For Coke, Innovation Comes in Small Bottles

The past few years have been tough on Coke.  Health-conscious populations have dramatically reduced their consumption of soda.

But now, after a jujitsu maneuver, Coke's global sales are rising.

What was their innovative, jujitsu move?  Instead of fighting the anti-soda trend, they went with the flow by selling smaller servings.

After decades of bigger bottles and "super-sizing", Coke started introducing small cans and bottles.

This has had 2 effects:

1. Coke makes more profit per ounce, because packaging is a large percentage of their cost.

2. More people are buying soda, because they see the small package as a comprise between drinking regular servings, and the ideal of drinking no soda

The lesson here is that innovation doesn't necessarily mean bigger or better.  It could be smaller and less.  The key is to give customers something they value.

Why Procrastination Can Be A Gift

Procrastination is seen as the major enemy of creativity and accomplishment.  Just thinking of the word conjures images of white-knuckled students pulling all-nighters to finish their term paper or study for the finals exam.

And procrastination can be terrible - keeping us from realizing our dreams and reaching our goals.  But this occurs when procrastination is rooted in fear of failure (or success) or perfectionism.

However, many times, procrastination can be a gift.  It can be a GPS signal for us to switch directions when we are on the wrong path.

In this case, procrastination is rooted in as mismatch between our heart and our heads.  When our minds, trying to please someone else, or through over-thinking, chooses to do the wrong thing, and engage in activities we don't really care about.

It could be volunteering for a cause we don't believe in, or doing a dead-end job we hate because we're afraid to try something new.  In either case, we find ourselves procrastinating because there is no joy, no adrenaline rush in accomplishing it.

Then, when we switch to doing something we are passionate about, something we enjoy, we'll do it effortlessly (unless, of course, we start thinking about failure or perfection).

Holistic Marketing and Social Media

In today's era of social media, marketing is now holistic throughout your firm.  All your employees - no matter what their job titles are - serve as de facto marketers.

A helpful sales clerk could get praised on Facebook, while a rude waiter experience might result in a Twitter rant.

Your company needs to take advantage of this - especially since we are in an age of information overload.  Traditional ads are no longer effective and even potentially useful content (such as blog posts and articles) is frequently ignored.

To turn your employees into actual marketers, they must become producers/innovators and promote by creating actual products and services that give value.

For example, as part of its marketing, a restaurant could get their chef to demonstrate simple recipes on its You Tube channel.  Then, they could expand on this by getting him/her to offer weekly cooking classes, for a nominal fee, at a time when the restaurant is closed or business is slow.  The classes could be promoted in the restaurant and online.

Don't Let Tax Decisions (CAPEX Vs. OPEX) Drive Your IT To The Cloud

The latest thinking among CIOs and CFOs is to drive IT to managed cloud services in order to convert capital expenditures (CAPEX) into operational expenditures (OPEX).

OPEX spending has the advantage of being immediately deductible, while CAPEX has to be carried on the books and depreciated over time.

However, when it comes to business and investing, making decisions based on tax consequences is the equivalent of "playing not to lose" in sports.

For every tax dollar you save, you could be giving up a potential 5-10 dollars, simply by not considering a long term competitive IT strategy.

It might make sense, for example, to migrate routine, lower level IT functions to the cloud but, if all your systems are in the cloud, what differentiates you from any start-up who plunks down $100 at Amazon Services?

With so many competitors accessing cloud services, with the same performance, it might make sense for your company to retain your existing infrastructure to deliver critical functionality faster and more reliably.  This creates a competitive advantage, "a moat", that competitors can't easily offer.

As a strategy consultant, I always advise my clients to focus on the key question: "How can we increase the value we provide to our customers?"  If you continually increase your relevance and value to them, you won't be considered a commodity - you will be a trusted business partner.

Your internal tax treatment (CAPX vs. OPEX) has no value for them, but proprietary IT infrastructure  / operations that enable them to meet their objectives better and faster than cloud - only has a lot of value.

The Mouse, Bird, and Fox

A haughty bird spotted a mouse crawling through the field.

The bird landed next to the mouse and said: “Oh, poor mouse! A hungry fox prowls this field! What are you going to do if he sees you?”

The mouse answered: “I have but one option – I will run away”.
The bird boasted: “I know several ways to escape the fox!”

Just then, the fox arrived!

The mouse ran away, and the fox ate the bird while it tried to figure out which escape method to use.

Moral: It pays to keep things simple! 

Business Synergy and Why Value Creation is Abundant

The best way to grow and market your business is to continually innovate and add value for your customers.

One way to do this is through collaboration.  A lot of innovation and value creation happen at intersections - between products, disciplines, and services.

I saw a reminder about this today when I read how Dunkin Donuts and Mondelez have created Oreo and Chips Ahoy based Coolata coffee drinks, and donuts.

Collaborations and synergy opportunities like this are endless - which shows abundance, because value can be created out of thin air, simply by combining things which already exist.

25 Year Old Hubble Telescope Shows That Old Tech Isn't Bad Tech

The Hubble Telescope recently celebrated its 25th anniversary.  During that time, it's completely changed our understanding of the universe and, with the latest camera upgrade, it's better than ever and taking great photos.

The Chicago Tribune had an article on this and mentioned how the Hubble "was conceived in the 1940s, designed in the 1970s and 1980s" and it still has old computer hardware from that time.

I'm not surprised that the 1980s computer hardware still functions very well because, in those days, they used simple and robust designs based on unix.

Today's computers and software are much more complex, but not necessarily any better.  A lot of the complexity, storage, and space is taken up because of the graphical user interface (GUI) and object-oriented, inefficient programming.

In the old days, programmers were better engineers, and they used simple, elegant command line commands.  Today, hardware and memory are cheaper than programming talent, so software is bloated with large object libraries, so that mediocre programmers can just slap together modules.