Posts Tagged ‘apple’

There are many misconceptions about what inventions and innovations are in the marketplace, but they are two very different things.  You can invent something and not do anything with it.  Think of Bell Labs which has hundreds of thousands of patented inventions.  Many of these inventions are just simply ideas and only some were great enough to be innovative where it changed the marketplace.  Or think about Leonardo da Vinci.  A great inventor who was ahead of his time, but many of his inventions simply were not practical during his lifetime.  Now look at Thomas Edison.  While he might have failed hundreds of times trying to invent the light bulb, when he perfected his invention and introduced it in to the marketplace, he created an industry.  He was an innovator.

• Innovation isn’t about being new to the marketplace.  Look at the iPod from Apple.  It wasn’t the first MP3 player in the marketplace.  They just did it right and made it simple.
• Innovation isn’t about technology.  Look at Starbucks.  They’ve created a business model around selling coffee in a comfortable environment and charging a premium.  They weren’t the first ones to sell coffee. They just created an environment that people wanted from a coffee shop and marketed in right.
• Innovation isn’t about doing it better.  Sometimes you just need to make your product simpler and more affordable.  Look at Windows from Microsoft.  They opened up a new marketplace where people could afford it and gain access to it easier.  They don’t have the best operating system in the marketplace, they just made it easier to use and made it affordable.
• Innovation doesn’t always come out of big research and development budgets.  There might be some initial research and development, but you don’t have to go broke in the process.  Look at Red Bull.  They tapped in to the youth culture in clubs and created their own viral grass roots marketing campaign and turned it in to a multi-billion dollar empire.
• Innovation doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.  You don’t have to spend a lot when you’re innovating.  You can do it very inexpensively and create a new marketplace with low overhead.  Ebay, for example, was profitable from almost day one and found a way to connect with the marketplace immediately.  Its first year revenues were modest, but it took the earning from its initial years of operation and invested it in to research and development to grow the service.

What do all of these have in common?  They’re obviously innovative products and services, but they all made an impact.  They all did something that was different in the marketplace that connected with its users.

Sometimes creating that next big thing is just simply doing it better than your competition or making it simpler.  Ideas are all around us.  Now innovate.

This article was contributed by Robert Driscoll, co-founder of Active Garage. You can follow Robert on Twitter at rsdriscoll.

Tagged as: active garage, active garage founders, apple, ebay, Innovation, innovation vs invention, invention, Leonardo da vinci, microsoft, Robert Driscoll, Sales and Marketing, starbucks, thomas edison

While at dinner in San Francisco recently, I’d asked a good friend – a nurse who works in the Sutter Health system – of his thoughts on the iPad. “Oh yeah…I want one..now!” he responded excitedly. (We were dining at Paxti’s if you must know; good Chicago-style pizza but nowhere near as yummo as the pies at Zachary’s across the Bay in Oakland) “I think they could be the answer to replacing our patient charts (you know, those old-school metal-clad clipboards dangling from the foot of patients’ adjustable beds). The iPad would be a fantastic tool for the healthcare industry.”

My friend’s enthusiasm got me to thinking: why wouldn’t healthcare COOs and/or CTOs (often doctors themselves) embrace the iPad for their Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and other patient care needs?  The productivity gains alone would seem to more than pay for the device, connectivity, and implementation costs. Then there’s the excitement factor…when was the last time you’ve seen end users this excited to use any device for work? Granted, the iPad may not be as indestructible as, say, a $1700 ruggedized WinTelMo device currently in use by some healthcare providers, but at less than a third the price, a larger interface and I mean, come on, a much better UI, seems to be a no-brainer, right? True, the iPad is a spanking-new device that has been on the market all of three weeks, and is as of yet unproven in the enterprise. However, this does appear to be changing…and fast.  Consider a couple of data points:

First, Citrix is already on board with the iPad, having recently released Receiver for iPad which provides secure access to corporate applications and desktops – from Windows environments to Oracle databases, to, well, 3D medical imaging applications.

Also, healthcare organizations are already beginning to show up among the early business adopters of the iPad. According to iMedicalApps, Kaweah Delta Health Care District near Fresno, California, has reportedly ordered 100 iPads for use with viewing radiology images, Electrocardiogram (ECG) and other patient test results. They feel the iPad will be especially useful for their mobile healthcare workers, such as hospice and home health nurses.  The iPad and Kaweah Delta Health Care presents an interesting test case for the device…could it also serve as a sort of bellwether for iPad adoption in healthcare? Possibly.

The subject of the iPad and its potential – for healthcare and many other industries – continues to flood the Internet, and will surely be a hot topic at upcoming conferences including, I suspect, next month’s CIO Healthcare Summit.

Now then, picture if you will…let’s call him Dr. Jones.  Our good doctor is commuting home via train after a long shift at a large metropolitan hospital.

Phone rings:

“Doctor! Mr. Smith in 207 is irate and uncontrollable…help!”

Dr. Jones: “Is that right? One moment.”

Enter iPad: Secure login > Recovery Wing NE > Patients > Bleau, Joseph R. – Rm.   207/A > [TAP] > Patient I.V.> Add > Sedatives > ”Sleepia TZ” > [TAP] > Administer > CONFIRM > [TAP].

Patient: Zzzzzz.

Hospital staffer: “Bless you Doctor!”

A fictitious situation? Sure. I’m just sayin’…

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Written by Marc Watley, Co-Founder & CEO of Datacenter Trust. Datacenter Trust is a recently-launched consulting and services delivery firm, providing outsourced server hosting, bandwidth, cloud services, and IT financial intelligence and analysis services to growing businesses.

Tagged as: active garage, apple, CIO Healthcare Summit, citrix, datacentertrust, ECG, healthcare, iMedicalApps, iPad, Kaweah Delta Health Care, marc watley, paxtis, sutter health system, zacharys

Should your experiences bringing products to market or providing services be added to the director’s cut of Jurassic Park?  Do critics and competition surround your brainchild like a pack of hungry raptors?  At the same time do you have to fight to maintain your position in the organizational herd?

Business, like nature, can be uncompromising in its response to your product and services. Provide what is needed and you live to see another day and get the opportunity to move your business forward. Take too big of a misstep and your business can be crippled or killed.

Darwin offers guidance in seeking opportunity, surviving, growing and thriving in a hostile environment. We will look at a tip to implement that guidance – feature management. We will also look at three signs indicating the odds of survival are decreasing.

Darwin

Darwin observed species adapting best to an environment without destroying it would have the best chance to survive. This includes dealing with threats as well as capitalizing on opportunities. This adaptation includes changing traits (evolving) as the environment changes along with predators and prey. The term he coined is “natural selection“. Without the forces of natural selection genetic drift sets in and the species risks evolving to a dead-end position. The dodo bird is a good example.

Feature management reflects natural selection with products and product development. On the other hand, genetic drift occurs in the presence of:

• Customer’s gold plating of requirements;
• Team’s gold plating of requirements;
• Feature creep

Natural Selection: Feature Management

Feature management chooses among all the possibilities and selects a set of features which, when turned into a product, will meet a customer’s needs within the prescribed limits of time, and budget.

For long-term relationships product development and/or the definition of services includes the client’s need to survive, grow, and thrive. The best relationships are symbiotic with both you and the client benefiting from the product or service.

Genetic Drift

Genetic drift in product development is movement into a spot outside the boundaries set by the market. The product is essentially isolated and dies.

Customer’s Gold Plating of Products

Gold plating takes specifications beyond what is required. I experienced customer gold plating with the use of robotics in vehicle manufacturing. The client firm’s management style was heavy-handed. Being the person who was the source of a design failure would have major negative repercussions. So, a weld seam that was adequate at 1/8” width grew to 3/8” as it progressed through the client’s internal design approval process. This occurred with almost every aspect of the vehicle and the design mushroomed. The cost and time to produce increased. A competitor was able to grab market share with a vehicle of equal performance but a much lower cost- and time to produce.

Team’s Gold Plating of Products

This is typified by the engineer with a solution looking for a problem. The product is viewed as an opportunity to showcase capability that is above-and-beyond what the competition can do but has no real value in terms of enhanced performance for the customer. Again, the cost- and time to develop can increase to the point that the product or service is no longer competitive for its market niche.

Feature Creep

Apple’s Copland operating system is a good example. It suffered from second-system effect and became bloated. It also suffered from mismanagement in terms of what it would take to propel Apple out of a niche position and back  to that of a major player.

The best way to deal with genetic drift is to review all work in terms of the boundaries set by a clear functional specification, time limits, and money limits. For more on this refer back to the “Project” post in this series.

This concludes the first, seven-part series on change management. If you are as fascinated with this material and care to comment or would like more information on change management contact me at gwmonti@mac.com or visit www.ctrchg.com.

With over 30 years experience, Gary Monti consults/teaches/mentors/speaks in change management and project management with a focus on compassion and respect in the workplace. The work is grounded in project management, chaos and complexity theories combined with Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

Tagged as: active garage, apple, Change Management, competition, copland, darwin, feature management, features, gary monti, genetic drift, gold plating, natural selection, products, projects, robotics, second-system effect, survival, survival of the fittest, vehicle manufacturing

Marketers have long used sex appeal to market their products. There’s no denying that visual cues have been used for many successful advertising campaigns.

Take a look at these two videos, first one produced by Apple. You’ve probably already seen it on TV.

Watch for how it has a unique sex appeal — the choice of song and the dance moves and think whether you would be more prone to purchase the product…

For some of you – Your ROCK STAR imagination kicked into overdrive with this commercial, and you were identifying with your wild side…

Here is the second video, which got a lot of attention on Doritos “Create your own ads” contest.

The “Checkout Girl” spot was a great way to showcase all the flavors and even slides in comments on each. It’s nice that they didn’t use a skinny model as the checkout girl. This is a very original and professional looking spot and gets better and better until the crammed-in “obligatory crunch bite.”

For some of you, you wanted to be that guy in the line…

If a picture in traditional advertising was a thousand words, you can imagine the power of video…the sex appeal lies in how close you get to act on your intent to purchase…ARE You READY to BUY?

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Contributed by Deepika Bajaj, President and Founder, Invincibelle, LLC and co-founder, ActiveGarage (the company behind 99tribes). Deepika is also the author of the book DiversityTweet: Embracing the growing diversity in our world. You can follow Deepika on Twitter at invincibelle

Tagged as: active garage, advertisements, advertising campaigns, apple, deepika bajaj, doritos, invincibelle, marketers, marketing, products, sex appeal, Social Media, youtube