Como ter ideias inovadoras
Publicado em 07 de dezembro de 2009 às 02h44
“Para inovar, é preciso observar as coisas. É a partir daí que se desenvolve um pensamento diferente, novo.” É o que diz o professor Luli Radfahrer, da Universidade de São Paulo (USP). O acadêmico ensina, em palestra, como ter ideias inovadoras e implementá-las, criar novos mercados a partir de ideias fortes e como dispersar esses projetos pelo mundo.
Assista aos vídeos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KjWH1UuInM&feature=player_embedded
domingo, 23 de maio de 2010
Gerenciando suas ideias
Managing Your Mindset
Apr 02, 2010 -
More and more people today rely on a deep level of knowledge in a narrow topic—aka subject matter expertise—for their livelihoods. I probably fall into that category, so I began wondering: can that kind of special knowledge actually get in the way when it comes to creativity and innovation? The short answer is yes, and reason is that special subject matter expertise is really the mother of all mindsets.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow once said, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” And one of my favorite Dilbert cartoon strips depicts a meeting in which a problem is presented, and each attendee around the table suggests a solution that just happens to match their personal “hammer.” In the final panel, a porcupine sitting at the end of the meeting table declares, “We must stick them with quills! It’s the only way!!”
But how can knowledge be bad? Aren’t the experts in a given area the ones who are supposed to have all the sophisticated solutions?
Dr. Stellan Ohlsson, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, thinks that deep but narrow bands of knowledge can leave us blind to other options. According to Ohlsson, when we’re faced with a problem or challenge, we tend to view it through the lens of our special knowledge and create a mental image of it based on that. But that can block our ability to see the problem in a new or different way and prevent us from considering other alternatives. We go round and round the problem, locked into our old ways of thinking, getting nowhere.
At the University of Pittsburgh, Jennifer Wiley conducted an interesting experiment designed to point out how knowledge can get in the way of creative thinking. Wiley took a group of baseball experts and a group with no special knowledge of the game. She gave both groups three words: plate, rest, and broken. The goal was to find a common word that linked all three ideas together. Wiley was targeting the word home, and indeed the baseball experts came up with home plate, a baseball term, along with rest home, and broken home quicker than the nonexperts.
But then, in a second test, she changed one word in the trio, producing plate, shot, and broken. She was targeting the word glass, as in plate glass, shot glass, and broken glass. The baseball experts didn’t do nearly as well as the nonexperts. Wiley believed that their knowledge of baseball caused them to lock on to home plate, and made it much harder to break free of the concept.
Does this mean that the person with the least knowledge about the problem is the person most likely to solve it? No, that’s not the case either. It was physicist Albert Einstein who discovered relativity, not Mae West. In fact, Einstein experienced the very frustration Ohlsson describes. Subject matter expertise is required. On the one hand, it allows us to think productively, efficiently, and logically. On the other hand, it can limit our ability to think expansively and objectively, in turn handicapping our creative problem-solving capability.
How do we then move beyond the limitations of our mindset to improve that ability? Harvard University’s Chris Argyris set out to address this very issue, of what he and MIT’s Peter Senge called “mental models.” Argyris developed something he called “action science,” and used some simple tools to teach people to see the flaws in their mindsets. One of those tools is called the “Left-Hand Column.”
In the exercise, Argyris has you reconstruct a difficult conversation, one in which defensive feelings arose. (Email strings are GREAT for this exercise, because you don’t need to reconstruct anything.) A line is drawn down a sheet paper, with the right-hand side used to write down what was actually said by both parties. In the left-hand column, you write down what you were really thinking and feeling, but not saying. The left side is evidence of your unique perspective, and a means by which you can deconstruct your hidden mindset.
By doing this, Argyris says, you will become more conscious of the effects of your individual pattern of thinking; in turn, expanding your thought process. In other words, the Left-Hand Column can help you can manage your mindset. You know you’re it’s working when both columns match.
You may want to try this the next time you get into one of those heated email exchanges in which you are fairly certain the other person is an crazy alien from a distant galaxy, clearly off base, and just not getting it. What's interesting in these cases is when you show the email string to others, they generally shrug, unable to see why you’re so upset.
That’s because they don’t share your mindset...their minds are set differently. And that’s a good thing, because as General George Patton said, “ If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”
Apr 02, 2010 -
More and more people today rely on a deep level of knowledge in a narrow topic—aka subject matter expertise—for their livelihoods. I probably fall into that category, so I began wondering: can that kind of special knowledge actually get in the way when it comes to creativity and innovation? The short answer is yes, and reason is that special subject matter expertise is really the mother of all mindsets.
Psychologist Abraham Maslow once said, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” And one of my favorite Dilbert cartoon strips depicts a meeting in which a problem is presented, and each attendee around the table suggests a solution that just happens to match their personal “hammer.” In the final panel, a porcupine sitting at the end of the meeting table declares, “We must stick them with quills! It’s the only way!!”
But how can knowledge be bad? Aren’t the experts in a given area the ones who are supposed to have all the sophisticated solutions?
Dr. Stellan Ohlsson, a psychology professor at the University of Illinois in Chicago, thinks that deep but narrow bands of knowledge can leave us blind to other options. According to Ohlsson, when we’re faced with a problem or challenge, we tend to view it through the lens of our special knowledge and create a mental image of it based on that. But that can block our ability to see the problem in a new or different way and prevent us from considering other alternatives. We go round and round the problem, locked into our old ways of thinking, getting nowhere.
At the University of Pittsburgh, Jennifer Wiley conducted an interesting experiment designed to point out how knowledge can get in the way of creative thinking. Wiley took a group of baseball experts and a group with no special knowledge of the game. She gave both groups three words: plate, rest, and broken. The goal was to find a common word that linked all three ideas together. Wiley was targeting the word home, and indeed the baseball experts came up with home plate, a baseball term, along with rest home, and broken home quicker than the nonexperts.
But then, in a second test, she changed one word in the trio, producing plate, shot, and broken. She was targeting the word glass, as in plate glass, shot glass, and broken glass. The baseball experts didn’t do nearly as well as the nonexperts. Wiley believed that their knowledge of baseball caused them to lock on to home plate, and made it much harder to break free of the concept.
Does this mean that the person with the least knowledge about the problem is the person most likely to solve it? No, that’s not the case either. It was physicist Albert Einstein who discovered relativity, not Mae West. In fact, Einstein experienced the very frustration Ohlsson describes. Subject matter expertise is required. On the one hand, it allows us to think productively, efficiently, and logically. On the other hand, it can limit our ability to think expansively and objectively, in turn handicapping our creative problem-solving capability.
How do we then move beyond the limitations of our mindset to improve that ability? Harvard University’s Chris Argyris set out to address this very issue, of what he and MIT’s Peter Senge called “mental models.” Argyris developed something he called “action science,” and used some simple tools to teach people to see the flaws in their mindsets. One of those tools is called the “Left-Hand Column.”
In the exercise, Argyris has you reconstruct a difficult conversation, one in which defensive feelings arose. (Email strings are GREAT for this exercise, because you don’t need to reconstruct anything.) A line is drawn down a sheet paper, with the right-hand side used to write down what was actually said by both parties. In the left-hand column, you write down what you were really thinking and feeling, but not saying. The left side is evidence of your unique perspective, and a means by which you can deconstruct your hidden mindset.
By doing this, Argyris says, you will become more conscious of the effects of your individual pattern of thinking; in turn, expanding your thought process. In other words, the Left-Hand Column can help you can manage your mindset. You know you’re it’s working when both columns match.
You may want to try this the next time you get into one of those heated email exchanges in which you are fairly certain the other person is an crazy alien from a distant galaxy, clearly off base, and just not getting it. What's interesting in these cases is when you show the email string to others, they generally shrug, unable to see why you’re so upset.
That’s because they don’t share your mindset...their minds are set differently. And that’s a good thing, because as General George Patton said, “ If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”
Futuro da gestão
Excluir comentário The new masters of management
Developing countries are competing on creativity as well as cost. That will change business everywhere
Apr 15th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
THIRTY years ago the bosses of America’s car industry were shocked to learn that Japan had overtaken America to become the world’s leading car producer. They were even more shocked when they visited Japan to find out what was going on. They found that the secret of Japan’s success did not lie in cheap labour or government subsidies (their preferred explanations) but in what was rapidly dubbed “lean manufacturing”. While Detroit slept, Japan had transformed itself from a low-wage economy into a hotbed of business innovation. Soon every factory around the world was lean—or a ruin.
Management gurus are always glibly proclaiming revolutions. What happened in Japan qualified, as did the advent of mass production in America a century ago. Now something comparable is taking place in the developing world.
It is hardly news that the world’s centre of economic gravity is shifting towards emerging markets. Buy a mobile phone and it will almost certainly have been made in China. Use it to phone a customer helpline and your call may well be answered by an Indian. Over the past five years China’s annual growth rate has been more than 10%, and India’s more than 8%. Yet even these figures understate the change that is taking place. Emerging countries are no longer content to be sources of cheap hands and low-cost brains. Instead they too are becoming hotbeds of innovation, producing breakthroughs in everything from telecoms to carmaking to health care. They are redesigning products to reduce costs not just by 10%, but by up to 90%. They are redesigning entire business processes to do things better and faster than their rivals in the West. Forget about flat—the world of business is turning upside down.
Competing for the future
As our special report argues, the rich world is losing its leadership in the sort of breakthrough ideas that transform industries. This is partly because rich-world companies are doing more research and development in emerging markets. Fortune 500 companies now have 98 R&D facilities in China and 63 in India. IBM employs more people in developing countries than in America. But it is also because emerging-market firms and consumers are both moving upmarket. Huawei, a Chinese telecoms giant, applied for more international patents than any other firm did in 2008. Chinese 20-somethings spend even more time on the internet than do their American peers.
Even more striking is the emerging world’s growing ability to make established products for dramatically lower costs: no-frills $3,000 cars and $300 laptops may not seem as exciting as a new iPad but they promise to change far more people’s lives. This sort of advance—dubbed “frugal innovation” by some—is not just a matter of exploiting cheap labour (though cheap labour helps). It is a matter of redesigning products and processes to cut out unnecessary costs. In India Tata created the world’s cheapest car, the Nano, by combining dozens of cost-saving tricks. Bharti Airtel has slashed the cost of providing mobile-phone services by radically rethinking its relationship with its competitors and suppliers. It shares radio towers with rivals and contracts out network construction, operations and support to specialists such as Ericsson and IBM.
Just as Henry Ford and Toyota both helped change other industries, entrepreneurs in the developing world are applying the classic principles of division of labour and economies of scale to surprising areas such as heart operations and cataract surgery, reducing costs without sacrificing quality. They are using new technologies such as mobile phones to bring sophisticated services, in everything from health care to banking, to rural communities. And they are combining technological and business-model innovation to produce entirely new categories of services: Kenya leads the world in money-transfer by mobile phone, for example.
Hope versus fear
All this is obviously good news for the billions of people who live in the BRICS (see article) and other developing countries. More consumers will have access to goods and services that were once confined to the elite. More than 90% of Indians and Chinese tell pollsters that they are optimistic about the future. Anand Mahindra, an Indian business leader, has described his dreams about the future as “not just colourful, but steroidal”.
What about the slow-growth rich world? Emerging firms are advancing on a greater number of fronts than the Japanese did 30 years ago and also advancing much faster, gobbling up Western rivals. Their charge will upset many established Western firms, which will face increasingly savage price competition, and also overturn many assumptions about the rich world’s competitive advantage. Many of globalisation’s most vocal supporters have justified the loss of manufacturing jobs in the West on the ground that the rich world will maintain an edge in innovation; the clever jobs will stay at home. Emerging economies are not merely challenging that lead in innovation. They are unleashing a wave of low-cost, disruptive innovations that will, as they spread to the rich world, shake many industries to their foundations. All sorts of chief executives will scream for protection.
Change will indeed be painful for incumbents, as disruptive innovation always is. But cheaper goods and services will be a blessing for Western consumers, who are likely to face years of slow income growth. It could also be good news for rich-world governments, which are plagued with deficits even before the baby-boomers begin to retire. Frugal innovation may well prevent America’s health-care system (which already consumes 17% of its GDP) from swamping the rest of the economy. Clever ways of applying economies of scale and scope in new ways could boost public-sector productivity.
Moreover, it is in the nature of innovation to feed upon itself. Innovation in the emerging world will encourage, rather than undermine, innovation in the rich world. Western carmakers learned the techniques of lean production from their Japanese rivals, just as the Japanese had earlier learned the techniques of mass production from the Americans. This great insurrection, like its predecessors, will make us all richer.
Developing countries are competing on creativity as well as cost. That will change business everywhere
Apr 15th 2010 | From The Economist print edition
THIRTY years ago the bosses of America’s car industry were shocked to learn that Japan had overtaken America to become the world’s leading car producer. They were even more shocked when they visited Japan to find out what was going on. They found that the secret of Japan’s success did not lie in cheap labour or government subsidies (their preferred explanations) but in what was rapidly dubbed “lean manufacturing”. While Detroit slept, Japan had transformed itself from a low-wage economy into a hotbed of business innovation. Soon every factory around the world was lean—or a ruin.
Management gurus are always glibly proclaiming revolutions. What happened in Japan qualified, as did the advent of mass production in America a century ago. Now something comparable is taking place in the developing world.
It is hardly news that the world’s centre of economic gravity is shifting towards emerging markets. Buy a mobile phone and it will almost certainly have been made in China. Use it to phone a customer helpline and your call may well be answered by an Indian. Over the past five years China’s annual growth rate has been more than 10%, and India’s more than 8%. Yet even these figures understate the change that is taking place. Emerging countries are no longer content to be sources of cheap hands and low-cost brains. Instead they too are becoming hotbeds of innovation, producing breakthroughs in everything from telecoms to carmaking to health care. They are redesigning products to reduce costs not just by 10%, but by up to 90%. They are redesigning entire business processes to do things better and faster than their rivals in the West. Forget about flat—the world of business is turning upside down.
Competing for the future
As our special report argues, the rich world is losing its leadership in the sort of breakthrough ideas that transform industries. This is partly because rich-world companies are doing more research and development in emerging markets. Fortune 500 companies now have 98 R&D facilities in China and 63 in India. IBM employs more people in developing countries than in America. But it is also because emerging-market firms and consumers are both moving upmarket. Huawei, a Chinese telecoms giant, applied for more international patents than any other firm did in 2008. Chinese 20-somethings spend even more time on the internet than do their American peers.
Even more striking is the emerging world’s growing ability to make established products for dramatically lower costs: no-frills $3,000 cars and $300 laptops may not seem as exciting as a new iPad but they promise to change far more people’s lives. This sort of advance—dubbed “frugal innovation” by some—is not just a matter of exploiting cheap labour (though cheap labour helps). It is a matter of redesigning products and processes to cut out unnecessary costs. In India Tata created the world’s cheapest car, the Nano, by combining dozens of cost-saving tricks. Bharti Airtel has slashed the cost of providing mobile-phone services by radically rethinking its relationship with its competitors and suppliers. It shares radio towers with rivals and contracts out network construction, operations and support to specialists such as Ericsson and IBM.
Just as Henry Ford and Toyota both helped change other industries, entrepreneurs in the developing world are applying the classic principles of division of labour and economies of scale to surprising areas such as heart operations and cataract surgery, reducing costs without sacrificing quality. They are using new technologies such as mobile phones to bring sophisticated services, in everything from health care to banking, to rural communities. And they are combining technological and business-model innovation to produce entirely new categories of services: Kenya leads the world in money-transfer by mobile phone, for example.
Hope versus fear
All this is obviously good news for the billions of people who live in the BRICS (see article) and other developing countries. More consumers will have access to goods and services that were once confined to the elite. More than 90% of Indians and Chinese tell pollsters that they are optimistic about the future. Anand Mahindra, an Indian business leader, has described his dreams about the future as “not just colourful, but steroidal”.
What about the slow-growth rich world? Emerging firms are advancing on a greater number of fronts than the Japanese did 30 years ago and also advancing much faster, gobbling up Western rivals. Their charge will upset many established Western firms, which will face increasingly savage price competition, and also overturn many assumptions about the rich world’s competitive advantage. Many of globalisation’s most vocal supporters have justified the loss of manufacturing jobs in the West on the ground that the rich world will maintain an edge in innovation; the clever jobs will stay at home. Emerging economies are not merely challenging that lead in innovation. They are unleashing a wave of low-cost, disruptive innovations that will, as they spread to the rich world, shake many industries to their foundations. All sorts of chief executives will scream for protection.
Change will indeed be painful for incumbents, as disruptive innovation always is. But cheaper goods and services will be a blessing for Western consumers, who are likely to face years of slow income growth. It could also be good news for rich-world governments, which are plagued with deficits even before the baby-boomers begin to retire. Frugal innovation may well prevent America’s health-care system (which already consumes 17% of its GDP) from swamping the rest of the economy. Clever ways of applying economies of scale and scope in new ways could boost public-sector productivity.
Moreover, it is in the nature of innovation to feed upon itself. Innovation in the emerging world will encourage, rather than undermine, innovation in the rich world. Western carmakers learned the techniques of lean production from their Japanese rivals, just as the Japanese had earlier learned the techniques of mass production from the Americans. This great insurrection, like its predecessors, will make us all richer.
Futuro da inovação
Futuro da inovação está nos países emergentes
Complacência e intransigência de nações líderes representam oportunidade de crescimento para países emergentes, diz pesquisadora
Carla Falcão, iG São Paulo | 03/05/2010 05:25
Egípcios, gregos e romanos têm algo em comum, diz a pesquisadora alemã Bettina von Stamm. De acordo com ela, foram grandes civilizações que, em determinados momentos de sua existência, agarraram-se a seus sistemas e processos e evitaram qualquer tipo de mudança significativa em sua forma de organizar a sociedade. A intransigência e a incapacidade de inovar, diz Bettina, foram certamente dois aspectos por trás da derrocada de tais civilizações.
“Empresas e governos de países líderes tendem a tornar-se complacentes, seguros de sua posição e pouco dispostos a mudar ou a acompanhar o restante do mundo. Quando percebem o erro de cálculo, já perderam espaço para concorrentes e outras nações mais modernas e bem preparadas”, afirma a pesquisadora. Sem citar nomes, ela lança um desafio: “Pense nos países e companhias que se encontram na liderança há um bom tempo e que não demonstram intenção de investir em mudanças e avalie quais são os próximos dessa lista”.
Foto: Divulgação Ampliar
Bettina von Stamm
Se a intransigência e complacência dos líderes desestimulam o uso da criatividade, a necessidade constante de superação dos que não estão no topo justifica a maior disposição para mudar o status quo. Regra que, segundo Bettina, vale para os países emergentes, apontados recentemente pela Revista The Economist como os novos “mestres da inovação”. “Cidadãos de países como Rússia, China e Brasil precisam lutar diariamente para garantir o que em outros lugares é considerado básico. E isso estimula nossa capacidade de pensar e encontrar maneiras criativas de vencer os obstáculos”, acrescenta a pesquisadora russa Anna Trifilova.
Anna e Bettina são autoras do livro The Future of Innovation (“O Futuro da Inovação, em tradução livre). A publicação, que ouviu mais de 250 pessoas em todo o mundo entre executivos, consultores e acadêmicos, traz uma série de reflexões sobre a forma como as empresas e a sociedade lidam com o tema inovação.
Entre as contribuições, há capítulos com nomes inusitados como “O papel do Big Brother e a educação”, “Seja emotivo” e “Trata-se de pessoas, idiota”.
De passagem pelo Brasil, onde participaram do X Congresso Nacional de Inovação Tecnológica, Bettina e Anna contaram ao iG que já preparam o segundo livro: "Global Market: from challenges to innovation opportunities" (Mercado global: dos desafios às oportunidades de inovação). A publicação, que seguirá a fórmula de contribuição utilizada em “O Futuro da Inovação”, deverá apresentar a visão de mais de 350 colaboradores de 60 países, incluindo o Brasil.
O objetivo, contam as escritoras, é mostrar na prática como é possível implementar inovações com resultados concretos em um mercado global. “Queremos desmistificar a percepção de que o restante do mundo tem sobre alguns países no que diz respeito a negócios e inovação. Antes de vir ao Brasil, por exemplo, ouvi histórias bizarras sobre o que poderia acontecer aqui e agora percebo o quanto eram falsas”, afirma Anna.
Leia a entrevista com Anna Trifilova e Bettina von Stamm.
iG – No livro que escreveram juntas – “The Future of Innovation” – vocês afirmam que a inovação é uma jornada. Como é possível trilhar esse caminho com resultados concretos?
Bettina von Stamm - Inovar é escolher o caminho certo para buscar mudanças que gerem valor. E não apenas para os acionistas ou donos de empresas, mas para as pessoas e a sociedade de forma geral. É o que chamamos de triple bottom line: capital, pessoas e meio ambiente. Outro ponto crucial para o sucesso é entender que não adianta inovar apenas uma vez. É preciso inovar sempre. O que é a melhor solução hoje, não é mais amanhã. Não se pode estimular a inovação em um dia e mudar de opinião logo depois. É uma questão de cultura e de planejamento.
iG – Em muitas empresas, as áreas de inovação e Pesquisa & Desenvolvimento ainda são vistas apenas como centros de custos. Ou seja, são as primeiras a passarem por cortes de orçamento diante de instabilidades econômicas. Diante disso, qual é o caminho para estabelecer planejamentos de médio e longo prazo?
Bettina – A crise econômica serviu para separar as empresas que realmente entendem o que é inovar daquelas que não tem a menor idéia do que estão fazendo. Minha experiência como consultora mostra que as companhias que realmente conhecem o significado de inovação não param de investir por conta da crise. Há pouco tempo, conversei com o CEO de uma multinacional da área de saúde sobre este assunto. No auge da crise, eles registraram perdas nas vendas da maior parte da carteira de produtos, com exceção dos mais modernos e inovadores, que venderam mais no mesmo período. Isso prova que, se estamos criando soluções que geram valor, as pessoas vão querer pagar por isso.
iG- O livro de vocês tem algumas citações inusitadas, como “O papel do Big Brother e a educação”...
Bettina – Basicamente, nós estamos nos referindo ao governo, que desempenha papel fundamental na educação, que é a base para inovar. Se houvesse maior preocupação em ensinar as crianças desde cedo a questionar o status quo e a não ter medo de fazer perguntas aparentemente bobas, talvez não tivéssemos hoje tantos problemas. O sistema educacional não estimula as crianças a manterem sua criatividade natural e sua capacidade de desafiar conceitos previamente estabelecidos.
Anna – Na Rússia, por exemplo, estou trabalhando em um projeto para aumentar a criatividade nas escolas. O objetivo é estimular as crianças a pensarem de forma diferente sem se sentirem envergonhadas. Meu país é conhecido pela criação de tecnologias na área espacial. Desenvolvemos, por exemplo, uma série de materiais leves e resistentes para usar no espaço. Mas, nunca pensamos em usar este material para outras funcionalidades, algo que a Inglaterra fez ao aplicá-lo na fabricação de macas para transportar pessoas doentes.
iG- Na última semana, a revista The Economist publicou um artigo apontando os países em desenvolvimento como os novos “mestres da inovação”. Esse é o futuro?
Anna - Cidadãos de países como Rússia, China e Brasil precisam lutar diariamente para garantir o que em outros lugares é considerado básico. E isso estimula nossa capacidade de pensar e encontrar maneiras criativas de vencer os obstáculos. Mas, infelizmente, ainda não temos recursos para levar todas essas ideias ao mercado.
Bettina - Empresas e governos de países líderes tendem a tornar-se complacentes, seguros de sua posição e pouco dispostos a mudar ou a acompanhar o restante do mundo. Quando percebem o erro de cálculo, já perderam espaço para concorrentes e outras nações mais modernas e bem preparadas. Esta é a oportunidade que países emergentes têm de dar um salto à frente. Quando você não tem que seguir sistemas rígidos, há mais espaço para inovar.
Complacência e intransigência de nações líderes representam oportunidade de crescimento para países emergentes, diz pesquisadora
Carla Falcão, iG São Paulo | 03/05/2010 05:25
Egípcios, gregos e romanos têm algo em comum, diz a pesquisadora alemã Bettina von Stamm. De acordo com ela, foram grandes civilizações que, em determinados momentos de sua existência, agarraram-se a seus sistemas e processos e evitaram qualquer tipo de mudança significativa em sua forma de organizar a sociedade. A intransigência e a incapacidade de inovar, diz Bettina, foram certamente dois aspectos por trás da derrocada de tais civilizações.
“Empresas e governos de países líderes tendem a tornar-se complacentes, seguros de sua posição e pouco dispostos a mudar ou a acompanhar o restante do mundo. Quando percebem o erro de cálculo, já perderam espaço para concorrentes e outras nações mais modernas e bem preparadas”, afirma a pesquisadora. Sem citar nomes, ela lança um desafio: “Pense nos países e companhias que se encontram na liderança há um bom tempo e que não demonstram intenção de investir em mudanças e avalie quais são os próximos dessa lista”.
Foto: Divulgação Ampliar
Bettina von Stamm
Se a intransigência e complacência dos líderes desestimulam o uso da criatividade, a necessidade constante de superação dos que não estão no topo justifica a maior disposição para mudar o status quo. Regra que, segundo Bettina, vale para os países emergentes, apontados recentemente pela Revista The Economist como os novos “mestres da inovação”. “Cidadãos de países como Rússia, China e Brasil precisam lutar diariamente para garantir o que em outros lugares é considerado básico. E isso estimula nossa capacidade de pensar e encontrar maneiras criativas de vencer os obstáculos”, acrescenta a pesquisadora russa Anna Trifilova.
Anna e Bettina são autoras do livro The Future of Innovation (“O Futuro da Inovação, em tradução livre). A publicação, que ouviu mais de 250 pessoas em todo o mundo entre executivos, consultores e acadêmicos, traz uma série de reflexões sobre a forma como as empresas e a sociedade lidam com o tema inovação.
Entre as contribuições, há capítulos com nomes inusitados como “O papel do Big Brother e a educação”, “Seja emotivo” e “Trata-se de pessoas, idiota”.
De passagem pelo Brasil, onde participaram do X Congresso Nacional de Inovação Tecnológica, Bettina e Anna contaram ao iG que já preparam o segundo livro: "Global Market: from challenges to innovation opportunities" (Mercado global: dos desafios às oportunidades de inovação). A publicação, que seguirá a fórmula de contribuição utilizada em “O Futuro da Inovação”, deverá apresentar a visão de mais de 350 colaboradores de 60 países, incluindo o Brasil.
O objetivo, contam as escritoras, é mostrar na prática como é possível implementar inovações com resultados concretos em um mercado global. “Queremos desmistificar a percepção de que o restante do mundo tem sobre alguns países no que diz respeito a negócios e inovação. Antes de vir ao Brasil, por exemplo, ouvi histórias bizarras sobre o que poderia acontecer aqui e agora percebo o quanto eram falsas”, afirma Anna.
Leia a entrevista com Anna Trifilova e Bettina von Stamm.
iG – No livro que escreveram juntas – “The Future of Innovation” – vocês afirmam que a inovação é uma jornada. Como é possível trilhar esse caminho com resultados concretos?
Bettina von Stamm - Inovar é escolher o caminho certo para buscar mudanças que gerem valor. E não apenas para os acionistas ou donos de empresas, mas para as pessoas e a sociedade de forma geral. É o que chamamos de triple bottom line: capital, pessoas e meio ambiente. Outro ponto crucial para o sucesso é entender que não adianta inovar apenas uma vez. É preciso inovar sempre. O que é a melhor solução hoje, não é mais amanhã. Não se pode estimular a inovação em um dia e mudar de opinião logo depois. É uma questão de cultura e de planejamento.
iG – Em muitas empresas, as áreas de inovação e Pesquisa & Desenvolvimento ainda são vistas apenas como centros de custos. Ou seja, são as primeiras a passarem por cortes de orçamento diante de instabilidades econômicas. Diante disso, qual é o caminho para estabelecer planejamentos de médio e longo prazo?
Bettina – A crise econômica serviu para separar as empresas que realmente entendem o que é inovar daquelas que não tem a menor idéia do que estão fazendo. Minha experiência como consultora mostra que as companhias que realmente conhecem o significado de inovação não param de investir por conta da crise. Há pouco tempo, conversei com o CEO de uma multinacional da área de saúde sobre este assunto. No auge da crise, eles registraram perdas nas vendas da maior parte da carteira de produtos, com exceção dos mais modernos e inovadores, que venderam mais no mesmo período. Isso prova que, se estamos criando soluções que geram valor, as pessoas vão querer pagar por isso.
iG- O livro de vocês tem algumas citações inusitadas, como “O papel do Big Brother e a educação”...
Bettina – Basicamente, nós estamos nos referindo ao governo, que desempenha papel fundamental na educação, que é a base para inovar. Se houvesse maior preocupação em ensinar as crianças desde cedo a questionar o status quo e a não ter medo de fazer perguntas aparentemente bobas, talvez não tivéssemos hoje tantos problemas. O sistema educacional não estimula as crianças a manterem sua criatividade natural e sua capacidade de desafiar conceitos previamente estabelecidos.
Anna – Na Rússia, por exemplo, estou trabalhando em um projeto para aumentar a criatividade nas escolas. O objetivo é estimular as crianças a pensarem de forma diferente sem se sentirem envergonhadas. Meu país é conhecido pela criação de tecnologias na área espacial. Desenvolvemos, por exemplo, uma série de materiais leves e resistentes para usar no espaço. Mas, nunca pensamos em usar este material para outras funcionalidades, algo que a Inglaterra fez ao aplicá-lo na fabricação de macas para transportar pessoas doentes.
iG- Na última semana, a revista The Economist publicou um artigo apontando os países em desenvolvimento como os novos “mestres da inovação”. Esse é o futuro?
Anna - Cidadãos de países como Rússia, China e Brasil precisam lutar diariamente para garantir o que em outros lugares é considerado básico. E isso estimula nossa capacidade de pensar e encontrar maneiras criativas de vencer os obstáculos. Mas, infelizmente, ainda não temos recursos para levar todas essas ideias ao mercado.
Bettina - Empresas e governos de países líderes tendem a tornar-se complacentes, seguros de sua posição e pouco dispostos a mudar ou a acompanhar o restante do mundo. Quando percebem o erro de cálculo, já perderam espaço para concorrentes e outras nações mais modernas e bem preparadas. Esta é a oportunidade que países emergentes têm de dar um salto à frente. Quando você não tem que seguir sistemas rígidos, há mais espaço para inovar.
Persuasão
The Powerful Persuasiveness of Introductions
Steve Martin
May 20, 2010 -
Shortly after boarding a flight the other day, the captain came on the PA to welcome passengers on board and remind us to pay attention to the safety demonstration that the flight attendants would be taking us through. We’ve all heard these words a thousand times before. Like many others I probably wasn’t paying that much attention to the words he used to persuade passengers to not only pay attention to the flight attendants, but to also keep their safety belts fastened at all times.
But towards the end of his remarks, he added six words that I have never heard before and I immediately became convinced that many more passengers than usual would be persuaded to pay attention and keep their seat belts fastened even if the seat belt sign was turned off.
The words he added were “like we do in the cockpit.”
These extra six words are not only a neat demonstration of how a pilot can influence his or her passengers but they also provide an example of how anyone in business – by understanding how people are influenced – can win more customers and clients.
For more than 65 years, social scientists have been studying the influence and persuasion process to determine what are the factors that cause people to say ‘Yes’ to the requests of others. My colleague Dr. Robert Cialdini, an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, has shown that there are only six universal principles of persuasion.
One of these principles is Authority. Simply put, the persuasiveness of a message, proposal or recommendation can be enhanced if it is seen to come from a legitimate expert. In business settings, for example, people will often be more persuaded by proposals or offers that come from someone who, in their eyes, has both expertise and trustworthiness, compared to similar proposals that don’t. So it’s generally a good idea to present your business credentials, your staffs’ training, and your business expertise to customers. But doing so can also present a problem.
How do you introduce your expertise and knowledge without being seen as a show-off?
Informing potential new customers that because of your greater knowledge and expertise, they should listen to and be persuaded by your proposal, will often result in them being turned-off rather than turned-on to you.
The answer, of course, is to have our expertise introduced by someone else. But what if such a person is unavailable? Or maybe you don’t want to keep harassing current customers for introductions? Research from Stanford Business School suggests that a business can use its own co-workers equally effectively and, provided that they do so honestly and ethically, a notable increase in referrals and profit can be realised.
Take by way of an example a small study we conducted in a real estate office. Typically customers who telephoned in with enquiries about rentals or sales would speak first with a receptionist who asked them the nature of their enquiry and would then route the call through to the most appropriate colleague.
We made one small addition to this interaction. Now, before putting the caller through to their colleague, the receptionist not only tells callers the name of the colleague she is putting them through to, but also mentions her colleagues’ credentials and expertise.
Customers interested in rental are told “Rental? I’ll connect you with Sandra who has over 15 years experience renting properties in this area.” Similarly, customers who want more information about selling their property are put through to Peter. “He is our head of sales and has 20 years of experience selling properties.”
The impact of this expert introduction had an almost immediate effect. The agency registered a 20.1 percent rise in the number of face to face meetings and a 16 percent increase in the number of customers who appointed the agency to market their property.
There are several attractive features of this simple intervention. Firstly, everything the receptionist tells her customers is true, but for Sandra or Peter to tell the customers would be seen as boastful and self promoting. Second, and consistent with the Stanford Business School research, it doesn’t seem to matter that the introduction comes from a colleague who will benefit from such an introduction, and thirdly, the intervention was both simple and costless to implement.
Proof perhaps that when it comes to influencing and persuading new customers, ensuring that we are introduced as experts could make for some big differences in our success.
*****
Steve Martin is co-author (along with Dr. Noah Goldstein and Dr. Robert Cialdini) of the New York Times bestseller Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive (Free Press). Take the free Yes! Test to see how persuasive you are at www.influenceatwork.com.
Steve Martin
May 20, 2010 -
Shortly after boarding a flight the other day, the captain came on the PA to welcome passengers on board and remind us to pay attention to the safety demonstration that the flight attendants would be taking us through. We’ve all heard these words a thousand times before. Like many others I probably wasn’t paying that much attention to the words he used to persuade passengers to not only pay attention to the flight attendants, but to also keep their safety belts fastened at all times.
But towards the end of his remarks, he added six words that I have never heard before and I immediately became convinced that many more passengers than usual would be persuaded to pay attention and keep their seat belts fastened even if the seat belt sign was turned off.
The words he added were “like we do in the cockpit.”
These extra six words are not only a neat demonstration of how a pilot can influence his or her passengers but they also provide an example of how anyone in business – by understanding how people are influenced – can win more customers and clients.
For more than 65 years, social scientists have been studying the influence and persuasion process to determine what are the factors that cause people to say ‘Yes’ to the requests of others. My colleague Dr. Robert Cialdini, an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University, has shown that there are only six universal principles of persuasion.
One of these principles is Authority. Simply put, the persuasiveness of a message, proposal or recommendation can be enhanced if it is seen to come from a legitimate expert. In business settings, for example, people will often be more persuaded by proposals or offers that come from someone who, in their eyes, has both expertise and trustworthiness, compared to similar proposals that don’t. So it’s generally a good idea to present your business credentials, your staffs’ training, and your business expertise to customers. But doing so can also present a problem.
How do you introduce your expertise and knowledge without being seen as a show-off?
Informing potential new customers that because of your greater knowledge and expertise, they should listen to and be persuaded by your proposal, will often result in them being turned-off rather than turned-on to you.
The answer, of course, is to have our expertise introduced by someone else. But what if such a person is unavailable? Or maybe you don’t want to keep harassing current customers for introductions? Research from Stanford Business School suggests that a business can use its own co-workers equally effectively and, provided that they do so honestly and ethically, a notable increase in referrals and profit can be realised.
Take by way of an example a small study we conducted in a real estate office. Typically customers who telephoned in with enquiries about rentals or sales would speak first with a receptionist who asked them the nature of their enquiry and would then route the call through to the most appropriate colleague.
We made one small addition to this interaction. Now, before putting the caller through to their colleague, the receptionist not only tells callers the name of the colleague she is putting them through to, but also mentions her colleagues’ credentials and expertise.
Customers interested in rental are told “Rental? I’ll connect you with Sandra who has over 15 years experience renting properties in this area.” Similarly, customers who want more information about selling their property are put through to Peter. “He is our head of sales and has 20 years of experience selling properties.”
The impact of this expert introduction had an almost immediate effect. The agency registered a 20.1 percent rise in the number of face to face meetings and a 16 percent increase in the number of customers who appointed the agency to market their property.
There are several attractive features of this simple intervention. Firstly, everything the receptionist tells her customers is true, but for Sandra or Peter to tell the customers would be seen as boastful and self promoting. Second, and consistent with the Stanford Business School research, it doesn’t seem to matter that the introduction comes from a colleague who will benefit from such an introduction, and thirdly, the intervention was both simple and costless to implement.
Proof perhaps that when it comes to influencing and persuading new customers, ensuring that we are introduced as experts could make for some big differences in our success.
*****
Steve Martin is co-author (along with Dr. Noah Goldstein and Dr. Robert Cialdini) of the New York Times bestseller Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive (Free Press). Take the free Yes! Test to see how persuasive you are at www.influenceatwork.com.
Tendências de marketing
Marketing in 2008 became decidedly social — and 2009 will see the social elements of marketing accelerate. Social media went from being on the cutting edge, to approaching the mainstream. When I say “social” I mean marketing driven by word-of-mouth relationships.
As you go through each of the following small business marketing trends, you’ll see how powerful the social component is for getting and keeping your ideal customer. Just remember, your customers control your brand, so act accordingly.
1. AUTHENTICITY– In 2009, the focus is on “authenticity” and letting the real people behind your company be visible and show through — no more hiding behind a faceless website filled with the word “We.” Instead, it’s “I.” Consumers and B2B buyers expect to know who they are dealing with before hiring your company.
In the event of a problem with your products, consumers want a real person to reach out to, whether it’s AngelaAtHP or ComcastCares on Twitter, or the Web designer you want to hire who actively participates in Facebook and Plurk. Business people are connecting one-to-one through social media sites and this activity will continue.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Set up a social media presence in your real name on sites like Twitter.com, and interact with customers and prospects, mixing in personal information as well as business information. Examples: @ShaneGoldberg (Shane Goldberg, founder of Extreme Member), @TimBerry (Tim Berry, President of Palo Alto Software), and @pixily (Prasad Thammineni, CEO of Pixily).
• Set up profiles and groups on Facebook and start recruiting customers to join.
• Create at least one blog to keep customers educated either about your industry or your products and services.
2. DO IT YOURSELF MARKETING – A study by the Yellow Pages Association of America found that more than half of all small businesses say that getting and keeping customers is a challenge, yet nearly two-thirds say they will NOT get any outside help in marketing. The costs of traditional advertising is going up with newspaper ad rates growing 18%, while the effectiveness of traditional marketing is coming down with newspaper readership coming down. In 1992 it took three touches to reach your buyer — and today it takes more than eight!
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Do some market research. Use free online survey tools like SurveyMonkey or QuestionPro to find out what’s really important to your customers.
• Invest in direct marketing. Take the time to build your customer lists and start sending direct messages to your customers whenever possible. Use the information you learned from your surveys to target your message. If you can’t afford direct snail mail, then do email marketing, which is cheaper.
• Post videos and slide shows on your web site and/or blog. Video a demonstration or collect testimonials from customers. Google likes video content, increasing your chances of being found online. By posting slide shows on your site and on SlideShare, you can reach two audiences – those on social sites like Slideshare and those that come to your site directly. And you make your existing presentations and documents do double duty by posting them online.
3. TECH-DRIVEN WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING – 68% of your customers will leave you because they don’t see the difference between you and the other guy. This is why word-of-mouth-marketing will become even more popular in 2009. Loyal customers tell their friends and family WHY to choose you. With so much advertising around us. small businesses will have to penetrate deep “firewalls” of resistance to get to their ideal customers.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Put a forum section on your web site and run ongoing Q&As with your customers. This will give you the REAL reasons that they choose you.
• Start a referral or affiliate program. It’s as simple as approaching those businesses who serve your customers BEFORE they get to you. A good example is car dealers can refer insurance agents. Clothing retailers can recommend dry cleaners. Look ahead of you in the supply chain and behind you in the supply chain and start referring and collecting referrals.
• Measure your Net Promoter Score. Fred Reicheld wrote a book called “The Ultimate Question” that discovered that this single greatest predictor of profitability was the answer to the question “How likely are you to refer [this company] to friends and family?”
4. ECO AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY – “Green” has gone mainstream. It’s not just a trendy thing to say anymore. In 2009, letting your customers know that your product or service is eco-and socially responsible is literally a feature you want to communicate. A BBDO (Ad Agency) study recently showed that younger consumers made purchasing decisions based on how what “difference you made in the world.” Whether you’re into this trend or not — many consumers have put this on their criteria list.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Promote whatever community programs or ecologically friendly projects or practices that you have. Don’t think that any effort at environmental-friendly activity is too small. If you are replacing all your light bulbs in your offices to the new fluorescent — then say so. If you are recycling paper — say so.
• If you’re a local business that does business locally — show your customers how you re-cycle and grow the money they spend with you back into the community.
5. BOOTSTRAPPING AND SIMPLICITY – We’ve been moving away from excess for a few years now. But in 2009, being resourceful and bootstrapping is officially cool. This year brings a terrific opportunity to cut out products and services that have little value. Simplifying your offerings gives you the opportunity to differentiate yourself and maintain (if not increase) your price points for products or services that you do best.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Run a report of your products and services sold to each customer and check out the margins. Highlight the low-margin offerings and see if you can move your customers to a more profitable alternative.
• Look at your bills and statements and ask yourself the question ‘In what ways does this expense get and keep my ideal customers?’ If you don’t come up with a good answer — it may be time to cut that expense out.
6. MARKETING TO THE “BUY BUTTON” – Neuromarketing is the study of how our brains respond to messages. Neuromarketing is becoming the standard baseline for copywriting and advertising. Learning how your customers’ “buy button” works will save you time effort and money.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Read the books Buyology and Neuromarketing to understand exactly how your brain is influenced to choose one product over another.
• Find ways to attach positive emotions to your product or service.
• Show your customer that you trust THEM by making a trial period available or quickly approving credit.
7. PAID MEMBERSHIPS — Membership sites are a new trend that make the Internet a terrific money-making opportunity for all kinds of entrepreneurs. Combine the trend of creating a niche, and a membership site, and you will have yourself a winning formula in 2009.
Offering memberships is not restricted to the Internet alone. Restaurants have used memberships successfully to even out cash flow and consistently bring in customers. Financial service providers have used memberships to educate their clients and provide special events and services.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Think of ways to offer a regular benefit to members: product or service of the month, research, e-books, designs and templates. If you have a niche, you have the makings of a membership opportunity.
• Can you call your customers members? What could you offer them on a regular basis as a benefit of membership?
• Some examples of membership sites: Artella Words and Art, Artistic Thread Works, The Biz Web Coach.
8. MOBILITY — Accessing the Internet via mobile device or smart phone is a given. The sites that are mobile friendly will be the sites of choice for consumers looking for information on the go. Another common occurrence is receiving updates on your order or any information that you request via text message.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Check out these services for sending text messages to customers from the Web: ClearSMS.com, Group2Call.com
• Talk to your technical expert to see what it would take to convert your web site or blog to be viewed easily on the web.
9. WISDOM OF CROWDS — Your customers will want more say in how you improve your product or service. Internet tools like UserVoice, Get Satisfaction and IdeaScale will gain more popularity in 2009 and will be common platforms for gathering customer feedback and ideas on product improvements. Using these feedback tools helps to build customer community and loyalty.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Sign up for a free version of UserVoice, GetSatisfaction or IdeaScale and put a Feedback widget on your web site or blog. Tell your customers to contribute ideas.
• Be sure to monitor (or have your employees monitor) the feedback on such sites and participate in it. Then as you implement suggestions – communicate that to your customers.
10. PERSONAL BRANDING– Personal Branding will become more important than a killer resume or bio. Your personal brand is your public identity. It’s what you are known for within and outside your network. It has never been more important to differentiate yourself and focus on what sets you apart from the crowd.
Good personal brands give people an immediate sense of knowing you and the experience your business offers. What do these names conjure up for you? Donald Trump, Oprah, Richard Branson? Each of these individuals have focused on a defining idea or element of who they are that is immediately recognizable. For example “You’re Fired” would not be Oprah and “Live your best life” would not be Donald Trump
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Make sure you are using a photo on the web. It doesn’t need to be professional, in fact, a candid and authentically-you shot is best. Use the same pictures everywhere until your brand is established. @GuyKawasaki has his standard picture – but he also changes it around now and then. @JenniferLaycock from SearchEngine Guide uses her company’s puppy logo as her brand.
• Register your name as your domain name. Also register extensions of your name on popular social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, and others. This serves a defensive purpose, too, as it prevent squatters from profiting off of your personal brand.
As you go through each of the following small business marketing trends, you’ll see how powerful the social component is for getting and keeping your ideal customer. Just remember, your customers control your brand, so act accordingly.
1. AUTHENTICITY– In 2009, the focus is on “authenticity” and letting the real people behind your company be visible and show through — no more hiding behind a faceless website filled with the word “We.” Instead, it’s “I.” Consumers and B2B buyers expect to know who they are dealing with before hiring your company.
In the event of a problem with your products, consumers want a real person to reach out to, whether it’s AngelaAtHP or ComcastCares on Twitter, or the Web designer you want to hire who actively participates in Facebook and Plurk. Business people are connecting one-to-one through social media sites and this activity will continue.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Set up a social media presence in your real name on sites like Twitter.com, and interact with customers and prospects, mixing in personal information as well as business information. Examples: @ShaneGoldberg (Shane Goldberg, founder of Extreme Member), @TimBerry (Tim Berry, President of Palo Alto Software), and @pixily (Prasad Thammineni, CEO of Pixily).
• Set up profiles and groups on Facebook and start recruiting customers to join.
• Create at least one blog to keep customers educated either about your industry or your products and services.
2. DO IT YOURSELF MARKETING – A study by the Yellow Pages Association of America found that more than half of all small businesses say that getting and keeping customers is a challenge, yet nearly two-thirds say they will NOT get any outside help in marketing. The costs of traditional advertising is going up with newspaper ad rates growing 18%, while the effectiveness of traditional marketing is coming down with newspaper readership coming down. In 1992 it took three touches to reach your buyer — and today it takes more than eight!
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Do some market research. Use free online survey tools like SurveyMonkey or QuestionPro to find out what’s really important to your customers.
• Invest in direct marketing. Take the time to build your customer lists and start sending direct messages to your customers whenever possible. Use the information you learned from your surveys to target your message. If you can’t afford direct snail mail, then do email marketing, which is cheaper.
• Post videos and slide shows on your web site and/or blog. Video a demonstration or collect testimonials from customers. Google likes video content, increasing your chances of being found online. By posting slide shows on your site and on SlideShare, you can reach two audiences – those on social sites like Slideshare and those that come to your site directly. And you make your existing presentations and documents do double duty by posting them online.
3. TECH-DRIVEN WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING – 68% of your customers will leave you because they don’t see the difference between you and the other guy. This is why word-of-mouth-marketing will become even more popular in 2009. Loyal customers tell their friends and family WHY to choose you. With so much advertising around us. small businesses will have to penetrate deep “firewalls” of resistance to get to their ideal customers.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Put a forum section on your web site and run ongoing Q&As with your customers. This will give you the REAL reasons that they choose you.
• Start a referral or affiliate program. It’s as simple as approaching those businesses who serve your customers BEFORE they get to you. A good example is car dealers can refer insurance agents. Clothing retailers can recommend dry cleaners. Look ahead of you in the supply chain and behind you in the supply chain and start referring and collecting referrals.
• Measure your Net Promoter Score. Fred Reicheld wrote a book called “The Ultimate Question” that discovered that this single greatest predictor of profitability was the answer to the question “How likely are you to refer [this company] to friends and family?”
4. ECO AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY – “Green” has gone mainstream. It’s not just a trendy thing to say anymore. In 2009, letting your customers know that your product or service is eco-and socially responsible is literally a feature you want to communicate. A BBDO (Ad Agency) study recently showed that younger consumers made purchasing decisions based on how what “difference you made in the world.” Whether you’re into this trend or not — many consumers have put this on their criteria list.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Promote whatever community programs or ecologically friendly projects or practices that you have. Don’t think that any effort at environmental-friendly activity is too small. If you are replacing all your light bulbs in your offices to the new fluorescent — then say so. If you are recycling paper — say so.
• If you’re a local business that does business locally — show your customers how you re-cycle and grow the money they spend with you back into the community.
5. BOOTSTRAPPING AND SIMPLICITY – We’ve been moving away from excess for a few years now. But in 2009, being resourceful and bootstrapping is officially cool. This year brings a terrific opportunity to cut out products and services that have little value. Simplifying your offerings gives you the opportunity to differentiate yourself and maintain (if not increase) your price points for products or services that you do best.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Run a report of your products and services sold to each customer and check out the margins. Highlight the low-margin offerings and see if you can move your customers to a more profitable alternative.
• Look at your bills and statements and ask yourself the question ‘In what ways does this expense get and keep my ideal customers?’ If you don’t come up with a good answer — it may be time to cut that expense out.
6. MARKETING TO THE “BUY BUTTON” – Neuromarketing is the study of how our brains respond to messages. Neuromarketing is becoming the standard baseline for copywriting and advertising. Learning how your customers’ “buy button” works will save you time effort and money.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Read the books Buyology and Neuromarketing to understand exactly how your brain is influenced to choose one product over another.
• Find ways to attach positive emotions to your product or service.
• Show your customer that you trust THEM by making a trial period available or quickly approving credit.
7. PAID MEMBERSHIPS — Membership sites are a new trend that make the Internet a terrific money-making opportunity for all kinds of entrepreneurs. Combine the trend of creating a niche, and a membership site, and you will have yourself a winning formula in 2009.
Offering memberships is not restricted to the Internet alone. Restaurants have used memberships successfully to even out cash flow and consistently bring in customers. Financial service providers have used memberships to educate their clients and provide special events and services.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Think of ways to offer a regular benefit to members: product or service of the month, research, e-books, designs and templates. If you have a niche, you have the makings of a membership opportunity.
• Can you call your customers members? What could you offer them on a regular basis as a benefit of membership?
• Some examples of membership sites: Artella Words and Art, Artistic Thread Works, The Biz Web Coach.
8. MOBILITY — Accessing the Internet via mobile device or smart phone is a given. The sites that are mobile friendly will be the sites of choice for consumers looking for information on the go. Another common occurrence is receiving updates on your order or any information that you request via text message.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Check out these services for sending text messages to customers from the Web: ClearSMS.com, Group2Call.com
• Talk to your technical expert to see what it would take to convert your web site or blog to be viewed easily on the web.
9. WISDOM OF CROWDS — Your customers will want more say in how you improve your product or service. Internet tools like UserVoice, Get Satisfaction and IdeaScale will gain more popularity in 2009 and will be common platforms for gathering customer feedback and ideas on product improvements. Using these feedback tools helps to build customer community and loyalty.
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Sign up for a free version of UserVoice, GetSatisfaction or IdeaScale and put a Feedback widget on your web site or blog. Tell your customers to contribute ideas.
• Be sure to monitor (or have your employees monitor) the feedback on such sites and participate in it. Then as you implement suggestions – communicate that to your customers.
10. PERSONAL BRANDING– Personal Branding will become more important than a killer resume or bio. Your personal brand is your public identity. It’s what you are known for within and outside your network. It has never been more important to differentiate yourself and focus on what sets you apart from the crowd.
Good personal brands give people an immediate sense of knowing you and the experience your business offers. What do these names conjure up for you? Donald Trump, Oprah, Richard Branson? Each of these individuals have focused on a defining idea or element of who they are that is immediately recognizable. For example “You’re Fired” would not be Oprah and “Live your best life” would not be Donald Trump
How to take advantage of this trend:
• Make sure you are using a photo on the web. It doesn’t need to be professional, in fact, a candid and authentically-you shot is best. Use the same pictures everywhere until your brand is established. @GuyKawasaki has his standard picture – but he also changes it around now and then. @JenniferLaycock from SearchEngine Guide uses her company’s puppy logo as her brand.
• Register your name as your domain name. Also register extensions of your name on popular social media sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, and others. This serves a defensive purpose, too, as it prevent squatters from profiting off of your personal brand.
Criação de estratégia
The 4 Ps of Strategy Creation
Ron Price (May 18, 2009)
Many organizations rush to move their strategic planning efforts toward consensus, failing to realize that it should be a dynamic process that allows for adjustments and alternatives as conditions change. Here is a model for strategy creation that integrates perceptions, performance, purpose and process.
When it comes to creating a strategy for your business, it is rarely wise to move forward with just one carefully thought out course of action. Instead, it is wiser to encourage vigorous debate and develop several alternatives as part of the strategic discussion. The best scenario is to have three to five alternatives that are all so good that you experience a lot of angst over which one to choose. This process provides several benefits; among them are better critical thinking, increased creativity, and a number of alternatives to choose from as the future unfolds.
Unfortunately, many organizations don’t value this approach and they quickly move strategic discussions toward consensus. As a result, these organizations often end up caught by the marketplace when circumstances change. While their strategy may have been great at the time they created it, factors outside of their control can change the dynamics of their business and, without alternatives that were developed in their strategic planning process, they cannot respond quickly enough to leverage an opportunity or avoid a significant threat.
In order to remain relevant and effective, businesses need some way to monitor both the execution of their strategic plan and the changing environment in which they do business. With these management tools providing input in real time, organizations can quickly adjust course as circumstances present new opportunities or threats. A simple model made up of “Four Ps” can help companies create this advantage. These Ps are Perceptions, Performance, Purpose and Process.
Perceptions
There are six different stakeholder groups you should be listening to periodically to determine whether you’re moving in the right direction. These six groups are:
Customers: How your customers see you is critical to any organization. Since not all feedback systems work equally to uncover customer perceptions, you should use a variety of feedback systems. Some examples are suggestion cards, phone calls, emails, interviews, focus groups, and so on.
Employees: You should to track your employees’ level of engagement and satisfaction. Again, you should use a variety of feedback systems to gauge their perceptions. Your employees have a big impact on your long-term performance, especially when you’re trying to execute changes in strategy.
Vendors: In the old world, companies didn’t care what their vendors thought of them. But in the new world, everyone is connected and part of a greater whole. In developing flexibility with your strategy, all of your relationships are potential assets that you can draw upon to execute or change your strategy when it’s necessary. So understanding how your vendors perceive you is important. Do they view you as one of their prime customers, or as one of the troublesome ones?
Regulators: Depending on your industry, you have different guidelines to follow. Sometimes those guidelines play a significant role in strategy. Therefore, know how your industry’s regulators view you.
Owners or shareholders: Whether your company has one or several major investors, you need to fully understand how each perceives the organization. Since the person or people who hold the purse strings play a major role in the company, they have dynamic relevance in terms of strategy.
Community: This could include the Chambers of Commerce, the media, the other significant businesses in the area, or even the government. How these outside groups view your company can significantly impact your strategy.
Performance
Performance relates to the following four questions:
How are we doing implementing and executing on our strategy, including the goals and the timelines? Are we ahead? Are we behind? Are we performing according to plan or are we in some way out of sync with the plan?
What are the current economics of our business? Has anything changed from what we assumed when we created our strategic plan?
What are the operational results that we’re producing? If you break these down to business units or individual strategies or functions, figure out the actual operational results you’re getting. You may be doing a great job executing on your strategy, but it may not be producing the results you anticipated.
How are we performing relative to the performance agreements that we established in the organization? The performance agreements are the specifics of the operational plan that were created in the strategy. How are you lining up with the milestones for specific initiatives? Or what’s happening with the consequences? Are you getting greater or lesser results than expected?
Purpose
When you review your purpose as an organization, you need to ask the question, “What has changed?” or “What is or will be changing in the environment?” Your answer should impact the way you look at your vision or your long-term goals for the organization. The goal is to look for new opportunities or to identify what threats may be emerging because of changes in the environment.
Continually ask, “What has changed internally since we met last?” Do we have some new strength that we didn’t have before? Did we obtain some new equipment, technology, or intellectual property? Did we get some great talent that we didn’t have before that should be impacting our strategy? Has there been a new limitation that’s emerged since we last looked at this scorecard?”
Based on your answers, you should review whether you still have the right strategy, goals, or timelines. You also have to determine what you can redefine and adjust in your plan to improve in any of the areas you’ve analyzed. Finally, you need to ask yourself, “Where should we focus our improvement efforts to create new value in the future?”
Process
All work is a process. It’s a series of tasks combined to achieve a particular goal. Such is the case with strategy as well. There are steps you go through, there are people involved, and there are processes you have to look at to determine where you can improve your implementation and in what order of priority. Are you creating waste? Is there rework? Are there inefficiencies in your various processes? Are the processes really creating the results you’re looking for? How are you doing tactically? How are you improving your processes? How should you adjust your resources?
Finally, you should be asking how you can create the sense of urgency and the accountability to ensure superior execution of your plan. You may have a great plan, but if you don’t have the right sense of urgency or the right level of accountability in the execution of it, a great plan poorly executed still produces poor results.
Keep Score for Better Results
Good strategic thinking and monitoring takes the four Ps into consideration. It’s about constantly looking at your environment and adjusting your plan as necessary. Developing this kind of monitoring system, along with a more robust development of alternatives in strategy moves you away from rigid organizational charts toward more team-based environments. As a result, you’re better able to adapt your strategy to the environment while it’s changing. When you implement the four Ps into your organization, you keep your strategy fresh and don’t become stagnant or obsolete in the implementation of your plan…or in the marketplace.
Ron Price is the founder and CEO of Price Associates, a company dedicated to helping business leaders and entrepreneurs solve problems, identify solutions and implement change in strategy and performance. Ron is also the author of “Finding Hidden Treasures,” a series of essays with action steps to aid readers in mining their own inner talents. As the former president of the AIM Companies, Ron directed the strategic, marketing, compensation and incentive planning, as well as field training and operations.
Ron Price (May 18, 2009)
Many organizations rush to move their strategic planning efforts toward consensus, failing to realize that it should be a dynamic process that allows for adjustments and alternatives as conditions change. Here is a model for strategy creation that integrates perceptions, performance, purpose and process.
When it comes to creating a strategy for your business, it is rarely wise to move forward with just one carefully thought out course of action. Instead, it is wiser to encourage vigorous debate and develop several alternatives as part of the strategic discussion. The best scenario is to have three to five alternatives that are all so good that you experience a lot of angst over which one to choose. This process provides several benefits; among them are better critical thinking, increased creativity, and a number of alternatives to choose from as the future unfolds.
Unfortunately, many organizations don’t value this approach and they quickly move strategic discussions toward consensus. As a result, these organizations often end up caught by the marketplace when circumstances change. While their strategy may have been great at the time they created it, factors outside of their control can change the dynamics of their business and, without alternatives that were developed in their strategic planning process, they cannot respond quickly enough to leverage an opportunity or avoid a significant threat.
In order to remain relevant and effective, businesses need some way to monitor both the execution of their strategic plan and the changing environment in which they do business. With these management tools providing input in real time, organizations can quickly adjust course as circumstances present new opportunities or threats. A simple model made up of “Four Ps” can help companies create this advantage. These Ps are Perceptions, Performance, Purpose and Process.
Perceptions
There are six different stakeholder groups you should be listening to periodically to determine whether you’re moving in the right direction. These six groups are:
Customers: How your customers see you is critical to any organization. Since not all feedback systems work equally to uncover customer perceptions, you should use a variety of feedback systems. Some examples are suggestion cards, phone calls, emails, interviews, focus groups, and so on.
Employees: You should to track your employees’ level of engagement and satisfaction. Again, you should use a variety of feedback systems to gauge their perceptions. Your employees have a big impact on your long-term performance, especially when you’re trying to execute changes in strategy.
Vendors: In the old world, companies didn’t care what their vendors thought of them. But in the new world, everyone is connected and part of a greater whole. In developing flexibility with your strategy, all of your relationships are potential assets that you can draw upon to execute or change your strategy when it’s necessary. So understanding how your vendors perceive you is important. Do they view you as one of their prime customers, or as one of the troublesome ones?
Regulators: Depending on your industry, you have different guidelines to follow. Sometimes those guidelines play a significant role in strategy. Therefore, know how your industry’s regulators view you.
Owners or shareholders: Whether your company has one or several major investors, you need to fully understand how each perceives the organization. Since the person or people who hold the purse strings play a major role in the company, they have dynamic relevance in terms of strategy.
Community: This could include the Chambers of Commerce, the media, the other significant businesses in the area, or even the government. How these outside groups view your company can significantly impact your strategy.
Performance
Performance relates to the following four questions:
How are we doing implementing and executing on our strategy, including the goals and the timelines? Are we ahead? Are we behind? Are we performing according to plan or are we in some way out of sync with the plan?
What are the current economics of our business? Has anything changed from what we assumed when we created our strategic plan?
What are the operational results that we’re producing? If you break these down to business units or individual strategies or functions, figure out the actual operational results you’re getting. You may be doing a great job executing on your strategy, but it may not be producing the results you anticipated.
How are we performing relative to the performance agreements that we established in the organization? The performance agreements are the specifics of the operational plan that were created in the strategy. How are you lining up with the milestones for specific initiatives? Or what’s happening with the consequences? Are you getting greater or lesser results than expected?
Purpose
When you review your purpose as an organization, you need to ask the question, “What has changed?” or “What is or will be changing in the environment?” Your answer should impact the way you look at your vision or your long-term goals for the organization. The goal is to look for new opportunities or to identify what threats may be emerging because of changes in the environment.
Continually ask, “What has changed internally since we met last?” Do we have some new strength that we didn’t have before? Did we obtain some new equipment, technology, or intellectual property? Did we get some great talent that we didn’t have before that should be impacting our strategy? Has there been a new limitation that’s emerged since we last looked at this scorecard?”
Based on your answers, you should review whether you still have the right strategy, goals, or timelines. You also have to determine what you can redefine and adjust in your plan to improve in any of the areas you’ve analyzed. Finally, you need to ask yourself, “Where should we focus our improvement efforts to create new value in the future?”
Process
All work is a process. It’s a series of tasks combined to achieve a particular goal. Such is the case with strategy as well. There are steps you go through, there are people involved, and there are processes you have to look at to determine where you can improve your implementation and in what order of priority. Are you creating waste? Is there rework? Are there inefficiencies in your various processes? Are the processes really creating the results you’re looking for? How are you doing tactically? How are you improving your processes? How should you adjust your resources?
Finally, you should be asking how you can create the sense of urgency and the accountability to ensure superior execution of your plan. You may have a great plan, but if you don’t have the right sense of urgency or the right level of accountability in the execution of it, a great plan poorly executed still produces poor results.
Keep Score for Better Results
Good strategic thinking and monitoring takes the four Ps into consideration. It’s about constantly looking at your environment and adjusting your plan as necessary. Developing this kind of monitoring system, along with a more robust development of alternatives in strategy moves you away from rigid organizational charts toward more team-based environments. As a result, you’re better able to adapt your strategy to the environment while it’s changing. When you implement the four Ps into your organization, you keep your strategy fresh and don’t become stagnant or obsolete in the implementation of your plan…or in the marketplace.
Ron Price is the founder and CEO of Price Associates, a company dedicated to helping business leaders and entrepreneurs solve problems, identify solutions and implement change in strategy and performance. Ron is also the author of “Finding Hidden Treasures,” a series of essays with action steps to aid readers in mining their own inner talents. As the former president of the AIM Companies, Ron directed the strategic, marketing, compensation and incentive planning, as well as field training and operations.
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