Process of Change : strategy

The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy

bobreb — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 20:34:00 GMT

I was asked recently how I evaluated alternative proposals. The question was asked in the context of social systems designs. And while there are a number of considerations that apply to social systems specifically, that in no way obviates the need for a fundamental understanding of the forces at play in your marketplace.

I won't even try to add value here. I think everyone should spend some time understanding at least this aspect of the work of Harvard's Michael E. Porter.

Recently the Harvard Business Review ran an article by Michael Porter. It included a pointer to a video of Porter describing his five forces that's definitely worth a viewing.

Integration first? Maybe -- but have you done your homework?

bobreb — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 19:16:02 GMT

Recently I found myself wondering about a comment from Sean discussing the order in which an organization should implement web 2.0 features.

Sean's answer was this:

"So, what’s the answer? Simple (simple to say, not do). The answer is none of the above. The most important feature to implement in your web 2.0 strategy is integration with existing systems and processes."

Sean is likely assuming you've done your homework. What I mean is that the what feature question is not the first one to ask.

Unless we're only discussing technical architecture, not user experience, the first thing you have to know is the readiness of your audience. The new "social" requires new behaviors. New behaviors are very costly to introduce. Has your audience already developed these habits of thought and action in any area directly related or not? Can you springboard from that? If not, do you understand what relative advantage participation provides and what personal cost your users will incur obtaining it? If the cost justifies the personal investment, it's time to demonstrate and educate.

If it's not entirely clear what features you should do first -- and the competitive situation could easily dictate a starting set of tactics -- I say think big, but start small. Experiment. If your customers must learn new behaviors, consider embedding the new into the old such that the old still works, but the new is clearly visible. Adding tags to existing support forums might be one example -- though not the least expensive.

If you can go where the audience already is, and you can do it credibly, that could be best. Experimenting with someone else's infrastructure has its good points. (As an aside, I believe there are ways of using existing third party investments without "going there" yourself, but that's beyond the scope of this post.)

In any event, wrap a simple program around the technology: incent the behavior; make the results observable; reward the participation; and, watch (measure) and learn.

Significant infrastructure investments are risky and therefore, appropriately, require evidence. Proof through analogy only goes so far. First hand experience with your customers is the best evidence.

The quest for the best community strategy

bobreb — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 05:42:59 GMT

As I said, I've played online games for a while. Yes, that includes the classics, though I'd rather not talk about things that will date me. From where I stand, online games really started getting interesting with Diablo. With Asheron's Call (or EQ for some) they really came of age. I've played a couple of WOW characters -- never past level 30. Yes, I know, that means I barely played the game. My oldest son has a level 70 character (and of course a raft of others, but his level 70 druid is his main). For well over a year now I've been following his progression from the battleground, to the Arena, and into the world of raids. He has a full set of Gladiator gear now and is looking for a new guild. (Changing guilds is very interesting -- if you're into this whole thing, at least in part, to maintain pace with the state of the art in community creation and management. More on that later.) His druid kicks butt.

In the meantime, I've started in on Lord of the Rings Online. I'm trying to determine if Turbine learned anything from WOW -- if they've made any improvements. Here's my level 22 Minstrel.

He's been a blast to play -- but you'd have to like healers. I almost always choose healers. In my experience they're the most complex role to assume, and therefore the most interesting. Both my kids avoid healers. They're either DPS guys, or in the case of the Druid, an all around character able to do almost anything fairly well.

I've also joined a kinship. My new kinship is the "Misty Mountaineers". Got to love it. They seem like a fine group.

Turbine has made a tweak or two that I think might make a difference. I like how they've handled PvP better than the way it's done in WOW. I think that despite WOWs astonishing popularity, the way they've dealt with PvP will be their undoing. If I find it offensive, I can only imagine what a high context culture must think. I assume the Blizzard guys are totally aware of the ramifications of the world-building decisions they make and the impact those decisions could make on the popularity of the game in various cultural contexts -- I assume so anyway. I mean they have to be, right?

If you're into it, I play on Firefoot and my game name is Endorfin. Give me a tell.

Diffusion Rate Fly-by -- Customer adoption of social networking

bobreb — Mon, 07 May 2007 04:36:00 GMT

The factors influencing the rate at which any given innovation spreads throughout a population are well known. Applying those factors remains a bit of an art, but the exercise is always instructive. That's especially so when we start thinking about marketing investments.

The single best source of information on this subject, imho, remains Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations. Although I've been told recently that Rogers has been challenged in some circles. I'd love to know more about the proposed alternatives.

Diffusion of Innovations, 5th Edition
by Everett M. Rogers, Everett Rogers

Read more about this title...

Overall we consider these things:

The attributes of the innovation
The nature of the culture
The nature of the decision
Change agent impact

Let's look (very) briefly at each of these with regard to how they apply to Microsoft customer adoption of online social networking services.

The attributes of the innovation are relative advantage, observability, trialability, complexity, and compatibility.

Relative advantage: this should be a big plus for us. Adopters will have distinct advantages in terms of domain knowledge generally, and it's currency specifically. Over time this expresses itself as fewer surprises, less downtown, greater productivity.
Observability: This one is harder. You have to be in close proximity and observe an adopter over a period of time to observe greater productivity due to improved knowledge acquisition. And the activity that leads to the improvements isn't highly observable itself. Therefore, we're going to have to increase observability. Contests, for instance, wherein the most connected people are provided observable rewards, come immediately to mind.
Trialability: I don't know if this is an immediate plus or not. Everything we do is immediately trialable, but for compatibility reasons the success of the trial is questionable. Until we've had a chance to deliver the "social network placement" services -- aka subscription services -- ease of trial could be a problem with some people quitting when benefits aren't immediately (first week or two) apparent. Greater knowledge takes time to accumulate. Finding the right feeds takes time to do. As we simplify entry, this will be a big plus, but until then it may well cut the other way. Perhaps this suggests improved tutorial/getting started material?
Complexity: Another problem for us here. While not exactly complex, it is different. We've found that even understanding weak-tie networks as community is something the uninitiated have a very hard time understanding. Once in, however, it all seems so natural. It's the initial bump however that's tough.
Compatibility: Jeez, another problem. To most people using a feed reader is just adding more information to the already too long list of things to read. Microsoft's technology professional customers are mostly in the 35+ category -- me too, btw. That means long established work habits and corresponding habits of thought. Social systems are easily picked up by the under 30 crowd. The trick then, as we've always imagined, will be to integrate the new services into the traditional applications in a way that makes them easy to consume.

The nature of the culture here might just help. Information workers generally, and technology professionals specifically, remain effective as long as they have access to the right information at the right time. Therefore, they have an enormous amount to gain picking up the new tools. Because technology changes as often as it does, "new" is not as horrifying as it might be to some information workers. The pace of technology change may make it conceptually easier to jump into the new tools for the technology professional.

The nature of the decision is interesting in this case. No government is going to mandate participation. And not everyone has to play for the game to be productive. Further, we're already past the need for a bootstrap solution. There are already enough players to get things going for anyone that wants in. I say this is a net neutral -- maybe a positive.

Change agent impact is a wild card cause we're the change agent at the moment. We don't currently have budget, and we're still figuring out how the new organizational reality we face is going to effect us -- could go either way in the short term, though I don't think it can be anything but positive in the longer run. But do we need marketing budget? Part of me likes to spend money. And I do think spending money could accelerate adoption -- it could certainly raise awareness. On the other hand, no money forces us to be creative. We like that part of the job the most. Another part of me thinks there might be another change agent in the works...

That's just a very quick look. I can imagine expanding any of the above considerably. But it's a start.

Ever used this model? Got a better one?

Crossposted, as always, on theworkingnetwork.

Tags: innovation socialsoftware community

Corporate community strategy: communications as the safest choice.

bobreb — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 04:08:00 GMT

Why is investment in online community communications -- specifically, enabling social networking and social computing -- unlike most innovative efforts you'll ever undertake? Two reasons: the strategy is rock solid, and the community will do all the real innovating. How can the strategy be considered so solid, and what would ever entice the community to do all the innovating? The same thing answers both questions: genes.

(http://members.cox.net/darkened-past/evolution.html)

It is that simple. Birds flock, fish school, people associate with one another, and some of those associations we call community. We are a social species. We are a "we". Community, broadly, is among the adaptive responses our species -- our evolutionary lineage in fact -- has developed to cope with the requirements of survival in the complex adaptive landscapes we have inhabited, and that clearly characterize our lives today.

What's changed now is only the revolution in community that has emerged from the co-evolutionary development of several internet technologies relating to personal publishing, web20-style development, and syndication.

At least the communications world.

This makes the strategy unassailable. People are hardwired to associate and to use those associations to achieve their own goals. Give people the opportunity to interact and they will. Increase the communications capacity of your audience and they will -- in time -- make the best possible use of it. Even if you can't foresee what they'll use it for. (Alexander Graham Bell, for instance, felt the telephone would be most useful as a means of broadcasting symphonies and news. He did not anticipate it's popularity as a means of 1:1 interaction.)

Sadly, that doesn't mean that the tactics are foolproof. There's a lot of room for error in exactly how we deliver these new communications tools to our customers. Plainly, this calls for an agile methodology. We have to assume some missteps and focus on short turnaround iterative development. What's the right path?

To decide what to build we elected to stick with the basics:

Know your customers as individuals
On the basis of that knowledge help to connect them to experts and peers (emphasis on peers)
Given them venues in which to interact
Reward them for participation.

We have projects aligned with each of those four pillars.

Along with those basics, we've adopted the following user experience design principles:

Every customer visit should result in a community connection
Let customers feel the presence of others
Customers are in control of their self expression and their consumption
Customers should have access to the tracks they leave
Build for the long tail
Wed participation architecture with personal utility and a focus on a specific activity
Expose an API

We believe we can deliver on each of those design principles through tight integration between the components. (Will we get it right the first time? Probably not. But we're in it for the long haul.)

As far as I know, we didn't actually create any of those principles -- they're a product of the community of people interested in social software. It's our community; one which we appreciate; and one in which we make every effort to contribute to.

Internet as social space -- how should that affect corporate communications strategy? Part 1.

bobreb — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 02:57:42 GMT

It should go without saying -- but I'll make it clear anyway -- that the views expressed herein are exclusively my own. If my boss should see this, or his boss (or heaven forbid his boss), please consider this in the spirit in which it is offered. And that is pretty spirited.

Anyway, a short while ago I resurrected some old work of mine in a post called "Recasting of Citizens and Pioneers". The whole thing boils down to this:

"...my PC generation and our understanding of the internet as a reference source where the name of the game is content discovery, and my kids generation and their notion of the internet as a social space [and connection is king]."

I suspect, as is so often the case, that the greatest benefits will accrue to those that learn to leverage the best of both worlds.

It is of course true: the internet is a vast reference source. Finding your way around in it remains a skill -- sadly. Sadly in that it would be a better internet if it were easier to find the right content at just the right time. But we continue to make progress in that regard.

It is also true that the internet is a social space. And traversing that social space is no less a trial for anyone new to the online neighborhood than high powered internet research is for my WOW Commander, clan member, guild lieutenant, vent-jacked teenage son.

In the middle is the domain of the latest generation of knowledge worker. These players filter, flag, and forward content discoveries thereby contributing cycles to their social network. They are jacked into a software enabled shared human processing community that supercharges every participant. (BTW, this is the game my team and I are determined to bring to every Microsoft IT professional and developer.)

So that should make your corporate online strategy clear. You need both, and you need them in at least an even mix.

Nevertheless, it's a safe bet that if you're part of a medium to large size company that's been around for at least 10 or twenty years, you have a web presence that is focused almost exclusively upon content publication. Your entire machine is built around the notion of maintaining a display of quality content that matches as closely as possible the expressed needs of your consumers. And that is good, as far as it goes.

But right about now is the time to start making the move towards a more balanced approach. Why, is probably a good question to ask. I won't even begin to wade into the sea of good reasons. If you want to skim the surface, read Scoble's book.

He makes a number of good points and provides a wealth of examples.

If you want something a little deeper -- it's a bit dated but still tells a damn good story -- try The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Lots of good stuff and available online.

The next good question might be when. I don't think I can dispassionately answer that question given that I've clearly made the career decision to focus on social computing. Hell, to me it seems clear that you move as quickly as you possibly can.

But, the right answer might have to do with the "Clockspeed" of your industry. I while ago I read a book by that title and some of the key lessons remained with me.

I believe that generally speaking the faster your industry's clockspeed, the more likely it is you will benefit from the new internet "social" model, and therefore, the more urgent the need to move quickly. I have argued internally, and intend to prove, that Microsoft customers -- our IT professional and developer customers specifically -- have a great deal to gain from coming to understand how to navigate internet social spaces. Anything we can do to accelerate that awareness and understanding, not to mention adoption and support therein, we should do.