The future of money

For years banks and credit card companies have held a strangle hold over the movement of money and charged exorbitant rates for doing so. Now this is changing and fast.

Michale Ivey the founder of Twitpay has devised a system, using code that PayPal made available to him, that allows people to make payments using tweets. The way it works is you include the recipients’ username in their message. For example, posting the update “@johnsmith twitpay $10 for lunch” would deliver the cash to that Twitterer’s Twitpay account. Simple and brilliant!

Hundreds of engineers and entrepreneurs are now revolutionising the payment industry, attacking the payment ecosystem and seeking out ways to pull down the stronghold the banks and credit card companies have built.

Here are some examples:

- Square, a new company founded by Twitter cocreator Jack Dorsey, lets anyone accept physical credit card payments using an attachment on their iPhone, any other a smartphone or computer by plugging in a free sugar-cube-sized device — no expensive card reader required.
- A startup called Obopay, which has received funding from Nokia, allows phone owners to transfer money to one another with nothing more than a PIN.
- Amazon.com and Google are both distributing their shopping cart technologies across the Internet, letting even the lowliest etailers process credit cards for less than the old price, cutting out middlemen, and figuring out ways to bundle payments to sidestep the credit card companies’ constant nickel-and-diming.
- Facebook appears to be building its own payment system for virtual goods purchased on its social network and on external sites.
- Apple has given iTunes developers the ability to charge subscription fees through their applications, making iTunes the gateway for an entirely new breed of transaction.

About 20 percent of all online transactions now take place over so-called alternative payment systems, according to consulting firm Javelin Strategy and Research. It expects that number to grow to nearly 30 percent in just three years.

This is going to revolutionise the way we use money eroding the monopoly that banks have. Serves them right for causing the Great Recession I’m looking forward to the day that we can all bypass banks. Zopa is another example of the new breed of talented companies that is reshaping the world of finance. Zopa is a lending and borrowing exchange where real people sidestep the banks to get a better deal. I’m going to research and write an article on innovative companies that are changing the world of finance so what this space.

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Connect with customers like you do friends

In my most resent article Onions or Parfait I put forward the proposition that companies should use new social media innovations to build relationships with customers akin to those of friendships. I strongly believe that customers want to engage in a open two-way relationship with companies that show a willingness and expend effort to build relationships. I just came across an example of 5 big brands that are using blogs, facebook and twitter to do just this. In a post by Attraction Marketing Starbucks, Zappos, Vitamin Water, H&M and Coke are identified as big brands that are actively using social media to build friendships and not just sell products.

I’m not surprised to see Zappos in this list. Zappos are innovators in creating connections with people inside and outside their organisation. I regularly use Zappos as a case study in my presentations and workshops. You can discover more about Zappos here:
Keeping employees motivated during a recession
Zappos hits one billion $ in sales
Zappos – delivering WOW through service

Zappos makes for an awesome case study in the corporate boardroom so if you are looking for ideas for your next meeting or proposal to your boss visit their website or email me and I’ll gladly offer my insights

You can read the article on Social Media 5 Big Brands below

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CEOs lose faith in strategic planning, they should look to yacht racing for answers

The Great Recession has made CEOs rethink strategic planning. Walt Shill, head of the North American management consulting practice for Accenture believes that: “Strategy, as we knew it, is dead…Corporate clients decided that increased flexibility and accelerated decision making are much more important than simply predicting the future.”

In my my latest presentation Brave New World which explores the realities of the new world of work and steps companies need to take to become a talented company, I compare strategic planning of today with that of yacht racing. Strategic planning of yesteryear was more like an egg and spoon race. Competitors lined up at the annual starting line, ran in a straight line from point A to point B, making minor quarterly changes (normally to budgets and not strategy!) and once in a while someone dropped the ball (in this case the boiled egg) and pandemonium ensued.

However, for the modern talented company strategic planning is like yacht racing. Talented companies have a clear destination or vision of where they want to get to. But once out of the harbour they recognise that things can change. The course you plotted may head north but you discover that competitors are heading south, do you change your plan and follow or keep track? A weather system may develop causing rough seas on your route, do you tack around the storm or hit it head on? The key for yacht racing is that strategy is emergent! As conditions around you change so do strategy and tactics. The one element that does not is your destiny (vision), how you get there depends on team work (in emergent strategy everyone understands the quest, provides input and is involved in the strategic planning process). Ultimately the skipper (as should the CEO) steers the boat and emergent strategy required bold leadership but the team is integral to the strategy as it emerges.

The days of long term strategic planning are over but that does not mean that strategic process is dead it has just changed. Strategic planning has now become emergent strategic planning.

For more information on emergent strategy and what it can do for your business please contact me.

You can read more about the latest thinking on strategic planning in the Wall Street Journal

Are you working for a TALENTED COMPANY, or do you know of examples?

I’m on a quest to find companies that are extraordinary, companies that not only achieve good financial results but also contribute positively to society as a whole. I’m intrigued at how many companies have fallen down in the past few years because a number of very talented people have been behaving badly – think Enron, the financial crisis, Bernie Madoff, Lehman Brothers and the US motor industry to name but a few. Companies have wrongly convinced themselves that they need the best of the best, the most talented people, to succeed and they have been rewarding their “talent” excessively. This has resulted in a bonus culture that is eating away at the fabric and moral code of business.

Rather than build a business around star individuals I believe that companies need to be building talented systems processes and cultures. They need to be focusing on building the star company. I’m currently conducting research to form the basis of a new book about talented companies. if you know of or work for a company that has talented structures, organisational designs, cultures, systems and corporate DNA I’d love to hear from you.

Tesco, a talented company

I’m always on the lookout for talented companies and I think I found one on my doorstep. The company’s name is Tesco and earlier this week I gave our Mind the Gap presentation at their marketing team away day.

I’m a fan of Tesco (and have written several blogs on the company see TPF has lift off and Tesco trains their staff in generational talk) mainly for one simple reason the customer service and experience I receive when shopping there. I love the fact that they have a stated policy of never having more than two people standing at the checkout. As soon as there is a third person, a new checkout is opened, and this policy works! From the Tesco Express around the corner from where I live, to their megastores I have seen it in action without fail. It is a simple policy but its execution is genius and it keeps me going back to Tesco because I hate wasting my time standing in lines, who doesn’t!

Recently I wrote an article called the Talent Reboot and argued that companies need to be focusing on creating talented companies (by creating talented tribes) rather focusing on individual talent (as banks do). It was therefore great to find in Tesco an example of a talented tribe in action. Carolyn Bradley , Tesco’s marketing director, did a great presentation using Tesco TV adverts (from as far back as the seventies) to bring to life the history of the Tesco brand. It was amazing to see the innovative initiatives and strategies that Tesco has launched since the early 1970’s to grow its market share to nearly twice that of it’s closest competitor. What was more impressive was that this growth has been achieved during at a time when Tesco’s competitors market share has remained relatively stagnant or even decreased. But it was by observing the marketing team in action at their away day and later at their office, that it became apparent that there is more to Tesco than innovative ideas, they are been building talented tribes.

The team spirit I observed at their away day was amongst the best that I have ever seen. I was privileged enough to be given a tour of their very unassuming head office and treated to lunch at the staff canteen (I had a very tasty Cumberland sausage and mash). I was able to see how each marketing team had decorated their cubicles with Christmas themes, building mock chimneys for Santa and using fake polystyrene snow. The finance team won the best and most imaginative design supporting the belief that within each accountant there is a creative marketer waiting to break free. The marketing team at Tesco is clearly talented and full of energy. What I observed at Tesco is very similar to what Zappos, America’s most successful online shoe retailer has achieved. Zappos is often used as a case study of a company that has created talented tribes. At Zappos teams dress up to celebrate events, decorate their team areas and are passionate about what they do – customer service.

What Tesco and Zappos appear to have in common are talented tribes and huge commercial success. They are clearly getting the ingredients right and I plan to follow their stories a lot closer.

Capturing the Asian Opportunity

S+B (Strategy + Business) is a great ezine from Booz & Co. This week’s edition focuses on where multinational companies might want to focus as the recession draws to an end and an upturn begins. And the place to look is probably Asia – if you have a clear focus. Read their article at their website, or an extract below.

Capturing the Asian Opportunity
Economic recovery in China, India, and elsewhere in the region could be the strongest source of sustained global growth for years to come.
by Andrew Cainey, Suvojoy Sengupta, and Steven Veldhoen

In September 2008, the global financial crisis hit Asia like a tidal wave, flooding in from the U.S. and Europe. Within weeks, Asian GDP growth rates began to tumble: China’s annual growth rate dropped from 13 percent in 2007 to about 9 percent in 2008, India’s slipped from 9 percent to below 6 percent, and Singapore’s plunged from 8 percent to less than 4 percent. Underlying these stark statistics were significant declines in exports. In March 2008, China and India had boasted year-over-year export growth rates of more than 30 percent; nine months later, both were well into negative territory. Foreign direct investment in these countries, and in Korea, Japan, and the nations of Southeast Asia, fell significantly as well.

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M-Pesa, Vodacom, Nedbank and Rob Shuter

Earlier this year Rob Shuter (head of Nedbank Retail) resigned from Nedbank and joined Vodacom as Financial Director. It was an exciting move from my perspective as I watch mobile phone companies (and technology in general) redefine how we do business. Not necessarily the companies, but users who adapt the technology to find innovative ways to run their businesses differently. The big question I was asking was what happens when someone with intimate retail banking knowledge and experience (especially of Shuter’s profile) gets a significant position at a mobile phone company? What happens after what comes next?

I’ve not seen anything obvious in the press, and have quite possibly missed it, but this week a couple of pieces of the puzzle dropped into place. Enter M-Pesa.

M-Pesa is an amazing Kenyan innovation, and describe themselves as:

M-PESA is a Safaricom service allowing you to transfer money using a mobile phone. Kenya is the first country in the world to use this service, which is offered in partnership between Safaricom and Vodafone. M-PESA is available to all Safaricom subscribers (Prepay and Postpay), even if you do not have a bank account. Registration is FREE and available at any M-PESA Agent countrywide. The M-PESA application is installed on your SIM card and works on all makes of handsets.

My sources suggest that M-Pesa has radically transformed the banking space in Kenya and left the banks flat-footed and out of the equation. Around 15 million people use M-Pesa to transfer money and make payments. Kenyan banks (collectively) have a third of this number as customers. M-Pesa has transformed banking access to the previously un-banked, who are found predominately in rural areas in Kenya. Areas that traditional banks have little to no access to.

The person I spoke to this week had some of the following to say about M-Pesa:

M-Pesa has made the sim card more valuable than a credit card.

M-Pesa is transforming how aid is distributed within Kenya.

M-Pesa has fundamentally re-defined the banking space.

Kenyan banks have not found an ‘anti-dote’ to M-Pesa’s presense, and possibly wont or can’t, simply because they’re unable to redefine themselves.

Maybe a little over-enthusiastic. But the hype and the numbers do confirm his thoughts.

Enter Shuter, Vodacom and Nedbank….

What if Vodacom’s next move is to bring M-Pesa to South Africa? Both Safaricom (M-Pesa’s master) and Vodacom are subsidiaries of Vodaphone. Certainly they have someone with huge retail banking experience in Shuter, and he has intimate knowledge and I imagine a solid relationship with Nedbank.

What if? Watch this space. This may be what happens after what comes next…..

The age of cheap oil

I’ve just watched a brilliant presentation by Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Movement on TED. He reminds us that the oil our world depends on is steadily running out, and proposes a unique solution to this problem — the Transition response, where we prepare ourselves for life without oil and sacrifice our luxuries to build systems and communities that are completely independent of fossil fuels. Rob makes some powerful points very eloquently and simply. Using a bottle of a litre of oil he highlights that this amazing porduct contains the energy equivalent of about five weeks of hard human manual labour; we can turn it into a dazzling array of materials – medicine, modern clothing and even laptops; we base the design of our settlements, business models and even economic growth on the basis that we will have oil in perpetuity. Yet when we look back over history at what may be called the petroleum interval, it is just a short slither in history in which we have discovered this extrodinary material and then based a whole way of life on around it. Rob suggests that we are now straddling the top of this energy mountain our degree of dependancy on oil now becomes our degree of vulnerability. For every four barrels of oil we consumer we only discover one new barrel. There are 98 oil producing countries in the world, but of that 65 have already past their peak in oil production.

The truth of the matter is that the age of cheap oil is over. in my latest presentation Brave New World I make the point that the world has changed and that there is now a new normal, and I show how over the coming years society is going to be transformed radically to the point that within ten to twenty years the society that we live in will be completely different and that businesses need to be preparing for this reality now. Of the two greatest factors influencing our world, an aging population and the end of cheap oil, are the two key factors that will force changes in the way we live and how we think about the world around us. If you would like to learn more about the Brave New World, and how you can prepare your business for it, please contact me for more information.

The James Martin 21st Century School – understanding the future

I am a huge fan of James Martin. Not the celebrity chef. Nor the inventor of the aircraft ejection seat. Nor any of the other famous James Martins. I am a huge fan of James Martin the futurist and author of one of the best books of all time, “The Meaning of the 21st Century” (see a previous post about the book here).

I recently discovered that a think tank “school” has been created at Oxford university, and named in his honour. It’s the James Martin 21st century school. It seems to be a fantastic institution. You can see an 8 minute video of the Dean of the school, ex-South African, Ian Goldin, speaking recently at TED. Follow the school at Twitter/21school.

The school’s aim is to tackle the toughest challenges of the 21st century, and provide input and resources for the Oxford university community on these issues (see the list below). They aim to formulate new concepts, policies and technologies that will make the future a better place to be. Very nice!

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Nike’s considered sustainability programme

Nike has some aggressive sustainability targets. Nike CEO Mark Parke believes that corporate responsibility is no longer a staff function at Nike. It’s a design function, a sourcing function, a consumer experience function, part of how we operate.

Lorrie Vogel is the general manager of Nike Considered, Nike’s in-house sustainability think tank says that the long-term vision for Considered is to design products that are fully closed loop: produced using the fewest possible materials, designed for easy disassembly while allowing them to be recycled into new product or safely returned to nature at the end of their life. By 2011, 100 percent of footwear will meet baseline Considered standards, apparel by 2015 and equipment by 2020 – creating better performing products while minimizing environmental impact by reducing waste, using environmentally preferred materials and eliminate toxins.

Wikipedia says that the “Nike Considered line utilizes materials found primarily within 200 miles (320 km) of the Nike factory which reduces the energy used for transportation, diminishing the resulting climate change impact. The manufacturing process reduces solvent use by more than 80% compared with Nike’s typical products. The leather comes from a tannery that recycles wastewater to ensure toxins are kept out of the environment, and it is colored using vegetable-based dyes. Hemp and polyester are used to make the shoe’s woven upper and shoelaces. The mid-sole is cut to lock into the outer sole, reducing the need for toxic adhesives. The shoe’s outer sole includes rubber made from recycled factory rubber waste. Considered is part of a larger effort Nike has been undertaking for several years to reduce waste, eliminate toxic substances, and otherwise lessen the environmental impact of the world’s largest athletic shoe manufacturer. The company has a publicly stated goal to “Minimize or eliminate all substances known to be harmful to the health of biological or ecological systems.”

You can read a recent interview with Lorrie on CleanTechnica’s blog and I’ve sourced an excellent MIT case study for you on how Nike is becoming more greendownload an MIT case study, alternatively contact me and I will send you the report

PodCast – Collaboration and Alliances

PodCast Update – Graeme Codrington interviews Dean van Leeuwen (Director of TomorrowToday UK) around his MBA thesis on collaboration and alliances.

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HR 2018: Future View

What will human resources look like a decade from now? This is the question asked of HR Execs by Workforce Management magazine. You can read their full report here.

The headlines are fairly unsurprising. I really hope that HR is shaken up more than this in the next ten years. But, they are insightful in describing the current trajectory of thinking by the people in charge of HR at the world’s large companies:

• Collaboration will be key. The top-ranked prediction was: “There will be an increased focus on infrastructures — such as social networks and wikis — to support building strong relationships and collaboration.” (This is a topic one of our team members, Dean van Leeuwen, is an expert in, having completed an MBA thesis on learning about alliances from coral reef systems – see his presentation on “A Brave New World” that highlights collaboration is crucial to success in the next decade).
• The second-most popular choice predicted novel work arrangements: “The structure of work will become more adaptive, more informal and less focused on formal structure and static design solutions.”
• Expanded use of virtual teams of employees who communicate extensively through videoconferencing, e-mail and text messaging.
• The concept of “offshoring” will cease to exist.
• Millennials (Gen Y) will redefine jobs, doing work at home and taking home to work.
• The labor market will look more like eBay than Monster or Yahoo HotJobs.
• Companies will engage in “crowd sourcing.”
• An HR executive will become CEO of a Fortune 100 firm
• Leadership development will be critical
• “The strategic role of decisions about talent and how it is organized will increasingly be recognized as pivotal to sustainable strategic success. Leaders will be held accountable for the quality of those decisions.”
• There will be continued labor shortages, particularly in leadership positions.
• “Companies will need to balance the need for a unified global culture with local strategic and cultural differences and make core global values locally relevant and easily understandable for all employees.”
• The corporate social responsibility movement will grow stronger.

Is this the future design for companies?

I came across an interesting article in the Mckinsey Quarterly today which argues that companies need to take the power behind informal networks and create formal networks. Their consultants state that:

- Most large corporations have dozens if not hundreds of informal networks, in which human nature, including self-interest, leads people to share ideas and collaborate.
- Informal networks are a powerful source of horizontal collaboration across thick silo walls, but as ad hoc structures their performance depends on serendipity and they can’t be managed.
- By creating formal networks, companies can harness the advantages of informal ones and give management much more control over networking across the organization.
- The steps needed to formalize a network include giving it a “leader,” focusing interactions in it on specific topics, and building an infrastructure that stimulates the ongoing exchange of ideas.

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Building Network Alliances – The future for profitability and success in turbulent times.

Business world is facing the dawning of a new alliance age / revolution that will bring about a new business model more symbiotic and substantially different from the business model of today. The competitive and changing economic landscape demands a new business model…one removed from the shareholder value model to one where value for all stakeholders is created. A model where symbiosis is common place, a model where an entirely new set of rules, governances and structural design/architecture is created; a model that requires the mobilisation of every ounce of intelligence from the managers managing the relationships. In this article our UK & European Director, Dean van Leeuwen, shares with us the results from interviewing over 30 senior executive managers and undertaking a broader global research study of leading companies. The results are illuminating.

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Activists and companies can co-operate

The Economist recently ran a fascinating little piece on how activists and companies need to work towards a common outcome and goal. Read it here (subscription may be required) – or an extract below. It may be idealistic, but it is a wonderful goal to have, and certainly is a requirement if we are really going to change the world.

Strange bedfellows

Companies as activists
May 22nd 2008

LAST month Tom Katzenmeyer, vice-president of investor relations at Limited Brands, met representatives of the government of the Canadian province of Alberta. Limited Brands is an American apparel firm with sales of $10.1 billion last year; its best-known division is Victoria’s Secret, which sells lingerie. And what was the topic of discussion? The firm’s worries over threatened caribou habitats.

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Five Ways Generation Y May Reinvent IT

I was sent a link to Baselinemag recently, that took an interesting look at the Millennial Generation from an IT industry perspective. Read the original article here, or see a summary below.

They’ve been called everything from narcissists to “Generation Me,” but those wily post-Gen X employees might just show their elders how to revamp an enterprise.

They depend too much on their parents’ money, they need constant hand-holding, they have no job loyalty, but do show remarkable acumen for demanding more than they’re worth, showing disrespect for older employees, and displaying stunning naiveté about corporate culture.

The backlash against Generation Y seems to be in full swing while the ink on their college diplomas is still drying.

Much discussion has centered around the expectations and work habits of this particular generation, with some pundits fretting about whether their casual attitudes will sink enterprises in the long run.

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My Customer, My Co-Innovator

In the 31 Aug 06 edition of strategy+business, Michael Schrage wrote an excellent article about using the power of Web 2.0 type thinking to involve customers in innovation processes. Read it here.

His basic point needs little elaboration: Involving customers in the innovation process can add value to new product designs. He is arguing for more than just “market research” – a process that can so easily be manipulated to achieve the results you’re looking for. Like many of us who believe that interactive technologies are causing a shift in values and institutional power, he is arguing that we need to extend an invitation to customers to actively assist in the whole process of innovation, especially when considering new features and functionality on existing products and services.

We don’t do nearly enough of this. If we did, I am certain we’d get more customer loyalty, too.

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Knowledge Workers as associates not subordinates

This is fairly basic stuff, but may be helpful as we think through how to attract and retain talented young people into our businesses. For a detailed definition, look at Wikipedia.

The term “knowledge worker” was coined by Peter Drucker in 1959 to describe someone who adds value by processing existing information to create new information which could be used to define and solve problems. They now dominate the workspace, accounting for over 80% of all formally employed people in the world.

“… fewer and fewer people are subordinates – even in fairly low-level jobs. Increasingly they are knowledge workers. Knowledge workers cannot be managed as subordinates; they are associates… This difference is more than cosmetic. Once beyond the apprentice stage, knowledge workers must know more about their job than their boss does – or what good are they? The very definition of a knowledge worker is one who knows more about his or her job than anyone else in the organization.”

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MySQL – The Model 21st Century Company?

I picked up on a great Fortune article on the CNNMoney.com site about MySQL, the open-source software designers, over the weekend. It unpacks the dynamics of this completely decentralised organisation, and just what makes it tick as well as it does.

This, according to the article, is a challenge facing many companies – new and old, established or fledgling – as we transition into a Connection Economy. As globalisation and commoditisation have an increased effect on our workplace and our employees, we need to find innovative new ways to nurture a productive bond among workers who rarely, if ever, meet.

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Connecting generations

I am not sure where this is originally from.  It was sent to me in one of those email type chains.  I have Claire’s books, and rate them highly, and appreciated this summary of what she has written on the new generation of employees, Gen Y.
This article is an excerpt from Connecting Generations: The Sourcebook by Claire Raines.

I get questions every month from businesspeople looking for something about the newest generation of workers. They’d like an updated version of Twentysomething or Beyond Generation X, books I wrote in 1991 and 1996. Along with Bruce Tulgan’s Managing Generation XX, they’re the classics on managing and motivating young employees. The thing is, the young employees we were talking about in those three books are well established in the workplace today, and the next generation is showing up with a whole new perspective, a different set of values, a distinctive work ethic. They’re as different from Generation X as they can be. By and large, it’s the Gen-Xers who are managing them, and who are looking for help in understanding just what the Millennials are all about. Thus this article. I think you’ll find a fairly comprehensive treatment of Millennial employees.
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Emotional Intelligence in an Economy of Connection

The shifts taking place in the global economy are changing the way in which a company establishes its value proposition as a competitive differentiator. A few years back a company could bet on their “quality of product� as a sure winner. Such strategies today do not suffice, and if opted for will relegate the business to the abyss of redundancy as they are surpassed by companies who embrace the values of the emerging economy.

Companies that understand the changes required are positioning themselves in relation to what Daniel H. Pink terms the conceptual economy. Others are calling it the Emotional Economy, the Relationship Economy, or what we at TomorrowToday.biz call the Connection Economy. Whatever you call it, the game is changing, and strategies of old will not work. Tomorrow’s economy is all about connecting. Staying alive, nay, conquering your industry will be a matter of connecting with your customers, suppliers, employees, families of your employees and connecting with the communities your organization finds itself operating within.

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The A – Z Of HyperNetworking In The Connection Economy

From developmental stages to mainstream technology

Companies around the world have already begun to experience the power of third-party Web sites (e.g. www.hellopeter.com) and any self-respecting marketing department commits staff to monitoring them. But that’s not enough anymore. Clients want to be involved and interact, not just comment and complain. In today’s Connection Economy, where information is being democratised, and stakeholders and clients alike are demanding more interaction and transparency, the use of a new range of HyperNetworking technologies is becoming imperative. Lets put some of the most important of these new business tools under the microscope.

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MyCircle.co.za

You remember Barrie’s The Oracle of Kevin Bacon post? So just how prevalent is social networking in South Africa? (with a truly South African flavour, that is). Yahoo! Groups is a facility that some of us use, and we’re becoming pretty au fait with Skype and other IM tools, blogging is gaining momentum but is there an offering that is inclusive of all these elements? A one-stop platform for social networking?

It turns out there is…

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Getting your customers to help each other

Nick Bradbury’s Nashville-based company, Bradbury Software, has only one employee – himself. He doesn’t have time to help all of his clients and answer their questions. He solved this problem reasonably easy – he got his customers to help each other – for free! In “Need Help? Don’t Call Us” (Inc, August 2005), Etelka Lehoczky explains that Nick’s customers seem only too pleased to help. Its the power of collaboration, blogging and people wanting to add value and appear as experts.

There must be ways in which other companies could harness these characteristics amongst their own clients.

A New Way to Collaborate

Blog + Wiki = a new way to collaborate.

21 year old Lucas Carlson has integrated these two existing technologies in an exciting new way… For years, programmers have used versioning tools to collaborate on writing software. In that way, hundreds of programmers can work on a single program at the same time. It has only been a matter of time before programmers brought the same concept to collaborative writing in general. He has called it Web Collaborator.

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10 Skills for future success

The Economist magazine ended a survey of e-business with a review of the skills necessary to successfully manage an e-world business. Now before you discount what is to follow because you might argue that you are not involved in an e-business, have a look at the list. It is no different from skills that Tom Peters, Charles Handy and others have been punting for the past 20 years!

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Relationships – The economic return of the future

Of course in today’s cynical, hard-pressed business environment, swallowing the prediction that relationships will be the economic return of tomorrow is a little like asking you to believe that bullets will one day bounce off vests made from the mixture of a spider’s thread and goats milk – right?

Wrong…very wrong!

Setting aside the bullet-proof vests notion as distracting trivia for now, let’s focus on the former assertion: that relationship will dominate the way in which we see and do business, the way we lead and manage companies into the future. Relationships will be a key economic measure and currency of the future.

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