Nov 30, 2009 | Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
The Victorian era threw up some extraordinary characters, amongst them Charles Dodgson, better known by his pseudonym, Lewis Carrol
Here was a man who is best known for a children’s story, one that has deep messages for adults together with the absorbing story for kids, but whose body of work includes hugely creative endeavors in mathematics and photography, as well as writing in all its forms.
Looking for something to use in a seminar on innovation a while ago, I stumbled across a wonderful quotation that encompasses the challenges many find when trying to build an innovation culture in their organisations, and it comes from one of Alice’s conversations with the cat.
“Can you tell me which way I ought to go from here” said Alice
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to” said the cat
” I don’t much care where” said Alice
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you walk” said the cat.
Seems to me to be a great explanation for the necessity of having a plan, with a worthwhile goal as the objective of a journey, and all innovation is after all, just a journey.
Nov 29, 2009 | Change, Innovation, Marketing
Firms are successful when all the elements of strategy development and execution are ‘aligned”, when functional management works in a synergistic manner, and when personal best interests are best served by serving the best interests of the firm.
When this happens, the whole “system” is working in an optimized manner.
The real challenge is to design a new system, one that redraws the rules of the business model, one that creates a new system.
The opportunities that will emerge out of meeting the challenges of climate change are going to be new systems, not a modified version of existing ones. It has always been this way with disruptive innovation.
Shai Agassi has evolved a new system to replace the car. He is testing with the assistance if the Israeli government a system of electric cars with points that replace the batteries, rather than just recharging, but you pay for the miles driven, not to buy and maintain the car.
Familiar?
If you have a mobile phone on some sort of a plan, that is the system that as been adapted by Agassi’s “Better Place” to provide transport, just the way a phone provides communication.
Nov 23, 2009 | Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
The evolution of the commercial and legal frameworks within which we live has left us with the notion of the firm as a legal entity, responsible for its debts, its own destiny, and to its owners for a return on the capital risked to fund activities.
In all those capacities, a firm is like a person, but unlike a person, who has an existence as a result of its parents, a firm does not live in the abstract without a value proposition to customers.
Firms grow and prosper only while their products are in some way superior to those of their competitors, and when the products become stale, so do their prospects of success.
This simple fact of life should drive the innovation efforts in all businesses. As the guru Peter Drucker once said, “the only competitive advantage that is sustainable is the ability to out-innovate competitors”
Nov 19, 2009 | Innovation, Marketing
The innovation process has many faces, the one becoming increasingly accepted is that of constant, small scale experiments to see what works in the market, and what can be learned to improve the next iteration.
Sometimes when you experiment, something completely unanticipated comes up.
In the 80’s pharmaceutical giant Pfizer was conducting clinical trails on a drug they had called Sildenafil, which was designed to address the chest pain associated with angina.
It was only marginally successful, and never went to market, but during the trials, a curious, and completely unanticipated side effect became obvious, and Viagra was born.
Nov 16, 2009 | Change, Innovation, Marketing
Not just the “bits”, the original target of Moore’s Law are halving in price every couple of years, lots of other things are as well.
For many goods and services, the whole notion of charging at marginal cost has been thrown on its head, because in many cases marginal cost has become negligible.
The internet has created the most competitive market the world has ever seen.
Barriers to entry are almost zero, and the marginal cost of production is zero. Therefore, how do you price this product, as price has always followed the marginal cost in traditional models.
The consequence is that over time, as things evolve on the internet, the for “free” component will increase, and the audience will increase, in numbers, but those who want “depth” will still be prepared to pay for it.
Disruptive innovation has used this model for 150 years.
Jell-O, effectively dried granulated gelatin in a box was given away in the 1880’s as a means to develop a market.
Linux software is the best known recent example of free stuff on the net, but it is every where, so the marketing challenge is to evolve a business model that enables you to make money when giving it away.
On of my clients has a unique information product that offers useful generic information covering an industry, but then has the scope to generate very specific and competitively useful information for individual enterprises and situations at a much deeper level of analysis. The debate about the best pricing model is proving to be very interesting indeed.
Nov 16, 2009 | Change, Innovation, Marketing
In the welter of new media arriving almost daily, is there an element of individuals being empowered to exercise their right to make their own choices after a lifetime of being told what they want by others.
Boys are taught from an early age to want a sports car by the role models and advertising thrust at them, and girls are taught what to want by magazines and their peers and role models, but do we really need most of it?
After several generations of honing the ability to filter out the mass market advertising we do not want to see, perhaps twitter and the other emerging social networking tools are an opportunity to express stuff that was previously just a personal consideration. The marketing implications of this ability to filter communications coming in, and respond directly to those that attract us for some reason are as important to marketing as Henry Ford was to automobiles.
