Noble Imaging, LLC

Ode to the Entrepreneur. ~ Evan Beard

Adam Richard — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 04:39:38 +0000

To be an entrepreneur traditionally means that you start something, usually a company.

But this is not an entrepreneur.

It is to look in the face of intolerable odds and know that you will conquer them.

It is to stand as David, in front of Goliath, and to feel not fear.

It is to conquer your insecurities, for at every point, everything will be at once going great and falling apart, held in precarious balance by some force that you don’t understand.

An entrepreneur is an emotional warrior, one who succumbs not to the tides of life, or accepts the hand he’s been dealt, but who deals a new hand himself, who changes the rules if the rules don’t work for him. There is no time to be knocked down or upset, only time for action.

As entrepreneurs we do impossible things, we dream big dreams, we know the toil and tears of hard work, the pain in the eyes that comes from working hours on hours, the ache in the back. The feeling of at once needing a shower from personal neglect but also not needing one, because today the keyboard is your only companion.

To be an entrepreneur is a way of life, it defines our relationships: with God, with our significant others, with our family.

We are the ones who do not settle, who know no gear but our highest, who aren’t afraid of failure as a part of who we are; for we know that if we don’t fail on occasion, we aren’t aiming high enough.

We are dedicated people—to our work, to our life, to those with whom we’re close.

We know the feeling of living on pure adrenaline and you can see it twinkle in our eyes, dangerous and fierce.

To feel the triumphs of life, and the sorrows; to breathe them in as a beautiful, artistic experience; to enjoy the vicissitudes as others do the Mona Lisa.

This is how one is an entrepreneur. We are people of passion.

Original Article 1

Original Article 2

Richard Branson: How To Succeed In Business By Really Trying

Adam Richard — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:16:06 +0000

Written by: Steve Denning, Contributor

RADICAL MANAGEMENT: Rethinking leadership and innovation

Original Article

Suffering Philadelphian air travelers: help is on the way!

I was cheered to hear last week from CEORichard Branson that Virgin America is starting flights into Philadelphia. In May 2011, I described here the horrors of US Airways and its Philadelphia hub. Last week, on CNBC’s SquawkBox, on the introduction of the new service, Branson offered pointed insights as to why US airlines are doing so miserably as well as making us miserable. He gave five suggestions as to how things need to improve.

1. Increase quality of service

Branson said he had set up Virgin America to increase the quality of air travel for poor Americans who have suffered for many, many years domestically. Virgin America, he said, was opening a lot of new routes around America. Philadelphia has almost no competition between Philadelphia and Los Angelesand Philadelphia and San Francisco. He said that Virgin would give US Airways “a run for their money.”

2. Offer quality equipment

Branson said, “US Airways doesn’t have any plugs for plugging in your equipment, no entertainment system. But with Virgin America, we have the kind of airline that people from Philadelphia and the West Coast enjoy to fly and I think we’ll do well on this route.”

3. Don’t nickle and dime your customers

As CNBC host Becky Quick noted: recently air travelers in the US have been getting nickeled and dimed for everything. One airline is even proposing to charge people $35 if they want to bring any carry-on luggage with them to store in the overhead compartments. Branson agreed: “Virgin likes to come in to businesses where people are being nickeled and dimed and where the quality of services is pretty dire. What’s happened in America is you have got these enormous airlines that are getting bigger and bigger and, now, the last thing they seem to think about is quality of service. In every other industry in America—hotels, restaurants, clubs, et cetera—quality is of paramount importance. However on a competitive basis, the airlines play into our hands, the more they make decisions like this which the public dislike.”

4. Allow actual competition

Consolidation of airlines in the US has made the airlines stronger but prices have also gone up. In fact, Virgin made its name going up against a virtual monopoly: British Airways. Branson said, “Consolidation is not good for the consumer and it’s incredible that the competition authorities keep allowing it to happen. In Britain, in their wisdom, the Comptition Authoriy has just allowed British Airways to take over British Midland. You wonder how they got the title, “Competition Authority”. A competition authority should be telling airlines to compete and if you don’t compete successfully to go away so you can make room for new up and coming companies with better ideas. You shouldn’t be able to be propped up by getting together with an even bigger carrier and then being able to monopolize and put fares up because you have no competition. It’s madness in what’s happening in the airline industry in the last five years.”

5. No resurrection: let dead airlines actually die

Branson continued: “You also have this bizarre thing in America where if a company goes bust, it doesn’t actually go bust: it goes into Chapter 11. It screws its competitors by screwing its creditors, comes back out of Chapter 11 and then most likely goes back into Chapter 11 again few years later. Continental has been in chapter 11 four or five times. There’s not one carrier in America that we competed with over the last 25 years that hasn’t gone bust, at least once. Generally four or five times.”

Not unique to the airline industry

These problems are obviously not unique to the airline industry. I have described elsewhere how they play out in other sectors including:

Retailing (Apple)
Food industry (Kraft, Sara Lee)
Conglomerates (GE)
Clothing (Li & Fung)
Supermarkets (Wal-Mart)
Customer relationship management services (Salesforce)
Computer routers (Cisco, Juniper)
Computer tablets (Amazon Fire)
Banks

In effect, we are not dealing with an airlines problem. We are confronted with an economy-wide management problem. Organizations are not sufficiently agile to cope with the demands of today’s emerging Creative Economy. The Fortune 500 must master the radically different management principles needed for continuous innovation that delights customers, with a different role for the managers, a different way of coordinating work, a different set of values and a different way of communicating. This is not rocket science. It goes by different names: “management 2.0″, “customer capitalism” or “Agile managment.” I have called radical management. Whatever we want to call it, as Richard Branson explains, it’s very different from traditional management.

Why Your Marketing is Missing the Mark (And How You Can Fix It)

Adam Richard — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:19:16 +0000

Picture this scenario: it’s Friday night, and you head out to a nice restaurant after a long week of work.

While you’re relaxing over a glass of wine, the waiter comes over and informs you of the special. “We have a delicious salmon risotto tonight,” he says.

That sounds perfect, you think, so you order the dish. The waiter jots it down and heads back toward the kitchen as you continue your wine and conversation.

So far, so good, right?

But then the chef comes out and walks over to your table.

“I understand you’ve ordered the salmon risotto,” she says as you nod in affirmation. “Well, risotto is a bit tricky, and it’s important we get the salmon right, too… have you ever made it before?”

Before you can respond, the chef turns around. “Tell you what, I’ll go ahead and get the olive oil started … you wash up and meet me back in the kitchen.”

I’m guessing this experience has never happened to you, and I’m also guessing that you probably wouldn’t enjoy it if it did. After getting past the initial surprise (does the chef really want me to come back in the kitchen and help prepare the food?), you’d probably find it very odd.

You know that the food in the restaurant costs much more than it would in the grocery store — you’re paying a big premium for atmosphere and service. If you wanted to make salmon risotto yourself, you would have done so. You didn’t go to the restaurant to learn to make a new dish; you went to relax and have people do everything for you.

What does this scenario have to do with running a business or plotting a course toward freedom?

Your customers don’t want to make their own dinner

Instead of offering people what they really want, too many business owners have this idea that it’s better to involve customers in the behind-the-scenes … because that’s what they think customers want.

We’ve become experts in telling people things they don’t want to hear about, and teaching people things they don’t want to learn.

It’s all the fault of the old parable:

Give a man a fish and he’ll fish for a day. Teach a man to fish and he’ll fish for a lifetime.

This might be a good idea for homeless fishermen, but it’s often a terrible idea in business.

Try a better idea

A better idea is to give people what they actually want, and the answer to that lies in understanding something very simple about who we are. Get this point right, and a lot of other things become much easier.

Most of us don’t want to learn how to fish. We work all week and go to the restaurant so that someone can take care of everything for us. We don’t need to know the details of what goes on in the kitchen; in fact, we may not even want to know the details.

Instead, we want the fish brought to us on a plate, deboned, lightly breaded, and pan-fried with a slice of lemon.

To give people what they want, first you have to definevalue

What is value, exactly? Here’s a basic definition:

Something desirable and of worth, created through exchange or effort.

Perhaps an even easier way to think about it is: value means helping people.

If you’re trying to build a business and you begin your efforts by helping people, you’re on the right track. When you get stuck, ask yourself: how can I give more value? Or more simply: How can I help my customers more?   Over the past two years, I’ve been traveling the world, interviewing “unexpected entrepreneurs” as part of the research for a book.

I learned to understand the clear value proposition that each person offered their customers. In most cases, there was a clear distinction between the actual product or service, and how it made the end-user feel.

Copywriters talk about getting to the real benefit of the product. The successful entrepreneurs I talked with had learned to market that real benefit — to “give their customers the fish.”

Jaden Hair provides recipes and stories about food from her popular websiteSteamyKitchen.com … but the real benefit is “spend quality time with your family.”
Megan Hunt makes custom dresses and wedding accessories from a co-working space in Omaha … but the real benefit for brides is “feel special on your big day.”
Ridlon “Sharkman” Kiphart takes clients on adventure tours to exotic destinations … and the benefit is “Live adventurously by joining us for the trip of a lifetime.”
Kelly Newsome left a high-paying job as a New York attorney to operate a private yoga practice in Washington, D.C … and the real benefit to her clients is “relax and prepare for the day through a personalized, guided practice.”

The stories go on and on, and you might be able to tell a similar story from your own experience.

When it comes down to it, what people really, really want is pretty simple.

We want to be happy. We want to have our lives improved, either through the addition of something positive or the subtraction of something that causes stress and hassle.   Are you doing that in your business?

Are you giving your customers what they really want?

About the Author: Chris Guillebeau’s upcoming book, The $100 Startup, launches on May 8th during the world’s first 7-continent book tour. He also writes for a small army of remarkable people at ChrisGuillebeau.com.

How That Sausage of Happiness Is Made

Adam Richard — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:15:31 +0000

Stefan Sagmeister’s ‘Happy Show’ at Institute of Contemporary Art

Ryan Collerd for The New York Times

Stefan Sagmeister during the installation of “The Happy Show” exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

The quest for happiness has been the direct or indirect subject of a huge chunk of intellectual endeavor: philosophy, theology, psychology, economics and, of course, literature, which has tended to cast a jaundiced eye on the matter. “To be stupid and selfish and to have good health are the three requirements for happiness,” Flaubert wrote, “though if stupidity is lacking, the others are useless.”

The world of design aims ultimately at happiness, too, through the elegance of a font or the feel of an iPhone. But a few years ago the Austrian-born graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister decided to take on the problem of happiness more directly, in much the same way he has approached ad campaigns and the celebrated album covers he has designed for David Byrne and the Rolling Stones.

“I know how presumptuous it sounds,” he said recently, smiling, in his offices on West 23rd Street in Chelsea. “I also knew I had to find a way to limit it, because it’s just too crazy-huge a problem. You could spend your whole life on it, as lots of philosophers have.”

Happiness is not a problem that Mr. Sagmeister has struggled with much personally. On a scale of 1 to 10, he rates himself a provisional 8. But in 2008, during a yearlong sabbatical in Indonesia that he chose to devote mostly to making furniture, he received some blunt feedback from a close friend. “He said if I was taking a whole year off, and at the end of it I had only some tables and chairs to show, then it would be pretty skimpy, wouldn’t it?” Mr. Sagmeister said. “And that somehow seemed true, even though I didn’t want to hear it.”

So he started to work instead on an ambitious, unusual feature-length documentary, “The Happy Film,” a kind of delivery vehicle for several years of thinking and reading about the nature of happiness. The film is not yet finished, but it has spun off an equally unusual art — or maybe design, or maybe amateur sociology — exhibition, “The Happy Show,” that opens on Wednesday at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and later travels to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

The approach of the show to its momentous topic can be gauged partly through one of its invitations: a thin, scrumptious-looking slice of Austrian beerwurst, vacuum-sealed in plastic, with the word “HAPPY” cut out of it.

“Because, when you get down to it, it seems that the two things that lead most quickly and reliably to happiness are having sex and eating rich, fatty foods,” said Mr. Sagmeister, who worked for weeks to perfect the sausage invitation with a fellow designer, Jessica Walsh.

But Mr. Sagmeister’s extensive reading — primarily in the field of positive psychology, a movement focused on well-being, pioneered by Martin Seligman at the University of Pennsylvania and explored by fellow psychologists likeJonathan Haidt — led him to a slightly more complex view. The conclusion he reached was that the three most widely agreed-upon routes to happiness were meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy and psychotropic drugs. He decided to spend a considerable amount of time testing each on himself, while filming the process.

“The question I wanted to answer was, could I train my mind to be happy, the same way one trains one’s body?” he said. “In running, I know that I can train as much as I want and I’m never going to break the world record for the five miles. It’s partly genetics; I’m just not built for it. But if I worked really hard, I might be able to cut my time by half. Could I do the same thing with my mind and my well-being?”

With Dr. Haidt signed on as an adviser to the film, Mr. Sagmeister began his positive-psychology self-research project in 2011 in Bali, where he went to meditate for the first time in his life, spending three months in intensive sessions.

Back in New York, he began therapy (another first), taking a camera crew to each visit. He and his therapist, Sheenah Hankin, talked about issues like the recent death of his mother, to whom he was very close, and his desire at 49 to settle down and have a family.

“The guy came in, and he was basically happy,” Dr. Hankin said. “That doesn’t happen often here.” The Philadelphia exhibition, which features an extended trailer for the film and a virtual funhouse of didactic interactive displays, functions much less like a design show than like an three-dimensional glimpse into Mr. Sagmeister’s travels in self-improvement.

“I went in thinking I was going to be doing a project with a graphic designer, and it’s only in the past few months that I’ve realized I’m doing a project, really, with a writer and poet,” said Claudia Gould, the longtime director of the Institute of Contemporary Art who left last year to take over the directorship of the Jewish Museum in New York. “Maybe he won’t end up being a graphic designer when everything is said and done.”

Mr. Sagmeister isn’t ready to answer that question just yet. He is willing to report, midresearch, that therapy seems much more effective than meditation in increasing overall happiness. But he will soon begin the final phase of the film — drugs — so the verdict is still out. The pharmaceuticals will probably be by prescription, though he had entertained the idea of sampling heroin, “because when are you going to get a chance to try something like that in a controlled environment like this?”

In an e-mail last week, he reported that he had spoken to a friend with some experience in the area and had decided that it was a level of happiness he probably could not afford. “Truly awful the first time, you just throw up, and by the time it actually gets to be enjoyable, you are already hooked,” he wrote. “I will leave it alone and stick with the pills.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

How To Get From A Great Idea To Actual Innovation

Adam Richard — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 00:49:04 +0000

There’s a tendency for all of us to glorify the ideation process when in fact it’s the reduction to practice that’s perhaps more important, says Stephen Hoover, CEO of PARC, a Xerox company.

What’s the formula for moving from a great idea to actual implementation? “You’d think we’d have a really complex answer for this one, given that PARC is in the business of breakthroughs,” says Stephen Hoover, CEO of PARC, a Xerox company. “But for me, it’s really simple and can even be captured in one phrase: ‘Inventions with impact.’ As in impact on people, our clients’ businesses, and the world. In whatever forms it takes.”

Fast Company sat down with Hoover, who is speaking at our Innovation Uncensored event on Wednesday, April 18 in New York City, to ask him how innovation works at PARC.

FAST COMPANY: What can a big company learn from a startup?

STEPHEN HOOVER:   Compared to big companies, startups have the advantage of no “legacy,” which means you don’t have to worry about disrupting your own business model or changing skillsets. So when big companies can–and some do–create the space for new opportunities that challenge the legacy, they can do incredible things!

Furthermore, there’s a place in the innovation landscape for big companies and startups and others, such as government and universities. While big companies tend to focus on core innovations and startups can pivot rapidly, all of us need to work together when the problems are too big or complex for any one entity to solve alone.

How do you create a culture of innovation?

From both the bottom up and top down. Most organizations tend to focus on one or the other. One of the things we did at PARC is to create a portfolio management framework–and associated review processes–that balance localized autonomy for our researchers with a comprehensive, proactive approach to managing our innovation investments.   Creating a true culture of innovation is very difficult. So we often recommend you start by trying to shift mindsets first. For example, mindsets such as embracing failure (not just fail fast but fail in order to learn), real options for metering and growing innovation investments (as opposed to net present value), and much, much more.

Shifting gears a little here, but we want to know how you found your last great idea.

So this is an interesting question, because it seems to put the focus on ideas–and I think there’s a tendency for all of us to glorify the ideation process when in fact it’s the reduction to practice that’s perhaps more important. And what we’ve found at PARC is that the best way to move from ideation to implementation is to focus on the intersection of these three things:

Technology expertise and trends beyond trendspotting
New models for business
Human-centered context, as in ethnography, to discover what people actually do and want and need, not just what they say they do.

One of these alone may give you good ideas and incremental innovations, but you need all three for innovation with impact.

Original Article

The Disconnect – Pursuit of Opportunity Without Regard For Reality

Adam Richard — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:06:17 +0000

By Jackie Summers

Jackie Summers argues that when you’re a CEO, reality is never what other people believe it is.

Being a successful entrepreneur requires a particular kind of disconnect from reality. It all starts with your idea for a product or service that no one has done before, or at least, your sincere belief that you can do it better. You become convinced that–for whatever reason–you see an opportunity that no one else does. You have the chance to create something that only exists in your mind, or recreate something that exists, but more efficiently, more profitably. And so you ask yourself: is my idea truly original, and if so, why hasn’t anyone done this yet? We have a joke we tell around HQ: if you believe your vision is so unique that no one has considered it yet, it’s either

A terrible idea
A brilliant idea, and you’re actually a freaking genius, or
You’re crazy.

If the answer isn’t 1, the truth is probably a combination of 2 and 3. Everything was at some point, someone’s big idea. There may, however, be valid reasons why no one has successfully executed your concept yet. There may be technological issues, moral issues, financial issues, that stand as barriers to actualization. This is where the disconnect comes in. The best definition of entrepreneurship I’ve ever heard, is this:

“Entrepreneurship is the pursuit of opportunity without regard to resources currently controlled.” – HBS professor Howard Stevenson

In other words, an entrepreneur is someone who doesn’t acknowledge the constraints of current reality, or more accurately, acknowledges them and proceeds anyway. You figure out how to circumvent reality, to recreate it to suit your needs. The process might not exist–you create it. You don’t have the time–you find it. Your experience in your chosen endeavor is lacking–you surround yourself with people who compensate for your deficiencies. You’re without financial resources–you manifest them. You become Hannibal crossing the Alps, and you adopt the motto “Aut inveniam viam aut faciam“: find a way, or make one. The process of overcoming the infinite obstacles between you and the actualization of your dream is preparation for success. You come to understand that reality is malleable, to those with the tenacity to impose their will over it. Just be sure you are passionate about whatever your chosen endeavor is.

* This essay originally appeared on The Good Men Project

The 5 Types of Work That Fill Your Day

Adam Richard — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 18:59:13 +0000

Illustration: Oscar Ramos Orozco

Hacking work is all the rage these days, along with tips for managing email, taking notes, and running meetings. But, at a higher level, what can we learn from analyzing the different types of work we do and how we allocate our time?First, let’s take a look at the five kinds of work we do every day:

1. Reactionary Work
In the modern age, most of our day is consumed by Reactionary Work, during which we are focused only on responding to messages and requests – emails, text messages, Facebook messages, tweets, voicemails, and the list goes on. You are constantly reacting to what comes into you rather than being proactive in what matters most to you. Reactionary Work is necessary, but you can’t let it consume you.

2. Planning Work
At other times, you need to plan how you will do your work. Planning Work includes the time spent, scheduling and prioritizing your time, developing your systems for running meetings, and refining your systems for working. By planning, you are deciding how your energy should be allocated, and you are designing your method for getting stuff done. The best workflows are highly personalized and occasionally borderline neurotic, but they keep us engaged. It may not sound sexy, but Planning Work helps you become more efficient and execute on your goals.

3. Procedural Work
Of course, there are many motions we go through every day that are neither reactionary nor strategic. Procedural Work is the administrative/maintenance stuff that we do just to keep afloat: making sure that the bills are paid or preparing tax returns, updating a deck for a business presentation, or tracking old outbound emails to confirm that they were addressed/solved. Procedural Work is important, but we must remember to remain flexible in our approach to it. Procedures backfire when they become antiquated and remain only out of habit, not necessity.

4. Insecurity Work
Insecurity Work includes the stuff we do out of our own insecurities – obsessively looking at certain statistics related to your company, or repeatedly checking what people are saying about you or your product online, etc. Insecurity Work doesn’t move the ball forward in any way – aside from briefly reassuring us that everything is OK – and we’re often unconscious that we’re even doing it.

5. Problem-Solving Work
Creativity becomes most important during Problem-Solving Work. This is the work that requires our full brainpower and focus, whether it be designing a new interface, developing a new business plan, writing a thoughtful blog post, or brainstorming the features of a new product. Whether you’re working solo or as a team, you’re leveraging raw creativity to find answers.

The best workflows are highly personalized and occasionally borderline neurotic, but they keep us engaged.

What We Learn When We Audit Our Work

Taking all five types of work into perspective, we can audit our day and the types of work we engage in most.

My typical day includes 2-5 types of work, with the majority being Reactionary Work. I hate to admit it, but I find that Reactionary Work constantly bleeds over into my efforts to schedule myself (Planning Work) and the deep thinking required to solve problems (Problem-Solving Work).

I also find that, between nearly any type of work, I usually slip into a period of Reactionary Work that may include surfing the top of my email inbox, or a period of Insecurity Work, which usually comes in the form of scanning Twitter messages about our business.

Here are a few realizations that might help as you do your own work audit:

Problem Solving Work is best done when you are fully engaged with the challenge you face. For many, this means working in a zone free from distraction and the flow of social media. Within groups, the best Problem Solving Work is done when staffing is voluntary and topics fall into the overlap of each person’s genuine interest, skills, and opportunity. Without a real sense of engagement, results suffer.
Procedural Work, meanwhile, is best done with the help of technology. Wherever possible, technology should be used to automate systems for managing projects and increasing efficiency. With Procedural Work, you want to minimize the time spent on it and optimize accountability. For those of us that manage teams, Procedural Work should be delegated when possible. Legendary managers recognize that they should spend time on Planning Work, setting up the systems that their teams will use to work, and then minimizing their time spent doing the day-to-day administrative (Procedural) work.
Reactionary Work can often crowd out all other types of work; it needs to be controlled by limiting the time you spend on it to distinct blocks throughout the day. Thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices, Reactionary Work seeps into every opening of your time – walks between buildings or a free hour that results from a canceled meeting. The biggest mistake we make is prioritizing Reactionary Work over everything else. Planning Work, in the form of proper scheduling, can help minimize the gravitational pull of Reactionary Work. Similarly, Procedural Work can help you identify stuff that should be delegated, thus reducing your flow of Reactionary Work.
Insecurity Work should be compartmentalized into designated periods of time every day (or every few days if you’re disciplined enough to manage it). Perhaps allocate 30 minutes at the end of every day to run through all of your Insecurity Work at once – checking stats, how many hits your blog received, how many new followers you gained – whatever calms you.
Planning Work is, for most of us, too circumstantial. You do it when you get stuck, rather than proactively. But if you believe that organization is, in fact, a competitive advantage (as I do), you need to allocate time for Planning Work and learn methods to optimize it. You should leverage existing systems but then customize them for yourself. After all, making your mark on your system breeds attraction, which in turn breeds the loyalty required to stick with that system long enough to achieve results.

All work is not created equal. Try working with an awareness of the type of work you’re doing, and how it’s helping (or limiting) your progress.

–

What’s Your Take?

How do you juggle the different types of work you’re doing?

–

Scott Belsky is the CEO of Behance and author of the national bestselling bookMaking Ideas Happen. You can follow him @scottbelsky.

Scrabble Typography Edition

Adam Richard — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:30:05 +0000

There was a time before iPhones when games of “Words With Friends” weren’t played over daylong stretches where you guessed until you got a word that existed thus proving your superior intelligence. No, it was Scrabble, and it was played on a board you got at the toy store that you kept stashed in the closet with beat up cardboard boxes labeled “Guess Who?” and “Thin Ice.” For a grownup version of the game with a font junkie twist, check out this Scrabble Typography Edition. The tiles get played on a solid walnut gameboard that gets stored away in the matching solid walnut storage case that makes for a far more sophisticated look than that cardboard box with duct tape along the edges.

$199 – YOU KNOW YOU WANT IT

Why Companies With Ideals Are Winning

Adam Richard — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 19:36:51 +0000

Morten Schroder of Van Houtte Coffee knows something about being a sustainability leader.

In fact, Van Houtte has a long, proud history of adopting sustainability measures, even before a clear ROI matrix has been established. (The latest example is Van Houtte’s implementation of Renewable Natural Gas, a product I helped position and market).

“We believe in making decisions based on the bottom line, of course. But we also have a very clear agenda to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” said Schroder. “What surprised us is that our sustainability decisions – without fail – have all paid off financially. Even when they were based on investing in new ideas.”

Schroder is not the only trailblazer reaping the rewards of acting on ideals.

As reported recently in Sustainable Brands, new research on the world’s 50 fastest growing brands found a cause-and-effect relationship between a brand’s ability to serve a higher purpose and its financial performance.

The research, from Millward Brown and Jim Stengel, cited companies like Method, Seventh Generation and Stonyfield Farm. All companies that have elevated ethics and sustainability to leading operating principles.

The study forms the backbone of Stengel’s book GROW: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies.

So are ideals the next brand differentiator? Is acting ethically the best way to engage jaded consumers? Or does it all come down to common sense?

A Practical, Successful Shift: B Corp

B Corp gained prominence a few years ago as a business sustainability certification program.

One of the things that made B Corp different was, in hindsight, incredible common sense. The program provided a template for companies to incorporate longer term payback – often key to sustainability initiatives – right into their corporate charter.

This simple, yet profound shift away from short term ROI made it possible for companies to invest in ethical, sustainable improvements without the fear of having their programs axed for lack of short term payback.

On Friday, February 3rd, B Corp announced it had over 500 US companies on board, and had just signed up its first 39 Canadian companies. A success that Houston Peschl of DIRTT, one of the largest Canadian corporations to sign on, attributes to finding a common sense way to validate ethical behavior. As Peschl says, “DIRTT understands that it requires a different approach to be successful, the old business practices of manufacturing are archaic. Through innovative product design, amazing work force culture, and revolutionizing how to manufacture environmentally friendly products within a local economy, B Corp allows us to capture many of the intangibles of our unique approach and show the world what we are doing to change manufacturing in North America.”

Futureproof Brand Lesson: Reconsider The Business Model

If there’s one thing to be learned from Van Houtte Coffee and B Corp, it’s that the old business model for measuring performance needs to be tweaked.

Quarterly returns are fine. But the consistent long term gains seen from sustainability measures – gains like customer loyalty, staff motivation and improved efficiency as energy use is reduced – take time to manifest.

It can be likened to the returns on brand investment. Brand building is a slow process, but accepted as invaluable to companies.

While we’re looking at the business model, attention needs to be paid to the ROI measures used. New, exciting sustainability initiatives often have hidden benefits, or hard to measure benefits. For example, the Renewable Natural Gas program that I worked on offered incredible marketing benefits that easily outweighed the operational costs – but those marketing benefits needed to be brought into the ROI measurement before the business case made sense.

Finally, if you want to build a futureproof brand, you need to lead. That said, your leadership needs to be based on strong insights into market trends and consumer demands. As Henry Ford and Steve Jobs understood, leaders can create products that people need – even before people know they need them.

Original Article

Just ask Morten Schroder or B Corp.

Marc Stoiber is a creative director who helps clients build resilient, futureproof brands. He previously was head of green innovation at Maddock Douglas, a leading US innovation firm; president and founder of Change, a green brand agency; national creative director at Grey Advertising; and creative Director at DDB. His passion lies at the intersection of green, brand, and innovation. He speaks on the topic of brands and innovation from coast to coast, and writes on the subject for journals that include Fast Company, Huffington Post, GreenBiz and Sustainable Life Media
[Read more about Marc Stoiber]

iPads Vs Textbooks: Crunching the Numbers (Infographic)

Adam Richard — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 20:34:54 +0000

Looks like Apple is on the verge of capturing yet another lucrative market, and changing education as we know it… Or are they?

On Jan 19th, Apple made a huge announcement: iBooks 2 would “reinvent” the way students learn by offering interactive textbooks, and iBooks Author would make it easy for anyone, even without programming skills, to create those books.

These new iBook textbooks would not only offer things traditional textbooks cannot, like embedded video, audio, and interactive graphics, but they would also be much less expensive than textbooks are today—with an average price of around $15, as opposed to the current average $75 cost many students pay now.

But are iBooks really cheaper? Especially after you add in the cost of a $400 iPad. So the folks who help people become teachers at Online Teaching Degree decided to crunch a few of the numbers, and see if change is truly coming. The results may not be as revolutionary as you think…

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