terça-feira, 10 de agosto de 2010

Maturity in Social Networks

In this particular post, by Social Networks I mean every technology oriented for communicating, including chats, blogs, micro-blogging, comunities and specifically social networks.

All of those tend to have a boom period, when is fashion and cool and everybody wants to give a try. This boom period can be longer or shorter according to the experience it provides to the users. The more complete that experience is, the longer it lasts. This is why Facebook had such a long boom period.

But, sooner or later, they all reach maturity, and a lot of users, abandon it, by shutting down, deleting, or just forgetting about it.

In the boom period, the tipycal user is young, and somewhat of a social geek. On the other hand, after reaching maturity the tipical user is older, with a selective and more professional profile.

A good example for this pattern, would be Twitter. Most teenagers had a twitter account sometime, but found it hard to keep track or a visiting routine. Now most twitters are older, with professional motives.

For everyone who is trying to create the next Big thing, this pattern means a great problem. In order to make it popular and be successful social networks have to be thanked for teenagers, but in order to be sustainable it has to have real advantages for grown-ups.

During the 90’s when someone wanted to look into the future of technologies it was common to look at teenagers. It was assumed that what was being done by teens, would later be done by everyone. But nowadays, we understand that teens can not be a reference for the rest of the society as they are mostly driven by excitement, not utility. If we want to understand the future of a certain technology we should look at 35 year old women, who usually can use technologies, but won’t do it just for curiosity. They will use it, when the utility of a certain technology outcomes the difficulty to use it.

terça-feira, 3 de agosto de 2010

Hire out of the box

Nowadays, Innovation is finally receiving the attention it deserves, and most people agree that Innovation is important. But when it comes to it, are we really up for it?

It’s not unusual to see someone doing things the same way he always did, and expecting different results.

One way to test the readiness to innovate is by evaluating the Hiring Procedure. By observing how a certain person or entity hires, we know if they are ready to innovate and if they will indeed innovate.

It’s not about age, or about a radical look. Nothing tells us that a teenager with blue hair will innovate more than 60 year old person with grey hair.

What must be seen is the relation between the mind-set carved by experience and the mission at hand.

If we hire someone who is a specialist at a certain task, innovation is not likely to happen. If that specialist comes from a more modern enterprise, it might bring the old-fashioned one half-way, but it will hardly bring it ahead. At the limit, it can innovate by aggregating competences from both companies.

If you really want to innovate and overcome competition, then you must hire out of that specific market, finding someone who doesn’t have the orthodoxies from your industry, but excels at the skills you want to introduce.

A good example for this paradox is Hospital Service Management. When asking most people who they would hire to run the hospital Service, usually the answer is something like Hospital Manager. Of course, someone like this won’t worry about the operational part, leaving it to the doctors, but won’t innovate as well. He will just focus on managing the money, operating logistics, and hardly anything else.

Instead, if you want to innovate in the service of the hospital, the right person to hire would be a manager from a 5 star hotel. Such a manager, wouldn’t concern about operational procedures, but would be extremely demanding in anything related to service, costumer care and professional-patient relation. His service standards are so high that he wouldn’t even had to be concerned to innovate. His mind set would only be to implement what he considers to be acceptable, and he would still innovate much more than any field expert.

So If your organization wants to innovate, it’s not enough to think out of the box. You have to hire out of the box.