Posts filed under 'leadership'
 |
|
October 27th, 2008, 01:30pm
|
Chris Brogan has an excellent blog for people trying to keep up-to-date with all things social media. What caught my eye this morning was a link to a series of videos that Seth Godin posted at the AMEX Open Forum - and a gentle reminder to actually watch them. I did just that, and highly recommend the three, in addition to the full series that is up there - instead of having to slog through a single, long video clip they are nicely segmented. Here’s a few of my favorites:
http://www.openforum.com/marketing/video_socialgood.html
The question in this first one if the value of social networking to business (particularly small business). Seth gives a relatively entertaining answer that focuses on how many of the “relationships” people have on social networks aren’t real - rather just a collection of people that didn’t want to offend you by turning down your friend offer. While the bar of “people I haven’t met in person on the other side of the world being willing to let me sleep on their couch” seems a tad high, the notion of focusing on real, high value relationships resonates.
Read More »
|
|
September 11th, 2008, 08:18am
|
While a combination of my job and a bit of intellectual curiosity leads me to devour a lot of content on the web, there is precisely one publication that I pay to have delivered to my house each week - The Economist. It’s always a special treat when one of their articles focuses on one of our regular research areas, which is just what happened last week with Following the Crowd. While much of the article covers some of the “unusual quarters” where crowdsourcing is popping up, the final few paragraphs focus on the perceived limitations and/or challenges.
I want to particularly focus on the last one, which is in relation to Cambrian House (CH). Following a brief discussion about why crowdsourcing and commerce “make uneasy bedfellows”, the article leads into the CH story with “And even those companies that do try to share the proceeds from commercial crowdsourcing are not safe.” Noting that the CH model of encouraging people to send in ideas for new software products, have the community evaluate them, and fund the winners sounded like a good idea, the article then mentions that the chief executive acknowledged that the business model failed.
Read More »
|
|
August 27th, 2008, 01:51pm
|
The combination of Ning and WidgetLaboratory (WL) was a story that had wikinomics written all over it. The former is a platform that enables anyone to create their own social networks focused on anything they want, and they actively encouraged individuals and companies to innovate on top of the platform and make it even better. WL did just that, and in a big way - they sold a number of widgets (for around $30 / month) tied to the Ning platform, supporting somewhere in the range of 2,000 networks and 1,000,000 individuals. WL was the most popular widget creator on the platform.
If I was writing this post a week ago, it probably would have been a feel good story about wikinomics, but the wheels have recently fallen off the proverbial bus. This is a development equally worthy of exploring in relation to the challenges that come with embracing wikinomics principles - and particularly those that emerge when you only embrace a few of them. Of greatest interest to me - if more stories keep popping up like this, it could be a dramatic blow to more open, collaborative innovation processes. That would be a shame.
TechCrunch picked up the story on August 22nd, when Ning suddenly removed all of the WL widgets, without warning to anyone, from their network. This decision which clearly angered the company, as well as the thousands of customers who had spent time and money with WL in order to optimize their offerings. Based on the emails that WL has published on the web, this is the gist of Ning’s complaint:
Over the past few months, WidgetLaboratory’s applications have caused multiple and significant technical degradations to the Ning Platform. In point of fact, your code has broken numerous times and has negatively affected a large number of Networks in addition to the Ning Platform.
Read More »
 |
|
August 19th, 2008, 01:12am
|
Last week I directed a leadership retreat for the student leaders at the Center for the Advancement of Leadership. The past couple of years I have helped develop and train students involved in the program. As I presented the different workshops, I was reminded of the blog post that Mike Dover wrote a few months back about movies that represent a generation.
Leaders have been scratching their heads trying to figure out what the Net Gen want. Many of the answers may lie in what they pay to watch.
From movies like Xmen, The Hulk, Ironman, and Fantastic Four, to TV shows like Heroes and Smallville, superheroes seem to be on the mind of the Net Generation. So then what do they see in them and why?
Read More »
 |
|
August 18th, 2008, 12:49pm
|
I’m doing some research with Accenture about benefits and challenges of hiring serious gamers (most of our research is based on games like World of Warcraft). There are plenty of upsides to hiring these people such as the ability to lead groups in remote locations, quickly analyze and react to data, create custom interfaces, divide up resources (and share spoils of war) etc. In fact, some people consider the leadership ability required of a successful WoW guild to be similar to that of a CEO of a small company.
I interviewed our friend Bruce Stewart about gaming and leadership and he brought up a good point. Old School games such as Dungeons & Dragons also indicated some potential for success in the workplace, despite it’s reputation as a game played in dark basements by mouth-breathing losers. Full disclosure: I was NOT the quarterback of my high school football team and am not proud of how much I enjoyed this article.
Role-playing games ruled by paper maps and dice developed the imagination more than (or at least in different ways) than videogame versions because the only limits are with the dungeon master’s imagination. These players, especially, have developed skills in communication, organization, and scenario planning.
Thoughts? Do you buy it, or am I just trying to justify time I wasted during high school.
|
|
August 14th, 2008, 10:03am
|
To understand the wikinomics connection here, you may have to read what wikipedia has to say about termites. Notably:
The termites are a group of social insects usually classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera (but see also taxonomy below). As truly social animals, they are termed eusocial along with the ants and some bees and wasps which are all placed in the separate order Hymenoptera. Termites mostly feed on dead plant material, generally in the form of wood, leaf litter, soil, or animal dung…
As eusocial insects, termites live in colonies that, at maturity, number from several hundred to several million individuals. They are a prime example of decentralised, self-organised systems using swarm intelligence and use this cooperation to exploit food sources and environments that could not be available to any single insect acting alone.
As always, you can check out the original at www.dilbert.com, and see all my other mashups here.
|
|
July 17th, 2008, 02:50pm
|
Thanks to Nicholas for this post - it’s refreshing to be called an exception in a good way 
- and to Luke for commenting on the post and directing people to the site. There is a 96.3% chance your life will improve if you follow their lead and send readers my way (you mean you don’t remember my first mash up?)
As always, you can check out the original (and all the other mash ups) at www.dilbert.com. Click on the Dilbert tag below to see all 52 of my mash ups (and counting…).
|
|
July 16th, 2008, 08:37am
|
You can check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
July 15th, 2008, 09:27am
|
As always, you can check out the original (and all the other mash ups) at www.dilbert.com. To celebrate my 50th mash up on the Dilbert platform, I thought that it was about time that I started branching out into a new genre - action films. The graphic below is not for the faint of heart, but it was recently revealed that Hellboy overpowered Hancock in the US, so somebody had to take a stand north of the border…
Read More »
|
|
July 14th, 2008, 08:51am
|
As always, you can check out the original (and all the other mash ups) at www.dilbert.com. If these themes keep up I’m going to have to add “random violence” to the tag cloud.
 |
|
July 11th, 2008, 10:37am
|
Editor’s note: this is the third post in a multi-part series from Stewart Mader, author of Wikipatterns. You can check out some of his other work at Grow Your WIki, and the first two parts of the series can be found here and here.
When an organization has a wiki at the center of its operations, people can gather and share the kind of information that others need - including everything from projects, products, initiatives, strategies, and other pieces of the big picture, to the everyday: how to process an expense report, access an office’s network, get business cards printed, or reserve a meeting room. On a wiki, this information can be gathered by the small efforts of many.
Let’s look at an example - the expense report. It’s a standard process, with a common form that people need to access, complete, include receipts, and submit for approval.
Read More »
|
|
July 11th, 2008, 09:23am
|
As always, check out www.dilbert.com for the original and all the other mash ups - now on to my comment on voting.
I have a group of people that I know who regular read my Dilbert cartoons, and they are extremely blunt in their assessments - whether they’re great, terrible, or somewhere in between. Interestingly enough, whenever they say that I’ve done a “good or better” job lately, I tend to find I have a relatively large number of ratings on the Dilbert site - but the ratings tend to be quite low. One possibility is that everyone I know has equally bad senses of humor, but I’m going to ignore that for now to look at what could be a fundamental flaw in the voting system.
Read More »
|
|
July 10th, 2008, 01:28pm
|
Check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
July 9th, 2008, 09:38am
|
Sadly, I don’t think I can compete with the sweater for the dead squirrel today - check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
July 8th, 2008, 09:37am
|
I kept thinking there was a twitter joke in here, but I couldn’t come up with it… can you? As always, you can check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
July 2nd, 2008, 10:23am
|
Reminds me of the most innocent sounding insult I ever remember hearing - when asked about the performance of a one-time collaborator, a particular gentleman stared straight ahead for a few seconds and then deadpanned “he met my expectations precisely.” As always, you can check out the original (and all the other mash ups) at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
July 1st, 2008, 09:49am
|
Let’s just say it’s in honour of Canada Day. You can check out all the other mash ups, and the original, at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
June 27th, 2008, 07:45am
|
Check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com. Who knows - maybe this one will spark another Friday Dilbert mash up war.
|
|
June 26th, 2008, 10:07am
|
You can check out the original at www.dilbert.com.
|
|
June 25th, 2008, 03:05pm
|
You can check out the original, and all the other mash ups, at www.dilbert.com.
« Previous Entries
