Jones ON Innovation

Turning ON Innovation In Your Culture, Teams And Organization
1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-62488-137-4
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 228 Seiten

Every business needs to innovate, but few know where to start. ON Innovation, gives leaders seventy-two simple but powerful ideas they can use to create a more innovative organization. Drawing from his experience as founder and CEO at Travelocity.com and from the ten other startups where he's worked, Jones helps readers turn innovation from an academic exercise into an everyday skill. The stories from his career and personal experiences provide well-chosen real world illustrations of how challenging, and ultimately rewarding, it can be to gather a team and establish a culture that is open to change and is committed to innovation as the way to do business. The short chapters seem to be perfectly tailored to today's time crunched business leaders. It's easy to envision readers doing what's advised in 'How To Read This Book': opening it to a random chapter when they're facing a challenge and drawing inspiration from wherever then land.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jones, Terry

Leseproben

SECTION 1: What’s the Rush? What Are the Business Changes Demanding Innovation today? “It does not do to leave a dragon out of your plans if you live near him” J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit IDEA 1 What’s Your Organization’s Attitude toward Change? “One of the things that is mind-boggling right now is how much we have to change all the time.” Anne Mulcahy, former CEO, Xerox1 I’ve made presentations on innovation to more than forty thousand people over the past few years. I enjoy talking with anyone who wants to continue the conversation following my speech. While the questions vary by industry, the urgency these people feel is usually the same. They see the world changing around them and realize they have to change to keep up with it. Unfortunately, while they understand the need to change, it often seems their bosses or coworkers don’t. In fact, one attendee said, “My CEO attended this event with me. I’m glad we heard your speech together, because it’s going to pave the way for me to broach the subject (again) of how urgent it is for us to do more to increase innovation in our company.” Are you in a position where you need to convince others to be more supportive of innovation? If so, this section outlines many important changes affecting business today and makes a case for why it’s in the best interests of organizations to innovate with these changes in mind…now. Hopefully, reflecting on how these changes affect your business will spark your idea engine. You might want to reference these changes to convince your boss and team of the urgent need to more actively encourage innovation in your organization. Questions to Kick-Start Innovation On a scale of 1 to 10, (1 = nonexistent and 10 = excellent), how does your organization rank in its support of innovation? Explain your ranking. What’s a tangible example of how your organization has encouraged and advanced innovation? Do you feel a sense of urgency about this issue? Is your organization not adapting quickly enough to changes in your industry? What’s an example? IDEA 2 SHORT-CIRCUITED OR REWIRED DISTRIBUTION “The only danger is not to evolve.” Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com I began my career as a travel agent in 1970. In those days, customers called us with their flight needs and we called the airline to book their trips. More than 90 percent of all airline tickets were sold that way. That began to change (and change quickly) when we introduced Travelocity in 1996. Our innovation created a short circuit in the distribution system of how flights were bought and sold. As online travel agencies continued to evolve, they captured $50 billion of the air travel business. In addition, airlines then got into the act and started recruiting travelers to come directly to their websites to book flights with their preferred carrier. Next, the airlines cut travel agent ticket commissions to zero (that’s right, zero), dooming most leisure agents. In ten short years, more than eighteen thousand travel agents were out of business. Similar innovations have happened in the music business. I used to go to Tower Records (remember them?) and buy the latest CD of my favorite group. Once Apple invented iTunes and the iPod, millions of music lovers, including me, flocked to the new intermediary, Apple. Over a very short period, CD sales plummeted, and traditional music companies lost 35 percent of their value.2 Brick and mortar bookstores (i.e., Borders) have also been short-circuited by a combination of new technology, a disruption of their traditional distribution, and new intermediaries. Yet not all businesses are being short-circuited. Some are being what I call “rewired.” The air conditioning industry is an example of that. In a keynote to the Air Conditioning Manufacturing and Dealers Association, I marveled at how much things have changed since I bought an air conditioner for my Dallas home in the ’90s. Back then, I looked in the Yellow Pages to find a local dealer. A display ad for Johnson’s caught my eye. My friends had good things to say about them, so I drove to a local store that weekend. A salesman asked about my needs, showed me a wide selection of options, and then suggested a Trane. I trusted his advice and experience, so I bought one on the spot. How would I buy an air conditioner today? I’d open my laptop and check out the manufacturer websites, some review sites, and perhaps a price comparison site. I’d make a decision and contact the manufacturer directly, who would refer my lead to a local dealer, who would then call me to close the deal and make an appointment to deliver and install my unit. It is a new, rewired relationship. If your company name includes the word “agent” or “broker,” or if you have a multilayered distribution system, chances are, you are being rewired. This trend doesn’t exclude anyone. You can’t hide just because you sell only B2B. Those relationships are being rewired as well. And don’t give me that line, “Our products are ‘sold, not bought.’” If your salesperson makes a wonderful sales call, what’s the first thing I will do when he leaves? I’ll open my laptop and find your competitor. And, by the way, if you are the competitor and aren’t online, then I’ll never find you. Stores are turning into showrooms. Just walk into the electronics department of a Best Buy, Costco, or favorite department store. Most people have their cell phones out and are checking around to make sure they’re getting the best deal possible on their flat screen, stereo, or computer. Want good news? It is possible (and preferable) for you to rewire your business rather than have it rewired for you. You don’t have to be short-circuited out of existence, like the thousands of travel agents who could not adapt. It’s in your best interests to take a proactive, rather than passive, role, so innovation is being done by you instead of to you. Questions to Kick-Start Innovation Has your industry been short-circuited by an innovation in the distribution process? Explain. Or, are you in a business that has been rewired? How so? What’s an example of how your company has taken a proactive vs. passive role in adapting to changes? IDEA 3 Search “You cannot step twice into the same stream.” Plato Unless you can say with confidence about your company that “We’ve got something you can’t Google,” you’d better pay attention to search. Almost half of Google’s daily searches are for products or services. On top of that, search is predicted to influence more than half of US retail sales by 2014.3 We know the power of search well at Kayak.com. We are not only a search company ourselves (vertical travel search); we got almost all our customers through search in the first five years of our existence. It was a very successful strategy, with measurable results, and cost substantially less than we would have spent on brand advertising. Yet search can be a big problem for traditional companies. As customers search for products, the search can quickly devolve to a price-only focus. On the other hand, search might be the only way people will ever find your company or product. With more than fifteen thousand new products being introduced every year in the grocery category alone, how can you stand out?4 SC Johnson, the makers of OFF!, bought the URL Mosquitoes.com for this very reason. People irritated by mosquito bites search the web for solutions, and this site pops up first. People want to be rid of mosquitoes, and this site tells them that OFF! is the answer to their problem. A friend of mine was in a hurry and threw all his dirty laundry in the washer. Unfortunately, a red shirt dyed his white underwear pink. He tried to bleach them back to white, but it didn’t work. So he went to the grocery store and asked, “Do you have something to remove this type of stain?” “Nope,” came the reply. So he drove home (this was before he could have used a smartphone) and searched online for an answer. The University of Iowa website (go figure) revealed that RIT, the dye company, also sold stain remover. Back to the store my friend went. He asked a stock clerk, “Do you have RIT dye remover?” “Nope,” was the answer again. Undaunted, he searched and found RIT stain remover hiding on the bottom shelf. The moral of this story? You can no longer expect store clerks to know your product exists, much less whether they stock it. You are no longer competing at the brand level; you are competing at the search level…the individual product level. Even if you do have something that can’t be Googled (whether that’s a unique product, service, or pricing model that is yours alone), then how will you get your story get heard and seen by your target customers? In the twenty-first century, in addition to shelf space, you have to have...