lunes, 15 de octubre de 2012

Más colombianos se lucran en YouTube

youtube. Colombianos encontraron cómo hacer dinero en Youtube.


Los videos de un profesor caleño que enseña matemáticas, una diseñadora que da consejos de moda y un periodista que pone en imágenes sus crónicas, le dan la vuelta al mundo a través de YouTube y generan ingresos.

Atrás quedaron los tiempos en los que las canciones o los videos musicales se lanzaban en programas televisivos, hoy si un músico o banda desea dar a conocer su nuevo álbum, suele hacer el lanzamiento por Internet.
Una plataforma como YouTube, en la que cada minuto se suben 72 horas de nuevos videos, en la que cada día se hacen más de 4.000 millones de reproducciones y en la quecada mes se publica más contenido del que pueden llegar a producir las tres principales cadenas de televisión de Estados Unidos durante 60 años, se ha convertido en la actualidad en el medio preferido para llegar al público, conseguir visibilidad e incluso ganar dinero.
Aparte de los artistas, personas de diversas actividades o profesiones también están aprovechando los beneficios que ofrece el sitio de videos por Internet. Los comediantes, por ejemplo, son de los que más le sacan partido actualmente, creando programas especiales para ellos.
También están casos como el de Machinima, empresa de entretenimiento para jugadores de videojuegos, que ganó reconocimiento luego de convertir esta plataforma en su principal medio para comunicarse con los usuarios.
Los artistas, los comediantes y las empresas que hoy brillan en YouTube tienen en común que cuentan con su propio canal online y hacen parte del programa de partners que maneja la popular plataforma de videos.
Este programa, que tiene 30 mil partners en 27 países del mundo, es el medio ideal que ayuda a todos los que están creando contenido para que puedan hacerlo de forma más profesional, llegar a más personas y de paso generar ingresos. Varios colombianos ya han entrado en esta tendencia.
Socios colombianos
Un profesor en Cali que enseña matemáticas y una diseñadora gráfica y de modas que quiere ayudar a que todas las mujeres se vean y se sientan mejor consigo mismas, son ejemplos de lo que sucede cuando un generador de contenidos desde un país como Colombia se une al programa de partners de YouTube.
El primer caso es el de Julio Alberto Ríos, un amante del conocimiento que siempre busca compartirlo con todos. En el colegio era el más solicitado por sus compañeros para que les explicara el tema que la mayoría no comprendía: las matemáticas.
Con ello descubrió que su pasión era enseñar a otros y fue así como empezó a explorar diferentes herramientas para sus clases, hasta que se le ocurrió hacer un video para sus estudiantes, que subió a YouTube.
Para su sorpresa, personas alrededor del mundo lo vieron y sin importar que estuviera en un idioma diferente al que muchos de ellos hablaban (originalmente español), le daban las gracias: “Me escriben mensajes en el que muchos me dicen que lograron pasar sus exámenes o retomar sus estudios y volver a la universidad. También hay padres de familia que se sienten agradecidos porque usan los videos para ayudar a sus hijos con las tareas. Me anima porque la gente aprecia el tiempo que le dedico a hacer estos videos”.

Este caleño demostró que las matemáticas son un lenguaje universal. Su canal, Julioprofe tiene ahora más de 60 mil suscriptores y cerca de 30 millones de reproducciones, siendo solo superado en popularidad en el país por el de Shakira.
El momento en que todo cambió fue cuando se involucró en el programa de partners de YouTube. Con la promoción extra que el sistema le proporciona, sus videoclases no solo se ven en Colombia, sino que son muy populares en México, Argentina, Perú y hasta lugares que nunca soñó, como Rusia, Japón y África; además, comenzó a recibir dinero por las veces que las personas veían sus videos.
Yo quiero seguir consolidando mi canal, poder poner mis videos al servicio de plataformas educativas. He ganado visibilidad a partir del programa de partners hasta el punto que sueño con que mis ingresos aumenten para vivir de mis videos”, comenta orgulloso ‘El Profe colombiano”.
Otro caso representativo en el país es el de Catalina López, quien dice tener una sola misión: hacer que cada mujer se sienta bien consigo misma, y al mismo tiempo que se vea muy bien.
Esta diseñadora gráfica, apasionada por la moda, comenzó creando prendas exclusivas, pero con el paso del tiempo sus clientas comenzaron a pedirle consejos y de ahí, pasó a asesorar a mujeres que quisieran mejorar su imagen personal. Con el crecimiento de su negocio abrió su sitio web y pronto descubrió que el mejor medio para llegar a más mujeres era con pequeños trucos en videos.
Con el canal de YouTube de Cló, su marca de asesoría de imagen y moda, Catalina comprobó que no solo podía compartir los videos en su página, sino que al tener suscriptores en su propio canal en YouTube llegaba a más personas.
Al vincularse al programa de partners todo aumentó: comenzaron a subir las visitas y suscriptores, hasta el punto que hoy tiene algo más de 16 millones de reproducciones, con lo que no solo ganó en reconocimiento sino que ayudó a obtener un ingreso extra para su negocio. Los números, no obstante, son solo una parte de lo que hace a Catalina sentirse orgullosa de ser partner de YouTube:
“Cuando comenzamos todo fue muy simple pero después de un tiempo nos dimos cuenta de que necesitábamos la capacitación y la ayuda que el programa brinda, porque creíamos que no le sacabamos todo el provecho a YouTube y no aprovechábamos todas las posibilidades”. Hoy Catalina lo toma como toda una profesión en la que cuenta con la suficiente motivación para publicar por lo menos un video a la semana y de esta manera seguir aconsejando a más mujeres.
Cómo funciona
El programa de partners de YouTube funciona de forma simple y la inscripción se hace desde el canal que la persona abre en la plataforma. Además de asegurarse que el contenido cumple con todos los parámetros de calidad para ser publicado, YouTube se encarga de ubicar anuncios en cada video que sea subido por el usuario, los cuales pueden llegar a generar ingresos una vez son reproducidos por otras personas. Luego de haber ingresado al programa y acumular reproducciones, la persona puede llegar a recibir ingresos directamente de YouTube.
En la actualidad muchos colombianos empiezan a recorrer este camino e incluso están listos para dar el paso y volverse ‘socios’ del sitio de videos, quizá sin darse cuenta. Está el ejemplo de varios periodistas en el país que han creado su propio canal de YouTube y han logrado consolidar un número importante de suscriptores, como es el caso del de Ernesto McCausland, que cuenta con más de 2 mil suscriptores con lo que sus crónicas, entrevistas y reportajes son vistos por personas en diferentes sitios del mundo, llegando recientemente a las 10 millones de reproducciones.
La pasión que este comunicador en especial tiene por el cine y lo audiovisual le ha llevado a explorar formas de ganar nuevos espectadores, lo que sumado a la posibilidad de la interacción, hace de YouTube una plataforma ideal para ‘comunicarse’ con sus audiencias.
Como McCausland, hay muchos otros periodistas y personas de diferentes profesiones que ya tienen su canal y publican contenido de calidad desde Colombia; personas que están listas para dar este paso y acceder de esta forma a los beneficios específicos que entrega el ser partner del YouTube, entre los que están llegar a audiencias mucho más amplias a partir de una promoción adicional, el acceso a diferentes herramientas para crear contenidos de mejor calidad y la conformación de una red de apoyo y de soporte para cada empresa o usuario.
Bien sea que la motivación inicial sea la de llegar a más personas o que lo que se pretenda sea empezar a generar nuevos ingresos, si cuenta con contenido de calidad en video y quiere compartirlo en Internet, YouTube puede ser su mejor aliado.

lunes, 8 de octubre de 2012

7 Ways To Stimulate Your Capacity For Creativity





A Frenchman walks into a bar with a duck on his head, and the bartender asks, “Hey, where’d you get that?” So the duck says “I got it in Paris, they’ve got millions of ’em there.”
Jokes like this one are funny because the punch line just doesn’t fit with the “context” of the setup. It violates our expectations, and this has the power to give us a chuckle.
Human beings are constantly observing the environment in order to make mental predictions for what will happen next, given the context of their observations. I’ve already written about how important context is when it comes to customer relationships. The deeper the context of a relationship--that is, the more detailed or informative your previous interactions with a customer have been--the more loyal that customer is likely to be in the future, because (among other things) the customer just doesn’t want to have to re-teach one of your competitors what they’ve already spent time and effort teaching you.
But context is also a key to innovation. Creativity drives innovation, and creativity is context-dependent. Only in this case, rather than using context to make predictions about our environment, creative ideas come when we purposely violate context. Context violations produce things you don’t expect, from funny punch lines to innovative ideas.
Your most creative insights are almost always the result of taking an idea that works in one domain and applying it to another. Every “new” idea you have, personally, is based on some combination of previous concepts in your own mind, even if you combined these concepts subconsciously. In a sense, as Matt Ridley has observed, innovation occurs when ideas get together and “have sex” with each other. In evolutionary terms, it’s called “exaptation.” Bird feathers, for instance, are thought to have evolved during the Cretaceous period to help land-based reptiles protect themselves from the cold, but when one species of reptile later began experimenting with gliding, feathers were exapted as excellent tools for controlling air flow.
Innovation thrives on context violations and exaptation. The anti-lock braking system in your car is a result of research and development originally done in the field of aviation, for example. Icy airplane runways can’t be sprayed with salt and gravel to assist in slowing a speeding plane, so anti-lock brakes were first invented in this domain. Computer punch cards were exapted from the punch cards originally conceived to drive weaving patterns on mechanized looms. Viagra was originally developed as a drug to reduce hypertension.
You become more creative when you violate the context of your own expectations. So if you want to generate more innovative ideas, then you should purposely expose your mind to radically different facts and unusual, often conflicting concepts. Creative ideas are high in “information entropy,” because they are not predictable. They don’t conform to the context of your current thinking. I listed several ways to generate high-entropy ideas in my post “Entropy Can Be Good for You” a few months ago. Be sure to check that list out, but here are some more suggestions for improving your own personal capacity for creativity and innovation:
• Move to a different apartment, or a different office location, or a different job. Change your environment, for no reason other than to make the change.
• Drive a different route to work or school, or to church, or to the club. Take a long cut, on purpose.
• Spend 30 minutes a day for two or three weeks with a language course from Pimsleur orRosetta Stone in order to learn how to ask directions and order food in a new language. 
• Brainstorm different ways to use a common tool (like a hammer, or a Phillips screwdriver).
• Go on a physical-fitness campaign. Work out until you break a sweat at least one time every day. Seriously. Every single day. 
• Memorize something useless but ambitious, like pi to 100 digits, or the names of all the major chess openings, or all the U.S. vice presidents and the presidents they served.
• Meet one new person a day for a whole month. Talk to them, converse with them, get to know them. Talk with each of them frequently in subsequent days. You can easily do this online.


Tomado  de Fast Company 1 de octubre

miércoles, 3 de octubre de 2012

El ADN del emprendedor


Gaia de Dominicis, directora ejecutiva de Endeavor Colombia, da los puntos claves para ser emprendedor y no fracasar en el intento.



El ADN del emprendedor .

Gaia de Dominicis, directora ejecutiva de Endeavor Colombia, firma que selecciona e impulsa casos de emprendimiento, entre los cuales están Bodytech, Refinancia e Ideagro, habló con FinanzasPersonales.com.co sobre las debilidades y fortalezas de los emprendedores.

Para Gaia, entre las falencias que tienen los emprendedores y que se deben convertir en fortalezas están:

1.Falta de confianza
La falta de confianza puede ser en si mismo ¿Qué tal fracase? ¿Qué tal no lo logré?; en el inversionista ¿Me va a robar? ¿Me va a robar la idea?; y en el cliente. Es una sensación generalizada de falta de confianza, lo cual genera una barrera para el emprendedor.

2.Falta de ambición
Entre las barreras también está que por creencias religiosas se tiene la idea que recibir dinero en cantidad muchas veces es pecado.

Así mismo, entre las falencias que que tienen las empresas emprendedoras y deben convertir en fortalezas están:

1. Demanda del mercado
No se pueden quedar en un vacío teórico o académico. Es muy importante validar y tener en cuenta el comercio y el sector productivo. Puede tener una muy buena idea, pero puede que no la compre nadie porque el mercado no la necesita.

2. Innovar

Innovar no es inventarse algo relevantemente nuevo. Muchas empresas generan esta barrera. La innovación se refiere a cómo puede hacer algo que ya existe de una manera mejor, por ejemplo ser más innovador en el modelo de negocio, manejo del equipo o en los canales de distribución.

Consejos para no fracasar en el intento
1.Tener las ganas: Para impulsar un negocio es necesario tener pasión por la idea y quererlo hacer.

2. No tener miedo: El miedo lo puede llevar a limitar sus sueños y sus ideas. 

3. Aprender de los fracasos: Estar dispuesto a fracasar en el intento y aprender de ello. Estar preparado para recibir un "no me interesa su producto" y aún así persisir en la idea.

4. Arriésguese, pero con precaución: Tomar riesgos, pero medidos. No es lanzarse y no saber dónde va a aterrizar, pero sí tomar el riesgo de ¡lanzarse al agua!.

5. Validar el mercado. Realice un breve sondeo para saber qué demanda tendría su producto en el mercado porque puede tener una idea buena, pero quizás no hayan muchas personas dispuestas a comprar su producto. Por ejemplo: en el caso de Bodytech, las personas siempre buscan salud y estética. Sin embargo, los gimnasios que habían eran negocios de barrio. Ellos no se inventaron algo extraordinariamente nuevo, pero sí formalizaron un sector.

Financiación
Además de recursos propios o adquirir préstamos (que generalmente son difíciles de obtener cuando el negocio no está produciendo alguna utilidad palpable), puede escoger el camino de buscar un inversionista.

En este sentido, Gaia aconseja que antes de conseguir dinero, consiga amigos. “En Colombia unos dicen que sí existen redes de inversionistas y otros que no, yo creo que sí. Lo más importante es tener la mayor cantidad contactos. El valor de las redes sociales es mucho más grande de lo que se cree y uno no sabe en qué momento le sale un inversionista: en la misa, en un restaurante, en una fiesta, en un matrimonio o en una comida”, señaló.

Así mismo, considera indispensable que las personas conozcan de finanzas, entiendan el negocio y aprendan a reconocer qué necesidades tienen de capital de negocio. “En dado caso deben estar dispuestos a compartir el negocio porque otro inversionista les puede ayudar a crecer”, manifestó.

¿Por qué ser emprendedor?
Ser emprendedor no es una tarea fácil y realizarse esta pregunta es clave: ¿Por qué dejar de ser empleado y recibir un sueldo fijo a arriesgarse a crear empresa?.

Lo primero que asegura Gaia es que no es para todo el mundo: “los emprendedores tienen un ADN especial, no todos estamos hechos para crear empresa. Tiene que tener una personalidad y características particulares”, indica.

¿Por qué hacerlo?, según la experta por la gratificación de ser un contribuyente para el bien común (pagar impuestos, generar empleo y hacer parte del crecimiento de la economía).

“El empleado está limitado a cumplir un horario, a que lo asciendan, a que lo despidan. Creo que son más las limitantes que se tienen como trabajador, pero definitivamente el emprendedor lo hace por convicción, porque lo cree firmemente y está dispuesto a luchar por una idea”, concluyó Gaia. 


miércoles, 5 de septiembre de 2012

10 paradojas de innovar y emprender


La vida profesional y la experiencia empresarial están llenas de paradojas que intentamos resolver día a día. Y el mundo de la innovación y el emprendimiento no está ajeno a esta realidad.
Bajo ese contexto, el consultor en innovación estratégica, Xavier Marcet,repasa en su blog los 10 contrasentidos que pueden enfrentar tanto innovadores como emprendedores. Acá se los presentamos:
1.- Creatividad -  disciplina
Tener ideas está sobrevalorado. Llevar las ideas a la práctica está infravalorado.  Innovar, emprender, es hacer. La disciplina de llevar las cosas a cabo es la competencia clave.
Todo el respeto para los que crean, toda la indiferencia para los que destruyen.
2.- Riesgo – responsabilidad
No me creo ningún emprendedor que no arriesgue de su bolsillo nada de nada.  Emprender es arriesgar. Ni en la innovación, ni en el emprendimiento todo es predecible por eso genera tanta tensión con el negocio del día a día, que lo que busca es predictibilidad.
3.- Razón y pasión
Pensar, es decir, tener lecturas propias de  contextos compartidos, es la base que permite construir propuestas innovadoras y proyectos de empresa diferenciales. Pero al lado de la razón necesitamos la pasión que nos compromete, que nos emociona. Sin pasión, no es lo mismo.
4.- Expertise y equipo
Cuando antes sepamos que no sabemos hacer, mejor emprendedores seremos . Cuando mejores seamos en complementarnos en equipo, más oportunidades de éxito tendremos en nuestros proyectos de innovación y emprendimiento. Necesitamos expertise, pero como dice Jerry Engel, entrepreneurship is a team sport.
5.- Empezar pequeño – pensar en grande
Se puede empezar pequeño pensando en grande. Se trata de hacer negocios porque queremos resolver grandes problemas y no como han hecho algunos que para hacer negocios ellos acaban creando grandes problemas a los demás.
6.- Aprender y desaprender
Aprender y dar resultados es clave de un éxito sostenido (con lagunas y baches de fracaso probables). Aprender del éxito y del fracaso. Y desaprender (estar dispuesto a olvidar paradigmas que nos dieron éxito en el pasado en contextos que ya no existen más). Desaprender es un ejercicio personal duro que permite prolongar razonablemente alguna juventud.
7.- Mercado y subvención
A nadie le amarga un dulce, pero las empresas viven de los mercados y se dopan con subvenciones. El dinero público puede acelerar un negocio pero su sostenibilidad le viene de los clientes. Las empresas que innovaban por subvención y no por convicción nunca se convirtieron en empresas innovadoras, nunca pensaron seriamente que la innovación era su forma de estar y crecer en los mercados.
8.- Ambición y humildad
La ambición es necesaria y un cierto sentido killer para cerrar negocios también. Pero un día uno está arriba y al otro está abajo. La humildad es la actitud de no despreciar a nadie y de ser capaz de aprender de todos. La humildad es una gran fuente de oportunidades, la soberbia es una gran fuente de necedades.
9.- Individuo – sociedad
Los proyectos innovadores y emprendedores tienen sello personal ( o de equipo). Las cosas van bien y van mal por la competencia de cada uno. Si se fracasa, se intenta aprender y pagar deudas. Pero no se adopta la queja como trayectoria. Quejarse sistemáticamente es lo menos emprendedor que hay.
La innovación y el emprendimiento son formas de responsabilidad social de primer orden.  Innovar es una forma de estar en las organizaciones y emprender es una forma de estar en la sociedad.
10.- Esfuerzo y diversión
El esfuerzo se mezcla con la ilusión, las horas infinitas pueden pasar rápido y tener sentido. El esfuerzo inteligente es la base de construir oportunidades y de una cierta felicidad. Trabajar mucho y divertirse.

Tomado: 

martes, 14 de agosto de 2012

‘Innovación debe estar a lo largo y ancho de las empresas'


Rowan Gibson se ha dedicado a estudiar más de 200 casos de mentes innovadoras.


Rowan Gibson, experto en innovación, sostiene que las compañías que quieren crear fracasan porque no destinan los recursos mínimos para experimentar con nuevas ideas.

El cambio es la constante para que se produzcan avances significativos en todos los ambitos, y esto no es ajeno al entorno empresarial, donde dichos movimientos se convierten en la matriz de la innovación, generadora incalculable de creativas ideas de negocios.
Precisamente, este será el tema central del foro ‘Juntas Innovadoras’, un espacio en el que personajes como Efraín Forero, presidente de Davivienda; Sergio Fajardo, gobernador de Antioquia, o Carlos Enrique Piedrahíta, presidente del Grupo Nutresa, hablarán de sus experiencias como líderes empresariales al frente de promisorios negocios de proyección.
Rowan Gibson estará el próximo 29 y 30 de agosto, en Bogotá y Medellín, respectivamente, como invitado internacional de Enfoque Seminarios, dictando la conferencia ‘Juntas innovadoras: lo que la junta Directiva debe saber para enfrentar los retos del futuro’. Portafolio, patrocinador del evento, habló con Gibson sobre el tema de la innovación empresarial.
¿Qué es la innovación?
La innovación es algo nuevo o remodelado, necesariamente revolucionario por su originalidad y que produce valor económico. Muchas compañías y gobiernos piensan que se refiere solo al desarrollo de nuevos productos o tecnologías, limitando así el concepto de innovación.
Este es un espectro muy amplio que va desde procesos hasta estrategias de mercadeo, estructuras de costos, modelos de negocios, sistemas empresariales y de gobierno.
¿Qué no es innovación?
No todo lo nuevo es innovación. Si hoy se lanza un producto exitoso con color amarillo y al año siguiente se saca en color azul, este segundo producto es, simplemente, una modificación leve del primero y no representa ninguna innovación.
Por el contrario, si un nuevo producto, servicio o proceso cambia el comportamiento o las expectativas de la gente, creando verdaderas ventajas competitivas o modificando la economía de una industria, se dice que hay innovación.
Cuando Postobon lanzó la Manzana Light, no hubo ninguna innovación, pero con Red Bull creó mundialmente la categoría de ‘Energy Drinks’, esto sí fue innovación.
¿Qué condiciones debe reu- nir una empresa para ser considerada innovadora?
Las empresas son innovadoras si demuestran una capacidad constante de lanzar nuevos productos y servicios. Estos generan un crecimiento permanente de sus ingresos y utilidades, y le dan una ventaja en el largo plazo sobre sus competidores.
Apple, Google, Nike, GE, P&G, IBM, 3M and Amazon.com cumplen perfectamente con este requisito. Reinventan su negocio todos los días, gracias a una excelente cultura innovadora.
¿En un país quién debe in- centivar la innovación: el Gobierno o las empresas?
Ambos. La promoción y defensa de la competencia empresarial, entre las regiones y entre los países es vital para generar innovación y, aquí, los gobiernos juegan un papel fundamental.
Muchos gobiernos aún consideran que innovación implica grandes presupuestos, inversiones en tecnologías sofisticadas y que es indispensable montar uno o varios ‘Silicon Valley’.
Por supuesto, es imprescindible forzar una mejor conexión entre las universidades y el sector privado para que juntos desarrollen nuevas ideas y el gobierno actúe como facilitador. Este último también debe promover la creación de nuevas empresas, eliminar tramitologías, incentivar la creación de fondos de capital semilla y defender la propiedad intelectual.
¿Cómo elaborar un derrotero de innovación?
Primero, se requiere un liderazgo y una estructura organizacional orientados hacia la innovación. Segundo, es necesario implementar procesos y mecanismos que permitan el flujo y análisis de las nuevas ideas. Tercero, la innovación debe ser una fortaleza de toda la compañía, por tanto se debe entrenar, reclutar, medir, bonificar y reconocer las habilidades de cada uno en función de la innovación.
LA TAREA DEBE EMPEZAR EN LOS ALTOS MANDOS
¿En una compañía, quién debe liderar la innovación?

Tradicionalmente, la innovación era liderada por Investigación y desarrollo o el departamento de Nuevos Productos. Pero, si se quiere innovar en mercadeo, producción, en distribución, administración, etc., es decir innovar a todo lo largo y ancho de la empresa, hay que involucrar a todo el mundo. Pero estos cambios no ocurren al azar. La Junta Directiva y la Presidencia deben liderar el programa, motivando a gerentes y directivos a formarse como mentores, que ayuden a irrigar la cultura innovadora en toda la compañía.
Además, se debe permitir que todos los empleados sepan y sientan que sus ideas y propuestas son bienvenidas y analizadas. Con solo darles un entrenamiento básico y crear una estructura para canalizar las nuevas ideas, se pueden obtener resultados sorprendentes.

Tomado de www.portafolio.co el 14 de agosto del 2012.


lunes, 9 de julio de 2012

Los “teachers” de Open English

negocioslosteachers1_. Adrián Lara, actor de los comerciales de Open English.
Andrés Moreno, presidente de Open English.
Con humor y una publicidad viral, dos venezolanos lanzaron una escuela de inglés en internet que, en solo seis años, ya tiene 50.000 alumnos y US$50 millones de capital.




Con su ‘cursito’ de inglés online, el venezolano Andrés Moreno no solo se está volviendo millonario; también se ha convertido en una celebridad latina. Recorre la región de arriba abajo y desde que se sube al avión la gente sabe que él protagoniza los sonoros comerciales de Open English. Lo que pocos saben es que, además de ser la cara de la empresa, es su fundador y presidente.

Hace seis años junto con Wilmer Sarmiento, un compañero de la universidad y US$300, crearon Open English, una empresa que ya opera en 20 países, tiene 50.000 alumnos, –que pagan en promedio US$1.000 por cursos de un año– y que a través del esquema de inversión de riesgo ya ha levantado US$50 millones para seguir creciendo.

La idea surgió de la experiencia que tuvo Andrés dictando clases de inglés de manera presencial a ejecutivos en Venezuela. Aunque estudió ingeniería, fue su amigo el que se dedicó a desarrollar el programa, que maneja una plataforma similar a la de Skype, mientras él se fue a Sillicon Valley a buscar inversionistas. No obstante, uno de sus primeros socios estaba mucho más cerca: la Organización Cisneros, que les dio la posibilidad de pautar en sus espacios televisivos a cambio de una participación en la empresa.

Aunque la escuela funciona online, Moreno considera que sus competidores son las escuelas presenciales como Berlitz y el Wall Street Institute, frente a las que ofrece la ventaja de no tener que padecer el tráfico para llegar a clase. “Esto es como el gimnasio, cuando la gente se inscribe comienza muy animada y va con frecuencia, pero luego con las exigencias del trabajo empiezan a faltar y al final no regresan”, comenta y recalca la ventaja de su plataforma, a la cual se puede acceder desde cualquier computador y a cualquier hora del día. De hecho, a las 11 de la noche es cuando tiene más alumnos.

“Otro punto a nuestro favor es que, mientras Berlitz tiene cuatro o cinco escuelas en las principales ciudades de cada país, nosotros llegamos a todas las urbes y es un hecho que, en América Latina, la clase media no solo está en las capitales”, agrega. 

Open English ya tiene más de 100 socios, muchos de sus 1.000 empleados han recibido acciones como pago, y entre todos tratan de sacarle jugo al mercado mundial de aprendizaje de idiomas, que se estima en US$83.000 millones anuales, de los cuales 15% es aportado por América Latina.

Pero más allá del esquema pedagógico, la clave del éxito ha sido la publicidad. Entre enero y mayo de este año, Open English fue el anunciante número 35 del país con una inversión de $5.800 millones, un salto de más de 1.000% frente a igual lapso de 2011.

Con su presencia permanente en la televisión latinoamericana, Moreno, de 30 años, espera llegar a los 80.000 usuarios al final de 2012 y mientras eso sucede es probable que se repita la escena que le pasó hace poco en un restaurante, donde dos señoras empezaron a comentar: “miren el calvo de Open English y está con la teacher”, pues su esposa también es una de las protagonistas de los célebres comerciales.


jueves, 28 de junio de 2012

To get Innovation…Try Stimulation

There is a saying, “horses for courses”. It means that certain character types (horses or people – or others) perform in different ways depending upon the circumstances. This holds true in collaborative engagements, whether they are crowdsourcing exercises, virtual focus groups, online research communities or a growing number of other online activities. A key success factor that we found over the last number of years — and perhaps the key success factor– is understanding what the best stimulative environment is for that activity, and your participants.

stimulation_for_innovation

You can have all of the fancy bells and whistles, or go very low tech in how you are going to capture contributions from your participants, but if they are not stimulated properly, at best, they will show up once and leave, and at the worst, they will not show up at all.

Having been at this for a while now, we have created the Stimulation Map™, a set of drivers that need to be “tuned” to each activity and audience in order to have optimal stimulation and, ultimately best success for online collaborative engagement, consultation, or crowdsourcing initiative.

We know that figuring out which stimulant to turn up or down for each particular engagement can have a decisive impact on a community, and therefore on the results achieved.  An overview of the six stimulants is outlined below.


Incentives












Incentives can play an important role in a crowdsourcing engagement.  Sometimes money is the answer. Sometimes not.  Often we have found that the best incentives are non-financial.  Creativity, planning and sponsor commitment are the best attributes for good incentive stimulation.  Doing that always and knowing when to double-down on incentive stimulation can have an impressive impact on your engagement.

Community



Is the participant going to grow their community, engage with others they know, find people that stimulate them?  Depending on the engagement, this is a big participation driver.  For instance, if the focus on your innovation engagement is narrow and you are not expecting a massive amount of people, make sure that you let potential participants know that they will be able to find and connect with others that share their relatively unique interest.  When do you turn this dial up and when do you turn it down…and how?

Outcomes




Where’s the meat?  Does the individual have confidence that there will be outcomes and change through this exercise?  Outcomes always matter but for certain engagements they are core to success.  One example where you need to have and communicate clear outcomes for an innovation engagement is with an internal crowd where morale may be low.


Enjoyment



For certain engagements, there is no doubt that some fun can go a long way to enhance the quality and frequency of the dialogue.  What should your fun quotient be?  Are there engagements where “fun” should never be a stimulant?  We’ve found that even in the most serious innovation engagements, keeping a perspective and looking for proper ways to ensure participant enjoyment are beneficial.

Value



There has to be value in it for the individual participant.  The better you are at establishing that and the more you have of it, the more inclined people are to participate.  This stimulant needs to be omnipresent but the level and focus will change based on the engagement.  For first time engagements with a new community, make sure you outline the value to them clearly (and make sure – to the best of your ability – that it happens).

Convenience




Depending on the engagement, the convenience factor can be huge in dictating the success of your engagement.  What are you doing to set the right level for your engagement?  We have found that this stimulant has trended up noticeably even in the last year and particularly for any external innovation…people in any demographic simply have more choices than ever to occupy their time.  Oh, and convenience goes far beyond having an intuitive platform (which are table stakes)…be prepared to have convenient processes and communication as well.

So what you have found in your innovation travels?

Is stimulation that important?  Can stimulation and the emphasis and elements associated with a variety of stimulants ensure a successful innovation campaign or do you find other parts of an innovation solution are as or more important?

Are these the same stimulants that you have found?  Does this cover the waterfront in terms of stimulation categories from your perspective?

What’s the proper stimulation “tuning” for your engagement?  There is an infinite scope of innovation engagements, each – we would argue – with their own DNA.  So what are some of your best practices for different styles of innovation engagement? Open, internal, small group and others.

By Geordie Adams


About the Author



Geordie Adams has been on the front lines of innovation for over 20 years, most recently through his founding of PubliVate, a leading partner in providing successful collaboration and innovation management solutions to organizations.   If not working with public and private sector clients, Geordie can be found thinking (Canada), sharing (@publivate), and creating (www.publivate.com) around better ways in which people can work together.





martes, 22 de mayo de 2012

Delusional economics: the four principles


Reprinted from Rohit Bhargava’s Influential Marketing Blog. See original article here.
Rohit’s new book Likeonomics officially launches this week.  You can see special offers for the book at www.likeonomics.com/special-offers and purchase on Amazon.
When it comes to economic theories, there is plenty of fascination in the business world around how to explain what drives business and purchasing activities. Behavioural economics, the field of economics concerned with examining why people behave the way they do when it comes to their purchasing behaviour, is hot right now.  Bestselling books like FreakonomicsandPredictably Irrational dig deep into the psyche of people to try and explain seemingly illogical actions.
My own upcoming book called Likeonomics, to some degree, looks at a similar theme of why we do business with people and businesses we like and what impact likeability has on building a trusted business. As part of the research for that book, I have come across a disturbing number of examples of a new type of economic philosophy which is becoming sadly common, and which cannot be explained by modern economic theory.
I have started referring to this philosophy as Delusional Economics – a new economic principle which explains the growing number of businesses who expect some type of unreasonable behaviour change or act of altruism among their consumers in order to help their business succeed. This is not a strategy for success, even though sadly many businesses fall prey to it. Here are what I believe the four key principles of Delusional Economics are, and how you might avoid applying them to your own small business:
    1. Change a customer’s worldview. A worldview is generally how a person sees the world around them, and it is usually the toughest element of perception to change. It is why people vote the way they do, why they sometimes blindly believe something or someone, and why they approach life in the manner that they do.  To attempt to change how they see the world as part of your business strategy is usually a waste of time and effort.
    2. Getting people to pay for something that is currently free. When a customer has become used to getting something for free, you really need to offer a compelling reason about why they should pay for something similar. Is it better, faster, more complete or more premium? Whatever the benefit, you need to make sure it is truly compelling to move people past the hurdle of being free.
    3. Basing a business model on revenue from nonexistent advertisers or customers. More than one tech startup has been launched over the last several years with an extremely naive view of what advertisers will pay for.  They have a revenue model based on advertising, but no pipeline or ability to get those customers.  The end result is that their entire business success hinges on being able to connect with a key audience that doesn’t even really exist.
    4. Overestimating a customer’s ability to appreciate value worth paying a premium for. A common problem with products or services targeted to the higher end of the market is that people in general are not that good at being able to detect what value is worth paying for. If I told you a bottle of wine was $100, you would assume it was great wine. If a wine bottle cost less than $5, it probably wasn’t. This is fine when it comes to wine, but in your business and industry it is probably much harder for a customer to discern the real value that they get and understand that it may be worth paying more for.



jueves, 26 de abril de 2012

Caine’s Arcade muestra que no solo de chips vive la tecnología

Si del cielo te caen cartones, haz una sala de maquinitas. Eso pensó Caine Monroy, un niño de 9 años que vive en Los Ángeles y que, un buen día, decidió hacer su propio ‘arcade’ con las cajas que sobraban del taller de su padre y otras cosas muy básicas. El resultado podría cambiar su visión de lo que se requiere para hacer tecnología:

El video, realizado por Nirvan Mullick, se viralizó en Internet y Caine se convirtió en una estrella. Ha sido visto más de 2 millones de veces en YouTube –sin contar las cifras de Vimeo–, su página de Facebook ya tiene más de 100.000 fans, los medios estadounidenses están enamorados de élse ha codeado con científicos de la Nasa y hasta ha sido ovacionado por el encopetado auditorio de la escuela de negocios de la Universidad del Sur de California.
Lo más importante: se han recolectado más de 190.000 dólares para que Caine pueda ir a la universidad. Todo para que su ingenio siga creciendo.
Tomado el 26 de abril del 2012 de la revista Enter
And  What do you think about it? What do you do for Innovation?
My Dearest students, Share a comment with us in this Blog.
Best Regards.
Jp

viernes, 20 de abril de 2012

10 Tips for Successful Innovation Teams

Innovation projects are said to fail 90% of the time. Why is this? Part of the answer lies in the special “innovation teams” who are mandated with finding breakthrough growth in large corporations. Setting these teams up for success is vital, yet corporations often fail when doing this. This article provides a collection of ten tips that serve as a talent management roadmap for growth companies in search of high-performance teams that deliver.


PUBLISHED: APRIL 12, 2012 BY: 


After interviewing a series of successful growth leaders, entrepreneurs and management gurus, we found that successful innovation teams start by selecting a diverse group who are analytical and creative in equal measures and have networks that are as broad and as deep as their skill sets. They function best within a structured environment that utilizes specialized working practices such as “safe space” and clear performance goals. Finally, the best teams are fully committed and invested in their success – mimicking the intense focus displayed by start-up entrepreneurs.
Imagine that you’ve been asked to lead a new “innovation team” at your company. Your task is to build a team that can come up with a new revenue-generating business idea and take it all the way from concept to launch. You’ve got a serious challenge on your hands though – finding new growth beyond the core will be tough in a company that has been making the same products for decades and has a notoriously risk averse culture. On the plus side, you’ve been given a budget and the freedom to assemble your own dream team to help you on your mission. On the other hand, you don’t have a lot of time and your division president is breathing down your neck looking for results. Where do you start?

1. Start by building a bigger box rather than trying to think outside it!

The first step in building the innovation team is selecting the right people. The best way to start is by understanding the actual work the team will do and then optimizing the personnel around these key activities. Commonly included in the work of an innovation team is a creative phase to generate new business ideas, an analytical phase to understand their business potential and a development phase to refine the most promising ideas and then test them in the market. With these activities in mind, assembling a group of people only capable of thinking “outside the box” clearly won’t be sufficient for success, as the generation of the idea is only one part of the process. We believe that a better staffing goal is to bring together a team that has the “biggest box” possible.
…assembling a group of people only capable of thinking “outside the box” clearly won’t be sufficient for success, as the generation of the idea is only one part of the process.
The box represents the sum of the experiences, skills, professional networks and academic knowledge that the team possesses collectively. The more diverse the backgrounds of the team are, the bigger the box they will have to draw from. Professor Jeanne Liedtka from the University of Virginia’s Darden School was among the first to make the important distinction between these two concepts in her book, The Catalyst and it applies as well to the innovation team as it does to the growth leader, which was her focus.
A big box is helpful for many reasons, especially because it increases the likelihood of forming new cognitive connections between all of the team members, commonly known as the “a-ha” moments that spur great new ideas and identify undiscovered possibilities. A team with a larger box will also be more capable of addressing the various challenges and questions that come up along the course of a journey from idea generation to launch.
While we believe that selecting people capable of generating fresh thinking is a given, we are surprised at how often companies err on the side of caution in this respect, bringing in a group of veterans whose deep experience of the core business can prevent them from seeing new possibilities. While we don’t advocate stocking the team full of “creatives” who are wired to generate a bucket of crazy ideas that can’t be implemented, it is unlikely that your team will come up with anything too breakthrough without sufficient diversity and a big box.


2. Select your team for who they know as well aswhat they know

The old adage of “it’s not what you know but who you know” is true for innovation teams. Every innovation team needs well-connected team members, who, with one glance at their Rolodexes (or iPhones) can find answers and call in favors, fast. As management guru Jon Katzenbach explains, “In an innovation team, there is no way to divorce the individual innovator from his network.” Access to a strong network provides insight into a broader range of knowledge, but it also provides support. An innovation team that doesn’t take advantage of its networks will be less successful.
While innovation teams usually network fairly instinctively, we believe that the quality of professional networks should be an explicit selection criteria when staffing decisions are made. In fact, modern tools have allowed mapping networks to become a much easier task (see Figure 1) and it is a wise investment of time to investigate this underrated aspect of teams before personnel selections are made. The importance of a strong network was highlighted recently during a consulting project at a large consumer goods company. When rumors spread that the team needed to supply detailed internal rate of return projections for an upcoming check-in meeting with top executives, the team panicked. Not only was there little time left before the meeting but they felt that they didn’t yet have the facts to put together such a granular analysis. On the other hand, disappointing a senior group of executives could be fatal for their project.
Luckily, a member of the innovation team had a strong relationship with the VP of Finance for the division. Before the meeting, he proactively reached out to the VP and aligned on the level of analysis needed while generating enthusiasm for the team’s work to-date. Thanks to the team member’s strong network, particularly his relationship with the VP of Finance, the new business concept gained vital buy-in from the Executive team. They were granted more resources to continue developing the concept – a big win for the team.
Click to enlarge

3. Pick one leader and provide him or her the autonomy they need to be successful

Because so much has been written about the concept of creative leadership, we instead chose to focus on how to set up the given leader for success in their role. Our research taught us several principles of leadership that are unique to innovation teams.
First, having just one appointed leader on the team is optimum. While some innovation teams have experimented with leadership duos or trios, they have rarely succeeded. One entrepreneur, Tim Ogilvie who was part of a three-way leadership team at a software startup remarked, “Any innovation team that has more than one leader isn’t set up for success.” He reasoned that the key downsides are inefficient decision-making and lower morale: “Equal voting rights creates gridlock over decisions and grumpy partners!” A solo leader is free to own the vision and make final decisions, which helps him keep the process moving along fast – a vital trait in this kind of work. For the leader of the innovation team, continuing to press forward even with imperfect information is better than stalling progress while waiting for elusive data points.
Interestingly, we found that while having one appointed leader is vital, multiple members of the team can and should be able to step up and take on leadership roles at times when they hold the relevant expertise at that time. Katzenbach reports that a team who is able to execute this practice has reached the status of a “real team,” – the highest level of functionality by a group of individuals.
The second major principle of team leadership is that the most successful leaders are granted total autonomy over team selection. They are free to recruit the people they feel are needed on the team (hopefully with the assistance of a seasoned HR professional) and can make substitutions when changes are necessary. Being able to fire a key team member is an important aspect of team success as teams need to stay nimble and flexible, with personnel who can respond to the needs of the project at any given time.

4. Build a team that can both identify gaps in the market and markets in the gap!

We all know that a good business idea usually fills a gap in the market – the idea addresses some sort of unmet need for which there is no other solution currently available. That is an important start but it isn’t enough to be considered true innovation. Innovation happens when there is not only a good idea, but also real customers willing to pay for it – that is to say, there is also a market in the gap. Surprisingly, innovation teams often neglect to bring in the skills required to ensure both of these two things happen.
Being able to assess the size of a market is often the part that innovation teams find easier. Most large corporations and management consulting firms have plenty of analytical “whizzkids” capable of performing heavy lifting in Excel and sizing the likely revenue opportunities attainable for a new business concept. Often, they build bottom-up estimations of financial performance (sometimes referred to as a reverse income statement) that can either fuel further investment or be used as rationale for deprioritization. While there is no doubt of the value that financial analysts bring, this unfortunately doesn’t ensure that the idea is good to start with. It’s impossible to staff a team full of analysts and expect them to come up with anything truly innovative.
To generate creative ideas and identify gaps in the market, nothing can replace the original insights gleaned through a team member trained in ethnography. An ethnographer’s role is to observe consumer behaviors and generate insights around their unmet needs – needs that typically lead to ripe innovation opportunities.
Having an ethnographer on the innovation team ensures that companies don’t innovate in a vacuum…
Ethnographers spend time observing and interviewing consumers as they go about their daily activities, looking for pain points and understanding their motivations. Having an ethnographer on the innovation team ensures that companies don’t innovate in a vacuum – consumers and their needs become a constant grounding force behind the direction of the work.
On a recent innovation project with a large financial services firm, ethnographers noticed simultaneous yet conflicting unmet needs between banks and their consumers: while consumers desired more interpersonal contact with banking tellers, banks sought to reduce costs by shutting down branches. Spotting this unmet need eventually led to the concept of a “virtual teller” system – delivered via ATMs equipped with cameras and video screens connected to outsourced tellers in remote locations. This innovative idea was a win-win for banks and their consumers and the concept has been launched in the market.

5. Find team members who tell great stories!

In our experience, the ability to communicate the new business idea is almost as important as the quality of the idea itself. Whether you are presenting to your boss, your colleagues or to a panel of Venture Capitalists, it is absolutely vital that they come away with a clear understanding of the concept’s value proposition, and a shared enthusiasm to make it successful. A good storyteller can help make this a reality.
Storytellers can describe problems and their solutions in a way that captivates attention and encourages action. They can help teams collaborate better and gain more support from others in the organization. In addition, it is cognitively simpler and more emotionally compelling for audiences to hear a well-explained story, versus sitting through a dull presentation of industry analysis and financial projections. Stories can be told verbally but they often have more impact if combined with visual methods such as storyboards, cartoons and movies. Modern platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest have all emerged as modern-day story telling vehicles that highlight the potency of combining verbal and visual methods.
At Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices business unit, the design organization has spearheaded the use of visual methods and stories to present new consumer experiences. It has proven to be especially effective as a tool to communicate with the Engineers who are responsible for creating the technology that makes the new consumer experiences a reality. “They see one of our presentations and they get jazzed. Not only are they more enthusiastic, they also make less mistakes, allowing us to innovate faster,” said one Microsoft Product Manager.

6. Understand the difference between good and bad conflict

While we strongly believe that a diverse innovation team will achieve the best results, there is no doubt that bringing together such a wide variety of people who have different roles, thinking preferences and perspectives will lead to some interpersonal friction. These differences can lead to discomfort and even conflict, so careful attention to the team’s working processes is a vital responsibility for the team.
The inevitability of such conflict was aptly described by Jeanne Liedtka who summarized that, “The value of the team and its ability lives in the diversity of their perspectives, but we also know that accomplishing things in the face of very diverse perspectives is difficult to do.”
In fact, not only is some conflict inevitable, but perhaps it is even desirable. Katzenbach said, “People think you put teams together because they are compatible, well you sure don’t want that on an innovation team! You certainly want team members to learn to work together, but you don’t want compatibility because you want their ideas to challenge each other.”
Getting people who think very differently to work together productively ensures that the diversity can be harnessed instead of threatening to take down the entire team. Group process skills – understanding how work gets done in a group – can help and the team must develop sophisticated procedures, rules, group dynamics and interaction styles in order to do this.
Cheryl Perkins, former Chief Innovation Officer at Kimberly-Clark described the difference between good and bad conflict. Good conflict or “constructive conflict,” means maximizing debate and problem solving that relates to the work itself. One form of constructive conflict is when group members challenge each other’s assumptions and hypotheses in the hope of arriving at a better answer. It is important to note, however, that constructive conflict can be over done: repetitively challenging another person is unlikely to lead to innovation. In fact, it can even be a source of bad conflict – interpersonal conflict – if disagreements about the content of the work leak over into the interpersonal realm. Bad conflict should be nipped in the bud, but constructive conflict should be encouraged.

7. Supplement the innovation core team with an external provocateur

Sometimes, no matter how great the innovation team, it can help to send in an outsider. In our work, we’ve had great success bringing in external experts from outside our client’s organization to function as a knowledge resource that can inspire an organiazation to consider bold and audacious srategies. In some cases teams lacking a spark should consider hiring a wild card member, who in the words of Katzenbach, will come up with “eight crazy ideas and two really good ones.” Any interpersonal idiosyncrasies that they might bring are more than mitigated by their potential to come up with a gamechanging idea or insight. We like to refer to this role as that of the “Irritant.” This is not to say that they must in fact be an irritating person, rather that their personality and experiences are in such contrast to that of the rest of the group that their mere presence can act as a boost of energy.
At a recent ideation session with a large CPG company, a senior member of the R&D organization showed up to play the role of the irritant. Unlike the rest of his colleagues who came in standard business casual dress, he wore a bright bow tie and jeans. He spent much of the day bouncing ideas of other colleagues while also reacting to and building on the ideas of the group. While his comments were imaginative and relevant, they were far from succinct and he didn’t seem bounded by the agenda. At the end of the session however, the room was buzzing with a handful of insights that this man had contributed to the group. His ability to think expansively, his long history working with and studying corporateinnovations and his confidence to think out loud while stumbling into the next great thought allowed him to add significant value.

8. Remember to set goals and measure progress

Some innovation teams neglect to set goals at the start of a project because the range of possible outcomes from the project are so extreme that they find it impossible to know what to shoot for. On the one hand, they don’t want to aim too high as they don’t want to fail but at the same time they don’t want to constrain themselves to only considering incremental opportunities. Even though it might seem to be a difficult exercise, teams that don’t have the discipline to set goals upfront are likely making a mistake.
…painting an image of the future that the whole team buys into feeds the team’s hunger for success while also mitigating conflict.
Starting off by establishing a vision of what the team is hoping to achieve is the first step. Dr. Kobus Neethling, President of the South African Creativity Foundation, notes that painting an image of the future that the whole team buys into feeds the team’s hunger for success while also mitigating conflict. “When team members are confident they are all striving for the same goal, interpersonal conflict is lessened,” because the only things they can disagree on will be how to achieve those goals.
The high performing teams tend to revisit their goals periodically as “a way of reinforcing amongst themselves their commitment to the cause” according to Katzenbach. The metrics that work the best are ones that the team has co-created themselves as teams are more likely to be committed and accountable to goals that they have set for themselves.
While some teams might set themselves lofty goals, such as “find $200MM of new revenues,” we believe that focusing on business outcomes too early in the process is a mistake. We agree with Liedtka’s recommendation in The Catalyst that getting an answer to a question might be a better goal to set. Innovation requires a number of applied experiments aimed at figuring out which new idea will work, and simply getting an answer—either yes this will work, or no, this will not work—is one measure of success. Disconfirming data is not to be considered a failure because cutting bait on bad ideas before you waste money and time, are vital for long term success of any organization that aims to grow.

9. Think like a startup entrepreneur

After spending time with successful entrepreneurs, we were struck by the stories they told about the high levels of motivation and focus they displayed at their peak. This level of commitment and engagement is hard to mimic in a large corporation, where members of innovation teams often work under less pressure. In fact, we’ve often been surprised to see members of corporate innovation teams going about their work in a “business as usual manner” in stark contrast to the approach of startup entrepreneurs whose passion often drives them to work long hours and make other personal sacrifices for the good of the business. Much of the innovation taking place in today’s world is happening because of entrepreneurs and if big corporations are going to keep up, mindsets and behaviors among innovation teams will need to change.
Attempting to spur entrepreneurial motivation within a corporation might be possible by adjusting the compensation and rewards to provide more risk and more potential for financial rewards. If this is not feasible, perhaps team members could at least sign an “entrepreneurship contract” pledging their commitment to the business.

10. Ensure team members have “both feet in”

Regardless of the potential monetary or other rewards, there is no doubt that for any innovation team to be successful, team members must be fully committed and not “one foot in, one foot out.” When looking at this aspect of motivation it is helpful to put on the hat of a venture capitalist to understand what characteristics are most important to them when they evaluate an innovation team.
According to Carter Griffin from Technology VC firm, Updata Partners, successful innovators have a unique mindset. The mentality is one that they “have to put their entire being behind this initiative, as the ones who try to hedge fail. The ones who don’t pour their soul into it typically don’t make it.”
One recipient of venture funding from Updata partners was a digital marketing company called iContact. The CEO of the company, Ryan Allis started the company while a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After a short while, his young tech company started growing and performing smartly. Soon, Ryan was faced with a difficult decision: continue at UNC and finish his degree or leave to focus on his startup? For him, it was a no-brainer. Just like his role models, Michael Dell and Bill Gates, he knew that the right choice was to leave school so he could give his business the attention it deserved.
Apparently he made the right choice. From its formation in 2003 to now, iContact has grown into a company with 210 employees and annual sales of $38 million. He was able to be successful in large part because he focused all of his time and energy on his business, instead of having his attention split several ways. For innovation teams in corporations, the same issue is present and often team members have their attention split across multiple responsibilities. For the team to be successful, team members must be allowed to fully focus on their innovation project, rather than being distracted by their other roles in the corporation.
In summary, we believe that as long as big corporations continue to seek new ways to deliver organic growth, innovation teams will have a role to play. Companies that spend time upfront, thoughtfully assembling, managing and motivating their teams will likely have more success than those who pursue a “business as usual” approach.
By Carl Fudge & Joaquín Roca

About the authors


Carl Fudge is a Director at the innovation consultancy, Motiv Strategies, based in Washington, D.C. He holds a MA degree in Social-Organizational Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University and is a former McKinsey consultant. Carl can be reached at: carl@motivstrategies.com
Joaquín Roca is an organizational change consultant focusing on group process at technology startups in the New York area and a PhD candidate in Social-Organizational Psychology at Teachers College, Columbia University. Joaquín can be reached at:joaquin@joaquinroca.com

Hello my dearest students,  Please Read It and Share your  comments in this blog !!
Best regards.