lead/marke | ralf schwartz

Thoughtful China: Interview Nigel Harris, Ford VP, China Distribution Operations

"Mr. Harris answered questions about Ford’s business in China, his predictions for car sales in China this year, training and human resource issues, the unique challenges facing multinational auto makers in China’s car market and the importance of friends and family in car-buying decisions. He also addressed the role of digital media in auto marketing, his favorite Chinese websites and social media tactics for Ford’s advertising and the rise of e-commerce and group-buying in China."

 
Source: Thoughtful China Newsletter

What Your CRM Might Learn from Monterey Bay Aquarium

I know, I know: What might we possibly learn from an aquarium? We are the consumer brands, we are the experts, the gurus, we have seen it all. We understand, we transcend. We inspire - not that Monterey Bay Aquarium.

All wrong!

First of all the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a fantastic place to be - not just because of its animals, architecture, and surrounding, but because of its caring wo/men, because of all those people sharing a vision and a spirit. Because of the culture you feel immediately when talking to any person being employed or volunteering time and resource there.

And this is the base you desperately need. Because: First of all you need every single one to truly live the brand, the positioning, image, and personality. All else follows!

Secondly the aquarium is a brand you can walk into! Think about that, please.

Thirdly, the learning (now, after you know a little bit more about the Aquarium):

I just received a mail from Monterey Bay Aquarium titled: "Do you still want to hear from us?" And how could you connect better than with that ref.?
There they say: "It looks like you no longer open our emails and we want to make sure that we’re up-to-date with your preferences for hearing from us".

Everybody today knows, that their emails are opened or not, etc. - but who takes any action? Who directly addresses the issue by asking the only person in charge and able to change that behaviour - the addressee? Monterey Bay Aquarium does!

A small step - but I liked it very much due to the common sense behind it.

Even better - and I do not just like but truly love that: "If we don’t hear from you by Wednesday, January 25 (by taking one of the actions above), your email address will be removed from our mailing list".

Ain't that just great? Monterey Bay Aquarium volunteers to reduce my email volume. Ain't that true altruism?

Of course I stayed, renewed my email, even changed my good opinion about Monterey Bay Aquarium to better resp. great.

Mission accomplished, or?

Now you may pay your CRM people a visit!
The tiny small steps do make all the difference. 

Source: Screenshot Monterey Bay Aquarium

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > "Eight Business Models, and Why They’re Important"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

The term Business Model is one that gets thrown around a lot these days. Even though it might sound like a buzzword to you, it’s important to understand what a business model is, and how they are useful.

One of the confusing things about the business model concept is that there are a wide variety of models of business models, and it seems as though everyone that talks about them makes up a new one. This can be frustrating if you are trying to figure out how to use the concept.

At their core, all business models address this questions: how do we sustainably deliver value to our customers? In this instance, the sustainable part refers to your organisation – how can you deliver value so that you’re still around in the future?

In a special issue of the journal Long Range Planning, Charles Baden-Fuller and Mary Morgan say that business models can serve three different purposes. They can describe different kinds and types of businesses. This is critical if we are trying to study them analytically. They can be short-hand descriptions of how firms operate – the primary value here is that you can use the business model to ensure that you have strategic fit across activities. Or they can be role models – you can use them to describe how you want your organisation to function.

More recently, Steve Blank has added another use – he says that business models are hypotheses about how your organisation might be able to create value for customers (see my discussion of this here).

To help illustrate some of the important points about business models, here are some of the models of business models that I’ve run across. The list isn’t comprehensive, so I apologise to anyone that I’ve forgotten – it’s simply due to my ignorance.

1. Value Networks from Verna Allee: Verna was working with some of the basic concepts of business models in the 90s. One of the tools that she developed is Value Network Mapping:

   

   Key points: value creation and exchange is at the core of understanding business models. You need to clearly articulate how you create value, and for whom. The other key point here is that value isn’t just about money. You can also create and exchange intangible value. You can see her latest work here in her book Value Networks and the True Nature of Collaboration.

2. Henry Chesbrough: described business models in an article with Richard Rosenbloom and in his book Open Innovation. Here is what his business model looks like:

   

   Key points: new innovations often require new business models. This is where the idea of business model innovation really started to gain traction. Chesbrough didn’t just describe business models, he also discussed how changing a business model can be an innovation just by itself. I’m beginning to suspect that all new innovations require new business models…

3. Strategy Diamond: this is a strategy tool developed by Hambrick & Fredrickson. They talk about the importance of having an integrated strategy, which looks like this:

   

   Key points: the first key point here is that a good business model is integrated. All of the elements need to be consistent with and support the others. If you change one element, it’s likely that you’ll need to change all of them. Second, this model illustrates how closely linked strategy and business models are. When you design a business model, you can’t do it without clearly articulating a strategy.

4. Patrick Staehler: wrote a PhD called Business Models in the Digital Economy that was published in 2001.His business model looks like this:

   

   Key points: the thing I like best about Staehler’s model are the three bottom boxes: Leadership Style, Relationship Style and Values. Think about that in relation to the point above about integration. If you change the relationship style within your organisation, you’ll likely need to change the rest of your business model as well. Furthermore, this business model innovation could be a source of competitive advantage. This is a very powerful point.

5. Business Model Canvas: around the same time that Staehler was writing his PhD on business models, Alex Osterwalder as also writing a PhD on business model innovation. He developed a tool called the Business Model Canvas. He has subsequently published a book called Business Model Generation, which is all over the place now, along with a number of other analytical tools. Here is his version, as modified by Steve Blank:

   

   Key points: this is where the business model concept has started to go mainstream – it’s astonishing how well this version of business models is doing right now. Osterwalder has done a great job of promoting the idea, and making it genuinely useful. This version of business models proves that it is a practical tool that you can use to figure out where your organisation should be heading.

6. Long Range Planning: the special issue mentioned above makes a couple of important contributions. There is a new model of business models in the paper by David Teece, but it is more of a model to use in description if you are trying to study these academically. It’s not really one that you could use very easily within a firm for analysis.

   Key points: the issue with the Teece model illustrates the point that Baden-Fuller and Morgan make about the different uses of the business model concept. Teece’s model is designed solely for description/classification. So you can run into approaches for business models that aren’t as practical. The second point in the special issue is this: about 2/3 of businesses surveyed in one of the papers can’t articulate what their business model really is. This is alarming. It also raises the point that every organisation has a business model, whether you have consciously thought about it or not. If you’re trying to develop business strategy, it is essential to actually give this some thought.

7. Seizing the White Space: Mark Johnson works with Clayton Christensen, and Johnson’s book from last year has another model of business models. The website has a bunch of useful resources, and the book has some great stories about business model innovation. His model looks like this:

   

   Key points: so now we have models of business models with 4,5,6,9 and 12 components. The same core elements keep turning up. For me, I don’t care which business model version you use, and picking the right one depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. Personally, I like the Chesbrough version because of the emphasis on networks, which I think is critical. On the other hand, the Business Model Canvas is getting easier to use now because of the substantial amount of resources that are building up around it.

   People build their own model for different reasons, but it’s important to understand that they are all trying to find ways to get at essentially the same issues. There isn’t one that is absolutely correct. So pick whichever one resonates the most with you to use.

8. Escape Velocity: the latest book by Geoffrey Moore is fantastic. In it he includes a 9-point Market Strategy Framework, which includes elements like Target Customer, Compelling Reason to Buy, Partners and Allies, etc. If you look at it, it’s outlining a business model.

   Key points: like I said earlier, any time you start thinking about strategy, you’re thinking about business models. So even frameworks that aren’t being put forward as business models really are business models.

Business models are important. They are an important tool that can be used to augment product and service innovations, to link innovation to strategy, to co-ordinate activities within an organisation, and they can be a source of innovation as well.

There are many models of business models out there. You can use whichever makes the most sense to you. But it’s important to use one.

(ralf says:
Your thoughts about your business and your business model should start with transcending the exististing or traditional market.

Markets are prejudices, too many great innovations fall prey to much too narrow market models. And - au contraire - the most successful innovations did create new markets or transcended existing ones.
Ideally an innovation equals a new market definition.

The following chart should just give you an idea on the direction in which you might transcend a traditional market (definition):

Find a bigger version of this chart after the click.

This is important because:

"Digitalization, the web, and mobility maximize human's individuality, independence, and impatience with unprecedented power.

Many businesses are trapped in their old beliefs and yesterday's successes - too much did they invest in now obsolete concepts and structures.

But human's new individuality, independence, and impatience may only be anticipated with courageous entrepreneurial independence, brilliance, relevance.

The corporate minds must outgrow themselves! To add value to the corporation again they will have to create true solutions, virtues & values for the individual." - leadmarke

Just think about the philosophy, you do not have to use it.

And think about the last lines - isn't 'creating true solutions, virtues & values for the individual' the best business model there is?)

Tim is a lecturer at The University of Queensland Business School. He researches, writes, teaches and consults on topics relating to effective innovation management, with an emphasis on studying innovation networks. He blogs at The Innovation Leadership Network. Twitter: @timkastelle

Porter's 5Forces, and What They Mean Today

Michael Porter, Adaptivity, and Digital Strategy

View more presentations from John Winterkorn

Via Neil Perkin.

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > Product Proliferation or "Category Management should include Clarity Management"

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

Some brands are line extension machines. To jockey for shelf space, they launch waves of new SKUs each year, often without meaningful differentiation from what is already there.

I’m sure there are category management justifications for every niche item, but most supermarket shelves are cluttered and hard to shop. Does Crest really need 40 varieties of toothpaste? Clutter causes confusion and confusion causes paralysis.

I love the refreshing simplicity of Help Remedies. I first spotted the healthcare brand at Duane Reade a couple years ago. Against the clutter of a typical drugstore aisle, they stand out.

Help’s rally cry campaign is “Take Less”: “Everybody in the drug aisle likes to talk about more, bigger, extra, super, and maximum. But we’re not going to talk about that … Help is a new type of drug company—a drug company that promises you less.”

I’d love to see the “Take Less” philosophy in more categories. Category management should include more clarity management.

As HBS professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter observed, “When everyone else suffers from over-complexity, there is a market for products and services that simplify life.”

(Marketoonist Monday: I’m giving away a signed print of this week’s cartoon. Just share an insightful comment to this week’s post. I’ll pick one comment by 5:00 PST on Tuesday. Thanks!)

After drawing this, I remembered I drew a similar cartoon back in 2003, Flanker Madness. Here’s one from the archives.

(ralf says:
Tom mentioning Crest reminds me of my own tooth paste & brush history at GlaxoSmithKline (I was responsible for media strategy not product strategy).

Flanker sometimes make sense, but to do it right is the most difficult to do. If you do not know the benefits of a brush, or your consumers, and their problems, you will fail.

Exaggerations do not make sense at all - which eventually led to my comparison of the brushes' history with that of sneakers: they grew from the most basic tools to some fashionista's gadgets. But the best were still the plain ones (which in the sneakers case we love as 'retro' or 'originals' today.), I guess. Best in the sense of effectiveness, not sales. The best in the sense of product life cycle and profit contribution. Some of them exist even 15 or 20 years later.

"Take less" is my favorite philosophy.

Tom is cartoonist and founder of Marketoonist, helping organizations communicate with cartoons. He draws from 16yrs of marketing, most recently as Marketing VP at method. He speaks about innovation, creativity, and marketing, using cartoons to visualize. @tomfishburne

Apple's new patent: Fuel Cell System to Power a Portable Computing Device

Via jesuisperdu.

"[According to the Telegraph newspaper, tech giant Apple have just filed for patents which could result in some massive technological advances. From the looks of it, the patents will allow Apple devices to be powered by hydrogen, meaning they could go for weeks without charging. Named “Fuel Cell System to Power a Portable Computing Device” and “Fuel Cell System Coupled to a Portable Computing Device”, these patents are essentially the same technology used by satellites to remain charged and powered. Apple released the below statement with the filings:

“Our country’s continuing reliance on fossil fuels has forced our government to maintain complicated political and military relationships with unstable governments in the Middle East, and has also exposed our coastlines and our citizens to the associated hazards of offshore drilling.]

[via HUH.]"

Best Damn Christmas Ever!

Via thisisnthappiness.

May All Your Wishes Come True!
Thx for following. See You next Year.
ralf 

Unendliche Dummheit - Geht Kopieren über Innovieren?

(Note: This is a post for The Third Club)

In 'Edge'*, meiner Lieblings-Publikation, las ich gerade folgendes Zitat. Ich möchte es hier als Gedankenanstoß wiedergeben, als Aufforderung, es kritisch zu hinterfragen, nicht zuletzt weil sich die Reflexionen des The Third Club auch um die Beobachtung immer seltener werdender Innovation drehen:

"A tiny number of ideas can go a long way, as we've seen. And the Internet makes that more and more likely.

What's happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we're being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet.

We're being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by.

And so, in the cold calculus of evolution by natural selection, at no greater time in history than ever before, copiers are probably doing better than innovators. Because innovation is extraordinarily hard.

My worry is that we could be moving in that direction, towards becoming more and more sort of docile copiers." - Mark Pagel, Edge

> Dass Facebook und Google dumm machen sollen, hat man ja schon öfter gehört. Verallgemeinerungen, die einem wenig helfen. Was aber ist mit dem Netz als Ganzem? Erzieht es zur Kopie? Verleitet es zur Kopie?

... bitte bei The Third Club weiterlesen ...

 

* Edge: "To arrive at the edge of the world's knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together, and have them ask each other the questions they are asking themselves." Eigendefinition Edge

 

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno "Simple (part 2 of The next 80%)

(L/M NET: the blogged experience & expertise of some of the best minds in Innovation, Brand Engagement, Communication Agility:
Tom - Tim - Konstantin - Helge - Drew - Charles - Anthony - Adrian)

 

The reason large parts of the corporate Internet is boring, difficult and of little direct use / effect is because we are unnecessarily complicating it. The Internet should be one thing: simple.

This is the second part of my presentation The next 80%, find the first part here:
Part 1: Introduction

 

.

Let me demonstrate with a couple of examples how even minute tasks get unnecessarily complicated online.

Example A:
Comoyo is an Internet based content service. The first thing that happens as I fill in the form is that it refuses the password that I use on 95% of all my Internet accounts. Why would you do that? Why would you start of by inviting people to a service they don’t know what is, offer them a log in and the first thing you do is just crash the whole process? If the system is to complex then redesign the system. We are putting to much of the responsibility on to people, instead of IT.

Example B:
This is the beta version of my Internet bank, the picture is from a sneak preview they offered their customers. Now, I have a bank because I need help doing bank-things. Most often (95% of the time) this means checking my account or paying some bills. The best thing the bank can do is offer me a service that makes banking better. But they don’t. Approximately 15% of the interface is spent on banking, the rest of it is navigation, CRM or a media platform that wants to sell me stuff I don’t need. They give me everything except the actual banking service that I should be demanding (people are just to polite and don’t know that their experiences are being robbed online. In the words of Richard Saul Wurman, the creator of TED: “I would have designed a much better Google interface, it’s not difficult.”).

Now, the reason the Internet isn’t simple, is because of technology. We are treating online as something complicated, something that doesn’t work, something we don’t understand. – And my question is: how much do we really need to understand?

Take a look at other pieces of technology: bread, asphalt, language, bicycle, chairs, door knobs. Now do you think about these things as technology? They work and they are, no questions asked. But this is not the case with the Internet, why?

Understanding the nuts and bolts of the Internet is as important to a business as understanding the complexities of the mechanics that goes on inside the door when we twist the door nob.

Unfortunately the fog of technology diffuses the process of building something meaningful by trivializing the discussions and spending to much time focusing on irrelevant details. When we think of the Internet we are not thinking business models, identity and brand value. We are thinking users (what is a user?), HTML5, responsive design (why would you offer the same service in every situation?), apps or clicks.

The Internet is fascinatingly simple, if we just stop referencing it as technology and start thinking of it as a loaf of bread – because our customers already are.

(ralf says:
All those gurus out there are very deep into the technologies and secrets of the internet. But they cannot transcend the easiest mechanics of it.

To the opposite of my father I never wanted to understand a radio, a television set or loudspeakers. And he was limited by that understanding. He always told me that small speakers cannot - due to the laws of physics - create deep sounds. But they can these days. I showed him. He said: No they can't. They just sound like they can.

We are in the very early stages of the web. We have to get it out of our way. We have to understand that it is not important to understand it. We do not have to understand oxygen to understand that we have to breath. We even do not have to understand that we have to breath. We just do.

We just have to take care of the web's independence, its neutrality, and ubiquity. We must take care that politicians do not sell it to corporations like they did with our water systems and resources ... as simple as that.

The more simple a medium (in McLuhan's sense) is the more precious it will be for us and our future.)

Helge works as a Planner for SDG, helping brands and organizations discover WHY they are valuable in consumers lives, and HOW they can create deliberate value on the arenas and inside the interfaces where they connect with them. Twitter: @congbo

Ross Dawson: "2012: 12 Themes - What to expect in the year ahead"

2012: 12 Themes - What to expect in the year ahead

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