5 Ways to Hatch Your Next Business Idea

In his book "Maverick Startup," serial entrepreneur Yanik Silver lays out his "X Factors" for turning your big idea into a profitable business, without taking on debt, partners or even a business plan. In the following excerpt, Silver guides readers through X-Factor No. 1: Developing a big idea.

If you don't have a big idea, you simply fade into the background like every other "me too" product or service. It's not always about having a proprietary product or service. This is really more about positioning and a prospect's immediate reaction to your product.

That's one of the key elements of the big idea -- gut reaction. With our world being busier than ever, people usually don't have time to explore absolutely everything about a product or service. We use shortcuts for our decision-making. The more clearly you can distinguish your product or service, the better you'll do in the crowded marketplace.

Working on your big idea is critical and means the difference between a "base hit" or a "home run" product. What follows are five major things I keep in mind when coming up with a big idea or hook.

• Give them the fish. I can't overemphasize this idea. People are lazy; cater to it. Everyone knows the saying: "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for life." 

Let me give it to you straight: People want the fish handed to them on their plate,   grilled perfectly with some seasonal vegetables on the side. Look at Home Depot, the world's largest "do it yourself" company. It started buying up companies to provide services for consumers, and their CEO thinks the "done for you" services will eclipse their current sales. 

I've had big success with "giving people the fish," including my first online product, www.InstantSalesLetters.com. The whole hook is in the headline on the site: "In only 2½ Minutes You Can Quickly and Easily Create a Sales Letter Guaranteed to Sell Your Product or Service. . ." That hook has been responsible for my first million-dollar idea with a little $40 to $50 product.

• Make your promise specific. Specifics are so important but usually completely overlooked because it's much easier to make a generic promise. However, a specific promise or a specific target market makes your marketing that much more powerful.

One of my winners has been an e-book called "33 Days to Online Profits," which I co-wrote with Jim Edwards. I believe that brand has been kept alive because of the very specific hook in the title. Each day you are given a homework assignment, so it's a day-by-day course for 33 days.

At first we'd planned to call it "30 Days to Online Profits," but decided on "33" because it was specific and credible. If the title had been "30 Days to Online Profits," it wouldn't be as successful since 30 is a "normal" number.

• Go in the opposite direction. I love this. However, I don't suggest being different just for the sake of being different, but there is a lot to be said for zigging when others zag.

My biggest example of this is the "Underground" online seminar concept I developed. Every year I bring in unknown speakers who were really succeeding online. It's not the usual suspects you'd see at other seminars. And each year the event has sold out weeks in advance.

Think about when Volkswagen Beetle first came to the U.S. with their "Think Small" campaign in 1960. It was the era of big cars and automakers were trying to outdo themselves by building bigger and bigger cars. But the VW Beetle quickly became a blockbuster because it went in the opposite direction. The campaign was so powerful that AdAge magazine named it No. 1 in its "Top 100 Advertising Campaigns" list.

• Move to a new application. Many times you can create a great hook by simply taking one successful hook and using it elsewhere. For example, the time-shares concept has been successfully applied to private jets, exotic cars, luxury second homes, yachts and even vineyards.

• Be first. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is to simply be the first. Time-shares and Club Med were the very first in their category.

If you are moving into a crowded marketplace, you can slice off a piece of that market to be first. Hedonism took Club Med's concept of all-inclusive resorts and geared it toward singles. Sandals resorts niched the all-inclusive concept again, this time for romantic couples.

If you start thinking about these points for creating the big idea or a hook, you’ll begin to notice ideas everywhere. Plus, you’ll see how successful products and services are, in many ways, takeoffs on other successful concepts that came before them.

via entrepreneur.com

 

How To Develop A Growth Mindset - Innovation on Low (or No) Budget

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner can seat up to 250 passengers and haul a half-million pounds. The Boeing (BA) jet has a range of up to 8,200 nautical miles and reaches a maximum speed of nearly 650 miles per hour. Its development required an investment of some $30 billion.

The new Big Dinner Box from Pizza Hut (YUM) can haul two medium pizzas, eight wings, and five breadsticks. It has a range of a few zip codes and reaches a maximum speed of what the delivery driver can get away with. Its development required, well, a different kind of cardboard box.

My point? How simple some innovations can be. You don’t have to have a monstrous research and development budget (or even a test kitchen, for that matter) to innovate. You just have to be alert to your customers’ needs and wants—and creative and responsive in addressing them.

Some innovations do require many years and billions of dollars to develop; witness the Chevy (GM) Volt, which took nearly four years and more than a billion dollars to go from concept car to street legal. (The verdict is still out as to whether it will become a commercial success.) Contrast that with Dr Pepper 10, a soda that targets men who don’t like the taste (or the idea, perhaps) of diet soft drinks. By using a different sweetener and throwing in a tad of good, old-fashioned high fructose corn syrup, Dr Pepper Snapple Group (DPS) came up with a formula that is showing such positive initial returns that the company is already expanding the concept to five of its other brands.

“A Better Way to Deliver Value”

The key to innovation is to not wring your hands about what you don’t have—a giant research budget and staff of PhDs—and focus on what you do have: a relationship with your customers.  Saul Kaplan, founder of the Business Innovation Factory, defines innovation in very simple terms: “a better way to deliver value.” In a recent interview, Kaplan explains what he means: “It is not an innovation until it solves a problem that a customer is having—it delivers value in the real world, solves a problem, and helps get a job done that a customer is trying to do. A lot of people confuse innovation with invention, and think that they just need new technology to solve a problem. But an innovation is not the same as an invention.”

He’s right. Inventions are almost always innovations, but innovations don’t have to be inventions. They just have to be a better way to deliver value. This Christmas, many personal-care product makers such as Procter & Gamble (PG) and Unilever (UL) are putting together gift boxes of toiletries as prosaic as deodorant and toothpaste. If that sounds like the contents of your medicine cabinet, it is. Still, by packaging their products as “affordable luxuries,” these companies are meeting consumers’ needs for simple, inexpensive stocking stuffers. That may not work so well in neighborhoods with circular driveways, but for the rest of us, it’s a gift we could really use. And while our gift-giver stretches his or her budget by (literally) getting a package deal, the manufacturers get to increase exposure and move more product.

Who would have thought a handful of personal-care items would make a great Christmas gift? Not me, but some enterprising packaged goods makers were paying attention to what highbrow cosmetic brands have done for years and have simply applied the concept to their own customers. That’s a helpful template for fostering creativity in innovation—combining two previously unrelated ideas into something refreshing and new. Dr Pepper found something refreshing by combining a diet soda and a regular soda and positioning it for people whose desires weren’t being fully met by either. P&G discovered something new by combining consumer staples with fashion thinking to create a simple, practical gift for challenging economic times. Pizza Hut combined a delivery box with a confectioner’s sampler so it could sell more of every kind of product it serves. You may read this splendid article in entirety via businessweek.com

How is your business doing? Speak to us about our guarantee that can increase your top line growth! 

Jim Woods is president and founder of the InnoThink Group. He is a no nonsense "tell it like it is" author, speaker, and a strategic management, innovation, commoditization and hypercompetition expert to business and government. He advises clients with an objective view of their competitive capabilities and defines a clear course of action to maximize their innovation return on investment to achieve profitable growth. To build your capability for ongoing innovation across your company or to secure a riveting speaker for your next event - Call 719-649-4118 or email us for more information on hiring Jim. Check Availability. 

How To Demystify Social Media - McKinsey

As the marketing power of social media grows, it no longer makes sense to treat it as an experiment. Here’s how senior leaders can harness social media to shape consumer decision making in predictable ways.

Executives certainly know what social media is. After all, if Facebook users constituted a country, it would be the world’s third largest, behind China and India. Executives can even claim to know what makes social media so potent: its ability to amplify word-of-mouth effects. Yet the vast majority of executives have no idea how to harness social media’s power. Companies diligently establish Twitter feeds and branded Facebook pages, but few have a deep understanding of exactly how social media interacts with consumers to expand product and brand recognition, drive sales and profitability, and engender loyalty.

We believe there are two interrelated reasons why social media remains an enigma wrapped in a riddle for many executives, particularly nonmarketers. The first is its seemingly nebulous nature. It’s no secret that consumers increasingly go online to discuss products and brands, seek advice, and offer guidance. Yet it’s often difficult to see where and how to influence these conversations, which take place across an ever-growing variety of platforms, among diverse and dispersed communities, and may occur either with lightning speed or over the course of months. Second, there’s no single measure of social media’s financial impact, and many companies find that it’s difficult to justify devoting significant resources—financial or human—to an activity whose precise effect remains unclear.

What we hope to do here is to demystify social media. We have identified its four primary functions—to monitor, respond, amplify, and lead consumer behavior—and linked them to the journey consumers undertake when making purchasing decisions. Being able to identify exactly how, when, and where social media influences consumers helps executives to craft marketing strategies that take advantage of social media’s unique ability to engage with customers. It should also help leaders develop, launch, and demonstrate the financial impact of social-media campaigns (for insight into the world’s biggest social-media market, see “Understanding social media in China,” forthcoming on mckinseyquarterly.com).

In short, today’s chief executive can no longer treat social media as a side activity run solely by managers in marketing or public relations. It’s much more than simply another form of paid marketing, and it demands more too: a clear framework to help CEOs and other top executives evaluate investments in it, a plan for building support infrastructure, and performance-management systems to help leaders smartly scale their social presence. Companies that have these three elements in place can create critical new brand assets (such as content from customers or insights from their feedback), open up new channels for interactions (Twitter-based customer service, Facebook news feeds), and completely reposition a brand through the way its employees interact with customers or other parties.

The social consumer decision journey

Companies have quickly learned that social media works: 39 percent of companies we’ve surveyed already use social-media services as their primary digital tool to reach customers, and that percentage is expected to rise to 47 percent within the next four years.¹ Fueling this growth is a growing list of success stories from mainstream companies:

Creating buzz: Eighteen months before Ford reentered the US subcompact-car market with its Fiesta model, it began a broad marketing campaign called the Fiesta Movement. A major element involved giving 100 social-media influencers a European model of the car, having them complete “missions,” and asking them to document their experiences on various social channels. Videos related to the Fiesta campaign generated 6.5 million views on YouTube, and Ford received 50,000 requests for information about the vehicle, primarily from non-Ford drivers. When it finally became available to the public, in late 2010, some 10,000 cars sold in the first six days.

Learning from customers: PepsiCo has used social networks to gather customer insights via its DEWmocracy promotions, which have led to the creation of new varieties of its Mountain Dew brand. Since 2008, the company has sold more than 36 million cases of them.

Targeting customers: Levi Strauss has used social media to offer location-specific deals. In one instance, direct interactions with just 400 consumers led 1,600 people to turn up at the company’s stores— an example of social media’s word-of-mouth effect.

Yet countless others have failed to match these successes: knowing that something works and understanding how it works are very different things. As the number of companies with Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, or online communities continues to grow, we think it’s time for leaders to remind themselves how social media connects with an organization’s broader marketing mission.

Marketing’s primary goal is to reach consumers at the moments, or touch points, that influence their purchasing behavior. Almost three years ago, our colleagues proposed a framework—the “consumer decision journey”—for understanding how consumers interact with companies during purchase decisions.² Expressing consumer behavior as a winding journey with multiple feedback loops, this new framework was different from the traditional description of consumer purchasing behavior as a linear march through a funnel. Social media is a unique component of the consumer decision journey: it’s the only form of marketing that can touch consumers at each and every stage, from when they’re pondering brands and products right through the period after a purchase, as their experience influences the brands they prefer and their potential advocacy influences others.

A social journey For more on social media’s relationship to the consumer decision journey, explore this interactive exhibit narrated by coauthor David Edelman.

The fact that social media can influence customers at every stage of the journey doesn’t mean that it should. Depending on the company and industry, some touch points are more important to competitive advantage than others.³ What’s more, our work with dozens of companies adapting to the new marketing environment strongly suggests that the most powerful social-media strategies focus on a limited number of marketing responses closely related to individual touch points along the consumer decision journey. The ten most important responses, range from providing customer service to fostering online communities (exhibit). One of those ten—monitoring what people say about your brand—is so important that we see it as a core function of social media, relevant across the entire consumer decision journey. The remaining nine responses, organized in three clusters in the exhibit, underpin efforts to use social media to respond to consumer comments, to amplify positive sentiment and activity, and to lead changes in the behavior and mind-sets of consumers. 

1. Monitor

Gatorade, a sports drink manufactured by PepsiCo, has been diligently working toward its goal of becoming the “largest participatory brand in the world.”⁴ It has created a Chicago-based “war room” within its marketing department to monitor the brand in real time across social media. There are seats where team members can track custom-built data visualizations and dashboards (including terms related to the brand, sponsored athletes, and competitors) and run sentiment analyses around product and campaign launches. Every day, all of this feedback is integrated into products and marketing—for example, by helping to optimize the landing page on the company’s Web site. Since the war room’s creation, the average traffic to Gatorade’s online properties, the length of visitor interactions, and viral sharing from campaigns have all more than doubled.

Such brand monitoring—simply knowing what’s said online about your products and services—should be a default social-media function, taking place constantly. Even without engaging consumers directly, companies can glean insights from an effective monitoring program that informs everything from product design to marketing and provides advance warning of potentially negative publicity. It’s also critical to communicate such feedback within the business quickly: whoever is charged with brand monitoring must ensure that information reaches relevant functions, such as communications, design, marketing, public relations, or risk.

2. Respond

Valuable though it is to learn how you are doing and what to improve, broad and passive monitoring is only a start. Pinpointing conversations for responding at a personal level is another form of social-media engagement. This kind of response can certainly be positive if it’s done to provide customer service or to uncover sales leads. Most often, though, responding is a part of crisis management.

Last year, for example, a hoax photograph posted online claimed that McDonald’s was charging African-Americans an additional service fee. The hoax first appeared on Twitter, where the image rapidly went viral just before the weekend as was retweeted with the hashtag #seriouslymcdonalds. It turned out to be a working weekend for the McDonald’s social-media team. On Saturday, the company’s director of social media released a statement through Twitter declaring the photograph to be a hoax and asking key influencers to “please let your followers know.” The company continued to reinforce that message throughout the weekend, even responding personally to concerned Tweeters. By Sunday, the number of people who believed the image to be authentic had dwindled, and McDonald’s stock price rose 5 percent the following day.

Responding in order to counter negative comments and reinforce positive ones will only increase in importance. The responsibility for taking action may fall on functions outside marketing, and the message will differ depending on the situation. No response can be quick enough, and the ability to act rapidly requires the constant, proactive monitoring of social media—on weekends too. By responding rapidly, transparently, and honestly, companies can positively influence consumer sentiment and behavior.

3. Amplify

“Amplification” involves designing your marketing activities to have an inherently social motivator that spurs broader engagement and sharing. This approach means more than merely reaching the end of planning a marketing campaign and then thinking that “we should do something social”—say, uploading a television commercial to YouTube. It means that the core concepts for campaigns must invite customers into an experience that they can choose to extend by joining a conversation with the brand, product, fellow users, and other enthusiasts. It means having ongoing programs that share new content with customers and provide opportunities for sharing back. It means offering experiences that customers will feel great about sharing, because they gain a badge of honor by publicizing content that piques the interest of others.

In the initial phases of the consumer decision journey, when consumers sift through brands and products to determine their preferred options, referrals and recommendations are powerful social-media tools. A simple example is the way online deal sites such as Groupon and Gilt Groupe provide consumers with credit for each first-time purchaser they refer. Our research shows that such direct recommendations from peers generate engagement rates some 30 times higher than traditional online advertising does.

Once a consumer has decided which product to buy and makes a purchase, companies can use social media to amplify their engagement and foster loyalty. When Starbucks wanted to increase awareness of its brand, for example, it launched a competition challenging users to be the first to tweet a photograph of one of the new advertising posters that the company had placed in six major US cities, providing winners with a $20 gift card. This social-media brand advocacy effort delivered a marketing punch that significantly outweighed its budget. Starbucks said that the effort was “the difference between launching with millions of dollars versus millions of fans.”⁵

Marketers also can foster communities around their brands and products, both to reinforce the belief of consumers that they made a smart decision and to provide guidance for getting the most from a purchase. Software company Intuit, for example, launched customer service forums for its Quicken and QuickBooks personal-finance software so users could help one another with product issues. The result? Users rather than Intuit employees answer about 80 percent of the questions, and the company has employed user comments to make dozens of significant changes to its software.

4. Lead

Social media can be used most proactively to lead consumers toward long-term behavioral changes. In the early stages of the consumer decision journey, this may involve boosting brand awareness by driving Web traffic to content about existing products and services. When grooming-products group Old Spice introduced its Old Spice Man character to viewers, during the US National Football League’s 2010 Super Bowl, for example, the company’s ambition was to increase its reach and relevance to both men and women. The commercial became a phenomenon: starring former player Isaiah Mustafa, it got more than 19 million hits across all platforms, and year-on-year sales for the company’s products jumped by 27 percent within six months.

Marketers also can use social media to generate buzz through product launches, as Ford did in launching its Fiesta vehicle in the United States. For example, social media played an integral role in the success of “Small Business Saturday,” the US shopping promotion created by American Express for the weekend immediately following Thanksgiving (for American Express CMO John Hayes’s perspective on that launch, see “How we see it: Three senior executives on the future of marketing,” on mckinseyquarterly.com). In addition, when consumers are ready to buy, companies can promote time-sensitive targeted deals and offers through social media to generate traffic and sales. Online menswear company Bonobos, for example, provided an incentive for its Twitter followers by unlocking a discount code after its messages were resent a certain number of times. As a result of this effort, almost 100 consumers bought products from the site for the first time. The campaign delivered a 1,200 percent return on investment in just 24 hours.

Finally, social media can solicit consumer input after the purchase. This ability to gain product-development insights from customers in a relatively inexpensive way is emerging as one of social media’s most significant advantages. Intuit, for example, has its community forums. Starbucks uses MyStarbucksIdea.com to collect its customers’ views about improving the company’s products and services and then aggregates submitted ideas and prominently displays them on a dedicated Web site. That site groups ideas by product, experience, and involvement; ranks user participation; and shows ideas actively under consideration by the company and those that have been implemented.

Converting knowledge to action

Despite offering numerous opportunities to influence consumers, social media still accounts for less than 1 percent of an average marketing budget, in our experience. Many chief marketing officers say that they want to increase that share to 5 percent. One problem is that a lot of senior executives know little about social media. But the main obstacle is the perception that the return on investment (ROI) from such initiatives is uncertain.

Without a clear sense of the value social media creates, it’s perhaps not surprising that so many CEOs and other senior executives don’t feel comfortable when their companies go beyond mere “experiments” with social-media strategy. Yet we can measure the impact of social media well beyond straight volume and consumer-sentiment metrics; in fact, we can precisely determine the buzz surrounding a product or brand and then calculate how social media drives purchasing behavior. To do so—and then ensure that social media complements broader marketing strategies—companies must obviously coordinate data, tools, technology, and talent across multiple functions. In many cases, senior business leaders must open up their agendas and recognize the importance of supporting and even undertaking initiatives that may traditionally have been left to the chief marketing officer. As our colleagues noted last year, “we’re all marketers now.”⁶

Consider the experience of a telecommunications company that proactively adopted social media but had no idea if its efforts were working. The company had launched Twitter-based customer service capabilities, several promotional campaigns built around social contests, a fan page with discounts and tech tips, and an active response program to engage with people speaking about the brand. In social-media terms, the investment was relatively large, and the company’s senior executives wanted more than anecdotal evidence that the strategy was paying off. As a starting point, to ensure that the company was doing a quality job designing and executing its social presence, it benchmarked its efforts against approaches used by other companies known to be successful in social media. It then advanced the following hypotheses:

• If all of these social-media activities improve general service perceptions about the brand, that improvement should be reflected in a higher volume of positive online posts.⁷
• If social sharing is effective, added clicks and traffic should result in higher search placements.
• If both of these assumptions hold true, social-media activity should help drive sales—ideally, at a rate even higher than the company could achieve with its average gross rating point (GRP) of advertising expenditures.⁸

The company then tested its options. At various times, it spent less money on conventional advertising, especially as social-media activity ramped up, and it modeled the rising positive sentiment and higher search positions just as it would using traditional metrics. The company concluded that social-media activity not only boosted sales but also had higher ROIs than traditional marketing did. Thus, while the company took a risk by shifting emphasis toward social-media efforts before it had data confirming that this was the correct course, the bet paid off. What’s more, the analytic baseline now in place has given the company confidence to continue exploring a growing role for social media.

In other cases, social media may have a more specific role, such as helping to launch a new product or to mitigate negative word of mouth. Similar types of analyses can focus on mixing the impact of buzz, search, and traffic; correlating that with sales or renewals (or whatever the key metric may be); and then gauging the result against total costs. This approach can give executives the confidence and focus they need to invest more money, time, and resources in social media.

As these social-media activities gain scale, the challenges center less around justifying funding and more around organizational issues such as developing the right processes and governance structure, identifying clear roles—for all involved in social-media strategy, from marketing to customer service to product development—and bolstering the talent base, and improving performance standards. New capabilities abound, and social-media best practices are barely starting to emerge. We do know this: because social-media influences every element of the consumer decision journey, communication must take place between as well as within functions. That complicates lines of reporting and decision-making authority.

If insights from monitoring social media are relevant to nonmarketing functions such as product development, for instance, how will you identify and disseminate that information efficiently and effectively—and then ensure that it gets used? If you spot an opportunity to have a meaningful conversation with a key influencer, how will you quickly engage the right senior executive to follow through? If you recognize a fast-moving service concern, how will you respond rapidly and openly—and when should you do so outside the traditional service organization? Senior executives across the company must recognize and begin to answer such questions.

Social media is extending the disruptive impact of the digital era across a broad range of functions. Meanwhile, the perceived lack of metrics, the fear, and the limited sense of what’s possible are eroding. Executives can identify the functions, touch points, and goals of social-media activities, as well as craft approaches to measure their impact and manage their risks. The time is ripe for executive-suite discussions on how to lead and to learn from people within your company, marketers outside it, and, most of all, your customers.

About the Author

Roxane Divol is a principal in McKinsey’s San Francisco office, David Edelman is a principal in the Boston office, and Hugo Sarrazin is a director in the Silicon Valley office.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Sirish Chandrasekaran, Dianne Esber, Rebecca Millman, and Dan Singer to the development of this article.

via mckinseyquarterly.com

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Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective growth strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability.james@innothinkgroup.com

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Do The Ends Really Justify The Means? Actually, Sometimes They Do.

Before dismissing this article by Tom McNichol hear him out. He makes a valid point. So, here is one for you. In rebuilding your organization for the new normal, do the ends justify the means? But...when considering Mr. Jobs accomplishments, perhaps they do. For business is in a battle of hypercompetition. Most businesses even in this downturn continue to belie an unimaginative and myopic agenda. No one can ever accuse Mr. Jobs of that. Jim

Apple's founder and CEO could be a cruel and nasty guy. He was also the greatest chief executive of our time. Don't go thinking those two things are related.

AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

Steve Jobs was a visionary, a brilliant innovator who reshaped entire industries by the force of his will, a genius at giving consumers not only what they wanted, but what they didn't yet know they wanted.

He was also a world-class asshole.

Walter Isaacson's best-selling biography of Jobs offers a revealing look at what the author has called "good Steve" and "bad Steve." Good Steve was brilliant, charismatic, a champion for excellence, an alchemist who turned a moribund computer company into gold. Bad Steve was petulant, rude, spiteful, and controlling, a man who thought nothing of publicly humiliating employees, hogging the credit for work he hadn't done, throwing tantrums when he didn't get his way, or parking his Mercedes in handicapped spots. For several years, he even denied the paternity of his daughter so that the child and her mother had to live on welfare.

The ease with which people can possess astonishingly contradictory qualities is one of the mysteries of human nature; indeed, it's one of the things that separates humans from, say, an Apple computer. Every one of the components that makes up an iPad is essential to the work it produces. Remove one part and the machine no longer performs its job, and not even the Genius Bar can fix it. But humans are full of qualities that are in no way integral to their functioning in the world. Some aspects of personality have little or no bearing on whether a person performs well, and not a few people succeed in spite of their darker qualities. You can be a genius and an asshole, but the two aren't necessarily causally linked. In fact, there's a strong body of evidence to suggest that there are plenty of assholes who aren't geniuses at anything other than ... being assholes.

The next batch of business books: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Assholes, The One-Minute Asshole, and Who's The Asshole Who Moved My Cheese?

But such subtleties may be lost on CEOs, middle managers and wannabe masters of the universe who are currently devouring the Steve Jobs biography and thinking to themselves: "See! Steve Jobs was an asshole and he was one of the most successful businessmen on the planet. Maybe if I become an even bigger asshole I'll be successful like Steve."

This sort of flawed thinking -- call it asshole logic -- isn't something that's necessarily endorsed by Jobs's biographer.

"(Jobs) was not the world's greatest manager," Walter Isaacson said in a recent interview with 60 Minutes. "In fact, he could have been one of the world's worst managers."

But asshole logic, not surprisingly, tends to ignore facts that don't sanction one's own assholery. This distorted reasoning was already prevalent before Steve Jobs's death, and is only likely to spread as Isaacson's biography closes in on becoming the best-selling book of 2011. Five years ago, when Stanford professor of management science and engineering Robert Sutton was researching his book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't, he ran across a disconcerting number of Silicon Valley leaders who believed that Steve Jobs was living proof that being an asshole boss was integral to building a great company.

Sutton's counter-thesis was that assholes--which he defined as those who deliberately make co-workers feel bad about themselves and who focus their hostility on the less powerful--poison the workplace and induce qualified employees to quit and are therefore bad for business, regardless of the asshole's individual talent or effectiveness.

When Sutton published an article in the Harvard Business Review advancing his theory, he was amazed at the reaction. He had published other articles in the Review, many of them longer and better researched, but nothing provoked the response that his asshole article did. Sutton received well over 1,000 emails, and gathered countless horror stories, including one about a worker undergoing chemotherapy whose boss told him he was "a wimp and a pussy."

What an asshole!

Sutton decided to expand the article into a book, and wound up interviewing dozens of Silicon Valley leaders and insiders. When Sutton would advance the notion that assholes are bad for business, one person after another had the same reaction: "What about Steve Jobs?"

"Even people who worked with Jobs told me that they'd seen him make people cry many times, but that 80 percent of the time he was right, " says Sutton. "It is troubling that there's this notion in our culture that if you're a winner, it's okay to be an asshole."

So many people advanced Steve Jobs as evidence that asshole CEOs build better companies that Sutton somewhat reluctantly included a chapter in his book on "The Virtues of Assholes," with Steve Jobs as Exhibit A. There is some evidence that "status displays" by aggressive bosses can motivate workers and give slackers a kick in the pants. And effective jerk bosses usually aren't assholes all the time, they're able to turn on the charm when the situation demands it, something Steve Jobs, by most accounts, was very good at doing. And it helps for companies to have skilled subordinate executives that are good at cleaning up after the Asshole-in-Chief, much like the sad-faced men carrying shovels who walk behind circus elephants.

But Sutton's book makes clear that for the most part, assholes are bad for the bottom line, to say nothing of the human toll they exact. There are plenty of very successful companies that aren't led by assholes - Google, Virgin Atlantic, Procter & Gamble and Southwest Airlines among them. Likewise, there are legions of assholes who lead companies that aren't successful, in part due to their own bad behavior.

With the death and canonization of Steve Jobs and the emergence of the Jobs biography as a kind of sacred text for managers, the ranks of bosses who see Bad Steve's nastier traits as something to imitate is liable to swell. It's unlikely the book will make despots out of thoughtful, fair-minded middle managers. It's far more probable that it will turn bosses who are already assholes into even bigger assholes, raising the temperature of the worst actors so that they become that most combustible of workplace figures, the flaming asshole.

Already, the web is full of articles that hold up Steve Jobs as the model of how to lead and succeed in life, with titles such as "Ten Leadership Lessons from the Steve Jobs School of Management" and "21 Life Lessons from Steve Jobs." Most of these works prefer to focus on Good Steve, but it may not be long until business book authors hone in on the timeless lessons to be drawn from Bad Steve's asshole ways. The titles write themselves: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Assholes. The One-Minute Asshole. Who's The Asshole Who Moved My Cheese?

The fact is, Steve Jobs didn't succeed because he was an asshole. He succeeded because he was Steve Jobs. He had an uncanny sixth sense about what consumers wanted, an unmatched ability to adapt existing technology and turn it into something new, and a commitment to quality that turned ordinary Apple customers into fans for life. Being an asshole was part of the Steve package, but it wasn't essential to his success. But that's not a message most of the assholes in the corner offices want to hear.via theatlantic.com

Speaking 

As the CEO and founder of InnoThink Group, Jim can help your organization enhance the strategic innovation and competitiveness of your business policy and strategy, with an emphasis on increasing top line growth. 

 If you’re interested in having Jim speak at your next event, simply use this form to send us your details and speaking requirements, and we’ll be in touch shortly. Or you may call us at 719-649-4118. 

 

 

Doug Rauch: Failing to Success Through Effective Customer Service

Doug Rauch, former president of Trader Joe's, explains that delighting customers in new ways only happens when you take risks. via blogs.hbr.org

Speaking 

As the CEO and founder of InnoThink Group, Jim can help your organization enhance the strategic innovation and competitiveness of your business policy and strategy, with an emphasis on increasing top line growth. 

 If you’re interested in having Jim speak at your next event, simply use this form to send us your details and speaking requirements, and we’ll be in touch shortly. Or you may call us at 719-649-4118. 

Ways To Monitor Your Website to Keep Customers

A staggering portion of the country’s consumer activity now happens in cyberspace. Last year, individuals spent nearly $227.6 billion shopping online. Though these customers have a multitude of e-retailers to choose from, they tend to stay loyal to businesses that offer consistently good online experiences.
That makes it more important than ever to measure the experience visitors have on your website. There are various approaches, both software- and appliance-based, that are generally known as real user monitoring (RUM) or end-user experience monitoring. Using such a system can mean the difference between loyal customers and lost sales. Here are a few more reasons to consider incorporating one into your service strategy:

1. A real user monitoring system is basically a smart stopwatch for e-business. It reports the time it takes to perform the requested action, as in transferring money from one bank account to another. This capability is a natural add-on to a technology investment such as application performance management. Look for IT vendors who package RUM with their systems at no additional cost, or check out free RUM software online.

2. Make sure all applications on your website function flawlessly all of the time. The failure of an online payment service, for example, can do hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage within hours. The long-term implications are even more serious. If customers cannot complete a transaction on their first visit to a website, they are unlikely to return when so many other alternatives exist.

3. Fix problems before customers complain. When RUM reports show slow load times or other deadlocks, use the data to pinpoint and repair the problem immediately, before it affects users. A RUM solution should deliver traffic streams from the client side, server side, and the network, so you can see whether a problem resides in the data center, the network, or the browser. via businessweek.com

Want to increase the sustainability of your nnovation initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us.

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. 

Participate in the 'Social Economy'

Deals of the day and other performance-based online promotions available through companies such as Groupon and LivingSocial are gaining traction with consumers. Perhaps you’re considering how to get in on the opportunities these social platforms create for reaching new customers. Even if you’re not quite ready to jump into the social fray, you can and should be taking simple steps to make your online business presence more social media-friendly.

The most important thing you can do is maintain control of the information and data that exists on the Internet about your business. Be aware of how your business appears in online directories and search engines. Take appropriate steps to keep this information up-to-date: correct address, telephone numbers, Web address, hours of operation. This is the information that will appear in mobile and social searches. You don’t want to lose business because your new address isn’t showing up on Google Maps.

Take care of your basic online business identity. Whenever you are ready to hop on the mobile and social marketing wave, you’ll be in a better position to take advantage of the opportunities available through these digital platforms.

Doyal Bryant
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
UniversalBusinessListing.org
Charlotte, N.C.

via businessweek.com

 

Hire us to work with your team.

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation. Want to increase your innovation initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us. 719-648-411 or email. 

 

Simon Mainwaring: The “doing” vs. “being” of branding

Image credit: Gemssty.com

AdAge recently did a great article on micro-sponsorship highlighting leading brands like Quaker Oats and Pepsi that are reaching out to communities for their stories and ideas around positive social change. To me this begs the question, are these marketing or research campaigns?

In my mind they’re a little of both and a smart thing to do. Not only are these brands participating in social conversation but they’re learning how to be effective.

The social good space will soon become crowded just as the green space has. The challenge for brands will then be how to define yourself in a way that is most meaningful to their consumers.

Too often brands are caught up in their doing – the doing of getting their latest product to market, of meeting their next quarterly profit projection, of jumping on the latest mobile technology or app.

What is more critical and determinative is the “being” of a brand.

If a brand understands who it is it’ll be able to articulate and demonstrate its core values clearly to consumers. And when it does that, every social change initiative will reinforce their authentic brand narrative rather than come off as a cynical effort to polish an unrelated brand identity.

So before a brand rushes off to do something, it would be wise to stop and be something. That way it’ll be more clearly defined, more meaningful to consumers and a standout in a crowded space.   

via simonmainwaring.com

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Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. Call for an appointmentto hire Jim to speak or advise your organization at 719-649-4118 or email. 

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66 Great Movie Taglines From the Past 30 Years | Adweek

We've combed through the last 30 years of movie marketing and selected our 66 favorite film taglines from that period. The cut-off of 1980 means we've left out what many consider the greatest movie tagline ever—"In space, no one can hear you scream," Alien, 1979—but there's plenty here to chew on. Berate us in comments for everything we left out.... See more via adweek.com

Subscribe to Innovation & Hypercompetition

The InnoThink Newsletter

• See ideas from leading corporations
• Learn Competitive Advantage strategies
• Define a clear role for innovation based on understanding its hypercompetitive contribution.
• Predict customers’ emerging needs and translate them into a breakthrough value proposition

Register today for valuable insights on innovation and growth.  

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies.

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Plantable raincoat is made from potatoes and laden with seeds

Equilicuá’s Spud Raincoat is made from potato starch and impregnated with seeds, making it fully biodegradable, compostable and suitable for planting.

It’s one thing for a cardboard box to be infused with seeds and designed for planting at the end of its useful life. It’s quite another, however, to see a similar concept in something made from plastic. However, it’s no ordinary plastic used in Equilicuá’s Spud Raincoat — rather, the PVC alternative is made from potato starch and fully biodegradable, compostable and suitable for planting.

Equilicuá’s Spud Raincoat can be reused numerous times, its maker says, since it’s only biodegradable under specific conditions. Available in white with red print, the poncho-style garment is priced at EUR 15. Once the user is done with it, however, the Spud Raincoat can be planted in the ground. Not only is its potato starch-based “Fantastic Bioplastic” fully compostable, but — through a collaboration with La Fundación + árboles — it’s been impregnated with the seeds of various Mediterranean plants and shrubs. For that reason, in fact, Equilicuá currently distributes the raincoat only in the European Union and Mediterranean countries where the seeds are native; coming soon are versions with seeds derived from other parts of the world.

Green innovations are no longer just the reserve of obvious ecological offenders such as those in the automotive industry. No matter what your product or service, there’s no longer any excuse for not doing it greener.

Website: www.equilicua.com

via springwise.com

We are a leading innovation and hypercompetition consultancy with a passion for profit. Want to increase the sustainability of your growth initiatives or need a speaker? Contact us.

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A leading consulting firm specialized solely in enabling organizations of all sizes in all industries develop top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. For availability email or call us at 719-649-4118. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.   

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When Failure Isn’t Free: Ramifications for Innovation

Companies often develop crisp stories about how they have nurtured a “culture of innovation.” They say that all their employees can be innovators, and even take some initiative to move their ideas forward. Not only that, they claim, but failures are tolerated, if not celebrated. Failure is, after all, an integral part of the innovation game.
That may be, but as Financial Times economics columnist Tim Harford points out in his new book, there is one small problem: Contrary to the gospel of open innovation and dorm-room programmers, failure is rarely free. In fact, it’s becoming more and more expensive.
When real dollars are at stake, there is a big difference between a bad failure and a good one. A bad failure is expensive and emotional; it results from a willingness to experiment without the discipline to learn. A good failure, by contrast, comes as quickly and as inexpensively as possible; it is managed through a rigorous process of testing clearly stated hypotheses.
It is not easy to run disciplined experiments. But a company without such discipline — and without a way to reward innovators for only good failures — is a company without a true culture of innovation. It is a company that spends money aimlessly in hopes of stumbling upon success, instead of one that smartly and swiftly adapts.

— Chris Trimble

An excerpt from Chapter 3 of Adapt: Why Success Always
Starts with Failure

Look at the world’s leading companies and consider how many of them — Google, Intel, Pfizer — make products that would either fit into a matchbox, or have no physical form at all. Each of these large islands of innovation is surrounded by an archipelago of smaller high-tech start-ups, all with credible hopes of overturning the established order — just as a tiny start-up called Microsoft humbled the mighty IBM, and a generation later Google and Facebook repeated the trick by outflanking Microsoft itself.
This optimistic view is true as far as it goes. Where it’s easy for the market to experiment with a wide range of possibilities, as in computing, we do indeed see change at an incredible pace. The sheer power and interconnectedness of modern technology means that anyone can get hold of enough computing power to produce great new software. Thanks to outsourcing, even the hardware business is becoming easy to enter. Three-dimensional printers, cheap robots and ubiquitous design software mean that other areas of innovation are opening up, too. Yesterday it was customised T-shirts. Today, even the design of niche cars is being ‘crowd-sourced’ by companies such as Local Motors, which also outsource production. Tomorrow, who knows? In such fields, an open game with lots of new players keeps the innovation scoreboard ticking over. Most ideas fail, but there are so many ideas that it doesn’t matter: the internet and social media expert Clay Shirky celebrates ‘failure for free.’
Here’s the problem, though: failure for free is still all too rare. These innovative fields are still the exception, not the rule. Because open-source software and iPad apps are a highly visible source of innovation, and because they can be whipped up in student dorms, we tend to assume that anything that needs innovating can be whipped up in a student dorm. It can’t. Cures for cancer, dementia and heart disease remain elusive. In 1984, HIV was identified, and the US health secretary Margaret Heckler announced that a vaccine preventing AIDS would be available within a couple of years. It’s a quarter of a century late. And what about a really effective source of clean energy — nuclear fusion, or solar panels so cheap you could use them as wallpaper? We suggest readng the remainder of this research via strategy-business.com

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. Jim is board president of a charter school located in Colorado Springs whose sole purpose is to prepare otherwise disadvantaged students more competitively for college. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective hypercompetition strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.    

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Sparking growth systematically: How to turn innovation into a discipline

How will you drive growth in your company now that all the bubbles have burst?

Take, for example, acquisition, that popular strategic ploy of the late '90s. It turns out that the staggering prices paid to capture other firms often lower growth rates rather than increase them. Just 23% of acquisitions earn back their cost of capital, concludes a McKinsey study, which looked at deals made by 116 companies over an 11-year period.

Tried-and-true methods such as suggestion systems that promote cost-saving ideas and continuous-improvement task forces that look to make processes more efficient can certainly improve your bottom line. But they won't help you achieve top-line growth. Smoke-and-mirrors tactics will only fool the market for so long. The solution? Innovation.

With all the hype about innovation during the bubble years, you'd think that companies were doing a lot of it. But don't be deceived by the billions they poured into new technology. Most firms have been focused almost exclusively on incremental improvements and line extensions. Valuable as these efforts are, their benefits rarely go beyond the intermediate term. The long-term benefits that come from game-changing breakthroughs, however, require more work: unconventional methods of seeking out the unmet and unarticulated needs of customers, faster prototyping of ideas, new ways of funding ventures, and compensation systems that provide incentives to increase the revenue from new products and services.

With top-line growth opportunities ever harder to find and sustain, companies can no longer get by with a partial or episodic commitment to innovation. In a three-year study, my associates and I were allowed behind the scenes in companies like EDS, Citibank, Borg-Warner, Royal Dutch/Shell, BMW, and others for a look at what amounts to a fundamental redesign of the innovation process.

Although each company's innovation overhaul has its distinctive features, they all encourage ideas from everywhere in the organization, not just the new-product development or strategic-planning departments. Moreover, to ensure that high-potential notions don't get lost, these initiatives take a systemic approach to idea management. Let's look at three of them.

The top-line, all-enterprise approach

Appleton Papers, based in Appleton, Wisc., found itself in the unenviable position of being the world's leading producer of a product fewer and fewer customers want: carbonless paper, the kind used in forms that need to be filled out in triplicate. The company already had a suggestion program for cost-savings ideas, but it desperately needed ideas that would replace revenue. So it created the GO Process (short for "growth opportunities"), which regularly solicits ideas from everybody in the company.

"In one year we've gotten over 700 new product ideas from our 2,500 employees," says Dennis Hultgren, Appleton's vice president. One of these is a new digital paper product that has been launched in Germany. "What we've learned is that it's important to bring everybody in on [the search]."

Ideas suggested by employees are fed into nine cross-functional teams, each led by a senior manager "spoke owner," who is in charge of championing the best ideas to make sure they become out-the-door new products. The teams meet several times a month to brainstorm, and share insights gleaned from investigative visits to other companies. Once a month, each team's best ideas are presented to Appleton's executive committee, which evaluates each submission using a scorecard that gives detailed feedback to the teams about why the product idea does or doesn't fit the company's objectives or available resources.

The innovation team model

The downside of the all-enterprise system is that, if implemented without sufficient training, it can lead to a bottleneck in sifting, sorting, and reaching consensus on which of the myriad ideas suggested to pursue. The innovation team model attempts to solve this problem by creating a companywide network of people with demonstrated skills in innovation and assigning them the responsibility not only of finding new ideas but of choosing the best ones and bringing them to market as well.

At Whirlpool Corporation, of Benton Harbor, MI, growth in the late 1990s had come to a standstill. Profits were falling, the stock price was at an all-time low, and another cyclical downturn was on the horizon. Management had already tried the usual cost-cutting measures, including the decision to trim 10%of the company's 60,000 workers. But it was a breakthrough washing machine from arch-competitor Maytag that caused executives at Whirlpool to act.

The company formed a 75-person, cross-functional team and charged it with scouring every region and functional area of the firm for ideas that could jumpstart new revenue growth. Out of an initial 1,100 ideas, the team identified 11 to investigate further and finally decided on six to actively pursue. One of the six was a new-to-the-world appliance that makes clothes ready to wear by smoothing away wrinkles and cleaning away odors.

Another idea involved the development of a new channel to sell it newfangled kitchen appliances to time-starved Baby Boomers. Taking a cue from Tupperware's "party" distribution system, Whirlpool contracts with chefs and culinary-school grads to host cooking-class dinner parties in customers' homes. The chef brings all the food and uses Whirlpool's latest cooking appliances to prepare the meal, and takes product orders at the end of the event.

The innovation team approach gives Whirlpool a continuous, sustainable vehicle for innovation that invigorates its existing methods of discovery and idea development. "We had this internal market of people we weren't tapping into," explains Nancy Snyder, corporate vice president. "We wanted to get rid of the 'great man' theory that only one person--the CEO or people close to him -- is responsible for innovation."

The innovation catalyst model

In this model, ideas don't leave the division or business unit to be developed elsewhere-at headquarters, say, or in a skunkworks or incubator. Citigroup's Citibank division uses the innovation catalyst model to drive organic growth and capitalize on synergies created by a string of acquisitions. The effort is led by the chief country officer, working with a full-time "innovation catalyst," who expedites the process.

Many of the ideas come from structured ideation sessions with clients. Members of a Citibank senior team spend a day with their counterparts from a particular client. A facilitator focuses the brainstorming on present and emerging needs, marketplace changes, and customer service issues. To ensure the flow of new-product ideas, the innovation catalysts work closely with "magnet teams," locally empowered, cross-functional groups of senior executives that regularly meet to review ideas. The catalysts don't propose new ideas; instead they help the local managers prepare a case for their ideas.

In one Asian country, the innovation catalyst model has worked so well that the magnet team meets every week to review and prioritize ideas that have been proposed. And in Citibank's Trinidad bank, the model was responsible for 30% of the total revenues during a recent year.

Conclusion

Idea management systems don't replace traditional departments and processes involved in new services, products, or strategies -- they serve as an adjunct to them. In addition, they create broader participation by making the hunt for new growth opportunities every department's business, rather than the province of a select few. And most important of all, they provide a framework that can help your firm turn innovation into an enterprise-wide discipline-and a sustainable process that drives growth in good times and bad.

Used with permission from The Innovation Resource Web site. For more articles by Robert Tucker, please visit his Web site at http://www.innovationresource.com/.

 

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. Jim is board president of a charter school located in Colorado Springs whose sole purpose is to prepare otherwise disadvantaged students more competitively for college. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective hypercompetition strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.    

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Innovation: Culture's Big Business Moment | Fast Company

Company culture is having a moment. And why not? The culture of an organization can be the key to its sustained success (see: shiny, happy Zappos employees ringing up more than $1 billion in sales) or degradation at the hands of disgruntled employees (see Greg Smith's much-shared op-ed in The New York Times describing the erosion of Goldman Sach's corporate to something “toxic and destructive”).

More than a business buzzword, culture is a cornerstone, according to Shawn Parr. But that hasn't stopped it from being misunderstood and discounted as the woo-woo component of a company that doesn't have much of an impact on its balance sheet. However, Parr argues, engaged employees in a performance-oriented culture give businesses a better chance at financial growth and innovation. Culture is a place where strategy is born.

A heated debate took place among Fast Company expert bloggers and our community of readers on whether “culture eats strategy for lunch.” The original quote "wasn’t meant to take sides so much as it was to highlight that the amount of time business executives pay to each is way out of proportion based on the contribution of each to an organization's success," wrote Brent Daily at Roundpegg.com. 

Business leaders at SXSW last week clamored to take a stab at articulating which is more important. Their answers, while different, suggested that organizational culture was a critical component in enabling the successful execution of strategy.

Here's Edward Saatchi, cofounder of NationalField, on how their culture of accountability made it possible to carry out the startup's strategy to connect on-the-ground operatives during Obama's 2008 campaign.

Ultimately, writes Bob Frisch, managing partner of The Strategic Offsites Group, you don't have to choose. “It's like asking whether you would rather back a great poker player with weak cards or an average player with great cards. You’re more likely to win when you have both: a great player and great cards. The same goes for culture and strategy. You don’t have to choose. Culture doesn’t eat strategy, and the company that lets culture do so is likely to starve.”

With that in mind, we've rounded up the experts to weigh in on how to build a great culture, how to nurture it, how to use it to foster innovation, and how to change it when things aren't working.

Bake It In

For Boy CEO Mark Zuckerberg, hacking goes way beyond the allegations that he coded his way into the Harvard Crimson and ConnectU--it's an integral part of him and the company he started in his dorm room. For Zuck, the hacker culture is about using shared effort and knowledge to make something bigger, better, and faster than an individual can do alone. His "hackathons" at Facebook are legendary and help foster innovation in all manner of projects from building better data centers to crowdsourcing urban planning for its surrounding neighborhood. At Facebook's new headquarters, the Hacker culture reigns supreme--the writing is literally on the wall.

Encourage Buy-in

Dennis Crowley, cofounder and CEO of Foursquare, says that when the staff grew from two to 10 people, he started by hiring friends he knew could work together. That fostered an initial spirit of teamwork and open sharing that scaled along with Foursquare's growth.

Pay Nothing

Founder of ClearGears Arshad Chowdhury is convinced that culture isn't costly. It can even save money. Start by getting rid of expensive firewalls that block Facebook and YouTube. Access to social media tools can help employees research and network faster. Also, Chowdhury says, it’s not true that the longer you work, the more work you will get done. According to a 2010 study, flexible work hours can lead to increased retention and productivity. If you must have staff on site, let 'em sleep. A NASA study indicates that a nap of just 26 minutes can boost productivity by 34%.

Throw Yourself Off a Cliff

To encourage innovation, Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn, believes you need to hire creative truth seekers who can assemble a plane on the way down from that cliff leap.

Empower and Support

It's not just enough to hire great people, you have to empower them--especially junior staff.

Recognize Achievement

A culture is only as good as the environment that supports it. People work for more than just a paycheck, they want their achievements to be recognized by the leaders and peers. Erin Newkirk, founder of RedStamp, says a little thank-you can go a long way. And it doesn't have to cost a thing.

Eliminate Poison at the Source 

If someone or something isn't working, it's time for a change. To shift culture in a better direction, Jim Fowler, CEO of Jigsaw, says start with eliminating those who are poisoning the well.

[Image: Flickr user Simon Li] via fastcompany.com

 

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group. A global management consulting firms specialized solely in helping organizations of all sizes in all industries catalyzing top line growth through strategic innovation and hypercompetition. Jim has over 25 years consulting experience in working with small, mid size and Fortune 1000 companies. He is a former U.S. Navy Seabee and grandfather of five. Jim is board president of a charter school located in Colorado Springs whose sole purpose is to prepare otherwise disadvantaged students more competitively for college. To arrange for Jim to speak at your next event or devise an effective hypercompetition strategy email or call us at 719-649-4118 for availability. Subscribe to our innovation and hypercompetition newsletter.    

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