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The Internet does not make much sense… On pricing digital goods and other illogicalities

Vincent van Wylick — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:14:49 +0000

“From my cold, dead hands…” It’s something that came to mind as I was thinking about writing this post. The part that doesn’t make sense about the Internet, today and perhaps since ever, is that American concept of “Freedom,” of independence and lack of governance.

In my post on piracy, my point was not complete. YES, historically, there has been a trend in every industry towards eliminating inefficiencies and yes, in some ways making things digital is just another step down that line, but NO, as @ksilvennoinen pointed out in the comments, digital goods do have a value greater than zero, the question is how to find a way to recuperate that value from customers.

To me value equals investment, but that is not the way pricing works. Unfortunately, I managed to misplace my pricing bible some months ago and can’t seem to recall most of the rules of pricing, but there is a strong psychological component to it. And the psychological part is what I am confused about. To get another book in here, it’s just like “Positioning: the battle for the mind,” if online goods are ‘positioned’ against a never-ending slew of free content, how do you position yourself to be priced at a value greater than zero?

On the one hand, it’s not so hard. You position yourself in such a way that a comparison does not make sense. Let’s take digital books, an area I actually don’t consider as threatened as publishers and media-outlets would like you to believe. The reason is that as soon as you download a digital book and view it on a PC, it immediately becomes an inferior product. Unlike a TV-show or movie, which I can frankly watch on a post-stamp (no matter what David Lynch says), reading and eyes work best together on either paper or e-paper (haven’t tried reading on the iPad, though I really like doing it on the iPhone). Of course the real threat to e-books in a PC environment is websites, but that’s a story for another day.

To get back to it, e-books work best in a dedicated reading environment, which immediately creates opportunities for platforms and putting walls around those. Platforms ensure that there is a network effect of content, walls ensure that there is no inter-leakage between the quality-controlled inside and the dark-waters-of-piracy outside. And that mechanism allows digital goods to be priced to recuperate investment and more. But…

Where it gets confusing again is how very open the Internet is. This openness allows you to create an app in a day, it also allows you to jailbreak an iPhone (now with US-gov. support), and it allows for me to get a movie that Chinese kid 107-xg46-*** released 5 minutes ago on the torrentZ. Amazon was built on this openness, as was OS X, as was pretty much anything that was stolen out of the Xerox labs 35 years ago. While there is a trend of eliminating barriers in general, it is even more prevalent on the Internet.

So, what I am asking myself here is the following questions:

Is this 1969 again, where hippies roamed free, sex was consequence-less, and there is an Aids-epidemic on the horizon, which will make us go back to the 50s in terms of promiscuity?
Are platforms doomed? I’m just talking platforms, not walls around them. Twitter is an example of an open platform.
Are the walls around platforms doomed? So: iTunes & iOS-devices, Amazon & Kindles, Facebook & human relationships, every online retailer in the world…
Is pricing digital goods a logical thing when taking into consideration how it is positioned against other digital goods?
Should digital goods be free and prices be set for things that cannot be spread digitally: iOS devices, Kindles, Disk-media, other consumption-devices…
And many more questions…

Getting back to value equals investment in my third paragraph. In any chain that leads from idea to the user, there are value points, which come from some kind of investment. In the embroidery example, a strong value point appears to be the creator. Without that person, there would be no creation. And, of course, there are plenty of examples on that. In the case of iPhone, strong value points are both the conceptualisation (R&D expenditure) and the production costs. In the case of Amazon, the website (presentation, distribution, etc.) is a strong value point. The end-product can still be digital, as it is in the case of the embroiderer’s designs, the iPhone apps, and the Kinde-ebooks, but the investment in certain parts of the chain is very much real.

And the value to consumers, which the crux of the matter, is equally real. If I compare 2010 to 1995, we live in the era of digital convenience. From e-banking, to restaurant-reviews, to TV-shows, to software, we undeniably live in a better world, but one where, ironically, we are less willing to spend as much on it. But there is another side to this as well. Let’s say, everything that exists is walled off. You’d have to pay to get access to every blog-post, to every youtube-video, to everything else that is already being charged for. I would sincerely start to question whether it was all worth it.

The Internet continues to be confusing to me, part shopping bonanza, part free-for-all utopia. Writing this has brought a little clarity, but if you have stuff to add that clears it up even more, please feel free to share it in a comment.

Thoughts on Intellectual Property and dealing with everything else that is out there

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:05:59 +0000

We’ve talked to a number of investor these last months and I can classify their questions into three categories:

Intellectual Property Protection (IPP)
Revenues
and Operations

Revenues is a straightforward concept and reflects market potential, market share, and business-model. Operations can also mean business-model as that clearly affects your operations, it also concerns the team, and it very much concerns *the last mile*—a very detailed understanding of how your product comes of the “factory line” and goes into a customers hands (every step and every screw has to be planned out). And IPP, well IPP is something special.

Intellectual Property Protection refers to legal and other ways that you protect the innovation and knowledge that is built within your company and its people. It is not as straightforward as simply taking out a patent, copyright, or trademark, though those are usually the first avenues that investors will pursue when talking to you about IP. IPP can just as much come from keeping information tacit—inside the heads of your team—, developing systems that spread an innovation across many parts—e.g. the way technology companies prevent copying from factories they outsource production to, by only giving them parts to produce, but not the whole—, another systematic answer could be deep vertical integration, which ensures a higher quality of products and services than can be replicated by vertically smaller competitors (a strategy pursued by Apple and Starbucks), and last but not least: speed—in some industries it pays to just scale very quickly, rather than build a protective base around IP (a contrast between e.g. web and medicine).

But let’s get real for a second. You’re an inventor, you developed something new. The most obvious path to pursue is a patent. The first issue is cost, because taking out a patent is not cheap. Basically, by filing a patent in your country, you can protect yourself for a while because there is a period, 1-2 years, I believe, where you are filing it and it can serve as a type of legal instrument to prevent other companies from filing a similar patent. But in the end, you have to shell out maybe €5000 per country to protect your invention internationally—and those costs do not cover the legal cost or protecting a patent once it’s being breached. Let’s get real x 2: you’re a startup and while your technology may be innovative, it may not be what the market needs (which can relate to actual taste, but also to cost, to regulatory issues, etc.) and that means that your patent, if you decide to take it out, may not be worth squat. Let’s get real x 3: your invention may not be unique, at least not in its current form, and pursuing a patent in that case is not even feasible.

So practically speaking, what do you do? Just to be clear, I don’t have the final answer to this, though it is something I am constantly thinking about as a potential risk in our, a technology startup. So my interpretation and approach are entirely my own, but I am writing this to start a discussion more than to give the final answer.

The answer to me is all about strategy. IP protection has to make sense in the context of a longer term business strategy, long term meaning to me longer than 2 years and preferably longer than 5 (if you have an actual patent and it has market value as well, you have over a decade of protection). And IP, just like a business, is something that can be split up to cover different areas related to supply, to the manufacturing, to the end-product, to the service, etc. So the more broad and comprehensive your way of protecting your intellectual value is, the less it can actually be replicated by your competitors.

All IP concerns aside, it is sometimes of benefit to not protect the whole value chain. This is true in our business, which I will write about some other time, where we can split up our technology into core-components that are integrated into new solutions which act as a platform for more solutions. Locking off that whole chain is perhaps of some benefit, but in some ways we would like to have people innovate in their respective areas and for us to focus on developing better products out of that. My point is that IP protection should be seen as something that can be shifted to those areas most critical to your business and that new development in your industry is not necessarily something to be scared of. In the end, we are in the product business and if we can produce superior solutions for customers that outweighs comprehensive IP solutions.

So the conclusion is, even if you are developing a product that is not entirely novel, there are places in the value chain where you can still develop an IP solution. And if you are developing novel solution, it has advantages on both the supply and the market side, to not make your IP too restrictive and thus diminish your product potential.

The value of Twitter vs. the value of Facebook vs. the value of having Neither [weekend ramblings]

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 14 May 2010 20:17:31 +0000

I think a value should always be weighed against the value of not having it, particularly when it’s hard to put a numerical value on something. This something is clearly Facebook and even more clearly Twitter, which still doesn’t compute for 100%. Why I love Twitter would be like saying why I love my dog or my Bengalese tiger, it’s hard to place a value on love. Not to say that I love Twitter, but there are few things that bother me about it. I tolerate it and it has nestled in a comfortable (but small) place in my life.

There are again ramblings against the status quo, or rather the status pecunia—the status of wealth. A few years ago, it was Twitter which seemed to show the Fail Whale more often then the “what are you doing now?” page. It lead to Friendfeed and various other me-too services that were dropped as soon as Twitter got its act together. There are again ramblings about evicting Facebook from people’s lives, though I’m here to tell you that if you want to have any kind of social life online, you’re probably better of keeping that account, though perhaps with less naked pictures or whatever you are worried about losing.

The value of Facebook is that it allows for richer connections between people that do not see each other every day. I care for my high-school friends that live in the UK, France, or Brazil, but since I can’t see them everyday, it adds value to my life to know that they are getting a kid or getting married. It does not add value to my life if people choose to leave Facebook, like some of my friends did at first when they were overwhelmed by all this publicity (something blogging prepares you for). And I’m really glad Facebook doesn’t delete accounts permanently as when people change their mind (they usually do), their friends are again there waiting for them (life is too exhausting to be-/de-/re-friend friends like most of the internet forces you to do).

The value of Twitter is like that morning coffee that adds a little (but not everything) to the quality of the moment you’re experiencing. No, NO, let’s not equate the value like that. The biggest value of Twitter to me is actually pretty much the same one as Facebook’s. I met up with a friend in Denmark a few weeks ago, who is also on Twitter, and I was able to finish his sentences because I read about his experiences ON Twitter. To me Twitter is more like a Second Life than Secondlife(tm) is. It allows for quick streams about people you care about or you “follow” because you respect them. If I had intelligent displays running Twitter on my sunglasses, I would wear them all the time while walking through life, that is how second life Twitter has become to (some of) my relationships. My business partner is going to China this week and I would love for him to update his Twitter-account while there to keep me informed of the cool stuff he’s researching for us (mobile operators better start catching up to this dynamic).

So, what, WHAT, could possibly be the value of Neither? Such a leading way to pose that question, as I’m clearly not on that side of the fence. I’m sorry that many of my friends decide against Twitter accounts because they don’t see the value of it. Those are usually the people that I see once every 6 months and our conversations are less deep because, well, we still have to get through the superficiality of “how was your day? What are you up to?” Questions that Twitter & Facebook both ask. And I’m sorry if my friends decide not to use Facebook as it not only allows them to post their thoughts, but pictures of their Bengalese tigers or their latest trip to hell, and even status updates about Farmville, which I previously stated, was an imperfect way of showing of your virtual garden to your friends.

The value of Neither is a type of emptiness that may be good for meditation, but it is no longer how the world works. It’s like seeing my parents struggle with emails or internet banking when no one sends snailmail or goes to a physical bank anymore. The world without Facebook or Twitter no longer exists. I don’t care about privacy issue 1 or 0, because it’s really your business what you put on the internet and what you don’t and you should never put stuff on there that you don’t want people to know about. I care about connections and about the empowerment that they bring to interpersonal relationships.

I have met 80 people on Facebook that I never expected to see again after graduating from high school, from university, or from leaving the coolest job I had as a tween. I am so grateful to the site for that that if Zuck were here, I could kiss him. Facebook isn’t perfect, and we should protest against these imperfections until they are fixed. Whether we should leave social networks and abandon all the possibilities they have brought us, that is like starving yourself in protest against war: Nobody cares!

This post was brought to you by TigersInPoolsHellYES. Donate via the paypal button on the right.

On PirateBay [2Long4aTweet]

Vincent van Wylick — Sun, 09 May 2010 08:36:49 +0000

Introducing this ’2Long4aTweet’-tagged series on Tech IT Easy, which are a short sentence or paragraph (or two) that I want to express quickly but… can’t fit into a tweet.

Media’s pursuit of PirateBay is simply another example of ‘shooting the messenger.’ What message is PirateBay (and other grey solutions) delivering? It is right now quicker to get global (US) media-content via Bittorrent then it is to wait for a global (European/Asian/Canadian/etc.) release. Instead of wasting all this energy on what is simply an expression of THE PROBLEM, media-companies should work on THE SOLUTION, which is to STOP DISCRIMINATING BETWEEN COUNTRIES & start solving the legal obstacles that encourage it.

On making Global Package Delivery a little better [Weekend Ramblings]

Vincent van Wylick — Sat, 08 May 2010 13:12:39 +0000

I’m currently on a tirade against two things. Global package delivery, which, every single time, seem to have me waste my time waiting for a doorbell to ring. And software-updates, which for some reason are a pretty fragmented affair.

OK, there’s nothing to do about software updates and I already give up.

Global package delivery, on the other hand… UPS was founded in 1907. That’s right, gentlemen & ladies, it is over ONE ZERO ZERO (purposefully emphasised) years old! That means that people have been carrying UPS parcels around on horses, then on Fords, on ships, on aeroplanes, and will most likely carry them to space also. Unlike regular mail, the Package Industry is here to stay as well, ladies and gentlemen, all thanks to you for ordering from places like Amazon every single day.

Now, I don’t mean to pick on UPS. I actually have a problem with FEDEX (founded 1973) this week and with DHL (a German company, founded 1969), both of which like telling me things on their website that aren’t true, or are true, but so incredibly late to publish that truth that it’s just a false truth.

Dear companies that I just mentioned: we are in the age of real-time. When my best friends go to the bathroom, I know about it 5 min. before they even think about it, that’s how quick Twitter is. Sadly, that doesn’t bring a hot new gadget into my life, like your great service does. I appreciate your service, it allows me to be lazy and order to Visa’s delight. But it’s meant to be a service of convenience, and I don’t consider having to drool over my doorbell-phone by any kind of definition, “a convenience.”

Here’s what happened with DHL: Package shipped on the 6th out of Germany. On the 7th, at 4:30 a.m., package left Germany heading for the Netherlands. I sent them a mail asking whether if it doesn’t arrive today, they ship on the weekends. No reply! At 20:00, I found out, that package has arrived for sorting at a sorting centre at 17:42. I decide to call the next day to ask whether they ship on the weekends. The kind person at DHL the Netherlands informs me that a. he has no idea where my package is and b. they do not ship on the weekends. 2 hours later, the doorbell rings. It’s the mailman, who works for TNT (the Dutch equivalent to DHL) with the package from DHL. Status on the website on the 8th: “7th of May, package has arrived for sorting at a sorting centre at 17:42.”

Here’s what happened with FEDEX: Package shipped on the 5th from the US. Paris then somewhere in the Netherlands on the 6th. Estimated delivery: on the 7th at 6 p,m. I’m home at 3:30 p.m. At 20:00 I get a message that FEDEX passed by my house at 14:55 p.m. and no one was home. Status: sadly FEDEX does not receive phone-calls on the weekend.

We need a change, we need that thing you do with the tracing, not to be restricted to when it arrives in parcel sorting centre 42. We need it to have an RFID chip in the parcel, which is connected to a GPS device in the truck, which at all times tells a satellite to send me a tweet of where exactly you are at what given time. And when I’m not home, I can tweet back to said truck to give notice, to save fuel, to save the planet, and/or to change the address to my work-address. Saves your time and mine and the planet’s.

This is not rocket-science. GPS exists (globally since 2000), RFID exists (required by Wal-Mart since 2005), real-time web exists (Twitter since 2006). Yet for some reason, in 2010, I still have to wait 10 hours for an update about something REAL & RELEVANT that happened 10 hours ago. Sigh.

OK, all ranted out now. Now go fix.

The management toolkit for an interconnected world

ceciiil — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:12:59 +0000

Ever since the first time Andrew McAfee coined the term, the definition of Enterprise 2.0 has constantly evolved.

Arguably, the most appropriate has been : “The use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.”

Regardless of how good these definitions have been, none of them has given enough credit to a) the tight relationship between Enterprise 2.0 and Management and b) the reason why we need to adopt these social platforms.

Management

Management here is considered here in its most generic sense, i.e. applied to people, managers, knowledge, innovation, business, customer relationship, IT, communication or human resources.

This is a critical dimension since while importing social platforms from the Internet into the workplace, we also import an underlying electronic culture that profoundly impact the workplace organization.

Interconnected

We are passing from an era in which things were assumed to be controllable, able to be deconstructed and then assembled into a clear, linear, always replicable and thus static form, to an era characterized by a continuous flow of information.

(Jon Husband – Will Enterprise 2.0 drive management innovation)

In The Future Of Management, Gary Hamel (the most influential business thinker according to The Wall Street Journal) asks how relevant it is in the 21st century to use the same management techniques as the ones we used a century ago.

How appropriate these techniques are in a world where changes have never been so fast nor happening to such large a scale, where barriers of entry have never been so low, where strategy cycles are shrinking, and, last but not least, where customers and employees have never been so informed and interconnected.

In the conclusion of this book, Gary Hamel states that a) to survive in such an interconnected economy, companies have to be extremely adaptable and b) adaptable eco-systems are not reduced to mere vertical top bottom flow of information and processes but are peer-to-peer democratized flat systems.

Toolkit

Gary Hamel conclusion : Internet is the best metaphor for 21st century management.

The Internet happens to be the foundation of our interconnected world and Social Platforms have naturally emerged as the best way to connect people and get things done on the web.

This is the very reason why we HAVE to import these tools behind the firewall.

It is not because they are new, trendy or because our competitors have implemented it. It is because they have proved on the web to be the most appropriate tools to leverage a continuous flow of information in order to create value.

Definition

Hence the proposed Enterprise 2.0 definition : the management toolkit for organizations in an interconnected world.

Bit Bang – Rays to the Future now online

Kari Silvennoinen — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 07:45:27 +0000

A quick note letting you know that the book I was involved with is now available online for free as a downloadable PDF.

If you’re interested in what’s in the pipeline technology-wise in the coming decades be sure to read this report. As previously mentioned, this report is a compilation of articles written by the PhD students of Aalto University (previously Helsinki School of Economics, Helsinki University of Technology and University of Art and Design Helsinki).

The topics include

Future of IT and hardware
Future of Telecommunication and Networks
Printed electronics and nanotechnology
Future of Media
Future of Living
Future of Globalization
Robotics and artificial intelligence

Also, in the appendix is a small diary of our meetings in Silicon Valley.

Normally these kind of reports would cost thousand of euros, but thanks to the Finnish educational system you can get the report right here for free (PDF; 2MB).

Enterprise 2.0 Forum – the 10 keys of successful projects

ceciiil — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 12:56:25 +0000

Big up to Kongress Media (Thomas Koch, Bjoern Negelmann) for organising such a superb event in Paris. Both ON (the conference) and OFF (parties in the evening) were fun and it was so nice to hang out with Enterprise 2.0 people (@bduperrin @flapinta @cflanagan @an_elm @tlg @ceciledemailly @tdebaillon @gculpin @aponcier) in real life.

Local Consulting firm NextModernity (Bertrand Duperrin, Richard Collin) acted as moderator and contributed to make the whole thing casual yet focussed.

Great organisation, great speakers but most of all : great real life projects feedback. Featuring : Claire Flanagan (CSC – multi-awarded project), Anu Elmer (SwissRe), Jérôme Poujardieu (Dassault Systems), Fabrice Poireaud Lambert (Lyonnaise des Eaux), Nicolas Rolland (Danone), Julien Le Nestour (Schlumberger), Jean-Paul Chapon (Alcatel Lucent) et Jane McConnell (NetStrategy).

A high number of common best practices have naturally emerged. Here are 10 of them :

1) Manage risks from the early stages of the project

Fabrice Poireaud-Lambert showed a very interesting 4 axis graphs (Organization and HR / Competencies / Methods and Tools / Culture and Behaviors) that LdE used to evaluate the change factor of such a project on the enterprise scale. They reached a 12/16 value which is pretty high.

In addition, these are cross-functional projects with a high cultural impact. Therefore, it is critical to address subsequent risks as of the very early stages of the project.

This comes with an advantage, though. When such risky and game-changing projects succeed, they benefit from large recognition : both CSC and Lyonnaise des Eaux projects are running for most innovative project of the year in their respective organisation.

2) Seek Executive supports

Both Claire Flanagan and Anu Elmer insisted on how critical it was to have unconditional Executives support for project involving change of such magnitude. Big changes project need legitimation. The reason : without strong leadership and executive support, the project is a lost cause against managers who have day to day budget and objectives.

So first thing first : use the elevator pitch and then Enterprise 2.0 presentation to show your executives how collaboration platforms can foster knowledge, innovation and productivity in the organisation.

3) Know your business needs and address them

Danone really wanted some tools to perpetuate their strong networking culture born at the beginning of the century and put the people right in the center of the solution.

Dassault needed to share sales best practices amongst their distributors (the Value Added Resellers) of their software solutions.

Schlumberger desired to save time to their workforce in critical environment (example : deep water drilling) when few minutes saving can turn into million of dollars.

Alcatel Lucent new management made it a strategic goal to have a greater transparency throughout the company.

The objectives can be marketing, HR’s, operational, leadership ones. The solution may be internal (i.e only amongst employees) or external as for Dassault between employees and partners. In any case, for any successful project, the objectives are clear so is the expected business value.

4) Knowledge sharing in complex and fast paced changing environment for distributed workforce is a common motive

Regardless of the business needs, the type of industry or activity, all companies have this same problem they wanted to tackle.

SwissRe is a reassuring Insurance company. They have experts on climate changes, terrorism threats, global economy etc … Hugely complex topics. They have office in many different cities.

CSC is a global IT services company : new technology, cloud computing, open source, software architecture, virtualization, enterprise system integration, project management, you name it : knowledge sharing make their professionals more reactive, efficient and team oriented.

If your organisation context includes these constraints, Enterprise 2.0 surely will make more sense and witness better adoption.

5) ROI may be complicated to evaluate but some benefits are unassailable

Talking about ROI in a project whose bottom line is a cultural one may be quite challenging.

Apart from Cisco who shows impressive figures, most companies and consulting firms struggle to puts ROI figures.

However difficult to monetize, some benefits may still be extremely valuable for the company. The most important one being engagement. CSC employees feedback is quite spectacular : the distances disappear and their solution has helped fostering a one team one company culture.

Jane McConnell in her survey on Intranet adoption reported that 30% of surveyed managers/executives answered either Quite a lot or Absolutely when asked if collaborative tools had improved employee engagement. This ratio grows to 50% when including people answering A few.

This is not anecdotical : Tower Perrin showed in their Global Workforce Survey that, on a three-year study, companies with high employees engagement show an average positive evolution of operating margin (+3.74%) while companies with low employee engagement show an average 2% reduction of their operating margin.

6) Usability is key for quick adoption

A key to Enterprise 2.0 project is the adoption. There actually are metrics to rate the success of adoption. How many people opt-in ? How many clicks ? How many people add content ? Commented ?

Now, if your tool is complex, not user-friendly etc … people won’t waste their time trying to contribute.

Open and easy are two of the key characteristics of Enterprise 2.0 solutions as per Andrew McAfee. Lyonnaise des Eaux and Dassault went for the Blue Kiwi solution. SwissRe and CSC went for the Jive SBS one. All choose a solution of a vendor specialized on the topic and went against the standard vendor selection IT policy of their respective companies.

The tool is so intuitive no-one get blocked during a 20,000 seats pilot (C. Flanagan).

Specialised vendor, no usage issue reported thanks to user-friendlyness, massive adoption rate, tens of thousand seats project successfully achieved within a year : would that be a coincidence ?

7) Cross functional participation is critical

Since Enterprise 2.0 project is a cultural one, and not simply a technological one, it requires cross functional competencies. HR, Marketing but also IT : all have to be involved in the project.

8. IT support is critical but IT Governance is crippling

This is probably one of the most challenging issue : have IT involvement without suffering the constraints of IT Governance. IT has been key in helping companies deploying enterprise solutions to support business processes (ERP, CRM, etc …). Security, stability, operability, overall IT architecture coherence, these are the main criteria they took in consideration. Usability ? Never. Here is the main problem : refer to point 6.

In order to circumvent this issue, both SwissRe and CSC prepared beforehand the list of criteria along which all different solutions would be benchmarked. One of the main use case for Claire Flanagan was the ability to administer the solution herself with her limited IT Admin knowledge. It was easy with Jive SBS and not with the other vendor being the IT preferred solution. CTO accepted that and all agree to play the game and chose the solution that satisfied the most the predefined use cases.

9) Don’t use the S word

Our company is a well respected 150 years old company. We are doing very serious stuff. In order to make sure we have executives support, I made sure no one ever pronounced the S word, following the very good advice from Andrew McAfee. (Anu Elmer)

Claire Flanagan, Fabrice Poireaud-Lambert, Nicolas Rolland, all reported the same lexical cautious approach. They never mentioned Social Media or so but kept on referring to business problems and how they could solve them with collaborative tools when selling the project to executives.

10) Top-Grassroot-Down is the new Bottom-up

All these projects started with a clear lead from project team. But as the project implementation started they all needed support from advocates disseminated in different teams to evangelize the new tool and make it viral. (Again if the tool is not usable, forget about viral regardless of how enthusiastic your evangelists are …).

So successful projects are both Top Down and grassroot efforts, more one or the other depending on the stage of the project.

Conclusion

I leave it to Richard Collin and his comment after Claire Flanagan keynote :

“CSC project massive success is a great example. These are knowledge workers generating business value through services, the typical 21st Century company. The fact that Enterprise 2.0 succeeds with such company is a proof of how relevant this approach is today and will be tomorrow.”

See you all next year. Be there or be 1.0.

Enterprise 2.0 Forum : the Jive side of Swiss Re project

ceciiil — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:13:08 +0000

(Hi It’s Cecil here. A french version of this blog post is available on Heavy Mental)

The Enterprise 2.0 Forum to be held on 17 and March 18 in Paris at the Meridien Montparnasse will present some case studies. The Swiss Re project is one of them.

So I’ve contacted Jive Software for an interview to check Jive situation today (rather good as the Gartner Magic Quadrant tends to show) but also their view on that project.

I owe quite a lot to Jive. As part of my job, I invited back in summer 2008 Devan Batavia (VP Sales EMEA) to give us a presentation on their product, then Jive Clearspace today Jive SBS (Social Business System).

It was a revelation. All the problems of knowledge management, innovation, productivity in a global enterprise and complex environment, all these problems that I was intimately involved with in my everyday job, all appeared in full light in one of the most relaxed and most professional presentations that I have ever witnessed.

To such extent that it has inspired my own presentation Enterprise 2.0 and allowed me to put order in my ideas and shed light on an irrefutable truth : my subject is Enterprise 2.0.

Devan has politely declined the interview and rerouted me to Nathan Rawlins to answer them. Nathan is Sr. Director of Product and he is in charge of steering the revolution of the Social Business. A bit of Jive promotion of course, but many ideas and comments that are worth visiting …

1) Could you please provide the readers with some feedback on you and on Jives ?

Jive is number one in Social Business Software (SBS), with the most extensive solution, the largest implementations, and unmatched expertise in delivering value.

Jive SBS is driving the biggest change to business practices in decades. Jive SBS takes all the things people love about social networking software, collaboration software, and community software and makes those work for business.

This is why many of the brands that drive the global economy – including Cisco, Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Intel, NIKE Inc., SAP, Swiss Re, T-Mobile and Yum! Brands – and thousands of other companies all Jive.

2) Tell us a few words on the Swiss-re deployment project that will be presented at the E20 forum by Anu Elmer, Swiss-Re VP Communications

Swiss Re provides highly customized service based on the unique risk profiles and objectives of its customers. Like most global companies, the teams at Swiss Re were becoming increasingly virtual and travel budgets had been cut. The current economic climate both increases the demand for Swiss Re’s services and places a premium on the firm’s ability to respond effectively to increasingly complex customer requirements. The business problem was clear: quicker and more efficient exchange of expertise was needed to better service new and existing clients.

The multiple collaboration tools the company depended upon-including email and other web-based tools-no longer satisfied their needs.
The Jive SBS platform – implemented under the name “Ourspace” – has enabled a more efficient exchange of specialized expertise and information which has enhanced innovation in response to client needs, reduced proposal development costs, and sped the delivery of services to key clients.

3) In terms of implementation project, what are the difference with an E20 project and the roll out of any of the above systems ? Is there any specific issue to bare in mind with E20 implementation ?

End-user adoption is paramount in the rollout of social software. That happens when interactions and connections are front-and-center. This is why adding a few social features to existing applications doesn’t support a successful social strategy. Traditional systems are focused on documents, records, or processes, not people. As such, when social initiatives are implemented, the old practices of “roll out the platform and mandate its use” won’t work. People need to feel drawn to the community.

Quite frankly, that is what is behind the success of Jive SBS. We hear again and again from companies that Jive SBS is the application people love to use, the application that makes them proud to be part of the company.

4) Some people recommend to have different collaborative platforms within the same company, some other a single one. What is your recommendation ? Don’t we lose some centralization benefits when multiplying the platforms ?

When it comes to social interactions, trying to have many platforms is a losing game. If users have to hop from system to system and stitch together conversations, they are going to stop using the systems altogether. This doesn’t just apply to internal conversations. What we have seen from our customers is that once they get collaboration happening internally on Jive SBS, the next step is they want to collaborate with customers, partners, and suppliers in a similar way. That’s why we’ve introduced the unique capability within SBS to bridge conversations across different communities, giving businesses the ability to maintain separation where necessary and foster open collaboration wherever possible.

5 ) Towers Perrin has just released a great study about people engagement in the company. This study shows that 40% of the workforce feels disengaged. Do you think E20 can help in improving workforce engagement ? How ? Have you witnessed such engagement improvement with ESSP during your studies ?

This goes back to the point in question three. One of the main reasons people are disengaged is they feel disconnected. They feel like they don’t understand where the company is going. They feel like they don’t have a voice.

That is where Jive SBS comes in. SBS lets anyone in the company have a voice. Not only does it help surface questions and concerns, it gives a platform for broad discussion of vision and direction. It gives employees something highly personal to rally around. As people feel connected on a personal level, they become more engaged.

6) Many middle manager feel unsafe with ESSPs. These bring disintermediation, and make manager feel like they are losing control of the work in the team. Do you think that 1st and 2nd level managers jobs and type of activity is at stake with the advent of the E20 ? How can they contribute ?

Successful managers will take advantage of social collaboration to help them build happier, more engaged, and more productive teams. Instead of worrying about disintermediation, they will embrace a more open dialogue that leads to better ideas and less confusion.

7) Broadly speaking, one can say that there are 2 types of Enterprise 2.0 activists. The revolutionaries and evolutionaries. The formers believe that collaborative platforms are disruptive technology that will deeply change the organisations. The latter think this is a incremental evolution that will just fill up some communication holes that are not covered in organisation 1.0. Where would you stand ?

Think of it this way: Facebook didn’t take off because it filled in a few gaps email didn’t cover. Facebook took off because it made it possible for people to interact more like they would if they were in the same room.
Chris Brogan has said the social media is our attempt to be human at a distance. Similarly, the potential of social business goes far beyond making it a little easier to collaborate. It makes it possible for employees to work together in fundamentally different ways — ways that are innately more human.

8 ) From all the studies you made with all types of organization, is there any standard anti-e20-persona that emerge ? Any over-enthusiastic-e20- supporter persona ?
Anti-e20 persona: those that are afraid of change
Over-enthusiastic e20 persona: those that just want to shake things up

9) Who would you think is the best C-Level sponsor for an Enterprise 2.0 project ? CEO ? Head of HR ? COO ? CIO ?

We’ve seen great sponsors with just about any title. It’s less about title, and more about vision. An executive that gets that this isn’t just a new technology, but rather a way of changing the way that business gets done—that’s the executive that is going to be successful.

10) My 9 years old boy keeps on asking me what I’m blogging about. What would you reply in a simple sentence ?

I’m blogging about changing the way business gets done.

Thank you Nathan and keep on making the social software revolution !

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