IT'S TIME TO BE INCREDIBLY AMBITIOUS

and go for it

What brought this on?

Here I am in lazy Brighton in the best weather we’ve had for ages. The birds are singing, the deck chairs are out and the roses are exploding symphonically into bloom. Maybe it’s the glorious Aegean blue skies early in the morning or maybe it’s the people I’m meeting and what they are saying that’s provoked it but I think it’s time for us all to wake up.

Let’s start with the Brighton Festival.

A huge success in 2010, aiming for better things in 2011, the number of Friends hugely increased and with Aung San Suu Kyi as guest director in the year that seems to mark the nadir for dictators. Magic. “We can really take on Edinburgh now,“ I said. No, I was told, this is little Brighton, little sister of London… Edinburgh has the clout, the history and the gravitas. And the Scottish B&Bs and the weather and the distance and the smugness.  Go for it Brighton. What’s wrong with you?

Emily Baker. Young. Singer. Songwriter. She appeared at an event called “Riding the Wave” organised by the local Chamber of Commerce. I spoke. She sang. We are bound together by virtual greasepaint. Will she make it? Conventional wisdom says she’ll struggle because she’s probably too good musically (eh?) and this is so crowded a field. But life is crowded and as BWW said “the fast always eat the slow.” So be fast Emily. Be newsy. Be ambitious, girl. I’m backing you to win.

Jess Wood. Designer. Very young. Running her own business. Just done a pack design job for Nestle. Great presence. Good work. Needs to rocket to a new level by being more daring, mould breaking and ambitious.  Be fast Jess. Dazzle us with your design-sprinting. I’m backing her too.

And Sussex CCC and Brighton and Hove Albion FC and the Olympics. Self- confident. Classy. Winners.
It’s time for the sceptics, cynics and naysayers to bow out or be ejected. It’s May 2011 and I want anyone reading this to repeat after me:

“Let’s be much more ambitious and take more risks. We have nothing to lose but our torpor”

….or our jobs?  In the case of the gloriously self-employed Emily and Jess not even that. And, anway, if that’s the price of renouncing boredom and despair, so be it.

Vote for ambition. Vote for innovation. Vote for freedom.

FIRST OVER THE TOP GETS SHOT!

Even the originators of the FMA theory (“First Mover Advantage”), Lieberman and Montgomerie, seem to have had a change of heart. Last week I heard the eloquent Professor of Marketing at IMD, Seán Meehan, define Apple as a fast follower and not an innovator as such at all.

Hurray!

At last the dumb truth about innovation is being laid to rest. Be best not first. That ‘s also what Jonathan Mills, Director of the Edinburgh Festival, said in laying into “premieres” in the arts.

The secrets of success lie in listening to the customers who use the products, fixing the problems that exist, constantly improving the product (iPad2 looks like being a bigger triumph than iPad1 just 8 months later) and being totally clear about the promise - in Apple’s case a confident “thinner, lighter, faster.”

I loved this assertion about clarity. Most mission statements are a confusing mish-mash.

Better to be a Ryanair saying “we are the cheapest” – and reacting with surprise and indignation to the question “do you do customer satisfaction surveys?” No, they focus all their attention on their core promise. They are living proof that it is better to be respected than liked.

So the message is to nail down brilliantly what you have in that box before you think of getting out of it. Stop trying to be an “original.” Focus on getting better and better and better.

And this is a tough new world.

Motorala’s global market share in mobiles fell from 45% to 9% between 1994 and 2008 whilst Nokia’s rose from 20% to 40%. And now Nokia are facing a near death experience. Brands are not immortal. Not Nokia. Not GM. Not Toyota. Not Apple.

Which is why life is so exciting.

Anyone out there who wants to be the next Steve Jobs might make it if they are as demanding about relentless improvement, brilliant design and speed to market as he is.

They don’t have to be first, though, just much better than the others.

Although looking at the Boat Race on Saturday I wondered if there wasn’t something in FMA after all.