A sort of apology

“I apologise to posterity for living in a country where the capacity and tastes of schoolboys and sporting costermongers are the measure of metropolitan culture.”

George Bernard Shaw (as music critic) in 1922.

Here we are ninety years on. Aside from the sexist reference (by today’s standards), he could have written it yesterday.
 

Immigrants drive exports

A Danish friend has sent me a fascinating article from yesterday’s Politiken.DK.

What it reveals is that Danish exports to emerging markets have been hindered substantially by language and cultural barriers ‒ and that a major solution has been found in using second and third generation immigrants to Denmark as intermediaries.

Apparently the policy has been so successful that exports from Denmark to Asian, Middle Eastern and South American countries have lifted rather dramatically.

Now a database has been created so that appropriate people can be matched with relevant markets. Says Jonas Ghiyati, “For example, Morocco is difficult to penetrate with only English. A person with Moroccan roots can reverse the language, will have contacts at all levels, knows the culture and system – and how to dodge corruption.”

Wonder how many other countries with multicultural populations (and negative politics/media around immigrants) have tried this approach?

CEOs and innovation training

A recent study by PwC/Accenture shows that globally 80% of CEOs believe that innovation will drive efficiencies and lead to competitive advantage.

Percentages very close to this come up in most surveys of top managers, time after time.

The problem of course remains that the majority of CEOs themselves have very limited training or hands-on experience in the field of innovation. Most of them attended business school and grew through the ranks at a time when specialised training was not widely available, and many have not actively worked in an innovation function.

It would perhaps be OK if several of them recognised this and went about fixing it. But in my experience that very rarely happens.

So classic problems remain within organisations as barriers to successful innovation – problems not only of climate and culture and inappropriate personal behaviour, but also the belief that having a standardised innovation process is the primary route to glory.

Many organisations would benefit from an honest, root and branch review of their innovation capabilities, coupled with the open-mindedness to deal with whatever issues emerge, starting with the CEOs themselves.

Throughout my time in innovation, I’ve found that CEOs think that innovation training is important, but only for THEM, not for ME.

Renovate or die

For years I’ve been a high priest of brand renovation, battling against the self-fulfilling effect of the so-called “brand life-cycle”.

For far too long BCG has made life-cycle theory fashionable through their “Boston Box” matrix, as a result of which far too many brands with potentially healthy and profitable futures have been consigned first to the unsupported “Cash Cows” box, before being consigned to the “Dogs” box, then to be withdrawn from the market altogether. What a terrible waste of potential shareholder value.

One of the most astonishing renovation stories is Skoda cars. Bought by VW, they were transformed from joke to cult status, from death-trap to top-of-class. Why does a Skoda have a double rear-window heater? To make sure your hands stay warm when you’re pushing it. That’s how it used to be.

In Communist Czechoslovakia, Skoda had some 98% of the local market, but customers had to put up with extremes of unreliability and poor performance. A clue to the low quality of the product is that one third of the workforce was drafted in from the local prison on a daily basis.

VW decided to invest heavily in product development and manufacture, but perhaps most importantly, they worked hard to create a totally different culture, initially bringing in experienced VW managers from other countries to work alongside their Czech colleagues. They built new relationships with key suppliers. There were no more convicts on the assembly line.

Quite quickly product quality improved and, with the introduction of new models and some honest marketing programmes, their reputation started to rise and sales in tandem. In fact, within a few years, in Britain they became the marque with the highest repeat purchase – an amazing 82% of owners going back for more. The Daily Mirror described the whole thing as “history’s greatest comeback since Bobby Ewing stepped out of the shower.”

Have you been involved in successfully renovating a brand that otherwise might have been consigned to history?