SOCIAL BUSINESS

Culture’s Role in Enabling Organizational Change – Booz & Co

“Culture is critically important to business success, according to 84 percent of the more than 2,200 global participants in the 2013 Culture and Change Management Survey. Findings also suggest strong correlations between the success of change programs and whether culture was leveraged in the change process—pointing to the need for a more culture-oriented approach to change.”

Complexity, Comptetitive Advantage and Embracing the Intangible – CMS Wire

“Studies suggest that the most effective way to ensure customer satisfaction is to have employees who give a darn and are empowered to act…  There’s another 20th century reality as well: complexity. Complexity is (a lot of things, some of them very precise, but for the purposes of this discussion …) the state of being which is either intrinsically impossible to understand by traditional rationalist methods, or where the cost or time involved in such analysis makes it impractical for the time being.”

Zero Sum Versus Humanism: What’s wrong with Entrepreneurial Culture – Stowe Boyd

“I am going to try to not overgeneralize about the entrepreneurial community from this post by Mark Suster, the entrepreneur turned VC, but it’s hard not to, based on my experience in that world and his insistence on calling on the support of ‘every experienced operator in my inner circle’ to support some of the most zero sum economic arguments about business management and human motivations.”

The State of Social Business 2013 – Altimeter

“While priorities such as metrics and training remain top priorities, new initiatives are getting attention, such as scaling social programs, making sense of social data, and integrating with digital and mobile efforts.  This is supported by related objectives to develop internal education and training, up to 43%, and connect employees with social tools, at 23%”

What Makes a Workplace a “Great Place”? – CNN

“According to Gallup’s 2013 State of American Workplace Report, only 30% of the 100 million American workers who work full-time are actively engaged in their work. This lack of engagement can lead to lost productivity to the tune of $450 billion to $550 billion annually, the report states.”

HR Tech Europe: Oracle president calls for HR to lead business – HR Magazine

“Oracle President Mark Hurd has called for HR to transform itself and start to lead and drive businesses.  He said that in the next 10 years HR would change ‘dramatically’ in the way it functioned, but this would hand it an opportunity to be at the core of how businesses operate.”

Zappos says goodbye to bosses – Washington Post

“The Las Vegas-based retailer is now going even more radical, introducing a new approach to organizing the company. It will eliminate traditional managers, do away with the typical corporate hierarchy and get rid of job titles, at least internally. The company told employees of the change at a year-end meeting, Quartz first reported.”

From Talking to Transforming: Getting Real Value from Enterprise Collaboration Technology – Accenture

“New enterprise collaboration technologies can systematically lead to better decisions and higher productivity—if companies follow three strategies that get beyond talk to changing how people work.”

Valve: How going boss-free empowered the games-maker – BBC

“Welcome to Flatland.  Imagine a company where everyone is equal and managers don’t exist. A place where employees sit where they want, choose what to work on and decide each other’s pay. Then, once a year, everyone goes on holiday together.  You have just imagined Valve.”

 The Digital Advantage:  How digital leaders outperform their peers in every industry – CapGemini Consulting

“We decided to find out what fast-moving digital innovaitons mean for large traditional companies.  In two years of study covering more than 400 large firms (See About the Research), we found that most large firms are already taking action.  They are using technologies like social media, mobile, analytics and embedded devices to change their customer engagement, internal operations and even their business models.  But few firms have positioned themselves to capture the real business benefits.”

They’re watching you at work – The Atlantic

“What happens when Big Data meets human resources? The emerging practice of “people analytics” is already transforming how employers hire, fire, and promote”

INNOVATION

The Internet of Things: A consumer’s perspective (and manifesto) about standards and openness – Gigaom

“In the last year I’ve gone from 12 connected devices in my home to about 50. As I’ve tried out different systems and ripped stuff on and off the walls I’ve spent about $3,000 worth of my own money and reviewed maybe $6,000 worth of equipment from hubs to sensors to connected toothbrushes (that last one wasn’t worth it). And in this last year my perspective has shifted with regard to the goals and questions we should be asking about connected devices.”

CES 2014: driverless cars are coming and they want to be your friends – The Guardian

Car makers, partnered with Google and chip-maker Nvidia, have taken over much of the gadget expo to offer previews of vehicles connected to smartphones and mobile computing tech.  “We’re getting to the point where the car is an extension of you and really looks out for you,” said Thilo Koslowski, an automotive analyst at Gartner. “The car is ideally suited for this, more so than your phone or a tablet or another computing device.”

 If this doesn’t terrify you… Google’s computers OUTWIT their humans – The Register

“Deep learning clusters crack coding problems their engineers can’t.  Analysis Google no longer understands how its “deep learning” decision-making computer systems have made themselves so good at recognizing things in photos.  This means the internet giant may need fewer experts in future as it can instead rely on its semi-autonomous, semi-smart machines to solve problems all on their own.”

Rob van Kranenburg: Internet of Things and the horizons of bio and nano, and Denisa Kera –  The Internet of Things

“The Internet of Things is the highway that will bring in the next horizons of nano and bio technology not as new trends or thin strands alongside the developments, but it will ‘eat’ them so that the mobile health patches in your t-shirt become slightly more organic and any component in any RFID enabled application or sensor based architecture even more small and smaller.”