JimCarroll

With all due respect to Web 2.0, what’s really important at a strategic level?

September 19, 2007 by JimCarroll

In the last few weeks, I’ve had several high-level sessions with the CEO and management team of a major construction company, as well as with the senior management team and customers of an organization in the packaging/consumer products industries.

Top of mind for these folks isn’t their Facebook strategy, nor are they focused on thinking about what to do with Web 2.0. They’ve got businesses to run, critical issues that need to be tackled, and strategies to be implemented.

There’s a lot of really cool Web 2.0 stuff going on, and yet from a pure strategic level, I’m coming to realize that there’s a lot of hype with the bathwater. It’s like it’s 1999 all over again!

Here’s what these folks are thinking about:

an accelerated innovation cycle: how can they ensure that they get to market at the pace demanded in the high velocity economy?
rapid ingestion of new technologies / methodologies: there’s a constant flood of new stuff they must deal with, particularly as customers, suppliers, and business partners come to expect an ever-more sophisticated information relationship.
faster time to market: how can they ensure their logistics capabilties, as well as the insight of their sales force, is finely tuned for dealing with shorter product lifecycles?
rapid re-focusing of resources for opportunity or threat: consider the China issue and quality: there are lots of organizations now scrambling to redeploy staff and resources due to the sudden new focus and challenge that has emerged
implementing narrow, niche oriented activities to avoid commoditization: how can they step up the value chain in order to avoid the dreaded “compete on price” trap?
….a mindset to deal with “high velocity change”: how can they lead their people into a culture that simply, “acts fast”

These are a lot of the themes covered in the upcoming release of Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast. We should be going to print within a few weeks.

Groundhogs, innovation, and the end of summer

September 4, 2007 by JimCarroll

I’m back at work, although when you work at home, you never truly leave it.

There were two keynotes during the summer, the Destination Marketing Association International, and the National Association of College Stores, as well as a private management get together with a major commercial/industrial construction company. The plan was to take the summer slow, recharge, and gear up for what looks like a busy fall.

One of the highlights of the summer involved the war with the groundhog who decided to take up space in our yard. I clearly lost — he’s back again today. I’ve tried everything, and even ended up writing an article for one of my regular columns about my efforts.

Aside from that, great feedback was had from the events I spoke at this summer : the NACS folks had this to say: “You were right about being highly energetic! You definitely did a great job in pepping the crowd up at Innovate 2007 in Tampa. The buzz in the hallway after your presentation was outstanding! Just thinking about the word “innovate” can be overwhelming. You did an excellent job in explaining the simple steps they need to take to incorporate innovation into their stores.”

The new book is in final edit; we should be going to print within the month.

Ready, Set, Done: Jim Carroll’s latest book

July 11, 2007 by JimCarroll

We’ve got a cover, and have the first draft of my newest book in for design/edit.

Titled Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast takes a look at

the factors that place us in a high-velocity economy
the core innovative capabilties that we must put in place to turn rapid change into opportunity
the key issue of how skills access and talent access will be critical to future success
concrete ideas for becoming a more innovative, agile organization.

We’re targetting late fall for release.

Ready, set, DONE!

July 6, 2007 by JimCarroll

Just about thirty seconds ago, I finished off the final chapter of my next book. We’ll fire up the editing process next week. It should be out mid-fall.

I’ve even finalized on a title, after coming up with about a half a dozen: Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast.

It was certainly a project — there’s so much going on, that it’s been hard to get the exact idea down on paper. But this was a huge milestone. And now it’s summertime, with only a few upcoming keynotes …. and lots of time in the pool!

Faster is the new fast: innovating for the new, high velocity customer

June 27, 2007 by JimCarroll

In the fast paced world of instant obsolsolescence and rapid innovation, time-to-market is becoming a key factor for success.

This is a video clip from a recent keynote that I gave for hundreds of executives from the grocery and consumer products industries, titled Faster is the New Fast: Innovating for the New, High Velocity Customer. I take a look at what innovative retail, packaging and consumer goods companies do differently.

This is the third retail presentation that I’ve done for a major retail conference this year; earlier, I spoke to several hundred convenience store owners and their franchisees; as well as to a group of executives involved in health care retail.

There are a few key themes that I wove through this keynote that retailers, consumer goods and packaging companies need to be thinking about, as well as their advertising agencies:

velocity: i.e. collapsing product lifecycles
instantaneity: faster trends; I have a wonderful story about dive-in movies, that I use to describe how the new global idea sharing machine results in faster product to market!
spontaneity: social networking, rapid emergence of new “hits”; there’s a new suddenness with consumer choice!
intensity: business operational excellence is critical; I have a story of a video game distributor — 45% to 60% of profit of a new video game occurs in the first FOUR TO FIVE days. I explained similar short, sharp shocks of revenue are coming to consumer goods
unpredictability: sudden, rapid shift of consumer choice, with nicheing, impact of new packaging, etc.
simplicity: the new consumer wants nice, simple solutions that fit into their life; there’s a great story here from the work I did with the American Nursery Landscape Assn, that spins directly into consumer products, beverages etc, in that simplicity is the new branding.
volatility: great unknowns; water on planes, melamine/pet food; we have to be prepared for unforeseen risks!
attractability: there’s another video that I’ll post soon that involves a story of the plasma people and the cardboard people. suffice it to say, the new consumer will be more highly interactive, sooner than we think
unfocusability: short attention spans, consumers scan 50 feet of shelf space per second; we’re seeing collapsing newspaper/magazine spend, rapid growth of online spend, etc.
virtuality: Screen Digest, a media consultancy firm, predicts that 80% of active Internet users will become involved in a virtual world by 2012.

Related postings:

Next big home entertainment trend? Dive-in movies!
Can you run your business at video game intensity?
High velocity retail innovation
Creativity, trends and innovation in retail, packaging & consumer goods

Innovation in the global energy industry

June 26, 2007 by JimCarroll

I spent a half day last week with the CEO and senior management team of a large global energy company.

They engaged me to provide them with insight on the trends which will impact the global oil, natural gas, energy and distribution sectors in the years to come.

It was a small, intimate get-together with about 40 senior executives; I provided my insight into the trends that I believe will have the most impact. That was followed by about an hour of very intense, deep probing discussion; I obviously stirred up some creative thinking within the group.

While not going into the specifics, the broad brush strokes of what I covered off included my observations that they should be thinking about these issues.

presume massive market disruption: Think GoogleCar: don’t limit your view of the future as to what might transpire. The future of any industry will likely bear no resemblance to the industry structure of today. Future competitors will probably come from completely outside of an existing industry. Challenge every assumption that you have about the future.
prepare for significant transformation: realize that existing insurmountable challenges are simply a big opportunity to someone else. Someone, somewhere, is going to figure out how to plug hundreds of thousands if not millions of small, local, home based renewable energy sources into the energy grid. It’s mostly a computation/mathematical issue: the energy grid was not designed for two way electricity transmission, and so there will have to be an intense amount of computational dynamics to structure a solution. Result? An organization that is a master of massive computational capabilities — and hence, grid management — might very well be the new energy company of the future.
find opportunity in scientific rapidity: we’re in the era of global collaborative knowledge generation, and R&D is rapidly externalizing. The infinite global idea loop means that scientific discovery is now happening faster than ever before, which provides for more product and market opportunity. Innovative organizations plug in, ensuring that all staff are in tune with the rapid rate of scientific advance that surrounds them, and are prepared to ride new emerging ideas as soon as they begin to emerge.
capitalize on skills fragmentation: the war for talent will define future success. We’re entering a time of massive skills specialization and ever smaller knowledge niches. As I covered off in my keynote to a global financial audience in the Cayman’s, it’s the organizations that can build a culture, structure and flexibility to attract and retain skills that will find the key to success in the high velocity economy.
structure for volatility: extreme volatility is the ‘new normal.’ If you have the capability to quickly adjust strategy, structure, plans, skills, projects and teams, you’ve got the right stuff for the new world of constant change.
prepare for business intensity: innovative organizations plan for more rapid entrance and exits from new markets. They do so through flexible structure. Partnership takes on new role in era of exponentiating, fast complexity and the rapid emergence of new opportunities: if you can scale up, you can win big.

The Economist Intelligence Unit recently noted that “the ability to swiftly adapt to change represents the greatest challenge manufacturers face in creating long-term value.” That’s the bottom line for innovating in the high velocity energy industry.

Related posts:

The Google Car and massive market disruption
Global infinite idea loop
Talent, not money, is the new corporate battlefront

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.