The Innovation and Collaboration Blog Jam

Websites Go Black to Protest SOPA

2012-01-18T13:42:00.000-08:00

Today, many websites have gone black to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) or the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

Although this act only affects websites in America, it will have impact worldwide. Many popular websites such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter are headquartered in US and will have to comply with this bill if passed.

For more information about SOPA:
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

For a full list of blacked out websites:

http://mashable.com/2012/01/17/sopa-companies-dark-list/

On a comedic sidenote, @herpderpedia on Twitter is currently compiling several tweets that show users panicking (re: mostly students) about the Wikipedia Blackout.

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

2011-12-05T11:41:00.000-08:00

The tenth and final post of my Business Goes Virtual blog series concludes with “Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know”.

The "High Five" Challenges in Leadership:

Challenge #1 — Cracking the Big Nut: Unlocking the Power of Your TalentChallenge #2 — Learning to Let Go and to Trust
...Trust is highly integrated with interdependence when employees require support from one another. This dynamic where I help you and you help me is rooted in reciprocity and is strengthened or weakened depending on the limitations of skill, time, or control that individuals have. Irrespective, if employees understand that each exchange needs to be a mutually satisfying exchange where respect and open transparent communication is shared, trust will strengthen between organizational ties and networks across the organization. When power behaviors are rewarded in an organizational culture, the implications to creating healthy trusting and collaborative cultures are impacted.
Challenge #3 — Ensuring Goal Clarity and Vision Visibility AlignmentChallenge #4 — Having the Courage to Shape ConsequencesChallenge #5 — Harnessing Social Power

If you are in a managerial/leadership role, what are the common kinds of challenges you face on a regular basis? How do deal with these challenges? How does knowing the "High Five" help you become a better leader?

If not, what are the most common mistakes your leaders make when dealing with other employees? What recommendations can you make to help them become better leaders? How does knowing the "High Five" challenges help you on your journey to becoming a leader in your company?

Buy a physical or electronic copy of Business Goes Virtual: http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/business-goes-virtual-realizing-value-collaboration-social-and-virtual-strategies

The content includes:

PART I - THE CONVERGENCE

Chapter 1 - Virtual Business: Real or Imaginary?

Chapter 2 - The New Face(book) of Organizations

Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

PART II THE STRATEGIES

Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Chapter 8 - Everyone Has a Stake

Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

PART III THE WAY AHEAD

Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

Innovation Conforms to Patterns - Study

2011-11-14T07:02:00.001-08:00

A study of innovation reveals that it tends to conform to several patterns. By studying and understanding these patterns, it may be possible to deliver innovation on a more consistent and predictable basis, and to harness the creative capabilities of employees, suppliers, distributors, partners and customers.

Subtraction or Reduction: removing one or more elements from the product or process. The natural tendency is to want to increase the features of a product or service. However, this can lead to feature bloat, a product which is confusing to the end consumer and spiraling costs. The element removed may be:

undesirable, such as the alcohol in beer or the caffeine in coffee, or
revolutionary, such as the speakers in a Sony Walkman, or
replaced by something already in the environment, such as removing the legs from a baby's chair and clipping it directly to the table, or
simply result in a more affordable product, such as the removal of travel agents, tickets, free food and drink, seat reservations and customer care from Ryanair.

Multiplication: adding one or more copies of an element or attribute of the product or service. For example,

adding additional blades and changing the angle of the blades in the Gilette razor, or
adding additional tray to a CD player to produce an automated CD changer.

Division: Divide the product or process into one or more separately usable, often modular, components. This is common with electronic goods. For example,

the separation of turntables, speakers and amplifiers into separate components. This modularisation of home entertainment units has meant that new devices, such as MP3 players are more easily integrated into existing equipment.

Task Unification: assigning new tasks to existing elements of a product, often combining the function of one element into another. For example,

getting the defrosting wires in a windshield to act as the radio antenna, orusing a iPhone to control other household devices.

Attribution Dependency Change: creating or removing dependencies between the product/process and its environment. For example,

splitting unisex razors into masculine and feminine razors.

Source: Strategic Coffee - http://strategiccoffee.chriscfox.com/2010/01/innovation-templates.html

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

2011-11-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

The ninth post of my Business Goes Virtual blog series continues with “Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World”.

Some companies gave up on [Second Life] (SL), others learned and revamped, and a select few actually got it right the first time. In the past 5 years, we have learned a great deal about what works and what does not work in SL. Learning insights include the following:
Virtual worlds are about interaction and engagement.
Events drive traffic.
In-world staff are better than bots.
Second Life offers unprecedented room for innovation.
Community experience is crucial

Some Tips on How to Successfully get started in Second Life:

Set a clear vision in your organization to embrace new virtual world capabilities:
Increase your employees’ collaboration, project management skills, and their sense of fun in the workplace.
It is imperative to develop, early on, clear goals and objectives with effective and relevant performance metrics. Start simple, gain some success, and build momentum.
Evaluate and experiment with virtual world experiences to learn.
The best way to optimize learning is to develop a learning lab or a pilot to interact online with external customers or recruits. As the numerous case studies have shown, learning labs and pilots are effective in SL. Having relevant performance metrics and reporting approaches to gain further executive support is also a key success factor.
Develop a collaboration competency. Collaboration competency is necessary in order to leverage virtual worlds solutions. This is the ability to collaboratively solve problems of mutual interest and work toward win-win outcomes. True collaboration requires the development of leadership behaviors that work in a virtual world. The leadership behaviors include the following:
The ability to develop rapid trust with people that you may never have physically interacted with.
Ensure your SL strategy is integrated into your Web 2.0, social mediated, and knowledge management strategies.
Develop collaborative work spaces to gather knowledge, express ideas, and concerns and share collective know- how. There are a variety of solutions that support collaborative knowledge generation activities:
Web conferencing solutions (e.g., WebEx, Live Meeting)
Document creation collaboration solutions (e.g., Atlassian, Confluence Social Text, IBM Lotus Connections, Igloo, Jive, Microsoft SharePoint)
Start small, yet think big!
A small and tightly focused project with clearly defined goals and objectives is usually the best way to get started. Suitable application areas for getting started include the following:
Recruiting islands— such islands offer an effective means of attracting users, particularly web-savvy and technically skilled talent (Gen X and Y).

Source: Pages 152, 154-157

Does your company use virtual worlds? If so, how does your company utilize this newer technology? What kind of benefits does it reap from using VWs?

If not, how can your business benefit from using VWs in the future?

Buy a physical or electronic copy of Business Goes Virtual: http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/business-goes-virtual-realizing-value-collaboration-social-and-virtual-strategies

The content includes:

PART I - THE CONVERGENCE

Chapter 1 - Virtual Business: Real or Imaginary?

Chapter 2 - The New Face(book) of Organizations

Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

PART II THE STRATEGIES

Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Chapter 8 - Everyone Has a Stake

Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

PART III THE WAY AHEAD

Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 8 – Everyone Has a Stake

2011-11-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

The eighth post of my Business Goes Virtual blog series continues with “Chapter 8 – Everyone Has a Stake”.

Collaboration in the workplace is as important to free enterprise as competition in the marketplace. The spirit of win-win cannot survive in an environment of stiff competition. For collaboration to flourish, win-win needs to be a mature operating practice, and the systems have to support it. The recruiting system, the on- boarding system, the training and educational systems system, the strategic and operational planning systems, the communication systems, the budgeting system, the information system, the compensation system— all have to be based on the principle of win-win.

So how many organizations have got this deep collaboration systemic organizational DNA tapestry right? Many do not— but increasingly many do.

This chapter includes in-depth case studies on Molson Coors, MTS Allstream, and Research in Motion (RIM). Listed below are the lessons learned from these cases:

Molson Coors:

Early objectives are key, and success should be measured.
Speak to, not at, an audience.
Social media success can be iterative.

MTS Allstream - The Idea Factory

IT development
Budget challenges.
Executive support
User- friendly design
Outcomes

RIM

Executive leadership and accountability are key.
Lead with leading practices.
Drive adoption rapidly.

Source: Pages 123, 127, 130-131, 134-135

Does your company have a collaboration strategy? If so, is it successful? How did employees adopt a collaborative mindset?

If not, how can your company benefit from developing and implementing a collaboration strategy?

Buy a physical or electronic copy of Business Goes Virtual: http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/business-goes-virtual-realizing-value-collaboration-social-and-virtual-strategies

The content includes:

PART I - THE CONVERGENCE

Chapter 1 - Virtual Business: Real or Imaginary?

Chapter 2 - The New Face(book) of Organizations

Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

PART II THE STRATEGIES

Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Chapter 8 - Everyone Has a Stake

Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

PART III THE WAY AHEAD

Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

2011-09-27T11:00:00.000-07:00

The seventh post of my Business Goes Virtual blog series continues with “Chapter 7 – The People Know Best”. Today's successful businesses have taken steps to becoming more customer-centric, more social, and more agile to keep up with the fast-paced internet trends. One of the case studies examined in this chapter is the use of viral internet memes to successfully launch a marketing campaign:

One the most spontaneous viral- creating events must be the so- called Crasher Squirrel. In 2009, a vacationing couple were enjoying an amazing vista in a particularly picturesque part of western Canada. The moment was so special that the couple wanted it to last for eternity. They decided to take their own picture with a beautiful background of a lake surrounded with near-perfect mountains. To achieve their snapshot of time, the recent groom carefully balanced his camera on a rock and scurried back to be with his beautiful bride as the self-timer counted down. Three, two, one...say cheese, and the shutter snapped.

Excited to see if they had captured the moment, they looked at the LCD screen to view the photo. To their surprise, there were three faces, not two, in the picture. Th e third face belonged to a gray squirrel that scampered into camera view while the groom was taking his place.

Once the Banff/Lake Louise Tourist Office knew about the picture, they decided to act quickly and decisively. After securing the rights to the picture, they took the bold decision to make Crasher the focus of the very successful media campaign.

Could or would your organization jump on a social media opportunity? Is your organization agile enough to capture the moment?

Buy a physical or electronic copy of Business Goes Virtual: http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/business-goes-virtual-realizing-value-collaboration-social-and-virtual-strategies

The content includes:

PART I - THE CONVERGENCE

Chapter 1 - Virtual Business: Real or Imaginary?

Chapter 2 - The New Face(book) of Organizations

Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

PART II THE STRATEGIES

Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Chapter 8 - Everyone Has a Stake

Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

PART III THE WAY AHEAD

Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

2011-09-20T08:03:00.000-07:00

The sixth post of my Business Goes Virtual blog series continues with “Chapter 6 – Any Place, Anytime”. Using
Cisco’s marketing collaterals on telepresence, the language was reworked in order to reflect statements on the value of virtualization. These statements form benefits to communicate the value proposition to achieve a competitive advantage:

The new way of working. Today you face greater business demands and a more competitive marketplace. You must continually find new ways to be agile and increase speed to market while reducing costs. Effective communication and collaboration are critical. The ability to engage immediately across geographies with employees, suppliers, and customers is a must to sustain competitive advantage.
Virtualization for everyone, everywhere.
Do more with less.
Transform your organization.
Drive competitive advantage.
Be greener and improve quality of life.
Build a collaboration strategy.
Powering the new way of working. Virtualization powers the new way of working. Learn how you can empower teams to collaborate like never before, transforming your organization by leveraging collaboration and social approaches; your world will simply get better.
By further consolidating, these key benefits have core communication messages for leaders to consider in positioning the value of virtualization with their employees. We have filtered these down to these virtual value propositions:
Create new ways of working. Increase your connections with your coworkers and customers and reduce your time to market, increase your agility, and reduce your costs.
Accelerate decision making.
Innovate across the value chain.
Scale resources.
Support the environment by going green.
Create the foundation for the new world of work. By going virtual you can power the new world to attract, develop, and retain your talent.

Has your company integrated any of these tips during its virtualization process, if so, how has it benefited your business? If not, which of these tips would you want to integrate into your business and why?

Buy a physical or electronic copy of Business Goes Virtual: http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/business-goes-virtual-realizing-value-collaboration-social-and-virtual-strategies

The content includes:

PART I - THE CONVERGENCE

Chapter 1 - Virtual Business: Real or Imaginary?

Chapter 2 - The New Face(book) of Organizations

Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

PART II THE STRATEGIES

Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Chapter 8 - Everyone Has a Stake

Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

PART III THE WAY AHEAD

Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

2011-08-15T09:15:00.000-07:00

The fifth post of my Business Goes Virtual blog series continues with “Chapter 5 – Making Sense of Virtual Worlds”. Although it may seem like all Virtual worlds (VWs) are games, they’re not. World of Warcraft, Farmville, and other popular massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) have taken the world by storm, but nongame VWs, like Second Life and Project X, are only starting to come out of its shell.

In Business Goes Virtual, we have provided four laws to be successful in VWs.

Law #1: Virtual Worlds Are Not Games
The first assumption that businesses often make is that VWs are games. This is a wrong assumption. The right answer is that VWs are a new, rich media communication channel. While the market for nongame VWs is still relatively emergent compared to MMOGs, VWs are a rapidly growing new market segment. Based on our research preparing for this book, businesses need to start planning an online presence in VWs in order to create interactive community experiences so that they can learn how to exploit new ways of communicating with customers, suppliers, and employees in rich, virtually immersive environments.
Virtual worlds are powerful as they have tremendous online reach and can easily bring together large groups of simultaneous players in a fast- paced online environment; they can provide an interesting capability for the future of organizations. MMORPGs represent a growing business that, according to the Tower Group, will reach 40 million people and generated over $9 billion in revenue by 2010.
Virtual worlds present the next frontier for customer and employee interactions. Organizations need to start preparing now for these new methods of communication, or they will lose talent and customer segments who desire this form of customer interaction experience.
Law #2: Experience Must Be Relevant to Solve a Business Need and Create Value
Law #3: Each Avatar Is a Real Person
Law #4: A Virtual World Experience Is a New Branding Opportunity

Are you a part of a VW? How do you think it will disrupt the market when it becomes more popular in the future?

Buy a physical or electronic copy of Business Goes Virtual: http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/business-goes-virtual-realizing-value-collaboration-social-and-virtual-strategies

The content includes:

PART I - THE CONVERGENCE

Chapter 1 - Virtual Business: Real or Imaginary?

Chapter 2 - The New Face(book) of Organizations

Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

PART II THE STRATEGIES

Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Chapter 8 - Everyone Has a Stake

Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

PART III THE WAY AHEAD

Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

2011-08-08T08:28:00.000-07:00

The fourth post of my Business Goes Virtual blog series continues with “Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing”. Knowledge hoarding has become a major problem for companies and causes many lost opportunities. With a newer generation overtaking the workforce, hopefully their innate sharing ability can help with this problem.

There is research that supports that different age groups share at different levels. Returning to the Forrester research that resulted in groundswell, we can see some compelling evidence. For example, using the creator category of the Social Technographic ladder as an example, we see a distinct difference by age. Based on Forrester’s most recent research that was conducted in early 2010 and included 26,913 respondents, we learned that different age groups of creators share more frequently. Recall that creators are those adult Internet users who write or upload video, music, or text, in other words share what they know. The following is a breakdown by age group and the percentage of each age group that create content (share):

46% of 18– 24 year olds create and share content
32% of 25– 34 year olds create and share content
23% of 35– 44 year olds create and share content
19% of 45– 54 year olds create and share content
12% of those 55 or older create and share content

Perhaps the time is right to stop the debate on the merits of sharing and instead harness the power of the desire to share.

Are you guilty of knowledge hoarding? What are some tips and lessons learned about knowledge hoarding/sharing over the course of your career?

Buy a physical or electronic copy of Business Goes Virtual: http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/business-goes-virtual-realizing-value-collaboration-social-and-virtual-strategies

The content includes:
PART I - THE CONVERGENCE

Chapter 1 - Virtual Business: Real or Imaginary?

Chapter 2 - The New Face(book) of Organizations

Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

PART II THE STRATEGIES

Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Chapter 8 - Everyone Has a Stake

Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

PART III THE WAY AHEAD

Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

Business Goes Virtual – Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

2011-08-02T06:07:00.000-07:00

The third post of my Business Goes Virtual blog series continues with “Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World”. Great leadership is always integral to the success of any business, but in the case of virtual businesses, types of leaders can vary depending on the organization.

We discovered that each of the organizations we studied was led (or had been led) by truly amazing leaders. However, as we analyzed the leaders we found that in many cases they were very different leaders. For example, using Eric Berne’s seminal work Transactional Analysis as a basis, we found some of the people we studied could be classified as transformational leaders while others would more likely be transactional leaders. Transformational leaders are those who believe motivating their people is the secret to success... Transactional leaders are those who subscribe to the management practice that combines the triad of power, reward, and punishment.

In short, what we found was that there was no magic recipe for being a successful leader in the virtual domain. It quickly became clear that leadership was essential; however, the type and style of leaders we encountered on our journey was as varied as the type of organization they were leading.

What kind of leader are you and have you encountered these types of leaders during your career? What are your pros and cons transformational or transactional leaders? Comment below!

Buy a physical or electronic copy of Business Goes Virtual: http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/business-goes-virtual-realizing-value-collaboration-social-and-virtual-strategies

The content includes:
PART I - THE CONVERGENCE

Chapter 1 - Virtual Business: Real or Imaginary?

Chapter 2 - The New Face(book) of Organizations

Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

PART II THE STRATEGIES

Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Chapter 8 - Everyone Has a Stake

Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

PART III THE WAY AHEAD

Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

Business Goes Virtual – Chapter 2: The New Face(book) of Organizations

2011-07-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

The second post of my Business Goes Virtual blog series continues with “Chapter 2: The New Face(book) of Organizations” and how businesses are using social technology to interact with their customers, but also how users are also being empowered by it.

Groundswell

The power behind the groundswell concept is that suddenly everyday people have unparalleled power, especially people that gather together and create communities (see http://www.forrester.com/groundswell). But what has changed to empower these communities with such power? Surely groups of passionate people have long yearned for the opportunity to influence or perhaps even hijack issues. Of course, there have been many times in history when large groups congregated to spark change. However, the logistics with massing large groups can be very cumbersome, expensive, and difficult to communicate.

Enter Web 2.0— a World Wide Web based on collaboration rather than content— and suddenly all these obstacles evaporate, at least for virtual groups. In their book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, authors Dan Tapscott and Anthony Williams describe how a low- cost collaborative infrastructure is empowering the many— they term these “the weapons of mass collaboration.” Tapscott and Williams warn that these weapons support a new level of collaboration that will turn the economy upside down and may well facilitate the destruction of organizations who fail to adjust.

(Pg 23)

The 2011 Egyptian revolution was facilitated by the use of social media websites Twitter and Facebook to co-ordinate and to organize the protests, thus increasing local and global awareness. Because of this “Twitter Revolution”, the now ousted Hosni Mubarak at the time believed that shutting off the internet would stifle the rebellion. (Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/28/whats-going-on-in-egypt_n_815734.html)

Events like these (including the protests in Libya), are a prime examples of how powerful Web 2.0 can be. Social media has given the power back to the public and stripped organizations and even political parties of theirs. How has social media empowered you as a person, consumer, etc.?

Buy a physical or electronic copy of Business Goes Virtual: http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/business-goes-virtual-realizing-value-collaboration-social-and-virtual-strategies

The content includes:
PART I - THE CONVERGENCE

Chapter 1 - Virtual Business: Real or Imaginary?

Chapter 2 - The New Face(book) of Organizations

Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

PART II THE STRATEGIES

Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Chapter 8 - Everyone Has a Stake

Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

PART III THE WAY AHEAD

Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

Review of Business Goes Virtual by Bill Ives

2011-07-25T09:21:00.000-07:00

I recently received a review copy of Business Goes Virtual: Realizing the Value of Collaboration, Social and Virtual Strategies by John P. Girard, Cindy Gordon, and JoAnn L. Girard. I have known Cindy for some time and we have done work together on several occasions, including several writing efforts so I had high expectations for this work. The book argues that after some false starts, four critical enablers have converged to make virtual business opportunities a reality: social technology, visionary leadership, an increasing recognition of the value of a collaboration culture, plus virtual worlds. They define virtual business as follows: “A virtual business provides innovative solutions to new and traditional business challenges by exploiting social technology, leadership, and collaboration in both the real and virtual words.”

The book examines four virtual business strategies that are showing promise. The “any place, any time” strategy provides high quality service 24/7 through bypassing traditional geographic challenges. The “people know best” strategy looks at crowd-sourcing the wisdom of every-day people. The “everyone has a stake” strategy allows organizations to take advantage of their stakeholders’ views. Finally, the “real in the virtual world” strategy enables real businesses to sell their wares in the virtual world.

The book provides case examples and best practices. They look at both successes and failures in this new market and make some bets on the future. They conclude that virtual business is here to stay and firms need to develop a strategy to take advantage of this new market or risk their demise.

One strong example is the transformation from printed books to e-books. I am reading a virtual version of their book now. The authors report that on Christmas Day 2009, consumers purchased more Kindle books than physical books through Amazon, a virtual store itself. Now the iPad is booming with Apple selling more tablets than PCs both in terms of volume and revenue – and the iPad is much cheaper. It takes e-reading to new heights and provides connectivity to so many other possibilities. For example, it becomes that much easier to sharing insights from what you are reading or look up related information from other sources. Publishers who recognize this trend will be in position to ride the new wave and those that do not will be ridden over.

This new world will change many things including jobs. The authors note that many of the top jobs of 2010 did not exist in 2004. We are now faced with preparing our children for jobs that do yet exist and to solve problems that are yet unknown. This uncertainty has always been the case to some extent but it has become a much stronger factor. I saw from another source that in 1986 75% of the knowledge that a worker needed was stored in workers’ heads but by 2006, that number was estimated to be 9%. We need new ways of providing the remaining 81% and the virtual world opens up an opportunity for this also through social software.

It is nice that at least some of the challenges brought forward with the virtual world can also be addressed through it and the new technologies that have enabled it. The authors provide a useful chapter on these new technologies including social networks, blogs, microblogs, and wikis. I was interested to see that Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere 2010 Report on American bloggers found that 81% have been blogging more than 2 years and 11% say blogging is their primary income source. I am currently one of those in the latter group. Supporting their growth predictions is that fact that most of their usage stats for most tools have now been surpassed.

Of course it is more than technology and they cover the leadership necessary to go forward in the virtual world. They found a variety of leadership styles to work including both transformational and transactional. They provide a series of stories written by a diverse group of successful virtual business leaders.

The book covers much more including the power of sharing, the four strategies mentioned above, and where the future may take us. I recommend it to anyone who wants to make sense of today’s business world and the opportunities and risks it provides.

Source:http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2011/07/review-of-business-goes-virtual.html

Introducing Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 1: Virtual Business - Real or Imaginary?

2011-07-21T13:55:00.000-07:00

This blog post is the first of a ten post series about my new book, Business Goes Virtual, written with John and JoAnn Girard. Each post will feature chapter excerpts and general commentary on the current topic.

In a nutshell, Business Goes Virtual combines academic theory and case studies of real-world success stories to provide leaders with leading practices and lessons learned to help their organizations innovate and grow more rapidly.

Virtual Business Defined (Sort of)

...Wikipedia defines the term as follows: “A virtual business employs electronic means to transact business as opposed to a traditional brick and mortar business that relies on face- to- face transactions with physical documents and physical currency or credit.”

Our use of the Wikipedia definition is very deliberate. We are very aware that some readers will cringe as they read the word “Wikipedia” and immediately challenge the validity of the definition. However, we believe that Wikipedia is an excellent source of material, especially given the subject of the book. Throughout Business Goes Virtual, we will use a variety of high- quality online references including blogs, wikis, social media, and corporate web presences as well as more traditional academic sources such as peer- reviewed journal articles, books, and conference proceedings. We will select the sources carefully; however, we will not differentiate based on whether the source is from electronic or paper media....

From our study of businesses in the domain, we define the term as follows: A virtual business provides innovative solutions to new and traditional business challenges by exploiting social technology, leadership, and collaboration in both the real and virtual worlds.

(Pg 9-10)

According to a New York Times interview with Marc Andreessen, a Silicon Valley venture-capitalist, tech businesses (where most of which are virtual businesses) are still being undervalued because of the 90’s tech bubble and its eventual burst in the early 2000’s. With the recent valuations of LinkedIn at $9 billion and Pandora at $3.4 billion (Source: http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/01/as-zynga-files-for-1b-ipo-linkedin-and-pandora-stocks-pop/), do you still agree with him? Are you willing to invest in these kinds of companies armed with the knowledge that there could be another bubble burst? Comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Buy a physical or electronic copy of Business Goes Virtual: http://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/business-goes-virtual-realizing-value-collaboration-social-and-virtual-strategies

The content includes:
PART I - THE CONVERGENCE

Chapter 1 - Virtual Business: Real or Imaginary? *Read the first chapter online at the above link*

Chapter 2 - The New Face(book) of Organizations

Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

PART II THE STRATEGIES

Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Chapter 8 - Everyone Has a Stake

Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

PART III THE WAY AHEAD

Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

Seven Sales Challenges

2011-04-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

With the complexity of today’s business solutions and their organization-wide impact, many senior level executives are actively involved in the sales process. Many companies are finding that their sales professionals are not connecting effectively in the coverage models to sell successfully.

Gaining access to executive decision makers can mean the difference between winning and losing sales. Here are seven common challenges that sales professionals must overcome to effectively engage those in the executive suite:

1. The salesperson doesn’t connect to the executive’s critical business issues and gets delegated to a lower-level person.

Brilliant ideas and valuable products and services elicit indifference if you can’t immediately establish credibility about and connect to the executive’s most pressing issues. Your credibility comes via the relevancy you establish in your introduction by connecting your solutions or capabilities to the business drivers. If you reference challenges the industry is facing or the company’s objectives in a substantive way, executives will recognize that they couldn’t have this conversation with anyone else.

2. Your strongest contact in the client’s organization no longer holds the power to make the buying decision.

In today’s highly competitive and volatile marketplace, globalization, consolidation, and centralization are some of the reasons that decisions move to higher levels of power and influence. This movement is forcing even the most experienced sales professionals to expand their expertise and compete at new levels in organizations.

Expecting that a single contact in your client’s organization can and will carry your message effectively is hanging on to thin threads of hope. It is critical that we translate the value we can create at the technical, operational, or clinical level to the impact it has on the client’s business. That’s a conversation most executives want to have.

3. Your competition is in the executive suite and you aren’t.

Can the competition get into the executive suite and take your account while you believe your relationship is strong at the operations level? Absolutely! Salespeople typically spend more time preparing for a prospect visit than for a current client visit. Don’t let over-familiarity lull you into understanding less about your client than your competitor does. Gain advantage and pull ahead of competitive threats by establishing a broad base of relationships that will preempt and neutralize competitive moves.

4. You have bought into, “I make the final decision,” when, in fact, you are hung up with someone who barely influences the decision.

Understand how your solution affects each level of responsibility within your client’s organization. It is only natural that you will interact at all levels to understand the full potential of your solution, and after the sale to assure that the full value of your solution is being achieved. Building these relationships as you gather information will ensure you are firmly grounded with those who are both impacted and influenced by the decision.

5. You reach the person who holds the checkbook, but you can’t build the financial case that person needs to make the buying decision.

The financial executive plays an increasingly central role in setting the strategy of the organization and how to fund the implementation of that strategy. Do not place the burden on your clients to translate your technical advantages into the financial impact of your solution. Involve them in your calculations; have them collaborate, and then adjust your assumptions. In the end, the client must “own” the justification. Be an advisor, not a sales rep. Position your solution as a strategic asset.

6. Third-party consultants are forcing you to compete on price when you know that the information on the value you would create for the client is not reaching the executive level in the client’s organization.

Recognize that you and the third-party consultants have the same client. Build the case for mutual gains with them by asking the questions they have not thought of asking. They will recognize the value you add to their position and invite you into the executive suite. Help third-party consultants manage a quality buying process that builds successful outcomes for them, for you, and for your clients.

7. Your convincing proposal wins the first round of approvals, but you find that the executive buy-in never happens. The executive had criteria on the table that you never tapped into, or even knew existed.

Engage executives early in the decision process to establish the criteria that create senior-level ownership. Build winning proposals that connect the business drivers at all levels of influence and decision. Ask the in-depth questions that have not occurred to your client. You should ask the questions that expose the risks inherent in a successful implementation of your solution.

Executives are concerned about working with suppliers who truly understand their business, their customers’ demands, and their competitive landscape, as well as the challenges associated with the implementation. If you cannot speak to these issues, your time in the executive suite will be brief.

To help you get started in gaining access and communicating with credibility, here are three suggestions:

Understand the executive mindset.
Gain insight into how they think, what they expect, what makes them move forward, and how they drive management support. They are looking for ideas and resources to execute their strategy, and how to reduce risk and increase the probability of success.
Create compelling relevancy.
Build a value assumption that will connect your capabilities to the executive agenda and ensure you have strong executive-level sponsorship to prove or disprove the hypothesis.
Establish exceptional credibility.
Expected credibility is what you know about your solution. Exceptional credibility is what you know about your client’s business. Look at your words and your documents. Are they about you and your solution, or are they about your clients and their businesses?

When you understand the mindset of executives, connect to their agenda, and establish exceptional credibility, you will have meaningful conversations that often result in long-term and mutually beneficial relationships.

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE

2011-04-26T05:34:00.000-07:00

Yahoo

Finally our new publication is out on Social Knowledge: Using Social Media to Know What you Know, a book project that John and Joanne Girard pulled together and we edited with over 20 other leading researchers, academics and practioners. I was priviledged to be able to contribute both on core content and also be on the editorial advisory board with:

1.) Alex Bennet of Mountain Quest Institute
2.) Nick Bowersox, TUI University, USA
3.) Kamiz Dalkir, McGill University
4.) Parissa Haghirian, Sophia University, Japan
5.) Harris Papoutasakis, Technological Education Institute of Crete University
6.) Suzanne Roff-Wexler, Compass Point Consulting
7.) Michael Sutton, Westminster College
8.) Jerry Westfall Liberty University

The book addresses perspectives that for the past two decades, executives have struggled to develop effective ways of sharing what their organizations know. Organizational leaders are now seeking ways to share knowledge with both internal and external stakeholders, driven by concerns such as: downsizing, the impending retirement of baby boomers, terrorism and a host of other organizational challenges.

Our new book provides relevant and current theoretical frameworks, latest empirical research findings, and practitioner's best practices in the area. The book is multi-disciplinary in nature and considers a wide range of topics, each of which is related to social knowledge. It is written for professionals who want to improve their understanding of the strategic role of social knowledge in business, government and in not for profit sectors.

The Content includes:

Chapter 1 - Social Learning from the Inside Out: The Creation and Sharing of Knowledge from the Mind and Brain Perspective

Chapter 2 - Measuring the Impact of Social Media, Connection, Communication and Collaboration

Chapter 3 - Challenging Our Assumptions: Making Sense of the Sharing of Social Knowledge

Chapter 4 - Social Knowledge Case Study: Innovation Linked to the Collaborative Socialization of Knowledge written by Dr. Cindy Gordon, author of this blog.

Chapter 5 - Social Knowledge in the Japanese Firm

Chapter 6 - Cultural Barriers to Organizational Social Media Adoption

Chapter 7 - Organizational Culture: A Pillar for Knowledge Management

Chapter 8 - Social Leadership: Exploring Social Media and the Military - A New Leadership Tool

Chapter 9 - Foundations of Cross Cultural Knowledge Management

Chapter 10 - Becoming a Blogger: A Social Knowledge Experiment

Chapter 11 - Encouraging Participation in Virtual Communities of Practices within the United States Air Force

Chapter 12 - Social Knowledge Workplace

Chapter 13 - Sharing Scientific and Social Knowledge in a Performance Oriented Industry: An Evaluation Model

Chapter 14 - Social Knowledge: The Technology Behind

Chapter 15 - Empowering Social Knowledge with Information Technology: Technological and Cultural Issues Convergence

For the next few months, I will comment on sections from this book to help share insights from our collective research in hopes we can inspire you to take leadership action and drive more social knowledge practices into your organizations work practices.

Results are already showing sales representatives that leverage social selling practice outperform their colleagues and drive an increase of over 10% greater revenue outcomes.

This is all my firm at Helix Commerce does with my partner, Alex Blom - we are helping to transform business practices, and we work primarily with large mutinationals, major banks, com and high tech companies, etc... so much work to do and every day we realize we know so little.

Measuring Innovation Successfully

2011-04-25T07:12:00.000-07:00

How do you measure innovation?

One of the reasons that only about one third of all Fortune 1000 companies have formal innovation metrics is because this simple question does not have a readily apparent simple answer.

Metrics can be important levers of innovation - for driving behavior, as well as evaluating the results of specific initiatives. Companies like 3M have had innovation metrics for years - the most noteworthy that 15% of employees' time can be used for experimentation with new opportunities and that 35% of the corporations' revenues should come from products introduced within the past four years.

But defining the right metrics for your business can be tricky. There's generally no one right answer and determining what, exactly, to measure can feel like more of an art than a science.

The Heart of the Problem

The heart of the problem is that today's competitive environment is radically different from the industrial environment in which traditional innovation metrics were born. Because most discussions of metrics begin with benchmarks of industries leaders (like 3M), innovation metrics tend to revert back to traditional measures of research and development investment and effectiveness. Across the Fortune 1000 that do possess innovation metrics, for example, the most prevalent metrics include :

Annual RandD budget as a percentage of annual sales
Number of patents filed in the past year
Total RandD headcount or budget as a percentage of sales
Number of active projects
Number of ideas submitted by employees
Percentage of sales from products introduced in the past X year(s)

While some of these metrics can be valuable for driving investment in innovation and evaluating results, they provide a limited view.

In today's environment in which "open innovation" (sourcing ideas and technology from outside the company) can create differentiation and competitive advantage, for example, some of these metrics actually inhibit strategic innovation. And in an environment in which disruptive innovation and business cannibalization must be wholeheartedly embraced as a core strategy, fundamentally new types of behaviors are required, and subsequently new structures and related metrics to drive these behaviors.

Another challenge experienced by business leaders interested in defining metrics is "metrics overload". A Business Week article recently noted that "many companies have too many metrics and try to measure everything with different criteria". This overload causes executives to view their metrics as missing "the heart of the matter" and are dissatisfied with their existing approach to measuring innovation. What gets measured drives behavior. Too many metrics leads to excessive activities that provide little value and often drive behavior in cross-purposes.

The Metrics Imperative

Because innovation is now a widely recognized critical requirement for virtually all companies across all industries, the metrics imperative is here. Leaders must establish a new breed of metrics that move beyond conventional measures and that:

Create an organizational environment that supports and drives strategic innovation
Establish critical capabilities tuned to the evolving competitive business landscape
Evaluate innovation efforts to ensure both return on investment and support feedback loops of learning and improvement

A Framework for Innovation Metrics

Our framework for innovation metrics attempts to create a simple solution to a complex challenge. With the assumption that successful innovation is the result of the synergies between a number of complementary success factors, our model incorporates two core principles:

Creating a "family of metrics" is essential for ensuring a well-rounded portfolio of measures
Including both "input metrics" and "output metrics" is essential for ensuring measures that drive resource allocation and capability building as well as return on investment assessment

Creating a "family of metrics" ensures a well-rounded portfolio of measures that cover the most important innovation drivers for your specific organization.

The following are the three categories that should be considered for any metrics portfolio:

Return on Investment Metrics
ROI metrics address two measures: resource investments and financial returns. ROI metrics give innovation management fiscal discipline and help justify and recognize the value of strategic initiatives, programs and the overall investment in innovation.

Organizational Capability Metrics
Organizational capability metrics focus on the infrastructure and process of innovation. Capability measures provide focus for initiatives geared toward building repeatable and sustainable approaches to invention and re-invention.

Leadership Metrics
Leadership metrics address the behaviors that senior managers and leaders must exhibit to support a culture of innovation within the organization, including the support of specific growth initiatives.

Within each of these categories, there are "input metrics" and "output metrics". Input metrics are the investments, resources and behaviors that are necessary to drive results. Output metrics represent the desired results for the metric category.

Procter & Gamble, for example, uses an organizational capability input metric focused on "the percentage of external sourcing of ideas and technology" as a way to drive its Connect and Develop strategy for open innovation. In 2000, 10% of the company's R&D was outsourced - in 2010, over 60% of all ideas and technology came from the outside.

Key Input & Output Metrics

The following are the key input and output metrics for each category. These illustrations are not meant to be exhaustive but rather provide an initial list of options for those looking to instill metrics within their own organizations.

Return on Investment Metrics
Input Metrics	Output Metrics
% of capital invested in innovation activities such as submitting and reviewing ideas for new products and services and developing ideas through an innovation pipeline Percentage of "outside" vs. "inside" inputs to the innovation process (open innovation) Number of new products, services, and businesses launched in new markets in the past year	Actual vs. targeted breakeven time (BET) % of revenue/profit from products or services introduced in the past X years Royalty and licensing income from patents/intellectual property

Organizational Capability Metrics
Input Metrics	Output Metrics
% of employees who have received training and tools for innovation - e.g., instruction in estimating market potential of an idea Existence of formal structures & processes that support innovation Number of new competencies (distinctive skills and knowledge domains that spawn innovation)	Number of innovations that significantly advance existing businesses Number of new-to-company opportunities in new markets

Leadership Metrics
Input Metrics	Output Metrics
% of executives' time spent on strategic innovation versus day-to-day operations % of managers with training in the concepts and tools of innovation % of product/service or strategic innovation projects with assigned executive sponsors	Number of managers that become leaders of new category businesses

Driving Innovation Metrics

Creating and driving the effective use of innovation metrics goes beyond simply defining and communicating new measures. Creating innovation metrics requires a strategic and disciplined approach that starts with the enterprise growth strategy and cascades throughout each business unit, division and group structure. By establishing a "family of metrics" that support the collective innovation imperatives of firm, business leaders can drive return on investment, organizational capability and leadership behavior at multiple levels of the organization.

Using metrics to drive and assess growth is more than a one time exercise. As an ongoing tool for innovation management, the approach involves:

Planning: Involving key stakeholders in the identification of metrics to insure the assumptions about the sources of value are explicit and clear, and metrics align to the firm's strategy.

Monitoring: A structured activity of monitoring metrics against goals as a means to gauge progress and define necessary adjustments to measures & strategies.

Learning: A continuous feedback loop that assesses progress, engages key stakeholders in identifying implications and new opportunities to support the firm's metrics-driven goals.

One potential approach to establishing innovation includes the following steps:

1. Clarify enterprise strategic business objectives

2. Define innovation goals to support growth objectives

3. Identify required innovation capabilities for the future

4. Identify desired innovation-related leadership behaviors

5. Identify organizational processes and models required to drive incremental and strategic innovation

6. Create a family of metrics that support the enterprise innovation strategy of the company

7. Create cascading metrics that align business units, divisions, groups and lateral process capabilities

8. Revisit and recalibrate strategies and metrics on an ongoing basis

Whatever the process, it is critical to engage key stakeholders in defining your metrics that will guide the organization into the future. Learning loops that capture insights gleaned from successes and failures must be integrated into the process and valued as a ongoing capability. And finally, metrics shouldn't be viewed as an end in themselves but rather an indicator of the types of strategic capabilities and behavior required of each and every employee to ensure long term success and business growth.

Sources:http://www.innovation-point.com/innovationmetrics.htm

Emerson Electrics Innovation Metrics

2011-04-24T07:06:00.000-07:00

Emerson Electric's Innovation Metrics

Large companies, where data-driven decision-making rules the roost, have long sought ways to measure innovation. Emerson Electric thinks it has the answer

Emerson Electric (EMR) is a company that embraces numbers. If something can be measured, the fast-growing industrial conglomerate doesn't hesitate to do so. On a wall at its St. Louis headquarters, photos of 2,000 Emerson managers hang in ranked order—from Chief Executive David Farr on down.

So as the company has sought to improve its innovation efforts, it has turned to—what else?—a new metric. With 140,000 employees and 52% of its $22.5 billion in sales coming from outside the U.S., the company, like many others its size, had set an arbitrary goal for its 60 far-flung business units: make a third of sales from products released in the past five years. Now Emerson is taking a different approach to tracking new-product sales—one it considers more insightful, revealing, and effective.

In this system, which began last year, managers divide new-product sales into one of four categories: minor improvements, major improvements, products that are new lines for the business, and ones that are completely new to the world. This rubric offers a more accurate guidepost, says Charlie Peters, Emerson Electric's chief innovation officer.

Managers can spend more time and money promoting breakthroughs rather than creating incremental tweaks. "It really shows just how innovative—or, better yet, not innovative—people actually are," says Peters, an Emerson veteran whose post was created last year.

Large companies, where data-driven decision-making rules the roost, have long sought ways to measure innovation, though none have found a magic set of measures.

The "new-to-the-world" framework dates at least to an early '80s study by consultants Booz Allen Hamilton. Emerson, which makes a dizzying array of industrial and electrical components, from telecom wires to dishwasher parts, has explicitly linked the metric with a broader innovation push. Despite healthy growth—sales have risen nearly 13% a year since 2003—Emerson engineers had spent too much time chasing the 33% new-product-sales target.

Now company divisions can free up manpower and money to go after groundbreaking projects rather than iterations of existing products. Thomas Bettcher, CEO of Emerson Climate Technologies, uses the quadrant in strategic planning. "It just gives us better data about where our resources are going," he says. Last year, for example, a third of all the new-product sales in his unit were classified as "minor improvements."

Seeing that analysis led Bettcher to increase investment in projects that will yield new-to-market or new-to-the-world results.He's doubled funding for projects that would embed electronics in air-conditioner compressors, making them more efficient and easier to operate. The metric "has given us a tool," says Bettcher, "to go after projects that are a little more difficult, a little riskier."

Skeptics wonder whether Emerson has any business aiming for products that are new to the world. Plenty of digital music players, after all, preceded the iPod; what made Apple's (AAPL) gadget great wasn't its novelty but the way it tied together a user's experience.

Brian Uzzi, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University who has studied innovation metrics, also notes that truly novel products have a very high failure rate. At companies like Emerson, with intense, make-the-quarter focus, he says, "reaching for more than you should could be detrimental."

SOURCE: REPRINT FROM : http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_24/b4088046119515.htm

Social Media in the Workplace - Distractive or Productive

2011-04-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

Social Media in the Workplace – Distractive or Productive?

guest author: Bobbie Walker

Officially, the jury is still out on this one, but the answer to this question is actually pretty simple if you stop to think of it – some people find it productive while others consider it distractive. Ok, so if the solution is so damn straightforward, why are there heated debates on this topic raging all over the Internet? Perhaps this is because the world of social media wants to be taken seriously and considered as more than just tools to while away the time or give vent to our narcissistic and voyeuristic tendencies.

I have nothing against Facebook and Twitter or any other social media tool – in fact, I use one quite regularly to keep in touch with friends as most people seem to have moved to this social media from regular email. However, I do find social media to be more distractive than productive; but that’s just because the nature of my work does not allow me to use social media to augment my profession and boost productivity. Perhaps the only professional advantage I gain is that I am able to touch base on a regular basis with others in the industry, thus keeping my options open in case I need to look for a new job.

For others however, social media adds to their professional edge because they use it as a marketing tool, to advertise and sell their products. They create fan pages and use them to drive traffic to their network. And they use Twitter to keep their customers informed about the latest news and offers from their organization. To them, social media is perhaps the cheapest and most effective way to get out the news to the largest number of existing and potential customers, and with the viral nature of news on Facebook and Twitter, these tools are extremely beneficial for marketing and promotional endeavors.

However, for the rest of us who don’t use social media for professional reasons, they are definitely a waste of time if they’re allowed to intrude on our work day. They’re addictive by nature, and for those who’re not too disciplined or work-oriented, they offer more interesting and subtle ways to while away the time than spending time around the water cooler or taking infinite number of coffee or bathroom breaks.

But then, at the end of the day, the truth is that productivity is a personal characteristic, one that has to come from within irrespective of the distractions that exist on the outside. So if you’re a conscientious worker, you do get things done, irrespective of the existence or absence of social media.

By-line:

This guest post is contributed by Bobbie Walker, she writes on the topic of Online BSN Degrees . She welcomes your comments at her email id: bobbiew862[@]gmail[.]com.

Innovation : Open and Closed Models

2011-02-28T06:29:00.000-08:00

What are some of the key characteristics of open and closed business models?

Open

1.) Speed to market
2.) Iterative design (constantly being virtual and scrumming)
3.) Release smallest subset of functionality - test for consumer /customer demand and build on learnings vs assumptions
4.) Strong in monitoring competitors
5.) Absorb ideas in real time - so agility is typically in founder DNA
6.) Use contract labor vs FTEs
7.) More aggressive in orientation
8.) Focus on Customer Traction and Sales traction vs IP (tail that wags the dog)
9.) Value is placed on financial performance vs projected
10.) Tend to be B2C vs B2B

Closed

1.) Slower to market: focus on perfecting working protoypes before hitting the market
2.) Brand sensitive and protectionistic
3.) Tend to be B2B vs B2C
4.) Dragged down by legacy infrastructure and processes that require customization
5.) Scale and Size matters so tight scrutiny on approach
6.) IP Matters and often complexities lose out on innovation as arrive too late to market
7.) Can be great if the recognition in the market is early enough ahead of the curve to continue to refine models

In the prior blog I wrote on open or closed business models, I indicated that knowing which approach to take is highly predicated on the type of innovation and the type of company you are in.

I always recommend if large global companies are trying to innovate emergence they do so outside the core, and have separate practices and processes from the core, and use the channel/sales capability of the core, but not ingest NEWCO.

I also question the needs for IP protection when in technology web centric models these are nearly impossible to protect and energy I believe is best spent on securing real paying customers.

Companies such as Apple, Google (Android) typify the new world of more open business models. The ecoystems they are building to allow others to take advantage of are simply mind boggling..... abundance rules and scarcity is for dinosaurs.

Communities of Practice Leading Perspectives

2011-02-27T07:12:00.000-08:00

Knowledge Now is a world class collaboration and CoP program in the United States Air Force. I was recently speaking at a global conference with the Air Commander from USAF where he discussed their Knowledge Now, program.

The program is full of stories of how people have collaborated on the ground to save time, money, resources and lives.

The initial projects was to integrate three existing knowledge sets:

1.) Lessons learned from across the Air Force
2.) The Air Force Deskbook, an annually validated set of processes and procedures, along with forms, key words and references
3.) A Smart Web based training program

The Director of the Center of Excellence for KM and Collaboration at the US Department of Defnse is Randy Adkins and "our collaboration and CoPS have thrived because of our over 300,00 plus people are accomplishing the mission and creating a knowledge market that we have clearly defined - collaborating, sharing, posting information in your communities is vital to our mission. This can help save lives."

Since the launch, over 16,000 active Communities of Practice (CoPs) are flourishing, with strong participation across the ranks, over 100,000 visitors viewing over 12 million pages a month, with 10,000 new users per month, more than 575,000 users since the program's launch and is not the largest implementation and most successful CoP environment in the Federal Government.

Lessons Learned

Randy shared some of the key lessons learned in their early days were:

1.) Identify the business purpose or value - be clear and compelling.
2.) Security and sharing are not compatible - better to be open than closed and trust your people.
3.) Organizational culture grows and is enhanced through collaboration.
4.) Experienced human support is critical for sustainability.

Key Seeding Strategies

1.) Work with the willing, not the wounded or the dead!
2.) Engage C level and middle management stakeholders - if they are not role modelling - few will follow!
3.) Focus on ensuring validated content add values.
4.) Include expert profiling and people search features that connect the right people FAST.

If I knew what I know now, seeding these are number ones:

1.) Focusing on creating a nurturing and sharing obsessed culture is critical
2.) Be creative about the metrics and have fun with them
3.) Make everything incredibly easy and simple to use -- avoid feature creep!

Invest in sustaining marketing and communication strategies and constantly engage the managers in the learning process, especially middle management as if they are not pumped - no one is going anywhere fast.

Creating a sense of urgency will require the most senior executives engaged and seeding messages around faster faster faster and seeding ongoing incentives and recognitions.

Sustaining the dialogue will be critical for operational success.

Perhaps is most important message shared and that we like to hear is: Engage with the best and the brightest in Adoption and Change programs at the seeding stage, they know how to influence the technology design, and get things up running effectively, and won't get dragged into technical perfection.

Our firm specializes in collaboration, innovation and next generation models. We just finished writing a strong leading practices book on CoPs and this can be found at:

http://stores.lulu.com/helixcommerce

We just finished doing some of the most innovative CoP and Customer Excellence planning at RIM, as noted at the IBM Lotus Sphere events held in Florida, and most recently in Toronto.

We were generously recognized by Rex Lee, Director of eCollaboration at RIM, our client who ensured Helix had the opportunity to do the global strategy for their collaboration and CoP programs. We were in a fortunate position as IBM allowed us to be subcontracted under them and do the work as RIM asked for us, putting aside their internal best talent to allow Helix and our secret sauce and methods take the lead.

RIM's program is now one of the most innovative collaboration and CoP environment's scaling rapidly worlwide, why everyone is asking us now.

Three key reasons we say are:

1.) RIM's leadership had the vision and empowered their people to engage and hire the best.
2.) RIM's center of excellence vision (full time resources) were embedded to sustain the program from the get go and are now approaching over 8 FT resources, plus certifying in each line of business collaboration advisors to get the embedded behaviors in the culture, something we knew was critical as we are also specialists in organizational transformation. This does not include the technical, architecture and other support resources.
3.) We seeded all the human performance systems to be aligned - these projects are not about technology and we see too often IT executives making the wrong decision as they get enamored with the tech.

Helix has the depth in tech in both the IBM Lotus Collaboration and Microsoft solutions - but distinguishes us is are three key factors:

1.) We lead with business value and case for action - client messaging as the foundation - we get the vision right first.
2.) We ensure stakeholder engagement = skin in the game in the seeding processes.
3.) We use agile iterative design and scrumming tactics to engage the organization culture to own vs do to them.
4.) We know the most important filter is "finding the right experts - so investing in profiling and incentives here - is number one!

So to achieve a winning Collaboration solution like AFKN or RIM, contact us.
www.helixcommerce.com

New Rules of Thinking

2011-02-27T06:41:00.000-08:00

Today consumers are changing companies continually. Overall attrition rates are seeing attrition rates as high as 40-65%. While this trend is growing, companies are searching for increasing bonding stickiness.

We all know that it costs 3-5 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep one. What this means is that every company, big or small must have a customer growth plan to keep in touch with its strongest and most loyal customers.

We also have to increase our innovation knowledge on disruption. The old adage if it ain't broke, don't fix it needs to be destroyed.

Reed Hastings of Netflix did not reinvent the movie rental business. Rather he capitalized on a weakness. People hate late fees, he simply created a simple model deployed over the web with subscription fees instead of unit sales.

Learn from other's mistakes

I love to shop at Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel as their furniture and products are beautifully styled and appeal to the home maker in me. However, look at Home Decorator's Collection (HDC) -- a no frills, discount offer that look the same as the beautiful ones in the expensive furniture catalogues and everyone loves a bargain.... so finding market holes is an important scanning skill to cultivate in your organizations. Every company has weaknesses - just need to look for them.

A few questions to ask:

1.) Would the Founder of Netflix been successful if he had followed the traditional video distribution model?
2.) Would Amazon continue to be be successful if they had stayed focused on pure bookselling strategy only?
3.) Would Apple be successful if they had not thought ecosystem vs product - ie: iPhone , iPAD, etc?
4.) Would Android be successful it had not been open?

The Cluetrain Manifesto is now an old book, but one thesis still holds true: Markets are conversations.

What Cluetrain failed to discuss is that human nature remains the same. For any conversation to continue their needs to be trust and reciprocity. You can expand your reach, but if the consistency in the experience, expansion of customer connectedness, people simply drift.

My partner, Alex Blom has the approach right to his over 40,000 twitterer followings, and now as one of the top digital media influencers in NA, he takes pride in responding to each of his followers, and returning their tweets, or building on their tweets, yes and he does not sleep very much.

There is a point where he and I both know he cannot sustain this personally and he is now at the tipping point, but he knows that the conversation is valuable and needs to continue and needs to be genuine.

In summary, as executives concerned about innovation and creating cultures that flourish on new ways of working, we need to develop practices that reward talent for thinking outside the box, giving them opportunities to break practices/processes as reinvention keeps you on the edge and agile.

To survive in an increasingly interconnected and web smart world - companies need to embrace change. It is the only constant fuel for growth and sustainability.

Innovation: Open or Closed Models

2011-02-27T06:17:00.000-08:00

As a former Venture Capitalist and founding member of the Toronto Angels, and now running a small strategy firm specializing in innovation and growth models using next generation technologies (collaboration and community based), it is fascinating to watch the shifts in business models and impacts on valuation under traditional IP thinking.

In today's web centric world, where the meaning of proprietary has shifted as many solutions are leveraging open source code in their production processes, the focus has shifted from IP (closed models) to valuation on the reach of their models.

One starts to see the realities of pumping in sums of scarce dollars into IP protection vs just driving the reach as models on the web and their returns depend on pervasiveness.

Our business world still works with old assumptions with non disclosures, non competes, patents and trademarks as protective strategies, disclose as little as possible, and valuation predicated on more closed than open models.

Yet the returns on models on web centric models are higher on more open models than closed. The economic theories are shifting to abundance vs scarcity - what many of my colleagues in complexity science have been saying for some time.

For web social/collaboration and community exchange models - open innovation is the right approach for rapid reach, but for models in bio science, or pharmaceuticals etc, the old models on patent protection still hold true.

What we need to teach CEO's and emerging leadership teams is to understand their business models and then select the right approaches - riding the traditional and more complicated historical ways of valuing companies is broken now and in time abundance will prevail... we just don't all understand this yet.

RIM Growth Challenges

2011-02-25T06:52:00.000-08:00

RIM is a world-class Canadian company that is now a world-class Global company. We have a hard time as Canadian's praising our children.

Once you get to be the size of RIM, you have the priviledge of being attached on all fronts. Who could not be losing ground to the likes of Apple. Their iPhone is brilliant and has set the soncumer standard for smartphone innovation. The Google's Android platform is also gaining share as its powerful operating system, and zero cost to channel partners, makes it an attractive solution to sell.

Consumer polls that are measuring product desirability consistently favor the iPhone and the Android is now squeezing Rim as well.

What should Rim do and is doing?

1.) Remember the line - Focus on your Core.

RIM has a powerful enterprise niche and must retain its high margin and loyal customers. To do this, enterprise services must always be ahead of the Apples, and Androids (whose dominance is more consumer)

2.) Expand footprint into the consumer garden but not at the expense of preserving the core.

It is easy to have Apple envy, however, my belief is it is better to have a strong foothold and preserve /fight to keep the core strong, as dilution will only erode the foundation on all sides.

Perhaps the biggest disappointment I had was RIM went to market too early on its new iPAD like product (The Torch), it did not deliver product superiority and shipping has had its challenges.

In summary, RIM may have its unique challenges, what it needs to do is not compare itself to Apple or the Android and look beyond these otherwise they are caught in a cat and mouse, function feature game, here are some ideas:

1.) Bring together the brightest engineers (top engineer from each university around the world (say 20) and offer them a $ prize to invent a new product to extent the Torch to levels unimagined (4 month co-op assignment)

See what unfolds - great PR and recruiting benefits, new ideas will emerge as with diversity comes more wisdom.

RIM is highly concentrating with R&D based in Waterloo and increasingly in the valley. It is now a global company, yet when one tests for harmony of culture and vision alignment of what the future holds, there is a worrisome level of concern by RIM employees (the enemy is now us is in RIM's tent), and their practices for engagement (doing business) is well understood to be plagued with difficulties.

All this aside, RIM will find a smart pathway forward, but it has to start with its internal engineers believing they can solve the challenge. This confidence is critical to evolution, feeling like you are in a shadow will breed mediocrity and erode confidence.

If Jim andMike spent one week each working side by side with their most brilliant engineers - some new energy would be unleashed, sometimes as executives we caught up in internal or external meetings and what is really important is ensuring our talent believe in the dream and know they are making a real difference.

Facebook - Your Stories can be real time ads now!

2011-02-23T06:40:00.000-08:00

Facebook has just launched its new initiative allowing you to become the star of the marketing your friends see on their profiles.

I have to try this as I am likely the Starbuck's queen at Brookdale /Yonge in Toronto.

Sponsored stories will allow advertisers to copy certain pieces of information from a Facebook user's news feeds and pin those posting tot he profiles of their friends. It's a new way for marketers to increase the visability of certain stories that show in their new feeds.

Word of mouth, recommendations, and endorsements are a major value to marketers.

Now when a Facebook user presses a like button for a certain product or service, or checks in at a location using Facebook Places, and downloads an application, marketers can now take that information and use it as a sponsored story.

Users can prevent what they share appearing by adjusting their privacy settings of their news feed.

Stores to sell products or services are effective, and entertaining. These types of approaches extend the reach of marketing professionals as they have more content to leverage, and voices to leverage to echo their brands.

Intelligent Cities: Megacity Mergers in China

2011-02-22T06:28:00.000-08:00

Imagine joining nine cities together to create a metropolis or mega city of over 42 milion people, a population bigger than Canada's ( we have 34 M).

City planners in China are looking at merging the nine cities around the Pearl River Delta, which would create a land mass of city dwelling that is 65 times greater than Toronto, and if merged will account for more than 10% of China's economy, due to the heavy manufacturing heartland.

Plans are underway over the next 6 years to invest in over 200 infrastructure projects (transport, energy, telecom, etc), cost of over $300B - now that is urban planning extreme.

By the end of the decade, China plans to consolidate more cities to strengthen services and consolidate costs for greater efficiencies.

As the megacity China growth strategy gathers momentum, investment is anticipated to exceed $US1Trillion, with an investment of $500B in high speed rail.

Reflections on the Internet on a Monday Morning

2011-02-21T06:10:00.000-08:00

For many of us the internet was something we were introduced to in the mid to late 1990's, when AOL became prevalent, giving us services to the web and content that we never knew was even possible.

Then if you recall we had the early search engines like Alta Vista, Yahoo and eventually Google appeared and the internet's vast content and possibilities became more real.

I remember when I was a VC in the late 1990's we still had people questionning the feasibility of buying goods on the internet, despite the early and evident success of eBay. Although when I look back and appreciate we were in our early content days, there really was a limited amount of good quality content back then, even Wikipedia did not exist.

Today there are literally billions approaching trillions of pages and we have literally too many options to choose from, exacerbating a new problem of drowning in possibilities - making search and profile intelligence even more important.

However is the Web dead? - if we can spend an entire day making use of the internet but never in the browser on the web via applications, IM, streaming services, then one needs to think of the evolution - with smart tablet applications with access to only the content the want - we need to be reminded that the power still lies in aps and servicing my needs.

Will we start to have a new generation of curator guides like in museums that are experts on searching for your needs and being your search coach and keep finding us the best content possible. We have crawlers that source content based on our needs, but still the context is often missing let alone the filter of a human mind, and also the coaching back on content value.

Facebook is rapidly shifting their strategy to integrate technology through its site, as you can now use Facebook to log into sites such as CNN, New York Time, recommend stories you have read to your friends, making the environment more porous.

Apple with the iPAD is pursuing a similar strategy with its IOS Platform.

Let's not all forget the internet is not even two decades only .... and it is the environment we rely on daily to do our work, support our personal lives, and stay connected.

What the future holds we can start to see with the increasing consumer electronic companies like Sony, LG integrating the internet with smarter appliances, media and entertainment, cell phones - striving to keep us in their ecosystem.

No one has done this as well yet as the Apple experience. We are in the process of upgrading our office equipment, and my team has finally convinced me the Apple is the only way to go.

What do you think is next?

Communities of Practice: Leading Practices

2010-12-12T10:02:00.000-08:00

Communities of Practice (CoP’s) are not a new concept, however, sustaining community enthusiasm, with challenging growth and continual learning experiences, is critical to sustain long term community engagement.

Coined by Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave in the 1990's a community of practice is a group of people who share an interest, a craft, or even a profession. CoPs can exist either online, in discussion groups, in newsgroup, or in real life. They are an evolution from working group like Quality Circles from the 1980's but an evolution in terms as a result of the focus on community from the cultural anthropological perspectives, vs productivity improvement perspectives. The one common learning element was the emphasis on story telling to share knowledge, transfer practices and create shared meanings, and experiences. A community is most healthy when the stories are rich in meaning. One of the key success factors in leading CoP organizations is the constant mining of stories to keep the community fresh, and behaving as a strong learning organism.

This was recently validated by AQPC in their Collaborative Benchmarking Study, however, their insights are not particular new, as those of us who have been experts in Collaboration for over 25 years, know that a community of practice needs to have a strong sense of purpose.

Although it’s fairly easy to hold people’s interest when a community is new, initial enthusiasm often settles into apathy, and keeping members actively engaged can prove challenging. Leading practice organizations typically use several techniques to promote long-term member engagement. These include:

providing a center of excellence, or one stop shopping with expertise in content, resources, ask an expert, research sourcing;

provide a place for learning by holding regular activities and learning events, and

provide a vision for the value of leading and participating in CoPs for leadership development as a core capability important to organizational growth, and ensure leadership measurement systems look for in performance reviews active demonstration of knowledge management, of which participation in CoP’s is a clear expectation of performance accountabilities.

Below is some excerpts from both AQPC research, but also from our research at Helix Commerce.

WHAT ARE LEADING ORGANIZATIONS DOING?

1.) Provide a center of excellence, or one stop shopping.

Organizations committed to Collaboration, KM or CoP health ensure a Center of Excellence (COE) is clearly established. Companies like: Accenture, Bain, Caterpillar, Conoco, Phillips, Fluor, IBM, and Schlumberger have embedded KM/Collaboration or CoP practices for some time now. New innovators like RIM, have only recently developed CoP strategy capabilities, but with such a young and talented culture, adopting collaboration practices is germane to their unique and creative DNA.

Some of the importance practices needed in a COE is ensuring strong leadership and a governance process for sustaining a long term collaboration vision. Some of the activities they typically do are regularly hosting events and providing learning opportunities, best-practice communities offer a one-stop shop for content and resources. This means that everything related to a particular topic—documentation, how-to articles and videos, discussion forums, collaboration spaces, contact information for experts, notices regarding virtual and in-person events, and so on—is accessible through the community interface. Most elements are available through both “push” mechanisms (i.e., community members can go to their respective communities to search for information) and “pull” mechanisms (i.e., community members can sign up to receive alerts whenever new content and resources become available).

2.) Provide a place for learning

Many communities become places of learning for their members through the myriad of resources they offer, from expertise location services and discussion forums to content repositories and tips documents. For example, Schlumberger’s communities host regular Webinars led by experts, enabling members to expand their knowledge while networking with their peers. Similarly, at ConocoPhillips, career development strategies highlight the importance of community membership as a means of professional growth and development.

Fluor takes this strategy one step further by making its communities a destination for employees seeking career development and learning resources. Information on career paths, formal training opportunities, and links to the learning management system are all available within the communities section of the organization’s knowledge sharing portal. According to Fluor’s vice president of KM and technology strategies, no employee is required to join a community nor, once he or she joins, to be an active member. However, if a person wants to keep abreast of his or her peers professionally, community membership and involvement are critical.

Another technique that best-practice organizations use to keep community members engaged is to schedule regular community activities and events. The type of activity—monthly community
projects, teleconference calls, bi-weekly Webinars led by subject matter experts, lively discussion forum exchanges—does not seem to matter. What is important is that there is a variety of frequent, structured activities that focus on relevant topics or issues and engage a significant portion of a community’s membership. For example, ConocoPhillips’ knowledge sharing team holds an annual, face-to-face Network Leader Summit at the organization’s headquarters where community leaders can network and share tips for managing communities. Schlumberger’s communities hold Webinars hosted by experts once or twice a month, with many Webinars drawing more than 100 participants. Fluor leverages similar activities in addition to some that are unique to the organization, such as an annual campaign to collect and promote KM success stories and a community-based mentoring program that pairs subject matter experts with less experienced colleagues.

3. Provide a vision for the value of leading and participating in CoPs for leadership development as a core capability

For CoP’s to sustain their growth capabilities, leadership needs to ensure there is a clearly defined vision for what a CoP is, why a CoP is a key organizational learning enabler, and what value they bring to an organizations health systems in terms of: innovation, employee engagement & loyalty, customer loyalty, & share holder value (Productivity improvements, and supporting profitable revenue and growth goals).

CoP measurement systems need to be linked carefully to broader KM and collaboration systems. and also performance appraisal systems.

Organizations that regularly inspect the health of their CoP’s against a more strategic KM and collaboration framework will be more successful than those cultures that have inconsistent and lack of integrated collaboration practices.

CONCLUSION

The key to member engagement for any organization is to establish communities as hubs where employees can get help with tasks, take advantage of professional development opportunities, and/or engage with like-minded peers around issues of mutual interest.

Employees must know that the community can meet their needs. When a community gains a reputation as the place for learning and networking, it becomes a powerful mechanism that ties employees to their colleagues, their departments or functions, and the organization as a whole. Communities are instrumental in making employees feel like they are part of something bigger than themselves. This sense of belonging is a strong motivator for participation and an enabler of long-term community success.

When Dr. Jose Claudio Terra, Heidi Collins and I wrote Collaboration Commerce, we explored the importance of CoPs as a core competency in enabling collaboration health in organizations.

Source Inspiration and Recognition:

APQC’s 2010 report Sustaining Effective Communities of Practice

WOMEN ADVANCING IN DEGREES BUT NOT IN POWER : IMPLICATIONS TO INNOVATION AND GROWTH IS A BUSINESS PRIORITY

2010-12-06T04:39:00.000-08:00

Today women are entering the workforce and earning college and advanced degrees in numbers equal to or surpassing men. But women still are not advancing into leadership positions as fast as men.

Women hold less than a quarter of the leadership positions in nearly all industries. Women of color fare even worse: Of the 15.7% of corporate officer positions in Fortune 500 companies that women hold, women of color hold just 1.7%.

Part of the reason is due to longstanding discrimination and cultural biases. Part is because some women “off-ramp” to raise their children or care for family members.

But part of the problem also stems from the fact that many women are uncomfortable with the 21st century taboos: power, ambition, money and failure.

As a result, many women manage their careers differently from their male colleagues.

Having risen to senior management early in my personal career before the age of 30, I was already a VP in a tier one bank, I knew then women were not equally represented in leadership and throughout my career over 25 plus years, I have yet to be on a client working team, or a leadership team with 50/50 male/female representation also balanced with cultural /and ethnic diversity

We have come a long way, but we still have a long ways to go, if we are to ensure the collective talent we have mirror's the customer/consumer landscape.

With over 80% of all consumer purchasing decisions being controlled by women, from houses, to cars, to clothes, and toys - women control the decision purse strings in families throughout North America.

Women know what women want and do not need additional filters to interpret their needs. After all there was a book written Men are from Mars, and Women are from Venus, offers insight to explain some of the differences that we know of. Dr. Barbara Anis's research on leadership and gender differences, also reaffirms that for organizations to compete more effectively (in other words design and develop solutions to attract more women to purchase), that innovation and growth is healthier with a stronger and more diverse workforce.

So take a look at your board level representation, your leadership representation, and ask yourself - Are we reflective of our customer market or not?

Innovation for Small Businesses

2010-12-02T18:09:00.000-08:00

It's almost the end of a business year and the beginning of another. And, as the old saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results. If you want better business results, especially in a slow-growth economy, you'll need to adoptsome fresh new resolutions. The key to improved results is innovative actions that, while they stick within the limits of your budget, also take you in exciting new directions. Here are some resolutions to help small or mid-sized businesses innovate in 2011.

1. Be proactive in 2011.Things change, but do you?

If your business is simply reacting to declining sales, then you are not being a proactive innovator. Be the one who makes change happen, instead of a victim of change. Resolve to take the proverbial bull by the horns in 2011. But how? You will need a few moreresolutions in order to be practically and profitably innovative.

2. Stop doing anything that no longer makes a profit.

The sacred cows of your business have to go. It does notmatter how long you've done something, if it no longer offers both profits and growth, stop doing it!

Most businesses are a mix of break-even activities, losscenters, and one or more sources of profit. For example, a gas station owner may have three properties, one of which is in a high-traffic area and makes a solid profit from pump sales, while another makes a profit only on its large convenience store and food court. The third used to make a profit from both gas sales and repairs, but now barely breaks even. Add it all up, and you have a low-profit business that takes a lot of management effort. Sell the property that barely breaks even, concentrate on the two that have profit centers, and you are heading toward a stronger bottom line with the ability to focus more management attention on building those profits.

It is hard to sell off or close parts of your business that do not make money, especially if your business is small or mid-sized, because all its parts tend to be interlinked. However, by taking this hard step early in the year, it becomes much easier to move ahead with growth-oriented innovations before another year gets away from you.

3. Find your most valuable asset, and make it the core of your business.

Resolution 2 focuses on improving your cash flow. This third resolution helps with your makeover by getting the right strategic mix of hard assets such as property and equipment, and soft assets such as know-how, name recognition, customer lists and reputation. Because assets are illiquid (don't change easily), they tend to lag behind strategy, and hold the business back. Don't let your assets become an anchor to future growth. Ask yourself, Which are our most vital assets for the future, not from the past?

To identify your best assets for growth, look at your business as an outsider would. What would someone else be eager to pay for? This question narrows the list -- sometimes to an alarming degree.

For example, a high-end restaurant and bar specializing in the well-to-do dinner crowd was no longer making a good profit for its owners. The menu and the name, both sources of pride, were no longer valuable assets because they had stopped delivering crowds and profits. The most valuable asset turned out to be the lease because the location was good with ample parking and high visibility in a popular downtown area. The owners promptly jettisoned the menu, costly chefs, sophisticated name and upscale decor, and reopened as areasonably priced beer and burger joint that immediately started to post triple the profits of the old restaurant.

Nostalgia is not bankable. Be practical about what your best asset is and how to put it to use in today's economy. Sell off or discard any asset that won't work hard for you in 2011.

4. Take some time away from your business to think about it.

Nobody is going to come up with a breakthrough growth strategy while repeating the daily routine for the thousandth time. Get away. Go visit some other businesses, both in your industry and outside of it. Have lunch with a different person every day, until you run out of people who'll let you buy a sandwich -- in exchange for picking their brains about new business ideas and models. Stretch your thinking by stretching your routines and horizons. Spend a few weeks soaking up diverse perspectives and seeing people and businesses you don't normally visit.

Fresh eyes help immensely. You could hire an expensive consultant with fresh eyes but with little or no practical knowledge of your business. However, you are more likely to find a new approach that really works if you invest in freshening your own perspective, instead of hiring someone to do your seeing for you.

5. Implement something by midyear.

Yes, it all comes down to doing. Innovation is creative insights applied in a practical manner to your business. Apply yourself and your ideas by making some changes. The sooner you try some new approaches, the sooner you'll test your ideas and learn from your experiences.

Innovations, at least successful ones, do not always spring fully-formed from the owner's mind. They often take a period of experimenting and refining before they work well. So, get started as soon as possible in 2011, and try to have the major kinks worked out of your new strategy by the beginning of 2012. Then you won't have to repeat 2011's resolutions. Instead, you can resolve in 2012 to refine your new business model and harvest a higher levels of growth and profits.

6. Become a seasoned innovator.

Innovation is a specific business skill that takes some study and practice to get good at. Pick up a good book on the subject, quizentrepreneurs and other innovators you admire, and spend at least a half a day each week using the tools innovators use, such as brainstorming (which, contrary to skeptical press coverage, is the only way to produce a rich stew of potential new strategies or designs). Also, make sure your team of employees, distributors, or co-owners is innovative at heart and willing to try new things with the persistence it takes to make them work. If you have some stick-in-the-muds who simply won't consider anything new, then get rid of them. Jettison the naysayers who rain on every new idea, so that you can approachyour new business year with optimism and openness.

Source:

Alexander Hiam (www.alexhiam.com) is an entrepreneur, artist, and the author of Business Innovation for Dummies, a how-to guide that offers practical techniques for stimulating imagination and developing ideas into successful innovations.

THE CHALLENGES OF MEASURING SOCIAL MEDIA

2010-11-21T11:42:00.001-08:00

Since the days when blogs were new, MySpace was cool and “You” were Time Magazine’s person of the year, marketers debated the validity of measuring the ROI of social media. The argument was that social media was a conversation and not something to be measured like a direct response campaign.

Author and blogger Shel Holtz once commented that there was no reason to measure ROI, he said “after all, is it necessary to measure the ROI of your pants?”

The point was that social media is a conversation that is essential for good business and to apply traditional marketing measurements to it does not recognize all it has to offer. The fact is that social media is what you make it. It is a communication’s tool that can be used by almost every function within an organization to be more receptive, responsive and efficient. Even though groups like customer service, PR, HR, consumer affairs and market research use it with different communication goals, they are participating in the conversation that is occurring around the brand and building strong relationships. The benefit of participation can certainly have a financial impact, but measuring a precise ROI is not a primary goal.

The goal for marketers can be different. Social media and word of mouth are more influential than any type of advertising and there is a lot a marketer can do to activate discussion about the company’s products. There are very specific practices to accomplish this and the results can be measured accurately. If you approach a social media word of mouth initiative with a direct marketing mindset, you can capture the right data to determine its impact on sales. So when people argue that social media cannot be measured, or that the ROI of social media is zero, they are looking at it the wrong way.

Although many of our clients are still struggling to come up with a social media strategy, let alone analyze those conversations and turn them into ROI position.

Recently, over 2,100 companies completed a survey sponsored by SAS Institute Inc. which found that: 75 % of companies didn’t know where their most valuable customers were talking about them, and only 23 per cent use social media analytic tools.

At the SAS Premier Business Leadership Series, the company announced that SAS Conversation Center, which is designed to help companies capture tweets in real time and identify those that are significant to the company, brand or product, based on sentiment and influence of the tweeter, will be available in January 2011. Tweets can then be routed to customer-service reps.

Earlier this year SAS also announced its Social Media Analytics tool, which brings together unstructured data such as RSS news feed, blogs and Facebook, and looks at sentiment over time.

Monster.ca is one company that sees value in analyzing this unstructured data. The company spent six years building up its business intelligence strategy in Canada, and now the Canadian model is being used in its subsidiaries across the globe. It’s using Base SAS, Enterprise Miner and SAS Stat for sales, marketing campaigns and customer service. So far, it’s increased customer retention by 15 per cent through its job posting optimizer, which was rolled out in 2007 to provide customers with value-added statistics.

But the impact of a bad customer service experience is even worse these days with social media, where a negative comment can be viewed by millions of people, said Jean-Paul Isson, vice-president of global BI and predictive analytics with Monster Worldwide Inc., based in Montreal. So his team is exploring social media analytics and putting together a project plan. For example, before they’d launch a new product, they’d include that analysis in their strategy.

“To survive, any forward-looking company should have a social media metric strategy in their business,” said Isson. Otherwise, they’ll “miss the bus.”

His team is also looking to analyze voice to text, in order to provide insight to the customer service organization. “It’s really about unstructured data,” said Isson. This includes text, voice and social media, but the challenge lies in differences between language and culture, even generational differences. For a Gen-Xer, saying “that’s sick” typically refers to something as disgusting, while a Millennial means that as a compliment.

But Isson says there’s still a lot of room to grow with structured data. Monster, which now operates in more than 55 countries, launched a subsidiary last month in Brazil and another this month in South Africa. While the company has a global framework for analysis, he says emerging economies are still at early stages of analytics, and they have to learn to ride a bike before driving a car.

Online travel reservation Web site Expedia Inc. is also exploring the concept o Sentiment Analysis and starting to apply it. In any given month, the company gets some 80,000 reviews. “We can diagram sentences, suck out sarcasm, and apply those same disciplines to what we see coming in on Twitter and our Facebook fan page,” said Joe Megibow, vice-president of global analytics and optimization with Expedia. “So if someone has an issue and posts some nasty comment, that we are in fact founded by the devil, we will respond privately to every one of those [types of comments].”

Clothing retailer Gap, for example, recently introduced a new logo and got “creamed” by customers, said Jim Davis, senior vice-president and chief marketing officer with SAS. Two years ago, Gap would have gone to a PR agency, launched the new logo and conducted a study over six to eight months — and by then it would have been too late. With social media, they found out immediately that customers hated the new logo and made an immediate adjustment.

But, Davis said, the social media feed is just another data source. Right now, there are many companies that offer views into sentiment, but he believes this phase will be short-lived and move toward something more actionable to try to move that sentiment needle.

Tom Davenport, author of Competing on Analytics and a professor at Babson College, agrees that social media analytics is just another channel. “As we do with our other channels, we have to evaluate what we do with it,” he said. “Social media is pretty good for customer service, but it’s not very good yet for selling anything. But even for customer service it’s not easy to analyze.” Sentiment analysis, for example, has to take into account sarcasm, language and cultural factors.

“So you better make sure you care about that feedback,” said Davenport. Comcast, a provider of cable services, is getting wonderful feedback for responding to tweets, he said, but they don’t have great customer service in other channels. “I call you up and I talk to you and you don’t respond to me — should I hang up and tweet about it?” he said, adding that anyone can tweet, whether or not they happen to be a Comcast customer. “You’ve got to give it the amount of attention that it really deserves.”

Research Reference Sources:
Vawn Himmelsbach On: 31 Oct 2010 For: ComputerWorld Canada

Banking Industry Trends

2010-11-07T12:43:00.000-08:00

The banking industry is under increased scrutiny due to the impacts of the velocity of change. Some of the changes are summarized below, but perhaps the most riveting one to not lose sight of currently is:

The wealth transfer is projected to be $12-18 trillion in inter-generational wealth transfer over the next twelve years, note the USA GDP is $12 Trillion. By 2053, some 130 trillion will have moved from one generation to another. This generation is tech savvy hot and smart; are we ready for them?

Here are some of the points gathered from research and our own experiences in supporting our FSI Clients.

1. The financial crisis has caused banks to re-assess their business fundamentals like profitability and client relationship management to improve client retention and cross selling capabilities.

2. Banks are renewing their focus on the fundamental assets of customer, staff and capital rather than product innovation for long-term growth to become well managed.

3. Banks are increasing risk transparency to help reduce operational risk and comply with corporate governance regulations and standards.

4. Banks are focusing on staff efficiency to make them more aligned with the bank’s risk and profit strategy by enhancing their IT solutions.

5.Banks are moving from a product-centric approach to a client-centric approach with a 360-degree understanding of their clients to better manage and maintain client relationships.

6.Banks are deploying client profitability analytics to enhance performance by analyzing profitability at multiple levels.

7. Banks are seeking data reporting technology and proactive approaches to better manage clients and client portfolios.

8. Banks are trying to better leverage the best of existing infrastructures while adding new platforms for operational and cost efficiencies.

9. Banks are accelerating the use of algorithmic approaches to complex back-office tasks for increased automation and efficiency.

10. Banks are looking to do more with less by balancing cost reduction with process improvements using business process management and business activity monitoring.

11. Banks are investing in online banking and improve electronic trading infrastructure and mobile solutions are a high priority in getting read for Gen X and Y needs.

12. Banks are recognizing the need to create stronger customer experiences across all products and services in terms of integrated portfolios, simplified interface experiences with all channel touch points or improved design interfaces.

INNOVATION TRENDS: New Product Introduction (NPI) Opportunity for Executive Leadership

2010-10-29T03:30:00.000-07:00

The Boston Consulting Group’s Innovation 2010 report, a large majority of companies named innovation as a top strategic priority for 2010: 72 percent named it as a top three priority for 2010 versus 64 percent in 2009.

The trend is clear: Companies coming out of the Great Recession believe innovation in product development is the key for growth in the future.

In a recent breakfast with the COO of a Tier One Smart Mobile Platform Provider yesterday, I asked him what his number one business priority was for global scale improvements and the New Product Introduction (NPI) process and the quality around this process was his number one focus area for improvement.

As the competition continues to grow in the Mobile space, this was not a surprize to hear. For some time, our firm has been helping leading companies like SAP, MTS Allstream, Bell and many others understand the strengths and gaps in their NPI Processes and practices.

In today's market, C level executives must be digging under the covers of their NPI processes, irrespective of company size and integrating ideation to retirement practices for all their service lines. With the amount of planning and investment in taking a new product or service to market, and the knowledge/documentation that is generated from each solution launch, organizations have to tighten up their knowledge management practices, and measurement systems in this area.

It is no longer sufficient to simply have the Chief Technology Officer or Chief Marketing Officer or VP of Product Development overseeing NPI practices, this is one of the most critical fulfilment underpinnings to any organization and each C level executive needs to be deeply knowledge of this value chain.

NPI needs to increasingly become a business imperative for creating a stronger innovation highway, supported by vigilence in culture and leadership practices.

Innovation is Like the Bark of a Dog

2010-10-23T18:43:00.000-07:00

I have been listening recently to the different sounds of how a dog barks. Sometimes the sound is sharp if a small terrier, if a german sheppard, firm and often echoes, a small new born maltese, faint and weak, a bulldog is strong and aggressive. Thinking of the different dog barks, it occurred to me that Innovation is like the Bark of a Dog.

Innovation is all about being heard in the crowd. Dogs like to be heard in any crowd, no matter how big or small they may be.

Innovation is like the steady beat of a drum to ensure breakthrough results. Dogs are like this as they are persistent in ensuring their drum beat is heard and they seldom stop easily, if if taken away from a barking doggie jamming session - they soon return with renewed eloquence to keep their beats being heard.

Innovation flourishes when trust is amplified. Dogs on a walk with their masters do a quick check with one another, but soon come together to play and focus on a task at hand, especially when there is a common goal they can both relate to.

Perhaps the most important thread of why Innovation is like the bark of a dog, is that dogs come in all different shapes and sizes.

Some dogs are small like incremental change, while other dogs are one of kind, and difficult to breed, like innovation often is; finding a barrier to entry and creating complexities in production practices is all in the day of an innovation dog!

Innovation is a Process with Art of the Long View

2010-10-08T15:05:00.000-07:00

Innovation is a process that is best managed with a long term perspective, not necessarily measured in long time increments (e.g., months, years), but rather in the completion of targeted goals.

This requires separating the innovation process into three implementable stages:1)identification of goals and exploration activities, 2) short-term deliverables and 3)near-term development.

The first stage, identification of goals and exploration activities, defines the course of action and establishes the motivational inspiration for the entire innovation process.

Setting forth a vision for the innovation goal and providing opportunities to explore various solutions enables innovator buy-in to the goal. Once the goal has been identified, the steps that need to be accomplished for success can be prioritized, assigned to stage 2 or stage 3, and executed accordingly.

It is important to realize that stage 2 and stage 3 are not static, and should be routinely reviewed and updated. As goals in stage 2 are completed, some of those in stage 3 move into stage 2 to provide the basis for a new set of measurable results and outcomes.

It is management’s responsibility to assess performance to goals in each stage and to determine when a goal has been completed or moved into a different stage.

By splitting the execution phase into 2 stages, the innovation process is positioned to yield a continuous flow of near term successes, which maintains innovator motivation. Furthermore, if corrections to the initial strategy need to be implemented, they can be done in a timely fashion and at relatively low cost.

It is important to understand that a clear definition of what constitutes innovation is critical to the success of measurement. If we define innovation as "people creating new value and capturing value in a new way ," there are basically three focal points to measure it:

** Past / current innovation performance
** The demonstrated ability to create and capture sustainable and profitable value from innovation
** Future/expected innovation potential
** Effective/efficient innovation capacity
** The activated capacity to realize the firm's full growth and innovation potential

The best wisdom I received as a Venture Capitalist in viewing innovation was to think of innovation like a venture capitalist, drive hard into value proposition, go to market risks, and the quality of the teams' skills and abilities to execute successfully.

I have also learned innovation is all about talent that are smart enough to iterate and learn successfully together working with leadership that have the art of the long view, and patience to keep sustaining the art of practice.

SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM BENEFITS

2010-09-28T17:54:00.001-07:00

IT Service Meeting Highlights Social Media Program Benefits

by Brian Sherman on September 23, 2010
(Sharing Content on our personal helix blog site as coverage from a recent presentation our firm spoke at to the COMPTIA Association this week)

Is social media a boondoggle or a valuable marketing tool for your business? That’s the question many solution providers have asked since these sites, such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter came on the scene.

The attitude of many business executives is, “If you can’t provide tangible results, what good is it?” Attendees of the CompTIA Canadian IT Services and Support Community in Toronto found several answers to that question with a deep dive discussion into the opportunities available with these web media sites. Dr. Cindy Gordon and Alex Blom, Senior Executives of Helix Commerce International Inc shared their knowledge of effective social community business models and provided advice on how to incorporate these tools into their own businesses.

Why should you incorporate social media into your organization? First of all, these interactive sites reach an international audience, including prospective customers, future industry partners, and potential employees. In addition, proper social media best practices can help strengthen relationships with current clients, collaborators and your existing workforce.

The second motive for integrating social media is to spur innovation and helps you spread your message with links to blogs, white papers and case studies, event registration (webinar or live), and product or service promotions. Through interaction and awareness of your company’s services and strategy, beneficial feedback should escalate and allow you to adapt your offerings and programs.

“Product innovation is rooted in collaboration, finding the means that allow you to build robust networks of partners that will help advance your organization’s goals,” says Dr. Cindy Gordon. “Social networks help build those relationships and allow you to receive quick and valuable feedback from a cross-section of industry experts, customers and others.”

It’s not unusual for businesses to attract 20,000 or more followers, allowing you to expand your reach and create new avenues that allow you to achieve your company goals. “Two-thirds of the global population is using social media, with millions of posts and site visits each day,” says Blom. This type of forum requires a creative sensitivity; you can’t repetitively broadcast your marketing message.

Business leaders need to talk to followers (consumers of social media) in order to develop trust and a mutually valued relationship. Success depends on attracting the right audience to your discussions. Don’t focus on the number of connections; having 10,000followers isn’t worthwhile if only a few are good prospects, partners or job candidates.

Building Twitter or Facebook communities requires a grass-roots recruiting effort, adding content and contacts in a rational manner to ensure eventual success. Posting the media profile links on your website, in newsletters and connecting to industry friends is a great first step. “This effort is not just about creating social media connections, but creating a transformational model that motivates people to communicate and collaborate,” suggests Gordon.

Here are some takeaways from the discussion:

1.) Start small and build a grassroots community, no matter what media you use
2.) Build trust via the brand messages and information you share. Make it worthwhile to be connected with your business
3.) Research and experiment by integrating programs such as Foursquare, which allows you to “check in” to a location (industry event or customer site) and notify your “followers” to your position. You can use it for onsite promotions or to publicize your attendance at certain conferences or preferred customer sites.

Reinforcing the social media discussion at the Toronto event was speaker Glen Robertson, COO of Service 800. Their Service Metric Benchmark Program takes into account many customer satisfaction variables, and social media is becoming an important part of that business measurement process.

According to Forrester studies, more than 500 billion web impressions of products and services are counted each year, with collaborative web sharing a big part of that. Businesses need to be proactive in blogs and other media, providing helpful information and discussing the topics that show they not only understand their customers, but have compassion as well. The web-enhanced customer experience isn’t relegated to the youth segment either; studies illustrate that almost 2/3 of Facebook and Twitter users are 35 and older! While they have the mass, a high percentage of people in their 20s—key group for employee recruitment— are social media consumers.

The reality is that new web communities are a force to be reckoned with. Social media is a critical component of today’s business and those that ignore or dismiss its value may lose out on connecting with a “tuned in” audience.

For more information on our Helix Social offerings, contact us at info@helixcommerce.com or contact our office at (647)477-6254.

Supply Chain Sustainability Challenges

2010-09-25T18:58:00.000-07:00

Harvard Business Review (Oct 2010) provided highlights from a survey of 335 respondents of which nearly 80% have direct or indirect supply chain practices. Of those surveyes 54%, indicated that they are extremely or very concerned about their sustainability performance.

The top performance issues identified concerning their company were:

*cost and financial concerns,
*lack of interest from stakeholders (Employees and clients),
current economic realities;
*the need to run lean,
*potential risks for brand and reputation,
regulatry compliance, or
*managing the life cycle and cumulative environmental impacts.

Areas hindering sustainability in the supply chain were:

*cost and financial concerns
*focused on more pressing priorities
*limited resources
*uncertain ROI
*insufficient supplier understanding and buy-in

As more businesses demand increased transparency, more organizations will need to reveal more clearly their sustainability practices in their supply chain practices to establish trust, and secure reputation.

Increasingly companies like Wal-Mart, Tesco and Kroger are using new technologies to provide more transparent information to the marketplace.

As telepresence becomes more pervasive and even live webcams allowing monitoring of what is happening on a factory in real-time, product and service provenance will be more open to public inspection.

New forms of technology will provide unprecedented visibility into the industrial system.

Social media products like YouTube, Twiters and other forms of social media provide viral platforms for activisits that are keen to challenge SCM practices.

Organizations will need to strive to release provenance information otherwise likely come under increased scrutiny as the world continues to move to demanding supply chain sustainability and provide increased assurance of following environmentally sound practices.

VENTURE CAPITAL: LEADERSHIP CALL TO ACTION IN CANADA

2010-09-19T08:04:00.000-07:00

CALL FOR CANADIAN VENTURE INCREASED LEADERSHIP

7 years ago I was a partner in a Tier one private venture capital firm, called XDLI, led by serial entrepreneurial Toronto leaders like Michael Bregman, and Dennis Bennie. Prior to joining XDLI, I was a partner with Accenture and all the excitement in the dot com space drove me to jump ship and in some respects jumped on the band wagon of the excitement to find the next holy grail. This was in 2001 - 2003 when the market was exciting as valuations were competitive and felt like the wild wild west. As we know the market came to a crashing wake-up call in 2003, and the venture capital industry in NA started to implode, and has been course correcting ever since.

However the trend continues to decline which has me personally very worried about Canada's long term economic smarts in innovation and commercialization.

Unfortunately in Canada, there is still too much retraction of VC investment activity. According to a recent Deloitte Survey released in TORONTO on September 7, 2010 — Venture capitalists (VCs)Canada expects their industry to contract further while those in emerging markets, including China, India and Brazil, expect to see theirs expand over the next five years, according to the 2010 Global Venture Capital Survey by Deloitte, Canada's Venture Capital & Private Equity Association (CVCA) and several other international industry associations.

According to the survey results, two thirds (66 per cent) of Canadian survey respondents expect the number of venture firms to decrease between now and 2015, while a great majority of venture capitalists in China, India and Brazil anticipate adding more venture firms in their country during the same time frame. Venture capitalists in the U.S. and the European continent also expect an industry tightening in their respective countries, but the Canadian industry is much more vulnerable to such a trend given its much smaller size.

The outlook for the dollar amount of venture capital available for investment in the next five years followed similar trends, with half of Canadian respondents seeing a decline or no change. In fact, 11 per cent of respondents predict a decline of more than 30 per cent, the second worst outlook of any country surveyed. Comparatively, respondents in Brazil, China and India see healthy increases. The institutional source of funds is also expected to be weak by Canadian VCs: Only 25 per cent of Canadian respondents believe limited partners are likely to invest in the country’s venture capital funds in the next five years, compared to 92 per cent for Brazil, 91 per cent for China and 76 per cent for India.

The 2010 Global Venture Capital survey, which measured the opinions of more than 500 venture capitalists worldwide, also examined the factors contributing to each country’s outlook and identified sectors of future growth.

Government policies to increase the size of the domestic VC industry seen as key to maintaining a capital venture industry in Canada

ADDITIONAL PERSPECTIVES

As opposed to past years, and following recent Deloitte-led changes to Section 116, Canadian respondents did not say that tax policy or regulations were creating an unfavorable climate for venture capital. Only 28 per cent cited tax rules as a major barrier. And they are positive on government support of R&D, with 67 per cent naming it as a favorable factor, second only to Israel.

Despite those advantages, when asked about the dangers of a lack of an established VC industry, Canadian VCs were by far the most critical in the world, with 61 per cent suggesting our lack of critical mass is creating a poor climate for investment and innovation. In contrast, VCs in other developed nations saw this as a non-factor, with only seven per cent on average mentioning it.

“Clearly, Canadian venture capital firms are up against serious competition from emerging markets, as are their counterparts in the U.S and Europe. But with the small size of the Canadian industry, the impact of this decline is even more devastating for Canada,” said John Ruffolo, National Leader, Technology, Media & Telecommunications Industry Group, Deloitte.

“This is an urgent situation and policy makers need to move quickly with measures that improve the odds of this vital sector here at home” Ruffolo added. “We need to get more dollars into the hands of existing Canadian VCs, and encourage the creation of more domestic VCs. A reinvigorated Retail Venture Capital program (particularly in Ontario), angel and VC investing tax credits, and the expansion of government-sponsored fund of funds programs are the three main priorities. Some of these measures have been adopted in Quebec, and that province’s venture industry has seen growth in both the number of firms and the amount of capital available for innovation.”

Clean tech and new media/social networking: Opportunities to seize now for the future
Despite numerous challenges, survey respondents across the globe show interest in new investment opportunities on the horizon. In looking ahead, respondents singled out clean technologies, healthcare services and new media/social networking as areas of great interest over the next five years.

Clean tech is the leader overall, with 67 per cent of Canadian survey respondents expecting increased investments. It is also ranked number one by China (95 per cent), Brazil (92 per cent), India (90 per cent), U.K. (85 per cent), U.S. (72 per cent) and Germany (71 per cent).

New media/social networking is seen as the second key sector of the future by 50 per cent of Canadian venture capitalists as well as 58 per cent of respondents in the U.S. and 64 per cent in Germany. Healthcare services were ranked second by survey respondents in China (92 percent), India (89 per cent), France (69 per cent) and the U.K. (62 per cent).

“With characteristic optimism, venture capitalists are already looking ahead to new growth industries and opportunities. In order for Canada to participate fully in this new economy, we need to have a larger and better-financed VC community to help incubate and grow these industries of Canada’s future,” concludes Ruffolo.

NOTES:

This blog has been sourced from major extracts from the Deloitte and CVCA Global Trends in Venture Capital: Outlook for the Future The Global Trends in Venture Capital: Outlook for the Future Survey was sponsored by Deloitte in cooperation with the Canadian Venture Capital Association and numerous other VC associations around the world. It surveyed venture capitalists in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. Deloitte received 516 responses from general partners with assets under management ranging from less than US$100 million to greater than US$1 billion. The survey was conducted during March and April 2010. Of the total number of respondents, 61 per cent were based in the Americas (of which 7% or 36 firms were Canadian,) 16 per cent in Europe, 23 per cent in Asia Pacific.

SOCIAL INNOVATION

2010-09-11T06:53:00.000-07:00

Social Innovation (SI) is all about simply strengthening community interaction models. It is a growth area impacting business strategies, innovation ideation practices, organizational designs, talent management, employee and customer engagement appraoches.

Working Definition

According to wikipedia, social innovation has developed several meanings. It can be used to refer to social processes of innovation, such as open source methods and techniques. Alternatively it refers to innovations which have a social purpose - like microcredit or distance learning. The concept can also be related to social entrepreneurship (entrepreneurship isn't always or even usually innovative, but it can be a means of innovation) and it also overlaps with innovation in public policy and governance. Social innovation can take place within government, within companies, or within the nonprofit sector (also known as the third sector), but is increasingly seen to happen most effectively in the space between the three sectors. Recent research has focused on the different types of platforms needed to facilitate such cross-sector collaborative social innovation.[1] Currently, social innovation is becoming increasingly important within the academic debate, also regarding its theoretical concepts.

Social innovation was discussed in the writings of figures such as Peter Drucker and Michael Young (founder of the Open University and dozens of other organizations) in the 1960s. It also appeared in the work of French writers in the 1970s, for example Pierre Rosanvallon, Jacques Fournier, and Jacques Attali. However, the themes and concepts in social innovation have existed long before that. Benjamin Franklin, for example, talked about social innovation in terms of small modifications within the social organisation of communities that could help to solve everyday problems. Many radical 19th century reformers like Robert Owen, founder of the cooperative movement, promoted innovation in the social field and all of the great sociologists including Karl Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim focused much of their attention to broader processes of social change.

However, more detailed theories of social innovation only became prominent in the 20th century. Joseph Schumpeter, for example, addressed the process of innovation more directly with his theories of creative destruction and his definition of entrepreneurs as people who combined existing elements in new ways. In the 1980s and after, writers on technological change increasingly addressed the importance of social factors in affecting technology diffusion.

Toronto is Alive with Social Innovation Leadership

There are many leaders in Toronto alert to the transformation needs of this type of thinking integrated into our business models and cultural communication practices. Centers like the Social Innovation Center or MARS where small businesses leverage for collective jamming, and cross-pollination are effective new age real-estate models integrated with community foundations.

Helix is in the early stages of developing a Social Innovation practice that extends our deep expertise in business innovation, New Product/Service Commercialization, and Channel Innovation practices to integrate our deep know-how in collaboration. Having written over 8 books in these areas, and hundreds of articles, and client engagements - we want to increase this know-how into a more open social innovation cluster vision.

Conclusion

I often think what we really have happening is less about SOCIAL INNOVATION and is simply more about MOTIVATING HUMANS. Humans have always been social creatures, enjoying social rituals. The kitchen is the place always for great conversations, whether by a fire in the woods eating a meal close to a cave, or in a luxury 5 star restaurant, humans are social creatures and are more open and relaxed over a good meal, surrounded by diverse sensations.

Research in Sweden on the impact of smell being airated into offices that increase social happiness has found that apple pie is one leading scent that stimulates conversation connectedness.

What is clear is the impact of community and the value of social sustainability challenges how the majority of organizations are designed and led.

Developing social competencies into our university programs will also be a key success factor in developing more universal knowledge with our future business leaders. There is a great deal of work to be done.

Any ideas, do not hesitate to contact me directly at cindy@helixcommerce.com.

Social Voice Strength on the Web and Implications to Changing Business Models

2010-09-06T09:44:00.000-07:00

In August 1991, Sir Timothy John Berners Lee put the first website online. The first consumer web we recall were the likes of: AOL, AMAZON, eBAY, and Yahoo.

Little did we appreciate the impacts new models like: PayPal, TicketMaster would have on revolutionizing and creating the transactional web.

The new era we are in is the Social Era as solutions like :Facebook, MySpace, Ning, Orkut create a more faciltiating, engaging and rewarding social experience. It's now all about self-expression, naked conversations, relationships, user affiliation, trust and user generated content.

The Social Web is now called Web 3.0 or the Semantic web.

Larry Weber in his book, Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build your Business, says that:

" The social web is the online place where people with a common interest can gather to share thoughts, comments, and opinions. It includes social networks such as: My Space, Gather, Friendster, BlackPlanet, Eons, linked and hundreds more. It also includes branded web destination sites like: Amazon, Netflix, and eBay. It also includes enterprise sites such as: IBM, Circuit City, Cisco, and Oracle. The social web is a new world of unpaid media created by individuals or enterprises on the web."

The real job of the marketing professional in the social web is to aggregate customers. You can do this in two ways:

1.)Providing compelling content to create a pull factor to return again and again and spread the word to others to create a following by creating retail rich media experiences, and
2.) Visibly becoming an influencer in the public arena and actively participating in the conversations.

Brian Solis, Founder of Future works says:

Social Media is no longer an option or debtable. It represents a powerful, and additional channel to first listen to customers, stakeholders, media, bloggers, peers and other influencers and in turn build two way paths of conversation to them.

Yes conversations are taking place about your company, product and service right now with or without you. This represents priceless opportunities to build relationships and shape perceptions at every step. In the process, you become a resource to the very people looking for leadership, expertise, visions, and also solutions.

The most important driver for outbound and proactive online relationship is that's its measurable and absolutetly tied to the bottom line. Much in the same way that Web marketers integrates calls to action and dedicated splash pages to direct responses, successful conversations can also benefit from strategically carved inbound and interconnected paths that can be tracked and measured.

From listening, participation to analytics, social media creates new opportunities to make deep and meaningful connections, forge relationships, and influence without manipulation. And, in the process, we also earn a place within their network as a trustworthy resource."

David Meerman Scott lists three uses of blogs for marketing and PR:

1.) To easily monitor what millions of people are saying about you.
2.) To participate in those conversations by commenting on other's blogs.
3.) To begin and to shape those conversations by creating and writing your own blog.

Social professional niche networks abound and they will continue to flourish. For example, Art Cloud for the Art world, Inmobile for the wireless industry, MarCom Professional for Marketing communicators, Sermo for Physicians, etc.

In summary, Cluetrain Manifesto proclaimed:

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering, and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter - and getting smarter faster than other companies.

These markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny, and often shocking. Whether explaining, or complaining, joking or serious, the human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked."

Implications:

Every Canadian business should have a cleared defined digital social media strategy in place and reaching out to the world for new growth connections. If you cannot afford to hire FT engage PT professionals from outsourcing Social media solution providers, a growing trend globally as marketing professionals and business recognize being social is a skill and a core competency.

Helix has a new offering on social media outsourcing solutions. Want to hear more reach us at info@helixcommerce.com.

Intelligent Cities - Technology Big 3 Leadership

2010-09-01T12:44:00.000-07:00

In my role as Vice Chair for the Intelligent Communities for i-CANADA, I recently researched some of the leadership activities of the BIG THREE technnology leaders: CISCO, MICROSOFT and IBM.

I am pleased to say, our firm and sister company, TerraForum have strong relationships with these organizations as clients, and partners.

CISCO

In 2009, Cisco launched its global Intelligent Urbanization initiative from Bangalore and signed a MOU with the local government to develop a roadmap for an intelligent and sustainable Bangalore City.

The global Intelligent Urbanization initiative was designed to help cities around the world using the networks as the fourth utility for integrated city management, better quality for life for citizens and economic development.

Bringing together a broad portfolio of products, services, partners and solutions across CISCO, the intiatives in initially focused on intelligent, sustainable solutions for public safety, and security, transportation, buidlings, energy, health care and education. An example of how technology can be used to improve security operations, Cisco proposed its own internal Security Operations Center, Real-Time security monitoring and alerts, video surveillance, tools, acoustic sensors, card-readers with biometric recognition, automatic alerts, and security activation systems were the highlights of this environment.

IBM

IBM announced its Smarter Cities program as part of its initiative to create an Intelligent Planet. The program was created to stimulate economic growth and quality of life in cities and metropolitan areas witht the activation of new approaches of thinking and acting in the urban ecosystem. Interconnected and instrumented smart technologies offer a real-time integrated view of complex city systems, enabling administrators to monitor operations, improve performance andrespond to the needs of their jurisdications each day. IBM's initiative focuses on seven areas: education, health, safety, transport, water management, energy and public governance in each of which the company describes a series of best practices, strategies, technologies and applications.

MICROSOFT

Microsoft is working with Coventry University and Birmingham City Council to establish Birmingham as the first UK Intelligent City able to showcase new and innovation applications.

The Intelligent City Proof of Concept is about an interoperable technology platform focusing on transport.

The objectives include demonstating the intelligent city vision for Birmingham and creating a service layer platform integrated with exisiting data/services, managing journeys across devices and modes of transport, empowering individuals to make more informed, smarter choices, and describing the impact on travel patterns, and economic and environmental issues.

Reference Sources:

Intelligent Cities, R&D OffShoring, by N Komninos and E. Sefertzi, Paper Presented at the Second Knowledge Cities Summit, China, Nov 2009.

IBM (2009) " A smarter Planet - Smarter Cities" Online http://www-05.ibm.com/uk/smarterplanet/topics/cities/index1.html

Intelligent Cities Series - Post #2

2010-08-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

Regional development in Canada is increasingly based on factors of knowledge, innovation and geographical accessibility.

Innovation led or knowledge based development of cities and regions has become the model with which most cities and regions will try to adopt and adapt to new conditions.

Linking innovation and regional development requires a nexus of co-operation between different industry sectors to enable intelligent city stimulation. This goes beyond traditional technology institutions and reaches into the disciplines of digital media, clean-tech, geo-local (mobile) entertainment, architecture and design rallying around a vision beyond infrastructure but reaching to a vision where collaboration and innovation growth outcomes are realized.

What are Intelligent Cities?

Intelligent cities is a new planning paradigm which corresponds to the type of innovation shaped by innovation networks and leveraging web-based collaboration intelligence ecoystems.

There are numerous movements shaping intelligent cities emerging all over the world. Some are driven by local intitiatives and local experimentations found in the Intelligent Community Forum which select cities recognizing their innovation towards intelligent communities. Last year Sweden was recognized. In addition in 2009, Moncton, New Brunswick California and Bristol Virginia, USA were also recognized.

These cities are characterized as intelligent cities with respect to five selection criteria in innovation and communication technology, knowledge and innovation. Broadband infrastructure whcih evaluates the local capacity for digital communication, Knowledge workforce, which measures the capacity of the population for qualified work in knowledge intensive activities, Innovation, which assesses how far communities have gone in creating an innovation-friendly environment that attracts creative people and creative businesses. Digital democracy which assesses the government and private sector programs to overcome the digital divide. Marketing,this assesses the attractiveness of a community and its competitive offerings with respect to other cities and regions.

Creating a Canadian Intelligent Nation Vision

2010-08-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

Recently I joined Bill Hutchison, Chair of i-Canada as a Vice Chair in a voluntary leadership capacity to help a team of change advocacy leaders committed to help change Canada’s future to realize global recognition as a Intelligent Nation in less than ten years. To get there, we have so very much to do together.

Join us in our Linked In leadership advocacy forum organized by John Reid CEO of CATA.

What is inspiring me is the 21st Century need to take a radical turn in ensuring information and communication technologies are converging with the innovation led regional economies, and innovation clusters.

Intelligent cities is part of the foundational vision to create environments that improve our ability to learn, forsee and innovate. The driving forces behind sustaining the rise of intelligent cities, such as the globalization of innovation clusters and networks, open innovation and web-based collaborative environments are strategic to the successful evolution of Canada’s economic future.

The new paradigm of city development and planning is rapidly changing as cities in Europe, USA, and Asia respond to these trends but developing intelligent city strategies. Well known cases are Living Labs in Europe, Singapore iN2015 Strategy, Malaysia Multimedia Super Corridor, Florida’s high tech corridor, and a new series of innovation glucsters and global hubs such as Arabianranta, Zaragoza Milla Digital, Seoul Digital Media City, Sweden’s Intelligent Community Innovations etc.

Can we get Canada to global Intelligent Community recognition status in less than five years?

The Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) named Stockholm, Sweden the Intelligent Community of the Year for 2009.“This is a community that has methodically and substantially redefined the possibilities of urban living and sets an example of how technology can play a role to enhance economic and social development,” said Louis Zacharilla, ICF Co-founder."

The Scandinavian community, known for its prowess in innovative technologies and its quality of life, during a national fiscal crisis in the early Nineties, decided to pursue an unusual model in telecommunications.The city-owned company Stokab started in 1994 to build a fiber-optic network throughout the municipality as a level playing field for all operators.

Stokab dug up the streets once to install conduit and run fiber, closed them up, and began offering dark fiber capacity to carriers for less than it would cost them to install it themselves. Today, the 1.2 million kilometer (720,000-mile) network has more than 90 operators and 450 enterprises as primary customers and is now in the final year of a three-year project to bring fiber to 100% of public housing, which is expected to add 95,000 households to the network. Stockholm’s Mayor has set a goal of connecting 90% of all households to fiber by 2012.

In 2007, the City of Stockholm published Vision 2030, identifying the key characteristics the city aimed to have by that year. In 2030, according to the plan, Stockholm would be a world-class metropolis offering a rich urban living experience, the center of an internationally competitive innovation region, and a place where citizens enjoyed a broad range of high-quality, cost-effective social services.

Louis Zacharilla, ICF Co-founder, congratulated the new Intelligent Community of the Year, saying, Stockholm has expertly demonstrated how a culture of use has formed within the context of Stockholm’s policy commitments, especially those to the environment, business and care for its citizens.

Stockholm is an ambitious community and on the move. Stockholm serves as a case study for communities where national government has taken a more prominent role during the current economic downturn.

The annual awards are presented by the independent think tank as part of its annual conference, Building the Broadband Economy, produced in association with the Institute for Technology & Enterprise at New York University’s Polytechnic school in New York (USA). The goal of the awards is to increase awareness of the role that broadband and information communications technology (ICT) play in economic and social development at the community level worldwide.

ICF also announced the recipients of the Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year award and the Founders Awards: Issy-les-Moulineaux’s Legendary Mayor named Visionary of the Year; Dave Carter of Manchester Digital Development Agency; Andrew Spano of Westchester County, New York, and Taoyuan County, Taiwan presented with annual Founders Awards.

Sources
Stockholm Named Intelligent Community of Year 2009 by ICF

Innovation on Steroids

2010-08-23T17:14:00.000-07:00

How do you drive an organization forward to achieve the most rapid innovation possible?

Based on my twenty plus years in both corporate (enterprise) and also supporting very early stage software companies, it strikes me the realities are still the same.

1.) Having a very clearly defined product or service vision of what you are trying to achieve, and an understanding of why the market should purchase this experience from you needs to be very acute and differentiated?

2.) Developing an employee engagement culture that ensures talent is motivated by your vision, mission and can believe the results you are striving to achieve are real and they can align their minds and hearts to focus on realizing the dream or customer promise you are aspiring to fulfil.

3.) Creating a customer experience that is uniquely differentiated to other experiences in the market. Each customer touch point makes a difference along the value memory highway. How you condition an organization to think and behave can be explicitely programmed into your organizational culture DNA, but also must be embedded into your business processes and measurement systems.

All these points add up, but there is nothing more critical than ensuring that you can successfully commercialize your products and services and secure consistent customer footprints, and create a brand that creates a following.

We are now at the same that employee engagement and customer engagement are constant heart beats in developing innovation capacity.However to drive innovation on steroids we need to add to this current formula fix a focus on community experiences.

What needs to be added to the mix?

As more and more trust moves to web based experiences where consumers rely on purchasing guidance or advice from trusted networks, the only growth engine remaining for innovation capacity is really community influence and mining for community intelligence to propel growth more rapidly forward.

When one looks at the success of companies like Zappos (shoe retailer sold to eBay for $850 million after attempts from eBay and others failed), or other companies like eBay or Facebook which are aggregating communities around deep product niches demonstrate new approaches to developing corporate business models.

Pathways for Innovation Execution Excellence

If you are looking to develop a deep digital social media strategy around your product or service offering, we have two new offers at my firm that may interest you:

1.) Digital Social Media Market Differentiation Rapid Scan - we quickly look at your digital social media offerings, scan the market, and give you clear recommendations of ways to differentiate and improve your go to market capabilities.

2.) Pilot Innovation Community Bazaars - we have learned that developing a rapid pilot with an existing community to test your product or service is a very effective way to gain rapid customer insights. There is a community these days for almost everything so stepping back and going directly to an existing community vs creating a new community is a far smarter way to innovate and be more agile.

Analytics Drive Business Profitability

2010-08-20T04:06:00.000-07:00

BI Profitability Game Changer for Growth

In today's fast moving business world, customer relationship intelligence is everything. CRM technology has promsed for years to enable one to one relationship support and also to tailor organization's marketing and operational programs to drive micro-segmentation capabilities for target marketing.

This has been a long time coming. But finally there is starting to be stronger evidence backed by quality research that we are seeing some game changing realities.

MIT and the Economist, two organizations that drive rigor before they speak have recently written on the experiences of IBM, Cablecom and Walmart.

IBM claims over $1B new revenue from BI insights

IBM is a pioneer in the use of mathematical models. Their analytics challenge was to learn how to maximize revenue per client by analyzing years of sales data. This insight helped them reconfigure their sales account size, industry and service offerings. Their position is that over $1B US in new revenue was generated as a result of a more optimized sales coverage was the outcome from analyzing huge data sets for business insights.

Wallmart Inventory Intelligence World Class Smarts Continue

In the case of Walmart well known for thier legacy in optimizing supply chain practices. They invested heavily in a Retail Link investory management system where they turn information into profit acceleration outcomes. For example, they can offload inventory management to suppliers by not taking any ownership of the products right until the point of sale by the consumer. This new strategy allows them to decrease inventory risk, conserve cash flow and reduce operating loss.

Cablecom Reduces Customer Churn from BI

Cablecom like many cable providers constantly live with the reality of customer churn. In their case by using advanced data analytics, they learned that they can impact customer defection loss by increasing calls by their customer support services with new offers. These offers were new incentive programs to higher risk customers resulting in reducing their customer defection loss from 20% of subscriber defection to 5%.

These examples reinforce that if business analytics are carefully architected with deep gold mining of tera or petabytes of data there is profitability to be found.

SUMMARY

In summary, data analytics has the ability to increase revenue, improve workflow efficiency, increase customer flows and improve customer satisfaction and hopefully achieve increased loyalty outcomes as well.

With the falling costs of high performance and cloud computing, more economical data grunching pathways are now available. the market is growing at about 10% a year, roughtly 2x faster than the rest of the Software industry, so CEO's , COOs, and CFO's and CIO's should be continually inspecting the quality of their CRM and data analytics capabilities.

My real question is how much knowledge do board of directors have on CRM - have you ever seen a Board Director overseeing CRM and BI and asking the tough questions at board meetings on these fronts... ? New ways of thinking are needed.

Is your organization up for the challenge?

Social Media Acquisition Buzz Highlights

2010-08-04T07:54:00.001-07:00

Deals (M&A, Finance) – Disney Gets In To Social/Mobile Video Games
Disney acquired social and mobile game developer, Playdom, for $563 mm in upfront consideration and the potential for $200 mm in further earn-out based consideration. Disney management notes that the company continues to be on the acquisition war path.

The largest deals in the week involved the advertising sector, with $15 mm in follow-on financings to eXelate and AdMeld, and $8 mm to BuzzLogic.
Four different social network/media companies received financing in the week, including, Hot Potato (acquired for $10 mm by Facebook), PlacePop ($1.4 mm round), Rapportive ($1 mm seed round), and dating site, Triangulate ($0.75 seed round).

Innovation requires Execution for Success.

2010-06-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest challenges facing organizations is their inability to execute. Organizations that focus on agility and execution across business units and functions - are more successful that those that are locked in analysis paralysis.

The levers to enhance execution capacity include: information systems flexibility and adaptiveness to meet changing business needs, corporate priorities clarity and keeping people focused to drive results vs shifting gears, ensuring robust talent management and employee engagement practices are in place.

What is a killer in many Fortune 500s we work with is the bureaucracy and process burden that distract people from being focused on the real work - of selling and delivering new products and services.

We have made some balancing act mistakes.

The recent ending economic boom drove companies to invest heavily in leadership development practices has often left middle managers with more limited training opportunities as they were focused on the nuts and bolts and often keeping the lights and wiring working in many organizations.

While many leaders are leaping into conversations in organizations -- are they doing sufficient execution heavy lifting to demonstrate real value to the bottom line?

What should you have your execution innovation eye attentive to?

1.) Ensuring you can spot new opportunities. Thinking like a Venture Capitalist is always a good skill to develop in your workforce. Real time data, formal reports supplemented with direct observations from the field widely shared across the organizations is key. Getting out to visit customers, talk to new employees, retiring employees. Always have the alert on to learn and grow is critical. Complacency and status quo is a killer.

2.)Ensure operational levers are well greased. Ensuring your organizational hydraulics - processes are translating into clear priorities into cascading group and indvidual objectives is critial to align the organization. How often does management review these goals with their employees... setting them and looking at them once a year or 2x /year in review cycles is simply no longer enough. Real time iterative learning is needed which means managers need real time conversations linked to online priority management.

3.) Reward for performance and not mediocrity. When I was at Xerox as a Full time employee this is something the culture did very well... sometimes too well for sales people.. always recognizing the service and administration resources is always something organizations need to balance out between the revenue producers and the revenue service enabling structures. Incentives need to be smartly balanced between the long and short term.

4.)Core Values that are memorable and believable. Having values with teeth is important. Too many core values sound the same from company to company and often employees cannot remember what they even are... and often even C level executives are caught exposed.. Try it some time in your board meetings too. Clearly articulated values that underpin agility and value execution are critical. Ensuring the right people are promoted along the way that really are role model in core values.

5.)Ensure you are building an organization of constant focused pressure vs heoric efforts. Senior leaders who clearly set clear priorities and inject continual pressure, rather than set and fight fires.

In summary, five high five requirements to help get your organization's innovation needs driving forward to achieve execution succes..

Google hunting iPhone and Blackberry customers

2010-06-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

Google has now entered the mobile telephony market and is unleashing another disruptive innovation. The Google Nexus phone is positioned against the Apple iPhone and RIM's blackberry.

Google is unleashing a tremendous amount of encouragement into the development community to build innovative apps for its Android Operating System, an open source operating system.

Apple has a very controlled approach in terms of carefully vetting which apps get into the Apple store, while Google exercises minimal control. Their approach is based on the abundance theory.. translated as "have fun" We will check back with you later." Creativity and openness oozes out of Google's strategy.

Developers can get started by going to (android.com/market).

Google is putting an interesting spider web together, dropping different pieces in front of the enterprise with little barriers.

As cloud computing increases in acceptance, enterprises will start to look at the costs of Software licences and evaluate the value given increased operating costs of IT infrastructure continue to be high and the need to secure cost savings to re-invest in the future will become more acute over the next ten years.

With Apple, Microsoft and RIM in the proprietary software business, and Google positoning itself in the open source market.

As developers are jumping on the Google Nexus jet plane, the dynamics will shift over time in the market.

Although the odds seem to be stacked against Google, one factor that none of us can predict is the creativity of start up organizations who see only new possibilities in supporting Google's dream.

CATA 25th Annual Innovation Award Gala - Proud to Be Canadian Night

2010-05-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

The CATA Alliance Annual Innovation Awards Gala held in Ottawa on May 19th 2010 hosted by Paul Brent, Host of CJOH TV's TECH NOW, and John Reid, President of the CATA Alliance was a world-class event and evening celebration.

Over 500 executives from business, government and academia attended the evening. 20 awards were recognized at the GALA with sponsorship from leading organizations.

Recognitions ranged from HR Leadership Aware, CIO Leadership Award, Outstanding Clean Tech Product Innovation, Outstanding Content and Application in the Mobility Industry to the prestigious Sara Kirk Award for Women Entrepreneurs.

The winners are posted on the CATA wesbite

This is the sixth year I have attended the CATA Innovation GALA ball, and each year we have a chance as a community to applaud the strengths of our entrepreneurs in Canada and reflect despite some of our challenges in this country - we continue to have tremendous success stories of entrepreneurial, business, government and academic champions who make a difference every day to the fabric of this country.

I want to personally recognize John Reid and his leadership team, and support staff as without leadership from talent like them... events like this are not made possible. Thank you to the CATA Team!

The finale of the evening was the CATA announcement of i-CANADA a program vision to strengthen the broadband infrastucture in Canada. What was made clear by the eloquent speech delivered by Bill Hutchison at the closure of this evening is we have a great deal more work to do in this area. When you hear Canada is rated in out of 30 countries ranking 22 in terms of our broadband and high bandwidth infrastructure in terms of intelligent community rankings... it tells us we have to all come together and make a difference not just for our current generation but also to plan for our future generation needs.

Bill outlined a compelling vision, one that I hope others will learn more about.

Knowing one day my grandchildren can talk to a nurse in our home on our television set, and my mother in law can check her sugar levels easily for her diabetes using intelligent smart systems in our home, and my fridge can relay to the super market we are low on milk, bread, and eggs, and my house is environmentally controlled by my personal computer at the office ... these types of smart intelligent services will not come our way unless we address our broadband infrastructure.

Bill was behind the success of Canarie which enabled educational institutions across Canada to be connected and use high speed infrastructure. We now need to catch up in our business to business, and business to community infrastructure.

ENTERPRISE 2.0 TEMPLATE

2010-05-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

Enterprise 2.0 RFP TemplateSubmission for Enterprise 2.0 wiki template contest.Submitted by Mark Fidelman

Enterprise 2.0 – Collaborative Networks Request for Proposal (RFP)

FOR: ________________________

Examples (Intranet, Social Business Initiative, Solution, Extranet, Knowledge Base, Community)

Feel free to adapt it for your own use and drop me a note at mfidelman at kelmarpartners.com if you use the template or have any questions.]

1. General Information

This section summarizes the General Information for the _________ Communities and is summarized into the following categories:

* Purpose of the RFP
* RFP communications
* RFP timeline
* RFP preparation
* Vendor responses
* Effective dates of pricing
* Evaluation criteria
* Right to reject RFP responses

1.1 Purpose of the RFP

The purpose of this Request for Proposal (RFP) is to establish the functional, technical and operational requirements for a _________ platform and _______management solution for _________.

TIP: This section should explain your high-level objectives. To develop this section of the RFP, it is important to take a step back and ensure that your team has a full—and shared—understanding of what you expect the project to accomplish. The more specific you can be with your objectives, the more specific and more accurate your respondents’ proposals will be.

The contents of this RFP are proprietary and are not to be disclosed to third parties without the express permission of _________.

The planned _________ solution will be a combination of:

* Primary
*
*
* Secondary
*
*

When we talk about building a solution, _________ is providing the infrastructure or “playpen” and the initial spark for the solution to get started. While we can nurture and guide the company to a certain degree, it would be a mistake to assume that we can single-handedly ignite a solution on our own. We have to have the patience and conviction to let the solution grow and evolve in whatever direction the users want them to grow. The solution will (or will not) be accessible from our website, but they will have an identity, name and style that are (same/different) from the _________ website and brand.

While the _________ customer component will be an important part of our solution, it is just a small slice of the total addressable audience.

One of the most important parts to becoming successful with the solution will be to continually provide fresh and new content. The expectation is that much of the content will ultimately come from team members.

Finally, building the solution will take a significant commitment and dedicated resources to manage and develop content for, and host (employees/guests) on the site. Another important point to make is that the solution will evolve over time – from both a content and adoption standpoint. The core infrastructure and initial content need to be in place for the launch, but it takes time to build trust in the solution, and to get members to begin contributing and actively participating in the solution.

We acknowledge that building the _________ solution will be a multi-year project.

At a high level, the types of content information planned for our solution include: EXAMPLES

* “Hot off the press” Content (relatively short shelf-life – days or weeks)
* Industry and other topical news
* Microblogging
* Blogs and columns
* Discussion groups and forums (threaded conversations)
* User editable wikis
* Alerts and RSS news or blog feeds
* Daily/weekly digest of new content/discussions
* “Library-Type” Content (longer shelf-life – months or years)
* Articles and whitepapers – by _________ or contributed
* Analyst reports
* Webinars – real-time and archived
* Podcasts and video
* Links to other relevant content

Ideally, we want the solution to become a destination site where our employees/customers come for valuable and topical content and to share insights with other employees/customers.

1.2 RFP Communications

Please direct all communications and correspondence regarding this RFP to:

Name –

Title –

Address –

Email address -

Phone number –

1.3 Timeline

RFP submission date - ____

Vendor proposal due date - ____

Vendor selection - ____

Vendor contract process - ____

_________ detailed plan with vendor - ____

Launch Solution - ____

1.4 RFP Preparation

All costs incurred in the preparation and presentation of a RFP will be absorbed by the prospective vendors. In the event that modifications or additions to the RFP become necessary, prospective vendors will be notified in writing. All supporting materials submitted with the Proposal will become the property of _________ unless otherwise requested by the prospective vendors at time of submission.

1.5 Vendor Responses

Prospective vendors are required to submit their proposals no later than ________. All supporting materials and documentation must be included with the Proposal. Proposals should be sent or emailed to ________. We may ask vendors to present their proposals in person or by webcast to the _________ evaluation team.

1.6 Effective Dates of Pricing

Prospective vendors should state in writing that all furnished information, including pricing, will remain valid and applicable for a minimum of one-hundred and twenty (120) days from the date their Proposal is received by _________ and should submit their best and final offers.

1.7 Evaluation Criteria

Prospective vendor Proposals will be evaluated using the following general criteria:

* Ability to satisfy functional business requirements
* Ability to satisfy technical and integration requirements
* Strategic partnering potential
* Cost

1.8 Right to Reject

_________ reserves the right to:

* Accept or reject any and/or all submitted proposals
* Request additional information from all prospective vendors at any time
* Negotiate a contract with the selected vendor(s)
* Include the vendor's RFP response in whole or by reference in the final contract
* Accept the proposal of any vendor at any time during the process and other vendors may or may not be awarded the opportunity to further discuss their proposals or demonstrate their solutions to the _________ team.

Therefore your response should include all information necessary for _________ to evaluate your solution, pricing and contract terms.

2.0 Requirements

This section summarizes the key requirements for the _________ Communities and is summarized into the following categories:

* Solution strategy
* Infrastructure requirements
* Functionality requirements
* Ongoing management requirements
* Technology requirements
* Other requirements
* Cost requirements

2.1 Solution Strategy

We believe that getting the strategy right is an integral part of building our solution. As part of your proposal, we would like you to include a description of how you will help us strategize our solution and approach. This may be part of a bundled package or priced separately. It is important to make sure that you are explicit in terms how you can help us, a description of your qualifications and an estimate of the time/cost necessary to help us finalize our strategy.

TIP: Once you have identified the main focus of the project, it is important to specify key objectives and allow the vendor to provide a solution for each of the areas you have identified. For instance, if the project focuses on project management capabilities, you will need to detail the issues your organization is currently experiencing and any requirements you have defined to solve those problems.

2.2 Infrastructure Requirements(suit to fit)

The key infrastructure requirements include:
* Platform
* Provide a robust, fully encrypted, and hosted platform that provides room to grow the solution and meets the other requirements detailed below
* Establish single sign-on and permissions rules
* Implement and manage legal and intellectual property agreements for access to content, member privacy
* Establish service level agreements that are acceptable to _________
* Document and train _________ personnel in administration and management of site
* Provide periodic training to _________ personnel as updates are made to the platform or as new _________ personnel get involved with site administration
* Strategy and planning
* Drive completion of solution strategy plan
* Create a comprehensive project plan
* Develop a customized look and feel
* Build a membership recruitment plan
* Design a launch plan (for marketing and PR)
* Generate an ROI measurement plan
* Develop solution rules for participation, posting, etc.
* Multiple sites
* Support up to ___ solution sites
* Enterprise search across solution sites
* Separate URLS for each solution site
* Separate look-and-feel for each solution site
* Support different levels of members (i.e. guest, registered, employee customer) with different permissions/privileges and access to content
* Scalability and Governance
* Support up to ___ concurrent users
* Support different restrictions for members (ranging from total blocking to full access)
* Support collaborative networking (i.e. professional profile, my favorite files/links, photo, etc.)
* Support for employee/user rating

2.3 Functionality Requirements(suit to fit)

The key functionality requirements include:

* Content types – we need to support the following content capabilities
* Dashboard charting and gauges
* Document and content libraries
* Multimedia libraries for videos, podcasts and other multimedia
* Discussion forums
* Blogs
* Wikis
* Webcasts
* Podcasts
* Vlogs (video blogs)
* Links
* Realtime polls and surveys
* Project Management
* Ability to manage tasks
* Ability to set up project sites/pages
* Ability to add team members to project sites/pages
* Dashboard reporting on projects
* Available metrics – we want to be able to measure the following metrics. The metrics should be available in standard reports and in user definable reports. The reports should be available online and printed or exported if necessary:
* Unique visitors by date and date range
* Page views by date and date range
* Session time by date and date range
* Registered members and join date
* Peak number of concurrent users (in live events)
* Total number of users (in live events)
* Repeat visits and Frequent visitors
* Customization requirements
* Ability to update and program solution easily using java script, deki script or php.
* Ability to create new workflow forms (i.e. expense reports, travel, requests) and pages on the fly

TIP: Customization.

When it comes to customization, there are some key pieces of information that can help you select the best partner for your solution. How does the respondent plan to develop your set of solutions? Will they use mostly out-of-the-box templates, or will they architect a custom-developed tool? Depending on your needs, some may propose using a combination of these two approaches. Your RFP should include questions that will clarify their experiences with respect to building solutions using both of these approaches.
* Data integration and mashups
* Ability to integrate data from our ERP, CRM, MRP systems
* Reporting – we need to mashup our ERP data with our CRM data to show our sales team detailed customer payment information
* Dashboards - Ability to chart real time data quickl
* Other requirements
* Ratings - ability to rate content & users
* Workflow – custom workflow
* RSS feeds – RSS feeds for news, blogs and other content
* Notification Alerts - alerts for content (users can set alerts for pages, discussions, blogs and other content)
* Subscriptions – ability for members to subscribe to any content on a daily, weekly or other time basis of their choosing
* Search – ability to search content by title and within documents or discussions (Google-like search capabilities)
* Enterprise search – ability to search across multiple instances of solution
* Email Posting - Ability to post to blogs and discussion groups by email
* “What’s new” – easy way to find new content or discussions
* Talkback – ability to add comments on content, etc.
* Social sharing – one-click ability to share any content via email and other social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, de.lic.ious, etc.
* Administration – ability for our admin manager to perform most routine administrative tasks such as setting permissions, making modifications to most pages, etc.

2.4 Ongoing Management Requirements

The key ongoing management requirements include:

* Management
* Provide a dedicated moderator to the communities to manage conversations and actively enhance member experience – with the goal of growing the communities and keeping the solution active and vibrant (based on activity and new members/partners added)
* Maintain and regularly check physical and virtual links
* Manage and summarize user feedback – and incorporate feedback into improving the site
* Provide continuous programming and membership moderation
* Provide solution training and demos to new/prospective members
* Generate detailed solution reports and analysis of results
* Solution Marketing
* Identify potential members partners and user groups to target, including obtaining of email addresses
* Invite potential users to join
* Get people to join – driving awareness and attention
* Encourage people to stay active and contribute
* Manage the membership and partnerships
* Create regular and periodic marketing campaigns to generate traffic, awareness of solution and member/partner growth
* Content creation
* Source new content (the majority of content must be from non-_________ to give it an aura of success)
* Build links to related sites, blogs, etc. (the onus of research and effort for this task will be on the vendor – to be augmented over time by _________ employees)
* Content management
* Keep the content fresh
* Prune and cull old or out-of-date content
* Coordinate, kick start and prime discussions
* Edit, review, upload and ‘censor’ materials and discussions, as necessary
* Content Moderation
* Please provide an overview of your moderation services (if any) and the various pricing options

2.5 Technology Requirements

The key technology requirements include:

Provide us with information that cover these technical details: (if hosted)

* Uptime and availability
* Backups
* Bandwidth
* Support access
* Privacy of data

2.6 Other Requirements

Are the any requirements that we missed? Please include ideas / topics / suggestions that we may have missed that you believe would greatly enhance a solution experience and/or be an area where you could provide significant value to the members of the solution and/or _________ as the solution sponsor.

TIP: People and Roles. Finally, ask for information about the respondent’s proposed team structure and the key roles it plans to fulfill in building your proposed solution. Respondents should provide a high-level snapshot of their proposed teams and resources, including specific roles and number of team members, as well as a basic reasoning behind their proposed team structure. Gathering this information will provide you with a clear picture of exactly how each respondent’s team will approach the project and whether it will fit your needs.

2.7 Cost Requirements

The initial proposal should outline a price quote and all pricing options available to support the requirements identified in the RFP. The price quote should address a plan for developing a solution and launching before the end of _____.

The price quote should include the amount and timing of the following:

* Upfront costs
* How much?
* What is included in the upfront costs?
* How many hours/days are covered in the upfront costs?
* What is the final deliverable?
* What flexibility is available in pricing?
* Annual costs
* What are the annual costs?
* What is included in the annual costs?
* How many hours/days per week are covered by this pricing?
* What flexibility is available in pricing?
* What ROI metrics can we expect?
* Payment options
* Monthly, quarterly, etc.

2.8 Other

Vendors should provide pricing data for any services not included as part of the software or support purchase. These may include training, implementation support, moderation, ongoing consultation, etc. This should include detailed rates for the different levels and experience of consultants that may be needed on this engagement.

Vendors should also be prepared to provide us with a list of reference-able customers with similar background as our solution. You may include information about reference-able customers in your response or include them in your presentation

Note: Some of this RFP is from an actual RFP developed by Tom Humbarger thumbarger@yahoo.com who has kindly allowed us to use and modify.

DOWNLOAD LINK TO ENTERPRISE 2.0 RFP EVALUATION SCORECARD: http://www.scribd.com/doc/23345858/Enterprise-2-0-RFP-Evaluation-Scorecard

The wiki text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution License agreement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Share

Community Planning and Scoping Perspectives

2010-05-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

Community Planning and Scoping ReportBuilding Successful Online Communities
Submission for Enterprise 2.0 wiki template contest.

Many companies, when implementing technology projects, focus too heavily on the Technology and perceived technology risks and not enough on the Planning, People and Change Management aspects of a project.

Submitted by Stephen Rahal IGLOO INC. Helix is a VAR of Igloo

Many companies, when implementing technology projects, focus too heavily on the Technology and perceived technology risks and not enough on the Planning, People and Change Management aspects of a project. As indicated in the diagram below, many organizations perceive their project risk as increasing the farther they get into the project, while actually most of the real risk to the project is introduced into or mitigated out of the project in the Planning and Scoping phase.

The IGLOO approach to managing projects will be to divide a project life cycle into five stages, of which three may involve a consulting engagement, one is entirely focused on the actual build and delivery of the technology solution and one is an optional stage that deals with the concept definition, which is required when a client needs added clarity on a project prior to its start. The following graphic clarifies these stages within their context and progressive implementation during a project life-cycle.

Project Planning & Scoping

This phase involves assessing and documenting the executive vision for the project, understanding the project alignment to the organizational goals, defining a high level scope, assessing the technical complexities, and determining project duration and cost estimates. This phase results in a Project Proposal and estimated project cost.

Corporate Vision

Defining the corporate social networking vision for the organization is the key to a successful adoption. The senior executives, that are the driving forces behind the adoption of a social networking strategy for the organization, need to express their vision in a clear and accessible manner. A clear vision will serve as the roadmap, not only for the implementation project, but also for the monitoring of progress and evaluation of ROI post implementation.

Corporate Business objectives and Social Networking goals

Setting goals and objectives build on the organizational process of visioning and taking stock. Goals are a clear statement of the visions, specifying the accomplishments to be achieved if the vision is to become real. The target objectives are statements of the specific activities required to achieve the goals, starting from the current status.
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PHASE 1: Requirements Gathering
Identify Key Goals & Objectives

Why are we doing this?

Goals can be lofty and a bit higher level, but keep in mind when talking with the customer that all objectives should be able to pass the "SMART" test, mean each objective should be:

1. Specific
2. Measurable
3. Achievable
4. Relevant
5. Time bounded -- are governed by deadlines
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The key goals and objectives for this project within The organization include:

Goal Specific Objective(s) What Constitutes Completed Measures of Progress To be completed by

Table 1: Project Goals and Objectives

Key Stakeholder Groups

For the purposes of building successful online communities and networks, The organization will need to identify "primary" and "secondary" stakeholders. Primary stakeholders can be defined as those with a direct interest in the online community; either because they depend on it for their function or they are directly involved in its ongoing running, building or supporting in some way. Secondary stakeholders would be those with a more indirect interest, such as those involved in institutions or agencies concerned with contributing to the community or those who depend at least partially on outcomes or benefits generated by the online resource.

The concept of the stakeholder does not extend merely to those directly involved in the community but extends to all those deriving some form of benefit from the community. At least for those groups identified as having significant interests or deriving important benefits, The organization has to look at their priorities and motivations, decision-making processes and institutions, and understand the social, economic and cultural links between each group and the community. Likewise, attention needs to be paid to the particular age groups of stakeholders. Given that online communities are relatively new in the professional realm, older professionals may rely heavier on conventional means of interactions, such as email, documents, etc., while young professionals (Net generation) might make more significant use of interactive media, such as blogs, forums, IM and the specific needs of these groups should not be overlooked.

The variety of stakeholders and their often conflicting interests in the community will mean that The organization will have to prioritize levels of interest of different groups in different community aspects. It will rarely be possible to accommodate all interests. However, this process can assist in identifying key or primary stakeholders and those with less direct or secondary interests. Through this process, some stakeholders might be felt to have only minor or very indirect interest in the community and therefore not need to be directly involved in the implementation decision-making process, although their concerns should be registered in the risks section.

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Phase I: Requirements Gathering
Identify Key Stakeholder Groups

•Who are the primary target users?
•What are their demographics, location, estimated numbers, what is their stake in this project, etc.?
•What are their 3 top needs by group?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The key target stakeholders for this project have been identified as the following:

Stakeholder Group (in order of priority) Stakeholder Group Description Primary Needs
Priority 1
Priority 2
Priority 3

Table 2: Requirements by stakeholder groups

Project scope

Most organizations desire to move their web presence into an interactive web environment, to engage current stakeholders, provide an ongoing relationship of support and/or establish a central clearinghouse of best practice information.

In order to successfully implement a high-value community network, the following important questions need to be addressed during the implementation:
* Do the stakeholders see the website as an extension of a support role or as a information destination on its own?
* How can the site best serve people looking for continuing support?
* What is the best way to engage people in a mission and to become members and/or donors?
* What kind of programs and/or activity information is needed? How best to deliver on those needs?
* How can a site support a deep, rich bond with all stakeholders?

The understanding gained from the answers need to be assessed for compatibility with the features and function set provided on the platform under consideration.

Positioning Strategy

This strategy describes how to best position the social networking solution within the corporate structure and culture. This will describe what key stakeholders will be targeted, how project risks will be taken into consideration and how success factors are used to make this successful.

Technical Complexities and Identified Risks

Effective risk management is a central function in the successful planning and execution of online community projects. In ideal risk management, a prioritization process is followed whereby the risks with the greatest loss and the greatest probability of occurring are handled first, and risks with lower probability of occurrence and lower loss are handled in descending order. In practice the process can be very difficult, and balancing between risks with a high probability of occurrence but lower impact versus a risk with high impact but lower probability of occurrence can often be mishandled.

Intangible risk management identifies a new type of risk - a risk that has a 100% probability of occurring but is ignored due to a lack of identification ability. For example, in online communities relationship risk appears when ineffective collaboration occurs, process-engagement risk may be an issue when ineffective operational procedures are applied, etc. These risks directly reduce the productivity of knowledge workers, decrease cost effectiveness, profitability, service, quality, reputation, brand value, and overall community value. Intangible risk management allows risk management to create immediate value from the identification and reduction of risks that reduce productivity.

Risk management also faces difficulties allocating resources. This is the idea of opportunity cost. Resources spent on risk management could have been spent on more profitable activities. Again, ideal risk management minimizes spending while maximizing the reduction of the negative effects of risks.

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Phase I - Requirements Gathering
Identify Risks

•Technology - expertise, bandwidth issues, integrations
•Operational - funding, staffing, privacy, IP
•Cultural - demographic, resistance to adoption

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The risks for the success of this project are identified as the following:

Risk Type Identified Risk Constraints Risk Mitigation
Technical
Operational
Cultural

Table 3: Identified project risks

Based on the list of identified risks we can now construct the organization Risk prioritization matrix for this project. This matrix consists of a two continuums being plotted against each other, namely Risk Consequences and Risk Probability of occurring. By Risk Consequences we mean the impact it would have if a risk would materialize in an actual event. The risks can be categorized as:

* Catastrophic
* Critical
* Marginal
* Negligible

The Risk Probability implies the chance of such risk actually materializing. The probability can be categorized as follows:

* Certain,
* Likely,
* Possible,
* Unlikely
* Rare

The risk matrix for this project is presented in the table below. The organization can use this matrix to prioritize resource and mitigation strategies by balancing risk probability (from rare to certain) and risk consequences (from negligible to catastrophic).

Negligible Marginal Critical Catastrophic

Certain
Marginal
Critical
Catastrophic

Table 4: Risk matrix

Estimated project timeframe

The estimated budget and timeline are presented in order to facilitate any decision for the project to be implemented. The next phase of this process focuses on the refinement and detailing of the project scope in order to create the project charter and schedule of deliverables as well as a detailed budget and timeframe for the project.

The wiki text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution License agreement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

To Wiki or Not To Wiki?

2010-05-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

To Wiki or Not to Wiki -- That is the question

Submission for Enterprise 2.0 wiki template contest.

Submitted by Stephen Rahal COMMUNICATIONS & SOCIAL MEDIA - IGLOO INC.
http://www.igloosoftware.com Note: Helix is a VAR of Igloo

Since the introduction of social technologies, community managers and members alike have reflected on when to use one particular application versus another. Wikis, blogs and forums are each built to simplify communication and collaboration. It’s just that the dividing lines and use case for each are not always crystal clear.

As the debate continues over what to use, and when, email still remains the de facto collaboration tool. According to Forrester’s 2009 Workforce Technographics Study, 87 percent of information workers rely on email while most collaboration tools still go widely untapped. Coincidently, email is also the leading cause of unnecessary productivity loss.

It’s easy to see how most inboxes become unwieldy when you factor in that anyone can send an email at virtually no cost. Whether it’s a simple FYI or information request, even the slightest message can set-off a chain of “reply-alls” that quickly overload your inbox. In the end, with so much noise to deal with and the lack of a shared and open workspace, email was just never intended for scalable collaboration.
Defining the wiki

The first wiki was created as an online knowledge repository. Ward Cunningham, the inventor of the wiki, called it “the simplest online database that could possibly work.” The typical wiki has multiple contributors – a great example being the online Encyclopedia Wikipedia. With over 75,000 contributors and 13 million articles, some studies show it’s more accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica.

Wikis also share some similar properties with other Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs and forums, depending on the software you may be using. Typically, all can be navigated through search using categorization or tagging schemes, RSS feeds and social sharing push content updates to the user community and comments are enabled. Furthermore, using WYSIWYG technology, new entries can be added with little to no programming experience.

When to use a wiki

When launching a community with social technologies, it is valuable to establish some guidelines outlining when you should wiki rather than post a blog entry, start a forum or share a document. A wiki is designed for co-creation. It’s a virtual sandbox where people can come together to produce content with lasting value. A wiki is your tool of choice if your goal is to:

• Create a knowledge repository for policies, procedures, documentation or best practices

• Organize and share information such as to-do lists, meeting notes and observations, but not necessarily hold a conversation around it

• Produce the content for a document that will later be designed, distributed and/or stored for reference

A wiki can also work in conjunction with other tools. For instance, to overcome the challenges associated with initiating user generated content, a forum could be used to capture seed material for the wiki.

When debating between a wiki, blog, forum or document, make sure you ask yourself these questions for each:

Wiki Blog Forum Document

Do you need the initial draft intact or the ability to reference prior changes? Should conversations link to the asset?
Is portability a concern?
Should control reside with the individual or the asset?

The wiki text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution License agreement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Developing Website Requirements

2010-05-12T06:09:00.000-07:00

This article summarizes key requirements for developing Web Functional Specifications as a helpful guideline. This information shared is part of the commons network and developed by a promising online community coordinator. Helpful points of view for consideration.

Section Areas

1. Overview
1.1. Objectives
1.2. Assumptions
1.3. User Groups/Audience and Goals
2. High Level Site Layout (Site Map)
3. Functional Requirements
3.1. Software Functions
3.2. End-User Functions
3.3. Administrative Functions
4. User Scenarios
4.1. Scenario #1
5. Reporting Structure

OVERVIEW

1.1. Objectives

This project is intended to update the interface, functionality, and positioning of ASQ’s internal online communities, including those currently hosted in SharePoint. As part of this goal, the project will offer community members such enhanced functionalities as single sign-on, improved online community tools (profile, discussion board, real-time interaction, chat features, direct messaging features, rating and comment features, and selective visibility/privacy features, among others), and increased visibility as well as participation/inter-linkage in external online communities such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, etc.

The primary goals of the project are to increase user engagement and expand the members of the Community (MOC), supporting the Community EA in place for this fiscal.

A few key measures of success would be increased engagement with ASQ’s online communities (i.e. more posts to discussion boards, blogs, and comment/rating features, as well as sharing links with off-site communities); increased responsiveness to internal community opportunities; X number of external site conversations leading to participation in internal communities; and development of X number of “super-users” (users whose comments are highly rated by other participants, who post frequently, who return frequently, and who show a steady rate of returning over time) within the first three months of launch.

1.2. Assumptions

IT is responsible for selecting, purchasing, and implementing software that meets the needs outlined in this document
- A single software solution exists to meet all of ASQ’s needs, and will allow previously installed instances of blog, discussion board, calendar, etc. content to be imported into it
- The software solution will be able to communicate with ASQ’s existing CMS and TIMSS solutions to allow User-Generated Content to be linked with CMS content, and to allow tracking of and reporting on usage, activity, and points/user-rating build-up

1.3. User Groups/Audiences and Goals

• ASQ Admin: Assign privileges to users; housekeeping needs.
• ASQ Member/Advocate: Read all comments, ratings, and discussion boards; post to discussion boards, comments, ratings, community; earn points and recognition; at pre-set point amount, gain blogging privilege
• ASQ Member: Read all comments, ratings, and discussion boards; post to discussion boards, comments, ratings, community; earn points and recognition
• ASQ Registered Visitor: Read public comments, ratings, and discussion boards; post to discussion boards, comments, ratings, community; earn points and recognition
• ASQ non-member: Read public comments, ratings, and discussion boards

2. HIGH LEVEL SITE MAP

Please find preliminary wireframes from Hanson Dodge attached as Appendix 1. These wireframes were developed last fiscal, and are being reworked to take into account new developments on asq.org, as well as additional details and guidance given by the Community Development team.

3. FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS
Software Functions Required

3.1. Requirement #1 – ASQ Branding & Templating

3.1.1. Definition: Templates within the community must allow for ASQ-defined templates to be put in place seamlessly with the rest of the site. WO must be able to have access to the templates in order to be able to update them as appropriate.
3.1.2. Goal of function: Integrate the community functions with the rest of the site and allow for easy design integration and maintenance with the rest of the site.
3.1.3. Notes/Assumptions: While blog and discussion board templates currently bear almost no relationship to the look and feel of the rest of the site, it would be preferable that this distance be lessened over time, to allow the full integration of the interactive experience with ASQ’s content.
3.1.4. This feature is required

3.2. Requirement #2 – No User Limit

3.2.1. Definition: The community software should be able to scale to at least the million-member MOC level targeted as an org goal.
3.2.2. Goal of function: To avoid user dissatisfaction as the community experiences rapid growth.
3.2.3. This feature is required

3.3. Requirement #3 – Network Site Statistics

3.3.1. Definition: Ability to gain actionable insight into community usage.
3.3.2. Goal of function: To continue current reporting practices.
3.3.3. Notes/Assumptions: There is likely to be something of a shift if the new software offers integrated reporting tools (preferred), since current methods involve hand counts out of TIMSS reports. If this could be automated or more closely integrated with Web Trends, that would be the best of all possible worlds.
3.3.4. This feature is required

3.4. Requirement #4 – Authenticate into ASQ community

3.4.1. Definition: Ability of site visitors to log into the community using systems already in place and following Customer Records rules and practices.
3.4.2. Goal of function: Unified/seamless user experience that nonetheless allows ASQ to control access based on current business rules.
3.4.3. This feature is required

3.5. Requirement #5 – Shared User Base

3.5.1. Definition: Registered visitors and members should be able to carry credentials earned in one portion of the software/site to all other portions.
3.5.2. Goal of the function: Unified/seamless user experience that more tightly integrates disparate elements of the software with the overall site visit experience.
3.5.3. This feature is required

3.6. Requirement #6 – External-facing Content Moderation System

3.6.1. Definition: Members who have achieved a certain credibility point threshold in the system should be allowed to flag (at lower threshold), and moderate (at higher threshold) other community members’ comments according to rules established at HQ and agreed to at the time the responsibility is earned.
3.6.2. Goal of the function: Self-sustaining community establishment requires that the members have a significant degree of control over what is acceptable to the community.
3.6.3. This feature is required

3.7. Requirement #7 – Ability to import content from previous systems

3.7.1. Definition: Content previously contributed via the homegrown comments and ratings features and calendar features; posts from the discussion boards and blogs; and content shared via the current community interface should all move into the new software as a basis for seeding the new community areas and maintaining continuity over time.
3.7.2. Goal of the function: The transition to the new software should be as transparent to the user as possible. Since not only the layout and functionalities will be significantly different, ASQ should be sensitive to the perceived credibility already established in our historical offerings and allow that to transfer without the end user having to worry about its loss.
3.7.3. Notes/Assumptions: The transfer should also allow us to start tying comments to registered visitors and members to begin to generate a more robust view of these individuals as well as pre-populate some points for such visitors who have already undertaken the desired activities within the old framework, giving them deeper incentive to continue contributing user-generated content within the more robust offering.
3.7.4. This feature is required

3.8. Requirement #8 – Authenticate according to specific customer type

3.8.1. Definition: There should be different access levels to the software features depending on criteria stored in TIMSS (i.e. registered visitor, vs. member, vs. member leader, etc.).
3.8.2. Goal of the function: Continue the outline of the customer records project to encourage registered visitors to establish and nurture a relationship with ASQ through to membership and beyond.
3.8.3. This feature is required

3.9. Requirement #9 – Sentiment Analysis available as a metric

3.9.1. Definition: The software should provide a high-level analysis of keywords and topics to give an easily generated report on key interests being discussed within the community setting, to be actionable by Community Development, Membership, and Market Development in support of needs expressed by the members of the communities.
3.9.2. Goal of the function: Support a conversation with members and customers that helps develop ASQ’s offerings according to the needs expressed in the community context.
3.9.3. This feature would be nice to have

3.10. Requirement #10 – Network Privacy Settings

3.10.1. Definition: Participants should be able to determine how much of their profile information is shared with different classes of contacts.
3.10.2. Goal of the function: Support participants’ desire for control of the information in their profiles.
3.10.3. This feature is required

3.11. Requirement #11 – OpenID compatible

3.11.1. Definition: Log-in and profile elements match up with current OpenID standards.
3.11.2. Goal of the function: This will allow ASQ’s communities to be more transparently connected with other communities, allowing for a richer data set per user, as well as increasing the ease of use for the participants by streamlining log-on across multiple social networking sites.
3.11.3. This feature is required

3.12. Requirement #12 – Online document storage, sharing, and commenting

3.12.1. Definition: Users should be able to upload documents (Word, PowerPoint, etc.) to the system and designate others who are authorized to view or edit those documents.
3.12.2. Goal of the function: Replace SharePoint document sharing. Individual users will be limited to 5MB of storage; groups that have been given appropriate authorization by the organization may access up to 5GB of storage.
3.12.3. This feature is required

End-User Functions Required

1.1 Requirement #1 – Spam Control

1.1.1. Definition: An automated challenge system that reduces the number of spam comments that either need moderation or slip through standard keyword or rules-based filtering.
1.1.2. Goal of the function: Keep community-based content on-topic and relevant to improve the visitors’ likelihood of staying through the whole conversation.
1.1.3. This feature is required

1.2. Requirement #2 – Search

1.2.1. Definition: Ability to search for user-generated content within the community area based on keywords and key phrases.
1.2.2. Goal of the function: Increase the visibility of the user-generated content to increase the likelihood that participants will continue previous conversations already taking place within the system.
1.2.3. Notes/Assumptions: This feature may be equally well-served by the current CMS, if the content generated within the community software is somehow tied to the CMS and we can use the CMS search function to find it. In fact, it would be preferable if we could maintain only one search engine to deal with visitors’ search needs.
1.2.4. Search function is required; it may not be necessary within the community software, however, if we can tie that content to the CMS.

1.3. Requirement #3 – User Profiles

1.3.1. Definition: User-generated information on self, falling into several categories.
1.3.2. Goal of the function: Increase the transparency of the participating individuals to allow for trust to be established between users based on self-advertised areas of interest, expertise, or industry.
1.3.3. This feature is required

1.4. Requirement #4 – Single log-on, unified user experience

1.4.1. Definition: Registered visitors and members should not need to log in separately to access any of their approved areas of community or site activity.
1.4.2. Goal of the function: Unified/seamless user experience that more tightly integrates disparate elements of the software with the overall site visit experience.
1.4.3. This feature is required

1.5. Requirement #5 – Reviews & rating system

1.5.1. Definition: A collaborative filtering algorithm that attempts to determine ratings for a collection of entities, given a collection of opinions that those entities hold about each other.
1.5.2. Goal of the function: Reputation systems are often useful in large online communities in which users may frequently have the opportunity to interact with other users with whom they have no prior experience or in communities where user-generated content is posted. In such a situation, it is often helpful to base the decision whether or not to interact with that user on the prior experiences of other users. Reputation systems may also be coupled with an incentive system to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior. For instance, users with high reputation may be granted special privileges, whereas users with low or unestablished reputation may have limited privileges.
1.5.3. This feature is required

1.6. Requirement #6 – Email notification settings

1.6.1. Definition: Simple notification system similar to RSS, only directed at a user-defined email address (can be constrained to the registered email address on the account, if necessary).
1.6.2. Goal of the function: Alternate means for participants to remain current with recent content additions.
1.6.3. Notes/Assumptions: Email notifications should be available for sets of content from particular segmented communities, particular users, particular topics, or particular industries.
1.6.4. This feature is required

1.7. Requirement #7 – RSS

1.7.1. Definition: Simple syndication.
1.7.2. Goal of the function: Alternate means for participants to remain current with recent content additions.
1.7.3. Notes/Assumptions: RSS feeds should be able to slice and dice content according to particular segmented communities, particular users, particular topics, or particular industries.
1.7.4. This feature is required

1.8. Requirement #8 – Member listings

1.8.1. Definition: Similar to current “Find a Member” functionality, these member listings would relate specifically to membership within particular segmented communities.
1.8.2. Goal of the function: Allow segmented community participants to know who else is participating in a particular dialogue to increase the trustworthiness of their communication within that context.
1.8.3. This feature is required

1.9. Requirement #9 – Variety of relationship types

1.9.1. Definition: Allow registered visitors and members to maintain varying levels of contact with other participants in the communities.
1.9.2. Goal of the function: Related to privacy concerns, some participants may not want all other participants to be aware of all levels of their activity. So display of particular online activity can be restricted according to the user-defined relationship with other participants (friend, colleague, group participant, mentor).
1.9.3. This feature would be nice to have.

1.10. Requirement #10 – Granular community descriptions

1.10.1. Definition: Segmented communities should have the ability to define who is allowed to participate and how the community will describe itself.
1.10.2. Goal of the function: Allow communities to arise through user demand, with parameters set by the participants (i.e. must have certain membership or registration credentials to participate).
1.10.3. This feature is required

1.11. Requirement #11 – Forums/message boards

1.11.1. Definition: Asynchronous, public discussion space for multiple participants.
1.11.2. Goal of the function: Allow space for members and registered visitors to interact in such a way that their conversations are publicly (as appropriate to the sponsoring body) available and can contribute to ASQ’s BOK.
1.11.3. Notes/Assumptions: Should add to the function-set currently available in ASQ’s discussion board, as well as allow current discussion board content to be imported into the new solution.
1.11.4. This feature is required

1.12. Requirement #12 – Tagging/folksonomy

1.12.1. Definition: User-generated tags and descriptions of content.
1.12.2. Goal of the function: Eventually ASQ’s folksonomy should offer an alternate method of navigating an increasingly large body of knowledge, as well as offer the Knowledge Offerings group insight into the ways community members interact with ASQ’s BOK.
1.12.3. This feature would be nice to have

1.13. Requirement #13 – Authenticated badges

1.13.1. Definition: Graphical tokens indicating a particular visitor has achieved certain levels of feedback quality, permitting them particular privileges.
1.13.2. Goal of the function: To establish an at-a-glance overview, in a transparent way, of which users are allowed to do what. These badges may be either community-generated/earned, or assigned by particular ASQ departments (i.e. LO, Cert, KO, Membership, Community Development) as appropriate to the needs of those departments (for instance, signifying that LO or KO has verified particular SME credentials, that particular certifications have been earned, or that particular member levels/distinctions/milestones have been achieved). Members have regularly requested such public acclaim, and this is given in offline circumstances; this feature would bring those offline credentials online.
1.13.3. Notes/Assumptions: There may be a need for a field-set expansion in TIMSS to hold ASQ-assigned credentials so that they can be accessed for the online community.
1.13.4. This feature is required

1.14. Requirement #14 – Events, calendar integration

1.14.1. Definition: Ability to set and find events within a single system. This system should also allow those events to be saved in iCal format, so to be integrated with external calendaring software (i.e. Google Calendar, Outlook Calendar, etc.) at the user’s discretion.
1.14.2. Goal of the function: Allow online participants to schedule offline events as appropriate.
1.14.3. Notes/Assumptions: This function should also have multiple layers of access, so that particular events can be designated as private (between “friends”), group-specific (for particular sections, divisions, networks, etc. only), or ASQ-wide. This should be able to replace and integrate the homegrown calendaring system currently in place.
1.14.4. This feature is required

1.15. Requirement #15 – Messaging

1.15.1. Definition: Asynchronous communication between two members of the community.
1.15.2. Goal of the function: Increase perception of community between two users.
1.15.3. Notes/Assumptions: For both messaging and chat there should be an ability to archive the conversation and determine its privacy setting (some conversations may turn out to be valuable to the community at large and could then be posted live for particular segments of the community to see at the discretion of the original participants).
1.15.4. This feature is required

1.16. Requirement #16 – Blogs

1.16.1. Definition: Site where one sufficiently credentialed member can post log entries on a regular basis.
1.16.2. Goal of the function: Reward for highly rated community participants to have their own space for ongoing posts about a particular topic of interest to them.
1.16.3. Notes/Assumptions: Some blogs will still be established by Market Development/Communications mandate, so there will need to be a function whereby administrative staff can turn on the function without the visitor/member having accrued sufficient community-generated ratings to open up access to that function automatically.
1.16.4. This feature is required

1.17. Requirement #17 – Chat

1.17.1. Definition: Synchronous communication between two members of the community.
1.17.2. Goal of the function: Increase perception of community between users.
1.17.3. This feature would be nice to have

1.18. Requirement #18 – Polls

1.18.1. Definition: Ability to gather visitor feedback in shorter, more informal circumstances, with immediate results visible to the visitor.
1.18.2. Goal of the function: Increase interactivity of the site and pique further discussion within other areas of the site.
1.18.3. Notes/Assumptions: There should be some filtering/restrictions in place to only allow one vote per user per poll. This could either take the place of, or take advantage of the poll program already available via QP. The feature should also have the capacity to have segmented community-specific polls (i.e. one for all community participants, one for webinar community participants, and yet a different one for the SOX community participants).
1.18.4. This feature is required

1.19. Requirement #19 - Wiki

1.19.1. Definition: Shared document creation and editing space.
1.19.2. Goal of the function: Allow properly registered community participants to collaborate on documentation online.
1.19.3. This feature would be nice to have

Administration Requirements
1.1. Requirement #1 – System-wide messaging
1.1.1. Definition: System whereby staff administrators can contact all or segmented community members to address community-wide administrative needs or reminders.
1.1.2. Goal of the function: Allow for easy administrative contact with participants to increase the transparency of necessary administrative actions.
Form/Data Collection
Initial access to ASQ’s online communities will be governed by the Customer Records log-in and rules. After pre-set thresholds of number of visits, registered visitors will be invited to fill out more elements of their profiles.

Source: The wiki text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution License agreement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Web Functional Specifications Author: Tonya Cannariato

Community Launch Checklist for Online Collaboration

2010-05-11T17:50:00.000-07:00

Community Launch Checklist

Online Communities take a lot of time and energy to be successful. Organizations must understand and prepare for the investment associated, from strategic planning to implementation and execution.

While planning the launch of your online community, we recommend you consider the following:

Roles and Responsibilities

Have you aligned the internal roles and responsibilities required for an online community? In the planning phase, it is imperative that you have full cooperation across all functional teams and groups within your organization.

* Do you have an executive team in place to approve and sign off on strategic initiatives?
* Is your legal team ready and prepared to discuss branding and governance policies?
* Has your IT department allotted sufficient time and staff for the integration and maintenance of the technology?
* Have you built a support team to help customers and community members successfully use the platform?
* Is your marketing ready to lead the way in terms of setting the tone and handling the daily tasks of managing the community?

Be sure you have staffed a social media strategist to lead the overall launch of the community, as well as a community manager or facilitator to support daily developments.

Operating Budget

Have you allocated sufficient funds to successfully build and launch your online community?

* What types of features and services will your site provide to users?
* Are you launching a basic or more advanced site?
* Will your site require design customization?
* Do you have the finances readily available to staff accordingly?
* Do you have the finances readily available to properly market and advertise the community, both at launch and beyond?

Notwithstanding the initial costs of partnering with a community vendor, organizations must take into consideration the costs associated with launching the community, hiring staff and other ongoing expenses. While the costs involved with selecting a vendor will vary, depending on the features and services provided, organizations should expect to allocate approximately $50,000 to $100,000 annually for a basic online community.

Community Research

Building a community that already exists is not generally recommended.

* Have you determined whether your community already exists?
* Is it beneficial to create a new online community or simply engage customers where they already are?
* Have you researched the community offerings of your direct competitors?
* Do your competitors’ communities have a high activity level?
* Is there a demand for a new online community?

By closely monitoring the competition, organizations can determine what is working and what isn’t, and how best to approach plans for an online community.

Policies and Training

A Governance Plan is an important component of the community as it provides the foundation for dealing with unpredictable situations.

* Do you have a dedicated community manager and/or facilitator and a social media strategist to prepare the governance procedures?
* Do you have a rapid response process and guidelines in place to deal with any negative incidents from the community?
* Have you trained the appropriate individuals so these guidelines can be properly enforced?

The more formalized the process, the more successful your community will be.

Technology Integration

Community platforms require development, design and integration with a company’s existing channels.

* Is your IT department ready to tie the community together?
* Have you allocated the time and budget required for future upgrades and maintenance?
* Is your IT team trained in community platform integration?

While the community vendor may be available to assist with the integration, your IT department is solely responsible for the entire integration process.

The Community Launch

Organizations will reap the rewards of a successful online community only if they have customers and members who actually use it.

* What methods of communication will you use to promote the launch of the site?
* Have you designed newsletters, blogs, forums and other similar features on your site?
* Are you leveraging promotions to market the launch?

The launch of an online community should be treated no different than the launch of a new product, and creative, non-traditional means of marketing and advertising will undoubtedly attract people to the site.

Goals, Benchmarks and Measurement Standards

Online communities require detailed timelines and expectations.

* Have you prepared an editorial plan, a strategy for growth and a guideline for specific milestone dates?
* What are your goals and objectives?
* What means will you employ to track the success of your online community?
* How will you collect this data?
* Do you have a team in place to monitor and report on measurement expectations?

Communities are highly measurable, and must be measured in order to track its success.

The wiki text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution License agreement http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Source: Community Launch Checklist Submission for Enterprise 2.0 wiki template contest. Submitted by Stephen Rahal IGLOO INC. NOTE: HELIX is a VAR of IGLOO www.helixcommerce.com

Ethics is Key To Innovation

2010-04-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

In 2009 the Ethisphere Insitute published a lists of the world's most ethical companies. I was disappointed to read the list and did not see one Canadian firm listed. Why is this?

Seems odd when you review the 2010 Edelman Survey on Trust for Brand in terms of companies that will do the right things for their customers, and that Canadian's have the highest level of trust now at 57% in the last four years... and trust is correlated to Ethics.

So what does this tell us - are we just quiet gentle leaders?

I do believe that this is the case as Canadians do not toot their horns too much. We are like the quiet leaders - men and women who make the tough calls in a ethical manner that respect diverse cultures and stakeholder neesd.

One of Canada's strongest cultural attributes is humility. I know and understand that the more I know means I know very little. Doing a doctorate for me was a learning journey helping me to further realize the roots of innovation are linked to trust, and collaboration capacity, and tremendous rigor and discipline and patience is needed.

Increasingly with the challenges we have in business we are learning daily that Trust is fostered only if ethics and transparency are integrated leadership practices.

We are not totally there yet - will we ever be - I do like to imagine a total world harmonized with a generation of values-led leaders, where multi-faceted challenges - globalization, sustainability, depleting resources, economic instability, co-opetition.... also embrace the realities of collaboration, ethics and trust sense making as only then will innovation truly flourish!

Growth Trends in Asia - Factoids

2010-04-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

Internet Use in Asia is growing fast

Internet users in Asia represent 42 percent of all internet users in the world. Still, Internet penetration in Asia is less than 19 percent of the population.

As of the second quarter of 2010, China has the most users in the region - 338 million a quarter of the population, and Japan, the next highest in the region has 94 million. By comparison, India has 81 million users (7 percent penetration).

Australia and Japan have the highest internet penetration rates - 79.6 percent and 74 percent respectively.

Patent Performance

In 1978, only five Asia Pacific countries were represented among applicants for U.S. patents - Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and New Zealand - for a total of 310 patent filings.

Patent filings from Asia have accelerated in the past 10 years. In 1998 - more than 2,400 applications were filed by applicants from Asia Pacific countries - by 2008 more than 6,800 were.

The number of filings from Chinese applications alone grew from 16 in 1998 to 647 in 2008.

Meanwhile Japanese applications represent 16 percent of all filings to the European Patent Office and South Korean applicants, 3 percent.

Source: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, European Patent Office

Innovation Growth - Lift Off is in China

2010-04-24T15:08:00.000-07:00

A recent Scotia Bank report Liftoff Achieved, but the Flight Path will be Turbulent spells it out clearly that developed nations are locked on a low -growth trajectory. In 2009, China's growth output increased by over 9%. Trade flows among Asian countries are double NAFTA levels.

With the shifting realities of global business, and in no small part the increasing importance of Asia Pacific escalating in growth and in operations, business footprints must expand to these growth markets.

Having skills and experience in Asia is now a critical innovation competency for global leaders of the future. Without this knowledge and companies rotating their talent to Asia, multi-national leaders will not achieve the insights they need to make more informed global business decisions.

What does it take to be a global leader? With over half of the world's global population and now being the fastest growing economy, developing knowledge of Asian cultures is critical for success.

The first important fact to undertand is that Asia is not a single market. Japan for example has a population that is aging rapidly whilethe vast amount of populations in Vietnam are very young. For example, the median age in Japan is now 44, while in Vietnam, it is 27, China it is 34, while India is only 25. Local tastes are different as well as spending power. To be effective, leaders need to understand the unique attributes of local markets, adjust their approaches and then learn to unlearn as they continue to adapt.

Business is moving rapidly due to the high levels of growth driving the realities of hyper-competitive environments and acclerated decision making needs.

Important to leadership in the Asia Pacific is appreciating win win as relationships are a life -time and not viewed as transactions. Understanding other's views and being empathetic to opposite views - demonstrating openness and preserving reputation of all is critical for leadership success. Win Win orientations are not always a strength of USA executives, perhaps more so in Canada given their rich cultural appreciation.

What ever partnering relationships are established, they need to be viewed as a long term commitment and not the flavor of the month. Signals are seen and observed in the trust making aspects of Asian cultures, and memories are long.

Companies like Coke are ensuring their future leaders move among global geographies and develop the know-how to lead with increased global insights.

Does your organization have an innovation growth strategy to support your organizations' growth into Asia Pacific markets? If not, it should.

The Talent War - Is It Over?

2010-04-22T11:40:00.000-07:00

A few years ago Alan Davis wrote an article entitled “The Talent War – Is it Over?”. In this article, he used examples from military history to illustrate similarities with the Talent War.

Since Alan wrote this article, we have been through a deep recession marked by company closures, layoffs and hiring freezes. Although there is no shortage of unclaimed talent on the market, the competition for talent still exists. In fact, it may have intensified as the Public Sector becomes more attractive due to employment stability and better benefits.

The points Alan makes in his article are still pertinent today:

1. Generals vs. Business Leaders: HR Leadership succeeds by providing strategic vision and implementing long-term recruiting solutions.
2. Troops vs. Workers: Talent Acquisition is a business issue that requires Subject Matter Experts in recruiting.
3. Weapons vs. Technology: Technology is used by Strategic Recruiters to identify and develop relationships with a target pool of candidates.
4. Military vs. Business Intelligence: Business Intelligence is used strategically to locate and contact future talent.
5. Wars without End vs. Talent Wars: Talent Wars are won by companies who build relationships with high-potential future employees.

How does your organization rate in the competition to acquire top talent in this post-recession economy? Now might be a good time to review your war-winning strategies. If you would like to read the complete article, it can be accessed at: http://www.alandavis.com/pdfs/The%20Talent%20War.pdf

The Value of Social Computing

2010-04-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

The ROI of social computing and its value resides strongly in Marketing 2.0 approaches where web 2.0 can be used to enhance customer intimacy using crowdsourcing, interactive discussion forums,wikis, community engagement experiences... all focused on creating a two way dialogue with customers and increase experience touch points.

These new tools create new ways to have new conversations -- learning about customers, their products and services, developing a new channel for ideation that may result in innovation breakthroughs etc.

A recent study was conducted by Mzinga with Babson Executive Education that reported that marketing at 57 percent is the area most likely to employ social media for professional purposes.

The Mzinga study also found that over 84% of the respondents were not tracking the ROI of social computing. Finding cases that have concrete ROI outcomes are not always easy to find in Web 2.0 but they are starting to trickle out as the industry matures.

For example in the Jan Economist, Intel reported that they saved millions of dollars in recruiting costs by using business facing social media sites rather than using expensive recruiting firms. Scottrade (Scottrade.com) is using a business facing social media social platform to reduce the costs of technology as it moves to more interactive platforms. United Airlines is filling seats by offering last minutes twares to loyal customers over Twitter.

Other companies actively experimenting with Web 2.0 approaches in the Canadian market include: ING Direct (where Peter Aceto has an active twitter following integrating business and personal), Rogers that has numerous customer interaction communities to Molsons which has over 30 active communities celebrating different beer brands with customers.

Inspiration Source Acknowledgement: Dan Rasmus, Friend of Helix Commerce International Inc. (content highlights from KM WOrld APril 2010).

Digital Social Media Adds Business Value to Innovation and Communication Connectedness

2010-04-19T00:33:00.000-07:00

Is the use of social media in your workplace supported or blocked?

If you answered yes, then your organization is one of the majority of firms with over 100 employees that have yet to embrace the use of social media in the workplace for the average worker.

In a study conducted by Robert Half Technology entitled "Whistle But Don't Tweet At Work," many organizations are struggling with how to integrate social media into the workplace.

However, there are a growing number of firms such as IBM, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Toshiba that are becoming highlyconnected workplaces.

Using digital social media tools such as blogs, microblogs, corporate social networks, wikis are providing new and effective ways to connect employees rapidly globally enabling mass collaboration opportunities.

Although some still question is their a positive ROI on the realities of uber connectedness, our research and work with clients throughout NA and SA are proving out that these companies are seeing improvements in communication, cross-functional collaboration and are finding employees are developing more creative approaches to problem solving.

More companies are discovering that a virtualized and connected workplace is not just about implementing a new set of collaboration SW toolkits - rather it is more about embracing a cultural shift to create a more open and transparent environment where employees are encouraged to collaborate virtually.

Recent research provides evidence that there are business benefits to becoming an more connected organization:

Access to social media improves productivity.

According to Dr Brent Coker from the Department of Management and Marketing at University of Melbourne in Australia, workers who engage in "Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing" are more productive than those who don't.

"People who surf the Internet for fun at work — within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office — are more productive by about 9% than those who don't," he says. "Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost productivity, however that's not always the case."

Millennials will seek jobs that encourage the use of social media. Those born between 1977 and 1997 — the ones you need to hire to replace the retiring boomers — are networked 24/7 and expect the company to accommodate pervasive connectivity.

An Accenture survey of Millennial preferences for various technologies at work found that they prefer to communicate via instant messaging, text messaging, Facebook and RSS feeds. What's more, they are prepared to bypass corporate IT departments if these tools are blocked. One Millennial MBA, typical of those we meet, says, "I need to access my Facebook in order to do my job." Has blocking Facebook today become the equivalent of denying an employee access to a phone at work 40 years ago or email 20 years ago?

Companies that provide access to social media create a more engaged workforce. Take the case of Cerner Corporation, the health IT firm. In 2009, Cerner implemented uCern, a corporate social network. In 2010, it will extend this social network to its customers and suppliers. Why? Because uCern has demonstrated significant business benefits to Cerner such as allowing employees to have increased access to experts across the globe, reducing the cycle time from discovery of new products to launch of new products, and increasing employee engagement and satisfaction in the workplace.

As we scan the workplace of the future, we see that everything we know about work — where we work, how we work, what skills we need to stay employable, what technologies we use to connect with colleagues — is changing. And these changes will only continue to accelerate as we move toward 2020, as the Millennial Generation will comprise nearly half of the workforce by 2014.

Companies who want to attract and recruit the best talent will realize becoming virtually connected will be a business imperative.

The journey starts with asking key questions like:

What business benefits are you trying to solve?

Will an increased ability to collaborate across the organization yield faster time to market, increased innovation, improved productivity, and increased collective intelligence as people are able to find knowledge and experts quickly?

Will engaged employees reduce your turnover rate and subsequent expenses related to hiring new talent?

Who needs to be involved in the coalition to become connected?

This is not an HR, IT or Learning initiative. Rather becoming continually virtually connected is simply the reality of the new way of working.

To bridge access to these capabilities for ensure the realities of this new way of working moves ahead successfully, organizations need to create a coalition of executives from Human Resources, Corporate Learning, IT, Legal Privacy, Security, and Corporate Communications. These are the ones who will plan, monitor and agree to a set of social media guidelines to ensure responsible use. Typically the process ownership for policy on employee usage is linked to employee code of conduct policies with strong leadership from HR and Legal, with the other working leaders in large global companies coming together to ensure all the respective interests of the different impact areas are considered.

Having recently designed and completed 5 programs in this area, we have learned that the policy and guideline sense making is not as complicated as ensuring the monitoring practices are put in place to comply with compliance requirements for using these toolkits for customer and business needs. Fortunately we have worked with the worlds toughest financial services organizations and so we understand the security and information management monitoring requirements - and if these tools can move into companies like JP Morgan or the Bank of America (doing major testing) currently, then there really is no excuse for other companies not to get going with the realities that this is the new way of working.

I liken this to when the wild wild west was moving from pony to buggy and to train express and these machines caused havoc in unsettling how we worked. As liberating as these are, each generation is faced with learning new ways of working and the Baby Boomers that have not been weaned with these ways of working and yet are in leadership positions throughout the world... need to recognize that more open, transparent and fluid communication problem solving approaches using collaboration solutions is the new world reality.

Our firm works to help C level executives understand the value of these approaches, and develop the right organizational structures that are needed to support these types of change.

We have learned that change management and cultural change and leadership development support sytems are key to operational success of deploying digital social media environments.

What type of change management plan needs to be put into place?

Recognize that the biggest hurdle is your culture and internal processes — not the technology behind the adoption of social media. Focus on finding ambassadors and influencers, then make it easy for them to share and participate in a social media pilot. Recognize that in the web community, status is built upon making meaningful contributions; so be sure to include recognition and incentives for participation early on.

Can your organization really hold on to policies that do not support the 24/7 hyper- connected lives employees are living outside of the workplace? Increasingly they are bringing digital expectations with them to the workplace.

We do not think companies that compete for global talent want to continue with outdated policies. Do you?

Stay tuned for our upcoming digital social media webinar on Web 2.0 Policies leading practices scheduled for June 11th. To register in advance contact kathryn@helixcommerce.com

The Innovation and Collaboration Blog Jam

Websites Go Black to Protest SOPA

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 10 - What Every Leader Needs to Know

Innovation Conforms to Patterns - Study

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 9 - Real in the Virtual World

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 8 – Everyone Has a Stake

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 7 - The People Know Best

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 6 - Any Place, Any Time

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 5 - Making Sense of Virtual Worlds

Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 4 - The Power of Sharing

Business Goes Virtual – Chapter 3 - Real Leadership in the Virtual World

Business Goes Virtual – Chapter 2: The New Face(book) of Organizations

Review of Business Goes Virtual by Bill Ives

Introducing Business Goes Virtual - Chapter 1: Virtual Business - Real or Imaginary?

Seven Sales Challenges

SOCIAL KNOWLEDGE

Measuring Innovation Successfully

Emerson Electrics Innovation Metrics

Emerson Electric's Innovation Metrics

Large companies, where data-driven decision-making rules the roost, have long sought ways to measure innovation. Emerson Electric thinks it has the answer

Social Media in the Workplace - Distractive or Productive

Innovation : Open and Closed Models

Communities of Practice Leading Perspectives

New Rules of Thinking

Innovation: Open or Closed Models

RIM Growth Challenges

Facebook - Your Stories can be real time ads now!

Intelligent Cities: Megacity Mergers in China

Reflections on the Internet on a Monday Morning

Communities of Practice: Leading Practices

WOMEN ADVANCING IN DEGREES BUT NOT IN POWER : IMPLICATIONS TO INNOVATION AND GROWTH IS A BUSINESS PRIORITY

TOP 50 Knowledge Management Posts

Innovation for Small Businesses

THE CHALLENGES OF MEASURING SOCIAL MEDIA

Banking Industry Trends

INNOVATION TRENDS: New Product Introduction (NPI) Opportunity for Executive Leadership

Innovation is Like the Bark of a Dog

Innovation is a Process with Art of the Long View

SOCIAL MEDIA PROGRAM BENEFITS

Supply Chain Sustainability Challenges

VENTURE CAPITAL: LEADERSHIP CALL TO ACTION IN CANADA

SOCIAL INNOVATION

Social Voice Strength on the Web and Implications to Changing Business Models

Intelligent Cities - Technology Big 3 Leadership

Intelligent Cities Series - Post #2

Creating a Canadian Intelligent Nation Vision

Innovation on Steroids

Analytics Drive Business Profitability

Social Media Acquisition Buzz Highlights

Innovation requires Execution for Success.

Google hunting iPhone and Blackberry customers

CATA 25th Annual Innovation Award Gala - Proud to Be Canadian Night

ENTERPRISE 2.0 TEMPLATE

Community Planning and Scoping Perspectives

To Wiki or Not To Wiki?

Developing Website Requirements

Community Launch Checklist for Online Collaboration

Ethics is Key To Innovation

Growth Trends in Asia - Factoids

Innovation Growth - Lift Off is in China

The Talent War - Is It Over?

The Value of Social Computing

Digital Social Media Adds Business Value to Innovation and Communication Connectedness