Seven years ago, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger posted an online document called the Cluetrain Manifesto. It laid out 95 principles for communicating with customers online. The Manifesto created big stir, was signed by a lot of people working in the tech industry, and turned into a book that sold well at the height of the Internet bubble. But since then it has been largely forgotten. Seven years later, the Manifesto is a mixed bag. Some of its maxims are seriously out of date, and a few are just plain wrong. There are also some things missing. Because the document is long, and parts of it are badly off target, we're reluctant to refer any of our clients to it today. However, parts of the Manifesto are just plain brilliant, and deserve to be spray-painted on the walls of corporations around the world.
Grade school idea applied to Business, perhaps?
Today, I led a session at the WITI conference on Spirituality & Business. We worked on 3 case studies: one with the Radioshack CEO who lied about his education as …
"Outsides" building your stuff?
Recently, Yahoo announced they were letting "outsiders" build their email solution. Why would they do that, some might ask? Why would they not, is what I'm thinking. Get the best …
“Outsides” building your stuff?
Recently, Yahoo announced they were letting "outsiders" build their email solution. Why would they do that, some might ask? Why would they not, is what I'm thinking. Get the best …
Two types of Advisors: those that Critique and those that Create
Have you ever had the feeling that the people around you are there to tell you how something won't work? Those are called critiques. Having a critique around as an advisor would be like being in the middle of the country and lost trying to get to NYC let's say, and having someone come by to say, "this freeway won't take you to there". Okay, fair enough. But don't just leave me there, dude. Tell me which one does!
Even Steinways get out of tune
What's the difference between an ethical leader and a business leader? Are they mutually exclusive, a subset of each other, or one and the same? This coming week, I'm speaking …
Carly, 2.0
Carly 2.0 was released this week. Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of HP, is on tour for her book, Tough Choices. Yesterday, I went. Are you surprised I went? I …
Live is to Choose
My firm is growing, and growing up to be something significant, and so this entry is my reflection on growth and what drives it. On a personal level, I believe …
Understanding the full impact of the web
This will probably sound crazy, but despite all the hype about Web 2.0 and web startups, the most common mistake we see tech companies making with regard to the web is underestimating its long-term impact on their businesses. I'm not sure why this is. Maybe it's a reaction to the Internet bubble -- because the short-term effects of the web were oversold, people also tuned out the long-term effects. I know some companies are so settled in their current franchises that they don't understand how vulnerable they are over time to the changes taking place in the marketplace. Others take the web very seriously in one respect, but don't understand its full impact across their entire company. To understand what the web is going to do to our businesses, you have to look at it as both an application development platform and a new communication medium. Either change alone would have huge impacts, but the two together are especially powerful. Here's what we see happening in each area, followed by some ideas on what they mean for businesses.
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