Tag Archives: seth godin

From the Industrial Age to the Connection Age

in entrepreneurship, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy

This is a guest post by my friend and fellow Generalist, Arnold Beekes.

WTF! What is happening?

It is clear that we are in a period of time, which is called ‘transition’, the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another. We are coming out of the Industrial Age (characterized by efficiency, repetition and thus standardization – building a ‘system of sameness’ in every aspect of life) into a new age, which some people call the Information Age. I am not sure about that name, Information Age, as I see information as, the enabler, rather than the purpose and intention in itself. I would like to call it the Age of Connection (characterized by creation, contribution and thus participation – building a ‘universe of uniqueness’), to be truly connected with ourselves, with others, animals and with nature.

But we are not there yet; we are really in this no man’s land, this limbo.…

Innovation Book Review: Disruption Revolution

in Innovation

disruption revolutionDiversity breeds innovation, and as I stated a few weeks ago when I shared with you a list of 10 books about innovation that I recommend you read, it is best for you to look far and wide about the type of content that you read.

Right now, the hunger for anything innovation is huge. There are enough sources that it is hard to decide what to follow and what not to read! In the last few months I’ve read material from other authors that just isn’t innovative. It’s just repackaging.

How many more books about innovation does the world need?…

Are you willing to abandon the past to become something else?

in Creativity, Innovation

“Art is what we’re doing when we do our best work.” – Seth Godin

Here’s a different angle on things, creation from a musical artist’s point of view.

If you don’t know anything about Linkin Park don’t worry, just take my word for it that these guys are artists in the true sense of the word. They’re not afraid to mix things up, to push their music in a different direction, to become something else entirely.

That’s where their newest album, One Thousand Suns, comes in. Released this week, the album is completely different than their previous work:

Linkin Park‘s new A Thousand Suns album is a lot of things, most of which have nothing to do with their previous (mega-selling) efforts. By their own admission, the band spent nearly two years attempting to leave their past behind. To that end, it’s not a stretch to say they succeeded. The album, which hit stores Tuesday (September 14), is the band’s most divisive. But there’s one thing seemingly everyone can agree on: From this point forward, Linkin Park will never be the same band again. And though Suns represents the band at a crossroads, that doesn’t mean they abandoned everything that got them to this point. Quite the opposite, in fact. They’ve just taken the old and reworked it through the prism of the new.

In the music industry, moving in a different direction or trying to reinvent yourself is seen as a big risk because an artist is ‘abandoning’ what worked for him/her before. Sound familiar?

Most organizations have an ‘unwillingness’ to go in a different direction, they’ll keep on doing what’s always worked and what works for everyone else. The act of ‘innovating’ is to create something new, to go in a different direction, to see anew. So where’s the gap?

If you watch the intro video to the ‘making of’ their new album below, you’ll notice the following statements:

“Willingness to go with something that’s weird and put yourself behind that.”

“We wanted to work on something that’s different than how we’ve done things historically.”

“As long as the elements are really different, that’s making it interesting.”

I think the key word in there is ‘willingness’ because if you don’t have the desire to be innovative (as many organization clearly don’t), then you have to be willing to try. To take a leap into the unknown, to leave familiar shores behind in search of new ones, to reinvent yourself. Gary Hamel said it best:

“The single biggest reason companies fail is they over invest in what is, as opposed to what might be.” — Gary Hamel

Abandon the past and become something else. This is what great artists do and also what great organizations do.


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Must read innovation stories of the week: creating sustainable competitive advantage

in Must reads of the week

How do you win in the marketplace? Seth Godin argues that creating a sustainable competitive advantage can take many forms: own something that’s hard to copy, creating a brand, creating a network where most of the power rests on you, creating switching costs and building a culture that’s innovative.

Why Brands in Public doesn’t suck…for Seth Godin

in Strategy
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The blogosphere is buzzing after Seth Godin’s announcement of his newest initiative, , which intends on becoming a ‘social signals aggregator’ for BIG brands.

Some Where the Heart Is rip , other’s want to and I actually think this is a good move by Seth.

If it wasn’t him somebody else would’ve figured out a more open approach to aggregating ‘social signals’ for brands and make it completely available for the world to see, this isn’t bad because it promotes openness.

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Guess Who dvdrip Although this seems like extortion to some think about it this way if he asked brands for their input first, which any smart person would do, and they saw some value in it then that’s enough of a good reason for Seth to create Brands in Public and why it’s up.

I don’t think he just created the pages without asking for their ‘permission’ first.

Remember, there is a NEED for this as a BIG brand you can only be in so many places plus $400 bucks is peanuts for them.

The BIG deal is his perceived aggressive approach, which is textbook Microsoft strategy. Brands can choose to buy, if not it’s still open for everyone to see including competitors. Great!

This is good business strategy, it’s not beautiful but it’s good strategy nonetheless.

Another thing that is being overlooked is the fact that if the brand doesn’t want to pay up it still gets to see where the mentions are coming from, it’s basically making some ‘listening’ work easy for them all they have to do is just engage that audience at that specific place.

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Also let’s consider that the internet is in desperate need of a ventures that actually make money from something other than advertising, in that sense this is going to be very interesting.

 

The real question is, does this really create value for the brand?

Although brands can use tools to do this for free, it does make the monitoring a little easier. On that note this could end up just becoming a short term experiment, smart brands (especially the one’s who know him) will happily (read happy) shell out $400 bucks for a few months to see how it works out for them.

Guess we’ll just have to wait and hear from the brands themselves.

 

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If you’re a brand manager at one of these BIG brands I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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