Category Archives: Strategy

Netflux – A Qwikster Innovation Divorce for Netflix

Netflux - A Qwikster Innovation Divorce for Netflix Breaking up is hard to do, but sometimes it is the right thing to do.

Imagine my surprise when an e-mail from Reed Hastings, Co-Founder and CEO of Netflix arrived in my inbox this morning announcing that Ms. Netflix was getting an innovation divorce.

Yes, Ms. Netflix has decided to send her old man packing and is no longer ashamed to tell you his name – Qwikster. Yes, Mr. Qwikster has been kicked to the curb with his DVD and Blu-Ray collection. Rumor has it Mr. Qwiskter was caught having a ‘qwikie’ with a mature video game, and Ms. Netflix decided she’d had enough. The newly independent Ms. Netflix announced she planned to devote all of her energy to her passion for streaming content now that Mr. Qwikster was out of the picture. Both hope that their individual pictures will be sharper after the breakup – and in full high-definition. They will share custody of their children Television and Movies, with Ms. Netflix getting custody online and Mr. Qwikster maintaining his relationship with the two by mail. Some friends of Ms. Netflix and Mr. Qwikster have already abandoned one or the other, with some people maintaining a relationship with both. In time we will find out who really has more friends.

I wish both Ms. Netflix and Mr. Qwikster the best of luck in their new lives apart from each other.

The Importance of Focus to Innovation

Surely I jest, but this news event has important innovation implications to discuss, and innovation should be about fun. The most important of these implications is focus.

When it comes to innovation, scale and breadth of offering often lose out to focus.

But few leaders have the courage to make the hard choices that are often necessary to keep innovation vibrant and the executives focused where they need to have their attention, while liberating the entrepreneurs to pursue the next best innovation with the passionate persistence it takes to succeed.

The divorce will allow each business to optimize its supply chain, its strategy, and most importantly will allow executives to spend less time in meetings that don’t effect their sphere of impact so that they can focus on identifying and executing innovation projects that create new value for their customers.

While I believe that Netflix strategically mishandled the execution of their innovation divorce from Qwikster, I must applaud its rationale. Although, I’m not so sure about the line in Reed’s e-mail where he talks about AOL and Border’s. Does that mean that he thinks that Qwikster is dead on arrival?

Personally I used to play Blockbuster and Redbox off of each other until my local Blockbuster went out of business. That forced me into a ‘friendship’ with Mr. Qwikster and Ms. Netflix. Now, I probably get more value out of my relationship with Mr. Qwikster because I can order old Disney classics like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to watch with my daughter, but if Ms. Netflix ever got her act together and formed real relationships with people like Mr. Disney and his friends Hanna and Barbera, then maybe I would ask Mr. Qwikster to stop mailing me stuff.

It will be interesting to see how Ms. Netflix and Mr. Qwiskter develop on their own. Ms. Netflix faces a huge headwind in building real relationships with the movie and television studios, and there is no guarantee that Netflix will win in the streaming space. Redbox is entering the space, Amazon is there, and Apple and maybe even Spotify pose real risks. Who will win? I don’t know, but it will be interesting to watch, although maybe not in 3D.

One Final Thought

I’m not so sure about the new name though – Qwikster – what is that? A cross between Quicken and Friendster?

I would be curious to hear what your take is on the name and whether you believe they will be able to achieve more innovation apart than together.

Editor’s Note: I will be conducting two-day innovation masterclasses in Dubai (October 23-24, 2011 at the Four Points Sheraton Dubai) and Kuala Lumpur (October 26-27, 2011 at The Renaissance Kuala Lumpur) if you would like to attend, please click this link for more information from the event organizers. If you would like to organize this masterclass to come to your part of the world, please contact me.

Special Bonus

If you’ve read all the way to the bottom, then you deserve a free sample chapter from my new book Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire. I hope you enjoy the sample chapter and consider purchasing the book as a way of supporting the future growth of this community.

Download the sample chapter

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Will Death of Blockbuster Kill Redbox?

12 Replies

Will Death of Blockbuster Kill Redbox? Let’s examine something that has been bothering me for a little while. I’ve been renting my movies from Blockbuster and Redbox for years, but now my local Blockbuster store is closing. When I’ve expressed this sadness to friends and colleagues, people just tell me to get Netflix.

Let’s dig quickly into the psychology behind the Netflix/Blockbuster/Redbox choice that each of us has been making. Now, I’m a big fan of technology, but it has its limitations. One of those limitations is that technology can isolate people from the real world. I know all you social media zealots and self-proclaimed experts out there are shouting ‘heresy’ back at me, but hey, that’s why there is a comments box down at the bottom of each article here—for people to engage in a wee bit of dialog.

While social media does serve to connect people, it also serves to disconnect them. To read more on the double-edged impact of social media you might want to check out the book Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other by Dr. Sherry Turkle.

Layered on top of the tensions between technology, psychology and social interaction is that people are as different as they are the same. As much as we like to think we’re all individuals, when it comes to market dynamics, we tend to be different. That’s why we segment our customers into groups for marketing purposes, test for personality types in team situations, and create separate brands for different groups of customers.

Given all of this, there is an impact of Blockbuster going out of business that I don’t think many people are anticipating, and that is the likelihood that Blockbuster’s demise will actually accelerate the demise of Redbox. This is because, unlike the assumption most people would make, Blockbuster and Redbox are more complements than substitutes. When Redbox emerged people used it as an arbitrage against Blockbuster to get cheaper rentals from Redbox while still retaining the pleasure of physical browsing and the selection advantage Blockbuster provides over Redbox.

Continue reading this article on the American Express OPEN Forum.

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Introducing Snack-Sized Innovation Consulting

2 Replies

As many of you know, Human-Centered Change & Innovation is a sideline for me, and a way of giving back by bringing together the best human-centered innovation, change, transformation, design thinking and experience insights I can get access to and then make them accessible for the greater good.

To pay the bills and keep Human-Centered Change & Innovation going, I do consulting, speaking and writing.

In recognition of the changing economic realities and the increasingly global market for our services, we are pleased to offer snack-sized innovation and marketing consulting services by Skype video conference as well as traditional on-site consulting. Now you can rent Braden’s brain for even the smallest need or budget. Here are our three main packages:

Silver

Gold

Platinum

Skype video call
Up to 90 minutes of preparation and consulting services
Additional hours available for purchase

Skype video call
Up to 180 minutes of preparation and consulting services
Additional hours available for purchase

Travel expenses
Custom on-site consulting solution
Purchased by the day or week
Scheduled in advance

Business Strategy Innovation delivers workshops and consulting services that focus on three areas:

Getting Started with Innovation
Creating a Culture of Continuous Innovation
Building Stronger Customer and Employee Relationships

Founded by Braden Kelley, Business Strategy Innovation has been advising companies since 1996 in industries ranging from medical equipment, software, and internet advertising to real estate, retail, defense, and more.

Based in Seattle, Washington we are just a short flight away from anywhere in the United States and available to work with companies in Europe, Asia, and beyond. But, now with these new snack-size consulting options, you don’t have to have a budget big enough to bring us to you, and can instead get some really good feedback or advice on the issues you are wrestling with at a much lower cost.

I look forward to helping out however I can.

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Joy is BMW – Marketing Innovation or Marketing Failure?

5 Replies

I came across the following video of a BMW advertising installation thanks to a tweet from Blogging Innovation contributor @RowanGibson and I think it serves as a perfect case study of how one firm – in this case BMW – can succeed and fail in utilizing some of the modern incremental innovations in the traditional marketing methods (including social media) to bond itself to an emotion – in this case ‘joy’.

First, watch the video, then we’ll examine where BMW has done well and where they have failed to harness the power of social media in creating the perception that ‘Joy is BMW’.

Successes:

1. BMW attempts to stake a claim to an emotion (joy) that no other car company is pursuing
2. The video has already had 115,000 views in one week
3. Lots of people are re-tweeting the video and including ‘BMW’ and ‘joy’ in their tweets on Twitter

Failures:

1. If you do a search on Google, Bing, or Yahoo! for “joy” – BMW is not in the top ten search results
2. Compounding this failure is that BMW is not doing any search engine marketing on the term “joy”
3. The startup video was herky-jerky after waiting a long time for it to load on the Joy is BMW page
4. The ‘Joy is BMW’ page is boring, not search engine friendly, and not social – there is no way for people to participate – no real value to the page
5. The 3D building projection event from Singapore is not featured on the ‘Joy is BMW’ page
6. There is no way for people to have conversations about the video (other than on YouTube)
7. BMW is not active on Twitter and makes no mention of Singapore event or ‘Joy is BMW’ campaign
8. No videos or photos related to ‘Joy is BMW’ on Facebook or mention of it by any of their 679,000+ fans
9. http://www.joyisbmw.com not purchased by BMW before launching the campaign
10. http://www.miseryisbmw.com also not purchased by BMW before launching the campaign

Unfortunately the failures list could be much longer, but I will stop here in the interest of brevity. The really sad thing about the ‘Joy is BMW’ campaign is that people want to be more social with BMW, they crave it, but they are not really being provided the opportunity.

To be honest, after watching the video of the experiential event I was expecting BMW to have created this forward-thinking integrated conversational marketing campaign to go with it, so imagine my surprise when the emperor’s new clothes fell off when I started looking around the social media universe.

BMW, there is still time to save the campaign. If you need some help (which it looks like you do), let me know and I’ll be happy to jump in, line up some great creative teams around the world, and knock out a great conversational marketing strategy to salvage the campaign.

What do you think? Has BMW blown a golden opportunity to go social with ‘Joy is BMW’?

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.

Find Your Nerve Guest Post

1 Reply

Are you going to be nervous in the downturn, or nervy?

It is much easier to lose your nerve than it is to regain it, so better not to lose it in the first place. I have lost my nerve before and made decisions I regretted for a long time after they were made. Acting out of fear leads to poor decision making and a lack of leverage that, in turn, leads to unfavorable outcomes. That is why you must maintain your nerve and focus on the actions you need to take to create positive change, rather than allowing yourself to be overtaken by fear. Fear is one of those emotions that grows to fill the space.

When this downturn began, I had a client that wanted to extend our contract at half the previous rate in order to cut costs. Without any other projects in hand it would have been very easy to take their offer and hope that something better would come along. It’s much harder to walk away from guaranteed income and focus on winning new clients during the biggest downturn in a generation, but I did. The outcome?

Not losing my nerve, refusing this offer, and fully dedicating myself to revitalizing my business has led to the signing of two new clients outside the United States, the signing of a top literary agent to represent my book project (and very soon a book deal), and to Blogging Innovation expanding to become the leading innovation blog on the web with more than 15 contributing authors and upwards of 200,000 monthly page views.

So before you lose your nerve and start asking yourself all those questions about what could go wrong, focus instead on asking yourself about the actions you could take now to make sure that things go right.

Are you going to be nervous in the downturn, or nervy? If you act fearful, your clients will be afraid to do business with you, but if you’re confident that you will do great things, then your clients will want to do great things with you.

This article originally appeared on Find Your Nerve

Sign up here to get Human-Centered Change & Innovation Weekly delivered to your inbox every week.