Podcasts
1st December 2010
Episode 8 - Episode 8 - How the web is driving business innovation
Hello and welcome to another edition of The Business Plan, which is brought to you by LeasePlan. I’m Jackie Allender. This week, we’re exploring a theme that’s been touched on throughout this series: how the web is enabling innovation.
Think back 15 years or so. The Internet was a pretty new concept. We had email, but not everyone had a computer at home – and certainly no internet connection from their mobile phone!
Think how business was done back then. Larger companies had invested in Electronic Data Interchange or EDI systems to exchange information such as purchase orders with their major suppliers or customers. Fax and email were driving some productivity growth. But interaction with customers, clients and suppliers – as well as with employees and other stakeholders – was done in a pretty traditional way. That is, through face to face meetings, on the telephone, via advertising on TV, radio or in print, or the interaction was mediated through distributors and point of sale outlets, or via the mainstream media.
Now think of how things are done today. Customers, clients and suppliers – not to mention employees – are likely to interact with businesses through the internet. Everything from potential customers doing product research online before making a purchase; employees accessing an online HR kiosk to check leave entitlements; it could be business customers using the web to order goods and specify delivery times. A lot of us do our banking online.
What are some of the innovative ways that businesses are using the internet?
Marketing is an obvious example of how things have changed: emarketing is nothing new these days, but 2010 is predicted to be the year when many more marketers jump in to the social media phenomenon, like Facebook and Twitter.
Here’s a good example of how the existence of the web and user-generated content has inspired innovation in marketing. Tourism Victoria wanted to appeal to the backpacker market, which is quite lucrative in Australia. It hooked up with Canadian blogger Mitch Moffat – whose work is on You Tube (the user generated video site) – and for a few thousand dollars, Moffat has created ‘Melbourne, Australia – the musical’ which spruiks the delights of the city through the eyes of a young tourist. And whatever you think about the end result, it’s clearly a great way to reach a target market with a marketing message.
Applications in particular are spurring marketing innovation. For instance, Kraft foods in North America have created the iFood Assistant app, which costs 99 cents and gives users access to a library of recipes and food hints. Clorox, the American cleaning product manufacturer, is shortly to launch an app called Clorox iStain, which gives consumers stain removal advice.
Perhaps more interesting – and certainly more radical – are the opportunities that the web is providing for organisations to collaborate. For example, the giant consumer products company Proctor and Gamble is now getting around half of its innovations from outside the company. It does that through a website called connect and develop – where the company not only invites you to provide it with your innovations, it provides a list of what it’s looking for – ranging from something that can prevent the common cold to sustainable polymers. In fact this open innovation model has even seen products and know-how transfer out of P & G to outside companies.
And social media, or enterprise 2.0 technologies, to use the name they are becoming known by, are not just the domain of marketers. Private social networks are beginning to be utilised to harness the power of collaboration in the workforce. A good example of the benefits to be had comes from the American credit rating agency TransUnion. Because so many of its employees were already using Facebook and MySpace, there was pressure for the company to start its own social network on those public sites. Instead, TransUnion spent 50 thousand dollars to create a private social network available in house, which included personal profiles, a wiki, a forum for questions and answers and other features.
By analysing usage of the new tool, the company found out which of its employees were good at solving problems. It estimates the investment of 50 thousand dollars in the private network has generated about 5 million dollars in savings in the first year.
MIT researcher Andrew McAfee has just published a book on how businesses are or should be using enterprise 2.0 technologies. He talks about how the word ‘social’ might be better replaced with ‘collaborative’ when referring to these technologies, understanding how pragmatic managers might envisage ‘social’ as employees engaging in non-stop chat.
What he is clear about is that these new technologies – wikis, tags, microblogs, Google-style searches and the like – are transforming companies’ innovation processes.
Well, that’s it for this week. I hope this edition of The Business Plan has been food for thought. Look for the transcript of this podcast on the LeasePlan website – that’s leaseplan dot com dot au – under the About Us and Media section. As well as the transcript and links there’s a section where you can make a comment. Next week we’ll look more closely at how governments are responding to the opportunities in web 2.0. I’m Jackie Allender, thanks for listening.
LINKS RELATED TO THIS STORY
http://www.mitchmoffit.blogspot.com/
http://www.visitvictoria.com/displayobject.cfm/objectid.0001D480-B585-1F03-94F080C476A903B7/
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007561
http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007547
http://www.projectmanagerplanet.com/leadership/article.php/3867246
https://www.pgconnectdevelop.com/pg-connection-portal/ctx/noauth/PortalHome.do
http://andrewmcafee.org/2007/11/how_to_hit_the_enterprise_20_bullseye/
- Listen
- Share
0 Comments
There's no comments. Start the conversation below:
The Business Plan - Series 2
| Episode 10 | Episode 10 - The Innovators |
|---|---|
| Episode 9 | Episode 9 - eGovernments: How governments are using the web |
| Episode 7 | Episode 7 - Is the future cloudy? |
| Episode 6 | Episode 6 - Don't forget your change! |
| Episode 5 | Episode 5 - e-Commerce Trends |
| Episode 4 | Episode 4 - Should employees have access to Twitter and Facebook? |
| Episode 3 | Episode 3 - Developing an online strategy for your organisation |
| Episode 2 | Episode 2 - Opportunities for business in social media |
| Episode 1 | Episode 1 - Data Security |