Today’s value generation can only come from experiences. People don’t buy a record, they buy the feeling listening to it, sharing it with friends & talk about it. The don’t buy electricity, they buy a warm home for their kids,…

We love to inspire you with some real life examples and a how to make it happen. Interested? Drop us a line at filip@joined.be.

Some teaser to get your brains spinning! Feel free to share the experience!

The headline of a campaign by Audemars Piguet, a luxury watchmaking took my attention. It struck me as a truth. But then again: In a world of disruptive change: is it really true?

The question is: Do you need the know your existing business to be able to change it?

To actually change it: Yes! You cannot go from A > B without knowing the A.

But typically, the more you know your business, the more you are conditioned to come up with the ‘existing answers’, so your definition of the outcome, your point B will be mediocre at best. It takes real visionary leadership, a lot of listening, open-mindedness and guts to define a truly disruptive B.

So to go from A to B in a successful way, don’t be afraid of blending your knowledgeable (but open-minded) experts with people from ‘the outside’ and some true leadership to make it a great cocktail.

Connecting others… it’s what networking should be. It’s not about connecting yourself directly. It’s about building up trust, credibility or any other form of social currency by giving others the gift of your network.

It can take any form:

• Plain old sharing a business card you received from that great designer just when you’re colleague just lost his regular designer.
• Sharing that inspiring blogpost with your co-worker.
• Give a book to a good friend for fun or work.
• Make an acquaintance discover TED.
• Introduce a friend to friend.
• Tell about the things you love.

When have you connected others?

What gives you Energy? Or probably even better:  what gives you a true emotion? It is about your Market (what you do) , your Customers (who you do it for) and let those two Communicatie with on and other.

E=mc².

If you try to do everything, you don’t have a market, you have a garbage.
If you try to do well for everybody, you will get tired very quick.
If you cannot bring the added value to your customer,  you are actually… well not creating any value at all.

So go bring some creative value out there!

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
˜Albert Einstein

Just a little story of today:

A colleague took the time to forward me an invitation to an event (old school: a crappy cut and paste from a webpage into a mail).

I realized that this type of behavior is not common any more in many organizations. Contradictory, this behaving of sharing information, insights, ideas,… is becoming more and more important. Not only do you cut a lot of overhead costs caused by different people doing the same work, it also gives a boost to the knowledge and mutual understanding between different parts of the organization.

It took me 5 seconds to type a small thank you mail. Not for this specific link, but for the idea of spreading. It took me one minute to push the send button, because we are trained to limit communication to what is ‘essential’.

Do you think it was worth pushing the ‘send’ button?

• Never use your own customer behavior to predict market reactions… but be sure to check your marketing strategy with yourself.
• Listen to the advice of other people, but make sure you have an idea yourself.
• Limit asking “why?”, ask more “how?”.
• Always keep exploring new ways of communication, because your customers will do as well.
• When in doubt, just go for it.

Happy 2010!

Ps: In case you forget a present for someone, maybe go for a brand new planner.

www.joined.be/blog/agenda

Continuing on the previous-blog post, let’s talk about the pain of not doing things.

You know the feeling: some of your friends go on holiday together. Sure, you miss them and you are glad when they return with great stories and marvelous pictures, but you also feel excluded. Chances are that in the coming weeks, months, years,… they will remember stuff from that fantastic holiday, tell one of those great stories again, rediscover a photo of their journey. To bad you were not there…

Being part of a group, having a shared experience is a very strong motivator. Both the ‘experience’ and the ‘shared’ are important here.

The power of an experience in today’s world is much greater than that of pure possession of a good. Buying a good has become a commodity for almost every product. Living an experience is something unique, because of what YOU feel when you have it.

Combine this with being part of something, making this experience shared and valuable in your social network adds even more power.

If you can offer these shared experiences as a business, you’re good to go.

And on a personal note: Be sure to have a lot of social experiences!

Enjoy!