What Is Life All About?

Life isn't about keeping score.
It's not about how many friends you have
Or how accepted you are.
Not about if you have plans this weekend or if you're alone.

It isn't about who you have kissed,
It isn't about who your family is or
how much money they have
Or what kind of car you drive.

Or where you are sent to school.
It's not about how beautiful or ugly you are.
Or what clothes you wear, what shoes you have on,
Or what kind of music you listen to.

It's not about if your hair is blonde, red, black, or brown,
Or if your skin is too light or too dark.
Not about what grades you get how smart you are, how smart
everybody else thinks you are, or how smart
standardized tests say you are.

Life just isn't.

Life is about who you love and who you hurt.
It's about who you make happy or unhappy purposely.
It's about keeping or betraying trust.
It's about friendship, used as a sanctity or as a weapon.

It's about what you say and mean, maybe hurtful, maybe heartening.
It's about starting rumors and contributing to petty gossip.
It's about what judgments you pass and why.
And who your judgments are spread to.

It's about who you've ignored with full control and intention.
It's about jealousy, fear, ignorance, and revenge.
It's about carrying inner hate and love,
letting it grow and spreading it.

But most of all, it's about using your life to touch or poison
other people's hearts in such a way that could have
never occurred alone.

Only you choose the way those hearts are affected, and those
choices are what life's all about.

Today let this rainbow remind your friends and family
of what life is really all about.

Why companies miss opportunities?

Sometimes the more successful companies don't see the biggest and the brightest opportunities in plain sight. It is a research done by Erich Joachimsthalor on companies like Sony and Apple. He examined and find out the reason why it happens.
Sony was once the world leader in music players. In all the 1970s, 1980s, and 19990s sony was leading in its way. And then there was Apple, a computer company that had nothing to do with music. In 2001, Apple brought a revolutionised mp3 product in the market called iPod. Today talk about mp3 player and everyone thinks of Apple. In mp3 player and music download it is the apple story all the way.
Why did Sony not noticed an opportunity that was right under its nose (since is excel in music)? And, how did Apple strike a goldmine that was not even familliar with (that is music).

The correct starting point - The Apple and Sony story teach you few lessons on how companies find opportunities. After the success of walkman, Sony started looking at the world from inside-out. Sony concentrated all their energies on one blockbuster and how to squeeze more out of it.
Apple on the other hand, had a completely different approach. Apple never ever say , "How do we create a music palyer better than walkman" even they did not look at the walkman. Instead what Apple did was study how people live around and manage their music. Apple said, "We need not create another music player and push it down consumers throats by creating a different or better value proposition". Apple did there research on how people manage music , manage video liberaries, manage communications, and see the fundamental behaviors that Apple have to change so that they can creat a value for the consumers. And, that was the atarting point for Apple.
The trick lies in reconstructing a day in the life of a consumer, and this works particularly for new and a breakthrough innovation. Apple did the marketing research to confirm there own perceptions about what consumers want. The reason why apple saw the opportunity in the music business because they are not in the music business ;).

Missing the big picture - Let us come back to the Sony example. The reason why Sony stumbled was because the compay had a different division, so there was a walkman division, a consumer electronics division and so on. The problem with the division was that these divisions remain confined to their little worlds and, rarely stepping out and exploring opportunities beyond their immediate responsibilities.
Take an example of Gillette, which had three seperate divisions: Duracell for batteries, Oral B for toothbrushes and Braun for high end devices. Gillette had all three division but they failed to see the biggest opportunity in the oral care market. It was P&G which entered the oral care category and increased its profit margins beyond its wildest imagination. The interesting and exciting point is that the P&G did not even have the technology to do the spinbrush. They used opensource to get the spinbrush technology. And that's where the difference lies.

Notion of competitive advantage - The classic approach that most of the companies use is, "Let us create a product that is faster, cheaper and better than what a competitor's product offers". All of that effort of competitive advantage is a sucidal game. It leads to product proliferation and commoditisation over time. Customer adavantage is something as simple as being able to identify innovations and the products that will fit into consumers lives, and make a difference to them. That is what Apple did, you can see the customer advantage in the iPod. The idea is to create a fundamentally different consumer experience.

It is not just about needs - Most companies operate from the paradigm called as "Need Fulfilment Paradigm": find a need and fulfil it. This is the basic paradigm of innovation and marketing. It creates a big problem because it causes the marketers to desperately find the needs. So they do surveys and focus on consumer and consumers say they want a product like that, but in the end that doesn't happen.
Instead what Joachimsthalor says something like "ecosystem of demand" - understanding of demand and know how it arises. "When we create innovation, we try to fulfil the need as understood from the consumer perspective other than realy understanding how a needs changes across context."

Think of it - Just think about it, you may drink a different beer when you are out with your friends in the evening, than when you are alone with your wife at home. "Many times you do not buy the things that you need, but instead you buy something just because of a passion or desire." Joachismthalor says, "I don't think that anyone ever bought an iPod because they needed another music device. It was bought for many more reasons."

- An article by Erich Joachimsthalor.

Erich Joachimsthalor is the founder of the strategy and the marketing firm "Vivaldi Partners" headquartered in NewYork city. He is the author of "Brand Leadership" and "Hidden in Plain Sight".