Behold the turtle...
So I'm reading this article about Las Vegas and how it's attempting to remake itself (again). This time it's taking some of the Sin out of Sin City and trying to become a nightlife capital (as if it wasn't already). They're investing in celebrity DJs and opening clubs all over town that charge you $30 to get in and thousands to get a table close to the DJ. But that wasn't what caught my eye. It was further down in the story, a part about how the CEO of Zappos (HQ is in Vegas) is attempting to remake the city as somewhere to work collaboratively and live there also. Even that didn't hit me that hard. This quote did:
"Research has shown that most innovation actually comes from something outside your industry or outside your area of expertise being combined with your own,"
Right about then I started thinking about the new Incentive Federation survey on the size of the market, and how we are finding out that we aren't' the center of the universe after all. What Mr. Hsieh's comment underscores is what's been happening to our business while we've been anointing ourselves as Kings of the World.
Retailers, with their scale, buying power, and brand equity, are changing how our business works, and how our clients access the brands that comprise most incentive programs. We now have a formidable competitor that has not only OUR brand equity, but their OWN equity which places us at a definable disadvantage. Add that to convenience (thousands of outlets), and a lack of resources of the part of the "legitimate" incentive market and you have the possibility of a mismatch.
But now that "something outside your industry or area of expertise" has shown up it presents us all with a chance to look at our own operations with a new pair of eyes. We can be less afraid to experiment, less concerned with finding the "home run" because we haven't even hit a single yet based on the size of the business that's being done by retailers.
Last year at Dialogues we said that our market seeks too many "big" solutions and doesn't try smaller-scale projects as much. Innovation may now be thrust upon us by the retail behemoths that sell our own products.
This might be fun...
Pete
posted by Pete Mitchell at 5:18 PM
2 Comments:
For years it's been suggested that Special Markets (which means nothing to the outside world by the way) might want to look outside of itself for inspiration, ideas or clues as to how the rest of the world functions. I personally find it encouraging that it took the CEO of my favorite shoe source to finally catch your attention.
Barb,
I have always thought we were insignificant. The organizations I’ve worked for over the past 20+ years have made that clear to me with no ambiguity.
We gather at events and conferences and convince each other that we are important by virtue of our sales volume, or the presence we have relative to each other. The rest of the world goes on without hardly any recognition (sorry, bad pun) that we even exist.
I am the last of my kind. When I go, my organization will keep some of what I did but toss the rest to the wind, to be handled by entities willing to assume risk and forecast the business, or the retailers.
I liked the profoundness of Mr. Hsieh's remark--that innovation doesn't occur within our group until some force acts on it. Newton's Second Law, perhaps?
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