What Innovators can Learn from a Snake

I don't know if you have followed the drama in New York this week, but it seems that many people are caught up in the news story about a missing Egyptian Cobra that escaped from the Bronx Zoo. It is probably a mixture of fear and humor that keeps this story alive, but today I want to talk with you about an innovative individual who stepped into the Cobra's news cycle and started something viral. Someone, realizing the opportunity for humor and attention, set up a Twitter account called @bronxzooscobra soon after the story hit the national headlines. They proceeded to share humorous short posts about what the cobra might be doing in New York City without the proper supervision. That simple twitter feed went from a few thousand followers on Monday to over 100,000 followers by the end of the day on Tuesday. What caused that kind of growth and what can we learn from our friend the cobra? Here are a few key things that the cobra's twitter crew did right: 1. A Real Event: They realized that as long as the cobra was loose it would be a story. This meant that they could tie their humor and content to a real event with real drama. 2. Authenticity: The people running the twitter feed are obviously from New York. Their content is authentic to the city with mentions of bakeries, famous people in New York and so on. 3. Quality Content: The writing is good and the humor is hilarious. That is the most important differentiator. They are not just posting random thoughts. The humor and the writing are well thought out and done in such a way as to appeal to different audiences in the city and around the world. So the next time you want to launch a viral marketing campaign to engage people with your new innovation, make sure to take these three pointers from our friend the cobra!

Shining Your Star

The analogy of a "shining star" or a "rising star" is very common in our success vocabulary. We hear it used in sports, business and education. Usually it refers to a person that is standing out or on the rise. Today I would like to apply the analogy to your innovation.

When we come up with an idea and begin to bring it into the world, we immediately run into one of the greatest tensions any innovator will ever face. Each day you are faced with the decision to either build/enhance/resource your innovation further or promote and market your idea. Usually you can't do both at the same time. So daily you make decisions about which is more important to your idea's success.

The strategic innovator knows when to focus on the details of the star and when to polish it. If you star is all polish and no mass, then you will disappoint people very quickly after their initial interest. If you have the best designed and smoothest running star in the galaxy but no polish, there won't be anyone to enjoy it.

Like anything else, we are looking for a wise balance. But first lets consider the folly of to much focus on either side.

No Polish:
I have sat with many presidents and ministry leaders who had an idea, saw a need and built something. They innovated in their area of ministry and there it sat. Sometimes that meant that there were 10,000 of them sitting in their warehouse. Other times it meant that a web site went unvisited. In many of these cases the product/service/outreach was strong. The philosophy was there and the back office support was there. But they had failed to think through how they would share it with the world and if the world even wanted it.

Too Much Polish:
I have also spent time with many innovators in ministry who have the best PowerPoint presentation, a great smile, powerful stories and examples, but no product . . . no service. When you push them, they are always in the process but there is nothing to back up what is on their heart. They go from meeting to meeting and from conference to conference selling their hopes and dreams.

In both cases the motivations are usually very good. What happens is that some innovators are introverts and others are extroverts. When God puts an idea on your heart and you hit the go button, you usually default to what comes naturally. That means that you approach your task with the skills you have.

If you love people and conferences, you take your idea on the road. If you love to tinker and work in silence then you start developing and you work till it is perfect. Both approaches if extreme will lead to failure.

The key is to know how you are wired and how you will want to spend each day and compensate. If you want to hit the road with your idea, you either have to plan it between idea development or have others helping you with the details. If you are in the back room tinkering all day, you need to force yourself to get out there or have people who come alongside you and help with this.

The innovators who learn to balance building and shining their stars are the ones positioned to impact lives. Are you one of them?

Clutterless Innovation

We live in a world where one more of anything is too much!!

We are overloaded, overcommitted, saturated, innundated . . .

So what is an innovator to do in a world that is crying for people to stop creating new things that they will have to pay attention to?

Here are some thoughts on how to innovate in a full world:

1. Even though people's lives are full, they want solutions to very specific challenges that they feel are a need. If you can identify a true need out there and speak to those people about your solution it will not be seen as more clutter.

2. Gone are the days when one tool works for all. Instead of broadcasting your innovation out generically, you will see better results by finding a smaller niche market.

3. Tie your innovation to something people are already using. If your innovation helps make another established resource more valueable, people will be more willing to add it into their lives.

4. Tell personal stories of impact with your invention. People don't want marketing hype. They want to see that a new idea/product/vision can help them with their daily challenges.

Finally, don't assume that anyone cares. Don't take anyone who you excite for granted. Each person who adopts your innovation is a huge milestone and it takes this one-by-one approach to really grow a new idea.

Using and Innovating

One of the misconceptions that I see out there about innovation is related to using innovation vs. creating it. Many people will take a new innovative tool, use it and claim that they have innovated. What they have done is very good and admirable, but it is not innovation.

For instance, our Communications team at HCJB Global was one of the early ministries to really embrace YouTube to share videos. That was a good move, but not an innovation. That was using someone else's innovation.

The key to innovation is that you have to take a challenge/opportunity and apply a creative solution. It gets messy because it can look many different ways.

Let me give you another example. While our early use of YouTube was not innovative, we soon realized that the true power of YouTube for a mission agency was not in showing videos from our YouTube Channel as much as it was creating a video repository for our many missionaries/staff to use.

Once we changed our strategy and began to feed video to dozens of blogs, web sites and email campaigns, our use of YouTube became innovative. We had a challenge: How do we help missionaries and departments share what is going on visually? We developed a new solution: Turn our YouTube videos into a repository designed to help missionaries and departments repurpose it for their own audiences.

So as you understand what true innovation is, take the opportunity to stretch your mind and use existing tools to create new solutions for the ministry challenges in front of you.

YouTube, GodTube and the art of imitation

I didn't expect it but should have . . . soon after YouTube became very popular out came a Christian version www.GodTube.com. At first no one noticed . . . but as online video distribution has shot through the roof, it is getting some press and attention from the Christian audience.

This Spring I was speaking to a group of journalists on innovation and a Christian journalists asked me why we at HCJB Global weren't using GodTube instead of YouTube. More recently I have had people who question some of the advertised content chastize me for putting things on YouTube.

So where does a site like GodTube fit in to the innovation picture. Along came YouTube and did something incredible - they made video available to the masses in a viral form. This was a true innovation that has impacted many areas of our modern world. Of course now there are many other people who are doing it. YouTube has many competitors including GodTube. But is GodTube innovative? For the most part it looks and feels just like YouTube only with a lower quality experience.

So what is GodTube? Simply put it is marketing. When you have a tool that does the job and someone creates another tool that looks very much like it, the main purpose usually is to focus on one audience in specific. This is not bad at all . . . it is niched marketing. But it is not innovation.

So as you look to create a strategic plan for your video as a ministry, church or personally, what do you put where. It all comes down to audience. If you are looking for a strong evangelical audience go to GodTube. If you are looking for a general audience go to YouTube.

BUT beware . . . usually the audience specific products cannot afford to provide as good of service because they do not have the sheer numbers. So lets say your audience is Christians, you may still engage more of them through YouTube because they are looking for that high quality experience.

Now lets look at the flip side. Because the content is much more controled, if you are looking to market video content to young families, GodTube may be a much better bet because parents will not want their children potentially exposed to some of the negative material on YouTube.

Never let someone convince you that one tool is always better than another. Each has its place. So enjoy the new era of online video - the potential to innovatively deliver your message to people around the world is huge . . . but please think about your audience as you go about your delivery.