collaboration

The natural decay of business structures

March 8, 2011 By Dan Thornton

I’ve been interested in how businesses organise themselves for a while, but working outside of a corporate structure has been allowing me to think more about what works.

As I previously posted, I’ve been reading PW Singer’s Wired for War recently, and nature is a huge influence on the world of robotics and AI – after all much of the work is finding automated equivalents to the brains and mechanisms of humans and other animals. But is was catching some of Professor Brian Cox last night in a programme about Destiny and time that sparked this particular idea (The show is currently on BBC iPlayer here)

Big Piles of Sand, Sunset — Big Piles of Sand by cobalt on Flickr.

Basically in a section on entropy, the example used was a pile of sand, which could be re-arranged in a huge number of ways without really altering the structure of the pile, and therefore it demonstrated ‘high entropy’. By comparison, a sandcastle containing the same amount of grains would be changed significantly by even just a small re-arrangement, and therefore demonstrated ‘low entropy’.

So with an extremely limited knowledge of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, what on earth does this have to do with business?

Entropy, time, nature and businesses:

Well, entropy affects all things, and is really a measure of energy changes as things disperse – think of a block of ice melting. And these changes which can increase entropy can happen spontaneously.

So busineses which arrange themselves like a pile of sand should retain their broad shape through a far bigger number of changes. The prime example could be the branded venture capitalism of Virgin. By using a branded VC model, they’re able to get in and out of various industries and fields relatively quickly and painlessly, whilst the overall company values remain. And they can experiment with space flight, for example, without fear.

Technology companies seem to be more adept at this – the 20% Google time for engineers to work on pet projects in one example of expanding and changing whilst apparently staying somewhere within the Google values (e.g. ‘Do No Evil) – hence the search and advertising business also includes a range of other projects which tie-in to a greater or lesser extent.

And smaller businesses which follow these ideas seem to be growing – for instance, the virtual agency model which tends to be occurring more often in the creative and marketing disciplines (as opposed to the crowdsourcing model which can often be more akin to ‘spec work’ – i.e. you just post your demand and someone meets it for the lowest cost). The virtual agency should be a collaborative co-creation environment, and certainly the better ones seem to fit that build (Disclosure – I’m a member of both Blur Group and Guided Collective)

The natural end of the formal structure:

The entropy idea seems to suggest that initially you had small, local groups, which turned into large formal ones due to advances such as the Industrial Revolution etc. In terms of the impact, the change was massive, but in terms of the duration of the change, 200 years isn’t such a long time.

Which makes me think that the move towards collaborative groups coallescing, splitting and reforming may well be the most natural state, and the time for the large formal institutions really is at an end.

Ronald Coase is attributed with the idea that economic tasks are performed by firms when the transactional costs suggest it. (Cheers to @jobucks for succeeding where Google and my memory failed).The earliest reference to it via Wikipedia comes from John R. Commons:

It is this shift from commodities and individuals to transactions and working rules of collective action that marks the transition from the classical and hedonic schools to the institutional schools of economic thinking. The shift is a change in the ultimate unit of economic investigation. The classic and hedonic economists, with their communistic and anarchistic offshoots, founded their theories on the relation of man to nature, but institutionalism is a relation of man to man.

But the digital age seems to enable a shift back to commodities and individuals with a basis in natural and social relationships. If each grain of sand is an individual loosely linked to the others in the group on the basis of selling a commodity, then it can exist with high entropy and continue to retain its shape in the face of the majority of external forces. Whereas tight formal rules of an institution bind ‘man to man’, but mean spontaneous external forces are far more likely to blow it apart.

The first ever DPiP pub meetup…

October 29, 2010 By Dan Thornton

The first meet-up of Digital People in Peterborough took place last night, and seemed to be a resounding success judging by the comments and conversations in the pub, and responses on Twitter (hashtag #DPIP).

Personally, it was much needed. I’ve been up to my eyeballs in freelance work for a number of clients, meeting and chatting to people about some possible permanent roles in the future, and keeping OnlineRaceDriver updated as my main public-facing personal project.

So it was great when around a dozen people showed up last night, with a wide range of talents and interests – designers, developers, marketing, website owners. Everyone huddled round a table and started chatting, and I think that a good few contact details were exchanged and potentially some interesting new ideas were hatched…

It was great to find so many talented people are based in the area, whether they’re working for large companies, small companies or freelancing, and to be able to find out more about what they’re working on.

The plan is to meet up once a month, so I’ll share the details of the next event soon, and possibly introduce some chances to learn more about each other, specific projects and share some know-how…

Incidentally – if you happen to run a pub or suitable venue in Peterborough for 10 – 20 geeks to turn up for an evening (especially if you have plug sockets, wifi and somewhere reasonably quiet to chat), let me know!

And finally, huge thanks to everyone who was able to make it – my fears of sitting alone in the corner of the pub were unfounded! And really big thanks to @joffff for helping to organise and round-up interest, and @pjeedai for his help and buying some food for everyone to share…

Bored of slogans? Or just politics…

May 18, 2010 By Dan Thornton

An article on the PRWeek site reveals research that apparently ‘Election slogans failed to resonate with voters’ (in the recent race for a new Government in the UK).

And some of the opinions on why this may be seem to be about ‘cut-through’, ‘lack of funds’ and bad luck.

What noone seems to have pointed out is that the voting population of the UK are being bombarded with slogans via marketing and advertising almost every second of the day. (And as someone who works in digital marketing, I’m not blameless).

What did seem to catch on were some of the viral content – whether official or unofficial, and maybe that’s because it was the only part of the actual election that many people actually felt a direct involvement with?

Matthew McGregor summed it up on the Guardian’s Tech Weekly Podcast (He’s the London Director of Blue State Digital, who were behind the Obama election campaign in the U.S).

The big difference across the Atlantic was that the use of social networking and communication/engagement in the U.S was directed at empowering engaged supporters to go out and spread the word about Obama to everyone around them, especially those offline.

Whereas in the UK we had an election which was reported far more digitally than ever before, one which was commented on far more digitally than ever before, and one which is likely to have a bigger effect on the digital future of the country than ever before – but no noticeable change in the level of direct interaction and involvement in politics.

If you want cut-through and engagement, give me honesty and transparent, and then give me ways to interact, contribute, and feel like I’ve had some impact. Spin never cuts through, and passivity doesn’t get shared.

What’s in store for microblogging in 2010?

December 31, 2009 By Dan Thornton

A guest post by Lauren Fisher, who specialises in online PR and social media at Simply Zesty – and can be found on Twitter at @laurenfisher.
As we look forward to a brand new year, I’m sure the burning question on everyone’s lips is – what’s going to happen to microblogging in 2010? In a year that saw Ashton Kutcher reach 1 million followers on Twitter and MSN launch their own microblogging service (and MSN China clone Plurk – Dan), the next year certainly has a lot to live up to. Here, I offer a few of my own predictions for microblogging in 2010, with Dan’s thoughts below.

Increased use in organisations

I’m talking here about internal use of microblogging, as a way for colleagues to collaborate and communicate with each other. We’ve seen Google Wave emerge as a tool for professional, organisational use and I think this is the path that microblogging will take in 2010. I’ve already written on here about my thoughts on Yammer (which I still stand by) and I think we will see microblogging tools play a bigger role in internal corporate communications, as an easy and efficient way to communicate with each other. The benefits of realtime will be no more paramount than for businesses.

Dan: Totally agree, although I’m not sure I’d pick Yammer out as the key product in this area – the move is towards integrating microblogging as part of a collaborative and project management toolset – e.g. Salesforce Chatter. The novelty of an ‘internal Twitter’ is fine, but doesn’t convert those who don’t like Twitter, or those happy to DM via Twitter already. Integrated tools give reasons for people to get involved.

Twitter Declining

I won’t be the first, or last, person to say this but I think Twitter may have reached its height of popularity and I think numbers will start to dwindle, albeit slowly. The love affair with Twitter has been exciting, but it might just be over. The avalanche of spam accounts has a part to play here, but I think that when Twitter reaches its highest point of saturation, is conversely when you start to lose value in the site. It has become incredibly noisy and I am beginning to question the real use of it.

Dan: I agree to some extent. I think some of the expansion already has been down to a huge number of spam accounts, and it’s something Twitter has started to tackle, but will always be a huge problem. The lesson here is to learn from the most popular 3rd party apps – Tweetdeck and Seesmic for example, which allow far better filtering than Twitter itself. The noise levels don’t bother me too much because I’m fairly selective about who I follow (Hard to believe when I’m following almost 2k people!)

Microblogging as customer service

I think that more and more companies will embrace microblogging in 2010, beyond the extent we’re seeing now. Businesses will realise the potential of microblogging as a customer service platform though, rather than a place for sexy social media campaigns. I don’t think there will be many more hashtag competitions, we’ve had pretty much every variation of these! I hope that more companies will realise the value of microblogging to source and, most importantly, solve issues for customers. As consumers, we are expecting everything to be solved in real-time and this is what we’ll expect businesses to cater to. The power of crowdsourcing will also be recognised more and we’ll see more companies opening up product development to the masses.

Dan: Totally agree that almost every company should be using Twitter as an integral part of overall improvements to customer service. I expect to reach any tech company via Twitter, and those that do have an active role tend to respond quickly and get my repeat business!

No to video microblogging

It’s not an area that’s really taken off and I don’t think 2010 will be the year for video microblogging. Some sites have made a good attempt, such as Vidly, but once the initial shine wears off the uptake is slow. I simply don’t think that microblogging lends itself to video. A quick text update is one thing : shooting, uploading and tagging a short video is another. We’re still not as comfortable in front of the camera as we are in front of the keyboard and I don’t think this will change any time soon.

Dan: Damn it – this is an area that comes back to haunt me after I made a prediction on video at a conference that Seesmic’s original video blogging platform would take off in 2009. And I was wrong for exactly the reasons above. I’d say for the over 20s, audio blogging such as Audioboo is more accessible. However, I think there’s a huge group of teenagers who are very accustomed to broadcasting themselves on Justin.tv and Ustream. If someone taps into that market and can lure them away from sites which are heavily integrating with Facebook, Twitter etc, then we may see video microblogging take off in a couple of years. It’s also likely to be primarily mobile, and the odds are people will still video other people rather than themselves…

Location –based microblogging

If Twitter is to continue growing in 2010, I think the answer could be in location-based services. As mobile internet usage rapidly increases, we’re all going to be using location services more. If we can make real connections on Twitter with those that are physically close to us, as a more integrated part of the whole microblogging experience, this could prove incredibly popular. Integrating tweets at real-world events such as concerts and sport events will also become more popular, bringing people physically together.

Dan: Totally. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more integration between location, microblogging and special offers, but that’s definitely going to arrive this year – look at mobile social location games like Foursquare, or Google stepping up their location-based efforts. And events are a huge influence on bringing people together on Twitter – the FA Cup, the Superbowl, Eurovision etc as examples…

Integration with sites

As more people will be moving away from Twitter itself, I think microblogging will play a bigger part in existing sites. The new redesign of LinkedIn sees the now familiar stream of status updates with more prominence and I think this is probably the way many sites will go, including email services, encouraging even further interaction between people through short updates. As we become increasingly productive online in 2010, we’ll expect the microblogging functionality to feature more heavily in sites we’re already visiting, than having to go to a separate site.

Dan: Twitter, Facebook and Google are the three services that you should expect to seemlessly be integrated into almost every site you visit in the next 6 months. Each one is becoming very close to the single unified ID many people have talked about…

Microblogging in 2010 – what do you think?