The Half-Life Of The Next Big Thing

Waveboard 2.0 for the iPhone examples the ever shortening half-life of the Next Big Thing (NBT) by launching the mobile NBT; demonstrating that the product cycle becomes even more complicated as products need to roll-out in multiple hosting formats such as: 1/ Cloud, 2/ Desktop, 3/ Enterprise, 4/ Mobile, and 5/ maybe on some conglomerate API like Quicken or salesforce.com.
This becomes a real PR and advertising headache. Don’t tell the software guys, you this is really a form of product extension like mini-Oreos. The only people to succeed at this have big budgets to build multi-media/modal to differentiate their gold label from the light. The good news is that, the easiest group to reach are “mobile app fanatics” because they can be found.

Google Wave Positioning

Developers gave them a standing ovation
Shaking their laptops above their heads
-Positioning: Replace Email
-Compelling Rationale: What would e-mail look like if it was invented today?
-Creating Category: "So, now that I'm caught up on this Wave...
-Evidence: When demonstrating Wave's ability to translate between languages, in real-time, as a person types, the audience cheered so loudly and for so long that it felt like they were calling for an encore at a music festival.
-Acceptance: At the conclusion of Lars and Jens Rasmussen’s demo, the developers gave them a standing ovation, shaking their laptops above their heads.
Source: John D. Sutter, CNN

Sponsors & Marketing

There are many issues in acquiring and keeping sponsors. Here is one related in an April, 2009 New Yorker by John Colapinto. The focus of his article is David de Rothschild. Yes his is one of those de Rothschilds. His project is to build a sail a boat made of plastic, throw away, water bottles through the Eastern Garbage Patch, a confluence in the Pacific made up of floating plastic trash and partials. (More information at Adventure Ecology.)

Being de Rothschilds he has some sponsors, but also important in environmental and other sponsor supporter causes is building public awareness. de Rothschild made a mistake in not differentiating his project to secure a unique position in the mind of his global sponsors. [For more on Differentiation ask me 650. 867.3700.]

As Colapinto relates, de Rothschild encountered a glitch in his plan – competition. A project not the same, but close enough. de Rothschild is building Plastiki, a bottle boat, sailboat made entirely of recyclable plastic products, using thousands of pressurized clear plastic water bottles as hull and flotation.

The competition is Junk Raft, which is made of fishing net pontoons full of unpressurized bottlers supporting a discarded Cessna fuselage with a sail.

de Rothschild Differentiation/Sponsor Problem
The junk raft embarked from Long Beach, California, with a crew of two, its sendoff broadcast on local television. "That's the competitiveness of these green groups and adventurers," de Rothschild said bitterly. "Because we're competing for corporate sponsors, they nudge in front of you."

He was discovering an unsavory truth about environmental activism – the kind that depends on sponsors and publicity to achieve its aims. The jockeying over money, attention, and ideas taints even the most virtuous with vanity and self-promotion. To de Rothschild's irritation, for the past few days prospective sponsors had been calling asking to know how Plastiki differed from the junk raft." (The New Yorker © 2009 Condé Nast)

Lesson: We live in an age of narrative, this New Yorker content is a prime example. UTube is another example. Narrative is important to help donors feel rewarded. Awareness, education & publicity are marketing issue, about which I know something. Give me a call. - doug

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Skoll Forum Notes

Oxford, UK - - Late March, 2009 - - Approximately 800 agents for social change descended upon this oldest of university towns for three days. For many the fun is reconnecting with people like Karen Tse the fearless founder of International Bridges to Justice. For me the excitement is in meeting new people such as the team from VisionSpring - an organization that delivers simple reading glasses to the poorest by developing an Avon-like distribution scheme, thus creating two winners: Individuals needing simple magnifying glasses, enabling them to continue their craft work and the Avon-like ladies who with a bit of micro-credit begin earning an income.

OBSERVATIONS
Venture Capitol Arrives
The VC types were there to explore business models for financing social ventures. – Having lived 25 years in Palo Alto I am quite familiar with VCs (some of my best friends are…). But this group was different in that they were not seeking for a 10X return on investment, but rather high social return. The VCs seemed most interested in how to scale successful social ventures. Scale, the ability to grow successful ventures, is THE issue for social progress. Such VC's include:
Steve Beck of SpringHill Equity Partners.
Brad Gambill and Hari Nair of Innosight Ventures.

Could Be So Much More
As one of the speakers, Lord Puttman, noted, most educational systems are trapped in mindset, dictated by the needs of the industrial revolution. The same is true for the Skoll Forum; it is trapped in an archaic academic format, which does not leverage the talent gathered.

Areas of Conflict
Met several in individuals working in areas of conflict such as David Haskell who described his work helping entrepreneurs in Syria & Jordan as, "Swimming upstream in toxic waters."

Berkeley Roadmaps Fundamental Solutions

The Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, UC Berkeley, has posted the a series of roadmaps outlining solutions to some of the world's most significant challenges – oil dependence, high energy costs, and inadequate healthcare – that may alleviate social ills while sparking the creation of new industries. The Roadmap Challenges are:
+ Oil Independence via Sustainable Mobility
+ Thermoelectrics for Efficient Energy
+ Affordable Zero Energy Home
+ The Promise of Synthetic Biology
+ Cost-Effective and Personalized Healthcare
+ The New War on Cancer

Also, check out the Berkeley Global Venture Lab recently sent out a press release in November 08, on the Impact Analysis for Large-Scale Deployment of Electrical Vehicles in California

For each of the roadmap’s challenges CET has a short video featuring insights from academic and industry experts such as as Better Place CEO Shai Agassi, UCB Bioengineering Professor Jay Keasling, UCB Mechanical Engineering Professor Arunava Majumdar, and First Virtual Group CEO Tom Siebel.

As you may remember Agassi and Siebel were big corporate dogs before the set out on their current journey, one by choice, one not so.

We Live In An Age Of Narrative

Every business, foundation, or technology requires some kind of story. People remember story long after they have forgotten the experience or product specs. All good salesmen know this.

The Internet drives our thirst for narrative.
+ Blogs are a narrative.
+ YouTube is video narrative. Lonelygirl15 was a narrative that millions followed.
+ Brand is a narrative -- as brand is based on the storyline a product develops with its customer. Any consumer who has brand loyalty can tell you why he or she feels so strongly about Mercedes, Makita or Kiva. The Apple narrative drives its fierce loyalty and contributes to its 23% return on equity.
The same is true for your not for profits brand.

Guest Editorial by Chuck Reed, Mayor of San Jose, California

American auto manufacturers are asking Congress for $34 billion in federal aid to fund their short-term cash needs. It is critical that any agreement not impede innovative, emerging transportation technology companies that will help our nation grow out of the current recession by creating thousands of new green jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, improve our trade balance and help protect our planet.

Proponents of diverting the Advanced Technology loan funds have created a false choice between protecting millions of existing jobs dependent on the domestic auto industry and catalyzing companies that will create new ones. Enabling a vibrant American auto industry is critical to our nation’s economic future, but other funding sources are available to provide the needed aid.

The real question is: How do we invest in innovations that will grow the auto industry for the future?

The answer is maintaining federal support for clean transportation technology innovation that is critical to our long-term economic prosperity and will solidify America’s leadership in the green economy.

Many transformative technologies are not in the distant future, but are being developed and produced today in Silicon Valley. Tesla Motors is bringing to market a revolutionary long-range electric vehicle. Better Place and Coulomb are creating the infrastructure needed to make widespread use of electric vehicles viable. BioFuelBox, Cobalt, Sapphire Energy and Amyris are developing next-generation biofuels. ElectraDrive is converting combustion-engine cars to electric.

Long Tail Development & Not For Profits

In patron and donor supported organizations, The Long Tail is often been dismissed as too costly or too time consuming – but in these economic times perhaps a second look is due.

In current marketing lingo the term Long Tail dates back to a 2004 Chris Anderson article in Wired Magazine describing the concept, which roughly says that selling a large numbers of low volume/obscure items is a viable revenue strategy. As Anderson says, "The economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits toward a huge number of niches in the tail." There is an analog for patron/donor supported organizations.

Stay with me on this, as you aren't selling rare books or renting obscure videos which typically benefit from a Long Tail, but there is a correlation, an analogy between Long Tail marketing and your lists of volunteers, friends and other occasional patrons and donors. McKinsey, the consulting organization, suggests a new methodology for segmentation, segmenting donors/patrons through their usage or participation patterns.

If you organization doesn't do patron or donor segmentation in fundraising call me as this may be too much of leap, but a trial in targeting by participation or usage patterns, may help in these difficult times.

Losing The Brand

Netscape, Webvan, United Way Billion Dollar Brands

In retrospect is easy pontificate .

Unproven business model: Webvan never was. It had money, trucks and a flickering business model. Business heavyweights rallied around the idea, the CEO of Accenture, quit to become CEO for a projected billion in stock. Then bam! Its expensively designed trucks were up for auction, the doors closed.

+ Today Yahoo, Facebook and MySpace have unproven business models, time will tell.

Ruthless competition: Netscape lacked management skill to prevent being rolled over by Microsoft. The guru came out to Silicon Valley from the Midwest as a hero and began a career as a technology start-up successes. The founder bailed, just as he had when SGI hit its peak. The only people to lose money we the shareholders caught flatfooted.

+ Like frozen yogurt, difficult as a stand-alone, but rather part of a whole product.

Inability to change: United Way was wounded by the shift to accountability. The organization was built to be symbiotic with the massive Fortune 500 management of the 60s, 70s and 80s. "Fare Share" – how American. Then upstart service, manufacturing and technology firms demanded metrics, and suddenly the United Way was reporting into a different management gestalt. No longer the fat cats and fiefdoms around the country, but rather a new breed of slim, open collar execs wanted to know where the Fare Share was going. What was the outcome?

+ NCAA, Red Cross, NAACP are all challenged by radical shifts within their constituencies.

Brand Delivers

Brand is a powerful carriers of values. -- To the painting on the caves in Lascaux, the oral history of the Inuit, the Dead Sea scrolls, modern man will add Dianna Ross singing, "Baby love, oh baby love, won't you be my baby love…."

Brands are a synthesis of 20th century communications and of how we as a culture recognized products and services. Future archeologists will love this era as they dig through layers of CRT screens and Styrofoam packing peanuts in order to decode newspapers that refused to decompose. In scholarly works, those 23rd Century archeologists will spin the meaning of such icons of the late 20th century as DEC, Lucky Strike, or the United Way. They will wonder what happened to Netscape just as we today speculate on the Etruscans.

All the effort about branding centers around the fact that brand delivers. The number one driver behind branding is that brands embody a set of values that provide assurance and draw people back. In moments of confidence, Brand Delivers …In moments of uncertainty, Brand Delivers …

For profit and non-profit alike brand is the marketing tool that delivers across all media.

Successful Market Entry

Several years back Geoffrey Moore and I discussed attack points across the chasm. We were interested in learning about the beachhead and what criteria a firm would use to pick a new market. This also applies when non-profits target a new audience for funding.

For example, game consoles require renewed market uptake each generation, but is fairly far along the adoption curve; whereas a new security product, like an eyeball analyzer, is way to the left on the adoption/volume curve. In the same fashion as game vendors, kiva.org builds their message on top of audiences awareness (micro-finance).

Three Requirements For Successful Market Entry. In strategic communications I identified three familiar circumstances that help predict market entry success.

1/ Media infrastructure dedicated to the product. For example, a game box with a blogosphere in the tens of thousands, along with its traditional media is a huge opportunity. But, security products have only a small, traditional media following.

2/ Does the well known PR rule, editors love competition, apply? Wii versus PlayStation or Sony versus Microsoft. The story has legs due to their rivalry.

3/ Intense user interest drives growth. From iPods to In-N-Out Burger, this is true. A game box has millions of avid users, a security system has only few champions.

In my analysis, only two indicators need be present for success.