21st Century Organization

The Power of Pull + Social Business Edge + 140 Character Conference= ?

Change is in the Air and in Business

It's spring in New York. The world is visibly changing with damaging winter storms given way to the joy and promise of blossoms and green.

Based on conversations at April events ranging from a party celebrating the launch of John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison 's "The Power of Pull" book, to Stowe Boyd's Social Business Edge and Jeff Pulver's 140 Character Conference at the 92nd Street Y, more than seasonal transition is in the air.

A tide of irreversible, technology and edge driven transformation of how businesses need to operate is underway, not just in the surrounding Manhattan offices, but in every office around the globe where individuals are connected.

Photo: John Hagel & John Seely Brown at "Power of Pull" Celebration, NYC, April 12

1. The Power of Pull

Distinguishing "The Power of Pull"--beyond book blurbs from Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich and Eric Schmidt (among others)--is the deep research and credentials of authors John Hagel 11I, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison based on their work with Xerox Parc, McKinsey and Deloitte's Center for the Edge, and prior publications: Net Gain, Networth and The Social Life of Information.                                          

Building from their deep experience, the authors explain the essential mindset change--from "Push" to "Pull"--needed to operate businesses in a world where:

"... information now flows like water, and we must learn to tap into the stream. Individuals and companies can no longer rely on the stocks of knowledge that they have carefully built up and stored away. But many of us remain stuck in old practices.." (Inside cover)

2. Social Business Edge

April 19 at Fleishman Hillard, Stowe Boyd--who coined the term "social tools" in 1999-- hosted "Social Business Edge" on the premise that:

" we are at the start of something much larger than a retake on marketing. We are seeing a rethinking of work, collaboration, and the role of management in a changing world, where the principles and tools of the web are transforming society, media, and business. The mainstays of business theory — like innovation, competitive advantage, marketing, production, and strategic planning — need to be reconsidered and rebalanced in the context of a changing world."

Riches in Stowe's event came from the blend of established industry leaders (including "Power of Pull" author John Hagel, Jay Rosen, Euan Semple, Lee Bryant, Dion Hinchcliffe and Adina Levin ) with new faces representing the next generation (Amanda Mooney (Edelman Digital), Venessa Miemis (NYU, Emergent By Design) and Deanna Zandt (Change This!)

3. #140 Character Conference

Convened by communications industry doyen Jeff Pulver, #140conf assembles those:

"interested in the effects of the real-time Internet on both business and “we” the people."

Appropriately #140conf provided broad access through UStream to the diverse array of presenters and topics in fast paced, abbreviated, Twitter style short talks with few slides. The cast of characters--starting with RSS feed developer and information sharing enabler Dave Winer--painted the landscape of the real time Internet's impact on business and life. A constantly changing piece of art built, from #140conf Tweeter photos, reflected the dynamic conference activity.

4. What does The Power of Pull + Social Business Edge + #140 Character Conference = ?

Beyond bringing people together to celebrate "The Power of Pull", explore "The Social Business Edge" and assemble characters concerned about effects of the real-time Internet, what do we know when the event crowds have dispersed and Twitter streams turned to other topics?

Here are my 3 take-aways:

i. "No is Not an Option Anymore"  ~John Bernier, Best Buy

A #140conf highlight was a serendipitous discussion with @bernierjohn (John Bernier), Best Buy's Manager- Social & Emerging Media. Our exchange included John's attention getting  observation that "No is Not an Option Anymore". 

John's explanation of Twelpforce, and how Best Buy came to it, point to the practical realities and path companies must pursue to operate effectively in the world of changed customer, partner and employee expectations in a social technology driven world.

Twelpforce is Best Buy's latest initiative to provide technical support through Twitter. Self selecting Best Buy staff answer questions that are posted through a proprietary platform allowing:

a) All questions and responses to flow through one identity @Twelpforce AND

b) The answers and activity to be gathered as internal knowledge and business intelligence.

By participating and sharing Best Buy staff's expertise openly in Twitter, consumers generally benefit and through the value provided, the brand is strengthened and new customers emerges.

ii. Not to be Ignored

In April 2010 the reality of social technology's impact cannot be ignored. No matter where you are in an organization "not participating" to understand what it takes to conduct your business on the real time web is "not an option".

iii. Network Mindsets, Business and Organizational Models Required

Colleague Victoria Axelrod and I have been writing together here about creating "21st Century Organizations" since 2006 so in no way underestimate the challenge of:

• Changing mindsets
• Creating new business models and organizational structures to operate in the stream
• Engage customers and stakeholders to innovate and co-create in an open world.

Victoria's 2006 Emerging 21st Century Organization Models and Methods presentation explains what's required and our Open net∞WORKing Organizations where to begin.

Since the earliest days of commerce in village markets it's clear that business is social and success depends on relationships.  The open social web exposes that reality and throws down the gauntlet to organizations to adapt. Speakers at each of the conferences provided clues.

Moving to a world where business value creation is measured less by ROI and more by Return on Attention (as described in "The Power of Pull"), or Return on Relationships (advocated by Kodak's CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett at #140conf) is, yes, HARD, but the cost of not doing so is potentially your business's sustainability.

Please take a moment to share your answer to:

The Power of Pull + Social Business Edge + 140 Character Conference= ?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Go to http://hashtagart.com/ and scroll over the NYC Taxi Cub pic to see the #140conf characters whose images (representing their conference Tweets) bring the image to life.

The Business of Community Networking Conference, March 24-26, Boston. Please Join Us

As conference contributor Patti Anklam wrote in describing The Business of Community Networking Conference scheduled for Boston, March 24-26:

"This conference is focused on businesses that want to engage customers in interacting, networking, and exchanging knowledge using social media.

The speaker lineup illustrates a commitment to offer best practices -- real nitty-gritty how-to information." ~ Patti Anklam

As a member of the conference Advisory Board, and Co-chair with Victoria G. Axelrod of the March 25 day one program, clearly I'm biased but have to tell you conference organizer Meghan Jacobi has done a fabulous job assembling presenters with deep experience and practical insights to share.  Mark Bonchek, whom Patti Anklam mentions, is chairing day 2. Patti will join Victoria, Francois Gossieaux and I live, with Facebook Group owners Eric Edelstein and Kimberly Samaha remotely, for a panel exploring findings of our Facebook Groups in Business Investigation. 

And this is just the beginning.

Do take a moment to download the brochure and see the list of industry experts --Chris Carfi, Michael Cayley, Susan GetGood, Michael Leifer,  Elizabeth Piqq, David Rubenstein, Myra Norton, Andrew Essex, Liz Strauss, Luis Fernandez-- and representatives of companies from JD Power & Associates to CondoDomain, AVON, eBay, and the National Collegiate Scouting Association ready to share their experiences creating social networks and measuring the ROI of online marketing. 

In addition note the workshops being offered March 24 by Mayra Ruiz-McPherson and Joel Richman.  Victoria Axelrod and I are also leading a workshop "Developing a Community Networking Strategy- Steps to Take".

Do join us for this meeting of minds about The Business of Community Networking, in Boston March 24-26.

Register before January 16 using code CHF392 to receive a $300 discount.

Any questions at all about the conference, please ask. I look forward to meeting you in Boston.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

"Should Your Business Be Friends with Facebook?"

To find out please visit TheAppGap blog where slides and the audio of our rich June 25 webinar discussion are posted.

Sincere thanks to:

• TheAppGap and Intuit Quickbase for hosting the discussion of findings from our Facebook Groups in Business Investigation for which the initial invitation to participate was posted on this blog October 2007
• Our audience and their thought provoking questions
• Members of our investigation team who contributed including calling in from South Africa and Europe at late hours.

Now please join us at TheAppGap to continue the discussion and address answers to the excellent questions audience members contributed.

In opening the webinar discussion about:

"Should your business be friends with Facebook?"

my blogging colleague Victoria Axelrod overviewed recent research and cases of companies from FedEx to Serena Software and Salesforce integrating Facebook into their strategies and daily operations.

In addition to addressing the webinar audience questions posted at TheAppGap I'm interested to discuss:

"What's ahead"?

For example, our webinar slides include Alexa graphs showing Facebook growth versus Twitter.

"What does this suggest about the future of consumer social networks and platforms to come?"

Finally, our Facebook Groups In Business Investigation (FGIBI) starting premise was that while Facebook may or may not evolve as a significant business platform, history tells us consumer technologies drive enterpise adoption so we should understand it. Hence:

"What are the important lessons from consumer use of Facebook for enterprise technology development?

What does the future hold?"

and

"How do organizations adapt to the reality of tools transience?"

There's so much to discuss at TheAppGap.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Enterprise 2.0 Summit Hannover Report & References

Thanks to Bjoern Negellman, Kongress Media, (organizer) and Simon Wardley (event facilitator), I was a privileged presenter, in the inaugural European Enterprise 2.0 Summit convened as part of CEBIT, March 4 in Hannover.   (Given COMDEX no longer operates in the United States, experiencing the CEBIT scale and vendor commitment was eye opening.)

Blog reports from Emanuele Quintarelli, François Nonnenmacher, Martin Koser and Robbert Homburg tell the event story that began with Simon Wardley reminding us how technology forces drive change, followed by Dion Hinchcliffe's keynote and Euan Semple's BBC lessons. Scenes from the event are captured on Flickr.

For me the event nuggets came in descriptions of serious business wiki applications by:

• Kenneth Lavrsen, Motorola A/S, wiki-ing quality standards documentation
• Wieland Stützel, Fraport AG (Frankfurt Airport), cross organizational knowledge sharing
• Diego Gianetti, BTicino S.p.a. (an Italian producer of communication, distribution and energy control systems) describing "Sul Campo" a sales force community of practice
• Cedric Blum, Société Française de Radiotéléphone Service Client (a French mobile carrier) explaining how using a wiki helps customer service solve customer problems and get more from IT

For those who stayed late into the day here are the books mentioned in my session introduction:

• Yochai Benkler, Wealth of Networks
• Rob Cross & Andrew Parker, Hidden Power of Social Networks
• Ron Burt, Structural Holes
• Lowell Bryan & Claudia Joyce, Mobilizing Minds
• Dan Tapscott, Wikinomics

Also referenced were:

• Patti Anklam, Net Work author
• Valdis Krebs, pioneering ONA practitioner
• InnoCentive and Harvard researcher Karim Lakhani et al's investigation of factors in problem resolution
• Procter & Gamble's Connect & Develop program

My presentation builds on a co-authored article "Learning through Participation and Connecting Intelligence". and two Inside Knowledge Magazine articles, Broadcasting innovation: organising to connect intelligence and Prediction Markets: Co-creating an organization's future (to be published).

    

     The Valdis Krebs admonition cited:

"You do understand Metcalfe's law does not work for social networks, right?“

came in response to reading our "Connecting Intelligence" article and Valdis's concern we had not made this point clear enough.  Metcalfe has openly asked us all to better understand the power of his law applied to social networks here . Colleagues and I have just completed an investigation of Facebook Groups in Business that points to the complexity of social network growth as Metcalfe discusses.

Thank you to everyone involved with Kongress Media's Enterprise 2.0 Summit for the rich conversations that I look forward to continuing, especially with Simon Wardley regarding his newly minted term:

"STRUCTURACTION"

Slides from my presentation are posted to Slideshare here.

   ~ Jenny Ambrozek

Social Media Club Gathering 20071211: A Gorilla on YouTube

Howard Greenstein labelled the event "What worked and what didn't in Social Media in 2007?" and convened an impressive collection of entrepreneurs and people who work at helping traditional organizations adapt to the impact of social media upon them. 

The most interesting discussion thread for me came via Jack Myers, (CEO Myers Publishing, author of the Media Business Report and "Virtual Worlds: Rewiring Your Emotional Future" published in May).

With TV industry experience starting at CBS, Jack proposed a potential outcome of the current writers strike is fundamentally changing the traditional television broadcasting industry. Given the impact of digital technology on transforming the recording industry, an entirely reasonable prediction.

Also discussed was the bottomline for organizations. As participative technologies empower individuals to become publishers and broadcasters via the Web, how do traditional media companies engage and develop new revenue models to play and sustain in this environment? No doubt the arrival of Chris Anderson's new book "Free" late 2008 will promote that dialogue.

It was interesting looking around the room and seeing who was present and not. My limited survey found technology entrepreneurs, consultants striving to help companies find their way in a low-cost consumer-created content world, and publishing industry companies although not the industry leaders.  I hadn't realized that Business Wire, the event host, is a Berkshire Hathaway company.  I'm betting there was no company in the room with more than 1,000 employees. While new low cost participative media technologies are nipping at the heels of larger organizations, their ability to adapt and leverage the possibilities is so much harder.

Not to say of course that some companies, with support from outside agencies are not figuring it out. Today's Financial Times (print p17) carries a story headlined "Gorilla drums up sales for Cadbury" with a photo of their YouTube favorite video captioned: "Sweet music". The story indicates the company reported the Gorilla advertising company "had helped it recover market share in its UK confectionery business." Tellyads voted the ad number 1 in 2007 based on their 185,000 requests since September 2007.

The Youtube video is here with 1,449,759 views, 3216 ratings, 2,442 comments, 4 honors 5 links and favorited 7,824 times. Sites are linkng to the Youtube ad and there are a string of remixes.

Of course the FT Cadbury Schweppe's story goes onto mention other forces at work challenging the company to change including an oil funds backed activist investor and rising commodity prices.

No doubt leveraging and adapting to new low cost participative media technologies is just one dimension to making an organization 21st Century sustainable.  Much more challenging is changing organizational structures and business models that demands serious heavy lifting and will.

~ Jenny Ambrozek