Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on September 9, 2008 – 5:01 pm
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
Last week, a local Dutch political party proposed a small emendation to a policy plan “Youth and alcohol, 2008″. Nothing extraordinary, you probably think. However, this particular addition caused a tide of media attention uncommon for such a local plan. The party suggested to distribute chocolate bars to the nightlife in order to keep them patient and avoid violence. “This is another, complementary action besides all existing controlling measures. Chocolate bars possess a small ingredient which makes people relax…”, says Gerben Hoogterp - the councilor of the party. The effect on society? A twofold reaction. The first group takes a rather sober, neutral point of view and argue whether chocolate is able to chill people down. The second group embraces the idea and consider it as an new opportunity to raise awareness for the society issues with nightlife, alcohol and violence. I’ll describe how you can use the next web to engage these two groups.
Regardless of who is right or wrong, I think the initiative should be able to have a huge impact on the society as long as you engage the heart of the society and enable them to hijack it. Make the youth the ‘owner’ of the idea and do not enforce it as a political leader. A profound brand hijacking strategy, new communication means and innovative way of thinking will mobilize the youth shortly.
Let’s discuss some chemicals first
The sugar in chocolate bars sparks the release of several nerve chemicals (including Endorphin) which result in a sense of well-being. Furthermore, it contains phenylethylamine, or PEA, which gives you the feeling similar to when you’re in love. (Elizabeth Somer- Why do I crave chocolate?). Therefore, there might be some relation between feeling ‘relaxed’ and eating chocolate. However this effect is not yet scientifically proven for human beings. Regardless of this, people enjoy eating chocolate and whether or not it stimulates an easy feeling, the political party endorse it as a effective method in mitigating collateral damage (e.g. violence, vandalism and even sexual assaults) of the nightlife.
Shaping the idea, raise the potential, ENABLE A BRAND HIJACK
I already mentioned it, the new measure might be very effective on the condition that it is well-executed and in line with the youths and their social environment. (more…)
I hope you like that post!
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Written on July 10, 2008 – 3:17 pm
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
Tuesday, IBM and Linden Labs (the creators of Second Life) announced that they’ve reached a breakthrough -It is possible to teleport your virtual characters to multiple platforms. A breakthrough because it evangalise the importance of data portability and interoperability for new web applications. Alright, so teleporting virtual characters among scattered virtual worlds becomes possible by now? Is it already possible to teleport my boring Second Life character to Google’s new virtual platform named Lively?
Lively
This week Google launched a new initiative that creates a real character in a virtual world surrounded by social networks. You can create a personal avatar and make or join a virtual 3d room, invite friends and get social. Not very innovative, unless you incorporate the fact that they also mashed up with other social networks as Youtube and Picasa. It now even becomes possible to project your own video on the plasma screen in your room. Well, other authors already did an extensive review on the application and business model opportunities. Therefore, no need to discuss the application myself.
Corporate Innovation Strategy
However, I would like to stress one interesting perspective of this story. I wrote an interesting article for CIO magazine (to be published in July 2008) in which I already mentioned the rewarding mechanisms and the particular time scheme of Google employees to create their own innovative projects. Again, Lively came about during Google’s “20 percent time” which is a rule of thumb for engineers to devote 1/5th of their time on their projects and innovation. In today’s world where customers bargaining power is rising and the need for innovation to differentiate is enormous, Google set an example for a valuable innovative strategy. In my daily practice as an innovation consultant I continuously notice how companies experience innovation. The innovation strategy is always a discussion about investing in your company’s portfolio or brand on the one hand, and fulfilling the daily operations on the other hand. Of course, I understand that Google’s time scheme is somewhat extraordinary, yet I do think that it can serve as a good example that valuable innovation requires investments both in capital and resources. Probably most of Goolge’s initiatives that come up during the 1/5th rule never reach a stage of becoming the next big thing, but Lively has the potential due to Google’s huge userbase and ability to integrate it with various other services.
Image: Flickrimage teleport (mercurialn)
Written on June 27, 2008 – 12:15 pm
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
Normally, I make an attempt to write articles in an optimistic and open way. (Okay, okay…with exception of my latest article about arranging a meeting in your next life.) However, in this article I would like to take up a rather gloomy position in order to foster the discussion about a new trend within the province of knowledge management.
I believe that social innovation platforms are doomed within organizational context. Why? The social aspect is still lacking and I’m quite sure about that. I noticed it in my daily operations and cases I’m involved in, and in my master thesis prior to my work as a consultant. In any case an organization wants to build a new platform that has to foster innovation, it seems that they continuously simply forget the social aspect of it. You cannot simply build an advanced technological platform and deploy it within you organization. Real innovation is fostered by people’s intrinsic values, organizational culture and rewarding mechanisms.
In most cases, the lack of use of an innovation platform is reproached to the effectiveness of internal marketing and promotion campaigns. But the real cause of the of the non-popularity goes far beyond that plain observation. An organization that want to foster innovation has to focus on the social issues, an technological platform should be given less priority.
Everybody entrepreneur
Three reasons why to focus on the social aspects and build a platform later on. First of all, is your organizational culture really that innovative? What kind of people do you recruit and employ? Are they open and willing to show entrepreneurship. Is entrepreneurship something that you call important, or is innovation something that is really deep-rooted in the whole corporate culture? Nedap is a good example of an organization that embeds innovation in the whole corporate culture. People in their company are really encouraged to show entrepreneurship. Nedap even does not use any grades for their employees and each employee is simply, yet clearly, called ‘entrepreneur’. Even the business cards don’t show any degree and just simply state the name and ‘entrepreneur’.
Start rewarding
Rewarding mechanisms are also still underexposed in most organizations. However, people simply won’t come up with new innovations if they know they probably don’t get any reward for it. They might do it for the first time, but certainly not for the second time. Unfortunately, most organization experience difficulties with redefining their embedded archaic metrics upon employees are rewarded. I do recommend a combination of short and long term metrics. Short term metrics focus on the added value on the short term, for instance in existing projects. Long term metrics focus on the result of innovation in the long run and measure the effect on business revenues. After all, only innovative organizations are able to increase business revenues year after year.
We really have to incorporate social issues in order to make social innovation work!
Written on June 3, 2008 – 5:42 pm
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
Dragon’s Den is a TV program which enables entrepreneurs to present their start-ups to VC’s and of course for the next Webbers - who’re happy to meet start-ups and new business ideas - a must see. Especially when someone is presenting a business plan which relates to social media, communities and next web functionalities and this happened yesterday. An entrepreneur presented nextlifemeeting.com which is a social website for people who want to meet their counterparts in their next life
NextLifeMeeting.com is a website for people who believe in reincarnation and want to make an appointment with like-minded in the future. You can define your profile on the website, define your profile of your past life……What? Wait a moment…..Ow, I see, if you follow the course at mypastlife.com you can uncover your personal life and profile of your past life…. Anyway, after you filled in your past life experience you can specify your focus in your past and future life and based on this focus you can make an attempt to meet each other in the nextlife. (As you would understand, you won’t be able to remember your password and profile, so focus points should enable you to keep your appointment in your next life – I guess).
As a I’m not an adherent of the faith related to reincarnation I don’t see the added value of social communities and social media for this project. And to be honest, I fully agreed with the VC’s who choose to not invest in the idea because it is simply worthless. Besides the architecture, interface and content (mix of Dutch and English) leaves much to desired. Therefore, credits to the creative brains behind the idea, negative kudos to the executor. I don’t want to meet you in this and next life at all.
Written on April 29, 2008 – 11:59 pm
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
Last weeks, multiple Dutch political parties debated about the potential of navigation devices in order to solve (or at least helping reduce) the traffic jams and congestion issues in the Netherlands. They argued about whether or not new generation of navigation devices should be able to reduce congestion problems and what kind of applications and functionalities would be required. In my opinion, it was a debate with a great value (though newspapers as well as bloggers don’t covered the debate!), both for society as manufacturers because it referred to a hot topic and the debate uncovered the urgency of navigation manufacturers to open up new markets and business models. The borderline: social computing (e.g. co-creation, crowdsourcing, mass participation or whatever buzzword you prefer) added to the next generation of navigation devices could help to inform and instruct drivers in a more adequate way resulting in a better transport flow and a better customer experience.
In this post, I would like to share some ideas regarding the next generation navigation devices and the relevancy and urgency for this mature market.
(more…)
Written on April 23, 2008 – 3:55 pm
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
At present, more and more companies are trying to achieve an authentic customer experience. However, it seems that the term ‘customer experience’ is getting a rather consultancy and marketing selling point; only a few parties have a real understanding of what authentic customer experience means and succeed in building such experience. Customers are in contact via different channels and companies should therefore build an authentic cross-channel experience instead of merely focusing on the online WOW experience.
(more…)
Written on April 15, 2008 – 8:00 am
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
Probably a lot of you guys went to The Next Web Conference. Though for those of you who didn’t, I’ve summed up the key arguments of the speakers in a two-minute a video. It gives a great overview of the speakers who attented there and shares some interesting insights. If you want to know more, browse to the live blog coverage of Anne and Ernst-Jan.
Unfortunately, it is only two minutes. So I’m afraid that you’ve to attend the full two days next year!
Written on March 26, 2008 – 12:00 pm
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
Yesterday, a new political party ‘Proud of Holland’ launched its party manifesto in the Netherlands. Or to be precise, postponed to launch its party manifesto because it will develop an online platform where people are involved in writing a new party manifesto. Visitors of the - to be launched - website will be asked to vote on polls and to help define a new strategy on an online forum - a wiki-like format.
Co-creating a new political strategy
Sounds as a good initiative, doesn’t it? Take the pulse of the rank and file of the party and ask the people what they actually want and how they think about particular topics. Certainly if you consider the rise of utilizing the wisdom of the crowd. Co-creating a new political strategy together with the people whom are - in fact - affected by the outcomes of that co-created strategy. However, I have my doubts for a number of reasons.
- DIGITAL DIVERSITY | There is still is digital diversity nowadays and therefore you might be asking whether or not the party’s program will reflect the opinion of the complete grassroots support.
- CHANGING THE STRATEGY | The political leader don’t want to elaborate on what she will do when the outcomes of the co-created strategy are not in line with her own vision. In other words, will she adapt her own vision or will she change the outcomes of the strategy defined by the wiki in the case they are not in line?
- LIFE HACKING?! | Online polls and wiki’s are sensible for fraud and underlying software can easily be hacked by people that want to affect the strategy. The process of defining a strategy is therefore not transparent.
- COMPLEXITY | In the science of public, there is a continuous discussion whether or not people are able to take decisions on political issues. Politics is continuous balancing the pros and cons for the whole society. It is not about defining the most promising and optimum strategy and solutions are an outcome of a political process. Besides, political leaders are paid to do their job, to make that though decisions and as a society you vote on a specific party because you believe in their vision and you think that party is capable of making the decisions which affect your life and the life of your children.
So, I have my doubts about the practicability of a wiki-like format to define new political strategies. We vote on political leaders because we think he or she is able to make the tough decisions with respect to the rank and file of the party and you don’t want to be bothered again and again on particular issues.
Written on March 20, 2008 – 11:50 am
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
Recently, I wrote an extensive post on how several companies are trying to utilize community knowledge in order to come up with more innovative products and services. In that article I discussed BrightIdea as a idea generation platform and elaborated on the pros and cons.
In these UtWotC series I would like to discuss another similar service with you named Kluster. Although the idea behind the two platforms is similar, the platform is not. Kluster distuiguishes itself by providing a universal platform for the generation of different ideas and project.
First, what is Kluster.
So, actually, Kluster provides a social platform which can be used for different purposes and projects, for different partners, and with different communities. Kluster incorporated incentives (both material and nonmaterial) which encourage communities to participate. Communities are set up around specific topics and as a participant you can decide to which project you contribute yourself.
In my opinion, Kluster has big pros:
- Big platform with different projects; Kluster attracts more communities than a platform which is build for the involvement of a single community
- The incentives system is great and powered by advanced algorithms
- It is a unique platform with it’s own currency (the Watt), own jargon (Sparks: proposed solutions to a phase, Amps: Amps allow participants to collaborate by proposing enhancements or refinements & Watts: Watts are supports for sparks)
- Advanced decision making tool; Kluster also incorporates a unique decision making tool which support companies to buy projects or ideas.
- The engagement of parties make it possible to fund ideas when they are selected
So, Kluster is a great platform which already has proved its success though I have some doubts about the universal approach of the platform. In other words, is it really possible to develop and use a universal platform that is fun, tempting and unique for your particular customers’ community?
Written on March 17, 2008 – 12:50 pm
Eric Bun, business innovation consultant
At the moment I’m reading Brand Hijack, a book by Alex Wipperfurth that discusses marketing in a revolutionary way. Instead of just writing a review, I decided to make a movie about this book. Here’s the teaser, more to come!
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
