Innovating with Ideas – Real World Remixing

Three good stories from the past week – great for me, since I am hearing feedback and “remixing” for things published here on this blog. But good, because they are nice examples of people taking ideas and tweaking them to fit their particular situation:

  • Phil saw my presentation earlier this year on IT Strategy, and latched on to the bridge between the tactical “run the business” (RTB) work (for IT, operational support tasks), and the strategic “enhance the business” projects (implementing new capabilities to drive the top line). He used it recently in conversation with folks in Marketing, trying to define a mental model for the balance between Messaging (getting the word out, awareness and education – for Phil, “RTB”) and Lead Generation (of real, actionable, top-line driving opportunities – for Phil, “ETB”). He saw the lights going on for his audience …
  • From the same presentation – Julie took the idea of “focus on the Top Line” to heart when having marketing planning discussions with her tech firm. Too often, Enterprise IT (their target market) focuses on the old Cost Reduction thing – and so do tech firms, when selling to Enterprise IT. Rarely does anyone come in with concrete ideas on how to help Top Line (unless they are doing an end-around, direct to the non-IT areas of the company. Want to really differentiate with Enterprise IT? Propose projects driving revenue (and help the IT guys communicate it correctly to the Sales and Marketing folks). The sales folks liked this approach …
  • Dawn let me know she borrowed a line from an old EDI initiative a few years back; for “traditional” electronic commerce like EDI, or the more service-oriented integrations of today, the critical justification doesn’t come from the transaction costs . The key is that once these connections are established, it becomes a barrier to exit for the customer. A more positive spin – it makes it much easier for the customer to do business with us (with a potential volume increase …). The customer-focused point of view goes over well with Marketing management …
Pass those good ideas along …

I’ve got another example on the way – over the last few months, I’ve been experimenting with IT metrics that can really resonate with the operational folks. I’ve done internal presentations on this stuff, but someone from the outside saw and asked for a copy. I’m finishing up a series on SQDC metrics for Enterprise IT- coming later this week …

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