Archive for February, 2011
by Rob Paterson
February 28, 2011 at 3:51 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Adoption, Paradigm
Of course everybody gets 2.0 now don’t they. After all even the Oscars were designed for Social Media. Large organizations are piling in.
But is this true? Certainly everyone is on board with the tools now. God I recall Jevon and I talking to CIBC 6 years ago and they thought we were martians. Now everyone is on Facebook!
But how many people “get” what is underpinning these tools? Not many and I have little hope for many too.
Why?
Because underneath all the hype, most of us see the world the same way as before. We see what we see with our eyes. Just like most people saw the world 500 years ago. Then, if you used your eyes, the world seemed flat. This perception allowed to you to do a lot of useful things. You also saw that the sun came up every morning and circled the Earth. This did not ruin your day and was also a useful observation. That is of course unless you wanted to sail a long distance. Or calculate a trajectory or build a complex building or in fact do almost anything that we take for granted in the modern world. Imagine Watt explaining the steam engine to the Vatican? Imagine trying to build a suspension bridge? Imagine anyone doing chemistry – see where I am going.
But we are not so stupid today are we? We don’t rely only on our eyes to tell us about reality?
Well here is your test. Can you see that all these things are in fact a fractal scaling of the same thing?
Can you see that what appears on the surface to your eyes as being unique, different and discrete are in reality the same and that all co-evolve and affect each other? Do you see them therefore as all obeying the same rules, the rules of networks? Can you see how with this perspective everything becomes actually quite simple to understand? All we need to know is how nature governs networks.
Or do you see them all as Objects that are are different – that interact only directly as objects do? That are therefore so complex that we can only know tiny bits of them. So medicine and science are all about the bits and the direct interactions. That we inhabit a Newtonian world where the geometry of nature’s interactions do not apply?
For is this not the prevailing paradigm?
This is why people seek to have masses of followers – this is a Newtonian idea about mass and gravity. It has nothing to do with co-evolution and true influence.
This is why it’s still ALL ABOUT ME! So long as I am OK it’s OK!
This is why medicine makes no sense and each week a new contradictory idea is floated. This is why science is lost in minutiae. This is why our organizations are so toxic. We have designed them to be Newtonian but we are fractal co-evolving networks. This why our mass education system is such a mess. This is why even how we fight our wars means that we have to lose them. This is why we think that there is a conflict between the planet and our economy.
We have been captured by a simple and wrong idea of us all being objects that bounce off each other like tennis balls whereas we are really magnetized iron filings.
No amount of Facebook Strategies will help you if you don’t get this.
The world is not flat and you and I are not an object.
If you want to know more about this new paradigm of reality – I have the great honor to introduce you to the work of Alexei Kurakin – a genius – a Galileo of our time.
by Bill Ives
February 28, 2011 at 4:57 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, IT Market, Innovation
Software innovation goes way beyond the high tech industry as more products are increasingly computer driven. For example, I saw recently that the new Chevy Volt has four-fold increase in computer components over prior cars. Mike Gilpin at Forester looked into this issue and recently offered the report, How To Foster Software Innovation To Exploit The Economic Recovery. His contributors in the report included Mary Gerush, Roy C. Wildeman, Dave West, Tom Grant, and David D’Silva. They interviewed experts in a dozen organizations that excel at software innovation and recorded the important process, organizational, cultural, geographical, and staffing practices that promote software innovation. I was pleased to get a review copy.
Their research focus was as much on the leadership concerns of management as it was on the enabling technology. One of these concerns was an expectation that 2010 (and beyond) would bring a return to growth and a return to a focus on innovation as the top priority. At the same time they felt that they had, “in one way or another (outsourcing, attrition, soul-destroying management practices) frittered away their innovation competency, and that they needed to take urgent action to get it back.” I have read about this shift from cost cutting to innovation in other sources and it is certainly a welcome change.
Mike reported that Forrester is forecasting growth of 9.2% for the software industry in 2010 off a somewhat depressed 2009 base. Other industries will grow at varying rates, but Forrester expects information technology to play a significant role in the strategies of many enterprises aiming to return to profitability and growth. It is nice to see growth as a goal and not just profits. We certainly need growth.
They feel that what Forrester calls, Smart Computing, will play a significant role. This smart computing is defined as:
“A new generation of integrated hardware, software, and network technologies that provide IT systems with real-time awareness of the real world and advanced analytics to help people make more intelligent decisions about alternatives and actions that will optimize business processes and business balance sheet results.”
I put the whole quote here because I am a big believer in real-time awareness and the use of analytics. The transparency within enterprise social media offers a rich opportunity here and a number of people see this use of analytics to be the next major step in enterprise 2.0. Analytics are not limited to social media but social media offer a new form of analysis – what people say and think, and not simply how the transactions and processes are running.
The report offers some examples where software innovation can play a major role including connecting mobile customers to a business through direct connections with mobile apps such as the Nationwide Mobile for iPhone app, the State Farm Pocket Agent, or the Pizza Hut iPhone app. I have seen elsewhere that the majority of computer interactions will soon shift from desktop computers to smart phones so firms should move into this channel full force. Another area is increasing the intelligence brought to a point of sales experiences by knowing more about the customer to make additional recommendations for product use of related sales.
Software innovation comes in two flavors; incremental and disruptive. The report expands this to four flavors incremental depth or incremental breath and disruptive that brings out a new product to an existing category and the creation of a new category. Each has their value and each begins by listening to customers but it does not end there. The other path is predicting want customers might want in the future and then validating this with them.
The report goes into great detail on these and related issues. One of their concluding recommendations is to develop a social media strategy to compliment your software strategy. This can help with implementation. You can find the report at the Forrester site.
by Bill Ives
February 25, 2011 at 3:01 am · Filed under
Collaboration, Community, Social Media
I had the pleasure of attending a very useful meeting recently on a very snowy day in Cambridge, Mass. But then most days are snowy in Cambridge this winter. The Hyper-Social Summit sponsored by the Human 1.0 Network covered ways to create successful online communities. It is based on research conducted by Francois Gossieaux cofounder of the Human 1.0 Network and Ed Moran, Director of Product Innovation at Deloitte’s Global technology, Media, and Telecommunications Group. Their book, The Hyper-Social Organization, covers this research in more detail.
Here are some highlights from their research. First they found that bad practices in online communities are enjoying rapid adoption. We need to look at the human issues in online communities rather than just the tools. Reciprocity is one key issue and a basic human reflex. If you act without reciprocity it can hurt the community so humans have developed a sense of fairness. There has been a lot of research to support. Fairness is even more important than transparency.
People can use a social framework or market framework to evaluate a situation. Key is getting people to use a social framework because it leads them to develop better connections and act more fairly. Sometimes money gets in the way of this fairness. Companies want to set up ways to encourage community participants to use a social framework within their community. We also love status. This works well with communities but we need to be creative on this and allow for a refresh of the status ranking. People get disinterested if they feel they have no chance for status.
I created a three part series on providing my notes in more detail. Here are the links.
Creating Successful Online Communities – Part One: Overview
Creating Successful Online Communities – Part Two: Success Factors
Creating Successful Online Communities – Part Three; Research Findings
by Bill Ives
February 22, 2011 at 3:21 am · Filed under
FASTforward'09
Here is a useful Gilbane research report on Smart Content in the Enterprise by Geoff Bock, Dale Waldt, and Mary LaPlante. It covers XML applications. As the authors note, these application have long proven value with reusable componentized content. However, it has been hard for XML champions to get greater acceptance within the enterprise. The report explores this parado. Thr authors looked at both failures and successes to try and abstract common points that could be used by firms wanting to make greater use of the potential within XML.
To answer these questions, they talked with business and technology leaders connected with successful XML deployments and supplemented this with their own experience in XML implementations. The key findings include a shift toward an outward facing customer impact view of content practices rather than a focus on internal operational efficiencies.
The authors write that this change in focus for finding value is causing a reversal in how applications are designed. Rather than starting with the content creation process for greater efficiency, successful applications of XML begin with the content delivery process to increase value to the user. Then they work backward to the creation effort. This reversal has sparked a demand for new ways to enrich content with XML tags for better embedded metadata. The focus on the end state of content use has also broadened the range of contributors to its creation. It has also encouraged the additional of more social components.
The authors use the term “smart content” to describe this new use of XML. It is granular at the right level, useful across applications, and supports collaboration. All of these are traits that can be useful in the more social enterprises and Web sites that are emerging and, according to the research, benefits are there. It makes sense to me and it seems that smarter use of XML is one way to ride the current wave of interest in social applications. The report is addressed to both implementers and vendors in this space and should provide great value to both.
The report concludes that it is important to focus on four content factors: granularity, enrichment, interoperability, and collaboration. The built in granularity needs to be complex enough to support effective repurposing and simple enough to not make this repurposing too difficult. Enrichment guidelines follow this just enough advice. Interoperability is supported by rich tags. The report offers the example of combining directory listing with location information to offer localized content. Collaboration can be enhanced by getting the right content to the right users through smarter content.
The report offers a rich set of findings, case examples, practical advice, and addresses the change management issues required to make effective use of smart content. If you plan to make effective use of XML or you are building applications to address this market, this report should provide valuable insights. It is publicly available for download at the Gilbane web site.
by Joe McKendrick
February 21, 2011 at 12:25 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Software, Social Computing, Social Media
I’m often skeptical of the multi-billion-dollar market predictions made by analyst firms. But social customer relationship management (CRM) is definitely an emerging portion of the enterprise 2.0 space, and it’s helpful to see what kind of growth it may generate.
Gartner, for one, just issued a prediction that the CRM market will enter a “three-year shake up” in 2011, as a number of key trends take hold. Sales, marketing and customer service technologies, projects and implementations will all see rapid changes over the next
few years, the consultancy predicts. As Gartner analyst Ed Thompson puts it:
“Over the next three years, social CRM will continue its exponential rise, software as a service (SaaS) will become routine, salesforce.com will reshuffle the market order, and consultants and system integrators will sell their own CRM software.”
By 2015, one-third of spending on new CRM software will be SaaS, Gartner predicts. In 2009, 24 percent of the CRM software market was delivered by SaaS, and this rose to more than 26 percent in 2010, up from virtually zero in 1999.
Gartner also says by 2013, spending on social software to support sales, marketing and customer service processes will exceed $1 billion worldwide. This compares with Gartner’s forecast of more than $12 billion for overall spending on CRM software in 2012, means that social CRM will encompass approximately eight percent of all CRM spending in 2012, up from approximately four percent in 2010.
Gartner issued recommendations for companies interested in social CRM solutions:
- “Determine if there are any social CRM projects already under way; look in the marketing or customer service departments first.”
- “Calculate the likelihood that you will be forced to start something in 2011 ? your industry and culture are the best indicators.”
- “Find case studies specific to your industry that can provide examples of what is possible, and share them with other decision makers in your organization.”
- Don’t try to bypass the IT organization in moving to social CRM solutions, Gartner advises. “Instead, involve IT in purchase decisions early on to avoid the most-frequently cited downstream issue of data integration, and to address potential concerns about inadequate security, scalability and privacy.
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