According to a recent IDC Global Retail Insights survey, 75% of retailers and 58% of consumer products manufacturers rank customer-centricity among top 3 keys to success. This finding aligns perfectly with our experience that the only way big ideas turn into big results is when those ideas are based in a deep understanding of customer needs and are executed by delivering a winning customer experience. There are some breakthroughs in approaches to listening to customers and tapping into their innovative ideas that the most innovative companies are applying today. Below are some simple descriptions and first implementation steps you can take to moving down this path.
1) Listen to customers, but listen closer to non-customers.
This is similar to to the idea of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer. Sometimes you learn more by listening to those who don’t see things your way than those who already agree. This tip is one very commonly overlooked when developing strategies for growth. Many companies listen to their sales force to understand strategic customer needs. This is one perspective, but the conversations tend to be short-term focused, are clouded by the vendor/customer relationship dynamic, and represent people who already see the world the way you do.
With the Wii, Nintendo converted non-customers of gaming systems by listening and creating a solution that moms would love to have in their homes. Southwest airlines converted non-customers of air travel by creating a price point and casual travel feel that matched bus travel, but was much faster. Netbooks are converting non-customers of expensive laptops into mobile computing users.
IMPLEMENTATION: To get started listening to non-customers, set up a specific research effort to call on customers who have left your business, sales leads which were lost, and targeting potential customers who have never been reached at all. Test if there is a lack of awareness of your company, a disagreement about the value proposition, or an unmet set of needs that you could begin to serve. This is where many breakthrough strategies originate.
2) Engage customers in open and direct innovation online
The most innovative companies are turning to a new set of online solutions to engage customers directly and openly into the innovation process. Cisco has been one of the most forward and successful, perhaps finding it’s next $1 billion product category through an online innovation campaign. They leveraged an online tool set from Bright Idea Software (Dissero’s strategic partner) to launch an open innovation contest that allowed anyone from around the world to suggest ideas, have them voted on by others, and collaborate and shape ideas together. The new solutions provide ways to open up and capture innovative ideas, engage with customers directly, and provide tools that filter the ideas so you can easily harvest only the best and most popular ideas for consideration internally. This allows you to truly tap the wisdom of the crowd, but not be overwhelmed with too many random and tactical ideas…like the old suggestion boxes that we’ve all come to detest. This is new technology, with new capabilities and a real breakthrough in business strategy.
Watch the video on this page to hear more about how Cisco did this and what the program accomplished. http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/iprize/index.html
Lego toys launched a site to let users design and purchase their own kits, which other people can purchase as well. http://factory.lego.com/
Starbucks created the My Starbucks Idea site to gather direct customer input for new ideas of all types. These are voted on by others so the best ideas can rise to the surface. http://mystarbucksidea.force.com/
IMPLEMENTATION: If you are interested in creating your own customer innovation site there are many considerations on technology platform, scope of ideas to request, and internal innovation management process to harvest the benefits. Dissero has partnered with Bright Idea Software to provide a full solution to quickly and easily get you in touch with your customers and begin tapping their innovative ideas, creating new revenue streams and great loyalty. The good news is that almost immediately and for the cost of a typical “ideation” brainstorming workshop or offsite with your management team, you can put in place a pilot program to engage customers, employees, and partners in searching for innovations. This will become as pervasive as having customer panels or user groups and much more extensive and powerful.
This month we published, with SPI Research, a white paper focused on how to successfully transform professional services organizations (PSOs). PSOs have an ability to rapidly scale and drive greater profitability if you have the right focus and ability to transform smoothly. Since PSOs are people-driven businesses, they have an ability to change very rapidly, but also are at the greatest risk in hitting roadblocks to change as well.
The white paper points out the specific reason why PSO transformations typically fail to reach their desired results due to the use of under-scoped and limited tools of change management and business process re-engineering solutions alone. A complete framework for transformation and a streamlined and proven transformation process are described. The paper also shares some breakthough statistics from the 2009 Professional Services Maturity Model that clearly tie leadership and strategic focus to greater profitability and overall performance.
For a copy of the white paper - click here.
If you had enough time to read 100 business books in depth, what do you think you might learn? Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten did that for all of us and this month published “The 100 Best Business Books of All Time” to share what they found. Jack and Todd run 800-CEO-Read and usually are selling books, not writing them. But they have seen a lot of business books over the years and took the time to summarize the best of what they have seen up through books published in 2007. They actually found that there are only five problems that all of these books truly addressed at the core. Todd tells us what those are in the interview that follows…
This week was the most amazing industry gathering I’ve attended in a long time. This meeting was held using Cisco’s telepresence meeting rooms in San Jose, Seattle, New Jersey and New York, as well as a lot of people joining by WebEx. The meeting was a gathering of professionals, across many different companies and industries, who were all responsible in some way for innovation at their companies. I was honored to have the group request copies of BIG Ideas to BIG Results for all of the participants. It turns out that most people in corporations agree that the problem with innovation is not a lack of ideas and creativity. The problem is in effectively hearing those ideas and then organizing to get them implemented, the topic of our book. (more…)
Today I met with about 50 professionals with a variety of experiences with M&A integration at the Association for Corporate Growth. The topic of my presentation was to share the true keys to success that have made the difference in companies who successfuly create shareholder value through business combinations. Several people were interested in getting a copy of the slides so I’m trying out an online publishing tool called DoXtop to easily share these.
In addition to the presentation, I’ve also included a link to a companion article to go with the presentation for those who are interested.
On Thursday, February 5th, the Association for Corporate Growth is holding their annual West Coast M&A Conference. I’ll be presenting on the topic of “M&A Integration…Shaken Not Stirred.” Too many M&A deals end with results that don’t justify the cost or effort of the transaction. Often this happens because companies try too carefully to not disrupt the existing orgnaizaitons and never get to the true value of combining companies. The event is at the SF Palace Hotel and will run from 8am to 6:30pm. If you are interested in attending, you can click here for more information.
BIG Ideas to BIG Results (FT Press/Pearson Hall) just made two top busienss book award lists for 2008! It is exciting to receive these honors, especially when thinking about hard we worked to create a useful resoruce for such an important and common business problem…too many ideas, too little results. We appreciate the recognition form the two organizations as well as all of the people who have bought the book as well.
800-CEO-Read: Best Business Books on Innovation
http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/008611.html?blog_id=1
The National Best Book Awards 2009, in the category of Business Management and Leadership
http://www.usabooknews.com/bestbooksawards2008.html
In our work, there always seem to be simple answers to complex problems, if you do your homework. And, it is quite often that what seem like huge and complex problems are simply replays of very common and previously-faced challenges. I recenlty saw the most simple explanation for the auto industry crisis and it was written years ago.
Usually Dilbert is the one comic that truly captures the tragically funny (i.e., would be funny if it wasn’t describing my actual professional life) things that happen in business every day. In this case, though, an old Calivin and Hobbes cartoon perfectly describes the auto industry crisis better than any strategic analysis our firm or any other analyst could do. (click the comic to enlarge the image)
It’s funny. But, it is also pointing out a repeating pattern that needs to be broken in the auto industry immediately and across other businesses as well. Take a quick read. Laugh, laugh uncomfortably becuase it is too close to the truth, or laugh it off, but take a moment to read it and consider how you might avoid the same issues in your business.
By Michael Kanazawa
This week I had the opportunity to meet with an amazing group of innovators at RKS Design, including Ravi Sawhny, the founder and CEO of RKS, Tom White and Deepa Prahalad. RKS designs products for companies in a very unique way. Rather than work from spec sheets, they go first to customer needs, wants and emotions. This philosophy meets closely with my perspective on customer-driven business strategy and managing to customer experiences, so I was interested in meeting them and learning more.
I didn’t keep it much of a secret that I also wanted to get my hands on one of their beautiful RKS guitars. In 2005 the RKS guitar graced the cover of BusinessWeek in an edition covering the most innovative products of the year! Holding the guitar it was clear why it won the awards and also won the hearts of people like Don Felder (The Eagles), one of my favorite guitarists of all time as well as Ricki Lee Jones, Ron Wood and many others. (more…)
By: Michael Kanazawa
People like to say, “failure is not an option,” in an attempt to motivate greatness and breakthrough results. However, like so many popular business phrases, this one doesn’t even make sense in real life. This phrase was made popular in the Hollywood version of Apollo 13, but business isn’t a movie and employees aren’t actors. We all lead in the real world where not everything gets resolved in a happy ending in a neat 90 minute story. Successful people and companies know that failure is always a potential and it is not something than can or should be ignored. (more…)
ABOUT
Michael Kanazawa shares recent insights and tips about the no-nonsense, results-driven approach to driving business breakthroughs found in his new book Big Ideas to Big Results.