Everyone is in a hype about the iPhone Launch - we already see the pictures of people queuing in front of the Apple stores in order to be the first to receive their brand new iPhone. While all the hype is about the phone itself and whether it is good or not I want to take a step back and look at the big picture of this iPhone launch.

Everything started with the iPhone announcement on January 9th 2007 at the Macworld. Everyone remembers the great show that Steve Jobs gave us, and the horrible show we got to see from Cingular CEO Stan Sigman. (A wrap-up about their presentation style can be found at the Presentation Zen)

Check out Steve Jobs’ presentation:

And here is Stan Sigman’s presentation (starts at 4:50):

Then the expected hype set in which resulted in an amazing coverage of the iPhone as can be seen by this analysis from Valleywag. They performed an analysis about mentions of “iPhone” in the news which can be seen in the chart below (iPhone news mentions are shown in Black).

Reasons for this incredible hype are that:

• Everyone was speculating about the iPhone but Apple kept quiet
• The final product has blown away everyone and set expectations tremendously high
• Everyone was speculating whether Apple has set expectations too high with the iPhone
• and of course: because it’s Apple

From looking at this, here comes my….
Lesson 1:

Keep quiet until the latest possible moment then make the best product presentation you can. If someone questions whether your product can live up to its expectations - keep quiet.

PC World summarizes the iPhone Hype and The Washington Post analyzes what might happen if the iPhone can not live up to its expectations. The following picture shows clearly how high Apple has set the expectations with the iPhone. This is a collection of various “user-created” designs what the iPhone might look like. And we know the story: Apple has excelled these expectations with the iPhone’s technology and design.

Nobody knows how closely Apple was following these designs but you can be sure that if Steve Jobs ever saw one of these, he would have said: “Nice, but not enough”.

Which brings me to…

Lesson 2:

Listen to your customers expectations not just to meet their expectations but to exceed their expectations.

In one of my previous posts I was asking the polemic question if Apple is really that innovative and the key insight is that at the end of the day it doesn’t matter whether innovation comes strictly from within your organization or whether it is the result of “assembling” technology and knowledge to deliver a great product. The article that I was citing in the previous article was from Businessweek: Lessons from Apple.

An article in the International Herald Tribune titled “Who really makes the iPod” nails it why Apple earns $80 on each iPod. “Those clever folks at Apple figured out how to combine 451 mostly generic parts into a valuable product. They may not make the iPod, but they created it. In the end, that’s what really matters.” And you can be sure it is the same story with the iPhone.

Therefore my ….

Lesson 3:

Focus on a few things you are really good at and let others do the rest.

These are the lessons that I take away from looking at the iPhone launch. Did I miss anything? Then go ahead and leave a comment!

If you are interested in learning more about Apple and the concept of open innovation I recommend the following books:

Posted in apple, customer innovation, customer voice, innovation, thought in progress | Permalink | No Comments »

My review of the book “The 25 most common sales mistakes and how to avoid them” got featured at the Small Business Issues Blog Carnival - Edition 7.

Bernhard Schindlholzer is a Ph.D. Student and Research Associate. The Customer Experience Labs is not about finding the ultimate truth - it’s about starting conversations. The 25 most common sales mistakes and how to avoid them talks about sales mistakes EVEN if you are not a sales person. “When you are giving a presentation to your boss about your latest project or a new business idea and trying to get funding and additional support - this is just as much a selling process as selling life insurance…”

Comment: Some really great tips Bernhard. Lack of listening and Not showing competitive spirit - these are the two top mistakes I have seen sales people make. Very few sales people listen - you have to hold them by their neck and tape their mouth shut (figuratively speaking, of course) and say “LISTEN to me”. I even had a sales person tell me once, “You do not know what you need. My product is what you need.”

 

Find this and other articles over at Atlantic Canada’s Small Business Blog.

Posted in sales | Permalink | No Comments »

Ben Terret at NoisyDecentGraphics has an interesting article about his observations that design is becoming the new management consultancy. Yes, I agree and from a strategic point of view it makes totally sense as well.

One of the main tasks of management consultancies is helping companies finding and strengthening their competitive advantage - a finding a space for differentiation from its competitors that leads to higher profits. Higher profits can be achieved by reducing costs or charging higher prices. But here is the problem: You will reach a point where you are simply not able to significantly reduce costs without increasing the effort to do so.

The only way to increase your profits then is to be charging higher prices - something that can only be achieved with improved products and services. And this is exactly the stage where designers come in. Just to make things clear: the designer is not the guy doing the layout for your marketing folder. Designers are the individuals that create and re-define your products and services to deliver a unique and improved experience for your customers. And they are the ones that can help define something fresh and innovative which can be used to improve your products and services.

Is this a management task? I would say so because it is about the organizations positioning and competitive advantage which should definitely be on top managements agenda.

Nevertheless the question remains: does this really lead to higher profits? This certainly depends on your cost-control measures but if you are able to deliver improved customer experiences, you can certainly be sure that your customers are willing to pay a price premium for that.

Posted in design thinking | Permalink | No Comments »

Posted in customer experience | Permalink | No Comments »

….and is Steve Jobs really such a great CEO? When we talk about about innovation we should first of all talk about “Closed Innovation” and “Open Innovation”.

Closed Innovation describes an paradigm where innovation should only come from a firm’s R&D. This has been the dominating strategy in companies like AT&T, IBM and Xerox in the 20th century. Some of these companies have made the transition to “Open Innovation”, those that didn’t are gone. So what exactly is Open Innovation then?

Open Innovation is a paradigm in which companies ask themselves two questions:

1. How can I profitably use others ideas in our business?
2. How can I profitably allow others to use our ideas in their business?

With this approach you accept that there are smart people (and innovative companies) out there as well and you change your innovation management process to answer the two question above. One of the best examples for Open Innovation is Cisco. Just look at the list of companies they have acquired in the last 17 years.

Apple: Not invented here, but very welcome

But let’s look at Apple now - and especially at one article in The Economist. Titled “Lessons From Apple” the key message of the article is that the main reason for Apple’s innovations is the use of strategies that support the Open Innovation paradigm.

What the article say about the iPod:

The idea for the iPod, for example, was originally dreamt up by a consultant whom Apple hired to run the project. It was assembled by combining off-the-shelf parts with in-house ingredients such as its distinctive, easily used system of controls.

And about the iTunes:

And it was designed to work closely with Apple’s iTunes jukebox software, which was also bought in and then overhauled and improved.

The article concludes:

Apple is, in short, an orchestrator and integrator of technologies, unafraid to bring in ideas from outside but always adding its own twists.

An addition to this is the discussion about the iPhone. Remember there is already a multi-touch phone on the market. The Prada Phone.

But does being an orchestrator also mean, that you are an innovative company? What do you think?

Posted in apple, innovation, thought in progress | Permalink | No Comments »