Walking along any local high street, or surveying agents’ websites and other marketing materials, it’s easy to see those that have innovated and advanced. Especially as they can be in such contrast to those that haven’t.

There is arguably never a good time to invest in new products, services, and innovations, but the cost of delay may one day be terminal.

Let’s have a look at what we can learn from the clever people at Google and how they have tackled this problem…

Founders Eric Schmidt & Sergei Brin adopted the “70-20-10 Rule Of Innovation”. Whilst not strictly a rule, they most certainly use it as a ‘rule of thumb’. Broadly speaking, they allocate their human capital in 3 main buckets.

70% of their resources go into their ‘Core’ business which is that of ‘Search’, allowing us to ‘Google’ things.

20% of their resources go into ‘Adjacent’ services that complement their core functions. These are things like Gmail and Google Docs etc.

The final section is they allocate around 10% of their resources to ‘Transformational’ ideas. These may seem a bit crazy, but with huge upside, if they pay off. Driverless cars are perhaps their most high-profile example of this.

If we bring this back to agency, then what may this look like…

Core – 70% of our time spent on driving Sales, Letting & Property Management.

Adjacent – 20% of our time spent on complementary revenue streams such as Financial Services, Conveyancing Referrals, or Land & New Homes.

Transformational – What would you spend your 10% on here?

• Creating your own technology?
• Charitable work in your community?
• Creating a sub-brand for your agency?
• Turning the front office into a coffee shop?

…the list is endless!

If Blockbuster had the above ‘70-20-10’ DNA in their business, history may have been very different.

It’s much cheaper to learn from other people’s mistakes, so well worth giving it some thought!

Best,

Mike