Video innovation
March 24, 2008
LocalOrigination is a local Baltimore company that has the potential to disrupt the multi-media communications market. Their product allows individuals to quickly and easily assemble a video-based message and to distribute it via email or a website. Use your browser to upload a video file created with a simple web cam or other video camera, upload additional content such as PowerPoint slides, images, animations, or other videos, and then quickly sync the video and the content with a few clicks of your mouse. Visit their website for a demo.
This product has the potential to become a disruptive innovation. The classic definition of a disruption is the creation of a technology that enables a new set of customers to perform a job that only specialists could previously perform. LocalOrigination fits the bill. Because of YouTube and other developments, many organizations are interested in leveraging video on their websites and in their communications with employees, customers, partners, etc. But many people are still intimidated by video production. There are many software packages, such as Flash or Microsoft Silverlight, that allow technical and creative people develop incredible video productions. Or you can outsource your video production to various agencies and consulting firms if you have the money. But for mere mortals, video communication can still be out of reach.
Now LocalOrigination is opening up the possibility of video and interactive, multi-media communications to people that have traditionally found video production too complex or too expensive in the past. This is the art of disruptive innovation.
At the end of the day, it’s simple.
March 24, 2008
Phil Myers’ blog entry today caught my eye. Especially the last paragraph that starts: “At the end of the day, it’s simple. Create a product or service that your buyers want to buy and the rest takes care of itself.”
I have been involved in several conversations of late around growing sales. On more than one occasion I have heard the statement: “in order to grow sales you need to increase sales activities.” In other words, sales grow when sales people and others responsible for sales in an organization make more phone calls, send more emails, schedule more meetings, attend more networking events, etc. etc. I couldn’t agree more. But it also made me wonder why it is so hard to actually get people to increase their sales related activities.
In some cases it seems it is a result of having the wrong people in the wrong seats on the bus. Some people are just not good or just don’t like being involved in sales activities. And if somebody is no good at something, they typically avoid doing it. But I think there is something deeper going on here, which brings me back to Phil Myers’ blog entry.
At the end of the day, it is all about having products and services that our buyers want to buy. This is the essence of innovation: creating products and services that meet the unmet needs of our buyers. Or as Clayton Christenson has taught me to think about it: creating products and services that our buyers want to hire to help them get important jobs done. As I think about all of the great salespeople I have known over the years, one common trait stands-out above all others: these great salespeople were all selling products and services that were in high demand. Sure these people were true professionals, and great with people. They had a strong worth ethic and high integrity. They maximized their sales activities every day, and they knew how to close deals. But they also knew how to pick hot products. And they weren’t shy about moving on to the next company or the next hot product when their current products cooled off.
So if you are thinking about how to get your salespeople to increase their sales activities don’t stop at the traditional techniques like more incentives, more training, and more carrots and sticks. Ask yourself: do my buyers want to buy my products and services? In many cases this question might lead to a bunch of additional questions to consider:
- Who are my buyers?
- What job(s) are they trying to get done?
- What alternatives can they use to get the job done besides my product/service?
- What criteria will they use to determine which alternative they will hire to help get their job done?
Who knows, these questions may lead you to the real answer to the question: how do I grow my sales? That is, I need to understand my buyers better and make sure I have created products and services that they want to buy.
Making the Internet safe for children
March 18, 2008
A local Baltimore start-up is creating a safer Internet for our children. safeTspace is a consumer identity management company that is practicing effective innovation. They are laser focused on helping parents (mostly moms) handle the job of keeping their children safe when using the Internet. safeTspace offers a consumer identity management solution for social networking sites such as Facebook or mySpace. It uses fingerprint technology backed by in-person identity verification and parental consent to provide a strong level of assurance that the people our children are interacting with on the web are in fact who they say they are. safeTspace has strong potential because they are focused on a real job that most parents must perform today: keeping our kids safe while they explore online. This is classic innovation at its best. And it is happening right here in Baltimore.
Avoid the email blues through Innovation
March 18, 2008
AWAYfind is an innovative product from SET Consulting, a small productivity consulting firm located in College Park, Maryland. It provides a painless escape from piles of email messages, while still allowing people to get in touch with you immediately for urgent matters (urgent communications are sent to your cell phone as a text message). This high potential product is laser focused on helping people accomplish the job of managing too much email. Check out the product and think about it from a disruptive innovation perspective, in other words does it solve a problem that is important enough for you to spend money on. Does it offer enough features? Or maybe it has too many features to make it simple enough that it helps more than it hurts?
My take is that the product has good potential. I like the idea of point solutions that focus on a single job I want to get done. I am willing to give up a lot of bells and whistles to get a simple, inexpensive solution that works.