Cheap, Re-usable Cell Phone Microscope? Yeah, It's A Thing...

For the last couple of years I have been exploring the idea of intelligence support to entrepreneurs.  The cool thing about this is that I get exposed to lots of new ideas.  The most recent - and one of the most interesting - products I have seen is the Button Microscope.

This is a microscope that you can attach to the lens of any cell phone with a camera.  It immediately turns it into a powerful microscope.  To be honest, others have done much the same thing but their products tend to be clunky, DIY projects that require far more patience than I have for that sort of thing.

The Button Microscope just works.  More importantly, it is going to be pretty inexpensive to produce and re-usable as well.  

I can't show you the prototypes I have been playing around with this morning (top secret, hush-hush stuff, you know) but I can show you some of the pics I took with them (with zero training I should add).

This first pic is one of a piece of graph paper I had lying around.  I edited both the left and the right image for size and brightness in the online photo editor, PicMonkey, but other than that both images are straight from my cell phone.

You can get a little bit better feel for the power of the microscope in this image.  On the left is the venerable Intelligence Analyst's Deck Of Cards (still available for sale...ahem...).  On the right is a close up of the box (focused on the "L" in "Analyst's").  You can see that the microscope has a distinct focal point and that the image blurs some at the margins.  That may be an existential feature of the device or it may just be that I am a pretty poor photographer.  I'll need to play around with it some more to see.

To me, this is the most impressive image set.  On the left you see one of the playing pieces from my game, Cthulhu Vs. Vikings.  On the right you see an image taken using the Button Microscope from the top down.  These pieces were all printed on the 3D printer and the macro view allows you to see every layer quite clearly and captures a surprising amount of detail even as the playing piece recedes from the focal point.

The broader intel/investigative implications of a device like this are pretty interesting to contemplate.  Clandestine collectors who are looking to get extreme closeups of, I don't know, circuit boards and such will love it.  Investigators look for trace evidence or fingerprints are going to love it too (If you have a clever idea for something like this, drop it in the comments!).

When can you get one of these amazing devices for your own cell phone?  Well, we hope to launch a Kickstarter campaign in October to fund the initial production run.  

Next we will add a mass spectrometer (currently available for $249 - no shit) and we will be well on our way to a tricorder.  Oh, wait.  That's due in January.

Intelligence And Vigilantes

(Note: This is the third and final entry in a three part series on some of the things I have learned about intelligence support to entrepreneurs from running a number of crowdfunding campaigns. For Part 1, click here and for Part 2, click here.)

Moros is a comic book series by Josh Lucas.  Loosely based on our hometown, Erie, PA, Moros tells the story of a former soldier turned policeman who becomes a vigilante to rid his town of a drug that he takes himself.

Josh successfully funded his third issue of the comic with a Kickstarter campaign that we helped him run back in April.

Josh was an experienced crowdfunder when I met him.  He had funded his first issue with a successful IndieGoGo campaign and had spent the time since that first issue working on his second issue and learning what he could about the comic book industry.

What he learned and what I have seen first hand with almost all of the entrepreneurs I have worked with (myself included) is that there is a kind of insanity that grips you when you are working on these projects.  It is almost impossible for you to see the world as it is.  Instead, you insist that the world is as you want it to be.  

Most intelligence professionals know this problem better as the Intel-Ops Divide.  The argument goes something like this:  Intel and ops need to be kept separate.  If they aren't, the intel guys run the risk of becoming so enamored with the plans the ops guys come up with that intel starts to see all the evidence not as it is but as ops hopes it will be.  This makes the intel guys useless to the organization.

The problem with entrepreneurs is that they don't typically have enough resources to be able to keep intel and ops separate.  So, what is an entrepreneur to do?  It seems to me that successful entrepreneurs manage this problem by asking dramatically different questions of intelligence professionals than the ones asked by either unsuccessful entrepreneurs or traditional leaders.

There is a growing body of evidence (produced largely by the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia) that successful entrepreneurs and innovators look at problems in fundamentally different ways from the rest of us.  Specifically, they use "effectual reasoning" (as opposed to causal reasoning) and five specific techniques to help them make decisions:  

• Bird in Hand.  "What do I have at hand and what can I do with it right now?" are the kinds of questions that emerge from the Bird in Hand Principle.  The kinds of intelligence questions that arise from this principle focus on expanding the entrepreneur's understanding of what resources are immediately available for use.

• Affordable Loss.  Good entrepreneurs don't focus exclusively on the potential gain.  Instead, they work hard to understand what they can afford to lose at each step.  Helping the entrepreneur understand the full nature of the downside risk is a good task for intel.

• Lemonade.  This principle is about not only taking advantage of surprises (both good and bad) but welcoming them.  It means that intel support to entrepreneurs has to be very flexible and very fast.

• Patchwork Quilt.  Good entrepreneurs rarely try to go it alone.  Instead they are constantly looking for partnerships (both formal and informal) with self-selecting stakeholders.  Identifying and prioritizing these potential stakeholders seems a natural fit for intel.

• Pilot in the Plane.  Good entrepreneurs focus on activities that they can control and don't worry so much about what they can't.  Quoting the Society for Effectual Action, at their core, good entrepreneurs seem to believe that "the future is neither found nor predicted, but rather made."  Intel's role here is to help define what can and can't be controlled in the environment that surrounds the entrepreneur. 

These principles and the associated intel questions that go with them don't ask the intel professional to buy into the underlying goals of the entrepreneur or evaluate the progress towards those goals.  Instead, they set the stage for intel success by asking questions that support the decisionmaking process of the entrepreneur uncomplicated by operational bias.

Intelligence And Cookies

(Note: This is entry number 2 in a three part series on some of the things I have learned about intelligence support to entrepreneurs from running a number of crowdfunding campaigns. For Part 1, click here.)

Ah!  Cookies!  Who can resist a good cookie?  Fresh out of the oven, homemade, imprinted with pictures of horses and bunnies and dinosaurs...

What?  

That is the good idea of Lisa Van Riper, the creator of the Tiny Hands On A Roll Kickstarter (closing in a little more than 24 hours). Little kids like to "help" when it comes to baking but kitchen implements are often too large, too unsafe or too uninteresting for little kids to use.  How can you keep them engaged without them getting frustrated?

Lisa hand makes laser engraved, bakery quality rolling pins that are exactly the right size for small children.  They work just like a good rolling pin ought to work but are sized for tiny hands and completed with customizable laser-engraved images that make the rolling fun.

Check out her project page (just click on the image above).  Her images are beautiful, her products demonstrate an over-abundance of quality and care in manufacturing.  Something like this ought to just kill it on Kickstarter, right?

Yep.  Except for one small detail (and my second lesson learned);  Timing.

Every crowdfunding project creator worries about timing.  What is the best day to launch? What is the best time of day to launch?  How long should the campaign be?  When is the best time of month to launch?  When is the best day to end?  What days should I avoid?  

These are all good questions but it is easy to be hyper-focused on these tactical issues and miss the strategic (or, at least, seasonal) trends.

Take a look at the chart below.  It is taken from Google Trends and shows the US search trend for the term "rolling pin" over the last ten years or so.  Talk about strong patterns!  Every peak is in December and every trough is in...ahem...April.  

Hindsight being 20/20, it is obvious why this is so.  Rolling pins are strongly associated with the scratch baking frenzy that begins shortly before the end of October and only ends around the time people are waking up late and cursing the winter sunlight of January 2nd.  In terms of searches for the term "rolling pin" at least, that frenzy is almost three times as strong in the fall as it is in the spring of every year since 2005.

We figured this out before we launched, of course.  Lisa wants to expand her business and she wanted to get this product line out there now and not wait till the fall.  She has already explored other ways to sell the product after the Kickstarter campaign is over and she will almost certainly do well in the fall with these products (when not only baking season but also toy season kicks in).  Our solution was to adjust her expectations - and her goal - accordingly.  

Not every product has this strong of a trend associated with it.  That said, if you have to swim upstream, you at least want to know about it beforehand.

Next:  Intelligence And Vigilantes

Intelligence And Coffee

It has been said (at least by me) that coffee is to intel as air is to life.  In fact, the Food and Drug Administration has reportedly recognized coffee, along with sugar and alcohol, as part of the three basic food groups of intelligence professionals everywhere (note I said "recognized" not "approved of"...)

So, it is no real surprise that I am beginning what I hope will be a three part series on the intelligence lessons I have learned running various crowdfunding campaigns with Roast Assured, a project that is not just about coffee but about the perfect cup of coffee.

Roast Assured is a client of our Quickstarter Project here at Mercyhurst.  Quickstarter allows us to match aspiring, energetic college students and their skills with entrepreneurs who need those skills to help get their crowdfunding projects off the ground.

I received a $10,000 grant from the good people at Ben Franklin Technology Partners last year to help local entrepreneurs run some campaigns (and recently received a much larger grant to run lots more campaigns over the next three years).  Since then, I have run five campaigns (three of which are live right now) and have spoken to nearly 30 other potential creators.

What have I learned?

Lesson #1:  Entrepreneurs need lots of intelligence support.  In fact, I would go so far as to say that the number one requirement of an entrepreneur is reliable intelligence about the environment in which they are operating.  Most entrepreneurs know their idea inside and out.  They know all about their current operational capabilities and limitations. Everything else is almost always enshrouded in varying degrees of fog.

To a certain extent this should be expected.  Clearly there are levels of expertise when it comes to entrepreneurship.  Most of the people who come to me are raw and untested. Some of the people I do see come to me better informed than others but I don't see many serial entrepreneurs or experienced business people.  The fundamental truth seems to remain, though, entrepreneurs love their ideas and know them quite well.  The rest ... well ... not so much.

Much of this intelligence needs to be tactical, real time support, however.  I call it "just-in-time" intelligence.  Intel support at this level is all about being able to fill in the gaps immediately and with just enough info to keep things moving.  To put it in terms most national security intelligence professionals will understand, with entrepreneurs, all of the alligators are at your ankles and all of the targets are 50 meter ones.

Roast Assured is a good example of this.  Jack Barton, an expert coffee roaster and the creator of Roast Assured, has a great idea.  He wants to work with people to help them get their perfect cup of coffee.  He knows how different roasts and different grinds and even different flavorings and spices work together (or against one another) to change the taste of a cup of coffee.

What he really likes to do, though, is to put that knowledge to work for people - to help them craft their perfect brew.  He also wants to take it a couple of steps further.  First, he wants his customers to be able to name their coffee.  It can have personal significance, it could be the regular coffee in a small town diner or even the official coffee of some internet start-up. He even wants to work with you and his artists to craft a logo for your brand of coffee!


The bottomline is that it is your coffee with your chosen name on it.  Once you and Jack figure out the perfect blend, your named coffee goes into his database and you can go online and order another pound of Spy Roast (or whatever) anytime you want.

Beyond this, it gets tricky.  Who wants to buy this?  Where can we find him or her? How should we price this?  What's our value proposition?  Who will finance us?  Where can we get this made?  Who are our competitors? And on and on and on!

Virtually all the important questions entrepreneurs have are, at their core, questions about things critical to the success or failure of the project that are largely or completely outside the entrepreneur's control - in short, intelligence questions.  

One problem, of course, is that these raw, untested entrepreneurs don't typically have the money to pay for this kind of intel support.  This problem is unlikely to go away.  A second problem is that most of the entrepreneurial literature and many of the entrepreneurship training programs don't expose creators to the kind of intel tools and skills that could be so helpful in getting their projects off the ground. 

Next:  Intelligence And Cookies

Combatting the Mid-Campaign Slump

(I have been writing about what I call "Entrepreneurial Intelligence" (or ENTINT for those who like acronyms...) on and off for a couple of years now.  Part of what I am coming to realize is that everything I do in support of entrepreneurial crowdfunding efforts through Mercyhurst's Quickstarter Project is really just intel.  The "best practices" report below, put together by my Research Assistant, McKenzie Rowland, and focused on dealing with the dreaded mid-campaign slump, is a good example)

When running a crowdfunding campaign, it is common to notice a dip in the activity in the middle of the campaign.  It is so common, in fact, that it has  a name - 'the mid-campaign slump".  

Fortunately, there are a number of tactics that you can apply to overcome this slump and keep your campaign running at a more even pace.  The table below is a ranking of what techniques the majority of crowdfunding advice-givers have found to be the most instrumental in campaign success (It's a big table so be sure to scroll right to see all the columns!).

Overall, the most common approaches are ones designed to make backers feel valued throughout the campaign.  By sending personal messages or emails and keeping them frequently updated with photos and posts, you’re showing them that you value their contribution and that their donation matters.  

Incentives also appear to be a common way to bring in more contributors and funds, and can boost donations when campaign activity is low.  This may encourage current backers to bring in others to the campaign, so it is likely important to tailor your incentives to the core value proposition of the project in order to bring in the most donors possible.  

These efforts can be time-consuming, however, and may result in greater costs to the campaign so it is important to make some estimate, in advance, of the cost (in terms of both time and money) to benefit ratio before pursuing any of them.

30 Hours To Go On My First Kickstarter Project - A Pre Post-Mortem

My first Kickstarter project, for my card game Widget, will end at 1758 on Saturday April 6 -- about 30 hours from now. The chart below shows the progress to date.

Most people wait until after it is all over to capture their thoughts about the process. I wanted to do something a bit different: Capture my thoughts just before the project ended and then compare these impressions to my more considered ones after the campaign was over.



Best Surprise: The level of support from all sorts of people - many of whom I don't know (or didn't know until this project began). Family, friends, former students, colleagues, other game designers(!), artists, and people I have never met from countries I have never visited have helped get Widget to its goal and well over it. I absolutely love this aspect of Kickstarter! It is incredibly rewarding to work directly with the people most interested in the game. 

Worst Surprise: My level of exhaustion. I am tired, folks -- bone tired. While eminently rewarding, this process has worn me out both physically and emotionally much more than I expected. It is kind of like having your first child. You have no idea what to expect next and your "baby" keeps throwing surprises at you. 

Most Interesting Finding: My total inability to use Twitter to help generate pledges. I spent a lot of time on Twitter and got extraordinarily good responses from people - lots of re-tweets and some interesting conversations. 100s of thousands of people have received tweets about Widget at this point. Return on time invested? 4 pledges, $65. While I am not discounting the intangible value of the experience, it is clear I am either "doing it wrong" (likely), Twitter can't really help in this way (hmmm...), or Twitter can't really help at all (unlikely but possible). Something I intend to think hard about... 

My next steps are to make it through the next 30 hours or so and then get the game printed and out the door. And yes, I am already working on my next project!

Well-known Terrorist Organization Seeks To Crowdfund Operations With Kickstarter

In what could be a preview of many more such campaigns, a well-known terrorist organization with
worldwide ambitions recently posted a preview of its crowdfunding campaign on the popular site, Kickstarter.  Click here to see the campaign now.

While the site is currently not live (i.e. not actively accepting donations) and it is unclear if it will be approved by the Kickstarter staff, the organization claims it is seeking the funding due to recent US activity which has left it depleted and without an adequate base of operations. 

Kickstarter is one of the new breed of sites which allows inventors, artists, dancers, game designers and others to go directly to fans and supporters to seek funding.  Well known projects from the site include the Pebble Watch, popular musician Amanda Palmer's new album and the amazing new card game, Widget.

Just Launched My First Game, Widget, On Kickstarter; ENTINT Questions Generated At A Staggering Pace... (ENTINT)

You might notice something different about the site.  Over to the right you will see a small box that contains details on my first game, Widget.  I launched this game last night on Kickstarter.com and the text box you see now will stay up there for the next thirty days or so (clicking on the box will take you to the Widget website in all its glory).

Kickstarter gives you anywhere from 30-90 days to make your target (in my case $4000.  I set my time limit for 30 days -- which Kickstarter recommends).  If you make it, you get the money.  If you don't, you get nothing (and all of your backers do not get charged anything).  Basically, failing costs your backers nothing and costs you only your ego...

So far the launch has generated as many intelligence questions as it has answered.  More next week!

(PS.  On a personal note, I genuinely appreciate the readers of this blog who have backed this game already on Kickstarter.  I have a long way to go yet, but it is both encouraging and humbling to be the recipient of so much good will.  While I also understand that this game might not be perfect for many of the rest of you, I do appreciate those of you who have taken the time to post to Facebook, tweet about it, or otherwise share it with your friends and family.  I am pretty certain that there is someone in everyone's social network who will enjoy this game.  My challenge is to the get word out to them and your help has been invaluable!  Thanks! Kris)

Why Am I So Excited About A Game Called "Resistance: Road To Liberation"? (Kickstarter.com)

Three reasons, actually.

First, Resistance: Road To Liberation is a tabletop role playing game.  Yes, yes, like Dungeons and Dragons and Traveler and a whole bunch of other games.  

The difference here is that the game intends to be historically accurate and based, initially, on the various resistance movements of WWII.  

I have had a chance to speak with the designer, however, and he indicated that his intent is to move beyond WWII and to develop rules and scenarios appropriate to the current spate of revolutionary and resistance movements going on in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Role playing has a long history as an intelligence analysis technique.  Dick Heuer and Randy Pherson devote a chapter to it in their recent book, Structured Analytic Techniques For Intelligence Analysis, where they indicate that "role playing is particularly useful for understanding the outcomes of a conflict situation."  Research by Kesten Green at the Victoria University of Wellington  indicates that analysts who role play are over twice as accurate in their estimates as those who use unaided judgment. 

Analytic role playing is typically very unstructured and informal, however.  To get more realistic results, it would seem necessary to realistically constrain the "players".  Taken to its extreme (See, for example, The Marine Corps' Infantry Immersion Simulator which is, in some sense, just role playing on steroids),  it is highly effective but also extremely expensive and time consuming.

It seems to me then that a lightweight role playing game that captured many of the essential constraints without overly burdening the players in either time or money would be a useful tool for exploring resistance movements.  It might also be a lot more engaging than listening to another briefing or reading another report.

The second reason I am excited about Resistance is that it is using Kickstarter.com as a way to fund the game.  Kickstarter has only been around for a very short time but it has already become a major way to fund creative projects.  While most of the projects are small (Resistance is looking for only $4000 in funding to get up and running, for example), some Kickstarter projects have raised over a million dollars. 

On the other hand, Kickstarter also has a fairly brutal kill switch.  If a project doesn't meet the minimum funding level, Kickstarter cancels the donations (which don't get distributed until the minimum is met) and the creator gets nothing at all.

Microfinancing isn't new (Kiva is my personal favorite example) but microfinancing has been traditionally associated only with developing countries.  As an intelligence analyst, anytime I see a new financing model gaining acceptance outside its traditional sphere, I sit up and take notice.  

Don't get me wrong, both Kiva and Kickstarter are excellent organizations and completely above board.  However, any business model that can be used for good can also be used for ill (can anyone say "JihadStarter"?).  Donating $15 or $20 to a worthwhile project on Kiva or Kickstarter is not only a good thing, it is also a cheap education in how these kind of internet based microfinancing sites work.

And the third reason?  The designer is my son, Charlie Wheaton.

OK, OK.  I hear you.  In the interest of full disclosure, yes, I am damn proud of him.  How many of us have wanted to make a living doing something we are passionate about?  How many of us had a plan for turning that dream into reality at age 20?  Yep, "damn proud" about sums it up...

More than that, though, is my interest in what he is doing with the role playing game genre and its possibilities for intelligence analysis.  I have played Resistance and it is a good game that is very different than most role playing games and not just in terms of subject matter.  

He has deliberately kept the rule set streamlined to give the maximum leeway to the players.  He has created a system where groups advance in skills and abilities as well as individuals.  He intends to publish the final version on Kindle as well as in hardback.  The list goes on...

Charlie has been actively designing games for the last three years and, while he has not had any commercial success, he has learned a good bit about design by both studying it and actually getting his hands dirty.  If he can get the money and successfully implement all of his ideas (and, in particular the ones revolving around more modern conflicts), I think we may all have a new tool for analysis and training.

Charlie distributed free copies of the beta version of Resistance at the Origins Game Fair (one of the world's largest) two years ago.  He made a point of giving copies to soldiers that were there.  The feedback he received was universally positive but everyone indicated that it needed more work on the details -- more scenarios, more options for weaponry and tactics and more possibilities in terms of resistance movements.  With the money he gets from Kickstarter (assuming he makes his minimum), he hopes to do all that.

So, if you want to throw a few bucks his way, you can do that here.  He has some neat "premiums" for various levels of contribution but Kickstarter also gives you the option to just donate some money to the cause.  

Likewise, if you know anyone who might be interested don't hesitate to forward them this link or the link to the Kickstarter page.