Brainbidextrous thinking to apply for Innovation,Marketing Strategy and Business Models. Music is subtle inspiration for life. Release the Chain Reaction
I'm interested in knowing the value executives find in external consultants. What you like the most? What you hate the most? and how the name influences success in the branding of the firm. Thanks for your valued time
Real experts must be real users, not great thinkers
It's about knowing the purpose. What do you really want?
We live in a web based society. It is impossible to deny how attached we are to the benefits of the web. Through internet, we get information about products we need, we stay connected with people we miss and we look for data from companies we are curious about.
In the same subject but from the opposite side, it's impossible to deny how useful is the web for businesses. It gives companies of all sizes a longer reach to communicate with costumers and it offers an efficient tool to optimize and generate leads and sales.
But it has its perils.
I am a corporate strategists with emphasis in business models, innovation and marketing. Recently, one of my current clients, a very recognized local organization with international presence in 10 countries, asked me to comment on its new website and to provide some recommendations.
Even when my selling proposal has never been social media improvement or social media "strategy", I do recognize the high importance of having a proper website design to reinforce your branding and support your value proposal as well as strengthening it through a consistent social media presence in the world-wide-web.
With this on mind, I visited the website to start my "do it yourself " session of the product and then make my analysis. Well, it didn't pass one minute before I was writing down the first areas of opportunity of the website. I have to admit that when thinking about the task, I was hesitating a little bit about the solidity of my recommendations because this was actually just a task asked by my client as an extra service, but I decided I was going to do my best.
I did it.
I received a -surprisingly- energetic "Thank you for your comments, we are very impressed by the profundity of the recommendations, we are implementing all you said right now".
So, what it is really necessary to be a so called expert in any field -specially in services-? real experts need to be real users so they can identify real needs and then provide real solutions.
Why I insist on that? Because my analysis was visiting the website as a client. I used my user mindset instead of my adviser mindset to start the analysis, and when talking about websites, it's very easy to avoid annoying headaches such as this terribly-scary-hard to believe-horrendous website in the picture
It was when I used my "user mindset" that immediately I started finding the areas of opportunity and eventually got on all my "adviser mindset" to finish the recommendations.
I wrote about DYI for managers because when getting used to do certain job, we humans just get into a mechanical mode that stops us from realizing how things should remain simple and effective.
If you want to identify areas of improvement go and have a proper "DYI Do It Yourself for managers" session and become the user. If it is about designing a beautiful, effective and profitable website, keep it as clean and simple as the image below.
Real experts must be real users, not great thinkers
It's about knowing the purpose. What do you really want?
We live in a web based society. It is impossible to deny how attached we are to the benefits of the web. Through internet, we get information about products we need, we stay connected with people we miss and we look for data from companies we are curious about.
In the same subject but from the opposite side, it's impossible to deny how useful is the web for businesses. It gives companies of all sizes a longer reach to communicate with costumers and it offers an efficient tool to optimize and generate leads and sales.
But it has its perils.
I am a corporate strategists with emphasis in business models, innovation and marketing. Recently, one of my current clients, a very recognized local organization with international presence in 10 countries, asked me to comment on its new website and to provide some recommendations.
Even when my selling proposal has never been social media improvement or social media "strategy", I do recognize the high importance of having a proper website design to reinforce your branding and support your value proposal as well as strengthening it through a consistent social media presence in the world-wide-web.
With this on mind, I visited the website to start my "do it yourself " session of the product and then make my analysis. Well, it didn't pass one minute before I was writing down the first areas of opportunity of the website. I have to admit that when thinking about the task, I was hesitating a little bit about the solidity of my recommendations because this was actually just a task asked by my client as an extra service, but I decided I was going to do my best.
I did it.
I received a -surprisingly- energetic "Thank you for your comments, we are very impressed by the profundity of the recommendations, we are implementing all you said right now".
So, what it is really necessary to be a so called expert in any field -specially in services-? real experts need to be real users so they can identify real needs and then provide real solutions.
Why I insist on that? Because my analysis was visiting the website as a client. I used my user mindset instead of my adviser mindset to start the analysis, and when talking about websites, it's very easy to avoid annoying headaches such as this terribly-scary-hard to believe-horrendous website in the picture
It was when I used my "user mindset" that immediately I started finding the areas of opportunity and eventually got on all my "adviser mindset" to finish the recommendations.
I wrote about DYI for managers because when getting used to do certain job, we humans just get into a mechanical mode that stops us from realizing how things should remain simple and effective.
If you want to identify areas of improvement go and have a proper "DYI Do It Yourself for managers" session and become the user. If it is about designing a beautiful, effective and profitable website, keep it as clean and simple as the image below.
Innovate for prosperity. Don't forget it wasn't easy
We can get much from something that nowadays we are too used to.
But before these times, some people had to dream big and fight hard to get such a success.
Looking one century back, a good lesson can be learned and should be replicated. The Wright brothers pushed the boundaries of our life further. And it was not easy, and not cheap. But they pursued their dream.
Lets replicate them by dreaming, and building. Wish you all the best successes.
An inspiring story based on the Wright Brothers. Armed with nothing more than a high school education, they rose above all obstacles and achieved the impossible. Be inspired by this lesson about attaining success even if the odds are against you!
Human history is based on indeible tracks of exploration that obey the indomitable
need of improving our conditions, our reaches, our comfort and ultimately our insatiable curiosity for knowing the mysterious unknown.
Thousands of years of intelligent life on earth are the hardest proof: Exploration is an important ingredient of progress.
The study of the great explorers in history points out some of the most convincing reasons for exploring and a clear pattern can be identified in
the multiple and repetitive journeys to the unknown of these adventurers.
Some of these names are bigger than others but all of them went through the perpetual exploration cycle.Magallanes, Vasco de Gama, Scott, Shackleton and others got themselves engaged in explorations after they had already succeeded or without any tangible reward but to satisfy their hunger to explore.
Innovation has its perpetual exploration cycle and I depicted it in the diagram, I explain the similarities stage by stage in this interesting and explorative adventure of innovation. The biggest reason to explore, as history clearly proves it, is the need to explore. Innovation is based on exploration, and exploration is part of our natural human condition. Let’s get more primitive then.
The perpetual exploration cycle
The cycle:
Motivation
It is possible to identify several motivators for innovation. Some of them are more obvious than others and more likely to be found in most of the companies that have a plan to innovate but certainly some of them are more effective than others to actually trigger the efforts of pursuing innovative paths.
Some of the motivators are:
· To outperform the competition
· To create new market and forget about competition
· To create new categories and lead the market
· To become more profitable
· To secure existence in this aggressive changing age;
· And others,
but undoubtedly the most important motivator should be ‘to leverage employees need to be creative’. It is true that not everyone wants to be creative or knows they can be creative; but there are always some creative minds eager and ready to propose interesting solutions to aging and long time rooted problems in the company, who only need to be listened. Companies ought to bear this in mind in order to foster an innovative clime and leverage brains more than repetitive tasks.
As it happens with explorers in history, after studying historical facts of their amazing endeavour’s worth to become the script for a movie, in addition to traditional and evident rewards like wealth, fame and recognition and commercial benefits the intrinsic and unique need to explore was the trigger number one. If this need to explore is part of our human nature...why to fight it? Companies need and must foster innovative clime so employees can smoothly propose new ideas and exploit their innovative being –those who have found it-.
Embark
This second stage in the cycle might cause some confusion due to its level of specification. ‘Motivation to innovate’ has never been enough to actually pursue innovation. It is as simple as asking employees the question: How easy do they find innovation opportunities in their companies? It is understood that (1) motivation to innovate and pursuing innovation are not the same, and (2) without support and opportunity to actively pursue innovation, employee motivation to innovate will dwindle or cease. For a company to embark into innovation efforts, some requirements must be fulfilled. This little but basic crucial aspects are:
Killing innovation barriers or obstacles:
1. Realise innovation is not impossible if properly supported
2. Embracing risk into own (each company) levels
3. Allocating money to be LOST in the INVESTMENT of innovation
4. Allowing employees to use some of their time at least “to pitch the ideas out”. (without asking how does it relate to the job description).
Providing right means to innovate
1. Communicating innovation is a priority so everyone jumps on the wagon
2. Taking some things not so seriously, for example asking high and mid level executives to stop pretending they know it all. –No smart asses please!
3. To make clear the fact that the idea is the one being judged, not the person speaking out the idea.
Once the company has embarked itself in the innovation effort, as in exploring, they style plays an important role.
Style
Starting from the point that the ultimate aim of every exploration effort is “discovery” we can identify different styles of exploration utilized by famous explorers throughout history. Some styles are more successful than others but have a direct impact in how successful each attempt to discover results.
In this stage of the cycle, companies can decide “how” they want to innovate based on previous experiences, resources available and expertise in the subject or how serious they are about innovation. For example
· Trying to leverage one single idea considered highly likely to succeed
· Giving this whole subject of ‘innovation need’ a unique chance by bringing in an innovation facilitator – to see what happens
· With added seriousness, hiring an innovation consulting firm
· Building a complete innovation department allocating specific job descriptions and keeping track of the process
Each one of these styles drags responsibilities and consequences to innovation attempts. Some of them are more solid and some of them are faster to get done –started and finished-
Style certainly affects deeply the outcome of an innovation attempt. It can be changed, get improved and honed with time.
Discovery
Discovery would have been achieved after the first stages of the innovation cycle are concluded. By this moment the result of the initial stages should be clear enough to provide a scenario about what shall be done next. These questions help realise where you are
· Did the team get some interesting ideas aligned with what we need and can do to innovate and grow?
· Are we sure we got a snapshot of what we are intended to build?
· Did the ideas were taken to a “proposal” format to which most of the involved participants agree with?
· Do we know what is it needed to do next in order to build this innovations?
For this stage it is necessary to stop for a while and think how the progress is going. If we are not close to the goals previously defined then it is necessary to do some reflection about how things have gone.
Did we take the wrong direction? –the goal was poorly or mistakenly defined
Did we approach the attempt with the wrong style?
If there is a clear progress then the effort shall be taken to the further step which is trying to get the most out of our new discovery. To exploit it!
Exploit
This stage is all about making the innovation profitable.
With no more words: Use all your capabilities to take it to the market and make it successful. For our particular interest about innovators and innovations, we need to add a step before actually going to the exploit stage which is prototyping. Then it will necessary to add one more loop between discovery –when fruitful- and prototyping. Prototypes are key for innovation; any attempt to innovate must consider one stage to prototype the ideas discovered before going to the exploitation of it. Once the prototype has proved itself successful, go and exploit it.
<<No one and nothing can prove the value of an innovation but the users.>>
Being this the last stage of the perpetual exploration cycle of Innovation, the story will ever repeat once and again in innovative companies and with innovative individuals, because as mentioned earlier, there is an intrinsic human need to explore. If no professional explorers, as employees we are keen to create and propose solutions when allowed to.
Keeping this cycle spinning is hard, but is actually unintentionally that it happens, because market requires us to improve ourselves and to renovate our ways and beings if we want to preserve or improve our place on this world.
Last point, please note how the cycle considers only fruitful and fruitless attempts, never successes or failures, because after every –unsuccessful – attempt, there is learning and gains. The only failure is to try nothing. And perish as a consequence.
As an example we can take paypal, company that went through several changes and re-definitions before finding the right way to exploit an important discovery their founders did. Have a read aboutinnovation by accident here in which the story of paypal is told.
7 social media subjects to consider for 2012, Summary of the white paper from Spredfast Inc
Spredfast is a software company that helps companies manage their social med
ia initiatives better. We provide a Social CRM system (sCRM) companies use t
o monitor, manage and
measure activity and engagement across multiple social channels.
<’Companies should focus less on marketing the brand externally; and instead, focus on creating shared value with customers, partners and employees‘> Michael Brito, SVP Social Business Planning, Edelman Digital
Here is a executive summary about social media strategy (SMS) for social media strategists published by the company.
The paper points out 7 areas of development of SMS that companies ought to foster to leverage efforts in the subject. It is deployed as 7 individual sessions in a meeting room.
At the end of every session, a set of questions is provided for you to consider the next steps in your own strategy.
Session 1. Gaining Deeper Insight into the Social Customer.
‘The best way to drive action on the part of your network is to be helpful, continuously provide value and deliver positive experiences’
Actions to complete
1. Dive into behaviour and content engagement
· Monitor organic conversations
· Follow dialog about your brand
· Tune into industry trends
· Track content engagements
2. Follow the Relationship Story
3. Identify and embrace advocates and influencers
· Mentions, Retweets, Comments
· Influence equals (From your top advocates)
o Klout score
o Audience Size
o Blog coverage
o Media coverage
Next Steps
1. Do you have a plan in place on assessing what is being said about your brand, your competitors and the general themes your network talks about??
2. From your content getting the most engagement: How are you planning on using this information to asses its impact and optimize it for your future content strategy
3. Do you have any advocate programme in place to reach out and build a stronger relationship with the people talking about your company the most?
Session two: Adopting Social Media Company-Wide
Underutilizing social for all aspects of the business in not just a missed opportunity; it’s also an expectation that, if overlooked, puts you behind in business
Actions to complete
1. Adoption of SMS Company-Wide
a. More people can share the opportunity and responsibility to communicate the advantages and unique benefits of your company. Include all the departments HR, Customer Care, Sales, Marketing, Product
2. Corporate buy in
a. Compare media types
b. Check out competitors
c. Find missed opportunities
3. Organise Teams
a. Identifies participants
b. Define Roles
c. Outline goals
4. Ongoing Guidance
a. Classes
b. Best ~Practices
c. Communication
d. Curriculum
e. Webinars
f. Tech training
5. Social Media training
a. Etiquette
b. Business Goals
c. Management
Next Steps
1. Is your company ready, culturally, to expand social media into all parts of the business?
2. Who is/are the best people to serve as internal stakeholders for training and guidance ?
3. What kind of programmes can be created to help teach internal teams to use social media properly?
Session 3: Operationalizing Social Media with Internal Workflows and Processes
Creating the right procedures can allow brands to be more active, more coordinated and more successful in building thriving online communities. It also ensures a brand’s reputation can be protected, while also protecting employees.
Actions to complete
Organize social presence by
Brand, Service, Offering
Geography
Business goal
Teams
Accounts
Set roles and responsibilities
Creating content
Overseeing processes
Approving content
Administration
Viewing only
Develop Policy
Ethics
Judgement
Copyright
Responsibility
Identify Social Media Champions Internally
Coordinating across teams
Companies must first get their internal foundations ready --before social media proliferation forces perpetual clean up.
Jeremiah Owyang, Industry Analyst
Partner, Customer Strategy
Altimeter Group
Next Steps
Have your organization done a social audit of all social accounts being used across channels?
What are the work flows needed to implement and manage social activity across internal departments?
What team is responsible for what type of social content and engagement?
(Publishing support tips and responding to customer care inquiries versus
publishing corporate news and updates?)
Session 4: Getting the most out of your great content
In 2012, businesses will rise about the din of mediocrity and retool their content efforts to create a sustainable, workable model that produces stuff that has merit.- Ann Handley Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
Actions to complete
1. Plan content pro-actively
Make a centralized editorial roadmap to keep consistency.
2. Centralized content:
a. Increases frequency of shares
b. Reduces red tape
c. Improves ease of access
d. Fuels efficiency
3. Repurpose existing content
Shake the dust out of old papers
4. Build in Social Tactics to larger Campaigns
If a product is launched, write a blog post, upload a demo on youtube, tweet about it like a champ, post photos on flickr
5. Asses and Adjust as needed
a. What has been shared?
b. Who’s @ mentioning
c. Activity driving downloads?
d. Time with most traffic?
Conversations and engagement stem from content, and responses
are a type of content themselves
Next Steps
1. What regular sets of activity can be planned in advance to ensure you are providing your network with relevant and timely information?
2. How can you be tying your content to business goals and larger campaigns to ensure the most success of your efforts?
3. How can you centralize content to be used by your entire team and do you need amanagement system to help coordinate this?
Session 5. Delivering Better Costumer Experiences
CMOs will finally stop asking ”Are we using platform X” and start asking ”Are we there for our customers, anytime and anywhere they want us to be?” - Andy Sernovitz Author, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking
Actions to complete
1. Meaningful engagement
a. Questions? Ask & Answer
b. Welcome opinions
c. Incentives
2. Interactive and Creative Experiences
a. Consistent and compelling presence across ALL social Channels
3. Be Different
a. Keep social weird
4. What’s next?
a. Monitor reactions to keep them engaged !
Delivering positive experiences – whether that entails answering questions in a timely fashion or creating custom experiences on platforms like Facebook – continues to be a major factor in the success of big brands in social
Next Steps
What type of engagement resonates with your audience?
How can your social channels be leveraged to enable and prompt engagement between you and your network?
3. How is your brand differentiated in social media? What are the specific values you add to fans and followers in comparison to the competition and similar companies?
This is the summary with the first 5 sessions the whitepaper offers.
In my opinion this is a very interesting and valuable document to consider for our social media strategies for this year, however I consider that they left 1 important subject out of the document which is actually getting more and more importance in the social media arena and it is expected to have exponential growth for this year. “The third Screen”! smartphones and tablets are just channels to get to the social media, but specific applications are needed to be developed to get a proper offer to hook our target through this important means. Some consider the tablets as the fourth screen, but I don’t think that is the case. If it is true that mobile marketing is a subject apart, when thinking social media, nowadays we just can’t forget about this important way to foster conversation.
Another point is that for me social media in 2012, is more thatn the 3 big brother fb, twt and blogs. Goolge + is having impressive growth of users and other new and novel applications are constantly arising so I would add the need to remain looking for spaces to foster the conversation and the engagement we are looking from our market.
The last part of the document is of course the selling and “calling to action” from the company “srepfast” but it is still a great piece of advice I think can help a lot to get started with more clarity in this effort to remain in the mouth of our customers.
Exploration is an intrinsic need in humans. It is the means for progress and it should continue as an iterative cycle between the motivation and failing (learning) phases.
Well known is that most people rather to get information in beautifully wrapped packs that help them to contain the message in a simpler way by connecting it –the info- with a reference that allows them to go inside their heads and find it whenever needed, walking the smooth bridge that an acronym, reference or Letter bundle represent, over a sea of raw wild and unpackaged information.
Maybe we were taught to do that in primary school or maybe the method is really useful to retain data more easily. The fact is that acronyms and letter bundles came to stay in the teaching – learning process and we have many of them rolling in our minds since long ago.
Maybe you are thinking in the famous 4 P’s of marketing right now. Sure!
One of the strongest examples of a letter bundle is precisely the 4 P’s of Marketing that in 1960 E J McCarthy popularized for the marketing mix subject and has been widely accepted for academics and practitioners around the world ever since.
The 4 P’s of Marketing were later changed to 4 C’s instead of P’s because Bob Lauterborn, professor of advertising at the University of North Carolina, thought the C was a better way to think about a marketing mindset and dared to propose his new approach to the marketing mix, but stayed within the letter packages information-delivery method. Which is our point in this occasion.
4 P’s of Marketing, 4 C’s of Marketing, 7 P’s of Service Marketing, 5 S’s of Kaizen in Continuous Improvement, 5 C’s of Business Credit or any discipline you might be interested in should have a letter bundle like these mentioned above and who knows? maybe we really consider ourselves more intelligent every time we memorized one of these.
Just to keep the tradition, I want to point out that Innovation has its letters bundle too. And it’s actually the addition of all the numbers above.
Easier to remember or not, maybe funnier or as annoying as it can be, any Innovation attempt (if to make it a process within your company) has 25 C’s to consider in the way:
Commitment for innovation. Companies have to take innovation seriously as a means for growth. We all know how nowadays this is imperative if wanted to remain competitive (competitive, another C!)
Connection. Within the company, identify who are the persons with the best attitude for innovating and give them a voice. Other participants with varied background, abilities, age and responsibilities as well as hierarchy should be connected to gain a richer environment for the ideation phase. It’s clear that openness is a great attitude towards innovation. Connect the inner with the outer as well.
2.1 Considering our technology served society, the word connection has a double input here; connectivity is a useful and valuable resource to increase the results of an innovation attempt that should be always leveraged. I mean remote connectivity through internet systems and mobility devices like tablets and smartphones.
Clarification. Make clear for everybody what innovation is and what is the objective of the particular session
Comfort. At any costs –(or budget cost, ok!)- build a proper environment in which participants feel comfortable and free to participate without further negative consequences.
4.1 Another tricky word: At the same time push them out of their usual comfort zone (professionally speaking) when immersed in the process so they can come up with better ideas
Coordinate. It is necessary that one member of the team coordinates the innovation process to keep the efforts aligned and order during the stages.
Collaboration. Innovation is a game of collaboration. Always worth to reinforce each member of the innovation team must [cooperate] to it.
Creativity must be fostered. There are many ways to do it.
Canalize the creativity towards the main aim by
Controlling the flow of ideas, by setting some rules to keep the propositions on feasible...
Costs and make sure they actually...
Contribute togenerate value.
Concretize the ideas to a more specific definition and...
Compare those who are a better match to the objective defined previously –C 3.
Categorize those ideas falling under your core activities –more likeable to pursue- and those falling under capabilities not developed by the company because you don’t want to waste a good idea even if your company can’t pursue it in the short term[1]
Communicate the ideas chosen as the best ones, to the board of the company and...
Convince them to invest on the selected ones some [Capital] to start the...
Conception of the prototyping; do it, try it, test it. Then...
Correct what goes wrong and...
Change what needs to be improved and with all the knowledge gotten...
Create what has just being worked upon.
These twenty C’s are always present in innovation challenges when running them as solid projects (isolated). This is once the decision of pursuing an innovation has been done. After the creation C, I am taking for granted putting the innovation in the market as a following activity, which now falls more in the marketing department.
Additionally, there are the next 5 C’s that belong to any company’s strategy if the intention is to be an innovative organisation capable to repeatedly innovate for growth and renewal.
Consolidate the process. Map it, define it, solidify it, and repeat it to gain...
Continuity, which allows you to take improvements as needed to make a [Consistent] machinery for innovation, more agile and in a smoother way.
Cohesion is the aim. Because this brings more velocity to the idea-to-market process and a more effective capacity of reaction to market demands.
Coaching is necessary to bring in latest tools, methodologies and facilitation for the process. It keeps the spirit high and the sensation of gaining progress during the complex road of innovation. New and fresh faces help to keep the improvement constant and to introduce different mindsets to the teams. Finally is always very valuable to keep...
Capacitating everyone.
There are more details, more steps and more C’s to be added, but I found these verbs and concepts as the basic aspects to bear in mind when innovating. I consider amusing how such a complex process –innovating- can be pretty well defined using solely the letter C, which is great because is the C of Cesar too. J
I threat to come back with a shorter letters bundle mentioning the 7 P’s of Innovation soon.
Business learning from a footballer. PANENKA AND HIS PENALTY KICK
Learn how 35 years ago, Mid fielder Antonin Panenka showed himself innovative and strategic by daring to execute the unimaginable in one of his most important matches.
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