Mitsubishi Electric CEO: My most important business lessons

I was browsing around google video this weekend and ran across this video by Tachi Kiuchi, ex-CEO of Mitsubishi Electric and now Founder of The Future 500.

The video covers a variety of topics including risk-taking, terrorism and accounting for the costs of using natural resources, all around the theme of “take risks and do what you want, but don’t die.”

Within this theme, he talks about the failure of companies to adapt based on feedback. “Enron grew unsustainably, and because it failed to adapt, it collapsed.” “No feedback, no adaptation. No adaptation, no change” gradually, the feedback, if ignored, grows louder and manifests itself in collapses and disasters. Though he goes on discuss the environment in particular, his point encompasses businesses as a whole. Feedback and adaptation is the key to the survival of a business.

Its an interesting video that runs about 5 minutes or so.

link to video

Peeking under the covers of Salesforce’s new Idea(Exchange)

We’re very excited to about announcement of Salesforce’s new idea exchange site, announced during Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff’s keynote speech at the Dreamforce 06 conference this week. Not just because we power the site, but because with this offering, salesforce has taken the lead once again by redefining what Customer Relationship Management means for enterprise software companies. Although we’ve been using CrispyNews in a similar fashion, Salesforce is the first major enterprise company to take the bold step forward. Others will soon follow.

IdeaExchange allows customers and development teams working on the product an avenue for a dialogue about upcoming features. This is an amazing increase in visibility for both sides, and as an ex-product manager at an enterprise company, I know first-hand how hard it is to get good visibility into your customer’s problems.

Yes, its your job to understand the issues, and yes, you spend alot of time with your customers. However, when coming up with new features for the next release, it has always been a black art. Come feature planning time, you sit down with your list of bugs, second-hand feedback from sales and the anecdotes from the few customers you’ve interacted with to come up w/ the perfect set of features. Its an impossible task, and mostly you’re saved by the fact that your competitors aren’t much better at it.

If you are a customer, suggestions seem to drop into a black hole. “We want this” is usually answered by “I’ll put in an enhancement request”, and that is the last you hear about that.

By turning what used to be a one-way street (‘file an enhancement request!’) into a two-way dialogue between the product team (what do you guys think of this feature?) and the customer (its overkill and we won’t use it), Salesforce is experimenting with a new level of interactivity in the traditional product development cycle. By allowing customers to vote on the features they like the best and discuss–among themselves–what features they like or how it should be different, product teams get a much better understanding of what ranks high in their customer’s priorities.

Perhaps this is how the community-driven concepts popularized by del.icio.us, digg and others on the consumer side will trickle into the enterprise space. As an ex-enterprise product manager I’ll raise my glass to that.