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.

If this is not a Value-Disruptor I’m not sure what is.

Value-disruptors disrupt the norm and bring value into our lives.

Fast Company featured an article this week about a smart contact lens.

As they stated:

Although it might sound like something from a science fiction novel, scientists at the University of Washington are working on solar powered contact lenses with transparent LEDs embedded onto the lens. This technology could be applied in countless ways, from health monitoring to text translation right in front of the wearer’s eyes.

And of course they gave us a cute picture of a consumer application.

When confronted with such astounding technology our first reaction is to typically dismiss it.  Who would ever use such a thing?  It reminds us of what everyone said in 1903 when the Wright brothers first flew.  However as leaders in our field we need to project into the future and imagine the possibilities.  Otherwise, how would we ever innovate?

So here’s my 5 minute take on 10 business applications that will allow new behaviors to emerge and in so doing create value in our lives.  Perhaps after you read them you can figure out ways you could use this technology to make your lives better.

10 business applications from a disruptive technology.

1. Financial traders on the stock exchanges will use it to see the trajectory of trades they are following.
2. CEOs will use it to walk around their organizations and see  information on who they are talking to, their area of responsibility and the performance of their teams.
3. Pilots will use it to keep their eyes outside the window.
4. Police officers will use it, along with face recognition, to identify who’s in the car when they approach.
5. Surgeons will use it to see updates on the status of their patients without diverting their attention from the patient.
6. Real estate agents will use it to see comparisons of the house they are showing clients with recent real-time sale prices in the area.
7. Repair people will use it to identify parts on an object they are repairing that is new to them.
8. Retailers will use it to look at items on the shelf and see which brands and sizes are moving with the greatest velocity that day.
9. Landscapers will use it to identify grubs in the lawn to apply the correct insecticide.
10. Politicians will use it to identify the big campaign contributors in a crowd.

What applications can you imagine?

Thank you for visiting http://ennova.ca

I originally had written about the Apple iPad in this post postulating its success because of the new behaviors it would enable.  Last week I crowd-sourced the following question on LinkedIn.

What are your best ideas on how the Apple iPad will value-disrupt the publishing and game industry?

Here are the three best answers I received.

Jeffrey Speiser

1. Publishers know that they can’t ignore Apple.  Book Shelf is going to take over the ebook market in the next few years the way itunes did. There’s a price war in the publishing industry already and this is just going to help Apple.  Consumers are already getting used to paying $9.99 for best selling hardcover books. Now they’ll be able to get them digitally for the same price.
2. Magazine subscriptions can now be distributed digitally. Same with comic books, trade journals, and newsletters. No costly printing, and users can easily archive all the issues they want without stacks of paper in their homes.  Unlike the Kindle or other readers the iPad is going to closely simulate the real world experience of reading a magazine, making it more accessible for older users, and cool enough for younger ones.
3. On the gaming front, users get instant access to the app store with thousands of games. They won’t be as graphic intense as a console unit, but that’s not the purpose of these games. Most of the best selling app games are more strategic in nature which is perfect for the iPad format.

Darren Yan

1. It’s my belief that the education sector will lead the adoption of the iPad as the preferred e-book tool, and it’ll be the students who will act as the brand ambassadors for the iPad who’ll take the product mainstream.  This strategy will disrupt the value chain for academic publishing businesses worldwide, with online libraries managed by companies such as Reed Elsevier uniquely placed to deliver an integrated research tool for students in universities.
2. Moving forward, traditional newspaper and magazine organizations should take advantage of this promising tool by turning all their published contents to be “click-able” and integrated across all major social networks that allow the content to move beyond the reader (i.e. iPad user) to the network, thereby allowing the same content to evolve into a viral distribution.   However, most newspaper and magazine companies have not invested adequately in their content management system that effectively integrates keywords to the Internet where complementary content can be incorporated in the content developed by the organization.  Moreover, the traditional editorial approach to content development in these organizations makes the adoption of an integrated news story difficult. Most editors and journalists take great pride in their work, and appending external links to add the social elements in the content could inadvertently be construed as their work being incomplete.

Hence, many challenges remain, and the degree of disruption to the value chain will take time.

George Hazapis

1. Apple is shaking up the digital book market like it did the music industry with the iPod & iTunes music store. The agency model is a departure from the way Amazon has been doing business with book publishers. With Kindle, Amazon sold digital versions cheaply to drive sales of its e-reader. Publishers make less on each e-book sale under the new model but are willing to accept a lower return for e-book sales because they can control the value of their product, that is, books and content. Consequently, the distribution and pricing models will be redrawn.
2. iPad seeems to revolutionize the digital media and may offer publishers a new way to present content and charge for it.  Apple has been able to control the price of music while boosting the sales of iPods without bringing the music industry much money.  Apple’s iphone gives content producers a platform on which to charge for their products/services. The iPad brings innovations to the market and appears to be a convergent electronic device as telecom firms, computer makers and consumer electronic firms are set to produce the same product.

In other iPad value-disruption  news

1. CBS plans to reduce prices to $1 on some iTunes TV episodes
2. Disney turning its attention on iPad for games, Marvel comics, TV
3. iPad Revolutionizes Online Continuing Education
4. Apple iPad to Have Big Impact on Online Poker

My take

As with all innovations, the greater the number, types, and breadth of new behaviors a disruptor (iPad) causes to emerge, the higher the probability that it will create new value.

New value in the form of new relationships between the user and:

• Self
• Space
• Friends
• Family
• Co-workers
• Communities
• Companies
• etc.

Now re-think iPad.  Imagine new relationships that individuals, groups, communities, content suppliers can build because of its capabilities.  Only then can you begin to see its trajectory.  And having seen how behaviour and relationships can so readily predict outcomes can you then begin to decode where we’ve come from:

• Language
• Fire
• Writing
• Printing Press
• Morse code
• Phone
• Internet
• Mobile phone
• Smartphone

and use that trajectory to predict where we’re going:

• iPad
• pure voice activation
• symbiotic measurement
• etc.

Value-disruption questions

1. What behavior can you see yourself now doing?
2. How would it impact your relationships?

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

There has been a lot of  negative press about Apple’s launch of the iPad.  Some commentators have focused on the name choice.  Others have lamented the lack of features: no multitasking, no video, no touch keyboard, to name just a few.

Missing the point

They’re missing the point about creating new market spaces.  Creating a new market space occurs when you enable new behaviors to emerge in a target population.  Specifically, if your offering (the disruptor) allows people to do something they couldn’t do previously, and many people want to do that, then it takes off.  The new behavior disrupts the norm of how people interact with each other and with space and in so doing, creates new value.

The power of new behavior space

For example, the Blackberry brought us push email.  That allowed us to stay connected everywhere.  New behaviors emerged, not all of them desirable mind you (emailing during a meeting).  This new behavior enabled by the Blackberry disrupted other phones and organizers (the Palm).

iPhone utilized the programmable touch screen.  That allowed more intuitive interfaces and a whole slew of new behaviors to emerge.  Face-Book, Twitter, Traffic alerts, conversion calculators, games, games and more games, etc.  Over 100,000 apps have been created in all sorts of areas with a corresponding increase in new mobile behaviors.

What they, and others (the telephone, steam engines to name a few oldies) did was create new behavior space.  As new behavior space grows, so too new market space grows.

(Behavior space = the number of people x the frequency at which they demonstrate a behavior.)

The iPad’s new behavior space

So what new behavior will the iPad allow to emerge?  When you inspect the core functionality of the iPad through the lens of behavior space you see that it was built primarily for two purposes, both of which do not currently have large “mobile” behavior spaces.

1. Playing games
2. Viewing media content (books, movies, magazines, newspapers, etc.)

Let’s just explore the latter.

Yes, the Kindle and Sony Reader already exist.  However, their adoption rates are small.  They haven’t swept the market.  I suggest two reasons for this lack of explosive growth.

1. Their offering is mostly one dimensional.  They only offer reading.  More critically, there is no obvious path for a potential consumer for new behavior growth. Consequently, potential buyers only have one reason to buy.  Do I want to be able to read in a mobile environment?  If yes they buy.  If no they don’t.  They’ve hung their hat (mostly) on one behavior.
2. Their business model does not include the potential for rapid evolution of content experience.  You can buy a book from Amazon, or you can download it.  In either case the book is largely the same.  Where is the capability to change the nature of the book, or magazine to take advantage of the new technology (disruptor)?

Look at how the iPad value-disrupts

1. iPad offers room for growth.  It has both games and media content (including movies) so it is multi-purposed to begin with.  Combine that with iphone apps and the device has more room to grow.  People will buy the iPad because there is more behavior capability there, and there is an expectation that those capabilities will grow even further.  This is especially true given Apple’s reputation.
2. With the app capabilities expect to see all kinds of new media content.
   • Self book-publishers will now publish their books through the iPad.  I worked with a self-publisher (Dr. Alex Osterwalder) on his recent book Business Model Generation.  Now he can publish on the iPad and make the experience far more interactive and rich.
   • Apps will allow successful bloggers to monetize their blogs.
   • The newspaper industry, which is in death throes, will do what the music industry did – migrate their offering to the iPad.  Some have calculated that printing The NYT costs twice as much as sending every subscriber a free Kindle.  With a multipurpose iPad it will make sense for them to build their own apps for their newspaper.
   • Creative magazines and newspapers will use color, 3G connections, GPS locators, video-play and gaming capabilities to develop an incredibly rich multi-media, multi-connected, location-specific experience to the user.  Think about that for a moment from a behavioral perspective.  What will the world be like when you can be at the corner of Main and Water street in your home town and point to a building and be presented with a multi-media array of games, news, background information, promotions, etc. all relevant to the entities you are pointing at?  Or, imagine what a “NYT experience” could be.  Even better, imagine what a small town paper could do (the Saskatoon Phoenix experience).  How exactly does Kindle compete against that?

The secret to market space is in creating new behavior space through a value disruptor.  The iPad, like the iPhone before it, and the iPod before that, is their next value-disruptor.

Watch the publishing industry be value-disrupted

So, no the iPad is not a replacement for the laptop.  No, it doesn’t do multitasking, or have video, nor phone capabilities.  It doesn’t need to.  It’s going after a much larger market.

100′s of thousands of  iPhone app developers combined with a mobile multi-media device creates the potential for a massive increase in behavior space in the publishing industry.  Apple will do to the publishing industry what they did to the music industry.  They will value-disrupt it.

What new behaviors can you imagine emerging?  In gaming?  In publishing?  How will the business models of publishers change?

You can learn more about value-disruption from the following posts.

1. How to differentiate - a story about a small janitorial firm
2. How LinkedIn is disrupting the recruiting industry
3. Pepsi uses crowdsourcing. Commoditizes Superbowl advertising
4. Will Google’s Nexus disrupt the smart phone industry.  Not yet
5. Companies value-disrupting their markets; a dialogue

Thank you for visiting http://ennova.ca

In an earlier post I mentioned that Jonathan Burns and myself were given permission to blog about a web 2.0 value disruption project that is currently underway.  This post is number two in the series that is expected to run until mid May.

Value disruption project posts

1. Introduction

Note: Clients names are kept confidential and/or disguised.

Value Disruption Project Scope

In November of last year we completed our three stage web 2.0 solutions program and delivered to our clients a project plan to develop three web 2.0 applications: expert blogging, internal collaboration, and a friends of ___ site.  We used a wall sized Implementation Canvas^TM to develop, with their team, strategies for reducing the risks and optimizing the rewards of the project.

A canvas to manage risk and rewards

Project Scope Items

The power of the canvas is that a team can simultaneously see all the strategic elements of a project.  And the design of the canvas forces users to adopt a risk-reduction, reward-optimization approach.  We completed a canvas for each web 2.0 application: Blogging, Collaboration, and Friends of___.

In terms of project risk:

• Blogging is the simplest of the applications with the least ambiguity and hence uncertainty.
• Collaboration is middle of the road and
• Friends of ___ is the  most uncertain and hence the most risky.

Here are highlights of three areas from the Collaboration Implementation Canvas: Risk, Rewards, and Uncertainties.

Collaboration Risks

• We can’t get the staff to use it so people view the project as a failure
• ISO compliance issues
• Not sufficient administration of system security
• We get the balance wrong on the scale of openness/lack of structure/ease of use and security/ISO compliance and end up with a tool that’s too complex and hard to use.
• There is unintended disclosure, we are highly regulated.

Collaboration Rewards

• Get projects done faster
• Improved productivity, find information faster -  Reduce email
• Keep track of what projects we are doing (macro level – not the details)
• Knowledge transfer to new staff
• Do repeat projects faster
• Retain IP of alumni
• Increase employee satisfaction
• Better logging of who edits the docs, revisions vs current “I drive” method
• Visible lessons learned
• Concurrent report writing (faster!)

After completing the risks and rewards they analyzed them to determine what they didn’t know.  In other words, they determined what they were uncertain about.

The challenge on all projects is not what you know, it’s what you don’t know.  So mapping the uncertainties, what you don’t know, is a critical step to reducing risks (as well as making sure the rewards are realized).  So, instead of making assumptions, determine what you don’t know and then go find answers to those questions.

Collaboration Uncertainties

• Who controls the level of access?
• How do we fit into the ISO document management requirements?
• What are the rules for a document becoming ISO official?
• What are the roles of the people in the walled-off garden?
• How do we migrate old technology?
• What are our metrics of success?
• How will this change our work-flow patterns?
• What projects types will we pilot on?

Mapping these uncertainties allowed them to structure the project, select the appropriate team and develop an initial set of actions to resolve the uncertainties.  They created a starting point.

Learning

Here’s what we found after using the canvases.

1. Each team was on board with the project.   The ability to see all the project elements in one place made them feel more comfortable that we, collectively, understood all the risks and had a good starting point for how to resolve the uncertainties.
2. It was a quick process.  The team was able to develop three implementation plans in about 4 hours.  Visualization of the entire project enabled the quick speed, in a team of 12 people.  (All 12 people agreed.)
3. The CEO, David L. appreciated the focus on risk management.  His role is to move the organization forward without exposing the organization to undue risk.  Explicitly determining the risks, as well as the rewards,  prioritizing them into the greatest areas of uncertainties, and then developing plans to turn uncertainties into known quantities made him feel confident his team has a deep handle on the issues.  When the CEO feels comfortable with the team that energy translates into enthusiasm.
4. Explicitly dealing with risks and their uncertainties brought us together as a team.  As we worked through the different applications we started to see how each individual had a contribution to make in dealing with the uncertainties.

Top Three Tips

Here’s my top three tips from this experience.

1. Explicitly focus project planning on risk-mitigation.  Pay particular attention to those risks (and rewards) that are uncertain.  Uncertainties represent the biggest failure point, especially in projects with high degrees of ambiguity.  You can learn more about risks and managing ambiguous projects that here and here.
2. Use a blank wall or wall canvas to map the project.  It makes all the elements visible to everyone so  conversations become more directive and integrative.  If you’d like to use our canvas, contact us at iCanvas@ennova.ca
3. As a seller of services, embracing risk is powerful.  The reason clients most often don’t do projects is because they legitimately see risks that they don’t know how to deal with.  Putting your team and their team together to explicitly discuss the risks and develop solutions for mitigating them is the most creative way to resolve this roadblock.  If you and your client team can’t find a way to mitigate the risks then you shouldn’t be doing the project anyway.

What risk mitigation strategies have you used?  What kinds of ambiguous projects do you run?  What other topics would you like us to blog about in this project?

Thank you for visiting http:ennova.ca

Jonathan Burns and I are currently working on a web 2.0 project with a client in the services industry.  We’ve received permission to blog on the project as it happens, agreeing to keep the names confidential.

Our purpose – Share value-disruption learning

It was formally launched on January 6th and it’s scheduled to run to mid May 2010.  The project scope involves creating three applications: blogs, internal collaboration, and A Friends of ____  site.  As a business model design expert with a practice in transforming businesses so they can value-disrupt a market, I’m most interested in blogging about our experiences in the following areas.

1. The generational divide
2. Methods for creating and managing risk reduced plans
3. Building and maintaining project momentum
4. Dealing with ambiguity resulting from project scope design
5. Disruption effects on the business model
6. Disruption effects on their markets
7. Team interactions and the role of trust and evangelists
8. The role of web 2.0  technology in managing the project.

Of course, what I post on is contingent on what happens so I won’t necessarily be following these topics in order.

Jonathan is web 2.0 technology guru, amongst other things, and so he’ll likely be blogging from a more technical side.  You can see his blog here.  I’m planning to blog once a week, time and constraints permitting.  Monitoring both blogs should give you interesting insights on:

• Web 2.0 installations
• Business technologies that are available
• How to deal effectively (or not) with ambiguous projects
• The power of disruptions and
• A host of other insights we can’t yet anticipate.

We’re excited about sharing our insights as they happen.

So stop by, or better yet, connect to us via the RSS feed on the blog as we tell the story of this project.

What other topics would you like to see?  Are you running any disruption projects that you can share?

Thank-you for visiting http:ennova.ca

If a disruption is a change to the norm, then Value-Disruption is  a change to the norm that creates value.

I’d like to start a dialogue about this topic.

I’ve been writing recently about value-disruption based on work by Clayton Christensen and Alex Manu.  The key ingredient seems to be: a new resource and associated interfaces (a value-disruptor) allow a new behavior to emerge in a target group that satisfies a human motivation.  This new behavior disrupts relationships (in a positive way) and so creates new value.

Value-Disruption Elements

LinkedIn Question

After having written a number of posts on this topic (here, here, here, and here)  I wanted to see what others thought so I asked professionals in LinkedIn this following question.  “What examples can you give me of companies that are value-disrupting their industry?“

I received some interesting answers back.  (And I’m going to ask you to submit your thoughts at the end, with a twist.)

Well Known Examples

First, well know examples were submitted.

• Circe de Soleil
• Apple with iTunes
• Nintendo Wii
• Google with many of its applications: Search, Google Maps, email,…
• Many social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter

Then a couple of airlines.

• Virgin Air
• Porter Air

While the airline examples offer a better service than others and have carved out a niche, I can’t see how they have a disruptor in play that allows a new behavior to emerge. (ennova)

Tor Grønsund suggested

Swiffer (P&G) disrupts the vacuum cleaner.

Connecting a power-driven machine doesn’t work for small jobs.  So instead you use a swiffer which has reasonable “pick-up” capabilities.  A small but reasonable level of new behavior (ennova)

Asif Khan suggested

Vex Canada

They are building a national WIFI network that’s free.  They will offer free WIFI in restaurants, coffee shops, airports etc.  by having suppliers to these locations pay for installation and running costs in  return for advertising for people using the wifi.

They should certainly disrupt the industry of paid WIFI in Canada and allow 1000′s of people to connect to the web in 1000′s of new hotspots around the country.  Significant new behavior can now emerge. (ennova)

George Hazapis suggested

The publishing industry is undergoing a transformation, re-engineering its value chain.

Vizu

One example would be Vizu, a company behind Ad Catylyst, a digital ad effectiveness measurement system. The company measures how online ads impact viewer perceptions of key brand attributes.

Zeta

Another company is Zeta which provides complete digital solutions to enable publishers to market through email and other digital channels to drive traffic and improve engagement. Companies are transforming the industry by taking costs out of the business, increasing the engagement factor for print, adding value to content, improving web-based CPMs, assisting publishers in increasing the value of content within their eco-systems through the use of short codes, and tagging. There is a burgeoning mobile market and publishing is going online & mobile.

Boy, you can just imagine all the new behaviors will emerge from brand managers now that they have tools that gives them real data.  (ennova)

The hospital business model is undergoing disruptive innovation as the hospitals need to keep everything & everyone well at low cost.  Hospitals should cede market share to disruptive business models, patient by patient, disease by disease starting at the simplest end of the spectrum of disorders that they now serve.  Hospitals need to deconstruct their activities operationally into two different business models: solution shops and value-adding process activities.

Aravind Hospitals

in India which do eye surgery, and

Coxa Hospital

in Finland which focuses on hip and knee replacement surgery.

People travel out of country to get top notch medical care at lower rates and faster than they can in their country. Significant behavior change. (Ennova)

Thanks George for these four strong examples.

First, thanks to all the LinkedIn contributors for your descriptions of value-disruptions.

So, what examples would you provide?  Most importantly what do you believe is the relationship between the degree of behavior change and their business success?

Lastly,  thank-you for visiting http://ennova.ca

Google’s Nexus is hot.  The question is. . . .  is this a game changing device?  Will it disrupt the Smart Phone industry by bringing in new capabilities that sweep away the incumbents?

Background – Current Share

Research In Motion (39%) continues to be the smart phone market share leader, down 1-pt since our previous survey in September. At the same time, number two Apple (AAPL; 31%) has edged up 1-pt since September. We note that Apple has experienced continuous market share growth every quarter since the iPhone launch two-and-a-half years ago.  Palm (6%), after holding steady in the previous survey, has slid 1-pt since September. (From Cellular news)

Maybe yes?

Google has a loyal following who love everything Google.  So there will definitely be a movement towards them.  Cellular News says  21% of those planning to buy a smart phone in the next 90 days say they’d prefer to have the Android OS on their new phone – a monstrous 15-pt jump in just three months.

To put this in context, three months ago Android OS was tied for last place in consumer preference among the major mobile operating systems. But since then it has surged into second place ahead of all competitors except the iPhone OS X (28%).

But

Buying intentions is one thing.  However, translating intentions into sustainable purchases based on significant differences is a horse of a different color.

DAVID POGUE of the New York Times did a good review of the features and capabilities of the Nexus.  When you read through his article you’re left with the impression that with the exception of “everywhere” voice recognition most all else is a little better or the same as the other features, with the exception of apps where Apple holds the lead.

Why Not Yet.

To disrupt an existing industry you have to create sustainable buzz, as opposed to just marketing buzz.  And sustainable buzz is generated when a latent behavior emerges – when the use of a technology affords the user the possibility of doing something they couldn’t do before that is meaningful, reliable, and accessible.  (Previous posts on disruption  here and here.)

For example, the Blackberry brought us push email.  That allowed us to stay connected everywhere.  New behaviors emerged, not all of them desirable mind you (emailing during a meeting).  This new behavior enabled by the Blackberry disrupted other phones and organizers (the Palm).

iPhone utilized the programmable screen with no keys.  That allowed more intuitive interfaces and a whole slew of new behaviors to emerge.  Face-Book, Twitter, Traffic alerts, conversion calculators, games, games and more games, etc.  Over 100,000 apps have been created in all sorts of areas with a corresponding increase in new behaviors.

Now Nexus has arrived.  Its new capability is voice recognition across all applications.  That means that where users are limited in their ability to type, or interact with the screen they can now use voice commands.  That’s good in the car for example.  So we can expect new behaviors to emerge in hands-free environments, subject to increasing legal restrictions for phone use in the car.

Is that enough to create the buzz?  To see massive movement from iPhone and Blackberry over to Nexus.  It doesn’t seem that there is enough new behavioral capability that would warrant such a move.  Especially when voice recognition reliability is not 100%.  Less than perfection is okay when you ask an app to open.  Not okay when you dictate a letter to a client and it contains errors.

Then Again

But. . . . the big BUT.   Google does have presence.  People will buy the Nexus.  They will become a direct player in the Smart phone industry.

AND, their operating system is open source.  Blackberry and iPhone are not.  With smart-phones only holding about 3% of worldwide market-share (17% North America)  it is entirely possible, (likely?) that from this base their open source developers will develop new disruptive capabilities that Apple and RIM cannot compete with.

So, the battle has begun.  Goggle won’t disrupt with this first addition, but don’t count them out.

Tips for business owners and executives

What can we learn from this story:

1. Not all disruptors have the power to value-disrupt a market.  Nexus everywhere voice recognition by itself is not enough.
2. Sometimes you first need to be playing in a market before you can disrupt it.  So adding a disruptor to your offering let’s you gain fast share and establish your credentials as a player.
3. You need to have a follow-on strategy for how you will ultimately value-disrupt.  Google’s open source operating system, with its faster speed to market for new disruptors, is the play with the potential to give them the leadership in the market.

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

It’s been reported multiple times (here, here and here) that Pepsi will not be advertising in this year’s NFL Superbowl.

Pepsi had been a major advertiser during the Super Bowl. According to TNS, the company spent $142.8 million on the 10 Super Bowl ads from 1999 to 2008, second only to Anheuser-Busch, which spent $216 million.

The nation’s second-biggest soft drink maker is plowing marketing dollars into its “Pepsi Refresh Project” starting next month as its main vehicle for Pepsi. The project will pay at least $20 million for projects people create to “refresh” communities.  A Web site will go live Jan. 13 where people can list their projects, which could range from helping to feed people to teaching children to read. People can vote starting Feb. 1 to determine which projects receive money. (sports.espn.go.com)

Still, CBS said in November that it had sold about 90% of its advertising spots during the game. (CNNMoney.com)

There is more going on than the savings.   When you unpack this story you reveal a truth about differentiation and the power of value-disruption.

First, unpack advertising at the Superbowl.  It’s a premier event watched by millions world wide.  Your brand picks up prestige: success, top of the game, toughness, etc.  However, it remains a passive medium.  The consumer/viewer watches and may or may not assimilate the message.  Which is why so much is spent on execution.  You need to capture viewer’s attention.  But behaviorally, there really isn’t anything that different compared to other adverting, other than scale, scope and prestige.  They are all passive.  The viewer behaves the same way whether they see your message at the Superbowl, or on the latest show of Desperate Housewives.

Compare that to the new connection they are going to make.  Viewers are transformed into users.  They interact with the site.  They put in ideas. They make comments.  They vote on other’s ideas.  They are part of a system that helps others.  They engage.

In this case the consumer’s behavioral construct is deep, multifaceted, and more emotionally relevant.  Their relationship with Pepsi has changed from passive to active.

The result?  The second largest advertiser of the Superbowl has left the Superbowl.

Going Nowhere

Opps….. Superbowl advertising just became a commodity.  Not because someone came up with a bigger and better event.  No, because they were value-disrupted by a technology (web 2.0) and an associated interface (voting system)  that enabled a new behavior to emerge.

And that, my friends, is the key to how you differentiate.

You can learn more about value-disruption in earlier posts here and here.

Thank-you for visiting www.ennova.ca

Unpacking stories to find the truth that lies underneath is always fun.  Here’s a story about a janitorial firm in Cincinnati Ohio that is both inspiring and, reveals how to escape commoditization by differentiating.

First the story.  The basic facts are these.

• They are a janitorial firm (since 1972) that service office buildings over 100,000 sq. ft.
• Like companies in the industry, their employees were largely immigrants looking for a first job that could lead them somewhere else.  After all, who wakes up thinking of cleaning toilets as a career?
• They like everyone else suffered from massive turnover – 400% a year (Yes, that’s 100% every 90 days.)
• You can imagine the turmoil and the low, low margins this level of turnover would create.
• So they implemented a bold idea.  They provided a Dream manager for their employees (all of them).   The dream manager met monthly with the employees and helped them articulate their dreams, plan for it, and because a financial component was usually involved, helped them save for it.

Think about the boldness of this idea for just a moment.  How crazy is that?  A dream manager?  Who has ever heard of such a thing.  A company that spends money helping you achieve your dreams?

Back to the story.

• The Dream Manager Program worked. It slowly gained momentum as employees started achieving their dreams.
• It really took off when Rita bought a house.  Then everyone saw that they too, could realize their dreams. (A car, a good education for their kids, a proper Christmas, a vacation back home, simple things many of us take for granted.)
• The results were (are) incredible.  In five years, 2,785 significant dreams were realized, turnover fell to 4%, gross revenue tripled, profits rose every quarter.
• Their costs are lower. Their client satisfaction tops everyone else (As you can imagine, their employees are very loyal and willingly work very, very hard). No competitor can match them.  They are differentiated.
• BTW, there are now 11 full time dream managers on staff.

What does this all mean?  Should we all hire dream managers as part of our business model?

No, not necessarily, but it does teach us an valuable lesson about how to differentiate.  It starts with a new phrase - value-disrupt.

A rose disrupts the moment. To differentiate, disrupt behaviour

Greatness has always disrupted the norm.  From fire to electricity; from writing to the iPod; different objects, different models, different ideas all inspire latent behaviours to willingly emerge that create new value.  (That’s they key!!)

Let’s unpack the story and discover the formula for differentiation.  As we go through the story we underline the elements.

1. Jancoa recognized a human motivation that existed in their target group.  In their case – the motivation of their employees to dream, to hope for a better future.  (While this motivation is universal for most of these immigrant employees they had long since stopped dreaming.  After all, life taught them they would never reach their dreams.)
2. To enable that motivation to express itself they created a disruptor – (The combination of a resource and associated interface)  = the dream manager with the monthly meetings.
3. The value-disruptor provoked a latent behaviour to willingly emerge.  Employees articulated their dream, planned for them and with the help of the dream manager, monitored progress a monthly basis until the dream was realized.  They did so without being coerced.  They wanted to do this.  A latent behaviour willingly emerging is the KEY.  It’s a new behaviour that a target group willingly adopts that causes a disruption to occur.
4. It disrupted the relationship between the employees and the company.  Duh Yeah!  I don’t just clean toilets here.  I make my dreams come alive.
5. That value-disrupted their markets.

So there you have it, the formula for differentiation.  I’ll return to this value-disruption concept in future posts.

Tips on disrupting

1. Focus on the new behaviour you wish to emerge.  As a result of changing your offer will they do different than they did before?
2. Test it for willingness.  Why will the target do it willingly?  To answer this question think about how easy it will be and how strong the motivation is.
3. Finally, remember that technology by itself is useless.  What is the work process that surrounds it that makes it useful?  Fire by itself just burns.  When you have a work process to control fire you have something useful that will value-disrupt.

Many thanks to Alex Manu who introduced me to this concept.

Thank-you for visiting www.ennova.ca.

You can buy their book about their experience here.  It’s a great holiday gift.