Accelerate your Innovation to Accelerate your Growth

We have been exploring the power of Innovation as a growth engine for your business. We already explored fresh thinking (bucking the prevailing wisdom) and modern portfolio theory but this video will focus on speed.

Tom Peters, the former McKinsey consultant and co-author of In Search of Excellence, calls it a “BIAS for ACTION”, he goes on to say that “Whoever Tries the Most Things WINS” and he stands the traditional process on its head, by saying, “the Cycle must be Do IT! Fix It! Try It!” In other words, speed is crucial to your innovation success.

Do not let Perfect be the enemy of good. Both Apple and Microsoft have exhibited how next generation products can be released sooner with the final tweaks and fine tuning coming quickly after the launch.

In order to be fast, use the small chunk technique where innovation projects are executed in very fast, small steps. Fast, small iterations, interspersed with relentless, continuous testing and measuring for validation will keep you on-track and avoid costly rework. Use rapid prototyping techniques and parallel processing to keep your speed up and your errors down.

Now, you may ask, why is speed important? Quite simply, the time saved results in revenue which can never be made up by a later introduction. The S curve innovation adoption model offers a great illustration of this principle.

The speed of innovation can be a powerful tool in your growth arsenal.

Contact me for help with crafting your innovation portfolio, speeding up your break-out innovation process or implementing your 2021 growth plan.

Innovation as a Growth Engine

Innovation can be a powerful growth engine for your business. You can innovate in new products, new technologies, new distribution, new ways of interacting with your customer groups, but no matter how you innovate there are ways to have break out performance.

The first key to innovation as a top performing growth strategy is: To go against the prevailing wisdom. When your industry is united and of one mind that you are in the “best of all possible worlds” (Gottfried Leibniz -1710); run, do not walk, to find an alternative. Examples of this abound but one of the most current is Elon Musk’s Tesla, which is now valued at $772B.

The second key to innovation as a top performing growth strategy is to treat Innovation as a portfolio of assets to help diversify your risk. Each innovation project should represent an asset class such as High Risk/High Reward or Low Risk/Lower reward to balance your risk. Also, your innovation projects should be selected to be the best performing assets within the class.

Contact me for help with crafting your innovation portfolio, brainstorming your potential break-out innovations or implementing your 2021 growth plan.

Valentine’s Day: Innovation as a Growth Engine

Happy Valentine’s Day. You scoff… “Valentine’s Day is a conspiracy of chocolatiers, jewelers and Hallmark.” I hear this frequently, however Valentine’s Day has its origins back in pre-Christian Rome as a pagan fertility ritual. What does this have to do with growing your business? First, Valentines is a monster holiday with $27 Billion in economic value. There will be 58 Million pounds of chocolate sold, 190 Million cards sent, and, of course, it is the biggest day of the year for florists with 250 Million roses given just this holiday alone.

But the innovation as a growth engine story is that of a florist that started with one brick and mortar shop in 1976. This year this one company will ship 14 Million roses. This company is 1-800-Flowers.com. How did accomplish this phenomenal growth? They innovated with or ahead of the economic trends. In the 80’s when telesales was the rage, they became THE name in telesales by adding the 1-800 part of their name and innovating their customer interactions. A decade later, as the internet became an emerging sales channel, they upgraded their name with the dot com suffix, as again reinvented themselves as a on-line powerhouse. As mobile browsing became the trend, they added an Ap, they acquired their way to a broader product range continue to innovate through the COVID shutdown.

Says CEO, Chris McCann, “The world has moved into a disconnected world… When the world is going through a loneliness epidemic, our mission is to really combat that and bring back the human connection.”

McCann goes on to say that when it comes to innovation, he wants a team who is willing to “get speeding tickets, not parking tickets.”

So do not think of Valentine’s Day as a conspiracy, but as a potential springboard for your business.

Contact me for help with crafting your innovation, helping your effectiveness or implementing your 2021 growth plan.

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, first advanced by German physicist, Werner Heisenberg can be harnessed as a tool to drive your business improvement. Heisenberg published this quantum physics assertion in 1927: that there is a fundamental limit to the accuracy with which the values for certain pairs of physical quantities of a particle, such as position, x, and momentum, p, can be known. This may not sound earth shattering to you, but it has ramifications across many fields. In business as well as in the social sciences, the consequence is that If you’re there measuring something; you have already influenced the outcome.

In Sociology & Anthropology, this is considered a bad thing; but in Business it can actually be a powerful success tool. The first Corollary that is important for business is that if you can’t measure it, you can’t control it and more importantly, by measuring it, you may already improve it. A lot of hidden ineffectiveness is exposed in the light of measurement. It is a proven technique to improve the performance of sales teams, with daily normalized performance of Key Performance Indicators. It can be a powerful tool in operations to look at throughput, on-time to customer statistics, or lead times.

It should be used in every aspect of your marketing. Marketing should be treated as an investment, not an expense, and every marketing investment should be tested and measured to be certain that there is a positive return.

The Lessons of Heisenberg for your business is to Be Relentless in your Measurements, institute KPIs, and make your KPIs performance based, not activity based.

Contact me for help with crafting your KPI's, helping your effectiveness or implementing your 2021 growth plan.

As we have spoken about over the last several weeks, you are reviewing and rebalancing your marketing mix. Do NOT assume more is better when it comes to social media marketing. You start with the questions:

Who is my target audience?
What good or service am I providing to them, and what benefit does it provide for them?
Where can I find this audience?

The answers to these questions will inform your media mix. As you select which social media channel(s) to use, be sure that you match your channel to the answers to the questions.

Do not assume that Facebook, as the big Kahuna, is best for you. If you are a micro business focused on local customers, perhaps Alignable or Nextdoor will offer you more impressions for the right audience and higher conversions. Perhaps the performance art aspect of TikTok will match well with your fencing or food service business? (Think Cocktail the 1988 mixologist classic or a Teppanyaki restaurant.)

If you are a B2B business, then LinkedIn should be a consideration for you. As the oldest and most trusted social media player, LinkedIn may prove a valuable addition to your marketing mix. They have over 9 billion impressions per week but only 3 million users posting content weekly. And do not think that LinkedIn is strictly for job seekers. They have 15 times more content impressions than job postings.

Remember that video, live video and on-line reviews will embellish your efforts and whatever media you select, test and measure your results for the best return on your investment.

As you are updating your business plans for the upcoming year, it is time to reexamine your marketing mix. Whether your business is large or small, Digital is a more important element than ever before. The COVID shutdowns have accelerated the adoption of digital by 5 years within the past 9 months.

But before you start, ask yourself the important first questions:

Who is my target market?
What good or service am I providing to them, and what benefit does it provide for them?
Where can I find this audience?

Once you have answered these questions, you can move onto what investments will I add to my marketing mix. The big elephant in the room is, of course, Google, with 7 Billion searches a day and a 95.7% mobile search share. Moving up even one spot in Google search can increase your click-through-rate (CTR) by up to 30.8%. If you show up on page 2 there is a probability of less than 1% that you will be clicked. Clearly anything that can be done to improve your Google ranking should be considered in your marketing mix.

SEO is a well know strategy but Google, never a slouch in recognizing a money making opportunity, has several add on products that you may want to consider:

Google My Business – this is free and highly recommended. Reach out to me for a free 15 point checklist of how to start and improve your GMB listing
Google Guarantee – a certification process Google offers for trades
Google Screened – a certification process for professional service providers
Google Partner – a certification process for digital marketers

Any of these can help your positioning in Google searches, so give them consideration if your business falls into one of these categories. All except GMB require an investment and a process that may take some time, so plan accordingly.

As you are updating your business plans for the upcoming year, it is time to reexamine your marketing mix. Whether your business is large or small, Networking can be an important element. Networking is powerful but it is also hard work. While it is a strategy that may be slower to yield transactional results, it is one aimed at building a relationship which has a higher lifetime value for your business.

The first skill of a Master Networker is to be a good listener. The most important skill is good follow-up.

Q: Which follow-up system is best?

A: The one that you will unfailingly use

Even during these times of spotty quarantines, there are 4 steps to take right away

Follow up, today
Embrace your discomfort
Hang out with successful businesses… even virtually
Conduct your research on your targets, groups and prospects

As we enter into the New Year, we should take this opportunity to write or update our business plans. Remember, wishful thinking does not count as a strategic business plan.

A great place to start your business planning process is to rethink your business basics with an eye to simplification. These examples will give you inspiration, but in any size business you can ask yourself: