What went wrong? It’s a question often asked after a project has failed and usually provides few satisfactory answers. But what if, as Richard Lawler of the Dublin-based consultancy StartInnovating suggests, you ask that question before the project started? Ask everyone involved in the project to assume it had gone disastrously wrong and explain why. You will probably compile a compelling list of concerns which participants might not, possibly because of company politics or lack of self-confidence, have shared. At best, you could confront these issues. And if the concerns are so serious as to call the project into question, at least the cost of failure will have fallen dramatically.
The world might have gone crazy over family trees but do you have a strategy tree? Sounds corny but it worked for McDonalds. At its simplest the tree starts with a question that defines your root purpose: why do you exist? The answer should help you define your business/selling proposition by answering the question: what is your value proposition? This, in turn, will help you decide the customer segment you’re aiming at, by asking: who are you trying to serve? This then begs the question as McDonalds put it, how will you know you are winning? The answer to that last question should, ideally, be four/six operational and financial metrics that help you keep score. These four questions sound like common sense but that doesn’t mean they are commonly done.
If you choose one TV show as a guide to the future it would be Glee, not The IT Crowd. During the opening session of the Fespa’s global business forum, Frazer Chesterman and Marcus Timson identified ten macro forces that would shape the wide-format industry. Their fifth force was creativity, the idea that “we have gone from an agricultural to industrial to information to a conceptual society” where “creativity and conceptual is starting to trump high-tech”. In other words, a clever idea that connects with the consumer will be worth more than a technological breakthrough. To paraphrase the Fun Boy Three, whose songs have, alas, not yet been covered by the wholesome Gleekd, it ain’t what you do it with, it’s the way that you do it. Muscle bound Innovation is many things – a mantra, an imperative, a buzzword, a mystery but it is also a muscle you need to exercise. Why not get to know a different industry to explore a new way of thinking? Or share ideas with an uncompetitive company? These are effective, cheap ways of flexing your innovation muscle.
How clear is your website? If it’s not immediately exceptionally obvious who you are and what you do, many visitors will bounce back from your website within 30 seconds and never darken your home page again. As a rule of thumb Google Analytics say a bounceback rate of 25% or lower is superb, 35% normal and 50% or over is worrying. Struggling in recession, the Ohio-based power and lighting distributor Ericson bravely turned its website into an online catalogue. The volume of orders soared as did the number of items ordered per customer. You may not like www.ericson.com but its success is an object lesson in the instantaneous nature of decision making on the web.
With the UK’s central government departments looking to reduce their CO2 emissions by 10% this year, printers may feel the need to join a network like ProcServe which has just gone into partnership with Planet Positive, the international environmental accreditation organisation, to reduce emissions in the supply chain and promote best ‘green’ practice. The ProcServe network has 12,000 suppliers on its books and these kind of networks represent a significant opportunity for eco-savvy printers – a recent ProcServe/PlanetPositive survey found that 69% of companies weren’t even aware of the government’s new environmental standards.
Rita McGrath, professor of business studies at Columbia Business School, has identified one essential role at innovative companies: “Resource scavenger”. McGrath didn’t invent this idea, the great Tom Peters spotted this phenomenon at Lockheed’s legendary Skunk Works factory and coined the term “skunks” to describe people who kept pushing a new idea even if they had no resources, no time and no interest from their bosses.
Large-format digital imaging is still really a pioneering growth industry in this country. We, as print producers, are constantly striving to find new and innovative ways to create new products, find new ways to solve display problems and answer ever more demanding clients needs.
What went wrong? It’s a question often asked after a project has failed and usually provides few satisfactory answers. But what if, as Richard Lawler of the Dublin-based consultancy StartInnovating suggests, you ask that question before the project started?
Ask everyone involved in the project to assume it had gone disastrously wrong and explain why. You will probably compile a compelling list of concerns which participants might not, possibly because of company politics or lack of self-confidence, have shared. At best, you could confront these issues. And if the concerns are so serious as to call the project into question, at least the cost of failure will have fallen dramatically.
The world might have gone crazy over family trees but do you have a strategy tree? Sounds corny but it workd for McDonalds. At its simplest the tree starts with a question that defines your root purpose: why do you exist? The answer should help you define your business/selling proposition by answering the question: what is your value proposition? This, in turn, will help you decide the customer segment you’re aiming at, by asking: who are you trying to serve? This then begs the question as McDonalds put it, how will you know you are winning? The answer to that last question should, ideally, be four/six operational and financial metrics that help you keep score. These four questions sound like common sense but that doesn’t mean they are commonly done.
If you chose one TV show as a guide to the future it would be Glee, not The IT Crowd. During the opening session of the global business forum at Fespa, Frazer Chesterman and Marcus Timson identified ten macro forces that would shape the wide-format industry. Their fifth force was creativity, the idea that “we have gone from an agricultural to industrial to information to a conceptual society” where “creativity and conceptual is starting to trump high-tech”. In other words, a clever idea that connects with the consumer will be worth more than a technological breakthrough. To paraphrase the Fun Boy Three, whose songs have, alas, not yet been covered by the wholesome Gleekd, it ain’t what you do it with, it’s the way that you do it.
Innovation is many things – a mantra, an imperative, a buzzword, a mystery but it is also a muscle you need to exercise. Why not get to know a different industry to explore a new way of thinking? Or share ideas with an uncompetitive company? These are effective, cheap ways of flexing your innovation muscle.
How clear is your website? If it’s not immediately exceptionally obvious who you are and what you do, many visitors will bounce back from your website within 30 seconds and never darken your home page again. As a rule of thumb Google Analytics say a bounceback rate of 25% or lower is superb, 35% normal and 50% or over is worrying. Struggling in recession, the Ohio-based power and lighting distributor Ericson bravely turned its website into an online catalogue. The volume of orders soared as did the number of items ordered per customer. You may not like www.ericson.com but its success is an object lesson in the instantaneous nature of decision making on the web.
