21st Century Organization

From Crowdsourcing to Collective Intelligence at Work: Organizations are the Key

2009-12-18T11:27:56-05:00

The Knowledge Innvovation Network (of the University of Warwick Business School) recently convened a diversely thought provoking workshop addressing "Knowledge and Prediction Markets". Jed Christiansen did his always stellar job explaining the operation and value of prediction markets. I had the opportunity to broaden the discussion, talking about "Collective Intelligence at Work: Promises, Perils and Practice".

My slides are now posted along with appreciation to all the very smart people-- acknowledged below-- who gave time to providing cases, insights and idea filtering to inform my talk.

Collective Intelligence At Work

Next Practice

Qualcomm's Ricardo Dos Santos and Motorola's Rami Levy are responsible for the two most evolved applications of "Collective Intelligence at Work" that I know:

i. Qualcomm's VentureFest where collective intelligence meets corporate entrepreneurship and

ii. Motorola's ThinkTank eXchange, a model of "socialized innovation"

and generously shared their slides allowing others to learn from their initiatives.

Both demonstrate the investment involved in putting collective intelligence to work that begins with clear focus on business strategy and how value will be created through crowdsourcing. It proceeds to developing the organizational systems and collaboration platforms required to filter the most promising collected ideas into profitable business opportunities.

Qualcomm's Venturefest and Motorola's ThinkTank Exchange also highlight the exceptional "Whole Mind" management talent required to lead collective intelligence initiatives. Both Ricardo dos Santos and Rami Levy succeed because they have respect and support from executive leadership and can also build the relationships across their organizations to engage key stakeholders and contributions from diverse minds.

Promise and Perils

My talk also included examples of crowdsourcing efforts that help us appreciate the discipline and evolved nature of the Qualcomm and Motorola collective intelligence initiatives.

Wikipedia participation dynamics, the gap between the number of people who read and actively contribute and their organizational challenges, have been well documented and discussed.

Tom Malone, director of MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, a "We are Smarter than Me" project sponsor, openly admits that the project needed more active facilitation. Ultimately a team of paid writers were hired to filter the crowdsourced contribution and produce the book.

Andrew McAfee's Cases 2.0 wiki was inspiration for Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises (WSE) (convened with colleague Victoria Axelrod) to collect examples of enterprises leading the way with sustainability projects to provide models for others. Paying closer attention to the number of Cases 2.0 collected emergently over two years would have made me wiser about the work involved to make WSE successful. I'm appreciating the organization the Social Media Advertising Consortium has assembled to collectively support the development of a common social media vocabulary and evolve their industry.

Your taking time to review my slides, comment and challenge my thinking is appreciated.

Do you agree putting collective intelligence to work is critical to 21st century business success?

Please share your successful collective intelligence projects and recommended practices. And if perchance your initiatives did not meet expectations do take a moment to reflect so others benefit from your experience.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

CREDITS

In addition to Ricardo Dos Santos and Rami Levy who shared their cases my thanks to:

Linda Rebrovick, CEO Consensus Point for permission to use her Web 2.0 Trends slide
Ana María Llopis, founder of ideas4all; David Resseguie, Sensorpedia, Oak Ridge National Laboratories, and Michael Turillo, COO of Spencer Trask Collaborative Innovations, (an industry leader through their investments in InnoCentive and Inno360) for product and trend insights
Gary Colet and Phil Ridout (Knowledge Innovation Network), Victoria Axelrod, Bill Anderson, Steve Ardire, Dan Keldsen, John Maloney, Wendy Gold and Cathy Joseph for fresh perspectives
Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises contributors and Vincent Associates for providing network maps.

RELATED RESOURCES

KIN December 2 Resources Google Wave
Ambrozek, Jenny, and Axelrod, Victoria "Broadcasting Innovation:Organising to Collect Intelligence," Inside Knowledge Dec. 2007
Axelrod, Victoria and Ambrozek, Jenny "Prediction Markets Co-creating an Organisation's Future." Inside Knowledge Mar. 2008

Have Prediction Markets arrived as an Enterprise Knowledge Sharing & Innovation Platform?

2009-11-09T14:55:33-05:00

A small and really smart group of people convened by John Maloney (at the Gleacher Executive Center in Chicago), on November 6 to explore the latest developments in collective intelligence and use of prediction markets.

The conversation flow, diversity, and challenge to conventional thinking mirrored the forward looking sculptures in nearby Millenium Park.

For those new to prediction markets finding a public prediction market to explore is increasingly easy, for example see the Industry Standard and CFO Magazine. The 2.0 Adoption Prediction Market made news at the recent San Francisco Enterprise 2.0 Conference.

Andrew McAfee lists prediction markets as part of Enterprise 2.0. This Inside Knowledge Prediction Markets Masterclass (co-authored with colleague Victoria Axelrod) describes the prediction market landscape in 2008.

Why did I leave Chicago thinking that enterprise use of prediction markets to tap grassroots employee knowledge for forecasting, and in support of innovation. is about to blossom?

Three reasons:

1. High Profile Proven Enterprise Prediction Market Applications

Exemplifying the time for new ideas and technology to find their way into widespread adoption first use of an enterprise prediction market is credited to Robin Hanson (George Mason University professor and Consensus Point prediction market platform provider Chief Scientist) and dates to 1990.

HP pioneered use of prediction markets with it's BRAIN project. (Dr. Leslie Fine, now Crowdcast's VP Market Design, was HP's BRAIN lead researcher.) The wider adoption of prediction markets by companies from Google to Best Buy, Cisco Systems, GE Healthcare, General Mills, Qualcomm and ArcelorMittal, is widely reported including in this New York Times articles.

Friday Rami Levy, added to the list in explaining Motorola's evolved use of a prediction market to filter ideas and speed innovation.

2. Technology Evolution

As a pioneering prediction market provider since 1994, Chicago Cluster sponsor Consensus Point hosts high profile clients Best Buy, Motorola and Qualcomm among others. The Chicago meeting also revealed a next generation of vendors including Crowdcast and Spigit. Crowdcast's focus is forecasting business results. Spigit gets attention because of Warburg Pincus's recent $10m investment. Their platform targets "innovation management" and embeds prediction in a social networking platform.

Each provider is carving out a niche and extending enterprise prediction market applications. In the process platforms are evolving, made easier to use and integrate into day-to-day business processes.

3. Growing Enterprise Understanding

The case has been made for the business value that comes from reaching out and engaging more diverse minds to solve business problems and co-create new opportunities. A host of books from James Surowiecki's Wisdom of the Crowds (2004) to Yochai Benkler's Wealth of Networks (2006), Dan Tapscott's Wikinomics (2006) and Clara Shih's Facebook Era (2009) detail the trend.

While enterprise prediction markets have been the province of innovative companies, the Chicago participants pointed to a diverse and expanding array of new applications.

The talent represented in each of the platform vendor executive teams, and among participants implementing new applications, was also thought provoking about factors in successful use. Putting prediction markets to work in enterprises demands a wide array of skills from technical understanding for making markets perform within the culture of an organization, to relationship building to engage participants and encourage contribution. Quantitative skills + tie to business strategy + relationship building + technology are all essential.

What have I missed? If you were in the room in Chicago, or not, please comment to inform my reflection on the discussions.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Hazel Henderson & Hopenhagen: The Challenge of Change

2009-10-22T23:21:37-04:00

The Institute for Sustainable Enterprise (ISE) at Fairleigh Dickinson University strives to "bring people together to learn how to live and manage sustainably".

Hazel Henderson: "Beyond GDP"

October 16 ISE provided the opportunity to hear from Hazel Henderson who as an author, speaker and activist has been working toward an interdisciplinary economic and political theory with a focus on environmental and social concerns. See her web site http://www.hazelhenderson.com/ and Wikipedia entry.

With a commitment to reducing her carbon footprint Ms Henderson presented via WebEx. The slides and audio are available here. (Please overlook the institutional sound check disrupting the presentation.)

There was much to consider in Hazel Henderson's "Beyond GDP: Operationalizing Indicators of Sustainability and Quality of Life" presentation but these were my key takeaways:

i. Time to Change

Hazel Henderson has been advocating for "an interdisciplinary economic and political theory with a focus on environmental and social concerns' for close to 30 years. Changing mindsets and practices is no easy feat.

ii. We Manage What we Measure

Ms Henderson's presentation reminds us that measures matter and that adapting enterprises to be more sustainable will demand using new metrics for success.

Rich discussions followed Hazel Henderson's presentation led by Frank Werner, a Professor of Finance at Fordham University, and Fern Jones, a financial industry expert focused on socially responsible investing.

Hopenhagen

Kelly Stephenson, who's helped bring Ogilvy Earth's Hopenhagen Campaign to life, was also present at ISE to encourage support for their program.

Hopehagen aims "to connect every person, every city, and every nation to Copenhagen. To give everyone hope, and a platform from which to act. To create a grassroots movement that’s powerful enough to influence change." The campaign grew from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon's concern to raise public awareness around the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen December 7.

Have we Reached a Sustainability Tipping Point?

As I think about Hazel Henderson's work through three decades to change "blind spots" of conventional economists and scan the landscape it seems to me momentum is changing. My last post here reported presentations from the www.wnsf.org October conference where executives-- notably all impressive women-- leading sustainability strategy at DuPont, IBM, Pfizer, TIAA-CREF and Walmart. Coca Cola, Siemens and SAP are corporate partners in the Hopenhagen campaign. (SAP's involvement is not surprizing given it's flurry of sustainable business publications and "long-term strategic focus on sustainability, covering both its own operations and customer solutions for more sustainable business practices" announced earlier this year.)

Everywhere I turn a professional group is striving to understand how their roles and skills are relevant and must adapt as their organizations become sustainability aware from doing the minimum, compliance, or seeking new opportunities "sustainability" offers. This week I participated in thoughtful discussions of the ODNetwork NY Sustainability SIG and I'm hosting a "Sustainability" discussion (members only) at allPM.com ahead of International Project Management Day. (I'm spreading the word about our Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises initiative that aims to build a living library of examples of enterprises leading the way and providing models for others to follow.)

Is your organization seeking new opportunities in "sustainability" like leaders DuPont, IBM, Pfizer, TIAA-CREF, Walmart, Coca Cola, Siemens and SAP listed above?

How are you preparing to adapt your skills to contribute to the needs of your organization as your management grasps the messages from business influentials starting with Ram Nidumolus, C.K. Prahald and M.R. Rangaswami that sustainability is key to competitive advantage?

Please take a moment to share your perspective. And if you are an enterprise that can inspire others with how you are adapting your business to be more sustainable and provide next practices to guide others, please share what you're doing and what you've learned.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Sustainability = Innovation + Collaboration: Report from WNSF Summit

2009-10-07T09:37:02-04:00

Speakers at the Womens Network for a Sustainable Future (October 6 in New York City) confirmed the thrust of Victoria Axelrod's recent post that Sustainability = Innovation. The innovation theme started with keynote Linda Fisher, DuPont's Chief Sustainability Officer and VP, Safety, Health & Environment and continued through an extraordinary panel dialogue that included:

Hye-Won Choi, Senior Vice President, Head of Corporate Governance, TIAA-CREF, and Co-Chair, SEC Investor Advisory Committee

Beth Keck, Senior Director, International Sustainability & Strategy, Wal-Mart Stores

Dr. Sharon Nunes, Vice President, Strategic Growth Initiatives - IBM Green Innovations

Dr. Ponni Subbiah, VP of Global Access Strategy, Pfizer Inc.

In each case innovation is the thrust of these pioneers' work.

i. At TIAA-CREF Hye-Won Choi, is pushing boards to be more open, responsive to shareholder requests and improve environmental practices to reduce long term business risks.
ii. Beth Keck is the guiding force behind Wal-Mart's sustainability initiatives including the Sustainability Summit, Beijing October 2008 amidst financial market turmoil, their Sustainable Product Index and Supplier Questionnaire.
iii. At IBM Dr. Sharon Nunes is charged with identifying and launching new businesses applying IBM's expertise in information technology, materials and processing to solve critical problems around environmental issues.
iv. Dr. Ponni Subbiah,is applying CK Prahalad's The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid principles to create new sustainable business opportunities and revenues for Pfizer in delivering affordable medicines and access to health care to the majority of the world's population currently without.

While innovation for sustainability is essential, notable was the focus on the collaborative approaches needed to get there. All speakers talked of stretching their organizations to create new working relationships especially with NGO's that very often had been protagonists. Wal-Mart's work with suppliers and governments to bring more sustainable products to market illustrates the approach.

Dr. Nunes describes her new business development as "collaborative innovation". IBM's "Big Green Innovations" grew from an Innovation Jam that engaged employees, partners and customers in a 3 day company wide conversation around new opportunities and resulted in a $100 million investment over the next two years to pursue ten new businesses.

As a contributor to The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook Ch.8 Transorganizational Collaboration and Sustainability Networks I was listening for how each organization collaborated to innovate in support of their sustainability strategy. Clearly each speaker revealed how innovation and collaboration go hand in hand.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Sustainability = Innovation, Reinventing the Infrastructure & WSE™

2009-09-11T16:53:07-04:00

Why Sustainability is Now the Key Driver of Innovation will rank up there with Core Competence of the Corporation as a must read article IMHO. R. Nidumolu, C.K. Prahalad and M.R. Rangaswami provide us with a 5 stage sustainability roadmap in their Harvard Business Review article to gauge where an enterprise is along the journey.

1. Viewing Compliance as Opportunity

2. Making Value Chains Sustainable

3. Designing Sustainable Products and Services

4. Developing New Business Models

5. Creating Next Practice Platforms

In the beginning of any major shift there is a plethora of information without a good framework in which to put it all in perspective. This has been true for two management arenas - sustainability and innovation. Continuous innovation has long been thought of as the key to enterprise sustainability but what is different here is formally linking the two.

Business Objectives - Beyond green and CSR

Nidumolu and colleagues are no strangers to deep enterprise transformation work or the fundamental reinvention required to attain new business models (stage four) and next practices (stage five). We see some of the usual culture change suspects executives must face – asking tough questions; what should the business be, how can we meet customers' needs differently, what are the implicit assumptions behind current practices?

Their survey of 30 companies resulted in a few simple rules for getting started:

Don’t start from the present
Ensure that learning precedes investments
Stay wedded to the goal while constantly adjusting tactics
Build collaboration capacity
Use global presence to experiment

The article makes clear that a sustainability journey is beyond “green” and “corporate social responsibility", a pattern which is clearly emerging from a variety of venues.

It’s Time to Reinvent - Take Action

In the past few week’s, cover stories have featured:

Fortune, New Rules for Recovery - CEO’s taking action to re-invent their businesses

Business Week, A radical re-think of R & D

The Atlantic - from health care to health and well being

NY Times, Venture Fund’s Green Fund’s Top $1billion Khosla Ventures, a major venture fund taking a bold stake toward investing in “science experiments” to reinvent our infrastructure and not be afraid to fail if we are to reduce the carbon footprint

Sloan Management Review, Beyond Green - Flourishing Forever an interview with John R. Ehrenfeld

In Ehrenfeld's words, sustainability is defined as:

"the possibility that human and other life will flourish on the planet forever. It’s a definition about as far from the central notion of sustainable development as night is from day. But, to me, it represents a truer idea about what sustainability is all about. Flourishing, like many other desirable qualities, is an emergent property. It has no thing-like character. It’s like health, or liberty, or freedom: It appears only when the whole system is functioning properly."

He challenges our thinking about typical "sustainability measures" as actually:

"... are our attempts to reduce the level of unsustainability. That’s different, because unsustainability can be divvied up into little pieces. Global warming, fisheries collapse—you name it, there are a myriad of different categories which we talk about today. All these problem areas need to be lessened and made less harmful because we’re not going to be able to flourish until we get these under control. They’ll never go away entirely, but they can be brought under control."

Common to all of these stories is:

Acknowledgment that something needs to be different (our world has changed)
Willingness to experiment with a new approach
More than CSR, green or sustainable development
Emergent
Whole system (beyond the enterprise boundary), and
An expectation of failure before success.

Workable Models for Executives

Several months ago I challenged Pepsi Bottling Group here to rethink carbonated and non-carbonated beverage bottling and recommended Carol Sanford’s regeneration process.

Another sustainable innovation leader is Janine Benyus who coined the term biomimicry – using nature's design for innovation. There's much to learn from a system that has been around for 3.8 billion years!

And our own CORE™ model, featured in The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook , to bring stakeholder networks together for innovation.

There are many methods to push ourselves to reinvent, restructure, and become sustainable enterprises, but only whole systems approaches will make a difference. We can not afford to keep nibbling and patching problems while hoping for different outcomes.

Sustainable Globalization

I ‘m preparing a presentation on Sustainable Globalization for the Organization Development Network Conference in October with fellow co-author Karen Davis. We'll demonstrate our "6 Lenses for Sustainable Globalization" approach to assist leaders in understanding the whole system in which their enterprises operate. Combined with the "5 Stage Sustainability Roadmap" and the insights from thought leaders mentioned above, executives can take away a fair diagnostic of where they are and where they need to go. These are approaches that work.

Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises and Influencers

In order to capture more of the “next practices” colleague Jenny Ambrozek and I have launched Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises, a crowd sourced initiative to profile enterprises and people who are creating the “next practices.”

We know there are more than the well known organizations challenging their old models and we want to hear about and share them with others. Add your examples of inspiring sustainable enterprises and the people influencing your thinking. Then send the link along to others to contribute too.

Collectively we can make a flourishing sustainable future.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises: An Invitation to Participate

2009-09-03T15:42:06-04:00

Recurring themes in this 21st Century Organization blog are open innovation, the power of engaging stakeholders and connecting intelligence to innovate and solve business challenges, topics we've written about for Inside Knowledge.

Today we're announcing our "Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises" (WSE) initiative to put the theory to the test.

We are embarking on an ambitious initiative to "crowdsource", using a wiki, examples of enterprises with attention getting sustainability initiatives. We want to reach beyond the top 10 or 20 large enterprises who are always the subject of press articles. We want to hear what's happening at the grassroots and how people deep inside organizations, business partners, customers, industry observers, and you define "sustainable enterprises".

WSE grew from our contributions to The Sustainable Enterprise Fieldbook, Ch 8, "Transorganizational Collaboration and Sustainability Networks". What we heard at book events was story after story of the need for examples of sustainability initiatives to help people deep inside organizations make the business case for taking action.

With help from colleagues we've developed a standard profile template. With your participation we hope to create a growing library of profiles revealing sustainability initiatives happening in enterprises small and large to provide practical insights and lessons learned for others to act upon. Our thanks go to Open-Sustainability.org founders Sean and Angela McClowry for hosting us.

Please join us in "Wikisourcing Sustainable Enterprises". Instructions for contributing profiles are here along with the first 3 sample profiles: Trane, InnoCentive and Stone Barns.

WSE is still in beta as we seek to fine tune the template and make contributing profiles as simple as possible. Your assistance in exploring WSE, adding profiles and or suggesting enterprises that deserve attention while providing feedback on wiki usability are all appreciated. Feel free to challenge our thinking and or make comments here.

Jenny Ambrozek & Victoria G. Axelrod
WSE Conveners

Enterprise 2.0: A solution in search of a problem

2009-07-09T10:57:36-04:00

A CEO’s first question, after the decision to launch a new product or expand to a new market in a different geography, is WHO will lead this endeavor? states the EVP of HR of a global media giant. Notice the CEO did not ask what technology will we use to support.

Talent at the end of the day is what makes or breaks a business. Technology enables individual and group performance which translates to organizational results. No doubt in some cases poor technology actually hobbles organizational performance.

I’m a technology advocate, but I think the emphasis needs to be on the who, not the how which is where E2.0 has focused despite protestations of its proponents. Reading some of the recent manifestos Andrew McAfee’s How Beautiful it is, how easily it can be broken or Michael Kreigsman’s mash up of Gary Hamel and McAfee, Enterprise 2.0, the Kumbaya irony one still gets the sense that technology is the “white knight” if we can only get the people to collaborate.

Technology generally has developed along the lines of someone seeking a better means (automation) to an end – an extension of what we have, tractor replacing a horse. Sometimes technology is applied to satisfy a desire to have more knowledge (fmri to map the brain territory in operation when we think of an object or concept - now a reality) and lastly, technology is a happy accident – a tool for one purpose turns out to have business benefits - Facebook like social networks, blogs wikis, and RSS – repurposed consumer tools for business. Historically, happy accidents abound. 3M’s semi-sticky glue meets scrap paper bookmarks equals Post-it Notes (now digital). Social media feels like Post-its.

Jenny Ambrozek and I have written before on technology/tool transience in our Facebook Groups for Business investigation. Five years ago only a small group used FB, two years ago what was Twitter? A year from now who knows what tool we will have. I’ll go so far as to say these technologies are only artifacts in our search to keep making our work and life more efficient, effective and meaningful.

Which gets back to the CEO’s question WHO will lead the business endeavor?

Once we start talking about WHO we are back to the beginning again. People, their skills, abilities, competencies, relationships and networks. Yes, social networks the backbone of getting work done or not. Not all folks play well with others. We are inherently social, but with social comes both competitive as well as collaborative behavior. Human behavior is a well studied field, but some how not known to many technologists.

Why businesses don’t collaborate- Meeting management, group input and wiki use is a nice survey conducted by Stuart Mader and Scott Abel. There really are no surprises in the report. All the usual suspects are accounted for – resistance to change, too many tools, and not enough time.

Organizational – people basics are what matter. Rob Cross, interviewed for the Financial Times comments, You can kit everybody out with Google’s new Wave system, which combines all the latest communication and social networking features, but if the right people are prevented by bad gatekeepers or energy-sapping bosses from working together, nothing will come of it.

Technologists keep tripping over the same human system in the middle of the floor.

At the 2009 Miami FOWA conference I caught up with Mark Masterson about my observations on human systems which he captured in his blog post on the event…

At dinner Monday night, Victoria and I had been kvetching over the problem that too many wheels get reinvented in the IT industry. People never seem to know what other people have already done, and assume they've had some profound insight when, in fact, they've just gone down a path well worn by any number of other people. In particular, people don't read enough. We're all in such a hurry -- there never seems to be enough time to just sit down and learn. So Victoria's gripe was that there was lots of research, both existing and ongoing, on things like organisational models, webs of trust, and so on, all of which contained significant information of value for IT practitioners working on software to enable things like social networking and collaboration. Yet, she said, it was a rare developer or designer that she'd meet who had the slightest idea of the existence of such research.

Leap frogging our selves into the future

The good news is each wave of technology actually does leap frog us over our own human limitations. Although the business of leaping can be pretty messy; just like the game, most of us have good intentions of moving forward, but we succumb to change fatigue. Efficacy has us opt for the equilibrium of status quo (which I prefer over resistance, having a pejorative slant) just to survive in our fast paced work environments.

A few folks stand out in the next leap forward Sandy Pentland, MIT – "sociometers" Honest Signals, Tim Berners Lee, Harvard – Linked Data , Fred Wilson, tech venture capital – Union Square Ventures, neuroscientists Marcel Just, Carnegie Mellon University – “thought identification” and Gemma Colvert, Neurosense – neuromarketing.

What connects these wizards is sensing (as in detection) and semantic (as in smart web). Between sensors, semantics and science our connectedness will become transparent. What they are achieving will more nearly marry our brain patterns to our social behavior with a web presence.

We are moving to linked data in a profound way – stuff talks to stuff and has been for the past few years. RFID chips track goods in the supply chain and your car trouble is diagnosed remotely. With Tim Berners-Lee’s Linked Data we will begin to not only structure how we tag information but be able to see the relationship of data sets as in network maps. My wiki may hold information which is unique or 95% redundant to another. The benefits become obvious.

Pentland’s “sociometers” are now gathering early data on the dominance of our nonlinguistic communications and their importance in increasing our 'network intelligence, comments Bob Metcalf. Looking much like a cell phone, the sociometer provides real time social network relationships.

These technologies are not science fiction. They are works in progress being used by top brand companies. Unilever, Intel, P&G, McDonald’s, and MTV-Viacom are all exploring neuromarketing.

Today’s web 2.0 and E2.0 are still rather clunky requiring endless conscious clicks between oceans of information accompanied by huge amounts of human energy to get people to become “users”. Ideally, we are “prosumers” with the above technologies, simultaneously generating and consuming.

Predictive power

What makes these technologies a leap ahead of web 2.0/E2.0 is their predictive power and embedded science of behavior.

Hopefully, when the CEO asks “who” will lead, science based technologies will enable an informed answer. The technology solution is then to serve the ever present problem – how to enable us to be more effective and efficient at what we want to do.

~Victoria G. Axelrod

Code Green: Earth is Hiring

2009-07-08T23:06:04-04:00

Great find for "green career" transitioners in June Outside Magazine's Code Green.

Not all jobs in the "green economy" will require new technical expertise. Not surprising many of the administrative positions will require classic skills in finance, marketing, sales, HR and IT. You may be in a renewable energy company, but your work may not look much different from the consumer goods company you just left.

... Kevin Doyle, founder of the Boston-based consulting firm Green Economy. "How did green jobs come to mean renewable-energy jobs?" he asked. What about conservation biologists? Park rangers?

"Once you stop defining your green opportunities around six or seven job titles in clean energy, then you're back where you were and, frankly, where you always are, which is: Who are you? What do you want to do?"

Green Career Central has more of Doyle's insights including excerpts from his book The ECO Guide to Careers That Make a Difference: Environmental Work for a Sustainable World. There are also some good federal government links at the end of the Code Green article to help steer you in the right direction.

My advice - every new field will claim to have career experts, so use common sense and vet your sources as you would in a more traditional field. Caveat emptor.

~Victoria G. Axelrod

Originally posted to the Sustainable Enterprise Network.

Social Media: The Five-Year Forecast

2009-04-29T15:38:33-04:00

Operating on the assumption that consumer behavior is driving corporate innovation, transformation and design faster than any internal strategies it appears past time to wake-up and pay attention to the impact of social media.

"The Future of the Social Web," by Jeremiah Owyang, a Forrester senior analyst, examines the monumental changes that have shaped -- and will continue to impact -- how consumers engage with each other. While you read these excerpts think of the impacts to your business, not just marketing but your value proposition, how you operate and the talent you employ.

1. The era of social relationships: Beginning in the mid-1990s, people signed up for online profiles and connected with their friends to share information.

2. The era of social functionality: As it exists today, social networking is more than just a platform for "friending," but one that can support a broader array of what Owyang calls "social interactive applications." However, identities are essentially disconnected silos within individual sites.

3. The era of social colonization: By late 2009, technologies such as OpenID and Facebook Connect will begin to break down the barriers of social networks and allow individuals to integrate their social connections as part of their online experience, blurring the lines between networks and traditional sites.

4. The era of social context: In 2010, sites will begin to recognize personal identities and social relationships to deliver customized online experiences. Social networks will become the "base of operation for everyone's online experiences."

5. The era of social commerce: In approximately two years, social networks will be more powerful than corporate Web sites and CRM systems, as individual identities and relationships are built on this platform. Brands will serve community interests and grow based on community advocacy as users continue to drive innovation in this direction.

Although I have come to realize the business world still organizes around very tight bubbles of self-interest (echo chambers) the folks who grab the link potential of networks will be the game changers. Their future will look like the future outlined above.

~Victoria G. Axelrod

21st Century Organizations @ Business of Community Networking: IBM, Avon, CondoDomain, AMA Boston & the National Collegiate Scouting Association

2009-04-01T08:39:50-04:00

When Victoria Axelrod and I started writing about 21st Century Organizations here 3 years ago examples of enterprises not leveraging their people networks for success abounded but good models were less obvious. The joy of the Business of Community Networking conference, in which we just participated, was access to terrific case examples. Here are some enterprises to watch:

IBM-Given the many times we've written about IBM's capacity to leverage knowledge deep within the organization (through JAMS) and from outside to inform their strategy (for example to rethink patent management p95 ), it was no surprize hearing Mark Bonchek, Chief Strategist Soundbridge, describing his company's work creating and supporting IBM's CIO Executive Advisory Council. From the disciplined approach to engaging external stakeholders as advisors to the metrics being tracked and stories of customers becoming brand advocates, IBM understands creating value through people interacting.

AVON- Kristen Mitchell, Marketing Manager, AVON Online, provided inspiration and practical ideas from her use of social networking platforms to empower Avon representatives, extend their businesses and grow sales on and offline. Clearly Avon is prepared to experiment and evolve to operate in today's connected world.

Condo Domain- Hearing Erica Farthing, Director of Social Media describe using blogs, video, Twitter, to extend this startup's brand and engage customers reminded me of Stowe Boyd's 2006 meme: "the individual is the new group". Erica does not hesitate to use her individual enthusiasm for her company and work to help build the business. Nor it appears do happy customers who appear in video interviews. The subsequent discussion raised the management issues around having employee identities so visible but clearly CondoDomain benefits from Erica's social media outreach. Read CondoDomain's story through their press coverage.

American Marketing Association, Boston- President Myles Bristowe captured attention describing his organization's evolved use of a Ning Network to grow membership and serve members. AMA Boston's disciplined networking, including defined roles and responsibilities in the social network built on research into the "economics of contribution", is inspirational.

National Collegiate Scouting Association- Brian Davidson, Director of Social Media, opened eyes and possibilities describing use of an array of public social netorking platforms to promote NCSA. Hearing about sales happening as a result of outreach and respectful conversations in Twitter leaves no doubt about it's growing importance and potential for doing business and serving customers directly.

Clearly the "Business of Community Networking" is evolving but success from the array of initiatives presented points to the importance of not dallying in experimenting with the new ways to connect with customers and members the latest generation of social networking tools provide.

For more BOCN nuggets read the Twitter stream from #bocn and @just_kate's excellent summary blog post here. And if you represented a model 21st Century Organization at #BOCN, putting people networks to work to grow your business, and I've overlooked you, please alert me.

~ Jenny Ambrozek