Today I leave for Asia and will be gone for 3 weeks. Before I go, I want to throw out an idea I have been playing with. It’s rough, and I will write more about it soon. The concept is probably most relevant to those in the “intellectual property” business – speakers, trainers, advisers, coaches, and consultants.
I was speaking with a friend who owns a training business. She described a frustration of hers. After doing a day-long training session for a company, she discovered that they were using her materials to train other employees – without paying her any extra money. From her perspective, this was not permitted unless they licensed her content. She also discovered that outside trainers (i.e., competitors) were getting access to her training materials.
This got me thinking about my recent blog entries on companies that are giving away their intellectual property as part of their innovation strategy. GlaxoSmithKline is giving away their cancer cell research, and Nokia is giving away free software.
So, I asked her, “What if you gave away your intellectual property? How would you need to re-invent your business?”
I then drew the following chart to stimulate some conversation. I used getting publicity (PR) as an example during our discussion (written from the viewpoint of the buyer – not the service provider).
The framework depicts three levels of services/products: tell me, enable me, do it for me.
Tell me: These products/services tell you how to do something. If you want PR, you could read a book, take a class, or listen to CDs on the topic. Coaching and traditional advisory-type consulting also fall into this group.
Enable me: These products/services go beyond advice and give you the tools to make things happen. Pricing may be a one-time fee, a subscription, or a pay-as-you-use. [my Innovation Personality Poker is a simple “enable me” tool]. As an example, if you want PR, you could…
- buy a press release writer, software that asks simple questions and spits out a professional press release with hypnotic marketing words embedded. Maybe it could even automatically submit it to PRWeb.com or PRNewsWire.com.
- buy/license an article submitter that sends your articles out to a pre-determined list of article websites.
- subscribe to PRLEADS.com, a subscription service that sends you daily requests from journalists who are looking for experts.
Do it for me: Here the work is actually done for you. You could hire a PR firm to get publicity and you could pay them on retainer (a monthly fee) or better yet, you could pay them on results (they get paid when you get placed).
What is interesting about this model is that as you go to higher levels, the value delivered increases, while the offerings become more difficult to replicate.
I believe that the sweet spot is the “enable me” level. Not only do you increase the value delivered and reduce the replicability, but you also gain leverage because you can build it once and sell it many times.
What if you gave away your intellectual property? What if you gave away your “tell me” content and used it as marketing material? What if your greatest assets were converted into “enable me” products? How would you need to re-invent YOUR business?
Well, I’m off to Asia. In the meantime, I welcome any thoughts or comments on this idea. And if you are in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, or Singapore, I hope you will attend one of my presentations.