Tag: entrepreneurs

Simple innovation & fear

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

I met a really smart person yesterday. It was a stand up conversation after a business breakfast seminar where like minds often gather to share a few ideas before parting ways. In this short time, it must have been less than 10 minutes, she managed to impart upon me two very innovative ideas that I immediately wanted to share on startup blog. They may not be new, but she put a certain spin on them and I’m yet to see them in market. A smart brand that actually cares would find a way to implement them.

1. The Full Supermarket Trolley:

Supermarkets should have an isle for their most valuable customers – those with full shopping trolleys. Instead what they have is specific isles for their least valuable customers – those with hand baskets. What supermarkets should have is a policy that says if your trolley is full – you never have to wait behind a person with one or two items or a hand basket. Maybe you press a button for the ‘golden trolley lane’ and someone comes from out the back to help you or something. Counter intuitive sure, but this is the type of thinking real marketers do, while engineers and logistics managers chase efficiency based on non customer metrics.  While it’s easy to argue that it is all too hard, and that there is no quick way to scan all the items of a full trolley, it really is just old world thinking getting in the way of actually caring. In the age of ‘self scanning’ checkouts, surely every person using a trolley could self scan their items with a mobile scanner as they place them in the trolley.

2. The 19 hour Hotel Room:

We check into hotels in order to have somewhere to sleep and it is expected that this is largely overnight. But in this day and age, why should it be? With hectic business travel and strange flight times, surely the period of stay should be up to the customer. So why don’t any 5 star hotels allow you to choose the 19 hours you need? It is because they are more concerned with the rostering of their cleaning staff than they are with their paying customers. The regular business hours or work day is yet another legacy relic based on a passed era. Surely the staff can be reorganized around the customers?

Both of these are simple innovations we are yet to see. Both are technically possible. Both would create interest and attention. Both would reward valuable customers. Both are yet to happen because of inertia and fear.

A funny thing about these innovations and fear, is that the person who shared them with me didn’t want me to link back to her in this post. I immediately told her that I wanted to share her ideas with my readers and give her the due credit, but she didn’t want it. When I asked her why, she mentioned that some of her clients where large supermarkets and she didn’t want to upset them or big note herself. She said I could blog away, take the ideas….. And while I can see her point, and respect her decision, I can’t help but think that the world (and maybe her business partners) are missing out on more of her wisdom because someone just might be offended.

Ironically, the same fear that stopped her ideas being implemented in hotels and supermarkets, is the fear she is suffering from. The fear of upsetting the status-quo for a minority, at the expense of making things better for the majority. In reality almost all innovations have a cohort of detractors, it’s just the way it is. We should push things forward regardless.

Startup blog says: Ideas need to be free and shared, and if our sentiment is positive, nothing should stop us.

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Hitting 3 out of 10

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

In baseball a hitters average matters a lot. If you are hitting 100, it means that you score a run 1 out of 10 times you step up to the plate. If you are hitting 300, it means you are getting 3 runs per 10 steps up to the plate. In modern times, a season batting average higher than 300 means two things. The first is that you will be in high demand in major league baseball. The second is that you will be earning millions of dollars for that skill. Anything higher than .400 is regarded as an almost unachievable goal. The last player to do so, with enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting championship, was Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, who hit .406 in 1941, though the best modern players either threaten to or actually do achieve it occasionally, if only for brief periods of time.

It turns out that sales and baseball are very similar.

An average person will probably close a deal 1 out of 10 times. Someone who can get the job done 2 our of 10 times will make a very good living as a sales professional and earn an income well above the norm. If however, a person can get over 300 in selling, then they too will end up earning millions of dollars – just like the guys in the major leagues. All they need to do is find an industry that understands and appreciates the value of people who sell their wares. A big clue here is that it wont be a product that sells from a shelf. Another clue is that sales can be learned, it’s invariably a human skill that we all have, but very few people actually embrace their potential to do it.

When it comes to startups, we’ve all got to sell. We’ve got to sell our ideas, our passion, our product and our vision. We’ll even need to sell to our supply chain before we even get a chance to sell to customers. Success and selling are inextricably linked. No matter how advanced technology becomes someone has to sell it at some point, or revenue wont happen.

The thing to to remember though, is that we really only need a hit rate of 2 out of 10 to beat Joe Normal. Doing any better than that and we are on our way to stardom.

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The original pivot – Oakley

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

There’s a lot of talk in startup circles about finding business models and the idea of making a ‘pivot’ to an alternative idea, model or technology. The pivot being taking part of what’s working and moving more pointedly in that direction. In the old school pre-tech startup days we used to call it a related diversification or a simple direction change. In many ways it’s far easier to do when we are in the information sector as we are only moving ones and zeros as opposed to factories, retail outlets and customer segments.

Recently I’ve embarked on a new project (a passion play with no intended financial outcome). The project is to build the BMX bike I wished I had when I was a kid. I did have one, but not the mac daddy version… So now that I can afford it, I’m going to find all the parts I need and build it piece by piece. My research on the topic currently lives here.

One of the parts I need want is a pair of Oakley 3 handle bar grips (seen below) Which as far as I can tell have been out of production for 20+ years.

It sent me on a bit of a search around the web, which gave me some nice insights into Oakley Inc – the company. They are a classic example of how to pivot. They seamlessly moved into new product arenas which spoke to the same type of consumer, using their core competency. While you probably know that they went onto make sport equipment including sunglasses, sports visors, and ski goggles , watches, clothing, shoes and even prescription eye wear…. they started with a mad scientist in his garage (James Jannard) trying to invent a better rubber / plastic to make better motorcycle and BMX grips with. He ended up developing a material known as ‘Unobtanium‘. Their first ever grip was made of it… as are the Oakley 3’s above. It is still used today in many of their products and eye wear.

The really cool part is that James could see 3 important things:

  1. How else the material could be used in his categories of interest (Motorcross & BMX)
  2. Which other sports (many had consumer cross over) had a cultural & product usage fit for brand extension (Skiing, cycling surfing)
  3. How to cross fertilise design ethic and brand cache by focusing on multiple niche markets.

It really is a modern example of entering passion categories, entrepreneurial endeavor, elbow grease and marketing smarts that resulted in a 40 years of innovation. I happened upon this video that explains a little more on the history of Oakley (and the pivots it took) which I think is worth a few minutes of your time.

Thanks for the lessons Jim!

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/18760239]

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The truth about innovation

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Recent shifts in technology have fundamentally changed the way we live. Consumer technology is now so pervasive that much more than communication that has been effected by it. It has changed our perceptions and what we think is possible. It has had important cultural and physical implications on consumer culture. New ideas change our physical surrounds and reality. It enables the re-birth of activities that got lost in the industrialised, world. A couple of simple examples include lomography, growing vegetables and slow food.

But all this technology has clouded our vision too. It has created some perceptions which aren’t based in reality. It has made us cluster around specific technologies, to the point that they become the archetypal definition of innovation. The place that innovation must revolve around. The app, geolocating or other technology de jour.

The truth about innovation is that it is not about tech wizardry – it never has been.  Innovation is about finding solutions. And solutions don’t necessarily involve, technology or even products. It might be a simple new way of doing something.

Innovation is really about good thinking being put into practice.

It doesn’t have to be leading edge, driven by industry or assisted by technology. It can be simple and human. And sometimes the best innovations come from ideas that got lost along the way. The re-invention or a reminder of a certain way to do things. Maybe it’s devolution? Or maybe it isn’t the ‘thing’ or ‘product’ itself that the innovation comes from, maybe it’s the things around it or the people using it. What we want to hear from people is “That’s a good idea”, rather than “Gee, I wonder how they did that?”

Innovation is all about what it provides to the end user. The truth about innovation is that it lies in the process that gets us to a better result, something that makes us happier for whatever reason.

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The end of manuals

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Up until very recently – maybe 10 years ago – the people who made the stuff we use, didn’t really care if we could use it. Which is why anyone who have ever owned a VCR can remember the time flashing at 12am for most of its shelf life.

People who made stuff didn’t care, because they didn’t have to. Our options were limited. There were only so many brands to choose from, and only so many retailers to buy from. It was buy from them, or miss out. But they were nice enough to a write manuals for us. If you’ve ever had struggled to read or understand a user manual of some sort. I’ve got good news for you… I have the translation below.

“Hi there, we’ve written this manual in order to avoid have to give you any real or human feedback. You see, we are too busy selling this thing in so many countries, that caring would impact our short term profitability too much. So instead we just got some of our engineers to write this thing, and then we hired a translation company to put it into your language….. so if this is all reading a bit back to front, or just too technical to understand, then that is why. The reason our product needs a manual is that we are pretty much trying to be everything to everyone. We couldn’t really decide which features to include or exclude, so we just put all of them in. We believe we can charge a higher price if it has more features, we are not 100% sure, but why risk it? We know having this many features makes it harder to user, but it really makes it easier for our sales and marketing team to tell customers and retailers our ‘thing’ does everything. Our policy is to do the bare minimum when it comes to anything related to our product after we already have your money. And we know that all our competitors do much the same stuff so we reckon we can roll like this. Good luck!”

Lucky for us manuals are a thing of the past and smart brands know this. In this day and age the thing itself should be the manual. If it isn’t we can be pretty sure that someone will replace our stuff with a better user experience that’s intuitive and actually cares about the people using it.

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What Internet TV needs

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

So I was true to my word and turned off Foxtel in my home. Instead I now have a Sony web enabled TV, and an Apple TV. Both of which do not have any on going monthly charges, but movies and TV shows can be purchased on demand – pay for what you use, not to keep a ‘network’ afloat – just the way I like it.

But the truth is that this TV set up is very labour intensive. It’s not as seamless as cable TV is. Firstly, the usability is not great. We all agree IPTV has a way to go to solve the usability problem (just like smart phones did). Maybe it will be the domain of smart entrepreneurs who develop apps that cut across all web enabled TV’s to give a more seamless, yet personalised viewing experience? If someone out there plans to do it – here’s what it needs:

So here’s the things it really needs:

  • Smart phone enabled control pads / remotes.
  • Aggregation sites which curate content from places like Youtube and other video sites to give a ‘network style experience’.
  • Curation of longer videos on the web – videos that run for less than 20 minutes are annoying.
  • History pattern suggested shows to view – genius style.
  • Geo located news & viewing experiences.
  • Full access to all studios output, not just manufacturer based deals.

Just like web search has become. The TV needs to be agnostic about where the content comes from and just deliver what people want. Once this happens, TV will never be the same again.

* On a side note. Our house now has about 90% of it’s viewing time allocated to Youtube. Full episodes of TV shows, documentaries, music video and kids shows are all available and free here. We use the Apple TV and the iPhone as the remote. it works very well.

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3 cool videos

Posted on by Steve Sammartino

Here’s 3 cool videos that have landed on my desk top that are worth sharing for different reasons.

1. A great advertisement which I’m putting in the anti-social media category. Taking a simple human truth that is top of mind for many of us as we blindly forge ahead into the world of big brother. I really do feel like we might see a lot of people moving against a digital public life soon. Is this the start?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5DJbKPS8d4]

2. Another more subtle advertisement from Quiksilver. The thing a like about this is that it moves deeply into the mind of the surfer. It unlock how emotionally attached to surfing we are. And for those who have never been inside a tube – it looks very similar to the visual in the film below.

[vimeo=http://vimeo.com/43122303]

3. Is of the art of presenting to an audience. It is the late Steve Jobs who knew how to use theatre to sell. Here he demonstrates the first ever laptop with wifi way back in 1999.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFngngjy4fk]

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