21st Century Organization

SEC Climate Change Disclosure 10-k Race Opens 2012

2012-01-09T16:06:03-05:00

It’s ironic that the SEC’s 2010 interpretation of a previous Climate Change 10-k Disclosure ruling of the material impacts to a business is equivalent to a 10k foot race. One thinks the race winner is to be a sustainability leader, but businesses, investors, Wall Street, and legal counsel see risk as well as opportunity. It’s a complex race in 2012 for public companies.

For those of us in the field of sustainability consulting, knowing the perceived constraints to transparent and honest disclosure, the politics of the SEC and other regulatory agencies will enable us to do more informed work with our clients and their stakeholders. Public or private we need to work within a whole dynamic system.

An excellent panel discussion – SEC Climate Change Disclosure Requirements and what you need to know took place in late November at Baruch’s Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity.

The panelists painted a landscape of conflicting behaviors from all stakeholders interpreting climate change impacts. Part of the issue is the lack of a clear framework for companies about what to disclose or what is material. But I see these as the questions a company might need to discuss, bringing together legal counsel, accounting and business unit leaders. Each holds a valuable perspective. Be proactive and set the race course or wait to follow what others set in your industry.

Climate Change Disclosure Documents:

Download SEC Climate Change Disclosure Ruling Interpretation

Download CERES Disclosing_Climate_Risks_Feb_2011-1

Enlightening questions and comments from the panel discussion:

“climate change or any other sustainability issues are interchangeable”

“the insurance industry is particularly impacted by climate change – think Japan’s earthquake and tsunami”

“is reporting integrated from board to employees?”

“GE Ecoimagination is not visible in SEC filings”

“how will products create less climate change?”

“where do rating agencies enter?”

“is the accounting profession behind disclosures?”

Panelists:

Karoline Barwinski - Research Associate, Assistant Vice President with the ESG Investment Program at ClearBridge Advisors

Jim Coburn, JD - Senior Manager, Investment Programs, Ceres

Adam Kanzer, JD - Managing Director and General Counsel of Domini Social Investments and Vice President and Chief Legal Officer of the Domini Funds

Moderator: Michael J. Greis – Principal, Riverbend Advisors

Companies mentioned:

AES - disclosed $17mm in carbon reduction

Chiquita - disclosed farms affected by floods

Climate Disclosure Standards Board

COSTCO - committed to sustainable seafood species based on consumer demand

Estee Lauder - thorough disclosure example

Puma - mapped their entire supply chain for material impacts

PWC – Carbon Reporting Standards

Siemens - Environmental portfolio of products and solutions

Timberland - CEO promotes sustainability

If you are in the NYC area and interested in sustainability please join us at ODNNY’s - OD and the Sustainable Enterprise with panelists from CSRwire.com, BSR and Deloitte’s Sustainability & Climate Change practice.

Make 2012 the year your enterprise wins the 10-K Climate Change Disclosure race and stays sustainable.

~ Victoria G. Axelrod

Scenarios 2011 to 2022 – Media/Military Complex: New Year Resolve

2010-12-29T09:34:01-05:00

I'm in a room laden with media technology, including an umbilical cord of cables descending from the ceiling watching as grad students from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at Tisch, NYU set up to present their four future scenarios. This annual presentation, open to the public, is the culmination of Future of the Infrastructure course.

These interrelated futures of new media and the global economy ironically came the same day as the New York Times summarized five “natural security” scenarios based solidly in our physical world and as potential sources of conflict.

Eerily, the students’ interactive media scenarios and the military's appear inextricably connected. Wikileaks for better or worse manifests an interactive media/military DNA.

I’m a big fan of Art Kleiner, adjunct professor ITP and noted author and editor-in-chief of Booz & Company’s strategy+business magazine , who set the context for the evening. Art provided a brief review of the scenario criteria students used – that they emanate from predetermined trends, however the outcomes are uncertain and they must have a degree of plausibility.

A few of the context trends were:

Moore’s Law continues through 2022, that is the march of computer power and data’s prevalence gets cheaper.
Revolution in fabrication of physical computing (making things), which changes business models for how we buy, uses and store objects. Think 3D manufacturing and cloud computing.
Streaming Link – in 2010, Wikileaks happens in all futures
Economic crisis of 2008 exists
Demographic shift – less children are born, an aging population, education levels down, the balance of economic burden between generations becomes greater
Twelve years ago, the dot-com bubble hadn’t yet burst, Amazon.com was just three years old, and China was known for Mao, not for manufacturing.

What will the world be like 12 years from now?

Student scenarios:

No More Secrets: Democracy evolves -- not with a bang, but with a wiki.(Insular media, wikipedia-like disruptions and rivalry among superpowers combine to change our conception of information flow, security, and public discourse – on the internet and elsewhere.)
A New Knowledge Ecology: The structure of institutions, starting with schools, is decoupled.(Bureaucracies in any field, struggling to manage order, cannot hold their lead against the new open institutions enabled by new media – but maybe not in ways that people expect.)
The 21st Century City-State: The power and influence of the nation devolves to local metropolitan areas.With the price of oil rising, an explosion in fabrication technology, and increasing migration to urban areas, the nation-state is fragmenting, and people look locally and globally for their identity.
Becoming Superhuman: The greatest plausible expansion of real-time information and augmentation.Information technology is no longer found primarily behind the screen. People make more informed decisions about the physical world, and it makes more informed decisions about them.

A lively discussion sparked by Art’s question to the students, “What do you want?” expanded the four rather “dystopic” scenarios. Faculty, alumni, friends and invited guests offered insight to the dialogue. A few notable comments from presentations and discussion:

A “reputation defender package” – on demand scrubbing and identity protection

Privacy vs. secrecy, reputation eclipses accreditation, data stream validated by experience, people want to feel omnipresent, do I own my data/control my identity?, do I have control or feel in control?

Outside of the technology arena, the interest level [with interactive media] is overestimated; technology is not part of all lives.

Decline of the nation state happens for different reasons – devolves to “low grade war all the time”, “power [emerges] for systems to create their own institutions.”

I found the rise of “alternative institutions” comment to be particularly interesting as Ann Swidler, earlier this year at Harvard (Hard Problems in Social Science), suggested one of the hardest challenges in the social sciences is to understand how institutions form.

Kleiner commented, “each scenario represents creative destruction” referring to Joseph Schumpeter, and a “redefinition of person to person, person to institution, institution to institution” is in progress.

Reflecting on the knowledge ecology scenario, “knowledge is open for acquisition, but where is opportunity for practice” drew a continuation of expressed concern over the demise of a credentialing bodies and conversely the reality that we already seek out friends advice in selecting the best “professionals.”

“What is a professional?” Art asked. The boundaries are blurred now amongst writers, consultants, investigators, researcher, etc. I thought of David Brook’s, Bobos in Paradise – we’re slipping into amalgams. Consciously or not? What’s the implied impact on organizations, I wondered?

Art wrapped up with “It’s glib to say one [scenario] will replace the other in response to immense creative destruction. All the scenarios are plausible and it is our human nature to feel discomfort, but are we up to the challenge?”

And what about those “natural security” scenarios reported in the New York Times?

Thom Shanker writes in Why We Might Fight, 2011 Edition

… the 21st century will be shaped not just by competitive economic growth, but also by potentially disruptive scarcities — depletion of minerals; desertification of land; pollution or overuse of water; weather changes that kill fish and farms... A basic question frames their[national security experts]thinking: What are the new relationships among resources, diplomacy, crisis and conflict?

Natural security scenarios:

Rising and hungry: China - As rising nations industrialize, they compete for resources, or use resource exports as bargaining chips in disputes; China does both

When Fish and Farmland Are Scarce: Yemen and the Horn of Africa -Climate change feeds anarchy in poor societies

Too Rich for Peace: The Niger Delta - Pollution and extraction complicate local conflicts in lands rich in minerals and fossil fuels

Stalking a New Frontier: The Arctic - Rights to the seabed under the melting Arctic icecap

Guarding a Planet’s Air: Brazil -What one country can do in the interests of all

Each of the student presentations had tangential nods to these global drivers, however I found most very US media centric. If I were to challenge the students to ramp up their scope, it is to reach more globally, to hold their scenarios up to the emerging physical world portrayed in the “natural security” scenarios. It is the content of their media scenarios.

“Creative destruction” coupled with “disruptive scarcities” makes for an unstable mix for which “scenario learning*” is a useful antidote. To Art Kleiner’s question, are we up to the challenge?

Scenarios

If you are interested in using scenarios, I highly recommend Liam Fahey’s Learning from the Future , also in Google books. I’ve used his process successfully with international groups. The process enables taking real action for strategy execution in businesses. Fahey uses the term “scenario learning” rather than the traditional scenario planning as decision making becomes intertwined with plausible scenarios. Learning is knowledge put to use with continuous dialogue. And it embraces a whole system view.

There is no denying that we are in an interconnected, emerging global future. However, in many organizations the means of approaching complexity and emergence still uses models for a stable linear world. I offer as a 2011 New Year’s resolution to anyone not up to speed on networks, systems, complexity, and scenarios to look around, read up and try out some of these approaches to understanding your organization’s sustainable future. You may be surprised by how better prepared you are for the unpredictable.

~Victoria G. Axelrod

GE's Ecoimagination Challenge: The Power of Ideas, Ecosystems and Scale

2010-11-22T12:31:27-05:00

November 16 I was fortunate to attend GE's event announcing the first winners of their Ecoimagination Challenge that strives to speed solutions to smarter power grids and energy technology. GE CEO Jeff Immelt, Marketing CMO Beth Comstock, VC funding partners and challenge winners were in the room

GE contributed $100m that was matched by 4 venture capital companies to invest in new smart power solutions and companies. The announcement of the first 12 winners , who will receive $55m in funding, generated media buzz including from MarketWatch, the Huffington Post and Fast Company. Meet the winners on the GE Ecoimagination site and watch the announcement video highlights here:

Beth Comstock's frank opening remarks set the open tone. GE understands it doesn't have all the best ideas and (because of it's scale) can play a convening role for smart grid innovation.

Clear too is GE’s understanding of the power of ecosystems. GE’s partnering with leading venture capital firms increases a funded companies chances of success. VC’s bring cash and business nurturing expertise while spreading the ventures reach to an extended investor network. And winners get access to "GE's army of product developers, engineers and sales people".

By crowdsourcing the pool of ideas and energy around the Ecoimagination Challenge are maximized. 4,000 concepts were submitted from across the globe over the course of the 10-week open competition.

Clearly GE is not the first to discover the power of crowdsourcing. Eli Lilly's outsourced research and development program that became I nnoCentive dates to 1998; Procter and Gamble has inspired others with Connect and Develop, that CEO Lafley instigated in 2000; and IBM has been using Innovation Jams since 2001. Still GE's Ecoimagination Challenge and the announcement presentations highlight the potential in appropriate openness and the power in creating idea and talent ecosystems to drive innovation.

What's your experience with crowdsourcing for innovation? What companies and programs impress you? How impactful do you see the Ecoimagination Challenge will be?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

In Frankfurt Enterprise 2.0 = Organizational Change & People Challenges

2010-11-09T10:11:32-05:00

Luis Suarez @elsua 's November 3 Tweet:

"One of the things I *really* like(d) from the #e20s is that we still keep making sustained use of the hashtag after the event. W00t!"

captured the abundant spirit of Enterpise 2.0 Summit Fankfurt, (convened by Kongress Media in Frankfurt October 27-28). The conference was exceptional and congratulations to the organizing team, Bjoern Negelmann and Cathrin Gill for two days of rich presentations and active discussions. Jim Worth's wiki page captures the highlights, (see especially active Tweeters) and Lee Bryant's conference reflection, the scope.

1. Enterprise 2.0 is a Management Model

The "Enterprise 2.0" evolution (in just four years since Andrew McAfee's "Dawn of Emergent Collaboration") that the Frankfurt Summit represented, makes adding a reflection through this 21st Century Organization blog lens irresistible. #e20s was a management rather than technology conference, with organizational impact and change the elephant in the room. Implementing enterprise social software platforms is changing organizations but that's a topic not being discussed widely in adopting companies because people don't like change.

Emanuelle Quintarelli's Day 1 blog post highlights the attention getting keynotes by Richard Collin – Professor & Director of the “Institut de l’Entreprise 2.0 Grenoble Ecole de Management” France and Rolf Schmidt-Holtz CEO of Sony Music & BMG that set the conference focus.

Collin told us:

"Enterprise 2.0 is the new version, a new model. It's nothing to do with Web 2.0" but rather "management and leadership for the 21st century".

Identifying the 2008 global financial crisis as the tipping point from an industrial age to information based economy, Collin redefines leadership as the "ability to get others to be connected willingly". Leading, he argues, involves:

Value bricolage
Design tinkering
Establishing systematic serendipidity, and
Thriving on gradual breakthrough.

(Collin is @richardcollin on Twitter and his presentation is posted to Slideshare. Collin's video interview with Jean Yves is here.)

2. Enterprise 2.0 is about People

With blunt statements about dangerous CEO's & Boards who "Don’t know anything anymore" because they are so distant from colleagues and markets; the failures of caviar and champagne strategic off sites at 5 star hotels; and "lonely, very smart people who cannot modulate companies", Schmidt-Holtz focused attention on the importance of listening, communication and how "people don't want to be impressed. They have to be embraced."

3. Next Practice Cases, Companies and Innovators

Outstanding corporate presentations from:

TMobile- Dr. Frank Schönefeld, Chief Technology Officer, T-Systems Multimedia Solutions GmbH, Germany
Deutsche Bank- Jamil Ouaj, Communications Manager, Deutsche Bank AG, Germany

Societe Generale-Franck La Pinta, Web Marketing Manager, Paris

Bayer- Ellen Trude - Training Consultant, Social Media & Special Projects, Bayer AG

BASF- Dr. CheeChin Liew, Project & Community Manager, BASF SE, Germany

BMW- Stephan Oertelt, Innovation Manager, BMW Group, Germany

Telecom Italia- Alessandra Pelagallo, Process Design/Optimization Manager, Rome

and others revealed next practices for opening communication and growing collaboration. Organizational cultures are changing, but as a by-product of social technology-enabled new patterns of interactions rather than intentional "change management" programs.

4. Research Reveals Enterprise 2.0 Work in Progress

Presentations from Dr.Thorsten Petry and Cecile Demailly (@ceciledemailly) provide context to the work and challenge that bringing more open collaboration and knowledge sharing to organizations represents.

Petry's study (with 281 participants) revealed the gap between use of collaboration software in participant enterprises (16%) lagging private use (25%) and between expected and realized impact on creating an innovative culture.

Demailly's findings identify the early stage challenge:

"..organizations face a paradox that often happens with adoption of disruptive change (whether it is technology, work methods or management patterns); they have to cope with it but cannot yet justify it nor master the transformation because it is too early, too little history and case studies to learn the lessons from from others. Except for some (high tech companies notably), we are still moving through the early stages of adoption."
Source: Toward Enterprise 2.0 Survey Report

5. No Room for "Wars"

Nowhere was the individual change challenge more present than in the "Knowledge Management versus Enterprise 2.0 Culture Wars" session, encapsulated by Elmi Bester via Twitter from South Africa as "Culture War or Turf War?"

While holding on to simple descriptions of our roles in complex 21st century organizations may be reassuring, I invite everyone to scan the bios of the thought leaders presenting in Frankfurt for the array of disciplines and open, curious minds each displays.

Think too about the diverse and talented teams leading innovative change in their companies, exemplified by BASF's computational scientist Dr. CheeChin Liew and communications aficionado Cordelia Krooß.

6. And, Both and Next

My 21st Century Organization blogging colleague Victoria Axelrod frequently reminds me today we operate in a complex "And Both" world. (Our 2008 article strives to capture the shifts.)

Returning from Enterprise 2.0 Summit Frankfurt to Victoria's maxim I'm adding "NEXT". The presentations and conversations (especially around KM and Enterpise 2.0 cultures) highlighted the importance for business success today of each employee being open, enquiring and paying attention to "NEXT", being prepared to adapt to a constantly shifting operating environment. If you have any doubt see Anja Wittenberger's Organizational Challenges to E2.0 Setup Mindmap.

7. New Organizational Models Emerging

I was fortunate to extend my Frankfurt trip to visit family and friends. The photos of remnant Heidelberg castle walls, reminders of what was, and the Saar River Loop constantly adapting to the changing, networked ecosystem in which it flows, to me symbolize the organizational model transitions 21st century enterprises confront.

What did I miss? Please challenge and enrich my thinking as did #e20s conversations live and on Twitter, especially during the Social Networking Culture Workshop. Special thanks to all workshop participants.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Credit: Saar Loop photo courtesy of Marianne Hilpert.

"Socially Challenged" - Putting the WHO in Enterprise 2.0 at Frankfurt Workshop

2010-10-19T16:29:51-04:00

Thanks to Bjoern Negelmann and his exceptional team organizing Enterprise 2.0 Summit 2010 I'll be in Frankfurt, October 26, leading a workshop on "Social Networking Culture- Made Simple".

I'm in outstanding company as Mark Masterson will bring next practice into the room sharing how CSC used Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) to ensure their C3: Connect, Communicate. Collaborate enterprise wide networking platform introduction succeeded. If you've heard Mark's recent talk at O'Reilly's Open Source Conference (OSCON), you know you can look forward to a thought provoking, bottom-line discussion.

An Information Week article titled "Socially Challenged" (September 27) provides a timely workshop backdrop with:

"IT's under pressure to deliver Facebook-like social networking inside companies. Yet the biggest worry is getting employees to use it. What's going on?"

The article draws on a suvey of 624 business technology professionals at companies using one or more internal social networking systems, August 2010.

It is recommended reading for insight into both the reality and complexity of implementing enterprise collaboration platforms, and the roles different internal groups want and need to play.

My "Social Networking Culture" Workshop builds from a couple of assumptions that:

1) The Enterprise 2.0 SLATES Andrew McAfee described in 2006 (Search Links Authoring Tags Extensions and Signals) are impacting organizations whether management chooses to face the reality or not.

By empowering individuals to communicate and share information up and down formal organizational hierarchies, across and beyond the organization, Web 2.0 tools are changing the way work gets done and impacting where control lies. Social Tools Impact Organizations

View more presentations from Jenny Ambrozek.

2) The 1980's Xerox Parc research (into how Xerox technicians fixed copiers) that led John Seely Brown and Estee Solomon Gray to write in an article titled "People are the Company" in the inaugural Fast Company magazine that:

"Organizations are webs of participation. Change the patterns of participation, and you change the organization.

At the core of the 21st century company is the question of participation. At the heart of participation is the mind and spirit of the knowledge worker. "

~ John Seely Brown & Estee Solomon Gray, "People are the Company" 1995

Through a series of network mapping exercises we apply principles from social network science to planning the people networks essential for collaboration success. (The workshop builds from the Open net∞WORKing Organizations article (2008) co-authored with colleague Victoria Axelrod.)

By focusing on putting the "WHO?" in Enterprise 2.0 initiatives the workshop aims to make your organization a member of the 10% Information Week identified who can say:

"Great: usage is high and we've improved communication."

Source: Information Week, September 27, 2010 p15.

Please join me, hear from Mark Masterson and participate in a day of intentional people network planning at Enterprise 2.0 Summit Frankfurt, October 26.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Enterprise 2.0 Boston June 2010 Highlights: Making Technology Work in Organizations

2010-06-18T09:30:31-04:00

As Marc Smith's Node XLS map reveals, recognized and aspiring Enterprise 2.0 thought leaders and software vendors gathered in Boston starting June 14 for the conference that grew from Andrew McAfee's 2006 MIT Sloan Review article The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration and became the book.

Source: See Marc Smith Node_XLS Map and blog post

Here are are my take aways from spending two days in the Expo Hall and chatting with valued industry luminaries including @absolutezero, @bhc3, @billives, @debs, @EranBarak @elsua, @frogpond, @jackvinson, @mikegotta, @panklam, @ross, @stoweboyd and @vanderwal.
1. From "Social" to Tapping Streams
Last year every booth brandished a "We've Added Social" announcement, usually in the form of micro-blogging or deeper member profiles.

As evidenced by SocialText's "Connect" announcement this year "social" functionality has turned to harnessing activity streams and integrating flows of information from multiple sources into platforms where the individual is front and center. Watching presentations from numerous vendors, I couldn't help but recall Stowe Boyd's meme "the individual is the new group".
Beyond SocialText, Thoughtfarmer effectively pre-empted my questions with a Power Point loaded on an IPAD. However, my standout for showing the future of enterprise collaboration and knowledge sharing platforms is IBM's Vulcan Project that strives to work across IBM platforms (including Cognos) and beyond, assembling information and connections (both requested and predicted), as relevant to an individual's work.
2. Drive to Innovation Rules
If "social" ruled as the must have functionality in 2009 in 2010 "innovation" (not surprisingly given the challenging economic climate) seemed top of mind with a host of platforms touting their abilities to assemble ideas and facilitate new initiatives.
Spigit, with a space just inside the Expo door exhibited their high profile industry position and Warburg Pincus bolstered coffers. Not so visible in a back corner InnoCentive (with it's pioneering crowdsourcing credentials and recent efforts to provide solutions to the Gulf oil spill) is showing new product offerings focused on enterprise adoption. ONRAMP is a suite of professional services and technical resources and InnoCentive@Work an "internal web-based collaborative community for problem solvers".
Other vendors touting "Innovation" solutions ranged from BlueKiwi to Newsgator and Portugal based Launchpad finalist Innovationcast.
3. Launchpad Finalists Instructive
Four finalists faced off in the Launchpad competition. The winner, Baydin, offered an "unsearch" solution for Microsoft Outlook email while Doodle helps teams more efficiently schedule meetings.
The buzz at Enterprise 2.0 is about "social" and harnessing information "streams" but what does it say that 2 of the 4 Launchpad finalists address very basic individual productivity challenges, saving time searching email and scheduling meetings?

4. The ROI Search Continues

Before leaving Wednesday I caught Dion Hinchcliffe's session while understanding from Martin Koser that a related ROI conversation was happening along the hall.

I've paid close attention to questions about proving the value of collaboration tools since Joe Cothrel and I conducted the Online Communities in Business 2004 Study and 72% of our respondents told us they couldn't measure ROI. While use examples grow can it be that sharing positive anecdotes continues to be a prime means of making the case to management for the value of Enterprise 2.0 initiatives?

5. Social Network Science and Organizational Knowledge Gaps
Back at my desk reading the #e2conf Tweet stream and emailing colleagues involved in teaching a forthcoming "Collaboration: How Your Practice Benefits from Social Media" Workshop it strikes me that there are vast bodies of untapped knowledge to address the challenges Enterprise 2.0 adoptions confront. For example, presentations by 21st Century Organization blog co-author Victoria Axelrod outline new organizational models, complexity and systems science, and "sociotech" as levers to more effective collaboration, knowledge sharing, stakeholder engagement, and co-creation of new offerings for enterprise sustainability. And as Enterprise 2.0 promotes "social" why isn't the science of social network analysis (SNA) more determinedly used to improve results?
Source: Victoria G. Axelrod in "Open netWORKing Organizations Co-generating Business Value"
Perhaps my perception would be different if I'd attended more Enterprise 2.0 conference sessions. If you did please take a moment to share your perspective on any knowledge gaps you see in improving success of Enterprise 2.0 initiatives.
~ Jenny Ambrozek

The State of Social Network Analysis in Business: LINKS Workshop Report

2010-06-14T22:34:30-04:00

June 7- 11 I had the good fortune of taking a deeper dive into social network analysis (SNA) at the University of Kentucky's Links Center Summer Workshop.

My SNA interest dates to joining Patti Anklam's "Emergent Learning Network" in 2003, inserting, with help from Rob Cross, an influence question in the Online Communities in Business 2004 Study (co-authored with Joe Cothrel). Patti Anklam also contributed a before and after network analysis of participants in the Facebook Groups in Business Investigation 2008.) It's my firm belief that a "Network Mindset", reflecting the computer networks that drive 21st century business, is critical to individual and organizational effectiveness in a connected world.
My goals in attending were to understand how UCINET, the analysis tool developed by Steve Borgatti "thinks" and grow my expertise at applying SNA to projects to improve collaboration effectiveness. Here's what I learned.

1. Graph Theory & Matrix Algebra are SNA Foundations

Monday's excellent "Elementary Graph Theory & Matrix Algebra" class addressed my question about what lies behind commonly derived network analysis measures such as distance, centrality and betweenness. The session also gave me deep appreciation for the importance of math and analytical talents in SNA.

2. SNA is Alive and Well in Academic Research

The LINKS Workshop serves primarily doctoral students. (That University of Chicago Professor Ron Burt (of "Structural Holes" fame) had 700 applications for two PhD candidate slots points to the level of SNA interest.) Worlshop attendees came from Canada, England, France, Italy and Sweden as well as across the U.S. The array of SNA applications represented is attention getting from understanding all dimensions of how teams operate in business through developing more effective water policy and improving health care service effectiveness. Specialist sessions Friday addressed the growing use of SNA in health and defense.

3. Business Use of SNA Concealed and Public
Gartner's December 2009 Press Release "Social Network Analysis Can Help Enterprises Achieve a Pattern–Based Strategy™ that Leverages Relationship Information" describes potential applications of SNA in business that have evolved from the work of pioneers including Steve Borgatti, Ron Burt, Rob Cross, Mark Granovetter, David Krackhardt and Valdis Krebs.
SNA also featured in Gartner's Five Social Software Predictions for 2010 and Beyond predicting:
"Through 2015, only 25 percent of enterprises will routinely utilize social network analysis to improve performance and productivity."
and pointing to the "why":
"when surveys are used for data collection, users may be reluctant to provide accurate responses. When automated tools perform the analysis, users may resent knowing that software is analyzing their behavior. For these reasons, social network analysis will remain an untapped source of insight in most organizations."
It's my sense that leading consulting firms from Booz Allen to Boston Consulting and McKinsey are using social network analysis in enterprises and government applications but projects are being kept close for the reasons Gartner cited. Hence we don't have a good measure of adoption.

4. SNA Embedded in Enterprise Platforms

I'm headed to Enterprise 2.0 Boston Tuesday June 15 to see what's new and especially if and how SNA is being embedded in enterprise platforms. IBM showed the way with their Atlas for Lotus Connections but are other vendors following? Will such tools be adopted?

What's your sense of the value of SNA?
Have you led or been a participant in a project?
What is your reaction to having your network visualized in enterprise collaboration platforms?

Please share your experience and observations.

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Game Change: A Better World, WoW

2010-05-31T23:02:10-04:00

We are in a constant state of change, contrary to the description proffered by many organization change models. The challenge I see for organizations is to direct our inherent ability to change and/or speed it up. Virtual game environments have that potential.

John Kotter wrote in The Heart of Change, too many change initiatives fail because they rely too much on “data gathering, analysis, report writing and presentations” rather than tapping “feelings that motivate useful action”.

Having surveyed numerous successful company change strategies, he concluded 8 stages, not necessarily linear, are required.
1.    Creating a sense of urgency.
2.    Pulling together a guiding team with the needed skills, credibility, connections, and authority to move things along. A coalition.
3.    Creating an uplifting vision and strategy.
4.    Communicating the vision and strategy through a combination of words,    deeds and symbols.
5.    Removing obstacles, or empowering people to move ahead.
6.    Producing visible signs of progress through short-term victories.
7.    Sticking with the process and refusing to quit when things get tough.
8.    Nurturing and shaping a new culture to support the innovative ways.
Just looking around at all the places and ways in which people are constantly engaged in change is enough of an indicator that dramatic organizational change is possible. And I am more and more convinced it is the failure to tap into the “feelings that motivate useful action” than any other factor. It is the human factor.

Powerful research evidence is corroborating Kotter’s statement, particularly the 3 billion weekly hours we collectively spend frequenting virtual game environments online.

In 2008, I reviewed economist and virtual world researcher Edward Castronova’s, Exodus to the Virtual World: How Online Fun is Changing Reality for Inside Knowledge Magazine. Most stunning to me was Castronova’s conclusion that more of our physical world practices need to and will borrow from game design, becoming almost seamless with “in world” or virtual world actions. His equally remarkable estimation of 40% of GDP deriving from virtual environments may look even more enticing post the global financial meltdown and environmental catastrophes (natural and man-made).
Games are where millions of us spend our time. The most recognizable being World of Warcraft (WoW) and Second Life (SL).

So what is it about virtual world game design that keeps us coming back, to create, collaborate, innovate, share, and perform at such high levels?

Jane McGonigal charmingly spells it out in Gaming Can Make a Better World; a 20-minute TED presentations. So, sit back and enjoy. I guarantee you’ll watch a second time.

From her research, a few key behavioral actions gamers generate:
Urgent optimism – for an epic win (sense of urgency)

Social fabric – weave tight relationships in guilds, forums, wikis (coalitions)

Blissful productivity – doing the right level work (short term wins)

Epic Meaning (great missions and visions to pursue)

All adds up to - Super-empowered participants

Coincidentally these five are almost identical to Kotter’s change strategies! Worth noting.

McGonigal is with the Institute for the Future and has designed three public simulation games to meet world sustainability challenges: World Without Oil,
SuperStruct, and March 2010 release of Evoke.
The Collaboration Curve: Exponential Performance Improvement in World of Warcraft (2009), a Deloitte Center for the Edge white paper, details similar evidence to Castronova and McGonigal, that players “share experiences, tell stories, celebrate, (and analyze) prodigious in-game achievements, and explore innovative approaches to addressing in-game challenges.” The game and the players’ experience levels grow over time in a symbiotic morphing, which the “collaboration curve” demonstrates. John Hagel III and John Seely Brown first used the term in 2009.

Two challenges of open innovation platforms and other virtual spaces are:

Teams create tacit knowledge, but have difficulty scaling to large platforms, and in

Scaled environments like Innocentive, many participants share explicit knowledge, but have no means to share tacit knowledge.

WoW game design by Blizzard has forums, wikis and databases, shared by guilds which enables sharing tacit knowledge quickly.

Both real-time feedback and “after action performance reviews” of raids, are another critical component to the game. Constantly learning new skills and gaining new tools has primacy in WoW, but it is as much a collaborative effort as it is individual.

Although I am not a gamer, I have explored Second Life, a virtual world and collaboration platform finding that the learning curve is initially steep. Avatars are used as personal representations requiring a skill to manipulate separate from any goal or content to be generated. Thanks to a well-versed SL colleague I was able to move from “barefoot newbie” to "presentable enough" in three hours to give a mini workshop on Social Capital: Glue for Sustainability to a sophisticated group in Cedar Island.
The convergence of mobile technologies, augmented reality, massive multiplayer online games and virtual worlds is moving quickly and quietly. The organizations designing their products and services to use less physical materials will be the winners. One only needs to look to the Virtual Reality Conference of the IEEE or the Federal Consortium for Virtual Worlds Conference to understand the sustainability gains from 3D, virtual materials design for science, medicine, healthcare and military to grasp the competitive value impacts.
As I wrote in 2008, the … “Implications of [Castronova’s] Exodus for business leaders, marketers – any one involved with organizational learning, innovation and knowledge – are significant. Not from the prosaic manner in which online space is used to conduct business or learning virtually, but rather to understand game design tenets, game behavior, ‘networked graphical sociality’ and how these will change real world expectations.”
~ Victoria G. Axelrod

Peer Financing for Developers & Diaspora: A Glimpse to the Future of Work and Business

2010-05-24T12:11:15-04:00

May 14 I attended the Peer Financing for Developers event organized by Embarkons Inc CEO Trevor Cornwell and hosted by law firm Cooley LLP in New York. Against a backdrop of Diaspora's extraordinary success raising funds through Kickstarter,a cadre of smart entrepreneurs representing Grow VC, Chittai, LendFriend and Appbackr explained their companies’ approaches to enabling peer funding of new ventures. Beyond insight into an emerging new industry what left with me was a sense of glimpsing the future. Here’s why.

With official U.S. unemployment close to 10% (and many people I know “statistics”), the energy and optimism among Peer Financing participants was refreshing. An assumption that the future lay in creating new products and businesses pervaded the room. And that’s good given thriving new businesses is exactly what the U.S. needs.

The Financial Times May 10 reports that small, young businesses are responsible for most new employment:

"New firms are essential to recovery. From 1980 to 2005, virtually all net new jobs were created by companies less than five years old, and the one to five-year olds created two-thirds of the jobs."

This reality is driven home in research at Deloitte's Center for the Edge showing the continuing declining Return on Assets (ROA) for U.S companies since 1965.

Source: ZDNet from John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison (2009) The Big Shift: Measuring the Forces of Change Harvard Business Review

Looking back reminds us that wealth flows to business minded entrepreneurs from the Rothschild’s, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts to the founders of the iconic 20^th century technology companies, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Salesforce, eBay, Amazon and Google.

The recent downsizing and destruction of full time jobs that came with the financial crisis point to the changing dynamics of employment, to the "eLance economy" as forecast by Tom Malone and Rob Laubacher in their 1998 book and fluid organizations described in The Future of Work (2004).

My take away from Friday’s Peer Funding event was not just admiration for the entrepreneurs determined to create thriving businesses and a new peer financing industry but a reminder about vital 21^st century skills. In an uncertain and dynamic economy being entrepreneurial, innovative and able to run a business are essential whether you are in business for yourself or trying to sustain working in an organization.

What’s your sense? Are entrepreneurship, an ability to innovate and run a business even more important skills in this 21st century? And from what industries will the wealthiest entrepreneurs emerge this century?

~ Jenny Ambrozek

Why Projects Fail: Realities from the PMINJ Symposium

2010-05-07T10:44:42-04:00

Monday, May 3, I was a privileged speaker at the Project Manager Institute New Jersey's (PMINJ) Annual Symposium. Suffice to say this was the best managed conference I've ever attended and congratulations to the all-volunteer team that made it possible.
Building on work Victoria Axelrod and I have done my talk addressed "Stakeholder Engagement & Co-Creation: Reducing Project Risks". Applying what we know from network science I made the case that bringing a network lens to projects, ensuring all stakeholders with diverse perspectives and expertise are engaged and strategically interconnected, is fundamental to a project's success. Here are my slides:
Stakeholder Engagement & Co-Creation: Reducing Project Risk
View more presentations from Jenny Ambrozek.
Our discussion started with the question: "Why do projects fail?" with answers including:

Loosely defined requirements

Too big

Sponsorship changes

Scope creep

It was after participants had completed a project network drawing exercise that we were reminded of the "human" dimension in project success:

The challenge of communication across virtual teams (no face-to-face and body language; operating across time zones)

Silo mentalities- closed, no information sharing

Cultural differences

Competing influences on others.

It's more than a decade since Stowe Boyd identified the emergence of a new breed of software he designated "social tools". "Social business" is the rage but in reality, since the earliest market places, business has run on relationships.
On Monday the hard working, talented PMINJ project managers at the forefront of leading strategically important and complex projects in their businesses, reminded us that structuring organizations to:

facilitate communication

incent sharing, and

align resources with strategic priorities

remains fundamental to success.
What's your experience with project challenges? How important are people and organizational issues to project success?
~ Jenny Ambrozek