Crowdsourcing goes mainstream, shaping organizations and the future of work

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Crowdsourcing is rapidly gaining visibility as a mainstream business topic. The current issue of Outsource magazine has a good article titled The Road of the Crowd. It was written by Steve Bynghall, who produced the recent IBF24 event run by Intranet Benchmarking Forum, and who is collaborating with me on some projects.

It’s a good article providing a nice overview of the field, and well worth reading in full. Here are some of my quotes used in the piece.
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9 great ways to make the iPad a useful work tool: structures, setup, apps

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When I posted a little while back about using an external keyboard with the iPad, I promised to share how I use the iPad for work.

When I bought the iPad I found it quite frustrating for a while in trying to use the iPad as I wanted, but I managed to work it out, and some of the elements that were missing at launch have been put in place. Here is what I have learned and how I use the iPad for work. I’m keen to hear what others have learned, as I’m sure there are plenty of other great tips.

1. External keyboard.
To my mind an iPad is of very limited use, almost a toy, without an external keyboard. I am sitting in an economy seat on an airplane right now, able to pull out my iPad and immediately write a blog post, respond to email, make notes in my to do list, or work on a client report. It is a fully functional work device. For more on this see my post The REAL transformative package: iPad plus wireless keyboard.
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Scoop: Corporate directors understand change and embrace governance for transformation

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I gave my keynote on How Technology is Transforming Business for Australian Institute of Company Directors this morning here in Beijing.

Based on the responses of the 500+ company directors in the audience, they absolutely understand the need for change. Here are their answers on audience response units to questions I posed during my presentation.


One of my key messages was that social and technological change are inextricable – they drive each other and cannot be understood separately. What is interesting is that directors felt that social drivers are more important than technology drivers. Certainly I believe that social change is moving at least as fast as technological change, and responding to this is fundamental to the success of organizations.
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Notes from the Australian Institute of Company Directors in Beijing

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I am at the annual conference of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, held this year in Beijing. It is fantastic that Australian company directors are choosing to meet here rather than at home, broadening vistas and opportunities. The Grand Ballroom at China World Hotel is full, with around 500 people here.

While I don’t have access to Twitter from my iPad (I haven’t had time to try to set up a VPN on my laptop yet) I can at least blog, so I might be doing more of that while I am in Beijing this week.

For now, here are my presentation slides for my keynote on How Technology is Transforming Business this morning. These are just a slightly different version of the presentation I shared last week. You can also find a pdf version of the Transformation of Business framework on which the presentation is based.

Transformation of Business – AICD on Prezi

Keynote slides: Building Success in a Connected World

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Tomorrow morning I give the breakfast keynote at Think Business 2011, making it my third keynote this week.

For those attending the breakfast, here are my slides, which go through and flesh out our recent Success in a Connected World framework and also touch on related issues such as personal branding. The usual disclaimers apply: these slides are designed to accompany my presentation and not to stand alone. However you may still find them useful!

New Prezi: The Transformation of Business

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I am always trying to get better at using visuals to support my keynotes and presentations. I use many videos, and we have created quite a few Flash animations that I embed into Powerpoint to make them more dynamic. I have been aware of Prezi as a dynamic presentation tool for some time now, though have never yet taken the leap to move my entire presentation into this format.

The launch of our Transformation of Business framework has provided a great opportunity to use Prezi. The entire story is laid out on a page, and Prezi enables me to zoom in, pan across, and illustrate they key points in the framework. I first used this on Tuesday for an executive team strategy session, and will be using it in a number of other presentations and keynotes over the next week.

As usual my disclaimer is that the slides are designed to accompany my presentation and not to stand alone, however they might be of interest and value even if you haven’t attended one of my keynotes.

Transformation of Business 1 on Prezi

New Framework: The Transformation of Business

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Our latest visual framework is The Transformation of Business.

Many of my keynotes and client workshops at the moment are to high-level business audiences such as boards of directors and top executive teams who need to understand the essence of how the business landscape is changing and the implications. While you can never capture the rich diversity of change on a single page, this framework seeks to distill the issues in a meaningful way.


Click on the image for full-size pdf

[NOTE:] Also see the presentation in Prezi format for more detail.

I’ll soon provide some more detailed commentary on the framework, particularly on the vital point that this framework leads to: Governance for Transformation.

Here is the content in text format:
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Keynote on Success in a Connected World at Think Business next week

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May is going to be a very busy month. I have 10 speaking engagements in Australia and China over the next five weeks, as well as several ongoing consulting projects, and an ever-increasing array of active web projects on our plate.

Next week my one public event will be a breakfast keynote on Friday 13 for Business Enterprise Centre (BEC) St George and Sutherland Shire, at Doltone House Sylvania Waters.

See here for full details and registration (just $33). My topic is:

Success in a Connected World
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Keynote speech in Beijing on How Technology is Transforming Business

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In a few weeks I will be in Beijing to give a keynote to the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) annual Company Directors conference. AICD has usually held its annual conference in Australian cities, but when in 2007 it held it in Shanghai they actually had far more attendees than usual. This is now the second time the conference has been held outside Australia, and it promises to be an outstanding event. Of course one of the great things about holding the conference in Beijing is that it exposes the directors of Australia’s leading companies to new horizons if they have not previously been actively engaged in China.

Here is a brief description of my keynote:

How Technology is Transforming Business
The rise of our connected world is transforming business, from how consumers buy and build relationships with companies, to the structure of the supply chain and the nature of global competition. Directors need to understand the emerging technologies that are changing business today, including the dramatic rise of mobile, the power of cloud computing, new elements of the media and marketing landscape, and user-driven computing. Establishing a framework for innovation-led governance enables companies to best take advantage of these shifts.

I will share some of the content I will be covering closer to the time.

Why high performance organizations will thrive on uncertainty and lack of control

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I recently gave a presentation at an offsite meeting of the leadership team of a global professional services firm. I was asked to speak about the future of business, and to be provocative, which is usually my objective in that kind of situation – it’s not very valuable if you can’t get people to think differently.

I discussed the driving forces of global business, and then gave them three ‘propositions’ of how I saw the future of business. One of the three propositions, which was really the underlying theme of my presentation, was ‘High performance organizations will thrive on uncertainty and lack of control.’

When you look at what has really changed in the best performing organizations of today compared to say those of a couple of decades ago, this is at the heart of the matter. Executives used to be in control, know what was happening, and to direct the company’s activities in detail to achieve success. That doesn’t work any more.
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