Kodak – Winds of Change
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtYXGY4wB-0]
Entertaining and relevant, but I can’t help but think it is 10 years late. Be nimble.
Category: strategy
Imagine this…
Not hiding anything from your audience
Making everything internal – public knowledge
Posting all staff salaries on your intranet
Staff setting their own pay rises
No official office hours
Staff setting their own hours
No official office location
CEO’s cell phone number on the company website
Every employee a shareholder
Sharing all company financials with everyone (internal & external)
Telling consumers your actual profit margin on the product
Telling consumers the retailers profit margin
Maybe printing these profit margins on the packaging
Staff voting on who should get the internal promotion
Suppliers voting on who gets a promotion
First in, best dressed at the car park
Hot desking – corner office to first person to sit there
No offices at all; or offices for all
Staff doing performance reviews of their superiors
Staff setting their managers salary
All performance reviews posted on the intranet
Any staff member allowed to talk to any media person, on any topic
Your bonus this year, is paid on how the company performs in 5 years
(yes, you have to wait, but we pay it even when you’ve left!)
Publishing the carbon output of the company
Publishing waste created per product
Publishing energy used per product
No email
No meeting rooms (no formal meetings)
A public company blog, an staff member can post on (no moderating)
Sure, some of these things would cause chaos, increase politicking, maybe even fraud. But maybe, just maybe, these ideas could transform your start up into something revolutionary.
What can you think of that your company would never do?
Limiting distribution
I’ve just done this without writing an entry for two weeks (it wasn’t intentional). An interesting thing happened. Loyalty remained and traffic increased.
When someone values something having less of it can increase anticipation and desire.
It won’t last forever. In the long run people will get annoyed and disappear…..
But sometimes limiting exposure can ensure our worth is enhanced and not diminished. We’ll remain exclusive.
Start ups with premium goods take note.
Think Dichotomy
Extreme dichotomies are emerging in many markets:
Hybrid – Hummer
Business class only airlines – Discount airlines
Subway – Krispy Kreme
Adventure travel – Virtual worlds (Second Life)
Harley Davidson – Vespa
Which dichotomy will your start up occupy?
Not from here
One of the best brand strategies is… not from here. It can be from anywhere. So long as it’s not here. You see, we know everything and everyone from where we are. So it must be better if it’s from elsewhere. They know what they’re doing. They’ve been doing it for years. There’s all this history, or maybe it’s their technology. Whatever, they really know what they’re doing. So we’ll pay a lot more for it.
It feels semi romantic to pay $14.50 for a bar of soap hand made in Tuscany from capsicum and Amalfi red oranges. We unlock the power of our imagination.
Language on packaging
Localised flavours
Hand made
There are plenty of niche brands overseas who’d love an international distributor. The bonus is, the strategy is already written…
Start up strategy – Not from here.
The Simpsons
Self Funding
10 reasons to avoid using VC or angel capital to fund start ups:
- We will get to make all of the decisions
- We can focus on doing, not reporting
- A VC funded business is just like having a job. Isn’t that what we left?
- It doesn’t have to be about making money
- We wont need an exit plan – like selling what we’ve built.
- VCs are fun vampires
- VCs don’t get bootstrapping & viral marketing
- We can do it quicker without them
- Not having money stimulates creativity
- We’ll learn more without them
- (bonus reason) – it’s OK to fail