Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: New product development

Showing posts with label New product development. Show all posts

Saturday, August 17, 2019

The Rt Hon Chief Product Officer

If you were planning to build a successful product called Brexit where would you start?
Well - you could, like the least successful product makers, sit around a table and work from a set of assumptions about what you think the British people are likely to buy.
You might even run a 'what do you like' survey. You would then invest the farm (or in this case, the country) on what you assume IS 'what they want'. And then spend, spend, spend on advertising to convince people that the thing you now 'have evidence that they want', is what they should invest their hard-earned in.
This is the way of the 95% of product innovation that fails.
The trouble with this approach is that even if the con(vincing) job works, and the customer does indeed buy, that customer ends up with something that doesn't fit their needs or answer the pain-points in their lives. They won't find it of value - they won't recommend it and they won't buy it again.
No, if you want to build a successful product called Brexit you must start with understanding the core needs of those you are making it for.
What are the core needs of the citizens of the UK? There may be some complex emotional ones (known as Esteem needs in Maslow's hierarchy) about fear of change, loss of status etc. But there are some tangible and more basic ones too: Security; Food; Clothes; Shelter.
And right at the top of the hierarchy is all the 'self-actualisation' stuff about being able to achieve one's full potential.
When those needs are understood - then is the time to move to developing concepts that could be best shaped to meet those needs, to solve their pain.
And in a series of iterations in which you shape the direction of that concept, always validating that it is meeting the needs of those for whom it is intended, always testing they understand and get value from what it is you are shaping, you may move to low-through-high-resolution prototypes until eventually you are in a position to launch something you can be pretty sure meets the actual needs of the people it is meant for.
I have yet to see a version of Brexit that serves more than a very narrow band of the nation's needs. You may see it differently.
We don't need (yet) another PR Guru in No10 to con(vince) us of what we want. At this point we need a very capable Chief Product Officer to respond to what we need.

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Nominate a social business innovator

It's March. So it must be time for the next (the second!) monthly Social Business Innovation Award.
And, just as last month, they can't happen without you.
Right now we need to work together on nominations; making them and attracting suggestions from others. Later in the month we'll need to join together to vote.

Last month found a worthy winner in BusinessCard2.0.

This month let's focus on businesses and organisations which have created,, or significantly improved, their products or services using digital social tools - from forums, microblogs, blogs and ideas platforms to social networks, email and SMS.

As last month, please nominate, with any relevant links, by posting a comment below.
Those that appear in the final nominees list will be entitled to display the badge you see here.

Please call on your friends to join in.

What are these awards all about?

Social business innovation: Efficiency and tranformation through the use of social tools.

We have the best set of tools in history for people to find each other and act together to create and improve on the things that matter to them.

What are we doing with them?

Some businesses and organisations are grasping them to wikifix their products and services, to deliver best-fit R&D and NPD and join in waste-free people-powered communications and marketing. The wikifixing of the world has begun.

Those engaging in the process reach new levels of efficiency thanks to an ever-better fit with the needs of their partners - those formerly known as the customer. (By way of disclosure, that's what we at 90:10 Group help organisations with).

I hope you will join with me to celebrate the best of them - and through this find a path to the communities-of-purpose-driven future of the organisation.

So each month this blog will host a Social Business Innovation of The Month award, nominated by you and voted on by you. The format is very much inspired by Neil Perkin's ThinkTank.

The awards are to recognise great work in open/social business/organisational design/innovation/tranformation/efficiency using social technologies.

The winners will enter a case-study Hall of Fame to be shared with all - and in which the winners can revel in the glory of their peers' admiration ;-). More importantly, we can all get inspiration and guidance.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

What does it mean to be a platform organisation?

I've been writing about the platform as primary organisational (and conceptual) framework pretty much as long as I've been writing this blog.

But I've never stopped to pull the essentials together.

What is a platform organisation? How does yours become one?

Let's start with a definition. Mine: A platform organisation uses its available resources to find, connect and support those who share its Purpose.

To be clear, I mean both within and without the organisation's own membranes. Those membranes must become permeable.

Of course, it does this with certain outcomes in mind. And to my mind these are they:

Why be a platform organisation?

Crowd-sourcing solutions offers three key benefits:

1. Value innovation: Access to more 'customer' minds in real-time increases the likelihood of 'blue ocean' solutions. These are those which seek to create new market space - where competition is irrelevant and benchmarking forgotten. Internal-only teams are more likely to default to tried and tested, me-too iterations delivering incremental efficiencies within current market confines. Value innovators look for things that customers value in common. Crowds deliver this. Then they ask: "what if we started anew?"
2. Better-fit solutions. Involving those for whom an outcome is intended in shaping that outcome results in a closer fit with their real needs. You make what you want; We make what we want.
3. Increased marketing and advertising efficiencies. Outcomes are more likely to be embraced by those who have played a part in creating them - the perfect start point for peer-to-peer advocacy.

There are others; You get closer to your customer; the customer feels they have skin in your game; you matter more to them; you get low-cost NPD, R&D, marketing, PR, advertising, customer support etc etc - but I think all these fall into the above three key reasons.

How to be(come) a platform organisation:

Start with the big why: Purpose. Platform organisations thrive on bringing people together to create best-fit outcomes but why would those outside your org want to join with you?
What is wrong with your industry, the way stuff gets done, how people are treated... the world... What is wrong with any of those things, that your org is out to put right?
Know this and express this through action. This is your first step to the Purpose-Driven Collaboration that platform organisations can share in.

Discovery and introduction:
Through expressing your purpose, and actively seeking those who share it, the latent community will emerge: those who care about the same stuff you do and who are willing to join you in working on it: communities of purpose. Join them, support them, contribute to them, provide for them. They were always there, the platform organisation's role is to discover and introduce them.

Community - groups
People join groups for three reasons:
1. Self-expression
2. To talk about the thing they care about
3. To fix the thing they care about.

Plenty of community tools enable 1 and 2. But 3 is too often disregarded. It is the key part. Social tools are not simply for connection, they are to enable outcomes that those people connecting care about. The platform organisation understands that 'social media' is 90% social, 10% media. It brings people together to make better stuff, not better messages.

Better messages are a necessary consequence of better stuff.

So ensure that their wikifixing contributions can be surfaced, acted on and the value created, shared.

It's nice to know that people are talking about you, saying nice things (or bad things) and where those things are being said. But much better to surface their concerns and join with them in addressing them - find ways for them to collaborate with you in fault finding and fixing and integrate that into work flows.

Systems which enable you to prioritise response and identify shared pinch points - from sophisticated conversation auditing to simple votes - offer some of the tools.

But the first step is to be open to collaborative change in the first place. And that starts in your head.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Less illusion - more reality

With the 10th anniversary of The Cluetrain, is it time to stop talking about marketing?

I mean, is it time to stop talking about marketing as a separate function or discipline?

I worry because thinking of it in this way makes 'it' difficult to be embedded in the processes that count.

You know, the processes that squeeze out turds long suffering marketers have to polish. (image courtesy)

I often tell orgs that every single person inside the org is responsible for customer service. It's not the job of the often lowly-paid to read out scripts by the often highly-paid. It's the responsibility of everyone who cares.

Of course that requires something to care about in the first place. And if you have that belief, your actions will attract people who care to join you in the first place.

Oh - and those outside the company too. (Gary Vaynerchuck, Mark Earls, Hugh McLeod can fill in the gaps for you on this)

Anyone who 'does' customer service (read: has conversations with customers) is in marketing as far as I'm concerned.

What is marketing for exactly? At its guts it is to connect people with what they need.

There are a heap of processes, sub disciplines, new and digitized, that we have come to believe have a part to play in that.

But by sticking a label on them and putting them in a box, have we started thinking of marketing as somehow distinct from design and production? Even, and way too often, as distinct from R and D/new product development?

So let's imagine a world in which no one has coined the term 'marketing'.

And into this world we parachute every marketer with their skills intact (but unlabelled)

Given their knowledge of the power of the network (grant me this):
What will they do? Who will they help? What will they aim to achieve?

How will they define and describe the part they play in changing the world?

Less illusion: more reality.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

The nitty gritty of ROI in social media

I've been doing a little thinking about Return on Investment in Social Media. I'm often asked to place value against things I kind of 'feel' have value and can give you case studies about creating value, but often what is asked of me is harder and more focused than that.(picture courtesy)

They want an equivalent or comparable to page impressions (CPMs) or click through rates (CTR).

However short-sighted or crude you may feel that is, there's a reality about answering the question. Those asking it may have spent enough time with you and your presentations and pitches to 'get' what you're saying - but they've got someone looking down from high above them who hasn't had the benefit of all that direct education.

Rare is the client who has some 'experimental cash' to back their personal judgement.

So coming up with an answer helps your closest contacts persuade their bosses that there's a job that needs doing and is worth doing - ie investing in joining in conversations - becoming human in peer-to-peer networks.

Find that answer and they are happier, their boss is happier, you (ok, I mean we, get to be happier).

It seems to me that at its heart this is relatively simple, at least the questions we need answering are relatively simple.

They are about conversion rates.

And they are about the value placed on the defined action by the client/organisation.

For example, let's say for every 1000 page impressions The Company sells one Product X. The value of this to The Company is £10. So every 1000 pi you notch up is worth £10 to the client. A page impression is worth 1p.

Your media buyer will of coure be looking to buy at rather less than that.

And if for every 10 P2P recommendations of Product X The Company sells one product X, then the value of a recommendation is £1. Pay your social media agency 50p per recommendation recorded and you are laughing all the way to the bank.

And that's all there is to it.

Even when we move into where the real explosion of value in social media occurs - co-creation, we simply have to define the value of the chosen action.

How much is one idea from a 'consumer' who cares about making your products better actually worth? How much could crowd-sourcing NPD saved you? Don't forget to include the value of the free and powerful marketing you'll get from those involved in co-creating the new version of the product. And the A/B testing they'll join you in.

Subtract what you plan to share with them. You are going to share, right?

I say that's all there is to it - but peer to peer is a place of supply and demand networks - webs not chains.

So the questions can become more complex.

Consider just some of the elements of social media.

Images, videos, blog posts, blog comments, IMs, texts, email, audio, forums. In a perfect world you'd be able to place a varying price on recommendations/mentions in each of these depending on their scale and scope - and whether they are being uttered by someone followed/influenced by more people than another. And whether that persons 'influence' ebbs and flows topic by topic and moment by moment.

The variables are many. The complexity immense.

But we have to start somewhere.

For example, if a recommendation is made in social media has anyone actually calculated how many times more likely it is that a purchase follows, compared to a page impression?

Has anyone worked out the likelihood of a defined action after someone has installed a badge/app/widget on facebook etc compared with an ad being served at them?

Do you have answers? Do you have questions?

Either way, please comment below. If we get a little traction I'll take this into a wiki we can work on and share together.