Chris Risley, of Bessemer Venture Partners (bvp.com), first introduced me to the idea of high concept. It is a term borrowed from the film and television industry that summarizes a proposed idea and usually leads a pitch. It is intended to evoke immediate interest and possibly understanding of the idea. For example, YouTube could have been described as "user posted video on the web".

All too often, an entrepreneur over complicates the communication of her endeavor. Besides her passion, she has been spending an enormous amount of time contemplating, refining and planning her new business. So, she rushes to explain all the richness and subtleties of the idea and how its innovation will change the market. She may even assume that you can't fully appreciate the value of the idea without being told all its nuance.

It is true that complete understanding will take some time and exploration. But this isn't a prerequisite of interest and when pitching the idea to a VC, friend and the target market, capturing interest quickly is critical. The audience's attention has to be earned and most will not have the patience of suspending interest while lots of background and tangential information is provided.

Herein lies the power of the high concept; it facilitates immediate interest and understanding. The high concept doesn't have to (and rarely will) capture the breadth and richness of the idea, but some essence that makes a connection with the audience. 

But is can also focus the entrepreneur and this focus is probably more valuable than the mechanism of communicating the idea to others. Entrepreneurs get easily distracted and assume, just as when communicating, their idea needs full implementation before releasing into the market. What they presume is the minimal feature set for a release tends to have fluff that could be removed.

The high concept is a simple litmus test; how does feature X support the high concept? This should not be a slavish rule but a sanity check. As Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." This focus can save an entrepreneur time and money, particularly at early stages where time-to-market is paramount and final value propositions are still emerging.

I have two favorite examples of high concept. In television, an NBC executive asked Michael Mann to come up with a show based on the idea "MTV cops". The result was Miami Vice and I think it is clear how the show tied to the high concept. In the Web 2.0 space, Meebo is "IM through a web page". Simple and concise, just like the actual product. I think many would envy Meebo's success and attention.

Most of software development can be considered from one of two perspectives: Is it innovative or can it be considered a commodity?

Starting with the latter case, these software projects are a re-implementation of software that has already been written numerous times. It is even possible to buy existing applications and integrate with other components or implement minor customizations. An example of commoditized software are shopping carts. Years ago, in the early Internet, merchant websites and shopping cart integration was expensive and required significant development; today I can pay an extra $20 a month in web hosting for the same functionality.

For a commoditized software project, it makes sense to look at low cost development options. These frequently employ overseas developers, thousands of miles away in other time zones. With commodity software, the requirements are well understood and many exemplary models exist. Communicating project requirements and expectations is easier, so the risks are far lower.

Innovators don't have such ease; requirements change often and are foggy at best. Building from existing components is either unfeasible or requires too much customization (the dreaded "integration tax"). This poses a great challenge for an entrepreneur, as being first mover may be more of a risk than an advantage. Large amounts of time and money can be expended while the entrepreneur searches for her actual market opportunity or the proper way to seize it.

Incremental and iterative development can help mitigate these risks for the innovator. With each iteration, the innovator has feedback that allows her to tune and adapt requirements, converging on essential functionality and de-emphasizing tangential functionality. For an entrepreneur with a limited budget, efficient use of development resources is critical.

While iterative development can keep you focused, it is not enough. Close collaboration and interaction with developers is also key. Building a rapport between product visionaries and those executing this vision not only creates a common sense of ownership, which leverages "collective brain power", but it forces the entrepreneur to clearly communicate her vision. Too often innovators have a muddy understanding of their own ideas. (A technique called "high concept" is another good tool for entrepreneurs and will be the subject of a future post.)

Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs treat their venture as commodity software, as they attempt to outsource development to low cost programming body shops. While I have a particular bias in this case, the real question for an entrepreneur is: If it is so easy to outsource your innovation, is your idea actually novel? Are there any barriers to market entry for a competitor? These questions are important to address before any development investment is made, regardless if the software is being treated like a commodity or an innovation.

Here we are again... again. Pivotal Labs has reinvented itself a few times over the years. But with each change, we've matured and expanded our commitment to helping teams produce better software and to do it more efficiently.

Who is Pivotal Labs? We're a consulting firm located in San Francisco that incubates the engineering efforts of startups and enables Agile software process adoption for mature companies. We started out doing Smalltalk, moved to Java development once that hit the scene, and a year and a half ago, we started falling in love with Ruby on Rails. And we've been doing Agile development since before it was called that, and we do it all the way.

We hire bright, talented, experienced folks and weave them into our growing team. We want to work with people we can learn from, people with vision, people with serious chops. Life's too short not to be working with people like that.

Anyone who works in software knows about missed deadlines, exhausted budgets and death marches. But we do things differently, and we've got the track record to prove it. We've been producing great software, repeatedly and predictably, for a long time. And while we know there are many great software teams in the industry, few have the ability to transfer "the how they do it" to others.

This makes us somewhat unique. We share our techniques, processes, and recipes, with clients and partners and colleagues. Interaction, collaboration and exchange -- in a word, openness -- are the core values of Pivotal.

This blog will be an example of that openness. Expect a mix of topics -- from technical (AJAX / JSON performance problems, acceptance testing with Selenium), to process (scaling Agile development, how to balance features and infrastructure), to business, always with some Pivotal personality and perspective.

We hope that you will get to know us and possibly benefit from some of our experience. We also want to hear from you; we love sharing ideas and experience, as this type of exchange has been the cornerstone of our success.