What Are The HYGIENIA Factors For Your Business?
Now there is a way to measure Clueless[ness] in organizations. Seth, We're all clueless. That's the best word I can use to describe the state of the art of marketing. HYGIENIA from Trendwatching offers interesting ideas on how businesses can get clued in. I've also added a few other goodies.
... HYGIENIA*: a marketplace inhabited by mature consumers from South Korea to Brazil, from Australia to Canada, who can instantly and expertly point out the various hygiene factors for each and every good, service and experience on offer. They base their knowledge on many years of self-training in hyper-consumption, and on the now almost biblical flood of new-style, readily available information sources and filters helping them to track down the Best of the Best, the Cheapest of the Cheapest, the First of the First.
Conclusion? The bar continues to be raised, creative destruction is a given, and while keeping up with (let alone setting) the trends can be tiring, the alternative is even less appealing.
OPPORTUNITIES
From ignorance to irritation to irrelevance
Let's face it, in the past you could get away with not performing at your industry's global peak, as consumers didn't enjoy full transparency of the best, the cheapest, the first, the most original, the most relevant. Chances are, even your own business didn't! Today, there is no excuse. They know, you know. And thousands of new blogs, newsletters and ventures dedicated to increasing HYGIENIA awareness will see to it that the last remaining virtual and geographical barriers to information will soon be eradicated. Which means any kind of willingness amongst consumers to be patient, to be forgiving, even to be cooperative and give you some feedback on how to be more like other, better performing competitors, is dwindling fast. Their already massive irritation will eventually turn into indifference towards laggards, rendering them utterly irrelevant.
The good news
How hard can it be to at least start listing all the HYGIENIA factors for your own industry? Or your own discipline? If consumers can do it, surely so can you. And how would you rate the stuff you sell on the HYGIENIA scale? Are you MASS CLASS? NO FRILLS CHIC? Trend setter, follower, or not even in the game? Who's working hard, seen and unseen, to wipe you off the scale all together? Get your camera phone, your Moleskine or your PDA, and start taking HYGIENIA notes and pictures. Online. Offline. Roaming the streets. Wherever you are, whatever you do or experience. As a consumer, and as a business professional. Find the sources that list the best of the best. Big and small. Across all industries. Worldwide, from Tokyo's Omotesando to Sao Paulo's Jardins. Find competitors who are setting consumer expectations much higher than you've ever been able to. They're more fun. They have better design. Their stuff tastes, looks, feels better. They're cheaper. Then compile what you think are now the global standards for whatever it is you do, and from there start thinking about new goods, services and experiences. More on HYGIENIA in future newsletters, including the role of new niche brands setting global standards. In the meantime, happy spotting!
How to Participate and Raise Your Hygienia...
The Economic and Social Foundations of Collaborative Innovation by Irving Wladawsky-Berger - Vice President, Technical Strategy and Innovation, IBM Corporation
...despite having built a highly successful, profitable business on a proprietary model, IBM takes the open source movement in its many manifestations very seriously. Working in an open community is for us a no-nonsense business decision, made only after considerable analysis of the technology and market trends, and due diligence on the community, its licensing and governance, and the quality of its offerings.
What is different today is that for the first time, in large part because of the Internet, we have the capacity to self-organize into groups fluidly and globally. The firm is no longer the only -- or, in some circumstances, the optimal - institution for organizing productive, value-creating work. And that promises a much more diverse and exciting -- and very innovative -- kind of marketplace.
Don't think for a second that these ideas apply only to software... read the Draft Craft Manifesto,
- People get satisfaction for being able to create/craft things because they can see themselves in the objects they make. This is not possible in purchased products.
- The things that people have made themselves have magic powers. They have hidden meanings that other people can’t see.
- read more on the Hobby Princess
Hygienia captures the essence of what Ideascape is intended for:
...to gather ideas and information, in real time, from Everywhere - Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati, Pubsub, Ice Rocket, Customers, Employees, Prospects, et al into a single, intelligent source as well as reversing the process to disseminate ideas and informatin to directed sources. In other words, the sweet spot of all ideas and information on the net and in your business so that people can create, collaborate, coordinate, and innovate new offerings, processes, and skills.
Bonue: Why Can't Business Learn From Open Source And Blogging?