Intention and Invention by Bill Warner

8/11/2019 Intention and Invention by Bill Warner

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Intention andInvention

Designing Companies That Create New Industries

Bi!Warner

V2 February 14, 2013


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Foreward

I intend to help people fo!ow their heart.

I believe people are pushed to fo!ow their head.

These two statements encapsulate what drives me these days. I started two companies,

Avid and Wildfire. Both had successful outcomes financially. Avid became a public

company and is the leader in high"end video and film editing systems today. Wildfire

created a telephone"based virtual assistant very similar to Apples Siri. It was sold to

Orange PLC in 2000, netting investors a 4"10x return.

But how the companies turned out from my original intentions is a di#erent story. The

intention behind Avid was I intend to help people tell their story. Avid does this

beautifully and has since it started shipping in 1989.

Wildfire captured the technology worlds imagination by making the first speech"based

electronic assistant, and one with a personality to boot. But as the demos wowed people,

I felt uncomfortable that something was wrong.

A jarring confirmation of this feeling came much later when I mentioned Wildfire to

young man, and he said Oh, Wildfire. I know that product. When I get Wildfire, I hang

up. I asked why, and he provided a zinger. People who use Wildfire dont want to talk tome. They use it to screen calls.

It was true. My unstated intention with Wildfire was I intend to help people feel closer

together. And after nine years of e#ort, I had built a product that did the exact

opposite.

I believe I took two di#erent approaches on the two companies. With Avid, I followed

my heart and fulfilled my intentions. With Wildfire, I followed my head and ended up

not fulfilling my intentions...even doing the opposite.

So today I work with entrepreneurs on a simple concept: That you can indeed followyour heart as you build your company. And, like Avid, the company will still make perfect

sense to those using their head as they invest. Starting in 2004, I have, over the last eight

years, created and refined a range of techniques for helping entrepreneurs truly turn the

energy that is in them into a company that not only reflects their intentions, but causes

those intentions to flow in an ever"growing way.


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On DesigningCompanies

Stories and Background


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What Game

Are YouPlaying?

Founder Fit vs. Market Fit

Ill start with an old joke. One fish swims by the other and asks

hows the water? The other replies whats water?

I believe the same is true in business. Businesses live in a medium,

but that medium is so taken for granted, and so assumed to be

singular, that the design of companies is remarkably static.

In fact, I believe that most entrepreneurs simply ignore the design

of their company and focus on the design of their product.

They adopt the assumed method of company formation that I callMarket Fit. You create a product that fits a market. You prove

the market exists, you convince investors it exists, you design your

product to the market and then you sell that product to the

market. Your company design? Thats simple. It becomes whatever

it must become to best serve the market you have found.

Voila. Youve left your company design up to the folks who have

the most money $now%to pay for a product that meets a current

need.

But what about entrepreneurs that seek to create products forwhich there is no current market? No one is searching Google for

the price for these things. In fact, people either dont think they

need them, or they believe the product is impossible.


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The Wright Brothers

1899: Bicycle Makers Plan Lifto!

I believethe Wright Brothers story providesexcellent information about how to build your

company to fit its founders, and then how not to.

While others were seeking to create powered flight

through complex and expensive inventions, the

Wright Brothers created a world for themselves. A

shop with everything they needed. Their own wind

tunnels. And finally, their own private, quiet, windy

beach where they could experiment in peace. $And

in secret.%

The Wright Brothers simply solved each problem

that came up until there were no problems left, and

they were able to fly. First as a glider. And then as

powered flight. When they couldnt find an engine

that performed well enough, they invented their

own.

I submit that from 1899 to 1903, the Wright

Brothers were using a company design technique I

call Founder Fit. They focused on what theyneededto accomplish what they believedwas

possible.

The Wright Brothers actions were taken only for

themselves. Not for anyone else. They didnt make

their own wind tunnel to prove flight to data to

others. They made the test equipment to learn what

they needed to learn.

The result is in the history books. They achieved

excellent powered flight before anyone else.

They were flying. Literally. And then they decided

to become a fish. Because after they made the

invention, the felt they needed to become a real

company. And real company in those days was based

on patents. Click herefor a quick video showing

what happened.http://bit.ly/WhatGame

VIDEO

A Brief Story of Changing the World

Click or enter the link below:

1:04
http://bit.ly/WhatGamehttp://bit.ly/WhatGamehttp://bit.ly/WhatGamehttp://bit.ly/WhatGamehttp://bit.ly/WhatGame


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Patent War

The Wright Brothers were obsessed with patents, and

with the fear that others would steal their ideas. They

refused to show their flying machines publicly until

the patents were set, which furiously increased the

creativity and cleverness of future competitors.

I believe that the patent war represented the Wright

Brothers decent into simple fish, living in the same

old water everyone else did. Two bicycle makers

designed their own world and cracked the hardestengineering problem of the century and then, with

only fear and an amazing lack of imagination became

fighting fish in a battle that could only kill them.

How could this happen?

I believe the answer is simple. People too often play a

game that is assumed, rather than the game they want

to play. I believe this is what happened:

The Wright Brothers played theirgame and won.

Then they playedsomeone elsesgame and lost.


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Intention, Inventionand Beliefs

A Framework for Creating Companies That Change the World


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Introduction

Four Concepts Form the Foundation of Your Company

I intend to help people see the simplicity in life. In my work with

entrepreneurs, Ive found that what will become an extremely

complex company can be understood through four simple concepts:

Intention:This is the energy in each of us that drives us to help

others. I believe its not just a general energy, but it manifests itself in

individual intentions, such as the I intend to help people tell their

story intention that drove me on Avid. I believe a single intention

can spawn a company and power its founder for a decade.

Invention: I see inventions as servants to intention. They are way for

ones intentions to take shape in the real world.

Beliefs: Beliefs are the connector between intention and invention.

For example, if you dont believe something is possible, you wont

attempt any invention. Beliefs are extremely powerful in that the

shape the flow of your intention, and they also lead you to invent in

specific ways.

Your People: I believe our insatiable desire to invent comes from our

desire to help others. And our greatest energy comes from our desire

to help people we love. Entrepreneurs often focus on customers ""people who can pay. I encourage them to focus on the people they

love helping, and design a company centered around that.

Remarkably, it usually turns out that you can help your people and

create a profitable, sustainable business with that help at the core.


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Intention

Example

The Declaration of Independence: The

Worlds Most Famous Statement of IntentThe central thesis of my work on designing companies to

fit their founders is the idea that ones own source of

energy comes from intention. I believe that intention is a

word for the energy a person has to help others. I also

believe that each invention we make springs from a single

founding intention.

The founding of our country serves as a wonderful example

of intention, invention and beliefs at work. In 1776, the

rebels had a tiny army and no proof that they could ever

win a war against England. Undaunted, they pushed the

belief"to"proof ratio to the maximum and issued the

Declaration of Independence. The intention was to help

people be free to pursue life, liberty and happiness. The

declaration said nothing about the the actual design of the

country that was dreamed of. It was pure intention and

pure belief. And no proof.

In 1787, the Constitution would lay out the basic design

principles of the country, providing an actual framework to

flow the intentions and support the beliefs that were

outlined eleven years before.

...!at "ey are endowed by "ei#$rea%r wi"certain unalienabl&'ights, "at among "ese are Life,(iber)and "e pursuit o*+appiness.

...,at "ese Uni-d Colonies are,and of Right ought %be Fre&and Independent Sta-.


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Invention

ExampleThe US Constitution: Guiding 240 Years ofCountry Design From Just 418 Lines of Text

Brad Feld has written a great book on startups called Do

More Faster.Its a series of essays on how to get more done

with less e#ort. I have two essays in the book, but I wish I

could add a third: Get Less Done with More E#ort.

If the Constitution was to be measured in lines of code, its

truly tiny "just 418 lines. Read the constitution and see the

accounting of the lines here. The US Constitution may be

small, but it was the result of years of enormous e#ort and

thought.

In fact, I would argue that the Constitution achieves the

highest ratio of intention flow to compared to the size ofthe invention. I call this ratio intention density .The US

Constitution is the smallest in the world. Its intention is

to provide Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

And arguably, the intention flow it has fostered is the

largest of any country in the world. Hence, it has the

highest intention density of any single invention that I

know of.

At the MITx Awards Ceremony, I gave a 12"minute

keynote speech that explains this in a funny way. Click to

listen

BLOG POST

http://bit.ly/

Constitution418

Our First Social Network:

The US Constitution

http://bit.ly/SocialNetworkSpeech

12:29

KEYNOTE SPEECH
http://bit.ly/SocialNetworkSpeechhttp://bit.ly/Constitution418http://bit.ly/SocialNetworkSpeechhttp://bit.ly/SocialNetworkSpeechhttp://bit.ly/Constitution418http://bit.ly/Constitution418http://bit.ly/Constitution418http://bit.ly/Constitution418http://bit.ly/SocialNetworkSpeechhttp://bit.ly/SocialNetworkSpeechhttp://bit.ly/SocialNetworkSpeechhttp://bit.ly/SocialNetworkSpeechhttp://bit.ly/Constitution418http://bit.ly/Constitution418http://bit.ly/Constitution418http://bit.ly/Constitution418http://www.amazon.com/Do-More-Faster-TechStars-Accelerate/dp/0470929839http://www.amazon.com/Do-More-Faster-TechStars-Accelerate/dp/0470929839http://www.amazon.com/Do-More-Faster-TechStars-Accelerate/dp/0470929839http://www.amazon.com/Do-More-Faster-TechStars-Accelerate/dp/0470929839


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BeliefExample

Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton fought in the Battle of Yorktown in

1781 and helped end the Revolutionary War. But his

biggest contribution to our country was in his ability to

change the fundamental political and economic

structure of the country. He is rightly referred to as one

of our Founding Fathers. Here I will use his story topoint out the power of belief, and the role it needs to

play in the design of companies as well as countries.

Bankrupt States

In 1790, most states were essentially bankrupt from the

debts they incurred to fight the War. Hamilton believed

that a strong central government and a modern financial

system could increase confidence in the new country.

The Federal Government Assumes State Debt

Specifically, Hamilton convinced Congress to have theFederal Government assume the debts of the states.

With this move, and with his other financial innovations,

our country went from a lose confederation of mostly

bankrupt states, to an emerging power. And yet, nothing

much had changed immediately. Only the structures for

the future.

The Belief"to"Proof Ratio

People love to see proof. But proof is a form of burden,

much like carrying weight. People also have an amazingability to believe in the future with little and sometimes

no proof. Hamilton, in his five years as Secretary of the

Treasury dramatically increased belief in the countrys

future, while letting the proof wait. Much like the

thrust"to"weight ratio in an airplane, when you can

operate with more belief and less proof, you climb faster.


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Your

PeopleExample

Google Helps Their People For Free

When Sergei Brin $left%and Larry Page $right%started

Google in 1998, Alta Vista was already a leading search

engine. Soon it was using the accepted method of

monetization in those days ""it had become a portal.

Remember the phrase sticky eyeballs? The idea was that

people would come for search, and stay for all the other

links, which would yield advertising dollars.

Page and Brin had a di#erent idea. How about making

search incredibly fast and simple? You come, you search,you leave. They loved their people "the searchers ""and

they vowed to serve them, and never take from them. No

monetization.

Steven Levys book In the Plexoutlines what happened.

Usage exploded, even while Brin and Page were at Stanford.

VCs invested due to the growth, but still asked for proof of

how Google could make money. Brin and Page just pressed

on with helping people search.

Eventually they found the answer that helped theirsearchers and at the same time brought in revenue. It was

called AdWords. Carefully designed so any ads were useful

to searchers instead of annoying, Google made an

incredibly profitable company that only helped searchers

and never took anything from them. No sticky eyeballs.
http://www.amazon.com/Plex-Google-Thinks-Works-Shapes/dp/1416596585http://www.amazon.com/Plex-Google-Thinks-Works-Shapes/dp/1416596585


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Intention FlowThe Essential Flow of Energy that Creates Great Companies


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Intention

FlowHelping People as the

Core of Any Great Company

In this diagram, the orange lines show intention flow from the

intention, through beliefs, through the invention and on to the

people being helped. The small circle with the little i is a single

intention of a single person. For example, for me on Avid it was

I intend to help people tell their story.

I call this a timeless intention, because like the Declaration ofIndependence, it says nothing about how to fulfill the intention,

and it is a simple human truth.

The Avid Media Composer was my invention, and it made all

video and sound digital and instantly accessible. My people were

editors who used the Avid to tell their story.

It is remarkably easy to take an entrepreneur who knows who

they want to help, and get them to block their own intentions

because they believe that focusing on the flow of money and on

current customers is the only way to design their product and$often by default%their company.

And it is also true that it is remarkably easy to get entrepreneurs

to do what comes naturally to them ""to invent for their people

and to create products the flow their own intentions .


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Do Less

SlowerMore Thinking. Less Doing. High Intention

Density Yields More Results

Much of the time I spend with entrepreneurs is to get them

to change their work habits. Much like the fish story earlier,

where the game is assumed, I find that entrepreneurs need

constant reinforcement that they are doing the right thing.

And working hard and getting a lot done seem to be the

default behaviors that everyone agrees is the sign of a great

entrepreneur.

Not me. The Founding Fathers took 116 days to come up

with their tiny 418 lines. A rate of 3.6 lines per day. I believe

that great work comes from little bursts of doing, and lots of

time thinking.

I believe that the entrepreneurs first task is to understand

their own intentions and beliefs, and then encodethese into

thesma!estinventions they can.

I believe entrepreneurs need to start by believing that they

have something important to give to their people, and they

dont needproofin order to start and to accelerate. They

dont need validation, and they often dont even need money

to start.

To put it in terms of two ratios, I believe entrepreneurs need

a very high belief"to"proof ratio, and then they should make

the smallest inventions that create the highest intention

flow possible $high intention density.%


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CoFlowCreating an Additive World


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Addition is

BetterSound Waves Meet the Venn Diagram

The concept of CoFlow is based on what we already know from

nature. We know that great things in nature are additive.

When you listen to the sounds of the forest, you hear them all.

The birds singing, the rustling leaves, the wind ""all those

sounds add up to what you hear.

In fact, the idea that anything acts in a subtractive way in

nature is hard to imagine.

But once we start to use our heads, we can imagine lots of ways

where subtraction is key. The Venn Diagram illustrates. Youtake three independent items, and begin to realize how small

the overlap is. Strangely, we see that small overlapping part as

the most valuable.

But in nature, things just add up. More sounds makes a richer

sound. More flavors make a richer meal. More types and colors

of light make a more beautiful scene. Nothing subtracts from

anything else.

I believe that we invest a fortune to teach our students the

benefits of subtraction. The benefits of understanding the small

commonality rather than the sum of the parts. I believe we

teach people to create companies that focus on what is shared

between the founders, rather than what is the sum of the

founders and beyond.

Ive created a company design concept I call CoFlow. It is

simply a way to add up all the intention flows from all the

founders. It may be simple, but the results are profound.


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The Founding

IntentionA Single Intention, From a Single Founder Forms

the Core of the Company

In the work I do with companies, one of my least favorite words

is we. Ask a founder whats important to them, and they will

often answer We think...

Usually, we means theyve gone through the Venn diagram

process and theyre talking about whats left after all that

subtraction.

I find it takes work just to convince entrepreneurs that the best

way to build a company is to understand each person as their

true selves ""their intentions, their beliefs, their inventions and

the people they want to help.

Once we do this work, we find the intentions of each founder,

and begin the process of designing and additive system that

creates something much bigger, rather than much smaller, than

the sum of the parts.

Nature has the concept of a central pathway as a core for

growth. Take a tree for example. It is built around its ability to

flow nutrients up to its leaves. More light moves more nutrients

up the core and creates more growth. A positive feedback

system. But the core is the flow pathway in the trunk. Its not

the leaves.

For companies, I believe a similar concept is the idea of the

founding intention, which comes from a single founder.

For example, I believe Larry Page provided the founding

intention of Google.


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Center Flow

The Core Flow to the Company's People

The founding intention becomes what I call the center

flowof the company. The founder who provides this is the

center flow founder.

This center flow and the people who receive its help

provide a crucial feedback mechanism for the company.

Other founders are free to create their own inventions andhelp their own people. I call these flows coflows.

The great thing about center flow and coflow is that they

are additive. But one simple rule makes them add up in an

explosive, exciting, and rewarding way.

Rule: Every CoFlow Must Add To theCenter Flow

This rule seems deceptively simple, but its e#ect is large.

The Google example illustrates. Page and Brin refused to

do any monetization until they knew it was good for

$Larrys%people. They didnt use my terms, but they used

the method. They created a true coflow with Ad Words. It

helped a new group directly ""advertisers. But it also

helped searchers in giving them a new way to find things

they might want to buy.

This rule will often disallow things that on the surface

seem fine. A new tool to bring in a new type of user. Doesit add to our founding intention? If not, then dont do it.


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CoFlow

Additive Flows that A!Increase the CenterFlow

In the coflow model, each founder has complete freedom to

create their own inventions and help their own people. They

only have to do it in a way that increases the center flow.


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Bill WarnerBackground and Story


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Bill WarnerBackground

Im an entrepreneur, and I get some of it from my

Dad who owned an aluminum extrusion factory, and

my Mom who was a real estate agent and public

speaker.

Ive loved photography since I was six, and flying

since I was 12, when my Dad learned to fly. In 1970 he

bought a Beechcraft Bonanza A36. I was in love.

I solod when I was sixteen. I did my 100"mile cross

country at sixteen also. My Mom had to drive me to

the airport since the driving age was 17. After my solo

round trip from Morristown, NJ to Lancaster, PA, she

had to pick me up.

I got my license at 17 and my instrument rating at 18.

I logged about 300 hours by the time I was in college

at Washington University. I got hurt in an accident

there, and my spinal cord injury made it hard $not

impossible%to fly. My love of flying remained, but my

time in the left seat was mostly over.

I had rehabilitation at NYU medical center. One of

my roommates, Tom Wade was a quadriplegic. I

ended up making a remote control system for him,

and that launched me into electronics.

I went to MIT, graduated and worked at

Computervision, Lexidata, and Apollo. In 1987 I was

fed up with how hard it was to edit videos, and Istarted Avid Technology, Inc.

In 1991, restless to start my second company and

finding Avid too big at 100 people, I started Wildfire.

Lots more information on my LinkedInpage.

Bi!solod at 16in his flying days

http://www.linkedin.com/in/billwarner
http://www.linkedin.com/in/billwarnerhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/billwarnerhttp://www.linkedin.com/in/billwarnerhttp://billwarner.posterous.com/http://billwarner.posterous.com/

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Intention and Invention by Bill Warner

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