An Airline Innovation - "Cuddle Class"

by Kevin Roberts

Innovation comes from the edge. For most European travellers the edge of the world is New Zealand. That means a 24 hour flight, and there are plenty who don't want to part with a huge amount of cash for business class - where you can get a real sleep. So congratulations to Air New Zealand for putting on their thinking hats and solving some of the negatives of long haul travel. Skycouches on their new Boeing planes mean that three seats form one bed, with an extra panel raised from the footrest area to give space for two to sleep in what they're calling "cuddle class".

Economy/coach class can be a tough ride, so the opportunity to lie flat with your partner and sleep off the miles will be too good to pass up. There's little mystery on a flight like this, and sensuality takes a back seat unless you're prepared to pay more, so adding a little bit of intimacy to the mix seems like a great solution to me. You arrive at your destination, not prodded by strangers' elbows and plenty of sleep interruptions, but after a sleep, a meal, and lesser chance of DVT. It costs a little more, so let's see how it goes. While Air New Zealand are ahead of the game in solving a long distance issue - there must be plenty of ways other airlines can innovate for shorter flights.

I won't bother challenging the major US airlines, who need a whole culture change before they can come close to getting this far (JetBlue and Virgin America being honourable exceptions), but I'm sure other carriers can continue to innovate, push the boundaries for economy as well as business and first class. Everyone is on the same plane together! Perhaps they can look at the other innovation from my national carrier - Spaceseats. Two abreast and designed to shape in to allow couples to dine together. You choose - the back of a seat, or at best a small TV screen, or the smile of your loved one facing you. And for those who are not couples, who knows? You might even make a new friend.

Image source: Vielflieger-blog

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Kevin Roberts is the CEO worldwide of The Lovemarks Company, Saatchi & Saatchi. For more information on Kevin, please go to www.saatchikevin.com. To see this blog at its original source, please go to www.krconnect.blogspot.com.

Get on the Bus to Flexibility

Snow in Seattle today. It will be interesting to see how many of my current clients make it to their office today. I for one am taking the bus and despite it being a bendy bus, it looks like it will manage to make it downtown. It had to go out and around a jack-knifed bus to make it up and over the bridge out of my neighborhood, but it made it.

Forecasters were sure we would get snow Tuesday night, but we didn't, nor did we get snow yesterday despite their predictions all day that we would. Snow didn't come to Seattle until last night. Most schools even announced closures based on these forecasts rather than waking up early to see if it had actually snowed. Forecasters blamed it on a "donut effect" meaning that the mountains to the west and east of Seattle took all the snow.

This Seattle snow fiasco is a good lesson in risk management. Is there really such a thing as 100% probability? While it is important to have a risk management strategy to protect yourself against events of low probability and high impact and every other combination, the key aspect of any such strategy is flexibility.

What if Costco or Nordstrom's had decided to close all of their stores based purely on the weather forecast? What would the unnecessary financial losses have been?

Flexibility is key. Flexibility in everything you do, from human resources to manufacturing to risk management. Without flexibility any strategy, policy, or process is doomed to have some snowless "snow" days.

Look at GM. Underinvestment in flexibility when times were good has left GM on life support and begging for money from the federal goverment because they only are capable of producing cars people don't want at a cost structure they can't sustain.

So when you are building any business or policy or process, look at whether or not you are designing it with the necessary flexibility.

After all nobody wants to get snowed under.

What do you think?

@innovate