Trends and innovation by Roland Bel
This event was host by the AEMBA,
one of the programs of KEDGE Business School. The speaker of the conference
called Roland Bel reached the position of Executive Manager and Vice President
in many companies. He became passionate about Asia and its development in terms
of innovations. It was nice hearing this French speaker talking about
innovations in the world and in China. If you were there you could felt his
passion.
The event was split up into two parts. The first one concerned misconceptions of Innovation (in China) and the second one dealt with the different ways to improve a company regarding its innovations.
Misconception of innovation:
1) There are not any innovation in China: WRONG
Here are some interesting figures:
R&D intensity has grown by more than 50% in the country since 2000,
China has more than doubled its number of researchers since 2000,
China’s share of scientific publications has quadrupled since 2000,
China’s patent has doubled BUT they are not focused on innovation for tomorrow,
Three Chinese companies are ranked among the most innovative 30 Worldwide companies: BYD, Haier Electric and Lenovo.
As a result, the well-known consulting group BCG is going to increase its investment in this part of the world with topic regarding all the steps of a process development. They believe that many innovations will come out of China.
2) Innovation is about ideas and creativity: WRONG
The purpose is not to have ideas but it is to find the right idea and then bring it into the market. Too many people have ideas but only a few of them are actually trying to implement them into their companies or markets.
3) Manufacturers know more than the users; WRONG
Nowadays, innovations are mainly coming from the users. We call this a Pull Strategy. The purpose is to create a unique customer experience in order to create a strong brand awareness and uniqueness that will retain your customers. You need to target specifically your customer’s needs. However, Chinese companies are not familiar with this strategy yet.
4) Innovation should be closed and protected: WRONG
It was what IBM was doing years and years ago, but now this is over. Most companies have to open their doors to other companies or people in order to create the best innovation and the best strategies with the best people.
According to Mr BEL, the rank of the different existing types of protection to overcome copy is lead time, secrecy, complementary manufacturing, complementary sales/service, patent, and other legal actions.
5) With innovation it is key to be the first one: WRONG
We all know that China is very good at copying and it is working for them. Actually, in the majority of the cases in the world, leaders are not pioneers. 50% of pioneers disappear of their respective markets and only 11% of pioneers and market leaders. It is actually best to wait in order to understand what are the threats and limitations and the best way to proceed in any relevant market.
What can you do to improve your company?
The consulting group Roland Berger Consulting pointed out that there are three ways of implementing a strategy to promote innovation in a company: Building an innovation oriented culture, integrating customer insights and finally facilitate the transition from inspiration to practice.
For the first one, there a few things you could do such as hiring people from different backgrounds, tolerate mavericks and rule breakers and encourage curiosity, self-confidence and risk-takers.
You should also refine your strategic leaderships and adopt a bottom up strategy.
For the second one, adopt customer user insights and a customer centric culture. For that you could empower middle managers because they have a key position between employees (who are directly speaking to customers) and top managers.
For the last one, you could elaborate an innovation strategy and create a proper process to allow and help people to participate, adopt collaborative tools in order to get as many ideas as possible and make it easy to improve them.
China is still in its development stage and is going to live an amazing decade in order to develop the whole country and more and more innovations will come from China. Let’s adopt the best processes to create the best and the most useful innovations.
The event was split up into two parts. The first one concerned misconceptions of Innovation (in China) and the second one dealt with the different ways to improve a company regarding its innovations.
Misconception of innovation:
1) There are not any innovation in China: WRONG
Here are some interesting figures:
R&D intensity has grown by more than 50% in the country since 2000,
China has more than doubled its number of researchers since 2000,
China’s share of scientific publications has quadrupled since 2000,
China’s patent has doubled BUT they are not focused on innovation for tomorrow,
Three Chinese companies are ranked among the most innovative 30 Worldwide companies: BYD, Haier Electric and Lenovo.
As a result, the well-known consulting group BCG is going to increase its investment in this part of the world with topic regarding all the steps of a process development. They believe that many innovations will come out of China.
2) Innovation is about ideas and creativity: WRONG
The purpose is not to have ideas but it is to find the right idea and then bring it into the market. Too many people have ideas but only a few of them are actually trying to implement them into their companies or markets.
3) Manufacturers know more than the users; WRONG
Nowadays, innovations are mainly coming from the users. We call this a Pull Strategy. The purpose is to create a unique customer experience in order to create a strong brand awareness and uniqueness that will retain your customers. You need to target specifically your customer’s needs. However, Chinese companies are not familiar with this strategy yet.
4) Innovation should be closed and protected: WRONG
It was what IBM was doing years and years ago, but now this is over. Most companies have to open their doors to other companies or people in order to create the best innovation and the best strategies with the best people.
According to Mr BEL, the rank of the different existing types of protection to overcome copy is lead time, secrecy, complementary manufacturing, complementary sales/service, patent, and other legal actions.
5) With innovation it is key to be the first one: WRONG
We all know that China is very good at copying and it is working for them. Actually, in the majority of the cases in the world, leaders are not pioneers. 50% of pioneers disappear of their respective markets and only 11% of pioneers and market leaders. It is actually best to wait in order to understand what are the threats and limitations and the best way to proceed in any relevant market.
What can you do to improve your company?
The consulting group Roland Berger Consulting pointed out that there are three ways of implementing a strategy to promote innovation in a company: Building an innovation oriented culture, integrating customer insights and finally facilitate the transition from inspiration to practice.
For the first one, there a few things you could do such as hiring people from different backgrounds, tolerate mavericks and rule breakers and encourage curiosity, self-confidence and risk-takers.
You should also refine your strategic leaderships and adopt a bottom up strategy.
For the second one, adopt customer user insights and a customer centric culture. For that you could empower middle managers because they have a key position between employees (who are directly speaking to customers) and top managers.
For the last one, you could elaborate an innovation strategy and create a proper process to allow and help people to participate, adopt collaborative tools in order to get as many ideas as possible and make it easy to improve them.
China is still in its development stage and is going to live an amazing decade in order to develop the whole country and more and more innovations will come from China. Let’s adopt the best processes to create the best and the most useful innovations.
Barcamp March 2014
I decided to start this beautiful day by a stop at the Barcamp event
that took place at The Nest. What was interesting at first glance was the mix
of technology and psychological subjects during this event. Is it because tech
guys are well known to be introvert people? Probably
I attended 2 of the conferences. As I am not a tech guy, the Long Drupal conference was definitely not in my target. But I am quite interested in psychology and I decided to head to the one called "how to get rich strategically" by Adrian Cahill and the one called "how to be outrageously bold" by Aaron. I already met those two guys during one of the Pitch@C3.
« How to get Rich Strategically» Adrian cahill
What a catchy headline, right? Do not take this the wrong way, he didn’t tell us any secret process to make money. However, he shared his assumptions about what really means “being rich”. The word rich can take various meaning from a person to another. Being rich means getting better at what you love doing for living.
For example, Edison tried more than 10,000 times before succeeding; Colonel Sanders (founder of KFC) got rejected 1009 times before he decided to create his empire.
Being passionate and give your best at what you love is great but be smart, learn feedback from your mistakes. Spielberg only tried 3 times to enter to the University of Southern California before he switched his goal career and found out that it was better for him to become a director. To understand what you aim for, you need to understand where your strengths are. For that, Adrian told us that two things matter: Extrovert vs Introvert and Intuitive vs Sensory.
Are you extrovert? (i.e: Oprah Winfrey) You like being surrounded of people, have many friends but not really deep relationships.
Vs
Are you Introvert (i.e: Warren Buffet) You are good with system, you have less friend but deepest relationship
Are you Intuitive? Do you always anticipate the future?
Vs (jobs balanced)
Are you Sensory? Are you constantly physically and emotionally in the present?
Understand what your strengths are and exploit them!
His last recommendation: read Tim Ferris.
Aaron
With Aaron it was not about theory and philosophy but it was about practice. In 30 minutes and through his game called “Dare” (a derived game of “truth or dare”) he succeeded to capture the attention of everybody in the room. The purpose of the game was to write down an action and then give it to a perfect stranger to do it. (A couple of people left when they heard that, too intimidate to do something stupid in front of perfect strangers). I decided to be a bit mean to the Chinese girl I was going to give my dare and I wrote down “imitate a chicken” and gave it to her with a demoniac smile already imagining the scene. However ... when everybody exchanged their dares, Aaron told us that the one who wrote the dare was actually the one who was going to do it. I felt a bit frustrated at this point, being caught at my own game!
Here is the interesting part: Aaron told us to stand up and follow his moves and it would help us to be emotionally and psychologically ready. We slightly glide on our left where he had to imagine ourselves acting our dares and the way we will feel. Then we had to slightly glide on our right where we had to imagine our heroes encouraging us in order to feel confident. What was interesting here was to feel the shift of emotions: from ridiculous to proud of being ridiculous. As soon as everybody started to feel invincible and confident we ran out of the room to act our dares. I let you imagine how people reacted when they saw a perfect stranger imitating a chicken and other crazy folks acting weird.
I believe what Aaron tried to teach his audience is that it is easy to try and actually do what we want to do. Many people have great business ideas but they stop at this point they do not really try to get them out of the ground! Go for it, try, make fool of yourselves. What only matter is that you believe in your ideas.
I attended 2 of the conferences. As I am not a tech guy, the Long Drupal conference was definitely not in my target. But I am quite interested in psychology and I decided to head to the one called "how to get rich strategically" by Adrian Cahill and the one called "how to be outrageously bold" by Aaron. I already met those two guys during one of the Pitch@C3.
« How to get Rich Strategically» Adrian cahill
What a catchy headline, right? Do not take this the wrong way, he didn’t tell us any secret process to make money. However, he shared his assumptions about what really means “being rich”. The word rich can take various meaning from a person to another. Being rich means getting better at what you love doing for living.
For example, Edison tried more than 10,000 times before succeeding; Colonel Sanders (founder of KFC) got rejected 1009 times before he decided to create his empire.
Being passionate and give your best at what you love is great but be smart, learn feedback from your mistakes. Spielberg only tried 3 times to enter to the University of Southern California before he switched his goal career and found out that it was better for him to become a director. To understand what you aim for, you need to understand where your strengths are. For that, Adrian told us that two things matter: Extrovert vs Introvert and Intuitive vs Sensory.
Are you extrovert? (i.e: Oprah Winfrey) You like being surrounded of people, have many friends but not really deep relationships.
Vs
Are you Introvert (i.e: Warren Buffet) You are good with system, you have less friend but deepest relationship
Are you Intuitive? Do you always anticipate the future?
Vs (jobs balanced)
Are you Sensory? Are you constantly physically and emotionally in the present?
Understand what your strengths are and exploit them!
His last recommendation: read Tim Ferris.
Aaron
With Aaron it was not about theory and philosophy but it was about practice. In 30 minutes and through his game called “Dare” (a derived game of “truth or dare”) he succeeded to capture the attention of everybody in the room. The purpose of the game was to write down an action and then give it to a perfect stranger to do it. (A couple of people left when they heard that, too intimidate to do something stupid in front of perfect strangers). I decided to be a bit mean to the Chinese girl I was going to give my dare and I wrote down “imitate a chicken” and gave it to her with a demoniac smile already imagining the scene. However ... when everybody exchanged their dares, Aaron told us that the one who wrote the dare was actually the one who was going to do it. I felt a bit frustrated at this point, being caught at my own game!
Here is the interesting part: Aaron told us to stand up and follow his moves and it would help us to be emotionally and psychologically ready. We slightly glide on our left where he had to imagine ourselves acting our dares and the way we will feel. Then we had to slightly glide on our right where we had to imagine our heroes encouraging us in order to feel confident. What was interesting here was to feel the shift of emotions: from ridiculous to proud of being ridiculous. As soon as everybody started to feel invincible and confident we ran out of the room to act our dares. I let you imagine how people reacted when they saw a perfect stranger imitating a chicken and other crazy folks acting weird.
I believe what Aaron tried to teach his audience is that it is easy to try and actually do what we want to do. Many people have great business ideas but they stop at this point they do not really try to get them out of the ground! Go for it, try, make fool of yourselves. What only matter is that you believe in your ideas.