Colin Hudson
January 28th, 2013 | Filed under: Customer Experience | No Comments »
From traditional management consultancies to boutique design firms, everyone seems to acknowledge the role customer experience plays as a point of differentiation in today’s increasingly competitive landscape. For the most part, thought leaders agree that customer experience management requires leadership alignment in order to foster a consumer-centric organization, as well as tools and processes to continuously measure and refine the customer experience. However, the key element that seems to be missing in today’s literature around this topic is how to actually design the customer experience.
So, how does one actually go about designing a compelling customer experience that builds a loyal fan base, provides a layer of differentiation and drives revenue growth? Ask a startup founder.
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Colin drives the business and analytical thinking on projects, working collaboratively as a consultant on the Motiv team.
Colin Hudson
October 8th, 2012 | Filed under: Motiv | 3 Comments »
Is there anything more refreshing than the first crisp, cool weekend of autumn? College football, pumpkin beers and the annual transformation of foliage all represent the transition from the lazy days of summer to a “back-to-school” mentality for students and professionals alike. Perhaps it’s the waning daylight hours or the falling mercury, but regardless, each year I use this transitional period to adopt a new hobby or learn a new skill that can keep me occupied through the bleakness of winter.
Thankfully, a host of companies have sprung up in recent years offering services to facilitate self-directed learning. Massively open online courses (MOOC’s) have proven to be a particularly hot trend this year, with offerings from Coursera, Udacity, edX, Udemy and others attracting millions of registrants for their courses in a range of subjects. These venture-backed companies are still working to align to the most effective business model, but for the most part their offerings remain free to users.
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Colin drives the business and analytical thinking on projects, working collaboratively as a consultant on the Motiv team.
Colin Hudson
May 21st, 2012 | Filed under: Innovation, Motiv | No Comments »
Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL. Harvard Business Review Press, 2011
The markets and regulatory agencies governing publicly traded companies should borrow a page from the NFL’s playbook and purposefully manage the division between the real and expectations market, argues Roger Martin in his latest book Fixing the Game. In the (slowly) retreating shadows of the recent financial crisis, Martin rails against modern day American capitalism, arguing that CEOs need to address consumer needs instead of focusing on maximizing shareholder value.
Through the lens of agency theory, Martin discusses the pitfalls of tying managers’ incentives to the expectations market (stock market) instead of the real market (operations, cash flow, products and services, real customers). His running analogy compares the idea of shareholder value maximization to the way in which the NFL is proactively managed in order to ensure that the fans’ experience is maximized; for example, players and coaches are forbidden from gambling on football, which could influence their on-field performance, and salary caps ensure a more equitable distribution of capital, theoretically leveling the playing field for all teams. The analogy falls apart at times, but the general point rings true: companies should not be held hostage by their shareholders.
Martin’s criticisms of capitalism’s emphasis on the expectations market at times blur the lines between policy and management recommendations and a moral diatribe. He essentially argues that hedge funds have no societal value, where as venture capital and private equity firms play a prominent role in facilitating the creation of jobs and game-changing innovations.
Nevertheless, I agree with his central tenet that if businesses successfully address the needs of customers, shareholders will subsequently benefit; however, if the focus is exclusively on the shareholder, customers don’t benefit. Even former champion of shareholder maximization, Jack Welch, admitted that an expectations market-centric view of management is flawed: “On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world,” he said in a 2009 Financial Times interview. Keep Reading»
Colin drives the business and analytical thinking on projects, working collaboratively as a consultant on the Motiv team.
Colin Hudson
February 15th, 2012 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
On Monday, LivingSocial announced the grand opening of a “first-of-its-kind live events venue” in downtown Washington D.C., where the rapidly growing daily deals business will offer unique experiences to its customers, and serve as a testing ground for its merchant partners. The “retail experience” space is an innovative move for the company, which is looking to expand its image beyond that of a “coupon company.”
Attendees of a Painting and Wine Class (image courtesy of Washington Post)
LivingSocial’s new venture is notable for many reasons, and I am particularly anxious to see how it pans out, as I’ve long been bullish on the daily deals business model and do not think it is sustainable in its own right.
Even though the company has expanded its user base to more than 60 million members, and offers deals in 647 markets worldwide, LivingSocial and its closest competitor Groupon have yet to turn significant, sustainable profits; figures from Amazon’s 10-K report imply that DC-based LivingSocial suffered a net loss of $558 million in 2011, on revenues of $245 million (Amazon has a 31% stake in the company). Those 60+ million consumers are proving to be very expensive to acquire as repeat customers.
Is a retail experience venue like that of LivingSocial a one-off innovative initiative, or a game-changing model? Keep Reading»
Colin drives the business and analytical thinking on projects, working collaboratively as a consultant on the Motiv team.
Colin Hudson
January 20th, 2012 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
“Get NOOK Free!” reads the banner ad on the New York Times’ website. Barnes & Noble, creator of the NOOK e-reader, has partnered with the New York Times to give away its NOOK Simple Touch with a 1-year online subscription to the NYT. Why would Barnes & Noble give away a product that is already heavily discounted at $99? Simple: e-readers are not profitable products, they’re valuable service platforms.
As we’ve recently reported in Fast Company, incorporating services into traditionally product-centric “design, manufacture, market” models–or replacing the product entirely with services–allows companies to create value for their customers as well as their shareholders. In the instance of media, we’re seeing that by replacing physical products (books, CDs, DVDs) with digital equivalents, companies that create service platforms accessible via consumer electronics are able to capture revenues previously owned by retailers and publishers.
The closing of Borders and the declining sales at Barnes & Noble stores indicate that the digitzation of media isn’t a trend, but instead a shift towards a new model in which traditionally tech-centric firms (Apple) have entered the media business, and retailers (B&N) have entered the tech business. Keep Reading»
Colin drives the business and analytical thinking on projects, working collaboratively as a consultant on the Motiv team.
Colin Hudson
December 12th, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
Greetings readers, and welcome to a new monthly blog series where I will discuss all things ‘startup’ – from venture capital resources to analyses of innovative companies that I think are truly disrupting their industries, or creating entirely new ones.
I wanted to start by introducing two companies that I recently discovered, both of which leverage technology to simplify consumers’ lives and literally “put the internet to work for you”: ShopSavvy and ifttt.
ShopSavvy
ShopSavvy screenshot
ShopSavvy, a free smartphone application introduced in September 2008 by Dallas-based idea factory Big in Japan, allows users to do comparative shopping on the go. The application, which is available on Android, Windows Mobile and Apple’s iOS systems, uses smartphones’ cameras, the internet, and geolocation services to identify products and inform shoppers where they can find those products online or locally. The app can read traditional barcodes as well as QR codes, and has a slew of features that allow users to add photos and prices, post reviews, share products via various channels, stream deals aggregated from the web and other ShopSavvy users, and check the availability of products at local retailers.
After using the application for a few weeks, I have been amazed by its potential to change the way consumers shop and its broader impact on B2C product-centric business models. Especially during such times of economic uncertainty, consumers are increasingly arming themselves with information to make smarter purchasing decisions, and ShopSavvy provides a clearly defined benefit in the form of immediate savings. For merchants, however, the application is more of a direct affront to profit margins, as they must become more aware of and responsive to competitors’ pricing schemes – a challenge that is especially daunting to smaller, less flexible retailers who cannot purchase on the scale of larger, big-box competitors. Continue Reading»
Colin drives the business and analytical thinking on projects, working collaboratively as a consultant on the Motiv team.
Colin Hudson
December 5th, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
In King of Capital: The Remarkable Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of Steve Schwarzman and Blackstone, authors David Carey and John E. Morris discuss the history of the storied private equity firm and discuss what factors have enabled the company to grow from a two-man shop to an international, publicly-traded financial powerhouse. The authors address some of the most significant charges that have been trotted out against private equity and leveraged buyouts – namely the “buy it, strip it, flip it” mentality that many argue leads to job-cutting and cost-slashing, which result in weaker companies that are less likely to survive the mountains of debt accumulated during the takeover – and ultimately defend the practice, citing market data and academic research.
King of Capital is mostly a corporate biography, with a significant emphasis on the Chairman, CEO and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, who has often been pilloried in the media for representing the excesses associated with the mountains of wealth created in the private equity business. Carey and Morris brilliantly lay out the development of the firm through an exploration of its deals – both the successful and the utterly dismal investments – and its investment team. It was particularly interesting to read about the deals by Blackstone and its competitors within a broader economic context; for example, telecommunications deals that occurred during the heady days of the internet boom were discussed, as were real estate investments that occurred during the run up to the 2007-2009 financial crisis.
The book was both entertaining and educational, as the authors took pains to delve into various financial tools and functions, debating the relative merits of stock buybacks, recapitalizations, vulture investing, etc. What I wasn’t expecting from the book, however, were valuable insights regarding innovation. As it turns out, co-founders Schwarzman and Peter Peterson weren’t just savvy investors – they were innovative entrepreneurs as well. Continue Reading»
Colin drives the business and analytical thinking on projects, working collaboratively as a consultant on the Motiv team.
Colin Hudson
November 30th, 2011 | Filed under: Motiv | No Comments »
While traveling through the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil last week, I often found myself dwelling on the challenges and intricacies of the supply chains of various goods and services in both the densely populated cities and the sparse, remote areas that I visited. As far as emerging markets are concerned, Brazil is one of the most developed, but its infrastructure—though rapidly developing—and its trade policies dictate that goods are often priced at a premium to their perceived fair market value. For years, multinationals have struggled with the challenges confronting distribution in markets such as Brazil, but what about the local entrepreneurs and manufacturers?
I spent two days on Ilha Grande, an island paradise a few kilometers away from the mainland, 45 minutes by high-speed water taxi. Everything anyone could need – tourists and locals alike – had to be brought in by boat. I watched from the pier as crates of food, souvenirs and various widgets were hauled in by hand, one load at a time. Not only are these goods more expensive because of the high costs incurred in transporting them to an island – as Manhattanites can testify – but they also dictate a larger environmental footprint.
"Downtown" Ilha Grande
I was reminded of a recent talk at Digital Capital Week where RTKL architect Kashuo Bennett discussed the concept of “fab labs”, small-scale fabrication laboratories that democratize manufacturing by providing local innovators with access to digital fabrication technology and rapid prototyping. Fab Labs, which originated in MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, have opened in dozens of countries around the world, and their potential applications in developing countries and remote regions are particularly interesting. Instead of paying significant premiums to move goods around the world to places such as Ilha Grande, perhaps local entrepreneurs could harness local Fab Labs to design, develop, and manufacture products. Continue Reading»
Colin drives the business and analytical thinking on projects, working collaboratively as a consultant on the Motiv team.
