Feb 11, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Strategy
We spend time and effort managing our way through legacy IT systems, recognizing the impact they have on performance, and the cost benefit of spending the capital to replace them.
However, we rarely think about strategy in a similar manner.
Instead we think about the status quo, the culture and the need to change them, and we craft sometimes elaborate re-engineering projects often at great expense, to change them, but rarely think about them as a “legacy” of the past, and therefore to be treated as an oddity to be removed as soon as practical.
Perhaps if we subjected legacy strategies to the same ridicule we heap on legacy IT systems, change would be a lot easier to make.
Jan 27, 2010 | Branding, Innovation, Marketing
Product development is most often a process that in its early stages is dominated by technical considerations after the initial idea is articulated. It is about the dimensions, performance characteristics, functionality, features, technology platform, and so on. Typically the product brief will cover all these aspects, and more, but it will not be enough for the designer responsible for the way in which the products interact with the consumer, and therefore does little for the development of your brand.
At some point, you need to reflect the behavior of consumers as they use the product, the level of engagement it attracts, the way they interact with the features, the situation in which it will be used, what else is likely to be going on around them concurrent with use, the way it needs to look and feel, and many, often qualitative aspects.
It is a common mistake to put a lot of effort into the product brief, but less into the design brief, thus ignoring the most important factor in the whole exercise, the consumer.
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Jan 24, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Leadership
Good art is never boring, it always “says” something new, irrespective of weather it is a drawing, a poem, a piece of music, a hairstyle, or anything else, it is never safe, predictable, and attractive to everyone.
Defenders of the status quo always try and put numbers on risk, but how do you put numbers on things that are new and different, and encouraging of change?
Art creates a platform, a means for people to engage, people who have nothing in common other than an appreciation of the piece of art in front of them will find a way to engage with each other, facilitated by the piece.
What an opportunity for product designers to appeal to markets that are vastly different in demographics, but in some behavioral way, very similar!
Take a risk, and engage with designers who see things differently to ypu, and most of the market, but first you need to get the defenders of the status quo to accept that what makes them uncomfortable is good.
Jan 21, 2010 | Change, Innovation
The Google phone, perhaps “G-phone” is another transformational innovation in this industry driven by the most consistent innovator of the last decade.
The standard business model in the mobile phone industry has been to effectively give the phones away in return for a contracted monthly fee for a period. Consumers have got used to this model, but generally dislike the opaque pricing.
The “G-phone” will be sold from the Google website, without a carrier, each consumer will be able to make their own arrangements. This will change the base of the business model if the Gphone reaches any sort of scale, particularly when a carrier in a market does a deal for Gphone owners based on the opportunity offered by a potentially large group of consumers .
Googles “Kindle” reader is rapidly building penetration, and has recently gone international, and is a huge threat to the existing institutions that inhabit all stages of the book industry. The phone has a similar disruptive potential.
Jan 14, 2010 | Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
Like it or not, “Green” is now mainstream, and the market, not the motley bunch of politicians, bureaucrats, activists, and assorted hangers-on who showed up to the failed Copenhagen party, will determine what happens.
Make no mistake, this is a seismic change in nature of economic activity that is evolving far more rapidly than those who seek to extract “rent” from it can change the rules to effectively charge the rent.
Al Gore fronted “An Inconvenient Truth” the documentary which won two Oscars in 2007 (best documentary, best original song) simultaneously with credible economic and political muscle being put behind the notion of global warming, and the stick was pushed into the ants-nest. Concurrently, Prius was a runaway sales success, Slow food & food miles suddenly emerged, Carbon foot-print became a board issue, and Wal-Mart decreed all products on its shelves would have a carbon score displayed, and the ants were running everywhere.
Smart investment is being funneled into development of sustainable/renewable energy technologies from solar, wind, “clean” coal, and those that use energy are seeking ways to minimise use without compromising productivity.
Under these circumstances, the best thing for the rent-seekers to do is stand back, and try to garner some of the credit when it emerges, as they can have little impact on the technical revolution that is happening around them.
Jan 13, 2010 | Change, Innovation, Leadership
Manufacturing is fundamentally important to a thriving, vibrant economy, and the notion that the economy can evolve and grow based on services alone is nonsense. If we ever needed evidence, just look at the impact of the GFC on the “service” economies compared to those, largely in the developing world, who still rely on manufacturing, or the Australian economy that benefits from the provision of inputs to manufacturing, although we do precious little ourselves.
The reduction in the technical education of our kids is appalling, by default we have accepted that manufacturing is yesterdays way of developing the economy, that there is some logical evolution along a continuum from basic manufacturing of small, cheap imitations through to increasingly complicated manufacturing, and then to services, and this is an inevitable process all economies go through as they evolve and develop.
If you asked China or India what they wanted from you, would they ask for assistance to develop a new financial product, or would they ask for a lend of your engineering expertise?
