Survey research providing proof that Web 2.0 technologies can help raise market share and profitability
The December edition of the McKinsey Quarterly has an interesting article titled "The rise of the networked enterprise: Web 2.0 finds its payday". McKinsey defined the "networked enterprise" as one that makes intensive use of collaborative Web 2.0 technologies (such as social networking and blogs) to connect the internal efforts of employees and to extend its reach to customers, partners, and suppliers.
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Through a survey with responses from 3,249 executives across different regions, industries, and functional areas, they find that "fully networked enterprises are not only more likely to be market leaders or to be gaining market share but also use management practices that lead to margins higher than those of companies using the Web in more limited ways".
Key conclusions and recommendations to becoming fully networked enterprises are:
- Integrate the use of Web 2.0 into employees’ day-to-day work activities. This practice is the key success factor in all of our analyses, as well as other research we have done. What’s in the work flow is what gets used by employees and what leads to benefits.
- Continue to drive adoption and usage. Benefits appear to be limited without a base level of adoption and usage. Respondents who reported the lowest levels of both also reported the lowest levels of benefits.
- Break down the barriers to organizational change. Fully networked organizations appear to have more fluid information flows, deploy talent more flexibly to deal with problems, and allow employees lower in the corporate hierarchy to make decisions. Organizational collaboration is correlated with self-reported market share gains; distributed decision making and work, with increased self-reported profitability.
- Apply Web 2.0 technologies to interactions with customers, business partners, and employees. External interactions are correlated with self-reported market share gains. So are internal organizational collaboration and flexibility, and the benefits appear to be multiplicative. Fully networked organizations can achieve the highest levels of self-reported benefits in all types of interactions.
Source article in PDF:
Si ce n’était pas l’anglais qui menace le français? Une accusation d’hypocrisie française
Dans la colonne de critique de livres de l'Actualité, Martine Desjardins nous introduit le livre Le premier mot par Vassilis Alexakis, un écrivain gréco-français.
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Récit d'un voyage en Grèce, le personnage central du roman est un professeur à la Sorbonne qui se plonge dans l'étymologie comme s'il s'agissait de fouilles archéologiques. Alexakis ne cache pas sa conviction de l'importance du métissage culturel pour toute société, et Desjardins a bien souligné une thèse importante de l'auteur:
«Le français est davantage menacé par l'étouffement des idiomes régionaux que par l'expansion de l'anglais.» Ces 26 parlers régionaux, tels le breton et le corse, risquent aujourd'hui de s'éteindre, car la France refuse toujours de les reconnaître officiellement – alors qu'elle prêche la diversité culturelle à l'échelle mondiale. Alexakis dénonce vivement cette hypocrisie: «Nous persistons à redouter les effets du multilinguisme sur l'unité nationale.»
Colonne de Martine Desjardins:
“Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.”
- Albert Einstein
WikiBranding: co-creating brands with the globalized youth
David Murphy, Co-President and Director of Brand Innovation at advertising agency BD'M, claims to have coined the term "wikibranding" at an Ad:Tech panel in 2007. The term conveys, in his words, "an observation that brands are in fact wikis, entities that are increasingly defined by the crowd and less so by the manufacturer".
With reference to this concept, writers Mike Dover (Wikibrands) and Rob Salkowitz (Young World Rising) shared their thoughts in a recent article on how this applies increasing to the Under 30's in the fast-growing middle class of emerging economies who represent the "next billion customers". While they now represent the most compelling growth opportunity for business, they also throw up major challenges as they are "coming of age in the same dynamic and unpredictable digital media culture that has disrupted old business models and old marketing strategies in the developed world".
Their key recommendations?
Change the nature of your corporate communications
Broadcast will no longer be effective. Companies need to actively engage with consumers in a conversation. The concept of a brand can no longer be developed by marketing executives in the boardroom; the conversations in the community determine the true nature of the brand.
Customize the message and delivery for the rising new world
The Young World shares many of the same characteristics as their contemporaries in the developed world, and one of the key examples is their ability to deftly scrutinize. A campaign that is reproduced or superficially tweaked for a new market will be at best useless and at worst counter-productive (many of the target audience may have already experienced the campaign via social media).
Balance the media mix
It isn’t just television that’s the wrong platform to reach the Young World. So too is the Internet Browser. Most of the marketing reach to the Young World will be delivered through handheld devices. It is important that the campaigns and community building be designed with these devices in mind rather than modifying another platform.
Source article
Winning in a polycentric world: Globalization and the changing world of business
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Ernst & Young recently released the results of the 2010 Globalization survey that they first undertook in 2009 along with the Economist Intelligence Unit. In a nutshell, the main theme is the challenge facing businesses of reconciling the conflicting need for both global scale and local relevance. The report lays out four priorities:
1. Redefine global and local
The need for local relevance is demanding greater decentralization. Leading companies are adopting a more balanced approach whereby local autonomy is combined with globally consistent strategic direction, a shared corporate culture and set of values. This allows companies to draw upon capabilities and resources from anywhere in the world.
2. Develop a “polycentric” approach to innovation
Companies are increasingly decentralizing the innovation process. Rather than innovate centrally, then adapt or de-feature products to suit different price points, now products, processes or components are developed primarily with local markets in mind, but reapplied when appropriate in other markets.
3. Rethink relationships with government and tax administrations
Government is playing a bigger role in business than at any time in living memory. This new dynamic requires companies to think carefully about how they engage with the public sector. This requires companies to manage and anticipate potential risks on a global basis.
4. Build diverse leadership teams with strong global experience
The skills and capabilities that are required to succeed in fast-growth markets are different from those needed in more mature markets. While business success in developed markets has been more recently rooted in process and efficiency, emerging markets demand experimentation, risk-taking and entrepreneurship.
The Globalization Index 2010 ranks the 60 largest economies by how connected they are to the rest of the world. The top 10 are all smaller European countries, except for Hong Kong and Singapore which take the #1 and #3 positions respectively. Canada is tied with Germany at #17, just ahead of France, while the US is further down at #28. I wonder how the results might change if intra-European "connectedness" is stripped out or otherwise adjusted for.
Source article
“[One] might well conclude that the true objectives of management education are indistinguishable from those of the liberal arts:”
"... to provide an interdisciplinary education in literacy, numeracy, and an understanding of people, so that one can marshal all these competencies in the service of creating and running sustainable institutions."
- David K. Hurst, author of Crisis & Renewal, writing in strategy+business (Winter 2010)
New CBC documentary on the Age of the Oil Sands
David Suzuki at the ROM screening of Tipping Point, Jan 23
Had the opportunity to listen to David Suzuki speak at the Royal Ontario Museum after the preview of the new CBC documentary "Tipping Point: The Age of the Oil Sands". The documentary will be shown on CBC on Thursday, Jan 27, at 8pm. Unavoidably polemical, but definitely interesting.
The rise of Indian women?
According to a 2010 report by Catalyst, a not-for-profit focused on women in business, 11% of the CEOs of large Indian companies are women. While that may seem like an unfriendly statistic to women, consider that only 3% of the Fortune 500 are led by the fairer sex. An HBR blog post points out that women in India represent a growing, attractive talent pool. Consider these facts:
Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo CEO, #6 on Forbe's list of the World's 100 Most Powerful Women
Women make up 42% of India's college graduates, a figure that has grown steadily over the last two decadesand is only expected to rise. Relatively unfettered by cultural preconceptions that steer Western women away from the "hard" sciences, they account for 44% of degrees in the sciences and 25% in business administration, management, or commerce. Also noteworthy: More than 50% of female college grads also hold a post-graduate degree, in comparison to 40% of men. "If you look at the number of top graduates from any Indian school," whether in management or engineering, as one HR manager for a global conglomerate notes, "a disproportionate number are women."
Armed with their freshly minted diplomas, Indian women are hungry to prove themselves. Over 85% aspire to hold a top job, showing levels of ambition nearly double that of their U.S. counterparts and markedly higher than women in Brazil, Russia, or China. Age doesn't affect their determination: Both older and younger Indian women show levels of ambition far higher than their counterparts elsewhere.
Indian gents, time to make some space before you get elbowed aside?
Source article
Who needs consumer research when you’ve got Steve Jobs?
When Steve Jobs provided a select group of journalists a preview of the iPad last year, he was asked what consumer and market research Apple had done while developing the product. His answer? "None, it isn’t the consumers’ job to know what they want."
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Wow. Talk about chutzpah. But with Apple's latest off-the-charts quarterly results, it's hard to argue with that. Truth be told, Apple employees undoubtedly provide an opinionated and cutting-edge focus group, and Steve Jobs is said to visit the Apple store in Palo Alto frequently (although I wonder whether and how he interacts with shoppers there). According to John Kao, an innovation consultant, Apple has been introducing "seeing-around-the-corner innovation", and that "these are not the kind of breakthroughs that market research, where you are asking people’s opinions, really help you make."
As the NY Times puts it, "Mr. Jobs, by all accounts, relies on intuition and his own sense of taste, in decisions ranging from hiring to matters of product design." An illustration that there's a limit to what analysis and quantitive methods can do for you; may all of us refine our own senses of intuition and taste. And here's wishing Mr. Jobs better health.
Source article
- Can Apple Find More Hits Without its Tastemaker (The New York Times)
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