Guy Kawasaki: Advice from an Apple Veteran on Making Your Venture Successful

Via Guy Kawasaki Success Magazine 

Guy Kawasaki is just like any other Hawaiian-born, hockey-playing, trendsetting, jet-hopping corporate evangelist, entrepreneur, author, columnist, blogger, venture capitalist, new media creator next door. He says success starts with a proper mantra.

“Almost every entrepreneur begins by creating a mission statement. Wrong,” the brash 55-year-old Silicon Valley veteran tells SUCCESS. “Mission statements are too broad and boring. No matter what kind of organization you are starting, what you first need to do is develop a mantra. Keep it two to four words max. You may never have to write your mantra down, publish it in your annual report or print it on posters. Indeed, if you do have to enforce your mantra in these ways, it’s not the right mantra.”

Kawasaki’s personal mantra: “Empower People.” The mantra of Garage Technology Ventures, the Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm he co-founded and directs, is “We start up startups.” Some other good examples Kawasaki often cites: Target—“Democratizing Design”; Nike—“Authentic Athletic Performance”; or Starbucks— “Rewarding Everyday Moments.”

Of course, the mantra is just one step in starting a business. Kawasaki stays in great demand relating the rest of the story. Author of the best-selling entrepreneurial how-to guide, The Art of the Start, published in 2004, and the detail-packed Reality Check in 2008, he shares lessons forged from his high-flying days at Apple Computer, his own startups and venture capitalist experience.

Finding Meaning

In speeches and interviews, Kawasaki plays off his candid persona, prompting USA Today to refer to him as “a head-banging bruddah from a tough blue-collar neighborhood in Honolulu.”

His books are chock-full of specific advice for entrepreneurs, but ground zero for Kawasaki is “the one question you should ask yourself before starting any new venture: Do I want to make meaning?” That is followed by other queries in the same vein: Do I want to make the world a better place? Increase the quality of life? Right a terrible wrong? Prevent the end of something good?

“We meet with entrepreneurs all the time and they tell us what they think we want to hear, that they want to make money,” he says. “When we hear that, it’s so depressing. It took me 20 years to come to this understanding, but the companies that are successful are the ones who create meaning. Create the next curve; don’t improve on sameness.”

That said, Garage is in a money business, and “revenue is the single-biggest challenge to entrepreneurs today because no one is buying anything,” he says.

“The least likely company to make a sale is a startup,” he says. “In these times, corporate employees are not likely to risk their career buying from a startup. There’s no magical answer on how to overcome that. It takes perseverance.”

While the home run has eluded Garage, it has nurtured a number of success stories, including D.light Design, which makes cheap, solar-powered lights intended for use in the developing countries of Asia and Africa, and individual investor champion The Motley Fool. The firm’s portfolio company, information-sharing site Kaboodle, was sold to the Hearst Corporation. PC Magazine named another client, job search engine and recruitment advertising network Simply Hired, one of its “Top 100 Websites for 2009.”

It’s a very different game today than before the dot-com bust.

“In today’s economy and tight credit markets, there is a much greater emphasis on getting to revenues fast and more emphasis on business models than before,” Kawasaki says. “You also meet companies that are further along. Whereas, a few years ago the accepted practice was you raised a bunch of money, then you went away for a year and built your software. You needed the money to hire people, buy tools and all that kind of stuff.”

It’s Not as Bad as It Seems

Aside from the fact that no one is buying anything, Kawasaki explains this may be one of the best times to start a company. “If you look at the factors a company needs—people, marketing, tools and Web services, storage, bandwidth, those kinds of things—the basics are extremely affordable,” he says. For instance:

• Marketing is basically free with Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.
• Tools are basically free because of Open Source.
• There is an abundant, cheap workforce because of all the people out of work.
• Inexpensive services are available—with cloud computing, for example, basically for $500 you can get a lot of storage and bandwidth.

“The cost of starting a company is lower than ever, which means you can go longer without venture capital,” he says. “It also means, however, that when you do need venture capitalists, they expect you to show up with more done than just a PowerPoint.”

In addition to Garage and writing books and columns, Kawasaki has set his sights on new media communication as co-founder of Truemors, a free-flow rumor mill Web site that NowPublic acquired in 2008, and Alltop, an “online magazine rack” for the Web that collects and posts the headlines of the latest stories from sites and blogs it considers the “best.”

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“The content and advertising businesses are very difficult ,” he says. “Someone explained it to me this way: If you look at a tech startup, most people try to go after elephants. A good elephant would be a Salesforce.com kind of company, right? Other people happen to bag whales, such as Google. So you have everyone hunting elephants and whales, but it’s more reasonable to go after deer. A deer is big enough to fi ll you but not so big you kill yourself going after an elephant or a whale. But most tech companies today are going after rabbits and prairie dogs. I can make the case that even more Web companies are going after plankton.”

The greatest benefit of founding Truemors (which cost less than $13,000 to launch) was that it led to Alltop, Kawasaki says. “We noticed so much traffic came from popurls [an Internet aggregator launched in March 2006], which inspired us to do Alltop.” Truemors had no business plan, no venture-capitalist pitch, and only 7 1/2 weeks to launch. He registered 55 domain names. Software development cost $4,500.

Nononina, the company that owns Alltop, is Kawasaki’s “two guys and a gal” garage band—or more accurately, a team consisting of “one guy in home offi ce (Will Mayall), one gal on a kitchen table (Kathryn Henkens) and one Guy in United Airlines seat 2B (Kawasaki).”

The New Information Sage

Alltop, which receives the bulk of Kawasaki’s focus today, tries to offer a robust information shortcut. “There is no such thing as too much information,” he explains. “I think there is no limit to the amount of information you can have. The question is, does it limit you from acting? The amount of information can be beside the point if you don’t have enough courage to make a decision.” Alltop is a snug fit with his internal wiring, which is always searching, learning and regurgitating, living as he directed in his 1999 book, Rules for Revolutionaries: “Eat like a bird; poop like an elephant.”

“It has been a joy to do this company because the blogs and sites are thrilled to be on it,” Kawasaki explains. “For the people who use it, it is like a breath of fresh air. If you were to Google travel, you would get over a billion matches. That’s not really useful. At Alltop, you would get a few hundred where we’ve aggregated and displayed the latest stories. Instead of some computer algorithm, it’s a curated site—a human has decided what should be there.”

Immersion is part of his household’s wiring as well. When Kawasaki’s kids became enamored with hockey after attending a San Jose Sharks game, his wife Beth, whom he met at Apple, insisted that if the kids were going to play, Kawasaki “couldn’t just be one of these venture capitalists on the sideline playing with a BlackBerry and that I had to take an active part.”

Now, if Kawasaki is not traveling, he plays hockey every day of the week. “I play more than they do,” he says.

Hockey analogies pepper his conversations (he often talks about how if he’d accepted the job as Yahoo CEO when it was offered to him in the late ’90s, he could own the San Jose Sharks right now—“what’s a billion here or a billion there?” he playfully asks). One of the things he says he’s learned with Apple, Truemors, and Alltop “is that success is a grind.”

“Many people, especially young people, think success is event-related,” he explains. “You announce. You ship. And then life is good and you go straight to the moon. Instead, what happens is you ship with bugs in the software, and people don’t like your product. Then you fi x and fi x and fix, and you keep shipping.

“I suppose there are some instant successes, but that’s principally an oxymoron. That’s like saying [Pittsburgh Penguins captain] Sidney Crosby was an instant success in the NHL. Well, sure, in his first two years he did very well, but that ignores the 17 previous years he practiced or played hockey five hours a day. There’s no instant there, or here.”

Although he acknowledges he shares the entrepreneurial trait that is always looking for the new thing, the next challenge, not being content to stick to one thing, he insists he can be satisfied.

“If I were to sell Alltop for, say, $10 million, I would disappear from the face of the earth,” he says with a laugh. “You’d never see me again.”

His track record indicates otherwise. via success.com

5 Qualities that Make a Good Leader in the Social Media Age

The book Humanize makes the case for innovating the way we lead and manage our organizations. It suggests that last century’s mechanical models of management have become outdated in today’s more social world, and our challenge now is to create more human organizations that are more open, trustworthy, generative, and courageous. These are the very same elements that made social media a success.

At a recent meet-up in Washington D.C. the authors and four panelists shared insights about how their organizations embraced the principles in Humanize as they changed their workflows, went through reorganizations, and embraced social tools and approaches to sharing information and completing tasks. The conversation was as much about organizational leadership as it was about social tools.

What makes a good leader in your organization?

1. They provide clear direction.
2. They use positive language when things change. They embrace change.
3. They are transparent and share information freely.
4. They reinforce the value of experimentation—even failure.
5. They talk aloud sharing their rationale and understanding with the team. They leverage the expertise of others to help them solve the tough problems.

Leaders Provide Clear Direction

A common complaint you hear from dissatisfied employees is that their managers micro-manage them. If you ask a few probing questions you usually discover that the employee’s frustration is that they have little control in how they can solve the problem because their boss’s expectation is that they will work the same way that they do. Of course, the boss’s intentions are usually pure in that they view their approach as proven—after all, it has worked for them.

As a leader you need to remember that the goal is clarity in the assignment, not telling staff how to solve the problem. Your staff want autonomy in how they approach the assignment. And when you provide them autonomy, you will often find that staff are more satisfied with their work and the results may be better than your expectations.

Leaders Embrace Change

As a leader in your organization, you are always on stage. Your staff are looking to you for how they should respond to situations. If you respond positively to changing conditions, so will they.

Leaders are Transparent and Share Information Freely

The clock is ticking on organizations that rely heavily on processes, tools, and control. We are already seeing evidence that successful organizations are more human. One example is American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) that was recently named one of the top 50 places to work by Washingtonian magazine. During the panel discussion Crystal Williams of AILA noted that what brings satisfaction to a workplace is giving employees control over that environment and by focusing on collaboration and community. She further noted by encouraging AILA employees to participate in social media and to connect with their members on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to not only get AILA’s message out, but to also help employees connect with members as real people.

In Work Happy, Jill Geiser offers these tips for building transparency in your teams:

• Don’t assume that people can read your mind or that your actions speak for themselves
• Explain your intentions. Be clear.
• Don’t hesitate to share the "why" behind your decisions
• Make sure your deputies feel free to warn you when something you’re about to do has the potential to be taken the wrong way.
• Cultivate your top performers to become your candid advisors. They see how your leadership affects the team, and have more confidence than most to call you out when necessary.
• Thank anyone who has the courage to warn you that your Evil Twin is in the room.

Leaders Reinforce the Value of Experimentation—Even Failure

Innovation does not happen overnight. It requires experimentation and learning. You need to create a culture in your organization where your staff feel safe taking risks and learning from them. Sometimes; however, mistakes are made and your clients or customers become unhappy. How you respond to these mistakes will set the tone of your organization culture. Sunayna Tuteja,VP of Social Media & Digital Communications at TD Bank spoke of these as “opportunities to learn and recover with flair.” It was a seemingly of-the-cuff remark, but it tells a powerful story about how TD Bank’s view their ability to experiment and learn from it.

Leaders Leverage the Expertise of Others

Nobody in your organization expects you to have all the answers; however, they do expect you to find someone does have the answer. Reggie Henry from American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) shared a powerful tip to gain insight from his staff to solve problems creatively. He simply talks to his team aloud, face-to-face, a unique approach in today’s age where email is king. For example, when ASAE was adopting a new technology platform, ...Read more of the story via forumone.com

 

26 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2013

Every year I have compiled a list of trends that marketers have to follow closely in the following year to beat the competition. Social media marketing trends for 2013 is all about mobile, personalization and location. Read on to find out how marketing will change in the near future.

 

1. Social everything

Social media is here and it’s the place where consumer spend big part of their day and that time is increasing. If the site they are visiting is not a social networking site then it’s usually connected to social with sharing buttons, displaying your friends on the site or using social media accounts for login.

Social technologies will be at the heart of everyday life and business environment. Social media marketing will lead in making a shift to context based personalization of marketing messages.

2. Social media as entertainment

People have turned to TV and later to news sites to kill time almost from the beginning of time. This is changing. The biggest junk of time online goes to social networking. The triggers for this are obvious: it’s easy to use, requires little mental effort, makes feel you good and connected.

In March of 2012 The Hollywood Reporter study found that 88% of the respondents view social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook as a new form of entertainment, and 79 percent of television viewers visit Facebook while they watch TV. This make storytelling more important for brands as great stories entertain and engage.

3. Social TV

TV is becoming interactive. Viewers comment and share during air time. This activity can be fed back into live shows or inspire plot changes in TV series. TV shows will make better use of votes, comments, etc. TV is going to be everywhere through mobile apps and this trend is growing.

TV ads will be the triggers to move consumers to websites and social media to get a more meaningful, interactive and personal experience. Currently second screen dilutes TV ads by making them easy to ignore. Advertisers will find ways to engage through the second screen.

4. Social news

News sites will crunch data from social interactions to deliver more targeted news. News sites will try to connect to your social graph. The dilemma for news sites is that they want to make the user visit their site to subscribe or for ad revenue. On the other hand social ties will make people stick to social networking sites.

The targeting will become transparent as most people will not bother to tweak the settings to change their preferences. We will take in a lot of recommendations and read the same things that our friends are reading.

5. Second screen shopping

As tablets and smartphones get ubiquitous second screens is going to grow very fast. Currently 79% of survey respondents always or sometimes visit Facebook while watching TV. This is fueled by better apps and this and continually shortening attention span. Add the need of instant gratification and there’s a potential to turn any TV program into an infomercial. Marketers will create models that bring consumers in from TV shows and ads, direct them to make a purchase right there.

Twitter will have a lead in this as TV already uses hashtags to add value and social context to the programming on the second screen. Facebook needs to find a way to get similar engagement.

Mobile commerce is expected to reach 10 billion dollars in 2012 and 31 billion by 2016. It’s time to start a new start-up on this area.

6. Social commerce

Social media will influence more sales. 70% of consumers have listened to music by an artist based primarily on what a friend posted on a social networking site. We are moving in the direction of social shopping but there’s no killer application yet that makes social buying really appealing to people. During the holiday season social referrals that led to purchase were really low.

Recommendations in a form of ratings, reviews and comments are one of the key drivers in buying decisions. Integrating that with the online shopping and social technologies is a powerful driver. Social media will allow consumers to get real user experience before making purchase decisions. Facebook can provide trust and emotional drivers through the mountains of data the have at their disposal.

7. Mobile everything

If 2012 was the breakthrough year for mobile then in 2013 mobile will strengthen its position. Social media usage on mobile devices will grow rapidly. More than 60% of people have used Facebook on a mobile device, but mobile will become even more important as the main device for social media channels. Social media is happening in real time and people share content when it’s happening!

People are expecting mobile versions of websites they are visiting and mobile app usage will continue to grow. All the successful new mobile apps will be deeply integrated with social networks allowing you to share and engage more than ever before. Mobile platforms on tablets and smartphones will enable second screen media consumption and local services.

The main question for platform owners such as Facebook will be the monetization of mobile channel.

8. Advertising on mobile devices

Right now consumers spend 10% of their time using media on mobile devices. However only 1% of ad budgets are directed at mobile channels. The problem is that there’s no real scalable solution to advertise on mobile.

Facebook and Twitter will be leading the way try to figure out how to present ads on mobile. They have to find a way how to target the right consumers with relevant messages and not to annoy users too much while doing it.

Marketing on mobile devices has to pick up as people move away from desktop and laptop computers.

9. Mobile first in web and add social

You will be left behind if you don’t have a mobile presence. Responsive design or a mobile version of your site is a must. This is not a social media thing but businesses need to make their sites mobile. More and more people are opting for mobile when they want to take a quick glance at your site. It is a sure way to annoy them by presenting a full-blown desktop site. Making your content mobile-friendly will give you an edge over your more old-fashioned competitors.

Make the mobile versions of your site location aware (if appropriate), add click to call. Make sure your content such as e-books, case studies, videos and other are usable on mobiles.

One interesting fact to note is that Facebook page apps can’t be used through Facebook’s own mobile app.

10. Local

As with mobile advertising there’s no real killer app in local field. Google and Facebook have all the data about our location and interaction with different venues. There’s a big opportunity in using this data in real-time marketing. Connecting social graph, behaviour and location is the next big step in marketing and technology. Location will add a lot of context to the other data providers have about you.

This is supported by our increasing use of mobile technologies. More check-ins and recommendations, more images uploaded, more chats in the coffee shop. All this leaves a footprint that location based services will use for marketing.

Location based marketing on mobile devices will become one of the most important channels to get new and repeat customers.

11. Big data gets social

Big data will make use of social dimension. Big data will try to combine and mine different sources from offline purchases to web behaviour and social with location context. Most promising sets of big data for marketers are social graph, intent graph, consumption graph, interest graph and mobile graph.

One side of the equation is that mining data will give you an edge over your competitors. The other side is that people start to demand personalization, predictions and features that this will enable.

12. Social media budgets will grow

Social media budgets continue to grow. Most companies will continue to increase their social media budgets trying to find new ways to interact and engage consumers. The increase will come from more people being hired to do social media marketing in-house, budgets for outside help will also increase to bring in agencies and consultants. And last but not least more tools will be used. The spending should at least double by the end of 2016.

Where is this money coming from? Well, some channels will get dropped in favour of others. Media spending shifts from display to content marketing as it proves to be a more effective tool. Traditional media will be replaced by digital according to how consumers actually spend their time using media.

In some cases this may create a situation where “marketing budgets” decrease as money spent on in-house content and social media marketing will be considered payroll expense.

13. Social media marketing ROI

Measuring results! The more money goes into social media marketing the more important it is to show the results. Marketers are testing new models and tools, dropping ineffective options and move towards measuring real business value.

Still less than half of the marketers measure results from social media marketing. Different studies and our own experience with our clients shows that there is a need to show real return on investment, but marketers lack the tools and know-how. CMOs worldwide agree they need to measure social media marketing’s contribution to the business in relevant, quantifiable terms.

One of the biggest problems is attributing social media marketing to offline sales. The combination of social, local and mobile (SoLoMo) will help to bridge that gap.

14. Social media advertising will grow

As Twitter and Facebook will be offering more advertising solutions, marketers are going to spend more. One important area in this respect is mobile ads on social media apps. The move towards mobile is profound among consumers and it’s a life and death question for social networking sites to figure this one out.

Facebook has at least two directions to increase its ad revenue. This meand going head to head with Google but it has to happen at some point anyway. First fixing its search may open up keyword advertising. Second, creating a Google AdSense like program for websites to display ads based on Facebook’s social graph and behavioural data.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and others continue to find ways to display more marketing messages to their users and the focus will be on cracking mobile ads. Social media advertising will grow to $10 Billion in 2016.

15. Social media integration with other marketing

People spend increasing amounts of time on social networking sites and marketers want to tap into this potentially free distribution channel. Creating social media connection with other marketing will get you better results for the same budget.

The main challenge for marketers will be finding ways to engage consumers so that they would care enough to share. Traditional marketing will act as an entry point to more interactive digital/social experience.

Campaigns will get more dynamic spanning from offline to actionable digital channels. Understanding consumer behaviour, social graph and location will help you to tailor the seamless social experience. Consumers want personalization, and to participate in conversations that will make them feel ownership of the brand.

Brands start large scale integration of social media content and personalization into their digital properties. The integration will lead to better targeting, spending less money and getting better results by being visible to people who are interested. You have to constantly monitor your spending and results so that the ROI would be positive. If something isn’t working change it. If needed switch the products, tweak the message, or select better channels but do go on.

16. Social reputation management

Consumers engage with content that’s emotionally important to them. This means that social reputation management drives brands to messages that promote their corporate responsibility and making the world a better place.

Brands start to use social causes, economic, and environmental issues as the backbone of their campaign strategies. This will make it easier to engage consumers and make them feel good about themselves and the brands they use.

Businesses can do this for a real concern about a social problem or this can be a simple case of greenwashing. When aligning the brands with social causes companies have to show that this is legitimate concern and they are totally open about it.

17. Content creation inside your company

Creating content for marketing communications is going to grow for some time now. Great content underlies your success in social media marketing. How to produce enough high quality content for your marketing needs will be one of the main challenges for businesses. Maximize content value by using more formats, tactics and channels to distribute your content.

Great storytelling about topics that matter to your audience will tie in with the integrated marketing trend. You need to tweak the content you create for different channels and context. Advertising will promote the content and content will sell the brand. This trend will continue and blur the lines between advertising and editorial content.

When I was putting together the content marketing trends for 2013 I found that the bigger the company the less of its content is created inside the company. This will give an edge to the smaller businesses as their stories tend to be more personal and engaging. Organisations should consider bringing content creation in-house. Combine the management of content creation, blogging, social media, SEO, paid search and advertising. The synergy from this combined team will get you better results for the same budget.

18. Content curation and discovery

Content curation is an alternative or addition to creating your own content. Marketers who lack the resources to create continuous stream of original and engaging content can turn to curation. Collecting important pieces of valuable content and distributing it through your own social media channels.

Curation will create an impression of being in the know, a central hub and a valued resource in your area. The best strategy would be to find a balanced mix of your own material with curated content from partners and even competitors.

19. Images, videos and instant gratification

Video content will grow. It’s easier than ever to create video content but it’s still under used compared to video consumption by the consumer. When we have asked different audiences what kind of content they would like to have video is an overwhelming winner every time. Tip: create easy to follow videos (max 100 seconds) to engage people and make them take next step or share your content.

Infographics, photos and picture boards will grow. Infographics are one of the fastest growing content format. Infographics have visual appeal and easily digestible information that makes it fun to consume and easy to share. At the same time infographics are relatively easy to create.

All this is fueled by shortening attention span and the need for instant gratification. Short videos and infographics point in the direction of ever increasing information overload. Short and concentrated pieces of content will engage audiences in the initial stages of interaction. This will lead them to more demanding content and ultimately to converting to leads and customers.

20. Targeting, personas and context

Targeting content to buyer personas. Understanding the motivation of potential customers will help you create stories that connect and engage. Interview your target audiences and find out why they buy. What is important for them, the sites they visit, products they use, where are they in the sales cycle, their past interaction with the company, etc.

Find out what you can do after the sale to turn customers into brand advocates. Targeting content, selecting the right context and time will get you a lot more results from the same budget.

Read the full story by Priit Kallas via dreamgrow.com

Click here to arrange for Jim to speak to or consult with your organization. 

Jim Woods is President and CEO of InnoThink Group, a strategy and uncertainty consulting firm designed to maximize the potential of leaders and organizations. For more on Jim check out his website and follow him on Facebook.  

Jim Woods solve problems. Helping companies identify, develop, and implement winning strategies, offering support and capability building at every stage of the strategic journey. 

For over 25 years Jim Woods has helped organizations and individuals achieve their goals, maximize their effectiveness, become more productive, develop confidence, and overcome the fears holding them back.

 

 

There are always opportunities for innovation

These days, if you follow the news, it is a lot of doom and gloom. Hurricane Sandy, earthquakes, Syrian war, rising numbers of unemployment etc. It is easy to be influenced by this kind of news. Therefor I do recommend spending a minimal amount of time following this negative news. And then you can use the ‘extra’ time to discover inspiring news. There are many blogs, videos, and podcasts, articles that emphasize positive and innovative news.

 

These circumstances provide a good breeding ground for new innovations. Please bear in mind that most innovations start at the edge and not at the center of most activities. It is hard to be innovative if you follow the pack. For example, I just listened to an interview with someone from Aurora pens and he said that the focus on standardization (in his case pc’s tablets, phones) gives him the opportunity to specialize in a niche area (nice writing instruments). He even mentioned a research that some schools in Italy are having their kids use fountain pens, as this improves their learning capability!

 

It is an interesting approach to do the opposite of what is at the center, e.g.

 

Center                                                           Edge

- standardization                                           - tailoring

- fashion colors are mild                                - colors are extreme

- eat as much as you can                               - eat as healthy as you can

- attain more goods                                       - have great experiences

- use plastics                                                 - use natural materials

 

 

You can go on and on with this approach. And it works, there are always customers who want to feel special and who have special needs. It is also easier to be successful at the edge than trying to innovate from the core. via arnoldbeekes.blogspot.com

Jim Woods is President and CEO of InnoThink Group, a strategy and uncertainty consulting firm designed to maximize the potential of leaders and organizations. For more on Jim check out his website and follow him on Facebook.  

We solve problems. Helping companies identify, develop, and implement winning strategies, offering support and capability building at every stage of the strategic journey. 

Click here to arrange for Jim to speak to or consult with your organization.

Startup Idea - Starting a Business is Good For You and Your Resume

If you are one of the many people still searching for that job lost during the recent depression, or about to dump the loser of a job you have now, you should be working on starting your own business, in parallel with looking for that ideal job. Let me explain why this is a win-win deal, no matter what the outcome.

You have probably secretly always wanted to run your own show, but with an existing job, never took the time to consider a startup. Then there was always the risk of failure, which of course doesn’t apply once your real job is gone. Also, for most of us, not having done it before, we have no idea where or how to start.

Here are my recommendations on how and why initiating a startup while looking, or about to be looking, for a job is the right thing to do:

• No gap in your resume. Instead of an embarrassing gap in your resume for your period out of work, you have an entry for your startup business, showing initiative, leadership, and breadth of experience.

• Fun learning experience. It’s more fun tackling the challenges of a startup in between job search activities, than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself and waiting for status callbacks on interviews (which seem to have gone out of style).

• Find a partner. Unless you are a true loner, you need someone like-minded but complementary in skills to help you with the startup plans. It’s always good to have someone to test your ideas, keep your spirits up, and hone your business skills. Now you have a reason for talking to people who may become lifelong friends.

• Incorporate an LLC. First, pick a name for your company and do the paperwork on starting a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC). Almost anyone can handle this without professional help, and the cost is less than $100 in many states. It shows everyone you are serious, and limits your liability on any mistakes.

• Develop low-cost plan. Pick a startup business that you can do for minimal cost, like a services business with the skills you have. With simple software available today, pick a domain name and implement your own website. Use social networking and blogging to get your message out. You don’t need an investor for this approach.

• Get business cards made. Nothing says you are serious about a business like handing out professional business cards at local events and Chamber of Commerce meetings. Do them on your home computer for a few dollars. Offer to help a couple of customers free, just to get your act together and your presence known.

• Highlight your startup efforts in job interviews. Work your startup efforts into every job interview and application. It will definitely show off your energy and vision, and will make you a more competitive candidate for any role.

• Make the decision – job or business. Obviously, at some point you will need to decide whether your startup business is better than the job opportunities. That’s good because it’s always nice to have an alternative, rather than feeling that you just have to take the first dead-end job offered.

There are other startup related points I could make here, like joining an existing startup as a “volunteer” for a time, just to learn more about what is required. Also, in most geographies, there are organizations springing up, and university workshops, to mentor people out of work and contemplating a startup. Get some help from them if you need it.

Just remember that problems are really just opportunities in disguise. Don’t miss out on what may be the best opportunity you will have in your lifetime for a new career. Start up now. Marty Zwilling via blog.startupprofessionals.com

IMPROVE YOUR RESULTS. Achieve Career and Personal Goals Faster With Jim Woods Coaching. With a clear understanding of human behavior and the reasons why you do what you do, you will be in a unique position to improve your own results in any area of your life - whether it's at home, in your career, your health, or your finances. Register for your free session to change your life now >>

Dave Barry's Brilliant Take on Meetings

Dave Barry’s Brilliant Take on Meetings

Posted On: February 21, 2011
Posted In: clever

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Focus On Your Competition - Testing Your Innovation Strategy

McKinsey

You thought you did everything right—gathered market research and consumer insights; brainstormed, prototyped, and tested a promising new idea; developed detailed financial models and a solid marketing plan. Yet your company’s new product or service didn’t perform as expected. What did you overlook?

If you answered “the competition,” you’re far from alone. In our experience, companies making decisions about developing and launching new products commonly fail to anticipate their rivals’ motivations and actions.¹ Moreover, the failure often contributes to innovation-related disappointments, many of which are below the radar and quite insidious: your rival, for example, discounts prices to encourage customers to stock up on its product rather than try yours, ties up distributors so you can’t get shelf space, or duplicates your service to dissuade consumers from switching.

Unfortunately, in the heat of competition it’s extraordinarily difficult for players to identify such threats, because the tendency to overlook rivals is deeply ingrained in human behavior. Indeed, neglecting to think about competitors is one of dozens of natural human biases—along with excessive optimism and overconfidence—that subconsciously affect strategic decision making. Addressing the challenge requires tools and processes that help companies “debias” their decisions.²

Recognizing this problem, some companies are tackling it head on by integrating war games into their innovation activities. By simulating the thoughts, plans, and actions of competitors, these companies are improving their products and services, while gaining a deeper understanding of how their innovation assets compare with those of rivals—insights that help them better identify, shape, and seize opportunities.

In this article, we’ll look at how companies use war games to sharpen their products and services as they wrestle with three interrelated types of innovation decisions: those involving individual products, portfolios of offerings, and market-entry strategies. We’ll focus on situations involving medium-term innovations—new products or services expected within one to three years. While it’s obviously important to keep an eye on rivals at all times, competitive insights gleaned at this stage are particularly actionable, and a company’s ability to adjust its approach relative to competitors, and thereby to change the outcome, is high.

Product-level decisions

The development team of a consumer-electronics company was debating the mix of components and features to include in the next version of an important product. Advances in the underlying technology meant that the launch, planned for the following year’s holiday season, could well represent a significant upgrade that would influence several generations of the product.

To see how the competitive landscape might evolve—and be shaped—the company ran an in-depth war game. Over three days, cross-functional teams of product designers, marketing and sales experts, and supply-chain managers, assuming the roles of executives in the company and a leading rival, participated in a series of games representing three consecutive holiday seasons.

The choices the opposing team made were revealing, for it identified several new components and technologies the competitor might include in its own update of this kind of product. While there were obviously no guarantees the competitor would act as predicted, the rigorous preparation the company had undertaken to ensure that players on both sides would behave realistically suggested that the competitor’s rationale for making the moves would be strong.³ Moreover, if the competitor wasthinking along the lines the simulation predicted, the resulting changes to its product and market positioning would be significant, requiring a speedy and decisive response from the company.

Fueled by these insights, the company went on to identify a host of moves it could make to seize the initiative—including partnerships, bets on particular technologies, and an attractive, untapped consumer segment it could target to spur growth.

Ultimately, many of the game’s predictions did materialize, and when the competitor moved as expected with its new product, the company was ready. Its own updated product was a hit with consumers, and it went on to sell more units than the competitor did over the following three holiday seasons.

An additional insight the war-gaming process sparked was that meeting the needs of the consumers the company was targeting wouldn’t always require using the very latest technology. In some cases, an older—and cheaper—one was more than adequate. The company used this knowledge to its advantage in subsequent sourcing and pricing decisions.

To increase the likelihood of gaining such insights, the consumer-electronics company included a range of framing questions when it designed and ran the game. We include a sampling of them here as thought starters for any company looking to plan and run a product-focused war game of its own.

• How much of a lead or leap—technological or otherwise—must we make in the next generation of our product or service?
• How might our new product or service stand up to the pressures of the existing—and, potentially, the new—competitive landscape?
• What price point will our product or service support and sustain?

Portfolio-level decisions

War gaming can also help companies develop and deploy their product portfolios more strategically across geographies and customer groups. Consider the experience of the global high-tech company whose leaders wanted to better understand how changing competitive dynamics would affect the company’s B2B business.

For years the company had sold a comprehensive range of specialized TV models to hotel chains across the price spectrum. (Compared with the company’s consumer models, the hotel TVs were more robust, had additional software features, and in some cases were more energy efficient.) Recently, though, new competitors had begun arriving on the scene in force, and competition had increased broadly. To learn what effect the new conditions might have on the company’s portfolio of products and how they were positioned, it created four rival teams, each representing a new or established competitor, and ran a series of war games against them.

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The results suggested the threat was bigger than the company had suspected. Notably, several of the games quickly degenerated into value-destroying price wars. That outcome helped company leaders understand how quickly its high-end TVs would migrate down to the buyers from lower-cost hotels as rivals discounted prices on their own higher-end units to gain market share. If the company were to maintain its pricing policy, the executives recognized, the resulting profit squeeze would be enormous.

In response, company leaders essentially decided to ignore certain market segments, where price competition would be fiercest—areas it had strongly contested before. Instead, the company would place its biggest innovation and marketing bets on serving midscale hotels. In this growing segment, it had a better chance of differentiating some of its existing products and services, and of creating more value for customers (by helping hotels capture additional revenue streams, for example). The company went on to identify several possible partnerships with players in the industry value chain. It has successfully leveraged these partnerships to begin implementing the new strategy.

Useful questions the high-tech company considered when planning and running the game included the following:

• Which product classes will face the most competition, and will supply-side dynamics or customer demand drive it?
• Can we adapt any of our existing products to differentiate them further for the geographies or segments that will face the most pressure?
• Which customer segments will our competitors focus on, and how do these segments overlap with the ones our new offering targets?

Go-to-market decisions

Finally, war games are a useful way of testing and refining launch strategies to help ensure that new product and service offerings get the most traction in the market.

That’s what happened when a financial-services firm wanted to determine which of a handful of promising new services had the greatest potential to reach global scale quickly and thus should be fast tracked. Company executives were particularly keen to test one technology-driven service that they felt had the potential to catch rivals off guard and to capture additional revenues from much-coveted business customers.

The company ran a series of simulated launches pitting itself against three rival teams whose members began the games unaware of the new service. Executives were surprised to learn how quickly and convincingly the opposing teams reacted to the offering and developed a version of their own. Worse, in some cases an opponent team’s offering appeared superior to the company’s, or at least close enough that company executives felt it would be tough for business consumers to differentiate between the two. “If we go to market with this offer,” said one team member, “we’ll get creamed.”

This exercise had a sobering effect on the executives, who began to recognize that overconfidence and excessive optimism had clouded their thinking. The company has since gone back to the drawing board and is using many of the observations gathered from the war game to help improve the new service and its market positioning.

Notably, the company’s team of developers has also begun identifying ways to use the service’s underlying technology to create entry barriers that could help delay a competitive response by up to a year. Given the tendency of players in the industry to copy good ideas quickly, the ability to create such barriers—and to include this skill in regular development activities—should serve the company well in years to come. Questions that it considered in the design and execution of its game included the following:

• What ideas could put our product or service out of business in the next one to three years?
• Can we create value and continued appeal with our service given the possible responses of attackers and other competitors, our responses to them, and their responses to our responses, over a defined period of time?
• What next versions and extensions are required to keep our idea in play, sustainable and scalable, and how do we start building them now?

War games are a tried-and-true strategic tool, yet relatively few companies use them to innovate. Those that do so effectively can not only avoid the problem of overlooking what the competition might do but also determine how likely their new products and services are to survive in the crucible of the marketplace. via Mckinsey 

Jim Woods is about helping companies and people engage innovate and grow in all the areas important to them. Jim is a professional speaker, author, coach, and strategy consultant based in Colorado Springs, Co. Follow Jim on Twitter @innothinkgroup, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/InnoThink Group or check out his company website http://innothinkgroup.com for more tips and strategies effective leadership, engaged employees, increase growth, and customer effectiveness through innovation. To arrange for Jim to consult or speak at your event email Jim.

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