Six ways technology is transforming small business

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This article was written to frame The Insight Exchange’s SME Technology Summit in Sydney on December 1 – while many of the references are to Australia the issues apply globally.

Small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) are taking a larger share of the business pie, and increasingly driving economic growth. This is one of the most important trends in business today, and one that will shape the next decade of business, work and society.

This powerful trend is driven largely by technology and connectivity, creating a world in which smaller, more nimble, better connected companies can outsmart their monolithic larger brethren, competing globally and tapping opportunities as they arise.

At the same time, using technology well in business is proving to be one of the most prominent drivers of success. Almost every aspect of business is becoming driven by technology. This is obviously the case with services businesses ranging from graphic design to even house moving. However this is relevant to every kind of organisation.

Gardening and worm farm retailers Wiggly Wigglers in UK, Caminito Argentinean Restaurant in the US, Brasserie Bread in Australia , Martell Home Builders in Canada and many thousands of others around the world are examples of companies selling highly tangible, everyday products that have built outstanding success through the use of online social media.

There are six key ways in which technology is changing the very nature of how smaller companies operate today.

1. Findability

Customers look for and find businesses in very different ways than just a few years ago. Search engines, recommendations from friends on social networks, and online services exchanges are now how most companies are found. Marketing has completely changed.

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The rapidly building wave of online outsourcing and crowdsourcing

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The Age today has an interesting article titled Outsourcing on steroids that looks at the array of online technologies that are enabling the outsourcing of small tasks and the crowdsourcing of design, innovation, and other key business functions.

I’ve noticed that in just the last few weeks mainstream media coverage of online service exchanges and crowdsourcing tools is picking up. As the article in the The Age concludes, “it’s certain crowd sourcing is a key business trend for the future”. The

The article quotes me in two different sections:

Although odesk and similar sites such as elance.com are known for being a meeting place where businesses can access very low cost services, crowd sourcing is not just about finding the cheapest service provider possible.

Futurist Ross Dawson says: “Online services exchanges are places where anyone anywhere can get people to perform services; it’s about the development of a global talent economy. Some services are commoditised – you might want someone to count the number of tennis balls in a photo for the lowest price possible. But they also allow you to find the best person for the job and price isn’t always the primary factor why you hire someone, sometimes it’s more about finding talented people. I use odesk and the last person I hired wasn’t in Egypt or Latvia he was in New York.”

This idea of how best to tap the most talented – rather than the cheapest – professionals in the global market is the subject of my next book. I’ll be writing a lot more about this on my blog.

Later in the article:

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Free webinar on Implementing Enterprise 2.0 (and win a copy of the book!)

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My book Implementing Enterprise 2.0 has been selling at a very healthy and consistent pace since its launch earlier this year. The front page of the book’s website features links to reviews of the book, including some very useful ones from ReadWriteWeb, CMSWire, and Inside Knowledge.

I thought it would be good to share some of the book’s insights in a different format, so I have teamed up with Newsgator – who have been key proponents of the book – to do a free webinar on Implementing Enterprise 2.0: Practical Steps to Creating Business Value. The webinar will be held on November 18 at 2pm US ET.

We will draw six complimentary copies of Implementing Enterprise 2.0 for webinar attendees.

Sign up for the webinar here.

Below is the webinar overview. Hope to connect with you then!

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Practical insights and advice on Everyday Enterprise 2.0

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Newsgator’s Director of Enterprise 2.0 Consulting Christy Schoon has launched a new blog Everyday Enterprise 2.0 at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. Christy says “I’m going to write in plain English about everyday Enterprise 2.0 from my own on-the-ground perspective working with living, breathing social computing champions at Fortune 500 companies.”

One reason I love the blog is Christy’s four standard recommendations to businesspeople on where to start with Enterprise 2.0 (particularly the first one :-) ):

1) read Ross Dawson’s sensible, plainspoken book “Implementing Enterprise 2.0“

2) read the Nielsen Norman Group’s report “Enterprise 2.0: Social Software on Intranets“; and

3) if your company has at least 10,000 employees, join the 2.0 Adoption Council

4. Get professional help.

However I also like the rich content tone. It’s very refreshing to see a post titledPimp My Site that happens to be a detailed discussion about the practical issues involved in Enterprise 2.0 adoption but begins:

My second blog post and I’ve already used the word Pimp. My Mom would be so proud.

The top 10 blogs for small to mid-sized businesses

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Blog search engine Technorati recently revised its blog ranking algorithms and created categories for the rankings.

The list of the top 10 blogs for small business provides an excellent resource for attendees of our SME Technology Summit in Sydney on 1 December, where there will be deep insights into all of the topics covered by these blogs.

Many of these blogs are for businesses of all sizes, but all of them provide valuable insights for small to mid-sized businesses. Check them out!

1. Online Marketing Blog

https://www.toprankblog.com

sbtech1

Covers digital marketing topics, focusing on social media, online PR and search engine marketing. A broad team of writers brings diverse perspectives to bear.

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Five reasons why Turkey is one of the hottest Internet markets in the world

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Last week I gave the opening keynote at IPZ2009 Interactive Marketing Summit in Istanbul. Here are my slides for my keynote on the Future of Interactive Marketing.

It was a fantastic event, the fourth annual IPZ conference organized by Günseli Özen Ocako?lu and Hakan Senbir of Marketing & Management Institute, which publishes a range of leading magazines including Marketing Türkiye.

In preparing for my keynote and during my visit I discovered many fascinating things I did not know about the Turkish online market. It is in fact one of the hottest and fastest-growing Internet markets in the world.

As it happens I have a very deep interest in language-defined online markets, such as Japanese, Chinese, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Korean. Each of these markets – some within national borders and others spanning countries – has very different characteristics across all facets including which types of social media are used, which are dominant players, and the most successful business models. I have written about this before in the context of blogging languages and global media strategies, and will be doing further analysis of country markets soon.

Here are five facts that illustrate how exciting the Turkish online market is.

1. Turkey is the third largest country in the world on Facebook

facebookcountries_Nov09.jpg

Source: CheckFacebook

Coming from almost nothing two years ago, Turkey now has close to 14 million Facebook users, overtaking France and Canada earlier this year to be the third largest country on Facebook after the US and UK. Facebook does not dominate social networking in other high population countries such as Brazil, Russia and Japan, so Turkey with a population of 72 million and a very rapid uptake of online services ranks close to the top of the list.

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What are the most useful social media tools for small business?

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Most business owners recognise that there are many social media tools that can help them run their businesses more effectively. The problem is sorting through the plethora of tools that are available today to work out what to use, and how to use it.

Mashable has come out with a useful list of 10 of the Best Social Media Tools for Business, mentioning:

1. Google Apps for Domains

Online email, calendar and office software

2. LinkedIn

Professional social network

3. Basecamp

Online project management tool

4. Facebook

Social network with fan pages, apps and other tools

5. Twitter

Micro-blogging for relationship building

6. Get Satisfaction

Customer self-support forums

7. MailChimp

Web-based mailing list manager

8. UserVoice

Tracking customer feedback

9. YouTube

Hosted videos for marketing, education and advertising

10. Monitter

Monitor Twitter for relevant conversations and comments

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Futurist proved correct! …and today describes the extraordinary social technologies of 2016 (release)

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This morning Future Exploration Network issued this press release (excuse the hyperbole :-) ) I have already done several radio interviews on the forecasts in the release with quite a few more radio, newspaper and TV interviews lined up for the next days – the ideas seem to have struck a chord.

Futurist proved correct! …and today describes the extraordinary social technologies of 2016

Seven years ago, in his prescient book Living Networks, global leading futurist Ross Dawson accurately described the networked world of today, anticipating social networks, Twitter, corporate blogging, crowd-sourcing, personalised advertising, virtual personal assistants and much else that is now familiar to us.

Today, he offers insights into the extraordinary world of technology we will experience seven years into the future.

Ross’s forecasts for 2016 include:

• Many people will wear video glasses as they commute and walk around, experiencing new forms of television, news updates, and detailed information about the world around them and people they meet.

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The Big Shift in economic structure and why knowledge flows are becoming a fundamentally important business driver

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A couple of years ago Deloitte tempted John Hagel away from independent consulting to co-chair a new think-tank, now called the Deloitte Center for the Edge. I have been a long-time fan of John’s work, and find many parallels with my own path and research.

The Center recently released its first major study, the Shift Index, which was accompanied by an article in the July-August issue of Harvard Business Review, titled The Big Shift: Measuring the Forces of Change.

shiftindex_500x266_180609.jpg

When the Shift Index was first announced, I was immediately drawn to look more closely because of its first key finding:

The performance gap between winners and losers has increased over time, with the “winners” barely maintaining previous performance levels, while the losers experience rapid deterioration in performance.

This matches exactly one of the main messages I have been preaching since the beginning of the recession, for example in my keynotes at the MegaTrends conference in Abu Dhabi and my TEDx presentation in San Francisco on Future of the Enterprise: this is a time of increasing divergence in organizational performance, and adopting new strategies and activities is essential to avoid rapid erosion in competitiveness.

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Overview of work as keynote speaker and strategy leader

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In addition to my rossdawson.com website, which focuses on my work as a keynote speaker and strategy leader, we have created a brief document which provides an overview of what I do in this space.

The document needs a few small updates, such as an additional book published, however it is essentially current.

Ross Dawson – Keynote Speaker and Strategy Leader