lead/marke | ralf schwartz

"What Does it Take to Come Up with a Really Great Idea?"

Via wavesofbarley.

And - most important - but not featured above: No process at all to bind you, to focus you, to give you directions, timings, stripes, and colours. No process at all - just a few simple questions to make you transcend your actual reality, limitations, and horizons.

And - for all you bosses trying to take advantage of the "5% Staying off internet for consecutive 90 minutes!" - no banning of the web, social media or networking sites. No banning of a free flow of information, collaboration, and emotion.

Graeme Lipschitz: A Few Short Ideas on Google+ to Get its Scope

To start early with G+ (and brief your agency accordingly so they do not oversleep like they did with facebook) you should get at least a slight idea of its potential:

- Google Plus and Docs = collaborative publishing on the fly.
- Google Plus and Youtube = exponential video sharing.
- Google Plus and Latitude = Foursquare killer.
- Google Plus and Translate = a true social media Babel fish.
- Google Plus and Sites = Facebook Fan page killer.
- Google Plus and Adwords = a viable, trackable and ROI effective monetisation model for social media.

Read it all at Google+ is the golden ticket to the chocolate factory of social media. Via Nico.

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "Social Fatigue"

(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)

 

With the recent launch of Google+, marketers are excited to have a shiny new social network. Even though brands aren’t technically allowed on Google+ yet, some (like Ford Motor) are setting up personal profiles to get started and the marketing world is buzzing with possibilities.

When thinking about opportunities, it’s important for brands to remember that the message is more important than the media. The quality of the conversation is more important than the quality of the platform.

[L/M NET] Drew Neisser > "What’s the Difference Between Google+ and Carmageddon?"

(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 northbound 405 freeway came to a standstill Sunday afternoon just before Seal Beach.  For the next twenty minutes I worried that Carmageddon was more than just clever name for a traffic jam and I would miss my flight back to New York.  Radio reports said otherwise.  In fact, it was just your run of the mill auto accident, a temporary glitch quickly forgotten.  Arriving at the terminal early, I couldn’t help but wonder if the contrasting hype versus reality of Carmageddon was an appropriate metaphor for Google+ (the new social networking service from Google that hopes to rival Facebook).

The Hype

Killing Innovation with a Gag Order!

(Note for all my German friends reading this blog: A gag order is no command to be funny from now on!)

Killing innovation with a gag order? How come?

Very easy. A muzzle is a muzzle is a muzzle. If there is one gag order there are others. If there is one official gag order there are dozens of informal ones. If there are dozens of informal gag orders people find scissors already in their heads.

Scissors inside our heads imply cutting truth, reality, critique - as long as it takes to please those in power, the CEO, the boss, the media, politicians.

Pleasing the powerful means shutting up at all - just clapping our hands, nodding our heads off.

Shutting up at all implies there will be no new information, no new horizons, no new developments, no change, no progress.

There will be no new directions, no new routes to walk, no parting the ways. No experiments, no risk, no fun.

Please stay away from corporations, parties, and societies where people are shut down. Shutting down the new individuality, independence, and impatience of people implies committing suicide - as a brand, as a corporation, as a party, as a society. And: without sensing your own death.
You will be dead from the inside - no matter how colourful your issued statements are. Killed by silence. Killed by a gag order. Think before you act.

Clients from Hell: How Would You Like Your Graphic Design?

Via clientsfromhell.

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > "Anything You Want" - "Experiment. Go!"

(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)

 

Experimenting is the key to innovation success.

The new book Anything You Want by Derek Sivers is worth a read (there’s tons of information about the book, and some great videos here). The book tells lessons that Sivers learned while running his website CDBaby. My first thought in reading the experiences of one person is “your mileage my vary” – but Sivers makes some excellent points that do generalise, including a couple about experimenting.

One is that whatever business model you have is simply one option of many possible ones.

He tells the story of the voice coach that he had when he was singing in a band. He’d have Sivers sing a song an octave higher, then an octave lower, then fast, slow, like Tom Waits, etc. After doing all of that there was always a choice about the best way to sing each song.

It’s the same for business models. Here is how Sivers puts it:

I’m taking an entrepreneurship class now. I’ve never studied business before.

We analyzed a business plan for a mail-order pantyhose company. Like all business plans, it proposed only one plan.

After reading the whole thing, I felt like saying things my old voice teacher would have said:

• “OK, make a plan that requires only $1000. Go!”
• “Now make a plan for ten times as many customers. Go!”
• “Now do it without a website. Go!”
• “Now make all your initial assumptions wrong, and have it work anyway. Go!”
• “Now show how you would franchise it. Go!”

You can’t pretend there’s only way to do it. Your first idea is just one of many options. No business goes as planned, so make ten radically different plans.

This is good advice for business plans, and it’s good advice for implementing any new idea.

The more ways you work out how an idea might be executed, the more likely it is that you’ll stumble upon a good plan once your idea hits reality.

Remember – every part of a business model is actually a hypothesis. You should figure out how to test each part.

Here’s another bit from the book:

If it's not a hit, switch from Derek Sivers on Vimeo.

 

Watch the whole thing, but here’s the key quote:

We’ve all heard about the importance of persistence, but I had misunderstood.

Success comes from persistently improving and inventing, not from persistently doing what’s not working.

We all have lots of ideas, creations and projects. When you present one to the world, and it’s not a hit, don’t keep pushing it as is. Instead, get back to improving and inventing.

Innovation is about experimenting. This story from Sivers is a story about experimenting – keep trying things to improve them. You show persistence with the experiments, not just by sticking with an idea that’s not working.

“Experiment. Go!”

(ralf says:
I just want you to have a look at that picture/quote.
Keep adjusting, Adjusting is not a weakness, it is a virtue!)

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

1956 BMW Isetta [Design]

Via jstn.

You don't Innovate - You just Variegate!

Thinking about my post Daimler: Celebrating 1000 Years of Incremental Innovation, I thought I should generalize a little bit, to struck you all. You cannot lean back any more by saying, okay it is just cars, sorry.

A marketing innovation is no innovation. A marketing innovation is a one-trick-pony. It betrays customers in the long run. They will walk away from you.

What you call innovation just works in unperfect markets, oligopolies, quasi-monopolies - which you lobbied as competitive to politicians, who do not know better.

The next yoghurt is no innovation. It is a taste flanker. Innovation carries true value for the customer - and exceeds existing ones of course. A faster car is no innovation. A 3-inch longer car is no innovation.

Innovation creates markets. Innovation converges markets. Innovation transcends markets.

Innovation is no wet dream, no idea for idea's sake. Innovation isn't rebate or better placement or shelf space.

Innovation changes the culture of the corporation. Innovation changes the brand positioning, extends the brand core, focusses it to the max, opens it for new customers at the same time.

Innovation reinvents the brand, the culture, the corporation.
Do you still think you innovate?

Kenny Powers becomes CEO of K-Swiss [uncensored Video]

Via geometriques.

[L/M NET] Tom Fishburne > "Evolution of An Idea"

(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)

 

There is a natural selection to ideas. Ideas can be strengthened or weakened, launched or killed outright. Any organization is a Galapagos of ideas in various stages of evolution.

The Survival of the Fittest law applies too, yet what is deemed “fittest” is in the eye of the organization. Very often, “fittest” means “safest”. Those ideas are smaller than the ideas that are originally conceived.

The best ideas are the product of many touches. In an organization, the lone genius is a myth. Instead, there is a synergistic effect where ideas are expanded or tightened, made bigger or made sharper. We all create and we all critique.

The job for someone championing an idea is not to complain when the climate is inhospitable, but instead to keep advancing the evolution of the idea.

The best approach I’ve seen is to get the ideas out of the organization and into the open, as in small stakes in-market tests. As WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg said, “usage is like oxygen for ideas”. The market and the consumer are better judges of “fittest” than we are.

...

Here’s another cartoon I drew five years ago on the Survival of the Safest.

 

(ralf says:
We have to differentiate between real users who search for value and critiques and pundits who try to impress others by giving early insights, judgements, and opinions.
Be careful who you are listening to. As within the company people outside the company also do have their hidden agendas, which will - out of pure egoisms - not support your ideas and innovation.)

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

Porsche 718 RS Spyder (1960) or Quantum Leaps in the Car Industry?

Via form9.

Within 50(!) years nothing really changed. Of course one could remind us of the unique form factor, the eternal beauty, and so on. I accept that. And I appreciate that.

But still running on gasoline? Still polluting the environment like mad? Come on! Cars can do better than that.

In reality they are even worse:
Daimler: Celebrating 1000 Years of Incremental Innovation.

Kevin Kelly’s 6 Words for the Modern Internet

Think about them 6, watch the clip.

1. Screening
2. Interacting
3. Sharing
4. Flowing
5. Accessing
6. Generating

Via wired.

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > Our Job is to Invent the Future, revisited

(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)

 

If we’re trying to innovate, our job is to invent the future. That’s why I was struck by this quote from Ray Kurzweil from a few years ago:

I’m an inventor, and I started looking at long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it was finished, not the world in which it started.

This short quote hits on several important points:

• We have to be thinking about the future because innovation always takes much longer than we expect it to: innovation is a three part process – idea generation, idea selection and execution, and idea diffusion. In particular, idea execution can often take a (very!) long time, as can idea diffusion.
• Innovation requires vision: the first part of the process, idea generation, requires vision. While there is often an overemphasis on ideation, innovation does always start with a great idea.

  

• We need a methodology for thinking about the future: one way or another, we need to think about where the world is heading. There are many ways to do this. We can make sure that in addition to tending to our core business, we also spend some time finding out what is going on out on the edges. We can use collaborative methods, as outlined in The Open Foresighting project (that link is to Venessa Miemis’ blog – go there and scroll down to the Futures Thinking links in the right column for more great resources in this area). We can use scenario planning – here is a recent version discussed on The Long Now Blog, another good resource. We can extrapolate based on what’s going on today.

In reality, we probably need to undertake a combination of all of these techniques. And just as importantly, we have to combine thinking about the future with a culture of experimentation. It’s experimenting that ensures that we are finding ideas that will actually work.

Our job is to invent the future, and to do that, first we have to formulate a good idea of what the future should be.

(ralf says:
It often also makes sense to look at 3 groups of people: 01 kids, and what they love to do - 02 most admired companies - like Apple, Google, Twitter - of the world, and where they are heading - 03 politicians, and what they are prohibiting. This will give you a multi-dimensional picture of the future.

You just have to be better than that.)

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

"Brands are no Longer the Destination - The Customer is!"

"Brands reluctant to do the hard work of defining what they stand for and integrating that within their organization, or brands that mistakes social technology as an end in itself rather than as tools to connect people emotionally, run the very real risk of becoming invisible and obsolete.

Put simply, brands must accept that they are no longer the destination. Their customer is.

...

Brands are facing a new competitive landscape in which self-definition, core values and purpose will increasingly define their ability to reach customers that only allow what is meaningful in their lives to pass through their filter."

Simon Mainwaring, What Google+ Means for Brands

Can't tell you often enough, that in this new world of maximized human individuality, independence, and impatience, you will have to Plug & Play to Win-Win!

See the mistake in the below picture? Think about it - and: Do not follow that route!

Via workman.

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > What’s Your Skype?

(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)

 

In his latest book Macrowikinomics, Don Tapscott (along with Anthony Williams) argues that there are two types of business models in existence today: those that have been disrupted by the internet, and those that are waiting to be disrupted by the internet (summarised in an article from the Wall Street Journal).

I’m not 100% convinced that this is true, but I think that there is great value in acting as though it is.

Here’s an example – take a look at this graph (from TeleGeography):

It shows the annual growth in minutes of international phone calls made over regular phone lines, versus those made on Skype.

Skype was founded in 2003, and almost instantly it was heralded as the death of long distance. It hasn’t been yet (although it has been in my household). However, the graph shows that it took close to eight years for Skype to really start biting into the market share of the traditional telcos.

Like I’ve said before, it takes a lot longer for a new idea to spread than we expect. What happens while this delayed diffusion takes place?

First, there are a lot of inflated claims made about the impact of the new idea. Then it takes longer to diffuse than expected, and everyone that should be worried about it is able to decide that it isn’t a threat after all. Eventually, the new idea either dies out (think Friendfeed), or takes off (think Skype) – but usually much later than expected. When these new ideas do take off, they often seem to take by surprise those operating business models that are disrupted by these ideas.

That’s why I think that it is very important for you to think about your business model, and ask: What’s my Skype?

Thinking about this question now will give you a few advantages:

• Planning for disruption means it won’t take you by surprise when it arrives: by giving some thought to what might disrupt your current business model, it gives you some time to react to these threats.
• Even if you don’t pick the exact idea that disrupts your business model, it’s good practice to think about what could do so: you might not be able to pick the exact idea that will disrupt your current business model. However, giving some thought to what could will help you be flexible in planning for change, and for thinking about scenarios that will help you cope with this change.
• Building this flexible thinking will help you maintain a balanced innovation portfolio: to be successful over the long term, you need to divide your innovation efforts across both ideas that will make you better at what you’re currently doing, and ideas that will disrupt whatever you’re currently doing. You don’t need to invest equal amounts into both types of innovation, but you need to be thinking about both.

Your Skype may not be out there yet. If not, great – you can work on inventing it yourself. If so, thinking about it now, and thinking about how you can respond to the changes it will instigate can be extremely valuable.

 

(ralf says:
If you do not 'believe', what Tim is telling us, please read this more personal story about Skype and Microsoft's Steve Ballmer: Dear Bill, Let Steve Ballmer Pay Skype's $8.5 billion from his Private Assets!

Now rethink the above ;)

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

[L/M NET] Helge Tenno > What makes a great planner - what makes a bad one

(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)

 

What makes a great planner? This is a personal compilation from the last few years of thinking about thinking.

1. We are not explorers, we are inventors
Planning is not excavation, its not digging into the ground to find something that is already there. Its digging into the ground to find something that didn’t exist five minutes ago. Our job is not to copy some affinity brand of the Internet or mumble some top-of-mind conclusion at the end of a standardized strategic process. If you’re not bringing something new to the table, you are wasting a lot of peoples time and money.

2. Nobody’s there to listen to you
Planners are not presenting their insight to show of their own brilliance. Our job is to empower others. If the people at the other end can’t make something useful with an insight, then we shouldn’t waste their time presenting it.

My old photography teacher used to say “half the job is editing the pictures”. Planners should spend more time editing and reshaping their insight and strategies. We need to be constantly thinking: “how is this useful for the people at the other end?”.

3. Respect
I’ve sat through planner get-togethers with people more full of themselves than a newly poured stout. Planners are not the most important people in the room, they are not excellent, they do not belong in every part of the creative process. A planner is an integrated team player, understanding that the job is to make the next ones down the food chain as brilliant as possible, and know when to get out of the way.

4. Companies compromise, customers don’t
Its easy to create strategies for companies; its a handful of people in a room wanting an answer that’s good enough for senior management to approve. Companies are political, they compromise, they make boxes with rounded corners. Customers on the other hand don’t compromise they don’t have the time. They either notice you or they don’t.

For them the product is a bar of chocolate – not the reason for waking up in the morning.

Designing strategies for people who give you a split second is completely different from designing strategies for people who will spend months tinkering on every word and possible meaning.

5. Listen
I’ve hear planners are essentially curious people, they listen – a lot, because they are more interested in other peoples wisdom than their own.

6. You don’t have format
How often is the delivery in the shape of a brief and/or a Powerpoint? We are stuck in old formats. The way we communicate our knowledge and insight is as important as editing the content. Powerpoint is a lazy man/womans tool. And take note next time; it’s never the facts that ignite the audience – it’s the stories you tell. Planners need to get better at storytelling, at analogies – and stop lazing over their powerpoints.

7. You’re job is to minimize risk, not enable it
Risk and guts are often cited as key ingredients to a successful creative process. I couldn’t disagree more. Risk is about uncertainty, it’s about not having the answers that gives the client the confidence they need to see that the “riskiest” option is the safest option. Clients shouldn’t need to take risks, and we shouldn’t demand it.

8. Nuanced
Nothing is black or white, we don’t shower in hot or cold water. The world is nuanced. When do we include nuance in our work, and when do we ignore it?

(ralf says:
Every APG (eg: apgd) should copy that!)

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

[L/M NET] Tim Kastelle > There Are No Innovation Shortcuts

(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)

 

Three things that caught my eye yesterday:

1. An excellent post by Helen Walters, which included this section:
   

   “The innovation shortcut is yours for the taking.”
   —
   This quote, from Gabor George Burt’s piece Why the Best Innovations Are About Relevance, Not Invention is the kind of statement to make blood run cold. Promising the earth and underplaying the difficult, time-consuming reality of innovation work is more than unhelpful. There’s no such thing as an “innovation shortcut” and promising one is unrealistic.

   Walters then addresses some of the good points that Burt makes, but her main issue here is correct - there are no shortcuts to innovation.

2. In the daily barrage of spam comments, there are always ones linking to sites with titles like “Buy Facebook Likes” and many about Search Engine Optimization. These, again, are shortcuts, and they work as well as any other shortcut. In other words, they don’t work at all.
3. Mindy McAdams wrote an interesting post called Branding: Should journalists build a personal brand? which includes her response to a quote from Gene Weingarten in the Washington Post:
   

   “Now, the first goal seems to be self-promotion — the fame part, the “brand.” That’s because we know that, in this frenetic fight for eyeballs at all costs, the attribute that is most rewarded is screeching ubiquity, not talent.”

   It’s very important that new or would-be journalists take Weingarten’s point to heart. There won’t be anything to be branded unless you have some substance to market, and that means much more than a talent for writing glibly. Lots of people have such a talent. Many of them spend their lives writing for an audience of one.

   “The work” is just that - work - and as part of the work, you have to get off Facebook and go outside and speak to real live people. You have to read, widely and voraciously. You have to be curious about those who live in skins other than your own. You have to learn what makes a good story and how to tell a good story well.

Walters and McAdams both make the point that at the bottom, success is built on working hard, creating substance, and meeting the needs of people. This is what you have to do to innovate.

You can’t find an innovation shortcut by discovering a new source of great ideas. You have to do the work to figure out how to make the idea real, and to find a way to get the idea to spread.

Search engine optimization doesn’t do you any good if the search engines don’t point to something of substance - you have to do the work of creating something worth searching for.

You can’t create a personal brand out of nothing. You have to do the work to make something before promoting it does any good.

It’s not about your great ideas. Innovation is about executing your great ideas to create value.

You have to do the work first.

(ralf says:
Even worse, for some 'innovators': an innovation not working in the market, not selling, not being adopted by the people, not successful, is no innovation at all!

And: an innovation NOT disrupting the market is no innovation at all!

You may tell that to all your ingenious engineers, your marketing stars, your social media consultants...)

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

Venice: Selling-off a City Brand

Last week I have been in Venice again. Venice is drowning, not just in the sea, but sinking into tourists, going under in commercialism - and its own greed.

On our last day we saw this poster in the historical (and at the same time tourist) center of the city (photo by me):

Venice is killing its own brand, positioning, heritage by every new commercial venture - and designer brands is only the latest commercial idea.

The new Venice is a Disney Land where tourists and commercials took over culture and art. Mediocracy has taken over.

And they ridicule at the city's forefathers:

In its zenith the city of Venice has been portraied by many well known artists - and always as a young, strong and beautiful women:

Via wikipedia.

Today, as you can see in the first picture, Venice is portrayed as a young lady, too. Offering the last she has to offer: bargains, rebates, sales, to attract the masses.

No more power, courage, and self-confidence, she is sacrificing herself on the altar of mass tourism and its pitfalls. Neglecting any distinction, personality, and character. Falling prey to mere mammon - even accelerating the vicious circle of her own ruin.

Quite a sad story ...