SBIR Insider (Rick Shindell) Call For Action…" IMMINENT threat to SBIR - please take the time to read and ACT on this before even more SBIR funding is taken away from YOU!"  I have included this request, below, to simplify the learning process. For Discovery Machine, Inc. the new proposed submission criteria remains a significant concern. The notion of non-US companies and VC controlled "SBIR factories" destroying this valuable research environment is more than scary. We believe most small businesses are delighted to compete, but only on a level playing field. We are republishing this URGENT call to action from Rick Shindell, the SBIR Insider, about an IMMINENT threat to SBIR - please take the time to read and ACT on this before even more SBIR funding is taken away from YOU! URGENT call to action from the SBIR Insider:    Dear SBIR Insider, Another "Call to Action" you say? Well… [not sounding like Reagan] if you don’t mind watching your chances diminish for getting an SBIR/STTR award, or starting a new high tech business utilizing SBIR opportunities, then hit your delete button and relax. Folks, this is as hard for me to write as it is for you to read, so lets look at a few quick action items you may want to consider. Keep in mind that many of the brightest and most experienced SBIR minds are also deeply concerned with the SBA proposed rules. So are many of the premiere SBIR/STTR guidance and assistance folks such as Fred Patterson [The SBIR Coach], Gail & Jim Greenwood [Greenwood Consulting Group] and John Davis [SBIR Resource Center] who have all written about this situation. Now the stakes have been raised because Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) and Congresswoman Niki Tsongas (D-MA) have written (but not yet distributed) a Dear Colleague letter to muster support in the House to press the SBA not to adopt several of the anti-small business provisions of their proposed SBIR size standard. The letter hasn’t been sent out yet, but please consider asking your representative to sign on to it today. The letter calls for the SBA to respect the congressional intent to keep SBIR as a domestic program for small business. Speaking of congressional intent, it should be understood that the SBIR law provides (as a pilot program) for small businesses that are majority owned by multiple VCs to participate in SBIR, at levels up to 25% of award dollars in NIH, DOE and NSF, and up to 15% in the other agencies. Although that should be respected, I see where some VC companies are wanting to take advantage of the loophole SBA has created which will allow VCs etc to qualify for unlimited access to the program. That must be stopped. Here are the action items I hope you will consider:  Action item #1 - Call your Representative’s DC office and ask them to please consider signing on to Congressman Ed Markey’s and Niki Tsongas’s Dear Colleague letter to keep SBIR a domestic small business program. This must be done on Thursday. You can call the Capitol switchboard (202-224-3121) and ask them for your representative’s office. If you’re not sure of your representative, go to http://congress.org/congressorg/directory/congdir.tt and enter your zip code. Action item #2 - The SBTC has created two letters, one to Congress (see http://www.nsba.biz/docs/sbtc_letter_to_congress_7-2-12.pdf ) and one to the President (see http://www.nsba.biz/docs/sbtc_letter_to_president_obama_7-2-12.pdf) If you agree with the letters, please consider adding your name to them. This has to be done by Friday. This is IMPORTANT! To be included, simply send an email to alec@sbtc.org with the following information: Your Name Company Name Company’s City, State You can also tell Alec if you only want to be on one of the letters (tell him which one) Feel free to copy me on it if you’d like (rick@zyn.com). Action Item #3 - Only 4 days left till the SBA comment period closes on July 16. As of now 3:30am pacific time, only 69 comments have been posted on regulations.gov. This is very poor and makes the small business SBIR community look disengaged. Go to https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/05/15/2012-11586/small-business-size-regulations-small-business-innovation-research-sbir-program-and-small-business and click on the green button on the right that says: "Submit a Formal Comment", then follow the instructions. You are not restricted to one comment, you can add as many as necessary. In fact, Jim Greenwood of the Greenwood Consulting Group has posted 6 comments (on different issues), and they are all very good. His comments are from the perspective of someone who trains SBIR companies as well as training the trainers. We have combined them in an easy to read page at www.zyn.com/sbir/insider/greenwood.htm I hope he doesn’t mind. You can view all the comments at http://www.regulations.gov/#!docketDetail;dct=PS;rpp=100;so=DESC;sb=docId;po=0;D=SBA-2012-0008 Here are some simple quick suggestions for comments. You can modify, or just cut and paste into the comment window. Your own comments are best. "Keeping with the intent of Congress, foreign ownership of SBIR companies should not be allowed. SBA should restore the requirement that to be considered a domestic business concern, more than 50% of the business must either directly or indirectly be owned by U.S. citizens, permanent resident aliens, or domestic (US OWNED) corporations, partnerships or limited liability companies (LLCs)." "The proposed changes to the affiliation rules are bad for small business and the SBIR program. SBA should continue to apply its current affiliation provisions to the SBIR/STTR programs." There are many more issues and you can learn about from the SBTC background paper at: http://www.nsba.biz/docs/sbtc_paper_on_sba-sbir_regs_06-29-2012.pdf FOR THE REST OF THE SBIR INSIDER’S EMAIL, VISIT http://zyn.com/sbir/insider  Paid for by InnovationPAC Not authorized by any candidate or candidates committee. Innovation Political Action Committee (InnovationPAC) is an independent, non-connected committee registered with the Federal Elections Commission. Contributions to InnovationPAC will be used in connection with federal elections to the extent permitted by law and are governed by federal election law. Contributions from foreign nationals are prohibited. Contributions to InnovationPAC are not tax deductible for federal income tax purposes.

ROI is the performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment. I want to say up front, we will always need and must do live exercises. But the current economic environment means there is going to be less of them.  When we do live exercises, we need to make the most of them.  That is why immersive simulations are so important. They save money. They let you practice. They let you make those simple ABC mistakes, that beginners make, in an environment that does not hurt anyone. Immersive simulations also allow for a complete capture of all the sensory data that is so critical to an affective after action review. So the return is more than just the comparison to the cost of a live exercise.  It is really a multiple because immersive environments let you practice so any live exercise time is optimized. What are some examples of the costs of a live exercise (metrics taken from various websites)? An F-15 fighter’s use in a live exercise requires one and half pilots and 10 maintenance people. The US dollar per flight hour can range from $17,000 to $30,000. The cost to operate an M-1 Tank in Europe is $338,000 per year. An M-1 tank gets 0.6 miles per gallon. The cost of running an aircraft carrier for a year is around $160 million dollars. A Nimitz Class has 3000 people on board, 90 planes, and is 20 stories high. The Rim of the Pacific exercise this month, which was held near Hawaii, was the largest of its kind.  The exercise brought together 42 ships, six submarines, 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel from 22 nations. Role player exercises have multiple cost elements: Time of the trainee, Travel, Set up, Management, Sets/Props, Meals, Housing,  and Role player costs can be $500 to $700 per day The range of cost for an immersive simulation seat can start at a couple thousand dollars.  It can be used every day be different individuals. If you want to know the ROI? Just tell me your costs. I will tell you the ROI.

This morning I stumbled upon a blog post which I feel gives a good synopsis of the true meaning of the term "Best Practice" (full post: http://www.truefruit.com/when-best-practice-is-best). In this blog, the author challenges the popular meaning of "best practice" and replaces it with her own alternative definition, "the superior method of getting a task done." Short and to the point. The next hurdle each company must transcend is the purpose of storage and access of best practices. Now, some people, like the author cited above, will tell you the best place to store information is in an easily accessible location like a wiki, Google docs, databases, and file folders. Whereby all these are great locations, what does it matter if no one in an organization knows how to find them? What if the collection of best practices grows so expansive that it becomes a best practice to find a best practice? In my experience if people cannot find something, they assume it does not exist and create a new version at a "more logical" location further exacerbating the problem. I want you to ask yourself the following few questions: Where do I look to find my company operating procedures document? How long does it take me to find it? How many locations could I access it? Odds are, you will answer the questions with answers like these: Google docs, the shared drive at work, and my personal computer (Not to mention the working copy your company is currently "tweaking"). 15-20 minutes. Two or more. The point here is NOT that I think centrally storing files is a bad thing, because I agree with that wholeheartedly. The point is, without a means of sifting through the information at your disposal, it does no one any good. There must be a better way. What if there was a system akin to Apple’s "SIRI" and Google’s "Google Now" products for mobile devices, that could intelligently sift through information and produce intelligent insights. The human intelligence is the key here. What do people do when they use a best practice? They synthesize multiple documents to follow a process and produce an outcome. A system which assists in this can be extremely powerful. To go one step further, imagine a system that could: Point out when you are deviating from the generally accepted corporate best practices, thus ensuring that current employees actually follow the best practices and that new employees are coached in how to execute them from day one. Provide suggestions for improving your results along the way based on the information you enter into the system. Produce physical results in the form of documents, updated database entries, websites, etc. Learn from interaction with users and adapt over time to reflect changes to the corporate best practice. Wouldn’t this be a system worth investing in at a corporate level?  I think so.  What kinds of things has your corporation done to leverage best practices?  What would help enhance your use of best practices?  

Confidence Unleashed! http://ht.ly/41eVy

I recently read two compelling blogs. One blog discussed how software tools for data analytics does not necessarily make everyone an instant expert in data analytics.  http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=83489&PageNum=1 The second blog described the authors vision for the next 5 years in knowledge management.  One of the needed capabilities is " meaningful visibility into what knowledge users truly need and use".   http://blog.kana.com/service-experience-management/knowledge-management-the-next-five-years/ Although these two blogs have seemingly different topics, they have a similar underlying theme.  The theme is methodology. Every discipline has a set of methodologies.  Look here for a good definition of methodology.  http://www.thefreedictionary.com/methodology A methodology is the principles that determine how tools of the discipline are deployed and interpreted.  Expertise is developed through years of executing a methodology and refining the methodology to get the best results. A novice plopped in front of an expert’s tools is still a novice. During training, an expert will stand over a novice’s shoulder, guide the novice through the methodology and help to determine when to apply the right tool or knowledge at the right time. The next challenge for data analytics, knowledge management and collaboration tools is to capture and deploy expert methodologies. How will you capture and deploy expert methodologies?

8/23/2012 2 PM EST Hosted by the SBA Discovery Machine, Inc. and many other companies participated in this extremely timely and valuable web conference. The slide deck from this two hour event will be available in a few days, after modifications based on feedback obtained at the web conference. A few things were made very clear: The changes are here to stay as they are now the law There remains a huge amount of controversy over VC and non-US companies now competing for SBIR/STTR funds New directives will be phased in agency by agency Comments are REALLY encouraged during "comment periods" We can only hope that more good than bad comes with these major changes. The SBA web site (www.sba.gov) is a great resource for all small businesses. Following are the most visited topics on http://www.sba.gov: Small Business Size Regulations Borrowing Money Follow These 10 Steps to Starting a Business Business Plan Executive Summary 8(a) Business Development Find A Local SBA Office SBA Loan Application Checklist Women’s Business Centers

"I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that" is a line which immortalized the classic computer villain HAL in the Movie 2001 a Space Odyssey.  Similar scenes have been painted across Hollywood in films ranging from The Terminator to I, Robot.  The common theme: artificial intelligence (AI) in machines, if unmatched, will take over the world.  Although these examples provide fun sources of entertainment, I question the validity of the evil AI paradigm they convey.  In fact, recent efforts have been finding very practical and beneficial uses of AI.  AI is no longer exclusively a notion for science fiction.  Gone are the days of malevolent artificial intelligence.  The world has finally caught up to the movies and figured out just how useful AI really can be. I recently have seen an abundance of articles on the emergence of artificial intelligence and how it will revolutionize the way people access and use information.  Quite frankly, this has come to no surprise to me, but it is encouraging that others have started to notice.  Two articles I read recently mention how AI is being used beneficially today and how it can be enhanced in the near future.  What’s interesting is AI research from two different spectrums are converging in the corporate world to propose new AI solutions for common problems.  Both military and academia have been obsessed with the possibilities of AI for years as a means of training troops virtually.  From intelligent collaboration of data to incorporation of intelligence into virtual assistants, the world has been taken by storm. One way businesses are benefiting is by applying proven military training technology to their own needs.  The article "Military Training Technology Making Leap to Civilian Use", published in the National Defense Magazine, discusses just this.  The article discuss how by transitioning military training simulations to the commercial market, businesses are seeing great benefits. Paramount among the benefit corporations see in transitioning military technology to meet their needs are: Cost savings due to relatively low price points on simulated training solutions. Time savings made possible by eliminating the need to bring all trainees to one location for training. Convenience of allowing students to train at their own pace and location. Increased learning rates made possible by enhanced engagement levels while training in virtual simulations. Academia has also had great impressions on the AI world.  Artificial intelligence research efforts led by some of the best academic research institutions have led to the realization of powerful AI systems.  Many of these efforts tend to be more data-centric and are designed to facilitate ease of access to information.  The article, "Tech’s New Wave, Driven by Data", published in The New York Times, highlights some of the many ways academic AI concepts are being applied for business today. Among the applications highlighted are: The Watson computer system developed by I.B.M. and a team of scientists at partner institutions. Driverless cars like those deployed by the Google corporation. Targeted advertisements and ability to project future optimal advertising approaches using AI. The applications of artificial intelligence continue to surprise me.  I am sure we are headed for an age of technological breakthroughs.  Artificial intelligence is now embraced by consumers and the focus has shifted from "how do we use AI" to "how do we provide the most valid information to AI users".  Discovery Machine is proud to be a part of the AI movement and is constantly striving to bring our customers the latest and greatest AI technologies.  Like the articles mentioned above, Discovery Machine believes that AI developed for the military should be accessible to the commercial world; just as data should be synthesized intelligently and put at the fingertips of all.

As part of a new series, I’m introducing today’s leadership concept via a segment extracted from my latest book, Lead with LUV, coauthored by former Southwest Airlines president Colleen Barrett.   The Customer is King I’ve said for many years that profit is the applause you get for taking care of your customers and creating a motivating environment for your people. No organization has lived and breathed that lesson better than Southwest Airlines.  Read on for a great example of how Southwest creates Raving Fan customers by taking care of them like nobody else does. Ken: These days, nobody has to convince anybody that the customer reigns. People are realizing that their organizations will go nowhere without the loyalty and commitment of their customers. Companies are motivated to change when they discover the new rule: Today, if you don’t take great care of your customers, somebody else will. Colleen: That’s for sure! So great customer service has to be top of mind for all of your people. We emphasize that all the time. I love the way you and Sheldon Bowles challenged us all to create Raving Fans®, not simply satisfied customers. Ken: We think enthusiastic Raving Fan customers make your business into a great business. Today you can’t be content to simply satisfy customers. Raving Fan customers are customers who are so excited about the way you treat them that they want to brag about you—they become part of your sales force. Let me give you a simple yet powerful example of this, from an experience I had personally with Southwest Airlines. What usually happens when you call most airlines to either make or change a reservation?  You get a recording that says, "All of our agents are busy right now, but your business is very important to us, so please stay on the line and we will be with you as soon as possible." Then the music starts. You could be on hold for who knows how long, sitting and waiting to talk to a human being. Recently, I called Southwest to change a reservation. Normally at Southwest, a human being picks up the phone. This time, a recording said, "I’m sorry, our Customer Service Agents are all busy right now; but at the beep, please leave your name and telephone number and we will call you back within ten minutes." So that’s what I did. What do you think happened a few minutes later? My cell phone rang, and this pleasant voice said, "Is this Ken Blanchard?" I said, "Yes." "Ken, this is Bob from Southwest Airlines. How may I help you?" Colleen, I’ve never had that experience with any other airline. How did you make that happen? Colleen: That’s a feature that’s available to all airlines. It’s called virtual queuing. It helps us handle our heaviest calling times without lowering our Customer Service standard. Ken: Why would Southwest use such a feature, and no other airline seems to be doing it? Colleen: I don’t know. But we’re always looking for service capabilities that far exceed those of the competition, and that even exceed customer expectations. Being called back by an airline? It was beyond most customers’ belief. Yet we routinely try to do the unexpected, and can then enjoy the growth and good reputation generated by customers like you, Ken, who have spontaneously joined our sales force by bragging about us.   If you think it’s too much trouble to go the extra mile for your customers, think again. It’s just common sense: Treat your customers unexpectedly well and they’ll be so delighted they will come back again and again, tell their friends, and your organization will reap the benefits.  Do you have any great customer service stories that have become legendary around your organization? If not, you might want to stop and think about it.