Archive for the 'Strategy' Category

Apple, google and everyone else - Who owns the customer experience?

Published
by
Karl
on March 10, 2008
in Customer-Experience and Strategy
. 1 Comment

apple google and you

It’s funny, I would suggest that Apple and Google probably have very different design processes and certainly a very different culture so what is the common denominator?

I think it could well be that they both have very influential people at the executive level in the organization that is focused and passionate about the design of the customer experience, ie. Steve Jobs and Marissa Mayer.

Can you point to the one person in your organization who “owns” the design of the user experience? Do they have the power and influence to effect every aspect of the user experience?

via

Trying Sometimes Cheaper Than Deciding - New Strategies

Published
by
Karl
on December 18, 2007
in New-Strategy and Strategy
. 6 Comments

Fullb Alltied 01
T-shirt All Tied Up From Full Bleed via tcritic

Having read this on a post at LinuxWorld it got me thinking:

Google is one of the few large companies that gets one fundamental rule of the Internet: Trying stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try it. (Compare the cost of paying and feeding someone to do a few weeks of P* hacking to the full cost of the meetings that went into a big company decision.)

So when the cost of deciding to do something becomes much more expensive than doing something, what do you do? Here are a few ideas:

  • Empower teams to launch experiments
  • Develop a process for manageing projects as a portfolio of experiments
  • Evaluate projects regularly
  • Killing projects should be as easy as starting projects and everyone needs to understand that, and the criteria
  • Start cheaply
  • Get ready to fail faster
  • Prepare to fail in public and be ok with that
  • Create a “beta” culture
  • Put basic legal boilerplate frameworks in place that minimize risk, don’t reinvent it each time

Those are just some rough ideas, any more? Anyone facing this issue?

Web 2.0 Strategy - Advertising Will Not Set Us Free

Published
by
Karl
on November 12, 2007
in Strategy
. 7 Comments

It still boggles my mind how many startups think that advertising is the monetization vehicle of choice. Didn’t we already do that during web 1.0, eyeballs are not the be all and end all.

IBM just completed a survey called “the end of advertising“, and in it Read/Write web reports that 11% of users say they would pay for a “youtube premium” account to avoid advertising. This would yeld 100 million in additional revenue.

I’ve always thought the Flickr “pro account” idea was one of the best and simplest examples of monetization in web 2.0 - provide something of value that your most passionate users will pay for, let them subsidize the usage by more casual users. This is of course in direct opposition to most product strategies which take the “safe” route and create a product for the “majority” of their users, which as Seth Godin will tell you is the risky thing to do.

Open Social - The Social Network For Companies Scared Of Facebook

Published
by
Karl
on November 1, 2007
in Co-Creation and Strategy
. 5 Comments

And myspace might be saying “Thanks for the add” to google as well.

google open social

I had initially thought this story from Tech Crunch was like a formation of a “coalition of the willing” with the other social networks, but I’m begining to think it might have much bigger implications.

Essentially Google has defined a set of api’s for core features for “social applications”

OpenSocial is a set of three common APIs, defined by Google with input from partners, that allow developers to access core functions and information at social networks:

* Profile Information (user data)
* Friends Information (social graph)
* Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Hosts agree to accept the API calls and return appropriate data. Google won’t try to provide universal API coverage for special use cases, instead focusing on the most common uses. Specialized functions/data can be accessed from the hosts directly via their own APIs.

Could this form the foundation for the Internet to finally become the platform? Sure you’ve got a few social networks involved but what if enterprises started using this as the basis for their own social networks? Imagine companies that started to run their businesses on social applications. Sure email is the lingua franca still, but wikis, blogs, and the concept of social networking are changing the way businesses are working.

The only thing that I see missing that would really enable this to happen is some kind of real identity system, because still the advantage that Facebook has at this time is pretty good identity and relationship management. Again the old adage applies, “on the internet nobody knows your a dog”

UPDATE:
It seems that quite a few people think it’s likely that Facebook will likely join OpenSocial as well, it makes sense, but it’s clear that Google had to get everyone else on board first.

Ars Technica has some more on the story as does Read/Write Web who I totally recommend following for more insight on this.

The Experience Is The Product

Published
by
Karl
on October 29, 2007
in Customer-Experience, Marketing and Strategy
. 3 Comments

Peter Merholz of Adaptive Path has just posted a presentation on the topic “The Experience Is The Product” on slideshare, even better he has synced the recording of him presenting this in the UK. In this presentation Peter does a great job of explaining that the experience is everything, it’s the branding, it’s the marketing, and how often our approaches to design screw this up.

Peter will hate me for doing it because he tried to do the whole presentation without mentioning the ipod, but of course he had to, because it’s the best example of experienced centered design out there.

ipod

One thing I’ll add is that when people say “experience design” or “experienced focused design” a lot of people think “sensory orgy” or the “wow”. But it’s not about the wow, it’s actually about focusing on the broader experience beyond the product, beyond the use of the product, the system if you like. The experience is the system is probably another way of saying it. Way back in 2003 I wrote a post that is somewhat related called “Thinking Outside the Product”

You might also find this presentation interesting from Marc Rettig on the history of interaction design which illustrates the transition from task focused design to design that takes into account the broader experience.

California College of Arts - MBA in Design Strategy

Published
by
Karl
on October 25, 2007
in Strategy
. 0 Comments

This is very exciting news, the CCA is launching a new program, an MBA in Design Strategy. This is another Big D MBA, which are of course few and far between, I have a pretty rare MBA in Design Management from the University of Westminster in the UK. Stanford of course has been promoting it’s D School but the MBA qualification or focus on business strategy is very rare.

Big congratulations to Nathan Shedroff who has been appointed chair of the program, Nathan of course wrote the book on experience design :-) I’m particularly interested in his new book that he has written with Cheskin called Making Meaning: How Successful Businesses Deliver Meaningful Customer Experiences.

I’ll be very keen to check out the content and approach of this program.

Social Gestures, Objects, and Equity

Published
by
Karl
on August 21, 2007
in Co-Creation, Marketing, Strategy and Viral-Persuasion
. 1 Comment

Hugh over at gapingvoid raises the interesting point that even though the market for companies to create and deliver one way “messages” is dissapearing, demand for PR, marketing, and advertising professionals is growing. The question is now that we don’t control the “message” what are we doing?

To quote Hugh:

1. Problem: Post-Cluetrain Reality- There is no market for “Messages”.

2. Opportunity: There is, however, a VAST market for “Social Gestures”. As Mark Earls says in his brilliant new book, “Herd”, we are, after all, social animals. We are, after all, primates.

3. Execution: Social Objects, Anybody?

I’m going to add number 4:

4. Value: Social Equity, the value you build over time from the creation of and participation with social gestures and social objects.

I’m absolutely convinced that one of the biggest differences between traditional marketing, and new conversational, people driven marketing is you actually build value over time. I think blogs are one of the best examples, every time you post to a blog it’s like making a small deposit in a bank account, each one build on the rest, and ends up returning interest that compounds. The value of a blog over time becomes more than the sum of the individual posts, as it and the author becomes interconnected through other blogs and sites.

Traditional marketing and advertising used to try and build brand equity, in the new conversational marketplace companies that are participating are building social equity (i’m sure that means something else somewhere but it seems appropriate).

What else could you call the value you build over time by participating in the O’Sphere?

Wal-Mart to deliver DRM free Music

Published
by
Karl
on August 21, 2007
in Co-Creation, Customer-Experience and Strategy
. 0 Comments

They must have heard my plea yesterday because today Wal-Mart announced it will be selling Universal and EMI music DRM free. In some ways it seems like this is a move by both Wal-Mart and the labels to try and wrestle away the stranglehold that iTunes has over the DL music marketplace.

$0.94 DRM-free, 256-kbps MP3 downloads from Universal and EMI with albums priced at $9.22

I don’t know how this turned into DRM week, but I think the move away from DRM is significant for customer experience and co-creation. As mentioned yesterday Grooveshark’s whole co-creative business model is reliant on non DRM music shared by it’s users.

Tweaking The Music Business Model So People Get Paid

Published
by
Karl
on August 20, 2007
in Co-Creation and Strategy
. 0 Comments

Companies often have great successes by tweaking business models. Tweaking a business model is sometimes about redistributing a bit of the work, that changes your cost structure, and changes how you compete. Ikea tweaked the furniture business model by employing their customers as logistics and delivery people. South West tweaked it’s business model by not serving meals or checking bags so their customers were employed as baggage handlers. Netflix tweaked the video rental business by employing their customers as reviewers that powered their recommendation system, customers got more value, netflix gained loyalty. The important thing about these business model tweaks is that when customers take on more work/responsibility they either receive more value or save money, that’s why they do the work.

What has happened with the music industry and p2p is nothing more than another tweaked business model, customers have taken on the role of promoter and distributer, but instead of compensating them for that valuable service they are getting sued. The obvious problem was that p2p systems didn’t compensate anyone, and the later ones that did compensate people compensated everyone except the people that make p2p work, that is the users, they are the engines behind p2p.

So along comes Grooveshark, a company that is going to allow people to share all their music and make recommendations, sell DRM free music, for 99 cents and compensate the artist, publisher, and the user who makes the sale. Grooveshark might not make it, but this is the model IMHO that will work in the end, it’s just going to require the right dealmaker/rainmaker behind it (Steve Jobs anyone?). Read a full report on Grooveshark and the exclent Read/WriteWeb blog.

See also

Trends & Cool Hunting Conference In LA September 13th

Published
by
Karl
on August 8, 2007
in Marketing and Strategy
. 0 Comments

Just heard about this conference in LA run by ImprintLife.com that is focused on trends in pop culture, art, blogs, and clothing. This looks like a breath of fresh air from the suffocating hot air that web2.0 has been producing recently :-) and is going to focus on some fun stuff. I’m currently trying to get involved in the blog culture panel which is moderated by Josh Spear who is an avid blogger on trends and cool hunting.

On September 13th, 2007, the second annual Imprint Culture Lab (www.ImprintLife.com) will take place in Los Angeles, California. The Imprint Culture Lab is set to have the top trend spotters, strategists and forecasters who will share their experiences on new ideas shaping pop culture today. This year’s Imprint will take a deeper dive into the social landscape and will host several forums to discuss the latest new ideas, perspectives and case studies from those who inspire change and innovation.

The conference will include a full day of networking, several sessions, and an evening reception. Topics include “Observations and the shift in pop culture”, “Blog Culture”, “The Pushers of Fabric (Street Fashion)”, “The Art Movement” and “YouTube Star Search”.