More on the great disruption from Harvard Business Online’s Scott Anthony
Thriving in the Great Disruption requires a particular breed of innovator. Specifically, innovators should look to master three disciplines:
1. Placing a premium on progress.
While more and more companies recognize the name of the game is transformation, the tolerance for blind experimentation has never been lower. Innovators will need to continue to find creative, cheap ways to bring their ideas forward. Fortunately, they can tap into a plethora of powerful tools to facilitate rapid learning.
2. Mastering paradox.
Leaders in most Fortune 500 companies grew up in an era where they could succeed largely by exploiting their existing business. Today’s leaders need to master both exploitation and exploration. They need to develop the ability to rely on precise data in their core business and intuition and judgment when they are creating new growth businesses. They have to live the old F. Scott Fitzgerald mantra, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the same mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”
3. Learning to love the low end.
In the dark days of October and November [2008, ed.], consumers flocked to discounters like Wal-Mart and McDonald’s. Increasingly value conscious consumers and hungry low-cost competitors mean that innovators have to learn how to love low-end business. That doesn’t necessarily mean that companies have to slash prices. Rather, they have to figure out how to deliver what consumers in low-end segments consider value.
On Progress in the down economy
Rapid prototyping and faster iteration cycles will become much more important as businesses look to create excitement about new products/services and re-invigorate old ones. Look for amazing advances in cloud-based web applications and computing, mobile applications and hardware, and the increased use of online video.
Overcoming the paradox of control
This has been eaten to death but it is none-the-less an axiom: Businesses no longer have the ultimate say about their brands. Conversations in the blogosphere rule the interpretation of brand names and an army of savvy, connected, social media literate consumers drive the discussion. This army must be engaged and guided, rather than confronted. The businesses that thrive in 2009 and beyond will be the ones that bring these leaders into the development process and embrace co-creation as a business model.
With activities that blur the silos of online marketing, customer service and public relations, Rasmussen’s interactions now hinge on seeding community brainstorms and prototyping new product ideas with online collaborators in forums, blogs and persistent virtual environments like Second Life.
“A lot of our online customers are eager to share their opinions, not just on new products, but also on how to improve existing products,” says Rasmussen. “Participation in these conversations provides customers with a genuine connection to a brand they care about, and a voice in the direction that brand takes.”
The low end and the long tail
The Long Tail is a concept that is transforming business, even as the concept itself continues to evolve. “Learning to love low-end business” is a good idea. A better idea is to push the low-end products/services into the tail of the sales chart, and drive the newest, most innovative work to the fore. New tracking tools and measurement methods that identify long-tail trends, and support them, will be essential to marketing success.
Measuring traffic and “eyeballs” haven’t been enough for a long time now, and the business that thrives will take advantage of new metrics such as:
- The number of downloads of the free whitepaper, trial version of software, etc
- Analyzing the context of inbound links
- Vigorous search and tracking of positive vs negative blog/forum posts & comments
- The tone and volume of Twitter posts (try “Motrin”)
Scaffolding will replace silos in the businesses that thrive
Amber Naslund makes a fantastic observation:
Building Without Walls
Flexibility is going to be key in a nimble digital world. Plans are going to be made, reworked, and all out broken. The days of the tabular marketing and communications plan are long gone. What’s next will be frameworks, scaffolding. Structure without permanence so that communicators like me (and you) can adapt and mold to the shapes that the conversations are taking online.[Emphasis mine, ed.]
Value is no longer a one-way street, it is more like a fiber-optic cable. The market has more value than simply a source of revenue. The market is growing into a marketspace, leaving behind those businesses that do not realize that it is a source of inspiration, innovation, and collaboration.
What say you?
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