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Are we loosing context?

I was at an event last night and got into a conversation about our loss of context. We were talking about the innovative use of maps - particularly the Geovation project/competition being run by Ordnance Survey   in the UK. 

One of my points that we have lost the context - by relying on GPS systems we forget the bigger picture. I cant remember the last time I got in the car and looked at a map, I am so used to falling in to the car, half asleep and punching into the GPS the postcode or whatever and then being told what to do.

One of the winners of the geovation prize is a very large scale map of the UK which allows school children to find places for history, geography and other subjects - bringing context back to these subjects and hopefully their lives.

I made the point that business is going down the same track - we have so many processes and procedures that we often loose the context of what we are trying to do. This 'rules' based way of doing things is the equivalent of the GPS for navigation - we are 'told' what to do next and our focus becomes smaller and smaller - the next turn. 

It is time that we stood back and questioned why - rather than just accepting the status quo - actively seek out the context - the bigger picture. If you do nothing else today take a wider view and see if you can find your context.

The carbon impact of the recession

Last night I was at a Corporate Venturing event and was chatting about the whole carbon economy area to a few people. On the train on the way back I was thinking about the Carbon impact of he recession - surely there must have been a significant decrease in carbon consumption with people buying less, driving less, and just consuming less stuff. There is a counter to this however as the bad weather increased out use of energy to heat out houses so that will probably balance things out maybe.

So could a good strategy to counter global warming be for governments to keep the recession going?

One sad thing is that the recession hit investment in low carbon technologies - hopefully this will recover.

I am not sure whether this recession induced carbon impact could be calculated but I thought I would probably have a go this weekend to see if I can get some data and try and put a figure on it. Any thoughts or sources would be appreciated.

The new Innovation Stress Points

Over the last few weeks I have been talking to a wide variety of people working in Innovation in large organisations across the UK. These companies are all in different industries are at different stages of development and are interested in different things. 

 When I did the research for my book 'Ten Steps' I did a survey that asked for people's definition of innovation - what came out was a very wide and dispersed view of what innovation actually was. These last few weeks have reinforced this as I have found many views, many definitions, and more importantly lost of different criteria for success.


What seems to be high on the Innovation Radar at the moment? What questions are companies and particularly those leading innovation initiatives struggling with?

1. The first question companies are facing is trying to understand what innovation means for companies and particularly how do they tackle/approach open innovation. What is the real difference between open and closed innvoation and which one is right for them?
 
2. The second common question I am coming up against is the need/role of an innovation team - should there be one, how big should it be and what should it do? (Facilitator, ideas generator, catalyst, framework definer, toolkit producer or clearing house).
3. The third question is what role does strategy play in making innovation a reality - should we have a separate strategy, if so what should it cover, should it align with business strategy, will it cover communications, marketing etc. or is it an entity on its own?
4. The fourth question seems to be around the type of innovation that the company needs. I guess this links to the first question but this is at a more tactical level and covers things like - is it around changing the culture, developing new products, building internal or external ventures, or satisfying the leadership!
5. The fifth question is how should success be measured - how do you know if it is working? What metrics can you look for. This links to question four as it depends on what you are trying to achieve.
6. The sixth question is around leadership and support. Companies are struggling to understand whether to approach innovation from the top down or go for a bottom up approach. What role does C level sponsorship have and is this a guarantee of success?
7. Question seven - is what is everyone else doing? There is a real fear out there of being first in many things and there are a lot of fast followers. This seems counter intuitive to me as innovation is, I think, about being first - with a new approach, a new market entry strategy or a new thing.
8. The eighth question, and the last for now, is what is the role of the consultant - do we need one, what value do they bring, what type of consultancy should we use (big, small, independent), are we looking for one with a methodology or just an approach is it a partnership or just a contract?. There are many consultancies working in the Innovation space and it is hard to resist a good sell, particularly if you are struggling with the previous seven questions!

Are these stress points or just conundrums - I will leave you to provide your own view - from my perspective these are all things that are causing stress in companies and are holding things back.

If you have a view on any of the above let me know.         

Pondering the nature of competition

What we have historically thought of as competition is being reshaped by technology and globalisation. The traditional view of competition – people selling similar products and services to ‘our’ customers, however you define, them has slipped into history. This is being replaced by an evolving landscape of new competitive models and competition can now come from the most unexpected places. 

I look back to 1983 when I was in BT and the telecommunications market was liberalised – Mercury was licensed and although didn’t have much of an immediate impact it heralded the dawn of a new age. Mercury was a traditional competitor – it ran landline telephone services using fibre optic cables run down the side of railway lines etc. as its backbone. At that time we knew who the competition was – it could be targeted and was, reasonably, predictable.

 If we fast forward to 2010 and look at the telecommunications market it is a very different story – who would have thought back in the 80s that the world would have gone mobile mad – computer and software companies would be launching phones and we could make international phone calls for free. Apple, Microsoft, Google, Skype and many others are changing the communications landscape in radical ways.

The analogy I use is that of warfare – in the past we knew who the enemy was – today we are in a world of asymmetric warfare where we no longer know who e are fighting. Our business world is the same – we no longer know who our competition might be. We are almost seeing Guerilla competition – we are being sniped at from all sides.

The ease at which technology solutions can now be deployed, coupled with companies moving into a more open approach to innovation and product development means that the concept of product roadmaps are no longer appropriate and I tal now of product landscapes – rather than product development being linear it almost needs to be discontinuous to succeed.

The other factor to add into the mix is the impact of social networking, peer feedback and other online sharing tools and techniques. eBay started this I guess when it started to rate sellers and buyers based on customer feedback. Amazon may also argue that it was first but whichever it was it has now become a fact of life and this changes the way companies market to consumers and business. The old paradigm of marketing – telling your customer why they should buy your product or service is now old hat, being replaced by the idea of trying to influence the influencers.

Companies such as Dell and AT&T have seen some success by tapping into the blogosphere – employing full time ‘independent’ bloggers to review their products and glean ideas for new products. This approach  has proved successful in changing consumers percpetion of the company and hopefully increased sales – well if you believe the hype it has.

So back to the original question – who or what is competition. Well in this new fast moving, asymetric world it could be anybody. The tectonic plates of the business world are still shifting and new business and marketing models are developing at a pace not previously seen.

When will this slow down – good question - my own opinion is that it will slow within the next 5 years. There are a number of factors that will impact the dynamics of the markets:

• ·      Environmental concerns
• ·      Economic factors
• ·      Consumerism fatigue
• ·      Resource constraints

Each of these factors will put pressure on the way we do business. Increasing concerns aboutr gliobal warming, coupled with poiltical manouverings around the environment will focus minds on recycling, sustainability and taxation. These elements will all, hopefully, reduce consumerism and materialism.

The recent recession has slowed consumer and business spending and this is seen in figures being released by companies around the world. This will ease over the next few years but the debt millstone we now have will take years to pay back.

I have been interested over the last few weeks to hear people wanting to get off the technology escalator of faster, quicker, more pixels etc.  A number of people have started to ditch their smartphones for a phone – just a phone that makes phone calls and not much else. I see this as a sign of wanting to declutter our lives – a topic I have blogged on before – reducing the ‘noise’ in our lives.

The last component is resource constraints. As the emerging economies start to build the demand for resources will increase and this will increase prives and demand for scarce natural resources. China is already consuming vast quantities of steel and building materials and as India and some of the South American countries come onstream the demands will increase further.

All this means that we can have less, whatever it is will be more expensive, we probably cant afford it and we will be under pressure to recycle and reuse rather than replace. Thes factors will again change the face of competition as new market drivers change the competitive landscape yet again – the question I guess is will it be an evolution or a revolution? The jury is still out!

 

Heroes and Villains - the power of storytelling in Foresight

Over the last 10+ years working in the Future and Foresight space the power of Storytelling has been highlighted many times. The use of stories about the future, about how things mapped out and the impact of a particular direction or strategy has been a very powerful weapon in my armory.

I had posted a few blogs which cover this but I thought I would just 'canter' through them again and bring in a few other tools and techniques you can use when using stories.

I categorize stories into a number of areas - stories about yesterday, today and tomorrow as well as fact, enhanced fact and pure fiction. This table aims to categorize the types of story used in business today.  I am sure there are probably others and I would welcome your suggestions.

Many of these stories have a format or framework that, although used widely, is never actually written down. In other words legends about things that have happened in the past tend to follow a similar pattern - they focus on an individual who overcame some adversity, usually some piece of bureaucracy within the corporation, and survived and thrived. Of course there is the Villain of the piece and this is very often a department rather than an individual. This framework is known as the Heroes Journey and is used, not only in yesterdays legends but often also used on scenarios when considering the future. 

The diagram on the right is my version of this journey which I have used extensively when helping companies develop future scenarios. There are two approaches to using such a framework and depending on the people involved each has its merits. The first is to start at the left hand side and start to build the story from today - identify the characters, the environment etc. and then work your way across the chart from left to right adding information as you go. 

My preferred approach, however, is to start at the right hand side first and decide on the outcome before I consider the finer detail such as characters etc. From this I work from both ends and hopefully meet somewhere in the middle! THere is, however, no right answer and its whatever works for you.  

Storytelling allows people to express their views, desires and dreads in a relatively 'safe' way by using a third party, in the case of the heroes journey, the hero and the associated villains. This ability to use the third party brings a level of freedom that people, particularly in large organisations, don't feel they can express. 

To 'tell' the story, particularly in a workshop environment it is usually productive to use a media that allows people to express themselves in a way they feel comfortable with. This can take the form of Rich Pictures, Lego models, puppets, fancy dress and many other ways - all work well with some groups better than others. I have coined the phrase making the telling 'Friction Free', by this I mean that I need to have materials and media available to allow the participants to use whatever they feel will allow them to express themselves most effectively.

I will, over the next few weeks post some of the other frameworks I use in Strategic Storytelling. I would be interested to learn of you have any frameworks that you find useful and again if you are interested in using these techniques in anger get in touch.

Mediastorming

When thinking about the future or looking at a current problem or opportunity a technique I developed a few years ago is Medistorming. This technique relies on having media available - either physical media or online can be used.

The idea is to use a random article from the news or a story from a magazine to stimulate gaining an   alternate view of whatever it is you are looking at. The questions to ask once you have your random article are:

1. How does this effect your problem/product/future?
2. How could my 'problem' help?
3. What are the relationships between my situation and the one on the article?
4. What insight can I get from this exercise?
5. What images could be used to represent the insight I have gained?

I often like to report back from the exercise as an image or drawing as it helps with the storytelling.

For the purposes of this blog post I have pulled up this newspaper article from from the Independent on 2009 which talks about country people using the Internet to find Love. If you are in the financial services industry this could stimulate some thoughts about providing mortgages for these couples or maybe savings plans for country people who are wanting to find a partner and get married. If you are in the health business it might stimulate thoughts about health screening or health education - maybe family planning guidelines?

If you are a technology company you might want to get into providing a web portal for country lonely hearts or a program of providing laptops and maybe training for people in this sector. The list goes on.

I hope you can see how this technique can, through random articles, help stimulate thoughts about a problem/opportunity or indeed the future.

If you are interested in finding out more or using this technique in anger please get in touch.

Alternate business models - transforming the future

In previous posts I have discussed different ways of provoking new ways of thinking about your current business. An alternate approach is to takes somebody else's business model and investigate how your company, products or services would operate under their way of working. This technique is typically well received by groups at all levels, particularly if well known companies and brands are used that everyone can identify with. This last point is very important, particularly with a diverse and multi-disciplined team where there may be mixed levels of experience and business understanding. Everyone knows what a company like Virgin or Amazon stands for and therefore can quickly translate these values and WOW (Ways of Working) into their company/group or team.

To help get you kick started I have put together a list of companies, again using the alphabet as a way   of forcing diversity in the process, which you can choose to use or you can create your own. It is important, I feel, that you don't stick to companies in your own sector or industry as you are aiming to bring in some external stimulation into the mix.

As preparation for using this technique I would typically prepare a set of slides, one per company that detailed background information about the company and the industry they operate in. Such information as:

• • Revenue
  • Profit
  • Cost base
  • Number of employees
  • Mission Statement
  • Values (if known)
  • Competitive positioning
  • Market/consumer perception
  • Major relevant news items
  • CEO/Director quotes etc.

This can either be preprepared or the participants can be provided with a framework and they have to go away and research the company - this latter option can take up to an hour so take care on timings.

As an output from this exercise there should be an understanding of the key similarities and differences between the companies as well as insights into how their business model would influence/benefit the company. Typically there would be a collection of positives and negatives that would be identified as well as risks and benefits of adopting their approach.

If used correctly this is a very powerful technique which can bring real insight into the participants - the secret as with many of these techniques is to translate these insights into action!

As I have mentioned previously if you are interested in using any of these techniques in 'anger', or need further information or clarification, please get in touch.

The Randomness of Tomorrow

Although we tend to think of forecasting as a science rather than an art or a craft the reality is that there is always the impact of randomness and chaos that shapes the future. If we believe this then applying a random factor to our thinking about what tomorrow can bring new insights into our approach.

To introduce a random factor we can use a whole host of ‘items’ to stimulate our thinking – a picture, words, websites, objects, TV programs, people etc. etc. The process is typically a facilitated one and I will discuss this first and then give you a technique that you can use on your own which I have found personally very useful.

If we assume that issue we are looking at is the future of the delivery ‘business’ then the first thing we need to do is to understand what we mean. How will we define the delivery business – is it grocery delivery or bulk delivery or consumer delivery or some other permutation? The second factor we need to decide on is the timescale - what horizon are we using? Once we are clear on what we mean then we can start to think about introducing the random ‘thing’.

The traditional way of using randomness is to liken the ‘problem’ or issue to a random object or thing. So in this example we will liken the delivery business to the ‘X-Factor’ TV show.

Using this random factor we can paint the follow picture:  

The delivery business has a constant stream of new talent – some better than others who all havedifferent talents and skills. They all think they should be a star but they will be judged by other who think they are experts in the area – in this case corporate buyers, however the real judges are the general public and they get to vote on whether the service will be any good or not.

The judges in this example are the ones promoting this service rather then the service providers themselves and have become powerful people in their own right, although over time the power base shifts back from the few to the many.

For the purposes of this post I will not go any further and hopefully you can see the power of the technique from this short exercise. As usual if you want to discuss in more detail or want to have a go please get in touch or post your examples on the blog.

I did promise to give a personal example I have used to help think differently – I call this ‘20-30-40’. The idea works in the US rather better than in the UK purely because of the layout of bookshops etc. But the idea goes along these lines. Get 20 random books or magazines, sit down for 30 minutes and come up with 40 ideas - which can either solve your problem or give some new insight into the future or into your customers. You can do this at home just as easy or go to a library if you still have one open in the area – if you are really adventurous use the random website feature on Google but I have found that my 30 minutes doesn’t go very far if I am surfing the web.

I hope you find this interesting and have a go at the techniques described – let me know how you get on

Future Workforce - The Millennial Effect

Our traditional view of the workforce is set to change as the Millennial generation
  (those born between 1978 and 2000) hit the workforce. These new workers, the children of the Baby boomers, have very different expectations and experiences and have lived in a world touched by technology all their lives. How are companies going to attract, reward and retain this new generation and how are they different?

Download the latest white paper on Millennials below:

Download Future Workforce – the Millenial effect V2

Is Global Warming stifling innovation and creativity?

Water shortages and restrictions are going to a common factor for the future. This means we are going over the next few years to steer away from getting in the bath/tub in favour of showers that use a 10th of the water. This however could be a retrograde step when we consider innovation and creativity as most people have some of their best ideas whilst having a soak in a nice warm bath. From an early age, and for a certain generation, the nightly soak in the bath was a ritual and for many one that has carried on into later life where the tub has become a sanctuary - a place to think and contemplate and more importantly to have great ideas and solutions to problems.  

In the 60s, 70s and 80s the UK was the worlds powerhouse for innovation and creative thinking with many of the technologies we enjoy today, such as CDs, mobile technologies, computers and arguably even the internet were being invented and developed - ok so in many cases these were exploited by other countries - but I would guess that many of these ideas started in a nice warm bath!

The key question is if we had only had showers would we have in fact invented them at all?

The next question is is there a correlation between those countries who enjoy a good soak and their success on the world stage. This I suggest could be argued for the Nordic countries who are the powerhouse for mobile technologies and also like a good soak.

So back to the original question - will our move way from a soak in the bath stifle innovation and creativity and could this be a reason why we find ourselves in the position we do today - a global recession, having difficulty in defining out role on the worlds stage?