Download Chapter 3 of Living Networks on Emerging Technologies
Every chapter of Living Networks is being released on this blog as a free download, together with commentary and updated perspectives since its original publication in 2002.
For the full Table of Contents and free chapter downloads see the Living Networks website or the Book Launch/ Preface to the Anniversary Edition.
Living Networks – Chapter 3: The New Organization
Leadership Across Blurring Boundaries
OVERVIEW: The boundaries between organizations are blurring as technology reduces the costs of transactions. It is becoming essential for companies to work closely with their customers, suppliers, and partners, however this involves very real risks. In this world leadership is required to take whole industries and supply chains into new ways of working based on transparency, collaboration, and sharing value. Those that embrace the networks and lead the way forward will reap the greatest rewards.
Chapter 3 of Living Networks – Commentary and updated perspectives
From the original writing of Living Networks I felt that the issues raised in chapter 3 were at the heart of what the living networks are about. The key concept here is that of ‘blurring boundaries’, something we are experiencing across every domain of society and business, including organizations, industries, and countries.
A quotation I discovered since writing the book, and have used extensively over the last years in my presentations, expresses this perfectly:
“Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.”
This quote comes from the delightful and wise book Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse, which looks at how we either limit ourselves or open ourselves to infinite opportunity in our lives. While it was published in 1986, its messages are more relevant than ever today.
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Living Networks – Chapter 4: Relationship Rules – Free Download and Commentary
By Ross DawsonDownload Chapter 4 of Living Networks on Emerging Technologies
Every chapter of Living Networks is being released on this blog as a free download, together with commentary and updated perspectives since its original publication in 2002.
For the full Table of Contents and free chapter downloads see the Living Networks website or the Book Launch/ Preface to the Anniversary Edition.
Living Networks – Chapter 4: Relationship Rules
Building Trust and Attention in the Tangled Web
OVERVIEW: Connectivity allows companies to integrate their systems more deeply and form many more business ties, but these opportunities are often neglected. In an increasingly transparent world, trust is becoming more rather than less important, and organizations must take steps to develop trusting relationships with their partners. The one scarce resource today is attention, so you must earn it from your clients and partners in order to create and maintain profitable relationships.
Chapter 4 of Living Networks – Commentary and updated perspectives
I opened the introduction to my first book Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships with the words: “Knowledge and relationships are where almost all value resides in today’s economy.” For the last decade I have explored the apparent paradox that in an increasingly digital world, human relationships, particularly trusted relationships, are becoming ever more important. At the same time, as the amount of information available swells, attention is becoming an increasingly valuable commodity. It is commonplace to talk of the attention economy, where value is based primarily on attention.
The feedback loop of customer attention and personalization
(See below for description)
Since trust and attention are so fundamental to where business is going, this chapter is absolutely as relevant today as when it was written. Arguably the underlying principles will become even more important in coming years.
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Announcing the 2008 Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications list – Launch is on 19 June
By Ross Dawson[UPDATE:] The final Top 100 list is now up.
Following the great success of last year’s Top 60 Web 2.0 Apps in Australia list and Web 2.0 in Australia event, this year we will release a list of the Top 100 Australian Web 2.0 Applications.
The list will be launched on 19 June in BRW magazine together with feature stories on the relevance of the leading online applications to business, including on investment, corporate productivity, customer engagement and innovation. It will then be published online on the Future Exploration Network website and this blog.
A lunch event on the same day at KPMG’s Sydney offices will formally launch the list, including showcases of some of the winners and a panel discussion by leading figures in the Australian scene. Full details of the lunch event, including registration, are coming soon. It will be in a similar format to our full capacity Web 2.0 in Australia last year, though open to everyone instead of invitation-only.
We are again looking for event sponsors. I’ve approached the obvious candidates in the last couple of days but we’re open to interest from any organization. Download the event and sponsorship information here or by clicking on the image below.
We currently have over 125 candidates for the list. Please email me or comment below if there are relevant apps that you think I am not aware of. We have information on all of the apps listed last year and those that applied to Vishal Sharma’s Startup Carnival earlier this year and those featured on his startup blog (a great resource!).
Montage of recent media coverage
By Ross DawsonWe recently created a montage of some of my recent television, newspaper, and magazine coverage. This was created primarily for the dozen or more Australian speaking bureaux I work with. The majority of my Australian, US, and global speaking work comes to me directly, but that is complemented by work that comes in from a range of speaking bureaux in Australia. I provide them with material regularly to keep them and their clients informed of what I’m up to.
Click here or on the images below to download the montage pdf (2MB). It includes most of the text of a few interesting articles, such as my predictions for the future of home and immersive technologies, and thoughts on the media landscape in 2020. The robot pets TV interview is also up – I’ll try to get some other recent TV interviews up on the blog soon.
TELEVISION
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Social networks open out – celebrating the last year’s change but “lots more work to be done”
By Ross DawsonIn the last two days MySpace has announced Data Availability and Facebook launched Facebook Connect, while Google is due to announce “Friend Connect” on Monday, according to TechCrunch. MySpace and Facebook are providing ways to open out users’ access to their data on those social networks. TechCrunch says that Google’s initiative may not be quite as open as the other initiatives, in that it will require data to be accessed directly from their servers each time rather than being able to be downloaded and manipulated (under strict terms of service), However Open Social, which Google’s initiative is based on, is being used by most of the major social networks other than Facebook, making Friend Connect potentially broader in scope, as long as the social networks supporting Open Social choose to use the new offering.
I wrote last year about how the dominant platform in technology is shifting to social networks, and the inexorable trend to openness in social networks. It turns out the MySpace and Facebook announcements may not be quite all they seem. Chris Saad of the DataPortability Working Group writes:
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MySpace embraces “data availability” – a major step forward to the Wide Open Web
By Ross DawsonMySpace has just announced its Data Availability program, which includes adoption of a range of DataPortability standards, and data sharing with Ebay, Yahoo, and Twitter. Detailed coverage of this at TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, VentureBeat, and many others (see Techmeme). At the same time, MySpace has joined Google, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Digg and others on the DataPortability project. DataPortability notes:
An important part of the background to this is that Ben Metcalfe is Director of Engineering for the MySpace Platform. Ben has played an important role in getting MySpace to understand the importance of an open approach (see his thoughts on this announcement), drawing on his experience in leading the BBC’s developer platform, and his existing involvement with DataPortability. I caught up with Ben recently in San Francisco and we discussed where data portability is going. Absolutely the leadership of the large players is fundamental to driving this.
This year there will be many announcements of this kind, but this is a particularly important one, both through the visibility of the announcement, and even more importantly the value of what it enables. The millions who are using multiple platforms such as MySpace, Yahoo, Twitter and so on will be able to bring together their activities, and clearly see that we are transcending the closed web. People will begin to understand that the natural format of the web is open, with our activities naturally flowing across applications. Expectations will heighten, and the already rapid pace towards the Wide Open Web will accelerate.
Laurie Lock Lee on Governance in an Networked World
By Ross DawsonLaurie Lock Lee is one of the top practitioners globally in network thinking. I first came across his work in the mid-1990s, when he was one of the first people in world applying social network analysis approaches to organizations, for his then-employer BHP. He moved to CSC with the acquisition of BHP’s technology group, and last year set up his own firm Optimice with Cai Kjaer. I have featured some of Laurie’s work in the last two Future of Media Reports, including a high-level view of media industry networks, and a detailed analysis of the impact of a large acquisition on the Australian media industry landscape. Many other great reports and industry network maps are available from the Optimice website.
Laurie has just launched a new blog on Governance in a Networked World. He notes that it’s important to find the right scope and topic for a blog, and I think this is a fantastic one. As I wrote in releasing Chapter 3 of Living Networks, governance is perhaps the most important perspective on how organizations need to deal with a networked world. There are certainly risks to be understood and dealt with, but there are also opportunities that must be recognized and addressed. Business and government leaders are abrogating their responsibilities if they do not engage with the issues raised by our hyperconnected, networked world. Laurie says on his inaugural post:
I look forward to Laurie’s insights on his blog.
Living Networks – Chapter 3: The New Organization – Free Download and Commentary
By Ross DawsonDownload Chapter 3 of Living Networks on Emerging Technologies
Every chapter of Living Networks is being released on this blog as a free download, together with commentary and updated perspectives since its original publication in 2002.
For the full Table of Contents and free chapter downloads see the Living Networks website or the Book Launch/ Preface to the Anniversary Edition.
Living Networks – Chapter 3: The New Organization
Leadership Across Blurring Boundaries
OVERVIEW: The boundaries between organizations are blurring as technology reduces the costs of transactions. It is becoming essential for companies to work closely with their customers, suppliers, and partners, however this involves very real risks. In this world leadership is required to take whole industries and supply chains into new ways of working based on transparency, collaboration, and sharing value. Those that embrace the networks and lead the way forward will reap the greatest rewards.
Chapter 3 of Living Networks – Commentary and updated perspectives
From the original writing of Living Networks I felt that the issues raised in chapter 3 were at the heart of what the living networks are about. The key concept here is that of ‘blurring boundaries’, something we are experiencing across every domain of society and business, including organizations, industries, and countries.
A quotation I discovered since writing the book, and have used extensively over the last years in my presentations, expresses this perfectly:
This quote comes from the delightful and wise book Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse, which looks at how we either limit ourselves or open ourselves to infinite opportunity in our lives. While it was published in 1986, its messages are more relevant than ever today.
Read more →
Thoughts from the Walkley Public Affairs conference
By Ross DawsonToday I spoke at the Walkley Public Affairs conference, organized by the MEAA, the peak body representing workers in the Australian media industry. I spoke on the Enterprise 2.0 panel, running through many of the issues I’ve raised on the Enterprise 2.0 Forum blog.
Here are a few summarized comments and reflections on what I heard while I was at the event from late morning to the end of the first day.
As I walked in, Sam Mostyn of IAG was saying, reflecting on what she’d seen at the insurer, that ‘what builds loyalty and commitment is trust’. That is a fundamentally important point. Corporate loyalty is evanescent today, particularly with younger workers. The only potential source of loyalty is trusting your employees. Not trusting them automatically results in zero loyalty. This is deeply relevant to the issue of blocking or allowing social networks in the enterprise.
On the next panel, Mark Pesce commented that social networks in Australia are extremely shallow. Outrageous news travels very fast. At the Future of Journalism conference comments that Roy Greenslade made about Andrew Jaspan, editor of The Age, were immediately heard. Messages propagate ubiquitously, in this case enabled by journalists in the audience live-blogging the event. Those who were interested in what Greenslade said heard about it almost instantaneously. Mark describes Twitter as his twenty-first century brain trust, extending his capabilities by giving him access to many with complementary knowledge. He describes this as ‘hyperempowerment’.
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To win in an open world Flash is becoming even more open – the result will be applications that reach every platform
By Ross DawsonAdobe has just announced the Open Screen Project, a broad-based initiative to push Flash’s reach across all digital platforms, including mobile and television. Supporters include BBC, Cisco, Motorola, MTV, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, and a host of other consumer technology, content, and mobile companies.
When Living Networks was launched in 2002, I wrote about how Macromedia (which has since been acquired by Adobe) used an open strategy to make Flash a standard in rich media on the web:
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After Web 2.0: WOW (Wide Open Web) – enough of version numbers for the web!!
By Ross DawsonIn the wake of the 2008 Web 2.0 expo, now 3½ years since the first Web 2.0 conference in 2004, it seems getting time to work out what will succeed Web 2.0. I always thought that Web 2.0 was a useful and meaningful term, and created my Web 2.0 Framework to help unpack and communicate what it is. The term helped people to understand the nature of the shift from Web as communication to Web as participation.
I’ve also long thought that Web 3.0 is a meaningless term. It means whatever people want it to mean. While we have reached a reasonably common understanding of what Web 2.0 is (though I’m sure others will disagree), I don’t think it’s possible that any consensus will emerge on what Web 3.0 is, making its use a destroyer rather than enabler of communication. The one element that people always associate with Web 3.0 is the semantic web, which has been a very long time coming, and will still be a very long time coming. It’s a tremendous, laudable goal which is still going to take far longer than most people seem to think, so it’s not something we should be talking about in the present. Anyway, the semantic web already has a term to describe it, and it is well defined, so why do we need to use a new term to refer it?
I’ve been a long time student of how business and technology terms are born, brought into widespread usage, debased, and die. I don’t believe that Web 3.0 will be a term that be useful or used. Charles Cooper has just tried to define Web 2.5, which is even worse – yes I agree with him that it’s about time to dump Web 2.0, but the answer is NOT Web 2.5! However we absolutely need new terms to describe where the web is going and what it means.
In my recent post on openness in the Internet I used the term Wide Open Web (WOW). On consideration I think this is a fair suggestion to describe the current and next stage of the web. There are undoubtedly many other possibilities, and I think it’s time for the proposals to come out, so the most relevant and useful term comes into usage, rather than terms such as Web 2.5, that are even more meaningless than Web 3.0, and don’t help anyone understand what is going on.
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