 Facebook As Investment: No Replacement for Facebook But Pureplays Will Fade shows how the fading importance of social networks is the threat—not competitors. In Part One of the Facebook As Investment trilogy, I argued that Facebook had a signifiant trust gap with users that would inhibit its ability to monetize its most unique and valuable assets, and that the trust gap was recently compounded by its “IPO irregularities.” In Part Two, I’ll take a different tack and analyze the investment prospects of Facebook-the-platform. Part Three advises executives on how to isolate their social business investments from Facebook business risks.
In its favor, Facebook will not have to worry about being “displaced” by another social network the way that it displaced MySpace. In the near term, this lack of competition will give the company some breathing room. However, a more daunting threat awaits, the end of the social network pureplay, but that is 3-5 years out.
Nonetheless, the fate of pureplays should be top-of-mind for serious Facebook investors: to produce the fabulous returns that […]
Review and Analysis of the twenty-first century’s first decade, how Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 are disrupting executives, enterprises, society and government.. crowdsourcing, collaboration, innovation, privacy, globalization, terrorism, organizational unbundling, and how to thrive in the Knowledge Economy’s accelerating volatility, which will spell the end of many Industrial Economy enterprises. […]
This Web 2.0 adoption curve helps commercial and government executives make investments in social networks, social media and Web 2.0 in 2009 and 2010: use this realistic adoption model to manage expectations and risk. […]
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, […]
As “the Internet” changed the rules of information access, Web 2.0 is changing how people are connecting with other people. Most organizations are not ready for it: all their stakeholders can find each other and start sharing insights without the organization even knowing about it. They are experiencing the slow boil*. […]
Companies must take an ecosystem-focused approach to website design in the Web 2.0 era; site-centric design is a relic of the past […]
IBM Drives Enterprise Adoption of Social Networks with New Enterprise Adaptability Practice offers reportage on the launch of IBM’s enterprise adaptability practice
Shades of Web 3.0—The Googlization of Knowledge Management—Resetting the Adoption Clocks
 Tuesday IBM announced a new services practice, “Enterprise Adaptability” services, which aims to help global companies realize a quantum leap in workforce agility and collaboration by facilitating their adoption of social networks and Web 2.0. As predicted in the Year in Review—2007, social networks and Web 2.0 are being embraced in the enterprise B2B arena this year, and this announcement shows that adoption is right on ahead of schedule. Enterprise 2.0 is reaching the mainstream, and companies that do not aggressively adopt enterprise 2.0 will experience serious competitive threats within three years.
IBM’s announcement validates enterprise social networking, but more significant is their rationale for launching the practice: their clients are struggling with adjusting to the Knowledge Economy, globalization and decreasing margins, and Enterprise Adaptability prescribes collaboration and innovation to cure legendary agility gaps. As explained below, Enterprise Adaptability smells like breakthrough, although it’s barely out of the oven. To look behind the curtain, I caught up with […]
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 […]
Converged Experience Presages Telecoms Transformation—Reexamining the Value Proposition
 CTOs Chris Rice (AT&T), Pieter Poll (Qwest), Mark Wegleitner (Verizon) and Matt Bross (BT) agreed that the discrete services that telecoms now offer would morph into a seamless, hyperavailable cloud of communications services. The converged experience will be seamless, feature-rich and accessible when, how and where consumers want. Telecoms’ ability to deliver will drive their stock prices in the near term and was the focus of the discussion.
From an operational perspective, telecoms have been too focused on product/service P&L. Now they have to eliminate barriers between products, so the customer can have a context-appropriate, seamless experience. The first phase of this transformation is bundling existing services; however, the real value will come from innovating new services. All applications will be unified around an IP (Internet Protocol) infrastructure. Telecoms don’t need to integrate networks; they need to build networks that interoperate.
Between the lines and longer term, telecoms must reexamine their value propositions because we are coming to the end of the era in which custom applications and proprietary interfaces were necessary to integrate networks’ “islands of automation.” Network-centric software […]
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