Business of the Future: How Collaboration Platforms Provide the Advantage

Part 1 - Why Collaboration is the Key to Success we looked at the importance of collaboration to a company and why it is so vital to fostering business success.

In this article we’ll delve into the specifics of implementing collaboration platforms in your business, covering the hows and whys of this sometimes confusing topic.

Every Business Is Different

Without wanting to state the obvious, it is true to say that every business is unique and because of this, every business has needs that unique. It is vital, therefore, that you take time to think about what it is that you want this new platform to do, and understand how it will both change and benefit the company, before you jump into spending money and implementing a collaboration platform. It is important to identify what you want from this tool.

Selecting a collaboration platform that suits your aims, needs and working environment is crucial to success. Integrating a collaboration platform isn’t merely about updating some software; the end goal is to decidedly alter the culture of the business for the better.

Examples Of Success

A good example that illustrates the incredible changes that can be wrought within a business environment through the use of a collaboration platform alone is the runaway success at the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The UK’s largest public service department and one of the country’s biggest employers with over 120,000 staff, the DWP utilized a Spigit platform to shake up its work culture. Spigit’s cloud-based crowdsourcing approach was ideal for a large employer that was looking for ways to engage its staff and generate new ideas. Through the use of this tool, the DWP accomplished greater interaction between its work force as well as a saving of £20 million, found through staff suggestions.

While this success story is a particularly strong example of the benefits of collaboration, it is by no means alone. Time and again successes like this are seen as silos are broken and information is shared.

Uses Of Collaboration Platforms

Platforms like Quip, Slack, Office365 and Atlassian’s Confluence help streamline team work to produce more effective project plans, budgets or press releases. Confluence’s ability to centralize and make available all documents, allows real-time revision from colleagues, bringing alternative and thought-provoking ideas to the table. Knowledge is readily available and work output is optimized. Errors are reduced and travel costs saved. It is benefits like these that provide a time and cost advantage and allow a business to alter its work mode as the nature of business becomes more mobile and dispersed.

Need For Management To Be Onboard

Without the participation of employees, collaboration is null and void. And to promote the engagement of employees in any organization managers must be fully onboard. The change requires interaction between executives and staff both on the platform and off, as behaviours in the work place and executive’s willingness to listen will affect employee’s willingness to participate. Similarly, a show of implementing some suggestions - or at least commenting upon them - exhibits the management’s commitment.

Collaboration provides feedback loops and transparency so that each action taken by a member of staff can be learned from a built upon. Decisions can be made further down the chain of hierarchy by less senior staff, but who are directly involved in the process. This move offers staff a change to take responsibility for their actions and a feeling of involvement. This change also removes the need for management to be omniscient and to sign off on everything.

Manager’s made need time to get used to this new way of working, but it will build a more efficient machine. These platforms instill communication, improvement and constant learning. As was mentioned earlier, integrating business collaboration isn’t just rolling out some software: it is changing the very culture of business. Ultimately, this leads to further equality, the acceptance of personal responsibility, and company growth.

Nicki Doble is Managing Director of 99th Floor. 99th Floor is a digital consultancy firm which helps its clients create and deliver their digital strategy (simply).

Business Builders Group: Is AI good or bad for business and jobs?

Business Builders Group: Is AI good or bad for business and jobs?:   I’ve been asked many times recently to comment on how the rise of AI will impact the jobs and the economy, particularly in customer servic...

Zuckerberg and Altman push for BAsic Universal Income

Mark Zuckerberg joins Silicon Valley bigwigs in calling for government to give everybody free money

• Zuckerberg presented to Harvard Students  and called for universal basic income, echoing other elite members of Silicon Valley

Todd Haselton | @robotodd

Thu, 25 May '17 | 4:28 PM ETCNBC

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called on the need to consider universal basic income for Americans during his Harvard Commencement Speech.

"When you don't have the opportunity to take an idea and try and commercialise it - we all lose!!

 How can we encourage people to try and fail and try again - so that we can all benefit? People need a cushion to fall back on if they failed

See the video here http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000621877 

UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME

Zuckerberg's comments reflect those of other Silicon Valley bigwigs, including Sam Altman, the president of venture capital firm Y Combinator. 

"Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it's time for our generation to define a new social contract," Zuckerberg said during his speech. "We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure everyone has a cushion to try new ideas."

Zuckerberg said that, because he knew he had a safety net if projects like Facebook had failed, he was confident enough to continue on without fear of failing. Others, he said, such as children who need to support households instead of poking away on computers learning how to code, don't have the foundation Zuckerberg had. 

Universal basic income would provide that sort of cushion, 

Altman's view is similar. A year ago, Altman said he thinks "everyone should have enough money to meet their basic needs—no matter what, especially if there are enough resources to make it possible. We don't yet know how it should look or how to pay for it, but basic income seems a promising way to do this." 

Altman believes basic income will be possible as technological advancements "generate an abundance of resources" that help decrease the cost of living.

What Next in a Global Labor Landscape in Flux?

 

By Kimberly Hogan

Focus on job creation 

“I see aspirations converging all over the world and I’m really worried about it because unless we move more quickly in fighting poverty, unless we move more quickly in creating jobs, thwarted aspirations could turn into something really negative.”

– Dr. Jim Yong Kim, World Bank Group President

How would you describe the modern work landscape? Confusing, upside-down, stark, ever-changing? Many factors have contributed to this disorientation: technology, information access, constant connectivity, globalization, and much more. Even the concept of a traditional work week has eroded.

The gig economy is here to stay - risk transference from the corporate to the individual

As of January 2016 regular “remote work” among the non-self-employed population, has grown 103 percent since 2005 in the U.S. and continues to grow globally. Meanwhile, the ranks of independent contractors swell as on-demand services become a more prominent segment of the workforce. 

What are the repercussions of such a disruption and how are our employers, recruiters, education systems, and communities responding?

Those are the themes that framed a Skoll World Forum session called A Work Landscape in Flux for Young People. 

As Jim Kim mentioned in the opening plenary of Skoll Week, now more than ever we need to pay close attention to these dynamics and anticipate the impacts. “Aspirations linked to opportunity yield dynamism,” he told the crowd. “Aspirations linked to frustration yield conflict, violence, and extremism.” There seems to be no better time to have this discussion.

Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of Institute for the Future (IFTF), set the stage by describing what she calls the “digital coordination economy.” This is our current age: built on the foundation of technology, connectivity, context, and coordination. New forms of efficiency, driven by individuals connecting those in need to services available, has created a dynamic gig economy. Www.referron.com

Sounds like a western perspective? Other panelists described similar shifts in other regions of the world. Marwa Moaz, Co-founder and COO of Bamyan Media, described how gig economies help formalize the informal work sector in Egypt. Forty percent of Egyptian Uber drivers were previously unemployed. Driving Uber, said Moaz, gives them autonomy and a reliable income, and they get paid on time.

Dina El Mofty, CEO and founder of INJAZ Egypt, described how young people are at the forefront of this movement, creating their own economy, especially in the Middle East, a region with the highest youth unemployment rate in the world. Organizations like her own have empowered 500,000 young people in Egypt and 1,000,000 in the Middle East by focusing on addressing work readiness and entrepreneurship.

Education and upskilling is key

Fhazil Wamalwa, an educator and social entrepreneur who works with the M-Soma Institute and DISA Energy Management, said that the youth unemployment rate in Kenya is over 40 percent. He stressed how we need to help young people improve their skill sets to better match emerging jobs. Perhaps this is a root cause of the issue of global unemployment, he offered.

In the gig economy, the weight of risk is moved from the corporation to the individual, a burden for which many are unprepared. Healthcare options and individual insurance are harder to come by for those juggling jobs for a living wage.

Many growing job sectors rely on independent workers: military, IT / computer science, agriculture, fishing, and forestry. We may need an overhaul of the social safety infrastructure to mitigate this growing problem of individual risk.

The opportunity - matching jobs skills to jobs available - www.myrectuitmentplus.com 

Each of the voices in this session found consensus around the need to match job skills to jobs available. But by whom, and how?

El Mofty noted that engagement with the government is critical. She cautioned though against waiting for government-led curriculum shifts; the marketplace is changing far too fast. INJAZ Egypt works with the Ministry of Education to partner with the private sector to teach work-ready skills to young people. These programs can create appetite, she said, and link students to the outside world through mentorship.

VET - vocational education is key as part of the solution - www.bsilearning.com

Gorbis mentioned how some U.S. community colleges are implementing a “learning is earning” model that requires students to be employed while earning their degree (preferably in a job related to their field of study). This approach encourages students to apply new skills in real time. Still, education and training must adapt curricula to match the actual needs of the marketplace, and quickly!

Parents can exacerbate the issue by pressuring their children to follow more traditional routes where there may no longer be a job market, said Moaz. Media has an opportunity to educate and shift mindsets. Wamalwa spoke to an interesting approach that M-Soma Institute has developed to quickly scale up individual technical skills by offering short-term training courses to young people before they pursue costly post-secondary studies. This not only equips students with a new set of “real time” applicable skills, but also allows them to earn an income and save for college or university.

The future of jobs will be different to what it is now  - if we don't chang- it will be at our peril! 

The question remains: can we adapt fast enough? It’s the pace that makes navigating this “brave new world” such a challenge. Will we forever play catch up? This loops back to Jim Kim’s thoughts. We need a sense of urgency, of personal responsibility, and of community to tackle these challenges. We need to play our part in empowering, educating, and creating opportunity for the next generation. We can all be mentors, and perhaps that’s one place to start.

7 ways to prevent your ideas from getting killed

Great article by 

 

A lot of my business ideas got killed in my 30-year-career. In practice, I have learned the hard way that if your new idea doesn’t fit your organisation, it will be rejected and nothing will materialize in the end. That's why I like to help you with 7 ways to prevent your ideas from getting killed.

Ideas are stopped by a lot of "NO's"

The single biggest obstacle at the start of innovation is one single word: NO. 

If your idea is not new,  it’s not innovation, it will get a lot of opposition. 

 

As startup partners and financers will confront you with a lot of doubts. As a corporate innovator it will be your colleagues and managers giving comments like:

• No, we have always done it this way...
• No, our customers won’t like that!
• No, we don’t have time for this…
• No, it’s not possible...
• No, it's too expensive!
• No, let’s be realistic…
• No, that’s not logical…
• No, we need to do more research…
• No, there's no budget…
• No, top management won’t agree...
• No, the market is not ready yet...
• No, it might work in other places but not here...
• No, that's way too risky...
• No, it doesn't fit our strategy...
• No, that’s for the future...

Be prepared to be met by all these idea-killers along the way. It might even spin you out of your company, as there is strong evidence that many of the new ideas implemented in new ventures are generated while the employee was working for a parent firm in the same industry:

 71% of all startups replicated or modified an idea encountered in previous jobs.

People and companies are risk-averse

The origin of all the opposition you encounter is that in essence most people and companies avoid risks. Moving beyond what they normally do makes them uncertain. In my lectures when I ask, “Who of you wants to be an innovator?” most hands go up in the air. When I follow up with, “Who of you wants to run a personal risk?” a lot of those hands go back down. For corporate innovators it’s very frustrating when you’ve been assigned to come up with great new ideas only to see nothing materialize because the same managers who gave you your assignment say ‘no’ to every idea, business case or prototype you present. First of all, it’s a pity for all the work you and your team have put into it. And secondly, your organization is still lacking innovative solutions. However, your chances of surviving the innovation maze will rise if your idea meets the company’s strategy and innovation criteria.

7 Ways to check if your organisation is prepared to adopt your idea and make it reality

Helmut Panke, the ex-CEO of the BMW Group, said, 

“My biggest challenge is saying ‘no’ to projects that are exciting, but don’t fit BMW’s strategy.” 

He hits the nail on its head. Your idea might be really exciting, but if it does not fit your company it will be killed sooner or later, most often early on at the front end. That’s why it’s wise to check this is as early as possible in the innovation process.

In my view there are 7 ways you to check if your idea fits your organization, preventing your idea from getting killed. Just ask yourself the following questions:

1. Has your idea the potential to attain revenue -, cost saving - or profit targets for your organisation? If not, rethink your business model.
2. Does your idea fit the processes of your company? If not, would your organisation be open to partner, or co-create them with others?
3. Does your idea fit the people of your company? If not, would your organisation be open hiring new people with different skill sets or operate it with others?
4. Does your idea fit the strategy of your company? If not, how can you tweak your idea to make it inclusive?
5. Does your idea fit the investment budgets of your organisation? If not, how can you lower the investments and/or find external financers to join in?
6. Does your idea fit the customers of your organization? If not, how can you get access to these new target groups? Can you co-market the idea?
7. Does your idea fit the present brand(s) of your organization? If not, can you introduce a new brand or co-brand the idea?

Well, if you have ticked six or seven boxes you’ve got a match. You can proceed with the next activity and work out the details later in the new business case. If you have ticked three to five boxes the match with your organisation is doubtful at the very least. Try to pivot your idea and business model to come up with a great idea which matches your organisation better. Or you might spin out your idea as a separate startup. If you have ticked two or even fewer boxes, there is no match at all with your organisation and spinning out your idea and the intellectual property rights could be a good option.

So check first if your idea fits the goals of your managers and your organisation, if you want to prevent your idea to be rejected. I wish you lots of success on your innovation journeys.

Do you want to improver your innovation skills and results? Join our next training in the FORTH innovation methodology Oct 29 - Nov 3, 2017. Check it out at: http://www.forth-innovation.com/training/

Sources:

• “Performance Driver: Helmut Panke”, Businessweek, June 7, 2004, p. 40.
• Developing New Ideas: Spin-outs, Spinoffs or Internal Divisions, Radoslawa Nikolowa, May 2011, working paper, p 2.

Written by

Gijs van WulfenInspiring you to master innovation

Elon Musk goes into solar power

Bob Pritchard's Column 

The new Tesla Solar Roof went on sale last Wednesday and Elon Musk’s enthusiasm for the product is amazing, rivalling that of the new Tesla, his Mars colonization, the Hyperloop, AI or his Boring Tunnels company.

 

Musk has always been a huge supporter of solar power. He likes to point out that humanity has a compelling alternative to fossil-fuel energy: the giant fusion reactor in the sky that bathes the planet every day with free power.  Solar also fits into his master plan, which involves eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions by electrifying transportation; backing up the biosphere with SpaceX, which would make humanity a multi-planetary species; and powering it all with solar energy.

 

If you are building a new property or replacing your roof, why not replace it with a roof that generates power and saves you money over the long haul? If you stay in your house for 25 – 30 years you’ll replace your roof at least once. With a traditional roof, at a cost of about $US10,000, you maintain the value of the home, but you don’t necessarily add much to it. The Solar Roof should last  at least twice as long as a traditional roof and it will reduce your electricity costs and, paired with a Tesla Powerpack battery, provide you with backup energy.

 

The up-front costs are high, but a Solar Roof could net a homeowner tens of thousands of dollars over 30 years.  In addition, Musk’s solar roofs look great with four different tile choices for the Solar Roof by 2018. Last week, Musk said for far too long, we’ve been deprived of rooftop beauty  and that Tesla had struggled to find sufficiently beautiful roofs upon which to base its designs.

 

The Solar Roof could be financed through a homeowner’s mortgage (adding, say $US20,000 for an effectively 30-year net savings of around $US5,000, making the roof effectively free). If the home’s value rises in line with the rate of inflation it will become part of an appreciating asset, further enhancing the homeowner’s bottom line and net worth.  In fact, outside of financial instruments, there really aren’t that many ways to buy products that will actually be worth more tomorrow than today.

 

There will be some depreciation with a Solar Roof, and maintenance costs could be a factor. But when the real-estate value of the property is taken into account, a homeowner should come out well ahead.  As Musk said “ In the future we want to look around and see beautiful roofs that draw energy from the sun.”

 

Sounds good to me.

 

The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil industry does not own the s

Will Walmart survive?

Another great gem from Curtis Carlson

PS WalMart is an interesting study.  An efficiency company (they all go away if they don’t innovate) that could have become Amazon and missed it.  Nokia all over again.  Can they recover?  In all the world’s history only a tiny fraction make it.