It is not possible to write a blog about inspirational stuff around innovation & marketing and not talk about Seth Godin (similarly, you cannot call yourself a marketeer and never have heard of Seth Godin either). Most probably you have all heard about or read his book "The Purple Cow", what Seth is calling the 6th P in the marketing mix. It is about why mass marketing is dead and that you have to be remarkable nowadays to survive. Doing something that stands out. Don't be boring. Safe is risky. Being very good is bad, you have to be excellent.
Another great quote I saw in a presentation flips it around: “Advertising is the price companies pay for being unoriginal” by Yves Behar.
Seth is also very passionate about spreading your remarkable idea, by telling it to the sneezers; the innovators and early adopters, who want to be remarkable, look for remarkable things and who will be telling their friends about it.
There is a nice clip on TEDtalks where Seth very inspiringly talks about The Purple Cow, nice to refresh all of our memories once in a while: Seth Godin on sliced bread
While searching for inspiring video's I came accross this talk from Seth Godin on the topic "this is broken" - about organizations/people offering customer experiences that do not work. Here also a link to the blog with more great examples Blog: This is broken
During the past years I have been leading marketing and product management teams with a continuous drive to improve performance and develop the department to highly performing teams. One consistent factor in these roles have been the search together with the teams what our mission and role is in the organization.
That is how I found an inspiring document with a great view of the added value of Product Management or "How a market-driven focus leads companies to build products people want to buy".
I have always believed that a product manager is the "CEO of the product" and that the role of PM is a management role not an operational sales support or marketing communication role.
In my efforts to define the most optimal marketing organization in the medical device industry, on element always stood out and that is the fact that it is impossible to integrate all aspects of product management - strategic, application, technical, commercial and marketing communication - into one person. There should either be sufficient expert support roles or it might be an idea to split the PM job as suggested in the article:
Strategic Role of Product Management
In a previous blog I mentioned that predicable innovation is not rocketscience. Here is a link to a presentation that has some inspiring content on that topic:
- An idea-first approach leads to failure in 70 - 90 percent of the time
- The truth is when it comes to innovation: voice of the customer practice does not work
- Companies do not know how to listen to customers
- Markets consist of people who are trying to get a job done…the goal of innovation is help customers get a job done better
- Products come and go - the job is the stable, long-term focal point around which value creation should be centered
Yes, the presentation is a bit commercial but anyway providing some insights.
The Secrets to Predictable Innovation
