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Tatsuya Nakagawa and Peter Roosen

February 6, 2008

Innovation: If You Lose Your Cool, You Won’t Get it Back

Building a business around being cool is really hard. Keeping it there is even harder. But the toughest of all is getting your cool edge back if you ever lose it. The good news for innovators is that refocusing on being credible can be just as profitable as being cool, without as much inherent risk.

Apple is a great example of a company that has been coming out with cool products ever since Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started making and selling circuit boards and computers in the late 1970s. Apple’s latest computers and iGoodies are widely perceived as must-have products with people routinely lining up to buy them as they are launched. At $1800, the MacBook Air launched last month is the latest on Apple’s hit parade.

So what will happen if Apple loses its edge? Not a problem if it takes the same approach that Kodak did years ago when its traditional business of photographic films and papers turned to ashes. Kodak is a big company with a long history of introducing cool products that date all the way back to about 1900 when it introduced the very popular “brownie” camera. Kodak saw big problems coming when digital camera sales started going through the roof. Although the company was in the digital camera game from early on, it knew it would face very tough competition from Japanese consumer electronics giants. Kodak simply wasn’t going to remain cool as the competition heated up.

Kodak was able to refocus on B2B offerings using the tremendous credibility it had established over the previous century. The company’s investor information page claims “Kodak is the world’s foremost imaging innovator. With sales of $10.7 billion in 2006, the company is committed to a digitally oriented growth strategy focused on helping people better use meaningful images and information in their life and work. Consumers use Kodak’s system of digital and traditional products and services to take, print and share their pictures anytime, anywhere; Businesses effectively communicate with customers worldwide using Kodak solutions for prepress, conventional and digital printing and document imaging; and Creative Professionals rely on Kodak technology to uniquely tell their story through moving or still images.” These are not consumer product offerings that will have people lining up in droves. Apple brags about its iPhone and having sold over 110 million iPods and over three billion songs from its iTunes online store but it has no major current B2B offerings.

A great advantage of a company that has leveraged and built up credibility to shift from leading edge consumer product offerings towards B2B offerings, is that the business becomes more predictable. This also applies to its R&D returns. Watch and see if Apple remains cool and if it shifts toward increasing its B2B offerings over the next few years. That would decrease the likelihood of the company falling flat on its face if it loses its cool.

Atomica Creative > Strategic Product Marketing • Vancouver, Canada • tnakagawa@atomicacreative.com

Posted by Tatsuya Nakagawa and Peter Roosen at 8:48 AM | Add Comment

January 29, 2008

Innovation: Old Often Becomes New

Originality is overrated. Engineers are often told in engineering schools that a good design typically consists of 45% duplication, 45% slight modification and 10% originality. Those who follow this principle benefit from the experience of their predecessors. Their designs tend to work. That is the way it should be.

We think the 10% originality might be a little too high. Engineering tends to be expensive and slow. For many manufacturers, the engineering efforts involved in bringing something to market often become the bottleneck in the process. This is the case whether in designing the product or the process to produce it cost-effectively. Sales people often go out and pick up orders for something, having to later tell the customer that the engineers haven’t yet worked everything out.

Let’s take the example of the compressed air car. In the highly competitive car industry, it is being touted by many as the next big thing in car manufacturing. India’s largest carmaker, Tata Motors Ltd., is preparing to roll out a line of compressed air cars in 2008. These cars are expected to go about 100 km on a charge of air that costs about 1 euro or $1.50 and takes 2 to 3 minutes to fill up. You’d have a hard time buying a hot dog or a cup of coffee at that price.

Continue reading "Innovation: Old Often Becomes New"

Posted by Tatsuya Nakagawa and Peter Roosen at 4:03 PM | Add Comment

January 23, 2008

Adjust Your Rear View Mirror Before Launching a Product

When engineering, product development and marketing & sales people get together and do a great job in successfully pushing a new product into the market to rave reviews, things can still fall apart. There can still be important blind spots in the system to watch out for. Big companies are not immune to this problem.

We discovered a hole in Fujitsu’s warranty programs after we went out and bought their latest Scansnap S510 office scanner a few weeks ago. We learned about the product from others, mainly online, who were successfully using these to help convert their offices to paperless environments. We bought one.

Continue reading "Adjust Your Rear View Mirror Before Launching a Product"

Posted by Tatsuya Nakagawa and Peter Roosen at 11:14 AM | Add Comment