Some lovely wise words from Richard Branson - all about the key to turning inexperience into an asset.
He thinks it is to pitch what is new about your product or service. Classic #greatmarketing.
How does your approach differ from that of other businesses? How will you reach out to target markets?Some Why should people choose your products and services over your competitors'? Present prospective partners with a fresh take on a tired industry, and you will grab their attention.
I really hope this is the case - as this is what we are trying to do with goAugmented - based up in Manchester - and the UK's only award winning AR company.
Our group's history has taught us to target new industries and markets where we feel we can add something new, improve the customer's experience and carve out a successful position. Our move from publishing into music retailing is a case in point. When we sensed that Student magazine's circulation was reaching its peak, we looked for more ways to make money, and decided to start selling records by mail order. A postal strike stopped the business in its tracks, but we had caught the music bug. Instead we set up our first record store. So our inexperience did cause us a near-miss, and it's likely that if people are asking you about your lack of experience, your ability to spot problems is on their minds. But many startups fail each year; a founder's background has little correlation with success. A couple of failures on a beginning entrepreneur's record should not be considered an issue. Indeed, investors need to become better at accepting that as our dynamic, innovative economy constantly reinvents itself, businesses will inevitably become obsolete. A young entrepreneur who has dusted himself off and started again, learning from his mistakes, has proved that he has what it takes.
Constrained by a lack of capital after the strike, we found a former shoe shop on Oxford Street in London, and we talked the owner into letting us use the empty space. We were not trained retailers, but we liked music and wanted to create a cool hangout for young people. Instead of building displays designed to move merchandise quickly, with huge racks of records and no place to sit down, we brought in big, comfy cushions and built listening booths -- it was a place where you could chat about music with your friends and share your favorites with them.
All this added to the Virgin Brand experience - so perhaps sometimes having little money and no experience is a good thing. Great news for a lot of my clients :)
Tuesday 29 November 2011
Friday 25 November 2011
I met someone - at #SVc2UK - someone rather special
And only for an instant - but it was enough.
So tracked down his blog and found some goodenss. It didn't take long. Just two clicks and pow!
Here are some thoughts about leadership he scribbled down as he prepared to participate in IBM's THINK Forum.
Which I think was just after the Silicon Valley meets tech City event we met at.
Joi Ito - so wise that you could almost weep.
"The Internet has enabled the cost of the production and distribution of ideas and information to plummet nearly to zero-resulting in an explosion of ideas and a low cost of collaboration. This has prompted a great deal of innovation, but also a complexity, speed and capacity for amplification that makes the world a difficult and dangerous place for many organizations and human-made systems designed for a slower and simpler era.
The cost of planning, predicting and managing rapidly changing, complex systems often exceeds the cost of actually doing whatever is being planned and managed. In fact, it can be often easier to try something and iterate than to try to predict the outcome and manage the risks. Most great ideas as well as dramatic failures have been unpredictable and are only obvious in hindsight. (Don't get me wrong: foreknowledge and planning are useful and, often, necessary; they're just not sufficient.)
In such a world, leadership hinges on the ability to master a broad set of skills and character traits necessary for fostering a robust system, including courage, flexibility, speed, values and a strong vision and trajectory. It's more important to have a strong compass than a detailed street map since the map is probably outdated and wrong.
These kinds of decentralized models of leadership have been evolving and emerging in a variety of situations ranging from battle (virtual and real) to religions. The Internet has just super-charged the importance of this type of leadership in almost every organization.
Managers in large corporations no longer have the promise of promotions and long-term employment to keep employees obedient and hard working. Central corporate R&D and planning organizations can no longer provide detailed maps of the world to their staff and partners. Innovation is happening in the most unlikely parts of the organization-often outside of the organization.
Leadership today is about empowering those around you share your vision, embrace serendipity, have the courage to take risks and learn from failure rather than be crushed by it. Diversity must be embraced and organizational borders made porous. Assets such as intellectual property and lines of software code must not prevent aggressive agility. Organizations must be willing and able to pivot away from attachment to such assets lest these assets become liabilities holding back innovation and progress.
In this new world, leaders must be courageous, visionary and comfortable in an environment where control and complete knowledge are impossible and their pursuit futile and counterproductive.
So tracked down his blog and found some goodenss. It didn't take long. Just two clicks and pow!
Here are some thoughts about leadership he scribbled down as he prepared to participate in IBM's THINK Forum.
Which I think was just after the Silicon Valley meets tech City event we met at.
Joi Ito - so wise that you could almost weep.
"The Internet has enabled the cost of the production and distribution of ideas and information to plummet nearly to zero-resulting in an explosion of ideas and a low cost of collaboration. This has prompted a great deal of innovation, but also a complexity, speed and capacity for amplification that makes the world a difficult and dangerous place for many organizations and human-made systems designed for a slower and simpler era.
The cost of planning, predicting and managing rapidly changing, complex systems often exceeds the cost of actually doing whatever is being planned and managed. In fact, it can be often easier to try something and iterate than to try to predict the outcome and manage the risks. Most great ideas as well as dramatic failures have been unpredictable and are only obvious in hindsight. (Don't get me wrong: foreknowledge and planning are useful and, often, necessary; they're just not sufficient.)
In such a world, leadership hinges on the ability to master a broad set of skills and character traits necessary for fostering a robust system, including courage, flexibility, speed, values and a strong vision and trajectory. It's more important to have a strong compass than a detailed street map since the map is probably outdated and wrong.
These kinds of decentralized models of leadership have been evolving and emerging in a variety of situations ranging from battle (virtual and real) to religions. The Internet has just super-charged the importance of this type of leadership in almost every organization.
Managers in large corporations no longer have the promise of promotions and long-term employment to keep employees obedient and hard working. Central corporate R&D and planning organizations can no longer provide detailed maps of the world to their staff and partners. Innovation is happening in the most unlikely parts of the organization-often outside of the organization.
Leadership today is about empowering those around you share your vision, embrace serendipity, have the courage to take risks and learn from failure rather than be crushed by it. Diversity must be embraced and organizational borders made porous. Assets such as intellectual property and lines of software code must not prevent aggressive agility. Organizations must be willing and able to pivot away from attachment to such assets lest these assets become liabilities holding back innovation and progress.
In this new world, leaders must be courageous, visionary and comfortable in an environment where control and complete knowledge are impossible and their pursuit futile and counterproductive.
Monday 14 November 2011
Not saying we dont you so :)
Poorly designed websites cost retailers hundreds of millions of pounds per year in missed sales, according to research published today. The study suggests that they have lost a combined total of £500m over a three-year period as frustrated consumers log off.
Not saying we told you so.
Websites which are too complicated or not well-enough integrated with stores' stock levels and catalogues are a major source of frustration for consumers. "Companies need to realise that it is not like the high street, people who are not sure do not have to walk 100 yards down the road to go to someone else's store; they just have to click 'back'," said online retail expert Joshua March.
Researchers at digital agency Head London used analysis from Oxford Economics to find the worst hit were Morrisons, said to have missed out on £314m in sales between 2007 and 2010. The supermarket was followed by Dixons at £32.6m and Phones 4U at £17.5m. Yet, Tesco was found to have added around £255m in sales thanks to its website.
Yet again Tesco's smashing it with innovation and making the money because of it.
They are the main guys when it comes to innovation with mobile phones applications, loyalty cards, digital and even augmented reality of mobile phones.
Not saying we told you so.
Websites which are too complicated or not well-enough integrated with stores' stock levels and catalogues are a major source of frustration for consumers. "Companies need to realise that it is not like the high street, people who are not sure do not have to walk 100 yards down the road to go to someone else's store; they just have to click 'back'," said online retail expert Joshua March.
Researchers at digital agency Head London used analysis from Oxford Economics to find the worst hit were Morrisons, said to have missed out on £314m in sales between 2007 and 2010. The supermarket was followed by Dixons at £32.6m and Phones 4U at £17.5m. Yet, Tesco was found to have added around £255m in sales thanks to its website.
Yet again Tesco's smashing it with innovation and making the money because of it.
They are the main guys when it comes to innovation with mobile phones applications, loyalty cards, digital and even augmented reality of mobile phones.
Wednesday 9 November 2011
Klout's lost Klout
A couple of you might not know what Klout is about: so let me explain.
Klout is / was a way of monitoring social influence online or more importantly online social influence. A greatmarketing idea.
It is one way out of a number of different ways - and a way I was due to be teaching about during Global Entrepreneurship Week.
But about a month or so ago - Klout changed its thinking - and heavily reduced many people's Klout scores - to a wail of protest (simple not listened to)
And at first I thought boo hoo - and poo - to the changes, such is life, so I thought, they own the platform they change the rules - just like Google does whenever it likes.
But much wiser men than I have had the time to look through the changes to Klout and it seems the games has been rigged, and not in a good way. It seems now that the more you act like a BIG brand i.e. those paying for the platform - the more you gain Klout.
Here are the findings.
Wise words from this man here.
http://bundlepost.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/my-klout-experiment-and-the-disturbing-results/
Results from many of his social networking experiments.
I noticed something that is even more disturbing. Based on my reduction in engagement and response to my friends and followers as well as blog comments, you would expect that the rate my score is declining would substantially increase. This did NOT occur. As you see in the image, it maintained the approximately the same level of decrease during the experiment.
Why is that important? It says that according to Klout’s new algorithm, responding and engaging with your friends, followers, fans and Blog “commenters” (which I might add builds relationships and therefore increases opportunity for ROI) has little to do with your influence in the social graph. Disturbing doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings about this discovery.
What’s more, the data in the image shows two additional frightening discoveries that should be pointed out:
1) Amplification Stabilized - Even though I stopped conversing at usual levels, my amplification stopped declining at the previous steady pace since the Klout changes. Seriously? How does that remotely make sense or be in anyway possible? So by not engaging and thanking people, how much I influence them increases? Disturbing to say the least.
2) Network Impact Increase – After a steep immediate decline at the beginning of my experiment, my Network Impact began to show a pattern of slow steady rise.
So while my overall Klout score continued its steady decline, my overall amplification influence and network influence became more stable or even started to rise.
As a previous proponent of Klout and someone that consistently saw their system as one with proper focus, leadership and focus on accurate depiction of the social graph, I am dismayed. As a heavy social media user, consultant and someone that has driven ROI and strategy for many businesses large and small, I am now almost speechless at what I have found.
Based on my experiment, it appears that Klout’s algorithm changes are not focused on improving their social measurement system, but a clueless attempt to prop up larger brands and celebrities anti-social behavior and stifle effective relationship building that leads to ROI for those that do it right. -OR- even worse, tech geeks and scientific formulas that have no real understanding of social media and it’s proper use in business.
Being a social media technology company, you would have thought Klout would have better managed their decision to release this new tech as well as get in front of this story with better answers that made some kind of sense. Instead, they decided to let social media do what it does and react to it, albeit poorly. This entire thing is an incredible example to other brands on how NOT to manage a crisis and to tech companies on how NOT to let your head get too big. Your customers and users should have a lot to say about the game, not just you.
I am not upset at all that my score lost 11+ Points. I am pissed that a company I trusted, upheld and cheered for has fumbled in such a horrific way. The only way Klout could save face with me at this point is to do what Bank of America is doing in the banking sector. Roll back to previous algorithm and make small incremental changes that are accurate and thoughtful.
*note – I did not add or remove any social media platforms during my experiment. I only altered my engagement pattern. Nothing more, nothing less.
Klout is / was a way of monitoring social influence online or more importantly online social influence. A greatmarketing idea.
It is one way out of a number of different ways - and a way I was due to be teaching about during Global Entrepreneurship Week.
But about a month or so ago - Klout changed its thinking - and heavily reduced many people's Klout scores - to a wail of protest (simple not listened to)
And at first I thought boo hoo - and poo - to the changes, such is life, so I thought, they own the platform they change the rules - just like Google does whenever it likes.
But much wiser men than I have had the time to look through the changes to Klout and it seems the games has been rigged, and not in a good way. It seems now that the more you act like a BIG brand i.e. those paying for the platform - the more you gain Klout.
Here are the findings.
Wise words from this man here.
http://bundlepost.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/my-klout-experiment-and-the-disturbing-results/
Results from many of his social networking experiments.
I noticed something that is even more disturbing. Based on my reduction in engagement and response to my friends and followers as well as blog comments, you would expect that the rate my score is declining would substantially increase. This did NOT occur. As you see in the image, it maintained the approximately the same level of decrease during the experiment.
Why is that important? It says that according to Klout’s new algorithm, responding and engaging with your friends, followers, fans and Blog “commenters” (which I might add builds relationships and therefore increases opportunity for ROI) has little to do with your influence in the social graph. Disturbing doesn’t even begin to describe my feelings about this discovery.
What’s more, the data in the image shows two additional frightening discoveries that should be pointed out:
1) Amplification Stabilized - Even though I stopped conversing at usual levels, my amplification stopped declining at the previous steady pace since the Klout changes. Seriously? How does that remotely make sense or be in anyway possible? So by not engaging and thanking people, how much I influence them increases? Disturbing to say the least.
2) Network Impact Increase – After a steep immediate decline at the beginning of my experiment, my Network Impact began to show a pattern of slow steady rise.
So while my overall Klout score continued its steady decline, my overall amplification influence and network influence became more stable or even started to rise.
As a previous proponent of Klout and someone that consistently saw their system as one with proper focus, leadership and focus on accurate depiction of the social graph, I am dismayed. As a heavy social media user, consultant and someone that has driven ROI and strategy for many businesses large and small, I am now almost speechless at what I have found.
Based on my experiment, it appears that Klout’s algorithm changes are not focused on improving their social measurement system, but a clueless attempt to prop up larger brands and celebrities anti-social behavior and stifle effective relationship building that leads to ROI for those that do it right. -OR- even worse, tech geeks and scientific formulas that have no real understanding of social media and it’s proper use in business.
Being a social media technology company, you would have thought Klout would have better managed their decision to release this new tech as well as get in front of this story with better answers that made some kind of sense. Instead, they decided to let social media do what it does and react to it, albeit poorly. This entire thing is an incredible example to other brands on how NOT to manage a crisis and to tech companies on how NOT to let your head get too big. Your customers and users should have a lot to say about the game, not just you.
I am not upset at all that my score lost 11+ Points. I am pissed that a company I trusted, upheld and cheered for has fumbled in such a horrific way. The only way Klout could save face with me at this point is to do what Bank of America is doing in the banking sector. Roll back to previous algorithm and make small incremental changes that are accurate and thoughtful.
*note – I did not add or remove any social media platforms during my experiment. I only altered my engagement pattern. Nothing more, nothing less.
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