Leadership insight: study air guitar!

My blog posting ten days ago (a "Memo to the CEO") stirred up quite a bit of interest and response. In the item, I noted that the most important thing CEO's "can do *right now*, as you work to navigate your way through the challenging economic shoals that surround you, is to make sure that you don't kill innovation in its tracks.

A few readers asked, "ok, so what do we do to ensure we keep innovating?" I had an teleconference with a client today, planning for an upcoming leadership event. Here's what I came away from the call with -- my ideas on bringing some focus to their innovation mindset -- based upon the rapid market change they are encountering:

• Study air guitar: there's innovation, and then there's market transformation. While Sony and Microsoft spent their time developing a faster video game machine, Nintendo transformed the video game marketplace with the Wii by introducing wireless 3-d spatial action to video gaming. That helped to refresh enthusiasm for the already-popular GuitarHero game -- since people could now do wireless GuitarHero. An entire generation of baby-boomers who mastered air guitar in the 70's who could never figure out an X-Box controller -- are now video game customers! Search YouTube for grannies playing Guitar Hero, and you'll see the results organization that has taken innovation to the next step! Not just innovation, but transformation.
  
• Energize your brand. If your brand looks tired, your customers will see it as tired. Once that happens, you'll start to lose all the equity you've built up. Brands today need to be full of energy; I spent time with a company6 last week that is re-approaching the world of brand-image with enthusiasm and passion. There was a lot of energy, and I suspect we will see that continue over time.
  
• Fail faster. Imagine that you are a company that has some stuff that will help to make the next market of LED TV's happen fast. Imagine that you can't decide whether to get involved or not. Imagine that your competitor has already worked on three prototype projects with the new platform. Who is going to win?
  
• Check your bench strength. Really smart people with the ability to get into self-assembling project teams are your best hope for the future. And the fact is, their skills are continuing to be in extremely short supply as everybody becomes more of a specialist. If you don't have an organization that can expand, contract and collaborate at will, drawing the capabilities of your A-team, you've got a big problem.
  
• Scare yourself. Do you know who your new competition will be five years from now? Think Google Car, iPlane, WalMart Hip Replacements. I know I've used this example before, but markets and industries are seeing big transformations with the rapid emergence of new competitors, and you need to be thinking about that.
  
• Check your speed. How fast can you innovate? Perform? Undertake miracles? Tackle a problem? I'm still on a mailing list for the Sporiting Goods Manufacturing Association; I keynoted their conference last year. This week, members are scrambling to deal with a fast new environmental challenge. Surviving todays' economy is all about how quickly you can assemble and reassemble your team to fix fast problems; that the SGMA is doing this is indicative of an industry that is learning to think and act fast.
  
• Invest in experience. Get a bit crazy. Try things out. Study my "Where's the Growth" document, and find out where your own market growth potential is. Rush a few new products or services to markets, and find out what you learn from the process. The insight your team gains in learning how to innovate will be extremely valuable. It's called experiential capital, and it's the new currency of the 21st century. The more you have, the better you'll be positioned. Innovation isn't something you just do: it's a culture, and a mindset that you invest in. By doing things.
  
• Set the tone. If you let the current economic headlines drive your corporate spirit, you're sunk. You have to keep people focused on the future -- otherwise, your team will smell your fear. Leadership is all about keeping your team focused on opportunity and goals, not on ongoing and regular ("new normal" volatility.
  

I'm seeing innovative leaders do innovative things, and there's a certain core theme that is out there.

Branding in the high velocity economy

Last week, I gave the opening keynote for a leading global auto collision repair group, Fix Auto, which has locations throughout the US, Canada, the UK and France.

I opened with one of my favorite quotes from Rupert Murdoch: "The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.”

What precisely does that imply? In this case, those who can spot the opportunity for rebranding of an industry sector, and who can pull off such a rebranding quickly. If you think about auto collision repair shops, there are a number of areas where we are seeing "high velocity change": customer expectations in terms of service quality are going up; there is a focus on cost reduction as insurance companies become more sensitive to increasing accident claims; rapid change in the very technology that makes up an "automobile" today. Each one of these areas of change can be spun into an opportunity through some unique business strategies.

My focus for the audience was to realize that we we live in a time in which we are seeing the:

• rapid emergence of new markets
  
• fast opportunities for arrival of new brand images
  
• new ways of achieving customer awareness around those brands, and
  
• significant opportunity to transform old, stale market and business structures to vibrant, new brands

Maybe the catch phrase is "branding in the high velocity economy." Folks who figure out how to do this will cause significant transformation in their industry, and from that, new and growing business opportunity.

Thinking ahead: knowledge delivery in the high velocity economy

I'm one of the keynote speakers today for the grand opening of Virtualis, which bills itself as "the largest and most meticulously designed convention center in the computer-generated world of Second Life."

Virtualis features ballrooms, breakout rooms, and an extensive trade show floor. I'll be speaking in the Grand Ballroom at 4pm EST; my own "trade show booth" (pictured here) features links to my blog, books, and to streaming video from strategically placed video screens on the wall.

Will such "virtual worlds" come to play a role in the meeting and convention industry? The media seems to have been quite down on Second Life as of late; at one recent digital marketing conference, it was dismissed as a waste of advertisers time, and the biggest project sinkhole in the last year. (See The Client Side blog link below).

Maybe so. Maybe not. I don't know whether that is true or not.

But I do know this. Ten years ago, we didn't have a Google; five years ago, there was no FaceBook. New methods of interacting are emerging at a furious pace. Ten years from now, we'll be in an economy in which organizations will have to figure out how to "deliver knowledge quickly." I think we will see a wide variety of platforms and methods of accomplishing this -- and that's why I'm spending some of my time exploring the opportunity within Virtualis.

I'm a big believer that meetings and events will continue to be a "key strategic component of an organization's success" in the future, because they involve the delivery of knowledge.

And there's going to have to be a lot more of that in the future. Organizations must deal with the fact that their world is becoming faster: they must deal with innovation time compression, the rapid emergence of new markets, fast opportunities for emergence of new product or service branding, increased skills specialization, rapid business model transformation and the emergence of new competitive challengers.

The impact is quite simple: rapid market, business, industry, and skills change leads to a need for faster “knowledge delivery.” We might need to upgrade the knowledge of a sales force for a new emerging market; help a leadership team focus on a new business competitor, or steer a project team towards dealing with a new industry challenge. Whatever the case may be, knowledge delivery is key to success in the future.

I think we'd be fools to think that we won't do a lot more of this online. Hence, the importance of new explorations such as Virtualis : it helps to solve a fundamental purpose, and plays a key strategic role, just as real-world conferences and events do. And so this is a critical and important first step.

It's all about innovation and trying things out. And as Larry Ellison of Oracle stated, “when you innovate, you've got to be prepared for everyone telling you you're nuts.”

More information

• Read Meetings.Net report on Virtualis launch
• Virtualis advertisement
  
• The Client Side Blog: The Hype Wagon Loses a Virtual Wheel
  
• Jim Carroll digital content solutions
  

Five secrets for creating a culture of innovation

The April issue of the Advertiser magazine ("The Voice of the Marketing Community") from the Association of National Advertisers features an article, "Five Secrets for Creating a Culture of Innovation."

I'm quoted in the article with two key observations, on the issue of "taking risks and learning from them." My concerns?

• "...he sees too much 'bandwagon innovation" in marketing these days. Consider the rush by brands to launch viral videos on YouTube. 'That's not what innovation is ... it's admitting that everything we do -- how we are marketing to the customer, what the brand means to the customer, and what we do to update uniqueness and freshness of brand -- has to constantly change because everything around us is constantly changing."
  
• I also talk to the importance of taking risks: "CMO's who aren't afraid to focus on 'experiential capital', as Carroll calls it, or encourage innovative thinking by taking calculated risks, regardless of the outcome, stand a better chance of being successful over the long run.

It's a good article: there's no doubt that the high velocity economy results in rapid change of consumer brand perceptions. Leading edge marketers work hard to beef up their innovation capabilities simply in order to keep up with consumers who are charging forward at a furious pace!

More information

• Read What a great idea!
  
• Why bandwagon innovation doesn't work
  
• Is your brand from the olden days?

A memo to the CEO: Innovation matters more than ever

Memo

To: CEO's worldwide,
       (particularly in the financial sector)

From: Jim Carroll

-------------------------
I know things are extremely busy, particularly given our economic climate, but I think there's a key issue that you need to make sure is on your agenda.

The most important thing that you can do *right now*, as you work to navigate your way through the challenging economic shoals that surround you, is to make sure that you don't kill innovation in its tracks.

In the last few years, you've nurtured and created a core group of people in your organization who have become relentlessly focused on innovation. They've been obsessively focused on process, service and product innovation. They're matching the needs of customers, are taking you in to new markets, and are figuring out what to do in an economy that changes at a furious pace.

In the months and years to come, these executives are going to be some of the most important and critical individuals on your team.

Leaders set the tone. The tone you need to set for your leading innovators is that innovation matters now more than ever.

I know it's a tough sector to be in right now; there's a lot of bloodletting underway, and there's likely more to come as hundreds of billions of dollars of losses are absorbed. Yet you'll likely get through it, and you are going to have to be relentlessly focused on meeting customer needs, open new markets, and continually re-orient your business models to continue to focus on growth.

In January 2008. I was honored to be one of the judges for the annual Monarch Innovation Awards. We examined various innovative service and product offerings from such major financial institutions as Wachovia, SunTrust, USBank, Bank of America, WellsFargo and others. The key goal of the awards, sponsored by Barlow Research, was to "recognize financial institutions that provide the most innovative products to business customers" and to "recognize risk takers in the financial services industry who create/promote innovation within their organizations."

Throughout the financial sector, there are innovation heroes like those who won the Monarch Innovation Awards. These are the folks who are willing to stick their heads up, take a risk, and do something new and dramatic.

It's your innovation heroes who will help you open the future.

You must ensure that they still have the courage to take risks. To open new markets. To do innovative things that will solve customer problems. To realign the business for the future.

Celebrate them. Elevate them. Make their contributions known.

As the CEO, you set the tone for your organization. You have a momentary chance to ensure that you stay focused on the opportunities that come from your innovation heroes.

If you want to chat about this, give me a call. I'm at 905.855.2950. Or just send me an email: innovationmatters@jimcarroll.com

Sincerely,

Jim Carroll

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More information

• Print A memo to the CEO: Innovation Matters More Than Ever
  
• Marketwatch press release: Barlow Research Monarch Innovation Awards

Innovating in a flat world - the jewelry industry

I keynoted the 2008 Manufacturing Jewelers and Suppliers of America Expo New York yesterday, on the theme of ""How to Unlock Your Potential in the High Velocity Economy." Just about a week from now, Dubai will hold a similar event. The challenge for the AJMA members is that they now find themselves in a world that has gone massively global and is far more competitive; and as the world has flattened, so too have their challenges. They're competing not only against the City of Gold, but countless other highly innovative jewelry centers.

The focus of my keynote: what to do after the world gets flat! How can they innovate to deal with the unique challenges of today? Most certainly, the challenges go far beyond just globalization: rapidly changing consumer attitudes are also playing a key role. I used some recent insight from research firm Mintel UK, which provided a few fascinating nuggets:

• only 5% of all the customers surveyed buy jewelry frequently - compare that to the trends with consumer electronics spending - a lot of discretionary spending now goes to the latter, and not the former.
  
• 22% compare prices before they buy
  
• 15% buy online
  
• 17% of women are finding jewelry sold in supermarkets an "increasingly attractive" option

These are all the classic signs of commoditization of an industry -- wherein existing competitors find themselves in a never-ending black hole of being forced to compete on price.

How do you innovate your way out of this? The advice I included in my 75-minute talk covered a vast number of issues; here's a few of the things they should focus on:

• faster time to market : fashion happens faster; they need to deal with this. If P-Diddy appears with a new ear-stud and it gets noticed, kids will want it. Agile jewelers align themselves to such instant production, by revamping their process and cost structure.
  
• innovate upside-down. Adopt new design philosophies: rather than innovating, focus on upside down innovation. Work with their retail partners to restart the design process. Innovative organizations recognize they can't do it all. They seek partners with everything they do, recognizing that there are of lot of really wonderful innovative ideas that transcend their organization and their culture. This allows them to discover new innovative ideas they hadn't thought of before; a process I call upside down innovation.
  
• revamp manufacturing capabilities: a lot of these folks manufacture to inventory, and with the high and fluctuating cost of gold and other metals, that's an expensive business model to maintain, particularly in the context of increased global competition. Leading edge manufacturers are using CAD/CAM tech to change their design process and are learning to shift their business model as a result.

These were just a few of the issues I covered ; the key is accepting the fast-change that envelopes the industry, and challenging your assumptions and habits to move forward!

More information

• Read the MJSA article Change Your Mind: Staying One Step Ahead
  
• Read What do you do after the world gets flat? Put a ripple in it!

Where's the growth?

Gloom has set in on global markets. Volatility rages. Some organizations have gone into a mode of “aggressive indecision,” deferring action while they try to figure out “what comes next.” A pretty lousy strategy that is doomed to fail in the longer term.

Future oriented leaders understand the reality of growth. They know that we live in a time in which opportunities for growth abound. They’ve aligned the mission of the organization so that they are capitalizing on real opportunity, not short term economic challenges.

Growth is everywhere.

It’s easy during a time of economic volatility to lose sight of where the global economy is really headed. Yet while stock markets might rock, innovation thrives.

New ideas continue to be explored, markets grow, and industries emerge. A variety of trends indicate that opportunities for growth continue to surround us.

Read this document to get in the right frame of mind for the future.....and think growth. Think opportunity. Innovate for future, don’t stagnate with the past.

Download Where's the Growth? Global Innovation Opportunities for the Long Term