At TomorrowToday, we are great fans of games, and especially of the learnings we can get from games. We are also keen observers of the gaming industry, which often picks up on shifting values and economic models before other industries do (compare them, for example, to the music industry - especially on the issue of pricing I’m about to talk about!).
Here is a small feature from the latest Economist magazine on a new financial model for games. Give them away for free!
FOR millions of East Asians, online gaming is not so much a hobby as a way of life. “Massively multiplayer” online games such as “Legend of Mir 3” and “MapleStory” have legions of devoted fans who spend an alarming proportion of their waking hours sitting in front of their PCs, at home or in internet cafés, doing battle with elves, wizards and mythological beasts. Some players take their parallel gaming lives very seriously: one man murdered a friend in a dispute over a stolen virtual sword (GC: this happened a few years ago, and is the only known extreme incident - but it is still much quoted).
Many of these games rely on a business model that is different from the way the video-games industry works in the West. Rather than selling games as shrink-wrapped retail products which can then be played on a PC or games console, the Asian industry often gives away the software as a free download and lets users play for nothing. Revenue comes instead from small payments made by more avid players to buy extras for their in-game characters, from weapons to haircuts. In this way, a minority of paying customers subsidise the game for everyone else.
Continue reading ‘Free games’
There is a lot of talk about targeting the next generation of new talented, graduates called Gen Y or Millennials. And for good reason, they are supremely confident, well educated, know exactly what they want and how to get it. This is presenting some unique challenges for today’s businesses.
This past Friday we were asked to shed some light on the issue and presented at the annual Bright Futures conference, an excellent organisation that helps students and companies connect. A number of top employee brands were present including HP, KPMG, L’Oreal etc. Dr Graeme Codrington presented to both corporate companies and students on Being Talented and Winning the Talent Wars.
One of the key challenges that the companies were raising at the conference was how to attract young talent and alert them to job opportunities. One of our clients a Big 4 accountancy and consulting firm is doing innovative work in this area. They are promoting their employee brand by going to the spaces where young people are congregating such as FaceBook, MySpace and YouTube. Deloitte is interviewing and videotaping employees about how great it is to work at their company in a fun light hearted way and using the clips to promote job opportunities and attracting Millennial talent. Have a look at what Deloitte is doing on YouTube.
We all know how ubiquitous mobile phones have become. In poorer countries, where communication technologies have been slow to arrive, the take up of mobile telephony is nothing less than breathtaking. But, the future brilliance of mobile phones lies not in their communication ability, but in the add ons that can be made to these little computers we all carry around with us. A decade from now, mobile phones will be personal digital devices hooked up with tens and hundreds of functions.
I recently blogged about the ability of MP3 players to replace stethoscopes - of course, any MP3 and microphone enbaled mobile phone could do the same. I also recently read about mobile phones being used by diabetics - they have a little needle embedded in them. A click of a button, the needle pops out of the phone and is inserted into the skin, the insulin reading is done by the phone and displayed, and the diabetic knows immediately what has to be done (sorry, I am not diabetic and don’t know exactly how it works - but the key is that the technology to do the test diabetics must do daily is embedded in the cellphone).
But, now graduate students have found a way to turn their cellphones into microscopes.
Continue reading ‘The Future of Mobile’
I spend a lot of time in carparks, specifically at airports. Normally, I am rushing to park and get checked in. And, at most airports around the world, there are not enough parking spaces, and it can take a lot of time to find an empty bay. But, at OR Tambo International airport in Johannesburg, the carpark has added a wonderful new feature.
Above every parking bay a small unit has been installed in the ceiling. This has the ability to detect whether something is parked in the bay, and turns a bright light from green to red if the bay is full. This is a remarkable improvement - you drive into the parking area and scan the ceiling for green lights. Search time is dramatically reduced, and from the far side of the parking garage, you can set a course for an open parking bay.
Thanks ACSA. This is one of your best innovations ever!
Today is the tenth anniversary of the little purple pill. Although I personally think that big pharmaceuticals should spend more time trying to cure diseases that are part of the scourge of poverty (like malaria and TB), it is noteworthy that one of the biggest money spinners over the past decade has been Viagra - the erectile dysfunction pill developed by Pfizer.
Viagra is one the best case studies for what companies must do to benefit from the ageing Boomer generation. As the generation born after World War II, who came of age in the swinging 60s, they were never going to be coy about sex, and certainly did not want a mere biological issue like “getting old” stand in the way of their preferred lifestyle. They are a generation that believes in choice - their choice! So, medicines that deal with hair loss, sagging skin, sexual slowdown and other age-related conditions were always going to be successful. Pfizer got there first. Others have - and will continue to - follow.
The Boomers are the “youngest”, healthiest, richest and most powerful retiring generation of all time.
Continue reading ‘V-day’
I am sitting in a full day session with Gary Hamel. I didn’t pay enough money to be alone with him, so I am sharing the hall with a few hundred other people, representing many of South Africa’s top corporates and leading businesses. Gary has been great. I enjoy his style (his PowerPoint slides are are shocker, but he is a relaxed and engaging presenter). His content is compelling. He knows his stuff. It’s been woirth the time and money investment.
But it’s now the afternoon tea break, and all around me I hear the same comment: “I’m looking forward to this last session….”. The reason for the anticipation is that Gary has set up things brilliantly in the morning sessions. He has explained the 21st century context, he has shown us why innovation in management processes is a key to sustained success, and he has inspired and excited us to want to innovate and make a change. But he hasn’t told us what to do yet. That’s what everyone thinks is coming now! I think they will be disappointed. OR, I will be disappointed in Gary. Either way, it’s going to be a disappointing end to a great day.
Here’s why.
Continue reading ‘Where’s my silver bullet?’
Here I sit, at another conference without power. Don’t get me wrong - I am not talking about the content. I am at Gary Hamel’s latest thing: “The Future of Management”, a full day session with the innovation guru himself. “Live and in person”, just as the advertising promised! The guy is good, and probably the best academic on the issue of innovation in business. So, the content is great.
But in just a few minutes, my laptop is going to die, because I don’t have a power supply near my table. I came prepared - I have two extension cables, and if there was a power outlet within about 20m of my table, I’d be OK (maybe creating a few health and safety issues, but nevertheless I could finish this blog entry without worrying about my battery). But once again the conference organisers have just not thought about people who don’t use paper. I have been given a deskpad and another pen. I don’t use those things. I want to be able to type notes directly into my laptop. I want to be able to work on my computer. I want power!
This needs to be standard practice at conferences! It is the 21st century, after all. AND, today, it is a conference on innovation! If only….
(Let’s not even talk about the fact that there is no free wifi available here. They are giving us free toilet facilities, free water on every desk, free pens and deskpads, free coffee and tea, but no wifi connectivity!)
Continue reading ‘Conferences with no power’
The Fast Company magazine of Dec 2007 ran a story that combines some of my favourite topics: young generations, technology and personal finance. It was called “Easy Money”. Read the full story here.
Here is a summary:
Americans under 35 spend 16% more than they earn, on average. College graduates leave school with an average of $20,000 in student loans and almost $3,000 in credit-card debt. This demographic, in sum, is sorely in need of an easy-to-use solution to their ample money woes. “There’s this dull throbbing sense of guilt that we should be doing something, but where do we start?” says recent Stanford grad Ramit Sethi, who draws more than 150,000 readers a month to his blog Iwillteachyoutoberich.com.
In the past six months, a slew of free online services has popped up to answer this question, offering widgets for budgeting, automatic bill pay, mobile alerts, and social networking. All are fighting to be the anti-Quicken. Although Intuit’s venerable personal-finance software commands 70% of the market, its $30 to $100 price tag, hundreds of features, and required hour or two a week of data entry are unlikely to appeal to a generation raised on Halo and diagnosed with ADD. Sure enough, Quicken’s 15 million users have an average age of 47. If personal finance for most folks is like personal hygiene–an unpleasant chore motivated by necessity–Quicken is Old Spice.
Meanwhile, the Axe Bodyspray of personal finance–cool, fresh, and even sexy–is an upstart named Mint. Its unique features, wrapped in an exceedingly clean and appealing design, are winning tech-industry plaudits and brisk traffic. …It signed up more than 40,000 users in the two weeks after launch. So has Mint cracked the code on getting Generation Debt to buckle down and take responsibility for its finances?
Continue reading ‘Getting a generation out of debt’
This is how new markets are made, and how worlds are changed! Today, Tata released their latest car. It was a car that all of their rivals said could not be made. About 5 years ago, Tata announced that were going to build a car that would cost less than 100,000 rupees, or US$ 2,500 (the price of a DVD player in most luxury cars).
Today, they unveiled it in India. See the early news reports here and here.
It is the Tata Nano. And, besides being a 5 door sedan, seating four, with just less than 650CC power, it also has remarkable fuel efficiency (20km/l), top speeds at 100km/h, meets all emissions standards and all safety standards, too. The deluxe model will have aircon. See the Reuters “factbox” for details. At this price, it is bound to be attractive to those who have not been able to enter the car market in the past.
It is no surprise that a car for the people in the “bottom half of the pyramid” should come out of India (see previous post on selling profitably to the world’s poor). For some, it may be a sad truth, but it is true nonetheless: unless companies make money out of supplying goods and services to the world’s poor, they won’t. But Tata shows yet another example of how this can be a win-win for everyone.
With a car like this, Tata will create a new market of car drivers, and are poised to conquer the world. I wish them well!
At least, that’s what my favourite Talk Radio station (Radio 702) said during their half hourly news reports throughout today. As a regular facebook user (see my profile here, and challenge me to Rock, Paper, Scissors here, if you have nerves of steel), I was intrigued. Read the story here (not sure how long their archives last, so I have copied it in full below).
Now the story itself is a fairly newsworthy one - especially at this time of year, when final year High School students are writing final exams, and some are trying to find illegal shortcuts to success. BUT, to headline the piece, and add commentary to it, indicating that this is a Facebook problem is ridiculous. And that’s what the news readers did this morning.
What a load of rubbish!! This is such typical media hype. The type that breeds dangerous attitudes in parents, and really does more harm than good.
Continue reading ‘“There’s a problem with Facebook”’
The long awaited monster passenger plane, the Airbus A380, is now ready for delivery. In fact, Air Singapore today took delivery of their first plane with much pomp and ceremony. Read about it here at the international airlines news, and read about the financial details at Forbes.com.
Some people have said:
- The plane is too late - the market has moved on, and there won’t be enough orders to pay for it.
- Given the delays and increases in development costs, they need to sell almost double the estimated number of planes to turn a profit.
- Its unlikely the market will be able to absorb the additional planes they need to sell.
- The plane will become obsolete before they sell 400 units.
- The plane is too big - no-one wants to fly with that many people.
In fact, these things were all said of the Boeing 747 when it was introduced to the market in 1970. Some people are saying very similar things of the A380 today. They have obviously not looked at the past and learnt from it. That’s a problem everywhere today, isn’t it?
With all the chaos and bad press related to Apple’s just-released iPhone, maybe the Economist magazine of a few weeks ago pre-empted things a bit too much. They wrote a great article on lessons we can all learn from Appe’s innovation machine - read it here at The Economist (subscription required, I think), or see an extract below.
Whilst the launch of their phone might not have been the all-conquering success they had planned, we can still learn a lot from the masters of design and innovation at Apple. Read on…
Continue reading ‘Learning from Apple’s Innovation machine’
Crowdsourcing is a technique that progressive companies are using to translate the enthusiasm of their most highly-engaged customers into valuable marketing, branding, or product-development insight. Dean van Leeuwen, TomorrowToday’s UK and European director, who has an MBA and extensive work experience in marketing, looks at this new trend and provides practical guidelines for customer-led organisations.
Continue reading ‘Crowdsourcing - Getting Your Customers and Staff to develop new innovations for you’
It’s official. After 800 years of being Catholic church policy, the theological construct of “limbo” has been abolished (read the International Herald Tribune on this). This was a place were unbaptised babies were said to go, awaiting some kind of final judgement at the end of times. It was “created” over 800 years ago, as a way of dealing with two competing theological factions in the Catholic Church. Last week, after a 3 year theological review, the Pope agreed that it was an error in judgement, and officially “abolished” it as a concept in Catholic dogma.
Good for him!
I suppose the lesson for us all is to ask what long held beliefs we each have that we need to be prepared to give up - no matter how embarrassing or life-changing it might be to do so. You can criticise the Vatican for this change. But you can’t argue with their guts to do something!
What do you need to change? And do you have the guts to do so?
I was recently sent the outline of a book, “The Ten Faces of Innovation”, by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman (Profile, 2005) - buy it online at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net. In our work on “Invitational Innovation“, we have been telling clients for a long time that just like there are different types of personality, there are different styles of innovative thinking. Not a big thought, really, but an important one, nevertheless.
This book appears to put some nice labels on different innovation types.
Continue reading ‘Ten Faces of Innovation’
A nice article in the Economist, 18 Jan 07, entitled: “Browne out“, looks at the departure of BP’s boss, Lord (John) Browne. He has been in charge since 1995, and his tenure coincides with some huge changes in the industry. These include massive mergers, the “greening” of Big Oil, and at the same time some big mess ups - “In March 2005 a fire at an American refinery killed 15 people and injured 170 more. Since then, BP has suffered corrosion and spills on its pipelines in Alaska, delays in developing new oilfields and two investigations of its trading arm for price-rigging.”
But the article makes a very interesting point: most of these issues relate to massive cost cutting that has characterised the oil industry in the past decade. Ruthlessly cutting costs eventually strips out the ability of a company to do what it has to do. It stretches staff, and demoralises them as well, often beyond their ability to cope with situations that arise. In oil companies, as in other industries, this can have catastrophic results, in the glare of public scrutiny. But for other companies, especially in the service industries and professional firms, the results can be equally catastrophic - yet unseen until the company teeters and topples.
There are only so many costs you cut, until you and all your competitors are all running on empty. In most industries, we’ve reached that point. Now, I predict, we’ll see competitive advantage coming in the form of “we’re not the cheapest, but we are the best” type approaches, as companies rebuild strategic capacity, and focus on VALUE, not just COSTS.
Anyone who knows me will know that I am irrationally exuberant about South Africa’s future. I believe my home country has a rich legacy, a wonderful heritage to share with the world, and a bright future. Of course, there are problems - but we’re sorting many of them out. We need more houses - but we’ve built close to 2 million in the last 10 years (can’t ask for much more, can you?). We need a better AIDS policy - that seems to be happening, now that the health minister (in an ironic twist) has fallen ill, and is on long term sick leave. Every decent economist I know is confident our economy’s fundamentals are solid - and our finance department and tax office are absolutely top drawer! Crime is a HUGE problem, and must be sorted out. We need more political will in this area.
But my friends at SA The Good News, and Guy Lundy, author of Reasons to Believe, and the great crew at HomeComing Revolution and the official crowd at the International Marketing Council all help me to be positive.
Continue reading ‘qnomore - gotta love the free market’
At a recent event, I was given a gift. This happens quite regularly, and always makes me smile - I mean, aren’t they paying my invoice? Its not like I speak for free… But, anyway - its a nice gesture, and besides the odd bit of rubbish corporate gift you get, most of the gifts are interesting and/or useful.
This one was a space pen. A small (half BIC size) ballpoint pen, with some serious technology in it. Invented in 1965 in response to the US’s need for a pen that work in zero gravity in space, this pen has a gas ball in the ink well, that expands as the ink is used, and therefore pushes the ink towards the nib. The pen can write upside down, in space and anywhere. It can write on anything that can be written on in ink. The Space pen company is rightly proud of this brilliant technology and innovation.
The Russians, however, had a similar problem as they were part of the space race. They came up with a different solution for writing in zero gravity. They used pencils!!
Sometimes, we can over-innovate.
Anyone who goes to clubs regularly will know the drill - as you walk in, stick out your arm, wrist upwards and get a stamp that indicates you’ve paid for entry. This allows you to come and go from the club that night. The stamps have either been the club logos, or random icons. But now, these stamps have been turned into an advertising medium.
Body Ads, a South African company (no website found), has exclusive rights for stamp advertising in venues in Joburg, Cape Town and Durban. And they claim to cover about 120,000 people a month, in the 18-32 year old demographic.
Two years ago we reported that some students were offering their bodies (foreheads, mainly) as portable billboards for temporary tattoos. They were paid to do so. This new approach is an extension of this approach of putting adverts on skin, but gets much greater coverage, and creative copyrighters and designers could do something really motivating on these rubber stamps at clubs. Clever.
We have a few clients who work in the news and publishing industries. These industries have always seemed out of date to me, but I recognise that many of these companies are working hard (scrambling?) to get into the digital age. One of the best articles I have read on this issue comes from Fast Company, and was written by Richard Watson under the Innovation heading of the magazine. You can read the article here.
A quick summary of what newspapers can do to become 21st century compliant:
Continue reading ‘The Future of Newspapers’
In the 31 Aug 06 edition of strategy+business, Michael Schrage wrote an excellent article about using the power of Web 2.0 type thinking to involve customers in innovation processes. Read it here.
His basic point needs little elaboration: Involving customers in the innovation process can add value to new product designs. He is arguing for more than just “market research” - a process that can so easily be manipulated to achieve the results you’re looking for. Like many of us who believe that interactive technologies are causing a shift in values and institutional power, he is arguing that we need to extend an invitation to customers to actively assist in the whole process of innovation, especially when considering new features and functionality on existing products and services.
We don’t do nearly enough of this. If we did, I am certain we’d get more customer loyalty, too.
Continue reading ‘My Customer, My Co-Innovator’
The innovation focus of the past decade has been on disruptive innovations and on the “big ticket” items. Most big corporates have not been interested in anything less than multi-million dollar bottom-line guaranteed innovations. Yet, it is probably easier, certainly more exciting, and absolutely more inclusive to also consider incremental innovations. A hundred of these innovations, made by people at every level of an organisation, over an extended period of time, could actually produce the same bottom line results, with much more residiual, internal value created along the way.
An advert that flighted on South African TV a few years ago illustrates the point. It told of the true story of how NASA spent millions of dollars trying to develop a pen that would write in the zero gravity conditions experienced in orbit by their astronauts. The Russians, however, had a solution that saved them all that R&D and money - they used pencils!
As simple as this stiry might be, I really do believe that some companies have lost the plot on innovation. And, lets be honest - for all their efforts, energy and resources, they haven’t really come out with anything to impress their customers in a long time now. Yet, they pursue the “big hit wonder” with mystic fervour. It smacks of desperation at times.
IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano has announced what he calls an Innovation Jam - an attempt to come up with new business and product ideas by leveraging the collective intelligence of IBM’s 100,000-strong ‘crowd‘.
According to Yahoo! Business, IBM has “used these online brainstorming sessions to mine for new business opportunities in 2001, to exchange ideas about good management in 2002, and to discuss IBM values in 2003″ - this is not a new idea, but is unique in that IBM is looking for ideas from clients, suppliers, consultants, resellers, employee family members, etc. They are going open source with innovation - 2 x 72 hour sessions in which stakeholders pump ideas into the system - “IBM won’t own any of the nuggets that emerge” - but are willing to put up to $100 million behind the strongest concepts.
Continue reading ‘IBM Puts Dollars Behind the Crowd’
Joshua Schachter once sent me an email. At the time, I had no idea who he was – his response had come from a request I’d sent to the del.icio.us ‘support team’. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site, I needed some help figuring out how to use it (being new to the concept) and support@del.icio.us seemed a good place to start.
His email was dated 11 October 2005. Not two months later, on 9 December, Joshua announced on his personal blog that Yahoo! had snatched up his fledgling Web 2.0 startup as part of their extreme 2.0 makeover. Nobody is really sure what was paid, but considering the bulk of the rumours estimated the price at USD30 million, give or take ten percent, Joshua did ok.
I’m not sure what it is about del.icio.us. It certainly isn’t pretty. In fact, it’s arguably one of the ugliest darn sites on the web. It might be the name – the name is downright smart, using the .us domain to complete a sublimely catchy Web 2.0-ish lilt. At least I got excited about that. Perhaps it’s all the extensions and plug-ins the del.icio.us community has created to integrate functionality into popular web browsers and blogging platforms. Then again, it might just be that I have found del.icio.us to be the least flashy, most functional, most valuable, most sustainable Web 2.0 application (and information resource) on the internet.
Continue reading ‘A Delicious Fetish’
Just when you thought there could be no new trends, the high society (high being the operative word here!) have found a new way of spending their extra cash…..by having dinner in the sky. No, its not dinner in a plane, its not dinner on a rooftop, it is dinner suspended from a crane 50m above the street and whats more, you can have it wherever you want it or wherever a crane can be taken to.Take a look at Dinner in the Sky’s website for more info. For the measly sum of 7900 Euros (Thats over R 70 000.00 for us South Africans) you can have dinner with 20 of your closest friends and family, or even do a brainstorming session up there, the sky is the limit, literally! But hey, dont drop the cutlery….hehehhe amazing, great concept, wonder if it will take off (scuse the pun)
