SOMESSO

Becoming a “Social Business” (Part 3 of 3)

Arjen Strijker — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:59:23 +0000

Corporate Adoption Curve measured against my Friends

Already long before I founded SOMESSO I have been interested in how communities work and behaviour within communities. My career so far and my friends around me can confirm that I believe in the strength of word-of-mouth. It has brought me where I am today – I’ve also been actively focusing and live-exploiting many networks during studies and professional career.

Almost every day I have the privilege to get to know new people from widely different communities, across continents, from many industries, nationalities, and professions. This ranges from investment bankers, to graphic designers, artists, skaters, young parents, bloggers, evangelists, consultants of any kind, workaholics, surfers, entrepreneurs, expats, venture capitalists, and so on. Each of these individuals in my network also obtains a network of their own, which means they belong to other communities too.

Now, my point is that a network of contacts with highly diverse backgrounds is probably difficult to grasp in terms of behaviours, but they also form an immensely strong army of ambassadors who more accurately understand me because they know me well. As I have spent a great deal of time with my friends they understand me better when I say something or react to something, and most likely a friend will provide a more accurate answer to a question than a stranger. Therefore, the “amount of time spent with one another“ is another crucial factor for determining whether a trend has become adopted behaviour, or not.

Friends confirm when jargon has been adopted

I’m not a news junkie of any kind – I very much believe in keeping a low-information diet. I don’t spend much time on emails, nor on surfing the internet for news – except when doing research for a previously defined topic, or sometimes when something just catches my sincere interest and I can’t wait to hear more about. Instead of looking for information, my friends and the people in my direct environment keep me up to date. They are my automated filter for a low-information diet, but also a measurement tool for the adoption of any new jargon. To me, new jargon is only adopted in society when it’s adopted by … me! I’m sure you feel the same. Only when this happens in my mind something comes into my world, not earlier. This is interesting, because it also keep you aware of the fact that your friends and the people who you surround yourself with always are a certain reflection of yourself – of your own life. You create your own world and only you are responsible for it.

Hence, I evaluate my own life regularly to the people I hang out with. Although jargon like “social media“, “social business (definition nr2)”, “web2.0“, “new media“, or “social enterprise” are increasingly mentioned in our vocabulary in both private and business lives, we still haven’t reached that point in time where we have agreed on a solid unified meaning. There’s still a lot of work to be done and I expect intense discussions at conferences, forums, and literature around the topic. However, as I mentioned in my first post of this series the Internet is here to stay and so are social media tools. On top of that social media will only advance to change the way how organisations communicate and do business, while they – when used in the right way with the right behaviour and mindset – can very much benefit from striving to become a “social business”. Slowly but steadily this new jargon will be adopted into society.

If you have any comments on any of these posts, please insert them below, or contact me. I’m always happy to learn, or enable a dialogue.

Go to Part 2

Go to Part 1

Becoming a “Social Business” (Part 2 of 3)

Arjen Strijker — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:55:11 +0000

Corporate Adoption Curve measured against Linguistic Determinism

Why is it that we need to (re)define jargon to accept something new?

For the past two years SOMESSO has organised conferences throughout Europe on the topic of social media in businesses. Each time we noticed that there’s much confusion about how to name the things that we are talking about. In 2009 we did a 2-day conference about social media in banking and finance at Swiss Re premises. Most of the leading local brands from the financial services industry were represented, including UBS, Credit Suisse, and Zurich Insurance. We did a so called “Swiss Re Risk Talk” where we arranged thought provoking individuals to speak: Marilyn Pratt – community evangelist at SAP, and Anne McCrossan – CEO of Visceral Business. In front of them were around 90 bankers and I am not exaggerating when I say 95% of them were males above 50 in traditional dark suits. The Risk Talk enabled an interesting dialogue, but as could already correctly predict the main reactions from this audience, learning from many past experiences. The main concerns (read “fears” in plain English) came up already during the first question from the audience: “We can’t work with social media, because our firm deals with highly confidential information”. This reaction shows that there is still no real trust in the judgement of colleagues & teams inside the organisation in general. More importantly, they all miss the point of what social media means: an important tool to establish a dialogue with your customers.

The fact that the Internet is here to stay is obvious. It’s also clear to most people that everyone is talking about everyone and everything online, just as everyone does in an “offline” setting, like a pub. From my experience as a recruitment specialist in Finance I can confirm that most people neglect almost any company protocol or rule when they are being mistreated or, worse, not being heard. Most people want justice, which seem difficult to get in large, slow organisations that are built to deliver on scale. Anyway, the above example show the general misconception one new buzz word can cause. This is typical of course when the buzz word is supposed to indicate that a new trend is reaching the horizon, especially when everyone around you starts talking about it. Peer pressure makes you feel that you can’t leave out, which is probably one reason why our events being visited. Buzz words that stick, so the new words that are accepted by a group of people or an industry (and the actual changes it facilitates) will become part of the daily business without further question. This is how new jargon is embedded into business and society, and it’s also how companies evolve.

As mentioned in my first post, our last Summit in London in March seemed to be slowed down due to jargon debates. Fellow Dutchman Ton Zijlstra (we actually first met via twitter, even though he was sitting right behind me an event we did in London – oh, how virtual fosters physical) commented to never use jaded current business jargon, as it makes any change about your ‘social business design’ completely invisible. He advised: „Instead, allow yourself to redefine the language that comes with the incumbent way of doing things“. I tend to agree with his statement, as I remember the words from professor Frans van der Reep to me after he finished his opening keynote speech at the very first SOMESSO conference back in 2008. Frans advised to always come up with new jargon in a growing business as it’s the only way to truly embed something new into a society. Not long ago I spoke with Steve Wylie, who runs the largest web2.0 conference / expo in the USA called Techweb. We spoke about this matter too and concluded that this entire (lasting) trend is about collaboration, while social tools, web2.0, social media, and becoming a social business, are all aspects that fall under this umbrella term.

Besides the recommendations from Frans and Ton, my girlfriend – a Doctor in Linguistics and very interested in how a / my brain functions – is reading The Brain by Ammar Al-Chalabi. She pointed me towards an explanation. It’s called the theory of Linguistic determinism, which states that we can only think of and handle concepts for which we have words. I’d say we’re on the right track with inventing new words for new things, like „social business“. As soon as new words appear repeatedly, we’ve adopted something new, even though no conformity exists (yet).

Next week I will discuss the corporate adoption curve of organisations becoming social businesses, but then measured against linguistic determinism…

Go to Part 3

Go to Part 1

Wochenrückblick: Crowdsourcing und Regierung 2.0

Judith — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:00:14 +0000

Vergangenen Montag, am 2. August hat Youtube-Starlet Dan Brown (pogobat auf YouTube, nein, nicht der “Sakrileg” Autor) ein Experiment gestartet. Nicht irgendein Experiment. Ein soziales Experiment: Dan 3.0
Seine Idee ist es, ein Jahr lang das zu tun, was seine Anhänger ihm vorgeben zu tun. Die Idee dahinter ist simpel: Auf einem eigenen Kanal werden täglich Videobotschaften von Dan bereitgestellt in denen er den vergangenen Tag zusammenfasst. In der Zwischenzeit kann jeder seinen Vorschlag einreichen, der dann zur Bewertung durch die anderen Nutzer freigegeben ist (dafür muss man bei Revision3 angemeldet sein). Die Vorschläge mit den meisten Stimmen können von Dan dann als Herausforderung angenommen werden. Natürlich habe ich Dan auch schon aufgefordert, etwas zu tun (er soll so viele Dezimalstellen wie möglich von Pi auswendig lernen – ok, zugegeben, vielleicht nicht der kreativste Vorschlag “ever”, aber mal sehn, wie viel Zustimmung er bekommt, oder ob er einfach ins Jenseits befördert wird).

So ganz neu ist diese Idee sicherlich nicht. Schon 1996 hat die damals 19-jährige Jennifer Ringley angefangen, Bilder aus ihrem Studentenzimmer im Minutentakt ins Web zu stellen. Immerhin hat sie volle sieben Jahre jedermann an ihrem Leben teilhaben lassen.

Das Thema “Participant Decision Making” hat auch bei “The Fleet”, dem englischen (fünftligisten) Blue Square Premier League Klub Ebbsfleet United, einen grossen Unterschied gemacht. 2007 wurde MyFC ins Leben gerufen – the world’s first web community owned club. Durch MyFC werden Männerträume wahr… Sie können eine Fussballmannschaft besitzen! Auserkoren wurde eben The Fleet – 50,000 Mitglieder (Teameigner) haben sich an der Akquisition beteiligt.

Der Film Us Now greift das Thema Kollaboration, Internet und Regierung sehr gut auf. Wer etwas Zeit hat, sollte ihn unbedingt anschaunen.

Us Now from Banyak Films on Vimeo.

Aber wie heisst es so schön? Zu viele Köche verderben den Brei. In wie weit kann also ein/e Gemeinde, Kommune, Bundesland von ihren/seinen Bürgern mitregiert werden? Aber eigentlich geht es doch gar nicht ums regieren, oder? Government 2.0 in der Betaphase ist eine aufschlussreiche “Analyse von eParticipation und Web2.0 Anwendungen der 50 grössten Städte und 16 Bundesländer in Deutschland”. Wie der Name bereits verrät gibt es noch grosses Potential nach oben. Wer mehr über dieses Thema erfahren möchte, oder auf dem Laufenden bleiben will, sollte die Seiten Government 2.0 Netzwerk Deutschland und Bürgerhaushalt.org besuchen.
Der Reinickendorfer Bundestagsabgeordnete Dr. Frank Steffel hat am Donnerstag erstmals eine Bürgersprechstunde per Skype abgehalten und berichtet im Video unten von seinen Eindrücken.

Andere Regierungen zeigen ein wenig mehr Wagemut, denken wir nur zurück an Barack Obamas Wahlkampagne und seine jetzigen Aktivitäten im White House. Auch Gross Britanniens PM David Cameron setzt auf das beliebteste Netzwerk der Welt, um das Haushaltsdefizit zu verringern.

Was denken Sie darüber? Wie werden Bürger in Zukunft mit an Entscheidungen beteiligt?

Ich bin gespannt,
Judith

Becoming a “Social Business” (Part 1 of 3)

Arjen Strijker — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 08:10:29 +0000

Corporate Adoption Curve measured against Democracy

This is my first of a series of three weekly posts on large companies trying to reach the state of becoming a “social business”. A “social business” is an organisation that has embraced social media to enable dialogue with its environment, like its customers and employees, to react and adapt to their continuously changing behavior patterns and needs. To be a “social business” or “social organisation” is the new state-of-being companies aim for, because they understand that those who listen and those who are in ongoing conversations with their customers will keep their competitive edge – now and in the future.

The Internet has forced every multinational on earth to rethink and transform their working habits and methods. Social media like facebook and twitter have enabled this. So, what is a social business? For me, it’s any company that makes a real continuous effort to making its employees and clients happier by letting them express, debate, and solve issues and information efficient and fast. Social media tools enable such a dialog and it’s up to each organisation itself to decide what is going to be shared with the public and what stays internally.

A social business is not an utopia, but a state of mind for any company. A social business is dedicated to absorb the huge amount of free think-tank power created by thousands of (mostly) volunteers grouped in existing communities on the Internet. These communities already exists for almost any brand today! The people in these online communities are dedicated to discussing your brand, services, and products publicly, regardless if you are there with them or not. In short, a social business is a company that listens to its end-users (regardless if they are employees or clients) to make sure that your brand will always evolve towards the changing needs of your employees and clients. You just need to be there with them! A nice article in the socialcomputingjournal with clever observations on the topic of social businesses can be found here. Also, Dachis Group, a leading global consultancy group on social business design, provides sharp and to-the-point insights on this topic. My company SOMESSO did a closed summit together with Dachis Group last March at the former French Embassy at 106 Piccadilly in London (now a Limkokwing University campus). Main learning point on this day was that even the considered “thought leaders” in this industry did not agree amongst themselves on the definition of social media. This indicates that we are still at the start of this lasting trend and we have not yet reached a clear adoption. Read more about the summit here. Or read this post from Lee Bryant for an impression of the day.

Someone asked me last week in regards to the „trend“ of companies becoming social businesses: „when is a trend no longer a trend, but adopted into society?“. Although I’ve had countless discussions on this matter, the best answer I received so far is „as soon as society adopted the handling or gesture in daily life, considering it as a normal action without thinking of it“. An example illustrating this is the use of the personal computer: we have reached the point in time that we turn on and off our PC’s every day without giving it a further thought.

How long does it take to insert something new into a society until it is considered to be adopted?

According to Fareed Zakaria (in The Future of Freedom), it takes 80 years on average to insert a democracy into a developing country. It starts with faking it, allowing corruption a free pass. Faking a democracy also means that it is the preferred form of government for the (corrupted) ruling party in that country. Then slowly but steadily the system itself is ruling out corruption and with it the leaders who „inserted“ the democracy model in the first place.

This is the same pattern we see on two sides today in the process of companies aiming at becoming a social business. On the demand side we see companies that, together with their traditional PR firms, try to fabricate a fast way to reach the state of being a social business, while heavily promoting their activities around social media as a new USP in relation to their competition. An example is a company that simply buys an expensive social media „campaign“ from their PR firm, which mostly delivers no more than a traditional marketing campaign that is spread through social media tools. So, nothing new. On the supply side we see more „thought leaders“ and „experts“ today then ever before. Mid 2010 we have landed in a true so called „cowboy market“. A great example are the hundreds of social media monitoring companies that all explain to the world that they are the „leading outsourcing party“ in the field of monitoring corporate social activity. However, when spending a minute on a google search, nearly none of the employees of these firms appear to be on twitter themselves (!), nor do they use any social tools to promote their own business. I’ve visited quite a few of them and I always try to meet them in their offices to see what’s really happening. Most of the time business is done through old fashioned cold-calling per telephone. These guys are all missing the point. I don’t need to explain that the heavily increasing supply of fake social media vendors and consultants leads to more confusion inside corporations to whom they should reach out. A benchmark is needed to spot quality from the increasing quantity of social media suppliers.

Next week I will discuss the corporate adoption curve of organisations becoming social businesses, but then measured against linguistic determinism…

Go to Part 2

Go to Part 3

Wochenrückblick: Personalmanagement – Recruitment mit sozialen Medien

Judith — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:26:02 +0000

“Jagd auf die Mitarbeiter der Zukunft” – so lautet der Titel eines Welt-Artikels vom 6. Juli. Nimmt man dies wörtlich, muss man sich Personalabteilungen als eine Art Ghostbusters-Team vorstellen. Futuristische Scanner und Waffen, die sich auf der Suche nach geeigneten Kandidaten befinden, um diese …einzusperren? …auszustopfen und auszustellen? Nein, mal im Ernst. Es ist ja richtig. Die Arbeitskräfte von Morgen sind die Jugend von Heute, bzw. von gestern Abend, denn viele der Zielgruppe zugehörigen sind Absolventen oder befinden sich in der Ausbildung/im Studium. Und wie lautet die so wahre Devise: go where your community is! Und wo sind ebendiese jungen Erwachsenen anzutreffen? Richtig, auf Facebook, studiVZ, Twitter, Youtube… Wenn man nun also an verstaubte Personalbüros denkt, in denen, ich mag es mir kaum vorstellen, noch Bewerbungsmappen verlangt werden, ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass diese ganz vorsichtig in die fremden Gefilde der neuen Medien vorstossen. Und bei so einem gefährlichen Unterfangen muss man natürlich ordentlich gerüstet sein!
Doch welches Unternehmen arbeitet heutzutage wirklich noch so? Welches Unternehmen konnte sich bisher komplett den Entwicklungen, die das Internet mit sich brachte/bringt, entziehen?
Die Otto Group jedenfalls nicht. Man kann sie sogar als Vorreiter in Deutschland bezeichnen. Schon Ende 2009 waren soziale Medien vermehrt für die Rekrutierung erfolgreich eingesetzt worden. Auf Grund der positiven Erfahrungen mit Twitter, Facebook, Youtube und dem eigenen Portal wird die Otto Group auch weiterhin auf diese Kanäle setzen und intensiver betreiben.

Wer sich immer noch fragt:

Social Media für Recruiting wirklich nutzlos?: Gut eine Woche ist es nun her, dass ich auf eine Facebook Werbeanze… http://bit.ly/c3Cgzeless than a minute ago via twitterfeedHenner Knabenreich
pm2null

Sollte sich folgende Präsentation ansehen:

Social Media Recruiting: Personalmarketing und Recruiting in sozialen Netzwerken

Oder auch diese:

Designing Your Social Media Recruitment Strategy

Um noch ein mal auf Herrn Knabenreich zurück zu kommen. In seinem Tweet hat er eine Referenz zu dieser Stellenbeschreibung (Social Media Manager gesucht) gemacht, die ganz unüblicherweise mal von einer viralen Marketing Agentur kam. Und zwar für einen Kunden. In einem Interview (etwas runter scrollen) legt der Creative Director die Hintergründe etwas genauer dar. Genau diese Art von Kampagne ist ein positiv Bespiel für die effektive Nutzung und Integration von sozialen Medien in die Personalabteilung. Bitte mehr!

Who you gonna call?
Judith

Wochenrückblick: Gehirn-Computer-Schnittstelle

Judith — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:29:18 +0000

“Mensch-Technik-Interaktionen”

Ok, im obigen Video ist zwar ein Affe zu sehen, aber das Prinzip ist dasselbe. Ein Computer wertet Gehirnwellen aus, um Befehle auszuführen. Sei es, so wie oben bei “Charlie”, um einen Roboterarm zu bewegen, einen Flipper Automaten zu bedienen (Spiegel TV Beitrag) oder aber um einen Computer zu steuern:

Der amerikanische Doktorand, Adam Wilson (University of Wisconsin) ist sogar so weit gegangen, dass er mit Hilfe von BCI Tweets versendet.

Aber wozu das ganze?
Schon seit einiger Zeit werden Forschungen in diese Richtung betrieben um körperlich eingeschränkte Personen dabei zu unterstützen, ein selbständigeres, unabhängigeres Leben zu führen. Zum Beispiel, durch ein Projekt der Defense Sciences Office, um Prothesen zu steuern.
In eine ganz andere Richtung geht Emotiv, die das Neuroheadset auf den Markt gebracht haben. Das Headset richtet sich hauptsächlich an Spieler, die nicht nur das Gefühl haben wollen, ihren Avatar zu lenken, sondern ihr Avatar zu sein.

Aber so faszinierend das auch alles sein mag. So beeindruckend der Fortschritt der Technik, sollten wir doch immer noch ein kritisches Auge darauf werfen, wo uns das alles eigentlich hinführt. Denn, wer möchte schon, das jeder seiner Gedanken gleich im Internet für alle sichtbar veröffentlicht wird?

Ich denk mich dann mal eben ins Wochenende,
Judith

Wochenrückblick: Erweiterte Realität

Judith — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 14:33:30 +0000

Laut der deutschen Wikipedia Seite versteht man unter erweiterte Realität (Augmented Reality =AR): diecomputergestützte Erweiterung der Realitätswahrnehmung. Diese Information kann alle menschlichenSinnesmodalitäten ansprechen, häufig wird jedoch unter erweiterter Realität nur die visuelle Darstellung von Informationen verstanden. Es ist die Ergänzung von Bildern oder Videos mit computergenerierten Zusatzinformationen oder virtuellen Objekten mittels Einblendung/Überlagerung. Bei Fußball-Übertragungungen ist Augmented Reality z.B. das Einblenden von Entfernungen bei Freistößen mit einem Kreis.
Kein Wunder also, dass auch Firmen diesen Bereich früher oder später für Werbezwecke entdecken.
Im letzten Monat hat O’Neill so eine Aktion gestartet. Schaufenster der Sportcheck Filialen in vier deutschen Städten wurden mit interaktiven Projekten gefüllt und so mit einem Gewinnspiel verknüpft. Teilnehmer konnten auf einer digitalen Welle reiten und mussten so versuchen, ihren Surfer so lang wie möglich aufrecht zu erhalten.
Ein anderes Beispiel ist Ben & Jerry’s Moo Vision. Der Eiscreme-Hersteller hat zunächst vier Geschmacksrichtungen “erweitert” – die Anwendung projiziert plastische Schaubilder auf die Verpackungen.

Ein Zürcher Beispiel ist Kooaba, die mit Smart Visuals Bücher, DVDs, Zeitungen und Gebäude sozusagen zum Leben erwecken. Ihre iPhone App Paperboy ist mit einer grossen Anzahl deutschsprachiger Zeitungen und Magazine kompatibel und liefert einige interessante Extras.

Ich bin gespannt auf den Tag, an dem die AR-Kontaktlinsen in die Augen hineinoperiert sind und so erweiterte Realität zur Norm wird. Dann brauchen wir Spezialbrillen, um die einfache Realität wahrzunehmen und so können die Kinder von Morgen dann auch mal sehen, wie ihre Grosseltern heute gelebt haben…

Zu guter Letzt noch ein Hinweis auf den “Old Spice Man”, der in der vergangenen Woche so einige Menschen mit seinem Charme bezaubert hat.

Wie erweitern Sie Ihre Realität?
Judith

Innovation in Switzerland

Judith — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:00:51 +0000

Originally and fully posted on arjenstrijker.com

Just google “innovation in Switzerland” and it’s surprising to learn that there’s hardly anything recent (in neither the German nor English language) on the topic popping up. One of the very first search results is a joint study of the Swiss–American Chamber of Commerce and the Boston Consulting Group dated from 2008. Their research doesn’t predict much good and I’m afraid things haven’t changed much until today. It carries confronting quotations in it like one from a member of the Swiss national council: “Considering the risk involved, it is not very appealing to become an entrepreneur in Switzerland.” Another Swiss entrepreneur mentions that “our wealth is our biggest enemy.”

So, what is innovation?

Andreas Schönenberger (CEO Google Switzerland) thoroughly summarizes what needs to be done:

“Innovation is based on great ideas, an open environment and significant rewards. Those countries that are able to foster the spirit of start-ups, ease the financing, reduce the regulatory/administrative effort to a minimum and allow innovation leaders to capture proceeds from their efforts will see more innovation happening.” (from BCG study mentioned earlier).

Why is there a lack of real innovation in Switzerland?

1. Fostering the spirit of start-ups

Main question still remains: where do start-ups and new ideas fit in such environment? Right now I see several initiatives that are just there so the initiators can tick this task off their to-do lists. One great example is the technopark in Zurich, and initiative realized by local government and business. I’ve worked there for about eight months and I can confirm that nothing is being done to “foster the spirit of start-ups”. The entire set up is wrong: it’s a large building with lots of offices with in the middle a canteen, auditorium, and copyshop. Inside you have the feeling you’re in a highschool gym. Neither their website, mission statement (“we run competencies”), venue, nor their events or employees contribute to facilitating an innovative climate to the residing startups. I fear it’s the opposite: innovation is not fostered but killed.

2. Ease financing

I’m trying to make clear that “ease financing” is not just a matter of cash itself, but just as much about the people behind the money. The visions and choices of just a few local VC’s and business angels have a large impact on opening up innovation in a small country as Switzerland. Moreover, if more wealthy people would dare to take more risk and invest directly into startups they think are cool and prosperous – things could look much better quickly. To market such a thing could be the responsibility of the Swiss government and if they don’t have the people who can do this, then it would be wise to hire smart and young people who can!

3. Reducing regulatory and administrative effort to a minimum

Administration and regulations slows down any process. This is the entire and obvious point: Innovation is trying to create something new, to provoke, enhance, and therefore change the system we live in.

The author of this (outdated) OECD research on productivity growth and innovation in Switzerland mentions that the conditions for creating new firms in Switzerland “are not as favorable as they could be”. To improve this, the report mentions that the Swiss need to revise their domestic market law, so that administrative and technical barriers to imports can be removed to reduce administrative burdens. This is also what BCG concluded in the report mentioned earlier.

4. Innovation leaders in Switzerland (allow innovation leaders to capture proceeds from their efforts)

Are you wealthy? à invest some of your money in startups directly. You can then tell your friends you’re a business angel and support entrepreneurship and on the other hand you really play a key role in enabling change and innovation. It’s like voting: it starts with you!

Are you a boss? –> continuously encourage your employees to think for themselves and ask them how they think they would improve the department or project you’re responsible for. You will get rewarded for it by your team (you value their input), as well as by your superiors (you deliver fresh approaches and remarkable results). If you’re a smart person, you’ve already hired just employees who are smarter than you are on your team.

So far the deciding factors on how innovation is achieved according to the quote of Andreas Schönenberger’s. I’d like to add two more factors that have not been discussed much yet.

5. Switzerland as a brand

This was a “picture of the day” from Facebook of a friend of mine. Clearly, she’s an artist (thanks Elena!). You should take the image above with some irony, but the text is kind of true. Even though “Made in Switzerland” stands for quality, Switzerland is not known for its openness or attraction (and retention!) of intellectuals from abroad, nor are the Swiss themselves famous for being emotional (in public at least). Cultural factors like these could explain the absence of a truly open, entrepreneurial, and innovative Switzerland. You can’t blame people for having a conservative attitude or culture, but you can blame the existing institutions that are responsible for boosting innovation for not doing a better job. If there are really no insiders that want to step up and make it their life-mission to really open up and pave the way to a truly innovative Switzerland, then why not buy the right knowledge = hiring foreign top talent and let them go wild in key decision making positions. Everyone will benefit!

6. Corporate mindset

It’s entertaining to learn that the so called Swiss Innovation Forum – search result nr 3 in google on “innovation in Switzerland” – has literally written in their mission statement that they exist as a platform to offer entrepreneurs best practices and benchmarking strategies. If you type in their website address without www in your browser, the website doesn’t load….how’s that for cutting edge innovation! I don’t think that the TED forum should be afraid for competition from this corner.

7. Who are the existing players?

Besides the above mentioned Technopark, there’s the Amt für Wissenschaft und Arbeit, some local venture capitalists like Redalpine, Mountain Partners, and Brains to Ventures. Have a look on their websites: I like brains to ventures as at least the team members smile on their profile pictures. The others do not look very approachable to me (serious men in suits and no single woman on their teams!), even though I respect some of the names listed there. It seems that there is hope though: this EIS report from 2009 compared innovation performance in Europe and concluded that Switzerland has risen in being innovative due to its very rapid growth in venture capital.

Other associations that contribute to innovation in Switzerland in certain ways are startzentrum.ch, the SECA, the IFJ (consists of venuturekick, venturelab, startup.ch, and some others, but it’s one organization), gründen.ch and the already mentioned Innovation Forum.

My personal selection of organizations and individuals that I believe really contribute to a more innovative Switzerland are the Gottlieb Duttweiler Institut with their mission, event content, and “next practice” (not best practice) researches. Also Alexander Osterwalder pulls together a lot of innovation from all over the world. While Alexander is Swiss, Switzerland benefits. Also, Brainstore in Biel is another great example, but I’ve heard from several ex-employees that the company is not doing too well and might be dissolved. The Brainstore concept on its own is a great one though, as they mix business with art. I’d love to be involved in a company like that (if you have a suggestion, let’s discuss it).

How can we make Switzerland more innovative?

Being an entrepreneur myself, my mission is to improve the ways corporations communicate and do business today. When I founded my first company I was (and still am) frustrated about the way people communicate and blindly accept corporate culture and politics in the organization at the instants they start working there. Below are some of my suggestions how innovation in Switzerland could be fostered in Switzerland.

1. Listen, Ask & Synergize.
2. Focus on sustainable profit.
3. Don’t be an island.
4. Foster controlled chaos (diminish bureaucracy).

Originally and fully posted on arjenstrijker.com

Wochenrückblick: Kontrolle und Sicherheit

Judith — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:09:06 +0000

In der vergangenen Woche sind mir vermehrt Berichte über die Bedenken nach Sicherheit und Kontrolle von sozialen Medien in Unternehmen begegnet. Aus gegebenem Anlass also, widme ich diese Woche dem Thema: Was er nicht weiss, macht ihn nicht heiss – Mitarbeiteraufklärung als wichtigstes Element für einen offenen, sicheren Übergang zu einer vernetzten Unternehmenskultur.
Fakt ist, dass es nichts mit dem Alter der Mitarbeiter oder Führungskräfte zu tun hat, ob soziale Medien in einem Unternehmen gewinnbringend (finanziell oder anderweitig) eingesetzt werden können oder nicht. Viel mehr entscheiden dabei Einstellung und Aufgeschlossenheit, Interesse an Neuem und auch etwas Wagemut. Wie mit allen neuen Erscheinungen, muss auch der Umgang mit den neuen Medien kennengelernt und geübt werden. Zugegeben, es scheint für die jüngere Generation einfacher zu sein, einen Einstieg zu finden, aber jeder, der lesen und schreiben kann und sich im Internet halbwegs zurecht findet (vorausgesetzt ist also der Umgang mit dem Computer) wird schnell feststellen, dass Twitter so etwas wie eine öffentliche SMS ist und Facebook wie ein erwachsenes Poesiealbum.
Obwohl zB Twitter bereits weitestgehend von allen DAX-Unternehmen mehr oder weniger aktiv verwendet wird, gibt es bei KMU hingegen noch viel mehr Potential. Demgegenüber steht, dass 80% der Führungskräfte soziale Medien nutzen, dies allerdings eher passiv – auch wird nicht spezifiziert, ob sie das beruflich oder privat tun… Ich möchte jetzt nicht, dass alle Unternehmen gleich anfangen wilde Kampagnen im Netz zu starten, aber eine Ermutigung aussprechen, das Potential auszuloten und vor allem, die Dienste kennen zu lernen und Möglichkeiten zu entdecken.
Unbestritten gibt es immer wieder Neuerungen, die auch immer wieder Risiken bergen. Dennoch sollte keine falsche Scheu bestehen, wer aktuelle Entwicklungen verfolgt und klare Prozesse und Vorgehensweisen kommuniziert sollte im Stande sein, alle Beteiligten nach ihrem Gusto mit einzubeziehen und kreative Lösungsansätze, bzw. innovative Praktiken zum Vorschein zu bringen und ungewöhnlichen Ansätze zu inspirieren.

In diesem Sinne: Hup hup Holland!
Judith

Wochenrückblick: Soziale Netzwerke sind nicht nur für Teenies

Judith — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:59:27 +0000

Eine kürzlich veröffentlichte Studie von Nielsen bestätigt, welch einen Einfluss soziale Medien heutzutage haben: 22% der Zeit, die online verbracht wird, werden damit zugebracht. Der Umfrage zufolge greifen 3/4 der globalen Onlinebevölkerung auf Blogs oder soziale Netzwerke zu, das ist ein 24%-iger Anstieg gegenüber dem letzten Jahr. Die beiden folgenden Bilder zeigen “Weltkarten der sozialen Netzwerke” von 2009 (oben) und 2010 (unten).

Wie man sieht, gibt es ein paar kleine Veränderungen, aber Facebook ist deutlich dominantestes Netzwerk. Aus dem Presseraum von Facebook kann man folgende Daten entnehmen: “More than 400 million active users; 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day; Average user has 130 friends; People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook”
Wie sind Sie online vertreten? Beteiligt sich Ihr CEO an dem Firmenblog? Wie aktiv sind sie auf Facebook und Twitter und verwalten Firmeninterne die bestehenden Konten?

“Was sind soziale Medien?” Diese Frage hat Mashable anlässlich des anstehenden Social Media Day am 30. Juni an seine Leser gestellt und die Top 20 zusammengetragen:

1.) Kollaboration
2.) Netzwerk
3.) Konversation
4.) Teilen
5.) Beziehungen
6.) multi-dimensional
7.) einschliessend
8.) Information
9.) Gemeinschaft
10.) Personalisierung
11.) ermächtigend
12.) ein radikales Umdenken in der Kommunikation
13.) Echtzeit
14.) Menschen
15.) Inhaltsverteilung
16.) Selbstausdruck
17.) Einheit
18.) Dynamik
19.) Entdecken
20.) die Macht der Masse

Erkennen Sie sich selbst in dieser Liste wieder? Oder haben Sie vielleicht das Bedürfnis, einen dieser Aspekte in Ihrem Unternehmen unter zu bringen?

Wenn Sie Sich nun fragen, wie kann ich online besser Netzwerken? Denken Sie doch mal zurück, vielleicht können Sie Ihre alten Kontakte auffrischen und so neuen Wind in Ihr Unternehmen bringen.

In diesem Sinne: Hopp Schwiiz,
Judith