Can you be crappy? Do you dare?
When we think about innovation, we usually think about what impresses us. Like Steve Jobs standing on a podium showing off his latest triumph: Incredible! Revolutionary! Mind Blowing!
However, the kind of innovation that changes paradigms is usually crappy. The stuff that doesn’t work all that well. The carpetbaggers who come into your industry utterly unprepared to service your existing clients. That’s where the danger often lies.
When we talk about digital media, we often focus on the obvious paragons of the industry. Google, Apple, Twitter and Facebook are all amazing companies with real achievements. Yet, in truth they make very bad examples, because they are so unique.
There are, however, some other companies that we can learn a lot from. These are unlikely successes, from companies which look a lot more like the rest of us. Here are four of them:
What do you know about Justin Bieber? If you’re not a teenage girl, the answer is probably not much. Yet if you want to a glimpse at the future of business, you should take another look.
He is a prime example of how our world is changing and how we’ll have to change with it. Understand Justin Bieber, and you’ll know why business statistics have a serious flaw and how numbers often lie.
Are you feeling depressed? Maybe that’s because you toil day after day and still lack the basic essentials, like a Bentley, your own private jet and a decent sized chalet in the Alps.
There’s no reason to despair. With a little practice, you can simply blame it all on your clients. It won’t earn you any money, but it will allow you to commiserate with your similarly disenfranchised peers and gain lifelong friends and admirers.
Here’s a quick guide that will get you started:
Can’t we all just get along?
No we can’t. Not if we think we can win by screwing over the other guy. We are all predators by nature (some of us more than others) and we do what we must in order to survive.
However, what this Nietzschean view misses is that altruism if often the optimal strategy. Building cooperation is one of the most important skills professionals and companies can acquire.
When we want to learn about strategy, we often gravitate to successes, yet failures are often far more instructive. Newsweek’s failed strategy gives us a great opportunity to do just that.
For those who missed it, last week the Washington Post company announced that they would sell the magazine, which they have owned since 1961, citing mounting losses and no clear path to profitability. The announcement was in stark contrast to Time Inc, which announced a very good first quarter.
The failure of Newsweek is especially interesting because it comes on the heels of a new strategy and redesign launched just short while ago. So it’s worthwhile for us to take a look at what the strategy actually was and why it failed.
Why does a rabbit run faster than a fox? Because while the fox is running for his dinner, the rabbit is running for his life. Businesses work the same way.
This isn’t a post about motivations, but rather a very simple principle with far reaching consequences: Priorities matter. Things survive for a reason. Existence implies viability.
Therefore we should always be on guard when given easy answers to hard questions and simple metrics to explain complex businesses. Life is much more complicated than dinner.
Conversation is in vogue this year, which begs the question: Who are you talking to?
Analyzing consumers is one of the most important things marketers do and therefore it’s important to get it right. Unfortunately, there are many pitfalls and it’s easy to get lost.
Here’s a quick guide to common mistakes and how to avoid them.
Media is changing at such a frenetic pace that even the most jaded veterans of the industry are uncertain about what it all means. We’re told the old days are gone, but it’s still not clear what the future will bring.
It seems that as soon as the next “big thing” comes along, a bigger one arrives to take its place. All of the dissonance and chatter is extremely confusing and that makes it hard to plot strategy going forward.
However, hidden in the commotion, there are some principles that are constant and they can help guide our way.
It’s no secret that the newspaper business is in very serious trouble. That’s a problem for the companies that own newspapers and for the journalists who work for them, but it is also a problem for the rest of us.
Newspapers make up the foundation of the fourth estate that is essential to the functioning of our society. As somebody who has first hand experience with societies that lack a well functioning free press, I can tell you it isn’t a pretty picture.
There is no problem with newspapers; it’s the newspaper business that needs to be fixed.
