A piece from AdNews that has a few comments from me on the marketing resourcing dilemma:

Andy Lark, CMO at software company Xero, and former CBA CMO, said a big challenge sits simply with human capability in the martech area – followed by process definition and invention.

“There is a serious lack of talent capable of implementing, running and then executing on today’s marketing platforms,” Lark said.

“Most CMOs now bear the burden of not just selecting marketing platforms and managing their deployment, but in reskilling, retraining and hiring the talent needed for them.”

How do you measure the rate of innovation? For many, its the percent of sales from new products over a given period. Like Heineken who is at 9%. Macquarie is much higher over a five year period, making them an innovation leader.

Measuring innovation in this way is useful in more traditional industries where new products and services eat the old. But what about cloud businesses who constantly innovate – where the product refreshes daily with new features and categories? Essentially all sales come a new product in any given period.

And this is what sets legacy software businesses from cloud businesses. In one, the rate of innovation is throttled by significant technical and business model debt. In the cloud, innovation isn’t just a constant, its the fuel on which the business runs.

One of the best books on leadership and team building I’ve read is James Kerr’s Legacy.  Here are the principals – thanks!

One of the greatest threats to the life span of a new venture is the pace at which your product evolves. 

Most products launch, we fall in love with them, then they settle in for the duration. Eventually we break-up because the product doesn’t continue to grow on us.

The good news is that you can get back in the game. Outlook might have done that yesterday with its big update. Apple products – mail in particular, settled years ago and have gone nowhere. Apps I use like Diligent for board meetings – same story (brand identity changes are immaterial to customers and we don’t care). Google, rather than allow GMail to settle is driving us all to Inbox.

In short, don’t let your product settle. Its the onramp to the graveyard. Its why we update Xero hundreds and hundreds of times a year.