A year ago I shared a visualization of our AHT Group Business Model.
Following that, I am now sharing our group 2012 Priorities. This comes from the principle of Open Business you can see in the 7 Enablers for our strategy. Our intention is to share more about the drivers of our business. The 2012 priorities document was created for our own internal use to guide our activities and use of resources through this year. However we are happy to make that open, in case anyone else finds looking at our approach is useful to them.
Click on the image for full-size pdf
Continue reading Open business: Sharing our group priorities for 2012 – Why not?
A book can be a very good way to distill and present useful information and guidance. We have done our best to make Getting Results From Crowds as pragmatic and practical as possible in helping organizations to use crowds to grow business and new possibilities. However for some issues and some people, a high-impact workshop or participatory event can be a more direct way of learning new ways to do things. As such I am planning a series of participatory workshops around the world that will build on the content of Getting Results From Crowds.
We are looking for event partners around the world who are interested in working with us bring these workshops to their local communities. Please go through this brief document for an overview of what we are suggesting:
Continue reading Looking for crowdsourcing workshop/ event partners: Europe, North America, Asia
Looking for exceptional events/ sponsorship manager in Sydney: Future/ tech/ influencers – Part-time
We have just advertised on Seek for an events manager. We have been less active in the events space for the last two years as other priorities have been taking our attention, but we are beginning to build back our activity.
Please pass this on to people you know who may be interested.
Exceptional events/ sponsorship manager in Sydney: Future/ tech/ influencers – Part-time
We want talent!
We believe in talent and we want exceptional people. We see a particularly deep pool of very talented people who do not want full-time work. As such we are looking for someone working around 8-16 hours per week.
Continue reading Looking for exceptional events/ sponsorship manager in Sydney: Future/ tech/ influencers – Part-time
SOPA, The Stop Online Piracy Act, is big news in many ways, not least in marking what is likely to be a historical landmark in the battle between traditional media and a now-powerful new media, played out in political influence and the shaping of critical legislation.
One of the most important ways to beat SOPA is to provide a good alternative. The majority of politicians seem to think that online intellectual property rights need better protection, so to kill SOPA requires providing something that can supplant it.
Into this field comes Rep. Darrell Issa, whose involvement in legislation to allow equity crowdfunding I wrote about a few months ago. Issa is essentially seeking to ‘crowdsource’ a bill. Good.is reports:
Continue reading OPEN: Using crowdsourced legislation to beat SOPA
The intelligent use of crowdsourcing can have many benefits for companies – as well as government and non-profit organizations – in achieving their objectives.
Here is a brief excerpt from Chapter 3 on Crowds and Business Value of Getting Results From Crowds
The business value of using crowds
Through history, companies have been limited in what they can achieve through the scope of their internal resources and how well they can draw on external resources. Crowdsourcing has the potential to create enormous value for businesses by giving easy access to an essentially unlimited pool of talent and capabilities. Those organizations that have the skills and competences to draw on external crowds, as well as in tapping the best ideas from their ‘internal crowds’, have an immense advantage over those companies that rely solely on their internal resources and traditional service firms.
Continue reading 5 important ways in which crowdsourcing creates business value
The latest issue of the annual publication Media Trends + Strategy magazine kicks off with a feature article I wrote titled The Decade Ahead for Media. Here is the article:
The decade ahead for media
The future of the media industry as a whole is extraordinarily bright. Alongside the extraordinary rise of social media and a connected world, in the last years we have learned the previously undiscovered depths of the intrinsic hunger humans have for media. As value creation in the global economy increasingly shifts to the flow of information and ideas, and every company can be considered a media organisation, those with the established capabilities, structures, and relationships in media creation and dissemination have an unparalleled opportunity before them.
Continue reading The decade ahead for media
[This post first appeared on Getting Results From Crowds book website]
Harvard Business Review has once again kicked off the year with a List of Audacious Ideas. One of them is Crowdsourcing Management Reviews for Better Management. Authors Linda Hill and Kent Lineback say:
Continue reading Crowdsourcing management reviews: doing it before staff do it for themselves
In December I created a list of 12 themes to frame the year ahead, and then explored the ideas in a number of media interviews. The slides for the 12 themes have been seen almost 50,000 times now, suggesting they struck a chord somewhere. It’s now interesting to reflect on these, especially the response from the media.
Continue reading Dominant themes for 2012: transformation and beyond
[This post first appeared on the Getting Results From Crowds book website]
Research firm IDC has forecast that there will be 1.3 billion ‘mobile workers’ in the world by 2015, representing 37.2% of the global workforce. This points to the massive explosion of what I call the ‘global talent economy’, in which talent can be and will be anywhere.
The forecasts suggest that the bulk of the growth will be in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), which will see 838 million mobile workers in 2015, up 237 million from 2010, representing well over half the global mobile workforce.
Continue reading In the global talent economy over 50% will be mobile workers
[This article first appeared on the Getting Results From Crowds book website]
Harley-Davidson has been in the vanguard of using crowdsourcing to fuel its creative marketing initiatives. That initial success has fueled its appetite, with its latest initiative a Facebook app that takes idea generation to a far broader crowd.
Last year I wrote about how Harley-Davidson had launched a major advertising campaign using Victors & Spoils, an agency built on crowdsourcing principles.
Harley-Davidson was initially cautious, saying:
Continue reading Harley-Davidson goes direct to the crowd after initial success with creative crowdsourcing
Another quick selection of my most popular posts from 2011, this time on the topic of the future of media:
1. Predictions for media industry in 2011
Social news curation, crowd sourced journalism, multi-platform distribution, personalized advertising and tablet media will be just some of the key trends shaping the year ahead.
Continue reading Top 10 posts on the future of media
Last night I was privileged to see in the New Year at the harbour-side broadwalk of the Sydney Opera House, at the Lord Mayor Clover Moore‘s party.
Personally, it was probably the best New Year’s Eve that I’ve ever had, not least because it was an absolutely fantastic party.
I wish I could do justice to the evening with an in-depth review, not least of the extraordinary fireworks and spectacle master-minded by designer Marc Newson, whose work I wrote about last year. Below is a brief excerpt of the display.
Continue reading The spirit of Sydney: an extraordinary New Year’s Eve celebration
Yesterday I appeared on the Australia national breakfast program Today, talking about what we can expect in social media and technology in 2012. I was on holidays in Melbourne so spoke from the studio there. You can see the clip below, or on the Today Show Video page, under the title Social Trends for 2012.
It is always hard to fit in a lot of content into a breakfast TV format, however I managed to cover thoughts on Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, augmented reality glasses, Siri and voice interfaces among other topics.
I’m officially on holidays, but back at home between a family Christmas and beach sojourn and doing quite a few interviews as I go, so I’ll slip in a quick blog post or two. 
Yesterday I was interviewed by Toronto radio station Newstalk 1010 about the future (or lack thereof) of newspapers, coming off the news that New York Times has sold its regional newspapers.
They of course wanted me to talk about my Newspaper Extinction Timeline from last year, and I ran through some of the economic reasons why remnant demand for newspapers doesn’t necessarily mean there will continue to be supply.
Continue reading From news-on-paper to news-on-many-channels
I believe strongly in visual frameworks as a way of communicating and engaging with complex ideas. I share these on the web, sometimes use them as central frames for my keynotes, apply them in strategy workshops, use them to shape my own thinking on the topics they cover, and sometimes create private custom visual frameworks for clients to define and articulate their strategy.
I will be shortly launching a more complete review of all the public visual frameworks I’ve created. For now, here is a review of the public frameworks I’ve created this year.
Success in a Connected World
I have used this in many keynotes and workshops this year to help individuals and small to mid-sized businesses to work out what they need to do succeed in a connected world, usually going into detail on the specific tools they can use in each area.
Click on the image for full size
Continue reading New frameworks of 2011: Connected Success, Transformation of Business and Government, Crowdsourcing
It’s almost the end of the year, so I’ll try to do a few compilations of my most popular posts of the year. Today, on the general theme of the future, here are 12 (+1 for next year) that have attracted the most interest…
1. Zeitgeist 2011: anxiety, mobility, blending, indulgence, immersion, wrath, nudity and more
The spirit of the times for 2011
Continue reading 12 most popular posts of the year on the future
Contagious Magazine has just launched its annual Most Contagious 2011, “reviewing the most innovative exercises in branding, technology, and popular culture,” taking a marketer’s perspective on what has succeeded this year.
The slides are below (you really need to view in full screen as it’s very detailed), or you can also see the Most Contagious website or the pdf version.
As a brief highlight of the report, here are four of Contagious’ favorite promotional YouTube videos of the year. Great viewing! I particularly like Nissan’s Damned Ponies…
Continue reading The most contagious marketing memes of 2011
The Australian startup scene continues to heat up. Arguably Sydney is already in the top 10 tech startup cities in the world, with activity rapidly growing through this year.
The latest news is that the mentor program PushStart (which I participate in as a mentor) is today launching its planned PushStart Accelerator program. I wrote about PushStart and the earlier startup accelerator Startmate at the launch of PushStart. Startmate’s first round of 5 companies has already had significant success, with shopping app Grabble already being acquired by Walmart and Bugherd quickly moving on to participate in the Silicon Valley-based 500 Startups accelerator program.
PushStart uses a very similar model, using the same legal structures as Startmate. There is unquestionably a deep enough pool of rising talent in Australia to fill both the Startmate and PushStart accelerator programs with high quality ventures, with plenty more left over. It will be great to see what comes out of this.
Here is the PushStart announcement:
Continue reading PushStart launches new startup accelerator program in Australia
For those who love rich data on the world of media and telecoms, the release of a report by UK telecommunications regulator Ofcom is always a cause for celebration.
Last year I covered some of Ofcom’s report on key trends on communication and media usage. Here I will excerpt a few of the highlights from today’s Ofcom International Communications Market Report 2011, which focuses on country comparative data. There is an absolute wealth of information in the report. The data below is a small selection that I found particularly noteworthy, with some brief comments.
Global telecoms sector revenue has flattened considerably, with just 2.2% growth last year, brought down by performance in major markets. Interestingly television revenue continues to increase at a healthy pace beyond GDP growth.
Continue reading Fantastic international comparative data on media, social media, and mobile
There are many themes and ideas threaded through our rich and complex times, so when I choose concepts to represent the heart of the year ahead, there is a lot to sort through and select. There were many dozens of ideas competing for the 12 themes I chose to represent what awaits us in 2012 (see slides below).
One of the most important themes of today that made the cut is ‘The New Luxury’ (Theme 8). I thought it would be worth expanding a little on what I wrote in the 2012 Themes on why this is important and what is unfolding in this space, following up on my post earlier this year on How is the culture of luxury changing?
Continue reading Why luxury defines our society and what to expect in 2012
I think one of the most valuable aspects of our newly-launched book Getting Results From Crowds is the analysis of Crowd Business Models. While crowdsourcing is clearly a fantastic way for organizations large and small to get access to unparalleled resources and scale their operations, it is also increasingly central to many companies’ business models.
We have created a framework that identifies 7 fundamental crowd business models (plus non-profits), and done an analysis of the monetization mechanisms and success factors behind each one. These provide a broader framework for the 22 categories in version 2 of our Crowdsourcing Landscape.
The Crowd Business Models framework below aggregates these categories. Further details are provided in Chapter 22 of the book on Crowd Business Models. We have chosen to make all of these resources freely available, as we hope they will be useful for those building businesses that are relevant today. Go to the Getting Results From Crowds website for more free chapters and other resources.
Click on the image to download the complete framework as pdf
Continue reading How to make money from crowdsourcing: A framework for Crowd Business Models
I’m at the launch meeting of the social media community of practice set up by Institute of Public Administration NSW (IPAA).
Earlier this year I gave the opening keynote on The Transformation of Government at IPAA’s annual conference, where I was encouraged to see the interest and appetite for new and more open approaches to government here.
At the conference I wrote about the case study of Queensland Police, which is a great example of government bodies creating value through social media.
At today’s event Tracey Sen of the NSW Department of Education & Training (DET), which has 110,000 employees, presented on the Department’s social media initiatives. Here are a few live notes from the event.
Continue reading Making social media happen in government: case study of NSW Department of Education
This morning I appeared on the Australian national breakfast TV program Sunrise in their ‘Ask an Expert’ segment, talking about the year ahead. Here is the 4 minute clip.
In the brief segment I draw on a number of the 12 Themes for 2012 I recently released. The key topics we discussed were:
Continue reading Sunrise: What to expect in 2012: transformation, social media divide, crowd work
We recently launched our 12 Themes for 2012, shown below, in which the third of the 12 themes is ‘Privacy vanishes’.
One of the drivers of privacy vanishing is the rise of facial recognition. As the 2012 themes document notes, while Facebook has prominently launched its facial recognition technology, Apple and Google have facial recognition capabilities that they have not yet launched. The landscape is now changing.
Continue reading Will your privacy completely vanish? It depends how we use facial recognition
When you talk about crowdsourcing, consistently one of the first objections you hear is worries about losing valuable ideas and intellectual property to unscrupulous overseas contractors.
Our new book Getting Results From Crowds is designed to help people get the most value from crowdsourcing. Part of doing that is giving perspective on the challenges and opportunities of using crowds. In Chapter 4 on When to use crowds, embedded below, one of several free chapters available from book, we discuss Intellectual property and confidentiality and provide a ‘reality check’ on IP protection – see pages 24-25.
Getting Results From Crowds: Chapter 4 – When To Use Crowds
Continue reading The realities of intellectual property and crowdsourcing: don’t hold on too tight
Not a good start to the day. Through a potential client following up on the phone and email after having not received a response to a message on the RossDawson.com contact form, I discovered that it has not been working since the end of October.
It is now working again. So if you have tried to contact me on the form over the last six weeks, could I ask you to get in touch again?
Very sorry! 
Today we are launching my new book Getting Results From Crowds: The definitive guide to using crowdsourcing to grow your business!
This has been, in all, many years in the planning and making, and I’m extremely happy with how it has come out. It is definitely my most useful book, and while it’s hard to compare it with my other books as it has a distinct purpose and design, it is in some ways my best work.
I’ve believed in, followed, and worked with crowds for over a decade. My 2002 book Living Networks had many examples of what we currently call crowdsourcing, including being the first of many business books to describe the Goldcorp challenge, and mentions of Elance, InnoCentive, and Procter & Gamble’s Connect & Develop program, before any were well-known.
Today much of my work is around the future of work and future of organizations. The most powerful single force shaping work and organizations is the rise of distributed work, often drawing on crowds. I have used crowdsourcing platforms extensively for the last decade, and studied and learned how to get the best results from these. Our group business model is centered on the effective use of crowds.
The Getting Results From Crowds book website has a whole stack of resources, including:
Continue reading Launching my new book today! Getting Results From Crowds
Last week I gave a keynote at the National Broadband Network – what’s in it for me? conference in Bunbury, Western Australia, a town 2 hours south of Perth, the most geographically isolated city in the world. Not surprisingly the hunger for broadband in the region is enormous – you could feel it in the room.
My keynote on The Killer Apps of Connectivity roamed through through some of the killer apps of massive broadband, including work, health, education, media, and new business models. I also spoke about ‘Everything’, in which connectivity is applied to virtually everything around us.
Image source: Application of Cloud Computing to Agriculture and Prospects in Other Fields
One of the domains that is very relevant to the South West region where the conference was held is agriculture. The image above shows the dynamics of a study sponsored by Fujitsu that used rich sensor data to improve practices and yields in rice farming in Japan, while rich sensor data has also been used in wine making, where grapes are highly sensitive to temperature and humidity differences and changes.
Continue reading Many sensors + Imagination = The Internet of Things
Last week I participated in and spoke at an Education Roundtable organized by Telstra, which brought together a small group of very senior executives in all layers of education in Australia. In the same way that I have been drawn into discussions on the future of government over the last 18 months, I am finding myself increasingly frequently asked to engage with decision-makers on the future of education.
There is much I want to share from my presentation and the fantastic discussion at the Roundtable, but for now I’d just like to point to the excellent Telstra White Paper launched at the event, titled Personalised Learning. The White Paper itself is the outcome of an Education Roundtable held a year earlier, and interviews with a variety of Australian senior educators and government officials.
The White Paper’s Executive Summary makes five points, in summary:
Continue reading Tech-savvy children are driving the future of education
Towards the end of each year I share some thoughts on what awaits in the year ahead.
It is actually a lot easier to look years into the future than just a single year, as while we can readily discern broad trends, the major events in a year are usually unforeseeable, though they may express the longer-term directions. However as the pace of change accelerates, it is becoming a little easier to see the themes, if not the specifics, of the year ahead. My Map of the Decade shows the 14 ExaTrends that are shaping this 10-year period. Today I launch my 12 Themes for 2012, in conjunction with Future Exploration Network.
Below is the text for the 12 themes, though they are better viewed in the slides above, as the images used are an intrinsic part of the themes. Alternatively download the pdf of 12 Themes for 2012 (10.6MB)
Continue reading 12 Themes for 2012: what we can expect in the year ahead
This is now the thirteenth year that I and some friends have organized the Annual Entrepreneurs and Self-Employed Xmas Drinks in Sydney. The reality is that many who are setting up companies, working solo, or running small businesses don’t have the kinds of Christmas parties that employees of big companies do. So we celebrate together, bringing our teams along.
This year we are running the event adjacent to a launch for my new book Getting Results From Crowds. In the end it wasn’t logistically feasible to run two separate events, and it made sense to do them at the same venue. The book is in any case highly relevant to entrepreneurs.
See the event page for full details, summarized below.
Continue reading Want to buy drinks for a bunch of Sydney entrepreneurs?
Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp, is in Australia for the launch of Yelp Australia. I was invited to interview him on Monday (embargoed until today) as part of a major media campaign to kick off the site.
Australia is the 13th country where Yelp has launched, with up until now all the action outside North America being in Europe. Stoppelman said that they are patient and take the time necessary to get quality data from the outset, so that users’ initial experience is positive.
In this case Yelp in July announced an exclusive deal with Sensis, the Telstra subsidiary that operates the Yellow Pages in Australia. This deal provides Yelp with the initial data to launch, plus a partner for monetization, with Sensis’ sales staff offering customers Yelp advertising options. Local search is a highly sales-intensive business, so the Sensis deal means Yelp can effectively build presence and monetize with limited local staff. It is in the process of hiring community managers in Melbourne and Sydney, where it is initially focusing.
Continue reading Yelp leaps into the underserviced consumer review space in Australia
One of my speaking bureau just asked me to provide them with a few quick ideas on how technology is changing events, as one of their key clients is having an internal meeting to discuss their future use of technology in events.
I only had 10 minutes free to write something, so it’s far from comprehensive, but I thought worth sharing here.
Before events:
- Connecting with speakers and others attendees
- Identifying who you’d like to catch up with at the event
- Arranging meetings with sponsors or other attendees
- Voting on content to be covered
- Surveys to gain insights into participants and their experiences and views
- Sharing content relevant to the event
- Getting recommendations for people to meet with similar interests, projects etc., using tools such as introNetworks
Continue reading How technology is transforming events
Last week I spoke at the annual meeting of a division of a major bank. It was a one-hour event, with a live audience of several hundred, and a few thousand who worked in other locations watching via a live webcast. Given the pace of change in their business and their overt focus on innovation, they had me speak for 20 minutes on the future, followed by the top two divisional executives for 10 minutes each on what they expect in the business moving forward, then the entire leadership team plus myself up for 20 minutes of Q&A. It was a first for them to use an external speaker for the event, though given the success of the format they will undoubtedly do it again. Bringing external perspectives can be invaluable in stimulating new thoughts on the business and where it can go.
My presentation quickly skimmed through the implications of shifting demographics, work dynamics, social expectations, financial and economic structures, and technology, framed in terms of how to think more openly about possibilities, challenges, and opportunities.
However in the final Q&A session I was asked about the future of business relationships. Given commoditization and competitive pressures, what would happen in relationships?
Continue reading The future of high-value relationships
Early this year I caught up for a coffee with Stephen Browning, Director of Corporate Affairs at News Digital Media and The Australian. During our conversation he told me about a weekly digest of what’s happening globally in digital news and paid content that he compiled for executives at News Limited, to keep them informed about all of many rapid changes in the space.
In the wake of News Limited’s recent blogger briefing on its paywall plan, which showed a dramatically more open attitude than the company had evinced in the past, it is now making its internal business intelligence report available to the general public.
Anyone can sign up for the weekly update at its Future of Journalism site. There is of course no really good reason why a company wouldn’t share with the world its internal business intelligence reports. However the reality is that almost none do. So once again hats off to News Limited for sharing this useful information with the world at large.
Below is the latest update from earlier today, showing the most interesting developments in paid content over the previous week, from the perspective of News Limited. (Apologies if the formatting doesn’t work properly – I just pulled in the HTML.)
Continue reading Open strategy: News Limited shares its inspirations on the future of paid content
AHT GROUP VENTURES & FEATURED CONTENT
About the Blog author
Ross Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author. He is Founding Chairman of AHT Group, which consists of 3 companies: consulting, publishing, and ventures firm Advanced Human Technologies, future and strategy firm Future Exploration Network, and events company The Insight Exchange.
Ross is author most recently of Implementing Enterprise 2.0, the prescient Living Networks, which anticipated the social network revolution, and the Amazon.com bestseller Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships (click on the links for free chapter downloads). He is based in Sydney and San Francisco with his wife jewellery designer Victoria Buckley and two beautiful young daughters.
Books By Ross Dawson (Incl. Free Chapters)
Articles and Reports
Future of Media Report 2008
Future of Media Report 2007
Future of Media Report 2006
Executive Insights into Enterprise Social Network Strategy
Future of the Media Lifecycle
Future of Media: Strategy Tools
Executive Insights into Enterprise 2.0
Web 2.0 Framework
Trend map 2007+
Extinction Timeline
SAP White Paper: Service Delivery Innovation
White Paper: The Seven MegaTrends of Professional Services
CNET/ University of Virginia White Paper: How Technology Purchasing Decisions Are Really Made
PM Network magazine's lead article on virtual teamwork (440KB), featuring Ross Dawson on the cover
Microsoft Strategic White Paper: How To Lock-in Your Clients (1.1MB)
Ranking
AHT GROUP BUSINESS MODEL
Visualization of our activities and modelLatest book
Recent Media Appearances
- Jan 12, 2012 – RTL Belgium January 19, 2012
- Jan 9, 2012 – Positano News January 10, 2012
- Jan 1, 2012 – ABC Radio National January 1, 2012
- Dec 30, 2011 – 2UE December 30, 2011
- Dec 29, 2011 – Newstalk 1010 Toronto December 29, 2011
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