Enterprise Social Software has gone mainstream. I say this based on the fact that the analysts are now releasing stacks of research on this area. Forrester is a good example (and one of the better companies out there):
Enterprise Social Software Links
We don’t normally post just links, but sometimes it is just too hard to keep up with the good stuff. Mike writes from South Africal about lessons learned from social software implementations, and Centopeia (almost as difficult a name as CYBAEA!) comments on Lee’s presentation at LIFT.
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Optimal Knowledge Management
Interest in productivity and how to manage innovation and know-how appears to be growing. Our article on employee productivity gets about four times more hits than the next most popular post. I imagine that more and more people in the West are waking up to the fact that innovation and high productivity is the only thing that keeps jobs here (though the link from USA Today probably didn’t hurt).
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Influencers are not influential
You are not nearly as influential as you think you are. One of my friends are doing research on influencers in mobile networks, and he is going to be crushed (or maybe not) by this entry in a recent HBR list which basically says that influentials are not very … influential. That is to say that the spread of new ideas in a social network is not dependent on a few super-connected, highly influential members, contrary to popular assumptions. The article offers some specific strategies for marketeers:
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Skill versus luck
When it comes to being an entrepreneur or venture capitalist, is it better to be lucky or good? According to a new working paper, Skill vs. Luck in Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital: Evidence from Serial Entrepreneurs, skill carries the day most of the time.
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When Venture Capital is more than capital
Venture Capital money is very expensive; probably by far the most expensive money you will ever get. The usual defense from the industry is that you so much more than just the money: you get experience, a partner and customer ecosystem, channels to market and much more.
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Innovation in consumer goods
Related to our previous article on new business models for innovation, McKinsey has a piece on reinventing innovation in consumer goods companies (subscription required) which challenges companies to reconsider the assumption that innovation starts with existing business models.
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Business models as the enablers of innovation
Sometimes the barriers to innovation is outdated business models. “Railroads and telegraphs needed the modern corporation and semiconductors and software needed venture capital”, says The Economist, quoting Gary Pisano, a professor at Harvard Business School who thinks that the biotech indostry is in desparate need of a simliar innovation. The problem is acute.
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The 3/2 rule revisited
We revisited the 3/2 rule of employee productivity using a larger data set and considering each sector independently.
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The 3/2 rule of employee productivity
The more employees your company has, the less productive each of these employees are. It is a generalization, of course, but a useful one and one that is confirmed by most people who have worked for growing organizations. As the company grows, so does the internal processes and the layers of bureaucracy, and the time spent on communications grows rapidly.
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