Where to start, then? How should businesses acquire customers—or more accurately—how they shouldn’t.

Yes momentum ensures businesses continue to market in the same way; continue to advertise in the same way; continue to think in the same way. But customers, both B2B and B2C, don’t have that problem—they are nimble and their choices are many.

Not too long ago I posted a video mentioning the freemium business model many internet start-ups have been going towards. “Why give it away?” the old mind might say, but clearly this free dissemination of value is gaining traction. What’s behind this trend and what can you take back to your business?

Two factors are driving the market toward this type of value first business ethos: 1) Customers are hyper-weary and 2) there are many choices. Combine these two and if you are if you are one of those trying to sell, sell, sell! you’ll quickly face declining sales.

To overcome companies have to give it away honestly, ethically and transparently with no strings attached. The effect? You attract people who are interested in you, build trust and open lines of communication.

Businesses must focus not on collecting new customers but building a community. When you demonstrate that your business understands me (the customer) by creating value first I begin, of my own will, to feel an affinity for the brand and will more likely be open to what you have to say, supportive of your message, and an advocate for your service.

From this community emerges your customers. In the freemium world, those are the premium customers (Evernote’s sports a 2% conversion and is very profitable doing it), but the same rule can apply in other situations.

While going after the customer may seem more direct, it’s lasting value is much, much less. Court a community with a value first ethos and you’ll cultivate advocates who will help you grow your bottom line in more ways than one.

As companies look for ways to improve their reputation in an ever more difficult market, executives likely find themselves struggling with one of the most misunderstood, perhaps underutilized business tools around: Brand.

This series of whiteboard sessions explores some of the latest trends we’ve observed and programs we’re working on. it’s meant to help clients and colleagues explore the implications and opportunities of an accelerating market and the emerging tools we’ll need.

Please leave your comments or reach out to me directly—I look forward to hearing your ideas as well, these concepts are evolving and, of course, imperfect.

Josh

Create Three Values from Great Monday on Vimeo.

Pre-profit Priority from Great Monday on Vimeo.

Forget value-added, today’s customer demands value first. Whether individual or corporation, they’re too smart to buy just because your Super Bowl ad said so. To get future customers you need to think about your pre-profit priority—building a community.

One Minute Mondays: Why work? from Great Monday on Vimeo.

Pretty much all Josh thinks about is how to help companies live their brand. Working with him, I get to hear a lot of gems and, I started thinking other people should really hear this, too. So (with my limited video skills) we decided to put this monthly video series together.

Enjoy this no-frills look at some of the thinking that goes on here at the office. First up, Josh wonders: Why work?

Do these examples alone prove the Get Fired hypothesis—that process can change perceptions and you’ll have nothing to fear when promoting a far out idea? Two examples do not a statistically significant sample make—however, they do support the hypothesis.

Assembled in one methodology, these concepts can be applied to change risk-averse attitudes and get more new ideas to market. The following “Get Fired framework” is a plan of action based on what we’ve learned to help you succeed in building, vetting, and implementing your biggest, craziest ideas.

1. Gather your ideas

Few true innovations are “ah-ha!” moments. Most are rooted in a state of mind—one that mixes deep knowledge of subject and consistent use of imagination to consider a project in a new way. Ideas beget ideas, and to keep ideas flowing, fresh, and productive, you need to look for them everywhere. Always be collecting ideas—yours and those of others.

2. Choose the winner

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep,” writes Scott Adams in The Dilbert Principle. You’ve collected a lot of ideas, but you need to cull the list and determine which are viable. Apply your filters. Is your organization operationally capable of realizing this idea? Does the concept forward your long-term brand purpose and strategy? Is there a market trend this idea will serve that will help grow the company? These filters are a good start, but go further. Adapt them or create your own based on what you know about your organization.

3. Build your case

Once an idea looks viable, prototype it. Learning comes from doing, but you’ve got to be fast, resource-efficient, and cost-effective. Famed furniture designer Bruce Hannah says, “Mock it up before you fock it up.” We couldn’t agree more. Prototyping is the best way to find out what’s working and what’s not. Test it out. Do you see potential, but realize that your new product or service is not quite ready for prime time? Send it back for revisions and try again.

4. Socialize the idea

At some point in the process, you’ll probably need executive approval. You’ve identified friends throughout the previous steps: brainstormed with them, sought advice from them, asked for support from them. Now it’s time to identify the champions among them who will help sell the idea. With your prototype’s proof-of-concept in hand, you and your fellow believers will be ready to go after executive approval and funding.

5. Land the plane

Congratulations: You’ve got buy-in, approval, and probably even funding. Now you need to choose the right people to bring the idea to market. The makeup of the project team will play two key roles: (a) it will help signal to the organization the importance of the project; and (b) it will lessen or heighten the probability of the success of the idea itself—especially at its current fledgling stage. Fight to pick the team leader who will carry this flame forward. It could be you, a new hire or, perhaps, one of the champions consulted along the way.

Unproven ideas are inherently risky, and the potential fallout of failure can be career-damning. But as we’ve seen at Saffron and Steelcase, there are ways for you and your organization to realize dramatic innovation. By pairing unproven ideas with a well-considered methodology, you can mitigate risk and possibly even deploy those curb-jumping, paradigm-shifting, out-of-the-box innovations that you once thought too dangerous to be possible.

Now it’s your turn to Get Fired.

Co-Authored By John Root Stone and Josh Levine. Author Posting. © 2009 The Design Management Institute. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the Design Management Institute for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Design Management Review, 21:2, . http://dx.doi.org/.

From its 1937 creation of a Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired desk to its 1996 investment in product design juggernaut IDEO, Furniture-company-turned-workspace-consultant Steelcase has a long history of not only investing in new ideas but successfully bringing them to market.

The latest in this long tradition is a newly formed group called Growth Initiatives, anascent project that focuses on creating, testing, and bringing new innovations to market. The group’s objective is to capture and systematically fund potential revenue streams as they look 5 and 10 years into the future. To accomplish this Growth Initiatives uses a rigorous venture capital-style investing process that grants progressively larger amounts of resources as an idea proves its value. This method mitigates Steelcase’s investment risk and ensures that only the most viable ideas move forward.

We asked Growth Initiatives program lead John Malnor how his team pushes the boundaries of what’s possible to help Steelcase achieve long-term design andfinancial success. His first response focused on the definition of failure; before an organization is able to fully embrace the opportunities provided by new ideas, it’s mandatory to change the definition of “failure” from “not successful” to “not learning.” He explained that everyone inside the organization must understand that it is acceptable for an unproven idea to not make it to market; and the only true failure is not learning from the process.

“You might have 20 different ideas, and only a couple of those might be viable for the long term. Instead of saying, ‘That failed because it didn’t get second-tier investment,’ you archive that idea, because maybe its time hasn’t come. Or you capture what you learn from that first idea and then look for somewhere else to apply it.” Or perhaps the idea just needs some tweaking. Malnor makes the point that even the best concepts go through at least two or three iterations before they’re ready for market testing.

One idea alone has little chance of success, so Malnor and his team try to gather several. “You want to be able to pick through a portfolio of ideas. If you have just one…people get invested and can’t let it go because there are no alternatives.” They become blind to objective evaluation.

Where do all the ideas come from? Customers, investors, trends, the market, the competition—everyone. “We’re always working on building our skill capturing new ideas,” says Malnor. He adds that Steelcase also cultivates employee participation in the process: “We make it easy for them to contribute.” The company intranet features a form developed to encourage anyone to jot down an idea.

What to do with an inbox of ideas? Design a decision-making gauntlet to determine which ones make the cut, says Malnor: “We’ve developed a set of frameworks that we filter concepts through.” The frameworks he’s referring to are questions that weed out weak ideas and reinforce the strong. Examples include: Is the idea a viable business opportunity; and Does the new business concept align with the company’s overarching purpose? “Some ideas have great potential,” Malnor explains, “but if it doesn’t build the long-term value of the brand, we pass.”

Perhaps the most critical framework is whether the new idea aligns with Steelcase’s current focus, which is determined by macro trends like economic environments and technology developments. In the past opportunities have ranged from geographic and product category trends to competitors’ new developments.

If an idea successfully answers these questions it’s promoted to prototyping and receives an initial round of funding to explore its real potential.

The first rule of prototyping: How fast can you learn, how little can you put at risk? When a concept is ready for in-market prototyping, “you need to invest the smallest possible amount to prove the concept,” explains Malnor. If you can figure out how to do rapid in-market prototyping for low cost and quick learning, then you’ll already have those metrics in hand to help prove the business case when you start looking for additional resources.

Malnor offers a few key recommendations for companies that want to emulate this type of methodical innovation. “Trust the talent within your company,” he explains. “Understand what your purpose is, and then build the skills and thick skin it takes to rapidly prototype ideas. You have to be willing to stop investing in many of those ideas—most of them, in fact. The only failures come from not trying new things—or, even worse, not learning from each new concept or venture.”

One early success to come out of Growth Initiatives is Workspring Venture (www.workspring.com), a collaborative business space designed to “inspire and support creative process, productive workshops, and transformative exchange.” An inspiring alternative to hotel conference rooms, workspring is intended to better address a growing trend in business—creative off-sites. No longer within the Steelcase primary offering of furniture, Workspring may have seemed risky to some. But it satisfied all the frameworks Mr. Malnor and team subjected it to, and brought it to market.

Co-Authored By John Root Stone and Josh Levine. Author Posting. © 2009 The Design Management Institute. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the Design Management Institute for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Design Management Review, 21:2, . http://dx.doi.org/.

Saffron Consultants is a brand consultancy founded in 2001, with 50-plus employees scattered across offices in London, New York, Madrid, and Mumbai. A client once said, “They’re the perfect combination of charm and brutality.”[1] It was this reputation for candor, and the firm’s design experience, that led us to believe it would be a robust test case for the Get Fired hypothesis.”

Wally Olins is the firm’s Chairman and Co-founder, and few names in branding are held in the same regard. He co-founded the venerable Wolff Olins [2] in 1965 and has overseen hundreds of brand creations and reinventions over five decades. Given his experience, he is uniquely positioned to advise how to realize new, expansive ideas.

For Saffron, the question is not as much about whether they might Get Fired for being too radical – after all, they are often hired to think in unconventional ways. Rather, it’s a question about whether a client has the ability to realize a radical idea and the organizational change that may follow it.

Why is it easier for some organizations to thrive on creativity and change, while others flounder at every attempt? “When you fail to innovate, it’s not because people don’t intellectually recognize the requirement to innovate, but it is because they cannot bring themselves to do the things that are required to make the changes.”

Mr. Olins offers GM as an example of a company that failed to make this leap for decades. “GM talked for 20 years at least about wanting to change. They did not do a thing really to change. Only when they were absolutely at rock bottom, when it was all over for them, did they change.”

To contrast, Olins cites Nokia and Stanford University as organizations that have sustained levels of creativity in their ranks: “They are among the 25 to 35 percent that really innovate very powerfully and very successfully, and once they have that in their bloodstream they don’t stop. But getting it into the bloodstream is difficult.” He cites strong competition, new management, and desperation as primary drivers that can goose new creativity in such organizations.

Mr. Olins offers Orange, the mobile phone concern, as one of the most radical new approaches of the 1990s. When Hutchison Whampoa – Orange’s parent company – decided to establish a mobile network, there was very little to differentiate it from the three substantial competitors already in the market. At a time when mobile phones were seen an elite accessory for the few, the Wolff Olins team suggested the name “Orange” as a way to democratize mobility and enable people from all walks of life to identify with the offer.[3]

The recommendation was very controversial. However, through diligent research and creative exploration the Wolff Olins team helped the client realize the new brand would humanize the offer. He explains that upon their ultimate acceptance of the name, “the company just seized it and drove it and pushed it and made it work remarkably successfully. And with great imagination and zeal and great courage.” The result: the company attracted 7 million people to its service in the first five years. It was a perfect example of how an extreme idea, that initially appeared out-of-bounds, was ultimately proven given the right energy and innovation process.

Saffron is hired to create big, bold brand and design changes for all sorts of companies and countries, and they have done this quite successfully. Olins offered the following ingredients for how the firm maintains a semi-permanent, sustained creativity in the organization:

Share ideas all of the time. “Nobody pays enough attention to communication. Nobody does. I try to, but I know I don’t. And most people don’t. It’s a very, very hard thing to do.” Effective communication is one of the most difficult, and most overlooked, challenges in many organizations. To foster good organizational communication, Olins recommends actively circulating new ideas, avoiding organizational silos, and being transparent about your beliefs.

Follow your instinct. “I’m quite often asked in this business, ‘How did you develop ideas around branding?’ I think you can post-rationalize some things, but a lot of it is instinct.” To make the best of your instincts, be honest with yourself about who you are and what you know. The greater your understanding of an idea, its opportunities and its risks, the more effectively you will be able to use your instinct.

Use the carrot as well as the stick. “You have to be very persuasive and offer carrots, but you also have to say, ‘If you don’t innovate, look what will happen to you.’ ” Everyone has fears and desires. Delivering your ideas with an eye to all the possibilities—negative as well as positive, moderate as well as severe—helps provide a balanced view of the possible impacts of your idea.

Make friends. “People who get the idea and run with it make it go further than you can make it go because not only do they understand what you’ve been saying, but they also understand the organization.” Relationships are central to success on an individual or an organizational level. The more friends you make, the greater your chances of having significant impact.

But how can organizations who haven’t hired a creative agency like Saffron push the boundaries of design and business? We went to Steelcase, a company that has a consistent record of bringing new ideas to market from the inside, to find out what makes it successful.

NEXT: Part 3 – From the Inside: Steelcase

Co-Authored By John Root Stone and Josh Levine. Author Posting. © 2009 The Design Management Institute. This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the Design Management Institute for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Design Management Review, 21:2, . http://dx.doi.org/.

“If staying on the cutting edge is critical to your business, here you’ll find insights for generating and implementing radical ideas that will make your company an industry leader.”

In the latest issue of Design Management Review, I co-authored an article with John Stone on building innovation into organizations. Now, in the first of a four part series I’m posting that article here.

Innovation, anyone? The Tipping Point. Inside the Tornado. The New, New Thing. You’ve probably read one of these books, or heard that you should. You’re not alone. Over the past 10 years, nearly everyone has boarded the innovation plane—at least in theory.

With all this talk about increasing value for customers and shareholders through innovation, why aren’t there more companies actually doing it, like Apple, or Google, or Virgin? The problem is not a lack of revolutionary ideas—it’s an inability to pick, package, and ship the revolution.

When a big idea strikes, people have serious difficulties making it happen. You can read all the curb-jumping, paradigm-shifting, out-of-the-box innovation books you can order, but it won’t make any difference until you take on the true challenge: bringing that new idea to market.

Why are big, valuable ideas so often hard to realize? In part, because they’re perceived as risky. That’s not surprising, considering that generations of business leaders have been taught to strive for predictability and reliability. Today, most businesses are built for stability, not innovation.

Let’s be clear: Reliability and predictability are good for business. They can generate value, profit, and professional success. But when they alone become the drumbeat for an organization, they can stifle the next big business idea. Would-be innovators who see opportunity for new, unproven ideas may not pursue them for fear of their corporate reputations, their advancement potential, and even the loss of their jobs.

We believe that ideas normally considered out of bounds are more likely to succeed if they are paired with a deliberative process that exposes their true risks and rewards. We call it the Get Fired hypothesis. This method adds credibility to an innovator’s idea while mitigating risk for those that decide what to pursue.

Why call it “Get Fired”? It’s the metaphoric benchmark for what it may take to convince an organization to support an unproven concept that could potentially fail. No one is advocating that anyone actually lose his or her employment—rather, it’s a way to prepare yourself to say and do those things you thought too outlandish before.

There are companies that time and again successfully explore and implement risky ideas—ideas that might otherwise put managers and executives at risk. How do those companies “de-risk” unproven concepts, mitigate the anxiety of failure, and ultimately create the biggest possible value?

Design is a core value for many companies that succeed in realizing radical ideas. Consequently, to test our Get Fired hypothesis we went to two organizations known for their design prowess—Saffron Consultants and Steelcase—to understand how they consistently generate valuable new ideas and successfully take them to market.

NEXT: Part 2 – Case study of Saffron Consultants.

Untangling brand and customer experience, in 10 minutes or less from Brandon Schauer on Vimeo.

Does the brand define the customer experience, or is the customer experience the brand? Your work may involve both, but you probably attack problems with a bias for one or the other.

Earlier this year I asked Josh Levine of Great Monday to simply describe the relationship between brand and experience, and I like what he said.

I went back and dug deeper with Josh to clear up the differences between how he described it and and the way I often see the relationships between brand and experience being practiced. What emerged was this illustrated question and answer, attempting to untangle brand and customer experience in just 9 minutes.