A friend of mine who teaches journalism at Harvard posted this video on Facebook the other day (a great testimony to the truths found in the video itself). I found it so compelling I wanted to share it with the rest of you.
My favorite line...
"If MySpace were a country... it would be the eight largest in the world."
If what's happening on the internet is any indication of the world to come, there is no doubt that our companies are falling way behind.
I want to extend a hat tip to Jon Ingham for picking up on this fabulous article from C.K. Prahalad.
Prahalad is a Professor of Corporate Strategy at the Ross School of Business at the Univ of Michigan. He, along with Gary Hamel, is responsible for the concept of Core Competence, and independently he has authored a number of articles and a book revolving around how to serve the poorest of the world's poor while still making a handsome profit.
It's inspiring work - who wouldn't want to make lots of money and change the world for the better in the process?! - and it's great business sense considering the sheer numbers and aggregate spending power of that vastly underserved demographic.
Please take a read. Article
Some interesting and fun new web 2.0 apps worth checking out.
Flock - The web browser for the uber-connected. Look for this to surpass IE, Firefox, and others among the most plugged-in generations. The functionality is quite impressive for someone who spends ridiculous amounts of time online, browsing, sharing, and blogging. I've thought about switching myself.
Jumpcut - Taking video sharing to the next level. Think GarageBand for video.
Pipes - For those of us who want our content served up on a silver platter, this nice Yahoo tool allows us to build custom feeds. Wonderful concept but still too complex for the lay person to use.
Now I'm really reaching back (2006!!), but I'm having a wonderful time exploring the TED Talks series and this one is just way too compelling to not share. It's a bit long, but Richard Baraniuk has conceived something truly valuable and unique with Connexions. Ultimately much more powerful than a $100 laptop and absolutely in tune with the challenges and controversies surrounding socioeconomic development initiatives.
As he notes, MIT is doing some wonderful things in this area, as well, with MIT OpenCourseWare. I'm currently taking one of Eric Von Hippel's (who, by the way, also offers a plethora of free materials on his own site) courses, complete with recorded lectures.
With Web 2.0 and social networking being all the rage, you're starting to see more vendors like SuccessFactors and Taleo beginning to use their platforms for building corporate social networks.
I say this a bit cynically, but I do think it makes great sense and I see enormous value in turning HR platforms into collaboration applications.
After all, employee data tables and internal resumes (including competencies, skills, experiences, etc) essentially provide the same content that you would be asked to offer upon opening a Facebook or MySpace account, so HR systems are already halfway there.
Plus, by morphing a mundane and static HR system into something much more dynamic and valuable on an everyday basis, you drive greater adoption (a huge challenge for HR technology vendors) and make the application a whole lot stickier. And there are some awesome potential derivative benefits (in violent agreement with Jason Corsello here).
All in all, a great strategy .
Again, vendors that have already adopted web 2.0 tactics have a clear head start here. But what about those that that haven't? Might companies like Pringo provide tempting bait?
Some HR software vendors trigger-happy to get on the web 2.0 bandwagon could heed some of Evan Williams' (founder of Twitter) advice listed here. Particularly the points around "Personally Compelling" and "Obviousness."
Some snippets are copied below to whet your appetite, but I recommend reading the whole entry at Evan's blog.
Question: Is it clear why people should use it?
Question: Do you really want it to exist in the world?
I am (finally) reading Chris Anderson's The Long Tail. This is one of probably 5 books that I am reading or have read lately and have thus far failed to write about.
In the meantime, I also came across this TED Talk, where he shares his own view of the Technology Life Cycle. Not nearly as nuanced as either Clayton Christensen's or Geoffrey Moore's point of view, but his examples are quite interesting. Definitely worth a look.
I found the linked articles (1 and 2) pretty underwhelming - it seems like a good example of the mainstream business media having less to contribute to the dialogue around innovation and technology. I thought I would post it anyway, however, in case I'm being too harsh and need to be corrected.
Personally, I would venture to say that:
- People are not going to start fleeing more open communities like Facebook and MySpace for "gated networks." Do people really believe that!?
-The Kindle is going to continue to be a controversial and only moderately successful product.
-Placing SaaS for the enterprise under "Innovation Predictions" is a bit silly.
Actually, the first few slides made me think of the IBM Innovation Man commercial that began airing recently. I could only find it in Italian (just listen for 'implementazione'). -
It doesn't make me terribly eager to pick up Fortune to read through their new Technology section, either.
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