Management Innovation Group

The Seven Common Myths of Innovation

Innovation is by far the hottest management issue now and, surely, your organization is abuzz with the rhetoric of innovation. But, here’s a question: Is your organization, like so many others, suffering from a massive rhetoric/reality gap? If you say “yes,” then it is likely your organization is blinded by one or more of the seven deadly myths of innovation.

MIG/Strategos at the Society of Information Management

Strategos director Amy Muller will give a presentation to the Boston Society of Information Management on Thursday, September 27th. Amy’s talk will focus on opportunities for management innovation within the IT sector, and help CIOs and leaders of technology organizations see new potential for innovative business uses of information technology.

BW on IBM’s Office Rival

MIG principal John Zapolski was interviewed for BusinessWeek staff writer Matt Vella’s recent piece on IBM’s entry into the office presentation and word processing software market. Symphony will offer users many of the features of Microsoft’s Office software, but will be available for free download through IBM’s website.

MIG at the Retail Executive Invitational

MIG principal John Zapolski will give an invited presentation alongside Strategos CEO Peter Skarzynski at the upcoming Retail Industry Leaders Association Executive Invitational. John and Peter will be in Albuquerque, NM to discuss opportunities for retailers to engage front line employees — those closest to the customers and the action — in creating successful ongoing innovation programs that deliver new growth and new strategic opportunity.

PodTech Podcast with Scott Hirsch

Recently MIG principal Scott Hirsch recorded a podcast with John Furrier of PodTech at the Under the Radar early-stage technology conference. They discussed technology-focused startups that drive by the rear-view mirror, open vs. closed networks, and why it’s the most visionary people that drive innovation.

Forrester Recommends MIG on Innovation

In a new report titled Culture And Process Drive Better Customer Experiences, Forrester Research agrees that companies that build a successful long-term track record with innovation do so because they work constantly at improving their products, processes, and culture. Here’s an excerpt:

“Many companies turn to outside agencies for help designing self-service channels or products — but the more lasting value of the partnership is often the agency’s ability to influence its client’s culture and process. In addition to sharing their design methodologies, agencies can help clients navigate politically dangerous waters, get people in different organizations talking to each other, and break down barriers to conflict resolution. Seek out agencies — like Management Innovation Group — that actively aim to improve corporate culture and process through design projects.”

Can Large Companies Succeed with Social Media?

Social Media — media created by the public in online communities — represents an inherently different paradigm of communication than traditional mass media. For customers, social media facilitates new ways of connecting, sharing, and organizing relationships and information. For companies, social media offers innovative approaches to marketing, media, product development, and overall customer relations. Social media has influenced a shift in business use of the Internet from developing new technologies and publishing to developing communities of customers and collaborators.

But so far, small companies and start-ups have dominated this space. Amazon represents the closest example we have to a large, established company using social media productively, and Amazon is only ten years old. Small companies looking for disruptive innovations have moved quickly to establish interactive relations with customers online. And perhaps because they are relatively resource-poor — necessity being the mother of invention — start-ups have leveraged the public as their writers, editors, and collaborators. Can large companies play too? We think so.

The Management Innovation Group has developed a framework for any company considering how to build a social media platform. Fundamentally it’s about asking the right questions at the right time, and having the experience to know what the right answers look like.

We start by teaching our clients to identify consumer segments and the opportunity to serve them. This research needs to look across current and potential customer types, and mix questions from ethnographic and marketing points of view. The results should express segments in terms of behavior and lifestyle affinities rather than demographics.

After understanding our customer segment, we explore which business benefits are desired and possible. Being explicit at this stage helps answer hundreds of downstream design decisions. Are you trying to succeed in customer acquisition? Publicity? Customer research? Building a scalable product platform? Viral marketing? Lower development costs?

Having defined our goals we can develop a combination of business process and technology. Again, the right questions are crucial: What is the potential size of the customer base? How do you solve the chicken-and-egg problem of building a critical mass of customers? What are the relative merits of social networking and social media? How can you combine social media with traditional, centrally-produced media? Should you buy, build, or partner?

This approach might look backwards from your typical business strategy or technology development, and it should. Social media platforms that neglect to put the customer first never fail to fail. Companies that over-prioritize software selection or purely selfish business needs are vulnerable to a steady stream of agile, customer-focused new competitors.

While many companies will want to enhance their business with social media, not all will succeed. A social media platform doesn’t simply mean adding an online forum or blog. It requires a shift in organizational mindset, a mindset of constant and immediate customer interaction, customer-driven innovation, and exponential network effects. Only companies willing to make this shift will have the discipline to ask the right questions.

Keywords: Web 2.0, participation, blogs, wikis, forums, ratings, web applications, services, internet

Strategic Influence Seminar

Enhancing Your Strategic Influence: Understanding and Responding to Complex Business Problems

A one-day seminar from the Management Innovation Group

Schedule

March 23, 2006 at the Information Architecture Summit in Vancouver.
Scott Hirsch, Victor Lombardi, and John Zapolski of MIG will be joined by
Harry Max, Independent Consultant, formerly of DreamWorks Animation
Mark McCormick, Director of Design at Wells Fargo

August 17, 2006 in Denver, Colorado.

Description

While the skill level of design teams has increased dramatically over the last several years, many still lack the tools necessary to understand and articulate the broader implications of their work within a complex and dynamic business environment. The most successful are better at recognizing the roots of strategic change and opportunity, assessing the potential impacts on their organization, and determining what to do and who to involve in getting it done.

This workshop introduces participants to a new way of thinking about cause and effect in complex organizations — within functional groups, across departments, beyond business units, and across industries. Participants come away with a set of tools to identify social, cultural, economic, and technological change, match products to emerging and changing markets, develop strategies to capture market value, and change organizational capabilities to reflect changing market and technological dynamics. Special attention is given to learning how to create and maintain a workplace and culture that facilitate and sustain innovation and change.

Questions

Here are some of the basic questions that we will help participants answer, both in general and in the context of their companies:

What is a business model? A value proposition? A business strategy?

Given my role, what contribution am I making to my company’s success?

How does my function deliver value in my company’s business model and value proposition?

How do I determine how to choose my battles wisely: which high-value projects to push and which can stay on the back burner?

How do I say “no” to bad projects? What language will be most convincing to my management and stakeholders?

How can I get more visibility for my function in my company? How do I build alliances with like-minded stakeholders?

How do other functions typically understand business problems, and how does that compare to the perspective from my discipline?

Who Should Attend

This session is designed specifically for managers and leaders who seek to use design as a strategic tool to understand and influence organizational change. While a deep knowledge of advanced design principles is not necessary for this session, participants should be willing to explore their roles as leaders and change agents within their organizations.

Types of attendees most likely to find this workshop compelling include:

Managers of design teams

Product Managers

Entrepreneurs seeking to build a culture that values design

Design practitioners who report to a non-designer manager

Anyone who aspires to enhance their role as an internal change agent

Comments from Recent Participants

“The presentations were full of useful information, and Scott, John, and Victor were very responsive to the group’s needs and questions. I appreciate how the whole day was planned in sequence: multiple levels of experience and different points of view were considered. I felt engaged in the conversation and left the talks inspired to investigate the topics further and continue the conversations.”
Jon Littell, Hot Studio, Inc.

Social Media and Value Creation

Social media takes audience participation to a new level, as readers become reporters, commentators, and even editors. For businesses, the many opportunities include building communities of loyal customers, reduced content creation/acquisition costs, and increased audience size through viral marketing. But there are threats as well: the barriers to entry may be low for competitors, a community’s point-of-view may not compliment the business plan, and communities are hard to jump-start and often slow to grow.

This poster presents an overview of value creation through social media in contrast to broadcast and interactive media.

Red Herring Profiles Scott Hirsch

Highlighting “20 Entrepreneurs Under 35,” Red Herring magazine profiled MIG partner Scott Hirsch. “We wanted to be a different consulting firm,” he says. “We wanted to be about collaboration, innovation, helping teams change fundamentally… and big companies be more entrepreneurial.” Read the article >>