JimCarroll

Video clip — where’s the opportunity? Where’s the growth?

October 14, 2008 by JimCarroll

Given the rapid pace of global economic developments in the fall of 2008, it’s interesting that the number of organizations bringing me in for a leadership or management event has increased.

That’s because, despite perilous economic times, CEO’s in a variety of industries are working hard to ensure that their organization stays focused on growth.

At these leadership meetings, I’m offering insight on growth markets and opportunities; innovation strategies to stay ahead in the downturn; and unique insight on how organizations are working hard to re-align their strategies and structure with fast paced market change.

If you need to get your staff and team mindset in the right frame of mind for moving forward in this high velocity, rapidly changing economy, you might need this type of high level, energetic message.

To help you get in the right frame of mind, here’s a little motivational video clip from a recent keynote I did on stage in Sydney, Australia.

100 Days of Innovation – #2 – Go Upside Down

October 10, 2008 by JimCarroll

When thinking about new product or service development, don’t do it in isolation. Seek advice and guidance from your business partners — or, even let them drive the innovation agenda.

This is the lesson I learned from a large company in the consumer goods/entertainment space. They had traditionally been responsible for an innovation plan that went like this:

Get the assortment right, i.e. in terms of new product
Figure out the merchandising plan
Then do the marketing

They then realized that trends and consumer choice was evolving so fast, that they no longer had a truly good grasp on the innovation agenda that they should be pursuing. They also came to realize they were taking product to retailers — but the depth of insight from retailers meant that they saw entirely different product and market opportunities.

So what did they do? They went outside — and learned how to work with the retailers, by having the retailers do much of the product innovation. Soon, the innovation pipeline worked like this:

Figure out the marketing plan, what unique ideas could be pursued in terms of consumer choice, attitude, brands
From that, determine what merchandise, packaging and products to produce
And then get the assortment right

Going upside-down is a powerful innovation concept — it challenges you to do things differently. More important, it pushes you into a mindset where you are pursuing partnership oriented innovation, with the result that have better, fresh, unique, external insight.

All too often an organization loses its ability to innovate because it becomes very internally focused — it can’t see beyond its own walls. People become narrow in their focus, and fail to see big opportunities.

Going upside-down changes this, in so many ways, and it’s one of the most important innovation ideas that you can pursue.

Can we talk – upside-down innovation?

Innovation – act fast – empower people!

October 9, 2008 by JimCarroll

Empowering staff and partners to make quick decisions is an essential component of innovating in the high-velocity economy.

Particularly given that right now, optics are really important.

RBC Plaza’s Grand Opening is on, but, Um, About Those Sky Divers …

(from iStockAnalyst)

Oct. 2–RALEIGH — A big building calls for a big celebration. But when the building is a bank — and its grand opening comes amid a banking meltdown — falling bodies send the wrong message.

Therefore, the sky divers at today’s RBC Plaza opening are canceled. Once again: The fabulous parachuting display is off.

“Given the recent market activities, we just didn’t think it was an appropriate time to have people jumping off of a bank building,” said Jamie Averette Mitchell, a spokeswoman for RBC Bank, which is dedicating its downtown Raleigh headquarters, the 33-story RBC Plaza, today.

The parachuters were to be part of a series of grand-opening events. They were to draw attention to the tower –the region’s tallest — at Fayetteville and Martin streets.

But RBC nixed the jumpers after a week of Wall Street turbulence, which included the worst drop ever in the Dow Jones Industrial average and the sale of Charlotte banking giant Wachovia to Citigroup for a mere $2.1 billion. The celebratory leap might have reminded some of the bankers and stockbrokers who jumped from buildings during the Depression. They didn’t wear parachutes.

Mitchell said, “We wanted to be very respectful of our financial partners and Wachovia” — a name emblazoned on another Fayetteville Street tower.

Part of my consistent innovation message through the last several years — “faster is the new fast” — challenges organizations to think whether they can move at the fast pace required of them in today’s high velocity world. Innovation isn’t just about new products and design — it’s about challenging yourself as to how you operate, act, compete, change and do things differently to keep up with rapid trends.

In this case, what could have been a PR disaster has turned into a smallish news story barely covered anywhere. That’s great innovation.

100 Days of Innovation – Get Out in Front

October 8, 2008 by JimCarroll

The last few weeks have seen a variety of keynotes for leadership meetings — for a telecom company, food services organization, commercial real estate & property management firm, among others. These have involved audiences from 250+ to 800+ executives.

Obviously, the economy weighs heavily into my observations on stage, and in the questions in the Q&A.

The keynotes have been built around my theme of 7 Things You Need to Do Right Now: Aligning The Fast Future to Your Current Strategy.

One of the 7 Things that has stood out – in common with all these organizations — focuses on the reality that with an economic correction underway, it is critical to keep existing customer/client relationships intact. Indeed, the CEO at the event yesterday noted that “customer retention” was one of the top 6 priorities for 2009.

What’s the innovation issue here? There is a big opportunity in solidifying existing relationships by solving customer/client problems before they know they have them. This is BIG.

Think about these issues, and innovate from them in terms of what you do with your customers / clients:

when times get tough, quality, service and relationships rule: operational excellence is more important than ever.
focus on a new partnership with the customer, for example: “we’ve got the latest strategies to help achieve cost savings”
stay ahead of fast paced change that you can utilize for the customer — with the attitude being, “we’re on top of fast paced developments that impact you, so you don’t need to be!”
make sure your customer understands that you are ahead of the pack in solving their problems.

Staying in front of the trends, and solving your customers problems faster, will be a key method of providing for retention, which is going to prove to be critical during the correction. It’s a critical innovation strategy right now!

Thinking innovation: The Challenge for Education in the High Velocity World

October 6, 2008 by JimCarroll

I’m thrilled to learn that I’ve been selected as the opening day speaker for the College Board — and specifically, a chance to speak with some of the leading minds in the university and college scene in the US on the issue of the future of education.

The audience for this invitation only event, to be held in January 2009, includes the Chancellors, Presidents, and senior admission officers for the largest colleges and universities in the US, including Duke, Cambridge, Harvard, Vanderbilt and the University of Texas, among others.

The group gets together annually to examine the challenges and opportunities facing higher education. This year, they determined that it was a good time to take a good, hard look at the education trends that will impact them in the future.

That’s where I come in. My session description, recently written, addresses these issues:

The “velocity” of knowledge is leading us to a world of “just-in-time knowledge”; the result being the reality that the relationship between educational institutions and students is set to change; primarily, from a period of short term, concentrated knowledge delivery, to one more related to the lifelong, ongoing replenishment and rejuvenation of knowledge.

The challenge for institutions of higher learning is how to change their ingrained thinking, behavior, structure –and outcomes — to adapt to this reality.

What’s driving the future of education? At a fundamental level, ever more rapid scientific discovery; knowledge fragmentation due to rapid knowledge growth; massive skills specialization and ever more narrow career niches. Knowledge and careers are also being impacted by rapidly changing business models; increased volatility in industry; shortened careers (imagine 18-month micro careers); rapid emergence of new industries; more rapid knowledge obsolescence; and the rapid emergence of new careers.

In the last fifteen years, I’ve spoken to numerous groups on global education trends. Given that what we do in this area makes or breaks the future success of a nation, it’s a critically important issue — and I am honored that I will be able to share my thoughts with such a senior group of leaders.

Freeze, innovate or panic? Innovation strategies for RIGHT NOW

October 1, 2008 by JimCarroll

Given the rapid pace of global economic developments, organizations are faced with a pretty stark choice.

The CEO of a company that is having me speak to an upcoming leadership meeting stated it this way: their choice going forward is to :

Freeze: do nothing
Innovate: respond to rapid market change through innovation, particularly with respect to strategies, struture, capabilities, markets, products, activities
Panic: make rash decisions on structure, markets, investments.

The last choice might seem to be the only response given the velocity of events as they occur, and it will be an unfortunate reality for some as the credit crunch hits.

But for others, panic will truly get you nowhere. And inaction – option 1 — is not a good choice, because markets, customers behavior, cost inputs and just about everything else will change even faster now, and so you need to change faster.

Option 2 — continuous innovation — remains the only thing to focus on. Maybe that’s why my phone has been quite busy in the last two weeks. There have already been several confirmed new events in October and November, where I will be coming into a corporate leadership meeting as part of an overall objective of keeping a company ahead in the game.

CEO’s and executive staff are working hard to align their current strategies with fast paced economic events. I’m providing grist for the grill, with specific insight on how they might innovate within their particularly industry.

It’s interesting that a lot of senior executives are all of a sudden looking for someone to bring their team this type of unique motivational innovation message. Two weeks ago, I helped to clarify for a commercial real estate / building management company leadership group where they could continue to find market opportunity right now, and how they needed to ensure they focus on enhancing existing customer/client relationships as a key strategy for going forward. We defined some strategies that they had not thought of; their team was inspired on focusing on opportunity rather than market upheaval, by thinking differently about what they do.

So what should you be doing from an innovation perspective?

I’ll starting putting up quite a few new blog posts starting next week, summarizing the many methods to innovate, particularly through any economic correction or downturn. I’m going to call the series “100 Days of Innovation,” and while I won’t post each and every day, I do aim to have one hundred concise, succinct posts full of unique innovation insight.

In the meantime, if you need a high level, energetic message to get your leadership in the right frame of mind to deal with high-velocity economic change, call me. The details are on my contact page.

JimCarroll

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THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.

THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO ARE FAST features the best of the insight from Jim Carroll’s blog, in which he
covers issues related to creativity, innovation and future trends.