Archive for the ‘ Disruption ’ Category

Want to be a good strategist? Keep challenging your assumptions and general conventional wisdom!

I love when I catch myself seeing the world through old glasses. It’s not a proud moment when it happens, but it’s an important one. Realising I run the risk of being out of date is a harsh wake-up call that generally keeps me on my toes for a year or so… and this morning I had such a wake-up call.

For all my life I’ve seen Sweden as a modern, innovative, creative country, and also one at the forefront of design! I even wrote a blog about it called ‘What’s up with Sweden and all its innovation”. In it I describe why I believe a small country like Sweden (a country I lived in until the age of 18) has produced so many big brands, and why it’s responsible for so many disruptive innovations.

So you can imagine my reaction reading the below title from Tyler Brûlé’s (Editor and Chief of Monocle) column in this weekend edition of the FT.

A decline into Swede nothings!!!! I nearly spilled my Cortado as I jumped off my seat! What is the man talking about?! Has he never heard of IKEA, H&M, Tetra Pak, Volvo, SAAB and Ericsson?!!!

I kept feeling annoyed until I got to the following caption ‘Swedish goods and services used to be a refreshing constant in my daily life but somehow they vanished – no cars, no telecommunications, no media, no hotels, no airlines. H&M and IKEA might continue their global assault (along with the odd crime author) waving a small blue and yellow flag, but increasingly Sweden Inc seems a little less potent’.

It made me think…Ericsson was founded in the late 19 century, Volvo in the 1920’s, IKEA and H&M in the 40’s, Tetra Pak in the early 50’s. Many of these organisations had their glory days in the 90’s, which also happens to be the last decade during which I lived in Sweden!

I’m embarrassed to admit that I had not questioned my assumption and beliefs about Sweden being an innovative country for over 15 years, and in these times that may as well be 100 years!

Not the end of the world I know. But take a break and think about yourself as the manger, strategist, consultant, and or leader you are, and then think about how often you challenge your assumptions or the conventional wisdom around which you base your decisions.

Not as often as you should, of that I’m sure…Now think about how that affects your decision-making!

There is no doubt that to ensure relevance, to ensure quality of advice and decision-making, we need to ask ourselves regularly (as in on a daily basis):

•    How long have I been doing, and why do I do things this way?
•    When did I decide what I believe on a certain topic to be true, and is it still?
•    Is what I do/think still valid?
•    What has happened that could/should change my assumptions?

There is nothing new about this… yet most of us fall into the ‘assumption trap’. To avoid this we must challenge our thinking by surrounding ourselves with people that are different to us, that come from different backgrounds and have different experiences.

I’m lucky to be part of this fluid world, and to have a business partner and clients who don’t allow me to have too many moments like this morning. Because of this I usually don’t need Tyler and the FT to remind me of the fact that I don’t drive a Swedish car, and that my phone, clothes and furniture aren’t Swedish (I mean really Liri!!! – pretty obvious!)!

Having said that, It’s with a bit of sadness though, that I bid farewell to my innovative Swedish legacy!

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2010
05/16
CATEGORY
Challenge the obvious
Disruption
Innovation
Strategy
this fluid world
1 comment

What’s up with Sweden and all its innovation?

I don’t know about you but I have always thought a hell of a lot of good stuff comes out of a country inhabited by only 9.2 million people, speaking a language very few people care about (a little over 9.2 million people I would guess :) ).

abba_w_swedish_flag

I have often wondered why, but to be honest never gone as far as looking for an answer, until I read an article in brandchannel.com, Brandinavia: Why Nordic Brands Rule. The article attempts to answer the question “How come the Nordic countries are such a branding powerhouse? (IKEA, VOLVO, Lego, Nokia, Ericsson, Absolut)?”.

The reason given in the article is that Scandinavia is a social democracy where people are taken care of from cradle to death (paid for by high taxes). This means Governments can focus on commercial issues, a focus that materialises in three ways:
-    Low corporate tax
-    Investment actively being encouraged
-    Supporting aggressive export of their products

Before continuing, and in the spirit of total disclosure, I need to mention I’m half Swedish (in case my last name has not given it away). I will therefore focus my comments on Sweden for no other reason than it being the only Scandinavian country I know intimately having lived there for 15 years.

I very much enjoyed the article, it was well written and informative, however I do question its focus on brands.

To me this is not a story about branding, but about creativity and innovation. What is interesting about Sweden is not the amount of famous brands it has given birth to, but how innovative it’s products and solutions are. Yes I agree that this innovation has lead to the creation of many famous brands, but more importantly they changed entire industries (the article mentions this but not in the sense of disrupting industries). IKEA revolutionised the furniture industry, H&M the clothing industry, Tetrapak the packaging and delivery industry etc.

tetrapak

(Tetrapak)

I believe a more interesting question to be, what makes the Swedes so creative and therefore innovative (to be discussed later)?

I also question the author’s Government support explanation. Although I would agree that the social democracy argument goes a long way to explain the successful go to market of products, and eventually the existence of strong brands, I feel this is very much an economic argument. The truth is it does not explain the actual initial innovation, especially as it was there long before Swedish businesses had the commercial support from their Government (We invented the safety matches in 1844, the commercial vacuum cleaner in the early 1900’s).

Personally I believe that the Swedish culture has more to do with the success of its products.

Having lived in Sweden for a long time, trust me when I say creativity is not what jumps out at you when you spend time with its population…and yet there it is!!!

So how come it’s there, in abundance? A long discussion with my father over breakfast lead to the following conclusion, it’s the Swedes practical side, and their constant search for practical solutions, that feeds this creativity. IKEA was born because the founder Kamprad wanted to ship a chair to someone but did not know how to package it, hence taking the legs of…and not because he wanted to disrupt the furniture industry. Skype was born because Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis were looking for a practical way to benefit from the Internet (in addition to making some money)…and not because they wanted to disrupt the telecomms industry.

Ok so this explains why great ideas are generated. But how come these ideas have such mass appeal? Again the answer I believe (and my dad too) is cultural. Sweden is a collective society, a society that always thinks of the group, and how to benefit that group. It’s therefore more likely that the ideas generated, and what is subsequently developed in terms of products and service, will be of benefit to many (satisfying a collective need), and by that rational sell in great numbers.

And finally, it does help that Swedish design, like the article mentions, is second to none. Again the answer is cultural. Swedes are very simple, honest and straightforward people. Yes is yes, no is no, what you see is what you get, there are no frills! And that is exactly what Swedish design is like, simple and pure (which again tends to have a mass appeal).

skandium2

(Skandium, design store on Marylebone High Street.)

So what should we learn from the Swedes that we can bring to our innovation efforts? Actually three little things, nothing we did not already know, so incredibly obvious, yet three things that prove hard to achieve (unless you are a Swede of course).

1.    Don’t be creative for creativity’s sake (is there a practical use for your product or service?).
2.    Think of the user, the people when you create (can you imagine a day when a large group of people will use your product or service?).
3.    And while you’re at it, throw in a bit of good taste into what you create, it never hurts!!!

Lycka till (Good luck!!!)

Brandinavia: Why Nordic Brands Rule, by Barry Silverstein, July 13, 2009 issue

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2009
07/15
CATEGORY
Disruption
Innovation
Strategy
Trend (people)
2 comments

The world seems to be full of disruption…or?…

From where I’m sitting you could think that disruption is all around us, and constant!!! Everyone wants to do it, are in the middle of doing it, or have already done it (some over and over again)!

I sat in two different meetings today, both with the same agenda, the desire to disrupt. One, a social application looking to disrupt…well to be honest I’m not entirely sure what….and the other a government body looking to disrupt their own organisation (sounds like a paradox to me).

Earlier this week I went to the Mobile Advertising UK event in London where again the word disruption was heavily used.

But is this really the case, is the world full of disruption? I mean really? If this was the case we would all suffer from disruption fatigue, this driven by the fact that industries would come and go on a monthly/yearly basis, technology would be relevant for a nano second (well that one is not entirely untrue), and we would all have to change jobs every week just to keep up with the change!

Since this is not the case something else must be going on….

12 years ago Christensen brought the word disruption, or rather disruptive technologies, to the mass market in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma. It is a must read for anyone claiming to be involved in anything disruptive.

innovators dilemma

If you learn only one thing from reading this book it should be that disruption is not synonymous with innovation, it’s not synonymous with change, or with new product development. Those things are part of every day business, things you are expected to do…and really the basics of staying competitive, or even in business.

But because we live in a (business) world handicapped by marketing myopia, filled with such incredible fear of failure and apathy, any type of innovation, any type of change, hell in some cases any type of action (just having done something) gets elevated to the status of a disruptive act!

The word disruption comes from  Latin disruptus, past participle of disrumpere, from dis- + rumpere to break. It is synonymous to burst; rupture, split up; rend asunder, and finally to the world turmoil! When you disrupt, or are disrupted, the paradigm shift is so big that it can’t be missed. Ask GE Medical and Kodak if they noticed Stentor, a tiny medical software company I worked with in the early 2000, who very much disrupted the mentioned incumbent’s medical diagnostics business! I bet you their answer would be ‘Hell yeah!”.

We all know these type of paradigm shifts are rare. So what is going on, why does everyone think they are disrupting or about to?

It’s simple. We are clearly obsessed with saying (words) rather than doing (action). The business world is like a series of buzzwords. We have gone from emotional intelligence to Just In Time (JIT) to re-engineering to… with very little actual change. (Feel free to look through 15 years of The Harvard Business Review, and you will be able to map out the buzzword of the month step by step).

So despite the fact that change and innovation is one of the hardest things to do, and happens rarely, it’s no longer enough …why…because the word is not exciting anymore. And when a word goes out of fashion, what do we do? We simply bring in another one. We no longer want to innovate we want to disrupt…well at least we say that we do (because if we knew what it actually meant, and what it would take to achieve, most of us would stay home the ‘day’ it is supposed to happen)!

So to these disruption crazy companies I say, let’s be really boring, old fashioned, unexciting! Let’s focus all our thoughts and energy on coming up with new products and services that people value, and subsequently on bringing them into the market place successfully.

Basically let’s leave buzzwords out of business and stick to the knitting of getting every day business right… just for a little while…now that would be disruptive!

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2009
06/19
CATEGORY
Disruption
Innovation
Strategy
Thoughts
1 comment