3 Trends Identified In Fast Company's Top 50 Innovators
Here are a few of the trends that I see that are changing the landscape of the world that we live in as businesses and consumers:
1. Online education is taking the lead on learning. We have seen this trend for some time now. I'm a regular advocate and occasional user of KhanAcademy. Youtube is making it easy for people to share knowledge and learn. My son learned how to play the ukulele from the master, "Ukulele Mike". MIT and a number of other notable schools offer critical engineering courses online. This is good for the consumers, and great for innovative businesses.
2. Marketing and advertising should not be considered simple anymore. Of course, it never was that simple to define the brand, build and execute campaigns well. But the complexity has been multiplied by 100x. This could be considered a negative, but in reality, it's a huge positive for the brand owners and the consumers regardless of whether or not they are selling b2b or b2c. The ad spend can now be tracked like it never has before, and the cost of advertising is dropping for creative and well executed campaigns. BuddyMedia, a marketing firm turned SaaS ad tracker is helping to lead the change. Others, like Red Bull have opted to forge their own path by bringing the creative programming in house, and they are succeeding.
3. New and crazy businesses will continue to appear, and to succeed. Just like Pinterest, Airbnb, and Skillshare, they may at first seem crazy. But eventually, they may just succeed at generating revenue while delivering value. We live in a great world that never stops evolving.
Super Bowl Ads Worthy of Note
I'd have to rank the Bud Light ad as one of my top choices.
However, Chevy Sonic was pretty powerful as well.
Zuckerberg and Karma
So this week is shaping up well, with the "Zuck" leading the news with a dreamy $28B personal stake in Facebook if things go according to plan. Does he deserve it? You decide...though your opinion does not really matter unless you can influence Facebook's stock price in some way. Regardless, it's nice to see such positive news added to a steady stream of solid economic indicators.
Also in the news this week, the Fisker "Karma", my dream car, is finally getting a little respect in the market place with a review on CNN. Ok...it's a little excessive in some ways, but I don't think that anyone could not like this car. It's a great environmentally responsible piece of engineering, including its humanely raised and environmentally friendly processed leather seats. (Sorry PETA...we're getting there) What is most interesting is the way that this particular reviewer mentions that the Fisker Karma "Matchbox" car has been sitting on his desk for a long time, and he was finally able to drive it. Did Fisker send him the Matchbox car? If so....it was an ingenious marketing ploy aimed at associating their new car with playful fun, expectation, and then finally gratification.
An Easy Way To Explain Your Business Plan
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Self Guided Bullets and Mentoring
I read an interesting snippet in Wired Magazine about self guided bullets today. Although I'm not convinced that this is something that the world needs, or that it will solve more than the chaos that it may create, it did immediately bring to mind the idea of mentoring. Odd you say? Hmmm....maybe not so much.
A self guided bullet knows where it's going and adjusts its direction by following a focused lazer beam that is on the target. Mentoring is the act of providing guidance to an individual, much like a lazer beam, showing the mentee where they should be going and how to get there. The result is that the person is able to achieve their goals sooner, and much more effeciently.
Wisdom and experience has its advantages, and it should be applied at every opportunity. Onboarding new talent, guiding new managers, or helping to prepare an executive to take over the helm of an organzation are just a few examples.
Wilderness Survival Requires Navigation Skills
There are weeks that I look at what I have accomplished, and realize that it's time to adjust my route to the desired destination. As an example, I have been working on product strategy, marketing and sales planning, in addition to taking care of the core business tasks. Most of my time was spent doing what I thought was important, but it yielded very little in terms of the ideal outcomes.
Despite my misguided focus, I actually learned quite a bit. I learned that I need to do more competitive research, talk to more customers, and ensure that we're using the right tools to determine our direction. Peter Drucker , a management thought leader that I hold in high regard, had some powerful questions that help me stay on track in terms of focus and direction.
1. What is our mission?
2. Who is our customer?
3. What does the customer value?
4. What are our results?
5. What is our plan?
Since I have to tackle these issues as a lean organization, rather than a company with the resources available to it like IBM or Boeing, both of which made headlines this week, I need to focus on what is manageable and realistic. Lean Startup principles will be applied. We know what our mission is and think we know what the other answers are. But I will absolutely be taking a deeper look at questions 2 through 5 as I work with our existing customers, and a few future customers.
Let's Refine Teacher's & Create Better Learning Environments
Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger conducted research that lead to the 70/20/10 learning model. The model states that 70% of your learning should come from hands on tasks and real life problem solving. 20% of your experience should come from feedback and observing good and bad examples. And finally, 10% should come from courses and learning.
The world of learning and development has progressed significantly in terms of adopting this model, and Kahn Academy is helping. It's not just because they are making the 10% of the learning process, courses, readily available on a variety of topics. It's because they have shown how easy it is to make this information available at such a low cost. A simple youtube video at the hands of a good teacher, combined with a searchable and indexed format in which to post the educational content, results in a small investment making a huge impact.
- Free learning for the masses
- Easily accessible learning for your customers
- Rich educational content for your employees and partners
Combine these great videos with the latest in audio to text translation tools, or audio search tools, and the sky is the limit.
Microsoft and others have been providing these types of tools for a long time, and like Kahn Academy, are always incorporating more hands on tools to cover the 70/20. But there is so much room for improvement, innovation and growth. I expect to see the education, learning and development market change dramatically over the next few years. The result will be incumbent businesses disappearing in the wake of those that take the lead as innovators, old or new.
As for the learning environments, I predict that more online tools will play a key role connecting people to hands on tasks for businesses and non profits, as well as mentors that can provide valuable feedback.
Cain, Paterno, Employers, and Other People You Trust
Bernie Madoff may not have veered from his ideal at all. I don't believe that he is capable of feeling the way that you, me and most other people do. We all know people that have done things that others consider wildly inappropriate, and yet they don't think it's wrong at all. Or at least that's the impression that they leave. Which brings me back to a key observation. Humans are wired differently.
We have 7 Billion+ humans on the earth today according to the United Nations Population Fund. That means 7 billion+ unique personality types, many of which have a very different view of what honesty, integrity and ethics means. As an example, I remember working with an executive at a firm that thought nothing of violating confidentiality agreements and stealing intellectual property. He and I stood on such different ground in that regard, that it was important for me to avoid working with him. Interestingly, people liked him because of his personality. People can get away with a lot, until they're caught. Sandusky is a good example.
In today's global economy, integrity is everything when it comes to long term success. Customer's want to buy from people that they trust, and can get the job done well. Having been a customer of Bank of America, I knew that they were heading down the wrong path when they "accidentally" switched my account to a split account with new add on fees without my approval. That was about 8 years ago. Based on the recent law suit that they settled, it's evident that they have continued to play shell games with their customers.
Business success depends on honesty, integrity and ethics, and it comes down to three elements: a. promise only what you can deliver b. deliver what you promise and c. do it fairly.
Modern Marketing
I remember working with my product and technology team back in the late 1990's on our latest technology products that served both the B2B and the B2C markets. We were successful because we understood early on that you needed to understand why people used your product, and how they used your product. What was the job to be done. We used the latest in web site user heat mapping and talked to customers to understand how they looked at our tools, and what they thought was important. That impacted how we communicated with them, as well as our overall systems design and flow.
Our marketing reach was global, spanning multiple countries, with millions of users. In these early days, we were so good at tracking our campaign results, including views, clicks, sign ups, referrals, buys, customer successes, that I had grand visions of a world that was dominated by tracked human behavior. The 90's were exciting, but I never imagined how far we would come. I'm impressed to say the least. I just wish that social media marketing was easier to track and report on. Hubspot, Hootsuite and a hundred other products are out there and available, but they still need work. In the mean time, it's a very manual slog in terms of compiling meaningful data from multiple sources from your full campaign.
Sometimes I miss the old days of print, television, radio, field deployments, partners, billboards and displays. It may not have been efficient, but it was certainly easier in terms of marketing. On the other hand, despite my comments, I love the new tools when they're mixed with the old school tools that are effective. When social media is combined with a broader set of the marketing channels, the impact and long term connection with the customers is unmatched.
Eli Lilly and Borders Bookstore Have Things in Common
Innovation seems to be sprinkled into most business and product discussions these days. It’s expected, particularly in an economy that is driven by global competition, the ability of competitors to duplicate products rapidly, price wars, and trying to get and keep the attention of the 7 billion prospective customers that are roaming the earth. Another reason it’s hot, is that entire industries and businesses have been wiped out, or have the potential to be wiped out by innovations. A quick look at the recent history of Borders bookstore, Blockbuster video, or even Eli Lilly’s loss of the patent for Zyprexa, and it’s clear that innovations can change the universe, and effectively crush businesses that are not able to stay ahead of the product curve.
Amazon.com, iTunes.com and even Netflix.com showed how innovation can change the world, and simultaneously stamp the life out of the incumbent businesses. Although I have to mention that execution still counts, because Netflix and Bank of America seem to have forgotten that customers are neither stupid nor patient when it comes to how they are treated. We’ll see how that turns out. The point is that innovation is important.
Innovation does not just happen in startups, hence the mention of Eli Lilly. Innovation is what created Zyprexa, their top selling anti-psychotic drug. Startups do tend to be better at creating new products because they are not caught up in the day to day operations that keep them from thinking more creatively. That’s why the Eli Lilly’s of the world like to acquire innovations that were created by startups. These large organizations are embracing it though, and I expect to see a lot more highly structured innovation teams living within their walls. The benefits, such as owning patents, minimizing costs, and maximizing profits, are too great for them not to at least try. Patent troll firms like Intellectual Ventures are driving a different type of behavior in the market by buying patents from inventors, and using questionable tactics to extract money from people that use the technologies. This will undoubtedly drive similar behavior by other businesses just to stay competitive. My gut tells me that this will benefit very few, and the rest of the market will suffer for it. That’s a subject for another day.
