Value Creation at its best.

Great article at The Next Web about how Apple’s long term strategy will likely dominate the tablet market.

They project a ten year dominance, similar to the experience of the iPod. In the article they provide, what I believe, are 7 compelling reasons for their dominance.

1. They are outselling (not just out shipping) by a factor of 10 to 1.
2. Tablets are not smartphones.  So competitors have to compete with Apple on device profitability alone.  In the tablet market there are no data plan subsidies to back them up.
3. Apple’s 336+ stores provide a high touch environment to learn whether to buy an iPad.  Moms and grandparents will be converted more by that experience than a tethered tablet at a Best Buy or WalMart.
4. Apple has the profit and cash reserves to invest heavily in the latest technology (solid aluminum skins) that make their designs more elegant and user friendly commanding higher prices and better experiences.
5. Apple, based on the above, has altered the relationships with suppliers, obtaining agreements that lock in their margins and lower cost advantage on the new technologies they fund.
6. Apple’s ecosystem.  Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad.  Once they pull you into the fold it’s hard to leave as the devices work so well together.  This phenomenon is sure to accelerate with the advent of the iCloud in the fall.
7. It works better.  Technically the user experience is smoother with the iPad.  They give reasons why the touch interface works better based on the underlying technologies and iOS software.  Watch for improvements in the next iPad.

It’s a compelling read on value creation at its best and the execution of a business model strategy.  A must read for all executives about how to pull all the pieces together into a cogent sustainable differentiation strategy.

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A new world warfare

I don’t often write about dangers as I am by nature, optimistic.  However this recent video article by Fast Company about Stuxnet is too compelling to ignore.  http://bit.ly/mMPZUg

In the article Cliff Kuang describes how the Stuxnet virus works and concludes:

There’s a powerful, under-reported takeaway here: The Stuxnet virus, having already done its job, now enjoys a scary afterlife. Its code is available online for anyone to look at and play with — and keep in mind, this is a virus capable of shutting down entire power grids. Could hackers re-engineer the virus to other ends, posing far greater threats to the international economy?

In 100 years, historians will probably look back at Stuxnet’s emergence as the Trinity Test for a new age of warfare — a harbinger of danger in an uncertain era.

It would seem that this virus has taken infection to a much higher level of sophistication.  It’s unclear as to whether we are ready for it.

Behavior disruption implications

So, how long before we see viruses:

• that transfer monies from one account to another
• that open up bank records or even vaults
• that gain access to ATM machines
• that capture internet credit card information
• that take down internet services like iTunes or Amazon.com
• that access government secret files
• on our favorite apps as sleepers to capture credit information on our mobile devices.

Should any of this happen, even in a small way, e-business would suffer tremendously.

It’s not a happy signal.

Given the risk level and underlying uncertainty of where’s it’s headed uncertainty it is a signal I believe we all should monitor for further developments .

Does anyone know who is tracking this phenomenon?

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The Signal Pattern?

The Signal Interpreter

1. Assess the behavioral impact of the signal within the context of the originating environment.
2. Transport that behavior into your environment by imagining a scenario where the same behavior, or something similar, could work for you.
3. Assess the do ability (barriers and the like) and take appropriate action.

Future of Medicine

Daniel Kraft video on the Future of Medicine gives a fast paced look at how medicine will evolve based on Apps.

Here’s my take on his talk and how the “signals” he talks about would fit with  other businesses. Specifically, around minute 3 he mentions using glucose meters with your iPhone to measure glucose levels and then send to your doctor.  That’s just one of many apps he talks about.  Let’s deal with just that one signal and see how we might transport it to the soft drink business by using the signal interpreter.  I chose the soft drink business because that seems “far away” from medicine

Step 1: Assess behavior impact in originating environment.
People are concerned about their health and want to keep track of important information and share it with experts.

Step 2: Transport the behavior into your situation (Soft Drinks)

Create an app that:

• Scans bar codes on any bottle of liquid from any supplier
• Downloads critical ingredient amounts into a personal database
• Tallies the total on key ingredients (proteins, sugars, etc)
• Compares them to health goals
• Set with the aid of a health professional (dietician?)

Step 3: Assess do ability

• Can you get access to bar-codes across the industry?
• Will other vendors share their ingredient list?  (May need to partner)
• Who will provide health advice and at what cost?

There you have it.  About 1 minute to think of it, and 5 minutes to write it.

Working with signals is easy when you know the pattern.

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Play matters

As children we played and played.  As adults, especially in our jobs and careers – not so much.

That’s tragic.  If we learned how to play again we could innovate at twice  the speed we innovate now – for the betterment of us all.

So. . .

Here’s a play story.

This play story is constructed in 3 parts.

1. First, I listen attentively to two signals and pick out the salient points about a technological and/or behavioral change.
2. Second I pick an industry.
3. Third, I modify/use the technological/behavioral change to fit my target industry in such a way that it disrupts the behavioral norm of the industry, thereby changing the relationship dynamics of the industry.

With this universal game-changing pattern in mind, let’s construct our play story.

Signals

Our first signal is from the following Ted Talk by Bill Davenhall.

He describes how our susceptibility to chronic diseases is impacted by the towns where we have lived in our lives.  And, how there exists a massive data on location and disease incidents.

The good stuff starts around minute 3.

Anders Ynnerman describes how video graphics cards combined with new high-speed scanning machines let doctors conduct virtual 3D real time  inspections patients, right down to individual tissues layers.

The good stuff starts around minute 4.

Industry

For the industry I choose life insurance.

In the same way that a child plays in a sandbox with trucks, pails and shovels, so too I combine the signals and play with PC graphic cards that visualize terrabytes of location specific diseases.

Play

1. Actuaries and underwriters in life  insurance capture data on past addresses from  applicants.
2. They use that to visually plot the life expectancy of the applicants based on the long term risk exposure (positive and negative)  of the places they have lived.
3. Their pricing, acceptance rates are changed accordingly.
4. They price based on superior information, and so disrupt the norm.

Summary

1. Listen to signals from outside your industry.  The further from your industry the better.
2. Play with the signals in your area. Imagine, as children do in their day to day play how you might combine them together to provide an advantage in your industry.
3. By doing so you create disruption in your industry and bring the future into your present.

Questions to consider

1. How can you make  play a common occurance in your company?
2. How can you broaden the signals your people listen to on a regular basis?
3. How can you store and evaluate those ideas to move your company forward?

Thank you for visiting www.ennova.ca

Listening and interpreting signals

No-one is destined to be a me-too player. We can all be game-changers.

The fourth in a series of posts about how businesses can own their future.

Here is what we have covered so far.

1. Game Changing Part 1 – Analyzing the Future
2. Game Changing Part 2 – Sensing and Adapting
3. Game Changing Part 3 – Experimenting

There are interesting developments all around us.  Many of these flash by without notice.  It’s our future rushing by.  All we have to do is grab one or two to take control of our destiny.

Here’s three unrelated developments (signals) that when combined, give us a glimpse of the seemingly invisible opportunities that surround us.

Signal 1: Robot avatar

Anybots now sells a rolling robot avatar that lets you be available anywhere on-site, 24/7, in informal settings.  As noted in a recent Fast Company article:

Signal 2: Long distance natural motion control

Taylor Veltrop has connected a Microsoft Kinect to a miniature robot, controlling it through his own motions.  You can learn more about it here.

Kinect controlled robot

This is early stages so there are no commercial applications yet.

But then, there’s signal 3.

Signal 3 – Nintendo 3ds

Nintento recently launched its new hand-held game that features 3D viewing without the need for glasses.

Game-Changing Conclusions

Put them all together and what do you get?

A full size robot avatar, that you control from afar through natural body motions, that lets you see what’s going on in 3D.

Imagine the behaviour changes that will spawn:

1. in distance medicine
2. in servicing remote locations
3. in servicing important clients
4. in policing
5. in border security
6. in meetings

That’s how game-changing works.  You:

• see signals,
• put them together,
• project the behavior changes that will occur,
• and then imagine a way to use those new behaviors to make your company stand-out.

In so doing, you not only see into the future before your competitors do, you get on board early and learn how to use it before everyone else does.

Questions to consider

1. Are you and your company signal watching?  (formally? informally? at all?)
2. Do you meet to discuss what they might mean to your situation?
3. When assessing the signals do you discuss what new behaviours might emerge?

Thank-you for visiting www.ennova.ca

Learning-based experimental design reduces risk

No-one is destined to be a me-too player. We can be game changers.

The third in a series of posts about how businesses can own their future.

Here is what we have covered so far.

1. Game Changing Part 1 – Analyzing the Future
2. Game Changing Part 2 – Sensing and Adapting

In this post we use a Ted Talk presentation to showcase how learning-based experimental design reduces risk.

It is also a very compelling story.  Let’s hope our children experience it soon in our schools.

Observations

Some observations from that experience

1. He took his idea and tested it one piece at a time.  What will children do if given a technology was the first test.
2. He did not interact with the experiment.  He left the children alone to discover on their own.  Good designers do the same thing when they observe, without asking questions, how people use products.
3. Learning was his agenda.  When he had expectations (the children would fail the bio-technology) he did not influence the experiment.
4. He formulated his hypothesis as the experiments progressed.  Education is a self organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon.
5. Based on the hypothesis that emerged from the experiments he then built his program/technology.

Good Learning-Based Experimental Design

Based on the above here are five characteristics for good experimental design.

1. Break ideas into small pieces and test independently.
2. Focus on learning as the outcome.
3. Observe but  interact as little as possible to get clean data.
4. Build your hypothesis as it emerges from the learning.
5. Create your working prototype from the emergent hypothesis.

Reduce Risk

In conclusion, good experiment-based design reduces risk.  By building a working prototype based on emergent hypothesis gained from in-field learning, we ensure much greater chance of success.

Questions to consider

1. How well do the people in your company demonstrate these behaviors when they create new offerings?
2. What percentage your new offerings in the last 3 years failed to meet expectations for market share and growth?
3. What was the cost of your failed offerings?
4. Can you afford not to take a learning approach?

Thank-you for visiting www.ennova.ca

Introduction

No-one is destined to be a me-too player. We can be game changers.

The second in a series of posts about how businesses can own their future.

In part one of this series I introduced the idea of the future being chunky.  That much of the future is knowable.  The paradox is that the part of the future that is knowable, is knowable by all.  So there’s no real advantage.

This next post explores how to reach into the unknowable future and pull something into the present that you can exploit before others in your marketplace.  I call that Sensing and Adapting.

Sensing and Adapting

Last April I posted here about how a solar powered lens would disrupt our business lives.  In the post, 10 predictions were made for how it might be used to disrupt existing markets.  You may well ask “if it was published in Fast Company magazine why doesn’t this piece of the future reside in the Knowable Now?”  (Knowable Now was defined defined in the first post of this series with the Apple iPad as an example of a technology that was knowable.)

To explain the difference let’s compare the iPad as a potential disruptive technology with the Solar powered contact lens.

Sensing

You’d have to be living in a cave not to be aware of the launch of the iPad in January 2010.  Big marketing campaign prior to the launch as only Apple can run.  Steven Jobs performing on stage followed by massive press coverage since then.

A simple question to ask ourselves is. . . How many people in our company did NOT know about the iPad? Was there even one?

Which means that everyone sensed the iPad.  They knew about it, and to a greater or lessor extent evaluated it.

Consequently:

• We have no inherent advantage over our competitors
• it will be exceedingly difficult to game change using the iPad
• and sustain that difference.

It’s too knowable.

Compare that to the Solar powered contact lens by Professor Babak Parviz at the University of Washington.  It was published in 2009 in a journal and picked up later by Fast Company.  No fanfare.  No glitz.

So how many people in our company DID know about the Solar powered contact lens? Was there even one?

Which means that no one sensed this nascent technology.  It is not broadly known.  Even now.

However, if our company had sensed this technology then we could have an inherent advantage over our competitors.  It’s possible.

Adapting

When it comes to using the iPad for competitive advantage, the path and processes are well understood and published. Technical specifications and developers kits are readily available.  Even the fee structure is published.  Everything we need to build apps for the iPad is right there, for us. . . . and everyone else.  It’s doable now.  It’s knowable now.

Which means, while we may not know how we would, or could use the iPad to enhance our offering that’s not important.  The day we start the project we’re simply in a race against our competitors.

The Solar powered lens is a different story.  It has not been commercialized.  As of September 2009 there was not even a fully functioning prototype.  Given that, we can only talk about the possible applications to a business, not the certainty of them.

So, working with the professor to develop a working prototype that our company could use would give us a leap ahead of competition.  In addition we’d create barriers to entry.  Working with something in the early stages means we run across technical, legal and other issues that need to be resolved.  The resolution of those issues, that only we know, become the barrier to entry for competitors.  That creates the potential for game changing offerings with sustainability.

It could start with a simple phone call to the professor to enquire about development and partnership opportunities.

Summary

Not all data we sense about the future are equal.  Some of it is eminently knowable and resides in our Knowable Now.  Some of it is shrouded in uncertainty and lies in our Possible Future.

How we deal with these different future states determines in large part our ability to differentiate, and whether we ever have the chance to game change.

Working exclusively in the knowable now means we can certainly better our offerings.  However it comes at the price of a high probability that any advantage we gain is short lived.  We are in a constant never-ending race.

But, working as well in the possible future means we have the possibility of a game changing offering with barriers to entry behind us.

Questions to consider

Here are some questions to consider about the leadership behaviors in your company.

1. Beyond, industry journals and regular mainstream media what is your organization sensing in aggregate?
2. Do you know the answer to question one?
3. Do you have an organizational sensing strategy?
4. Supposing people in your organization read about a technology that could  possibly disrupt the market, would they recognize it for what it is?  In other words, could they interpret it correctly?
5. Is there someone in the organization to whom they could send it to who could correctly interpret it?  Do they know who that is?
6. Is it part of that person’s responsibility to explore the possibilities this nascent technology might represent?
7. Does the leadership team include in their strategic portfolio resources to explore the possible as well as the knowable?

Shouldn’t the possible future be in your lexicon and plans?  Future posts will explore the region of the future past the Possible Future.

The good news is that there are organizations that offer sensing.  So it’s easy to get started.

Here are a some good ones.

• Institute for the Future
• Fast Company
• Trend Watching
• Ted

Thank you for visiting http://www.ennova.ca.

Critical Leadership Behaviors

When considering what it takes to imagine and launch a game changing product or service I start with the following premise.  Great leaders:

The result is that the organizations they lead shape their futures, rather than being shaped by it.  They are game changers.

In a series of blogs post I plan to explore the first behavior.  See more clearly, and with greater insight where the future is headed.

What is the future exactly?

We are so used to analyzing data from the past, I thought I’d start by providing a perspective on how to analyze data from the future. Sounds a little weird but stick with me for a bit.

The future flows towards us.

We know we live in the present.  As we live and breathe, time passes by and the future arrives.  Here’s what that means.

Reading those last three sentences took about 5 seconds.  When you started reading those sentences the end of the third sentence was 5 seconds away in your future.  By the time you finished reading it, that future, previously 5 seconds away, was now in your present.  And by now, is about 6 seconds in your past.

Clear?  As time passes by the future flows towards us.

Our life and business trajectories are mostly stable.

Yet, during the time you were reading those sentences your life (business, personal, etc.)  did not change dramatically.  Who you love, your finances, your career trajectory, and the other things important to you stayed on course.  So while the future was flowing towards you its impact on your life/business and all your relationships was negligible.  In that regard, your present, your near past and your near future are all the same.  They have little to no impact on your trajectory.  Unless of course, you were involved in a catastrophe such as an earthquake.

So….we normally think of time as flowing past us smoothly, much like the graphic below where we sit in the now and move towards the future. . . .

However, when we consider the flow of time’s impact on the trajectory of our lives and businesses it behaves more like the next graphic where the past, present and future are all part of now. What I call the Knowable Now.  Time does not flow smoothly.  It passes by in chunks.  Which explains why all societies have created ceremonies to delineate between moving from one chunk to another: adulthood, marriage, children etc.  It’s a cultural recognition that time is felt in chunks, not smoothly.

We know the past, we know now, and for a certain period of time, we know the future too.  In fact, much of our lives is spent trying to make the future part of our knowable now.  That’s one reason why businesses go through annual planning cycles; to take future events and put them into the knowable now.

The future is divided into know-ability.

What this means is that the future can be grouped by its know-ability. We’ve just shown that when it comes to the fundamental trajectory of our business, barring an unpredictable event the future and the present are essentially the same:

• 5 seconds from now
• 5 minutes from now
• 5 hours from now
• 5 days from now
• 5 weeks from now
• 5 months from now

However, at some point we do reach a time where we don’t feel comfortable that the core issues and opportunities are knowable.  Our data projections are just too unreliable.  Therefore, the length of time between now, and that uncertainty point in our future, represents our knowable now.  Anything past that point we don’t feel comfortable that we can reliably predict our trajectory.   Our future, as we normally conceive of it as being unknowable, actually lies past that point.  Everything, of major importance, is mostly knowable between now and then.

So the future is, from a practical standpoint, divided into a period of time that is largely knowable, and a subsequent period of time that is mostly unknowable.   (Note: In a future post I will further subdivide the unknowable future into two other categories.)

Implications of time as chunky.

Here are some conclusions from this subdivision of the future on analyzing data from the future.

First, all value you will give and receive is in your future, some part of the knowable now and some part of the unknowable future.   Consequently, as business people responsible for  creating and delivering value (shareholder, customer, employee, etc.) we need to learn how to deal with the future.  It’s where we succeed or fail.  Success and failure lies ahead of us, not behind.

Second, I’ve blogged extensively about how innovation involves taking a technology, or new business process and deploying it in a way that allows new behaviors to emerge.

So let’s take the example of Apple’s recent launch of the iPad on Jan 27th, 2010 and determine what this chunking up of time means to us.

Implications of the iPad launch.

Prior to the launch, the capabilities of the iPad, it’s position in the computing market and functionality were largely unknown.

We knew something was coming but not what.  That knowledge resided in the unknowable future.  All that changed on the day of the launch.  Its capabilities, usability and functionality became part of the knowable now.  Of course, on the day of the launch we didn’t know the exact characteristics of all the apps that would be made.  BUT, we could make very intelligent guesses.  They became mostly knowable, as evidenced here and here.

Which means that if a business was thinking about using it to gain a competitive edge they were too late.  Why?  Because on the day of the launch all their competitors had the same data.  They could know the same capabilities and imagine the same kinds of uses.  There was no inherent advantage.  It simply became a race of the fastest and any leadership would only last until the competition caught up.

Working with data from the knowable now does not inherently provide game changing advantage.

Preliminary conclusions of working in the knowable now

1. When it comes to our lives and business trajectories time passes by in chunks.
   • Part of the future includes data that is largely knowable.  That data is in the now. Not in the future. Therefore, now includes part of the future called the knowable now.
2. When speaking about the future businesses should define the time period that represents their knowable now.
   • There will likely be different lengths of time for different topics.
3. Businesses and competitors have access to essentially the same data.  Consequently, if the data businesses are using to make their plans and develop  offerings comes from the knowable now they have no inherent advantage as it’s available to everyone.  They can’t see the future any more clearly than any one else.
4. The development of business strategies needs to embrace capturing data and using it from the unknowable future.
   • In my experience, that behavior, embracing the unknown is counterintuitive for most business people as they perceive it as highly risky.  So I will address how to effectively analyze largely unknowable data in my next post.
5. Businesses that mostly work in the knowable now condemn themselves to hard-fought, never-ending competition.
   • Game changing ideas come from the unknowable future, not the knowable now.

How far out is your knowable now?

Thank you for visiting www.ennova.ca

How to shape a publishing future

Here is an idea that builds on the concepts I’ve talked about to shape our future.  Enjoy.

JE: Hi I’m Jim Ellis and I’m the Managing Editor of Business week. I’d like to welcome you to today’s podcast. This podcast is the fourth in a series of six where we showcase the most intriguing innovations from 2014.

I’m pleased to have on today’s show Frank Nedamyer, President of CenterICE.com. For listeners on our show CenterICE is the New Sports fan experience that has swept the National Hockey League over the last three years.
Welcome Frank I’m so glad you could be with us.

FN: I’m happy to be here.

JE: Frank when I called you in February to inform you that our innovation team had selected you and your organization as one of the winners of our “Most Intriguing Innovators Award” I was thinking about CenterICE. Yet just two weeks ago you made an announcement about the NFL. Can you tell us a little more about that?

FN: I’d love to Jim. We’ve just signed an agreement with the NFL to create a similar fan experience for their fans which we’re going to call CenterField. It’s a 10 year contract to work with the teams using our proprietary “Fan at the center” technology. We expect to complete the roll-out in August just prior to the start of the season.

We’re especially excited because the NFL is the premier sport enterprise in the world and will help us migrate this platform to every major sports franchise.

JE: How did this all get started? If I remember correctly you started this back in late 2011 correct?

Disruption

FN: Actually, Jim it was earlier than that. It began in early 2010 when I was working at corporate headquarters and was given the task of developing a customer focused innovation capability. At the time we had a number of different companies one of which was the Jersey Publishing Company with a number of broadsheet newspapers as our core properties.

As happened to all of us in the newsprint business it was a time of great disruption. Craigslist had substantially reduced the most profitable source of revenue – classified ads. Page advertisers were leaving to go to Google ads where they could key word and location target. Readers, especially the younger generation were using alternative source of information like blogs.

All of this disruption in a time of increasing costs.

At the time of course, we were on the web with an on-line offering. It was successful enough as it goes, comparable to others, but we couldn’t seem to crack the nut. Our trajectory was not one of sustainable high profit growth. And then to top it off, the iPad was launched guaranteeing that further disruptions were coming our way. As you can imagine it was not a fun period.

JE: Is that when you first started to innovate?

FN: Not exactly. We had developed a very robust internal innovation process back in 2001. We had been very successful with it in the ensuring years, at least in terms of internal efficiencies. However, it had never really yielded anything of any significance in terms of growing the top line. They were mostly expense based innovations. So we knew something wasn’t right and started in the spring of 2010 to inform ourselves of what capabilities were required to innovate on the top line.

JE: This sounds very interesting what did you learn?

FN: Of my gosh all kinds of things. Fundamentally it’s a mindset change in how you look at your business. But if I was to summarize this change, three things really stood out. First, to create a customer-focused, fast-growing, profitable innovation you need to disrupt. And right there, that word, disrupt, was a challenge. We don’t normally think about innovation as disruptive. But it is.

And by disruption I mean you need to put something into the market that allows a new behavior to emerge in your target population. Here’s an example. When you looked at what we, and every other publisher, were doing on-line, it was copying the paper experience over. Sure users could search, and print, and read some blogs. But basically, everything was very similar. So from a user standpoint there was nothing really new in what they could do.

Read the paper, or read it on-line, it’s all the same – passive interaction with content. That’s why those models never really attracted many users. And without users, advertisers won’t come.

JE: Very insightful. What else?

Business Model as Core Capabilitites

FN: The second big insight we had was how to look at our business. We learned to stop seeing the business as publishing but more from a capabilities standpoint.

Rather than framing all our conversations about innovation and top line growth from a publishing bias, we learned to frame it from a core capability perspective. For us, what we excelled at was gathering and assimilating information and turning it into stories and insights very rapidly. That was our core.

JE: Is that when you came up with the idea for CenterICE?

FN: Almost, there was one more piece left. Our last big learning was about motivations. Identifying a target group of people who have deep seated motivations to explore and express themselves in new ways. Then figure out what we now call the sweet spot.

Choose a target you have familiarity with including their motivations, and using your core capabilities aligned with creative use of technology, create an environment where they can do things they have never done before. Create an experience that they could never do before because your offering did not exist.

It’s like the phone. No-one ever knew they needed to be able to connect with people across town instantly until the phone arrived. Once it showed up people started behaving differently. They called instead of writing.

No-one knew they needed to make videos to share with their friends and family until YouTube arrived. Now 13 hours are uploaded every minute. That‘s the equivalent of 57,000 hours of Hollywood feature length films a week.

It goes all the way back to our heritage. No-one knew they needed fire until our ancestors figured out how to capture it a move it from place to place.

Take any significant innovation, from fire, to the printing press, to electricity, to the iPhone, to CenterICE, and it always follows the same pattern.

JE: So what was the thinking behind CenterICE?

FN: Well, when we looked at the business through this new disruptive lens a couple of targets immediately came to light: Sports fans and Political followers.

Both groups are passionate about their fields. We choose Sports fans because the risk was lower and they have lots of fanatics. Fanatics can’t get enough.

And because a large portion of fans are of younger age they would be open to new experiences. The key motivational factor was fans don’t want to just cheer. They want to coach! Go to any bar and the conversations are about what the coach should have done. So, that’s the experience we created for them.

We started in late 2011 with an on-line site where they could simultaneously watch the game and provide live analysis.

This was supported by our top sports columnists who were live analyzing the game as well. All the participants rated the views provided by both the pro journalists as well as the fans “scribes”. Overtime, the fan journalists who did well, as voted on by the group, achieved status rankings ranging all the way from Newbies up to Pro.

It really took off when we signed an agreement with the Philadelphia Flyers and they invited the “Pro” writers to interview the players. Fans went crazy trying to achieve the Pro status and volume on the site grew.

JE: How were you making money?

FN: Initially it was just advertising. In the beginning it was free for the fans. But, because we had their complete profiles we were able to charge premium rates to advertisers to have access to our site. After the Flyers joined we went into joint ventures on product placement etc.

Now, we’re ruining journalist boot camps on-line for wannabe sport journalists and we charge for that. Finally, to have access to the behind the scenes information we charge premium subscriptions to fans. All our “Pros” get that free. Those working up the ranking system, have to pay. It’s a multi-tiered monetization scheme.

The sports fans love it and the teams love it as we are delivering to them more dedicated fans. That’s why in 2014 we were able to negotiate with the NHL commissioner a league wide offering.

JE: So why did you start with hockey?

Risk Mitigation

FN: It was part of our risk mitigation. Look, the NFL is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. You don’t want to bring an idea to them that’s not been fully worked out. The NHL on the other hand is the weakest of the major franchises. That made them more open to our concept.

JE: Weren’t you worried about the other leagues stealing your idea once you got going.

FN: Once again our risk mitigation strategy kicked in. We created an unassailable patent wall around this offering. I can’t get into the particulars but it was a three year effort. Some leagues tried but soon found out it wasn’t possible to breach it.

JE: What about “Behind the Bench”?

FN: That was in 2013. By then we had 237 fans who had reached pro status. And boy, were they fast and good. With the instant feeds between them and a digital based collaboration site they could jointly analyze a game in real time.

Imagine, two hundred thirty-seven experts all working at the same time collaboratively. We started to recognize that they were seeing things that the coaches behind the bench couldn’t see. So we approached Peter Laviolette, the Flyers coach and ran a little pilot program. Five minutes before the end of the period a representative from the group would debrief someone from the coaching staff.

It was slick. They had video clips and diagrams and the whole lot. Then they would pass it on to the coach to use or not use as he saw fit.

Remember in April after the game when the Flyers made it into the play-offs and Peter mentioned that he owed a lot to the CenterICE team for their analysis between the second and third periods? After that endorsement our fan base jumped 30% in the three teams we had platforms for. As they say in hockey, sometimes the puck bounces your way.

JE: How about building it out. How difficult was that?

FN: We stumbled a bit in the beginning until we realized that you can’t take people who have a fulltime job in traditional publishing and expect them to work on an idea as different as this in their spare time. Not only is it too stressful to balance both, you inevitably put them into a conflict of interest. Do I work on sustaining the publishing business or work on this new business that might hurt the publishing business? That’s a trade-off you can’t ask people to make.

What we did was create semi-permanent innovation teams who reported in to head office and were tasked to take an idea from prototype to pilot very quickly on a (mostly) full-time basis. While the operating groups complained about taking their people away we were able to negotiate our way through this.

What was interesting in this process is how we found ourselves unlearning a lot about risk. Traditionally, we had applied traditional business risk principles to innovation. In particular, eliminate uncertainty. From a practical standpoint what that meant in the past was if the idea was bold, reduce the “boldness” of the idea so it reduces the uncertainty and hence the risk. That’s how you end up with an on-line offering that mirrors the paper version.

What we learned to do successfully was to keep the idea bold and therefore keep the uncertainty high. BUT, use other techniques to reduce the uncertainty.

All in all, customer-focused innovation is very different. And while we bolted the new system on to our tracking and creativity processes that we had in place, we learned that it takes a different mindset and structure to make it work.

JE: So what’s next for you?

FN: As you know we’ve started dialogues with NBA and MLB, and have had representatives from both the IOC and the FIFA World Cup approach us.

JE: Well on behalf of our listeners I’d like to thank you for joining today’s show and being one of the 2015 most innovative companies.

FN: My pleasure Jim. We hope to see you at the game and CenterICE.

I hope you enjoyed the story.

Thank you for visting www.ennova.ca

Value Disruption Alert

Wow, if this is true a massive value-disruption is about to occur.

Fast Company reports that Microsoft’s Translating! Telephone, exhibited at the Silicon Valley TechFair, brings Universal communication unhindered by language differences a little closer to reality. This VoIP program combines three Microsoft technologies–speech recognition, translation, and text to speech–to create a speech to speech and text to speech translator that’s surprisingly accurate.

The Fast Company article says it’s currently about 80% accurate, but good enough that two programmers (German and English) were able to debug a program.

So now, project this technology forward in 2-4 years when a mobile version becomes available and consider the behavior space implications.

1. Instead of being stranded helpless in a foreign country not understanding the signs on the buildings, or even able to ask simple directions you can now become independent.
2. People who wanted to work in foreign countries but couldn’t because of language restrictions, can get postings.
3. The number of people you can collaborate with virtually has gone from millions to billions.
4. You understand what those arrogant French waiters in Paris are saying about you and can give back in kind.
5. Marriages between two people who don’t speak each other’s language will take place.  A little help to “Love conquers all”.
6. An entire industry crops up to deal with the issue of translating technical terms in support of the tool.  So, what exactly does quantum physics really mean in English?
7. Immigration costs plummet as new immigrants can assimilate more rapidly into a country without relying on taking “XXX as a second language” courses.
8. And my favorite.  They figure out how to translate Politician speak and we finally find out what they are actually saying. (Which I suspect is essentially nothing.)

Questions

By now, if you’ve been following this blog, you’ll recognize that all great innovations create new behaviors.

1. What new behaviors do you see emerging?
2. How would you use it personally?
3. How could you use it in your business to drive more revenue?

Thank you for visiting http://www.ennova.ca