Jed Christiansen

I’m currently an MBA student at the University of Cambridge, which has a smallish but rapidly growing business school.

There are a huge number of things that impress me about the school, but I wanted to mention just a couple about the admissions process and office:

• The MBA Admissions office is blogging! So far it’s a mix of school-related posts and some posts on what it’s like living in Cambridge. I highly recommend reading it. I think it’s fantastic to have a bit more transparency in the admissions process, and congratulate James for starting it!
• It doesn’t cost anything to apply to the Cambridge MBA. This is different from virtually every other business school I’ve come across, but Cambridge is committed to access to the programme no matter your financial circumstances. It doesn’t make the admissions process any easier, but I believe does help add to the diversity of the class.
• Since the Cambridge MBA is ~150 students (I believe growing by about another 30 students next year) the admissions office and administration truly get to know you. I was astounded on my interview day and on the first day of pre-term just how well everyone knew me! It was clear they hadn’t done a cursory look at my CV and career goals, but had truly studied who I was through my application. This isn’t something you can get from larger schools.

For those of you applying to the Cambridge MBA, good luck! For those of you considering applying, I hope this gives you a little better sense about what Cambridge is all about.

As for me, I’ve got exams this week… hopefully those will turn out okay!

I believe strongly in transparency when starting a business. While some people try to keep their “secrets” locked up, all it really does is lock those entrepreneurs away from valuable feedback. Business is about execution; if you’re working on something you’re passionate about and actually executing, you have nothing to worry about.

So I’d like to explain the project that I’ve been working on for a while more to you here. In a sentence, it’s a business devoted to helping you collect, develop and most importantly implement great new ideas. Tentatively named IdeaGreenhouse, it’s web-based software and optional advising services for companies, clubs, community groups, interest groups and any other organization to use internally to help them do things better.

What does it do?

This software allows anyone with an idea to submit it into the system. Any other user can comment on it or support it through a voting-type system. Most importantly it lets users create and volunteer for micro-tasks to take the idea forward. Instead of relying on a small group of connected people in the heart of a business or organization to evaluate ideas and implement them, it connects the people in the company that are really interested in the idea and that have the skills to make it happen.

I’ve been thinking about the software and sketching it out for quite a while. Earlier this fall I worked with an outsourced developer to get a prototype established, which is now up and running. I’m taking advantage of my MBA class to help get comments and feedback on the prototype by using it to help find ideas that will improve the Cambridge MBA. It’s at the point now where I can clone that initial site fairly easily for new alpha-testers. If you’re interested in becoming an alpha-tester, please contact me!

Who is it for?

Who is an ideal customer? One example is my rowing club in London. The club has several hundred members, and over a hundred active rowing members at any given time. There’s also a lot of excitement around the club’s 150th anniversary next year. A lot of members have tons of great ideas to raise money, make improvements to the facilities, run the clubhouse and rowing program better, etc. But it’s virtually impossible for one person with an idea to press ahead and make it happen. Right now all the ideas come through a small group of volunteers (all overloaded anyway) for evaluation and implementation. It “doesn’t scale.”

Another use? Potentially as an political interest-group tool. While change.gov is great in that you can submit your questions/ideas to government, what you’re really doing is throwing them over a wall and hoping the people on the other side can see what you see. Instead, a group like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) could establish a site to develop the best policy ideas and marketing ideas to bring about those policy changes. They could connect lawyers, tech stars, business types, video producers and who knows else to work collaboratively to develop the best policies going forward.

The biggest revenue-potential is companies that are looking to constantly improve and innovate. Software like IdeaGreenhouse can connect people across silos in an organization to find solutions to problems, new innovations, or simple better ways of doing things across a business. Instead of relying on approval through a “chain of command,” the people in the company that are passionate about an idea can connect and move it forward themselves.

While the traditional method of “throwing ideas over the wall” for someone else to review and approve is great (it’s not too much work), implementing ideas is about a thousand times better. It’s a heck of a lot harder, but it’s incredibly satisfying when it does. IdeaGreenhouse is a tool that will help get businesses and organizations do that.

Competitors

There are a ton of competitors in the “submit ideas and vote for them” category. Starbucks and Dell have both used SalesForce.com’s ideas application, with lots of publicity. Change.gov uses Google Moderator, and there are more commercial solutions like GetSatisfaction and others.

Where IdeaGreenhouse is different is that it is an internal tool, to use the knowledge and experience of your employees/members/organization. It is NOT a tool to get feedback from your customers. The users don’t just submit ideas, they work to accomplish the ideas, too.

There are some enterprise-level software applications that do this, but they all focus on large companies exclusively. IdeaGreenhouse will scale to work with any size company or organization.

The Team

The team working on this consists of me and Dom Orchard, a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge. (Really smart, and a fellow Jesuan.) Dom also drafted the logo above.

Feedback

I’m creating a “landing page” to detail this more soon, and will post that here when I do. I’ve got a few different names I’m going to try out, and will use Google AdWords to hopefully find the best one of the bunch. (See here for more.)

If you have any feedback, please contact me, or submit a comment below. This is what I plan to spend much more time talking about this year, and look forward to any/all of your thoughts.

One of the biggest stories in the tech world in 2008 has been Twitter. I was at first quite down on Twitter, but have since changed my mind. It’s a mix of a social network (like Facebook/MySpace) and a communications tool (like email/texting).

The best way to describe it is through this short YouTube video:

Now go sign up for Twitter and then follow me.

I was against Twitter at the beginning because of Kathy Sierra’s influence. Her post (circa 2006) pointed out that if you’re trying to achieve “flow” in your work Twitter can be quite detrimental as friends’ updates will always be interrupting you.

But I’ve found that when I need to I can just turn off the Twitter application. When I don’t need to achieve that flow it’s interesting to listen in to what friends and others are discussing. If you’ve got a lot of followers, then they can serve as quite a good group to “crowdsource” questions to! (I’ve seen people asking for advice on office space, restaurants, and more.)

In the end, I highly encourage you at least try it out. If you’re on Facebook you can link any Twitter updates you send to your Facebook status, so you only have to type your “status” once and have it link everywhere. Nice…

My apologies for the lack of posting recently… LondonAnnie and I moved!

We’re just down the road a bit from our old place. For the same rent we’ve got a much bigger flat that even has a view of the river. It’s a 2 bedroom, which means it will be much easier for family and friends to stay with us, too. (Hint!) It’s not for the superstitious… we’re #13 on our road in SW13.

Unfortunately, moving around the holidays means that our internet won’t get hooked up until sometime in January, and none of our neighbors has an unlocked wireless signal. Unless I can get Netshare up and running on my iPhone soon, don’t expect much posting from me until after my exams in January.

But Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year to everyone. I hope 2009 is even better than 2008 for you all.