Meeting with Yahoo - Klaus Kaasgaard

Klaus Kaasgaard is a Vice President at Yahoo. He was the second presenter. He explained to us that the bottom line is customer needs. He said that right now internet products are hot, but the internet is becoming for of a problem than a solution. There are still unmet needs out there. The goal of design is to find un-expected things. If you find what you already know, then don't waste time on it. Address the full range of research and focus on delivery on research not on solutions. He thinks that focus groups are over-used and it doesn't work anymore. We also need to think more creatively.

Meeting with Yahoo's Marc Davis

Our meeting with Yahoo began with a presentation by Marc Davis. Some of the key notes he told us about design were: First, in design, you should re-fram the issue or problem. Second, for a design team, you should put people with different backgrounds together.

Marc also mentioned about a Yahoo design project called "One Connect". It's goal is to connect people with myspace and facebook, etc... all in one. He also talked about yahoo answers - http://www.answers.yahoo.com/. Finally, he talked about using flikr to track people; no more privacy and bosses may know where we are. The way it works is that people can take pictures using the camera on their cell phone. Then they can send it to their flikr account. Flikr recognizes the background and knows where you are.

My Thoughts on Meeting with WordPress

Here are my thoughts on our meeting with WordPress:

1) During our conversation with Matt, I was really amezed that his background is in Political Science and Philosophy. He wasn't even a developer trying to come up with the next big thing.

2) WordPress began their company by "winging it" and they are still "winging it". They started their company with no business plan. In IDEO's book, "The Art of Innovation", Tom Kelley also mentioned that they too just went with their guts and "winged it" and they became successful and they are still "winging it". IDEO also mentioned that they did not have a business plan.

3) Startup companies, like WordPress, began their company by developing something that they needed for themselves and used their own software and then it got huge and became successful. This is also how PeopleSoft began too. They developed and used their own HR software and then it became successful.

4) WordPress was ahead of the game; ahead of their competitors and understood what the next big thing may be and took a risk on it.

5) I can't believe that Matt allows all of his 20 employees to work from home from all over the world. I can't believe that he trusts his employees to work from home. How do you manage people working from home all of the time? What if they slack off? How does he know that they are actually working? I guess the good thing about allowing all of his employees to work from home is the need for office space. He doesn't need to spend money on it.

6) WordPress is free for the users to blog. So, how does WordPress or Matt make money?

7) I can't believe that he is only 23 years old and he didn't even need an MBA, yet he articulated so well. He spoke as if he had an MBA because he used business terminology that we heard in MBA school. He was also straightforward, direct. When we asked him a question, he directly and honestly answers the question. He did not beat around the bush like current business leaders in the larger companies.

I am amazed by our meeting with WordPress. I have learned so much from him.

Meeting with WordPress Founder

Our first visit in San Francisco was a meeting with Matt Mullenweb (pictured above), founder of WordPress and Automattic. WordPress is a small sized IT software company. They developed a blogging software used by thousands of people in the world. Matt is only 23 year old and he never completed his undergraduate degree. His background is in Political Science and Philosophy. He is one of the two executives at WordPress.

WordPress now have 23 full time employees from all around the world and they all work from home! Their headquarters are located in San Francisco, CA because it is where most of the Information Technology companies are located and they wanted to be close by to that area. Where a company is located is an important part of global strategy. Other important aspects of global strategy includes organizational structure, design and innovation and management.

Matt's other strategies include assigning one problem to multiple (one or two) developers and they work on them individually. His motto is that everyone works on everything. This way, there will be many different solutions for the same problem. Developers argue with team over choosing what to do or how to design a solution. However, this can be perceived as a waste of money.

In addition, WordPress uses online chat, blogging and twitter to communicate with each other instead of using emails. Projects are tracked via blog sites so that they can see the history of the blogs much more easier. Matt believes that emails are a distracter for developers because then they cannot concentrate on coding/developing. One reason that emails are considered a distracter is because people check and respond to emails multiple times in one day. Therefore, at WordPress, emails are turned off and employees only check once or twice per day.

WordPress' Human Resources – Recruitment Strategy

1) Find the best people wherever they are:

• Matt's first strategy is to find the best people wherever they are (i.e. Ireland, France, etc..) and keep those best people where they are.


• Matt has a couple of employees in Ireland and United Kingdom. He wanted to keep them where they are because he did not want to make them pick up and move their whole family.


• Everyone works from home. It keeps morale up and keeps his employees motivated.


• All of the employees get together twice per year. Once in San Francisco for a company meeting and once for fun (i.e. Mexico).


• The advantages of working from home includes the ease of working online and employees are happier and more motivated.


• However, the disadvantages of working from home include language barrier and it is not easy to socialize online.

2) Hire people who are dissatisfied all of the time and who are curious or easily annoyed

• These people usually have the greatest ideas


• Developers love to argue


• These people create innovation
  

Matt also gave us the following tips on designing or managing design:

1) Start building for yourself (just like PeopleSoft and WordPress did, built software to be used for themselves and it became big). Matt said that if you build it, people will use it. WordPress was originally built as a blog site for themselves for fun. They didn’t think that people would use it.

2) Uncertainty - In design, there's a limit of uncertainty. You are not certain whether it will be successful.

3) Anticipate the market and identify what you think is going to be big next. For example, a plug-in system was not popular before, but now it is.

4) Criticisms - You will receive lots of criticisms, don't let them get to you and don't listen to them.

5) Add to the Core - Add new product to the core of your business.

6) Laisez fair attitude - Let developers develop it and see if users will use it. Use a "Develop and See" attitude

7) Can’t satisfy everyone because nothing in life is perfect. There will always be at least one person who is not satisfied and want something different. There will always be at least one person who finds something wrong with your product.

8) Ask for forgiveness, not permission. The worst that can happen is getting fired.

9) Listen to the customers and observe people and market users

Originally, WordPress blog is an application but now WordPress has evolved and is now doing things as platforms, not applications. Companies change and evolve as it grows whether they are aware of it or not.

Design and Innovation Class

I am currently attending Temple University for my graduate degree (MBA). This summer, I am taking a class called Design and Innovation (MIS 5190). This class is an introduction to design thinking and methods in organizations. It is a combination of classroom, online (posting ideas and notes onto blog sites) and fieldwork experience (class trip to San Francisco to visit IDEO, Yahoo, SAP and several other companies). We also had to do a team design project for our class to help us think more like a designer.

I will be posting what I have learned from this class and trip, including my thoughts and pictures from the corporate visits. This blog will help me organize my thoughts, so that I can write my final paper for two different professors (one for MIS and one for GSM - for GSM credit).

Our class trip to San Francisco began on Monday, May 19, 2008 through to Thursday, May 22, 2008. First, we started out learning about design thinking from small Information Technology companies to medium to large ones. Then we moved into design thinking from a Branding/Marketing perspective. After that, we learned about design thinking from a medium sized Product Development company. Finally, we visited small to medium sized architecture companies and learned about how they used design processes.