Category Archives: Market Intelligence

Beyond the Beaker, A Book Review

Paul Patterson’s Beyond the Beaker, a book on How to Achieve Successful Market Adoption for Emerging Technologies, is a book that belongs on every innovator’s bookshelf. Whereas there are a lots of books on how to innovate, and even a fair number on how to take your product to market, there are very few that overview all of the relevant issues that need to be addressed and managed, fewer still that address both the innovator and corporate perspectives, even fewer still that illuminate the roadmap with real case studies, and next to none that uses successes and failures to help you understand the criticality of getting even the seemingly mundane choices right.

As Paul Patterson notes in the preface, the true, Real Life, events, which frequently go undocumented, are more often the critical events of success. For example, its 4 am and your phone rings. The person on the line is upset, screaming vulgarities because someone in the collaboration violated international trade laws. It’s your job to repair the situation.

For example, sometimes the most important aspect of the product is the seemingly mundane service guarantee. Here in North America, we expect our products to work and manufacturers to replace them if they don’t. We also reward companies who have faith in their products and provide satisfaction guarantees in addition to basic “works as advertised” guarantees. These companies do so knowing that, since we want to do the right thing, we won’t abuse the guarantee. However, do the right thing is culturally defined. Whereas some cultures will pride themselves on only using a guarantee if they are truly unsatisfied or the product doesn’t work, others will pride themselves on finding innovative ways to use the guarantee because their culture prizes cunning in business more than personal restraint. As Paul Patterson notes with this quote from Gan Chee Eng, Vice President of Amway China Company Limited, the Amway Guarantee almost put them out of business in China on the first day:

“I tried to explain to corporate that their guarantee will not work in China, but they insisted. People would have a wagon in the parking lot with a small barrel in it, come into the shop and purchase a 1 litter container of L.O.C.TM, walk out to their wagon, dump the container into the small barrel, walk back inside, and say, ‘I’m not satisfied, you replace’. Honouring the guarantee almost put us out of business on the first day. We closed for two weeks and re-opened with a new guarantee, which limited customer satisfaction to providing one replacement, which meant we effectively sold two for the price of one.”
– Gan Chee Eng

Sometimes the most important aspect of the product is the education around the importance of the product. For example, the success of Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL), the largest soap and detergent manufacturer in India, and its Lifebuoy soap (reformulation) came down to educating the populace on the importance of using soap. A market analysis by HLL found that many consumers were not using soap when washing because they believed that soap did not provide any additional value. So HLL developed an educational program that “visual clean is NOT safe clean” which included a germ-glow demonstration targeted at school children ages 5 to 13 and their parents. This program which did not advocate HLL or Lifebuoy but simply soap usage, ultimately led to a sales increase of 30%. The branding around the educational content was enough.

And sometimes the most important aspect of the product is the insight into potential usage. For example, consider the classic Post-It Note. In 1968, Spence Silver at 3M developed a super-weak glue that could stick to objects, and be easily peeled off, while searching for a new super-strong glue formula. For five years, he hyped the product internally, showing samples in spray-can and tack-less bulletin boards, but it never took off. Then he noticed Art Fry using pieces of the tack-less bulletin board tiles to mark pages in his hymnals and he came up with the idea for a better bookmark. Then he realized that the product wasn’t really a better bookmark at all, but a better note. And while there were technical challenges in perfecting the formula so the glue stayed on the note and not the object the note was stuck to when the note was removed and in developing appropriate coating equipment for paper (which was an imprecise substrate), the biggest hurdle was coming up with the right application for the technology. The second biggest was the right marketing campaign as the product, which was the company’s Outstanding New Product in 1981, did not take off with the first launch attempt in 1977, but the second in 1980.

The second thing I really like about the book is that it’s not your usual pop-culture business book that uses 200 pages to expound upon a simple (although usually very important) idea that could be summarized in 20 pages but is instead a jam-packed tome of information which would make a good textbook. As a result, this is a book that will end up on your bookshelf when you are done reading it and not the goodwill donation pile because you will want to read some parts of it more than once and keep it for reference.

Not only does it tackle strategic marketing, business development, financial concerns, legal considerations, organizational management, and corporate perspectives as well as the identification and evaluation of emerging technologies and technology development, but it addresses each from multiple viewpoints. For example, with respect to strategic marketing, it addresses SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, & Threats), macro and micro approaches, Porter’s Five Forces (Rivalry, Threat of Substitutes, Buyer Power, Supplier Power, and Barriers to Entry), Boston Consulting Group Market Evolution (Fragmented, Specialization, Volume, Stalemante), market and sector attractiveness, competitive advantage, value proposition, application and value chain analysis, other market drivers, and risk management. It addresses business development from a multitude of perspectives that include strategy, cultural, pitch, promotion, and communication. And it covers the five phase evaluation of emerging technologies (feasibility, value research, quick test market, action plan creation, and implementation) because the easiest thing about innovation is, well, innovation itself. The real challenges often lie in getting the innovation to market.

Finally, I really like the inclusion of a chapter on the corporate perspective. If you identify an emerging technology that you want to bring to market, you have to understand how your potential financiers think if you are going to be successful. Financiers typically invest in a portfolio of opportunities to mitigate their risks and increase the odds that they will see a return on their investment. As defined by Copper et. al in Portfolio Management for New Products:

Portfolio management for new products is a dynamic decision process wherein the list of active new products and R&D projects is constantly revised. In this process, new projects are evaluated, selected and prioritized. Existing projects may be accelerated, killed, or deprioritized and resources allocated and reallocated to the active projects. The portfolio decision process is characterized by uncertain and changing information, dynamic opportunities, multiple goals and strategic considerations, interdependence among projects, and multiple decision makers and locations.

This indicates that decisions about whether or not to invest in your product will not be made in a vacuum and will be made with respect to the rest of the portfolio. That means that you will need to insure that you continually address each of the critical success factors of portfolio management (strategic alignment, competitive advantage, market attractiveness, leverage of core competencies, technical feasibility, and financial rewards) if you wish to get funding and maintain it.

All in all, a great book and a great reference.

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Why Are You Paying PR Firms to Develop Your Marketing Plans?

As per Wikipedia, public relations is the practice of managing the communication between an organization and its publics. Let’s say it again. It is the practice of managing the communication. Not developing the communication. And certainly not developing the marketing plan that the communication is part of.

So how come it’s now becoming the norm that not a week goes by where I don’t hear of yet another vendor engaging a PR Firm to develop its marketing plan and spending, at least in my view, an obscene amount of money for the privilege?

(Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t use a PR Firm [even though I have had numerous issues with a number of PR Firms and/or vendors who have used external PR Firms over the last few years]. If you don’t have the talent in-house, can’t afford to have the talent in house, or don’t have the need for a full time PR person, then you should definitely consider engaging a PR Firm. Managed properly, a relationship with a good PR Firm who can help you get in front of the right audience and refine your message appropriate to the audience has a significant ROI. But a mismanaged relationship with the wrong PR Firm will come back to bite you in the behind. Like an arms-reach BPO who takes your broken process and runs, a mismanaged relationship is only going to make things worse.)

A PR Firm doesn’t know your products and services, they don’t know your business, and they might not even know your vertical. Considering that these are the three things you have to know to come up with a good marketing plan, how can you possibly expect a PR Firm come up with one? The reality is that the free marketing advice you’re going to get from us bloggers — who know your vertical, your business, your competition, and what your products should do — is much better than anything you’re going to get from a PR Firm no matter how many (tens of) thousands you spend.

Remember where the PR Firm’s expertise lies — communications management. A good PR Professional is a Spin Doctor. This means that for them to add value, they need a message to spin. If you don’t have a marketing plan with appropriately identified messages before you go to them, then they have nothing to spin.

So I guess what I’m saying is, if you hire a PR Firm to do your marketing plan, don’t be surprised if all you get back is a bunch of hot air. Their function isn’t creating substance, it’s creating spin. And if all you give them to spin is air, then that’s what they’ll do.

Flexible Capacity: Is it realistic in a down economy?

A recent article over on Supply Chain Brain on preparing for uncertainty noted that:

the imperative of capacity flexibility for design and development departments is especially high in the current uncertain climate. Even though the pressure on controlling operational cost is intensifying, leading to shedding excess capacity, not being able to fulfill demand when needed could lead to a lost customer. And losing customers due to capacity shortfall when demand does spike can lead to more losses than having excess capacity, which limits your loss to overhead.

But how do you create flexible capacity? The article gives us three options:

Create Capacity Options

One option is to buy capacity when needed, instead of retaining dedicated technologies. However, this will increase cost.

Another option is to cross-train dedicated capacity. For example, structural engineers could be cross-trained on mechanical systems and vice versa. Then your engineers could be applied where the need is. However, the engineers will be less productive in these secondary areas that they rarely work in, which will increase cost as the work will take longer and require a greater degree of care in review.

A third option is to use multiple vendors. However, if demand is forecasted to be low, and commitments are minimal, the chances of you getting the best price on a per-unit basis are slim to none.

Rolling Forecast Mechanism

Use periodic rolling forecasts that are updated regularly, and at least quarterly, and ramp available capacity up or down on a regular basis, such as every quarter, based on the rolling forecast updates. However, it costs you money every time you have to recruit someone or lay them off. Furthermore, what happens if you can’t find the talent fast enough when you need to ramp up quickly?

Layered Sourcing

Maintain captive capacity at the expected minimum demand level for a given time period (such as a year) and then have on-demand contracts with additional providers who serve as capacity reservoirs. The spot-buys from the capacity reservoirs will be more costly, but will always correlate against actual demand.

But how realistic is each of the above in the current down economy?

Capacity options

Buying capacity when needed sounds good, but without guaranteed income, many more suppliers are going to go out of business. So it might not be there when you need it.

Your staff is probably already over-worked, and under-paid, and chances are you’ve already made the mistake of cutting the training budget, which is usually the second thing to get cut after the travel budget. So this probably isn’t an option either.

More vendors than necessary is not going to save you money, so that’s not a good option either.

Rolling Forecasts

Not only can you probably not afford the costs associated with hiring and firing every quarter, but you’re probably already running at minimum staff levels. Thus, even though you should be using rolling forecasts anyway, you can’t really use them as a fountain of flexible capacity.

Layered Sourcing

This could work, as long as your captive vendors also give you the option for reserve/ramp-up capacity because even if your reserve vendors don’t go out of business, it could take them time to ramp-up.

In conclusion, in a down economy, your options for flexible capacity are limited and layered sourcing might be your only alternative. Any differing opinions?

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Change By Design, A Book Review

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Although he was the engineer’s engineer, Brunel [who designed the Great Western Railway] was not solely interested in the technology behind his creations. While considering the design of the system, he insisted upon the flattest possible gradient because he wanted passengers to have the sense of “floating across the countryside”. He constructed bridges, viaducts, cuttings, and tunnels all in the cause of creating not just efficient transportation but the best possible experience … Brunnel was one of the earliest examples of a design thinker.

A purely technocentric view of innovation is less sustainable now than ever, and a management philosophy based only on selecting from existing strategies is likely to be overwhelmed by new developments at home or abroad. What we need are new choices — new products that balance the needs of individuals and of society as a whole; new ideas that tackle the global challenges of health, poverty, and education; new strategies that result in differences that matter and a sense of purpose that engages everyone affected by them.

Only gradually did I come to see the power of design not as a link in a chain but as the hub of a wheel. … I also noticed that the people who inspired me were not necessarily members of the design profession; engineers such as Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Thomas Edison, and Ferdinand Porsche, all of whom seemed to have a human-centered rather than technology-centered worldview.

The natural revolution from design doing to design thinking reflects the growing recognition on the part of today’s business leaders that design has become too important to be left to designers.

So begins Tim Brown’s new book Change By Design (available September 29) that tackles the myth of innovation that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the mids of geniuses while exposing the reality that most innovations stem from rigor and discipline … the kind that comes from the application of proper design thinking. Design thinking, a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues, attempts to match necessity to utility, constraint to possibility, and need to demand to meet end-user need and drive business success. The ultimate challenge for a design thinker is to help people articulate the latent needs they don’t even know they have. Fortunately, the search for insight — in contrast to the search for hard data — is that it’s everywhere and it’s free. You just have to open your eyes and look at what people are doing.

For example, when IDEO was hired by Zyliss to design a new line of kitchen tools for the home, they started out by studying children and professional chefs. While neither was the intended market, both yielded valuable insights. A seven-year-old struggling with a can opener highlighted issues of physical control adults have learned to disguise and the shortcuts used by a professional chef yielded insights into cleaning requirements. The exaggerated concerns of people at the margins of the market led the team to abandon the idea of a “matched set” and create a line of products with the right handle for each tool. The end result was a product line that flew off of the shelves. [Proving one of my favourite points: just because you’ve been doing it that way for years, it doesn’t mean you’ve been doing it right!]

The Zyliss success story happened because the willing, and even enthusiastic, acceptance of competing constraints by the design team is the foundation of design thinking. The first stage of the design process is often about discovering which constraints are important and establishing a framework for evaluating them. Constraints can best be visualized in terms of three overlapping criteria for successful ideas: feasibility, viability, and desirability. A competent designer will resolve each of these three constraints, but a design thinker will bring them into harmonious balance. The popular Nintendo Wii is a good example of what happens when someone gets it right.

For those trying to wrap their minds around design thinking, the basic innovation rules that Tim outlines in chapter 3, A Mental Matrix, are a great place to start because they’ll put you in the mindset required to grasp the key tenets of design thinking.

  1. The best ideas emerge when the whole organizational ecosystem has room to experiment.
    And room to fail! The greatest successes will often emerge after you get the false starts and failures out of the way (and make an effort to understand why you failed).
  2. Those most exposed to changing externalities are the ones best placed to respond
    and the most motivated to do so.
    Furthermore, if you have someone who thrives in that sort of an environment, make sure she’s on the team!
  3. Ideas should not be favoured based on those who create them.
    The most successful individuals are often those who latch on to, and promote, good ideas.
  4. Ideas that create a buzz should be favoured.
    Nothing’s better than viral marketing!
  5. The “gardening” skills of senior leadership should be used to tend, prune, and harvest ideas.
    Not to create them.
  6. An overarching purpose should be articulated.
    You’re looking for new ideas to solve a problem that people want solved.

And you want to grasp design thinking, because it works. Probably the best example is that of “Cool Biz“, the imaginative program from the award-winning Japanese advertising agency Hakuhodo designed to help the Ministry of the Environment in Japan get people moor involved in meeting Japan’s commitment to the greenhouse gas reduction goals of the Kyoto Protocol. Within a year of the launch of this program, the slogan “Cool Biz” was recognized by a staggering 95.8% of the Japanese market. Can you imagine the boost to your corporate brand if 95.8% of your potential market recognized your corporate offerings?

For more information on design thinking, which is becoming more necessary by the day in a world where constant change is inevitable and everything is a prototype, see the Design Thinking blog, IDEO’s website, the The Harvard Business Review article on Design Thinking, the Innovation 100 Interview with Tim Brown on YouTube, the Design Thinking video (extended version) on YouTube, and the Global X Interview with Tim Brown on YouTube.

And if you’re still not convinced you should buy the book, consider the following quote which literally made my day:

Business school professors are fond of writing learned articles about the value of brainstorming. I encourage them to continue to do so (after all, some of my best friends are business school professors, and it keeps them busy and out of my way).

Would This Be The End of Wall Street?

Louis Gerstner recently said that “short-term investment gains should be taxed at 80%”. It’s one of the most logical things I’ve ever read. But such a logical plan to fix what’s wrong with our greedy economy by taking us back to good old-fashioned long term thinking would likely be the end of Wall Street.

But would that be a bad thing?