Product demo, should it be perfect?

Have you been in a situation where you are looking at a product demo and it failed? Does it sound very common?

Actually it does, majority of product demo in the technology sector fails. Just take in to account the demo that Microsoft did at the Mobile World Congress during Steve Ballmer's key note address. Have you seen that? If not here's a short summary...Steve introduced Windows Phone with awesome capabilities then Joe Balfiore showed the Windows Phone live on stage and then bang!... a few of his demo cases failed. Is that acceptable? Does this outline how bad Windows Phone is?

In my perspective if you demo a product make sure you are well prepared and make sure that your uses cases always work. Or am I alone in thinking as such?

Invest or Monetize? Early Exit or Long Road Ahead?

The financial world is moving again, notable by the increasing number of new investments compared to the past 3 years. Having said that I spoke to a friend thi weekend whom I have not seen for ages who is having what I consider the most wonderful dilemma in the world. He is in the business of building medical infrastructure, hospitals in that regard. Currently he has this wonderful project to build an ultra-modern hospital of which he found an investor willing to finance the entire business from build to operation for 5 years then later find a big buyer. At the same time a bigger medical company approached him and willing to buy the entire project now at a premium considering future results.

So he asked for my advice. Well to me it was a simple question of financial benefits. Both offers look the same at the surface, although the value of money now is higher than the value of the same amount 5 years in the future. So next item is risk and reward, what is the probability that the project will fail compared to it becoming a resounding success and how much gain is five years going to give. This is a much harder point to consider and only he can actually answer.

Most importantly is how much he enjoys working on this project in the next five years compared to doing something else. I can't provide the answers and only him can decide, however if you are to decide what will you choose?

If I am in his shoes, and I would love to be in his shoes right now, I will most likely choose the most compelling and yet most challenging path between the current project and what I will be doing next.

How does emotion affect business decisions?

During negotiations, how does a one’s emotion affect his or her decision making? There have been countless of research done on controlled environment about the effects of decision making such as the ones publish by Bechara, Naqvi, Dunn, Damasio (gut feeling), Ming and Young (anger and fear in project and financial decision making), Barnes, Thagard, Sayegh (emotions distort reasoning), Lowenstein and Bagozzi (decisions can be anticipated), Isen and Shalker (effect of emotions in decision making), Isen and Patric (mood maintenance). There are more, however I am not writing a lecture so let’s skip them. In the business world Warren Buffet’s famous advise "emotions should be left out of the investing process” is as famous as the man himself.

The common belief is that in a controlled environment the emotions like anger makes people commit more resources to a failing project, fear makes people abandon efforts when the going gets tough, happiness makes people takes less risk, sadness makes people take higher risk. Humans are naturally emotional creatures do emotions play a big part in our decision making process. For example when buying a mobile phone or a car design and performance plays an important factor since it elicits emotion.

But how about in the business world where decision makers are trained to separate emotions from decision making, where financial models and controls becomes a huge factor making the decision maker as cool headed as a computer crunching the numbers, where every logical aspects are carefully calculated and planned. How does emotion play a role? In my observations during the past 15 years both during commercial negotiations and technical management emotion still plays a big role when a decision maker is presented with a choice. Emotion also plays a part in plotting strategies and plans. Even the great Buffet introduces emotions much like any brilliant negotiator to break an impasse.

Looking back, how did your emotional state affected your decision making at that time? How did your decision affect the final outcome?