Killer Innovations with Phil McKinney - A Show About Ideas Creativity And Innovation

In this weeks show, Phil McKinney and Kym McNicholas talk about the winners of the technology and innovation competitions held at CES along with an eclectic set of companies and innovations they believe could be winners in 2016. They discuss: Extreme Tech Challenge – one of the largest innovation competitions with more than 3,000 entrants each year, uses CES to select the final three that get a personal invite to Sir Richard Banson's private island for a week of coaching and mentoring. The winners were:Bloom Technologies, Giroptic and Sphero. Richard Branson sent in a video message to the event at CES and said he was so impressed with all 10 finalists that he wanted all of them to come to Necker Island. At Eureka Park, Kym came across a number of interesting companies including: * UnaliWear: Wearables for seniors: UnaliWear's Kanega watch provides discreet support for falls, medication reminders, and a guard against wandering in a classically-styled watch with a speech interface rather than buttons. It doesn't require a smart phone. www.UnaliWear.com * Ashley Chloe Wearable wireless headphones: Ashley Chloe caters to fashion-forward individuals who crave digital wearables designed expressly for their modern lifestyle. The Helix Cuff, its flagship product, bridges the gap between high fashion and functional form in the wearable and headphones market. The product has won the CES Innovation Awards 2016 in the Wearable Technologies category. http://www.ashleychloe.com * PhoneSoap Mobile Phone and Tablet Sanitizer and Charger: Using UV light technology, PhoneSoap products kill 99.9% of bacteria and viruses. Each sanitizing device is also equipped with USB ports so the phone or tablet can charged while being sanitized. www.phonesoap.com * Somabar Robotic countertop bartender: The world’s smartest bartender. Somabar integrates Wi-Fi connectivity, onboard sensors, electronic ingredient tagging and automated cleaning making bartending as easy as pressing a button. The Somabar app lets users share and create cocktails with anyone on the globe in seconds. http://www.somabarkickstarter.com/ Phil hosted an annual Pitch-It event where 10 startups come in a pitch to a room of 40 CEO's and CTO's or large companies looking to close a sale. A few of the companies that I found interesting included: * Pypestream: Is a mobile messaging platform, enabling businesses to connect with Millenials ad GenZ's in real-time using custom chat application. Some  are calling te “WhatsApp” for businesses. https://pypestream.com * Arcadia Data: Arcadia's platform enables the creation of real-time queries on very large unstructured data sets. Think of it as a big data tool that every organization can take advantage of. http://arcadiadata.com * RTI Studios: Based on military technology, RTI produced panaormaic 360 degree video capture and distribution using a single camera that produces high quality real-tim stream without seams or distortions. http://www.rtistudios.com .. and more. In one case, you could look at CES as one big massive set of innovation competitions.

In this weeks show we discuss the  15 secrets successful innovators know about time management. As inventors, innovators and creatives, we struggle with prioritization given that we tend to be working on multiple ideas at the same time. I know I struggle. This weeks guest, Kevin Kruse, is a New York Times best selling author has a new book out on time management. During the interview, Kevin shares … * Its not about hustle  and hard work. * Work smarter not harder * The concept of 1440 and why its so important * Don't let people steal your time * Why you shouldn't use to-do lists * The E3C method to increase your productivity * How to use procrastination to your advantage * Tricks to avoiding digital distractions for better concentration * The myth of multi-tasking * Prioritize based on your MIT (most important task) * .. and everything you would ever want to know about time management. About Kevin Kruse Kevin Kruse started his first company when he was just 22 years old. He worked around the clock, literally living out of his one-room office and showering each day at the YMCA, before giving up a year later deeply in debt. But after reflecting on his experiences, Kevin focused on what he calls wholehearted leadership and employee engagement, he went on to build and sell several, multi-million dollar technology companies, winning both Inc 500 and Best Place to Work awards along the way. Contact Kevin at: * kevinkruse.com * On LinkedIn * Information on his book, 15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management Killer Question:  Do you have a digital twin? The concept first formed on consumer sites like Yelp, but it’s becoming a catchphrase in marketing and sales. The idea is that dedicated users of sites like Yelp eventually notice that there are other users whose tastes, interests, and “favorites” match their own. These digital twins do not “know” each other in the traditional way. They most likely never communicate directly with each other, but a link forms as one person realizes that the other seems to like or dislike the same brands that he or she does. Both twins’ tastes align across a number of sites. People start to trust these twins to the point where they bypass the process of reading multiple reviews, and simply check to see what their twin thinks. Eventually people start to value their digital twin’s opinions over their own. Recently I was looking for a barber, since my previous one made the inconvenient decision to retire. I went on Yelp and found a local husband-and-wife shop that had more than a hundred five-star reviews. I showed up one Saturday for a cut. Sure enough, the line was out the door and the service was great. Now, I’ve never met any of these reviewers, but my instinct was to trust the collective voice of the group. This is a huge change from the old days when I would have gone into work and asked my buddies in the office for a recommendation. The power of the anonymous point of view has been amplified. And it is incredibly hard to control. Customers used to be much more influenced by sales guys in making the big purchases, but now an individual can walk into a store already sold on what brand and item they want—even if it’s an item they have no real experience with or knowledge about. So what’s the end result? There’s been a huge swing in influence. The individual voices of happy or dissatisfied customers has been amplified—way beyond the power of an individual voice in the pre-...

This weeks show is the annual “prediction” of what will be at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and what that means for the innovation trends and technology trends for 2016. Some of the innovations and technologies discusses include: * Next generation TV's and displays * Virtual Reality (VR) and what to expect for content * Wearable's such as watches and medical devices * Drones * Security and Privacy * Autonomous and connected cars * … any many more technology trends and innovation trends to watch for 2016. Killer Question: On October 4, 1957, Russia launched a beach-ball-sized satellite named Sputnik, which orbited the Earth in just over ninety-six minutes. The previous front runner in the space race, the United States, was now the runner up. Our only competitor had trounced us, seemingly out of nowhere. A month later the Russians sent up Laika, a small stray terrier collected from the streets of Moscow, in Sputnik II. The dog became the first living creature sent into space, and an instant celebrity back on Earth. The “Sputnik moment” ended up being a huge benefit for our long-term space goals. The US government was shocked and embarrassed that Soviet Russia managed to beat us into space. President Kennedy retaliated by greatly increasing funding for space travel. In 1958 NASA was founded, and the United States has led the way ever since. We all need Sputnik Yes, they can be alarming, but they are also invigorating.A Sputnik moment is the catalyst for change because seeing your enemy get ahead is the greatest motivator there is. It makes you see that you have to seriously improve your game if you want to win. A Sputnik moment makes you realize that if you don’t change, you’re going to get left behind—and soon. Have you ever had a Sputnik moment?   Sparking Points * What future predictions can you make based on the innovation rate for your industry (e.g., Moore’s law in the computer industry)? * What decisions would you make today if you knew that the rate of innovation would double? * What “impossible” idea (product, service, solution) have you been ignoring because it can’t happen? What would need to be done to make it happen?

This weeks show gives insight into a serial entrepreneur and the cycles he went through from starting, pivoting and selling his past companies and his current start-up that has gone through its pivot to find its place in the market. What's the secret of pivoting your company so that its a better chance of success? Guest: Jeff White – Founder and CEO of Gravy Never short on ideas, Jeff is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Gravy. Prior to founding Gravy, Jeff founded several companies and led them to successful exits. Though a kid at heart, Jeff has built successful companies for over two decades. Named the D.C. Technology Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011, he founded and led mySBX to growth of over 100% annually. Jeff also founded Blue Canopy, twice named to the Top 500 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America. Jeff is passionate about building real products for real people and loves to start with a blank canvas (he’s a whiz with a whiteboard). Jeff currently lives outside of Washington, D.C. with his family and mentors other D.C. area entrepreneurs. You can connect with Jeff at: * Jeff on LinkedIn * Gravy Killer Question: Price is king, right? “Build ’em cheap and stack ’em high” is practically the motto of most segments of the tech industry (naturally, there are some notable exceptions). It’s certainly a core assumption about what the majority of customers want. For example, $320 is a huge sum of money for a middle- or lower-class Indian family, but it hasn’t stopped sales of DreamScreen – a product aimed at the India market. Our customers saw the value that DreamScreen brought to their lives. The price, though steep, makes sense. Never kill an idea because you assume your customers can’t afford it. If the value the product brings to their life justifies the cost, they will find a way to make the purchase. Your first concern should be to make it relevant; your second, to make it affordable. Remember that in many cases the customer is not evaluating the perceived worth of your product solely on price, but more on value. They ask themselves, “What do I get for the money that I spend?” If you’re getting tripped up in trying to understand if your customer will perceive your product as “expensive,” ask yourself if you are confusing price and value as being the same thing. Price and value are not the same thing; if there is sufficient value in the product the customer will find a way to save for or finance their purchase. People will find a way to pay for the things that are important to them, and important is a purely subjective thing. Look at the organic food market. Vegetables that are certified as organic cost an average of 50 percent more than non-organic. Organic milk and meat are almost twice the price of conventionally raised products. Now, everybody benefits from healthy food, but there is still no definitive study showing that an organic head of broccoli is dramatically healthier than its conventionally raised counterpart. Yet millions of people regard the extra cost of organic food as part of the cost of doing business, or raising their family. Organic matters to them, and they’ll prioritize it, even if it means cutting out other items from their budget. There are other ways to give a customer access to products that are theoretically too expensive for them to purchase. In the last five years businesses that allow women to rent luxury items for monthly fees have become a huge trend. Bagborrowandsteal.com com allows a user to rent a Chloé handbag for $225 a month. At the end of the month,

In this weeks show, Kym McNicholas joins Phil to share her surprise and enthusiasm for Colorado, and specifically the Boulder, start-up scene along with sharing her work with Sir Richard Branson and the Extreme Tech Challenge. Some of the topics the two cover include: * Kym reveals some surprises on Phil and his “personal time” activities and his secret weapon at trade shows * Colorado and the Boulder start-up scene * The difference between the startup culture in Colorado and Silicon Valley * The Extreme Tech Challenge and Sir Richard Branson's involvement * Discuss the process to select the top 25 out of thousands of companies submitted * Discuss the 5 in the top 25 companies that are from Colorado * Kym and Phil's share their favorites of the top 25 companies in this years Extreme Tech Challenge You can listen to the audio for the December 6th show. The top 25 companies in this years Extreme Tech Challenge are: Note: No killer question this week.

In this weeks episode, we take a look at toys that help our kids to discover their own creative ability. With the emerging creative economy, creativity is quickly becoming a foundational skill that everyone will need to have to succeed and where better to start than with our kids creativity. What's the secret to creative kids? We cover such topics as: * Why are some toys better than others when it comes to allowing our kids to experience their own creativity? * Are unstructured toys (e.g. “Instructions Not Included) better at sparking creative kids? * What does it take to create this new generation of toys? Show Links: * Modular Toys on Amazon * Modular Toys website Guest: Vitali Minin – Founder and CEO of Modular Toys Vitali Minin searched for 3d racetrack construction toy for his son but he could not find a true 3d racetrack construction toy. The natural response for this kind of situation for any entrepreneur was – “I`ll do it”. Using his design background, he developed the concept, including the design,  and presented it to the big companies in toys industry. Fortunately – all of the companies rejected the idea. To give up was not an option. Vitali searches and finds Plastokit Quality ltd, a plastic injection factory in Israel. He forms a partnership with Avi Levy and Shimon gal,  the owners of Plastokit. They together developed the first prototype of Modular Racetrack and presented it at the Nuremberg Toy Fair. As they say, the rest is history. Today, Modular ™ Construction Toys specializes in the design and production of three dimensional construction toys. The concept is based on a new patented and innovative modular system that enables multiple variations developing 3D perception, planning, creativity and abstract thinking. * Vitali Minin on Linkedin * Modular Toys on Facebook * Information on Modular Toys products Other Resources: * How to Nurture Creativity in Your Kids * How to teach kids to be more creative (video) * Kid Entrepreneurs: A 10 Year Old Who Is Franchising His Idea S12 Ep14 Killer Question Odds are that you and your competitors are actually competing in two distinct ways. The obvious battle is the one to win customers from each other. The less obvious, but equally important, one is the battle for the resources required to produce your product. In previous episodes, I touched on the concept of unexpected jolts, and how the disruptions they cause can be not only destructive but also an opportunity for a savvy company to make bold moves and leapfrog over their competition. One way to prepare for jolts is to assess your relationship with key suppliers, and figure out if those relationships are strong enough to survive an unexpected event.

In the innovation game, finding and engaging in a community of innovators where you can get your questions answered is important. Otherwise, you face your biggest innovation challenge alone. This weeks show centered around the answers to the most common listener questions. These questions included: * What is the biggest innovation challenge (mistakes) organizations face? * How did the “7 Laws of Innovation” come about? (Link to poster) * What was your biggest innovation success? * What was your biggest innovation failure? * What was your biggest innovation challenge? * How did you get into doing the Killer Innovations podcast? * What is your opinion of the decision for HP to split into two separate companies? * Given that you worked with Carly, what is your opinion of her? Direct link to Season 11 Episode 35 Killer Question: Not that long ago, a passenger complaint letter to Virgin Atlantic circulated around the web. It was very long, fully illustrated with photos, clearly somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and very funny, but it made a few good points about the bad food and surly service this particular passenger had experienced. All these years later it still occasionally shows up as one of the most-read stories at telegraph.co.uk. In 2009, another disgruntled passenger created a music video about how United baggage handlers had broken his $3,500 guitar. He uploaded the song to YouTube, and to date it has been viewed more than fifteen million times. United’s customer service department, which had originally denied him any kind of compensation, quickly changed their minds as the video went viral. They adjusted their tone from defensive to humorous and held a meeting with the passenger. Eventually the airline made a charitable donation to a jazz school in his name. The problem is that none of their existing, former, or potential customers care that United eventually resolved the customer complaint. All they remember is that it took a funny song and nine million YouTube hits to get the airline to do the right thing. The point is, it’s easier than ever to find out what your customers are thinking and saying about you these days. It’s also much easier for their opinions to go viral, so it’s imperative that you respond to your them with the same speed and immediacy they use to critique you. Social networking sites have fundamentally changed the nature of the customer complaint. Customer complaints are morphing from one-off exchanges between a customer and a service representative into ongoing conversations, often in real-time, visible to the public, and open to anyone who cares to comment. By monitoring these sites, you can hear what your customers are saying about you, without them even being aware that their opinions are being heard. When I was still with HP, I found out about a notebook hinge problem through Twitter. How? I had HootSuite app up all the time, and I used it to search for any tweet related to HP. One day I was sitting in my office and a customer tweeted that he was having a problem with a hinge on his HP notebook. The complaint got my attention. I put down what I was doing and went to respond to the tweet, but before I could even get my hands on the keyboard another customer replied, “It’s a known problem, HP has a repair protocol.

Why are some companies more successful than others? Why Do Only 13 Percent of Companies Successfully Execute Their Strategy? What are the 87 doing wrong? Topics in the show include: * Why conversations control everything in your business? * What are the 10 conversations that create a connected organization? * How can truth combat the the Execution Virus (innovation antibodies) that infect every business? * How important is it to “declare” your vision? * What is the one advice that all CEO's show follow to become the 13 percent who execute their strategy? Guest: Dan Prosser Daniel Prosser, as CEO of The Prosser Group, has over 40 years of experience as an entrepreneur CEO, speaker, teacher and mentor, coaching business leaders, entrepreneurs and micropreneurs to cultivate an uncommon approach to building an extraordinary competitive edge. * FREE copy of Dan's book – Thirteeners  * Dan on LinkedIn * Dan's personal website Killer Question  Do you sell atoms or bytes? Do you think that your answer could change over the next five years? Think about Amazon and the Kindle. Jeff Bezos asked, What is my role going to be if the nature of books changes? He realized that to stay relevant and necessary his company needed to retain control over something tangible and physical. There could have been other options. Amazon could have bet that the reading experience would fully transition to audio, but they ultimately gambled that the act of reading was still integral to the enjoyment of a book. So, how do you stay in control of a physical experience when your product is going from atoms to bytes? Think about what a profound change this is. What would you do if your physical product—one that has been around, unchanged, for hundreds or thousands of years—suddenly seemed headed toward obsolescence? How do you still keep yourself relevant—an essential part of a transaction or an experience—especially if, like Amazon, you are primarily functioning as the middleman between product and customer? How do you keep that link alive? For Amazon, that link is providing the medium that brings the printed word to the reader. First that medium was books, and now, for many, it’s the Kindle. Amazon has been smart to keep physical ownership over the process of reading. Even though a reader may have transferred allegiance to digital media, Amazon is still controlling access to the “thing” in a reader’s hand. Granted, there are plenty of competitors springing up, all with their own pros and cons, but none has both the sheer heft of Amazon’s catalogue and the huge advantage of having arrived so early on the market. A Kindle, like the Hoover vacuum cleaner before it, is becoming both the specific name of the product, and a catch-all term for its category—a great place to be. It will be interesting to see how far Amazon pushes the possibilities of the Kindle, and how its relationships with publishers and authors will develop. Publishers are no longer in the business of selling paper, yet most still act as though they are. The publishing industry is still figuring out exactly how to handle pricing on e-books, and especially how e-book pricing can be aligned with traditional book pricing in a way that makes sense to the consumer. Customers are not happy to pay more for a Kindle edition than a hardcover edition of a bestseller. Yet some books are more expensive as digital downloads than as hardcovers. It doesn’t make sense to consumers, and it’s a downright dangerous situation for all concerned if book piracy takes off in the same way that music piracy did a decade ago. You don’t want to antagonize your customers or make them feel like fools for ...

Innovating inside large organizations can be challenging in the best of circumstances. So how do you go about getting leaders inside of established large companies and organizations get it when it comes to creativity and innovation and be successful? How do you get out of the innovation straitjacket? Topics covered in this week show include: * What is meant by the concept of “innovation at the speed of life”? * How do you succeed when you are operating in an innovation straitjacket? * What is an “innovation dividend” and how do you use it to persuade others that your idea has value? * What is the difference in innovation approach between the US, UK and China? * Why do Chine leaders have a different approach to giving teams the “freedom to innovate”? * Can innovating inside large organizations even be possible? Guest: Matt Bross Matt Bross is the former Global Chief Technology Officer of Huawei, British Telecom and is a well known industry visionary who is passionate about harnessing new technologies and driving service innovations that improve and transform the ability of people to communicate. Matt has a strong track record of understanding key global business trends and translating them into innovative products, solutions and services. Matt is currently the Chairman and CEO of Compass-EOS which is a next-generation routing company. You can connect with Matt at: * LinkedIn * Compass Networks * East West Institute  Killer Question: One of the first products I created as a software developer was a touch-typing program called Typing Instructor. This was back in 1985, and at that time there was no such thing as a standard PC. Instead you owned a specific brand and had access to the programs that had been written specifically for that make, whether IBM, Wang, or DEC. Each of these companies was attempting to create lock-in for their third-party software developers. If a user wanted a specific application, they needed to own the computer for which it was written. Now, was this a good thing or a bad thing? All of these brands approached the problem in unique ways. Compaq, a dinky start-up in the 1980s, had the most expansive philosophy about building their business. The team at Compaq realized that to win against the industry strategy of creating unique, proprietary PCs, they must push for PC uniformity. They decided to make their products compatible with IBM. Similarly, IBM licensed MS-DOS, a Microsoft operating system designed specifically for their PCs, a decision that subsequently made a fortune for Bill Gates. On the other hand, companies like DEC and Wang thought they could create some unique differentiators that would make the software developers come to their platforms first. Wang was especially notorious for wanting to keep their programs proprietary. Because the PC manufacturers were in a fight to dominate the market and win over the largest market share as quickly as possible, locking a customer into using their brand and making it as hard as possible for the customer to switch in the future seemed like a good idea. One of my first jobs in computer engineering was with a company called Individual Software. I was twenty-four at the time and married with a kid when Individual called me. I knew these guys, and I had faith that they were going to do interesting work, and that it would be a good place to get in on the gro...

Innovation can truly change the world but only if the world can access them. One key innovation is broadband. This week, we dive into a new innovation that is bringing mobile broadband access to the rural and developing countries.  We cover such topics as: * Dealing with two different types of innovation antibodies * The economic challenge of bringing innovations to developing countries and how to overcome them * The timing of inventing, innovating and the market readiness *  Patience when it comes to overcoming technology challenges * Background on broadband access in Africa and specifically in Rwanda Guest: Dr. Vanu Bose, Ph.D., is the Founder of Vanu Inc. and serves as its Chief Executive Officer and President. Dr. Bose is the principal inventor of the software radio technology that serves as the basis of Vanu Inc.'s products. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Jumpstart, a non-profit focused on early childhood literacy, and is also a member of the Board of Overseers for the Boston Museum of Science. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Bose developed a technical teaching curriculum and on board medical, computer and satellite communications systems for a DC-10 flying hospital for Project Orbis, a private, non-profit organization dedicated to fighting world blindness. Dr. Bose completed his doctoral thesis on software radio in April 1999, and received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) in June 1999. He received his Master's degree in EECS from M.I.T. in 1992 and two Bachelor's degrees, one in EECS and one in Math, from MIT in 1988. You can contact Vanu at vanu.com Facebook page for Vanu, Inc. On LinkedIn. Killer Question Where do we perform product research and development? Where else could this be done? What is your organization’s philosophy about design and development? Do you keep everything in-house, or do you outsource as needed? There are two schools of thoughts on this. By keeping the design process in-house, a company can build a sense of continuity and cohesion that links the entire family of products together in a satisfying way. Or you can outsource as needed, hiring talent for specific products and moving on once that product is complete. Neither is right or wrong; the more important point is to have a rationale for whichever strategy you choose, and to extract the most value from it. Look at a company like Herman Miller. Their Aeron chair is an iconic design for the technological age, but it wasn’t designed internally. Instead, Herman Miller outsourced the design to leading designers that have their own firms. The famous husband-and-wife team Charles and Ray Eames designed the classic 1950s Eames chair the same way. The point is that Herman Miller knows what their strengths are: manufacturing and distributing the final product. They also have a huge amount of practical expertise. For instance, they have experts in ergonomics, the less obvious details that are critical to the overall comfort and practicality of a product (e.g., the way a chair distributes the body heat generated by the user). They share this very specialized knowledge with designers, and then throw the company’s expertise into selling the final piece of furniture. Herman Miller has a very different idea of where design, research, and development should take place. Herman Miller has adopted the philosophy that it’s more important to ensure that the best and brightest are working on your product, and that this is a higher priority than making sure the work is done in-house. In the past, I led  projects for specific countries. So why would you design it in the United States?

In this episode, we discussed the process (and challenges) of going from invention, to innovation and then ultimately to commercialization.  The question covered: * What are the three attributes of a great innovation roadmap? * Why are good requirements so critical for successful innovation and commercialization efforts? * Can you create metrics that are meaningful for innovation? * Is the challenges for partnerships different between public and private organizations? * How does the US stack up when it comes to invention, innovation and commercialization? Guest: Dr Tom Cellucci Dr. Tom Cellucci has been a senior executive in both the private and public sectors for over 32 years. He served as the US Government’s first-ever Chief Commercialization Officer, working for both President Bush and President Obama. Tom leads a successful management consulting firm, Cellucci Associates, Inc., based in Cambridge, MA. He has authored or co-authored 24 scholarly books and over 192 high-tech business articles. Cellucci earned a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania (1984), an MBA from Rutgers University (1991) and a BS in Chemistry from Fordham University (1980). For more, see  www.cellucciassociates.com. Killer Question: What are we throwing away because we assume it has no value? My wife is famous for being a little frugal. She once routed me and our son Logan from Las Vegas to Phoenix to Los Angeles and finally to San Jose because she could save twenty bucks each over the nonstop fare. Kind of nuts, right? But if I’m honest I have the same mind-set in one respect: I am determined to squeeze everything I can out of any idea or opportunity that is available to me. I am diligent about looking at information and ideas that supposedly have “no value” and wondering, “Hey, maybe they do.” What I mean by this is simple. Just because you or your business has always operated under the assumption that something—be it data, ideas, or scraps from the manufacturing process—is essentially worthless, it doesn’t mean that that assumption was ever, or still is, true. I constantly review the stuff that gets thrown away and ask myself, “Is there value here?” One of my big breaks was becoming one of the early executives at Teligent, in 1997. Teligent provided phone service to businesses across the United States and in twelve other countries. The core products were voice and data services to businesses. There wasn’t much to differentiate us from our competitors. Basically we were all competing on the same fundamental premise: providing a good, reliable service at a cheaper price. Here’s the problem with that: If there are no significant differences between you and your competitors, you are essentially in a stalemate, until one of you finds a way to differentiate from the pack. So, even as our company continued to hum along nicely I started asking the questions about who we were, what we were doing, and how we were doing it. I started doing some internal investigating about the information we were gathering from our customers. After a little persistence, I got hold of the complete call-detail records for our network. In the telecom industry, the network throws away any record that isn’t relevant to billing. The result was that 70 percent of the information in call-detail records was thrown away. A customer rang a business, the line was free, the call was answered, and a charge was added to the bill. Great, that’s how we make money. But looking through the full call-detail records, I noticed something interesting: The logs showed not only the ...

Culture is critical for teams and organizations looking to be have significant innovation impact. Based on working across large, small, non-profit and government agencies, I've discovered what are a common set of four culture attributes in organizations that were highly innovative. We validate these and other attributes that make-up culture for an organization with this weeks guest. Guest: Dr. Natalie Baumgartner Dr. Natalie Baumgartner is a Co-Founder and the Chief Psychologist at RoundPegg. RoundPegg is The Culture and Engagement Platform for all companies. We strive to make it possible for people to fit and thrive where they work. With Culture Science at it’s core, the RoundPegg culture and engagement platform helps companies increase engagement, reduce churn, retain top talent, and break down silos using web-based social apps. Natalie has been the human form of RoundPegg for over a decade, consulting on corporate culture with investors, senior executives and boards of directors. She holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and serves on the board of the Consulting Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association. She is a popular speaker on culture, engagement, mergers/acquisitions and change management – and a TEDx speaker on Culture Fit. Natalie is a culture evangelist and is passionate about the power that company culture has to revolutionize how we work. You can connect at Roundpegg LinkedIn Profile   Killer Question Can I create an on-demand version of the product? Do you need to have a finished product in order to make a sale? Is there any way that not offering a finished product would actually give you an advantage, or even become a selling point? Suppose that your manufacturing costs appear to have gotten as low as they can without sacrificing quality. Even if your costs are acceptable to you, you still have to deal with the lag time between ordering a product and having it manufactured and shipped to you—typically six weeks from China. Perhaps this lag time causes you to lose sales, or to miss the window of opportunity for your product if you’re aiming to respond quickly to a short-lived fad. Is there any other option besides relying on this manufacturing and supply chain? My children have long since outgrown toys, but if they were still young today, I’d probably be roped into visits to Build-A-Bear. Build-A-Bear, like the paint-your-own pottery craze that preceded it, doesn’t offer a finished product. In fact, the whole selling point is that you create your own customized product in-store. These types of businesses are offering a dual product: both the end result—be it a stuffed animal in a personalized costume or an “I Love Dad” coffee mug—and the chance to create something without taking responsibility for gathering materials or cleaning up the mess it generates. A stuffed toy may feel like a low-risk product, but children’s tastes, interests, and fads can be as fickle as an adult’s. Just ask any parent. Once you start adding the layers of design and complexity to a toy—clothes, accessories, prerecorded sounds—you risk creating something that misses the mark with your target audience. Build-A-Bear’s strategy is very clever in that it allows them to keep components, rather than finished products, as inventory. They never have to run the risk of being stuck with 10,000 astronaut bears the week after the latest Pirates of the Caribbean opens. Or conversely, having 10,000 pirate bears in anticipation of a hit only to find the franchise has run out of gas and the kids don’t care. There are two points to take from this. The first is that these companies are reducing their risk of having a stockroom full of faddish, briefly popular products that they now can’t sell.

[social align=”center”] When someone says innovation, most default to products or services but innovation can be applied to anything. In this weeks, show, we will take a look at innovating a brand. Our guest, Michael Mendenhall, will share his thoughts and experience in successful brand innovation. This Weeks Guest: Michael Mendenhall – CMO for Flextronics Michael is the Chief Marketing and Chief Communications Officer at Flextronics where he most recently led the re-branding of the firm to Flex. Previously, he served as the Chief Marketing & Communications Officer and Executive Vice President of Fusion-io, Inc. From 2007 through 2011, he served as Global Chief Marketing Officer and Senior Vice President at Hewlett Packard. where his organization directed all aspects of the Fortune-10 company’s corporate marketing operations globally, including brand strategy, digital strategy, integrated design, strategic partnerships, customer intelligence, and hp.com among other responsibilities. Read more about Michael … This Weeks Killer Question/Brain Hack What emotional, psychological, or status benefits could people derive from using my product? Do you have diamonds stashed away that you reckon you can sell if times ever get tough? Say, a family heirloom, or an engagement ring from a failed marriage? Perhaps you know how much the diamond was appraised for by a reputable seller and feel confident that you can get a reasonable return on your investment. If so, you’re in for a disappointing surprise. In the late 1880s, a group of British financiers who’d invested heavily in South African diamond mines grew alarmed at the discovery of vast new supplies of the supposedly scarce gem. They realized that the value of their What—diamonds—was essentially the public’s perception of them as both extremely rare (and thus valuable), and a sign of sophistication and affluence. This belief about what the diamond merchants were selling would be irreparably damaged if the world’s markets were suddenly flooded with the gems. The financiers banded together, formed the De Beers consortium, and have managed and manipulated both the supply of diamonds and the public’s perception of them ever since. In the late 1940s they coined the phrase “A diamond is forever” and persuaded young couples everywhere that the purchase of one was an essential symbol of love and devotion. In the late ’50s, they responded to a glut of tiny diamonds from the Soviet Union by creating the idea of and the market for the “eternity ring.” The eternity ring was promoted as a gift for established couples to celebrate their ongoing commitment. Rather than one large diamond, the ring was comprised of a string of tiny diamonds set in a band. Prior to the eternity ring, customers were more interested in purchasing large diamonds. De Beers was able to convince consumers that these small diamonds were equally desirable by creating the idea that the small diamonds represented the passing of the years. Smart. Even more cleverly, they realized that by marketing diamonds as both investments and emotional signifiers, customers would keep them rather than reselling them down the line. You might part with Grandma’s bond portfolio, but you were far less likely to sell her ring. This sentiment helps keep untold billions of dollars of privately owned diamonds off of the market, thereby keeping the price of “new” diamonds high. Brilliant. However, the actual value of a diamond is negligible. Recently a friend took a loose diamond to a dealer. She had vague plans of buying a twin for it and making earrings...

This weeks show takes a look at Boomtown – a next generation startup accelerator that has greatly improved the accelerator model. Boomtown startups currently enjoy a 96% survival rate and 78% of them are generating revenues. Guest: Toby Krout of Boomtown Toby Krout is an entrepreneur, investor, and startup coach. He co-founded Boomtown, a startup accelerator in Boulder, Colorado in 2013 where he currently serves as the Executive Director. Boomtown’s mission is to understand and continuously improve the modern accelerator model for the benefit of entrepreneurs. His startups currently enjoy a 96% survival rate and 78% of them are generating revenues. You can find more info at boomtownboulder.com Guest: Aiden Chopra of Bitsbox Bitsbox is new way to teach kids how to program computers. The Bitsbox system has two halves: First, a website where kids as young as six can program apps that run on real phones and tablets. Second, a monthly subscription box that arrives in the mail. Each month’s box contains dozens of programming projects to keep kids engaged. The management team consists of Scott Lininger as CEO and Aidan Chopra as chief product officer. They worked together for eight years at SketchUp, Google and Trimble Navigation. You can find more information at bitsbox.com Guest: Aquiles La Grave of Visibl Visibl believes in a world where the size of your idea matters more than the size of your budget. They democratize video advertising by giving users large and small the same access and reach that giant advertisers have online. But we do it without needing million dollar budgets or advanced math degrees. Get more info at getvisibl.com Killer Question/Brain Hack What will future customers’ buying criteria be? A big part of my business is being aware of, and responding to, the life cycles of my industry and my customers. Some of these are easy to see; you only need a cursory understanding of the effect of OPEC on gas prices in the early ’70s to understand why cars became more fuel efficient in that decade. Other reasons are harder to see. Some criteria can be “faddish,” based on things such as color or brand. Others are based on external influences. For years the cell-phone industry fought to offer the smallest, thinnest possible phone. That’s what customers wanted. Now those same customers are prioritizing access to the web over the size of the phone. This has reversed what was seen as a key and unshakable evolution trend toward smaller phones. Now customers want larger phones with bigger screens. Sometimes trends can be reversed by something completely outside your control. Something that changes the buying decision. What will these same consumers want as they get older? Will full web access and streaming music and video be a priority, or will their needs change as their eyesight and hearing fade? Remember the cycle part of “life cycle.” You may lose the connection with your customers at certain stages of their lives but regain it later. It’s like the young man who buys a sports car when he gets out of college, trades it in for a minivan when he marries and has kids, and finally reverts back to sports car as an empty nester. Don’t assume that a customer is lost forever just because they’ve shifted their allegiances for the time being. If you can maintain some kind of link during the years they are not using your product, you still have a good shot at winning them back again when their needs and your services match up better. Sparking Points * What are the ways your future customers’ lives are changing? * How will that influence what they buy? * What will they abandon and no longer purchase as their lives change? To get connected,

Toby Krout is an entrepreneur, investor, and startup coach. He co-founded Boomtown, a startup accelerator in Boulder, Colorado in 2013 where he currently serves as the Executive Director. Boomtown’s mission is to understand and continuously improve the modern accelerator model for the benefit of entrepreneurs. His startups currently enjoy a 96% survival rate and 78% of them are generating revenues. Toby has an MBA from Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. He is a co-founder and partner at Boulder based creative agency Atomic20. He was previously the Program Director for Governor Hickenlooper’s Colorado re-branding project. He has co-founded dozens of startups over 20 years and currently serves on the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship Board of Directors at the University of Colorado. You can more info on Toby at … Toby on LinkedIn On Boomtown At Boomtown on Twitter