On being open
“The conventional wisdom goes that companies should lock in customers to lock out competitors. There are different tactical approaches — razor companies make the razor cheap and the blades expensive, while the old IBM made the mainframes expensive and the software … expensive too. Either way, a well-managed closed system can deliver plenty of profits. They can also deliver well-designed products in the short run — the iPod and iPhone being the obvious examples — but eventually innovation in a closed system tends towards being incremental at best (is a four blade razor really that much better than a three blade one?) because the whole point is to preserve the status quo. Complacency is the hallmark of any closed system. If you don’t have to work that hard to keep your customers, you won’t.
Open systems are just the opposite. They are competitive and far more dynamic. In an open system, a competitive advantage doesn’t derive from locking in customers, but rather from understanding the fast-moving system better than anyone else and using that knowledge to generate better, more innovative products. The successful company in an open system is both a fast innovator and a thought leader; the brand value of thought leadership attracts customers and then fast innovation keeps them. This isn’t easy — far from it — but fast companies have nothing to fear, and when they are successful they can generate great shareholder value.”
Source – The meaning of open, Jonathan Rosenberg
The ‘Social Era’
The value that rules…
- Industrial era – Institutions
- Information age – Data
- Social era – Value creation
“[…] while in the industrial era, organizations became more powerful by being bigger, in the Social Era, companies can also be powerful by working with others. While the industrial era was about making a lot of stuff and convincing enough buyers to consume it, the Social Era is about the power of communities, of collaboration and co-creation. In the industrial era, power was from holding what we valued closed and separate; in the Social Era, there is another framework for how we engage one another — an open one.”
Source – Traditional strategy is dead. Welcome to #SocialEra (The #SocialEra ebook)
Businesses socially networked: In & Out
“The average interaction worker spends an estimated 28 percent of the workweek managing e-mail and nearly 20 percent looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks. But when companies use social media internally, messages become content; a searchable record of knowledge can reduce, by as much as 35 percent, the time employees spend searching for company information. Additional value can be realized through faster, more efficient, more effective collaboration, both within and between enterprises.”
Source – The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies
“[…] we’re witnessing how web-based collaboration and social tools have dramatically changed the way people connect. Whether you’re across the street or across the world, you can hold face-to-face meetings, share updates with colleagues and friends and work on a presentation together in real time. Like Google Apps, we think Google+ can help colleagues collaborate more easily and get things done—and get to know each other along the way.”
Source – Bringing Google+ to work
Blogging in Asia vs doing it in Western countries
“In emerging markets, particularly in China, online users report a larger proportion of social media accounts are devoted to microblogging (75 percent) and blogging (66 percent) than in other countries. In Asia, people blog to stay connected to friends and family; consequently, a blog’s range of influence tends to be relatively small, typically less than 11 people. In Western countries, however, blogging is viewed as a form of publishing, intended for larger audiences, which may also explain why fewer people in these geographies do it.”
And a couple of interesting facts about social media globally:
Why users use social media and networking sites
Why users interact with brands in social sites
Source – From Social Media to Social CRM. February, 2011. IBM
Watching TV is now multi-tasking
TV no longer gets our full attention as it is mostly used simultaneously with other screens (smartphone, laptop, tablet).
“I’m sometimes shopping, sometimes looking for recipes, sometimes typing them up, you know. Sending emails, reading, I could do anything on there. It’s not often that I just sit and watch TV and do just that.” – Lori
Mobile is key: Smartphones are the devices used the most throughout the day. They are also the most common starting point for activities that will take us to other screens. Think of that book that you checked on the go to see if they had it online, but that you ended up ordering from your laptop.
Source – The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-platorm Consumer Behavior. August, 2012. Google
Genoveva Descalzo 