2009 A Year of Focused Innovation
Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 03:25AM Here we are not more than 15 days into the new year and there hasn’t been a dull minute yet. News headlines will either cause you to panic, or sigh in relief because your nearest competitor has the same issues. All of us will go through some change, some good, some bad. Personally, in the end I like change as it’s what caused me to end up here, and will define where I will be tomorrow. I don’t believe we can always control change, but we can help focus it’s results.
As 2008 came to a close, so did the era of build-it and hope that someone will eventually use it. All the big guys, including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to name a few have products that they run or sell that never got traction. Google yesterday announced shutting down of several of theirs including Google Video. I expect this to be the first of several we see from products/services that either just didn’t make it, or overlap other more popular offerings. These changes all leads towards more focused innovation.
Layoffs have been on the rise since August of last year. TechCrunch even has created a layoff tracker to visualize the layoffs as they occur. You can see their tracker here. Layoffs and refocusing of staff is all part of the process necessary. Companies that are in dire straights layoff because they have to. Companies like Google, and other solvent companies layoff to gain focus on core objectives. Even Microsoft has been broadly rumored to be considering some level of reduction. In good times, such actions would be viewed as a weakness, but in reality I believe keeping focus should be an ongoing process at any company. Over the last few years strong companies have been able to be lazy about keeping the focus and have failed to prune or adjust on the fly. With the tightening economy not only do companies feel it’s prudent to catch up, investors are demanding it. These layoffs can help fuel the innovation as good strong people enter the market many will choose to give their ideas a try. This will cause many new businesses will be born and a few that focus on innovation will thrive. For companies like Google and Microsoft they will use these layoffs and reorganizations of staff to focus more on their core innovations. I have no doubt that the major players that still have $20+ billion in the bank will be looking to cash in by innovating now.
2009 is a year that indecision by company management will lead to near term destruction and failure. Companies like Yahoo that can’t decide if they are for sale, or have other clear signs of management indecision are doomed to fail if they don’t focus. CEO’s like Bartz who just took the helm at Yahoo are on a short leash to make concise decisions and to rally their employees to focus on their core innovations.
If your not excited yet about focused innovation in 2009, you can be thrilled that your not in the marketing department. Marketing of products in 2009 is going to be a challenge. With companies looking for every opportunity to reduce costs marketing messages will have to focus on that as well as how what their selling is one of the companies “focused innovation” areas and not a dead end product that is about to be killed. For technology buyers we will have to do our best to look thru the marketing spin to uncover if a product or service is really viable long term. Speaking of Spin, SalesForce.com seems to have done a good job here spinning why their canceling their "paid event” and going to a “free” event. Expect to see more creative spin as companies try one message and realize it doesn’t work. Events like this that are trying to brain wash attendees on products will have to be free to get any attention. If your responsible for these type of events, think small bite size exposure that lets people spend as little time as possible away from what their company has decided is their focused innovation. People will be able to justify a few hours, but not a few days. But most importantly, if we are going to focus on innovation in 2009 we can’t, I repeat can’t stop learning. In fact now is the time to spend some extra time and catch up on one or two technologies you have fallen behind on.
In some ways all the cloud offerings have come just in time, they help lower the cost of entry to many innovations. For new startups these can be leveraged to quickly determine if an idea has wings. Microsoft towards the end of the year launched a program called BizSpark to make their software available to startups at no cost. Like the cloud this reduces the barriers of entry for new startups and I believe will help create more innovation. I’d love to see other large players commit to do similar offerings.
Considering a new administration is about to be installed in Washington DC, I wouldn’t be complete without a call to action for the new president. I don’t know about you, but I’m dead tired of hearing about bailouts. I want to hear about how the government is encouraging and making innovation happen. If I was called today and asked my recommendation, I would recommend the creation of a “FIP” ( figured it wouldn’t fly unless I had an a 3 or 4 letter abbreviation like TARP!) FIP would be a Focused Innovation program to encourage and accelerate innovation. The program would be funded with $20 billion and provide $100,000 grants to companies that submit a short form business plan (2 page). The program would be spread out across the United States to spark innovation in each state. I would recommend Guy Kawasaki as the Innovation Czar to put in place a process to handle the program. The time has come to stop bailing out and to start pushing forward, to continue giving money to large failing companies is no longer viable.
If you made it this far, you must too believe that 2009 will be the year of focused innovation. In the end, I believe you have two choices. You can sit still do nothing and just worry when you will be the next to get laid off, or you can decide change is good and your going to make a difference. I’m choosing the later and hope some of you join me!
Reader Comments (2)
If you can't grow, what are you worth? Business is about allocating resources to growth opportunities, and layoffs indicate you can't grow. Layoffs are an admission of no growth plans, and that means you are heading straight into the Swamp. Read more at http://www.thephoenixprinciple.com
With news like this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/business/economy/27jobcuts.html?
and a peek at the stock market it would be easy to go into the hibernation mode. Those who can resist the clarion call to hide will make a killing in new markets and new people. Invest in change is the mantra for me.