Atlassian What would the world have been without Atlassian? It is not that they presented thought leadership on either wiki’s or issue management. Yet, they solve an old problem in such a fresh manner that collaboration and issue management become enjoyable. Are you looking to create and manage knowledge for your organization? In Confluence and JIRA, you will find something that you’ll be happy to pay for. Email, RIP!

Riverbed Why didn’t anybody do this before? They make data backup’s and syncs make so simple that you’d kick yourself hard for not doing this before them. They have the audacity to connect a simple concept with a humongous market and save bandwidth, processing and countless hours of time. If you think of start-up’s, think of Riverbed as an example of how deep industry knowledge is as good as outsider’s perspectives.

37Signals Project management is never the same. Without BaseCamp and Campfire, we’d still be stuck in the stone ages trying to create project schedule on MS Project. Again, one of the service that takes collaboration to a higher but easier level. And anybody will be happy to keep paying them for the wonderful things they do.

SalesForce There is never enough to say about how SalesForce has revolutionized the way CRM happens today. You might not like their start-up nature converting to an Oracle like scary giant, but you’ve got to admit that there’s no better way to manage your CRM.

To say that the efforts of the music industry towards reducing piracy were misguided is no overstatement. Much like every successful engineering project, success lies in the design of the solution rather than imposing legal restrictions and spending a fortune to attempt their enforcement. With the amount of cash the industry had, the failure of the industry to innovate was stupid but typical of incumbents fate. However, what is even more amazing is the restrictions placed on entrepreneurs who are trying to innovate the way music is consumed – with obvious and humongous benefits for the industry. To put this in perspective, just imagine having to pay Google some money for every search you performed. How about a $50 monthly package? Sound ridiculous, doesn’t it?! No doubt, such parallels are not easy to come by to those who hold the reins of the industry.

Advertisement based models which reduce or eliminate the cost of the users have shown a lot of promise. Services, such as Pandora, which have what I consider less than a perfect business model have been growing with such pace that the potential of a better business model would easily be in billions of dollars. Much of this innovation must be sourced from the users – but little research has been done on what the users really want from their music experience. Perhaps, even parts of what is really required are spread across different start-up’s today. We don’t need just social networking based on media, neither do we need to listen only to songs with similar music – throw me some variety and throw some choice! User experience is the king.

The future is undoubtedly in the mobile. While phones that can run the smart connected apps of today form a limited percentage of the mobile phone market, the segment is growing rapidly. As data costs reduce and faster technologies come up in emerging markets like India, the hurdle that stands in the way – the mobile service providers – will soon be less relevant. Once that layer of the ecosystem stops acting bossy, a few record labels with outward thinking management can easily change the face of the industry and their bank accounts. Till then, mobile service providers will continue to spend millions of dollars asking people to dial a number to listen to songs! Is user experience only understood by Apple!? The time is now, services like Pandora and Last.fm are already up there and maturing. Let us see how soon will they innovate or die in the face of smarter business models.

A typical retail store is often flooded with people who are just “checking out” things. What can a store do to maximize it’s energies towards people who have a genuine interest in buying your product? The obvious answer is: find out who are the people who are really interested to buy something similar to what you have on offer. For decades, organizations have focused a disproportionate amount towards impulse purchases. While that may be a good strategy for a street side ice cream vendor or a coffee brewer, sellers of digital cameras, expensive apparel, and other products with high level of customer cognition in the decision making process, are erroneous in such an approach. Typically, at the cost of the customer group which is likely to produce greater output for the marketer’s buck.

Consider Mr. X, a student who has researched for weeks for his next laptop purchase before finalizing on a model from a specific brand. When he visits the store of one retailer, he finds everybody in the sales team busy and unwilling to attend to him, even as they explain every short piece of detail to another customer who is older and looks wealthier. After waiting for some time, the student departs for another store for the same purchase. And the older customer ends up not purchasing from that brand as another brand had another charming sales person who could convince him better. The student didn’t need to take extensive time of the store by requesting for explanations of the features. He probably understood them better than the sales person. But the store lost a customer who offered a better ROI for the store’s time.

It is then very important for the stores to use more effective criteria to distribute its resources and therefore necessary to invest a larger amount to find out about the actual decision making process of potential customers. One way to do this by identifying touch points. With reference to the previous example, a serious customer purchasing an expensive laptop would enquire about the price of the item on the phone before arriving at the store. This is the place where you should acquire the customer with your friendly service and reasonable prices. Gone are the days where businesses can afford to rely on impulse purchases and assume customers to be ignorant. Isn’t it time to re look at the decision making process of your consumers?

It roared, it blazed, my heartbeat raised

Was it a blast or a jet crash next to my place

Sweating and scared, I couldn’t make

As an army of them went on a rage

I rolled up in my blanket curious as a child

Like scared by a beast in the wild

I stayed still till it turned mild

And peeked out in the dark of the night

Only to witness a cloud fight

Why are they so important?  Because these interactions often define (a) the level of awareness and (b) the attitude of customers towards your brand, both of which are of utmost importance in the first stage of your marketing effort. And without strategic management of touchpoints, it likely that subsequent stages such as ‘creation of buying situation’ are far less successful.

If you’re a start up, one of the most effective way of marketing yourself is to concentrate on these touchpoints. Here’s how:

1. Start with the pre-interaction touchpoints. One of the most challenging tasks of a startup is to build credibility in its brand name. And since credibility is a kind of thing that is better built by others than yourself, some of the pre-interaction touch points (where you are not directly involved) could prove to be especially useful. Try focusing on:

(a) word of mouth communication : everyone is trying to be the smartest person on the street (/office/cubicle). If somebody tells you that a really cool product can do your task in half the time with doubly better results, you’re not going to be left behind in the race to get that product. Remember how Gmail got its popularity?

(b) limited exposure : a short or limited exposure to your product is beneficial in a variety of ways. Firstly, being limited or scarce allows a product to be perceived as more valuable and exclusive. Secondly, too long an exposure may not be worth the time of your customer or maybe simply disregarded as a marketing gimmick. Thirdly, a short exposure increases curiosity of your prospective customer to learn about your product. What can be a more cost effective way of explaining your product than the customers going to your website to find more about it!?

c) positive PR : compared to word of mouth, PR could help reach wider audiences and also provide similar credibility. Remember ‘limited exposure’ when deciding on your PR materials as journalists may be too keen to come out with a premature evaluation of your product. Don’t let them get their hands dirty on all the features of your product. Show it slowly, in bits and parts.

d) limit it : just like your product exposure needs to be short, so do your initial users of a product. Anything that is freely available has much less perceived value when compared to things which are scarce. This always works: think of diamonds, gmail or even the iPhone. Depending upon your product, either increase the price or limit the quantity. Let them crave for it.

2. Follow it up with On – Interaction touchpoints. Go do this exercise: go to the website of Hyundai motors and then go to the website of Mercedes Benz. What is the difference that you notice? Mercedes Benz’s website appears to be more premium and sophisticated. A website is an on – interaction touchpoint. And like other on – interaction touchpoints, it could be a deal maker or deal breaker. If your brand has done a fantastic job with pre interaction touchpoints but fails to deliver on – interaction, it leaves prospective customers in a rather disoriented state and thus leaving your brand very vulnerable to being disregarded as another effort to create hype.

So stick to your brand values which may be something like customer service, reliability, value for money and so on. Whatever your brand values maybe, on- interaction touch points are the opportunities to nail these values together with your brand name. If your brand help your customers bolster their self esteem, give them the treatment that raises their self esteem – make them feel like they are the smartest people to decide on your brand and the most priviliged ones to get a chance to interact. Owners of Vaio’s, Apple’s, Mercedes and even electric cars are happy to buy the respective brands because of this.

3. Post Interaction for Re-Interactions and New Interactions. The post interaction experience of a customer is beneficial in many regards. Firstly, and rather obviously, it converts them from just customers to loyal customers, which most possibly explains why people buy an i-pod, buy a new version of an i-pod a year later and even buy an i-phone alongside. The customer service and the positive feelings generated by being recognized for owning a product are clearly pivotal in creating repeat purchases. But great post interaction experiences are more beneficial than that. Word of mouth from your existing customers acts as a touch point for your new interactions which makes it greatly important to keep the customer pleased even after the purchase has been completed. No wonder Maxtor was happy to take back my external hard drive to replace it with another one when it got spoilt.

One day, innocence shall be hailed

One day, happiness will spread

One day, differences shall shred

One day, love will surround

One day, kindness shall be around

One day, we will be enlightened 

One day, nobody shall frighten

One day, there will be harmony

One day, we shall hear no cacophony

One day, we will do our prayers

One day, we shan’t care about those chairs

One day, character will count

One day, we will stand on moral grounds

One day, god will be in people

One day, the world shall be regal

That day, I may not see

But I will hear, for smiles shall set free

And fly like birds with their chee chee’s

Right to my ears, in the heaven’s blissees

1. Some of the best ideas are often found by start-ups which are financially strained to fully realize the potential of an idea even in their home nation. To expand to a new location might be spreading yourself too thin to gain a competitive advantage in any of the locations of your operation. By the time the firms are financially rich, the idea’s corresponding product / service is already reaching the maturity stage which is enough time for other firms to get ‘inspired’. 

2. New products and services are often built arond the specific needs of  clients / customers / consumers of the home country of the originator of the idea. This is probably because of the fact that the market research is primarily focused in the home country. Hence, a lot of new products are built to be too specific to the market they originate in which implies the task of customizing the products results in a greater inertia than for a standardized product.

3. People / Companies often ignore the need of patenting their products / services in countries of great potential due to the lack of industry knowledge in these countries amongst the founder / management.

These and various other reasons often lead various start ups in the ‘other’ countries to get ‘inspired’ from some of the ideas, customize the products according to local demands and play the game of risk and return backed on confidence arising from the originating firm’s success.

Is this a good process? I’d guess so. It allows the whole world to see the future products much more quickly than otherwise, making the world a more globalized place to live in. Will the originating company / team like this? Depends on whether they are after money(like netjets) or about the spread of an idea (like ideas of linux).

Consider Riverbed Technologies, a San Franscisco based start up which specializes in reducing data transfer times (through compression, a few special algorithms and some really obvious things) which subsequently helps organizations save huge amounts of bandwidth and processing costs. What would be the probability of a a person from an unrelated industry where such problems didn’t exist to to think of ideas in finding solutions for these problems? Definetly much lesser than compared to a person who wastes a few hours of his day everyday trying to backup data or the management of a company which is required to heavily invest in buying greater bandwidth and more processing power. 

My understanding is that organizations need to do invest a far greater amount to promote internal innovation. The challenge of course remains with finding the optimium between ‘running existing processes efficiently’ and ‘developing new processes / technologies’. And the answer lies in the far sightedness of your thinking.