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Digital Economy and the Digital Revolution
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the digital revolution and the changes that it is driving in the economy. We are seeing a bifurcation between the old 19th and 20th century manufacturing based industries and the 21th century digital...
The Growth of the Recommendation Economy
Seth Godin wrote about the the attention economy. But it seems to me that we are also seeing the evolution of an online social recommendation economy. When we all lived in villages there was a strong recommendation economy, and it was fuelled by...
Friction, Hypereconomics, and Social Intercourse
Friction is one of the more important concepts in the world. Many things are either made possible or impeded by friction. Strike a match and the friction creates a flame. Yet that same kind of friction stops other things from flowing smoothly....
The Business of Social Business
Social business is the new trend following on from Enterprise 2.0 – but underlying it is an essential conflict between two different styles of doing business. The conflict is between businesses optimized for efficiency and those optimized...
How Do We Create and Share Value in a Jobless Economy?
Jeff Jarvis sparked my thinking on this recently with his post on The Jobless Future. As Jeff so bluntly stated: “We’re not going to have a jobless recovery. We’re going to have a jobless future. Holding out blind hope for the magical appearance...
Business, Boring Jobs and Social Good
Over the past 150 years businesses have dealt with the challenges of increased scale by optimizing processes, resource allocation and expenditure. However, there is a limit to how much one can optimize a business and not damage the society within...
The Jobless Future and Social Innovation
I have argued previously that capitalism is broken and that we need to find new approaches that are good for people, animals and the planet. Further I asked if social innovation might be part of that new approach. The world is facing an...
Sometimes a Tweet is Not Enough
In the olden days when I was very young it was the custom, upon receipt of a kindness from someone, to write them a thank-you note. This note took the form of a missive, hand-written, on personal stationery or a note card. The note was then taken...
Innovation – does it make sense for business?
Every business book I pick up nowadays seems to accept as a fundamental premise that innovation is a good thing and that it should be pursued relentlessly. But I’ve been wondering about that particular premise and under what circumstances it might...
Libraries for the future
I spent most of my youth and childhood hanging about in public libraries and reading their books. In fact I blame libraries for most of my quirks these days, since it was there that I was exposed to dangerous ideas from philosophers, historians...
Lean times favour innovation
Companies struggle with how to innovate when their existing business is stable or growing. There is often a perception that innovation requires a lot of investment. However, it has been my experience that it is much harder to innovate in...
Engagement marketing is about people
The best place to see engagement marketing in action is in a small town that is not far from a large shopping centre. Here the shopkeepers know that if they do not engage with you then you will simply jump in the car and head off the the...
