In a previous blog, I discussed the various barriers to innovation that you might have experienced or will experience at one time or another. Although the roadmapping process will not address cultural or organizational issues, it is a flexible approach that when combined with other strategic planning tools will help drive focus, alignment and understanding for your innovation portfolio.

A firm’s strategic intent is its vision of what is possible and what it plans to achieve in the long term. As Porter stated, essence of strategy “is not doing something better than your competitors but doing something different - choosing a unique and reliable position that is rooted in systems of activity that are difficult for others to match.”

Roadmapping provides a structured framework for exploring and defining potential paths and gaps that will aid in achieving the future state the firm desires. If the strategic vision is the general direction with a destination in mind, roadmapping is a process that aids in a step-by-step plan that shows how to get there, with the roadmap as the output. Basically, roadmapping is a strategic planning process that:

• aligns and communicates the business need: know-why;
• outlines actionable steps and interdependencies between the steps: know-what;
• drives an understanding of the alternate routes and tradeoffs to optimize resources and risks: know-how;

Roadmapping is a flexible process that integrates various views of a business (product, technology, market, capabilities, …) as a multi-layer time-based presentation. It was first used in the semiconductor industry in the 1970s to align technology, market and product directions. Today it is used quite widely in industry as it delivers many direct and indirect benefits to the organization. In summary, roadmapping and roadmaps:

• Organizes and integrates cross-functional views (market, industry, customer, R&D, …) as well as business and technical issues;
• Documents complex decisions and dependencies in an easy to digest form;
• Gives a long term direction by combining different planning horizons (product, market, technology, operations, processes, …);
• Requires multi-disciplinary, cross-functional effort which can result in better teamwork, shared ownership and communication, thereby generating alignment and engagement across sites;
• Establishes clear understanding of what needs to be done, by which order, and forces to firm to prioritize investments and make the needed tradeoffs;
• Helps identify gaps and competencies that need to be developed to be successful in the future;
• Offers an effective communication tool to be used with customers, suppliers and partners to gather reactions, and establish synergies;
• Provides continuity in strategic planning process by integrating planning and vision phases;
• Enables the firm understand and fund the capabilities and assets needed tomorrow to be successful today;

Roadmapping is an effective process that will help identify key synergies, dependencies and gaps within a strategic plan. It also aids in effective decision making and enables better communication and alignment, especially across disparate teams and organizational boundaries. This is a process where the journey, i.e. roadmapping process, is just as important as the output: roadmap.

As roadmapping is a flexible process, it comes in many different forms: market, technology, product, service, capability, science/research, product/technology, … You can represent your roadmap in whatever form best meet your needs, as long as you keep in mind to show the integration of key pieces of information in a multi-layer format with a time-line. Following Porter’s guidelines on strategy, your roadmap should answer the questions to: how your firm will compete, how your firm will deliver a unique value, and how your firm will maintain that unique position in the market.

You can get a glimpse of a firm’s roadmap, even when it is not explicit. Basically start with the firm’s vision/mission statement and strategic intent, and analyze its past and present product, service and technology offerings. This will give you a good idea where the firm is today and where it will most likely explore tomorrow. Here is a quick look at Motorola, Dell and Google, as examples.

Motorola is one of the pioneers in utilizing technology/product roadmaps. Given that, it is baffling to see how they got caught without a 3G phone, and didn’t recognize the changes in their end-customer tastes and desires. I previously blogged on Motorola’s product line, and what looks like a single minded focus on their innovations. An accurate, non-biased roadmapping process should have clearly highlighted these risks and shifts in the marketplace. However, based on a recent WSJ article (you’ll need a subscription), in-fighting might be the reason behind their problems. Motorola also indicated the challenges of achieving bottom line growth as they mainly focused on new product development, without focusing on the process or operational improvements. Again, the roadmapping process can help integrate and align market, product, technology and process activities and investments across the firm’s innovation portfolio.

Dell’s mission “is to be the most successful computer company in the world at delivering the best customer experience in markets we serve”. Their 2006 strategic corporate initiatives are: “driving Global Growth, achieving Product Leadership, enhancing the Customer Experience and developing our Winning Culture“. Given this, coupled with challenges of the direct sales model in emerging markets, it is no wonder to hear the rumors that Dell is considering channel sales. However, Dell will need to do more than just another cheaper PC, or Linux bundled laptops, or more customized/personalized color options on their systems to yet again achieve the most successful computer company in the world. What do you think will be the next business model innovation in the computer industry?

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. With that, Google’s Office Suite (Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and now Google Presentations), and other collaborative products seems out of place, as they are about collaborative content creation. However, looking at the fact that Google is mainly known for its global presence, collaborative tools could provide the leverage Google is looking to create virtual groups, and organizing information along that vector. Although today, these tools work only online, given the growth in emerging markets, and customer desire for maintaining local data, it is quite likely to see a future architecture that would combine the local data with online content, perhaps building on top of Google Desktop. On another tangent, one of the biggest challenges for Google is the low switching costs associated with search engine. With that, integration of analytics, better and more targeted search technologies, and APIs increases the switching costs for customers, so I would expect to see more targeted and personalized search results, as well as additional products along the lines of analytics and SEO in the future. At the same time, there is a growing concern towards Google for knowing and collecting too much information about anyone and anything. Given that, what are potential products, customer services or business models Google might bring up in the future to combat that concern?

Next time, I plan to dive into building roadmaps, specifically in the context of technology/product roadmapping process.

Technorati Tags: roadmapping, strategic planning process, roadmaps

One time or another, every firm struggles with the answer to this deceitfully basic question: what business are we in? Those that are successful at figuring out the answer continue to evolve, the rest become extinct.

What business are we in is an important question as it guides an organization at ever facet of its decision making: who its customer is, what needs it meets, what benefits it provides, how it’s organized, how its organizational culture formed and what competencies it develops to deliver this value. Fundamentally, it orchestrates how the value is created and delivered, for the firm, its customers, employees and shareholders.

Knowing what business you are in, and more importantly not in, helps the firm focus on what to pay attention to, what to ignore and what to learn: customers, markets, competencies, technologies, trends… Ultimately, this all contributes to the firm’s profitability, its top line and/or bottom line growth.

It is also important to note that the industry, market and customer dynamics are constantly evolving and changing. Being aware of those changes is crucial for a firm’s ability to evolve, and to refine the answer to the question: what business are we in. At the same time, our thought models, our day to day context constrains and limits our thinking. Therefore, building awareness of the complex environment we operate in, and becoming mindful is a key to survival of the firm. Scenario planning, forecasting techniques and SWOT analysis are tools that can help break the boxed thinking and force us to look beyond what is obvious. The challenge for managers is how to design these agile organizations that can evolve and respond to the changing needs.

Railroads are a classic example from the pages of history books. Once the growth engines for the country, now mostly extinct. The ones that survived, like Union Pacific, redefined their business as transportation and not just railroads. Henry Ford introduced the concept of mass production to automobile industry: you can have any color, so long as its black. But, it was GM that recognized the changing trends in the customer desires and realized that semi-customized designs could be delivered at minimal cost to the customer: a car for every purse and purpose.

What started as a test and measurement business in the late 1930s for Hewlett Packard, became computing and peripherals in the 1990s, and today is moving “to integrate content across the home, whether it’s emanating from the Web, from satellites, from cable, or the PC, and bring that to the consumer’s touch.” (The Wall Street Journal, The Weekend Interview with Mark Hurd The Un-Carly by Michael S. Malone, April 14-15, 2007)

Amazon is not in the business of selling books or groceries for that matter. For Amazon to be successful, to be profitable, they built the needed competencies for logistics, warehousing, distribution and fulfillment: the shipping business. Starbucks is not a service provider, they are all about experience. Experience that brings us the “third place” beyond home or work, a place that has a feel of a friendly sidewalk cafe in Europe, and a place where you can order a double tall not fat extra dry cappuccino with a dense, caramel-like sweetness and smooth, satisfying finish consistently every time.

I mentioned that we recently visited LegoLand. Take a look at these shots I captured; what business do you think they are in: annual subscription? Park hours were 10am-6pm during our visit. On a positive note, with so many interesting things to look at, we were able to avoid most of the rides. Our son, like a kid in a candy store, was quite happy with just being there, and enjoyed every minute of the visit.

So, what business are you in?

Technorati Tags: what business are you in

Recently Motorola CEO, Ed Zander, commented on the challenges of building and executing to their strategy: “Today, this is about execution in the mobile-device area. It’s been more challenging to figure out the strategy than we initially thought.” I previously shared my observations on Motorola, specifically their single-minded focus on strategy and innovation. So, this blog is devoted to reminding us of the challenges surrounding successful execution of strategy.

The word strategy originates from the efforts of military leaders as they utilized their troops based on their own as well as their enemy’s resources and capabilities, examination of the external forces including the terrain, weather and the likelihood of uncertain events and developments, in order to triumph in combat. In the world of business, the battle is the effective utilization of a firm’s scarce resources to bring in profits in the face of fierce competition. This requires good understanding of the needs and wants of the potential customers, and the ability differentiate oneself so that customers would choose you over your competitors.

As strategy is a long term plan of action to achieve a particular goal and objective, it requires execution with fluidity, especially in the presence of uncertainty. Effective execution is a competitive business advantage: better execution = better performance. Creating a strategy is easy, but implementing it successfully is where the challenge lies.

The following are my personal experiences and challenges that I have encountered in building and implementing strategies successfully. Reviewing this against your current strategy and its implementation, and devising action plans to avoid these common pitfalls will help improve your chances of a successful outcome.

Strategy is about making tough choices and defining trade-offs; it is about what you are going to do, but more importantly what you are NOT going to do. This requires strong leadership, as successful strategy is about being different regardless off all the nay-sayers inside and outside of your firm. Unfortunately, on too many occasions a firm chooses to keep its options open, and provides an environment that enable its people to ignore the firm’s strategy. However, when things go wrong, the end result will be wasted effort, a disappointed and cynical workforce, and not to forget the loss of credibility of the leaders.

Many aspects of a firm’s strategy can be copied by its rivals, as in the case of fast followers. It’s incredibly arrogant for a company to believe that it can do what its rivals do, and do it better and longer. How well a firm can execute its strategy is determined by its assets and the core competencies. At the same time, immediate availability of market research and competitive intelligence data, continuos changes in customer buying habits, government regulations, convergence of technologies and globalization are making what once was a clear differentiation of the firm’s competencies a temporary competitive advantage.

Strategy is about the basic value you are delivering to your customers: who, what, and how. With this, strategy must have continuity; it can’t be constantly reinvented. Without continuity, your organization will be confused, and your customers won’t know what you stand for. At the same time, strategy formulation and implementation is an on-going process requiring continuous reassessment in the face of ever-changing marketplace and customer demands. Strategy will not need to change often, but will require periodic adjustments based on external circumstances. With that, it is important to keep your strategy flexible, and give your people the freedom and empowerment to respond and adjust as needed.

Strategy and its execution requires ownership at all levels, from the CEO on down. Executive leadership must embed strategy in the organization: from its people, to its processes, to its culture and values. Any strategy, however brilliant, will fail unless people are emotionally committed to its success. In order to achieve unwavering commitment, people need to be involved in the strategy process early, they need to understand and believe in the strategy, and they need to feel included. The organization’s culture, values, incentives, people, structure and processes all contribute to how the existing internal environment will support its strategy. Through establishment of performance targets and incentives, it is important to direct the existing behavior and culture. After all, what gets measured gets done.

Execution is a process, not an action or a step, and it requires time. Though strategy might be built by few, execution requires everyone. With that, it is about change and management of that change. If change is not managed effectively, it will generate internal resistance. Though speed of execution is important, you need a cohesive approach to communicate, align, motivate, focus and enable people to execute the strategy: self-supporting environment that will follow through even where the organizational structure and processes fails.

Strategy must be attainable. The executive management team needs to assure that the organization’s objectives, performance targets, and strategically critical business processes are all in alignment with its strategy: horizontally and vertically across the various departments. Each of the strategic initiatives identified needs to be budgeted and managed. Most importantly, there needs to be recognition of both the existing competencies and the required competencies for success, and a plan to bridge the knowledge-doing gap. Establishing tangible and practical steps, along with key milestones, will help achieve early victories that will generate momentum and excitement for the whole organization.

Technorati Tags: successful execution of strategy, strategy, implementing strategies

In a previous post, I mentioned using SWOT analysis for analyzing the forces impacting your innovation. SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) is a flexible and simple tool that can be used in many different contexts: strategic planning, organizational evaluation, career evaluation, technology competence analysis, product or service analysis, strategic partnership evaluation, and so on. There are numerous sites that cover the basics of SWOT analysis. As such, instead of going into the HOWTO of SWOT, this post will focus on best practices for SWOT.

In basic terms, SWOT is a great tool for structured brainstorming, with an intent to map out the landscape of the strategic question being evaluated, and determining the potential next steps that the organization should take action on. A successfully conducted SWOT will give insights on existing strengths to maintain, build and leverage on, weaknesses to minimize or remedy, potential threats to counter or minimize, and opportunities to prioritize and exploit.

Given the simplicity and the flexibility of SWOT process, it is quite easy to fall into traps that would result in inaccurate, incomplete and subjective analysis. However, by keeping a few best practices in mind, you can ensure that you have a comprehensive, methodical and objective study. Here are some of the practices that worked for me in the past; please add on to this list.

Emphasize Detail

The simplicity of the process can easily result in 2-3 word phrases that don’t mean anything:our technology platform is superior. Remember, the goal is to come away with insightful and actionable areas. One method to achieve that would be to ask the Why? question at least 5 times.

1. our technology platform is superior — why?
2. it is superior because we have a flexible platform architecture — why?
3. it is a flexible architecture because we had to implement some specific functionality for a few customers — why?
4. we needed to enable our customers to optimize their operations — why?
5. they needed to streamline the workflow and customize the starting point for improved job flow and they didn’t find any company or product to do what they needed, so we quickly did the work for them

With these 5 quick questions, you just identified your strength in building customized solutions, and opportunities to market the strength of your product architecture, to investigate new product extensions to support this existing need, and the potential of offering customized solutions.

Another method for getting to details is to do a further breakdown of the given statement and analyze each attribute separately. As an example, our product quality is poor could be further broken down to:

• Product quality — does the product meet the agreed upon specifications;
• Product specification — does the product specification reflect the customer needs, benefits and problems;
• Product usability — is the product easy to learn and use;
• Product performance — does the product performance meets the customer needs;
• Quality assurance (QA) process — is the QA process effective;
• …

The bottom line is that there are many things that could contribute to overall product quality, and some more important than others. Again, by focusing on the details, you have more accurate information for your decision making process.

Apply/Do Objectivity

Unfortunately, SWOT’s simplicity can also result in a biased analysis. However, even in the areas of high subjectivity, you can apply objective analysis by bringing in varying opinions. If you haven’t already done so, visit the Periodic Table of Visualization Methods, and check out potential tools that you can use for aiding on your objective data analysis, such as performance charting or radar charts. But, remember, quantitative is not automatically synonymous with being objective. As human beings we tend to be optimistic, even when we think otherwise.

Align With Organizational Strategy

The SWOT process does not have favorites; it just states the findings and observations. However, you can link the analysis results with your strategy, previous market and competitive analysis reports. This creates a personalized SWOT analysis that would better aid in your decision making process. After all, not every opportunity and threat is equal, and your strategy will highlight the necessary tradeoffs: what are we not doing. During your objective analysis, you can weight and rank each of the areas. This can be as simple as using a scale of 1-5, or percentage based evaluation.

Your strategy also will highlight the evaluation of important intangible resources: capabilities, competencies and reputation. Although these may not come up during your SWOT analysis, these intangible resources play into a firm’s competitive differentiation. Through this analysis, you can identify opportunities (ex. new application of existing technologies) as well as threats (ex. revamping of the workforce with new technologies).

Recognize The Moving Target

SWOT analysis captures the landscape at a given point in time. Today, everything moves at the speed of light. However, with some additional work, investigation and competitive intelligence gathering, you can distinguish between where your organization is today and where it can be in the future. This is where the gap analysis can help to identify potential strategic and tactical actions your firm can take.

Technorati Tags: SWOT, best practices, decision making process

Well designed metrics programs enable firms to focus on what is important and what really adds value for themselves and for their customers. However, designing and executing a metrics program requires work and effort. At the same time, it is too easy to misuse the metrics. You have probably seen these classic examples of metrics gone bad, and have plenty to share of your own.

• Scott Maxwell on his post highlights the 10 best ways to lie with metrics.
• Dilbert tackles the challenges of establishing software metrics where Wally writes himself a new minivan.
• Joel Spolsky shares his customer service experience and the impacts of measuring customer service representatives based on the number of calls taken per hour.
• Yet another airline is proud to achieve successful on-time gate departure, while you sit on the tarmac for the next 2 hours before the actual take-off.

As valuable as the metrics are, falling into common traps can result in dysfunctional behavior, cultivate the wrong intents, and ultimately hurt the firm, its customers and shareholders. Here are some of the most common metrics mishaps:

• Too many (or too few) metrics — Your metrics should be aligned to support your strategy. Too many metrics is a clear distraction, not to mention a ton of work. At the same time, too few metrics will not help track the real issues or progress. Your metrics should be insightful and actionable, and not become your self-imposed prison.
• Ill defined metrics — Your metrics should not be left to interpretation by your team, and create additional confusion. They should bring clarity to your strategy, and to your performance measures. Take the time to explore and define your intents and objectives with your metrics, especially when it comes to measuring intangibles such as building an innovative culture, delivering quality products, and even increasing customer satisfaction.
• Conflicting metrics — Your metrics are the levers you will use to maximize the performance of your company. So, beware of conflicting metrics, as they will send mixed messages to your organization: are we cutting cost or becoming more innovative? Where needed, you can use weighted methods to prioritize your metrics.
• Lack of communication and training — Metrics have the power to build teamwork by pulling everyone in the same direction. However, this requires the leaders of the organization to clearly communicate the strategy, explain the purpose of the metrics program, and provide the needed training to support the teams.
• Inaccurate metrics — You may have your metrics well defined, but are you measuring them correctly and accurately? As an example, before you celebrate the large number of visits you received on your web site, ensure that you are not counting the search engine crawlers, or the number of comments you received do not include spams (my latest headache…).

So, what do you do, and where do you start? I have recently finished reading Bob Phelp’s Smart Business Metrics: Measure What Really Counts & Manage What Makes The Difference. This book is a good reminder of measuring what really counts, along with several case studies that discusses the process of building these metrics. In the past, I used Balanced Score Card performance metrics, which is a good management tool for aligning your organization top to bottom. However, I enjoyed the simplistic approach Bob shared in his book for building metrics program to specifically address the business issue at hand, and ensure that it is aligned with the business strategy. He refers to this as the value web: “a framework for the sort of measures that are needed to guide a business and its managers.”

Since the value web framework is focused on building value for the organization, the process starts by identifying a few key output metrics: things that really matter and should be measured as the output your business produces or wants to produce. Once you have determined your output metrics and ensure their alignment with your organization’s strategic direction, the next step is to determine the value drivers (factors that drive present value) and value builders (factors that drive future value) that impact the output metrics you identified. This clear separation of roles in the value web framework brings clarity, focus on what really counts and ensures present and future value is included in the metrics. Once the value web is built, the next step is to identify process improvements to support the objectives: reward and recognition programs, communication programs, training programs, etc. It is important to note that creating the value web requires in-depth analysis of drivers and their impact on the value whenever possible, using tools such as variation analysis, decision trees, regression analysis, or conjoint analysis.

However you build your metrics, make sure your metrics are clear, actionable, supports business objectives, and based on data and facts. Also remember, metrics drive behavior, so understand how your organization’s behavior might change before you launch into your next metrics program.

Technorati Tags: Bob Phelp, Smart Business Metrics, metrics program

Social networking technologies are changing the way customers and consumers interact with companies, their products and services. As an example, Amazon.com customer reviews and the ’search inside this book’ technologies influence my book buying habits; and this is not limited to just searching for opinions on books.

Social networking sites and technologies can be a gold mine for companies; in some aspects they are the online version of a focus group. Customer discussions and comments enable firms to get real-time feedback on their products, identify trends and test ideas with a diverse user community. However, building these online communities are not without challenges and effort, as summarized by Michael Bloch in the article Forums as marketing tools - tips and pitfalls.

For Dell, this challenge is a good opportunity to reconnect with their customers. As I mentioned on my previous post: Strategy 101: Revisiting Low-Cost Leadership with Dell:

At the business level, reiteration of the customer commitment and firm understanding of why the customer chose, and is going to choose, your company’s products is the next important step in starting your differentiation process.

So, in February 16, Dell announced Dell IdeaStorm and StudioDell. These new social sites complement their already existing Direct2Dell: one-2-one communications with Dell blog site, which has been in operation since at least July of 2006.

No doubt that the value of these sites is linked to the utilization of the ideas presented. However, it is certainly a great strategy for working closely with customers on the web. I am quite curious to see how it will evolve and change Dell’s brand, products and services. However, I do hope Dell will look beyond the customer input for new ideas and innovations. Managing customer feedback can be a challenge, as in some cases “customers may not know what they want, but certainly want what they know.” (Bob Phelps — Smart Business Metrics: Measure What Really Counts & Manage What Makes The Difference) As always, there needs to be a balanced approach, as highlighted in Ballmer’s interview with Fast Company.

“We can believe that we know where the world should go. But unless we’re in touch with our customers, our model of the world can diverge from reality. There’s no substitute for innovation, of course, but innovation is no substitute for being in touch, either.” Steve Ballmer

Social webs are a great resource for the firms; just don’t let them be the only source for your innovations.

About Dell IdeaStorm
Dell IdeaStorm is a social website designed for customers to share, discuss and vote for ideas as a Dell user community. The site provides a vehicle for the customers to post new ideas and wishes, and enables the community to promote/vote on these Digg-style. As Dell points out on the Ideas in Action site, they have every intention to utilize these learnings, as well as providing their responses for the most popular requests, such as the case for Linux distribution options.

Dell employees are monitoring IdeaStorm to gauge which ideas are most important and most relevant to you. And we’ll share those ideas throughout our organization to trigger new thoughts about how we evolve as a company.

As your ideas continue to pour in, we will use this page to provide updates on ideas that Dell is considering. We’ll also show you how your ideas are being put into action at Dell over time. Please check back to see your ideas in action.

About StudioDell
Dell also launched “Your Stories” section on StudioDell, similar to YouTube, for customers to submit their own videos showing how they use Dell products and services in their business and personal lives.

Technorati Tags: Social networking technologies, Social networking, Dell, IdeaStorm

Dell has been generating quite a bit of news lately with Michael Dell’s return as CEO, and Kevin Rollin’s quick exit. There is a fair amount of discussion in regards to if Dell will succeed in turning around the company: with his vision, strategy and style. However, for me, as a curious observer of business turnarounds, Dell’s current dilemma is a great opportunity to visit business strategy 101 and reinforce the need for innovation for growth.

Dell was able to establish itself as the low-cost leader in the PC market, mainly due to its direct sales business model as well as the incredible efficiencies it achieved via its supply-chain strategies. Today, Dell lost its market position to HP and hopefully realizing that efficiencies are not the means to an end; competition is global and fierce; customers are constantly evolving and business can’t stay still.

Although economics 101 dictates that the demand increases with decrease in price, the real world doesn’t always follow this philosophy. In fact, commodization is a kiss-of-death for many firms: the price becomes the only way to differentiate; profit margins decline as increased volume isn’t sufficient; growth comes to a halt. This further impacts the company negatively as customers struggle to find a unique value and benefit in the firm, leading itself to perceptions of poor quality, poor brand and poor service. Unfortunately Dell is impacted with this perception/reality, as it is not viewed as an innovative company and is currently suffering problems with its customer service.

In the times of stress, it is human nature to resort to old habits and lead from our strengths or what we know best. For businesses, this tends to translate to cutting back on innovation investments and focusing on bottom line for margins or having a single-minded focus on its innovations. Along these lines, Dell is also planning to further improve its efficiencies in its supply-chain. I believe Dell has one of the best-in-class supply-chain efficiencies in the industry, yet it is quickly loosing footing. As such my logic dictates that although this strategy might help with its margins as the low-cost provider, its not going to drive the needed growth.

Change is constant, so is customer taste and buying patterns. Although today’s customers are price sensitive, they do prefer quality, innovation and customer service, and are willing to pay for it. Research shows that it can cost five times more to gain a new customer than retain an existing one. Unfortunately, Dell’s recent customer service problems seem to further alienate their existing customers. At the business level, reiteration of the customer commitment and firm understanding of why the customer chose, and is going to choose, your company’s products is the next important step in starting your differentiation process.

For growth, the firm needs to focus on its top line by retaining its existing customers and attracting new ones. New product and service innovations, as well as incremental value improvements to existing offerings would fuel the growth Dell needs. Sanjay Dalal of the blog Creativity And Innovation Driving Business shares his thoughts on the new products and services Dell can target for the new customer segments, such as: educational computers for students, cool computers for teenagers, appealing computers for women, the home bundle, and best business computers.

Although innovations are good, defensible innovations are what the firm needs. As I discussed in my post Innovation and the Degree of Innovativeness, innovation is multidimensional, and the more dimensions you are innovating (technology, process, product, service, business model, value-delivery, brand, design, quality, market, customer/segment, …), the more difficult for your competitors to copy you.

For Dell, innovating or updating their direct sale model to further support the new customer segments and products as Sanjal Dalal suggested, perhaps through strategic partnerships, would improve their competitive standing. Strategic partnerships, leveraging the strengths of individual businesses to form an alliance that is beneficial to both parties, is another method by which new growth opportunities can be created for a specific goal – promotion, product bundles, technology integration, services, channels… For Dell, strategic channel partners could also come in handy as Dell grows its non-US markets where the direct sale model is not central to consumer buying habits.

Ideas for innovation are everywhere: security and secure infrastructure is a concern for all enterprises, demand for mobility and connectedness is rising, green-ness is not hype and always there is a growing need for energy efficient systems, and customers need systems that just work as computing infrastructure grows in complexity. As the competition intensifies with globalization and new technologies, brand becomes even more important for firms as they compete for differentiation. Interestingly enough, I was never aware of the green-efforts that were pursued by Dell; perhaps another opportunity for improving their image.

Starting with your customer and your brand is good first step towards determining your overall strategy for growth. However, don’t stop there: look for dimensions you can innovate and continuously add value. These strategies will help in your quest for growth.

Technorati Tags: Dell, strategy 101, innovation, low-cost provider

Recent announcements from Nokia and Motorola on their latest earnings and new found focus for 2007 left me wondering… Granted the handset market is quite competitive, driven by short product lifecycles, design and technology innovations and price pressures, but I can’t help but wonder if the firms had a dose of single minded focus when it came to their business strategy.

Nokia dominated the mobile phone market with their focus on design, ease of use, branding the phone as a personal statement as well as a technology innovation. However, somewhere along the way, they dropped into the shadows. They completely missed the demand for thinner/slimmer mobile phones, and allowed competitors to enter the market. For 2007, they plan to mitigate that mistake by offering a new sleeker portfolio of phones and refocusing on their design.

On the other hand, Motorola became an overnight hit in the market with their introduction of the RAZR — great combination of style, technology and price performance. Interestingly enough, as an outside observer it is hard to tell if Motorola has a portfolio of mobile phones (try to find a Motorola PEBL in the stores), and it is getting hard to differentiate the various RAZR product lines. Basically, they got stuck in incremental improvement mode for the RAZR: itunes, thinner/longer, slider, hip colors, … Motorola’s CEO also indicated that their sole focus on market share, pricing strategy utilized, and quality of their product mix greatly impacted their profit margins.

It seems to easy to fall into these traps where single minded focus (that might have helped before) becomes a hinderance, especially in fast moving and highly competitive markets. Here are some thoughts that can keep an objective perspective from becoming a horse with blinders on:

• Focus on market leadership both your product mix and your financial returns;
• Continously enhance and innovate your products and scan for opportunities to extend into new markets;
• Product innovation will only carry you so far. As your products and the market grow and mature, utilize the innovation lifecycle model to incorporate needed process, logistics and customer relationship management related innovations.
• Establish regular portfolio reviews to ensure you have the right projects, the right level of investment and the right innovation initiatives to support your business goals and financial objectives.
• As humans, we seem to be overly optimistic and confident of our estimations. Unfortunately this can be a dangerous combination for strategy development. Utilizing scenarios during the strategic planning process, with the err on the pessimistic side can compensate.
• As economics dictate, a sunk cost is a sunk cost. Establish milestones, do regular reviews and don’t be afraid to switch gears. The more quickly you learn and rebalance your portfolio of projects, the lower the sunk costs will be.
• Keep constant tabs on your customers (old, new, lost and future) and market trends. Continuous changes in customer tastes, new technologies, low-switching costs makes it quite easy for you to lose existing customers.

Technorati Tags: business strategy, leadership, innovation lifecycle, management

Kodak has apparently released an internal video for external viewing, which currently has over 100,000 views on the YouTube site. It is quite invigorating, and I hope you will enjoy the video as well. Plus, I figured this is a good opportunity to test incorporating video to my blog

Though the commercial is impressive, and purposeful with their intent to recapture the “Kodak Moment”, I do question their ability to be successful. They are quite an innovative company. And, one cannot forget their memorable slogans, starting with the slogan for their first simple camera introduced in 1888 you press the button, we do the rest.

Kodak also has been struggling for the past several years, especially when it came to digital technologies. They have been acquiring companies, selling them, outsourcing their manufacturing of digital cameras, and overall restructuring the company to regain the market. I hope they will be able to live up to this advertisement.

Technorati Tags: Kodak

Recently, I read an article on moods and how they potentially effect our daily results at Knowledge@Wharton. You might need a free subscription to the site to access the article: “Waking Up on the Wrong Side of the Desk: The Effect of Mood on Work Performance.”

The research is interesting, as they investigate how our moods, before we set foot at work, could effect our productivity in the office. The conclusion of the research is as follows:

“Start-of-day positive mood spills over and affects positive employee mood during the day,” … “likewise, start-of-day negative mood spills over and affects negative employee mood during the day,…” “… Last, we show that daily mood at work can influence important work outcomes.”

Though Isaac Newton suggested that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, an action from your environment doesn’t have to result in a specific mood. Yes, maybe the traffic was really horrendous that day. But, don’t we have the choice on how to react? The article reminds me of the Saturday Night Live skit featuring “Stuart Smalley” - “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!”

Granted, I do believe everyone deserves to have a ‘bad mood’ day, if they choose to. But, as the article highlights, it would be worthwhile to ask yourself “if today is a good day to have the bad mood”, before you step onto that path.