Finding Gold in the Closet at the Detroit Economic Club
Today when I attended the presentation by Gary Shapiro to the Detroit Economic Club I uncovered opportunities that were being overlooked. Mr. Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronic Association, encouraged Detroit to embrace free trade agreements and use innovation to meet the challenges of increasing competition. He was absolutely correct, however as so many others beating that drum, he failed to explain how to innovate. Many of the attendees left feeling even more pressure.
Oddly enough, everyone of the people I spoke to were using the same failing approach to competition and every single one was overlooking huge profits from using resources they already own. Profits from things they currently considered expenses.
Two companies I spoke with were trying to improve efficiency in hopes of lowering prices. The first was a tool and die company that was implementing 6 Sigma to find ways to improve process efficiencies. This is a good thing. I was one of the founders of using statistical process control (SPC) in the USA back in the 1980s. If the company was typical they could expect 10-30% improvements. This would make many managers very happy. But they were actually wasting their time and energy. They had 4 very expensive machines sitting idle. They were probably losing $400,000 per year in missed revenue. More importantly if they just made $1 more from those machines it would be INFINITE improvement in efficiency. They are currently getting zero efficiency. The machines are collecting dust and wasting space. Any money they make from those machines is infinite increase in efficiency.
Revealing Emerging Expectations, the most important step of innovation.
Emerging expectations are the things customers will start to demand next. These are features, benefits, and values current products are missing but customers haven’t started demanding yet. When customers realize these desires can be met they will demand it from all future products. It’s essential to have something ready when that happens or you will lose customers.
Working on things customers are already asking for puts you in a race with others. If you try to meet existing desires you are in a race against time. Even if you make it to market first, your advantage will quickly disappear. Others will develop competing products, if they haven’t already been working on them. If you don’t have the next product ready your innovation will be overwhelmed with copycats that make improvements on your design.
Revealing emerging expectations allows you to work two steps ahead so you always have the next great thing perfected and ready to release when the demand is strongest and profits are greatest. Plus if you can accurately predict the future innovations you will be able to overwhelm competitors with improvements faster and with less expense than they can copy you. You get ahead, stay ahead, and increase your lead.
Just because you can make it doesn’t mean customers will want it. To get the best return on investment you need to choose the innovations customers will do anything to get. And even if it’s something customers want it doesn’t mean its right for you to sell. So the innovation system you use must reveal a large selection emerging expectations, preferably all, and provide a way for you to compare and rank them in order of value to you.
Many people can think of pie in the sky “futuristic” products. Science fiction is full of those types of ideas. Some of those sci-fi products actually do become real products and are successful. The question is, when? Absolutely predicting the future is impossible but understanding the land marks to watch for gives you the information to plan your actions. If a new product depends on other developments then you should wait for those to be released before releasing yours. You can have everything ready to go and jump into the market at the exact right time. You maximize profits and minimize risk. A complete innovation system shows you those land marks with enough lead time to act.
Revealing the emerging expectations is what makes the OutCompete Predictive Innovation Method predictive and not just another feel good innovation system. The way it does this is by using certain laws of systems that apply to every system. Understanding that every system must follow certain laws allows you to see which things will become “must have innovations” and the order it will occur.
Ron Paul Revolution: History in the Making. My new book.
My new book is just released. It goes into great details about what is driving the excitement for Ron Paul and how Freedom is the Ultimate Product for Evangelism Marketing.
During the pre-primary campaigning I’ve been able to meet Ron Paul and consult with the official campaign. I’ve been able to see the inner workings and I’ve been all over the world with the grassroots. Ron Paul’s success is a perfect example of evangelism marketing and the abundance society at work. Ron Paul’s campaign is the epitome of evangelism marketing. None of the success has been from anything the national campaign has done. The fund raising, the signs everywhere, the posts all over the Internet are all from individuals acting on their own to promote the idea.
Factors like the Long-Tail as described by Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine have enabled Ron Paul’s supporters to set records for fund raising. Open Source techniques are being used to propel ideas into action and even fund $300,000 projects. This type of free innovation overcomes the scarcity economics.
Few people understand what is going on with the Ron Paul campaign, not the media, not the competition, and not even Ron Paul’s staff. The new culture based on abundance is taking hold and its powered by freedom. I’ve talked with the top staffers in Ron Paul’s campaign many times, and even Ron Paul himself. They don’t have a clue about evangelism marketing, they just know something is working. I can only imagine how big this campaign would be if they had implemented the 22 elements for a complete evangelism system. Ron Paul himself does do the most important thing, he tells the truth.
Many of the 22 elements of a complete evangelism marketing campaign have been implemented by supporters. That is the power of evangelism, abundance and freedom.
Here is a sample chapter.
The Largest Minority
The industrial revolution focused on mass marketing. Success was achieved by making common items in the most cost efficient manner to sell to large groups of people. Standardization was the hallmark of the 19th and 20th century, but as the Information age emerged it became possible for the universal truth of individuality to move to the forefront. The potential for mass customization became reality and is totally revolutionizing every aspect of life. Oddly enough the information age, re-popularizes the ideas codified 230 years ago in the Constitution of the united States of America. The individual is King.
The Ron Paul Revolution benefits from a phenomenon described by what publisher of Wired magazine, Chris Anderson, calls “The Long Tail” In his article in Wired Magazine and his book of the same name, he pointed out that 98% of the Top 10,000 books carried by Amazon.com sell at least one copy per month. That means there is a market for every imaginable subject.
Predictive Innovation Training
Predictive Innovation: Core Skills Book
RoundSquareTriangle.com