Designing design thinking driven operations

"There's a world of opportunity to re-think and re-design the way we make stuff.

When you think about social media, what do you envision? Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Foursquare? If you’re like me, blogs would have made the top of the list. But how can blogs survive in a time when the attention of connected consumers is not only precious, it’s elusive. After all, people can read no more than 140 characters at a time right? With the surplus of networks and a river of social activity that washes away personal information levees, how can we be anything but distracted?

Ultimately, customers are the only relevant judges of your business model. However, even before you test your model in the market, you can assess its design with 7 questions that go well beyond the conventional focus on products and market segments.

1. How much do switching costs prevent your customers from churning?

2. How scalable is your business model?

3. Does your business model produce recurring revenues?

4. Do you earn before you spend?

5. How much do you get others to do the work?

6. Does your business model provide built-in protection from competition?

7. Is your business model based on a game changing cost structure?

The author of this article is huge fan of the Online Journalism Review and after reading one of the latest blog posts"Five more lessons for getting it right, this time around" ( http://bit.ly/vg45DU ), she thought to start a healthy debate and perspective on Niles’ assertion, “Don’t make the syndication mistake.”

While she agrees that licensed content should not replace original content creation, the syndication market has rapidly evolved over the past 5 years, creating a new architecture for news and media and providing huge opportunities for publishers and content buyers.

In this full interesting article, I excerped this part and it is the title of my curated article:

"Niles (the author of post on OJR) focuses on traditional publishers in the article, but licensing syndicated content is also a great opportunity for brands. For example, imagine you’re the content marketing strategist for a major fashion retailer. Your entire job is dedicated to building, articulating and spreading your brand’s view on fashion trends through your blog and content marketing efforts.

Creating high quality, original content takes a lot of work and time, as it rightfully should. However, imagine that you have the opportunity to license and streamline a huge range of voices and perspectives into your content marketing strategy – from bloggers such as The Sartorialist to the Fashion Toast, magazine publications like Inventory and Elle, major fashion sites like Style.com or The Cut.

Whether you’re a content marketing strategist, an online editor or traditional publisher, the key is meticulous curation. If done right, highly curated, syndicated content can be hugely valuable, cost efficient and sustainable long term.

Curating a variety of relevant, niche perspectives not only supports the evolving definition of today’s “journalist,” but also helps to build your own unique voice, better engage your audience and increase the likelihood of people staying engaged and on your site...."

curated by Giuseppe Mauriello

[read full and original article here http://j.mp/uAE45a]

The ability to deliver superior customer service and support across multiple channels isn't a requirement to be Best-in-Class.

Photocredit: 500px / Photo “Dislike Heaven ” by Kai Ziehl.com