Turning obstacles into opportunities
Ironically, the key to your future success may lie hidden in the very challenges your company faces. Turning obstacles into opportunities depends on developing the ability to look at them in a new way and to create new responses. We call these new responses, “repossibilities”. Without a developing new way connect with customers more powerfully, you are trapped into conducting business the old way in a new environment.
What you’ll find here
On this site you can learn about:
- The five steps to “getting repossible” at your company
- Examples of companies that have created “repossibilities” over the last century.
- Thought leaders writing about “repossibility” concepts
Creating new ways of tackling existing problems. We call that “Insighting Ideas”. It’s what we do. It’s who we are.
To start creating “repossibilities” at your company, call or write to arrange a free 30-minute session to start identifying where “repossibilities” may lie at your company.
2nd Recession Opportunity
How to overcome the (new) coming recession
With all the noises in the media about the end of this recession, it’s tempting to think that we are getting back to normal. The light at the end of the tunnel – we’d like to convince ourselves that it is indeed there. While it is natural to hope that a nice and juicy steak awaits us at the end of what has been a bread-and-water period for most businesses, the reality is more sobering. Not only is the recession not over yet, the recovery too comes with its own set of challenges for the economy.
Business Strategy from the Pilgrims
Surprising lessons from Thanksgiving myths
As Thursday’s tryptophan wears off…
Less is more… in ways you don’t expect!
What Jeff Bezos Knows
Let’s not ‘turtle’ our way through the recession
Millennia of shared experience and painful years of direct experience have taught us to keep our heads down in times of crisis, lest we draw attention to ourselves. All this conditioning has trained us to think that if we don’t rock the boat, we might get through the storm OK.
From our herd instinct we have learned “there’s safety in numbers”. But marketers know that in order to get heard, this is a death wish. Only by standing out will we remain standing.
Is your company’s future frozen?
Guy Kawasaki has a question
The Ice Man Cometh… and Stayeth
In the 1880’s a new industry evolved: ice. Folks had these fancy new contraptions dubbed “ice boxes” to prevent their perishable food from spoiling. Milk, eggs, meat – all the foods that contributed to better health needed special preservation. The answer came in the form of the icebox. Its only drawback was the ongoing need for ice blocks.
That gave rise to ice harvesters who spent the winters cutting ice from frozen lakes and storing it for later delivery. No matter where you lived, you could get ice delivered. And no need to struggle with ice preservation. The iceman took care of that.
From Disaster to Domination
An Afternoon of Desperation
You probably don’t remember it, but the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 in St. Louis was celebrated in a terrific heat wave. And July 23 was particularly hot — which is why it is such an important date in innovation history.
It was especially terrific for one immigrant, Arnold Fornachou, who was fortunate enough to scrape together enough funds to purchase a vendor booth selling ice cream. He was thrilled to be selling at such a prestigious international event… and he wasn’t disappointed! In fact, business was so brisk, he ran out of the glass dishes in which the ice cream was served! Disaster!
Customer to Competitor
Old Wine in a New Bottle
As late as 1999, Kodak clung to its belief in the permanence of film cameras, slowing down its foray into digital technology. The company had to fight back its way into the market when rivals from outside photography like Canon and Sony had already established an advantage. Kodak simply did not “get” the customer need for convenience that digital cameras catered to.
Power of Passion
The search for Excellence takes us back to Kindergarten
Learning the ABC’s
In the highly technical fields of information technology and medicine, there’s nothing short of a quagmire of acronyms and complex detail. When the two intersect, the swamp grows exponentially. You might think you’d need a number of advanced degrees to create success, but as it turns out, with a nod to Robert Fulghum, all you really need to know you learned in kindergarten.
Winning with Wikinomics
Another milestone in Wikinomics history occurred recently when the online movie rental company Netflix concluded a three-year contest for a system to improve movie recommendation accuracy on its site by 10%. Two global teams ended in a virtual dead heat, with no winner of the $1 million prize to be declared until September. 
As the New York Times reported, “The contest, which began in October 2006, has already produced an impressive legacy. It has shaped careers, spawned at least one start-up company and inspired research papers. It has also changed conventional wisdom about the best way to build the automated systems that increasingly help people make online choices.”
Recommendation engines predict what a person might enjoy based on statistical scoring of that person’s stated preferences, past consumption patterns and similar choices made by many others. The goal was to improve the movie recommendations made by its internal software by at least 10 percent, as measured by predicted versus actual one-through-five-star ratings by customers. By a Nose at the WireWhen one team announced last month that it had passed the 10 percent threshold, it set off a 30-day race, under contest rules, for other teams to try to best it. That led to another round of team-merging by leading rivals who assembled a global consortium of about 30 members, appropriately called the Ensemble.
