Strategy and innovation are inextricably linked. To move forward in any direction, you need to change and improve the way you do things in an environment of changing context.
However, where many go wrong is in assuming that strategy must precede innovation. Often, if not the great majority of the time, it is the other way around. Innovations, such as the steam engine, railroads, the Internet and the search engine change the substrate within which economic organisms evolve.
Therefore, it is important not to fall into the trap of selecting specific areas in which to innovate. A preponderance of evidence shows that creating an innovative environment is more important than the ability to pick winning areas.
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There is a popular marketing mantra that you should always target high-volume, high-value consumers. Why waste time on marginal, low profit prospects when you can go after the big fish. That’s where the real money is!
However, there is a problem with that argument. Different brands in different situations have different needs. Moreover, since marketing contexts tend to be fluid, targeting needs to be flexible and adaptive, not subservient to rigid rules.
While the heavy consumer argument is valid and carries weight, there are, in fact, some good reasons to look outside heavy consumers when considering your marketing plan.
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Networks, spurred on by digital technology, have become such an important part of our lives so quickly, that much of the bigger story has been lost. The result has been a lot of unneeded confusion.
We tweet, update our status on Facebook and talk constantly on our mobile phones. We prospect for business, find jobs, friends, lovers and even spouses through a complex web of relationships that we’ve really just begun to really understand.
That is the story of networks. It’s a fascinating tale with many twists and turns that reach across centuries. Moreover, it’s an important one. As networks become a larger part of our lives and businesses, we need to understand them better than we do now.
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Everything is changing! Nobody watches TV or uses e-mail, advertisers are racing to shift money into digital media as fast as possible and those fat cats who are too lazy to change will all soon be toast.
These things all must be true, because you can read them on the Internet. You can either accept it or…check the facts.
The amount of crap that’s regularly spewed around never fails to amaze me. Self-styled gurus often relish in mouthing off without the first clue about what they’re talking about. Here are some facts, like ‘em or not!
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I was still in high school in the 1980’s when I first heard the term “information age.” I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, but it seemed to be important then and has since proved to be a true revolution.
It is clear now that the information age is now giving way to the communication age. There is an abundance of data, but getting the right information to where it can be most useful is where real value is created today.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the most intriguing characters of the 20th century, can help guide us. Ironically, despite being a profound thinker about communication, he was somewhat inscrutable himself. Nevertheless, there is much we can learn from him if we make a little effort.
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Websites are important. They allow us to promote, sell and communicate more effectively than we ever have before.
So it’s somewhat paradoxical that most websites fail miserably. What’s more, the reason that they fail is seldom a lack of investment or even effort. They fail because they are too difficult to use.
There’s no reason it has to be this way. Although much in the digital world is complicated and mysterious, web usability is fairly straightforward with sound principles that are well established. Here are 5 simple rules that will help you.
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The Internet, and the World Wide Web it has spawned, has always had a quasi-hippie feel to it. Openness has been prized, in both architecture and practice, while proprietary technology and business models have been viewed with suspicion, if not disdain.
Lately, there is a growing sense among many digerati that a shift is taking place; that the web is passing from its idealistic adolescence into a more realistic adulthood. Accordingly, the digital future will begin to look more like the analog past where hardnosed business people defend their dominion with fervor and intensity.
Central to this view is that the open web is some kind of newfangled idea that will perish once cooler heads prevail. However, a more realistic interpretation is that the concept is as old as capitalism itself, dating back to just after American Revolution and David Ricardo, one of free enterprise’s seminal figures.
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TV is dead. Push marketing is dead. Long live the conversation!
You hear that a lot from social media advocates, despite all evidence to the contrary. TV viewership remains at or near all time highs, media companies are profitable and social media remains a very small part of the overall picture.
“That’s fine in practice, but does it work in theory?” some might say, “there are powerful social forces gathering which will obliterate conventional media practices.”
And you would be wrong. Everything we know about how ideas travel through networks points to mass media broadcasting remaining dominant.
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We’re all wrong sometimes, probably more than most of us like to admit. Spouses, if we choose good ones, are usually very helpful in pointing out just how often that is.
We like to applaud visionaries, but they blunder just as often as anybody else and usually more spectacularly. If you are ever going to get anything right, being wrong is just part of the territory.
It’s not something they teach you in school. Smart people are supposed to have the right answers, but it takes much more than intelligence to fail fruitfully. Everybody is right some of the time, but to be wrong and do it well requires a special mix of genius and character.
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Yahoo is an enigma. Once the sugar daddy of the online world it has become the poor relation who makes everybody uncomfortable. It’s still around, but seems hapless and adrift. What happened? Is there a future for Yahoo?
A recent insider account gives some answers, but raises even more questions about Yahoo and where online media is really headed.
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