citizen Evangelist

Merriam Webster defines innovation as:

Function: noun
Pronunciation: \ˌi-nə-vā-shən\
1. the introduction of something new

Wikipedia adds some additional thoughts in this matter:

the change must increase value, customer value, or producer value. Innovations are intended to make someone better off, and the succession of many innovations grows the whole economy.

There is an important distinction between invention and innovation that often goes unnoticed:

An invention is an object, process, or technique which displays an element of novelty.

Inventions are first ever creations. Innovation is the tireless pursuit of creating value. Innovation isn’t isolated to products. In fact, innovation can occur in every business process, in every customer interaction, and in every activity that takes place within and around your business. It isn’t about being first. It isn’t even about being ideal. It is only about improving what you have and what your are doing to increase value for you, your customers, your products & services, and your business. Innovation is about staying viable in the market and refusing to succumb to the commodification of your business.

Let’s face it: the competition is out there. They are going to be working hard to increase their revenues. They are going to work hard at taking revenue from you. Can you afford to be the low cost leader when competing in a global marketplace where there are companies with employees and operation costs that are a fraction of yours? Or are you ready to take on a new way of thinking, a corporate directive that focuses not on driving down costs but instead on driving up value?

Just In Time Innovation is a simple concept: when the opportunity presents itself, make improvements. In practice, things get pretty complicated. This requires a whole new way of organizing yourself and a significant new importance placed on truly understanding your customer. The customer is your boss. The customer pays your salary and gives you your job. The customer is who determines if you’ve succeeded in providing value in excess of your costs. When you are successful your customers will buy your product and tell their friends.

There are many recent signals that a handful of companies are embracing this belief and are getting organized to innovate in new and exciting ways. Ben McConnel notes the launch of Starbuck’s My Starbucks Idea. Last year, Dell launched a similar initiative with IdeaStorm. And earlier this week I referenced a slightly different approach by Nokia and the use of Beta Labs.

Customers buy because the are seeking something. When a customer buys from you, is there any additional you could you could do for that customer? How do you know? Do you ask them? If a customer is asked “How else can we help you?” is that information collected? Is it available throughout your organization? Can your organization take that information and innovate?

If you don’t have a strategy and don’t have the tools, what are you doing to ensure your company is going to survive?

Disclosure: I am founder and Chief Evangelist of Whisper Labs. We offer a hosted web application that makes it easy to collect and manage customer ideas. Your customers know what they want. Some times, they even know what you can do differently in order to provide what they need. The best thing you can do is ask them: “What else can we do to delight you?”

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Many businesses find great wealth in focusing on the small things. For example, banks and other financial institutions are very fond of the benefits of partial percentages and fractional cents. When collected together, the sum of those parts is quite exciting.

What if there were an opportunity to do the same thing with time? After all, time is money, and based upon my earlier arbitrage post, wouldn’t there be an opportunity to do some great things?

Let’s start with calculating my spare time. Each year, I have time I can invest in projects of my fancy. That time can be broken down into these categories (assuming 365 days per year):
hours: 8,760
minutes: 525,600
seconds: 31,536,000

Now, in most cases, I’m going to have certain amounts of that time allocated to things that I really need. Those things are going to include sleeping, eating, and working.

Let’s say that I’m going to sleep 8 hours per day. On average I eat two real meals, and I spend and hour on each. For work, I’ll falsely state that I only spend 8 hours each day at work, five days a week (40 hours).  Of course, I do get sick time, vacation, and holidays. For argument sake, let’s say that there are 1′840 hours which are allocated as work (2080 work hour possible per year - 80 hours for holiday - 80 hours for vacation - 80 hours for sick/personal time).

The annual time allocated will include:

Sleep: 2,920 hours (8hrs x 365 days)
Eating: 730 hours (2hrs x 365 days)
Working: 1,840 hours

Allocated time: 5,490 hours per year

Now, let’s figure out how much time I have left to discretionally invest.

Available hours: 8,760 hours
- Allocated hours: 5,490 hours
======================
Free hours: 3,270 hours

Stated in the same terms as above:
Free hours: 3,270
Minutes: 196,200
Seconds: 11,772,000

Now, imagine that I can get 24 seconds of your time to complete a small project. What would that be worth? In general, the amount of time required to complete a project will take much longer than this, but we’re talking about less than 1/2 of a minute. This represents
0.00020% of your free time per year…

Now, imagine that I can get 10% of the population to give me 45 seconds of time.

Population Clock:
U.S. 299,315,488
World 6,530,710,933
13:14 GMT (EST+5) Jul 26, 2006

US: 29.9 million people x 24 seconds = 718,357,171 seconds
World: 653.1 million people x 24 seconds = 15,673,706,239 seconds

Let’s make that tangible:
US time: 11.9 million minutes = 199,544 hours = 8,314 days = 22.8 years
World time: 261.2 million minutes = 4.4 million hours = 181,408 days = 497 years

Now.. we can argue about my assumptions… but let’s create one more calculation. What if I would normally need to pay minimum wage to accomplish these tasks, but was able to offer a solution which eliminated that cost? What type of value creation are we talking about?

US: 199,544 hours x $5.15 USD = $ 1,027,650 USD
World: 4.4 million hours x $5.15 USD = $ 22,422,107 USD

Now.. imagine I could get that accomplished more than one time per year.

Following the example of Linus’ Law, which states “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” I believe that we can expand this to state that given enough eyeballs, all problems are shallow. And, I think that the companies who figure out how to leverage this crowdsourcing framework are going to drive the next wave of innovation.

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I suppose it knew it… but I had never really thought about it.

An article on CNN referenced social networking sites as the ultimate marketing tools, promoting “the virtuoso of yourself.”

In certain ways, I’m sure that blogs fulfill the same lizard brain needs.

In a world of so much anonymity… so many strangers in the crowd. I suppose that deep down we all want to connect and belong and be liked.

Match.com and many others have long catered to individuals looking for members of the opposite sex. It only stands to reason that the disconnection that is our lives would ultimately drive the need to meet with or stay connected to others in a ‘non dating format.’

My 20 year reunion is coming up and I’ve been working with a few friends to find all of our classmates. We turned to Jot to facilitate this. Our graduating class was about 120 folks, if memory serves.. and we’ve managed to get over 50% to the site… and probably 1/2 of that group to create a page with some information about what’s happened in the last 18 years with pictures of the family.

Its amazing how technology has made it so easy for anyone to create content that is enjoyable. Most classmates spend hour upon hour reading each page with detail before posting their own information. Each page that is created gives a glowing perspective on what’s going on with their lives and their families. Its right out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

When the consumer takes on the role of the marketeer… how effective can marketeers be in reaching those individuals through traditional mediums?

Even now, I want individuals to come to my site… leave a comment… enjoy their stay. But, my traffic is low. I haven’t built the infrastructure of linklove required to show up in the relevant search results. I’m now focused on how to promote my site in order to fulfill my lizard brain need for love and acceptance.

Companies that provide a customer with a venue to promote themselves will begin to endear that customer. Especially since we all have a small bit of anxiety that we may not be in the types of relationships that will allow us to accomplish the goals we have.

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I bought the book last week. I’ve been looking at it each day, but haven’t cracked it open yet.

I’m reading three others at this time (1, 2, & 3), and I’m in various stages of completion on each. When a new text hits the shelves, i’m drawn to it.. Especially when the topic is so near and dear to my heart. I have it, but now its hard to know whether its time to break my promise to those authors and start with this one, or to keep the course.

I’m a maven.
I’m a visionary or inventor rational
I’m a conductor, naturally and adapted.
I’m a cross-pollinator & collaborator who is working to be the storyteller.

For the last year, I’ve been working on a project with my team that is a tail enabling technology. What I haven’t been able to do is get the story down. I appreciate great storytellers. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy Guy’s work. He tells a mean story.

What I think is interesting is the way that Guy assumes folks will forget the important elements of implementing a long-tail play. I think our society and our infrastructure often prevents us from implementing solutions that fit this category.

Have you ever tried to give an elevator pitch for a new type of solution? Imagine that you were doing so for a new long-tale technology? Rob Adams keeps telling me that it sounds too good. “Cures cancer, tastes great, costs a buck” is the line I’ve heard him say most often. I know most VCs are equally cynical.

The irony… if you build your solution with the philosophy that the customer is the platform, you don’t need to be that cynical. But if you’re going to require me to keep me to 30 seconds, it will sound too good. Give me 30 minutes, and I’ll start to make you a fan.

Let’s be clear here. The Long Tail is merely the application of the efficient markets theory. I give Chris major props for coining the phrase, giving it context, and creating the framework for all the stories. But, at the end of the day, this is Business 101 stuff. Perhaps it does sound too good to be true. Perhaps economists have been deluding themselves for years. I don’t happen think so.

And, to Guy’s point, I don’t happen think that the folks who matter will forget.

I think that the real problem is that very few producers of Long Tail technologies will survive long enough to realize their dream because “the system” beats it out of us.

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Aye, I eye.

Yes, I see. Internet. A powerful connection of distributed computers which allow so much possibility.

It really is about me. Meme.

Web2: I am part of the Internet too.

I have power.

I have control.

I have something to contribute.

There is an incredible transition in the mindset of today’s consumer. I’ve been trying hard to get my fingers around what it is that is occurring. I certainly used to see more of it in others than I did in myself… but through this recent exploration, I think I too have become infected with the idea and in touch with what is going on.

In many ways, we have unplugged from each other. Companies have placed us into environments which are about efficiency and cost-effectiveness… and we are chopped up into little pieces of the process so as to separate any one individual from the lifecycle of the relationship. In other words, we have become separated from accountability to each other. Sure, I know.. you’ll jump on me about accountability to the job… but think about it… when it comes to customer service, the people we are supposed to interface with in this process are facilitators that get your call or inquiry from a queue and then ‘handle’ you.

“NEXT…”

As we’ve unplugged from each other in the sense of business, we’ve gotten more plugged into the internet as providers of self-service as well as into our “local” communities. (I’ll leave the notion of the community extremely loose for now, as it demands an exploration of its own).

This transition in focus and mindset is unlocking one of the most powerful transitions in marketing as we know it: Influence 2.0

The customer evangelism evangelists point to a wiki which asks those interested to begins to explore this topic a bit. It can be found here

With service like that… it’s really no surprise. I’m still dumbfounded that we let corporations get away with the treatment they offer. After all… it is our money they need to survive.

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