2013-05-24T03:21:57-04:00 Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=larry-macdonald Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Larry MacDonald Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1920083 2012-09-27T14:04:08-04:00 2012-11-27T05:12:01-05:00

Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-macdonald/
A better future can mean many things to many people. You may think you are having problems, but you could be having solutions instead.

You already have everything that is necessary to improve our economy by trillions of dollars. You have everything you need to create jobs. The issue is how you utilize the resources at your disposal, how you go about it.

You do not yet take advantage of the immense amount of wisdom and experience of your existing workforce. You still think of workers as elements in a machine that shouldn't be listened to and haven't much to contribute outside their normal hourly work. But the truth is that the same problems that existed decades ago persist today, because no one listened to those who spoke of them, so no one could bring them to the attention of those who had the capability of generating solutions. As a nation, we can learn to listen to one another better.

You probably could notice things several times a day that you might know how to improve if you put your mind to it. Everyone does, but these bits of knowledge are rarely collected and consequentially drop through the cracks and are lost forever. Once an employee has made a few suggestions, hoping to be helpful, and their efforts have been ignored, they shut up, never to be heard from again. Our experience cost a fortune to create, yet we turn ourselves and others off, like putting an old hard drive in the closet that is full of valuable information.

Since so little of these bits of knowledge are collected, most all are lost as potential technological improvements that might lead to product improvements, new products, new industries, new jobs, new companies, new tax revenue, new schools, better health care, less pollution, more resources, lower costs, and a myriad of other benefits. You know what I mean, for your ideas have been treated this way countless times, probably so many times that you have shut down your observational and creative ability.

The numbers are astounding. There are more than 80 million baby boomers in the U.S. Over the last 10 years that is 800 million man-years of experience that is not being tapped to the full extent possible. If each one had only observed one problem opportunity each year that they could make a contribution to solving that would make available 800 million potential solutions. If you value the experience a man gets each year at only $100, the baby boomers' experience is worth $8,000,000,000,000 (that's trillions), and it is largely wasted, because no one has noticed it or developed a way to capture and capitalize on it.

This is not a trivial amount, but instead, a sufficient quantity to make all the improvements we want in just about everything, whether jobs, social conditions, financial assistance, education, you name it.

As it turns out, many of the suggestions common people make are quite good. At Toyota, it is said they gather over a million suggestions a year and have implemented far more than half. That is one company implementing more than 500,000 improvements a year.

If Toyota can come up with and implement 500,000 improvements a year, what do you think 80,000,000 baby boomers could come up with to help solve America's problems, create jobs, and get us back on track? But could we? Would we? Will we?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.999246 2011-10-07T17:23:14-04:00 2011-12-07T05:12:01-05:00

Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-macdonald/
Have you ever wondered how it got to be a global event? Are any of our current crop of scapegoats really so powerful that they can influence the entire world economy? Doubt it.

Some cycles take so long we may not notice them. A 24-hour day cycle is easy. The seasons are familiar, too. But once you get to a year, things get hazy. Four years for the Olympics and high school and college, but do you know any eight or ten-year cycles?

When you recognize that you are in a cycle, such as the yearly changing of the seasons, you don't panic and think that spring may never come do you? You know you can't hurry it.

The yearly cycle, if watched in time-lapse photography would show the birthing of plants in the spring and their death in the fall. The seasons are the inhaling and exhaling of mother earth, it might seem.

If you have wondered what powers, aside from God, have greatest sway over nature, you may come to the conclusion that in our local solar system the almighty natural power is the sun. It controls everything on the planet, granted subtly.

The majority of people believe that the seasons are caused by the earth being further from the sun during winter and closer in the summer. Not true. We have the seasons because the earth's axis is tilted slightly. As it goes around the sun, either the northern of southern hemisphere receives more direct sunlight, resulting in the seasons.

So the solar output of the sun doesn't change during the seasons to a significant extent. You can think of the sun as having a constant brightness, or can you? Perhaps the amount of visible light is fairly constant, but the output in the other spectra is varied.

There is an 11.1 year sunspot cycle that closely aligns with the global economy, which you can see here.

We don't know why there is a correlation, just that there is one, reasonably constant over the last several hundred years. It is not a perfect mirror image, but close enough to notice a distinct pattern.

The point I am suggesting is that we are in a totally natural cycle of expansion and contraction. The cycle sometimes behaves a bit like a manic depressive, going wildly up and then crashing down. At other times, it is a rather mild expansion and contraction.

In such a cycle, there is nothing that can be done to change the course. So many years of atypical, read manic, economic expansion is followed inevitably by an equally dramatic contraction. Like breathing in and breathing out, you can't stop the cycle short of a cataclysmic event.

The attitude that someone, or some law, or some program will mollify the effects of the cycle is unrealistic. Like in a perfect storm, you have to ride it out... if you can. Those who can't are swallowed by it.

So if you want to know when the recession will be over and things back to normal, just look at the dates and overlay the 11.1 year cycle, and you will be pretty close to prognosticating the recovery.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.910003 2011-07-26T14:20:09-04:00 2011-09-25T05:12:01-04:00

Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-macdonald/
This letter was my response and may help others like them understand they are leaving billions of dollars on the table for others to pocket if they ignore SEO.

Dear Bob,

Your question is well taken and certainly not unusual, for many leaders are not aware of the singularly most important aspect of marketing on the web: appearing at the top of the search engines is the least expensive way to capture more orders.

Do you believe that it is enough if your company's website looks fancy and is easy to navigate? It isn't.

Do you have any interest in customer who don't know you and won't be referred because they don't know any of your current customers? If you don't why are you in business.

For centuries in retail the key to success was "Location, location, location!" That worked because people passed by, saw your store, and would walk in and buy. The corollary in the internet age is "Position, position, position!"

But position now refers to where you appear in the buyer's crowded field of vision when they try to find your service online. The most effective place is right in front of the buyer's nose when he calls out for your service, and these days, that is at the top of the search engine results, where the action is.

The great majority of leaders are unaware of the critical importance of their position in the search results when a potential customer does a search, or even that there are different positions possible because no one has explained it to them.

If you do a Google search for "SEO" you will see that Google counts over one billion results. But somehow you found this article! How did that happen? Google thought is was important for your search.

In normal life, when you search for anything, you normally, without any conscious effort, eliminate all but about five possibilities. Think about it. Where do you want to go for dinner? What movie? Which event? What car dealer? The number is close to the number of fingers on one hand.

What if I could guarantee your business would not show up when someone searched for your business offering? Is that a scary thought? Well, in most cases, I can.

If you don't pay attention to SEO, I guarantee you won't show up. I guarantee new customers will never find you without knowing your name beforehand. I guarantee your marketing will cost three times as much as it should. I guarantee you will fall further behind your competition every single day.

Now that I have your attention, let me explain briefly in non-technical terms what SEO really means. As you know, 80% of the people in the United States use Google to initially discover new suppliers of everything. I'll bet you do, too.

Google is what the Yellow Pages used to be, and back before Google, no one would think of neglecting their Yellow Page ads. For now, when those yet-to-be-customers search online for your service, regardless of what it is, if you don't show up on the first two pages, you will never hear from them, for like you, they don't usually read past the first page, much less the second.

Leaders have been led to believe that having a website was all they needed for customers to find them. That works fine only if they already know your name. But what if they don't know your name?

Potential buyers will type any number of keyword phrases into Google in their attempt to describe your service or their problem in an attempt to find you.

And here is the tough part to swallow: if your competitors have made the effort to optimize their pages for the search term your potential customer uses, I guarantee you that they, yes all of them, will come up above you on the search engine, giving you a near zero probability of getting the business. They will have already bought before they even see you.

The truth is that regardless of how great your website looks, if they can't find you in the search results, the money is wasted. And more importantly, your customers are using search tools to find your competitors. Do you want them ahead of you?

Keep in mind that a great many people believe, wrongly, that ranking is qualitative. They think that if someone appears above another company that Google thinks the one on the top is simply better. It is not true. Google just thinks the website is a better match for the query being searched. SEO is about creating a webpage that Google considers to be the best match for a particular query and that takes special effort and knowledge.

To prove my point, ask yourself whether you are getting all the business you could from your website. Even if you say yes, you can be almost positive you are leaving the majority of possible business on the table, because I have yet to see a website that I can't dramatically increase traffic and conversions for. See for yourself: type in several keyword phrases that people searching for your services might use to search. Are you on the first or second page? You aren't getting calls from the website, are you.

Hint: if you aren't getting what you consider a reasonable or even a substantial amount of new business from your site, then you have no idea what you are missing, since most of my clients get nearly all their new business from the web. The web is the biggest fishing hole in the world and if you aren't optimizing your website, you don't get a license to fish.

I hope by now you are coming around to the idea that maybe you should give some thought to how you might maximize marketing with the most cost effective tool in existence, SEO.

If so, you need to know that web designers are not experts at SEO, even though they often think so. SEO is easy to read about and even take courses about, but difficult to do in practice, just as it is easy to read a book about being a great CEO, but a bit tougher to carry off. In fact, there is no reason to expect web designers or IT professionals to be proficient at SEO. SEO is best done by someone familiar with marketing, rather than a technical background.

Why marketing? Google has one goal and that is to get you to use its search engine. If not, you won't be clicking on their money bunny, those Google Adwords. If the search results give you the best results when you search, you will keep using Google and they will be happy, too.

So SEO is really the process of optimizing a website for the user's benefit, not Google's. Google has spent millions developing its algorithm to determine what should be at the top for a particular search. While the algorithm has more than 200 variables, the reality is much simpler. Google wants to rank the site with the most valuable content the highest.

In the end, SEO is simply making a site appear to Google to be the most appropriate and valuable for the searcher for a specific search. We make such judgments intuitively, but Google has to do it mathematically.

SEO has to take into consideration all the phrases and methods a potential customer might use to find each of your services. This requires a marketing approach and is supported with some technical tools, but the marketing mindset is the key.

Not having an appropriately optimized website is a bit like having a bleeding ulcer. You might slowly bleed to death without even knowing it is happening. In your case, it is the cash bleeding away that you might have received, if the customer only knew you were there.

Bob, I hope you now have a better understanding of how you can improve your profits through SEO. The extra revenue you get from SEO is cream, because you have already covered your fixed expenses through your existing sales. That means it is the most profitable business you can have and it costs the least to use. SEO can be a one-time expense that keeps on giving for years to come.

Best,
Larry
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.905354 2011-07-21T13:44:58-04:00 2011-09-20T05:12:01-04:00

Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-macdonald/
The culture of a company, for better or for worse, is set by the leaders and only the leaders are responsible after so many years of their bullying of employees, government, business, and individuals.

It often takes a great narcissistic, egotistical bully to finally wake people up to the miscarriages of justice, morality, and ethical behavior. Someone who thinks they can get away with it forever, like those running Enron, eventually trip and expect those around them to pick them up and put them back on their tricycle without anyone letting on that they fell off.

Well, not this time! I say leave them in the mud and act on the fact that just because someone bullied you, you don't have to let them keep doing it.

Cub Scouts know more about how to behave and the sooner the world understands that we don't have to put up with all this crap from bullies, the better.

Just because someone is a tough SOB and beats up those around them doesn't mean you have to continue to reward them for it. Murdoch gives business a bad name and we shouldn't condone the behavior of a sociopath, regardless of whether he makes money for a bunch of people.

How many of these cases do we have to endure before the rest of us take responsibility to stand up and be counted?

How many people quietly went along with the bully telling them that it was OK to break and enter into people's private lives? This is right up there with the most egregious insults to a civilized society.

I hope it stimulates discussion and repercussions that shake up those behaving in such infantile ways. Will it? It's up to you. Tolerate it and get more.

Raise your voice and be heard!

The Patriot Act gives our government the right to do what Murdoch has been doing for years: listen in on our most private conversations, to say nothing of watching our every move. You don't think Murdoch should do it? Why should our government? Murdoch abused his power. Do we really have the necessary checks and balances to prevent the same abuses? Do you really think that information obtained from wiretaps doesn't get sold or passed to people who can abuse their private knowledge?

Dictators throughout the ages have used various events to promote their own agendas. Murdoch is just a dictator in business, as hated as those in politics he has abused.

I think we have only seen the first layer of this rotten onion.

This post has been modified since it was originally published. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.845748 2011-04-06T16:14:59-04:00 2011-06-06T05:12:01-04:00

Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-macdonald/
Manufacturing has typically been located in areas that offer resources the manufacturing company requires, whether natural resources, like water, good weather, or cost-saving labor.

With the advent of the Internet as well as the expansion of global trade and low cost manufacturing in other countries, these small businesses have lost their advantage and market. Everyone loses in this situation, especially the city the business operates in, as tax revenue declines, property taxes decline, and welfare and support costs increase.

Is there an alternative to stagnation in the small manufacturing sector throughout the United States? I think so. It just requires a different perspective and the ability to identify what people need or want.

The Internet has opened new channels of distribution and direct sales that can jump-start small manufacturers. The old distributional business model of jobbers, distributors, reps, and retail was expensive and amassed redundant transportation, commissions, and warehousing expenses. Internet-direct sales means far more money stays in the local economy to support jobs and the community.

Small companies in trouble can find new products that can be manufactured locally and sell direct to customers using the Internet. This takes advantages of economies of scale and dis-intermediates middlemen, keeping all the revenue in the local economy.

What does this look like? Let's use a very simple business, blacksmiths, to explain the concept, realizing that any manufacturing company might be substituted in the example. Though most are more complicated, it works for all but the most specialized plants.

Assuming the blacksmith is in that part of the company where labor costs are reasonable and there is a sufficient pool of talent available, city planning might assist in developing an alternative business model that could save the company and give the community a boost.

In our example, we have a company that is qualified in metal work and has all the components available locally. All that is missing is a product with existing demand that can be sold and shipped directly from a central location using the Internet.

By looking at the manufacturing capability and selecting, as an example, weather vanes as a product, a company can bring their capabilities to bear on something they can sell internationally direct to customers. Most products would not be this simple, but this illustrates the process nicely.

Simply manufacturing weather vanes and using traditional distribution channels would put the company right back in the situation it was in, where it could not compete financially and would go out of business. But coupling a product that can be sold nationally with a national direct sales system, makes sense.

This model comprises finding a product with existing demand being searched for on the web that fits the manufacturing capability of the company, creating models that can be photographed, creating websites with direct sales capabilities, and promoting the products using social media and search engine marketing.

The designs for the weather-vanes can be obtained for free from the patent office by searching old design patents that have expired.

The company need make only one of each, by hand initially, photograph them, and include the images in a website that has a shopping cart and perhaps open a store on eBay. Start-up costs are relatively small. Only when a model is ordered is it manufactured. No inventory, no commissions, no middlemen, no accounts receivable. It is all cash-in-advance and made on demand.

By optimizing the website for search engines, using social media, and creating videos, the company can rise to the top of the search engine results and have a very successful line of weather vanes, sold entirely through the website at retail prices. The model provides lower costs for greater sales.

While small manufacturing companies may not know about this approach, city planning managers, bankers, and economic revitalization groups can develop a plan, using their expertise in each of the necessary areas.

Small towns and cities with manufacturing about to disappear now have an option. They can remodel their business strategy to match the new business environment created by the Internet and save jobs and maintain their tax basis.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.844590 2011-04-05T16:30:16-04:00 2011-06-05T05:12:01-04:00

Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-macdonald/

With all these books and experts you might think it is terribly difficult to get high ranking and there are exact steps to take and if you take those steps, you will be at the top. Yet when you survey the results, it appears there's many a slip between cup and lip. Were it that easy, everyone could be in first place.

How much of a role does art play in SEO? How much does the art of marketing contribute to success? Or, as some might claim, is it all science?

In many fields it is not enough to know what to do. You need to know how to do it, and why to do it. Without knowing the why, you can't make optimal choices. And, as in cooking, writing a recipe is a far cry from attempting to execute it flawlessly. How hard do you beat the eggs? How hot is medium heat? Is that vegetable or fruit really ripe or over ripe?

An artist in the kitchen might look at the whole picture a little differently than someone unfamiliar with kitchen tools and materials. A chef will know from touch if the temperature is right, if the food is fresh, and have the experience to know that he needs a thick pan for one task and a deep one for another. The chef understands the art of cooking.

In search engine optimization, there are similar subtle aspects to consider that may go right over the head of someone lacking an appreciation of classical marketing. I am defining marketing as the analysis of what customers want and the strategy of how to give it to them.

In marketing it is crucial to understand the customer's needs. In SEO, it is important to understand both the customer and the middleman that mediates what the customer will be shown. That middleman, the search engine, acts a bit like the producer at a night club, picking acts based on what his customer wants. He determines what the audience sees.

In our example, the owner of the club is Google and the producer is the Google algorithm. The person doing the search is in the audience inside the club. The producer picks the show, the audience only can choose the club, thus picking the show indirectly.

How? The audience, the searcher, knows what they want and always has the option to go to another club if they aren't satisfied. Just as when you search Google, you always have the option to go to Yahoo or Bing. Like the club owner, Google gets its revenue from people attending the show. Those are the searchers getting what they want in the easiest way and in the best form possible.

Scientific approaches to SEO often miss the point that Google, like the club owner, is motivated to provide the most valuable information possible, because if they don't they lose the audience and all the ad revenue generated from that audience clicking on those Google Adwords.

If the audience in the club were scientific about the shows, they might ask for shows of an exact length, ones where everyone wears red, where the song titles all have three words, where the lighting is intense, and the sound track has a certain number of instruments. But, we all know that isn't how a good act is put together. A good act depends on intuition, feeling, skill, experience, and knowledge. Those are not just rules and steps read from a book.

The Google algorithm is said to comprise hundreds of criteria, and we have to guess what many are because Google doesn't want us to game the system. I can tell you that it is a constantly improving attempt to evaluate web pages by formula in the hope of providing the most valuable results to the searcher. It simply wants to give you what it thinks you want: quality results.

Why might a scientific approach miss the point? Because it is nearly impossible to model the Google algorithm in a set of instructions to humans, especially when we are guessing as to the content of the algorithm. And a scientific approach has no way to quantify something as abstract (artistic, if you will) as "the most valuable information possible." It can only make assumptions based on what it reads.

Notice that I didn't say it wanted to give you sites with five word title tags, or a specific number of words or headlines. It sniffs out what it thinks is the highest quality information, even depending on rumor and innuendo from blogs and links.

But quality in this context is not the quality of content that your English teacher demanded. It is quality as might be determined by a machine that can't understand your thinking, only your presentation and words. It can detect poor writing and grades you like a grammar teacher.

Google pretty much likes what I like when it comes to packaged information and uses a similar method of selection. I pick up books to look at based on their title. I go into bookstores based on their stores reputation. I scan the table of contents in books and the headlines of articles before I decide to read them. I can determine instantly whether the book or article I am holding is of value just seeing a few words in the titles, chapter headings, and headlines.

You probably do that as well. That is what Google does and that is what you have to address in search engine optimization. You must provide quality to be judged superior. The art is in quality, where science can't go.

Thus I would argue that a successful search engine optimization strategy is the result of analyzing what the ideal target customer is seeking in the way of information and crafting the web page and site to provide it in the most desirable and concise form, even before any technical SEO tactics are considered.

If you do that your site will be seen as valuable, people will link to it and write about it and your site will gain momentum.

Only once you have carried out what I call an artistic marketing evaluation (I don't mean the design), looking at the web site through the eyes of the customer, and done all you could to improve the value to that customer, should you attempt to use SEO tools to polish the site's technical aspects.

First give the searcher what they want. Only then should you optimize so the search engine sees your quality more clearly. Otherwise you may be putting lipstick on a pig.

I would argue that a site with high value content, organized well and professionally edited without any tricky SEO will be preferred by searchers and rank higher than a site with mediocre content and organization that is all tweaked out using a formulaic approach to SEO.

In other words, give the customer what they want first, then you can play with the SEO. Art before science. If you have a commercial website that deserves to be on the first page of Google, contact me at TopSpotters.com.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.843725 2011-04-01T14:38:33-04:00 2011-06-01T05:12:01-04:00

Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-macdonald/
This can result in an increase in traffic but not cause an increase in sales, which is the real goal. You may just work harder, for less money, with more overhead, and have lower job satisfaction through out your company.

Most professionals, whether attorneys or dentists, have a hierarchy to their clientele. Each wants business, but prefers certain types of business that may be more profitable, more convenient, reduce stress on limited resources, and provide more and better quality future referrals.

Search engine optimization, search engine marketing, internet marketing, whatever you choose to call it can describe a plethora of specific tactics.

If you are a professional you want to focus your thinking on selecting the cream, not the milk, and especially not the skim milk. Make a list of the low hanging fruit and give special attention to the most attractive clients.

Pick the clients that offer you the most long-term benefits. Which ones will be the most profitable for the effort you expend? Which types will be the easiest to handle for your staff? Which category will give you the most time with your kids?

Once you have ranked the types of customers you really would like to work with, you can stop focusing on the entire ocean and focus your your SEO investment using a laser and attract the cream you identified. You will be turning lead into gold.

Focusing on narrow niches of highly desirable clients will improve your life and bottom line far faster than attempting to attract everyone who is interested in attorneys, accountants, teeth or construction. Better to build your site to attract estate planning, high net worth individuals, gold bridge work, and luxury contractors.

To accomplish this will require sophisticated marketing thinking. You will need an SEO expert who can empathize with your ideal customer. You will need to make major modifications to the content on your site, not just add keywords. It is a marketing approach vs. a technical one.

By taking a more focused approach to your internet marketing, you will have far more satisfaction, earn more, have more time for your family, and give your staff greater job satisfaction. Everyone likes to work with the creme de la creme.

We know it works because we've been doing it for years.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.842673 2011-03-30T19:16:05-04:00 2011-05-30T05:12:01-04:00

Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-macdonald/
In anticipation of selling a company, it may be advantageous to identify new market needs and have a number of attractive opportunities in the development pipeline to sweeten the deal.

Products in your pipeline will only be deemed to have significant future value if the potential acquirer believes they address a real need and there is existing demand, all other things being equal.

Using proprietary technology combining sophisticated web-based crowdsourcing and market gap analysis, it is now possible to reduce the time and cost to bring product concepts to a level where buyers can estimate the future value of their contribution to earnings. This enables you to sell at a higher price.

New needs analysis methods detect latent market needs before they become consciously apparent to even those with the needs. By focusing on the most appropriate needs, valuable intellectual property can be created quickly and inexpensively.

Most companies make little use of the intelligence available to them from their stakeholders, and even less from non-customers. These stakeholders and potential customers can be valuable resources in the identification of market needs. It is not as simple as asking them, though. If you ask someone what they would like you to invent, they will give you a blank stare. Most people are unable to see what is not there.

Why would acquiring companies prefer to buy new products in development in smaller companies? Usually, breakthroughs come from outside an industry because those in the industry are so attached to the existing way of doing things. Perhaps subconsciously employees resist suggesting change because it might affect the jobs of their peers or expose them to ridicule and hurt their reputation. More likely it is because the company has never had a process in place to deal with employee contributions.

Large companies should not be expected to push innovation. They are the companies that we expect to be dependable and strong, like the trunk of a tree. Their inflexibility is strength, not weakness. The development of "new buds" takes place on the periphery, at the end of the branches, in smaller, more limber companies.

Large companies prefer to buy companies that have taken the risk and created something new with big markets and existing demand. They want the risks reduced to a minimum and will pay well for it.

If you select valid solutions to latent market gaps and can show those solutions address an existing demand, the potential buyer may well have good reason to believe that your company is worth more than if it didn't have those new products in the pipeline.

The cost of identifying possible new products with the characteristics of large market and existing demand need not be high. It can be accomplished in the range of $250,000 assuming several are done at the same time.

By gathering potential market needs from those who are not yet your customers, but you would like to become customers, you can often find opportunities unavailable to you through your normal stakeholders.

Focusing on needs for which a solution would generate at least $200 million would be the first filter. The next filter would be to eliminate any on the list that don't exhibit existing demand, even if the particular product specifications are not articulable by the market.

Once the need is quantified and meets the qualifications, the next step is defining the ideal characteristics of the product and what acceptable design might comprise. Then it is relatively straightforward to design the product and take it to the stage where the initial protection of patent pending status can be gained.

From there, the marketing department can create marketing presentation materials that communicate the value proposition, show potential packaging, and describe the product features and benefits.

With these materials in hand, providing they are supported by quantifiable market estimates and demonstration of marketing demand, a case can be made for increased valuation based on estimated future earnings from the product.

If you had five products in the pipeline with potential revenue of $1 billion over the next 10 years, what would that do to your company value?

Depending on the size of the market and number of products in development, the value of the company can be significantly increased at a relatively low cost in anticipation of sale of the company.

From start to finish can be as short as four months, assuming you are not developing new technology.

Disclaimer: The process described above was developed and tested over the last four years by Edison Innovations, Inc. as a method of generating new intellectual property for license to companies and entrepreneurs seeking new concepts to build a company around.

]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.841593 2011-03-29T16:38:34-04:00 2011-05-29T05:12:01-04:00

Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-macdonald/
In this budget cutting environment, a vast, valuable resource has been overlooked in the quest to reduce the cost of education: the kids.

Kids Teaching Kids has developed a free service that will ultimately allow any kid with access to a cell phone or computer to watch a video teaching how to solve every problem in every textbook.

Does that sound impossible? Consider these statistics: YouTube now has two billion, views a day; every day 35,000 hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.

The educational system acts on kids as if they are objects, without voice or intelligence. Imagine if the idea of competitive shows like America's Funniest Home Videos could be harnessed to motivate the creation of exciting, entertaining educational videos.

For centuries adults have thought they were smarter than kids, and perhaps were, but now the kids are smarter than the adults. Have you tried playing the current computer online games? Good luck.

Additionally, it's rare that I ever hear anyone say what a great job the educational establishment is doing -- it seems it is always the opposite. The average school seems empowered only to teach the minimum necessary to produce quiescent, docile employees who can work for minimum wage at fast food franchises.

But this is nothing new, as the educational system has, with a few shining exceptions, always had the objective of creating efficient worker bees. This may have started during the early immigration of our citizens, when education's purpose was to condition the children to work in factories.

The new direction focuses on test scores, how we are doing in relation to other countries and how our economy will decline because we aren't turning out enough scientists and engineers. It has rarely been about the quality of the individual, but about productivity.

Given the massive cutbacks in education we are about to experience, it is time to turn to the abundant resources we have ignored: the kids. It is time to change the objects of education into action verbs.

Let's consider that kids know more about what turns on kids than the adults do and will be better teachers, if we let them. Doubt that? Look at Disney's gold mine: kids entertaining kids on TV.

While we aren't there yet, it won't be long before every kid in the civilized world owns a smart phone capable of watching videos, as well as creating and sharing them. Every child will become a potential producer of educational video materials. All that is needed is a self-ranking method of organizing and presenting the content combined with a self-policing mechanism, such as the one used successfully by Wikipedia. Kids can be trusted.

Kids would much rather watch other kids than adults. When kids produce award-winning videos that can be used in the classroom for free, the game will change, the effectiveness of education will improve and costs will decline.

Think national contests for the best video explaining how cells reproduce, or the Pythagorean Theorem with rock music and visual effects. Or how about a video showing exactly how to determine the area of a complex shape? Let kids vote the way they do now on everything on the web. Let the cream rise to the top.

In less than ten minutes, Duncan, my eighth grader, can make a three minute video explaining a math problem and upload it to YouTube for instant global distribution. Using speech recognition technology, YouTube can then automatically translate it and create captions for it in 51 languages.

All of a sudden, kids with computer or cell phone access will have unlimited numbers of virtual tutors who will explain concepts in ways they can best understand, whatever form that might take.

Here is an example of a video Lily, another student in my daughter's Santa Rosa High School economics class did in a few days to help explain inflation. Notice the excitement and style compared to typical, boring, educational videos produced by adults:



America makes far less use of cell phones than the rest of the world, so the major impact will be in other countries -- unless we get on the band wagon first.

It is ironic that kids will be the ones leveraging technology to answer some of the problems budget cuts are causing in our educational system. Like every other industry, disruptive innovation comes from unexpected directions without considering or asking for permission from the authorities and institutions it affects. No matter how this puts pressure on educational dogma, the teachers, the parents, the publishers, and other stakeholders of the educational industry, this will happen. It cannot be stopped.

The Khan Academy, is providing free videos and has served 43 million. They use adults and it works; kids prefer watching kids, and that will work as well. Khan Academy videos will allow kids to learn the material themselves before teaching others around the world.

Education yearns to be free and run at its own speed. It will be universal sooner than we think.

When all the educational material you ever want is available for free on your cell phone and computer, do you think home schooling will increase? Do you think teachers will become more effective given unlimited entertaining, multisensory teaching materials produced by kids for kids?

Technology has always served the purpose of education, but this may be the first time kids will carry the ball using the latest hand-held combination of computer and video camera.

Disclaimer: This has been a pet project of mine for the last 10 years. Technology has finally caught up with the idea. If you want to support this approach and make it happen, please contact Kidsteachingkids.org. They are looking for leaders, a CTO, grant writers, sponsors, supporters, implementers, producers, and other excited people who can provide needed resources to make it happen faster. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.839337 2011-03-23T15:07:55-04:00 2011-05-25T18:40:24-04:00

Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-macdonald/
If you want people to be able to find your content on the web, read on for a crash course in common-sense search engine strategy.

In a nutshell, Google makes every attempt to identify content that is "especially suitable" for the search terms you use because their revenue depends on you using Google. If you want to be at the top of Google, then your content simply needs to be "especially suitable."

That's easy to say, but harder to put your finger on. Google uses more than 200 criteria for determining the suitability of a web page when a search is conducted. But, while marketing considerations are more important than technical, everything helps... or hurts.

You wouldn't want to read a book in which each chapter had the same name would you? So don't have the same title for all your web pages. It is common sense to ask yourself if you would find things attractive the way you have them.

This is important: People searching tend to use "problem" words that correlate with symptoms in medicine. But when people create websites, they tend to describe their business using "solution" words. Often the solution pages will not contain a single problem word and therefore, never be found. So be sure to describe your solution using the problem terms people might search with. In other words, use "pain" if you are selling headache remedies.

If you think in terms of dating, you can get closer to the truth about search engines and how they work. It is all about being attractive in every sense of the word. Just as when writing a dating profile, you need to empathize with the reader and present your site as attractive, make them a bit curious, and get them to take action.

Let's say your major interest is dancing. Do you write something that gently weaves the word "dancing" into the copy or do you hit them over the head with it? "I love dancing and want to go dancing. I hope you like dancing, too, so we can go dancing." That would put me off, and it puts off the search engines, too.

You probably have masses of other features you want to talk about to find a date. Do you list all 20 or 30 you can think of, or do you concentrate on four or five with the most importance to prospective dates? People think in topics, so you will seem more appropriate if you don't spread yourself so thin no one knows what you actually are like.

Do you use keywords that the date matching engine might take into consideration, such as "loves sports," "enjoys the symphony," or "skier"? How do you emphasis the more important features? Do you use bold or italic? Search engines notice these things, just the way men and women benefit from attractive clothing and good manners.

If you think of SEO as putting on makeup, you may recognize that too much makeup is a disaster.

Do you use a short ultra-elevator pitch that will come up when the group is presented, like "attractive skier loves to dance," or do you write something less specific, like "I want someone who dances"?

Do you get the picture? It is about content and relevance. Apply the same approach to a website or web page about any topic. Be a good conversationalist. Provide value to your visitors.

You can bring your content into sharper focus for the search engines by highlighting it in more technical ways, similar to using cosmetics.

This includes the file structure and file naming scheme for the website, and even the domain name. Balance the number of keywords to match the way you might speak or write. Sound too technical? Ignore it. Just use the right keywords the way you would in normal conversation. That's what Google is trying so hard to detect, normalcy.

Search engine strategies can be straight forward if you use common sense and a bit of imagination. Think about the content that you would find important and incorporate it into your site in an organized way.

Think Readers Digest. That's the way Google thinks and that's the kind of date they are looking for.

Disclaimer: While this article is a bit tongue in cheek, I use the techniques described for all my clients and they are all at the top of Google, so something must be right. My specialty is helping high-end professionals and businesses in specific geographic areas be easily found on Google.
]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.838789 2011-03-21T21:06:57-04:00 2011-05-25T18:40:24-04:00

Larry MacDonald http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-macdonald/
The naked truth is we already have all the resources necessary to improve our economy by trillions of dollars and create as many jobs as can be filled. Every major energy source throughout history has been quietly lying beneath the surface like a Mother Load of gold, oil, uranium, and gas, waiting to be discovered.

Eight trillion dollars is the conservative value of the immense intellectual capital, wisdom, and experience residing in our citizens, yet we have failed to notice it, much less monetize it. Why? Hubris.

We know it all and we know everything better than anyone, so why listen to anyone else? We still think of workers as unworthy cogs in a machine without any potential value to contribute outside their ordered tasks, as if we believed cars were only to be used to drive to work and could never be used for any other purpose.

People have an innate drive to contribute and to be helpful, yet somewhere along the path we decided the economics of mass production were more valuable. We didn't realize it took the spirit and soul out of people once they made a few suggestions, hoping to be helpful, and their efforts were ignored.

While our collective experience cost a fortune to create, we turn others off, like putting an old hard drive in the closet that is still full of valuable information.

In most organizations the majority of the problems that existed decades ago persist, since no one listened to those who spoke of them, no one could bring them to the attention of those who had the ability to solve them.

As a nation, we must learn to listen to one another better. Collaboration and the drive for survival during World War II was the last time everyone took suggestions seriously and had to abandon selfish and self-protective motives.

If you are like 99.99% of Americans, since childhood your ideas have been discounted countless times, probably so many times that you have shut down your observational and creative ability.

But even now, you probably notice things several times a day that you might know how to improve if you put your mind to it. Everyone does, but these observations and bits of knowledge are rarely collected and consequentially drop through the cracks or are lost forever in dusty file drawers.

Since so few of these bits of knowledge are formally collected and indexed, most are lost instead of leading to product improvements, new products, new industries, new jobs, new companies, new tax revenue, new schools, better health care, longer lives, less pollution, more resources, lower costs, and a myriad of other benefits.

Toyota gathers over 700,000 suggestions a year and the company implements over 99%, making more than 600,000 improvements a year. Contrary to institutional beliefs, most of the suggestions common people on the front lines make are valuable.

Look what 20 million ideas over 40 years at Toyota did to our automotive industry. Toyota took the process we used to win the war (which we quit using) and used it to gain the upper hand in the car wars.

How can we turn the corner and renew America? The numbers point the way and are truly astounding. There are more than 80 million baby boomers in the U.S. Just counting the last ten years, that totals 800 million man-years of experience, only a tiny portion of which has been tapped.

If each person had only observed one single problem opportunity each year and solved it that would make available 800 million improvements.

If you value the experience a person gets every year at only $100, the baby boomers' experience is worth $8 trillion, and that is for the most part wasted, because hardly anyone has noticed and appreciated it enough to capture and capitalize on it.

If 67,000 Toyota employees could come up with and implement nearly 600,000 improvements a year, what do you think 80 million baby boomers could come up with to help solve America's problems, create jobs, and get us back on track? But could we? Would we? Will we? What could another 75 million solutions mean to the U.S. economy?

It won't need to take another world war to get our attention this time. Our current financial crisis should do the trick.

Larry MacDonald is president of Edison Innovations, Inc. a company that generates intellectual property based on the collection and analysis of previously unarticulated market needs. Larry lives in Santa Rosa, CA and has been involved with innovation all his life. ]]>