genus = notebook; species = HP

genus = notebook; species = Apple

I think we’re witnessing a similar kind of evolution with the word “site” — as in Web site. Consider: what we have been calling Web sites, for oh say 16 years – aren’t really “sites” — in the full sense of the word. From the Latin, situs: “place or position occupied by something.” The standard Web site is not a “place,” and it certainly is not occupied, certainly not by people. But in fact that’s how sites are evolving in the post-Web 2.0 world. The site has evolved into the social network, and networks, as anyone who has spent a lot of time in them will attest, are very much like places. Even their names sometimes evoke a sense of physical place (MySpace, Farmville, many others). And while they are not like real places, they are clearly an advance on the original concept. Once again, technology has evolved to meet the hype of a marketing metaphor (the “site”), in a way that more closely resembles what we have in “real” life. And that, I believe, is the most remarkable thing about online communication and computing. There is an irreversible march toward evolving the objects and tools we use to navigate the virtual world so that they better match the way we navigate the real world.

But unlike the notebook, the evolution of the Web site has implications for anyone in business (i.e., it’s not just HP and Dell’s problem). There was a time when it was understood that every company needed a Web site — it was one’s place on the “World Wide Web.” An entire industry was spawned at the dawn of that insight. No such thing has happened yet in the post-2.0 age, unless you look at the corporate blog as an evolutionary advance on the corporate Web site. Perhaps that’s true, but it’s only a small advance compared to the social network. And while practically every company now at least understands the value of a blog (or blogs), very few in comparison understand the value of an enterprise social network. But if you trust the consensus of the market makers in this particular world (I do), it won’t be long before that changes, too. In the meantime, here’s what’s confusing businesses from seeing the horizon ahead:

genus = real estate; species = Trump

genus = real estate; species = Facebook

–The good news: the emerging world of networks is just that … emerging. The world is changing. We are moving from a site-centric world (”site” in the Web 1.0 sense of the word) to a network-centric world. But it’s a new world with lots of uncertainty. How does a business deal with the fact that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn have such a great presence in the network-centric world? Ignore them? That would be wrong — just as wrong, in fact, as it would be to ignore the largest players in the real world of real estate. So much has been written about how companies should make their static sites more compelling and relevant by integrating with social networks and other services (again Jeremiah). I agree — in fact, this point of view informed a big part of my consulting practice over the last few years. But a safe bet would be for businesses — and non-profits — to also invest in a little real-estate of their own, create their own networks, and grab a piece of the American dream. There’s a nascent market of “enterprise 2.0″ companies (I am with one of them) ready to respond to the market, and already the market is beginning to see the value. I’ll share more as I move along — I’ve been on the job (officially) less than one week. But it’s one of the most interesting and exciting markets that I’ve competed in for quite some time. It’s a great place to be, literally and metaphorically.

Source: InnoCentive

It’s not often I can point to a trend in social technology and get truly excited. The business benefits of social tech have long been established (the effectiveness and efficiency of networked communications), but so have the human costs (distraction and dependency on networked devices). But there’s a trend that’s (a) just beginning to mature and (b) shows real promise to benefit both business and the human condition — really. I’m talking about the many systems and platforms that have been used to “crowdsource creative” — that is, to tap human networks to create new ideas, products, and services. These platforms have been used to create everything ranging from t-shirts, corporate logos, to earnest solutions for world peace. Regarding world peace, that’s not exactly the kind of human benefit I’m thinking about (more about that in a moment). But the range of things that can be crowdsourced — both mundane and sublime — is worth considering. I like to bunch these things in three general groups:

*Platforms that crowdsource the creation of products and services. Perhaps the best known example of this is Dell IdeaStorm, an initiative that’s enabled the company to tap its most avid customers for ideas that contribute to product and service development.

*Platforms that crowdsource the creation of ideas. The idea here is to organize groups of people to innovate, develop new ideas, and solve problems that have eluded organizations that have attempted these things on their own. There are lots of examples of this, from the famed InnoCentive site (most recent challenge: clever solutions for responding to recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico); to the $1 million Netflix competition (which enabled the company to develop a superior recommendations system); to the very recent $1 million Edmunds Toyota Prius challenge (“re-create unintended acceleration in a car and then solve that problem and prove the whole thing to us”), to the many experiments that are being conducted at Ideascale, a platform that “empowers communities to drive innovation” by enabling them to collect ideas from “customers, give them a platform to vote, the most important ideas bubble to the top.”

*Platforms that crowdsource the creation of professional-class content. Of the three general classes of crowdsourcing creative, I find this to be the most interesting, for three reasons. First, most of these platforms tap communities of professional-class (or near professional-class) participants. No longer do businesses need to limit themselves to consumer-driven user-generated content (USG); they can avail themselves to professional-generated content (PGC) as well. Second, because of the professional standing of many participants, they are generally more Web savvy and better connected; a brand that engages one of these communities might get instant marketing at the start of a competition because so many members of the community are likely to publicize their participation. Third, the very fact that businesses have begun to crowdsource actual “creative” — the term that the advertising industry has given to any and all artifacts (design, images, video) — from the creative disciplines has serious implications for traditional business models in the world of marketing, communications, and, yes, advertising. Examples of PGC platforms are Logoworks (acquired by HP) and 99designs, which crowdsource the creation of logos and Web design; MOFILM, which helps brands crowdsource the creation of film and video; Aniboom, a global community of professional-class animators; and Talenthouse, perhaps the most audacious of all platforms, attempting to create a virtual marketplace for the entire “creative” community (art, fashion, film, music, design — and that’s just to start).

These many experiments have given us something else to think about — the use of the word “creative,” which, as I noted, is a term that the advertising community has branded and defined too narrowly. As the entire universe of crowdsourcing has demonstrated, the work that people can be tapped to do is the most important stuff there is. For the essence of “creative” is creating, the making of things, without which there’d be nothing (literally). And, as companies like MOFILM, Aniboom, and Talenthouse are demonstrating, the things we are talking about are potentially great things — this is not the world of amateurs, but a newly organized world of professionals — and people on their way up (e.g., MOFILM has done a great job connecting with students in film school) — who are motivated to work in environments that are less hierarchical and more network-centric. That, of course, has long been one of the promises of the Social Web, but I believe that “crowdsourcing creative” is pushing the outer edges of social technology design and that we can all learn a lot from it. I’ve been watching this market for quite some time (disclosure = Aniboom was a client of my agency a while back), and these are three things I’ve observed.

(1) The best platforms have defined value from the start. As I said, many of these platforms are looking to create important things for which there is a clear and compelling market need (from a cheaper logo for starting a new business, to breakthrough technology that can transform a business).

(2) The best platforms are driven by social design. It’s no accident that many platforms connect with their participants through contests and games. The challenge, always, is to devise the right kinds of incentives for the creative community in question (to put the “centive,” for example, in InnoCentive), and this is where innovators in social technology are spending most of their time. But the bigger lesson for all is just how important “game logic” has become for so many experiments on the Social Web (for a smart look at this opportunity, check out the recent Business Week article by John Hagel and John Seely Brown examining what businesses can learn from multi-player games like World of Warcraft).

(3) The best platforms have found a way to connect with the “out crowd,” the most talented professionals that are too remote, too invisible, too shy to rise inside the traditional enterprise. A colleague of mine recently pointed out that one of the cooler things about “crowdsourcing creative” is the opportunity to engage with someone who for any reason — too shy, too far away, invisible behind the corporate lens — to get noticed otherwise. This, I believe, can have a profoundly healthy effect on both the businesses that recruit talent and the people who have it. Healthy for business, because there’s nothing so vulnerable as a company that depends on a small “in crowd” mentality; better to tap the best talent there is, wherever it is. Healthy for the person who has creative talent, because the making of things is the bedrock of a happy life. Put the two together, and you’d have the kind of organizational culture that’s required to compete in the new digital/social economy. But whether or not that’s too idealistic, engaging and supporting “the out crowd” might make for a happier corporate life. As Freud said, “love and work are the two cornerstones of our humanness.” Solving for at least one of these challenges — shall we start a contest? — sounds like a good thing to do.

[Acknowledgement: Big thanks to Tatiana Josephy and Chris Advansun for their research and insights on companies featured in this post.]

Touch is not a new technology. It’s been around many years, but mostly as a labs-and future-of-technology showcase. Of course, the iPod/iPhone changed all that, and it’s fair to say that Apple and its many device-manufacturer followers have been teaching the world to touch for several years now. I got a good reminder of this about a year ago when I picked up a magazine and unconsciously spread my fingers over the print, attempting to make the type bigger; the iPhone had already trained me to use a computer UI to navigate the world of physical media (a creepy but enlightening moment). But what many people are discovering this month is that touch is a much more compelling modality when the form factor — the size, weight, and field of play of the device — is right. Many things that worked OK on the iPhone work even better on the iPad. If the iPhone was the first device to begin to teach the world to touch, the iPad may usher in a bigger wave of education. And if that happens, all the hype surrounding Apple’s magical device will be deserved. Because of if the world learns to touch, computing may in fact change forever.

But what’s all the fuss about touch? If you have a touch-screen phone, iPod or iPad, some of the benefits should be obvious. For example, with a number of computing tasks — e.g., sorting through photos — touch makes for a far more efficient experience that the mouse. For things like reading, it makes for a more intimate, natural experience (note how the turning-the-pages feature in iBooks mimics the physical-world experience of reading books). But perhaps the most profound thing about touch is — duh — the sensory component. Computing used to be only about seeing and hearing. Now that it’s also about touching, we can begin reimagining how computing will further enable us to traverse the physical and virtual worlds, which increasingly compete for our time. Hard to clearly imagine where this is all going, but the immediate horizon is beginning to become visible. To me, the most interesting experiments in augmented reality anticipate a new wave of innovation in device design where the motion of our wrist, hands, and fingers can help us bridge the physical and virtual worlds. (E.g., the “Sixth Sense” project, prominently featured at TED (see below)).

This is only the beginning, of course. But it won’t be long, I think, before a cunning marketeer catches and exploits the sad irony in all of this. For among all the senses, “touch” is the one we most associate with human intimacy, and our technology experiments with touch are happening at a time when so much of the world has lost its ability to touch — in part because of the increasing amount of time we spend behind screens. This is not entirely new — we’ve been moving in this direction for quite some time, enough to inspire an AT&T marketing team back in 1979 to exhort the world to “reach out and touch someone.” It was the dawn of the PC age, but already the world was losing its ability to touch. Expect innovation and surprise on both the technology and marketing fronts now that touch has a compelling virtual analog.

So what is it about southern accents that make them contagious, if in fact they are contagious? I’ve decided to crowdsource this question, here on this blog and through several social networks. But to get things started, here are a few pet theories of mine, developed at different times over the years, reflecting the different stages of evolution of my cynical self, which leans neither North, South, but probably East:

–Southern accents demand that we slow down our conversations … and slowing down has a natural, positive, sedative effect. That’s especially true if you are a fast-talking Yankee on vacation. You want to slow down. “Set a spell. Take your shoes off. Y’all come back now, y’hear?”

–Southern accents demand that we speak more poetically. If you are a fast-talking yankee on vacation in a Southern city — particularly an elegant Southern City like Savannah — chances are you need to act more civilized, want to act more civilized. Nothing more civilized, you notice, than adding a little lilt in your voice when you ask for something. “A bit more foam in that latte? Much obliged.”

–Southern accents are like forbidden fruit — you cannot, will not resist them. Imagine you are a teenage girl in the 50’s, and your parents warn you to stay away from the dangerous, brooding Fonzie type who hangs out with his even more dangerous friends outside the corner drugstore. He was interesting before your parents spoke up. But he’s even more interesting now. Same goes for Southern accents. You know they are contagious — people have warned you — and you know you are too smart, too disciplined to give in. Which is why you give in. For there’s nothing stronger than the time-stopping, poetic, song of the people whom we fought and parted with so long ago that the whole thing seems like a myth. In the end, what makes Southern accents so contagious is the desire that we have to connect with the unconnectable. Especially, again, if you’re a Yankee on vacation. You are more than happy to forget your busy, fast-talking, prosaic life — for a spell – and imagine you’re at home with long-lost relatives.

User-centered innovation has helped conduct us into an unsustainable world. The reason is sustainability is not embedded in the anthropology of our existing culture, society, and economy. Yes, people are starting to be concerned about the environment. But their concerns about many other things — their budgets, health, safety, well-being, and emotional fulfillment — are increasing, too.

It’s an interesting perspective, and one that might add depth to the discussions many businesses are having today about the design and implementation of social media. The bias in this world — and it’s a good one — is for user experience. But our rational obsession with the user can easily obscure the difference between the work that UE/UI professionals do and the work that social-media innovators do. Both are important, but it’s important to see them on different horizons, to borrow from the old McKinsey model for corporate growth. Even Facebook — the company that has developed the gold standard for user experience in social media today — will sometimes ignore the crowd and bet on a feature, a functionality, a concept that will play big in the future (i.e., across a later time horizon).

I suspect the reason we get tripped up on this distinction — between user-experience and user-centered design — is the overwhelming egalitarian vibe in the social media world. We like to think of this world as one where practically everything can be crowdsourced. But the vibe distracts how innovation happens, whether it is crowdsourced or not. It rarely comes from the crowd en masse, but it can come from the crowd on the edge. Says Verganti:

It is only within the framework of a vision-centered process that users can provide precious insights. There are indeed some people who are already adopting sustainable behaviors. However, they are rare exceptions. Only leaders and designers who are driven by a vision and who explicitly search a priori for those sustainable behaviors can tune out the unsustainable needs of 99% of users and focus on the few exceptions.

One such person is Ezio Manzini, a respected scholar in the field of sustainable design who has conducted significant research on how local communities have developed clever sustainable solutions to everyday problems. Ezio is not at all user centered in his approach. He does not look at what users want and need. He is one of the most visionary and design-driven innovators I can think of. He wants to find sustainable behaviors. Therefore, he refuses to look at dominant consumption. Rather, he explicitly searches for the needle in the haystack: local fringe communities that have already found sustainable solutions for everyday living. He then engineers these solutions and proposes them at a larger scale.

It’s great that Verganti uses the word fringe to describe those outlier communities where innovative ideas are first surfaced, tried, practiced. It may be the wrong word. Coincidentally, yesterday, on the same HBR blog, John Hagel and John Seely Brown explored the difference between (a) fringe communities, which may never enter the mainstream, and (b) edge communities, which may someday lead the mainstream. In any case, the folks in these communities are often on the outside, and it’s not so easy to fit them into the fabric of ordinary user-centered design. Perhaps, of course, that’s just another way of stating the requirements for leadership. Leaders don’t ignore what the crowd needs today. But leaders do focus on where the crowd will want to go, and they will go there with their customers before their competitors do.

These features have had the effect of motivating legions of people to participate. It’s fun to see your stats. It’s fun to get a little competitive. It’s great when you get that notification that you’ve earned a new badge.

Sound familiar? Yep — it’s the same kind of incentives that make online social games one of the fastest growing markets today, transforming companies like Zynga (the purveyors of Farmville, YoVille and Mafia Wars) into economic powerhouses. As Carpenter suggests, games are addictive — so addictive, in fact, that the next wave of innovators in Enterprise 2.0 are already thinking of incorporating them into their offerings. Hint of what’s to come? Take a look at Deloitte’s recent article in Business Week, where the authors John Hagel and John Seely Brown examine what businesses can learn from the World of Warcraft. Deloitte is not alone. I think we can safely predict that the lag will be shorter between Foursquare and the “Foursquare for the enterprise.”

Why the delay? Not sure, but I think it may have a lot to do with the fact that Enterprise 2.0 — as a market — is just starting to heat up, and enterprise-wide social media … well, it just isn’t there at most organizations. And in order for the enterprise-wide thing to happen, IT will need to get involved. Recently, I attended a workshop at a management consulting company where a very smart social media practitioner blithely dismissed IT as an important stakeholder on social media projects. There was a time when many agreed that IT doesn’t matter (Nicholas Carr’s argument that IT is no longer a competitive differentiator, because every business has it), but lately the rap is that the IT professional doesn’t matter.

It’s an unfortunate view — it’s not only disrespectful, but way short-sighted. Yes, many great, emergent Enterprise 2.0 projects can be launched in the cloud, on a personal credit card, without the knowledge or consent of IT. But that’s just a snapshot of where we are today, and it would be a mistake for people to conclude that all things 2.0 and in the cloud leave IT on the sidelines. As another Gartner analyst at the Baltimore event noted, big organizations are now taking a look at larger projects, and IT is very much involved. Some stuff will stay in the cloud, other stuff inside the firewall, and perhaps even more stuff in some hybrid form. In any case, IT folks will be there, and they certainly do matter. But the Gartner event this month signals the kind of education — for both IT and the people who sell to them — that will need to happen before we see meaningful results.

We’ve gone through this process before. Apple carefully stages the expectations for a media event, seeding the market with fact and fiction about a new product that’s poised to disrupt the market. In the days leading up to the event, dozens of companies are reengineering their PR strategies to draft from the announcement, or at least position themselves in a way that will make them look good, or at least prescrient, when the announcement is made. I noticed at least two companies doing this last week. First, the New York Times announced it would begin recharging its Web users for “frequent use,” a odd-but-clever reversal in the days before Apple is likely to unveil some new ideas for rescuing the media industry. Then we heard from Amazon, which announced its intention to develop an ecosystem for developers building on the Kindle, the one device most obviously threatened by the Apple tablet. Brace yourself, because this is just the tip of the iceberg. You can expect many other companies to position, reposition, and even contort themselves to fit into this week’s news-cycle.

Why do we do this? Well, it’s not as though marketers don’t have a reason. Just as Apple has learned to expand its footprint in the tech world by creating ecosystems for developers, its command of the news-cycle creates and ecosystem of news stories each time it makes a new product announcement. Marketers no doubt are also fearful that making an announcement that doesn’t fit into the Apple storyline — either on the side of the protagonist (a pro-Apple story), or the side of the antagonist (an anti-Apple story) is too risky because it will get lost in the news-cycle. This comports well with the notion that the average human being (starting with the average journalist, blogger or other news scribe) can only think of one thing at a time. It’s the ADD theory of PR, and it mostly works (to keep marketing people in their jobs), so it’s no surprise that practically everyone subscribes to it.

If you have a story to tell this week, and it doesn’t quite fit into the Steve Jobs briefing book, I’d caution against the mostly rational impulse to hold your story until next week (or the following week). Before you pull the plug, ask yourself if you believe that people have the desire to hear another kind of story this week. Better yet, ask yourself if all you want to do is talk about Apple this week. As much as I like Apple — pretty sure that I will be buying the tablet — I know I’ll have at least a few other thoughts on my mind. Bet you your customers will, too. And they might be pleased to hear from you during a week when none of your competitors have the cojones to say something.

*What: Latino2, a celebration and exploration of all things Latino in the age of digital/social engagement. Brought to you by Latinos in Social Media (LatISM).

*When: April 30-May 2, 2010 in Los Angeles (Venue TBD)

*Want to help? Come to the pre-conference Tweetup: Saturday February 6, 8PM at Seven Restaurant & Bar, 555 W. 7th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90014, 213.223.0777, http://sevenrestaurantbar.com

*For more info: go to latism.org, latino2.com, or follow the conversation on Twitter (#latism, #latino2)

[The following is a post that I orginally published earlier this week on the LatISM blog.]

For those of you who know me — or at least follow my movements on Twitter — it should come as no surprise that I recently experienced a cultural reawakening, and that a new focus for me in 2010 is the emerging world of Latino communications. It all began last summer, when I was asked by the National Hispanic Corporate Council (NHCC) to give a keynote at its annual conference. The topic was the corporate adoption of social media, something I often speak about in public and private settings. But, of course, the context for this talk was the Latino market. I was less prepared for that, and I soon realized I had some homework to do. I immediately began by searching for people and groups steeped in both social technology and Latino marketing. The timing was right. Earlier that summer, a group called LatISM — Latinos in Social Media — took off on the Web like a rocket, and by the Fall they had organized a number of events on the East Coast. After the NHCC talk, I flew to speak at a LatISM in DC, connected with co-founders Ana Roca Castro, Kety Esquivel, and Louis Pagan, and we soon got to talking about bringing LatISM to the West Coast. Today — along with my West Coast colleagues David Vallejo, Antonio Altamirano and Laura Gomez — I am proud to announce that LatISM in fact is coming to California, for a weekend conference running April 30 through May 1st in Los Angeles (venue TBD).

We are now in the pre-production phase, and we are reaching out to people interested in speaking, sponsoring. or otherwise supporting the event. If you have attended earlier LatISM conferences, you will see the same commitment to the LatISM mission: to bring together Latinos — and people close to Latino communities — to share insights and best practices in digital/social communications. But there are several things that will make the “LatISM West” event different:

The scale: The western region of the U.S. is by far the largest general domestic market for Latinos, and L.A. is one of the major hubs as well as home to many of the leading innovators in social technology. For that reason alone we are designing the event to be a bit larger. We’ve already identified several locations that would be appropriate. But we are also gathering the requisite people power and sponsor support for the effort.

The scope: We are also designing the event to leverage some of the unique assets of the Southern California market: the rich clusters of talent in entertainment and media. We will also stretch up North, tapping leaders and thinkers from Silicon Valley, Sacramento and other parts of the state where many interesting projects in government, public policy and commerce are happening today. And we will also look to leaders from neighboring states — Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, others — to bring greater representation as well as a real Western feel to this event.

The season: Finally, there’s something special about the timing of this event. If I have learned anything about Latino communications in the past few months — the short amount of time that frames my personal “reawakening” — it’s that Latinos are quickly organizing themselves online, and the speed at which this is happening is remarkable. The folks at LatISM had a hunch last year that the time was right for an organization devoted to supporting — not dictating — this type of self-organization. And it’s all happening at a time when it matters more than ever that Latinos stand up and be counted — the months preceding the 2010 Census, a project that could have a significant impact on national priorities. But even without the census, Latinos have reason to stand up, be counted, and participate in the new conversations on Latino communications. The approach we are taking is the broaden the umbrella wide enough to allow for even livelier conversations. If you are “Latino too” — by origin or affinity (i.e., engaging with Latinos really matters to you) — come to Latino2. But don’t wait for April 30 to make yourself heard. If you can, come to our Tweetup (see details above) and take part in shaping the event from the start.