Category Archives: Strategy

Audacious

How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World

Exclusive Interview with Mark Schaefer

Mark W Schaefer The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to a tsunami of AI-generated content, and according to Gemini these are some of the concerns for marketers:

Erosion of Brand Authenticity: AI can generate marketing copy, social media posts, and even personalized emails. The fear is that over-reliance on AI-generated content could lead to a loss of genuine brand voice and connection with customers, making marketing feel impersonal and manufactured.

Decreased Content Quality and Creativity: While AI can produce grammatically correct and seemingly relevant content, it may struggle with nuanced storytelling, truly innovative ideas, and emotionally resonant messaging that connects deeply with human audiences. This could lead to a decline in the overall quality and impact of marketing content.

Over-Saturation of Generic Content: If many marketers use similar AI tools and prompts, there’s a risk of the internet becoming flooded with repetitive and unoriginal content. This could make it harder for brands to stand out and capture attention in a crowded digital landscape.

Misuse for Deceptive Marketing Tactics: AI could be used to create highly targeted but deceptive marketing campaigns, such as generating fake reviews, creating convincing but misleading product descriptions, or even impersonating real people or brands. This could erode consumer trust and damage the reputation of ethical marketing practices.

Loss of Control Over Brand Messaging: While AI can assist with content creation, marketers may find it challenging to maintain complete control over the messaging and tone of AI-generated content. This could lead to inconsistencies in branding and potentially even PR crises if the AI produces something inappropriate or off-brand.

Now that we’ve got the ironic bit out of the way of asking AI to tell us what marketers have to fear from AI (in italics), let’s dive into the heart of this article and hear from the humans.

The Audaciousness of Humans

I had the opportunity recently to interview Mark Schaefer, a globally-acclaimed author, keynote speaker, and marketing consultant. He is a faculty member of Rutgers University and one of the top business bloggers and podcasters in the world. Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World is his eleventh book, exploring how companies can create more effective marketing by being audacious.

Below is the text of my interview with Mark and a preview of the kinds of insights you’ll find in Audacious presented in a Q&A format:

1. We are seeing a marketing evolution from messages to stories, agree or disagree? Or is the evolution to something else?

This is an interesting question. Marketing is about creating customers. Our ability to do that has been dramatically changed by technology.

Let’s say 50 years ago, messages and taglines were about our only options. Advertising is expensive. Space was limited.

But in the Internet age, we have virtually unlimited space to tell a story at no cost. And stories can be created by anyone. I think the evolution of marketing right now is when we can do something so worthy, so memorable, so useful, that our customers can’t wait to tell the stories for us.

2. What impact are we seeing from AI on marketing?

There are two types of marketing – performance and brand marketing.

Performance marketing is about repetitive acts like ads that create traffic for the top of the funnel. These activities will almost certainly be dominated by AI.

Brand marketing creates meaning – an emotional expectation for your company or product. In this respect, AI can still have a major impact on creativity and planning, but I forecast that there will still be a human role to play for years to come.

The most effective connections still come from relationships with people!

3. Product, service, solution, experience… In today’s world, which is the most important?

The beauty of our world is that it is filled with people who have diverse perspectives and needs! Some people might buy on value, some might buy on performance, or even the status they feel when they own a product.

However, at the very highest level, I think experience is an interesting opportunity for brands. Let’s look at Patagonia, for example, it does not product the cheapest clothes, or the most functional or beautiful. But the brand MEANS something to a devoted fans because of a shared experience or responsible outdoor recreation.

4. With people drowning in content, how are marketers supposed to reach their target customers?

This question really cuts the heart of my research and writing over the last 15 years and it is the theme of my new book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World.

The book reveals research that shows that the vast majority of marketing and advertising is boring and ineffective and AI is making it more so. I would say we are in a pandemic of dull.

Competent doesn’t cut it. Competent is ignorable. So we need to ignite human creativity in a new way by disrupting traditions and norms. Changing HOW we tell a story. Changing WHERE we tell a story. Changing WHO tells the story.

It is time for audacity in our marketing. That is the only way we’ll cut through the clutter to be seen and heard. Audacity is now a survival skill.

5. Shock and Awe, which one should marketers focus on and why?

I actually address both of these in the new book!

Awe is an under-appreciated source of success in marketing. It’s not just about something that is vast and overwhelming. It can be something as simple as bringing people together in a meaningful new way that creates a shared experience. Wouldn’t it be amazing if people added more awe to their marketing?

Shock is also an overlooked idea. I don’t mean being offensive or reckless, but just waking up the sense to something completely different. A good example of this is Liquid Death, the fastest-growing beverage brand in America.

Nobody calls their product “Death.” So right from the start they have your attention. Their advertising features water boarding and kids chugging glasses of sugar. It is difficult to watch. But you don’t forget it, either.

6. You’re in charge of marketing the iPhone 17 and it’s basically the same as the iPhone 16, except now it’s available in Magenta. How would you change the marketing for a product that basically hasn’t changed?

This product introduction might actually work, but not for everyone.

You might recall that Apple introduced a black “U2” iPod many years ago. It sold out. It only worked because Apple already had a massive base of loyal fans – and so did U2! So even though the product wasn’t very different, the meaning for the fanbase was.

Normally, introducing a product with no discernible new value would be foolish but it is possible if the brand has meaning.

An example from my book is the game Cards Against Humanity. People invested in a hole in the ground and dried cow turds because they just wanted to be part of the fun. The value was in the meaning, not the product.

7. What does disruptive marketing look like now and in the future? What will become normalized?

The irony is, disruptive marketing is rapidly normalized. Here’s what I mean. The cover of my book is a world first – a QR code that creates an evolving, morphing cover based on the stories in the book. That is disruptive.

But you can only be disruptive once. From here on out, anybody who has QR code book cover will simply be copying me. The disruption has been normalized. You can only be audacious once.

8. Why are there so many damn QR codes in the book? 😉 (wink)

My book is full of “oh wow” moments. But a lot of them are better viewed than described. For example, a star of the book is Michael Krivicka, the king of viral video. I have never met a person with a keener sense of storytelling. There is no way you can appreciate his skill without seeing a video, so I provided QR code links so everyone has the chance to do that!

9. Where should marketers be careful as they challenge the standard ways of marketing, to be audacious?

There are lots of reasons why marketers should be conservative and traditional, especially when following laws and regulations.

However – if you’re staying in a boring box because there is fear in your organization, because dull is normal in your industry, or simply afraid, then you are vulnerable. The AI bots are here. They are competent, and in most cases more than competent. But you still own crazy. The companies that unleash the unique human fireworks of creativity will thrive in the AI era!

Conclusion

Thank you for the great conversation Mark!

I hope everyone has enjoyed this peek into the mind of the man behind the inspiring new title Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World!

Image credits: BusinessesGrow.com (Mark W Schaefer)

Content Authenticity Statement: If it wasn’t clear above, the short section in italics was written by Google’s Gemini and the rest of this article is from the minds of Mark Schaefer and Braden Kelley.

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The Real Winners of Mega Events

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From the Super Bowl to Rock Concerts

The Real Winners of Mega Events

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Fans who attend major sporting events and concerts may have memories to last a lifetime. The owners of the sports teams and producers of major music events may smile as they look at a sold-out crowd. The athletes and musicians are well-paid for their performances. And we can’t forget the sponsors who pay large sums of money to be affiliated with events, enjoy brand recognition and see a return on their advertising dollars. But there’s one other “happy customer” that many people don’t think about: the city that gets the honor of hosting these events.

The Super Bowl is next month, and for many, it is a festive occasion. For the city that hosts the biggest sporting event of the year, it’s a windfall in economic benefit. This year, that city was Las Vegas. Even before the Super Bowl was hosted in its new stadium, the city profited from major sporting events. People flock to Vegas to party, gamble and enjoy their favorite major sporting events on the gigantic screens in the casinos around the city. Although the NBA championship may be played in a different city, it’s still hard to find a room at a high-end hotel like Bellagio, Wynn or Caesars.

The point is that the host city receives a huge economic impact beyond the game, even if its main street is not lined with casinos. Two years ago, Major League Baseball’s World Series pitted the Houston Astros against the Arizona Diamondbacks. There was an economic windfall for the two cities.

According to a local economy study, Houston First Corp. found that each game played in Houston was worth $12.5 million. In Phoenix, where the D-Backs play, the numbers are similar. Even though fans want their team to win quickly and decisively, there is an economic benefit to the best-of-seven match going the distance. Restaurants, hotels and more benefit, and the taxes charged benefit the cities and states.

The NCAA March Madness “Final Four” basketball tournament is ironically played in April. Last year’s “winning city,” regardless of the teams playing, is Phoenix. The last time Phoenix hosted the tournament was in 2017, and a Seidman Research Institute study at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business found an estimated 59,761 visitors stayed an average of 4.16 nights and spent an average of $487.19 per day, with a total economic impact of $324.5 million.

The benefits of sporting and entertainment events for their respective cities can’t be ignored. Be it sports, concerts, festivals, art shows, etc., these events are not just enjoyed by people attending. The trickling benefit of a boom to the area makes the effort to produce and host the events worthwhile.

Last year I met with Steve Schankman, the president of Contemporary Productions, who has produced concerts, special events and music festivals for more than 50 years. His events range from high-school venues where he booked Chuck Berry in the ’60s and ’70s, to the Super Bowl halftime show with U-2, to major music festivals starring Elton John, The Beach Boys and many other music icons, with millions in attendance throughout the years.

A couple of years ago, Schankman, with his partner Joe Litvag, produced Evolution Festival, a two-day summer music festival in St. Louis, with the goal of bringing the local community together to enjoy a talent lineup that featured Brandi Carlile, The Black Keys, Ice Cube, the Sugarhill Gang and more. If the lineup seems eclectic, that was purposeful, as Schankman’s dream was to unite music fans from every part of the area. “Music should bring people together, regardless of color, religion and sex,” says Schankman. More than 25,000 people—7,500 from outside the St. Louis area—enjoyed the festival. But it’s more than just entertainment for music fans, and he can’t wait to do it again with a lineup even more exciting and diverse than the first year’s festival.

In an article recapping the inaugural Evolution Music Festival, Schankman said, “I got 600 people working here. Besides that, we have employment taxes, we have sales taxes. We’ll do seven figures in concession sales. Seven figures in ticket sales. So just the taxes alone for the state and the city are great.”

The Metro St. Louis area, with a population of more than 2.7 million people, profits from a major music event like Evolution Festival just like it would from a major sporting event. Looking beyond the fun-filled weekend, the financial side of the sports and entertainment industry benefits more than just the talent on the field, court, or stage. Even though a concert experience like Evolution Festival doesn’t have the same financial impact as a Super Bowl championship or Final Four tournament, there are still similar benefits.

According to Brian Hall, chief marketing officer at Explore St. Louis, the average travel party to St. Louis consists of three guests staying 2.4 nights and spending $969 on hotel rooms, restaurants, attractions, etc. Then you add on ticket sales for the event, food and beverage, and souvenirs, and the numbers grow. With approximately 7,500 out-of-towners attending the Evolution Festival, the city and state enjoy a windfall of tax revenue to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, there are future benefits. Hall says, “Visitation to a community is a precursor to economic development, including moving, relocating a company or starting a business in St. Louis.”

The events business, be it sports, a concert/music festival or any other large public affair, always has support from local, national and international sponsors. Large brands like AT&T, American Express and Anheuser-Busch put millions into major sporting events. While Schankman won’t compare the Evolution Festival to the Super Bowl, he said, “Cities like St. Louis offer sponsors the chance to be seen by a geographically targeted audience. The festival created 31 million impressions through the in-person experience, on social media and with our traditional advertising and marketing.”

Several times Schankman emphasized bringing people from all walks of life together. At the end of our interview, he summed it up by saying, “At a time when we’re experiencing racial and religious tension, political divide and terrifying world events, let’s remember what Beatles drummer Ringo Starr is known for preaching, ‘Peace and love!’ That’s what Evolution Festival is all about, and the businesses and brands that support it should want to be a part of something that special!”

Image Credits: Pixabay

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com.

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Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

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After a week of torrid voting and much passionate support, along with a lot of gut-wrenching consideration and jostling during the judging round, I am proud to announce your Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024:

Greg Satell
Greg Satell is a popular speaker and consultant. His first book, Mapping Innovation: A Playbook for Navigating a Disruptive Age, was selected as one of the best business books in 2017. Follow his blog at Digital Tonto or on Twitter @Digital Tonto.

Janet Sernack
Janet Sernack is the Founder and CEO of ImagineNation™ which provides innovation consulting services to help organizations adapt, innovate and grow through disruption by challenging businesses to be, think and act differently to co-create a world where people matter & innovation is the norm.

Mike Shipulski
Mike Shipulski brings together people, culture, and tools to change engineering behavior. He writes daily on Twitter as @MikeShipulski and weekly on his blog Shipulski On Design.

Robyn Bolton
Robyn M. Bolton works with leaders of mid and large sized companies to use innovation to repeatably and sustainably grow their businesses.
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Pete Foley
A twenty-five year Procter & Gamble veteran, Pete has spent the last 8+ years applying insights from psychology and behavioral science to innovation, product design, and brand communication. He spent 17 years as a serial innovator, creating novel products, perfume delivery systems, cleaning technologies, devices and many other consumer-centric innovations, resulting in well over 100 granted or published patents. Find him at pete.mindmatters@gmail.com

Geoffrey A. Moore
Geoffrey A. Moore is an author, speaker and business advisor to many of the leading companies in the high-tech sector, including Cisco, Cognizant, Compuware, HP, Microsoft, SAP, and Yahoo! Best known for Crossing the Chasm and Zone to Win with the latest book being The Infinite Staircase. Partner at Wildcat Venture Partners. Chairman Emeritus Chasm Group & Chasm Institute

Shep Hyken
Shep Hyken is a customer service expert, keynote speaker, and New York Times, bestselling business author. For information on The Customer Focus™ customer service training programs, go to www.thecustomerfocus.com. Follow on Twitter: @Hyken

David Burkus
Dr. David Burkus is an organizational psychologist and best-selling author. Recognized as one of the world’s leading business thinkers, his forward-thinking ideas and books are helping leaders and teams do their best work ever. David is the author of five books about business and leadership and he’s been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, CNN, the BBC, NPR, and more. A former business school professor turned sought-after international speaker, he’s worked with organizations of all sizes and across all industries.

John Bessant
John Bessant has been active in research, teaching, and consulting in technology and innovation management for over 25 years. Today, he is Chair in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, and Research Director, at Exeter University. In 2003, he was awarded a Fellowship with the Advanced Institute for Management Research and was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy of Management. He has acted as advisor to various national governments and international bodies including the United Nations, The World Bank, and the OECD. John has authored many books including Managing innovation and High Involvement Innovation (Wiley). Follow @johnbessant

Braden Kelley
Braden Kelley is a Human-Centered Experience, Innovation and Transformation consultant at HCL Technologies, a popular innovation speaker, workshop leader, and creator of the Human-Centered Change™ methodology. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and Charting Change from Palgrave Macmillan. Follow him on Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

Howard Tiersky
Howard Tiersky is an inspiring and passionate speaker, the Founder and CEO of FROM, The Digital Transformation Agency, innovation consultant, serial entrepreneur, and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Winning Digital Customers: The Antidote to Irrelevance. IDG named him one of the “10 Digital Transformation Influencers to Follow Today”, and Enterprise Management 360 named Howard “One of the Top 10 Digital Transformation Influencers That Will Change Your World.”

Stefan Lindegaard
Stefan Lindegaard is an author, speaker and strategic advisor. His work focuses on corporate transformation based on disruption, digitalization and innovation in large corporations, government organizations and smaller companies. Stefan believes that business today requires an open and global perspective, and his work takes him to Europe, North and South America, Africa and Asia.

Dainora Jociute
Dainora (a.k.a. Dee) creates customer-centric content at Viima. Viima is the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world. Passionate about environmental issues, Dee writes about sustainable innovation hoping to save the world – one article at the time.

Teresa Spangler
Teresa Spangler is the CEO of PlazaBridge Group has been a driving force behind innovation and growth for more than 30 years. Today, she wears multiple hats as a social entrepreneur, innovation expert, growth strategist, author and speaker (not to mention mother, wife, band-leader and so much more). She is especially passionate about helping CEOs understand and value the role human capital plays in innovation, and the impact that innovation has on humanity; in our ever-increasing artificial/cyber world.

Soren Kaplan
Soren Kaplan is the bestselling and award-winning author of Leapfrogging and The Invisible Advantage, an affiliated professor at USC’s Center for Effective Organizations, a former corporate executive, and a co-founder of UpBOARD. He has been recognized by the Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top keynote speakers and thought leaders in business strategy and innovation.

Diana Porumboiu
Diana heads marketing at Viima, the most widely used and highest rated innovation management software in the world, and has a passion for innovation, and for genuine, valuable content that creates long-lasting impact. Her combination of creativity, strategic thinking and curiosity has helped organisations grow their online presence through strategic campaigns, community management and engaging content.

Steve Blank
Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and Senior Fellow for Innovation at Columbia University. He has been described as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship, credited with launching the Lean Startup movement that changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Jesse Nieminen
Jesse Nieminen is the Co-founder and Chairman at Viima, the best way to collect and develop ideas. Viima’s innovation management software is already loved by thousands of organizations all the way to the Global Fortune 500. He’s passionate about helping leaders drive innovation in their organizations and frequently writes on the topic, usually in Viima’s blog.

Robert B Tucker
Robert B. Tucker is the President of The Innovation Resource Consulting Group. He is a speaker, seminar leader and an expert in the management of innovation and assisting companies in accelerating ideas to market.

Dennis Stauffer
Dennis Stauffer is an author, independent researcher, and expert on personal innovativeness. He is the founder of Innovator Mindset LLC which helps individuals, teams, and organizations enhance and accelerate innovation success. by shifting mindset. Follow @DennisStauffer

Arlen Meyers
Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is an emeritus professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, an instructor at the University of Colorado-Denver Business School and cofounding President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs at www.sopenet.org. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ameyers/

Ayelet Baron
Ayelet Baron is a pioneering futurist reminding us we are powerful creators through award winning books, daily blog and thinking of what is possible. Former global tech executive who sees trust, relationships and community as our building blocks to a healthy world.

Leo Chan
Leo is the founder of Abound Innovation Inc. He’s a people and heart-first entrepreneur who believes everyone can be an innovator. An innovator himself, with 55 US patents and over 20 years of experience, Leo has come alongside organizations like Chick-fil-A and guided them to unleash the innovative potential of their employees by transforming them into confident innovators.

Rachel Audige
Rachel Audige is an Innovation Architect who helps organisations embed inventive thinking as well as a certified Systematic Inventive Thinking Facilitator, based in Melbourne.

Art Inteligencia
Art Inteligencia is the lead futurist at Inteligencia Ltd. He is passionate about content creation and thinks about it as more science than art. Art travels the world at the speed of light, over mountains and under oceans. His favorite numbers are one and zero.

Paul Sloane
Paul Sloane writes, speaks and leads workshops on creativity, innovation and leadership. He is the author of The Innovative Leader and editor of A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing, both published by Kogan-Page.

Phil McKinney
Phil McKinney is the Author of “Beyond The Obvious”, Host of the Killer Innovations Podcast and Syndicated Radio Show, a Keynote Speaker, President & CEO CableLabs and an Innovation Mentor and Coach.

Ralph Christian Ohr
Dr. Ralph-Christian Ohr has extensive experience in product/innovation management for international technology-based companies. His particular interest is targeted at the intersection of organizational and human innovation capabilities. You can follow him on Twitter @Ralph_Ohr.

Jeffrey Phillips
Jeffrey Phillips has over 15 years of experience leading innovation in Fortune 500 companies, federal government agencies and non-profits. He is experienced in innovation strategy, defining and implementing front end processes, tools and teams and leading innovation projects. He is the author of Relentless Innovation and OutManeuver. Jeffrey writes the popular Innovate on Purpose blog. Follow him @ovoinnovation

Dean and Linda Anderson
Dr. Dean Anderson and Dr. Linda Ackerman Anderson lead BeingFirst, a consultancy focused on educating the marketplace about what’s possible in personal, organizational and community transformation and how to achieve them. Each has been advising clients and training professionals for more than 40 years.

Shilpi Kumar
Shilpi Kumar an inquisitive researcher, designer, strategist and an educator with over 15 years of experience, who truly believes that we can design a better world by understanding human behavior. I work with organizations to identify strategic opportunities and offer user-centric solutions.

Scott Anthony
Scott Anthony is a strategic advisor, writer and speaker on topics of growth and innovation. He has been based in Singapore since 2010, and currently serves at the Managing Director of Innosight’s Asia-Pacific operations.

Anthony Mills
Anthony Mills is the Founder & CEO of Legacy Innovation Group (www.legacyinnova.com), a world-leading strategic innovation consulting firm working with organizations all over the world. Anthony is also the Executive Director of GInI – Global Innovation Institute (www.gini.org), the world’s foremost certification, accreditation, and membership organization in the field of innovation. Anthony has advised leaders from around the world on how to successfully drive long-term growth and resilience through new innovation. Learn more at www.anthonymills.com. Anthony can be reached directly at anthony@anthonymills.com.

Paul Hobcraft
Paul Hobcraft runs Agility Innovation, an advisory business that stimulates sound innovation practice, researches topics that relate to innovation for the future, as well as aligning innovation to organizations core capabilities. Follow @paul4innovating

Jorge Barba
Jorge Barba is a strategist and entrepreneur, who helps companies build new puzzles using human skills. He is a global Innovation Insurgent and author of the innovation blog www.Game-Changer.net

Chateau G Pato
Chateau G Pato is a senior futurist at Inteligencia Ltd. She is passionate about content creation and thinks about it as more science than art. Chateau travels the world at the speed of light, over mountains and under oceans. Her favorite numbers are one and zero.

Douglas Ferguson
Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist. He is the founder and president of Voltage Control, an Austin-based change agency that helps enterprises spark, accelerate, and sustain innovation. He specializes in helping teams work better together through participatory decision making and design inspired facilitation techniques.

Alain Thys
As an experience architect, Alain helps leaders craft customer, employee and shareholder experiences for profit, reinvention and transformation. He does this through his personal consultancy Alain Thys & Co as well as the transformative venture studio Agents of A.W.E. Together with his teams, Alain has influenced the experience of over 500 million customers and 350,000 employees. Follow his blog or connect on Linkedin.

Bruce Fairley
Bruce Fairley is the CEO and Founder of The Narrative Group, a firm dedicated to helping C-Suite executives build enterprise value. Through smart, human-powered digital transformation, Bruce optimizes the business-technology relationship. His innovative profit over pitfalls approach and customized programs are part of Bruce’s mission to build sustainable ‘best-future’ outcomes for visionary leaders. Having spearheaded large scale change initiatives across four continents, he and his skilled, diverse team elevate process, culture, and the bottom line for medium to large firms worldwide.

Tom Stafford
Tom Stafford studies learning and decision making. His main focus is the movement system – the idea being that if we can understand the intelligence of simple actions we will have an excellent handle on intelligence more generally. His research looks at simple decision making, and simple skill learning, using measures of behaviour informed by the computational, robotics and neuroscience work done in the wider group.

If your favorite didn’t make the list, then next year try to rally more votes for them or convince them to increase the quality and quantity of their contributions.

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2015
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2016
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2017
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2018
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2019
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2021
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2022
Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023

Download PDF versions of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 lists here:

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Happy New Year everyone!

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3 Strategies All Changemakers Should Know

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3 Strategies All Changemakers Should Know

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

All too often, we see change as a communication exercise. We think that if people really understood our idea, they would embrace it. In this view, bringing about change is really just a matter of messaging. Find the right slogan and deliver it in the right way, and you will ignite the passions required to drive transformation.

Nothing can be further from the truth. If a change is important and has real potential for impact, there will always be some people who won’t like it and they will work to undermine it in ways that are dishonest, underhanded, and deceptive. Change rarely fails because people don’t understand it. Most often it is actively sabotaged.

A more elegant slogan won’t save you. What you need is a sound strategy to overcome resistance to change. Fortunately, we know from social and political movements that radical, transformational change is possible and, as I explained in Cascades, their principles can be highly effective in organizations. Here are three strategies that you should know.

1. Start With A Majority

Change starts with a belief. If people believe that a change is good, they will be likely to adopt it. If they believe it’s bad, it’s going to be tough to convince them otherwise especially, as is often the case, their beliefs are rooted in their identity and sense of self. In fact, research has shown when we are presented with facts contrary to our beliefs, we tend to question the evidence rather than our own preconceived notions.

This raises an important question: How do we come by our beliefs? As it turns out, the best indicator of not only our beliefs, but our actions, habits and even some aspects of our health, is the people around us and studies suggest that the effect extends out to even third degree relationships. So not only our friends, but the friends of our friend’s friends influence us.

The truth is that majorities don’t just rule, they also influence. That’s why when we seek to bring about change, it’s important to start with a majority. The secret is that you get to choose where you start. It might be a small, local majority of, say, three people in a room of five. As long as supporters outnumber detractors, change can move forward.

You can always expand a majority out, but as soon as you are in the minority, you will feel immediate pushback. When that happens, you can lose momentum and send the entire initiative off the rails. In many cases, you will never get the momentum back and your hopes for change will end before they really start.

There’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature that drives us to want to convince skeptics. Resist it and focus on empowering your supporters.

2. Prepare For A Trigger

It’s easy to confuse a moment with a movement. A movement links together small, but often disparate, groups in the context of shared purpose and shared values. A moment occurs when an event triggers a temporary decrease in resistance and opens up a window of opportunity. Movements require preparation. Moments often emerge on their own.

What’s crucial for changemakers to grasp is that a trigger eventually emerges that creates a moment. It’s rare that we can predict exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s not too hard to see that one will come eventually and prepare for it. Political revolutions have leveraged this for decades, focusing on particular stress points in which a trigger is likely to emerge.

For example, the color revolutions in Eastern Europe targeted elections that they knew were likely to be falsified. After Martin Luther King Jr.’s failed Albany campaign, he moved on to Birmingham, because he knew that Bull Connor, the Commissioner of Public Safety, was a hothead and likely to employ the type of brutal tactics that would trigger a moment.

In much the same way, the Covid pandemic triggered digital transformation in many organizations. Economic downturns trigger efficiency measures. When a competitor comes out with a hit product, it tends to trigger enthusiasm for innovation. We don’t know when these things are going to happen, but we know that they are likely to happen eventually.

One reason why so many change efforts have failed in recent years is that the movements were built in response to a moment. Once the moment comes, it’s too late. You build your movement to prepare for a trigger, so that once it comes you can make the most of it.

3. Leverage Your Opposition

Change thrives on passion. The status quo always has inertia on its side and never yields its power gracefully. That’s why so many would-be changemakers start out by attacking their opposition, seeking to meet them head on, expose their misconceptions and show the value of doing things differently.

This is almost always a mistake. Directly engaging with staunch opposition is unlikely to achieve anything other than exhausting and frustrating you. However, while you shouldn’t directly engage your fiercest critics, you obviously can’t act like they don’t exist. On the contrary, you need to learn to love your haters.

In fact by listening to people who hate your idea you can identify early flaws, which gives you the opportunity to fix them before they can be used against you in any serious way. They can also help you to identify shared values. For example, the LGBTQ movement prevailed by emphasizing their commitment to stable marriages and happy families, exactly the ideas that were used against them for decades.

Perhaps most importantly, you can leverage your opposition to your advantage. If left to their own devices, they will often overreach and send people your way. Bull Connor’s brutality, which he was all too eager to display for the TV cameras, furthered the cause of civil rights. In the color revolutions, the activist group Otpor found a way to even use arrests to weaken the regime and empower the revolution..

The truth is that to bring about real change you need to attract, rather than overpower. Being seen fighting the opposition may fire up your most active supporters, but it won’t bring anyone to your side. However, if the enemies of change see you gaining traction, invariably they will lash out, overreach and send people your way.

Applying Strength To Weakness

In the final analysis, the reason that most would-be revolutionaries fail is that they assume the righteousness of their cause will save them. It will not. Injustice, inequity and ineffectiveness can thrive for decades and even centuries, far surpassing a human lifespan. If you think that your idea will prevail simply because you believe in it you will be sorely disappointed.

Tough, important battles can only be won with good strategy and tactics, which is why successful change agents learn how to adopt the principle of Schwerpunkt. The idea is that instead of trying to defeat your enemy with overwhelming force generally, you want to deliver overwhelming force and win a decisive victory at a particular point of attack.

Yet Schwerpunkt is a dynamic, not a static concept. You have to constantly innovate your approach as your opposition adapts to whatever success you may achieve. For example, the civil rights movement had its first successes with boycotts, but moved on to sit-ins, “Freedom Rides,” community actions and eventually, mass marches.

Starting with a majority, preparing for a trigger and leveraging your opposition are only three ways you can apply strength to weakness. The key to success isn’t any particular tactic, leader or slogan but strategic flexibility. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what most change efforts lack. All too often they get caught up in a strategy and double down, because it feels good to believe in something, even if it’s failure.

Change, like many things, largely boils down to strategy and execution. It’s not a simple matter of belief or passion. You need to learn how to operate effectively, by studying those who succeeded and those who failed, building on your successes, dusting yourself off after the inevitable setbacks, correcting mistakes and returning to fight with renewed vigor.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credits: Pixabay

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Voting Closed – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

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Happy Holidays!

For more than a decade I’ve devoted myself to making innovation insights accessible for the greater good, because I truly believe that the better our organizations get at delivering value to their stakeholders the less waste of natural resources and human resources there will be.

As a result, we are eternally grateful to all of you out there who take the time to create and share great innovation articles, presentations, white papers, and videos with Braden Kelley and the Human-Centered Change and Innovation team. As a small thank you to those of you who follow along, we like to make a list of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers available each year!

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Do you just have someone that you like to read that writes about innovation, or some of the important adjacencies – trends, consumer psychology, change, leadership, strategy, behavioral economics, collaboration, or design thinking?

Human-Centered Change and Innovation is now looking to recognize the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024.

It is time to vote and help us narrow things down.

The deadline for submitting votes is December 31, 2024 at midnight GMT.

The ranking will be done by me with influence from votes and nominations. The quality and quantity of contributions to this web site by an author will be a BIG contributing factor (through the end of the voting period).

You can vote in any of these three ways (and each earns points for them, so please feel free to vote all three ways):

Sending us the name of the blogger by @reply on twitter to @innovate
Adding the name of the blogger as a comment to this article’s posting on Facebook
Adding the name of the blogger as a comment to this article’s posting on our Linkedin Page (Be sure and follow us)

The official Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024 will then be announced here in early January 2025.

Here are the people who received nominations this year along with some carryover recommendations (in alphabetical order):

Adi Gaskell – @adigaskell
Alain Thys
Alex Goryachev
Andy Heikkila – @AndyO_TheHammer
Annette Franz
Arlen Meyers – @sopeofficial
Art Inteligencia
Ayelet Baron
Braden Kelley – @innovate
Brian Miller
Bruce Fairley
Chad McAllister – @ChadMcAllister
Chateau G Pato
Chris Beswick
Chris Rollins
Dr. Detlef Reis
Dainora Jociute
Dan Blacharski – @Dan_Blacharski
Daniel Burrus – @DanielBurrus
Daniel Lock
David Burkus
Dean and Linda Anderson
Dennis Stauffer
Diana Porumboiu
Douglas Ferguson
Drew Boyd – @DrewBoyd
Frank Mattes – @FrankMattes
Geoffrey A Moore
Gregg Fraley – @greggfraley
Greg Satell – @Digitaltonto
Helen Yu
Howard Tiersky
Janet Sernack – @JanetSernack
Jeffrey Baumgartner – @creativejeffrey
Jeff Freedman – @SmallArmyAgency
Jeffrey Phillips – @ovoinnovation
Jesse Nieminen – @nieminenjesse
John Bessant
Jorge Barba – @JorgeBarba
Julian Birkinshaw – @JBirkinshaw
Julie Anixter – @julieanixter
Kate Hammer – @Kate_Hammer
Kevin McFarthing – @InnovationFixer
Leo Chan
Lou Killeffer – @LKilleffer
Manuel Berdoy

Mari Anixter- @MariAnixter
Maria Paula Oliveira – @mpaulaoliveira
Matthew E May – @MatthewEMay
Michael Graber – @SouthernGrowth
Mike Brown – @Brainzooming
Mike Shipulski – @MikeShipulski
Mukesh Gupta
Nick Jain
Nick Partridge – @KnewNewNeu
Nicolas Bry – @NicoBry
Nicholas Longrich
Norbert Majerus and George Taninecz
Pamela Soin
Patricia Salamone
Paul Hobcraft – @Paul4innovating
Paul Sloane – @paulsloane
Pete Foley – @foley_pete
Rachel Audige
Ralph Christian Ohr – @ralph_ohr
Randy Pennington
Richard Haasnoot – @Innovate2Grow
Robert B Tucker – @RobertBTucker
Robyn Bolton – @rm_bolton
Saul Kaplan – @skap5
Shep Hyken – @hyken
Shilpi Kumar
Scott Anthony – @ScottDAnthony
Scott Bowden – @scottbowden51
Shelly Greenway – @ChiefDistiller
Soren Kaplan – @SorenKaplan
Stefan Lindegaard – @Lindegaard
Stephen Shapiro – @stephenshapiro
Steve Blank
Steven Forth – @StevenForth
Tamara Kleinberg – @LaunchStreet
Teresa Spangler – @composerspang
Tom Koulopoulos – @TKspeaks
Tullio Siragusa
Yoram Solomon – @yoram

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We’re curious to see who you think is worth reading!

Back to the Basics of the Performance Zone

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Back to the Basics of the Performance Zone

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

As the global economy gropes its way to a new normal, with buyers still looking to regain their confidence to invest, most companies are dealing with sluggish performance—not terrible, but not great. In such circumstances, management attention gravitates to the Productivity Zone, where the focus is internal on ourselves, and the goal is to optimize our processes to prop up our operating margins. All good, but only half the solution.

The other half is to reengage with the Performance Zone. The goal of this zone is to not to improve–it is to win the game. There is no process for doing this (if there were, then Germany would win the World Cup every year), so internal focusing will not help. Instead, we need to reexamine our relationship with others, specifically with our customers and our competitors. Strategy begins, in other words, when we divert our attention from us and put it on them.

Investigating our Customers

In a doldrums economy, we know that existing budgets are tight, so if we are to find growth opportunities, we need to detect where new budgets are emerging. In other words, we are looking for forces at work in our target markets that are changing the investment priorities of our target customers. The key unit of examination here is the use case.

Use cases live at the intersection of our portfolio of offerings and customer value realization. We already have libraries of established use cases, but those are the ones that are under budget constraint. We are looking for emerging use cases, typically gnarly problems that are possible to solve with our stuff, but only with net new innovation and additional attention from us. Such use cases are at odds with our Productivity Zone focus on efficiency, but they are key to finding growth opportunities in trying times.

Each use case is a shorthand representation for a mini-TAM (Total Addressable Market). We are not looking for big here, we are looking for urgent. We want use cases that will activate customers to invest now, even when budgets are tight, keeping in mind that even the most highly focused use case with the smallest immediate TAM is normally a harbinger of bigger things to come. First-mover advantage in an emerging use case is like winning an early primary election—it is modestly valuable in itself, but even more so in terms of its impact on later competitions in bigger venues.

To detect these opportunities we need to interrogate our customer-facing teams in sales, solution engineering, and customer success to extract from them anecdotal evidence of novel use cases, regardless of who the vendor is. We also want to hear stories about customers struggling with problems that no one is solving. The question we are trying to answer is, what does the world really want from our company now? What would cause prospective customers to line up to spend money with us today?

To be sure, pursuing net new use cases requires investment at our end, and we too are under budget pressure, so there can be no “spray and pray” here. We need to stack rank whatever opportunities we detect on a risk/reward gradient and focus on the top one or two only, the limiting factor being that whatever we do fund must get “all the way to bright.” Adding even just one more opportunity than there is budget to fund results in all opportunities getting underfunded and nothing getting over the finish line. It is the most common cause of companies losing their way and drifting into irrelevance.

Learning from our Competitors

Here again we should divide up the landscape into legacy versus future competitors, as we will treat each differently. The legacy group are competing for the same constrained budgets as we are, using tactics we are now quite likely to be familiar with. This is the realm of execution, not strategy. It rewards campaigns led by the Productivity Zone focused on extracting the best returns we can from what is a low-yield, but also a low-risk, situation. Our customers are not going away, but they are going to sweat their assets and consolidate vendors wherever they can. Inertia here is our friend, and we need to leverage it as best we can by eliminating any sources of friction that would diminish our returns.

On the other hand, our future competitors do warrant strategic attention, for any number of reasons. For example, any recent wins they may have had could signal an emerging new use case, one that we too should be checking out. Alternatively, we may learn they are attacking our own target use case, in which case we need to differentiate quickly and dramatically in order to block them out early (a mini-TAM is too small for more than one winner). A third possibility is that we may be getting blindsided altogether, our installed base under some whole new form of attack, potentially jeopardizing the future of our entire franchise. It’s a wake-up call nobody likes to get, essentially forecasting an existential threat, but that is often what it takes to prod an established enterprise to adjust to a changing market landscape.

The standard unit of work for investigating future-oriented competition is the win/loss analysis. Again, we need to bring in the customer-facing teams to get their anecdotal evidence. Analyst reports don’t help much—they tend either to track us and our legacy competitors in established markets, or to glom onto the next potential disruptive technology and make extravagant extrapolations of its future returns. Instead, we want to look closely at the new use cases, regardless of whether we have won or lost, to see what the customer ended up prioritizing and why that drove their buying decision. As always, we prefer to win, but it is imperative regardless that we learn.

Changing the Narrative

Once we have focused on others, once we have revised our understanding of what the world wants from us, and who we are going to be competing with, we can now legitimately focus our attention on ourselves and our stakeholders. These include our installed base, our ecosystem partners, our investors, and our employee workforce. Our new strategy calls for a change in our course and speed, and we need everyone in our boat to row in the same direction. This can only happen if we change the narrative.

It is hard to overemphasize this point, so let me put it another way. If we do not change the narrative, nothing new will happen. No one will change course and speed. Even if we make clear the course corrections we are making, things still won’t change. That’s because everyone always assumes that things will be more or less the same, and that goes especially for established franchises. Getting stakeholders to turn a big boat requires a big signal.

The structure of the successful new narrative is always the same. It is never about you. Nobody cares about you (well, except your mom, of course, God bless her). Stakeholders have plenty on their own plates to worry about without taking on stuff on yours. What they do care about, on the other hand, is what is happening in their world, how it impinges on their hopes and plans, where it is creating risk for them, and what, if anything, you might be able to do to help them mitigate that risk. That’s what your new narrative must be all about. It’s a new you because it is a new world, and you are rising to meet the occasion. Not only does this change people’s focus, it energizes those whom it attracts, giving a real boost to the team at a time when everyone can use one.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Unsplash

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Nominations Closed – Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024

Leave a reply

Human-Centered Change and Innovation loves making innovation insights accessible for the greater good, because we truly believe that the better our organizations get at delivering value to their stakeholders the less waste of natural resources and human resources there will be.

Our lists from the ten previous years have been tremendously popular, including:

Human-Centered Change and Innovation is now looking for the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2023.

The deadline for submitting nominations is December 24, 2024 at midnight GMT.

You can submit a nomination either of these two ways:

Sending us the name of the blogger and the url of their blog by @reply on twitter to @innovate
Sending the name of the blogger and the url of their blog and your e-mail address using our contact form

(Note: HUGE bonus points for being a contributing author)

So, think about who you like to read and let us know by midnight GMT on December 24, 2024.

We will then compile a voting list of all the nominations, and publish it on December 25, 2024.

Voting will then be open from December 25, 2024 – January 1, 2025 via comments and twitter @replies to @innovate.

The ranking will be done by me with influence from votes and nominations. The quality and quantity of contributions by an author to this web site will be a contributing factor.

Contact me with writing samples if you’d like to publish your articles on our platform!

The official Top 40 Innovation Bloggers of 2024 will then be announced on here in early January 2025.

We’re curious to see who you think is worth reading!

SPECIAL BONUS: From now until December 31, 2024 you can save 30% OFF on my latest best-selling book Charting Change on either the eBook (immediate download) or the hardcover (free shipping worldwide) when using code HOL30.

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Make the Planet and Your Bottom Line Smile

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Make the Planet and Your Bottom Line Smile

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

What if the most profitable thing you could do was work that reduced the rise in the earth’s temperature? What if it was most profitable to reduce CO2 emissions, improve water quality or generate renewable energy? Or what if it was most profitable to do work that indirectly made the planet smile?

What if while your competitors greenwashed their products and you radically reduced the environmental impacts of yours? And what if the market would pay more for your greener product? And what if your competitors saw this and disregarded the early warning signs of their demise? This is what I call a compete-with-no-one condition. This is where your competitors eat each other’s ankles in a race to the bottom while you raise prices and sell more on a different line of goodness – environmental goodness. This is where you compete against no one because you’re the only one with products that make the planet smile.

The problem with an environmentally-centric, compete-with-no-one approach is you have to put yourself out there and design and commercialize new products based on this “unproven” goodness. In a world of profits through cost, quality and speed, you’ve got to choose profits through reduced CO2, improved water quality and renewable energy. Why would anyone pay more for a more environmentally responsible product when its price is higher than the ones that work well and pollute just as much as they did last year?

When the Toyota Prius hybrid first arrived on the market, it cost more than traditional cars and its performance was nothing special. Yet it sold. Yes, it had radically improved fuel economy, but the fuel savings didn’t justify the higher price, yet it sold. Competitors advertised that the Prius hybrid didn’t make financial sense, yet it sold. With the Prius hybrid, Toyota took an environmentally-centric, compete-with-no-one approach. They made little on each vehicle or even lost money, but they did it anyway. They did the most important thing. They started.

The Toyota Prius hybrid wasn’t a logical purchase, it was an emotional one. People bought them to make a statement about themselves – I drive a funny-shaped car that gets great gas mileage, I’m environmentally responsible, and I want you to know that. And as other companies scoffed, Toyota created a new category and owned the whole thing.

And, slowly, as Toyota improved the technology and reduced their costs, the price of the Prius dropped and they sold more. And then all the other manufacturers jumped into the race and tried to catch up. And while everyone else cut their teeth on high volume manufacturing a hybrid vehicle, Toyota accelerated.

Below is a chart of hybrid electric vehicles (hev) sold in the US from 2000 to 2017. Each color represents a different model and the Toyota Prius hybrid is represented by the tall blue segment of each year’s stacked bar. In 2000, Toyota sold 5,562 Prius hybrids (60% of all hevs). In 2005, they sold 107,897 Prius hybrids, 17,989 Highlander hybrids and 20,674 Lexus hybrids for a total of 209,711 hybrids (69% of all hevs). In 2007, they sold 181,221 Prius and five other hybrid models for a total of 228,593 (65% of all hevs). In 2017, sold 15 hybrid models and the nearest competitor sold four models. The reduction from 2008 to 2011 is due to reduced gas prices. (Here’s a link to the chart.)

United States Hybrid Electric Vehicle Sales

The success of the Prius vehicle set off the battery wars which set the stage for the plug-in hybrids (larger batteries) and all-electric vehicles (still larger batteries). At the start, the Prius didn’t make sense in a race-to-the-bottom way, but it made sense to people that wanted to make the planet smile. It cost more, and it sold. And that was enough for Toyota to make profits with a more environmentally friendly product. No, Prius didn’t save the planet, but it showed companies that it’s possible to make profits while making the planet smile (a bit). And it made it safe for companies to pursue the next generation of environmentally-friendly vehicles.

The only way to guarantee you won’t make more profits with environmentally responsible products is to believe you won’t. And that may be okay unless one of your companies believes it is possible.

Here’s a thought experiment. Put yourself ten years into the future. There is more CO2 in the atmosphere, the earth is warmer, sea levels are higher, water is more polluted and renewable energy is far cheaper. Are your sales higher if your product creates more CO2, or less? Are your sales higher if your product heats the earth, or cools it? Are your sales higher if your product pollutes water, or makes it cleaner? Are your sales higher because you bet against renewable energy, or because you embraced it? Are your sales higher because you made the planet frown, or smile?

Now, with your new perspective, bring yourself back to the present and do what it takes to increase sales ten years from now. Your future self, your children, their children, and the planet will thank you.

Image credits: Google Gemini

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Components of a Good Digital Strategy

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Components of a Good Digital Strategy

GUEST POST from Howard Tiersky

If I told you I had a document in my hand that was the new digital strategy for your company, what would you expect it to contain?

A list of projects? A “mission” statement? A technology vision? A competitive market analysis? A financial forecast?

One of the problems with the label “digital strategy” is that there’s not a common understanding of what it actually means or should contain. Naturally, the needs vary by company, but what if I said I had one menu for a Chinese restaurant and one for an Italian restaurant? Of course, there would be some differences, but there would also be some similarities: both would contain a list of foods you can order and their prices.

While we know what to expect to see in a menu, what should we expect to find in a digital strategy?

We develop digital strategies for companies from media to retail to financial services, and we use a ten-chapter outline for our digital strategy documents. Starting from this point, we often customize, and I’d encourage you to do that as well. Consider this a cheat-sheet that, if it works for your organization, can form the basis for your digital strategy.

Chapter One: Our Current Situation

Describe your company’s current situation vis a vis digital. Outline the digital touchpoints that currently exist, how recently they have been “remodeled,” how you measure their performance and what feedback you receive from both customers and stakeholders. Neither exaggerate the problems nor sweep them under the rug. The idea is to present a clear, objective, and fact-based description of the current state. Ideally, cite specific stats such as conversion, ad revenue, usability testing results or other data-driven “evidence” for your position. Also, describe any obvious gaps in your digital landscape. If you have clarity on the reasons for some of the problems or gaps (technical issues, business process issues, etc.), then state these as well.

Chapter Two: The Customer and Competitive Landscape

Describe your customer segments succinctly. What is understood about their current needs? How have they changed? Ideally, cite evidence from market research. In particular, how have their channel/touchpoint preference and expectations been evolving? What does that suggest about what your brand needs to do to stay relevant? If you have data to support it, describe how the current digital ecosystem for your company impacts your customer’s perception, behavior and purchase decisions (either positively or negatively — you may have examples of both). Now take a look at competitors. Your customers are evaluating you against your competitive set; what are they offering regarding a digital experience? How does it differ from what your brand is doing? What success metrics do you have available to indicate how successful competitive efforts are? (remember not everything your competitor is doing differently is necessarily successful). Remember to look not just at your traditional large competitors, but also at smaller competitors who may not be taking a significant market share (yet) but who might be more nimble or creative. Look also at “comparative” brands. If you are a hotel, what are airlines doing? What is Uber or Amazon doing? And how are their latest innovations both creating new expectations your customers have for you and also highlighting opportunities for your industry to do something similar?

Chapter Three: Trends

Chapters One and Two describe the current state. Chapter Three is your space to forecast the future. What trends are likely to impact your customer and your industry over the next few years? I suggest focusing on a 2-3 year time horizon. In today’s fast-moving world trying to forecast farther than that is too inaccurate. What kind of trends should you focus on? Certainly focus on digital trends, such as the shift to mobile or other digital technologies that may be relevant to your industry (wearables, VR, AR, chatbots, etc.). But also focus on trends that may not be inherently digital but which may have a significant impact in your industry over the next few years. These could be growth in China, the different priorities of the millennial generation, etc.

Chapter Four: Our Assets

Nothing in the outline of the first three chapters is inherently good news or bad news — it’s just a journalistic perspective on your brand, your customers, and competitors- where they are today and where they are going. It’s not uncommon for it to be an inventory of all the ways you are behind and that can be a bit of a downer. This chapter is your opportunity to remind the reader of any untapped assets you may have that might be able to help you leap ahead. What kind of asset should you describe? Here are some ideas. Consider which apply in your situation:

Your brand — How is your brand viewed by customers? Even if you are behind the curve in digital, it takes a long time to build a trusted brand. That’s worth a lot, and if you catch up, that brand may be a huge competitive weapon even against companies who seem to be ahead of you today.
Your content — Perhaps you have a backlog of content that is not being fully leveraged. A new digital strategy may enable you to tap value that is currently latent.
Technology — You might have some proprietary technology that, if connected to a stronger digital touchpoint, could enable you to bring capabilities to the market that would be difficult for others to match.
Your people and their skills — Your organization may be uniquely good at something. Perhaps there is a way to leverage that strength. Or you may have specific individuals whose talents aren’t fully leveraged but who could make a major difference if given the opportunity to drive new digital strategies.

Your scale, financial resources, partnership relationships, network of stores, licensed IP, etc. Companies have many other assets, far too many to list here. Try to inventory everything you have to work with and consider which other assets might have a place in developing a strategy that provides sustainable competitive differentiation.

Chapter Five: The Future Customer Journey

Chapter Five is where you describe your vision of the future. You have been setting up the rationale for change in the previous four chapters; this is where you propose your solution. Describe how the customer will interact with your brand differently in the future — what changes will be made to the different touchpoints? How does their journey play out from initial introduction to your brand, through the phases of initial interest and research, through their purchase decisions, experience of your product or service, problem resolution, and future re-purchase? Describe your customer, their situation, and their priorities and tell a compelling story that rings the intuitive bell of the user that this future journey will be both far better for the customer and also lead to better business outcomes for the brand. Support the alignment with customer needs via research data where available. One format for describing the customer journey is a roadmap.

However you describe it, your strategy should align with the three key priorities of a successful digital business.

Chapter Six: Money and Business Model

If you have done a good job in Chapter Five, you now have your reader or listener (if it’s a presentation) thinking, “Sounds great, but how much is this going to cost??” Chapter Six is where you lay out three things — roughly what implementing this strategy will cost, what your projections are for financial return, and how the business model under the new strategy changes, if at all. Clarity around investment and returns is what separates digital strategies that sound good from ones that actually get done. After all, an ambitious digital strategy for a major brand is likely to be a substantial investment. Most of the time those at the CFO and CEO level making investment decisions of hat scale are not doing it because of the inherent “good” of digital, but because they expect a return that justifies the decision. You must help them see your story in the kind of financial language that they use to make all of their other decisions. Be sure to describe not only the total budget but how much you anticipate will be capital vs operating budget and what the cash flow timing looks like. You’ll want someone from your finance department to be involved in modeling this in spreadsheet form.

Chapter Seven: Technology

It’s quite likely that your new strategy will be closely tied to technology. In Chapter Seven describe the technologies that are needed. It’s not essential to describe hardcore “tech” details or reference specific software tools. Rather, the idea here is to describe the key requirements you will have of technology to achieve the strategy.

Chapter Eight: Business Process and Organization

Often a substantial digital transformation will change the way you do business. If so, then no doubt you will need to reconsider various business processes or parts of your organizational structure. Chapter Eight should describe the types of changes that may be needed.

Chapter Nine: Timeline and Challenges

In Chapter Nine, you lay out a detailed quarter by quarter plan of how you intend to proceed. In addition, be upfront about the assumptions, risks and anticipated challenges your strategy will face. It may seem like it would be better to keep quiet about possible risks, but actually, the opposite is true for two reasons. First, it adds credibility to your plan and process to show you’re realistic about the possible roadblocks and are already thinking about how to avoid them. And second, when you get funded, and your project actually does encounter challenges it won’t be a shock to your stakeholders. Most major transformations encounter a lot of twists and turns, and you need not only the initial support but the sustained support of your key stakeholders. Having a frank conversation about the things that could go wrong in advance is planting the seeds for their support when you need it in the future.

Chapter Ten: The Cost of Failure

The last chapter addresses the question of what if we don’t do it? Or what if we do it half-heartedly? Digital transformation projects inevitably involve risks. And really wouldn’t we all rather avoid risk? This last chapter is the time to describe the risks of not proceeding or not fully proceeding. How will this impact sales? How will it impact your brand? If you just delay a year or two and then proceed, how will that impact your ability to catch up to the market?

So there you are: ten chapters of your digital strategy (or at least a starting point). One final suggestion is to make the development of your strategy an inclusive process. These days an effective digital strategy touches every part of an organization, and people can be quite resistant to an outside “digital team” deciding their fate for them. Furthermore, I suggest you create an inclusive process around the finalization of your digital strategy outline before you begin the process of developing the strategy. To the point I began with, there is a risk that when you come back to your CMO or your CEO with “The Digital Strategy” they may be surprised by what is and what isn’t covered. You can use this outline as a starting discussion point to gauge their expectations and jointly agree on what the strategy actually needs to address so that the scope and structure of the strategy meets their expectations and you can focus on the substance. Good luck strategizing and as always let us know if we can be of any help!

This article originally appeared on the Howard Tiersky blog

Image Credits: FreePik

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