Volatility, Uncertainly and Opportunity—Move Crisply while Competitors Are in Disarray
 Now that the Year in Review 2008 has summarized key trends, we are in excellent position for 2009 prognostications, so welcome to Part II. As all experienced executives know, risk and reward are inseparable twins, and periods of disruption elevate both, so you will have much more opportunity to produce uncommon value than normal.
This is a high-stakes year in which we can expect surprises. Web 2.0 and social networks can help because they increase flexibility and adaptiveness. Alas, those who succeed will have to challenge conventional thinking considerably, which is not a trivial exercise in normal times. The volatility that many businesses face will make it more difficult because many of their clients and/or employees will be distracted. It will also make it easier because some of them will perceive that extensive change is afoot, and Web 2.0 will blend in with the cacaphony. Disruption produces unusual changes in markets, and the people that perceive the new patterns and react appropriately emerge as new leaders.
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Editor’s Choice of the Global Human Capital Journal—Accelerating Disruption and Opportunity
 What a year! When I wrote in the 2007 Year in Review that 2008 “would produce an unimaginable degree of change,” I had no idea how right that would prove to be. We saw major disruption in the global economy, and the U.S. presidential campaign closed the year with a major political upset, largely at the hand of social media. That said, I still believe that 2008 will prove to be a transitional year and that more profound change is on the way.
Look in any direction. From a macroeconomic perspective, the global economy is showing itself to be pervasively interdependent. The U.S. successfully exported its real estate finance crisis without even working up a sweat. I don’t believe that anyone really knows where all the bodies are buried yet, and central bank chairmen, national presidents and global organization leaders are still holding their breaths, even though they smile bravely on television. Barack Obama’s successful U.S. presidential campaign showed that a new era of politics is upon us; as we’ll discuss below, […]
Year in Review 2007—Editor’s Choice of the Global Human Capital Journal
As I reflect on 2007 and create strategy for 2008, several macro-trends come into sharp relief, and I believe that some of them might be helpful to you as you conduct your own planning. As always, I focus on emerging phenomena because they are areas in which disruption and discontinuous change are acting on markets, thereby elevating threats and opportunities. Helping leaders to create strategy to manage the risk of unusual market developments is the focus of my consulting practice.
In 2007 it became clear to me that we were entering a profound social transformation that would produce an unimaginable degree of change. Unlike the technology-precipitated change that I’ve been helping people with since the 1990s, technology is shifting to the background now, and pervasive social change is taking the stage. Look for disruption in all areas affected by how people connect, communicate, purchase and collaborate: business, politics, community and leisure. Moreover, these changes are completely global with all the variations that engenders.
I can’t tell […]
Edison as Mashup Artist: Combining Discipline, Process and Intuition
 Innovate Like Edison is a must-read for anyone who wants to thrive in the “flat world.” Had it been written in the 20th century, the book would have been applicable to R&D leaders, and it would have been a nice-to-have for business and government leaders. Innovation was the place kicker on the team during the Industrial Economy because companies created value through efficiency (refining continuous processes), and innovation is about discontinuous processes.
In the 21st century Knowledge Economy, however, innovation is the linebacker. Customers merely expect world-class efficiency, but it rarely differentiates. Innovation is now a core competency at most levels of every organization.
The problem is, the authors explain, is that very few people are innovation literate, and they don’t know how to practice it practically. As I’ve written extensively, business innovation failures are over 95%, and most new products fail at high rates. We must reposition innovation as a linebacker, and that means understanding it differently and treating it differently.
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Valuable Space to Create Your Professional Knowledge Network
 LinkedIn is a social network website that enables people to build and manage (mostly) business connections in order to discover jobs, ventures, new clients, etc. Unlike other social networking sites, its focus is business rather than social or entertainment.
LinkedIn is emerging as a dominant networking environment for executives and professionals, and its development will be of interest as both an immensely practical tool and as a study of the social network phenomenon. Founded in 2003, LinkedIn crossed the chasm in 2007, as the company reports that thousands of people are joining per day. Today, it has more than 9 million members, and membership is very global.
As valuable as LinkedIn is, one of the company’s weakest points is making itself approachable to executives. For example, I recently attended an Illinois IT Association Sales Round Table at which attendees represented a broad range of executives, IT management and professionals and were no strangers to developing relationships and business development. Presenter Steve Weinberg gave an excellent presentation on LinkedIn’s potential and features. Listening to the interaction of the at-capacity crowd, I was impressed by […]
Immensely Valuable Field Guide for Word of Mouth Practitioners—with a Twist
 Word of Mouth Marketing is an exceptionally useful, insightful and surprising book. Andy Sernovitz has done a masterful job at creating a brief, lucid and tactical guide to realigning your company’s relationships with your customers, quickly and inexpensively. It is very straightforward, honest and full of practical techniques. Moreover, it is very human because it addresses customers as human beings, not demographics. I suspect that this aspect of the book might peeve those marketers that are invested in the difficulty and complexity of their craft. Think about it: when customers were (relatively) mute and invisible, marketers were the intermediary between the enterprise and the customer; in the absence of the customer’s voice, they created models and theories to simulate it. WOM, powered by Web 2.0, means that customers can talk in their own words, and companies can listen. The customer’s back!
However, this direct customer connection also means that marketing will be much more fun and less frustrating for companies that understand the shift and engage their customers. This direct, fun and productive new reality emanates from the book’s every […]
An Excellent Primer for the Core Competency of the 21st Century
 To thrive in the Knowledge Economy, companies will have to learn how to innovate at warp speed, or they will simply slip beneath the surface of the water like stricken liners. Ultra low costs and exceptional quality feature sets are merely expected, and they no longer differentiate.
Conventional wisdom holds that “innovation” cycles reappear every five years, when companies have exhausted the then-current cost-cutting approaches and need to focus on driving the top line.
However, the Knowledge Economy doesn’t call for your father’s innovation. The 21st century kind will require that companies turn themselves inside-out. Winners will learn to engage and catalyze their customers’ creativity. As author Patty Seybold aptly puts it, “Companies with the smartest customers win.” Outside Innovation is an in-the-trenches manual for evolving your company to embrace the innovation imperative.
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A Must-read Guide to the Importance of Web 2.0 and the Knowledge Economy
 The Long Tail is a watershed book that reflects many of the profound socioeconomic changes wrought by the transition from the Industrial Economy to the Knowledge Economy. The “Long Tail” represents the splintering of the mass market—what is happening, why and how you can thrive in the new era of the niche. Moreover, it shows how the mass market was a temporary phenomenon that developed because niches were not economically viable for producers to address.
Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired, and the book has an appreciation for culture, the economics of technology and the importance of innovation. It’s also very well written: Anderson tackles some fairly abstract concepts, but the reader doesn’t trip over them. It’s possible to read the book quickly, but there is plenty of substance for a detailed, reflective reading as well. Difficult to over-recommend!
The Long Tail offers an insightful look into the byte-oriented Knowledge Economy and its movement away from the zero-sum, bits-oriented Industrial Economy—and what this holds for business and culture. The book […]
Excellent guidebook for succeeding in the online world, including social networking
 The Virtual Handshake is an immensely valuable book, both as a handbook to the virtual world for the business-oriented person and as a guide to purposeful networking. I was compelled to get it after seeing David Teten speak at a conference because he spoke with authority while explaining new things clearly. Allen and Teten have done a masterful job at writing an interesting book that is full of useful information. Moreover, they succeed at providing a conceptual framework, so the reader can make use of the information. It is also a fun read.
As a marketing executive and a management consultant (strategy) since the early 1990s, I have helped to build parts of the virtual world the authors describe. I am very familiar with the topics, and I found the book useful on two key levels:
Conceptual: The virtual world is difficult to understand conceptually because it is boundaryless and serendipitous, and the authors describe what it is enough so you can get to the point: how to interact with it to accomplish what you want. This is extremely important […]
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