theIdeaStudio (Customer Crossroads)

Paying it Forward with LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a profile site that business people are intended to use to stay connected. I've had a free profile for quite a while, and recently updated it. In fact, LinkedIn is now a Typepad widget; you can get your own button for your blog.

Seeking recommendations: feels pushy

The site keeps reminding me that I need to ask other people for recommendations. But this just feels pushy to me. (I am a Canadian, after all, and we don't push, we line up.)

So this week I tried something new. I decided to give recommendations to a few people on my connections' list who hadn't asked for a recommendation.

Early results seem very positive, I heard from one person who was pleased about it. And it was definitely a Girl Guides moment for me, generating a nice warm feeling.

Where is LinkedIn going?

I have always assumed that LinkedIn is based on the web-advertising model. But they seem to have pushed into new territory while I wasn't looking.  They now have "business accounts". If I upgrade to a business account ($19.95, $50 or $200) monthly, I can contact people I don't already know through their In Mail service. This is reported by LinkedIn to be 30 times as effective as e-mail from just anybody.

I can't honestly say this has been a problem for me yet, as sales people seem to have no trouble at all finding me through the usual channels. But if that changes, it might change my mind about the network. And this definitely makes me think they have put a glass ceiling on the seniority level of people who will play ball with their application.

For instance, I couldn't find Seth Godin. But Jackie Huba has a listing, and so does Guy Kawasaki.
 

What are the rules of polite society?

Looking at my list recently, I also realized that I hadn't put people on my network that I know very well and see all the time, for the most part. Mostly I had put in people I might lose touch with, and didn't want to lose touch with. The people whose phone numbers are in my cell-phone speed dial are not all there. And there are a few people there now that I can't honestly say I know well. They asked to join my network, and I said yes. Now I only say yes if it's someone I actually know, not just someone I met.

But what is the polite way to clean house? Or maybe you don't clean house.

We haven't yet figured out all the norms of the brave new world of business-social networking.

References:
Here: a LinkedIn discussion about the value of being linked in. These people like it, and make me think I'm not really giving it a chance

Here: a discussion at 37 signals about LinkedIn, which seems more negative

Here:  the social networking blog tells you the key is to expand your network as fast and large as possible, whether you know people or not. Hmmm...

This is civilization: Flying Porter

I'm sitting in an airport lounge that feels a bit different... it's Porter Air, at the Toronto Island Airport. A fellow sitting nearby just said to his buddy, "This is civilization!". And indeed, so far this trip has lacked half the hassle of flying out of Pearson.

[Above: ferry waiting area]

For starters, the lounge is free to everyone. And wireless access is free. There are nice flat-screen computers like the one shown above, and branded water.

The guy beside me -- who has a combat pattern skinned onto his Blackberry -- just finished an espresso. 

You get here via a short ferry trip from downtown. You can pass the short wait by watching the scoters bob and dive for fish. You get to the ferry terminal via a comfortable shuttle bus from the downtown check-in kiosk. And it's a NICE bus. And all the staff are NICE!  They say things like "have a great trip" while giving you a smile.

There are a few mis-steps. I wasn't sure what floor the checkin kiosk was on, so they could have better signage there.  Plus, I just heard Frank Sinatra sing "New York, New York" on the audio for the second time in an hour. And "The Girl from Ipanema" just started. Tape definitely not long enough. But interesting ambiance, and obviously thought through by someone. (Note to self: remember to put the new Sennheiser headphones in briefcase for the next trip)

But the main advantage has to be the ease of access from downtown, and no $50 taxi ride to get to the airport.  I actually came to my first meeting via public transit, and then walked over to the shuttle kiosk. I have to agree: it feels VERY civilized.

I confess I was not in favor of keeping this airport, when it has come up as an issue in municipal politics. And there has been more than enough jiggery-pokery on the funding to keep us taxpayers in a state of rage for years. But as long as this thing is rolling, I plan to give it a try.

Loyalty Program Points for Orange Juice

I just got an offer from Aeroplan to earn points by buying specially marked boxes of Tropicana, and then entering the numbers on them into my Aeroplan account.
Interesting concept.

[Forget for a moment that they promised to only send me relevant and important e-mail...how do I untick "juice offers"??]

This feels very new and innovative. No idea if it will work, but I suspect they have realized that we're not cashing in coupons the way we used to, and they're trying something new. Now if the store could just do this on my behalf somehow, we'd really be cooking here.

Keeping up with the connections

Sean Moffit at Buzz Canuck has created a wiki to enable more connectedness among the Canadian bloggers, called the 1 percent army. (Aren't lists fun?) Now someone has proposed that we have a virtual meeting in Second Life. [Which means I need to visit again soon, and re-learn how to walk, fly, and talk...Just as soon as I finish my GST return...]

The wiki has a wonderful quote attributed to Victor Hugo, and totally appropriate not just for this wiki, but for this year:

"One can resist the invasion of an army but one cannot resist the invasion of ideas." (Victor Hugo / 1802-1885)

At the same time, a client said to me today that "blogs are so passe ... it's all about podcasts now." Indeed, she may be right. It's hard to keep up. People keep asking me how I keep up. If only...!

Dunbar's number: or why you can't have all the coffee dates you want

I was thinking about something called Dunbar's number recently, which seemed to fit one aspect of this keeping up issue: I can't keep up with all the people in my network.

Dunbar studied primates and their social networks, which had an average size of about 50. Based on this work, he predicted the average size of human networks would be 150, based on our brain size. [whatever...]. Turns out that he was pretty close to right.

I heard an O.D. consultant describe that number as the campfire circle -- the number of people who can form a ring, and still feel like part of a shared bonfire experience.

In an actual coffee date with a very interesting person today, we discussed the formation of networks of resources among entrepreneurs, and how one might facilitate more of that kind of good thing. So people can find a good lawyer, a good banker, and so forth. The challenge is, if you're not careful, you reinvent the Yellow Pages. And it's been done.

But you can't have coffee dates with that many people, or even exchange e-mails regularly with them, no matter how interesting they are. Not if you want happy clients, at any rate. Eventually you just have to let go, and hope you bump into them at a conference somewhere. And hope they don't think you're a snob, or arrogant, appallingly disorganized, or just a plain old jerk of the first order.

I have had e-mail replies to notes I sent to people who I imagine to be much busier and more connected than me, such as Seth Godin and Warren Bennis. How on Earth do they do this? Do they have a small army of executive assistants? I can't even keep up with my comments page, and let me just apologize right now if I've offended you by not sending a personal note, as I used to be able to do.

What is the Dunbar's Number for brands?

With all this connecting going on, who's got the time for strategic thinking out there?

And why do you think anyone has the time or interest to read your lame advertising, listen to your direct marketing call, open your multi-page PDF brochure, or anything else that isn't completely compelling?   

Indeed, why should anyone develop a connection to your brand? If you aren't in the inner circle of brands, maybe you'll just be disconnected, like a friend we used to have that we don't have time to have coffee with anymore. We still send them the Christmas letter, but it doesn't have a personalized PS. It's a lingering remnant of a past relationship, a memory, a memento of something that used to be relevant.

This is the joy, and also the challenge of social networks and all the cool technology that enables them. I am now in touch with researchers around the world, but didn't have my neighbors in for coffee. [And what with global alarming, we may not even bump into each other shovelling snow this year]

And somewhere in my inbox is at least one invitation to coffee from December that I still haven't answered, from an interesting person. If only one could make a living going for coffee, e-mailing and of course writing blog articles.

References:

Dunbar's number, according to Answers.com is here.

Amusing version of Dunbar's number and what it means for man's inhumanity to man is here. 

Buzz Canuck's list of Canadian bloggers is here.

[Imagine what such a list would look like if it were U.S. bloggers... I think it's called Technorati?]

Clayton Christensen: Back to the beginning

Doing a little year end file clean-out, I came across a wonderful interview that Inc. did with Clayton Christensen in 2002. Reading it reminded me of the brilliant simplicity of his ideas, and how often we hear someone spout a muddy version that clouds the picture.

On strategies for growth when competing with established leaders:

The leaders in every industry have vast resources at their disposal. If I try to grab a piece of real estate that the established leaders want, where the customers are attractive and the business is attractive ... the leaders will win. So what I want to do is to craft a strategy that takes advantage of what I would call asymmetry of motivation. That is, a situation where I'm motivated to go after the business of the market leaders, but the piece of their business that I can most naturally go after is the one that they're the least motivated to defend.

This wonderfully clear idea, four years before Kim & Mauborgne published Blue Ocean Strategy.

Defining disruptive innovation:

A disruptive innovation is a technologically simple innovation in the form of a product, service, or business model that takes root in a tier of the market that is unattractive to the established leaders in an industry. Very often this occurs at the low end of a market ... Or it takes root by providing a simple and inexpensive product that enables a new population of customers to begin participating in a new application in the market.

I think Nintendo Wii meets a number of these tests, by the way, including being less costly, with lower overall processing horsepower than competitors, and appealing to a market that hadn't before used this type of game. They also developed a distribution system for Wii games that enables them to sell and make money on games at a very low price -- too low for existing distribution channels.

Litmus Test: Is this market suitable for disruptive innovation?

First ... Is there a larger population of less skilled, or less wealthy, customers who could be pulled into that market? ... If there isn't a larger population of less skilled and less wealthy people whom you can identify to pull into the market, it's a strike against the disruptability of that market.

Second ... An innovation will get traction only if it helps people get something that they're already doing in their lives done better....The safest assumption is that people won't change the fundamental things they want out of life... You need to be very observant about what people are trying to do -- not what they say they wish they were doing. If you can facilitate what they're already doing -- maybe make it cheaper, easier, and more convenient to do -- then your disruption has a much better chance of success.

Some good thoughts to take into a new year.

References:
The Disruptive Start-Up: Clayton Christensen On How To Compete With The Best, by Nancy J. Lyons, Inc magazine, Feb 1, 2002. Available online via Sherpa Partners Resources for Entrepreneurs

Nintendo President and CEO Satoru Iwata interviews the Wii development team about their philosophy and approach to the design and technology in Wii here. A fantastic read, and gives a lot of insight into how an innovative process unfolds inside an organization.

Customer Driven Innovation

At a qualitative research conference a while back, I attended a session on using games to support innovation. The people you see above are other researchers, holding up their "product box". [Sorry the pics are so small, all I had was the camera phone. And it's taken me this long to get the darn pics out of the phone, but that's another story!]

This method was laid out in Luke Hohmann's book, Innovation Games, and this was a nice chance to see it in action. Tables were given lots of materials to work with, and a plain white box. The task was to create a box for an alarm clock that they would like to buy.

Participants came up with lots of interesting ideas. For example, at my table we wanted an alarm clock that knows what time it is, just like a cell-phone does. A smart clock.

Many people mentioned Apple inspired design -- features and controls so easy to use you don't actually need to read the manual, because it's intuitive. Can you tell that this group spends a lot of time in hotel rooms, trying to set yet another clock radio, or figure out what the current local time is?

What I found especially interesting about the exercise was that the room seemed to divide into two larger groups: those who were concerned about clock functionality, and those concerned about managing the morning mood and ambiance. Could these be segments, I wonder?

During the debrief, the facilitators asked multiple questions of each spokesperson, to uncover the needs and ideas around the benefits sought.

You'll find lots of people who will tell you that "focus groups can't lead to innovation", and other blah, blah of that nature. I say it depends a lot on who is running the event. If you ask customers literally "what should we do?", you may not get that much you can use. 

But the joy of this exercise was that it focused people on unmet needs, and benefits they would derive from the features they proposed. A development team could definitely learn a lot from the output of that.  And the act of creating the box helped all of us get past "design issues" and focus on what we'd really love to have.

References:
Summary of keynote speaker Paco Underhill from the same conference, talking about global trends in retail.

This method first came to my attention through Luke Hohmann's book, Innovation Games.

 

Apple's New Phone: How will they manage the partnerships?

I know the world is pretty excited about the Apple i-phone. But I'm going to be a wee bit skeptical about one thing here.
Past Apple successes largely relate to areas where Apple could fully control the customer experience.  Even with music, they set up their own delivery system with i-Tunes.
This time, Apple will need to rely on working with Telco's, who are notorious for being irritating to customers.
Here's what I mean: I hve a nice Razr Camera Phone. It should be able to download pix to my laptop via a cable. But my telco shut down that capability, because it wants me to use their cumbersome e-mail system. The first time I did it, it cost about $90.00. [That's not a typo] That was something like $.50 for the picture, plus a $52.50 per megabyte charge for the bandwidth. [That's not a typo either]. 

But I could sign up for a $20.00 a month package that would give me unlimited downloads. So of course I did. Now I'm paying $240.00 per year for a function that was built into the hardware. But wait... there's more!!!!

The installation of this service package on their end disrupted the integrated voice-mail between my land line and my cell phone. A mere five phone calls, several hours of holding, and more than a week later, I got my voice-mail back. No apology, of course. I'm actually simplifying this story considerably, believe it or not.

And this is the network that Apple's new baby will be entering. Hence my skepticism. I hope I'm wrong, and this event will mark the beginning of a new, customer-friendly era in telecommunications. Any thoughts, dear reader? Will Apple be able to make this work?

Far Coast: Coca-Cola pilot coffee cafe in Toronto

To bring you only the finest of blogging experiences, we went on a quest to Far Coast, Coke's global pilot store, conveniently located in Toronto.

You wouldn't know this is a Coke operation directly -- although I felt the graphic design shared some DNA with Coke's current billboards.

I found it interesting that the furniture arrangement has changed since the pictures other sites took on launch day -- there are more tables now. 

Mixed furniture styles suggest bohemian / early apartment influences, and I kind of liked that they were not all the same. There's a surprising amount of room on the main floor, with an ample aisle so you don't have to brush others coming and going.

Here's the second floor, very spacious, but with more of a 'party zone' feel, with upholstered benches, for socializing. Also a kids play area (not shown).

The coffees and teas are intended to evoke the pleasures of international adventure, in a safe and predictable way. Interesting that the graphics used for other coffees almost never have people in them -- but Coke has clearly identified personalities with the various flavors of coffee (see the pix higher up). This feels very unusual, and has to be part of the branding strategy.

There were about six flavors of coffee, and similar of tea. And then you have a choice of preparations for the flavor: Americano (basic brew), latte, and a few others.  I found their menu choices difficult to navigate, actually.  The signage, unfortunately not visible in the pix, said something like "Choose your adventure".  So it took my companion and I some flailing around before we were able to make a coherent order.

My choice turned out to be excellent -- a mid-range brew, fairly aromatic, and much to my taste. My companions was a watery, lifeless, tasteless thing that would never pass muster south of the 49th parallel (IMHO), and neither of us would order again.

The heart of this system is the machine that makes the brew. That's the real innovation here. There are three of them in the image below. Each one takes a pod-thing of the right flavor, and the server presses buttons to give you the brew style requested.

No baristas here, these folks just have to get the buttons right.

Part of the target is apparently to provide the system to other purveyors of coffee, such as restaurants. From the company's press release:

Through Far Coast, the Company has created a revolutionary new system to empower its retail customers - premium restaurants, entertainment venues and other high-end outlets - to offer a variety of freshly brewed espressos, chai teas, cappuccinos and lattes with a high degree of operational ease.

The concept store is not the beginning of a large-scale rollout of a chain of Far Coast outlets. It is intended to demonstrate the product to consumers and to the retailers who are the real target. This is a fascinating direction for the company to take.

The location will allow the Company to gather consumer feedback quickly on new products in order to provide proven products to its restaurant customers. The location is also a great venue for the Company’s retail customers to observe the brand potential, gain consumer learning and train crew. (company press release).

No one could justifiably accuse Coke of being lazy in the research side of things, and the day I visited, they were conducting on-site interviews. So they now have a laboratory to pilot, test and promote the new brand.

References:

The first image comes from the Coca-Cola company. The rest came from my Razr. More pictures can be found at Coke's site, here.

Some other views about Far Coast can be found below:

BlogTO here - "the pod system is a little too downmarket. It takes the romance out of the experience and left me feel like by drink had been McDonald's-ized."

Andrew Burke, Digital Construction here - "From overhearing Coca Cola's own marketing people pitching Far Coast, their approach seems to not be about becoming the next Starbuck's, but rather to have a few Far Coast locations in trendy and heavily-travelled areas, and to sell the fancy machines and flavour pods to restaurants and hotels, like they already sell their Coke fountains. No doubt you'll eventually be able to buy your own pods of 'Borana' at your favorite grocery emporium - and maybe a 'home game' version of the machine. This approach means they don't have to hire by coffee-making skill, but rather (I'm pretty sure I overheard this) by photogenic ethnic diversity - which is a whole other blog post in itself there."

Now Magazine here - "what we have here is the mother of all branding quagmires a company that personifies American cultural imperialism, targeted by boycotts all over the world, is trying to grow a new market out of us green urbanites."

Martini Boyz here - "Far Coast beverages all sport exotic names, like Belgante, Borana, and Sofistro. Keeping with the adventure theme, drinks are not described in terms of taste, but rather descriptive copy. For instance, Belgante, the Italian blend, is a “rich, captivating piazza encounter,” while Borana is “a jungle safari,” and Sofistro is a “subtly sweet, enchanting aria.” It’s appealing in an Elaine Benis, J. Peterman way."

Co-creating with your customers: a TTC story

Our local Toronto Transit Commission is not known for its usability or customer experience.  I tried to figure out which one of four buses would be most likely to come by one day recently, and was completely unable to decipher any of them (see above map, which defies all cartography conventions).

The TTC's web site is no better, either from an aesthetic or informational standpoint.

Bringing bloggers into the design process

But let's get to the co-creation, and see what can happen with even a little effort to invite your customers inside the tent...

The story is best told by the blog that started it...Reading Toronto:

"The Toronto Bloggers' website challenge to new TTC Chair Adam Giambrone gathered steam with postings on readingtoronto.com, Spacing.ca, Torontoist.com, Blogto.com, and transit.toronto.on.ca. It seems that Toronto's netroots can influence city hall. In case you missed the news, bloggers in the city were embarrassed by the transit commission's online presence. We asked our readers - people who tend to use the site every day - how they would improve the TTC website. Their answers are honest and insightful."

The new TTC chairman, Adam Giambrone, seems to have accepted the challenge. Today's Globe and Mail reports that he will be meeting with the bloggers to discuss their ideas, and a new site should be up and running by the summertime. !!! 

This is a big step for an organization I've heard described as insular, rigid and paramilitary in outlook.

And the input is excellent.  Here are a few of the suggestions made via comments on the various blogs:

"Like Google Maps, I want to be able to type in a destination address, execute a search and be taken to a map segment that shows the nearest TTC route; then I’d like to be able to use that route information to construct a travel plan from my point of origin....
The current system expects a user to know what route number he/she wants which is, of course, backwards thinking."

"As well as a journey planner, simple printable maps should be available to broswers, maybe with operation schedules/wheelchair accessible stops/other related information provided."

"Information like closures, schedule changes, or route disruptions should be available on the site, as an RSS feed, as an e-mail subscription, or as an SMS subscription that can be signed up for from a page on the TTC website."

"Trip planner please. Vancouver’s Translink already has one that on their website that’s very helpful. Also, most Translink stations display a phone number which you can call en-route and speak with an attendant regarding Transit schedules, like how long until the next bus, and route information.
http://tripplanning.translink.bc.ca/hiwire?.a=iTripPlanning&.s={$SID}"

I thought this recommendation was particularly insightful...

"...the TTC should hire a someone to head up a Design department. This person will be in charge of formulating standards for TTC advertising, route/schedule information posters, website design, and station/vehicle signage. ....If that doesn’t happen, this will just be a one-off, and like all one-offs will end up decaying into another sloppy mess. The TTC needs design everywhere, not just on its web site."

Another commenter has created a TTC schedule for their Palm, that you can download!!!!! 

Another great suggestion from several people: the TTC should make their database available to developers, to enable just this sort of open-source innovation.

So what?

The learning here: if people care about your service, they are receptive to helping you improve it to meet their needs better. The insights generated on these blogs contain real insights, the sort of ideas I'd be delighted to generate for a client as part of a research project. And this organization is getting them for free. Let's hope they have the brains to listen.

If your customers built a web site about your organization...

You might ask yourself this: if your customers built a web site about you, what would be there? What tips and tricks would they share with others? What navigational aids? What contact points? What secrets would they share?

References:

"The TTC gets some online help", by Bert Archer in the Globe & Mail, January 6, 2007. [free for 7 days]

Reading Toronto, founded by architect, urban planner and columnist Robert Ouellette, looks at the city from the standpoint of the creative arts.

Spacing Wire, a blog about public space issues in Toronto. Here's the TTC post with comments.

Blog TO, a blog about Toronto events, with an emphasis on the arts. Here's their post about the TTC with comments.

Torontoist, their TTC post and comments are here 

Transit Toronto shows how a dedicated fan site can actually provide significantly more useful information than the corporate site.

Obligatory New Year's Predictions

We're still single digits into this new year, so I hope it's okay to make a few trend predictions. I'm counting on the curmudgeons in the audience to remind me to check back later and see how we did.

Second Life and Avatars:
As noted in an earlier post, Second Life is not the end point, but the beginning. Yes, we will see lots of marketers climb aboard the virtual world. They'll be doing it to keep in touch with the evolution of the virtual world, and to learn, because there isn't going to be a lot of ROI there for a while. But it's well worth doing anyway. The ROI will all go to the designers, script-writers and consultants.

Innovation Gets Real:
Innovation is not going away in any meaningful sense -- the pressure is on everyone to be more innovative to compete, and if you happen to live in the developed world, even more so. For many, the real thrust of innovation will be on the next trend, the environment, and that's what we can expect to see on the covers of magazines.  Meanwhile, in my little corner of the universe, the Innovation project at Schulich will be launching the final phase of research, as well as a conference. [Reports on the research are available here]

The Greenifying of Everything:
The environment will be the real star of everything this year, and you can expect all the innovation stories in the business press to relate to the environment. The cool kids will all be looking to show how their organization, product or service is environmentally friendly. A lot of this will not be true green, it will be "greenification". 
Consumer culture abhors inconvenience, and truly being green sounds highly inconvenient. [Which of course is why we must push for government action, because as individuals, we'll never take big enough steps.] We don't want inconvenience, but we want to feel good about ourselves, and smart marketers will be coloring everything green, or at least making it out of bamboo.

Personalization and Customization Continues:
This major trend will continue, and probably pick up speed.  Consumers want the ability to get exactly what they want, not what you want to sell them. They'll continue modifying and tweaking, and if you help them tweak, they'll love you for it.
We want anything that makes us feel like individuals, without necessarily wanting to be too different than everyone else. To understand this phenomenon, watch the high school kids on the bus. They're all different, while being all the same.

Boomer Life Changes Aging:
There's little doubt that the boomers will exert tremendous impact on everything they need as they age.  In fact, their parents already started the movement. Most recently, I've noticed a lot of really cool reading glasses around. Sample packets of anti-wrinkle formulations are stuffed into all manner of magazines. I see more men at the hair salon getting a color than ever before. I bet you could add about a dozen items to this list with almost no effort.

Organization Life Keeps Changing:

Just as Boomers are changing aging, everyone under 35 is changing the definition of a career and an organization. There are a whole lot of forces at work here, from globalization and the loss of long term job security, to the culture of young people who want to be hired where their friends are hired.

For geezers like me, work-life balance meant having enough space in each box. There was even a book, called "The Three Boxes of Life", that told you how to get there. For the twenty-somethings I meet now, they want it all mashed up together, not neatly divided into boxes. There still needs to be a balance, and the fun can't all be after hours.

Not only that, but these folks aren't prepared to wait ten years to get roles with impact and interest.

At the same time, there are a lot of people in their early fifties that are tired of working so hard, and want much more flexibility and much more variety in their lives. They'll want to contribute their wisdom and managerial talent, but they don't want a conventional role definition either.

Any organization that can figure this stuff out and do it well is in great shape. Everyone else will continue to whine about the lack of managerial talent and other such blah, blah. But don't expect to see the organization man anytime soon, I think he's dead, and resting in peace.

Customer Experience Gets Funded:

When I started writing about customer experience here two years ago, a lot of people didn't know what I was talking about. There were only a few of us consulting and researching in this area. Now everyone is in on it.

And for good reason: to compete as a service business, you have to put real resources behind customer experience. That's finally starting to happen, and we will see a lot more thoughtful effort in this area in the coming year.

And it will take the form of cross-functional work that brings marketing and design thinking into contact with operations and front line delivery. [Could be exciting!]

One last prediction: Apple loses its cool

I have the sense that Apple is now so pervasive in the iPod and music space that they may not be the coolest kid on the block soon. We'll still love them, but we won't think they can save the world anymore.
 

So happy new year, dear reader, I think we are in for an interesting ride in 2007. How lucky we are to be born in this age, when there is still time to save the planet, and we can do it carrying a pink Razr and wearing a bamboo t-shirt.