We are having our share of winter snow storms this year in Seattle, WA, and it has been quite amazing. It is quite uncommon for this area to get so much snow. Life has certainly been brought to a standstill. I have captured some highlights of our snow storms here.

There is nothing purer than a white carpet of undisturbed snow that highlights the stillness and beauty of the holiday season. Wishing you peace, health and happiness throughout the year.

For more advice on focusing your innovations during hard times, check out Innovation Weblog’s special report Innovation Strategies for the Global Recession. Chuck Frey and Renee Hopkins Callahan have compiled an extensive list of strategies on how to maintain innovation during challenging times from a diverse collection of innovation experts and practitioners. Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: innovation strategy, Innovation Weblog, economic downturn

Focusing your innovations during down times is key to survival. You need to keep on innovating to differentiate and grow, but also innovate on products and services your customers would be more willing to buy to stay profitable.

As I mentioned before, the profitability equation is quite simple: when a firm’s revenue from selling its product or service is greater than the cost of offering it, then it is concluded that the firm is profitable on that given offering. This same equation holds true for your customers’ business as well: the benefits of the product or service outweigh the cost of acquiring it.

Profits = Revenues – Cost 
During downturns, clearly demonstrating how your new product or service contributes to the profitability of your customers’ business is the key. Analyzing your own and your customers’ value chains can be the inspiration for your focused innovation strategy. Here are 6 key areas that will help focus your innovation strategy.
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I have been playing with the Roku Netflix streaming device, Apple TV as well as the XBMC and Boxee open source media centers running on Apple TV. This is the inspiration of this post: the what, why, when and how questions relating to defining your open architecture strategy.

Quick background: Using ATV USB Creator, it is possible to install XBMC and Boxee on Apple TV. However, as soon as a firmware upgrade occurs for Apple TV, I’m back to square one: wait for the open source community to catch up with the fixes to ATV USB Creator, followed by reinstall and reactivate. As much as it is a hack, these hacks/solutions do increase the value of Apple TV, enabling me to access other available Internet channels, outside of iTunes.
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Strategy+business has a great article regarding innovative metrics by Michael Schrage. As the author describes, innovative metrics are measures that gauge the unique value inherent in an innovation as a means of marketing it. In other words, instead of just relying on the traditional language of features and functionality to connect with customers, innovative metrics are used to relay the value of the new innovative idea, such as in the case of using horsepower to market James Watt’s steam engine.

Enjoy the article.

Technorati Tags: strategy+business, innovative metrics, metrics, marketing

“Technology has made our lives more full, yet at the same time we’ve become uncomfortably “full”.”
–John Maeda

I just added The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) by John Maeda to my Bookshelf. John argues that technology and life only become complex if you let it be so. Even then, as he highlights in law #5, we can’t have simplicity without complexity. With that, here are his ten laws and three keys:

• Law 1 Reduce: seek thoughtful reduction to achieve simplicity
• Law 2 Organize: achieve illusion of few through organizing many
• Law 3 Time: give a sense of simplicity by reducing time
• Law 4 Learn: drive simplicity through wisdom

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Innovation and risk go hand in hand. They are the yin and the yang. Highly innovative projects have the highest projected return and also carry the highest risk of failure. By using risk management, organizations take a structured approach to dealing with uncertainty, finding ways to manage and mitigate risk.

Traditional risk management processes rely on the evaluation of the impact vs. the likelihood of occurrence. As every innovator will tell you, Murphy has a permanent spot in their team. Given that, accurate assessment of the uncertainties the innovation process brings would be like walking on water. More importantly, attempts at managing those risks can stifle the innovation process. Using a mindful approach to risk management, organizations can improve the effectiveness of their development activities while fostering their innovations simultaneously. To start, evaluate your existing project risk management processes and update it using the following ideas.
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I just read from ABI Research that HP is exiting the HDTV business. If I had known about this when I wrote the article on Strategy 101: A Look at Positioning Through Apple’s MacBook, I would have certainly mentioned it. I know that HP engineers great products; I had the privilege to be part of the HP team. Which makes it all the harder to watch these failed attempts at transitioning into to markets that they are not positioning themselves well for. Hopefully these failed attempts will translate to something truly great in the near future. From Michael Wolf:

HP’s MediaSmart TVs have been fairly well reviewed, but that doesn’t translate into having consumers buy them. I often advise these types of vendors to start a wholly new brand when they are entering the market, since this allows consumer to develop their own fresh connotations around this new brand, instead of bringing whatever connotations have been associated with brands that may scream “IT” or “PC” rather than “great living room experience”. After all, who would have thought three years ago Vizio would gain a substantial amount of HDTV market share in the US,. while HP, Dell and Gateway would all flounder?

Technorati Tags: marketing, positioning, HP

Here is my blog’s Wordle based on my recent postings. Wordle is a fun toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. What do you think? Have I been writing about Apple little too much?

Technorati Tags: wordle

 

“Positioning starts with a product. A piece of merchandise, a service, a company, an institution or even a person… But positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.”
–Ries & Trout; Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, 20th Anniversary Edition

The fact is, our world is noisy and getting noisier by the day. Positioning can help to cut through the clutter and the noise. Positioning enables a company to establish itself in the minds of its customers, and shows how the firm fits within the competitive landscape. What comes to your mind when you hear “Think different” or “Highly advanced yet simple to use“?

“Being all things to all people is a recipe for mediocrity and below average performance.”
–Michael Porter

Ignoring the concept of positioning could either lead the firm to take on its competitors head on, or appear as if they are everything for anyone. Neither is effective. Remember Zune as the iPod killer? It is through positioning we can strategize how our strengths will help create a winning situation for us. And, it is through positioning that we touch up every tangible aspect of the product, price, place and promotion to support the overall strategy.

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