Looking for a Cinderella?

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

March Madness: Take a look at Radford University

One of the delights of every NCAA tournament is the little or little-known school that makes its way into the “sweet sixteen” or even the final eight. Even if I weren’t a professor at Radford and didn’t know some of the fine young men on the team, I would keep an eye on them. RU has a cool story — a 6’11’ 260-pound center who has only played B-ball for 5 years and spoken English for 2 and a 55 year old rookie coach. Check out the story on USA Today:

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/bigsouth/2009-03-12-radford-cover_N.htm

Or the local press coverage:

http://www.roanoke.com/sports/mcfarling/wb/197116

The bad news? The #$%@ seeded them 16th, so they play game one against North Carolina, who ESPN says is the most talented team in the country and who the NYT said is the favorite to win it all. As noted in the USA Today story a 15th or 16th seeded team has never gotten to play Cinderella… 

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Deloitte on Financial Service Innovation

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

This 2005 article from Deloitte is interesting…(but it is so 2005–premeltdown). A great quote:

“Product innovation gives less than three months competitive advantage. Process innovation gives at least 12 months competitive advantage.”                            – Sir John Bond, Chairman HSBC, 2001

http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/cda/doc/content/DTT_DR_GlitteringPrize_May2005.pdf

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Cocreation: the core competency of innovation

Posted on March 6, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

I generally don’t post PR puff pieces on my blogs, but this announced research joint venture between Babson College and Venkat Ramaswamy’s consulting firm sounds important for service innovation.

Next Practices in Value Creation aims to “demonstrate how organizations can co-create innovation… 

The research will investigate how organizations are co-creating value with customers through compelling experiences… interaction with customers is the new locus of value creation, and… co-creation is the new competency for firms… core competences are no longer located in the value chain of the company, but at the point of interaction between the customer and the firm.”

 To see the full release:

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/03-06-2009/0004984339&EDATE=

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Hotel Innovation in focus

Posted on March 3, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

Avoiding group think from focus groups

It should not be a surprise to readers of this blog that innovators in hotel service find focus groups and surveys “unreliable” and suggest actually observing customers using the services instead:

http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/events/roundtables/service.html

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Does Economic Turmoil Breed Innovation?

Posted on February 26, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

Back to the Garage

Wired magazine recently included an essay suggesting that now is the time to innovate. Bootstrapping is a part of e-ship: lean production was developed in lean times. Many large firms such as Apple and Microsoft were started in hard times.

Siebel systems was started in a downturn. Tom Siebel is fired up to do another start-up…because the timing is right: (1) rents are cheap; (2) good people are available; and (3) other potential entrepreneurial competitors are dispirited.

See more in “Back to the Garage:”

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-12/st_essay

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Otago Forum 2

Posted on February 25, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

 In a recent posting I discussed the issue of service dominant logic versus service science and cited a paper presented at the Otago Forum 2.

The Forum has kindly posted ALL of the papers from the conference online. I am sure you can find one or two of interest.

With 2 year leads to have articles published in academic journals, it is valuable to have access to conference proceedings to have an idea of CURRENT research efforts. The proceedings are available here:

 http://marketing.otago.ac.nz/events/OtagoForum/final-papers.htm

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All products are service

Posted on February 9, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

SDL in the real world

An interesting story in The Economist about the success of Rolls Royce in aircraft engines reaffirms the SDL of marketing: all products are service.

The article states that some of RR’s success is due to embracing a model of selling service. For 80% of their clients they no longer sell engines plus a service plan but instead sell hours of propulsion. Thus the engine is simply a part of a service that they sell to airline customers.

The full story is here:

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12887368

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Confessions of a focus group moderator

Posted on February 2, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

Fifty years of research has shown that relative to simply interviewing customers 1:1, group techniques for ideation — focus groups and brainstorming — are harmful, as they:

  1. Reduce the number of ideas generated, and
  2. Reduce the quality/originality of the ideas generated.

Griffin and Hauser in “The Voice of the Customer” show that even the cost argument doesn’t work. But still these idea-slaying methods continue to wreck havoc with innovation projects in corporations as consultants promote their “expert moderation” and senior executives find them fun.

So it is worth sharing the words of a former high priest of focus groups, who confesses his past sins: 

http://www.promisecorp.com/blog/?p=82

Several of the academic researchers, including Fern and McQuarrie, who have debunked focus groups over the past half-century have also been former expert-moderators.

(also see past postings on customer research methods)

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Service Science vs. Service Dominant Logic

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

 

SDL or Service Science: establishing standards or branding?

IBM has been fostering “service science” as an approach to understand service and service innovation. Two academics who wrote the well known Journal of Marketing article have been promoting the “Service Dominant Logic” (“SDL”) of marketing in books, special issues and conferences from Australia to Hawaii to Naples.

Is this a branding competition or an effort to establish standards like Beta vs VHS and Blue Ray vs. HD DVD?

Four IBM researchers prepared a paper for the Otago Forum, comparing the ten foundational principles of service science to the ten foundational principles of SDL. Not surprisingly they find a lot of overlap — enough that I might argue that it is more of a branding issue than a standards one. Their paper is available here:

http://marketing.otago.ac.nz/events/OtagoForum/Final%20forum%20papers/Otago%20Forum%20Paper%202_Spohrer.pdf

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Services Marketing

Posted on January 23, 2009 by Gary R Schirr

A while back MadTV took a hard look at marketing practices by the airlines. Frequent fliers will appreciate their insight into the evolving revenue models of the airlines.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76LP3suWgTw&NR=1

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