The mobile phone industry is changing at a pace that has left many established players far behind. The biggest victim of this change is Nokia and while the company is still selling millions of low-priced feature phones, the organization is struggling to deliver a Smartphone that even just matches current industry standards. These problems culminated in recent weeks with some high-level employees leaving the organization (Jan Chipchase, famous ethnographer and Adam Greenfield, Head of Nokia Design Direction), long-term supporters jumping the ship (Symbian-Guru.com is Over) and the increasing rumors about the replacement of Nokia CEO Kallasvuo (Nokia boosted by talk of Kallasvuo exit). And a look at the stock price tells you that there is more than just bad economic conditions that hammered the price of NOK. 

In order to get out of this situation, Nokia needs to do two things:

1. Define a new vision what Nokia, mobile communication and “connecting people” means in the future. A touch smartphone with maps, app store and music store (aka Nokia Ovi) will not be enough to reach a leadership position again. What is next after Smartphones? What is next after app stores?
2. Streamline the organization; optimize processes and increase performance, speed and agility in the organization with just one single goal: bringing new products to the market. Not concepts, not demos, real products that “wow” customers.

With these challenges ahead some obeservers are looking for a "Finnish Steve Jobs” for Nokia. But that will not – and should not – happen.

Nokia does not need a "Steve Jobs"

Nokia is still an excellent example of a design-driven companies. Jan Chipchase, former Nokia ethnographer (who left Nokia recently), has reached celebrity status with his research on mobile phone use in emerging markets. The Nokia 1100 is still the world’s best selling mobile phones. There have been countless design studies from Nokia about the future of mobile communication yet despite all these activities and concepts, none of them made it into real products that had sustainable success in the mobile market.

The negative highlight was the recent announcement of Nokia bicycle charger kit. Clearly this is not the way to beat Apple, Motorola, Samsung and Research in Motion and whoever was in charge of that should reconsider what his job is.

The reasons are manifold for this mess, ranging from bad integration of various companies and technologies into the Ovi platform, hanging on to the featurephone strategy for too long and still hoping that Symbian OS will catch up with other operating systems and countless other legacies that hold the design teams back instead of enabling them to write the next chapter in the mobile industry history.

Of course a "Finnish Steve Jobs" who has the same degree of reputation, respect and leadership qualities could lead a turnaround at Nokia. But Steve Jobs is Steve Jobs because he started Apple, got fired, came back, led the turned, survived cancer, revolutionized the mobile industry and through this created a company that has nearly outgrown its investor in 1997, Microsoft, which it needed at that time to even ensure liquidity. Steve Jobs is an outlier, a wonder child and genius.

Betting the survival of a company on finding an “outlier” leader like Steve Jobs is foolish. And setting the expectations that the next CEO will be a Steve Jobs will be fatal: cause he won’t be a Steve Jobs and can only dissappoint.

A co-CEO strategy with a business and a design leader

Nokia still has design capabilities, but at the end of the day it comes down to managing processes, operations and projects that turn these capabilities into real product. The best design capabilities in the industry are worth nothing if the organization doesn’t have the processes – from procurement, production, supply chain and marketing – that work together to deliver innovations. Nokia needs leadership that addresses the two most urging issues: First it is about leaving feature phones behind, catching up with Smartphones and envisioning the future of mobile communication. Second it is about creating a world-class organization that can execute this vision, without politics, without bureaucracy but with a clear focus on results.

Instead of searching for the “dear leader for Nokia” who can do this in one person, Nokia should aim for a co-CEO strategy with one CEO responsible for business operations and one CEO responsible for the design and engineering direction in the organization.

The “business-driven CEO” is responsible for business operations should be easy to find and his job is to streamline the organization, as fast as possible. The “design-driven CEO” does not need to be the ultimate visionary. Instead it

should be a designer who can lead the design organization (and be respected through his achievements and experience) but who is also able to work with the business side in the organization to develop the best concepts and to bring the best concepts to market.

I also think it is important to differentiate between a Chief Design Office and a design-driven co-CEO. While the first one still reports to the CEO, the design-driven co-CEO will be in charge just as much as the business-driven co-CEO.

First fix the organisational aspects, then the design challenges

Who is more important? I believe an excellent “Business-driven CEO” is more important in the coming 12 months than a “Design-driven CEO”. Nokia still has to catch up and therefore it needs to get its existing operations in order and turn existing concepts into reality. At the same time this gives time to build and nurture internal design talent with one person becoming “Design-driven CEO”.

Whatever will be next for Nokia, it is a fascinating moment in the company’s history and the industry as a whole. Will Nokia make the turnaround? It depends on the pressure – even the pain – that the organization feels in order to implement the changes necessary for a turnaround. Is the pressure and pain already high enough? We will find out in the coming weeks and months and see either a new and revived Nokia that will strive in the industry or a Nokia that will merely exist, holding on to existing strategies and keeping alive with innovative tactics.

inspired by The Register: Rescuing Nokia: A former exec has a radical plan

Posted in mobile, strategy | Permalink | 3 Comments »

Group Buying is the latest online trend in 2010 and the US-based site Groupon.com, launched in 2008, is estimated to earn around 350 million USD in 2010 – in its second year of its business! Based on this massive success, many similar websites have emerged. These “Groupon clones” target other markets and of course Switzerland has its own group buying website called deindeal.ch (“Your Deal”).

Deindeal.ch is the latest startup from Swiss serial-entrepreneur Adrian Locher (also a graduate of the University of St. Gallen) and his business partners Amir Suissa, Dario Fazlic, Flavio Rump and Lucas Vogelsang. In the weeks before this interview, the founders experienced their best-selling group buying offer which sold more than 1000 times in the course of a few days. That was the reason when I contacted Adrian to talk about the lessons he has learned from launching a Groupon clone in Switzerland. And it was an interesting conversation.

Ideas are important but Timing and Execution are essential for success

Adrian believes that the key ingredients for a successful new business are ideas, timing and execution. While many people focus solely on the first idea, ideas only define 10-20% of your potential success. More important are the right timing of your new venture (20-30% relevance) and the focused execution (60% relevance) to launch and scale your idea into a profitable business. Of course an unrealistic or simply stupid idea will not turn into a successful business through timing and execution. The point is that even a brilliant idea is worth little if timing and execution are not excellent.

“deinDeal.ch” builds on the same idea as the US site groupon.com so the idea part was easy in this venture. Even though the team already identified several areas that needed to be adapted to the local market and circumstances the main question was: Is Switzerland ready for internet-based group buying using coupons?

Finding the right timing – is your target market ready?

The biggest obstacle for a startup is that a target market is not ready for an idea – that’s why timing is everything. Based on the experience that Adrian made with his earlier startup smaboo, an ambassador marketing agency, he argues that a startup should never try to establish a completely new market. While the company is in its successful 3^rd year today, it took longer than expected to convince clients of the benefits of ambassador marketing and only after clients such as Facebook, Microsoft and Research in Motion/BlackBerry have signed up with smaboo, have other companies been willing to engage in this new marketing concept.

Educating customers about a product or service is expensive and takes a long time and is the reason many of the first-generation group buying websites are long gone. One of the most well-known “too much, too early” examples is the website letsbuyit.com, the group buying platform launched during the 2000 dot-com bubble which was quickly gone because the market and consumer were not ready. Ten years later the second wave of startups can now build on the triggers initiated in 1999/2000 that have changed consumer behavior and attitude towards e-commerce.

The success of the original Groupon concept in the United States showed that consumers are accepting this online group buying concept in 2010, nevertheless this still didn’t guarantee the success for a Swiss version of the website. Contrary to the US market, coupons are not very popular in Switzerland and the biggest bet was on the willingness of Swiss consumers to use coupons for special offers.

Focused execution with no time for decorations

While ideas and timing are still the easy parts in running a startup, the main capability for a successful startupshould be on agility and execution. This was especially important in the case of deindeal.ch since it was well-known that the US site is planning an international expansion. Based on the initial idea the decision was madeend of January 2010 to launch a Swiss version of a group buying site. Three weeks later a team of designers and programmers started the development of the site and the first version of the site was launched around five weeks later on March 24^th. Such a short timeline – in total less than 8 weeks – is impressive and is the results of more than just putting in long hours.

The key for such a short development cycle is to focus on the essential things that are relevant for your startup today. Don’t aim to build an application that includes features that you might need in a few months down the road – focus on today and cut out all the unnecessary noise and decorations of what you think might be useful someday.

Another important aspect is to push your application into production mode as early as possible and improve the application every day instead of delaying your launch until everything is perfect. One example how the team at deindeal.ch approached this is the management of a user’s purchase history. While this might require asophisticated interface with sorting, filtering and pagination, it is not necessary to have this feature as long as a user has not bought 20 or more coupons. And this will not be the case at launch but only after several months so there is no need to implement this in the first version. And this was just one feature that has not been implemented yet but will be once there is a need in everyday use.

Localizing a globalized idea

The answer to the main question, whether Swiss consumers are interested in coupon based group buying, could ultimately only be answered after the website was launched. The success of other web-based buying concepts such as FashionFriends.ch affirmed the founders that Switzerland is at least ready for new and innovative e-Commerce concepts. During the first coupon deals that were offered, it became clear that Swiss customers focus on high-quality, localized services and that they don’t want to save just few Swiss Francs but a significant amount of money when they buy a coupon. This lead to a selection of high-quality, high-value wellness, beauty, gastronomy and leisure offers instead of average-priced, standard offers.

Spreading the word and getting traction

Once the first version was launched, the next step was to spread the word and get the Swiss to use the platform. While many businesses today would go directly for a social media marketing campaign, deindeal.ch chose a different approach. In order to launch and promote the new service, the founders have formed partnerships with local media companies who have a sufficient leverage to promote the new concept through established channels. In Switzerland this was through the popular websites and mailing lists like local.ch, RonOrp.net and DayDeal.ch. Another critical factor for gaining new customers was the recommendation program where users earn money if they invite friends to the website. With the successful launch in Zurich, the site is now expending into other Swiss cities, the first on the list are Bern, Basel, Lucerne and St. Gallen.

Social media services like Facebook have proven to be an important tool to reach potential customers that have a high online affinity. However Twitter has had little impact in gaining customers but proved helpful to reach out to opinion leaders. The reason is that Twitter is simply not that widely used in Switzerland. So in comparison with other media channels, Facebook and Twitter are important but they cannot yet substitute traditional media channels.

In the next step deindeal.ch is in the process of rolling out an ambassador marketing program to further strengthen relationships with local companies and to integrate high-impact, localized media channels.

The key lessons learned from launching deindeal.ch in Switzerland

• The success of a startup depends on three factors which are Idea, Timing and Execution.
• Idea: 10-20% relevant for success
• Timing: 20-30% relevant for success
• Execution: 60% relevant for success
• Improve your timing by searching for indicators in the markets and with consumers that help you decide if your idea can gain traction or not.
• Focus and agility are the core during implementation, early releases with daily iterations are the key to success
• During implementation you have to review every day what is necessary today, what you have achieved and if you are on the right track.  Cut out all the noise and unnecessary things.
• Understand the core of a new business idea and then implement it locally by leveraging local partners.
• Facebook and Twitter are nice, but leveraging established media platforms still has the biggest impact.

Posted in management, startup | Permalink | 3 Comments »

Once you see PowerPoint Slides with the watermark “Microsoft Confidential  – Under NDA” you could guess that there might be an interesting back-story. Over the last few days a range of highly confidential presentations from Microsoft about the next version of Windows have spread on the internet. Now I don’t know if Steve Ballmer has been throwing chairs or not but either way I believe this is absolutely no strategic problem for Microsoft. Embarrassing yes, but not of significant strategic importance.

The Features of Windows 8

Let’s start with a few details of these documents, you can find the full documents at “Microsoft Kitchen” but here is my brief analysis:

1. Microsoft envies Apple and the Mac OS
2. There will be stronger cooperation with hardware manufacturers to provide a better overall customer experience
3. Focus on Experience based Differentiation
1. “Partners are able to customize Windows in alignment with specific hardware and software offerings to create unique, integrated, and branded experiences.
2. Customers who are shopping for a new computer are able to clearly see the value of Windows 8 product offerings and are able to choose a Windows 8 PC that best matches their personality, interested and lifestyle.
4. Development focuses on improving efficiency, on/off transitions, diagnostics and management as well as resilience
5. There will be an App Store called “Windows Store”
6. There will be a stronger integration with Microsoft Cloud Services

Is this the ultimate strategic disaster with all this information about Microsoft’s most important product out in the wild? I don’t think so. Maybe this is the best that could happen to Microsoft and the Windows franchise.

There is nothing new under the sun

Many of the ideas and concepts described in these documents are definitely new for Microsoft and Windows. But they are not new in the IT industry. There is Apple and Mac OS X with an integrated hardware-software experience, we have application stores on various platforms and we have standalone applications that integrate cloud services on the desktop (i.e. Dropbox or the Upcoming Google OS). And of course efficiency and on/off transitions have a lot of potential on Windows – that’s something that every Windows user is aware of.

If you are observing the IT industry closely, most of the “news” in these slides already exist and many could have guessed which trends have gained enough traction to be considered in a future version of the operating system.

Yet creating PowerPoint slides is one thing, delivering the software is another story. But maybe now that these documents are available online, Microsoft can focus on executing, instead of planning.

Planning distracts from execution

I once heard the unconfirmed story about the CEO of one of the major Swiss pharmaceutical company who said after the final review of the companies 5 Year Strategic Plan:

“Great, now let’s pack everything up and send it to our competitors because it doesn’t matter if they know it or not. What matters from now on is execution.”

Definitely a bold statement but there is some truth to it. I believe that too often planning substitutes execution and instead of working on the fastest track to bring something to the market, companies focus on the most sophisticated planning exercise that creates the most beautiful and thought-through PowerPoint slides.

With your plans well known, you can focus on execution – and delivering all the ideas, concepts and improvements that have been put together in PowerPoint Slides. And now that the world knows what to expect in Windows 8, Microsoft can (and hast to) focus on execution. And the recipe for success is simple: Create a user experience that is better than your competitors and you don’t have to worry about customers.

Would you publish your product roadmap?

Now of course you don’t have to publish your strategy documents and your product roadmap. But I think it would be an interesting thought experiment who your organization or team would change its behavior when all its plans would be. What would change if you are suddenly confronted with a published version of your strategic plan/product roadmap and the only thing left to focus on is executing and implementing the ideas?

And once this question is answered, the next question is: What’s stopping you from doing that right now?

Posted in strategy | Permalink | 1 Comment »

This week Facebook has launched Facebook Zero, a version of Facebook’s website that is optimized for mobile phones. There are already custom applications available for accesing Facebook from your iPhone, BlackBerry or Android device but those are limited to smartphones only. Users that don’t have a smartphone can now use the Facebook Zero light-weight website that can be viewed on nearly every mobile phone by simply opening the site 0.facebook.com.

The feature of Facebook Zero that will revolutionize the mobile industry: users in many countries don’t have to pay for any data traffic on their mobile phone when they use Facebook Zero.

No mobile data charges when using Facebook Zero

Facebook Zero brings access to Facebook for millions of people in the world for free. (The exception is for viewing photos). And while there are some developed countries on the list as well, most of the countries are in emerging markets which opens up a huge base of potential users for Facebook. Here is the list of countries and carriers that will offer Facebook Zero for free.

So who is going to pay the bills?

Instead of having customers pay for the service, Facebook will be paying carriers for the data traffic. Yes, the content provider will pay the service provider so user can access it for free. This has never happened in the mobile and telecommunications industry before.

This is a revolution because the mobile and telecommunication industry wants such a business model already for a long time. The increasing web-usage and web-traffic through websites like YouTube poses a problem for carriers: They have to increase bandwidth but cannot charge users more. So they would prefer to charge Google/YouTube and other content provider instead while at the same time ensuring that users will have the best viewing experience with YouTube and not with other sites (who don’t pay the service provider).

This is against the principles of net neutrality that states that service provider cannot impose restrictions on content, sites or platforms or degrade traffic. The topic of net neutrality is exactly the reason why content and service providers have not been able to implement such a strategy and the Facebook Zero experiment will be an interesting case study in this industry.

A brilliant strategy, a risky experiment or the end of net neutrality?

I don’t want to argue for or against net neutrality here, one question remains: Is Facebook Zero a brilliant strategic move or a risky experiment that will put more pressure on Facebook and its policies?

My opinion is that Facebook Zero, despite just being announced this week, deserves to be a prime case study for business model innovation and reframing existing industry assumptions. Either it will be a success and others will follow or it will fail and there are many lessons to be learned.

Two objectives have already been achieved with Facebook Zero:

• Facebook Zero will give access to Facebook to millions of users in emerging markets thus contributing to Facebook’s goals of user acquisition.
• The selection of emerging markets, besides the untapped user base, offers an opportunity to experiment with a radically new business model while being “off the radar” of net neutrality advocates and observers in developed markets.

How this experiment will work out – from a business perspective as well as from a net neutrality perspective – remains to be seen, but it is certainly an interesting experiment to watch.

Posted in business model | Permalink | 2 Comments »

The idea of customer experience management is gaining momentum in Switzerland and I would like to draw your attention to the 2nd Customer Experience Forum that will happen on June 17th in Bern, Switzerland. Jointly organized by Stimmt AG, a Zurich based experience design consultancy, and Swisscom, the leading Swiss telecommunications company, the event will bring together practitioners that are active in the field of Customer Experience for an intensive one-day knowledge exchange conference.

Get in touch!

If you are interested in participating in the Customer Experience Forum in Berne, Switzerland you can find more information in this PDF file, the agenda for the day is listed below.  In order to discuss your participation you can contact either Helmut Kazmaier (helmut.kazmaier@stimmt.ch) from Stimmt AG or Miriam Bleuler (Miriam.bleuler@swisscom.com) from Swisscom.

If you click on the picture below you will be redirected to the Customer Experience Forum Facebook Page which has a more information as well.

 

The event will be mostly in German, if you don’t speak German get in touch with the organizers to discuss how you can participate.

Participate and share your knowledge!

If you are working in an organization that has done projects in the field of customer experience management you are invited to participate and share your knowledge in one of the workshops. All you need to do is present one of your projects and the lessons you have learned from this project and you can participate in this invitation only event. I have done that and I can guarantee that the time you will spend on creating this poster (templates are provided) will be offset by the people you will meet and the ideas and knowledge you will get on that day.

A unique cooperation between Stimmt AG and Swisscom

The Customer Experience Forum was initiated as a joint project between Stimmt AG and Swisscom. Stimmt AG has a 10 year history of user & customer experience consulting and is successfully organizing the Customer Experience Forum, Intranet Breakfast and other events in Switzerland. Swisscom is the biggest telecommunications company in Switzerland and has performed a radical strategic change in recent years. The organization changed their strategic direction from a technological focus to a customer experience focus and has pulled-off one of the most challenging cultural change projects I have come across so far. In this event selected Swisscom employees share their experiences with this transformation process and their new approach to developing new products and services.

Discussions with active customer experience practitioners

I have participated in the last Customer Experience Forum in November and the event has positively surprised me. The limitation in number of participants and the knowledge exchange that emerges in such a setting was extremely valuable. The mini-workshops stimulate discussion of new telecommunications pricing models, tangible insurance products and customer experience oriented organizational structures. The best is that these discussion are with people who have actually done these kinds of projects. Additionally you will also have a chance to visit and experience the “Swisscom Brand Gym”, a unique office environment at Swisscom that is used as a the central hub within Swisscom to facilitate the change process in the organization. A first impression of the Brand Gym can be seen in the picture on the right.

 

Agenda (German only)

08:15 Frühstück / CX-Reise
Für alle Frühaufsteher gibt es im wunderschönen Ambiente des Café Mélange des BrandGym ein Frühstück und die erste Gelegenheit, sich kennen zu lernen. Wer zudem vorab einen Überblick über die CX-Welt und aktuelle Beispiele erhalten will, kann mit uns auf eine kurze CX-Reise gehen. Eine gute Gelegenheit, in die richtige Stimmung zu kommen und fit in den Tag zu starten.

09:00 Begrüssung und Einführung
Wir starten gemeinsam und geben eine kurze Orientierung über den Tag und den Ablauf.

09:15 Führung durch das BrandGym
Wer das das BrandGym kennt, weiss, dass dies ein besonderer Ort ist. In kleinen Gruppen bekommen wir einen kurze Führung und Erklärung zur Entstehung, den Hintergründen und Gedanken, die das BrandGym geformt haben.

09:30 Keynote von Christina Taylor, Head of Brand Experience bei Swisscom
MaNagINg By CaRPET – oder wie bringe ich men- schenzentriertes Design in ein technikorientiertes Unternehmen? Vor zwei Jahren hat die Visionärin die Ärmel hochgekrempelt mit dem Ziel, die Zukunft von Swisscom zu gestalten, Dinge zu vereinfachen und Kundenherzen zu gewinnen. Zwei Jahre später sind 500 Produktmanager ausgebildete Customer Experience Designer und aus dem Konferenz- zentrum ist eine kreative Oase rund um Human Centered Design entstanden, das BrandGym – ein Ort, wo Wissen lebendig wird. Christina lässt uns einen Blick hinter den Vorhang werfen und lüftet nicht zuletzt das Geheimnis, wieso sie mit einem farbigen Teppich am meisten Manage- mentattention erhalten hat!

10:00 Eröffnung Vernissage CX-Fundstücke
Das CX-Fundstück ist die Eintrittskarte für das CX-Forum. Ein Objekt pro Gast mit Bezug zu Customer Experience und eine kurze Geschichte, warum das Objekt ausgewählt wurde. So entsteht eine gemeinsame Vernissage an CX-Fundstücken, die inspirieren, zu Diskussionen anregen und Aufschluss über die Paten geben. Erlaubt ist, was beeindruckt: Bücher, Blogs, Filme, Podcasts, Bilder, Geschichten, Gegenstände und und und… Wir sind gespannt.

10:30 Fallstudien Block I
Die ersten zwei Fallstudien werden zur Wahl stehen. Nach der Vorstellung des Beispiels gehen wir in einer interaktiven Diskussion im World Cafe Format den angesprochenen Themen, gewonnen Erkenntnissen und aufgebrachten Fragen weiter auf den Grund.

12:00 Mittag
Zeit für eine Stärkung am feinen Buffet und Gelegenheit weiter zu diskutieren, Kontakte zu knüpfen, CX-Fundstücke zu entdecken oder einfach zu geniessen.

13:15 Marktplatz | CX-Herausforderungen
Bis zu fünf Unternehmen stellen eine aktuelle Herausforderung vor und laden zum Nachdenken, Diskutieren und Feedback geben ein. Das Ganze in lockerer Marktplatz Atmosphäre bei Kaffee und Dessert.

14:00 Fallstudien Block II
Wieder können die Teilnehmenden eine von zwei Fallstudien wählen und anschliessend wie zuvor vertiefen.

15:30 Pause
Verarbeiten des Erlebten? Gedanken austauschen? Ein Kaffee in Ruhe? Alles ist möglich.

15:45 Ausblick Customer Experience Network
Wir geben einen kurzen Überblick über das Customer Experience Network, die weiteren Gefässe und Formate und die Möglichkeiten sich einzubringen.

16:00 Visuelles Kommunizieren – Highlights des Tages
In kleinen Gruppen bekommen wir einen kurzen Einblick in die Kunst des visuellen Kommunizierens und können gleich an einem konkreten Beispiel üben und unser Highlight des Tages visualisieren und zusamentragen.

16:30 Offizielles Ende
«All good things come to an end.» So auch das CX Forum. Vermutlich viel zu schnell. Wir verabschieden die weit Gereisten und freuen uns auf den Apéro, den wir ganz entspannt geniessen, dabei den Tag reflektieren und Pläne für die Zukunft schmieden. So fällt der Abschied weniger schwer, denn nach dem Forum ist vor dem Forum.

Posted in customer experience, event | Permalink | 1 Comment »