In August, Jacques Bughin, Michael Chui, and James Manyika, published an update of 8 business technology trends identified by McKinsey two-and-a-half years earlier, in December 2007.

According to McKinsey 8 trends turned into 10, merging 2 of them and adding 3 new ones.

Trend #1: "Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream."

What does that mean? And: Do you agree?

Whereas once companies built castle-like walls to protect the wrong information from leaving the fortress, opening the gates only for bursts of mass-marketing, we see more and more organizations being surrounded by a translucent and porous layer allowing in- and out-flux along the whole value chain.

Wishful thinking, restricted to high tech and social media, or even a fad only? McKinsey mentions three examples:

- IBM being based on a community-developed operating system, Linux

- Wikipedia out-performing the Encyclopedia Britannica by relying on an army of external writers, and

- Facebook, Xing and LinkedIn out-sourcing the translation of their products to global volunteers.

Do we have more examples for the R&D end of the value chain?

By comparison, in sales and marketing, the transformation is evident all over the place. Word-of-mouth marketing is slowly replacing mass-marketing for organizations size-of-one to multi-million dollar companies assisted by tools like Twitter, Facebook, you name it.

Others are trying to ramp up there own networking platforms, like P&G's Vocalpoint, Business Week's Business Exchange, or the NYT's Times People.

What about services & support?

In my opinion there is a huge opportunity here. An opportunity to decrease dissatisfaction mainly. Consumers are no longer willing to wait in line on a service number or fill out a Web form and hope to hear back anytime soon.

The same channels that are open for word-of-mouth marketing may be used to prevent bad-word-of-mouth and enable customer service: Twitter and Facebook or specialists like Get Satisfaction.

Those external platforms are a step up from classic approaches as Microsoft and Apple Support communities. Well, are they? Make sure to comment!

Back to the overview!

In August, Jacques Bughin, Michael Chui, and James Manyika, published an update of 8 business technology trends identified by McKinsey two-and-a-half years earlier, in December 2007.

According to McKinsey 8 trends turned into 10, merging 2 of them and adding 3 new ones.

2010

1. Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream
2. Making the network the organization
3. Collaboration at scale
4. The growing 'Internet of Things'
5. Experimentation and big data
6. Wiring for a sustainable world
7. Imagining anything as a service
8. The age of the multisided business model
9. Innovating from the bottom of the pyramid
10. Producing public good on the grid.

2007

Managing relationships
1. Distributing cocreation
2. Using consumers as innovators
3. Tapping into a world of talent
4. Extracting more value from interactions

Managing capital and assets
5. Expanding the frontiers of automation
6. Unbundling production from delivery

Leveraging information in new ways
7. Putting more science into management
8. Making businesses from information.

Start with Trend #1! | Read the McKinsey Quarterly 2008! | Read the McKinsey Quarterly 2007!

Consultants and speakers are touting the Social CRM horn these days. Jeremiah Owyang summarizes in his Social Media Summit keynote What's Next: The Three Trends Companies Must Invest in for Social Business.

Social CRM? Tying existing customer CRM records with social networks!

Read Jeremiah's blog! | Read the Social CRM report! | View the presentation!

Last week saw me power-testing foursquare. Three weeks before I was playing around a little bit with Google Latitude. I have Gowalla and Plancast accounts. I might even join Loopt, Whrrl, Brightkite, Burbn, MyTown, whatever .... But for now - I am off the grid!

After struggling with Google Latitude end of May for a few days

- it's not an App on my iPhone (not Google's decision, admittedly), it's between cumbersome and impossible to invite contacts, I have to use iGoogle on my computer (the last time I used "iGoogle" was back in 2006) -

I gave foursquare a serious try to know what everybody is talking about these days: 11 "nights" out. 74 checkins. 8 things done. 36 places discovered and the mayor of 6 places are the result.

My thoughts:

1. This stuff is addictive! It's a time-killer to be honest. Even without earning badges, becoming mayor here and there, and check who might have already been in a place, I felt the urge to check in repeatedly during the day and during the night. I know my addictions, I don't need an additional one ;) Thumbs down.
2. Where is the value-add? Actually, I did not discover new places last week. I discovered new people instead. Which is a good thing at first sight! But looking closer I realized that most of the people I "discovered" I had discovered earlier on via professional networks, via reading their publications, or in the real world. Do I really want to connect to strangers on the road? I have to think that business case through for some time to come to a conclusion. Still thinking.
3. I power-used foursquare only. Google Latitude a little bit. This is one and a half out of x services. How should I seriously connect to all my contacts using the other platforms at the same time? Ok, there are consolidation services like FourWhere bringing different checkins together. But using such a service isn't the real thing. It might be ok for aggregating, finding, and analyzing. Not for participating and publishing. As long as there is no real consolidation: Thumbs down.
4. There is no regional mobile price plan for Switzerland, there is not even such a plan for or within the European Union. Crossing borders frequently and avoiding horrendous data roaming charges degrades a smartphone in 2010 to what it was 15 years ago: A mobile phone with significant roaming charges. As long as Europe does not wake up: Thumbs down.

MG Siegler was here already 3 months ago: "At first, I was using all of the services I had on my phone to check-in when I arrived at a place in Austin. This included: Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Whrrl, Brightkite, Burbn, MyTown, CauseWorld, Hot Potato, Plancast, and (at certain places) Foodspotting. Even with great AT&T service, this would take a solid 10 minutes or more to check-in to all of them. And it took even longer when I'd have to pause to explain to my friends what the hell I was doing on my phone all that time."

My decision: I'll stay off the grid. Nevertheless, feel free to contact me on whatever network you use. I might even check in again sometime here and there. For now I will continue tracking my location with Google Latitude for me, myself, and I. Find me there!

As I said: Flooding SlideShare ;)

Bram Pitoyo loves fonts. Typography. No wonder. The subtitle of his website reads "Works at the intersection of user experience, architecture & typography."

"How can we take principles from divergent fields of study, like gaming, architecture and interaction design, to encourage ethically conscious behavior amongst occupants, players and users."

View the presentation!