This year Innovate Raleigh led a conference looking at the future of region by exploring how global trends like climate change, population growth, and AI will impact the region over the next 30 years. It was a great conference discussing the future of sustainable development, entrepreneurship, and technology. Specifically the theme around how forward-thinking leadership and innovative thinking are paramount to the community’s success. This Summit served as a catalyst for ideas for innovation and connected to the work of the many partners in the region. Here was some key agenda items and points shared at conference that stood out:

• THE CITY OF TOMORROW: A NEW APPROACH FOR INCLUSIVE GROWTH
• CAN CITIES BE ENGINES OF SUSTAINABILITY? THE CHALLENGE OF LIVING ON EARTH IN THE AGE OF HUMANS
• CITIES OF THE FUTURE: INNOVATIONS IN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
• THE FUTURE OF INNOVATION

Key Points Shared:

• Think of our impact on environment. Global warming? Three impacts of our growing CO2 levels impacting climate change is earth gets warmer, it rains harder, and seas rise. In addition, consider impacts on human health due to longer higher temperatures that impact productivity and result in more insect borne illnesses from those that breed in hotter weather scenarios. The key to fight this is reducing fossil fuel burning like the fossil fuel plants alongside electricity and heat systems based on fossil fuels and 300 million cars burning this fuel.
• Think about what future we will choose based on our choices? Think of the consequences. Make good changes now to have better future later.
• Look for opportunities to walk more in your city and find the bike and walk paths to utilize for better and healthier ways to transit. Plus encourage your city to do more to support better pathways for pedestrians versus favoring car transit. In 1946 1/3 of Americans walked, biked, or took public transit to work. And travel between cities was mostly by train. Only 50% of people had cars. Think about un-building our transit mistakes and going back to more sustainable and efficient healthier travel.
• How innovation can help cities achieve inclusive and sustainable growth? Provide innovations that scale and cover needs of all constituents. Ensure robust public engagement to educate, communicate, and get people involved in new projects that impact work and living. 

​Local thought leaders who are tackling evolving challenges in entrepreneurship and innovation shared how their work is contributing to a more equitable and sustainable future for the region. Here is some wisdom shared:

• The fashion industry making billions of clothing items result in some of the worst waste water problems like toxic sludge. (ie. 5-10 tons a day from some manufacturing). Through innovations like SeaChange Technologies, waste water and pollution can be reduced while creating re-usable particles. In some cases, 50% reduction in pollution through implementing new technologies during production process.

• New clean tech offerings improving environment, health for people, and generating new jobs. 24+% industry growth in clean tech and leading the number of new patents being generated.  Some new innovations include, creating micro grids and using wind power to create electricity for 15,000 people in Alaska. Self-charging buses that can drive on battery with charging system. Stop to let people off and within 15 seconds of stop, the bus can be re-charged. 

• This is our time to be brave, courageous, and follow what you believe is right.
• Growth of population in city centers is not the problem. Ignoring the growth is the problem.If you adopt and change, new opportunities open up.
• Best practice is to engage with your community to educate and inform. Then engage the public to get informed feedback and help influence in ways best for people.
• Balance both "Equality and Equity" so all sides impacted by actions are covered and have fair share with a voice and participation in cause & effects from changes.

• Ecosystem Building:  Think of nature as best example of community. The plants and animals within mother earth working together to help all in that forest thrive. This is the way ecosystems of people and companies in communities can thrive too.
• Think how you can contribute to all people and companies around you so all grow and thrive. A rising tide floats all boats. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. Think big picture and team work. We are all in this together!
• The Gig Economy:  53 Million Americans are independent work force. Consultants. 61% do so by choice. It's a new powerful workforce! 42% of freelancers do so for flexibility and control over life and family.  Gig economy is now a $200B industry!
• Key to success in your consulting and contracting work is networking and continuous learning and growing. 

Overall a great conference with excellent panel discussions, keynote lectures, and presentations connecting great leaders and participants in all various aspect of work in region creating great dialogue about the most important elements that will contribute to our community’s success. Thank you Bridget and Innovate Raleigh team for setting this up and all the wonderful speakers and moderators!

Today a great conference was held in Durham called, "Think Outside The Bowl". The event provided both inspirational and hands-on sessions to help companies increase loyalty, word-of-mouth, and most importantly, revenue. At this event they indeed took a deep dive to help your organization stand out in a sea of sameness!  The conference brought together expert faculty to teach approaches to Customer Experience, Brand Experience, and Employee Experience. The point was by focusing on experience design, companies can achieve greater results. Here is some of the top wisdom shared today at this conference:

• In a world where commoditization is the norm, differentiation is key. The kind of differentiation customers and employees will notice doesn’t come from what you say, it comes more from what you do.
• More than any other factor, your brand’s customer and employee experience will determine whether you thrive and profit or struggle and fade. There is a strong business case for winning the hearts of customers and employees, especially when it leads to increased retention and referrals. According to Gartner, a 5% increase in retention can boost profits by 25% to 125%.
• In a world where commoditization is the norm, differentiation is key. The kind of differentiation customers and employees will notice doesn’t come from what you say, it comes more from what you do.
  
• More than any other factor, your brand’s customer and employee experience will determine whether you thrive and profit or struggle and fade. There is a strong business case for winning the hearts of customers and employees, especially when it leads to increased retention and referrals. According to Gartner, a 5% increase in retention can boost profits by 25% to 125%.  

• Be more human in business and connect more...
• Be careful of firm policies and rules to not ruin the human element of customer relationships and service
• Let technology do what tech does best so we can let people do what people do best(Relate to other humans and take care of them uniquely)
• Remember The Framework- 3 Rs:

1. Relationships: Have to have good relationships with customers and understand their needs. This is first most basic table steak item to do. Then let technology do the remembering of customer data points and help your people do the connecting and empathizing.
2. Responsiveness: Be responsive to people to support them timely. People demand improved response time. They want it now.
3. Readiness:  Be ready to harmonized customer experiences. Bridge tech experience to human experience. Serve the customers where it's needed most.

Improve Readiness:

1. Train your team. Have readiness culture, tech system, and employee experiences aligned to create that magical experience for customer
2. Collaborate so departments work together and customer communication flow seamless because to customers their are no departments
3. Understand not only what your customers need, but also the context within what and how they need it
   

• THE MOST HUMAN COMPANIES WIN- Evan Carroll

"Take care of your associates and they will take care of your customers"- JW Marriott

• "Your brand is what other people say about you when your not in the room"- Jeff Bezos
• The only way to deliver iconic customer experiences is through trust and empowerment by your people to have confidence and ability to exceed customer expectations.
• Leaders become great, not because of their own power, but because of their ability to empower others
• Don't micromanage so your team can rise and make decisions and trust you will support them
• Rules are good, but need to allow for them to be bent or broken so employees can make adjustments to best serve customers individually. Nordstrom motto: "Use best judgement in all decisions to support customers"
• Nordstrom known for customer service. Built on two components. The devil is in the details so do the little things right. And empower people and show you trust them
• The Ritz Carlton- "Excellence Wins" every customer relations leader is given $2k to make customers happy! Make employees feel valued and trusted!
• Chick-Fil-A vs. KFC  

-Chick-Fil-A Sells 3x as much as KFC with 1/2 the stores and closed on Sunday. The customer service experience is better (Clean, good product, employees are nice, smile, happy,and create great experiences. People become advocate and customer for life.

• "If there is no risk, there is no trust". "Amp up the trust, Amp up the empowerment"- Calvin Stovall

• "People don't care how much you know, until they know much you care" -Roosevelt
  
• Do you know we spend 10% of our life waiting...
  
• Remember the etiquette of being on time. No one in life is ever on time. People are either early or late...
  
• Same thing applies in marketing and customers we serve. No such thing as just meeting customer expectation. Either exceed or fall short. You must do the little things to make a bigger difference to exceed customers expectations.
  
• A purple gold fish = do little things to give people a better guest experience and you win. For example, "Guppy love" per a pet gold fish given for free in a bowl if you like to have a pet during your hotel stay. Give people a reason to share their experience
  
• Remember the one word "Lagniappe". Mark Twain said it's worth traveling to New Orleans to get: Lagniappe. The additional gift or receiving more then expected. ie. The 13th role in bakers dozen!
  
• 10 Important Things to remember around two categories of VALUE and MAINTENANCE.

VALUE

1. Make a good First and last impression
   
2. Offer a nice throw-in
   
3. Give sampling 
   
4. Offer a guarantee
   
5. Pay it forward

MAINTENANCE

1. Added service
   
2. Additional Convenience
   
3. Better waiting on
   
4. Handle mistakes like a pro
   
5. Give good follow-up, thanks

• "Always Exceed Expectations". For example, the Disney Parade! Now the most asked question at park is, what time is the parade? Walt Disney referred to this giving of something extra as "Plus-ing"
• What is your version of parade or purple goldfish?- Stan Phelps

• Great brands know who they are and what customers/employees want. They know what makes them unique. Attract what you want and detract things you do not want.
• Illuminate the imperfections like Kintsui-Japanese art
• Framework to separate yourself from competition. Main Highlights

1. Flaunt: To parade without shame. Be proud of who you are and how you do it. Be unapologetic of what you do and stand for. Example, Buckleys Cough Syrup. It does not taste good and they know it so they marketed it like: "People swear by it and at it". Or this slogan, "It tastes awful and it works!"
   
2. Lopsiding- Do more of what industry does less of to set yourself apart. For example McDonalds offering fruit and salads to fight the "Fast food bad perception", everyone else is also moving to reduce unhealthy food. Except Hardees! They moved to the THICK Burger...Hot dog on bun and chips thrown it! Then promote it, "Eat like you mean it. Instead of healthier lets make it more fast food yummy so they launched "The Aporkalypse Burrito and Biscuit- Bacon-Ham- Sausage. They launched marketing slogans like, 'Save a vegetable eat a roast beef sandwich". It just tastes better!
   
3. Antagonize- Go against people who are not the right fit for you like people who text in movie theaters. The example is Alamo Draft house Theaters that has a rule that if you talk or text during a movie-we kick you out. Repel the wrong people. Who are you willing to anger to satisfy people you want?
   
4. Withholding- Remove things that others add to stand out. For example, Black Black Coffee only serves black coffee. They have motto "Death to cream". They serve Black Black coffee because when done well and brewed properly and beans roasted right then less is more, black coffee is best!
   
5. Opposing- Go against what all the others do. For example, REI revolted against the crazy Black Friday retail rush. REI did the opposite and launched a campaign, "This Black Friday REI doesn't want you to go shopping. We're closing to spend day outside. Please join us! The result, The REI Co-Op memberships increased.

• Remember FLOWSOME= Flaunting, Lopsiding, Antagonizing, Witholding. Swerving. Opposing, and Micro-Weirding
• "Don't try to stand out from the crowd, avoid crowds altogether"- David Rendall

Thank you Stan Phelps for the invite and great conference! One of the best speaking events I have ever attended! And Stan is offering free ebook downloads. Reach out to Stan to receive! Thank you!

Tonight thanks to the Triangle Revenue Exchange, T-REX org, we met at WeWork in downtown Durham to enjoy great food, beverages, networking, and learning. T-REX brought in a great speaker Corey Richardson, the Vice President of Sales at Teamworks, who presented their team approach to selling. A great talk around how through collaboration and team work you can secure new business and renew clients at a high rate. Here was some of the wisdom shared:

• Top 3 things for people to thrive: Air, Water, Food. Top 3 things for companies to survive: Employees, Customers, and Shareholders. Need all three, but focus in order of air and employees first!
• Avoid internal channel conflict and internal competition that hurts morale so everyone gets along and works together. Need incentives for sales team members to cheer each on and work together! That is why team selling can help you achieve more.
• Working in teams can help you better take care of customers with more support and if one person leaves still other team members helping account. 
• Everyone contributes to the win. There is no I in TEAM.
• Call sales reps advocates and consultants tp keep the right healthy sales perspective and  proper view on the work to help the customer.
• Keys to success: "All organizations are perfectly aligned to get the results they get"
  • People: Right people, Skills, and Work
  • Structure: Roles & Responsibilities in Place
  • Rewards: Compensation & Recognition (Keep comp plans simple. Reward straight forward and celebrate team wins)
  • Resources: Have the right Tools, Technology, and Use of Time
  • Decisions: Give authority to those closest to the work
  • Processes: Have work processes that support the strategy
• Keys to sales team success is to have clear roles and responsibilities to have all carry the weight. 
• Regularly seek 360 feedback from the team. Be in tune with the pulse of how all is going in the trenches. 
• Remove non-team players. Stop the lone wolves.
• Over-communicate to  Senior Leadership Team and other department heads so your plan and intentions are very clear.

​
A special thanks to T-REX, short for the Revenue Exchange (http://therevenueexchange.com) for event and WeWork for hosting, Corey Richardson from Teamworks, and sponsors!  

Lights, Camera, Action! You don't usually think of innovation and wisdom when it comes to live music & entertainment productions, but certainly Cirque du Soleil and the bigger productions like Phantom Of The Opera paved the way with newness around events and musical theater. Well this new production called "The L.OV.E Show" does both with an innovative experience format both an event and musical theater like show featuring singers, songwriters, spoken word, comedy, visuals, and videos performed and shared by rising star talent along side wisdom story telling all around the theme of LOVE! 

The next show is at The Cary Theater in Raleigh, NC this Saturday August 31st for a 3pm and 7pm showing and has the best rising star talent in North Carolina performing their hearts out all on one stage for one day! It's a great date night and family affair to sit back, relax, and enjoy a memorable experience that will evoke all the wonderful emotions around the theme of love. The VIP seats also include a glass of wine and chocolate! Now that is romantic! 

​If you want to learn more about this innovative event and show sharing wisdom around the theme of L.O.V.E check out their website at www.LoveShowEntertainment.com or their L.O.V.E Show pages on Facebook, LinkedIN, and YouTube! Enjoy and feel the love!

Lastly, as a bonus, you can win two free tickets to The L.O.V.E. Show here: 
https://www.loveshowentertainment.com/enter-to-win.html

If you want to learn more about winning in sales and marketing and how to best collaborate between the two teams, I recommend you check out this free podcast giving you advice & wisdom on success both in selling and marketing from two experts in the field from Silicon Valley and Research Triangle Park, Enjoy the podcast here: https://anchor.fm/winning-combo/episodes/Winning-Combo-Podcast-Intro---Episode-1-e4fmac/a-ahto3e and it's available on iTunes

As a passionate marketeer and being colleagues with Vijay Damojipurapu the author of this book,"Market Leadership", I'm happy to share this brief review and two thumbs up on his informative and helpful writing!

The author Vijay Damojipurapu is a marketing leader with a great track record of launching products and managing multi-channel marketing programs to drive awareness and high growth for many companies with specific expertise in marketing tech with leading companies from Silicon Valley. Author Damojipurapu demonstrates his knowledge and passion for building customer empathy, influencing sales, and best-practices of marketing in this very practical book that can help anyone looking to up their game in marketing knowledge.
​
What is great about this book is how it explores the area between product management’s agenda of product innovation and product marketing’s focus on marketing strategy. These are crucial pieces in the puzzle for product market leadership, profitability, and overall business success. In this book you can enjoy chapters dedicated to everything from "Leading with a product roadmap", to "Thinking beyond product portfolio", to overall best advice on "Marketing Excellence". My favorite offerings of the book, and why I think it's worth you checking out, are as follows:

• Very practical guide with real good stories, examples, and tools to do well as product marketer and product manager 
• Excellent advice on market leadership
• 6 great chapters covering main aspect of marketing in-depth with good closing summaries on each chapter
• Easy to follow and learn insights that are bullet-ed out or number listed so very easy to read to apply knowledge

This book "Market Leadership" is a wonderful read and something you can easily enjoy on any plane ride or morning coffee reading session! I loved the excellent writing style and great case study examples coupled with the many relevant stories. Plus it's very prescriptive offering clear advice points and outlines making it super practical and helpful to anyone wanting marketing guidance to improve their game. Recommend you check out the book on Amazon and learn more here: https://amzn.to/2WLWniJ

About The Author Vijay Damojipurapu:
Strategic B2B SaaS product marketing leader with track record of launching new products and devising multi-channel marketing programs to drive awareness and high growth. Technology product marketer at heart passionate about building customer empathy, influencing sales and completely at ease, interacting with analysts, media or engineers. ​

On average, two people have about a 40% chance of experiencing a good personality match based on how their personality styles naturally fit together. That means that, most of the time, two people are likely to have a built-in challenge in relating well with each other – UNLESS they understand each other’s personality styles. Today Thomas Miller from his session provided a basic understanding of your personality style and the personality style of those around you that help you lead and connect with others in a more effective manner. In this session we learned how to identify and capitalize on their strengths, reduce struggles based on blind-spots and implement strategies for a more effective approach to organizational leadership.

​Here is a recap of some of the top wisdom points shared:

• Identify patterns in people to better understand them, lead them, and influence in a positive way.
• Remember there are patterns for people that can be observed in a quadrant form. Consider the DISC method.  People are either more Dominant, Influential, Steady, or Compliant personality mindset types. Ds are about the what? Is are about the who. S are about the how. And C is about the why. Measure twice cut once!
• Ds seek results. Active. Multi-tasker. Like to win, plan for future, like new ideas, and be own boss. Greatest Fear: Being taken advantage of. When communicating with a D be brief and direct! Ask what not how questions. Focus on results and discuss problem and outcome.
• Is seek friendly environment. Like to be liked, being in front of groups, like recognition, and activities. Greatest fear for Is is rejection and loss of approval. When communicating with Is don't do all the talking. Don't ignore ideas and allow time for socializing and follow up with details in writing. Four short 10 minute discussions are better then long 40 minute discussion.
• Cs enjoy environment that honors logic and facts. To be right, like clear expectations, and patterns. Appreciate instructions, finishing what is started, and organizing things. Their greatest fear is Criticism. For maximum communication with a C provide a lot of details and use validated facts. Be precise and specific. Answer any questions and follow up with additional data if requested.
• Ss seek a team environment and very loyal. Like teamwork and cooperation. Enjoy sticking with what works and harmony. Their biggest fear is loss of security and confrontation. To best communicate with Ss create friendly tone for discussion and show interest in them as a person. Don't be overly aggressive and minimize potential for confrontation.
• If you know people fall in general pattern shapes you can better understand how to deal with them to best serve their personality types to better serve your communication aims.
• People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Show interest first and ask questions to show your care to build rapport.
• You have to be good under authority in order to be good in authority. Be able to serve well in order to lead well.
• Nice to be important, but more important to be nice. Be mindful of what you say and how you say it!
• You may actually HELP people by saying no. You can't say yes to everything. If it's not in the other persons' best interest or yours its good to say no.
• It's ok to build the plane while in their air. Take some risks and try new communications.
• Remember all successful communications is about connecting!
  

Thank you for great talk and session Thomas! Special thanks to productcampRTP for wonderful conference!