The Innovation Muse-ings

Election 2012 - Who can resist social media meets politics????

2012-02-08T23:56:00.000-08:00

During the fall, I spent some time looking at the Republican political field (link here)as well as President Obama (Link 1 here, Link 2 here). While there have been a hundred debates already on the Republican side and even some controversy around that Chrysler Ad during the Superbowl, the reality is we are really getting into the thick of the political season. And whether you are a Republican or a Democrat the thought of how social media analytics is going to impact this election is exhilarating. Which ever candidate can tap the power of what people are saying and how they can make adjustments to their strategies is going to have a huge advantage in the coming election. There is so much proof of how social media commentary can impact things. As I wrote the other day, I was amazed when doing some novel prototyping of new social media methods, how impactful these methods can be. In fact, I was visiting customer looking at some historical data around some business analysis and we were all shocked to dimensionalize how social media could have impacted how they dealt with issue. We literally all learned something about their strategy and the social media reality of the situation. It was almost shocking.

As I always say when it comes to social media analysis, it is the wild west (link here), but it is changing in 2012 . Everyone is realizing the social media sun is coming up and there is so much room to grow (link here). As for the political climate, I decided to take a wholesale look at the last 5 candidates using brand passion and little funky dance with the data. For this data pull, I created a brand passion index around two key data points. I took each candidates' data for the full year from 2/8/11 to 2/8/12. And since the election is in 2012, I pulled the data since the 1st of the year to give a sense of comparison.

This brand passion index is getting pretty fascinating to me. If you looked at my previous posts, you will see some interesting things. For one...President Obama is slowly improving his brand passion. while he does have the most negative sentiment overall, he is showing some significant movement in since year began. What is most amazing about this is the sheer volume of data that he generates. Moving the titanic is difficult and the good news for President Obama is his is moving in the right direction...upward.

As for the Republican field, it really is sort of a mess. With the pummeling the President has taken since the 2010 elections, any movement at all is welcome. As for the Republican field, however, they all live in a better world of sentiment, but boy do people lack passion for them all. Good, bad or otherwise President Obama generates more passion than all of them by a long shot. If you think about what is going in the race for the nomination we see decent correlation with all the things being said.

Mitt Romney continues to languish in the neutrality land of mediocre passion. And if you look at past posts on the subject he really is dead stuck where he has been versus every analysis I have done. He may have the most buzz of the candidates (a good thing), but he can get ahead.

Newt Gingrich...it is true that he had a brilliant flash forward, but he has peaked and is slowly diving down. His reality is this...it looks like has not broken out as he thought. He merely caused a rucus that seems to be dying (much like our friend Herman Cain) (link here).

As for Santorum; even though is the darling that last few days, I would say that his overall buzz and position are good, but not great. He trails all candidates in buzz, which means that he is not dominating the discussion as much as a real threat should. They say too little too late...I agree.

And Ron Paul...he does have the most passion an strongest sentiment. I would even argue he is in the best position of everyone. Those who like him...really do. The problem he faces is this it seems like a passionate niche following. I would say this, however, he is a real threat to the Republicans is he is a 3rd party candidate. He could easily throw the balance of the election by pulling 3-4% of the vote should he run.

But lets take a different look at this data. Below is a chart that shows the raw data that makes up this chart. We will see their Buzz, Sentiment and Passion for the two periods discussed. But I added another column. To get a sense of "momentum" I also calculated what percentage of their buzz in 2012 represents the total. It seems like an interesting way to look at their momentum going forward. And I believe the results are interesting to say the least.

Looking at the momentum column you will see little surprise that President Obama's buzz since the beginning of the year is the lowest. He generates so many sound bites and is in the news for so many reasons the buzz since the beginning of the year is proportional. That being said to see a 7 point jump in his sentiment versus the last year is pretty amazing. That is a big jump in the last 5 weeks. It is real. The economic news they say bodes well for him. These number suggest that is true.

The next number worth noting is Rick Santorum's. It is amazing to see that the amount of buzz he generates as a percentage over the past year is almost 66%. While his buzz is lower, this change in momentum means to me that there real discussion going on about him. It is almost as if the Republicans are trying to figure out what to do. It will be interesting to watch how this "momentum" changes. It will cool to watch if we keep calculating this number going forward if it goes up or down. The conversation is real but will it amount to anything.

On the flip side, our potential spoiler Ron Paul is seeing the opposite trend. He may have the best position in the brand passion index, but his momentum is starting to wane as are most of his polling numbers. The discussion for him a s serious candidate is waning but those who talk about him love him as we all already know. Watch out gang...if his brand passion maintains you are looking at very interesting situation should he run as a 3rd party.

As for Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. They are deadlocked in the middle on momentum. Both of them have generated 45% of their buzz since the beginning of the year. Boy are they simply floating along. Neither of them seizing position against everyone else.

What we see here is what we hear. Candidates are trading positions rapidly. One would expect that Mitt Romney should have a higher "momentum" in his buzz, but alas even with the most buzz his acceleration is lower that Rick Santorum.

What does this all mean. Not sure, but I do believe we may have uncovered another metric in social media we can track and watch going forward. The concept of social media momentum may be a very telling sign of things to come as the year wears on.

It will be interesting to watch the following

1. Once the Repuclican Field picks its candidate will we see a major climb in the President's "momentum? For now there is little need to discuss him politically as the fight is going on somewhere else.

2. Will future Romney wins correlate to greater momentum for his candidacy? He is generating the buzz, but he lives in a sad part of the Brand Passion Index AND he has less momentum in the discussion. That needs to change.

3. Can Santorum continue his astonishing momentum or will the vetting he is going slam into going to affect it? He has the attention of everyone after the other night. That could be good or bad. When Rick Perry had it...he nose dived. When Herman Cain had it, he did too. Newt Gingrich...same thing. No one has stood up to Romney effectively, but we shall see.

Boy politics is fun regardless of your affiliation. I find watching it unfold and linking it to social media is a great way to take over the wild west...

Social Media Fatigue is a Relativity Thing

2012-02-05T21:11:00.000-08:00

I have been reading a lot about the concept of social media fatigue. This idea which simply states that people are totally worn out from the cacophony of engaging with each other over a virtual world. In fact, I read an article on Yahoo! about a guy who totally unplugged from all things social: email, facebook, twitter, even his cell phone. I found the article interesting (link here) because I remember a time when I had none of these accessories. In fact, I often benchmark social history for some strange reason with the movie Less than Zero because I remember these raucous 20 somethings going on LA base drug adventures without the use of cell phones or even pagers for that matter. When people couldn't triangulate each others whereabouts they simply dealt with it.

In fact, as a teenager, I was fortunate to have a mother that had one simple rule on the weekends. She would say to me, "I don't care how many times you call, but the last phone number on that answering machine better be the one of the house where I can find you". Can you imagine parents today dealing with such rules? No friggin way. Today, we are afraid (me included) to let the kids walk across the street to their friends house on a cul-de-sac because they read a story online that someone's kid disappeared walking that far. Or if they do go, we need them to text us when they get there. The technology leash helps allay the fear. Irrational or not!

Or how about that my first job was working for Heaven Sent Couriers (R.I.P). Who is Heaven Sent Couriers? The genius business created by my sister's friends step father that had a team of people who worked on bicycles delivering letters and packages across town the same day! You could call us and we would come by your office, pick up the letter and deliver it across town in less that an hour! You didn't hav to wait days before you would receive that letter locally. A 16 year old kid making $250 bucks a week would give it to you quickly. This guys made tons of money running this business...until.....you know the end of the story.

It is amazing what technology does isn't it? It sounds sophomoric to say so, but the reality is with technology the world shrinks and the noise has gotten louder. And unless you are ADD, dealing with the noise can be deafening.

Where am I going with this? I am not sure, but the story about the guy on facebook really struck a cord. I think where I am going is just how pervasive social media is and how much it has impacted our society as a whole. As a teenager, I like many my age had a distinct punk rock phase. A phase in my life where I would wear combat boots, go to shows every week with my friend Yuriy, slam dance and simply talk about the angst towards society for fun.

If you think about it, that type of angst is totally dead in our society. Why do I think it is dead? Because no matter how edgy you think you are, you are really just a slave to technology that is being monetized by corporate America. If the people I hung out with during that period of my life could see today from the where they were in the 80's (where we called each other, said we would meet each other somewhere and just wait till everyone got there...or hell we would just go to a spot and see who was there) they would call everyone posers. Why? Because every single cause, change agent or otherwise needs the social technology they have to actually accomplish anything today. If you boycott it, you are just denying what will never change. You need the technology to simply exist. You can't have fatigue. If you do, you can't connect with the world anymore. And if you can't connect with the world in the language of the world, it is hard to get ahead in it. So sure, cutting yourself off would be refreshing, but the reality is that being a contrarian is not the same as it once was. You have to be a conformer in order to even be a contrarian because your message will be drowned out by the crowd.

Punk Rock? I can use Pandora to listen to my old favorites I remember and even the one's I don't. My Combat Boots? I can probably find the exact make and model online on either Ebay or Zappos.com. Yuriy? I found him on facebook about a month ago. He is a venture capitalist. My angst towards society from my youth? It is lying all over this blog called the innovationmusings as I have taken up the cause of being a change agent...because I am by nature a contrarian.

The only thing I would say is this...

I embrace the change, because as a liberal capitalist who is objective about all opinions (doesn't matter the politcal party or belief), it is better to think about how your enemy thinks rather than simply wag your finger at them in an attempt to scold them to your point of view.

I often say as a member of the social media typhoon...change is my business and business is good.

Imagine what social media will look like in 10 more years.

Hopefully that asshole out there with a contrarian bee up their butt to invent SkyNet is allergic to bees and gets stung by one...or there will be a whole lot more people that look like Arnold Schwarzenegger around that I care to imagine....

And lastly...in a tribute to the greatest punk band that neverwas...

RUIN (from Philly) had the best version of white rabbit ever performed...

it is below...

RUIN WHITE RABBIT

Happy New Year 2012 - When the hockey stick meets the road!!

2012-02-03T13:33:00.000-08:00

While it has been a while since writing about so many things, I figured I would re-engage with my fingers (boy do I hate writing) to discuss some changes in the social media landscape.

There has been an analogy I often use to describe the development of the social media marketplace. It is an analogy that is based on the concept of the day. I had the great fortune of getting involved in social media analytics and application a long time ago. In fact, I didn't even realize I was doing anything novel until I began working in social media on a daily basis. Two lives ago, back in 2006, I actually met NetBase as a customer when they were known as Accelovation. At that time, I was working in the R&D function developing a corporate technology strategy process and in consumer products a key part of that is finding consumer insights. At that time, working from R&D, it was taboo to spend money on consumer insight development. Voila, this novel concept of using social media crossed my desk. It just made sense. We found a way to get sponsorship for looking at trend work in a new area of business. In fact, the output of this work was viewed as very novel. Later, we had the chance to work on a new brand launch. In this case, social media data helped provide the WHY that the marketing folks could not get from their traditional methods. The low bias and free speaking consumer on the web, was better able to articulate their interests. And then lastly, we were able to insert ourselves in the acquisition process. On this project, we were able to give the executive team consumer insights they couldn't get and we helped inform a nearly billion dollar acquisition. You would think that under these circumstances that social media would catch like wildfire. It did not. Even with all that value in the 2006-2007 timeframe, people still couldn't feel comfortable with the data.

FRANKLY...IT WAS MIDNIGHT (my day analogy)

People laughed at midnight. They chuckled. They questioned who was on the internet. They worried the data was influenced. They didn't see that we were controlling bias by simply capturing data in the "wild". It wasn't how things were done. We use focus groups etc...etc...etc...

Fast forward...

Over the next several years, I would say that tools were not up to snuff. NetBase, Radian 6 and others didn't have their operational tools. Everyone was focused on different parts of the organization. Radian 6 focused on PR, NetBase focused on market research and the JIVES of the world (CRM). The market is fragmented, and more importantly the consumer had not begun to drive the marketplace. Why? Data maturity. Twitter and Facebook were still growing in their usage and application. It was a slowly maturing market. But as we moved into the end of 2010, something started to happen. C2B! The arab spring saw people using twitter to manipulate governments and more tactically, we saw consumers shouting out. The greatest example occurred September 2010 when GAP launched its new logo. The logo survived a week. Why? Consumer backlash. They hated it...they let people know and they made the adjustment because of this. On the corporate side, however, people were still wedded to their methods so they weren't paying attention to what was happening around them.

Corporate behavior (how they interacted with consumers) was not aligned at all with their own consumer behaviors. What do I mean? Everyone person uses social to make decisions personally, but corporations weren't telling them what to do. Essentially, I use the web to pick a restaurant, decide what to buy, understand what hotel to stay, what doctor to use BUT I don't trust my own personal behavior to make business decisions. There are a lot of misalignment from the corporate side, the data side and the technology side.

AT THAT POINT THE SUN ROSE AND IT WAS DAWN.

Today we see constant social media change. Just today, after several days in the news, the Komen foundation not only caved on removing financial support for Planned Parenthood, but the amount of support Planned Parenthood received from online microdonations during this event almost equaled the $680,000 Komen gives in a year ($400,000 from 6,000 donors). Think about that. Komen makes a controversial decision to pull its funding. Social Media not only turned them around but the infrastructure it provides helped it get an addition 75% funding for its programs over the controversy. This is a unique case. Usually we simply see reversal. Such was the case for both Bank of America this past summer ($5 debit card fee) and Verizon (Sept/Oct $2 fee) this fall. But now we have an example where they reversed their decision AND came out ahead (planned parenthood that is). It is only a matter of time that controversy is staged to see this type of effect.

Either way, the data infrastructure is built to support the consumer driving business. The cycle accelerates and the impacts are impossible to ignore. The question continues in the corporate and service sector; will they figure out they need to trust this data so they can get busy living. To date, my experience with the market research community (who sort of owns the analytics side of things) has been guarded at best. I again last week asked a room of 150 market researchers how many of them trust social media and less than 5 raised their hands. There was no improvement versus the same question last year when the room had 60 market researches and only 2 raised their hands. That being said they all raise their hands when you ask them if they turn to the net when buying something or picking a restaurant. The culture shift in Corporate America continues to be filled with people who behave like consumers one way but act at work in their corporate cultures another way.

I am happy to say that things are improving. For one, I see the cycle of purchase for social media tools getting quicker. People know they need something to help. Unfortunately, we are still in a manual people process world. This means that people think they know how to pick a tool, but they continue discard a scalable human methodology to make their tools/toolbox sing. Although I work for NetBase, I do understand that some solutions take a suite of tools and in the current technology landscape that might be still be how you implement.

The good news is that corporate culture is getting its head around what is happening to them...

SO TODAY...I AM RELIEVED TO SAY AFTER 6 YEARS...IT IS FINALLY 8AM.

The question remains...when will the sun sit highest in the sky?

When will it be NOON?

Herman Cain: A year to build it a minute to lose it

2011-11-04T00:50:00.000-07:00

This Monday I posted a look at the three Republican front runners using data through 10/27/11. This post even went so far to link the changes in net sentiment to the poll numbers we are seeing from candidates (with sentiment potentially being a one month indicator of their poll numbers in the following month). Today, I am going to show how social media can show week to week (and even day by day) what can happen when bad news strikes.

This week Herman Cain has faced allegations of sexual harassment improprieties. In fact, it has been the major story in the news cycle this week. And as the week has worn on, it seems that this issue has grown and grown. What I want to show here is how social media can very quickly show his change in fortune during this issue.

I recently showed this for Netflix, so consider this showing that this process can work on any issue. You will see that this scenario is occurring in a different area (business versus politics).

Let's take a look...

Above is a breakdown of buzz, sentiment and passion counts for Herman Cain from 10/1 to 10/27 and from 10/27 to 11/3. In addition, I have also calculated the ratios for sentiment and passion for three periods listed. You will see the absolutely dramatic drop in the ratio from before October, for the first 27 days of October and the last 5 days. It is clear that Herman Cain's fortunes continue to erode (as was discussed in my previous blog post). In fact, his sentiment ratio has gone from 5 positive to every negative over a period from July to the end of September to less than 1 to 1 in the last 5 days. This continues the trend that was discussed this week. In that post it was predicted that he would drop in November, but this was prior to the scandal that has plagued him this week.

Let's take a look at how this has changed his brand passion since the last post. Below is the chart from the previous post with a new bubble for the last 7 days. You will see a change.

It is clear that his fortunes continue to sink. Not only that, if you look at the buzz over the last 7 days the amount generated is 89,147, a very large amount. In just a week his sentiment has decreased 44 points from 37 to -7.

And how does this change trend over the time period. Below is the net sentiment over time for the last 7 days.

You will see the day the news breaks and how his negatives continue to grow day by day as Herman Cain continues to change his story. Overall, we can get a very detailed look at his day by day social media fortunes. In addition, you can see in the word cloud beneath the trend chart the number of works that bring up the issue at hand. Sexual harassment is the number one negative in read with other parts of the world cloud highlighting the same issue.

If we look at this same chart for the period from 10/1 to 10/27 we will see that he has a very flat net sentiment and there is no sign of this issue. In addition, the word cloud is free of mention of the sexual harassment issue.

Now let's dig deeper and look at his likes/dislike for the period from 10/27 to 11/3.

At this level, again we can see the issue making its way to the top. In the likes chart, we see what one would expect. But in the dislikes chart there are many mentions of the issue in a variety of different ways. But what is most interesting at this level, the breakdown of the dislikes is very specific. We see mentions of him attacking the politco report, that he got testy with reporters, and they they accuse Herman Cain. The dislikes are going beyond the obvious issues to discuss more specific issues around the scandal. People are very clearly mentioning ATTRIBUTES of the issue meaning they are talking about many aspects not simply that it happened.

As for the prior period 10/1 to 10/27 you will see that the dislikes show no mention of this issue as well.

I found one other surprising view here. Below is a gender breakdown of the search over the last seven days. As I would have expected, this story is being driven by women...only this ISN'T the case.

Actually this data is being discussed 3:1 men to women. This is a big surprise. One would think a sexual harassment issue would be attacked by women, but it looks like men are driving this discussion.

To give a final frame up on this issue. Let's take the BPI chart from the previous post that looks at the previous 3 months for all the candidates and simply add in Herman Cain's last seven days for context.

Herman Cain has moved into a bad place compared to others. He was already heading downward when he became a front runner. But now his star on the chart is literally falling out of the sky. The question is will he survive. Why put all these charts? Because it again highlights how social media is so sensitive that a single person armed with the right social media tools can study a problem easily and quickly to understand what is happening. If Herman Cain had started this analysis on day one, he might have been armed with a wider look at the issue. With this knowledge would he have made different decisions? Would his star have fallen this far or would he have been able to stave off the scandal? We can see its impact, but we can never know because he has made his bed and now he has to sleep in it. Only time will tell if he can recover.

The Republican Field: Linking Social Media to the Polls (co-author Professor Mitch Lovett University of Rochester)

2011-11-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

If you’ve been following my blog you know that I’ve been interested in the use of social media data in understanding political races for a while now (see my previous two political posts on President Obama (Post 1, Post 2)). The other day Professor Mitchell Lovett of the University of Rochester, Simon School of Business called me to tell me about some analysis he had been doing regarding the primary season using NetBase's Brand Passion Index. He is a fantastic collaborator in the world of social media theory and application, not to mention one of our lead users and a main contact point for our university partnership with the Simon School of Business. We had a great conversation that turned into a small collaboration, and this co-authored blog post.

This blog post is really about how social media can help take the voice of the “crowd” to make sense and possibly even forecast events like polls and candidates’ strategies. In the process we will end up touching on two of Professor Lovett's recent research projects, including one still very much in process. Throughout we are going to focus on the current frontrunners--Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry (so sorry to all the Gingrich, Paul, and Bachmann fans).

We’re going to share with you some analysis and thoughts on the Republican primary and a little on what it might portend for the general election. Throughout we will be referring to the NetBase Brand Passion Index, so you might want to look here (Brand Passion Index Explanation) for more details. The Brand Passion Index is made up of three key social media measures-- buzz (total number of mentions of the candidate), sentiment (positive or negative content about the candidate) and passion (intensity of emotion about the candidate). With that intro, let's dive in.

Herman Cain. Cain has virtually no political experience, but lots of business experience. Whether you agree or not with the concept of 9-9-9, it is catchy and has led to a huge amount of attention for Cain. His poll number have been on the rise particularly in October, even though his organization and fundraising are well behind the other two leading candidates (for example, see OpenSecrets.org for financial contributions data, which we will reference throughout). What can social media add to this?

To understand the social media story we see, you really should know a little about two of Professor Lovett's recent research projects. The first coauthored with Ron Shachar is titled "Seeds of Negativity: Knowledge and Money" and was recently published in Marketing Science, one of the leading quantitative marketing journals. That paper shows how when voters know more about a candidate and the opponent, and when candidates have more money, candidates go more negative in their advertising. While that study considered general elections and negativity in advertising, the general idea may be relevant to primary elections and other forms of attack such as during debates and on the campaign trail. Applied to Cain's situation, the increased attention is going to lead to more attacks on Cain. That's exactly what we saw in the last debate and this is what we see playing out in the social media, too.

The second research project is still in its infancy, but even the preliminary results could have relevance here. Mitch Lovett and Paulo Albuquerque, also at the Simon School of Business, correlated NetBase's net sentiment measure to polls for over 30 races in 2010 for Governor and U.S. Senate. Though their results are still tentative, they suggest that net sentiment may lead changes in polls by up to a month. In other words, we might be able to use the net sentiment as a leading indicator of public opinion. We'll see some anecdotal evidence on this shortly.

Okay, so now let's turn to Herman Cain's Brand Passion Index. First, consider the small yellow circle in the middle of the chart. This was Cain’s brand passion index in August. The center of this circle is positioned about half-way left-to-right on the graph, which indicates people on social media express moderate passion (for a political candidate, though low for a top commercial brand) about Cain. It is also about half-way up-and-down, which indicates people view Cain relatively neutrally (which is actually relatively positive for politicians, who generally are viewed fairly negatively). Cain's buzz (indicated by the size of the circle) in August was tiny for a national candidate. People just weren't talking about him much online.

In September he started to get more attention and this led to an initial increase in net sentiment, but that all changed in October, when for the first time he became the focus of public attention. He came under attack by his opponents and under the scrutiny of the media. His buzz went way up, but his net sentiment took a nose-dive and he is now well in the negative. How does all of this square with polls?

The chart above shows just how well the movements in net sentiment track with the poll averages. In fact, this chart is displaying the net sentiment from the prior month. In other words, the net sentiment seems to predict the movements in poll averages extremely well, at least for Cain. Given what we just learned about Professor Lovett's research, it seems we are likely to see two things in the future: 1) It appears Cain may slide in the polls some in the coming month as mass opinion catches up with the sentiment expressed in social media, 2) Cain may continue to be attacked (for now), and 3) Cain may start throwing back some serious punches, too. Given his lower funding levels, for now Cain's attacks might be restricted to the debate and campaign event setting.

Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney proved himself an impressive fundraising in the last Presidential nomination, and that funding machine and organization appears well in place this time around as well. In the polls he has been consistently in the top two places at least since August and he is a competent debater. What does social media have to add?

Romney has considerably lower passion than Cain. People just aren't that excited about Romney. He is the kind of candidate that is probably adequate and could end up the last man standing, but people aren't charging the gates for him--He's no Ronald Reagan. At the same time, he is getting a lot of buzz with most months showing hundreds of thousands of mentions. How about net sentiment? His net sentiment is actually a little lower than even Cain's lowest level. As for changes, he appears to have made a slight decrease in September in net sentiment, but passion is actually picking up (a little), and buzz is essentially unchanged. Nothing major going on here, which for Romney is probably a good sign given his other advantages.

So, one has to ask, why isn't Romney advertising on television to leverage his funding advantage? Romney's opponents haven't been as well known as Romney, so based on Lovett's research, the benefits of attacking them were likely lower. As a result, Romney might have preferred to wait. Besides, attacking (at least early) may cast Romney as too aggressive (remember Reagan's wisdom to not attack fellow GOP members). The social media suggests that Romney's opponents are even less secure than their current poll numbers might indicate and the longer he waits the clearer his main target will become. At the same time he is building his war chest. In other words, He doesn't really need to go to the airwaves, but given his cash on hand, look out if someone takes a swing at him.

Rick Perry. With Rick Perry, we see a different story altogether. His entry into the race was received very positively and he led the polls for awhile afterward. He had an excellent fundraising month in September, but he didn't seem to fare as well in the debates and he has been polling much lower lately with Cain stealing his top position. What can social media add to this?

His passion level is actually the highest among the top three players. When he entered the race in August his buzz just took off. Like Cain, however, his negative sentiment also took off. Then the gaffes started. He performed relatively poorly in the debates. He had the misstep on immigration. His tax plan while bold in concept didn't have the desired punch. And this past week he stated he might start skipping the Republican debates. His net sentiment started essentially a straight shot south. Worse, since August his buzz, though still much higher than his pre-entry level, has decreased, suggesting he is losing the interest and attention of the public. A look on the graph below again suggests that net sentiment is tracking ahead of the polls and that is a bad thing for Perry, since net sentiment keeps going down.

What can we expect from Perry? Well, he isn't making the impression he'd hoped for in the debates and now he is much better known, in a bad way. With his poll position sliding and his large cash position, he seems likely to go to the air. Will he go negative? Given Professor Lovett's research this would suggest some negative advertisements could be in his future plans. But who he should target is less clear. Cain? Romney? Both?

This last picture pretty much sums it up. Perry is heading south rapidly, while Romney is only sliding a little and Cain dropped a lot in his first month in the full public eye. Cain is still the frontrunner on net sentiment, but he and Romney are pretty close on buzz, while Perry's buzz has been decreasing. Perry is the clear winner on passion while Cain is a little weaker and Romney weaker yet.

Adding Obama in the picture, really gives some perspective on all of this data. Though we see differences in the GOP candidates, they are all weaker than Obama on passion and much weaker on buzz. Yet, perhaps more importantly, they are higher than Obama on net sentiment. Is passion more important to the American people than sentiment? If so, Perry might have a chance for a soft landing and a rebound. Of course, that would also suggest whichever Republican is nominated could face a tough struggle against Obama. Stay tuned for more updates.

When social media strikes Part 3: Netflix in FLAMES....

2011-10-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

After Netflix announced first to raise prices and then create Qwikster they saw a massive drop in their stock price. We are talking about over 100% drop from its high of ~290 to around 104 in just three months. A few days after the announcement to kill Qwikster, I wrote a fairly comprehensive blog post analyzing how the change in net sentiment seemed to correlate with the drop in Netflix stock price.

Click here for a link to the blogpost

Yesterday Netflix announced its earnings. The news was positive in that they beat estimates...

"From a financial perspective, Netflix did better than analysts expected in the July-September period.
The company earned $62.5 million, or $1.16, per share, in the third quarter. That compared to income of $38 million, or 70 cents per share, at the same time last year. The performance topped the average earnings estimate of 96 cents per share among analysts polled by FactSet. Netflix's revenue climbed 49 percent from the same time last year to nearly $822 million -- about $9 million above analyst estimates."

What is amazing is the other "consumer part" of their news really hurt them.

"The company, which is based in Los Gatos, ended September with 23.8 million U.S. subscribers, down about 800,000 from June. Netflix had predicted it would lose about 600,000 U.S. subscribers in a forecast released last month.Management expects to gain U.S. subscribers in the current quarter, although Netflix didn't set a specific target. But a substantial number of Netflix's customers are expected to choose between renting DVDs through the mail, or streaming Internet video, instead of paying for both services."

And while this loss of customers will translate into lost sales, which is financial, they did beat estimates. And being that they gave no guidance of how their subscribers will increase, one can see strategically how their concept works. They are trying (as they have overtly stated) to increase the rate of revenue so they can provide a better more comprehensive selection of movies (as licensing fees are higher for better content). Everyone would agree, their execution has been flawed and the shock their poor roll out has caused is the root of their issues. But the jury is still out on how their transition will ultimately go. Is their CEO still ahead of the curve? I would argue again...the risk the Netflix faces is now based on their brand perception which continues to weaken every week. Even if they do have the best selection, will the sour taste in their consumers' mouths taste be so bad they can't come back as the service improves. I would suspect even if it does, they have serious work to do on their brand image with consumers because their slow return to Netflix as their service improves could prove catalytic as they miss numbers because of this "consumer effect".

What does this mean? Angry and untrusting consumers who are waiting for the next price increase will be delayed in their return no matter how great Netflix is. As they delay, Netflix doesn't hit its numbers and the financial sector questions their business and so on. The consumer uptick in subscription might never recover if it doesn't improve things soon. I am not a Netflix subscriber (late adopter I guess) and the difference in price from 10 to 16 dollars seems pretty reasonable to me. I pay gobs of money for Comcast, and I hate it, but I am still a little lazy to create a multi-product package for my TV that can save you money overall. We will see.

On to the analysis. I have updated and extended my "coverage' of the Netflix brand collapse. When we last left off, I covered and analyzed Netflix as of October 17th, 2011. I looked at the full year, the period before the price hike announcement and the period after the price hike announcement. We saw some major changes in how consumer perceived this brand and even saw some qualitative correlation to the stock price changes that suggest some predictive link between the change in sentiment versus the change in stock price.

Again...the blogpost link for part one is here ====> Netflix Part 1

Let's look at the net sentiment over time chart since October 1st. This will encompass both the earnings announcement AND the announcement to kill Qwikster.

We see from the analysis that the net sentiment for Netflix is actually climbing after the announcement and the spike around the announcement didn't hurt the brand in anyway and actually seemed to help. But in the last few days, we can see the effect of the announcement. The net sentiment dropped from about 50 to -8. A major drop. Below are some closer looks at the sentiment charts zoomed in for the last few days.

We see the net sentiment going down dramatically yesterday and even more this morning. The top chart goes through yesterday and the bottom includes what has been collected thus far today. This is a major drop in the net sentiment. And it dropped as the day wore on yesterday as the announcement came out. The announcement came out at 1:05PM pacific time towards the end of the Wall Street Day.

But if we look at the changes in the data for the last 3 months (which includes the price hike announcement) versus the last 3 days, the results are quite telling.

Note: In my last post, I ended on 10/17/11. Our data is a 12 month rolling history, so I have updated the numbers (mostly for the 12 month ratios) to reflect the most up to date changes. Last 3 months tracks from the announcement to today (so a little bit longer than 3 months)

Over the last 12 months the ratio of positive sentiment was 2.78. This means for for every 2.78 positive expressions of sentiment (regardless of intensity) there was only 1 negative expression. In the last three months that ratio dropped to 1.86. This is a 33% percent decrease in the ratio of positive to negative expressions of emotion. And when looking at the LAST 3 days? That ratio has dropped below 1 to 0.85 or another 50% decrease again. Netflix in the last three days is in a situation where the number of negative expression of emotion actually outweigh the positives. The normal ratio in social media tends to be higher than 1 overall. People tend to express more positive sentiment online then negative. This is an amazing social media development.

How does this all link to the stock price?

Again, I have created some curves that trend change in sentiment to change in stock price. They are below.

You will again see that the stock trends over the last 30 days seem to follow the change of sentiment. The sentiment drop yesterday could easily predict the drop today. It just continues to show that change in sentiment seems to correlate with stock price. Netflix didn't just throw gasoline on the fire...the fire ran up their arm and they are in flames.

Did they damage their brand? Let's look more closely. I have created a brand passion index on the brand with some key dates. See below

Look what happened to the brand passion in the last 30 days. It actually improved versus the time period of 7/10/11 to 10/10/11. In fact, the last 30 days includes all the negatives we are talking about today. But what is troubling is the bubble created with the data from the last 3 days. Look how low the brand has sunk using only this data. This is really poor. If we zoom in on the likes and dislikes for the last 30 days and the last 3 days, we will see some thing very troubling.

Let's look at the last 30 days.

You will see that over the last 30 days there is little change from the last 3 months. People are talking about the price hike, the death of qwikster, and that they are leaving. What should be looked at more specifically is the two pieces of pie lose subsriber and lose customer. Over the last 30 days the percentage of people falling into these categories is 34%. We do see the stock mentioned at 5%. In general you are seeing what you would expect. Consumers are not happy with Netflix moves since their poor moves after July 11th, 2011.

Let's look at the last 3 days. What we see is pretty frightening...

The likes over the last 3 days are the usual banter about Netflix. People like the service. They think it is a great product. These are the normal chatter about what people like about Netflix. There is nothing that interesting based on other slices I have seen around what people like. There was a huge uptick happiness around killing qwikster, but otherwise mundane likes...

If we move to the dislikes, however, we see more changes even versus the last 30 days. Now we are seeing even stronger language around the Netflix brand. 60% now refers to either lose more customers or lose subscribers. We know this is mostly due to the announcement, but remember this chart looks at expression of emotion. People are expressing opinions about these two facets and regardless, it continues to grow. Another very telling piece of data that has grown is we are now seeing expressions around the brand itself. Lose subscriber and Lose customers are about the product. Now we see lose luster and destroy brand faster as two groupings. In fact, these two groups make up 14% of the data. People are starting to express direct emotions towards the Netflix brand itself.

The hierarchy of Netflix downfall has followed the following trail...

1. They didn't like the "product" price hike
2. They didn't like the "product" complexity (qwikster)
3. People expressing they don't want to buy the "product" has increased to 60% from 30%.
4. People are directly expressing emotions about the "brand" itself.

This means that Netflix may have jumped the shark. Could they rebound? Sure, great products create great demand, but they have surely opened themselves up from a brand perspective. People don't trust the brand now and it will be telling to watch whether or not this grows with time. Getting people to trust Netflix is going to take $$$ and resources, because the brand is now damaged. It is uncertain how much, but there is evidence that it is damaged.

The ratios and trends from the last 3 days onward need to be monitored to see if this trend reverses itself. If it continues, what once was a great idea could go the way of the dinosaurs into the land of what not to do case studies.

The jury is now out on netflix and you need to figure out a way to put out the fire that is is now engulfing your brand's body. I would say in the infamous words of that old dick van dyke educational video on fire prevention it is time to "stop, drop and roll".

I couldn't find the actual spot...but he did lots of them

Dick Van Dyke the detector

Obama - President in Peril?? Part 2

2011-10-14T12:09:00.000-07:00

I am going to follow up my previous post yesterday with the goal of answering another question. If President Obama's Brand Passion is so low and he lives in "danger zone", how does he compare to the "front-runners"?

This is always a great question. And one I figured I would tackle to give more context to the President's position in social media. Just to level set for those who didn't read my previous blog post (here is a link if you want to), I have re-posted the charts below.

These charts help give a relative view comparing brands. The first compares the President's Brand Passion (see previous post) over time. The second focuses on giving a comparative view of how the Barack Obama brand compares to a variety of disparate brands. The goal is to help "see" how President Obama benchmarks with other types of brands.

Today, I wanted to follow to ask the following...if President Obama's brand sits in a very negative sentiment place only a mixed amount of passion, what does this mean about his re-election?

Rather than look at the entire field, I created a Brand Passion Index focused only on the top three Republican front runners (Herman Cain, Rick Perry, and Mitt Romney) to see how he directly compares to his challenge upcoming in 2012. I also included Hillary Clinton just for the fun of it. I also threw in Chris Christie to see what people believe they lost with him not running for President.

Below is the Election 2012 Brand Passion Index. Let's take a look...

To me...this is interesting. Yesterday, I called my post A President in Peril. While this is certainly true, if we look at the field we do see some interesting things. For one, President Obama has much significantly higher level of buzz than anyone else. The only one who comes close is Mitt Romney. Everyone else is really small potatoes from a traffic standpoint. Below is a buzz comparison of those on the chart above...

You can quickly see that the President has a significantly greater amount of buzz that the field. This gives you some additional context. It also tells you that he will be trying to steer a much rougher river if he wants to "change" how people feel about him. I would go as far to say as there are forces at work that must organically improve (housing, economy, unemployment anyone) to move such a loud voice in the right direction. On the other hand, the Republican field can still shape its voice. This is where the danger lies. The story is not told by them yet. They can create their message and we can watch how it takes hold.

As for the BPI, I believe what is the most interesting part of this analysis today is that no one is really that great. While the other candidates do have better sentiment, their passion is pretty weak. Let's look at Mitt Romney. What we hear about him is what we see on the BPI. He isn't very inspiring and is slowly marching his way to mediocre candidacy. The flavor of the week Herman Cain. He fairs the best and actually creeps into positive sentiment territory, but again the passion is low. Chris Christie, the savior of the Republican field. Not really. He has way lower buzz (which means the story is yet to be told) but he is pretty similar to Obama. In essence, no one really has the upper hand. Everyone is in a wait and see mode with this field. Even Hilary Clinton (while better than Obama) is not significant either. But like her Republican counterparts she has a decent amount of buzz that could be shaped over time as well.

We have a President who is mired in negativity (which we can look at next) and a field of republicans that doesn't inspire anyone. To really understand the nuance, we will have to dig deeper.

Much deeper. Coming to you from the sanctity of my computer as a one man gang who is analyzing the 2012 race in under 4 hours so far...until next time...

Oh yeah, the beauty of social media is you can do it yourself and "get up to speed on a topic" very quickly and easily and in any direction.

Barack Obama - A President in Peril

2011-10-13T22:17:00.000-07:00

We know corporations are still thinking hard and heavy about whether they should even consider social media. That being said, we also know that politicians are probably obsessed with it. From a cultural perspective (meaning political management), I am curious how effectively they will use social media in the upcoming election.

The last election saw the viral marketing of candidates explode. They used Facebook to rally the message. They used online infrastructure to garner donations at an amazing pace (well at least president Obama did). And over the last 4 years, the media has USED social media to PUSH their message. The question remains...how will they PULL in this election to not only influence, but to understand what is being said about them so they can speed their interaction cycle to new heights.

I question their efforts. I believe one of the real problems when it comes to the application of social media to business or any topic is the outright arrogance of those who "think" they understand how to do it. I would argue as an evangelist of the topic, I probably fit the bill. In fact, I am the first to admit that I usually make it up as I go. And when you are pioneer, it is a hard road to hoe.

The razor's edge of the election 2012 will be the candidate who not only figures out how to have other PUSH their message but truly make up new APPLICATIONS of capturing and measuring THE CROWD. What suite of social media tools will be put in the campaign's toolbox to garner the speed of insight edge they need. And in my limited time working in the world of computer engineers, I am often astounded at how quickly they degrade to technology discussions and move away from the importance of how things apply to the user. Like many said about Steve Jobs, his success was based on his maniacal passion about thinking like a consumer. He also had the stones to literally OBSOLETE products at the expense of his own. Genius.

Let's turn back to politics. Rather that do the full analysis of an entire topic, I figured I would go slower this time. Piece by Piece. I figured as a passionate supporter of the president and person who would love to help his re-election, I decided to begin to dimensionalize first him and then his opponents. Call it a play book by which I watch and understand what is going on.

Today, I am starting at the top. Like my previous post, I am going to take a look at the passion for the President. How does he fair over the last year? How does he fair if we break it down month by month? How does he compare to the front runners he is currently facing? Below are some of the answers.

Again...I turn to the Brand Passion Index as a high level view. The video of this chart is linked here: Brand Passion Index Explanation Video.

Below are two charts. They are both month by month view of the President's "brand passion". The gives a contextual view of where he sits in the 4 box grid. The second is a closer view of his month by month Brand Passion and the total for the last 12 months (10/13/10 to 10/13/11).

What does this all mean???

Essentially, these two charts are telling us that President Obama is dare I say, stagnant with his consumer base. Of course, many folks out there don't like the President, but what is most troubling is the stagnant pattern we see here. Overall, Barack Obama has a fairly negative level of sentiment (emotion). From a passion perspective, while they feel negatively, the intensity of this emotion is somewhere between "dislike" and "hate". This isn't the greatest place to live on a brand passion index. From a positive/negative perspective this is a disaster. From an intensity perspective, the President can salvage things. But clearly he has work to do.

The second chart in my mind is more gloomy. If we look at how people feel about him month by month we will see that it doesn't get much better. He does float around a bit, and in certain months rises to the occasion, but overall he is mired in a swamp of negative sentiment and average passion. It's kind of like, I guess I might vote for him, but I definitely don't feel great about it right now.

You can see a few bright spots on chart 2. The first one is January 2011. This is when we gave the state of the union address. I remember it being well received and if we look at the chart it was one of his best months. He pushes towards daylight on the BPI. The second month is May. This was clearly good political mojo for him. He got Bin Laden and the people rejoiced.

And while this picture isn't great, let's give it some context. Below is another BPI, which I mixed up a bunch. I put a whole bunch of different "brands" on it. I chose retail, consumer products, electronics and other people to give you an idea of where President Obama sits in relation to these other brands.

You will see just how negative the sentiment is for the President. For crying out loud, no one likes Walmart and his sentiment (or position on the y-axis) is much much lower. There is almost nothing said positively about him on relative basis. On the plus side, the amount people that hate Walmart is higher because it is much further over on the right. That being said, President Obama's bubble is really really big. There are a lot of people saying negative things about him. And while you might say how can that many people say so much...it must be volume, in steps the iPhone. It has even more buzz, but has a much better sentiment and passion than the President. So essentially it is possible to have a better position on the Brand Passion Index with that much buzz. And the Kardashians? The USA loves celebrities. They do better than the President.

I think the President is doing an admirable job. He inherited a bad economy. God knows he has tried, but to win this election he must awaken the sleeping giant that is his following. If he doesn't it will be hard for his election team to PUSH any message amidst a sea of negativity. I hope they are listening...because I am going to work on understanding...because as I have said many times...I just want to help.

The question I have now...is how does he compare to the front runners in the campaign???

Tune in tomorrow to find out...

Not sure what time, but same crazy channel...

C2B How social media is flipping who has control...

2011-10-13T15:54:00.000-07:00

I have always made it a point to admit when someone comes up with a term or idea that is just simply great and/or poignant. In this case, the concept of C2B, a term I have started hearing lately is just that...elegant.

What is C2B? This is he opposite of B2C where the consumer is driving the business and not the other way around. In some of my posts, I have made it a point to focus on what I call the social media speed of insight. This is essentially the hypothesis (and looks like reality) that if companies do no take the time to understand the sentiment and insights embedded in THE CROWD they can be affected by it.

When they are affected, it is the situation when the consumer (C) are driving the (B). I have talked about it. I have thought about it. I have never put a term to it. Bravo! And as a scientist, it is ALWAYS the case that when an issue in science becomes big enough it gets it own unique term. Well social media is on the way to having its own version...C2B.

The question remains...who will be the biggest players in C2B.

What parts of the market need the infrastructure, service or products to make it live. I have written about THE CROWD and MY CROWD. These are two beast that need taming. Their are elements to taming them. There is the demographics, influence, sentiment, interaction between and many other things that need to be built for C2B to become something tangible and real.

As C2B grows the question what is going to happen to B2C?

How will the flow of information affect how B2C runs and for that matter B2B?

These are things to ponder for sure...

Hopefully, as part of C2B you can help me think about it....

When Social Media Strikes - Netflix Gasoline on the Fire

2011-10-12T13:02:00.000-07:00

A while back I wrote a long post giving a theoretical look at what happens when social media strikes? Essentially this means that the consumers of the blogosphere speak and how it can get out of control on a company really quickly...

You can read the post here When Social Media Strikes Post

Today, in light of the recent events at NetFlix (well actually over the past several months), I figured I would back track and analyze how social media struck Netflix and what mistakes they have been making by thinking their strategy can run faster than the social media speed of insight.

Here goes...

"On July 12, 2011 Netflix announced that it would separate the current subscription plans into two separate plans: one covering the instant streaming and the other DVD rental.^[35] The cost for streaming would be $7.99 while DVD rental would start at the same price." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix).

Netflix added Insult to injury when...

"On September 18, 2011, Netflix CEO and Co-Founder Reed Hastings said in a Netflix blog post that the DVD section of Netflix would be split off and renamed Qwikster, and stated that the only major change would be separate websites for the services.^[43] The new service was to carry video games for an additional charge, whereas Netflix did not.^[44] Netflix subscribers who wanted DVDs by mail would have had to use a separate website to access Qwikster." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix).

This event or some would say "strategic business choice" has lead to a major upheaval of what has been a very innovative brand over the past 5-10 years. They single-handedly changed how people rent movies and literally killed the on ground movie rental store. Blockbuster and Hollywood video were basically decimated and Netflix has been a leader in both the mail-order movie business as well as the streaming business.

If you look at the historic stock price of Netflix you will see nothing but upside. It has grown since it first hit the market from about $5 a share to its peak at $286.93 on July 11th. This is exactly the day before Netflix announced its now infamous price hike and then later in September split in how it would serve its consumers. Since that decision the stock has dropped to $108.66 in less than 3 months. They say you can take years to build a relationship but seconds to destroy. Evidence would suggest this is the case at Netflix.

So doing an analysis of social media would seem redundant. All the information sits in that stock chart right? It is...but how could Netflix have avoided its pain or at least reacted more quickly during this crisis to rescue some of its brand equity. In my experience, most brand equity is tracked using survey over longer periods of time. In fact, my current experiences have taught me that most companies are looking for ways to increase the speed by which they track their brand's health.

Below is an analysis I performed on Netflix. I started today and put about 5 hours into the work you will see below. I did this alone, with no help. In fact, I had knee surgery 5 days ago and decided to use our solution at NetBase to do this work to show how a single person at home at their desktop can analyze a problem like the one Netflix is having.

First, I looked at the overall buzz, sentiment and passion for Netflix over the past 12 months. To do so I used high precision sound bites are shown below. High precision is determined using natural language processing to get sound bites that are 80-90% accurate. As a scientist, having good accurate data is the key to doing strong analysis. You can read on how NetBase measures its accuracy here. NETBASE WEBSITE WHITE PAPER.

You will see there is a great deal of buzz (over 4,000,000 soundbites) over the last year and that Netflix has a very strong net sentiment and passion intensity. The definitions are listed in the slide below...

Looking closer, you can definitively see in the social media data that all was quiet on the social media front for Netflix over the past 12 months. At least, until they made their announcement on July 12th.

Looking at Netflix over the past twelve months you can see from the chart above that Netflix's net sentiment was hovering at 50-60% for many months. Our index's average is about 31.5%. This shows how healthy a brand Netflix was in the time prior to the announcement. A very strong brand will be between 60-80%. As a benchmark politicians actually move into negative territory for the most part. The chart also clearly shows how that sentiment changed in July when the price hikes were announced and subsequently dropped again when Qwikster was announced. These chart demonstrate that you can clearly see the public's response to their business strategy. Imagine if they had been watching the reaction more closely. We hope they were, but knowing the buzz went up is only half the battle. Getting accurate sentiment on your brand is more important that simply knowing that people are tlaking. What is interesting is the net sentiment for Netflix seems to be going back up. We all know (and what prompted this blog post) is that announcement to reverse the Qwikster decision but keep the price hike on October 10th (yesterday). Below is a closer look at the net sentiment before and after the announcement (a blow up of what is above). You will see how flat their sentiment is and what happened afterwards.

So social media can show us how people felt about their decisions and how it affected their brand versus before the decision. Let's go a little deeper. Below is a look at the social media buzz, sentiment and passion for Netflix before the announcement (October 11th, 2010 to July 10th, 2011) and after (July 11th, 2011 to October 11th, 2011). If we begin to analyze the numbers a bit, it gets even more intriguing.

What is the quantitative effect of their decision? You will the stats on their buzz, sentiment and passion before and after the announcements. Firstly, if we look at the buzz as percentage of the total, we see that 33.2% of the buzz generated has occurred in the last 3 months (7/11/11 to 10/11/11). So there is a definite, uptick in buzz since they made this announcement. So the buzz is up! But if you only know where and how much buzz their changes have generated, you are not looking deep enough. In fact, if you think about this some more (at the buzz level only) you will only say that there is a moderate uptick in the buzz and might not understand the meaning of it or if it is positive or negative.

Because of natural language processing we can go deeper to look at both sentiment (the positive and negative expressions of emotion) and passion (which is the intensity of that emotion...love versus like, hate versus dislike) because not all sentiment is created equally. To do this, I performed some very simple ratio analysis looking at the the number of positives/the number of negatives. This will give us a rudimentary way to track changes in both sentiment and passion. To make this meaningful in the context of the netflix announcement, I looked at the sentiment and passion data before and after.

Sentiment Ratio Analysis: Before the announcement on July 12th, Netflix has a sentiment ratio of positive to negative of 3.57. For every 1 negative expression of sentiment, Netflix received 3.57 positive expressions of sentiment. After the announcement the ratio drop to 1.85 almost dividing by 2. Essentially, in the last 3 months the number of negative expressions of emotion have doubled compared to the previous 9 months. This is a major difference.

Passion Ratio Analysis: If we perform the same calculations using the strong and weak emotion counts in the chart above we will see the same picture. Prior to the announcement, the positive passion/negative passion ratio is 4.92. At nearly 5 to 1, Netflix customers express positive passion for the brand. After July 12th, this ratio drops to 2.29. It drops in half. In fact, in the case of passion it drops a bit more than half. This again shows the dramatic fall of how people are feeling about the Netflix brand.

The question is why? In doing meaningful social media analysis it is critical to go beyond buzz (which we have been able to do) to sentiment and passion. The real value however, will come from understanding why. Below are some automatically generated charts from our Insight WorkBench. Again all data is using high precisions sound bites. The first are the top 10 "likes" for the Netflix Brand. The second is the top ten "dislikes" for the Netflix brand. Our method for "clocking" this precision can be found in our white paper on the subject. You can find it at the link on the NETBASE WEBSITE WHITE PAPER.

The why before the announcement...

Prior to the announcement people speak about things one would expect. They like streaming, the movies, and the service. They call it the best thing. As for dislikes, they also mention the movies and the service. They also mention that it just isn't for them or the selection. I would argue from a consumer perspective online, you can please everyone. They do mention an outage that occurred, but it is not dominating the chatter. Now let's look over the last three months.

The dialogue has changed...in a big way. From the likes perspective, we still see the same key words, but there is a big change. Almost 20% of the people online are celebrating the death of qwikster. In fact, it is at 20% and the announcement happened about 3 days ago. This topic is statistically swamping the last 3 months of emotion for the Netflix brand. On the dislikes side, you will see it is littered with people talking about the price hike, how they are leaving netflix and that the company is being greedy. Again, the change is dramatic. People really didn't like this decision.

Bringing into one view...

At NetBase, one form of analysis we often use what is called the Brand Passion Index. Attached is a short video that explains the chart and how to think about it. BRAND PASSION INDEX VIDEO LINK. Essentially, this view of social media data takes all three types of measures into the tracking of brand health. It uses the buzz (size of bubble), the sentiment (positive and negative expression on the y-axis) versus the passion (intensity of the sentiment (like versus love, dislike versus hate) on the x-axis) to give you an overview comparison of a brand's health. It can be created using competitors to see how your brand relates to theirs with consumers. It can be created over time to see the shifts (which I will show below). It can also be used to see how certain attributes contribute to the position of the brand. In this case, you take a dataset focused on a brand (Netflix in this case) and use verbal context to "carve" out a smaller data set from the larger one. Below is such a chart for Netflix.

You will see on Netflix brand passion index several different bubbles. You will see the whole year (complete brand look for Netflix) as the largest bubble. Overall, people were reasonably bullish on the brand. They show some intensity but the overall sentiment of that intensity is overall neutral. If we break up the timing by which the data set is created (using before 10/11/10 to 7/11/11 and 7/12/11 to 10/10/11), we see a different picture. Now we can see that prior to their announcement both the sentiment and the intensity of that sentiment is more positive. This demonstrates that things were pretty good for Netflix. When we look over the last three months we see a major downgrade of the brands overall brand passion. But if we look at some pieces of the data, we can see the key attributes that are contributing. The three smallest bubbles show subsets of the data. They included searching on things like price, announcement and Qwikster in the context of Netflix. In cases where key language was added to see how specific attributes affect Netflix, much of the negative chatter is due to these areas of discussion (as the pie charts above show). We can now quantify and see what parts of the social media discussion are driving the negativity of Netflix. This was done quickly and we only used the scalpel in a few areas, but with natural language processing you now have the ability to quantify what attributes of the social media data are causing either the pleasure or the pain.

So how could Netflix have taken action on all this....

Funny...I did a little thinking. How was this data predictive. It is clear if they had been understanding what was going on as it was happening, they may have made course corrections. But in the end it is about shareholder value. I did some very rudimentary trend analysis by doing my best to put the net sentiment over time charts against the stock curves available on Yahoo!.

Below are snapshots getting more focused in little by little...

You will see in each of the charts, the sentiment over time charts seem to show downward trends that occur prior to the drop in the stock price. This gives a glimpse of how sentiment seems to preclude the response in the market place. And how could Netflix taken action with this data. They could have watched after the first announcement at how the sentiment for the brand never recovered to original levels. They may have held off on the Qwikster announcement by watching if the sentiment improved and if the stock price began to recover. It seems the decision to move foward with Qwikster was absolutely disastrous to their brand and stock price. In fact, since the pull back on the Qwikster, it seems that the sentiment is improving. If we look at the stock price today is has moved upward again since yesterday. It has climbed so far today about 5 dollar to around 114 from 108 yesterday...

Maybe they will reverse the trend, maybe they won't, but one thing is clear...

When social media strikes and the company ignores the consumers...they do so at their own peril.

GRIT Report - A market researchers view of market research

2011-10-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

I wanted to take a minute to give a shout out to Lenny Murphy, coordinator of the GRIT report. This report is a survey of the market research community and its thoughts for the coming year. It is a huge undertaking and actually included over 1000 responses this year. The report is focused on taking a deep look at what the community believes is going to shape its own future.

there is tons of good information here and I had the chance to contribute the social media look that was included in the final report. It was a very fun time working with Lenny and the group. They are a very dynamic group who is very passionate about the subject. My main goal was to help them triangulate what the survey thought on certain subjects versus what was reality online.

Probably the biggest insight is one that is my job. Many folks in the market research community feel that social media analytics and the resources to drive social media are one of the most important things to think about in the coming year.

I guess...change is coming and now those affecting are at the bus stop waiting to get on...

check it out.

http://www.greenbookblog.org/grit/

The crowd vs. My crowd - Get clear on the difference

2011-09-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

As a person who is working to find a way to shackle the bucking bronco that is social media, I spend my time immersed with what I call The Crowd. At NetBase, we spend our time trying to capture and understand the erratic tide of social media by using Natural Language Processing to accurately understand both the emotion (positive or negative feelings) and the passion (intensity of that emotion because all sentiment is not create equal...I like it versus I love it are different). We spend our time working to harness the message from the ultimate crowd; the 420 petabytes per year (a stat I have quoted which is all the books ever written in any language across times 3600). To me, for the sake of this blog post, is the The Crowd. Why? Because this big data set is controlled by a crowd of billions who are posting trillions of pieces of information. If you can understand what it is saying with accuracy you have tapped the collective voice of the world. Imagine if you could look at a topic of global warming from a macro perspective and first understand the key issues and then slowly dig down into how that message changes from region to region, from country to country and then step back and look for commonalities across global demographics. It would be tapping The Crowd.

That being said, the purpose of this blog post is to highlight the difference between The Crowd (as one person has defined it here) and My Crowd. Thinking about the power of crowds, one thing continues to strike me is interesting. The concept of operational definitions, which is something that I often talk about as a key principle of innovation. In the case of My Crowd, I am talking about pulling segments of the The Crowd together for a means or purpose. And as this pertains to social media, I am seeing a lot of subtle differences that will help change the game in this respect. Much can be made from the application of new technologies, processes and thinking methodologies. Perhaps one of the most interesting these days (from a social media perspective) can be summed up by parsing things into the The Crowd versus My Crowd. And if we take it a step further, we can even say think about things that create The Crowd versus utilize The Crowd. This would also make sense for My Crowd as well.

With a framework like this, one can begin to think about how to apply many of the new social media tools out there. By first understanding what the feeders and filters are you can then think more concretely about how they fit you business (never mind which ones drive the right cultural alignment with how you or your organization like to do things).

The reason for this theoretical concept to create a framework to talk about some of the tools/services that I encounter and how they fit in. I have often talk a lot about Spigit and BrighIdea, the innovation platform companies that help internal organizations innovate. To me these are two organizations that are critical to leverage ones' own human resources. Where do they fit? If you think about them, they are focused on developing MY CROWD from an internal perspective. They have chosen to tackle the very important social media issue of how do I get my own people to collaborate and create effectively? Why is this a challenge? Because while you aligned with the desires and goals of management (the enterprise) by leveraging your people in a collaborative way (THE ME's and THE WE's), you are fighting differences in human nature and the cultural battles that ensue inside. You are building MY CROWD infrastructure that should enable MY CROWD to eventually leverage THE CROWD. And yes, the ideation platform concept is also about THE CREATION of ideas from MY CROWD. This idea is powerful, but until it plugs into the EXTERNAL MY CROWD it is more limited.

Another form of MY CROWD that is EXTERNALLY focused is the company Pureprofile. This organization is well designed because it works to have regular consumer OPT in to create a very robust and global MY CROWD. While this MY CROWD is externally focused (the greater web) it is MY CROWD because it is limited to the number of folks that opt in. As it grows, however, one could envision it becoming THE CROWD. And as a CROWD in general, PureProfile is leveraging people to create a way for organizations to UTILIZE an external MY CROWD.

As I stated earlier, NetBase, Radian 6, Crimson Hexagon and all the other social media analytics filters are really and truly trying to leverage THE CROWD. Is this the perfect solution? NO. It is merely another method of UTILIZING THE CROWD to understand.

The point is this. Every organization needs some help to figure out how to make sense of social media. Whether you believe in natural language processing, text analytics, human developed insight when trying to UTILIZE THE CROWD or you think that the microtask workers of Odesk or the people in the Pureprofile database can be YOUR CROWD to give real time help or information, it is important to first think strategically how to use this EVERCROWDED (pun totally intended) resource.

I get beat up for being to conceptual most of the time, but as my profile has taught me that I need a construct to take action. In fact, I have found that creating a conceptual framework is the secret to working smarter, because you hit the right nails at the right time. While many feel getting lots of boxes checked on a list is what is best measured, I believe the opposite. I think that concepts are the foundation of truly smart action and the difference between strategic success and tactical failure.

Yes the marketplace is fast, but with limited resources in an mile a minute marketplace, social media as I have said before is the wild west. Those who understand how everything fits can act with a purpose that drives the culture change that is needed to stay focused, check the RIGHT boxes, and win on the marketplace.

So do you want to utilize THE CROWD OR MY CROWD or are you trying to CREATE THE CROWD OR MY CROWD? Get clear...it will help you take action and UNCROWD your mind.

Social Media Analytics - The net catches the fish that are there...

2011-09-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

There is ongoing debate about the value of social media as well as how it can be used to quantify consumer behavior.

I think we can all agree on the following:

1. Social media is a huge data set (duh)
2. Social media is having an impact across the business landscape and has effected companies' business
3. Social media data is less expensive to harness (and IF you can harness it) because it is freely available
4. Social media is changing how people communicate and share their thoughts
5. Social media is causing instantaneous expression of consumer sentiment in real time
6. Social media in some form is probably here to stay

Although all these things are true, the lack of best practices for utilizing social media in a meaningful way in your business continues to slow its uptake in corporations. And while this is a culture thing (change I can believe in), it is also about bridging the current methods to the new ones that do not exist. I would also mention that people are still struggling with how the data is collected in a apples to apples way to give them confidence that they can quantify their data. And if they cannot quantify or control the variables in their work, it is a struggle to think about this data in a scalable and consistent manner.

This post is mostly about turning how you think about data collection on its head as well giving some tips to consider when integrating social media into your work flow.

Data Collection: I have been thinking about the following analogy to help people realize that social media data as a source has some very interesting nuances that make it valid in a different way than traditional data. For traditional data collection and metric development, most researchers give validity and confidence to these methods (survey research, focus groups, ethnographies) because they control who they are talking to. I have spoken with researchers and they make a fair point that they can trust the results because through their design they know they are talking to the right people to answer the questions they develop. This is fact...it makes sense...it is right. I have no argument there. That being said, I have said here a number a times (and I have worked on and been part of traditional means of market research or consumer interaction) there is tons of bias when directly interacting with consumers. In addition, sample size is smaller (even though time has shown it can be pretty accurate) and therefore questionable. And lastly, many of these methods take time and planning to execute and therefore cost more and have much greater opportunity costs because of the time you lose in a world that has changed.

The fish analogy I like to think about for traditional research is this: Traditional research is like going to the fish market and handing picking one type of fish, buying a certain number say 12, to see how they differ physically, by smell, by taste when you decide to cook them.

As for social media...I use this analogy. Instead of picking the best fish and they are all the same, social media is about simply throwing nets into the ocean and seeing how many fish end up in your net. You don't know how many you will get or what types might be in there, but the real value can be found in by simply catching FRESH fish in a net rather than waiting for them to make their way from the ocean to the fish market. If you can throw 8 nets over the side, you can do it quickly and will be able to directly compare each catch to learn about the difference. Simply put, you introduce another type of control into your data collection when you use social media. What this gives you is speed, lower cost (I go one place to catch fish as opposed to walking the whole fish market to find just 8 fish) and potentially the ability to capture knowledge about fish you would ever look at during your study. If you think about control differently when collecting social media data you suddenly have a new level of control in your data set that was never there before. The controlled randomness is something that could be considered an advantage.

Some tips to help you see the power of this bridge...

1. Create bridged ratios - Is there a standardized number in your business that you collect that could be merged with buzz, sentiment or passion counts? Think about it. If you know that your business grows when your same store sales grow a particular way, you could easily create a ratio of your efforts as it relates to social media to allow you to track if your social media efforts correlate with your traditional and accepted measures

2. Go Broad - Because your have a less control of the demographics of your collected data, you should think about ways to broaden your search to see if there is correlation. For instance, if your eight nets are looking at your competitors there is real meaning in seeing the buzz or sentiment count differences between you and your competitors. This difference is important because you method of catching fish is the same. The differences are real if you create strong definitions when you collect your data.

3. Trust the lower bias - While it can be hard to know if there is skew in your data online, there is for certain way less bias if you can get pure consumer data into your net. And because you are simply catching fish that are in your net, you are not looking at them beforehand when you catch them. Your selection process includes no filter other then the size of the holes you net. Social media's advantage is lower bias, utilize it to your advantage.

4. Leverage the speed in your mind - We know the data is instantaneous. I see it when I give a talk how I am being tweeted about as I do it. There is no question it is faster, but the you need to trust the value of that to begin thinking about how to bring this into your process. I trust the speed, I see the advantage of the speed so just go with it.

Just to show you that I don't believe that traditional methods will go by the wayside, I will fast forward in my mind a few years. In a few years, I see a pipe with social media data being plugged into a company (think of you brand as the data flowing through the pipe). The end of this pipe has a filter. When the data flows through the pipe it is plugged into a screen. As the data flows through the filter onto the screen, a company will see numbers instantaneously changing as the data affects the brand. Essentially, I am talking about real time metrics flowing onto a screen to help you understand what is being said about your brand in the social media sphere. As we are able on ANY topic to understand instantaneously what is being said and how people feel about it the reversal will start.

What I mean by the reversal is this. When instant data becomes the norm, the need to slow down will grow again. At what point when something happens is the change relevant. Is it 3 hours? 5 hours? 2 days? At this point the need for older data analysis methodologies will become extremely important and relevant. We will need to quantify the cause and effect because total optimization while possible in a real time business, will most likely create new business errors that we can't yet see.

The future of how social media will be relevant is exciting, but as with all change will still require further change. There is no perfect solution on a future state that improves upon the current state. But that future state eventually is the current state and therefore we must adapt again.

The GRIT panel...a chance to see what people believe

2011-09-14T23:42:00.000-07:00

I just returned from Orlando tonight after going to the AMA conference. Before I start, I want to thank my colleague Lenny Murphy @lennyism for including me on a panel there for his GRIT report. This report is a look at what the market research community is doing and believe will impact them in the coming year. As part of the "pre-launch" I had the privilege of sitting on a panel to discuss this report.

Frankly, it was a real pleasure. But what I thought was most interesting is something I have spoken about in the past. The reality of culture change. My colleagues on the panel did a great job of framing what they thought was important in the coming future in the market research industry. What I struggled with (and not their thoughts or comments...they made some great ones), is often how functional based groups are often haggling about what change means for them. Change is something that is inevitable and many people are risk adverse when it comes to accepting it while others are not. That being said, I believe that seeing change, accepting it and adopting it are three different things. What I saw today as I looked again at the data of how providers and clients feel change is coming to the market research industry is that there is misalignment. They don't see the same things. This is not bad, but a reality when experts get together.

At one point during this panel I was asked to comment about what I thought about this misalignment and what it meant. And frankly, as I hesitated to answer a bit (because I don't see myself as a market research expert...merely an innovator who is championing a change in their industry), I put my culture hat on and stated that I wanted to see the differences that would ensue when these questions were asked to the functions that were not involved in the survey. What would marketing think, or sales, or PR or R&D for that matter? What new market research technologies do they believe are going to make an impact? To me, if an functional group wants to ask itself questions about how they can find change they can believe in shouldn't they ask their consumers? Shouldn't they triangulate their own collection of data to get a fuller look at what they see when they look in the mirror? Lenny even acknowledged when I made my point that the the other functions would contribute further delta to the findings (which is what I believed when I asked the question).

This question and this observation continue to make the point I always make here. The people within the culture drive the change. Fear is the mind killer and being afraid of what is obviously coming (and in this case technological advances in how consumer behavior is measured (and not just social media)) is what needs to be thought through more holistically. When people cannot do things the traditional way; they adapt. For instance, how many 3rd world countries put phone lines in now? They don't. They put up cell towers and people use the towers. In the retail food industry, where I worked, many retailers couldn't afford traditional focus groups and ethnographies, they simply use e-panels and other new technologies. Why? Because they have too. Those married to the past who refuse to learn from it are just a MySpace away from ignoring Facebook.

Don't believe me...you can call my pager...

NLP: The bridge between gut and data

2011-09-13T22:25:00.000-07:00

I recently met with a customer who said to me that one of her great goals in her career to quantify something that drives her crazy because it seemed almost impossible to do so. She shared with me that it drives her crazy when the Ad Agency continuously try to dismiss the sound quantifiable based data predictions she develops as a market researcher by simply saying..."My gut feels this is just the right thing to do".

In fact this type of "hand waving" by business people drove me to get my MBA in the first place. As a scientist, I was appalled to learn how my marketing folks guesstimated many of their business decisions with basic financial modeling. As a scientist, I was taught to carefully manage variables to ensure the right controls were removed in order to get the right data.

So how does NLP (natural language processing) come in. Well, NLP is used in social media analytics to help one understand the emotion expressed in language. Because you break down the sentence like you did in middle school english class, you can more accurately characterize their thoughts and feelings.

Because this is true, doesn't this mean that you should be able to more accurately quantify "gut". If a person who is doing an advertisement wants to talk about love and kittens because they think it is a great way to market valentine's day, NLP would allow you to search on Valentine's day in conjunction with kittens to determine how often they are mentioned. In addition, it would also help you understand when they are mentioned how people feel positive and negatively and how intense this positive or negative emotion would be. Essentially it creates accurate counts of the emotion expressed about two topics that happened to be mentioned. And oh yeah, because it is social media data you are simply pulling in data that is already there. There is not set up or screening. There is no prompting. There is simply the act of casting your net how to see how much fish are caught and what type. And when you catch the fish, you can also see how they are feeling.

This NLP "filter" and the ability to capture emotion would allow you to begin to create quantitative numbers around the emotions of a topic that "you believe" is a big idea.

GUT is filtered by capturing data around relevant terms that can give you emotion to allow you to QUANTIFY that expression you believe is valuable.

Yep...NLP can turn GUT into data...think about it...how does it make you feel?

Social Media - Ignoring the Possiblities

2011-09-07T10:30:00.000-07:00

A question? How are you tracking your social media P&L?

Do you even have one? Are you wondering what I am talking about? The answer is this, the social media P&L is all about your social media brand awareness. And by social media brand awareness, I am talking about making sure that you have good understanding about what people are saying about your brand online.

The reality is this, and I have said this before, social media is becoming impossible to ignore because of two very important reasons:

1. You market research wears no clothes - People are talking about everything online as we speak. They are also talking about your brand. In addition, people are reading about what they are saying about your brand. And because people are reading it, they are being influenced and you might not even know it. And having a crapload of likes on your facebook fan page does not cover everythingt that is being said online. Why? Because when you go to buy a new refrigerator and you want to buy Samsung do you go to the Samsung Facebook Fan Page to find out what people think about refrigerators? No you don't because your Facebook fanpage is a bunch of your core consumers passionately saying how much they love it. There isn't a ton of objectivity there.

2. The suggestion box is now public - Much in the same vain, consumers are making suggestions and essentially gushing insights every second online. That being said, people still insist on spending hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to figure out the next big thing and most of the time are only talking to their "target consumers". I get this strategy, but at the same time, isn't the concept of target consumer slowly becoming obsolete because everyone is out there in a consumer free-for-all acting like MEO's because they must be heard...I mean...the suggestion box is now fully public.

So how should you think about this concept? Think about being able to UNDERSTAND some key attributes of your brand. Of course you want to know the following:

1. What is the buzz around my brand?
2. How does my buzz compare to others in the category?
3. What is the overall sentiment for my brand? Do people speak positively or negatively?
4. Can I measure the intensity of that liking for my brand?
5. What are some key things people like or dislike about my brand?

Even with this very basic information one can begin to get a clear picture about what social media says about your brand. And more importantly, you will gain insight from a NEW data source. Many people are spending entirely too much time debating whether or not social media is a decent place to collect data. Stop the debate...it is! But...and a big one...is to think about how it can work for you. At a minimum, you should be thinking about how it can augment your work. Even if it isn't your core consumer and even if you think the data is skewed, couldn't it save you money to study social media before you do a focus group or ethnography?

The point is this. The companies who can identify how to best operaitonalize social media by bringing concepts like a social media P&L into their work flow, will win in the mid-term. Notice I say mid-term. I spend all my day working with very large companies helping them understand and still convincing them about the value of this new BIG DATA set. The reality is adoption is dependent upon the vision of the leaders. And today, many folks spend far too much time worrying about making a mistake rather than paying to do a really great experiment.

Start simple. Start with a quarter look at your brand versus its competitors. You can always go from there. Getting a way to have an overview with social media data will help you decide a few things. For one, it can help you decide whether the data set is merely an augmentation of what you do. And second, you might realize you can save a boatload of money because it is accurate and worthwhile as a new way of doing things that might replace slower and more expensive methods.

Either way, social media is change...and change is my business and business is good.

Cultural Conundrums - a Generational Perspective

2011-09-02T10:09:00.000-07:00

At one point in my career if you can believe it I managed the diversity program as an Innovation Leader. I always remember my good friend Phyllis E. asked me upon meeting me for the first time, "Can I ask you a question...what the heck does diversity have to do with innovation????". I had met Phyllis (a 40 something year old african american woman who has become a great friend since this question) for about 5 minutes (in fact my beer hadn't even arrived) when this question was given to me.

My response...I looked back with a smile and said, "I have little to no idea, but we are sure as heck going to find out..."

Since that day, my journey into the generational differences had begun. Very quickly (in fact moments after my beer arrived) I began to ponder the answer to this question in a meaningful way. My boss at the time (newly minted I might add) Frank C., had given me responsibility for this across an organization of 20,000, with the idea that diversity today is about diversity of thought as much as it is about the protected classes (I always forget this list).

I always loved this concept as was evident in my post about innovation platforms and understanding how people innovate. How people innovate is clearly about diversity of thought.

That being said, I have two millennials in my house, I am smack in the middle of Gen X, and I have had the pleasure of working with Gen Y's and mentoring them too (as well as having baby boomers and the generation older than them as well...that name escapes me).

As much as how people do things different, what skills they have in their educational tool box, the concept of generational diversity is also a factor that must be considered when creating an innovation culture based upon trust.

I recently had a great adventure with my Gen Y buddy when I got to go out with a bunch of his friends in NYC. It was wild. I am 40 year old suburban living California with two kids who has been married before internet dating was even conceived. I am a Gen Xer who is very able to appreciate some of the hallmarks of Gen Y culture (work/life balance, freedom to operate) but I also have much Boomer ethic in me (do what it takes to get the job done, no one will hand it to you, working hard is where success comes from), but like I always say, until you are face to face with the differences you cannot appreciate what it is truly like to deal with them. And oh yeah, I am married to a woman from South America which means I have a hybrid-Hispanic/American culture in my home...call it a real melting pot.

I guess the point of this post is to highlight that all generations needs to get greater awareness of the other in order to make a more seamless work culture. The only thing I had in common with this youthful troop (besides Stan who is a first generation American and demonstrates other traits not seen in true-blooded Gen Y's) is that we all work in social media. I work in the creation of the infrastructure on the west coast in silicon valley...they work on the east cost marketing its value to the consumers who create its ebb and flow. You would think there would be much to discuss.

But I would say it started as a awkward cultural cluster you know what. As a Gen X going to a socializing event, it is perfectly normal to expect to share your professional experience, talk shop and even trade cards looking for some commonality of business interests. For us, crossing those boundaries is normal and regular. For Gen Y, they want to separate work and life, but at the same time want you to know what they do in their work while they are enjoying their life, so it is a bit confusing that they claim not to be defined by their careers although they wear their achievements like a badge. This sounds negative, but it is not. I am merely highlighting what I believe is a difference in generational culture.

Secondly, I was raised to be more interested in learning about others as I was sharing about myself. It is proper manners to ask first about someone else, with an expectation of being asked as well. I continue to be fascinated that the percentage of Gen Y folks who will follow telling you about themselves with a question is about 25%. I would say 1 in 4 ask you back. Now this is something I think is a shame. I certainly respect a Gen Y's view on life. I love the work/life balance thing. I love the trust me and I will get the job done (even in my experience their ability to "push" themselves to achieve the things they envision is hit or miss). I also love their confidence in their abilities (even though I still believe there is a think line between confidence, arrogance and ego). But as a Gen Xer who I am sure was similar in many ways when I was in my 20's I will share this...

I have learned in the last five years a very important lesson I would share with anyone. The epiphany is this. Find people older than you who are your peers, but also have been where you are. They are like time travelers. They know things about what you are going through AND you are peers in thought. If you lower your narcissistic tendencies for a moment (sorry Gen Y...this is you I am talking to...although there is plenty of that across generations), something wonderful can happen. You can accelerate your learning curve because they can help you see into your future. What skills you need to learn, how to avoid mistakes they have made and where you might be going even if you are not sure.

The best example of this involved a recent breakfast I had with two of my innovation elders. One I have known on and off for five years, John Joss (a real scholar, a real gentleman, and a real visionary) the other is H whom I will call H as we are still getting to know each other.

After returning to the Bay Area last year, John reached out to me because quite frankly we were innovation kindred spirits (people who travel along the innovation time line so to speak) to have lunch. Eating together after not seeing each other for 3 years was a real joy. We caught up, we talked and he shared with me some adventures he wanted me to be involved in. Part of the meeting included meeting with H (his buddy who he thought we would have much to discuss). I agreed and we set up the breakfast I am referring to.

One morning, before a meeting, I met John and H in the Ferry building in SF. John shows up wearing a leather motorcycle suit with sun glasses and his hair slicked back (John is 78 an is a true inspiration in this regards...because he doesn't see age) and H shows up wearing classic silicon valley attire (jeans baby!). We proceed to have breakfast together and talk about innovation and what opportunities my current company might have with H's market research firm. But as I am sitting there I get that time traveler sense. H and I are connecting very strongly from the standpoint of creativity, culture change and helping people see how to be different. H owns his own business and has for 25 years because he doesn't like what big company culture has to offer. He has a smile as he listens to my story of how I ended up sitting in the seat across from him. If I dismiss H, because I know more, I have my proverbial shit together etc, I miss the opportunity to SEE into my future.

H sits there laughing gently staring at me because I can see he has been in my shoes struggling with the future that I look towards and he has already lived. I ask him..."you can see where I heading can't you?" He wisely looks at me and says..."yes, you are nearly there, but it will take some more time". I won't go into the specifics, but the gist is that by meeting a thought peer with experience I am now able to recognize when it is time to shut up and ask a lot of question to learn rather than assume I know it all because it is different now. As a middle aged guy, I know technology changes, which changes how we relate to the world, but the emotional and mental tribulations we go through in life are merely similar flavors. Instead of being key lime today it was lime in the past, but it is still lime and it is still citrus. I mean blue lake beans are just friggin green beans if you know what I mean.

What does this have to do with diversity and culture. I believe to drive better cultural symmetry in our personal and professional lives, we have to get real, stop leaning our generational morays and simply try to learn all the time from everyone. In my night out with Gen Y, I stepped into some cultural mines that made me feel like most of them where thinking who is this slightly overweight balding middle age guy and what is he doing here. What they didn't take the time to ask or learn is they may have had a time traveler in their midst who could be a great peer that could help them understand the mine field they are currently wandering through as they try to find themselves.

It is why even though I live 3000 miles away from Stan, that he will always have my support and help. Why? Because when I was an executive at a company of 20,000 people he had the guts to walk into my office look me in the eye and ask for my help, because I seemed the least full of shit leader he had come across and he wanted to learn. Good move Stan. This is the type of humility missing from our generational timeline that exists in a fast paced world that is now overrun by social media.

In fact, I was able to open up an opportunity for Stan to get a job...why? because as I said he recognized the opportunity to befriend a time traveler...and that is where true learning starts and narcissism ends.

think about it.

Time versus Information - The Acquisition Cycle

2011-09-01T16:50:00.000-07:00

There are many questions about when to use social media, what do I do with it when I have the information and can I trust it. In my time working in innovation, I have learned that one of the principles that make an innovator successful is the concept of encountering the desperate.

What does this mean?

Encountering the desperate simply means that if you are trying to make something new happens, one of the best partners to collaborate with is the "desperate". This is a person that is in a bind and will be more flexible as it pertains to taking on a new idea. They are usually wanting to minimize their risk but need to try something risky to make it happen.

In fact, one of the key relationship as it pertains to social media is the idea of time versus information. Essentially, Social Media is a good solution when I don't have the time to get that information. And a great use case of this scenario is during the acquisition cycle.

A few years ago when I worked with parts of the organization who lead the acquisition of new business, I observed something very interesting. When it came to buying new businesses, most of the due diligence focused on quantifying the value of the business but a great deal of it did not focus on gathering key consumer insights. In fact, I was shocked to learning during these experiences that many executives of very large companies gather little to no information consumer insights on the company they are acquiring, relying more on canned information, personally collected data (they try it themselves and their gut). This brings up a great example of people making HUGE decision where they don't have enough time to get the information.

Why social media then?

Speed - we all know social media information is happening all the time. Because collecting consumer insight is very fast, ones ability to get primary data where there is little makes it a great way to help a company make a more informed decision.

Unbiased - If a company is trying to decide whether it wants to invest a ton of money into a new business, social media's unbiased nature (the data is what it is) makes it a great method for collecting consumer insight.

Competitive Analysis - Because you can look at all your competition easily, quickly and cheaply you can get a much better consumer competitive analysis than ever before. This makes the data richer and more complete when before this time there was no way to collect anything meaningful.

Did I successfully prove my point?

A number of years ago, I did get the chance to apply social media during the process of making an acquisition. During this project, the social media data WAS the method by which the consumer insights were developed and I was told by the key stakeholder who trusted me using this process, that while it was why the decision was made, the executive team did feel much better about taking the leap knowing that when they didn't have time to get the information they were able to get the social media picture.

Oh yeah...that was 2007. 4 years before this huge thing called social media hit the streets. Is this a way to stroke my ego because I was using it so long ago...actually no! It is more about the fact that when you encounter the desperate and there is not time to get the information you can drive change...AND that is what I am interested in helping people see....

Beyond the Innovation Collaboration Platform

2011-09-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

I am back...after two months of home remodeling and moving...I have time to write again...

Last week, I had the pleasure of being invited as an innovation thought leader to Bright Idea's Birds of a Feather innovation collaboration event at Kraft Foods. I wanted to thank the Bright Idea folks for including in what was a very interesting event.

The main goal of being there was to discuss and share collaboration stories from across the organization around how the growing collaboration platforms, like Bright Idea, are being utilized by the organization. Hat's off to Matt Greeley for making not about sales, but collaboration and networking.

Having this pure goal gives great credibility to their efforts to help organizations develop meaningful collaboration solutions. And to get 100 people there is impressive.

As someone who loves the principles of trust, transparency and collaboration and sees them as the foundation of great innovation, I really want to also give credit to my colleagues at Spigit as well in this post. I have had the opportunity to spend time with both organizations (Bright Idea and Spigit) and I continue to believe and want to praise both companies for their efforts to move beyond the 2000's principle of open innovation towards the next frontier of leveraging your own people for great things. Does this mean that open innovation is an concept with low value...NO! What I continue to believe and have seen in my experience on the front lines and in talking to people in the space is that if you can't change the culture of the company you will never see the greatness of open innovation flow across the enterprise. Why? Because if the there is only one WE (group) working and believing in this principle then it is hard to get the other WE's (departments) focusing on it and making it live.

At the BOF meeting in Chicago I was pleased to see a great many people spending time talking about how collaboration platforms are growing in their power in a grassroots sort of way. Meaning that many executives are getting the authority to brand the idea, bring it to the rest of the organization and are being tasked to operationalize it. It seems that those who understand the concept is growing...the question is now about approach.

What gives me great hope however, is how both Spigit and Bright Idea are both breaking through the cultural barriers of collaboration by systemitizing a platform that can give innovation an operational methodology by which companies can leverage their folks.

In fact, in Chicago, the presentations were excellent in that they gave a wide look at the different industries that are all tackling how to make the platform live. In fact, I saw presentations from distributors, to construction to CPG. This is an awesome moment for innovation collaboration.

Now to my true point here...

There is still something missing........

Now we have a means to help people collaborate to create across long distances.

We also have means within the platform that make sure the good ideas don't simply die because both companies are thinking about the funding and project management process beyond the idea.

THE QUESTION IS THIS...EVERYONE HAS KEY SKILLS THEY HAVE ACQUIRED...BUT HOW DO THE INDIVIDUALS OF AN ORGANIZATION LIKE TO ACTUALLY INNOVATE?

By this I mean...we all create, product, interact and learn differently. By our very nature, there are people who love to develop concepts that produce frameworks, while there are others who are masters at de-risking incremental ideas that can be made actionable. What is missing from the current platforms is the inclusion of the internal human elements that make people innovate.

Currently we have great internal open innovation systems that give the company a way to operationalize the creation, buy in and execution of new ideas. What we don't have is a way to bring the right people at the right time to different types of engagements internally. If I want to create huge breakthrough ideas who should I turn to. If I then want people to take those big ideas and figure out which one is the most feasible I probably need someone different. What if I want to solve that problem previously described for a process engineering problem? that might require a different set of people to bring to the party. Internal open innovation needs another layer of depth to make it even more efficient.

The ISPI...one simple answer to this question...

below is the "totem" of two different types of innovators

What this is is the ISPI. It was created by Bob Rosenfeld of Idea Connection Systems and it is something I very much believe in when it comes to innovation. What it highlights essentially is that we are all programed to innovate differently. In fact, these two charts are only a piece of the entire picture (there is more to both totems) but for the sake of argument to be made here around innovation platforms. What is obvious is this...these two people do not like to innovate the same way. One is better at creating incremental innovation, de-risking ideas and will be outstanding at documenting the process they came up to solving the problem on paper. The other is fashioned for creating huge game-changing ideas, will not worry about the details when creating any idea and will do a great job during brainstorming of taking in all the information being presented and thinking about it and using it to produce an idea that will test what people are saying. They are really different. Now layer on the fact that one could be a finance person and the other could be from R&D. If you bring that into the discussion (and it doesn't matter how you put it together) you would want that expertise for different things no?

What I am trying to say is there is a deeper layer and methods out there to help these outstanding platforms push it to the next level. To help it make even more sense as companies try to get value from great tools. Today, they bring structure where there isn't any. In the future who knows, could these tools bring a scalpel to the problems at hand?

I think so...it is how you get align what I consider the three key pieces of an innovation culture...

the tools are really helping bring the goals of the enterprise (I want ideas) together with mobilizing the We (those who play), but they need to account for the ME's skills a bit more.

Just some food for thought and thank you Bright Idea for including me in what was a great experience.

Innovation speed dating, trust and implementing social media

2011-07-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

As a change agent who hangs his hat in the social media arena, I want to start bringing some of my learnings from driving change into the social media discussion in a more overt way. Why? Because as I continue to wander around the social media landscape, I continue to find great similarities to the simple fact that getting people to adopt social media across within the organization is a game of change.

Back in 2008, I gave a talk called Innovation Partnerships: Being the benevolent virus which highlighted the key behaviors to building a successful partnership for an innovative offering. One of the most important steps in building innovation partnerships is approaching the creation step differently. In my talk I call it Being and Innovation Speed Dater. Why a speed dater? Because when you speed date you only have a few minutes to decide whether you want to go out on that date. If you can't decide, someone else might steal the date from you. And to be a speed dater you need to have the right mind set when you are learning about you potential partner. Below is a slide that highlights my point (from the talk link listed above)

What you see here are how the innovation extraction/speed dater mindset is different. In my experience over the years I see most people taking a lean back, skeptical and prove it to me approach. How is this any different in social media? I am seeing the companies who are leaning forward and taking action as the ones who are winning (my personal experience). This point brings one story to mind. I went to a company to meet with the executives about our products (last fall). In fact, this executive was invited to be a lighthouse partner for the creation of our product. He said, I will wait and see then. When I met with him in the fall, he again said I will wait and see. Today, his biggest competitor is a client who is leading the charge while he simply waits and sees. As a lighthouse partner, he would have had a say in how it looked, what it did and even the future roadmap. Today he probably can sit there saying...look when I buy it I will get it totally finished and didn't have to take the risk to invest all this money to find out it didn't work. But can he ever really make up for lost time. Because even when he says yes finally (and I will start working on that soon) he will have to get a whole cadre of people to buy in to do it. He will be at the starting line, a tortoise, while his competition was the hare, but this hair ran out of the gate and isn't stopping for a nap.

The point is this. Being an innovation speed dater is about trust, believing in what your partner says and most importantly at the BEGINNING giving them the benefit of the doubt as you EXPLORE what is possible. Does this you are married forever? NO! It means you will trust your partner and what they are telling you enough to do an experiment to find out. Nothing tried, nothing is a saying for ninnies who are terrified to win. And in social media that statement is one for the dead, because if they don't try there are so many reasons there competition will kill you dead. Remember the speed of insight is climbing by the second. I can tell you exactly what people liked and didn't like about #askobama hastag today. If you standstill the insights are passing you by and if you don't have good insight...you won't have a business for long because the DAVID who uses social media will really kick GOLIATH's ass in a guerilla marketing street battle...

If you are desperate enough to look for love in your own life...be an innovation speed dater in your business one!

Why is social media data quality less important than quantity?

2011-07-06T23:46:00.000-07:00

I will keep this short, but I am at wit's end over this. As I work with many companies across the business landscape, I am appalled by the number of people who are continuously enamored with social media data quantity over quality.

What does this mean?

To the average person I see many more people questioning social media data because there should be more of it. Or they say using a statistical sample is garbage because they want to know about the other 990,000 data points. I hear people say that unless we understand everything then it can't be true. Yet they will manhandle 20 sound bites that state there message and run off the to press room.

I mean come on. This is just craziness. Isn't it true that presidential elections are usually fairly accurate using standardized polling methods that use statistical samples of data with a few thousand data points. No one questions these number even though they are usually generated through calling home phone numbers that are becoming obsolete. Isn't that statistically "difficult" to swallow.

I remember when I was a lab scientist that my head was beaten in if I didn't do the right control experiment, collect the data enough to be sure it was right or simply had the common sense to accept relevant data sets.

With social media its like people have gone crazy due to data overload. Are you really going to miss the insight if you don't get that 999,999 sound bite characterized? All I am saying as I usually do is that social media listening does not equal understanding.

If you have 1000 great highly accurate data points doesn't understanding what they are specifically saying help you more than knowing there are 3,200,000 tweets on a website and the volume is up 5% versus yesterday.

Give me a deep understanding in a day (versus waiting 4-8 weeks with a normal brand tracker), rather than a surface look at a ton of junk...

I am just sayin...let's think a little harder about why versus how much or how much more.

When social media strikes!!!!! - A theoretical scenario in the near future

2011-07-05T16:25:00.000-07:00

Introduction....

You are the Vice President of Marketing/Market Research/PR... at a very large company. Your role includes ensuring the business stays healthy. Your company is #1 in the marketplace and the key to your success has been the expert way you have managed understanding your consumer. Over the past five years, you have successfully managed the business by always bring quality products to the marketplace focused on delivering against the promise of your brand. Your brand is viewed by consumers as having high quality. They believe in the brand promise of keeping my family safe and your long standing reputation as a good corporate citizen who has been a leader in fair labor practices. Regardless of whether to new products on the market are innovative or merely line extensions/product improvements you have a great grip on your consumers. And while many may consider your products boring, the history of the brand has made your a stalwart with the boomer generation and their children. You are very aware that you need to reinvent yourself with the younger consumer but because your brand is associated with their grandparents the market research being conducted suggests you are slowly winning them as well because it reminds them of the comfort of their family.

The scenario...

The phone rings. It is 5AM Tuesday morning. You roll over to answer the phone knocking it over. From the floor you hear the frantic shouts asking if you are there. Startled, you grab the phone to hear your boss the COO on the other line. He/She is panicked. In fact, they can barely get the words out to you. As the severity of their emotion strikes you, you quickly awaken from your slumber to reality.

"What happened?" you ask.

"You need to get to the office right away. I was waking up to head to the gym and you won't believe what I read on our Facebook Fan Page. A consumer asked some pretty serious questions about our product safety. A consumer stated that their child nearly died when they used too much of our newly launched product. They referred to a report talking about recent findings by a University that our main ingredient across our product line poses potential health risks for children under 14. The study is by a very influential assistant professor who continues to look for the link between ingredients and health issues in children. You remember the guy. He was the one who spent two years showing how powdered formula made babies obese and that certain brands were more at fault than others. Holy crap. The number 3 player ended up number 1 because they had moved away from the less expensive material towards the more natural one. This guy is a big net influencer. His twitter stream has over 150,000 followers and his blog posts are picked up by all the mommy blogs. What are we going to do? I need you in the office in 30 minutes so we can game plan on this issue."

You quickly jump in the shower thinking through the problem. Over the past two years, your brand trackers have shown time and time again that there was little to no risk from your main ingredient. In ethnographies, parents often told you that while there were some trade offs using the product your long standing tradition of quality limited the risk. You quantified the consumer panel time and time again. Your vendors assured you that your brand equity was one of the strongest and that you had beat back any local questions around this issue, because the science showed there really wasn't any issue. Focus groups worked and your facebook fan page allowed you to talk to your consumers to keep a pulse on how much they loved your products. In fact, your follows show great passion and love for what you do. You don't expect the question to blunt the followers. Your agency continued to give you buzz reports showing how much traffic your brand has been getting launch after launch. In fact month over month it was growing by 5%. You are confident that your listening tools will help you answer the question because they will help you monitor where the buzz is and if it is dying down.

When you arrive at the office, you check in and call your social media manager. They quickly check the facebook fan page and see there is a small group of people asking questions of the post, but the faithful followers swamp them out. You look at your listening reports show that while your traffic is up, there is nothing unusual occurring that you can see. The story doesn't seem to show a dramatic increase in impression beyond the facebook fan page. Calmly you report to your boss that your social media report seems OK and you don't think the issue will pick up because the question on the fan page has been met with skepticism and the buzz seems stable.

What is wrong with this picture????

This executive is stopping at listening. Just because your direct marketing effort to your fanatics on your facebook fan page is calm AND you know the buzz is up or at least steady is not enough to help you UNDERSTAND if this is an issue. Any company who feels safe under this type of analysis with the speed of insight in social media is taking a risk.

Here are few questions...

1. Does this executive have any idea beyond their Facebook Fan Page (their only direct window into social media consumers) what the chatter is saying?
2. How can one UNDERSTAND the why within the data if they are just checking the BUZZ (mentions) to see where the volume is?
3. How could a few posts that are checked represent the meaning or sentiment of the potential millions of tweets are that out there the social media sphere?

What is missing from this analysis to make it more complete?

One could use a brand passion index (which looks at buzz, sentiment and passion on one chart) to understand if there was a change in the brands passion with consumers. You could also do a netnography (brand audit online) to understand what is happening specifically with the brand.

The point is this...Listening does not equal Understanding in social media and there are many holes in taking this approach. When companies can quickly find the RIGHT social media data and UNDERSTAND what it is saying in say less than an hour then you have a good way to deal with this made up scenario.

I have a feeling however it is like matter...Matter can neither be created nor destroyed but merely changed in shape or form. I would argue there are execs struggling with this right now. And regardless of what you think the best tool is...you should at least ask HOW LONG WOULD IT TAKE ME TO UNDERSTAND WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS? If they say longer than an hour...you don't have a good tool!

Breaking Filter Bubble's - How Natural Language Processing can help.

2011-07-01T08:33:00.000-07:00

Recently, a colleague sent me a link that has stuck in my brain. It is a 9 minute talk on TED by Eli Pariser on the concept of internet filter bubbles. What Eli argues is that while the internet was created to help drive globalness and openness between individuals, the optimization going on behind the scenes is simply destroying it. Essentially, companies have worked so hard to develop algorithms to make sure you see what you like that we are now living in a world where we see what they want us to see. It is scary to me. In his talk he gives an example of two people doing the same search on google (search is Egypt) and that they see completely different front pages. And that as your usage goes so does what you see until you only really see a small portion of the internet. This filtering, in essence, leads to a world where people believe they are in a free e-world able to roam around where they please but in reality they cannot anymore. The sites we use are starting to hold us hostage using these behind the scenes methods of "observing" you behavior. I do agree that this type of optimization would be useful to give folks a positive experience about their product experience (because it drives efficiency, control and some measure of confidence). But can I really find what I want? And do unemotional algorithms monitoring my clicks UNDERSTAND what I want to really do. If I am a person who worries about their health and likes to read on the issues I may think I have, are we doing consumers a favor by continuous taking them to sites giving that type of information with medicine ads that help them treat the problem. Wouldn't we do an even greater service UNDERSTANDING over time that this consumer is afraid and that they also need to find sites that could help them deal with their fears of getting sick?

The question is this; doesn't something like natural language processing, where you can understand the link between sentences give us the ability to break these filter bubbles by taking an out of the box approach to checking behavior on web content? Instead of simply seeing clicks it could see links within the language you write in your queries (or even let you write sentences as queries rather than key words) to get to a wider variety of information. And over time this approach would broaden the filter bubbles by bringing information in that connects not only with WHAT you want know but HOW YOU FEEL when trying to find out. This would at least give the consumer the option to go places that currently computers currently decide for you. Then you could get more control of your own online world and at least get you out of your own infophobic bubble you let the companies create for you behind the scenes. But I guess the real question is...shouldn't they just give us the option to click the unfiltered button before we click search?

Why we won't see the 90's dotcom bust this time - The Virtual Business is really here

2011-06-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

This year there will be a flurry of IPO's. Linked In already went public last month with much hoopla. Pandora, Zynga and others are doing the same. As many of us remember, in the late 90's many millionaires were created and then destroyed as quickly as they got rich. It seemed back then that every company with a pulse had set up a storefront that was going to be the next huge business. When the bubble did eventually burst in 2001, most people simply said that many businesses were not meant to be run over the internet or people just don't trust the internet as a mode of doing business. And while we have seen a good many of them survive and thrive (hotwire, expedia, ebay, amazon etc), the bubble ruined a lot of dreams. In fact, many things I have read chalked it up to generational issues. By this I mean, that Gen X was not really savvy enough to become the online consumer and that it was important for us to wait until Gen Y was the overarching consumer.

If we fast forward 10 years, things appear different. Gen Y is the overarching consumer now. Many companies have figured out how to grow using the internet as a business platform. Everything seems honkey dorey so to speak. I believe in the coming internet boom of the 10's. Why? It has nothing to do with the consumer and everything to do with the business. The consumer is clearly ready. The social graph says so. The number of consumers used to using the internet is now a way of life. This is an important part of making the internet economy thrive. It has shrunk the world for sure.

Why do I think it is not only the consumer's readiness (an important part)? Because I believe there is a three legged business stool that is being created that will change ANYONE's ability to compete in this new internet economy.

What is this three legged stool? The first is the virtual storefront. The second is the virtual marketing machine and the third? (It would be my blog if it wasn't the third leg) The third leg is the virtual consumer research marketplace.

First - The virtual storefront...

One of my hypotheses on why the dotcom bust came had to do with what I would call the lonely virtual storefront. During the 90's the internet most certainly empowered companies big and small to be able to reach a much wider audience for their business in a much simpler way. A small company in a small town in Texas was now enabled to sell their products to anyone anywhere in the world. In essence, the storefront went global with the use of technology. This is an obvious point that anyone would agree with. But when the virtual storefront went up, many people forgot that having a great product with an ingenious store is not enough to attract customers. You need marketing, word of mouth and trust. In the 90's the virutal storefront was accompanied with what...traditional marketing media to attract consumers. Pets.com and its puppet. Etoys and their great song intro. The list goes on. Both of these companies worked to use traditional marketing to attract its consumer to a new way of doing business on their virtual storefront. It didn't work very well. They loved the commercial but their habits hadn't changed AND the virtual storefront didn't have a virtual way to market at a low cost. It made it prohibitively expensive for anyone to set up their store and reach their target. That is until the late 00's...

The virtual marketing machine (Twitter/Facebook anyone?)

As the 00's wore on and people were thinking very hard about how to make the Web work many new services that enable trust and infrastructure to the virtual storefront emerged. We have Paypal, which helped consumers transact with each other. Ebay gave the everyday person a way to sell what they wanted which showed people that the web was trustworthy. The litany of security technologies that arrived to you feel safe to use your card on the web. And essentially events occurred that helped people change their behavior. I hate shopping at Christmas why not do it from my house? I loved that BBQ sauce in Memphis, I wish I could buy it...You Can Now!. ETC. But then the game really changed with Twitter and Facebook.

The advent of these two services which by the way make up 86% of our consumer insights index arrived on the scene and everything changed. Why? Because beyond ads online and SEO to get your name out there, marketing became nearly free. With these two dominant social networks, a company's ability to reach consumers changed overnight. My sister, for instance, has a photography business. She does weddings. She tells me that with Facebook alone, she gets business because her clients refer her and post their pictures to this very personal engagement. Like wildfire there is more business. When an independent business owner can market themselves for free AND setup their virtual storefront they are now empowered to compete with big companies. In fact, they have an advantage because their consumers do wonders for them. Facebook and Twitter are the linchpins to give anyone the ability to run a business cheaply and effectively.

Virtual Consumer Insight Genreration!

So I now have two legs of the social media stool to run a business...the last piece is coming. The ability to understand consumer behavior in a much less expensive way. Enter social media analytics/listening or whatever you want to call it. With the advent of natural language processing, at Netbase we have given people a vehicle to understand consumers who talk in the virtual world. The power of this is founded in two things. For one, our tools give accurate information about this sentiment. And second, because we have indexed billions of sound bites expressing emotions from consumers, you can look at any topic. This means you have an inexpensive way to do research on your own business, but also you competitors as well.

Today, someone wanting to set up a business can put up a virtual storefront, market to hundreds of millions of consumers for free and soon they will be able to study what people are saying at a significanlty reduced rate. You as an individual can have a completely virtual business that could compete with multi-billion organizations because the data AND the consumers are there for you to touch any time any where from the comfort of your computer screen.

And now I am going to tweet this blogpost so you read this...tweet it to someonelse if you do...that is how my virtual business as an innovator can grow!

The social media speed of insight - Better get on the bus

2011-06-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

I mentioned in my last post from the conference I attended how people even within the market research field know the importance of the change social media will bring (change more the operative word for me), yet their is a lack of trust and therefore a lack of adoption of this data except for the innovators and early adopters.

I thought I would put in an even more granular perspective as to why corporate culture must get its head around and ahead (pun intended) of what is coming. The real issue I have been hearing in my discussion with those who track consumer behavior is there lack of trust in social media for several reasons

1. Who creates the data - This is a big one. People will acknowledge that there is no question the social graph is normalizing, but there is still a huge question of whether the total numbers of consumers are "representative". And by respresentative I mean how CPG and large marketing/market research functions segment their consumers. In my experience, most big companies study their core consumers and segment/name them as a means of figuring out who their brand really targets. These groups are often very specific from a demographic perspective giving them the target they need. As for social media and the social graph, because no one has done a great job of being able to break down the data in this way, people are skeptical of how to link this data to that way of thinking. They also don't trust who puts the research on the web. Many have questioned if it is being influenced by the companies who market online. There are other issues with who creates it, but you get the idea.

2. The data's accuracy - This one is obvious and even those not in the field worry about this. It is accurate? how can I trust it? I will come back to it, because this is the fundamental problem that could spell big companies' doom. This is what I consider the most cyclical of issues in social media. And those who get caught in the tornado can't get out...I fear for them.

3. How do I quantify? I am a scientist (I have a PhD in Chemistry and I play a market researcher on TV)...my DNA is embedded with the need to quantify things (even if it is isn't in my profile...I hate details and love concepts). Even with my aversion of details, I still believe completely in the need to control your studies in a way that comparisons can be made accurately. I am looser than your average scientist because I like thinking about change and big idea, but regardless I appreciate the need for quantification when making statements about data. And when it comes to consumers, the variety of the human dynamic, makes it even harder to quantify and then correlate information.

4. The boss didn't tell me to - This is the lamest and unfortunately the buddy of the other three. Fearing for one's job by taking a risk is the worst reason not to do things. It is how companies live and die. Only through the passion of its people will companies recognize change when it is coming. I am not even going out on a limb that while this is number 4 on the list, the chasm between a marketer or market researchers behavior as a consumer (they use the internet...see the last post) and their behavior as a professional (they don't trust it) makes this the scariest of reason why the social media speed of insight could swallow them whole.

Regardless of whether these are good or bad reasons for not adopting change (and in this case the change is social media data to drive the business), they are real and I see them everyday as I work with many people across many organizations at many levels. Now to my point and the thing I want anyone who reads this to think about.

One of the great hindraces in the outstanding minds in the market research firms is speed. Market researches love to quantify and make sure they have their i's dotted and t's crossed. This thinking is something that can hinder the accpetance of social media. Actually it makes sense. That being said...

The speed at which the data is developed is accelerating so fast and vast that if you cannot understand how to process it and understand it, it could change an hour later causing you to make a mistake in your interpretation. Once more, this data is competely public and spreadable in the flash of a second. Case in point, within 15 hours everyone was aware that a man in Pakistan named Sohaib Athar had not only tweeted that Osama Bin Laden was dead, but they knew he was doing it without knowing it. This news spread worldwide in less than a day. In fact, the day that Osama Bin Laden was killed, if you searched on NetBase product the term Obama you would see the data more than double every hour of the day until it reached millions of sound bites by the end of it.

Frankly...market research will eventually live in a world where quali quant might have to be good enough or at least until the technology can track it quickly and efficiently. But for now...we may have to throw out how we think about things...

If you are getting caught up some of the reasons social media is not viable think about the consequences. If you don't get on board to do the following:

1. What is my social media strategy?
2. What is the suite of tools I need to monitor, understand and respond to social media?
3. What resources will I assign to understand and deal with social media?
4. What external sources/partners will help me break it down, understand it, react to it and plan for it?

These things take time and money in any company and in a big one this could easily take 18 months to get through. So if you haven't started, don't trust it and still have leaders afraid of it you are losing ground on those who have started, trust it and have leaders that aren't afraid of it. And every second you keep thinking about what to do those who already know are only gaining more ground on you.

It is time to cross the chasm because between the public nature of social media, the volume it creates and the speed at which it can affect you, the time is coming where those who are on board will be unable to compete.

Good luck moving the mountain because if you are reading this and nodding your head, then you are a change agent, champion or expert and you may have an uphill battle to face. Drop me a line if you want a partner in crime!

Let's get this party started right! wOOt!

The social media adoption conundrum - Change Agents and Evil Planners wanted!

2011-06-08T10:54:00.000-07:00

This week I was at the Marketing Research association conference selling my social media wares and I even had the privilege to speaking on the topic to a group of very smart market researchers. What was most intriguing to me as I stood in front of about 60 people was the answer to the following question. As I started to share with the group a case study using social media data to look at a brand, I asked the following, "Of the people in this room how many of you trust social media as a viable data source for doing research?". Do you know how many professional market researchers raised their hands to affirm their trust of social media?

2! FREAKING 2 OUT OF 60!

One would think in the belly of the social media application beast so to speak that more people at this point would be willing to trust social media data even though it is different and strange. You know why? Because when I followed up the first question with another question later in my presentation, one that completely changed directions on them, I received something different from the audience. This time I made it personal.

My second question...,"When you buy an appliance or piece of electronic equipment what is the first thing you do to decide?" Then I asked, "How many of you go to read reviews on the web?"

The response this time.....

58! FREAKING 58 OUT OF 60!

I think you get the point. When it comes to change and in this case social media, getting people to apply something to business they already personally use as consumers each and every day demonstrates the importance of culture in the equation. I can't tell people enough if you are selling innovative solutions from the outside in, you are playing a game of culture. A game that is long and hard, but can be worthwhile should you choose to do battle and choose to build the right skills to do it. And as a person who was the champion in a large organization I will say this, it takes one to know one. Whether you are trying to get a large organization to change the game or a person within the organization trying to create a change you believe in, expect effort, hardship and the need for a political savvy. Most importantly, however, know how to spot a champion or to be one to make it happen.

Innovation champions are gluttons for punishment, people who are passionate, believe in themselves and the need for change, and lastly are all about collaborative innovation. This is what it will take my friends if you want to see the social media NOON as I like to call it. Folks, this exercise at the conference (in front of a group of experts) showed me we are still in Social Media dawn. The early adopters are still whom I seek and there are just too damn many of you standing on the tracks staring at the oncoming train. I know I am an evangelist, but I also am starting to use simple logic on what social media means to business.

Simply put…the speed of insight is accelerating so fast that one’s ability to understand the data before there is more to interpret is too fast that you must find a way to keep up. In the past, one could say there is just too much data to process so we leave it to our gut. But today the equation has changed. Not only is the volume accelerating and getting out of control, but those who can latch onto something and drive it to the masses is becoming the new element in the equation. Folks, your suggestion box are now public and your market research wears no clothes. Your data is out there growing like the ebola virus and the experts (the audience I spoke of) are consumers who are not recognizing the impact it could have on their livelihood in the coming months (not years). We have already seen the Osama Bin Laden raid tweeted by someone by accident as it was happening. We have seen the logo changes of two behemoths judged in public (GAP and Starbucks) with differing results (GAP changed back within 7 days) and we see the downfall of the powerful in an instance when they stupidly choose to think the web won’t catch up with them (Rep. Weiner...how could you do that to such an accomplished and strong woman). We see it all around us, but we still the let the shackles of the culture of the corporate titanic ride towards the iceberg. Why?

Because I believe that Hugh McLeod said it best in a cartoon in his book Evil Plans…(which I just literally finished and while I don’t read much is inspirational…

“Why is creativity such a “dirty word” for big companies? Because it’s something that requires you to put your balls on the line.”

I believe those who are willing to do just that will be the ones who will become intoxicated with what it feels like to drive change and to feel empowered. It is easy to see why we shouldn’t do it. But how often in a day do you ask not “yes, but” but “yes, how”? Don’t be the corporate lulled consumer engaged cretin who didn’t raise their hand the first time but did the second time.

Lord knows even though I have been driving change for years, getting involved in this role has only accelerated my taste for driving change and my awareness of the box I have lived in even as a change agent. Going from intrapreneur to entrepreneur is what it took to unlock my voracious appetite for helping others and myself through sharing and learning. I guess it is my evil plan. Coming up with scalable ways to change how people interact, learn and get along better. To this end it is in the corporate context, but make no mistake I will keep writing about change, why going more deeply internal will help one impact more externally and keep focused on my evil plan. Hugh McLeod did for me what I try to do for others…give me a framework to think and learn…thanks Hugh.

Find your inner champion, embrace change and shout it from the trees. As for social media, don’t let the oncoming train hit you. On average, trains are usually on time and this one is approaching the station. Change is good…change is constant…change is the catalyst for learning to make life fulfilling.

Social media is merely a minor vehicle to state how change that will continue, but seeing that group of experts resist what they do everyday reminds me that one must never give up on preaching the value of different…I guess that is my quest and I will stick to it…

Building a WE enterprise plaform - the power of solutions innovation platforms

2011-06-03T00:18:00.000-07:00

In order to build an innovation culture based upon trust, it is imperative above all things to link they elements to do this...the people. As stated in past posts, I believe there are three key elements that must be aligned if one wants see their innovation culture thrive. Simply mandating that you will partner your way to a collaborative culture is not enough. While the concept of open innovation is very powerful and teaching those within any organization to look outside of their own culture to "trust" others to help is key, it is not enough. This concept does clearly bring the intellect and abilities of those outside one's organization to bear and its value is great, but it does not guarantee that those who truly believe will not ultimately destroy these valuable concepts.

I remember a time when one of my employers funded a new ventures group that focused solely on bringing very cutting edge new opportunities into the company. While many of their efforts were often way out there, one time they successfully purchase a very great brand. The name was very versatile and would enable a whole slew of new products to be launched from a company that had a very traditional and narrow focus. I remember hearing about the brand and saying to myself what a great idea. It really fits with our company's focus and would really allow some great adjacent products to be developed and launched. It seemed like the perfect fit.

Then this great idea was brought into the "business" so it could be positioned, tested, prodded and poked to make sure that it met with the criteria the business believed it needed to become a viable business. Essentially, a great open innovation idea was exposed to the rest of the organization. This organization had no ownership of the decision, were not part of the process and frankly didn't truly subscribe the methods of open innovation. That idea died one of the slowest and most painful deaths I have ever seen in business. First, the materials to make the product were not good enough. They were toxic, unstable and really didn't fit the model of the company's margin. They needed to be totally redone. Next, the marketing function didn't ''get" the brand. Upon further review, it didn't really connect with the target consumer. Our model for success didn't quite fit this higher priced offering. The consumer segment was wealthier and off target. The brand was based on principles that couldn't translate. We are not in those products on some of them. The list of what was wrong went on and on. And before I knew it was dead and the person who sold it to us made a boatload of money because they bought it back at a very reduced rate. Great investment for them. What tore me apart, is conceptually it just made sense in every way. But the lack of collaboration and ownership took a great externally developed idea and killed it with culture.

This is a long winded way to make one of my points. Unless a company has the individuals (me), the collaborative group (we) and the company (enterprise) aligned innovation can never thrive in a seamless way. Think about that. Each enterprise has a culture of morays they follow and usually hires people that fit in with those morays. This can be for the entire organization, a function or a group, but at some level the need for people to follow the culture of the enterprise is important. In addition, aligning with the strategy of the company is equally important to make sure it heads in a direction that is valuable.

When this occurs however, a company must also remember that while everyone must align with the enterprise's goals that the ME's or individuals need to be respected as well. In fact, isn't it true that everyone is different and has strengths and weaknesses. These differences are very important if we want to work together collaboratively as a WE.

That brings me to the key to this post. The ME's are all busy working diligently together as a WE for teh good of the enterprise, only the collaborative spark or synergy that exist can get great help now. Over the past several years the social media idea platforms for driving innovation have appeared. Companies like Bright Idea, Spigit and Jive. This post is a tribute to them. Those who are creating these collaboration platforms are creating the key networked infrastructure to make the WE become something that has an idea superhighway to bring people together more easily and seamlessly.

This type of system is the future foundation of what will make open innovation successful. Why? Because platforms like these are more than idea machines...they are the collaborative innovation network to connect ideas, drive collaboration which helps ME find other ME's to become a seamless WE.

What will be the difference between success and failure of these outfits? Can they evolve beyond the idea to bring about the tangible path to execution. It is not enough to create a WE that surfaces ideas, the WE needs to won their execution, bring the right people around those ideas and ultimately manage the ideas to success. But is is more. Systems like these need to continue to think of themselves beyond mere ideation. They are simply holisitc collaboration platforms.

I had the privilege of talking with Paul Pluschkell, CEO of Spigit a while back and in our discussion I can see the seeds of going beyond ideation there. Spigit continues to expand its thinking about its innovation platform and I believe recognizes the importance of connecting the WE so the ME's and the ENTERPRISE can operate in harmony each and everyday. Smart infrastructure like this is more than simple email or sharepoint (which merely feels collaboration folders), it is taking the idea of collaboration into an interactive and dynamic day to day operational use case. And the person who can figure out how to make connecting those in a global organization as easy as logging onto your computer has brought the concept of artificial intelligence into the idea of innovation collaboration, seamless execution and total connectivity.

Bravo to those who see that vision...it will align the ME, the WE and ENTERPRISE which is the essence of a successful innovation culture. And frankly, that is the internal dream coupled with the external dream open innovation hoped to achieve in the previous decade. Without the connectivity internally bringing ideas from everywhere will not have the ownership internally which often leads the slow death of great ideas by politics and rigid culture.

Welcom to The Social Media Wild West Yeehaw!

2011-05-24T23:17:00.000-07:00

It seems that the social media market is starting to arrive. Linked In (public), Radian 6 (bought by Salesforce for $325MM), Tweetdeck (bought by Twitter $40-50MM) and Springboard research (acquired by Forrester) and the list gets smaller and goes on.

I have often used the analogy that when I started applying social media to business in 2006 that is was midnight at the time. As I shopped the idea of getting insights more quickly from this new form of data that had a degree of real objectivity I was laughed at. Everyone said that data was crap because only the teenagers blogged or crazy people/companies are writing that stuff. Well since then the amount of content increases exponentially by the second and the myriad of ways one can interact with it only explodes day by day. Start ups are popping up faster than you can see them fall and in reality the times have changed.

Today it is dawn. The acquisitions above suggest that the market has arrived. And for the venture capital world that might be true (because the coalescence has clearly begun), but in reality the companies swallowing/using this content are still immature and scared. That is why I believe it is only dawn. The sun is starting to come up because companies cannot deny that the data set has hit a sort of "singularity", but their cultures who are filled with people who use it do not tell them to do it in their jobs. The dawn of social media is definitely here although the disconnect brings up a very interesting conundrum.

For us in the space trying to build a new market and show people how and why they should use it, there is resistance. As I work from company to company and with partners everyone is still trying to figure out how to get our customers to take the leap and think beyond matching the data to the methods they currently use. People are still waiting for their leaders to say it is OK. They are waiting to be sure that they invest correctly. They don't want to make a mistake and sometimes this analysis paralysis is going to catch a number of companies flatfooted because this rocket ship is flying into the new day faster than those standing on the ground can keep up.

This is making for a serious wild west like atmosphere. The market is beginning to snap itself up, the consumers of the information aren't sure which way is up, and the data set increases faster than the US debt. This could make for some serious challenges for those trying to make heads or tails of when the right time to jump in. As was often told to me as a kid if you just open your mouth, hold your breath and eat it experience of trying something new can be better than the fear of trying it.

I would say this to everyone...

If you wait too long the products you are evaluating will change or the culture of those you are working with will be different if they are swallowed (because you will lose your say in how the products develop)

If you don't trust the data you will be so far behind that your competitor will be better prepared to deal with the data than you

If you try to get it perfect the choices will be too great. You gotta believe in the new to take this leap. That being said, I watch lots of players not getting in early hoping to save a bit of money rather than learning. This is a huge mistake because the products, data and market are changing so fast that it will be too late.

See what I mean...this argument is getting totally intertwined, circular and messed up. It is just too fast to make sense of. And those trying to show the market its power continue to wonder why each and everyone of you use this data multiple times a day (how about I take your iphone from you...now how lost do you feel), but they seem to be too afraid to collectively tell their companies that their methods are old and tired. Everyone uses it but nobody trusts it...I tell you it is the wild west out there.

And it keeps getting crazier, louder and more confusing. Take a stand, pull out your six shooter and start shooting...chances are you will hit something and your business will get the chance to get those trying to get their guns out of their holster!

Yeehaw!!!!!!

I know why I do what I do...do you?

2011-05-22T01:19:00.000-07:00

Where you do you get inspired? Where do you clear your head? For me it is often at the movies. Tonight, I went to the movies as often happens, I am able to clear the cacophony that resides in my every whirling mind. And as usual, that clarity helps me conceptualize a great many things. As I sat listening to the music on the way home I thought about social media. Why? What importance could this hold?

Actually, it helped me see even further beyond where I am today and the change I am focused on creating. At my core, I believe I am a change agent now as I have often said, that Innovation is to Pupa as Change Agent is to butterfly.

That being said there is a distinct flow to how we end up in the spot we are at the moment you may choose to read this. And in this moment I can clearly see the flow of how I got here and most importantly I have the clarity to understand that purpose.

Today...I am a Chief Evangelist taking up the cause of championing social media
Before that...the Global Vice President helping create models to help drive change
Before that...A Technology Broker linking the wonders of discovery to the needs of a business
Before that...A Technology Developer pushing the boundaries of people thought was possible
Before that...A budding innovator studying my trade as a chemist in graduate school
And this goes on and on and on...

But the real question is how is this path created and how do we lose sight as we develop in our career? And the reason I leave my personal side out (I am a father, husband and son of course), because sadly much of what drives us in today's society is our professional development. But that is what is interesting, because in our quest as a person and professional we must find truth in why we do it. For many, it is simply a job while for others it is everything. I choose to take a wider view of my career. I often believe what is most important is to be a life learner, because this mindset helps break the boundaries of everything we do on a day to day basis in every interaction we have.

Because we must have some sort of professional purpose to help us learn, provide, or even feel passion, I ask anyone reading this do you have clarity of how you became what you currently are and do you understand where you are trying to move to?

As I drove home, I thought about that and realized the theme I must face with each and every step I make is that everything above is about change, learning and taking on challenges others find impossible. On a personal side, I strive to continuously learn from anyone and everyone around me all the time. The confluence of these two concepts is all about where I am heading. To where, you may or may not ask?

I guess I have believed for many years now that it is becoming my purpose to help others see the power of what's possible and what has continued to bother me is how I am watching a population in the country I live turn its back on the fundamentals that create the building blocks for what creates the possible. What the hell does that mean?   Well I hear everyday how our population of worthy scientists and therefore innovators is dwindling and that we cannot compete. Even though as you look at where I have been my choices have taken me further and further from the basic science I found passion in as a high school and college student. But I consider myself lucky to have escaped. Why? Because the sum of my experiences up to this point have enabled me to do something more important. To collaborate, to facilitate others to believe in what they think is impossible, to negotiate with others to believe and most importantly to mobilize people to take what they believe in and go with it. The sum of my experiences has granted me the fortune of being open to learning from others and taking on challenges that stretch how I think about everything everday.

So where am I going? My quest and I choose to spell it out here is to take the gifts given to me as a change agent to find a way to help rebuild the innovation foundation that America is losing as the corporate culture takes over everywhere. I would love to raise money and champion the cause of finding people willing to re-invest in the principles of basic research. Why basic esoteric research? Because as I ran from it in the past towards the financial gains the corporate success can bring, my time getting closer to those possibilities is seemingly bringing me back around the importance of simply understand at its fundamental how to break the boundaries of what is possible. Basic research is just that, the foundation for which practicality is built. In this case, without funding the fundamentals or the building blocks how can one expect to create a stable house. In our country, basic research has given way to applied research problems and funding for research is geared to the person whose work can be tied to the tangible results that bring application benefits. I say this slippery slope is wrong for innovation and wrong for our future growth. Research for the sake of research is becoming a lost art because it cannot get funded. My close friend is a professor and she tells me that getting funding for the basic work she does is increasingly difficult.

If I can create the financial freedom, I will ultimately go full circle and create funding for professors or people engaged in basic research. Call it my scientific Gates Foundation.

Great...who cares...maybe this goal inspires you, but that is not the point of this post. If you go through how I arrived writing this you can see how each steps is giving me the ability to actually get there...

I left big corporations to work in a startup. I have excelled as an intrapreneur, but now I am learning to be an entrepreneur. With this experience in the fast world of new business, I have gained courage to start something of my own one day. I never would have thought like this had I not chosen to move into the space I am in now.

I work in social media...I have learned how it can quickly get a message out...thus I am now blogging. 18 months ago when I started this blog I wrote one post a month and only had about 200 views until March. In March, I started being a Chief Evangelist and now I write a few times a week and this blog has gotten over 1000 views this month more than double than last month.

I worked as a change agent of culture at Daymon Worldwide. This experience will give me the skill to help envision and create the framework to mobilize people to see how to work together to create the catalysis for the cause of making this issue front and center.

I worked as a technology broker who became skilled in negotiating and managing alliances, something critical to making the the organization a reality because partnership with others is possible. Alliance management is something that builds bridges and those bridges are the foundation for creating new things more quickly. More quickly because alliance principles say the sum is greater than its parts and it is built on trust.

I worked to develop and implement new technologies while making cleaning products. This has taught me how to see basic technologies in a way that makes them applicable to solving problems. And the gift of creating cleaning products for "everyone" has taught me about the consumer variable. Literally how to put myself in the shoes of someone else when creating a tangible output.   It is a rare gift and I thank Clorox for teaching me this ability it comes in handy everyday. Linking emotion to usage so to speak.

I was a student learning to be a great scientist who understood how to study variables, become an expert at scientific method and to walk in the shoes of those who truly love science. It was very painful, but taught me the fundamentals of thinking about technology and possibility because I was charged with breaking the boundaries of what was known by proving something unknown.

And most importantly I can't forget the people who have taught me how to learn these skills, abilities and self evaluation. They deserve a shoutout (and a link)

Robert Porter Lynch - Who taught me the word Creationship which is state of ultimate collaboration.
Robert Rosenfeld - The mentor who taught the power of people in this journey
John Hommeyer - A business man and mentor who creates innovation in a way that others can see
Helen Eckmann - A woman who believes in the power of leadership and how it shapes others
Frank Cohenour - A man who balances leadership, business and friendship better than anyone
Peter Ford - A scientist with the highest of ethics who teaches people scientific fortitude

What does this all show. It shows how having vision for what you want to accomplish starts with tackling learning what you need every step of the way. It shows that those around you can influence how quickly you learn about what you want to do. And more importantly, to recognize what each experience brings your personally besides the wealth that brings freedom or stuff (which ever you fancy). But it also shows clarity of path, a linkage between events and most importantly it creates passion as you accomplish things as you grow and choose to change.

And lastly...it helps you see the gaps that can help you get where you ultimately want to go. Where ever that may be. For me, it is to bring back the foundation that we are starting to miss in America. Innovation the President is said is critical. I agree, but I believe we need to take a huge step back on get on the balcony so we can see the dance floor. The dance floor these days is a mess because what we believe will get us that innovation is all wrong. It isn't about business or what I call the Corporatetocracy which rules us, it is about fundamentals of learning.

I am getting clearer how to get to where I am going because I strive as best I can to be humble and to see the quest to where you want to get starts with knowing you might need help to make it.

Are you clear? If not get clear...it will help you cure your frustration and help you get going.

Why social media will change the competitive landscape...

2011-05-21T01:17:00.000-07:00

As the large corporation and frankly many people in the corporate world wrestle with how to think about social media data I am sad to tell you the data singularity has probably already passed. What do I mean by the singularity? If you ever saw any of the terminator movies (even though this term is well know...I chose to use a more fun way to explain it) you will remember the singularity as the moment artificial intelligence of computers exceeded humans which led to man's downfall. In the social media sphere the singularity in my mind is when the validity of social media as a data set is no longer a debate. And while I don't have tools to say whether this has truly happened and that social media data as truly representative as normal consumer data, I will say that the rate of change on the volume and demographics is accelerating so fast that it would be hard to argue that is hasn't happened.

Why do I mention this? Because when I started applying social media to business problems in 2006, I was often challenged with the validity of the data set. Even though it was a valid concern, I still had enough opportunities to show that this data was comparable to the knowledge my companies had garnered using slower, more expensive and potentially more biased traditional methods.

This brings me to the topic at hand...if social media data is now essentially valid AND there are glut of new ways to tap this data set, doesn't the competitive playing field soon change forever. What I mean by this is the following. Prior to having this data, the only way a company could do market research involved very labor intensive and expensive methods like focus groups, ethnography, survey studies among other methods. Because most of this work could only yield very specific amounts of data on particular projects, the average small business would very rarely invest in this sort of market research. In general, they would compete on ingenuity, gut and guerrilla tactics.

Over the past five years something is happening. The analogy I would use is one of my favorite. Rather build telephone lines in poor third world countries, they simply installed cellular towers. Now in third world countries telephones are all cellular and the technology literally jumped the infrastructure. The same thing is about to happen as it pertains to competition from a consumer research perspective. We are already seeing how a small company can look very big by setting up a virtual store online. Now it gets even scarier.

With a rather small investment per year, ANY COMPANY WHO BELIEVES IN SOCIAL MEDIA AS A CONSUMER DATA SET CAN DO THE SAME PRIMARY MARKET RESEARCH AS A FORTUNE 500 WITH MILLIONS IN THEIR POCKETS.

Why? Because with tools like those NetBase has any company can easily set up their market research shop for one price. When they do this...they can look at what consumers are saying on any brand or topic at any time from their desktop. This means they can compete.

A great example recently happened to me as I partnered with one our customers. One day recently, I went to work in their office developing some data on their brands. After about six hours, I went over and shared my findings with my partner. As we discussed the merits of the work I had done, I took the risk to share what I really learned about their business. For about 5 minutes, I described what I saw as the key problems and opportunities in their business and what they might consider going forward. The partner I was working with was a very skilled market researcher who spends tons of times studying the company opportunities and issues. After I finished, I was not sure I was right so I asked if my interpretation of the data was in line with their deep knowledge. This person looked back at me and quietly agreed with my assessment saying that's what what they saw too. This person has been a great partner because over our time working together they have become pretty convinced in the power of social media. But then I added something to our discussion. I stated, "you know I have really only spent about 20 hours in your company's data and isn't interesting that in that short time I was able to play back to you the issues and opportunities for your business in a manner that I could talk to your leadership and sound coherent.". My partner agreed and I smiled and said, "I have seen this before. The true power of social media is the acceleration of one's ability to get "up to speed" on any topic in a short period of time from a consumer perspective." At this point my partner smiled and saw the power to an even greater degree.

Now imagine you are starting your own business going up against one of the largest companies in the world. You now have the power to set up shop on the web, create an e-panel of loyal customers to see what they say AND out research your competitor because the data is there for the picking. You only need a tool like the ones NetBase has to complete your ability to simply be Goliath instead of David.

Big companies better wake up because the day this scenario can happen is here. Call it the social media singularity and it is accelerating every second...

The Importance of Slope - Social media Volume versus Time

2011-05-18T23:18:00.000-07:00

As many people in the social media sphere are constantly looking for the ROI on how to apply this data in a predictable and sound manner, what continues to be lost in this discussion is METRICS. As I stated in my last post, it has been a real challenge to get people to use what I consider strong operational definitions of social media (the listening versus understanding argument). In fact, as I think about it I see this incredibly powerful emerging data set that is really a mess.

Why is it a mess?

Firstly, because the ebb and flow of information is so dynamic. This incredibly malleable and wandering data set can actually make it hard to hold. What works in its favor is the volume is so large that the room for error is probably pretty forgiving. I mean when you can pull 1,000,000 data points on a particular event or topic at any given time (if you are lucky enough to have that amount of recall) you have to admit the room for error decreases a bit versus holding a focus group of 6 people who are being led by a "neutral" moderator.

Secondly, social media as a data set is currently a frontier. People are unsure what they want to do with it or how to approach it. Can they trust it? Will it augment what I do or should I replace what I do? It isn't traditional and is new...how should I fund it? The misinformation on the data set is troubling. Only 15 year olds write on the web (even though 55-60 yr old women are the fastest growing segment). This type of volatility makes for great angst and great opportunity.

And lastly, social media is a real threat that people are not paying attention to yet. I am bewildered by the fact that large companies don't notice the threat it poses them. With the right tool in their hands, small companies can now interact with consumers anytime, anywhere from the comfort of their office. This is going to change the game on how we compete with each other. In fact, I think this will be a deeper discussion for my next blog post.

What does this all have to do with the importance of slope?

Everything...because we have to first learn how to make sense from the noise before we can understand and predict it.

I have spent so much of the last five years thinking about how to apply social media effectively to produce business results that create Tangible ROI. Whether this comes from saving money or creating new opportunity, I have always and still believe that application is the name of the game (I will probably keep pounding this from post to post because hey...I am an evangelist and it is my job).

But recently, I have really taken the opposite approach as I discussed earlier today. I believe it is the development of METRICS that will help turn the tide and create scalability to social media application not the other way around. So at this point I spend a lot of time looking at our natural language processing capability, our huge index and the power that words can now play in the development of metrics.

And when I think about the concept of Buzz, Sentiment and Passion and NetBase's ability to capture those three counts/measures accurately, I begin to see scalable patterns that can be apply to the issues at hand. If you use the earlier analogy I made around trying to ring the bell at a carnival and that each measure represents a more sensitive measure of your social media effectiveness, these three counts become increasingly important to consider.

Why? Because recently, I was looking at an event that intrigued me (Obama's speech on Libya about a month or so ago) and I noticed something very interesting.

Above is a net sentiment chart on the subject of Obama and his speech on libya on 3/28. The chart gives a look at a selected time period before and after his speech. The green part of the chart is positively expressed emotion about Obama in the context of Libya and his speech. The Red part of the chart is negative emotion being expressed about the topic. The blue line is the Net Sentiment or %positive - %negative (form -100 to +100). You will distinctly see the volume of sentiment expressed climb dramatically when he gives the speech on March 28th. I have only tracked this study through the day after the speech.

The next slide is a look the absolute buzz (non-sentiment based sound bites) expressed in the news and on microblogs (twitter) and the % change this buzz represents on the subject (the two lines). You will notice here that twitter line is climbing at a much higher rate than the news (which tapers off pretty quickly). In fact, it was pretty amazing to see the "lifecycle" on this event.

The third slide is the same view as the first slide, except it was rebuilt only using twitter content (not the sum of all social media sources like news, forums, blogs, microblogs social networks etc). What is very interesting here is that the net sentiment for the twitter chatter on this topic is much hired 43% net sentiment versus 24% for all content types. This actually shows in this case at least that there is a difference when looking at different sources of social media.

Why use this example? Because it brings me back to the importance of slope. What this data suggest is that there is a life cycle for any social media event. And what some might hypothesize is that each source represents a different point in an events life cycle. And as you think about different counts you can measure buzz, sentiment and passion (three different but deeper types of social media measures) you have a very sensitive footprint for a social media event.

The question is this...

If I take the rate of change of volume in buzz, sentiment and passion for an event AND I think about how each source type changes, do I have the secret footprint for social media? Why is this a footprint? Because these three sensitive measures tracked across different sources can be studied and become predictive when what an event occur. Keeping it simple, if the slope is 4 on Twitter for one event and 1.5 for another doesn't this begin to predict the seriousness of one versus the other.

I think this is the foundation for using very simple metrics as a means of teasing out to become predictive of social media events. And because they happen fast, you better know the event fingerprint.

Of course this is all theoretical and you will need to be able to get those three sensitive measures to make it work...and that is where natural language processing comes in...doesn't it. And an index that allows you to react to anything...welcome to my evangelism for a technology that is truly differentiated.

Sorry for the sale, but it is how a customer becomes an evangelist...and that is at the heart of MY social media passion.

Social Media Listening does not Equal Social Media Understanding

2011-05-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

As social media develops, I think it is getting increasingly important that the right operational definitions are created. As I have stated many times, that operational definition or "defining what something means is the core of creating clarity" is the difference between success and failure in any sale of something new whether this is inside the company or from outside the company.

Currently, as I walk across the business landscape trying to get people to believe that social media is going to impact them whether they like it or not. And one of the great misnomers in social media today is that almost EVERYONE uses the term listening almost exclusively.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say (as I did in my last post) that this is too broad a way to talk about social media. While it is very true that we are listening to what is going on across all that data, because it is already there and we are peering into to what is being said, there is definitely more to it. For instance, if I can tell you that in the last 24 hours there were 1,000,000 tweets on twitter MENTIONING a brand, what does that really tell you. In addition, if someone decided to then give you 50 sound bites for a flavor of what is being said. What does that tell you? I would argue...not much at all. Buzz volumes on specific sites are not going to give you much except a knowledge of how often you are mentioned. IT WILL NOT GIVE YOU ANYTHING STATISTICALLY OF WHAT THEY FEEL ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT OR ISSUE. This is the crux of the social media operational definition issue.

LISTENING AND UNDERSTANDING SOCIAL MEDIA ARE NOT THE SAME.

Understanding is something that gives you depth where Listening only scratches the surface of social media's power. To this end, if you can understand the vastness of what is being said, you can begin to come up with new ways to develop unbiased insights from all that information that is there already. Understanding can get to the nuance of why someone likes or doesn't like something. For instance, if people know that McDonald's is not healthy capturing mentions of that tells you little (what listening means). If you can suddenly tease out the specifics of why consumers think it is unhealthy you are now understanding the key points. Social media can do that if you have the right methods and the "natural language processing" that can really understand the sentences. And while our company does have that I come back to the point I always make. If you have good ability to parse sentences, you can then differentiate them accurately and ultimately have the data quality that gives you confidence. With this confidence you can then dive into the data in a way that gets you the traditional answer you want when interacting with the consumer in a different way.

So why make a fuss about this? Because if we don't differentiate these two terms in social media, then people will think incorrectly about what type of social media application will provide them. If you are talking about CRM of issues through the PR function, listening to the buzz can be very helpful especially if you can easily react and "stave off" the issue because you can hear the problem quickly. In this case, understanding would be helpful, but could take too long (as of today) to solve the problem at hand.

On the other hand, if you have an "event" that has the potential to be cataclysmic to you business, there is going to be value in being able to listening quickly and react, but think about if you can understand what is being said and where it is being said across the event (during the first day). With listening you might start to react to something so quickly that you are putting out data into the social media sphere that could only add to the chaos (you create more). If you can understand the real problem being expressed, you can actually THINK ABOUT WHAT IT MEANS AND THEN PROACTIVELY RESPONSE RATHER THAN REACT. This example to me is the meat of the issue and the reason a better definition is needed.

Understanding in social media is underutilized term and one that needs to quickly make its way into the social media lexicon if people don't want apply social media incorrectly. I would even argue listening and understanding have a cousin term that I can't even see yet, but creating better operational definition will make social media less of a fad (which it is not) and more scientific in the coming months and years.

I continue to worry for the companies who ignore social media. It is my job to convince people of social media's relevance and I am actually paid to do this. That being said, however, I have had the privilege of being involved with social media for 5 years now. And within that, I have gotten the chance as a change agent to successfully apply it to business problems. But what concerns me is that companies continue culturally to struggle to fit the social media box into their current measures and practices. In fact, you would be shocked at how many very intelligent business people will challenge the validity of the social media as a data set. And then when I ask them what they do first when buying a new appliance or electronic, the smile and say the web. This shows me they get it but their culture is keeping them from acting because "no one told me to use this data." This cultural challenge and fear is limiting many companies chance to get ahead of the curve. It is our job, however, to make sure we come up with the strongest ways possible to describe how to think about social media for those who are dancing with it. Simply lumping everything into the concept of listening does no justice to the power of social media, because it can lead people to think incorrectly about how to apply it.

And because it is my job to help people believe in social media, I take full responsibility in making sure we define it clearly for those interested and do our best to link those definitions to applications that fit their category, business, function, usage case and most importantly culture.

John Lennon said give peace a chance.

In social media, I would say the same thing to separating Social Media Understanding from Social Media Listening.

why buzz, sentiment and passion are meaningful social media metrics

2011-05-15T22:36:00.000-07:00

When people talk about social media the most widely used term to describe leveraging its value is listening. This is a very good way to describe what is now approximately 420 petabytes/year. There is so much content I guess the best you can hope to do is just that; listen. In fact the first time I learned how to put 420 petabytes in perspective I was astounded. 420 petabytes is equal to all the books every written in any language across the history of time...times 3600 (or at least this was a stat that has been shared with me a number of times...so I take it at face value). Boy that is a lot of content and on a yearly basis it is going to increase even more in the coming years.

But the question for those interested in social media is this...is listening good enough?

In fact, if you are only trying to listen are you even scratching the surface of what is possible in social media? I would argue you are not. And that brings us to the point of this post...

Listening isn't enough...you need to understand what it is saying. And understanding requires that you can pull apart the relationships within the sentences. If you can do that on mass scale then you suddenly can begin to understand what social media is really saying. Why? Because if you can efficiently understand the language of all that content you should theoretically have a much more accurate look at the data which then will enable the most important lynch pin in social media...METRICS.

In my experience on the social media dance floor everyone is trying desperately to tell you they can accurately understand what is being said. But the question is how do they BUILD their data set. Do they use "people who know where to look"? If they do then they are at the mercy of what I call the hit by a bus principle. If anyone who "knows where to look" is hit by a bus while crossing the street then than integrity and accuracy of that data just changed and it is less valid than it was before. Another thing I always see if people stating, "on this website there were 3.2 million tweets and here are sample of what they were saying". How is this helping you understand? Volumes of tweets are interesting because it give some sense of scale between two subjects (the buzz), but it does nothing to help you understand the sentiment (emotion) or better yet the concept of intensity (passion). It merely allows a small comparison between volumes on websites. And in the world of metrics that is only worth a bit but not everything.

In fact, how could you translate the number of tweets into ROI on say an advertising spend? This brings me to my "pitch" (a bit of promotion for my company NetBase). At NetBase, because we have 80-90% accuracy automatically captured in our Index (we have googled the web so to speak), you can now UNDERSTAND the emotion within the content using a repeatable method to collect the data. Because this is the case, each search that is done is apples to apples and because we pull this data from content that is indexed, the principle of comparison is at my disposal.

This brings me to the metrics. It is easy to think about how to apply social media first and THEN build metrics that suit the application. I choose to go a different direction in my conceptualization of applying social media to business. I would rather think about the measures I have at my disposal and THEN find the right applications.

What I have spent much of my time contemplating are the usage of buzz (mentions only), sentiment (emotional mentions) and passion (intensity measure like capturing love, like dislike and hate) to help create metrics that will enable viable applications of social media data. In fact, what I found quite interesting is that in our index for every 100 buzz sound bites, 20 of them will contain sentiment and 2 will contain pure passion (love, like, dislike and hate...while if you include other emotional expressions of passion the number goes up to about 5%). A good analogy would be the following...when you go to the carnival and grab the hammer to ring the bell...the deeper you connect with your consumers with either your products or online messages the more "response" you will get. If you "hit it" 1/3 the way up to the bell, you get buzz. 2/3 the way up you get sentiment. All the way up you get passion.

Another way to say it is this...

If my social media message gets a higher than average number of positive passionate expression on a daily basis without spending a dollar on advertising then I have gone viral and hit the holy grail.

That is really what we are all trying to do on social media. This post for instance (is mostly for me to get my thoughts out), but there is a part of me that wants millions of people to read this and say they love it without every having to tweet it to get people's attention. Why do I care about that? Because I like to think about concepts that create change and if my message has the maximum impact without any effort that I can drive a lot more change efficiently.

Now onto measuring your spend. If we think about those three counts as a means of accurately capturing what is being said online about a brand, I can begin to think about their application to something like advertising. In advertising we know what the strategy for the ad was. We also know what we spent on the ad. But how do we understand the response to it in near real time. I would propose that social media can be that response using buzz, sentiment and passion Why? Because after I start my campaign I can very easily begin to track buzz, sentiment and passion (if they actually ring the bell). Once I know those counts for a promotion, I can then begin to look more closely at the relationship between these measure.

I could look at the the counts in relation to an attribute beneath the brand like customer service versus store cleanliness.
I could take a look at the amount of sentiment generated versus some average across all brands (this will help me see if the attribute like customer service elicits a greater sense of emotion versus another attribute)_.
I could even look at the rate of change of each measure over time and see how the change relates to other events

While these measure seem hypothetical, they are things I am currently exploring with fortune 500 companies. I write this because my goal is challenge those who read my posts to stretch themselves. I figured by getting some thoughts around measures into social media sphere there will be more chatter that will get most of those who are thinking about social media beyond their fear of the data.

The point is this...knowing what the buzz is only will never be enough to accurate extract real insight from social media. It is going to be accuracy in the data that only natural language processing can give you. It is going to be the ability to capture more measures than simple buzz. And lastly, it is going to be ALL ABOUT APPLICATION AND METRICS.

I always preach in social media the name of the game is application...and that is my game. Make it yours.

Innovation, the consumer and SaaS together at last! - connecting scalably to the consumer

2011-05-11T15:56:00.000-07:00

As much of my writing suggests, my true passion lies in the area of innovation, culture and people. No surprise there. But one of the other things I find very fascinating is the framework by which behavior can be changed and innovation can thrive.

During my time within start-up world as Chief Evangelist of NetBase Solutions has been taking my experiences as a Product Developer of Cleaning Products at Clorox and translating those skills to tackling the social media market. Talk about a chasm to walk across on a string. That being said, I never realized until recently that when a person is tasked with mixing a bottle of chemicals together with susie home maker in mind and how this consumer will wipe a counter, clean a toilet or even take care of their children you gain the ability to put yourself in the consumers shoes. This "consumer variable" is something that has helped me think about not only what a good idea is but how to connect with the consumer who uses it. Many of us have it, but leveraging this knowledge and being a user is critical to helping this personal skill live.

What does this have to do with social media and SaaS companies? Actually everything. Most SaaS companies are working to create a solution that consumers will use and love everyday. It is the lifeblood of a scalable business model. But what are the consumer elements that give the business model life? There is no question that a huge portion of this lies in a companies' ability to develop a solution that fits into relevant business processes in a way that provide financial value of some sort on an ongoing basis. And while this is the tangible effort every company undergoes...is it enough? In some cases, the answer is yes. If the software is functional and performs a job that helps the company run better it can simply be the best technology that it can be to provide this value. On the other end of the spectrum, however, are solutions that require culture change to see them "cross the chasm". What is the secret to unlock this benefit so the software can scale and grow? It's emotion. And emotions that are tied to consumer perceivable benefits to really drive the change. So the next question what are the key emotions that will help create a scalable consumer perceivable benefit?

There are three (in my opinion) that any SaaS company should think about with each and every feature/function/improvement they consider adding to their offering.

What are they? Control, Confidence and Efficiency. As I like to say...take it in. Think about it a bit. Why these three? We have left out fun, easy, smart and many other relevant words. The reality is this; every consumer of your product is strapped for time, what to trust what they use on a day to day basis and most importantly have differing needs based on how they like to innovate (and thus control how they do things). Each of these emotions are critical to unlocking the key to consumer behavior.

A great example of this would be in our own business where our index enables consumer to search on a brand or topic to unlock the emotion and passion within social media data. What happens when your brand or topic is something like the brand Tide? Tide can mean a great many things. But at its highest level it can mean Tide laundry detergent (what you are probably searching for). But it can also mean the Alabama Crimson Tide or even the Tides in the ocean. How can you create a query that lets you zoom down to the data you want to look through? In fact for many months our software (and I am not the most experienced software user although I am good at applying social media) had no way to help you deal with this problem without thinking through the all the key terms you need to separate out the data so to speak. And as someone who only likes to focus on detail like that for short periods of time, I found myself not using the software. I was essentially stopped passing go because setting up a search wasn't (do I hear it) efficient. It took a long time to think through the words you would exclude or include, what context might help your narrow things down or where I might even want to look. Second, when I did try to go through this process when I had to I was never sure I had set things up right. So I had no Confidence in my work. I did have control, because I could choose whatever terms I wanted to make it go. But this problem at the beginning of our software lacked two of the three emotions (confidence and efficiency).

A few months later we added our disambiguation wizard. Now before I press go I can look into the search and see what key words are coming up. I can click on a word see a sample of sound bites to decide if this word is relevant and when I want to exclude it I can see how much data is removed from the dataset. I can go back to my search query and add more context or more filters or whatever I want and then go back to the wizard.....(you get the idea).

In the end I can cycle through the until my changes yield just that, little change...AND THEN PRESS GO.

This new system takes a few minutes (efficient), helps me know I have the right data (confident) and I can keep or remove what I want (control). Its the emotional trifecta of SaaS. Think about it. Every feature and benefit can be put through such a filter to help on decide whether they are hitting the right emotional consumer targets.

As the title says...innovation, the consumer and SaaS together at last!

Applying social media - Getting beyond the fear

2011-05-09T00:34:00.000-07:00

Over the past five years, I have had the privilege to be involved with social media. And not from a standpoint of creating it. No, my claim to fame has been applying it and using it for business. Over the past five years, I have come to trust the validity of social media data and the concept of netnography because I have seen it work.

And while I recently wrote in my introduction to Pipeline 2011 about getting over the fear, I figured I would spend a little time discussing at a high level how to think about applying social media to your business. At NetBase for whom I champion the social media cause, we have indexed the web and using natural language processing have given people the ability to quickly capture the relevant social media data they are looking for (say a brand like Tide) and allow them to UNDERSTAND the emotion being expressed in the data. Our natural language processing (something I am not an expert at understanding) enables us very accurately (clocked at 80-90% using independent people measuring its accuracy) extract the emotion in sentences. This huge index + accurate understanding of sentiment makes one giant database for capturing and observing consumer behavior in their natural habitat. My good friend Dr. Rob Kozinets calls it Netnography. This way of doing consumer research is very powerful because you can access this data and observe your consumer from anywhere anytime on any topic from your desk. Secondly, consumers in this natural habitat usually discuss things in a state free from bias because they don't know they are being observed (we only use the public web by the way...no private content). And lastly, because we have great natural language processing AND have indexed the web the data set is built the same way each and every search so all application work is not dependent on random data collection by people. It is an apples to apples collection of data that gives you a starting point to work from.

Enough about NetBase...the point of discussing this way of collecting social media data is to share how I collect my data when thinking about applying social media to real business problems. How do I begin to dimensionalize using social media everyday... I like to think about the following relationships.

TIME vs. RESOURCES vs. INFORMATION

This relationship is very critical to successfully beginning to think about the application of social media beyond counting sound bites. Let's think about it a bit more.

TIME vs. INFORMATION: In this case social media is a godsend. When you want to understand consumer behavior and you simply don't have the time to get the information where else can you go? There are many times when this happens. A great example is during what I call an "event". What is an event? It's a major issue your brand is facing because of something that suddenly occurs on the marketplace. This could be a celebrity making a verbal gaffe or a company's products making people sick. Either way, your ability to not only properly react but understand the data at hand is extremely limited. Normal methods requires days to prep and days to execute. Social brand trackers don't show real results for weeks after you need them. How will you have the time to get the information. Enter social media. I have had the opportunity to work on a number of "events" in recent weeks and to effectively do this you need some key measures to make it work. Fortunately, I have such measure at my disposal. Buzz or how much general comments are being made on a topic. Then there is sentiment. Sentiment is the positive or negative emotions being expressed about a topic. And lastly, there is passion or intensity. This is a special metric because not all sentiment is created equal. In fact, only with our natural language processing can we get at the passion count. Simply tracking the changes in these can be a powerful way for brand to understand a crisis. In fact, I spend much of my time these days playing with these three metrics to create novel social media business applications. Things like advertising effectiveness, event management, and innovation insight generation.

RESOURCES vs. TIME: This relationship is an interesting one. In the case of social media it about granularity. This is a case where you wouldn't take the time to spend the resources. There are many questions that a brand has that it might never answer because it just isn't worth the effort. I came across a great example a while back. At my previous company they had a brand that could be referred in two ways. One way was unique to our company the other was more generic. This piece of information was a debate for many years. In about 5 minutes we were able to unlock the secret from social media. When we checked the more generic way of labelling the product there 437 mentions. When we checked it our way it was 40. A 10:1 difference in buzz. The marketer I was working with at the time looked at me and said we would never spend to find that out but boy does everyone want to know the answer to that question. The speed and breadth of information that is available makes it possible to now learn what people are saying when it wasn't worth it before. My good friend Andrew used to look at me when I asked a stupid question and say, "you couldn't possibly care". I used to laugh and say he was right, I didn't. Now however, when someone says that about a brand question that is hard to fathom you can possibly care.

RESOURCES vs. INFORMATION: The most important thing to talk about in social media application. This is the game changer. Why? With our offering, a company can for the cost of about 5 focus groups have one analyst looking at any brand or topic at any time in any way. Why is this important? Because a company who could compete in the past because market research is too expensive has just become empowered to do as much market research as they want for about 10% the cost. This is how big companies will be taken down in the new market research data set that is emerging. If a small company can develop processes and methods for tapping all the data that is already out there...the game changes. In the past, these smaller companies didn't have the resources to get that information, but now they can. If they are hungry and not risk adverse they can now understand consumers with a SAS solution.

This is just one way to think about social media application but as I am very into rules of thumb and concepts like this, it makes a great way to begin to place your application methods in a particular box. I have no doubt after 5 years of applying social media that its power is only just being realized by companies. The ones that aren't afraid to try something new will win...those who stall will become dust.

An analogy I like to use regarding social media is this...

When I started applying social media to the business in 2006 it was midnight. It was dark and you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. In fact, I was often laughed at for suggesting this idea, but some people believed. Those who did started to be converted. I will never forget the time I was applying social media to acquisition work for one of my previous companies. During one cycle, we had generated a report on the pros and cons of the product from both a consumer and professional products perspective. We gave the report to the acquisition team (a great application of time versus information). They went to a report out meeting with the target. They had our findings with them. When one of the VP's got back I asked him how it went. I will never forget this social media moment...it was my magic moment. With wide open eyes he looked back at me and said quietly, "it was absolutely amazing, when they presented the pros and cons of the business I already had everything in my hand."

Well today it is only dawn. Most companies know they need social media but are still bewildered about where to spend or if they can even trust the data. I have worked across the corporate landscape in this respect having worked with visionaries who are forcing the change from those who know it is important, but are moving yet. Social media is a Ferrari bus with full tank of gas and a nitrous switch. If the bus leaves the station, it is going to move real fast.

The question remains when is NOON coming. The moment when the sun is high in the sky and brightness of the day shines on social media.

My prediction...we are nearly there...the Ferrari bus is revving and the driver has his foot on the gas.

Innovation Rules of Thumb - Preparation - Know Thy Client

2011-05-08T19:04:00.000-07:00

When you have a big idea...who do you turn to if you want see it come to life? Within the corporate landscape, no innovator gets an idea done in a vacuum with no one's help. You have to rely on others to help make it happen and in many cases your idea needs a client to make it happen. This client can be an external customer, channel partner or internal stakeholder. And no matter what you will probably need someone to become the "consumer" of your idea.

When you have targeted your client, what is your rationale for picking them?

One method would be to think first about your idea. You might say to yourself, I love this idea and it is perfect for THIS client. In this case, the fit will be mostly about matching idea with client regardless of who the client is, what your relationship is with them and usually how much revenue or success it can generate for you or your company.

I would consider this the traditional method of finding a client for your idea. This to me is all about the business. The greatest success is tied to the greatest revenue. More money equals more success. And this is the most important metric in making innovation valuable. Because we are all in this to make money right? (Cue the sales guy dressed suavely in a tie laughing and slapping you on the back).

In fact, picking this method can give the biggest results, it can give the most pain. Why? Because people are self interested and when it comes to change they will only engage if it makes sense for them as we have previously discussed. That is why the rule of thumb KNOW THY CLIENT is so critical to helping you succeed. If you start down the wrong path at the beginning, how can you expect to make it to the end at all? There are so many pitfalls to the change agent game, starting off by picking the right partner to make things go is probably one of the most critical things we do.

As an innovator coming up with ideas is like popping popcorn, you put some heat on it many kernals pop. So rather that pick you biggest idea and match it to the right client, find the right client for the many ideas you might have. Success as an innovator is a game of big leaps but getting to leap is a game of inches. You can increase your odds of winning by always going to the right partner. And this means taking the opposite approach for success.

So what is the rule of thumb KNOW THY CLIENT about? Very simple...

If I have an awesome that is worth $1B and another one worth $100MM but the client for $1B is someone I can't trust, but the $100MM idea is for someone I have succeeded with many times, forget the $1B idea and go with $100MM idea.

This sounds kind of weird doesn't it? Picking the less valuable idea over the bigger one. But if you think about it a bit, it makes sense. In both cases, you will be asking your company to take a risk and do something different, so it is most valuable to make it happen rather than lose out because of who you stakeholder is for the idea. As an innovator, good partners are the most important thing to consider in making things happen and this starts with KNOWING THY CLIENT. The politics of innovation isn't about the merit of ideas, but what the people who make them happen think about the merit of the ideas. If companies don't innovate and people do, then choosing a good partner will more than likely help great things happen.

And what is most important to remember, KNOWING THY CLIENT is a personal thing. You know your innovation style and a good client is someone who you jive with, trust, and connect with in how you like to make it happen. Never be influenced by others. Know your style and bring it to the party when picking your client to bring an idea. Trust yourself.

Trust is the oil of innovation because it keeps friction down when working together. Bring the oil if you want to make great things happen....

One man's rules of thumb for navigating the politics of innovation - introduction

2011-05-04T22:44:00.000-07:00

Back to the politics of innovation...

Now that we have delved into why innovators often fail and what makes them successful, there is another key thing to think about...the rules of thumb to live by. I guess to me having rules of thumb are principles you can use to help you make decisions quickly and when no one is there to help you. I guess the point here is if you wanna innovate in space (be able to tackle any situation) you will need to keep your wits about you. There are four key headers for the rules of thumb Preparation, Communication, Influence and Collaboration.

I will tackle them one at a time (although I have tackled a few already along the way)

here they are...

Preparation

Know thy Client
Understand decision-makers personality types
Know why you shouldn’t do it
Success has many parents failure is an orphan

Communication

The Concept-Approach principle
It’s your fault they don’t understand
Know when to start selling and when not to
Never innovate by article or book

Influence

Sell high informally
Patience is a virtue
Learn how to lead the horse to water to drink
Sell you ideas in bits and pieces

Collaboration

Always support your allies
Look for opposite-minded partners
Find bolt-on opportunities
There is enough credit to go around

Pipeline 2011 - Social Media Meets Innovation

2011-05-04T00:19:00.000-07:00

On June 1st, I will be the closing keynote speaker at Pipeline 2011, the online innovation conference on product development. And while I spend a great deal of time talking about innovation theory, I thought I would deviate today to discuss a bit about the subject of my talk...Social Media.

I have had the fortune to stumble upon the concept of using social media within the enterprise since 2006. In fact, my foray into the subject came about through my interaction with a supplier called Accelovation. This company eventually morphed into NetBase and after successfully implementing their social media solutions at my two previous companies, I have joined the company as its Chief Evangelist responsible for helping people see the power of social media as a data source for driving the business.

This post is not about what I have accomplished in social media as much as it is about starting a dialogue prior to my talk at Pipeline 2011. In fact, what I want it to be about is my favorite innovation subject...culture and trust. About two months ago I discussed the concept of culture based adoption. This idea, which discussed how new software is as much about getting people to use new tools as it is about changing culture in the process, is at the center of the social media debate in my mind.

For many months, I have learned much about what I consider the slow adoption of social media as a data source. In working with many companies in many fields, I have heard many reasons why they are slow to integrate what is clearly impacting all of us everyday. It's not accurate. It's biased. Only gen y is online. Companies are poisoning the data. The list goes on and on. But what often amazes me is this. When confronted by what I consider fear of change within the corporation (a topic of the politics of innovation), I always ask people one simple question. When you are about to buy an appliance or an electronic product what is the first thing you do? The all say go to the web and read up. This to me highlights the struggle social media faces within the Enterprise. The ENTERPRISE is not telling the WE or the ME (my earlier post) that social media is extremely important. There is cultural misalignment and therefore resistance to this new and powerful idea. The proof is in the fact the everyone (ME) turns to the web immediately about hundred times a day through their phone.

In fact, I had the pleasure of presenting at an offsite in February to discuss how it can be applied. This company was a one that sits on the tip of everyone's tongue everyday and more importantly is in the heart of silicon valley. At this offsite, I asked the group to raise their hand if they felt that social media could be a relevant data source. Not one person out of about 50 did. I was shocked. Here I am standing within one of silicon valley's giants and even that company is resistant. This company does ALL of its business online, but no one is telling everyone who uses the web personally everyday that the conversations online are relevant to learn from. And I did ask them the question above after no one raised their hands and people smiled and agreed they do look to the web when they buy.

Now many people will say that there are so many tools how do you know what to choose? This is a true statement, but I guess the point here is that to build a new capability you can't take all the risk out of your experiments. Even thought I represent a company that sells a profound capability to driving social media insights and analysis, I am a change agent and innovation broker at heart. I tell any customer I work with that they need to think about a suite of tools just like anything. Everyone wants one solution to do everything. And while the market will mature and there will eventually be that one tool, it is important to move from fear to exploration. We must stop letting social media impact us and move to a place of embracing the change by getting off the wall and asking our partner at the junior high dance to do just that.

How can stay competitive if you are unable to even take the risk to compete....

See you in June to learn more about how social media can make innovation faster, better and cheaper.

Great Innovators are often successful because - Personal Drivers

2011-04-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

Personal drivers are as much about the tangible (what you know and what you've accomplished) as it is about the intangible (who you know and how you connect with them). Both sides are key to being successfully influential. And you need it all. At its core though...there are some invisible type questions I always like to ask when it comes to personal drivers...

How do you interact with others? Do they understand how you like create, produce, learn and interact? Do you overlap with "how they like to do things"? Are you one of their "trusted advisers"? As an individual what about these facets of yourself...Are you a person who gets their energy from people or from yourself? Do you like the big picture or do you like the facts. Are you a person of action or one who is prudent? We all like to innovate differently. In fact how well you overlap with someone is something that can greatly affect how well they "take to you". If you don't get along with someone else how can you influence them or better yet get them to trust you? As I like to say without trust you can have no innovation. It is the foundation of a creationship (my favorite word from my good friend Robert Porter Lynch who I will post and respond to some of his thoughts shortly) a place of total trust transparency and collaboration between people. Great innovators are not only aware of the personal drivers to make things happen. They are aware when they don't align and can actually either adjust themselves or delegate and bring the right people to the table to help make the change go more smoothly. When have a partnership it is about leveraging differences and trusting their value to our ability to get things done. Without each other we can have no collaboration and I have proven many times in my career (at least to myself) that it is table steaks for innovating. I know what I don't know and try to see who knows what I don't know...then I find them and work with them. It is efficient...it is smart and it is a proven way to succeed. On to the personal drivers...

They have a successful track record: Remember Data, Gut and EXPERIENCE. This is where a person's experience with you is what gets you the credibility to make change happen more quickly. When you succeed, people trust you. And when they trust you it takes less to convince them to try something new because you become someone they can count on. Whether you are successful in their mind can be a complex thing, because it could be you do things the way they like or because they actually saw the tangible value you provided. Ever get something done, but have people still question your track record? A successful track record is as much about how as it is about what you achieved. Make sure you are aware of the difference because it can be an awareness you have about yourself. You may think you have a successful track record but do they? If they do then you have a personal driver for making change happen. My favorite example of this deal with work I did for my friend (now close ally and mentor) John. When I was working at innovating from the middle, John was a senior executive at my company. He was in the middle of working on a very big project that was a high stakes game. I took the risk to claim that I could apply social media to his problem to help him get more data that would help make a stronger case for his project. He trusted me (because we liked to innovate in the same way) and gave me the funding to prove my point. I executed the project with a team of people to make it more objective. The data helped make the case stronger and John was thrilled with the risk I took, the novelty of my approach the strength of the data. Ever since that exchange we have become close friends, he trusts my unorthodox instincts for things and has supported me both personally and professionally ever since. He is my trusted adviser and someone who has helped me the most over the last several years. I value him. But I got this trust because of my successful track record in helping him AND because he understood how I like to innovate. It made sense to him too.

They have professional credibility: I have experience innovating...I have a track record...people see that track record and it often leads to trust in what I do. Whether this professional credibility comes from what you studied, the certificates you hold or the respect you get in your background, the cred gets you the audience. These personal drivers about the tangible things you did. If I tried my hand at innovating in the law space, I would question my skills UNLESS they wanted me to think about the process by which they create new ideas. My professional credibility is all about driving change and putting structure around it. It is about helping get the most out of how people can work together to create and execute new opportunities. It is NOT about innovative legalese. I stay true to my area of expertise and then I get the credibility to drive the change.

They have strong allies/relationships: Your network is worth its weight in gold. This is about having personal drivers based on who you know. How far does your network reach? How powerful is it (power drivers)? Who within the organization can you get to? How intimate are these relationships? Do you they see your value (see above)? All these things are what get you personal influence. And this is about how you like to build relationships and how you like to network. To have strong allies you need to do the things above, but you also need to deliver for them too. Do you go out of your way expecting nothing from your allies. Do you pay it forward when people need you? These are all important aspects of creating a strong network/allies to be successful at leveraging the personal drivers. I really believe in networking and giving and receiving. It helps me reach farther when I need to get something done. A good lesson here is something I have personally committed to over the past three years during the recession. I ALWAYS go out of my way to help my allies/network get jobs. I take personal ownership of helping my colleagues in need because I just believe it is right. In fact, I have helped 3 or 4 people land jobs during this time and asked for absolutely nothing in return? Why? Because when I need those people they will be more apt to help me back later when I have need. And if I never need them...who cares...it felt good to do it. You would be surprised to see how many people will not go out of their way to help unless it helps them. I think this stinks...it is bad networking and it is a sure way later to hurt your ability to have the personal drivers you need to get things done. They say a positive customer experience is shared with a few people and a negative one much more. Same goes for building a successful network. Treat it like gold, nurture it when it doesn't make sense and be there personally and professional for people. It is the currency of being a successful innovator.

They have found an innovation kindred spirit: The last personal driver is the most esoteric and the one that I love the most (it is the conceptual thinker that I am). Ever meet someone and you just simply connect so much that you simply open up and trust. I call this the innovation kindred spirit. My friend Robert Porter Lynch calls it the creationship. Either way, this is a special place that enable big things to happen quickly. This type of synergistic moment is when you have found someone who simply get YOU and IT. You can't explain it but we have all been involved in it. Treasure it...recognize it and leverage it to get your ideas moving in the direction of implementation.

Great Innovators are often successful because - Influence Drivers

2011-04-24T23:23:00.000-07:00

Data...power and now influence. All logical places to go and you will see the nuance of their differences becomes slight, but at the end of the day if you can recognize a pattern you will be in good shape. Obviously if you are a great seller you can get people to yes. But being able to influence has other components besides being able to sell. Below are some of the ways you can begin to dimensionalize influence when selling innovation beyond the direct assault approach. That approach while powerful is often rife is long term pain. Pain that arises because of the bodies you leave behind during the process of getting what you want. If you think about using influence you better think about when to do it and if it is worth it. Too many times because we CAN influence to get our way, we don't THINK about its consequences. This post if about why an innovator is successful and how to think about influence. It does not discuss how one's bias for action can often lead them to use influence incorrectly and to their disadvantage by not thinking through it first.

They have successfully built a supportive coalition: Very simple way to succeed, build a group of people who support what you want to do and usually it will happen. This is always one of the safest ways to influence because it is about creating a collaborative wave that carries the day over time. In fact, influencing through a supportive coalition can often be a catalytic process. Why? Because those who aren't interested in being the champion of change are often very lemming like in their behavior. If push the right buttons and get the right people you will often find yourself having more people than you would think because those YOU influenced will bring who THEY can influence to the party. And when this happens across levels rather than down, your ability to get somewhere can move so fast you might not be ready for what is expected. Collaboration is the name of the game and supportive coalitions are the core of driving change.

They have understood others' interests: As stated in an earlier post, negotiation is about interests and if you understand someone interests it is often much easier to bring them where you want them than if you simply think about what you want to do. This is very important because most innovators can be very focused on getting what they want that they will ignore the needs of others. We can be a single minded group and breaking out of that and focusing on what someone else wants can be an eye opening experience. I find myself often thinking I know what someone else is thinking and while I am often right, when I am wrong I wanna kick myself. Staying focused on others' interests means always trying to understand what everyone wants, thinking through how you can bring your interests in line with theirs and then build the biggest coalition you can to make it move.

They have encountered the desperate: This is my favorite innovation principle of all when it comes to success. Have you ever come across someone in trouble? They have put themselves out there and they are worried they are going to fail. Are they a political pariah? Well, while the conventional often run, this represents great opportunity for an innovator. Many times our ideas are about bigger things than simply a new product or service. Many times our ideas around flexible...meaning they could fit in many places within the organization. A person in trouble will be very easy to influence. They will want to try anything to get out of their situation and often make a very loyal innovation partner. And if you deliver for them when others were afraid to support them you make an ally too. Some of my greatest ideas have come from helping the desperate. Because you can build a coalition with someone who it is easy to understand their interests...to survive their current situation. Sometimes they could also be someone so eager to do something that you are their shining light who can speed it up. There are many types of desperate I guess and frankly the term should be considered loosely when working on the political grid, but always be on the lookout for the desperate because they can be your best innovation friend now and in the future.

They have access to decision makers: If you are good you can get to decision makers and get them to move where you want them to. This is an art, but a great one to cultivate. For example, early in my career I used to say...it doesn't matter when you get into work, but best action can occur after 530 when the day starts to die down. Why? Because many decision makers stay late. They will notice your "commitment". And they are tired and are often chatty and willing to open their door for you at the end of the day. And while this is certainly more a big company idea, it is nonetheless all about access. Getting access to the right people is huge when trying to drive change. I have always believed, however, you desire to get closer to those who can help make things happen must be genuine and must include loyalty. That is why you get access for working with decision makers and by managing expectations and delivering. This is what gives you access...not simply because you can talk to them will you have credibility. Don't believe this is a phone tactic to be successful. This is all about being genuine, honest and forthright with those who make decisions. Use your access wisely or it will be short lived.

Great Innovators are often successful because - Power Drivers

2011-04-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

After having the data, there is power. Even though I used to say that "Innovation is a team sport", which it is, a friend once corrected me and said...no, "Innovation is a contact sport". I have thought about it a lot since he said it to me and while I am a true believer in trust, transparency and collaboration, there is little doubt that there is a lot of contact when innovating. And sadly, sometimes the contact is bloody. Having recently wiped a lot of blood of my face in the war of change, I think that we must be true to ourselves and realize that power plays a role in being successful at driving change. Below are some reasons one may be able to change the game when you have used power to drive the change.

They have unseen influence: I would say that on average an innovator's most valuable weapon is that they like to network. Does this mean that people who don't aren't good innovators? Absolutely not, but we are talking about politics of innovation which by its very nature is about interacting with lots of people, situations and cultures (people). As a networker or a relationship builder, it can be incredibly powerful to have a relationship that can help you when others can't see it. Probably one of the best examples of this is a technique I have used many times in partnership (a topic for building innovation partnerships). If you are trying to partner with an outside organization one of the greatest ways to create unseen influence comes from your partner. You are partnering. You want to get something done. You have a culture at your company. You have a hierarchy. You have people competing for air time. You have people between you and the decision makers you need to influence. Why not simply use your close and trusting relationship with your external partner to have them use their leadership to get YOUR point across. By trusting you external partner and having them get their senior leader to make your case you have gone around your entire organization and created unseen influence. Utilizing your network and DELIVERING for your network gives you credibility to ask for such things in the example provided. You must continue to think about how you can have others be your cheerleaders. This is the hallmark of unseen influence. Cheerleading. Having others do it for you can influence around those in your way. But remember, this works in both directions most of the time.

They have a risk tolerant client: Why is this related to power? Well a risk tolerant client will often take your objective, make it their objective and help push people out of your way because they believe. Partners who believe in the risk you are asking them to champion creates a tide that pushes problems aside. Sure risk tolerance is merely believing, but mobilizing that belief is power. And if you can find all the risk tolerant clients during your efforts to make something happen, think about that political wave. Pretty powerful, pretty unstoppable, and very protective of what most might consider risky folly.

They have decision making authority: This one is as straightforward as it reads. If they can make the decision and they believe in you then they can make it happen...enough said.

They have created hierarchical cascade: This is one of my favorite reasons I have succeeded. In a previous post where I talked about the principle of BEVIA (believe, experiment, integrate, validate, adapt). This principle explains how complex and dynamic gaining consensus can be when creating a change wave. Essentially, just because you get the most powerful person to say yes to something, doesn't ensure you will move the mountain. That being said, it can create what is called hierarchical cascade. This means that if you can get around everyone and influence those in power, they may take up your cause and with their influence get those beneath them to follow along (the cascade). It can be a very powerful way to not only get your goal across the finish line, but also create future power for yourself because those around you will respect your ability to get things done. In addition, you will have made a senior ally if your idea helps make things happen that are new and different. Hierarchical cascade can be very risky (because the opposite can happen when you are wrong) but it helps build your success more substantially.

Great Innovators are often successful - Data Drivers

2011-04-22T00:06:00.000-07:00

After spending a ton of time talking about failure when it comes to innovation, I love that we get to switch to the other side of the playing field. We have discussed what keeps innovators from succeeding, but what makes them successful?

The next four posts delve into the four mega factors (what I believe anyway) that help innovators succeed. The first is what I call data drivers. I was once told by a friend that all people make decisions in three ways. They either use data, experience or their gut. As someone who likes rules of thumb, this was an interesting way to put it. If this is true, than someone who gets their proverbial data thoughts together should be able to show people the value of an idea that might seem foreign to someone's day to day activities. With the right data most people can be influenced even if they like to use either their gut or their experience. I learned to embrace the old saying from my time as a scientist...there is no bad data only data.

They have leveraged corporate culture: The first data driver while seemingly a bit soft is an innovator's ability to leverage the corporate culture. Whether you are within or outside the organization who is the client for you new idea or concept, if you can understand what makes the collective tick (a very critical piece of change agent data) you stand a chance to influence them successfully. Why? Because culture is what people cling to most of the time as a means of saying no. As someone who has managed alliances for over 15 years, you get to walk around the cultural block until you are exhausted. With this experience managing partnerships, one will gain the ability if they choose to become a cultural chameleon. When you can recognize the culture, the lingo, the process and the personalities of the collective, fitting between its cracks becomes possible. Think about it...Have you ever known someone in your company who isn't particularly competent but has risen high because they are "political"? This is someone who knows who to talk to, what to say and when to say it. They leverage the corporate culture to achieve a level of success. Doesn't this analogy contain the nuance you need to go from stubborn evangelist to sly change agent? Think about the do's and don't of a culture and if you focus on how your idea fits the do's or your method for getting to yes makes senes to "how we do things" your odds of success go up a ton. Even if your idea is something that is counterculture...no pun intended.

They have made big issues small: Getting ahead of issues takes patience. When making the different tangible, you must stop and think about why people would say no. If you get ahead of this you can think through why this issues are really pretty tiny. This takes preparation and thus data to get ahead of a big issue and solve it before you launch the innovation. The reason this data driver is so critical is that most innovators don't like to think about the risks. One of my bosses a long time told me that I needed to think about why things go wrong more. He shared with me that I was great at crafting the idea, thinking through why is was a good idea, but that I didn't spend enough time thinking through why we shouldn't do it (another principle that will come up in a bit). He said if I did that, I could be more prepared for the naysayers out there. Whatever could kill it, get ahead of it and then kill that problem with data and you can stop them dead in their tracks before they try to stop you!

They have strong standards: When negotiating a deal, one of the key steps is to come with a standard of legitimacy. This means are there other precedents for why your proposal has been tried before successfully. These standards are often loose connections to the proposal, but they do make a case for validity. After loving this whole concept in every negotiation I have accomplished, I let it make the jump to my innovation process. If negotiation is one of the four critical skills of an innovators (my earlier post) then the principles of the process should scale. This is a key part of idea/innovation development...think of a standard that works for the situation you are in. Can you connect it and better yet can you think of one that relates to something the person you are influencing actually did? If you present them with a standard that would make them a hypocrite wouldn't that seem to help you make the case? Standards give history and history is a means of how people make decisions...leverage their need for history well and you will make it happen faster.

They have a clearly articulated plan: They say the devil is in the details, sadly that is true (especially when you are conceptual thinker like me). Get a clearly articulated plan together by being succinct and clear. Simple, true and the hallmark of making it easier for them to follow the logic of an idea that may be way out there.

Great Innovators are Often Successful because - Introduction

2011-04-13T22:38:00.000-07:00

The last several posts have focused primarily on why innovators fail. Knowing what can stop you is the best place to start when figuring out how to succeed. On the other hand, knowing how to look for signs that can make you successful is another set of innovation weapons that you must arm yourself with as you battle the political forces of Corporate Culture. Just as seeing the warning signs is all about seeing how the outside world perceives YOU, creating one's success is about going inside yourself to ensure YOU are ready for the outside world.

Being an innovator is so much about challenging convention. When you do this your internal and external radar needs to be up at all times. You need to get aware of those around you and constantly be aware of yourself. This is at the core of why great innovators are successful. I believe it is being a life learner, who has the perseverance to challenge oneself to be a cultural chameleon, human rubber band or whatever you want to call it.

A good story of this is happening to me right now. Although I have lived with myself for so many years, I am astounded at how even as I grow older I can still find extremely profound observations about how I do things and how they are perceived by others. I mean big stuff...the kinds of things that if you can create "coping mechanisms" for, will pay big dividends in your ability to work with others. As a disciple of the Idea Connection Systems ISPI (a topic for another day...go look at www.innovating.com/ispi), I have come to think of my innovation profile as something that is fixed with it being up to me to find ways to challenge myself to be flexible. Having awareness of myself and having been trained in how to read others "profiles" or habits, I am learning over time to see interactions and recognize what I am doing wrong.

Just recently, I realized something very interesting. As a person who has a profile of creating big ideas, being visionary and unfortunately divergent (in my mind anyway) that I am person who loves concepts (thus this very conceptual blog). In fact, I am realizing that while I have successfully created and delivered big ideas that drive business results throughout my career, as a change agent I often do not get recognized for the small things I sometime do. And while I am used to this...I think I recently learned one important link. As a conceptual thinker, when someone asks me to communicate my thoughts, I often answer with a conceptual explanation. Within the context of my concept is a very tangible output that will deliver something great. And while I am very focused in my explanation of that concrete end state, I need the conceptual framework to think about how to get there. Because I describe a conceptual framework to talk about an end result, my ideas sound very theoretical. That is not my intent, but how I create and ultimately produce. I need to do a better job I realized, because unless my counterpart is like me I can come across as out there...and that is frustrating. This is a great example of why it is so important to be self aware at all times. If you want to be a change agent, the road can be difficult. You can be perceived as contrarian, out in left field, risky, misunderstood or whatever. But if you remember that when you point the finger at someone there are three fingers pointing back at you, you will have the moxie to change.

This learning is helping me think through why I have to do a better job of communicating when the audience is the opposite of me...convergent, concrete and interested in results. My lesson for myself...I need to think FIRST about what I am going to deliver and focus hard on describing that. I just need to keep the conceptual framework to myself. That is my magic...it is my personal fuel and no one else's. I

This is the moment when innovators because good and good innovators become great. WE ALWAYS MUST RECOGNIZE TO CHALLENGE OURSELVES. And now the CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK for those who love concepts about why great innovators are often successful.

Some followups and final thoughts...

1. Go check out www.innovating.com/ispi if you want to learn how you like to create, interact, learn and produce innovation
2. Think about how you are going to CONSTANTLY challenge yourself to improve your awareness of yourself...being successful in my opinion starts here
3. If you like concepts they can help guide you to analyze things to then be able to CONSTANTLY challenge yourself.

Politiics Kill Innovation - Personal Issues

2011-04-13T09:28:00.000-07:00

The most obvious roadblock to an innovator is always personal problems. Regardless of how obvious this particular post can be, it is important to at least dimensionalize the issue by splitting some of the hairs that make it happen. As a good friend of mine taught me...the elements of destruction are present at creation. How does this relate? Essentially, knowing what is lying in wait to destroy you because of who your are, what your idea represents or the threats the new poses to the people and organization, one needs rules of thumb to help them "see" what lies in wait upon the road to success. This post will be short because the breakdown of personal issues is obvious.

They have issues with you personally: If someone doesn't like you chances are they won't like your ideas.

They have allies with issues with you: A touch more subtle, but sometimes you can lose your innovation head when it isn't your partner with the problem, but those lurking behind them who don't really value what you are doing. They can then INFLUENCE and destroy support you have. What is very difficult in this situation is it is like an innovation time bomb waiting to go off. For example, you have a great idea. You go to a partner/stakeholder/decision maker and sell them the idea. Let's say they are a person of action and relationships and they say I LOVE THIS IDEA let's move forward. Then two days later they are in the cafeteria having lunch with someone who doesn't really believe in the way you do things. They say...whoa be careful that innovator doesn't always do things the "right" way or perhaps its I don't know if I would trust them. Before you know it they have influenced your partner and you have started moving forward. This is a common and bad scenario that can happen to any of us. Sometimes the danger lies around you and not in front, thinking beyond the the partner and the direct line of those who will support your idea is something we often forget to do.

They have issues with people on their turf: Sadly, not everyone is a collaborator (again another topic). Some, actually, most people are self-serving when it comes to their career. And in some cases it makes sense, I gotta provide for my family too. That being said, as an innovator we are often very collaborative. I frankly don't understand this "bad behavior". I stand for trust and collaboration. These are the hallmarks of an innovation culture based upon trust. Be aware if people are territorial and don't want you there, they will keep you from succeeding. In this case, if it isn't there idea or they feel they own it they will react very negatively and try to stop you.

They distrust your motives or interests: Hey, relationships matter. Distrust can come from a number of things, but usually it is based upon how we like to innovate and the differences that exist between people. If you are a visionary who likes concepts and they are concrete and need to see things you will not be speaking the same language and thus they might distrust your motives or interests. Be aware of your differences with people and make sure you work on building trust with those around you. Every interaction counts and your behaviors today can effect your ability to influence tomorrow. If people don't trust you their behavior towards you will be negative and ultimately they will not support you or better yet try to stop you.

Politics Kill Innovation - Interest Issues

2011-04-09T18:48:00.000-07:00

After poor influence and risk aversion comes the next reason politics kills innovation...Interests Issues. If you read my earlier post on what skills are critical to be a great innovator, you will see one of the key skills is negotiation. I had the pleasure of holding a job early in my career where I got do create, do and manage a lot of deals (a topic for another time) particularly licensing agreements. During what I consider one of the most critical times of learning during my journey to change agent, I received both formal and informal training around principled negotiation. In my opinion, negotiation is a science more than an art. Everyone likes to say they know how to negotiate, but after learning on the job AND learning the actual process for negotiating I started to see the value everywhere I looked. The first key step in principled negotiation centers around the concept of interests (may be redundant for many). That being said, understanding interests is one of the most important lessons. To align all (using operational definitions...another key innovation skill) interests in my view are taking the time to understand what your partner wants and is simply interested in. The thing about interests is that sometimes they are overt (explicitly said) and other times they are implicit (not really told to you). In any negotiation, aligning your interests with your partners is how deals happen. When it comes to innovating, however, using this principle to help you get your ideas across is the secret sauce to getting things going and maintaining one's momentum throughout the process. Interests change as innovation's are born, grow and thrive, so being aware of this at all times is critical and if you don't will lead to problems throughout the innovation lifecycle

How do interest issues get in the way?

They don't care about it: If those around you don't care about your innovative ideas, they their interests are not your interests and thus they won't support what you are doing. The ebb and flow of people's interests need to align and if people don't care about what you are doing you can't expect the to support your efforts.
They don't have the same agenda and won't work with you. Does this mean they will work hard to stop you in your tracks? Maybe it depends on how much their interest mesh with yours. When they don't care about it they don't care about you.

They don't have the same agenda: The politics in your office is about agenda and what each of us want to accomplish. If those around you don't have an agenda aligned with yours they can often come out against it strongly because they may be fighting for the same resources dollars or simply will do whatever it takes to see you fail. Not have the same agenda can be deadly because it can bring the worst behavior out in others around you. If your agenda is to collaborate for instance and some nearby wants to build an empire, this two personal agenda are like gas near a fire. The collaborative agenda is meant to empower while the empire agenda is meant to control. How can they go together? How will they both survive. You can be doing "good" for the organization, but those who seek to do evil can be doing something much more detrimental. Either way, it is this type of political misalignment that stops great ideas cold.

They don't have the capacity to support it: Sometimes people around you can understand your interests, but they simply don't have the time or resources AT THAT MOMENT to help you. This is important to recognize because if you don't understand this it can lead to aggravating a relationship. Knowing that this is happening kills your opportunity but it also is an opportunity. If people can't support it because of capacity you simply need to find another way around the situation or be patient (a virtue of success to be discussed)

They don't see the value versus other work: Very similar to capacity, seeing the value of your idea versus their other work is another way to lose ground in your quest to get things new implemented. In this case, however, you have the power to explain the value. Unfortunately, many times we as innovators communicate value in different ways than those who "manage" the store. So you better brush up on why those who may have influence can see the value versus the other work they do.

Politics Kill Innovation - Risk Aversion

2011-04-08T23:16:00.000-07:00

The second reason politics will kill innovation is due to Risk Aversion. This one is easy to understand as all of us whether we are pushing the envelope a little or a lot have encountered a scenario where risk hurt our chances for driving change. Risk aversion is something that is actually in many people's DNA. It is simply a factor that is built differently in all of us. The most important thing is to recognize when you and the person in front of you have a differing sense of risk. If you can begin to recognize when the issue is sitting in front of you, you will be able to get better prepared to handle this situation. Below are a few things to realize around what could happen in a risk aversion scenario so you can think a few steps ahead of your fearful opponent.

They have been influenced: Be wary of this. Many times we believe we have the cat in the bag (because those who like the change fight don't see risk) only to find out your sponsor changes their mind. This could be simply a third party who you can't see has been messing in your innovation kitchen. Think about the person you want to get on board and then think about who else could be lurking in the wings reminding them that their passion for your idea is really foolish. Forgetting who is around the person you are trying to influence is a surefire way to get blindsided by the fear of change.

They have a boss who is afraid of it: This is a little easier to deal with as there is only one person to be aware of. In this case, however, the road block is much more serious because they can stop things dead and for good. Always consider who is the decision maker behind the client is before you engage in your quest.

They fear the risk of innovation: Most of these principles make sense and are actually pretty obvious, but getting granular can also help you analyze your failures when you go back in for more. Sometimes it is just your client who is afraid. And if they are the doorway to your idea getting life, you need to know it and think about how to deal with it. Let's face people who see risk more than you will definitely fear what you believe is a perfectly sane plan.

They have had a bad experience: There are cases however, where the bad taste of innovation still sits on their tongue. They have been hurt by trying before and won't get hurt again. If you are not connected to your partner's history, you might misinterpret their NO for something far more difficult...the scars of trying. We have all had it and as we all make decision using either gut, data or experience, we cannot ignore how experience can stop new ideas before they started.

Politics Kill Innovation - Poor Influence

2011-04-07T23:11:00.000-07:00

As one thinks about driving change within their organization you need to first understand what kills innovation. The first overarching area that seems to stop innovation in its tracks is Poor Influence. Why? Well, having great ideas is just that...great, but getting others to understand why those ideas are great and more importantly take up your cause to see those ideas live is another story altogether. If you are in the change business, getting clear on why you are not influencing others is critical to learning how to do it. Taking ownership of this outage in your journey is critical to learning how to combat your weakness. My good friend once told me that innovation isn't a team sport it is a contact sport. I never used to believe this, but until you are in the arena for a while and see how quickly you can get crushed, you will begin to believe. So what does poor influence mean when it comes to innovation failure?

They don't understand it: If they don't get it you don't get their support simply put. Making sure that people understand what they hell you are talking about seems pretty obvious, but getting clear that this is a real thing to be on the lookout for when selling is another. Always keep you radar up to know when your potential partner is lost in your vision, concept or approach (I have already written on the concept/approach principle earlier)

They don't see the value for them: Maybe your potential partner does "get" what you are selling them but there is no good reason for them to go out on a limb for you. As an innovator, when this happen this it is like getting stabbed twice, because if they don't understand it, you can accept that maybe you need to do better or they just don't get it. If they don't see value, this selfish moment on your potential partners' part hurts because as most innovators believe in trust and collaboration, this self serving behavior sucks. However, it is real and if you can create value for people they will come along...

They don't believe you are right: This scenario is a test of wills and when it happens you either need to deal with the issues (what problems they may have with you or your idea) and go back in for a second round. The other option is to build around your opponent (which will come later in why innovators are successful).

They don't have enough data: While this is a common issue, knowing what data someone needs before they can support your idea can be an easy or long road depending on how they like to innovate. But be aware for sure of this issue because unless you can meet the data hurdle set for you, your effort can stop dead in its tracks...

The politics of innovation introduction...

2011-03-31T14:23:00.000-07:00

Without mincing words, politics kill innovation. If you are not careful, anyone's brilliant new idea can be squashed without one knowing it, realizing it is happening and in some cases you are standing right there when it happens in your face. You might say, boy that's obvious, politics is rampant and everywhere we look. I agree this is the case, but when you are thinking about being a change agent within any business the odds of politics killing your new ideas is always high.

Why? Because all organizations have their cultural attributes and morays and if you are challenging convention the opportunity for the organism to react to something different inherently feels much higher. Think about it...even if you live inside a relatively new culture, if you "go against the grain" you will have to make your case as effectively as you can to bring about change. It is easier, but politics will dictate whether you are successful or not.

Over my career, I have been extremely lucky to have had the opportunity to learn to be an innovator with no budget, authority, or people from the bottom, middle and top of the organization. And in the last few months, I have broadened that opportunity as I am now doing it at a small company with little resources at all. Having this chance to view driving change from all levels and sizes of organization has given me the chance to think about and formulate methods that enable one to think about any situation to enable them to "innovate in space" I will spend the next set of blog posts bringing the principles I use personally as an innovator from my politics of innovation deck into the blog. Much of the content in that deck was created a few years ago, but after utilizing these principles in my work life, I have had a chance to use them, teach them and refine them to a place that I have been surprised that they still hold water.

As I have stated in earlier blog posts, having broad rules of thumb or principles that help you in any situation are great ways to help you make decisions more quickly in tough situations both personally or professionally. To help you drive change of any kind, knowing what is happening around you at all times is ALWAYS the difference between success and failure to launch that change.

The Bridge to Innovation - from theory to reality

2011-03-28T23:14:00.000-07:00

When it comes to innovation, I never cease to hear people discuss how mushy it is. They often discuss how many of those in the innovation field make wild claims on what can be accomplished, but very few of them produce anything tangible. Why are innovators so easy to attack? I believe it stems from a variety of things, not the least of which is the issue that great innovation theory is too far away from the tangible results most corporate leaders look for and crave. Too many times we hear people at work say, "We are all in this to make money, right?" And this statement is usually follow up by a horrifying laugh that makes my skin crawl as the narrow minded financially focused belt on.

To best understand how to make a difference as a change agent, we need to get clear on how to think through things conceptually in order to be able to make real change happen. Below is one way to think about the link between theory and functional execution.

Essentially what this visual highlights is a simple way to think about each thing an organization needs to make a great innovation live. And more importantly, it gives the innovator a way to think about where they are in the process to best understand what step is next and what is missing.

Theory: This is the foundation for big innovation. Innovation theory is where great ideas are born. Theory can add great impact to anything, because when the net is cast wide enough it can catch a lot of fish. The problem with theoretical constructs is that really have low dollar value until they are distilled and ultimately proven correct. And while they are usually one of the most exciting things for an innovator to work on, its limited business value can often keep them from ever really getting off the biggest idea off the ground. Is it folly to be a person who loves theory, no! Theory is what brings many efforts into context and creates what are often the most powerful and scalable innovations. Without the theory of open innovation, the explosion in external partnering in the late 90's and 00's would have never happened. In this case it took theory to give people a way to think about the change.

Process: While more tangible, process does not always drive the bottom line. In this case, we are not talking about the process design to make a product, we are talking about business processes by which corporate scale is often created. As stated on this slide, process brings the needed order to things, but its downside is it often crushes the spirit of new ideas because "we have a process for doing this...and that is outside of it". We have all heard these dreaded words and they are usually involve the next level on the bridge (politics/culture), but without good process many innovations die in the one-off graveyard. Where process shines is in its ability to bring people together. Process can be the birth of corporate collaboration (the needed order). What is probably most intriguing to me is the way a process can help those involved defocus the personal and collaborate more professionally as a team.

Politics/Culture: This sits at the top of the bridge for a very simple reason...politics and culture are the difference between succeeding and failing in the change game. Every company or group has a methodology for doing things and those within the culture often fight to lead and get their ideas implemented. As someone who often is focused on changing either the structure or culture, knowing how to move between the cracks is essential. If you don't, change will die quickly, if you do it can speed everything up substantially. Being a student of politics and culture in the innovation/change agent game is critical to helping you accomplish the innovation goals any organization has for itself.

Organizational Structure: As you come down off the peak of innovation to organizational structure, you begin to come in contact with the more mundane structure of a organization. On the theory side you have process which is the needed order for how you drive change (the process). On the concrete side of things you have the organizational structure (the people). This can be a very difficult part of making innovation real. The what's your role and should you be doing this is where corporate turf wars live. On the other hand, knowing who does what can help the innovator focus on targeting the right part of the organism to affect change. Finding the right pressure point and then getting it do break ranks from the structure is a trick worth thinking about as you move forward as an innovator.

Functional Execution: Like the big thoughts of theory that have little impact on the bottom line, when you are executing innovation you are making it real. But at what expense? Often times when those who are great at making innovation tangible, often lose the vision of why it was created in the first place. This step can lead to a launch that delivers less that it should have because "the box" got it done, but did it get done right? Thinking ahead and planning for this is critical. It is where a scalable theory is critical, a good process for aligning people for the change is paramount, knowing which players can accelerate things, who needs to buy in so in the end the functional execution is done with excellence.

All part of the bridge are needed to make it real. Start to far to the right you will be only incremental. Stay on the theory side and nothing gets done. All five parts are key...but that being said, the politics of innovation are where a person ultimately succeeds or fails in their quest to become an expert change agent...

Innovation is to pupa as Change Agent is to butterfly

2011-03-20T23:52:00.000-07:00

What is an innovator really? For many years being considered innovative was primary to my goals. Whether this meant working on the front end of the business, being the person people would turn to for "different ideas", or simply being the square peg in a round hole for whatever company I worked for, I relished the thought. And above that, leading an innovation effort was my real interest. Actually, I am not sure why this was my quest, but seeing new ideas and methods come alive was what I enjoyed and all that really interested me. And I guess the ME at the end of the last sentence really highlights the issue that needed to be overcome.

After many years of looking for the opportunity, my chance to lead an innovation program came to pass when I become global vice president of innovation at Daymon Worldwide. During my early days at Daymon, something happened. I am not totally sure when it occurred or how it occurred, but when I was in a position of "innovation leadership" it became clear that the innovation mantra was overrated. The more respect I received because I was in a position of authority on the subject of innovation, the more I saw it as my job to help others see why no single person can own an innovation effort. Don't get me wrong, I always wanted to have a chance to impact a lot of people by making their job fun and work as a place of self discovery, but not for my own ego's sake. In fact, after starting my twitter stream in 2009, I wrote something that helped me externalize what was happening.

Early in my learning this new social media technology, I wrote something that struck me as interesting...

Simply put...Innovation is to pupa as change agent is to butterfly.

Read it again...Innovation is to pupa as change agent is to butterfly.

Think about it. After writing it, it made perfect sense to me.

Innovation is merely an amorphous thing that people spend a lot of time fighting to define. How many of you innovators sit around defending your corporate existence arguing about how your efforts directly impact the bottom line? You can scream till your blue in the face about your efforts, but someone who is way more concrete than you will always argue that what you are pointing to is, "not innovative at all". They might go on and say its all our job to be innovative and what makes what you do any more innovative than what I do? And thus the merry go round goes round again. And again. Innovation is a great thing when it happens. It can be so obvious when it comes to life. That being said, I feel that what most innovators miss is how we can have the most impact on everyone.

And the word EVERYONE at the end of the last sentence is the point of this blogpost. After writing that twitter post, I began to realize that I was changing as an innovator. I realized that the concept of innovation, in my opinion, was merely a subset of the being a change agent. Change Agents (often referred to as innovation champions) operate on an entirely different plane. I began to recognize that if everyone could be about 5% more innovative the impact to the company would be so much greater than if my small team was 200% more innovative. The power of helping others see why they owned innovation became the focus, not the ideas or even the products/services. Our concrete friends are right, it is everyone's job and everyone is innovating everyday. What they fail to see however, some people use their culture, their process or their loyalty to how things are done are the seeds of where innovation stops and the need for change agency starts. It is only when a leadership team takes on the goal of showing everyone the power of having a culture of innovation that is based upon trust that true change can happen. And when I could see the power of culture and people as a key part of my role did I know I could always have an impact where ever I worked.

I recently received a complement I won't soon forget. I was having a conversation with a colleague who wanted to know more about what I had done at Daymon Worldwide. And as I shared with him some of my thoughts on how to build an innovation culture based upon trust, he listened attentively. After a back and forth discussion for about 15 minutes, he stopped me. He looked at me across the table and told me that my approach was different and that he really saw the power in the concept of innovator as change agent. I was very curious why he said this. I truly believe in the work I do, but like any good leader, I am always wary of my ego and hubris, because over my career when ever I feel like I am really doing great, someone always knocks me off my pedestal. So I asked him what I had said during our conversation that made him say this. He looked back at me and very directly told me. You know, I have sat in front of many innovators in my day, most of them always throw around the words innovation and strategy. You are one of the only ones who used the words people and culture. In fact, you didn't say innovation or strategy at all and that approach is different and refreshing. And at that moment I realized I had hatched from my cocoon and become a butterfly.

Financial Landscape vs. Authority - Getting the money right for innovation investment

2011-03-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

Have you ever worked with an external partner who has something great for your organization but asks for too much money to do the initial project together? At this moment in an innovator's cycle you have three choices; you can take the price and try to get it funded, you can think their screwing you and reject the partnership or you can get strategic on the issue. Most innovators have a never say die attitude in moments like this, but as with most efforts as a change agent, I believe you need a simple principle to handle every situation. In this special case, I call it thinking about FINANCIAL LANDSCAPE VERSUS AUTHORITY.

What is financial landscape versus authority?

If your partner asks for some amount of money for a project, in most organizations there is a distinct financial authority someone has before they must ask their superior. And if they have to ask their superior there is a chance that the "landscape" they can spend that money on widens. As the landscape widens the odds of getting your idea funded diminish greatly. So if your partner asks for say $250,000 to do a project, in most cases this level of funding will be taken on by a Vice President and when you get to this level stop and think about the number of choices that person could spend that money on. Odds are their are so many you could be dead in the water, because most innovations are riskier investments than standard ones and unless that leader is special or you have major credibility it can be hard to get to yes.

How do you deal with this?

What is most important is to know what your internal partner's financial authority for spending is. You want the amount you are asking for be within their authority AND to be something they want to do. If you get the level of investment within those two parameters you will find a strong internal partner for doing the innovation experiment that can help your company win on the marketplace.

How do you deal with your external partner?

It is imperative that you deal openly and honestly about this issue as you negotiate pricing. Do it collaboratively, don't do it positionally. The greatest successes in innovation come from collaborative and trusting partnerships, not ones that are steeped in questions. There is always time for tough questions, but it can often be less valuable than using trust and clarity. In the case of financial landscape versus authority, simply telling your partner it won't get funded and exactly why is the best course to make it happen. If they believe in you they will work with you, if they are merely interested in short term gains, they might walk away. Better to find that early than after you start and learn the price of doing business is too high to move forward.

Should you never go big?

Of course not...going big is in the innovator's DNA, but for you "infection" of the corporate body, you want to get started small and cheap with a focus on developing data and a partner champion that will allow you to go bigger next time. If you get a business partner who is championing your effort, then you sound less like an heroic evangelist and more like a savvy innovator who is "connected to the business".

Financial Landscape versus authority in action...

One of greatest successes involved getting my company to fund an experiment in social media. When I first discussed the price with my partner, they asked for $250,000 for a 16 week partner. And while I believe the project would give more that $250,000 in value, I realized quite quickly that I needed to go the that dreaded VP level to get the funding. I had a good director level partner who was eager to do the work because of the situation he was in. So rather than try to get him to fund it and end up in front of the VP who probably would look out on the horizon and choose not to, I told my external partner it wouldn't work. Instead, I figured that my internal partner could fund the project for about $100,000 and told my external partner that the chances of funding at this level were faster and easier. It worked, the internal partner funded it and we did the project.

What happened afterwards?

After the initial $100,000 project, the external partner has enjoyed a 5 year relationship with my company. This partnership yielded over $1,000,000 dollars over that four year period with the second deal totaling $275,000 dollars about 4 months later (funded by a vice president). In addition, I left the company two years into the partnership and the relationship has survived in some financial form even today.

When can you go big right away?

There are many principles that make an innovator successful. And this is something I will talk about in a later post....

If you lead the horse to water...its your responsibility to make him drink

2011-03-17T23:03:00.000-07:00

Often times as an innovator, I have found myself feeling like an outsider looking in. Why? Because as a born contrarian and a natural divergent thinker, my process and method for doing things is often different from others. Over the years, I have come to learn that this style difference is merely that a difference in how I like to innovate versus others. And while that is the topic for another longer post, I will say this...regardless of how different we are as innovators, to bring change to others it is up to us to figure out the coping mechanisms to "get along" with those we encounter everyday.

How often in your quest to work on novel and different ideas that often go against the grain do you get frustrated because others don't understand where you are going, how you are getting them there and most often even what you are trying to say? I would say in the beginning of my career way more often than now. And while this frustration will always remain, I have learned to accept that if I can't get the horse to drink it is my fault not theirs. Too many times, it is too easy to say to others who are different from us that they just don't get it or their too afraid. In reality, if you are really pushing the envelope, you need to take responsibility that this in our quest to bring what are often considered risky and different ideas, we must find ways to help other see what we see.

And while this isn't easy, it is critical. Earlier I wrote about the concept approach principle. where understanding that your struggle can often be not your concept but the approach you want to take. This will often bring instant clarity to any situation, it is only the first step. Acknowledgement that bringing people along to your way of thinking is your responsibility can often create even more clarity because when we own what is ours (in this case the differential in thinking) we find ourselves moving more quickly towards growth and new skills.

And in the end, we can only improve as innovators and change agents if we are readily willing to take on the constant challenge to grow and change for the good of bringing about the wonderful ideas that give us passion...

Crossing your arms or reach out for a hug - the innovation partnership difference

2011-03-16T15:58:00.000-07:00

What is the difference between speed in implementing innovation and never getting it off the ground? Trust! That being said, one of the key things to think about when you first encounter an innovative idea is this...

How do you first interact with the idea/concept/solution/product etc?

Do you question and doubt everything you hear until the potential partner proves to you the value they bring? Do you worry about if it is worth the risk? Do you actually sit there with your arms folded across your chest?

Or do you bring trust and accept what you hear at face value first and then over time determine the positives and negatives of what you have just heard?

I believe the majority of folks cross their arms rather than reach out and embrace what they hear and because of this attitude/behavior many great opportunities for individuals and companies to shine are lost. You may say yes, but only about 10% of ideas are really worth launching. Or you might say, hey that is off strategy for our business. These things are all true, but resting on the obvious reason to say no only makes the point even more.

Many of my greatest successes have come by bringing trust to my relationship from the moment I first meet someone. This does not mean show every single card. It means being clear (expectation management)about your interests and your company's interests, being honest about what you need to be successful in the partnership, and being forthright about the cultural challenges you may see or have with the path to success. In my earlier post being the benevolent virus, I talk about this as the first phase of building an innovation partnership.

While I have many examples of this, my current role at NetBase started in this way. In 2006, when I first came across NetBase's fantastic technology rather than question the value of their solution, I saw potential and shared it very openly with my partners. I told them very clearly what it would take to succeed and never deviated from the things I promised to them. This included sharing how Clorox's culture took time to try new things, it involved being open about the amount the company was willing to spend on a pilot for a new idea, and most importantly it involved getting very open with them about the folks they met during the journey (essentially exposing them to the strengths and flaws of those who were involved). This building of trust enabled us to figure out a creative way to do our first project together and ultimately led to a financial relationship that lasted over 2 years after I left Clorox and was no longer there to champion the effort. And the financial result? Over seven figures in sales in total over a 5 year period.

This all started because I was willing to take a risk in how I approached people I didn't know well as well as how I treated an idea that I believe had potential

The concept/approach principle - influencing clarity

2011-03-15T18:28:00.000-07:00

How many times have you tried to drive change only to be brushed aside by a critical stakeholder? Have you ever thought why beyond the fact that they just don't get it? Is it possible that you didn't help them get it enough?

This leads to a simple innovation principle called the concept/approach principle.

What is the concept/approach principle? This principle is a simple way to analyze a situation when an innovator is trying to influence someone. When you are trying to share a new idea with a stakeholder if you are having trouble getting your point across you must ask yourself...do they not understand the concept I am presenting them or do they disagree with my proposed approach? This is an extremely critical distinction because if we can separate where our problem is we can have insight into how to fix our arguments to achieve our goals.

It also helps to cut down on frustration because if we recognize that someone doesn't understand our concept, it is easier to understand that we need to work harder to make sure they can get the concept we are selling. We might even decide there is another politcal route to getting this concept understood and ultimately implemented.

As for approach, if we are losing on approach it may be a bit easier to accept because this can be a difference in opinion. And while it is harder to convince someone to change ther emind on approach, at least we can make more sense of our disagreement. In addition, I have found if you can point out to someone that you don't have a concept problem first (they feel understood) so when you poiint out that it is about approach they might even get a bit more open minded to what you are saying because have done aq good job of cliarying the situation.

While it seems so simple, understand the issue in this simple way can help you better react in real time and be successful at driving the change you crave to implement.

Culture Based Adoption - Driving Change from the inside or the outside

2011-03-15T18:24:00.000-07:00

As a person who has worked on the front end of the business my entire career I have often been curious about how to make bringing new opportunities to life something that have repeatable principles. And over time working inside large organizations (CPG companies) and now working outside at a small innovation organization (social media SAAS startup), I am starting to think through how we can create a simple principle to think through the most complex of changes.

I call this concept CULTURE BASED ADOPTION. What is it? Culture based adoption is the simple principle that getting people to do something new is actually a "2-step dance". The first step in the dance is usually based on getting someone to use something new whether it be a product or a service. If you think about this first step it is a scalable principle. From a business perspective it could be the interaction between your company's product or service and the customer/consumer that interacts with it. So whether you are a SAAS company selling a tool or a CPG company launching a new product concept, we must all get our end-user to understand how and why they should use it. The second step in this process involves the culture part. To explain this best, it is probably better to focus on the corporate side of things. The simple point here is once you get someone to understand how and why they must use this new product/service you must then ask yourself will this involve a culture change that could be rejected by the "others" involved?

A great example comes from the adoption of social media tools/services that are flooding the marketplace. As I work with NetBase solutions, we have a new way to mine social media through understanding the language of the web. This interface give its users the opportunity to interact with consumers anytime anywhere from the comfort of their desk. And essentially for a single price they have the freedom to not only talk to them anytime, but to also perform the same research on brands they never in their right mind would spend money on. Here is the problem with step one. Even when someone really gets this new interface and way of interacting with consumers, they still must decide whether they even like to use tools at all. Think about it...a way to do market research on nearly any subject at about 10% of the cost of their current method of operation. And many users will say, I don't have time. Instead they will not use a tool and simply take more time and money to have someone else do it for them. This is a micro version of the two step dance. First, I need to learn something new and second I personally have to change my way of doing things. And while it may be more efficient and less costly, there is real push back because of the "other work" or the "the way we do business". But what happens when they do want to learn something new and become a champion?

This is where the real second step of the Culture Based Adoption comes into play. While many people may understand this new tool's value, they may shy away from it because we are now asking a company who never even would consider a new data source like social media to be valuable. This is where the champion DNA meets the road. Knowing and being willing to fight your culture to bring new value to it starts with an awareness that your organization is throwing away money by doing it the old way. And from the sale side, it is imperative to understand this because it is not simply enough to wonder why things are going smoothly. You must ask yourself if your offering or idea falls into the concept of culture based adoption. That is learning to do something different and then changing the behavior of others to make it real and continue.

So how do I adjust?

Be Aware: You must analyze your idea/offering to say this...is it hard to use and will it require people to do it differently? If the answer is yes and yes you need to think through a process to help them see why?

Collaborate: While all innovations may be valuable in your mind, you must also realize that only through others can you affect change. Great innovators are born with no budget, authority or people. If you can drive change without these things then you can "innovate in space" and bring change when you need to. I have learned time and time again, if you can be patient and bring others along to your way of thinking then they will own it and help you make it real.

Build Trust: In a sales cycle, many people make the mistake of thinking that selling innovation involves making others believe that everything is perfect and there is no issue. I think this is wrong. Selling the hardest innovation requires a huge measure of trust between you and your clients whoever they are. If you use strong expectation management and negotiate fairly (in terms of what you will commit to doing) you can go far. In addition, sometimes showing your warts and acknowledging the problems will help you bring people closer to what you want to accomplish.

Bring Fortitude to the Party: Delivering innovation is not for the those who can't withstand the heat. My good friend told me that innovation is not a team sport but a contact sport. Be aware of where the contact is coming from and be ready to defend your position to make it happen.

In the end, driving new usage behavior and changing the culture of your customer/consumer is something that is hard, but the biggest breakthroughs in the world are never that easy...make it happen

Innovation Partnerships Talk Final Fei

2011-02-03T00:28:00.001-08:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: this presentation takes a look at how to create successful innovation partnerships. What is different about this approach is that it challenges the alliance manager to do things in the opposite manner they are used to. This means embracing the unknown, sharing openly with partners, creating loyalty to your partner over your company and most importantly openly negotiating your way to both parties success. Without trust innovation's life span can be zero because it never gets off the ground.

Innovation Partnerships Talk Final Fei

View more presentations from Malcolm De Leo.

The Politics of Innovation

2011-02-01T14:55:00.001-08:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: This presentation is a summation of skills and tools that helps any innovator increase their ability to recognize political danger when leading change within an organization

The Politics of Innovation

View more presentations from Malcolm De Leo.

Fate and its role in innovating ourselves

2010-04-19T06:16:00.000-07:00

When I think about where I am in my life today, I often think back to the critical moments when fate seemed to put me at a fork in the road and simply said...choose. It dawned on me earlier in my life to recognize when a choice would have implications as to how the rest of my life would go. If we can recognize this is happening to us, we can make a more informed decision which ultimately helps us move forward without looking back.

So how do we know when we are there?

Its about introspection. Its about knowing yourself, and getting closer to your base emotions: fear, anger, happiness and sadness. If you can be touch with these things you will be able to recognize what is going on for you at that moment and learn to say to yourself, "This choice is important and I need to know that whatever choice I make, things won't be the same.".

One might say, so what? So I choose and life goes on. But does it? I learned this thinking when I was finishing college. In fact, I use this story in any interview I have because it shows convinction, willingness to take risk, and a willingness to live out of the box. And this is not my opinion but what I have been told over the years when I tell this story. And I believe it shows the point best.

The Story: In college, I majored in Chemistry something I had a great deal of passion for as a high school student. It was something I really loved. During my senior year, it became clear to me that I needed to go to graduate school, but I have to say I wasn't sure where to go or better yet where this would lead me in my future. I met with my advisor, who helped me select a group of schools to apply to. As is turns out half of them were on the west coast and half of them were on the east coast. For geographic irony, I was going to school smack in the middle of the country in St. Louis. For context, I grew up on the east coast in Phladelphia and many of my close friends in college and high school were mostly heading back east to live. So simply put, the easy choice would be to do what was comfortable.

One night I was sitting in my room (probably having a beer) filling out my many applications for graduate school. As I sat there looking at schools on the west and schools on the east, I was pretty confused on how to decide. And out of nowhere (this is absolutely true), a voice came flying into my head and said quite clearly, "if you want to grow up and face yourself you cannot go back.".

This may sound like a movie or alien hokey, but those were the exact words I heard. Now as you read this post you will expect me to say that was fate talking, and that you should listen to crazy voices in your head, but it was not. That was me talking. But what I did learn at this moment was that I was at a critical juncture in my life. And while it is obvious that going to school in a far away place would be shape my life, it is the fact that this moment helped me know that when a critical decision comes up you must know it.

So the next thing that happened was I picked up all my east coast applications and threw them away. Essentially, I made the decision that would shape my life right then and there. I listened to the voice, which was critical, but I chose a path that would reshape things. This is knowing and going forward. What I didn't discuss here is the second thing I started to say to myself after I made this decision.

About a week later, when I started wearing shorts in February (because I had gotten into UC-Santa Barbara), someone asked me if I was excited to go to graduate school. My response was this, "I want to finish what I started, and even if I never practice chemistry again, it won't be a waste of my time". And this is how we not only recognize the fate forks in the road, but also how we can take control of our choice and walk that path prepared for the downside potential our choice can cause.

Fast forward....

Did I grow up and face myself as the voice said? Absolutely. I did go to California. I did finish my graduate degree. I did grow an entire life away from my family and spent 15 years there. I did learn during graduate school that I hated working in the lab and that doing bench science and even pure chemistry was not for me. I am now working in the innovation field (something not that far from my training...because I do human experiments and develop innovation theory). But every single day I am so happy I made the second statement when placed at that fork in the road, because when we recognize we are there, we recognize what we must do, and most importantly set our own expectations so we can remember why we chose. It is this last thing that makes you successful at the fork. If going in, we can get on the balcony and understand what's most important when we choose. We have set ourselves up for success because we are innovating ourselves personally. And with this type of growth, comes the chance to produce astounding results in whatever we do either personally or professionally.

So ask yourself this...

1. Am I making a decision that will fundamentally change things going forward?
2. If it is a moment like this, what is important to me?
3. What do I want to achieve with this decision
4. What key thing must I assure myself that this is NOT a bad decision no matter how it goes?
5. How I can be sure to look back at this moment later with no regret because I learned no matter what?

Hey Innovator...what skills are critical?

2010-04-18T19:49:00.000-07:00

Being an innovator is a hard business. In fact, it is often downright painful. Why? Because you are usually a champion and in this role you must be willing to fight against the status quo and conventional thinking to lead those who don't see to a place of clarity and value. But how do you teach the skills of being a change agent? Some would say you can't. I don't agree. In fact, I have spent a long time thinking about the key skills that have helped me. And while there are some key internal skills (a topic for another day), one must realize there are some key skills a person needs as they deal with the people around them they want to change. Over my career, I have found the following skills to be the ones that have been critical to my ability to “innovate in space”. This means that wherever I am and whatever I am doing, that I am capable to assess the situation and come up with a way to influence those around me to see the value of the innovation or change I am championing. If you can know how and when to use these tools, you will be successful in driving change. The slide at the beginning of this post is a framework from what is discussed below.

Communication Clarity Skills: The idea of communication clarity is very important because it is the foundation for ensuring that you are on the same page with those you are trying to influence. Innovation is a dangerous game and when you are unskilled at communicating clearly with those you are trying to influence, you can very easily lose your credibility and lose the trust you have worked so hard to build. Communication clarity skills focus on just that...learning to get clear about what you mean.

Operational Definition Creation: I always tell the story of how when I was getting my MBA how my operations teacher who taught us nothing about operations, spent many classes talking about the most critical thing we would learn is the principle of operational definitions. This means when two people point at something and call it pink does it mean the same thing? This is critical because it is first step to creating misunderstandings between two people. If you are unclear on your operational definitions, you are starting off on the wrong path. There are many times in my career that I have failed at this and paid for it later. In fact, without it you can very easily end up working on the wrong thing and end up with a client that is pissed about wasting time. As an innovator you can really endear youself to others when you take the time to listen for mismatches here. I have saved many meetings simply hearing bad operational definitions and point out that people are not on the same page. They always thank me and it builds credibility for the innovator. It is also directly linked to poor expectation management, the other critical communication clarity skill.

Expectation Management: One of the most critical skills of innovation is learning to say no. Why is this critical? Because innovators in general love to see the possiblities in things and ultimately prefer to say, "I can do it". This fundamental love of change is our greatest asset and weakeness...unless you can learn to manage expectations. You can think of this as an innovator's power of yes, which a heavy dose of MAYBE lumped in. How many times have we promised something hoping it will work out, only to find you have stretched yourself too far and end up falling flat on your face. Being able to work with people and get clear on what you can and can’t get done is so important because in the game of change it helps you manage your integrity as a partner. This sounds obvious, but I have been amazed at people's ability or lack thereof to use candor when working in a partnership. People think that by making people feel good they will walk away from the table aligned. This is simply not true. While it can sometimes be offputting to be so clear with folks, it is critical to setting things in the right direction. This is also the foundation to building a great relationship that innovates and tolerates the issues that arrive between partners when driving change. So for me, I try to start every request or idea with..."no is always an appropriate answer". This is how I train myself to be better at this because I always remain open to hearing no, understanding why and working to manage expectations if I have gone too far with my idea for change

Collaborative Influencing Skills: The other type of skills that is needed at the higher level is collaborative influencing skills. Because in addition to communicating clearly innovators must also excel in their ability to influence when they have no authority. I have often said and stand by the idea that great innovators learn with no one reporting to them, they have no formal authority and have no budget. If you can successfully create ideas and implement them when you have nothing but your wits you can command a large group to do things for you. What this means that these skills in particular are very important because they are the second part of the external foundation that help you lead from a point of perceived weakness

Negotiation: If you think about it, everything we do is essentially a negotiation. Whether it is our children, our spouse or the people we work with you are negotiating your point more often than not. Why is this critical to innovation? Because you often have to get others who don’t believe to do just that; believe in something shocking and different. So the ability to use the formal negotiations is critical to success. I personally subscribe to the principled negotiation method. It is the innovator's friend because is a style that is based on collaboration. In this process, the first and most critical step is the idea of probing for interests. Simply put, this means taking the time to ask yourself what does the other person want? Most people do not spend the time to really think about what their partner wants, they are more interested in what they want to get in the negotiation. If you are too focused on yourself, you cannot really hear what is going on which can ultimately sink what you are trying to do. When it comes to interests it is imperative to keep poking and poking at them. Why? Because you might just learn something that makes the scenario a winner for everyone. You must play back what you hear and keep asking. When you get their interests it makes creating options easier because they will make sense for everyone. In addition, if you are clear on your own interests you will be sure what you will or won’t do. This type of clarity supports being good at expectation management as well as being strong a using operational definitions. In fact, the skills begin to flow together.

Facilitation: The last skill is something the most overlooked as a personal external innovation skill. Facilitation is the art of being able manage a group towards a goal. But what is different about innovation facilitation versus regular faciliattion? Most facilitation is merely a process by which you manage a meeting. Time keeping, agenda writing and neutrally helping a group go through the steps they outline to create value from a meeting. When it comes to innovation facilitation, a very unusual skill, the facilitator actually knows where they want to lead the group and literally drags them there in a very subtle way. How is this done? Sometimes the faciliator can say what they think and ask the group if it is a stupid idea. You goal is to bring people towards you and ellicit a reaction that is close to where you want to go. Think of innovation facilitations doing the process with an opinion. But the bottom line if you are able to mobilize a group towards a point of agreed to convergence you are on your way to helping them create something. Sprinkle in a little negotiation thinking, operational definitions and expectation management and you will see yourself moving everyone around and around to where you want them to be.

So that sort of it...

In my experience as I continue work to improve how I drive change in the world around me, I believe the skills outlined here will enable a person to really be able to tackle problems from any angle. And being able to tackle problems from multiple points of view is the essence of coming up with new ideas that ultimately need a change agent to implement them.