I invite you to join me as I con­tinue my… well let’s call it a voy­age of dis­cov­ery. Pub­licly, it all started last week with a post enti­tled “It’s All About the Cus­tomer; 5 Myths to Bust to Get There”, the premise is that busi­nesses have/are mov­ing away from sell­ing a prod­uct to sell­ing a solu­tion by focus­ing on cus­tomer rela­tion­ships and reten­tion. This is how I closed the post:

Myth­buster Needed

What’s we as busi­ness lead­ers need to embrace is new answers for old prob­lems — lead­er­ship, inno­va­tion and growth – and new chal­lenges. In order to do this here are five myths that we need to bust.

Myth 1: We can’t Afford to Fail… Often

Myth 2: Deci­sions should be based on data not intuition

Myth 3: Past ways need to be totally forgotten

Myth 4: Prob­lem solv­ing and crit­i­cal think­ing are the same

Myth 5: It’s all about the features

I’ll explore these myths more next week.

On Field Audible

We most cer­tainly will dig into each of these myths, how­ever, upon fur­ther reflec­tion dur­ing the week I think it is well worth the effort to take the time to explore the back-story that’s dri­ving this trend. After all, if we don’t develop a hypoth­e­sis around the engine of change (the core) how could we ever expect to for­mu­late rea­son­able argu­ments against the myths?

The Post Reces­sion Consumer

I’m not nec­es­sar­ily a fan of trickle-down– eco­nom­ics but rip­ple effects (reper­cus­sions) within the supplier-consumer eco sys­tem are all too real. At the core of the cur­rent busi­ness model renais­sance is the impact the past reces­sion (although to mil­lions it is still all too cur­rent, so well just think of it as the reces­sion and post reces­sion wave) has had on the atti­tudes of con­sumers. In the U.S. we have seen sav­ings rates jump from under 5% of take home pay to in some cases to +10%, ter­ri­tory, an area that has not been treaded upon since the early 1970’s. Accord­ing a Strat­egy + Busi­ness arti­cle “The Power of the Post-Recession Con­sumer” by John Gerzema and Michael D’Antonio, it is a move to a lifestyle more focused on com­mu­nity, con­nec­tion, qual­ity, and cre­ativ­ity. These spend­ing shifts have  

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Whether we rec­og­nize it or not we live in a global mar­ket­place in which mar­kets are local.

In years past it very rarely crossed our minds that we – when I say we I’m talk­ing about us as indi­vid­u­als — would be inter­act­ing with both part­ners and cus­tomers from around the world on a daily basis. We knew the hot but­tons, morays, and cul­ture of our mar­kets because our clan was part of the mar­ket. Today that really isn’t the case. We com­mu­ni­cate with ex-patriots in East­ern Europe, have run­ning dia­logues with Aus­tralians, and have part­nered locally with a friend who matured in the busi­ness envi­ron­ment of China.

We all deal with an amal­ga­ma­tion of local mar­kets to ser­vice our cus­tomers. It thus behooves us to under­stand cul­tural ori­en­ta­tions and how it influ­ences an individual’s perception.

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photo via Don­ald McMichael

While I never going into depth about the finds, I do encour­age you check them out if they sound interesting.

When to Gam­ble — and When to Fold? Inno­va­tion Strate­gies for a New Economy

With regards to inno­va­tion it’s not always best to be first. Business his­tory is lit­tered with exam­ples of those who put together the core prin­ci­ples of new busi­nesses only to have the fame and quite often the for­tune go to the sec­ond, third, or fourth mover. As cor­po­rate devel­op­ment types we’re always on a quest to bet­ter under­stand this phe­nom­e­non. In this Whar­ton @Knowledge arti­cle Scott Sny­der, a senior fel­low at the Whar­ton School’s Mack Cen­ter for Tech­no­log­i­cal Inno­va­tion is quoted as stat­ing that “The les­son here is the set of assump­tions we make a long term bet on … are very frag­ile”. Check out the full arti­cle for insights as to why Com­pa­nies that suc­ceed in this area are not nec­es­sar­ily the ones who bring prod­ucts to the mar­ket first.

The other posts are:

• Busi­ness model inno­va­tion starts with chal­leng­ing hid­den assumptions
• 3 Lev­els of Strategy
• What’s The Most Dif­fi­cult CEO Skill? Man­ag­ing Your Own Psychology
• The paid­Con­tent 50: The Most Suc­cess­ful Dig­i­tal Media Com­pa­nies in The U.S.

Check out my main site DonaldMcMichael.com to see the full post.

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“Assess the advan­tages in tak­ing advice, then struc­ture your forces accord­ingly, to sup­ple­ment extra­or­di­nary tac­tics. Forces are to be struc­tured strate­gi­cally, based on what is advan­ta­geous.”
— Sun Tzu

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