Social Media - We're Just Getting Started

Gentry Underwood focuses on social media and collaborative software at IDEO. He works both internally and with the firm's clients to design and build software people will actually use.  Check out his recent post: Social Software, The Other Design for Social Impact. Gentry's post includes the following exerpt:

It isn't difficult to see where most social software falls short: many tools have pleasant, user-friendly interfaces and take advantage of well-designed physical devices (i.e., they're easy to use from a human-computer-interaction perspective). But it's in the sociological and anthropological arenas where they run into trouble: most social software tools are clumsy and ineffective at smoothly facilitating interpersonal interaction.

The bottom line, which Underwood intelligently shares, is that we are in the infancy of social software and new methods of designing these tools will lead to more powerful applications of their capabilities. Join Gentry and continue the discussion at http://socialsoftware.org. In the meantime watch this hillarious satirized look at Facebook by the British improv troupe Idiots of Ants  that pushes the social behaviors of Facebook to the extreme.

The Key Challenge for Organizations - New Disciplines

Most established organization's have everything they need to take advantage of high-growth opportunities, with one exception: the right disciplines. Below are fundmanental concepts required to achieve success during this time of the convergence of the three mega dynamics of the revolution: globalism, technology & culture. See Rita Mcgrath's lecture below on these important topics and consider how you can bring these disciplines to your organization and reap the opportunities the revolution is presenting to us all.

Topic	Key Message
Discovery Driven Planning	Stop using the same planning techniques for new businesses that you use for existing ones; instead, plan to learn
MarketBusting	Identify huge growth opportunities by using five key lenses with discipline
Entrepreneurial Leadership	Understand the five key practices that create an entrepreneurial mindset and culture in your company
Capturing the most value from venturing	Get beyond go/no go thinking when evaluating your ventures to maximize their benefit to your company
Designing a portfolio for growth	Balance long-term and short-term investment horizons while simultaneously integrating strategy, projects, budgeting and people development
The middle managers’ role in growth programs	USe middle managers as the secret weapon in a drive to create growth.
Designing the launch	What should you take into account when you are launching your new business?
Dynamic Strategy	For years, we’ve been told that sustainable competitive advantage is the best strategic outcome. Rita shows you that temporary advantages can be just as powerful.

Rita Gunther McGrath from Rita McGrath on Vimeo.

Facebook Exceeds 300 Million - What Does It Mean ?

Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that its online community crossed the 300 million user threshold, equaling the approximate size of the US population. About 70 percent of Facebook's users are outside the U.S., according to statistics posted by the company. Facebook says its fastest-growing demographic is people older than 35.

Facebook's growth reflects a tipping point for web 2.0 tools and its implications are far reaching for organizations, as consumer driven platforms will increasingly shape our world. With integrated voice chat coming soon to the platform, even more rapid evolution is inevitable. In Fortune's recent interview, CEO Sheryl Sandberg, reveals the rise of advertising revenues and users using the Facebook tool. She points out that you are seeing the beginning of what advertising is becoming - "part of the user experience".

One cannot underestimated the implications of Web 2.0 tools, which Facebook is. These tools and their users will redefine the constructs of markets and fuel business innovation opportunities. Truth is their adoption is just beginning and the tools will evolve rapidly with other even more powerful platforms like WAVE coming soon.

Three key points for organization's to keep in mind when employing these tools were brought to light in a recent article by Udayan Banerjee, The 3 Faces of Web 2.0, and are outlined below. When exploring Web 2.0 potential, its important to keep these points in mind.

1. Remember You Are Interacting with an Enlightened Consumer

“…the new consumer has grown up with brand new perspectives and redefined the interplay of communications, relationships, brands, technology and media.” – from Five Rules to Engaging a New Breed of Consumer

2. Adopting An Open Collaboration Platform Requires New Disciplines

“…make the corporate intranet into constantly changing structure built by distributed, autonomous peers – a collaborative platform that reflects the way work really gets done.” – from Enterprise 2.0: Dawn of Emergent Collaboration

3. Monetizing the Collective Intelligence of Users

“…collective Intelligence draws on this to enhance the social pool of existing knowledge.” – from Collective Intelligence page of Wikipedia

Apple - Understanding the Business You Are In

A recent article in PC Mag by Dan Costa pointed out something pretty interesting about Apple:

 Apple doesn't want to attract new customers—it mostly wants to keep its existing customers happy. Now, you might think that Mac people are so self-satisfied they don't need any help being happy. And you would probably be right. Still, these customers have proven they are willing to pay a premium for a product that is more commodified every day. In fact, Apple has a stunning 91 percent of the market for PCs that cost more than $1,000. Clearly, these are customers Apple wants to keep.

Costa points out that just 4.86 percent of worldwide Internet traffic comes from systems running the Mac OS. Even if you throw in iPhone users, the number barely passes 5 percent. Hardly a mass phenomenon. And thats a good thing indeed. You see by staying small Apple can be more innovative and flexible.

Apple is a great hedgehog organization, ala Collin's book. They understand the business they are in and act accordingly. Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings. That's its mission. The business understands its focus - Great businesses know its all about the consumer and the product. See an interview of Jobs as he talks about Apple.

Collins - How the Mighty Fall

Jim Collin's new book "How the Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In" asks, "How do great companies fall? Can the decline be detected and avoided? How far can a company fall before doom becomes inevitable and unshakable? How can businesses reverse course?" Well his answers are straight forward and insightful, as so often Collins is.

Collins confronts these questions, offering hope that leaders can learn how to stave off decline and, if they find themselves falling, reverse their course. His research project requied more than four years and uncovered five stages of decline:

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success

Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More

Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril

Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation

Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

Decline, Collins concludes, is largely self-inflicted, and the path to recovery lies largely in each companies own hands. We are not controlled by circumstances, history, or defeats along the way.

What is most notable about the book is the meaning of the tag line: "And Why Some Companies Never Give In". For many never giving in means holding on to the status quo. Instead Collins urges leadership to be willing to kill failed business ideas even shuttering long time big operations; to evolve into entirely different activities a part from present operations; to be willing to embrace loss and temporarily lose freedoms; to be willing to form alliances with former adversaries. “Never give in” is not continuing the same things. It means identifying that success is falling down and getting up one more time without end. Businesses must be willing to change in a disciplined fashion in order to survive, and there are many examples in this excellent book.

Check out Collin's video below as he outlines the five stages to decline identified in the book.