by Brett Miller
Want to be more creative? Take a step back and look at your daily routine.
If you are like most people you get up about the same time everyday, eat similar things for breakfast each day, take a familiar route to work, have a list of tasks to get done before lunch, eat lunch, get some more work done, head home the way you always do, have some dinner and do your normal evening activities before turning in for the night. Then you get up and do it all again. We are all creatures of habit. There is comfort in this predictability. This is all well and good if you are content with your level of thinking and creativity moving along at the same predictable pace.
If you want to elevate your creative thinking, you need to get off your ass and break out of that comfort zone. To get a new perspective on things you can’t just sit in your “ivory tower” and expect it to come to you in a flash of genius. You need to deliberately get out there and experience new things and meet new people.
Here are 12 routine-breaking things that will give you a new perspective and open your mind to new thinking (kind of a 12-Step Program for unleashing creativity):
1. Take a new form of transportation to work next week.
2. Get out of your normal work environment at least 4 hours each week.
3. Strike up a conversation with a complete stranger.
4. Take a “Radical Sabbatical” with your team and experience something you all have never done together before and share perspectives with each other afterward. This could be an hour, a day or a week together.
5. Set up a monthly lunch with someone outside your department or company and get his or her perspective on a problem you are trying to solve.
6. Ask your family (especially your kids if you have them) to help you solve a problem.
7. Read a magazine, book or blog that you would not normally read.
8. Watch television programs that you would not normally watch.
9. Listen to radio stations or music you would not normally listen to.
10. Take a walk in a park, go to a museum, a zoo or a movie during office hours. (Gasp!)
11. Go shopping (to an actual store, not on the Internet) for something you don’t need or even want. Talk to the salesperson and ask a lot of questions.
12. Eat only things you have never tried before for a week.
So, what are you waiting for? Get up, get out there and become more creative! What else would you add to the list?
Friday, May 21, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
Place Bets on Passionate People
by Tony Hsieh
Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos.com, Inc. During the past 10 years, the company has grown from almost no sales to more than $1 billion in annual gross merchandise sales, driven primarily by repeat customers and word of mouth. Below is an excerpt from Tony's forthcoming book that describes the beginning of Zappos.
Nick [Zappos' original founder] summarized his entire pitch in three sentences: "Footwear is a $40 billion industry in the United States, of which catalog sales make up $2 billion. It is likely that e-commerce will continue to grow. And it is likely that people will continue to wear shoes in the foreseeable future."
A few weeks later, Nick contacted us and said that he wanted to set up a lunch meeting. He'd found someone named Fred who worked in the men's shoe department at Nordstrom and was interested in joining the company, but only if the company got funding beyond the small friends-and-family round that Nick had already raised. Nick also asked me what I thought of "Zapos" as the name of for the company, derived from zapatos, which was the Spanish word for "shoes." I told him that he should add another p to it so that people wouldn't mispronounce it and accidentally say ZAY-pos.
And thus, the name Zappos was born.
A few days later, Alfred [Zappos' current CFO and COO] and I met with Nick and Fred at Mel's, a 1950s-themed diner a block away from where we lived. As we talked about the potential of Zappos, I did my best to not let the fact that Fred was a spitting image of Nicolas Cage distract me from the business conversation. Fred was thirty-three years old, tall, and really did look like he could be Nicolas Cage's stunt double.
I ordered the turkey melt, with a side of chicken noodle soup to dip the sandwich in. Fred ordered a turkey burger. Exactly 10 years later, Fred and I would return to Mel's and order the same thing to celebrate our ten-year meeting-versary together.
Nick talked about the progress that the website had made over the past few weeks. They were already getting $2,000 worth of orders a week, and the numbers were growing. They weren't making any money, because anytime an order was placed, Nick would run to the local shoe store, buy the item, and then ship it out to the customer. Nick wanted to put up the website just to prove that people would actually be willing to buy shoes online.
There were literally thousands of different brands in the footwear industry. The real business idea was to eventually form partnerships with hundreds of brands, and have each of the brands provide Zappos with an inventory feed of what was in each of their warehouses. Zappos would take orders from customers on the Internet, then transmit the order to the manufacturer of each brand, which would then ship directly to the Zappos customer.
This was known as a "drop ship" relationship, and although it already existed in many other industries, drop shipping had never been done before in the footwear industry. Nick and Fred were betting that they would be able to convince the brands at the next shoe show to start drop shipping, and then Zappos would not have to own any inventory or worry about running a warehouse.
Fred told us that he'd climbed the corporate ladder at Nordstrom for eight years, just bought a house, and just had his first kid. He knew that joining Zappos would be a big risk, but he was ready to take a leap of faith if Venture Frogs would provide the seed funding for the company.
Alfred and I looked at each other. Nick and Fred were exactly the type of people we were looking to invest in. We didn't know if the shoe idea would work or not, but they were clearly passionate and willing to place big bets, so we were willing to bet on them too.
A week after our seed investment, Fred quit his job at Nordstrom. He was officially a Zappos employee now. He and Nick headed to the shoe show in Las Vegas the very next day.
Tony Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos.com, Inc. During the past 10 years, the company has grown from almost no sales to more than $1 billion in annual gross merchandise sales, driven primarily by repeat customers and word of mouth. Below is an excerpt from Tony's forthcoming book that describes the beginning of Zappos.
Nick [Zappos' original founder] summarized his entire pitch in three sentences: "Footwear is a $40 billion industry in the United States, of which catalog sales make up $2 billion. It is likely that e-commerce will continue to grow. And it is likely that people will continue to wear shoes in the foreseeable future."
A few weeks later, Nick contacted us and said that he wanted to set up a lunch meeting. He'd found someone named Fred who worked in the men's shoe department at Nordstrom and was interested in joining the company, but only if the company got funding beyond the small friends-and-family round that Nick had already raised. Nick also asked me what I thought of "Zapos" as the name of for the company, derived from zapatos, which was the Spanish word for "shoes." I told him that he should add another p to it so that people wouldn't mispronounce it and accidentally say ZAY-pos.
And thus, the name Zappos was born.
A few days later, Alfred [Zappos' current CFO and COO] and I met with Nick and Fred at Mel's, a 1950s-themed diner a block away from where we lived. As we talked about the potential of Zappos, I did my best to not let the fact that Fred was a spitting image of Nicolas Cage distract me from the business conversation. Fred was thirty-three years old, tall, and really did look like he could be Nicolas Cage's stunt double.
I ordered the turkey melt, with a side of chicken noodle soup to dip the sandwich in. Fred ordered a turkey burger. Exactly 10 years later, Fred and I would return to Mel's and order the same thing to celebrate our ten-year meeting-versary together.
Nick talked about the progress that the website had made over the past few weeks. They were already getting $2,000 worth of orders a week, and the numbers were growing. They weren't making any money, because anytime an order was placed, Nick would run to the local shoe store, buy the item, and then ship it out to the customer. Nick wanted to put up the website just to prove that people would actually be willing to buy shoes online.
There were literally thousands of different brands in the footwear industry. The real business idea was to eventually form partnerships with hundreds of brands, and have each of the brands provide Zappos with an inventory feed of what was in each of their warehouses. Zappos would take orders from customers on the Internet, then transmit the order to the manufacturer of each brand, which would then ship directly to the Zappos customer.
This was known as a "drop ship" relationship, and although it already existed in many other industries, drop shipping had never been done before in the footwear industry. Nick and Fred were betting that they would be able to convince the brands at the next shoe show to start drop shipping, and then Zappos would not have to own any inventory or worry about running a warehouse.
Fred told us that he'd climbed the corporate ladder at Nordstrom for eight years, just bought a house, and just had his first kid. He knew that joining Zappos would be a big risk, but he was ready to take a leap of faith if Venture Frogs would provide the seed funding for the company.
Alfred and I looked at each other. Nick and Fred were exactly the type of people we were looking to invest in. We didn't know if the shoe idea would work or not, but they were clearly passionate and willing to place big bets, so we were willing to bet on them too.
A week after our seed investment, Fred quit his job at Nordstrom. He was officially a Zappos employee now. He and Nick headed to the shoe show in Las Vegas the very next day.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
The Key to Spotting Disruption Before It Happens
by Scott Anthony
The April 15 issue of The Economist published a simple chart that gave me chills. Look at it for a minute. What looks scary to you?
The chart displayed the number of pieces of mail sent by year over the last decade. When you look at the chart, the first thing you probably noticed was the precipitous decline in mail volume over the past few years. Indeed, mail volume has sagged 17 percent since 2006. Even though the postal service has furiously cut staff over that time period, it's still pleading with regulators to allow it to consider additional strategic responses to address the disruption clearly affecting its business.
That's not what scared me though. I found the years from 2000 to 2006 to be particularly frightening, when nothing much was happening in mail volume.
How could a relatively flat line be scary?
It just looked so eerily familiar. Go back and look at what happened to CD sales from 1996 to 2001. Or check out newspaper company revenues from 1996 to 2005. Or Kodak's film sales during the 1990s. Or Blockbuster's revenues in the early part of the 2000s. Or Digital Equipment Corporation's revenues in the 1980s. And on and on and on.
In the early days of transformation, market leaders tend not to feel deep pain. The transformation takes root away from the mainstream, or in a seemingly non-connected market. It's not yet good enough for mainstream markets. Or, the overall increase in consumption acts as a "rising tide" that lifts the boats in the mainstream market. This makes it easy for executives to say, "I get what you are talking about. But my business is healthy! It's all overblown."
It's only after the not-good-enough transformation gets better that a "Big Switch" begins. And when that magic tipping point hits, the switch accelerates rapidly.
The lesson for executives is that it's important to look beyond revenue or basic market share data to determine whether or not a would-be disruption is a legitimate threat. If the U.S. Postal Service had measured its market share of "pieces of communication" (which, it very well might have) it would have noticed sharp share declines even as its revenue was increasing. Similarly, while Digital Equipment Corp. might have felt great that its revenues went up from $3 billion to $11 billion during the 1980s, that growth paled in comparison to the explosive growth in the personal computer market.
Another Big Switch in the offing might be television viewership. I remember an executive from a leading cable broadcaster telling me a couple of years ago, "This YouTube thing is all hype. You add up all the hours ever spent on YouTube, and it's less aggregate time then one night of primetime."
That's correct, and while television ratings have declined over the past few years, they haven't fallen off a cliff. But I have observed my own family's habits shifting. We increasingly watch content on portable devices and our computers. For the most part, this viewing is additive, but you can see the Big Switch coming. I hope that cable executive is looking at share the right way, and responding accordingly.
Spotting transformation requires looking beyond the traditional boundaries of your business. Growing revenues can hide a looming threat that demands your immediate attention.
The April 15 issue of The Economist published a simple chart that gave me chills. Look at it for a minute. What looks scary to you?
The chart displayed the number of pieces of mail sent by year over the last decade. When you look at the chart, the first thing you probably noticed was the precipitous decline in mail volume over the past few years. Indeed, mail volume has sagged 17 percent since 2006. Even though the postal service has furiously cut staff over that time period, it's still pleading with regulators to allow it to consider additional strategic responses to address the disruption clearly affecting its business.
That's not what scared me though. I found the years from 2000 to 2006 to be particularly frightening, when nothing much was happening in mail volume.
How could a relatively flat line be scary?
It just looked so eerily familiar. Go back and look at what happened to CD sales from 1996 to 2001. Or check out newspaper company revenues from 1996 to 2005. Or Kodak's film sales during the 1990s. Or Blockbuster's revenues in the early part of the 2000s. Or Digital Equipment Corporation's revenues in the 1980s. And on and on and on.
In the early days of transformation, market leaders tend not to feel deep pain. The transformation takes root away from the mainstream, or in a seemingly non-connected market. It's not yet good enough for mainstream markets. Or, the overall increase in consumption acts as a "rising tide" that lifts the boats in the mainstream market. This makes it easy for executives to say, "I get what you are talking about. But my business is healthy! It's all overblown."
It's only after the not-good-enough transformation gets better that a "Big Switch" begins. And when that magic tipping point hits, the switch accelerates rapidly.
The lesson for executives is that it's important to look beyond revenue or basic market share data to determine whether or not a would-be disruption is a legitimate threat. If the U.S. Postal Service had measured its market share of "pieces of communication" (which, it very well might have) it would have noticed sharp share declines even as its revenue was increasing. Similarly, while Digital Equipment Corp. might have felt great that its revenues went up from $3 billion to $11 billion during the 1980s, that growth paled in comparison to the explosive growth in the personal computer market.
Another Big Switch in the offing might be television viewership. I remember an executive from a leading cable broadcaster telling me a couple of years ago, "This YouTube thing is all hype. You add up all the hours ever spent on YouTube, and it's less aggregate time then one night of primetime."
That's correct, and while television ratings have declined over the past few years, they haven't fallen off a cliff. But I have observed my own family's habits shifting. We increasingly watch content on portable devices and our computers. For the most part, this viewing is additive, but you can see the Big Switch coming. I hope that cable executive is looking at share the right way, and responding accordingly.
Spotting transformation requires looking beyond the traditional boundaries of your business. Growing revenues can hide a looming threat that demands your immediate attention.
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