"Eight business technology trends to watch", from Mckinsey Quarterly

Eight emerging trends are transforming many markets and businesses. Executives should learn to shape the outcome rather than just react to it.

Managing relationships

1. Distributing cocreation

The Internet and related technologies give companies radical new ways to harvest the talents of innovators working outside corporate boundaries.

1. Better Customer Relationships,
2. Improves Knowledge Management,
3. Facilitates Recruiting and Retention,
4. Increases Business Opportunities,
5. Builds Community.

I finally get it - this stuff is too simple. What do you think?

With business social networking software - managers and employees now have a system for connecting informal interactions and discovering new information flows.

So, stop reading about social applications and collaboration tools. Unleash your imagination and start experimenting. The real power of social software can only be appreciated with hands-on experience. Consider a pilot project.

"Social Networking Blurs Boundaries of Learning", from Chief Learning Officer

"Comparing Wal-Mart and Target on Facebook", from Emergence Marketing.

"Target has over 7,000 members and mostly positive comments in a vibrant set of discussions. The Wal-Mart group on the other hand has a little over 1,200 members, no discussions are allowed, and the wall postings are mostly negative."

Enterprise Mashups Hurtle Toward Mainstream, eweek

"Many companies looking to cull data from multiple sources to help their employees do their jobs better are seeking mashups as an answer, said Anthony Bradley, a Gartner analyst, Sept. 21 at the Gartner Web Innovation Summit 2007 here.

I've been using del.icio.us for the last three years as my primary search tool. Google/Yahool are great for the generic stuff but for the meaningful stuff I use del.icio.us. Why? Easy, most of the bookmarks to web pages are intelligently filtered, noted, and tagged.

Hey, would you put crappy music on your ipod?

The NY Times has an interesting article about mashups - Do the Mash (Even if You Don't Know All the Steps)

"POP music has its mash-ups that combine tunes and vocals from different songs. YouTube viewers do it, too, mixing together segments from various music videos."

This is the what and how of social information management

YouTube: Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us via Digital Ethnography @ Kansas University

We can all act on our imaginations farther, faster, deeper and cheaper than ever before.