Doing Something That’s Never Been Done

Executives, project sponsors, project managers, and steering committee members can learn a lot from how some deep technology startups approach their projects.

This isn’t true for all kinds of projects, but it is for every project that involves doing something that hasn’t been done before and has a high risk-reward profile.

This isn’t another lean startup story. Nor does it involve agile development or digital transformation. This is a story about doing technology research and development with clear goals and constraints. 

I’ve been an active angel investor for several years now. As such, I invest my own money in very early-stage startups. I try to help them with my knowledge, experience, and network, as well as my money. 

3D2cut is one of the startups I’ve invested in, and I sit on its advisory board. 3D2cut is all about winemaking. The company uses modern technology to tackle several problems associated with grapevine pruning.

The Challenge

Like winemaking, grapevine pruning is part science, part art, and getting it right determines the size of the harvest and the quality of the wine. 

In pruning, last year’s canes, which are now surrounded by a layer of wood, are removed to facilitate fresh new growth.

The work is laborious and expensive. There are around 7.5 M hectares of grapevines worldwide. Each year, approximately 1.3 M people prune for multiple weeks during the winter season.

Bad or imprecise pruning leads to wood diseases and can kill vines, which reduces yields and grape quality.

Therefore, as a vineyard owner or manager, you need well-trained staff to prune. 

However, training your staff to prune well takes a lot of resources, and the nature of the work – it’s hard! – means most pruning teams have a big turnover. Training staff is a recurring and expensive task.

Besides the cost, finding the required expertise to train pruners is a challenge.

Industrialization, extensive mechanical management of vineyards, and climate change make pruning far more complicated as your plants become more sensitive and crave for more gentle treatment.

That’s why you need an expert to correctly train your staff.

3D2cut has come up with a solution to address these challenges using modern technology. With this solution, everybody can become a Master Pruner without any training. The product guides vineyard staff through every cut.

The Solution

The solution is simple. 3D2cut will supply you with a device that uses Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Reality technologies to advise pruners on where to cut, simply and quickly.

This pruning expertise isn’t just any old advice. It represents the codified knowledge of the world’s premier pruning experts: Simonit & Sirch.

3D2cut’s solution results in:

> Better grapevine health, increased yields, and less need for chemicals.

> Less money and time spent on staff training, and reduced impacts arising from staff turnover.

> Rekindled passion for vineyard management thanks to a simplified, less stressful pruning process that’s also more sustainable.

Building It

The idea is simple, but that doesn't mean it was easy to achieve. We started by breaking down the problem and writing down its key assumptions. 

What did we need to be certain about to continue supporting the project?

> That the device could support augmented reality and work in the field. Rain, sun, snow, dust, long days. 

> That Simonit & Sirch’s knowledge could be codified in algorithms. We call this the Pruning Expert System (PES).

> That the device could recognize a vine in its natural environment and identify the vine type and its constituent parts (cane, cordon, shoot, bud, etc.) through machine learning. We call this the Vine Vision System (VVS).

> That we could create a large set of annotated images of vines to train and test the PES and VVS.

> That we could apply the PES to the results of VVS and project proposed cuts to the vine via the augmented reality device.

> That we could make this all work and produce the cutting proposals within 2 seconds.

> That we could patent the solution.

We then started testing these assumptions one by one.

After we validated the individual parts, we started building the walking skeleton and plugged in the parts. Next, we started field testing and improving the end-to-end solution.

This is where we are now. 

We have proven every assumption to be true, but we are not completely satisfied with the end-to-end product.

That said, we expect to have the first version of the product ready for a pilot client in December this year. Just in time for the northern hemisphere pruning season.

The Lessons

> Start by formulating your key assumptions. Test them one by one. This process won’t tell you if the project is worth continuing, as many other factors will come into play, but it can definitely tell you if you need to abandon your project immediately. This step is excellent risk management. 

> Proving individual assumptions is a sign of progress and supports discussions around funding. It also helps win support for your project from company stakeholders.

> See if you can create a win-win partnership with a company or team that complements your project team’s capabilities and assets. In our case, Simonit & Sirch are co-founders of 3D2cut. This alliance arms us with their unique expertise and gives them a vested interest in 3D2cut’s success. 

> See if you can apply knowledge and working solutions from unrelated areas. In our case, we applied algorithms for detecting human movement to detecting vine structures. It worked very well and saved us a lot of effort. It also allowed us to leverage the experience and knowledge of the people who invented these algorithms. Instead of starting from scratch, we could build on a strong foundation.

> If possible, collaborate with experts – universities or research institutes, for example – on certain parts of the problem where there is a common interest. We work together with IDIAP. One IDIAP employee works on problems formulated by 3D2cut; meanwhile, a 3D2cut employee is completing his Master’s degree at IDIAP.  

> Build for, and test in the field. Don’t create artificial problems to test your assumptions. Make it as real as possible. Only then will you be testing the assumptions. We started working on our VVS by using vine images with an artificial background. We learned a lot, but it wasn’t the problem we had to solve. Vines in vineyards do not have an artificial background. We spent time and money on annotating these images with artificial backgrounds. In hindsight, we spent too much on these efforts.

> Most startups don’t have much money to spend. You’re forced to focus and be creative. You can make that happen in your project by applying stage-gate funding, which is when you release more budget for the project only if certain milestones are achieved. This is comparable with the startup funding concept. It starts with the 3F (friends, family, and fools), then a Seed round, then a Series A, Series B, and so on. You should spend significant money to scale, not necessarily to build.

> You can validate assumptions whilst knowing that another assumption is still outstanding or that the result is not yet what you need. For example, we started building PES and VVS and tested them in the field on a tablet instead of glasses that support augmented reality. By not waiting for such glasses, we bought ourselves a lot of time and discovered new requirements for the glasses.

> Even if technology isn’t ready today, you can anticipate what’s coming in the near future. Based on our field tests with the tablet, we realized that the first version of the product would need both a tablet/cellphone and glasses to work. We know that within the foreseeable future that glasses alone will fulfil our needs, but today this is not the case.

> Smart and motivated people learn very fast. You don’t need experts in every area. You need a small team with people that are capable and willing to learn. Since you don’t know upfront what problems you’ll encounter and what solutions will be available, it makes no sense to look for a bunch of experts. You can always hire an expert for a few consulting days if necessary.

> Start building a walking skeleton as early as possible. You’ll need to work and test it in an end-to-end environment as soon as you can. Only then will you see the real results of your changes.

In a nutshell: Corporates can learn a lot from how some deep technology startups approach their projects.

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Create a Lighthouse to Drive Your Transformation

I’m a firm believer in transformation through delivery. In my experience real change cannot be implemented without a vehicle that is used to drive it through the organisation and crash through existing barriers. 

Transformation is far more than just deploying new technologies for the sake of it. A genuine competitive advantage can only be gained through the combination of an organization’s culture, its strategic choices and way of operating. 

It’s about continuously enabling new and leaner operating models underpinned by flexible business processes, connected platforms, analytics and collaboration capabilities that enhance efficiency and effectiveness. 

It’s about searching, identifying and developing new technology supported business models and, above all, ensuring that customers and employees are at the center of whatever a company does.

A good way to start transformation through delivery is by defining a so-called lighthouse project early on in the process and letting your best people make it a success. A lighthouse project is a short-term, well defined, measurable project that serves as a model — or a “lighthouse” — for other similar projects within the broader transformation initiative.

This technical delivery project will show new ways of working and doing business combined with the use of technology and will help to identify organizational challenges that hinder you to do the same in the rest of your organization.

The 4 key attributes of such a lighthouse project are:

> It has high business value and visibility so it is less likely to be cancelled. A lighthouse project doesn’t need to directly benefit everyone in your organisation. But its value should be something that everyone in the organisation can appreciate and understand. It should have obvious results, such as “we have reduced the hardware purchasing budget by 70 percent” or “we have managed to increase our application uptime from 95 percent to 99.9 percent.”

> It has clear metrics. You’ll notice that the results mentioned above involve hard numbers. Collecting quantifiable data about your lighthouse project is important in order to make the demonstration of value as clear as possible.

> It touches multiple business units and silos to enable the identification of barriers and influence change.

> It has a hard deadline in the near future to focus the business and delivery team to provide pressure to break down barriers. You don’t want to wait years for your lighthouse project to be complete. Choose a project that can be implemented within a reasonable period of time—a year at most. Of course, you should be careful to balance time-to-completion with sophistication; don’t make the project too simple in order to make it faster to complete.

In a nutshell: A lighthouse project is the key to transformation because it shows everyone in your organisation what they can achieve by leveraging new ways of working, new ways of thinking, and using new technologies.

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The 17 Global Goals For Sustainable Development

Besides shedding some light on an initiative that is very important to me, this article will present a great example on how to define project success with help from objectives and key results (OKRs).

In September 2015, the leaders of all 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) adopted Agenda 2030, a universal agenda that contains the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. 

Sustainable development has been defined as development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It calls for concerted efforts towards building an inclusive, sustainable and resilient future for people and the planet.

The 17 Global Goals (i.e. Objectives) in turn hold 169 targets (i.e. Key Results) and 230 indicators (i.e. Measurements).

From 2015 till 2030 all countries will mobilize efforts to end all forms of poverty, fight inequalities and tackle climate change, while ensuring that no one is left behind.

The Global Goals is the most ambitious agreement for sustainable development that world leaders has ever made. It integrates all three aspects of sustainable development; social, economic and environmental.

The Global Goals and Agenda 2030 builds on the success of the Millennium Development Goals and aims to go further to end all forms of poverty. The new goals are unique in that they call for action by all countries, poor, rich and middle-income to promote prosperity while protecting the planet.

With the help of the Global Goals, we will be the first generation who can eradicate poverty and the last who can tackle climate change.

For the goals to be met, everyone needs to do their part: governments, the private sector, civil society and the general public.

While the Global Goals are not legally binding, governments are expected to take ownership and establish national frameworks for the achievement of the 17 Goals. 

Countries have the primary responsibility for follow-up and review of the progress made in implementing the Goals, which will require quality, accessible and timely data collection. Regional follow-up and review will be based on national-level analyses and contribute to follow-up and review at the global level.

The Objectives

The 17 defined objectives are:

1) No Poverty - End poverty in all its forms everywhere

2) Zero Hunger - End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

3) Good Health and Well-being - Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

4) Quality Education - Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all

5) Gender Equality - Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls

6) Clean Water and Sanitation - Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

7) Affordable and Clean Energy - Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all

8) Decent Work and Economic Growth - Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all

9) Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure - Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation

10) Reduced Inequality - Reduce inequality within and among countries

11) Sustainable Cities and Communities - Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

12) Responsible Consumption and Production - Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

13) Climate Action - Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*

14) Life Below Water - Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

15) Life on Land - Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss

16) Peace and Justice Strong Institutions - Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels

17) Partnerships to achieve the Goal - Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development

How will Key Results be measured?

At the global level, the 17 Goals and 169 targets will be monitored and reviewed using a set of global indicators, agreed on by the UN Statistical Commission. 

The Economic and Social Council and the General Assembly will then adopt these indicators. Governments will also develop their own national indicators to assist in monitoring progress made on the goals and targets.

The follow-up and review process will be informed by an annual SDG Progress Report to be prepared by the Secretary-General. You will find the report for 2019 here.

The annual meetings of the High-level Political Forum on sustainable development will play a central role in reviewing progress towards the SDGs at the global level.

Taking action

Choosing one Goal to support is a good way to start, and to take specific action. However, all the Goals are interlinked, so by supporting one Goal your actions will have positive impacts on other Goals. For example, promoting gender equality (Goal 5) in your organization will help support a growing economy (Goal 8) and quality education for all (Goal 4).

There are so many things everyone can do to contribute. Here are a few good things to start you off:

> Spread the word about the Global Goals, so that more people can take action and contribute to meeting the Goals.

> Join an organization that actively contributes to meeting the Goals.

> Reduce your general waste and your environmental footprint. Avoid plastics, take the train instead of the airplane, the bike instead of the car.

> Make conscious choices in your consumption. Buy local and try to make sure what you buy is produced in fair and sustainable ways.

> Show compassion and stand up against racism, exclusion, discrimination and injustice.

Use your imagination. The future depends on our ability to imagine it.

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Your Project Is Not Disruptive. And That Is OK.

Innovation means the application of ideas that are novel and useful.

Creativity, the ability to generate novel and useful ideas, is the seed of innovation but unless it’s applied and scaled it’s still just an idea.

Innovation must lead to the introduction of new products and services that add value to your organisation and your clients.

Innovations can be big or small, but breakthrough or disruptive innovation is something that either creates a new category, or changes an existing one dramatically, and obsoletes the existing market leader.

So we need to stop calling everything breakthrough or disruptive, especially in internal company discussions. It is more than OK to have a balanced pipeline of big and small ideas, and we need to get comfortable with that again.

If we demand nothing but disruption or breakthrough, (delivered tomorrow and on small budgets) then that is all people want to work on, and to accommodate this, everything gets labeled in those terms.

But language matters, and once we start calling good but smaller ideas breakthrough, we lower the bar.

This is a recipe for mediocrity, and is one of the reasons why so many companies struggle with too many small initiatives and not enough big ones.

In a nutshell: It is important to have a balanced pipeline of big and small ideas, and we need to get comfortable with that again.

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Stop Wasting Money on FOMO Technology Innovation Projects

Big data, blockchain, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, robotics, 5G, machine learning... Billions and billions are poured into projects around these technologies, and for most organizations, not much is coming out of it.

And this is not because these projects are badly managed. Quite simply, it is because they should not have been started in the first place.

I believe that one of the main reasons that many innovative technology projects are started comes down to a fear of missing out, or FOMO.

FOMO is the pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences that you are not. This social anxiety is characterized by a desire to stay continually connected with what others are doing.

FOMO can also be described as a fear of regret, which may lead compulsive concerned about the possibility of missing an opportunity for social interaction, a novel experience, a profitable investment, or another satisfying event.

In other words, FOMO perpetuates the fear of making wrong decisions on how you spend time and money, and it’s all due to your imagination running wild.

This fear is not limited to individuals. Organizations are victims of FOMO as well. And you will find that fear prominently on display in the many technology innovation projects that are started.

So before you start your next technology innovation project, please ask yourself the following fourteen questions. And if you’re not happy with the answers, don’t start spending time and money just because you fear missing out.

1) Why do anything at all?

First, be sure the project lies clearly in the direction your organization is heading.

It’s important to fully understand your organization’s latest strategies, priorities and targets. This helps prevent fundamental errors early on. Strategic thinking could even reveal larger opportunities than you first considered. After all, a complex technology project requires your very best people and a great amount of their focus.

2) Why do this exactly?

There are three basic ways to create value: earn more, spend less, or do things more efficiently. Decide what you’ll focus on and be able to explain why the project will do something meaningful towards that.

What customer do you want to serve with this solution? Will it involve selling more to existing customers, or pitching to entirely new ones? What job do you want to help them do better? Is the problem even big enough?

Clayton Christensen, the famed Harvard Business School professor known for coining the term “disruptive innovation,” believes that one of his most enduring legacies will be an idea he first put forward in his 2003 book "The Innovator’s Solution": don’t sell products and services to customers, but rather try to help people address their jobs to be done.

What if the benefits of the project are less tangible at this stage? Proceeding in order to gain market and product knowledge, develop new capabilities, find new partners and test possible models is perfectly valid. The challenge then is to articulate the benefits effectively.

3) What does success look like?

Before you start a project it's essential to work actively with the organization that owns it to define success across three levels:

i) Project delivery success is about defining the criteria by which the process of delivering the project is successful.

Essentially, this addresses the classic triangle of "scope, time, budget." It is limited to the duration of the project, and success can be measured as soon as the project is officially completed (with intermediary measures being taken, of course, as part of project control processes).

ii) Product or service success is about defining the criteria by which the product or service delivered is deemed successful.

For example, the system is used by all users in scope, uptime is 99.99 percent, customer satisfaction has increased by 25 percent, operational costs have decreased by 15 percent, and so on.

These criteria need to be measured once the product/service is implemented and over a defined period of time. This means it cannot be measured immediately at the end of the project itself.

iii) Business success is about defining the criteria by which the product or service delivered brings value to the overall organization, and how it contributes financially and/or strategically to the business.

For example, financial value contribution (increased turnover, profit, etc.) or competitive advantage (market share won, technology advantage).

Once these possible benefits are projected, examine whether those outcomes are realistic.

4) Will people pay for it?

This seems quite self-explanatory, but the amount of products that large organizations build for which there is little eventual market appetite is not to be snickered at. You want to build prototypes to not only validate the product/solution fit but also the revenue/pricing model.

5) Will it cost less to deliver than people are willing to pay for it?

What's the cost of delivery per customer and customer acquisition cost? You need to understand this and compare it to the lifetime value generated per customer. If each customer is worth approximately $1 million but it costs us $1.1 million to deliver said product, then you're operating at a loss and need to rethink your business model.

6) Is there already an effective but ‘less innovative’ solution to your problem?

Many of the problems we try to solve in technology already have solutions that we know work. For example:

> WORM storage vs. Blockchain when it comes to immutability
> Simple scripts vs. expensive RPA solutions

These solutions are not new and we have plenty of data to show that they are effective in solving the problem that they’re trying to address.

If the problem that you’re looking to “solve” already has proven and effective solutions, then maybe you don’t need an innovative new idea. You just need more funding for boring solutions that actually work.

7) Has it been done before? 

It's important to look at already available analogs (other products that validate market appetite) and antilogs (products that invalidate market appetite).

For example, analogs for the iPod were the Sony Walkman (these validated mobile music consumption) and MP3 players (these validated that people would download MP3s to external devices). Likewise, you want to identify failures and understand why they failed and whether or not this learning presents an opportunity.

Be aware that other organizations may have already attempted the innovation that you are advocating, and failed. One of the problems we face in development is that not all failures are reported, making it hard to learn from all that has come before us.

8) Are you trying to solve the underlying problem using only technology?

Technology can do many things to an existing process. For example, it can:

> Make the process faster
> Make the process more reliable
> Store lots of data
> Make the process more interactive
> Allow people involved to communicate more easily.

However, technology alone cannot solve an underlying problem. Taking a bad system and replicating that bad system with better technology won’t necessarily lead to improvements.

In my experience, the most effective innovation projects are ones that make incremental improvements to an existing process or system using technology (e.g., making the process faster, more reliable, etc.).

A fundamental requirement is that people are already using the existing system. If they don’t use the existing system, then they probably won’t use the new one.

9) Can you test it relatively quickly, economically and effectively using your existing networks and ability to prototype?

If you can't, then you won't be able to move quickly enough and may over-commit time and money to something that there may be little appetite for. However, today all it takes is a little imagination to build prototypes for even the most ambitious technical endeavors. The first prototype for Google Glass was built in just one day.

10) Is this scalable?

If you are successful in finding product market fit and validating your business model, what will it take to scale up by 100x, 1,000, or 10,000? Can you scale, or do you need funding and partners? How would you go about that? Would scale affect your business model and what makes your company tick? What would be the cost per unit if you scale? Will your business model still make sense?

11) Why not wait?

Why act now? You need to be able to explain why failure to act now will threaten the organization.

There is often less risk in not being first to market. Competitors can react quickly and effectively, simply learning your methods and replicating your gains without making large investments themselves.

The net result then could be restricted to temporary market share gains and, potentially, lower long-term industry prices. Even if you’re seeking to respond to a new functionality launched by a competitor, be sure of why you can’t wait to see their market reception before initiating action.

If the additional revenue gains are not large enough to win sufficient internal support over other opportunities, you must be able to point to other reasons that compel action now.

12) Who could or should do this internally?

Often, the source of innovation is not where the execution ability sits.

Identify which internal departments need to be involved. If the project proceeds, they will hear about it anyhow. It’s better to learn from their perspective and insight early on.

This is also important if you need both central corporate and local divisional sponsors, and it is unclear where the full cost should appear.

13) Who externally could do this better?

Determine if you have the necessary skill-sets internally to achieve the optimum outcome.

It is expensive and risky to create an entire new platform yourself unless the opportunity is large enough. Can you outsource some of the components involved? Instead of developing new systems, could licensing or working with a third-party vendor improve speed, flexibility, and scalability? Maybe you could buy a startup in the space you are looking for.

14) What else could I do instead?

In a competitive trading environment with constant pressure to innovate, the project generation, review, and approval process often only involves a few individuals. This may help with focus, but it also removes valuable alternative perspectives.

Project sponsors should actively seek alternative views and ensure relevant experts are consulted. It is much more persuasive if project sponsors show they have thoroughly considered alternative, organic growth strategies.

Closing Thoughts

Ideally, organizations should only do as many things as they can do well.

You should, of course, ensure that you are exploring all opportunities that create value for the organization. However, once a growth area is identified, the key to making the right decision depends on many variables and estimates, as well as the judgments of senior executives.

In a nutshell: These deceptively simple but powerful questions help you in testing and refining technology project proposals, clarifying the business case, building support, and ultimately persuading others why they should invest scarce resources in an idea or not.

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