Hum. This article turned out to be targeted at big company types, not entrepreneurs. Innovation at big companies almost never works anyway. The authors of "In Search of Excellence" did excellent research on just that, and found that inventions which had big impacts almost always came from companies with less than a few dozen people.
'... Hum. This article turned out to be targeted at big company types, not entrepreneurs ...'
I think the below extract could / should be applied to any startup. The point being made here is to create cheap in-expensive (money and time) rapid prototypes. In the process discovering new insights.
'... Sketches, he argues, are quick, inexpensive, disposable, plentiful, offer minimal detail, and suggest and explore rather than confirm ... The value of sketching is less in the artifacts themselves than in the cognitive process of working through dozens of ideas, of considering as many options as possible, and allowing each option to raise new questions ...'
This particular technique is extremely useful when the next step, "translate design to code as quickly as possible into a working prototype". Speed from idea to code allows crappy ideas to be exposed faster and is a technique (rapid development of ideas into code) was used by Joshua Schachter for various projects leading up to delicious.
I think the article and the book are slanted towards big business because they have less constraints (more money, resources) and hence have problems tackling the design process. It might also be written for companies that do not create product and either make money by the hour or contract, not product ~ http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FiveWorlds.html
