What the !@#$ is Social Jet-Lag? What the !@#$ is a chronobioligist? I’m a sucker for such cool terms. My technical mind was “drooling”. I really wanted to get to the meat of this book. I really wanted to know about sleep. I’ve had lots of trouble with it. Others dear to me have had trouble with it. I was very curious. Why do some people sleep late? Others early? Some long? Some short? What’s really natural? What’s not?
The brainpickings blog post Internal Time: The Science of Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired « Brain Pickings is very thorough and captures the detail in this book. It is worth a read. The concepts are very provocative. But sometimes blog posts are too dense for me. Sometimes I’ve got to read the book to really get it. This is one of those books. There is so much good stuff in this book and the author Till Roenneberg tries very hard to make it “popular science”. He’s done a pretty good job at presenting his work for lay people. I think the problem is that this book contradicts so much conventional wisdom. It’s like everything I knew about my bodies’ clock was wrong.
This book goes way beyond what I thought I wanted to know. It is amazing stuff. You can try to dig in via the brain pickings blog. But I’m guessing that the graphs will look cool and whet your appetite to really get the message of the book.
The big message is that my “Internal Time Clock” is extremely important, it is part of me (like an arm), it may differ a lot from others, and it changes significantly as I age. My “Internal Time Clock” may not match the “External Time Clock” that I am trying to live by. I may be many hours out of synch. This lack of synchronization may be from the hours required by my job or even something as simple as “Daylight Savings Time”. That is not good, it’s called – Social Jet Lag. My “Internal Time Clock” manages the timing of my bio-chemistry, or manages my “chronobiology”. Fascinating. Important.
Here’s the Amazon link. Internal Time: Chronotypes, Social Jet Lag, and Why You’re So Tired « Amazon.ca: Till Roenneberg: Books
Parting Wish
( It would be cool if Jonah Lehrer took a stab at this material for a lay audience.)
Posted by Iain Verigin 
Synthesizing Your Work ( HowTo: Customer Development & Leanlaunch Pad )
February 6, 2013updated Mar 25, 2013 - includes Business Model Canvas as Scorecard examples – Jersey Square video and MammOptics.ppt
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I’ve been having many meetings with people early on in their Customer Development Process. A common issue is that the Startup Owners Manual by Steve Blank is very large and figuring out where to start is overwhelming. The second issue is the unsaid, “You don’t really mean I have to develop my own diagrams and models?”. The answer is, “Yes your progress is directly correlated to how well your version of these diagrams and models is!”. Here is a post from the current LLP workshop that I’m running. It may help you prioritize. Enjoy.
Synthesizing Your Work
Here are some thoughts on synthesizing your work/data, gathering insights from your data, and develop new questions/tests to perform.
First it would be good to go back to Chapter 4 and revisit your hypotheses. In doing that you’ll see that there are a lot of diagrams and models that will help you synthesize your work. The practice of evolving these diagrams from “rough sketches” to “working models” is an important part of your work. Telling your story with these supporting diagrams will become a powerful tool for you. The gaps in the diagrams are most useful because these gaps highlight what you need to do next. Continue to focus on the “fit” between “Value Proposition” and “Customer Segments”.
The second point is that we have been focussing on the marketing aspect and you should take a peek at the Selling Concepts. This brings Channels, Customer Relationships, and Revenues more into view.
The third is to read the “Market Type” subsection pages 112–122. There is a big difference in the actions you will need to take in entering Existing, New, and Re-Segmented markets. The key is that no one is entering “existing” market head on – you are either a creating a new segment or a new market. Please look at Market Type- Cost of Entry, Table 4.2, page 115 for an answer to why this is the case.
Fourth. Some of you need to read Intellectual Property ( SOM page 171–174).
Specifically
Go Back to Chapter 4 – Refine and Go Deeper
Customer Discovery Phase One: State Your Business Model Hypotheses
Then take a look at Channels, Customer Relationships, and Revenue. The online How to Build a Startup course covers this material with a depth that complements the textbook.
Diagrams, Visualization, Models
The Startup Owners Manual is full of techniques to diagram your work. There are Customer Workflow, Purchasing Decision Flows, Sales Roadmaps, Get-Keep-Grow Funnels, Market Maps, Organization Influence Maps, and more. Here are some that you should take begin getting familiar with and start working on.
( As Scorecard w/ Iterations )
* Jersey Square Canvas Video
( Key Players )
(Before & After)
(whole product timeline)
(Day in Life of Product )
* Medical V0.1
Comment on “What is the End Game?”
For me ( physical products and channels) the End Game of “customer development” is to develop a Sales Funnel with supporting Marketing activities, and materials, for your product. This translates into four maps/models: 1) Plan of Record Sketch ( the whole product timeline), 2) Get-Keep-Grow Funnel model, 3) Sales Access Strategy Map, and 4) the Sales Roadmap. If you can “discover” these and make them “operational” then everything else will fall into place. You will have what is called, “Traction” for your product/service. From this point you can “really” develop a solid “bottom-up” Sales Forecast which will provide you with a ton of leverage with investors. To make those models work you’ll need to do a lot detail work first ( iteratively ).
For more colour on the priorities of Sales vs. Marketing vs. Engineering read on. The Sharp End of the Stick « Steve Blank