By Christopher Rollyson  [UPDATED] Analyst firms are go-to sources for emerging business and technology trends since they conduct constant due diligence on markets and technologies, which they sell via a subscription model. In addition, they are prodigious producers of content, conferences and other thought leadership activities relevant to social technologies, and a large portion of their employees produce and deliver content publicly (research, write, present), which strengthens their competency with social technologies.
As with most advisory firm categories, market leaders Forrester, Gartner and IDC are being challenged by analyst social business pureplays Altimeter Group and Constellation Research Group, while other firms hang back. This report also includes NM Incite, which is more of a market search firm, but it makes for an interesting comparison.
Advisory and Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012 is a research survey that evaluates and quantitatively ranks the maturity of agency and consultancy social business practices. The survey ranks Strategy firms, Big Four, Marketing/Advertising/PR agencies, Analysts, Enterprise I.T. firms and Pureplays on their social business practices, service offerings and leadership—specifically according to their relevance for leading client organizations’ transformations to more human entities that are grounded in listening and responding, not marketing.
Continue reading Analyst Report: Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012
By Christopher Rollyson  Advisory and Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012 is publishing as individual Executive Summaries of firm category reports. These discuss relative scores of firms in each category, but they don’t disclose scores themselves. This enables us to have some fun. You can guess the highest scores in several categories and win valuable prizes!
Contest Rules
To be eligible for 1st, 2nd or 3rd prizes, all you need do is respond to four questions via the embedded survey below. You could win an Extended Analysis report of any firm in this Research Survey, or even commission your own Extended Analysis report! For five minutes of your time.
I will award prizes two days after the last Executive Summary publishes (see the Research Survey microsite for dates). However, the first person who responds with the correct answer wins that prize. This introduces some risk for people who just wait until the end! You should also know that I reserve the right to change any of the rules or prizes without notice except on this page.
Read on for details of the prizes, guidance and clues, and the link to participate. Good luck!
Continue reading Guess the Scores Contest: Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012
By Christopher Rollyson  Advisory and Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012 audits the maturity of management consultancies’ and agencies’ social business practices. It aims to serve CEOs and CMOs who want to maximize the potential value of social business by evolving their organizations. Similarly, it will be useful to firm and agency executives that want to position themselves as strong players in the growing market for social business strategy.
This research survey may be unique because it focuses its evaluation on firms’ ability to advise clients on becoming more social by transforming their organizations. It attempts to factor out “social media promotion” since it is usually driven by marketing, not relationship. In addition, this survey quantitatively measures firms’ social business commitment; firms that don’t practice social business themselves cannot be credible advisors.
The Advisory and Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012 microsite has all information pertaining to the research survey. Continue reading Preview Advisory & Services Firm Social Business Adoption 2012
By Christopher Rollyson ![Social Media Upgrade [Social Business Team Building] case1](http://rollyson.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/sbtb1.png) [Updated] The Social Media Upgrade applies to most consumer-oriented brands that have been outsourcing much of their social media work to agencies. In 2013, digital marketing and brand executives are thinking about building their internal teams to provide more continuity and scale.
Social Media Upgrade is the first of the five-part social business team building series The series describes team building in the context of various scenarios in which firms build social business capability, step by step, while investing wisely. Social Business Strategy Use Cases outlines and compares all five use cases while Social Business Team Building gives general guidance for how to create social business teams as well as recommendations for what characteristics leaders have, so I recommend reading them, too.
Continue reading Social Media Upgrade Social Business Team Building
By Christopher Rollyson  [UPDATED] Several times over the past few years, I have been contacted by major brands to advise them on finding a “social media executive” to help them “figure out social media” and “create a strategy.” In 2012, many firms began building social media teams in earnest, and this trend will continue to grow in the years ahead. Firms are also bringing “social media work” inside after having outsourced it to agencies. All of my client work has involved helping clients to build social business competency and teams, so here I’ll offer some pointers for how to build teams and avoid the pitfalls most companies experience.
Although each organization’s culture is different, the CEO, CDO, CMO or CAO will be happier with the social business investment if s/he doesn’t invest far ahead of return on investment, which remains low at firms that insist on “business-meaningful” metrics, not the PR- or “brand-building” variety. It’s a chicken-and-egg challenge: how do you know what kind of team to build until you’re achieving real business-meaningful returns on your social business initiatives? Continue reading Social Business Team Building [Recruiting]
By Christopher Rollyson 
You can create more opportunity with a career mission, especially when you don’t get distracted by traditional career or job search concerns like whether you have a “consulting” or “employment” relationship. Here I’ll share how you can create far more opportunity by changing your assumptions about work, tapping the Social Channel and aligning yourself with the emerging Knowledge Economy. To illustrate the point, I’ll use myself as an example because I’m a veteran of many types of “work arrangements.”
It’s the good news-bad news story of the almost-decade: legacy “work” and “jobs” have permanently gone by the wayside as the primary means for people to be productive in “modern” economies (bad news). However, people can create a higher quality of life by adopting a more flexible approach to work, and organizations are crying out for flexibility (good news). Continue reading Create More Opportunity with a Career Mission
By Christopher Rollyson  It is exciting to see widening recognition that brand survival depends on improving the lives of customers, not merely “pushing product” as they are accustomed to doing. In the latest example, Business Should Focus on Sociality, Not Social “Media”, Umair Haque offered a case for the end of social media and the disruption of many Industrial Economy structures, namely the social contract.
As regular readers well know, I agree with Haque’s key thesis, that brands need to jettison their legacy focus on products/services in favor of dedicating themselves to helping users achieve outcomes while using their products. I have often written that humans and their organizations will have to adopt a more collaborative and responsible attitude and approach in general. However, I don’t agree with him that there’s only one way to do “sociality” as he implies by his assertion that brands have an “existential responsibility” to “the art of living.” Here I’ll explain the differences, which will help brand stewards understand the nuances of brands’ disruption. Continue reading Brand Survival Depends on Improving the Lives of Customers
By Christopher Rollyson Unusual strategy & management guide shows how to use social data to solve complex problems
Everything Is Obvious* is an excellent how-to guide to understanding how social networks change strategy, prediction and decision-making. It offers practical techniques and profound insights for using social networks, big data and new ways of thinking to solve complex problems in business and government.
Intriguingly, the book also cites research that debunks several social media sacred cows.
Watts has an interesting point of view because he combines several disciplines: he began his career as a physicist before moving into sociology, so he strives to combine the quantitative, experimental methods of physics with maddeningly complex social problems. Moreover, he’s been running practical experiments at Yahoo! for several years, using search, Web and social data. Watts backs up his assertions with primary research that he has led or in which he has participated. He is also a very engaging writer.
I also highly recommend “Obvious” because it enables the reader to question commonsense thinking that s/he uses in cases where s/he oughtn’t—and that clients use. This affords a new level of flexibility and insight because common sense is so pervasive and leads us astray so regularly.
My analysis and conclusions follow the outline of each chapter.
Continue reading How Social Networks Change Strategy, Prediction and Decision-Making
By Christopher Rollyson  I covered the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Economic Forecast last week, where all speakers issued this refrain: “More of the same.” Key economic indicators have been stuck in neutral—the proverbial “sideways” movement—so the consensus in the room was one of faint frustration tempered by gratitude. Everyone had lived through worse.
The current “recovery” is underperforming any other in recent memory according to many measures, especially employment.
The conference was very well organized and featured expert presenters. Reading between the lines, I perceive significant opportunity that will surprise most people. After my notes of speakers’ remarks, I’ll share my thoughts on 2013’s opportunity that is evident when one regards “the economy” from a different point of view.
Everyone wonders what kind of presents we will open in 2013 (right). Continue reading Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Economic Forecast
By Christopher Rollyson  [UPDATED] Several profound market forces are preparing the ascendancy of Knowledge Economy products, which result from collaboration among designers, artists, engineers, customers and firms. This represents one of the Knowledge Economy’s most exciting-yet-disruptive elements: “products” will cease to be dominated by monolithic factories that mass produce virtually all items that people use and consume. Moreover, people have an inherent joy when they can make things for themselves, their friends and their families—and a dramatic new wave of creativity and innovation is imminent. To help you wrap your mind around Knowledge Economy products, this post will recall what happened to mass media and entertainment industries.
Knowledge Economy products are conceived, designed, prototyped and fabricated in the Social Channel. Best practices in open source, Agile development, design and Web development will unleash continuous innovation at a scale and pace we’ve never seen before. Knowledge and innovation will be free in the Knowledge Economy because all supporting processes will become an order of magnitude faster and cheaper. Firms and brands that do not recognize and respond quickly enough will become irrelevant.
Most brands can create a renaissance in relevance and value by adopting elements of the CommCo and ProAm social business models. Brands like P&G, Domino’s, Betabrand and Threadless are suggesting how it’s done. Read on to see how Knowledge Economy products will affect brands, manufacturers and service firms—and give leaders a once-in-several-lifetimes opportunity to recreate their firms and brands. Continue reading Knowledge Economy Products and The Future of Manufacturing
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