An interesting dynamic characterizes the design world: while the client may foot the bill, a long list of stakeholders—from users to community representatives to neighborhood opponents—shape the project. Ultimately, these stakeholders can significantly alter a project’s final outcome. For this reason, stakeholder groups comprise an important piece of your competitive landscape puzzle.

In recent news, stakeholders—in this case community opponents of the proposal, put forth by casino-mogul Steve Wynn and New England Patriots’ owner Bob Kraft, to make Foxborough, MA, a gaming destination—killed the project by electing two anti-casino selectmen. Despite their previous investment to gain community support (which I discuss in this earlier post on politics), Wynn and Co. wisely decided to cut their losses and pulled the casino proposal.

In a highly visible example from the 1980s, the Cambridge community shot down Harvard University’s plan to build a pedestrian bridge on the edge of the university’s campus. The pedestrian bridge was intended to link the then-new Arthur M. Sackler Museum, designed by the renowned British architect James Stirling, with the Fogg Art Museum across the street.

The reason I call the Sackler example “highly visible” is that, despite the community’s rejection of the bridge, the Sackler was nevertheless constructed so the bridge could be added later. The resulting façade is basically incomplete, and it looks incomplete.

James Stirling, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 1985

Of course, we could provide a critique of the Sackler Museum’s giant columns as “announcing the entrance,” and the enormous hole above as in keeping with the postmodern motif of “punched square window openings” a la Robert Venturi and Aldo Rossi.

Robert Venturi, Vanna Venturi House, Chestnut Hill, PA, 1962-64; note large square window to the left

Aldo Rossi, Teatro Del Mondo, Venice Biennale, 1980; note square windows throughout

The message here is threefold—for the client, the designer, and the community.
• To the client: Don’t underestimate the power of a united and determined community. If they don’t like your design, you’re in trouble.
• To the designer: Don’t let your client ignore community concerns. Do you really want your name on an “incomplete” building?
• To the community: Don’t underestimate the stubbornness or hubris of the client. Sure, you won on the bridge issue, but in the end you got stuck with two massive columns and a gaping hole to nowhere…. Is this the image you envisioned for your neighborhood?

My question for you: How have stakeholders helped shape—for better or for worse—your projects?

Technological advances, in the design industry as well as those in seemingly unrelated industries, have a major impact on your competitive landscape.

Let’s begin with an example directly related to the design and building world—the development of mass-producible structural steel, a material advance that forever changed how we design and what we design.

Before the creation of the Bessemer process in the mid-19th century, which led to structural steel building elements, a building’s height was limited in large part by its load-bearing masonry walls. The north half of Chicago’s Monadnack Building, designed in the 1880s-90s by Burnham & Root, is reportedly the world’s tallest building to be supported by load-bearing brick walls, which needed to be six-feet thick to support the 17-storey structure!

Monadnack Building, Chicago, 1892; by Burnham + Root

Rendering of Burj Khalifa, Abu Dhabi, 2010; by SOM + Adrian Smith

BIM may still be evolving to its full potential, but to ignore BIM is no longer an option. As BIM becomes more widespread, those who haven’t grappled with its existence—either embraced it or formulated some response to it—will fall by the wayside. Equally important, early adopters have used this newer technology to position themselves as go-to BIM firms. And as we discussed last week in the post on materials, being an early adopter can be a huge boost for a firm’s reputation.

As for an “outside our industry example,” think about the explosion of smart phones and ubiquitous wi-fi networks. I’m writing this on my laptop in Starbucks. I can later edit and upload this post on my IPad, then send the link via IPhone to you, my dear readers. What does this mean for traditional office space, home offices, and coffee shops? This technological shift immediately impacts how we live, work, and play, and consequently, how and what we design.

The bottom line: technology, whether in our industry or seemingly beyond our realm, has a serious impact on your design business. My questions for you: What emerging technologies will affect you? How can you, as an early adopter, use them to your advantage?

“I’ve got one word for you, Benjamin. Just one word. Plastics.”

For this post, I’m revising this classic line from the 1967 film The Graduate. Today my one word for you is “materials.” New materials offer an amazing opportunity for competitive positioning. Jumping decades and genres, you may wonder (a la Tina Turner), “What’s ‘materials’ got to do with it?”

"One word ... Plastics!" The Graduate, 1967

My answer: being among the first to adopt a new material or construction technique can push your business into the spotlight. For this reason, I’ve included “Materials” as one piece of the Competitive Landscape Puzzle.

Often designers hesitate to work with a new material or construction technique, and understandably so. Propaganda abounds, so it’s difficult to get unbiased information on a new product’s performance. In addition, clients may shy away from “the unknown,” and designers don’t want to be blamed for a non-established material’s less than stellar performance. For these and other reasons, the adoption of new materials in the A/E/C industry is not as frequent as one would think in our technologically advanced age.

This hesitance creates a terrific opportunity, though, for those designers willing to take a risk. I’m not talking about a ridiculous or irresponsible risk, such as replacing structural elements with some mystery marshmallow-based compound. Rather, there are some very promising materials and techniques out there that may be worth a shot. For example, a recent article on nano-advances in new architectural products highlights an exciting possibility:

• Self-cleaning surfaces: Nano-infused coatings that promise to keep themselves clean, stain- and odor-resistant. Currently these products are being used for bathrooms with much success in Japan and Europe. But who is using them in North America?

Such self-cleaning surface coatings seem to be a natural choice for medical and lab environments, too. Picture this: your firm works in the hospital market, and you devise ways to use these self-cleaning surfaces. Image the possible health benefits for staff and patients, not to mention the reduction in maintenance costs that such a product could create. How’s that for a selling point to set you ahead of the competition?

Like William McDonough, featured in last week’s post for turning a trend into a empire, you could take your involvement with a new material a step further. McDonough partnered with the chemist Michael Braungart to create new products, including recyclable carpet—“a PVC-free, fully recyclable alternative to tradition carpet tile.”

Then we have starchitect Frank Gehry, whose designs draw on automotive and aerospace fabrication methods to create distinctive forms. In the early 2000s Gehry parlayed his experience into Gehry Technologies, “an A/E/C technology development and consulting company providing leading edge solutions.” Gehry saw an opening for these tech services, and he filled it.

Perhaps you see an existing hole—a missing material or new process—that, with the right collaborator, you could fill. Is there a problem you often encounter in your market, or an idea that could make some aspect of your industry easier? Ask yourself, “what’s missing, and how can I fill this gap?”

Entrepreneurial designers realize the value in being first. Align yourself with a new material. Adopt a novel technology. Then publicize it for all you’re worth; as Michael Jackson would say, “Don’t stop ‘til you get enough.”

Question: What new material or technology can make you first?

Social and cultural trends present an amazing opportunity for you to excel in your competitive landscape. In this sixth installment of 12 Factors That Can Make or Break Your Design Business, I’ll show you how one guy turned a trend into an empire.

Thirty years ago, the environmental initiative was little more than a social/cultural trend. In 1970, when Earth Day was founded, environmental design typically evoked thoughts of granola-eating, desert-dwelling Paolo Soleri followers. Yet by the late 1990s, “being green” was no longer a fringe movement; sustainability was becoming mainstream. Today sustainable design has become a norm in our industry. We see LEED rapidly develop new certification programs and major cities like Toronto mandate green roofs. By necessity, “green” is here to stay.

Bill McDonough + Cameron Diaz

• In the early 1990s McDonough partnered with German chemist Michael Braungart. Together they founded MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry), a sustainability consulting and product certification firm that emphasizes the Cradle to Cradle® philosophy. (A “Cradle to Cradle” system, as explained by the book of the same name, is one that produces no waste throughout its lifecycle, only nutrients for other processes.)
• In 2000, also with Braungart, McDonough founded GreenBlue, a non-profit institute that assists businesses in moving toward sustainable design and production.
• In 2009, McDonough started the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, which develops global standards for healthy and safe products.

These environmental efforts have been repeatedly recognized through national achievement awards (including the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development, 1996; the first EPA Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, 2003; and the National Design Award for environmental design, 2004). Now McDonough is a sought-after public speaker and quasi-celebrity, even partnering with Brad Pitt (below) to help New Orleans rebuild its Lower 9th Ward in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and mugging for the camera with Cameron Diaz (above) after a Stanford lecture on sustainability.

Brad Pitt, Make It Right Foundation

McDonough didn’t set out to capitalize on the green trend. Rather, his thriving architecture practice, MBDC, GreenBlue, and his other endeavors rest on his passion for ecology and social equity. He recognized the inevitability of—and the necessity for—sustainability. He addressed the absence of environmentally minded designers, products, and companies, all during a time when it became no longer possible to ignore the need for ecological awareness. McDonough built a green empire by embracing a trend and riding it the top of his game.

So my question for you is, what social and cultural trends could be the foundation of your empire?

With this one post we’ll cover two factors that can make or break your design business: politics and the economy.

Politics and the economy affect everything we do in our businesses, often in ways we don’t even consider. But before we look to a specific example, I’ll clarify what I mean by “politics” and “the economy.” For the purposes of this discussion, “politics” includes everything government related including permitting, codes, legislation, trends, and leaders from the civic level on up. “The economy” covers just about everything money related, including financing, loans, and a company’s or area’s general fiscal health.

These super-broad definitions of “politics” and “the economy” relate to two points:
1. Depending on your market and services, any of these things—as well as a number of other political or economy-related facets—could be crucial to your business’s success or failure.
2. Politics and the economy weave together like a spiderweb; the strands often can’t be separated and together create a large, sticky mess that traps all in its path.

The Massachusetts casino-gaming saga demonstrates the large, sticky mess that politics and the economy can generate. In 2007, Governor Deval Patrick proposed the legalization of casino gambling in MA. The main driver behind this idea was economic—annually $900 million dollars was leaving MA for the coffers of Connecticut and Rhode Island, thanks to their legalized gaming. Despite a bitter political battle during which the casino proposal was twice rejected by lawmakers, the economic motives finally prevailed. In November 2012, Patrick signed into law MA’s casino bill, allowing three resort-style casinos and one “racino” slot parlor.

The five years between Patrick’s initial casino proposal and the approval of the casino bill were filled with arguments and counterarguments teetering on
• Moral issues: Does gambling breed addiction and crime? Counterargument: We already have the state lotto. Isn’t that gambling? And people are going to gamble anyway!
• Community concerns: Can towns handle the increased infrastructural and traffic needs casinos bring? Counterargument: Casino funds will subsidize needed improvements.
• NIMBYism: No (casinos) In My Back Yard! Counterargument: But they will create jobs and revenue!
• Tactical issues: Gov. Patrick—”Resort-style casinos only!” Counterargument: House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo—”Slot parlors too!”

In short, the casino debate was the spider that spun the political/economic web. Spiraling arguments ensnared all participants.

Even with the passing of the casino bill the back-and-forth persists, albeit in a different form.
• Which towns will house the casinos?
• Who should have first dibs (Native American tribes)?
• Which developers will come out on top?
• How can these developers overcome community opposition to their plans?

The web becomes increasingly intricate, and the stickiness continues.

What does this casino mess, born of political maneuvers and economic motives, have to do with your business? Lots, if you are in the A/E/C realm.

Successful firms aren’t simply in the right place at the right time; they insert themselves in the right place to begin with. It wasn’t a matter of if casinos would come to MA; it was just a matter of when. Watching the five years of negotiations, this was the reality all along. Now these four casino destinations will need massive amounts of infrastructural improvements, people to design all scales of architectural and engineering feats, and scores of contractors to implement the work. Savvy A/E/C firms started following the casino saga early on. They saw the writing on the wall. And they positioned themselves for these budding work opportunities by sidling up to prospective developers, community groups, and other concerned parties. With the MA casino law finally in place, these forward-looking firms have a big jump on the competition.

So does it pay to keep an eye on political and economic developments?
You bet!

What tactics do you use to monitor political and economic events that affect your business?

How do you play the A/E/C Game? Do you follow the rules and hope for a win? Or do you recognize that success isn’t only about the rules but rather about how the participants play the game—their strategy, their skill, their positioning, the amount of risk they take? In all cases, winning comes down to how well you perform compared to your competitors.

In the April 2012 issue of the SMPS Marketer, Scott Braley and I offer a sneak peek into our Build Business 2012 session, “Combining Competitive Intelligence and Action to Change the Game.” To learn more about how you can use competitive intelligence to transform your game CLICK HERE. Thanks for reading, and we hope to see in you at the conference in San Francisco in July!

PS: Check out our previous Marketer articles, “What Is Competitive Intelligence?” and “Assess Your Competitive Landscape.”

Can Barenaked Ladies help your business? Yes, but not how you may think!

Aside from the name, the Canadian alternative rock band Barenaked Ladies (BNL) is not in the least bit risqué. I love this group—they are witty, amazingly entertaining, and wonderfully talented. And the history of their band offers a great lesson about collaboration and how it can go wrong.

Ed Robertson and Steven Page founded BNL in 1988. Over the next two decades the two friends cultivated a five-person band famous for their spot-on harmonies and improvised onstage antics. The Robertson/Page duo remained at the forefront of the band and appeared to complement each other perfectly. Yet, in 2008, NY police arrested Page for cocaine and marijuana possession. This scandal broke while BNL was promoting its new children’s album, Snack Time (a fantastic musical collection, for parents out there). The group promptly withdrew from their scheduled Disney-sponsored performances, and the following year “by mutual agreement” Page left the band. Despite Page’s front-man status, BNL carried on, retaining its legions of fans.

Here is where Barenaked Ladies can help you avoid a big (albeit common) mistake. Partners must share a common culture. For BNL, some shift occurred in their chemistry. Despite their earlier success, it became increasingly clear that Page no longer fit with the group’s culture.

This “culture clash” directly applies to the A/E/C world. This industry requires partnerships; different firms must constantly work together to complete projects. As a result, collaborators form a major aspect of your competitive landscape. How do you vet the firms with whom you will partner?

When looking into firms as possible partners or collaborators, you most likely focus attention on aspects such as a firm’s finances, their past and current projects, and their experience and reputation within their market. You may even consider their relationships with possible clients and competitors. But do you think about a partner firm’s culture?

Cultural fit can make or break a collaboration. Before jumping into a project with another firm, consider the following points:
• Values and principles: What drives this firm? What matters to them?
• Firm goals: What are their overall goals, ambitions, desires?
• Leadership style: Who makes decisions? How are they made?
• Working methods/processes: Are they fixed or open to change?
• Employee turnover/satisfaction: Will team members change? How quickly?

Think about past partnerships. I’ll bet that the more culturally matched your firm was with the partnering firm, the more successful the collaboration turned out to be. If, as in the Barenaked Ladies scenario, a collaborator is snorting coke while you’re promoting a children’s album, chances are pretty high that the partnership is doomed to failure. The group had the strength and ability to disband the collaboration. With their difficult experience in mind, hopefully you can avoid a collaboration culture clash all together.

In your experience, what other key elements can make or break a partnership?

Market Research forms a valuable piece of the competitive landscape puzzle. The problem with market research is that all too often companies rely on it without taking the big picture into consideration. This post, part 3 of 12 Factors That Can Make or Break Your Design Business, addresses how market research, when viewed out of context, can actually hurt your business.

Let’s quickly review the image above. The competitive landscape puzzle graphically depicts a number of factors that make up your business world, the place in which you will wildly succeed or dismally fail. This idea of competitive landscape ties directly to the concept of competitive intelligence. Competitive intelligence (aka CI) is a method of collecting and analyzing information that lets you gain an edge knowing what’s around the corner. In other words, CI is a process of targeted research and informed analysis that prepares you to take action.

Competitive intelligence and market research are not the same thing, yet many people use the two terms interchangeably. This myth—thinking CI and market research are equivalent practices—can actually make market research a threat to your business.

So what’s the difference between CI and market research?

1. Range of Focus: While market research zeros in on clients (or prospective clients), CI takes a much broader view of your context, considering everything from competitors and outside industries to the economy and political trends. And yes, CI also includes market research. So market research is not the same as or a replacement for CI; rather, it is one of many pieces that figure into the CI process.

2. Qualitative vs. Quantitative Focus: While market research includes client opinions, it largely emphasizes the quantitative—working with numbers and hard data. In contrast, CI is highly qualitative. Yes, CI incorporates numbers-based investigations, but a major component of the CI process includes talking to people to acquire information. Such “word of mouth” info can be difficult to quantify. Yet, when it comes to discerning trends that affect your future actions, this qualitative knowledge often proves to be more important than hard data.

3. Past/Present vs. Future Focus: On the whole, market research examines what has already happened or is currently happening. While potentially helpful, this knowledge alone isn’t enough to predict what’s around the corner. In comparison, CI extrapolates from the past and present to get at the future. The end goal of CI is always to provide a glimpse as to what will happen next. Such insight allows you to strategically position your business for future advantage.

But I promised to take the “market-research-as-dangerous” idea further, right? I stated that focusing on market research alone could actually damage your business. So let me show you how.

Let’s say your market research focuses on client surveys to reveal levels of satisfaction and potential new services clients may need. Your survey results show that overall your clients are quite pleased with your operation, and they feel that the services you offer are right on target. Great news! Comforted by your market research, which shows happy clients and glowing reports, you plot a strategy to keep on keeping on. After all, you’re busy, clients are satisfied, and they will keep coming back. But will they?

Here is where the problem arises. Market research alone doesn’t give you a glimpse into the future. It doesn’t reveal what changes may be coming from forces beyond your clients’ control. You don’t have real insight into what is happening in outside industries that will affect your clients’ needs, of pending political or economic shifts that will impact your business, or of emerging social or cultural trends that will alter your services in general. All you truly know is that clients value what you are doing now, not that they will continue to value you in the future.

How can you ensure that your future services will be valuable to clients? Now we’ve come full circle, back to competitive intelligence. Take a broad view of your competitive landscape—consider clients AND competitors AND market research AND more (hint: check out the pieces of the “puzzle” above). This is your best bet for developing and maintaining competitive advantage. Armed with a big-picture perspective, you can take action to help your company thrive.

How does market research fit in to your big-picture view?

In an earlier post I discussed the idea of indirect competitors, and how these unknown entities can sneak up and eventually replace an architect’s services. An article recently published by Fast Co. Design, “How G3Box Turns Shipping Containers into Clinics,” provides a perfect example of how knowing about an indirect competitor could create a major growth opportunity for your design business.

My previous post details the growing healthcare trend of mass-market retailers (like Target and CVS) including walk-in medical clinics in their stores. With G3Box, we find yet another “outside” threat to those offering architectural services for small-scale medical facilities.

G3Box, the brainchild of two Arizona State engineering students (Gabrielle Palermo and Susanna Young), turns shipping containers into easily transportable medical clinics for developing countries. As the founders state, “G3Boxes are better than modular buildings because they can be ready to go at a location in a couple of hours, and are more secure and durable than tents.” While repurposing shipping containers is not a new idea (note past ideas for offices and housing, for example), these women are finding a way to make a readily available everyday object into a potentially industry-changing product.

While these containers-turned-clinics have been conceived for use in disaster situations (like post-earthquake Haiti) and developing areas (like mining zones in remote areas of India), there is no reason G3Boxes can’t be used in the US for less extreme situations. For example, if a flu epidemic is sweeping through a certain region, Target could deploy a few G3Boxes (dressed up a bit and sporting the Target logo, of course) to the affected area. What’s even better, these “clinic appendages” would operate outside of, but adjacent to, the store proper, preventing contact between hapless shoppers and contagious clinic patients.

Industry-altering innovations pop up all the time. For an architect who offers design services to medical professionals, being aware of these container clinics and their possible uses could prove to be a great advantage. Savvy architects out there should be lining up to talk with Palermo and Young; who knows what fantastic partnering opportunities could result?

Best of luck to you, Gabrielle and Susanna!

Here we are, Part 2 of 12 Factors that Can Make or Break Your Design Business. In this series I highlight elements that shape your company’s operating environment. Last week we talked about why you must know your clients’ industries (hint – it has direct bearing on what services they need from you!). Now on to another key piece of the competitive landscape puzzle—competitors.

Broadly speaking, you have two kinds of competitors: direct and indirect. Direct competitors are exactly who you think they are—the firms you battle for clients, the companies you fight for projects, the businesses you strive to out do. Although it goes without saying, I’ll say it anyway: these guys should be on your radar. And I’ll bet they already are.

Another facet of direct competitors involves emerging companies within your industry. These are the little guys you haven’t come across yet but who nonetheless have their sights set on you. Again, keep an eye (and ear) out for these underdogs who can encroach on your clients bit by bit.

Indirect competitors are even sneakier than underdogs, not necessarily by design but by positioning. You see, indirect competitors come from outside your immediate industry; they offer a service or product that can be a substitute for—or entirely replace—what you do. You may think you are safe from the indirect-competitor trap, but very few businesses are. Because they fall outside of your industry proper, you may fail to consider them at all. If so, you won’t see your indirect rivals coming until they have already arrived. By then it is often too late.

To bring the idea of indirect competitors into the design realm, let’s say you provide architectural services for people building eco-friendly vacation homes. What product or service could replace what you offer? How about the rash of environmentally sensitive prefab and modular homes now available, such as those offered by BluHomes and Eco Cottages? True, these kits may have been “architect designed” to start, but then they move beyond—and undercut—the architect who provides one-off homes. Your client can easily order a modular, customized eco home to fit his needs instead of turning to you for a unique design. So do you count these prefab companies among your competitors? You should.

Or perhaps you design small-scale medical facilities, such as private doctors’ offices and medical clinics. The growing trend toward merging walk-in clinics with mass-market retailers (i.e., get your kid’s ear infection treated at your local CVS or Safeway) could definitely mess with your client base. As the country’s healthcare-delivery system changes, more patients’ needs will be met outside traditional doctors’ offices. As a result, your designs for such offices will be needed less and less. Target’s walk-in clinic becomes your arch nemesis.

The best defense against indirect competition is preparedness—being aware, and ready, to shift your service offerings as the competitive environment changes. Ferret out and focus on indirect competitors. ( Competitive intelligence can help you identify these unknown rivals). Aside from reducing your chance of being caught off guard, an understanding of your indirect competitors can foster new opportunities for your business’s growth. For example, in the case of the small-scale medical facility designer, if she is aware of the growing healthcare trend merging mass-market retail with walk-in clinics, she could parlay her medical-office experience into this new realm. Not only would this designer get a jump on direct competitors, she’d leverage an threatening element of indirect competition—the shifting healthcare market—to her advantage.

So take a step back and think: Who are your indirect competitors?