Backblog

In our experience, firms often engage in ad-hoc innovation as a result of crisis management, or in reaction to external influences and competition within their marketplace. These efforts tend to focus on implementing something quickly with the expectation that it will help avert disaster, or change the companies’ fortunes somehow. Its no wonder that managers and employees alike, often experience innovation initiatives as frustrating, distracting, and disappointing.

Crossing the delta between a pilot-scale lab and the ramp up to demonstration scale is a significant challenge in innovation.

Innovation is an ongoing theme at Backbone. We write articles about the topic, we created a submission when the federal government asked for input on its digital-economy strategy, and we recently created a contest designed to help innovative early-stage Canadian companies. So I welcome the news that Canada ranked seventh among 38 countries in a list of the world’s clean-tech leaders. (Globe and Mail). Why be pleased with seventh?

A recent article published by Tien Tzuo on the CIO Network blog on Forbes’ website suggests that ERP is dead. While it was a well-written article and isn’t necessarily inconsistent with what many other analysts have stated over the last three to five years, I’m still not buying it and still don’t see ERP software going anywhere anytime soon.

For me, one of the best Chapters in the book... Adam uses many examples of how SJ (Steve Jobs) drilled culture and acceptable behavior through the ranks at Apple and describes his fight against the bureaucracy that tends to cripple and slow organizations as they grow. SJ was fervent in his fight to maintain a start up type environment upon his return to Apple.

Over the past few days, I've posted on some of the implications of Bill C-30, including the mandatory disclosure of subscriber information, the "voluntary" warrantless disclosure of emails and web surfing habits, and the stunning lack of detail on a wide range of issues including costs and surveillance capabilities. While the bill includes some detail on surveillance capability requirements, perhaps the most dangerous provision is Section 14, which gives the government  a stunning array of powers:

When using computers in healthcare, there is not much that seems more mundane (and irritating) than having to change your password on a regular basis. Government organizations and hospitals excel at requiring users to change their password every 42 days. Not sure why this particular number of days was selected - perhaps there is evidence that this is the safest time-frame.

Are you a CEO? Do you tweet? If so, you are among the '8 percent'. Peter Aceto is and he explains why. Peter sees a dramatic shift in the way companies are now being run, as do other experts like Don Tapscott. Social business is here and one of its big requirements is transparency. Find out what social business leaders are doing to connect with customers and employees in new and exciting ways.

Although many people today associate digital "community" with a customer-facing space, B2B communities are also an integral part of social media. After all, businesses are comprised of (you guessed it), people. Maria Ogneva, the Head of Community at Yammer, has pulled together the following 10 best practices for managing a B2B community. Has your organization followed all of these tips?

Many marketers (if not all!) have, at some point in their careers, come across basic principles of behavioural psychology. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is one prominent example that marketing professionals have historically drawn upon to understand some of the psychological motivations for action.

The introduction of Bill C-30 has generated enormous public debate (I focused yesterday on the "voluntary" warrantless disclosure of subscriber information) but less discussed is how the bill leaves out many crucial details on the new surveillance rules will actually function. Indeed, for a bill that is ten years in the making, it is shocking how much is still unknown.

In our experience with firms, two major recurrent themes often rise to the surface that are directly associated to the underlying root causes of poor innovation performance. These areas are outlined below.

Purchasing ERP software has become easier and more flexible over the last several years. The advent of public and private clouds, SaaS ERP software, on-demand offerings, and hybrid deployments all provide more options to executives looking to deploy new ERP systems in their organizations. This is good news to most CIOs and CFOs.

Who are we and where are we headed?" - in terms of the digital media economy in Canada - was the question that started the 49 Pixels project. The survey has taken a year and seeks to answer the following questions: the size and scope of the industry, the number of digital media service providers operating within Canada (number of employees, location, revenue, etc), and the size of the workforce (habits, salaries, and skills of producers of digital media content). Read the full report...

When the government placed the Internet surveillance bill on the notice paper one week ago, few would have predicted that within days of the introduction, the anger with the legislative proposals would have been so strong that the government would steadily backtrack on its plans, with Public Safety Minister Vic Toews yesterday telling the House of Commons the bill will go to committee before second reading to ensure that there is greater openness to amendments (changes are more restricted after second reading). While the battle is only beginning, the overwhelming negative reaction seems to have taken the government by surprise.

Who are the media influencers today? Bloggers. Dave Fleet tells how not to work with bloggers and how to work with them. He describes a new model for interactions. He has tips for bloggers too!

If you’re new to my blog or the VoIP space, you may not know Ooma. On the other hand, if you go back far enough with me, hopefully you’ll recall I was one of the first to trial Ooma as well as write about them. The VoIP space has evolved since then, and while my early posts were not optimistic about Ooma’s prospects, that view was balanced by their strengths, which I believe have served them well to survive into the present.

Yesterday [February 9, 2012] was the official launch of the Rogers One Number service, and I was on-hand for the analyst briefing hosted at their HQ in downtown Toronto.

Today [February 10] was the last day of iConference 2012. The conference, geared to topics of interest to iSchools (i.e. Information studies), was hosted by my school, University of Toronto, Faculty of Information. When I wasn't volunteering, I was able to attend several sessions. This post captures my ramblings as I make sense of my first foray into iConferences and immersion in the iSchool movement.

Smart TV use is growing and in 2012 we can look forward to the release of iTV from Apple as well as other Smart TV developments. Nick Jones explains what Smart TVs are, who makes them and what opportunities they provide.

This week, I had the opportunity to guest lecture for a great class on social networking at the University of Toronto. I spoke about how new technologies were facilitating geosocial networking, that is people connecting and sharing place-based experiences via their mobile device. I've been studying this for over two years and I'm an avid user of the ultimate geosocial app, Foursquare. So I was excited to speak on this topic. I'll give a brief summary of the main themes I addressed in my presentation.

I have read (and am now re-reading) Adam Lashinsky’s fantastic book titled ‘Inside Apple’.  I highly recommend to anyone who is:

Last night was MobileMonday Toronto's annual Meet the Analysts event at the MaRS Discovery District facility.

Dr. Ann Cavoukian's presentation on why freedom of information matters and how organizations and individual healthcare providers can prevent privacy breaches. The 'circle of care', a term used in the context of sharing information with implied consent, is discussed as is Ontario’s Experience with PHIPA.

The Internet Society is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. They are a global organization devoted to maintaining a free, open, accessible, and viable Internet. I've recently blogged about the Internet Society's call for people to submit ideas for a new Internet Hall of Fame they are establishing.

You have a website but how do you get people to find you when they are looking for a service provider in your industry? Todd Bailey, speaking at Dx3 last month, helps take the mystery out of search engine optimization (SEO) which can deliver the sort of result you want. Yes, it is possible to rank near the top in search engine results. Here's how...

Just launched free website that helps small business better measure and manage tactical marketing programs. We are looking for beta testers for our new website called MarketingReportCard.com – a marketing measurement dashboard. Designed for small to mid-size businesses, companies can login to the beta version of the MarketingReportCard.com and document and measure tactical marketing results over time.

Last week Rogers advised the CRTC that it plans to drop Internet throttling for all customers by the end of the year.

Canadian superstar Neil Young on piracy:

It doesn't affect me because I look at the internet as the new radio. I look at the radio as gone. [...] Piracy is the new radio. That's how music gets around. [...] That's the radio. If you really want to hear it, let's make it available, let them hear it, let them hear the 95 percent of it.

The reports that the music industry lobby (along with the Entertainment Software Association of Canada and the movie lobby) is seeking the inclusion of SOPA-style provisions into Bill C-11 has generated considerable discussion online and in the mainstream media (CBC, Financial Post). Yesterday, Balanced Copyright for Canada, the group backed by the music industry, fired back with several tweets claiming that opposing their reforms would benefit "illegal BitTorrent sites"and "illegal hosting sites."

Recently had the pleasure of gaining John Holland’s perspectives on the keys to high performing sales teams. The titles of John’s best-selling books, in many ways, nicely summarize his thinking. CustomerCentric Selling and Re-Thinking the Sales Cycle. A summary of our recorded 30 minute conversation:

It doesn’t matter how fancy your ERP system is. It doesn’t matter how closely the system’s capabilities match your company’s needs. It doesn’t matter that the ERP system is SaaS, comes with the latest flavors of business intelligence, or can be used by mobile workforces on their smartphones. No, none of this matters if the system isn’t implemented correctly.