In order to get out of this situation, Nokia needs to do two things:

1. Define a new vision what Nokia, mobile communication and “connecting people” means in the future. A touch smartphone with maps, app store and music store (aka Nokia Ovi) will not be enough to reach a leadership position again. What is next after Smartphones? What is next after app stores?
2. Streamline the organization; optimize processes and increase performance, speed and agility in the organization with just one single goal: bringing new products to the market. Not concepts, not demos, real products that “wow” customers.

With these challenges ahead some obeservers are looking for a "Finnish Steve Jobs” for Nokia. But that will not – and should not – happen.

Nokia does not need a "Steve Jobs"

Nokia is still an excellent example of a design-driven companies. Jan Chipchase, former Nokia ethnographer (who left Nokia recently), has reached celebrity status with his research on mobile phone use in emerging markets. The Nokia 1100 is still the world’s best selling mobile phones. There have been countless design studies from Nokia about the future of mobile communication yet despite all these activities and concepts, none of them made it into real products that had sustainable success in the mobile market.

The negative highlight was the recent announcement of Nokia bicycle charger kit. Clearly this is not the way to beat Apple, Motorola, Samsung and Research in Motion and whoever was in charge of that should reconsider what his job is.

The reasons are manifold for this mess, ranging from bad integration of various companies and technologies into the Ovi platform, hanging on to the featurephone strategy for too long and still hoping that Symbian OS will catch up with other operating systems and countless other legacies that hold the design teams back instead of enabling them to write the next chapter in the mobile industry history.

Of course a "Finnish Steve Jobs" who has the same degree of reputation, respect and leadership qualities could lead a turnaround at Nokia. But Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs because he started Apple, got fired, came back, led the turned, survived cancer, revolutionized the mobile industry and through this created a company that has nearly outgrown its investor in 1997, Microsoft, which it needed at that time to even ensure liquidity. Steve Jobs is an outlier, a wonder child and genius.

Betting the survival of a company on finding an “outlier” leader like Steve Jobs is foolish. And setting the expectations that the next CEO will be a Steve Jobs will be fatal: cause he won’t be a Steve Jobs and can only dissappoint.

A co-CEO strategy with a business and a design leader

Nokia still has design capabilities, but at the end of the day it comes down to managing processes, operations and projects that turn these capabilities into real product. The best design capabilities in the industry are worth nothing if the organization doesn’t have the processes – from procurement, production, supply chain and marketing – that work together to deliver innovations. Nokia needs leadership that addresses the two most urging issues: First it is about leaving feature phones behind, catching up with Smartphones and envisioning the future of mobile communication. Second it is about creating a world-class organization that can execute this vision, without politics, without bureaucracy but with a clear focus on results.

Instead of searching for the “dear leader for Nokia” who can do this in one person, Nokia should aim for a co-CEO strategy with one CEO responsible for business operations and one CEO responsible for the design and engineering direction in the organization.

The “business-driven CEO” is responsible for business operations should be easy to find and his job is to streamline the organization, as fast as possible. The “design-driven CEO” does not need to be the ultimate visionary. Instead it

should be a designer who can lead the design organization (and be respected through his achievements and experience) but who is also able to work with the business side in the organization to develop the best concepts and to bring the best concepts to market.

I also think it is important to differentiate between a Chief Design Office and a design-driven co-CEO. While the first one still reports to the CEO, the design-driven co-CEO will be in charge just as much as the business-driven co-CEO.

First fix the organisational aspects, then the design challenges

Who is more important? I believe an excellent “Business-driven CEO” is more important in the coming 12 months than a “Design-driven CEO”. Nokia still has to catch up and therefore it needs to get its existing operations in order and turn existing concepts into reality. At the same time this gives time to build and nurture internal design talent with one person becoming “Design-driven CEO”.

Whatever will be next for Nokia, it is a fascinating moment in the company’s history and the industry as a whole. Will Nokia make the turnaround? It depends on the pressure – even the pain – that the organization feels in order to implement the changes necessary for a turnaround. Is the pressure and pain already high enough? We will find out in the coming weeks and months and see either a new and revived Nokia that will strive in the industry or a Nokia that will merely exist, holding on to existing strategies and keeping alive with innovative tactics.

inspired by The Register: Rescuing Nokia: A former exec has a radical plan

Deindeal.ch is the latest startup from Swiss serial-entrepreneur Adrian Locher (also a graduate of the University of St. Gallen) and his business partners Amir Suissa, Dario Fazlic, Flavio Rump and Lucas Vogelsang. In the weeks before this interview, the founders experienced their best-selling group buying offer which sold more than 1000 times in the course of a few days. That was the reason when I contacted Adrian to talk about the lessons he has learned from launching a Groupon clone in Switzerland. And it was an interesting conversation.

Ideas are important but Timing and Execution are essential for success

Adrian believes that the key ingredients for a successful new business are ideas, timing and execution. While many people focus solely on the first idea, ideas only define 10-20% of your potential success. More important are the right timing of your new venture (20-30% relevance) and the focused execution (60% relevance) to launch and scale your idea into a profitable business. Of course an unrealistic or simply stupid idea will not turn into a successful business through timing and execution. The point is that even a brilliant idea is worth little if timing and execution are not excellent.

“deinDeal.ch” builds on the same idea as the US site groupon.com so the idea part was easy in this venture. Even though the team already identified several areas that needed to be adapted to the local market and circumstances the main question was: Is Switzerland ready for internet-based group buying using coupons?

Finding the right timing – is your target market ready?

The biggest obstacle for a startup is that a target market is not ready for an idea – that’s why timing is everything. Based on the experience that Adrian made with his earlier startup smaboo, an ambassador marketing agency, he argues that a startup should never try to establish a completely new market. While the company is in its successful 3^rd year today, it took longer than expected to convince clients of the benefits of ambassador marketing and only after clients such as Facebook, Microsoft and Research in Motion/BlackBerry have signed up with smaboo, have other companies been willing to engage in this new marketing concept.

Educating customers about a product or service is expensive and takes a long time and is the reason many of the first-generation group buying websites are long gone. One of the most well-known “too much, too early” examples is the website letsbuyit.com, the group buying platform launched during the 2000 dot-com bubble which was quickly gone because the market and consumer were not ready. Ten years later the second wave of startups can now build on the triggers initiated in 1999/2000 that have changed consumer behavior and attitude towards e-commerce.

The success of the original Groupon concept in the United States showed that consumers are accepting this online group buying concept in 2010, nevertheless this still didn’t guarantee the success for a Swiss version of the website. Contrary to the US market, coupons are not very popular in Switzerland and the biggest bet was on the willingness of Swiss consumers to use coupons for special offers.

Focused execution with no time for decorations

While ideas and timing are still the easy parts in running a startup, the main capability for a successful startupshould be on agility and execution. This was especially important in the case of deindeal.ch since it was well-known that the US site is planning an international expansion. Based on the initial idea the decision was madeend of January 2010 to launch a Swiss version of a group buying site. Three weeks later a team of designers and programmers started the development of the site and the first version of the site was launched around five weeks later on March 24^th. Such a short timeline – in total less than 8 weeks – is impressive and is the results of more than just putting in long hours.

The key for such a short development cycle is to focus on the essential things that are relevant for your startup today. Don’t aim to build an application that includes features that you might need in a few months down the road – focus on today and cut out all the unnecessary noise and decorations of what you think might be useful someday.

Another important aspect is to push your application into production mode as early as possible and improve the application every day instead of delaying your launch until everything is perfect. One example how the team at deindeal.ch approached this is the management of a user’s purchase history. While this might require asophisticated interface with sorting, filtering and pagination, it is not necessary to have this feature as long as a user has not bought 20 or more coupons. And this will not be the case at launch but only after several months so there is no need to implement this in the first version. And this was just one feature that has not been implemented yet but will be once there is a need in everyday use.

Localizing a globalized idea

The answer to the main question, whether Swiss consumers are interested in coupon based group buying, could ultimately only be answered after the website was launched. The success of other web-based buying concepts such as FashionFriends.ch affirmed the founders that Switzerland is at least ready for new and innovative e-Commerce concepts. During the first coupon deals that were offered, it became clear that Swiss customers focus on high-quality, localized services and that they don’t want to save just few Swiss Francs but a significant amount of money when they buy a coupon. This lead to a selection of high-quality, high-value wellness, beauty, gastronomy and leisure offers instead of average-priced, standard offers.

Spreading the word and getting traction

Once the first version was launched, the next step was to spread the word and get the Swiss to use the platform. While many businesses today would go directly for a social media marketing campaign, deindeal.ch chose a different approach. In order to launch and promote the new service, the founders have formed partnerships with local media companies who have a sufficient leverage to promote the new concept through established channels. In Switzerland this was through the popular websites and mailing lists like local.ch, RonOrp.net and DayDeal.ch. Another critical factor for gaining new customers was the recommendation program where users earn money if they invite friends to the website. With the successful launch in Zurich, the site is now expending into other Swiss cities, the first on the list are Bern, Basel, Lucerne and St. Gallen.

Social media services like Facebook have proven to be an important tool to reach potential customers that have a high online affinity. However Twitter has had little impact in gaining customers but proved helpful to reach out to opinion leaders. The reason is that Twitter is simply not that widely used in Switzerland. So in comparison with other media channels, Facebook and Twitter are important but they cannot yet substitute traditional media channels.

In the next step deindeal.ch is in the process of rolling out an ambassador marketing program to further strengthen relationships with local companies and to integrate high-impact, localized media channels.

The key lessons learned from launching deindeal.ch in Switzerland

• The success of a startup depends on three factors which are Idea, Timing and Execution.
• Idea: 10-20% relevant for success
• Timing: 20-30% relevant for success
• Execution: 60% relevant for success
• Improve your timing by searching for indicators in the markets and with consumers that help you decide if your idea can gain traction or not.
• Focus and agility are the core during implementation, early releases with daily iterations are the key to success
• During implementation you have to review every day what is necessary today, what you have achieved and if you are on the right track.  Cut out all the noise and unnecessary things.
• Understand the core of a new business idea and then implement it locally by leveraging local partners.
• Facebook and Twitter are nice, but leveraging established media platforms still has the biggest impact.

The Features of Windows 8

Let’s start with a few details of these documents, you can find the full documents at “Microsoft Kitchen” but here is my brief analysis:

1. Microsoft envies Apple and the Mac OS
2. There will be stronger cooperation with hardware manufacturers to provide a better overall customer experience
3. Focus on Experience based Differentiation
1. “Partners are able to customize Windows in alignment with specific hardware and software offerings to create unique, integrated, and branded experiences.
2. Customers who are shopping for a new computer are able to clearly see the value of Windows 8 product offerings and are able to choose a Windows 8 PC that best matches their personality, interested and lifestyle.
4. Development focuses on improving efficiency, on/off transitions, diagnostics and management as well as resilience
5. There will be an App Store called “Windows Store”
6. There will be a stronger integration with Microsoft Cloud Services

Is this the ultimate strategic disaster with all this information about Microsoft’s most important product out in the wild? I don’t think so. Maybe this is the best that could happen to Microsoft and the Windows franchise.

There is nothing new under the sun

Many of the ideas and concepts described in these documents are definitely new for Microsoft and Windows. But they are not new in the IT industry. There is Apple and Mac OS X with an integrated hardware-software experience, we have application stores on various platforms and we have standalone applications that integrate cloud services on the desktop (i.e. Dropbox or the Upcoming Google OS). And of course efficiency and on/off transitions have a lot of potential on Windows – that’s something that every Windows user is aware of.

If you are observing the IT industry closely, most of the “news” in these slides already exist and many could have guessed which trends have gained enough traction to be considered in a future version of the operating system.

Yet creating PowerPoint slides is one thing, delivering the software is another story. But maybe now that these documents are available online, Microsoft can focus on executing, instead of planning.

Planning distracts from execution

I once heard the unconfirmed story about the CEO of one of the major Swiss pharmaceutical company who said after the final review of the companies 5 Year Strategic Plan:

“Great, now let’s pack everything up and send it to our competitors because it doesn’t matter if they know it or not. What matters from now on is execution.”

Definitely a bold statement but there is some truth to it. I believe that too often planning substitutes execution and instead of working on the fastest track to bring something to the market, companies focus on the most sophisticated planning exercise that creates the most beautiful and thought-through PowerPoint slides.

With your plans well known, you can focus on execution – and delivering all the ideas, concepts and improvements that have been put together in PowerPoint Slides. And now that the world knows what to expect in Windows 8, Microsoft can (and hast to) focus on execution. And the recipe for success is simple: Create a user experience that is better than your competitors and you don’t have to worry about customers.

Would you publish your product roadmap?

Now of course you don’t have to publish your strategy documents and your product roadmap. But I think it would be an interesting thought experiment who your organization or team would change its behavior when all its plans would be. What would change if you are suddenly confronted with a published version of your strategic plan/product roadmap and the only thing left to focus on is executing and implementing the ideas?

And once this question is answered, the next question is: What’s stopping you from doing that right now?

The feature of Facebook Zero that will revolutionize the mobile industry: users in many countries don’t have to pay for any data traffic on their mobile phone when they use Facebook Zero.

No mobile data charges when using Facebook Zero

Facebook Zero brings access to Facebook for millions of people in the world for free. (The exception is for viewing photos). And while there are some developed countries on the list as well, most of the countries are in emerging markets which opens up a huge base of potential users for Facebook. Here is the list of countries and carriers that will offer Facebook Zero for free.

So who is going to pay the bills?

Instead of having customers pay for the service, Facebook will be paying carriers for the data traffic. Yes, the content provider will pay the service provider so user can access it for free. This has never happened in the mobile and telecommunications industry before.

This is a revolution because the mobile and telecommunication industry wants such a business model already for a long time. The increasing web-usage and web-traffic through websites like YouTube poses a problem for carriers: They have to increase bandwidth but cannot charge users more. So they would prefer to charge Google/YouTube and other content provider instead while at the same time ensuring that users will have the best viewing experience with YouTube and not with other sites (who don’t pay the service provider).

This is against the principles of net neutrality that states that service provider cannot impose restrictions on content, sites or platforms or degrade traffic. The topic of net neutrality is exactly the reason why content and service providers have not been able to implement such a strategy and the Facebook Zero experiment will be an interesting case study in this industry.

A brilliant strategy, a risky experiment or the end of net neutrality?

I don’t want to argue for or against net neutrality here, one question remains: Is Facebook Zero a brilliant strategic move or a risky experiment that will put more pressure on Facebook and its policies?

My opinion is that Facebook Zero, despite just being announced this week, deserves to be a prime case study for business model innovation and reframing existing industry assumptions. Either it will be a success and others will follow or it will fail and there are many lessons to be learned.

Two objectives have already been achieved with Facebook Zero:

• Facebook Zero will give access to Facebook to millions of users in emerging markets thus contributing to Facebook’s goals of user acquisition.
• The selection of emerging markets, besides the untapped user base, offers an opportunity to experiment with a radically new business model while being “off the radar” of net neutrality advocates and observers in developed markets.

How this experiment will work out – from a business perspective as well as from a net neutrality perspective – remains to be seen, but it is certainly an interesting experiment to watch.

Get in touch!

If you are interested in participating in the Customer Experience Forum in Berne, Switzerland you can find more information in this PDF file, the agenda for the day is listed below.  In order to discuss your participation you can contact either Helmut Kazmaier (helmut.kazmaier@stimmt.ch) from Stimmt AG or Miriam Bleuler (Miriam.bleuler@swisscom.com) from Swisscom.

If you click on the picture below you will be redirected to the Customer Experience Forum Facebook Page which has a more information as well.

The event will be mostly in German, if you don’t speak German get in touch with the organizers to discuss how you can participate.

Participate and share your knowledge!

If you are working in an organization that has done projects in the field of customer experience management you are invited to participate and share your knowledge in one of the workshops. All you need to do is present one of your projects and the lessons you have learned from this project and you can participate in this invitation only event. I have done that and I can guarantee that the time you will spend on creating this poster (templates are provided) will be offset by the people you will meet and the ideas and knowledge you will get on that day.

A unique cooperation between Stimmt AG and Swisscom

The Customer Experience Forum was initiated as a joint project between Stimmt AG and Swisscom. Stimmt AG has a 10 year history of user & customer experience consulting and is successfully organizing the Customer Experience Forum, Intranet Breakfast and other events in Switzerland. Swisscom is the biggest telecommunications company in Switzerland and has performed a radical strategic change in recent years. The organization changed their strategic direction from a technological focus to a customer experience focus and has pulled-off one of the most challenging cultural change projects I have come across so far. In this event selected Swisscom employees share their experiences with this transformation process and their new approach to developing new products and services.

Discussions with active customer experience practitioners

I have participated in the last Customer Experience Forum in November and the event has positively surprised me. The limitation in number of participants and the knowledge exchange that emerges in such a setting was extremely valuable. The mini-workshops stimulate discussion of new telecommunications pricing models, tangible insurance products and customer experience oriented organizational structures. The best is that these discussion are with people who have actually done these kinds of projects. Additionally you will also have a chance to visit and experience the “Swisscom Brand Gym”, a unique office environment at Swisscom that is used as a the central hub within Swisscom to facilitate the change process in the organization. A first impression of the Brand Gym can be seen in the picture on the right.

Agenda (German only)

08:15 Frühstück / CX-Reise
Für alle Frühaufsteher gibt es im wunderschönen Ambiente des Café Mélange des BrandGym ein Frühstück und die erste Gelegenheit, sich kennen zu lernen. Wer zudem vorab einen Überblick über die CX-Welt und aktuelle Beispiele erhalten will, kann mit uns auf eine kurze CX-Reise gehen. Eine gute Gelegenheit, in die richtige Stimmung zu kommen und fit in den Tag zu starten.

09:00 Begrüssung und Einführung
Wir starten gemeinsam und geben eine kurze Orientierung über den Tag und den Ablauf.

09:15 Führung durch das BrandGym
Wer das das BrandGym kennt, weiss, dass dies ein besonderer Ort ist. In kleinen Gruppen bekommen wir einen kurze Führung und Erklärung zur Entstehung, den Hintergründen und Gedanken, die das BrandGym geformt haben.

09:30 Keynote von Christina Taylor, Head of Brand Experience bei Swisscom
MaNagINg By CaRPET – oder wie bringe ich men- schenzentriertes Design in ein technikorientiertes Unternehmen? Vor zwei Jahren hat die Visionärin die Ärmel hochgekrempelt mit dem Ziel, die Zukunft von Swisscom zu gestalten, Dinge zu vereinfachen und Kundenherzen zu gewinnen. Zwei Jahre später sind 500 Produktmanager ausgebildete Customer Experience Designer und aus dem Konferenz- zentrum ist eine kreative Oase rund um Human Centered Design entstanden, das BrandGym – ein Ort, wo Wissen lebendig wird. Christina lässt uns einen Blick hinter den Vorhang werfen und lüftet nicht zuletzt das Geheimnis, wieso sie mit einem farbigen Teppich am meisten Manage- mentattention erhalten hat!

10:00 Eröffnung Vernissage CX-Fundstücke
Das CX-Fundstück ist die Eintrittskarte für das CX-Forum. Ein Objekt pro Gast mit Bezug zu Customer Experience und eine kurze Geschichte, warum das Objekt ausgewählt wurde. So entsteht eine gemeinsame Vernissage an CX-Fundstücken, die inspirieren, zu Diskussionen anregen und Aufschluss über die Paten geben. Erlaubt ist, was beeindruckt: Bücher, Blogs, Filme, Podcasts, Bilder, Geschichten, Gegenstände und und und… Wir sind gespannt.

10:30 Fallstudien Block I
Die ersten zwei Fallstudien werden zur Wahl stehen. Nach der Vorstellung des Beispiels gehen wir in einer interaktiven Diskussion im World Cafe Format den angesprochenen Themen, gewonnen Erkenntnissen und aufgebrachten Fragen weiter auf den Grund.

12:00 Mittag
Zeit für eine Stärkung am feinen Buffet und Gelegenheit weiter zu diskutieren, Kontakte zu knüpfen, CX-Fundstücke zu entdecken oder einfach zu geniessen.

13:15 Marktplatz | CX-Herausforderungen
Bis zu fünf Unternehmen stellen eine aktuelle Herausforderung vor und laden zum Nachdenken, Diskutieren und Feedback geben ein. Das Ganze in lockerer Marktplatz Atmosphäre bei Kaffee und Dessert.

14:00 Fallstudien Block II
Wieder können die Teilnehmenden eine von zwei Fallstudien wählen und anschliessend wie zuvor vertiefen.

15:30 Pause
Verarbeiten des Erlebten? Gedanken austauschen? Ein Kaffee in Ruhe? Alles ist möglich.

15:45 Ausblick Customer Experience Network
Wir geben einen kurzen Überblick über das Customer Experience Network, die weiteren Gefässe und Formate und die Möglichkeiten sich einzubringen.

16:00 Visuelles Kommunizieren – Highlights des Tages
In kleinen Gruppen bekommen wir einen kurzen Einblick in die Kunst des visuellen Kommunizierens und können gleich an einem konkreten Beispiel üben und unser Highlight des Tages visualisieren und zusamentragen.

16:30 Offizielles Ende
«All good things come to an end.» So auch das CX Forum. Vermutlich viel zu schnell. Wir verabschieden die weit Gereisten und freuen uns auf den Apéro, den wir ganz entspannt geniessen, dabei den Tag reflektieren und Pläne für die Zukunft schmieden. So fällt der Abschied weniger schwer, denn nach dem Forum ist vor dem Forum.

Here are two videos of iPad users who you would probably not include in the typical group of users for such a device. Nevertheless the experience that this 2 year old kid and the 99 year old grandmother have with the iPad is once-in a lifetime experience. I think it is well worth your time if you invest the 10 minutes and just observe how they interact with the device.

A 2,5 Year-Old Has a First Encounter with An iPad

iPad Helps 99-Year-Old Woman Rediscover Writing

There is also a longer version available with an interview with Virginia.

After watching these clips of “extreme users”, you have observed two humans whose life has just changed:

• A 2 year old child who will never know what a world without tablet computers is like, and
• A 99 year old grandmother that becomes an active, creating part of a digital society.

And the core learning is: Contrary to many industry pundits and technology experts, users don’t care about multitasking or a webcam because the iPad opens up so many new opportunities for them that the device becomes a life-changer. These two videos are also an excellent starting point for a conversation in your organization what this new device category ultimately means for your business.

Nevertheless the question is not what application you could transfer to the iPad in the next 3 months. The ultimate question is: How can you solve your customers problems with this new device category? Which business opportunities will emerge with this new category of devices in the coming 18 to 24 months? How can you trigger new business opportunities and leverage existing ones?

New iPad applications: An opportunity for Customer Co-Design?

I have run several customer co-design workshops and the experiences I have made during these workshops confirmed that this is a useful approach to identify opportunities for product and service improvements.

In a customer co-design workshop you bridge the gap between designer (product management, software development, product design) and the customer by integrating the customer into the actual design process. This has the benefit that you don’t need to “extract” implicit knowledge from your customer but instead give him the tools and method to express his requirements.

The iPad is an an excellent opportunity to integrate customers into the design process and develop new ideas with your customers. And the best of all, you can probably do this by yourself:

1. Buy at few iPads – If you are not in the US you can either wait until they are available in Europe or tap into other sources (eBay, friends, your next business trip) to get a device.
2. Invite a few customers and use the iPads together with your customers, let customers explore the device and imagine how the iPad and applications on the iPad could help them solve their problems, run their business and enjoy life.
3. Brainstorm ideas, sketch prototypes for new applications and imagine different business models that utilize the iPad.

This is not a guarantee that you will indeed find the next breakthrough idea after one event, but it is a big step into that direction. Certainly the selection of customers is important and the workshop itself should not become an “all you can wish for” event but with the right approach it will help you find answers to the biggest question: How will the iPad impact your business?

Yet leadership is essential for successful innovation since not just processes, methods and techniques are relevant but the key is the creation of the right environment. This has a far greater impact on the success of innovation projects than jumping on the next creativity technique to generate new ideas. The problem that large corporations face is not that their employees don’t have good ideas – the problem is that they are reluctant of sharing them because the environment doesn’t support them.

Leaders for innovation projects should ensure that the environment allows the emergence of these ideas. The first step to better understand leadership is to understand the different types of leadership.

Leadership Styles: Coordinator vs. Innovator

One such taxonomy of leadership styles has been developed by Quinn in 1984 which identified eight leadership roles organized around the two dimensions flexibility vs. stability and internal focus vs. external focus as shown in the following figure.

The definition of these roles are:

• Innovator Role: The innovator is creative and inhibitions, encourages, and facilitates change.
• Broker Role: The broker is politically astute, ex-virus resources and maintains the units external legitimacy through the development, scanning, and maintenance of a network of external contacts.
• Producer Role: The producer is the task — oriented, work — focused role. The producer seeks closure, and motivates those behaviors that will result in the completion of the groups task.
• Director Role: The director engages in goalsetting and role clarification, sets objectives, and establishes clear expectations.
• Coordinator Role: The courting Nader maintained structure, does to scheduling, coordinating, and problem solving, and sees the rules and standards are met.
• Monitor Role: The Molitor collects and distributes information, checks on performance, and provides a sense of continuity and stability.
• Facilitator Role: The facilitator encourages the expression of opinions, seeks consensus, and negotiates compromise.
• Mentor Role: The mentor is aware of individual needs, listens actively, a sphere, supports the to be made requests, and attempts to facilitate the development of individuals.

Looking at this will it becomes obvious which kind of leadership style is supportive for innovation, change and empowerment off employees. Let’s dive a little bit deeper with another framework for leadership functions.

Leadership Functions: Directing vs. Empowering

Another approach to better understand the different types of leadership is to focus on the functions that leaders provide. Pearce et al. analyzed scientific literature and identified four types of leadership:

1. Directive leadership
2. Transactional leadership
3. 3. transformational leadership and
4. 4. empowering leadership

For each of these leadership types they have identified typical functions that are aligned with it:

Leadership type	Leadership functions
Directive leadership	· Organizing · Problem solving · Clarifying roles and objectives · Informing · Monitoring
Transactional leadership	· Recognizing · Rewarding
Transformational leadership	· Planning · Motivating and inspiring · Networking
Empowering leadership	· Consulting · Delegating · Supporting · Developing and mentoring · Managing conflict and teambuilding

Source: Pearce et. al., Transactors, transformers and beyond: A multi-method development of a theoretical typology of leadership.

The right leadership style for innovation

These two taxonomies of leadership styles help to understand which type of leadership is supportive for innovation. A flexible, internal oriented, empowering leadership style is necessary to help innovation teams achieve high performance where as a monitoring, controlling stability oriented leadership style will limit the emergence of breakthrough ideas.

Nevertheless concluding that externally focused, controlling leadership styles are useless would be superficial. A corporation is not just made up of departments delivering innovation but also of operations departments that staffed with managers who ensure that the corporation and administration keeps working. And there are enough projects in an organization that require a rigorous control and analysis as well as strategic projects that require externally oriented directors that present an organizations interest. Yet when you are aiming for innovation, when you are aiming to develop breakthrough products and services you will not succeed but creating a tighter controlled environment with more milestones and better reporting and a leader who wants to make decisions by himself.

Empowering employees, facilitating idea creation and experimentation as well as individual development of employees are necessary to lead an innovation team towards success. With these frameworks in mind it becomes easier to understand why it might be hard for managers in an organization to create innovative environments but it will also help to understand which group of managers can act as leaders for innovation projects and which group of managers is better in managing operational aspects within an organization.

Sources:

Quinn, R.E. (1984), Applying the Competing Values Approach to Leadership: Toward an Integrative Model

Pearce et. al. (2003), Transactors, transformers and beyond: A multi-method development of a theoretical typology of leadership

If you want to innovate, you should prevent such discussions because they lead nowhere. Of course there is a difference between a well-founded feedback session and polemic argument, but even the value of feedback is limited when you are truly innovating. Could anyone have imagined a situation like the one below?

Who would have thought that one day we would be communicating 140 characters at a time? At least not Mike Arrington, founder of Techcrunch, the largest technology blog online, who wrote in his first post about Twitter (which was still called Twttr at that time):

There is also a privacy issue with Twttr. Every user has a public page that shows all of their messages. Messages from that person’s extended network are also public. I imagine most users are not going to want to have all of their Twttr messages published on a public website.

If this was a new startup, a one or two person shop, I’d give it a thumbs up for innovation and good execution on a simple but viral idea.

But the fact that this is coming from Odeo makes me wonder – what is this company doing to make their core offering compelling? How do their shareholders feel about side projects like Twttr when their primary product line is, besides the excellent design, a total snoozer?

Today Twitter has become a global phenomen with 75+ million users and aims to become the number one platform for real-time conversations on the web.

Apple is the company that usually receives pretty bad feedback when they are releasing new products. Let’s have a look at the first comments about the iPod in the MacRumours forums, the number one outlet for Apple news:

Great just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player. Go Steve! Where’s the Newton?!

I still can’t believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently!

Why oh why would they do this?! It’s so wrong! It’s so stupid!

We have all experienced the revolution of the music industry that was triggered by the iPod. Not much more needs to be said.

Fortunately, Marc Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, did not listen to his Harvard Professor’s recommendation either, who told him sincerely, that it doesn’t make sense to further pursue Facebook.

Of course, at that time I thought that social networking sites were a complete waste of time — both for the users and those developing the sites — so I earnestly tried to talk Mark out of squandering his precious Harvard education on such a frivolous endeavor. "You think you’re going to compete against Friendster and Orkut?" was the general outline of my argument. There were already too many social networking sites out there, I claimed, and building yet another one was clearly a waste of time. After all, didn’t he want to graduate? And make an A in CS161 while he was at it?

What is the key take away?

Nobody can predict the future and even the "experts" will never fully grasp the impact of some innovations when they where interacting with them the first time. You will always find somebody who can give you hundreds of reasons why it will not work. But the goal is not to find the idea that is not facing any obstacles – the goal is to find an idea that is worth overcoming these obstacles.

But maybe even more important: What does it mean when even pundits fail to predict the success of breakthrough products and services like Twitter, the iPod and Facebook? How much can you really trust the naysayers?

Innovation leaders and entrepreneurs need to be aware of this, ignore the pundits and focus on building traction for their ideas. While others are discussing, the leaders are acting. And even though one might fail, only by trying to invent the future you can achieve success. Solely discussing and predicting what the future might hold will never lead to a different future.

Facebook is a becoming huge and with 400 millions users it is currently the second most visited site in the US behind Google. Yet the biggest share in the “body of knowledge” about Facebook is about Facebook as a tool for social media, social networking and business – most of if superficial and not worth the effort to read.  But from time to time some smart people analyze the underlying patterns and contribute towards an explanation into a social motivation and behavior that makes Facebook such a success.

Robin Hunicke did a great speech at lift08 about Facebook as a game that makes you feel loved. A new perspective that helps to understand the dynamics and motivation to join and use Facebook. But there is still the question why are 80 million people growing virtual foods on a virtual farm?

The answer to this is given in the talk “Design Outside the Box” by Carnegie Mellon professor Jesse Schell who explains the Farmville phenomenon, how you can make millions of dollars with virtual money and lays out a vision of the future in which our lives will become one big role-playing game. The talk is 28 minutes long, it is worth every minute and after that you can skip reading mainstream articles about Facebook for the next year.

I have embedded the talk below, if you can’t see it watch it online.

This award is given each year to the authors of the article published in the preceding volume of the California Management Review that has made the most important contribution to improving the practice of management.

About the Article

In their article, Beckman and Barry outline four core elements of design thinking — observation, framing, imperatives (needs or design principles), and solutions.
They ground these elements of design thinking in models of how people learn, describing which learning style is best suited to each element of design thinking. By doing so, they provide a model for achieving innovation among members of a team with different learning styles. Their model can be applied across a wide range of sectors, from hardware and software products to services to architecture.

“The innovation process as a learning model suggests that teams be composed of individuals who are polar opposites in how they take in and transform information,” Beckman and Barry write. They add, “Good teams behave like bicycle racing teams, where individuals are assigned positions in the race because of their strengths, not because of seniority or some other measure.”

And here is a video that summarizes the core ideas from the article. This is also an excellent example how you can condense information from a 30 page article into a compelling 5 minute video.

Innovation as a Learning Process from Roger Shealy on Vimeo.

The best about this award is that the article is now available as a free download, so you can access it even if you don’t usually have access to the California Management Review.

Unfortunately the download is not free anymore, but you purchase a copy here, it’s a must read. You could also try to use Google with this search query and see if you find a copy online somewhere.