Last weekend we had the distinct pleasure of attending X Media Lab: Commercialising Ideas in Wellington at the Te Papa National Museum. The theme for this lab emerged from New Zealand’s classic problem: We have great ideas but we’re traditionally very poor at taking them to market. The XML team did a great job of assembling a group of international mentors that could give their unique perspective how to capture the value of your innovation, and find a channel which can turn an idea into dollar signs.

The format of the event is quite unlike anything I’ve seen before. The first day was open to all as a lecture style symposium, each speaker getting no more than 20 minutes to present. This rapid fire approach forced each of the speakers to really crystalize their core message, resulting in a day packed full of valuable insight which I’m sure got a lot of people thinking more about how they build valuable businesses.

A couple of my core take-aways from the talks:

• Think about your customer, get a picture of them in your head, on paper, on the wall, wherever. Make sure everyone in your company knows who you’re making things for and why they care
• Iterate, iterate, iterate. Nothing is ever finished
• Work with your community, your early adopters are your best salespeople. Give them the power to promote your brand
• Company culture and a healthy collaborative design environment will make or break the quality of your output. Companies like Blizzard and Valve are well known for attributing their success to nailing this. Ask yourself: Are you really listening? Are you really being heard? Be careful though, design by committee can also be dangerously distracting. Make sure it’s structured.
• Cash is king. Classic quote but seriously, this is the thing that destroys far too many great companies. New Zealander’s are traditionally bad at asking for money. If you’re not happy asking for someones money, then you’re obviously not confident that your product or service is actually worth them parting with their hard earned cash.

The next two days took a completely different format as 16 project teams were selected to go one-on-one with the international mentors over 10 sessions. These sessions saw us take our philosophy and products in front of industry superstars such as Tom Duterme, Noah Falstein, Suresh Seetharaman, Brian Seth Hurst, Sean Kauppinen, Marcelino Ford-Livene, Sean Kauppinen, Hugh Mason, and Chris Deering.

This format presented an unmatched opportunity to get face time with a wide range of high ranking industry pros, each bringing their own unique perspective and a positive approach to working with the teams to refine their value proposition.

I’m glad to say that everyone really bought into the Meaningful Play message, with each and every person we met coming up with a new and interesting application for the philosophy. Our Studio Manager, Emma, diligently took notes throughout all the workshops and at the end of the lab we were wondering what the value of that notebook might be. While we could go through and count up the hours and potential consultancy fees that might have got us the same feedback and insight, the real answer was quite clear to us: it was invaluable, a collection of strategic insight and action points that presents truly limitless value at this crucial point of our company’s evolution.

X Media Lab truly is the best in its class worldwide. Congratulations to Megan Elliot and Brendan Harkin for doing such a phenomenal job. Cant wait till next years lab!