Atos Netherlands recently shared an analysis taken from Right Relevance of the top influencers in the future of work, shown below.

I am of course honored to be ranked so highly among such august company, however to be frank I don’t believe that overall these rankings are particularly accurate. Harold Jarche managed to get a brief description of the metholodogy, but it doesn’t say much really, so the rankings have to be taken at face value. But I’ll take it. :-)

These themes were explored by leading futurist Ross Dawson in his keynote at the 2016 Ericsson Services Forum in Mumbai. Dawson’s talk related to the event theme of “Turning Wants into Wows” by discussing how organizations can create value in a connected world through harnessing the power of networks, consumer expectations, integrated systems, and unique branding. The full keynote is shown in the video below.

Here are four key insights drawn from Dawson’s keynote at the forum.

1. Networks are driving change and transforming the structure of the economy

Today, all layers of our lives are becoming intricately networked, changing the ways in which value is created. As Dawson told the forum, we have shifted to a society in which “the unit of value creation in the economy is now the individual, as they are connected, as they are able to share and create value”. Consequently, he asserted,

“The network is the birth of the global brain: we are collectively becoming something beyond ourselves.”

What does this mean for organizations? Firstly, that there is an explosion of possibility and opportunity as more and more of the things around us become connected. From the cloud to crowdsourcing to the Internet of Things, a social trend towards openness is shaping technology, which is in turn reshaping social attitudes. This cycle is fuelling a networked economy in which scale-free networks are growing, creating winners and losers.

Winners such as Uber and Airbnb exemplify the power of crowd sharing and how “social change is as vast as technological change”, like Dawson said at the forum. As a result of social change, organizations are grappling with rapidly changing consumer expectations, affecting how they understand and approach innovation, business structures and strategy.

2. Consumers expect more on every front

Fuelled by the vast possibilities of technology, “Our expectations for everything are going forwards, not backwards,” said Dawson. “We expect more on every front.” Here are some of the points he raised about consumer expectations:

We expect immediacy. In 1998, with dial-up Internet, you could download a webpage in approximately one minute. In 2017, ten seconds is too slow for most of us to wait.

We expect to participate. The pervasiveness of social media has put consumers “inside” and behind information as sharers and co-creators, critics and influencers, empowered in a networked economy.

We expect choice. We subject our demands for features such as speed, functionality, price and efficiency to intense comparisons both before and after purchasing.

We expect beauty. Even enterprise technology is now commonly scrutinized for the beauty of its user interfaces.

We expect world-class products and services. Our standards for quality are on the rise, driven by our knowledge of the competition, what other people are receiving, and our desire to have the best experience possible.

3. Aligning internal and external systems can drive value for customers

In order for organizations to fulfil and exceed consumer expectations, Dawson emphasizes:

“The way in which you interface with your customers, or the world at large, needs to absolutely mirror and be integrated with the way you work internally.”

This is vital because the dividing line between the outside and inside of an organization is blurring, partly due to open data and public expectations around transparency. Consequently, organizations should aim to be “extraordinarily well networked”, Dawson said, with their culture, connections and idea flow integrated in networks that drive value for external customers. This process can also promote efficiency and innovation, as well as clarify brand values and messaging.

4. Organizations must be unique to succeed

In a fast-paced world of widespread disruption, the least performing and best performing organizations are growing in divergence. Building on the ideas of Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson in Race Against the Machine, Dawson declared:

“All organizations are becoming more and more different…Now we are seeing the potential for the merging of the technology and culture and history of an organization to create something that is absolutely unique. And that is not just an opportunity, it is an imperative.”

A unique organization, in Dawson’s view, “cannot be copied by others however much they look at it, because they are not able to embody what it is”. In order to achieve this, leaders must help their organizations to transcend the boundaries and become as flexible as their environment. Otherwise, according to the Law of Requisite Variety, organizations and their employees will simply be buffeted by the winds of change, unable to take a lead and shape the world around them.

Therefore, in order to create a unique vision and vibrant future for their organizations, leaders should understand how networks impact the flow of innovation and value creation. As Dawson wrote in his book Living Networks, we have shifted to a society where, ultimately, “value is created by the network, not by the organization”. Those organizations that create value across systems and communities will be best equipped to benefit from—and contribute to—our connected world and its future.

Images: Adapted from Polychorosket and Khalid Albaih

It is certainly not intended to be rigorous, but simply to give an indication of how influential futurists are on social media and the web by combining a few key indicators such as Klout, web traffic and Twitter followers, using a simple algorithm.

No doubt we are missing quite a few futurists who should be included on the list. Just let us know if there’s anyone we should add to the list.

Feel free to embed it on your site if you wish.

Enjoy, and be sure not to take it too seriously! :-)

City of Melbourne’s over-arching vision for the annual Melbourne Spring Fashion Week is to position Melbourne as Australia’s premier fashion destination, and have a real economic impact by driving increased sales for retailers in the city.

In partnering with IBM for the second year the intention was to extend the impact of the event beyond the week and to drive ticket sales and in turn sales by tapping the social currency of influencers.

Melbourne Spring Fashion Week is unusual in fashion shows in that everything on the runways can be bought at stores in the city. This contrasts to the traditional role of fashion shows as breaking new fashion, which may not be available for many months after it is launched.

Melbourne Spring Fashion Week used IBM Social Media Analytics on Twitter and Instagram to uncover the top 50 relevant fashion influencers, used Watson Personality Insights to work out how best to approach them, and invited them to be MSFW “insiders”, asking them what content would be most useful to them.

Ticket sales have been considerably higher than last year, with 4 of the events sold out.

The initiative is particularly interesting in showing how social analytics and engagement can help drive shoppers into shopping centers and physical stores.

While individual stores can do a great deal to merge their digital, social and physical engagement, the real power comes in bringing people to a shopping center or area, or even an entire city center.

All shopping is becoming social. Retail strategies for merging physical and digital are best envisaged and implemented on a large scale, tapping collaboration and activating buyers.

Image credit: Eva Rinaldi

The fundamental capabilities of PR professionals are more relevant than ever in our intensely networked world. Arguably, PR should be at the center of the marketing universe, since it is better able than any other discipline to deal with a world driven by relationships, fueled by connectivity, social, mobile, and power shifting to the individual.

The big question is: will the PR industry seize the immense opportunity before it?

Both in my own work and that of my companies we work extensively with PR agencies.

I have personally worked with a number of major PR globally agencies in framing the future of media. I am also frequently engaged by PR agencies on behalf of their clients to deliver keynotes at customer events and to act as a spokesperson for media campaigns.

Among the many services that our companies work with PR agencies on, notably Future Exploration Network creates compelling futurist content to support media and B2B marketing campaigns, Advanced Human Technologies does organisational and influence network analysis for designing high-performance organisations and campaigns, and MemeStreme (to be launched soon) will offer world-class interactive information visualizations.

However beyond these direct engagement points, it is clear that in a networked world marketing is being completely transformed. I believe that leading PR professionals – whose business is relationships – are probably best equipped to truly understand a world of distributed relationships, and find successful pathways to the future.

Please have look at Creating the Future of PR, join the conversations in our Creating the Future of PR Facebook Group, and let us know if you would like to contribute to the publication.

We will also be running a Creating the Future of PR Forum in Sydney this October, and will collaborate with local partners to run events in other major cities around the world.

Please do participate and pass on word to those who would be interested in this, our intention is over time to build something that will be truly valuable for the industry.

If consumers are smarter, they are expressing it with not just increased expectations, but an increasingly active expression of their displeasure if expectations are not met.

The following chart, provided to me by IBM in response to a request for more detailed information, shows that in all major countries advocates – those who actively advocate for their primary retailer – have decreased, while antagonists – those who would actively discredit their retailer – have increased.

Source: IBM

In fact from 2012 to 2014, advocacy rates in Australia have declined from 34% to 10%, while antagonism has increased from 12% to 37%. Sobering statistics for retailers.

Increased expectations are supported by the shift to online and mobile buying. The pace of the shift to online buying is highest for the most expensive goods.

Where there is trust, customers are more willing to share information with retailers than before. However this is happening in conjunction with heightened expectations, meaning that they will only continue to do so if that information is used to create clear value for them.

And it is clear that consumers are want to be in control. They understand the issues and while they will share information if there is trust, their expectations include personal control.

In summary, people are less likely to actively support retailers and more likely to attack them in increasingly public forums such as social media.

However trust can still grow, but it will only create value for retailers if it first creates real value for their customers.

There are and have been many influence ranking systems around. This one focuses on a particular group – keynote speakers – for whom online influence is particularly important, and brings together three measures: Klout, website traffic, and Twitter followers.

It is of course very easy to criticise any influence rankings mechanism, and we do not pretend this is by any means ‘accurate’, it is intended to be indicative and interesting. We have provided complete transparency by publishing the algorithm we use. The intention is to tweak and develop the algorithm over time. Let us know if you have suggestions on how to improve it!

At the time of writing this post I am in 23rd position, which I think is pretty decent given my illustrious peers. I suspect I will move down the list over time, as we have no doubt missed people who should be on the list. Please suggest additional speakers if you or anyone else are not on the list and you believe should be included. To be included people need to work primarily as a keynote speaker.

Let me know your thoughts!

]]> https://rossdawson.com/launch-keynote-speaker-influence-ranking-tracker/feed/ 0 https://rossdawson.com/reputation-personal-opportunities-identity-will-shaped-social-media/ https://rossdawson.com/reputation-personal-opportunities-identity-will-shaped-social-media/#respond Mon, 02 Jun 2014 12:13:39 +0000 https://rossdawson.com/?p=7001 This morning was the launch of the Safeguarding the Future of Digital Australia 2025 that I wrote and compiled for McAfee, part of Intel Security.

There has been a very strong response to the report, with so far good articles in The Australian, Dynamic Business, WA Today, and many others, and the Federal Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull saying “Intel Security’s report makes a major contribution to our understanding of how to safeguard Australians online and into the future.”

Parliamentary Secretary for Communications Paul Fletcher spoke at the report’s launch at Parliament House, drawing particular attention to the tagline we created for the Future of Social section:

Our reputation, personal opportunities and identity will be shaped by our participation in social media

Many of the questions to the panel after our presentations were about this theme. Since the event was part of the Federal Government’s Stay Smart Online Week initiative, the focus was on how we safeguard our reputation and identity in a world shaped by social media.

I found one of the most interesting statistics from the survey accompanying the report was that 54% of Australians believe it is unfair for our social media activity to influence our work or financial opportunities.

Is it unfair if it is a true reflection of us? Perhaps the primary idea is that it is unfair that our degree of participation in social media should shape our fortunes.

On the plane back from Canberra I came across a pertinent article in the newspaper about the reputation of restaurant customers.

Keeping notes on customers is hardly new. But as social media continues to knock gaping holes in the divide between personal and public, restaurants that bother to do their research are reaping bigger rewards for their efforts.

Shared online reservation systems like Dimmi’s ResDiary, as well as social media sites liked LinkedIn and good old Google searches, can be a double-edged sword. Systems can be used to track dining ‘performance’ – how much you ordered, whether you tipped well, how pleasantly you treated staff or whether you continued to camp out at the table long after you’d finished dessert.

Our reputation is not just about our work performance, or even how good a partner we are. The insights gained from social media in the broadest sense mean that our reputation indeed precedes us in all domains.

Is this fair?

It is in an interesting question.

Irrespective, there is no question that social media is increasingly shaping our reputations and opportunities.

We are now releasing a series of short videos delving into the ExaTrends, starting with Reputation Economy.

Some of the issues covered in the video include:
* The amount of data we have now is enabling the measurement of reputation
* Influence and Reputation are different
* Klout, PeerIndex and their peers do not measure reputation, they are trying to measure influence.
* Other players in the emerging reputation space include LinkedIn, Honestly.com and CubeDuel
* Service marketplaces such as Freelancer.com, oDesk and Elance have internal reputation measures
* There is immense value to reputation measures, across many aspects of business
* Reputation is becoming central to business and society

You can download the full Map of the Decade including descriptions of each ExaTrend by clicking on the image:

An interesting article in Techworld titled How to manage your online reputation goes into the issue, describing how pharma firm GlaxoSmithKline had one of its trademarks hijacked by a dodgy company. The piece goes on:

“Reputations are more visible – and more vulnerable – than ever before,” says futurist Ross Dawson, who cites reputation as one of the key themes for 2012. So what can you do to ensure that your organisation is remembered for the right reasons?

The article then suggests some strategies, including this quote from me:

“If companies are illegally using social media sites, for example by misusing brand names, the first port of call is to ask the social media site to close the infringing account. Social media services want to avoid problems, and if there is obvious abuse they will take action,” says Dawson.

“You do need to be careful with this approach and only use it when it is legitimate. For example the social media furore Nestle experienced about its use of palm oil from rainforest areas came only after it asked YouTube to take down a Greenpeace video by saying it infringed its trademarks.

“If you can identify the infringing company and it is based in a country with a strong legal system, you can issue a cease-and-desist notice and otherwise take legal action, though in many cases this isn’t viable.”

“If there are no legal or other direct remedies, while it is frustrating it is often better not to take action. Drawing attention to what might be a small issue would just make the problem bigger.”

There is far less control than ever before in corporate reputation. Yet there are possible responses.

More importantly, the best way to manage potential negative reputation issues is to build a highly positive online reputation, which among other things can crowd out negative attention. Reputation, by its very nature, cannot be neutral. It is only either positive or negative.

From my 12 themes for 2012 deck, here is what I said on REPUTATIONS EXPOSED:

Reputations are more visible – and more vulnerable – than ever before. Beyond Wikileaks and its imitators the powerful amplification provided by social media means more shocking secrets than ever will be brought to light, with media organizations, corporations, and governments caught naked. While reputations can and will be trashed in moments, the rise of increasingly accurate reputation measures will also make visible the best companies and talented individuals.