Predicting the next Disruptive Innovation
In The Perils Of Extrapolation: Who Knows What The Next Disruptive Innovation Will Be Mike Masnick points out how important it is for an entrepreneur to be able to respond to changes. If you can accurately predict the next big innovation its easier for you to respond to change or even be first to market.
Traditionally forecasting doesn’t work well for innovation. Trend analysis isn’t very accurate for predicting the future because it’s looking at the past rather than what makes the future happen. That is why most people thing, “It’s always difficult to predict which innovation is actually going to hit”.
Predictive Innovation changes that and puts you in control, increasing profits, decreasing risks, and neutralizing competition.
How to hire the best people and why its harder to find them in a downturn
In “Why hiring is paradoxically harder in a downturn” it was pointed out that A players can be 10 times more productive than C players. That big a difference can’t be from just being better.
A players are much more productive because they do things differently. You can’t be 10 times more productive by working harder or faster. Being 10 times better comes from not doing unneeded work, from doing required work in a different way, and from getting others to work in a way that creates an overall more productive result.
C players follow the rules and either lack skills or talent or just don’t try very hard. B players follow the rules and try hard. A players break the rules and change the game all together. A players are innovators.
You might feel you need B and C players until the A player figures out how to get the job done without anyone doing it. Since A players change the game you might not need anything except a few A players who work together. But since A players aren’t just more skilled they do things differently, if allowed they will show everyone how to raise productivity.
B players focus on skills. B players are better. B players are easy to spot. They have good grades, good references, and steady employment history. B players are what all the books on interviewing tell you to hire.
A players do things totally differently. A players might have top notch grades or they might have dropped out. But they do excellent work. A players might have horrible references but an amazing track record. A players tend to make B players jealous or frustrated. The B players TRY HARD but can never achieve the level of A players because the A players “cheat”, they play a different game.
Since B players fit the mold they tend to be mid level managers and many times will chase away A players. But if the B player can play the support role a B player can manage an excellent team of A players.
A players often do their job for the love of doing it well. That doesn’t mean they don’t want to be paid well, they do and deserve it. Allowing A players to reach the next level, that includes doing something totally different not just more of the same, is very important to A players. A players might seem like show-offs some times but probably are not motivated from the attention. They want to achieve the best possible. They don’t compete with others, they compete with themselves. In that way they often don’t even understand the idea of ranks of A, B, and C. They just want to do the best possible.
A players often don’t care about relative status. Paradoxically that makes them seem arrogant which is opposite from the truth. They just don’t care about meaningless ranking so they might not hide it (seeming boastful) or don’t honor it (seeming disrespectful). A players tend to be task focused so they don’t care about status, only results.
There are A players for everything so some of what I described does not exactly fit all roles. If the role requires tremendous empathy then the A player for that role will be hyper aware of ranking and status and play it to the best advantage.
If you want the best from A players, get out of their way and let them play.
How do you find and attract A players? Get rid of the Human Resource department. A players are not generic resources. A players are talented individuals. Since A players are often looking to achieve something spectacular, offer opportunities to do it. These types of roles won’t appeal to C or B players so they will weed themselves out. Highly performance based pay will attract A players and scare C & B players away.
Highly challenging tasks with real freedom to do chose how to accomplish the task will draw A players.
How are Predictive Innovation and Evangelism Marketing related?
The world business environment has fundamentally changed Customers can now both find and filter information to get what they want. This means traditional interrupt based advertisement is losing its effectiveness. At the same time customers can search the entire world for exactly what they want. Technology is also making it possible for customers to easily build more of what they want for themselves. So to succeed you need to:
Provide exactly what the customer wants, when the customer wants it, in the way the customer wants, and for the price the customer is willing to pay.
And you must communicate to customers you have what they desire while the customer is actively trying to ignore you because so many others are trying to get their attention.
Innovation gets you half way, but you can’t just innovate, you must Predicatively Innovate to stay ahead of the competition. And how do you communicate something new to people who are ignoring you? Search based marketing won’t work very well because people must first know something exists in order to search for it. That is why Evangelism Marketing is so important.
The great news is Evangelism Marketing doesn’t just introduce a new product; it builds the confidence of each level of user from early adopter to mainstream to late comers. But it’s not just a technique for selling. Evangelism Marketing guides the processes of innovation. In order to get customer to freely sell your product for you, you must first Make them so happy they want to do it. Giving them exactly what they want when they want how they want in the way they want for the price they are willing to pay is essential to Evangelism Marketing.
Evangelism Marketing is a relationship. You are helping someone by giving them information. They in turn give you back information and continue to spread the information you gave them. You might say surveys and marketing research does that, but it doesn’t. How do you get someone to take a survey? Often you can’t. Even with bribes it’s hard and the data is frequently heavily skewed. What about getting customers to freely spread the message? Traditional top down concepts don’t work in a distributed environment. More power, more widely spread is the wave of the future. There are HUGE opportunities for people willing to embrace it and horrible disruption for those that cling to the old way. Which will you be?
-
Links
- Predictive Innovation Method Training
-
Categories
-
Archives
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- July 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- September 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- October 2007
- September 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
