Update vs. innovate – knowing when is best for your company

What version of operating system does your phone run? Is it the latest? If not, do you even care?

The change in life that an upgrade makes, is it even still noticeable? Compare that to how it felt when you first bought a smartphone. Or your first car?

The impact of successful products

As a product actually develops from idea to reality, the potential directions it could go in rapidly narrow. The potentialities evaporate as decisions have to be made and things start to be laid in place. Once build begins, the cruft – the assorted debris, the complexities, leftovers and impacts of design and build choices – increases.

Gradually it becomes harder and harder to improve upon the product, and the effort required to continue to develop new features or apply improvements increases.

Meanwhile, something worse is happening.

The addressable market for your product is shrinking. Or because I like to focus on people rather than market numbers, I prefer to phrase it another way: the potential emotional value that your product supplies is shrinking.

The product value / product development trade off

The users whose pain point you solved with the launch of your MVP and first few iterations, are still around, but their scale of problem has reduced. You’ve (hopefully) already addressed it somewhat and provided some level of solution.

And therefore the emotional value that updates to your product can deliver is steadily shrinking too.

Gradually, the effort to update your product is going to greatly outweigh the emotional value updates can bring.

So what’s to be done?

Innovating whilst managing expectations

As CEOs of product based businesses, you should be looking to diversify and innovate. Find new problems and deliver solutions.

As Product Owners, you should keep updating your roadmap but beware of the diminishing returns that your product is likely to deliver. Feed this up.

And don’t feel bad! Feel good for every bit of value delivered in this increasingly complex situation.

As suppliers and agencies building products, you’re in a difficult position.

On the one hand you’re trusted to improve a product on behalf of a client. On the other hand, you are at risk of being viewed increasingly unfavourably over time (quietly, unfairly blamed?) as your work fails to bring the same returns as those early, giddily successful releases.

The best approach for you is to be open and supportive of your client. Highlight the diminishing returns they will eventually face. Help them avoid the risk of ossifying, losing out to new, smaller, focused products whose teams can move faster and deliver more emotional value than your clients 18th update can.

Encourage your clients to diversify, look for new emotional problems and product opportunities, and work with them to ideate and build these new products.

 

How AI will change the game for digital campaigners

Are you a digital campaigner? Are you keeping an eye on how evolving tech will impact on advocacy and campaigning?

Well you should, and especially if you use email campaigns. Because advances in tech mean that organisations that run supporter-driven mass email campaigns – especially those that send email to MPs, candidates and other political ‘targets’ – could soon find their efforts going to waste.

The case for change:

Evidence A:

At a recent digital campaigning forum, a member of one political party mentioned that major political parties are increasingly using filters to detect and automate replies to emails that come in via mass supporter-mobilisation campaigns.
Basically, they are employing tools that detect recurring email subject lines or body content and then using this to automatically send appropriate replies.

Evidence B:

This agenda for a recent hackathon:

This summer, The Fourth Group will host a Politician AI Hackathon to see how we can automate tasks politicians are expected to do. These tasks include: Understanding voters’ preferences; writing speeches; making strategic decisions in regards to policy proposals, and; addressing problems faced by constituents.

AI and its impact on email campaigns

Together these demonstrate that we’re only a small step away from AI and natural language processing being used to detect the subject matter of emails and issue appropriate responses on a MP / candidate’s behalf. The system could be choosing from a bank of preformed response templates, or even writing sections of replies directly.

This automation means MPs and their offices will be personally engaging with these emails (and by extension their constituents’ concerns) less.

And therefore taking action less.

Of course, in this scenario MPs’ offices may also soon be using data dashboards that show the public’s key areas of concern based on the numbers of emails received and grouped by topic.

But the empathy and emotional response that comes from directly reading a message from a concerned constituent, or the unease which comes from being on the receiving end of a deluge of angry emails, will cease to exist.

And perhaps even worse, it is the more ‘fringe’ and less emailed-about issues – which won’t have response-flows set up for them – that are likely to escape the system into the real world, be read by a human, and start a chain of cause-and-effect that will in some form result in some level of emotional engagement and action.

This is a big deal. Not just for anyone who wants to communicate with their MP, but especially for organisations that rely on mobilising its supporters to take part email campaigns.

So what should digital campaigners do?

Digital campaigner? Change your attitude

When it comes to setting up email campaigns, we could get involved in a war of attrition, increasingly varying subject lines and body content to get past increasingly sophisticated automated detection and replies.

Don’t.

The weakness of mass email campaigns isn’t their uniformity of content. It’s their uniformity of value to the recipient. The 51st templated email received by an MP is the same as the 50th, which is the same as the 49th, the 48th and so on. It offers nothing new.

To get beyond this, stop thinking of MPs and candidates as ‘campaign targets’ to be assaulted with repetitive communication. Treat them as another audience. Even better, think of them as some of your most potentially influential supporters.

Give them something of value. Give them something they can use.

Don’t just hassle them to pledge; give them a press release that they can send to content publishers.

Don’t just bombard them with templated supporter emails; ensure every email has a unique piece of data they can employ.

Ditch the mass emails altogether, and instead ask your supporters to come together to pool data or opinions. Use this to create a unique, valuable package and then give this to MPs and candidates.

Give them a suite of assets.

Give them content for a tweet.

Give them quotes.

Give them imagery.

Give them something that they can stand up and present with. That they can ask a parliamentary question with. That they can use as they try to make their first impressions in a new parliament.

The outcome could be an MP getting on board with your campaign’s goals. It could see them referencing your stats in a TV interview, employing a visual with your organisational branding, or even just generally better-respecting your organisation and its mission.

And, of course, it maintains a human relationship with those in political power, which in these times is an increasingly valuable commodity.


Image: Creative Commons

artificial-intelligence-503593_1920 by Many Wonderful Artists

 

Have online payments got one step closer for Myanmar’s startups?

Fantastic news this month for Myanmar’s startups and entrepreneurs: The Central Bank of Myanmar has finally removed restrictions on the use of domestically issued Visa cards.

But what does this mean for startups?

Until recently, domestically issued cards couldn’t be used for purchases within the country. This meant that anyone who held a card could only use it to make payments overseas, or through overseas-based online platforms. (On top of this, if you were using one of the pre-paid cards, you often faced the situation of reaching a checkout page only to find that a pre-paid card wouldn’t be accepted, and all your previous form-filling efforts were for naught.)

In a country where internet access has gone from 2 million to an estimated 39 million in just 3 years, over half of Facebook’s Myanmar 15+million users joined in the last 6 months, and mobile phone penetration has equally zipped up from 6% to a (possibly disputed) 90% since 2012, this was a major problem for startups looking at generating online revenue.

Non card-based payment channels for Myanmar digital startups

As a solution, for revenue many online startups relied on cash-in-hand payments, such as handing cash to delivery drivers or payments made in person direct to business representatives (esp. in the case B2B businesses).

Some (including myself) have also experimented with revenue models that rely on transferring phone credit – a complicated scenario when factoring in the three (soon to be four) different, incompatible operators. Others still have relied on printing their own scratch card vouchers which are stocked by local partners and redeemed online or by phone (actually, this can be quite a good solution when you consider the low cost of printing, low financial literacy and the cash based economy).

These recently announced changes herald a new era where online payments are increasingly possible and revenue at last flows directly from individual customers to startups via online payment gateways.

Slow or fast? The adoption of a digital economy in Myanmar

However, it’s not the answer to the startup entrepreneur’s prayers just yet: we must accept that true change will take time.

Like others, I’ve been excited to see the appearance of ATMs around Yangon in the past year, but the card-carrying culture is not yet established. The country still only has an estimated 1,500 ATMS for a population of 54million. That’s 1 ATM for every 36,000 people. Meanwhile neighbouring Vietnam has a much healthier ratio of 1 ATM for every 5,200 people.

On top of this, cash is in Myanmar is something special. Of course physical currency everywhere is something tangible and known, however within Myanmar it is also associated with mighty levels of distrust, trust and authenticity.

The Myanmar Kyat – emerging from a turbulent history

Myanmar’s Kyat has gone through two horrendous currency demonetisations in recent years – the 1987 demonetisation of a range of notes without warning or compensation made 75% of the currency worthless overnight. The Kyat does not feel inherently stable.

Additionally, as Myanmar returns to the world stage, Myanmar people are eager to help restore the previously-hobbled country to the powerful economic status it once enjoyed and deserves.

Could these be push factors that encourage an explosion in card uptake and which fuel a growth in Myanmar’s digital economy, to mirror that of smartphones and internet penetration?

And yet, and yet… go into any Myanmar bank today and you will see people withdrawing bricks upon bricks of notes. And, where they are collecting US dollars, still inspecting each and every note with a close eye, ready to reject them upon detecting the slightest blemish. This is despite these notes being handed to them by the bank itself, and in blatant rejection of recent decrees that it is no longer acceptable to refuse blemished dollars.

With so much energy and scrutiny going into the printed currency, can we imagine that Myanmar’s people will so readily embrace the opaque world of cards and digital transactions?

So, how should startups view the opportunities in Myanmar’s digital economy?

We must lean to the optimistic; online card payments are the future, but will be just one amongst multiple payment mechanisms.

The case for card payments:

Despite the Kyat’s turbulent history, and despite the physical comfort of cash-in-hand, there is an internal, undeniable drive to restore Myanmar to the world stage that is remarkable in its pressure. This will quickly overcome caution and reticence about cards and card payments.

Plus, significant numbers of Myanmar’s digital startup entrepreneurs have experience working or studying overseas, and are looking to opportunities in their country of birth. Returning to Myanmar, integrating online payment gateways into their platforms is a normal practice to them, and these digital entrepreneurs will help drive a wider uptake of cards and online transactions.

So startups that begin building for and strategizing for online payments now will be in pole-position as card uptake soars. Those that don’t will be quickly left behind.

Support card payment with other payment channels

However, to succeed into the immediate future, startups should a) provide Myanmar’s citizens as much support and transparency as possible to encourage online card payments; and importantly b) remember to still invest in other payment channels.

ATM rollout – and therefore card uptake – isn’t going to be instantaneous in a country the size, geography and economy of Myanmar. Meanwhile, competition between the Telcos is going to become increasingly fierce and in an attempt to solidify their market shares it is only a matter of time handling fees are cut and deals are struck that allow transfers of credit between different operators. Such moves will advance mobile payments in a significant way.

In short: The future looks good. Startups should build strategies and channels for accepting card payments in Myanmar now, but also recognise that payments via phone credit is going to increasingly become another viable channel. Both must be explored and accounted for.

 

The Pansodan Gallery, Yangon

In 2013 I made a video about an art space and collector in Myanmar. The space’s owner / collector Aung Soe Min was one of the first to focus on contemporary art.

I had a problem with the sound and lost it all before the edit. However I worked with it. Following the principle of working with constraints, I think it actually turned out for a more effective and moving piece.