Archive for September, 2017

It’s not just products

Monday, September 25th, 2017

It’s not just products!
By Roger La Salle
www.innovationtraining.com.au
Building a business
Research conducted by the Chief Scientist of Australia and no doubt by many other showed that companies that replace their products at the greatest rate, the most innovative if you like, are the ones the grow the fastest with the greatest profit.

Of course there are many competitions in Australia and elsewhere that promote the so called, most innovative companies. Indeed some actually charge a fee to enter such a competition which possibly “smacks a little like google Awards in paying to be noticed.

None the less, it doesn’t take a competition to see who are the most innovation operators in Australia. McDonalds would be my No1, a company that brings out some new product or a menu change or highlight on almost a weekly basis. Of course Apple, a company with no product in its stable much more than 12 months old are also at the top of the tree.

What else?
However, apart from innovating your products there are many other ways to achieve sustained growth, but many of these are overlooked or simple not on the RADAR of business executives clambering to stay ahead of the game.

Some of these include, complementing you offering, which is in effect selling something that captures the mind set of your customer.

Yet another is to accessorise you products or indeed accessorise the products of any successful business. The company Belkin comes to mind as a company one may well argue may not even exit but for the accessories it has developed for Apple and like products.

A further means for growth is to enhance the channel though which you communicate and reach your customer. For instance insurance companies and banks are perfectly places to achieve this but to date have been very poor in implementing this powerful growth strategy, possibly because they are too focused on their banking business and have failed to properly look outside the square.

Finally, there are new markets.
The world is a very small place these days with communication and transport now so fast, cheap and reliable.

An important way to grow your business is to grow your geographical foot print, but too often, again the pressure of survival in an ever a more aggressive environments restricts many companies, especially the smaller ones from properly addressing the search for new markers.

What now?
Perhaps the rate of product churn is powerful growth mechanism but new products can be a risky, costly and time consuming business.

Remember, new products are just one business growth strategy, ignore the others at your peril.
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Roger La Salle, trains people in innovation, marketing and the new emerging art of Opportunity Capture. “Matrix Thinking”™ is now used in organizations in more than 29 countries. He is sought after as a speaker on Innovation, Opportunity and Business Development, is the author of four books, and a Director and former CEO of the Innovation Centre of Victoria (INNOVIC) as well as a number of companies, both in Australia and overseas. He has been responsible for a number of successful technology start-ups and in 2004 was a regular panellist on the ABC New Inventors TV program. In 2005 he was appointed to the “Chair of Innovation” at “The Queens University” in Belfast.

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The energy crunch has come

Tuesday, September 19th, 2017

The Power Crunch has come

By Roger La Salle
www.innovationtraining.com.au

It is simply amazing that the people on every side of politics for the past 15 years have not foreseen the power crunch coming.

Frankly, this is unbelievable. Who advises Government on energy policy, who is to blame for the catastrophe that is now befalling this country? Are these people blind to the obvious or simply in denial or, worse still, stupid!

Many years ago energy generation was planned 30 years in advance with the eye to population growth and likely demand. Gone are all these forecasts so that now at the 11th hour the Government is scrambling, at any cost just to keep the lights on – and of course it’s too late. No short term fix is possible and for the long terms, there is no plan, no foresight, just hope. Where are the engineers, the people that could see this coming and where was the action to head this off at the pass?

Australia in now doomed to energy poverty. Poverty in a country that should and could essentially have free power. We have an abundance of power generation capability but politicians too afraid to make any decisions, except to give more subsidies to renewables, a source of power that cannot possibly meet the demand.

We also hear of the fabulous batteries that are supposed to provide the stop gap measures, we hear of 10KW domestic batteries, (one assumes this is 10kWhour – but of course the experts don’t even know how to properly specify it’s capability) a battery that barely has sufficient capacity to cook a single large roast dinner.

We have the wonderful prospect of 100MW batteries (again one assumes this is 100MWhour). Wow, 100MWh would not have enough power to charge Australia’s population of cell phones, laptops and tablets, just once. Yes, one day of charge from a 100MWh, but who’s counting?

Then we have the issue of disposal of these so called wonderful savours. In a few years these will be like car tyres, and what of their carbon foot print in manufacture, delivery and of course disposal. I have not heard a single commentator even mention this, much less offer a solution.

This is simply greatest failure of Governments of all persuasions in the history of this nation. We are now in a place where the government is in knee jerk panic response at any cost from an economy already at breaking point, but alas, it’s all too late.

To boot, apart from energy poverty, we are driving industry to the wall with ever rising power prices, and it’s only going to get worse.

Who is to blame? It’s time we sheeted this home to out hopeless body of politicians running scared in the light of C02 mitigation when even the Chief Scientist says that what we are doing will have no effect on global temperatures.

Are we mad, it seems so!

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Roger La Salle, trains people in innovation, marketing and the new emerging art of Opportunity Capture. “Matrix Thinking”™ is now used in organizations in more than 29 countries. He is sought after as a speaker on Innovation, Opportunity and business development and is the author of four books and a Director and former CEO of the Innovation Centre of Victoria (INNOVIC) as well as a number of companies both in Australia and overseas. He has been responsible for a number of successful technology start-ups and in 2004 was a regular panelist on the ABC New Inventors TV program. In 2005 he was appointed to the “Chair of Innovation” at “The Queens University” in Belfast. www.innovationtraining.com.au

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