Archive for fatigue factors
In the latest Harvard Business Review, Edmund S. Phelps and Leo M. Tilman have a short essay calling for government action to better fund innovation. In “Wanted: A First National Bank of Innovation,” they paint a picture that agrees with what we describe in Conquering Innovation Fatigue, where we review some of the “innovation fatigue” problems we are observing in the United States and elsewhere:
Dynamism has been in decline over the past decade. Venture capitalists bemoan a dearth of innovative ideas, and investors bewail a precipitous drop in their rates of return. IPOs of venture-capital-backed firms have steadily declined from the levels of the 1990s. Total venture investment is now running at less than $20 billion per year. Institutional investors and equity analysts now pressure CEOs of public companies to hit steadily growing earnings targets. That pressure distracts from long-term value creation. And the patent system, which at first encouraged invention, now threatens inventors with a tangle of infringement suits.
The current financial system is choking off funds for innovation. It lacks transparency, and incentives for risk takers at financial firms are fundamentally misaligned with the interests of stakeholders. Outdated accounting conventions and inadequate disclosures make it impossible to evaluate the business models and risks of financial firms. Excessive resources are allocated to proprietary trading, to lending to overleveraged consumers, to regulatory arbitrage, and to low-value-added financial engineering. Financing the development of innovation takes a backseat. Whatever self-reforms and regulatory reforms are now in the works, we do not believe they are likely to restore the rollicking times of old, when banks lent to and invested in businesses, steering the economic transformations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In the next decade, the inadequacy of the financial system will become only more glaring. Opportunities in clean technologies and nanotechnology require large-scale, long-term investments. Unfortunately, most financial firms lack the expertise to invest in business ventures on a sufficient scale, now that a generation of financial professionals has been trained to focus elsewhere. Unless something changes, the gap in funds for business innovation will keep widening.
The solution the authors propose is a government program to provide additional funds that could be loaned to entrepreneurs. The system would be designed to “foster judicious business decisions, competent risk management, and well-aligned incentives.” Recognizing the possibility of politicians doing the things that politicians do, they make this statement: “Of course, every effort should be made to keep FNBI (the First National Bank of Innovation) free of political patronage and popular pressures.”
It’s a valuable idea, one that could really help if done properly. Unfortunately, government programs often have unintended consequences (the bigger the program or policy shift, the bigger the surprise), and any program created and guided by politicians could suffer from political distortions. Could it be done fairly? Is there a risk that money might be misallocated or ultimately diverted from healthy to unhealthy regions of the economy? Crafting an organization that fosters judicious business decisions may not be a reasonable expectation for politicians, so many of whom are unfamiliar with the challenges and rigors of running a business. With the right help and understanding of the challenges and needs innovators face, it could help. But is it solving the right problem? Would there be new unintended negative consequences?
The financial barriers to innovation that many entrepreneurs are facing today can, in my opinion, be largely traced to the failures of previous government efforts to help the economy. Even overlooking the role of the Federal Reserve Bank, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Congress, and other government organizations in creating the housing bubble, the present tightness in credit, in spite of all the misallocated billions of bailout money, can be at least partially traced to the artificially low interest rates created by the Federal Reserve Bank, which allows banks to borrow money for almost free and get safe, lucrative returns by investing in treasuries, whereas loans to entrepreneurs are high risk.
The government actions and policies that have made credit very tight for innovators and people like you and me are discussed in a recent (Dec. 30, 2009) article at Motley Fool, “The Real Reason Banks Aren’t Lending” by Chuck Saletta. Here’s an excerpt:
For one thing, there’s an interesting “carry trade” going on right now that only banks can access. The Federal Reserve set the Federal Funds Rate at around 0%, giving banks an opportunity to borrow at essentially no cost. But 10-year Treasury yields — the typical proxies for mortgages — are around 3.8%. As a result, banks can earn an essentially risk-free 3.8% borrowing from the Fed system and lending to the Treasury, rather than lending to risky borrowers like you and me.
That’s easy money if you’re a bank. With the Federal deficit ballooning, the Treasury is certainly offering the banks plenty of opportunity to buy government bonds, rather than take a risk on traditional lending.
Theft by government fiat
And speaking of risk, several other government policies are dramatically adding to lenders’ risk. . . .In essence, these policies have diminished the property rights of lenders. In effect, they turn every loan otherwise secured by a change of ownership in bankruptcy into the equivalent of an unsecured credit card. When banks and bondholders lose their ownership rights in bankruptcy proceedings, they lose much of their incentive to loan to anybody that needs the money. That doesn’t make lending impossible, but it certainly makes it tougher and costlier.
Hitting banks particularly hard is the concept of mandatory mortgage modification. Such enforced after-the-fact contract changes make it perfectly clear to lenders that they don’t have the same rights to foreclose they thought they had when they made the loan. Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), for instance, had to set aside $8.4 billion in a mortgage modification settlement with various states.
Without a credible threat of foreclosure, banks have no protection against speculators leveraging up with the banks’ money if those speculators can simply demand a sweetheart deal when their gambles don’t work out.
Other lenders have been hit hard by bad government policy as well. Some of the more pernicious examples include strong-arming bondholders into accepting deals whereby …
•Chrysler was handed over to its unions, Fiat, and the U.S. and Canadian governments, while its bondholders were given a few dimes on the dollar.
•General Motors was also handed over largely to its unions and the U.S. and Canadian governments, with its bondholders getting only about a 10th of the company. . . .In fact, every time Uncle Sam dictates that lenders have to adjust the terms of their loans, or that bondholders do not deserve their seat at the table when an indebted company files bankruptcy, it threatens to weaken the debt market further. As President Obama’s feckless plea to banks to lend more money underscores, no amount of jawboning will really get banks to widely open their lending spigots again.
Government programs often cause unintended problems that are “fixed” by new government programs, which . . . In this case, I suggest that instead of giving politicians another hand at directing the flow of money to where they think it should go, let’s let the market do that. Let’s restore market rates rather than creating a source of free money for banks, at the expense of the rest of the economy. Let’s let banks compete, along with the rest of us, and let them fail, no matter how big, so that failure will not be subsidized by the rest of us. It was the free market, with the inherit ability to reap reward or failure in taking risk, that made the United States so successful in innovation. That track record of success was not due to government funding or programs, apart from generally appropriate efforts to help people protect their property rights (with some abuses, to be sure, from politicians and barons). Now that there is innovation fatigue in many quarters, the best solution may not be another government program, but perhaps the dismantling of programs or policies that are the source of current innovation fatigue and related barriers.
The Forest Bioproducts and Paper Industries: The Need to Conquer Innovation Fatigue
Posted by: | CommentsThe North American paper industry suffers from a largely undeserved image problem. Many view it as an antiquated smokestack industry, when it has been a leader in exciting areas in technology and business practice. Fans of biofuels and green energy, for example, should know about the pioneeing efforts from the forest bioproducts industries, including many paper companies. “Green energy” from forest biomass has been the basis for economic success in pulp production for decades. A kraft mill burning black liquor is a stellar example of recovering useful energy from the byproducts of a renewable resource, coupled with smart recycling and regeneration of chemicals.
The industry has also been an important part of advances in practical aspects of RFID technology, in supply chain management, in green labeling and packaging, and in many other area. In nanotechnology, papermakers have actually been dealing with nanoparticles and complex colloids for decades, producing increasingly useful and practical products built with nanotechnology employed at a massive scale. In plant genetics, crop management, and stewardship over bio-resources, the forest products industry have demonstrated world-class capabilities and results. Industry stewardship has led to more trees and forest lands in the United States than we had a century ago. Advances in plant management have led to almost miraculous results such as the ability of carefully managed plantations of eucalyptus trees in Brazil to yield trees that can be harvested after just five years – and perhaps even less in the near future.
But with the proud history of innovation and leadership that I see in the forest products industry, it pains me to see how little recognition it received, and how little sense of that tradition seems to be alive in the industry today. On too many counts, the industry appears to be seized with innovation fatigue.
In the new book from John Wiley and Sons, Conquering Innovation Fatigue by Jeff Lindsay, Cheryl Perkins, and Mukund Karanjikar, we identify sources of innovation fatigue factors in three primary areas: the behavior of individuals including innovators themselves and the people around them (“people fatigue”), organizational-level flaws such as flaws in vision and decision making (“organizational fatigue”), and external factors such as challenges in IP law, burdensome regulations, tax policies, and trade policies. It is easy to point fingers at management and criticize their lack of courage or willingness to invest, but we must recognize that the forest products industry have faced unusually painful burdens due to external factors which have only strengthened systematic incentives to cut back on innovation and focus on cost-cutting.
There is a need for policy makers to consider the “voice of the innovator” and the unintended harmful impact that some laws and policies can have on long-term innovation. Policies are needed that put manufacturing industry on a more equal footing relative to global competitors who are generally free of the numerous burdens North American industry faces. Policies are needed that reduce the many disincentives corporations may face to be innovative and more visionary here on North American soil.
Meanwhile, there are other things that North American industry can do. Innovation, whether in business models, products, or processes, must be viewed not as an expense to avoid, but as a necessity to survive. The key may not be to conduct detailed research related to the commodities now being produced, but to boldly explore adjacencies and new product spaces as MeadWestvaco did. We see some of this in the biofuels area, such as creative approaches to integrated biorefineries using technologies suited for local biomass and other local resources and markets. We see this in many of the packaging innovations created by innovators in paper-related companies. We see this in the example of companies like Kimberly-Clark that transformed themselves from commodity makers to producers of world-class high-value consumer products rich with innovation and intellectual property.
The most exciting innovations of the future will come at the intersection of disciplines. Building the right relationships and networks across companies, innovators, and institutions will be needed to be aware of the possibilities and to seize them. The technologies we are using today and the know-how we have developed in the forest products industries may be the foundation for rich innovations in nanotechnology, health care, electronics, and various emerging fields, if only we have the courage to explore wisely, with talented minds empowered and motivated to find the paths forward, unhindered by the chains of innovation fatigue.
This post is related to a longer article written for Tappi360 magazine, Dec. 2009.
DUI (Don’t Understand Innovation) Accidents on the Busy Streets of Innovation Fatigue
Posted by: | CommentsGuy Kawasaki correctly notes that a lot of innovation success can be achieved in small baby steps. A few minutes a day of effort can lead you to innovation success if you know what you are doing. On the other hand, it’s important to note that would-be innovators face some very dangerous streets that must be crossed, and baby steps or even toddler steps can get you run over in a hurry. Weeks of progress can be erased when you are hit by a vehicle in a DUI accident (DUI = Don’t Understand Innovation). In other words, many hours of baby steps toward the next block on the journey to innovation success can be wiped out with a momentary exposure to an “innovation fatigue” event. Theft of an invention, corporate “Not Invented Here” syndrome, painful surprises with intellectual property or regulations, and many other factors can stand in the way of success.
Those who wish to achieve innovation success or support innovation in their corporation or sphere of influence need to understand the nine major innovation fatigue factors and their many variations. They need to understand the work-arounds and energizing factors that can give them a chance. Innovation is still risky and hard work, even when you know what you’re doing, but crossing streets without a map and without knowing the risks and what to look for can give you a painful DUI encounter that can erase all those baby steps you’ve been making for so long. Sometimes baby steps are no longer appropriate, and you need to take big leaps of have someone else carry you over an accident-prone crossing.
That’s what Conquering Innovation Fatigue is about. A guide to help get you safely across some of the biggest hazards in your way. Take a look at the Overview and some of the free excerpts, and let us know what you think.
Beware the Unintended Innovation-Killing Consequences of Laws and Policies
Posted by: | CommentsThe road to innovation fatigue is paved with good intentions embodied in laws, regulations, and even corporate policies. Leaders at all levels must be aware of uninteded innovation-killing consequences that may follow from their good intentions. Staying in touch with the “voice of the innovator,” as we advocate in Conquering Innovation Fatigue, is vital in avoiding such pitfals.
The Wall Street Journal from Dec. 4 offers two columns with examples of innovation fatigue factors that can be introduced by well-intended actions. The first article I wish to mention is “Near-Zero Rates are Hurting the Economy,” an opinion column from David Malpass, president of Encima Global, LLC. He argues that the artificially low interest rates created by the Federal Reserve Bank in the name of rescuing the US economy have actually been driving capital overseas and starving small companies–the leading sources of most innovation, economic growth and job creation, as studies from the Kaufmann Foundation and others have shown. Here is an excerpt:
[M]ore than a year after the heart of the panic, the Fed is still promising near-zero interest rates for an extended period and buying over $3 billion per day of expensive mortgage securities as part of a $1.25 trillion purchase plan. Capital is being rationed not on price but on availability and connections. The government gets the most, foreigners second, Wall Street and big companies third, with not much left over.
The irony of the zero-rate policy, coupled with Washington’s preference for a weak dollar, is a glut of American capital in Asia (as corporations and investors shun the weakening U.S. currency) and a shortage at home. For gold and oil, the low-rate policy works, weakening the dollar so commodity prices go up and providing traders with ample funds to buy into the expanding bubble. Those markets are almost daring the Fed to try to break out of its zero-rate box.
But for small businesses and new workers, capital rationing is devastating, spelling business failures and painful layoffs. Thousands of start-ups won’t launch due to credit shortages, in part because the government and corporations took more credit than they needed (because it was so cheap).
Already countries with higher interest rates, Australia for one, are viewed as less risky because they have room to cut rates if there’s another emergency. This wins them capital and jobs that might otherwise be ours.
According to International Monetary Fund data, U.S. GDP has fallen to 24% of world GDP from 32% in 2001. And as U.S. capital escapes the weak dollar and high tax rates, the U.S. share of world equity market capitalization has fallen to 30% from 45%. This leaves the U.S. alone with Japan at the bottom of the monetary heap, with rate expectations so low they repel investment.
When single individuals or organizations make policies that affect millions, it is far too easy for good intentions to translate into new problems, unless the decision maker is essentially omniscience. Failing ominiscience, perhaps market forces should be given a try, allowing the invisible hand mediated by the mechanism of price to determine the right allocation of resources. But even with a reluctance to use market forces to set interest rates and allocate capital, wiser decisions could be made by policy makers if they understood the personal side of innovation and the barriers faced by the innovators seeking to propel our economy forward. Unfortunately, the real innovation engines of the future aren’t likely to be powerful, highly connected people today, but may be a lone entrepreneur or president of a small company today that could grow and create many thousands of jobs, if only given a chance. Giving credit and bailouts to well-connected dinosaurs can be based on good intentions, but it may be a misallocation of resources that only makes things worse for the most important prospective innovators and job creators out there.
A second article in the Dec. 4 Journal is “Sarbanes-Oxley on Trial” (p. A24), an op-ed piece that briefly mentions the economic burdens this 2002 law has imposed, and urges government to modify its implementation to be more accountable. There is much more that could be said, some of which we discuss in our book. Sarbanex-Oxley is especially burdensome on small, innovative companies and has driven many innovators to look outside the United States in launching a start-up. Intended to make businesses safer and more accontable, it has slowed job creation and economic growth, in the eyes of some experts. Unintended consequences. It’s something every policy maker and business leader needs to be worried about. Are you listening to the voice of the innovators who have to live with your decisions? That could be the difference between success and innovation fatigue.
Innovation Fatigue in University-Industry Relationships
Posted by: | CommentsOne of the nine major innovation fatigue factors that we address in our book is the problem of effective university-industry relationships. I’ve been on both sides and understand some of the frustrations and barriers to innovation success in these relationships. This was a topic I addressed in a couple recent presentations, one in Singapore at the kind invitation of leaders in A*STAR who had me speak during their Innovation and Enterprise Week in October. The other presentation was given at the AIChE (Amer. Inst. of Chemical Engineers) Annual Meeting in Nashville, Nov. 2009. A subset of the material is presented in a twenty-minute overview, “Conquering Innovation Fatigue in University-Industry Relationships,” using the Pixetell screen recording service. The short URL is http://tinyurl.com/jlpres2.
Inventors in universities sometimes face disappointment in seeing their work get into the marketplace or implemented by industrial partners. Several innovation fatigue factors, discussed in detail in Conquering Innovation Fatigue, need to be understood to realize success in working with corporations. Corporate personnel also need to understand the pressures and expectations of universities when it comes to successful open innovation. Sticking points such as IP rights can be handled fairly if you know what you’re doing and pick your partners carefully. UC Berkely, for example, is a great example of a university finding ways to be a great partner for successful collaboration with industry.
Don’t Let Innovation Fatigue Burst Your Bubble: Another Demo from Magic and Innovation
Posted by: | CommentsAs part of the series on Magic and Innovation, today I’m using a simple magic trick with a balloon to illustrate some of the trials in producing successful innovations within a corporation. I begin by discussing the challenges and barriers that inventors and prospective innovators within a corporation face.
Available on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiF6IQO79ag
Not Optimism, But Healthy Paranoia: A Key to Innovation Success
Posted by: | CommentsShortly after I became Corporate Patent Strategist at Kimberly-Clark Corporation in 2001, I had the opportunity to address nearly several hundred people in the innovation community of K-C at a large internal technical conference held at Stone Mountain near Atlanta, Georgia. My theme was “Healthy Paranoia” as the key to success in innovation. I drew upon the experience of Admiral James Stockdale, the highest-ranking naval officer held in captivity during the Vietnam War and a remarkable survivor and leader. James C. Collins’ famous book, Good to Great, describes a conversation with Stockdale regarding his coping strategy that helped him survive. Stockdale explained:
I never lost faith in the end of the story, I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.
Then he asked Stockdale about the other POWs who didn’t survive. What made the difference? Who were they?
Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, “We’re going to be out by Christmas.” And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, “We’re going to be out by Easter.” And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.
This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
The need to confront brutal facts applies to all of us, and especially to those involved in innovation and business development. Foolish optimism leads businesses to neglect competitive threats, to ignore key information from early market studies that challenges expectations, or to make terrible mistakes with intellectual assets.
One small company with a terrific innovation recently told me not to worry about their intellectual property, for they were sure it was rock solid and didn’t need any further attention. I said, “OK, but every time I’ve heard that kind of talk in the past, it was a sure indicator of trouble.” Turns out their intellectual property estate was in shambles, and when I gently pointed out the gaps, they ended up asking me to prepare a new application, which we were able to do quickly just days before it would have been too late. Near disaster!
Innovation is always a high-risk activity. Those who do not recognize the risks and think everything is secure and sure to succeed are inevitable disappointed and often poorly prepared for the real risks they face. Those who practice “healthy paranoia” and recognize that there are risks and unknowns at every stage are much more likely to pay attention to those threats and mitigate them.
Mere paranoia and fear of the unknown is unhealthy, as it causes people to abandon the dream unnecessarily. The gloom-and-doom anti-innovation crowd lacks the faith that inspired Stockdale with the vision that he would prevail in the end. Successful innovation requires that faith, for it drives people to keep trying, to learn from their mistakes and learn from the market to iterate and find new approaches to succeed. A combination of faith in the end but a willingness to face and respond to the many brutal facts of reality – a “healthy paranoia” rather than blinding optimism – is what it takes to succeed.
The brutal facts of reality include inevitable failure in initial efforts. This is what separates the innovators from the rest. You are going to fail: the patent will receive a rejection, the initial launch may be a disaster, the partnership may go sour, the funding source may fall through, or the focus group will turn up their nose at your product. Success will go to those who learn from that, and iterate to improve and come back again. “Iterate to innovate.”
Keep the end vision intact while applying healthy paranoia to face and overcome the many innovation fatigue factors that will stand in your way.
Transforming Nickel Ideas to Dollar Innovations
Posted by: | CommentsAs part of my “Magic and Innovation” series, here is a 3-minute video blog, “Transforming Nickel Ideas to Dollar Innovations: The Danger of Excessive Valuation of an Invention.” In it, I discuss one of the innovation fatigue factors that stem from the innovators or inventors themselves when they think their early-stage invention or embryonic innovation is far more valuable than it really is. This brief lecture includes a sleight-of-hand effect in which a nickel coin is transformed to something more valuable. No trick photography is used.
It’s so easy for a prospective innovator with a great idea, an interesting product, a cool gadget, or a new software concept, to do some calculations and come up with gargantuan valuations. “Let’s see, everybody in the world eats bananas. If as few as 20% of the North America buys my new automatic banana peeler and slicer at $15 each, that’s $1 billion for North America alone! So all I want is $50 million and you can own my provisional patent application. And I’ll toss in my non-functioning plastic prototype for free. ” Inventors and entrepreneurs need to look through the same “Lens of Risk” that potential licensees or acquirers must use. Going from a nifty “nickel” concept to an innovation that succeeds in the market involves numerous risks that must be overcome for the transformation from nickel to dollars to occur. Until you help your prospective partner or licensee have a genuine reason to believe that success will come, the value of your brilliant concept will be painfully low. But there are things you can do to enhance its value and help overcome the hurdles to success. This includes building the diverse intellectual asset estate we discuss in the book, completing your “Circuit of Innovation™,” working with partners to overcome various hurdles, and making iterative changes to address feedback from the market place. It’s not easy, but when done right, you can greatly increase the odds of success and experience the magic of successful innovation.
From YouTube.com/magicinnovation (Jeff Lindsay’s Magic Innovation channel): “Magic and Innovation: Transforming Nickel Ideas to Dollar Innovations,” August 14, 2009. Recorded in Appleton, Wisconsin. All rights reserved.
The Analogy of the Soda Can: Overcoming Innovation Fatigue in Your Innovation Community
Posted by: | CommentsIn our newly released book, Conquering Innovation Fatigue (John Wiley & Sons, July 2009), we offer guidance for innovators, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and policy makers. Today I’d like to speak to leaders of teams or organizations where innovation matters but seems to be less effective than it should be. Innovation fatigue can set into an innovation community for a wide variety of reasons we discuss in the book. When that happens, the solution is not necessarily to punt and discard your team. The first step should be to look within and identify the fatigue factors that may have left your would-be innovators feeling disconnected and empty. Has there been a breach of trust that needs to be rebuilt? Are there barriers that keep your innovation community out of the loop and disconnected from the needs of the market place? (If so, see our chapter on the Horn of Innovation!) Are there steps you need to take to recharge your innovation group with the energy and innovation fizz they used to have?
My short video clip below uses an analogy with aluminum cans to help illustrate the problem and recommended approach. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I hope it makes a point. OK, it’s a bit lame and amateurish – just trying to make a point in a round-about way. No trick photography is used.
From http://youtube.com/magicinnovation: “The Analogy of the Cans: Energizing Your Innovation Community.”
The Beautiful Palm Pre
As I began writing this post, my wife was in a car a thousand miles away with a brand new smart phone. I received a call on someone else’s phone informing me that my wife’s smart phone had quit working completely after following the instructions she received from tech support to fix the GPS system in her phone. The GPS had quit working that morning after tech support had her do another set of procedures to fix another problem. Now she had no GPS and also couldn’t make or receive calls. The problem would later be resolved. I’m still not sure how much of it was due to network trouble (the black hole effect I describe below), hardware trouble, user error, and questionable tech support, but after almost 3 weeks of experience, I can say two things about the Palm Pre: 1) It is a terrific and beautiful phone with many innovations, and 2) Palm is doomed. Doomed, I fear, unless they make some changes in their business model and better consider the harmful long-term impact that some short-sighted decisions may have. The exciting work of the innovators within Palm may be destroyed, in the long run, by Innovation Fatigue Factor #5, “Flaws in Decision Making and Vision”(the subject of Chapter 9 in Conquering Innovation Fatigue).
The problem, in a nutshell, is that Palm and Sprint (the only network for the Pre) apparently have decided to focus on getting the limited production of Palm Pres into the hands of as many users as possible, rather than letting tech support staff have them. The quality of customer service is being deliberately sacrificed to grab more market share and get more buzz among consumers, but this may backfire and create negative buzz due to some compounding factors. Some users may be happy with what they can figure out on their own and never need tech support, but I think many Palm Pre users are likely to need support. I say this because users are not given the Palm Pre manual and the manual in PDF form is not provided on the Palm Pre, cannot be downloaded from the Palm Pre, and even if loaded onto the Palm Pre, cannot be read by its PDFView application without crashing the phone. It’s a painful irony that makes aggressive users rely more than they should on tech support, and yet tech support is in the dark. When you call 888-211-4727 for support, you will be speaking with someone who has never used the phone, perhaps never even seen one. You can usually get to a human in under three or four minutes, which is wonderful, but simple questions can take far too long to be answered, if an answer ever comes. If uncorrected, this will drive consumers away from this phone and toward the many alternatives that can do many of the same things.
Here’s an experience that illustrates the problem of using inexperienced tech support instead of people familiar with the phone. I had a problem with a disappearing icon. There are five icons across the bottom of the screen for a newly installed phone: one for dialing, one for contacts, one for email, one for the calendar, and one that brings up a directory of apps and services. On day two of using my phone, the email and calendar icons disappeared. I’m still not sure how. There were suddenly just 3 icons, not five. I was able to still find email by navigating through the apps, but wanted the convenience of rapid access to email that the icon provided. So how does one get it back? Nothing in the skimpy guide given to new users addressed the issue. So I called tech support.
After being escalated through three levels of tech support over the course of an hour, I still hadn’t found anybody who could answer that question, so I gave up when, mercifully, the signal dropped. The top-level person didn’t call back. The next day, when I had to call again for another issue, and while talking to a rep, I asked this new guy if he knew the answer to the icon puzzle. He put me on hold for about 60 seconds, and then came back with the simple solution: press any icon in the apps window for several seconds until it glows, then drag it into the row of icons at the bottom of the screen and it will stick. I was delighted. “Wow, that’s great. Do you mind if I ask why you were able to help so quickly when three levels of tech support yesterday all searching for the answer couldn’t help?” “Oh,” he said, “there’s another guy over here who owns a Palm Pre. So I asked him and he was able to show me.” Ah, someone with experience – someone with a phone!
Because the person I reached knew someone with experience, he was able to reach out to his local value network and get the knowledge I needed, and he could do it in 60 seconds, compared with a fruitless hour of my time and Sprint’s when talking to people without experience. My wife and I have been contacting tech support a lot– far too much, but usually out of necessity–and nearly everyone I’ve talked with didn’t know much about the phone at all. Thank goodness one person had access to someone who had one.
By going for short-term market share by getting more sets into the hands of the public instead of into the hands of your own support staff, Palm is taking a huge risk and incurring costs that may well outweigh the benefits of the accelerate distribution to the public.