domingo, 30 de janeiro de 2011
quinta-feira, 27 de janeiro de 2011
quarta-feira, 26 de janeiro de 2011
segunda-feira, 24 de janeiro de 2011
13º salário - Você sabia disso?
Veja o que aprendi em um email enviado pela internet.
Salário mensal = R$ 1.000 X 12 meses = Salário anual = R$ 12.000
13º sal = R$ 1.000 então salário Total = R$ 13.000
Agora veja a matemática genial:
Salário mensal = R$ 1.000 (igual ao anterior) : 4 semanas = R$ 250 por semana (é equivalente por semana).
Como temos 52 semanas no ano então R$ 250 x 52 = ??????Advinha.. Salário total = R$ 13.000. Nesse caso, sem receber 13º.
Na verdade, o chamado 13º é apenas a reposição da perda de algumas semanas no ano daqueles meses que possuem 5 semanas.
Portanto, o 13º salário na verdade é apenas o salário normal recuperado. Vc sabia disso?
Salário mensal = R$ 1.000 X 12 meses = Salário anual = R$ 12.000
13º sal = R$ 1.000 então salário Total = R$ 13.000
Agora veja a matemática genial:
Salário mensal = R$ 1.000 (igual ao anterior) : 4 semanas = R$ 250 por semana (é equivalente por semana).
Como temos 52 semanas no ano então R$ 250 x 52 = ??????Advinha.. Salário total = R$ 13.000. Nesse caso, sem receber 13º.
Na verdade, o chamado 13º é apenas a reposição da perda de algumas semanas no ano daqueles meses que possuem 5 semanas.
Portanto, o 13º salário na verdade é apenas o salário normal recuperado. Vc sabia disso?
sábado, 22 de janeiro de 2011
quarta-feira, 19 de janeiro de 2011
terça-feira, 18 de janeiro de 2011
segunda-feira, 17 de janeiro de 2011
Draw your Business Model
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
Draw your Business Model
View more presentations from Alexander Osterwalder.
Business Model Camp, Hub Berkeley, CA
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
Business Model Camp, Hub Berkeley, CA
View more presentations from Alexander Osterwalder.
Creating Start-Up Success
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
Creating Start-Up Success
View more presentations from Alexander Osterwalder.
What Is A Business Model
Check out this SlideShare Presentation:
What Is A Business Model
View more presentations from Alexander Osterwalder.
sábado, 15 de janeiro de 2011
Book Review of Shift
Book Review of Shift
There’s a quote that goes something like this: “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” In the new book SHiFT: Harness the Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers, Craig Elias and Tibor Shanto will show you how to focus on your timing when you prepare to sell. This is not a new concept – but it has never been presented in such a way that a sales professional or business owner can grasp and implement almost immediately.
How I Got to This Book
Maybe the best way to explain how SHiFT will teach you to use “timing” to get to your prospect at the precise moment that they’re about to buy what you’re selling, is to tell you how I came to know Craig Elias and get this book.
I was in a conversation about strategic ways to use LinkedIn that people hadn’t quite caught on to yet when I heard about Craig Elias and his books SHiFT. I immediately went to Google and typed in the words “Trigger Events” and “Craig Elias” and came upon a LinkedIn Group. I’d say no more than 15 minutes after I clicked on the LinkedIn Group, my phone rang. It was Craig Elias (@CraigElias on Twitter)! Talk about timing.
When I asked him how it was that he called at that very moment, he mentioned that he had received a ping about my joining the group. He quickly reviewed my LinkedIn profile and decided that I was worth contacting directly. That is the power of trigger events at work.
What’s a Trigger Event, and How Can It Help You Be the Ideal Choice?
A trigger event is the moment when you are no longer just thinking or wishing or searching for a solution. It’s the precise moment when you are motivated to find and purchase a solution to your problem. Imagine wanting to upgrade your computer, but not doing anything, and then having it crash so you have to buy a new one. Of course, most trigger events aren’t that obvious or immediate. But they are just as powerful. Understanding what triggers a prospect to buy, who they choose to buy from and why is what you’ll learn in SHiFT.
A Magical Map to When Your Prospects Need You Most
The book starts with understanding the sales and marketing process from the buyer’s perspective instead of your own. Here’s a closer look:
The Status Quo: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Your prospects live in this space most of the time. They might have thought about making a change, but any proposed benefit clearly isn’t worth the effort or the risk.
Window of Dissatisfaction: Suddenly, the status quo isn’t quite good enough. ”The Window of Dissatisfaction occurs AFTER the prospect has experienced a trigger event, and decides that what he or she currently has is no longer good enough, but before they’ve decided to actually do anything about it.” This is the sweet spot for any seller, because it’s at this perfect point that the buyer is most likely to put a higher value on your offer if it shows up on time.
Searching for Alternatives:If no one has approached the buyer during the window of satisfaction, they go on the hunt for an alternative–and their perception of value suddenly shifts into judging mode. That means that it’s just about too late to woo them to your offer.
SHiFT: Your Portable Trigger Event Coach
SHiFT is not a complicated book. The buying cycle I described above is all there is to learn. This concept is introduced in the beginning; then each chapter gives you tools and insights to help you create your own sales and marketing system that grabs prospects at the very moment they are ready to choose you.
The beginning of each chapter starts with the heading, “If you don’t read this chapter you will miss out on the following,” and each chapter ends with a summary and a series of action steps for you to take. I could tell that it was written by sales experts because it took into account the fact that most of us want to get to the point and put it into action.
SHiFT Will Increase Your Bottom Line
If getting and keeping customers is part of your marketing plan, than SHiFT is the book for you. SHiFT will make you look like a mind reader because you’ll learn how to track and identify the trigger events that cause your ideal customer to start looking for new solutions. And that’s when you will appear with the perfect solution.
There’s a quote that goes something like this: “Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.” In the new book SHiFT: Harness the Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers, Craig Elias and Tibor Shanto will show you how to focus on your timing when you prepare to sell. This is not a new concept – but it has never been presented in such a way that a sales professional or business owner can grasp and implement almost immediately.
How I Got to This Book
Maybe the best way to explain how SHiFT will teach you to use “timing” to get to your prospect at the precise moment that they’re about to buy what you’re selling, is to tell you how I came to know Craig Elias and get this book.
I was in a conversation about strategic ways to use LinkedIn that people hadn’t quite caught on to yet when I heard about Craig Elias and his books SHiFT. I immediately went to Google and typed in the words “Trigger Events” and “Craig Elias” and came upon a LinkedIn Group. I’d say no more than 15 minutes after I clicked on the LinkedIn Group, my phone rang. It was Craig Elias (@CraigElias on Twitter)! Talk about timing.
When I asked him how it was that he called at that very moment, he mentioned that he had received a ping about my joining the group. He quickly reviewed my LinkedIn profile and decided that I was worth contacting directly. That is the power of trigger events at work.
What’s a Trigger Event, and How Can It Help You Be the Ideal Choice?
A trigger event is the moment when you are no longer just thinking or wishing or searching for a solution. It’s the precise moment when you are motivated to find and purchase a solution to your problem. Imagine wanting to upgrade your computer, but not doing anything, and then having it crash so you have to buy a new one. Of course, most trigger events aren’t that obvious or immediate. But they are just as powerful. Understanding what triggers a prospect to buy, who they choose to buy from and why is what you’ll learn in SHiFT.
A Magical Map to When Your Prospects Need You Most
The book starts with understanding the sales and marketing process from the buyer’s perspective instead of your own. Here’s a closer look:
The Status Quo: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Your prospects live in this space most of the time. They might have thought about making a change, but any proposed benefit clearly isn’t worth the effort or the risk.
Window of Dissatisfaction: Suddenly, the status quo isn’t quite good enough. ”The Window of Dissatisfaction occurs AFTER the prospect has experienced a trigger event, and decides that what he or she currently has is no longer good enough, but before they’ve decided to actually do anything about it.” This is the sweet spot for any seller, because it’s at this perfect point that the buyer is most likely to put a higher value on your offer if it shows up on time.
Searching for Alternatives:If no one has approached the buyer during the window of satisfaction, they go on the hunt for an alternative–and their perception of value suddenly shifts into judging mode. That means that it’s just about too late to woo them to your offer.
SHiFT: Your Portable Trigger Event Coach
SHiFT is not a complicated book. The buying cycle I described above is all there is to learn. This concept is introduced in the beginning; then each chapter gives you tools and insights to help you create your own sales and marketing system that grabs prospects at the very moment they are ready to choose you.
The beginning of each chapter starts with the heading, “If you don’t read this chapter you will miss out on the following,” and each chapter ends with a summary and a series of action steps for you to take. I could tell that it was written by sales experts because it took into account the fact that most of us want to get to the point and put it into action.
SHiFT Will Increase Your Bottom Line
If getting and keeping customers is part of your marketing plan, than SHiFT is the book for you. SHiFT will make you look like a mind reader because you’ll learn how to track and identify the trigger events that cause your ideal customer to start looking for new solutions. And that’s when you will appear with the perfect solution.
quinta-feira, 13 de janeiro de 2011
The Fallacy of “Industry Best Practice”
From the Bull | For many years I have heard people in business talk about industry best practice and expound on it as if it is some sort of Holy Grail. That, if you adopt it in your business, it will lead you to a business nirvana. This is a fallacy. In reality it’s just another vague business “buzz” word.
The problem is that “best” is a subjective term and open to interpretation. It’s really just someone’s opinion. Talk to 10 different experts and you’re likely to get 10 different versions of what an industry’s best practice is, depending on what they’re peddling. In any event what if your main industry competitors (and leaders) weren’t all that good to start with? Why would you want to benchmark yourself against that? Or adopt their practices?
Great companies seek to learn from the best but make sure that they retain the uniqueness that compels customers to buy from them. They also have a genuine desire to improve themselves. They do this by studying what their competitors are doing well (and badly). They also know their industries inside-out.
But this is only their starting point. They know that their industry will only provide some of the answers they need and that they have to dig deeper, and go wider, than this for information if they want to get the best results possible.
They aspire to gain knowledge from people and businesses that operate far outside their market-place or industry sector. They look outside as a way to shake up thinking, challenge old behaviours and to gain a wider perspective knowing that it will ultimately lead to better decisions being made.
Intuitively, they know that the strategies and practices that are standard in one industry can be revolutionary when applied in another.
There are many examples of this occurring. One that comes to mind is McDonalds who brought what was standard operating procedure (mass production and labour specialisation) in the car making industry and incredibly adapted it to the low-rent business of cooking hamburgers and fries on a large scale. Without this radical initiative which allowed them to create a replicable franchise-based business model McDonalds would never have been able to grow to over 31,000 restaurants globally. In hindsight it sounds like a simple, logical idea but at the time it was a game-changing event not just for McDonalds but for the fast-food sector in general.
Next time someone starts spouting off about “industry best practice” consider what they are saying in the context of your own business. Is it “best” for your business? Will it differentiate you or clone you on your competitors? Will it move you towards your longer term goals or be a distraction to your efforts?
Whatever else, take a balanced view and look far and wide for the answers. The key is to see and exploit the opportunities that your competitors don’t see. These are never obvious and that’s why you won’t find them if you’re focused inwards or are too busy worrying about someone else’s view of “industry best practices”.
The great ideas are out there but like McDonalds discovered they might be where you least expect to find them…
The problem is that “best” is a subjective term and open to interpretation. It’s really just someone’s opinion. Talk to 10 different experts and you’re likely to get 10 different versions of what an industry’s best practice is, depending on what they’re peddling. In any event what if your main industry competitors (and leaders) weren’t all that good to start with? Why would you want to benchmark yourself against that? Or adopt their practices?
Great companies seek to learn from the best but make sure that they retain the uniqueness that compels customers to buy from them. They also have a genuine desire to improve themselves. They do this by studying what their competitors are doing well (and badly). They also know their industries inside-out.
But this is only their starting point. They know that their industry will only provide some of the answers they need and that they have to dig deeper, and go wider, than this for information if they want to get the best results possible.
They aspire to gain knowledge from people and businesses that operate far outside their market-place or industry sector. They look outside as a way to shake up thinking, challenge old behaviours and to gain a wider perspective knowing that it will ultimately lead to better decisions being made.
Intuitively, they know that the strategies and practices that are standard in one industry can be revolutionary when applied in another.
There are many examples of this occurring. One that comes to mind is McDonalds who brought what was standard operating procedure (mass production and labour specialisation) in the car making industry and incredibly adapted it to the low-rent business of cooking hamburgers and fries on a large scale. Without this radical initiative which allowed them to create a replicable franchise-based business model McDonalds would never have been able to grow to over 31,000 restaurants globally. In hindsight it sounds like a simple, logical idea but at the time it was a game-changing event not just for McDonalds but for the fast-food sector in general.
Next time someone starts spouting off about “industry best practice” consider what they are saying in the context of your own business. Is it “best” for your business? Will it differentiate you or clone you on your competitors? Will it move you towards your longer term goals or be a distraction to your efforts?
Whatever else, take a balanced view and look far and wide for the answers. The key is to see and exploit the opportunities that your competitors don’t see. These are never obvious and that’s why you won’t find them if you’re focused inwards or are too busy worrying about someone else’s view of “industry best practices”.
The great ideas are out there but like McDonalds discovered they might be where you least expect to find them…
Create Experiences
Jan 12, 2011 -
A friend of mine, Peter Shankman, built and sold HARO, an email list for public relations professionals, and sold a few other companies as well. But what makes him smart isn't his results: it's where he started. Shankman stands out from the pack because he created a unique experience for his consumers.
Create An Experience
Shankman did a project with ScotteVest, a company known for its interesting clothing. The apparel provides hidden compartments for technology storage, like a secret iPad pocket. The project had a few key elements: an active Twitter presence, a strong blogging platform, a cause marketing element (they donated to Best Friends Animal Society), and several practical uses for its products.
You can implement these components into your own business. Do you sell an all-natural beverage? Set up a food truck, travel around New York City and hold tastings. Capture it on video, put the video online and use Twitter to start a conversation with your consumers.
Remember the Elements
Create an experience that's fun with a content-creation angle. The goal is to create something for your consumer to enjoy. Have a platform on the web and social networks, but also provide an offline marketing aspect that your consumers can participate in. Add a cause marketing effort.
Remember to Measure
Measure your success and the steps you took to get there. Make sure the final product can be tracked back to some tangible call to action. Awareness isn't enough; track the number of clicks on your links, how many people signed up for a demo and your increase in sales.
Chris Brogan is the New York Times bestselling author of Social Media 101, and president of New Marketing Labs. He blogs at chrisbrogan.com
A friend of mine, Peter Shankman, built and sold HARO, an email list for public relations professionals, and sold a few other companies as well. But what makes him smart isn't his results: it's where he started. Shankman stands out from the pack because he created a unique experience for his consumers.
Create An Experience
Shankman did a project with ScotteVest, a company known for its interesting clothing. The apparel provides hidden compartments for technology storage, like a secret iPad pocket. The project had a few key elements: an active Twitter presence, a strong blogging platform, a cause marketing element (they donated to Best Friends Animal Society), and several practical uses for its products.
You can implement these components into your own business. Do you sell an all-natural beverage? Set up a food truck, travel around New York City and hold tastings. Capture it on video, put the video online and use Twitter to start a conversation with your consumers.
Remember the Elements
Create an experience that's fun with a content-creation angle. The goal is to create something for your consumer to enjoy. Have a platform on the web and social networks, but also provide an offline marketing aspect that your consumers can participate in. Add a cause marketing effort.
Remember to Measure
Measure your success and the steps you took to get there. Make sure the final product can be tracked back to some tangible call to action. Awareness isn't enough; track the number of clicks on your links, how many people signed up for a demo and your increase in sales.
Chris Brogan is the New York Times bestselling author of Social Media 101, and president of New Marketing Labs. He blogs at chrisbrogan.com
How Do You Transform Good Research Into Great Innovations?
Jon Kolko's three strategies for making ideas flow fast, after you've done your homework.
This is the first essay in a three-part series by Jon Kolko, author of the new book Exposing the Magic of Design, on how to embrace design synthesis in your organization.
You've just completed design research in the field, capturing hours of video, thousands of photos, artifacts, papers, and documents. And now, you're stumped and overwhelmed. What should you do next? How do you do it? And how do you know when you've done a good job?
Design synthesis -- the process of translating data and research into knowledge -- is the most critical part of the design process. Yet in our popular discussions of design and innovation, we've largely ignored this fundamental role. We engage in debates and discussions about process methodologies (waterfall vs. agile, user-centered design vs. technology-driven design) and management techniques (topgrading, negotiation), yet we rarely engage in conversation about incubation and translation: making meaning out of the data we've gathered from research, as we strive for innovation. It's as if this part of design is magical, and for us to formalize our techniques would somehow call attention to our sleight of hand.
We rarely engage in conversation about making meaning out of data.
Without a formal strategy and approach to synthesis, experienced designers rely on their intuition, built up over years of trial and error. "Just trust me," says the old-guard, and the discipline of design loses credibility. Worse, younger designers flail and waste precious time, becoming frustrated and ultimately rejecting the ethnographic research methods themselves. Yet it isn't the research methods that are at fault, as research itself does not produce new ideas. The approaches to incubation and translation can be formalized, and to do so offers a great service to designers who are struggling to work through increasingly complicated problems in business and culture. During design synthesis, truly revolutionary innovations emerge.
Focusing on Activity and Action
Most of us engaged in large-scale design efforts agree that ethnographic research is required to build empathy and understanding. Yet immediately after research has been conducted, a period of complacent inaction emerges. The team is overwhelmed, and without a clear indication of what to do next, they sit, idle, sifting through the transcripts and video with no rhyme or reason to their method. In my experience, clients -- reacting to this inaction -- dismiss the entire value of research at all. Similarly, creative directors -- frustrated with a lack of forward movement -- often circumvent process and rely on their personal experiences, doing whatever worked well last time, again. Precious time is lost; ideas become flat and tired; the team tends towards inertia. Here are three tactics to overcome this inertia.
1. Get out of the laptop. The data created or gathered from contextual research will often take many forms: photographs, video clips, transcripts, requirements lists, magazine clippings, and other artifacts related to the problem. In an effort to maintain some sense of coherence, we’ll frequently horde the data in our laptops. The digital format lets us easily organize ourselves around files, folders, wikis and databases. But the file structure also arbitrarily limits the ability to manipulate individual pieces of data freely across file types, to form connections between pieces of data, and to manipulate the data quickly. The physical limitation of the laptop (the size), combined with the digital limitations of the software (the organizational schema), dramatically limits our ability to understand the research in totality. Externalize the data through a process of spatialization. This is the quintessential (and unfortunately overplayed) image of the designer moving Post-it notes around (typically on a glass wall, and usually photographed through frosted glass with a dramatic depth of field). Each Post-it contains a piece of data. A week of research will generate thousands of data points. Take the time to rigorously move from a digital medium to the physical world.
2. Identify and celebrate patterns and anomalies. As your data is now quite literally all around you, methodically identify relationships between customer utterances, feature requests, technical constraints, and other data points. These relationships are hidden in the data, and it's up to you and your team to identify them; the unique disciplinary makeup of the team will determine the lens through which you examine each data point. Quite literally, compare note 1 and note 2, and if they are related, place them next to each other. Repeat this, through several passes, over the entire room. Time-box the exercise based on your schedule; when you are done, look carefully at patterns you’ve discovered, as these can begin to articulate opportunities for “low-hanging fruit” or “quick hits”. But don't discard the extreme outliers, either -- as these articulate opportunities for dramatic and radical innovation.
If the data isn't modeled, it never happened.
3. Build a model of something, anything. A model is a visual representation of an idea; we use models to understand, and to communicate, and to simplify. Build a model of your data. Start with circles and arrows, and connect noun and verb pairs. Identify existing or potential work flow changes, and map them in a process flow. Extract the power dynamics implicit in any human system (literally, the people who hold the power, and whom they hold it over), and make a chart of this data. Because these are thinking tools, tools for synthesis, there’s only one wrong way to do this: not doing it at all. Looking at the data and talking about the data doesn't count. If it isn't modeled, written, drawn, and otherwise solidified in an artifact, it never happened.
These tactics are fundamental for making sense of gathered research data, in order to move from data to information. This is the beginning of synthesis: Making meaning of data in order to produce new, compelling, and appropriate innovations. These tactics can be applied to the design of new products, both physical and digital, and to business process problems, systems and services, and even to complicated issues of channel optimization, go-to-market strategies, and other complication core business issues.
In Part II of this series, I'll describe the culture that's necessary to support these types of activities. See you next week.
JON KOLKO
Jon Kolko is the Executive Director of Design Strategy at Thinktiv, a venture accelerator in Austin, Texas. Jon is also the ... Read more
This is the first essay in a three-part series by Jon Kolko, author of the new book Exposing the Magic of Design, on how to embrace design synthesis in your organization.
You've just completed design research in the field, capturing hours of video, thousands of photos, artifacts, papers, and documents. And now, you're stumped and overwhelmed. What should you do next? How do you do it? And how do you know when you've done a good job?
Design synthesis -- the process of translating data and research into knowledge -- is the most critical part of the design process. Yet in our popular discussions of design and innovation, we've largely ignored this fundamental role. We engage in debates and discussions about process methodologies (waterfall vs. agile, user-centered design vs. technology-driven design) and management techniques (topgrading, negotiation), yet we rarely engage in conversation about incubation and translation: making meaning out of the data we've gathered from research, as we strive for innovation. It's as if this part of design is magical, and for us to formalize our techniques would somehow call attention to our sleight of hand.
We rarely engage in conversation about making meaning out of data.
Without a formal strategy and approach to synthesis, experienced designers rely on their intuition, built up over years of trial and error. "Just trust me," says the old-guard, and the discipline of design loses credibility. Worse, younger designers flail and waste precious time, becoming frustrated and ultimately rejecting the ethnographic research methods themselves. Yet it isn't the research methods that are at fault, as research itself does not produce new ideas. The approaches to incubation and translation can be formalized, and to do so offers a great service to designers who are struggling to work through increasingly complicated problems in business and culture. During design synthesis, truly revolutionary innovations emerge.
Focusing on Activity and Action
Most of us engaged in large-scale design efforts agree that ethnographic research is required to build empathy and understanding. Yet immediately after research has been conducted, a period of complacent inaction emerges. The team is overwhelmed, and without a clear indication of what to do next, they sit, idle, sifting through the transcripts and video with no rhyme or reason to their method. In my experience, clients -- reacting to this inaction -- dismiss the entire value of research at all. Similarly, creative directors -- frustrated with a lack of forward movement -- often circumvent process and rely on their personal experiences, doing whatever worked well last time, again. Precious time is lost; ideas become flat and tired; the team tends towards inertia. Here are three tactics to overcome this inertia.
1. Get out of the laptop. The data created or gathered from contextual research will often take many forms: photographs, video clips, transcripts, requirements lists, magazine clippings, and other artifacts related to the problem. In an effort to maintain some sense of coherence, we’ll frequently horde the data in our laptops. The digital format lets us easily organize ourselves around files, folders, wikis and databases. But the file structure also arbitrarily limits the ability to manipulate individual pieces of data freely across file types, to form connections between pieces of data, and to manipulate the data quickly. The physical limitation of the laptop (the size), combined with the digital limitations of the software (the organizational schema), dramatically limits our ability to understand the research in totality. Externalize the data through a process of spatialization. This is the quintessential (and unfortunately overplayed) image of the designer moving Post-it notes around (typically on a glass wall, and usually photographed through frosted glass with a dramatic depth of field). Each Post-it contains a piece of data. A week of research will generate thousands of data points. Take the time to rigorously move from a digital medium to the physical world.
2. Identify and celebrate patterns and anomalies. As your data is now quite literally all around you, methodically identify relationships between customer utterances, feature requests, technical constraints, and other data points. These relationships are hidden in the data, and it's up to you and your team to identify them; the unique disciplinary makeup of the team will determine the lens through which you examine each data point. Quite literally, compare note 1 and note 2, and if they are related, place them next to each other. Repeat this, through several passes, over the entire room. Time-box the exercise based on your schedule; when you are done, look carefully at patterns you’ve discovered, as these can begin to articulate opportunities for “low-hanging fruit” or “quick hits”. But don't discard the extreme outliers, either -- as these articulate opportunities for dramatic and radical innovation.
If the data isn't modeled, it never happened.
3. Build a model of something, anything. A model is a visual representation of an idea; we use models to understand, and to communicate, and to simplify. Build a model of your data. Start with circles and arrows, and connect noun and verb pairs. Identify existing or potential work flow changes, and map them in a process flow. Extract the power dynamics implicit in any human system (literally, the people who hold the power, and whom they hold it over), and make a chart of this data. Because these are thinking tools, tools for synthesis, there’s only one wrong way to do this: not doing it at all. Looking at the data and talking about the data doesn't count. If it isn't modeled, written, drawn, and otherwise solidified in an artifact, it never happened.
These tactics are fundamental for making sense of gathered research data, in order to move from data to information. This is the beginning of synthesis: Making meaning of data in order to produce new, compelling, and appropriate innovations. These tactics can be applied to the design of new products, both physical and digital, and to business process problems, systems and services, and even to complicated issues of channel optimization, go-to-market strategies, and other complication core business issues.
In Part II of this series, I'll describe the culture that's necessary to support these types of activities. See you next week.
JON KOLKO
Jon Kolko is the Executive Director of Design Strategy at Thinktiv, a venture accelerator in Austin, Texas. Jon is also the ... Read more
terça-feira, 11 de janeiro de 2011
segunda-feira, 10 de janeiro de 2011
Ano novo
Ano Novo
Quando o fim do ano se aproxima, chega o tempo de esperança. A atmosfera se renova com um novo ar. As pessoas ficam ávidas por renovação e derrubam resistências. Têm mais fé.
O cenário da festa de Ano Novo é em geral curioso e único. Gente extasiada, cheia de encanto pela importância da data, expressando vibrantes votos e desejos, boa comida e bebida, amigos, parentes, familiares, tudo ajuda na proposta de um tempo novo de grandes oportunidades e sucesso.
As pessoas perguntam: “Planos de fim de ano funcionam?” Resposta: “Quase nunca”. Razões? Basicamente duas. A primeira: são feitos para um prazo longo demais. Segunda: ninguém se lembra de contabilizar os recursos que deverão ser empregados na sua realização.
PRAZO
Um ano é muito tempo. Doze meses, 365 dias, 8.760 horas. a cada minuto coisas demais acontecem, escolhas são feitas, crenças são geradas e novos rumos estabelecidos.
Na realidade objetiva, cada novo segundo é o início de um ano novo. Ele já está ai. Uma data em si nada tem de diferente, pois o tempo é vazio – nós o preenchemos.
Mudar o calendário não faz a vida tornar-se cor-de-rosa ou azul. Roupa branca, ir à praia, saltar sete marolas ou comer grãos de romã são elementos que, no máximo, despertam a consciência para o reinício de um ciclo. São apenas signos, superstições, costumes, sem qualquer poder em si, por mais fé que se tenha e por mais insano que seja ter fé em coisas.
Quase todos esquecem de que o modo como vemos os fatos, inegavelmente faz toda a diferença. Não podemos evitar que o carro enguice, que o avião atrase ou que chova forte numa sexta-feira à noite, mas o modo como reagimos a tudo isto, só depende de nós e irá determinar a qualidade de vida que nós e os demais teremos em consequência disso.
O tempo flui, segundo a segundo. Não há números que o distinga. Na primeira manhã de janeiro, nada terá mudado além dos marcadores de tempo - padrões convencionados. A vida e as nossas ações não distinguem isso.
PLANOS
Se você vai fazer planos e espera que funcionem, a providência mais inteligente é diminuir o prazo a que se aplicam. Warren Buffet, um dos milionários mais inteligentes da atualidade,costuma dizer: "Eu não tento saltar barreiras de dois metros de altura. Prefiro procurar as de trinta centímetros que eu posso transpor com apenas um passo". Planos devem ser simples, práticos e fáceis de ser empreendidos em curto espaço de tempo.
A regra é: “Não faça planos para um ano inteiro”. Cada hora tem importância. Metas simples e alvos próximos são mais fáceis de se alcançar. É melhor dez pequenos sucessos por dia do que um grande acerto por semana. Esta contabilidade produz energia positiva para a continuidade do processo. Se suas metas forem trabalhadas semanalmente, você chegará a um mês com muitos sucesso somados e, então, seu ano será bem sucedido. Este é o segredo.
MUDE SEU MODELO MENTAL
A unidade básica de medida do sucesso na vida não é o tempo, mas a atitude. É o nosso comportamento e o processo decisório que adotamos que determinam o que somos, quem somos e como estaremos no futuro.
Uma metáfora significativa é um cofrinho que se enche com moedas. É de uma em uma que se consegue isto. Nossos atos e os resultados que obtemos através deles a cada minuto ou decisão constróem o sucesso de todo um dia. Portanto, o sucesso de um ano todo corresponde à soma de sucessos que somos capazes de juntar, um a um, em todas as áreas da vida, a cada mínima fração do tempo. Para os que desenvolveram a habilidade de aprender com tudo, até os erros e prejuízos se transformam em ganhos. Tudo depende da conduta, da atitude e do modo como se vêem os fatos.
OS RECURSOS
Nosso estado interior é determinante.
Há estados que habilitam – confiança, amor, força interior, alegria, êxtase, crença – e deixam sair grandes mananciais de poder pessoal e realizações. Há, também, os estados paralisantes – confusão, depressão, medo, ansiedade, tristeza, frustração – que nos deixam sem poder.
Todos nós entramos e saímos de bons e maus estados. Entender nossos estados é a chave para promover mudanças e conseguir excelência.
Sempre fazemos o melhor que podemos com os recursos de que dispomos. Mas, algumas vezes, nos encontramos em estados sem recursos. A chave, então, é tomar conta de nossos estados e, assim, termos poder sobre nossos comportamentos. E isso é possível.
A participação de nossa fisiologia é de grande peso. Coisas como tensão muscular, o que comemos, como e quanto respiramos, nossa postura, o nível global de nosso funcionamento bioquímico – enzimas, hormônios, glicemia, etc – provocam impacto importante sobre nosso estado e, por conseguinte, influenciam nosso comportamento.
Pensando bem, a maioria de nossos estados interiores acontece sem qualquer direcionamento consciente de nossa parte. Vemos alguma coisa e respondemos a ela entrando num estado positivo ou negativo sem fazer um balanço de quais serão as conseqüências disso. Assim, nossos planos se frustram. Sem controle de nosso estado, acabamos agindo de modo contraditório à esperança com que fizemos nossos planos no início do ano.
A diferença entre os que falham em realizar suas metas na vida e os que são bem-sucedidos é a exata diferença entre aqueles que não conseguem se colocar num estado de altos recursos e aqueles que, com segurança, se põem num estado de energia que os ajuda em suas realizações.
Isso depende de cada um. Não tem nada a ver com reveillon, com fogos de artifício, com o lugar onde estamos ou com a cor da roupa que usamos no Ano Novo.
______________________
Fonte: Consultor Shapiro
Quando o fim do ano se aproxima, chega o tempo de esperança. A atmosfera se renova com um novo ar. As pessoas ficam ávidas por renovação e derrubam resistências. Têm mais fé.
O cenário da festa de Ano Novo é em geral curioso e único. Gente extasiada, cheia de encanto pela importância da data, expressando vibrantes votos e desejos, boa comida e bebida, amigos, parentes, familiares, tudo ajuda na proposta de um tempo novo de grandes oportunidades e sucesso.
As pessoas perguntam: “Planos de fim de ano funcionam?” Resposta: “Quase nunca”. Razões? Basicamente duas. A primeira: são feitos para um prazo longo demais. Segunda: ninguém se lembra de contabilizar os recursos que deverão ser empregados na sua realização.
PRAZO
Um ano é muito tempo. Doze meses, 365 dias, 8.760 horas. a cada minuto coisas demais acontecem, escolhas são feitas, crenças são geradas e novos rumos estabelecidos.
Na realidade objetiva, cada novo segundo é o início de um ano novo. Ele já está ai. Uma data em si nada tem de diferente, pois o tempo é vazio – nós o preenchemos.
Mudar o calendário não faz a vida tornar-se cor-de-rosa ou azul. Roupa branca, ir à praia, saltar sete marolas ou comer grãos de romã são elementos que, no máximo, despertam a consciência para o reinício de um ciclo. São apenas signos, superstições, costumes, sem qualquer poder em si, por mais fé que se tenha e por mais insano que seja ter fé em coisas.
Quase todos esquecem de que o modo como vemos os fatos, inegavelmente faz toda a diferença. Não podemos evitar que o carro enguice, que o avião atrase ou que chova forte numa sexta-feira à noite, mas o modo como reagimos a tudo isto, só depende de nós e irá determinar a qualidade de vida que nós e os demais teremos em consequência disso.
O tempo flui, segundo a segundo. Não há números que o distinga. Na primeira manhã de janeiro, nada terá mudado além dos marcadores de tempo - padrões convencionados. A vida e as nossas ações não distinguem isso.
PLANOS
Se você vai fazer planos e espera que funcionem, a providência mais inteligente é diminuir o prazo a que se aplicam. Warren Buffet, um dos milionários mais inteligentes da atualidade,costuma dizer: "Eu não tento saltar barreiras de dois metros de altura. Prefiro procurar as de trinta centímetros que eu posso transpor com apenas um passo". Planos devem ser simples, práticos e fáceis de ser empreendidos em curto espaço de tempo.
A regra é: “Não faça planos para um ano inteiro”. Cada hora tem importância. Metas simples e alvos próximos são mais fáceis de se alcançar. É melhor dez pequenos sucessos por dia do que um grande acerto por semana. Esta contabilidade produz energia positiva para a continuidade do processo. Se suas metas forem trabalhadas semanalmente, você chegará a um mês com muitos sucesso somados e, então, seu ano será bem sucedido. Este é o segredo.
MUDE SEU MODELO MENTAL
A unidade básica de medida do sucesso na vida não é o tempo, mas a atitude. É o nosso comportamento e o processo decisório que adotamos que determinam o que somos, quem somos e como estaremos no futuro.
Uma metáfora significativa é um cofrinho que se enche com moedas. É de uma em uma que se consegue isto. Nossos atos e os resultados que obtemos através deles a cada minuto ou decisão constróem o sucesso de todo um dia. Portanto, o sucesso de um ano todo corresponde à soma de sucessos que somos capazes de juntar, um a um, em todas as áreas da vida, a cada mínima fração do tempo. Para os que desenvolveram a habilidade de aprender com tudo, até os erros e prejuízos se transformam em ganhos. Tudo depende da conduta, da atitude e do modo como se vêem os fatos.
OS RECURSOS
Nosso estado interior é determinante.
Há estados que habilitam – confiança, amor, força interior, alegria, êxtase, crença – e deixam sair grandes mananciais de poder pessoal e realizações. Há, também, os estados paralisantes – confusão, depressão, medo, ansiedade, tristeza, frustração – que nos deixam sem poder.
Todos nós entramos e saímos de bons e maus estados. Entender nossos estados é a chave para promover mudanças e conseguir excelência.
Sempre fazemos o melhor que podemos com os recursos de que dispomos. Mas, algumas vezes, nos encontramos em estados sem recursos. A chave, então, é tomar conta de nossos estados e, assim, termos poder sobre nossos comportamentos. E isso é possível.
A participação de nossa fisiologia é de grande peso. Coisas como tensão muscular, o que comemos, como e quanto respiramos, nossa postura, o nível global de nosso funcionamento bioquímico – enzimas, hormônios, glicemia, etc – provocam impacto importante sobre nosso estado e, por conseguinte, influenciam nosso comportamento.
Pensando bem, a maioria de nossos estados interiores acontece sem qualquer direcionamento consciente de nossa parte. Vemos alguma coisa e respondemos a ela entrando num estado positivo ou negativo sem fazer um balanço de quais serão as conseqüências disso. Assim, nossos planos se frustram. Sem controle de nosso estado, acabamos agindo de modo contraditório à esperança com que fizemos nossos planos no início do ano.
A diferença entre os que falham em realizar suas metas na vida e os que são bem-sucedidos é a exata diferença entre aqueles que não conseguem se colocar num estado de altos recursos e aqueles que, com segurança, se põem num estado de energia que os ajuda em suas realizações.
Isso depende de cada um. Não tem nada a ver com reveillon, com fogos de artifício, com o lugar onde estamos ou com a cor da roupa que usamos no Ano Novo.
______________________
Fonte: Consultor Shapiro
HBS Faculty on 2010's Biggest Business Developments
Published: December 27, 2010
Author: Staff
Executive Summary:
Three Harvard Business School professors—former Medtronic chairman and CEO Bill George, economist and entrepreneurship expert William Sahlman, and innovation and strategy authority Rosabeth Moss Kanter—offer their thoughts on the most significant business and economic developments of 2010. Key concepts include:
Social networking is the most significant business development of 2010, says Bill George, noting that some 600 million people are now active on Facebook—and half of them spend at least an hour per day on the site.
The problems of the Great Recession continued to dominate the economy in 2010, according to Bill Sahlman, who says that the popular media have grossly underestimated both the current deficit and level of debt in the United States.
Rosabeth Kanter points out that new technology shined in 2010, in spite of the world's economic anxieties. She gives kudos to the Apple iPad, which accelerated the trend toward digital content.
EASY PRINT VIEW
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About Faculty in this Article:
Bill George is a Professor of Management Practice, Henry B. Arthur Fellow of Ethics, at Harvard Business School.
More Working Knowledge from William W. George
William W. George - Faculty Research Page
About Faculty in this Article:
William Sahlman is the Dimitri V. D'Arbeloff - MBA Class of 1955 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
More Working Knowledge from William A. Sahlman
William A. Sahlman - Faculty Research Page
About Faculty in this Article:
Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
More Working Knowledge from Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Rosabeth Moss Kanter - Faculty Research Page
From the problems posed by the Great Recession to the devastation in Haiti and the Gulf of Mexico, from the continuing economic growth of India and China to a cascade of entrepreneurial ventures, the year 2010 offered a wide assortment of accomplishments and disappointments. We asked three Harvard Business School professors—former Medtronic chairman and CEO Bill George, economist and entrepreneurship expert Bill Sahlman, and innovation and strategy authority Rosabeth Moss Kanter—to offer their thoughts on some of the year's most significant developments in the world of business and economics.
Bill George, Professor of Management Practice
Social networking is the most significant business development of 2010, topping the resurgence of the U.S. automobile industry. During the year social networking morphed from a personal communications tool for young people into a new vehicle that business leaders are using to transform communications with their employees and customers, as it shifts from one-way transmission of information to two-way interaction. That's one reason Time magazine just named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year.
"The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers, who may become obsolete when layers of managers are no longer needed to convey messages up and down the organization."
A year ago many people poked fun at Facebook as a place where kids shared their latest party news. Today more than 600 million users worldwide are active on the site. The most rapidly growing demographic is people over forty. More than 300 million people spend at least one hour a day on Facebook. Approximately two hundred million people are active on Twitter in spite of—or because of—its 140-character limitation. Another 100 million use LinkedIn. None of these social networks even existed at the beginning of the decade.
Leaders like IBM's Sam Palmisano, PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi, Apple's Steve Jobs, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Carlson's Marilyn Nelson, and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria are all active social network users. Why? Because these social networks are a unique way of broadly communicating real-time messages to the audiences they want to reach. They can write a message anywhere, anytime, and share it with interested parties without any public relations meddling, speech writers, airplane travel, canned videos, or voicemail messages. Now their words are much more authentic and can be remarkably empowering.
Social networking is also flattening organizations by distributing access to information. Everyone is equal on the social network. No hierarchies need get involved.
The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers, who may become obsolete when layers of managers are no longer needed to convey messages up and down the organization. The key to success in the social networking era is to empower the people who do the actual work—designing products, manufacturing them, creating marketing innovations, or selling services—to step up and lead without a hierarchy.
Consumer marketing companies are lining up to use these networks to reach their tailored demographics with highly personalized messages. Already they are revolutionizing marketing by shifting dollars from purchased media advertisements to building their own outlets and content. Kraft Foods, for example, is now one of the largest publishers of food-related materials. IBM is launching thought leadership communities. PepsiCo uses social networks to reach millions of social entrepreneurs in lieu of advertising at the Super Bowl. From a leadership perspective, social networking is making authentic leadership a reality and a necessity for 21st century leaders. You can't hide on your social network when you're revealing who you are and what you really believe. Transparency is essential here.
Even more important, this new phenomenon is enabling business leaders to regain the trust and credibility they have lost over the last ten years. That's why social networking is the most important business development of the year.
William A. Sahlman, Dimitri V. D'Arbeloff-MBA Class of 1955 Professor of Business Administration
From where I sit as an economist, it's still all about the economy and the long-term impact of the problems laid bare by the Great Recession. During the financial crisis, the world came to the apparently shocking realization that debt financing entails risks. Financial institutions, households, and governments all suffered because they had too much leverage.
Though the corporate sector has generally decreased leverage, the same is not true of government, particularly in the United States. Every company and household here and abroad will ultimately be affected by the unabated and accelerating gap between government revenues and spending.
"Every company and household here and abroad will ultimately be affected by the unabated and accelerating gap between government revenues and spending."
There is a great deal of confusion in the popular media about the level of the current budget deficit and outstanding debt. To illustrate, most press reports peg the current U.S. deficit at $1.5 trillion, roughly 10% of gross domestic product (GDP). Gross public debt is $14 trillion, or over 95% of GDP. Most observers believe that the government will run a sustained deficit for the next decade that could add over $10 trillion to outstanding federal debt.
But closer inspection of government data reveals that these figures grossly understate both the current deficit and level of debt. Consider, for example, that the estimated net present value of obligations under the Social Security system is approximately $8 trillion. As the ratio of retired people receiving benefits to working people paying into the system increases, there will be an ever-increasing deficit confronting the government.
Even more problematic is the fact the Medicare system has a vested unfunded net liability of approximately $38 trillion. Once again, the inexorable shift in demographics, combined with high and increasing healthcare costs, will result in a widening gap between tax intake and payment outflow for Medicare.
On another front, the government is also on the hook for insuring bank deposits (including money market funds at the peak of the crisis), pension liabilities, and a wide range of other loans and liabilities. The total value of explicit loan guarantees is well over $10 trillion.
In total, the estimated liabilities of the federal government are in the range of $70 trillion, over five times annual GDP. By implication, the annual deficit is equal to the reported deficit plus the change in the vested, unfunded liabilities incurred in that year (e.g., the change in the Medicare liability) plus the implicit net cost of the annual guarantee for various liabilities. Therefore, the current deficit is more like $4.5 trillion than $1.5 trillion, while the total net revenue for the government was only $2.2 trillion in fiscal 2009. Washington, we have a problem.
This kind of leverage is unsustainable. Though some will argue that higher taxes are required, the reality is that the total amount collected each year in personal and corporate taxes (excluding social security and Medicare taxes) is only a bit over $1 trillion. Spending must be cut.
The recent report of The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform suggested a number of options for addressing the challenges posed by excessive government leverage. This report, and several others prepared by other objective bodies, must become part of our collective dialogue about the future of the country. Every business leader and every citizen has a responsibility to understand and help address these issues. Otherwise, as some scenarios in Europe have already made clear, the United States will ultimately suffer the same fate as all countries that spend way beyond their means.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration
In many ways the biggest business developments of 2010 were the things that didn't happen. Big companies with cash didn't spend it. Banks with cash didn't lend it. Small businesses didn't attract capital and thus didn't help reduce unemployment. Europeans were paralyzed by debt crises and transportation shutdowns caused by volcanic ash and disgruntled workers. Americans were paralyzed by fear of a Chinese takeover of the world. Google didn't exactly leave China or prevail in the face-off over government-banned content. The BP oil spill debacle in the U.S. Gulf region didn't destroy the company, didn't stop offshore oil drilling for very long, and didn't produce the political will to push for alternative energy sources.
Yet even in the midst of gridlock in Washington, economic anxiety around the world, and government liquidity crises in Europe, technology marched on, seemingly impervious to global events. Technology companies with the capabilities and courage to innovate were bright spots and signals of important trends for the future.
"Technology companies with the capabilities and courage to innovate were bright spots and signals of important trends for the future."
One enormous continuing development is the exponential growth of social networking media and the increasing use of social media by companies to crowdsource ideas, mount contests to award prizes and gather audiences, and attempt to create dialogues with customers. The year 2010 accelerated the trend toward the use of social networking sites for an increasing number of commercial purposes and gave social networking companies the confidence to remain independent rather than be acquired by existing players (witness upstart Groupon's recent rejection of Google's $6 billion offer, for instance).
And for what it symbolizes, let me add the launch of the Apple iPad in April. This device quickly gained a 95% share of the tablet computer market and a big share of the public mind.
But the iPad represented more than just an extremely successful product launch. It also signified important technological directions that are reshaping other industries. The iPad extends and accelerates the webification of life whereby devices can connect to the "cloud" and provide functions on a mobile, as-needed basis. There is no more need to embed them in the guts of a stationary device. This makes an enormous amount of computing power available to individuals and small businesses and continues the importance of apps that can be accessed directly. The existence of the iPad extends and accelerates the trend toward digital content such as e-books and downloadable newspapers and magazines.
While uncertainty continues to cause wary businesses to wait before investing, innovation and entrepreneurship are invoked by leaders as the one sure way out of economic distress.
Fonte HBR
Author: Staff
Executive Summary:
Three Harvard Business School professors—former Medtronic chairman and CEO Bill George, economist and entrepreneurship expert William Sahlman, and innovation and strategy authority Rosabeth Moss Kanter—offer their thoughts on the most significant business and economic developments of 2010. Key concepts include:
Social networking is the most significant business development of 2010, says Bill George, noting that some 600 million people are now active on Facebook—and half of them spend at least an hour per day on the site.
The problems of the Great Recession continued to dominate the economy in 2010, according to Bill Sahlman, who says that the popular media have grossly underestimated both the current deficit and level of debt in the United States.
Rosabeth Kanter points out that new technology shined in 2010, in spite of the world's economic anxieties. She gives kudos to the Apple iPad, which accelerated the trend toward digital content.
EASY PRINT VIEW
E-MAIL TO A FRIEND
SHARE ARTICLE
E-MAIL THE EDITOR
About Faculty in this Article:
Bill George is a Professor of Management Practice, Henry B. Arthur Fellow of Ethics, at Harvard Business School.
More Working Knowledge from William W. George
William W. George - Faculty Research Page
About Faculty in this Article:
William Sahlman is the Dimitri V. D'Arbeloff - MBA Class of 1955 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
More Working Knowledge from William A. Sahlman
William A. Sahlman - Faculty Research Page
About Faculty in this Article:
Rosabeth Moss Kanter is the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.
More Working Knowledge from Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Rosabeth Moss Kanter - Faculty Research Page
From the problems posed by the Great Recession to the devastation in Haiti and the Gulf of Mexico, from the continuing economic growth of India and China to a cascade of entrepreneurial ventures, the year 2010 offered a wide assortment of accomplishments and disappointments. We asked three Harvard Business School professors—former Medtronic chairman and CEO Bill George, economist and entrepreneurship expert Bill Sahlman, and innovation and strategy authority Rosabeth Moss Kanter—to offer their thoughts on some of the year's most significant developments in the world of business and economics.
Bill George, Professor of Management Practice
Social networking is the most significant business development of 2010, topping the resurgence of the U.S. automobile industry. During the year social networking morphed from a personal communications tool for young people into a new vehicle that business leaders are using to transform communications with their employees and customers, as it shifts from one-way transmission of information to two-way interaction. That's one reason Time magazine just named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year.
"The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers, who may become obsolete when layers of managers are no longer needed to convey messages up and down the organization."
A year ago many people poked fun at Facebook as a place where kids shared their latest party news. Today more than 600 million users worldwide are active on the site. The most rapidly growing demographic is people over forty. More than 300 million people spend at least one hour a day on Facebook. Approximately two hundred million people are active on Twitter in spite of—or because of—its 140-character limitation. Another 100 million use LinkedIn. None of these social networks even existed at the beginning of the decade.
Leaders like IBM's Sam Palmisano, PepsiCo's Indra Nooyi, Apple's Steve Jobs, Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, Carlson's Marilyn Nelson, and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria are all active social network users. Why? Because these social networks are a unique way of broadly communicating real-time messages to the audiences they want to reach. They can write a message anywhere, anytime, and share it with interested parties without any public relations meddling, speech writers, airplane travel, canned videos, or voicemail messages. Now their words are much more authentic and can be remarkably empowering.
Social networking is also flattening organizations by distributing access to information. Everyone is equal on the social network. No hierarchies need get involved.
The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers, who may become obsolete when layers of managers are no longer needed to convey messages up and down the organization. The key to success in the social networking era is to empower the people who do the actual work—designing products, manufacturing them, creating marketing innovations, or selling services—to step up and lead without a hierarchy.
Consumer marketing companies are lining up to use these networks to reach their tailored demographics with highly personalized messages. Already they are revolutionizing marketing by shifting dollars from purchased media advertisements to building their own outlets and content. Kraft Foods, for example, is now one of the largest publishers of food-related materials. IBM is launching thought leadership communities. PepsiCo uses social networks to reach millions of social entrepreneurs in lieu of advertising at the Super Bowl. From a leadership perspective, social networking is making authentic leadership a reality and a necessity for 21st century leaders. You can't hide on your social network when you're revealing who you are and what you really believe. Transparency is essential here.
Even more important, this new phenomenon is enabling business leaders to regain the trust and credibility they have lost over the last ten years. That's why social networking is the most important business development of the year.
William A. Sahlman, Dimitri V. D'Arbeloff-MBA Class of 1955 Professor of Business Administration
From where I sit as an economist, it's still all about the economy and the long-term impact of the problems laid bare by the Great Recession. During the financial crisis, the world came to the apparently shocking realization that debt financing entails risks. Financial institutions, households, and governments all suffered because they had too much leverage.
Though the corporate sector has generally decreased leverage, the same is not true of government, particularly in the United States. Every company and household here and abroad will ultimately be affected by the unabated and accelerating gap between government revenues and spending.
"Every company and household here and abroad will ultimately be affected by the unabated and accelerating gap between government revenues and spending."
There is a great deal of confusion in the popular media about the level of the current budget deficit and outstanding debt. To illustrate, most press reports peg the current U.S. deficit at $1.5 trillion, roughly 10% of gross domestic product (GDP). Gross public debt is $14 trillion, or over 95% of GDP. Most observers believe that the government will run a sustained deficit for the next decade that could add over $10 trillion to outstanding federal debt.
But closer inspection of government data reveals that these figures grossly understate both the current deficit and level of debt. Consider, for example, that the estimated net present value of obligations under the Social Security system is approximately $8 trillion. As the ratio of retired people receiving benefits to working people paying into the system increases, there will be an ever-increasing deficit confronting the government.
Even more problematic is the fact the Medicare system has a vested unfunded net liability of approximately $38 trillion. Once again, the inexorable shift in demographics, combined with high and increasing healthcare costs, will result in a widening gap between tax intake and payment outflow for Medicare.
On another front, the government is also on the hook for insuring bank deposits (including money market funds at the peak of the crisis), pension liabilities, and a wide range of other loans and liabilities. The total value of explicit loan guarantees is well over $10 trillion.
In total, the estimated liabilities of the federal government are in the range of $70 trillion, over five times annual GDP. By implication, the annual deficit is equal to the reported deficit plus the change in the vested, unfunded liabilities incurred in that year (e.g., the change in the Medicare liability) plus the implicit net cost of the annual guarantee for various liabilities. Therefore, the current deficit is more like $4.5 trillion than $1.5 trillion, while the total net revenue for the government was only $2.2 trillion in fiscal 2009. Washington, we have a problem.
This kind of leverage is unsustainable. Though some will argue that higher taxes are required, the reality is that the total amount collected each year in personal and corporate taxes (excluding social security and Medicare taxes) is only a bit over $1 trillion. Spending must be cut.
The recent report of The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform suggested a number of options for addressing the challenges posed by excessive government leverage. This report, and several others prepared by other objective bodies, must become part of our collective dialogue about the future of the country. Every business leader and every citizen has a responsibility to understand and help address these issues. Otherwise, as some scenarios in Europe have already made clear, the United States will ultimately suffer the same fate as all countries that spend way beyond their means.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration
In many ways the biggest business developments of 2010 were the things that didn't happen. Big companies with cash didn't spend it. Banks with cash didn't lend it. Small businesses didn't attract capital and thus didn't help reduce unemployment. Europeans were paralyzed by debt crises and transportation shutdowns caused by volcanic ash and disgruntled workers. Americans were paralyzed by fear of a Chinese takeover of the world. Google didn't exactly leave China or prevail in the face-off over government-banned content. The BP oil spill debacle in the U.S. Gulf region didn't destroy the company, didn't stop offshore oil drilling for very long, and didn't produce the political will to push for alternative energy sources.
Yet even in the midst of gridlock in Washington, economic anxiety around the world, and government liquidity crises in Europe, technology marched on, seemingly impervious to global events. Technology companies with the capabilities and courage to innovate were bright spots and signals of important trends for the future.
"Technology companies with the capabilities and courage to innovate were bright spots and signals of important trends for the future."
One enormous continuing development is the exponential growth of social networking media and the increasing use of social media by companies to crowdsource ideas, mount contests to award prizes and gather audiences, and attempt to create dialogues with customers. The year 2010 accelerated the trend toward the use of social networking sites for an increasing number of commercial purposes and gave social networking companies the confidence to remain independent rather than be acquired by existing players (witness upstart Groupon's recent rejection of Google's $6 billion offer, for instance).
And for what it symbolizes, let me add the launch of the Apple iPad in April. This device quickly gained a 95% share of the tablet computer market and a big share of the public mind.
But the iPad represented more than just an extremely successful product launch. It also signified important technological directions that are reshaping other industries. The iPad extends and accelerates the webification of life whereby devices can connect to the "cloud" and provide functions on a mobile, as-needed basis. There is no more need to embed them in the guts of a stationary device. This makes an enormous amount of computing power available to individuals and small businesses and continues the importance of apps that can be accessed directly. The existence of the iPad extends and accelerates the trend toward digital content such as e-books and downloadable newspapers and magazines.
While uncertainty continues to cause wary businesses to wait before investing, innovation and entrepreneurship are invoked by leaders as the one sure way out of economic distress.
Fonte HBR
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