Identiture's Blog

Be Brilliant At The Basics

Don’t try to accommodate every customer. The more you do, the more you can potentially dilute your initial strength that people loved you for. Sure, it’s a balance; just keep it tipped the correct way.

Building a better business is certainly about giving the customer what we want e.g. the plumber who tidies up after his/her work. But it’s also about giving the customer what he/she didn’t realise they needed e.g. a text telling of the exact arrival time at your home to start work.

Don’t use email for anything that needs the expression of emotion unless you have the skills of a Mills & Boon novelist. No: see them face-to-face or pick up the phone.

Your corporate culture is not something that can be ‘rolled out’; it is the sum of what individuals do on a day-to-day basis. And understanding why they do what they do.

Notice how the small stuff can really wind you up when you’re in a line for a coffee or dealing with your bank. Does your business do that to its customers?

More important than great offices, a cool logo and a function spreadsheet is a sustainable, differentiated, profitable idea on which to build your business.

Yes it does matter. Many people really do mind that ‘customer parking’ has no spaces, that reception has last month’s business magazines, and that the account manager had an indifferent attitude.

Never talk negatively about a team member who is not present. Talk to him or her.

Everybody sells. Everybody talks value, everybody dissolves resistance to purchase, and everybody spots sales opportunities. Sure, there are some in the business (salespeople) for whom it is their final and number one accountability. But everybody sells.

Why do you want to be big? Quite. You really want to be profitable. Which may or may not correlate with size.

Make price the smallest issue. The one which is just a simple question — and how much is this/and what are your fees? — not a big debate nor negotiation. How? Through talking and illustrating and referencing the tremendous measurable value and benefit they will get when they become one of your customers.

These business tips were excerpted from the mini-book Brilliant At The Basics of Business 100, by author, designer, and teacher Nicholas Bate of Oxford-based Strategic Edge.

Read the full 100 business tips in this free PDF (70kb).

Shipping container image courtesy of Thinkstock.

 

[via David Airey]

 

The Planning Lab x Business Model Innovation

This model comes from Kay Plantes, a PhD strategist from MIT that has her own consulting practice. 

Her thesis is simple: the ONLY source of competitive advantage a company can have is its business model. A winning business model is proactive and changes with time. The consequence (rather than the business model) are great products and services.

 

[via The Planning Lab]

PSFK As Future Agency Or Publishing Model

Interview by Mario Gamper [Ideas Will Travel] with Piers Fawkes, Founder of PSFK.

 

 

Inspiration As A Future Agency Model

 

[Via Ideas Will Travel]

The Beta Principle: Skip Perfection & Launch Early

One thing every company has in common is a desire to innovate. Whether it means creating entirely new products or improving existing ones, everyone is familiar with the anxiety that accompanies all things new. All too often, we strive to get everything right the first time around. As a consequence, our products suffer from costly delays and insufficient feedback prior to launch.

For a solution, we can steal a page from the playbook of modern Internet and technology companies that have pioneered the practice of “launching in beta.” As you probably know, most of Google’s products are launched in beta (with bugs and all) for the world to adopt. The “Labs” icon in the top right hand corner of Gmail is a treasure trove of quickly executed ideas that Google is testing. Some are clearly half-baked, but all are available.

Why? Because sometimes it’s best to launch a product before it’s perfect. I call this acting without conviction. You may be uncertain – and some things may remain unfinished – but you’ve got to push it out. The reasons are both practical and psychological.

"Sometimes it’s best to launch a product before it’s perfect."

On a practical level, you can only get feedback and real user data when the product is released. Google makes major changes to their products while they are in beta – and these changes are made based on rock-solid analytics. Also, if there are fundamental flaws in your assumptions about your product, you will realize them more quickly if it’s live. Rather than spending many months (and lots of money) on the finer details, getting early feedback can lead to priceless realizations.

On a psychological level, a team thinks differently once the first version of a product is up and running. Rather than working for a hypothetical group of customers, everything you do affects real people. Your team will become more expedient and start to think of the project in smaller chunks rather than as an insurmountable giant.

Even Apple, a company that is known for perfection and control, releases products with known shortfalls in exchange for market data and an early impact in the marketplace. Inside chatter that I’ve heard suggests that the critical “copy/cut/paste” functionality, noticeably absent from the early iPhones, simply wasn’t good enough yet at the time of launch. Rather than hold the iPhone back, Apple released the product anyway. And when they figured out the right solution, they upgraded the functionality many months later.

Especially for those perfectionists among us, it is important to weigh the benefits and costs of extending development. Oftentimes, the bounty of information and insight garnered from launching (or “going public”) is greater than the cost of early adopters finding a few bugs — and bringing them to your attention!

 

[via 99%]

Innovation In The Design Of Retail Spaces

Game Change In The Design of Retailing

Earlier this week, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum presented a panel discussion about innovation in the design of retail spaces. Michael Bierut from Pentagram moderated the discussion with Rob Forbes, Founder of Public Bicycles and formerly of Design Within Reach, Glen T. Senk, CEO of Urban Outfitters, and Jenna Lyons, President and Executive Creative Director ofJ.Crew Group. The panel covered topics ranging from traits of a memorable retail experience to the roles for designers and artists within large retail organizations. Probably our favorite quote of the night came from Glen Senk who said “Retail is Detail”, speaking to what successful retail experiences usually have in common.

Cooper-Hewitt has provided a full video on the evening so if you couldn’t attend, you didn’t miss a thing.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

[via PSFK]

Identiture Student Innovators Program

Identiture recently launched the Identiture Student Innovators Program in collaboration with AdU Network.

The focus of the program allows students to virtually co-create brand strategies, interactive campaigns, and digital platforms for clients who are looking to integrate an immersive + collaborative experience in the creation and design of marketing ideas based on specific needs.

Students with interests in digital media, design thinking, trends research, product innovation, strategic management, and design engineering are encouraged to apply, and share in this experience. 

 

Program Guide

America's Coolest Young Entrepreneurs

Inc's 2010 List of the Top Entrepreneurs Under the Age of 30

Naveen Sevadurai

 

Naveen Sevadurai, 28, and his co-founders at Foursquare are rocking it in the geo-location space. With more than  million users, the business is valued at nearly $100 million.

Sarah Prevette

 

This 28-year old Toronto entrepreneur created Sprouter to combat her own feelings of isolation. The Twitter-like social network lets small business owners connect, network, and advise one another. At last count, the site had 15,000 users.

Vikas Reddy and Jeffery Powers

 

Occipital's founders created Redlaser, the highly popular iPhone barcode-scanning app, which they recently sold to eBay. They used the proceeds from the deal to hire three engineers who are now working on developing more cool products. The Boulder, Colorado, start-up, which was backed by the incubator TechStars, will post $2.5 million in revenue this year. Reddy is 26, and Powers is 27.

Ellen Gustafson and Lauren Bush

 

FEED Projects mixes style with a strong social mission. Profits from the New York City company's collection of canvas bags – some designs are simple, others are more ornate – are donated to fight hunger. With sales this year of $1.5 million, FEED has provided 56 million meals to children worldwide. Gustafson just turned 30. Bush, 26, is the niece and granddaughter of the former presidents.

Sachin Agarwal and Garry Tan

 

Making blogging as simple as sending an e-mail is the goal at Posterous, a San Francisco start-up. The company developed technology by which users can automatically create a Web page when they send a post, a picture, or a video to [email protected]. The business has raised more than $5 million, and is backed by Y Combinator, the prestigious incubator. Agarwal just turned 30; Tan is 29.

View complete list here.

[via Inc]