Rick Watson ETail West 2012 ECommere Strategy Presentation

ELEVATE STRATEGY AT YOUR COMPANY: HOW TO BUILD A REPEATABLE PROCESS FOR INNOVATION Rick Watson February 28, 2012

SITUATION AT MANY RETAILERS…

RICK WATSON
GM, Marketplace for Barnes & Noble.com
Software / Technology Background
Been in ECommerce Industry for 13 years
Twitter: @rickwatson
Website: http://rickwatsonsblog.com/

A DIFFERENT FILTER IS NEEDED Project Type Project Goals Strategy Execution Expand & Improve Improve one of your KPIs 25% 75% Experimentation Business segment replacement/addition in 3-5 years 75% 25%

GENERAL FRAMEWORK
Think critically about people’s needs
Capture relevant trends inside/outside your industry
Brainstorm at the intersection
Execute

PEOPLE ANALYSIS
Focus on: emotions, decisions, priorities in their lives.
What jobs are they hiring you to solve?
What else people did people do before to solve these kinds of problems?
What types of people are not able to access your industry’s services?

PEOPLE ANALYSIS: STROLLERS
Zero time in the day for themselves
What will I do with this thing when my daughter outgrows it?
Neighborhood status symbols
Wonder where my babysitter goes with the child when I’m away?

THINK ABOUT BROAD INDUSTRY TRENDS
What types of things are:
People using more of? Less of?
Getting more or less expensive to produce?
What do you know will be certain 10 years from now?
What things did you grow up with that are now completely irrelevant to a 10 year old?

BROAD INDUSTRY TRENDS: EXAMPLES
Economy doesn’t look like it will improve quickly for most people.
Subscription services are becoming more popular rather than buying everything up front.
More people are starting families later in life.
It’s 10x easier to manufacture your own product today than it was 20 years ago.

PEOPLE/INDUSTRY INTERSECTION
Setting Expectations
What if?
Why not?

INTERSECTION EXAMPLES
GPS Tracking or Tiny Cameras on Strollers, viewable on Mobile
Custom-built Travel Stroller
Stroller Trade-in Service

EVALUATING YOUR IDEAS
Open up access to a new set of customers?
Could see yourself tinkering with idea 5 years from now?
Could envision a shallow investment profile?
Unclear who else might execute this?

EXECUTION
Goal: Select one idea a year to execute
Look for a market
Establish ownership & ideas to test
Independence is critical

SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO APPLY THIS
Start in your own area: your group is a microcosm of the company.
Early on:
Take shortcuts. Use vendors. Outsource. Build prototypes. Think critically and learn the domain.
Later on:
Firm up critical systems. Refine business model & expectations.
Define critical success factors. Scale & build.

SUMMARY/TAKEAWAYS
Innovation and long-term investment must be priority #1 to get attention. Traditional thinking needs to flip.
Thinking needs to evolve beyond how to improve your metrics – those ideas go in another bucket
Questions about the intersection of people and industry trends provide the fuel for product & services
Experimentation takes time

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Rick Watson ETail West 2012 ECommere Strategy Presentation

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Rick Watson ETail West 2012 ECommere Strategy Presentation Presentation Transcript