Dear Creative friends,
Hello again.
Please send me any comments
or suggestions that you have.
Pleasant reading,
Amir
In this issue:
(a) Announcements
(b) Creative ideas
for...
(c) Creative tool - Adding a Dimension
(d) New on Best100ideas.com
(e) Recommendation of the month
(a) Innovation and Economic Crisis
Recent economic events indicate a possible difficult period for US and world economies. These developments are bound to effect many of our future business activities even if we are not directly related to the issues involved.
Innovation is normally seen as a driver of business growth at times of success. However, at such times, innovation may also be used as a way to find solutions for troubled times - for achieving More for Less.
I wish you all success in whatever you do, and hope to contribute a bit to your creative thinking.
yours
truly,
Amir
(b)
Creative Ideas for Service Innovation
In today's business world, we may see more and more service businesses developed and integrated into the modern economy. In the past, if you provided a service, you could expect competition from similar local service providers. Today, with the effects of globalization and the Internet, you may no longer rely on your local connections and on your exclusivity. If you do so - you may soon find that your clients have turned to far-away service providers, who simply offer a better deal than you can.
What you must do in order to survive is innovate and re-invent your business. The strategic implications of service innovation are beyond the scope of this newsletter. However, I will offer some directions you may start with.
- Turn it Into A Product: A service is usually dependant on a service provider - a person that has to actually be there or communicate with the client in order to provide the value. This is why a major expense in a services business is wages, which in turn limits growth possibilities and earnings. There are now many ways for you to overcome this basic obstacle by turning at least some parts of your service into a product. This requires some creative and practical thinking but some directions may be to do it by packing your the knowledge of your service into a format - a book, an e-book, a website, etc. Then you may sell your knowledge to people that otherwise would never have heard of you. This is exactly what I have done with the 100 Creative Presentation Ideas e-book.
- Link Payment and Result: This innovation idea is based on the innovation tool described in the following section. Usually, you would price a service according to the hours and quality of what the client gets. It is rare to find a service that guarantees a result and bases it pricing on it. Changing you pricing and even payment policy and determining the price the client pays according to what they actually got is a revolutionary approach. For instance - a lawyer would only ask for payment if the client was acquitted, a doctor would be paid if the patient recovered quickly (by the way - in traditional chinese medicine, medicine men would get paid as long as people remained healthy!). This would result in many meaningful changes - your employees would have to be very professional and successful in order to bring results, clients would perceive you as an expert as you are willing to "risk" not being paid if you are not successful. This would allow you to ask for a premium price that would balance the rare times that you would fail and thus won't get paid.
- Offer Your Service to Non-Conventional Groups: By non-conventional I refer to those who would not normally use your service. If you are a bar, open a fun soft drink bar next door for youths and kids that are not allow to drink alcohol.
- Group Separate Clients Together: As a service provider, you may encounter clients that are too small to order a full service from you, or are unwilling to take a big risk all by themselves. You may overcome this obstacle by creating groups of clients that otherwise have no knowledge of each other's similar needs and offer them a solution as a group.
(c) Creative Tool: Adding a Dimension
Adding a Dimension is one of the Systematic Inventive Thinking (SIT) technique usually used for New Product Innovation. It is a bit more complex than systematic innovation other tools, but offers a very powerful method for coming up with new product and service innovation ideas.
Here are the basic steps for using Adding a Dimension as an innovation tool, along with an illustrative service innovation example - of a photo shop service.
- Produce Variables List: you begin by producing a list of the product or service variables or attributes, and variables of it environment or related things.
Example: location of the shop, size of the shop, name of the business, name of the owner, types of photography service offered, price of services, languages spoken, speed of photo development, types of paper for photo printing ....etc. Features of the environment and related things: age of client, profession of client, name of client, gender of client, time of day, month of year, weather conditions ...etc.
- Create New Variable Links: in this stage you choose pairs of variables and create a link or relation between them that did not exist beforehand. The new link could be between two variables of the product or service itself, or between a variable of the product/service and a variable of the environment.
Examples:
A. Link time of day and price of service - this might be made by offering a certain "Happy Hour" for reduced price of certain services. If, for instance, the business has a rush-hour of customers in the morning and afternoon hours, it could offer a 30% discount for clients choosing to switch to noon.
B. Link age of client and type of service offered. You could offer special services for kids on one hand or for elderly people on the other hand.
C. Link name of business (as well as types of services) and profession of the clients. If you are in a business area and there are 2-3 types of professionals that are working in the area, you could offer a service that caters for the needs of these professions and name that service or even the shop itself so that it reflects the special benefits offered to those professionals. For instance - "Medical Pro Photo Services" or "The Lawyers Photo shop".
Organizations and individuals seeking online expert advice on innovation and creativity may now contact me directly through the BitWine Online Coaching Network. The online advice may be used for any need related to creativity and innovation. And there's a Special offer for those who will use the service by the end of April 2008 - if you use my online expert services for 1 hour, you will receive a free copy of the 100 Creative Presentation Ideas e-book. If you use the expert advice for more than 3 hours, you will get a license to use 20 copies of the e-book.
To use my online innovation expert advice on BitWine: Amir Elion - Expert Innovation Advice Online
The Go2Web2.0 Blog is THE place to keep up to date about Web 2.0 Innovations and new websites. It includes a rich coverage of all the major websites and services related to the Web 2.0 “trend”. The blog is written by Orli Yakuel, and has made her an important figure and critic of Web 2.0 websites. It is written in a fresh personal style, and yet includes thorough and valuable information regarding the issues it covers. If your are into Internet and Web 2.0 innovation - this is a MUST READ blog. Also check out the Go2Web2.0 - Complete Web 2.0 Directory to check out the ever-growing scene of Web 2.0 services.
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