Helix Commerce International

Making Sense of Facebook and Marketing Tips and Techniques

Dr. Cindy Gordon — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:21:56 +0000

In the last couple of years, Facebook has gone from a college photo-sharing site to a burgeoning business- networking platform for self-promotion, advertising and multimedia interaction. With new apps and add-ons, Facebook users can send each other a virtual drink, create and host events, advertise their businesses through social ads, and more.
There are now over 66 million “active” users, with an average of 250,000 new registrations per day. Facebook claims over 65 billion pages views per month, and that people spend an average of 20 minutes on the site every day.
Recently, Facebook began working on translating the site into different languages in order to make the site available internationally. This will increase its reach to more global audiences, and make it even more valuable target for marketing campaigns.
According to Hitwise, over 72% of all U.S. social network traffic in 2007 went to MySpace. Although, Facebook’s traffic increased 50% last year and MySpace traffic decreased 8%, these numbers remind us of there is still tremendous value in MySpace and its eyeball reach.
One of the questions we are often asked in supporting our clients develop stronger business innovation strategies leveraging social mediated technologies is how do we make sense of how these new toolkits can be applied to reach our customers, employees and suppliers differently.
Facebook is one of literally thousands of social networking toolkits, Linked IN, Google’s opensocial, Twitter, Spock etc…all are examples of potential social networking solutions. It is important to have an overall strategy and architecture vision to ensure you are using
Below is an excerpt from the Facebook 100 tools and Tips to Tap the Facebook Customer that we thought was exceptionally, good published on January 23, 2008 by the Editors of CRM.

Why Facebook?
Why has Facebook become the go-to networking site for marketers? Check out these articles to read up on the rise of this networking giant.

Inside Facebook: This blog is devoted to “tracking Facebook and the Facebook Platform.” You’ll find useful stats, marketing tips and more.
Facebook’s Ads Page: This page explains how Facebook provides business owners with self-service solutions, market-research solutions and integrated solutions when it comes to advertising.
Should You Advertise on Facebook?: This article helps U.K.-based businesses decide whether or not they should advertise on Facebook.
The Value of Facebook: Even in its earlier days, Facebook was considered a hot commodity in the industry. This post uncovers why there’s good reason for all the hype.
What’s the Big Deal About Facebook’s Social Ads?: This article discusses why Facebook’s social ads are such a hit.
$240 Million! Think of All the Beer We Can Buy!: When Microsoft shows a $240 million interest in your company, you know you’ve made it. Advertisers will also want to take note.
Why Is Facebook Suddenly So Popular Among We Geezers?: A CNET blogger wonders how Facebook’s popularity has stretched from its original base of the under-25 crowd.
Ten Reasons Why Facebook Is So Popular: This tongue-in-cheek article explains exactly why Facebook is such a popular site.
How Did Facebook Become So Popular?: This blogger tracks Facebook’s rise to social-networking stardom and its technique of “utilizing one of the most powerful viral marketing strategies ever conceived.”
Facebook: More Popular Than Porn: Time magazine’s Web site discovers that Facebook is more popular than porn sites among college students.
Fifteen Reasons Facebook May Be Worth $15 Billion: Back when Microsoft decided to invest $240 million in Facebook, it also declared the social-networking site to be worth around $15 billion total. The reasons for the site’s popularity still hold true in 2008.
The Impact of Facebook’s Platform: This article from ReadWriteWeb compares Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to a young Steve Jobs and applauds Facebook for opening up its company to developers and advertisers.

Advertising
Learn about current and future advertising opportunities on Facebook by reading these posts.

Sponsored Groups: Sponsor your own group on Facebook by purchasing a link that hosts ad content, message boards and more.
Mini-Feed: When it first came out, members weren’t sure if they wanted to be updated each time a friend added new photos, changed their status or even wrote on someone else’s Wall. As an advertiser, though, you can track your Mini-Feed to find out what your friends have been up to and more closely study your target audience.
AceBucks: Facebook users earn AceBucks by playing games and taking surveys, then cashing them in for real-life prizes like Wii systems and iPods. Create your own survey or game to promote your business, then invite others to play.
Five Moneymaking Opportunities on Facebook: Mashable! lists several moneymaking strategies available on Facebook, advertising and otherwise.
Facebook’s Secret Rate Card: This article explores which Facebook advertising methods are worth your money and effort, and which aren’t.
Could Facebook Change Web Advertising?: Listen to this NPR (National Public Radio) report to uncover the newest trends in Web advertising.
How to Effectively Advertise on Facebook: Trendcatching’s post explores some of the more lucrative strategies advertisers have used to tap into the Facebook market.
How Does Facebook Figure into Your Online Advertising Campaign?: This article is a must-read for business owners who are thinking about incorporating Facebook marketing into their own advertising campaigns.
Social Networks Find Ways to Monetize User Data: Learn how to make money off of your Facebook friends (it’s not as sleazy as it sounds) with the tips and analyses provided here.
Digging into Facebook’s Ad Future: CNET News.com believes that Facebook has the capabilities to become an “advertiser’s paradise,” despite some social-networking sites’ inability to make serious profits.
Promote Your Cause on Facebook in Six Easy Steps: TechSoup shows nonprofits how to use Facebook for self-promotion.
Facebook Ads: Facebook’s official advertising page strives to prove how social ads, profile pages and paid ads can increase a company’s business.

Free Marketing Opportunities
The beauty of using Facebook as a marketing tool comes from the endless ways in which you can advertise your business for free. Once you’ve set up a free account, use your creativity to maximize these features.

Profile Page: All Facebook members get their own profile page when they sign up. Use this as your canvas to upload pictures, logos and other information about your company.
Groups: Use the site’s Groups feature to network with your target audience. You can join existing groups or create one just for your business to amp up the buzz about its services.
Facebook Marketplace: College kids use the site’s Marketplace to scout out used couches and find roommates, but a savvy business owner can advertise services and product sales, as well as search for new employees.
Networks: Ignoring the Networks question when you create your company’s profile could lose it a lot of business. List your business’s city, industry, neighborhood and any other relevant information to let potential customers and business partners know where they can find you.
Facebook Badge: Facebook describes its Badge feature as “a customizable way to share your Facebook information on other Web sites.” Creating your own Badge will link Facebook friends to your company’s Web site.
Events: Instead of printing out flyers and mailers the next time you want to advertise an event, use the free Facebook Events app to get the word out.
FunWall: Mass emails are so yesteryear. If you want to keep in close contact with your Facebook friends, use the FunWall to create a message or send a greeting to everyone at once.
Top Friends Network: Reward your top friends by sending them a virtual drink or writing on their FunWalls. As a marketing tool, the Top Friends network serves as another way to group your contacts, keep an eye on your target demographic, and quickly and effectively reach out to your company’s best customers.
Inbox: Send secure, private messages to your clients on Facebook with the Inbox app. You can still send out mass messages, but only to the contacts you select.
Notes: Mashable! calls Facebook’s Notes application a blogging feature because of the way users post links, messages, photos and other information that they want to share with friends. Even if you maintain a blog elsewhere, give your Facebook friends an exclusive peek into your company’s news and behind-the-scenes schedule by posting here.
Contact Importer: The contact importer helps you “find your friends on Facebook.” If you want to find out if your clients or other work-related contacts use Facebook but think it’s a little lame to come right out and ask, upload your contacts from AIM, Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail and more to find out if they’re online.
Share Partners: When you publish updates to your company blog or Web site, add the link or a link and a photo to your Facebook profile using the Share Partners app.

Tools and Applications
Facebook add-ons allow you to customize your profile page and build up virtual relationships with clients and customers. Check out these tools and applications that will give your marketing plan a boost.

Facebook Social Ads: Pinpoint your company’s Facebook friends and friend wannabes by creating a social ad that reveals itself to visitors of your profile and friends of friends of friends … you get the idea.
Facebook Pages: A more business-savvy name for Profile, the Facebook Page now includes all kinds of add-ons so that you can post videos, logos, pictures and other marketing info.
Facebook Polls: Businesses can effectively find out what their target audiences are thinking by utilizing this polling service on Facebook.
Facebook Beacon: Connect your company’s Web site to your customers’ Facebook profiles with the Beacon action alerts. By integrating just three lines of code, your customers can choose to let their friends see what they viewed and bought on your company’s Web site and more.
Facebook Insights: Through charts and mapping devices, companies can accurately track their “presence and promotion on Facebook.”
Facebook Platform: If you want stand out from the thousands of other Facebook advertisers, create your own tools and applications with Platform. This system helps Facebook users design interactive apps so that visitors and friends can easily explore what your company has to offer.
FeedBurner: Advertise your company’s blog or podcast with the FeedBurner app for Facebook. A feed will appear on your profile, so visitors to your page are instantly updated with new postings, videos and more.
Gydget: Small companies, bands, nonprofit groups and other organizations should try out Gydget, “a stand-alone viral-promotions tool” that you can add to your Facebook page and also encourage others to integrate with their own pages Update fans and clients with details about upcoming events, networking opportunities, sales and product launches.
Ether: Charge by the phone call when you list your Ether number on Facebook with this ingenious app. By adding the button to your Facebook page, you can advertise your expertise and invite friends to call you for advice.
Jobster: Attract new talent from the Facebook pool by integrating a Jobster button with your profile. Your company can build its own job network, submit a listing in the Jobster network and more.
QOOP: QOOP helps you create promotional items like T-shirts and mugs from digital photos. Facebook users can use the QOOP app to share the items by letting friends view and purchase your marketing creations.
Oodle Classifieds: Organize your company’s advertisements, job postings and classifieds on Facebook with the Oodle app.

Targeting the Right Demographic
Before you decide to tackle the entire Facebook market, try narrowing down your strategy by researching each of Facebook’s demographics.

Big Brands and Facebook: Demographics, Case Studies and Best Practices: This slideshow from Forrester breaks down Facebook’s primary demographics by age, country and other dividers to give advertisers insight into effective marketing campaigns.
Facebook Polls Launches Tonight: Marketing Research Paradise: This article details the ways in which Facebook’s Polls app can help your company get in touch with its target demographic.
Could Facebook Become the New MySpace: Many have speculated over the relationship between Facebook and MySpace.com, and this article explores the specific demographics of each.
Facebook by the Numbers: This article is from May 2007, but readers can still use the post as a guide to study Facebook’s age demographics.
Facebook Users Up 89 Percent Over Last Year; Demographic Shift: Find out how Facebook’s overall demographic has changed from its inception to today.
Facebook’s Most Popular Apps So Far: Want to know where to slip in ads and find your company’s audience? Find out which apps people are using the most on Facebook.
Facebook Goes Beyond College, High School Markets: Even if your company’s target audience isn’t made up of college students, Facebook is still a viable marketing platform. This article explains why.
Facebook Market Research Secrets: Discover the sneaky way to perform market research by using Facebook’s tools.
Facebook: The Future of Market Research?: This market research analysis holds that “sites [like Facebook] are providing useful business solutions not only to advertisers, but also to market research companies and marketing services companies.” Read the whole article to find out why.
Facebook Provides Fascinating Glimpse Into Society, Media Demographics: This analysis of Facebook’s advertisers also gives tips on how to look for marketing clues from your target audience.
Social-Networking Demographics: This article tracks the general demographic stats of social networking sites like Facebook.
Exercise for the Reader: Facebook Member Stats: The author of this post decided “to pull together some stats on relative numbers of members from each country.” Find out the results by reading the entire article.

How-to Guides
Follow these how-to guides to navigate the limitless marketing possibilities and tailor your own Facebook marketing strategy.

Six Ways to Market on Facebook: This article should help those business owners who are still relatively new to the Facebook world. Simple tips include “host an event and post it” and “post news articles.”
Inside//Out: Facebook: This blogger gives great tips on how to effectively market your company on Facebook without disrupting the advertiser-customer relationship.
Tips to Marketing on Facebook: Writer Janet Meiners considers some of the basic but effective marketing tools that Facebook has to offer.
Facebook Marketing. It Can Be a Good Thing: BusinessWeek’s article about Facebook marketing considers the pros and cons of placing ads on the networking site.
Eight Marketing Ideas from Facebook Groups: The Influential Marketing Blog dissects seven different Facebook groups and general event groups to find out what works and what doesn’t when promoting your event or business.
Ten Killer Facebook Marketing Tips: From sending virtual gifts to adding friends, this article explains why certain Facebook actions are great self-promoters.
Facebook Usage and Marketing: Check out this guide for tips on how to make Facebook’s apps work for you and your business.
How to Create a Successful Facebook Group: If your business wants to create a group on Facebook to reach a bigger audience, use these tips to gain a large following of fans.
Target Niche Audiences With Facebook Advertising: AllBusiness.com publishes this post to help advertisers understand the pros and cons of using Facebook as a marketing platform.
How Marketers Use Facebook: This upbeat article has some useful tips to introduce marketers into the world of Facebook.
Facebook Marketing: Social Networking at its Best: You don’t have to go all out with social ads and beacons to use Facebook as a marketing tool. This article explains the benefits of setting up your profile page and networking with new friends.
How to Use Facebook Status for Marketing Purposes: Instead of letting friends know that you’re “sleeping” or “at work,” use the Status feature to clue customers in on what big business idea you’re working on.

Small Business Strategies
Even if you don’t have the budget to promote a presidential election with ABC, your small business can benefit from Facebook’s marketing strategies. Find out how with this list of tools and tips.

Networking: Use Facebook as a Marketing Tool: This article focuses on how entrepreneurs can use Facebook as a self-promotion tool and turn social networking into professional networking.
Top Five Viral Facebook Techniques: Learn how to make the most of referrals, giveaways and other simple apps with the tips in this article.
Web 3.0 Marketing with Facebook: Find out why Facebook is great for small businesses wanting to tap into a large, global market.
Facebook as a B2B Marketing Tool: This article chronicles how ordinary Facebook users have begun to use the social networking community as a place to self-promote and improve business.
Top Ten Ways to Use Facebook to Promote Your Business for Free: If your company doesn’t have a huge marketing budget, don’t worry. This article gives tips on using Facebook’s free features to reach consumers.
Entrepreneurs Need Both Facebook and LinkedIn: This article from the Small Business Trends website details why entrepreneurs should take advantage of the many self-promotion and networking opportunities that Facebook offers its members.
Time for Facebook?: This author tries to figure out why Facebook, not just e-mail, is a useful tool for keeping contacts. Readers will also find tips on how to become more savvy at online networking.
Make Money with Facebook Applications: Web designers and developers are encouraged to create their own Facebook applications as an on-the-side moneymaking project.
Using Facebook for Business: A Real Life Example: The analysis of a real-life Facebook marketing strategy will help other small-business owners determine if a similar technique is right for their company.
Facebook Platform: This page includes “everything you need to get started building a Facebook Application.” Ready, set, design!
Facebook, a Marketer’s Friend: This article from The Wall Street Journal tracks a small-business owner and her lucrative, profitable adventures with Facebook marketing.
Five Ways Small Business Can Benefit from Social Media/Networking Sites: Small-business owners will find ways to use Facebook to meet their unique marketing needs.

The Danger of Facebook
Before you invest all of your company’s hard-earned marketing budget into Facebook advertising, check out these guides that discuss some of the negative challenges you might encounter.

Why Facebook Is Not a Viable Marketing Platform: Blogger Muhammad Saleem considers the reasons why Facebook marketing isn’t always a good idea. From lack of focus to lack of visibility, he argues that there are several reasons to avoid this strategy.
Facebook Grooming Us for Intrusive Marketing?: A blog at CNET News.com suggests that Facebook’s cozy relationship with advertisers treads on the dangerous concept of intrusive marketing.
Facebook Marketing Stunt Backfires: This article reveals how careless marketing tactics can lead to controversial, shady ad campaigns and bad public relations.
Five Things That Could Kill Facebook: From inbox contamination to application noise, learn how not to overdo your Facebook activity.
A Failed Facebook Marketing Campaign: Discover why Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s Facebook marketing campaign wasn’t a success, and what your company can learn from its mistakes.
Facebook’s New Ads: If You’re a Good Person, Why Should You Want Privacy?: Can advertising on Facebook backfire? This article thinks that it can, if members are annoyed that big businesses prey on social- networking sites just to spy on their consumers.
Facebook Beacon: A Cautionary Tale About New-Media Monopolies: This article condemns certain Facebook marketing opportunities like Beacon by calling the technique “a classic case of overreaching.” Read this post before setting up a Facebook-oriented marketing strategy.
Madison Avenue Stampedes Onto Facebook: This video/article combination warns Facebook users against huge corporations that are “using Facebook … to exploit the site’s functions for their own business-networking pursuits, personal expression and just plain goofy fun.” Make sure you steer clear of these sketchy techniques if you want to attract new customers via Facebook.
Ten Reasons Why Social-Media Marketing Sucks: From undefined goals to all-around randomness, see why this blogger thinks social-media marketing sucks.

Miscellaneous Resources
These resources provide even more insight into the many ways that advertisers can capitalize on Facebook’s popularity.

Social-Media Marketing in a Nutshell: Dosh Dosh introduces the concept of using social-media sites as venues for cutting-edge marketing techniques.
Facebook is the Marketing Story of ‘07: According to Influxinsights, “Facebook emerged from college dorms late in 2006 and then exploded onto the cultural scene in the U.S., U.K. and Canada in 2007.” Read the rest of the article to learn why 2007 was Facebook’s year.
Facebook Lets Advertisers Reach Members Via Free Apps: To reach customers on a “deeper level,” get tips on utilizing Facebook’s many applications.
Employers Reach Out to Recruits with Facebook: Besides marketing your business to consumers, why not market it to fresh recruits? This article shows you how.
Inside Facebook: The Facebook Book: This blog provides analyses and excerpts from the book “Inside Facebook” to help businesses understand what the social-networking trend can do for them.
Facebook Members Sell Their Own Ads: Though it’s currently against the rules, “more than 1,500 Facebook users have started placing advertisements on their own profile pages.” Find out how selling ads on your profile eventually backfires.
Why Your Company Needs to Be on Facebook: Harvard Business School’s Conversation Starter site publishes this article from Forrester’s Charlene Li. Check out the many reasons why all companies should consider joining Facebook.

Summary

Facebook is a solution that will continue to evolve and have impact on your future business models. Is your organization prepared to take advantage of these new forms of social media tools?

Yum Brand’s - Opportunities for TurnAround - Case Study Blog

Dr. Cindy Gordon — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 16:37:27 +0000

This blog post is relevant as it highlights a stark example of Yum Brands, a leading food chain company which runs KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut—announced disappointing U.S. results in early February.

To restart growth, the company plans to aggressively introduce new products and attempt to refresh existing brands. Its best chance of success will come if it stages experiments, considers introducing new brands, and also considers business model innovations. This article below has been written by Scott Anthony, Innosight Partner and Innosight is known for their Harvard case study roots as their founder Clayton Christensen is a world renowned professor there. In the work we do at Helix on helping our clients develop effective innovation business strategies leveraging Web 2.0 - we view Innosight as one of the best practice research firms on Innovation.
Although this case is geared to the food industry – it also is applicable to many organizations that are in crisis – need growth but have not developed the corporate culture that enables them to evolve. This is one area where we have expertise at in Helix to have robust transformation change methodologies to support our clients innovate. The number one enemy is corporate culture in executing effective innovation and change practices – many solution providers do not understand cultural diffusion and complexity science techniques that can help “unglue” an organization to respond to new attractor mechanisms.
Enjoy reading this case below and at the end of it – we pose some questions that any organization can reflect upon as well?

When a company CEO states, “In all candor, the best thing I can say about our weak U.S. performance in 2007 is that it sets us up for growth in 2008,” it is a pretty clear sign that a company needs a shot of innovation. Yum Brands Inc. CEO David Novak will have to act carefully if he hopes to achieve the growth he seeks.
Yum has three of the most recognized fast food brands in the world: KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. Its international sales are surging. However, while McDonald’s hit its stride with new products like its chicken snack wrap and its high-quality coffee, Yum’s U.S. operations seem to have stagnated. Same-store sales, a critical metric in retailing, were flat in 2007. Operating income dropped 3 percent from 2006 to 2007.
To address these issues, Novak told investors that the company was considering a range of changes. For example, KFC will be re-branded to be “more youthful and contemporary.” The chicken chain could be restructured around a “nonfried chicken platform.” Yum plans to roll out a series of new products across the chains, and will seek to make its restaurants “destinations” throughout the day.
Innovating out of stagnation is a very difficult task. A wholesale change in a company’s core formula can fail to land new consumers. Worse, it can drive away core consumers that are critical for long-term success.
A past Innovators’ Insight detailing jewelry retailer Zale Corp’s efforts to master this problem raises a cautionary note. The company felt stuck in the middle tier of its market. Zale’s flagship Zales Jewelers division couldn’t command the price premiums enjoyed by competitors like Tiffany. Neither could the division effectively compete against low-cost attackers like Wal-Mart. So the company sought to move up-market to reach more upscale consumers.
On February 18, 2005, then-Zale CEO Mary Forte told investors, “We’re in the process of really kind of tearing everything apart now.” The stock jumped close to 10 percent on the news. But the effort bombed. Zale failed to attract new customers and drove away a significant portion of its core budget-conscious consumer. Since Forte’s announcement Zale’s stock has declined more than 40 percent, and it has changed CEOs twice.
One lesson from Zale’s struggles is that a lack of growth is not always synonymous with a lack of loyal customers. On the contrary, a company with stagnant sales could very well have built a solid group of customers that absolutely love the company’s core offering. Companies seeking to innovate out of stagnation need to avoid the double whammy of failing to attract new customers while killing core customer loyalty.
We have three pieces of unsolicited advice that we think would help Yum Brands successfully escape its U.S. stagnation.
1. Stage investments carefully
Yum is sure to do substantial market research before it implements any changes to its existing stores. Market research is a useful tool to help companies create and execute a winning strategy. But what customers say they will do and what they actually do can be two different things. Also, execution-related challenges sometimes only appear after implementation exposes unpredictable interdependencies between processes.
Moving full speed down a transformative path oftentimes is a strategic mistake. If the consumer research turns out to be faulty or execution turns out to be trickier than anticipated, companies can end up “stuck” with a flawed model that is difficult to adjust.
McDonald’s has thoughtfully approached its innovation efforts. It starts with experiments in a central test kitchen. Then it trials products in select geographies. The in-market experience allows McDonald’s to figure out if stated purchase intent from consumers translates into actual purchases. If the experiments succeed, McDonald’s can then scale the offering.
Yum might be tempted to make a “bold move” to show how serious it is about change. It has a far greater chance of creating long-term impact if it precedes a big splash with a round of careful in-market testing.
2. Consider introducing new brands
Companies always feel tempted to “leverage” existing brands as a cost-effective way to enter new market segments or reach new customers. After all, those brands have legitimate strengths, and it seems cheaper to build on what you have than to create something new. But those brands can bring baggage that outweighs projected benefits.
It is difficult and expensive to change the meaning of an established brand so it appeals to more upscale—or for that matter more downscale—customers. Companies seeking to branch into different market tiers need to consider establishing new brands.
For example, think about how Toyota managed its move from a bare bones low-cost competitor in the 1950s and 1960s to the automotive titan it is today. It didn’t seek to bring its Corona brand that appealed to budget-conscious consumers to new market segments. Rather, it introduced a series of new brands, like Avalon, Camry, Lexus, and Prius.
Perhaps Yum can transform the KFC brand into a more hip, healthy, chicken provider. But in the long run Yum might have more strategic impact creating a new brand (or buying an emerging company).
3. Explore new business models
The basic fast food business model hasn’t changed a tremendous amount since McDonald’s broke through in the 1950s. Offer a straightforward, reliable selection of food at reasonable prices. Seek to attract a steady flow of customers, especially repeat ones. Franchise the concept to local owners. Profit.
There have been new food concepts (Mexican, sandwiches, frozen yogurt), attempts to introduce higher-quality food (Panera Bread), and providers that have experimented with selling branded food in other retail channels (Boston Market), but the basic model has remained relatively static for 50 years.
If Yum really wants to drive change, it could consider both incremental and radical business model innovations.
Incremental business model innovations could include increasing self-service options in stores, developing branded vending machines, bringing new food products to non-meal day parts to increase utilization, dramatically lowering the space requirements for stores (opening up new locations that have smaller square footage), or further developing delivery offerings.
More radical moves could include finding ways to create entirely new revenue streams in existing stores—imagine revenue sharing arrangements where other vendors could use pieces of Yum’s store front during quiet parts of the day—or rethinking the entire retail model. Food trucks are derisively called “roach coaches” or “gut chucks.” What if Yum figured out a way to offer good, reliable food via a convenient, mobile delivery mechanism?
Yum has a lot of things going for it. Despite signs of stagnation, its stock price has tripled over the past five years. It has highly recognized brand names and a strong group of loyal customers. By testing and iterating, considering new brands, and exploring new business models, Yum will maximize the chances that it successfully soars through its current stagnation.

Summary
Although all these ideas posed by Scott are excellent one in balancing incremental and radical business innovation models, additional approaches could be to:
·         Assess the organizations’ culture in terms of innovation capacity and resilience using proven methods to assess cultural risk and adoption
·         Apply complexity science techniques identifying the ecosystem dynamics for growth requirements and putting out attractor change interventions to evaluate the speed and diffusion for innovation capacity
·         Developing a focused change leadership program that motivates and recognizes innovation and growth results
·         Putting in place new infrastructure for increasing collaboration and knowledge sharing using Web 2.0 technologies
In conclusion, what is important for any organization that has disappointing results is to understand the basic operational facts of when went wrong and where and if a pattern for solving the problem exists then execute flawlessly.
However, often results that are declining are due to much deeper problems that require surgical precision to test multiple approaches and learn from them. In some respects, one needs to look at an organization as a perpetual beta product, constantly iterating and learning. In today’s complex world – organization’s need to be adaptive, agile and resilient and at their core value root be developed a strong foundation of collaboration where knowledge sharing and risk taking are balanced with a learning outlook. People today and increasingly in the future will move with the law of gravity of their two feet – and in the food industry this is extremely true as turn over ratios are continually high (25-30% turn over rates – and sometimes higher). Winning organizations have to compete for scarce talent and ensure their talent management practices (attract, retain, develop) are balanced with the strategies for innovation and growth. If the people are not motivated or prepared to innovate – setting higher performance targets or reducing operating costs – will not turn around a business.

What will Yum’s do?
For more information on Helix’s business innovation or change transformation offerings, you can reach us at info@helixcommerce.com or (647)477-6254.

Bibliography:
“KFC Tries to Teach an Old Chicken New Tricks,” by Richard Gibson. The Wall Street Journal. 6 February 2008. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120227503488747205.html)
10 Rules for Strategic Innovators by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. Harvard Business School Press, 2005.

Virtual Worlds and Real Estate

Dr. Cindy Gordon — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:48:29 +0000

Virtual Worlds continue to evolve and enchant marketing professionals as rich media experiences continue to improve and integrate blogging, instant messaging, podcasting, discussion forums, gaming, and rich communication interaction experiences. One of the major opportunities for Virtual Worlds is to help sell real estate property as it provides an opportunity to navigate real estate properties leveraging three dimensional experiences. Second Life, the 10 pound gorilla, founded by Linden Labs, has been innovating in Virtual worlds since it was founded in founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale to create a revolutionary new form of shared experience, where individuals jointly inhabit a 3D landscape and build the world around them. Second Life, has a rapidly growing population of over 10,000 Residents from around the globe, who are creating and inhabiting a virtual world of their own design. Just today, when I signed in to my account under

Syndi Lane

and, there were over 200,000 member’s teleporting (navigating or flying) from one real estate landscape to another.

There has been a number of innovative real estate developments enter Second Life including Starwood Hotels where they initially launched a new hotel brand, aloft, in the massively multiplayer virtual world of Second Life over a year ago. Their in-game implementation, called “aloft island,” was based on early designs and floor plans and will serve as a 3D dress rehearsal for the actual hotel. Another active Real Estate company, based in Canada that aggregates market information on condo projects around the world is Global Condos. On November 12^th, 2007 they unveiled its comprehensive virtual directory of new condo developments in Second Life. An international project with locations in Dubai, India, and South Africa, developments are organized by the city and region in which a developer’s project is located. This ensures the property is showcased in searches by local residents as well as global buyers. Condo Centre offers access to information about multiple developments in a single location and a Web site listing condos for sale in different cities. Potential condo buyers in SL can to explore new developments, view information detailing real-world properties with interactive floor plans and design options. “We wanted to create an immersive and interactive experience for prospective buyers”, says Cliff Bowman, President of Global Condo Centre. Bowman’s SL avatar name is Barry Janus. “Our real estate developer clients around the world pre-sell condo developments aimed at several demographic profiles. Namely the Boomers, X, Y generations and the newest profile, the “Net Generation or Thumb Generation”. Visitors to Global Condo Centre Island may get the chance to a walk through floor plans in real time and interact with design options, altering the flooring, kitchen cabinets and wall colors that better fits their lifestyle: urban, resort or ski recreation. What are the implications to Real Estate Developers in Canada? 1.) Marketing Strategies and Online Web Planners will need to start thinking about how to develop virtual world experiences to reach out to a new market segment of buyers that are tech savvy. In looking at future segments like Gen X and Gen Y’s who in less than 10 years will be able to make major investments in the real estate or condo market….companies that get ahead of the game and build relationships with their future customers here will have a lead advantage2.) These environments provide low cost and low risk ways to test new real estate design plans and seek customer feedback on the design using online focus groups in virtual worlds. 3.) Opportunities to sell virtual world real estate and develop a new revenue line.

Summary We have been analyzing marketing approaches to Virtual Worlds with CMP Media out of New York for over a year, with Dr. Dobb’s brilliant visionary, John Jainschigg and in our seminal evening conversations when we were key note speakers last year at the International KM World Conference, we both concluded that we are entering another generation of web presence, where the experience economy promise is rapidly changing how consumers, and markets will interact in purchasing their products and services. There was a day when people could not fathom how eBay could dominate a global community auction, with staggering growth rates

Marketplaces net revenues totaled a record $1.5 billion in Q4-07, representing a year-over-year growth rate of 21 percent. With 46 percent from US operations and 54 percent from its International business.

In Q4-07, gross merchandise volume (GMV), the total value of all successfully closed items on eBay’s trading platforms, was $16.2 billion. (Total GMV for the full year 2007 was more than $59 billion.)
eBay users worldwide trade more than $2,039 worth of goods on the site every second.
There were 637 million new listings added to eBay worldwide in Q4-07. At any given time, there are approximately 113 million listings worldwide, and approximately 6.7 million listings are added per day. eBay users trade in more than 50,000 categories.

We predict that like with communities like eBay, virtual worlds will create new communities of interaction which will shift traffic patterns of consumers. Early predictions by Gartner Group have indicated that by 2011 over 80% of tech savvy users will have an avatar. This is only three years away. If this growth rates happens as aggressively as forecasting this has significant implications to not just real estate markets, but also to all marketing professionals world-wide in their struggle to capture eye balls. The real question is your organization prepared for a virtual world tsunami – it is moving and gaining strength and momentum – although skeptics are still resting on the beaches – those that are smart are entering virtual worlds now to test and learn to ensure there are positioned effectively to ride the constant currents of change.

The Twelve Days of Holiday Innovations - A Tribute to the Season! Make that Six Days!

Dr. Cindy Gordon — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 22:23:04 +0000

First, I apologize I have been remiss writing the last few months due to a new book project - just now released with the CEO of Webex, Subrah Iyar, called: Why Buy The Cow, available at www.lulu.com. This was a year plus research project on leading approaches to Software as a Service (SaaS) and innovations in this market space. A short but good read for the New Year!

In thinking about 2007, and all the innovations in play. I thought given the holiday season twelve reflections would be appropriate. So enjoy the festive thoughts.

Reflection One - “Internet Collaboration Jingles” - the internet, mobile, commerce and media have given us new ways to create new innovation jingles across global boundaries. Today, there are few boundaries left in companies ability to involve their customers, employees, partners, and suppliers in new forms of collaboration experiences. The co-creation opportunity to distribute value through dispersed networks has enabled companies to reduce their time to market, cost structures, and increase their product innovation capabilities. A good example of opportunity is to transform the US Economy (12 percent) of the labor activity into more distributed and networked from of innovation to improve product and services innovation productivity. Let’s get those jingle innovation bells rockin more. They really rock!

Reflection Two - Finding More Talent - Where is Rudolf when you need him? Organizations that strive to find full time talent in traditional ways will continue to be disappointed as the market for hidden talent deepens into the web enterprise. We are now in the ANYwhere Network where sourcing talent is only a google search away. As the workplace continues to go collaborative on steroids, and new communication tools like Octopz continue to arise, companies can decentralize more of their work and drive more economies to their organizations, with even more highly specialized experts than often organizations are able to attract internally. TopCoder is a company that has created a network of software developers that gives organizations access to a diverse talent pool which is more cost effective than hiring full time engineers. We are projecting that the Brand of One talent sourcing will continue as more talent adopts these new forms of working. Also, organizations that source more transparently requirements will achieve more competitive differentiation as they shift to recomposing organizational boundaries and distributing tasks to more specialized and distributed networks of competence.

Reflection # 3 - Customer Interaction Value - “Go Prancer, Dancer and Vicken” - Given the ubiquitous nature of technology and unified communication goals in play, customer interactions are being executed faster and faster. Although speed has improved dramatically, and device utility extended and form factors simplified - the customer interaction experience requires more creative innovation than in any other time in history. Customers are acutely atuned to the extra personal interactions, the relationship creativity, and the unique memorable DNA connections. Customer Experience is now a major Innovation differentiator for customers. West Jet, a major Canadian airline uses humor and wit in their welcoming and departure messages - lightening up passengers buzy travel days with a smile. Apple’s iPOD object of desire experience and branding color have captured the hearts and souls of customer’s world-wide. Now with the iPhone - customer experiences are even better. What is clear is customer innovation requires more customer experience brand differentiation - and anything goes - to stand out and be more memorable in an information overloaded economy.

Reflection # 4 - Interactive Virtual Worlds Shape New Purchasing Experiences - “Addicted Reindeer” - The market for virtual worlds is now over a $1B industry and the growth is accelerating as virtual world and game line experiences start to enter now the enterprise markets. Innovations in recruiting talent in virtual world experiences, employee onboarding in virtual worlds, purchasing virtual goods and services, branding and advertising, to selling real estate property. Companies like: Second Life, There.com and soon to be a major competitor to Second Life: Areta will enter the online virtual world. Life will never be the same as we move from addicted gaming with teenagers to a generation of addicted reindeer of all ages. Who knew StarWars would be so close to reality in 2008.

Reflection #5 - Consumer Innovation - Frosty the Snowman Meets the Grinch! - In today’s super turbo charged web universe, consumers can real time co-create with suppliers. With the evolution of Web 2.0 Technologies and Mashups - new widespread platforms for interaction, communication, interaction and activism are now powerful new ways for customer engagement and innovation for economic advantage. Oh My News, a popular South Korean online newspaper is now South Koreas most influential media outlets with over 700,000 site visits a day - and the reporters are the local citizens. Threadless asks people to submit new ideas for T-shirts and cosnumers propose ideas, designs and the community votes on new products. Every one can be a real journalist like the wiki enclyclopeida as the wisdom of the crowd starts to become more apparent as a new model for innovation.

Reflection #6 - Prediction Intelligence - “Who knew children could leave so many cookies for Santa” - With the information explosion, we have had an increase in ideagoras (eBAY like marketplaces for Ideas) to predictive market models to promote searching for the holy grail as companies like Google mine growing pools of rich data to dervide more intelligence. What is clear is that identifying patterns of opportunities more rapidly than the nearest competitor is becoming a increasing requirement for competitive advantage.

Predictive analytics offers something completely different from standard business reporting and sales forecasting and provides more accurate and insightful actionable predictions for each customer. This special form of business intelligence foresees each customer purchase, response or cancellation, predicting the individual behavior of each existing or prospective customer under certain conditions. Naturally, per-customer predictions are key to allocating marketing and sales resources. For example, by predicting which product features each customer will respond to, you can target each customer accordingly. Leading analyst firm IDC (www.idc.com) predicted that the predictive analytics market sector will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8 percent during the next five years. Every company striving for innovation strength will need to intensify their depth of expertise in predictive analytics and disruptive innovation detection.

Whew - now I remember why singing the Twelve Days of Xmas I got so tired - same thing happens when writing a blog - so signing off for now.

Wishing all my readers a happy holiday season and commited to updates on a more regular basis in 2008. Safe travels and much growth and happiness in the New Year.

Recruiting the Right Talent

Dr. Cindy Gordon — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:50:47 +0000

The number one priority for CEO’s globally is recruiting the right talent.

Securing optimal talent fit that embodies the knowledge, cultural values, and emotional smarts to get the job done continues to be a top of mind priority for organizations competing in the war for talent. Although we have all heard of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) not everyone has it. A few questions for reflection: Do you say what you think even if you know it will upset or hurt someone - even worse do you do this on email? Do you view people as basically good and well intentioned or are you always finding it hard to trust people and develop relationships over the long-term? Are you happy with life or are you constantly feeling the glass is half-empty? Can you develop sustaining and healthy long-term relationships or are people viewed as transactional experiences (like changing parts with little tolerance for ambiguity in life)? Depending on how you answered these questions you would either have a high EQ or a low EQ. Low EQ talent do not succeed well over the long term in their career roles, and are typically very poor managers as they create havoc in other’s lives and are not effective coaches to help people aspire to be the best they can be.

In today’s competitive environment for finding the best talent, Emotional Intelligence or EQ is more important for recruiting fit than technical skills. Smart people can grown and learn into a role - but if the EQ is not there - organizations will create cultures that are not aware of their emotions, know how to manage them or be aware of how their emotions impact the lives of others. When organizations recruit for emotionally intelligent leaders - managers and people simply do things much better!

The term EQ was dubbed after Daniel Goleman, psychologist and New York Times Contributor came out with his new book Emotional Intelligence. Although in the early days EQ was dismissed as a fad, companies have recognized the value of hiring and promoting emotionally superior workers, with the increased importance placed on leadership, team work, and culture fit. People with higher emotional intelligence know how to create and grow great teams - they are viewed as more human as leaders and they have a strong sense of heart and balance about life and its ebbs and flows. People often are hired due to their IQ - but what gets them to do better on the job is their EQ. Simple EQ questions are important to ask in recruiting that tests for peoples comfort in talking about their feelings. Questions like: How are you feeling about looking for a new job in your life? When you are working, do you prefer to work on several tasks at once rather than focusing on just one? Do you find it easier to complete jobs if you work right to the deadline? Do you ask people for help if a task seems too hard or will you exhaust all options before asking for support? Do you prefer familiar tasks and consistency or do you prefer to have jobs that are constantly changing? Do you say what you think even if it upsets someone or do you look at conflict as an opportunity to learn and grow?

There are many good books on EQ on the market a few of our favorites are summarized. A good book for leaders is by Reldan Nadler, President of True North Leadership, Inc. and author of Leaders’ Playbook: How to Apply Emotional Intelligence - Keys to Great Leadership, as he shares ideas about Emotional Intelligence (EI), and puts its principles to work throughout this book to enhance your own business performance and that of your business team. Another good book for Project Managers is Emotional Intelligence for Project Managers: The People Skills You Need to Achieve Outstanding Results by Anthony Mersino.

There are recruiting tools that can help test and assess for emotional intelligence that help to identify people with enhanced skills - in today’s competitive world - hiring balanced leaders with both IQ and EQ will be a key success factor for enabling growth of organizations. As the talent pool becomes constrained, recruiting the right talent will intensify as an important leadership competency to develop. Even more importantly is for organization’s to have culture and strategy fit with their innovation growth objectives recruiting for EQ will be a competitive differentiator.

Check out www.helixtalent.com for more information or other perspectives on talent management.

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Workplace Stress - A Business Productivity Killer

Dr. Cindy Gordon — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 20:21:50 +0000

Workplace Stress - A Business Productivity Killer!

Stress in the workplace has become an increasingly hot topic over the past few decades.

Increased stress in the workplace has been shown to increase absenteeism and employee turnover. Increased stress in the workplace also increases medical and insurance costs because of rising. Workers compensation rates and awards due to mounting stress in the workplace suits. Stress, defined, is the “wear and tear” the body goes through as it adjusts to the constantly changing environment. Anything that causes change in a person’s life causes stress. Stress can be short-term (acute) or long-term (chronic). Acute stress is the reaction to an immediate threat. This is commonly known as the “fight or flight” response. The threat can be any situation that is experienced as a danger. Common short-term stresses include:

• noise

• crowding

• being isolated from others

• illness

• hunger

• danger

• infection

Stress is on the rise globally due to continued economic upheavals, and workplace stress is on everyone’s mind.

Downsizing, layoffs, mergers and bankruptcies have cost hundreds of thousands of workers their jobs and cause uncomfortable, stressful situations in the workplace. Millions more workers have been shifted to unfamiliar tasks within their companies and wonder how much longer they will be employed, causing a great deal of anxiety and stress in the workplace for everyone. Adding to the pressures that workers face are new bosses, computer surveillance of production, fewer health and retirement benefits, and the feeling they have to work longer and harder just to maintain their current economic status. Workers at every level are experiencing increased tension and uncertainty.

With the war for talent raging as baby boomers retire in droves - will leadership be accelerate focus on creating healthy workplaces? Clearly we are not making the major improvements in this area, as stress levels continue to erode the quality of human capital and innovation capabilities of organizations throughout North America.

Stress in the workplace reduces productivity, adversely affects the bottom line and lowers profits causing company’s stock price to fall. The American Institute of Stress estimates that stress in the workplace costs U.S. corporations over $300 billion annually, or more than ten times the cost of all strikes combined. In addition, employers may be held liable if they do not offer programs designed to reduce stress in the workplace. It has been estimated that 75 - 90 % of all visits to primary care physicians are for stress related problems.

One in five professionals claim that workplace stress has negatively impacted them physically or psychologically. To some, corporate culture mean toxic environments. Boosting employee productivity requires leadership to ensure that they are strengthening their emotional intelligence business acumen, and investing in stress management skills for their employees. In a recent survey by Leger Marketing, their research indicates that over 41% of blue collar, service and professional workers experience workplace stress as a result of work experiences. Physically 53% of Canadians say they are experiencing headaches, clenched jaws, indigestion, fatigue, insomnia due to stress.

As a result psychologically, 55% experience: anxiety, irritability, defensiveness, anger, mood swings, feelings of helplessness or of being trapped. Over 52% say that stress in the workplace increases their levels of impatience, causes them to procrastinate, makes them quick to argue or withdraw. 30% say stress prevents them from being recognized for their work contributions, while 22% believe that stress has prevented them from moving up in their careers.

Other insights on Canadians and stress are summarized below:

More than six in 10 Canadians report that they are experience a great deal of stress on the job
34 percent of Canadians with health plans agree with the statement that “Workplace stress has been so overwhelming that it has made me physically ill at times.”
41 percent of Canadians say that their employer does not do nearly enough to help them manage stress at work
It is estimated that 40% of worker turnover is due to job stress.

Unfortunately stress for professionals has escalated progressively over the past few decades. Unfortunately most organizations are not actively training all their talent to improve their emotional intelligence skills. One quick survey we provide our clients with more insight on their stress realities at work is a short diagnostic tool which gives key insights on employee’s job stress levels.

Job Stress Diagnostic Tool

Enter a number on the sliding scale that best describes you: Strongly Disagree Agree Somewhat Strongly Agree 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

I can’t honestly say what I really think at the office.	__________
I don’t have very much authority.	__________
I could usually do a much better job if I were given more time.	__________
I seldom receive adequate acknowledgement when my work is performed well.	__________
In general, I am not particularly satisfied with my job.	__________
I have the impression that I am repeatedly discriminated against at work.	__________
My workplace environment is not a very pleasant or motivating environment to work in.	__________
My job often interferes with my family or personal needs - and there is little tolerance for home life balance.	__________
I tend to have frequent disagreements with superiors, coworkers or customers.	__________
Most of the time I feel that I have very little control over my life at work. *Instructions*	__________

Add up the replies to each question for your Total Job Stress Score. If you score between 10-30, you handle stress on your job well; between 40-60, moderately well; 70-100, you’re encountering problems that need to be addressed and resolved.

Summary

Employers have a major role to ease workplace stress. Workers need to learn to take some time out at work to reflect on their emotions and ask some tough questions about why they fell the way they do. Responsibility starts by taking control of one’s life and one’s environment. Employees need to have a positive attitude that they are not a victim - if the environment is toxic - change the environment. Start with the law of two feet if you cannot change it - then ensure your mental health and motivation levels are helping you become simply the best person you can strive to be.

An interesting site to visit is the American Stress Institute Website which provides helpful newsletters, knowledge sources, and access to resources to help improve your organization’s knowledge of managing stress.

Our research in creating collaborating cultures has a foundation of creating positive leaders. By thinking positively - you have the power and control to change your experiences by changing your attitude about them. Developing optimistic perspectives vs negative self-talk patterns are critical skills to develop to avoid seeing the glass half-empty - as well when you think positively you are more productive and less stressed, and hence happier with your life. In all starts, however, by knowing who you really are and what you really what out of life.

Each person is unique and there are certain features of your personality that make some jobs a better fit than others. If you’re in a job that’s not well-suited for your personality, you may be putting yourself under unnecessary stress every day you go to work. The following are some good questions to ask yourself:

Do you like to work toward deadlines, or do you like your tasks to come in a relatively steady stream?
Do you like to work as part of a team, or independently?
Do you like things to be structured and routine, or loose and variable?
Do you enjoy being a ‘big fish in a small pond’, or would you like to be a ’small fish in a big pond’? (Meaning, would you like to be a small part of a large company or a large part of a small company, or something else?)
Do you believe in what you do, and is it important to you that you do?
Do you like lots of change?
Do you like lots of travel or prefer to be working close to home?

Knowing who you are and then selecting the corporate culture that will allow your special talents to soar in is an important leadership skill to develop. Having mentors and advisors in your career path can also help ensure you make the right decisions. I know personally from my own career experiences had I asked the tougher questions I would have avoided making some mistakes in my career journey. However - we learn from mistakes and stress can help us make the tough decisions to change our current reality.

We all experience some level of stress in our careers - learning how to be in control of it on your terms and avoid unhealthy stress is what having more emotional intelligence is all about. As leaders competing in the war for talent - we have a responsibility to create healthy organizational cultures where stress is healthy and not a business productivity killer which is plaguing North American businesses.

For more information you can also visit our human performance and talent management website at Helix Talent for more information on careers that we are helping our clients recruit for or learn more about our Helix Talent Service offererings.

Wikis are a Powerful Knowledge Accelerator

Dr. Cindy Gordon — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 13:42:57 +0000

The twenty first century is moving more rapidly than the last century. Knowledge used to double world-wide in decades; three years ago knowledge doubled every twelve months. Today, we are doubling global knowledge in less than six months and are rapidly approaching a period where knowledge will double world-wide not just in days - but in seconds.

There has never been a period in mankind’s history where the fountain of knowledge has been flowing so rapidly. We continue to invent gadgets such as cell phones, iPods, RIMs, and other portable devices to help keep knowledge on point 24×7. The ubiquitous nature of knowledge transfer although has improved our access to know-how - it has also generated complexity in our ability to source the right knowledge in the right format at the right time. In some ways, imagine pouring a glass of water and the water runs over the top of the glass continually — this is the reality of today’s knowledge environment - there is tremendous knowledge captured - but easily finding it continues to be one of the catastrophe’s in managing intellectual assets.

Another relatively new source of knowledge capture and harvesting capability can be found in the usage of wikis. A wiki (sometimes wiki wiki) is a web application designed to allow multiple authors to add, remove, and edit content. The multiple author capability of wikis makes them effective tools for mass collaborative authoring.

Wikis enable rapid self-organizing and self-correcting knowledge capabilities and enable knowledge to be processed dynamically rather than other more traditional and highly structured sources of content management solutions. Users of wikis are allowed in real-time to agree or disagree in the sharing of content. In addition, this spontaneous flow of creativity and sharing of ideas may spark new insights contributing to innovation capacity development.

In San Diego County, the Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA) launched a program called mobile remote workforce innovation to improve services at risk to children and families, while decreasing costs. The economics of wikis supporting health care industries are very attractive, given the low cost of the software, and operating costs. Many of the leading Wiki Solution providers, like Atlassian, also donate the software for not for profit organizations - providing an additional incentive for organizations to take advantage of these types of solutions.

Isaac Jones Blog outlines three solutions for wiki applications which based on our working experience are all valid and accurate perspectives.

The first approach is using wikis for knowledge repositories - alot like an encyclopedia. We are using wikis in our client engagements so all of our client collateral is accessible via a wiki and at the end of our client projects, client can either pay a modest monthly fee for the knowledge to be maintained in our wiki environment, or transfer to their local servers. The opportunity to create these content management structures for ease of integrated collaboration are very powerful and effective communication approaches.

The second approach is for collaborative writing which is a bit like a more elegant version of emailing word documents. The ability to easily track document changes and allow the voice of multiple stakeholders to participate in the creation of a collaborative document we have used in our book publishing projects, and also in our market research projects.

The third approach is Situation awareness, which isn’t so different from the news; it draws from the news as a source, it can also be authored by the eye-witnesses themselves, and each story becomes an integral part of a knowledge repository. I don’t claim that these are an exhaustive, nor are they a partition: Wikis are also used for bug tracking and as web discussion forums, for instance.

In summary, wikis are a powerful knowledge accelerator and the market for these types of tools is exploding. IDC projects worldwide revenue growth of the overall collaboration market of 17% this year and 26% by 2011, with the fastest growth in live conferencing and team collaboration spaces. Forrester notes that Web 2.0-based social computing technologies are experiencing an explosion of innovation and proliferation, with many vendors incorporating blog and wiki technology into their products. A related development, mentioned by both Driver and Levitt, is the ability of newer tools to create mashups-essentially hybrid Web applications that contain content from multiple sources in a single user interface.

While Microsoft and IBM dominate many segments of the collaboration market-promoting one-stop shopping and integration across their products Google needs to be closed watched. The increasing breadth of Google’s productivity software includes email, calendaring, IM, word processing, spreadsheet, and Web site building and will soon add presentation graphics and wikis-all embedded with collaboration features. Google’s latest foray into making affordable messaging, collaboration, and office productivity tools targets business people worldwide and takes dead aim at Microsoft Office. . . . Google is not simply attacking Microsoft’s core email and office productivity applications business-Google is expanding the market for workplace productivity tools to include people who have traditionally been left without them.

One thing is for sure wikis have a strong future in the collaborative applications all aimed to improve knowledge worker productivity - finally some solutions which are firmly in the control of the end user community.

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Disruptive Software Solutions - Software as a Service

Dr. Cindy Gordon — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 02:01:30 +0000

It won’t be long before enterprise software pricing strategies are totally dead - as the market for Software as a Service (SaaS) continues to grow at twenty five percent per year, and this trend is anticipated to continue through 2010.

Bill McNee, Founder and CEO of Saugatuck predicts that by 2012 more than thirty five percent of all new business software that is deployed will be delivered as SaaS. McKinsey also reports that forty six percent of companies with sales of over $billion will adopt SaaS as their main business model by 2007.

One of the major growth SaaS segments to watch is the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) market which is growing currently at thirty percent annually according to Gartner Group. Currently only two to three percent of the overall ECM market ($1.2B) is spent on hosted SW solutions (about $23M currently).

An interesting web content SaaS software company to watch is Crown Peak. CrownPeak SaaS Solutions include: Web Content Management, Search, Web Hosting, and Intranet/Extranets. They were recently named to eContent’s 100 most influential companies list, has won Product of the Year from InfoWorld and eWeek’s Analyst’s Choice Award, and named as one of the top 25 ASP’s worldwide by ASPNews.com.

With the large market for improved enterprise content management solutions, and the rapid growth of this sector, business models like CrownPeak have tremendous opportunity to service clients globally as the continued focus on operational efficiency and productivity of knowledge workers intensifies in our Flat World Economy.

During the last year, our firm partnered with WebEx to research and write a new book on the future of on demand business models (SaaS). This book will be released in the Fall of 2007, and if you want to receive a marketing announcement when this NEW book is printed on the leading on demand Publishing platform, LuLu.com , please email us at info@helixcommerce.com reg: Why Buy The Cow: How the On Demand Revolution Powers the New Knowledge Economy.

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Collaboration and Young Adults: Changing Business Realities

Dr. Cindy Gordon — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 20:28:46 +0000

Is your organization prepared to meet the collaboration needs of young adults to attract, develop and retain the workforce of the future?

Fact - Generation X and Generation Y Talent use more real-time collaboration tools over asynchronous (non real time like email). According to a recent survey by The Associated Press - almost half of the teens surveyed use Instant Messaging (IM) and almost three fourths of teens use instant messaging more than email, while less than a quarter of adults use IM, and almost three fourths of adults who use IM use email, more often than IM.

I know that with my daughter who recently started university - for me to personally keep in close contact - having an MSN IM account was the best way to stay connected as she seldom checks her email, but guaranteed she is always accessible on MSN IM or via cell text messaging.

So, what do these behaviours tell us about the collaboration age gap between different generations?

I think this means a number of things for organizational and leadership communication approaches. Companies need to encourage IM, Blogs, wikis and all forms of real time collaboration to motivate the talent of the future. These communication needs need to be taken into account and designed into all forms of employee communication, online communication and software development approaches.

Asynchronous communication is well on the way to extinction….unfortunately old habits for the Baby Boomers, including me are hard to break.

Demand for real-time collaboration solutions have already generated more than $1.3 B in 2006 - which represents nearly one quarter of all collaboration application revenue. An increasing trend is to integrate all communication toolkits - and in different formats - whether the media form is via: email, IM, or voice - the promise is an integrated platform or a unified communication platform (UM) which promises to improve the productivity of knowledge workers - and for sure simplify operating infrastructure costs.

A promising collaboration company based in Canada that was recently recognized as one of the hottest Web 2.0 companies at the Enterprise 2.0 and Tim O’ Reilly conference recently held in San Francisco is Octopz.

Octopz is a browser based collaboration solution developed in Flash and has a simplified interface allowing ease of navigation, enables interactive and secure communications, and easily allows markup of advanced media types like videos, audio, animations, Flash files, and 360º panoramas. Octopz gives us a good perspective of the increased collaboration toolkits that are viable business productivity tools. This is a company to have not just on your company watch list, but also BUYING a subscription is a MUST to get you underway in using onoe of the most powerful on demand collaboration software solutions that I have seen in a long time.

More information on understanding collaboration commerce and the business impacts can be further understood by reading Collaboration Commerce: The Next Competitive Advantage.

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