Welcome! My name is Trevor Speirs. My passion is the convergence of social networking, content, and mobile technologies. A MBA/JD generalist who loves helping technology companies succeed, since 2002 I have worked with numerous companies leading and participating in projects that touch sales, marketing, business development, intellectual property protection, customer support, finance, and product development.
I hope that by sharing my thoughts and experiences, I can start a discussion about business best practices for the technology industry. The goal is that we can codify a book of knowledge that can guide technology companies as they tackle the inevitable challenges of growth. For more info about me.
I can’t begin to say how much I love this post! Seth Godin uses the Apple/AT&T iPhone PR disaster to talk about scarcity and how companies can use it to their advantage.
Some of the points I want to highlight:
In today’s internet age, we should not have people lining up to get a scare product. Allow them to buy in advance online forming a queue.
The advance purchase allows you to manage implementation and rollout to control potential for massive disasters like this past weekend (a small disaster can be quickly fixed and kept quiet).
Treat your best customers better. You know who they are because the pre-ordered the phone (or you previous customers who are big users of the product). By allowing them to just go pick up their phone in a VIP line or give a customized phone for the 1st X customers just reinforces the value of scarcity.
Post is bang on and completely relevant because so many companies still market the old way ignoring the potential of new technological advances.
During my MBA, I have evolved my thinking about presentations. I have grown to hate the bullet, text heavy design that we have been programed to do since grade school. I strongly believe that style does little to convey much of a message as the audience is too busy reading rather than connecting with the speaker.
So I am becoming a proponent of the visual presentation where the speaker memorizes his key points rather than reads them off a slide, but I think there may be a challenge depending on the audience. When presenting to analytical types like engineers and professors, they like to see the data even if it means not listening attentively at the speaker. One part of me says force them to listen (they will benefit from it), but the other recognizes if you only have one shot and you fail to deliver what the audience expects (or demands) you may lose them from the start. Not sure how to reconcile this situation.
But I want to highlight another great presentation on the art of presentations by Nancy Duarte. I like Nancy because she ignores the common mantra of destroy powerpoint and advocates embracing the platform to deliver truly memorable presentations (don’t shoot the messenger, shoot the message (and message creator)).
Nancy really makes a great point that I have embraced (but not necessarily articulated very well) that powerpoint is a powerful tool that has multiple uses. Obviously we can use it to make wonderful visual presentations. The other use is as a document creator. Fill each slide with text, graphs, images, bullets. The key is to recognize how each are to be used: visual presentations to engage audience and documents for your audience to read on their own.
A few weeks ago, I asked if innovation was challenged in a world that can replicate ideas so inexpensively and quickly. I felt that it spoke volumes that people continuously innovate in spite of the fact that often it is someone else profiting from their innovation after they copy it.
I would like to add to this discussion by listing some of the strategies the original innovator can use to best capture the fruits of their innovation.
1. First to Market - We frequently see the first person to release idea can maintain market dominance. This is particularly true with a innovation that benefits from network effects (something that is becoming more common in this internet age). Check out this great post that break down the viral loop.
How: a) act quickly to promote the innovation and drive adoption; and b) make it easy for users to invite their networks to use the product.
Examples:
Twitter, Hotmail, Myspace (not the first per se, but the first to do it the right way)
2. Brand Baby, Brand - If your product is easy to copy and will not benefit from network effects you will need to find a way to differentiate it. The best way is branding - the great art of the consumer products world. Why can Chlorox bleach charge a price premium and still lead market share versus a private label bleach? They are both bleach - not a very complex formula. Brands get to the emotional level of the consumer and that is where you need to be if you want to fend of the copy cats.
How: a) identify an emotional driver of your target audience (listen to your early customers and test groups); b) craft a message around that emotional driver; and c) ensure that message is consistently delivered in every customer touch point (not just communications).
As a wrap up my MBA program, I am excited to announce that I have accepted an incredible position at Experian. I will be a Manager of Synergy & Innovation on a small team led by a EVP. Essentially, our charter is to create an environment where Experian’s multiple business units are motivated to share information in the hopes that they find process improvements and new business ideas.
I think it is a perfect position for me because I will be able to exercise my broad range of skills and interests. It touches on strategy, marketing, finance, organizational behavior, and even law. To top it all off, I will be exposed to all of Experian’s different business lines. So, for a guy who likes new things, I think I will be enjoying myself.
The challenge for me will be learning how to navigate such a large organization with an extensive history. My background is primarily working in smaller companies, so I will be exposed to whole new level of communication and people motivation challenges. Scary - a little. Excited for the personal growth opportunity - you bet.
I will try to keep you informed as much as confidentiality allows.
PC Mag recently cited an Accenture study stating that 68% of electronic product returns worked properly! That means the main issue was that either the product was difficult to use or set up. While it is easy to blame the stupidity of consumers for not understanding how to use your product, you should really ask who is the stupid one?
All too often companies get focused on building the best technology, ;lying the mantras “add more features”, “improve performance”. In product development meetings we rarely hear the word “simplify”.
Of course it is not necessarily your fault. Early on in your product’s life, you had to market to the early adopters. They have a good understanding of technology and will likely get a product with the worst user interface working. They also pound the drum of new features, better performance so that they can get an edge on their competition. So it’s not your fault, you were trained to think this way by your customers.
The problem is that the elusive “Early Majority” mass market across Moore’s Chasm do not want new features and better performance. It is very likely you have too many features and your performance is more than good enough for them. The value proposition they are looking for is “give me an easy way to solve a pressing problem”. They usually don’t even want to get an edge on competitors; they just want to keep up with everyone else.
Can you see the problem here. On one side your current customers want more features, better performance that gives them an edge and on the other side your future customers want easy to solve a current problem that will help them keep up with their competitors. What is easy for these groups to demand will be a nightmare for your company to deliver without incredible discipline.
At the drop of a hat, you will need to turn your product development strategy 180 degrees; moving from performance to simplicity. It requires an incredible mindset shift and often requires new employees who bring that view to the company. Crossing the Chasm is a great book to help you understand strategically (and tactically) what you need to do, but I will try to summarize some steps.
Pick a focused segment of the mass market with an incredibly focused painful problem.
Deliver the entire solution to new target market even if this requires you to partner with other companies. This also means making the solution as easy as possible for the customer.
Position your product in a category that the new target market understands with two competitors - a budget product and a differentiated product. These will help legitimize your solution and differentiate it as the best solution.
This is not an easy task. Most companies fall into the depths of the chasm never to be heard from again. The goal is to avoid those 68% of product returns because your product is too complicated for the customer to use. Your solution may solve their problem completely, but if they can’t figure it out immediately, there attention will move elsewhere - plunging you head first into the chasm.
Everyone’s favorite new mass communication service, Twitter, has been having some issues lately. Namely, two down times on consecutive days. This has cause some Twitter-ers to organize a “Twit-Out” to “send a message to the powers that be“.
Honestly people? Do you think twitter’s “powers” start the day saying “how can we make our service fail today?” They are tackling an incredibly challenging problem that grows in difficulty as it scales (Check out Alex Iskold’s excellent post on the scaling issue). Your message will not motivate them to solve the problem anymore than they currently are. Go ahead, move to some other service, but once it scales to the same level it will likely have similar problems.
Bottom line is that we love Twitter. For those of us that have embraced it, it is hard to remember how we got on without it. That makes us act crazy when it lets us down. Lets just remember the Twitter team’s good intentions, ask how we can help them, and enjoy the good times while the kinks of this service get ironed out.
As an analyst intern at a private equity firm, when looking at newer companies, I am looking for a long term competitive advantage. It is hard to find when I know that even the most innovative new product ideas can be replicated so quickly. For example many of Naked Juice’s new juice products are now copied and sold under a Trader Joe’s private label. How long did that take? About 18-24 months from when it started to take off? Given the R&D that goes into a product, 2 yrs is a very short time to take profits to make innovation worthwhile for companies (especially new companies).
Take this concept to my area of interest internet businesses. Obviously, in today’s era of quickly spread information, hyper-prevalent coding skills, and open source collaboration, an innovative website will be copied in a matter of weeks (forget months)! That means no matter how great an idea you have there is a high chance that someone else will profit off it and not you! Think about that.
Sure there are patents, but they really provide little protection in today’s environment. Once people know what you did, often they can find a work around.
“It is profound that people create in this environment”
I think what is amazing is that, despite these troubling realities, people still create. They must know that their ideas will be copied, but they create and contribute to society. This environment calls into question the foundations of our patent system that was created to incentivize innovation, but today’s environment implies that humans have deep implicit incentives to create. To me that is a profound observation!
Maybe we do not need a patent system anymore? Maybe we need to recognize the first creator of something with some form of financial compensation? Inventions could no longer be protected “rights to prevent” and become open licenses to the world for some fee. How we could determine the fee is beyond me, but it would be a great way to continue innovation and reward its creators.
This is only the opening of a conversation. I would be interested in hearing what other people think.
In my final quarter of my MBA program, I have the great honor of participating in a project that uses web2.0 tools to generate awareness and financial support for fantastic charitable and non-profit projects. My group’s project is dedicated to support aspiring women in emerging countries. These are women entrepreneurs who require loans to expand their businesses or young girls from Africa who need education and safety in order to improve their lives and communities. We ask that you rally around these great causes. You can make an immense difference in the lives of these incredible women with just a little bit of effort!
What You Can Do
1. Buy Articles You Normally Buy At Amazon.com: We have set up an Amazon WebStore, CaringMBAs.com, where you can buy articles that you can buy at Amazon.com at the same prices. The only difference is that all of the commissions we receive go to giving scholarships to promising young girls in Mozambique.
2. Give Directly:GlobalGiving.com allows you to small donations to projects that matter to you. Kiva.org is a great site that allows you to contribute to small loans to entrepreneurs in emerging nations. The great part about Kiva is that your loan will be paid back; allowing you to reinvest your money in another entrepreneur! Check out our sponsored projects below or find them at CaringMBAs.com.
3. Let Other People Know: Make a brief blog post about our cause. Use the text above and link to our caringmbas site!
4. Let Us Know: If you shop at our WebStore, give directly, or simply want to let us know you support what we are doing, we ask that you let us know by leaving a comment below.
Thanks for your support. If you have any great ideas on how we can spread the message about this great cause - leave a comment.
In one of my interviews I had to share situations about how I managed projects without official authority. As it wasn’t one of the standard interview questions, it caught me a little off-guard and I improvised a weak answer. In working with other companies and during my MBA experience, I often work with teams helping them get projects done without any authority. The interview experience made me go home, review my experiences, and document some of the things I have done in this situation. As usual, the ideas I express below are not novel, I learned many of them from people much more adept at this than me. I just want to express what has worked for me.
Building Trust: For example to build trust with the Product Development Manager, I made sure to read up on issues surrounding software development such as project management methodologies (Waterfall or Agile) and best source codes to use (.Net or Java). I would solicit his opinions on these topics. Our conversation demonstrated that I had taken the time to understand his perspective and strengthened our trust.
Aligning Goals:It is less important for people to see why you think your project is important than it is for them to recognize why it is important to them! I often spend my most of my time in new places or groups talking to people to better understand their goals. Don’t be afraid to dig into their initial responses to try and discover what are their key drivers. Once you understand what motivates them, try to present your projects in ways that highlight how they align with theirs.
Tailoring Communications: It is not only languages that create communication barriers between people. Personality types, education, job titles, and work cultures are other barriers that effective communication must navigate. Always modify your communication style in a way that best resonates with your audience.
Let Others Lead: In meetings, I let team members shape the agenda and drive the meeting. Their ownership builds their commitment to the project. I try to operate as a person who documents the meeting - trying to highlight consensus or interesting ideas - adding my insight where appropriate and driving the discussion forward.
Note Actionables of Team Members: When a team member undertakes to perform a deliverable for the team, I try to clarify the “what” and “when” during the meeting. That way the member has committed to the team to perform the deliverable; not to me individually.
Follow Up: In addition to sending out a recap of the meeting and actionables,it is critical to meet with key individuals before and after important meetings to get their feedback on how they see the project is progressing. The act reinforces your interest in their input, helps you gather important information, and, most importantly, ensures that they are never surprised by something in a meeting (the one thing that can seriously derail any meeting).
This is just a few tips. I am sure people have even better ones. I encourage you to share yours in the comments.
As a devout planner, I benefit from the fact that my projects generally stay on track and deliver solid results. However, the risk of a planner is that it fosters an environment that misses out on those creative moments of innovation that arise through spontaneity, improvisation and free thinking.
A planner can always “schedule” time for steps, but these activities may not come naturally to me. That’s why I am always on the lookout for good frameworks to ensure that creativity can bubble up to the surface of my groups. Presentation Zen just posted a video about Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats. I have heard about the method before, but it never stuck with me. Now that my MBA experiences have helped me recognize my strengths and weaknesses as a group member, this methodology seems like a great tool to help planners move outside of their habitual thinking.
There are great internet resources about the methodology (such as this one at Mind Tools), but I will do a brief review. First here is a video of Edward de Bono discussing the first five hats.
Overview of the Six Hats:
White Hat: The facts and nothing but the facts. Data, information, what questions need to be answered, what are the gaps, what do we have, what do we not have, and how are we going to get it.
Red Hat: Emotions are OK. This is where people talk about feelings and instinct that we can’t support with facts. Since in most business environments feelings are not allowed, people rationalize them in a logical argument that can severely bog down a meeting. Red Hat gives team members a way to signal that this comment is a hunch. Red Hat comments can range from personal like or dislike to instincts coming from many years of industry experience. The key point is that anyone expressing a Red Hat thought does not have to justify it.
Black Hat: The logical negative. Essentially, the Black Hat is our critical thinking. Why does something not fit; what are the weaknesses. It is an important function early in innovation to identify weaknesses that will need to be overcome and critical assumptions that will need to be verified before big bets are placed. Black Hat thinking should be used at critical points of innovation, but it should not dominate the process as it will generally lead to risk-adverse projects with relatively low payoffs.
Yellow Hat: The logical positives. What is the logical feasibility, benefits and advantages that would flow from project. Just as critical thinking finds reasonable weaknesses with the plan, we should also think about reasonable strengths inherent in the plan (something we often forget about while focusing on the negatives).
Green Hat: The creative hat. The Green Hat allows the group to put forward new ideas, discuss possibilities of the project (ie, where can it go), and think of alternatives. It is a great tool to reverse dominance of Black Hat thinking. When the Black Hat seems to dominate group discussion ask the group to put on their Green Hats for awhile!
Blue Hat: The one hat to rule them all. This is the hat of the meeting chair who’s job is to ensure the discussion covers the other five hats.
As a wrap up my MBA program, I am excited to announce that I have accepted an incredible position at 
PC Mag recently cited an 
