Author Archive
by Paula Thornton
October 14, 2008 at 2:08 pm · Filed under
2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0
Frankly I couldn’t have said it any better than Leo Babauta, in his piece Productivity 2.0: How the New Rules of Work Are Changing the Game. Indeed, he’s said a lot of relevant things I’ve wanted to say, but just haven’t gotten around to.
To put it all in context he compares two perspectives — Old School vs. Productivity 2.0 — across the following dimensions:
Crank It Out vs Deep Focus
Lots of Planning vs Just Start
Tons of Paperwork vs Automate
Multi-Tasking is Productive vs Multi-Project and Single-Task
Produce More vs Produce Less
Be Organized vs Tag, Archive and Search
Hierarchy vs Independence, Freedom and Collaboration
Work Longer Hours vs Work Fewer Hours
This all reinforces fundamental 2.0 thinking.
Way to go, Leo.
RELATED POSTS
-No related posts
by Paula Thornton
July 7, 2008 at 11:27 am · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Barriers, Culture, Enterprise 2.0
As 2.0 conversations continue, the topic of transparency has become a key area of focus. Harvard Business Press even suggests that transparency can be leveraged strategically. While many look to leverage transparency outside the organization, there is great benefit to be gained through increased transparency in leadership, internally.
Along with transparency, there is a need to increase a commitment to being more explicit, by uncovering the ‘unwritten’ rules and cultural mores and holding them up for observation, consideration and criticism. Hidden ‘rules’ and ‘agendas’ decrease the productivity of a company in endless subtle ways. It diminishes the critical trust factor within a culture. It creates a culture of protectionism — it encourages scarcity behaviors. Scarcity behaviors influence and are embraced by daily work efforts.In scarcity cultures, few are willing to state the obvious. Denial is the norm.
Even in more enlightened culture, often the obvious just isn’t so obvious to everyone, because it hasn’t been made explicit. Making ‘the obvious’ more explicit can add tremendous value. Unfortunately the mechanisms of choice for making a business ‘explicit’ are the typical tools most readily available to employees — a suite of office products (e.g. Word, PowerPoint, Excel). The tools are not necessarily the problem, the way in which they are employed is.
In making the work of a business more explicit, placeholders are important. A brand is one form of a placeholder. A brand is a shorthand. It’s an artifact that can elicit a variety of visions, thoughts and emotions. It can offer a simple synthesis of a much deeper collection of detail.
While a vast collection of information might be shorthanded by a tagcloud, there are design elements/features that can enhance a representation to elicit greater awareness or understanding — the typical tagcloud provides only minimal distinction. To illustrate this further, the functions offered at Wordle.net quickly deliver a wonderful branded shorthand of any set of del.icio.us links, or collection of terms. The visual image can serve as personal inspiration, a personal brand.
Even at the highest levels, businesses often lack visionary placeholders. While there are often supposedly well-crafted strategies and goals, across decades and across companies, I can’t recall a single line from any company strategy or goal I’ve ever been exposed to. I can remember more about what was ‘insincere’ about such statements — they never matched the reality we faced. If the artifacts were intended to represent a desired future state, I never witnessed the anticipated change ever occur.
Three-to-five-year animated movie projects use storyboards as placeholders. If we’d had a storyboard to frame the goals of the company and/or our path forward, I’d probably still have a copy of it. Indeed, I can recall most of the cartoons we hung in the halls outside of our cubes. Those were our makeshift artifacts of reality. They branded our beliefs. We have an inherent need for such artifacts. Where they are lacking formally, they show up in informal ways.
Businesses need more artifacts. In various business situations, I’ve watched as people have talked…and talked…and talked about issues and topics. Hours and days, wasted talking in circles about the same thing and not making any progress. It was all I could do to refrain from jumping up and interjecting myself into their efforts to help them. They needed the tools and the means to capture and look at their thoughts in a form other than simple discussion. Somehow, putting something down on paper changes the commitment to thought, but not just though words (e.g. minutes from a meeting, or endless documents). People more readily engage when they can ’see’ something. Artifacts are helpful because they:
- Provide a different way to represent what has been discussed. Often, when illustrated it becomes more clear that while the words might have been the same, the intent and meanings were not. A visual representation provides a way to further and deepen a common understanding.
- Serve as a placeholder for the last set of agreements. Things evolve. As understandings deepen and people have more time to thing about something, they uncover ways to make something better. A visual representation (which can/should include text), is a far more inspirational place to restart a conversation than a list of ‘minutes’. Notes or minutes should be relegated to actions or parking lot items (things important but perhaps not immediately relevant).
- Focus and Inspire. Sometimes the simple reminders of the basics are all that’s needed to gain focus and inspire effort to engage in additional work.
- Simplify and synthesize. A detailed document or an endless list can be overwhelming. While the details can be important, they can also add very little meaning. Sometimes a synthesized view is needed to provide the context to suggest the importance of the detail.
I’ve participated in a very compelling Structured Visual Thinking method, led by the talented efforts of John Caswell. Very dense with content, the artifacts can be overwhelming. But for those who have participated in the process, or have been walked through the story, the visuals effectively ‘brand’ the effort.
At a recent conference, the very talented Nancy White captured the key speaker messages in her own unique visual collections.
Businesses need to find new ways to make their reality explicit, so that everyone can look at it and discuss whether or not they agree with that reality and/or if they think the reality can or should remain the same.
If you move forward, but don’t know where you are, you can end up anywhere and nowhere all at the same time, but it’s not likely that you’ll end up where you really want to be.
by Paula Thornton
July 4, 2008 at 4:05 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Change, Enterprise 2.0, Social Networking, Social Work-net-ing, Socialprise
On this day of celebration of the United States revolution, I was celebrating the potential of another great revolution. Via social media and social networking, the stars and the moon aligned and the Age of Aquarius came into view.
While the theme of FASTforward ’08 was the User Revolution, the various keynote presentations actually presented compelling evidence for an even larger revolution: fundamentally redefining business models. I regularly leverage Don Tapscott’s allusion to an economic tsunami, and the corresponding revolutionary responses. But today I leveraged it in yet another critical way.
If there need be a voice to lead the charge in this revolution, the most credible voice is that of Jeffrey Hollender, President of Seventh Generation.
It occurred to me today that Jeffrey has quietly been engaged in the larger social ‘conversation’ for a long time — albeit in more traditional form of a newsletter, with a personal message from Jeffrey in each issue. But this realization only came about as a result of the serendipitous social-crossing (a random Twitter reference found) of a talk Jeffrey gave last month, at Sustainable Brands ’08.
My true enneagram one self was emotionally jumping up and down while listening to the following thoughts:
Just to give you a little context on where Seventh Generation is, after around 2000 the business was growing at about 25-30% a year. Last year the business grew 45%. This year-to-date, we’ve grown 65%.
I’m going to talk about something hard to see…something going on inside the company…the most challenging part of the equation…to build a culture…
Then he goes on to share artifacts of same.
If we come out with a marketing claim, are people in the company comfortable challenging that claim?
It also deals with things like my compensation [“Our Compensation Principles and Beliefs”]
Everybody gets a free massage every week…that’s an easy thing to do. [this is where my screaming kicked up a decibel or two] It’s easy to let dogs run around the office.
We provide 100% paid health insurance for our employees.
We ABSOLUTELY believe that employees should have an ownership stake in the company. You can’t build an equitable, responsible company if your people…don’t own part of that company.
I think that equity and justice don’t particularly exist inside most companies.
Yes, a fundamental element of Seventh Generation is social responsibility. But Jeffrey takes social responsibility to the next level, by investing in the social health and well-being of his employees. Socialprise is about fundamentally redesigning an organization around the strength of the human element. It’s about finally overthrowing over-yang’d classic business models with a healthier balance of yin. It is through the healthy balance that a company will be better prepared to survive the buffets of the economic onslaught.
Why? Because just as a tree that spreads and digs its roots deep, an enterprise is made more stable through the strength afforded it by all of its relationships. Socialprise is an enterprise that understands and capitalizes on the most important economic factor responsible for its existence: Relationship Equity.
Seventh Generation has always been fundamentally grounded in the definition of a Socialprise. They’ve not allowed newer forms of the social exchange to pass them by. Just last week, Seventh Generation started a Twitter account, to highlight key messages including posts from Jeffrey’s blog, Inspired Protagonist. I’m thrilled because I rely upon Twitter as a messaging filter more than RSS (as do others).
And now Jeffrey has joined forces with others to redefine The Future of Management, as instigated by Gary Hamel.
Mr. Hollender, count me in as a revolutionary recruit.
by Paula Thornton
June 6, 2008 at 5:06 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
I’ve been MIA, microblogging on Twitter rather than hanging out here. I’m switching channels for a moment to share relevant info. The Enterprise 2.0 2008 Conference, “Transform Your Organization” (next week in Boston), has a room set up in FriendFeed to track the ‘flow’ of the event. Helps facilitate virtual participation.
See you there, then.
by Paula Thornton
April 11, 2008 at 10:57 pm · Filed under
Innovation, Marketing, Social Networking, Twitter, Web 2.0
Talk about a unique use of social connections. I’ve reported elsewhere how Twitter is being leveraged by various entities (e.g. mining conversations) to tap the power of social connections. But a spur of the moment event occurred today where the power of connections surged in another direction. Like the strong weather that decended suddenly the past few days in Texas and elsewhere, I hardly had time to recognize what was happening.
The Zappos CEO has a Twitter account — @zappos. Somehow I was following his account (not something all that random for me — I check out the value-add of each ‘voice’ before I connect with them). Earlier today he tweets:
I will be randomly selecting someone to get a free pair of shoes from all @zappos followers later tonight. Thanks @pokai for the suggestion!
I remember reading the note earlier wondering if I had to fill out a form or something. I briefly checked out the Zappos site…and then just went on about my business.
Tonight I was tweeting a number of ‘rants’ as I was reading the fabulous book Power Healing, by Leo Galland (e.g. “74 percent of patients seen…for various common symptoms…no…diagnosis to explain the cause of their problems.” 74% failure rate!!!), when suddenly the following series of messages pass by.
And the free shoes winner is… @rotkapchen - congrats! @rotkapchen has 61 followers but only 3 were also following @zappos (cont..)
@marobella @paulisakson @karllong were @rokapchen ’s 3 friends! Congrats to all, thanks for playing! I will direct msg each of the winners!
I’m thinking @rotkapchen — that’s me! I’m shooting an email to my kids and a few friends when private tweets hit my phone as text messages, with instructions to provide my email address to claim my prize. I jump into the Twitter interface to send a private message back directly to the Zappos account, and minutes later I get an email with a code to go online and shop at Zappos.
I was still reeling trying to figure out exactly what I’d done when I read the tweet:
Winner was randomly selected from all @zappos followers, and up to 10 of winner’s friends also win if they also followed @zappos
This was shortly followed by:
Thanks all for playing, it was fun! Let’s do this again soon! @zappos any suggestions for making it more fun/exciting in the future!
This is not a small thing. Free pair of shoes? It’s not too often that I spend $150 on a pair of shoes! But I’ll sure have fun trying.
What was interesting was the email that I received from Zappos. In the interest of time, an existing process was obviously engaged. The fact that this process is already in place is what intrigues me the most. Check out the wording of the message, its implications and how many ways I’m given direct access to continue the conversation if I was to desire to do so (after having a horrific week trying to engage in conversations with other vendors causing me real grief):
We apologize for any inconvenience we may have caused. Let us assure
you this is not indicative of the high quality of service and products we
strive to provide our customers.
As a token of goodwill, Zappos is issuing a coupon in the amount of $xxx
for your next purchase at Zappos.
Below is the coupon code you will need to place the order.
csxxxxxxxxxx
You can use this coupon with your next order at Zappos.com anytime
within the next 90 days. To use this coupon, place the code in the space
provided at the bottom of the shopping cart page.
Please accept this as an apology for any inconvenience, and do not hesitate
to contact us if there is anything we can do to be of further assistance.
Please note, this coupon code is associated with your account and is only
valid when used with the email address attached to your account. This coupon
is not redeemable for cash and cannot be duplicated, altered or auctioned on
any web site. This coupon is non-transferable.
Sincerely,
Customer Loyalty Team
Zappos.com
Powered by Service
1-800-ZAPPOS-1 (1-800-927-7671) or
702-943-7677
e-mail: cs@zappos.com
http://www.zappos.com
Pretty much says to me, their byline “Powered by Service” is not just marketease.
Can you imagine what would happen to the GDP if this same commitment to customers and unique, direct involvement in new forms of interaction were to be embraced for ALL relationships (internal and external) by all companies? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, like with Zappos, we didn’t have to imagine it at all but could live it? Why, there probably would no longer BE a justification for a revolution at all.
And what about the others who also get to experience all of this because, simply by association, they too are winners? That’s pretty good payout for social networking. There’s already a lot of goodwill being spread around.
Now if you will excuse me, I have some shopping to do.
Postscript:
Industry colleague David Armano also wrote about this Zappos scenario and pointed out how it’s not about the tools, but about the unique ways in which they get used. Capitalizing (as is Forrester) on the crossover to Marketing audiences, he points out, it’s all about the ‘buzz’!
by Paula Thornton
March 31, 2008 at 5:07 pm · Filed under
Innovation, Long Tail, Social Work-net-ing, Wikinomics
While the keynotes from FASTforward ‘08 featured topics and elements of the ‘new’ Digital Natives, now there’s a whole new category: Long-tail natives of Social Work-net-ing
Read Lauie Parker’s experience journey, over the several-year evolution of P&G’s Long-Tail-of-Research via the Innocentive research collaboration model: Profiles in Innovation.
An issue for a lowly graduate student…grad students don’t exactly have the time or the resources to actually try the chemistry that is needed to demonstrate solutions to synthetic problems…. my first submitted solution…although I didn’t win…I received helpful critique and encouragement in the review of my solution.
How’d I become aware of this piece? Via the ‘draw’ of their recently-improved-format newsletter: Inside Innovation, delivered straight to my inbox.
Let’s just say that their overall design progression has been positive (but then I don’t rely on ‘opinion’, I look at the data).
Innocentive: July 2001
Innocentive: 2003-2007
Innocentive: Today
by Paula Thornton
February 28, 2008 at 1:03 pm · Filed under
Barriers, Change, Control, Economics, Enterprise 2.0, FASTForward '08, Freedom, Social Networking, User Revolution
Marketing Daily released a piece today that sounds remarkably similar to the key messages shared at FASTforward ‘08. It details the actions of Ford of Canada:
FORD MOTOR COMPANY OF CANADA is launching its biggest marketing push in six years with a campaign that focuses on letting Ford customers serve as brand ambassadors.
The ads carry the theme line: “A car is just a car until it’s powered by you.”
The campaign also includes a new Web site, Fordpoweredbyyou.ca. The site is intended as a social-media forum where consumers can air their opinions of the Ford brand, technology and vehicles.
“We don’t own the brand the way we used to; consumers own it. It’s not about claims any more. Consumers don’t want to be preached to. It’s about a dialogue and discovery, giving people the chance to comment,” he says. “We see it as more of a consumer site than our site.
I draw attention to the fact that Ford is an American company with the actions taking place in Canada. I add to that the fact that many of the brightest voices on this blog, are Canadians (I can only claim founder heritage in the 1600s).
I have noted more and more conversations where the opportunities to leverage 2.0 (or the willingness to embrace/adopt, typically in pursuit of innovation) are greater outside the US. The US was founded on the pursuit of freedom to act. With that freedom it became the economic leader of the free world. Are US enterprises typically places where people are free to act?
It would appear that the titans of industry need to take a step back and rethink their positions and their methods of conducting business. As Don Tapscott so powerfully illustrated in his keynote last week, the tsunami is on its way. There are crumbling foundations that will not withstand the force. And there won’t be armies bearing humanitarian aid in the aftermath.
by Paula Thornton
February 25, 2008 at 1:28 am · Filed under
3.0, FASTForward '08, intent, interaction, metadata, semantic
Not to diminish my colleague Joe’s efforts to report on John Hagel’s comments, the true potential is not in the Attention Economy but in the Attraction Economy (not to be limited to emotional connection, see also video [7:21] — emotion is one dimension in a personal economic model of decisions, and is relevant but not a priority in enterprise interactions).
Attention is the goal; attraction is the most effective means to achieve the goal: moving from reactive to interactive. The new ROI is Return on Interaction.
Hagel misses the real potential when he recommends moving from “push” to “pull” to optimize resources. Basic laws of physics suggest that the level of energy (effort) expended is the same for either push or pull – there is no net gain. The only way to capitalize beyond push or pull models is to leverage existing energy (effort for free) – by tapping the ‘draw’, the natural forces of attraction between: the customer and the company, the employer and the company, any combination of resources seeking each other.
Several different speakers illustrated how this attraction can be facilitated: zero-term search, liberal use of personal metadata and related metadata to build inference.
Ok, so if we’re going to talk inference then we’re really pushing toward 3.0. But the true innovative stories were leaning in that direction.
Gerry Campbell of Reuters, spoke of the significance of context — the need to create an ecosystem (infrastructure) that provides capabilities beyond core business operations. To move themselves and their customers toward such a reality, Reuters purchased a technology upon which they built Calais to enrich content with semantic metadata. Over time, user-generated context also needs to be fed back into the system. Such efforts move toward a big “tent” revival, where Michael Cleary of Reuters suggests that con-tent is brought together seamlessly with in-tent.
by Paula Thornton
February 22, 2008 at 2:33 am · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Emergent, FASTForward '08, Microblogging, Twitter
As I commented to my colleagues as we were wrapping up on Wednesday, we truly experienced Conference 2.0. What we accomplished and how we participated in FASTforward ’08 embodied key elements of 2.0. Moreso, what we experienced/achieved via the conference could/should be a repeatable model for other conferences (not just FASTforward ones).
Some of the elements:
- The blog itself. With Sandy being quite prolific, she had posts up faster than most of us could take notes, let alone synthesize and edit them into pieces (and as Rob mentioned in his interview, there are others of us who need time to digest it all).
- The myff08.com. While we struggled with some of the interaction elements, one high-value deliverable was having the pdfs of the keynote presentations available the same day. Someone’s checking on more ‘public’ availability of these.
- Video interviews that were available the same day. While they are a bit large I immediately noticed a huge difference in both the audio and video quality over last year. Not to mention Jerry’s impeccable skill as an MC (not to diminish David’s efforts last year). Jerry effortlessly made us all look/sound better. [Not to forget, although I did, the tireless effort of behind-the-scenes work for videography/lighting/sound, scheduling and editing.]
- Microblogging (Twitter) and photojournaling. The latter could have used a little collaborative instigation by requesting photos from the at-large crowd and suggesting a tag to post on Flickr (and I obviously need a larger memory chip in my camera). We’re also looking to get an account (or syndication) to flow related tweets through the FASTforward blog space.
- [On a negative note, the tracking devices were nearly useless – I would not recommend the effort to do that again…the bloggers had some pretty strong offline commentary about them.]
Having wireless available makes a huge difference, as does not having it when trying to facilitate near-instantaneous sharing. I had to laugh at myself as I was trying to tweet on my phone, drop it to take a photo, start typing some notes in Word when I couldn’t type fast enough on my phone and/or grabbed a pen and threw a note on paper (my thanks to facilities planning for putting power strips on the front tables of every room). If I’d continued as I had in the first session and also had my audio stick running I would have been trying to operate on 5 channels simultaneously. I can tell you – it doesn’t work. But they were all just my experiment – not something I’d been specifically asked to do. They were my way of being engaged and contributing.
The critical point here is, while we had shared a couple of ‘blogger’ calls among ourselves before the event, they were mostly about the logistics of the event. Not much more. We did not have specific assignments or even any charters – it just evolved.
Even slightly more ‘formal’ actions evolved. For a panel luncheon on Wednesday, the panelist list was firmed up that morning. The ‘intended’ blogger participants ended up with schedule conflicts and new resources were put in place.
As I had stepped up to ‘facilitate’ (a format I simply recommended and was adopted), I felt some onus to check on the room early (not asked, not planed, just seemed reasonable). The room was found to not be staged for a panel at all. Kudos to FAST, the travel group they engaged for event logistics and to the hotel staff for quickly pulling together a SWAT team to reconfigure the room in 20 minutes. For some, all of these elements stacked together, let alone any one of them, could have turned into a nervous mess or frantic disaster. Everyone simply stepped up and gave it their ‘get it done’ best and no one else noticed. [Although in the frantic mess, I did leave my cell phone in the podium afterward, and yet 3 hours later it was safely found at the Registration Desk – exactly where an event logistics person suggested I might look first.]
I had earlier shared my observations (to someone who suggested they hadn’t noticed) as to FAST’s careful staging of the ‘welcome’ experience with the:
- Wash of orange color through the grand hallway
- Greeting attendees with refreshments, served graciously and enthusiastically before reaching the registration desk
- Lively visual impressions of the drinks in the neon orange tumblers with the FAST logo on the side
- Careful positioning of the vendor booths within the normal traffic flow (although for all of that careful staging, I still didn’t find time to get to more than 1 booth the whole time).
And where did I miss the whole contest for a car? Having that on the floor with the winner’s name on the roof, was a very STRONG association to the benefits of registering early. What were those rules, terms & conditions?
I’m sure there are other conferences we could take some leads from, but this one did just nicely, thank you.
Any other 2.0 experiences/observations to report?
Postscript: See related microblogging reference.
by Paula Thornton
February 18, 2008 at 10:00 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, FASTForward '08
Per the Postscript in my last post about staying tuned to the Bat channel, we’ve been informed that FASTforward ‘08 is devoid of a conference wireless network.
Let’s just say, the Bat channel will have a bit of a broadcasting delay…
by Paula Thornton
February 18, 2008 at 9:05 am · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Business Model, Marketing
One key axiom of 2.0 thinking is “Shortening the Distance”. Advertising does not support this thinking. It is inefficient. A free-market economy will continuously adjust itself to eliminate inefficiencies. The advertising model will eventually be eliminated or minimized into some other predominant form.
I read models – I’m not prophetic. I don’t know what advertising will be replaced by, nor do I know how soon, but I do know what is more efficient: direct brokering or agents. On the internet today, the model that makes the likes of Google so successful with advertising relies heavily on bots (internet or web robots). This, at least adds some relevancy to the advertising. Bots were purported to be the kind of technology that could better serve our personal needs by delivering more relevant content – instant delivery, replacing the need to ‘find’. But we’re bombarded with these instant deliveries when we’re not ‘looking’ for them. [BTW, to avoid ads during search, I recommend using Clusty -- it was the first engine that helped me understand the power of FAST technology, almost a decade ago.]
In discussing this issue with the lawyer sitting next to me on the plane yesterday, he reminded me of the typical buying scenario: we’re looking to make a purchase, we tap into our net. We either talk to friends or we literally get online and leverage the ‘advisory’ model. On Amazon and other ecommerce sites, we read the ratings/reviews of others. We put those reviews into our own context, and draw our own conclusions. In that way, the collective of reviews serves as a brokering mechanism.
Advertising may incite awareness or interest, but it is no longer the ‘buying’ factor it was during an era of consumption most influenced by a ‘need to belong, fit in’. How many advertisements do you not act on in a day? Whether you acted or not, someone paid for the fact that you ’saw’ the ad — even if you really didn’t ’see’ it. How often are you in a buying/need state? When you are, how often is that act influenced by advertising (either past or current)? Where it may be influenced at all, did advertising cause the act or reinforce it? For all the millions of advertising dollars spent on SuperBowl XLII, how relevant were any of the products to you and did you act on any of the ads?
The only reason advertising continues to survive is that it is ‘familiar’ and it is monetized. Amazon, however, understands the value of brokering. They continue to add more and more infrastructure and facilities/services to provide incentives to those who can facilitate buying directly through their Associates model, or direct brokering. Far more efficient, their model only pays for results.
Even Forrester has been suggesting that marketing is ‘broken’ and that marketers should reinvent themselves. As part of that advice, Forrester suggests that marketing needs to take back control of their investment from agencies:
On average, agencies will influence nearly 60% of the marketing budget in 2007. The combination of anticipated spending on agency fees and measured media cover the bulk of marketing communications activities.
Marketers reported allocating an average of 17% of their budget to ad agency fees and 41% of their budget to measured media.
Advertisers spent a total of $271 billion on domestic US ads across all measured and unmeasured media channels in 2005, a 2.8% increase over 2004.
Marketers aren’t convinced that their agencies can formulate new media strategies, and agencies aren’t fully convinced themselves. Huge gaps exist between marketer and agency perceptions of ability to deal with changes in TV, Internet, and consumer-generated media
Almost all agencies (93%) believe their contributions drive their clients’ marketing success, while only 63% of marketers feel the same.
Despite the fact that agencies wield influence over a majority of the marketing budget, 76% of marketers do not measure the return on investment of their lead agency relationship.
So the majority of marketing dollars are spent on ‘outsourced’ services for which there are limited measures of success? That all sounds pretty inefficient to me.
Amazon even has a book that addresses this subject: Marketing Without Advertising, Inspire Customers to Rave About Your Business to Create Lasting Success. Ah, but if you read the reviews, one individual suggests other guerilla marketing titles.
Guerilla marketing? Described as “an unconventional system of promotions on a very low budget, by relying on time, energy and imagination instead of big marketing budgets”, the term itself seems to be well positioned for the likes of a Consumer Revolution.
P.S. Monetization was a hot topic during table discussions at last year’s FASTforward. I’m looking forward to some of the deepest conversations, with some of the smartest people I’ll get to have all year…see you there. Or, stay tuned on this Bat channel for updates and conversational relics.
by Paula Thornton
February 6, 2008 at 3:44 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Business Model, Culture, Marketing, Social Computing
There is a shift in Marketing toward behavioral marketing that shuns classic marketing approaches and embraces ‘newer’ forms of research (all fundamental to the practices of Experience Design). A great newsletter/blog that deeply covers this phenomenon is Behavioral Insider.
Today’s post was particularly relevant in that it:
- Calls out specific shifts in marketing, many of which have very 2.0 implications
- Highlights a business model that taps into the behaviors/preferences of a very specific youth market.
- Tells a more compelling story by comparing and contrasting ‘differences’
Supporting quotes — pay particular attention to the last two:
Behavioral targeting has widely succeeded in changing the rhetoric and terminology of marketers. Rare indeed is the self-respecting behavioral advertiser who doesn’t speak in terms of having a one-to-one dialogue with customers. Yet, as Ryan Okum, president of StreetWise Concepts and Culture, explains below, moving beyond the habits of the older impressions-based marketing paradigm requires more than talk. It demands the cultivation of a new skill set.
Okum: Our focus is on online conversations and community building. We’re working with clients who are moving away from, or at least re-thinking, the ideas that behavioral targeting is strictly about serving advertising….The goal is to build a two-way environment where consumers actually go to participate.
Okum: The difference between our behavioral approach and more conventional approaches is, there’s a much more transparent execution in what we do. It’s not, as behaviorally targeting impressions is, a ‘two-way mirror’ where the marketer just looks in and eavesdrops on where consumers go online. We use analytics tools, yes, but to focus in on not just where they go, but what they do.
Okum: What marketers are shifting toward is that promotion is fundamentally more about creating conversations than reaching impressions.
Okum: [The digital channel] takes [a] philosophical as well as tactical shift. There’s a huge difference between accepting and living inside the paradigm where audiences and consumers are passive impressions to be reached with your message, and the new, conversational paradigm. The new philosophy is, you listen to the target market and give them what they want rather than making guesses about their interests and serving them up impression-based ads.
by Paula Thornton
January 29, 2008 at 1:55 pm · Filed under
Books, Business Model, Emergent, Enterprise 2.0, FASTforward08, Web 2.0
A collaborative writing project, not only sponsored by WebEx but also published by them, this book carries the byline: How the on-demand revolution powers the new knowledge economy. [“on-demand” is a critical element of the “customer revolution” -- the FASTforward ’08 theme]
The premise of the book is well stated in the Forward, written by Dr. Timothy Chou, author of “The End of Software” (a favorite mantra I repeat, walking IT halls):
…businesses and consumers alike can access amazing functionality, built on massive computing power, by simply connecting to it. Which prompts the question that is the title of this book: Why buy the cow, when you can get the milk for free? Or, if not for free, by paying only for value received, completely free of the headaches and burdens inherent in “cow ownership.”
As I was writing this (primed with another set of words to begin), these comments struck a different chord. Almost in a reverse-Billy-Crystalesque-City-Slicker sort of way, I thought of the dude ranch mentality. In this case, the irony plays out with the CIO-as-land-baron, who has grown so accustomed to a Dallas-like status that goes with managing a ‘large spread’ (they’re not called server farms for nuthin’), that CIOs can’t imagine any other way of doing business.
But they’ve been duped – somewhat attributed to the term which has labeled them all these many years: Information Technology. The reality is that they’re not barons of information – they’re barons of data. Ten years ago we started a movement to unleash the data from the applications they were locked into. Anyone who has to use enterprise software will suggest that we haven’t gotten very far.
CIOs are the barons of data technology, not information technology. Data only becomes information when it ‘informs’ – which requires a recipient-relevant context (ask any CIO what that even means). A map on the wall of an abandoned gas station in the Mojave desert is only useless data –unless the gas station is marked on the map AND it’s relative directional positioning (e.g. angles of the building to the grid of the map). Information is data in recipient-relevant context – and it has to ‘matter’ to me, as well.
Intentional or not, these barons of technology turned everyone else into information serfs or peasants – left to be satisfied with whatever they were given, whenever it was provided to them, and be thankful.
The internet and decreasing costs of computing power and storage shifted the power base. There was a land rush on – anyone could own a piece of land and call it their own. And they did.
The internet was the virtual space to create your own sandlot game, and let it grow into a major league ballpark (if that’s what you wanted). Many warned about the ungrounded economics upon which the stock prices of eCommerce companies were based – and they gloated when the stocks plummeted. The economics did prove to be wrong, but even in their supposed overinflated states, these stocks may still prove to be undervalued after all (Amazon’s 1999 $100+ price was matched again in Oct. 2007).
But, back to the book…it did get all these thoughts stirred up.
My colleague, Bill Ives, contributed two great chapters, both focused on 2.0 topics, with some stirring of his own. Offering real-world examples, he illustrated simple, successful 2.0 endeavors. Nothing earthshaking – but that’s the point of it all. Earthquakes are powerful and can move a lot of matter in a very short period of time, but they take a long time to build up and the results can be catastrophic.
There’s a time and a place for being treated like royalty, paying $100/person for a dinner. But most of the time, we really just want the price, convenience and the unique features of a really good roadside diner. Bill shares the sights and sounds of the digital Route 66.
High marks to Bill for totally ‘nailing’ the real value and potential of Knowledge Management – by aligning it to a del.icio.us example. That suddenly put to rest for me my distaste for Tom Davenport’s continuous insistence on harkening back to the over-engineered, over-controlled, baron-wielding-devices of the likes of Lotus Notes, as proof that 2.0 offers nothing new. KM isn’t about someone else managing my knowledge – it’s about me managing my own, on my own terms: THAT’s at the heart of the User Revolt (you have to understand the ‘why’ of the revolt if you want to seek ways to either quell or leverage the revolution).
Bill hints at, as I firmly believe, that we haven’t even begun to unleash the undiscovered potential of the next, yet-to-be-named-Wiki-Mash-a-Blog-Tag, that might define the rules of the ‘new’ game to be played in this vast field of dreams. One example he offers is Harvard’s H2O project which puts a different spin on knowledge collections (like del.icio.us), by creating playlists of content: http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/home.do [don’t confuse the letter in H2O with the number zero, as in 2.0].
Taking the time to champion once again the beauty of the fundamental doctrine of The Cluetrain Manifesto – Markets are Conversations – Bill offered many great examples of how markets are changed by conversations. While I seem to hear more rumors of corporate leaders getting caught in the backlash of having open conversations via blogs, Bill offers a great list of successes. He also features three case studies, illustrating specific economic capitalization:
- Creating Small Business Communities to Develop Markets
An Oklahoma winery gained its own market attention by drawing upon the collective strengths and energies of other wineries, by creating an online business community.
- Blogging Your Way to Success
A founder of a 2.0 solution gained focus for his offering by gaining attention to his blog.
- Creating Online Connections and Relationships
An on-demand service, filled a market need by facilitating the connection between individual needs and the service offerings of others (need-service matchmaking).
Bill shares a number of other artifacts and examples – thought appetizers. He calls attention to the behaviors of these emergent experiences as they evolve and connect one with another – an amazing element of emergence, unintentional results – often more valuable than the original design/intent.
I saw more evidences of a thread of truth, which we are not fully embracing. Enterprise 2.0 is far more significant than Web 2.0 because unlike the corollary of Web 2.0=internet, Enterprise 2.0>intranet. It fundamentally changes the way we can/should consider doing business, internally or externally, for ALL relationships.
A final Enterprise 2.0 perspective from Bill:
On-demand business solutions are already empowering businesses to interact in a richer and more personalized way with customers [I add here, all other relationships: vendors, dealers, employees, etc.]. In the future, we see a movement toward greater integration of these services, to offer a full spectrum of collaboration options, extending the benefits they offer. Participants will be able to move seamlessly from asynchronous dialogue media like blogs and wikis, into virtual meetings when the conversation calls for real-time exchanges…The availability of this full spectrum of synchronous and asynchronous collaboration technologies will expand the options for connection and further enable community.
So to close the circle on that chapter Bill, it goes back to the opening quotes you provided from the Cluetrain Manifesto, right? To ride the crest of the economic wave of ‘now’, we need to find new ways to enable and facilitate (ala. access to facts) continuous conversations – AND participate in them.
I’m waxing my surfboard.
by Paula Thornton
January 26, 2008 at 3:17 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, FASTforward08, Microsoft
Continuation of “The Offer: Part 1, Fast Responds”
Comments from the industry speak volumes. Within 36 hours of the Microsoft announcement to buy FAST, upwards of 500 stories hit the global media.
The most telling comment was from Microsoft itself. Microsoft Business Division president Jeff Raikes said: “Fast has the best people and the best technology.”
BusinessWeek also noted significant comments from Raikes.
Corporate search “will be for workers tomorrow what Internet search is for consumers today,” he said in a conference call after the deal was announced. Fast’s software may also help Microsoft improve its Web search engine while bolstering the company’s research and development efforts in Europe, added Raikes.
I originally found it interesting that Paul McDougal classified enterprise search as “a relatively new market” But Chris Kanaracus also reported that “the move means that enterprise search has truly arrived as a software category”.
Paul McDougal illustrated why this topic, even beyond the deal, is such an important issue – why enterprise search has significance beyond internet or even intranet search:
Corporate networks, by contrast, contain mountains of structured and unstructured data archived in numerous formats, some of them decades old and stored away in highly secure servers. So, for instance, engineers at an aircraft manufacturer might have a tough time finding schematics for an older airplane model if they’re suddenly needed for a crash investigation.
It’s a costly problem. A company that employs 1,000 information workers can expect to lose $5 million in annual salary costs on time spent searching for documents, according to IDC.
Benjamin Romano, of the Seattle Times, reported similar thoughts and suggests that “the acquisition signals Microsoft is serious about enterprise search, a market still very much up for grabs.” [emphasis added]
Benjamin also rightly suggests that, “Particularly for companies in information-intensive or regulated industries, search is becoming the starting point for many tasks — in much the same way it has become the starting point for navigating the Internet.” The conservative potential for such an industry is pegged by IDC analyst Susan Feldman at an annual growth of 20 percent.
While many accurately note the Microsoft offering as a 42% premium (which I reported earlier is really at par when sliced another way), John Blossom suggests the offer is “relative pocket change”. Concise and insightful, John introduces a reality check suggesting that FAST has been challenged by “a sales strategy that reached beyond their ability to deliver on ambitious promises”. He then also notes that Microsoft “failed to create any significant sales momentum behind its own enterprise search efforts”. He suggests that the results of the offer will, “bring together two impressive partners that promise to dominate enterprise platforms for some time to come”…“FAST’s rapid growth over the past few years into an increasingly dominant position in enterprise search markets is just the ticket that Microsoft needs to position itself in increasingly competitive enterprise platform markets.” Lastly, he reinforces his earlier financial comment: “it’s a major investment in securing Microsoft’s future cash flow.”
BusinessWeek reiterates this with comments from a financial analyst:
Buying Fast will cost Microsoft less than three weeks’ worth of free cash flow, and could provide better returns on the company’s $21.6 billion cash pile than stock buybacks and dividends, says Brendan Barnicle, a vice-president and senior research analyst at Pacific Crest Securities.
Chris Kanaracus offered related comments from Robert Tennant, CEO of Recommind, who has his own view of the potential of this market.
“We believe that search is really important to the next generation of all software,” he said. “It provides information access with context. We believe that you’ll see search … woven within the fabric of other applications.”
But then FAST talked about one important aspect of this concept and what they’re doing to address it, at last year’s conference (I’m looking forward to what the latest will be at this year’s conference).
So while Robert suggests that “search is really important to the next generation of all software”, here’s my predictive synthesis of the greatest yet-to-be-explored, yet-to-be-tapped industry potential – the ‘now’ great adventure before us: Enterprise, The Final Frontier
[Don’t take this analogy too lightly. Their trips were ultimately funded by the exploration (ala. search) of new knowledge.]
by Paula Thornton
January 10, 2008 at 8:32 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, FASTforward08, Microsoft, Search, SharePoint
While Zia offered a formal blog statement on Tuesday (re: the Microsoft offer), he did one better by talking to the blogging team directly, by phone today.
To facilitate timeliness I’m covering this in 2 parts: Part 1 is a general recap of the meeting; Part 2 covers the industry response.
From a financial perspective the Microsoft offer put a 42% premium on FAST’s stock price, but is equal to the fully diluted equity value of the company. The offer needs 90% stockholder approval, but already has board approval and support from key stockholders. As with most deals such as this, trading of the stock was suspended during negotiation. As trade resumed, Microsoft displayed their confidence by buying 10.1% of FAST’s stock base.
In a letter to customers, FAST expressed their excitement and commitment to the offer: “The acquisition not only validates FAST’s vision and long-held leadership in the search marketplace, but it also opens a new chapter in the ongoing evolution of search. We are now moving toward enabling customers to fuse cutting-edge search technologies with leading business productivity capabilities”
The Microsoft Strategy
The primary focus of the acquisition is toward bolstering SharePoint’s search capability. While the FAST team will be aligned to SharePoint development, the company will exist as a wholly-owned subsidiary. FAST will continue to service its existing markets, including sales to LINIX shops.
If you’d been paying attention (apparently I wasn’t), you’d have noted that Microsoft and FAST had already been working to bring the two technologies together. Back in July 2007 Microsoft released federated search connectors to FAST ESP.
When SharePoint is competing for corporate sales, a primary decision disqualifyer is search. The addition of the enterprise-class performance of FAST ESP gives Microsoft greater leverage in major deals for which search is an important criterion. Many are saying this fills a big hole in the SharePoint offering. This acquisition will also decrease the complexity of dealing with two different companies to obtain key enterprise workplace functions.
Technology aside, this deal will immediately increase Microsoft’s European presence. Microsoft will acquire a major research footprint in Europe and takes an increased posture as a pro-European company.
The Future
This deal reinforces FAST’s ongoing commitment to innovate the enterprise workspace. While search is part of Enterprise 2.0 it is not all of it. This deal is a critical step to put the user in control and positions Microsoft to better compete in a user-reactive market. This radically changes the search marketplace and puts the working-class in a better position to participate in the benefits of 2.0. It definitely increases the potential to ‘shorten the distance’ between the individual and critical information.
There is a lot to be decided over the next several weeks and months — no roadmap for product development has been decided. With FASTforward ’08 just a few weeks away, the conference will swell with conversations around the latest news, as it progresses (and an increased Microsoft presence will be evident). Zia reiterated a commitment to the unique experience I was appreciative of last year: the FASTforward event in Orlando will be the place to engage in deep discussions between Customer/Partner/ISV/analyst. It will be THE event to participate in truly industry-significant discourse around the future of the enterprise workspace.
Come be a part of it (or you’ll have to just read about it).
by Paula Thornton
January 2, 2008 at 12:10 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Barriers, Change, Enterprise 2.0
For me, it’s frustrating when making/defending a critical point (fundamental for increased understanding), only to realize that I’d been making the point over and over again for a decade (accepting potential problems with the message, I’m not convinced it’s the primary barrier). So I’m sensitive to other people, like Jon Husband, with key messages that are traction-challenged (barring recent attention in KM circles). Indeed, even Jon was lamenting repeating himself over and over again in his comments to an earlier post by colleague, Tom Mandel.
In 1999 Jon coined the term wirearchy to capture a reality where authority isn’t hierarchical, where interconnected listening is fundamental to success:
“a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, credibility, trust and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology
Hierarchy has typically meant:
- Size
- Role Clarity
- Functional specialization
- Power
Wirearchy is shaping up to mean:
- Speed
- Flexibility
- Integration
- Innovation”
From my perspective, this definition positions wirearchy as a conditional means to achieve 2.0.
Jon really caught my attention in an exchange of comments to one of my own posts. The topic wasn’t as important as his way of thinking about achieving a 2.0 future state:
“I’d call it redefining knowledge work along the lines of more natural human cognitive processes (they of course existed, but were constrained and handicapped by structure, protocol, policies, reporting lones, exclusion from basic decision-making, and so on). These processes occur in the hands and with the heads of knowledge workers, and find more effectiveness in interaction and collaboration … constructing purposeful knowledge out of relevant information. The heavy-duty databases have by and large been built, the social computing tools, services and platforms can be layered over those databases, and information and expertise are now beginning to find ways to find each other and get to work.”
I concurred with the constraints he pointed out:
“Amen. The problem from where I’m sitting is that the list of handicaps are still well-entrenched in most companies and will only be ‘moved’ via the efforts of the collaborative masses. It’s a bit difficult to affect/challenge anything that’s not recognized as being in existence.
The biggest challenges: denial and apathy.”
Jon added:
“Agree, and might go a tad further. The people in organizations charged with ‘designing’ and managing work use the same tools and methods, by and large, today, as they did ten or twenty years ago, and those are based on assumptions and beliefs that have been around for quite a while.
If you don’t have ways and methods, etc. of organizing (and managing, controlling, measuring, etc.) then maybe what is shaping up in front of you, you can’t ‘see’”
That’s what I mean by ‘redefining’ knowledge work. What does this new territory mean for .. job descriptions, job evaluation, competency analysis and models, performance management schemes, compensation policies and practices, teleworking. and so on, and so on. Slippery beast … I doubt many organizations will let their workers work as a small startup might (although they could !!).
Gary Hamel’s new book The Future of Management is basically exactly about this stuff. He is calling for a new Management 2.0 that takes its cure from Web 2.0.”
As I explored Jon’s thinking further I uncovered:
- His insights from reading Gary Hamel’s book [My placeholder for top quote: “Right now, your company has 21st-century Internet-enabled business processes, mid-20th-century management processes, all built atop 19th-century management principles.”]
- Great commentary from others who listened to the podcast of Jon interviewing Dave Snowden. [1] [2]
- Jon’s frustration over losing great ideas without a digital voice recorder (I just gave in and ordered one)
Jon has his finger on the pulse and knows how to ask the right questions. He’s a key synthesizer. Not only can he connect the dots, he knows which dots are relevant to the picture. More importantly, he believes there is a picture, while most others don’t even notice the dots, let alone believe that they can or should be connected.
by Paula Thornton
December 26, 2007 at 2:07 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Barriers, Enterprise 2.0, Facebook, Social Networking
This is in response to a comment from my colleague, Bill Ives, who asked for my thoughts as to the potential shakeout of social networking tools in the Enterprise. Bill has previously reported both on a major software developer, Serena, which has adopted Facebook to REPLACE their intranet (supporting 800 employ
