What is possible: how the social enterprise drives differentiation

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I recently gave a presentation to an internal team tasked with re-envisaging the intranet for a large corporation. I was impressed that they had brought together around 40 managers and executives from across the company to spend two days thinking in a very open format about what internal communication could and should be like, and how to create that.

I was brought in at the start of their workshop to provide a compelling vision, being given the title of “The Art of the Possible”. As such I gave a big picture view of how our increasingly networked world is changing organizations, spent some time on the vision of what a better-connected company can be and can achieve, and wrapped up with some of the realities to recognize in achieving the grand vision.

While there are many perspectives on the specific benefits possible from building the social enterprise (see for example my chapter on Key Benefits and Risks in Implementing Enterprise 2.0), at the highest level this is about the ability to differentiate your organization.
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Review of Tibbr social enterprise platform – keynote at Sydney launch on February 8

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The launch last week in San Francisco of Tibbr, the social enterprise computing platform from TIBCO, attracted an immense amount of attention from the leading commentators in the space. The offering is not directly comparable to any existing enterprise social software suites, and draws on TIBCO’s strong integration heritage to create an offering that works fully across an organization’s activities.

Tibbr global launch events follow in London (yesterday) and in Sydney on February 8 at the Opera House, where I will give the opening keynote on Why social computing will drive organisational success. Here are registration details for the Sydney launch of Tibbr next week.

I hope to offer some personal thoughts on the Tibbr platform after the launch event. For now I thought it would be most appropriate simply to review some of the more interesting comments on Tibbr since the launch.

To start, here is an interview by Dennis Howlett of TIBCO’s CEO, Vivek Ranadive. Vivek begins by saying that Tibbr is an extension of the vision he had since he started TIBCO (in 1985).


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What is the future of the IT department?

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The future of enterprise technology is a massively important theme, which impacts organizations, vendors, governments, and indeed society at large. Taking each of these perspectives provides a different view on how the space is evolving.

One of the most interesting perspectives is from the very center of the fray: the IT department itself. It needs to deal with the minutiae of technological change as well as the macrotrends shaping organizations and their shifting place in the global economy.

I’ve teamed up with the outstanding strategist Greg Rippon of NetFocus, who I first worked with back in 1999 on a broad-ranging scenario project for a major bank, to create a one-day workshop for IT departments who want to take a structured look at the future and what it implies for their current strategy.

Click on the image for the flyer for the workshop on the future of the IT department.


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Video highlights: keynote on future of global media for Ketchum in New York

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Last November I gave the keynote at Ketchum’s Global Media Network meeting in New York.

Here is an edited video pulling out some of the key points I made during the keynote.


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Finally I have an answer when people ask what I do! Visualization of our group’s business model

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[UPDATE May 2013] The original business model below has now been updated and separated into two visuals: New AHT Group Business Model and AHT Group Strategic Overview

For the last 15 years of my life post-employment I have struggled when people ask me what I do. More recently I have managed to crystallize a simple description of myself: Futurist and Entrepreneur. However that doesn’t explain the diversity of my companies’ activities, and how they fit together. In particular people are often confused by the relationship between our primary companies: Advanced Human Technologies, Future Exploration Network, and The Insight Exchange.

A few months ago I started designing a business model diagram to help me conceptualize the relationship between our brands and activities, our scalable and less scalable business models, and our current priorities. While it included a few personal aspirations, I ended up showing it a number of job applicants to help explain what we are doing. I soon realized I needed a public version of our business model. This is what we created.

AHT Group Business model (click on the image for full-size pdf)

Some comments on a few of the features of the business model:
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Narrative Science raises $6m to replace web copywriters with computers. How long until journalism is automated?

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The internet can be characterized very simply. Billions of people are looking for interesting and useful information, and millions of companies are trying to make money by people finding their content, through search engines and increasingly on social media.

This has led to the rise of companies such as Demand Media, which last week listed on New York Stock Exchange to be valued at $1.5 billion, more than the New York Times. Demand Media and its peers such as Associated Content, now owned by Yahoo!, use low-cost writers and sophisticated algorithms to create massive amounts of content tailored to generate revenue from search traffic.

There are also many writing brokers such as TextBroker and The Content Authority that help smaller companies that need web content to improve their search rankings to get copy written, at rates as low as 1.2 cents a word.

I have written about the proliferation of crap content and how search is evolving to deal with the rise of low-quality content. The latest iteration in Google’s search algorithms explicitly address duplicate content. The quest for original content to feed the search engines continues.

The obvious next step is to automate copywriting, further improving the cost-revenue equation for those seeking to attract search traffic.

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Tablet Opportunities for News Publishers: the transformation continues

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We see the nexus of the rise of tablets and the transformation of media as one of the most fascinating and important topics today. It continues to be a key focus for us in our client work and own projects.

This week International Newspaper Marketing Association (INMA) released its Tablet Opportunities for News Publishers report, which is free to members and $295 for others. In the report, “dozens of leading news industry executives reveal their up-to-the-minute thinking“.

I was quoted throughout the report, and they also included our iPad Media Strategy Framework, as below, to encapsulate the key themes.

ipadmediastrategy_500w.jpg

Click on image for full-size pdf

Here are some of my quotes and thoughts included in the report:

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Full video of cloud computing keynote for Telstra Business – Tapping the forces of change

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A few months ago I did the opening keynote for a national roadshow run by Telstra Business on cloud computing. My big picture piece on Tapping the forces of change was followed by a more detailed presentation by Telstra’s CTO Hugh Bradlow.

It’s taken a little while to get up, but here is a complete video of my 25 minute keynote speech for those who are interested.

If you’d just like to read some of what I covered in the keynote, you can read an article on Six steps to success in a world driven by cloud computing which summarizes some of my messages.

The rise of personal brands means the rise of personal logos – here’s mine, what’s yours?

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Personal branding is one of the big themes today, for a number of reasons.

As I wrote in five key trends in how influence is transforming society, one of the dominant forces is that reputation is shifting from the corporate to the individual. People build relationships and place trust in individuals more than organizations, changing how (the best) companies organize themselves and engage externally.

In addition, professionals are increasingly shifting to independent work in a global distributed economy. As such they must build their own brands and not rely on their affiliation with the brand of the company for which they work.
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Is social media bad or good? The debate heats up

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The first of my 11 themes for the Zeitgeist of 2011 was ‘Networked or Not?‘

We are all facing a fundamental choice that will shape our lives. Many dive headlong into a world of always-on connection, open social networks, and oversharing. A few cry halt and choose to live only in the old world of tight-knit personal communication. The result is a divided society.

Addressing exactly that point, a great article in The Guardian titled Social networking under fresh attack as tide of cyber-scepticism sweeps US , drawing particularly on Sherry Turkle’s new book Along Together.

The article notes:
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