The Future and Us and Kurzweil

Posted on July 19, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Ray Kurzweil at Stanford Singularity Summit. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Ray Kurzweil is one of around a dozen figures who mark out the space between present and future – and us and technologies. He is an optimist as to speed of progress and its generally beneficent character, up to and including his “singularity.” Here he is noting, in general rather helpfully, that the future is easier to predict than some may think, in areas where exponential digital change is driving events (if you like, on Gordon Moore‘s moors.)

Of course the fun really starts when technologies bump into each other (convergence), when their disruptive impact is so great it’s just not clear what’s going to happen next, when people (yay, people!) decide to make decisions that shape what comes next, and so on.

I’ve written before about various aspects of all this (not least the rapid aging of companies that are out there on Moore’s moors – segue to Facebook‘s valuation, and so on). It’s handy to be reminded of the impact of the digital factor. Perhaps we can devise an impact factor that could be attached to companies, business models, and industries. Those close to pure digital will flourish rapidly and collapse/be superseded very fast. The search/social phalanx is slowly being followed by biotechnology as digitization and the management of huge data sets moves along (and, oh yes, typewriters and sliderules . . .). Random industries such as travel agency and cameras (sorry, Kodak) were hit hard and early. Publishing has taken longer and is going through an anguished process that will not soon be resolved. Education, especially higher education, has resisted with a fortitude and insouciance that would have been hard to resist.

So yes, some things are easier to predict. Some much less so. Some will always surprise. And then there’s the human factor.

Ray Kurzweil on Predicting the Future #WIFNY | Working Knowledge ®.

Ray Kurzweil on the Singularity and Bringing Back the Dead (singularityweblog.com)
(via 10 Questions for Futurist Ray Kurzweil – Video -… (futureof.biz)
Ray Kurzweil on Predicting the Future #WIFNY (customerthink.com)

Facebook user satisfaction plummets- MSN Money

Aside

Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook

Mark Zuckerber (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Nuff said.

But if I may add: The cause is attributed to three factors: Privacy issues; the constantly changing interface; and what HuffPo describes as “in-your-face advertising.”

Which takes me back to a theme I keep harping on: Our leading “social” company is among the least engaged on its own behalf in social media; despite being uniquely well-placed, it has chosen to disconnect itself from its user/customers and take continual decisions without consultation.

The context here is fascinating, since it is not simply that Facebook, “the social network,” does less well than G+ and Twitter; as a whole social companies score far worse than traditional (and traditionally unpopular) companies such as airlines and utilities.

Hard to make this up. And truly remarkable that these companies seem to be among the least able to grasp the impact on business/consumer relationships of the technologies they have mastered.

It’s also dire news for Facebook investors.

Facebook user satisfaction plummets- MSN Money.

[News] Facebook User Satisfaction Plummets, Google+ Shines, Says Survey (pcworld.in)

Social Media is NOT necessary for the C-Suite . . .?

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

English: Infographic on how Social Media are being used, and how everything is changed by them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After all the recent talk around the unbelievably low numbers for executive participation in social media – including that of hardly any CIOs, which should be a hanging offence if not one for drawing and quartering first – we now have an effort to defend the C Suite and pooh-pooh the concerns of those of us who have been suggesting that the Fortune XXX are well on their way to losing their fortunes.

Jeff Esposito makes the best of a thoroughly bad case, and I invite you to read it (link below).

Quick points in rejoinder (and see my earlier posts):

1. The issue is strategic. If in 2012 hardly a soul in the C-Suite is actively engaged in social, a (the?) major source of competitive (dis)advantage is simply being ignored – because, unlike say the dictaphone, you don’t know what you’re talking about / hiring for /strategizing about unless you have splashed around with several of these platforms over time. As I said in an earlier post, social is like saying you’re sorry; you can’t just hire someone to do it for you.

2. CEO disengagement is bizarre (these are supposed to be the smart guys). @Rupertmurdoch stands out as the only top CEO using Twitter interestingly. Only. But if the CIO, the conscience of the new info technology, is making snide remarks about people wasting their time “twittering,” it is not surprise everyone else in the suite feels they are off the hook. He (OK, almost all of them are) is doing more damage to the company than he could begin to imagine. At Moore’s Law speed, the social revolution is – chaotically – up and running. (The fact that most U.S. CIOs still report through the CFO, another body blow revealed by recent reseach, explains, sadly, a lot.)

3. Point is: This is not “about” marketing/customer service – though fielding complaints in real time is no bad thing. It’s about strategic re-invention by the alignment of corporate values, the values of employees, and those of present and prospective customers. It’s about B2B as much as B2C. It’s about letting loose a force for continuous innovation within the company – the only way, in the M’s-Law context, that this can be achieved. This is nuclear stuff. And the sooner 225 CIOs are giving their marching order (only 25 are on Twitter), the better. At least, if shareholders and boards have any interest in long-term profitability.

Jeff’s charge is partly that social media pros, whatever exactly they are, are jumping up and down about a situation which is of course of interest to them. But by and large their interests are tactical and marketing/CR focused. This issue is nuclear in its implications. There is no better thing any board member or CEO or C Anything Else could do than spend 2 weeks in social media immersion.

Memo to Social Media Pros – Social Media is NOT necessary for the C-suite.

The CIO Issue is about Strategy; Strategy; got that? (futureofbiz.org)
The Social Revolution: Customer Service and those who don’t get it (futureofbiz.org)
More on the #social #CIO (futureofbiz.org)

The Grim Details on CEOs and Social; 14/500 are tweeting, for example

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

An Evening with the Fortune 500, May 7, 2012 (Photo credit: Fortune Live Media)

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion, as these bizarre studies keep tumbling in, that serious personal engagement in social media is an absolute prerequisite for corporate leadership in 2012. And given the numbers, it’s also the single biggest opportunity for developing competitive advantage.

And here’s a project – anyone want to team up? Remedial social education camp: Every Fortune 500 CEO and other C-Suite denizen, every member of their boards, unless they are in the tiny minority actively and seriously engaged, needs to come spend a week being enabled to understand the single most dynamic force in the world in which they are operating.

Here are some of the most telling numbers.

5 of the 19 CEOs on Twitter have never tweeted, and other accounts are “underutilized”
25 of the 38 CEOs on Facebook have less than 100 friends
only four CEOs are on Google+ (including Larry Page)
not a single Fortune 500 CEO is on Pinterest

Here’s the report. Pour yourself a stiff drink before opening.

http://www.ceo.com/wp-content/themes/ceo/assets/F500-Social-CEO-Index.pdf

The CIO Issue is about Strategy; Strategy; got that? (futureofbiz.org)
CEOs, C-Suites, and Suicide (futureofbiz.org)
The Two Most Stunning Facts about American Business (futureofbiz.org)

CEOs, C-Suites, and Suicide

Posted on July 12, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...

Image via CrunchBase

Seems that approximately once a week a report is coming out giving fresh evidence for the same, utterly bizarre, fact: That most top execs are simply not engaged, personally or professionally, in social media. To qualify a tad: One well-placed observer tells that he believes many are actually engaged in private social media (such as Yammer) within their companies. I should be interested to see the evidence. Some I am sure are. But the whole point about social is that it is substantially public; private chat/bulletin experiences are not exactly the point. And while we are being skeptical: Anyone have data on private social use? Key issue is that the dynamic, transformative, threatening, swirling, social ocean needs to be swum in. It’s not just chit-chat among colleagues.

Back to point: Just before reading this nice piece in AllThingsD, I had posted a cry of distress that our major “social” corporations (that is, Facebook et al.) are themselves way down the list of those corporations benefiting from social engagement with their customers/users. Way down.

That is, the argument is a fortiori. If even our top social corporation isn’t engaging with its environment socially, what hope for B2B and B2C players in more trad industries?

This is bad.

Top CEOs Aren’t Using Social Media, Study Says — Should They Be? – Mike Isaac – Social – AllThingsD.

The CIO Issue is about Strategy; Strategy; got that? (futureofbiz.org)
CEOs Afraid Of Going Social Are Doing Shareholders A Massive Disservice (forbes.com)

The CIO Issue is about Strategy; Strategy; got that?

Posted on July 11, 2012 by Nigel Cameron

In a helpful review of the various studies on CIO social media use et al. Theresa Clifford draws attention to the most details, a Gartner piece from earlier this year, with its alarming (though hardly surprising) data point that social is not on the list of the top ten CIO priorities for the next 3 years. Links below.

Having discussed the social-C-Suite problematic on various occasions I am wrestling with a way of understanding what this is emerging as one of the most ridiculous deficiencies (and, at least for now, biggest opportunities) in the entire business environment.

Plainly, the extraordinarily limited personal engagement of top CIOs in (public) social media (4 blogs/250, 25 Twitter accounts . . .) is one factor. Back of that is the hiring and promotion policies that have set in perhaps the most sensitive position in corporate America the least prepared persons. Back of that is the tech focus of the CIO office, which should be about information – the core of value in C21 – and is far too much focused on system upgrades and playing defense on security and employee social use and BYOD and . . . Back of that that the CIO office it typically reports through the – ugh – CFO (it really does). And back of it all: that the CEOs and Boards of our top companies have yet to realize that the seismic development of this generation has not been about comms and database systems but about the information that they contain and enable.

Kinda basic, don’t you think? But at the end of the day amazing insights and dumb errors usually are. Think, once again, of Thomas Kuhn. Every exec and board members should read him; just as they should all do social immersion courses. I’m serious. And happy to help.

It’s about information; and once you get that, you will get that it is about social – knowledge and relationships, and the threat and opportunity the offer in tandem to every organization on the planet.

That is to say, taken together, they present the core strategy issue to C21 business. Every C21 business. And the bigger, by and large, the more central.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1897514

Is social media the next area for CIO innovation? | CIO New Zealand.