Measurable Marketing

The Five Assassins of Innovation

Every company talks about innovation and recognizes the need to be innovative. But then why do so many promising ideas die an untimely death? Let me introduce you to the assassins of innovation who have your next big idea in their crosshairs:

1. Low self-esteem Larry: “We’ll never get away with it. We’re not (insert name of impossibly cool brand).” Don’t be fooled by his self-effacing facade. Larry is one of the most prolific eradicators out there. He strikes early and takes down ideas in their infancy. How to defend yourself against Larry?

Try this: A recent study from Millward Brown found that there was no significant correlation between brand or category involvement and likelihood of viewing and sharing viral video. Think about the most popular viral videos in recent years and the categories they represented: bottled water, a mobile provider and deodorant — not typically the types of things most people get worked up about. Well-executed ideas are what make a brand cool, not the other way around.

2. Benny the Brain: “We don’t have the data.” Benny’s right. Odds are, you won’t have the data to justify a truly innovative effort because data is inherently backward looking. Data can tell you the “what” but not the “why.” Nor is it about asking customers what they want. (Think back to the Henry Ford quote, “If I asked my customers what they want, they simply would have said a faster horse.”) The type of data you really need comes from talking, following and watching your customers to understand their needs, then creating a solution based on that understanding.

3. Practical Paulie: “[Insert name of brilliant idea] is just a fad.” Unlike Benny, Paulie usually has all the numbers at his disposal. For every idea, he’ll have a few stats to prove why it won’t work. The biggest issue with the industry reports and studies he cites is that they're rarely specific to your audience, category or situation. Try turning the tables on Paulie. If 25 percent of mobile phone owners only use an app once, that’s 75 percent who are using it more than once. Innovation is rarely mass adoption; it’s about seeding a new idea, reaching early adopters and gaining traction.

4. Helga the Historian: “It’s already been done/We’ve already tried that.” Helga lurks in unexpected places, including companies that are considered innovators by most standards. She’s the one who reminds the team, “We tried mobile back in 2002, and it was a disaster.” Let Helga know that it’s 2011 and times have changed.

Facebook didn’t invent social networking. Remember MySpace? And before that Friendster? And if you go way back, GeoCities? Sometimes it’s just the right idea at the wrong time. Other times it’s the right idea but it's executed poorly. There are countless reasons why innovations fail. The key is to learn from your mistakes and the successes of others to maximize your odds of producing a winner. Think about your most admired companies. Chances are few, if any, were the first to market. Let Helga know it’s not about being first, but about being better.

5. Big Al the Accountant: “We can’t afford it.” The economic downturn has lavished Al with a lot of extra ammunition. Companies believe they’re doing the right thing by staying with the tried and true, avoiding the risks of bringing a new idea to market. However, it’s companies that are continuing to invest in innovation during tough times that are emerging from the recession with higher growth rates. In this case, think small. Distill down a grand vision to its essential components and propose ways to execute it quickly and inexpensively.

Arming yourself against the assassins
The assassins aren't invincible (otherwise, I'd have made them superheroes). Know how they’ll attack and be prepared. To summarize, here are quotes from a couple of the smartest people I know: Sun Tzu: “Know your enemies and know yourself and you will win countless battles.” My mom: “Don’t forget to do your homework.”

Originally published by eM&C

What "You're Not Being Strategic" Really Means

Strategy is one of those words that sounds very smart, definitive and meaningful until you realize that it means something different to everyone. In my mind, the definition of strategy is simple. It means understanding available options and identifying the one that best gets you to your end goal.

But when I’ve heard the phrase “you’re not being strategic” what it usually means is one of three things: 

1. Knowing: You haven’t done the fundamental exercise of understanding what are the options and what path should be chosen.  
2. Showing: You know what’s important but you’re not doing a good enough job of showing how connecting it to the tactics.
3. Doing: You know what’s important but the work you’re doing has nothing to do with it.

So what aren’t you doing?

Business Inspiration from the Grateful Dead & Van Halen

If you're like me, you probably have a steady stable of "best in class" case studies that you trot out a few times a year for inspiring brainstorms or the latest deck about transforming your business. This is the month to freshen up those JetBlue-GE-Amazon-Ikea-Wal-Mart-[insert your favorites here] war horses. There's a bumper crop of unexpected inspiration on this month's newsstand.

In the Atlantic Magazine article "Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead" the band's forward thinking business practices are featured. This includes customer loyalty cultivation, tightly controlled merchandising and that crazy idea of profiting from "giving it away." On this last point, the Dead's lyricist John Perry Barlow worte in 1994, "the best way to raise demand for your product is to give it away."

John Perry Barlow goes on to explain that in the digital world, Adam's Smith's "scarcity = value" equation doesn't neatly apply. With the Internet "if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced."

In Fast Company, Dan and Chip Heath treats us to "Business Advice from Van Halen" and paint the picture of David Lee Roth as an operational expert (who knew?) They shed light on the now legendary Van Halen clause about “no brown M&Ms.” The clause reads “There will be no brown M&Ms in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.” Turns out this was a way for the band to ensure that the venue was thoroughly reading the contract. A successful concert is built on the details and if they saw brown M&Ms, that was the band’s tip off that other details have probably been missed.

So what are you going to talk about in your next presentation -- Sam Walton and Jack Welch or David Lee Roth? (as if I had to ask). Next post? The Marketing Genius of Lady GaGa. Take that Herb Kelleher.

Creativity: Nature or Nuture?

What would you rather have in your company -- 10 employees who are creative thinkers or 10,000? Most would likely opt for the latter and yet we often work in ways that that reinforces the former. I’ve always liked this story from Thinkertoys:

The CEO of a publishing company wanted to understand what made some employees more creative than others. After a year-long study conducted by some very smart psychology experts, he learned that the creative employees believed they were creative and the less creative ones believed they were not.

In the following year, a program was put in place to train and change the non-creative group’s perception of their own creativity. End result, this group became more creative than the group originally deemed “more creative” and delivered a series of innovative projects.

For all I know, this could be a complete urban myth. Verity aside, the finding about creativity as a self-fulfilling prophecy rings true. The employees known to be the “creative ones” become must-haves at brainstorms and high profile projects while the others sigh with relief, awe, envy or some combination thereof. The result? The creatives have the opportunities to hone their skills and the “not creative” are affirmed in their beliefs and status quo is maintained.

I thought of this topic recently when reading Geoff Colvin’s Talent is Overrated. Both his book and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (coincidentally, the books were published within a month of each other) address the topic of deliberate practice.

Like any other skill, creativity must be practiced and encouraged. For managers, that means doing away with any preconceived impressions of which employees are and aren't creative, providing training in creative thinking and most importantly offering opportunities for everyone to exercise their creative thinking abilities.