Blog Yes & Know

Where do great ideas come from?

Are you the One with all the ideas? Some people think they need to be. That they’re job is to be the “Chief of Answers”. But it’s not true! Well, …

Putting the Power of Connection to Work

Through onlyness, we celebrate that which only we can bring to a situation. And while it is the starting point of how extraordinary value gets created, it is not the …

TedGlobal Talk: Banking on Openness

As you might have noticed, I took the summer off. Well, not quite off.  More like away.  I went to Scotland, and gave a talk at TEDGlobal on the topic …

Online Communities: Ignore at Your Peril (I)

In the strategy work I do with tech companies, I’m frequently asked about web communities — how they operate, what they can and can’t do, and how a company should …

Online Communities, How They Work (II)

This is Part II of a series of posts on online communities (that is also available in PDF form: Rubicon-web-community) originally done at Rubicon (the company I led/founded). To return …

Online Reviews Second Only to Word of Mouth as Purchase Influencer in US

A broader investigation into how business can exploit online community underlines the importance of online information in driving purchase decisions, but the most influential information is beyond the direct control of companies selling products and services. Courting the small fraction of Internet users who write online reviews and comments is a very important task for many companies, but one they often neglect.
Many companies downplay the importance of online communities because only a few percent of all Internet users contribute to them heavily. What they don’t understand is that most other Internet users read those reviews and rely on them heavily when making purchase decisions. Taking good care of online communities can be a huge money-saver for companies trying to get more marketing impact from limited budgets.