How Do You Cultivate Innovation ?

Being innovative means solving a problem in a unique and creative way. Companies like Google, Apple, GE and Facebook have made billions because innovation is a principal value in everything they do. Given the positive associations with it, every organization likes to think it fosters innovation, but unfortunately, the truth is often much different. This week's Culture Beat explores the qualities of truly innovative cultures. How does yours stack up?
Promoting Pride in the Individual and the Organization
According to research recently published in the Journal of Business Venturing, which looked at two decades of data on 62 countries, both individualistic and nationalistic cultures support innovation. While it’s not a major surprise that individualism is strongly associated with innovation, a more intriguing finding is that cultures that value the success of the group and have high degrees of patriotism also encourage innovation in their people. Countries like Japan and Sweden, for instance, are traditionally more collectivist but are also extremely innovative.
Employing Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership is a management style that seeks to positively impact the attitudes and behaviors of followers. Frequently described as high-energy and high on passion, transformational leaders are focused more on success of the people responsible for the outcome than the success of the outcome itself. Such managers promote intellectual curiosity, open communication, performance rewards and professional development. They are able to articulate a clear vision for progress and, by appealing to the moral high ground, serve as an inspirational role model for employees. Michael Dell of Dell, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Lou Gerstner of IBM and Martin Luther King Jr. are oft-cited examples of transformational leaders.
Giving People Permission to Fail
True innovators know that hitting upon a successful idea is a process of trial and error, and more often than not, you have to experiment with several approaches before finding one that works. Cultures infused with innovation are not risk-averse and don’t hold people back by always insisting on a revenue-winning outcome. By giving employees the freedom to fail, organizations also open themselves up to spectacular wins. Sounds a bit like transformational leadership, doesn’t it? And one need only to look at Microsoft to see it in action.

Don’t Restrict the Focus to R&D
Throwing some budget at research and development departments, or launching a siloed “innovation committee” will not definitively move your culture in the right direction.  Instead, employees in all areas of the business must be encouraged to weave innovative thinking into everyday tasks and projects, and should be rewarded for doing so.
Innovative Cultures Don’t Need Gatekeepers
Fast Company Co.Design bloggers Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus Bech Hansen claim that there is a new type of professional in American businesses specifically tasked with innovation. “Innovation custodians” are middle managers assigned to oversee innovators and their processes. “Innovation word-slingers” are external consultants who lead in-house innovation workshops. The problem with innovation professionals, say Skibsted and Hansen, is that they rarely have the maverick outlook that it takes to innovate in a substantive way. Also, innovation should be an attitude that organically runs through the heart of an organization and cannot be easily implemented by a manager with a to-do list.
Do you think your culture breeds innovation?  What advantages and disadvantages do small businesses have in this regard?
Alexandra Levit is a former nationally syndicated business and workplace columnist for The Wall Street Journal and the author of Blind Spots: The 10 Business Myths You Can’t Afford to Believe on Your New Path to Success. Money Magazine’s Online Career Expert of the Year, she regularly speaks at organizations and conferences on issues facing modern employees.

12:49 by Robert dawne · 1

Mark Pincus On Zynga’s Facebook Addiction: “We’ve Never Thought Of It In Terms Of Attachment (Or Detachment)”

Zynga CEO Mark Pincus took the stage today at D10, and of course because Facebook is all people can talk about after its IPO two weeks ago, he got asked and asked and asked again about Zynga’s “attachment to Facebook.”
“Zynga is very tied to Facebook,” Kara Swisher brought up immediately, describing the two stocks as “tethered together.” Indeed, Zynga makes up 15% of Facebook’s revenue, and Facebook makes up most of Zynga’s.
“They’re really important not just to us.” Pincus said, “Facebook is providing a new part of [the ecosystem's] stack, there is now a social stack and an app stack.” Pincus went on to describe the social graph as “magical” but expressed concern at Facebook’s pace of innovation on mobile, “On the web they’ve been really important with regards to distribution.”
Pincus called out for more mobile discovery options, and referred to Android and iOS as platforms that held just as much importance for the future of Zynga. “Discovery and the return path to apps still needs innovation on mobile,” he emphasized.
In order to address the lack of a unified place to discover apps of mobile, Pincus brought up that Zynga had aspirations to become this platform, aiding third parties in the distribution of social games, an ambition that Swisher compared to that of Xbox Live. But it’s sort of tough to become a platform while you’re still addicted to another.
Because Pincus didn’t clearly address how its reliance on Facebook for its primary revenue was being dealt with strategically inside Zynga, The Verge’s Josh Topolsky asked the CEO again about Facebook during Q&A, “How are you going to get detached from Facebook?” Topolsky said, “What is your actual strategy for being a business on your own?”
“We’ve never thought in terms of attachment or detachment,” Pincus responded, “We have a 90 to 10m rule, which means that if a platform can bring us 10m DAUs in 90 days then we invest at scale. Facebook met that rule and Android and iOS have the potential, he said.
“I think of it like the evolution of TV.” Pincus explained. “People wanted to watch TV but our desire to watch TV wasn’t created by the networks, it was a relationship between us and content. People have a latent interest in playing independent of the platform and we are willing go anywhere.”

11:13 by Robert dawne · 0

Facebook’s New App Center: Everything You Need to Know

Facebook’s upcoming App Center may look a lot like the Apple App Store and Google Play, but it’s not exactly their competitor.
Instead of selling apps that integrate with Facebook, the new App Center will refer users to other app stores where they can buy them.
Confused? You’re not the only one. After Facebook announced the new feature on Wednesday, “I don’t get it” was a common response.
We’ve answered below some of the most common questions about how the App Center will work, what apps it will contain and why Facebook built it. Let us know if you have another question we missed.

So Facebook is going to have an app store now?
Yes, but not in the same sense that Google and Apple have app stores. What Facebook has announced is more of an app showcase. In addition to apps built on Facebook, it includes apps that use Facebook Login, regardless of whether they’re iOS, Android or web apps.
Does that mean I can buy iOS and Android apps on Facebook?
No. Though you will find iOS and Android apps in the App Center, you will be directed to Apple’s App Store or Google Play to actually download the apps.
Facebook announced on Wednesday that it will allow developers to charge for “apps built on Facebook” for the first time, but is not clear whether users will purchase apps directly from the App Center.
What are “apps built on Facebook,” and how are they different than iOS and Android apps that integrate with Facebook?
Apps built on Facebook are web apps viewed and used within the Facebook site. They get a special page within Facebook where they load. On the other hand, apps with Facebook integrations such as Draw Something and Pinterest are built on external platforms, but they interface with Facebook for login and other social features.
Couldn’t I spend money on apps built on Facebook before?
Yes. Previously, Facebook has allowed in-app purchases within these apps, but it has not allowed developers to charge for apps themselves.
Social game maker Zynga, for example, has previously been able to charge for items like blueberries or game advantages within Farmville. Now it will have the option to charge for Farmville itself.
How will I access Facebook’s App Center?
Facebook’s App Center will launch on the web as well as within the iOS and Android Facebook apps.
What will the App Center Look Like?
It will look a lot like Google Play or the Apple App Store. Each app will have a detail page, which includes a five-star user-rating system. A screenshot of the prototype that Facebook engineer Aaron Brady included in a blog post about the center includes sections for recommended apps, friends’ apps, top apps, trending apps and top-grossing apps.
“We use a variety of signals, such as user ratings and engagement, to determine if an app is listed in the App Center,” Brady wrote.
Hasn’t Facebook launched something like this before?
Sort of. When Facebook first launched Facebook apps in 2007, there was a dedicated applications area where users could browse apps from third-party developers. Users currently locate Facebook apps through the same search bar they use to find people, groups and events.
Why would Facebook launch something like this?
As Brady put it in his blog post, “The App Center is designed to grow mobile apps that use Facebook — whether they’re on iOS, Android or the mobile web.”
Facebook wants developers to build mobile apps that integrate it. Reaching Facebook’s 900 million users through the App Center is another incentive for them to do so.
The showcase also encourages makes it easier to discover apps built on Facebook, many of which integrate Facebook’s payment system Credits. All games built on Facebook are required to use Facebook Credits to accept payments (except when they’re running on iOS), and Facebook takes a takes a 30% cut of all purchases made with Facebook Credits. That’s why as of February Zynga accounted for 12% of the social network’s revenue.
Facebook will also presumably take a 30% cut of the purchase price for upcoming paid apps built on Facebook.

12:12 by Robert dawne · 1

Facebook Inches Into Craigslist Territory With ‘Highlighted Posts’

Facebook is testing a product called “Highlighted Posts” that potentially puts the company into the online classified ads arena dominated by Craigslist by letting users amplify their status updates.
The feature — discovered by Stuff, a New Zealand blog (which is unaffiliated with the U.K. publication of the same name) — is being tested with a “small percentage of users” right now, a Facebook rep says. The fee for using Highlighted Posts, meanwhile, runs from zero to “a couple of bucks.”

When asked who would use the product, the rep gave the example of a small band plugging an upcoming gig or someone selling their car. The latter appears to be new ground for Facebook since the company hasn’t previously offered users the ability to amplify their status updates. If the program is successful, it could let Facebook enter the online classified market, a segment that the IAB pegged at $2.6 billion in 2011.
It’s unclear how the program — which is similar to new ad products aimed at corporate users — would work and if it would function along the lines of Reach Generator, a Facebook ad product that ensures that a high percentage of people in your network see your post.
The rep stressed that Highlighted Posts is one of many products the company is testing right now.
The introduction comes a week before Facebook’s expected IPO. Facebook filed an amended S-1 form on Wednesday highlighting the fact that its advertising growth hasn’t kept pace with its exploding user base.

11:59 by Robert dawne · 0

Today’s Top Stories: Mark Zuckerberg’s Hoodie, Sony’s Powerful LTE Smartphones

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. Today, we’re looking at three particularly interesting stories.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Hoodie a “Mark of Immaturity”
Mark Zuckerberg went to a meeting in New York on Monday with potential investors wearing a hoodie, and analyst Michael Pachter thinks it’s a mark of immaturity. “I think that he has to realize he’s bringing investors in as a new constituency right now, and I think he’s got to show them the respect that they deserve because he’s asking them for their money,” Pachter said in an interview on Bloomberg TV.
Sony Unveils Two LTE Smartphones for the Japanese Market
Sony has unveiled two powerful LTE smartphones to be launched in Japan this summer: The Xperia GX and the Xperia SX. The first smartphone sports a dual core, 1.5GHz CPU, a 13-megapixel camera and a 4.6-inch screen, which makes it one of the most powerful devices in Sony’s lineup.
The Xperia SX is much smaller, with an 8-megapixel camera and a 3.7-inch screen. The device weighs only 95 grams, and Sony claims it’s the lightest LTE device in the world right now. Both devices will launch with Android 4.0.
Twitter Debunks Hacking Claims
Reacting to the claims that 55,000 Twitter accounts have been hacked with users’ credentials posted online, Twitter said those claims are largely false. Those accounts are mostly duplicates, Twitter claims, or contain the username and password information for suspended spam accounts.

11:10 by Robert dawne · 0

Facebook Launches Crisis Tools for Military Service Members

A new Facebook program provides military personnel, veterans and their families with customized resources when their content is flagged as harmful or suicidal.
It is an extension of a suicide prevention effort Facebook launched in December, which lets friends alert the social network when other users express suicidal thoughts by clicking a link next to the comment. Facebook sends an email with suicide prevention resources to the author of the comment.
“While this is helpful for a military family, there are several specific resources provided to our nation’s military that we wanted to make sure they were aware of at their time of need,” military support organization Blue Star Families, which along with the Department of Veterans Affairs partnered with Facebook for the effort, wrote in a statement.
Facebook engineers developed a way to help identify military members and their families, and it will now send them military specific resources such as The Veterans Crisis Line when their content is flagged.

In a survey of 2,891 military family members by Blue Star Families, about 10% said they had considered suicide and 9% said they knew a service member who had contemplated suicide.
When they were asked what military leaders should do concerning the issue, the most common response (23%) cited the need to eradicate the stigma that still surrounds seeking mental health support or counseling.
“Indeed, many comments mentioned leaders telling military members to ‘suck it up,’ or ‘soldier up,’” write the authors of the study.
With 86% of military families on Facebook saying they use the service daily, it makes sense for the network to serve as a private referrer to military-focused suicide prevention resources.

11:00 by Robert dawne · 0

Easy Ways to Fit Social Media Into Your Business

How do you incorporate the latest and greatest new social media platforms into your marketing strategy without increasing the workload?
We got advice from members of the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only nonprofit organization of promising young entrepreneurs that has access to tools, mentoring and resources that support each stage of business development. The organization promotes entrepreneurship as a solution to unemployment and under-employment.
1. Determine the goal. "[Look at] how the new social media platform aligns with your overall social media goals by asking these questions: Will it create more sales? More engagement? Better customer service? Next, establish forecasts and measure the costs against the benefits. If it makes sense to add the new platform to the mix, try it out for a few weeks to see what happens."
— Logan Lenz, founder and president of Endagon
2. Outsource other things. "Unless you want your social media accounts to read like robots are writing, you're going to have to put in some time and effort. Outsource other things that you don't do well so you can focus on true engagement. Social media is a strong tool to nurture clients and leads. Of course it's going to take work, but it's well worth the returns."
— Kelly Azevedo, founder of She's Got Systems
3. Syndicate existing content. "Whenever a new social media platform appears on the scene, I start by syndicating what I'm already doing to [the new one]. It's rarely the best approach to get full benefits, but it allows me to start learning that platform without stressing about using it perfectly. That way, the new platform doesn't dramatically add to the workload. Then, as best practices emerge, I can evolve my strategies and rearrange priorities."
— Thursday Bram, consultant for Hyper Modern Consulting
4. Focus on quality. "It’s all about quality over quantity when it comes to social media. Post strategically and you will not have to overload yourself trying to keep up a constant presence on all new sites. Prioritize each social media platform by which one has provided you with the best ROI and focus the majority of your time there."
— John Hall, CEO of Digital Talent Agents
5. Prioritize your presence. "Prioritize where you want to focus your social marketing efforts. You don’t have to be present on every little social media platform. Find the ones that fit your needs and provide the most success and focus your time there."
— Brent Beshore, owner and CEO of AdVentures
6. Repurpose old content. "If you have posts that worked well on Twitter or Facebook, rewrite them in a different way and share them on new networks when they emerge (such as Pinterest). Content is king and if you have valuable stuff, don't spend time re-creating it. Instead, spend your time distributing it to the masses."
— Lucas Sommer, founder and CEO of Audimated
7. Adapt to a management platform. "Using tools like HootSuite or Buffer, you can add multiple social network accounts into one dashboard to view. Send all of your updates from there. Both tools allow you to schedule updates to go out on multiple platforms. Buffer especially will find the best times for you to tweet to receive the most return response and maximum exposure. HootSuite enables you to have side-by-side timelines for reading and sending."
— Lane Sutton, social media coach at Social Media From a Teen
8. Make it work with ifttt. "[The company]'s claim that it will 'put the Internet to work for you,' is a good one. Social media can take up a lot of time, so a tool [such as ifttt] that gives you one hub where you can update numerous platforms is a touchdown. Update one platform from ifttt while it updates the others without you having to manually do it."
— Ashley Bodi, co-founder of Business Beware
Put these resources to work for your business by trying these tips from upcoming entrepreneurs on effective social media strategies.
What helpful advice have you gotten about social media lately?

07:21 by Robert dawne · 0

Sexiest Social Network: Your E-Mail Inbox

Let me preface this discussion by saying that I've been involved in online social networks since the 1980s, when they were dial-up bulletin-board services. I've spent more informal time on them than most people, and I've made them part of my profession for well over a decade. Because of this, I get asked one question quite a lot: What's the best social network?
The truth is that the best social network is the one that benefits you the most.
What is beneficial may differ, depending on your business. If you're a home-improvement company, you might get more out of Pinterest. If you're a musician, you'll love Soundcloud. Google+ is loaded with photographers.
But none of those networks are the sexiest. Instead, your e-mail inbox is the most powerful and alluring network that exists.
Inbox Allure
When someone chooses to read your e-mail and responds or forwards that e-mail, it's a much deeper interaction than hitting a Plus icon or a Like button and moving on to the next consumable.
If I've earned a spot in your inbox, I've got your most intimate social network near at hand. You can introduce me to people who matter to you. You can forward my message or idea to someone else. The interaction stays with you.
Smaller Is Sexy
There's a reason that smaller is sexy. While Facebook is nearing its 1 billionth customer, another network called Path that imposes limits is getting some attention. Path limits you to 50 friends. It's a very small, very intimate social network. You can do a lot of the same things that you can on Facebook: Post location, photos, text, and so on. But only be 50 people can see what you post.
As a small-business owner, if I can focus my attention on a very small group of people (or maybe two small groups—my would-be buyers and my sources of new ideas), I won't be so overloaded with what could be. I can decide who matters and dedicate my efforts to them.
Huge social networks generate fantasies of huge potential: I could reach millions of prospective buyers. But check out some smaller networks and see if you can serve them more fully. You might find that you'll do better.
Small Is Not Local
When I praise small networks, I don't mean location-specific networks. Geographic diversity is very important if it's at all possible in your business. If your customer base is limited to your region and it's impacted by an economic or weather issue, you'll be low on buyers. If you can sell to more than one locale, you have a better chance of diversifying your streams of revenue.
More paths help sustain your business. If you can sell somewhere other than only local, give it a go.
What Works for You
Sometimes targeting a smaller network serves your business better than trying to reach infinite numbers of customers. Evaluate what you put your energy into to decide what will best serve your business. Don't be distracted by the potential of reaching the masses when your own closest network—your e-mail contacts—may be the one that will benefit you the most.
What are you doing with small or not-so-small networks? Which network matters most to you now?

06:13 by Robert dawne · 0

20 Mouthwatering Instagram Pics [FOOD PORN]

The Best of Instagram Series is presented by T-Mobile. Its 4G Tweet Race, a week-long campaign launching May 3, pits Twitter users against one another in a daily, frantic race for retweets. There are 7 races, and the winners of each heat win a new HTC One™ S phone with a year of T-Mobile’s Unlimited Value service, and the final winner takes home $4,000.
Instagram users often get a bit of flack for oversharing their food photos. Now that the photo-sharing app is available for iOS, Android and possibly soon Facebook, we expect the user base and the photo uploads to surge.
But that’s not to say all photos aren’t worth sharing. Sure, maybe there are a swarm of users who like to share photos of their Subway sandwich, but there are also tons of gorgeous pictures of food and beverages that will make your mouth water.
We’ve collected photos from Instagram users, professional photographers and even chefs to present you with 20 of the tastiest photos. (Note: You can’t actually eat them.)
Do you think your food photos have what it takes? Let us know in the comments.

11:27 by Robert dawne · 0

How Instagram Took America by Storm [INFOGRAPHIC]

Have you caught Instagram fever?
The flaming hot mobile app and recent $1 billion Facebook acquisition now has more than 40 million users.
This Online Colleges infographic shares some impressive stats behind the viral mobile photography app. Instagram gains one new user every second. One billion photos have been taken with the app — that’s roughly 58 photos uploaded each second.
Instagram’s on track to hit 100 million users — joining the ranks of LinkedIn, Tumblr, Twitter and Facebook — two years after its initial iOS launch in October 2010.
The infographic, created by an online university database, focuses on college students’ adoption of the app. It suggests professors and campus professionals use Instagram to foster community through photo contests. It also recommends that students follow professors to learn about their interests outside of the classroom.
How have you seen colleges use Instagram? Do you think students and professors should interact on social networks?

10:24 by Robert dawne · 0

What’s America’s Most Engaging Social Network? You’ll Be Surprised

Try to guess America’s most engaging social network. Facebook? Wrong. Twitter? Wrong. Pinterest? Wrong again. According to comScore‘s most recent social networking data, from the month of March, the San Francisco based site Tagged engages users like no other service. It was the only site to finish in the top two in both of comScore’s engagement metrics.
Tagged users visited an average of 18 times each during March according to ComScore, second only to Facebook’s average of 36 visits per vistor. And each time a Tagged user visited the site, he or she stuck around for 12.1 minutes — which trailed only Tumblr (14.7 minutes) and beat out Facebook (10.9 minutes).
Tagged co-founder and CEO Greg Tseng says he’s happy about ComScore’s March data, but that his company has been among America’s most engaging social networks for about a year now. The secret to Tagged’s success? A pivot Tseng and co-founder Johann Schleier-Smith made around the beginning of 2008.
The longtime friends started Tagged in 2004, at the time angling it to be a Facebook-like social network for high schoolers. Eventually, however, Facebook expanded beyond a closed college network and allowed anyone over the age of 12 to join.
“We took a hard look and decided we weren’t going to win,” Tseng says. “But we had found out a lot of our users were actually using Tagged to meet new people, so that led us to pivot into a new space called ‘social discovery,’ where people use sites to make new social relationships.”
As opposed to sites like Facebook, where people primarily organize and maintain relationships established offline, Tagged functions mostly as a portal to meet new people online for romance or simply friendship. The site’s algorithms encourage users to connect based on shared interests, tastes and hobbies.
Tseng says Tagged’s 10 million core monthly active users form an average of 100 million new connections per month. The site has been profitable since 2008, and over the past year tripled its staff to a current count of more than 170.
With social discovery as a whole seen by many to be a rising tide, Tseng believes Tagged’s success will continue to grow.
“If I look out at the next five or 10 years, I really see social discovery as big as social networking — in some sense I think you can think of social discovery as the engine for social networking,” he says, referencing Dunbar’s number, which theorizes that humans can maintain an average of 150 connections at a time.
“Facebook is the place where you maintain your current 150,” he says. “And Tagged will be the place where you refresh that 150.”
Do you think social discovery is the next big thing? Let us know in the comments.

10:09 by Robert dawne · 0

What’s America’s Most Engaging Social Network? You’ll Be Surprised

Try to guess America’s most engaging social network. Facebook? Wrong. Twitter? Wrong. Pinterest? Wrong again. According to comScore‘s most recent social networking data, from the month of March, the San Francisco based site Tagged engages users like no other service. It was the only site to finish in the top two in both of comScore’s engagement metrics.
Tagged users visited an average of 18 times each during March according to ComScore, second only to Facebook’s average of 36 visits per vistor. And each time a Tagged user visited the site, he or she stuck around for 12.1 minutes — which trailed only Tumblr (14.7 minutes) and beat out Facebook (10.9 minutes).
Tagged co-founder and CEO Greg Tseng says he’s happy about ComScore’s March data, but that his company has been among America’s most engaging social networks for about a year now. The secret to Tagged’s success? A pivot Tseng and co-founder Johann Schleier-Smith made around the beginning of 2008.
The longtime friends started Tagged in 2004, at the time angling it to be a Facebook-like social network for high schoolers. Eventually, however, Facebook expanded beyond a closed college network and allowed anyone over the age of 12 to join.
“We took a hard look and decided we weren’t going to win,” Tseng says. “But we had found out a lot of our users were actually using Tagged to meet new people, so that led us to pivot into a new space called ‘social discovery,’ where people use sites to make new social relationships.”
As opposed to sites like Facebook, where people primarily organize and maintain relationships established offline, Tagged functions mostly as a portal to meet new people online for romance or simply friendship. The site’s algorithms encourage users to connect based on shared interests, tastes and hobbies.
Tseng says Tagged’s 10 million core monthly active users form an average of 100 million new connections per month. The site has been profitable since 2008, and over the past year tripled its staff to a current count of more than 170.
With social discovery as a whole seen by many to be a rising tide, Tseng believes Tagged’s success will continue to grow.
“If I look out at the next five or 10 years, I really see social discovery as big as social networking — in some sense I think you can think of social discovery as the engine for social networking,” he says, referencing Dunbar’s number, which theorizes that humans can maintain an average of 150 connections at a time.
“Facebook is the place where you maintain your current 150,” he says. “And Tagged will be the place where you refresh that 150.”
Do you think social discovery is the next big thing? Let us know in the comments.

09:45 by Robert dawne · 0

8 Ways to Cultivate Serendipity in Business and Life

When Facebook acquired Instagram for an unprecedented $1 billion three weeks ago, many pundits chalked it up to luck. Two individuals, though, saw it differently.
Thor Muller and Lane Becker, co-founders of Get Satisfaction, the community platform that lets companies participate in an ongoing online conversation with their customers, saw it as not just dumb luck, but rather a series of strategic moves on the part of Instagram leadership that led to the historic acquisition.
Muller and Becker have published a new book called Get Lucky, which outlines the skills and elements we need to begin cultivating luck.
"Luck is a fundamental part of how the world works," according to Muller and Becker. "Open any history book and you’ll find stories of curious people looking for one thing and finding another."
The Search for Luck
When asked about the secret of Google’s meteoric rise, company co-founder Sergey Brin replied that "The number-one factor that contributed to our success was luck." Muller and Becker maintain that Brin wasn’t saying this to dismiss his accomplishments. Instead he was arguing that it requires more to happen than any one person can fully take credit for in order for something to succeed with the scale and speed that Google did.
"What Brin can take credit for," they say, "is being open to serendipity, and being willing to use it to his advantage." They add that Brin combined a passion for his work, a commitment to his organization’s purpose and a willingness to do whatever it takes to find the best way to put those qualities to work in the world.
Planned Serendipity Explained
Those qualities are all part of the skills of what Muller and Becker term "planned serendipity." Muller and Becker believe that planned serendipity is the only way to succeed in our fast-changing world, where so many things are out of our control.
"Accidents happen," they say. "There’s nothing mystical about them—but it’s our practical ability to take advantage of the best accidents that transforms these from forgettable moments into incredible opportunities. This is the essence of planned serendipity, the kind of luck you make for yourself."
That's good news, since most of us have at one time or another envied a competitor who seems to win by sheer good fortune while we keep working tirelessly without ever realizing that sudden overnight success.
The real question is, how can we introduce serendipity into business and life and put it to work? Muller and Becker offer these eight suggestions:

• Motion. Maximize physical and conceptual movement in your workspace.
• Preparation. Focus on breeding and feeding obsessive curiosity.
• Divergence. Minimize fixed plans and goals to allow for changing circumstances.
• Commitment. Choose from all your options the right ones to focus on.
• Activation. Create new activities to open up your awareness of all the possibilities.
• Connection. Optimize the number and quality of connections with others.
• Permeability. Replace the rigid walls most organizations put up to keep themselves separate from other people and organizations with an open exchange of information.
• Attraction. Project your purpose out into the world to draw the best and most valuable events, people, ideas and opportunities toward you.

Making Your Luck
But how do you begin creating a life and workspace open to serendipity?
"Break out of your routine!" they implore. "Routine is the enemy of serendipity."
Muller and Becker add that to take advantage of unexpected surprises, you have to put yourself in a position to encounter the unexpected. This is what they call "the essence of motion," putting yourself in unfamiliar situations, but within familiar environments, to engage with previously unfamiliar people and ideas that are connected to your job, your projects or your interests.
As a practical example of how anyone working away at a job might do this, the authors offer the following advice.
"Visit a different department inside your company. Attend a conference in an area related to your job, or even pick a different place to sit for lunch in the cafeteria each day."
"Here’s a little secret," they add. "No one succeeds without an assist from the unexpected. But every successful person on this planet employs the skills of planned serendipity."
How do you change up your routine? Have you had a stroke of good luck happen lately?

12:43 by Robert dawne · 0

5 Social Media Activities for Your Next HR Training Session

There’s a new dilemma in today’s training world: Is it prudent to allow technology devices in the classroom? One school of thought is that there should be absolutely no distraction—technology won’t be tolerated and should not be incorporated into a professional training environment.
But a new way of thinking is to encourage smartphones, laptops and tablets. Make them a part of the session, since today’s training participants are multi-taskers. Trainees may want to tweet, post pictures and take notes to add a valuable interactive element to their own learning experience. In this new school of thought, trainers are becoming facilitators. It's a great opportunity to introduce trainees on how to properly engage with social media to add a professional benefit to not only their own employment but also to the company at large.
Adding social media is a terrific means to spark conversation before, during and after a training session. Here are five examples of training sessions that provide employees with a great grasp on how to wield social media for the good of the company.
1. Facebook before you train
Prior to a learning event, a trainer can create a Facebook group for participants. This page can be used to solicit and convey information about the program. In addition, videos can be posted prior to the session to provide background information for participants. You can also post materials using document sharing systems such as Google Docs or SlideShare.
Some of the advantages to using a Facebook group prior to training include: getting participants engaged with the trainer, breaking down any barriers between the group and starting a discussion about the subject prior to meeting. All of these are good ways to engage the group before the formal training session starts.
2. Start networking on LinkedIn
Objective: Recruiters are online, companies are online, job seekers are online and you should be too. A professional profile is a necessary tool in our social media-focused world, so there's no excuse not to have one.
Technology: LinkedIn
Activity: Ask participants to set up a LinkedIn account, then give them tasks. For example, ask them to connect with five people they know, update their profile with their current job, make at least one recommendation and join one group.
Discussion: Talk with new users about the experience. What did they learn about the platform? What tasks were easy and difficult? Where can they see the advantages of using this social networking site in the future?
3. A map of our team
Objective: Great for virtual teams to build a stronger sense of team identity and the individuals on the team.
Technology: A location-based map service like Google Maps or Bing Maps. If your company wants to implement a custom or branded map, OpenStreetMap is a great option.
Activity: Assign each team member a unique marker or pushpin. Team members can place the pushpins on the map anywhere to identify landmarks related to them, including details where appropriate.
Examples of relevant locations are where a person currently works, the location of corporate headquarters or regional offices and the locations of key customers or vendors. You could also include the city or campus where a participant went to college, the farthest place you’ve ever traveled or the location of your first job.
Discussion: Ask the group about how sharing information helps to build teams and how geography plays a role in a person’s work style.
Source: The Big Book of Virtual Team Building Games by Mary Scannell, Michael Abrams and Mike Mulvihill.
4. Customer service role play
Objective: To practice customer service recovery situations.
Technology: Twitter
Activity: Create a Twitter account that simulates angry customers. Then, assign participants the specific roles (customer, sales rep, manager and operations department) and give them an assignment. For example, a customer might complain that his equipment isn’t working. The team should work together to troubleshoot and offer a solution.
Discussion: Ask the group if they were able to solve the problem and how they accomplished the task. This can also be a great activity to discuss clarity in communications.
Source: Social Media for Trainers by Jane Bozarth.
5. Tweet your training
Another consideration is to create a Twitter hashtag for your training session so participants can read through all of the tweets. After the session, the hashtag can be used to post a summary of key points and articles or blogs of interest. Trainers can host Twitter chats or a guest speaker to keep the conversation going as a method of increasing learner retention.
Conclusion
Adding social media to training isn’t creating a distraction; it’s a way to engage people with the tools that most of us are already using in our lives. What better way is there to enhance the learning experience for everyone involved?

09:03 by Robert dawne · 0

Yahoo Escalates Patent War With Facebook

Yahoo just took its war of lawsuits with Facebook to the next level, adding two more patent-infringement claims to the 10 it filed for back in March.
The company also accused Facebook of not having a good-faith belief in the counterclaim it filed almost a month ago.
“Today Yahoo! filed additional claims against Facebook in U.S. District Court related to two additional patents on which Facebook infringes,” Yahoo said in an emailed statement.
“As we have stated previously, Yahoo!’s technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. We intend to vigorously protect these technologies for our customers and shareholders.”
In the face of the new claims, Facebook was more succinct: “We remain perplexed by Yahoo’s erratic actions,” a Facebook spokesperson said, also in an emailed statement. “We disagree with these latest claims and we will continue to defend ourselves vigorously.”
With the “erratic” dig, Facebook seems to be depicting Yahoo as the tech-company equivalent of a crotchety old man. Considering Yahoo specifically calls out Facebook for using recently acquired patents as the basis of its lawsuit — even though some of the patents in Yahoo’s claim were acquired as well — the image may well stick.

A quick recap: Shortly after appointing former PayPal executive Scott Thompson as CEO, Yahoo warned Facebook that the social network was infringing on its intellectual property — specifically, 10 patents that relate to Internet technologies.
It then went ahead and sued Facebook a few weeks later, becoming something of a tech-industry pariah in the process.
Facebook, rather than try to end the suit with a quick settlement, set out to arm itself for a retaliatory strike. The social network quickly acquired many patents from both IBM and Microsoft. Facebook also countersued Yahoo — saying that it, too, was guilty of patent infringement.
The whole affair would be funny if it wasn’t a symptom of a wider, all-out patent war. In the last year we’ve seen Apple, Google, Microsoft and a host of others sue the pants of each other, and a company that barely does anything can claim to hold a patent on the web itself.
So this latest salvo in the Facebook-Yahoo patent war likely won’t be the last. What’s your take on the ongoing dispute? Sound off in the comments.

10:32 by Robert dawne · 2

How to Maximize Your Facebook Engagement

If you have a Facebook page, you likely know how important it is to get likes and comments. Without those, your EdgeRank suffers, and your posts are seen by fewer fans in the future. Facebook has already admitted that the average Facebook page only reaches about 17% of its fans. Since less than 1 to 2% of fans go back to your page, EdgeRank and newsfeed visibility are critical.
When you get a new fan, you have the opportunity to keep them engaged. If you don’t, they’ll simply stop reading your posts. Here are some of the things you should keep in mind as you determine how best to engage your Facebook customers.

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Which Days are Your Fans Most Responsive?

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You need to maximize likes and comments to be visible to fans. Part of getting better engagement results is knowing which days of the week your fans are most and least responsive. This is different for every company and industry. Knowing the best day of the week for all Facebook pages won’t help you with your brand. So even if the best overall day is Tuesday, your company’s best day might be Sunday. For example, recent research indicated that the most responsive day for high-fashion brand pages is Wednesday, while the most responsive day for outdoor clothing brand pages is Thursday. Why should brands care? Well, even if you post every day, your greatest focus should go to those days when followers are most responsive. So, if your best day is on the weekend, make sure you have that covered.
It also turns out that the best days of the week to post on Facebook are not always the same days brands create the most posts. Sometimes it’s a Sunday, and maybe no one is working. It appears that the amount a brand posts is not based on their most responsive days, but perhaps just on convenience or coincidence.

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Case Study: Chanel

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When you compare individual companies, you see that the days they do the most posts are not the same days that they get the most likes and comments per post. For example, see the following charts: Here is when Chanel posts the most (average posts per day over 90 days):

 

And here is when their fans are the most responsive (likes + comments per post):

 

Chanel’s fans are most responsive on Saturdays, but it’s their second-to-least posted on day of the week. Most likely, their social media person isn’t working that day, and they’re not scheduling posts for that day. Without realizing it, they’re missing out on a lot of likes and comments, which of course hurts their Edgerank and lowers their fan page’s post visibility.
This highlights that you shouldn’t post most when it’s convenient for you, but when your fans are most responsive.

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How to Maximize the Most Engaging Days

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If you want to figure out this data for your page, here are the steps:

• 1. Go to your Facebook page insights and click on likes.
• 2. Click on export data. Choose post level data, then select at least a two-month range so you have a good sample.
• 3. Save it and open it in Excel.
• 4. There’s not a quick way in Excel to group dates by day of week, but with a bit of manual work, you can find the average lifetime of engaged users per post, per day of the week.

The only shortcoming here is that the data is limited by how good and engaging your posts have been. It’s better to look at 10 to 20 brand pages per industry. You will have to manually look at hundreds of posts, or find a way to scrape that data. Then you can find the average likes and comments per post, per day of the week across an entire industry.
If one of your competitors is doing a much better job at getting likes and comments, you might want to follow their lead. It could be, in part, the days of the week they post, and also the type and quality of content.

10:26 by Robert dawne · 0

Women Are More Likely Than Men to Have a Blog, Facebook Profile [STUDY]

When it comes to the demographic discrepancies of social media usage, we tend to think primarily about age. Young people, we assume, are Facebook addicts; older people, we assume, are Facebook-phobes. And while generational divisions have represented, and continue to represent, a primary division in the way Americans use social media, there’s another important factor, as well: gender.
In a report released Friday, Nielsen found that women, overall, are significantly more likely to engage with social media than men. Per Nielsen’s Internet-usage index, women are 8% more likely than the average online adult to build or update a personal blog — while men are 9% less likely to do so. Similarly, women are 18% more likely than the baseline American to follow a brand on Facebook or other social media sites … while men are 21% less likely. Have created at least one social networking profile? Women: 6% more likely to have done that. Men: 7% less likely. Used the Internet to purchase a product featured on TV? The ladies: 12% more likely. The dudes: 14% less likely.
These are striking discrepancies — particularly because they’re not just about purchasing trends. (It’s long been documented — and Nielsen reiterates it in this report — that women are the more active gender when it comes to digital brands and online purchasing. Just as they tend to dominate with traditional brands and analog purchasing.) The Nielsen findings suggest an intriguing generality, though, to women’s digital affinities: The ladies aren’t just more likely to buy stuff online; they’re more likely to be online in the first place. They’re more likely to blog. They’re more likely to be on Facebook or Twitter. They’re more likely, in general, to represent themselves as digital personas.
That’s fascinating, in particular, because it’s part of a clear trend. A June 2010 comScore study found that women, globally, spend more time online than men (24.8 hours a month for women, as compared to 22.9 hours for men.) A September 2011 report from Rebtel, the mobile VOIP provider, found that 68% of women who use the web to stay in touch with friends, family and acquaintances do so using social media, while only 54% of men do the same. And a February 2012 report from the firm Porter Novelli found a similar breakdown: In a survey of U.K. women, 65% said they used social media at least once a week, while only 51% of men said the same. (The same survey, however, found results that contradict one element of today’s Nielsen findings: Men, it concluded, were more likely than women to write their own blogs, read others’ blogs, and comment on others’ blogs.) And a February Pew survey determined that “women use Facebook more than men,” with women averaging 11 updates a week — compared to 6 updates for their male counterparts.
Those are striking findings, and worth many, many follow-up studies. They’re also a good reason for optimism when it comes to the web as an agent of social change.

10:06 by Robert dawne · 0

Does Instagram Owe Kodak a Billion Dollar Thanks?

A few days ago, I was walking around the George Eastman Mansion in Rochester, NY, blissfully unaware that Facebook was preparing to buy Instagram for $1 billion. I loved the tour. Eastman and his company, Kodak, turned early photography, an incredibly a cumbersome and rarified process in the mid 1800s, into a portable, easy-to-repeat consumer obsession.
Today, the obsession continues but largely without Kodak, which is now mired in bankruptcy. In its place is, I guess, Instagram, the $1 billion-dollar baby.
I still haven’t decided if I’m happy that Facebook bought the digital photography app and social network. I am an Instagram user, although I was not an early adopter. I think I first noticed it when I saw some shared images on Twitter that reminded me of old Instamatic photos.
That was clearly the appeal of Instagram: the ability to take everyday digital images from your iPhone’s camera (now Android, too!) or photo library and apply a filter that made the picture look like it was taken by a camera that Kodak (or Polaroid, for you Land Camera fans) made more than 50 years ago.
Hipsters everywhere instantly adopted Instagram as their own. Every Instagramed photo was somehow more authentic, like the act of adding a filter made the image hand-made. That’s not what really happens, of course. Instagram’s filters, although there are a bunch of them, do not change from image to image. That jagged edge on the “Kelvin” filter will look the same on one photo after another. But the effect is still quite good. These pictures look like you developed them yourself.
That’s particularly rich, of course, since most people using Instagram today probably don’t even know what I’m talking about. Certainly, most Instagram users have never developed their own negatives or printed their own pictures. (Yes, I have, but that’s another, very long story.)
Still there’s a thread of connection between what Eastman did — delivering photography from the pros to the every man by inventing roll film and a camera that could shoot with it — and what Instagram has done: taken something that took time and expertise (photo filter application), and given average consumers the ability to make beautiful (some might say artistic) photos and share them to, potentially, millions with the press of a virtual button.
On the other hand, there would be no Instagram without Eastman and Kodak. Even the Instagram logo is similar to a classic Kodak Instamatic camera—though I don’t know that Instagram has ever paid a dime to Kodak.
The Eastman museum displayed a lot of Kodak’s early cameras and related photography equipment, but no Instamatic that I could find. Although the camera arrived nearly 30 years after Eastman’s death, it helped solidify Kodak’s position in the “photography-for-everyone” pantheon. Clearly, the easy-to-use, low cost, and very portable camera influenced the Instagram team.
As I looked at the remarkable innovation and sometimes quirky (a camera gun?) applications of photographic technology at the Eastman House, I couldn’t help but be a little depressed. Eastman’s genius launched two industries: photography and movies. He had become one of the richest men in the world and believed money could move mountains — or at least homes.
He once had his own mansion split in half and had the two sections moved apart by 10 feet so he could enlarge the conservatory. The work cost $775,000 in the early 1900s. Today’s Kodak would no doubt have other, more pressing needs for the that money.
As Kodak works its way out of Chapter 11, it’s obvious that the company held onto traditional photography as the centerpiece of its business for, perhaps, a little too long. Yes, it was one of the first to introduce a digital camera, but Kodak and its customers seemed to believe traditional film photography would never die.
Too bad Kodak couldn’t have seen as far ahead as Eastman once was. Maybe it could’ve come up with the idea of Instagram and today Facebook would be buying it, instead. That’s a fantasy. The reality, though, is that Facebook and Instagram probably do owe Kodak something — maybe a debt of gratitude. Without Kodak, there would be no Instagram and I bet Facebook would be a much duller place, too.

1860 Folding Camera and George Eastman on right 

 

Errtee Button Camera 1912 

This device could take photos, develop them and then spit out wearable photo pins that cost passerby 5 cents. A major feat for 1912.

 

Kodak EOS-1n

An early pro-level digital camera that saved images to a hard drive.

16:37 by Robert dawne · 0

Everyone’s Curious About Instagram; Android App Hits 5 Million Downloads

What a week.  As if being purchased for $1 Billion by the most influential social media company in the world wasn’t enough, Instagram has just reached 5 million downloads for the Android version of their photo software — and that’s in 6 days.  We reported when they hit a million earlier this week, and now it looks like they’ve continued their ascent.  Judging by my personal experience, I can see that there is definitely a buzz about Instagram — people are wondering what exactly it is after the Facebook purchase and this may have led to a snowball effect for the app.
As reported first by The Next Web, by studiously watching the Google Play page for the Instagram app, the app has now jumped into the category of “5,000,000 – 10,000,000″ installs where it was previously in the “1,000,000 – 5,000,000″ install range.  I’ve picked up the application myself, and while I still think it’s a close call with Camera ZOOM FX, Instagram’s ability to auto upload and share with others is pretty slick.
Are you using Instagram for Android?

10:32 by Robert dawne · 1

Foursquare Shuts Down Location API for “Girls Around Me” App

A recent application that allowed users to spot the girls that were within their vicinity has had some of its rights revoked by Foursquare.  The app, called “Girls Around Me”, was scanning public Foursquare and Facebook to determine whether there were any females in your location.  If a girl had checked in to a location near you or had listed personal location information on Facebook, GAM would find this and show their position overlaid on a map.  Obviously, when this came to light people were a bit unnerved by the whole thing.
The app was first discovered by John Brownlee over at Cult of Mac and has since gone viral.  John tells the interesting story of showing this app to friends to set their “skin crawling”, and explains how the most worrying thing about the app is how it uses public information — nothing the app is doing is technically forbidden.  It raises a few questions for platform creators — questions that other services Tumblr have been facing recently: Do you draw moral and ethical boundaries on the content on your site?
It seems like the answer is yes for extreme cases like these.  There’s no reason to let this application continue to provide potentially dangerous information to people, and Foursquare took the opportunity to emphasize this by shutting down GAM’s access to the Foursquare location API.  This was followed by Apple taking the application down from the App Store.

19:38 by Robert dawne · 0