How to Bring Innovations to Market

How Aha! Really Happens

Now, I am not providing these videos as a point where everything ends but rather where we start our journey to discover who we are. You will find many more thinkers who have devoted their lives to enhancing learning, education, creativity, thinking, and in general human capacity. Let us follow their lead and see where the journey takes us at the end of the semester.

As you can tell, I am a fan of Sir Ken Robinson, and for good reason. I hope you will watch the videos with care and attention they deserve, they are more about your future than my past. I also enjoyed reading the works of Edward De Bono who is a noted expert on thinking and teaching thinking. Here are a few more words and phrases that may lead you to other fertile grounds: “abductive reasoning”, “lateral thinking”, “divergent thinking”, “design thinking”.

Post comments if you like, take notes, open your mind, learn how to forget to learn more.

PhotoXpress.com Ad

Why do companies resort to questionable practices just to get a few customers? Marketing is not about getting customers at all cost; it is about offering the greatest satisfaction to them within the boundaries of societal norms, laws, and ethics. Otherwise, every marketer would be a con man, and some may think that it is already the case. As a professor of marketing, this is how I see the profession.

On the back cover of the last issue of Layers Magazine was an ad. The tagline caught my attention and I first applauded the company. They did the first thing right by getting my attention. It said “15,000 Photo Downloads Per Month for $9.99 /month“. That is a great offer, nay, a terrific one. Then it continued with “Rendezvous with 6.5 million images. Prices beyond words“. A nice photograph accompanied the words. I decided to check out their website and found an attractive Web site at photoXpress.com. You may want to check out their claim yourself. Realizing that I may send some people to their site despite my intention to the contrary, I am providing the Web address and the ad that I scanned for you to be the judge.

What I found on the site did not seem to have anything to do with their claim in the ad. If you paid $9.99 /month you would be entitled to 1 (one) download per day, amounting to 30 downloads per month, somewhat close to 15,000! The “Monthly 25″ plan gave you 25/month for $37.50/month. And so on. Clearly there was a mismatch between the ad and the reality. I wanted to find out more and I wrote a message to them from their Talk to us form and asked where might I find the advertised subscription plan. In a day or two, I got the following answer:

Your ticket “Subscriptions / 15,000 photo downloads per month for $9.99/month” has been answered.

Hi, Thank you for your e-mail. Please feel free to visit our new Subscription Plans section http://www.photoxpress.com/Info/Upgrade Note that our minimum plan is for $9,99 and currently we have over 15,000 photos available on the site. Kind regards, PhotoXpress C.S. Department Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/PhotoXpressFree Join us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PhotoXpress

Or read your answer by logging into your PhotoXpress account and clicking here:
http://admin.photoxpress.com/Member/Support/Questions

Best regards,
The PhotoXpress.com Team

I did not find the answer to my question and I was a bit more confused especially by the explanation of 15,000 photos. They have more, much more than 15,000 photos, so the use of that figure sounds a bit, well, arbitrary to me. (Their facebook page reports “Nearly 10 million Photos and Illustrations”) One category I clicked on, Food & Drink, yielded 889,917 hits. Truth be told, I did not count them! But defending the claim “15,000 photo downloads” by simply saying they have more than 15,000 photos is on shaky ground, don’t you think? Why stop there, go ahead and say “150,000 downloads per month” as there are more than that many on the site?

Not having an account there, I had no way of logging in to read the response. If there was more to it I could not see it. So, I replied to their feedback@photoxpress.com address in the mail footer and reminded them that they had not answered my question and I was primarily interested in the truthfulness of their claim. I also asked that they kindly replied to my e-mail rather than posting an answer I had no way of reading. Needless to say, I have not yet heard from them and I am not holding my breath.

Will I ever buy anything from them? Most likely not! I don’t know about you, but if someone talks in a confusing manner, even before the first rendezvous I get a bit uneasy! I wanted to learn a little more about the membership and started reading their FAQ, nicely organized with a TOC at the top. I clicked on number 7 “Daily quota and Downloading” which jumped to the relevant entry #7 where I found “7. [Intentionally deleted] ” (as of January 8, 2011). Come again!

They have a decent quality collection, images appear to be of good quality, the variety seems to be there. Why on earth did they use the obviously misleading claim? Could it be an overzelous ad agency? Maybe an intern came up with the idea and nobody thought of critically reading the short copy. Whatever the reason, I hope someone pays attention to this problem and takes corrective, and proactive action. An explanation of this ad will be a good start. Truth in advertising is not just an empty idea. It is the law and it needs to be upheld by everyone, buyer and seller, if we expect to benefit from marketing communications.

Now, let me share this with my colleagues to use in the marketing ethics discussions …

This sort of analysis is not a historical narrative. You need to look for connections, triggers, discontinuities, inventions, new entrants, and other insights and all changes that will help us learn from what might have happened in an industry. This requires studying a time span no shorter than several years and preferably covers five to ten years. You need not have a day-to-day account of what has happened in that time frame since events of strategic importance does not happen every day. In a five year time span, you will probably find several events with significant strategic importance.

What is analysis

Although analysis requires a full understanding of factual information, this mere understanding is not analysis. It requires looking at what is being analyzed through a window of selected standards using appropriate tools. In marketing we use a variety of tools like market share behavior, product life cycle (PLC,) demand characteristics, break-even analysis, financial statement and ratio analysis and so on. They all have their application areas and you should learn when and how to use these tools.

As an example, let us consider the implicit and explicit analyses we may use when buying a new hat.

1. Most of us do not know our hat size. Therefore, the best method of analysis is to try it on for size, first hand experience and actual product trial is necessary. This is explicit and very direct.
2. We may not also know how we might look wearing a certain style of hats. Again a look in the mirror, or opinions from friends may be essential before the purchase.
3. As we do this several times, we develop more convenient tools of analysis like hat sizes and styles. Now, we can look at a catalog and analyze the decision to purchase a hat simply from a photograph and a short description of it. When this happens, we will have detached the analysis from the object under consideration. Significant efficiencies and additional insights emerge as we leave an object-based, first hand experience analysis and start using tools that we have developed, and tested for this purpose.

What goes in to this report

You should try to have a similar (of course an appropriate) method of analysis and try to use the following as tools to crystallize your thought. These are areas of analysis, tools of analysis, approaches to analysis, that may or may not be useful in your case. Use them as seeds for your analytical thoughts.

1. Decide on the level of analysis. Should you include electronic distribution of music as part of the entire music industry or study it as an emerging method of distribution by itself. Should it include digital music players or should it be limited to the music sales alone. The level of analysis will focus the attention sharply on what is important without leaving important parts out.
2. Analyze customers, key market segments. Who are they, what are their characteristics, needs? How has the market been segmented, is there a better way of segmenting it?
3. Analyze markets, market definition, demand trends, PLC and identification of key success factors. Consider the growth rate of the market, primary demand behavior, time and place affects on demand.
4. Analyze major competitors, their strategy, weaknesses and problems if any, sustainable competitive advantages (SCA) that they may have and how they may have acquired it. Why?
5. Look at the past strategies of a few important competitors, what worked and what did not. Why?
6. Analyze major environmental changes, trends and opportunities and threats stemming from them. Are there any major changes pending that may affect the industry? How?
7. How does the industry look from the viewpoint of GE industry attractiveness dimension, or BCG market growth dimension?
8. If possible, interview a manager from the selected industry to get better insight into the above
9. Assume that you are advising a client who wishes to enter this market? What strategy would you use and why is this strategy important?

When writing the report, if you try to be comprehensive you will lose sight of what is ahead in favor of what was behind. Your analysis of competitors, market trends and important environmental changes should help you and your client gain better insight to your current situation. You are writing a business report, not a marketing history book.

Remember to use the proper style and format as explained in the section of this syllabus about writing.

What is a case study anyway?

All case studies have one common goal: to help learn the subject matter in hand. Therefore, you should not approach case studies as isolated assignments that you need to submit to get a passing grade. Basketball players shoot free throws during practice so that it comes easier in a game setting. Likewise, cases allow learners to practice and hone their skills in their chosen disciplines so that they can do it better in real life.

Learning changes the learner in overt and covert ways. Because of this, we do not spontaneously start exuding brilliance but our behavior, in the broadest sense of the term, changes in many important ways. Since this change takes place in the learner, it must rely on his or her mental processes. In other words, the learner must experience the phenomenon in a uniquely personal way. Many things, like riding a bike, need learning from our experiences. In a similar way, we can learn from our experiences in studying marketing cases. In normal class settings, experiencing marketing may be difficult for variety of reasons. This is where cases emerge as substitutes for real life experiences.

A well-prepared case study, as a microcosm of real life, gives the learner an opportunity to project him or herself into a situation and interact with the information and the imaginary participants in the case. From this interaction, all readers may extract slightly or substantially different learning experiences. In order for this process to be fruitful, the learner needs to treat the case as an opportunity, as a challenge rather than a chore, an assignment that must be completed, turned in and forgotten. The process of analyzing a case and discussing it with others is very much an integral part of the learning process.

How to get the most out of cases

Quite often, case studies will narrate the circumstances covering a particular period with corresponding data of different sorts. The selected case studies in a course need not be “current” to be instructional. Not every piece of information or data directly helps in understanding and analyzing the case. Separating the chaff from the wheat is an essential part of the learning process, as we must do the same in our professional lives.

Although everyone may develop his or her personal way of studying cases, some general guidelines may help the beginners. In the following section, you will find some general suggestions. You should take them as what they are: suggestions. No single analytical template will suit everyone’s or every case’s needs to arrive at intelligent conclusions. If such a template existed, every decision maker would use it to make the best decision under all circumstances. Obviously, this cannot happen.
Suggestions

In studying cases, always remember that you are learning marketing. Learning at advanced levels, as you will, requires foundation knowledge. Do not rely on your “common sense” as the sole or even most of your analysis. You need to use marketing knowledge to analyze marketing problems. Your analysis must use well-established marketing knowledge and theory glued together with logic and common sense.

• Before tackling the full case, familiarize yourself with it. Depending on the length of the case, this may require more or less time but probably not more than several minutes. Quickly skim the material to develop a general sense of the structure, the people involved, the kind of organization under study, and similar general information.
• Return to the beginning and start reading the case carefully, underlining what might be important information, and making marginal notes as necessary. Be selective in what you underline for its purpose is to attract attention to key ideas. Also important is to make connections among ideas both mentally and visually. So, draw a connecting line if some ideas are related. You may even consider writing on the connecting line the essence of the relationship as you see it.
• Try to understand who is trying to make what decision with what kind of constraints. “Who” may refer to an individual or an organization such as a company.
• Separate the symptom from the problem. Do not accept what the case presents without critically evaluating the information. If the case says, “our promotion has not created the desired result” do not immediately assume that the core decision area is “promotion.” “Promotion not working” may very well be a symptom of another or a deeper problem.
• Determine the strategic area where a decision is necessary. Your knowledge of the subject matter will be your first line of defense of attack. Although there are no “best” solutions to cases, you must firmly seat all “plausible” solutions in a body of supporting knowledge of marketing. What makes one case analysis better than another is not the “answer” or the decision but the quality of analysis-synthesis and the support given for it.
• Use appropriate tools of analysis. If the case offers relevant financial data, use financial analysis tools like financial statement analysis, financial ratios, and the like. When dealing with behavioral information, you will tap into your knowledge of consumer behavior and theories explaining behavior, and so on.
  Do not assume that you can simply use common sense for analyzing information although common sense is a desirable trait. Remember that the purpose of studying a case is to help you learn the subject, marketing. “Arm-waving” with common sense will result in, well; arm waving which is not the same as sound analysis.
• When writing the result of your analysis, do not simply rehash the information in the case. Do not include sections from the case to retell the story. Present your analysis and use the material from the case as evidence when necessary. Tell the reader what that information means, what needs to be done, and why. Focus your attention on the result of your analysis of the case rather than the material that you used. At times, you will find it necessary to point to a particular piece of information or data in the case. In such circumstances, refer to the information directly and be brief.
• Your written case report must convey your thoughts clearly. Do not leave points open for interpretation. The reader of your report may not interpret them the way you want and expect. Clearly articulate your thoughts using proper marketing and business terminology and clear English.
• Remember that there is no “correct answer” to a case. The reason for studying them is to remove the illusion that there may be a singularly correct answer to questions faced by marketers. In learning with cases, the road traveled is more important than the destination.
• Pay attention to the “road” since you will travel that many more times. Reflect on what you have done, observe what you have learned, and understand why. This is precisely the reason you study a case.

Study by objectives

Understand what you are trying to learn before the study session begins. Quickly browse the chapter in five minutes or less to get familiar with the general nature of the material. Then, write on a piece of paper several learning objectives.

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes

There is no doubt that we will all make a mistake sooner or later. There is a great learning opportunity in what you might otherwise call failure, like receiving a low grade on an exam. Instead, take that as a great opportunity to find out why you received that grade and devise ways to prevent it from happening again. The greatest failure is the failure to learn from mistakes and the worst mistake is the one we repeat.

Assess learning

After you finish studying, refer back to your objectives to assess their achievement. If necessary, go back and review the part that you may have missed. You may save a great deal of time this way since you only have to study what has not clicked yet.

Teach to learn

Teaching is an excellent learning method. Try explaining what you have learned to a willing friend. You will be surprised to see how much more sense the material makes all of a sudden.

Don’t daydream, have fun

Daydreaming is a black-hole that swallows your time. In a contest, leisure wins over study. Don’t let them compete. Spare time for fun. Don’t steal from your study time and feel guilty about it. Have fun after serious studying.

Don’t procrastinate

“Later” is too close to the deadline and the end of the semester is sooner that you think. After procrastinating for a while, the backlog will be so great you will fall into another trap: “there is too much to study, I don’t know where to start.” It is easier to go over little hills than great mountains.

Manage time

One of the most important factors in good class performance is time management. The most likely reason of missed-deadlines is lack of organization. You need to have a system that will let you handle several classes with assignments, upcoming job interviews, personal commitments, and a good dose of “senioritis”. Organize your day, week and the semester to do all that and still have a little time for fun.

Be realistic

Don’t underestimate the time required to complete a project. You feel comfortable when you have the most time at the beginning of the semester and panic when you can least afford it, at the end of the semester. Remember, most projects will take more time than you think.

Set a schedule and stick to it

If you don’t stick to your schedule, time will slip through your fingers. Do things on schedule, not later or tomorrow.

Visit these pages periodically

If you have tips to share, send them to me. I will incorporate them to these pages with due credit to you unless you wish to remain anonymous. Wisdom cannot be told but experiences can be shared to build it.

Organize early and you will be rewarded. Select a team leader who can organize meetings, keep assignments on time, and make the administrative burden much lighter on everyone. Exchange telephone numbers and e-mail addresses with each other and make sure that I have a copy of this information for the entire team.

Schedule standing meetings when everyone will show-up. Allow extra meeting time during the heavy load periods if necessary. Remember, the only people responsible for an efficient team are the team members! If there are minor difficulties in scheduling, assignments, etc., at the beginning, I will be glad to lend a hand to organize the team. I am a member of every team!