Identity 2.0 Keynote
We watched this movie some hours ago and we`ll discuss it next week. It`s worth seeing 
“Innovations in business - how to be ahead of competitors in reacting to market trends?”
Yesterday, besides my normal lectures (on International Politics and EU Policies), I had an opportunity to attend a panel discussion:
“Innovations in business - how to be ahead of competitors in reacting to market trends?”
At the email I received some days ago was also written:
“Why it is worth coming? The debate is a unique chance to contrast our vision of fast changing market with experiences of top managers and try to answer vital questions of today business: How to distinguish between crucial changes and vagaries of fashion? How to react more effectively then competitors? How to maintain flexibility of a giant company?”
The talk was quite interesting, although went beyond the innovation topic. It was held by two of the best professors at SGH plus a young lady, working at Johnson&Johnson.
Below are some of my notes:
–> Before talking about innovations as something that enhance the success of a company we should first try to answer questions like “What is success?”, “How we could measure it?” etc. /the conclusion was that there`s no a single definition and it has different meaning for different companies/
–> Companies should try not to look good in market but to be good in it
–> One decides to invest at certain activity in case the latter would bring him/her value more than elsewhere
–> Market share it s not good enough indicator in terms of measuring success of a company (what would bring you growing market share in a dying market?)
–> There’s no a single definition for value creation (it differs for owners/stakeholders/shareholders; in ST or LT etc)
–> Innovations usually are not successful from the very beginning. Change requires learning. The question is how long should your patience last?
–> ST indicators are easy to be manipulated
–> Innovation could be started in order to catch up our competitors or to surpass them
–> Nowadays innovation is a “big world” in all companies, but usually most of the innovation ideas are too expensive to be implemented
–> The smallest innovations brings the most profit
–> Innovation means always risk. Most of the innovative products don’t bring success (profit) but help the growth of the “old ones”.
–> Innovations should be at first place at IT solutions. The problem is that most of the companies treat IT solutions as cost instead of value enhancing tools
–> Innovations are not only at portfolio level- distribution, delivery, information system etc
–> A good manager should be able to identify trends
–> Corporate culture could be seen as a competitive advantage for companies (“something that could not be copy, at least not easily”). It `s not equal to bonus system It`s intangible. It helps attracting same kind of individuals. It’s also something that employee could not understand, explain etc, just feel, being a part of.
–> Nowadays the relation with a customer could be much more important than the product itself.
Advice
If there would be a sentence I`ll always remember my “Network Economy” class with, this would be:
The only way a company could achieve a competitive advantage nowadays is through creating something that could not be copy!!!
Prof. dr hab. Piotr Płoszajski
We are trying to find out some ideas and solutions for reaction to the fast changing environment… And almost everything we come to has 3 main characteristics: it`s on-line based , it`s giving the customer an option for personalizing it and the major source of income for the business it`s not from the main product, but from the additional ones.
What I`ve heard today was also “Traffic is the king”…
