Overview: Business

"Marketers and PR professionals are hard-wired to put the product/company first. Journalists put the consumer first.... journalists should be in the box seat when it comes to running a newsroom - be it for the media or a brand." plus 5 or 6 more reasons, spelt out here - Why a journalist should run your brand newsroom | LinkedIn

Enjoying this excellent guide to ideation by Krysta Curtis. Something for the weekend: admit it, you won't have time for this much fun during the week: - Paint-by-Idea — Medium

"Displaying data can be a tricky proposition, because different rules apply in different contexts. A sales director presenting financial projections to a group of field reps wouldn’t visualize her data the same way that a design consultant would in a written proposal to a potential client. So how do you make the right choices for your situation? …

"Chartist is noteworthy because it doesn't just make existing charts smaller or bigger, it changes the the way the data is displayed so that it makes sense on whichever size screen it's being viewed on. A chart showing each of the 12 months along its x axis when displayed in a full-width browser window, for example, will change to show only six m…

"We couldn't understand why people without technical knowledge had to tell programmers "what" to do and, furthermore, they had to supervise "how" programmers did it." At last. Someone said it. And also quite a bit more about the timesucks that are meetings, email and commuting. These guys avoid all of them, work 4 days/week and are growing …

"the biggest impact on competitive advantage comes not from products, processes or technology, but empowered employees. And with the lines between Internal and External Communication becoming increasingly blurred, ensuring your people are engaged and empowered has never been more critical.... Leading Internal Communication teams are already bla…

"Government around the world is pretty good at thinking about its own needs — they often put their political needs followed by the policy needs. The actual machine of government comes second. The third need then generally becomes the system needs, so the IT or whatever system’s driving it... the user comes a poor fourth, really." Turning that ups…

"In a circumstance where two people who report to you are having an acrimonious disagreement, you will need a thoughtful approach with some options to resolve the problem. " - Conflict Resolution: Being a Successful Manager | LinkedIn

Sonar Solo allows you to search any topic to find trends and influencers about any subject, in real time. Sonar Solo visualizes what’s on people's minds right now, by combining data mining, trend intelligence and advanced sentiment analysis on the world's social media chatter.

(and why I joined a technology company, not another comms agency): "...organizations that had software engineers and Web enthusiasts in the room when big decisions were made navigated the seas of change more successfully than those that didn’t... When you think about how news and entertainment have been delivered over the internet so far, four m…

A wonderful presentation from Jonathan Corum, science graphics editor at The New York Times, on creating infographics and data visualisations that truly add value: "Sometimes, I feel more like a translator than a designer. Trying to translate the point the scientist is trying to make to a wider audience, and removing all of the jargon. ... If I …

At least 1 year's reading right here: " ... the main projects, events, new sites, trends, personalities and general observations that have struck me as being important to help further the development of this field." A well-timed survey, given the recent publication of the UpShot's opus on the US economy and other daa visualisation ventures. But t…

Excellent insider's view of both theory & practice... "My first holacracy meeting made me want to quit my job. One year later, ... I can’t imagine going back to our old way of working.... a holacracy eschews titles and instead builds a chain of command based on the work that needs to be done. The group decides to distribute tasks. Those responsi…

"this is the eternal founder dilemma — which hats do you wear, which ones do you give to others, which ones do you forget about? all in less time than you need, while your hair is on fire & your house is burning down. Choose. but there’s one job you can’t hand off to anyone else: setting the vision and inspiring your team. that job is yours & you…

"Recent research confirms that entrepreneurs inside large, established organizations ... largely follow the same act-learn-build logic as new venture entrepreneurs, but ... have few colleagues (and sometimes no one) to talk to, explore ideas with, or gain emotional support from." - Internal Entrepreneurs Don't Have to Be Lonely - Len Schlesinger,…

"... envisions a Yahoo that’s as ubiquitous as computers seem destined to be. Phones, watches, public terminals, brain implants — Yahoo wants to be able to deliver content to all of them... Yahoo Labs’ biggest focus appears to be on machine learning... a dedicated machine learning group based in New York; ... “hardcore science and some theory,…

Just listed to HBR's podcast interview with Pentland. Will probably get this book. Typically good roundup by Greg Satell: "Pentland’s research has found that the most important predictor of success in a group is the amount—not the content—of social interaction. It is exposure to peer activity that drives learning and changes in behavior.... in …

Altimiter study finds that while 80% of companeis surveyed said they were "undergoing digital transformation": "... only 25% had actually mapped out the digital customer journey. It’s unfortunate that so much time and resources are going toward programs that may or may not hit the mark." That's a lot of money being wasted. "While the word “digi…

"Two of the biggest trends in news today: the rise of mobile and the rise of data visualization. The unfortunate reality is that they’re often in conflict. ... If you want to do better, check out MobileVis ... Ros also pulls out a set of best practices for doing visualizations for mobile. Data visualization is good. Data visualization that works …

" the 4 key layers of a big data system - i.e. the different stages the data itself has to pass through on its journey from raw statistic or snippet of unstructured data (for example, social media post) to actionable insight. The whole point of a big data strategy is to develop a system which moves data along this path. In this post, I will attem…

"...there are computational techniques that will reveal all kinds of information about you that you're not aware that you're sharing... "Project Gaydar... were able to infer people's sexual orientation by completely ignoring anything that the person had actually said and instead looked at the person's friends ... even if you're a person who want…

"incumbent players [must] expand the horizons of their leadership team beyond the next quarter or next year ... challenge key assumptions... resist the temptation to deny that [disruption] exists." - Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: The Disruption Debate - What's Missing?

Wow, that's timely: "Q1. What is disruption? Disruption happens when the strong are defeated by the weak....

A whole bunch of reasons why the wrong consultants are hired for the wrong reasons: "When we don’t know much about somebody, we ... think about people in over-optimistic ways...what normal individual can stand up against an outsider or expert made up of pixie dust and rainbows? ... when we go looking for a better expert ... we tend to find them…

A good framework from @briansolis: "how do you innovate or take chances when the management imperative dictates an invulnerable stance? It starts with business goals and objectives. It's brought to life through a culture of intrapreneurialism and employee empowerment.... Intrapreneurialism ... promotes creativity, imagination and experimenta…

"Gallup's State of the American Consumer ... appears flawed on multiple levels... based on surveys performed back in December 2012 and January 2013... a virtual lifetime ago... [moreover] "You don't poll consumers whether advertisements or marketing make them buy stuff. People will always say, 'No, I am not influenced... It's not an objective in…

@digitaltonto weighs in on the LePore v Shristensen debate on Forbes: "Yet Lepore veers off course by essentially affirming the consequent.... In her fervent desire to critique, she conflates. Disruption, innovation and disruptive innovation are, in fact, three distinct entities.... there is more than one way to innovate, what’s really important …

"In the end, meetings turn out to be a waste of time — just people sitting around, chatting, wasting hours of precious time (even preparing for it). Approximately 15 percent of your time working in any company is spent in meetings. That number is more than doubled for middle managers, while executives spend 50% of their time stuck in meetings."

Clayton Christensen reacts to Lepore's article on his theory of disruption. Nice to see academics can be as carefree with facts as politicians and think tank gurus ... "in order to discredit me, Jill had to break all of the rules of scholarship that she accused me of breaking... if she was truly a scholar as she pretends, she would have read [tho…

"Case studies are terrible at proving theory, but they serve as a great way to think through a problem." - winterspeak.com: Silicon Valley, the New Yorker, and Disruption