May 5, 2010 | Change, Communication, Innovation, Social Media
What happens next?
Mega platforms for social networking have overtaken many of our lives, from email, facebook, twitter, and the rest. All have the common trait of being “mass” platforms, designed to be used by anyone, with very modest generally available customisation allowed at the fringes.
For most people, in most situations, this is enough.
However, every time something has been invented, that reaches a wide audience, and satisfies a generic proposition, someone starts playing with the tailoring. This applies throughout history, to all widely used devices from armor to iphone apps.
Bespoke social networking at the edges is about to evolve into a fragmented range of networks where there are substantial barriers to entry, and therefore attract a highly focused group, with a deep connection of some sort, who can network amongst a select group of peers.
Imagine a social network of PhD qualified nuclear physicians from a selected group of institutions, which excludes the University of West Bumcrack and its brothers. This tiny, exclusive group of geeks, would love a social networking platform, an app that enables them to interact with the couple of dozen others around the place who understand them, but to date it has not been offered because it does not “scale” and the established rules for success of these networks is “scalability” which means it is capable of being monetarised. In addition, it would work differently, much more like a series of human interactions as would occur in the university common room, rather than being reduced to a series of quantitative options as is the case in a mass app.
The corollary is that if you are not in the “frame” for the bespoke app, you will probably never even know about it.
May 4, 2010 | Innovation, Marketing, Strategy
Marketing is much more than a menu to be picked from, it is an evolution of characteristics specific to a purpose a place and a competitive environment.
Some is visible above ground, most is invisible, underground, the roots of the ecosystem, but the needs are similar, if growth and health are to be maintained.
As in nature, marketing in a market tends to be similar, FMCG marketers pick from similar menus of options that are a function of the forces driving the marketplace, but those menus are subtly different from those that are in other markets.
Again, as in nature, a step change really only occurs when there is a cross pollination across boundaries, when a smart marketer disobeys the “rules” of his market, and adopts a different approach, sometimes with insights from others. That is when the really interesting stuff happens.
May 3, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Management, Strategy
All species, including humans, are inherently adaptive, yet the organisations humans inhabit are by their nature resistant to change.
The management challenge of the future is to figure out how to build an organisation that evolves sufficiently quickly to be ahead of the changes occurring in the environment around them so as to be in a position to exploit and leverage those changes rather than just reacting to them.
May 2, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing
What a cliché this has become, and you hear it all the time, like most cliches, it has become so common, we need to go a step further. Outside the box, outside the room, outside the building? How far outside is far enough?.
Surely it is more a matter of thinking differently, looking at the facts through a different set of eyes, not just seeking a way out solution that is the point here. It doe not much matter how far outside the box we are, it is how we interpret the box, and what is in it that counts
Apr 27, 2010 | Category, Customers, Innovation, Sales
Running a qualitative consumer research group recently, one of the participants surprised me with a metaphor that made great sense.
She said that the web had taught her to “forage”, her term, looking for stuff of interest, checking out the Sku’s available in a category far more widely than previously, when she had a modest “basket” of regulars, with a pecking order, and that did not change much from month to month. This reminded her of the behavior of the farm dogs she had as a kid, always looking for something to eat, in different places, and always nuzzling something new when it became available, and then deciding if it had any interest.
The implications are pretty clear. Experimentation within categories, and into adjacent categories may have been encouraged by the transfer of the “nuzzling” behavior we undertake every day as we cruise the web, looking for tit-bits of interest.
Sku numbers in supermarkets have exploded over the last 20 years, and I always thought it was just the drive for shelf presence and often minor differentiation in an effort to attract consumers that had driven it, but perhaps there is something more primal in our reaction to variety.
Apr 26, 2010 | Innovation
Successful innovation rarely comes from a formulaic approach where the marketing department has a brainstorm, prioritises the outcomes, then they progress through a “gated” process culminating in a launch.
Usually it comes from three sources:
- A sufficiently close relationship with customers that you can see their challenges and opportunities, and are able to assemble your capabilities to assist them to compete successfully.
- A deep understanding of the strategic and competitive environment in which your customer lives, and a willingness and ability to change the rules as a result of that understanding.
- The culture in your organisation supports the innovation process automatically, it has become part of the DNA of the organsiation.
These three factors are mutually supportive, but scoring 2/3 is simply not good enough for consistently superior performance.
