The Myths That Prevent Change - Roberto Verganti. By Roberto Verganti | 11:14 AM May 16, 2012 You probably think that the barriers to innovation are negative elements of your organization — that is, the wrong people, behaviors, and processes. But the most subtle and pernicious barriers to innovation may be the seemingly positive myths about what has made your organization successful. Every organization has myths about who are the great leaders, what are the behaviors to admire and imitate, what business you are in, what customers want, what are the best skills to run a process. Whenever someone proposes an idea, it is explicitly or implicitly screened with the myths. Consider Bang & Olufsen , the Danish manufacturer of music players and speakers.
These myths impeded Band & Olufsen from reacting to the rise of MP3 digital encoding. As a result, B&O was slow in capturing the opportunity of this "outlandish" technology. Galimberti talks of individuals. What's the remedy? I couldn't agree more. 3 Tips For Selling A Geeky Idea To Everyone. When I’m not writing for Fast Company or elsewhere, I make films that help organizations and companies make sense of interesting ideas. One of my frequent partners is National Public Radio, and a while ago they asked me to help them get the word out about their Android app.
Their interesting idea was this: Because the app was open-source, anyone could help design and develop it--and not just hackers, but everyday listeners, too. My brief: Come up with a way to film "open-source app development" in a way that was appealing to geeks but not so technical that it scared off regular people, too. Quite a design challenge. Here’s the solution I came up with, which just won an AIGA 50 award in Washington, D.C.: It’s always hard to make technical subjects seem understandable, which is why animated "explainer videos" are such a hot thing these days. 1.
When something makes sense, we don’t say we "understand" it. 2. What is building an open-source app like? 3. What The 3 Stages Of Love Teach You About Crafting Great Services. Digital services, such as Google Maps and Foursquare, are a fast-growing part of our daily lives. These services can be beneficial and much loved, like Amazon Prime, but poorly designed services can revile, causing customers to terminate brand relationships. Designing living entities So what is service design all about? At Fjord, we use service design to shape delightful experiences wherever people meet the products they use.
•In response to people’s evolving needs and expectations. It’s not that the design of services is inherently better or more important than other forms of design. Designing for love Instead of getting stuck in industry jargon, we like to compare services to human relationships. At Fjord, we aim to design services that people fall in love with. The same logic goes for digital solutions. When the iPhone first came out in 2007, it wasn’t the most feature-rich phone, and an over-burdened AT&T network made voice calling a real pain. Three stages to true love. What "Jack And The Beanstalk" Can Teach You About Pitching Clients. So you have a really revolutionary idea that might transform your business, or your client’s business. Good for you. Now comes the tricky part: Selling it.
It’s not that your idea is bad, or your audience isn’t smart. It’s simply that you have something that they’re not looking for. That’s a challenge we regularly face at Sense Worldwide, and we take inspiration from one of the great works of management literature: Jack and the Beanstalk. The witch does a great selling job on some magic beans. At Sense Worldwide we spend a lot of time thinking about which ideas are “coins” and which are “magic beans.” So we always start our pitch with coins. Recently, we did some work for a big packaged goods manufacturer. The idea was magic. All of this was achievable, and it boosted sales in test markets. McKinsey has long called itself the University of Strategy. [Image: Photoroller/Shutterstock] Nancy Duarte: The secret structure of great talks. Why We Need Storytellers at the Heart of Product Development.
There's an interesting question on Quora right now: If you had to pick between an amazing product designer or an amazing engineer to build a new company around, which would you pick and why? This question reflects a painful problem that is common at both small startups and large corporate organizations. Far too often, teams focus on execution before defining the product opportunity and unique value proposition.
The result is a familiar set of symptoms including scope creep, missed deadlines, overspent budgets, frustrated teams and, ultimately, confused users. The root cause of these symptoms is the fact that execution focuses on the how and what of a product. But in a world where consumers are inundated with choices, products that want to be noticed and adopted must be rooted in the why. A product is more than an idea, it's more than a website, and it's more than a transaction or list of functionalities. Who are the product storytellers? Who are the right-brain thinkers?
Five Ways To Weaponize Your Brand Storytelling. Five Ways To Weaponize Your Brand Storytelling Posted by Mike Walsh on Sun, Apr 01, 2012 @ 10:52 AM As you read this the world’s most dangerous symbol is only a few inches from your eyes. That small, blue thumbs-up icon may look harmless enough but not if it distracts you from the real game in town - arming your brand to tell better stories. The future of your social media success is not chasing friends and followers, but rather influencing what they are talking about.
Here's my prediction - your most important decision this year will not be the amount of money you spend recruiting fans on Facebook, but rather the investment you make in the stories through which your brand tells your customers what it stands for. When a fighter jet approaches an aircraft carrier to land, after a high G turn to throw off speed, they then do the unthinkable - they rev to full throttle. So why should this matter to you? Here are five ideas to get you started today: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.