Overview: Business

When EU tried to create its own platforms directly, “it was spectacularly bad. It tried to create its own version of Google, called Quaero... Going head-to-head with Google with a project involving well-funded, energetic entrepreneurs would be foolish. Attempting the same with a multigovernment collaboration is beyond description.”... there a…

while authority can compel action it does little to inspire belief. Only leadership can do that... That’s why change management efforts commonly fail. All too often, they are designed to carry out initiatives that come from the top. - To Create Real Change, Leadership Is More Important Than Authority | Digital Tonto

Over 40 new resources ... some great longreads to enjoy as the nights grow long, the productivity tips you’ll need to find the time to read them, and a free set of steak knives. The Christmas season, after all, is almost upon us.

true artificial intelligence, if it is realized, might pose a danger that exceeds every previous threat from technology—even nuclear weapons—and that if its development is not managed carefully humanity risks engineering its own extinction... Bostrom is arguably the leading transhumanist philosopher today... bringing order to ideas that might o…

Ray is a brilliant technologist, futurist, and director of engineering at Google focused on AI and language processing... of the 147 predictions that Kurzweil has made since the 1990's, fully 115 of them have turned out to be correct, and another 12 have turned out to be “essentially correct” (off by a year or two), giving his predictions a stunni…

I am done with attending badly run meetings and if you have any sense so should you be... running a good meeting comes down to the following: - I am done with bad meetings — Medium

The GDS was set up to improve online public services but disagreements with the top brass over its ambitions have seen four leaders abruptly resign - Why are senior staff fleeing the Government Digital Service? | Public Leaders Network | The Guardian

The number and diversity of communications skills needed to implement a communications strategy never stops growing. How are you organising them?

After studying innovation among 759 companies... found that corporate culture was a much more important driver of radical innovation than labor, capital, government or national culture... what is an innovative corporate culture? And ... is there any way you can build one? This article addresses both questions by offering a simple model of the k…

Practices, research, and ideas from Google and other organizations to put people first. re:Work is organized around some of the biggest ways you can make an impact in your workplace. Each subject contains guides, with tools and insights, for addressing specific challenges.

disruption theory is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success. Despite broad dissemination, the theory’s core concepts have been widely misunderstood and its basic tenets frequently misapplied... refinements over the past 20 years appear overshadowed by the popularity of the initial formulation... too many people who speak of “disrupt…

Things that happen in an instant are mostly bad ... this earthquake or that horrible murder. ... But once you turn to statistics it gets much harder to have a pessimistic story... The kind of maths that people are taught at school focuses on algebra and calculus, which they hardly ever use later in life... You use statistics all the time - T…

There's never been a better time to innovate in media, so it's good to be back to EurActiv. Eight years ago I helped launch BlogActiv, before leaving for the world of EU communications agencies. Give or take a month or two, my 6-month stint fell in the middle of EurActiv's 15 years of life so far. It's good to be back, albeit p…

In this week’s edition, a months’ reading - some 30 posts - on social media, digital transformation, content/system design and EuroPCom2015. But first some news from me

If we dig too deeply into everyone's internet data we will become afraid to ever type anything which might one day be seen as dangerous... police forces around the world are investing more money trying to predict crimes and stop them before they occur. It’s not precog intuition or strange telepathic gifts, but big data and algorithms... ... …

Blog posts take hours to write, those great images need to be found or created and those social networks need to be managed and nurtured. It is often not done or persisted with because there are no apparent quick rewards. This is where the tortoise can beat the hare by slow persistence. It is a marathon and a journey not a sprint... you are bui…

If a 100 new alluring little foxy ideas, insights and observations hit you every week, and can pick out the 1 that is worth responding to, you're a foxhog... the foxhog can live in a highly uncertain environment, and be responsively engaged within it, yet create a high-certainty execution context... This ability to turn uncertainty into cer…

true digital transformation requires the courage to challenge entrenched beliefs within one’s organization. .. Digital transformation is probably about as big a deal as the invention of credit. It changes the way we do everything. - Digital Transformation: Becoming a ‘Forgetting Organization’ (Wharton)

Social Media had its place in marketing during the early days, but as platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest) have evolved brands/businesses have lost their ability to stand out... social media is a channel to connect with and provide value to your existing users...should be the responsibility of a cross functional team member who wo…

This should be an exciting time. After all this is what we have wanted for so long. But it could prove dangerous if we do not handle it well... Instead of getting strong, clear direction about becoming digital first there is a vague vision... One danger is that the digital first vision fades before it can take root.... The second danger is it g…

Social media marketing software team admits they’re failing at social media marketing...The bottom seems to be falling out across Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+... The Buffer team is running some experiments to try to determine the cause of this huge loss in social referral traffic, but I have a few ideas of my own ... - OMG. Buffer…

There is no shortage of content aggregators and aggregators of aggregators... give us a better overview of all the sources of information we have subscribed to and found ourselves now depending on... Constantly checking our feeds for new information, we seem to be hoping to discover something of interest, something that we can share with our ne…

many urban children face a lot of challenges ... they have courage and persistence and quickly get back on their feet after setbacks. Urban kids have grit by the boatload — and with the right tools and encouragement, grit will turn these young people into a wellspring of talent in the future.” we need this talent. We need new ideas, new approac…

we begin to see the complexity at the intersections, the amplification of disruptive power, and the broad implications for the future.

One reason for peaking turns out to be success. Success means more employees, more meetings and more compromise. Success means more pressure to expand the market base and to broaden the appeal to get there. Success means that stubborn visionaries are pushed aside by profit-maximizing managers. - Seth's Blog: Peak Mac

In this week’s edition, two new social media products in one week; a few good longreads for the weekend; and more stuff for your online toolbox.

While many businesses use Carousel Ads solely to promote products, the ads also provide an excellent opportunity to showcase your brand’s unique narrative. In this article, I’ll share how to use storytelling in carousel ads - How to Tell Stories With Facebook and Instagram Carousel Ads Social Media Examiner

In many fields of research right now, scientists collect data until they see a pattern that appears statistically significant, and then they use that tightly selected data to publish a paper ... this p-hacking ... uses a quiver of little methodological tricks that can inflate the statistical significance of a finding ... a significant problem …

Huge longform exposé - don't know whether to be impressed, amused or horrified: "... what did it mean for an online retailer with annual sales of more than $1 billion, that fills 280,000 orders per week, to be “self-organized”?... Holacracy is ... just one example of a growing movement... that seeks to apply insights derived from evolutionar…

People don’t leave companies. They leave managers — it’s their number one reason to leave... Modern business structures are built on a fundamental system of mistrust, division, and antagonism I call LCD management — managing to the lowest common denominator... companies of all sizes, in every industry, have operated without managers for decades…