Tag: Innovation

- by Chris Sykes

Oh two!

O2’s recent network problems naturally infuriated phonaholics who were left in a blind panic and desperate state of perceived isolation when the network went down and up and down. It was obvious the drama and sequence of events would be played out across Twitter. O2 subscribers vented their Roth and frustrations; many breaching the grounds of common decency
Why is it deemed such behaviour is acceptable on a public platform? Such rants in the middle of the street could see the perpetrator charged with a public order offence. If I sent such content via my work email, I’d be fired – but hey, that’s the nature of the beast I guess.

‘Human’ twitter

Anyway, for this post that’s neither here nor there. What I have observed over the past 24 hours is O2’s measured and ‘human’ Twitter response to such abuse. This has created other streams deflecting attention away from the original subject. This shows an organisation that is in touch with its social-self and one that is reasonably well-equipped to deal with a reputation crisis over social-media. If we compare O2’s response to Blackberry RiM’s after it suffered a similar fate, it shows O2 is leaps ahead. It also helps to get the message across to large organisations that they need to invest in proper resources, training and procedures to deal quickly and adequately in such scenarios. Despite the still many news-worthy corporate social-media faux pas, there’s still a sense of denial from many executive management teams that they need to get serious about social-media. If you upset your customers they are going to tell you and tell you in the most public of forums.

As disruptive as a network outage is for people and businesses that genuinely rely on their phones, here’s a small nod of respect to the O2 social comms team, who have dealt with adversity in quite a good way.

- by James Gardner

The future of innovation is collaboration

“Innovate or die” – isn’t that what they say?

Facebook f8 logoMaybe it’s true or maybe it isn’t, but you can be sure that innovation is happening every day.

Two weeks ago, Facebook rolled out a series of changes to the Facebook platform at its f8 conference. They included the new Timeline profile view, new ways of sharing, an updated ticker, and partnerships with Spotify and other services. The introduction of these features split opinion amongst the Facebook faithful, even before they had a chance to try them out for real on their own accounts.

Some users were unimpressed:


Facebook continues to reinvent itself, by making itself less usable yet somehow exactly the same.
September 21, 2011 12:24 pm via EchofonReplyRetweetFavorite
@modeps
Jim Hunter

While others loved them:


Impressed with the new Facebook & Spotify collab app just announced. So far Facebook’s new release & “Open Graph” is impressive.
September 22, 2011 6:09 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite
@DJMoonDawg
DJ MoonDawg

It wasn’t until a week later that the more refined and objective commentaries started to appear.

And this brings us to the fundamental issue: change is difficult.

On one hand we must continually innovate, as Facebook does, and on the other we have the inbuilt negative human reaction to change. How do we reconcile these two opposing ideas?

The answer is social

The face of innovation is changing. From big ideas that will impact a company’s share price, to grassroots ideas that will touch on a single team or product, we now have the tools necessary to harness and unlock the IP of our consumers and staff. In a tough economic climate, finding this hidden revenue can make a big difference.

Social channels provide us with the ability to connect directly with our audience and involve them in the innovation process. Change driven and controlled by users – even if that feeling of control is sometimes more smokescreen than reality – is more readily accepted, more easily communicated, and ultimately more satisfying for the consumer.

Dell’s ‘Ideastorm‘ and Starbucks’ ‘My Starbucks Idea‘ are two good examples of this process in action. ‘My Starbucks idea’ empowers and rewards consumers for their participation in the innovation process and puts a face to the idea evaluation through their ‘Starbucks Idea Partners’.

Both Starbucks and Dell have focused on their consumer businesses, but these same principles can be just as successful inside a business and its extended channels.

Creating Innovation inside the business

Linde - Innovation Banner

Volume created an Innovation Generator (IG) for global industrial gases company, The Linde Group. Tasked with creating a portable innovation program that would could be rolled out anywhere in the world easily and simply, we went straight to the heart of the matter and looked to engage directly with all Linde Group employees.

IG is a social collaboration platform for idea generation that involves employees from gas cylinder fillers to senior management. Providing a platform to present ideas/improvements and a strong incentive to get involved, Linde has now generated a 1,000 valuable and viable ideas. Social collaboration is helping Linde to unlock the potential of every employee in their organisation.

Change doesn’t have to be difficult.

Innovation doesn’t have to be difficult either.

To find out more about harnessing innovation in your business, contact Tom Lambert (tom.lambert@volume.co.uk).