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 9, 2010 | Communication, Innovation, Social Media
I suspect neither Coke or Mentos planned for the tsunami of videos on Utube and others demonstrating the effect of a Mentos in a bottle of coke. Nevertheless, it happens, and it remains to be seen if the popularity of coke-bombs impacts the brands in any way.
Blend-it has made a business by demonstrating the blending power of their appliances by blending all sorts of things, latest is an Ipad, but this by contrast is a deliberate marketing strategy that has delivered a huge brand position for little cost.
The point is that the power of the web can be harnessed, and used to your benefit, but it is a demanding, unpredictable mistress, and just as prone to turn around and bite your bum, as it is to do you a favour.
Believing you can manage the web content that impacts on your products is the first mistake, best you can do is participate, contribute, comment, and if you do it well, as Blendtec has, you can leverage the power, never control it.
May 6, 2010 | Change, Communication, Leadership, Strategy
For years there have been libraries written on the value of business purpose, vision, mission, and values, consultants have made a good living out of running workshops and managing implementation projects. Now, at a TED event, all the complication has been stripped away by Simon Sinek in a terrific presentation about “why” .
As managers, and in my case, a consultant and advisor, we talk about all this stuff, but never have I seen it put so simply, and so compellingly.
May 5, 2010 | Change, Communication, Innovation, Social Media
What happens next?
Mega platforms for social networking have overtaken many of our lives, from email, facebook, twitter, and the rest. All have the common trait of being “mass” platforms, designed to be used by anyone, with very modest generally available customisation allowed at the fringes.
For most people, in most situations, this is enough.
However, every time something has been invented, that reaches a wide audience, and satisfies a generic proposition, someone starts playing with the tailoring. This applies throughout history, to all widely used devices from armor to iphone apps.
Bespoke social networking at the edges is about to evolve into a fragmented range of networks where there are substantial barriers to entry, and therefore attract a highly focused group, with a deep connection of some sort, who can network amongst a select group of peers.
Imagine a social network of PhD qualified nuclear physicians from a selected group of institutions, which excludes the University of West Bumcrack and its brothers. This tiny, exclusive group of geeks, would love a social networking platform, an app that enables them to interact with the couple of dozen others around the place who understand them, but to date it has not been offered because it does not “scale” and the established rules for success of these networks is “scalability” which means it is capable of being monetarised. In addition, it would work differently, much more like a series of human interactions as would occur in the university common room, rather than being reduced to a series of quantitative options as is the case in a mass app.
The corollary is that if you are not in the “frame” for the bespoke app, you will probably never even know about it.
May 4, 2010 | Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
Marketing is much more than a menu to be picked from, it is an evolution of characteristics specific to a purpose a place and a competitive environment.
Some is visible above ground, most is invisible, underground, the roots of the ecosystem, but the needs are similar, if growth and health are to be maintained.
As in nature, marketing in a market tends to be similar, FMCG marketers pick from similar menus of options that are a function of the forces driving the marketplace, but those menus are subtly different from those that are in other markets.
Again, as in nature, a step change really only occurs when there is a cross pollination across boundaries, when a smart marketer disobeys the “rules” of his market, and adopts a different approach, sometimes with insights from others. That is when the really interesting stuff happens.
May 2, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
What a cliché this has become, and you hear it all the time, like most cliches, it has become so common, we need to go a step further. Outside the box, outside the room, outside the building? How far outside is far enough?.
Surely it is more a matter of thinking differently, looking at the facts through a different set of eyes, not just seeking a way out solution that is the point here. It doe not much matter how far outside the box we are, it is how we interpret the box, and what is in it that counts
