This blog "borns" in a LinkedIn environment. The goal of this blog is to provide great sources of information regarding Business Strategy. Long-term benefits from critical thinking activities which enable companies to achieve goals. Setting up organizational goals is important. How you get there is key (Strategy).
If you haven’t seen the movie “Letters to Juliet” please be warned that you might find it to be just another romantic comedy somehow similar to most of its genre. For us however, it is an enchanting movie about love, and therefore, we believe it is worth wasting a couple of hours on it. And here is why.
Actress Amanda Seyfried plays the role of a young American fact finder, who travels to the Italian city of Verona, home of the doomed Juliet Capulet of “Romeo and Juliet”, where she joins a group of volunteers who respond to “letters to Juliet” looking for advice about love. Answering one of these letters, Amanda elaborates as follows: “‘What’ and ‘if’ are two words as non-threatening as words come. But put them together side-by-side and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life: ‘What if?’” “What if” is nothing more than an indication of the human mind’s annoying predisposition to worrying! Have you noticed that your mind is constantly flooding you with questions such as: “What if I lose my job?”; “What if I lose my eyesight, my hearing or my ability to speak?”; “What if no one hires me because of my tendency to overreact?”; “What if no one marries me?”; “What if my family or friends stop loving me?”; “What if I die young without having enjoyed life?”; “What if I do not have the capacity to support my children?”. And, the cliché, “What if the world ends tomorrow?” What if, what if, what if...
Keep it simple
Are you close to a nervous breakdown? With this simple exercise of imagining what is behind people’s tendency to worry so much, we already feel overwhelmed! Don’t you? Does such an illustration make you feel more human? It is not only you who thinks about this “stuff”. The key question is: do you let those two non-threatening little words bother you? Such words indeed have the power to haunt you for life, but the good news is that they only haunt you if you let them! So, if you feel you want to get rid of some of your worries, here are a couple of tips inspired by Dale Carnegie’s book “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living”:
1. Don’t allow the small things to ruin your happiness; 2. Don’t waste your time revisiting your past over and over again; 3. Live your daily life rather than worrying about the future; 4. Learn to relax at home and at work; 5. Be enthusiastic about your life and your work; 6. Once you discover a problem, work on getting rid of it. Write it down and try to answer some simple questions like: a. What is the problem? b. What is its cause/root? c. What are the possible solutions? d. What is the best solution for the problem? 7. Avoid “floating paper anxiety”: file and organize paperwork (especially post-its) that might be needed in the future. 8. Decide how much anxiety and worry you should give to a particular matter, and refuse to give it any more.
We hope you will soon be able to say you are living a purposeful, fulfilling and stress-free life!
(I received this message from one of my great network connections! thanks David)
In the last twenty years, I’ve been privileged to witness a shift in individuals, on teams and within many organizations. A move from struggle to strength, from what’s wrong to what’s right, from doing what’s next to doing what matters.
What I’ve learned over the years is that happy, healthy, productive people (and companies) focus on some very specific actions every day (eight, to be exact) that keep them sharp, balanced and full of energy. They connect their endeavors – at work and at home – to the principles that are most important to them; and then things change.
In my forthcoming book, The 8 – Basic Elements to Greater Happiness, Health & Productivity, I share the stories of these enlightened individuals and the companies they love to work for. People who discover their grand ambitions and then start everything they do each day with passion and positive energy. Individuals and teams that focus on their strengths and avoid dwelling on their limitations.
As an executive and organizational coach, I’ve discovered that there really is no secret and we won’t find a cure; the answers are within us. To be fit and fulfilled it’s important that we share our expectations with those around us and avoid unhealthy communication patterns. It’s essential to bring our whole selves into the actions we perform everyday and live the values that drive us at every turn. We should recognize our interactions with people as opportunities to connect with another human being and learn from those relationships – even the most challenging ones. To recapture our joy, we should spend less time investing our emotions into where we fall short and more energy into the victories we’ve accomplished – even the tiniest ones. And as we do all of these things, we must be ever mindful of how and with whom we can pass our life’s lessons along and help someone else achieve their greatness.
We must live the 8.
In less than three weeks, to coincide with my book’s release on March 21st, we’re set to launch our new site at livethe8 . There you’ll be able to read a sample chapter from The 8, learn more about our Personal and Professional Development Kit to use with work teams, and enjoy our complimentary online assessment, a five-minute survey called The Happiness Index™. Be sure and visit livethe8 on March 21st!
Meanwhile, to learn more about The 8 and discover how this message might resonate with you and the people you work with, I invite you to turn up the volume on your computer and click on the link below. Enjoy this little four-minute movie and start today right...right now.
An astrological crisis is installed since it was reported that Ophiuchus would become the 13th zodiacal sign, pushing all the other signs a month forward.
On this side of the planet, this discussion has a lighter weight since until now, nobody has pointed out the existence of a thirteenth animal sign in the Chinese horoscope. Consequently, we are about to leave the ferocious Year of Tiger and enter into the “mild-mannered” Year of the Rabbit.
During this festive season you should expect to see rabbits, bunnies and fluffy tails everywhere you go and, at night time, while you have a drink, you may also watch them on their hutch at Sands Macao.
The rabbit, bunny or hare are similar creatures which essence derives from the Moon. Being the icon of longevity they have been the chosen animal to represent and promote Duracell brand batteries.
As you may recall, the commercial advertisements of Duracell present several pink rabbits and the “Duracell Bunny” also known as the “Energizer Bunny”. This fluffy fellow is powered by a Duracell battery that allows him to win all races or games against his pink rabbit opponents powered by rival batteries. The point of the advertisement is that the bunny powered by a Duracell battery can continue functioning for a longer amount of time before its battery runs down.
However, and since these little creatures also symbolize graciousness, good manners, sound counsel, kindness, and having a huge sensitivity to beauty they have also been selected to be Playboy´s fantasy archetype.
According to the experts in Chinese Astrology, in each and every rabbit individual there is a strong will and a great self-assurance. They believe in their own ability to survive, relying on their judgment, which makes them at peace with themselves.
They might appear slow or over deliberate at times, but this is most likely due to their sense of caution and discretion. They never use harsh words or vulgarisms, which make them having their credentials flawless.
They jump any obstacles that come into their paths and recover from catastrophes with extraordinary resilience. No matter how the rabbit is tossed he always land on its feet and that is probably why in cartoons, Bugs Bunny always gets his carrots!
So, to benefit from this rabbit wisdom here are some tricks to get your carrots:
Admit your mistakes and quit trying to cover them up;
Stop blaming other people;
Return everything you ever borrowed;
Give things away to people less fortune than you;
Be kind to the unkind people in your life;
Wherever you go, always show up on time;
Be positive and speak in the positive language;
We strongly believe that in the long run, those small actions will unlock your potential, making you live a happier, bunny kind, inspired and longer life.
Life is nothing more than a daily race or fight. So, please make sure your batteries are Duracell and that you will take the batteries charger everywhere you go…
Society is changing - and the evolution of the Internet in recent years is causing
unprecedented changes in consumption patterns. Until very recently, people rely on cafes to conspire and explore tomorrow’s trends or, in an often isolated act, used napkins from restaurants to record ideas born in a spark of creativity. In deciding a purchase, we had to go to a friend's house to ask for advice, a few trips to the stores, read magazines or newspapers, have ears ready to catch the last word-of-mouth, be attentive to whatever was advertised. We had no central decision-making - we had several: scattered geographically and conceptually. With the popularization of the Internet, the centres of decision merged into one: a huge online headquarters. Today we plan online and do offline. Internet provides all the information in a single point, and only ceases to be used when a physical demand overtakes it. Buy a mobile phone? We look for models on the Internet, choose models on the Internet, choose where to buy on the internet, we join with friends to buy cheap via Groupon, we see the best route to the store in the Google Maps ... and after going to the store ... we go back to the Internet to join the brand's site and make updates, to check technical support and do some reviews. And if we're not happy, we say bad things about the phone on Facebook, or give it just one star. If we are pleased, we distribute "Likes" in everything that relates to the brand. Things are made in a smart way, because you simply keep coming back to the online world. In the limit ("limit" is too hard in this context), you don’t even go out - just buy it online. Making a revolution in Tunisia? Pass the word on Facebook, outline the strategies online, go to the streets and knocks out a regime offline. Making a revolution in Egypt? Well, you know the story ...
However, the passage from a structured face-to-face strategy of thinking to one designed online, may have other implications. The “virtualization” of society gives us great tools for “organization” in a broad sense (organizing resources, people, procedures...) but it is misleading to the “physical” society: the one in the operational level, in the fieldwork. No wonder that power is more concerned with the raw materials for iPad’s batteries than with the food shortage that began to plague the planet. No wonder it can better deal with speculative bubbles in the stock market than with the deaths of miners around the world due to lack of operational and psychological conditions. Virtualization gives us the illusion that we can do everything. There will always be a freeware to the problem X, or an app to pass the time with Iphone. But it's too far more complicated to solve a tangible problem, with physical implementation. In Farmville’s land we can produce virtual food - but the human stomach is not satisfied with that placebo. Returning to the revolutions issue, I fear the day when this feeling of "Super Internet" (the feeling that great things can be organized virtually) collides against the cruelty on the ground, where troops organized (literally) to the bones will be not so intangible in the wounds they’ll inflict. I also have my reservations about virtual money: the extent to which “Facebook Credits” could save someone who needs U.S. Dollars to eat the next meal. Money can be disguised, but needs cannot. So, I leave a message: virtual world must evolve sustained in the development of the real world, not the opposite. The Internet has developed thousands of times faster than fishing, today almost no one uses a Spectrum (which appeared in 1982), but millions of people still use ancient fishing techniques. This imbalance between the online and offline, if not corrected, could lead to a false sense of security. And as far as I know, bits are not very good to eat.
The process of creating expectations is developed in our subconscious and interferes directly with the motivations, perceptions, emotional responses and decisions. These four factors, together with the element of satisfaction, are the most important factors that marketing should manage to acquire and retain consumers.
In a further reflection on the drivers of consumer satisfaction, we can argue that some markets and consumer groups choices are made based not just on needs and satisfaction, but based on the characteristics of products or services and then making a purchasing decision related to consumer expectation.Consumer satisfaction is related to the level of expectations created prior to a purchase and then the outcome after purchase must meet or exceed their overall expectations.
From the dictionary definitions, expectations are "anticipation with the confidence of achievement" and "experience of affective and emotional states." That is, if consumers have an expectation, they anticipate what will happen awaiting completion and there is an activation of the emotional state by increasing the attention and curiosity. David Huron says in his book "Sweet Anticipation" expectations are a constant element of our mental life and it can be seen as a further sense - the sense of the future - that the mind provides information about upcoming events; it’s not about how the world is, but how the world will be.
Our mind automatically creates expectations in relation to everything we see, read and hear. This process begins in the "Pons" that exists in the brain where the electrical signal begins, and that directs our attention. Then the "Telemis", which represents the short-term memory, raises expectations and gives an answer to the question "What will happen?" to the central system. Finally, the mind compares the expectations created in the "Telemis" with the long-term memory (past experiences), which is located in the "Cortex". We Compare expectations that we have created, with what we already know, hoping for the same or better. Through this comparison, a decision is made that is based on expectations and not needs.
Expectations, emotions, motivations and perceptions are in the consumer subconscious. All experiences will shape the "schemes" that are housed in our memory. Consumers compare the information that they hold in short-term memory (what they see, hear, and read at a given time) with the information they know that is staying in long term memory. It is based on this comparison that we decide. This means that comparing expectations housed in short-term memory with what they know through the experiences, transformed into "standards" for which await a repeat result or even improvement.
We have created expectations in the first place, as part of our biological system. But if we generate expectations, it means that they must and can be managed and controlled through communication. The process of creating expectations lies in our subconscious and interferes directly with our motivations, perceptions, emotional responses and decisions. These four factors, together with the element of satisfaction, are the most important factors that marketing should manage to acquire and retain consumers.
Managing expectations is a new marketing approach, which may be crucial in the success and differentiation of any brand. The expectations management approach is the opportunity to interact with the consumer subconscious. The model I present to investigate the management of expectations is divided into five phases: Motivations, Sensory Perception, Emotional Response, Decision Making and Satisfaction.
In the first phase the consumers motivation to purchase is created. There is a need and an idea about what they need to meet this need (1 - What do you want). Faced with what they want and the price for what they want. (2 - Perception of getting what they want), the consumer will feel satisfied if they can get what they want and proceed to purchase, or they will have to adapt themselves if they can’t get what they want until they are able to purchase or the barriers keeping them from purchasing have been reduced or eliminated allowing the purchase to happen.
For example, in seeing the recent movie about the creation of Facebook, we understand the perceived need Zuckerberg found was how Internet users liked to appear and be perceived (which was reflected in the explosion of the process of "self-google" and now facebook).
The second phase involves the creation of an Expectation / Perception that is created when consumers go to find what they want to see (announcements / images / design / package), read, and hear. Based on information they get, consumer experiences and information they received, they create an expectation / perception about the product / service and its characteristics. Consumers form expectations on all factors related to the product or service such as quality, design, functions, social impact, etc. If we change communication, we can change the perception obtained for each factor. In the case of Denim, a brand of perfume belonging to Unilever mass market in the 1980’s and 90’s, the expectations created by advertising to their customers was the image of domination, ie, the ruler in a possible sexual relationship was the man "and they always know what they want.”
In the third stage there is an emotional response from consumers. After consumers are motivated to buy, and have created an expectation and a perception about the product and about each feature of that product, there will be a response / feedback. The emotional responses will be present at all stages of the buying process. However, a "tension response" occurs before the decision and that will increase their levels leading to the purchase which is the most important emotional response or one that can dictate the decision and the levels of motivation for the decision. Through this emotional response, which may be caused, we can create and increase levels of curiosity and attention.
This phase is clearly more complicated for marketing managers, because the knowledge, control and influence over the emotional responses of consumers is much more complex. Again, using the same example, when the man wears Denim he feels safe and in control of the relationship (and woman) he is involved with.
In Phase Four there will be a purchasing decision. The decision is based on expectations and takes place through a process of comparing alternatives and consumer experiences. The balance between the need and expectation can be analyzed by one of the models that I am developing and will be important for there to be a positive decision and satisfaction after the decision process. What brings us to the movie theaters to see a particular movie, buy a car or a particular clothing brand x is the expectation we have on a number of factors related to the product or service. The expectation on each of these factors can be changed until there is a balance between expectation and existing needs, which results in a purchasing decision. To realize this process, we must understand the attitudes that are linked to the subconscious, and look at what really drove us to buy certain products or services. The easiest answer would be to say there was an existing need. But the question is not why we bought a phone ... The question is to know why we bought the phone x and not y. Most of our decisions are made based on information we have in our subconscious. When consumers are able to think on a conscious level, they have already made the purchasing decision.It becomes a known conscious level because now the result/outcome of satisfaction and meeting expectations is known.
As an example, if we find that the expectation among consumers about the power of the car "x" is relatively low and this is an important decision for the target y, we can adapt all elements of communication emphasizing this factor: putting the car in situations that demonstrate the factor "power" will change the perception of consumers regarding the power of the car or readjusting the existing expectation or even creating the correct expectations from the beginning.
In the fifth stage we examine the levels of satisfaction. Satisfaction depends on the levels of expectation created and what the consumer obtained for each factor/feature of the product or service. To be satisfied there was balance between the existing expectations and needs. The higher the level of expectation the more difficult it will be to satisfy the consumer. Currently, the only communication that is resulting from company branding and marketing is working to increase consumer expectations on their product or service.Therefore the most important task of satisfying their customers becomes more difficult or almost impossible because of the increased level of expectations.In order to be successful It’s important to understand the expectations created in a consumer’s subconscious and what is needed to satisfy those levels of expectations.
The current marketing and communication approaches will evolve as the management of expectations continues to develop.Through this approach of managing expectations without changing products or services, we can influence levels of consumer perceptions, satisfaction, decision-making, and alter various consumer groups’ motivations for purchasing.
Author's Note:
My research is based on cognitive psychology and focuses on consumer behavior, based on the following theories: ITPRA Theory - General Theory of Expectation, Expectancy Theory, Expectation Fulfillment Theory, Hedonic Adaptation, Placebo Effect, Stereotypes, Sensory Perception, Peer Effects; Relative Standing, Availability Effects, Loss Aversion, Endowment Effect, Status Quo Bias, Engogenous Determination of Time Preference, Multiple Alternatives: Anchoring, Paradox of Choice.
In order to quantify the analysis of expectations and be able to take decisions, I am developing a set of models with positive correlations between needs and expectations, satisfaction and expectations, and importance of factors such as price. Through these models we can quantify the level of expectations and understand the factors that we should increase or decrease the level of expectations, so we generate a "positively balanced decision."
The hypothesis that I present and the theory that I am developing has positive correlations between Expectations and Motivation, Expectations and Sensory Perception, Expectations and Emotional Responses, Expectations and Decision Process, and Expectations and Satisfaction.
Some thoughts about networking and internet based on an analysis of Edward Bellamy's Utopia, “Looking Backward”, and Aldous Huxley's Dystopia” Brave New World”.
There’s always Dystopia if Utopia isn’t available; on a regular basis, in my humble opinion.
“We can now literally "look backwards" at the 20th Century and as we do so, the contrast between Bellamy's utopia and Huxley's dystopia is a useful one to simulate reflection on what went wrong. And, clearly, something very important did go wrong to confound the reasonable hopes of men and women. While they expected that moral and social progress would continue in parallel with technical progress, in reality every forward advance seems to have been accompanied by catastrophes that call into question the very survival of the human race.
In Brave New World, the radical overextension of rationalization makes human beings into objects of technique on much the same basis as raw materials or machines. This same view underlies much 20th Century thought, for example, pessimistic social theories such as Max Weber's and the various philosophies of technology influenced by Martin Heidegger.
What is it about networking that has the effect of erasing dystopian consciousness? Instead of the passivity associated with participation in a broadcast audience, the online subject is constantly solicited to "interact" either by making choices or responding to communications. This interactive relationship to the medium and through it to other users appears non-hierarchical and liberating. Like the automobile, that fetish of modernity, the Internet opens rather than closes vistas. But unlike the automobile, the Internet does not merely transport individuals from one location to another; rather, it constitutes a "virtual" world in which the logic of action is participative and individual initiative supported rather than suppressed by technology. This explains the proliferation on the Internet of expressions with the pronoun "my," as in "My Yahoo," "My MP3," and so on.
It is noteworthy that this evolution of the network owes more to users than to its original designers who saw it as a system for the distribution of information. The real revolution occurred when the Internet became a medium for personal communication. As such it is a switched system like the telephone in which the corporate giants who manage the communication have no control at all over what is communicated. Such systems, called "common carriers" in English, extend the freedom of assembly and so are inherently liberating.
What is more, because computer networking supports group communication, both in real time and asynchronously, the Internet can host a wide variety of social activities, from work to education to exchanges about hobbies and the pursuit of dating partners. These social activities on the Internet take place in virtual worlds constructed out of words by the participants. The "written world" of the Internet is indeed a place where man and machine appear to be reconciled (Feenberg, 1989).
At this point, a note of caution is in order. The enthusiastic discourse of the Information Highway has become predictable and tedious. It awakens instant and to some extent justified skepticism. It is unlikely that the 21st Century will realize the dream of a perfectly transparent, libertarian society in which everyone can work from their home, publish their own book, choose multiple identities and genders, find a life partner and buy personalized goods at an electronic mall, and complete their college education in their spare time for $49.99. It is reasonable to be suspicious of this vision. After all, someone devises the menus that offer the choices, and then makes money off the users. The choices are thus not really free in either the economic or the political sense. The dystopian critic finds here merely a more refined and disguised incorporation of the individual into the machine.
The Internet will certainly have an impact on society, but it will not revolutionize everything. It is ludicrous to compare it with the industrial revolution, which pulled nearly everyone off the farm and landed them in a radically different urban environment. My "migration" to virtual space over the last 20 years can hardly be compared with my ancestors' migration from the country to the city. Unless something far more innovative than the Internet comes along, the 21st Century will be continuous with our world, not a radical and disruptive break. The real significance of the Internet lies not in the inauguration of a new era, but in what it reveals about social and technological change at the current level of advance.
The issue is not whether the Internet will liberate us, as though a technology had that power, but rather the subtle change in the conditions of public organization and activity introduced by networking. This change had already begun before the rise of the new medium, but intermittently and laboriously. The Internet promises to enhance the ability of the population to intervene in the technical decisions so vital in a society like ours. This has to do with fundamental changes in the structure of democracy under conditions of technological advance.
So long as the population of modern societies is politically defined by traditional spatial districts, its influence on technical life is severely restricted. What can a local community do about the introduction of a technology that crosses all geographical boundaries, for example, a new medicine or a new method for producing food? The "public" which ought in principle to be able to comment on such changes and influence them democratically is not locally defined. It is fragmented into subgroups which follow the lines of specific technical mediations. For the most part it can only act in the technical sphere through those subgroups, whether they are factory or clerical workers, students, patients, soldiers, or grocery shoppers.
The geographically bounded units of traditional politics may eventually integrate the various technically mediated subgroups through legal or regulatory decisions. But usually where politics in the familiar sense of the term is involved at all, it draws the conclusions of an initial round of struggle that follows the links in technical networks. Unfortunately, all too often the fragmentation of technical publics renders them politically impotent.
The utopian and dystopian visions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were attempts to understand the fate of humanity in a radically new kind of society in which most social relations are technically mediated. The hope that such mediation would enrich humanity while sparing human beings themselves was disappointed. There is no way of extending technical control without it embracing human beings. But what the dystopian failed to understand was that once inside the machine, human beings gained new powers they could and would increasingly use to change the system that dominated them. We can observe the faint beginnings of such a politics of technology today. How far it will be able to develop is less a matter for predictions than for practice. “
“Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Reflections on the 20th Century”
(Andrew Feenberg , Philosophy Department, San Diego State University)
Timothy Sykes is a stock trader turned information marketer. While continuing to trade, he sells stock trading education DVDs and monthly subscription to premium content. He is also the creator of Investimonials.com, a community of investors & traders who review financial products, and profit.ly – a site that lets you share your profits and losses.
Tim has made over 3 million dollars thanks to his blog. In this interview we’re talking about how he did it and what’s his approach to blogging.
Crowd sourcing can be looked at as an application of the wisdom of crowds concept, in which the knowledge and talents of a group of people is leveraged to create content and solve problems. Crowd sourcing can be broken down in to three categories: creation (like Wikipedia); prediction (like Yahoo! Buzz); and organization (like Google).
WHAT IS AT STAKE?
Jeff Howe (June 2006) first proposed the idea of Crowd sourcing.” Whether you believe crowd sourcing is a gimmick, or the next big thing, it’s important to note that the idea is still in its early, some would say idealistic, years. How it was proposed, and what it may become, will be largely based on how it is interpreted. “
POINTS ON CROWD SOURCING:
An analogy with outsourcing, in which work previously done by company employees is offered to, and performed, by a group of people on the Internet – the news is, the introduction of financial motivation, on the part of people doing the work, who get paid for performance; the company doesn’t make employees from the crowd.
A new capability brought on by the Internet: the ability to work together to a shared goal without the need of company’s infrastructure.
Mass customization and collective customer commitment, are models of crowd sourcing. In mass customization, the crowd is reacting to an open call to design an individual well; in the second, the main focus of participation of crowd is the selection crowd sourcing (product management) task.
MY OWN VIEWS:
TRUTH: Business-to-business brands are or subject to regulatory requirements and need a different approach.
TRUTH AND GOOD: There are many a consumer-focused brands - these would benefit from a totally open creative process.
TRUTH BUT BAD: Many times crowd sourcing projects are evaluated by the quantity not the quality of received submissions.
TRUTH: There are two perspectives (benefit or disadvantage) about crowd sourcing’ concept: engagement of an undefined group, and uninformed execution.
TRUTH AND GOOD: There’s a delicate balance between encouraging participation and surrendering control. Engaging consumers has always been essential for establishing brands.Of course delivering the process of brand manager to the crowd is another thing altogether.
TRUTH BUT BAD: As it is commonly practiced in the marketing world, crowd sourcing forgoes strategy and outsources execution.
TRUTH: Crowd sourcing works well for large-scale initiatives where gathering data would be otherwise impossible.
TRUTH AND GOOD: One thing is gaining insights into how consumers think about a given brand, but it is not a problem solver.
TRUTH, GOOD OR BAD? The crowd is just another committee that produces results that are incredibly average.
THE FUTURE AND SOME QUESTIONS:
Crowd sourcing and its counterpart, co-creation have started to become business strategies, if not actual models. Diverse companies have aggressively pursued ways in which customers can help create or inspire new products (co-creation). These practices, accelerated by the web and social media, raise all kinds of questions:
Will crowd sourcing and co-creation, actually increase innovation? (Using peoples talent)
Will they reduce the cost of development and design, and along with it, the salaries of people who create for a living?
Will they help in solving those large, unsolvable problems; everything, from health care to education, to global warming?
Will they change the traditional relationships between employers and employees?
Are crowd sourcing and co-creation here to stay, or are they simply convenient alternatives to business as usual in a miserable economy?
Even after the global financial crisis comes to an end, the new marketplaces that support crowd sourcing will continue to evolve, offering more engaging company’s efficient and creative ways; the company will look for help in the crowd.
WHY? If businesses can find access to more ideas for less, they will, down economy or not. AND, today’s customers and prospects, actually want a voice and a say, in influencing a brand and its products.
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