Jan 11, 2011 | Customers, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
If I were managing a business in financial services, I would be asking myself if I had missed the second wave of the “net-boat” that is rapidly becoming a force in financial services.
Banks and other financial institutions have reduced their costs enormously by leveraging the capabilities of the net to receive and process payments electronically in developed countries, but even there, PayPal has carved a growing share of transactions, but more importantly, opened relationships with millions of customers who use the web for shopping. Just as the retailers missed the potential of consumers to use the web to seek the best prices, banks have allowed PayPal to build a customer base to pay for them.
In the developing world, millions are not serviced by the financial infrastructure of the developed world. predictably, alternatives are emerging, powered again by the web, and businesses that have no existing financial services infrastructure to protect, are able to move quickly to provide a cost effective and easy to use service to customers and potential customers not serviced by banks.
It is unlikely in my view that banks will become the recording companies of the early 2000’s and ignore the competitive threat until it is almost too late, but their influence, particularly in the developing world will be substantially diminished from what it could have been.
Jan 11, 2011 | Management, Uncategorized
A great irony amongst the many I see, is that the skills required to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognise what a right answer looks like.
Put another way, our incompetence in a field masks our ability to recognise our own incompetence.
This irony has been observed by many, Charles Darwin and Bertrand Russell amongst others, but was systematically investigated by two Cornell University psychologists, and has become known as the “Dunning-Kruger effect“. The obvious corollary is that knowing what you do not know is usually a sign of intelligence.
Dunning and Kruger demonstrated this effect is as prevalent amongst educated people as it is amongst those with seemingly less training that may enable them to see their own weaknesses.
In today’s connected and service oriented developed world, this effect when combined with a slick presentation, and loads of self confidence can be a real trap for the unwary, just look at those sprouting financial and stock market certainties just before the GFC hit.
So, next time you hear or see someone sprouting stuff you do not understand, no matter how slick it may appear, make sure you rectify that lack of understanding before you put your hand in your wallet, alternatively, get the hell out of Dodge.
Jan 9, 2011 | Innovation, Leadership, Social Media
Ideo is an ideas factory, its stock in trade is ideas and the resulting products, that others commercialise. As such, it has been a lab or case study in how to innovate as they have grown. As a small business, they all knew each other, collaboration happened as a part of the DNA of the place, but growth and geographic spread made it increasingly difficult, so they set out to use themselves as the lab for themselves, evolving what they have called the “Tube” in which they mash up all the collaboration tools enabled by web 2.0 into a form that works for them.
Then, god bless them, they put it out there in the spirit of transparency and the collaborative energy that can be created, for us all to learn from.
Jan 6, 2011 | Customers, Marketing, Sales
Word of mouth advertising has always been the best sort, people put great store in recommendations from those they trust. The extension of this recently has been what I call “word of mouse” advertising, enabled by the networking capabilities of the net.
Taking the idea further, the potential to engage your customers via various forms of social media, to the extent that they become advocates of your product is not only possible, but should be a key marketing objective.
Call centers have progressively taken over the function of a sales force, and technology, and India has progressively taken over the call centers. Perhaps there is an opportunity for high end goods to reverse the trend, use technology to facilitate the transactional end of a relationship with a consumer, but invest in call centers to build the engagement of consumers by personal contact.
Jan 5, 2011 | Change, Innovation
The “green revolution” may be denied by many, failing in the Parliament, and not engaging consumers as their utilities bills increase, but it is happening around us anyway.
The world is greening, despite the best efforts of many to avoid the issues. Because there is a dollar in it, businesses are recognising that the future will be different to the past, and are looking for ways to innovate and find opportunities to build new business models.
This list of the green initiatives of 2010 should make us all think, and perhaps conclude that in the challenges the planet faces in managing our consumption of non recurring resources, there are enormous opportunities for innovation, and change that will enhance the quality of life of those who follow us.
To this list we could easily add the impact of the current floods in Queensland on the world price of coal, and the knock-on impacts of that on utility bills of consumers and business. Given the role QLD plays in world coal supply, there will be some re-evaluation of scenarios in many boardrooms, and I would be surprised if the attraction of alternative energy sources, including nuclear was not considerably enhanced.
