Digital strategy through innovation: why your practice should mirror a coral reef

When we investigate the history of innovation and in what situations it flourishes, we discover that various kinds of collaborative conditions support new ideas and inventions. A recent Harvard Review story titled Innovate like a Kindergartner noted that collaboration was a key ingredient for innovation. With this in mind, how can we use these optimal conditions to create rich professional experiences and resources for better innovation in digital strategy?

Steven Johnson, in his recent book Where do the good ideas come from, theorizes that two examples of these environments include large cities (urban communities) and the Web. Why? Because in these densely populated environments numerous connections are made and remixed, resulting in a kind of hybrid melting pot of ideas and solutions.

Digital strategy planning requires extensive business knowledge and digital marketing experience, including business start-up experience. Startup experience is valuable because of the dynamic, fast-paced culture of startups, which provides the opportunity to be technically and creatively inventive and financially resourceful (a requirement for many brand campaigns). Startups are often required to launch products and services; their intense small business teams quickly develop excellent cross-platform collaboration skills.

So, in practice, the digital strategy planning process should reflect the coral reef: an environment where different forms of information and experience, such as media, ideas, digital and legacy media experiences, business operations, technology research (types trends and non-trends) and strategies must be integrated. Your personal digital strategy center of excellence becomes a complete resource toolbox for better, more insightful digital solutions and innovation.

For example, in a healthy coral reef, zooxanthellae can provide up to 90% of a coral’s energy needs; this symbiotic relationship enables corals to succeed as reef-building organisms in tropical waters. Companies sometimes don’t allow for cross-departmental collaboration and extensive research during the digital strategy planning stage. The result: the strategist must produce a strategy brief and launch and implement a timeline before the proper macro and micro research is completed.

An environment that truly supports innovation at the digital strategy level should operate as Johnson suggests, like “zooxanthellae, coral, and parrotfish, not competing but collaborating, borrowing, and reinventing each other’s work,” at the digital level. micro and macro.

Collaborative environments allow ideas to flourish, much like the Internet and the Web. The Web was developed through a collaborative effort of academics and with government funding. Once the academic and private sectors came together, only then could the force of the Internet/Web emerge.

If you look at digital strategy from a macro perspective, you’ll also find that good insights can come from good research in areas such as: a brand’s history, the competition, current global trends in a specific niche or broader target market, current digital technology, consumer behavior, where technology trends or non-trends are headed in six months to a year, and identify and address customer requirements. All this allows the development of new innovative tools and techniques. By using technology alongside traditional promotions, it also drives new features, social integration and strategy.

Usability feedback (UI/UX), organizational vision, goals, and market opportunities and initiatives are also important to maximize digital investments. The digital strategist must also be flexible and have experience working with a company’s senior management, marketing and sales, and service stakeholders in order to understand its business strategy.

How does a global perspective play in a good planning of the digital strategy?

Good strategic research includes gathering intelligence on a global level. For example, understanding current and future global trends in urban centers can develop insights into successful branding, public relations, and marketing campaigns.

In the large urban centers there are millions of urbanites with purchasing power. From Manhattan to Mumbai to Barcelona, ​​consumers are demanding the latest trends and are sophisticated and connected through social media. These urbanites are willing to try new products and services and are comfortable with media campaigns and digital conversations. I am referring to urban consumers who have some level of disposable income. Here are some interesting ideas:

For example, here is a current global urban trend that could possibly impact your brand strategy planning:

“According to Intuit, in October 2101, China, Africa, and India are poised for immense urbanization within a few decades. Nearly 180,000 people move to cities daily, adding approximately 60 million new urbanites each year” .

Here is an idea of ​​the purchasing power and behavior of urbanites:

“According to the May 2010 Bundle Survey, the average Manhattanite spends 59% of their $13,079 food budget on dining out, compared to the average American household spending only 42% of their $13,079 food budget on dining out.” $6,514″.

Now that we have trend research, how can we use it in our digital strategy planning?

In large urban settings, many residents will adopt identities that reflect the culture of the city, changing the normal identity from one of I am me to I am New York, Los Angeles, Sydney, or Shanghai. So, if you were to launch a media campaign in a large urban environment, you could target it by identifying your brand with city-specific products, services, and communications that capture the character of a city.

In August 2010, Starbucks launched new ultra-premium single-origin coffees only available (in limited quantities) in metropolitan markets such as New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Miami.

In December 2010 in San Francisco, Yahoo! installed digital screens at 20 bus stops throughout the city. Travelers were given the opportunity to play video games with and against each other. Travelers have the option to identify with one of 20 pre-selected neighborhoods and represent one of them as a player. The winner of the two-month contest received a performance by the band OK Go and a fully paid block party. The residue of this is an intense increase in the number of Facebook friends and Twitter followers!

Finally, keep in mind that the development of the Internet was an academic and government-funded project. It took the private sector to make the Internet/Web successful, giving rise to a very powerful new medium, YouTube. Some ideas are just ideas; some are practical and can stand on their own, while others lead to more innovations. They come from people in the business market/non-collaborative environments, like the programmable computer and the market/collaborative environments, which is how the calculator was developed. In non-commercial/non-collaborative academic or research settings superconductors were developed, and in non-commercial/collaborative settings the computer was designed.

So, given these insights, your personal digital strategy center of excellence should be an ecosystem like a coral reef, borrowing and reinventing itself from different resources and global locations, for good innovation to happen.