May poll wrap: Location Based Services: Fad or Future

On Foursquare I have: 1,700 checkins, 41 badges and 11 mayorships.  I’ve met new friends using the app and I keep in touch with many other friends through viewing and commenting on their checkins.  Nonetheless it still feels like early days with LBS.  New applications continue to come to market, existing applications are adding checkin capabilities and LBS vendors are adding new features.  Still there’s a lingering, “what’s it all about?” feeling.

Poll Results

Interestingly the poll showed a dead heat.  50% think Location Based Services are a fad and 50% think there is a future for LBS.  It will be interesting to try this poll again in 12 months.

 

photo credit renjith krishnan @ freedigitalphotos.net

Next up on #IMChat – Social influence measurement

–

Please join me, Zach N. Hofer-Shall, Sarah Glass, Suresh Susara and David Deal this Tuesday, May 17th at 2:00 eastern for the next #IMChat.  The topic will be social influence measurement.

Here is Zach’s post on the event.

–

Details

  • #IMChat is a weekly online chat focused on Interactive Marketing topics
  • It’s every Tuesday at 2:00 eastern
  • To join, just go to Tweet Chat

We’ll be covering the following questions in the upcoming session.

  1. How do you define online “influence”?
  2. What metrics do you use to calculate an individual’s influence?
  3. What challenges do you face with social influence measurement?
  4. What are your uses of knowing an individual’s social influence?
  5. What’s next in social influence measurement?

Please follow Suresh Susarla’s ettiquette rules during the chat.

photo credit renjith krishnan @ freedigitalphotos.net

Interactive Marketing Tweet Jam #IMChat

Create “On Ramps” For Innovation

Recently I wrote about 7 Steps To Creating An Innovative Culture.  Step 5 is to create “On Ramps”.  I’d like to drill down a bit more into that topic because I find it to be a way to innovations to market.

The Resource Conflict

Managers often feel overwhelmed by the amount of work they need to accomplish and dismayed by the amount of resources they have to work with — who wouldn’t like to have more bodies and money to attack an opportunity?  Yet, innovation can be stifled when 100% of resources are allocated.  Conflicts arise when new ideas must compete with resources that have already been allocated.  Promises have already been made. Expectations are already set.  These are difficult obstacles to overcome when trying to move innovations forward in this system.  The only way innovations can move forward is either increasing available resources (which usually takes too long to be effective) or to delay in flight projects.  This means breaking promises and resetting expectations.  It’s not a comfortable process for anyone.  This conflict is caputured in the diagram below.


Building On Ramps

The key is building innovation into the system.  Allocate a small percentage of resources for the purposes of innovation.  This will give the organization the ability to respond to market opportunities.  Create a system for deciding which innovations can and should move forward.  This “decision engine” must work quickly to vet and test ideas.  During earlier ideation phases you might have suspended judgment on whether an idea was feasible, but now is the time to apply a standardized rigor.  You have to be quick and merciless in killing ideas which should not move forward.  On the flip side you need to be able to advance good ideas quickly to take advantage of the opportunity.

In summary building “on ramps” creates a standard way to bring innovative ideas to market quickly.

Do you have innovation on ramps? Or maybe you have a different way of moving innovations forward?

Social Media convo at #iciconf

Load more