Published in the Independence Daily Reporter June 2019

I was on a panel at a conference recently entitled “You Have an Innovative Idea, Now What? Should You Pursue It?” Part of the discussion turned to how quickly or aggressively you should pursue the idea toward getting it to the marketplace.

The first thought is that quicker is better. After all, we have to beat the competition, right? It seems it would be best to have plenty of capital to launch the idea very quickly without delay. In the business coaching and economic development business, we all have a joke about the potential client that says, “I have this great idea. All I need to do is borrow [$insert large sum of money here] to launch the full business model. I haven’t made a sale yet, but sales will come almost immediately after I open. How soon could I have a check with the loan proceeds?” There are at least two reasons why this scenario rarely plays out.

First, it’s almost never a good idea to launch a full business model directly from the idea stage. The original idea for a product or service is almost never the final version that customers want to buy. Changes to the original product or service idea are almost always required. If someone spends all their resources launching the original idea, there are no resources left over to make the changes requested by the customer.

Second, things happening too fast don’t give us a chance to think those things through. Constrained, or slower resources make us really think things through and in some cases make us think of innovative ways to accomplish more with fewer resources.

In another topic, the moderator asked us panelists to share one of our big mistakes. That’s tough to do in front of an audience, but the other panelists had bigger, or at least more expensive, mistakes than mine, so that helped. My mistake had to do with things happening too quickly and without enough constraint on resources.

I was a young adult in the photography business in Garden City, Kansas. This was circa 1980 BD (before digital.) I was booking many portrait and wedding sessions and decided I was paying out too much money to the photo processor. In the period BD, to make photographs you used a light sensitive material in the camera called “film.” After chemical processing, the film yielded a reverse-color image of the subject. We called them “negatives.” The negative was used to make an exposure on light sensitive paper, which again after processing yielded another reverse-color image, turning it back to a “positive” image of the scene. When the chemical processing was just right, at precise temperatures, the images turned out to be an accurate representation of the colors in the original scene. Any out-of-control parts of the process and the colors came out wrong, requiring rework. It sounds extremely complicated and it was. Somehow, I convinced myself that I was smart enough to buy some equipment and do the film and paper processing myself and do it with less expense than I was paying the professional processing house.

My chief investor, my mother, didn’t ask too many questions. She trusted, wrongly, that I knew what I was doing. So, the financing came quick and I set out to buy the equipment. Of course, there was no used equipment to be had. It all had to be purchased at a new price. The suppliers said “Oh, you won’t be able to find a machine like that used. They never become available. Here’s your price quote on a new machine.”

In a nutshell, over the next two years, with much money down the drain in the form of rework and wages, I learned that the professional processing house was not the bad value I had thought. So, I sold all the equipment I had purchased two-years before. At this point, there were used machines like mine everywhere. So many on the market for sale I did not come out well at all when I sold.

That was my own personal, hard lesson in what sometimes happens when you try to rush things too much. Today, I get frustrated at how long it takes to implement something, both at the Lab and at home, but generally the delays have led to better results as I think things through while trying to implement.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter June 2019

A few years ago, one of our area Main Street program directors was lamenting the fact that one or two of the fairly recent businesses in the downtown area had closed. “It just seems like some businesses close as fast as others open.” I told her that we should be celebrating the fact that when spaces open up there are people ready and willing to open another retail establishment; we should be celebrating the churn and always inviting people to come and see what is new. This surprised her as she said she’d never thought about it that way.

In our area of Southeast Kansas, I’ve always thought there were a surprising number of businesses more than 100 years old. It would easily take more than two hands to count those businesses in Montgomery County alone. I’ve not seen any studies on this, comparing the number of 100 year old companies per capita, but it seems like we have a large number for a county of around 35,000 people.

Unrealistic expectation

Several of these businesses are in downtown districts and many people long for a stable group of businesses in a downtown area, all successful for 100 years that fill all the empty buildings and available spaces. In today’s world of increasing competition from the vast selection on the Internet and in the “box stores” starting businesses that will last for 100 years will be challenging to say the least. Entrepreneurs and small business owners need to be ever aware of changing markets. Customers’ wants and needs change and what they wanted five years ago may not be what they want or need today. We should be celebrating and encouraging business churn and reinvention in our downtown districts. One definition I found for churn is “To produce something in an abundant and automatic manner.” We should be working to develop and encourage new entrepreneurs, willing to try new businesses in our downtown districts, in an abundant and automatic manner.

Start small and grow

The key is for the entrepreneur to start small, growing the business while tweaking the products and services offered to minimize the risk on the way to opening a retail store in a downtown district. Danielle Passauer, dba Platinum Designs, is growing her business in just such a manner. She came to Fab Lab ICC about three years ago, with a very small, fledgling business. She used our lasers for several months to grow her business into what she calls a “serious part time venture.” Now she has her own laser and other customization equipment at her home and during these last holiday seasons, she’s operated pop-up retail stores on certain occasions. She once told me that her goal was to have a full-time retail business in downtown Independence. She is reaching her goal in a measured series of small steps, reducing her financial risk every step of the way.

We should be replicating Danielle’s story all over Southeast Kansas, encouraging small start-ups that can grow into full-time businesses many even needing to hire employees to help serve customers. Nearly all of our business-related initiatives at Fab Lab ICC like Growth Accelerator and Women 4 Women are about helping and encouraging people start small and grow.

Start with a change in mindset

This is a different approach than starting big with big financing and it all starts with a change in mindset to that of what we call an entrepreneurial mindset. Before we get to cash flow projections and nuts and bolts business management disciplines, we need to learn to think in terms of solving problems for customers and starting small so corrections in our offerings are easily made as we learn what our customers really want. The Entrepreneurial Mindset class starts this fall in mid-August, running on Wednesday evenings. This is where we learn to think about solving problems in the marketplace and starting out small.

Celebrate the churn

There will always be a churning of businesses in our downtown areas and indeed in our region with businesses coming and going as the market changes. With the right mindset, we can always have new (or reinvented) entrepreneurial ventures to fill the openings in our buildings and in our marketplace. The churn is what makes an economy vibrant and exciting. Let’s celebrate the churn.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter June 2019

This is a recap of the remaining top 10 challenges we’ve faced in the creation and operation of Fab Lab ICC since we opened in October of 2014. Although our successes and these challenges have made us what we are today, I’d change some things if I were setting up a new Fab Lab or maker space.

Member and Volunteer Training

The challenge of learning so many processes and machines, especially well enough to show others, has been daunting. We now realize training for members and volunteers will be a combination of how-to outlines and videos along with short, 1 or 2 session starter classes for those ready to begin learning how to do something new. There will, however, always be a substantial element of self-learning and knowledge-sharing among members. That’s part of the culture and fabric of fab labs and maker spaces.

Fab Lab Blab Newsletter

Our “Fab Lab Blab” newsletter is very popular. The stories tend to be inspirational. We email the digital version to nearly 2,000 people both regionally and around the country. We regularly receive requests to be added to the email list and people in offices tell us they share it with others. When we do presentations and speaking engagements, we usually take a stack of 20 – 50 printed copies and they nearly always disappear.

As we’ve become so very busy, it has been difficult to find the time to write and edit the stories, select the images and assemble everything into the format. This continues to be a challenge this year and will require an extra effort to publish the next and following issues.

Organization

Organization of our supplies and materials has been a challenge from the beginning and continues today. Perhaps the challenge has grown as we’ve moved machines, equipment and supplies to the new building. There’s a Japanese discipline called “5S” some of us have used previously in a manufacturing environment.

5S is a workplace organization method that uses a list of five Japanese words: seiri, seiton, seisō, seiketsu, and shitsuke. These have been translated as “Sort”, “Set In order”, “Shine”, “Standardize” and “Sustain”.

We could certainly use all of the “S’s.” so we’re trying to figure out how to implement “5S” in the Lab.

 

Web Site

For five years, we’ve struggled with our web site presence and how to keep things current. This and so many of the other challenges are due to the “bare bones” staffing practices of the fab lab culture. I mentioned “Wild Apricot” last time as the web-based system to help us with member management. Turns out, “Wild Apricot” is an entire web site management system as well. It makes it easy to change content and keep it current.

Images and Video

So many activities have generated thousands of photo and video opportunities. We’ve captured about 1/3 of them, but getting them from the capture device, our myriad of phones, digital and video cameras into some kind of organized, searchable system has been extremely challenging. Currently Dropbox for Business seems to hold the greatest promise for not only storing but also tagging and cataloging the image content.

Project Management

Many, many projects and tasks have been on our combined plates starting even before we opened the doors. In knowing and remembering what work needs to be done and a rough order in which the work needs to be performed we’ve relied on a hodge-podge of manual lists, scratch pads and sticky notes. We’ve not ever tried a sophisticated system like Microsoft Project because it has failed in every company in which I’ve seen it attempted; too complicated. We’ve tried a couple of newer, web-based project management systems with little success. One most recent attempted solution had no provision to print a report, everything had to be viewed on screen or phone. I’m not quite ready to give up paper just yet. Using concepts from manufacturing planning systems I’ve used in previous lives, we’re developing our own web-based system so that everyone sees the stuff they are supposed to be working on and when it is supposed to be finished.

These were the top 10 (11 if you’re counting) biggest challenges in our first five years. There will always be new challenges as we move forward, but I hope if I revisit our biggest challenges in a year, some of these will drop off the list because we’ve figured out solutions.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks.

 

Published in the Independence Daily Reporter May 2019

I like to use a Top 10 format both in speaking and in writing. Ten is a manageable list that fits within the time and space restraints of most situations. I use “Top 10 Things You Should Know About Fab Lab ICC” a lot because the list can be altered easily as new items come up. Today’s list is one that highlights the Top 10 Challenges of Fab Lab ICC. It is a historical look at the challenges we’ve faced since our grand opening on October 1, 2014; some we still face today. I’m a believer that we are the sum of our experience and, generally, don’t think about what I’d do differently if we had it to do over. Still, in regard to these challenges, I’d change some things if I were setting up a new Fab Lab or maker space.

Membership Management

We’ve really struggled with member management, starting the tracking in Excel spread sheets, not bad if you only have ten members but when the number grows to 100- or 200-members management becomes cumbersome; knowing who is up for renewal, let alone notifying members to renew. We were recently introduced to a wonderful membership management application called Wild Apricot. It is a web-based system that provides complete membership management, including the renewal notices and even taking credit card payment.

Technology

This is a continuing challenge to learn the technologies involved in all the capabilities we have to offer, not only to be able help others learn, but to keep the machines up and running properly. Being located in a rural area means we don’t have “factory” technicians across town, and we have to do a lot of troubleshooting on our own.

Inventory

With the wide variety of capabilities and machines comes a need for a wide variety of supplies and materials. Some of the materials are not available locally so we offer them for sale to our members as a matter of convenience. We are preparing to implement a point of sale inventory system to help us better manage our supplies and materials.

Database and Financial Management

Early on, we made a decision to run the Lab like a business and implemented QuickBooks. That has greatly helped us with knowing our positions in cash, payables, receivables, sales and expenses. However, like many small businesses with which I work, we are not fully to a point of using management reports to better run the business.

Everyone who visits or becomes involved with Fab Lab ICC becomes a “person of interest” to us. In the beginning, we used sign-in sheets when people visited, then entered the names into a spreadsheet. You can imagine how difficult it was to read people’s hand-writing. We finally have progressed to a web-based visitor sign-in form. We try to get everyone who comes to the lab to sign in when they arrive and out when they leave. The visits are stored in our new Zoho web database. Knowing the number of visitors, and now the reason for the visit and how long they stay provides a big advantage in the success of our grant-writing opportunities.

Volunteer Program

Our early philosophy of making our Fab Lab “available to the community” meant that we would always operate with a lean staff in order to keep our membership prices low, currently $125 per year for an individual. (In some cities, the maker spaces are charging as much as $80 per month for memberships. We believe that would be beyond the affordability of too many in our region.)

We have recognized an effective volunteer program as essential in making the Lab, it’s capabilities and facilities available to our members. We have recently renewed our efforts to recruit and train volunteers to help us with the availability and operation of the Lab.

We’ll take a look at the remaining Top 10 challenges in next week’s column.

 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349, by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu or Twitter @jimcorrellks.