Creating Blue Oceans

Share in the happiness

Slingshot shows you how to continuously infatuate customers and how to re-engage your inner child as your personal resource for creativity. Excitingly both of these essential ingredients can be tapped for your work and personal life.

From our friends at the Delivering Happiness blog: 

Last week, Tony had a great discussion with Gabor George Burt, an internationally recognized expert on innovation, creativity and strategy development and author of Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life.

They discuss Delivering Happiness, of course, as well as the intersection between doing good business and doing good, what it means to be truly connected with others, and much more! You can listen to their chat below or hop over to Slingshot Living and see what else they’re up to.

 

Get busy Mickey, we need a Disney FastPass for real life

Up until the Fastpass, everyone assumed that waiting in line was an immovable part of the overall experience. People heretofore spent an overwhelming portion of their time waiting in line, and this was the subject of most visitor complaints. For over forty years nothing was really done about it. Everyone operated within the traditional boundaries without challenging the conventional wisdom. With the arrival of the Fastpass, however, visitors’ wait times were cut to a fraction, allowing them to have a profoundly more enjoyable experience (excerpt from Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life by Gabor George Burt).

Now, wouldn’t it be great if we could have a Disney-like FastPass for real life? From Fredericksburg.com. 

The Fastpass is genius, really, and Disney would be doing the world a huge favor if it expanded the concept to other venues.

For instance, rather than sitting for three hours in the DMV lobby, you could Fastpass to the part where the bureaucrat behind the counter tells you that you need to provide a fifth form of ID and a DNA sample before she can issue you a valid driver's license.

Bullied middle-schoolers everywhere could simply Fastpass past the wedgies and lunch-money holdups to the part where they own the corporate skyscrapers whose bathrooms are cleaned daily by their former tormenters….

[Image via kichiweb.]

Re-engage your childhood creativity

It may be hard to believe, but all of us were children once. As children, we all experienced the sense of elation and accomplishment from inventing our own games and making use of random props and terrain to choreograph a customized pastime that was a blast to play. There was virtually no limit to what we could play and where. What if we could reignite our childhood creativity and deconstruct our realm of acquired assumptions in the process? It would not only be disarmingly fun but deeply meaningful in guiding our strategic thinking.

Here is the connection: the basis of the most successful strategies is not outcompeting rivals, but rather creating your own game, your own market space. This approach is especially important during turbulent times, when traditional market definitions and standards disappear.

So of course we were psyched to see these comical illustrations from Stacy Harmon in which she shows the humorous side of adults reconnecting with their childhood creativity. Check out all the fun creative illustrations at Mike Brown’s Brainzooming blog that is loaded with creative tips. You can also find Stacy on Twitter @Just_Stacy.

[Image via Brainzooming.] 

Manchester United capitalizes on infatuation, turns fans into stakeholders

If you can captivate consumers as ManU has done, is there any limit to what you can sell? Would not this same community be interested in traveling on ManU Airlines or welcoming a new line of ManU health drinks? Not only is this question useful for you to identify continuous brand expansion opportunities, but it also helps you to identify your most relevant competitors of tomorrow. Would an insurance provider or a mortgage company have thought of ManU as a viable competitor a decade ago? Your competitors of tomorrow can come from anywhere, so you better look all around (excerpt from Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life by Gabor George Burt).

Similarly, see how Manchester United is turning capitalizing on infatuation to turn its Asian fans into stakeholders. Via BusinessWeek.  

Manchester United is planning to list its shares on Singapore’s exchange in September to sell up to a 30 percent stake of the British soccer club for $1 billion, three people with knowledge of the matter say. The club is seeking to capitalize on its popularity in Asia, which is home to more than half its fans. ManU also signed up DHL to sponsor the team’s training apparel in a deal worth $66 million and is closing in on an arrangement that will allow Malaysian snack maker Mamee-Double Decker to use the club’s logo, one of the people said.

Learn more about the importance of infatuation for your business and personal life in Gabor’s new book Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life.

[Image via Google.]

Gabor gets the Happiness party started with Tony Hsieh

Tune in today as Gabor welcomes Tony Hsieh on Slingshot Living radio. Tony is the CEO of Zappos and bestselling author of Delivering Happiness. Play the Slingshot Visionary Challenge and win an autographed copy of Tony's book Delivering Happiness. 

To win:

Tweet the correct answers to these questions:

1. When Tony was just nine years old, he had his mind on the entrepreneurial track by wanting to farm and sell what?

2. In his teenage years, Tony advertised his button making business in what magazine?

Become a follower of @SlingshotLiving on Twitter. 

Tweet your answer in the following format:  I entered the @slinghsotliving visionary challenge featuring Tony Hsieh: [answer 1] and [answer 2]  

The winner will be chosen randomly. From the correct submissions, one winner will receive an autographed copy of Tony’s bestselling book Delivering Happiness.

If you are chosen, you will be notified via Twitter Direct Message. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.

Deadline: Wednesday 21 September at 11.59 PM USA Eastern time.

Interview will air on SlingshotLiving.com on Thursday 08 September at 08.00 AM USA Eastern time.

Are you infatuating your customers enough?

In order to infatuate, your offering must reflect compelling lifestyle (or workstyle) enrichment and stay relevant to consumers. 

As proof, here’s just one testimonial we received from a small business owner who is already tapping the power of Slingshot:

We own a 748-bedroom student housing complex which provides off-campus housing for Grand Valley State University students, in Allendale, Michigan. Gabor's book Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life has helped us to re-energize our marketing approach! We are now looking past assumptions to understand and reach out to our college student market. We have embraced the concept of "infatuating” our student tenants so that they renew their leases with us with gusto! The concepts in Slingshot are simple, yet so powerful! 

Thank you for writing this book that has motivated our marketing and management team to strive for excellence and to infatuate our student tenants! 

—Glenn A. Turek

Managing Partner, Meadows Crossing

Tune in to Gabor’s regular Slingshot Living radio program to find out how some of the world’s most creative minds are infatuating their audiences. Stay close via the Slingshot Inner Circle newsletter or follow on Twitter (@SlingshotLiving).

Defying Conventional Wisdom to restart an economy

With talk of another recession on the way, smart leaders will embrace the idea of challenging traditional assumptions. This perspective of defying conventional wisdom goes hand-in-hand with the process of Blue Ocean Strategy, which is a systematic approach to turning unconventional ideas into winning strategies. 

For inspiration, see how the country of Samoa is restarting its economy via defying conventional wisdom, by creating a veritable time warp. From CNN:

If you attempted to visit Samoa, do not plan a celebration there on December 30th. Why? Because that day will simply not exist there. The calendar will jump from the 29th of December to the 31st. "What in the World?", right?

Why? 

It's actually a smart economic decision.

See how the perspective of Deyfing Conventional Wisdom can help you to start re-imagining in Gabor’s new book Slingshot: Re-Imagine Your Business, Re-Imagine Your Life.

[Image via Maps International.]

Tony Hsieh joins Gabor on Slingshot Living

Tune in on September 8th when Gabor welcomes Tony Hsieh on Slingshot Living radio. Tony is the CEO of Zappos and bestselling author of Delivering Happiness. Play the Slingshot Visionary Challenge and win an autographed copy of his book Delivering Happiness.  

To win:

Tweet the correct answers to these questions:

1. When Tony was just nine years old, he had his mind on the entrepreneurial track by wanting to farm and sell what?

2. In his teenage years, Tony advertised his button making business in what magazine?

Become a follower of @SlingshotLiving on Twitter. 

Tweet your answer in the following format:  I entered the @slinghsotliving visionary challenge featuring Tony Hsieh: [answer 1] and [answer 2]  

The winner will be chosen randomly. From the correct submissions, one winner will receive an autographed copy of Tony’s bestselling book Delivering Happiness.

If you are chosen, you will be notified via Twitter Direct Message. Winners must respond within two days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.

Deadline: Sunday 11 September at 11.59 PM USA Eastern time.

Interview will air on SlingshotLiving.com on Thursday 08 September at 08.00 AM USA Eastern time.