My biggest takeaway from the day though had nothing to do with the questions asked, nor with the statements made by our competitors. Instead it was the opening presentation by Arild Saastad from Bertel O. Steen. What really stuck with me were the comments he made about how important it is for an ERP vendor to earn the trust of the organizations using their systems.
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I don’t think there’s anyone who has ever accurately been able to tell when a phenomenon or a movement peaks, right when it happens.
So we are left with guesses, and why shouldn’t we guess, when it’s so much fun?
Read on to see my reasons for believing we are now starting to see the beginning of the downturn – however temporary it might be – of the regin of this one, really great company.
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When I read through this post just after finishing it, I thought it might be a bit too silly, or at least too basic and obvious. No academic statistics or processes at all, just common sense. But after giving it a second thought, I actually think I hit the mark, i.e. that most people forget the simple trick of using common sense in the innovation process. So let today…. and the next day, and the next… be ‘encouragement’ days.
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Too often I feel I am too busy with day-to-day stuff, like customer presentations and back-to-back meetings. It might be a question of keeping pace with the mailbox that tends to overflow from time to time, or finalizing a product positioning document. But I have a technique for reminding myself to lift my nose from the grindstone every now and then and think a bit ahead.
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“I quit school and recruited the professor,” Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify.
Just over twenty years old, sitting in his apartment with his friend (in their underpants because it is 30 degrees thanks to the servers everywhere), his dream had just begun. Now he is friends with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, he rides shotgun in vintage cars with Neil Young and exchanges texts with Bono. My simple conclusion is that all great ideas start small.
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I am in full preparation for my biggest physical challenge for at least the last decade and after IFS announced that Bruce Dickinson, lead singer in Iron Maiden, is keynote speaker at IFS World Conference 2012 October 15 – 17, I have a new source of inspiration; “Run to the hills…”
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If you were about to invest in a company that had about 85% market share for one of the main products in its portfolio, and nearly had market monopoly for another main product, wouldn´t that investment be recognized as safe and profitable in the long term, rewarded by a share price that rises over time? The answer is no….
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It is easy to dismiss Windows 8 as being nothing new—just an iPad (or Windows Phone) copy slammed into the same box as good old Windows 7—and therefore doomed to failure.
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Sitting on a late flight heading west to the UK for a presentation to a board of directors, I read some official stats in the flight magazine that proved my personal motto when it comes to sales pitches. The stats showed the relation between the pitcher’s view of his own presentation and the clients’ view of the presentation. It’s founded on the premise that any pitch you make will be made up of four elements—style, format, content and chemistry.
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It’s often said that access to information is a competitive advantage. We are living in an information society and selling knowledge and services is seen as a future-proven business model. But who will win the battle for the customers’ pockets?
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Browsing magazines and books that are far away from your own business, and perhaps your comfort zone, is extremely productive if you are looking for new ideas, need to find solutions to a problem or want a new angle on things. Let yourself be influenced by ideas and emotions from businesses outside your own.
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How can you, as a company, share with investors the most important ingredients for new innovations, namely dreams and emotions? How can you, as a company, explain tools (e.g. company culture) and processes you have in place to mass-produce ideas that will later become profitable innovations? Is it possible to measure, communicate or even benchmark the ability of companies to create and share dreams in a financial document such as a quarterly report?
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