Archive for June, 2008
June 24, 2008
Any sufficiently advanced technology…
This week I needed to use Internet Explorer in order to access some systems for one of my clients. This is not as much of a challenge as it used to be for someone based on a Mac now that Apple uses Intel chips in their hardware.
I am using Windows XP on VMWare Fusion, which allows windows applications to run as if they were native to the Apple operating system.
The following scenario made me think of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous quote: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
I dragged a file from Apple’s Finder into a folder in Windows Explorer. The directory in Windows Explorer was actually on a remote server I had connected to via WebDAV in Windows Explorer. So this file went from my native Mac filesystem to a simulated Windows operating system which then transmitted it to a directory on Windows Server hundreds of miles away from me.
All via a single drag-and-drop of the file.
This may sound like Greek to many of you but, believe me, so many different things have to be solved for that kind of operation to be feasible that I was awed.
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June 19, 2008
Chief Program Killer
I had a conversation yesterday where one of Peter Drucker’s maxims on innovation was mentioned: sustained innovation can only happen in an organization if you are diligent about killing programs that do not provide sufficient value.
The reason for this is plain. It is impossible to make resources available for sustained innovation if all the resources of the organization are tied up in existing programs, products, services, etc.
Many organizations have put an executive in charge of fostering innovation but I imagine few of them consider putting the same person in charge of killing programs as well.
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June 11, 2008
David Gammel’s 2008 Summer Teleconference Series
I am conducting three teleconferences this summer on a variety of topics that have been in high demand with my consulting and speaking clients. I hope you’ll join us!
I will cover the following topics during the series:
- Creating High-value Partnerships with Technology Providers
- Using the Web for Customer-sourced Innovation
- Global Web Site Strategy
The live calls are absolutely free to attend. You also have the option to purchase recordings of all the calls if you would prefer to listen to them at your own convenience. Anyone who purchases the recordings will also receive access to a bonus teleconference.
The first call is Friday June 20. Register today!
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June 9, 2008
David Gammel’s Web Strategy Report, Volume 1, Issue 2
Thoughts On Strategy: Facilitating Customer Innovation Online
- Innovation is nothing more than doing something new or something you have already done in a different way.
- Customer-driven innovation is the creation of ideas for doing something new from your customers.
- This has obvious applicability to online communication, community and collaboration!
- Track what people are saying about your company, organization, products and services online. Many ideas and new perspectives can be surfaced this way alone.
- Leverage existing customer communities anywhere on the Web when they are discussing how to improve your business.
- Determine how you can best engage your employees in this online conversation that is going on all around you. The more staff you have paying attention, the better a chance for new ideas to break through to you.
- Consider facilitating the generation, discussion, and evaluation of new ideas from your customers via interactive web sites. The case study below provides an example.
- Publicly calling for ideas from your customers conveys a promise: that you will genuinely consider them, indicate which you are going to pursue, and give credit where credit is due for the successes.
- The hardest part of sourcing innovation from customers is not going to be your customers. It is going to be getting your staff and organizational culture to incorporate them. Lay the groundwork and infrastructure to adopt great ideas before you ask for them from your customers.
Case Study: : Dell and Starbucks Customer Innovation Web Sites
Both Dell and Starbucks have launched web sites that ask their customers to suggest, rate, and discuss ideas on how to improve in any aspect of their company, operations, or products and services. Suggestions range from adding an extra shot to Venti sized lattes to ideas on being a more socially responsible global citizen. Both sites use Ideas, a service of Salesforce.com.
How are these sites different from a glorified suggestion box? Both are sponsored by the CEOs of each company, making them high profile projects internally. Each has staff dedicated to monitoring the site, responding to each entry, and taking ideas into the company for exploration. These are not trivial, feel-good, marketing campaigns. They have been designed as a key element of the overall innovation process for each company.
Dell has a dedicated blog, called Ideas in Action, where they report on the progress of ideas within the company and solicit feedback from the community of customers involved in the IdeaStorm web site. This is a great example of how the company shows its commitment to listening to their customers. It was also a critical step, given how Dell’s billion-dollar brand was bloodied by bloggers in the not-too-distant past.
This leads us to the key to success for this kind of effort: it starts within the company, rather than on the Web. If staff incentives and business processes are not redesigned to value and nurture this form of customer innovation, it will fail. Worse, publishing such a site without the organization firmly behind it reneges on the implicit promise to take the customer’s contributions seriously.
High Geekery: Occam’s Razor 2.0
The simplest solution online is often the best when interacting with customers. All you need to do to illustrate this is to complete a transaction on Amazon.com and then try to do the same on the web site of your telephone service provider. It’s rather obvious which company focuses on customer value and which does not, isn’t it?
This is even more important when you are trying to facilitate customer-driven innovation.
Take, for example, Proctor & Gamble’s effort in the late 90’s to use the web to allow customers to create their own custom cosmetics via a web site tied directly to an automated factory built just for this purpose. This was a very elaborate system to allow customers to innovate their own cosmetic colors and properties. It fell flat and was shut down at a huge loss a few years later. There were simply too many options for a normal person to pick from when all they wanted was good product from a brand they trust.
Now compare this to the simplicity of the Ideas application from Salesforce.com highlighted in the case above. Ideas are easily suggested, rated, and discussed. The company publicly responds to them, and everyone moves on, with the best ideas being implemented. The cost of a bad idea in this system is very low and good ideas are surfaced without strenuous effort. All with a simple, easy-to-use interface. This is Occam’s Razor 2.0 in action.
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June 4, 2008
Emitting HTML
Any HTML markup generated by a web content management system should be customizable. This includes everything from the opening html tag to forms. If the system creates tags they should be customizable by the site publisher.
Why? This provides maximum flexibility to the site owner in deploying their desired template and overall design. Sounds like a no-brainer, huh?
You might be surprised how often this can be an issue, particularly with content management systems that are not very mature or have not been updated in a while. It creates many headaches in deploying web site designs and might even prevent the site owner from deploying the best possible design for their needs.
Add this to your list of key things to assess when reviewing web content management system.
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June 4, 2008
Robots.txt Protocol Enhanced by Big Search Engine Companies
I learned today, via Search Tools, that Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google have agreed to specific extensions to the robots.txt file protocol. All of their search engines will now honor additional directives. More info from Yahoo! and Google.
What is robots.txt some of you may be asking? It is a simple text file you can place on your web site to tell search engine spiders what parts of your site they should index and which they should ignore. It has been around for a long time and these are the first additions to the standard in at least a decade.
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June 2, 2008
Building Credibility Even When You Can’t Say Anything
Great example from the Direct2Dell blog of listening to the online conversation about their future products, summarizing the discussion, and simply stating what they can share about it right now (not much):
Dell’s Secret Mini Laptop: Speaking of D6, a Gizmodo post about a forthcoming Dell mini notebook sparked hundreds of reactions in the blogosphere. Anne B. Camden reacted and shared a few more pictures in her post on Your Blog. Reaction was pretty positive. Seems like a lot of folks are interested in a small notebook at an affordable price. Still, others in the blogosphere want a sub-notebook that doesn’t skimp on performance (take a look at the comment threads from Gizmodo and Engadget to see what I mean). When we can share more details on this product, we’ll blog about it.
(Emphasis added by me.)
This is a great way to acknowledge a topic while being truthful about not being prepared to share anything. This kind of post builds credibility with their most dedicated followers (pro or con). Staying silent would miss an opportunity to build trust, at best, or actually harm their reputation.
I’ll be discussing Dell’s customer idea generation web site, which uses Salesforce.com’s Ideas application, in the next issue of my newsletter. Be sure to sign up this week for David Gammel’s Web Strategy Report to get the next issue. You can read the first issue If you missed it last month via the same page.
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