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Resilient Organizations & Open Networks

By on April 23, 2012 in Market Power, Social

In Philip Auserwald’s recent book, The Coming Prosperity, he mentioned that open networks beat closed networks and larger networks beat smaller networks. As regular readers know, I’ve been talking about similar ideas in the fast/fluid/flexible series on business models. His set of ideas provoked me into asking a series of questions to and with Philip [...]

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Stop Talking About Social and Do It

By on March 16, 2012 in Market Power, Social

“Leadership” has changed when a decentralized group of people can take down a government. “The Value Chain” has changed when the customer is no longer just the “buyer” but also a co-creator. “Human Resources” have changed when most of the people who create value for your organization are neither hired nor paid by you. “Competition” [...]

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Why Social Marketing Is So Hard

By on March 9, 2012 in Social

Brands are spending a great deal of time and energy investing in platforms to get likes or pluses, and not really being social at all. It’s been well over 15 years since the social era started. So many brilliant people have been writing, speaking, and sharing case studies over that length of time, that if [...]

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Why Porter’s Model No Longer Works

By on March 6, 2012 in Market Power, Social

This post went live mid-week last week, on HBR. It is the 3rd installment on a series of why fast / fluid / flexible is crucial for the social era. The headline has caused some interesting discussion / perspectives. (It also got some VERY strong personal attacks going.) I’m curious to see what you think, [...]

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Social Means Freedom, For Better or Worse

By on February 23, 2012 in Culture & Leadership, Market Power, Social

This is part II of a series on how the social era affects every business model, from how we organize, what we produce, and what we sell.  (Part I, the foundational rules of the social era can be found here.) Do let me know what you think.. and especially what you want to see addressed [...]

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Rules for The Social Era

By on February 15, 2012 in Market Power, Social

I mentioned in a prior post that I would soon update what has been keeping me heads-down. For months now, my Harvard editor and I have been planning on a series on the Social Era — and what it takes to win in it. Instead of ‘Built to Last’, we need to ‘Build for Speed’. [...]

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What Barack Obama Could Learn from Vivek Wadhwa

By on January 27, 2012 in Culture & Leadership, Social

Ever since the presidential election of 2008, I’ve been getting progressively mad about something. I got enthralled with an administration that wanted to connect with people in the social era to create change. Perhaps unrealistically, I had this hope it would carry beyond the election cycle. I knew it wouldn’t be easy but I thought [...]

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Must Read Weekend Reading

By on November 18, 2011 in Social

Does Being Nice Pay Off? Two interesting research pieces crossed my desk in the past few weeks. One, from Stanford, argues that while people want to hang out with generous, kind, honest, sincere, and trustworthy people, they often select (hire or buy from) people who exhibit competitiveness, effectiveness, intelligence, and confidence. The other, from Harvard, [...]

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What is Happening To Netflix Is Unfair

By on October 27, 2011 in Market Power, Social

Here’s the deal. Companies are around to profit maximize – a corporate form of self-interest. For many years, this was the organizing principle of all commercial enterprises. The rules, and rewards seemed fairly clear. Not many people argued with it as a system that worked. Then came the social era we live in. More than [...]

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Enough About You

By on October 14, 2011 in Social

I remember when I first joined online communities. How foreign it all felt. Who was “out there” that I was tweeting to? Who was going to read the blog that I was writing on? I spent my energy in real-life relationships more than online. I would poke my nose in and not “get it” very [...]

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