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Reversing the Enterprise 2.0 Pricing Model

Why is the Enterprise 2.0 market not taking off more strongly? The reason has to do partly with ill-conceived pricing structures: volume-discount (VD) schemes. Fix them, and you fix one of the obstacles preventing the market from expanding rapidly. And by fixing them is meant reversing them, in particular by using volume-increasing schemes. Pricing Tied to Volume Enterprise social computing offerings -- such as social networks or the numerous Twitter-for-the-enterprise applications that currently abound -- generally don't have complex pricing structures. They are volume-discount based: that is, the more accounts customers buy, and the more employees who use them, the larger the discount vendors give them, and the lower their average price per user will be. Some vendors advertise flat pricing schemes, but when a customer is big enough, a volume-discount deal inevitably creeps in. Value and Cost Out of Balance

Volume-discount pricing structures are simple, tried, and true. So, why aren't they efficient? The reason is because of where returns on investment (ROIs) are located. Enterprise social computing offerings provide increasing marginal productivity as they scale, at both the individual and organizational level. The more that employees use a service, the higher the margin gained by their company in productivity, and the more the company extracts value from the product. A corporate customer that has 10% of its employees using a Twitter-like product won't extract as much value as one that has 50% of its employees using it.

Technology is a key for banking in 2009 I found a whole range of technology predictions for 2009.  One of the best general forecasts comes from Gartner, who say that the top ten technology areas to focus upon during an economic crisis are:1. Reduce headcount or freeze hiring2. Renegotiate with technology and service providers3. Curtail data center expansion, virtualize assets and lease them back4. Consolidate systems5. Outsource commodity6. Offshore outsource7. Investment shutdown8. Prioritize projects9. Mothball businesses and projects10. Change leadership and restructure IT teamsI agree with this list.In banking, it goes further.  In banking, technology is a critical part of the solution for the crisis, and technology also provides a way to avoid the crisis occurring again.  That is why I titled this as technology providing 'a key for banking in 2009'.Technology is the key. 

Bourdieu defines social capital as, "the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition." (248) An individual's social capital is determined by the size or their relationship network, the sum of its cumulated resources (both cultural and economic), and how successfully (quickly) the individual can set them it in motion. According to Bourdieu, social networks must be continuously maintained and fostered over time in order for them to be called upon quickly in the future.

The New Economics of Music: File-Sharing and Double Moral Hazard Part 1: Why the Music Industry is (Really) Broken ‘The whole point of digital music is the risk-free grazing’ – Cory Doctorow Every major label 's setting up an iTunes these days. They're all, in the immortal words of Johnny Cash, 'born to lose, and destined to fail'. Why? The music industry doesn't understand the microeconomics of it's own business. If it did, it would see that it's business model is not just misguided, but broken- because, DRM or not, the implicit contract it signs with listeners is being broken in both directions. I reached this conclusion because, as I was scoping BoingBoing one day, I read Cory's statement, and it struck me as exactly right. For many people, digital music's more about risk than it is about music itself. Not legal risk - but transactional risk, the kind of risk you take when you buy a used car. Now, this statement has deep economic meaning. I'd like to explain why.

9 Technologies to Watch & Get Involved With in 2009

1. All Social Media is Now Mainstream

2. Twitter Means Business

Nick, I agree. Imagine semantic analysis, recommendation tech and who knows what else added to that mix and we're just at the beginning of a very exciting era.

McElhaney, Kellie A., Toffel, Michael W., Hill, Natalie. (forthcoming 2005). Designing Sustainability at BMW Group: The Designworks/ USA Experience. Strategic Sustainability

McElhaney, K. & Hill, N. (December 2003). Human Right in Business: The Case of Hewlett-Packard United Nation Global Compact. UN Global Compact case book forthcoming in 2004. McElhaney, Kellie A. (December 2003). Ways in Which Academia Can Assist Business in CSR Programmes. The International Chamber of Commerce Guide to Corporate Social Responsibility 2003. PPf Publishing, London, England. McElhaney, Kellie A. November, 2003. Strategic Partnerships in Corporate Social Responsibility. Welcoming Brief for G8 Summit in London and Dubai. Michael W. Toffel, Natalie Hill & Kellie A. McElhaney. 2003. Developing a Management Systems Approach to Sustainability at BMW Group, with Natalie Hill and Kellie A. McElhaney, Corporate Environmental Strategy: International Journal of Corporate Sustainability 10 (2): 29-39. Michael W. Toffel, Natalie Hill & Kellie A. McElhaney. 2003. BMW Group's Sustainability Management System: Preliminary Results, Ongoing Challenges, the UN Global Compact. Corporate Environmental Strategy: International Journal of Corporate Sustainability 10 (3): 51-61.

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility

40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them

We all know brands are using Twitter — whether or not you want them around. Some of them don’t quite get the medium and just tweet self-serving links or marketing speak, but you won’t find any of those brands here. We’ve handpicked 40 of the best brands experimenting with the micro-blogging platform, and asked them a few short questions about how they’re using Twitter. If some of their responses seem short, well that’s because they are. I asked each brand correspondent to answer our queries in 140 characters or less. Most of them got the point, a few rambled on a bit too long, and only asked me if “u” was acceptable in lieu of “you.” All in all, we’ve found some amazing people, doing some pretty powerful things at big companies, and all via Twitter. Smart brands use Twitter in meaningful ways, and most of them use their brand name as a way to make sure customers can find and recognize them. This piece, and the knowledge I learned from the incessant hours invested, demonstrate why brands do belong on Twitter. No other medium gets you inside a business or brand quiet like Twitter. And if you’re a brand that didn’t make our list, let us know why your tweets deserve consideration in the comments.

Chevrolet

All business models must be based on something that is legitimately scarce. Today, no matter how expensive it is to make, content will become freely available quickly. So much music is free that you cannot legitimately charge much for a song. So much film is free that you cannot charge much for a move. So much information is free, that you cannot charge much for it (Britannica). This is a reality - so you have to get over it and find another area that is legitimately scarce where you can find value. So where is it?

CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo

Jive Software makes enterprise-class social software that connects employees, customers, and partners. We have two flagship products: Clearspace, collaboration software that applies a people-centric approach to facilitate workforce networking and productivity, and solves the problems associated with legacy file-based systems; and Clearspace Community, community software that is used to engage customers, build brands, and accelerate marketing initiatives. Jive's social software solutions are used by more than 2,500 customers -- including over 15% of the Fortune 500.

Kelly Duffin-Maxwell, Senior Vice President, Breakthrough Innovation, Kraft Foods

"Facebook is about people you used to know; Twitter is about people you'd like to know better."

Having Conquered Flickr & Yahoo, "The Newsfeed" Is Now the Dominant Info-Metaphor of Our Time

The internet is really exciting. There's a whole lot of information on it - an overwhelming amount, even. Years ago we first looked at it in monochrome text, then we started looking at it through a search box on an empty white page. What's next? Is it huge War Games style multi-monitor displays? A swirling UI somewhere between Tom Cruise in Minority Report and David Bowie in Labrynth? Today we're ready to declare The Newsfeed the dominant internet metaphor of the day; the cascading waterfall of updates from your friends, with comments swirling even around those - that model is everywhere now! Today one of the biggest photo sharing websites and the biggest news and email portal in the world both fell under the spell of the Newsfeed.

When you gather people together in any sort of group, a social structure most always arises. Leadership is something that comes natural to some, and others have it thrust upon them.