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4 March 2011 Curmudgeonly Looking into the Past to Divine the Future—That Nagging Privacy Issue—Debunking the Elephant
 The Big Switch is a valuable book that reflects what has become Nick Carr’s trademark role, heckling IT and Web enthusiasts, albeit from good seats. Carr seems to relish his role as “the fly in the ointment” of the idealistic IT-enabled world that Web missionaries espouse. Although this book has shortcomings, I recommend it for two reasons. First, Carr makes a convincing and useful argument that the “electrification” of business and society (the Edison part) has valuable lessons for the “computerization” transformation of business and society (the Google part) that is currently unfolding. This parallel provides context to think about some of the disruptions around your business, society and career. Second, Carr raises serious questions about possible privacy implications of computerization. He palpably weighs in on the dark side and seems to want the world to change course from the “googlization of life.” If you haven’t read The Long Tail, I would read these books in proximity because they are very complementary and both quick, important reads.
As usual, I will outline the book’s chapters before giving my interpretation and insights in Analysis and Conclusions.
12 February 2011 SocialTech Grows Up—Relationship the Foundation of Business Success—Digital Clodhoppers Become Sore Thumbs
 2011 will mark a turning point in the adoption of digital social technologies because the experimentation phase is drawing to a close, and stakeholder expectations are increasing. Organizations and people will no longer gain attention by executing badly. At the enterprise level, participation will wane in venues and initiatives that have no business strategy, focus, content strategy and commitment. Paying inexperienced people or agencies to “share” snappy content will expose brands as digital clodhoppers and push customers away. Individuals will also have to improve their game and focus on the most relevant people in their networks. Stop sending default invitations on LinkedIn. Proactively support people whom you respect and trust the most. The theme is determining and executing on strategy, focus and commitment.
In 2011, the bar to attract and hold attention will be higher, which will present organizations with a new threat: when participation falls, some executives will conclude that “social media” was only hype anyway, and they will curtail investments. This reaction will create opportunity for people who understand what works and why. At the same time, stakeholders are more savvy and responsive when you show sincere interest in them, which will result in stronger relationships and business results when your interactions are based on a sound strategy.
Continue reading Web 3.0 and Social Business—2011 Predictions & Recommendations
16 May 2010 Chicago Salon Speakers Share Breakthrough Applications of Social Technologies
 PopTech’s Social Mapping Salon was 12 May 2010 in Chicago, and its evening component featured three ultra-creative leaders whose teams were using mobile technology to vastly improve business processes, within the context of disaster recovery, incarceration and violence. PopTech itself is focused on creating and nurturing disruptive innovation through design, technology and cross-boundary collaboration. This salon was about using social mapping to create breakthrough. Although I didn’t attend the day part of the salon, I gathered from talking to people that it’s about using social connections to disrupt lock-in thinking and unnecessary assumptions. Social maps (below, right – or, even bigger) are visual representations of connections and breakthrough areas.
Continue reading PopTech Maps Course of Social Change
15 February 2010  Thanks to @guykawasaki, happened across a robust discussion about whether new hardware formats like the iPad can “save” mainstream media. The article covered some comments from Google economist and Valley stalwart Hal Varian, and it precipitated great discussion. Here are some back-of-the-envelope thoughts and strategies I would strongly consider were I to be leading or advising a “publishing” organization through twenty-first century waters.
Continue reading Noodle VIII: Tablets Won’t Save Mainstream Media But This Might
7 February 2010
Fresh Insights from Enterprise Social Business Executives and Practitioners
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The adoption of Web 2.0 and social networking accelerated significantly in 2009, and it shows no sign of stopping. Global digital word of mouth is disrupting growing swaths of business models, and CEOs want to understand its opportunities and threats. Although the Web is resplendent with prognostications from social media gurus, the voices of enterprise practitioners are too scarcely heard.
Therefore, the Global Human Capital Journal is pleased to present perspectives from highly experienced executives who share their thoughts on how Web 2.0 is changing their businesses and mindsets. Moreover, they share its limitations and problems. Keep in mind that each contributor wrote independently, and I have made no attempt to unify the view, although I will offer my analysis and conclusions as well as the intriguing backstory below. Here is a sampling of the group’s eclectic insights:
Continue reading 17 Enterprise Visionaries Release 2010 Predictions for Social Networks, Web 2.0
6 January 2010 How Mass Collaboration Is Transforming Company and Culture—Mining Disruption’s Silver Lining
 “We are flying into some turbulence, so please return to your seats and keep your seatbelts fastened while we try to find more favorable winds.”
As chronicled in the just-published Decade in Review 2000-2009, the twenty-first century is proving to be volatile and disruptive in every way, and 2010 will continue the trend. Three disruptive forces are converging: the relative value of the Industrial Economy continues to fall as overproduction reigns. Globalization is replete with extras that people at the head table didn’t order. Most imperceptibly yet poignantly, the emerging Knowledge Economy is digitizing communications and changing the economics of knowledge and relationships. Web 2.0 and social networks drive down the cost of communication, which accelerates volatility because when people talk, ideas change and lead to action, and digital conversations happens faster and less expensively. Social networks are rapidly making “the Web” human, thereby attracting an ever-larger portion of all human communications online. In 2009, adoption reached critical mass, ramping strongly among consumers, so many enterprises are following. The Web 1.0 adoption rhythm is very instructive.
Pervasive Web 2.0 also means reexamination or disruption of most areas of life, culture, society, government and business because social networks alter how many and what kind of relationships people have. The impact is similar to Ford’s production line, except it is more powerful: it scales relationships. Large organizations will remain in a profound state of turmoil because they were not built to withstand the volatility these forces are unleashing. Many Fortune 500 companies will be confronted with their survival, and some will not make it. Entire industries will consolidate over the next several years (automotive, airlines, banking, hotels, food, consumer goods…). Web communications mean we consume novelty far more quickly, which curtails product life cycles and leads to ultra-fast commoditization. Companies will require unprecedented innovation to even stay in place. New entrants around the world compete for customers and leverage their lower costs and better innovation processes. And Web 2.0 is still in the early stages of adoption.
This dynamism elevates opportunity and threat for executives and their organizations, so our focus here is to lay out probable milestones for 2010 to assist executives in business strategy and career planning for 2010 and beyond. First, I will lay out predictions, on which I’ll build for my 2010 recommendations. By the way, this follows Year in Review—2009/Social Networking Gains Legs on Heavy Seas and Decade in Review 2000-2009/The Rise of Web 2.0, the New Pervasive Human Space.
2 January 2010 Relationships on Demand Are Changing Economics—The Emergence of the Web as Creative Destroyer of the Industrial Economy
 We need to upgrade the turntable again! When I emerged from undergrad in the eighties, the economy was rotating at 16rpm, which we doubled in the nineties with Web 1.0 to 33rpm. The 2000s had us grooving at 78rpm. Even though one part of me says that this metaphor is poorly chosen because it’s retro, it also reflects another key trend: atomization and mashing up.
The Web is a communications revolution that speeds the consumption of novelty and its economic value, so it is destroying the Industrial Economy’s main value mechanism: value via efficiency and long product life cycles. During the 21st century’s first decade, the overriding trend is that society and markets in which executives have interest saw extensive disruption and change. That meant volatility. As I’ll discuss, this volatility will continue to accelerate because the transaction costs of communication are plummeting, which drives rapid iteration and change in all areas of human society. At the risk of sounding subjective, I believe this will probably be regarded as one of the most disruptive eras in history.
Continue reading Decade in Review 2000-2009/The Rise of Web 2.0, the New Pervasive Human Space
31 December 2009 Editor’s Choice of the Global Human Capital Journal—Behind the Curtain—The Best Strategy, Tactics, Case Studies and Insights of 2009
 2009 may have been many things, but boring was not among them! To do it justice, I feel like I have to dock the ship, which has been sailing on turbulent seas, frothed with spellbinding sunrises, sharks, dead winds and tempests. Volatility and surprise have certainly been the watchwords among executives I’ve collaborated with this year, and all indications are that we should look for the same in 2010. However, as dramatic as the environment is, it is only the backdrop for the real story: Enterprise social networking has found its legs and is ramping strongly. Although still tentative, social network investments are becoming pervasive due to the exploding adoption among individuals—and the latter’s impact on markets and firms. As I have been writing since 2005, digital social networking represents unprecedented disruption, opportunity and risk, and I saw many of my predictions play out in 2009.
The 2009 Year in Review gives you the chance to come up to speed rapidly or fill in the holes in your understanding. My perspective comes from intense collaboration with exceptional pioneers of enterprise-focused social networking. Many of the articles come from client work and real situations I encountered this year. I have reviewed 2009′s articles, selected the best and wrapped them in a review and analysis to help you realize where we have been, so you can better plan where you want to go in 2010.
So, throw a log on the fire, pour yourself a nice glass, and let’s dive in.
10 July 2009
Enterprise Social Networking Continues to Mainstream: 2009 Mid-year Adoption Snapshot
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 In January, I reported that enterprise social networking was showing many signs of mainstream adoption, and this conference bore that out. Wal-Mart’s Ben Newton offered one of the strongest signs: in a recent survey, fully 83% of Wal-Mart employees expected the company to provide social networks for them to communicate outside of work. If Wal-Mart isn’t a barometer for mainstream U.S. workers, what company is? Social networking managers from Sun, Intel, HP and Oracle shared their lessons learned, and these ran the gamut. They spoke as practitioners, not solution providers.
Los Angeles 2009 took place June 24-26, 2009 at the SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills. I was happy to see Digg talking about community and Nokia sharing a vision for mobile social networking. Yammer brought us current on enterprise microblogging, while Dow Jones mashed up business intelligence and business networking, Electronic Arts injecting the gaming element, and Google briefed us on marketing trends as only they can. And The Facebook Era was as enlightening as ever.
Between running a workshop and moderating a panel, I took enough notes to share the high points of most of the tracks, which I’ll summarize before offering Analysis and Conclusions. The reportage follows this convention: the summaries are from my notes of speakers’ remarks. For more information on my workshop, Succeed with Enterprise Social Networking Initiatives, see the description and preview. Click on logos for abstracts of the tracks.
30 November 2008
2009 Poised as Inflection Point in Enterprise Usage—LinkedIn Increases Relevance to B2B Executives
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 During the 1990s, I was intimately involved with helping global organizations to decentralize their information technology—as a management consultant and marketing executive. However, a far more disruptive force is imminent today: communications and marketing are rapidly evolving into a networked, distributed pattern, following IT’s lead. Individuals that congregate online will have an increasing role in affecting how other people make decisions, significantly weakening the influence of the mass media on which many marketing strategies depend. Organizations that depend on centralized, controlled communications will be astonished at how fast they become irrelevant over the next five years. Although the case studies are still being written, I’ll go on record as saying that the 2008 U.S. presidential election will prove to be an inflection point of digital social networks’ disruptive potential.
LinkedIn is a leading venue for B2B and B2C executives, so it merits significant attention. The inputs for this Executive Adoption Snapshot are varied: I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of executives to apply LinkedIn to their business processes in 2008. I met two LinkedIn executives this month, and I covered CEO Dan Nye’s recent interview. I will synthesize clients’ experiences and LinkedIn executives’ remarks in three sections: 1) Executive Summary, 2) remarks from Dan Nye, Patrick Crane and Steve Patrizi, and 3) Analysis and Conclusions.
I would also be remiss if I did not share some of my experience around what kind of services enterprises will require to excel in this new environment, so after Analysis and Conclusions, I have provided initial thoughts gleaned from my experiences with clients thus far working with Web 2.0.
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