At C-Level

Here's an Idea

Here's an innovative idea I've been thinking about for a long time.  In fact, ten years ago my company filed a patent on it, but then, due to budget constraints, never followed up.  It falls under the category of cool business ideas that I've decided I'll never do.

The concept is simple--make emails effective advertising vehicles.  Yes I know that sometimes advertising is now being embedded at the end of emails, but it's really pretty worthless.  What would make it better?  If the advertising was effectively an endorsement from the sender.  Here's how it would work:

1. You subscribe to the service because it's cool, and because a portion of the revenue goes to a charity you select.

2. You select a product or brand from a large group of participating advertisers.  Naturally, you're likely to select one that you personally endorse--maybe Harley Davidson, Patagonia, American Eagle, MTV, Dancing with the Stars, the latest movie, Tater Tots, Gold's Gym, etc.  The possibilities are endless.  And you can change whenever you want.

4. The ads would be simple.  A logo and a tagline.  However, you can customize your "ad" with a specific endorsement, such as: "Toyota Prius: This is my car (hyperlink).  I'm getting 52 MPG!"    It would also include a brief acknowledgement of the chosen charity.

5. Companies could pay by click, or possibly for every email sent (if that could be tracked or verified, at some point). 

Email users would like this because, like Facebook, it's personal and revealing.  Email recipients wouldn't be offended for the same reason, and because they know a charity benefits.  And advertisers would love it because it is not just a paid ad, but an endorsement from someone the recipient actually knows (and presumably shares at least some common interests).  And the ads would be clicked at a higher rate than anything out there. 

That's the idea.  Would it work? 

Tweeting History

I just ran across a very cool Twitter application called TWHistory (www.twhistory.com).  Their idea is to recreate history in a series of tweets from the journals and recounts of various participants in the events.  I'm currently following ten historical faux-Twitterers, including President Lincoln, General George Meade and several soldiers from both sides in a real-time recreation of the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place 146 years ago today through Friday.  This is especially interesting to me since my son and I are visiting Gettysburg later this month, along with other Civil War battlefields.

Many experts have debated the business model potential of Twitter.  I'm not sure anyone knows how it will develop.  But as TWHistory demonstrates, if you build the platform, innovative applications will follow. 

Animal Branding

Brad McLaws, co-founder and managing partner of SagePoint Consulting and one of the best branding guys I've ever met, made an observation the other day about the Mozilla branding.  (Full disclosure, I am a co-founder and partner in SagePoint also, but that's really beside the point!)  He sent me a screen capture from the Mozilla home page and asked: "What's up with all the animal branding?"  I took a look and laughed.  Now I love Firefox--both how it works and what the Mozilla   organization stands for.  But looking at this menagerie does leave me scratching my head (I hope it isn't fleas!).  We have the fox, and the thunderbird, and in the trees there is a racoon and a squirrel and more birds.  (Aren't these typically dining fare for foxes?)  And of course at the bottom, the Mozilla dinosaur, a nasty looking carnivorous creature that looks like he could swallow up all the critters on the screen before breakfast.

And we won't even begin to discuss what the hot air balloons are doing in this picture, or why the tree looks like a Sanskrit org chart, or the symbolism behind the heart and the clock and all the rest.  Or, for that matter, just what planet the fox is looking at?  I don't mean to pick on Mozilla, because this type of thing is not all that unusual.  Far too many companies have allowed their brands to suffer from incrementalism, patchwork additions and changes that over time muddle up the communication of something that could and should be singularly powerful with meaningful clarity.

OK, so Mozilla doesn't spend a lot of money on branding.  Maybe that's a good thing, given its charter.  But the organization could clearly benefit from some good thinking in this area as it continues its drive to take market share from the rich and distribute it to the masses.  Further, given its non-profit status, I bet some good consulting firm would work on it pro bono.

Old Dogs and New Tricks

A new study from the UC Berkeley suggests that the time teens are spending online often provides them valuable social and technology development.  And as expected, it's a mode of learning that is inexplicable to most older adults, who tend to view the text and Twitter pastimes with disdain, as a virtual waste of time.  

What strikes me as profound is that technology is constantly transforming how we learn.  And as might be expected, the majority of the older generations are not keeping up.  It has been my experience that many of my contemporaries, the Baby Boomers, don't really know how to use the Internet.  Oh sure, they have web access, send emails, shop and watch YouTube.  But they don't know how to quickly find the answers to their questions, or how to study a subject from all sides.  When I was a kid we always had a 24-volume Encyclopedia Brittanica in the living room and we often referred to it when our curiosity was piqued on a subject.  Now the Internet brings us virtually all the world's knowledge at our fingertips.  What a marvelous breakthrough, if we only know how to use it, how to efficiently gather data and objectively assess and analyze its contents.

Part of the problem is that we must learn to use technology in a brand new way.  A generation ago every consumer electronics product came with an instruction manual, and the first thing most of us did after purchase was read it.  Hah!  I wonder if my kids have EVER read an instruction manual.  Technology manufacturers have taken the cue and instruction manuals now often exist only in pdf form on the web, or as Help or FAQ pages.  If you haven't switched to learning by experimentation and trial and error, then you're hopelessly behind.  Just watch a kid with a new video game.  First step: Pop it in and start playing.  Fool around with every button and note the effects like a laboratory scientist, except you record the observations in your head.  Learning is shared with peers ("Push the X button three times--awesome!").   Very quickly, expertise is developed.

It seems to me that effective learning in simple programs like word processing or spreadsheets results from two approaches:

1. Curiosity and experimentation.   I see this thing called "Watermark" under "Page Layout" and one day I try it, just for kicks.  Now I know a bit more, and am likely to use the feature one day.

2. As assumption, embedded in experience, that the technology should provide the capabilities you are imagining.  So you search around until you find it and figure it out.  For example, although I've never used the feature, or seen it used, it makes sense to me that there should be an easy way to change a section of text to all capital letters in Microsoft Word.   I look on the Font section and click on a few things until I come to an "Aa" logo that looks right.  But I don't know how to use it.  But then I notice that Microsoft is telling me to click on F1 right now for help on this feature.  And voila, the correct instructions pop up.   Plus, I've learned about the handy F1 feature, which will surely prove useful in the future.

Baby Boomers needn't all start building Facebook pages and Twittering their innermost thoughts to keep up with the times.  But if we want to understand the way technology is changing the world, we have to be willing to live the changes, to participate in and adapt to the experience.  That means a new way of learning.

Cool Twitter Screen

Sometimes the sterility of company websites is depressing.  So I was pleased to see this happy little screen pop up on Twitter.  Nothing special, but it felt like a breath of fresh air versus the boring error messages we usually see. This particularly struck me because lately I've written a few error messages for Training Mirror and I found myself being ... dull.  I don't know of any company that is striving for a boring brand image.  But we create lemming-like content, features and processes because we're afraid to step out.  We're like all the high school kids who take careful pains to dress just like everyone else.  Except we ought to know better.  So enjoy the zen-like inspiration from Twitter. 

Extra! Extra!

If you're in the newspaper business, you don't need to read the business section to know you've got a problem.  The writing is on the wall.

The bottom is falling out of the U.S. newspaper business.  According to data just released by the U.S. Audit Bureau of Circulations, circulation at the top 500 papers was down 4.6% April-September vs. year-ago.  The previous year, the drop was only 2.6%.  Combined with the advertising budget squeeze brought on by the weak economy, this is very bad news for an industry that reports the news, but can't seem to generate any.

There are glimmers of hope.  Many newspapers report that total readership--when counting their online editions--has actually increased.  Unfortunately, the ad revenue base for online is not nearly as profitable as print. 

So tell me, in light of this steady decline, why is it that virtually every online newspaper I read looks the same?  Why is it that none have managed to make themselves of much value to my life?  OK, I'll give credit to the Wall Street Journal for being much more aggressive than most.  It recently introduced an improved site with more online-only content, an effort to build communities, improved searchability, a pretty good mobile reader and more real-time information.  If I wasn't already an avid daily reader of the tree-pulp version of the WSJ I would probably make the online site a primary source for news. 

But why is most of the industry so slow to develop new offerings?  And why the lack of innovation in their business models?  If this were my market, I would be exploring all manner of products and partnerships that made the local paper indispensable to various constituencies.   For instance, here in Salt Lake City we have eight world-class ski resorts within an hour's drive.  Why wouldn't the Salt Lake Tribune have absolutely the best, most up-to-the-minute information on ski conditions?  And why wouldn't they have extraordinary yearbook like information on the Utah Jazz, Salt Lake Real, BYU and Utah.  What about a key index of educational opportunities in the area?  Locally-based ocial networks?  Or the very best local job sources?  Why not find a way to hook high-school students early?   There is no shortage of opportunity, only of imagination.

Instead, they put up a website and pat themselves on the back for their technological savvy.  It's not enough. Companies that resist change are writing their own epitaph.  The only question is when it will be published.

Hard as Dell

The WSJ reports that Dell is looking to sell its factories. It’s the death knell of their famed business concept, linking just-in-time production and Lean manufacturing to provide customers with customized products and fast delivery. The fact is, the business model worked unbelievably well for a few decades. Dell became one of the most successful and admired companies in the world. I remember a few years ago listening to former CEO (and an old B-school classmate of mine) Kevin Rollins talk about Dell’s management philosophy and thinking this was one of the great businesses of the era. I still believe that the company was doing extraordinary things.

But more than anything, that may be why the Dell has stumbled badly in the past three years. It was simply too slow to abandon a model that had been so wildly successful, but whose days were quickly passing, driven by the consumer switch to more manufacturing-intensive laptops produced cheaply overseas and purchased conveniently at retail outlets. Dell had (and still has) a truly great team of employees, a remarkable culture and a highly valued brand name (which is, unfortunately, eroding). But the company couldn’t generate the sense of urgency needed to acknowledge the external realities of a shifting market and make the necessary changes.

John Kotter has studied and written more on change than anyone. His most recent book, A Sense of Urgency, explains how typical it is for successful companies to struggle with change, burdened by the victories of the past. (For another classic example, recall Kodak and its excruciatingly slow recognition of the digital revolution.) Every company, every CEO is vulnerable to this myopic maladaptation. Forgive me for repeating the Gary Hamel quote once again—because I like it so much: “All companies are successful, until they’re not.”

Google wins with Chrome

I downloaded Chrome today, Google’s new browser. I’ve been a loyal Mozilla user for a few years and was completely satisfied with the product. But Google’s track record for developing cool products made me want to try it right away. I wasn’t disappointed.

Expect a flood of technical reviews and strategic analyses to hit in the next few days. I won’t try to compete with those. But I will say this—Chrome is noticeably faster than Mozilla or IE, especially when I’m opening and closing tabs throughout the day. The beta-launch features don’t blow me away, but with open source I expect to have plenty of new options coming down the road. According to the Google website (a very innovative and fun comic-book explanation) I’m also better protected against malware, phishing, etc. And at some point I expect a seamless association with browser-based applications, including Google’s word processing, spreadsheets, etc. After one day of experience, Chrome is a no-brainer.

It is humbling to see how Google continues to pull this off. Their pace of relevant, powerful and really interesting new products is breathtaking. How do they do it? (OK, someone go ahead and note their $146B market cap and $13B in cash.) But if throwing people and money at developing and buying nascent concepts was all it took, Microsoft would have won this game years ago.

Google’s real advantage is that it is built differently. It is a company designed for the fast-paced needs of today’s economy. Very flat structure. Autonomous teams. Smart people who are free to speak their minds and challenge any thinking, from Eric Schmidt’s on down. The company insists that 30% of engineering time is on projects off the beaten path. People work on what they have passion for. Peer review of projects is aggressive, ongoing and highly influential. And the company has fully embraced aggressive development with the mantra: Launch early, launch often and launch fast.

It’s not only the Internet that is moving at warp speed today. Almost every industry is rapidly evolving, demanding change and innovation to compete. Take a look at how your company is organized, your management structure and practices. Are you like Google, throwing out the old rule-book, breaking new ground, staying ahead of the curve, playing offense and keeping competition on its heels? If not, you’re at serious risk of losing the game. As Gary Hamel once said, “All companies are successful, until they’re not.”