The Wednesday-morning quarterbacking has begun in earnest as people pick apart the campaign strategies of the winners and losers. Jack and Suzy Welch chimed in at Business Week with their disappointment at McCain's loss as well as some high-level views on what business leaders can take away from the successes and failures of the two candidates:
Listening to the analysts during last night’s televised election results shows, I too was struck by what we can learn from the two efforts — more specifically how the principles of innovation were so cleary in evidence in this election. Let’s look at how a few of the key models we advocate to drive corporate growth were applied by the Obama camp to generate a significant win:
- Target nonconsumers — when a company is able to connect with a segment of the population who are not buying a product or solution and convert them, growth follows. The Obama team embraced this, looked beyond the Democratic “base” and even the registered Independents and sought to engage first time voters. The result? The highest voter turnout (64.1%) since 1908 (65.7%) with 68% of first time voters going for Obama.
- Look for opportunity at the bottom of the pyramid — instead of seeking big ticket donations and endorsements from key party pundits by aligning his message to their narrow needs, Obama sought support from a very broad base and raised a record amount of funding from first time donors through small, internet-based donations.
- Rethink your business model — Obama used technology to reach and engage a younger voting community and encouraged others to do the same. Who can forget Obama-girl at the top of the YouTube charts?
By contrast, McCain did everything we would expect from one about to be disrupted:
- Focus on your best customers — for this campaign McCain moved away from his popular bi-partisan approach and played to the conservative base. His selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate was widely regarded as a move to bring his ticket back to the “right” and appease long-time critics of his in the Republican party.
- Ignore the threat — McCain secured the Republican nomination in March, but was largely quiet during the balance of the hotly contested Democratic primary through the summer. By not using this time to develop his own grass-roots support network in all 50 states, he yielded valuable ground to the Democrats who used the free news cycles to generate additional momentum for their eventual nominee.
- Cramming — running a new solution through the traditional business model. McCain was not a typical Republican. This was a large part of his appeal and likely one of the reasons he did so well in spite of the economic climate and general distaste for his party at the moment. However, he took his non-traditional approach and crammed it into a very traditional campaign. He engaged the same leaders who had run Bush’s campaigns, he cut himself off from the media, and became the Republican candidate instead of John McCain. Utilizing traditional campaign tactics smothered his unique qualities instead of bolstering them.
Of course, there were a lot more forces at play that helped determine the outcome of the election but nevertheless, these contrasts were clear to me as I watched the map get filled in last night.
