Much is written about value. Even more is said about it. Value just might be the most overused word in business today.

At the organization level, we hear about customer value, shareholder value, and enterprise value. At the department level, Product Management wants its products to be perceived as good value not high cost. Sales wants to sell from value rather than feature/functions. And, Marketing is measured on the value of leads and brand equity.

Even support departments like Finance, IT and HR strive for value. Finance wants positive returns of value for capital deployed. IT must demonstrate value to its business unit customers. And, HR strives for a culture that recognizes the value of individuals.

If value is so important, why is there a dearth of proven ways to create and capture value in a given market space? A clear path to value would seem to be critical at a time when competitive differentiation is short-lived and the rate of change has accelerated.

My experience shows there is little content out there to help an enterprise know how to truly identify and realize top and/or bottom line value in their market. Which is enormously frustrating to client-side executives looking for clarity amidst the noise created by multitudes of companies touting their particular solution sets.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be shown the way to value rather than sold solutions? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a roadmap from a trusted advisor to guide your way to value — especially in a market that’s undergoing rapid change? You bet it would.

So what is there to do? Rise above the noise. Stop selling your stuff, and start making sense of the madness. Become a thought leader for your industry. Develop a value roadmap that shows the way to create and capture value in your market space. It works. I’ve helped architect a number of value roadmaps for companies in emerging or changing industries like PLM (product lifecycle management), Customer Experience Management, Digital Media, and Scientific R&D, among others.

What does a value roadmap look like? It’s a map that shows discrete routes to value along with specific advice on capabilities needed to capitalize on the journey. On the one hand you delineate the opportunities to create value. On the other you provide advice on the people, process, and technology needed to capture value. Simply put, a value roadmap shows where to go, how to go, and what’s needed to maximize value.

A road to value is organized by the following connected route and competencies:

More specifically, a value roadmap is comprised in the following ways:

–  Two measures of value. One is growth. The other is cost savings

–  Seven or eight discrete value opportunities. These are proven opportunities to create either top line growth or bottom line cost savings. One or two of the value opportunities might create both top and bottom line value

–  Two to four executing strategies for each value opportunity. These are the strategic imperatives that bring the value opportunities to life

–  Four to six business initiatives aligned to each strategy. These are the activities taking place deep inside an organization. Business initiatives are typically where most conversations start

–  Three sets of competencies in the form of people skills, process/workflow, and technology infrastructure needed to fully realize each value opportunity

Beyond the structure, it’s critical to know what a value roadmap is and isn’t.

A value roadmap is an overarching view of an industry for the benefit of everyone in that industry. As such, it is imperative to present a complete view of the capabilities and credentials needed.

A value roadmap is not a subset of just what your organization might be able to provide when it comes to knowledge transfer, process support or technology. The capabilities needed to fully leverage each value opportunity must be all encompassing.

Again, a value roadmap is an industry-leading effort. It is thought leadership at its best. And, unlike most thought leadership, a value roadmap is highly functional because it is actionable and real.

A value roadmap has clear and immediate benefits to any company operating in your market space. But, it also represents a significant opportunity for the company that publishes it and leverages it. Look for more on that in my next post, The Road to Value, part 2.

Note: If you like this post, you might want to check out another of my posts called Noise. It’s an example of how a value roadmap shifted an entire industry and helped position the company that brought it to market as that industry’s leader.

Thomas Butta

Writers Note: This post is about what’s possible for those of you facing an opportunity to accelerate your organization to a higher level of value. It showcases a company that had the courage to challenge the status quo and heavy-duty competition. The story is longer than normal, but it’s a compelling case study that needs room to unfold.

Did you catch the news of IBM’s latest software acquisition a few weeks ago? Business as usual for Big Blue? Certainly. But, who and what is Platform Computing? Click here to find out.

We had the same questions in late 2009 when 21 Weeks was retained by Platform Computing, Inc. to help position and package Platform as a credible enterprise software player in cloud and big data against behemoths like IBM, HP, EMC and VMware.

For 17 years, Platform Computing was a well-respected leader in the niche field of high-performance computing (also known as technical computing). Its clients were companies who relied on large, mission-critical applications, like models used in financial services, discrete manufacturing, and oil & gas. Platform not only helped such companies maximize application run time, but Platform helped them optimize infrastructure costs as well. Before cloud, such infrastructure configurations were known as clusters or grids.

Platform was successful because its software had at its core a highly intelligent algorithm that optimized the balance between effectiveness and efficiency, run-time and cost, performance and capacity. The smart algorithm enabled Platform to achieve levels of optimization that far exceed other software companies. And because Platform’s open architecture worked equally well on any operating system or infrastructure configuration,  it helped its clients avoid vendor lock-in, the unspoken cost of doing business with the dominant players.

That was all well and good, but Platform’s year-over-year growth slowed considerably by 2009 as its niche market of high performance computing matured. So, Platform plotted its  move to the much larger and faster-growing enterprise software markets for cloud and big data. Platform’s expertise and experience were a good fit, and the markets provided the opportunity for geometric growth.

That was the plan, but the move came with significant risk. Platform would be expanding outside its big fish/small pond comfort zone to arguably the hottest segments of enterprise computing — markets dominated by iconic brands and enormous companies with marketing departments larger than the whole of Platform.

How did Platform transform from a relatively unknown company to become a credible player in the enterprise software markets for cloud and big data?

How did Platform achieve year-over-year double-digit growth?

How did this niche company from Toronto become important enough to be acquired by IBM, one of the most powerful companies in the world?

It did so in two ways:

1. Platform made the smart decision not to focus on the broad-based cloud market, but rather on the emerging space of private cloud favored by enterprises running large, mission-critical applications. Not only did this space closely resemble Platform’s roots in high-performance computing, but it was an area that was still forming. The same held true for big data. Focus gave Platform the the chance to compete.
2. Platform embraced a classic challenger brand stance. It established a compelling positioning platform around a provocative point of view. To Platform cloud — and whatever they call that which inevitably comes after cloud (like big data) — is simply an iteration of what came before cloud, like clusters and grids. To Platform the fundamentals of managing applications in cloud and big data computing environments are the same as running applications in clusters or grids environments. It all comes down to optimizing an application’s run time and minimizing infrastructure costs. Nowhere was this more true than in the emerging areas of private cloud and big data where critical applications and big enterprises played.

A simple, but bold refrain became Platform’s provocative point of view, positioning platform, and rallying cry: Clusters, Grids, Clouds, Whatever.

Everything flowed from that compelling, challenger positioning platform:

• The opportunity for growth

— The move beyond technical IT to corporate IT brought with it the chance for double-digit growth versus single-digit growth in the maturing technical IT market

• The acquisition of talent with enterprise computing and market formation experience

— New talent was enticed and secured for  product management and marketing, sales, business development, and corporate marketing

• Clarity of market sector

— Cloud had correlation to Platform’s roots, but private cloud had highly credible      relevance and no clear market leader. The same was true with big data. Focus increased Platform’s odds of success.

• Internal alignment

— The positioning platform provided a clear framework for internal decisions and    actions: Product development (best performing software for clusters, grids, cloud and whatever came next like big data); sales (cross-sell existing relationships with technical IT to get to corporate IT; attract new, enterprise customers); marketing (win over analyst and media influencers; drive awareness, interest & adoption)

• Brand Identity

— A change in identity is an effective way to get people to look at you in a fresh, new way. Platform’s new identity not only demonstrated exactly what it did, but it did so in a memorable way thereby achieving two strategic goals with one effort

• Messaging

— Platform lived the role of the challenger brand by being provocative and embracing bold in speeches, booth displays, advertising, webinars, its website, etc.

• Analyst  Relations

— Industry analysts are critical influencers to buyers, which is why Platform set out to become the advocate for private cloud, for example

• Recognition

— Leaders need to be recognized as leaders so Platform worked important industry and trade media to win and promote Platform’s technical credibility and prowess

• Thought Leadership

— Emerging markets are often led by the company that owns the customer problem so a series of Point-of-View booklets were created and marketed

• Sales Training

— Selling into the enterprise is where the best software selling machines operate. Platform needed a new kind of sales executive and a different mode of selling — from  feature/function focused to one that was value-oriented

• Partnerships

— Rarely does a company achieve rapid growth in a new market sector on its own. Hand to hand combat (i.e., selling to one prospect at a time) doesn’t scale. Finding one-to-many distribution opportunities is an effective match to direct sales

In two years, Platform achieved what it set out to do. It grew at double digit rates. It attracted new talent. It won over new important enterprise relationships. It generated credibility with customers, analysts and the media for its newest products.  It got noticed.

Could Platform have made it big if it continued on an independent path? It’s hard to say. But, Platform certainly transformed itself from a niche market, technical computing expert into a credible player in the hottest categories in enterprise computing today — important enough that IBM wanted to buy the company.

Platform’s Founder and CEO, Songnian Zou, summed it up this way in his post-acquisition blog. “Platform Computing as a standalone company may come to an end, but the journey continues to clusters, grids, clouds or whatever comes next.”

Will you be ready when you have that rare opportunity to transform your organization into a more valuable entity?  Will you be ready? Or will your attitude be one of … “whatever”?

We just passed a milestone that should have been a thunderclap heard round the world. Instead, it slipped past with barely a whisper.

This May 25 was the semicentennial of a great moment in history. In his 1961 “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent Needs,” a young president painted an insanely bold picture of our future in the language of a dare: We’ll put a man on the moon and get him back safely—within the decade.

The truly crazy thing, of course, is that we did.

What JFK employed there was what I call futureview, and right now it may be our most pressing national challenge.

Futureview is your ability to project yourself into the future and then look back at your present position from that future point of view. Futureview is not the same thing as a goal, plan, ambition, or aspiration. It is not something you hope for or try for. When Martin Luther King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and spoke to a great people about their greater future, he didn’t say, “I have a plan.”

Futureview is the picture you hold, for better or for worse, of what you expect and believe about your future.

How you view the future shapes how you act in the present; how you act in the present shapes your future. Your futureview determines the future you.

My concern is that for many Americans today, the futureview is bleak.

In India and China, the prevailing futureview is positive. Young and old alike are actually excited about their future. The atmosphere crackles with an optimistic, can-do energy.

Visit the airport in Beijing and ride the train that transports passengers from terminal to terminal. On its walls you’ll see posters highlighting Chinese entrepreneurs, their dreams and accomplishments. Get off the train and into the city: everywhere you look, you’ll see evidence of seemingly impossible ideas becoming reality. Dreams are everywhere.

The result? These people are moving forward, proactively building their future. They see a bright tomorrow. So they’re creating it.

And here in the U.S.? The American futureview is mostly negative, filled with apprehension and fear. This is the first generation of parents since World War II who do not believe their children will have a better, richer life than they did.

Making the Impossible Possible

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to converse with Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon. He said that in the years following Kennedy’s articulation of that goal, NASA engineers would periodically hit a major roadblock and declare the goal impossible.

Each and every time, the response from those in charge was the same: “We’re going to the moon.”

So the engineers would go back to their benches with a renewed determination to do the impossible. Every time they hit a snag, that unshakable futureview held them to their task.

“They kept solving those unsolvable problems,” Armstrong added, “until one day, there I was—walking the lunar surface.”

And here we are, fifty years later. Who is standing up to paint us an insanely bold picture of our future? Who is calling out that impossible dare, naming it so we can all go about the great work of achieving it?

So far, the answer is, “nobody.” Everyone seems too busy casting blame and keeping their eyes glued to the problems.

Here’s the good news: the potential for real innovation, growth, and new prosperity in the United States is vastly greater than the prevailing futureview suggests. We are in a time of massive, technology-driven, transformational change, pregnant with opportunity. Realize it or not, we have an unprecedented ability to create new products, new services, new markets, and new careers — provided we exercise the futureview it takes to see them.

If we don’t, they will remain invisible. And you can’t build what you can’t see.

The problems we face today are not economic or technical in nature. They are largely in our minds. We need to take a fresh, close look at what it is we’re looking at.

The sooner we start looking at the extraordinary opportunities before us and seeing a picture so insanely bold that we feel compelled to reach for it, the sooner we can get about the business of seizing those opportunities and transforming our society—for generations to come.

Daniel Burrus is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and business strategists, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients better understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous, untapped opportunities. He is the author of six books, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal best seller Flash Foresight: How To See the Invisible and Do the Impossible as well as the highly acclaimed Technotrends. For more information, please visit: www.burrus.com.

Social media is everywhere,

For all of our fascination with social media, I ask, have we become anti-social?

Sit in any office environment and what do you see?
People with their eyes glued to their computers. Alone.

Peer inside most cars on the road and who is there?
A driver. On the phone.

What forms of communication are most prevalent?
E-mail. Texts. Posts. Chat.

Sure, we’re communicating at record rates, but a critical form of communication is missing: Human interaction! You know, good old-fashioned face-to-face talking in real-time.

Nowhere is face-to-face communication more critical than when you are leading a change agenda. Whether it’s a new way, a new idea, or a new plan, experienced change agents practice a proven art form – socializing an idea. Remember that?

No matter how big or even how good your idea is, the best way to get people to try it, let alone adopt it, is to talk about it early and often. Successful change agents practice this anywhere and everywhere – in one-on-one or group settings, in a conference room, in the hallway, over coffee or during a meal.

There is extraordinary value gained when you make eye contact, witness body language, feel the emotion behind what’s said, and observe what’s not being said.

You’ve heard a lot about the transformation PTC was able to pull off in going from a once proud product company that had lost its way to a higher value thought leader in a new, more strategic space. The shift that needed to occur for PTC to have a chance to win was seismic. The forces of inertia holding the company back were formidable.

Sure, the ideas of what needed to be done and how to execute them were smart and powerful. But it was the practice of socializing the idea that won people over. Whether it was the early morning runs, one-on-one or small group meetings, lunches, dinners, or long flights, the art of socializing the new idea was practiced. Even large group settings weren’t one-way diatribes. They were either discussions or previews about early thinking, possibilities, and what might be. Dialogue was encouraged. Feedback was provided. Ideas were refined. So when the formalized agenda for the new way was officially launched, many people were not only on board, they felt as is they were already a part of the change culture simply because they had a voice in it.

Social media is fantastic for conveying information in new, exciting ways. But if you want to drive sustainable change, make time to have face-to-face chats, too. It will make all the difference.

To me, magic in business is bringing to life a big idea embedded with emotion. Yes, big ideas are differentiating, relevant, and provocative, but they become magical ideas when they also have a strong human component.

Magical ideas are ideas that connect with people. They move people to see things in a different way. They move people to want to know more.

Magical ideas are ideas that stop you. They pull you in. They set new standards.

So why don’t we see more of them? Two reasons. First, it is very difficult to conjure up a big idea baked with emotion. Second, magical ideas are often dismissed out of fear or nervousness before they ever see the light of day.

Magic makers are only as good as magic enablers. Like any breakthrough work, magic makers need to lead courageously and confidently. But, they also need magic enablers to demonstrate equal amounts of bravery and fortitude. This high-stakes dance is at play everywhere, but especially between marketing executives and CEOs, writers and publishers, and entrepreneurial innovators and investors.

When you have the guts to put a spotlight on a magical idea you can move people, reverse course, and set a new agenda. I will share such examples in another post.

• Is your company in a position to accelerate? If not, what’s in the way?

• Are you positioned for value – or are you selling based on features, functions or price?

• Are you a thought leader in your market space?

• Is your competitive environment exploding in a frenzy of hype?

• Do you have a new offering that could leapfrog you into a desirable new position?

• Do you have big news that could change the face of your company?

• Do you have what it takes to challenge the big dogs? Or are you a big dog feeling the heat from challengers?

• Are you limited in your ability to reach up and over in your best customers?

• Are you seeing effective collaboration between marketing, product, and sales?

• Do you have the critical talent to push your brand promise to the next level?

• Is your company being valued fairly?  Are you at risk of becoming a commodity?

If you were to honestly answer the questions posed above, what would you learn? Is it time to change? If so, what’s stopping you?