Outside Innovation

The Future of Programming and Innovation

In early August, I had the pleasure of participating in National Instruments’ annual NIWeek user group event. NI’s customers are scientists and engineers who are experts in a wide array of disciplines, from nanotechnology and photo-optics to the design of alternative energy power supplies in automobiles, the control of robots and other manufacturing processes, to the design of signal processing systems on programmable embedded chips in today’s cell phones.

These engineers and scientists use NI’s virtual instrumentation software innovation toolkit, LabView, to design, prototype, and deploy applications that measure real world phenomena—analog signals and physical movement—analyze these signals, describe actions that need to be taken, send out the signals to execute those actions (usually in parallel), analyze the results, and take additional actions. Whether the device being programmed is a nanorobot being used to splice genes or a spectrum analyzer being used to measure radio frequency interference, the scientist is dealing with real world phenomena in real time.

Hanging out with these real world scientists and engineers got me thinking about the future of programming as we know it today. The future of programming is a topic to which NI’s top executives have also been giving a lot of thought.

As faithful readers know, LabView is now the graphical programming environment used by elementary school age kids who can design, build, and manipulate robots using LEGO Mindstorms NXT. Jeff Kodosky is the original inventor of the LabView environment, which was designed to be the equivalent of a spreadsheet for engineers and scientists—a simple tool that lets them model their world and do their jobs. At NI Week, Jeff Kodosky gave a compelling peak into the future of LabView¹.

Has Your Firm Adapted to the Blurred Boundary between the Internet and Your Products and Services?

In late July, our client work had me thinking about the fact that our organizational structures aren’t keeping pace with the speed with which all of our products, services and business processes are becoming Internet-enabled.

Our corporate marketing organizations are working hard to transition to “Web first” content creation, catalog maintenance, and marketing campaigns. They lead with well-tagged and granular e-content and then produce glossy brochures and catalogs, rather than the traditional approach of the other way around.

Our product development groups are incorporating “phone home” features into products for troubleshooting and diagnosis. Many products are now Internet-connectable, from your cell phone to your stock portfolio, from your tractor to your home or office energy management system, from your exercise bike to your blood test equipment. Some products now include Internet-based service updates (book a service appointment), replenishment (order more ink cartridges), and email alerts (your stock just hit a threshold) based on events or on triggers customers can set. Many products offer built-in subscription features (“do you want to download updated tax tables now?) as well as renewals (licenses, maintenance agreements, subscriptions, memberships). Some products now come with electronic dashboards. And many of today’s products and solutions are custom-configurable online.

How Do You Communicate Your Vision?

One of the most powerful communication strategies you can use to gain support, alignment, and resources allocated to customer-impacting initiatives is to tell a compelling story about how you’re eliminating customer pain points and saving customers’ time. I learned this lesson from Phil Gibson, the head of Web strategy at National Semiconductor. Phil perfected a way of communicating the benefits of the investments he was making by always starting first with the benefits he was delivering to National’s most important customers—the design engineers who select National’s devices for the products they’re designing for mass production. Phil talked about the hours that he was able to save customers each month by providing them tools to do their jobs. (“We are saving each of our customers on average 60 hours/month.”) He talked about the increased number of design iterations that customers could do in the same amount of time (3x to 4x), which resulted in better designs and more design wins for themselves and for National. In every presentation Phil makes describing the latest enhancements he has made to National’s Web site (or the ones that are on the drawing board), he leads with the customer benefits, followed by the benefits to National. He also tells the story by describing the context and the goals of the typical design engineer, or purchasing agent, or partner, or account exec. Then he maps those stakeholder benefits to business bottom-line benefits. But he always starts by putting himself and his audience in his customers’ shoes.

In "The First Big Mistake in Search and Knowledge Projects: Establishing the Right Vision and Compelling Communications," Sue Aldrich offers a great visioning “how to.” She provides an antidote to the “first big mistake” she encounters in most search and knowledge management projects: No clear compelling vision. She dissects two great examples of successfully delivered visions: putting a man on the moon and restoring New York’s Central Park. Sue walks you through the process of crafting a compelling vision and telling it as a story. You’ll want to craft a story about how we can save customers’ time and make their jobs and lives easier. You’ll want to tell a compelling story about how we can empower employees and partners by making it easier and faster for them to do their jobs. You’ll want to use real numbers. Sue explains how to identify and to sell your vision to all the internal stakeholders who need to understand what’s in it for them and why they should care.

Two Great Ways to Get Your Customers Working for YOU!

1. Let Your Customers Manage Their Information and Relationships

Almost every company we’ve worked with is somewhat embarrassed about the state of its customer data. Yes, it’s true that there are organizations that have perfect and accurate records of their customers’ account information, transaction histories, product ownership, and service and interaction histories. But, to be frank, those organizations are the exception; not the rule.

In every organization we’ve ever seen, customer information is distributed, specialized, and functionalized. There may be “one system of record” for all core customer account information. But I can guarantee you that there are also many silo’ed and ancillary applications, spreadsheets, email lists, and databases that are hopefully, but probably not, linked into a federated view of customer information. The fact is that the proverbial “360-degree view of our customers’ information” is an unattainable and unrealistic holy grail.

The first mistake that we find most organizations making is to wait until they have “perfect” customer data to begin exposing it to their customers. There is no such thing as perfect customer information. There never will be.

The second mistake that we find most organizations making is not moving quickly enough to enable customers to enter and manage their own information. We are all so embarrassed by the fact that we don’t have everything perfect and linked together that we ignore the twin realities that a) nobody else does it much better, and b) many customers would be happy to help us connect the dots.

Implementing Customer-Friendly Select and Buy

Make It Easy for Customers to Select and Sort on the Parameters They Care about!

When your prospects or customers are looking to: a) see what solutions you offer that might fit their needs and/or b) select the appropriate one for their particular needs, they usually have a few key context-specific criteria in mind. We’re all familiar with these parameters. We use them all the time. For example, when researching business travel options, we usually search on parameters like destination, times of departure or arrival, number of stops, seat availability, and price. Ideally, we might really want to see all non-stop flights to the SF Bay area that arrive by 9 pm that have an available aisle seat, at a price under $900, and then be able to relax any of those parameters, if necessary, until we find the optimal compromise. When selecting clothing, we often search/navigate by gender, category (adult/child/petite), type of clothing (pants, shirts, footwear), style (formal vs. casual), actual size, color, and so on. Ideally, we might want to find size 12 petite green women’s slacks. When selecting computer software, we care first about compatibility with our operating system, browser, email, and existing file formats. Then we care about whether it will do the particular job we have in mind—does it have the functionality criteria we need? We also care about performance, scalability, ease of use, and ease of support. We might really like to start by seeing only options that run in our default operating system/browser/email configuration.

Guyz Nite “Live Free or Die Hard”

By Mitchell Kramer, Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, Patricia Seybold Group

Every day with lunch, I read the Business Day section of the New York Times. On June 25, under Media, I came across an article written by Maria Aspan: “A Spurned Parody of ‘Die Hard’ Returns to YouTube, Approved.” It was a story about a rock band named Guyz Nite and 20^th Century Fox’s Die Hard movies. Last August, Guyz Nite took a song that it had written about the movies, created a video for the song using clips from the movies, and posted the video on YouTube in an effort to create some publicity and marketing buzz about themselves. The song chronicled the exploits of the movies’ hero, John McClane, in all the, then, three Die Hards. It had the catchy kind of tune that you can’t get out of your head, and it had a fabulous hook—John McClane’s “Yippe ki yay m#$@! f&$%#,” a line that is actually copyrighted by Bruce Willis, the actor who has portrayed McClane in all the Die Hard movies. The video did a great job of synchronizing the words in the song with scenes from the movies.