Forget creating customer loyalty and focus on building friendships with customers

I’m not talking about the glib friendships companies try to encourage by inviting their customers to be friends or fans on Facebook, but rather intimate and deep relationships that come from having a vested interest in the people that make their business possible. I recently came across a study by Michael Argyle and Monika Henderson at Oxford University on friendships. They identified a number of universal rules, which they published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships. The rules included: Friends must provide support, respect privacy, share aspirations, dreams and be tolerant of other friendships. It is my belief that any company could use these rules as a framework for their customer experience and engagement framework.

You can read more of my thoughts on this issue in the white paper I wrote called Onions and Parfait: Why customer relationships no longer need to be a thing of fairytales and pirate stories.

Today I came across a great example of the third rule in action. Gwilym Davies co-owner of Prufrock Coffee at 140 Shoreditch High Street, and the current World Barista Champion, has come up with the “disloyalty card.” The idea is simple, you get a stamp on a card for visiting eight different quality focused coffee shops. After visiting the eighth “friend” (actually his competitors) He will say thank you by making you a cup of his own coffee for free. There is no catch Gwilym just wants people to try different quality coffees.

So swing by Prufrock Coffee shop grab a card, enjoy your tour of the best cafes and coffee shops around Central and East London and then go back to Prufrock for your free cup where you can compare notes with one of the best baristas in the world. Pure customer experience genius at work. Superb stuff!!

Africa’s Gift to Silicon Valley: How to Track a Crisis

A report under this title appeared in the New York Times on 12 March 2010. It’s a great example of a few things, but especially of the power of social media, and the fact that innovation (and competition) can come from anywhere these days.

Read the story of how technology developed in the aftermath of Kenya’s disputed elections was used in Haiti to track responses to the crisis there. You can read the original at the NYT website, or read an extract below. (As an aside, you’ve got to love how US journalists can always rely on the “war on terror” to grab attention).

The company states that “the Ushahidi Engine is a platform that allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline. Our goal is to create the simplest way of aggregating information from the public for use in crisis response.” The company’s website is http://www.ushahidi.com/ – check them out.

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A Radical Proposal for Executive Pay

Everyone agrees that something must be done about executive pay. One of the major contentious issues emerging out of the financial crisis is the way that senior executives and manager, especially in the financial industries, are remunerated. These days, executive pay often seems to be unrelated to the company’s performance, and in many industries it seems out of proportion to the value the company adds to society.

A century ago, executives earned anywhere between 3 and 20 times what the average worker in their factories earned. According to research by global human capital and risk management firm, Towers Perrin (now Towers Watson), in 1965, CEO pay was 26 times that of their average worker. This is looking at the total packages, rather than base salary. By 1980, this had risen to 40 times. In 1989, it was 72 times. In 1999 it had risen to 310 times, and by 2004 CEO pay had reached 500 times that of the average worker in their firm. In some companies by 2010, this had jumped to over 1,000 times. (In pure salary terms, in 2008, US executives took home 319 times more than the average worker, according to a report linked to the Guardian’s salary survey).

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The future of money

For years banks and credit card companies have held a strangle hold over the movement of money and charged exorbitant rates for doing so. Now this is changing and fast.

Michale Ivey the founder of Twitpay has devised a system, using code that PayPal made available to him, that allows people to make payments using tweets. The way it works is you include the recipients’ username in their message. For example, posting the update “@johnsmith twitpay $10 for lunch” would deliver the cash to that Twitterer’s Twitpay account. Simple and brilliant!

Hundreds of engineers and entrepreneurs are now revolutionising the payment industry, attacking the payment ecosystem and seeking out ways to pull down the stronghold the banks and credit card companies have built.

Here are some examples:

- Square, a new company founded by Twitter cocreator Jack Dorsey, lets anyone accept physical credit card payments using an attachment on their iPhone, any other a smartphone or computer by plugging in a free sugar-cube-sized device — no expensive card reader required.
- A startup called Obopay, which has received funding from Nokia, allows phone owners to transfer money to one another with nothing more than a PIN.
- Amazon.com and Google are both distributing their shopping cart technologies across the Internet, letting even the lowliest etailers process credit cards for less than the old price, cutting out middlemen, and figuring out ways to bundle payments to sidestep the credit card companies’ constant nickel-and-diming.
- Facebook appears to be building its own payment system for virtual goods purchased on its social network and on external sites.
- Apple has given iTunes developers the ability to charge subscription fees through their applications, making iTunes the gateway for an entirely new breed of transaction.

About 20 percent of all online transactions now take place over so-called alternative payment systems, according to consulting firm Javelin Strategy and Research. It expects that number to grow to nearly 30 percent in just three years.

This is going to revolutionise the way we use money eroding the monopoly that banks have. Serves them right for causing the Great Recession I’m looking forward to the day that we can all bypass banks. Zopa is another example of the new breed of talented companies that is reshaping the world of finance. Zopa is a lending and borrowing exchange where real people sidestep the banks to get a better deal. I’m going to research and write an article on innovative companies that are changing the world of finance so what this space.

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When social media grows up… it will change everything

Download a copy of this article in PDF format – right click here. The contents of this article can be presented as a keynote or a workshop for your team. Contact our UK or South African offices to find out how.

Twitter recently hosted it’s billionth Tweet and Facebook had over 500 million users by the end of 2009, continuing its trend of doubling every nine months or so. It is difficult to continue to argue that social media is nothing more than a fad, and an increasing number of companies are starting to make use of these technologies.

But most of these companies are merely using social networks as a means to communicate (mainly with customers, but sometimes with staff as well) or to market their products and services. These are simple – and obvious – applications, and soon you’ll just be another voice in cacophony of online noise. Unfortunately, most “social media experts” focus only on these aspects of online social networking, and are overhyping the benefits and underemphasising the cultural shifts required for companies to truly benefit. They are missing a really important trend with huge implications for every organisation in every industry and sector.

The reason that social media has taken off so quickly is that it is more than a fad. It is, in fact, merely the technological expression of a values shift that has been taking place for a number of years. It will therefore be a shaping force in the world over the next decade. It might not be the answer to all your problems as many social media pundits are predicting. But it will definitely change everything, and more and more companies are starting to see the benefits it offers. A revolution awaits us.

You can hardly turn on a TV news channel or read a business magazine these days without being overwhelmed by requests to “follow my tweets”, “check out our blog” or “send us your videos”. Social media has gone mainstream. But most business users and organisations are treating it like a gimmick, and only gaining a fraction of the value they could. If they understood the true nature of what is happening, they’d know that social media is merely an expression of a deeper trend that has the potential to change everything. And they’d realise that the first companies to grasp this will have the opportunity to gain phenomenal competitive advantage in their industry. In fact, some companies have already started to do so.

Social Media 101

If you’ve missed this trend and are not sure what I’m talking about, here’s a quick primer: social media are the tools you can use to do social networking on the Internet. This involves connecting with other people, and sharing information with them digitally (yes, it’s just networking and connecting with others online). The most used tools are:

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The Internet? Bah!

Many years ago, in a South Africa finding it’s way to it’s first democratic election, a friend of mine would often say, “Don’t be a victim of your own words.” He of course was referring to saying things that might come back and bite you down the road. And in an emerging ‘New South Africa’, lots of people were saying lots of things, and plenty of them got it badly wrong.

The world of technology is another one of those ‘dramatic change spaces’ that offers up the opportunity for history to come back and bite you big time.

Here are some exerts from a Newsweek article (1995) dug up by the guys at The Next Web. Clifford Stoll, writes a piece called ‘The Internet? Bah!’. And boy does he get a whole lot wrong : ) Keep in mind that he wrote this before Google, FaceBook and Twitter.

Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Intenet. Uh, sure.

There are so many beauties contained in the article. I’m tempted to drop the whole thing in as a quote. Go and have a look for yourself : )

Then there’s cyberbusiness. We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obselete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet–which there isn’t–the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

Connect with customers like you do friends

In my most resent article Onions or Parfait I put forward the proposition that companies should use new social media innovations to build relationships with customers akin to those of friendships. I strongly believe that customers want to engage in a open two-way relationship with companies that show a willingness and expend effort to build relationships. I just came across an example of 5 big brands that are using blogs, facebook and twitter to do just this. In a post by Attraction Marketing Starbucks, Zappos, Vitamin Water, H&M and Coke are identified as big brands that are actively using social media to build friendships and not just sell products.

I’m not surprised to see Zappos in this list. Zappos are innovators in creating connections with people inside and outside their organisation. I regularly use Zappos as a case study in my presentations and workshops. You can discover more about Zappos here:
Keeping employees motivated during a recession
Zappos hits one billion $ in sales
Zappos – delivering WOW through service

Zappos makes for an awesome case study in the corporate boardroom so if you are looking for ideas for your next meeting or proposal to your boss visit their website or email me and I’ll gladly offer my insights

You can read the article on Social Media 5 Big Brands below

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Learnings around working from home

One of the emerging requests/trends in today’s business environment centers around the mystery of ‘working from home’. Many people talk with much  gravitas about the ‘ins and outs’. However, in my experience, once you dig under the surface a little, you discover how little they know. In fact how little is known, period, about this subject (again that’s my opinion).

You can understand then, why this blog post from Inc Magazine caught my attention. The entire staff decided, as an experiment, to see what they could learn about working from home. And so home they went, for one month. What a great project : )

This article is written one week in, and they give a brief summary of the learnings so far:

Remember to eat

Prepare for e-mail overload

Get out of the house

Get a comfortable chair

Video chat is your friend

Don’t forget to stop

You can actually get stuff done

In the article they unpack each of these 7 points. Worth following and reading for sure….

Tesco launches world’s first zero-carbon emission store

Tesco sometimes takes a few knocks in the press. Most recently for not allowing people wearing pyjamas into their stores and another for asking a father, for safety reasons, to leave a store because he was balancing his six-year old child on his shoulder. Frankly I don’t want to shop were people are running around in their old flannel pyjamas (it’s never going to be sexy French lace nighties) so I for one applaud this decision and as for the dad with his kid on his shoulders, sure it’s petty but we have a government obsessed with health and safety rules and a big brother mentality. So no need to shoot the messenger in this case the Tesco security guard.

Over the past 18 months I’ve become a fan of Tesco. As a company they have achieved incredible results in a very competitive industry. Tesco have streaked ahead of their competitors over the past 20 years because they understand what their customers want and shrewd management and marketing have kept them ahead of the competition. At the end of last year I had the privilege of being invited to do my Mind the Gap keynote presentation on generational marketing at the Tesco Marketing away day and I got further insight into Tesco, you can read about these insights here.

This week Tesco launched the world’s first “zero-carbon” emission store as part of its bid to be a carbon neutral company by 2050. The shop, in Ramsey, Cambridgeshire, is timber-framed rather than steel, and uses skylights and sun pipes to cut lighting costs. It also has a combined heat and power plant powered by renewable bio-fuels, exporting extra electricity back to the national grid. In addition the refrigerators – one of the biggest blackspots for food retailers trumpeting their green credentials – have doors to save energy and harmful HFC refrigerant gases have been replaced. The new store, cost 30% more to build, but it uses 50% less energy, and with oil costs on the increase the business case sells itself.

To coincide with the Ramsey opening, the supermarket chain said it intended to spend more than £100m with green technology companies, although Leahy was unsure of the level of supermarket’s current spend on this.

Tesco has been at the forefront of the grocers’ race to be green. The UK’s biggest supermarket has provided £25m of funding for the University of Manchester to set up a sustainable consumption institute, and has a 10-point community plan, with pledges to increase local sourcing and to consult local communities in an attempt to be viewed as a good neighbour.

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should

My colleague in the UK, Graeme Codrington, posted “3-d TV is here” a week or so back. It’s a short post about Sky News launching 3D TV.  When Graeme writes he’s normally very definite in his opinion, and he’s not scared to put it out there. If you read his 3D TV post, you’ll notice he ends with a fairly ‘limp’ conclusion around the future of 3D TV. I haven’t spoken to him about his lack of definite view, but based on his post, I share his same feelings around 3D TV. I think it’s a limp idea.

• Perhaps it’s because I haven’t seen the ‘new 3D TV’s’ needed to enhance 3D in this medium. What I have seen (my kids movies) has always left me feeling a little disappointed, experience wise.
• Then there’s the idea of 3D glasses lying around my house. We already have enough of a problem storing, not standing on, dropping, and spilling things on multiple remote controls, all sorts of Wii controls, iPod chargers, iPods, etc, etc. The thought of more paraphernalia to enhance my viewing experience far from excites me.
• While we’re on the glasses, how many are we going to need? Or will it become acceptable to ask friends to bring their own? And how silly might I look with ’sunglasses on’ when friends or family come around to watch TV?

The obvious next step from 3D is going to be  holographic TV (Holy TV?) . That’s 3D on steroids. That isn’t going to need any extra goggles to watch, and while it may mean some new equipment in the viewing area, the massive leap in expeirence from what we have now to that, will be worth whatever pain I may have to go through.

Is 3D then, simply a transitional technology between now and then? If it is, I’m guessing those that run the TV world have done their sums and figure they’re going to sell enough boxes to make the investment worth it? I’m not sure it switches me on enough to get into the game. But then again, peer pressure and great advertising may be all they need to make me a convert.

Still I do think there are times when being able to do/create/buy things doesn’t mean you’ve got to. I think this may be one of those times. Time will tell, and in the mean time I’ll go over to Graeme’s house to watch on his 3D telly : )

Will the next generation live to be 1000 years old?

Anthony Atala asks, “Can we grow organs instead of transplanting them?” His lab at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is doing just that — engineering tissues and whole organs (bladders and, soon, kidneys) using smart bio-materials and cutting-edge techniques.

Watch his amazing short video on TED MED

Are you working for a TALENTED COMPANY, or do you know of examples?

I’m on a quest to find companies that are extraordinary, companies that not only achieve good financial results but also contribute positively to society as a whole. I’m intrigued at how many companies have fallen down in the past few years because a number of very talented people have been behaving badly – think Enron, the financial crisis, Bernie Madoff, Lehman Brothers and the US motor industry to name but a few. Companies have wrongly convinced themselves that they need the best of the best, the most talented people, to succeed and they have been rewarding their “talent” excessively. This has resulted in a bonus culture that is eating away at the fabric and moral code of business.

Rather than build a business around star individuals I believe that companies need to be building talented systems processes and cultures. They need to be focusing on building the star company. I’m currently conducting research to form the basis of a new book about talented companies. if you know of or work for a company that has talented structures, organisational designs, cultures, systems and corporate DNA I’d love to hear from you.

A looming retirement crisis for Boomers (with lots of opportunities)

We have argued many times on this blog that the Baby Boomers are going to redefine retirement (for example, here, here and here). In fact, we even thought we were very clever using the phrase “retyrement” to describe what we think will actually happen. We’ve had a presentation called “Prime Time” about it. And one of our colleagues started her own consultancy called the refirement network.

We’ve been saying this for at least the last 6 years, so it’s got very little to do with financial downturn of the last two years. Although the recession allowed us to add one more reason why Boomers were not going to retire in the way we think of retirement now. But maybe the recession will cause some Boomers a big headache in this area.

Because many companies will need to find ways to strip out costs over the next few years as the recovery slowly begins, they will think of removing the high remuneration costs for senior staff. The weak economy could very well result in job losses that will force more people to retire early. This would severely scupper Boomers plans to continue working longer.

However, we would argue strongly that this will simply see Boomers become entrepreneurs. We cannot imagine that they will retire gracefully to the “do nothing” state often associated with retirement. Some will move into the voluntary sector. There is therefore a huge opportunity for charities, non-profits, and faith-based organisations to target recruitment campaigns at this generation. I’d say this could work for any organisation that could use more volunteers, from local schools to the World Cup Football competition.

But, many of the Boomers are likely to try and start up their own companies. The opportunities here are boundless. This is a generation that loves consultants – and they’ll be very happy to use some of the early retirement payout to buy consulting services. They’d pay for anything from IT support to virtual secretarial services, and from business mentoring to outsourcing of warehousing and deliveries. Many of them are used to having teams of people do their bidding, and they’d probably pay to have this setup again in their startup businesses.

Given just a few good experiences, they may be able to get their heads around virtual support (such as eLance), but in general, they are a “hands on” and “face to face” generation.

There are huge challenges ahead for the Boomers. This next decade is likely to be a very frustrating one for them. But there are amazing opportunities as well.

What are your thoughts?

2010 will be an important – but bad – year for green business

Cop15, the global conference in Copenhagen last year, produced about as much as anyone could have expected (a lot less than was hoped) – a fudged solution that requires much further discussion and negotiation. And in the UK, the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme (the renamed Carbon Reduction Commitment) initial deadline for creating baselines was pushed out a year to April 2011. It’s unlikely the USA will be able to get to a final cap and trade agreement into legislation during 2010 (the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 must still pass through the Senate). While China made positive noises before Cop15, it seems that they were really sticky in Copenhagen and were a big reason that the final agreement did not include any operational terms.

With all of these issues in mind, it seems clear that 2010 is likely to be a year of talks and discussions, but very little action. For companies involved in green industries this will be frustrating. Many of these companies are startups, gearing up for the expected demand in sustainability issues (technology, consulting, business processes, engineering, energy, and much more). But many of them won’t survive another year of waiting and delays in implementation and client demand. It seems likely they will have to.

Companies that are keen on implementing green strategies (for whatever reason) have probably started to do this already. Companies looking for an excuse to delay implementation, however, will have plenty of excuses in 2010. They’re likely to keep delaying. They’ll do so until they’re forced to change (and that’s the main reason I support emissions trading legislation!).

So, 2010 will not be a good year for those involved in the sustainability industry. But it is an important year nevertheless. It’s important to continue lobbying. It’s important to continue to search for the best solutions and the best processes that will not only produce the best outcomes, but will also be compelling for those who are not yet convinced that anything needs to be done. It’s an important year for science – more must be done to show the scientific evidence of climate change and the need for changes in our lifestyles. And it’s an important year for venture capitalists, who must try to separate out those startups that truly have something to offer from those that are just taking a chance on the bandwagon (remember the shakeup in the online IT industry just 10 years ago?).

Who owns the moon?

This is not a frivolous question. China is making great strides towards a presence in space – as is India. Russia, the UK, the EU and the USA are already there. And it’s not all about national pride and the “because it’s there” motivation. It is highly likely that there are some very useful and very valuable minerals on the moon. And right now, it could very well be a “first come, first served” scenario for their usage. Oh, and let’s not forget that Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is also in the mix and should soon have the ability to launch and relaunch space vehicles at will. So, this will soon be a government and private interest issue.

Can you own property on the moon? This question may have to be answered sooner than you think.

Earlier in 2009, a NASA probe crashed into the moon’s surface and discovered frozen water – they claim lots of it. This makes establishing a base on the moon a lot more feasible. There are lots of reasons someone might want a moon base. There would be military benefits and scientific ones, too. But most important, there would be commercial ones too. There are some amazing mining opportunities on the moon, including huge quantities of helium 3 which could be used to generate clean energy on earth.

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In a Web 2.0 world, business has it’s head buried firmly in the sand

I’m curious. Curious about business’ lack of engagement with Twitter  / FaceBook / Tumblr / Google and everything else Web 2.0. I would have thought that any communication channel getting the sort of traction, focus, attention and subscription that these channels are getting, would have business engaging like a love struck teenager who’d just discovered their perfect partner?

But it’s not so. So not so. So far, the majority of my experience and observation is that business has been an extremely poor performer in these spaces. Take a look at these points from Jeffbulla’s Blog:

1. 73 percent of Fortune 100 companies registered a total of 540 Twitter accounts.
2. About three-quarters (76 percent) of those accounts did not post tweets very often.
3. More than half (52 percent) were not actively engaged (This was measured by engagement metrics such as numbers of links, hashtags, references and retweets.)

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M-Pesa, Vodacom, Nedbank and Rob Shuter

Earlier this year Rob Shuter (head of Nedbank Retail) resigned from Nedbank and joined Vodacom as Financial Director. It was an exciting move from my perspective as I watch mobile phone companies (and technology in general) redefine how we do business. Not necessarily the companies, but users who adapt the technology to find innovative ways to run their businesses differently. The big question I was asking was what happens when someone with intimate retail banking knowledge and experience (especially of Shuter’s profile) gets a significant position at a mobile phone company? What happens after what comes next?

I’ve not seen anything obvious in the press, and have quite possibly missed it, but this week a couple of pieces of the puzzle dropped into place. Enter M-Pesa.

M-Pesa is an amazing Kenyan innovation, and describe themselves as:

M-PESA is a Safaricom service allowing you to transfer money using a mobile phone. Kenya is the first country in the world to use this service, which is offered in partnership between Safaricom and Vodafone. M-PESA is available to all Safaricom subscribers (Prepay and Postpay), even if you do not have a bank account. Registration is FREE and available at any M-PESA Agent countrywide. The M-PESA application is installed on your SIM card and works on all makes of handsets.

My sources suggest that M-Pesa has radically transformed the banking space in Kenya and left the banks flat-footed and out of the equation. Around 15 million people use M-Pesa to transfer money and make payments. Kenyan banks (collectively) have a third of this number as customers. M-Pesa has transformed banking access to the previously un-banked, who are found predominately in rural areas in Kenya. Areas that traditional banks have little to no access to.

The person I spoke to this week had some of the following to say about M-Pesa:

M-Pesa has made the sim card more valuable than a credit card.

M-Pesa is transforming how aid is distributed within Kenya.

M-Pesa has fundamentally re-defined the banking space.

Kenyan banks have not found an ‘anti-dote’ to M-Pesa’s presense, and possibly wont or can’t, simply because they’re unable to redefine themselves.

Maybe a little over-enthusiastic. But the hype and the numbers do confirm his thoughts.

Enter Shuter, Vodacom and Nedbank….

What if Vodacom’s next move is to bring M-Pesa to South Africa? Both Safaricom (M-Pesa’s master) and Vodacom are subsidiaries of Vodaphone. Certainly they have someone with huge retail banking experience in Shuter, and he has intimate knowledge and I imagine a solid relationship with Nedbank.

What if? Watch this space. This may be what happens after what comes next…..

The age of cheap oil

I’ve just watched a brilliant presentation by Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Movement on TED. He reminds us that the oil our world depends on is steadily running out, and proposes a unique solution to this problem — the Transition response, where we prepare ourselves for life without oil and sacrifice our luxuries to build systems and communities that are completely independent of fossil fuels. Rob makes some powerful points very eloquently and simply. Using a bottle of a litre of oil he highlights that this amazing porduct contains the energy equivalent of about five weeks of hard human manual labour; we can turn it into a dazzling array of materials – medicine, modern clothing and even laptops; we base the design of our settlements, business models and even economic growth on the basis that we will have oil in perpetuity. Yet when we look back over history at what may be called the petroleum interval, it is just a short slither in history in which we have discovered this extrodinary material and then based a whole way of life on around it. Rob suggests that we are now straddling the top of this energy mountain our degree of dependancy on oil now becomes our degree of vulnerability. For every four barrels of oil we consumer we only discover one new barrel. There are 98 oil producing countries in the world, but of that 65 have already past their peak in oil production.

The truth of the matter is that the age of cheap oil is over. in my latest presentation Brave New World I make the point that the world has changed and that there is now a new normal, and I show how over the coming years society is going to be transformed radically to the point that within ten to twenty years the society that we live in will be completely different and that businesses need to be preparing for this reality now. Of the two greatest factors influencing our world, an aging population and the end of cheap oil, are the two key factors that will force changes in the way we live and how we think about the world around us. If you would like to learn more about the Brave New World, and how you can prepare your business for it, please contact me for more information.

The James Martin 21st Century School – understanding the future

I am a huge fan of James Martin. Not the celebrity chef. Nor the inventor of the aircraft ejection seat. Nor any of the other famous James Martins. I am a huge fan of James Martin the futurist and author of one of the best books of all time, “The Meaning of the 21st Century” (see a previous post about the book here).

I recently discovered that a think tank “school” has been created at Oxford university, and named in his honour. It’s the James Martin 21st century school. It seems to be a fantastic institution. You can see an 8 minute video of the Dean of the school, ex-South African, Ian Goldin, speaking recently at TED. Follow the school at Twitter/21school.

The school’s aim is to tackle the toughest challenges of the 21st century, and provide input and resources for the Oxford university community on these issues (see the list below). They aim to formulate new concepts, policies and technologies that will make the future a better place to be. Very nice!

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Funtheory – changing people by having fun

TheFunTheory.com is a website dedicated to the thought that something that is fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.

There are some great examples of this theory. My favourite is the sticker of a fly that has been put in men’s urinals – when men have something to aim at, they aim at it! And this has reduced mess in the men’s room dramatically. Simple. Fun. Works.

I like it. Check out The Fun Theory for lots of other examples.

Space Tourism is 18 months away

Last Thursday, Sir Richard Branson updated shareholders in Virgin Group on “Virgin Galactic”, the company that has taken $200,000 deposits from over 200 people for seats on the first commercial near-orbit flight. However, his announcement indicated that the first flight would be reserved for his family (an a few friends and some journalists, too, no doubt), and that it is expected to happend within about 18 months.

In addition to these tourist flights, Virgin Galactic will also put satellites into space, train NASA crews and is investigating orbital hotels and tours of the moon. Anyone who says this won’t happen clearly has never heard of Richard Branson (or the Wright Brothers for that matter)! A few people alive today are old enough to remember when cars were considered a luxury for the truly rich and famous. How long will it be before the middle class can afford space tourism? Probably in my lifetime, I would have thought.

The “mother ship” that will launch the actual space flights: VMS Eve (see photo), named after Sir Richard’s mum, got its debut in Oshkosh, Wisc., this past July. And SpaceShipTwo, the suborbital plane for space tourism, will be unveiled on December 7, Branson says. He added: “What started off as a dream to send people just for the excitement of a voyage to look back and marvel at Earth has turned into a business.”

Entrepreneurial Edge – CNBC Africa

If you’re watching CNBC Africa this evening (15 October) at around 20:30, you can catch Entrepreneurial Edge (hosted by Chris Bishop), with at least one of it’s guests being me : )

The focus of the programme is future trends impacting entrepreneurs, and we chatted around education, skills development and Web 2.0. The two other guys in the interview were Dawie Olivier (CIO – Sasfin) and Devan Naiker (Dep CEO – Services SETA)

There was some nice stuff being thrown around in the short time we had. Thanks to Kate from SimonSays Communications for arranging and for being there to do my hair (really not necessary – I need a lot more than hair help)

CNBC Africa is on Channel 410 on DSTV.

Surprise! Creating experiences for your customers

For many years now, we’ve been telling our clients that one of the keys to connecting with younger customers (Generations X and Y) is to add an experience to your offering. No longer are the traditional “Ps” of marketing (product, price, placement and promotion – and even people) enough. You need to create experiences that transcend these, and give customers a further reason to connect with you.

Some people are talking about tribes (see, for example, a great video by Seth Godin at TED.com). Others are doing funky stuff with their stores (Walt Disney have Steve Jobs to turn their stores in mini theme parks, for example). There are countless examples of creating experiences that develop your brand (Red Bull are geniuses at this).

But here’s a new one…

Hipstery ask their customers to fill in a questionnaire about yourself. They then choose a T-shirt design for you, and send it to you. It remains a surprise until you open the package. This adds an interesting thrill to the boring task of choosing a T-shirt.

It seems that while most companies are providing ever more choice and ever more information, there is a growing trend of businesses relieving consumers of the burden of decision, and helping them make choices. Obviously this can go wrong. So Hipstery will replace any t-shirts that customers don’t like, with the option of a refund if they’re wrong the second time too. Sometimes a lack of choice is a good thing, especially if it is used to surprise and delight consumers.

Nice one.

Power of Mobile Money

In the early 1990’s I started work for one of South Africa’s largest banks. The most innovative project I worked on was the use of smart card/chip technology to enable people to purchase items using the smart chip inside their mobile phones. I thought it was the best idea out! Back then mobile phones were the size and the weight of a brick, but the advantages of the mobile chip technology in financial services seemed limitless. The project though never gained traction because the bank was concerned about handing over too much power to the mobile phone operators, and eroding profits.

So it was with great enjoyment that I read the Power of Mobile Money article in a recent Economist. This article illustrates the power behind markets and shows how even the poorest farmer in Africa can force bank managers to support one of the best financial innovations of recent years.

You can read the article below or follow this link to The Economist

The power of mobile money
Sep 24th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Mobile phones have transformed lives in the poor world. Mobile money could have just as big an impact

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Big news in Outer space and Cyber Space

Over the past two months there have been a number of huge developments in both outer space and cyberspace. Developments which could change the world we live in forever.

Outer space first…
On the 24th September it was officially announced that water was found on the moon. Chandrayaan-1, India’s first-ever moon probe, detected wavelengths of light reflected off the surface that indicated the chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen — the telltale sign of either water or hydroxyl. In an attempt to further confirm these findings and establish how much water is present, on the 9th November NASA crashed the rocket and a satellite into a crater near the moon’s south pole. It will be awhile before all the data from the satellite can be analyzed to determine if there is water on the moon, but if confirmed then this will be equivalent to finding the holy grail of space exploration. Water on the moon would mean that colonisation of the moon would be possible within the next 10 – 20 years.

Cyberspace rockets ahead…

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A happiness bank – connecting helpers with those who need help

I am doing some work in Estonia in a few days time, and so have been watching the wires for news reports from that country. One of these really jumped out at me.

“Estonians to lauch world’s first e-Bank of Happiness” – read the story here. The concept is simple: bring together those who are in need of help and those who can help. In the e-bank one can exchange information on needs, offer help and register good deeds. All for free. It’s basically elance.com for volunteers.

The idea is not only to help people out digitally and online, but for this to extend into Estonia, with people in physical need (e.g. elderly people need help to get to the shops, house sitting while on holiday, looking for a gym buddy, etc) can also use the system. “The Bank of Happiness is an initiative to change the way of thinking. It’s a bank for exchanging good deeds. The wish of the Bank is to make people think and act with their heart. The Bank is meant for all those who value good deeds and have the will to make good themselves.”

You can check out the simple user interface here: http://www.onnepank.ee/en.

I’ll watch it closely, and hope it succeeds. A nice idea, well executed. Let’s hope people support it.

Two innovations that will change the world

Two technological innovations are giving me great optimism for future sustainability, reduction in our reliability on fossil fuels (and therefore hopefully less conflict in the middle east) and lower emissions of hothouse gasses. They are the exciting developments of Honda’s Clarity, a car that runs on hydrogen and emits H20 (It’s a decent looker and performer!); and a battery, developed by Peter Bruce at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, that draws on the oxygen around us providing cheaper, lighter and longer lasting batteries for mobiles and laptops.

These are probably two of the most exciting and important innovations in the past 100 years.

Honda Clarity

You can learn more about the Honda Clarity by visiting the excellent website or see the entertaining Top Gear special report hereTop Gear Honda Clarity

Air Power

You can read about the battery blow or visit The Economist

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12 ideas that’ll have you thinking a little differently

I picked this link up off of Twitter (@tomorrowtodayza if you’d like to follow us). It’s from Wired and it’s a list of 12 counter-cultural ideas from various ‘experts’ in a variety of fields. If anything else it’ll certainly have you thinking differently for a little while. Had me!

Warning: The ideas expressed here may be dangerous. For this year’s list, we walked right past the usual suspects and went looking for trouble. We wanted radicals, heretics, agitators—big thinkers with controversial, game-changing propositions. We found a prison reformer who wants to empty jails, an economist who thinks foreign aid hurts more than it helps, and a military theorist who believes the US should launch preemptive cyberattacks, right now. Then there’s secretary of defense robert gates, who wants to win wars, not just prep for them. Risky? Sure. But this is no time to play it safe.

The emergence of Neuromarketing

Traditional market research has it’s limitations when one considers the influence of the ‘observer’ on the ‘observed’ when attempting to understand people’s true thoughts and feelings on the product/brand/service being researched. If we could just get into their heads to withdraw a pure brain impulse without the constraints traditional market research introduces in the mechanisms it uses. Enter Neuromarketing…

Neuromarketing is the practice of using technology to measure brain activity in consumer subjects in order to inform the development of products and communications–really to inform the brand’s 4Ps. The premise is that consumer buying decisions are made in split seconds in the subconscious, emotional part of the brain and that by understanding what we like, don’t like, want, fear, are bored by, etc. as indicated by our brain’s reactions to brand stimuli, marketers can design products and communications to better meet “unmet” market needs, connect and drive “the buy”.

FastCompany posted an article recently that explores the issue and the companies that are using this new ’science’. It also suggests a few shortcomings and some interesting ethical concerns.

Neuromarketing is only poised to grow in use and influence. But as the practice makes its way out of the lab and into the real world, at the grocery aisle, onto your computer perhaps…a debate, well beyond marketing, will rage.

Pursuing the ‘Better Way’

There is always a ‘better way’ to do things. It is a mindset. What often serves as a roadblock in pursuing a ‘better way’ are the default setting within our organisations. Default settings dictate how we operate as a system and are learnt behaviours to secure reward, avoid conflict, create efficiencies, acknowledge status, maintain comfort, secure favour…in other words those things that shape the over-riding reality within the organisation.

The problem is that it is our default settings that inhibit or constrain an organisation’s ability to innovate and therefore adapt to changing realities. This can and usually does prove fatal. Developing the capacity to override the default settings becomes a necessary focus for leadership in times of change. Leaders need to create both the space and permission for their people to, ’see a better way’ and then develop supporting structures and processes that explore, nurture and grow alternative ways of doing things.

Following the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon the American Jewish community responded to the crisis by raising $300 million to help rebuild the northern part of Israel. A normal reaction one might reason. A default reaction is what it was in the circumstances. One senior person in the Jewish network proposed a ‘better way’ to the challenge than the default setting that had been engaged. he proposed that the money raised should also be used to help rebuild southern Lebanon which had also been devastated in the conflict. His proposal recieved no support and a fair amount of push-back. In the end, much of the help given to restore southern Lebanon came from Hezbollah and so they were able to solidify its patron-client relationship with the Lebanese in this situation.

‘Better ways’ are often unpopular as they go against the grain, the status quo; they often create discomfort and challenge the conventional wisdom. That is exactly why we need them. Smart Leaders encourage ‘better way’ thinking and practice at both an individual and organisation level and in doing so invite feedback, reflection and experimentation.

It is an essential element in becoming an adaptive organisation. It could well determine whether or not you survive the future. And of course, today’s ‘better way’ becomes tomorrow’s default setting. Such is the nature of life!