Posts tagged ‘Competitive Advantage’
Keep up (don’t give up): How to take a tech trend-based work-ation
Last week, we talked turkey; this week, we get ready for the reindeer games.
But, there is still time to sneak in a couple of work-ations before the year is over—extracurricular explorations that can set us up for success in 2011. Work-ations are creative excursions (either actual trips or virtual dives) designed to inspire us, and help our companies get a jump on some of the trends that could kick-start revenue growth.
Today’s work-ation list focuses on one of the most important (and, sometimes overwhelming) trends that everyone in business absolutely must pay attention to: technology innovations. How do you dig into what’s new and match the tools to your business concerns?
WARNING: TECH TRENDS CAN BE OVERWHELMING AND POSSIBLY LEAD TO PARALYSIS
A friend recently visited a whiz-bang tech shop in Los Angeles and came away saying, “I don’t know if I should keep up or give up.”
The truth is that we can’t afford to give up. We can all jot down a problem that’s keeping our company from moving forward, and design a work-ation refresher course to study someone who’s tackled that issue using technology.
A WORK-ATION IDEA INSPIRED BY TECH INNOVATIONS AN IDEA TO GET YOU STARTED: GEOFENCING
Trend-related work-ation task: Learn about geofencing.
It’s the next wave beyond zip codes and Groupons and Foursquare and SMS text messaging and Google maps. Geofencing is the power to know where your customers are (physically) and their permission to customize offers to their (almost) every move.
With geofencing, a company like North Face or REI can ask a customer for permission to send out customized SMS text messages with offers that match the customer’s location. If I live in California and fly to Denver, REI or North Face can greet me with a text message that says: “snowboard rental discount available at these Denver locations.”
OK, it sounds 95% creepy (Big Brother is watching) and only 5% cool (Wow, someone knows where I am and is meeting my immediate customer need).
But the ability to take customer intimacy and responsiveness to a new level definitely offers any business leader inspiration for amp-ing up his/her definition of “customer responsiveness.”
If we’re still stuck with an old-fashioned approach to coupons based on a static location-based offer (like for a free dessert at a restaurant in zip code X based on the fact that the customer lives in zip code X), we’re missing one of the biggest lessons we can learn from companies like Placecast and others taking advantage of the geofencing trend: our customers move around so our businesses needs to customize our relationships with them so that we’re where our customers are. All the time.
TECHNOLOGY HAS ALLOWED US TO SHIFT BUSINESS FOCUS FROM WHERE OUR CUSTOMERS LIVE TO WHERE THEY ARE (RIGHT NOW)
The shift from direct mail coupons to Groupons to geofencing is sort of like the shift from calling people’s houses (land lines) to calling people’s ears (mobile phones). Our places are no longer static, and zip codes are no longer the sole definition of where our customers need us.
Which technology trend will be on the back of your envelope this week and which work-ation will you schedule to catch up on the tech trends and contemplate your next moves in 2011?
MUSICAL CODA
Follow You
by Josh Kelley
Everybody tells me I am wrong
When I know I’m not
Something in me moves me to be strong
Cuz its all I got
But I don’t know what to say
When you ask me everyday
My mind won’t let me play
The thought of you
The thought of you
So tell me what you need
I’m getting stronger
If you will help me see
It won’t be long now
Its time for you to leave and I will
Follow you follow you
Dora the (Business) Explorer: How to plan work-ations that will grow revenues, part 1
November means it’s time to think about turkey and very soon about mistletoe. But, in our business lives, we translate this time of year into pressure for Q4 results, with next year’s Q1 expectations looming in the not-too-distant future.
In companies all over the country I hear quiet cries for help: 2010 has been a challenging year for many industries with the impact of low interest rates haunting some businesses, not-yet-recovered consumers challenging others, and global pressures hitting us all.
The world of commerce isn’t for sissies, so we can’t afford to quake, tremble, or stay put very long. It’s time to rally once more before the end of the year and take action.
What would be the most powerful thing a business leader can do before year-end? It’s probably too late to change course too dramatically for the next eight weeks (although sales forces can perform their final rally to reel in some fence sitters). But, it’s not too late to get creative. In other words, to carve out time to ask ourselves if a fifth grader were going to end the year with a bang, WWAFGD (What Would A Fifth Grader Do)?
The answer is clear. Take a field trip.
In business, we should create our own versions of what kids know naturally (and, what one of the folk heroines of the younger set, Dora the Explorer, demonstrates) when we’ve had too much reading, writing, and arithmetic. We need to change scenery for awhile and get ourselves re-stimulated. We need to arm ourselves with curiosity, questions, fascination, and in Dora’s case, a monkey and a backpack, and hit the road.
We need to plan at least 2 work-ations (vacations without the long flights) that will get our juices flowing about new ways to tackle our vexing issues. This week and next, I’ll share some of my recommendations, but the rules for why and how to “work-ate” are:
- Why: Businesses learn from cross-industry insights. Studying another company’s approach to building consumer loyalty can inform our own and we can adopt someone else’s ways to kick up our offerings a notch.
- How: Pick a company that rocks at something you’re trying to get good at. Ask yourself where your business is stuck and think about who’s doing a killer job in that arena. Then, go and visit (informally or by appointment—both approaches have merit).
Top Ideas for Work-ations to End 2010 with a Bang
(Part one this week; part two after Thanksgiving.)
1. Vexing issue: Customer loyalty.
Work-ation idea: Cooper’s Hawk Restaurant and Winery (Chicago)
I walked into this restaurant-qua-winery-qua-wine-bar and experienced unbelievably memorable service. The place boasts a cool environment with over-the-top customer focus. But wait, there’s more. It turns out that even at a time when many restaurants at this price point are struggling, Tim McEnery has created much more than a fantastic service model. He’s actually built a very loyal following with thousands of diners joining their wine club, and coming in every month to claim their (very affordable and great) bounty. You figure out the math. No wonder they won the Hot Concept award in 2010.
2. Vexing issue: Brick and mortar real estate.
Work-ation idea: Pop up stores (Dick’s Sporting Goods in Pittsburgh, Toys R Us Express 600 locations nationwide)
It was only a matter of time before commercial rents squeezing from one side of the vise grip and internet sales pushing from the other would yield a smart alternative to fixed rent—the popup store. It’s like the compactness of a cool Airstream trailer with the merchandising spirit of Barbie’s Dream House.
All accessible with updates via Twitter and other social media, many designed to be highly seasonal. Check out an example like Scratchproof Jackets in Sacramento California, Dick’s Sporting Goods in Pittsburgh, or Toys R Us, and be prepared to be inspired.
3. Vexing issue: What is the value of social media for business?
Work-ation idea (stay at your desk for this one): Follow some people on Twitter.
We’ve all heard opinions on two extremes of the social media spectrum. On the one hand, we see those fifth graders removing vowels from the words “Oh,” “My,” and “God,” and sending what we dismiss as meaningless drivel to each other, nonstop. On the other hand, we see that Martha Stewart has started to tweet. An easy work-ation idea—follow a couple of people on Twitter for a day (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsFmaCEOqyw&feature=related). Below is a short video that gives the overview for business and http://www.associatesdegree.com/2009/09/14/100-best-twitter-feeds-for-savvy-business-students/ gives you a great list of Twitter hotspots to follow, like @mint and @zappos and @richardbranson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUhfDpCHeZ0
OODA
Do-do-do-do-dora!
Do-do-do-do-dora! Let’s go!
Dora, Dora, Dora the explorer!
DORA!
Boots and supercool exploradora!
Grab your backpack! Let’s go! Jump in! Vamonos!
You can lead the way! It’s Dora, the explorer.
If you’re stuck, mix it up: How (and why) to have an “interesting” conversation
At TEDxSanDiego, everyone took part in a novel experiment designed to track conversations throughout the day, partly to encourage the speakers, audience, performers and sponsors to mix and mingle in new ways, and partly to look at how the interactions at a TEDx event might be different from traditional networking. What kinds of questions would lead to the most “interesting” conversations? And, what can business leaders learn from an informal social experiment dedicated to tracing the intersections of people at a conference?
Business leaders who are stuck can solve problems by not focusing directly on their problems and instead focusing on discovering new insights from experts in other fields.
Here’s the in-a-nutshell version:
Lesson #1: Creating a breeding ground for “interesting” conversations involves some engineering of diversity—gather people together with the specific purpose of cross-disciplinary expertise.
Lesson #2: Putting yourself into a discovery mode, where you’re learning about a new field, creates a different spark than a networking mode or a day-to-day, problem solving mode.
Lesson #3: Business leaders can benefit from this spark of discovery—by opening themselves up to new insights about trends, shifts in customer preferences, and new technologies and products on the horizon. [For example, if you’re working on software solutions for schools, talk to a 10 year old about what games they’re playing.]
Interesting conversations can become the catalyst for corporate insight.
How to Engineer Interesting Conversations
How do you have an “interesting” conversation these days? How do you put yourself into a situation where you’re learning not telling? How can business leaders apply the results of the TEDxSanDiego informal experiment?
For corporate teams that are stuck and looking for new direction, the TEDxSanDiego experiment offers an interesting insight into a powerful skill that any business leader can use to expand his / her perspective. Here’s how it worked:
- Everyone at the TEDxSanDiego conference was asked to list the topic they were most passionate about: Technology, Entertainment, Design, Entrepreneurism, Innovation, Community, Sustainability, Philanthropy. The audience and speakers were selected to represent a good cross-section, to make sure there was representation in the room from every field of interest.
- Throughout the day of programming (22 speakers, performers, videos) everyone was asked to interact with people they didn’t know already and to name 3-5 people they didn’t know prior to the event with whom they engaged in an “interesting conversation” throughout the day.
- James Fowler, Robert Bond, and Chris Fariss (the team of researchers from UC San Diego) mapped the interconnections.
The assumption had been that some patterns would emerge, with the most likely outcome being that people would group according to the birds of a feather rules—people with similar interests would gravitate toward each other–the way that jocks, debate team members, and drama club thespians would interact at a high school reunion.
And the answer is…no interaction pattern is a significant finding.
At TEDx San Diego, something very interesting happened. At the end of the day, no pattern emerged (see the map below.)
Technology folks mixed with Philanthropy folks. Ecologists linked up with Entertainers. Innovators connected with community organizers. The data looked absolutely nothing like the high school reunion of stereotypical cliques.
Instead, the array of conversation mapping looked like 52-card pickup.
And, people found those cross-expertise conversations extremely interesting.
Let’s remember that the Conversation Mapping experiment was designed to encourage cool discussions during breaks. And let’s remember that the TED conferences are specifically created to encourage cross-disciplinary thinking. So, the deck was stacked a bit.
But, it got me thinking.
Are there some times when we, as business leaders, need to shake things up a bit?
Are there times when we’re out of touch with trends and need to get together with some new people and enter “discovery mode”? Are there ways to orchestrate a setting where we interact with a diverse collection of people with very different perspectives from ours, and ask great questions, listen with tremendous interest, and learn about fields that are totally outside of our day to day knowledge base?
What was the best way to engage in these “interesting” conversations?
Follow these steps to broaden your horizons:
- Think about your hunches about where you’re currently challenged in moving your business forward. (For example, how to build healthcare facilities smarter and better in the future.)
- Envision a group of people whose perspective could add insight (For example, bringing in an expert from Qualcomm to talk with your healthcare architects.)
- Engage in “interesting” conversations, where you discover what’s keeping them up at night, what’s exciting them, what they see on the horizon in their world.
- Take it all in. Sleep on it. Don’t focus on the problem at hand.
- Eureka…you’ll have an insight in a few weeks based on seeds that were planted during these interesting conversations. (For example, wireless innovations could lead to remote diagnostics and a redesign of your laboratories.)
If you’re stuck, mix it up.
Big and some Pac and you mix them up in a pot
mix them up in a pot, mix them up in a pot
Take some Big and some Pac and mix them up in a pot
mix them up in a pot, what the f- do you got?
(Fifty!)
It’s Big and some Pac n u mix em up and you got, juggernauts of this rap sh–, like it or not
Live is not dead: How to move ideas further, faster, better—flesh-to-flesh
We used to gather in caves and around fires, to exchange ideas and get together. We made a move: from an individual existence to a shared existence. And we kept going forward. From primitive ideas to civilized ideas. Towards evolution. Towards progress.
Fast forward thousands of years and enter the age of technology, when the promise of sharing ideas faster, more efficiently, and more powerfully led many of us to believe that live was, well, dead. Why interact live when electronic images could communicate the same ideas over the Internet? Why have flesh-to-flesh meetings when Skype and video conferencing (and still face-to-face) could substitute for the real thing?
I’ve been co-organizing the first TEDxSanDiego conference (the viral Technology Entertainment Design colloquium live in San Diego), to take place next week, and wondering why so many people want to come together—live—to interact and engage and experience being in one room for one day to hear speakers and see performers whose presentations can just as easily be viewed in the comfort of a home or office with a live stream. So, why be there live?
Luckily, the book (actually an e-book on Kindle) on my bed stand provides some clues. Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist and his related TED talk, When Ideas Have Sex traces hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution. And his compelling conclusion is that our ideas evolve fastest when they “have sex”— it’s the exchange of ideas that accelerates the speed of progress. But, does that exchange have to be live, or could live interaction be replaced with remote connections? We can, after all, have sex over the Internet, telephone, and cell phone (think sexting).
In the 1970s, two classic media images were born that planted the seeds of doubt regarding the power of live. Memorex introduced an ad campaign in 1971, “Is It Live, Or is it Memorex?,” that forced us to wonder if the live singing voice of Ella Fitzgerald was superior to that same voice captured on tape. In 1973 Woody Allen’s movie Sleeper introduced the “Orgasmatron,” a machine that offered the safest sex possible, an elevator-sized capsule equipped with pleasure-inducing devices. It set us up to consider a question, albeit with an appreciation for the ridiculous: Could a futuristic device replace live touch?
I, for one, believe that the live will never be dead.
With rallies like Jon Stewart’s Restore Sanity to informal gatherings like PechaKuchas with short presentations that move ideas forward to business conferences like TED to live concerts and festivals like Austin City Limits to unconventional gatherings in the desert like Burning Man to everything in-between, live is on the rise. And according to a government study on Audience 2.0, “people who participate in the arts through electronic media are three times as likely to attend live events.” (See http://www.nea.gov/research/new-media-report/index.html.)
What can business leaders learn from the live phenomenon? You might think live is dead, but it isn’t. Don’t make bets too quickly on the extinction of live. Remember the people who bet against the paper industry when personal computers entered the scene? And, how many more sheets of paper are people using—to redraft and rework documents? I’d place my bet on the personal connection surviving as a vital part of the way we all do business. Telecommuting won’t, and can’t, replace the power of the live tribe. Airlines won’t be replaced by Skype. But, we hold the power in our live, warm hands, we can tap into what’s truly special about why we gather, and make those moments, moments.
MUSICAL CODA
Text Me Pictures by Lady Gaga
Because…Baby you text me you send me pictures
You send me things cause your still in love with me
Ohhhhh you don’t wanna hear from me if you do only cause your friend told you so.
Baby you text me you send me pictures
Ohhhhh hhhh ooohhhhh cause your callin’ me saying
Oh baby I love you
My heart belongs to you
The power of WOW: How to rock your customers’ worlds
In honor of National Customer Service Week, Business Genome offers a lesson on how to tip the scale in favor of customer loyalty using the power of “wow.” Empathica’s Mike Amos has developed metrics linking the perception of wow with a customer’s intent to return to a restaurant. Zappos’ founder Tony Hsieh (and featured speaker at the recent Inc 500 conference) exemplified the economic strength of an SMB (small and medium-sized company) that recently sold for $900 million dollars. Zappos’ customer service is so over the top that if they don’t stock the shoes you want, they’ll find you someone else who does.
Wow is an approach that brings the customer from satisfied to loyal.