Apple has been rolling out game-changing products in steady succession, while keeping their R&D spending at $4.6 billion, or roughly 10% of earnings over the last four years. And as Steve Cheney points out, that’s at odds with the strategy of some of its competitors.

Example: Microsoft, in contrast, have spent a whopping $31 billion—700% that of Apple—over the last four years.

Real innovation starts by thinking long and hard about your customers’ problems, about how solutions to those problems are being unmet, and then finding better ways to solve those problems in ways that benefit your customers…first.

The outcome: Apple gets more content, Lulu gains a distributor and authors gain access to a highly lucrative market of readers who buy a lot stuff online, including books. Everyone wins.

Lulu’s timing could not be better for this. Have a look at the kinds of sales that ebooks are generating these days. According to the International Digital Publishing (IDP) Forum, ebooks generated some $165.8 million in sales in 2009…more than triple what was reported in 2008 ($53.5 million) and more than five times the record for 2007 ($31.5 million).

Data: International Digital Publishing Forum

This is an niche industry that has barely…just barely begun to hit its stride.

Results for 2010 are already described by the IDP as being off the charts…some $60 million in January and February alone, putting it on track to score some $300 million in sales by the time the year is through.

That has lead me to one of my newest gift products: custom-made postage stamps.

After all, even in this digital age, just about everyone I know still needs stamps…and just about everyone I know in business is always short a stamp or two for mail-outs. So when an envelope arrives at a client’s doorstep with a full sheet of personalized stamps (authorized by Canada Post*) ready to use, I can almost hear their cheers right across town.

The feedback I’ve received on this product has been great, and that’s included plenty of interest in learning more about how it’s done. So here’s a summary in three easy steps.

1. Visit Canada Post’s Picture Postage website. It explains all the important technical and legal points that you need to know about.

2. Choose the digital image that you want to feature on your personalized stamp. Make sure it’s a photo you own and have the legal right to feature on a stamp. A company logo might be allowed, but exercise good judgment. Remember that your client is going to want to use the stamps on their own mailouts, so make sure that it doesn’t look as though you’re putting your brand on their correspondence. My approach has been to use photos from my personal collection, but decide what works best for you.

3. Review the finished product and send to your client. When your order ships to you from Canada Post, it features a full sheet of stamps, plus a card-sized reproduction. I forward this along with a short note to my client saying thanks for their ongoing business. I also find it helpful to mention that yes, indeed, these are real stamps and valid at domestic letter rates in Canada.

* American readers take note: there’s a similar service for custom US postage available right here.

Trend-spotting author Jeremy Gutsche relates a great story about this in his book Exploiting Chaos. A few years ago while working for a leading Canadian credit card company, he and his group had an insight: “customers didn’t think about their rates as numbers, they thought about whether or not the rates were fair.”

Rather than advertise the lending rate on their card as a percentage, they switched to presenting it as “Prime +2,” which meant that their lending rate was just two percentage points higher than the prime rate set by the Bank of Canada. Sales skyrocketed.

Granted being a great speaker is a skill that takes time to master. But it really is a skill that anyone can learn. And with the right advice to get you started, your next speaking engagement can be something that you’ll actually look forward to. 

Earlier, I posted five tips to help you get started.

Here are five more (with more to come)… 

6. Don’t worry about whether you’re funny.
Some people think that they absolutely must have funny-one liners in a speech to help break the ice. But most people just aren’t gifted with coming up with good material and delivering it in a way that makes people laugh…genuinely. So for most of us out there with a tin ear for comedy, we make do just by concentrating on putting together a great speech that people can relate to. And that takes me to my next point…

7. Don’t just be yourself. Share an experience.
When you’re speaking to an audience, it’s like making an acquaintance for the first time. And things tend to go well when people feel comfortable and can identify with their speaker. That’s the real key to breaking the ice. Early on in your presentation, try to share an experience with your audience…one that tells them a little bit about you. By doing this, you became less of a stranger
to the umpteenth degree. You’re on the road to being a friendly, familiar face.

8. Help the audience with cues.
For most, listening is a difficult skill. Many people get lost easily in a presentation unless you help them along with some simple cues. First, get right to the point explaining what your presentation is about. And be specific. If you can’t sum it up in a sentence, there’s a good chance your message risks getting lost. Next, give your audience a list of the things you are going to cover. In less than a minute, those folks sitting in front of you will know exactly what to expect, and they’ll appreciate you for it.

9. It don’t mean a thing if it ‘aint got that swing.
That’s what the songwriting powerhouse of Duke Ellington and Irving Mills once said. And there’s a truth in there that applies to public speaking. A great speech is about more than ideas. It’s about conveying emotion. When people can identify with the emotional space where you’re coming from, they become a lot more receptive to the ideas you put forward, including your call-to-action.

10. Practice, practice, practice.
Ideally, you should do a dry-run of your speech in the room where it’s going to be delivered. But that’s not always possible. Even if your practice area is your living room and your makeshift audience is the family dog and a photo of Aunt May, the more you rehearse the more comfortable you’ll be at the podium.

Forget the labels on things, pull together ideas that you might otherwise assume would be an impossible match — the results can sometimes be really surprising. 

Case in point: could you ever imagine Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis jamming on the same stage? Neither could I, until I saw this…