Category Archives: Innovation

6 ingredients for SME success

The post on the 2 tools SME’s need  in early August  led to a comment that, whilst the headlines of focus and discipline made sense, the challenge is in implementation. Fair comment. So, how do you build the needed focus … Continue reading

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6 vital elements of a marketing story that sells.

  As everyone will tell you, (including me here) marketing is about stories, stories that resonate, are remembered, that generate empathy, and lead to an action, and hopefully if your effort is to be rewarded, a transaction. So what are … Continue reading

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Intersection of sales, marketing and technology

  18 years ago running an ingredient supplier to the food industry as a contractor, I sponsored a project of quantifying a range of ingredient specifications against a matrix of  organoleptic, and cost outcomes given a range of processing parameters. … Continue reading

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Design doing

Steve Blank is one of the real thinkers in the innovation space who gets out there into the weeds and gets stuff done. The illustration at the top of this post is one from a recent post on his blog … Continue reading

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Future of Urban Agriculture

  How we deliver good quality food and water to an urbanised and growing population around the world is the challenge of the 21st century. We have gone from a largely subsistence existence to a highly urbanised one in 200 … Continue reading

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Energy, Innovation, technical capability, and common sense.

It seems to me that the most important emerging driver of success in the economy that must drive innovation and value delivery, is the intersection of technical capability and power generation. Oil has driven the geo politics of the C … Continue reading

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4 point strategic rural reality check

There is plenty in the press about the role agriculture will play in the post mining boom era. “Asia’s foodbowl” and other such optimistic clichés get front page coverage. I have been sitting in Armidale (NSW) for a few days, … Continue reading

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Risk and A/B testing

As a marketer, I am fairly left brain oriented, some may say flakey and opinionated, and I have done well with that for many years. Here is the paradox. You can now test just about everything if you try hard … Continue reading

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8 ways to build a hypothesis testing mind set.

The most successful people I have seen over 40 years of business share one crucial characteristic. Curiosity. The successful are insatiably  curious, it spans all aspects of their lives, not just the parts that are spent working at what pays … Continue reading

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Organised serendipity

At first sight, “Organised” and “Serendipity” are at opposite ends of the scale, almost mutually exclusive. Serendipity occurs by chance, when the stars align, the unexpected happens and not by any organised process, or so we are led to believe. … Continue reading

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Media ownership paradox

Comment on possible changes to the cross media ownership laws is emerging, again. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull reopened the conversation in an interview with Sky, reflecting that the media landscape had changed dramatically, so it makes sense to change the … Continue reading

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Value development process.

Innovation is a process, mostly it is managed for better or worse with some sort of stage-gate process. Sensitive project management of innovation is vital, the context of the project, the culture, management engagement, business model, the source of resources … Continue reading

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2014, better or different

Its the  new year, 2014, January 6 to be exact, and I have been ruminating on the “List” every blogger accumulates and publishes early in January in the hope that they get noticed, and build some momentum for the year. All … Continue reading

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100 great quotes for 2014

It is that time of year again, and everyone is offering their ’10 most” lists. My colleague Nelson Luc at Mobile Push offers this list of 100 great quotes via Forbes. Much better than some self centred “top 10 ” … Continue reading

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The Value Gap

Engaged in an innovation portfolio management assignment a while ago, we struggled to define why one project should continue to suck up resources in preference to many other seemingly worthy opportunities. We tried all sorts of models, financial and strategic, … Continue reading

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Simplifying innovation

Innovation takes up a lot of my time, and whilst successfully bring a new product to market is a huge task, challenging as it does all sorts of personal, organisational and financial barriers, it can nevertheless be broken down into … Continue reading

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Cottage cheese and the job to be done.

  Cottage cheese is a pretty dull category in supermarkets. A relatively tasteless, low calorie (therefore it must taste crappy, right?), price competitive, group of products. Yes, so we thought. Years ago, 25 years in fact, I was the GM … Continue reading

Posted in Branding, Category, Customers, Innovation, Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The client made me do it!

People instinctively like consistency and predictability, it allows them to be comfortable, and make judgments without too much risk of being wrong because the status quo has been maintained. Helping out with a competitive pitch recently I was shown a … Continue reading

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Marketing debt.

  I have just been a part of a post investment review with a client, looking at what a significant investment in capital equipment has delivered, compared to the planned outcomes, that underpinned the Capex. Not a pretty sight, and … Continue reading

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Real entrepreneurs never come.

  Public programs are great, they redistribute the largess of success to the less successful or fortunate via taxes. Every civilised society has some, of varying value, but necessary none the less. Public entrepreneurial programs are a bit different, despite … Continue reading

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