Connect with Charlene
Subscribe Via RSS
February 2011
You are browsing the archive for February 2011.
Hot Or Not: Disruptive Technologies To Watch in 2011, Part 1: The Framework
Last month, I gave a presentation on the top disruptive technologies to watch at the SFAMA monthly meeting. One of the things I did to prepare was to read as many tech predictions for 2011 as I could find. You can see them all collected in one place.
The one thing that struck me was that many of these forecasts didn’t provide a reasoning for why these trends (and not others) were picked. Having done my own predictions and trends to watch forecasts in the past, it was very much a subjective list.
I decided to approach this task from a different perspective. Instead of thinking about the trends first, I wanted to create a framework that would help organizations figure out themselves which disruptive trends they should prioritize and focus on. That’s because companies have limited people, time, and budget to focus on these disruptive technologies that are far-off on the horizon. They can’t focus on everything, so how do you pick and choose?
As a business focused on companies helping companies thrive with disruptive technologies, the work we do at the strategic level focuses on creating a strategy that’s robust and resilient in the face of these new tech forces. What amazes me is that companies can often see these tech disruptions coming from a mile away — and do nothing about it. That’s because they don’t have a way to prioritize, think, and plan a strategy around the technologies that matter. Guiding my thinking in this area is the outstanding work of people like Clay Christiansen, who have been thinking about disruptive innovations for decades.
I believe there are three major drivers that make a disruptive technology important to a particular business. While I frame these at a high level, each organization should look at these drivers to prioritize their focus.
- User Experience. Does this technology pass the “no manual needed” test? Does it allow people to connect in new ways? Twitter is powerful as a platform, but inscrutable if you’re not familiar or comfortable with @ and DMs — which thereby limits its disruptive power. In comparison, social networks like Facebook are intuitive and provide tremendous value with the new experiences they enable.
- Business model. Simply put, can you make more money, or save costs because of these new technologies? And by using the technologies better and faster than your competitor, can you gain an advantage? An example of this is YouTube, which when deployed in a strategic way can lower acquisition and support costs for companies.
- Ecosystem value. The most disruptive technologies though are when ecosystems get impacted. Streaming, on-demand video seemed to be the dominion of cable companies but then along comes Netflix who wasn’t even in the streaming business at all — but has the relationship with movie viewers who were sick of keeping track of red envelopes. Value shifts with the entrant of a new player who is able to tap into this new technology.
I’ll be doing a Webinar on this topic — and sharing the top trends I’m watching — on Thursday, Feb. 17th at 2pm PST (go to this link at that time). I’ll be using Slideshare.net’s new Zipcast service, so be one of the first to give it a try with me. I’ll likely be doing repeat presentations, and will update this post with that information.
I welcome your thoughts on the basic outlines of this framework. What am I missing? What else should I be considering? How can I refine my thinking further? And how does your organization go about prioritizing which disruptive technologies to focus on — and creating resilient strategies to thrive with them?
I’ll be going into greater detail the individual technologies over the next few weeks as my research digs deeper into this area, and I hope you’ll come along with me on this journey.
Report: How Corporations Should Prioritize Social Business Budgets
One question I frequently get is “How much should I be spending on social media?” The answer, of course, is it depends. This report looks at how 140 Social Strategists spent on social media in 2010 — and their plans for 2011 (read report). From this deep data, my co-author, Jeremiah Owyang, and I, found that maturity levels are a key driver of social technology adoption, and hence, social spending. (Jeremiah also wrote a detailed post about the report). I *love* data, so this was a particular fun and satisfying report to work on with the team (special thanks to Christine Tran and Andrew Jones for being our data gurus).
I’ve included several key charts and points, as well as the report below. But here are a few key takeaways:
- Budgets are the numerical depiction of your strategy. If you don’t have a coherent strategy, you won’t have a coherent budget. And the core of every strategy is a keen sense of what you will do — and what you won’t do. Thus, the budget expresses the prioritization of what you need to focus on. You have limited dollars, people, and time — so you better be focused on how you deploy your precious resources.
- Over-invest in training. It was shocking to see how little people were investing in training. Social is hugely transformative, and I frequently find that most organizations are in desperate need to train not only their social strategists, but anyone touching the customer. Trainers in HR need to be brought into the fold — and they typically have budgets set aside for training employees, meaning more non-social business dollars that you can tap to support your strategy.
- Don’t try to boil the ocean. While it’s fun to dig into the latest SCRM or community platform, unless your maturity level and strategy is aligned to take advantage of that level of social business sophistication, you’re wasting your dollars. Double down on the basics in each area of your social business and build a firm foundation for your long-term strategy, making sure that you are driving concrete business results (so that you can ask for even more budget next year!)
Report Details
The chart below shows the three different types of maturity levels (take a quick quiz to determine your maturity level), and how the average budget, team size, and also the way they are organized differs. The report has a great deal more detail on how adoption and thus spending differs by maturity.
We looked in greater detail at 12 spending categories in three areas: 1) Internal soft costs (staff, R&D, training); 2) Customer-facing initiatives; and 3) Technology investments. The graphic below shows the average spend for each of these categories, for those people who have adopted them. The story is nuanced because not every company is spending in areas like SCRM or community platforms.
Recommendations
This begs the question then, of what you need to do to prioritize in your budget, and thus your social strategy. We developed specific priorities and recommendations for each maturity level, summarized conveniently in the graphic below. Mashable also has a great write-up of the recommendations from the report.
Below is the report, followed by some key charts and findings:
Digital Marketing Partner:
