While I’m sure there are hundreds of things business can learn from Avatar, in this post I present four ideas that came to mind as I reflected on the movie over the last couple of days.

1. A visionary leader. James Cameron has had a vision for this movie for 14 years – he first wrote the movie script in 1995. The details were incredibly specific down to documented descriptions of the plants, animals, equipment on the Pandora planet. The ability and unwavering determination to take that vision and execute it with such precision across the hundreds of people involved in the making of the movie is remarkable.

Lesson for business: Do you or your leader have a remarkable vision for your business and an unwavering determination and passion to make it happen?

2. A vision that forces incredible innovation. The vision for Avatar was not able to be executed with the technologies that existed prior to the movie. The vision forced game changing innovation – 3-D camera innovations, facial expression camera technology, and computer generated visual effects advances.

Lesson for business: Will your business vision force game changing innovation that will alter the landscape of your industry and catapult you into the industry leader position?

3. Engage people emotionally in your story. I see that some people have criticised Avatar as being strong on visual effects but weaker on storyline. I have to disagree (although I would be first to admit that I am not an experienced film critic). Avatar really engaged me. I got weaved into the story. I’m still thinking about it a few days after watching the movie.

Lesson for business: Are you just selling clients on the features of your offerings? Or are you wrapping them up emotionally in the a remarkable breathtaking story that excites them and sticks in their mind like superglue?

4. Human profits should never come ahead of life. This point is a little different from the ones above – it is more about a key message in the movie rather than the approach to the movie itself. The message I took away from the story is that humans have destroyed their own planet and are prepared to destroy life on Pandora in the name of business and industry profit. My conclusion from the movie is that the value of preserving the rich living environment on Pandora is far greater than any value of profits to human business and industry.

Lesson for business: Let’s not get to the point where we have destroyed our planet and need to search for another planet to destroy in order to fulfil our profit needs. Instead let’s find ways to generate profits while preserving our precious resources, environment, and society on Earth.

On a final note, as a Wellingtonian (New Zealand), well done to Weta Digital who did much of the visual effects for Avatar -  you make us proud yet again.

To find out more about the background of Avatar, check out the video below. Click here if you can’t see this video.

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The fresh air of the Wairarapa, New Zealand

I’ve been reflecting on something Seth Godin wrote in his New Year’s day post welcome to the frustration decade:

…And, to top it off, savings are thin and resource availability isn’t what it used to be. A lot of people ate their emergency rations during the last decade. Look for this frustration to be acted out in public, and often.

My concern is whether our businesses and industry also ate our emergency rations during the last decade – the rations of resources, environment and society.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that businesses and industry make a critical contribution – creating employment, providing necessary products and services, fueling economic growth, and providing returns to investors. But they also consume resources, impact the environment, and influence societies. As businesses and industry move into the new decade I believe that you and I (who operate within businesses and industry) need to pay as much attention to the latter set of considerations as we do to the former set. As a powerhouse in our communities our businesses and industry have the muscle to make a difference in the world – let’s make it for the good.

Many leaders have already shown us the way, making a contribution to profit AND purpose:

• Terracycle – a business that creates value from waste (see my post TerraCycle – A Business Built on Waste and Worm Poop)
• Interface – a petroleum intensive flooring manufacturer well on their way to having zero impact on the environment by 2020 (see my post Interface Looking after Tomorrow’s Child)
• TOMS Shoes – for every pair of shoes sold TOMS Shoes gives a pair of shoes to a needy child (see my post One for One – TOMS Shoes)

Our world, our society needs us to step up and to continue this same lead in our own businesses and industries for the next decade and beyond. Small changes now can make a big difference in the future.

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First, this is just a fantastic thing to do that makes a contribution to people in need.

Second, if you are an employee at TOMS Shoes you certainly have a higher purpose to work towards. You’re working hard to make a difference, and not just to maximise profit as is the case in most commercial businesses.

Third, they have such a powerful story and point of difference that is at the core of their business. The story is unexpected and people will be naturally interested. There is no need to come up with some superficial marketing and advertising gimmick to get people’s reluctant attention. The business naturally gets people’s attention – willingly!

Fourth, as Seth Godin mentions in his post of TOMS Shoes, people who wear the shoes make a statement. Of all the shoes they own, their TOMS Shoes will be the ones that they talk about. They will pass on the TOMS Shoes story by word of mouth, and those who identify with the story will buy their own pair and make their own contribution to the TOMS Shoes movement.

TOMS Shoes was foundered by Blake Mycoskie after a holiday in Argentina, where he saw children without shoes in local villages. The TOMS Shoes shoe design is based on shoes worn by local Argentinian farmers. The brand TOMS is derived from the word ‘tomorrow’.

See the TOMS Shoes story in the YouTube video below.

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Pink points to an abundance of evidence showing that common business approaches to reward and incent performance, such as sales commissions and employee bonuses, actually result in worse performance. The reason? Incentives narrow focus, when what we actually need is broader conceptual and creative thinking to solve the problems faced in our complex business environments. Performance incentives work well only for basic mechanical activities where there is a simple set of rules and a clear objective.

As a solution, Pink indicates that we should be focusing on intrinsic motivators (rather than extrinsic motivators) to generate high performance. The intrinsic motivators he proposes are:

• Autonomy
• Mastery
• Purpose

Pink states “pay people adequately and fairly, get the issue of money off the table, and then focus on autonomy”. He then references a number of case studies, including Australian software company Atlassian, where team members work on whatever they choose for 20% of their time, leading to creative products and solutions for the company.

I recommend watching Dan Pink’s presentation below, where he discusses the above points in more detail. As a bonus, Pink is also a very entertaining presenter. The video clip is around 18 minutes long.

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A couple of days ago Chris Anderson released his latest book entitled ‘FREE’, and true to his word, he has made his book available in digital form for free. In fact if you have a huge screen and really good eyesight you can read it right here at Unexpected Idea below for free (actually since originally posting this, I have found that you can toggle the reader to full screen with the button on the RHS, which makes it much easier to read). The slight challenge is that you cannot download it or print it as a PDF. So the alternative I have taken is downloading for free his FREE audio book which you can listen to on your iPod or MP3 player. Alternatively, you can pay for a physical book or an abridged version of the audio book.

Let me listen to the audio book, and then let’s explore this topic further as an unexpected idea for business.

FREE (full book) by Chris Anderson

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We have a choice to make during our brief brief visit to this beautiful green and blue living planet – to hurt it or to help it.

Ray Anderson, Founder of Interface, 2009

I watched the below presentation from Ray Anderson on www.ted.com a couple of days ago and it was an unexpected inspiration. From the above quote you may think that Ray Anderson is an environmentalist. And perhaps he is, but he is also the Founder of the worlds’ largest carpet tile manufacturer Interface Inc.

In 1995 Ray came to the realisation that business and industry were the largest contributors to the decline in the environment as well as the only hope to save it. He set out on a mission of sustainability – to provide an inhabitable planet for Tomorrow’s Child. To achieve this, Interface set the goal to transform their petroleum intensive business to have zero impact on the environment by 2020. In the last 14 years the company has made impressive progress by minimising waste, using renewable materials and renewable energy, recycling their used products, and introducing efficiencies into their processes. As a result of this transformation Interface’s greenhouse gas emissions have decreased by 90% in 14 years.

At the same time Interface’s growth has increased and its profits have doubled. Ray believes that their mission for sustainability has been an incredible marketplace differentiator, securing the goodwill of customers in a way that no marketing or advertising ever could. The mission has also generated a stronger team focused on a shared higher purpose.

Ray Anderson and Interface have taken the lead. They have proven that business and industry can be sustainable and profitable – even more than that, that it can be a better business model. Now that we know this, now that we know it is possible, is it not our duty to follow and make the same transformations in the businesses we work in?

Glenn Thomas, one of Interface’s employees wrote the below poem entitled Tomorrow’s Child, inspired by Interface’s mission of sustainability:

Tomorrow’s Child (Written by Glenn Thomas)
Without a name, an unseen face
and knowing not your time nor place
Tomorrow’s Child, though yet unborn,
I met you first last Tuesday morn.

A wise friend introduced us two,
and through his sobering point of view
I saw a day that you would see,
a day for you, but not for me.

Knowing you has changed my thinking,
for I never had an inkling
That perhaps the things I do
might someday, somehow, threaten you.

Tomorrow’s Child, my daughter-son
I’m afraid I’ve just begun
To think of you and of your good,
Though always having known I should.

Begin I will to weigh the cost
of what I squander, what is lost
If ever I forget that you
will someday come to live here too.

Watch the below TED Talk video clip of Ray Anderson’s presentation. In my view it is essential viewing for anyone in business or industry who cares about the legacy they leave on our world. It is 16 minutes long.

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In their book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die brothers’ Chip and Dan Heath provide an example of Outpost.com who released a Superbowl commercial where wolves attack a marching band on the football field (included below). Humans are wired to pay attention to threats – such as wolves attacking – so clearly this commercial would have been unexpected and memorable. However, with no connection to the business or product it is questionable whether this unexpected message would have been effective. 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k40ViflvUgk[/youtube]

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Their founding product was TerraCycle Plant Food. TerraCycle is paid to take waste product, which they feed to worms, and then sell the worm poop as plant fertiliser. TerraCycle runs school and community recycling programmes to collect recycled soft drink bottles, and uses these to package the plant food. The operation is run from a previously abandoned warehouse in New Jersey and uses misprinted boxes from other companies to ship product.

TerraCycle has recently expanded its product range to include other lawn and garden supplies, cleaning products, office and school stationery, bags, and fire logs – all made from waste.

Founded in 2001, TerraCycle was expected to make around US$8 million in sales in 2008 and continues to grow. TerraCycle is different and unexpected – it breaks the pattern. As proven by the massive media attention received – TerraCycle stands out and grabs your attention.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM6sxZFvJ5c[/youtube]

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Automattic's team members are located around the world

While open source business models are no longer new, they are still unexpected when compared with the conventional ‘invest in software IP and then sell licenses to use’ model. Certainly it would now be very difficult for a competitor to take market share off Automattic in the blogging software market – the WordPress software is both free and high quality – why would you use anything else?

Currently Automattic makes its revenue from associated services – upgrades, VIP hosting, advertising, and enterprise services. Not a bad model in many ways – offer high quality products for free, grow a huge loyal community, and then over time generate revenue almost as a by-product of the massive community and profile that you have built. Not to mention the active community that contributes to your product generating productivity and loyalty when compared with proprietary models.

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Potatopak plate

According to a recent Time Small Business article The Dish on Green Disposables Americans use an estimated trillion disposable plates and utensils every year, with each disposable plate’s useful life averaging just five minutes. Add to this the fact that disposable plastic plates do not decompose – they sit in landfills for hundreds of years.

By contrast, New Zealand company Potatopak shows a video on their website of pigs eating their disposable plates. If you have been to a barbeque or party in recent years in New Zealand, you may have found yourself eating off a Potatopak plate made from potato starch. The plates are 100% biodegradable and completely decompose in a few weeks or months.

Potatopak’s potato starch is extracted from food processing plant waste water. So, Potatopak’s products are environmentally friendly, their manufacturing process produces zero waste, and they even reduce (and create value from) the waste of other processing facilities.

The Time article (referenced above) also went on to discuss environmentally friendly disposable plates made of leaves steamed into shape – from a US company Verterra.

I thought that both Potatopak and Verterra had excellent ‘unexpected ideas’ that are helping our environment as well as helping the companies gain attention.

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