Month: November 2008

What marketing opportunities have been created by the recent global financial meltdown?

Developing new products and services is hard and most fail. What customers want (and are prepared to pay for) may have changed significantly. These discontinuities provide exciting opportunities for companies…

Steven Todd, an Associate Director of Mindsheet, recently wrote this article for the Saïd Business School, Oxford University where he is an Associate Fellow.

“What marketing opportunities have been created by the recent global financial meltdown?

Developing new products and services is hard and most fail. The cost of these failures to US companies alone is estimated to be over $100 billion per year. The recent global financial meltdown has had a profound impact on many markets. Businesses and individual consumers are reducing their budgets and becoming increasingly cautious about spending money. But more importantly, what customers want (and are prepared to pay for) may have changed significantly.

These discontinuities provide exciting opportunities for companies who are prepared to take a fresh look at what customers really want. Leading companies, such as Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson and Microsoft, have moved beyond traditional approaches to customer-driven innovation and instead focus on outcomes – the metrics that customers use to measure success when executing the jobs, tasks or activities they are trying to get done.

To exploit these opportunities, companies need to act fast and do three things. First, adopt an outcome-based approach to understand what value really means to their customers today. Second, use this insight to reposition current offerings and develop sales material and tools that focus on outcomes. Finally, review their pipeline of development projects and cancel or redirect projects that don’t deliver measurable improvements in customer outcomes.”

Thank you to Steven for allowing us to share this article with you.

To find out more about the outcome based innovation model, read our Innovation Lens report for a full insight.

Mind Mapping to Project Plans in 30 mins

How do you go about starting a project plan? Getting the myriad of information into some form of comprehensive plan can seem like a bit of mountain to climb at first. A perfect solution to jump start your project plans is the use of software tools incorporating the powerful Mind Mapping process.

A quick question …how do you go about starting a project plan?

Getting the myriad of information into some form of comprehensive plan can seem like a bit of mountain to climb at first. A perfect solution to jump start your project plans is the use of software tools incorporating the powerful Mind Mapping process. I have now used mind mapping software for the last eight years, such as MindGenius and Open Mind and cannot imagine project planning without them!

The Mind Mapping technique pioneered by Tony and Barry Buzan has becoming increasingly popular. It is particularly suitable for business because it helps you organise complex information which in turn inspires the creation of more ideas and concepts. Once any information is captured in Mind Map form then it also tends to stick in your memory because of the way that you intuitively visualise the map in your mind’s eye. These attributes have lead to the widespread adoption of Mind Mapping for ideas generation, organisation and note taking.

The Mind Mapping Book by Tony Buzan demonstrates how to create Mind Maps and gives many examples of beautiful maps that have been created for a variety of different applications. It is no surprise that the content of these maps should be strongly etched in your memory after the huge artistic effort that has been expended during the map’s creation.

However, what about Mind Maps for mere mortals with little artistic ability or for that matter time! – Cue software programs that enables you to create Mind Maps at breakneck speed and with no artistic talent. More and more executives are discovering how useful it can be.

Mind mapping is about getting information into your head in a way that makes it stick. It allows you to work smarter, quicker and cheaper. You can get stuff out of your head on demand. It’s a way ofextracting information and then recognising it and using it in a way which allows you to understand and communicate better.

Mind Map

The majority of mind mapping packages integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Office and are a boon for project managers. The picture above shows the results of a quick fire workpackage brainstorm with members of the project team. The project’s central theme is represented in the middle of the map and then ideas radiate outwards by association. Don’t worry about mistakes or ideas going to the wrong place, it’s easy to sort out afterwards with the drag and drop interface.

Next you can view your Project Mind Map as a work breakdown chart by a single click. Now consider project risk and augment the chart with additional activities to properly manage the risk.

When you are satisfied with the work breakdown, then start adding resources and timing to the activities straight from your MS Outlook address book or your company directory or send activities to Outlook as To-do items. Another button click and the entire map is transferred to MS Project where it can be viewed as a network diagram or a gantt chart.

Likewise the map can be transferred to MS Word or Powerpoint for documentation and presentation.

So if you haven’t already tried out the many benefits of Mind Mapping software especially in relation to project planning, go online today and try one of the many trial Mind Mapping software packages out there and let me know what you think!

Implementing Business Strategy with Virtual R&D teams

I don’t know if outsourcing is something you have undertaken recently or are contemplating for your business? Or, on the flipside, are you or have you been a specialist contractor or part of an outsourcing team offering your skills to companies?

I don’t know if outsourcing is something you have undertaken recently or are contemplating for your business?  Or, on the flipside, are you or have you been a specialist contractor or part of an outsourcing team offering your skills to companies?

I’m guessing you’ve probably answered yes to one of those questions but, I wonder, have you ever been involved in R&D outsourcing?

Outsourcing has been on the increase over the last 30 years, driven by the difficulty of maintaining world-class standards across all aspects of business activity and a desire to reduce costs.  It started with the outsourcing of support activities and then moved on to mainstream activities such as manufacturing, distribution and customer service.  Non-technology companies have often outsourced product development, but for technology companies this activity has remained largely in-house.

Increasingly though, technology companies are experimenting with development outsourcing strategies.  The need for R&D teams to develop differentiated products and services to meet the market needs coupled with the need to stay abreast of all technology developments and new competitive threats has meant R&D outsourcing has become more and more attractive.

If R&D outsourcing is something that is, or has, affected you, I hope you may be interested in my joint paper

“Implementing business strategy with virtual R&D teams“.

(I presented the paper along with my colleague David Allen at the IEEE Engineering Management Conference in Washington).

In the paper, we examine the issues surrounding R&D outsourcing and, most importantly, how to mitigate them through the introduction of the right strategic and tactical management processes.

To learn more about R&D outsourcing and read the paper click here.

Fast and lower cost ways to protect your inventions

Have you managed to come up with a good idea recently that addresses a strong need in an attractive market? Right from idea inception you should be taking measures to create barriers that prevent competitors from exploiting your efforts. Some form of IP protection and search should be conducted as soon as possible.
Find out how.

Have you managed to come up with a good idea recently that addresses a strong need in an attractive market? Hopefully you’re on to a winner, you just need to get your resources in place ready to develop and launch your product successfully. Sounds good doesn’t it but expect other people to copy your idea as soon as the potential is proven. Equally, it could be that you have unwittingly copied someone else’s idea. Downstream lawsuits, after you have developed and launched your product could be very costly indeed.

Right from idea inception you should be taking measures to create barriers that prevent competitors from exploiting your efforts. Whilst secrecy can serve as the main tool for protecting your idea during the early stages of development, some form of IP protection and search should still be conducted as soon as possible.

The right blend of IP protection, whether patents, trade marks, copyright and / or designs will very much depend on the nature of your invention. However it can be a long and costly process and can impede the success of your idea if you don’t approach it in the right manner.

Here’s a brief guide to some fast ways to protect your IP and keep down your costs without compromising your market position.

 Before we get onto this, first a few disclaimers:

1)            We are not patent attorneys.

2)            You should always seek legal advice.

Now we have got that out of the way, I have got 15 patents and do know what I’m talking about.

Initially, undertake online research to establish whether any prior art (existing work in the public domain) exists. Useful references include:

Another useful article on how to search for Patents can be found on the Mindsheet R&D business exchange at:

www.mindsheet.net/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=91

Again, the article indexes many more useful internet resources.

Having satisfied yourself that your idea is unique the next step is to capture the embodiment of your invention. Useful headings for writing up a patent invention are:

  1. Invention Title
  2. Inventors (also identify lead inventor)
  3. Summary of invention
  4. Previous solutions – known prior art
  5. Novelty and uniqueness
  6. Detailed description of the invention
  7. Key advantages of the invention
    • Remember to take an outcome approach for identifying key advantages – concentrate on innovation hotspots
    • Commercial advantages
    • Technical advantages

Now you’re ready to see a patent agent. If this is your first time with a patent firm and you have prepared the above information, then you can expect a consultation for nothing prior to appointing the firm as they make their pitch. Before the fee clock starts ticking carry out as much of the groundwork as you can.

Under their direction, I tend to prepare the write-up of the patent and any drawings, but I always leave the development of the claims to the patent attorney. This is the most critical part of the patent, it is what creates the broadest monopoly for your invention and it is what the lawyers will fight over in court if there are any disputes. Therefore, use the patent attorney and take advantage of their legal indemnity cover if things go wrong. 

Figure 1: Doing your own drawings and drafting the main body of the patent can save £3000 in fees, but leave the claims to the experts

Typically, dividing the work up in this way saves about £3000 in fees and takes 1-2 months off the patent drafting time, (providing that you are prompt with your side of the preparation).

What happens next? Well the patent agent will file your patent which then creates the priority date (the date from when the patent counts). In the UK system you then have 12 months before publication to get the claims right and to request a search before publication. There will be further fees involved for the examination and also for any extra work that the patent attorney has to undertake depending on the results of the search and examination, see UK Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO). www.ipo.gov.uk for useful advice and a full description of the process.

You can see an example of one of my patents at:

http://v3.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=GB&NR=2431632A&KC=A&FT=D&date=20070502&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_GB