From the monthly archives:
As a follow-on to the previous Twitter post, ComputerWorld has published a great article on Twitter for Business. The article mentions five ways to tap the power of Twitter:
Each of the five ways mentioned have great ideas embedded within making this article well worth the read.
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Gist recently released significant new features to its invite-only beta group. In addition, T.A. McCann talks about the Defrag conference.
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Dr. William Duggan, Columbia Business School, gave the keynote address at Defrag 08 on strategic intuition. Strategic intuition is that flash of insight which enables the “Aha” moment or a series of connected dots enabling you to move forward. Covering the majority of his 2007 book, “Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement,” Duggan used examples from history (Napoleon, Steve Jobs, and Google), to discuss the four key pieces that enable strategic intuition to occur (examples from history, presence of mind, flash of insight itself and resolution).
A new movie shows strategic intuition at work.
Flash of Genius, is based on the true story of engineering professor and part time inventor Robert Kearns, who invented the intermittent windshield wiper only to have Ford, and then Chrysler steal his design and refuse to credit him for inventing it.
The title comes from an old U.S. patent law which said that in order to be granted a patent, the inventor had to be able to show that “the inventive act had to come into the mind in a ‘flash of genius’ and not as a result of tinkering.” For Bob Kearns, his flash of genius for the intermittent windshield wiper came on his wedding night when he hit himself in the eye with a champagne cork, and got to thinking about how the eye blinks only when it needs moisture, and then later, while driving in the rain, wondered what if there was a windsheild wiper that could behave like the human eye.
Was this strategic intuition? I think so. As T.S. Eliot said, “ Immature poets imitate; mature poetssteal. ” In a scene from the movie, we see this played out. During a trial, a Ford Motor engineer explains it. Bob Kearns didn’t really invent the intermittent windshield wiper because he didn’t create anything you couldn’t buy at your local electronics store. All he did, the engineer explains, was arrange those basic over-the-counter pieces in a particular order.
Aware of Duggan’s work on strategic intuition, I am looking forward to checking out Flash of Genius.
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At Defrag08, I had the opportunity to eat dinner with a group of people, one of which was T.A. McCann, the CEO of Gist. Gist is designed to control information overload. By looking primarily at your email (attachments, links, sent mail) in addition to blog posts and news, a user is able to at a glance determine what is important and who is important. Business-critical information on both a key person or a company is at your fingertips.
This video shows how easy it is to use Gist.
Gist is still in limited beta but are taking requests for access. You will be asked to fill out a survey to help the Gist team prioritize who gets access. I’ve filled out my survey and is now anxiously awaiting an email giving me access.
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At the Defrag08 conference, one of the vendors that caught my eye was LiquidPlanner. Debuting this year and receiving good reviews, LiquidPlanner provides on-line project management software. Their key discriminator is that the tool allows teams to manage change and uncertainty. As a user of Microsoft Project, one of the problems that often occurred is the schedule is carefully crafted, published and then rarely looked at or updated again.
Most project managers haven’t mastered project estimation. Therefore, there isn’t the ability to set a range of dates that a task may be completed in. LiquidPlanner’s ability to provide ranged vs. single-point estimate plus its ability to provide probabilistic scheduling help to ensure the project is estimated more accurately and will be updated on a regular basis.
Other team functions built in are wiki’s, document sharing, social project networking, and task tracking make this a great team tool for distributed groups. Personalized dashboards provide a quick way to visualize your tasks/tools.
Pricing is free for the first 3 team members. After that it is $35/month or $300/yr.
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Pistachio Consulting has released a new report comparing enterprise microsharing tools. One of the key findings in the report was “Your employees are likely already microsharing.”
Why microshare? Another key quote from this report is “Twitter supports a worldwide user base and represents staggering potential value from relationships, interactions, data flow and more.” Watercooler conversations now being held worldwide, at any time and any location.
As this technology rolls out into the enterprise, case studies will begin to be released which I believe will show the value in remote collaboration and improved work.
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