A good NY Times article http://nyti.ms/zIp8l9 provides further support to my research on group ideation and groupthink. There is a benefit to solitude: http://dld.bz/aGMaU
When it comes to ideas, especially CREATIVE ideas: Groups Kill!
See my previous post: http://wp.me/pdSfz-dC
This course will debut at Radford U in January. In the planning and proposal stage the course has benefited from crowdsourced ideas from my online friends and colleagues. So I have come back for more! What follows is an outline of the topics, planned workshops and group-led discussions. I appreciate any thoughts on additional topics (for example we need four more group-led topics).
Course Topics
Organizational Application of social media
Workshops
Student reports
Please post suggestions here or at the FB fan page: www.facebook.com/SMM4RU
Happy 2012 to all!
An earlier post that generated “crowdsourcing” help for the course design is here: http://wp.me/pdSfz-aF
Most people have heard something of the incredible story of the PARC division of Xerox and the Apple MacIntosh computer but it is a wonderful story to illustrate the difference between innovation and invention.
Xerox invented the Mac
That seems a strong statement. But read the excellent account that I have ripped from the WSJ:
“At Xerox in the 1970s, a group of brilliant researchers invented the personal computer—they called it the Alto—complete with onscreen windows, menus, icons, graphics and the mouse, all more-or-less as we know them today. Alan Kay was foremost among these genius innovators. Mr. Kay built, in turn, on the 1960s inventions of Douglas Engelbart. Mr. Engelbart was first to develop the mouse, the onscreen window, and the whole idea of computers that did more important things than compute. He wanted computers to solve everyday problems, do word-processing and make pictures and graphs instead of (only) performing complex numerical calculations, controlling intricate machinery, and keeping inventories and payrolls up-to-date.
Corporate Xerox was unimpressed with the Alto. It was expensive, and who needed a personal computer anyway? “Personal computer” sounded like “personal aircraft carrier.” The market had to be smallish. Xerox accordingly made a deal with Apple whereby a group from Apple was ushered into the top-secret research boudoir in Palo Alto and allowed to look and ask questions. Jobs led the Apple group, and he understood right away that the Xerox researchers had done something tremendous. They had made an easy-to-use computer that spoke pictures instead of numbers. Jobs saw that a cheap version of this elegant computer might be gigantically popular and hugely important. And he ran the project that rolled out the Apple Macintosh in 1984.” (see full WSJ article by David Gelernter at GelernterArticle )
Xerox saw no potential in the device so they let the Apple Engineers come in and see their wonderful invention!
“Real artists ship” or Real innovators go to market!
Steve Jobs and Apple did not invent the GUI, or the Icon, or the mouse, or really any of the features that made the Mac revolutionary – the guys at PARC did – but Jobs and Apple brought the Mac to market. As Steve jobs said in the Atlantic link below: “Real Artists Ship”. Xerox invented; Apple innovated.
Coolest Show on earth (WSJ) GelernterArticle
Praise for Bad Steve – The Atlantic http://bit.ly/pDJ6Tw
For my dissertation I conducted multiple interviews with managers involved in innovation in 40 service organizations. Two types of organizations stood out as different from all the others in terms of innovation: hospitals and universities. I concluded that universities and hospitals had three key traits in common that hindered innovation:
Despite the incredible growth as Higher Ed moved from an elite luxury to a middle class requirement, the dominant business model and primary delivery process hasn’t changed much in 400 years. Ironically, organizations that serve as centers for scientific research and innovation have not innovated despite incredible growth and skyrocketing costs.
Customer- and user-driven innovation
Readers of this blog know that I believe that innovation starts with a deep understanding of user needs and ideally draws users and customer into co-creation and collaborative innovation.
Customer-centricism drives innovation in many industries, but in education it is not simple to define the customer. Are customers current students? Employers? Alumni? Parents and government (who pay)? Each of these groups may have different views on needs and what would improve the service.
Most colleges now have students evaluate their professors. Some universities (especially teaching-oriented schools) weigh the ratings in pay reviews and tenure or promotion decisions.
Are current students the customer? Students have a wide range of reasons to be in college including: parental pressure; credentials for a job after school; a relatively safe and enjoyable place to continue their high school experimentation with sex, drugs and liquor; and (hopefully) studying something that they are interested in.
Scholars have argued that attempts to focus on current student feedback have resulted in dumbed-down courses and less focus on cheating. See:
For how student evaluations and course selection dumb-down courses: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775703000256
For how student evaluations taught a professor not to enforce the honor code: http://t.co/tt9ppan via @rogerschank
Math is hard and writing papers are a drag. Through course selection and student evaluations rigor and demanding assignment decrease. As the saying goes “a college education is one of those very few goods for which the less the buyer gets, the more he likes it.” Once again: Are current students the sole or even primary customer for Higher Ed?
Who do you think universities should consider the customer? Who can they use as innovation partners?
I have posted two previous articles here and one at SMM Magazine on the Klout menace. Mark Schaefer has recently posted a number of warnings on his excellent blog, Grow. But I think the topic deserves another visit.
Mechanically measuring someone’s influence using an algorithm is going to be imprecise and quirky. Does anyone really believe that Justin Bieber is the most influential living being? or even the most influential online American?
I check my ratings on PeerIndex, Klout and TweetGrader and my rank on SMM marketing professors list, but don’t get distraught when I have slipped a point or another highly followed marketing professor has emerged. It is kind of fun to see how I and my online friends are rated and ranked.
What is the problem?
I am not looking for a job, selling my consulting services, desperate for a free giveaway or in need of approval. But others on twitter are. Recent WSJ and NY Times articles have shown that job hunters were screened by influence scores and some have begun putting them on resumes! Hiring decisions have been based on scores. Companies have offered previews or free goods or services to “high influencers.”
Klout is preying on these trends as it tries to make its site more “social.” Special offers for tweeters with are highlighted. And everyone can award 5 +Ks a day. For now the +Ks don’t mean anything in the Klout rankings but they give us a chance to pat each other on the back (FollowerFriday every day!) and keep us coming to the site. Watching the site daily we should get caught up in the trend of our score and worry about it. [I confess that I now visit the site more often…] Increased focus on influence measures matters since:
In some of his recent columns Mark Schaefer has reported the despicable ethics in SEO: How long till they spread to SM influence? How long till a large number of tweeters decide:
Twitter will be a different environment!
What can we do?
Some actions to help save SM include:
Other posts see:
I am interested in innovation in services and goods. Much still has to be learned about the (Fuzzy) front end of innovation: Where do good ideas come from? How do you gather information from users? How do you evaluate alternative ideas?
Not group brainstorming or focus groups — they kill
One technique that has been rigorously researched for over 50 years is the use of group brainstorming and user focus groups to generate and evaluate ideas. The evidence of these studies is consistent and conclusive:
Group methods (compared to individual ideation):
Why then are focus groups and group brainstorming still employed to generate ideas from users? I used to believe that charlatans ignored the research and oversold their expert skills at running such groups. But I now realize that there is more to it than that: these group processes create an illusion of effectiveness to everyone involved.
Group Brainstorming and Focus Groups are FUN
Participants enjoy the process, believe that they individually are personally responsible for most of the ideas produced, believe that the group was creative and very effective, and leave the effort committed to the ideas generated. There actually is value to an organization of this positive illusion: it is often hard to sell innovation or new ideas to an organization – this enthusiasm can help innovations go forward.
How to combine the bad and the good?
Participants don’t come up with the best ideas but they believe in the ones they do come up with… People already employ techniques to help overcome group idea-cide: for example it is common to have participants individually brainstorm and write down their ideas before starting a group ideation effort.
If I were leading a group brainstorming or focus group for innovative ideas I would start with individual brainstorming, collect all the individual ideas, and then have the brainstorming session. I would either ignore the group ideas or more likely collect them as if they were the ideas of another individual and then separately evaluate all the ideas.
[Of course this puts off the questions of how to evaluate the ideas for another day… research also indicates that groups do a bad job at evaluation…]
Earlier posts on idea-cide from group efforts:
I also have an upcoming article in the Journal of Product Innovation Management on this topic. I will post that article when the editor gives me permission. [See http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-5885.2012.00918.x/abstract ]
Interesting story in last week’s WSJ:
Bank of New York Mellon Corp. has been fighting accusations that it took advantage of clients while trading currencies… BNY Mellon priced 58% of the currency trades within the 10% of each day’s trading range that was least favorable to the fund, the analysis shows. As a result, the trades cost the pension fund, the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association, $4.5 million more than if the average trade occurred at the middle of the trading range for each day, the analysis showed.
A BNY Mellon spokesman confirmed the accuracy of the data and… said there was nothing improper about the practice. It said clients like the Los Angeles pension fund knew—or “should have known—that the bank doesn’t act in their interests when pricing the trades.”
How to Serve (Wall St) Clients
Less sophisticated clients of Wall Street firms such as BNY Mellon, Goldman or Morgan should know that there is a standard procedure for dealing with them, reminiscent of a famous Twilight Zone episode. Aliens invite humans to visit and have their hospitality pre-planned in a book that a scholar has tentatively translated as “How to Serve Man.” [Spoiler] Warm feelings turn to horror when the scholar figures out that the book is actually a cookbook! Similarly Wall Street firms have standard rules of “How to serve Customers.”
Best pricing is for large trades with sophisticated clients who check prices with multiple firms. Prices get further away from market prices as: (1) clients are less sophisticated, (2) clients are perceived as loyal customers who don’t price check (or as stupid), (3) the client position is known, so traders can guess which side they will trade from, and (4) for smaller trades. Since the municipal clients are less sophisticated, loyal, clear their positions with the bank, and trade in odd lots, they get really bad prices. To quote Animal House – a classic movie about investment bankers in college – when a distraught character sees what happened to his brother’s car, his partners, er-frat brothers say:
You F***ed up: You trusted us!
Next quarter when Goldman again reports that they made money trading every single day of the quarter bear in mind that much of it is not trading in the sense of taking real market risks but instead “Serving Customers” (well done, no juice left).
WSJ article: http://dld.bz/abhDn
I am sure you think carefully before you follow someone new on twitter. You look at the #FF list of someone you trust; or take a look at someone wise enough to RT one of your great tweets or blog posts. Yet occasionally you get a quick signal from a tweet or DM of the newly followed that you may have erred…
I have collected my top nine quick indications that I screwed up below.
Number one of course is the DM we all hate:
Hey, I just added you to my Mafia family. You should accept my invitation! Click here: http://t.co/thedon
What can I say? I would like to urge him to go back to Facebook and help tie up the world’s internet during the afternoon playing Farmville, but a quick unfollow is best.
The remaining indicators are in reverse order, ala David Letterman:
9. Make some money tweeting, sign up to for Sponsored Tweets! http://bit.ly/spamu
Bet I’m going to really enjoy reading your tweets! Let’s sing the SPAM song…
8. BBW lovers join me on my webcam. I can travel to help you relax on business trips. http://warmup.com
Even if the #FF list is from a trusted twitter friend you should still check out the profiles before following. You don’t know everything about your twitter friend or what he does away from home…
7. Home Teeth Whitening – What is the Best Teeth Whitener?: http://bit.ly/whiteisright
Everyone on twitter should have gleaming teeth by now!
6. Get followers fast! Today’s giveaway: 5,000 followers!
I bet that they are a fascinating group of tweeters! In The Tao of Twitter, Mark Schaefer discusses advising a friend to close a twitter account after he had “enhanced” it with one of these services.
In August the 25th annual Global Research Symposium on Marketing and Entrepreneurship will be held in Rio. There is a journal known as the Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship that has been around for a couple of decades. And there is an active and well-run Entrepreneurship SIG in the American Marketing Association. Yet these are exceptions: generally in academia when entrepreneurship does not have its own domain it is included in Management, not Marketing. Why?
Why management, not marketing?
I have known and studied a number of entrepreneurs. I have yet to hear one say: “I wish I had studied more about strategy.” Or “I wish I had studied HR.” Or “I wish I knew more about transactional leadership!” What I have heard is “I wish I knew more about selling” or “I wish I knew more about marketing.” So why isn’t e-ship often included in marketing?
Some of it may come from the leadership of management scholar Drucker (who also wisely noted that ALL that matters for firms is marketing and innovation). And some of it is likely due to some of my Brethren in Marketing who see themselves as applied psychologists and are somewhat hostile to crude capitalists such as salespersons and entrepreneurs. However, in a world of lean startups and effectuation, it is clear that understanding markets and clients are key skills of entrepreneurship.
So I would like to tip my hat to Marketers such as Gerry Hills, David Carson, and Glenn Omura who are studying entrepreneurship and trying to keep it in its proper domain!
Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship @J_RME http://www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/journals.htm?id=jrme
2011 symposium: http://2011rsme.com/author/2011rsme/
Since I had been involved in new service development as well as in several startups before becoming an academic I was skeptical of formal product development models such as stage gate. But still there an attraction to research and planning, so much of the recent research on product innovation is disquieting.
Just Do It!
Agile development, lean startups, probe-and-learn, and effectuation all describe a rapid-prototyping-like process of simply (1) putting a “minimal” product into the market, (2) observing results, (3) learning, and (4) doing another iteration. In other words: Just Do It!
Nuances include keeping the “bet” small, so that you can afford failure and future iterations. And having a vision and discipline so that the iterations are more like controlled experiments than random evolution.
Marketing’s role is thus to be agile, to collect and understand data, and to adjust product vision. Forget the formal market research and business plans.
Brave new world for marketing and product innovation!
An aside: Origin of Nike Slogan
As an aside, do you know the origin of Nike’s slogan Just Do it! ?
Hint: It was inspired by the phrase “Let’s Do It.” Not the Cole Porter song made immortal by Ella Fitzgerald; that would hardly fit the edgy image of Nike! (This is the company that was still running commercials using the imagery of dog fighting after their spokesperson Michael Vick had been arrested.)
Let’s do it! were the final words of career criminal and serial killer Gary Gilmore before he was executed by firing squad in Utah.
ProfessorGary on Innovation and Marketing 