Filmed at On Your Marks, Connect 2013

Colleen McCreary tells the Zynga Story from Wavelength

Hawthorne Experiments

Gerard Van Grinsven

Marketing Myopia – Harvard Business Review

The Innovators Dilema – Clayton Christensen

Gopro – Antelope Crash

Tom Peters

John Seeley Brown – Xerox Park Scientist

Business as War – Fast Company

Click to read Alan’s blog

Click here to see our photos

Photos courtesy of John Owen Photography

Click to read George’s LinkedIn blog

Filmed at On Your Marks, Connect 2013

Sophi Tranchell: is money everything? from Wavelength

Filmed at On Your Marks, Connect 2013

Liam Black makes the case for Corporate Social Innovation from Wavelength on Vimeo.

We look forward to seeing you on 12th March at a sunny (hopefully) Sheepdrove Conference Centre.

Yesterday’s post, ‘Using storytelling for behaviour change’, looked at the case study of Well Told Story (WTS). Rob Burnet, Director, described the agency as a Shared Value Business.

“we’re a shared value business we’re not a social enterprise we’re not a straight commercial enterprise. It’s possible to be a business where everyone is a winner. We will not put a story in our media that is not in the best interests of our audience. But we deliver value to the partners such as Safaricom [Vodafone in Kenya]. We don’t deal with CSR, we deal with the marketing department and we are committed to giving them commercial value.”

Rob Burnet, Director Well Told Story

 I’m going to use two examples of how two very different organisations looked to their communities at times of extreme crisis – Hurricane Katrina – and by supporting those around them strengthened their business and their place within the community. First, supporting the external network:

Phillip Capitano, mayor of the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, reported that “the only lifeline in Kenner was the Wal-Mart stores. We didn’t have looting on a mass scale because Wal-Mart showed up with food and water so our people could survive.”

Walmart to the Rescue

 Walmart shipped almost twenty-five hundred truckloads of goods to the affected areas including to community members and organisations wishing to help. Of course getting the community back on its feet quicker also meant that Walmart could reopen its stores quicker. But it would be cynical to suggest this was the only motivation. Walmart also provided a large number of free goods, including prescription drugs to those in the worst hit areas.

Ritz Carlton is a popular example when demonstrating how internal communities are supported. They surpassed themselves when Hurricane Katrina hit:

“… we offered every employee the opportunity to relocate with his or her family and have a job at another Ritz-Carlton hotel. Clearly there was a cost associated with that decision. But it was the right thing to do. People had been displaced; many employees lost their homes. There was no immediate opportunity for them to regain housing. We knew the hotel would be closed for a significant period of time. Some business leaders would need to know the return on an investment before they would support such a decision. Ultimately, we knew that doing the right thing for our people is what produces our uniquely engaged workforce.”

Paul Westbrook, senior vice president of product and brand management

I know these examples have an extreme backdrop, but what they do show is by looking after their communities, including customers, employees, suppliers and even competitiors, an organisation can maintain the stability of their ecosystem, and how serving networks for good becomes inherent in how to continue to be successful in business. Networks and connectivity don’t just benefit your CSR programme, they’re part of your ‘shared values’.

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By Kate Pickering BBC Development Producer for CBBC Interactive

Beginning her career at the BBC Kate freelanced in TV production and development for ten years. For the last five years she has focused on technology and innovation in brands, marketing and journalism and has managed projects across US, Australia and mainland Europe. Previously a director of media140 she is a great evangelist for the human side of technology. As an innovation leader she has run a citywide innovation programme across Greater Manchester and most recently for Co-operatives UK.

Kate recently rejoined the BBC as Development Producer for CBBC Interactive and is now happily marrying the two elements of her career – always learning new stuff, pressing buttons and making stuff up!

]]> http://thesamewavelength.com/12-days-of-digital-day-11-connecting-for-good/feed/ 0 http://thesamewavelength.com/12-days-of-digital-day-12-leading-in-a-connected-world/ http://thesamewavelength.com/12-days-of-digital-day-12-leading-in-a-connected-world/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2012 07:01:49 +0000 admin http://www.wavelengthlive.com/?p=2344 The impact of social technologies has fundamentally changed our lives, work and play, especially how we connect and interact. The connected world means we can simply search for a personality type we would like to work with, or even date; we don’t need a name or number. Alongside the human impact technology has altered everything from the speed of commerce to communication costs. Bearing these things in mind the big question is – how has the connected world impacted your management style or organisation structure?

Last year I wrote about how relationships in the virtual world could deliver value in business by making them real, Taking Digital Offline. This year I’m going to go a step further and not just talk about relationships ‘out there’, but how those relationships are already in your business, waiting for an environment and culture to nurture and get the best from them.

If change is happening on the outside faster than on the inside the end is in sight.

Jack Welch

There has been a great deal of research into creating physical environments for creativity or for innovation; collaborative spaces that optimise ‘the water cooler moment’ when inspiration hits happenstance and a new product or service is born. But there is a bigger challenge; we will soon have five generations within one workplace and need to cater for them all accordingly – their preconceptions and expectations. How do we build bridges between those generations, to share knowledge and learn from each other; making the most of that all important social capital in your organisation. As networks become more important they become more difficult to negotiate.

Alexander Osterwalder writes a checklist to achieve the ideal balance in business in the foreward to Dave Grey’s new book (based on his blog) The Connected Company,

(…)transparent interaction and communication favouring autonomy and adaptation, a culture of experimentation and learning, and a new governance and reward system encouraging new behaviour and holding it together.

Simple? Of course it’s a scary time for those who feel ill prepared to tackle connectivity head on. But remember this, companies have always relied on networks to perform – it’s as simple as a stationer supplying paper to those who need to report in the business district, or a confectioner for those who love to consume sweet treats in the suburbs.

It is true technology has reduced distance, increased variety and velocity of business but it’s also true that knowledge has come to the fore in competitive advantage; there is a human side that must not be forgotten. I hope in this series of blog posts I have highlighted some areas for development and support, but the biggest support of all can be your business network. Connectivity is your friend!

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By Kate Pickering BBC Development Producer for CBBC Interactive

Beginning her career at the BBC Kate freelanced in TV production and development for ten years. For the last five years she has focused on technology and innovation in brands, marketing and journalism and has managed projects across US, Australia and mainland Europe. Previously a director of media140 she is a great evangelist for the human side of technology. As an innovation leader she has run a citywide innovation programme across Greater Manchester and most recently for Co-operatives UK.

Kate recently rejoined the BBC as Development Producer for CBBC Interactive and is now happily marrying the two elements of her career – always learning new stuff, pressing buttons and making stuff up!

In an age where people claim to be overwhelmed with information why choose storytelling, distribution of yet more content, to get an important message across?

Our business is to deliver to people big ideas they can use to make their lives better. It’s true where I live people struggle to access information although change is happening very fast.

It’s still difficult to get people’s attention; people are still prioritising their time. The power of a story is that it cuts through everything else. It gets people to pay attention and to listen, and not just with their heads but with their hearts and stomachs. Their hearts and their stomachs hear more and retain more than just with facts and figures with their heads.

We’ve done some research on the ability of the audience to recall stories that we’ve made. What we’ve found is there is a direct correlation between the story that we’ve told and the ability to remember and packaged facts and figures people don’t remember.

Telling a story to entertain is very different from telling a story to affect change or impact behaviour. Beyond great scriptwriting how do you ensure a message affects change without seeming like a marketing campaign?

This is a real juggle, and something we tiptoe through all the time. I think the simplest answer to that is that we don’t deal with subjects that don’t have relevance to the audience; we’re not just a mouthpiece for our clients. As a business we describe ourselves as shared value business.

We make sure we talk about what we know our audience is concerned with. Yes we have great scriptwriters; the team who are writing our stories are 23 years old. They’re the same as our audience actually so we make sure we’re only pressing buttons that we know our audience want to have pressed – that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about difficult subjects, that just means we are very careful we are aligned with the audience, because our business dies if the audience goes away.

How do you ensure those messages you’re communicating are right for the people you are trying to reach?

Our whole team spends one day in the field every month. We spend time to talk to groups of young people about everything that we’re doing so before we even start writing a story we’ll go and do some focus groups of potential audience members.

So many of the things we are dealing with appear to be no brainers – say for example the message is ‘if you plant this seed then you get twice the size of harvest’. But if it’s so easy then why isn’t everyone doing it? We found a lot of the time, for example, that the rural audience is ruled by an old-fashioned dad who doesn’t want to change. We’ve seen this over and over.

Our audience are school leavers, they want to change things, they want to innovate, but Dad calls all the shots. No matter how clever we are with our young audience if Dad says forget it then we aren’t achieving anything either. So we help our audience identify blockages they have to overcome.

Sometimes they are blockages in perception or sometimes they are blockages set in context but we always make sure we’ve understood. We’ll involve the audience before we go to script, then before we go to broadcast or print, we’ll tweak, we’ll test – we don’t leave it to chance.

How does the kind of media you use impact the kind of communities you reach? Is there a relevance of the media you chose for distribution depending on the story you have to tell? 

We tell a version of the same story across all of the media; we determine which different media delivers best to different segments of the audience. Which different media can we use to push people up the ‘behaviour change continuum’ as we call it. We know the audience start behaviour change at different points. We just try and meet them where they are.

For some of the audience we just want to make them aware of something. Then there are other people that are wrestling with change, they are empowered they are aware. We know that someone who is picking up a comic book, purely to have a good time is different from someone who is engaging with a character on Facebook, they are already engaging with the story and engaging with us.

So for example we’re working with the World Bank on a budget story. Most of the audience is not going to turn up to a monthly town hall meeting. Step one is to explain the budget is and that young people can influence it. The final step is for them to attend the meeting in the town hall.

How do you use connectivity or networks to increase the impact of your message?

We’ve found success spreads success. We ask ourselves how do we make them famous, how can we ensure that people doing the right things become heroes.

We’re looking for those early adopters and giving them the biggest push we can up the chain. One of the ways we encourage that is celebrating their success and the way we do that is feature them in the stories.

We try and get the voices of our audience across all our media so they get a sense of their own achievement and accomplishments. We think that’s important for them to feel they are on the right path, and we also think it’s important to represent real stories from real Kenyans and that’s getting a secondary wave of adoption to happen. Somebody who enjoys success becomes an agent of change. We’re also working hard to connect those agents of change to support each other, sometimes digitally but more often in real life.

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By Kate Pickering BBC Development Producer for CBBC Interactive

Beginning her career at the BBC Kate freelanced in TV production and development for ten years. For the last five years she has focused on technology and innovation in brands, marketing and journalism and has managed projects across US, Australia and mainland Europe. Previously a director of media140 she is a great evangelist for the human side of technology. As an innovation leader she has run a citywide innovation programme across Greater Manchester and most recently for Co-operatives UK.

Kate recently rejoined the BBC as Development Producer for CBBC Interactive and is now happily marrying the two elements of her career – always learning new stuff, pressing buttons and making stuff up!

Crowdfunding describes the collective effort of individuals who network and pool their resources, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organisations. Essentially an enterprise publishes their idea on one of many websites with a target value they want to achieve; pledges are tiered so that those who put more into a project get more out. Generally crowdfunding relies on low investment but is high risk.

Crowdfunding is working even in sectors perceived as traditional or struggling. It seems provided a project is specialist enough with a strong network and has the confidence and potential found in entrepreneurial determination – anything is possible. Take ‘Mattter’ high-quality in-depth investigative journalism on science and technology created by Bobbie Johnson, a former Guardian technology correspondent, and U.S.-based journalist Jim Giles, whose work has appeared in The Economist, The Atlantic and New Scientist. They hit their $50 000 target on Kickstarter in less than two days, nearly trebling their initial ask in investment.

Crowdfunding has make its name over the last few years and, although side stepping towards mainstream, hasn’t been without limitation (depending on legislation of the host nation) or risk. Times are about to change. Netherlands’ ABN AMRO has launched Seeds. The bank doesn’t have a say in the projects tauted and just facilitate the platform; the only thing they do ask is that entrepreneurs have experience in social media, some networking talent and the ability to manage investor relations (and if the new business does need a loan that they consider ABN AMRO).

Maybe I’ve jumped ahead with finance, or at least finance that relies on networks. Building a network has become central to some businesses, and not necessarily those you hear have a billion dollar price tag but are yet to see the business model.

The granddaddy of building a network around their products is Amazon; the largest retailer online and now a classic model for sales. Founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos, made the decision early doors to include negative, as well as positive, comments about the products they stocked. He was highly criticised at first for not understanding how to sell, but he did know how to build trust – the loyalty followed.

It’s no surprise that consumers are listening to their peers over a marketing campaign; cemented by Nielson research in 2009. It’s the bottom line of why social networks have been so successful with CMOs. The review online has built economies around it too with sites like Tripadvisor and IMDB relying on sponsorship and advertising.

The service economy seems to become more and more established in the age of networks. There has been a shift away from of organisations with big overheads and the need to own as opposed to the need to provide service to maintain communities around the business. Robin Chase’s career history shows the trend neatly. Robin co-founded Zipcar, a car sharing business owning over 10 000 vehicles for their members to use. She has gone on to establish Buzzcar, a peer-to-peer car pooling business. She has recognized the power of the networks around her and using it to bring down costs associated with running a fleet of cars in her new business model.

Service providers can only be judged on their reputation it’s not the end product that matters so much as the experience. Service implies a relationship to be successful and a relationship needs trust, authenticity and conversation. How are you building your relationship with your customer? And even working with their network?

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By Kate Pickering BBC Development Producer for CBBC Interactive

Beginning her career at the BBC Kate freelanced in TV production and development for ten years. For the last five years she has focused on technology and innovation in brands, marketing and journalism and has managed projects across US, Australia and mainland Europe. Previously a director of media140 she is a great evangelist for the human side of technology. As an innovation leader she has run a citywide innovation programme across Greater Manchester and most recently for Co-operatives UK.

Kate recently rejoined the BBC as Development Producer for CBBC Interactive and is now happily marrying the two elements of her career – always learning new stuff, pressing buttons and making stuff up!

As much as social networks are the generator of data they have also caused a marked rise in awareness and desire to protect personal data. Amongst other misguided suggestions, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt claimed people only worry about privacy if they have something to hide while Mark Zuckerberg regularly hits the headlines with Facebook’s controversial privacy changes and his references that privacy is no longer the social norm.

But to quote Alan Mitchell ‘Privacy isn’t dying. It’s being reinvented’. There’s increasing support for the idea that ‘personal data is a personal asset’ and the full potential value of data can only be realised if individuals are able to control what personal information they share with who, for what purposes, under what terms and conditions.

 As much as the consumer generates information about themselves on social networks, organisations are collecting data about the individual through their transactions. In the case of Walmart and P&G, we’ve already seen how, by sharing anonymised data organisations can more profitably serve their market. UK Government, however, are taking a different tack with the launch of the midata project.

“Midata will allow consumers greater insight into their everyday consumption and lifestyle habits by using applications and intermediaries to analyse their actual behaviours and thereby empower them to make better spending choices and secure the best deals.” Norman Lamb

As part of the government’s Consumer Empowerment Programme the initiative hopes to help buyers make ‘the right purchasing decisions’ by giving them access to their own purchase history and related information. Examples of data made available include electronic receipts of purchases customers can download at home to remind them when guarantees expire through to document verification that would allow employees to send data such as driving licences, qualifications and Criminal Records Bureau checks to a new employer electronically.

Organisations from Google to EDF Energy have agreed to support midata, however, companies are far from chomping at the bit to be involved. Following a luke warm reception to companies voluntarily providing consumer information the government has started exploring compulsory involvement, consultation closed on 10 September this year.

Many have voiced concerns over data security, but is that the whole story? Ian Stockley, MD of Indicia asks ‘Why retailers are so afraid of midata?’ Unfortunately the answer he seems to cling to is ‘it seems that many retailers are still stuck in bygone eras, stubbornly clinging onto old values that no longer apply in the modern marketplace. After all, data is knowledge, and knowledge is power.’

There seems to be some evidence to fuel this fire when it comes to personal data. Take the example of Patients Like Me in the USA, a data-driven social networking site, a platform for its community to share and chart their progress in health treatment. With greater awareness of their illness, and knowledge of the real impact of medicines on their conditions patients are more empowered when meeting their doctors. As a result some have even been ‘sacked’ by their doctors for challenging their treatment.

Knowledge doesn’t mean power any more, connectivity does. Stimulating an organisation’s connectivity by empowering a network can build a business within a community.

“To seize this innovation and growth opportunity, we need to accept four core principles. Individuals are the managers of their own data and information is a tool in the hands of the individual, privacy is a personal setting and that it makes sense for individuals rather than organisations to look after their own personal data.” Alan Mitchell, Strategic Advisor to midata project

How will you lead your organisation to make the most of, rather than ignore, consumer empowerment?

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By Kate Pickering BBC Development Producer for CBBC Interactive

Beginning her career at the BBC Kate freelanced in TV production and development for ten years. For the last five years she has focused on technology and innovation in brands, marketing and journalism and has managed projects across US, Australia and mainland Europe. Previously a director of media140 she is a great evangelist for the human side of technology. As an innovation leader she has run a citywide innovation programme across Greater Manchester and most recently for Co-operatives UK.

Kate recently rejoined the BBC as Development Producer for CBBC Interactive and is now happily marrying the two elements of her career – always learning new stuff, pressing buttons and making stuff up!

Mobile in 2015 for Young Adults from Wavelength on Vimeo.

Make Data Work For You predominantly looked at using data for communication, setting context for analysis. This year I’m going to challenge you to engage with and use data or be left behind.

The new stats are in town; and they’re getting bigger. The headlines are below but ultimately ‘by 2016 there may be the data equivalent of every movie ever made hurtling across the internet every three minutes.’

• 168 million emails sent
• 694,445 Google searches
• 695,000 Facebook status updates
• 370,000 Skype calls are made
• 98,000 tweets on Twitter
• 20,000 new posts on Tumblr
• 13,000 iPhone apps downloaded
• 6,600 new pictures on Flickr
• 1,500 new blog entries posted
• 600+ videos posted totalling over 25 hours duration on YouTube

Information collated by Go-Gulf

Data is challenging business and the roles within those businesses everywhere. At the front line, at the moment, is the marketer. They have been thrown into the deep end of data based on using social networks to engage with consumers and for market research. If you haven’t seen last week’s Marketing Week Big data rewrites the CMO’s role I suggest you take a look to be ready for or things to come.

But if I say nothing else, my big message is that social technologies, and data, are not just about marketing. Far from it, sharing data can be incredibly productive, and lucrative. I’ve touched on open data and open innovation in previous posts, and the potential of creating new products by sharing research information with others and crowdsourcing the creation of a new product or service.

One of the new golden rules emerging is to give data to get data. Reciprocation is creating surprising partnerships for collaboration based on sharing information; for example, Walmart and Proctor & Gamble. Walmart shared their data with P&G on what was happening in store on the shop floor including customer behaviour and demand. ‘P&G and Walmart found a way to leverage on information technology by sharing data across their mutual supply chains.’ Ultimately the insights into customer behaviour that Walmart could offer increased sales by 32.5%.

Data is not just being used to impact bottom line either. Last year Nike announced it was looking for a fellow to lead the opening of the company’s internal data to share information on its factories to improve conditions for overseas workers. The move didn’t go without criticism with cynics suggesting it was more about PR than real change. This year Nike is proving their case by plowing forward. With wiki inventor Ward Cunnigham onboard Nike has sponsored the Smallest Federated Wiki that “shares through federation, composes by refactoring, and wraps data with visualization.” It will be the platform for the $6 million of sustainability and product life cycle data the company has released.

 So the only questions that remain are what data do you have and how will you use it?

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By Kate Pickering BBC Development Producer for CBBC Interactive

Beginning her career at the BBC Kate freelanced in TV production and development for ten years. For the last five years she has focused on technology and innovation in brands, marketing and journalism and has managed projects across US, Australia and mainland Europe. Previously a director of media140 she is a great evangelist for the human side of technology. As an innovation leader she has run a citywide innovation programme across Greater Manchester and most recently for Co-operatives UK.

Kate recently rejoined the BBC as Development Producer for CBBC Interactive and is now happily marrying the two elements of her career – always learning new stuff, pressing buttons and making stuff up!

Aaron Magness – Why Coastal decided to give away free pairs of glasses from Wavelength on Vimeo.

George Anders – 7 Steps for leaders in social media from Wavelength on Vimeo.

]]> http://thesamewavelength.com/erik-hersman-on-rethinking-africa-through-mobile/feed/ 0 http://thesamewavelength.com/john-waibochi-the-mobile-business-revolution-in-east-africa/ http://thesamewavelength.com/john-waibochi-the-mobile-business-revolution-in-east-africa/#comments Thu, 27 Sep 2012 10:02:50 +0000 admin http://www.wavelengthlive.com/?p=2283

John Walbochi – The mobile business revolution in East Africa from Wavelength on Vimeo.

Lisa Gansky – Why access trumps ownership from Wavelength on Vimeo.