Marketing & Innovation

Marketing & Innovation has moved

2006-01-26T22:55:00.000-08:00

The Marketing & Innovation Blog has moved and is now available at the following URL: http://visionarymarketing.wordpress.com/

Access 250 newspapers from 55 countries

2006-01-16T05:50:00.000-08:00

PressDisplay.com is a website which publishes pdf versions of a great number of newspapers From Around the World. I have been amazed by its ability to let you browse through the list of available countries and then choose the desired newspaper. This is actually triggering a question. One may think that journalists are shooting themselves in the foot by publishing (or letting others publish) their information online. Of course, some of it - mainly the archives are only accessible to subscribers. For instance, Time magazine will let subscribers print and read Time online if you have a valid username and password. But secure access does not prevent sharing, and it is yet to be proven that openness is beneficial for contents providers. Of course, it enables people from remoter locations to look at these newspapers that they would not be able to buy anyway. By the way, access to the information contained by the website is not free. When provinding your email address (check those spammers!) you will be able to test the Web site for 7 days and 7 issues for free.

Emergence Marketing

2006-01-13T07:01:00.000-08:00

Emergence Marketing is another weblog dedicated to Marketing & Innovation. Gabe D'Annunzio and François Gossiaux are its owners, and the owners of Corante. Corante is an initiative aimed at creating a network (the Corante Network) and hubs where each hub is a handled by experts. So in a way, it's a semi open social network where each hub contributor is an expert and not just a Mr Nobody. See Corante's Marketing blog page which is packed with Marketing & Social material. Exciting new venture. FYI, François Gossiaux is the former head of Marketing for Eroom, a company that was taken over by Documentum (itself acquired by EMC)

Amazing Online Jukebox Pandora Could Make Long Tail Even Longer

2006-01-13T05:22:00.000-08:00

The Pandora project enables you to create your own radio stations based on music you liked and delivering new titles you hadn't thought of or even didn't know that they existed. It's a great way to discover new artists. Could it be considered a new media? Could it replace your good old radio one day? On should we even envisage that future radio sets - being connected to the Internet - could deliver that kind of programme through your radio set or hifi tuner?

Besides, should we consider that this is the neginning of the end of real-time radio listening as we knew it. Whta is certain is that if we were to replace our regular radio stations with online widgets like these, we could actually wave goodbye to radio commercials as we know them. Or should we invent new forms of commercials instead?

Christopher Allen's History of Social Software

2006-01-13T02:49:00.000-08:00

The evolution of Social Software according to Christopher Allen is available online in his blog entitled "Life with Alacrity".

PERFORMANCING: A Blog Editor That Sits Within Firefox

2005-12-29T02:03:00.000-08:00

Performancing is a brand new Blog editor that sits within your Firefox browser. It enables users who are new to blogging to create a blog very easily.
It also enables you to upload a file to your blog, but the limit set on file uploads is very low. Not quite sure what the benefit of using Performancing is compared to Blogger or another online blogging system. Explanations/comments welcome ...

BT's Vision on Digital Content Provision

2005-12-20T08:18:00.000-08:00

British Telecom has published the following article on the decline of traditional media and the development of new digital content. They are expressing this vision while promoting their new line of service devoted to content provision. In 2001, BT started to work on the delivery of a Standard Delivery Platform (SDP). Their aim has been to 'enable the industry to standardise'. In June 2005, and after a long period of incubation, they decided to spin off the existing department a new entity co-owned by FT and NVP (New Venture Partners). This new entity is entitled iO and delivers special contents services to MVNO's. Their webpage is available at http://iogloballtd.com/iO-Home.html

Climate Change: Should Marketers Go On Working Unabated?

2005-12-19T06:14:00.000-08:00

A new scientist article about global warming and its consequences in Europe is raising fears that Europe might enter a new ice age. Not much to do with Marketing and Innovation you will say. Well I think just the other way round. It has everything to do with Marketing and Innovation. We as professionals go on working unabated and our aim is to produce riches. There is nothing wrong with this obviously - as long as it is done ethically - but what can we say about the consequences of the 'new' economy we are generating and its impact on the world. Indeed, we are no more guilty about this than our forefathers, and maybe less even.

But what difference does it make to the world as we know it? Would we be able to pursue our activities if Europe became a mere slab of ice? Would we be able to sell more LCD screens if no electricity could be produced anymore? Could we go on with Web 2.0 if a major disaster was taking place and you could not live in your flat anymore? Surely, survival would be number one on your and everyone else's agenda. So like it or not we are all part of it. But what can we do about this? Is it not too late anyway? If there anything we can do to change things in the short term? Or is it just a matter of waiting for scientists to be proven wrong about climate change. After all, only a few years back, when people were asking whether that particular heatwave in Europe was linked to Global Warming, the same scientists were denying the facts. It seems that they have changed their minds this time but it may change again I am sure.

Come what may, should we not surmise that Marketing should also encompass such Society issues and become more caring about people and the environment? If so, will that apply to emerging countries too? After all, I saw that air transportation for passengers went up by 7% in 2005 (2 billion passengers carried i.e. up by 100 million on 2004). Should we deny the right to travel to the increasingly well off Chinese for instance, who find it possible at last to roam the world freely after so many years of oppression? Is it really fair? It seems like changing the world for anyone of us individually is an impossible task. We had better leave this to our governments, but still ... maybe doing something about it could be a nice thing too, even though it looks like a daunting task for a single human being.

Web 2.0 gone mad

2005-12-13T00:02:00.000-08:00

It's not because you are a collaborative work enthusiast that you have to agree with everything that is going on in the name of so-called WEB 2.0. A USA today editorial published on Nov 29th entitled "A false Wikipedia biography" is making our hair stand on end. How come anybody can log in to a system as visible as Wikipedia and fabricate a biography for a living person. Besides, other online encyclopedias have copied this information too.

One may imagine what it would be if someone started to rewrite history in that manner. Historical characters would not be able to rise from the dead in order to correct such mistakes. In retrospect, this is more than just outrageous. What we are seeing here is the end of a myth around collaboration, it is Web 2.0 gone mad (see previous entry about Nicholas Carr's latest article against the Web 2.0 craze). And Web 2.0 gone mad is just like 1984(*) with people rewriting history as they like. There has to be - eventually - limits to our freedom of speech, and these limits are set by the general interest. Failing to understand this would definitely kill Web 2.0 and the wonderful tools brought by the Internet.

(*) George Orwell, 1984, Penguin Books Ltd ISBN: 0140126716

A whiter kind of web development with Ajax

2005-12-12T23:33:00.000-08:00

As described in Richard McManus's post on Zdnet a flurry of new online applications are being developed - literally - as we speak. They are one of the occurrences of so-called WEB 2.0.

Of course, one could sneer at that new buzz-word which mainly seems to be filling the gap for a nameless all-encompassing concept. Last week, I heard erstwhile O'Reilly CTO Jon Orwant (now a Director of Research for the FTR&D Boston lab) rightfully point out: "What was wrong with Web 1.0 that one had to rebrand it Web 2.0; wasn't it working properly?" he said in essence. After all, WEB 2.0 is the umpteenth buzzword and fad that we have been able to witness in the IT industry in the past 20 years. Each time a new buzzword is created, there are hopes - on one side - that things are going to get better for ever, and fears - on the other side - that this is the end of the world as we know it. Taking a bit of hindsight can prove useful, particularly in this context.

Having said that, one should pay a lot of attention to the following developments, which are putting ASP (Application Software Providers I mean, not Microsoft's 'active server pages') back on the IT agenda. Not all these applications are Ajax-based. But this new development method (this is not really a language as explained by Garrett, see following link) is setting the pace for an increaslingly fast-changing world. For a thorough description of Ajax , please refer to Guru Jesse James Garrett's blog page by clicking here.

Some of the online apps mentioned by McManus (following lines taken directly from ZDNET)

" [...]

Writely - "The Web Word Processor" (note that for creating documents, it uses an HTML editor and then converts to Word format)
FCKeditor is also an MS Word-like web app. It's open source too.
gOFFICE - "a browser-based online word processor and desktop publishing program"
Num Sum - web-based spreadsheets - except only the author of a spreadsheet can edit it.
Kiko - Online calendar solution powered by Ajax.
Gmail and now the new Yahoo! Mail (Microsoft is rumored to be working on a Hotmail upgrade, codenamed Kahuna)
called S5 - web-based Powerpoint
Webnote - web-based version of Microsoft's OneNote
thinkfree - online Office suite
Openomy - online file-system

And ones Peter has added to the mix:

[...]"

I hope my readers will be able to add more tools to this list. Reviews welcome.

How much is your Blog Worth?

2005-12-07T00:24:00.000-08:00

On his weblog Dane Carlson has developed a tool which can help you evaluate your Weblog. His tool is inspired by Tristan Louis's research into the value of each link to Weblogs Inc. He created an applet which is using Technorati's API and displays your blog's worth using the same link to dollar ratio as the AOL-Weblogs Inc deal.

Networking and Collaborative Work

2005-12-06T02:16:00.000-08:00

Proposed outline for the March 2006 RIM conference Date: 04/12/05

By J.Delacroix and Y. Gourvennec

Networking and Collaborative Work
Status and Trends for the Networked Economy

Please note: this is a draft executive summary; parts or even the entirety of this document may be subject to change

INTRODUCTION

The advent of Collaborative work is now well and truly established within the enterprise world. In a mid 2004 survey, analyst company IDC pointed out that their “focus group participants voted Web conferencing the most appropriate collaboration and meeting tool in 60% of everyday meetings and business processes”, and this is a clear sign that collaboration – or at least some form of it – has now become mainstream. But it's certainly not just a matter of technology. In this article, Jerome Delacroix and Yann Gourvennec have analysed the root causes for such changes. Beyond behaviour, it is the very relationship between working habits and technology which is at the heart of this issue. When Vannevar Bush wrote his trail-blazing article on dynamic associations in 1945, he created the concept of hypertext and eventually paved the way for Berners Lee's invention of the Web as we know it. Bush's idea was not about creating yet another technological gizmo, it was about knowledge, about improving our access to information and our understanding. At the end of the day, hypertext made possible the growth of information networks.

This dynamic and reciprocal influence between technology and social behaviour is the main reason for the amazing development (first at home, then in the office) of a flurry of collaborative tools. One should also be aware that new technology adoption always takes place in the consumer market nowadays before the business market replicates these changing behaviours. This is also a very significant sign of the times and it has significant consequences. The Collaborative revolution is well and truly underway and we may only be at the beginning of it. 2005 was a very propitious year for the development of new initiatives (collective online news blogs, IP-based telephony with increasingly potent plug-ins, collaboration weblogs, collective wiki-based encyclopaedias and even online Ajax-based office applications with in-built collaboration capabilities). This has triggered many thoughts and even fears which are not different from those expressed 10 years ago when the Internet became known to all. This new revolution was even entitled WEB 2.0 by some but not everyone – Nicholas Carr being one of the sceptics - is convinced.

THE IMPORTANCE OF NETWORKING AND COLLABORATION: LINKEDIN AND THE FOAF MODEL

The advent of LinkedIn is only natural, after years of changes in the way we work. LinkedIn and the like have become almost obligatory for these thousands of professionals who want to build their own informal networks. The principle on which LinkedIn is hinging is simple. It is named the FOAF model and was made popular by the Friendster website. That model relies on the notion of social capital, whereby the relationships between people at work are an asset as important as technical skills or financial capital. Such networking models enable professionals to find experts within an organisation, or even outside this organisation, and help establish the link between the supply and demand for expertise. New working methods have also cropped up with regard to the increasing instability of the job market and the fact that this has led office workers to become more and more detached and adopt the status of symbolic analysts which was announced years ago by Charles Handy. This is what is eventually leading to the explosion of Soho companies and knowledge workers, who are keen on retaining a high level of autonomy while being eager to tie links with many professionals with whom they work in networks. At the heart of the FOAF model, one finds reputation management, a mechanism whereby network members are appraising each others’ skills. In this article Jérôme Delacroix and Yann Gourvennec will give examples of existing networks enabling professionals to network with one another and sell their wares.

WHAT ARE THE REQUIRED SKILLS TO PERFORM IN THE NETWORKED ECONOMY ?

In order to achieve one’s goals in this new context, one must develop an array of behavioural skills in the following areas:

· “Intrapersonal” skills
With a frontier between work and personal life getting thinner by the day, it is becoming crucial for an individual to identify his core values and that of his/her organisation. As cooperative work develop, it will require more and more interactions between colleagues and with the outside world, and too wide a discrepancy between one’s beliefs and the identity of the corporation would soon lead to an unbearable mental pressure. That need for coherence is already a driving force in the professional choices of so-called cultural creatives around the world. In other words, everyone will need to be Socratic and discover who he really is.

· Interpersonal skills
Given the high amount of interaction between people, being able to smoothly interact with others will become even more important. Theories like transactional analysis and non violent communication can play a significant role here to ease teamwork.

· Communication
Accepting to communicate in an open manner on what you are doing, share your knowledge and let the others know what you know and who you know may be a challenge for many of us. Yet, these attitudes are prerequisites in a cooperative economy. Ability to negotiate in a cooperative, win-win manner is key to foster effective work relationships in the long run.

THESE TOOLS THAT CHANGED THE COLLABORATIVE LANDSCAPE IN THE PAST 10 YEARS

As hypertext and the Internet developed, networking practices increased, but they are only a starting point. E-mail was obviously the number one driver, which made it possible to lift the barriers against communication within the organisation itself to begin with, because it meant that it was no longer necessary to go through the hierarchy for two similar levels in the organisation to talk to one another. That was a very big change which did a lot for lifting hindrances to communication. It also forced middle management to change its way of working and mostly change the way that they were behaving with their staff. In this article, Jérôme Delacroix and Yann Gourvennec will provide a historical perspective with a focus on Groupware and the genesis of collaborative work. Subsequently, they will describe the different families of collaborative tools and elaborate on the fact that all these tools and approaches that are being developed are built around a stove-pipe approach.

THE FUTURE OF COLLABORATION

But the task of trying to find the right technology for the right kind of business requirement is daunting. How to make sense out of this myriad of technological developments? Visions are not easy to develop in that context, but some major trends can be described. To start with, the link with presence tools is a must. Collaboration tools will have to be built around such capabilities but interoperability will be an issue, as always with instant messaging. Presence can be developed around standard EIM (Enterprise Instant Messaging) systems but it might also emerge over time thanks to telephony over IP. But the real issue for large enterprises is to foster collaboration through instant messaging and assure interoperability while avoiding the proliferation of various public IM systems. How to keep one’s eyes open while maintaining security will be the worst nightmare keeping CIO’s awake at night.

But the real challenge with collaboration is to be able to determine what kind of usage is going to suit what kind of users. User segmentation is a must and is the preliminary exercise for all kinds of requirements definition study in that field of practice. Features like Videoconferencing for instance are always quoted by users but very seldom used. Online video presence may well become mainstream but we are not there yet.

Breaking the barriers between the various tools that make up collaboration is leading us to the inevitable discussion about convergence. Previous experience in unified messaging has shown that convergence can happen when users have come to use individual tools in a stovepipe approach and then – once used to these tools – there can be a requirement for convergence. (This is also linked to Metcalfe’s law). Supporting hardware availability and interoperability is a must-have to reduce integration risks.

The mastering of all these aspects of collaborative work is the obligatory path for the resolution of the complexity that is associated with the deployment of such technologies, and the only way that can turn a technological gadget into real business benefit. If all these criteria are taken into account, real savings can be achieved through collaborative work in the enterprise.

Collaboration would not be complete if information repositories were not taken into account. Many other features are now added to such collaborative environments which cover the entirety of the spectrum regarding office tools: Group calendaring, project management, document versioning and tracing, … Such components are now key to employees’ every day work and in fact, it even extends beyond the walls of the enterprise. Blogs, wikis, and P2P based user-centric tools are key to the successful implementation of a collaborative work information system. However, such an overwhelming complexity reinforces the need for specifying the requirement accurately – which may not stop with the eliciting of an existing requirement but lead to the suggestion of new features. Online collaboration through web-centric Ajax-based applications is reinforcing the success of “main-frame”-like approaches which enable collaboration and compensate for the explosion of information on individual unshared computers.

Understanding the hype cycle is also key in the selection of such innovative systems which are both appealing and hard to implement. Collaborating is tempting but it is mostly based on the decision of individuals to share information with each other and cannot be imposed. A deployment through viral internal marketing is the best possible approach.

A FEW HOME TRUTHS ABOUT ROI’S

Despite the fact that all these technologies are so powerful and so widely available, despite the fact that using them is becoming almost natural to all (mainly through IM) it is still difficult to deploy collaboration tools in the enterprise world. Because of requirement assessment issues, user segmentation issues, training and usability issues ... but also because there is a flurry of new products being launched in the market that they are all converging in one way or another but one doesn't quite know where when or how. Besides, if convergence could enable more features to be united under the same collaboration umbrella, one can be sure that such converged tools would become increasingly complex in their usage. However, the evidence that Jérôme Delacroix and Yann Gourvennec have gathered concerning the implementation of corporate collaboration shows that ROI’s can be significant.

Can process management stifle innovation?

2005-11-22T03:37:00.000-08:00

Do process management programmes (TQM, ISO 9000, Six Sigma,...) discourage Innovation? Such is the question posed by Mary J Benner, Assistant Professor of Management at Wharton university of Pennsylvania. Benner is a seasoned specialist in innovation and management and she and fellow researcher Tushman have been studying this subject since 1998. Lester Craft from Innovate Forum is adding a few comments on this subject too. Craft believes that such programmes can indeed entice companies to go for incremental innovation versus disruptive innovation, and therefore adopt what in essence is a minimalist approach to innovation.

Benner doesn't deny that corporate process programmes are having positive effects. On the contrary. She is a former GE manager and she must know about six sigma. In fact, she merely suggests that Managers try and apply these principles in a more appropriate and maybe less systematic manner.

More on Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Cafe delocator declares war on uniformity

2005-11-18T03:32:00.000-08:00

Thank god, it's not just a few old gits from Old Europe who seem to be fed up with these faceless standardised, uniformed coffee houses which are cropping up all over the world. A group of anti marketing coffee house activists has decided to create a delocator to promote their idea of a good café. This delocator is very useful and simple. Just enter a post(zip) code in the input box and press the 'delocate' button and you will be able to display a number of alternatives to these despised standard cafés.

You can try it with a Manhattan (10452) zip by clicking here.

Last but not least, the Delocator Toolkit will enable you to create your own coffee delocator and install it on your website.

http://www.delocator.net/index_full.php

Nicholas Carr is having a go at Web2.0

2005-11-18T02:33:00.000-08:00

You already knew about Nicholas Carr's famous article ‘IT doesn’t matter‘, which we have already commented on Visionarymarketing.com. Carr made his point very clear about what he thought about how strategic IT was to business. (Read my summary of Carr's article online)

A short time ago, Nicholas Carr posted another article on his blog on the subject of so-called Web 2.0, i.e. the advent of collaborative work on the Net. His criticism is, one again, very sharp. To him, the Web is amoral because it values amateurism better than professionalism. Being able to react in real-time is no excuse for poor content. He is mainly having a go a the new star of the Internet, the amazing collaborative encylopedia called Wikipedia. We have also dealt with that subject on our website in the article entitled of networks and men.

Nicholas Carr