Blog Archives
Leading from the front…
If you don’t spot the innovation coming you can pretty much guarantee that you have missed the big growth curve. But that might be OK for you, if you are happy just riding along on the end of the wave. It’s not as exciting though is it?
And if you are producing the same events, magazines and marketing you were 10 years ago, clinging onto an old business model that is still delivering the goods (just) you are definitely stuck.
Stuck in the mud. Stuck in a rut. Stuck in a working pattern that is ignoring the fundamental shift in business practices that is happening all around you if you would only stop and look and listen.
And changing it is. So fundamentally and radically that in five years time the media landscape will be unrecognisable. LinkedIn and Facebook, and other networking sites, will be the new broadcast media pushing groups of likeminded, engaged and empowered communities to their own networks; instant online solutions will deliver knowledge sharing and collaboration across national and cultural boundaries. It will be a very small world indeed.
So where will you be? At the forefront of this global revolution or sitting on the sidelines waiting for someone to tell you what to do, or worse sitting there because everything your business is built on today simply vanished overnight?
The Semmelweiss Effect
As soon as we hear the following sentence, our heart sinks:
“But that’s the way we’ve always done it.”
And we know that there is every chance we will have a fight on our hands. While it is important to watch and listen to any client organisation, because sometimes the way they have always done something is pretty good, has been developed for a reason and gives benefit all round. Other times though, it is the surest sign of a moribund organisation where the status quo is given more credence than innovation.
This instant rejection of new ideas is known as the Semmelweis Effect, named after a Hungarian doctor, who in 1847 suggested that by washing their hands regularly maternity ward doctors could drastically reduce the mortality rate of mothers, something he had done himself. Such a simple idea and yet it was dismissed by the medical profession of the time out of hand.
While many businesses have been launched and succeeded because their founders came up against resistance to their ideas, many more have foundered because they can’t let go of the past and embrace fresh thinking. But without innovation and the frisson of excitement created by trying something new we would never evolve with our customers or generate new ones.
