Circuit City Short Circuits

As many readers already know, Circuit City has been wiped from the face of the retail planet. Doomed by poor management and an inability to compete in the marketplace any longer.

In 2007 it would seem that Circuit City decided customers only care about price when it comes to consumer electronics, and Circuit City shed their highest paid employees to reduce their costs. Best Buy, believing instead that consumers valued good advice in making their buying decision, quickly snapped up many of those laid off from Circuit City.

On the pricing front, my favorite 'no wonder they went out of business' story is this:

• My step-brother picked up a digital camera in the Circuit City liquidation sale at more than 20% off and he was feeling good until he found out that Wal-Mart's regular price was $4 cheaper. Circuit City may you rest in peace.

Now let's examine other reasons why knowledge is profit and then look at some possible innovations that would increase customer satisfaction and profitability.

Consumer electronics are complicated products that need some explanation, and if people don't feel comfortable that they will be able to successfully operate a piece of electronics when they get it home, then they won't make the purchase.

One lesser known fact is that 95% of returned electronics are returned not because they are faulty, but because the customer experienced buyer's remorse or could not figure out how to make the device perform the desired task. Source: Accenture study

My electronics retail experience found that functioning returns are the bain of a retailer's existence. They take up space, many customers will refuse to purchase them, and there are a lot of other costs hidden in the financials (lost sales, extra staffing, etc.).

How can surviving electronics retailers innovate to improve their chances of surviving?

1. By leveraging in-store expertise solutions provided by companies like Experticity, to augment (not replace) in-store staff expertise and give both customers and staff access to product experts that can answer questions the in-store staff can't.


2. By creating mobile applications for iPhones, etc. that allow customers to take a picture of a bar code on or near the product (or to enter a product code) and access a wealth of information about the product and possibly an expert on that particular product and its competitors


3. By distributing mobile devices at the front of the store that give customers without a smartphone access to the same product information


• Retailers could probably convince a device manufacturer to contribute toward the cost for the positive brand exposure

If electronics retailers take steps such as these then repeat customer visits will be more about accessory and media sales and less about returns.

What do you think?

@innovate

Disruptive Innovations in the Gaming Industry?

I came across an article on Windows Live the other day highlighting a couple of potential distruptive innovations in the gaming industry that I thought I would share with you.

The first is OnLive, based in Silicon Valley, which simply put is Video Games On Demand. No downloading, no physical media, just click and play. All you have to do is plug in a sleek mini-console (about as a big as a pack of cigarettes), or load a 1mb plug-in into your PC browser. The company was founded by noted technology entrepreneur Steve Perlman (WebTV, QuickTime). OnLive spent seven years in stealth development before officially unveiling at GDC 2009 for a Winter 2009 Launch - check out the video (53 min):





Zeebo Inc. is the second company attempting to challenge the gaming industry leaders with disruptive innovation. Zeebo Inc.'s "video game console for the next billion" is aimed at countries like India, China and Eastern Europe where a PlayStation 3 might be out of reach. Games will be distributed through cell-phone networks, using Qualcomm technology. Graphics quality isn't leading edge, but Zeebo is wagering that developing markets will think that it is good enough. They have launched it in Brazil so I guess we will find out quickly whether it will succeed with customers.

What do you think?

@innovate

Making Money by Giving IP Away

If you haven't seen this video highlighting the work that Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and team have done in the wake of decreasing music sales and increasing piracy, you certainly should:



Nine Inch Nails makes their body of work available on their web site for free and then offers people several different ways of purchasing a part of the music and a part of the experience (including limited edition items).

It all boils down to two key concepts:

1. Connect with fans (CTF)


2. Give people a reason to buy (RTB)

So, what are you doing to connect to the fans of your products and services?

Are you giving your customers enough of a reason to buy?

@innovate

Beyond the Amazon Kindle

I came across a video on BNet on the future of ink. Electronic ink (aka electronic paper) is the display technology powering the Amazon Kindle and pretty much every other serious digital book reader out there. The technology is also being tested with store signage in Wal-Mart and was used to power a multimedia panel on the cover of Esquire. If you're not already familiar with the technology, or if you'd like to see more, watch the video below:



The key question in my mind is not what has the technology been used for so far, but what other imaginitive uses can people come up with that will improve the quality of our lives?

What do you think?

@innovate

Best Kept Secret in Wireless Innovation

I came across an article in Fast Company on a wireless technology standard that I think most people (especially non-techies) have probably never heard of - ZigBee.

ZigBee is a wireless technology that uses significantly less power than WiFi and as a result is ideal for monitoring applications. The application detailed in the Fast Company article was a remote healthcare monitoring solution called AT&T Telehealth, but the technology is also touted for energy management and efficiency, home automation, building automation, and industry automation.

If you are interested in learning more about ZigBee, they have lots of educational information on their web site.

What other uses can you imagine for this technology?

@innovate

Celebrating 20 Years of the Internet

To celebrate the twenty year anniversary of the Internet, here is a video of Tim Berners-Lee talking about the birth of the Internet and where things may go from here.

For his next project, he's building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, and video - to unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together.

Check it out:



What do you think the future of the web holds?
(please add a comment)

@innovate

World Innovation Forum 2009

The World Innovation Forum will take place May 5-6, 2009 in New York City.

May 1, 2009 is the last day of the $410 discount.

I will be a featured blogger at the event, and as a special service to my loyal readers I have negotiated an extra $200 discount when you register using the discount code - INNOVATE.

Speakers will include:

• CLAYTON CHRISTENSEN & Disruptive Innovation


• World-renowned for his work on innovation and disruption, sought-after consultant and best-selling author


• VIJAY GOVINDARAJAN & Innovation in a Global World


• One of the world's leading experts on strategy and innovation


• FRED KRUPP & Eco-Innovation


• President of the Environmental Defense Fund


• DAN ARIELY & Predictably Irrational


• Behavioral economist and best-selling author


• CK PRAHALAD & The New Age of Innovation


• One of the world's most recognized thinkers on strategy and author of the bestseller, Competing for the Future


• PAUL SAFFO & Future & Technology


• Stanford University Professor, Technology Futurist and Forecaster.


• Founding Chairman of the Samsung Science Board

Here is a video from one of the speakers, Clayton Christensen, on why some people are more innovative than others:



In addition to blogging and vlogging at the event I am looking to set up interviews with corporate innovators for a new feature called "Innovation Interviews" that will launch on our revised site in April.

If you will be attending the conference, occupy an innovation role within a company and would be willing to be interviewed, please contact me to set up an interview.

I look forward to seeing you there!

@innovate

Interview - IdeaConnection CEO - Scott Wurtele

I had the opportunity to meet interview Scott Wurtele, CEO of IdeaConnection when he was down from Canada this week. I also had the opportunity to meet his lovely wife Wendy Wurtele, VP of Design for the company.

They started IdeaConnection part-time a couple of years ago and began focusing on it full-time about eight months ago when they sold their last online business LawyersandSettlements.com. Scott and Wendy also started and sold WorldBid.com - which counted Alibaba.com as a competitor.

I sat down with Scott to discuss his latest venture, IdeaConnection, a company looking "To give businesses access to the world's most creative and innovative minds, who work collaboratively to solve problems and develop innovations."

IdeaConnection offers individuals the opportunity to sign up to solve problems for pay, and corporations the opportunity to submit challenges to hand-picked teams of diverse experts. At the same time IdeaConnection is also using crowdsourcing to build up a directory of innovation-related resources and information, with listings for conferences, blogs, consultants, etc.


What inspired you to start IdeaConnection?

IdeaConnection is one of the many ideas I've had over the years, and it just started to make more and more sense as I continued to stress test it with myself and others.

What does IdeaConnection offer that nobody else does?

We're providing a lot of free services including buying and selling of ideas. Nobody is doing what we are doing.

Here is how it works:

Companies give us problems or challenges, they set the price, IdeaConnection chooses the group of problem solvers and invites them to the challenge. At this point, they've already signed one level of NDA, and they are showed the first level of the problem and are shown what the solution seeker will accept. Problem solvers only get paid if the solution seeker accepts their answer to the challenge.

People tell us why they are interested and are evaluated against previous performance and we select a very diverse group of 4-8 people. We also have a pool of 75 world-class facilitators to choose from for facilitating each group. They then select another level of NDA and rights assignment and the challenge begins.

Group members can go into a patented ThinkSpaceTM (you can see part of this online), and can either work alone or as a group. Each time they come back they can see what is new. Features include: audio, video, thinking tools, and a whiteboard (launching soon). The final part of the solution is a wiki where the group presents their solution. During the challenge they can ask questions of IdeaConnection or the solution seeker.

We are currently exploring having teams with a mix of solution seeker employees and our problem solvers. Or potentially the solution seeker could use ThinkSpaceTM for internal use.

How is IdeaConnection different from Innocentive?

Innocentive will issue a challenge and get lots of people working on it. We know a bit about Innocentive because we have two advisers that came from there. Innocentive goes for the Fortune 500, and Idea Connection is going for the other 99.9% of businesses.

Our competition is focused on personal relationship selling, and we are focused on internet selling. We are attracting our problem solvers at probably 25% of the cost.

Innocentive also makes the challenge public, we don't. This gives our clients a greater degree of confidentiality - companies can even come in blind if they want to hide who they are.

One final way we are different from Innocentive is that we only have one group working on the challenge. Innocentive could have 100 groups working on a challenge, but only one gets paid. We think we can attract a higher quality of problem solver.

How do you sell against true crowdsourcing like MyStarbucksIdea?

Sites like MyStarbucksIdea are great because they are educating people on the concept, which makes it easier for us to recruit problem solvers and solution seekers.

Why should a CIO (Chief Innovation Officer) choose IdeaConnection over Innocentive, one of your other competitors, or running their own crowdsourcing effort?

My advice would be for Chief Innovation Officers to try them all and see which ones work best for their organization. The proof will be in the results. We are less expensive and faster. Innocentive asks for $25k up-front and takes a long time to run a challenge. We have experience doing things fast.

Along those lines, we also just started offering something called Rapid Response on the site to serve clients that have urgent needs. Clients e-mail in their challenge and we will send out to 10-20 people who have registered to be “on call” and they all get paid if they answer within the tight deadline

Is crowdsourcing a fad?

I think it is not, and I think the growth will happen very fast.

What is the future of crowdsourcing?

Crowdsourcing can be used in politics, market research, and of course problem solving. This type of activity has always been happening, but now it is internet-enabled and the internet will facilitate its growth. It is now going to happen on a bigger scale, especially as smart phone and ad-sponsored phone usage spreads.

For example - Imagine receiving a message on your phone "Do you like the new Starbucks Via design? Yes/No"

Do you see evidence of companies cutting their innovation budgets?

No. Companies are increasing their focus on innovation. Their budget may be down, but probably in a smaller percentage than the rest of the budget.

What advice do you have for companies out there trying to innovate?

Get rid of any arrogance. Be infinitely curious.

We need a new word for "failure" - there is no such thing - it is more data - more education. The real failure would be the failure to learn.

What is your favorite innovation book? Why?

Any book that stirs my curiosity is my favorite. There is no book that I re-read. I read a lot of different things (probably two books a week).

People throw around the word "innovation" a lot. When it comes to innovation, what is the biggest misconception?

It is not necessarily pleasant. It can hurt to innovate. It is a change. It takes work. It means structural change. It means entertaining ideas you've rejected.
We want to see companies start to understand that they can throw out a section of a problem to us for solving. We recently had a consulting company of 25 people sign up with us. We are exploring relationships with larger consultancies too. Consultants might have 90% of the answers. Why shouldn't they throw us the other 10% of the problem to solve?

Conclusion

Thanks again to Scott for making time for this interview.

If you are a corporate innovator or Chief Innovation Officer and would like to be interviewed in print for Blogging Innovation or on video for Innovation Interviews (launching in April), please contact us.


What do you think of what Scott Wurtele of IdeaConnection had to say?

@innovate

Trickle-Up Innovation

Trickle-Up Innovation is a topic you will hear more and more about.

Innovations currently tend to be commercialized in the developed countries and then distributed in the developing world. Trickle-Up Innovation turns that model on its head by commercializing products or services in developing countries and then adapting them for the developed world.



Trickle-Up Innovation does not displace the traditional dissemination patern, but instead provides another option for innovators to consider when looking at commercializing their ideas.

One reason that Trickle-Up Innovation will find increasing adoption is the fact that innovative products and services tend to initially be adopted by those with the greatest pain.

Another reason that companies will expand their innovation strategies to include Trickle-Up Innovation is the fact that often the breakthroughs that drive innovation come from working with extreme users.

Extreme users and those with the greatest need for an innovation are equally likely to be found in the developing world as in the developed world - opening the door for Trickle-Up Innovation.

Where will you find innovation?

@innovate

For more information, see Fast Company's article or BusinessWeek's article on Trickle-Up Innovation.

Effective Conversational Marketing

Business Strategy Innovation just published a white paper to its web site on
"Effective Conversational Marketing."

Here is an excerpt:

"Introduction

What is conversational marketing?

Conversational marketing is relationship marketing for the social media age. Thinking about your marketing efforts in terms of a conversation changes the approach and better integrates social media. Relationships are something that are formed, but conversations are ongoing and evolving and require both sides to participate.


How Social Media Fits In

It seems like I can't get through a day right now without hearing somebody in the media or on the street talking about social media. I think it is great that social media has captured people's attention, but will having more communication channels improve conversational marketing?

Only if properly integrated into the conversations between consumers and companies.

To do this, social media must be established both as part of your on-going conversational marketing programs (on-boarding, loyalty, retention, etc.) and also integrated into your ad hoc or seasonal marketing campaigns."


Download the complete "Effective Conversational Marketing" white paper in PDF form.

What do you think?

@innovate



Image Credit - NoLifeBeforeCoffee

Sixth Sense

You may have seen a video I posted about a wearable computer designed by some MIT students.

I just came across a TED talk from Pattie Maes that explains the details of the innovation you saw in that video, while also showcasing more of what the technology is capable of and what the device costs to build with off the shelf parts. It's definitely worth a look:



Do you think people will want to wear something like this around?
(post a comment)

@innovate

Twitter Search to Challenge Kumo and Google?

I came across an article on TechCrunch that got me thinking. I have been writing for a while now that the main functionality of Twitter, really is just a product feature that can and is being copied Facebook, Plaxo, Windows Live, and probably everyone else out there.

For Twitter to survive they have to find a way to turn it into a platform. Finding a way to create value-added search is probably their best bet.

After all, what is the number one thing that people share, other than what they are having for breakfast?

Links...

Links tweeted by Twitter users are more valuable because they (for the most part) have been added to the search database by people who found their content to have value.

One of the biggest challenges that traditional search engines like Kumo and Google have is that they have to warehouse everything, and most of the Internet is full of garbage that is of no use to people.

For Twitter to maintain any value in search over and above Kumo and Google, they will have to constantly be looking for creative ways to block robots from posting 140chars automatically stuffed with links and keywords.

Without naming names, I have the feeling that one of the people I am following has found a way to automatically post tweets. This means that spammers can and will start attacking Twitter with automated tweets for their viagra and weight loss treatments for all kinds of keywords - reducing the value of Twitter search.

Are Twitter engineers up to the job?

@innovate

Charlie Rose Interviews Evan Williams of Twitter

Charlie Rose interviews Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter about the service and its effect on Internet usage, and the future of the company.

The most interesting point he makes is about how strong the developer community is, with at least 2,000 applications and growing, and how they plan to develop the service from a usefulness perspective.



Will Twitter survive as an independent company?

What do you think?

@innovate

Charlie Rose Interviews Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn

Charlie Rose interviews Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn about the future of technology and social networking, and discusses with him the differences between LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace.

The most interesting point he makes is that while tolerance for risk and the ability to manage it are key skills for entrepreneurs, we are all entrepreneurs now. By that he means that each of us is now responsible for managing our careers and keeping an eye towards finding that next job opportunity to further develop our career.



What do you think?

@innovate

Institutions versus Collaboration - Value of Loose Networks

Back in 2005 Clay Shirky spoke at Ted about how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributions can deliver big value and fluid cooperation replaces rigid oversight. Even though it was delivered four years ago, the video is still worth the time:



What do you think?

@innovate

Microsoft's Vision for 2019

I found this video showing how Microsoft imagines we might interact with technology in the world in 2019, and I can't say that I agree with what they find to be compelling real world uses for future technology.

As I watched the video, I saw lots of things that were visually interesting but very little that would deliver increased productivity or true value in terms of time or money savings.



Most of what they are imagining I find to be visual noise, that would actually decrease productivity and overload the brain.

The most compelling thing I saw was the digital white board that they quickly skipped over.

Second most compelling was the plant identification by video input example. If you expand that to showing the computer just about anything and receiving back information about what you are seeing, it could be a very valuable educational tool.

What do you see in this video that is compelling?

@innovate

Is Crowdsourcing a Fad or a Foundational Element?

Much has been written about 'crowdsourcing' and the 'wisdom of the crowd' over the past couple of years, including "Crowdsourcing" by Jeff Howe - a contributing editor at Wired magazine, and "Wisdom of the Crowd" by James Surowiecki - a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Crowdsourcing - "The act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call." - Jeff Howe

'Wisdom of the Crowd' - "Refers to the process of taking into account the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than a single expert to answer a question." - Wikipedia

For those of you not familiar with crowdsourcing, here is a good video from Jeff Howe:



So, what will happen to 'crowdsourcing' and 'wisdom of the crowd' as more and more companies start to employ these techniques.

Will the crowd remain wise or lose its predictive powers?

One thing is certain. Organizations will continue to use 'crowdsourcing' and 'wisdom of the crowd' together to help them find ideas that will resonate with their targets.

Organizations will, however, have to work harder to market their initiatives as the competition increases for people's time, if they are to maximize the value they accrue from the effort.

What do you think?

@innovate

Creative Cultures - Making Innovation Work

I found an interesting video of Professor Paddy Miller talking IESE's program Creative Cultures: Making Innovation Work. The video talks about the importance of innovation in our current global economy and the challenges in making innovation permeate the organization.



"Much of the innovation industry talks recycled platitudes: the real secret is that innovation is more about business culture than it is about brainstorming ideas. A culture of innovation is driven by the individual. It's instilled in an organization by small teams working together day to day."

- Paddy Miller, IESE Professor


What do you think?

@innovate

Twitter and Social Media in Plain English

I thought I would share a couple of plain english videos from Common Craft on Social Media and Twitter for those who are new to these two phenomenons.

Twitter in Plain English

Social Media in Plain English

These are really high level overviews. The Twitter explanation unfortunately leaves out the fact that many people in the Twitter community (including me) use Twitter to share insights and useful links.

What do you think?

@innovate