Pioneers almost always lose out to latecomers. Will Apple & Samsung concede to Xiaomi?

The digital world is abuzz with a four year old company – Xiaomi – giving established global multinationals a run for their money. The company has already trounced Samsung in China to be the numero uno in smartphones. It’s now training its eyes in India where initial sales have been more than encouraging. With its stupendous rise, Xiaomi has also attracted some rave reviews. It has been accused of aping innovation giant Apple. Can a new comer replicate the success of an established one?     

The annals of business history would perhaps reveal the truth. In the recent past, we have seen Samsung and Apple take each other to court several times for replicating innovation. In today’s digital age, such blatant replication of innovation is bound to rise as faster-innovation-to-market becomes the norm. One copies the other to go one-up in the market. Is there a way out? An increasing number of companies can be seen scaling up their investment in people and culture. This investment would be the only competitive differentiator that a competitor cannot copy. Around people and culture revolves significant other differentiators like programs, assets and capabilities. These are unique as are the people within each organization.

Take for example the perceived value of quality that comes with every product. The company creates products that consistently deliver high quality in accordance with its brand promise. An Apple customer need not necessarily go through reviews and recommendations to understand and assimilate specifications – features and functionalities. They simply know what they are getting – an outstanding product. The late CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, had said, ‘be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected.’ He also believed in ‘hiring good people with a passion for excellence.’

Xiaomi is a four year old brand with the perceived value of offering products that are value-for-money. At least, for the time being. The company probably has a winning product in Mi3 packed with all the features and functions of a top-notch Samsung or Apple product and time will tell if customers aspire to own the product. Going by its marketing ploy, limiting availability to a select few, there is certainly a beeline of customers waiting to own the product. Can they change the perceived value? Time will tell. 

Business history indicates that companies who create radically new markets are not necessarily the ones that scale them up into big mass markets. The pioneers almost always lose out to latecomers

Work Smart:Not yet in India

Thanks to the mid-week break, she said walking into the office appearing rejuvenated and revved up for the tasks that lay ahead for the rest of the week. My colleague was completely immersed in her work the rest of the day; calling people, prioritizing meetings, delegating work and responding to mails. Unlike other days, there wasn’t any time for long coffee breaks or catching up on trending topics. And, unlike other days, she appeared cheerful carrying out the tasks. More importantly, she seemed to get charged up as and when she completed a task and moved to another one. It really made me wonder if there was any correlation between work hours and productivity. I got my answer when I read Anjana Menon’s article in Economic Times - work less to work better.

I was pondering over the benefits of the concept and thought of collating some stats to back it up. But then there was this lingering uncertainty to key in specific views favouring the article lest the naysayers go for my throat. “As if he is always working hard,” would be a snide remark. We are people who innately believe in following traditional and well entrenched framework of carrying out work. Anything outside this would affect productivity or so is the belief. Experts are still mulling over the efficacy of extending workplace flexibility in India and a work-less work-better policy would be a little early as they continue deliberating on what’s best for corporate India.

The topic however is not put to rest. Media has already come out with counter arguments on the topic. See what the experts have to say

Do you have an Oscar, Messi and Neymar in your team?

It’s the biggest game of all and the fever’s catching everyone; albeit a bit slowly. I am referring to the World Cup Football. While some bet on the wily Brazilians, the Spaniards and Germans are no less favourites either. Any conversation on the world cup would revolve around the individual brilliance of some of the players amongst the qualified teams. There’s the crafty Neymar, the swift Dutch Arjjen Robin, man with golden legs – Messi, playmaker Ronaldo to name a few.  I feel there is more to a team than individual brilliance. To cement Brazil’s legacy and gun for yet another title as the best ever, Brazil would have a built a strategy especially around its key players. It goes without saying that these role players would know what’s expected of them and recognize the vital part they play in the team’s success. Each member of the team also understands that while the key players may ultimately make the difference, it’s really the way the entire system works together that propels the team to victory time and time again.

It’s no different when it comes to a corporate team. Undoubtedly, the superstars would go the extra mile to rev up the work engine. What’s important is to check whether the business has the right role players to help system work well as a unit? Do they know what’s expected of them? 

·        New roles are emerging; new skills and support are required. Business is changing by the day. Strategy faster, with more flexibility and adaptability being the order of the day. I was speaking to a colleague who mentioned businesses transitioning to embrace the trends in the market driven by increasingly empowered customers. There are new roles emerging within businesses. Digital evangelists, Content head, Customer segment owners, marketing technologists to name a few.

·  Better the customer experience. Progressive businesses are recruiting customer-focused professionals who can match customers’ needs with businesses’ products and services. They can also prioritize contextually relevant customer experiences.

·        Adopt new technologies. CMOs hitherto averse to technology are slowly and steadily picking up new age technologies to keep pace with their customers. And, progressive businesses are increasingly demanding laggards to adopt technology as a native capability in to fuel business requirements.

There is an innate understanding between Neymar and Oscar in the Brazilian squad. Neymar knows when and where Oscar would feed him with a through-pass. That understanding is the foundation for the team’s success. Similarly a business should build and align teams, structured to best serve the customer in the post-digital age. It is important to ensure a fluid design with more collaboration across silos to execute strategy faster, with more flexibility and adaptability.

Tech Tows Consumer Companies in Engaging Customers

McDonalds give away toys with Happy Meal; an attempt to keep their young customers engaged. Chocolate maker Ferrero India, packs toys as a surprise inside its Kinder Joy chocolate egg. These are small examples of a fast growing trend. An increasing number of businesses are embracing the customer activated enterprise model. As per an IBM study, leaders in organizations that outperform their peers are not just managing customer experiences; they are reorienting their organizations, strategies and investments to cultivate contemporary relationships across all manner of customer interactions.

Progressive ones are transitioning from selling products and services to being an active partner with customers’ interest group. In short, more and more organizations can be seen fervently attempting to create an ecosystem around customers’ sweet spot. According to David Aaker, a sweet spot reflects customers’ “thinking and doing” time, beliefs and values, activities and passions, possessions or places they treasure. Ideally, it would be a part of, if not central to, their self-identity and lifestyle and reflect a higher-order value proposition, much beyond the benefits provided by the offering.

Aaker illustrates this with the example of Pampers. The brand went beyond diapers by creating the Pampers Village community that provides a “go to” place for all issues relating to babies and child care. Its five sections – pregnancy, newborn, baby, toddler, and preschooler – all have a menu of topics. Its online community allows moms and soon-to-be moms to connect with each other to share their common experiences, issues and thoughts about how to raise a healthy, happy child. The program demonstrates that Pampers understands mothers, and works to establish a relationship between the brand and the mother that will potentially continue throughout the mother’s Pampers buying life.

What is surprising is that this marketing ploy isn’t restricted to B2C businesses. Technology giant IBM recently announced ‘IBM Cloud Marketplace,’ one place where clients and partners can discover, try, and buy cloud-based capabilities. The IBM Marketplace has mobile apps, software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings, and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings - all in one spot  - where they are easy to locate, easy to understand, easy to order, easy to try out, and easy to purchase. That’s not all. The company also launched a BlueMix Garage development center in San Francisco,  where it plans to work hand-in-hand with entrepreneurs and startups on next-generation, cloud-based agile applications. 

Aaker says that connecting with a shared-interest area provides avenues to a relationship much richer than that of an offering-based relationship that, for most brands, is driven by a functional benefit and is relatively shallow and vulnerable.

Views are personal

Is Facebook’s Acquisition of WhatsApp a Threat to Telcos

A cousin of mine, aged 22, can always be seen tapping fervently on his mobile. For someone sporadically glancing at this exercise, it might seem as a new generation rhythm. For others who are forcefully but passively involved in this so called music, it is a mobile-centric social paranoia that is seizing especially the young ones. The culprit is the ever increasing mobile messaging apps.

The recent announcement by social media firm Facebook about the acquisition of WhatsApp will only trigger the obsession towards real-time content sharing. It is soon turning into an emotional activity. And, such emotional activities are what marketers are increasingly trying to tap. It is also a great handle for customer engagement. Consider this; the 22-year old spends more time on his mobile than chatting with his family members staying with him. He is just one among the 70% of WhatsApp users that use its services every day. Facebook comparatively has only 61% hooked onto it every day. 

      

It is clear that social media gorillas are transitioning to the traditional mainstream industries ousting well entrenched and seemingly unshakable giants. Consider the case of telcos. The goings on hitherto indicates that they completely missed the social media phenomenon. Grappling with continued operating challenges, telcos’ rhetoric of continued innovation to create new revenue streams from analyzing user behavior is increasingly seen as yielding no outcomes. Communication tools like WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber to name a few are in fact overtaking telcos initiatives towards meaningful customer engagement.

The recent announcement by WhatsApp CEO is further damaging to telcos already waning significance in the communication ecosystem. Beginning Q2 2014, WhatsApp will enable voice within its app. And, like how the communication tools previously chipped away the once prominent SMS from telcos, there is likelihood of a threat on telcos’ voice revenues.   

Staying Ahead with Mobile;Losing Fun in Life

When someone doesn’t pop the question – what plans for the New Year – it might seem atypical. Well, that is what happened to me. No one cared. But that is typical of folks now. The mobile devices keep everyone engaged. So engrossed are people that most have absolutely no clue of the time passing by. What do they care of others plans? I was mulling over the clutter of mobile applications – some device resident while others in the cloud – and a way to stay away from it when some marketing to-do list for the year struck me. 

1.   Stay focused – I had been repeatedly suggesting to people I meet to stay away from mobile applications that challenge not just their stress thresholds but the tolerance of others around. What is increasingly seen is a tendency to procrastinate with the belief there will tomorrow to make up for today’s indulgences. Marketers who are relentlessly pursuing ways and means to garner consumers’ mindshare are being asked to stay away from strategies weighing down their brands. No marketer would want to commoditize a brand, right? Similarly, we ought to focus on one or two applications that keep us and others around us engaged. 

2.  Be seen – One of the advices from my boss early this year was to be seen where it matters. The connected world permits one to work from anywhere. It also implies that one can find the most convenient place to expedite work. While convenience matters, collaboration between team members should be a priority and hence regular meetings an imperative. The other day, I asked a journalist friend if she would want to walk across the road to meet a common friend. She preferred to take down the number and call instead. The conversation lasted 5 minutes; ending with the note of a possible meeting at a later date. Be it friends or relatives, whatsapp, Facebook, hangout etc are challenging the social aspects of human life. ‘Walking is no more a verb’ in my vocabulary, commented a young colleague recently. ‘Texting, pinging…etc are more frequently used,’ she continued. 

3.  Spread word that matters - In our quest to gain prominence across social media, we tend to indulge in activities that diminish the significance of matters that demand attention. A nine year old missing boy in Mumbai was fortunately traced with the help of his father’s extensive social media network. Not many are lucky though. The unedifying demeanor of our elected representatives in the Parliament should remind us of obstreperous kids and neighbors who get ostracized during community activities. Their political sagacity lies only in hoodwinking people.