Steps to Becoming a Disciplined Disruptor: Innovation

Some companies lose themselves in trying to grow too quickly. In the fight to get ahead, they forget where they came from – the core tenets that made them unique, and gave them the ability to compete and win.

This can be particularly true for start-up executives, who often find challenges in discovering their company’s true advantage. As they attempt to grow, they sometimes have a tendency to want to branch out beyond that advantage. In many cases, this approach to growth lacks discipline and does not take into account what actually makes their company special – its offerings, yes, but also its core philosophies. If this is the case, the growth process can lead down uncertain paths that include the creation of disparate product offerings, unhappy employees, and disenchanted customers and a lack of competitive advantage.

The business landscape is littered with large and small companies that started doing one thing and then got distracted by bright, shiny objects – the concept of “Hey, wait a minute – if we can do THIS, then certainly we can do THAT, too!” Startups will often try to reach beyond core capabilities, but, unfortunately, in far too many cases this means diluting the focus that initially made the business great, to the point where mediocrity reigns across the board.

Then, there are organizations like Atlassian, a Sydney-based software company. Its website describes the corporate culture and make-up as “geeks, beer drinkers, nerf herders, fraggers and Wolverine-wannabes.” And that could very well be. But Atlassian is also very, very good at creating issue tracking and collaboration software. That’s the company’s focus, and it’s committed to doing it well. It’s why Atlassian has grown from a handful of employees in 2002 to more than 400 today.

There are, of course, examples of larger companies that have done well by applying a laser-like focus and disciplined approach. Over the past five years, Apple has been extremely focused on delivering quality content through the iPad, iPhone and more. Its M.O. is to deliver attractive, cool devices that are fast and user-friendly. While its primary rival Google is intent on offering many services and products in a multitude of areas, getting further away from its core service offering (search), Apple seems content to provide a singular, focused experience. Needless to say, the approach has worked well for the company.

Contrast that with companies like Research in Motion (RIM) or, going back even further, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). RIM’s troubles within the mobile space have been well documented, but they stem from one common mistake made by many companies: not listening to the customer base. At one point in time, RIM was an innovator; it provided businesspeople with communications devices the likes of which had never been seen before. But when customers declared they wanted a better browsing experience and applications, RIM balked and stubbornly refused to provide either. The company moved away from a core aspect of its business – providing innovative mobile devices – and have since stagnated.

DEC’s an even more cogent example of a company that had everything yet lost its way. DEC started off by focusing on the microcomputer market, eventually growing into one of the biggest technology organizations on the planet. But the company strayed from its roots, incorporating new and varied products, different distribution models, and more, to the point where DEC became a behemoth without focus, one that could not support its own weight. Slowly, the company that once proudly announced that it had never undergone a layoff began breaking apart until, in 1998, the remaining assets were sold to Compaq – a sad end to a once-promising company’s epic decline.

But for every DEC, there is a Red Hat. For every RIM, there is a SalesForce.com. And for every startup’s inspiration, there is an Atlassian and others like it. All of these organizations have successfully found the sweet spot between growth, discipline, and differentiation by not only identifying and honoring uniqueness, but by also keeping customers happy.

The good news is that discipline is an attitude that can be fine-tuned and adopted.

Kevin B. Thompson

Kevin B. Thompson is president and CEO of SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI), a provider of IT management software. He has served in that role since March 2010. Prior to that, Mr. Thompson was the company’s COO, as well as CFO and treasurer. He has also held positions at SAS Institute and Red Hat,, and serves on the board of directors of NetSuite.

via chiefexecutive.net

 

Food Cart Design That Doesn’t Block Airplane Aisles

The Orbit Aircraft Food Delivery System by Heather Dunne is a space-saving solution that solves a common and annoying problem on airlines.

 Orbit is a concept system for delivering food on commercial aircraft by UK designer Heather Dunne. The space-saving solution improves upon the traditional airline food cart by making it slimmer and longer, so passengers can get around flight attendants. The design also allows food to be easily loaded and unloaded and can hold more than the current cart.

At 8 inches wide, Orbit is 4 inches thinner than traditional carts, which allows passengers to move past it in the aisle. It is able to hold up to 60 meals as it is longer than the current design, which holds around 35-40. Bio-pac food packages can be taken from the top using a pressure shelf system. Once one layer of packages is removed, the ones underneath move up, allowing flight attendants to deliver food to passengers without having to bend down. Orbit locks into sunken tracks in the aisles, with a motor that propels the wheels forwards or backwards. They can also be locked into the tracks during turbulence so it doesn’t lift off the floor.

Orbit

via psfk.com

 

How to Manage Employees and The competition in Lean Times - Jim Woods

In this hypercompetitive age managing is a difficult task. Perhaps even more difficult considering in this age of empowerment and easy access to new opportunities, no one really wants to be managed. Which is one of the reasons so few managers are good at their job. Management quality guru Deming once remarked, that less than 15% of what managers ever learn is effectively articulated and implemented. That is sad wouldn’t you agree? Particularly at a time when companies and municipalities rely upon an entire organization to reduce costs and increase revenue. 

To innovate, the task of acquiring customers and retaining customers better than ones competitors rely on a few simple unconventional truisms: 

1. Never pass the buck
2. Accept responsibility
3. All yourself as accountable as you would your employees
4. Treat your employees as employee partners. Employee partners create more towards the bottom line.
5. Lead do not manage. Managers are a dime a dozen. Leaders are few. By leading you increase your effectiveness and value immensely.
6. Praise easily
7. Treat everyone as if they are a volunteer.
8. Keep meetings short
9. Never embarrass or berate anyone openly
10. Never promise what you can’t deliver on.
11. Understand you are on stage everyday. People are always watching you. Everything you say, the way in which you say it, sends clues to your employee partners.
12. Help all of your employees reach legendary status. 
13. Help them become more than who they are in every aspect of their life.
14. Recognize even at your best you cannot change people. The best you can do is to facilitate.
15. Never allow your employee partners to feel you are discouraged and without solutions.
16. Celbrate special occassions big. 
17. Do more than the cursory birthday card passed between departments. You want to know your people. 

Lastly, expect your employees to rise to the occasion. They will meet your expectations. Everyone has insecurities. This goes for leaders, managers and employees. 

via jimwooods.typepad.com

 

Schumpeter: To Be Innovative is To Be Good At Copying | The Economist

 

 

EVERY year Les Wexner, the owner of Victoria’s Secret, a lingerie retailer, takes a month off to travel the world looking for other companies’ ideas to adopt. Limited Brands, his clothing group, seeks lawful inspiration from firms ranging from airlines to consumer-goods manufacturers. Mr Wexner’s philosophy is that business should celebrate imitation.

That is almost a heresy. Politicians and countless awards ceremonies extol innovation’s role in economic growth. Businesses are told to innovate or die. Imitators are cast as the bad guys: “The corporation that is first…has an opportunity to manufacture with the highest frequency and in the most desirable markets,” proclaims the boss of Burkett & Randle in “Duplicity”, a 2009 corporate thriller starring Julia Roberts. The firm duly triumphs over the evil rival which tries to copy its supposed cure for baldness.

In the real world, companies copy and succeed. The iPod was not the first digital-music player; nor was the iPhone the first smartphone or the iPad the first tablet. Apple imitated others’ products but made them far more appealing. The pharmaceutical industry is split between inventors and imitators. Some innovators, such as Pfizer, have joined the copycats, starting generic-drugs businesses themselves. The multi-billion-dollar category of supermarket own-label products is based on copying well-known brands, sometimes down to details of the packaging. Fast-fashion firms have built empires copying innovations from the catwalk.

The pace and intensity of legal imitation has quickened in recent years, argues Oded Shenkar, a management professor at Ohio State University, in a provocative book, “Copycats: How Smart Companies Use Imitation to Gain a Strategic Edge”. Among social-gaming firms copying, and accusations of copying, are rife. One boss is said to have told his employees: “I don’t fucking want innovation. Just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers.” Germany’s Samwer brothers, Alexander, Oliver and Marc, have made a fortune replicating American internet models in other markets, sparking outrage in an industry which prides itself on invention. One of their recent efforts is Pinspire, an online pinboard with a similar layout, colour scheme and features to those of Pinterest, the latest craze in social media.

History shows that imitators often end up winners. Who now remembers Chux, the first disposable nappies, whose thunder was stolen by Pampers? Ray Kroc, who built McDonald’s, copied White Castle, inventor of the fast-food burger joint. Even Playboy magazine was just an imitator, noted Ted Levitt, one of the earliest management gurus to acknowledge the role of imitation. Copying is not only far commoner than innovation in business, wrote Levitt in the 1960s, but a surer route to growth and profits. According to “Copycats”, studies show that imitators do at least as well and often better from any new product than innovators do. Followers have lower research-and-development costs, and less risk of failure because the product has already been market-tested. A study by Peter Golder and Gerard Tellis, “Pioneer Advantage: Marketing Logic or Marketing Legend”, found that innovators captured only 7% of the market for their product over time.

Firms seldom admit to being copycats. First, it is bad for bosses’ egos. Second, it can be legally risky. Apple is suing Samsung for “slavishly” imitating its products with its Galaxy smartphones and tablets; and Samsung is suing Apple back. (According to Mr Shenkar, Samsung is also eagerly awaiting a Korean-language version of “Copycats” to distribute to its executives.) This week a jury found that Google had copied Oracle’s intellectual property related to bits of its Java infrastructure.

But there is usually plenty of scope to imitate safely. Jean-Paul Gaillard, a former chief of Nespresso, a coffee-making system which has made billions for Nestlé, a Swiss food giant, decided to take on his old firm. His new venture makes coffee capsules which exactly fit Nespresso machines, to compete with Nespresso pods. Nestlé has been unable to stop him. Copying may be safer still when the imitator is not grabbing the innovator’s customers: Southwest Airlines, an American discount carrier, made no objection when Ireland’s Ryanair cloned its business model.

Not invented here

Some businesspeople are willing to talk about the limitations of innovation. Kevin Rollins, a former chief executive of Dell, a computer-maker, asked, “If innovation is such a competitive weapon, why doesn’t it translate into profitability?” But most remain obsessed with their own inventions. Copying is taboo. Praise and promotion do not go to employees who borrow from other firms.

As a result, firms pay insufficient attention to the art of copying. Levitt examined a group of companies whose sales depended on regularly launching new products. None of them, he found, had either a formal or informal policy on how to respond to other firms’ innovations. So they were often far too slow to imitate rivals’ successes, and missed out on profits. Not much has changed since Levitt’s day. Though copying is fairly common, lots of companies fail to do it effectively. American firms in particular are too obsessed with innovation, argues Mr Shenkar. By contrast, Asian companies—such as Panasonic, whose former parent, Matsushita, was nicknamed maneshita denki, “electronics that have been copied”—have excelled at legal imitation.

Excessive copying, of course, could be bad for society as a whole. Joseph Schumpeter worried that if innovators could not get enough reward from new products because imitators were taking so much of the profit, they would spend less on developing them (hence the justification for granting inventors temporary monopolies in the form of patents). But that is not the immediate concern of corporations. Copying is here to stay; businesses may as well get good at it. Economist.com/blogs/schumpeter via economist.com

 

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Our Guarantee. Where many consulting firms are reluctant to bear risks or tie their rewards to project outcomes, we decided to build a better model. We align our success with yours. We’re outcome obsessed, outcome paid, putting nearly two thirds of our fees at risk subject to hitting predetermined milestones. More than a guarantee we wanted from the outset to create true partnerships with shared responsibility. See a few of our clients.   

We provide broad ranging advice covering innovation, commoditization, competitive advantage, business policy and strategy, as well as global strategy and implementation. 

 

50 Golden Blogging Tips For Business: Social Media - Brad Shorr

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Every blogger should know that social media and SEO are fast becoming one big, messy and marvellous marketing discipline. Here is a collection of 50 blogging tips from my most recent and valuable posts on topics that are essential for a successful blog marketing effort. If you’re just starting out with a blog, these tips may save you a lot of time – and perhaps a little heartache as well.

Blogging Tips For Strategy

Blogging is a powerful tool to be used in marketing as well as presenting yourself as an expert, but you need to take notice of a few simple rules to make it more effective for you or your business.

1. Headlines are just as important as the blog post, and in some ways, more. It takes a pretty good one to capture the attention of readers who are scanning scores if not hundreds of Web pages every day.
2. SEO drives traffic, but a site must be optimized for conversion in order for that traffic to turn into leads and sales.
3. Companies err by concentrating on SEO and ignoring CRO, conversion optimization. The fatal flaw of an SEO fixation is that it takes your eye off the ball. SEO is about traffic. Traffic is important, but it’s not the goal.
4. The fundamental purpose of Internet marketing, and business blogging in this case, is conversion.
5. Publish regularly. Have a calendar based plan for your blog posts. Once a week is good, twice a week even better. The important thing here is that you stick to your plan.
6. Consider hiring an SEO specialist. This is one of the most important decisions you will make in your pursuit of online marketing success. (see points below)

Blog Design And Functionality

No matter how brilliant a website’s design, no matter how elegant its navigation, sooner or later visitors will decide whether to take action because of something they read. In the end, the effectiveness with which a website converts visitors hinges on words. If a new website is going to hit all the right notes, its content must be just as well crafted as its design and programming.

1. Primary SEO keywords should appear at the beginning of headlines. This helps readers as well as search engine crawlers.
2. Use bold text for keywords; again, this help readers in addition to strengthening SEO.
3. Use bulleted lists to the attention of readers and crawlers.
4. Insert primary keywords at the beginning of Meta titles.
5. Build a strong internal link structure on your site.
6. Optimize site images – this is an often-overlooked technique that boosts SEO and user experience.
7. The biggest error in corporate website content: inward focus.
8. The second biggest error: burying the lead under a pile of unimportant words. Give readers the point first of all, and then elaborate.
9. The third biggest error: poorly optimized or non-existent Meta content. Your site will seriously confuse Google and readers without proper optimization.
10. The fourth biggest error: Too much content. If you can say it in 1000 words, you can say it more effectively in 500.
11. The fifth biggest error: Lame or non-existent calls to action. If you don’t tell readers what to do next, they won’t do anything.
12. Corporate sites tend to have weak calls to action because they don’t take the time and apply the creativity to develop them in the first place.

SEO For Bloggers

Title Tags are the Nuclear Warheads of Content Marketing.

While Title Tags contain only a very small mass – roughly 65 characters – they pack an unbelievable punch. Because of title tags’ enormous impact on SEO, social sharing and conversion, content marketers should know how they work, and how to put them to work.

1. Title tags are the most important piece of Meta information on a Web page in terms of SEO.
2. Title tags are also crucial for optimizing user experience and facilitating social shares.
3. Title tags may or may not include a branding message.
4. Title tags must always include the primary keyword phrases for the Web page it represents.
5. Title tags can be composed for conversion: snappy titles inspire social sharing. The decision whether to stress SEO or conversion depends in large part on the nature of the content.
6. Skilful use of H1 title tags boosts conversion without compromising the SEO integrity of title tags.
7. Title tags should be updated if on-page content changes relevant keywords.
8. The biggest factor in selecting an SEO partner: understanding their methodology. If the agency doesn’t have a formal one, or if the methodology is outdated, results inevitably will be poor.
9. The second biggest factor: understanding the SEO’s track record. Actions speak louder than words!
10. The third biggest factor: making sure there is a good fit. Every SEO has a sweet spot; if you’re not in it, results will lag.
11. The fourth biggest factor: the longevity and stability of the SEO. You don’t want to start from scratch after investing years developing a program with a partner who suddenly disappears.
12. The fifth biggest factor: great relationships. You don’t want to start over after investing years on a program with a partner who suddenly disappears.

Some web content writers, as well as web designers view on-page SEO as a necessary evil to an effective content strategy on the web. However, when properly executed, SEO can actually enhance a site visitor’s experience, rather than detract from it.

Writing For Web

Web writers are a special kind of breed. Their jobs include writing AdWord ads, corporate bios, blog post titles, calls to action, display ads, Facebook fan page posts, landing pages, Meta descriptions, taglines, testimonials and tweets.

1. Writing AdWords ads requires more precision than perhaps any other form of Web writing.
2. Corporate bios require genuine creativity to be readable and relevant.
3. The art of writing brochures should not be lost, because it’s still a highly valuable business skill.
4. Landing page composition is too important to be a sideline job: great landing page writers are made, not born.
5. Several important (and not always understood techniques) go into writing a truly persuasive sales proposal.
6. Taglines are the most all-around demanding form of business writing there is. There’s a reason why brilliant taglines cost a fortune.
7. Twitter may seem like a frivolous medium, but great writing skill is required for effective business tweets.
8. “Different from” is universally accepted, but “different than” is not.
9. Avoid the expression “if and when.” Not even experts understand its meaning.

Social Sharing And Blogging

Twitter is a feast-or-famine marketing tool. It can help you achieve important business goals, or it can be a monumental waste of time.

Social Sharing is the latest ‘add on’ in blogging and Twitter has become one of the most important social sharing platforms. Here are some practical tips how to make Twitter perform better for you.

1. On Twitter, define your purpose clearly before launching your page.
2. Make sure you have adequate resources to support your Twitter program. Many firms grossly underestimate the time and effort needed.
3. Select the right Twitter interface platform to support your program. They all have strengths and weaknesses.
4. Vet your Twitter followers and clean them up to avoid being buried under a mountain of spammers.
5. Learn the basic types of tweets and best practices for writing them before you start tweeting.
6. Don’t tweet on one or two themes all day long: variety helps attract followers.
7. Although you have 140 characters to work with, tweets at 100 characters or less can be very effective and draw retweets.
8. Avoid jargon and exotic abbreviations in tweets – the longer it takes someone to get your drift, the less likely they’ll be to pay attention to you.
9. Schedule certain types of tweets in advance to save time and make sure you’re getting the full message out.
10. Always respond to people who retweet your material and ask you questions.
11. Always be ready to lend a hand to fellow tweeps – giving to get works well on Twitter.

I hope these 50 tips will help you in your blogging endeavours. If you have any blogging tips of your own please share with us.

Brad Shorr works for Straight North, a Web development, Chicago-based agency concentrating in B2B, with clients in specialized niches such as credit card processing for gas stations and truck tracking systems. via socialmediarevolver.com

 

Searching For New Solutions to Attract and Retain More Customers? Looking for a Strategic and Innovation Advisor to work on retainer? A riveting speaker? 

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a leading Strategic Management and Innovation Consulting Firm in Denver, Colorado. He is an author, speaker, and a strategic innovation and hypercompetition expert to profit, non-profit organizations and municipalities. 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. Build a capability for ongoing competitive innovation across your company. Call 719-649-4118 or complete our form: contact us for more information on hiring Jim to advise or speak for your next event.

 

This column will change your life: design thinking

 

Oliver Burkeman: 'The notion that designers might have much to teach the rest of us has swept the business world.' Illustration: Francesco Bongiorni for the Guardian

If you're a graphic designer, you'll already know that "kerning" refers to making tiny adjustments to the spaces between letters. If you're not, there's a strong possibility you won't care. But either way I suspect you'll see why I was sceptical about a new book entitled Life Kerning: Creative Ways To Fine Tune Your Perspective On Career & Life, which treats kerning as a metaphor for living. No offence to the designers I've known, but they tend to be neat-freaks with an obsessive attention to detail (and stylish spectacles). These are excellent attributes for the job, but are they really a recipe for happiness? Most of us could do with a bit less perfectionism and a bit more acceptance of those parts of life that, metaphorically speaking, will always be in badly-kerned Comic Sans.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the book, by the Chicagoan designer Justin Ahrens, is a solid collection of antiperfectionistic advice – a font of wisdom, even. Ahrens doesn't overstretch his metaphor. He uses it to argue for "creating space" around the elements of your life by, say, planning short retreats to gain perspective, and to emphasise that small changes – a tiny tweak to a routine – might make all the difference between an awkward life and a beautiful one. "We tend to think sweeping changes need to be made," he writes, yet "it's often the fine adjustments between the smaller details… that tend to make the headlines of our lives seem… not as harmonious as they could be".

The notion that designers might have much to teach the rest of us has swept the business world. "Design thinking", to paraphrase its leading proponent, Roger Martin, means thinking that focuses on creating better things, while "analytical thinking", which is standard in business, is choosing between things. Sometimes, design thinking literally means what we colloquially mean by "design": the careers blogger Penelope Trunk argued recently that the past 20 years, dominated by email, favoured good writers, while new technologies mean "you will be more valuable and more relevant if you can think in terms of visuals". More broadly, design thinking refers to seeing things as systems, and shifting perspective to break out of predetermined grooves.

There's legitimate eyeball rolling to be done here. "The idea," writes one sceptical designer, Peter Merholz, "is that the left-brained, MBA-trained, spreadsheet-driven crowd has squeezed all the value they can out of their methods. To fix things, all you need to do is apply some right-brained, turtleneck-wearing creatives, 'ideating' tons of concepts and creating new opportunities for value out of whole cloth." Besides, creatives can be narrow-minded, too: studies on "architectural myopia" have shown architects literally see the world differently from laypeople, which may explain why they so often design buildings people hate using.

Still, there's something appealing about treating life as a design project: it's less cringe-inducing than "life as a work of art", yet more free-spirited than life as a to-do list. Most lives are too messy to think in terms of a blank canvas. But thinking in terms of elegantly arranging interlocking items is practical, while leaving space for real creativity. There's an old joke about designers, which I'd always taken as teasing them for being truculent, but perhaps on reflection it's more flattering: how many designers does it take to change a lightbulb? "Why does it have to be a lightbulb?"

oliver.burkeman@guardian.co.uk; twitter.com/oliverburkeman

• This column was corrected on 6 December 2011. In the original, Justin Ahrens was referred to as Jason Ahrens.

via guardian.co.uk

Searching For New Solutions to Attract and Retain More Customers? Looking for a Strategic and Innovation Advisor to work on retainer? A riveting speaker?

Jim Woods is president and founder of InnoThink Group; a leading Strategic Management and Innovation Consulting Firm in Denver, Colorado. He is an author, speaker, and a strategic innovation and hypercompetition expert to profit, non-profit organizations and municipalities. 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. Build a capability for ongoing competitive innovation across your company. Call 719-649-4118 or complete our form: contact us for more information on hiring Jim to advise or speak for your next event.