The global innovation report is a yearly report showing R&D spendings across different industries. For reference, I have included the 2009 results by industry and the 2011 version below. The sectors which invest in R&D do not differ much from one year to another.
Although the report states that R&D investments doesn’t always mean that innovation is produced, or that this innovation is performing better than other products investments diluted across other budgets, there a precious few metrics that make it possible for us to measure how innovation is faring. So we’ll have to make do with this.
What the report shows as well is that rising investments mostly happe in America, whereas Europe was already deep in recession at that time. I can’t wait to see what the 2013 report will show.
At last, the report shows a strong correllation between sales and R&D investments. One could read this either of two ways: when sales are good, R&D investments grow, or … when R&D investments grow sales are better.
An interesting question would also be to wonder what is actually meant by R&D spending and whether all product development efforts are measured under that umbrella. I have seen a lot of companies in which R&D is kept as a separate effort and doesn’t represent the main area for product design and development ; this is significant in a world in which innovation is driven by vendors’ offerings, mostly in the Computing & Electronics world, the first sector for innovation in that study.s
R&D Spending Returns to Pre-Recession Levels, Finds Booz & Company Global Innovation 1000 Study | Innovation Management
key findings from this year’s Global Innovation 1000 study:
The three industries with the greatest R&D investment were computing and electronics, health, and automotive (28 percent, 21 percent, and 16 percent of the total Global Innovation 1000 spend, respectively).
Two-thirds of the $53 billion increase in R&D spending between 2010 and 2011 came from the computing and electronics, automotive, and industrials sectors.
75 percent of companies increased their R&D spending from the previous year in 2011, up from 68 percent in 2010.
This year Amazon joined the top 10 “Most Innovative” companies pushing out Facebook. For the third straight year Samsung rose in rank on the list (to fourth place, up from seventh place last year), and Apple, Google, and 3M took the top three positions, respectively, also for the third consecutive year.
Regionally, companies based in North America grew their R&D spending by 9.7 percent—just above the global average of 9.6 percent—while Europe and Japan grew theirs at below-average rates of 5.4 percent and 2.4 percent, respectively.
India- and China-based firms again increased R&D investment at the highest rate overall across regions (27 percent on average), although from a small R&D spending base.
[This report has been published in instalments, type bit.ly/sharpgrow in your browser location bar to display the piece in its entirety]
myth number six : the 80/20 rule always applies
This isn’t a myth per se, but the numbers don’t quite add up. Sharp, on the basis of numbered evidence once again, shows that Pareto’s Law does apply but real numbers based on observation are closer to 50% for most brands and never reach 80%. This reinforces the need to acquire more customers.
myth number seven: advertising doesn’t sell
Sharp shows on the contrary that advertising has a clear (but mostly long-term) impact on sales… Provided your product is distinctive enough and that your campaigns follow a few simple principles amongst which:
reaching all by categories
no lapses
clear brand links
easily noticed and remembered
myth number eight: price promotions increase sales in the long term
That one is far less counterintuitive I find. Price promotions are quite effective in boosting sales. Evidence produced by Byron Sharp shows that promotion have no or little effect on long-term sales. Sharp sees little rationale for maintaining price promotions over time apart from maintaining a relationship with retailers.
myth number nine: loyalty programs are effective
In fact, loyalty programs work a little, but their impact on loyalty is minimal and in some cases, brands won’t even feel the true effect at all for many external reasons. My friend and colleague Prof Christophe Benavent from the Paris University has been a long-time contender that loyalty programs don’t work. He’s actually quoted in Byron Sharp’s book as well. One may have the vague feeling that conclusions might be different whether one looks at airlines for instance, or a company like AMEX which has built its distinctiveness upon its loyalty program (I even chose to get an AMEX card a few years back which is coupled with my airline frequent flyer program and I have transferred the entirety of my purchases to AMEX) but evidence is required before one makes any rash conclusion.
Overall, I really enjoyed Sharp’s approach which is based on fact rather than fiction, even though some of the most counterintuitive conclusions would benefit from a serious data update. I definitely recommend you buy this book and place it on your bookshelf.
[This report is being published in instalments, type bit.ly/sharpgrow to display the piece in its entirety]
myth number two: heavy buyers matter, light buyers don’t
That is false too. A customer base is like a long tail , with few repeat buyers and a vast majorty of light or very light buyers; but the sheer mass of the latter makes their category very important in fact. These people are those which brands must convince over and over again if they want to succeed.
myth number three: targeting works
That one is really puzzling I must admit. Sharp points out that despite marketeers’ efforts in trying to “differentiate” through targeting, brands end up sharing “normal – looking” customer bases and those customer bases are supposed to be interchangeable. This is – once again – said to apply across all categories and countries. Yet, luxury products for instance, cannot be afforded by all. Sharp’s point is that segmentation within a subcategory doesn’t exist. It may exist between subcategories however. This item would however, in my mind, require further investigation.
myth number four: cannibalisation is a bad thing
According to Sharp’s findings, it’s not! What matters here, is not whether brands are differentiated, but whether they are “distinctive” (that is to say easy to recognise from others).
myth number five: consumers by preferred brands
Sharp contends that is just the other way round. One tends to favour one’s own choices; some sort of post justification of one’s own purchases in fact (I bought this, therefore I like it; or, I’m used to buying this etc.) That point he adds, also applies to iconic brands like Apple and Harley-Davidson. Basically, he means that Apple customers aren’t in any way, more loyal than PC clients for instance.
This chapter is probably the most difficult to sell. There is so much hype about Apple products that things do get very irrational. Sharp may well be right, but the evidence he uses to show that this is the case are rather outdated. Beside, Apple’s overwhelming success has, recently, put so many companies in such a bad position (Nokia, Sony Ericsson to name a few, not to name hp which withdrew from the Pocket PC (then Smartphone) market which it hugely dominated only a few years before). The evidence given here is a bit outdated on the one hand, and debatable on the other. This chapter requires therefore more investigation, even though mine Sharp may well be onto something (for other myth busting regarding Apple on this blog, click here).
Once in a while, a business book appears which changes your perception on things for ever. Such business books are inspirational (Crossing the chasm in 1992 for instance), some are critical (such as Scott Berkun’s myths of innovation) and some just take you back to basics. This is the case with Byron Sharp’s “how brands grow” (Oxford – 2010), an opus which unfortunately didn’t get enough attention and is even sometimes wrongfully dismissed as scientific claptrap. I must admit that I enjoyed the book thoroughly, even though some of its conclusions did puzzle me a bit. I suppose that these will lead to more investigations, since some of the evidence presented in the book and some of the conclusions based on such evidence (mostly in chapter 7) are very counterintuitive. Here is what I learned and would like to share with you regarding this book.
[This report is being published in instalments, type bit.ly/sharpgrow to display the piece in its entirety]
Marketers are used to believing their own stories but often fail to check the facts. This is what Byron Sharp and his Ehrenberg Institute have done and their conclusions can be summarised as follows:
myth number one: loyalty matters, acquisition is less important
How often do we hear that it is more worthwhile to retain existing clients rather than acquire new ones? Well… as far as I am concerned, almost on a daily basis. Sharp shows that this is wrong, that churn depends – mostly – on the size of your customer base and that customer acquisition is of paramount importance. This is what is known as the double jeopardy law: “sales are lower because they have fewer buyers who buy the brand less often”. That law, besides, applies to all sectors, and all countries. As a consequence of the double jeopardy law, it is not cheaper to retain an existing customer than acquire new ones. Acquisition, CRM pundits must be eating their hats now, is not an option, it must even be a priority for brands.
Despite the fact that his flight was not able to take him further than New York and let alone Munich, Fons Trompenars was brought live from New York by Orange thanks to its network of telepresence rooms.
His presentation was about “managing people in a fast changing world”
Shareholder value was established at the cost of other values, Fons Trompenaars said, and all values established at the expense of other values are doomed to failure. The essence of a value is how you can “integrate opposites”, mostly in a world which is multicultural (60% of people below 25 years of age living in Amsterdam he said have non Dutch parents).
The real question he added not “how can I perform better” but “what can I do to help you perform better”. The real question he added is “why did we forget about serving people in business” and business literature. Great leaders show passion and control, it’s not bi polar like in the Myers Briggs example he said. We don’t need “balance” he said, this is bi-polar too. What we need is integration instead.
Do we need to globalise/standardise or customise?
What we need to do in a global world is build unique offers from “standardised building blocks” he added. Speed comes with hindsight he said (“recul” in French) quoting John Cleese with whom he worked a few years ago. This isn’t self excluding. And he concluded with a lot of humour at the end of his presentation by saying “we don’t need questions because I’m usually very clear in my messages”, but he did answer quite a few questions of course.
Or how not to jump to hasty conclusions in just one step
A few days ago, I came across a piece on Bnet on which there was a mention of Sun Tzu‘s “the Art of War” in not very favourable terms. I therefore asked the Vincent Berthelot, who is very well versed in Oriental culture (he is even fluent in Tai), to write something up for us. Here is his comment, 100% devoid of political correctness.
Very often, I have been annoyed by the tendency to superficially squeeze management tips into constrained lists such as “five key marketing techniques”, or even “how to succeed in social media in 12 steps”. Alas, this is a gimmick which has being quickly imported from America by many a Continental blogger. Let’s admit we all wrote at least one piece in that manner, but abusing this method leads to stereotypes and facile conclusions.
In that blog post, James puts together in the same basket, some of the bestselling US management books of the past 20 years and celebrated writings such as Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” and Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”. This very list shows the seriousness and hindsight behind the author’s methodology.
Reading that piece online will force you to click on as many internal links as possible so as to maximise traffic; after all, this is serious marketing stuff, don’t get mistaken! Geoffrey James also adds profound comments such as that Adam Smith could not possibly surmise the invention of the modern multinational or of computers and that Sun Tzu’s book is mostly useful if you are planning to play computer or board games only.
Of course, I admit that business and war, at least on the surface of it, have little in common and that Sun Tzu’s advice belong to another time.
I would in fact recommend that James’s list be updated to include his point of view on Marcus Aurelius, Clausewitz, Machiavelli and a few others. Books such as Sun Tzu’s are not meant to be utilitarian, just like your average management book, and they have to be read with different eyes too. They aren’t meant to deliver “recipes”, and since his words cannot be directly applied to your marketing strategy either. Continue reading
On May 10, 2011, the Orange Biznis Forum meeting took place in Bratislava, Slovakia. The guest speaker at that meeting was the much revered Canadian Ice Hockey legend Mark Messier, who is now retired. Mark had come to share with us some of his best tips with regard to team management and leadership inspired by the strong moments in his rich and long career. This business meeting had taken place the morning after we had witnessed the splendid victory of the Ice Hockey team of the Czech Republic, at the Orange arena in Bratislava [footage of the match available from our Posterous account]
a living legend
It’s not everyday you come across a living legend, and even though I’m rather new to Hockey, I could well sense that we were experiencing a very special moment when Mark Messier came to talk to us about leadership and management at an Orange Business Meeting organised by our Orange representatives based in Bratislava, the Capital town of Slovakia in central Europe. Mark played hockey for 26 years and he retired only six years ago. He played in Edmonton, Canada for 12 years and then joined the New York Rangers with whom he won the Stanley cup in just three years. He is credited for the amazing turnaround of the New York City team, despite incredible media pressure.
Mark opened his presentation with an old Cherokee quote: “there are two wolves inside you” he said, “one good and one bad; guess who wins? The one you feed!”.
The real challenge is how to convey a “positive and energetic attitude”; something he understood when talking with his uncle Victor Messier “some sort of Guru and philosopher”, in a “Buddhist kind of way” according to his own words. Victor showed him the pictures of one Alex Grey, an artist interested in anatomy whose paintings were trying to make personal energy visible in 7 foot-high paintings. Mark described this as a defining moment. Although he admits that this kind of revelation could happen in various ways according to who you are and how you feel. What is important is to understand “how you can capture the energy in order to show a positive attitude which can lead you to success”.
Last week, I was attending the Blogwell and SMBC meetings in Philadelphia. I also had an opportunity to sit with Andy Sernovitz, the founder of SMBC and well known author of the Word of Mouth Marketingopus.
It’s now more than 2 1/2 years since I joined the former blogcouncil, now known as Social Media Business Council, and a lot of water has gone under the bridge. I thought, as Hervé Kabla and myself – co-founders of Media Aces in France – are currently finalising our book entitled ‘Social Media Taught to My Boss’ (in French, but I’m open to suggestions from publishers), that it would be a great idea to sit with Andy and review the history and principles of SMBC as well as take a bit of hindsight and see how things had developed over the years. It’s hard to describe but spending 3 years of field practice in Social Media for a large company implies that a lot of work and effort has been put into these initiatives. Sometimes it’s good to put down one’s tools and muse.
Andy keeps repeating that doing Social Media for large groups is not as easy as doing the same for an individual or a small shop. I know that many people must not believe that this is true. « You are a big brand hence it’s way too easy » a lot of people must think. Yet nothing has ever been more true. Innovating within a large enterprise is a never-ending, groundhod day-like heavy-lifting exercise. This is why SMBC is important. It enables the heads of Social Media like us to get together, to help each other and to learn from one another. This is what Andy is referring to as being the « missing piece in the puzzle ».
And this is also why there are now more than 150 members within SMBC. Hats off Andy!
here are some of the 150 members of SMBC as of now …
The following video is a December 2009 interview of Paul Argenti (Corporate Communications Professor at Tuck University) following the release of his book dedicated to how ”Web 2.0″ (even though the term is a bit outdated). The book describes how Social Media transforms corporate communications. Here are – in a few words – what should be remembered from that interview. As it happens, a lot of what Argenti describes here is similar to what I have written in these columns and elsewhere:
most execs are out of sync: and it’s easy to dismiss what you don’t know as being a fad or meaningless,
yet a true revolution in corporate communications is unfolding with regard to how our corporate relationships are impacted in all areas: press and public relations, investors, analysts, partners and clients, employees and job seekers etc. What is funny, Argenti says, is that despite point 1, none of the interviewed execs denies this fact,
this revolution has less to do with tools than strategy,
Video and Vlogging (video blogging) are transforming everything we do in corporate communications,
Web 2.0 enable proactive vs. reactive communications;
negative feedback is definitely what execs are afraid of, but it is already broadly available beyond social media. Social Media is not the cause of negative feedback or brand disloyalty and cannot be held responsible for the quality of a product or the fact that a service hasn’t been rendered properly.
to point 6 I would also add that often public relations representatives:
have no clue about how to and how not to behave with regard to social media,
misjudge the importance of a sentence or a comment whereas – even more than in the printed press – every word counts in Social Media,
fail to understand the human factor behind crisis management in Social Media and think that fiddling with comments is enough, whereas human conversations work wonders,
minimise the importance of engaging in Social Media as opposed to being present in social media,
talk digital vs. do digital, and don’t understand what the web makes available to all,
fail to count on positive feedback including that which can be generated by internal blogging communities and partnerships,
Below is the contribution which I sent to the council on behalf of Orange Business Services.
social media: beyond the ROI issue
With the advent of the Internet since the middle of the 1990s, users have become used to not only getting what they want online, but also to being able to participate and interact with each other. 15 years later, the widespread use of the Internet as a source of information and also a place where users can help each other and solve each other’s problems has changed the face of commerce, of organizations, and even relationships within the hierarchy. In view of these changes which have permeated every section of the outside world, enterprise communications must get to grips with the benefit from the great potential which is made available by the use of social media. The power of the Internet to connect people and get them to interact can not only be used internally, but also outwardly and ultimately with one’s customers to begin conversations in a brand new way. The expected results can extend way beyond the mere ROI issue. This is what we have experienced at Orange Business Services with our 2008 Security Blog initiative.
It’s the most extraordinary bubble burst ever since the end of the 1920′s and it might even take a few more years before we start feeling the angst to the full; for we should remember that the heart of the great depression was 1934 and not 1929. Yet, despite the incessant stream of gloom and voicing of bad news – which is reminiscent of Kal’s excellent frontpage for the Economist dated November 1997, i.e. the midst of the previous global meltdown in Asia – there is no guarantee that history will repeat itself. Thank God for that. ICT expert Stewart Baines from London even goes one step further suggesting that certain sectors – and the telecom sector in particular – is bound to benefit from the crash.
This question has attracted quite a few comments on the part of more experts on Linkedin (check here for details), which shows that the topic is hot and deserves more than just the gloom being delivered on the media (listening to ‘wake up to money’ on BBC radio 5 early in the morning produces the same result as a stroll in the temple of doom in the midst of Halloween). So the question is not to evaluate whether the slump is bad or awful, it’s about evaluating how we can do better business during these troubled times and focus on positive factors.
Once your Corporate stakeholders have understood why Web 2.0 is more than a fad and why its marketing could benefit from it (read our 12 golden rules for Web 2.0) and once they have established how their 2.0 strategy should be articulated (refer to our interactivity matrix), quite a few questions remain: how to create a professional looking blog and how to make it known? How long does it take every day and how many visitors may I expect? Where should my blog reside, should it be hosted or should I put it on my corporate server? What should I do so that it is well indexed by Google and other search engines? What are the do’s and don’ts of Corporate blogging, what are the risks… These are some of the questions that we come across most of the time with regard to corporate blogging. In this article, we will spell out the steps which can lead to proficient Corporate Blogging and we’ll try and address the above questions.
These pages can actually be used as corporate blogging guidelines for the perusal of your corporate blogging experts and your corporate blog managers. You can even use this as a charter (namely the do’s and don’ts chapter in part three) with which you would like them in their regular blogging exercise and also get them to agree to the rules of efficient and responsible corporate blogging. A lot of the material enclosed in this article, is drawn from the experience of experience bloggers and Internet writers including myself who have been working in and around the Internet for many years (13 years in my case).
a few facts and figures
Before you delve into the particulars of this methodology and blogging guidelines, we urge you to read the following lines which will serve as an explanation for the rest of the document.
Maybe 90% of blogs (90 not being the actual number but a ballpark figure) attract less than 50 visitors per day. Don’t raise your expectations too high mainly if your content is not up to scratch,
user generated content is the era of empowered users who go on to the Internet hook up to a website and create a blog for free. Because you’re a corporation doesn’t mean that you own the best experts in the world on the subject that you want to deal with. Expect a lot from other bloggers who will have already started commenting on the subject. What about starting a journey by reading what they have done?
Blogging success is established in the long term: it can take a few years before you reach the top 10 of your category. As a consequence, forget about these people who will tell you that blogging is easy and that collaboration is effortless. This is just not true,
Your expertise might be really good, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that your blog could attract hordes of visitors. A small crowd of enthusiasts is worth a million passive users. Besides, your subject will probably be a niche subject, which is perfectly normal for expertise,
From experience, at least 20% of blogs close within 1 1/2 years from their inception because of a lack of content or a loss of purpose. You have to hold on tight. Once again blogging success is established in the long run. Mainly if you consider that if you have many competitors today, there could be far fewer tomorrow since many of them will certainly give up,
Writing good articles and reviews does not suffice. Quite a lot of time must be devoted to valuing the content and promoting it. The advantage of being a large organisation is that the marketing and buzz marketing can be organised by specialised teams who can free up their experts from that burden,
Don’t do this for money, this is not the name of the game. And don’t try to sell your products this will not work, a blog is not the right forum for this kind of things,
The quality of a blog hinges on the quality of its content, the frequency of its updates, its usability and transparency. Don’t focus on usability in the first place. Quality of content and update frequency are the main issues when you start a new blog. Transparency however is not an option. You have to be clear about your intentions and your experts have to know about this (hence these guidelines). As a consequence one will have to establish a disclaimer whereby one explains that the opinions expressed in the blog are those of your experts and are not legally binding. A disclaimer of that kind is available at the following URL: add link to Orange business services disclaimer,
Blog visibility is established not only through surfing but also through RSS feeds. These RSS feeds are useful for your readers who want to subscribe to your content automatically. Click here for a description and explanation of RSS feeds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format). However, RSS feeds will not do all the work for you. Bridging the gap between your website and your blog is also a good way of bringing more visits to either of those,
If you want your blog to be visited regularly, you will have to update it on a regular basis. There is no future for blogs in which the latest post is older than a few days, a week at most,
It is reckoned that if you want your blog to be visible you have to generate at least 10 to 15 posts per month on average. Whereas it is understood that writing so many posts on your own is a challenge, building teams of people who will feed the system with information on a regular basis is probably going to solve the problem to a large extent. While certain experts get more busy at times than others having a roster of experts at the ready can actually help you avoid going through gaps in the feeding of your system.
What’s in a blog?
Blogs are particularly interesting insofar as they are purely content orientated, they attract visitors and help build up traffic very fast, they are also easier to link to and from than a corporate website which is more geared towards selling your products, and therefore fewer people would be reluctant to link to your content if it is valuable content. The blog will also bring dynamism, RSS, interactivity, and you may even branch into a corporate blogger programme (such as the one managed by Orange business services) which would open the doors to writers from the outside (not in the short term though).
Taken at face value, entering posts on the blog is very easy. It looks like an online word processor which enables you to publish your articles and make them available online as well as manage a few options and features. However, this is a lot more complex than you think. Not necessarily from a technical point of view, but certainly from an Internet writing skills point of view.
With blogs however you do not need to be an Internet expert. And this is certainly what makes them so successful. Besides, Google and other search engines like bogs a lot, because they are dynamic and they produce a lot of content, therefore they are great if you want to beef up your search engine optimisation (aka natural indexing). Lastly, blogs are more direct than Internet corporate websites, they look less institutional and less commercial. They are ideal to start conversations. However, they also have their limitations such as lack of flexibility over how page layout can be managed and the difficulty to fine tune the indexing for search engines (but the latter issue are less of a problem for the end-user/contributing expert).
12 worst practices of e-mail usage in the workplace and recommended strategies for increased productivity (in 6 installments)by Yann Gourvennec
As announced in a previous post, here is my analysis of e-mail usage (or misuse rather) in the workplace. I have also inserted my recommendations for productivity enhancement for each of the worst practice items which I have described. This is obviously not meant to be a comprehensive list. Feel free to add comments to this post and add items.
Introduction: we have all become ‘anoraks’
In the Internet world e-mail can be considered one of the oldest web-related applications together with the late Gopher and newsnet. But e-mail per se already existed in pre-Internet era. As far as I am concerned, I have been a user and observer of e-mail usage since its inception in the late 1980′s when I was working for one of the leading IT providers of that time. That IT provider made the decision to extend the usage of e-mail (then in proprietary format) to the entirety of the company’s users (i.e. 125,000 users across 35 countries but sadly enough far fewer today). The main issue with electronic mail at the time was about the requirement to make all employees including managers actually use it, the latter being rather reluctant. Indeed, many of them had difficulties coming to terms with the fact that their status was no hindrance to using the tool by themselves (many couldn’t associate typing with manager status, at the time it used to be secretarial work only). We were number 3 in the IT world at the time, but it didn’t make any difference in fact, strangely enough. All this to show our younger readers how far we’ve travelled in terms of IT usage since such prehistoric times.
A little less than 10 years after, the Internet revolution was making IT a cornerstone of work efficiency not only in businesses, but also schools, not to name the entertainment revolution in the home. In business, it has now virtually become impossible to name any profession not resorting to IT for their normal day to day operations. Luddites are now few and far between. To an extent, we have all become nerds. So much so that IT has now become just one more of our working tools, just like pen and paper, the mobile phone and other tools, just an ordinary tool, and no longer a subject for nerds/anoraks to discuss amongst themselves using incomprehensible three letter acronyms.
However, despite the fact that IT has become ubiquitous, and even in spite of the Internet in particular, can we venture to say that we are all using it properly? In fact, there are many signs showing us that we are not. E-mail usage (be it in the business world or even on the open Internet) is very often inadequate, and can even be the source of conflicts in more in many ways.
Besides, e-mail usage has to face up to new and increasingly worrying problems: exponential rise of spamming, e-mail overflow, e-mail addiction through devices like blackberry and other mobile Internet devices, not to name viruses. What I’m proposing here is an analysis of e-mail usage, its good and bad practices, and the strategies that are required in order to protect oneself from the side-effects of bad e-mail usage, and also more positively, positive strategies for better using this tool.
At Cisco France’s request I wrote this brief article (see per below) on the role that innovation can play in customer relationships. This article will be published shortly in the client publication, which is entitled Ciscomag. In order to write this article, I used the material developed for a previous interview carried out in September 2007 for NextTimes, which is the Orange equivalent of Ciscomag for Orange Business Services (click here to read the September issue of NextTimes, the article being on page 2).
I have added a few recent references to this core material. The main purpose of this article is to lay the stress on our clients’ requests for outsourcing and how they evolve. This is not the only goal however. In a recent article entitled, “is innovative outsourcing a pipe dream” (that title in itself in fact is causing an issue, because one wonders whether the journalist is referring to innovative outsourcing, i.e. outsourcing done differently, versus innovation within outsourcing, which is in fact the true subject), Stephanie Overby describes how difficult it is to execute on an innovation strategy within outsourcing. In essence, the future outsourced client wants his or her savings delivered (standard outsourcing savings being 20% on average, in this kind of contracts), and the vendor is therefore making a lot of promises with regard to innovation, which according to Stephanie Overby will seldom if ever be implemented. As soon as the contract is signed, the outsourcing service provider is caught in the daily woes of delivery and has literally no bandwidth left for innovation implementation. In many cases, Overby is right – and that was the case for the December client mentioned in my article (client name will remain hidden).
Now that we’re on the other side of the New Year, I thought I would share my thoughts on what I feel should be one of the companies’ top priorities – and probably their number 1 resolution for this year: Efficiently managing their online reputation.
Managing online reputation is fast becoming a growing problem for businesses. With the rise of social media and user-generated content, the Internet has quickly become a complex ecosystem where public opinion can be created and disseminated within seconds. Keeping your eyes and ears on the world of consumer generated media can be a daunting task for any company. Blogs, forums, wikis and social networks gain popularity every day and without a plan to monitor and manage your company’s online reputation, you could be at risk.
A great brand can take months, if not years, and millions of dollars to build. It should be the thing you hold most precious and managing your business’s online reputation is key to owning your brand.
So now is the time to take control of your online reputation!
Discover how to maintain, enhance & protect your brand identity …
Yesterday, 12th of December 2007 was a great day in my recent career as a lecturer in marketing and innovation which started last April with the 360° analysis of the marketing of ICT products and services (click here to access the files). Indeed, I was invited by Pr Manuel Sosa to pitch on the subject of joint innovation at Orange business services, in order to present our activities in front of the students of the executive MBA of INSEAD. This is one of the world’s leading eMBAs, number 9 to be precise according to the FT eMBA 2007 ranking (click here to display the eMba FT 2007 World ranking). I was most impressed with the school. What I saw there was really amazing in terms of facilities, campus, quality of teaching, and above all interaction with the students. The good thing with executive MBAs is that you’re not really teaching to students, but rather exchanging ideas with your peers. All the students are professionals and executives in some of the world’s most prestigious firms, and they come from all four corners of the world.
My pitch started with a little quiz, asking participants to name a few innovative companies in their eyes. Naming them was not enough, they also had to tell me why they were deemed innovative, and also whether this ‘innovativeness’ was sustainable. This little exercise was far less innocuous than it seemed. By asking this simple question, we very quickly, in less than one hour, put our fingers on all the questions surrounding the difficulty to define, nurture, and deploy sustainable innovation in and outside the enterprise.
This exchange was extremely fruitful, because all of the participants had already thought about these problems, and they could easily relate to most of them. The rest of the presentation was more standard, and consisted of a capability statement of what Orange business services is able to do in terms of joint innovation with its clients, mainly in the large projects business unit, to which I belong. I gave examples of what in my eyes, and in the eyes of our clients, innovation means when it comes to large projects and outsourcing. I was also able to show the audience my innovation wiki repository, and interesting and passionate discussions were Triggered around the genesis and definition of wiki webs, the perspectives that collaboration is making possible in the enterprise, and the expected results. I was able to reuse some of my examples and materials which are developed either at Paris University (click here) or the Paris graduate school of management (click here).
The presentation lasted four hours, and we were also able to exchange quite a few business cards in the process. In the evening, I was invited at a special cocktail party, where INSEAD alumni and current students were present, and were welcoming prospective students who had come to the school in order to investigate with regard to the executive MBA. This exchange was very exciting, very open and very pleasant, and it gave us an opportunity to exchange on business, on the course, on our lives and experience. To sum it up in a few words, I really liked everything about the school. The people and the recruitment process is just outstanding. People from all over the world were there, and the quality of our exchanges was absolutely dazzling. I am looking forward to another session at INSEAD soon, probably next year.
When thinking about factors that distinguish top performing companies, the root of their success often can be traced to the human equation. But how many companies are able to tap more than a fraction of their workforce potential? How many are able to take advantage of latent talents, ideas and contributive strengths waiting to be switched on? How many are able to unleash the power of remote collaboration & virtual team management? The companies that find the means to use a larger fraction of their human resources will undoubtedly supersede their competitors. That is their edge in the global economy.
With increased globalisation, virtual leadership has started gaining a strong foothold in recent times. As the workplace evolves, the techniques for managing employees are changing. Today’s leaders and managers are faced with a different set of challenges for managing employees who work in various locations across the globe or telecommute. Managing in the virtual environment can be quite a daunting undertaking.
The biggest challenge with remote collaboration & virtual team management is actually to maintain quality and productivity across all participants, despite the physical and cultural distance. Other associated issues are operational. Indeed, you do need to ensure that everyone is working on “the same project”. Social issues may also come into play: If the teams adopt an “us versus them” mindset, they might well wind up working at cross-purposes. All these challenges may finally be exacerbated by time zone and language differences that make collaboration and real-time communication even more difficult.
Advances in information and communications technologies have enabled businesses to become truly global in scope. There is an abundance of technology available today for collaboration. However, a company’s culture and processes that encourage people to share work in a productive manner are central to effective collaboration.
So how are top performing organisations avoiding the many pitfalls of remote collaboration & virtual team management and what are the key to success for adapting to this complex and ever-changing working environment?
(almost) anybody interested in innovation knows about the IDEO process and the well-famed Ideo shopping cart video shot for ABC. It is indeed a staple for innovation seminars and a renowned example of faultless creativity methodology. In the ABC video (you can purchase it from ABC see link per below) you will see the IDEO team challenged about the re-design of a simple everyday object, the shopping cart. And the demonstration is compelling. Here’s an object we use on an everyday basis, that is almost universally used from one end of the planet to the other, and we hadn’t even thought about making it more user-friendly. Obvious isn’t it? And the Ideo team therefore redesign the aforementioned trolley in less than 2 days. Impressive, all the seminar attendees stand up and cheer, here’s an impressive process that leads to compelling results (see the finished trolley on the lefthand-side)!
At least that’s what I had thought too, maybe a bit naively, until I read the following critical articles for which I am providing links hereafter. Afterthoughts include questions such as “why wasn’t this shopping cart deployed after the show and why can’t we find it in shops?” and also “is the exercise real or is it artificial, namely at the beginning of the process when they start investigating the problem with cameras, are they doing it for real?”.
I was also pondering – whereas I have just started reading Rosenzweig’s latest opus – whether this wasn’t a case for a halo effect, i.e. “a tendency to make inferences about specific traits on the basis of a general impression” (The Halo Effect, p50). Yes, the video looks nice, and the people look brilliant and the process really seems to work fine. In just two days a new (supposedly) superior shopping cart was created but the real question is: what is really good design? Is it design that looks nice, or is it also about practicality for instance? (what about all these boxes on the cart, are they really so convenient? where do you store them? how do you pile the trolleys on one another etc.). Is it design (only) aimed at the end user or is it also aimed at shop-owners too? that’s an important part. In the video the onus is on the team to develop a shopping-cart that would be more convenient. But more convenient to whom? Can we assume that shop-owners aren’t worried about the cost of their trolleys, the way that they are stored, their lifespan? Besides, is the trolley issue the main issue, even for end-users? For instance, would clients rather pay more for food stored conveniently in a designer trolley or pay less for food piled up in a chicken-wire box on wheels?
These are open questions, but chances are that the answer lies in the fact that one cannot find these trolleys in our shops.
But mind you, don’t jump to the conclusion that the Ideo process doesn’t work either. Judging on just one example would simply be not enough. It would just be another halo effect.
Seen today on my friend Jean François David’s blog (a must-read on IT and organisation), this post on a Bain study related to the appraisal of usage and user satisfaction of today’s most hyped management fads and tools. The surveys spans over a period of 14 years and covers all 4 continents. The list of items surveyed includes the Balanced Scorecard, BPR, Corporate Blogs (new in 2007), CRM, Outsourcing,
RFID, and last but not least Strategic Alliances and Collaborative Innovation, some of these very often debated on this blog too. This also reminds me of another must-read, ie Phil Rosenzweig’s sharp attack on management fads entitled the ‘halo effect‘.
Rosenzweig wrote The Halo Effect because “during 25 years in and around the business world, [he has] seen so much nonsense—unsupported claims by famous gurus and self-described “thought leaders,” sweeping assertions based on poor data, and simplistic stories that claim to be rigorous research. Worse, most people—including many very smart managers, consultants, and journalists— can’t tell the difference between good and bad research”.
So, what is Bain’s survey telling us about collaborative innovation (click above picture to enlarge)?
First and foremost, collaborative innovation is not in a bad place on the matrix. On the contrary. It’s way above the inevitable six sigma and offshoring buzzwords in terms of satisfaction, but also in terms of usage. What it tells us too is that the winners are rather basic to say the least (customer segmentation, core competencies and such like at the top). Fine, Marketing managers have all bought the latest edition of Kotler’s obligatory opus. Not a done deal for marketing 2.0 and the like for sure. One the other lessons we are tought from Bain’s report is that Hi tech companies aren’t, after all, in advance in terms of innovation. Is that surprising? Not really in fact. CPG companies innovate constantly, even though their product image may be low key. Washing powders – often mocked by hi tech marketers as the epitome of non innovation – are being constantly re-invented in different formats and various formulae which are making them probably the hardest products to imitate properly. Beiersdorf’s Nivea is also one the epitome of innovation as explained (sorry, in French only) in that detailed account of a Nivea innovation meeting I attended a year ago. So as we see, there is even more room for improvement in marketing 2.0 implementation in hi tech companies.
Indeed, a very interesting report; thanks again Jean François!
Howard Rheingold’s vision of ‘the guy in the basement‘ who is the one responsible for innovation is becoming reality. I have attached a great article in which Rheingold depicts the importance of collaboration and how people can actually re-shape the corporate world in which we live, and for some of us, barely survive. (download the source of innovation – Howard Rheingold).
Now in a businessweek article are living examples of how people are actually changing the world from the bottom-up. Only 2 years ago, when Jérôme Delacroix from Cooperatics first talked to me about wikis I had been very intrigued. Then I tried to set up a wikiweb by myself but did not really manage to get people interested or at least not as much as I had managed with my legacy website and now with all my blogs. Now I can realise how much the world has changed in a very short period of time. The phenomenon has even been granted a name by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams: Wikinomics, i.e. economics revisited by collaboration. Today I have a wiki back in the office, which I populate and which I use everyday to foster innovation internally and get people to cooperate for business, and I also use this blog to populate the wiki and the forums and the rest of it (innovating from the outside in). What Charles Handy was writing about the virtual organisation 12 years ago was really visionary; not that I ever doubted it of course, but it’s reached scales never attained before.
![image_thumb[5]](http://visionarymarketing.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/image_thumb5.png "image_thumb[5]")
What the report shows as well is that rising investments mostly happe in America, whereas Europe was already deep in recession at that time. I can’t wait to see what the 2013 report will show.
At Cisco France’s request I wrote this brief article (see per below) on the role that innovation can play in customer relationships. This article will be published shortly in the client publication, which is entitled Ciscomag. In order to write this article, I used the material developed for a previous interview carried out in September 2007 for NextTimes, which is the Orange equivalent of Ciscomag for Orange Business Services (
Now that we’re on the other side of the New Year, I thought I would share my thoughts on what I feel should be one of the companies’ top priorities – and probably their number 1 resolution for this year: Efficiently managing their online reputation.
