Vol. 2  No. 7   

Newsletter of the Menlo Institute   

November 2003

The Innovator's Solution.   When it comes to technology, forget about stuff like demographics and market size data to determine what's best for your customer.  Focus instead on what job your customer is trying to accomplish.  This is at the heart of Menlo's High-Tech Anthropology®practice.  Read an excerpt from Clayton Christensen's new book the Innovator's Solution that explores this concept in detail.

What makes a genius?  Is the brain a blank slate?  Researches are beginning to think that some folks are born with a brain with preinstalled "software."  We are talking about the radical idea of "the genetic transmission of knowledge."

Is your website easy for Maude to use?  Menlo uses the concept of "personas" to make sure that a given technological solution will in fact meet the needs of a certain type of user.  This is a key component of High-Tech Anthropology®.  Read about how persona-based design is changing the way companies build websites.   

A new "Taste of Success."  Come join us and learn how to dominate your market space with High-Tech Anthropology®. Attend Menlo’s new 90-minute seminar on High-Tech Anthropology® and learn the keys to building great software.  This free "Taste of Success" seminar is offered Wednesday, December 17th at Menlo’s office in downtown Ann Arbor. Click here to register. 

"Not finance.  Not strategy.  Not technology.  It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare"  says Patrick Lencioni from his recent book: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable. We highly recommend the excellent book. It gives a compelling analysis of what makes teams effective.  Buy it here from Amazon.

Computer processors at the speed of light! At Menlo we are always on the lookout for disruptive technology.  Read about how an Israeli start-up has developed a processor that uses optics instead of silicon, enabling it to compute at the speed of light.

Classes, Classes, Classes.  The Menlo November and December class schedule is out.  Time to buckle down and learn how to really apply those use cases, manage those projects, and deliver systems successfully! 

Outsourcing your IT development overseas? We suggest you first learn the secrets of how to develop software successfully yourself, then worry about how to cut incremental costs. Otherwise, you may end up a customer of Empowered Software Solutions, who is making big money fixing the messes caused by offshore development firms. You also run the risk of having personal information compromised.

Can you afford to train 100 people? YES, with Menlo's new TRAIN THE TRAINER Program you can.  If you have bright and intelligent people on staff with the appropriate interests and skills, we can teach them to teach you.  Our TRAIN THE TRAINER Program lets you develop your own in-house training capabilities to teach Menlo's core curriculum.  For a fraction of the cost of an external training program you can train internal trainers, customize the curriculum, and launch an effective in-house education program.  Call Rich Sheridan at (734) 665-1847 to find out more.

Zero G, a San Francisco based company that makes installation software, is a survivor.  They almost went out of business a couple of years ago.  It wasn't due to the economy, they had plenty of customers.  They almost bit the dust due to producing really bad code.  Learn about how management turned things around by implementing the practices of Extreme Programming. (registration required)

About Menlo

Are your Executives having these conversations? 

"We are about to purchase a million dollar software solution and we're not sure if it's the right thing to do." 

"We’re about to approve a $3.5 million dollar budget for a new custom software project and we don't want this one to fail like the last time." 

"We have an old piece of software that no longer meets the needs of our business, but we're not sure how to modernize it without disrupting our current operations." 

"We are a software product company concerned that our user's experience is silently killing our market share."

"We have a great idea for a new project, but need a stable production version launched in less than 3 months." 

Menlo uses High-Tech Anthropology to define the user experience and discover the highest priority business needs.  It is applied at the critical beginning stages of a new endeavor and then iteratively during the entire project, leveraging the Menlo Software Factory to construct early-stage functioning prototypes to confirm initial findings and then carry the project on to completion. 

For those who wish to transform their own organizations, we also teach these methods to our clients at The Menlo Institute. 

Created in the spirit of Thomas Edison's Invention Factory in Menlo Park, Menlo is passionate about inventing software that makes a positive difference in the everyday lives of businesses and their employees. 

 To find out more, contact us, or attend our free 90-minute success seminar.

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