Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/655792
28 FEDA News & Views from strategic planning to R&D to after-sales service, should be designed for and take direct aim at the still oft-ignored wom- en's market. Likewise, the population is aging at an incredible rate and the "oldies" have more or less all the discretionary income. To say their needs are under-served is a gross under- statement. What's at stake? For one thing, the women's market worldwide is an estimated $28,000,000,000,000. 11 Design is an attitude, not prettifi cation, and it has universal application. With Apple as our role model, we fi nally understand that design pays (b-i-g time). Both aesthetics and user-friendliness rule. But design consciousness that matters is not an after- thought or add-on. It should infect every decision. And, make no mistake, design consciousness applies to an eight-person training department as much as to a retail outlet! 12 Little is as good as big, maybe better. Innovation over the long haul rarely, if ever, comes from enormous breakthrough ideas. Steve Jobs never invented anything. He took extant ideas and polished and polished and polished some more and perfected and repurposed them until, eventually, something magical emerged. Also, and perhaps even more important, time and again (if you're trying enough stuff quickly enough), a tiny twist or turn will yield gargantuan Innovation is Strategy continued Tom Will Be There, Will You? Don't Miss Tom Peters Keynote Address at the upcoming FEDA Convention, "Reimagine Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age," March 30 - April 3, 2016, in Tucson, Arizona. results—e.g., change the entrance road into a Vegas casino from a harsh 90-degree turn to a gently curved road and the number of people who come to the casino doubles! Walmart signifi cantly increases shopping cart size and small-appliance sales shoot up by 50 percent! (I could add 100 more similar eye-popping stories if I had the space.) 13 Little beats big. Like it or not, our giant fi rms are rarely our best innovators. It's our SMEs/Small and Medium-sized Enterprises that spear- head innovation and carry the weight of sustainable economic progress. We must support these fi rms in every way imagin- able, from funding availability to development of large-scale innovation incubators to instilling a national proclivity for entrepreneurial efforts. (FYI: In the U.S., women-owned ven- ture-fi nanced startups outperform—fi nance, growth—male- owned startups.) 14 Little-within-big. The "death of hierarchy" is unlikely—and even unwanted. There must be a structure of accountability in any complex operation. On the other hand, much/most of the work in today's organizations will be done by project teams, project teams with a mishmash of members from all over the map, collections/collages of project teams, and constantly re-form- ing sets of project teams. Developing and sustaining a fl uid organizational structure that allows these teams to be rapidly generated, change shape, and disappear—without losing the capability to execute and fi nish the job—is a major and chal- lenging chore. 15 Sweat the details. An old boss of mine in the White House in the '70s said execution is strategy. Great ideas need polishing and polish- ing—and polishing. It ain't over until the last 1 percent is in place. Or consider this: A hotel is only as good as the efforts of the housekeeping staff. Lousy housekeeping and a poor cus- tomer attitude on the part of frontline employees, in general, can torpedo a $100,000,000 hotel investment in a perfect loca- tion. (FYI: One retail genius said, "Remember, your customers can never be any happier than your employees.") The challenges enumerated here are monumental. Few will get passing grades in every category. But we cannot reduce the pace of change bearing down on us, so we must create a strategy and culture that encompasses a big share of the ideas above—and do so at an unrelenting speed. WWW.SERVICEIDEAS.COM | 800.328.4493 WE. SERVICE. IDEAS. CONNECT WITH US ON Cool Ideas from Service Ideas •70 t Anniversar• Magisso ® Self-Cooling Ceramics • Cools with just a few minutes under cold water. • Over 20 self- cooling bar and tabletop pieces. • Customizable with chalk.