How to thrive in the future: predictions made by Kevin Kelly

In this fast-paced world, one of the most disadvantaged conditions for a business professional is:

• Working very hard, but you are not in the fast growing industry.
• You are smart, but you don’t know how to or don’t take advantage of new business trends.

The writer of Out of Control Kevin Kelly published his new book, “The Inevitable” in Chinese, which is in early December this year was prior to it being published in any other language. It sold 75,000+ copies on the first day. The English version will be available on June 7, 2016. Kevin elaborates on his view of the future in his new book and discloses the 12 technological forces that will shape our future.

In my opinion, the following key points are critical:

Invisible Value

More and more products have been commoditized, how can you differentiate your product/service offerings from the competition? This book describes the 8 subtle and likely invisible values that will make a difference:

1. Real-time: real-time creates a scarcity value. For example, people will pay premium price to watch the first showing of a film.
2. Personalization: personalized service is hard to copy and thus increases customer loyalty.
3. Explanation: companies like Red Hat can offer a free downloadable software to their customers, but may charge $10,000 for a guide book.
4. Reliability: people would rather pay for a trustworthy software than download a free software, which may contain a virus.
5. Availability: Free Wi-Fi is available at many places, but the download speed is not satisfactory. Many don’t mind using a costly data plan for a higher speed.
6. Visibility: A great story can be filmed or performed live for example.
7. Sponsorship: more and more fans want to support a creator/designer of a product and make connections with their idols. However, you must have a simple payment method, a reasonable price and mutual benefits to facilitate the process.
8. Searchable: to grab a customer’s attention, you have to make a product searchable by its target market. However, we are still at an early stage in determining what kind of information should be filtered and how to filter it.

Use right vs. Ownership

Uber, the world's largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world's most popular media owner, creates no content. Ownership has become less and less important compared with proper and effective use. This change has largely relied on the technology trends. I have listed some of these trends for your reference:

Decentralization

The effect of decentralization is that everything, whether it’s visible or not must flow faster to ensure the whole system will move in synchronization.

The richest and most destructive organizational structure is a decentralized net such as Apple and Google. All these giants utilize third party suppliers to add value to their own systems. They often build an ecosystem by opening their API and welcome other people/companies to leverage and expand the existing system.

Sharing Economy

Sharing Economy has been used to describe a new style of economy. Its purpose is to maximize individual autonomy and teamwork at the same time.

Tracking

Internet of Things is designed to track data. Tracking is the essence of the cloud where all data is stored. In the next 5 years, Kevin estimates that 34 billion IoT devices will be used to distribute data. Anything that has access to the cloud will be tracked and can be tracked.

A new human right and responsibility will appear in that is every human being has his/her own right to obtain data about himself/herself and benefit from the data. Meanwhile, everybody needs to respect the completeness of the data and takes responsibility to share the data and accept data monitoring by a third party.

To sum up, our previous experience and success will not guarantee the future success. To thrive in the future, it will largely depends on whether we can follow the technology trends, how fast we can learn the new skills required to leverage the emerging technologies, and how quickly we can experiment with new ideas, fail and move on.

How to Differentiate Your Business through Customer Experience Management – Key Takeaways from MVNOs North America Congress

At the recent MVNO North America Congress in Dallas, Customer Experience Management (CEM) was a hot topic that was discussed in the panel discussions. Shaibal Datta, President & Managing Partner at Sigma Software pointed out that a majority of service providers agree that CEM is one of the key success factors given the commoditized product/service portfolios in the telecom industry. However, service providers and MVNOs face challenges on how to improve customer experience.

Creating a Customer Focused Company Culture

Tyler Leshney, President of Ultra Mobile said that a customer-focused culture can’t be created without building a solid foundation. The foundation lies in two main areas:

1.       Definition – Clearly defining who are your customer
2.       Mission – What is your central mission

 Everything you do to improve customer experience should build on this foundation.

Proactive Customer Approach

Ken Schaffer, EVP Products at Ting shared their best practices on utilizing a proactive customer approach that Ting has empowered its support staff to do anything and everything necessary to solve customer complaints quickly. Ting’s customer care team collects customer feedback based on the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and shares all such constructive complaints with its product team for immediate and continuous improvement.

Embracing Social Media

One of the challenges is on how to embrace social media to provide a timely response to customers’ queries/issues. Diane Magers, Customer Experience Executive at AT&T explained how social media has been managed within AT&T in that its customer service team owns the social media channels, while Marketing also uses these channels to help in its decision-making process. It is significant not only to listen and respond to customers, but also to understand how customers conduct business through the social media channels.

With the high fragmentation and diversity of social messages, to find a balance in managing social media is challenging. Tyler emphasized that addressing the root cause of a complaint is much more critical than responding to every single question a customer ask. If you can solve the root cause of a problem, it may save you a lot of time in answering 50 similar complaints.

Technology

Ensuring a pleasant customer experience highly depends on to what degree internal employees, especially customer care team, have been taken care of. Many service providers and MVNOs have equipped employees with modern technology to facilitate the communication process, both internal and external. Here is a list of tools that are widely used to increase the productivity:

•  Slack – real-time messaging and archiving and search for internal teams.
• Yammer – an enterprise social network to get work done faster.
• Delighted – gather customer feedback with Net Promoter Score in minutes.
•  Zendesk – a web-based customer support and ticketing software.
• Salesforce – cloud-based customer relationship management software for distributed sales teams.
• Observe Big Data Analytics platform – to collect and store real-time structured and unstructured data for timely decision making.

 Simplicity

The effective customer experience management requires simplicity. To design the business process and products as simple as possible allows customer care team to readily explain each product/service to customers.  Troy Trybom, CIO North America at ACN gave an example from Amazon regarding its intuitive digital experience. However, Troy emphasized that simplicity is often not inexpensive or quick. Service providers and MVNOs should plan carefully and comprehensively taking into account many manual processes in the back office and the challenges of a tight budget.

The treadmill phenomenon - How to stay ahead of the game with the ever-changing customer base

We can always find co-workers at our workplace who seem very busy, speaking fast, walking fast, no time to chit-chat or even take time to eat lunch. Does “busy” mean productivity? Often times the answer is no. This made me think about the “treadmill phenomenon”:

• You work very hard. But no matter how fast you walk/run, you do not go anywhere.
• If you stop, you will find that you are actually in the exact same spot where you started from.

To be fair, with budget constraints the way they are in many companies, employees carry relatively more responsibilities compared to their workload in the past. However, to some extent, busy means laziness. Busy can be a good excuse not to think about why we do what we do. Just do it to get it done.

I have noticed that Simon Sinek’s “start with why” philosophy - The golden circle has been mentioned in various meetings and conferences recently. The golden circle has three layers:

1. “Why”- why we need to do it? Why can’t we do it?

2. “How” - How we can achieve the goal. It’s the route towards the direction.

3. “What” - What is the expected result?

The golden circle concept is a philosophy of thinking from the inside out. The core belief is Why. If you have a business or you are on the way to transform your business in line with the emerging technologies and ever-changing customer base, to find out “why” - the real value of your business is mission critical. As Sinek puts it, “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.”

Successful companies are those who can clearly answer the “why” question. For example, Mark Zuckenburg founded Facebook because he identified “why he wanted to do it” that to connect people in the world is very important. Everybody wants to connect with his/her friends and family members. Life becomes more meaningful if we can connect with people and share what happens in our life with them.

As a marketer, to find out why customers need/what to buy from us out of all other competitors and to communicate the value to the customers is significant. When Steve Jobs unveiled the MacBook, instead of describing what they do - sell computers.  He said that we sell dreams. We help customers unleash their inner genius, and we will win over their hearts and minds. The “why” has generated hundreds of millions of Apple fans.

To start from why, often times, needs to challenge the status quo, challenge ourselves and overcome all our own negative feelings and make changes albeit obstacles and criticisms at different levels. However, this may be the only way we can avoid the treadmill phenomenon and keep abreast of changes and stay ahead of the game.

Increasing sales by 4,600% - 3 creative business cases

Business case #1

In a commodities market, increasing sales by 4,600% seems like an unrealistic probability or even a miracle. However,  Intermarché, one of the largest supermarket chains in France made it happen through creative branding.

Every day 500 million litres of orange juice is sold globally, half of that in Europe. The competition is that every brand claims its juice to be the best. It is common sense that the fresher the juice, the better it is. Intermarché created a brand, utilizing the exact hour & minute that a bottle of juice is produced as the brand name for that bottle. For example, 8:30 means the bottle of juice was made at 8:30 am. The brand changes according to the actual production time. The price of each bottle of juice is very affordable i.e., about 1.5 Euro, equivalent to $2.2. After 3-weeks in the market, the traffic in the stores increased by 25% and the sales of the juice increased by 4,600%. Moreover, this creative brand generated a hot hashtag #LeJusLePlusFrais (the freshest juice) that further strengthened the brand message and rocketed the sales. Watch the video about this campaign on YouTube.

Business case #2

Coca-Cola ran a brand campaign in China called “song lyric bottle”. The company found out that the Millennials in China feel more comfortable chatting online, and consequently face some challenges when communicating in person. Coca-Cola created a way to bridge the gap through music. The company collected the famous lyrics of hundreds of the current pop songs and printed one lyric on each bottle. For the first time, you can express your feelings through lyrics. Moreover, Coca Cola utilized the advanced Augmented Reality (AR) technology that allows consumers to scan a bar code and enjoy the flash animation created according to this lyric or listen to the original song that includes the lyric. You can also download an app called “music icons” on your smartphone and share the lyric and animations with your friends. For example, you can purchase a bottle with the lyric “there is a rainbow always after the rain” to encourage your friend who is facing a life challenge. Coca-Cola also engaged the original singers of those lyrics to promote their respective lyrics to their millions of fans online. Watch the video about this campaign on YouTube.

Business case #3

In Japan, fewer and fewer young people read newspapers. On the other hand, mineral water is one of the most popular items in a convenience store. A mineral water producer creatively brought together the newspaper and a mineral water bottle and named it “news bottle”. Each day, the latest headlines will be printed on the bottle. The manufacturer utilized AR technology so that people can read the full story of a headline by scanning the barcode on the bottle. The company reduced the price of the bottle by half to make it more affordable to young people. Now, news can be accessed almost everywhere while you rehydrate. As a result, the company has sold 3,000 bottles of mineral water per store per month. This campaign was reported in various media and was able to generate extensive public awareness.  Watch the video about the campaign on YouTube.

The advantages of disadvantages

There was a famous battle in ancient Palestine three thousand years ago. In the Israelite camp, a shepherd boy named David stepped forward and volunteered to fight with a Philistine giant Goliath, six feet nine at least, wearing a bronze helmet and over a hundred pounds of full body armour. With nothing more than a stone and a sling, David won the battle. How could David turn the mission impossible to possible?

This battle story gives us new perspectives on advantages. Goliath is not exactly what we think. Yes, he is tall and armed with heavy weapons - a javelin, a spear and a sword. But he only has advantages when his opponents come close to him for hand-to-hand combat. David, on the other hand, refused the King’s sword and armour and put one of his stones into the leather pouch of a sling, and he fired at Goliath’s exposed forehead in the distance. What happened next is a matter of legend.

Here, people thought Goliath had the advantage in terms of physical might, which he did, except that physical might would not be the deciding factor. Goliath’s advantages became disadvantages when David came running toward him, powered by courage and speed: he was too big and too slow for this kind of opponent.

The story illustrates that there are no absolute advantages or disadvantages. Advantages at a certain point will turn into disadvantages. As an old Chinese saying states, going beyond the limit is as bad as falling short.

One reason we are often confused about advantages and disadvantages is that we forget we are in a U-shaped world. The psychologists Barry Schwartz and Adam Grant said that there is no such thing as an unmitigated good. All positive traits, states, and experiences have costs that at high levels may begin to outweigh their benefits.

An inverted - U curve has three parts, and each part follows a different logic. There is the left side, where doing more or having more makes things better. There’s the flat middle, where doing more doesn’t make much of a difference. And there’s the right side, where doing more or having more makes things worse. For example, butter is gold in the morning, silver at noon, lead at night. In fact, nearly everything of consequence follows the inverted U. It makes more sense to identify where we are on the curve and then make strategies accordingly.

In this ever changing world, more and more disruptors have shaken the giants’ territories. Advantages may come in other forms and the old rules will be replaced with new rules. Be open!

Source: David and Goliath Malcolm Gladwell

Photography credit: Reference for Business

How to take advantage of Big Data - A historical approach

Big Data is not a new term. It was first introduced in the U.S. in the 1980s. Big not only means that the volume is huge, but also means the amount of data that we can analyze and utilize grows exponentially.

According to Moore’s Law, the computer hardware processing speed and storage capability will double every one or two years.

This exploding volume growth of data is represented in three dimensions:

1. The same type of data increases rapidly.
2. The speed at which data is obtained.

3. The variety of data continues to grow, including the data source and the data type.

How to collect, store, maintain, manage, analyze and share the Big Data remains a challenge to the world.

Ramayya Krishnan mentioned that Big Data has the potential to fundamentally transform society. However, unlocking this potential will require careful attention to data governance and insightful application of data analytics combined with an environment that spurs managerial innovation.

From a historical perspective, to accept a new trend and to take advantage of it takes courage, persistence and improvement/integration of legislation, technology and talent.

Legislation

Let’s look at how the U.S. government prepared itself to adapt to the trend. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) took effect after the 12-year arduous effort of the Father of FOIA John Moss and the ice breaker Donald Rumsfeld.

Technology

When the concept of internet started to become a popular term in 1988, Mark Weiser a scientist from Xerox first defined Ubiquitous Computing. It basically means that for everything that exists in the world, it can be connected to everything else. Every connected thing can be calculated. This can be achieved by connecting small computing devices. This way the data can be collected anywhere, anytime. Eventually computers will integrate with the environment as a whole.

Another important concept is Business Intelligence which is defined as “ to collect, store, analyze and share data.” In 1992, Bill Inmon, the father of the Data Warehouse defined it as a subject oriented, integrated, non volatile and time variant data storage to support decision making. In 1993, Edgar Codd made contributions to Online Analytical Processing. In my opinion, one of the most important concepts is visual explanations - the visual display of quantitative information. Since the data has become more and more complex, people can hardly understand what it means. Visual explanation will help ordinary people to understand the trend behind the data. Design is pivotal for data visualization. Edward Tufte said that there is no such thing as information overload, just bad design. If something is cluttered and/or confusing, fix your design.

Talent

Let’s find out why the U.S. has been able to advance in the software industry for many years. In 1959, the U.S. National Defense department and IBM jointly developed a project - Semi-Automatic Ground Environment. This project was dedicated to collect, process signals from radars to monitor activities by various aircrafts. It lasted 30 years and cost approximately $10 billion (U.S.). Together with other similar sized large projects, they trained many data analysts, developers and architects.  They were called the West Point training projects. Those talent people then joined the private sectors and have developed all kinds of software which made U.S. remain at the top in the global software industry.

The impact of Big Data to Individuals, Organizations and Government

Individual Data Privacy

The U.S. Privacy Study Commission (1977), mentioned that the real danger to individuals is the gradual erosion of individual liberties through automation, integration, and interconnection of many small, separate record-keeping systems, each of which alone may seem innocuous, even benevolent, and wholly justifiable.

In 1948, George Orwell, in his book titled Nineteen Eighty Four, described a situation where you had no place to hide whenever you were sleeping or awake, working or eating, indoor or outdoor, in the bed or in the bathtub. Except what’s inside your brain, nothing belonged to you. There was a Big Brother who took control of things. Today, the Big Brother could be the central data bank. The impact of data integration from different source is immense, similar to 1+1>2.

Organization - Data Driven Decision Making

In 1989, Howard Dresner first defined Business Intelligence that is a fact based business decision making method.

Wal Mart was the first organization that applied data mining techniques. The famous case study was the successful campaign of diaper and beer promotional package sale. According to the data analysis, Wal Mart found out that 30% to 40% new fathers tend to buy beers as a bonus for themselves when they purchase diapers. The cross sales campaign was a huge success and data driven decision making has been widely utilized thereafter in the business world.

Government - Increase Efficiency and Effectiveness

The U.S. government has also benefited from Big Data analysis. Jack Maple, created CompStat (Computer Statistics) methodology to analyze the reasons and trends of crimes in New York City which has proven effective and efficient to stop crimes and better utilize police force.

The collection, storage, management, analysis and sharing of Big Data will continue to evolve as technologies and techniques using Big Data develop and as the economic benefits of the use of data continue to grow.

Source: "Big Data", Tu Zipei

Identify the blue ocean and stay in it -- what made Cirque du Soleil so successful

All who saw it must have been thrilled by the amazing performance by Cirque du Soleil (the Cirque) at the Pan Am 2015 opening ceremony in Toronto. The Quebec based group was founded by Guy Laliberté and other partners. Some-time accordion player, stilt-walker and fire-eater, Guy spent the past 20 years making the Cirque -- earlier this year sold to TPG at 1.5 billion US dollars -- a huge success.

What are the critical success factors that helped the Cirque create and maintain uncontested market space (often called a blue-ocean strategy)?

Among many factors, I summarize the following three factors that are of most importance:

Innovation

Every organization talks about innovation, but what made Cirque du Soleil so special in terms of innovation?  If you have watched any of its performances, you will notice that it’s a circus without any animals. It is actually a combination of acrobatics, musical numbers and performing arts. So it created a new definition of circus - familiar yet strangely new.

The Cirque embraces ideas from a wide variety of resources, not only including those from the creative team, but also from performers and behind the scenes staff across the globe. There is an annual workshop that allows over 5,000 global employees to express their ideas freely. What’s more, the Cirque also collects feedback from temporary workers like artists and new technology innovators.

The Cirque is a lean organization. They cut the high cost of training and caring for animals (by eliminating the animals) and focus not on big name, expensive stars but on a stellar lower-cost ensemble. The creative team is independent. Each team member can fully utilize his/her imagination without any interruption or random changes.  For example, its art director Sean Mckeown mentioned that the Cirque added the theater elements and creatively used the painting style to show the plots.

Data driven approach

When planning a new performance, the marketing team will conduct market research and identify which topic/theme interests an audience the most. Then the creative team will create a storyline based on the results and decide what kind of sceneries and performers are required.

The Cirque has a comprehensive database that records every performer's strengths and weaknesses. It works a bit differently than other circuses. For other circuses, if a crew performed a show well, they would produce a new one using the same crew. The Cirque, on the other hand, will hand pick each performer based on the theme, plot and requirements from the creative director through the global database. This ensures the best suitable performers are selected for a specific show.  The Cirque knows that the most important element in a performance is people. What can really touch audience is the emotional attachment that performers created through their movements, facial expressions and integration with music, settings and lightings.

Leadership

Guy Laliberté, the former owner and current CEO, empowers the team and sets minimum restrictions to maximize every employee’s potential, expertise and ideas. However, when it comes to decision making, he himself becomes a standard. To some extent, Guy is a demanding boss who requires high quality and pays close attention to details. The whole team works under pressure that is not from bureaucratic hierarchy, but from the mutual agreement of exceeding the requirements and pursuing excellence.

On the other hand, as a former performer, Guy understands how to attract audience attention and he tries to be objective as he does not involve himself with the creative team on a daily basis and therefore can view the show with fresh ideas. If the rehearsal does not meet his requirement, Guy is not afraid to make big changes at the last minute.

All these above mentioned factors have contributed to the success of Cirque du Soleil. Chan Kim, the co-author of Blue Ocean Strategy believes that you can pursue both differentiation and low cost at the same time when you apply the blue ocean strategy. The Cirque’s success seems to support that view -- always new and exciting, it spends its resources wisely focused on maintaining and building in its unique market space with a brilliant, collaborative ensemble performing a unique variety of acts using all available arts creatively and economically.