Why Aren’t You More Successful?

A friend of mine is a fantastic freelance writer.  After telling her how great she is, she asked, “So if I’m that good, how come I’m not working now?  Tough market out there.”

Yes, it is a tough market.  But I suspect that is not the reason she can’t find work.  She has fallen into the trap of believing that being good is good enough.  It’s not.

I often tell other professional speakers… “We are not in the speaking business, we are in the marketing business.”  Or maybe more accurately, we are in the marketing and innovation business.

The late, great Peter Drucker once said, “You get paid for creating a customer, and you get paid for creating a new dimension of performance, which is innovation. Everything else is a cost center.”

His perspective is brilliant.  I particularly love that his definition of innovation is not focused on creating new products but rather on “creating a new dimension of performance.”

If your business is not as successful as you would like, maybe you need to focus more on marketing and innovation.

Innovation Articles I am Reading

Today, I am catching up on some bookmarked innovation articles.  I will provide commentary on these in the near future.

Does Obama Need a Department of Innovation? (NYT)

Innovation at Kraft (USA Today)

Electric Car Innovation is Not Coming Out of Detroit (NYT)

Why Movies Disappear from iTunes and Netflix (Wired)

Innovation for Hard Times (Business Week)

Is Einstein the Last Genius? (Yahoo/Live Science)

Making Your Products/Services Affordable and Accessible

One of my last blog entries discussed the need to create affordable and accessible solutions as a way of staying competitive. Given  globalization, cheap labor, and a damanged economy, this makes more sense than ever.

Here are three starter questions to ask to help you generate new ideas:

How can you productize a service? One way to make a service more affordable and accessible is to turn it into a physical or digital product; something that requires little or no human intervention. In my earlier entry, I talked about Cybersettle automating insurance claims processing. My Innovation Personality Poker enables people to recreate one of my most popular speeches/workshops. Self-assessment tools can reduce reliance on consultants. Remote diagnostic technologies can speed medical exams and pre-qualify patients before they come to the doctor. Legalzoom.com offers affordable legal advice for people who might otherwise not seek counsel. TurboTax simplifies tax filing. Experts convert their intellectual property into books, mp3s, DVDs, digitally delivered training (including eLearning) systems, or online databases. The possibilities are endless.

How can you offer a low-cost product/service? In an earlier blog entry, I quoted Antoine de Saint-Exupery, author of The Little Prince, who once said, “Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add but when there is no longer anything to take away.” I love that.  Ask, “Why are people really using our products/services and what are the bare minimum ways of delivering the desired outcome?” $300 netbooks are stripped down computers because most people want to do word processing and surf the net. Tata is offering a $2,000 car in India (ok, maybe that is a bit too scaled down). Ernst & Young Consulting (now Cap Gemini) once offered a subscription service, Ernie, which provided small businesses with a low-cost alternative to high priced consulting. Dow Corning, the maker of silicone-based products, created Xiameter, an internet-based division that sells product only in bulk… with no call centers.  Which features, services, or qualities can be reduced in order to tap into a new market?

How can I make my product addictive? Drug dealers know that if you get someone hooked on your product, they will come back to buy more. This strategy can be useful for attracting – and retaining – customers. Last month I spoke with the CEOs of three software companies. The one strategy that was pertinent to all three was the development of a stripped down version of the software…and potentially offering it for free. The idea is to get the customer hooked and using the software on a regular basis. Then as the customer’s needs grow, they will need to upgrade (note: this is not the same thing as offering something free today and then charging in the future). I worked with a major computer manufacturer many years ago where this concept was applied. Their flagship computer was (let’s call it) the “F” series. But that was too expensive for most companies, so they introduced a much slower and less expensive computer – the “E” series. Interestingly, the two models were 100% identical except a computer chip was added to the “E” to slow it down. The company knew that many customers would eventually want an upgrade, and they simply pulled out the chip and charged an exorbitant fee.

All three of these strategies move your innovation to the left-hand part of the bell curve (above) rather than the right. All three can be used by any company to augment their existing products and services.  The point is to make your “core competency” available to a broader market – without negatively diverting energies.

I will be including more strategies in future blog entries.

Predicting the Next Meltdown

I just got back from over two weeks on the road. I was in and out of five airports. As you go through security, the routine is always the same…

- Take off your shoes
- Take out your liquids
- Take out your computer

Why are we put through these security gymnastics?

On December 22. 2001, Richard Reid was caught with plastic explosives in the soles of his shoes. That’s why we now have to walk barefoot through airports.

On August 9, 2006, two dozen people were arrested in the UK because they were plotting to bring liquid explosives on planes leaving Heathrow airport. Now we have to travel with miniature shampoos, shave creams and toothpastes.

Computers are scanned because, well, that’s the obvious place to look. I guess.

What do these have in common? For the most part, the security scans we now endure were due to cleverness on the part of terrorists. Rarely are we subjected to scans that are due to the cleverness of government agencies.

Are there ways to easily smuggle weapons on planes in spite of our increased security? Of course. Nearly every time I pass through a metal detector, I have metal collar stays in the dress shirt I am wearing. Although the detector never beeps, these could easily have been turned into razor sharp weapons.  Does this mean that next week I will have to travel topless through the airport?  Good thing I have been working out.

Give me 15 minutes and I could rattle off dozens of other, more sinister ways to smuggle weapons on board.

Reactionary Innovation

This is a reactionary approach to business.

The current financial situation also demonstrates a reactionary approach to business. Enron has a meltdown. What should we do? Implement ridiculously stringent rules like the Sarbanes-Oxley act. Our financial institutions start to falter. OK, let’s spend $700 billion of the tax payers’ money to sort out the mess.

I’m not saying that these rules and legislation are good or bad (or ugly). That’s a conversation for another time. But I do find it ironic that the “big ideas” always seem to come in response to some tragedy. They are rarely proactive.

What does this have to do with innovation? Everything.

Most organizations use creativity to help them determine what to do next. They brainstorm ideas, select the best solutions, and then implement the most promising ones. Creativity is used to determine what your company or organization will do next.

Predictive Innovation

But in these rapidly changing times, creativity can be equally (if not more) valuable for determining what the marketplace and your competitors will do next.  Or, if you are the government, it may help determine what your banks and terrorists will do next.

When is the last time you had a brainstorming session where you asked the following questions?

• What are we most afraid our competition will do to us?
• Who is not a competitor now, but might be in the future?
• What shift might happen in the buying habits of our customers that may make our product/service less appealing?
• How can the sagging economy help our business?
• What emerging products or services may make our business irrelevant?

The list of outside-in questions can be endless – and valuable.

In your next brainstorming session, try the following:

• Brainstorm your own list of questions, building on mine above.
• Determine which ones you want to tackle first.
• Brainstorm, using a variety of creativity techniques, to identify “possible” outcomes.
• For those which are deemed plausible, brainstorm a list of “triggers” for each. These are market conditions that tell you that the given scenario is moving from “possible” to “plausible.”
• Set up a corporate “radar” system to help monitor external conditions. Have everything in place such that you can implement critical ideas when market conditions dictate.

This approach blends creativity with scenario-based planning . It helps you move from reactive solutions to proactive solutions. And in today’s volatile world, this might just be the key to your long-term survival.

P.S.  If you want to see where airport security is heading, visit Ryanair’s website.  For adults only.

Remembering Paul Newman

Although I did not know Paul Newman personally, I always admired him.  He was an Academy Award winning actor (I remember being enthralled by “The Sting” as a kid), a championship race car driver, a successful food business man (I love Newman’s Own dressings and salsas) and a philanthropist.

He achieved so much and impacted so many lives.

Did he have plans to do all of this?  I’m sure at some level he must have.  But in a recent AP article, two friends - Robert Forrester and David Horvitz – implied that he was (using my words) a bit more ”goal-free.”

“Even though he was a Hollywood icon…it was a rare moment in which Newman reflected on how he would be remembered after his death,” Horvitz recalled.  “Most of the time he didn’t think about legacy.  He was pretty much in the moment.”

Being in the moment is a cornerstone living goal-free.  Avoiding excessive planning is another cornerstone.

Forrester joked how “such planning wasn’t part of Newman’s nature. A sign famously hangs in Newman’s Westport, Connecticut, offices that reads, ‘If I had a plan I would be screwed.’”

According to the article, Newman “welcomed the opinions of others as he pursued the business and his philanthropic efforts.” Forrester explained how the actor “believed in the benefit of ‘creative chaos,’ where, as in a movie set, different people offer ideas about how a scene should be handled.”

I love this concept.  Everyone has a voice and is valued for their contribution.

And contribution is the one legacy Newman wanted.

He once said that he wanted to be remembered for “the ‘Hole in the Wall’ camps he helped to start across the world for children with life-threatening illnesses and to make sure that 100 percent of the profits from his popular food company, Newman’s Own, would continue to benefit such camps and thousands of other charities.”

To date he has donated over $250 million to charities and has impacted countless lives.

Whether or not Paul Newman lived goal-free is irrelevant.  What is clear is that he lived by high principles.  If we could all live like Paul Newman, the world would be a better place.

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