Archive for October, 2008
Presentation: Built to Thrive and the human innovation imperative
Posted by jay in 10 Uncontaminated Generation, Making Memes (my presentations and workshops) on October 30, 2008
Sustainable and successful organisations explore new frontiers of competitiveness as a matter of doing business. Reframed thinking results in new business configurations being tested and uncharted territories unearthed. This results in businesses renewal activity that impacts the human component of the business directly.
Human Innovation is used as a driver to deliver new growth platforms. What are the new emerging practices of innovation? Can we learn from the history of innovation? How are successful companies using innovation to compete in this fast changing world? Where does human innovation fit in the new business?
This presentation covers four key areas when looking at Human Innovation:
- Capturing value by using emergent Social Networks
- Understanding the Human Eco-system by reading collaborative participative cues
- The drive towards Transparency creates new opportunities
- Forget about talent we need to focus on Managing Genius
These critical questions will be answered through case studies and insights into the latest innovation findings.
Something to say for Return on Innovation (RoI)
Posted by jay in 03 Business Philosophy, Technology Stuff on October 27, 2008
We all have been looking at Apple as it transformed itself over the last few years. But how much of a turnaround has it been? And, and what point will an Apple, Google and Amazon.com alliance pose a threat to Microsoft where full replacement technologies are a reality?
Looking at the financial crises globally, we’ve returned to “cash is king”. Apple has $25billion, Google has $14.4billion and Microsoft has $21billion in cash reserves. Microsoft’s deal with Yahoo is still lingering, but for how long (or is it now finally over)? Revenue growth for the quarter is looking pretty good where Apple has shown 27% growth, Google at 31% and Microsoft at 18%.
If the network is becoming the computer (as initially promoted by Sun) how long before the world stop using desktop operating systems and applications all together? We are seeing massive growth in telecommunications infrastructure and broad-band upgrade projects around the globe. Companies like MTN is pursuing business on the African continent to bring telephony to the masses; people who have little access to basic lifestyle products – yet they own cellphones…
The new world of innovation is far removed from the classical industrial view on innovation. Here are some points to ponder:
- re-thinking your business’s abstract value in relation to its value proposition (Apple is becoming a media company)
- redefining business models by separating the participative customers from economic customers (Google is an infomogul)
- driving open innovation models by using collaborative and socially connected talent pools (Google’s Android is a developer ecosystem, etc)
- protecting your business channel turf (Microsoft’s focus on interrelated and mass-adopted products)
What to do during tough times – Innovate, Collaborate OR Protect?
Posted by jay in 05 Ecogenetic Changes, 08 Participative Customer, Technology Stuff on October 22, 2008
Three bits of news seconds from each other got my attention today. You figure out what this means in light of these three Innovation Strategies:
1. Design based innovation – being focused on design and ecosystem based offerings
2. Open collaborative innovation – using information and the participative customers to entice the economic customer
3. Innovate though protective barriers – use legal systems and threat based tactics to protect your market
From ZDNet Tech Update:
Apple beats estimates; credits iPhone sales
“Apple beats estimates; credits iPhone sales Sam Diaz: It’s not the past performance that investors want to know about, it’s the future. What are companies doing to ride the economic storm? Yesterday, Apple reported fiscal fourth quarter earnings of $1.14 billion, on revenue of $7.9 billion. The company credited the strong quarter partly to iPhone sales. “We sold more phones than RIM,” CEO Steve Jobs said.
Other highlights from the quarter:
* The company sold 6.9 million iPhones, taking the company passed its goal of 10 million sold for 2008 – with two months left in the year. The company said iPhone is now 39 percent of the total business.
* Apple shipped 2.61 million Mac computers, a 21 percent increase over the year-ago quarter. It set a company record for a single quarter.
* More than 11 million iPods were sold, up eight percent from a year ago. The company said it was record for a non-holiday quarter. It’s market share for portable music players remained above the 70 percent mark.
* The iTunes store has more than 65 million active accounts and a catalog of 8.5 million titles. It has just added more television shows, renewed its content deal with NBC and added high-def programming.
* The company has $25 billion in cash and zero debt. In a call with analysts, Jobs hinted that the financial position gives the company the “ability to invest our way through this downturn.”
* The iPhone App store expects to see its 200 millionth application downloaded by tomorrow, 102 days since the July launch.”
From CNET Reviews:
The Android is here
If you managed to miss the hype, here’s some news: T-Mobile’s G1 phone, which runs Google’s Android mobile platform, is here. The phone might not be perfect, but Google’s Android platform has the potential to make smartphones more personal and powerful. We’ve got full coverage, including a full review of the G1 phone itself, the latest news on Google Android, and a speed test that pits the G1 against the iPhone 3G. Dig in!
* Coders get 70 percent of Android Market revenue
Google officially opened its Android Market Wednesday and promised that beginning next year, programmers will get the lion’s share of revenue from applications sold on the download site for the company’s mobile phone operating system. The first incarnation of the Android Market has more than 50 applications available
From DailyEdge:
Microsoft Flexes for Global Anti-Piracy Day
The selection of October 21 as Global Anti-Piracy Day may have been random, but Microsoft is tying its renewed emphasis on reducing the use of unlicensed and otherwise illegal software to the larger economic fears that businesses and end users alike are dealing with right now.
Anti-piracy numbers:
48: number of countries in which Microsoft is launching or relaunching anti-piracy education and enforcement actions today
5: number of continents on which those 48 countries can be found
20: number of resellers against which Microsoft announced legal action today, for allegedly selling pirated software
1/3: number of PCs globally, at minimum, that contain pirated, unlicensed or counterfeit software, according to Microsoft
$50 billion: Cost to businesses, globally, of pirated or unlicensed software in 2007
800-785-3448: telephone number customers can call to give Microsoft hot anti-piracy tips
120000: the number of open source projects actively working on solving this problem, Google is one of those companies with a few projects…
Top-line growth for banks by using innovation
Posted by jay in 11 Information Epistasis, Innovation Models on October 1, 2008
These are some of my ideas as take-aways from the Banking conference:
Take Away 1: “Cost saving is not a strategy” as some banks might think. You can only have a “top line growth” based strategy. This means that you use innovation to drive more relevant and competitive financial services across the portfolio. It might also require a rethink of your customer profile.
Take Away 2: Tracey’s model on Value Discipline’s got me thinking that industries have moved on since this model was created. The three dimensions used in his model are: Product Leadership, Customer Intimacy, Operational Excellence.
You have no choice these days but to be good at all of these dimensions. This is a strategic question: can mass market retail banks be customer intimate? Can private banks be operational efficient?
Take Away 3: “Life stage” based banking is still a challenge by understanding your life stage as student, married, married with children, divorced, etc in segmenting markets. Another model used in “Life style” based assessment is where you try and understand the markets financial status.
Take Away 4: You can’t learn from Europe and the US as the population spread in age, growth and wealth is fundamentally different to Africa, South America and Asia. Looking over the last 1000 years the use of money has shifted and acts of value sharing has shifted aggressively from the 1500 onwards. The Black Death outbreaks of the 1400′s got the populations to decrease across Europe and wage rates increase as skilled labour was in short supply. Moving ahead to today: are the children of today using the money systems designed in the past? E-mailing money, sending money via cellphones, getting cash from automated teller machines without a bank card and only access to a mobile phone.
Take Away 5: Can banks provide financial management dashboards to their clients to manage three major components; what to grow (assets, etc), what to shrink (credit card, car finance, etc), and cash flow. The bank can then analyse these results and start doing fine grained segmentation to understand the ways in which people use money.
Take Away 6: Islamic banking in the US is now called “moral and ethical banking” as there is a move by markets to wanting more transparency in banking services.
Take Away 7: The “can-do banks” have moved their problem solving philosophies from western to eastern models. This means that you try and solve problems by getting the group together and finding the root of the issue instead of finding the guilty party and penalizing them. Can this be used by the client facing people in a bank?
Take Away 8: A new agenda for top-line growth: focus on value for customers, clarity by understanding your customers, revenues in the different clients, profit focus, strategic thinking and execution.
Take Away 9: “A skill bankers need to develop is how to use technology” was a great statement made in response to how banks can become more competitive by using innovation.
Take Away 10: I’m not sure if I believe Jo’s sentiment as we’ve seen value in networking way beyond the financial transaction: “I see that there is no value in social networking” (by Joseph DiVanna) and no immediate conversion of value because people only use their networks for: Trying to obtaining great investment ideas from me, try to sell a product to me, people trying to get introduced to people in my network, or generally someone that wastes your time.
Check out some of these interesting innovative organizations:
Dubai Bank customers start by depositing E10million to start.
Aboriginal Banking at Bank of Montreal follow customers around by using GRS tracking for those that move around.
Exim Bank in Tanzania focuses on women in jobs and those at home.
First Women Bank in Pakistan focuses on women entrepreneurs. There is a network of women working together to do business.
AKBANK for technocrats and under 30 movers and shakers.
Capital One Card Lab where customers design their own credit cards.
Ingenico with innovative payment solutions.