Innovate By Focusing In On What Makes You Great

Always innovating is a tough game. RIM more then anyone has had a tough go of it recently. Jon Evans has a piece in Techcrunch today that I really relate to. If you are from Canada, it's hard not to want to see RIM turn themselves around. There are a tonne of smart people at that company and they simply transformed the technology market place here at home.

But evans isn't optimistic. He talks about the inevitable demise of RIM. He thinks it's one of ability. They don't have the product development prowess of a Google or Apple in his mind and never will.

I just don't buy that.

I have friends who have gone to work for Google - they'd probably come and work for RIM. I know a huge amount of smart product people working in startups all over Canada -- they'd go work for RIM. Facebook bought Parakey -- many people say only to get Blake Ross as part of their team.

Ironically i wrote about RIM in the context of a post back in 2009, reinvent or die. Might be good to read that one again.

But reinvention won't happen by focusing on the competition. There is no light at the end of the "trying to be like Apple or Google tunnel".

Moreover, RIM definitely shouldn't waste its time focussing on why people AREN'T buying their products -- they need to start reframing their challenge by looking towards how to unlock their incredible potential just like Hermes did.

So my advice?

Innovate by focusing in on your amazing strengths and what has made you great.

And if this helps at all, just remember you still have an army of brand advocates sitting here waiting for you to succeed.

Chilling Real Time Decisions In A Real Time World

James Armstrong is live Tweeting the Tori Stafford murder trail and wrote a post called "Tweeting from the Rafferty Murder Trail" about his experience which is well worth a read.

I have to say, as a Mother of a 16 year old daughter, and a 3 year old and as someone who worked with the amazing Leslie Parrot, mother to Alison, this story has actually kept me up at night. I find myself conflicted as to what I want to know as a human being, what I should know as a parent and what I should just stop myself from reading.

Armstrong said this:

"Though Twitter has been used effectively to live-tweet elections, riots, and revolutions, to tweet a murder trial is different. The words ‘tweet,’ and ‘murder’ sound diametrically opposed – two things that at first glance, just feel wrong"

In a real time world, we are now in a situation of facing real time decisions. What is right to one person, is completely wrong for another.

For those who work as social strategists, they often tell clients to use common sense, but there is nothing common about any of this.

Armstrong says:

"But tweeting the trial, I believe, helps provide another layer to the coverage. It gives people who may not want to sit and watch a two-minute piece, complete with the editing and storytelling journalists take so much pride in, a chance to digest the story as it happens"

We call it the future of news, but really it's the future of trust because as it happens creates an entire new level that is required -- how we determine what is right and wrong, what the audience should know, wants to know and what role if any, that very audience plays in the building of it.