McKinsey have released a new report on what they believe will be the most disruptive technologies, and the economic impact they will have.  The report, produced by the McKinsey Global Institute, has had input from the likes of Hal Varian and Erik Brynjolfsson.

It concludes that the most disruptive technology will be the mobile Internet, with renewable energy failing to live up to its hype.

Of particular interest is the high placing of automating knowledge work.  The report outlines how the rising intelligence of computing can be both a blessing and a curse, taking on some of the tedious work we do on one hand, whilst also of course removing whole jobs on the other hand.

Whilst automation made a huge impact upon manual work, the report suggests the impact upon knowledge work would be subtler and more nuanced.

Nevertheless, the report suggests that automation could be performing the role of over 110 million people by 2025.  Whilst this may have many potential benefits in terms of better quality service, the knock on effect on society is pretty clear.

The full report is available below.  It’s 178 pages, but well worth a read if you’re at all interested in what the future could bring.

When you enjoy the work you do, the day seems to fly by in a blur of stimuli.  How many of us actually enjoy the work we do though?  Employee engagement statistics would suggest a pretty small number.  For many, it seems work is something that has to be done, and we plug away in the hope that one day things will change round and the hard work will bear fruit.

It doesn’t have to be this way though.  The long history of games has shown us that doing complex tasks can be enjoyable, dare I say even fun.  These games have much they can teach us about how to shape the things we do in the workplace.

A good game typically has one of the following types of stimuli that makes them enjoyable.  See how many you can integrate into your own work.

8 types of workplace fun

1. Problem solving. We’re hard-wired to enjoy a challenge, and it is often the routine and un-challenging nature of work that makes it dull.  Stretching yourself however can be incredibly rewarding.
2. Exploration.  This desire to solve problems often leads us to attempt new things and requires us to learn new skills in order to solve each problem.  This sense of exploration is an inherently rewarding experience.
3. Teamwork.  The massive multiplayer environments of modern games should show managers how much people like working together to crack a problem.  We are often natural collaborators, so you should use all the tools at your disposal to encourage this.
4. Recognition.  Research a few years ago showed that people value recognition and appreciation more than sex.  A simple thank you can raise employee engagement by as much as 30%.
5. Success.  Back in 2011 Harvard academic Teresa Amabile released The Progress Principle.  The book charts the importance of achieving success, or at least making progress, and its impact on our happiness in life and at work.
6. Surprise and novelty.  Relationship gurus the world over trumpet the virtue of keeping things fresh in a relationship.  Novelty is kinda taken for granted in the social world because it moves so quickly, but introducing fresh things should be a key part of your working life.
   
7. Creativity.  How often do you get to come up with great ideas at work?  I suspect when you think of those times, it was generally accompanied by a happy feeling.  Just as challenging work is exciting, so is trying new ways of succeeding at work.
   
8. Knowledge sharing.  If you’re regarded as an expert in your field, it does wonders for your ego.  The culture of hoarding knowledge and using that power to climb the greasy pole is hopefully slowly fading out, so get out there and show off your knowledge internally.  There are lots of collaboration tools available now that encourage internal knowledge sharing.  The chances are your organisation has one in place, so get out there and make use of it.
   

If you can incorporate these things into your work life, then the chances are good that you’ll become happier and more engaged.  Let me know in the comments if you have any other tips.

Google have gone an awfully long way to changing how we view geographic information.  Google Maps and Google Earth have allowed us to digitally explore our world like never before.  A new site wants to take things one step further however.

Collaborate.org launched this week at the Future in Review conference.  It’s aim is to bring geospatial data to the masses via over 2 million different data layers that can be overlaid on top of maps.

“We want to harness the collective knowledge of the online global community, sharing expertise and enthusiasm,” said company CEO Kevin Montgomery. “We are providing worldwide geospatial infrastructure to empower people.”

The site is built upon World Wind, an open source platform developed by NASA.  It’s kinda like Google Earth but on an open source platform that allows users to develop and interact with it.

“It’s an interface for that spatial data and puts it in the native context of the real world. It’s a way to allow innovation to occur.” said Patrick Hogan, the apps project developer at NASA.

The range of possible applications are limitless.  For instance, they believe they can provide real-time geomapping of all tweets made in the world or provide mapping of all flights as they zip around the world.

The more people contribute to the environment, the richer the data available to users.

“Technologically, it’s big data leveraging the cloud with community crowdsourcing moderating the data,” Montgomery said.

Suffice to say it is early days, but this looks like a project that is very much worth keeping an eye on.  You can find out more about it in the video below.

Noted Nazi propogandaist Joseph Goebbels famously said that if you repeat a lie often enough, sooner or later people will come to regard it as the truth.  Whilst obviously not on the scale of some of the things Goebbels trotted out, the idea that to achieve expertise in something has become pretty much accepted since Malcom Gladwell popularised the notion in Outliers.  As heuristics go, it’s one of the most widely used.

Is it correct though?  Some new research suggests not.  The study looked at the affect of practice on the skill level of chess players and musicians, and found that practice alone was not enough to explain the differences in performance amongst people.

“Practice is indeed important to reach an elite level of performance, but this paper makes an overwhelming case that it isn’t enough,” researcher Professor Zach Hambrick says.

It runs counter to the Gladwell heuristic of 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery of a subject.  Hambrick goes on

“The evidence is quite clear that some people do reach an elite level of performance without copious practice, while other people fail to do so despite copious practice,” he says.

To reach their conclusion Hambrick and colleagues analysed 14 studies of chess players and musicians.  They were looking in particular for the impact practice had on performance.  They found that at most it accounted for perhaps 1/3 of the differences in skill level of chess players and musicians.  The remainder can be explained by things such as natural ability, intelligence, the age in which we begin practising and so on.

Hambrick is at pains to point out that things aren’t all doom and gloom however.  He suggests that rather than showing how many of us will never achieve greatness regardless of how often we practice, it does instead make clear the likelihood of achieving certain things, and thus give us a more realistic picture, thus allowing us to refocus efforts in more fertile areas.

In Charles Dickens classic Oliver Twist, the character Mr Bumble is informed that “the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction”.  It solicits the classic response

“If the law supposes that … the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

Never has this seemed more apt than in a ruling this week in New York City that the sofa surfing website Airbnb is in fact illegal.  The judge ruled that a man who rented out his flat via the site had violated a 2011 law that was setup to prevent illegal hotels.  This ruling determines that property owners cannot rent out their property for less than a 30-day period over the course of a year, so the odd weekend here and there as is common on Airbnb is against the law.

The case in question revolved around a gentleman who had rented his appartment to a woman for a 3-day stint in September.  This was deemed to have broken the hotel law, and the judge ordered him to pay a $7,000 fine.  Whilst a later ruling reduced this to $2,400, it still represents a major blow to the ethos of the site.

Here is the official statement from Airbnb.

“This decision runs contrary to the stated intention and the plain text of New York law, so obviously we are disappointed. But more importantly, this decision makes it even more critical that New York law be clarified to make sure regular New Yorkers can occasionally rent out their own homes. There is universal agreement that occasional hosts like Nigel Warren were not the target of the 2010 law, but that agreement provides little comfort to the handful of people, like Nigel, who find themselves targeted by overzealous enforcement officials. It is time to fix this law and protect hosts who occasionally rent out their own homes. Eighty-seven percent of Airbnb hosts in New York list just a home they live in — they are average New Yorkers trying to make ends meet, not illegal hotels that should be subject to the 2010 law.”

It’s worth remembering that this is the same Airbnb that was used as a platform to provide temporary shelter to over 4,000 people after hurricane Sandy had hit the very same state that has now ruled much of the sites activities illegal.  There’s gratitude for you.

As Mr Bumble aptly put it, the law is indeed an ass.

Earlier this month I wrote about a new service called Bonus.ly.  The idea behind the site is quite simple.  Each month employees are allocated a budget, be it financial or otherwise, that they can then allocate to their colleagues according to who they feel has performed well.  The idea is that peers will be much better placed to know who the top performers are than managers, and this peer recognition is better motivation.

The site is currently in testing so there isn’t a huge amount of empirical data to go on, but a new research paper suggests that they may be on to something.

The researchers wanted to test the performance claims of the kind of prosocial bonuses used by Bonus.ly.  To test things, they applied prosocial bonuses to a team of sales people in a pharmaceutical company.  They calculated that when a $10 bonus was given to a salesman to spend on himself, he only generated $3 in extra sales, so a $7 loss.  When the salesman was given a $10 bonus to give to a colleague however, the prosocial bonus yielded an extra $52 in increased sales.  Which is kinda interesting.

The authors of the research have a new book out in a few weeks where they chronicle the kind of social dynamics and psychological research behind selfless behaviour, and the benefits that can acrue from it.  It’s called Happy Money and could be well worth adding to your reading list.

They are however at pains to point out that taking an individuals entire bonus and making them spend it on other people may not be entirely a good idea as a motivational tool, even if of course if that employee does well they’re likely to get plenty back in return.  The feeling that money is being taken from you does kinda act as a demotivator.
It’s certainly an interesting use of money as a motivator however and if nothing else will provide some fascinating insights as these various approaches generate material and evidence as to their effectiveness.

Social business has massive potential to change how your organisation operates.  As with many social based work however, the failure rate remains unduly high.  IBM have released a new report that aims to change that by sharing some of the things that the best organisations do.

The document is concise at only 12 pages, but provides a nice introduction to social business.  It says how many organisations are using social tools and philosophies to improve their customer service, product development and HR functions, not to mention of course the more traditional sales and marketing.

Where the report comes into its own however is in explaining how these improvements have been made.  IBM introduce the concept of social business patterns.  These are akin to business process flows, and IBM discovered several key patterns in successful organisations.

• Finding expertise
• Gaining external customer insights
• Increasining knowledge sharing
• Improving recruiting and on-boarding
• Managing mergers and acquisitions
• Enabling and improving workplace sanity

Lets look at each in turn.

Finding expertise

Old school knowledge management has been a core component of its modern incarnation of social business.  With KM being a mature field, the report has a good back catalogue of issues that need to be overcome, but also some good strategies for overcoming them if you want to achieve the outcomes IBM believe are possible in this area.

• quickly locate the right people, or published content containing, the expertise needed to solve a problem
• connect the best possible resources to effectively respond to customer needs
• document and share reusable solutions to common issues
• create highly-engaged and productive employees

Gaining external customer insights

To many organisations persist in being ‘make and sell’ types, where little customer feedback is sought.  For them, social media is merely another tool by which to flog their wares.  Social business tools allow you not only to listen to what customers are openly saying about you online however, but also to invite them into your own communities to share their feelings.

• quickly learn customers’ opinions and preferences related to existing and potential products and services
• identify and connect with key customer influencers to aid marketing efforts

Increasing knowledge sharing

This pattern is very similar to pattern #1 in that both very much fall under the knowledge management umbrella.  Whilst IBM do state some benefits from this, such as fewer meetings and higher employee engagement, it would have been nice had they shared some more tangible successes from knowledge sharing, such as whether it helped produce more new products or better processes.

• more efficiently and effectively capture, share and access knowledge
• increase innovation through wider reach of ideas
• reduce excessive, unproductive time spent searching and exchanging information

Improving recruiting and on-boarding

Getting the best talent into your organisation is as much of a no brainer as ensuring that talent is then utilised effectively.  Sadly of course, a great many companies screw up their recruitment, and as with dating, the first weeks are crucial.  Research earlier this year revealed that organisations with low employee turnover scored around 4x as much profit as those with high turnover.

• collaboratively find and connect the right candidate to the right position
• streamline assessment and hiring processes
• better connect, engage and retain new hires
• contextually recommend expertise to increase new hires’ productivity

Managing mergers and acquisitions

This is another knowledge management pattern in that you’re both looking to improve the transfer of experiences learned from past mergers to current staff, whilst also helping to better communicate the shared values and cultures expected of the newly merged group.  With the track record of successful mergers being pretty poor, this is clearly an area that is very difficult to concquer.

• increase overall success rate of merger and acquisition activities
• raise effectiveness of vision setting and communication before, during and after merger or acquisition
• accelerate creation of “one company” community and culture

Enabling and improving workplace safety

An interesting final area the report explores is in improving health and safety.  It’s an area that isn’t often covered or trumpeted as a social business success.  Nevertheless, IBM believe that social tools can help spread both the explicit and tacit understanding of health and safety procedures and behaviours.

• speed communication of new or changed safety regulations, policies and procedures
• minimize or eliminate project execution delays arising from actual or potential safety issues
• improve innovation in safety procedures by increasing dialog between safety experts and workers

As mentioned at the start, it is only a short report, with content amounting to 10 pages at most.  As such the limitations are plain.  It won’t be something that provides all the answers to your social business questions, nor indeed does it cover all of the things that social business can achieve.  It is a very IBM-centric publication, in that it focuses very much on the things IBM can help you with.  There is no mention for instance of crowdfunding or strategy formulation and dissemination.  If you’re new to the field though it provides a good introduction to the kind of things social business can do, whilst also providing some potential metrics to measure success.

Last week I wrote about a novel project being run in Bogota, Columbia that is attempting to crowdsource the funding of a new skyscraper.  The Prodigy Network, who are running the scheme, offer crowdfunding opportunities for a whole host of retail projects around the world.  It’s the tip of an ever growing iceburg.

We’ve all heard of Kickstarter, but a growing number of sites are looking to crowdsource local community projects.  For instance, in Rotterdam a new pedestrian walkway is being funded by crowdsourcing, with people being asked to contribute €25 to help fund the project.  In return they get a message etched into the bridge.  Within a few months the project had reached its intended amount.

Spacehive is a similar site here in Britain.  They claim to be the very first crowdfunding site for civic projects and offer people the chance to invest in a range of projects around the country.  Recently funded projects have included a project to bring free wi-fi to Mansfield city centre, and to build a rock climbing facility in Minehead.

What makes it fascinating is that unlike the projects organised by Prodigy Network, investors in Spacehive projects don’t receive anything in return (other than a sense of goodwill obviously).  Other civic crowdfunding sites offer investors/donors small gestures of gratitude, be that some kind of mention ala the bridge in Rotterdam, or even something as seemingly trivial as a poster to say thank you.

Such sites are certainly growing in number however, with the likes of Neighbor.ly in America and UrbanKIT in Chile all offering people the chance to help fund projects that matter to them.

Thinkers such as Steven Johnson believe this kind of civic involvement is merely the beginning.  He points to the participatory budgeting in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre as an example of what can happen when you give people control over how their money is spent.  The system allows citizens direct input into how their tax money is spent.  The success of the system in Porto Alegre has prompted another 70 Brazilian cities to follow suit.

It’s a model that clearly chimes with the civic crowdfunding organisations.  They bemoan that the present mechanism for deciding on projects is often beholden to NIMBYs who stalk planning meetings with the intention of blocking projects they disapprove of.  Very few people stalk local government to get something do.  The crowdfunding groups see this as a chance to change that, and to get local people involved in crafting the local environment they want to live in.

Johnson was also a staunch champion of the Finnish organisation Brickstarter.  They’re hoping to release a book chronicalling their adventures in crowdfunding this month.  They intend to make it freely available as a PDF and it should make fascinating reading for anyone with an interest in this kind of mechanism for funding projects.

With Deloitte estimating that crowdfunding will generate around $3 billion for projects this year it’s certainly a growing area.  They also estimate that $500 million of that will be going towards civic projects where donors expect no financial return.  I’ve long believed that the Internet has the potential to change how society operates in a fundamental way.  It’s something Johnson refers to as peer progressivism.  Civic crowdfunding on a large scale could well be a fundamental part of that.  Exciting times indeed.

Last year an employee was sued for taking the Twitter followers he’d amassed with him when he left his company.  The case focused attention on just how much a Twitter follower was worth.  Suffice to say that since then, a good deal of effort has gone into highlighting just how many followers are fakes.  So it’s clear that not all followers are of equal value to you.

What about the ones that really engage with you on social media though?  How much are they worth?  That was the question asked by new research into the profitability of social media users.

It found that engaged social media customers spend significantly more (as in 5.6% more) than those customers that aren’t engaged.  Yet more evidence if any were needed as to the important role social media should play in any corporate effort.

The researchers studied a large wine retailer in the north-east of America.  The company first jumped into social media in 2009, and has since grown its presence there, posting a mixture of promotional material, local information and advice on wine selection.

The research team began analysing the companies customer database in early 2011 to determine who amongst them were regularly engaging with the company on social media, and combined this with both their demographic profile and spending habits.  All in all they analysed nearly 400 customers over a three year period.

To provide a good comparison between those that were engaged online, the researchers found customers of a similar demographic profile and with similar spending habits from the time before the social presence was launched, but who didn’t go on to become engaged online with the company.

Before the launch of the social media stuff, both groups of customers would visit the companies stores as frequently as each other, also spending a similar amount when in them.  That picture changed however once the company jumped into social media.  At that point, the engaged online customers began outstripping their offline brethren.  They began visiting stores more often and spending more money when in them.

The researchers also began to identify particular types of customers by their social habits.  For instance, those who posted regular content online (the fabled 1%), bought wine in larger volumes than anyone else.  They also tended to go for the more expensive products, and were more loyal to the company.  This goes against the impression that social is merely home to those looking for bargains or items on sale.

It underlines the importance of both knowing your customers, and tailoring your social communities to serve those segments.  Whilst some customers may hunt down your special offers, there will be others that are passionate about what you do and crave the premium end of your offering.  Both should have communities tailored to their specific needs and interests.

“It is vital that managers integrate their knowledge about customers from both offline transactions and online social media sources in order to better serve them,” the authors write.

Last week I shared research that can predict the movements of people within a disaster area by analysing their mobile phone usage in the months prior to the disaster.  Such uses for big data are becoming commonplace.  Google Flu Trends has largely been a success, albeit with a well publicised mishap during the latest American flu season.  Indeed such has been the success that they have taken the approach and applied it to Dengue.

With Twitter being so potent a source of updates on what we’re all up to, one would think it would be just as useful as our mobile phone behaviour or our search engine requests.  First though we have to understand how often people make reference to their location in their messages.  There are two ways for Twitter to identify the location of a tweet.  The first is the use of Places, where tweeters actually identify the location they’re in from within the tweet.  The second uses the GPS data from the mobile device they used to send the tweet.

Due to security concerns however, this latter option is disabled by default, with users having to manually allow it again.  Recent research has looked at the number of tweets that allow observers to identify the location from which it was sent, and indeed how many of these tweets were from the two forms of identifying source.

They analysed the Twitter decahose over a period of 39 days towards the end of 2012.  They found that 2.02% of all tweets included geographic metadata, with 1.8% having a Place indicator, 1.6% having Exact Location, and 1.4% having both (these sum to more than the total because tweets can have both).  Closer inspection found another 1.1% of tweeters who had manually entered their location.  So 3.04%, or roughly 46.5 million tweets contained some kind of identifying information, with over 600,000 unique places on Earth captured each day.

You can see below how these were distributed around the world.

It is of course worth pointing out that georeferenced tweets were made by just 8.2% of total Twitter users, with 1.1% making 66% of all location based tweets, so it is not a large proportion by any means.  Does that curtail any hopes of utilising this data for meaningful work?  That was a question unfortunately the researchers didn’t explore, instead choosing to focus purely on the number of georeferenced tweets and the geographic spread of retweets (location was found to have no bearing on our likelyhood of sharing something).  Hopefully the research will open the door for more digging around in this fascinating area.