iTunes 10 goes Ping (and makes good use of social media concepts)

Apple launched the new version of iTunes yesterday – version 10. Besides a host of small improvements, including a long overdue change in the icon (dropping the CD image!), the big news is that Apple have understood that social media concepts can be integrated into any software and shopping platform. It’s obvious, and we have talked about this at length on this blog (see especially this blog entry on going beyond the “obvious” with social media in businesses), but so many companies just haven’t got their heads into this space. It’s good to see Apple taking their first steps here with the introduction of Ping as part of iTunes 10.

Unfortunately, they’re only first steps. There’s a long way to go still before it is really impressive.

Ping is a social media platform that sits inside iTunes (that’s part of the problem, as it crawls along at even slower speeds than the snail paced iTunes store). Ping allows you to follow artists and friends and have them follow you – basically a music-based social network. It also promises to be quite clever about learning your music preferences (from your iTunes library, purchases and likes). It displays a customized Top 10 chart that is based upon your followers (although when you start, it’s a bog standard list that includes Lady Gaga, U2 and Linkin Park). The friends feature allows privacy controls so you can choose who to share your music preferences with.

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Is Google becoming a former supermodel?

In the rapidly changing world of the Internet, Google has become one of its superstars. Within little more than a decade Google has risen to be a giant in the industry with almost 20,000 employees, revenue of $23.6 billion and profits of $6.5 billion. Growth though is slowing and competition is on the up. Most companies would be envious with long-term growth rates of 17% that Google is expected to achieve, but for a company that has been used to growing at between 30-40% a year such growth seems almost pedestrian. Analysts think so, and while Apple has become the most valuable company in tech, Google stocks have hit the wall in the past 12 months and under performed the broader market.

So has Google run out of runway, can it compete in this Brave New World? Is this supermodel now destined only to make cameo appearances on Hollywood movies, or in MBA terms, has Google moved from being a Star and become a Cash Cow?
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Declining Job Markets everywhere – even chicken sexers are changing

I had to check that it wasn’t April Fool’s Day when I read an article yesterday. It tells the story of an industry that is changing. On this blog, we try to provide the reasons why the future of world of work is changing and give insights into what it might look like. We often look at examples and case studies to illustrate the points we’re making about new skills, shifting structures and the unlearning and relearning that will be required to be successful in the near future.

We’ve highlighted all sorts of changes, from why the trucking and engineering industries are battling to get young people to join their industries, to issues faced by banks, pharmaceuticals, media, the military, politicians and almost every other industry.

But this article was a revelation to me. Apparently, Japan has dominated the world wide chicken sexing industry for nearly a century, supplying almost all of the highly trained people who are able to decipher whether a newly hatched chick is female or male. But things are changing. Read about it at News24 here, or an extract of the news item below. It might be a bit of fun, but it’s also another example of the changing world of work…

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A bit of fun: 10 Incredible Politician Technology Gaffs

FastCompany magazine recently were a bit taken aback by a very unscientific survey that rated the “Digital IQ” of the United States Senators. It was a completely nonsense survey, but it did allow the magazine the opportunity to poke fun at some top politicians who clearly have not fully come to terms with technology.

You can read an extract below. If you’d like to see some of the pictures, and links to videos of the actual events, then read the original at the FastCompany website.

Top 10 Politico Tech Blunders, From the Internets to the Google

BY AUSTIN CARR
Aug 20, 2010, FastCompany

… Politicians are notorious for their blunders and ignorance of all things tech-related, and this study–while not exactly using the most scientific metrics to determine tech-savviness–may just be a blunder in itself. Here we present our top 10 politico gaffes that show just how low our elected officials’ Digital IQs actually are.

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Constant Change must be a Continuous Business Process

At TomorrowToday we are convinced that the decade ahead will be the most turbulent that any of us have ever experienced. The change will not be spectacular (in the sense that there will be world changing changes), but rather that the speed and complexity of change will be incessant. The changes will come in small steps, but they will come so often that the effect will be of constant, disrupt change.

The pre-emptive management/leadership approach in such times will be to build the ability for constant change into the heart of your organisational processes. This is obviously easier said than done. Yet, it is not as hard as it might seem if it becomes a leadership focus. Booz & Co’s S+B e-zine recently featured an excellent article highlighting this very issue. You can read it online here, or an extract below.

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HSBC looking at majority stake in Nedbank

Of course this is old news to many, but in case you missed it:

NEDBANK GROUP LIMITED ANNOUNCEMENT
Nedbank Group Limited (“Nedbank Group”), the majority owned South African banking subsidiary of Old Mutual plc, released an announcement on SENS today. The following is the full text of Nedbank Group’s announcement: “Shareholders are referred to the announcement released by Old Mutual plc (“Old Mutual”) today. Shareholders are advised that Old Mutual has advised the Board of Directors of Nedbank Group Limited (“Nedbank Group”) that it has received a proposal from HSBC Holdings plc (“HSBC”) to acquire a controlling interest in Nedbank Group (“the proposed transaction”). The proposed transaction, if and when it proceeds, would be implemented by way of a partial offer, made to all Nedbank Group shareholders, for up to 70% of their shareholdings in Nedbank Group.

Nedbank Group’s initial assessment of the proposed transaction is that HSBC represents an attractive international banking partner and shareholder of reference and has the potential to provide Nedbank Group with benefits which should enhance Nedbank Group’s ability to strengthen its position in the
South African banking sector. Nedbank Group believes that there is a substantial opportunity for it to expand both within the South African and African markets in due course.

The making of a binding offer by HSBC is subject to a number of pre- conditions, which include, inter alia, due diligence of Nedbank Group by HSBC and a number of regulatory and other approvals. In order to satisfy these pre-conditions, a period of exclusivity has been granted by Old Mutual Group to HSBC. There can be no certainty that these discussions will lead to a transaction.

Whether or not successfully concluded, the proposed transaction may have a material effect on the price of Nedbank Group securities. Accordingly, shareholders are advised to exercise caution when dealing in Nedbank Group’s securities until a further announcement is made.”

For further information on Nedbank Group Limited, please visit the corporate website at www.nedbank.co.za.

For further information on Old Mutual plc, please visit the corporate website at www.oldmutual.com

Date: 23/08/2010 07:32:00 Produced by the JSE SENS Department. The SENS service is an information dissemination service administered by the JSE Limited (‘JSE’). The JSE does not, whether expressly, tacitly or implicitly, represent, warrant or in any way guarantee the truth, accuracy or
completeness of the information published on SENS. The JSE, their officers, employees and agents accept no liability for (or in respect of) any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential loss or damage of any kind or nature, howsoever arising, from the use of SENS or the use of, or reliance on, information disseminated through SENS.

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Insights into one of the most original strategic thinkers

Coimbatore Krishnarao (C.K.) Prahalad would have been 69 on August 8, 2010, but sadly he passed away from a sudden lung illness on April 16 of this year. Along with Gary Hamel and Peter Druker CK Prahalad has inspired much of my thinking and approach to management. He was one of the most influential and original strategic and management thinkers of the last 50 years. Here is one of the last interviews that he ever gave which I found in the latest Strategy + Business.

The Life’s Work of a Thought Leader (Strategy + Business)

Big Ideas from Simple Questions

S+B: Which of your ideas have had the most impact — and how did you develop them?
PRAHALAD: One would be the idea of core competencies in a corporation. That has had a long life. For example, it reappears as capabilities-driven strategy. Others included the bottom of the pyramid [the profitability in targeting the 2.5 billion people who make less than US$2.50 per day], co-creation [companies and customers innovating together], constrained innovation [typically used to develop very low-cost but functionally sophisticated products, like the Tata Nano], and dominant logic [the idea that companies are held back by their prevailing view of how to conduct business]. Everybody now talks about shifting mind-sets, which is essentially a dominant logic argument.

In developing all of these ideas, I learned not to start with the methodology, but with the problem. A lot of times, research tends to start with the methodology. I prefer to start with a problem that’s of interest and apply whatever methodology is appropriate.
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The evolution of the Gen Y hipster

I came across a great post on Gen Y and being hip and cool, written by the brilliant Carol Philips Carol is one of the world’s leading authorities on Gen Y and I think her post succinctly captures who they are. I especially like the quote she uses from Outlaw Consulting, a consultancy that focuses on identifying youth market trends. They have captured Gen Y in a nutshell. This is one of the best descriptions of Gen Y that I have come across:

“Millennials, or Gen Ys, are definitely different. They seem to feel more empowered – and more entitled– than any generation before them. They have an innate team orientation that makes them excellent collaborators. And the ideas about issues like marriage and career are radically different. Their “American dream” isn’t about the picket fence; it’s a flexible freelance career and a life defined by passion. … Gen Ys see themselves as change-makers. But they’re also busy trying to have a middle-class life, so their protests take different form than youth protests of the past. They see corporation’s as having lots of power but little heart, and they try to create change by using their dollars. The “aha” for corporations is to recognize that values and authenticity are important to this generation — and that directly affects how they spend. American Apparel, for example, has been totally embraced by youth because of its labor practices. Shopping there make them feel like they’re spending money in the right place. Companies that really “walk their talk” about core values will be endeared. If you want to be relevant to Gen Ys, you need to understand their mindset.”

How’s this for an awesome picture, the Evolution of Hipster

You can read Carol’s full post below or click here to be taken to her post

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Gartner Says the World of Work Will Witness 10 Changes During the Next 10 Years

I was recently sent this list by email. A quick Google search points to the source at Gartner. It’s a quick read and has some useful insights and thought provokers.

The world of today is dramatically different from 20 years ago and with the lines between work and non-work already badly frayed, Gartner, Inc. predicts that the nature of work will witness 10 key changes through 2020. Organizations will need to plan for increasingly chaotic environments that are out of their direct control, and adaptation must involve adjusting to all 10 of the trends.

Organizations will need to determine which of the 10 key changes in the nature of work will affect them, and consider whether radically different technology governance models will be required.

1. De-routinization of Work
The core value that people add is not in the processes that can be automated, but in non-routine processes, uniquely human, analytical or interactive contributions that result in words such as discovery, innovation, teaming, leading, selling and learning. Non-routine skills are those we cannot automate. For example, we cannot automate the process of selling a life insurance policy to a skeptical buyer, but we can use automation tools to augment the selling process.

2. Work Swarms
Swarming is a work style characterized by a flurry of collective activity by anyone and everyone conceivably available and able to add value. Gartner identifies two phenomena within the collective activity; Teaming (instead of solo performances) will be valued and rewarded more and occur more frequently and a new form of teaming, which Gartner calls swarming, to distinguish it from more historical teaming models, is emerging. Teams have historically consisted of people who have worked together before and who know each other reasonably well, often working in the same organization and for the same manager. Swarms form quickly, attacking a problem or opportunity and then quickly dissipating. Swarming is an agile response to an observed increase in ad hoc action requirements, as ad hoc activities continue to displace structured, bureaucratic situations.

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A new normal – a new reality – for the economy

This is an excellent interview with Mark Anderson, the editor, publisher, and chief correspondent of the Strategic News Service newsletter. It was conducted by S+B (Booz & Co’s ezine) in July, and gives one view of the “new normal” that is emerging. Well worth a read:

A Return, Not to Normal, but to Reality

Mark Anderson, the high-tech industry’s most accurate prognosticator, foresees an economic landscape still under the stress of too much liquidity — and decision makers still in denial.

by Art Kleiner

In trying to make sense of economic uncertainty, it pays to look beyond conventional wisdom for an explanatory theory of the hidden fundamentals that can drive or hinder growth. Hence this interview.

Mark Anderson is the editor, publisher, and chief correspondent of the Strategic News Service newsletter, one of the most incisive publications in its field. Ostensibly about the future of the computer and communications industries, it covers a broad range of factors that affect and are affected by those businesses: everything from technological advances to capital flows to government policies to educational innovations to advances in physics.

Anderson argues that the root cause of the crisis of 2008–09 was excess liquidity: too much money seeking rapid returns, subsidizing too much production for too few customers. That bubble burst, no subsequent engine of economic growth has proved sustainable, and the excess liquidity remains, driving some prices up and others down, and splitting the world even more dramatically into economic haves and have-nots. Three critical measures, in Anderson’s view, need to be put into place before serious recovery can get under way. The first is better protection of intellectual property. The second is the specific type of financial reform that would prevent “jackals” (short-sellers) and “vampires” (sophisticated investors who take profits without contributing either market balance or information) from dominating the market as they do today. The third is a rebuilding of the manufacturing base of the industrialized world, including an accelerated transition to green energy and technologies.

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Mind Games – games where thinking REALLY counts

Got sent a link from Faaiez (twitter username : )

Very short article from The Los Angeles Times profiling some new games that require you to really engage your mind in order to play them. Engage as in, in order to move things you have to think them into action.

Charlatans and con artists have laid claim to its power for centuries. In science fiction, Jedi knights call it “the Force,” and the mind-bending X-Men (and Women) are old hats at it.

Telekinesis. Harnessing the mind to control your surroundings. It is the stuff of fantasy.

Now, that fantasy is crystallizing into reality.

Of course this technology is destined for greater things. Our cars, houses, planes, artificial limbs, wheelchairs, etc, etc will one day be controlled by simply thinking.

I often wonder how this will all be so? Let’s be honest, most of us battle to think about the stuff we have to deal with now. And based on millions of years of human history, we don’t think that well. Imagine when our minds are needed to control more than just ourselves? What damage will we be capable of then?

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How much Klout do you have on Twitter?

I mainly use two online apps to run the Twitter accounts I run. And I use these two because they do very different things. There are some things I need to do from time to time where the one trumps the other, and visa versa for other things. So there’s no getting rid of either of them.

• CoTweet (I do wish Co-Tweet had an iPhone app)
• HootSuite

Anyway, a possibly meaningless introduction to Klout. It’s integrated into CoTweet, but you can get there without CoTweet (click here).

The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 0 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 25 variables to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score. The size of the sphere is calculated by measuring True Reach (engaged followers and friends vs. spam bots, dead accounts, etc.). Amplification Probability is the likelihood that messages will generate retweets or spark a conversation. If the user’s engaged followers are highly influential, they’ll have a high Network Score.

We believe that influence is the ability to drive people to action — “action” might be defined as a reply, a retweet or clicking on a link. We perform significant testing to ensure that the average click-through rate on links shared is highly correlated with a person’s Klout Score. The 25+ variables used to generate scores for each of these categories are normalized across the whole data set and run through our analytics engine. After the first pass of analytics, we apply a specific weight to each data point. We then run the factors through our machine-learning analysis and calculate the final Klout Score. The final Klout Score is a representation of how successful a person is at engaging their audience and how big of an impact their messages have on people.

I’ve enjoyed engaging with their system of measurement, simply because it goes beyond the usual measure of ‘how many followers’ I have? A friend, for example, who has three times as many followers on Twitter than I do, but our Klout Scores suggest I behave in a very different way to how he does, and because of that, according to Klout, I get a higher score.

Sometimes I smile when I look at what Klout feedbacks to me, because it sounds a little like a personality assessment based on my Twitter behaviour. Very flattering and all mushy and gooey. Who knows, perhaps this will even be a significant measure of who we are in  the future. Can it be any less accurate or definitive than some of the measures we use today? Maybe even an extra layer to be applied to the Talent Matrix being implemented inside of companies the world over? At least the feedback is objective, instant, and I know exactly what’s expected of me to move it  : ) But this is a conversation for another day…

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Wave the Flag…Today!

Tonight Bafana Bafana take to the field. New game, new era, new Coach, new goals to achieve…and hopefully score. In a way this represents a rebirth of sorts following all that was experienced and accomplished during the World Cup.

The challenge is for all South Africans is to get behind our team, to continue waving the flag. This is an opportunity to build on what was achieved during those remarkable days during the Finals. It shouldn’t be merely some emotional hype, it has to go deeper than that in order to be sustainable. And of course sustainability is the challenge facing South Africa. Staying connected and deepening relationships at both a personal and macro level will be what is needed. Companies that did amazingly creative stuff with their staff during the Finals need to ask themselves ‘what next?’. How can they sustain the goodwill and momentum that they were able to generate?

It has to go beyond the hype! Wave that flag but think about what needs to happen next. After all, thinking is the place were all intelligent action starts!

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Precious – a bicycle that Tweets!

Have you ever heard about Tweetjects? – objects that Tweet, It’s a term coined by Dr Andy Stanford-Clark, IBM’s Master Inventor (that has to be the coolest title out there!) and he is on a quest to enable objects to provide people with relevant information without us having to seek out this information. It’s cutting edge stuff and you can learn more about Tweetjects here

Meet yesiamprecious a bike that is tweeting it’s way across America, sharing every sweatin’ mile of joy and heartache. Precious’s brain is an on-board device that captures all of his experiences, combined with a cloud-based system that analyzes those experiences. Put this all together and get a bike that’s able to express itself in his own words. He shares his up-to-the-moment thoughts, and has a subconscious which allows him to dream about all he’s been through. The bike’s “thoughts” are then documented on Twitter account and on the Precious site

Why do this? It’s all part of a really clever way to use social media to raise funds for the Livestrong Foundation – The Lance Armstrong Foundation unites, inspires and empowers people affected by cancer.

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When People Reckon It’s OK to Cheat, by Dan Ariely

Dan Ariely, professor, author and behavioural economist, is someone I have found in recent months. His research is fresh and his insights interesting. He is the author of the best selling “Predictably Irrational” (buy now on Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net).

He is doing quite a lot of work at the moment on why people cheat, and what you can do to make sure they don’t.

I picked up a nice piece on him in the BusinessWeek – very interesting stuff:

Perhaps because of the cheating uncovered in the aftermath of the financial crisis—the lies told by everyone from mortgage lenders to Bernie Madoff—behavioral economist Dan Ariely has been getting a lot of calls about the nature of dishonesty. Ariely, a Duke University professor and author of the best-selling book Predictably Irrational, has spent years studying the topic.

Ariely says he’s not surprised that derivatives—whose values are based on other financial assets—have gotten a bad rap. He has found that people are more likely to cheat if they are a step removed from the cash payoff. In one experiment, he paid subjects (whom he allowed to report their own scores) for correctly solving math problems—some in cash, some in tokens to be redeemed across the room. The second group exaggerated their scores twice as much as the first. Similarly, in studies of real-life expense reports, he found managers pad expenses more when their assistants compile the report. Such detachment, Ariely says, may be what’s involved “when you backdate a stock option.”

His most recent experiment—on deception’s slippery slope—was inspired by some Prada swag he got after speaking at a conference last year. Carrying a genuine luxury bag made the fashion-challenged economist “feel different,” he says, leading him to wonder about the psychological effects of sporting a counterfeit.

In an experiment involving 500 people, he found that subjects who knowingly wore fake Chloé sunglasses later cheated more than twice as often on an unrelated task than those assigned to wear the authentic designer goods. “If you take that first step, your self-image changes,” he says. “It becomes easier to do the next dishonest thing.”

Ariely’s new obsession is how to prevent cheating. Consider the math task with the tokens. In one variation, testing participants first on their recall of the Ten Commandments eliminated cheating on the math scores. Then there’s the study Ariely did with an auto insurer: Car owners who signed their names at the top of the insurance application, he found, were more honest about their driving habits, even though higher annual mileage meant higher premiums.

“We all like to think of cheaters as evil people,” Ariely says. But deterrence can be as simple as reminding people of their better selves. His advice to the IRS for next tax season: Move the signature line to the top of the form.

Source: BusinessWeek

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Cell C may need more than (Trevor) Noah’s Ark to get them out of this one?

I’m sure it started out as a great idea at CellC Marketing HQ? The mobile phone industry has a mostly terrible name when it comes to customer service. Lines drop all the time, prices cripple you, data crawls regularly and call centers frustrate whatever life you still have, right out of you.

So it was a no-brainer to come up with a bold PR/Marketing angle of honesty, integrity and openness aimed at the bruised and beaten South African consumer. You know the story if you’ve been in South Africa these last 2 weeks. But in case you need an overview, care of The Daily Maverick and Mandy De Waal:

On Wednesday 28 July a mysterious Internet user going by the moniker of SABobbyT posted a video clip on YouTube of popular local comedian Trevor Noah going ape about mobile networks in general and Cell C in particular. In just four days Cell C found the offending link, watched it, decided to respond publicly, briefed its big agency (Ogilvy) to swiftly book media space in the Sunday Times and Rapport and to develop an advert apologising to Noah. The ad was created, approved and placed in record time before the advertising print deadlines for the two weeklies closed.

So what exactly did the ‘then nearing Super-Hero status’ Cell C CEO do? More from Mandy De Waal and The Daily Maverick:

Two “mea culpa”’ full-page adverts signed by Cell C’s CEO Lars P. Reichelt later, and the Twitterverse was abuzz with chat about social media hero Trevor Noah, how he had stood up for the small guy and what swell people Cell C were for coming clean. The story was getting airtime and was reported on by no less than Bloomberg while other media pundits were calling the effort a marketing “master-stroke”.

However, what started as a ‘master-stroke’ is fast turning into a sinking ship (in some circles anyway – search cellc on Twitter and scroll through). You can read other’s views on why they think this has been a ‘master-sink’, here, here and here, but I’d like to comment on simply this:

What Cell C and Trevor ‘I need a lifeboat’ Noah missed in all of this, is that they picked a social media space to execute their very clever campaign. They used a new world platform with old world marketing antics. They just don’t go together easily.

The Social Media space has, at some levels, become a sacred space created away from the power, smoke and mirrors of traditional media. There’s a new set of rules that governs, towards the promise of more authentic and honest dialogue. It’s a space that belongs to everyone, equally. No matter your status, your money, your power. In the world of Social Media we can all stand together as equals. You may be able to shout further than I can, because of the size of your network, but you can’t shout any louder. Your view is as important as my view.

So when Cell C (powerful and wealthy) steps into ‘our space’ and sends communication to apparently ‘one of our own’, who can shout quite far with his ‘friend base’ of over 120 000 on FaceBook, and thereby invites us to accept their communication as honest, transparent and full of integrity, and then confesses to this being simply a marketing campaign, you can understand why people are responding the way they are.

My prediction is that Cell C and Trevor Noah will lose credibility through this event. It’s a classic case of two parties not understanding the shifts that have taken place in this new-way-of-connecting-world. Of course they wont lose on every front. Some people out there (see Twitter again) love that they’ve been pranked (or should that be Arked? Or even Noah’d?). But this will remain, for a long time, as a case study of how you don’t do social media.

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As Google Wave dies, here’s what Foursquare does NOT understand about social media

Google officially axed the underutilised (and overhyped) Google Wave project last week (read Fast Company’s obituary here). I have a fear that my favourite geo-tagging program, Foursquare, will go the same way.

Foursquare allows you to use your mobile phone’s GPS capability to “check in” at various venues (read an intro slideshow here if you need to know more). But they are missing a few tricks by not understanding some basics of what makes social networks work, and also by misunderstanding some basic human psychology. I hope they sort this out soon, because I’d love to see geotagging really take off.

Here is my list of reasons why Foursquare is unlikely to grow further, and will ultimately die:

• They have failed completely to discuss and engage with users on the issue of security. I personally don’t have a problem checking in and letting my friends know where I am, but many people do fear the openness of letting others know their physical movements. Foursquare needs to actively engage in debate and social values shaping conversations.
• Their iPhone app provides no information from Foursquare. On a few occasions, Foursquare has shut down in order to do upgrades. But all that happens on their App and website is that nothing works. No messages, no interactions, no connection…
• When you move from one city to another, you start all over again. It treats each city entirely independently. For what reason?
• It provides no connections with my friends. Why is there no “friends nearby” feature? And why are there no features to challenge friends, connect with friends, chat to friends? This surely is the key to social media success: that you create connections between people, and enable them to connect with each other. Foursquare doesn’t do this.
• It does not provide “near things”. The only “near here” type functions are paid for adverts called “specials nearby”. But what about “places your friends frequent” or “places your friends have written tips about” or “most visited place near here”?
• It doesn’t do competition well. I have an ongoing battle with “Kay A.” for the mayorship of Raynes Park train station. But, there is very little way for me to interact with Kay. More importantly, neither of us know where we are in the competition stakes. The system doesn’t let me know how many check ins I need in order to become mayor, or how close other people are behind me in the race. Each venue needs a “leader board” type function to raise the stakes of competition. Otherwise, it loses its lustre very quickly.
• What’s the point? Badges are too hard to earn. I can leave tips at venues, but there is no incentive to do so. Companies are given no incentive to interact with regular attenders. And so on… Incentives are required.
• Finally, providing feedback to the system (especially, for example, indicating duplicate venues) is a really long and complicated procedure (and is not a feature of the iPhone app – why not?). This functionality also needs to be delegated down to “editors” in local areas (think of how Wikipedia manages content).

If you’re a Foursquare user, what do you think? Have I missed anything?

In summary, then, Foursquare has the potential to be brilliant. But only if it learns the lessons of other social media success stories. Connect us, and enable us to connect! Speak to us, and enable us to speak to you. Enable us to contribute to the development of the system.

Foursquare, I hope you’re listening, because I don’t want you to go the way of Google Wave. But if even the mighty Google can get it so wrong, then no-one is safe.

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Talent teams vs Talented individuals

A new report is about to be released in Organization Science, entitled: “Too Many Cooks Spoil the Broth: How High Status Individuals Decrease Group Effectiveness” (Authors: Boris Groysberg, Jeffrey T. Polzer, and Hillary Anger Elfenbein).

Their Abstract says:

Can groups become effective simply by assembling high status individual performers? Though an affirmative answer may seem straightforward on the surface, this answer becomes more complicated when group members benefit from collaborating on interdependent tasks. Examining Wall Street sell-side equities research analysts who work in an industry in which individuals strive for status, we find that groups benefited—up to a point—from having high status members, controlling for individual performance. With higher proportions of individual stars, however, the marginal benefit decreased before the slope of this curvilinear pattern became negative. This curvilinear pattern was especially strong when stars were concentrated in a small number of sectors, likely reflecting suboptimal integration among analysts with similar areas of expertise. Control variables ensured that these effects were not the spurious result of individual performance, department size or specialization, or firm prestige. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results for the literatures on status and groups, along with practical implications for strategic human resource management.

This is an issue we’re convinced of at TomorrowToday. We have recently developed a presentation we’re calling, “The Talent Reboot“. Our message is simply that talent works best when it is part of a talented team, and not treated as an independent entity. This is true in the world of work, just as it appears to be true in the world of sport, or in Hollywood.

For example, think of the 2010 Football World Cup. The two teams that made the finals, Spain and Holland, did not have too many superstars, and their superstars did not overly shine in the tournament. Other teams were studded with stars, and merely stuttered along. Football is a team sport. The U.S. men’s 2004 Olympic basketball “dream team” was equally filled with star NBA players. Yet the team underperformed and only won the bronze medal. They didn’t play as a team.

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Using Design thinking to create a culture of innovation

Working through some old magazine clippings last week, I found this amazing excerpt from a book that was released just a year ago. It’s by Tim Brown, the CEO of design shop IDEO, and is called “Change by Design” (buy it Amazon.co.uk or Kalahari.net). The excerpt gives a case study of a hospital they worked with to illustrate critical importance of design thinking and the use of tools that come out of the world of design (brainstorming, prototypes, scenarios, storytelling, etc) to build cultures of innovation in organisations of all types and sizes.

I was inspired by the excerpt. The book will be on my shelf soon. This is a MUST READ for all leaders.

Change By Design

BOOK EXCERPT
FROM: BusinessWeek, September 24, 2009
by Tim Brown
In his new book, the CEO of design shop IDEO shows how even hospitals can transform the way they work by tapping frontline staff to engineer change

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Flattr Update – How paying for content is shifting and changing

A while back I wrote about new models for paying for content online. One of the new developments I wrote about was Flattr. It’s a ‘closed system’ that allows you to pay people for the content they produce, as long as they’re part of the Flattr system. I like the ethos behind their model, and I think it has great potential to begin to shift our mind-set around paying for content.

I signed up for Flattr at the beginning of July. To be a part of Flattr will cost you a minimum of a 2 Euros per month. It’s an investment in other people’s content, and not a payment to Flattr.

At the end of July I had been allocated 6.31 Euros, and a total of 7 of my blog posts had been Flattr’d 14 times. I’m chuffed with the results, and assuming Flattr is able to sustain the growth of their database, it can only be a good thing.

If you produce content (blog, podcast, vidcast, etc) I’d encourage you to look them up and apply for an invitation to get into their system.

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