Author Archive

Adding Social Computing Capabilities

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

According to a new Forrester report, The Next Wave of Office Productivity by Sheri McLeish with Matthew Brown and Joseph Dang, Microsoft Office continues to dominate both in the enterprise and at home to no surprise. However, changes are affecting enterprise productivity strategies, such as Web 2.0, enterprise 2.0, and the consumerization of IT. Many enterprise workers use products like the iPhone and YouTube at home and they have expectations at work for similar functionality either through these tools or enterprise versions. As a loyal Mac. iTunes, and iPhone user who is still attached to Office, I was interested in where all these tools are going and appreciated getting a review copy of the report.

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Creating Mini Knowledge Services In The Enterprise

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Here is an interesting idea. Marc Andersen, my former Renaissance colleague, posted recently on his blog on applying “product service systems” to corporate environments. He was inspired by a Boston Globe article, The Leased Life, on how people should share products across their communities. Many people purchased tools and other things they rarely use, causing an unnecessary strain on their budgets and the environment.  The globe reported that this has been recognized and Web sites have started to facilitate these transactions. This is another example of the potential of Web 2.0.

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Creative Brainstorming Through Innovation Management

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

Okay, I know what you might be thinking, but innovation management is not actually an oxymoron. There is much more to bringing innovation to the realization of business value than the light bulb going off within an individual. In reality, as Tad Milbourn, Product Manager for Intuit Brainstorm and I discussed, most creativity is a group process. This is true for most, if not all, forms of creativity, not simply that in business as I remember form my academic experience. Tad told me that Intuit offers unstructured time to many employees to work on their own ideas independent of the tasks they are currently assigned.

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Google Looks To The Future Of Television

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

Google recently purchased video compression provider On2 Technologies for about $106.5M. As Gartner’s Andrew Frank writes, this is a “relatively small sum in the heady world of Internet valuations, for a company that’s been steadily losing money on less than $20M in annual revenue.” However, they have an interesting technology and the On2 purchase may be the clear signal of the plans Google has to enable video beyond the computer, taking it out of the home office and into the living room.

Google appears to want to be a player in the future of television. They must believe that video distribution to TVs and mobile devices will evolve to be more like the Web, Google favorite playground. So far in video, however, Google has admitted that profit from YouTube has proven more elusive than originally thought.

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Adding Social Broadcasting To Your Enterprise

Thursday, August 6th, 2009

Social media tools have begun to migrate from the consumer web to the business web, sometimes facing outward, sometimes focused in. Just as public-facing applications need broad appeal, enterprise tools need to be designed for a defined organizational space to be effective (see Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron). With the explosion of the Twitter market, some of these new tools are designed specifically for enterprise microsharing (sometimes called microblogging and social messaging). Although Twitter can be used within an organization, it was created for the broader web and does not have the functionality that appeals to enterprise decision-makers, seeking multifaceted tools.

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Are Professional Services Needed For Enterprise 2.0

Thursday, April 16th, 2009

Here is re-post from FastForward as I wanted to see if I could stir up some more conversation on the topic. An interesting question was raised in the post, Should Software Vendors Also Sell Professional Services?, by Stewart Mader. He quotes Oliver Marks, “The reality for all “social community” roll outs is that the software is a relatively minor component compared to the change management required to drive uptake and usage and to weave the software into the business fabric of day to day use.” I certainly agree here and was even part of a panel at Enterprise 2.0 Conference in 2007 titled: 90% people, 10% technology.

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