School in the Post PC Era

My 10 year old daughter had a paper due recently on the Cherokee Indians.  We happened to be traveling to San Jose on the weekend before the paper was due, so we didn't have much time to do the research and write the paper.  Afternoon flight on Friday, packed weekend, late night flight on Sunday back to Vegas. 

While in the air on the way to San Jose my daughter was doing research on the internet on an iPad.  As she found sites with interesting information on The Cherokee Indians, she copied and pasted the information into the Notes app.  She did this for 3 different sites. 

On Sunday, we were delayed for an hour in the airport, where my daughter opened up a Macbook Air.  The notes were all synced to the Mac and she started on her paper and finished it on the plane ride home. 

I wish I had the technology Apple is putting together when I was in school.  The ability to take a device to school and do research and everything transfers to the main computer when writing the paper is something that will make school and amazing experience for young children.  

Obsoletive: Revolutionary Products in Tech Don't Disrupt-They Obsolete

Three things irk me about “disruption” as it’s used in technology:

New products that do what existing products do, but (theoretically) better, are not disruptive. They are “sustaining.” Instagram Video is not disrupting Vine. It’s competing with it.

The misplaced obsession with low-end disruption, which, as I argued last week, doesn’t apply nearly as strongly to consumer markets.

The characterization of obsoletive technology as disruptive.

I like what Ben Thompson has to say here.  Everyone loves holding on to buzzwords, but the iPhone did obsolete its competition.  It literally put two of the most powerful companies out of business.  That wasn't disruptive, it was destructive. 

The rest of the article hits it on the nose.  Good read. 

Why Your Employees Need to Make More Mistakes

...for a new company, a willingness to make mistakes is a strength that management should seek to leverage.

Why? Because mistakes are what happen when you're moving fast. Or, to put it another way, if you want to minimize mistakes, you will also have to slow down. If you're too consumed with preventing mistakes, you'll sacrifice speed. In today's competitive landscape, this is not an acceptable tradeoff for a young company, for which speed is one of the few natural advantages over larger, more powerful incumbents.

Couldn't agree more.  In my line of work, CRM/Database Marketing, innovating and acting quickly is much more important than worrying about mistakes.  I always tell my team if we aren't making mistakes, we are moving too slow.  This is why we were able to integrate a Marketing Automation system, new data warehouse design and a new BI platform within 4 months and with a team that is only 5 deep.   

Platform updates and the rate of innovation

the really interesting thing is that there are now 200m people using iOS7, where last year 'only' 100m people upgraded to iOS6 in the opening weekend.

Apple is truly playing a different game then anyone in the mobile space.  Google has done a herculean effort to own the platform race from a market share perspective, but Apple just keeps moving everyone forward with new technology.  Looking around at all the people around me, most not technical, upgrading their OS's to the latest version.  That is amazing.  You never saw this in the past and Apple is moving hundreds of millions onto new platforms in a week.  Tough to keep up. 

http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2013/9/23/platform-updates-and-the-rate-of-innovation 

What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong in his Theory of Low-End Disruption

Cool article about Clayton Christensen and his Theory of Low-End Disruption.  I think there are some great points in this article that highlight Apple as the use case.   

I don't subscribe to the theory of low-end disruption in the consumer space.  I think Ben Thompson is right on.  There are so many cases of companies that thrive without having to serve the low-end, even when the competition puts out a decent or "good enough" product at a much lower price point

• BMW, Mercedes and Audi in cars
• Apple in consumer electronics
• Rolex and Tag in watches
• Four Seasons in hotels

The list can go on and on.  Companies don't have to play the market share game to be successful.  It takes so much more effort to satisfy the masses, the support costs  and the scale the business has to grow are just two reasons why a business should think twice.

I prefer serving the fewest amount of customers to make the most profit.  In that model I can give better customer service and create a much more loyal base to maintain profit share.  

The Myth of Steve Jobs Constant Breakthroughs

For every great leap forward Apple ever made, it accomplished at least as much through small steps that made its products easier, faster, thinner, lighter, more polished and/or more useful. Apple’s most important products may have been the game-changers, but its best products, always, have been those that benefited from smart, evolutionary improvements. And as far as I remember, Jobs never seemed guilty about the profits they brought.

Super article.  Why does everyone want to put a fork into Apple and call them done?  The product they put out on Friday is so superior to every smart phone out there.  Incremental or not, they are still innovating.  

The items in our new iPhone 5s' are the foundation for their next jumps.  The M7 processor is the beta test for a wearable technology.  The 64-bit A7 chip is the baseline to take over TV and move the low end laptop computer world into the modern era.  

Remember, the time between the iPod and the iPhone was 6 years.  The iPod led the way to develop the iPhone.  Without the iPod, there probably never would have been an iPhone.  You can argue the iPad was an incremental improvement on the iPhone.  

So Apple is ready for their next disruption, we just have to realize we are already using it.  When the next disruption comes out, you can bet it has many of the technologies in the current phones.

How the U.S. Airline Industry Found Its Edge or Demise?

So what happened? The turnaround can’t be attributed to a bold, Da Vinci-esque initiative such as new carbon fiber aircraft, the pioneering of new markets or even low-cost innovation. Rather, it was the result of something far more modest: the slicing of airlines’ base offerings into customizable “options and extras.” The most famous of these options was checked-bag fees, but most of the recent innovations have focused on “upselling” passengers into an improved experience (e.g., selling fast-track boarding, lounge-access, extra leg room and others).  

This is one of the most interesting articles I have read from Harvard Business Review.  For one, I can't disagree more with the premise.  The premise of the article is that charging fees is a good thing for businesses.  Like many businesses in the "what have you done for me lately" quarterly earnings craze, the airlines have gone with the strategy of making bad profit.  

What's bad profit do you ask?  It's profit that erodes the long term profitability of the business.  Not all profit is created equal.  The airlines have sacrificed customer satisfaction and loyalty for short term profit.  The article argues it saved the industry and these are innovative.  I argue there is nothing innovative about this strategy.  It is lazy. 

As part of this shift, airlines realized that some people didn’t need everything that was included in the sale of a standard ticket; this opened the door to unbundling the “one size fits all” offer — and led to the introduction of fees for checked bags. Many business travelers never check a bag but historically subsidized the substantial cost for leisure travelers who did. Today, those who need the option pay for it. Many passengers grumbled, but the impact has been undeniably positive for the industry. Last year bag fees alone generated $3.6 billion in revenue in the U.S. Imagine where the industry would be without this?

What?  Unbundling?  They didn't unbundle, they added on fees.  If they were truly unbundling, that business traveler referenced above would start paying less for their ticket.  Instead, they kept prices the same or even raised them and tacked on these fees.  I can't comprehend this thought process. 

What really has saved the airline business?  From the outside looking in it seems they have become smarter about their routes.  They have cancelled many unnecessary flights, because most flights I go on are completely full.  That wasn't the case before, and it's not because the customers are excited about paying for baggage fees. 

The airlines seem to have become better at yielding their prices.  I don't know if it was a big practice in the past, but the airlines seem to be much more strategic about their pricing model.   

Articles like these make me wonder what we are learning about customer service.  These strategies allow for an upstart competitor to come in and take major share, think Southwest.  Southwest is growing faster than ever and that is because they don't nickel and dime their customers.  Maybe the other airlines should find their "true innovation". 

Marketing Automation with Neolane

Building a capture program is something that usually is untouchable with most marketing automation tools.  We built ours in 3 days with Neolane.  Very complex offers built dynamically based on previous behavior of redemption or no redemption.  Yet another tool I am becoming quite a big fan of.

Apple Innovation from January 2004

Very interesting article from January 2004 and why Apple can't succeed as an innovator.  It's so easy to bash in hindsight.  I think I had the same opinion of the company back then also. 

To Lead is to Decide

To Lead Is To Decide. Making change decisions is a cognitively and emotionally taxing activity that the average person will go to great lengths to avoid.

How true.  It is so easy to add on another initiative, but it is very hard to take one away.  In this day and age where so many companies are trying to make every dollar they can, it takes amazing restraint and leadership to forego money on the table for a strategy that is more sound for the long run.

But the one thing they all seem to have in common — the one thing that distinguishes them from ordinary people — is their willingness to decide when others could not.

Innovation...

Companies covered by larger numbers of analysts generate fewer patents, and the patents they produce have lower impact than those from other firms, according to an analysis by Jie (Jack) He of the University of Georgia and Xuan Tian of Indiana University. The findings suggest that analysts exert so much pressure on managers to meet short-term financial goals that they impede companies’ investment in long-term projects, the researchers say.

Hmmm.  Just what I said in my last post. 

Why Apple needs to innovate faster

ZDNet’s most recent Great Debate raised the question whether Apple needs to innovate more rapidly. The answer is a definite “yes” and here’s why.

I love when writers and analysts talk about other peoples businesses and come up with blanket statements like this.  What's even more amazing is to use the stock prices of two companies as your argument.   

Wall Street is the killer of innovation.  Innovation happens over time, you can't rush it.  It happens through iterations.  If Apple were to have hurried their innovation in the past they would have released the iPad first, which would have been a flop because it would have cost much more than it did when they introduced it.  Instead, they took their time and iterated and introduced the iPhone first, which allowed them to build up more buying leverage to reduce prices for the iPad. 

Apple will show us what their next innovation is and analysts and tech writers won't be the ones dictating the timetable. 

Is Data Visualization Actionable?

Although data visualization has produced some of the most captivating artistic displays in recent memory, some of which have found their way into exhibits at the New York Museum of Modern Art and countless art installations around the world, business leaders are asking: is data visualization actionable?

I believe for the most part, the answer is yes.  Data visualization tells a compelling story which allows the consumer of the data to see patterns that are missed in analyzing the numbers.  Even when visualization cannot tell the whole story, they are able to point you in a direction that will save countless hours as they give a great starting point.  

The other side effect of visualization is it engages executives.  Executives love pretty pictures and stories without having to dig through multiple pages or large spreadsheets of numbers.  Dashboards are all the rage, but the visualization tells a story that executives can appreciate. 

IBM Watson, the Ultimate Marketeer?

When a computer can figure out whether a movie trailer is going to positively affect an audience or not – it makes you wonder how close we are to computer generated predictions on everything else in life.

Computers make our lives as marketeers so much easier in the past, however with social media and instant access to data, our jobs become much tougher to stay ahead of the curve.  IBM's Watson could be the way we all look at marketing in the future

Predict new trends and shifting tastes

Watson is a voracious consumer of data, and it doesn’t forget anything. You can feed it data from credit cards, sales databases, social networks, location data, web pages and it can compile and categorize that information to make high probability predictions.

IBM Watson is the ultimate in big data.  The ability to analyze sentiment and understand how tastes are changing in the marketplace is invaluable.  Most marketers don't know this until well after the shift takes place.   

Analyze social conversations – generate leads

Most social listening solutions on the market today do an adequate job of giving the marketer signals and reports about their industry, competitors, partners and current customers. But it’s up to the marketer to analyze the information and take action.

What if someone could tell you what to do, not just tell you something happened?  In this age of social media it takes teams of people to keep up on the never-ending conversations happening about the brand.  Taking complexity out of tasks is what technology should do and this sounds like the perfect use of Watson.

Computer calculated and automated growth hacking

If you’re a marketer and not familiar with growth hacking, please study up fast. Growth hackers focus on innovative A/B testing techniques to maximize conversions on emails, websites, social media, online content or just about any digital media available to them. It’s a low cost but more effective alternative to traditional media.

A/B testing is nothing compared to what Watson can do.  Imagine A/B testing on steroids, using predictive analytics and much more information than just clicks on a webpage.  The ultimate in design and the right offer/message to the right person at the right time. 

Running Corporations as Autonomous Business Units?

Lampert runs Sears like a hedge fund portfolio, with dozens of autonomous businesses competing for his attention and money. An outspoken advocate of free-market economics and fan of the novelist Ayn Rand, he created the model because he expected the invisible hand of the market to drive better results. If the company’s leaders were told to act selfishly, he argued, they would run their divisions in a rational manner, boosting overall performance.

It amazes me there are not more companies copying what Apple has done from an organizational structure.  Apple doesn't let each business unit run as an individual business, in fact they don't even own their own P&L.  This allows them to move resources and work more autonomously as a team, rather than infighting and creating different tribes within the organization. 

The divisions turned against each other—and Sears and Kmart, the overarching brands, suffered. Interviews with more than 40 former executives, many of whom sat at the highest levels of the company, paint a picture of a business that’s ravaged by infighting as its divisions battle over fewer resources….  [one former executive said it created a] “warring tribes” culture. “If you were in a different business unit, we were in two competing companies,” he says. “Cooperation and collaboration aren’t there.”

This doesn't surprise me at all.  I've seen it many times in my career in smaller organizations, watching all the tribes compete with each other.  The battle is outside of the organization, not within.     

Creating Baselines

On Monday Apple introduced a brand new iOS, version 7. While it didn't change the basics of the operating system, it created a new starting point. I call this a baseline. The point in which things will be measured against. The standard if you will.

Baselines are very important to measure your business. I always want to come in to an organization, create a new baseline and innovate from that point. Once innovation has slowed and opportunities start to become scarce, a new baseline must be formed to build the next great iterations. Without the foundation, a house cannot be made.

Apple has created their new foundation on which to build upon. Some don't like it, some love it. In time it will be like second nature and we won't be able to remember when the interface wasn't like this. All companies eventually have to create new baselines, even ones as insanely successful as Apple. This should be embraced, because it takes courage to throw away and start new. The alternative is to slowly fade into mediocrity.

Bridge the Gap Between Marketing and IT

...IT organization has been transitioning from the traditional development approach of (1) define functional requirements, then (2) design, then (3) build (the "waterfall" approach) to making quick, small changes to systems ("Agile Scrum").

The waterfall approach kills companies that are not in the software business.  Since internal products are not sold, nor measured by sales, its easier for IT departments to hide behind process.  Process and requirements kill companies.  Companies in this current age need to be faster to market.  

Agile and Scrum have allowed ING to respond quickly to signals from customers. But moving to continuous delivery is a struggle. Some business people who are used to the traditional waterfall method can fall into an unfortunate cycle: taking months to develop requirements, then waiting for IT to respond, then telling IT that's not what they wanted. Now instead at ING they say, "Here's your team. You need to be in every daily or weekly Scrum cycle or sprint to decide if the work is meeting your needs." It demands more time from the business people, but they are engaged and own it.

The Agile method is so much more effective to engage the business.  The business moves at the speed of sound compared to IT and if the IT department gets buried into process, the business loses faith in IT and finds another way.  This doesn't make sense for the business, but it happens to get things done. 

While Scrum has been employed primarily in software development, ING shows that it has broader management applications. They have used Agile Scrum as a key tool for collaboration across functions in processes such as developing new products and in marketing campaigns. And the frequent (daily or weekly) meetings accelerate decision-making.

This is very interesting and I have never thought about all decision making changing to an Agile Scrum.  In my business, I deploy an "unofficial" Agile Scrum, just have never thought about it from that point of view.  I believe it works so much better, to be engaged daily in your business and with your team.   

 

Redesigning the Look of iOS Is Jony Ive's First Step Towards CEO

I don't believe that Jony Ive is being groomed for the CEO role.  In my opinion, what Tim Cook is doing is defining his #2.  I have believed for some time that your #2 should be your opposite.  Jony Ive is a true product guy, an innovator.  Tim Cook is an operations guy, a brilliant logistical tactician.     

When your #2 is your opposite, it allows you to focus on what you are passionate about, your expertise.  Let your #2 focus on the things you don't have passion for.  A trusted #2 that is your opposite will make your team more effective because the team gets the best of you. 

Manage Data with Organizational Structure

Article on who should manage data...​

most people management is actually done in the course of day-in, day-out work, by managers and employees. HR may very well define the semiannual performance review process, provide the needed forms, and make sure it is carried out. But performance assessment is completed by employees and managers.

This last point strikes at the heart of the federated model. Corporate HR sets policy; department HR may modify it in accordance with specific needs; and departments, managers, and employees carry out these policies. Most have a certain degree of latitude in how they do so.

 I am a big proponent of moving data management out of IT.  The HR model is exactly the model that works.  The business is closer to the data and very few IT department can handle the pace of the business when it comes to data management.  IT designs the network, builds the hardware and manages updates, while the business manages the ETL, data model and governance of the data.  

Compromising When Compromise Is Hard

Respect also allows good people to disagree — sometimes vigorously — without animosity. You may be heated in your argument, but you are not irritated with the other person. This is liberating. You can both channel your passion for the work into something constructive. Far from "abandoning your principles," you're both proceeding from a place of deepest conviction.

 A decent article about compromising.  I don't like the word myself.  I think too many times organizations embrace compromise which ends up being the worst of both worlds.  

The quote above is what I believe great organizations do.  Once the organization trusts each other, vigorous debates, on the verge of argument, creates greatness.  Too often compromise is both sides giving up their principles until they meet in the middle.  That doesn't lead to greatness.  Greatness happens when two sides incorporate the best parts of their ideas to crete something that is far superior than meeting in the middle.  The best products I have been involved in have came from trusted partners "going at it" until we came out with something great.