learnthe4ps.com - For students of marketing.

“Design thinking” is an emerging school of thought around innovation and new product development. Many who practice this approach believe in rapid prototyping — getting products into customer hands quickly, soliciting feedback, and then adapting the product before going through additional rounds of the same.  While the approach has many advocates, a culturally engrained “fear of failure” can make adoption of the concept a challenge. A post at the HBR Blog Network, “The No. 1 Enemy of Creativity: Fear of Failure” (October 5, 2012, you may have to register to access) provides some background. As regular readers know, I have a soft spot in my heart (and my classes) for creativity — click on the “Creativity” tag on the right for some past posts on the topic.

What do you think about the authors’ assumptions?  Do you agree that we are raised to fear failure?  Does this fear of failure result in more cautious ideas — less creativity?  If you think that begin more accepting of failure would make you more creative, how can you begin to change your mindset?

[Update: right after I posted this I found the video below that provides some great examples related to this idea.]

Sometimes the most creative business ideas are “stolen” from one industry and applied in another.  In some ways this can be safer — at least you know the creative idea works somewhere.  So can you rent/sell neckties the same way Netflix rents videos?  You can read more at “TieTry lets subscribers rent ties by mail, like Netflix,” (USAToday, July 19, 2012).

What other industries might utilize the Netflix business model?

Interesting little story of social entrepreneurship on NPR, “Company Ties Shoes And Ethics Together” (April 7, 2012). Gideon Shoes was born out of a desire to support The Street University, a retreat for marginalized kids in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia.

The shoes are not cheap ($190 – $320 a pair), in part because the company emphasizes production in safe, ethical, highly monitored conditions — significantly raising production costs. The company has done a marvelous job generating publicity, but right now is selling just about 60 pair of shoes per month.

The story brings to mind another social entrepreneurship venture in the shoe biz — Toms (read or listen to more at “‘Soul Mates’: Shoe Entrepreneur Finds Love In Giving,” NPR All Things Considered, November 26, 2010).

Read or listen to the story about Gideon Shoes.  Keeping in mind the company’s values and limited resources, what marketing strategy advice do you have for Gideon Shoes?  Offer a target market and make some suggestions for Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.

Twitter’s efforts to build a viable business model have been inconsistent. Now the micro-blogging service appears to have a formula that is working. Advertisers are starting to get on board. Bloomberg BusinessWeek‘s cover story this week offers a closer look at Twitter, see “Twitter, the Startup That Wouldn’t Die” (March 1, 2012). A quick overview can be found in the video below — but read the article to get more insight.

This is a useful story for entrepreneurs as getting the right business model is not easy.  For marketers, Twitter has some real potential, though I believe they need to do more analytics so they can deliver highly targeted audiences to advertisers.  Facebook can do that now.  Do you use Twitter?  Do you think the advertising model will work?  How else could Twitter improve its model?

Here in Fort Collins we are proud of the success of local craft brewer New Belgium Brewing.  Driven by the popularity of its Fat Tire brand, the company has grown to be one of the top 2-3 craft brewers in the United States.  The company has largely eschewed television advertising and focuses a great deal on events and print advertising.  The company’s culture and commitment to sustainability are admirable — and make it the dream job of many locals.  So it was great to see the local brand get some national publicity in this article in Bloomberg Businessweek, “New Belgium and the Battle of the Microbrews” (December 1, 2011).  The article provides some background on the craft brewing market and provides a nice example of a woman entrepreneur, Kim Jordan.

Are you familiar with New Belgium’s marketing?  If not, and you are over 21 years old, check out the website.  What do you like about their marketing?  What could be improved if you worked there?

We are seeing more examples of businesses that are effectively leveraging social media that works with customers. This article describes a New York City baker that has found success — and almost 3000 likes on Facebook. This short article “A Bakery Gets Sweet Returns From Social-Media Blitz” (Wall Street Journal, February 14, 2011, non-subscribers may need to click here) offers examples and qualifies the example by suggesting that bars and restaurants may be special cases with social media.

What do you think?  What other small businesses might be able to take advantage of social media?  How?  Offer some examples.

The Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story this week (“What Amazon Fears Most: Diapers,” October 7, 2010) is a long article on Diapers.com.

The story is interesting and relays the low-cost start-up strategy. The founders spent their seed money on building a customer friendly website. When they launched they were buying diapers from the local club stores and storing them in a friend’s garage. They have since moved into three state-of-the-art warehouses.

The article describes Diapers.com’s retail and pricing strategy — let’s not make money on the diapers but on the other products shoppers add to the cart with the diapers. The article also has some excellent examples of logistics and distribution.

What do you think of Diapers.com? Will this specialty retailing strategy work against the broader product lines of Amazon?  or Wal Mart?