Recently "Trends for new products and services in 2013" was published Are they correct? When contextualized into a low vs. high market + a startup vs. corporate model yes, they create value. How can your firm benefit? Simple: Growth by Innovation or Growth by Acquisition. Here's how & by simplifying we get to the meat of making it happen.
2013 Trend 1: Tension is where competition starts
Summary Description: "Services that let you be predictable one day and impulsive the next, and products that appeal to values that once seemed in tension: eco and luxury, traditional and playful, retro and hyper-modern.
Innovation Model: Start a news company/division that pays attention to what people are doing & where they are going on a daily basis
Acquisition Model: Buy these users, their clicks, there location information and/or preferences, details and usage patterns
2013 Trend 2: "Customer-facing employees are your brain and your backbone."
Summary Description: "The sales associate, the courier, the flight attendant, or the service agent--in many ways these are your most important, best-informed people. "
Innovation Model: innovation tracking software, blogging aggregation, employee twitter analytic systems
Acquisition Model: Walk around, take notes, weekly outings with employees and clients and implement new business lines based on output
2013 Trend 3: Slow Analog just as important as Mass Market Digital
Summary Description: "[the] people and processes that made them [products], form an emotional connection that digital can’t match."
Innovation Model: having in house designers go out and interface (paid by the company) to work with international superstar artists, designers, musicians, architects.
Acquisition Model: hire these designers to design for your firm.
2013 Trend 4: "Worth is determined by philosophy, not price"
Summary Description: "If two competitors spend equal amounts on production, the one whose ideals resonate with the target market is the more valuable."
Innovation Model: Create articulate and specific core values in a replicitable manner in all aspects of imagery materials, interactions, etc. Walk the walk and talk the talk
Acquisition Model: Find adjacent companies who know how to do this, purchase them no matter how small and hi-jack and inject. It's called copying, injecting, and "trending" and that's why it works.
2013 Trend 5: Narratives make information stick.
Summary Description: "A story out of chronological order is nearly impossible to remember, but information that has a beginning, a middle, and an end becomes something we can own, embrace, and share"
Innovation Model: If your firm does not have a history start creating one, people, the people who started, stayed and built the firm are the reason why people stay just as much as the products and the people that use them.
Acquisition Model: hire design superstars to design for your firm.
2013 Trend 6: "Repair and Re-purpose"
Summary Description: "A growing consumer subculture that sees hacking and repairing as an indicator of true ownership. [Successful] firms will offer products and services that invite users to actively maintain and modify, winning loyalty and love along the way."
Innovation Model: How are hackers, designers, disruptors and deconstructionists using and LOVING your products. If they aren't, if you aren't showing it, other firms love will outpace you.
Acquisition Model: hire design, music, super user superstars to do this for you
2013 Trend 7: Technology is too fast, ignore it.
Summary Description: "Only a slim population of early adopters counts pixels or processor speeds anymore. The rest of us just want to know what it’s like to use. Talk about experiences, not features. "
Innovation Model: R&D inside your firm, set aside 12-18% of net revenue and start a skunks works IP and commercialization division. If you not, someone else is doing it, else, see #6 and #5 above and start talking about superusers.
Acquisition Model: buy firms, students, designers, R&D or hackers to do this and bring their work in-house and brand it as your own.
2013 Trend 8: "Flawless" isn't a reality, so make it one.
Summary Description: "Despite the proliferation of features, more of us are realizing that what we really want is a phone that makes good calls, every single time. [So] fill in the gaps."
Innovation Model: Basic works, simple works, ie. Microsoft Metro: slimmed down to the core and the usable and thanks to "minimalism" it is accepted and desired. Capitalize on this. But it costs and your going to have to hire internally to do it.
Acquisition Model: buy this from designers who know how to make it seem simple - it's more complex than you know.
2013 Trend 9: Brand Loyalty means no Decision Pain
Summary Description: "Once we believe that our values and choices align, we’re happy to leave choices to the brand that’s earned our trust, and shift some of the burden off our own shoulders. Communicating in familiar language, [means[ relax. “Go ahead,” and “ we've got you covered.”
Innovation Model: Make a model that encompasses all of the above and if you can't don't because hacking it together without consistency is like buying a 50's Fiat - your going to be fixing it constantly and spending a lot of money to do it.
Acquisition Model: buying smaller firms that have this down and injecting that DNA into your firm.
2013 Trend 10: Human interaction is everything
Summary Description: "[Know] when customers need to be listened to or expect the nuanced expertise that only a person can provide. Automat[ing] everything [does not work]"
Innovation Model: Talk on the phone more, stop texting, go to lunch, visit the client and their clients, build this into the DNA of the firm and stop using outsourced call centers in lands with employees that read off a script to save a dime. It will cost.
Acquisition Model: buy a firm that does this & bring it in house as soon as possible.
2013 Trend 11: Gen Y is a Service Economy
Summary Description: Don't ignore "AirBnb vs. VRBO, or Etsy vs. eBay as Gen Y is defined by optimism, social engagement, and digital fluency, and these are attributes that can attract older customers as well. The key is to act as an enabler, not a controller"
Innovation Model: Bring on innovation interns and create an in-house innovator in residence program and then pay them. This just might be tomorrows next great business unit and it's cheap to do when it's just a let's try it and see model.
Acquisition Model: buy the firm that someone else didn't monetize when they fired the person with the great idea who the firm couldn't commercialize due to internal politics, ego, or god knows what.
2013 Trend 12: Specialists create followers & followers create cash
Summary Description: "Trying to be everything to everyone is a losing proposition. As customers embrace their connoisseurship, they seek out brands that match it. "
Innovation Model: Bring these brand leaders in-house as in the examples above and if you can't make your own based on employees that are firm & product leaders right inside your house. Your son or daughter is a star musician? Make them the star of the family. Same with your firm.
Acquisition Model: hire designers, musicians, artists who do this on an international scale and make them do it for your firm.
These top 12 trends are not our own, but make clear sense when implemented with the iGNITIATE disruptive design model which most firms ignore. Build or Buy or be Buried.
