In my continuing search for examples of Small Business Blogs, I came across Industry Blogs, a listing of more serious, business-related blogs. I even got my own site registered. This aggregated site is still in its early stages but may grow. Many of the the sites are from the UK.
Once it fills up, this could be a good starting point for someone looking for examples on how to start blogging for business.
Work
business & working
Commons-based Peer Production
In my previous post on Obsolescing the Middle Men, I had referred to commons-based peer production. From George Siemens I learned that Irving Wladawsky-Berger, VP Technical Strategy & Innovation at IBM, takes this form of production very seriously. Wladawsky-Berger states that :
Clearly, despite having built a highly successful, profitable business on a proprietary model, IBM takes the open source movement in its many manifestations very seriously. Working in an open community is for us a no-nonsense business decision, made only after considerable analysis of the technology and market trends, and due diligence on the community, its licensing and governance, and the quality of its offerings.
I think that we are seeing the next phase of open source getting bigger and more serious. Even more traditional business publications, such as Knowledge@Wharton are discussing open source models. This is a practical and pragmatic way of doing business which can be profitable, but also idealistic in that it fosters the common good. This may be the new model that our antiquated managerial capitalist world needs.
Commons-based peer production is a BIG idea.
For the past several years I have participated in a number of regional economic and industry-focused development initiatives. They have focused on how a region can be more innovative, get more jobs, create wealth, etc. In all of these cases the status quo remains, in terms of power and wealth. I also don’t see much real innovation, especially the quantum type referred to by Franz Johansson. The Commons could be the unifying idea that allows companies to make profits, individuals to opt-in on their own terms and non-profits to participate and benefit. However, to really make commons-based peer production work, the traditional power centres (corporations, executives, bureaucrats) will have to give up control, and that could prove to be most difficult.
Perhaps it could start with the CBC?
Furl: Small Business Blogs
I had previously asked if there were many blogs being used by more traditional small businesses. Since the anonymous comment function is temporarily turned off (until I get an easier way to reject the comment spam), I didn’t get many responses. In the interim I have kept an eye out for small business blogs and have created this Furl Topic – Small Business Blogs.
To date I’ve found a coffee company, a mortagage specialist, a real estate agent and a health food company. I’ll keep adding to this site, as I think that this is the real growth area for business blogging, enabling small companies to have direct conversations with their customers and eliminating the marketing middle men.
To date I’ve found a coffee company, a mortagage specialist, a real estate agent and a health food company. I’ll keep adding to this site, as I think that this is the real growth area for business blogging, enabling small companies to have direct conversations with their customers and eliminating the marketing middle men.
“The Corporation”
I finally sat down to watch The Corporation, as I could never convince the whole family to watch it with me. This is a great film, and unfortunately not much is surprising. We have arrived at a point in our history where the dominant power structure has outlived its usefulness to human kind. My most memorable line is from Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, who has seen the edge of the corporate/industrial cliff:
The first industrial revolution is flawed, it is not working, it is unsustainable, it is the mistake – and we must move on to another and better industrial revolution and get it right this time.
After the documentary was about 3/4 over, my boys came home from their pizza party and watched the rest with me. Now they want to see the whole thing :-)
Information on how to buy a personal copy of the film is available on the website.
Connecting to Online Communities
If you’re not sure what participation in an online community can do for your business, then check out Lee’s post at Common Craft. Lee shows how online communities are separate from business operations, but that there are ways to connect without opening up the whole store. For instance, business goals can be shared with the online community.
Below are examples of the types of goals that can benefit from community participation:
- Identifying solutions to common problems
- Identifying innovative ideas
- Reducing bugs in software or products
- Counteracting negative or inaccurate PR
- Reducing support costs
- Increasing non-community participation in events
Lee cites a number of examples of community mobilization, such as the March of Dimes. This is a good summary for those not immersed in online communities but trying to figure out the business potential.
Obsolescing the Middle Men
Ross Mayfield’s recent article on the rise of the Commons-based peer production business model came with a quote that about 50% of US GDP consists of transaction costs. These are the costs of getting a product or service from the seller to the purchaser. The contention is that the commons model, used by open source software developers as well as others, reduces these transaction costs.
There appears to be a huge opportunity for nimble small companies (without huge marketing & sales overhead) to significantly reduce transaction costs and pass these on to purchasers. This is what Mancomm Performance did on our last project by using open source software and underbidding a Fortune 500 company by ~$2M.
Looking at this situation through McLuhan’s tetrad for the laws of media, here is how this could be explained.
Commons-based peer production:
- Extends each individual’s reach worldwide
- Obsolesces the middle men (accountants, lawyers, traders, brokers)
- Retrieves the barter system or the bazaar – (I can set my own rules for buying & selling)
- and Flips, when extended to its limits, the Commons into a whuffie economy
Virtual work, but we need you onsite
Nine Shift relates this story about a reader who had applied for a job developing ‘virtual’ learning:
“I wanted to share with you something that happened to me last week. I found an interesting position listed on The Chronicle of Higher Education’s jobs listing for an Instructional Designer to work with faculty at a large online university. Even before reading Nine Shift, I had toyed with the idea of teaching or working in some way with education online, so this sounded like a great opportunity. And, I reasoned that it could easily be done online (even if the ad was not specific), since the faculty the incumbant for this position would be working with would be exclusively online faculty. But, just to be sure, I contacted the HR Department at the university before sending in my documents. I was contacted back almost immediately (which was refreshing) and told that this was an onsite position and not an online one. It struck me as odd that even the people doing online education are not willing to see what could be done and are still requiring some jobs to be located on campus that could easily (and more effectively) be done by telecommuting.”
Many companies are developing products and services for clients all over the world but they may never meet their clients face-to-face. However, the urge to be able to watch over employees and keep them in one place/time zone seems to be hard to overcome. This mentality is also evident in the command-and-control systems (like time tracking to the minute) that these companies use.
Smaller companies and free-agents are starting to give these companies a run for their money. We’re not there yet, but we’re honing our virtual work skills every day.
I do a lot of virtual work and have done projects completely online. Our project teams embrace any tool that can help us, such as:
- Skype — for instant messages, presence monitoring
- eGroupware — for formal collaboration
- Gmail — for transferring large files
- Marratech — when we need real time video and document sharing
All of these applications are free and/or open source. We use them because they work and we don’t need an IT Department’s permission to use them either. We have also embraced virtual work because we can’t afford to spend all of our time traveling (especially traveling to the office). Free-agents have figured out how to use the Internet to make us more effective and get things done cheaper and faster. So far though, the corporate world still seems to be looking for clock-punchers who can be monitored close at hand. The situation doesn’t seem to be changing too quickly …
Business Blog Consulting
I’ve been reading Rick Bruner’s Business Blog Consulting for almost two years now but recently he was slowing down due to other commitments. Rick has now invited a number of very good writers to contribute on a regular basis and all of a sudden the site is becoming "the" place for discussions around the business side of blogging. If you’re interested at all in the two-way web and what it can do for business then stay tuned to BBC.
Small Business Blogging
I had previously mentioned how traditional businesses could use blogs. Small Business Trends now reports that one in ten small businesses in the US are planning on using blogs in their marketing strategy.
As a micro-business, I have no doubt about the value of blogging, especially for free-agents. Most business blogs seem to be in IT-intensive fields but they can also work for more traditional businesses. Two examples – Landfair Furniture in Oregon and The Lincoln Sign Company .
Like e-mail, I think that blogs will become ubiquitous in the near future as the Early Adopters have already moved to blogs.
Are there other examples of more traditional small businesses using blogs? I know about the consultants, writers and techies, but what about companies with less than 100 employees who are blogging in order to have real conversations with people?
Culture is Everything
Anyone who has worked as a consultant or on an external/internal project knows about culture and change. It’s what can make or break a project. Fast Company has a quick note on the importance of culture, it’s organisational DNA, and gives this how-to list:
Something to try:
Consider the team/group/organization you’re leading
1. Look at your vision/mission statement and jot down the behaviors that everyone supposedly follows.
2. On a second list jot down the behaviors that everyone actually follows.
3. Pick the one discrepancy that annoys you the most.
4. Make it a top priority to change it.
5. Have a conversation with colleagues on why each of you think the discrepancy exists.
6. Agree on some structures to put in place to ensure that change happens (communication, processes, rewards etc).
Consider the team/group/organization you’re leading
1. Look at your vision/mission statement and jot down the behaviors that everyone supposedly follows.
2. On a second list jot down the behaviors that everyone actually follows.
3. Pick the one discrepancy that annoys you the most.
4. Make it a top priority to change it.
5. Have a conversation with colleagues on why each of you think the discrepancy exists.
6. Agree on some structures to put in place to ensure that change happens (communication, processes, rewards etc).
I’m not sure that it’s ever this easy to address culture issues but these "discrepancies" can spell the death of any project. If you can spot them early, they can also be indicators of projects to avoid.