John Della Volpe I agree. The CEO ultimately has to trust his or her people. But the most important the aspect of that is finding the right people. It's finding your most passionate advocates, and providing an opportunity, oftentimes using technology, to harness their creativity and ideas to make your organization more successful. That's what Obama is doing. He has a staff of hundreds of passionate people and millions and millions of passionate voters who want to help, who want to have little piece of that campaign. He's using technology to do three things: mobilize, raise money and persuade. It's a question of understanding your audience and your objective and using technology appropriately. I've always believed that Web 2.0 is far less about technology and far more about people. Web 2.0 simply is a better way to do everything.
As regards social networking and Web 2.0, persuasion has more weight because comes from within your social circle?
Somewhere between two thirds and three quarters of Americans do not trust traditional means of marketing and advertising. I would almost guarantee if you added the word "political," the number would be closer to 90 percent.
In one story, Obama was quoted as saying, "One of my fundamental beliefs from my days as a community organizer is that real change comes from the bottom up. And there's no more powerful tool for grass-roots organizing than the Internet." Does that capture the thrust of what you're seeing?
It completely does. It goes back to what I've believed from the beginning: It's less about technology than it is about people. The internet allows him to organize millions of people, raise money from millions of people, much faster than the old fashioned way.
You've called Obama an example of blue ocean strategy. Why?
There's a book written on the Blue Ocean Strategy. Red ocean and blue ocean are metaphors for the market universe. The red ocean is all the industries and businesses in existence today, kind of the known space. Too often, companies are trying to improve within the margins to get a little bit more marketshare. The reason it's referred to as the red ocean is because everybody is fighting, there's churn and there's blood in it. The blue ocean represents new ideas, open space unattained by the competition that's not really fought over. The new voters, the millennial voters, represent blue ocean for Obama.
Where have you seen his campaign put this strategy into action?What Obama did in Iowa is one of the most important reasons why he's the nominee today. The Hillary Clinton campaign -- and many of the campaigns on both the Democratic and Republican side -- targeted the hardened Iowa caucus goers, the relatively small part of all the potential voters in Iowa, who show up year after year to caucus for the candidate. It's a very, very small pool. Up until nine months ago, it was a winning strategy for most presidential campaigns.
Barack Obama realized that in order to be successful, he had to engage new audiences and expand the marketplace. He did something few believed could happen -- he extended the voter pool. The return on his investment for that strategy was a winning margin of 5:1 for voters under the age of 30.
If Obama were a CEO, what type of CEO would he be?
Maybe he's a combination of Howard Schultz of Starbucks and the founders of Google. Howard Schultz created something that didn't exist before -- Starbucks was a "third place" outside work and home where you go to chill out, meet friends and drink a $5 cup of coffee. It was centered around community, neighbors and conversation. Then you have Sergey and Larry from Google who are constantly reinventing their company and constantly finding ways to use technology, not only to meet their business objectives and earn money for their shareholders but also to do good. So it's a combination of the innovation on the technology side of Google and the innovation on the community side of Howard Schultz.
And McCain, what type of CEO or company would he be?
McCain is more like a big American institution. I'm thinking more like a Home Depot. A little bit more narrow in scope, tried and true, just doing what you do and trying to do it better every single day.
Imagine you're the CEO of company. What lessons should you draw from the Obama campaign?
Expect more. Ask for more from your customers and your employees. Abandon the silo approach. Find the 10 to 20 percent of your most active, passionate customer, and bring them inside the tent. Help them help you to innovate, make better products and market better. Same thing within your company, whether you're a multinational company or a small business. There is tremendous value sitting inside your company. There are many ways to use technology to tap those insights to make the company more productive.
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