Mar 30, 2012 | Change, Innovation, Strategy
Evolution happens in most circumstances in the absence of strong ‘anti-evolution” measures, and often even then, generally there is stuff happening at the fringes.
However, rigid barriers hold back change, until like the boy in the dyke, you run out of fingers, and then all hell breaks loose.
Allowing, even encouraging evolution acts as a pressure relief valve.
For some years I worked in the regulated milk industry, it was pretty obvious that the regulations protected a small number of people to the detriment of many, were a barrier to growth, and had no rational economic or social base at all. The problem was politics, not economics, there were a small number of electorates that could swing on the votes of dairy farmers, and we all effectively paid a price to keep them in business.
It was pretty obvious it would end badly, as indeed it did. The costs to everyone were far greater than necessary when the regulations were removed, particularly to those who had survived only because of the barriers. Instead of having time to adjust, those farmers were “killed off” overnight, a tragedy for them, but an inevitable outcome of the sudden removal of significant protection.
In effect, the evolution that was happening on the fringes of the market, and in other regulatory jurisdictions, was disregarded, and it required a bloody revolution, with all the associated pain, to get change.
Just think how much less pain would have been felt in the Middle East had the various autocrats in the region allowed change to evolve, rather than supressing it for years. It is much easier in the long run to encourage evolution.
Mar 29, 2012 | Change, Communication, Innovation, Social Media
It is all a matter of perspective.
Digital marketing implies an application of the existing disciplines of marketing, just tweaked a bit to accommodate the presence in the environment of digital options, facebook, linkedin, Pin it, and the rest.
Marketing in a digital world implies a pivot, the old rules no longer apply, because the world has changed.
Comscore has released their latest research, summarised and commented on in Mike Stelzner’s great Social Media Examiner blog. The impact of on line shopping, our seeming addiction to social sites and the opportunities to find new ways to engage with consumers as they conduct their digital lives, is delivering a host of new businesses, business models, and service opportunities not on the radar just a couple of years ago. Just look at the sudden emergence of cloud computing, the question is not where in the organisation responsibility for operating the cloud interactions should reside, but how can we best leverage the opportunities thrown up by this piece of the digital revolution.
Digital is no longer an option if medium term commercial survival is an objective, weather it be marketing, managing manufacturing, customer relationships and inventory, or just doodling, it is the other side of the inflexion point.
Not every body is there yet, but it will not be long, so don’t be late.
Mar 26, 2012 | Collaboration, Innovation, Small business
Blogs, facebook, web sites, and e-books have all bypassed the mass model of publishing, enabling huge numbers of people a creative outlet not available before 2000, but there is still the need for seed-funding. Raising the modest amounts of money to try and commercialise creativity has become a whole lot easier with the birth of Kickstarter, a crowdsourced funding platform for creativity.
Kickstarter is an interesting model. It calls for pledges for a project, a target and a time frame. When the target is reached, the credit card pledges are activated, if the target is not reached, they lapse. In this way, it creates micro finance for creative projects. The social media collaboration between the site, and facebook enables a “fan-base” to be developed, creating a market at the time the pledges are taken.
A challenge to this type of funding being extended to commercial operations is the hold current legislation gives ASIC, intended as a protection against snake-oil salesmen. The same challenge exists in the US where last week congress passed legislation to enable crowdsourcing of funding up to $1 million/year from a small unaccredited investors, and $50 million for established private companies before having to register a prospectus with the SEC.
Both are very good ideas, that should be translated to Australia where SME’s have great difficulty raising money, and the hurdle of having a prospectus approved by ASIC is very high indeed. The potential for growth enabled by access to funding by SME’s has to be substantial, providing a kick to the economy.
Mar 20, 2012 | Change, Innovation, Strategy
On March 14, IPART, the NSW Utility regulator made public a decision that put a price of 6-8 cents for energy exported to the grid, compared to the current cost of 30-44 cents for any power consumed from the grid.
The argument is in two parts, if I can put a complex report into a few dot points:
- The distribution infrastructure, poles & wires make up over 50% of the costs of electricity, and
- The times of peak demand do not coincide with times of strong sunlight, and therefore the power imported to the grid is of less value.
It seems to me that vested interests have got hold of the argument.
If it was truly that we were seeking to reduce our reliance on coal fired power stations, the ones the pollies tell us are better in private hands so the capital requirements are not a drain on the public purse, would it not be sensible to do two simple things:
- Use tariffs to shift the time of peak usage, (This assumes that households are the drivers of peak demand, which seems questionable to me, industry is a much larger user of power than households) this simply means people put their dishwashers on before they go to bed, not as they finish the meal, and ditto for dryers.
- Encourage the “crowdsourcing” of power, which takes the pressure off the network systems. The march of technology seems to imply that in a very short time we will have cheap batteries that will be able to recharge during daylight, storing power for use later. Put simply, put the generation points next to the consumption points.
We mostly accept that crowdsourcing of all sorts of things is the most efficient way of getting them, from ideas, to finance to goods. So why don’t we do it with power?
Why do we insist on insulating a legacy system that we are moaning is from the last century from the winds of change, when the alternative is obvious, and policy decisions elsewhere seem to indicate that the contrary outcome is in our long term interests. This is not necessarily an argument for subsidy, that is an emotive word, but it is an argument for reducing the responsibility for power generation from the public sector to those using the power, taking advantage of C21 technology.
Mar 6, 2012 | Innovation, Leadership
It is pretty easy to avoid making that confronting customer call, stand up and articulate an idea at odds with the boss, conduct an experiment conventional wisdom says will fail. The price for not doing this stuff is pretty low, few will critisise, but there will be little pay-off as well.
It takes intellectual bravery to confront the natural reluctance to stand out from the herd, make yourself vulnerable, be different, but without that bravery, nothing changes, and little new value creation will happen. As George Bernard Shaw said, “all great things start as blasphemies”
Feb 19, 2012 | Communication, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media
Just a few months ago, QR codes seemed to me to be the answer to a marketers prayer, a simple way for products and services to connect with anyone with a mobile device, and an interest.
However, Aussies, often quick adapters of technology seemed not to be interested. At a recent wine symposium of a major wine region to which I was lucky enough to score an invitation to, I saw only one brand using QR codes, and yesterday in a major retail outlet, I scoured to the place to find, none. (great excuse eh, just looking for a QR code darling!). This lack of take-up by Australian wineries was a surprise to me, then Joan Muschamp posted on the Social media examiner site, and all became clear.
I thought wineries would rush to QR codes, perhaps the explanation in this article talking about the next big thing, leading to the early death of QR codes, Mobile Visual Search, that we humans are visual animals, and a big bar code does not do it for us, has something in it.
Soon we will be able to point our phone at a building, label, poster, product, whatever, and get immediate feedback on the object. Currently the technology is pretty early stage, Google have started marketing it as “Google Goggles” and Apple has their version as well.
Point is, the pace of innovation is still accelerating, and the opportunities are for the early adopters, the marketers who get on top of a consumer friendly technology early, and leverage it for the brand, by connecting to their content, and telling their stories.
