By Andrew Jenkins |
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By Andrew Jenkins |
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Posted by Andrew Jenkins on November 08, 2010 at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
By Andrew Jenkins |
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Over the past month I have been fortunate to attend a number of events that reminded me that there is no lack of ideas. What seems to be missing, however, is an execution mindset. I am not suggesting that people are lazy but rather that they either do not realize or have forgotten how easy it is to turn an idea into something tangible. We too frequently allow gaps to form between our ideas and our ability to execute them.
Last month I attended the Business Innovation Factory’s Collaborative Innovation Summit (BIF-6). Over the course of two and a half days I heard a number of inspiring stories and three were especially noteworthy because they were not complex ideas and their impact was based on simply changing behaviour and attitudes.
The first storyteller was Cassandra Lin who received a standing ovation after she described her Project T.G.I.F. (Turn Grease Into Fuel). She heard about families having difficulty heating their homes and started a program to collect and refine grease from restaurants into usable fuel to heat homes. Cassandra is in the 7th grade and showed a room filled with experienced adults what is possible when you set your mind to it. Her program also included a educational game show component used to raise awareness with schoolchildren. She didn’t face huge obstacles. Grease was abundant and refining partners existed. She simply put the two together and championed the idea. We can learn a great deal from her. You can hear her story here.
The second storyteller was Dean Esserman, the Chief of Police for Providence. He is the son of a doctor who was tasked with improving policing in his city. He reflected on the past when his father would make house calls and developed strong ties with his patients and, more broadly, his community because of it. Inspired by that, Esserman gave his police officers Blackberries and business cards. He then asked them to get out of their police cruisers and get into the community to get to know the citizens and become known by them. Nothing fancy beyond community outreach and that is something we have been hearing a great deal about in the online world but it is great to see it happening in the offline world.
The third storyteller was Gerard van Grinsven, President and CEO of the Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital. Formerly an executive with Ritz-Carlton, he has applied his expertise in hospitality to healthcare. By bringing quality food, amenities and education to healthcare, he has created a facility that people actually want to visit, even when they are not sick but wish to participate in one of the many wellness or educational programs being offered. How many other healthcare organizations will adopt this kind of thinking and behaviour? You can hear his story here.
Fresh off my visit to BIF-6, I tagged along to Startup Weekend Toronto. I supported team Tadwana with a Social TV idea. Although we did not win the competition, I still got a tremendous amount of inspiration from being a part of it. The weekend showed me that, with a small team of bright, energetic people, you can take an idea from concept through to tangible business idea in about 48 hours. A mockup in powerpoint or a working prototype online or using a simulator are enough to convey what you are trying to accomplish and how. It was also further proof that a prototype, even a poorly constructed one, is still better than an exhaustively constructed business plan without a prototype to give the idea credibility.
The following stats are also noteworthy from that weekend:
157 participants, 52 observers, 38 ideas pitched, 13 teams formed, 14 sponsors, 8 speakers, 4 panellists, 5 mentors, 5 winning teams and over 900 bottles of water consumed.
If there was enough stamina, how many new companies could be formed by running startup weekends on a regular basis? How many problems could be attacked and resolved by running hack weekends on a regular basis? I am not suggesting that this is the only approach to idea generation or problem solving but it certainly gets people focused and energized around ideas which is the whole point.
Lastly, I was involved in an innovation workshop to help some companies identify the different mindsets that exist within in their organizations when it comes to innovation and how to put together the best teams to tackle the problems that require innovative solutions. The emphasis was not on how creative people are but on how they are creative.
Several of the activities illustrated how adults have unlearned things. We can give too much thought to things because we have accumulated knowledge and experience which drives a particular perspective. We fall into the trap of thinking of how things should be rather than how they could be. This is why children can often focus on the outcome and work backward to develop the most appropriate path rather than getting bogged down with over-engineering the process to achieve the outcome.
We were doing a number of activities used for workshops in corporate settings that had originated in the Destination Imagination Program for Children. For example, teams were tasked with constructing a tower as tall as possible with the materials provided and launch a feather from the top of the tower. The height of the tower plus the distance travelled by the feather would be added together to determine the winning team. No matter how successful a team might have been, none came close to achieving the success of teams comprised of children. All the adult teams focused too much on tower construction rather than the overall objective. If you had a tower two inches tall but you used a paper airplane constructed from the materials to send your feather greater than ten feet then you would have easily beaten a team who built a tower three feet tall but could only blow their feather a little over two feet because they missed the point of the exercise - outcome trumps process.
If we chose to take a more holistic perspective with emphasis on the outcome or objective as well as the parameters we must play within then I wonder how many more times we would find solutions rather than getting distracted by development of the process.
When I reflect on these different events and the stories I heard, the ideas I saw developed in a weekend, and the examples where adults need to unlearn some things in order to be more innovative, I can not help but think that we are spending too much time thinking and too little time doing.
If we remind ourselves to draw inspiration from broad sources, strive to prove a concept through prototyping rather than written explanation, and learn to unlearn for the purposes of innovation then we will have better chance of closing the idea-execution gap. Good luck to us all!
Posted by Andrew Jenkins on October 18, 2010 at 01:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
By Andrew Jenkins |
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I have always admired other entrepreneurs with innovative business ideas. I especially admire the ones with business ideas that are beautiful in their simplicity.
If you ask Jason Sadler what he does, he proudly says, “I wear t-shirts for a living.” Huh? Yes, you read that correctly. He wears t-shirts for a living.
Jason is the founder of iwearyourshirt.com. Begun January 1, 2009, the idea was to sell t-shirt-based promotion by-the-day to companies wanting to advertise their product or service. Things started slowly, but momentum began to build and 2009 was sold out eight months into the year. Continuing to build, 2010 sold out early too.
But building and maintaining the momentum has not been easy — it has been a serious investment of time and effort. Jason works 12-16 hours per day, seven days a week. At last count, he had worked 612 days straight without a day off. This dispels the myth he often faces from potential clients and audiences: he was not an overnight success. Social media is not easy, nor is it cheap in terms of true costs. It took Jason 18 months to accumulate his following and it must be maintained daily. In his own words, “It is a marathon, not a sprint.”
Profitability in the first year of operation, selling out each year early, to-die-for press coverage, and an army of loyal followers and clients are just a few of the results of his efforts. Not bad for someone who has never advertised, has no media kit, and doesn’t use salesforce.com to track leads. He has actively used social media tools, media coverage, and public speaking to promote iwearyourshirt.com — and the result has been clients seeking him out, not the other way around.
What do clients get in exchange for buying the day, sponsoring the month, or becoming a proud partner? If you buy a day, you get Jason and his team wearing your firm’s t-shirt, blog posts, a Ustream.tv show covering your firm, and mentions on Facebook and Twitter to and by the iwearyourshirt.com army.
Their YouTube channel has had 1.4 million views, and they get approximately 1000 viewers for the daily Ustream show, broadcast from wherever an internet connection can be made. Jason has approximately 24,000 followers on Twitter and nearly 5000 friends on Facebook. These channels all get leveraged for the sake of the day’s client, and people show up every day to find out who that client is. Not bad at all.
If you look at the “How it works” section of Jason’s site, you can see that buying a day is relatively cheap in comparison to other options. And you can’t quantify the passion behind doing something fun for a living and engaging people on a daily basis.
Jason does not guarantee a specific ROI but he does guarantee content and engagement. That content lives online forever, and Jason and team can advise on what to do next. Based on iwearyourshirt.com's success, some clients have been afraid of the potential increase in business and how to handle it. That’s a great problem to have.
Brands like Nissan, Pizza Hut, Jockey, and Lucky Brand Jeans have all jumped on board. Competitors have tried to copy Jason’s approach, but he is authentic and his passion is contagious. Clients have remained loyal, for the most part, and Jason reciprocates by only promoting things he believes in.
Wearing a t-shirt for a living is not a complicated business model. However, it was not a back-of-the-napkin idea nor was it exhaustively planned out. Jason adheres to a “focus more and do less” mindset. He mapped out the idea, looking ahead a few years but not allowing planning to stand in the way of execution. In social media especially, things move too quickly to waste time deliberating.
With two years of growth and success under his belt, the future still remains uncertain. New members are being added to the team. Relationships with clients are growing and deepening. Word of mouth continues to grow and, despite the relentless activity, Jason still feels, “It’s much more fun to say I wear t-shirts for a living.”
Posted by Andrew Jenkins on September 14, 2010 at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
By Andrew Ballenthin |
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Over the past 18 months there's been a revolution in template driven integrated blogs, websites, and online communities. This year I've decided its time for a change despite having had a phenomenal 18 month run with this blog. I've learned that TypePad is the least friendly and advanced site for site Content Management Systems; they are up to 18 months behind providing functionality that WordPress, SquareSpace, and Ning offer in my view. I have a list of needs for our new integrated website, blog, and community and would like your opinion on why gets it right.
Continue reading "Creating an Integrated Website, Blog, Community - What Platform Does it Best?" »
Posted by Andrew Ballenthin on August 18, 2010 at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
By Andrew Jenkins |
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In
filmmaking there is a term known as “shooting ratio” that refers to the ratio
between the amount of footage shot and the amount of footage contained in the
final cut. What drives this ratio are the number of shots planned for each
scene for maximum coverage and the number of takes allocated per shot.
Continue reading "Take 6 or Why You Should Budget for Failure" »
Posted by Andrew Jenkins on May 31, 2010 at 01:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
By Andrew Ballenthin |
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There's a substantial amount of buzz going on over Facebook's decisions to further commercialize the value of it's technology and assets (user information). While the decisions Facebook is making may come as a shock to users it awakens the business questions in social media that have not been getting addressed - how does a social network monetize it's model beyond advertising income?
Continue reading "Facebook Privacy - It's Not's Their Issue" »
Posted by Andrew Ballenthin on May 14, 2010 at 01:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
By Andrew Ballenthin |
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Article: Toronto Star, Jacqueline Nune, May 6, 2010. I was interviewed and quoted in this article. Following is an excerpt from it's start... "As a small- business owner how do you attract customers? How do you foster ever stronger relationships and loyalty? How do you build a strong vital company with little time and even less money to sink into marketing?"
Continue reading "Small companies 'socially' acceptable - Toronto Star article today" »
Posted by Andrew Ballenthin on May 06, 2010 at 08:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
By Andrew Jenkins |
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I am currently working on a strategic planning project and I am incorporating the Balanced Scorecard developed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton. It got me thinking about how one might apply the Scorecard to social media strategies. I know that I am not the first to consider such an approach but I still thought it worthwhile to give you my take on it.
Continue reading "Four Perspectives on Social Media and the Balanced Scorecard" »
Posted by Andrew Jenkins on March 01, 2010 at 01:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
By Andrew Ballenthin |
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The timeless adage "don't fix it if it isn't broken" is the opposite of what thought leaders aim to do. Seth Godin, an illustrious thought leader, recently stated, "want to know why so many companies can't keep up with Apple? It's because they compromise, have meetings, work to fit in, and fear the critics...". As a thought leader is he right?
Posted by Andrew Ballenthin on February 23, 2010 at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
By Andrew Ballenthin |
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Reproduced from MarketingVOX - Because it is meant to look fun, putting together a social media campaign - or integrating one into a larger online initiative - can be surprisingly difficult. There are many challenges to capturing and engaging user interests online - starting with finding the right person to lead that effort, says Andrew Ballenthin, president of Sol Solutions.
Continue reading "8 Tips for Hiring a Social Media Expert" »
Posted by Andrew Ballenthin on February 01, 2010 at 04:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
By Andrew Ballenthin |
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Continue reading "Not An Impressive Presentation by Google At Ad Week" »
Posted by Andrew Ballenthin on January 30, 2010 at 09:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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