What has gone wrong with Australian innovation? For a nation so wealthy, it’s remarkable how poorly the country performs globally in terms of bringing new products or technologies to market.
At Ad:Tech Sydney yesterday, The Great Australian Innovation Fail panel discussed what has gone wrong and what can be done to get the nation back to a position more in line with its comparative affluence.
Boasting a range of digital media veterans and startup founders, the panel was far from a group of muttering naysayers. Although all but Fleet Systems’ Flavia Tata Nardini were distressed at the failure of Australia’s innovation agenda and the country’s general disdain for new businesses and technologies.
Michael Priddis, the CEO of research and development consultancy, Faethm, pointed out that automation and artificial intelligence are not the future but the present and the job losses are happening now across industries.
Caitlin Iles, founder of XChange, added that she believes the estimates of nearly fifty percent of Australian jobs being lost to automation are actually understating the effects and it’s more like 90% – “a doomsday statistic” – which is something that Priddis endorsed in observing how the mining industry has automated in the past decade.
The employment shifts are being ignored by governments, says Beanstalk Factory’s Peter Bradd. “They have to get their heads out of the sand. We need to be supporting workers in threatened jobs to reskill. That’s just not happening at the moment.”
Australia’s underperformance is stunning when you consider tech startup exits, says the Information Industry Association’s Tony Surtees. Unsurprisingly Silicon Valley dominates the global statistics with over 47% of the global value with London, Los Angeles and Tel Aviv following. Sydney was at the bottom of the table with only .01% of value.
The value of exits is a problem, but that is more about the capitalisation of startups and may be changing. A bigger problem lies in how Australia’s corporate sector innovates and engages with new technologies.
Corporate Australia’s failure to engage is shown in the OECD ranking the country at 81st globally in ‘innovation efficiency’, while the nation is tenth in inputs it fails dismally in applying those inputs into outputs.
This is reflected in corporate Australia’s failure to compete globally outside the mining sector. Basically Australian executives have little desire in international markets and most have no interest in engaging with researchers, universities, innovators or entrepreneurs.
“People don’t like to collaborate,” says Peter. “They want to keep everything to themselves.”
“The CEOs of Australia’s top twenty companies need to get together with CSIRO and the universities and fix this problem. There’s money on the table.”
Whether Australia’s business leaders are prepared to pick up that money, or they’re happy and comfortable with their lot is probably the question of whether Australia can start to pull its weight in the innovation stakes.
“In ten or fifteen years we’ll be screwed if we don’t,” concludes Michael.
Facebook’s challenge in executing for the enterprise
Workplaces by Facebook is the social media giant’s push into the enterprise computing market. Its success isn’t assured.
Workplaces by Facebook was is the social media giant’s enterprise collaboration service it hopes will put the company into the enterprise space.
Like many similar products, the service is aimed at improving collaboration in the workplace. As the media release gushes, “the new global and mobile workplace isn’t about closed-door meetings or keeping people separated by title, department or geography. Organizations are stronger and more productive when everyone comes together.”
On first impressions, Facebook should score some successes with the service however it’s success is far from guaranteed. As we’ve seen with other major company’s attempts to open new products, being the deepest pocketed player doesn’t automatically ensure a successful product.
The Google example
A common assumption when a behemoth enters a martketplace is will simply smother smaller competitors by virtue of its size.
History shows this not always the case, Facebook itself thrived despite the huge threat posed by Google+, indeed Google is probably the best example of a large corporation that struggles outside its core business.
Part of the reason for the idea of big companies easily squashing the little folk being a fallacy is that the smaller companies are more focused on their problem – for a corporation the division is one part of a broader operation run by managers, not owners.
In such a marketplace, execution and management focus matter so Facebook’s success will depend as much on executive buy-in as the resources thrown at the product.
Cost and complexity
A notable thing about Workplaces by Facebook is its partner network, led by Deloitte. This is not a good sign.
The need to have consulting partners – particularly huge and expensive companies like Deloitte – is not an encouraging sign for the nascent service and may be a barrier towards adoption.
A separate issue in Deloitte’s involvement is how cloud services, which we include Workplaces by Facebook, are buddying up with the major consulting firms with everyone from Huawei to Oracle entering arrangements. While this might help partners squeeze a few more pennies out of their hapless clients, it’s doesn’t seem to be in the vendors’ or customers’ interests.
Trust
What happens to users’ data is a perennial problem for Facebook and it’s notable this issue isn’t mentioned in the announcement.
Facebook’s success shows consumers are relaxed about how the company uses data but that attitude may not be shared by managers and business owners.
The proprietor of one reasonable sized startup said, “I have a slight concern about giving Facebook any access to my company information. Whilst it has been fine from a personal perspective I feel the trust level is not strong enough to warrant handing over access to, effectively, everything.”
Overcoming that objection may be one of the biggest challenges for Facebook being accepted as an enterprise tool.
Becoming an enterprise service
Facebook’s push into the enterprise isn’t surprising and indicates that as the company matures, something more than the advertising funded consumer market is needed to drive its growth.
That consumer background is a strength for Facebook as the consumerization of enterprise software is an established trend. Having an interface and tools that are familiar to most staff is very attractive to managers looking at introducing new platforms with the shallowest possible learning curves.
However the ultimate question is what need does Workplaces by Facebook address? There’s no shortage of collaboration platforms that offer most of the futures offered by the platform.
If Workplaces by Facebook does address a genuine need in enterprise workplaces and the company’s management can maintain its focus on the product then the service may be a success. That isn’t a given though.
Lake Wobegon and the sharing economy
In the world of the sharing economy every participant needs to be in the top ten percent.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd can’t get an Uber because her feedback score isn’t high enough.
Similarly, when the Philadelphia Citypaper’s Emily Guendelsberger went undercover as an Uber driver she too found feedback scores determined how much work a contractor won.
Guendelsberger found a driver with feedback score of 4.6 risked being dropped by Uber while Dowd discovered her rating of 4.2 meant drivers didn’t want to take her.
Both these numbers are out of five and translate to 84% for Dowd and 92% for drivers.
If you’re the type that works from the baseline of giving three out of five for delivering a service as described then adding points for exceptional performance or deducting marks for a poor experience then you’re messing with the system.
With the Uber scoring model – and one suspects this is the same with most of ‘sharing economy’ feedback mechanisms – the baseline mark is a perfect five with small increments deducted for poor performance.
Basically the curve is squeezed up to the right. Business Insider reported last year that only one percent of trips receive a rating of one or less and five percent below three.
In Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon every child is above above average, it seems in the world of the sharing economy almost every participant is in the top ten percent.
Collaboration and buzzwords
Collaboration tools are changing business but the progress is slower than some of us expected
Today in Technology Spectator, I have a piece on collaboration based around the Google and Deloitte paper released last week.
At the moment Google are on a marketing campaign promoting Apps for Business, for a previous campaign I prepared The Future of Teamwork which examined the benefits of cloud computing for industry.
It’s interesting how the message hasn’t changed a great deal in the last five year, despite it being valid.
The rise of the business digital native
Today’s new businesses are the true digital natives.
‘Digital natives’ has been the term to describe people born after 1990 who’ve had computers throughout their entire lives.
The theory is these folk have an innate understanding of digital technologies from being immersed in them from an early age.
It’s doubful how true that theory is; the generation born after 1960 were born into the television generation yet the vast majority of GenXers would have little idea on how to produce a sitcom or fix a TV set and the same could be said for the war generation and motor cars.
Digitally native businesses
For businesses, it may be the digital native concept is far more valid. Ventures being founded today are far more likely to be using productivity enhancing tools like social media, collaboration platforms and cloud computing services than their older competitors.
What’s striking about older businesses, particularly in the Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) sectors, is just how poorly they have adopted technology. The Australian Bureau of Statistics report into IT use by the nation’s businesses illustrates the sectors’ weak use of tech.
The most telling statistic is the number of businesses with a web presence; the SME sector lags way behind the corporate sector that has almost 100% penetration.
Many of the zero to four business can be disregarded as most of them are sole trader consultants who’ve had to register a businesses for professional reason, although there is an argument even they would benefit from a cheap or free web presence to advertise their skills.
The ABS statistics show small business is lagging behind the corporates in social media and e-commerce adoption as well so the argument that local businesses are ignoring the web and using services like Facebook, LinkedIn or Google Places to advertise their services doesn’t hold water.
Old man’s business
Part of this reluctance to use digital tools is age; many SMEs were born either in the era when faxes were a novelty or when Windows computers were first appearing on small businesses desktops. They are creatures of another era.
In the current era cloud, social media and collaborative services are running business. The idea of buying a workstation for a new employee and waiting for the IT guy to set them up on the network is an antiquated memory; today’s workers have their own laptops, tablets and smartphones to do the work – all they need is a password.
Those services offer a different way of organising a business and this is the most worrying part of the statistics – large organisations are slowly, and not always successfully, adopting modern management practices while many small businesses are locked into a 1970s and 80s way of working.
For businesses being founded today, this isn’t a worry – they are the true digital natives and are reaping the benefits of more efficient ways of working. Something emphasised by Google’s updates to its Drive productivity services announced overnight.
That’s something that should focus the plans of established businesses of all sizes as they adapt to working in a connected society.
Building the post-agile workplace
Yammer founder Adam Pisoni believes the Microsoft owned business could be then next phase of the industrial revolution.
“I personally believe we haven’t seen a major change in how companies work since the industrial revolution,” says Yammer co-founder Adam Pisoni. “We’re, I think, on the brink of a change as large as that.
Pisoni was speaking at Microsoft’s Australian TechEd conference on the Gold Coast and gave an insight into how Yammer’s development philosophy is being implemented at Microsoft since the smaller company was acquired last year.
He believes all businesses can benefit from collaborative, cloud based tools like Yammer however software companies like Microsoft are the ones being affected the earliest from their adoption.
“We sometimes joke that Yammer’s development methodology is post-Agile, post-Scrum” says Pisoni. “Because they were not fast enough and don’t respond to data quickly.”
Understanding modern workplaces
This will strike fear into the minds of managers who are only just coming to understand Agile and Scrum methodologies over the traditional ‘waterfall’ method of software development.
“We focused primarily in the past on efficiency,” states Pisoni. “In many ways things like scrum attempt to make you more agile but still focus on efficiency. Everyone is tasked based and hours and burn down points and all that”
“The name of the game now is not efficiency, it’s how quickly you can learn and respond to information.”
“Yammer is less of a product than it is a set of experiments running at all times. We take bold guesses about the future but then we try to disprove our hypotheses to get there.”
“So we came up with this ‘post-agile’ model of a small, autonomous, cross-functional teams – two to ten people for two to ten weeks who could prove or disprove an hypotheses based on the data.”
“This lets us quickly move resources around to double down on that or do something else.”
Flipping hamburgers the smart way
Pisoni sees this model of management working in areas outside of software development such as retail and cites one of his clients, Red Robin burgers, where the hamburger chain put its frontline staff on Yammer and allowed them contribute to product development.
The result was getting products faster to market – one burger that would have taken eighteen months to release took four weeks. The feedback loops from the customer and the reduced cost of failure made it easier to for the chain to experiment with new ranges.
With companies as diverse as hamburger chains, telcos and software developers benefitting from faster development times, it’s a warning that all businesses need to be considering how their employees work together as the competition is getting faster and more flexible.
It remains to be seen if this change is as great as the industrial revolution, but it’s now that can’t be ignored by managers and entrepreneurs.
Paul attended Microsoft TechEd Australia as a guest of Microsoft who paid for flights, accommodation and food.
The sport of racing dinosaurs
Bud Selig’s refusal to use email tells us how major sport administrators are insulated from the realities of the modern economy.
The admission from Bud Selig, the US Major League Baseball Commissioner, that he has never used email raised lots of eyebrows around the world.
As Business Insider notes, Selig is 79 years old and there are plenty of other sports administrators challenged by technology so it’s understandable that the commissioner might not see the need to use a technology that became common twenty years ago.
Bud Selig’s story illustrates a much more important issue facing the professional sports industry, that it’s run on an aging business model.
The last fifty years has been very good for professional sport as television and Pay-TV networks bid sporting rights higher across the world.
In most nations, the dominant sport did extremely well as broadcasters fought each other; the Olympics, Soccer leagues in most of the world along with baseball, American football and basketball in the US, Cricket in India, Aussie Rules in Australia, Rugby in South Africa and New Zealand all became incredibly rich.
There weren’t many competitive pressures on the managements of those sport as the dominant sports rarely had any competition, it was a matter of just playing the TV executives off each other.
As a consequence, many sports are run by people with a somewhat exaggerated sense of privilege – they believe it’s their talent, not Rupert Murdoch’s or NBC’s money, that is responsible for their game’s riches.
Bud can dismiss the disbelieving gasps of people in the real economy because for most of his career the only competition he’s had to deal with was from his colleagues has he fought his way to the top job which he won in 1998.
In the real economy, there’s no such luxury. In fact, email may be becoming yesterday’s technology as social media and collaborative tools take over. David Thodey at Telstra and Atos’ Thierry Breton are two leaders in this field.
The danger for sporting organisations is that they are ripe for disruption, so far broadcast media rights have stood up well while revenues in other parts of the entertainment and publishing industries has collapsed. There’s no guarantee though that broadcast sports will remain immune from those changes.
Should disruption come along, even just in the form of sporting rights stagnating, many professional codes will suddenly find inefficiencies like Bud Selig are an expensive luxury.
While Bud’s story is amusing, in reality there’s little the rest of us can learn from how Major League Baseball’s senior executives run their offices.
Re-inventing management with social media
Is social media changing how management works? It could be the case at Telstra.
Yesterday I went along to hear Telstra’s Paul Geason speak at the American Chamber of Commerce lunch in Sydney.
Geason, who is Group Managing Director for the company’s Enterprise and Government division, was speaking on some of the findings from Telstra’s Clever Australian program along with some of the technology trends he’s encountered in big business and public organisations.
The bulk of Geason’s presentation I reported in an article for Comms Day, and much of his observations about enterprise technology trends wouldn’t surprise keen observers of the industry or regular readers of this blog.
What did stand out though were his comments on how social media is changing management behaviour at Telstra where over 25,000 registered users of the company’s Yammer platform have direct access to the company’s CEO, David Thodey.
Social media is just going crazy. Within Telstra now we have over 25,000 of our staff registered on Yammer. It has been a phenomenon. It’s playing this really interesting role of breaking down the hierarchy in our organisation.
Which is not just because of the technology but it’s also got something to do with our CEO.
He is on Yammer just about every single day of the week. There is not an issue that hits that site that he won’t pick up and direct to the right place to get it to the right place and have it dealt with.
Our people love it, they would never have imagined they could get that level of access and input and intervention from the CEO.
There’s a certain transparency that has come to our organisation that didn’t exist previously which is really great for the levels of engagement of our people and very challenging for us as leaders in having to deal with that level of visibility that was not there before.
I think it’s really changing how organistations are operating.
Paul Geason’s comments are a good example of changing management structures. Not only does it bring accountability to executives, it also means organisations can respond quickly to changing marketplaces – something covered in the Future of Teamwork presentation back in 2010.
A few years ago, no-one would have thought of Telstra as being an open, collaborative organisation yet today it’s gone quite a way down the path to becoming one.
The key though to this is having senior management buying into the process. Without that leadership many companies might be facing a tough future.
Live Blogging from the Dreamforce keynote
A live commentary of the Dreamforce keynote session
[liveblog]
Reaching connected communites
How do associations and clubs make sure they are visible on the web.
As our homes and communities become more connected, people are expecting to find all their information online. How do associations and clubs make sure they are visible on the web.
This is the transcript of the opening keynote to the Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association’s 2011 conference. The accompanying slideshow is available on Slideshare.
Reaching Connected Communities
Thank you very much for the kind introduction and the opportunity to open Australian Seniors Computer Clubs Association’s 2011 conference.
We’re in a time of history where all of us have the planet’s information at our fingertips and the ability to broadcast our own views and beliefs to the world.
Increasingly our roles as productive members of society are determined by our access to that information and our ability to use it.
Seniors computer clubs have a critical role in ensuring older generations have the opportunity to contribute to the connected society of the 21st Century.
The problem for clubs is that all of us struggle to be heard through the noise of the online world. This morning we’ll have a look at what tools computer clubs can use to stake their claim on the Internet and be found on the web.
It isn’t just clubs affected by this, many of the traditional models of media and business are struggling with these changes and this presents opportunities for computer clubs and community organisations.
Underlying the use of these tools there are the principles that I call the four C’s –community, collaboration, conversations and communications.
Communications
Of the four, communications is the most traditional area. We need to be talking to those who need our assistance.
We have to be telling people how we can help them, what our services are and of course when and where the clubs meet.
In a traditional way, we advertised, or had articles put into the local papers and other publications. These channels are evolving in the digital era and are important to clubs as the people you want to reach out to are those who aren’t using the web effectively.
We also have newer communications platforms in local search, mobile apps and social media.
All of these channels complement each other and allow us to post relevant and timely messages that keep members and the public up to date with key issues.
With search engines and social media now the main ways that people research and find information, it is more important than ever that clubs have a legitimate online presence.
Communications isn’t just about getting the message across, it’s also about working together and many of the cloud and social media tools like Google+, GoToWebinar and Webex allow us to have conversations with the housebound and dispersed groups.
Conversations
Traditional broadcast methods of communicating do not encourage conversations. If you want to have your voice heard in the local paper you have to write a letter to the editor which may take weeks to be published, if at all.
In reality there was no conversation. The owner of the printing press or broadcasting licence controlled the message and who was allowed in the discussion.
Today’s online tools today allow us to talk to our audience. This is a great advantage for community and volunteer groups.
This is something that big companies and governments, with respect to the minister, struggle with and it is where computer clubs and other community organisations will increasingly carry out an important role.
Collaboration
One of the traditional problems with volunteer groups is that much of the work fell on one or two individuals. The cloud computing tools of today mean groups can collaborate far better and take the load off key members.
Tools like Google Docs, Dropbox and WordPress mean that the load can be shared among a group and no longer has to rely on one person to update the website or complete meeting minutes.
These cloud computing tools allow clubs to work together better internally, improve efficiency and engage more effectively with their communities.
Community
The most important part of clubs is communities.
One of the problems we’ve seen in the 20th Century is that the rise of the motor car and broadcast media fragmented our communities.
Online tools, particularly social media, will work to bring communities back together, a process that’s going to accelerate as the era of cheap credit ends and the limitations of government are going to become apparent.
The tools
So what are the tools we can use for our clubs. I’m going to run through some basic ones. This is by no means a definitive list and you may find alternative tools that suit your organisation’s needs better.
These are listed on my website and at the end of my presentation I’ll give the web addresses to this presentation online so you don’t have to write down the scripts.
We’ll look at social media platforms, web publishing services and local search. First let’s look at the collaboration tools that help clubs deliver a better message to the community.
Google Apps
Google Apps, which is free for organisations with less than ten users, is a really handy service that offers basic word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software.
Its great strength is the ability to share those documents, spreadsheets and presentation with other users who can all work on them at the same time.
Google Docs also has a form feature which allows you to setup quick and ready surveys, feedback and booking forms.
Other similar tools are Zoho and Office365 which both offer collaboration and sharing features.
Dropbox
Dropbox, and its competitors Box.net and Microsoft’s SkyDrive, are great tools for sharing files between computers and collaborative teams.
These services allow you to create folders on an Internet service that you can then securely share with other people. It makes working on projects very easy and eliminates the shuffle of email attachments around groups.
If you are using these tools you don’t need to be converted about them.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is the sanity saviour of small businesses and community organisations wanting to get newsletters out.
Managing a mailing list is hard work and these services take the hard work out of them as well as make sure your organisation complies with the spam act.
The service offers templates and sophisticated management tools so you can see who is opening your newsletters and what links they are clicking.
Survey Monkey
Survey monkey helps organisations keep in touch with their members and understand their needs. It’s a great tool for measuring customer satisfaction and feedback.
Google Apps has a more basic survey function built into it as well.
Both are excellent ways of keeping your membership in the loop when it comes to agreeing on new ideas.
Local Search
Local search is changing the way we do business.
Consumers using local as they abandon phone directories and classified ads as the net is a quicker more effective way of searching.
These local search results not only appear at the top of the page but they also feed into the popular social media services.
All organisations, local or otherwise should be listing on these not just to improve their search results but to also appear on other services and on devices like GPS systems.
If you have a relative or friend running a business I’d urge them to list on all of these services as this is an area that is seriously changing the business landscape.
Google Places
It is essential to be listed on Google Places as this will appear at the top of a local search and feeds into other social media and services like street directories and GPS navigators.
Ensure you fill in as many fields as possible, especially the times and days you are open and contact details.
Use the custom fields to improve your keywords and give a richer description of who you are.
You can also upload photos and videos which will improve your search results along with give visitors more information about what you do.
True Local
News Limited’s answer to Google Local ties into News’ local newspaper network.
True Local charges for some functions that are free in Google Places and offers additional free services like the ability to upload Word and PDF documents.
Sensis
Sensis is digital roadkill, the most common complaint with the print edition now is that it’s too small to read and the phone book doesn’t make a good monitor stand anymore.
However, Sensis’ free listing is important as it feeds into NineMSN’s search which is the default on Windows computers.
You’ll also receive a free listing in the printed Yellow Pages for what it’s worth, which to be fair is probably where the most digitally challenged folk will find you.
Social Media
In recent years we’ve been lead to believe that social media is something bigger than the industrial revolution that will cure various tropical diseases, rescue broken business models and make a cup of tea for you in the morning.
The reality is social media is changing the way communities and markets communicate. It’s the 21st Century’s town square or village tavern.
Social media services are great for driving traffic to your site and excellent for listening to trends, monitoring news and talking to your community. They are also the greatest driver for people getting online.
Contrary to stereotypes, the fastest growing group among Facebook’s 800 million users are seniors.
This is the biggest opportunity for clubs as the late adopters – the sceptics who’ve resisted going online are now doing so, if only to talk to their grandkids.
There’s a view that Facebook, and most other social media services, are for teenagers putting up pictures of cats and talking about what they did last weekend. That’s wrong on many levels as the service cuts across all demographics and groups.
Facebook Pages
Like a Google Places page, a Facebook Page is free and vital to clubs and businesses. If you have relatives running a business, they should also sign up for a free site.
Increasingly this is where the public goes to online and we have to be there. You can also add events and publicise them through these pages. Your community can contribute and share to your page.
Get 25 members to like your page and you can claim the full name as well.
Google+
Like Facebook, Google+ has a free pages function for community groups and pages. However it remains to be seen how much traction Google+ will get as the service develops.
Google itself seems to be confused about what Google+ actually is, Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, calls it an identity service rather than a social media platform. This confusion of what Google Plus actually is doesn’t fill me with optimism on the service’s future.
Apart from the social aspect, Google+ has some interesting collaboration tools such as Hangouts, that allow ten people to work together. If you have a webcam installed, and most new systems come with one, you can set up a group for training or collaboration.
Along with Google+ there are other webinar programs such as GoToWebinar or Webex and Skype’s conferencing feature does a very job at this as well.
As a conversational and listening tool Twitter is excellent, although it has been largely mis-sold by the social media business community as a marketing and PR tool.
Twitter allows you to be ahead of the news cycle as most journalists use it to find stories. My own use of Twitter is as a news source.
It’s a good way of keeping up to date on what is happening in communities and with connecting with individual journalists and opinion makers.
Own your platform
The website is your site and your property. Overlooked the dangers of not owning the space you are publishing on.
Websites have become easier to use and build. It you’re using a service like Blogger or WordPress you can get a site running for as little as seven dollars a year and you can be delegating access to various members of the group.
Your website is the centre of your online presence and your home base in the digital economy.
Blogger
Blogger – Google’s free blogging service – is a great tool for getting a website running.
Easy to use, with dozens of templates and plugins for services like e-commerce, newsletters, social media and events it’s an effective and quick way to get a website running.
You can also use your own business domain name for free. Which means you can get online for under $50 a year.
WordPress
WordPress is the most popular web content management system. Offering a vast number of templates and plug ins with the advantage of a big community of developers to support the product.
The software also allows an easy upgrade path to other services like Drupal.
Not business as usual
This is not business as usual.
Many of our business and political users are locked into 1980s ideologies and business models that are rapidly being challenged.
In the media we have a whole generation of journalists who are seeing their careers being twisted out of shape by forces they don’t recognise, something that has already happened to the record industry that thought it could use the old business model of developing new technologies that would extend their playlists in the way the LP had in the 1970s and CD in the 1980s.
We see this in the consumer goods industries where old business models are being challenged.
Earlier this year Bernie Brooks, the chief executive of Myer, signed a deal with one of China’s biggest contract manufacturers to make Myer’s homebrand clothes.
The problem with this is it’s the 1980s model. Today consumers can research these things and they will quickly figure out that Myer’s $200 branded shoes are made in the same factory and little different from those you can by for $50 at Target or Lowes.
This mindset illustrates the problems of established businesses and it’s no problem that Coles and Harvey Norman are campaiging to obstruct online shopping in an environment where the informed consumer is able to circumvent the old distribution and retail models.
In many ways these are modern equivalents of the stagecoach operators and it’s no co-incidence that a hundred years ago this year that Cobb & Co went broke. This is risk that any business runs when it is unfortunate to have managers who ignore trends.
Addressing the digital divide
Seniors computer clubs have an important part in today’s society.
The real digital divide is not across age, it is not between “digital natives” and “digital immigrants”, the real divide is between those who are prepared to understand and use these online tools and those who won’t.
Those who won’t are going to be increasingly isolated from a world that is going online. At a time where we’re seeing the NBN rolled out, the launch of 4G networks and increasing use of the web by business and government agencies it’s going to be essential to have some knowledge of the online world and the tools to use it.
Being on the wrong side of the divide will make it increasingly hard to access services and information.
The role of groups like the local seniors’ computer group is to help people remain valued and productive members of our community in today’s connected society.
Hopefully I’ve given you some ideas this morning on how to carry out the important role you have in this decade of great change.
Online tools to turbocharge your business
Flying Solo’s Independents Day looked at how the web can help business productivity.
Flying Solo’s 2011 Independents Day conference featured our Online Tools to Turbocharge your Business.
We looked at some of the most popular cloud computing, social media, productivity and collaboration tools that can help a business make more money and grow faster.
Most importantly, it shows how business owners can free up some of their most valuable asset – their time.
Some of the tools we discussed include the popular social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and how they can be used for customer service and market intelligence on top of being marketing services.
We also looked at how collaborative and cloud computing services can help small businesses work together and improve the ways consultants can work with big business clients. In many ways, collaborative tools like Google Apps, Zoho and Dropbox help build team and deliver projects more effectively.
The Online Tools to Turbocharge Your Business presentation itself is available on Slideshare and if you subscribe to our newsletter, you’ll receive a free copy of the accompanying Online Business Essentials e-book.