Design Thinking: 1+1+1=5

Tim Brown of IDEO recently delivered a tremendous presentation at TED on  ”Design Thinking” or System Design and System Thinking.  His ideas focused on design “interactions” versus just individual design “points”. Basically the system is more than the sum of the individual components. The concept really resonates with Rule #5 for successful Social Media: Be Excellent . Let me...

5 Steps For Steering Rolling Boulders (and your Social Media activities)

So how do you guide the Rolling Boulder of social media? In my last post I covered why marketers have lost control of their brands. Now what? First, lets take the “glass is half-full” approach. As a marketer, you may have lost some control, but you now have significantly more tools to get your message out than ever before. If you are a corporate exec, you are closer to your customers and you can get much...

Rolling Boulders and Social Media

If you are a marketer, it’s time to face a hard truth…..the world has changed and you have close to zero control over your online brands. This is a big contrast to the good old days of advertising and communications, circa 1998, when you could still exert tremendous brand control through advertising, promotions and PR. Am I exaggerating? Maybe a bit, but let me use a rolling boulder...

Google Wave – The Opportunities Are Tremendous

I just previewed Google Wave and the opportunities for extension & integration are tremendous. I am excited to see the apps from B2C developers (Lonely Planet already has a cool tool) while B2B SW companies have an awesome new platform / capability to integrate and extend their functionality (and value props) with. Starting out, SAP and Salesforce.com have developed two elegant apps for BPM and Customer...