An outlet for musings, observations and futureneering from the company helping you to transition into the connection economy
We have a few clients who work in the news and publishing industries. These industries have always seemed out of date to me, but I recognise that many of these companies are working hard (scrambling?) to get into the digital age. One of the best articles I have read on this issue comes from Fast Company, and was written by Richard Watson under the Innovation heading of the magazine. You can read the article here.
A quick summary of what newspapers can do to become 21st century compliant:
In the The Sunday Times in the UK today, there is a bizarre story about BAE Systems (read it here). This company produces a variety of products, mainly military armaments. In a report on Sunday, BAE Systems announced that they would be pursuing an environmentally friendly approach to their products, including quieter missiles (so that as they zoom over your home to destroy the village down the road, you’re not irritated by the noisy whine?); military cars, ships and planes with lower CO2 emissions (so that future generations do not live in a messed up world? Oh wait, these vehicles are used for mass destruction - at least they won’t affect the ozone layer, though); missiles that have bio-degradeable components (so that after its killed your friends, it can bring new life by providing compost for your flower bed?); and my favourite: bullets with a lower lead content and missiles with reduced toxins.
Are these guys absolutely joking?
This is an example of the corporate world gone mad. Sure, we preach to our clients that environmental care is becoming an important part of a company’s reporting and ethics. Sure, we tell our clients that in this “connection economy”, we need to be concerned about what our clients are concerned about. And “being green” is important! But, no amount of “green” will cover the red stain of blood on the hands of arms manufacturers. I can only see this bringing ridicule to BAE Systems. I can’t see any government, militia or terrorist changing buying habits of armaments based on environmental factors. Can you?
News broke this past week that HP board chairperson, Patricia Dunn, had ordered a probe into how information was being leaked to the press. This investigation led to the obtaining of personal phone records of some directors, and at least two reporters covering HP. The investigation conducted by a company hired by HP used a controversial technique called “pretexting” to obtain the personal phone records of silicon.com sister site CNET News.com reporters Dawn Kawamoto and Tom Krazit, California state prosecutors said. Pretexting is an illegal method of obtaining personal records through misrepresentation of someone’s identity.
Dunn has resigned as chair of the Board, although she will remain on as a director. Another director has been forced to resign. The issue was raised by a non-executive director who resigned earlier this year in protest over the investigation, and took his complaint to the AG.
Right now, this story is simply proof that the connection economy exists. Its not just what you sell anymore, its who you are that people are worried about. How HP responds will be critical, and interesting to watch. An unanswered question for me is: “who was leaking the information, and did the inquiry come to any conclusions?” The answer to that question may be HP’s rescue boat. But, in this new era of transparency, its not just what you do, but how you do it that counts. HP are finding this out the tough way.
Every marketer says that they do. Companies swear that they know their customers. But, as a fantastic article from Fast Company shows, most organisations are just fooling themselves. Its a long read, but well worth it - from Fast Company, Issue 34, April 2000. Read it here (or below).
Key messages:
This is one of the cornerstones of the connection economy. This is worth taking seriously!
Continue reading ‘Listen to your customers’
Today is another anniversay. It is 29 years since Steve Biko died in police detention in South Africa. Steve Biko was a leader who focused on helping black people in South Africa to gain self esteem. He founded the Black Consciousness movement, and talked about Black is Beautiful. Of all the lives lost during apartheid, for me personally, his is the most tragic. I really wish I could have met him. By all accounts he was a brilliant human being.
One of my favourite “memories” of him came through a re-enactment of one of his trials in the movie, “Cry Freedom“. Asked by a white judge, “Why do you call yourself black, when your skin is brown?”. He replied with, “Why do you call yourself white, when you are actually pink?”. Cheeky, self-assured, witty and correct.
But someone told me recently of another famous Biko saying, and it is in this that Biko showed his prescient genius. He apparently believed that Africa’s gift to the world would be our ability as Africans to put the humanity back into business, government and organisations. He couldn’t have been more right.
Read Aiden’s memories of Biko previously posted at this blog.
Here’s a great description of the “connection economy”:
A profound, but silent, transformation of our society is afoot. Our industrial system is generating more goods and services than at any point in history, delivered through an ever-growing number of channels. Superstores, boutiques, online retailers, and discount stores proliferate, offering thousands of distinct products and services. This product variety is overwhelming to consumers. Am Ibuying the right digital camera? Am I getting the best treatment for my chronic ulcer? Am I signing up for the right service? Simultaneously, thanks to the propagation of cellphones, web sites, and media channels, consumers haveincreased access to more information, at greater speed and lower cost, than ever before. But who has the leisure and the proficiency needed to sort through and evaluate all these products and services? The burgeoningcomplexity of offerings, as well as the associated risks and rewards, confounds and frustrates most time-starved consumers. Product variety has not necessarily resulted in better consumer experiences.For senior management, the situation is no better. Advances in digitisation, biotechnology, and smart materials are increasing opportunities to create fundamentally new products and services and transform businesses. Major discontinuitiesin the competitive landscape - ubiquitous connectivity, globalisation, industry deregulation, and technology convergence are blurring industry boundaries and product definitions.These discontinuities are releasing worldwide flows of information, capital, products, and ideas, allowing non-traditional competitors to upend the status quo.At the same time, competition is intensifying and profit margins are shrinking. Managers can no longer focus solely on costs, product and process quality, speed, and efficiency. For profitable growth, managers must also strive for new sources of innovation and creativity.
Thus, the paradox of the 21st-century economy: Consumers have more choices that yield less satisfaction. Top management has more strategic options that yield less value. Are we on the cusp of a new industrial system with characteristics different from those we now take for granted?…. The answer, we believe, lies in a different premise centered on co-creation of value. It begins with the changing role of the consumer in the industrial system.
The most basic change has been a shift in the role of the consumer - from isolated to connected, from unaware to informed, from passive to active. The impact of the connected, informed, and active consumer is manifest in many ways.”
The Future Of Competition: co-creating a unique value with customers, by C K Prahalad and Venkat Ramaswamy
Have you noticed how busy everyone is? It’s almost as if the phrase “things are hectic” is usurping the inimitable response of “fine” when asked, “So, how are you?” Shawn Callahan over at Anecdote has termed this the busy-ness meme. So, as a unit of cultural meaning, is this meme a representation of how busy we really are or a self-defense for not being busy?
In the 31 Aug 06 edition of strategy+business, Michael Schrage wrote an excellent article about using the power of Web 2.0 type thinking to involve customers in innovation processes. Read it here.
His basic point needs little elaboration: Involving customers in the innovation process can add value to new product designs. He is arguing for more than just “market research” - a process that can so easily be manipulated to achieve the results you’re looking for. Like many of us who believe that interactive technologies are causing a shift in values and institutional power, he is arguing that we need to extend an invitation to customers to actively assist in the whole process of innovation, especially when considering new features and functionality on existing products and services.
We don’t do nearly enough of this. If we did, I am certain we’d get more customer loyalty, too.
IBM CEO Samuel Palmisano has announced what he calls an Innovation Jam - an attempt to come up with new business and product ideas by leveraging the collective intelligence of IBM’s 100,000-strong ‘crowd‘.
According to Yahoo! Business, IBM has “used these online brainstorming sessions to mine for new business opportunities in 2001, to exchange ideas about good management in 2002, and to discuss IBM values in 2003″ - this is not a new idea, but is unique in that IBM is looking for ideas from clients, suppliers, consultants, resellers, employee family members, etc. They are going open source with innovation - 2 x 72 hour sessions in which stakeholders pump ideas into the system - “IBM won’t own any of the nuggets that emerge” - but are willing to put up to $100 million behind the strongest concepts.
When we speak about a sense of significance, this could be an implied point anyway, that significance needs not be found in the workplace only. Reading an article this morning on companies that promote and belief in social awareness, I realized that today’s talent will also be find significance in projects outside work.
It is very difficult to be passionate and fulfilled whilst doing an audit, yet if you were making enough money to support a project and something that spoke to one’s purpose, today’s talent may give loyalty in exchange for that. Kind of work-purpose integration.
Co-incidentally I’m meeting more people who are starting companies in order to fuel or support something they feel passionate about. My question really after all this is,” is Today’s talent use their work as something that funds their economic engine, in order that they may do something more purposefull with their lives in other forums?”
Pardon me for a parochial comment (about cricket and about South Africa), but this caught my eye…
Jones is distraught and repentent (see his statement below), but he is also fired. In a connected and flat world like the one we live in, you can’t get away with any form of prejudice like that. And public commentators (of any sort) cannot get away with private prejudice for too long either (long live the impending death of spin doctors everywhere!!).
Continue reading ‘Dean Jones sacked after ‘terrorist’ remark’
Joshua Schachter once sent me an email. At the time, I had no idea who he was – his response had come from a request I’d sent to the del.icio.us ‘support team’. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site, I needed some help figuring out how to use it (being new to the concept) and support@del.icio.us seemed a good place to start.
His email was dated 11 October 2005. Not two months later, on 9 December, Joshua announced on his personal blog that Yahoo! had snatched up his fledgling Web 2.0 startup as part of their extreme 2.0 makeover. Nobody is really sure what was paid, but considering the bulk of the rumours estimated the price at USD30 million, give or take ten percent, Joshua did ok.
I’m not sure what it is about del.icio.us. It certainly isn’t pretty. In fact, it’s arguably one of the ugliest darn sites on the web. It might be the name – the name is downright smart, using the .us domain to complete a sublimely catchy Web 2.0-ish lilt. At least I got excited about that. Perhaps it’s all the extensions and plug-ins the del.icio.us community has created to integrate functionality into popular web browsers and blogging platforms. Then again, it might just be that I have found del.icio.us to be the least flashy, most functional, most valuable, most sustainable Web 2.0 application (and information resource) on the internet.
One of the more difficult Connection Economy concepts for people to get their heads around is the concept that Edward de Bono dubbed, “co-opetition”. This is defined as the ability of competitors to co-operate.
Watching the longest Tour de France stage yesterday (230 km’s!!), with an early breakaway of 5 riders, that eventually put more than half an hour between themselves and the peleton, it struck me that professional cycling provides a great example of co-opetation. Those five riders had to work together and co-oridinate their efforts in order to get ahead of the pack. But they all knew that about 5km from the end, one of them would break ranks and force the competition to re-emerge and dominate for the last sprint to the line. As soon as the first person broke ranks, the co-operation would be over. But until that point, they’d work well together and get an advantage.
Simple picture, but it works for me.
Co-opetition: This was a word invented by Edward de Bono, that described co-operation between competitors. This is a feature of the Connected World.
A small story caught my eye this past week. Recently, two employees of Coca-Cola (at head office in the USA) were busted trying to sneak out secrets, especially the recipe for a new Coke flavour. They got caught because the person they were trying to sell the secrets to contacted Coca-Cola and tipped them off.
Who was this honest person? It was Pepsi Cola Company. Whether or not Pepsi actually saw the recipe before telling Coca-Cola is a moot point. The bottom line is that in pretty much every industry in the world, the competitors are watching each other so closely that the competition is NOT based on WHAT they sell, but rather on WHO they are. That’s why this kind of action is so important. It goes to who you are.
Well done Pepsi!
Business 2.0 recently released its list of 50 People Who Matter NOW, and 10 People Who Don’t just to compliment it.
No huge surprises on the Top 50 Who Matter list, if you understand that the role of the consumer has changed dramatically in the last few years.
You see, Business 2.0 reckons the most important business person on the planet right now is…
… wait for it …
YOU!
Evidence of the “connection economy” is growing all the time. One of the key characteristics of this new era is the decreasing importance of tradition boundaries, and the increasingly significant role of connections. In particular, geographic barriers are being swept away in a tidal wave of technology-fuelled globalisation. The latest scrap of evidence of this emerging reality comes from the Anglican church (the “Church of England”).
Since 2003 when the American arm of the Anglican church, The Episcopalians, ordained an openly gay man, Gene Robinson, to the position of bishop there has been a growing divide in the global church body representing about 80 million people around the world. In particular, the African Anglicans who are mainly conservative and opposed to homosexuality have been pushing hard for the Americans to be disciplined or even kicked out of the Anglican Communion. The general body of the Episcopal church have refused to budge.
BUT, a number of individual churches that are more conservative have broken ranks. They have left their geographic diocese, and have oversight from another diocese. In the past, this has sometimes been done from “head office” in Canterbury directly, but now something new has happened. These American churches have connected with African diocese, and are now accountable to bishops thousands of miles away. This is actually outside of the Anglican rules, although technically it is within church law.
The bottom line is that the connection economy is impacting everything everywhere. As Thomas Friedman said, “The World is Flat”, and it is seriously Connected, too.
Read more about the Anglican Church in The Economist.
A few years ago, the super clever leaders of Dubai realised that oil was not going to last forever. Maybe only 20 years (some scaremongers think this is so), maybe 100 years, or maybe even more than that. But whatever the number, it wasn’t forever. So, what does a country that has nothing but sand and oil (and a coastline) do in this situation? The answer: reinvent itself. Not when the crisis is all over you like a rash, but rather, long before the pain hits you, and long before it smacks of desparation.
So, they set out to create the world’s greatest tourism destination. A bit like Disneyland on steriods. It started with a world class airport that become a massive international hub. It extended to hotels and shopping malls. And now, they have everything… I mean, EVERYTHING. The have the world in a series of man made islands, visible from space. They have a ski slope, a few world class rated golf courses… everything.
But they’re even better than that! In May, they hosted a massive international humanitarian trade fair, attracting thousands of NGOs and suppliers. They are also offering aid now as well. And by 2008, they promise to have built a “humanitarian city” - probably an “upmarket” Dubai-style refugee center. With all of this, Dubai is winning the hearts of the world - especially the third world. They understand connections (like the Americans don’t!). It should stand them in good stead - because these days its not just WHAT you sell, its also WHO you are that counts!
Continue reading ‘Dubai in the Connection Economy’
We’ve all heard of viral marketing, product placements in movies and TV, and know the power of word of mouth. But now Proctor & Gamble (P&G) have taken this a step further. They’ve started paying hundreds of thousands of moms (literally!) to drop their products into conversations and subtly promote P&G’s brand in their everyday interactions.
“By crafting product messages mothers will want to share, along with giving them samples, coupons, and a chance to share their own opinions with P&G, [they're] using personal endorsements to cut through advertising clutter. ‘We know that the most powerful form of marketing is an advocacy message from a trusted friend,’ says Steve Knox. The program is a state-of-the-art method for reaching the most influential group of shoppers in America: moms.” Read the full story from BusinessWeek here.
Like network marketing, this might work with Boomers, but I wonder how Gen Xers are feeling about it? I wonder what I would think of a product that was recommended to me, and I later discovered the person was rewarded for recommending it? And, most importantly, I wonder what I would think of the person who made the recommendation - originally supposedly just out of friendship, but now I discover for some personal gain?
I’m interested to know what others think of this venture.
I could back this up if I needed to, but my gut and all the evidence points to the fact that the “next Google” (the next big company that takes the world by storm) will come from one of the following industries:
A small little filler in the BusinessWeek magazine, 29 May 2006 edition, caught my eye. It is about what different people want in the physical layout of their offices. Interesting read:
What Do Men Want? A Thermostat
By Elizabeth Woyke
To build a better work space, consult the worker bees. In a poll conducted by Knoll, a furnishings maker, and research firm DYG, 850 workers at companies with 100 or more employees were asked what surroundings made them productive. Some 45% said they work best in private offices. The rest prefer collaborative spaces (16%), their homes (18%), or other sites outside the office (22%).
Some 40% of Gen Y workers, aged 18 to 29, said they like open office plans. (Just 18% said they would choose cubicle-like stations with panels for privacy). “Young people are saying this is how we expect and want to work,” says Christine Barber, Knoll’s director of workplace research. “That’s driving a trend toward more creative, interactive work environments.”
Then there’s what might be called the thermostat factor. Women listed eight attributes as having a “high impact” on productivity, including privacy, natural light, and the option of personalizing a space. Men named just one: the ability to control the air conditioning or heat.
Original source: click here.
A quote from “Governance in the Digital Age“, by John M. Eger:
This trend away from corporate community engagement must be reversed as we increasingly must compete for the high-tech knowledge worker. Corporate America needs to lead the way to help reinvent our communities for the global knowledge age. Together they need to find a way to start a community-wide dialogue to help define what our common future looks like and, in the process, bring these two forces or visions together.
The timing for such an effort is more urgent than ever, for as we enter the 21st century, creativity and innovation will be our greatest assets and, hopefully, lie at the heart of our greatest exports. But we must do so fully cognizant that a business-driven society that fails to embrace the values of its civil society, as Yankelovich has written, “without showing respect for its employees or customers, without inspiring people to give their creative best to their jobs, without employees and management understanding each other and without employees’ buying into management’s vision of the future (will) inevitably slip into mediocrity or worse.”
When three prisoners at the Guantánamo Bay Camp X-ray - America’s much maligned detention camp for “enemy combatants” that has kept prisoners of “war on terror” in a legal limbo for over 3 years - committed suicide earlier this month, the US Administration fumbled over its response. The first official statement was the one quoted in this post’s title. Colleen Graffy, America’s deputy assistant secretary for public diplomacy called it a “good PR move”. The commander of Guantánamo,said that by committing suicide they had committed an act of “asymmetrical warfare” against the United States.
The Economist has possibly the best succinct response to this event (see below, or read it here). (This piece is also a reminder for me of why I prefer British magazines to any other - just brilliant writing!!).
The critical question in the piece is this:
“The point, though, is that if much of the war against terrorism is a contest between values—in short, a PR war—America should be winning hands down. A brand that stands for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is an easier sell than a brand that stands for beheading unbelievers and reviving the Middle Ages.”
It strikes me that the reason America is not winning this no-brainer is that they don’t understand the Connection Economy. In this era, its less and less about WHAT you sell, and more and more about WHO you are and HOW you sell. America doesn’t get this - they think that a good “product” is good enough. It isn’t!!
Secondly, they don’t understand that today’s consumers are very quick to discount “spin”. They want to see a connect between what an organisation SAYS and what it DOES. Guantánamo is a huge disconnect. America has assumed that it can manage the disconnect between its own values (as stated by its Founding Fathers) and its current actions simply with a PR job. It cannot. As important as PR is in the Connection Economy, it can only work if it is telling the truth (i.e. that the underlying “product” actually does deliver and adds value).
The Connection Economy creates plenty of opportunities. But it can be pretty brutal as well.
Continue reading ‘Suicide: A Great PR Move’
SAP, the conservative German software company announced a month or so ago that it will pay out $ 381 million in 2010, to a few hundred managers, if the company is able to increase its market cap by 100% from a $57 billion starting point in 2006. The explanation to shareholders was “if you want extraordinary performance, you have to offer extraordinary incentives”.
This is a great example of what we believe needs to be done to attract, retain and release talent in your organisation - they must be able to benefit from their contribution. But there are some things SAP needs to be careful of:
I am sure that SAP are dealing with these and many other issues. This is a great thing they’re doing, and I wish them success.
There was report today on the radio about a warning given to British soldiers serving in Iraq: do not phone home on your cellphone!
The Iraqi insurgents are tapping into cellphone calls made by soldiers back to their families. Its not the content of these calls that is the problem (soldiers are well trained these days about what can and can’t be said), but rather the fact that the insurgents get the numbers of both the solider and their family, and then send threatening text messages, and make threatening phone calls. Basically, they’re transporting the terror from the battlefield to the homes of the soldiers. Imagine the terror this can create, and the difficult position it puts soldiers in, knowing they might be opening their families to the conflict in this terror-full way.
In this Connection Economy, “the war” is no longer “over there” (as one hit TV show calls it). Today, terrorists strike from anywhere to anywhere. But governments still try and fight them using traditional force. As with all things, the Connection Economy brings potential for great good, and great evil, too.
Conversations about knowledge continuity often relate to succession planning and the retirement of key older leaders. While these considerations are obviously important, they can mask the fact that, these days, business critical expertise and knowledge often reside lower down in the organisation and with younger employees. And when these younger people leave, they can threaten the life of the business itself. New thinking and strategies are required to ensure that businesses find out who knows what, understand how they know, create processes for transferring what they know, develop communities rather than stars and secure their future success by enabling business continuity.
For the past few decades this function has largely been delegated to “Knowledge Management� (KM), who in turn thought of it primarily as a technology solution. The amount of raw information that has been captured but not properly utilised or transferred into companies is frightening (and, very often, overwhelming and confusing, and therefore fairly useless). It is time to move beyond KM to “Wisdom Management�. Wisdom is knowledge that is not time-bound or linked to specific experiences. Rather, it is transferable and has the ability to be used, adapted and applied wherever it is needed.
The problem is that wisdom can’t be bought. It takes time. Or does it?
We live in a world of constant change. In particular, the last decade has seen a dramatic increase in staff turnover and voluntary employee churn. This has been driven mainly by a younger generation who tend to move every three years on average – and move not just within industries, but to entirely different careers, on a regular basis.
Continue reading ‘Business Continuity in Age of Constant Change’
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