The answer came once again from DeadMongoose (second week in a row) who answered:

DeadMongoose

In the article, BusinessWeek remarked that of the top 50 innovative companies, 15 on the list were asian (including Korean company LG). This number is up from 5 in 2006. Previous stalwarts, 3M, Starbucks and eBay were absent from the list in 2010.

This signifies a mind significant shift in the global marketplace. During the Industrial Revolution, countries in Asia, like China, Korea and Taiwan, thrived due to the outsourcing of manufacturing. Innovation wasn’t key to their growing economy. Hard work and long hours drove the culture. Innovation was led by North American companies. In fact, just five years ago only 6 of the top 20 were headquartered outside the US. This year, 12 of the top 25 were located outside the US.

This is a wake-up call for US companies. They cannot rely on what made them successful twenty years ago. They need new practices, new products and new services, made for a rapidly evolving economy.

Tomorrow, a case study on an old world US company committed to innovation in new world economy.

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As I mentioned yesterday, something was missing though.

Businesspeople.

Social Media offers anyone with a business an opportunity to:

• Increase brand awareness
• Increase customer satisfaction
• Gather Intelligence on customers and competitors
• Increase sales

Yet, at nearly every social media event I attend (SxSW, Social Media Club, Free State Social, Highlight Midwest) the target audience appears to be those in mobile/social media, user experience design and application development.

There is one business exception — Non-profits. As management guru, Peter Drucker once noted, businesses can learn a great deal from the business efficiency of non-profits. At it’s core, social media is operationally efficient marketing.

Non-profits, out of necessity, are looking for ways to funnel as much of it’s cost to its core business. In the book, “Managing the Non-Profit Organization: Principles and Practices,” Drucker assesses that most non-profits are run more efficiently than most of for-profit businesses. Both types of businesses have something in common — sustainability. The reality is that the for-profit business probably has a budget to pay for an expert resource. The non-profit is more likely to be interested in offering you a volunteer opportunity.

Wouldn’t it be nice to network with businesspeople at these events or have a meaningful conversation about the type of help you might be able to offer? Wouldn’t it be a great opportunity to learn about specific problems businesses are struggling to solve?

So why don’t more businesses attend these events when they could obviously benefit? I speculate that something to consider is that it is easier to market these conferences to those wishing to become more competent in social media professionals. These conferences offer attendees an opportunity to improve their craft.

But a more likely reason why businesspeople don’t attend, I speculate, is that Mobile/Social media utility and value still isn’t obvious to business. I speculate social media isn’t yet relevant or meaningful for many companies. How can the social media industry make these methods more obvious to businesspeople?

I wonder if, because these are events are billed as “social media,” they would attract more companies if they were billed to be about “business innovation.” I wonder if a conference offered a business track and included education on “increasing sales, “lowering the cost of public relations,” or “lowering the cost of managing customers,” which highlighted many of social media principles, would more businesspeople attend. At the very least, I speculate more companies might pay more attention.

If we could create a space where business could look to the social media community as experts in business, instead of social media, we would see an opportunity to talk to small and medium-sized business owners and executives about their needs. It would create a powerful networking opportunity in which business leaders(potential customers) and experts (potential suppliers) could come together and give each other the type of help they need.

What do you think? If you are a social media professional, what more do you need to learn to begin to help someone with their problems in business?

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• Increase efficiency
• Increase brand awareness
• Compete in the global marketplace
• Anticipate market drift
• Produce satisfaction

The lineup of speakers was truly strong. Chris Brogan and Jeremiah Owyang represent two of the strongest thinkers in the industry. The rest of the lineup was extremely solid as well and in that assessment I also include the local panel of Zena Weist, Shea Sylvia, Ramsey Mohsen and Tony Botello.

I left the conference Friday afternoon extremely satisfied and thinking that I couldn’t wait til next year.

There will be a lot written about the Free State Social and what a strong event it was. After all, the Lawrence Journal World brought industry heavyweights to the region. They were exposed to legions of the social media professionals in the mid-west. This created a situation in which we in the mid-west walked away with some tremendous learning. There were a few things that I personally took away from the conference.

1. Be who you are all the time – You never stop being a mother or a father and similarly, you never stop being an executive, salesperson, customer service associate or a technologist. We tend to compartmentalize who we are. Do we decide we are only who we are at work from 8-5 and after that, do we become a cook, a chauffeur, or care-taker of virtual farms? We must embody our role and be that at all times.

2. Be a care-taker – Your customers, your employees and even your boss need to be tended after, much like your children, even when you are not with them. Take care of those who take care of you. Hold their concerns as your own.

3. The Rings of Influence – This is a powerful way to help businesses think strategically with social media. If you want to reach potential customers via social media, have you even reached your own employees yet?

4. Be Different – If you are the only supplier of what customers are looking for, they’ll come back for more.

5. Lastly, there was something missing from the conference which I will write about tomorrow. I speculate that for those of us who attended, there is a leadership opportunity available to us, that you hadn’t thought of.

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The global marketplace has experienced the equivalent of “after-shocks” with the invention of the personal computer and the Internet. The seismic activity within the global marketplace has created a tsunami of historic consequence for business. In no other time in human history have we seen that established businesses are now threatened by small and medium sized competitors.

Businesspeople are not recognizing the consequence that this earthquake and its aftershocks have created. Businesses don’t see the fault lines in the foundation upon which their own companies are built.

They don’t see that inflexible and bloated processes are thwarting the ambitions of owners and shareholders.

They aren’t seeing that it costs too much to engineer their products and services.

What they DO see is that their mind share, market share and profits are eroding.

They act by laying off employees because that always worked in the past. They act by focusing on beating the competition because it worked that way in the past. Sometimes they act by trying to bullshit the marketplace, because that used to work too.

Bourne out of the earthquake the micro-chip created, there is now a tsunami that is crashing down on the global marketplace. It is a tsunami caused by a computer-driven marketplace. When its done, many of the traditional brands and companies will either be weakened, or washed away. Instead of trying to find the “right” solution, I suggest businesses focus on the consequences of the various choices they face.

They can ignore what’s going on and continue to think and act as they have. This will not make the tsunami go away. The company will just live peacefully and weakly UNTIL the water crashes overhead.

They can batten down the hatches and reinforce spaces in their business where they are weak. They can’t prevent the tsunami from hitting but they can “hope” they survive. This will be very costly in time, energy and money. If they are wrong about any of the choices they’ve made in shoring up weakness I speculate they will suffer the same fate as the company that did nothing.

There are other options. One option I teach companies to do is to transform their business. Get on a surf board and ride the wave of computer-driven tools instead of getting hit by it.

Tomorrow, I’ll write specifically about how I help companies tranform.

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As someone who, up to this point has declined to “wear the ribbon” of Saving Folgers in Kansas City, might make those who do scratch their head a bit and wonder why not? Doesn’t Vince care about jobs? Does he hate coffee? Families will suffer because of this, Vince, aren’t you aware?

Vince, wear the ribbon. If you don’t, you just don’t care.

If anyone is interested I will explain why, to this point, I have declined to wear the ribbon. I view it as an opportunity to talk philosophically about something I care about and also help my readers notice something that they might previously have not seen before.

A metaphor was used with regard to this situation. It has been said that this situation, while on a much smaller scale, is similar to the situation in Haiti. I’ll bite my tongue a bit but am happy to use a different metaphor in which we now have more information and see if its valid.

We live in a world in which forces act without concern for human beings. Weather is a perfect example. Case in point, in 2005 South Louisiana endured one of the deadliest hurricanes ever to reach American soil. 1800 people lost their lives, businesses were overrun and thousands were displaced and homeless. The suffering was highlighted and enhanced by the interpretation that the US, state and local government response was largely neglectful and incompetent.

People took to the blogosphere and traditional airwaves to denounce the government efforts. Petitions were drawn for the victims. Because of the widespread criticism, the numerous breakdowns experienced, and the lack of satisfaction produced by its citizenry, FEMA is challenged with, according to the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace within Stanford University, to:

transform itself from a civil defense agency into a natural disasters agency.

It may be a challenge but at least they have the power to take action because of the criticism.

For background’s sake, it is interesting and obvious to note that no one protested or aired any grievance at the hurricane itself that actually caused the destruction. Why? Because hurricanes don’t care what humans think. As humans, we know it does no good to scream at weather. That’s why we blame the weatherman.

In the movement to Save Folgers in Kansas City, there are also forces at work that we have no control of.

We live in a global marketplace. This marketplace has grown exponentially in the Internet age. Manufacturing, programming, call center and other jobs that can be shipped remotely, typically are. As such, salaries for these types of jobs have become priced by overseas talent. Companies, not just big companies, but EVERY company is looking to operate as efficiently as possible. The commoditization of labor is a real problem for laborers who seek to earn a living and live a good life.

Because the cost of labor is plummeting, it poses a different set of challenges for large companies. Small companies can now compete with large companies for profits that were once unheard of. Micro-breweries are competing with larger beer distributorships. Boutique businesses can impact the bottom lines of Enterprise-size companies. To further illustrate, 11.9M viewers saw the last episode of The Sopranos. To date, 55M viewers have seen David After Dentist. The Internet age is a threat large companies must deal with.

Large businesses for the first time, because of the Internet age, see smaller businesses as huge threat in their industry. Folgers might not admit it, but it is scared to death of companies like The Roasterie. Every one of them are eating at the profits companies like Folgers used to enjoy.

At first glance, it might look like Folgers is the big bad corporation hopping on board the bandwagon to screw the American worker. In truth, the American worker is screwed by the global marketplace. But even that’s not true.

The global marketplace doesn’t care about the American or the Kansas City worker. It is indifferent because both the American and Kansas City worker can’t provide any marginal utility over a worker in Mexico, Brazil or, in the case of Folgers, New Orleans. In many ways, Kansas Citians could think fondly that these jobs aren’t headed overseas. I speculate that they could very easily.

The global marketplace is why you can search on any topic in the world and come up with a result. It is why knowledge is at a premium and hard work is at its all time low. It is why profits from the Roasterie have grown every year since 1993.

The flaw in the Save Folgers KC movement? Delicious aromas will still exist, they are just moving to a different neighborhood. Folgers isn’t the first company to lay off an American or Kansas City worker and they won’t be the last. Folgers isn’t doing so because they have no heart. They simply decided to operate more efficiently as a response to their owners — the shareholders of Smuckers Inc. If you were CEO, you might choose a different plant to close but, no doubt, you’d have to choose one.

To protest the Folgers plant leaving Kansas City is like protesting against Hurricane Katrina. It provides no benefit. Forces, like the global marketplace, and other laws of physics, exist without concern for humanity.

I have no suggestions over what you should protest instead. Maybe you can go to one of our lovely coffee shops in Kansas City and think about it for awhile.

Or . . .

Maybe you would like to make the world a better place. If so, I have a cause that I would like to talk to you about.

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Secondly, Line2, an app you can download from iTunes, allows you to have a second line on your iPhone. It’s similar to Google Voice in that allows you to make calls over a wireless network instead of using AT&T. No more dropped calls?

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“This merger will give them more control over the musicians and the consumers. Control is power. With that combination, it is probable that we will lose!”

So how does one go about fixing an industry that is thriving in spite of the fact that many in the industry (i.e. the bands themselves) are threatened by the future?

Being a musician is expensive. It’s costly for equipment but also on relationships and family. Musicians need to spend time on the business side of things making sure they have dates lined up to play. They also need to spend time on the music side of things . . . practicing with bandmates, learning new songs. It’s a heavy time commitment that many aren’t aware of. And the best way to justify all this time spent is if you can make money as a musician.

As I mentioned, it’s a great time, because of the Internet, to become known and distribute music. The barrier has never been lower. It’s still difficult to play live and make money though.

I got interested in this topic because I am a music fan. I love live music and have been known to travel just to see music I love.

I’m not worried about live music, per se, but I am worried about the ability of bands that I care about throwing in the towel because they can’t afford to make music. There are applications like KickStarter and Pledgemusic that facilitate music promotion and connecting with fans.

My friend, Peter Thomas, has also created an application that addresses these concerns. Pete has created ShowIgniter. It connects bands to fans and shows to venues. It puts the power in the hands of those who have a passion for live music. I’m committing some resources of my own to move ShowIgniter forward.

ShowIgniter will be sponsoring some live music next Tuesday at 7pm at the LightThread offices in downtown Kansas City. I’ll have some information for you tomorrow on how you can get involved.

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I hired a personal trainer and I am finding the physical limits my body can take.

It’s been apparent to me that I have lived a very comfortable existence for much of my 43 years. I had a good paying job. I was single. I ate what I wanted. I chose comfortable things to do like playing video and card games over exercising and eating healthy. Living comfortably was more important than living healthy.

Here is what I have learned. The only way to know your limits is to “find” your limits. Find out what you are capable of. I wonder exactly how many people do this. I speculate that people don’t know how useful this practice is.

I also speculate this is because our culture is so focused on being comfortable. To live with discomfort is so foreign to people. We feel entitled to comfort. Something is wrong or un-natural if we aren’t comfortable. I’ve come to find the whole thing so interesting. I’ve begun to notice the conversations I’ve had with people when I talk to them about some concern I’m struggling with, like my body. For those who think and act with their body as a concern, they listen. I can have a real conversation with them about different strategies I can employ to provide a more meaningful impact. For those who don’t think and act with their body as a concern, they look at me with incredulity and tell me how great I look. It’s as if they think I have a self-esteem problem because I feel a need, finally, to do something about my body at the ripe old age of 43. I speculate its because misery loves company. People getting healthy makes the unhealthy very uncomfortable.

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Business and Technology work best when they are planned within a powerful interpretation of reality. Human beings have concerns that they cannot ignore. If these concerns are ignored (for instance: choosing not to exercise or eat healthy), you will reach a point in your life that you will suffer. Because business exists within the same reality that humans exist, the same laws apply to companies. If you neglect your concerns related to marketing or technology, your company will eventually suffer. I will call this “not taking care.”

Science is coming up with ways to explain this phenomenon. Cosmologist, Sean Carroll speaks to the University of Sydney about “Entropy” and “The Arrow of Time” to illustrate that answers can be found in physics for consequences related to those who don’t take care.

Why isn’t the universe and our concerns more static?

Part One:

Part Two:

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Mobi-Strategy will still point to this location but the branding of the blog will be entirely different. As such, if you have any bookmarks to this space, you won’t need to change them.

Best,

Vince

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