May 18, 2010 | Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
Digital interactivity has moved to the centre of marketing strategy. The launch of the iPad by Apple has moved it noticeably.
I have not seen one, just read the reviews, and when you sift through the hyperbole, it seems that the iPad has a pretty good chance of changing the way a large section of the market behaves. For communication centric uses, the iPad will possibly be a revelation, but to applications that require number crunching, it will not replace a computer. Now the market will segment by what sorts of applications you require, not just the size, and performance characteristics, and PC Vs Mac segmentation that has prevailed.
The other segmenting drive is the coming battle in “e-book” publishing, which will be facinating to watch. Amazons Kindle got the ball rolling, but the momentum will be built by the iPad when they get the iBook store running properly, which should not be long. It took Apple several years to get the iTunes store running, and it created a tsunami in the music world, it may be a bit harder in books because they are simply harder to digitise, but the lessons from launching iTunes will not be lost, and the current book publishing business model is clearly about to be broken apart.
May 17, 2010 | Communication, Leadership, Management, Personal Rant
I watched Q&A last night, in the ultimately vain hope of getting some intelligent debate on the Federal budget, and its foundation proposal to change the manner in which the mining industry is taxed.
Should have known better.
What passed for debate was really just a moderated annunciation of political hyperbole and PR crafted phrases intended to play to the emotions, there was little presentation of the facts. How are we to form intelligent positions on issues where all we see is the spin? Are we the electorate, expected to be so compliant and thoughtless that we just accept the nonsense from whichever side of the political divide best suits our generic position.
There are strong arguments on both sides, lets hear them in a way that enables us to make a decision on how we feel, rather than being told how we should feel on the basis of spin.
Increasingly businesses I see are making real efforts to remove the verbiage, and present facts without the gloss and polish as a means to make sensible decisions, and engage the stakeholders in the process to the extent that even if they do not agree with the outcome, they are satisfied that there was due process, and therefore they can live with the outcome.
If our two “debaters” last night were sitting around the board table of anything more significant than the local tennis club, and expecting to get support for their respective positions, the chairman would be well within his rights to send them to the corner to share the pointed cap.
May 16, 2010 | Communication, Innovation, Leadership
A while ago facilitating a two day innovation session, I became involved in two very different, but very similar conversations during various coffee breaks.
The first was with a smart young technical bloke, who expressed the view that all the nice encouraging words expressed at the session were great, but that the business was too risk averse to actually do anything daring.
The second was with the marketing director, someone with a track record of achievement, skills, and a preparedness to have a shot, to push resource allocation and strategic boundaries. He felt that those he relied on to develop the means to execute the technical end of some of the ideas were too interested in science for the sake of it, and disinterested in the commercial and market issues he had to address.
In effect, they are both seeking the same outcome, but the language of management, the functional cultural preconceptions and perceptions have got in the way of unambiguous communication.
This is not an uncommon challenge, every innovation effort must work hard to overcome the cultural and semantic barriers to be successful.
The more attention is focused on innovation, and the higher up the tree that focus emanates from, the better to turn the words into action.
May 13, 2010 | Personal Rant
As we appear to be in a recovery, at least those industries that can benefit in any way from digging stuff up appear to be, what will happen to the underemployed?.
Yesterday, the unemployment numbers came out, 5.4% Australia wide, 5.8% in NSW, but what they really mean is that of those surveyed, 95.6% of those who want to work, did some work, which can mean a couple of hours, in the previous month. I normally do not follow the detail of the employment figures, the statistical and political games played with them just get the blood boiling, but you would have to be crazy not to believe there is a very considerable under-employment in the economy.
Usually we focus on the young, but what about the late middle aged, the plus 50’s (of which I am one) who sit around much of the time, under-employed.
There is a huge well of experience and wisdom that is being wasted. Many of these people do not want to retire, they are the baby-boomer generation, they get their kicks out of working, and many now cannot retire, the GFC has seen to that.
As organisations try to keep full time employment down to minimise costs, and many have a barrier about hiring someone 50-plus, this group who have much to contribute, are being shuffled aside ignored, and devalued.
Wake up Australia!
May 12, 2010 | Alliance management, Demand chains, Leadership, Operations
Successful groups have great power, power to identify, understand the causes and implications of problems and opportunities, and come up with creative responses, and once moving can gather great momentum. Most workplaces are now actively seeking to harness the intellect and creative power of their employees and other stakeholders, and those that do it well create great opportunity.
The flip side is that groups also have inertia, they are much harder to get rolling than just an individual, and once rolling, have a tendency to take unpredictable excursions.
It is easy to underestimate the effort, leadership, and capacity to connect that is required to overcome this inertia, and to manage the momentum constructively, leading a group in a consistent direction, focusing on the important issues, and consistently delivering outcomes.
I bet Isaac never thought of this application of his laws.
