Author Archive
by Jenny Ambrozek
July 15, 2008 at 1:58 pm · Filed under
Reviews
June 25 here at TheAppGap 3 owners of Facebook Groups that participated in the Facebook Groups Investigation– Eric Edelstein, Francois Gossieaux and Kimberly Samaha– joined conveners Victoria Axelrod, Bill Anderson and myself to share what we learned in a webinar. Slides are available here.
Now thanks to Hylton Jolliffe an Executive Summary of the discussion has been released. Please go to http://www.theappgap.com/AppGaponFacebookGroups.doc
The webinar discussion summary includes these 10 tips for creating business value from Facebook Groups.
1. Just get going.
2. Find a topic people care about.
3. Be careful (i.e., be smart). Don’t “spam” your Facebook Group.
4. Rewards help.
5. Create connection points.
6. Create outreach programs.
7. Give the community a heartbeat.
8. Identify, appoint, and nurture ambassadors.
9. Your name matters. What you call your group is important
10. Watch what others are doing.
Are you using Facebook for your business?
Do these tips match your experience?
Anything we’ve missed?
We look forward to reading your insights and or addressing any questions about the “Should Your Business be Friends with Facebook” Executive Summary.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
by Jenny Ambrozek
July 9, 2008 at 1:52 pm · Filed under
Collective intelligence, Enterprise 2.0
Offices without people sitting at computers are unimaginable today but it was not so 60 years ago. Under the title: “Tea-shop Boffin who pioneered business computing” the June 28 Financial Times obituary of David Caminer 1915-2008 reminds us:
“ A more incongruous sight would be hard to imagine, particularly in 1951. There, at the heart of a vast catering empire devoted to tea and cakes, was a pulsing sci-fi monster with endless rows of tubes filled with half a ton of mercury. The monster’s name was Leo. It was the world’s first business computer and its master, David Caminer, who has died at the age of 93, was one of the great pioneers of commercial computing.”
Leo and it’s master seemed very far away the July 4 weekend as I followed a Twitter conversation about “ambient intimacy” begun by Mastermark who Tweeted:
mastermark On OSX, with Adium, that even comes with Growl notification windows, so the full ambient intimacy program is in effect. 08:24 PM July 03, 2008 from Ping.fm
For those unacquainted with “ambient intimacy” the term is attributed to Leisa Reichelt and dates to a March 1, 2007 blog post that explains:
“I’ve been using a term to describe my experience of Twitter (and also Flickr and reading blog posts and Upcoming). I call it Ambient Intimacy.
Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. Flickr lets me see what friends are eating for lunch, how they’ve redecorated their bedroom, their latest haircut. Twitter tells me when they’re hungry, what technology is currently frustrating them, who they’re having drinks with tonight.”
Mastermark on Twitter, Mark Masterson in the real world, is an obviously seriously talented and thoughtful software architect, whose reading interests range from Bertrand Russell to Kurt Gödel. If I understand correctly, Mark used the term “ambient intimacy’ in the context of implementing Identi.ca, the emerging open sources challenger to Twitter, to ensure signals from all his social networks were ambiently present. Mastermark’s blog post describing his effort is recommended reading.
From Leo to Mastermark enabling Identi.ca to maximize ambient intimacy, I couldn’t help but wonder where to from here? If the demo pavilion at the recent Enterprise 2.0 Boston is any indicator established and new enterprise platform providers have their programmers very engaged inserting “social network” functionality. However, how will the availability of “ambient intimacy” change, or not, the nature of work and organizations?
Whether you are a Twitter enthusiast, opponent, or observer, your insights please.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
by Jenny Ambrozek
June 20, 2008 at 9:54 am · Filed under
Collaboration, Collective intelligence, Webinar, social networks
Thanks to TheAppGap sponsors Intuit Quickbase next Wednesday June 25, 3pm EDT we”ll have a chance to share learning from our Facebook Groups in Business Investigation convened December 2007.
Webinar details are posted here along with the registration.
PLEASE JOIN US.
To ensure we address your questions about observing the dynamics of 10 Facebook Groups December 2007- February 2008, please submit as comments below.
The 10 participating Facebook Groups and owners (from 6 countries and 4 continents) who made the investigation possible were:
Bordeaux Colloquium- Kimberly Samaha
Cscout- Ray Cha
eSquared- Eric Edelstein
Hellenes Educators & London Jewish Cultural Centre- Niki Lambropoulos
Huddlemind Labs- Dave Duarte
Marketing 2.0- Francois Gossieaux
Network PR- Jenni Beattie
RNIA Supporters- Adam Kovitz
As investigation co-conveners with Bill Anderson , Victoria Axelord and I monitored our 21st Century Organizations Facebook Group.
The investigation was supported by advisors Jeffrey Keefer, Patti Anklam, Jill Howell, Josh Katinger, Danielle Ravich, and interest from the Knowledge Innovation Network, University of Warwick to which the first findings were presented March 6. The slides are here.
Our Facebook Groups learning included:
- What it takes to drive activity in a Facebook Group
- The importance of purposeful business objectives, and
- Gaps in Facebook administration tools.
We also experienced the challenges of facilitating a peer-to-peer action research intitiative across 16 hours of time zones but the joy of collaborating with an extraordinary ad hoc “network in the word” (as fellow AppGap contributor Patti Anklam describes) that assembled for this investigation. Proving the power of online to connect and serendipitous real world encounters, only one Facebook Group owner was known to the conveners before the investigation begin.
Having your questions in advance to guide webinar planning is appreciated as is your registering and joining our conversation about Facebook Groups in Business June 25, 3pm EDT.
1. What interests you about Facebook Groups and their potential value for your business?
2. Have you successfully used a Facebook Group to support your enterprise or started a group and watched it lie fallow?
3. What have we missed?
Please share your insights and questions.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
by Jenny Ambrozek
June 16, 2008 at 12:31 pm · Filed under
Reviews
Last week I was in Boston for Enterprise 2.0 and delighted to connect live for a change with TheAppGap contributors Patti Anklam and Bill Ives. It was a REALLY busy conference meshing workshops, formal conference sessions, vendor presentations and the Open Session hosted by SocialText’s Ross Mayfield. Bill Ives report here has highlights.
At the conference we learned there were multiple related conferences happening around us:
i. Enterprise 2.0 Boston speakers Dion Hinchcliffe and IBM’s Jeff Schick travelled on to the June 12 Web 2.0 Strategies Conference in London.
ii. Clara Shih, the Salesforce presenter on Mathew Lees Social Software Shoot Out panel mentioned O’Reilly’s Graphing Social Patterns conference taking place in Washington DC. Subheaded “The Business & Technology of Social Platforms”, the conference is billed as:
”the premier conference for developers and marketers building and distributing apps for MySpace, Facebook, OpenSocial and other social networking platforms”
iii. Appropriately as inventor of the term “Enterprise 2.0″ Andrew McAFee attended the Boston conference, quizzing an excellent panel of practitioners about their experiences implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools. In a quick exchange I learned Professor McAfee was en route to San Francisco and on his blog today I see must read reports from the mLab conference, organized by Gary Hamel, Professor of Strategic and International Management at London Business School. (My 21st Century Organization blogging partner Victoria Axelrod wrote about Hamel’s “Moving Management Online” article for Harvard Business Review Online last fall.)
What does this flurry of gatherings past– Enterprise 2.0 Boston;, Web 2.0 Strategies,London; Graphing Social Patterns, Washington DC; Management 2.0, Half Moon Bay– and on the horizon, Supernova 2008 taking place this week in San Francisco, the International Forum on Enteprise 2.0 in Italy June 25, and the 4th Annual WikiSym gathering in Portugal come September tell us?
Can it be that 9 years after Stowe Boyd drew our attention to “Social Tools” the impact on organizations at the grassroots is finding it’s way into executive suites and the potential for wider adoption and organizational adaptation to take advantage of “Collaboration, participation, collective intelligence: Innovation” as Enterprise 2.0 Italy suggests?
At Enterprise 2.0 Boston I had the chance to interview Stowe Boyd for his forthcoming Inside Knowledge magazine profile. The video in which Stowe looks back and forward about the adoption of social tools in organizations is posted here. Social tools are also being put to work to gather insights for Stowe’s IK Magazine profile. Context and an invitation to contribute Stowe stories are posted here. If you’ve been influenced by Stowe Boyd’s writing over the years, please do share your insights..
~ Jenny Ambrozek
by Jenny Ambrozek
June 4, 2008 at 3:59 pm · Filed under
Collaboration, Collective intelligence, Enterprise 2.0, social networks
Next week with fellow TheAppGap contributors Bill Ives and Patti Anklam on a panel about Blogging I will be in good company attending the Enterprise 2.0 Conference, Boston. Evidence as John Seely Brown and John Hagel have taught us that the interesting developments happen at the edge, I learned about this conference from London based Mark Masterson whom I met at Enterprise 2.0 Hanover in March. Appropriately my exchanges with Mark began around Ronald Burt’s book Structural Holes, a theme of my presentation.
Looking ahead to Enterprise 2.0 Boston I’m wondering what “App Gaps” will I see filled and what holes will continue to exist? Clearing my desk last weekend I found the December 2007 McKinsey Quarterly article ”Eight Business Technology Trends to Watch” and wondered to what extent these will be evidenced? The McKinsey 2008 trends list runs:
Managing Relationships
1. Distributing cocreation
2. Using consumers as innovators
3. Tapping into a world of talent
4. Extracting more value from interactions
Managing capital and assets
5. Expanding the frontiers of automation
6. Unbundling production from delivery
Leveraging information in new ways
7. Putting more science into management
8. Making business from information
Curiously also in my backlogged reading was an April 2007 Information Week piece: Web 2.0 Arrives to Find Web 3.0 Under Way. Browsing this I can’t help but wonder how long it will be before we see “Enterprise 3.0″ Conferences being organized? If we had a prediction market about which Patti Anklam has blogged here we could use that. In it’s absence I’m curious to hear your thoughts about “Enterprise 2.0’s” life span.
Meantime my 21stCenturyOrganization blogging colleague Victoria Axelrod and I will be in Boston and very much look forward to meeting anyone who is attending there. We plan to participate in the Enterprise 2 Open Tuesday afternoon (June 10) and would welcome your joining our session, Open net∞WORKing Organizations - Co-generating Business Value.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
by Jenny Ambrozek
May 27, 2008 at 3:27 pm · Filed under
Culture
The piles in my office point to my reading behinded-ness but I wonder if anyone else caught the May 11, 2008 New York Times Magazine article reporting that the Oxford English Dictionary has no future plans to publish print versions. The author, Virginia Heffernan laments:
”But while The New York Times and other newspapers have refrained from rash decisions about their print editions, the Oxford English Dictionary — staid, right? — has already shaken off the shackles of print and said cheerio (“a parting exclamation of encouragement”) to books! The stab I felt was sharper than nostalgia. It was fear. “
From TheAppGap perspective it was the OED editor’s reported comment regarding technology that caught my attention:
“ In any case, we’ve only finished from volume ‘M’ to ‘quit shilling.’ We have about 20 years’ more work to do revising and adding entries. Who knows what will happen with technology in 20 years? We certainly don’t.”
“Technology in 20 years?”
Prompted by hearing about Dave Weinberger’s references to Ray Kurzweil at the Community 2.0 Conference (at which Patti Anklam spoke), I went searching for what occupies Kurzweil these days. In terms of what technology will look like in 20 years this video is interesting.
Bottom line. If carbon based humans are challenged to keep up in an exponentially digital world in 2008 then how will we manage in 2028? What will work and technology look like then? What trends now will help us see the future?
A serious question and I look forward to reading your thoughts.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
by Jenny Ambrozek
May 6, 2008 at 2:43 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, Talent Management
Jon Husband’s April 26 post here asked:
“Will Enterprise 2.0 Drive Management Innovation?”
Last year watching the buzz around Enterprise 2.0 in a blog post titled: “Enterprise 2.0 “Tips” Not Enough: wikiNOMICS, Chariots of Fire Velocity & Net Work” I wrote:
“…it occurred to me one could globally replace “KM” in most of the “Enterprise 2.0″ posts and you would see the same exchanges pioneers had striving to implement KM in organizations…”
Recently researching an article to be published in Effective Executive Magazine’s June KM edition, I’ve had the privilege of an exchange with Robert H. Buckman whom Infoworld 2003 called “KM’s
father figure”. My interest in Buckman’s work grew reading his March 6 2007 post to the AOK Yahoo Group that included:
“Jerry, thank you for the kind words, but I never did try and manage knowledge. What I really tried to manage and nurture was a culture that would encourage and expand the flow of knowledge. It was because economic value could only be obtained in our environment when knowledge moved across the organization in response to a need.” ~ Robert H. Buckman
We’ve folded every rich nugget of our recent Bob Buckman exchange into our article but suffice to say his focus remains as per the quote above on creating an organization that supports knowledge flow. He told us:
“If you look at it from the standpoint of how much effort it takes to achieve and effect knowledge sharing across an organization, you will find that the technology piece is about 5 to 10 percent of the effort, changing the way work is done is the 90 to 95 percent of the effort. You can define the effort as time or as money, it still comes out about the same” ~ Robert H. Buckman
IBM’s just released CEO survey points to technology being a factor in causing change. Still as mentioned by 37% of CEO’s it ranked behind market forces and people skills, both 48%, as leading external change forces.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
by Jenny Ambrozek
April 8, 2008 at 9:20 pm · Filed under
Talent Management
Did anyone else see the April 6 New York Times piece promoting “Whole New Mind” author Dan Pink’s argument that the “M.F. A. is becoming the new M.B.A.?” Titled “Let Computers Compute. It’s the Age of the Right Brain” it makes the case that:
“… now that computers can emulate many of the sequential skills of the brain’s left hemisphere - the part that sees the individual trees in a forest - ….. it’s time for our imaginative right brain, which sees the entire forest all at once, to take center stage.”
The NY Times quotes General Motors’ Robert A. Lutz in support. On being hired to “whip the product development into shape” Lutz told “The New York Times” about his new approach:
“It’s more right brain. It’s more creative” … “I see us as being in the art business” he said, “art, entertainment and mobile sculpture, which, coincidentally, also happens to provide transportation.”
The NY Times writer argues:
“When a car company like G.M. is in the the art business, every company in any other industry is, too.”
March 8 The Financial Times marked 100 years since Harvard began a masters of business administration program. Eight, all men, finished with another 25 class members failing to do so. The thrust of the FT piece title “Masters and misgivings” is whether the 100 year old coveted MBA qualification has proven it’s full worth. The article explores aspects from student perceptions through reasons companies like Google hire MBA’s, to public criticism of MBA programs and the challenges business schools face adapting to serve internet generation students. I’m curious to hear from TheAppGap contributors and readers on this topic. Does the MBA remain an essential qualification for business leadership in the future, and or, do you see a shift to more focus on “right brain” talents and recruiting MFA’s? ~ Jenny Ambrozek
by Jenny Ambrozek
April 2, 2008 at 1:13 pm · Filed under
Reviews
In describing Central Desktop as a “Wiki-based Collaborative Platform” Bill Ives reminded me of the very evolved wiki applications presented at the inaugural Enterprise 2.0 Summit in Hannover March 4. My blog post reporting the event describes 4 very different uses by 4 companies across 4 countries.
At Motorola in Norway Kenneth Lavrsen, implemented a TWiki wiki to streamline maintaining quality standards documentation. The positive results: moving the documentation process from a chore (in advance of anticipated auditor visits), to a living document that is continually used. In addition the wiki has inspired other uses and internal knowledge sharing improvements.
As knowledge management head for Frankfurt Airport (Fraport AG) Wieland Stützel, introduced a wiki for cross organizational knowledge sharing. His implementation process provides excellent lessons for building an implementation team to support adoption and ongoing use.
Diego Gianetti with BTicino S.p.a., (an Italian producer of communication, distribution and energy control systems) implemented a wiki, “Sul Campo”, to support a sales force community of practice. I’ve worked on projects trying to encourage sales teams to share knowledge and appreciate this is a serious accomplishment.
And at, Société Française de Radiotéléphone (a French mobile carrier), Cedric Blum has implemented a wiki to help customer service representatives share knowledge and solve customer problems.
As often happens during the early adoption of new technologies, one tends to hear the same cases repeated. On how many occasions have you heard Andrew McAfee’s Dresdner Kleinwort wiki cited as a good example? It was refreshing to add to my list of serious, strategically important wiki applications.
My congratulations to each of the March 4 Enterprise 2.0 Summit, CEBIT, wiki case presenters for their business vision and wiki implementations.
by Jenny Ambrozek
February 9, 2008 at 10:13 am · Filed under
Reviews
For those unable to attend hats off to Steve King, Jim Ware, and Josh Holbrook for a fabulous AppGap webinar Friday. It provided a complete scan of the remote working landscape including benefits and challenges to organizations.
Particularly thought provoking for me was the discussion about P&Gs “Connect & Develop” program as an example of “amplifying” individuals and organizations, and breaking down organizational barriers. For a recent Inside Knowledge Magazine article on “Broadcasting Innovation” (co-authored with Victoria G. Axelrod) we contacted Larry Huston, Managing Director, 4iNNO, who as P&G’s Vice President of Innovation, was responsible for implementing “Connect & Develop”. Larry described the positive business impact of reaching beyond P&G’s internal research and development facilities for innovation as:
“Using this program, along with improvements in product cost, design and marketing, R&D productivity increased by nearly 60%. Innovation success rate more than doubled while the cost of innovation fell. From 2000-2006 R&D investment as percent of sales fell from 4.8% to 3.4% while creating 250 products generating billions in new top line sales.”
For the same article we also looked closely at InnoCentive, the innovation marketplace pharmaceuticals company Eli Lilly initiated in 2001 to reach beyond the walls of their internal laboratories and “crowd source” or “broadcast” their research needs. Today InnoCentive connects commercial, academic, and nonprofit organizations “Seekers” that post “Challenges” spanning a wide spectrum of industries and disciplines to “Solvers“. Solvers are incented with cash awards that have ranged from $5,000 to $1,000,000. 125,000 plus engineers, scientists, inventors, business people, and research organizations in more than 175 countries are reached.
Intriguing regarding InnoCentive is what Harvard Business School’s Lakhani and colleagues found from investigating 166 discrete scientific problems “broadcast” for resolution by 26 company laboratories between 2001 and 2005. They attributed this open approach to “a 29.5% resolution rate for scientific problems unsolved by R & D laboratories of well known science-driven firms.” (1)
More interesting in light of Friday’s webinar was why accessing a larger pool of external talent works and other factors in problem resolution. Success was associated with the ability to “attract specialized scientists with diverse scientific interests.” In addition, “successful solvers created solutions to problems that were on the boundary or outside of their fields of expertise.” Openness worked to “trigger the transfer and transformation of knowledge from one scientific field to another. Efficiencies were gained as solver drew on information from previously developed solutions.” (1)
Knitting together the Lakhani et al InnoCentive findings with outcomes from recent research into how Google’s prediction markets operate has me wondering about the potential impact on geographically separating a company’s workers for diversity of thinking and innovation. At Google, Bo Cowgill (2) and researchers found:
“Traders in the same location tend to make the same trades at the same time. The trades of cubemates within a small radius is the best predictor we found. By using a record of historical office changes, we could observe that the correlation begins shortly after people are seated nearby. It makes sense, because the physical proximity enables easy communication.”
So if:
i. Broadcasting problem research beyond the bounds of R&D labs through idea marketplaces like InnoCentive and P&G’s Connect & Develop program increases problem resolution, and
ii. Physical proximity of Google cubemates correlates with similar prediction market trading patterns
is it not possible that geographically dispersing workers, potentially, may result in more diverse thinking in an organization?
My musing through Friday’s webinar about a possible link between remote working and diversity of thinking in organizations is pure speculation. However, along with wondering what others took away from Friday’s seminar, I do wonder if anyone is aware of research into the topic of my speculation.
~ Jenny Ambrozek
1. Lakhani, Karim R., Lars Bo Jeppesen, Peter A. Lohse, and Jill A. Panetta. “The Value of Openness in Scientific Problem Solving.” Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 07-050, 2007.
2. Cowgill, B., et al 2008- “Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence from Google
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/flow-of-information-at-googleplex.html
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