John Winsor

Help with Baked-In

As many of you know, Alex and I are working on a new book, Baked-In: The Power of Aligning Marketing and Product Innovation. We need your help. We're looking for examples of products where the marketing has been baked right into the product itself. Where everything carries the same narrative. From the product, to the  packaging to the environment, the distribution, the web and even the advertising. All of it saying the same thing.

There are some great examples out there, Apple and the iPod, Nike +, Threadless, Patagonia, etc.

Shoot me a note or leave a comment with other examples.

Thanks for the help.

The Art of Being Culturally Relevant

Zappos responds quickly to take advantage of the news and get people talking. How can you be culturally relevant in a way that's true to your brand?

The Death of American Socialism

I was surprised the other day when a good friend said that America is the largest socialist country in the world. He qualified his comment by saying that instead of socialism residing in the government, socialism in America resides in big corporations.

And, the socialism has been manifested by digital technology. Now, with email, blogs, etc. CEO's and CMO's can connect directly to the customer. And, the customer can connect directly to the top. So, the question is, why are all of the corporate layers needed today?

Not only is it a financial imperative to further flatten organizations today, it's a cultural expectation from customers.

Customers want to and now can have a relationship with real people inside of companies who can take the personal responsibility to handle their questions and problems without being shuffled around and blocked.

How can you flatten your company?

Overcoming Dematerialization

A couple of years ago CP+B bought it's first 3D printer to help bring to life the products we were creating. Now, with the growth of our Industrial Design group we've been using them more and more to overcome the dematerialization that's been brought on by our digital age. In a world were everything has become virtual and digitized, from books to communities, it's nice to have a tool that reverses the trend.

Today, I was doing some research about the future of 3D printers for Baked-In when I came across an article that painted a fantastical picture of the future:

Whether or not they arrive in the home, 3D printers have many promising areas of potential future application. They may, for example, in future be used to output spare parts for all manner of products, and which could not possibly be stocked as part of the inventory of even the best physical store. Hence, rather than throwing away a broken item (something unlikely to be justified a decade or two hence due to resource depletion and enforced recycling), faulty goods will be able to be taken to a local facility that will call up the appropriate spare parts online and simply print them out. NASA has already tested a 3D printer on the International Space Station, and recently announced its requirement for a high resolution 3D printer to produce spacecraft parts during deep space missions. The US Army has also experimented with a truck-mounted 3D printer capable of outputting spare tank and other vehicle components in the battlefield.

Another possible future application is in organ printing. This is where replacement parts for the human body may be printed via an inkjet style process with the nozzles outputting layers of organic materials. This is also an area of rapid development, with the US National Science Foundation currently funding a multidisciplinary project (see organprint.missouri.edu).

As reported by Nature in March 2008, a company called Organovo has already managed to output blood vessels and cardiac tissue via a printer that dispenses cells instead of ink. The material so created actually fused into living tissue just 70 hours after being printed, and started beating 20 hours after that. Replacement bones or parts thereof are another obvious application for 3D printers in the future, with 3D patient scan data used to enable doctors to print precise replacement parts before any flesh is cut.

The future will materialize faster than we think.

The Future of Medicine

A couple of weeks ago I got to see the new face of medicine in action. I was having some weird chest pains and thought I'd try to get in to see the doctor. My doc, Eric Zacherias, is quit progressive. We communicate most of the time via email.

Well, I emailed Eric and he responded in a matter of minutes and suggested that I come in that afternoon to check things out. He asked if I could call his front desk to let them know I'd be dropping by. I called his receptionist and, as expected, I had to wait for twenty minutes on hold to talk to someone. When I did talk to someone they said Eric was booked for a week.

I promptly emailed Eric back. He suggested that I stop by after work. At 5:15 I stopped by his office, emailing him that I arrived. He had his nurse in front to meet me and usher me back to a room where Eric was ready to go. After a nice chat and a 15 minute evaluation I was declared good to go.

Eric represents the future medicine. The ability to see patients as customers and to have a personal relationship with them with no walls in the way.

The receptionist, however, represents the past. It doesn't matter if you're in retail, technology or medicine customers want to have a direct relationship with real people. Walls just get in the way of getting things done.

At it's core, the economic crisis was brought on by the power of people to make direct connections, disintermediating, layers inside companies and even companies themselves, making them irrelevant.

The best way thrive in these times is to cut out the layers. Not only will you save money but you'll also have happier customers.

Cultural Obesity

Like everyone else, I've been trying to put the events of the economic crisis in context to help me understand it. I was especially astounded by the death of the WalMart employee on "Black Friday." The bottomline is that we've become obese as a culture. For a while now, we've become so focused on our appetite to consume. We have all seen how such an appetite for food has caused our health system to come close to collapsing. Now, our whole culture is teetering from the same kind of appetite for stuff.

How do we, as a culture, break this cycle. It's a lot like working out or eating right. We've got to become disciplined in what we consume, always asking, will what I'm contemplating consuming really help me get to my goal or make me happy? It's about focusing on the moment. It's a victory every time we don't bow to our appetite.

To get out of this thing it's gonna mean putting one step in front of the other and focusing on becoming healthy. There's no doubt that, when this is over, we'll all be better off for going through it.

Steal, Don’t Imitate

As the poet, T.S. Elliot once said, “Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.” Companies that simply imitate other products constantly find themselves two steps behind their competitors. Conversely, stealing an idea requires piecing together different elements, essentially creating something new. This may seem like a controversial idea, but consider Steve Jobs’ first computer, the nearly portable “Apple II.”  Jobs’ machine was the first of the Apple series and used a simple green monitor screen. When he toured the Xerox headquarters, however, he took notice of their Graphical User Interface technology. He returned to his garage and revamped his computer screen using GUI mechanics. In this sense, Jobs saw an opportunity to selectively take an old idea and create a new product altogether. 

What are you going to steal?

Be a Heretic

Ever sense Martin Luther nailed The 95 Theses to the door of the Castle Church in 1517 and ushered in the Reformation the term “heretic” has had religious connotations, being someone who’s opinion was a deliberate departure from accepted church doctrine. The business world needs more heretics, especially today. The marketplace demands more people who seeing outside the standard paradigm in an industry and have the courage to change it. The paradigm represents the way to get things done. It’s easy to go with the flow and follow the crowd.

But look around. Innovation always happens at the edges, where someone uses strategic intuition and breaks the mold to think the opposite. Dick Fosbury shocked the track and field world in the 1968 by doing the opposite and high jumping upside down. Instead of following the current paradigm and jumping stomach-first over the bar, he jumped back first. Fosbury broke the world record by almost 30%. Such gains don’t come from following the crowd.