Five things we’ve learned on The Next Web 2015
Last week the Social Seeder team went to the 10th edition of The Next Web in Amsterdam. We had our own booth for the two-day conference and met a lot of inspiring people. Thank you all for coming and chat with us about the Social Seeder platform! Apart from the people we’ve spoken to, the many keynote speakers and startups that were present also inspired us. Here’s a brief recap of what we’ve learned at The Next Web 15.
Everybody is looking for ideas
In the era of disruption and digital transformation, everybody is looking for new, great ideas. The problem with those bright ideas is that most of them aren’t solving an existing problem and therefore are not needed at all.
If you switch up your mindset and look for problems instead of ideas, you’ll get a better look at things. If you know what you want to solve, you can come up with ideas that are actually desirable. It sounds easy but we, human beings, don’t tend to think in this direction.
Ideas are expensive
Saying that the people of Adobe are creative would be a huge understatement. And there’s a good reason behind the great solutions that the organization has been deploying.
Adobe’s VP of Creativity (they even got a department to cover creative thinking) explained that the whole process from coming up with an idea until eventually rolling it out is a very expensive and frustrating flow because of the many obligated meetings. Resulting in a lot of ideas getting killed early-stage but having cost a lot of time and money with no results.
So they introduced the Red Box, which includes a 1,000-dollar credit card and offers the employees to execute the ideas they have. The box forces the colleagues to work out the idea they have to a minimum viable product, which they can then present to their executives. Ever since, fewer ideas get killed at a young stage, the quality of ideas is a lot higher and the (expensive) chiefs aren’t bothered every now and then with the next best idea from their employees.
A clear vision is key
A lot of ideas/solutions are great at first but then get lost in execution because there’s a lack of vision and direction.
At Amazon, the innovators have to write a press release about the eventual product or service before they start working out the solution that they earlier came up with. This forces them to determine a concise vision for the idea that reminds them of where they’re heading with the product or service.
After the one-page press release, the innovators then have to jot down a clear and useful manual of eight full pages to explain the solution. The manual has to explain the solution in an easy way so a complete stranger understands the product or the service.
This method ensures that the innovators at Amazon always hold on to the determined vision and never lose sight while developing.
The startup community is alive and kicking
We met a lot of talented, smart people on The Next Web. The list is too long to mention everybody but we’re sure that a lot of startups are growing vastly and will become the disruptors of tomorrow!
We want to give one special shout out to our Belgian colleagues at Teamleader who won the startup battle at TNW15 and won the main prize of €100,000. Keep winning, keep disrupting!
Online ambassadorship is becoming more important
Wether it were startups or multinationals, everyone told us that engaging with their (online) ambassadors is becoming more and more prior to them. Traditional marketing and even online marketing efforts are beginning to lack or already are lacking the desired impact. Every organization we met is looking out for new ways to engage with their target audience. It’s safe to say that online ambassadorship will become a very important layer in the marketing strategy of the (very) near future. We already believed in ambassadorship but thanks to the people on The Next Web, we now know that companies are moving in this direction as well!
Do you want to start your ambassadorship program today? Do you want to activate your colleagues to share your company’s content on their own social media? Please contact us for a free trial!
