Sep 8, 2009 | Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
The first syllable of the word “innovation”, describes how most organizations see the process. Look inside the business for better processes, better science, better customer service practices, better product offerings. Problem is, that way you are always seeing the world from within the boundaries set by the status quo that pervades the business.
Looking at the world from another point if view, from the “outside” is usually a better way to create something new.
Innovation thinking from outside requires new rules about collaboration, and where you can get ideas, and it requires a special sort of leadership to enable an enterprise to activiely seek those who “do it” better than you.
Procter & Gambles A.G. Lafley reinvigorated the company by actively seeking ideas from outside the huge P&G innovation machine, recognising that most of the great ideas will be elsewhere, and the skill of the organisation is to recognise and commercialise them.
The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz noted “we observe everything from a point of view”, and like much of his other writing, he was centuries ahead of his time, as the really successful innovators remove themselves from the shackles of the corporate point of view, to bring the outside inside their innovation efforts.
Sep 6, 2009 | Innovation, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
Then notion of “industrial commons” as a metaphor for the clustering of firms of a similar type in an area put forward by Gary Pisano of Harvard Business School is immediately attractive, as it easily explains things we have all seen, without recognising the implications.
Pre industrial revolution, the notion of commons applied to the common land on which all villagers could graze their cattle, or carry out other communal activity.
In the post industrial age, it is about the manner in which particular skills assemble over time in a location that enables them to leverage the proximity of the intellect into goods and services. Silicon valley is the best known example, but there are many others.
This puts a simple platform under many publicly funded efforts to enhance “clusters” in my area of work, particularly in the production of high value specialty food products.
The growth of Orange in the central west of NSW as a fine food centre is supported by a wide range of agriculture, from broad acre cropping to intensive horticulture and wine making, further supported by mining operation which give some scale to the engineering services sector, and the University offering agricultural science amongst a wide range of disciplines. By contrast, nearby Mudgee has all the agricultural advantages, possibly more, but lacks the mining, university and the attraction to general tourism and passing trade, and so the clustering of food value adding has failed to gather the momentum of Orange.
The challenge in creating a “common” is the timeframe of the return on investment in the necessary infrastructure. Governments create and abandon a development program in sync with the electoral and economic cycles, commons will take a generation at least to gain traction, so governments should not be surprised to see their efforts largely fail, whilst next door, a “cluster” will evolve with little or no engagement of public funds beyond basic services, simply because it has all the natural conditions to thrive.
Sep 2, 2009 | Leadership, Management, Marketing
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, it is probably a duck.
How easily some of us can be led to believe that what we are looking at is something other than what we see.
The old saying about the duck has never been truer than in the recent collapse of Bernie Madoff’s empire. Billions were invested by many otherwise sensible people in the mistaken belief that one investment business could consistently outperform the market under all circumstances.
Madoff conned people over an extended period, creating a “Ponzi” (to Australians, pyramid selling )scheme that became so big, and so successful at attracting new funds that most refused to believe it could be a Ponzi scheme
If it too good to be true, it usually is, irrespective of the hyperbole that may accompany it.
Sep 2, 2009 | Marketing, Strategy
Customers do not always fall into the easy demographic segments so favored by marketers. They think, and react to a range of stimuli that have little to do with their age, sex, family situation, education, where they live, how much they earn, and what job they do.
Each consumer is a market of one, and they must be won over by your brand and product offering, so make sure you really understand why they behave the way they do.
So called “new media” offers a channel to communicate with consumers individually rather than on mass, this does not make it easier than the old “mass media”, if anything it is harder, and it is certainly different.
Aug 31, 2009 | Leadership, Marketing
Isn’t the marketing job done by the Canterbury Bulldogs on Hazem El Nasri about the best branding game in town at the moment?
Forget that he is an athlete, and that his personal credo appears to be beyond reproach, Canterbury have done a great job of branding for the man, the club, and the game after a low period that has called into question the survival of the game as the main football code in this part of the world.
There are many alternatives to league, all of them competing for the hearts and minds of players, supporters, sponsors, and perhaps most importantly, young players mums. Their concerns have been adroitly addressed by the brand strategists who have executed beautifully over the last 6 months, culminating last weekend.
It would have been a perfect finish had the young bookend been sufficiently marketing savvy to have passed to Hazem 3 minutes from the end, with the line open, rather than taking the try himself. What an opportunity missed!
Professional marketers spend their lives looking for sources of competitive advantage, then building and defending them. They use the quantitative tools that identify segments, targets, strategies and opportunities, but to be successful they must not forget that marketing is more about the heart than the head, but you need both.
Those who carried this exercise got it right, recognising that marketing is a science, except where it is an art.
Aug 27, 2009 | Innovation, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
The world will look different when it emerges from the crunch, as we appear to be doing currently.
The globalization and connectivity of the world are trends that will not go away, and the chaos of the last 12 months will have enabled trends at the fringe to build momentum much more quickly that would have otherwise been the case.
Consider the acceptance, even demand, for increased government intervention in business, something that would have been impossible a year ago, the growth of twitter over the same period, the role pro-active networking of supporters using the web played in the success of the Obama campaign, and the explosion of sales of “green” cars like the Toyota Prius, and Honda’s equivalent at premium prices during a financial meltdown. All examples of disturbance at the periphery of activity which became full blown disruptions at the core in a very short time, motivated during the economic chaos by people seeking new ways to understand and deal with what was going on.
Building adaptability has become a key survival skill, taking lessons from the natural world where many small “experiments” at the fringes builds the capacity of the species to survive as the environment changes around you. It may be that Peter Drucker‘s maxim that the only core competence needed by an organization was innovation has been reinforced, as all the literature on successful innovation cites the ability of an organization to run many experiments as a key component of innovation success.
Anyone thinking the post crash world will look like the pre-crash one needs to think again.
