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The Giddyup and the Whoa of Innovation

May 7, 2012 in Business Genome, Competitive Advantage with 2 Comments

Who will be the X-Y-Z guys for your company’s next innovation?

It’s dangerous out there in the world of business. It used to be dangerous because business was run by the leaders who favored incremental growth over innovation. Risk-averse leaders were the ideal during times when corporate growth was simply a matter of executing well and acting responsibly.

But for many companies in today’s fast-paced market, where incremental growth won’t make the grade anymore, innovation is now in vogue. The positive side of innovation is that it can lead to a way out of stagnation—companies can uncover new opportunities for products and services that hit the mark with customers and keep brands at the top of the market. The problem is that to get innovation to stick, companies need two different types of people—the visionaries and the executors—and it’s critical to put everyone to work on the part of the process where it makes the most sense.

House painters who start the job aren’t the same personality type as the ones who can paint the baseboards.

My dad had a theory about house painters. He said that the same guy who was great at painting the walls might not be so hot at finishing the baseboards. He called the first guy the “A-W” guy and the other guy the “X-Y-Z” guy. It turns out to be the same with innovation. The people who generate all of the Continue Reading…

Optimism for Business at the Speed of a “Flip”

April 30, 2012 in Business Genome, Competitive Advantage with 0 Comments

Get your business ready to accelerate your learning curves.

Business can learn how to innovate from TED-Ed, a new platform designed for sharing lessons and customizing learning.

The world of business is overdue for an optimism revolution. We all need strategic alternatives that free us from the doom and gloom of economic and competitive pressures. We would like to transition our companies—large and small—into an era of abundance.

If you’ve read Peter Diamandis’ book, Abundance, you may agree that the secret to business prosperity is innovation—figuring new ways to face the new world of competition. But, the question is this—How can we all get smarter, faster?

Brace yourself—the answer is a bit twisted. Suspend your disbelief and consider these ideas:

–In some cases, we can achieve competitive advantage by sharing information more aggressively – giving and receiving.

–In other cases, we can join forces with others—either through informal collaboration or joint venture–and piece together opportunities that leapfrog us forward. For example, we can add ecommerce to our brick and mortar retail brands (like Allstate and Esurance) or add new brick and mortar configurations to our existing brands (like State Farm’s Next Door).

But, whatever our strategy for growth, we know that we have to open ourselves up to new ideas. We need to jump outside of our silos, immerse ourselves in unfamiliar territory, understand new ways of seeing Continue Reading…

How To See The Future, Today

March 26, 2012 in Business Genome, Competitive Advantage with 0 Comments

Cross-industry CoLabs eat SWOT analysis for lunch

A rabbi, a priest and a cop walk into a bar…well, that’s not exactly how it begins—more like 3 business leadership teams walk into a conference room: one that heads up a mid-sized aluminum company, another that runs a niche software company, and a third that’s responsible for growing a very unique carpet manufacturing operation. They have never worked together before, but they share a common interest—they’ve gone through the traditional SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis, they’ve put their best minds on their strategic competitive analysis, they’ve integrated forecast models into their planning. And, still, they wonder, “Is there more we could do to get ahead of tomorrow’s opportunities?”

Granted, it’s an unconventional approach to gather together leaders from completely different industries. But, in the past 3-5 years, the business environment has drastically changed, creating chaos in all of our predictive models. Who was to know that iPhones would yield more pictures than Kodak cameras? Who would have predicted that startups in online insurance would grab significant market share from the traditional companies, or that Starbucks would sell beer? More than ever before, we live in a cross-industry world, and more than ever, we need new tools to plot our next opportunities and stay ahead of our customers’ desires. We can no longer afford the luxury of Continue Reading…

Send Tinkerbell Tweets: 4 Simple Steps to Jump Start Crowdsourcing

January 30, 2012 in Business Genome, Competitive Advantage, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Social Media with 2 Comments

We can’t ignore it. The age of crowdsourcing is upon us. If we’re not doing it, we can be assured that our competitors are. It’s time to wake up, smell the roses, and venture into the world of the crowd. Crowdsourcing widens the net and significantly changes the competitive game.

In the traditional telling of Peter Pan, Tinkerbell drank poison and fell into a stupor. In the story, Tinkerbell’s only hope for revival was for children to clap their hands to offer support and confirm that they did indeed believe in fairies. The community’s will resuscitated her and hand clapping did the trick. And, in its own low-tech way, the Tinkerbell story set the stage for what we all know to be true: There are times when our own capabilities and approaches benefit from more input, different ideas and more sets of hands.

Today, with the support of technology, we have entered the era of crowdsourcing–the mechanism for casting a wide net for input into issues and problems that used to be addressed strictly by traditional approaches within an organization’s four walls.

If Tinkerbell were alive today she’d crowdsource. If she were Continue Reading…

Business Genome Interview with The Engaging Brand

January 24, 2012 in Business Genome, Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Innovation, Interviews and Media, Organizational Growth, Product and Service Innovation, Secret Sauce, Small Business Growth, Social Media, Talent and Leadership with 0 Comments

I recently was interviewed by Anna Farmery of The Engaging Brand. It was a great time with many helpful insights shared. You can listen to the recording online here. Below is a description of the interview.

Andrea Kates joins Anna Farmery to discuss how to discover and exploit your business genome. Andrea is the founder of the Business Genome® project and author of the bestselling business innovation book, Find Your Next.

What you’ll learn during the interview:

  • Why you should be finding your next…rather than looking at the past, in business
  • What is the business genome?
  • Is there one business genome or a collective genome based on the leadership.
  • Why you should take a fresh look rather purely rely on the data.
  • How to look outside your industry for new ideas
  • 4 steps of developing the business genome – sort, match, hybridise, adapt and thrive
  • Why you should use your hunches rather than always data.
  • How do you ensure that you match what your business genome should be rather than what you want it to be?
  • Are there a risks from new thinking as well as opportunities?
  • Is the secret sauce relevant across products rather than the product itself?
  • What are the elements of your business genome?
  • Take the diagnostic test online to find your next?
  • How you turn from looking back to looking forward – trendability is the most important factor!

Listen online here or through iTunes here.

Four Simple Ways to Create WOW Customer Experiences

January 23, 2012 in Business Genome, Business Strategy, Competitive Advantage, Customer Impact, Innovation, Organizational Growth, Product and Service Innovation, Small Business Growth with 2 Comments

Every time I get off of an airplane and need to connect to another flight, the well-trained and very well-intentioned airline attendant asks me, “What’s your flight number?”

I usually have to reply, “I don’t know, but I’m going to Nashville.”

Next comes fumbling. Her list seems to be organized by flight number. Mine (the passenger’s/customer’s) is not.

Customers think destinations.
Airlines think flight numbers.

To all the companies that are working on initiatives aimed at making life easier for their customers (while often inadvertently missing the mark) I’ve compiled a few easy tips to nudge your organization into what I call “outside-in” thinking, where the customer’s perspective guides decisions and makes life easier for everyone.

#1. What’s your flight number? (Described above)

INSPIRATION FOR IMPROVEMENT: There’s one last check that you should do before you initiate a customer-facing practice. Take on the role of your customer. Exit a flight in a state of mild Continue Reading…