Filling The Gaps

The Art of Internet Marketing (on FORA.tv)

A nice introduction to the area of online marketing… The speaker talks a bit about most of the ways you could use internet to help you generate greater profits – through banners, video, radio, text, image ads, forums, social communities, YouTube, corporate & business blogs, etc.

It`s not so much about great ideas on how to differentiate your business from your competitors but it helps to realize (once again) how valuable could be intenet marketing for your business or to think of some new ways you could try out.

What was mentioned a couple of times was the need of refining the online campaigns you run. It`s not just to be on the internet, it`s more about finding the right way to do so, the right image, place and so on.

Here you can find some of the author`s bookmarks related to the topic.

Thomas Friedman: Why We Need a Green Revolution (I have bought the book “Hot, Flat and Crowded” on my trip to Brussels and I hope I`ll have some free time to read it soon…)

Александър Петров: Кризата може да се окаже по-тежка от Голямата депресия

DB Research

The End of Time-Based Management?

[…] If you look at the history of using time to measure work, it’s a relatively recent concept starting around the 1930s, when assembly-line production became too complex to determine what you did or what I did. Prior to that, people were paid according to how many buttons they sewed: by task.[…]

[…] ROWE obviously has some limitations, especially in the service economy, where you need people present during certain hours. […]

[…] It definitely asks more of managers.[…]

Take a look at the comments as well as there are some good points worth to read.

( “How to measure the “unmeasurable”?”; “9-5 is an arbitrary system set-up in the Industrial Age (read Tim Ferris’s 4-hour workweek) We live in Enterprise 2.0.” , etc.)

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A SHORT COURSE IN BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS

[…]Beginning October 1st, Edge will begin to publish on a weekly basis the text, selected video highlights, and photos of the six classes comprising “A Short Course In Behavioral Economics”. Below, please find the Table of Contents; Introduction By Daniel Kahneman; Summary of Day 1 By Nathan Myhrvold; Summary of Day 2 By George Dyson; Link to the Photo Gallery; and Link to Class One.[…]

I really liked one of the quotes below this text- it says “[…]The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crisis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard.[…], Nassim Taleb

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Seven Questions: Thomas Friedman’s Plan for a Hot, Flat, and Crowded World

No need of presentation or quotes, just read it : )

Technology and the Global Economy

Quite an interesting conversation on the connection between technology and economic development. Talking a lot about innovation issues (why innovation is so important today, what does innovation ecology mean, what ODM stands for, Factor 4…or 10?, etc) and the “incredible excitement of change”.

I like the reflections on the world we are living in as an “age of discontinuity” instead of an age of continuity, as it was till now. (And as a result of that- is the set of assumptions & knowledge managers have is relevant in today`s world?) plus much more. It`s definetely worth listening to.

We watched this movie some hours ago and we`ll discuss it next week. It`s worth seeing

Yesterday, besides my normal lectures (on International Politics and EU Policies), I had an opportunity to attend a panel discussion:

“Innovations in business – how to be ahead of competitors in reacting to market trends?”

At the email I received some days ago was also written:

“Why it is worth coming? The debate is a unique chance to contrast our vision of fast changing market with experiences of top managers and try to answer vital questions of today business: How to distinguish between crucial changes and vagaries of fashion? How to react more effectively then competitors? How to maintain flexibility of a giant company?”

The talk was quite interesting, although went beyond the innovation topic. It was held by two of the best professors at SGH plus a young lady, working at Johnson&Johnson.
Below are some of my notes:

–> Before talking about innovations as something that enhance the success of a company we should first try to answer questions like “What is success?”, “How we could measure it?” etc. /the conclusion was that there`s no a single definition and it has different meaning for different companies/

–> Companies should try not to look good in market but to be good in it

–> One decides to invest at certain activity in case the latter would bring him/her value more than elsewhere

–> Market share it s not good enough indicator in terms of measuring success of a company (what would bring you growing market share in a dying market?)

–> There’s no a single definition for value creation (it differs for owners/stakeholders/shareholders; in ST or LT etc)

–> Innovations usually are not successful from the very beginning. Change requires learning. The question is how long should your patience last?

–> ST indicators are easy to be manipulated

–> Innovation could be started in order to catch up our competitors or to surpass them

–> Nowadays innovation is a “big world” in all companies, but usually most of the innovation ideas are too expensive to be implemented

–> The smallest innovations brings the most profit

–> Innovation means always risk. Most of the innovative products don’t bring success (profit) but help the growth of the “old ones”.

–> Innovations should be at first place at IT solutions. The problem is that most of the companies treat IT solutions as cost instead of value enhancing tools

–> Innovations are not only at portfolio level- distribution, delivery, information system etc

–> A good manager should be able to identify trends

–> Corporate culture could be seen as a competitive advantage for companies (“something that could not be copy, at least not easily”). It `s not equal to bonus system It`s intangible. It helps attracting same kind of individuals. It’s also something that employee could not understand, explain etc, just feel, being a part of.

–> Nowadays the relation with a customer could be much more important than the product itself.

If there would be a sentence I`ll always remember my “Network Economy” class with, this would be:

The only way a company could achieve a competitive advantage nowadays is through creating something that could not be copy!!!
Prof. dr hab. Piotr Płoszajski

We are trying to find out some ideas and solutions for reaction to the fast changing environment… And almost everything we come to has 3 main characteristics: it`s on-line based , it`s giving the customer an option for personalizing it and the major source of income for the business it`s not from the main product, but from the additional ones.

What I`ve heard today was also “Traffic is the king”…

Kevin Kelly: How does technology evolve? Like we did.