In a recent survey of 765 Chief Executives conducted by IBM, sixty-five per cent said they are convinced they will make fundamental changes to their businesses over the next two years. Presumably the remaining thirty-five per cent do not intend to make radical changes and will be hoping desperately that the rest of the world follows suit.
The odds are against them. As the Harvard Business Review said, “It’s tough when markets change and your people within your company don’t.” Ask Blockbuster, the $3 billion video store business that failed to change when the world and technology surrounding how people watched films changed. Their eight thousand stores rapidly went down to five hundred while those in charge must have wondered what had gone wrong.
Innovation is the life blood of a constantly evolving business world. In just a few years, people stopped visiting video stores and started downloading via online companies. Over the same period, Apple grew from being side-lined as the brand for arty designers to the must-have name associated with a huge range of successful, http://vhealthportal.com/product-category/blood-pressure/, innovative and outstandingly popular products.
Innovation means never accepting the status quo. At Admiral, when clients began to ask us how they could gauge whether they were on the right track with social media, we realised there was no effective tool for them to evaluate their performance in a totally objective way and see where they ranked alongside their neighbours and competitors. So we spent six months developing and refining SociaLIGHT, which gives meaningful measurement to organisations’ social media by examining over fifteen different social media ‘markers’.
We are pleased to have been recognised for this work, having been shortlisted in the ‘Innovation’ category of the UK Social Media Awards, along with five organisations from across the country. The award recognises social media innovation in the development of a platform or application and other short-listed nominees include Auto Trader and the Greater Manchester Police. The ceremony will be held in London at the Emirates Stadium on Thursday 24th October so there is not long to wait.
In the meantime, think of Albert Einstein who has long been accepted as a man of remarkable intellect. He famously said, “If you always do what you always did, you will always get what you always got.” In the spirit of refusing to accept anything at face value, I would like to state that Albert Einstein got it wrong. If you always do what you’ve always done, you might just find that you have been left behind when the rest of the world moved on. Innovate or die: it’s common sense.
