Feb 25, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Personal Rant
It has been interesting listening to the “debates” over the last week or so on two different topics, the latest of the seemingly endless versions of a NSW transport plan, and the redevelopment of the area of Sydney harbour now called Barangaroo
On both issues, it seems if talkback radio is any indication, that everyone has an opinion, and wants everyone else to hear it.
It also appears that the conversations vary from loud opinions based on fluffy thinking at best, to sensible opinions based on a series of assumptions that even if you choose to disagree with the opinion, at least the assumptions upon which they are based are transparent. There appears to be some correlation between the level of noise and the ignorance of the mouth from which the noise emanates, particularly when responding to an opinion leading view expressed aggressively, as Paul Keating has done on Barangaroo.
It seems to me that if you are going to be taken seriously in a debate, any debate, about the changing of the status quo, you had better have some facts, transparent assumptions, and a vision of the preferred outcome in order to be taken seriously, and to have a useful role in the debate.
Making noise just distracts from the real work of driving change.
Feb 24, 2010 | Branding, Innovation, Marketing
It seems that most innovation is aimed at getting more of the same for the same price, rather than making the experience with the product better.
Every time I see an ad for a new car, it seems to have more airbags, more electronic gizmos to go wrong the day the warranty ends, but who really needs it all to get from point A to point B reliably, comfortably, at a modest cost, which is the point of having a car.
Surely it is time to innovate backwards, do less, strip the glitter, simplify.
I used to shave with a single blade, now I am a poof unless I shave with five, my stringy beard is not five times tougher than when I was 21, just a bit more gray worked its way in.
Two businesses, Gillette and Intel have led the way in adding features that they think will give them a marketing advantage through differentiation, and then turning them into benefits.
For a funny, sarcastic view of the trend to complication, follow the link to the Onion site, and have a laugh.
Feb 23, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
How often is the “next big thing” hiding in your organisation without you knowing?
Fairly often is seems.
Probably the classic example, is the development of the first digital camera by a Kodak engineer , Steven Sasson in 1975.
Kodak, with a totally dominant position in the film market had a huge amount to lose with the development of an alternative, and ironically, many of the adjacent inventions such as advances in storage volumes, which enables the digital photographic technology to be realised, and which also made the computer industry as we now see it possible, were also developed in their labs, but put aside, as Kodak commercial management saw little of interest to their business.
Way after the digital camera market had been populated by the likes of Sony, Kodak woke up, but way too late to preserve their market dominance, or even have a role in the shape of it.
Meanwhile, the inventor toiled away inside Kodak, watching others commercialise the technology he initiated.
The lesson here is that you need to creatively engage with all stakeholders, whilst seeing the opportunities through eyes other than those that restrict the view to the status quo.
Feb 14, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Management, Strategy
Much of what we read encourages us to experiment, test, and adopt and adapt the better ideas as they survive, and evolve. I am a great advocate of this approach, but the downside is that an apparent ad hoc mindset, a lack of planning discipline, may allow the basic performance measurement disciplines of to fall away.
It is another management paradox, you have to be flexible and agile or “loose” to succeed, but to succeed you must have “tight” management to ensure the choices made have the backing a data, and strategic fit, not just the result of somebody’s good idea when they woke up that morning.
Feb 11, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Strategy
We spend time and effort managing our way through legacy IT systems, recognizing the impact they have on performance, and the cost benefit of spending the capital to replace them.
However, we rarely think about strategy in a similar manner.
Instead we think about the status quo, the culture and the need to change them, and we craft sometimes elaborate re-engineering projects often at great expense, to change them, but rarely think about them as a “legacy” of the past, and therefore to be treated as an oddity to be removed as soon as practical.
Perhaps if we subjected legacy strategies to the same ridicule we heap on legacy IT systems, change would be a lot easier to make.
Jan 27, 2010 | Branding, Innovation, Marketing
Product development is most often a process that in its early stages is dominated by technical considerations after the initial idea is articulated. It is about the dimensions, performance characteristics, functionality, features, technology platform, and so on. Typically the product brief will cover all these aspects, and more, but it will not be enough for the designer responsible for the way in which the products interact with the consumer, and therefore does little for the development of your brand.
At some point, you need to reflect the behavior of consumers as they use the product, the level of engagement it attracts, the way they interact with the features, the situation in which it will be used, what else is likely to be going on around them concurrent with use, the way it needs to look and feel, and many, often qualitative aspects.
It is a common mistake to put a lot of effort into the product brief, but less into the design brief, thus ignoring the most important factor in the whole exercise, the consumer.
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