steelcase blog: Docs for Change…, The Tao of OBA and S+S

Saw this today.  Mark Greiner, who runs Steelcase's "Workspace Futures" team spoke at a Transformation, a Symposium on Innovative Health Care Delivery recently at the Mayo Clinic.  Among the speakers that stood out to Mark was Michael Howe, CEO of MinuteClinic.   Here's an excerpt of what Mark had to say about Michael's presentation:   

"What caught my attention was the how cost effective and accessible MinuteClinic,… it’s been referred to as the 7-Eleven of patient acute care.  It proves that you don’t have to be everything to everyone to be valued.  MinuteClinic makes a few procedures available to large audiences, by integrating their service into the consumer’s lifestyle.  They locate where people frequent such as shopping areas,… how brilliant is that.  Get a Starbuck’s cappuccino and a flu shot as you shop for a new pair of shoes" (emphasis mine). 

With this, Mark neatly sums up in a short paragraph a good chunk of what I was trying to get at with my posts here and here on the consumer value stream!  :-)   

At the same time, his comment about MinuteClinic encapsulates a spirit that I would call the "Tao of OBA and S+S" (well, at least one version of S+S).  The notion that you can integrate your services into a consumers lifestyle, or an employee's workstyle, is really at the heart of the OBA and S+S philosophy.  Rather than, "If you build it, and spend a ton on marketing/training, they might come" (to your web site or to ERP/LoB system), the mind set is to bring capabilities direct to the customer and enable great experiences that empower them while fitting seamlessly into their existing lives and habits.