Social Business leadership lessons from playing Candy Crush!

One of the funner videos on Social Business Lessons!


Customer-Centric Leadership - One of my Picks for HBS Learnings!

At the end of this week I will be heading to Boston for my HBS Reunion!  I am so excited about seeing my friends and their families.

The other thing I love about our reunions are the case studies that drive new learnings.  One of the case studies I cannot wait for is on the Taj -- in particular, the bravery and resourcefulness shown by the rank-and-file employees of the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower luxury hotel during the terrorist attacks that took place in Mumbai, India, on Nov. 26 2008.

It will be a lesson in customer-centric leadership including the hotel’s history, its approach to training, and the “guest is God” philosophy inherent in Indian culture.   It is interesting that the Taj employees stayed at their posts, jeopardizing their safety to save hotel guests.

Can this level of loyalty and dedication be replicated and scaled elsewhere?  I will learn their secrets!

View the case at http://courseware.hbs.edu/cases/taj


Geek Girls are Chic! Selected by SXSW for a Session in 2015!

We are doing a session at SXSW -- YEA! http://ht.ly/BvqyI ) entitled "Geek Girls are Chic - 5 Career Hacks!".

So excited to share a sneak peek and we hope you join us at Southby!!!!

[youtube=http://youtu.be/6f5dMnvjMnw]


Don't go it alone: Create partnerships to prepare for the future A Chat with Ray Wang!

Ray Wang is one of the most visionary guys I've spoken to.  So I caught up with him on the Business Tech Trend report.   And his advice:   Don't go it alone: Create partnerships to prepare for the future

Ray Wang, founder and chairman of Constellation Analytics, talked about this partnership idea during our launch of the Business Tech Trends webcast. He commented that what clients are looking for today are "system integrators, partners, and value-added resellers to co-innovate, co-create. They are looking for new ideas and the ability to transform."
Ray-Wang

Ray is absolutely right! Furthermore, we're on the horizon of a digital business disruption. This disruption is more than just technology and networks talking to each other, it means a fundamental shift in business models. Ray went on to list seven elements of the digital disruption, which you can listen to on the webcast!

I suggest getting started on these three things:
1.  Pursue creative partnerships. Build partnerships that will help you create the next level of solutions.
2.  Increase analytics into your decision-making. Ray suggested that if 20% of your business isn't built on insight patterns by 2020, your enterprise won't survive. To start, register for the Watson Analytics Beta!  Watson Analytics Beta -> http://www.watsonanalytics.com
3.Re-imagine the hiring process. Your ideal candidate shouldn't be one that already fits the mold of your business. You need candidates that are considered outside of the box that will help re-imagine your business model.

Learn more here!  http://ibm.biz/biztechhuddle


Digital tip of the week – Twitter’s analytics dashboard now available for everyone

From our Business Tech Trends report, we found that Pacesetters leverage Analytics in all they do.

Check it out here!

  • “Raising the game: The IBM Business Tech Trends Report” https://ibm.biz/IBMBTT14
  • The IBM Tech Trends interactive Dashboard   http://bit.ly/tt14dashboard

Twitter has made its analytics dashboards available to all its users. You can now find data on how many people have seen and clicked on tweets from your account and get real-time information on engagement, retweets, replies, favorites and clicks for a tweet.

The tool also provides information that only third-party applications could serve until now, such as statistics on number of followers gathered over a two-year period, as well as detailing their sex, interests and location.

This feature was at first only available for advertisers and verified users and there is a help guide and FAQ on its Help Centre website. To access the services, you would need to login with your Twitter details on https://analytics.twitter.com/about .


Wumdrop's MOBILE solution delivers a victory at the Entrepreneur SmartCamp Cape Town!

Congratulations to Wumdrop for winning the SmartCamp Cape Town competition!

 

wumdrop

This year's event in Cape Town had 5 outstanding startups competing for the win. Each startup had very different and unique solutions that included scalable transactional monitoring, ecommerce store builder, mobile identity, and even a micro-radar so a bicyclist can track automobiles for increased safety. I'd say the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Cape Town is producing some very creative startup solutions!

Wumdrop's mobile solution allows you to request shipping service at the click of a button. No more waiting in lines at the post office or shipping kiosk! What's so impressive about their solution is that it furthers the notion of mobile solutions making daily tasks easier and faster to complete. This is a great resource for business and personal use!

And a big shout out to Tech4Africa! SmartCamp Cape Town ran in partnership with Tech4Africa. Every time they are involved in a SmartCamp event, it is huge success for everyone! So THANK YOU to Tech4Africa!


London Welcomes Business Tech Trends! What are the European differences?

I will be in London this week for the Entrepreneur County event entitled "Follow the Entrepreneur!"with Julie Myers as well as spending a few days at Shoreditch ... especially highlighting some Europe differences of our Business Tech Trend Study.

So in prep for Europe, I wanted to know the specific differences that we were seeing in Europe! Here's the highlights! As a reference, European companies make up 47% of those who contributed to the study (primarily from UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Russia)

Differences:
Social adoption is lower in Europe:
64% of European enterprises have deployed social (vs. 70% of non-Europe enterprises)
Plans for increasing Big Data and Analytics investment are lower:
66% of European enterprises are planning to increase investment over next 2 years, vs. 75% non-Europe
Europeans report having the needed cloud skills needed:
63% Europe vs. 56% non-Europe
• European companies are less likely to be engaging academia and clients as a partner:
73% use for activities, vs. 81% of non-European enterprises

79% use clients for activities, vs. 84% of non-European enterprises

• They are less likely to use analytical insights in their decision making:
30% Europe vs. 43% non-Europe (vs. 7 in 10 Pacesetters)
• And Finally, European enterprises are less likely to report gaining major competitive advantage from their initiatives in these areas:

  • Mobile: 66% in Europe gain major comp. advantage (vs. 77% non-Europe)
  • Social: 63% in Europe (vs. 77% non-Europe)
  • BDA: 65% in Europe (vs. 82% non-Europe)
  • Cloud: 67% in Europe (vs. 82% non-Europe)

While here I found this cool app as well -- for seeing the sights ..not that I will get to this trip but it is a fascinating app!
Googling Around London

 

 

Googling Around London [Infographic] by the team at Cheapflights

 


IBM Navigator on Cloud: Try it for 30 days to Manage your content

Did you know that 2.5 billion gigabytes of data are created every day? And, that as much as 80 percent of that data is comprised of unstructured content such as contracts, claims forms, and permit applications.

The explosion of content, and more importantly new forms of it including tweets and posts to social media, has increased the need to use any type of information from nearly any source.

IBM Navigator on Cloud, available on the IBM Cloud marketplace and built on SoftLayer’s Cloud platform, is a SaaS offering that can help all businesses gain value from a huge amount of content. You can even interface to IBM Navigator on Cloud via open APIs. In addition to being a secure, scalable and reliable platform, IBM Navigator on Cloud is also easy to use and delivered through a modern user experience.

IBM Navigator on Cloud has put IBM as a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Content Management for its completeness of vision and ability to execute. Also, the leading analyst firm IDC, for the 8th consecutive year, ranked IBM number one in worldwide market share for content management. It's a great tool to use and manage your content and files!

To learn more about IBM Navigator on Cloud, check out the video below! You can also try IBM Navigator on Cloud for a 30-day trial period.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrSgbNtsoH8&w=560&h=315]