800-CEO-READ Blog: Information Technology

Article from Tracy L. Tuten, author of Advertising 2.0

The following article was contributed by Dr. Tracy Tuten, author of Advertising 2.0: Social Media Marketing in a Web 2.0 World. Dr. Tuten is Associate Professor of Marketing at Longwood University. Her research interests include Web-based survey methods, branding and identity, and online advertising. She serves on the editorial review board for Psychology and Marketing.

Lessons Learned from Second Life

Virtual worlds give participants an opportunity to be whoever they want, wish or hope to be. With a custom designed "avatar," you can look, behave and speak any way you want. It's your "second life," after all.

Brands, however, don't have that luxury. They bring established reputations and perceptions into a realm where everything is new and anything goes.

The "Wild West" nature of virtual worlds frightens brand managers schooled in carefully crafted and controlled messages, and Second Life indeed chased many away.

But with technology -- and especially social media -- becoming more and more pervasive in consumers' lives, virtual worlds will get a second chance. Here's how to capitalize on it.

Second Life and other virtual worlds have enormous branding opportunities. In terms of social media, virtual worlds really are communities in the most literal sense, and it is the level of interaction and engagement that creates such a strong platform for branding. Some brands (like Vodaphone) have found ways to develop interactive spaces in world that intrigue and engage prospective customers. For these brands, virtual world marketing is much like participating in a sponsorship: the presence is valuable if there's a good fit between the space, the target market and the brand -- and if the brand can find a way to add value for those visiting the space.

For some brands, though, virtual worlds are not the most friendly of communities. They may find that other forms of social media marketing are better suited -- or at least simpler to manage (particularly if the virtual world in question is Second Life)! Here are a few factors that can help you understand "why" . . . or "why not."

Ease of Use
Second Life is complex and user-unfriendly. Time magazine called it a case of Fortune 500 companies trying too hard to be hip. A recent report from Forrester suggests that marketing in virtual worlds is still too complex for broad adoption as a business strategy, but that this is likely to change in the next five years. Complexity is an issue, not only from the marketer's perspective, but also from the consumer perspective. It is one of the primary characteristics that can slow the rate of adoption for innovators. Some virtual worlds are easier to learn than others; Second Life is likely the most difficult to learn.

Software Requirements
Second Life, and some other virtual worlds, requires users to install its software. Software installation could be a deterrent to growth beyond the innovators and early adopters already a part of the virtual world phenomenon.

Number of Active Members
Second Life, for example, does not have the reach that other online advertising venues garner. Despite the claim of millions of residents (with continual growth), under a million are active and engaged.

Opportunities for Negative Response
Residents of Second Life are known to dislike and distrust big brand promotion. "Griefing," vandalizing and harassing in world, is a common problem for brands. Linden Labs takes a hands-off approach to managing griefer attacks, relying instead on resident governance. How bad can griefing be? A helicopter crashed into a Nissan building, starting a fire that left a couple of dead bodies, and American Apparel customers were attacked by members of the Second Life Liberation Army armed with virtual guns.

Accuracy of Results Reporting
Second Life offers publicity and the value of free media impressions as social and other media cover new developments. However, no distinction is made between positive coverage and negative coverage. When the media attention is negative, such as reporting attacks on customers, the publicity does not build brand equity.

User Security
Aside from the security from griefers, Second Life has struggled to provide security to the real life people behind the avatars. In 2006, hackers obtained credit card information for some residents.

User Capacity
Second Life's infrastructure limits the capacity at some events. Your brand might do a phenomenal job of planning and executing a relevant brand experience with an outpouring of enthusiasm, only to find the system crashes when more than 70 avatars are present at a time.

Number of User Interactions
Of course, capacity concerns are only an issue if things go well. Spend some time walking or flying around Second Life. It is filled with exquisitely detailed representations of real and fantasy locations. Yet seeing other avatars is rare unless one is spending time earning free Linden $ (the currency of Second Life) at Money Island.

Tie-In to Real World Sales
Some brands have sold digital versions of their products. Toyota, Reebok, Adidas, and Dell are all examples. No brand has yet announced success at using the in world branding site as a direct response tool for real world sales. Bob Tedeschi, in his article entitled "Awaiting Real Sales from Virtual Shoppers," explains that brands experience little measurable influence on real world sales that can be tracked to virtual branding efforts.

Number of Media Outlets
There are still a limited number of Second Life media outlets and advertising opportunities (beyond supporting retail space, experiential facilities, and events). NPR and Reuters are there, along with the AvaStar newspaper, but for brands accustomed to buying ad space in hundreds of television networks, consumer and trade magazines, and national, regional, and local newspapers, this is not a rich media landscape. Ad inventory will develop over time. A "MetaAdverse" network has been established to provide in-world billboard advertising.

Scalable Branding Initiatives
It is difficult to gain economies of scale in branding initiatives. One cannot lower the average costs of products by making mass amounts of products, and there are no huge media buys to lower the costs of advertising.

Design Costs
There are expenses to brand building in Second Life. Linden Labs sells land and then requires ongoing maintenance fees. Those are minimal compared to the design expenses brands encounter. Alex Veiga points out that brand building requires artists, designers, writers, and marketers to develop all aspects of the brand's identity in Second Life. Scion City, a Toyota initiative, took about 10 weeks and probably cost in the range of $100,000. Importantly, brands that enter Second Life must be committed to operating there. It does no good (and in fact could harm a brand) to have a presence there that is not manned, managed, and leveraged towards accomplishing the brand's objectives.

In open worlds, economies are free markets. Brands are welcome to compete and the spoils go to the brands with the best strategy, the best targeting and the best engagement propositions for their target audiences (mindful, of course, to ensure the strategy is suitable for the virtual culture in question). The brands with the wherewithal to strategically plan a social media marketing campaign will also know to commit to the campaign and to provide ample time for the strategy to work prior to making judgments of success or failure and redirecting resources to other marketing executions.

In other words, they'll understand and capitalize on why . . . or why not.

(c)2008 Dr. Tracy L. Tuten

A Thousand Things Matter

"...products of true enduring quality are not those that do one thing 1000% better but rather those products that do 1000 things 1% better."

-from The IBM Way by Buck Rodgers and Robert Shook [out of print]

[hat tip: PowerShell Team Blog]

Writing About Numbers

In watching the del.icio.us feed for the business+book this week, there have been a number of webizens that are paying attention to Stephen Baker's The Numerati.

The Sept 8th cover story of BusinessWeek titled "Managing By The Numbers" was an excerpt adapted from the book about amazing work being done at IBM:

"I'm here to find out how Takriti and his colleagues go about turning IBM's workers into numbers. If this works, his team plans to apply these models to other companies and to automate much of what we now call management."

You can find the introduction excerpted and an active weblog on The Numerati website.

The book I would correlate this with is last year's Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres, which is out in paperback now.

Cinderella or Cyberella

Two leading scholars in the gender and information technology field have put together essays that bridge women in age, culture and educational backgrounds. These writings are found within the book Cinderella or Cyberella? and they provide women with the information to be more empowered in finance, work and families.

One author, Nancy J. Hafkin, has worked in these fields for thirty-plus years and has been the Chief of Research and Publications at the African Training and Research Centre for Women of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Hafkin has also headed the Pan African Development Information System. She also has a degree in African history from Boston University.

The other author, Sophia Huyer, is the Executive Director of Women in Global Science and Technology and Senior Research Advisor with the Gender Advisory Board of the United States Commission on Science and Technolgy for Developement. She has a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies and International Development form York University.

The essays include case studies from Africa, Asia and Latin America to show different perspectives from all over the world of how women are participating in today's information society.

A Book Publisher's Manifesto

For all of you interested in what the future of publishing will look like, Sara Lloyd has begun posting her essay on the topic over at the digitalist (the digital team at Pan Macmillan's blog). Because of it's length, she's posting it in six parts. Today's installment was part two.

From the introduction posted yesterday:

Crucially, we will need to work out how we can add value as publishers within a circular, networked environment.

One of the key perception shifts that publishers need to make, then, is about the book as 'product'. Whilst the book continues to be viewed as a definable object within covers, as a singular 'unit', publishers will continue to limit their role in its production and distribution, and this is a sure fire way for publishers to write themselves out of the future of content creation and dissemination.

This is a conversation we have quite often here. While we were handing out books at an author event recently, a gentleman walking by turned to us and said, "no one reads books anymore"--and, keep in mind, this man was there to see the author of the book speak. It's that sentiment that causes so much panic in our industry about the possible demise of the printed book, and I think that that panic sometimes clouds our vision of the future and what great possibilities it holds. So far, Sara Lloyd's essay has provided a very thoughtful and sober view of the situation. I'm looking forward to the next four posts.

And, speaking of the future of publishing, you can now browse inside HarperCollins books on your iPhone.

Embracing the future of travel guides

The New York Times must be reading our minds because just yesterday Todd and I were discussing the future of travel books, and today there's a great article about what travel guide publishers are doing to anticipate and incorporate changes in the industry.

A few approaches mentioned in the article:

• Specialized guides are available online - you can get an entire guide to pubs and inns in the UK, without the other information available in more comprehensive guides. And, you can get a version that connects to the GPS in your rental car.
• Dorling Kindersley (DK) has made all of the content in its Eyewitness Travel guides available online at traveldk.com
• Lonely Planet plans to have all of its guides online in two years, but currently offers individual chapters available for download at a few dollars each.
• Several publishers allow web site visitors to create and print out or order customized guides. Others are getting their stuff into the backs of airplane seats.

Todd and I were discussing the dilemmas of choosing the right book(s) for your travel needs. For instance, you could create a customized guide to New York City with the maps of certain neighborhoods, history on the art in the museum you're visiting that day, and a subway map with certain stops highlighted. But, Todd pointed out, what do you do when it's 4:00, you're in an unfamiliar neighborhood, famished, and you want to eat at a great New York restaurant? Or, as I pointed out, what happens when you're on the Brooklyn Bridge and you want to know how many years it took to build?

Many travel guides boil down the history and cultural information that comes in handy when you're out and come across something new, something you didn't plan for when putting together your guide. Or you only visit sites in the chapters you've printed, and miss out on something cool right around the corner. Some of the spontaneity is lost.

On the other hand, when you're lugging around an iPod, a digital camera, a cell phone, bottled water, and a couple of kids, do you really want to carry a book? And, chances are, you'll need a couple of books, just in case one works well for, say, transportation, and the other works well for selecting restaurants and accommodations. And then there are the books you pore over before the trip and leave at home when you go...

Several publishers are looking at these strategies as a game plan for if (or when) the print publishing industry collapses.

"'We want to be in a position where, if the business suddenly collapses in five years, we have a plan -- unlike the music industry,' said Martin Dunford, publishing director of Rough Guides, which is part of the Penguin division of the media company Pearson, based in London."

But that big IF isn't looming on the horizon at this time:

"So far, the digital media revolution has been much less turbulent for guidebook publishers than for record companies, which are fighting rampant online copying. Sales of travel guides, while flat in some traditionally stalwart markets like Britain, have been growing strongly in developing countries and in the United States -- despite a weak dollar, which has made overseas trips more expensive for Americans.

Travel publishers sold 14.8 million books in the United States last year, up 11 percent from two years ago, according to Nielsen BookScan. Still, guidebook companies may have missed an opportunity on the Internet..."

Check out the article. I know I'll be visiting DK Travel and Lonely Planet's web sites to see what I can do for a little trip I'm planning.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/03/business/media/03guides.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Do It Wrong Quickly - Marketing in the Age of the Web

A little background...Pearson, a major international publisher of educational and resource materials, puts out some of the best books on Internet marketing, technology support, and learning HTML and multimedia software. (And they're not paying me to say so.) You've probably seen Pearson's many imprints on your resource books -- IBM Press, Financial Times, Prentice Hall, Peachpit Press, Longman, and Wharton, among many others. Peachpit's Quickstart guides, for example, give non-technicians the basic tools to make heads or tails of programs once mastered exclusively by programmers and graphic designers. As much of our creative work becomes do-it-yourself or stays in-house, it's almost necessary to start a reference library. Over the next few months I'd like to recommend a few titles to get you started.

As we're thinking about ways to expand our online presence, Todd and I have been talking a lot about the best ways to approach new projects. It used to be that we decided to do something--print a new brochure, redesign a web site, incorporate a new technology--and then presented a plan to a designer. There might be some initial back-and-forth about needs and goals, but what the designer came back with in the end was essentially a finished product. We had to be sure we knew exactly what we wanted before we asked (and paid) for it. Today, though, there's a lot of wiggle room. Especially online, we can try and fail at something new without taking a significant hit (or any at all, sometimes).

A few weeks ago Todd wrote about a book called Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres:

http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/007328.html.

http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/007292.html.

This week I opened up Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules (IBM Press). The subtitle might make you think "Um, where have you been?" but the author, Mike Moran, actually gets at something close to what Ayres talks about in Super Crunchers. Using a bow-and-arrow analogy, Moran suggests that the archer with three arrows has a higher chance of success than the archer with one. In other words, it's great if your shot in the dark hits the bull's eye, but chances are it won't every time. On the other hand, if you take three shots at the same time, you might not hit the bull's eye, but you'll score more points--and learn more along the way.

I'm probably not doing justice to the author's message, here, but I think that the important thing to take away is that it no longer makes sense to expect that even a carefully thought-through, well-executed marketing campaign will hit the target in today's world. In fact, Moran believes that the new marketing means getting away from the plan-then-execute approach, and starting to try lots of approaches at the same time. In addition to systematic ways of assessing your online marketing (conversions, metrics), you have to listen better to your customers. He talks about the social media phenomenon, incorporating multi-media approaches in your message, and creating deeper relationships with your customers by engaging them in a conversation.

As Moran puts it, "whether change gets your blood pumping or leaves you in a pool of sweat, marketing is undergoing a revolution more profound than any of us are likely to see the rest of our lives." Do It Wrong Quickly is a friendly invitation to that revolution.

Colbert/Keen Bout

Stephen Colbert brought Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of The Amateur, onto to the show last week.

The normal verbal melee ensued:

link for the RSS folks

Super Crunchers - A Story Continued...

One story line in Super Crunchers is that of Dick Copaken and his secretive company Epagogix.

Copaken thinks that neural networks can improve scriptwriting in Hollywood. Most of his clients don't want the world to know what he is doing or that they are paying for it.

Malcolm Gladwell changed that in October 2006 when he made Copaken a subject of his article titled The Forumula: What if you built a machine to predict hit movies? Read the piece. It is brilliant.

Super Crunchers picks up where the article left off.

Epagogix's neural equations have also let studios figure out how to improve the expected gross of a film. The formula not only tells you what to change but tells you how much more revenue that change is likely to bring in. "One time they gave us a script that just had too many production sites," Copaken said. "The model told me the audience was going to be losing its place. By moving the action to a single city, we predicted that they would increase revenues and save on production costs."

Epagogix is now working with an outfit that produces about three to four independent films a year with budgets in the $35-$50 million range. Instead of just reacting to completing scripts, Epagogix will be helping from the get-go. "They want to work with us in a collegial, collaborative fashion," Copaken explained, "where we will work directly with their writers...in developing the script to optimize the box office."

Now, Copaken hangs out with agents, studio executives, and even hedge fund managers. The story starts on page 144 and is an update to the original New Yorker piece.

Internet: Culture or Crap

Andrew Keen (Cult of The Amateur) and David Weinberger (Everything Is Miscellaneous) have been debating the merits of Web 2.0. Andrew thinks the Internet is unravelling popular culture and will lead to terrible ends. David sees nothing but upside.

The Wall Street Journal has a text debate. This follows the live panel involving Keen and Weinberger that took place at SuperNova 2007.

Andrew also wrote a ChangeThis manifesto titled Against You: A Manifesto In Favor of Audience.

I encourage you to check these out. There is a deeper, more nuanced discussion going here than most are giving credit.

Also by Frank Abagnale (Catch Me If You Can)

Frank Abagnale, the legendary check forger and imposter and author of Catch Me If You Can, has another book out, Stealing Your Life: The Ultimate Identity Theft Prevention Plan. And according to Inc. Magazine, entrepreneurs are especially at risk.

This may be the answer to keeping the modern day version of Abagnale at bay.

Links From My Inbox - 1/29/07

• Joel Spolsky reviews Dreaming In Code
• The Los Angeles Times ran the Financial Times' review of Purpose over the weekend.
• WSJ's Carol Hymowitz has a Q&A with The Three Tensions author Ken Favaro [sub. needed].

Books from The Computer Class

Sally (editor of ChangeThis) and I are taking a class on Adobe InDesign right now. We both consider ourselves computer literate, but find the Adobe products start from a different base than we are familiar with.

We got a free book with the class for future reference. C2 Graphics gives all of their pupils PeachPit Press Visual Quickstart Guide for InDesign. Our instructor Fritz also recommended Adobe InDesign CS2 Classroom In A Book for additional exercises.

Business Books For January: Wikinomics

Don Tapscott has been writing about the intersection of business and technology for years. Wikinomics is his latest effort to explain how the networked Web is changing the relationships between companies and their customers. If you spend any time in this ideaspace, you are going to be familiar with many of the examples in Wikinomics. Second Life, Legos, and InnoCentive all make appearances.

In the chapter on The Prosumers, Tapscott and co-author Anthony Williams ask some good questions:

So here's the prosumption dilemma: A company that gives its customers free reign to hack risks cannibalizing its business model and losing control of its platform. A company that fights users soils its reputation and shuts out a potentially valuable source of innovation. Apple and Sony may feel the latter option is an acceptable risk so long as hacking remains as the fringes. After all, product hackers are still a small minority of their customers, and there is little evidence yet that product hacks and home-brew applications are leaking out into the mainstream. Any company that believes that the status quo will hold for long, however, is mistaken. Product hacking is just getting started.

Customer with the skills and inclination to hack their products may be in the minority today, but what about in five or ten years, as increasingly technology savvy kids will become the norm? Will companies choose to fight all of their customers then? How will they cope with the proliferation of tools and Web sites that enable prosumer communities to flourish? Will they unleash the lawyers and risk driving their customers to alternative platforms? Indeed, how will they compete with the inevitable rise of hacker-friendly platforms that let customers do whatever they want and in return tap unlimited pools of free innovation? The answer is they can't and won't fight their customers for long. Customer hacking will live on.

Like any good business book, the authors offer some good answers:

Prosumption is becoming one of the most powerful engines of change and innovation that the business world has ever seen. Cocreating with customers is like tapping the most uniquely qualified pool of intellectual capital ever assembled. A reservior of talent that is as keenly and uniquely enthusiatic about creating a great product or service as you are. But it comes with new rules of engagment and tough challenges to existing business models. Anyone who tells you different has not fully grasped the implications of the impending prosumer revolution.

More than customization
Just as prosumption is more than marketing disguised as customer advocacy, it goes way beyond product customization. Customization occurs when a customer gets an off-the-shelf product adjusted to his or her specification. There is nothing wrong with mass customization: Customers get to tailor products to specific uses while companies get to maintain the economies of large-scale production.

The problem is that mass customization generally entails mixing and matching prespecified components, which significantly limits flexibility and innovation for users. When you order a Dell computer, for instance, you can slot in any DVD drive you want, but it's still a DVD drive. True prosumption entails deeper and earlier engagement in design processes (ie Lego's next-generation Mindstorms) and products that facilitate customer hacking and remixing (iPod, PSP, and mashups)

Losing control
Customers will increasingly treat your product as a platform for their own innovation, whether you grant them permission to or not. As both the iPod and PSP cases illustrate, they invent new ways to create extra value by collaborating and sharing information. Over time, value migrates from your product or service to what customers do with the information. If you do not stay current with customers, they invent around you, creating opportunities for competitors. Inevitably, it is preferable to sacrifice some control than it is to cede the game completely to a more adept, prosumer-friendly competitor.

Customer tool kits and context
Forget about static, immovable products. If your customers are going to treat products as platforms anyway, then you may as well be ahead of the game. Make your products modular, reconfigurable, and editable. Set the context for customer innovation and collaboration. Provide venues. Build user-friendly customer tool kits. Supply the raw materials that customers need to add value to your product. Make it easy to remix and share. We call this designing for prosumption.

Becoming a Peer
After gaining some experience with this new world of prosumption you'll realize that your real business is not creating finishing products but innovation ecosystems. Companies will participate in these ecosystems in the same way that IBM participates in open source--it harvests value from Linux, but it does not own or control the Linux ecosystem. Similarly, Second Life creates an environment in which customers do 99 percent of the value creation. As prosumption matures, expect to treat customers like peers, not patrons.

Sharing the fruits
Customers will expect to share in the ownership and fruits of their creations. If you make it profitable for customers to get involved, you will always be able to count on a dynamic and fertile ecosystem for growth and innovation.

Don't think communism. Think of the eBay microeconomy instead. Hundreds of thousands of eBay's customers make their living there, while eBay takes a cut of their transactions. Indeed, with Second Life's customers creating so much of the game's content, it only seems right that they should own all of the IP rights to their creations and make real money by selling in-game assets. IP rights spur prolific rates of customer cocreation and make Second Life's thriving virtual economy a source of real-world income for customers. Why couldn't your products and services support similar kinds of value-added activities?

What Will Wright Reads

You are starting to see an number of outlets write profiles on Will Wright, the creator of The Sims. He is working on a new game called Spore, which looks to be his most ambitious yet.

The Wall Street Journal wrote a piece on him earlier this year (couldn't find the link). They mentioned some of his inspirations in the piece and I remember wanting to write a short post on them. I never got to it.

The New Yorker has written an even more extensive profile and Kottke has already written the bibliography.

Whole Earth Catalog

Back in a previous life, I believed that we could change the world. One of the books that gave me hope was The Whole Earth Catalog, co-edited by Stewart Brand.

The following quote is from the introduction to a new book called From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner from The University of Chicago Press.

To answer these questions, this book traces the previously untold history of an extraordinarily influential group of San Francisco Bay area journalists and entrepreneurs: Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network. Between the late 1960s and the late 1990s, Brand assembled a network of people and publications that together brokered a series of encounters between bohemian San Francisco and the emerging technology hub of Silicon Valley to the south. In 1968 Brand brought members of the two worlds together in the pages of one of the defining documents of the era, the Whole Earth Catalog. In 1985 he gathered them again on what would become perhaps the most influential computer conferencing system of the decade, the Whole Earth Lectronic Link, or the WELL. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Brand and other members of the network, including Kevin Kelly, Howard Rheingold, Esther Dyson, and John Perry Barlow, became some of the most-quoted spokespeople for a countercultural vision of the Internet. In 1993 all would help create the magazine that, more than any other, depicted the emerging digital world in revolutionary terms: Wired.

Read the forward here.

I will read the book and get back to you after I have finished.

Transcript of Blogging Teleseminar

We recently worked with Debbie Weil on a teleseminar for her book The Corporate Blogging Book. She has created a transcript of the best questions and their answers. You can download it at her website.

Talking Blogging with Debbie Weil

Debbie Weil is running a great offer in conjunction with us on her new book The Corporate Blogging Book. She will give you a seat at a free teleconference if you buy 5 or more books of her book from us. Read all the rules and regulations on her blog.

Killing time at the airport

New York Times talks about the safety of WiFi at airports and other public places. Some good advice.

"Robert Vamosi, a senior editor with the online technology publisher CNET, said wireless networks at airports — or for that matter, hotels or cafes — are not as secure as most people think.

“Someone may have some software on their computer that allows them to look at all the wireless transactions going on around them and capture packets that are floating between the laptop and the wireless access point,� he said.

These software programs are called packet sniffers and many can be downloaded free online. They are typically set up to capture passwords, credit card numbers and bank account information — which is why Mr. Vamosi says shopping on the Web is not a great way to kill time during a flight delay.

“Where I’d draw the line is putting in your bank account information or credit card number,� he said, adding that checking e-mail messages probably is not that risky, but if you want to be cautious, change your password once you are on a secure connection again."

Brand Autopsy's Best Business Blogging Book

John at Brand Autopsy has declared Debbie Weil's The Corporate Blogging Book the best. As John points out, there are alot of books that have been published in the category. The biggest splash was probably Naked Conversations. Here is John's conclusion:

Debbie’s book is the best of the bunch because it’s actionable. She wastes little space in telling stories about blogging and instead, shares practical insight and guidance on all the relevant issues businesses face when deciding how, when, where, and why to blog.

If you need a taste, Debbie wrote a ChangeThis manifesto that we re-released this month to coincide with the book's release. Check out the Beginner's Guide to Business Blogging.

Get Back In The Box - Rushkoff on other books

This is the final post in a series on Doug Rushkoff's Get Back In the Box.

In my last installment, I thought I would highlight his mention of other business books. Rushkoff has no hesitation about calling people out. His first swing is at HBSP's Got Game (John Beck, Mitchell Wade):

In a classic misunderstanding of play culture, a Harvard Business School Press book about how "the gamer generation is reshaping business forever" contends that kids who grew up with videogames need to be treated differently in the workplace. True enough, but the authors but the authors surmise that game play has made young workers more competitive "because the object of all of those games is to win." They couldn't be more wrong. Beyond technology, the main difference between video games and those that came before them is that many videogames have no winner. That should be a clue: the real difference in creating a work environment for the gamer generation is finding ways to allow them to participate actively and consciously in the evolution of the enterprise itself.

I would say he goes a bit further with Clotaire Rapaille, author of The Culture Code. In this section, he is referencing his Frontline documentary The Persuaders where he spent time with Rapaille (watch section four The Science of Selling):

I've watched another consultant, an eccentric French former psychologist named Clotaire Rapaille, utterly transfix the CEOs of dozens of Fortune 500 companies by claiming to have a system through which he can discern "the code" underlying each of their industries. Through focus groups and hypnosis sessions , Rapaille uncovers people's earliest remembered associations for anything from coffee to jet planes, in order to help clients redesign their products, packaging, and promotions in accordance with the buried archetype or "code".

One Boeing executive I interviewed fully believes that the new Dreamliner aircraft will achieve its success with customers primarily because of Rapaille's input. "It's not enough to make bigger baggage compartments. They have to be 'on code.' " Of course, the executive could not tell me Rapaille's code for the Dreamliner, for it I released it, the competition would be able to redesign its aircraft using the same secret formula.

An interesting feature of Rapaille's work is his insistence on hypnotizing not only random focus groups, but also key executives involved in making decisions. His combined role of hypnotist, psychologist, and brand guru puts his clients in a particularly passive--what Freud would call "regressed"--position The net result is to make these executives more dependent on his advice and support. From what I've witnessed at baronial estate in Tuxedo Park New York, his clients are quite under his spell. They drink champagne, marvel over his car collection, and listen with rapt attention as he explains that women's experience bearing children makes them more conscious of automobile interiors, or that a luxurious air travel experience is undermined by aggressive search routines at the gates. His insights are either absurd, obvious or both, but his audience of executives focus on his every inflection with their jaws slack and eyes glazed over.

By hypnotizing this clients, Rapaille also gains insight into their true personal and business aspirations. The information about airplanes he gets from airplane executives is just as, if not more, important than what he gets from their customers. For those who have forgotten how to get back to the source of their passion and expertise, a hypnotist and psychologist like Rapaille might be useful--at least in the short run--as a form of psychotherapy or internal inquiry. The problem is, of course, that, unlike a course of therapy where the patient learns to solve his or her own problems, here Rapaille ends up receiving credit for insights gained and retains the exclusive ability to mine for more.

If you stuck with me on this post, the first thing I like about the book is Rushkoff's challenge of other people's thinking. It is often too polite in the world of business thought and we don't get to work really works.

Prahalad Keynote on IT Conversations

IT Conversations has a 32 minute audio keynote of C.K. Prahalad. In this speech, he talks about how location is no longer a barrier to innovation. The talk is titled, "Emerging Hi-Tech Ecosystems".

IT Conversations has tons of great content. We have linked to them a number of times. Here is a quick sample of people you can hear:

• Malcolm Gladwell - Human Nature (10/2004) and On Blink (03/2005)
• James Surowiecki - Independent Individuals and Wise Crowds (03/2005)
• Chris Anderson - Economics of the Long Tail (03/2005)
• Clayton Christensen - Capturing the Upside (03/2004)
• Geoffrey Moore - Orchestrating the Stack (03/2004)
• Tom Kelley - Ten Faces of Innovation (11/2005)
• Barry Schwartz - Less Is More (10/2004)
• Robert Scoble and Shel Israel - The Corporation in a Blogging World (05/2006)
• Steven Johnson - Serious Games (10/2005)
• Lawrence Lessig - Free Culture; Chapter One (03/2004)

Future of the Book Part II

I thought this would be a good follow-up to Kate's post this morning.

I created a transcript for a portion of my interview with Pip Coburn (The Change Function, a JCS for June). I asked him what he thought the future of the book was given the upcoming release of The Sony Reader. Here is what he had to say:

When we go through the crisis side, I am not too sure there isn't anything doesn't work about the book. The length of the books is a question mark in a society that is getting more short term oriented. One of the reasons the Blackberry works really well is it answers that question of what I should do with the next 30 seconds while I am waiting for someone.

I think once we start to allow, if we do, Google to do through searches and scans of books, the amount of books people read will probably drop quite a bit across the next ten, fifteen years. The number of full books actually read will drop considerable, I suspect.

But, as far as the form factor, the form factor works pretty well. It is flexible. It doesn't break. You don't have to worry about batteries. You can scratch it. Not too many people worry about messing it up. So, I think it is actually going to be fairly slow for people to change.

There is also a nice sense of completion with a book, as you turn the pages. People use the phrase, "It's a page turner." No one every said it was a page-turner in a negative sense. Well you can mimic alot of those things.

I think Bill Gates is right that one of the elements that has to change quite a bit, and now we are getting to the total perceived pain of adoption side, is the form factor and your ability to read off of it.

Now score one for the people who say we are going to change. Alot of people are getting use to getting their news flows and information off of laptops and desktops. So, the society is changing in a parallel way as to how people changed from writing everything to using a keyboard. So, I think that is one element.

The second thing is how easy can they make the form factor so you can easily download what you want. Is it easy to set-up? All of those types of things. Is there a place like iTunes where there is a ubiquity of books - you can get any book that was every done on the planet, as opposed to going to the bookstore and maybe they have it or going to Amazon, and maybe they have it but you have to wait three days. I think alot of those issues are going to play into it.

I would not expect a quick conversion. I am certainly interested in it myself. With the Sony Reader, I expect my response will be not enough titles, slightly inconvenient.

I like my old book. I can take it to the beach. I can take it anywhere. It works pretty well for me.

We talked a little further. I mentioned that these reading devices have been around for some time. Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops bought some of them about fifteen years ago and they are still in the basement of one of the stores. Pip responded by saying that The Sony Reader and these old units probably won't look that much different. So, it is not the technology. What will be more important now is how the culture has changed in the last fifteen years.

You can listen to the whole interview here or buy a copy of The Change Function here. It goes on sale today.

Change Function Links

We are featuring The Change Function over on inBubbleWrap today. Here are some links for more info on the book.

I just posted an interview I did with Pip last week.

Pip led the May issue of Fast Company with a essay based on the book.

Tom Evslin at Fractals of Change has written a review endorsing the book. Shawn Lea also has a review. Marta Salij as a 10-second revu.

Long Tail Cover

Chris Anderson put the cover art to The Long Tail up on his blog last week.

We have galleys now and are reading it. The book comes out July 11th.

If you are still not on the Long Tail bandwagon, start with Chris' original piece in Wired and then get caught up on his blog.

800-CEO-READ's Rollyo Search

Rollyo is an interesting search. They allow you to limit your search and choose the sites that you would like the results to come from. I remember hearing about it when it first launched, but I couldn't find a use for it then. I have seen it pop up a couple of place recently and decided to try it out.

One of the things we try to do here on the Daily Blog is give you what others are saying about business books. We'll often see a article that creates the basis for the post and then might search for some supplemental material. The problem with most business book titles is they use common words (ie Execution, Satisfaction, The Wal-Mart Effect). If you do a google search, you get a couple of good hits, but most are junk.

I created a Rollyo search for business books. My goal was to find what the major periodicals and great business blogs are saying about books. I also included the family of 800-CEO-READ sites. You can choose up to 25 sites to include in your roll. You can see the list done the left hand side of the Rollyo page.

I have been happy with the results thus far. I was looking for some more material on Alpha Dogs by Donna Fenn. If you do a Google search on "alpha dogs", you get alot of junk. If you use the Rollyo search, you see the Inc. magazine mentions (Fenn writes for them). The gem was the Inc. TV interview that I would have never found otherwise.

So, feel free to use the search or create another that works for you.

Kevin Kelly's Cool Books- Part III

To finish up for the week, Kevin Kelly's final two choices were:

1491: New Revelations Of The Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann (kevin's description)

and

Programming the Universe: A Quantum Computer Scientist Takes on the Cosmos by Seth Lloyd (kevin's description)

Kevin Kelly's Cool Books - Part II

Today, Kevin suggests Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near.

For a little more, check out the extensive interview with Kurzweil in Tom Peters' Cool Friends section.

Kevin Kelly's Cool Books - Part I

Kevin Kelly of Whole Earth Catalog and Wired fame, has a blog that so lives up to its name called Cool Tools. He highlights all sorts of things that can help make your life easier ranging from silicone spatulas to longer term car rentals in Europe.
Kevin says he is going to be devoting the week to books:

While I gather more and more of my conceptual trends from blogs, and still remain an unabashed magazine junkie, there is nothing like a book to frame and surface the deeper news. The longer cycle of reflection demanded by the full rhythm of a book allows bigger questions to be asked and hopefully answered.

His first recommendation yesterday was John Battelle's The Search.

This morning he posted his second selection -- Edward Castronova's Synthetic Worlds.

Blogging on Business Books

There has been a lot of talk on the business book scene that I thought I should direct you to.

Robert Scoble thinks most business books suck. Obviously, I am a little partial to the subject, but I think walking into a bookstore and deciding what you are going to read based on what is on the shelves is a bit like walking into a grocery store and deciding what to eat based on what is on their shelves. Neither is going to give you a very good diet. Sure there are good things, but you need to know what you are looking for. (Robert has a book coming out at the end of the month - Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk With Customers.)

Guy Kawasaki is blogging. This is the man who wrote Rules for Revolutionaries and Art of the Start. He is writing some great stuff on VCs and entrepreneurship.

Tom Peters thinks the best book of 2005 is Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan. Now, the book is published in 2002, but he thinks it is still the only book on how to systematically get things done. Tom has been doing alot of reading and writing over the last six weeks. Here are some of the other books he has suggested:

• Prime Solution: Close the Value Gap, Increase Margins, and Win the Complex Sales by Jeff Thull
• To Be of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work by Dave Smith (of Smith and Hawken fame)
• Creative Company: How St. Luke's Became "the Ad Agency to End All Ad Agencies" by Andy Law
• Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space And Make The Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
• Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War by Robert Coram

Kevin Roberts: New and Improved

In January, Saatchi & Saatchi's Kevin Roberts is returning to business books with two titles.

The first is an expanded edition of Lovemarks: the future beyond brands. We have talked alot about this one (see blog search). The main thing you get in the new and improved is an additional chapter called "Diamonds in The Mine". Roberts talks about the shopping experience with the pictures and passion you'd find in the rest of the book.

The second title is a new one called Sisomo: The Future on Screen. The sub-subtitle is "Creating Emotional Connections in The Market with Sight, Sound, and Motion." Here is the first two paragraphs from the introduction:

People have always loved watching screens. We have all felt the attraction. In the early days of television, before we got a set of our own, I remember the fascination of televisions on display in store windows. Like everyone else, I'd stand on the street gazing in at the magic of the moving pictures and feel the future had arrived.

We are now living in that future. The Screen Age. Screens are informing, entertaining, communicating, connecting, transacting, controlling. Screens for every need and purpose. And as these screens spread everywhere in our lives, it is becoming clear that using them with skill and creativity is the solution to the key communications and marketing challenges of our time.

I really like this book. I think it is because it takes the topic and looks at it from lots of angles - profiles of different screens, the myths of television (he says the 30 second spot lives!), storytelling on screens, and examples of folks doing cool things on screens.

Web2.0 Business Books

With all this Web2.0 talk and all you budding entrepreneurs, I thought might direct you to few titles to help you with your new ventures.

First, I would recommend Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. Some have said it is the same sort of stuff you see in every startup book. I think Guy does a great job at getting to the heart of the matter whether it is positioning or pitching. The chapters that have the most revelance in the post bubble world are "The Art of Bootstrapping" and "The Art of Raising Capital".

The next book you might want to check out is Startups That Work. Joel Kurtzman, former editor of Harvard Business Review, worked with PricewaterhouseCoopers to do extensive research into what makes or breaks a new company. Here are a few thoughts that caught my attention:

• Of the 328 companies they studied between 2001and 2003, only 18 had gone bankrupt or had a serious negative business development (This support contentions from Start-up Nation; more research needs to be done...).
• Founding teams with a diverse set of skills tend to be far more successful than a single founding entrepreneur, especially if the members of the team worked together previously and had complementary skills and personalities (This would support similar ideas from The Partnership Charter).
• Make certain a marketing or sales person is a part of the founding team. Companies make big mistakes when they focus all of their resources on their products and services but not their markets. Don't worry of the technologists and the marketers disagree. You need them both even though they see the world differently. For start-ups, when conflicts arise, they have to be argued out or mediated toward a creative conclusion, not simply stopped.

FT/Goldman Sachs Business Book Award Finalists

This morning, they announced the finalists for The Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of The Year Award.

The finalists are:

• The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote The Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle (Portfolio)
• The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Globalized World in the 21st Century by Thomas Friedman (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
• Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (William Morrow)
• Fast Second: How Smart Companies Bypass Radical Innovation to Enter and Dominate New Markets by Constantinos Markides and Paul Geroski (Jossey Bass)
• The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Econonmist Examines the Markets, Power and Politics of World Trade by Pietra Rivoli (Wiley)
• DisneyWar: Battle for the Magic Kingdom by James Stewart (Simon & Schuster)

Each finalist receives £5000 (~$9000) and the winner will receive £30000 (~$54,000). The overall winner will be announced Monday, November 21st.

Stay Tuned....

What Bill Says CEOs Should Be Reading

Bill Gates held his annual CEO Summit last month.

We have a little inside scoop for you.

There were five books recommended to the attendees:

• The Trendmaster's Guide: Get A Jump on What Your Customer Wants Next by Robyn Waters


• Blue Ocean Strategy: How To Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne


• The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown


• FAB: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop--From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication by Neil Gershenfeld


• MarketBusters: 40 Strategic Moves That Drive Exceptional Business Growth by Rita Gunther McGrath and Ian C. Macmillan

Why Businesspeople Should Read Wired

I like Wired alot.

Most people think is a tech magazine. I think it is about the future and that is something all businesspeople should be aware of.

If you were reading the current issue, you would see Dan Pink's Q&A with Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat). You would read another great excerpt from Freakonomics. You would also see reviews for The Silicon Eye and Radical Evolution.

Bill's Predictions Ten Years Later

The Road Ahead by Microsoft founder Bill Gates is ten years old and Forbes has a rundown of what did and did not come to be.

The New Guy At HP

The Wall Street Journal reminded Jack and I that new HP CEO Mark Hurd co-wrote a book last year called The Value Factor. Here is the book blurb:

What is the one thing I have that my competitors do not have? What can I invest in that my competitors cannot replicate? Information. It's the new competitive edge.

Capitalizing on the information a company owns about its customers, suppliers and partners is now the value proposition for sustainable long-term growth. Authors Mark Hurd and Lars Nyberg go inside companies to see the value proposition in practice. Combining case studies and analysts' insights with common sense and surprisingly simple ideas for growth, The Value Factor shows how companies transform information into a competitive asset.

Hurd and Nyberg have access to some of the top companies in every industry and from around the world. In this book they share their unique perspective on what the innovators are doing to get ahead and stay ahead in the tough business environment of today and how top companies are meeting challenges and turning them into growth opportunities.

I am not sure it is a blueprint for what Hurd is going to do at HP, but it might give some insights.

Here are five direct tips from the article [sub. needed] on how to take over at a new company:

1. Dive into the company to learn about strategy, operating models, and people.
2. Be an engaged manager and get involved with multiple levels of the company.
3. Lay out key metrics by which you intend to gauge the company, and make those metrics transparent.
4. Let employees know you plan to promote from within.
5. Make sure the board, the management, and the CEO all have one script.

Wired's Rave Awards - Book Category

In the March issue (now on newsstands), Wired Magazine announced their 2005 Rave Awards. The categories range from science to art to industrial design.

The winner in this year's book category is On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. From Wired:

"A neuroscience manifesto might be the last thing you'd expect from the guy who conceived the PalmPilot PDA and the Treo smartphone. Between product launches, though, Hawkins has been studyingthe human neocortex for 25 years. "I was fearful that I might go to my grave and not communicate this stuff," he says. "The day I finished writing the book, I felt a huge relief. No matter what happens, the ideas are out there."

Hawkins' thoughts on thin-slicing in science:

"Intuition leads scientists astray every time," [Hawkins] says. "Your intuition about the nature of reality is very likely to be wrong. Instead, take careful look at what you know. The answer is hidden there."

Our reviewer Rob May wrote a review of On Intelligence at the beginning of January. He had similar thoughts on the impact this book will have.

Other nominees in the Rave Awards book category included:

The Pentagon's New Map by Thomas Barnett
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
O'Reilly Hacks Series by Rael Dornfest, Dale Dougherty, and Tim O'Reilly
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki

The blogosphere, according to the right

The blogosphere, according to the right
Hugh Hewitt’s skewed thesis on the 21st Century Information Reformation

By Shayne Bowman

2004 was the year of the blog. Merriam-Webster added the word “blog” to it’s official lexicon. Blogs made the cover of Time for Rathergate and were nearly named the magazine’s People of the Year. Bloggers covered the presidential conventions of both major parites; and impacted the outcome of the presidential campaign in numerous ways — through grass-roots reporting, fact-checking the media, providing analysis and perspective on issues, as well as fundraising, social networking and advocacy for candidates.

It’s no surprise that 2004 was also the year that weblogs began to significantly enter the awareness of the mass media consumer, achieving a collective readership of 32 million U.S. citizens.

A new book by nationally syndicated conservative talk show host Hugh Hewitt, Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World, aims to convince today’s leaders (in business, government, church, media, etc.) to pay attention to and engage an emerging new media power — the blogosphere.

The blogosphere is the term used to describe the sum total of all interactive blog communication. Hewitt ought to know something about the subject. He’s been writing about the rise of new media since 2001. Since HughHewitt.com was launched in early 2002, more than 10 million people have visited his weblog.

Unfortunately, right from the start, Hewitt’s conservative ideology takes over and distracts from otherwise sound messages in his Introduction. “People don’t trust the old mainstream media with anything like the old level of confidence,” says Hewitt. Okay, I’m with you Hugh. “There are plenty of books out there that explain what happened, but it basically comes down to the left-leaning ideolo