That’s a bold statement so let me try and back it up.

First of all, NPR and the public radio system have got something that no other media has in America – Growth in audience.

Why? I suspect that a large part of the answer is to be found in one word – “Trust”. As our world becomes more uncertain, it is also clear that much of the media was either complicit in hiding the truth about what was going on or that they just missed it. The non profit aspect of NPR and its system, I suspect helps keep it more trusted. The second point is just good journalism. As all other sources of media have retrenched on their staff, NPR and its stations have continued to invest in great staff.

But there is more going on here than the core journalism – NPR – like no other organizations except the BBC – is there a pattern here too? – Has made a decisive push to make the web work for it, for the stations and for the audience.

Here is the “Story” as revealed in a “Power Curve”.

This suggests that NPR is at the Tipping Point. Why? Because we can see both the acceleration and also the growth of the supporting system that will facilitate the growth.

We see a long gestation period from 2005 – 2007. Podcasting began then – greatly facilitated by iTunes.

It is in 2008 that we see progress begin to accelerate. In 2009, NPR is positively rocking.

How did this happen when so many other media organizations are merely hiding behind the castle walls?

I think the answer is in the New Realities Process that NPR undertook at the end of 2005 – May 2006. Over 800 people were involved in “Exploring” what the web might mean to NPR and the system of stations.

This was the basic problem presented to all.

Please let me explain. Remember this was done in early 2006. The core assumption was that by 2009, the web would be ubiquitous. NPR’s relative position versus the web at the time was that tiny black line.

The question was this – How did we get to scale on the web in time AND still not piss off the audience AND the Stations?

Looking back, the time line we posed was correct and it seems that we have solved the key question.

So how did this process of mutual exploration help NPR and the stations do this? My answer is this – It gave everyone a real voice. ALL the issues were on the table. A real common view emerged.

In every meeting, groups came up with the same big idea. That we had to be able to offer the audience what we did “Their Way”. This appears to have been an underlying idea that has been realized by the Mobile App – many groups even envisaged a device like the iPhone that would enable this.

Surely this is no small thing? Most media organizations still insist controlling everything.

The underlying constraint was what would be the role of NPR and of each station? At the time, many believed that NPR had a “secret plan” to go it alone. In truth many at NPR also did not know what to do. They talked about working with the stations but were uncertain.

A major result of the process is that the senior NPR folks realized that they HAD to work with the stations. It has taken years for much of the fear that NPR would go it alone to dissipate but it is. NPR have proved by their actions that they are in this together.

For another common theme that kept coming up again and again was this. That the end game would look like this – a REAL NETWORK based on Natural Systems. This was the systems’ great hidden strength.

This idea of a large natural system is now even bigger than anyone envisaged in 2006. For the CPB has been making major investments in creating a Public Radio AND TV system. The Facing the Mortgage Crisis project is one of these investments where radio and Tv stations in 32 markets are working together. NPR and the NewsHour are working together to offer the best news service in the nation. Key local stations are creating local news hubs.

All this is going to come together in late 2009 early 2010.

2010 will be I think THE year. The product will be unparalleled. The Web approach will be ideal. The resources will be all that such a network can supply.

With the audience, with the engagement and with the web fully supporting the air all that is left is this..

I think that with the underlying audience, engagement and a network – it should be possible to make the money and the system work – don’t you?

So in closing I return to the question of our time. How do large organizations make the changes that they have to? How do they do this when the New is often the opposite of what they are and what they do today?

I think that the answer for NPR and Public radio is that they overcame the huge natural resistance by investing in a shared and deep exploration of what confronted them. What they have done since has come from the genuine emergence of ideas and of a language that they created for themselves.

It has not been easy. I admit to being in despair in 2007 when I could see no visible progress. But in retrospect I was naive. The laws of nature demand a period of gestation. 2007 was that time.

What is remarkable now is that NPR and the system has fully met the challenge set out in the starting question of the process. They have kept their audience, kept the system together AND become a leader in the web.

Now they have to turn this into revenue. I think that they are up to this.

It also works on Blackberry – Here is the NPR Download page.

Staci Kramer’s article is very comprehensive and will show you the direction of the strategy in detail.

National Public Radio is already a leader in podcasting. But a free NPR News iPhone app that launched Saturday night opens up a new dimension for the network and its member stations with live and on-demand mobile streaming. It’s also the first app to make reading the news and listening to it equally important, providing full-text coverage along with audio. In addition to NPR’s own programs and those it distributes, the app includes direct access to local shows from more than 600 member stations live and on demand.

Here is Scott Simon with a tour

Here is more on this by Ben Parr for Atlanta Internet Marketing

NPR News [iTunes link], which just became available for download, offers the same core features of other news apps like AP Mobile [iTunes link], primarily that you can browse the day’s big stories and read news articles in multiple categories. However, no other news app is linked to 1000+ NPR radio stations, news programs, and live streams, meaning you can listen to your news anywhere, anytime.

The App adds a strong audio layer to the news reading experience. While it’s simple enough to read the day’s top stories, you can also listen to most of the day’s top stories as well. A speaker icon next to most articles allows you to listen in on stories, and the playlist feature lets you queue up the stories you want to listen to if you’re busy, on-the-go, or just need to keep occupied.

The other key aspect of NPR News is that you can listen to any NPR program and any NPR station, including both live radio and past shows and podcasts. There has to be thousands upon thousands of hours of archived content available, not including the live radio. You can even pick out your station with GPS.

While many news organizations are floundering in the era of social media and even struggling to survive, NPR has thrived. Its innovative social strategies have served it well, and the NPR News iPhone app is just the latest solid innovation from the non-profit news organization.

I am also profoundly affected by this work because I am now seeing that all the effort put into learning how to cope with the web by NPR, the system and me back in the day is paying off.

Back in 2005 NPR did something that I think is still unique. They hosted a mammoth engagement process, New Realities, that involved over 300 stations and over 1,000 people. The purpose was to discover what the web would all mean. You can see the results in so many of the actions that NPR and the radio system have taken since then. This new site is a pinnacle of that collective insight

But at first, at the end of the process, I and many who had been involved were disappointed. For the immediate result was not there – or so I thought. For two years, like seeds in the ground, there was little or nothing to see. But with NPR Music, the real green shoots began. Since then, the seedlings have grown and multiplied.

I had been foolish and naive. I thought that the conversation would produce results immediately.

But! Now – 4 years later – I am beginning to see the real result. And it is this. That NPR and the lead stations in the system are convinced and are committed to making the web work. They also have a common language.

This is simply not true for most others in the media world. They have not had this personal and deep experience with each other in an examination of what will come.

I think I see the true result of New Realities now. It is cultural readiness. For is not Culture the main barrier?

I have been writing and blogging more over the past six months or so about social computing inside the firewall, and have spoken at several conferences about the issues and dynamics therein.

Today I used Google to search for references to me and my work, and so rediscovered a blog post I wrote four years ago about the use of blogging in organizations to stimulate dialogue, learning and innovation.

Obviously, people looking for references to my past writings on the use of blogging inside the firewall have helped this old and forgotten blog post to surface.

Update for the fact that there are now more collaboration platforms and applications, change the verb tenses and few words to make it pertinent to today’s Enterprise 2.0 context, and I think it’s still relevant.

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Blogging, Dialogue, KM and Learning
by jonh on Thu 03 Jun 2004 12:17 PM PDT | Permanent Link | Cosmos

Over the past couple of years many knowledgeable and committed bloggers have held forth on how blogging can replicate the dynamics of dialogue. They have also offered opinions and examples of how blogs and blogging can (potentially) be extremely useful for what we call "knowledge management".

In addition, there have been various anecdotes and examples of how reading blogs, commenting on blogs, and creating blog posts are activities that accelerate learning.

All this makes good sense. There are core aspects of blogging that facilitate learning in simple and effective ways.

Firstly, individual or group blogs that are focused on a domain of information and expertise chronicle and catalogue the blogger(s)’ knowledge. Over time, this grows to create a recognizable "body of knowledge".

Secondly, by offering the capability of commenting and interacting, the information on offer can be better defined, refined, explored, tested, and built upon.

Thirdly, the information on offer provides a latent platform for action – information that can be acted upon often turns into knowledge that can be shared and used in various ways.

Fourth, by linking to the blog or blogs that offer related information, the knowledge that is built can be shared more and more widely, if desired.

Fifth, the rhythym and cadence of the posting, reading, commenting and linking replicate the dynamics of dialogue in very effective ways. There aren’t the same kinds of interruption and distraction that so often occurs in conversations that only weakly replicate the dynamics of dialogue.

Finally, an ecosystem of knowledge can develop that consists of the aggregated sets of links and content the participants in a blogalogue create. And this "body of knowledge" and understanding remains online, available to anyone who cares to become involved.

I think these dynamics hold great promise – they demonstrate the characteristics that many have suggested are desirable and necessary for learning communities and learning organizations.

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Tags: Enterprise 2.0, blogging, dialogue, accelerated learning

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Here, via the Guardian (UK) is a brief report that demonstrates how far and wide the impact of blogging has spread.  We know that many mainstream online publications have adopted many of the features, and worked at increasing interactivity with readers, and I suggest here that this is but a harbinger of things yet to come.

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The world’s 50 most powerful blogs

From Prince Harry in Afghanistan to Tom Cruise ranting about Scientology and footage from the Burmese uprising, blogging has never been bigger. It can help elect presidents and take down attorney generals while simultaneously celebrating the minutiae of our everyday obsessions.

Here are the 50 best reasons to log on.

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The spread of the use of wikis and blogs into the world of enterprises began being considered not long after the rise of blogging as a sociological phenomenon, and made clear the different dynamics and structural impediments that would be encountered as the tools and services spread into the organizational environment.  Humans spend a lot of their time communicating with each other … always have done, and always will do so.  And wikis and blogs make it easier to do so in an interlinked environment in which humans use integrated information systems, keyboards and computer screens and software to enable their communications.

I know I am stating the obvious here, but the concepts of knowledge work and knowledge workers take on additional meaning, I  think, when one considers that much of the products we purchase and use are manufactured elsewhere, such that much of business and the activity of many organizations consists of exchanging information in the pursuit of product design and development, marketing, sales and customer service.

Email is still in many cases the "killer app" for human communications, but the advent of wikis and blogs lent some additional structure and focusing-of-purpose (in the context of knowledge work in an enterprise) to communicating for the purpose of accomplishing objectives.  That’s a key reason why essentially every purveyor of enterprise software has incorporated the capabilities of wikis, blogs and easy publishing to the Web into the collaboration suites  they are now working at selling to the enterprise IT function.

It was this realization, for example, that led to the writing of "Making Knowledge Work – the arrival of Web 2.0".  I was a reasonably early adopter of blogging, and because I had been involved in the issues of work design for the past two decades, I became convinced that wikis and blogs would spread into the enterprise setting.  I thought they were a natural extension beyond using email for people to communicate and share information that may be useful to small groups of other people interested in the same or similar issues.

In 2003 I began arguing about that with a man who was on the Board of Directors of the blogging start-up I co-founded (Qumana) and who at one time had been the head of KM research at the Gartner Group.  His position was that it was just a fad that teenagers and cranks were using to bleat on about whatever it was they wanted to bleat on about, and my position was that "yes, there was that aspect to it", but that it was also a natural way for people to express ideas, opinions, point others to useful information, carry out arguments and dialogue and spark insights and the need to collaborate.

Well, blogs and wikis continued to spread and eventually Web 2.0 and then Enterprise 2.0 became recognized as domains of ongoing activity in which participation, interactivity and collaboration were key dynamics.  In 2006, he (the man I was arguing with) basically said  "OK, you win" and challenged me to add the observations and knowledge about the use of social computing (wikis, blogs, etc.) to the existing edition of "Making Knowledge Work" which had not foreseen the rise and penetration of Web 2.0 tools, services and dynamics into the enterprise setting.

It will be most interesting to see what the state of human communications looks like in 2015, both inside the firewall of organizations, and outside … although it may be that the lines between "inside" and ‘outside" continue to blur, the beginnings of which we have already seen and which has been much discussed, though to date mainly in the realms of marketing, PR and more recently product development.

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Rob Paterson just posted this account of a Yahoo employee who was Twittering his way out the door after being laid off. What better way to communicate your situation — and availability for new opportunities — to the world? Truly astounding, and an incredible , empowering resource. That dude probably won’t be spending too much time on the unemployment rolls.

Forrester’s Josh Bernoff has weighed in with some of his thoughts on how Web 2.0 would prevail through a down economy. “Things are different this time,” he opines. For example, we won’t a repeat of the devastation of the 2001 recession, because this is “not a tech bubble” as it was in 2000-2001. “Technology spending is not irrational,” he points out. Agreed.

Josh adds that social networking platforms will flourish in a down economy, however. While advertising may get cut, marketers will see greater value in blogs and social networks. And the best part is that social applications “can be nearly free (think blogs, Ning.com, facebook pages) and even more sophisticated communities are typically $30K to $200K — a lot cheaper than a significant sized ad campaign.” Plus, being all digital and all, social network-based responses are extremely measurable.

So the social networking platforms will do just fine in the event the economy were to go south for a while — and in fact, may even receive a boost from companies seeking inexpensive channels to their customers. And, as I mentioned previously, end users will have that power in their hands as well.

I think Forrester has been pretty steady and early in their understanding that blogging is here to stay and will have large impacts upon marketing, PR and the evolution of knowledge work inside the enterprise.  Forrester’s Charlene Li was early to the party and produced some good research about the blogging and social software phenomena in a business context …

• Blogging:  Big Deal or Bubble?  (November 2004)
• Corporate Blogging Policies (Public Wiki)
• The ROI of Blogging – The "Why" and "How" of External Blogging Accountability (January 2007)

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… and more recently Forrester had the good sense to hire Jeremiah (Owyang), a smart and well-informed fellow.

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It will be interesting to watch and read Colony’s blogging, and over time see if he, like many other people, comes to believe that it is useful to think, question and listen in public and "out loud".

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Tags: Forrester, CEO blogging, Charlene Li, Jeremiah Owyang

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Two things stimulated me this morning … Joe’s point about IBM formalizing the term "Cloud Computing", and Rob’s story about his wife Robin’s increasing use of and familiarity with digital services and content (and maybe devices .. Rob ?)

I have a sister-in-law who just turned 50 who has been until recently remarkably (and determinedly) resistant to online activities.  She has basically not ever used the Internet for anything but email, and even that sparingly.  Part of her reluctance and resistance is lack of familiarity (beginner’s embarrassment) and the other equally strong aspect has been her clear sense of how online can encroach on or steal time from what many will call "real life".

That there are forms of emergent social isolation and alienation, and addictive behaviours, that have developed as the online world has grwon and spread is irrefutable … just as the number(s) and types (s) of connections and interactions have multiplied and led to interesting behaviours and outcomes.

Back to my sister in law.  She is also a very good cook (let’s say amateur gourmet chef) and a talented amateur photographer.  As she has grown in her capabilities with a digital camera, she has also gotten more familiar with online environments.  Bit by bit, her attitude has been changing.  Recently she discovered StumbleUpon, and has almost become an evangelist, taking time out from conversations to show people who visit the interesting things that one can stumble upon just by clicking once.  It was also interesting to see her and her girlfriends’ initial reaction to finding people they knew on Facebook.

Slowly and surely, more and more people will use services and tools on the Internet as it weaves its way into and throughout our lives.  And as that happens, people will notice more and more the smooth sides and sharp edges of ways this spreading and weaving will impact the ways we live and work .. as will whatever the Cloud becomes.

"2008 is the year that sees Microsoft’s ambitions challenged" is a line halfway through the movie posted below.  Eerily prescient, no?

What also seems certain is that even if Microsoft does not acquire Yahoo !, other acquisitions and mergers (and the concomitant convergence and integration) are sure to happen over the next decade

Maybe EPIC 2015 (originally released as EPIC 2014 in 2004 by Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson) does not seem so weird or impossible today ?

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There must be something in the water or the air, one would think.

This announcement comes from the P2P Foundation, spearheaded by Michel Bauwens.

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User-Led Innovation: A New Framework For Co-Creating Business and Social Value

This new CRC report reveals the major drivers of user-led innovation and explores how it is affecting organisations’ relationships with key stakeholders.

It investigates how user-led practices generate business and social value through a major case study of the virtual world Second Life. The report canvasses a number of pathways for organisations to leverage the participation of their audiences, customers and citizens in the interest of co-creating new products, services and platforms.

The research draws on extensive interviews with some of the world’s leading thinkers on the social, economic and legal aspects of user-led innovation including: Eric von Hippel (MIT), Yochai Benkler (Harvard), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Siva Vaidhyanathan (Virginia), John Howkins (Adelphi Charter), Michel Bauwens (P2P Alternatives) and Mitch Kapor (Linden Lab).

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The people interviewed, as cited, are certainly amongst those that are seen to carry significant authority in this Internet era.  The same can be said of the Aspen Institute Roundtable participants, who included John Seeley Brown , Joi Ito, John Hagel (featured speaker at the upcoming FASTForward08 conference), Tom Malone of MIT, and other clearly credible folks.

At the risk of being seen to be involved in repeated and shameless self-promotion (I tagged this on to the previous post as well), I’d like to tag onto this emerging activity the working definition of wirearchy from a couple or so years ago.  I promise I’ll stop soon

"a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology"

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Tags: Collective Intelligenece, Co-creation of value, new paradigms, peer-to-peer, business models, wirearchy

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"It" is interactive, it’s fast, the flows of information are overwhelming, it feeds social computing, it’s not going away, and it will be coming to a workplace near you.  It’s also becoming clearer and clearer that the pressures due to a growing demographic shift are getting more and more tangible every month. When the Gartner Group starts predicting that the coming generations of knowledge workers will understand how to work in wirearchies, and predict that their influx will cause 40+ % annual growth in the adoption of Enterprise 2.0 capabilities .. well, one might say that awareness is growing.

Remember sending groups of people off for training on the latest complicated software ?  Will that change ? 

JP Rangaswami, who writes often about the use of social software in the enterprise based on his experiences at DkW and BT recently emphasized the coming impacts at the LeWeb 3 conference in Paris, noting in his presentation that:

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The digital natives now starting to flood into the workplace are already all trained up on these (social software) tools.

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This also reminds me of the central issues raised in a seminal article article in the Economist 18 months ago titled The New Organization, namely that most organizations have watched the rise of the networked worker (and equipped them all with Crackberries) without making fundamental changes to organizational structures and work design,

I suspect that’s one of the core targets of Gary Hamel’s new book The Future of Management, in which he lays out this key challenge for executives and managers everywhere.

Here’s one Gartner Group analyst’s take on the coming challenges associated with Enterprise 2.0 and the war for talent in a digital era.

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‘Digital Natives’ Will Drive Web 2.0 into Your Business
Clint Boulton
September 20, 2007

Analysts delve into how businesses might leverage blogs, wikis and other social networking tools.

LAS VEGAS—Digital natives—people who grew up using interactive Internet tools—will push the enterprise social software market to grow at a compound annual revenue growth of 41.7 percent through 2011, said Gartner analysts at Web Innovations here Sept. 19.

As these digital natives grow up, they’re moving into the work force, taking with them blogs, wikis, mashups, RSS feeds and other so-called Web 2.0 social networking tools that will enable them to collaborate more freely in an enterprise environment, said Gartner analyst Anthony Bradley.

"They bring with them a set of expectations of how they will interact and the tools they’ll use to interact, and they can be woefully disappointed walking into organizations that don’t have some of the Web 2.0 tools that they’re used to using for building relationships and getting things done," Bradley said.

Digital natives will thus usher in what Gartner calls the Enterprise 2.0, where users will use rich Internet applications, social software and a Web platform to execute tasks.

Social software includes social networking (Facebook-like profiles), social collaboration (JotSpot-like wikis and blogs) and social publishing (social tagging, think Digg) tools to interact socially and boost organizational effectiveness.

While traditional Enterprise 1.0 tools were more rigid and siloed, Gartner analyst Tom Austin said Enterprise 2.0 technologies need to be "free form," or informal, messy and participatory, to make co-workers comfortable.

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Tags: Marc Prensky, Rob Paterson, JP Rangaswami, digital natives, Enterprise 2.0, hierarchy, wirearchy, the new organization, networks, Gartner Group

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