1. If we build a community, and get traffic to the site, how are we going to make money from it ?

2. The younger people, gen Y, that will come, don’t have money.

I must say, the above are pretty common comments. I am not saying they are wrong, but they seem conservative, and perhaps short sighted. It is easy for corporates to be short sighted, given fiscal year and shareholder challenges.

After listening to Marc Andreessen, it was clear that the big guys, build the community and business model first. They stick to their guns and don’t sell out to revenue. I guess they are trying to tie up the market, and then build revenue once they are self sustainable and big enough barriers to competitors.

I have written other article talks about Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, Seth Godin idea’s about marketing, and web2. It talks about if you get it right, you get unlimited free marketing.

I think if you get the eye balls on your content, then the money follows. Its like if you could get free TV airtime – you don’t ask how do you make money out of free TV spots.

I also have another post about eyeballs.   I quoted Donald Trump:
He does make an interesting point :
“sustainable traffic is THE source of competitive advantage on the web.”

It seems planning for traffic and communites would be sufficient in most cases.

I believe Gen Y are more likely to be single, have more disposable income, and more likely to spend online. I’d say they might be the best target in a lot cases anyway.

Here is an easy and fun to watch video as an intro to his ideas.

This video introduces you to:
- old companies sell average products to average people, and use a lot of TV advertising. Seth says this is dead
- we are in an economy of idea spreading, or idea diffusion. Make something remarkable, and get WOM (word of mouth) to spread the idea
- be remarkable. Good or very good isn’t enough – be remarkable

Seth is listed in the top 50 business thinkers, runs a blog, and authored a lot of books.

You will find Seth slowly moves you along in your ability to innovate.

He has a quality that slowly convinces you of news ways to think/look/understand Before you know it, you will be innovating too.

My Take

Idea Diffusion for me brings together a few concepts:
- Malcolm Gladwell’s tipping point – talks about different sorts of people – connector/maven/salesman. Whilst Seth doesn’t differentiate between these types of people, he still makes the point – ‘telling the right person, and hopefully that person will tell/convince their friends’.
- word of mouth (WOM) advertising is a cheap and effective marketing strategy – when done well. Seth says – be remarkable – you will get WOM.
- web 2.0 and social networking on the internet has changed a lot of people’s lives. This can be explained similarly to WOM and idea diffusion.

I like the juncture between remarkable, WOM marketing, web 2.0 communities, and an ecommerce site. If you can get this happening, then you have unlimited free marketing. You have also dramaticly reduce your costs, as you no longer pay for advertising, or sales or channel commissions. You effectively disintermediate all sales/marketing costs from your business, and have unlimited scaling of your marketing for free.

top 50 thinkers

I have never heard of the the first guy – but they have a podcast listed for him – guess where I am heading

The business leader types are always in the press etc.

The top 12 – I either know a reasonable amount about, or have read their books, or studied them in my Masters of Management (MGSM crica 1998).

Even if you don’t agree with what they say, or the texts are dated, its still very important as manny people are still running on those older models.

I think everyone should understand what Michael Porter has to say, here is an overview. Not that I would start a business based on that – but lots of older companies are purely based on it, with MBA types running those companies. You can then use that knowledge to contrast ideas like ‘blue ocean strategy’ and Seth’s ‘purple cow’.

I might do some more work on:
- referencing which are old/new world thinkers
- which ones I don’t know enough about.

1. C. K. Prahalad Indian management guru
2. Bill Gates Geek-turned-philanthropist
3. Alan Greenspan Ex-Federal Reserve chairman
4. Michael Porter Competitive strategy author
5. Gary Hamel Business strategist
6. W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne INSEAD professors and authors of Blue Ocean Strategy
7. Tom Peters In Search of Excellence author
8. Jack Welch Former GE CEO-turned-columnist
9. Richard Branson Iconic British entrepreneur
10. Jim Collins Good to Great author

11. Philip Kotler Kellogg’s marketing guru
12. Robert Kaplan & David Norton The creators of the balanced scorecard
13. Kjell Nordstrom & Jonas Ridderstralle Funky Business duo from Sweden
14. Charles Handy The original portfolio worker
15. Stephen Covey The man with seven successful and highly effective habits
16. Henry Mintzberg Controverisal Canadian management expert
17. Thomas Stewart Editor of Harvard Business Review
18. Malcolm Gladwell Author of The Tipping Point and Blink
19. Lynda Gratton London Business School professor and author of Hot Spots
20. Donald Trump US Apprentice host

21. Scott Adams Creator of Dilbert
22. Ram Charan Co-author of Execution
23. Vijay Govindarajan A Tuck professor and GE’s new chief innovation consultant
24. Warren Bennis Veteran on leadership
25. Clayton Christensen Innovation expert
26. Thomas Friedman Author of The World is Flat
27. Kenichi Ohmae Globalisation guru
28. Rosabeth Moss Kanter Renowned Harvard academic and author
29. Steve Jobs Apple’s iconic business leader
30. John Kotter Leadership and change guru

31. Jeff Immelt Jack Welch’s successor at GE
32. Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones Authentic leaders at London Business School
33. Adrian Slywotsky Heavyweight modern strategist
34. Marshall Goldsmith Coach to the top executives
35. Bill George Another fan of authentic leadership
36. Larry Bossidy Co-author of Execution with Charan (22)
37. Daniel Goleman The father of social and emotional intelligence
38. Marcus Buckingham Top self-help guru
39. Howard Gardner Harvard’s creator of the multiple intelligence concept
40. Edward de Bono Supreme lateral thinker
41. Al Gore Climate change campaigner
42. David Ulrich Human resources expert
43. Seth Godin An insightful marketer
44. Costas Markides Charismatic strategist
45. Rakesh Khurana Harvard thinker
46. Richard D’Aveni Hyper-competition expert
47. Peter Senge Learning organisation guru
48. Chris Argyris The originator of the learning organisation concept
49. Jeffrey Pfeffer Stanford intellectual
50. Chris Zook Bain consultant-turned-author

Did you start a small business on the back of a hobby ?

Where is your business plan, and more importantly business model ?

If you setup a small business that is similar to other competitors – you are dead !

How are you going to do signficantly better in order to compete ?

You need to be remarkable (Seth Godin on remarkable) , and Seth’s book (Free Prize Inside).

I see a few people advocating ‘learn your craft’ – and whilst being knowledgeable is good, I think its very DANGEROUS.
- Christopher says in 10 secrets for 10 years – but again – I think a lot of his thoughts take you perilously too close to competing head-to-head
- this is also echoed by Malcolm Gladwell
- the worst advice I have ever heard – is to be a ‘challenger brand’ – which means you are competing head-to-head

Don’t start a business the same as someone else ….. life is just too short to spend competing doing the same thing as someone else.

Do you have the worst ever small business ?

This is all innovation.

Seth Godin says you need to be remarkable. This helps reinforce – small changes, or bandaids, are generally not enough.

Surely you can’t make or review all these changes at once. You need a structure to help you reduce clutter and focus.

You can make innovation at several distrinct places in your company:
- business model
- marketing strategy
- branding innovation
- product changes
- pricing changes
- sales techniques
- customer service changes
- customer retention plans
- customer referral

Changes towards the top of the list generally cost more, requires more vision, and generally is a bigger risk.

The bigger changes (towards the top of the list) clearly require more buyin – from higher levels of management, the CEO, and even the board.

You will also have the potention to make much more profit from the innovative changes that are more aggressive. You can literally blow open a market, and make competitors irrelevant by business model changes.

Having said bigger is better, many innovations might be WRONG for you:
- you might like smaller changes – so you can manage the risk
- you might not have senior enough buyin
- you might not be able to find the right ideas
- you may not require big changes to meet your goals

As you get more comfortable with innovation, you will find the real value is innovation at more than one level at the same time, like:
- branding and pricing changes
- business model and changes in marketing channels

But again, starting with smaller changes, with one dimension is easier, and less risk to start with.

My suggestion would be for you to work out:
- what are your goals for the company
- do you need small incremental change, or do you need more significant change
- what sort of senior buyin do you have ?
- how much risk can you stomach ?

Targeting your effort to where innovation will best fit your organisation’s needs should now be the obvious answer.

So when you hear – “we need product or price changes” – ask yourself – is that the WRONG place to innovate ?

You should read this if you :

- are launching a new product

- are reviewing your marketing of a product – especially on a crowded industry

The basics are:

- differentiation through marketing alone is not enough

- your product must genuinely be different to your competitors. And it needs to STAND OUT

- brainstorming is rubbish – its all about edge thinking

- you need to champion your ideas – although this is less relevant if you own your own business

The book details an innovation system about edges

- take your thinking and product to the extreme edge

- make it invisible, or outrageous, or obscene, or quiet. It has a very useful list of starting ideas.