Innovation Blueprints OCTOBER 2016 • ISSUE #103
INNOVATION STRATEGIES & SATIRE
Special feature:
WHY PERCEPTION MATTERS
SPECIAL FEATURE: THE 10 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT 'HACKATHONS'
Future thinking innovation •UX DESIGN: INSIDE THE UX DESIGNER BRAIN • L&D INNOVATION: HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT • THINK LIKE A FUTURIST: RETHINKING THE FUTURE
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LETTER FROM EDITOR
M Nils Vesk, Chief editor
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Mistakes are opportunities in disguise
istakes are a common occurrence when it comes to innovating. Mostly because a lot of us haven't had a lot of training in 'how to innovate'.
In this edition I dig into some of the most common mistakes people make when innovating. So what are the mistakes and how do you tackle them? Well we recently surveyed over a thousand people and asked them for their innovation challenges in order to fine tune the list of common innovation mistakes. The mistakes can range from not having an innovation process to not knowing how to ask other people for ideas. We unpack many of them in this issue. As usual we've got some interviews from some seriously smart innovators all to help you become a world class innovator. In the last issue we shared some marketing tips from Franziska Iseli. It's no surprise that her latest book 'Perception' has become an Amazon best seller, and we are lucky to have some content from her book to share with you. Please keep the feedback coming and send your friends to the magazine website so that they can subscribe to it for FREE. You can subscribe at www.InnovationBlueprints.com Keep on innovating! Cheers,
Nils
Nils Vesk Chief Editor & Founder of Innovation Blueprint nils@InnovationBlueprint.com.au www.InnovationBlueprint.com.au
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i n s i d e th e i n n ovative world of UX d e si g n
A ng e l a C her 'Ha c ha n shares k athon' ti ps
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CONTENTS
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WHAT’S INSIDE UX Design - what's it all about? 4 Current innovation challenges 10 Innovation tips - Russian Sports Federation 12 Content Marketing 14 Innovation solutions L&D Innovation Hackathons Futurist thinking Perception & differentiation
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Film review by George Clooney Current innovation challenges Social Innovation - Thread Together
37 38 44
26 S F UT URE TREND how g reat futuri sts i n n ovate
perception & differentiation
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INNOVATION TIPS NEW HEADING HERE
UX DESIGN : THE INNOVATIVE THINKING MAKING SERIOUS BUSINESS INROADS INTERVIEW WITH ANDERS TOXBOE BY NILS VESK
WANT TO GET UP TO SPEED ON UX DESIGN? WE CATCH UP WITH DENMARK’S UX MOVER & SHAKER ANDERS TOXBOE TO UNPACK UX DESIGN.
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hen you explain UX design to a lay person how do you explain what it is?
I would explain how we work with users rather than for users to create user experiences that fulfill its purpose and intent. That a user experience should encompass all aspects of an enduser's interaction with a brand, its services, and its products – not just the product at hand. I would explain the importance of learning from the context of users and their understanding of the world. That we should embrace the complexities of the world users live in rather than trying to apply our own simplistic and deterministic 4
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means as we try to constrain or trick users into certain behaviour. It's end-user anthropology, really. I would also explain how the experienced UX designer would start to see patterns of recurring solutions in his or her work. These patterns come in many forms of which I've documented two: User Interface (UI) Patterns and Persuasive Patterns. They each represent common solutions that solve recurring design problems. The experienced UX designer knows how to conduct good user anthropology and what UI patterns and Persuasive Patterns that can help solve the problems that user research unveils.
we should embrace the complexities of the world users live in
The earlier you can validate your assumptions, the faster you can change direction anders toxboe
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hat do you think the biggest value that a UX designer brings to a project. Is it preventing future costly customer mistakes? Lowering frustration? Planning a seamless experience? Or something else? All of them. The longer into a project you are, the more it costs to correct the mistakes you have made earlier. The earlier you validate your assumptions, the faster you can change direction and in turn, the more money you can save. The tools of user research goes hand in hand with tools for building. Test your prototypes or final product with your users as early as you can. Do A/B tests, landing pages tests, test feature stubs, test with handheld Wizard of Oz features, create clickable prototypes, observe your users, conduct guerilla user tests to get quick feedback, and do user interviews to validate your assumptions.
The traditional approach to making software better is by evening out the bumps on the road. Most UX designers' favourite tool to better interactions and the overall user experience of a website is to remove its friction or lowering frustration. Focusing on improving usability is trying to remove friction. Focusing on improving usability is a great way of making your users reach their goal more easily, but what if your users don’t share the same goal as your business and don’t have the same motivation? If you think of friction as a force holding the user back; a vector pulling in the opposite direction of where the user is heading, then we can think of motivation as a force pushing the user forward. This is where psychology comes in: to increase motivation.
A personal quest of mine is to approach UX design from both angles. To aid me, I've build up a library of both UI Patterns and Persuasive patterns on my site, UI-Patterns.com. I've recently released big parts of the library as a physical brainstorming tool: two card decks showcasing the most useful design patterns.
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toryboarding and wireframes seem to play a big part of the UX design methodology, can you explain what this is and why it's important? Wireframes is an important part of the UX toolbox to help you get feedback early. By having something concrete to test on early, you can validate your assumptions early as well - leaving you to spend as much time on the right solution rather than building the wrong solution, right.
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UX DESIGN
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hat's a good example or stories of UX Design principles being applied in areas beyond the digital world or product design world? Design patterns are all over. The first mention of design patterns was in the physical world, by the architect, Christopher Alexander. In his 1977 book, "A pattern language", he documented 253 patterns of well known architectural problems and common recurring solutions to solve them. So it's the other way around. The experienced UX designer borrows from practices invented before the digital age came to be.
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hat do you love about UX design?
Everything. But what triggers me the most is the dialogue with real users; either directly through faceto-face interviews and usability studies or through quantitative experiments like A/B testing or merely launching new features and watching them grow in the hands of users. 6
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n one of your latest products Persuasive Pattern Cards you share some 50 behavioural patterns that people can use to improve an experience can you tell us a little bit more about where they have come from and why you created them and how they can be used? I've collected and documented User Interface (UI) Patterns on my site, UI-Patterns.com, since 2007. While UI Patterns clearly help creating more frictionless and useful products, they only represent half of the story. There are clear reasons that explain why some UI Patterns have become more popular than others – why they work so well. In many cases, why they work so well can be explained by psychology. So in 2010, I started looking into product psychology and discovered the movement of Persuasive Design. Not long after, I expanded my site with a Persuasive Pattern section. My site now represented both sides of UX: the part that helps remove friction (usability), and the part that helps increase motivation (through psychology).
The next step was putting my research to use. As I was struggling to get momentum with my development teams, the idea of creating physical real world playing cards to use in brainstorm sessions came about. My conclusion was that demanding my team to read up on complicated psychological concepts was an incomprehensible task for most. I needed to remove friction and introduce fun. The Persuasive Pattern card deck is a collection of 54 printed design patterns driven by psychology, presented in a manner easily referenced and used as a brainstorming tool. With a focus on human behaviour, each card describes one psychological insight and suggests ways in which you can apply it to your product. It works beautifully together with its UI Pattern counterpart.
UXNEW DESIGN ARCHETYPE HEADING HERE
i n n ovati on i s ab out a sk i ng why we should b uild somethi ng
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hat are the first thoughts or images that come to mind when you hear the word innovation? and why? The first thought that comes into my mind when I hear the word "innovation" is misunderstandings and excuses. Excuses for not focusing on the business and what brings value, but instead to think "out of the box". I believe that most people don't understand innovation. I'm not sure I do – or ever fully will. I think that's the quest we're all in: to figure out how to really innovate – on purpose. For me, innovation is about asking "why" we should build something rather than "what" and "when" we should build it. It's less about executing a plan than it's about
I believe most people don't understand innovation validating and testing assumptions in order to get on the right track. There are great processes that can help you facilitate innovation. Agile in combination with Lean Startup approaches have helped me and my teams time and again. But perhaps most importantly, I believe your measure of success for the product you develop, should be to reach a metrically measured goal rather than completing a list of features. Focus more on whether what you're doing right now is what will help you the most in terms of reaching your shared goal faster.
An observation I've done again and again is that having a project that's under pressure in some way or the other, help bring together the development team and the sponsor to focus on questioning initial assumptions in order to achieve the same things in smarter ways. Whether the pressure is through limited budgets, technological difficulties, speed, or something else – constraints and limits help foster innovation.
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UX DESIGN ARCHETYPE
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hat roles do you think UX design plays in creating more innovative products, processes or services? To me, the most important part of UX design, is testing assumptions through clever user research in order to make sure you're solving real problems. To figure out whether you're solving the real problem, you need to talk to real people and find appropriate solutions. For the experienced designer, finding appropriate solutions is the easiest part of the job - finding the problem is the trickiest. Without questioning and testing your assumptions, you are essentially designing in the blind.
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Without UX design, you'll be lucky if you'll end up building something that is even worthwhile for users. If there was one thing that our readers could do to adopt a UX design mindset what would that activity be? Study the competition. Conduct user tests on competing products and learn from their mistakes and home-runs. Go through as many similar interfaces as you can that solve the same problem as you, and start build a screen-shot library of the details you believe you can use for your own product. Soon you'll find that you become quite seasoned in knowing what you want and have a clear idea of what you think works.
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ometimes UX design can be left till it's a bit too late, what ways can people influence or convince their teams to start adopting UX design at the beginning of the project? Bring in an agile coach or lean UX coach – and let them explain the cost of delaying user research to your senior management.
Companies like Apple, Spotify, Uber, and the like have made UX a competitive advantage.
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hy do you think UX design is growing so rapidly?
Companies like Apple, Spotify, Uber, and the likes have made UX a competitive advantage. 10 years back, good UX was scarce; building great user experiences was something few companies focused on. As UX is becoming abundant and a household focus for most companies, I wonder what the next competitive advantage is going to be. Data?
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here do you see UX design moving to, eg. any new areas of decisions making, new fields etc? The professional team has incorporated UX into all decision making by letting their development and business decisions undergo hypothesisdriven development. In the old days, product managers, or representatives from "the business", would develop a roadmap and give a prioritized list of desired features to an engineering team.
What is seen more and more is that data scientists or UX designers work with development team members to identify themes to be explored and experimented with. With a rapid feedback loop (A/B tests, etc.) in place, teams continually enhances the product, measuring its success by business improvements rather than feature completions. Anders Toxboe consults, trains and speaks around the world on UX Design. To learn more about persuasive patterns, visit Anders' blog at www.UI-Patterns.com, get your copy of the Persuasive Pattern card deck, or take his video course on building persuasive products.
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INNOVATION: CURRENT ISSUES NILS VESK DEALS WITH SOME OF THE CURRENT ISSUES THAT PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT WHEN IT COMES TO INNOVATION
MOTIVATION: HOW TO MOTIVATE A TEAM TO BE INNOVATIVE Quick tip: Create a story as to ‘why’ innovation is important. Why? Because stories (or narratives as behaviouralists like to call them) when they evoke emotions are one the most powerful ways to instigate behavioural change. This means we need to have a continual supply of stories that reinforce and engage in an emotional way as to ‘why’ innovation is important and stories of how innovation is already happening. Share stories of what you want to see ‘more of’ and why it’s so important. This leads to establishing values of innovation. Tell stories of ‘observable and measurable innovation behaviours’. For example “Just this week our team invited a guest supplier in to talk about their latest process mapping procedure...”.
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PROCESS: HOW TO DESIGN AN INNOVATION PROCESS THAT SOLVES CURRENT & FUTURE BUSINESS NEEDS Quick Tip: Design around the four key phases to innovation. Here's why: Innovation isn’t just about ideas, its about insights, prototypes and commercial projects too. Needs will always change but the phases of innovation will always remain. Phase 1 - Investigation: This is all about discovering insights. Ensure you have a process that generate insights from your stats (eg. sales, mktg, refunds, breakdowns etc.), insights from new emerging trends, and insights into what customer needs, desires, aversions and obstructions are. Phase 2 - Ideation: Make time to generate ideas and lots of them. Be that by setting a KPI for the no. of ideas created at each weekly mtg. Drop expectations of quality. Quality follows quantity.
Phase 3 - Iteration: Ensure you have processes to test & prototype ideas rapidly and cost effectively to minimise risk and gain certainty. Phase 4 - Commercialisation: Treat innovation as seriously as any other part of the business by creating metrics that measure the number of ideas, insights and prototypes created each quarter. Have processes that allow innovation projects ideas to become billable projects.
REAL INNOVATION CHALLENGES
When we have an innovation resistant culture we need to change the narrative of our people.
RESISTANCE: COUNTER WITH THE PERSISTENCE OF A NEW NARRATIVE Quick Tip: When we have an innovation resistant culture we need to change the narrative of our people. Why? People have narratives (stories) that they have made up as to why innovation and change is not good. It’s our job to change the narrative that they have in their head by showing them alternative stories as to why innovation is important. This needs to occur on multiple levels yet it’s crucial to involve the CEO. Find examples of what is ‘desirable’ innovative behaviours already happening and share stories that express the need to repeat and emulate these behaviours. Continue to express the need for these new behaviours and continue to recognise them as they occur.
think of tiny habits you can start & use
KEEPING UP TO SPEED: IN A HIGH PRESSURE TIME POOR ENVIRONMENT Quick Tip: ‘Flipboard’ it. Here's why: By using a ‘flipboard’ (mobile app that enables you to bring all your social media feeds together) you can follow your key influencers or ‘mover and shakers’ and have them conveniently filtered to one easy to scan place. Hint: Have key twitter influencers as your key source as people tend to only tweet when they’ve got something important to say. If you’re in a team divide the team up to ‘follow’ certain sectors of the industry or from beyond so that as a group you can cover all bases. Get people to share once a month as to what’s been happening.
DAY-TO-DAY: DAY TO DAY TIPS FOR INNOVATION Quick Tip: Think of tiny habits that you can start and use. Why? We’re so time poor that just the thought of finding 30 minutes to ‘brainstorm’ seems an impossibility. So we need to think of micro activities. A tiny habit is one that is super short (less than a minute) that is fun to do and leads to a larger behavioural change. Here’s a good one. At each weekly mtg. Write the following question on a flip chart or white board. “What’s the most innovative product, process or service that you have come across recently beyond our industry and what made it so compelling? ” Writing this will take less than 30 seconds and as a group you might end up spending 15 minutes discussing it. Yet it will lead to the group starting to adapt new ideas from outside of your industry that you can use in yours. Think of creating as many of these tiny innovation habits as you can and the rest will follow.
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INNOVATION SATIRE
RUSSIAN SPORTS FEDERATION TOP TIPS INNOVATIVE CHEATING TIPS FROM A SPORTING FEDERATION
USE EVERYTHING AT YOUR DISPOSAL
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When you have a government threatening you with a 'kill order' you need to use every scientist and expert available to try to get the most out of the athletes, so long as it keeps a roof over your head and pays for the next bottle of vodka.
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DON'T WORRY ABOUT TOMORROW
All that counts is getting those results now. If the athletes get health problems later that's someone else's problem.
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MAKE SURE EVERYONE IS INVOLVED
When you're onto a good thing it's worth spreading around. Think of the low profile sports people too, table tennis players are just as in need for high performance as a weight lifter.
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LET THE ATHLETES IN ON IT
Athletes (whilst often treated like monkeys) are smarter than we give them credit for. So let them in on what we are doing as telling them we're giving them a flu immunity injection can only work a couple of times a year.
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DENY EVERYTHING
If things go wrong, deny everything and blame it on someone who doesn't exist. No one would dare investigate the bureaucracy of mother Russia and hope to come out alive.
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PEOPLE DON'T REMEMBER THAT FAR BACK
The next competition is always a round the corner so even if we do get caught it will only be for the current discretion, nothing from years back.
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REPUTATIONS ARE REPAIRABLE
No one minds if you've done something wrong in the past. We have a great propaganda machine that works well enough to repair damaged reputations.
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MARKETING INNOVATION
INNOVATIVE CONTENT MARKETING INTERVIEW WITH CONTENT MARKETING & BRANDING EXPERT ZOE PALMER BY NILS VESK
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hat do marketers like yourself do to help organisations differentiate themselves from the competition? It’s getting harder to differentiate. Yet you can differentiate in a number of areas such as: • Price (though this isn’t sustainable) • Choosing a niche where you have particular expertise and a good track record • Expertise rung - becoming a particular thought leader or expert in a particular area • Experience - the type of experience you have had • Personality - eg. authenticity to what your brand is all about Personality is good for attracting a community who are interested in an 'experience' not just the features of your offering. Zen desk (a ticketing software business) is a great example of this because they have such a great brand personality. They create funny, quirky content, have beautiful design and a good product.
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hat role does storytelling play in marketing?
A lot of marketing is based around storytelling today because you can make such a memorable point with a strong story. You can also tap into things that your community is interested in. For example using the analogy of pop marketing with digital marketing which we recently used. We released an info-graphic around 6 months ago that was based on an article on the 15 digital marketing trends from a social mktg. influencer Jeff Bullas. We realised that the audience who would be interested in this were also likely to be interested in pop culture such as the life of Justin Bieber or the latest from the ‘Game of Throne’s’ TV show. So we took all the key points and tied them to pop culture elements and it ended up becoming one of the slide shares of the week and went really well. It worked because we took boring data and turned it into a story that the audience could relate to. Check out slideshare. net and search ‘the ultimate pop culturalist’s guide to digital marketing’ to see it.
Zoe Palmer - founder of Brand Chemistry
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hat role does innovation play in marketing for you?
Innovation isn’t a word we use, we just do it. We talk a lot about improving results and that means using new techniques to solve a problem or boost results in a particular area instead of continuing along a path that’s under-performing. We often go back to the original goal. This is really important in innovation. We track behavioural and demographic data and use this to tweak campaigns on a daily basis. We also come together every 2 weeks for a strategic meeting and every other 2 weeks for a 'team share'. During the strategic meeting we talk about our client strategies and our own strategies and then we share ideas about how we can improve the way we work and the way we are delivering.
MARKETING THINK
you can make such a memorable point with a story
D At 'team share' meetings we all deliver a 5 minute presentation on a topic we’ve been studying, or improvements we've been working on. This has a massive impact on engagement and results. It’s amazing how many things cross over such as email marketing crossing over to design and UX. This also educates and up-skills the whole agency. Innovation for us is very much around sharing information on a regular basis. We also like to practice simplicity by thinking about the path of least resistance and asking "What’s the fastest way to get a minimum viable product to market? " This way we can get feedback and iterate rather than over-thinking and overengineering things.
We look at content pieces that are going well and challenge ourselves to see how we could do it bigger and better. This really helps us to get great engaging content pieces into the marketplace. We use sites such as buzzsumo. com to analyse what content performs best for any topic or competitor. It shows you the top content articles and their level of social media engagement.
o products or service have to be remarkable in order to be marketable?
You could have the most seemingly remarkable product or service in the world but if it’s not particularly relevant to an audience or if the audience is not quite large enough then it’s never quite going to be that successful. To be remarkable you need to understand what your ‘single unit of value’ is to your client/ buyer. It’s where you really have to understand how your product or service is making life better for your customer. You have to build your whole business around that and be relevant to this in your communications, in your user interface, your user experience, your awareness, your advocacy and being consistent in delivering this throughout.
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INNOVATION INTERVIEW
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ow do you go about grabbing attention in a sea of information?
This comes to down to relevance. Pull marketing is when we are optimising content to be found when people search for solutions that will solve their problems. This means that your content answers your customers pain points but is also structured in a particular way that covers off all stages of the buying process. For example in the buying process you may give free information on how to solve some of their pain points. You may also give them information on how to select a vendor or provider of those services. When it comes to 'how to choose a vendor' - we call this ‘middle of the funnel’ content and that’s where really compelling case studies come into play. Self assessment quizzes can also help a buyer understand what their needs are and which vendor may be better suited to their needs. Case studies are good stories that show how you have solved businesses problems with your product or service and also provides proof points that show you are a better provider than your competition.
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Once you have broken your buyers process into distinct stages of the journey from awareness through to delight, you want to think about how you can differentiate through your content piece. This is where testing can really come into play. Testing subject lines, search phrases, and imagery. Interestingly these differ from market to market. For example for one of our clients we found that having a question in the subject line was having a poor response yet in another market it was scoring amazingly well. This means you have to test to your own market and use that data to improve.
Tell us more about pull and push marketing. Pull marketing applies to people who are searching for you at that time. A challenge for marketers is trying to capture a group at the right time, when they are thinking about your product or service. Push marketing tends to send blanket messages and pushing them out to people without knowing where they are in the buying stage and playing a numbers game and hoping that some of those will be perhaps ready to buy.
pull marketing captures attention at each stage of the buying process Pull marketing however aims to capture attention at each stage of the buying process. The early stage is helping people who are thinking about their problems and the late stage is pulling people who are ready to buy. It's all about thinking about the buyer in the bigger context and where they are at. Push can still be relevant as there are still people buying without going onto Google and doing research. Quizzes are good examples of pull marketing. People just can’t resist quizzes and roughly 80% of people will respond to a quiz if they think it’s going to be fun and relevant to them. Never underestimate the amount that people are willing to find out or talk about themselves. Quizzes are brilliant lead generators and help you collect data on your prospects that you can use to better target them.
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hat’s delighting your customer all about?
This is the stage after you have closed the deal and you’re delivering what you promised. It’s a case of them understanding the benefits of working with you and perhaps gaining access to a user group or an annual conference. Alternatively you may have referral rewards for referring others, or maybe they get cited for doing great work. Or perhaps they are part of a community that helps them succeed with your brand. If you really nail that piece you’ve got the retention of those customers sorted. We always look at churn rate as everyone knows it costs so much more to acquire a new customer than it costs to maintain an existing client.
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s it easier to build a new product for an existing market or easier to create a new market for a product or service? It's definitely easier to launch a new product to an existing market. If we are an existing provider, with a track record, and good experience then we can leverage that to the market and we know what that market will appreciate.
It’s a lot harder for a business to break into a market that it’s never played in before because they don’t have that institutional memory or understanding of the market. Plus when you are launching a new product in a new market you’ve got so much education to do around that. One good thing is that our culture now has a great appetite for new things and everyone is looking for the new thing.
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ow to do you create a platform for your audience/ community?
This is about creating a sense of belonging. To build any type of community you have to tap into what ever is common to that community and whatever passion that is, and what ever big problem of theirs you’re trying to solve. So even before you have the solution to their problem you could be giving them valuable information. Hubspot is a great example of this, they are a software product, yet their marketing content was so good that they created a vast pool of marketers before it even become apparent that they were a software product that people could use.
their experiences with each other. They want to hear from other people in their community and they want to discuss things. The more that you can encourage your audience to share, the better the community becomes. If you’re looking at making your message to market more compelling or looking to create some high value personalised content then contact Zoe at www.BrandChemistry.com.au
Make your community a place where you share value and encourage the community to share www.innovationblueprint.com.au
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REAL INNOVATION CHALLENGES
INNOVATION: CURRENT ISSUES NILS VESK DEALS WITH SOME OF THE CURRENT ISSUES THAT PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT WHEN IT COMES TO INNOVATION
EXECUTING IDEAS: FROM IDEA TO IMPLEMENTATION Quick Tip: Make a prototype of it before you make a project of it. Here's why: An idea is a risky proposition until we can test it. No one wants to fail at an innovation and prototyping allows us to test at low risk before going live with it. Start by building a rapid conceptual prototype (something that takes less than 30 mins to build). Share this with people and get feed back on ‘why’ you’re doing it’, ‘what’ need, desire or aversion it deals with, ‘who’ it’s for, ‘how’ it works etc. If the conceptual prototype is well received, develop it further - this time spend a couple of hours on it. Prototype after prototype. Start to plan the prototype, make predictions as to what you think will happen, test the prototype, record what happens and evaluate those predictions against the outcomes. Start your next prototype plan and test again. This is how we reduce the risk and develop the idea and implement it.
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FAILURE: REDEFINE WHAT THIS MEANS Quick Tip: Professional innovators don’t use the word failure they use the word experimental learning. Here's why: Innovation is really experimentation, and the most commercial innovators of all time have seen their innovation as a series of experiments. Edison’s thousands of so called ‘failure’ light bulbs were simply experiments which told him what would not work. The professional innovator approaches innovation with the experimental mindset yet uses small experiments to reduce the risk. In short consider what your predictions are or were for an innovation, record what actually happened and finally evaluate those predictions with the outcomes and record what you have learnt. The motto is ‘spend a little learn a lot’.
FRONT LINERS: ENCOURAGING THEM TO GIVE LIFE TO THEIR IDEAS Quick Tip: Recognise their intelligence & brilliance. Why? Front liners, are at the hard face of business dealing with the gripes and objections of your products. service or processes. In reality they are a treasure trove of customer insights. Yet we treat them optional rather than as valuable. The cold hard facts are there is more money in their minds than in the boardroom. It’s your job to recognise that brilliance, importance and value. Your second job is to facilitate them so that they share and help you to action ideas around these insights. To do this you need to help instil a new narrative that shows why that knowledge is so important and stories that share how they can and have been implemented before, whether in your organisation or in others.
Unthink.Able
Rewire your thinking capacity. Start now with a free innovation diagnosis. www.InnovationBlueprint.com.au/diagnosis
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LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT INNOVATION INTERVIEW WITH L&D EXPERT EMMA WEBER
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hy do you think learning is so important in business today?
Learning is important in business today because change is important. Change is constant, and learning is the lever for change. The stats around change projects in organisations are pretty appalling. Many studies have found that only 30% of change initiatives succeed – results that haven’t changed in the last 40 years! When people think "I need to learn something" really what they're thinking is "I need to change". That's why learning is so important, because it is inextricably linked with change. Organisations that are not linking learning with change are doing themselves a disservice. Unfortunately, organisations send people to a learning event, or a training 20
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program because it seems like a good thing to do. We send them on a learning experience to have fun, but at the end of the day it's what they do from that experience and how they change that is most important.
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n what ways do you suggest people could measure their change or their progress?
There are two ways that you can look at it. The easiest way is through what we call calibration - a self-rated score on a scale of one to ten. For example, you could reflect on yourself; “is this an innovation? ”, “to what level have I executed this to date? ”. You might set your calibration at a two out of ten because you've written a process for it, but you haven't actually rolled it out either to yourself or your team. Then you could keep check on how far you're
tracking on that scale of one to ten. The end goal could be a ten out of ten when the process is rolled out to 50 people across your three countries. What's interesting is instinctively if you ask yourself where your progress is on the scale of one to ten your brain will come up with a number. You can say “well, what does that mean to be at a four? ”. Then you can decode, and then work out what your next steps are. So calibration is a very easy way to measure, and it can also help you keep track with moving forward. The second way is slightly more complicated. You could link your innovation to a business KPI that's already measured and captured by the business. When you can link your innovation to a business KPI then it's trackable and valuable.
LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT INSIGHTS
In organisations accountability can be a dirty word L&D expert Emma Weber
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et's come to a space where you guys plan amazingly well, which is around coaching. Why do you think coaching works so well in terms of creating behavioural change? At its essence coaching is a tool for behavioural change. There are so many different styles of coaching. Our particular methodology, which we call ‘Turning Learning into Action™’, is specifically designed to work alongside learning and training interventions. We also work alongside change projects as a very short, sharp, and effective way to create behavioural change.
In organisations accountability can be a dirty word. Who wants to be held accountable? However, if you're held accountable to an idea, then you're holding yourself accountable to yourself, versus being held accountable to the organisation.
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o you think it's an even split between reflection and accountability? Is one more important than the other? It depends. You can have all the interesting, beneficial reflection in the world, yet if you're not held accountable to putting that change into place then it has just been a reflection.
It's the following through that counts. Admittedly, sometimes the reflection will create enough of an inspiration that you will follow through. But often with behavioural change, changing a daily habit can be much harder to change than something that is a one off.
At the core of Turning Learning into Action™ coaching is reflection and accountability. It's the accountability that helps people keep on track through the change.
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hat are some of the latest innovations in L&D, and what might make them innovative?
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o what about then the power of reflection? Can you give us a little bit more of an example of how we might use reflection? A lot of this is around language. When people think about reflection they might think about leaning back in their chair, putting their feet up on the desk, having a quiet half an hour to themselves. But really, the more specific and intention filled you can make your reflection the more useful it will be. If all you have is five minutes with a coffee, then ask yourself "what's working well with our project at the moment? " and "what needs to be done differently to create an even better result? " Those two key reflection questions can offer some really good insights.
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Business technology is increasingly coming into the forefront of learning, with a focus on people who can learn anything, anytime, anywhere. Increasingly people are looking towards social learning, and how people can learn from other people. It's becoming less around formal workshops, and more about people pulling learning to them. There's push and pull learning and we're seeing quite a lot of people move towards pull learning. Delve into that a little bit more, social learning. What would be an example? ‘Working out loud’ is a good example. This is when someone is working on a project, and they're actually sharing what they're doing on a project. Then they have a conversation with someone else, and the learning comes out of that. We all socially learn every day. Almost any conversation can be a learning conversation.
Social learning is really shaking up learning as we know it. We often see learning as very structured and prescriptive, similar to what school classrooms are like. Increasingly I’m seeing 'support learning', when people need to know something immediately to improve, so they pull learning towards themselves, and can easily get access to things which will help them be supported in their role. Stretch learning is another trend that is popular. Stretch learning might be when you're developing leaders, new managers, or high potentials within an organisation. These people need to create awareness in where they are at present and where they need to be in the future in order to help them stretch. Stretch is using off site programs that will continue to be used to help people learn in that way. Any other little areas that you can think of that have some innovation at all? One of the things that I'm often saying is that people learn together, and through team collaboration, but they change themselves. Individuals that change create organisational change.
NEW HEADING HERE
However, if you try and have a group change often you get 'groupthink' where people say "we should do this", but no individual actually takes that responsibility to change themselves. So there's quite a different distinction between learning and changing within the group dynamic. A lot of the time when people think 'innovation' they tend more towards the 'idea'. My preference would be, "let's get things executed", because that's where the change will come. The importance around execution is to keep track of your progress by for example, using calibration. Keep reflecting on what's working, what's not yet working, and find ways to hold yourself accountable to putting that change in place.
'working out loud' is when we share a project we're working on
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know that Lever Transfer of Learning has had some massive growth. You're based in countries all around the world. What do you think has been part of that growth? People are fairly innovative in the ‘known’ part of learning. When we think about learning we think about getting content across to people. Because people feel safe in that area that's often the area that they will innovate in. It's inherently difficult to get people to change after they have attended a learning intervention, or a conference.
So the innovation that we actually focused on was the area that people thought was unsolvable. But it is actually very solvable. It's an area that people were not talking about because they felt it was something that wasn't connected with learning. By innovating in a space where there was a real problem we've managed to become very successful. To find out more about Lever - Transfer of Learning visit www. transferoflearning.com. There you can download a free chapter of Emma's book, which is ‘Turning Learning into Action: A Proven Methodology for Effective Transfer of Learning’. People are very welcome to reach out to Emma and have a conversation. Emma Weber (@emmaweber) is CEO and Founder of Lever – Transfer of Learning. She is a Learning Transfer and Evaluation specialist, established author, and internationally recognised speaker."
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10 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HACKATHONS TOPS TIPS FROM HACKATHON GURU ANGELA BEE CHAN
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A HACKATHON IS...
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TEAMS ARE TYPICALLY COMPOSED OF...
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THE HIPSTER WORKS ON...
managing the project and creating a business plan to ensure the team wins prizes and/ or has a strategy for the project to be taken further. A lean canvas is usually used.
is a competition which challenges people to create something over a set time period using technologies. It's an opportunity to connect, collaborate and create. It's also an opportunity to network and meet other people, form teams with people from other skill sets and industries to tackle a problem or process together.
a HUSTLER - a business savvy guru who can manage and coordinate a the project. Usually sales people, marketers and project managers a HIPSTER - A UX designer or graphic designer a HACKER - a programmer/ coder. These three make up the core team.
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THE HUSTLER WORKS ON...
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THE HACKATHON STARTS WITH...
A briefing that is often done on a Friday evening. This is where either a list of problems are shared with the prospective teams or an area requiring innovation is identified. Teams get the opportunity to interview the people with the problems. For example a brief might be "we have all of this data from our constituents, how can we use it? " There may be mentors/ experts from respective fields on hand to answer questions from the teams.
The Hipster works on the User Experience process and design. They'll deep dive into what core features are required and create an interface using tools such as Photoshop, InvisionApp and Canva. InVisionApp.com which enables people to transform web and mobile apps into clickable, interactive prototypes and mockups.
HACKATHONS
A ng e l a B e e C h
a n ...
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70% of people classified 'networking' as their top reason to doing a hackathon. Prizes are an added bonus!
THE HACKER WORKS ON...
Quickly creating something that works be it a website or an app of some sort. Many hackers use github.com which enables people to house and collaborate and build software projects.
THE PLAN IS TO FAIL FAST & LEARN QUICKLY
Much of the success from Hackathons comes from failing fast. An idea that doesn't work quickly becomes the impetus for something else that works better. People learn from others as much as they learn from the projects.
PRIZES ARE NOT THE BE ALL AND END ALL
Angela Bee Chan is the Founder of Hackathons AustraliA+, an association which brings hackathon organisers, participants, partners and government together. To find out more visit www. HackathonsAustralia.com
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PERSONA'S ARE IMPORTANT
Just as important as the coding is persona and customer journey mapping. What would the end user think, feel, do and say?
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SUCCESS IS DEPENDENT ON...
1. Having clear objectives & outline 2. Having a great mix of different people 3. Have a great environment that does not feel like the usual work space 4. Having a motivated team
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WHY YOU NEED TO THINK OF THE FUTURE INTERVIEW WITH FUTURIST CRAIG RISPIN BY NILS VESK
WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT TO BE ABLE TO ANTICIPATE WHAT A CUSTOMER DEMANDS BEFORE THEY ASK FOR IT?
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C ome of our readers might not know what a futurist is. What essentially is a futurist?
People ask me that all the time because they don't think it's a real job. But it is. I say that futurists are just reverse historians. Historians study the past, we study the future. There's 25,000 of us in our professional society around the world. The value that we bring to society is that we try and get people to think about where we're all going to end up living. We've always said the best way that we can serve society is by asking big questions. The big questions that get people to think about the future rather than serve the past.
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Can you give us an example? Yes. Recently I worked with the Pork Corporation, Sydney Airport, and the Building Research Institute. These are completely different industries, but they all started to have the same question. We're living in this world where our industries have changed more in the last few years than in the last few decades. We're starting to get an inkling that we may be irrelevant in the future, and what we're doing today will not be needed tomorrow. So what we really need to do is see what major driving forces or trends are happening around the world, and look at some possible scenarios. We call this scenario planning, and we look at where the world might be in 5, 10, 20 years, and then literally make a bet on the best possible scenario for us in our industry. So it's really thinking about the future, looking at the driving forces.
an you tell us a little bit about what scanning is, and what scenario planning is?
Scanning, or an environmental scan, or a horizon scan is where you gather up all the information that you can about industry trends happening worldwide, nationwide, and locally. Using some modern tools that are not unlike Google, you can quickly scan across the internet and find predictions that are being made. There will be extreme predictions, and low predictions and if you take the middle and say this is what we estimate we're going to be in 10 years time, or 20 years time, you've got a conservative estimate of where we might be. For instance, recently I asked this algorithm three questions for the Pork Corporation. 1. What's the future of food? 2. What's the future of meat? 3. What's the future of pork in Australia? So there’s a global question, a specific question and a question with a specific geography as well.
We've literally seen tens of thousands of startups bet on an emerging technology For instance, we might see a scenario where pork becomes the most popular meat in the world overtaking chicken. This is a possible scenario. What does that mean for pig producers here in Australia, what does it mean globally, and what does it mean to the future of food more generally? We gather the trends and patterns that we see and then boil these down into 15 or so major driving trends. Once we have these driving trends we use them in a quadrants to define scenarios. On the X axis we're going to make a bet on the future that food is either going to be more regulated, (because of food security, and poisoning scares) or it’s going to be less regulated. On the Y axis we're going to see incumbents, or we're going to have 'start-ups'. So we end up with 4 possible scenarios. There's one possible scenario where we have less regulation yet incumbents. Another scenario where we have less regulation and lots of disrupting start ups. another scenario where we have more regulation and incumbents and one final scenario when we have more regulation yet disruptive 'start-ups' playing in the space.
FUTURIST THINKING
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hat have been some of the organisations you've worked with where you've been able to help steer them and they have saved money?
For each of the four quadrants, you give them a name, and you write a little story about them. You publish them in your industry newsletter, and you get people to contribute. As futurists we don't try and make really specific projections. What we're trying to do is show people an overall direction that they might head. We've seen literally tens of thousands of start-ups bet on an emerging technology, and that technology just sweeps them along, and they become a global organisation in an ever increasing shorter period of time. Uber is a good example of one organisation going from zero to over a billion dollars value in 15 months. We've never seen this before in history, it's pretty incredible. It's because these new organisations knew about the driving trends, and they’ve capitalised on them.
There was one case with my client BHP who were buying very expensive computers that were designed for hostile environments. On a single computer they might spend $6,000 to $7,000. This is the time where your average PC was $1,000. So their head of IT sent me their three year budget, and said Craig, this is what we're going to be investing in over the next three years, have a look at it. I saw thousands and thousands of these $6,000 and $7,000 PCs. I thought it was absolutely nuts, because I had seen this 'start-up' create a little completely solid state $70 computer that would run all of their software, same as that $6,000 computer. These little $70 streaming computers essentially have a keyboard, a screen, and a mouse. The main computers are actually running back at Perth. while the guys in Saskatchewan could be using these $70 streaming computers. I saved them a couple hundred million dollars, so that's one win I can attest to.
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FUTURIST ARCHETYPE NEW HEADING HERE
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Google have a tool called Google Trends where you can type in whatever term you want, say pork versus chicken, and it will show you what the worldwide search trends are on trend or off trend, chicken versus pork and it can show you by country. So you can say chicken versus pork in Australia or America, and it will show you whether something is one trend, or off trend historically. This is a good tool to get a global survey of your topic. It’s like doing an instant survey of billions and billions of searches. If you want to go deeper than that, one of my favourites for doing a cross industry environmental scan is one called ‘shaping tomorrow’ that a lot of futurists use. Here you can post a question, and it will send a robot out across the internet, an artificial AI empowered algorithm looking for projections. Then when the projections come back to the futurist society, any of the futurists that are interested in the topic will read that research, and give it a ranking as to whether it’s important or relevant to this discussion or not and how big an impact it might create.
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W
hat are some futurist tools that people could use?
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ould you suggest we scan every week, or do it quarterly?
It depends on the organisation, yet most organisations will have a monthly board or executive meeting and this is a perfect time to share some of the emerging trends. So I think monthly works well. If you have each person, each board member, or each executive leadership team member, or people who are passionate in your industry group that want to be that topic leader, give them each maybe ten different topics that they could give a regular update on. We'll give each executive three minutes at the board meeting to give an update on their trend area. That really tends to drive that organisation towards the future.
hat would be your real simple search methodologies tips?
I use advance search tools that visualise information better than a Google search. So the problem with a Google search is you just get a whole bunch of text listings. You don't get any connection between those. So there are advanced search and categorization tools. I use one called DEVONthink. Part of this DEVONthink office is a tool called DEVONsearch. What it will do is you can say ‘show me the future of marketing automation’. It will show you a Google search, a Bing search, a Yahoo search. But then it will look at all of those search results, and connect them with hyperlinks. It's a bit like a visual thesaurus. If you have ever seen a visual thesaurus, where you can drill down in a particular direction to try to find a particular word. So it will summarise in a mind map mode. Then you can drill down into a particular area. It doesn't just give you a link to the website, it summarises what's on that page. It does a word density search, picks out the words that pop up the most, and then shows ten of those mention this. So it gives you a visualised survey of your search.
FUTURIST ARCHETYPE NEW HEADING HERE
This is a highly specialised search tool, but I use it a lot when a client commissions me to do research. It's much better than using Google just by itself. But there are many tools like that. If you don't want to use Shaping Tomorrow or DEVONthink, you should shop around. There is a website called alternativeto.net. You can type in any program, say Evernote, and it will show you all of the alternatives to Evernote. You can put in DEVONthink, and you might find another program that does similar things like that. For example, TheBrain. It does mindmapping of search results. It's like an Evernote and a search tool together. There's actually hundreds and hundreds of these tools. Just like in every industry there's special tools. Collectors, researchers, and thinkers have been using tools like this for a long time.
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ow can people find out more about your offerings?
I've got over ten futurist processes in my book, 'How to Think Like a Futurist' with ten ways of how to think like a futurist, and seven techniques; including environmental scanning, horizon scan, scenario planning, futures wheel, futures workshops, the Delphi method, causal layer analysis. It gets into pretty geeky futurist stuff. But it's a quick read that might give some people some further ideas to study if they want to drill down a little bit.
You can get this for free from my website www.futuretrendsgroup. com. Just click on author. Craig also runs mentoring groups globally, here in Australia, and online. to find out about them click on mentor, it will list all of my groups; Melbourne, Sydney, Newcastle, Western Sydney, North Sydney, CBD, and online for his global clients.
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MARKETING ARCHETYPE
DIFFERENTIATION
MARKETING GURU FRANZISKA ISELI SHARES SOME GEMS FROM HER LATEST AMAZON BEST SELLING BOOK - 'PERCEPTION'
i ng h e r Fra nzi sk a read el l er Amaz on b est s
D
efining differentiation
What you make or do is a commodity. How you do it can differentiate you. Your unique way of doing things is part of your differentiation. The purpose of differentiation is to get noticed or to be distinguished from the rest. We’ll talk about specific strategies of how to differentiate in Chapter 6. For now, let’s look at examples of differentiation.
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Let’s take some basic commodities like water, salt, or coffee. These commodities are available under numerous brand names, and for the most part they are quite inexpensive. (In most of the developed world, clean drinking water is nearly free, flowing from your tap!) Yet we are willing to pay a premium price once those commodities are differentiated – giving us the perception that they are worth more, and somehow better. Whether that “betterness” is real, or just how we feel about them, is an open question.
That’s why many manufacturers of bottled waters are able to sell their water at higher prices than we pay for gasoline for our cars – and look how much we complain about gas prices! That’s also why we are willing to pay even three times more for high-end brands of coffee than the lower-end brands such as Nabob and Folgers. These examples illustrate how basic commodities can be transformed into differentiated products simply by adding an aspect of your company’s uniqueness to it. Why differentiate – and how? Differentiating can help you carve out a specific market or allow you to charge a higher price. Or both. If you don’t want to compete on price (which most don’t), you must differentiate.
where do you sit on the differenti ati on g ra ph? In fact, you have to differentiate if you don’t want to blend in and go unnoticed. To differentiate, start by looking at what makes you different – or what could make you different. This applies to anything: a person, a business, a product, a service. Brook runs an interior design business (that’s the “what,” the commodity). Lots of other people run interior design businesses too. She really needs to think of ways to differentiate, so she can stand out from the rest. Here are a few things she could look at: • how she runs the business • her personal touches • the customer experience • her location • her team • her unique past, Having lived in Indonesia, which now places her in the distinct position of coming from two cultures and being able to blend Indonesian products with Western style in a new and innovative way.
the more differentiation you have the better The Differentiation Spectrum In general, the more differentiation you have, the better – although that may depend somewhat on your industry. If you are in a very crowded space, it helps to become more differentiated, as long as you don’t get so narrow or specific that there is no longer a market for you. The Differentiation Spectrum is a visual of how differentiated your product (or your service or your brand) is. On the left are nondifferentiated commodities where you are just one of the crowd. And on the right are differentiated products where you stand out in all your glory! You want to be somewhere between the middle and the far right of the spectrum – if you are not selling a commodity, that is.
Let’s look at some examples of undifferentiated products. What about double-A batteries for your flashlight? We’re sure there are a few brand names you’ve heard of out there, but most likely your purchase decision will be based more on price than on differentiation. Not to say that you can’t differentiate batteries. In most cases, you don’t want to be perceived as just a commodity. The further left you go on the Differentiation Spectrum, the more general your market will be. The further right you go, the more differentiated and more specific you become. Your total market may be smaller, but you are more likely to acquire some very loyal fans, early adopters, and come to dominate that smaller pool. You want to be a big fish in a small pond rather than a small, unknown fish in a big pond.
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You need to look at what your possible markets could be and what you have to offer that gets them excited
become "talkaboutable"
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am gets this. Brook is nervous about his crazy cushion designs – that there won’t be much of a market for them. But Sam is right; Brook doesn’t need much of a market. She just needs to reach enough of those “right people”: the ones who don’t want a standard department store cushion; the ones who will be proud to display a unique, exclusive – and expensive – Savvy Mundo cushion on their couch. Many business owners are scared to go to the right because they think they are missing out on business, when in fact they are attracting their perfect market by becoming more irresistible to them.
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You need to look at what your possible markets could be and what you have to offer that gets them excited. It might also be smart to look at what your competitors are doing. If all you do is copy them but offer your products cheaper, then you are competing based on price (being more of a commodity, with low differentiation) – and that’s hardly ever a good gameplan. But if you can differentiate yourself more, by offering an incredible customer experience, differentiating your products, or by finding a specific niche and gaining loyal fans, then you can position yourself on the right end of the Differentiation Spectrum. Instead of competing on price, you become “talkaboutable”, special, desirable – and people will be happy to pay more for your product given that the value outweighs the price.
In general, only very large businesses or business partnerships (those that can compete on price via the economies of scale to become the big discount providers) can succeed on the low-differentiation commodity side of the spectrum. Walmart’s positioning, for example, is to be on the very left of the differentiation spectrum, always finding the cheapest products for its customers thanks to buying in bulk. Most small businesses must differentiate to survive and thrive. They don’t have the advantage of economies of scale and will never be able to compete with the big companies on price and they really shouldn’t either. It’s a lot more fun to play on the right side of the spectrum!
MARKETING ARCHETYPE
you are the one who should be calling the shots on how you are perceived You call the shots. It’s really important that you are the one who takes charge of how your brand and products are perceived – how your “right people” recognize your differentiated product or service as the irresistible solution they need. Not being seen at all may be an option in your private life. But it’s not an option in business if you want to increase your impact. If people have heard of you at all, they will have formed some sort of perception of you. Do you want that perception to be created by the market or – even worse – by your competitors? Of course not! So it’s really important that you remember you are the one who should be calling all the shots on how you are perceived.
Fra nzi sk a Isel
i
This means: 1. choosing what attributes you want to be known for 2. defining how you want your brand and products to be perceived 3. differentiating i.e. figuring out where you want to position yourself on the Differentiation Spectrum 4. putting yourself out there! …
Franziska Iseli is the founder of the marketing business Basic Bananas, the author of several books and an international speaker on marketing. To find out more stalk her at www.basicbananas.com
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NEW HEADING HERE
INNOVATION: CURRENT ISSUES NILS VESK DEALS WITH SOME OF THE CURRENT ISSUES THAT PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT WHEN IT COMES TO INNOVATION
DEALING WITH FAILURE: HOW TO REDEFINE IT Quick tip: Professional innovators don’t use the word ‘failure’ they use the word ‘experimental learning’. Here's why: Innovation is really experimentation, and the most commercial innovators of all time have seen their innovation as a series of experiments. Edison’s thousands of so called ‘failure’ light bulbs were simply experiments which told him what would not work. The professional innovator approaches innovation with the experimental mindset yet uses small experiments to reduce the risk. In short consider what your predictions are or were for an innovation, record what actually happened and finally evaluate those predictions with the outcomes and record what you have learnt. The motto is ‘spend a little learn a lot’.
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FRONT LINERS: HOW TO ENCOURAGE THEM TO GIVE LIFE TO THEIR IDEAS
STAKEHOLDERS: HOW TO ENGAGE THEM FOR FEEDBACK
Quick Tip: Recognise their intelligence & brilliance.
Quick Tip: Co-create
Why? Front liners, are at the hard face of business dealing with the gripes and objections of your products. service or processes. In reality they are a treasure trove of customer insights. Yet we treat them optional rather than as valuable. The cold hard facts are there is more money in their minds than in the boardroom. It’s your job to recognise that brilliance, importance and value. Your second job is to facilitate them so that they share and help you to action ideas around these insights. To do this you need to help instil a new narrative that shows why that knowledge is so important and stories that share how they can and have been implemented before, whether in your organisation or in others.
Here’s Why: People tend to switch off when giving feedback, this can happen because what’s been done has been done, it could have been a bad day, or they have no time to do your 50 question evaluation form. They are however more interested in being involved in creating a better experience for themselves in the future. After all the future is much more exciting than the past. Find ways to invite your customer to be involved in design phase of your next product or service creation. They’ll be much more engaged and excited about it and they will be much more willing to share ideas to deal with elements that didn’t hit the mark before.
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the innovation process, reinvented.
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WILL
OWEN
HILARY
MICHAEL
FERRELL
WILSON
SWANK
CAINE
HALF BAKED
doing very little is serious business
SCREEN AUSTRALIA ;BAD TASTE STUDIOS PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH INNOVATION ENTERTAINMENT *GUY RITCHIE WILL FERRELL OWEN WILSON HILARY SWANK /MICHAEL CAIN cENYAdTOM FORD tPICASSO eALFIE f BAZ LUHRMAN g HELMUT NEWTON p CHRIS JACKa ALLAN JOYCE j OBAMA k RON HOWARD IN CINEMAS DECEMBER 9
FILMS WORTH WATCHING
FILM REVIEW: HALF-BAKED WITH GEORGE CLOONEY
WILL FERRELL AND OWEN WILSON LEAD A FULL ON ASSAULT ON THE SERIOUS JOB OF DOING AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE IN THE CORPORATE WORLD... AND GETTING AWAY WITH IT.
W
hat starts out as a serous movie suddenly turns into a parody about getting away with doing very little in the corporate world.
The lead character 'Archie' played by Owen Wilson plays a tortured upcoming executive who is close to burn out. A demanding glamorous wife who always expects more, a bunch of high achieving friends who are always trying to outsmart and outplay each other. On the verge of losing it, he comes across the unlikely ally of senior vice president TJ played by Will Ferrell. TJ sees the desperate Archie and takes him under his wing and starts to show him the ropes of how business can really be done. Hence begins a riotous adventure of re-education as TJ shows him how doing very little can look like doing a lot. From strategy sessions that achieve nothing, workshops that excite everyone but lead nowhere to an impressive use of models, corporate jargon that leave those around feeling as if there not smart enough to be in the room. While in reality nothing is really being done or said, and so the fun begins. For those who have ever spent time in a corporate meeting will know there are politics, agendas, vendettas and power plays at the heart of nearly every meeting. Half-baked shows this is in a hilarious way as TJ and Archie float along the corporate echelons with their quick wit and baseless strategies and solutions to business.
With out doubt one the best scenes is in a spitball brainstorming session. Where TJ gets the team hyped up and create some of the worst ideas imaginable yet manages to make everyone including the CEO feel like that it was the most innovative brainstorming session ever. Supported by some class actors including Hillary Swank as the 'ball buster' CFO and Michael Cain as the CEO. If you've ever wondered how some people got ahead in business with out really doing anything - then this movie is for you and will make you cry and laugh at the same time as you realise how believable some of the corporate moves that go down. Before you come up with that half-baked idea, catch this movie elimination and you're career will be sure to advance like never before.
George
4 stars. www.innovationblueprint.com.au
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CURRENT INNOVATION CHALLENGES
INNOVATION: CURRENT ISSUES NILS VESK DEALS WITH SOME OF THE CURRENT ISSUES THAT PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT WHEN IT COMES TO INNOVATION DISPARATE: HOW TO INNOVATE WITH REMOTE TEAMS
CREDIBILITY: HOW TO BUILD CREDIBILITY FOR AN IDEA
Quick tip: Show & tell
Quick tip: Make it understandable.
Here’s Why: Sounds weird but people are social by nature and they like to hear from other people. The most powerful communication and motivation currency we have is ‘story telling’.
Why? Too often we fall in love with our idea to such a state that we fail to communicate an idea in a way that people can easily understand and follow.
Even if you have teams spread across the globe, nothing is more powerful to encourage collaboration than through starting with story telling of innovation. Consider: Starting with ‘what great innovation, product, process or service have you see recently, and what made it so good? ’ Move onto sharing what new innovative behaviours people have been displaying recently and why it was useful eg. We went on a field trip to our suppliers plant last week and we learnt... Share problems and ask for help in solving them. 38
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INNOVATION EVALUATION: HOW TO DETERMINE THE VALUE OF AN INNOVATION TO ENSURE PERSISTENCE AND IMPLEMENTATION Quick tip: Look for a ‘payback’ both ways. Here's why:
Ideas that demand credibility have a few things going for them. They are: Understandable - ie. they are easy to grasp and see the context in how they might be used. Language such as ‘It’s kind of like...” helps people to use association to make sense of it. Testable - ie. Scientific credibility comes from being able to test and show results. A good idea should be the same, being able to create a plan to test it and show it works. Valuable - ie. Demonstrating the value to the user/ customer and the value to the organisation creating it. The more thought out the business case the more credibility the idea generates.
While it’s great to create an innovation that adds value to your client, it’s an absolute ball to create an innovation that not only satisfies the client yet also makes life easier you and your team. To evaluate a potential idea simply consider both the R.O.I for the client and team. Consider benefits such as: Saves time, saves effort, reduce complexity, prevents mistakes, reduces need for refunds, increases fun, increases excitement, saves money, creates curiosity, intrigues people etc. While not every innovation needs to contain all of these elements, the more we do address the more compelling the idea and the higher the engagement and persistence will be.
Innovation breakthroughs often come from leaving things out www.InnovationBlueprint.com.au
CURRENT INNOVATION CHALLENGES
BACK END: HOW TO GET THE' BACK END' TEAMS TO INNOVATE Quick tip: Reverse the process. Here’s why: When we label the ‘back end’ IT team ‘back end’, then they behave that way. If we were to treat them as ‘front end’ or customer facing we would get a very different response. Some simple ways to do this is to get the teams to give a ‘show & tell’ presentation of the mechanics that they work on. Then ask yourself and the team to imagine what a customer would expect from this back end. List all of their expectations. Now get the ‘back end’ team to list all of their design intentions about how this system should work and be used. Now get the team and outsiders to list how the typical customer would interpret ‘how to use’ the system. Be realistic, assume your typical customer has no prior experience or knowledge on how to use the system. How would they interpret it? Now compare the design intentions against the customer assumption/ interpretations. If there are discrepancies- this is where the team needs to innovate and they will also see the need to innovate.
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BARRIERS: HOW TO BREAKDOWN INNOVATION BARRIERS Quick tip: Give people the ‘how to’, ‘chance to’ and ‘why to’ innovate. Why? The main barriers to innovation lie behind each one of these. ‘Chance to’ - people rarely have the chance to innovate, this can be in the form of permission, time or resources. Give people permission, give them time and support and innovation can start. ‘How to’ - innovation does not come naturally to people, and most of us have creative thinking totally crushed through our formative schooling and education. This means we need to train our people on ‘how’ to innovate. ‘Why to’ - this is the motivation that we need to innovate. Creating a narrative as to why innovation is crucial. It’s about sharing stories that engage us emotionally as to ‘why’ we need to innovate and what that look like in our respective organisation.
Seek forgiveness versus permission BOTTOM UP: HOW TO CREATE INNOVATION THAT INFLUENCES FROM THE BOTTOM UP Quick tip: Seek forgiveness versus permission. Why? People are risk averse by nature, and are unlikely to support innovation until they see it working, which they are unwilling to allow unless it has already happened. Hence the motto. What this means in reality however is getting some quick ‘runs on the board’. We can do this by rapid prototyping to learn what can work and developing these prototypes further so that we have irrefutable evidence and proof of the success out potential innovations can have. It’s far to easy to knock back an ‘off the cuff idea’ but very hard to knock back let alone ignore a well thought out business case that’s backed up small scale prototypes or ‘proof of concept’ projects. Go forth and innovate!
INNOVATION SOLUTIONS
GOVERNMENT SERVICE: HOW TO HAVE QUICKER INNOVATION YET STILL BE ABOVE THE BOARD Quick tip: 90 day co-creation projects
DEFINITION: HOW TO DEFINE WHAT ACTUALLY IS INNOVATION Quick tip: Think of innovation as a verb versus a noun.
Why? I spoke about co-creations before in how getting customers involved in designing in a new improved service is a win-win situation. This is no different, yet the challenge many government organisations have is in the time frame execution.
Here’s why: Too many people talk about innovation as a noun - and they are looking for a commercial result of some kind without actually knowing what could create that end result.
Most ‘time effectiveness’ experts agree that 90day projects work best because of the relative short time frame, the ability to see and experience progress in a short amount of time and to reach the end and evaluate what they have learnt as a result of it. Rather than trying to totally reinvent the processes in place look at compartmentalising service innovation into 90 day projects. If approvals are a challenge, then create 90 day prototypes/ proof of concepts to validate the need to roll out to the public.
Innovation simply put is when we apply innovative behaviours that lead to the improvement, reinvention or invention of a product, process or service. It could be a 1% improvement or an ground breaking new methodology. Innovation means demonstrating behaviours such as: * Identifying pain points in the organisation * Listing out the needs, desires and aversions of a customer, team member or user. * Suggesting ways that a process, product or service can be improved by adding or combining other activities or elements * Maps a customer journey/ experience of a service or space. * Suggests ideas to prevent or solve customer frustrations. * Lists the predictions that will occur as a result of making a change to an existing process or implementing a new idea.
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NEW HEADING HERE
INNOVATION BEHAVIOURS: HOW TO CREATE INNOVATIVE BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE Quick tip: Start by defining innovative behaviours Why? If the behaviours are observable and measurable then they are achievable. Some observable innovative behaviours include: • Converts a pain point or frustration into a question • Shares research and findings about a particular problem with the team • Pins up pictures or articles of an upcoming trend that will affect organisation or customers. • Observes a process, interaction, reaction, activity and records their observations • Actively looks for new ideas from outside of the industry • Builds rapid conceptual prototypes of an idea to communicate with others and assess an ideas potential • Plans social, physical or workplace experiments • Tests a product or service to see how usable, simple, logical, intuitive and foolproof it might be • Helps to craft a story to help communicate what's remarkable about a product, process or service • Creates templates to increase the efficiency and productivity of execution • Identifies the scale of difficulty of an idea • Identifies potential profits or costs/ time savings of a new idea
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COMMERCIAL: HOW TO IDENTIFY THE MOST USEFUL AREA TO INNOVATE Quick tip: Cover all 3 areas of a business - Product, Process, Service Why? any make the mistake that innovation is all about product, whilst many of the most innovative organisations don’t even have a product in the real sense. Targeting each of these 3 areas will ensure that your organisation remains commercial. If you haven’t touched a process for years, chances are it needs an innovative overhaul. If you’ve been selling the same product for years, chances are there’s a better product that will sell more, and if your service hasn’t changed then chances are there are some unhappy clients who are telling other people about their dissatisfaction. Consider in terms of usefulness, if there is a link to... profitability, usability, ease of use, ability to motivate customers or employees, ability to influence, ability to anticipate customer demands, increasing satisfaction, reducing failure rates or refunds, time savings, resource savings etc.
NEW HEADING HERE
MARKET: HOW TO DECIDE WHAT WILL SELL Quick tip: Create what people want whilst satisfying needs Why? Every other business out there produces a product or service to satisfy a need, yet it’s the ones that go beyond the need to satisfy a desire that do better than the rest. They don’t stop there, the products or services that have no shortage of customers, do so by having a ‘remarkable’ element to them. Whether it’s a remarkable benefit, feature, appearance or customer experience. This is what gets people to remark about and if it’s a good remark, they’ll tell others and others will buy it. AirBnB knew that people didn’t need to stay at other people’s houses when travelling. They needed accommodation, but they wanted something affordable and that would make them feel more like a local and less like a tourist.
THINKING VERSUS DOING: HOW TO ENCOURAGE INNOVATION WHEN PEOPLE VALUE DOING OVER THINKING Quick tip: Make the innovative thinking a ‘doing’ activity Why? If an organisation values doing versus thinking we need to make innovation a series of ‘doing activities’ that doesn’t feel like thinking. For example conducting a customer profile identifying their most common needs, desires and aversions each month as a part of an account review is innovative thinking, yet it can look like a ‘doing’ activity. It’s simply a matter of repackaging the thinking as a ‘doing’ activity and locating it in a logical place so that it feels just like a ‘doing’ activity.
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SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS CREATING CHANGE THROUGH INNOVATIVE THINKING
SOCIAL INNOVATION THREAD TOGETHER
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hread together is an Australian non for profit organisation that gathers excess unsold clothing from Australia's biggest fashion houses and then distributes them to those who need them most. They collect the excess clothing from over 20 leading fashion houses and transport them back to their central warehouse. With the help of many volunteers, they sort through all the clothes, categorise them into categories such as womans shorts, mens Tshirt's etc. Then they send them around Australia to and with the help over 30 community and charity groups distribute them to the individuals needing new clothing. 44
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Fashion with a purpose
Giving people in need new clothes or even new shoes create a special feeling for people. It gives them confidence and it gives them dignity and creates a sense of self worth. The have helped over 50,000 people already and have distributed over $4,000,000 worth of clothing already. There goal to is to be able to help 100,000 people per year with their service.
Andie Halas
“Our model is very simple. We collect end-of-line brand new stock from clothing providers. With the support of volunteers, the clothes are sorted by age, gender, and purpose, and then re-distributed to people in need through charities across Australia. I think of it as redistributive justice.� - Andie Halas, Founder of Thread Together To find out more visit their great website to find out more at www. threadtogether.org.
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UNDER ACHIEVER ORGANISATION: GLOBAL CORPORATE LOCATION: LONDON ENGLAND REMUNERATION: HIGH SIX FIGURES + EXPAT RELOCATION PACKAGE CONTRACT TYPE: SUCCESS BASED ANNUAL REVIEW Aimed at under achiever specialists who want to advance their career by doing as little as possible. Work for one of the worlds leading corporates in our leadership team department and be involved in some of the most radical anti-productivity and anti-innovation strategies being implemented in the world. Based just outside of London, our organisation offers the opportunity to take part in the exciting field of 'hampering other people's efforts' and denigrating people for their efforts. The company has an 'under achieving' culture and we strive to keep it that way, where employees are valued and inspired for doing as little as possible. The organisation’s current research in procrastination & filibustering has created an environment where it is possible to make both individual and team contributions towards commercial under achiever excellence whilst sharing in the profits. BENEFITS: Benefits include a pension superannuation scheme, life insurance, private health care insurance and dental plan, subsidised gym membership, a flourishing social scene, and one months sick leave. TO APPLY: Applicants will need to submit a proposal on effective strategies they would consider using for under achieving. Proposals will be judged primarily on the basis of strategic merit, track record of the applicant and potential for development of application. To be involved in this vibrant culture and organisation going nowhere, please visit underachiever. com/careers-all/careers-international/ CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATION: 12 DECEMBER
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innovation blueprints Changing how we look at innovation www.InnovationBlueprint.com.au