If You Are Great At Something – Let it Go (Or Resell It)
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This is a cross-post from Radar
I am fascinated by what I see as Zappos’ ongoing evolution from a simple, online retailer to a leading online innovator. A few months back I wrote about Zappos pioneering what I called “Experience Syndication” with their Powered by Zappos (PBZ) service. In brief, PBZ syndicates the end-to-end value of shopping with Zappos – from the online store experience to shipping, to returns, to the call center – everything. Clarks Shoes, Stuart Weitzman and many other online sites are providing a customer experience entirely syndicated by Zappos.
Last night I saw CEO Tony Hsieh’s tweet about Zappos Insights - a paid membership site “that allows ‘Fortune one million’ companies to gain insights from the learnings of Zappos.com. The site will allow access to Zappos.com management and contacts and provide guidance and direct answers for user generated questions via video responses.”
If PBZ syndicates the customer experience, Zappos Insights is syndicating the internal business experience; providing a window into the leadership and culture that has made Zappos such a successful business. What is so radical about this is the notion that Zappos is willing to let go of the very thing that makes them so exceptional.
I think Zappos has good reason to think it can stay ahead of the crowd – Toyota shared all their manufacturing “secrets” and have been studied by other companies up-close and personal for 15 years — by sending teams and teams of people to Japan for months at a time……nobody has been able to duplicate their manufacturing success. Why? Changing people is the harder stuff – and getting your management on board with big culture shifts is incredibly difficult.
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