Though he had his fair share of flops in his early days (Apple III, NeXT, Lisa) and some well documented personal flaws, probably the greatest “product design CEO” of our era was Steve Jobs.

I realize that I am writing about Jobs a little later than most, but I finally finished the massive 500 page W. Isaccson biography over XMAS & I wanted to jot a few thoughts down about the world’s most valuable brand & it’s ringleader.

 The Product Guy

Great products/services really define a business. That is why some of the world’s greatest marketers are intensely “product” focused.  Steve Jobs was the most hands-on, product focused CEO that I have ever read about. And, he inspired people.

Jobs was not just product focused; he knew how to integrate the elements of a marketing mix once the product was in place. Lets do a quick Apple highlight reel review using the classic 4Ps of marketing

* Product:  Defined the “Post PC” era via the iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc…
* Place: Tightly controlled distribution strategy & killer “up market” Apple shop approach (including top notch service via the “Genius Bar”)
* Price:  In 2010, Apple had 7% of the revenue in the personal computing category, but accounted for 35% of category operating profit.  All due to the price premium Apple was able to command via great products.
* Promotion: The 1984 Super Bowl ad and the “Think Different” campaign are two of the most memorable advertising pieces of our era.

In his second life as Apple CEO, Jobs became a textbook example of a CEO who mastered & executed “Big M” Marketing–Marketing that is strategic, integrated, drives company culture and builds transformational business results.  Jobs expertly pruned the Apple portfolio relentlessly and distinctively positioned Apple as “up market.”

Becoming the Inspirational Marketer  

As Jobs became a master marketer, he honed his ability to inspire.  Jobs saw the work of Apple as a cause–saving people from poorly designed, inhuman computer products.  He continued to perfect  masterful keynote presentations that mesmerized his employees, the tech press and fanboys/girls, building a brand that connected with others in a deep way.

Jobs understood that great marketing involves inspiring people internally and externally around a vision…he managed to create meaning by galvanizing people around his articulated cause.

If you get a chance, read Isaccson’s bio about Jobs.  We can learn so much about what to do professionally (and, sadly, what not to do privately) from guy who led Apple out of near bankruptcy to become the world’s most valuable brand.

A couple of days ago, I saw a tweet from Bill Gross that made me pause for a moment.

This tweet crossed my queue while I was reading the brutally honest bio of Steve Jobs.  Steve was a well documented master of product simplification and complexity reduction. While the ability to be ruthless in saying “no” served Jobs extraordinarily well professionally, according to biographer Walter Isaacson, it didn’t work as well in his personal relationships (as husband, father, brother, son, etc.).

But I’m digressing a bit here…

As 2012 approaches,  I’ve stumbled on a couple of good blog posts with tools to help set the year up right, and I wanted to share them with you.

Good to Great author Jim Collins wrote an honest post back in 2003 where he highlighted that the best thing you could do in your personal planning cycle was to create a “stop doing” list.  If you have the time, I suggest you read this post.  Jocelyn Glei also recently wrote a nice “simplifying your life” post via her 99% blog (#3–is all about removing the clutter).  Chris Guillebeau offers up a solid .xls template that can be used to do an annual review and get you moving in 2012.

So, here’s to discarding what does not fit or is not doable in 2012!

Happy New Year.

A few months ago, I had a discussion with my brother & dad around the impending “economic reset” looming as a result of the European debt crisis.  So, we war-gamed scenarios, created new business ideas for the post-Euro world and poked a little fun at doomsday predictions.

Fast forward a few months into the future…while most countries in Euroland will probably not face extreme Depression era scenarios, 1 or 2 might (e.g. Greece) leaving the door open for some radical changes in society and business.

“People Powered hope” despite the gloom

Even if the economy blows up in Greece and contagion spreads, people today have more ways to bypass dysfunctional institutions via the web.  Heck, if the banks freeze up entirely, you can get a loan from a person in another country via Zopa.  People today can use existing assets and skills to save/make money, barter and transact via exciting new sharing sites & apps.  As sharing with strangers has become commonplace, peer to peer (P2P) sites like Vayable (community travel guides)  AirBnB (BnB hosting)  Skillshare (education) autonetzer (transportation) taskrabbit (community freelancing)  etc. have popped up everywhere.  All these sites take “micro-prenurialism” (from the early days of eBay and Craigslist) to the next level.  By opening up the possibility to share literally any kind of asset online (and make $$$) new P2P sites are helping disrupt traditional industries and empower people.

Reputation, community and shared access

Not only do “people-powered” sites put more $$$ in pockets during a downturn, they also help us build deeper relationships with those around us in the community.  Signing up for taskrabbit or dropping into a collaborative coworking space  helps us to reverse the absolutely depressing “Bowling Alone”  trend outlined and forecasted by Robert Putnam in the early noughties.

Rachel Botsman, a leading Collaborative Consumption thought leader, recently gave a talk (highly recommended) at the Wired 2011 conference where she demonstrated how the 21st century is going to be about collaborative consumption defined by reputation, community and shared access.  This is a great talk that ties together a lot of the trends discussed in this post.  Go and check it out!

Confession time.  Have you ever traveled abroad and returned home with a massive cell phone bill?

On a recent US–>Europe trip, I decided not to buy the outrageously expensive daily package from my service provider because I thought I would use data services “sparingly” while in the US.

OOPS.

I will spare you all the details of my smartphone bill horror story…it was ugly.  Luckily, I am not alone in my dislike for the state of international data roaming. (Please see this ZDNet article from Larry Dignan on the state of data roaming.)

Data roaming is a problem between European countries as well.  Individual country data plans provide a barrier to basic mCommerce and Location Based Services (LBS) like Foursquare, Gowalla, etc.  As a German subscriber, it is hard for me to personally leverage Foursquare’s rich local business discovery tools (tips, recommendations) when I am in London unless I am willing to pay for expensive daily add-on data packages.   My European friends, who aren’t using LBS tools yet, get frustrated when they are on holiday in Spain and simply want to buy something via smartphone.

The roaming problem is so bad, mCommerce powerhouse eBay recently issued a mobile manifesto in the UK with several recommendations on how to reduce prohibitive data roaming charges.  Two thirds of eBay survey respondents  (63%) say they are put off using the internet more overseas because of the cost of downloading data.

But back to Foursquare…

In Sept, Guy Brighton from PSFK wondered out loud whether Foursquare was gaining real traction in Europe.  Foursquare claims that 40% of all downloads across its 10 Million strong user base come from overseas.  From my own experience, however, beyond some of the edgier urban city locals, Foursquare is not being used much in Europe.  This is likely driven by general lack of awareness, privacy issues, cultural issues and (to some extent) roaming issues.

Lack of awareness in Europe is a clear issue for Foursquare.  However, I’m betting that Foursquare will get their machine fired up and continue their PR success story across the pond over the next year or two.  This should help.

There are also privacy & cultural barriers tied to the idea of signaling one’s location without much overt purpose beyond the check-in.  Many of my European friends have asked me why anyone would want to use such a service; they laugh at the idea of collecting badges & scoff about signaling their location multiple times just to receive a fictional mayor title (there aren’t a lot of loyalty deals over here just yet).

Finally, roaming issues hurt the prototypical Foursquare loving power user who travels outside the country and tends to evangelize the service to friends.  To date, Foursquare has relied on these power users to spread the word about the benefits of using Foursquare in the US.  As the data from the eBay manifesto shows, however, many UK users simply don’t use their smartphones for web surfing when they are not on the island.   The same issue applies to German, French, Spanish & Italian smartphone users.

There are a lot of barriers for Foursquare in Europe today, but also a lot of opportunities.  Europe is generally one/two years behind the US when it comes to widespread adoption of new social tools.  Foursquare has done an amazing job of leading the LBS revolution, so assuming a strong business model emerges via local ads, etc. look for them to continue their dominance overseas despite the challenges.

We are in the early innings of Location Based mobile revolution, so a lot can change in a heartbeat.

What are your thoughts here?

Photo courtesy of Lospibesdesistemas

I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been pretty intrigued by the Occupy Wall Street movement as it “went global” last week.  Yeah, a few anti globalization demonstrations caught headlines in the late 90s, but I never thought a movement uniting the middle class left AND the right (at least in theory) against the perils of crony capitalism, corporate greed and political corruption would ever fully get rolling in the US.

I was wrong.

We’re now a month into a growing movement kicked off by the savvy (anti) advertising guys at Adbusters in Canada and this time around it feels different.  Several prominent thought leaders and change makers are lining up in defense of the protesters.  In 2011, just about everyone (except some on the hard core right) realizes that our institutions are broken and need tweaking…

And, when heavy tweaking needs to be made in US society, we tend to look to entrepreneurs instead of govt.  While many of our best entrepreneurs are off trying to clone the next daily deal site, others are talking about how they can respond to the current crisis by building tools that really matter to people.  Below are a couple of great examples of entrepreneurial thought leaders standing with the OWS movement & pushing the dialog forward.

• Marc Cuban, a wealthy serial entrepreneur recently wrote a passionate blog post defense of OWS.  Here is what Cuban would do if he were elected to be a spokesperson for the cause; this is a pretty motivating blog post even if you aren’t a Cuban fan.
• Fred Wilson, a highly influential VC blogger–with considerable influence in the startup world–wrote a widely discussed post on Oct 16 entitled Occupying my Mind.  In this post, Fred stated that he wanted to  help the movement bring about intelligent progressive change.  The OWS movement should connect with Fred & exchange ideas.
• Jason Calacanis initially scoffed at the protestors for being lazy & not starting up their own businesses on HuffPo, but he seemed to reverse course a bit as he railed against heavy handed NYC police response to OWS in a recent vodcast (scroll to the last 5 minutes).  On the vodcast, Jason and  Tyler discuss how they would like to see a well designed, radically transparent website where politicians are outed for receiving corporate money.

Entrepreneurs with big ideas are needed very, very badly right now.   There is an unbelievable information revolution happening–right under our noses.  And, there are tons of places where entrepreneurs can help reimagine our creaky institiutions and help fix USA Inc.  One of the best assessments on how to fix USA Inc out there is from Mary Meeker–a Kleiner Perkins VC.  I would encourage you to read this great report from Mary if you are interested in the details.

If you aren’t into addressing problems you feel the govt. should solve, why not start a next gen. collaborative business that keeps $$$ in local economies and stimulates job growth?  As Calacanis notes in his HuffPo article, the guys who started Airbnb created a billion-dollar business that democratized travel, while giving individuals in local economies the ability to make extra money.  In an Airbnb, person to person, new economic order the 99% earn money, while the 1% lose out (unless they join the revolution & rent out their mansion!)  Social, local, mobile apps like We&Co empower service employees to become business drivers in the new experience economy.  As consumers and OWS supporters, we should try to support these new collaborative/human2human businesses.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world where the 99% gets fully left behind (see the troubling chart below).  It is up to us to re imagine a new world, where the 99 percent are empowered, not forced into working three jobs just to get by.  Past generations have responded to challenges like this with hard work & collective sacrifice.  We can do the same.

Courtesy of The Straight Dope

PS:  If you are an entrepreneur with big ideas or a blogger/influencer  out there, please join the discussion around OWS.  This is big & we need your help…Thanks.

PSS:  Full disclosure, I am a We&Co CoFounder.

Photo at top courtesy of The Reid Report

When I was in the Fortune 50 corporate world, one of the best pieces of practical advice I ever received was to “save as a draft.”  Hostile emails sent off in (real time) moments of anger typically don’t help anyone.

We all live in a NOW world (& it’s getting faster)

That was then (good old email days) but this is NOW.  Since its launch in 2006, Twitter  has given rise to a publishing immediacy that is pretty incredible.  There is practically no delay between a thought and a published tweet on this game changing micro blogging platform.
A few years ago, pundits lamented that bloggers were sabotaging journalism.  Bloggers were lampooned as rash and quick to judge.  Today, old school bloggers spending two hours researching a topic to write three coherent paragraphs before publishing are seen as legit critical thinkers

I’m noticing the NOW addiction in my own consumer behavior.  I’m blogging less & tweeting more (sigh).  Just a few years ago, I thought it was amazing to have a crisp new book arrive on my doorstep from Amazon.com–in 1 day!  Today, I’m expecting a real time digital download from the ubiquitous internet cloud on my Kindle or iPhone.  I’m almost stunned when a book has to physically be delivered to me because Amazon was slow to digitize the author’s content.  And, I can’t even remember the last time I set foot in a brick & mortar DVD shop.  As Sebastien Provencher (VP of Needium) and panel leader at the upcoming Local, Social conference nicely puts it, “consumers are looking for instant gratification via real time products, services and experiences.”

Yep, if we are honest, instant gratification expectations have crept into our lives even if our true desires are for things to slow down a bit.

It is still all about the consumer/customer/shopper in the real time era.  But they are all harder to please.

Brands that don’t adapt their models to the real time / always on /individually focused digital age could be ushered to the exit–anyone seen Blockbuster, Borders or Circuit City lately?  As Forrester notes, companies need to obsess over how to deal with the incredible amount of real time data and  intelligence generated by empowered consumers in this disruptive, NOW world.

Oops.  I wanted to write more about this stuff, but I need to run!  More to come on the real time intelligence topic though and thanks for hanging with me through a few weeks without a post.