Apple overtook Google this year as the most powerful brand in the world. One of my favorite brands, Starbucks had a strong year with a 40% change vs. 2010 but nothing like Facebook who entered the list with a 246% change.
I commented on a LinkedIn discussion board comment/question today and wanted to share it.
Q:
The alpha version of qwiki (search engine that builds interactive videos on the fly) is pretty exciting. What do you think a corporate version could do to juice up employee or investor communications?
A:
Engaging content is definitely the future. You want to know the interesting thing in my mind though? Everyone says content is king and I agree. Corporations can have great tools, but only if they have great content. If you are interested try and remind me to talk with you in about a month. I’ll need to get clearance to show it to you but we are working on a knowledge sharing tool within the company and it has some really interesting social gaming aspects to it.
My hope is in the coming years we can use these types of tools as a basis for merit increases and performance reviews. That type of thinking is counter culture to many organizations but social tools can help break down information silos and encourage collaboration like never before. They “can” also show you who your team players are in the organization meaning those who are helping others and not just themselves. If we reward and recognize via virtual currency and in the future provide monetary incentives, it will be very interesting to see what happens as a result. Whether you have a LinkedIn discussion board, a blog, or a survey people are busy and often hesitant to share.
Want to see a dramatic increase in our discussion board usage? Send out a message to membership telling them if they post at least one comment or post on the discussion board they will get 25% (50%, 75%, 100%…whatever) off their next conference fee. My point is some people will share but many will do so only when rewarded or recognized.
The other interesting thing I like about Qwiki is they are using it as a platform. I was fascinated by what they are looking at as a future alarm clock (see video link below). I’d imagine it won’t be too many more years before our bathroom mirrors are huge rear projection touch sensitive screens which let us see news, weather, or any other gadget/widget we want to subscribe to. Same thing with the business world. I’d imagine it won’t be long before E-ink type screens will allow us to have constantly updated information presented to us to interact with throughout the day. But we can only have these tools if we have the content which means employees will need to write and contribute that content.
I’m probably overstating things aren’t I? Resumes aren’t dead just yet but I see video and online porfolios/blogs as a much more engaging way for people to market themselves in the professional world. As powerful as these new tools are, why aren’t more people using blogs, portfolios, and video to market themselves to prospective employers? Similarly, why are so few employers satisfied with receiving a sheet or two of paper, or a PDF/.Doc file, that doesn’t contain links to digital content in the 21st century?
Rob Pitingolo for instance created the video below which helps him more creatively highlight his work experience, but it also gives employers insight into his passion and creative abilities. Rob wrote an interesting post a while ago on “where smart people live“. I liked it so much I started following him via his RSS feed. If you don’t have a presence online you are quickly falling behind. On Rob’s blog (http://robpitingolo.org/) you can view his resume, a video resume, his LinkedIn profile, as well as blog posts to show writing samples. Compare what Rob has done below with the resume above. What is going to rule in the future? It can’t be a boring resume right?
With everything going electronic will we find static resumes replacing engaging and dynamic ones? Jump ahead 10 years from now and I’m sure we all will agree “dead trees” (aka books) will mostly be a thing of the past and dynamic and engaging media will dominate. The trend has started in the books/eBooks space, but why not resumes?
Yes, I’m a data geek and I crunch company operating results for fun. Check this out…
Wolframalpha is a public data search engine which allows for lots of complex data analysis. The data below is how much revenue each publicly traded company generates when it is divided by the total number of employees it has (per year). I work in the retail sector so I first looked at how much revenue each company makes if it were divided by their number of employees. As you can see below I for instance was able to determine that Kroger is making $36,841.74 more revenue per employee than Safeway. The numbers are correct and publicly available via calculation but they don’t make sense to me.
I’ve posted similar things in the past and have had some really smart followers of this blog add to the conversation so I hope this post continues that trend. Why would a Safeway employee create more revenue per year than a Walmart employee? Why would a Kroger employee make $36,841,74 more revenue per year than a Safeway employee? The interesting thing about doing the calculation this way is it takes out unions, employee compensation, and other factors. What are the contributing factors? Is sales per square foot the real reason the numbers are so unexpected? Is the number of retail stores a major factor? Did these numbers surprise you? Is looking at annual company revenue by employee even important? Then when you think each retail revenue by employee is high look at Google and Apple!
Disclosure: I am in no way representing any company in this post or site. I’m surfacing public data and merely asking what we can derive (if anything) from it. Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks for adding to the conversation.
I love my lunch time chats with coworkers and I know they are anything but typical. We get into some interesting subjects and I always seem to take away at least one thing every lunch hour. Somehow the topic of Ferrari’s came up a few months ago and after doing some fact checking I found what they told me to not only be true, but also inspirational and amusing. I wasn’t aware Ferruccio Lamborghini started his career building tractors. He had a passion for sports cars and Mr. Lamborghini wasn’t satisfied with the quality and performance of his Ferrari so he requested a meeting with Mr. Enzo Ferrari himself. I love the story of Mr. Ferrari and Mr. Lamborghini meeting because it helps demonstrate why leaders need to listen and respond to the feedback they are provided. If you fail to listen you leave the door wide open for others to stop telling you and to start showing you what they want. In some instances what is requested is in fact a better way of doing things and if those who were trying to give you feedback to help you stop telling you and start showing you, they can become your most fierce rival.
Below is an extract from Wikipedia of what happened in the meeting with Mr. Ferrari and Mr. Lamborghini:
“The exchange between Ferrari and Lamborghini is often cited as the latter’s inspiration for founding a carmaker in the first place, but it is as much the stuff of legend and myth as it is a factual occurrence. In the 1991 Thoroughbred & Classic Cars interview, Lamborghini said that after the clutch problems endured, “I decided to talk to Enzo Ferrari. I had to wait for him a very long time. ‘Ferrari, your cars are rubbish!’ I complained. Il Commendatore was furious. “Lamborghini, you may be able to drive a tractor but you will never be able to handle a Ferrari Properly.’ This was the point when I finally decided to make a perfect car.” Later re-tellings of the story center around several basic points: Lamborghini visited Ferrari; proceeded to challenge, demand improvements, or deride Ferrari; and finally was dismissed as a mere tractor manufacturer. Whether the industrialist’s spite was enough of a reason to enter the carmaker business, or if the exchange inspired further business interests or merely served as an anecdote, is unknown. Sackey writes that the economic motives for entering the high-profit-margin sports car business far outweighed Lamborghini’s personal sentiments. In the T&CC interview, Lamborghini notes that “Ferrari never spoke to me again. He was a great man, I admit, but it was so very easy to upset him.”
