Mar 3, 2010 | Innovation, Management, Strategy
The great pressure for “innovation” comes at least partly from the buy in of senior executives in the notion promulgated by numerous thinkers that the only really sustainable competitive advantage is the capability to out innovate the competition.
However, in the rush for new products and processes, some have forgotten the real outcome of successful innovation is cash, and common sense, discipline, and experience get thrown away in the rush for the newest thing, that more often than not adds little value to the customer experience.
Mar 1, 2010 | Marketing, Small business, Strategy
It is very tempting for marketers to become all sweaty about the prospect of a message going viral, all that free awareness, when in the old days, it would take lots and lots of advertising, costing big dollars.
If only it was that easy, just make a funny video and load it up!
It is still a matter of deciding who you want to delight, executing, and then you have a chance that they will spread the word, but without the focus on the small group to whom the experience of whatever it is you are selling is compelling, it is unlikely anyone will make the effort to spread your word for you.
In the early stages, it is inevitably, “one at a time” marketing, and the web does not make it easier than it has always been, it is just a different tool.
Feb 28, 2010 | Change, Management, Sales, Strategy
How many times have we heard this as a smart front line operator expresses frustration with the attitudes of the executive suite, the redundancy of the business model, or the strategy being pursued, as again, the “bosses” appear to fail to understand the coal face drivers of success.
The most common cause of this cry is becoming the rapid commoditisation of many markets, and those that see it first are usually on the front lines. Suddenly, long term customers are turning away, a new competitor emerges, and the only tool the troops have left is price, and they are pushed to do more with less.
Short term responses to a fundamental change in the business model necessary to be commercially sustainable won’t get you far, at best it will put off the inevitable. You need to ask yourself a couple of key questions:
- How can I differentiate my commodity product to a smaller market, instead of being all things to all people?
- How can I solve a problem someone has with the existing commodity product and service?
- How do I deploy my resources to make it happen, recognising , often this will mean adding a different type of resource.
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.
