GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Benjamin Schwarz is one of the best professional in digital TV I know. Recognized international expert on converging media and technologies, he bloggs at  CTOIC.net.

An old friend since the early days of IPTV in 2004,we often chat about the future of Television, and this time we talked about the current challenges of Social TV and Content Recommendation.

Drawing on this conversation, I would like to examine an approach for innovation in a disruptive market.

What is Social TV?

Social TV is digital interaction between people about television content or their digital interaction with that content, as defined by Futurescape.TV.

In my opinion, Social TV covers three main domains:

• Firstly is the domain of Content discovery where the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) is enhanced with Internet information web sites, and social recommendations through Twitter feed and Facebook. Social reviews nurture social curation, empowering viewers to filter and voice their opinions, and then to participate.
• Secondly there is Participative TV where viewers interact with the program for voting, betting, polling, playing, converse with characters and TV presenter, Live Tweet or Facebook chat, and buy things related to the program.
• Finally the domain of Device and cloud control is where you enable channel flicking from a smart phone, flinging stored or bookmarked content around the home, or the world, one-click options to bookmark or save shows to cloud storage (universal queue).

Social TV corresponds as well to the emergence of the Companion App on smart phone & tablets, making all the connections, discovery, participation, control and giving access to all sorts of TV viewing as well: “broadcast” TV, VoD, catch up, and streaming media.

Smart phones and tablets are called the second screen in this context. A second screen brings many benefits: it is convenient (“big picture on TV, Facebook on second screen”), intuitive, frictionless, personal, and of vital importance to many operators, it is already paid for and can be monetized!

While Social TV meets high usage growth, competition is fierce: more than “50 apps currently socialize your TV“!

Why is Social TV a disruptive market?

Some predict an even stronger impact, amending the story telling:

• Viewers’ engagement around TV shows will become so massive that it will start undermining the current ways of creating shows and become the main driver for new TV content” claims Anne-Marie Roussel, expert in Social TV at Sharp in Silicon Valley.

• It’s a major issue for broadcasters and networks. “The future isn’t either traditional or digital: it’s a feedback loop between the two. Television fans want to get involved and be counted. It’s how creative we are in engaging those fans – and keeping them connected – that will determine how potent and profitable we will be in the future.” says Kevin Reilly, President of Entertainment, Fox Broadcasting.

• “Content will then be created with social interaction in mind”, adds Anne-Marie, “the audience will be able to interact with the storyline”. Voting online for some game shows, and affecting the outcome of the show is just a start: welcome to the era of Transmedia!

What innovative path did we find in this fast evolving market?

Our bet starts to win-back: developed in very short time, Blended TV is currently used or in the process of being used by various applications within Orange (Orange Sports web portal, Rendez-Vous TV / Le Mag TV companion app, Roland Garros app, Orange France web portal), and outside Orange (Broadcasters, TV metrics provider, TV guide).

The next challenge is the customer experience

Let us not deny it: the ultimate challenge for those completing an end-user Social TV service is to create a great customer experience, understanding customer behaviour, and providing simplicity and relevancy.

Consumers use a variety of sources to discover what’s personally relevant as explains Richard Edelman in “Media Cloverleaf”. I believe the user interface has to screen the complexity of the engine, reflected in the various spheres, and in the range of tools (recommendation tool, Social TV intelligence engine) that could be processed, learning to know the viewer better everyday.

Cory Bergman founder of Lostremote, a web site dedicated to Social TV, has a creative idea, displaying 4 kinds of recommendations :

1. new episodes of shows you customarily watch;
2. current shows your friends enjoy;
3. trending shows across the larger population, and
4. what your friends are watching now.”

Maybe like the four sides of a cube?

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

The world of Intelligent Things

Netexplo presented recently a meaningful conference related to the world of Intelligent Things. What is this world? Intelligent Things are objects which “become” intelligent because they connect to the Internet.

At Lieu du Design, in a conference named “Digital objects, design of a new industrial world – Internet of things”, and presented last May by Jean-Louis Frechin, one talked about “extending objects by Internet connection“. Extension means a various set of actions enhancing the object: hacking, gluing, watching through sensors like cameras, …

Some Intelligent Things are extensions of pre-existing objects (“revisiting the object”), but others are original creations, designing specific Internet objects that will communicate, collect and display knowledge, entertain, collaborate, …

Actually, Rafi Haladjian, a forerunner in creating Intelligent Things with his Nabaztag rabbit, distinguishes various ranges of sensors, an essential piece to change inert objects into Intelligent Things: “infrastructure, smart phone, enhanced device, neo objects, add-on like Rfid tag, and DIY (do it yourself)”.

Sensors collect data and lead to the “area of big data“, and the concept of “web squared“.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Marketing innovation traps

Once you’ve  “iterated your innovation” enough to sharpen it to go to market, you might feel relieved.

But there are still several traps to address if you’re willing to “cross the chasm”.

1. Needs aren’t enough

Customer expectations need to be fulfilled but what customers imagine as an innovation might end as an incremental optimized release of a current product;  This is not what you’re looking for.

To achieve real breakthrough, you have to tackle “erstwhile imaginary”, desire, and design your innovation as a cultural object: Stéphane Hugon explains how Internet has grown so fast and taken such an important place in our life, by the fact that it echoes in-depth imaginaries, present in our real life, and coming from far away.

2. The “S” curve is not systematic

Following instantaneous sales towards early adopters, you might encounter a flop and not cross the gap between early adopters and mass market: “what works for early adopters does not work for the mainstream and the other way around”. While Techies like feature abundance, mainstream users value simplicity: they hate it, when technology takes control!

Moore’s paradigm has gone all the more difficult that early adopters might not have the time to become evangelist for your innovation, and convince mainstream users to use it: in times where new technologies flow continuously, “your early adopters might run off to play with a new great thing before you have a chance to take your technology mainstream”.

Your window of opportunity has become dramatically narrow, and you have to carefully work on the value that the product creates: if early adopters perceive an immediate lasting value, one can hope that they will be less tempted by the next new technology.

3. The emphasis is too much on the technical dimension

Innovation projects have a tendency to handle technical risk, targeting zero default operating, looking for perfection adding continuously new advanced features; this way, they underestimate marketing and financial risks.

But the market does not stand still during the time of your development: you have to keep a close watch on competition. Moreover, it’s rare for a product to become a “de facto standard” because of its single technical capabilities: it’s the understanding of a wider ecosystem which proves to be key.

Consumers buy-in to a product is not limited to its function: they buy a product or service because of its price, its accessibility (ease of buy, notoriety), its ease of use (user friendliness), the status it provides (branding), the effect it produces (effectiveness, emotional feeling).

All these parameters have to be captured in the design: viable, feasible, and desirable.

4. Market is targeted as a whole

In marketing management, this approach is called the “big homogeneous market myth”! This is the mistake Diesel made by challenging head-on and globally the steam engine.

Actually, your innovation might well benefit from niches conquest as initial steps: having customers in various segments, with different applications of your know-how, bring good sales, enhanced feedback, and keep good spirit!

5. Marketing investment is underestimated

It’s about marketing investment, and not marketing costs: it’s an investment in the way that marketing helps you build a brand (which might prove more sustainable than your technological advance); by turning your innovation design into a story, it initiates a relationship with your customers which will feed your innovation in return, if you demonstrate your ability to listen and iterate.

Don’t forget that when innovating in a disruptive way, you are like a new entrant. Marketing investment can be from 60% to 100% of development costs for a new product seeking for market creation, and up to 70% of leader’s revenues, when looking for substitution.

Driving marketing innovation to success

Considering the previous traps, what might be an effective approach to market successfully your innovation?

Before we focus on a specific customer target, we need to determine which is the right target: it’s something you don’t know for sure at the launch of an innovative product. Therefore a wise advice is to start by abounding towards a selected range of various targets, assess market reactiveness, and then focus on the customer pools adopting the product with thrust, allowing a rapid growth of your market share.

Customer segments can be determined by a classical partitioning using technical criteria (problems solved by the innovation) and behaviours (innovators, early adopters, …), and feedback can be rapidly captured through one to one interview on customers samples.

The higher is the perceived quality of your product, the higher will be your market share (PIMS): “quality improvement is the single most important source of gains in market share, which in turn favorably affect prices and various costs and, ultimately profitability”.

To monitor the quality perceived by customers, you need to work closely with them: it requires proximity to get feedback, iterate, update and develop new functionality.

First customers are really key in this move, also non customers who did not adopt the product: understand the reason why they did not commit can help you correct quickly your marketing launch, repositioning your offering with regards to the market.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Why don’t teams work?

“Why team don’t work”, an HBR interview with J. Richard Hackman by Diane Coutu, is a great and surprising article on team work: while everyone takes team work for granted, researches from Professor Hackman, the Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University, show that “most of the time, team members don’t even agree on what the team is supposed to be doing“.

“Getting agreement is the leader’s job, and the team leader must be willing to take great personal and professional risks to set the team’s direction.”

In brief, Professor Hackman also points out that:

• “teams underperform often their great creative and productive potential;
• teams need to be set up carefully to ensure they have a compelling direction;
• small teams whose memebers stay together for long periods of time perform best;
• leading a team requires enormous courage because authority is always involved, which arouses great anxiety in team; great team leaders often encouter resistance so intense it can put their jobs at risk”.

Let’s make the whole more than the sum of its parts

Conversely what we want to achieve is Confucius mantra, a greater whole than the sum of its parts, and to use the team as a leverage for innovation.

So let’s assume you’re the team leader, and go through some dimensions that will help you glue together the team work.

1. Belief

A team will gather around a shared vision, which is a foundation for your innovation; so the very beginning is to express your belief or the metaphor for the innovation you want to raise: innovation is design, it requires a clear intent, before translating concept in a simple and elegant realization. For example, in the Silicon Valley, there is an apiration to make the world a better place with their innovation, others want to solve a specific problem they’ve been facing for years, a few “think different”…

You don’t have to build this alone like an hermit: for our Smart TV design, the key principle of Openness (TV experience opening doors to Internet content & services) came in the early days of our team work. For our social TV work, we picked up “Social Belief“, meaning that social conversations around TV are not just noise, but, if well collected and filtered, they can help your content discovery.

2. People

Brainstorming about a belief featuring your innovation target is fun! In my experience, setting-up the team is the most difficult part. A friend of mine at HEC told me: if you really want to know if you’re going to get along with this person, have lunch with him and see if you get bored! Bottom line: recruiting successfully takes time. That’s why they spend substantial time on recruitment at Ideo or Google.

The paradox is that you’re in an innovation hurry: control the haste is then your first resistance act as team leader.

You need the right skills to go the long innovation way: you have to select the best in a range of functions: idea generator, designer, engineer, user observer-sociologist, market watcher, product marketing, … Each of them should show an ability to listen and debate, collect ideas from each other (for immediate use or kept on the shelf to use later), take risks, test new things, call into question established systems (what Professor Hackman calls “deviant thinking, opening up more ideas, getting more originality”).

Tim Brown calls them T-shaped people. If regular involvement of all team members in debate is necessary, it’s not always a natural movement for everyone, especially for expert engineers not used to speak up: help them by fostering attention when they express.

Harnessing collective intelligence is what you want, it involves the customer as well. “Support and feedback is what our customers are telling us, product is what we’re telling our customers, presenting one cohesive story to the world” spots Twitter’s founder, Jack Dorsey. Switching from monologue to dialogue with customer is an uneasy thing the team will have to complete as a whole. Help your team to value customer feedback as a lever to rebound on innovative items.

You know you have succeeded when team members start spontaneously sharing views in meeting, out of their traditional role’s boundary. Last time I saw this was when everyone was excited to discuss about the logo of our social TV service, Blended TV!

You may benefit from starting with a small number of people to build a core team. Moreover, big teams over double digits “usually wind up wasting everybody’s time”.

While your team need stability so people get “comfortable and familiar with one another”, you might want to adapt team composition overtime, when approaching the marketplace: marketing processes, brand, or commercial launch of a product or service will have more importance. One thing that really paid off in one TV service I developed was to have all functions involved from the start, including sales and customer service. Those people acted as a regular link with the customer and retails shops, very precious at the early stage and along the process. Their involvement was light at the beginning, just expressing their feeling as market representatives, and it became more important as they had to anticipate market launch, and eventually the hand over of the project when product got running.

Bringing together a “dream team” of talent to participate in the innovation project is one of the most difficult task. Like in innovation, failure is part of the game, and player can be replaced as in any sport game. No need to make someone guilty, complete substitution in due course. Try to learn fast, what kind of people you fit with, and share a common innovation timing.

3. Framework

A framework for the team work is something quite well known: first of all, “team must be bounded, with explicit membership” as highlights Professor Hackman; you need then to provide a clear organization of tasks and responsibilities, set-up stretched goals to electrify team motivation, help narrowing the scope to avoid depressing hesitation, handle launch and regular follow-up meetings, and arbitrate conflicts with no delay: a latent conflict is some sure innovation killer.

Consistency and cohesion are the two legs of your innovation team: every one shall have the same fight, designers and developers …, everyone shall understand how it makes sense with regards to the innovation belief.

I have put it in other words in “creative tension is good for you!” talking about knowledge circulation as the key indicator of a good team framework.

4. Environment of trust

Innovation team needs protection. While providing the team with appropriate distance from mainstream operations and issues, it requires headquarter manager to be humble, to slightly set back as well.

Osman Can Ozcanli speaks about “in vitro method“, consisting in finding innovative and autonomous people, and letting them free in a flexible framework.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Same Exterior, Different Innovation Engines

by Nicolas Bry

As I was completing my thesis on “rapid innovation”, one of the frequent comment was: “and you’re lucky to work in the digital industry because you can include in your case studies Google and Apple”. As if they were two innovation champions of the same kind…

Google and Apple may seem to share similar innovation patterns from afar, but under the hood, they play totally different ball games. This way, they demonstrate their ability to build their own identity based on a genuinely personal  innovation model. Let’s get more in-depth into the comparative analysis.

Leadership and Culture

Google was founded in 1998 by two brilliant engineers and strong leaders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. To take their growth to the next stage, and in response to the well-meaning but strong pressure exerted by their shareholders, they strengthened the team in 2001 by recruiting Eric Schmidt, a manager with an international reputation, as Executive Chairman. On joining the business, Eric Schmidt discovered that 60% of searches were run from areas outside of the USA and set up sales teams to develop operations in Europe. The management style is characterized by the care dedicated to recruitment: Larry Page has always carefully considered each and every application from potential candidates and it is not uncommon for up to 10 recruitment interviews to be held. However, this does not mean that there is no scope for thoughtful open-mindedness: to boost the performance of its network of servers, Google’s 18^th employee was a neurosurgeon who had qualified at Harvard and the Yale School of Medicine. Finally, one should note the sense of fun “which is taken very seriously” at Google; the Googleplex site is playfully decorated, with toys, benefits and services available on the premises, while the delicious, cosmopolitan and healthy cuisine symbolizes the sense of enjoyment that presides at Google.

Even though Apple was co-founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, it is really the “baby” of one leader, Steve Jobs, who has not ceased to act as its visionary, charismatic and authoritative head except for during the period when he left the company between 1985 and 2000. It would be possible to say that Steve Jobs has invented himself a super hero outfit in order to be better identified: he is invariably dressed in a black, high-collared T-shirt, jeans and white New Balance tennis shoes; the round spectacles and carefully neglected beard complete his American student look which creates the illusion of eternal youth reminiscent of our childhood heroes. Steve Jobs does not hesitate to get involved: on welcoming Didier Lombard, former Orange France Telecom CEO, and presenting the first iPhone release, he got up, walked around the table and got down on his knees next to the President of France Télécom to show him he could zoom in on pictures using two fingers and how to access his address book. This contagious enthusiasm is one of Apple’s strengths. What is more: Steve Jobs has not become obsessed by power and, according to his colleagues, continues to be a man who is open to criticism provided that it is backed up arguments.

Portfolio of Innovations

Google initially developed on the basis of a simple, fast search engine which provides high-quality responses. The portfolio has become considerably more diverse with the Gmail mail service, the Google Images and Google News search services, the Froogle price comparison service, the Google Maps and Google Earth map tools, the Google Chrome Internet browser, the Android operating system, and the Google TV middleware, namely a range of innovative and powerful tools for using the Internet. Google also conducted an intense strategy to acquire emerging technologies and know-how: Double Click ($ 3,2bn), AdMob ($ 681m), Keyhole (future Googleearth),  Grand Central (future Google Voice). Rooted more or less directly in Google’s search expertise, these tools do not always seem to be interlinked in any obvious way or to contribute directly to the revenue streams of the sponsored links. Instead, this service portfolio seems to be motivated by the technological challenge, the possibility of taking innovation further, of providing a new useful and effective service on the Internet.

Apple has built its success on its legendary Macintosh whose user interface offered a revolutionary new way of using a computer. This product is backed up by a strategic innovation: Apple changed the business model initiated by IBM, by targeting the public at large and professional users, purchasing its microprocessors from external suppliers and using a network of stores as outlets for its computers. Since the return of Steve Jobs, Apple has managed a paradox: it has widen its portfolio from PC to entertainment devices , and it has kept at the same time a strong innovation focus, concentrating on a small number of products: iMac, iPod, iPhone, and now iPad. Together, these products form a family and have been designed within a very strong ecosystem: the range of accessories continues to grow and is now being promoted in the Apple Stores. The most extensive ecosystem is in the sofware: it is the one that embraces the iPod personal music player, the iPhone & the iPad, and goes right through to the iTunes music and video download service, and has helped Apple develop into a content provider. It has been extended with the App store, a store of thousands of applications which run on iPhone and iPad.

The Innovation Process

Google’s need to innovate is huge since it does not possess a captive user group, with everyone being free to change search engine whenever they want. Google closely integrates users in the design of its products and practices a type of collaborative product creation: after seeing how strongly Internet users reacted to the first changes to the search engine’s home page, Google was quick to understand the value of including these users at an early stage in its design considerations. This gave rise to the logic of developing beta versions which are available online at GoogleLabs.com. These are unfinished versions which are intended to be improved thanks to the tests performed by users. Finally, Android, without truly being totally open in the same way as an open source system, is a no-cost operating system which other players in the industry are free to implement in mobile terminals and TV decoders and which is used in third-party mass-market applications (Android Market is Google’s answer to the App Store). At Google, all IT developers can spend 20% of their time, or one day a week, working on the project of their choice. This 20% rule is a way of encouraging innovation: enjoy yourself, don’t worry about whether your idea is going to make money. It takes its inspiration from 3M and the working rhythm that Larry and Sergey experienced at Stanford: the American teachers who spend 4 days in the office and the fifth immersing themselves in research. Google believes that people are more productive when they are working on things that they consider important or that they have invented. It is also a way of promoting bottom-up innovation: there are limits to what a management team can specify or command. Thus people talk about what they are working on over lunch, the Google intranet allows everyone to tell the others about the object of their work (Google tools enable to stay connected everyday including the week end),  and the company also sets aside time for meetings at which the engineers can listen to the comments their colleagues have to make about their budding ideas: a positive comment means that other people are prepared to work with you and is the first step in constituting a project. Then some of these ideas receive finance and the management team assures the follow-up necessary to ensure that the project becomes a reality. Google offers both freedom and resources.

Apple constructs complete, self-contained ecosystems around its products. The software is an integral part of the hardware and any divorce between the software and the appearance of the terminal could harm the brand. Apple retains control of the system and the customer is simply a user of the product: consequently, a Windows PC is more open than a Macintosh; a fact which has caused some users to unlock, or “jailbreak”, their iPhones in order to install applications outside of the Apple system. However, with the iPhone, Apple is nevertheless opening up to developers for the first time by allowing them to create mass-market applications which Apple then validates and publishes in the App Store where users can download them to their iPhones at their own expense. Another characteristic of the Apple innovation process lies in the secrecy which surrounds the design of new products. The company’s executives are extremely disciplined concerning its strategy of silence, certain rooms are protected from the eyes of inquisitive employees by secure access mechanisms and projects are designated by code names. One and the same project has different internal and external name and these codes change half-way through the development phase: Didier Lombard recalls that it was forbidden to mention the iPhone other than by the term Acmé. Apple does not hesitate to perform take-overs in order to save time, acquire expertise or complete the ecosystem surrounding their innovations: with the purchase of PA Semi, a chip designer, and the grey matter of its teams, Apple has secured a competitive advantage for its tablet and iPhone 4 in terms of performance, energy efficiency and production costs.

Design

In terms of design, the Google search engine is characterized by an extremely simple home page. This page was designed by Sergey Brin in the absence of the money needed to pay a graphic artist and with no great artistic talent himself! It has become a distinctive Google trait. Google’s initial approach to design was somewhat random in which pleasing results arrive by chance (“serendipity”). The same sense is found in the products that followed: Gmail, Google Earth, Chrome etc. in which the main aim of the graphical user interface ergonomics and functions is to meet a need efficiently and the design is not particularly remarkable.

Apple’s hallmark is its design. Its products have always been carefully designed and easy to use. Very early on, Steve Jobs said that computers were only slowly finding a place in the home because they were horrible grey machines designed by engineers with no taste. With him, the concepts of beauty and ease of us penetrated the IT world: “What Apple is great at is figuring out how to invent cool technology and making it wonderfully easy to use”. Nothing is left to chance, from the shape of the products through to the cable that powers them. The designer Jonathan Ive, who once designed bathrooms, imposes his ideas on the engineers and through him, the iPod and iMac products were to mark a turning point; they were no longer merely “user friendly“, they were “friendly” pure and simple: beyond their functionality, they reflected a prestigious status which gave pleasure to the user, they created an emotional relationship. In other words: Apple has the desire to achieve totemic minimalist and playful devices through design & engineering excellence, integrating simple to use and theatrical interfaces and a closed eco-system“, the whole creating an unforgettable emotional experience that is bigger than the sum of the parts.

The Brand

Rather than spending the money they had raised on advertising, Google’s founding duo were intent on creating a quality product and providing a service that was sufficiently attractive for people to want to use it. Good products backed up by word-of-mouth recommendation, so to speak. Under these circumstances, the recognition achieved by this brand which has become a part of everyday speech represents an outstanding success. This marketing approach, unsystematic to say the least, is seen again in the creation of the Google brand name which was brought into existence by the founders during an evening’s brainstorming when they mistook it for Gogol! Gogol (10¹⁰⁰) had sparked the founders’ imagination and “Google chose this term to symbolize its mission: to organize the immense volume of information available on the Web.” This lucky spelling mistake was then to give rise to the name Google. This initial conviction has recently been enriched by the desire to develop the Google brand through the founding of the Google Creative Lab. Its mission is to remind people why they like Google; it works in association with the product managers. The Creative Lab is a proactive force that develops concepts (e.g. YouTube Symphonic orchestra, a composition by Tan Dung with a competition for musicians); it operates as a studio, as a creative PR agency and manages relations with the other agencies.

The Apple brand is at the very top of Maslow’s pyramid! Apple products draw their customers into the Apple world, they ensure acknowledgement, they leverage accomplishment and give their users a feeling of freedom. People speak of the brand’s iconic status, of religion and a faith in Apple! Apple is an expert in marketing strategies. Before a product launch, the information surrounding it is released drip-by-drip and Apple makes sure that rumors keep circulating outside of the company. There is nothing like keeping the buzz going to make sure that you are talked about while saving costs: David Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School, has calculated that before its launch, the iPhone had benefited from free media coverage worth an estimated 400 million dollars. The products are then presented at a finely choreographed public event, the famous semi-annual Keynote, which is synchronized with intensive advertising campaigns. Jobs’ public appearances are models of successful communication. If the Apple boss always gives the impression of speaking informally then this is a mere illusion. Every word is painstakingly rehearsed with his team of PR consultants: for example, the “Today, Apple will reinvent the telephone” at the launch of the iPhone, the careful staging of his praise for the lightness of the MacBook Air which he removed from a padded envelope which he opened in front of the cameras. The clarity of his presentations which never contain more than one sentence, one photo or one visual is as remarkable as his way of making numbers concrete: “the iPad battery lasts 10 hours? That’s enough to watch movies non-stop on a flight from New York to Tokyo.” In 2011 Apple’s brand just overtook Google to become the world’s most valuable brand at $ 153 billion.

Business Model

After initially adopting the conventional approach of selling licenses for the use of its search technology, Google has been distinguished by the innovative nature of its business model: drawing on the experience of the yellow pages in which advertisements appear on the same page as the consulted numbers, Google developed sponsored links (inspired by Overture) associated with an auction system for key search terms which places Internet users at the center of the value chain.

The Apple business model is the classic model of a manufacturer marketing its own terminals and accessories. This has recently been enriched by the online iTunes service (music sales and video rental), the applications available in the App Store (revenue shared with the application developers) and the Apple Store distribution network (reintegration of distributor margins), with Apple extending its control over the industry network.

Philosophy

“Don’t do evil” is written on Google’s walls. This illustrates the original angelic desire of its engineer founders who were also able to put on the mantle of battle-hardened businessmen. When Google was first listed on the stock exchange, they said: “Our search results are the best that we can produce; we do not take money to change these results. We therefore display advertisements that we can clearly identify and which we do our very best to make relevant”. The text “Help make a better world” also appeared in the initial launch document.

Steve Jobs is the incarnation of the Apple philosophy. Beyond his design and brand philosophy, Steve Jobs, who is nicknamed the “Apple guru”, gives the impression of someone with a mission to accomplish, teaching to lavish. As he said in 2005 at America’s Stanford University when describing the lessons he had learned from his life “connecting the dots looking backwards; find what you love to do & follow your heart; stay hungry, stay foolish, live every day like the last day and some day it will be true!”, a lesson that continues to be gospel truth for millions of Apple fans today.

Would you like to know more about innovation champions, and see how they distribute from thriving innovation organization to innovation dedicated unit? Have a look at:”become the innovator you are”.

Image credit: missha

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Innovation is no serendipity” says Braden Kelley in Innovation is No Accident: “When it comes to innovation, good ideas are a dime of a dozen”.

The story of Newton’s falling apple is surely not what happened to Charles Goodyear: “Discovery holds meaning only for the one whose mind is prepared to draw an inference, the one who has applied himself most perseveringly to the subject.”

Actually Braden claims:

“innovation thrives within an environment with some structure and constraints, it is not a solo activity and requires that collaboration be fostered with a formalized approach”.

It includes innovation meaning for your organization, innovation language, vision, strategy, goals, process, financing, innovation portfolio, projects staffing and funding, instrumenting to learn fast.

Similarly, in Rapid innovation model and Innovation: thoughts for thoughts from 24 years ago, I have suggested innovation projects should be sparkled with a “creative tension”.

What is creative tension, and how does it articulate with new product development teams?

Tension #1 is Diversity

• Diversity will be promoted within innovation teams; setting-up multidisciplinary teams, with T-shaped professionals, crossing the company boundaries, and interacting with the outside market of innovation is a way to circulate knowledge and enhance creativity: bringing  a variety of point of view generates new ideas and accelerates development, and further industrialization through anticipation. Diversity is also a source of tension, and one has to define a common language to let the team work harmoniously : tension drives attention!

Tension #2 is Focus:

• Knowledge circulation is key and has to be carefully monitored, notably by fast iterative prototyping, showing whether the concept manage to transfer into elegant realization, and capturing new knowledge to enrich the concept as in the C-K approach. Fast prototyping implies cutting development into pieces, and moving incrementally at fast pace. Designing in short cycle eliminates a lot of collateral ideas, focusing on the essence, converging progressively as product finds its identity, leaving “chaos for order”. “Keep It Simple and Sexy” is a constant tension for the innovation team.

Tension #3 is Leadership:

• It provides a constructive management framework as well as ambitious and specific goals which will support innovation efforts: narrowing the scope actually helps the team. To manage the creation of new knowledge linked to your innovation, the team will have to build what Ikijiro Nonaka calls metaphor, analogy, and model in “the knowledge creating company”:
  
  • Metaphor is intuitive, it’s a symbol which drives imagination and starts creative process;
  • Analogy is the next step which clarifies distinctions and solves inconsistency;
  • Model is the last step, it is logical, immediately understandable, and integrates all concepts previously created.

Conclusion

Metaphor reminds me of Belief Simon Sinek speaks of in “How great leaders inspire action” at Ted: “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, they buy in your belief. “No freedom without necessity” says French philosopher Alain. Developing co leaders within the team, empowering team members, letting the team manage the team, achieving persistent knowledge circulation, inspiring your team create a worthy operating system to boost innovation. It’s also a demanding way to lead, requiring indefectible trust: that’s the third tension.

Creative tension addresses risk and uncertainty; it builds a framework for the innovation team which reduces what Jeffrey Phillips calls the uncertainties of innovation: strategic, outcome, communication, success, commitment.

What is important is to get your team out of  “serendipity land”! And therefore define your own innovation engine and share it with your team, grabbing in the methodologies what echoes in your mind, and molding it the way it fits with your organization.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Strategy is about resource allocation.

So is innovation, and portfolio management (PM) is one proper practice of investing resource according to your innovation strategy.

Robert G. Cooper is a master in portfolio management.

He has defined 10 best practices and 4 guidelines for portfolio management for new products:

Best practices are:

1. load the front-end of the project;
2. install an idea to launch process and stage and gate system;
3. adopt an incremental commitment approach (before full investment);
4. know when to walk away (learn to kill projects)
5. categorize your developments projects into buckets and adapt (one size doesn’t fit all)
6. triangulate (combine multiple selection methods) to pick projects
7. try scorecards as a Go/Kill decision tool;
8. use success criteria (such as profitability and sales) too;
9. use the right financial approach (Expected Commercial Value method might be more appropriate than Net Present Value);
10. build in periodic portfolio reviews to rank your projects and prioritize resources.

Guidelines or goals of PM are:

1. maximizing the value of your portfolio using assessment tools (NPV, ECV, Scorecard);
2. seek balance in your portfolio using Bubble diagrams and Pie charts techniques;
3. align your portfolio with strategy, splitting resources into strategic buckets (which means you have to define a product innovation strategy)
4. pick the right number of projects.

Another look at Portfolio Management using Rapid innovation “glasses” brings me to the following assertions to make your innovation portfolio highly valuable:

Balance your innovation portfolio (IP)

Cooper categorizes projects in New products, Platforms and technology developments, Improvements, and Customer requests. In rapid innovation approach, trying to keep innovation simple, we’ve seen that we are crossing new products, with a broader leadership platform, and customers needs and acceptance. Therefore we suggest to rather balance the portfolio between:

1. disruptive and radical projects (see “four quadrants of innovation” ranking) drawing on a “silver bullet” approach, with high reward and high risk, and which may require time for development and engagement;
2. quick wins projects which will demonstrate rapid innovation capabilities;
3. exploration prototypes which are to illustrate future trends, materialize ideas, and demonstrate concepts which will further feed the innovation pipe; working  in the way design probes or concept car work, they are at low investment cost.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter in “Innovation: the classic traps (Nov 2006)“ show a rather similar approach with an innovation pyramid: “a few big bets at the top,  representing clear directions and receiving lion’s share of investment, promising midrange ideas, and a broad base of early stage ideas or incremental innovations permitting continuous improvement”.

Inspire

To measure your innovation portfolio success, you have to define your goals (define a dedicated performance yardstick: initially prefer product delivery encompassing innovative leadership platform to short-term financial results), and therefore your innovation intent (define your belief, the challenges you want to face, formulate and share the innovation strategy and culture principles, create context).

It is all the more important that a fuzzy innovation strategy will prevent you from balancing portfolio consistently, and staffing resources according to priorities.

Scorecard and metrics are precious to maximize your value portfolio: so are belief, metaphor, or mantra which explain why you start moving, and will support you persistently along the innovation process.

Staff

Staff projects appropriately to complete them faster. Be mindful of some scarce resources that might be shared across projects: reduce number of projects rather than atomizing your resources. Once a new market opportunity bubbles up, “resource” quickly to complete pre-development assessment: clock starts ticking from day one.

Develop a reserve: unplanned new product ideas will arise unexpectedly, leave some unused capacity for the really new projects.

Manage dynamically

Portfolio has to be constantly monitored along the development process of the various products through what Cooper calls the stage and gate system. Some projects make progress, and get more financial commitment. Other projects turn out to be bad ideas, and deserve to be killed: use your “license to kill” rather than defocus your portfolio. To anticipate projects leaving the portfolio, you need to feed the pipe: maintain a storehouse of developing technologies,  leverage on open innovation to feed your pipeline, initiate an invention track separately from product development track to grab new innovation ideas. Make the funnel more like a pipe: “make tough choices early”.

Make it transparent

Everyone must understand the rules of the game and position their individual decisions in the context of the innovation plan. Periodic portfolio reviews are necessary to rank your projects and prioritize resources: they must absolutely fight arbitrary, and apply homogeneous scorecards  and assessment tools across all projects: no project can be prince’s fiat, innovation is a collective adventure.

Scale

“Start by managing a smaller portfolio of projects and achieve appropriate matching of workload and capacity, leading to greater commitment, reduced idle time and development queues, and increased innovation cycles” is the smart advice of D Reinertsen and P Smith. Streamline portfolio management and  product development process so as to synchronize marketplace rhythm and innovation capabilities. Then scale up.

APQC (American Productivity & Quality Center) studies completed in 2003 show clearly the positive impact of PM practice, and reversely that companies lacking of PM practices, such as projects ranking, balance in project types, balance between number of projects & resources, project selection process, are notably underperforming.

Thereby there is no better way to conclude the way Robert Cooper claims it: “Any portfolio method outlined is better than non at all. So just do it!”

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Taking the long view on innovation management, one can draw some organization archetypes most commonly implemented. None can be applied as it is to your organization: there is no such thing as “one size fits all” in innovation management. You have to make your selection of best practices, and assess which are appropriate, considering your company status. You have to build your own innovation identity.

From the academic and case study reviews included in rapid innovation thesis I completed last year, 2 main innovation models seem to emerge:

1. Thriving innovation model means the innovation culture is at the cornerstone of the corporate company; the company develops interactions both across internal departments and with external resources to complete its innovations. 3M, P&G, Cisco, Sanofi, Renault, the Open source way of working are championing this model.
2. Dedicated entity model involves the creation of an autonomous unit pursuing new and uncertain activity lines. Lockheed with its skunk works, Saturn the GM subsidiary, marketed as a “different kind of car company”, Ideo, EDF Business Innovation are concrete tracks of this model.

3M is a typical case of thriving innovation model, involving a culture of intrapreneurship with some specific rules refined over time: innovation has sustained 3M continuous growth from the beginning to the end of the 20th century. Some of 3M rules are as follows:

• Small autonomous units
• Commitment to R&D
• Technology propagation
• “Lab to market” channel
• Project management
• Reward adapted to innovation
• “Bootleg rule” : 15% free time to personal innovation
• Recruitment focus
• Innovation, a “game of numbers”
• A solution to solve a problem (the post-it story)
• Learning from the past

Going another way, Ideo embody in a modern dedicated entity model the skunk works approach created by Lockheed in the 50?s. At Ideo, they say “We’re not good at innovating because of our flawless intellects, but because we’ve done 2000 products, and we’ve been mindful”. What are the rules of these innovation experts? Very few actually:

• Culture is driven by creativity : recruiting, stimulating
• Small entities, flat hierarchy
• Cross-functionality as creativity catalysis
• Fast prototyping and iteration : try it, fix it, try it again
• Innovation framework constantly improved

Taking advantage of both models was the intention beyond Rapid innovation model, the best of both worlds! There are many companies “in-between” which illustrating a blended approach: Oticon, Decathlon, Gore, players in the video game industry, Google, and Apple.

• At Google for instance, innovation is in the core DNA, which links them to the first model; reversely, as they enable small teams to investigate disruptive innovation in a flexible framework, they are  close to 2nd model with dedicated entity.
• At Decathlon, they have central R&D, fully interacting with external resources and skills, and they have local R&D supporting brands developments. They manage ambidextruous organization with 2 DNAs.

Gore is one of my favourite innovation style, an amazing example of hybrid innovation champion. Here are some of their new rules of business detailed in The Fabric of Creativity, by Alan Deutschman, which shows that their “culture is as imaginative as their products”:

• The power of small teams
• No ranks, no titles, no bosses
• Take the long view
• Make time for face time
• Lead by leading
• Celebrate failure

There is no universal Mendeleev classification for innovation models. In the innovation toolbox, we’ve talked about Jaruzelski and Dehoff classifying innovators in need seekers, market readers, and technology drivers, with big, consistent winners in all camps. Gary Hamel also distinguished innovators archetypes in the following taxonomy: tyros, nobel laureates, artistes, cyborgs, born again.

The secret formula for being an innovation champion is still very very secret!

Innovation management is a strategy each company has to develop, not embracing a theoretical model with its “eyes wide shut”, but rather leveraging on reference models to build its own way, taking advantage pragmatically of all situation potentials:

• What are your strengths, what is your story, where do you come from?
• How are the market environment, competition /new entrants, customers portfolio, suppliers, regulation evolving?
• What is your level of expectation, the portfolio balance you have in mind, your tangible innovation objectives?
• What reference models and innovation practices attract you? What will not work in your organization?

In the way to define our innovation mantra and strategy,  a look at the 10 facets defined by Jeffrey Philipps can also help, positioning where you want to be on the graduation:

• open vs closed innovation:
• skunk works vs broadly participative;
• suggestive vs directed, incremental vs disruptive (also stretching innovation vs “all included” innovation vs disruptive innovation);
• centralized vs decentralized;
• product / service / operations / business model, funding, wisdom of crowd vs defined criteria and experts.

You have to “become the innovator you are”. The only failure you can make would be to complete a biaised analysis.And to forget to adapt your strategy over time …

Building your innovation strategy is a primordial essence of your identity, it’s like your “tao”: the road where it goes and you feel like going, where it’s viable and you think you will harness innovation opportunities. Only you can make this path.

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GUEST POST from Nicolas Bry — originally published on Innovation Excellence.

Web 3.0 relates to the way Web is coming into real world, interacting with every value creation processes.  Let’s see how it changes innovation management and leads to build a specific innovation Operating System.

There have been two main Internet waves:

• Web 1.0 has opened a new window to the world: in a mouse click and a stridently modem connection, we were looking from France at American colorful text pages such as Yahoo!, Altavista, and Lycos, navigating with Netscape mosaic, developing “one to one” communication with emails.
• Web 2.0 has matched with the acceleration of all kinds of distribution: video distribution enabled by broadband connection, e-commerce uptake facilitated by permanent access, information distribution with new generation of search engine like Google, and the rise of exponential “many to many” exchanges linked to social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

We have entered a new stage called Web 3.0. Web 3.0 are Tim O’Reilly words, also talking about Web² as explained in Place de la toile translation:

• It encompasses semantic web, a “Web of data” that enables machines to understand the semantics, or meaning, of information on the web, inserting machine-readable metadata about pages and how they are related to each other. It creates an overlay of formatted information ready to be used by computers, facilitating social intelligence. “When it does” says Tim Berners Lee “the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.”
• Tim O’Reilly in Web Squared speaks of real time data, communicating objects, collective intelligence: an overflowing Web, that exploits in real time all available data rising up from ubiquitous sensors, part of them being produced by our own behaviors and digital footprints.

I see Web 3.0 from a slightly different angle, matching the previous technological outputs, semantic Web and real time data, but more human oriented: “Internet is everywhere” used to say my customers 5 years ago at focus group about IPTV. I think it’s becoming more actual everyday: we can feel the pervasive Internet in our life, it’s like a blend between virtuality and reality. This mix, or virtual reality seems to me the most striking aspect of Web 3.0.

Internet is now part of all processes: not only purchasing with e-commerce or information search, but any value creation processes. These interleaving links between virtuality and reality cover a wide array of human processes:

• cultural creation with transmedia, leveraging on all digital platforms to build a story world traveling across various media;
• digital tools used to format the news, bloggers input, data journalism demonstrated by Wikileaks, exchanges between journalists and their readers;
• as well as the “oldest occupation in the world” – aka prostitution – where Facebook is used as a display (How Tech Tools Transformed New York’s Sex Trade);
• digital city where “information highways” prevail on real streets, superposing new mapping as explained in Place de la toile podcast.

Bertrand Cathelat, enthusiastic sociologist of the Web, goes more in-depth in this virtual reality tendency in Netexplorateur trends 2011, speaking of “a 180° turn, virtuality coming into reality”. Bertrand Cathelat says: “Following “alter web”, which aimed at escaping real world, and  “alter society”, escaping in social network and virtual tribes, Web  is coming to the world, like a “boomerang Internet”, bringing back virtual resource into real world in various manners”:

• crowdsourcing:  konbit, manorlabs, waze, tube strikecrowdmap;
• “freenomies”: drive my car, job prize, personal branding, activism 2.0;
• superposition: augmented reality (layar façade), enriched understanding (useful progress), decoded environment (looktel), speaking objects (sticky bits), reactive (luminar, twinkle), productive objects (proverbial wallets), enriched (zugstar), commercial teaser (i-butterfly), augmented reality on glasses (Vuzix).

“The Internet is over” says Oliver Burkeman following last SXSW: “we’ve been hearing about this moment in digital history since at least 1988, when the Xerox technologist Mark Weiser coined the term “ubiquitous computing”, referring to the point at which devices and systems would become so numerous and pervasive that “technology recedes into the background of our lives”.

Innovation as a processes is impacted by Internet flow and Web 3.0 wave. Evolution from linear to interaction innovation model gave birth to open innovation, and demonstrated how knowledge circulation in short cycles is the engine of innovation: now it’s time for the engine to fire, leveraging on collaborative sparkles.  The next innovation move  will extend multi-lateral interactions and accelerate knowledge circulation through a permanent iterative co-creation phase:

• Customers, developers (thinking of market place and app store ecosystems), new players will be part of the process at every step, from the initial creation and development stages, to  distribution and during product life time, extending user-led innovation approach.
• Their contribution will be in real time through digital technology, quite far from conventional R&D…
• Permanent contribution will lead to a living innovation, a dynamic  innovation that never ends, always looking for enhancement. This looks natural with digital services, but unlikely with finished goods? You have then to think of innovation as an ecosystem, a leadership platform, able to evolve over time on various dimensions, rather than to an end product only.

What are the new rules deriving from this change of paradigm, where “innovator let go” is a strong parameter? What is the reference framework for this cooperative living innovation?

We have some trials with crowdsourcing innovation, ideas capture through tournaments, jams or hubs, early adopters community, open source cooperation for business such as OpenVBX or Invox (open source phone systems), marketplaces where others can create value, or advanced model of social CRM such as Giffgaff (“the mobile network run by you”), but real time innovation will not be contented with asynchronous punctual inputs.

This is were Web 3.0 comes on stage, bringing its intelligent agents and multilateral sensors and  its stream of machines talking to machines: in a similar way, innovation has to define its sensors that will collect social contribution, formal (suggestions, feedback, expectations, developments, …) and tacit (usage observations, after-sales returns, …),  compile data, extract meaning, and inject it automatically in the engine, working as an innovation Operating System, which designs, refines, and enriches its output in a continuous virtuous improvement cycle. Applying Tim O’Reilly claim to innovation: “building innovations that literally get better the more people use them, harnessing network effects not only to acquire users, but also to learn from them and build on their contributions”.

Defining its real-time innovation sensors and Operating System  is the challenge of innovation for tomorrow.

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