How Open Systems Change Economies

One of my favorite activities is thinking about ways in which radical ideas can completely change existing rules. While this typically doesn't happen as a "radical change=new rules" model (not that simple), what does frequently happen is a small change with built-in flexibility can radically change the rules. The secret ingredient is typically to allow people (users/partners/etc.) to be able creatively modify the change, usually in ways that you never image.

I was originally going to write about this topic because I'm exploring certain aspects of the Freemium business model for my Strategic Marketing course. With the drop in online advertising due to the economic downturn, I'm interesting in exploring how companies that have grown through Freemium (or just Free), will survive. Will their growth drive enough ad revenue, even at low CPMs? Will they begin to charge for corporate usage or partnerships? Or will they develop new business models that change for newly created value (whatever that might be)?

Reading through the blogosphere this evening, I came across this interesting article about how the adoption of cell-phones in Kenya, and the subsequent creation of phone-minute based economy has evolved the country. Nobody could have predicted that the country would begin using a non-currency as the currency for trade, but it happened because the originators of the system allowed it to remain open, even after it began expanding beyond their original model. It allowed the market to define their own "value" and evolve around it. The incredible line in that piece was,“Within about a year, (Safaricom) became the biggest bank in East Africa.”

Imagine if your company had that opportunity placed in front of it? Could you react to that much change? Would you be willing to allow that much change to happen?

Strategic Marketing Project - Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Media

I'm pretty excited tonight because we got our mid-term Strategic Marketing project approved. (The abstract is listed below) Portia Mount and I had actually talked about a concept like this prior to the class starting, so we were glad that we'd be allowed the flexibility to choose the topic and scope.

Portia is VP of Marketing for her company, so I believe she's been thinking about aspects of this since last summer.  I got the original idea while reading this article from Umair Haque, as part of a continuing series he's doing on Edge Economy and the need for radical innovation to break us out of the challenges of the current economic crisis.  It also connected for me as I reflected back on stories from both Wikinomics and The Future of Work, as they looked at the value of sharing information externally, building communities, building partnerships, and truly building companies that can survive in the pace of the 21st century.  Listening to Seth Godin's podcast on Tribes and Leadership today completed the circle for me, showing how all of these pieces and ideas came together in the 2008 election.

The other element of the project that I'm excited about is that we're hoping to show how this 21st century approach can be applied to more traditional brick & mortar companies.  Portia and I felt like this would be an interesting challenge to research, as well as our way of giving something back to the rest of the class.

The paper and presentation aren't due until mid-April, but I'm already looking forward to starting on this project.  I'll be sure to post updates as we move along.

=======ABSTRACT========

ObamaNation: Lessons from the front lines of social media.

This presentation will look at how the Obama campaign used social media strategies to mobilize grassroots audiences to win the White House and what business might learn from this success. In this presentation we'll highlight noteworthy examples including:

1. The use of Social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter that created new online communities.
2. The Campaign website and its use of targeted messages to create urgency to generate record breaking campaign donations
3. How mainstream newsmedia outlets took advantage of the unprecented online presence during the campaign season to connect to new and younger voters
4. How the rise of the citizen journalist and an expanded blogosphere allowed Obama, a virtual unknown at the start of the campaign, to gain global recognition in one campaign season

Discussion of the Week - Exponential Times

We had several interesting discussions in class this weekend, but I'll go ahead and pick a discussion from our IT Mgm't course as the introductory "Discussion of the Week" topic.  I actually learned more in the early discussions in the OpsMgm't and StratMktg courses, but I think this discussion had broader relevance to our overall MBA program.

The discussion centered around a snazzy Exponential Times video, looking at the pace at which our world is changing due to this technology they call "the Internet".  Prior to watching the video, we were asked a simple question, "How do you see the trends of the last 10 years continuing (or failing)?"  The responses ranged from Globalization to Big Box Retail to Greater Customization, alot of stuff that you read about in the press on a daily basis.  All good answers, but then we watched the video.  

As a group of (on average) 30-40yr old folks, the immediate response in the room was fairly quiet.  When you're between the Boombers and GenY demographics in the US, and the mass of humanity in both India and China, it's an interesting place to be...to say the least. 

As a group, we face several challenges and opportunities:

• While we're technology literate, we're really the first generation to move through this as a learning curve, not as a part of our DNA (sorry Boomers....you're on the way out, so I'm not counting you anymore)
• We've grown up in a world where companies followed the strategies and models defined in the 20th century.  We learned and been trained in companies that sold locally and regionally, and that survived over many decades.  Our MBA program is somewhat of a bridge between those 20th century models and scratching the surface on 21st century ideas.  

Having lived on Internet time for the past 15 years, I felt comfortable (as much as anyone can be) with the explosiveness of the numbers in the video.  I've lived with growth on that scale for a long time.  What I need to get my head around is the idea that many of the current business models I know will be (or already are) obsolete.  The good news is I have Fred, Seth and Umair to balance my work experience and MBA learnings.