5 major trends for the future of IT and the Web – #blogbus

The Orange Blogger bus tour – of which I am the organiser on behalf of Orange of which I am the Director of Internet and social media – was stopping by San Francisco today and the whole day was hosted by Orange Silicon Valley

Georges Nahon delivered a very inspiring keynote today before our panel of bloggers in which he shared his vision with regard to what is happening in IT in general, and in the Valley in particular. I will begin my account of Georges’s visionary presentation by detailing his conclusions. As I always do, I have taken detailed notes of the pitch and they are made available at the end of this piece. If there is one thing that should be remembered from that pitch is that the Web is everywhere and in everything that will be happening in the future. Something which established players don’t like according to the Head of Orange Silicon Valley. However, Nahon insisted on the fact that it won’t be the same Internet we used to know.

Facebook will be “Yahooed!”

“Social” has been going through a rough patch over the Summer, with the now infamous Facebook IPO, dubbed “IPOcalypse”, IPO meaning “It’s Probably Overpriced” Nahon said facetiously. Yet, Europeans are wrong when they interpret these issues as the end of social media, Georges Nahon said in essence. Social is here to stay, and beyond, it will change everything which takes place on the Web, even though Facebook itself will probably be “Yahooed!” Georges added.

But the worrying thing I got from his pitch is that, according to his analysis, next to the World Wide Web that we all know, an increasing number of companies, including Amazon, are creating a “non-searchable adjacent Web” which sounds very much like the end of the Web as Chris Anderson announced in Wired a few years ago. I think Georges is right indeed, there is a growing concern that Net neutrality is being sacrificed for the sake of user experience. Time will tell, but there are indeed worrying signs.

Georges Nahon, head of Orange Silicon Valley, on the first day of the blogger bus tour

Here is how I summed up Georges’s 5 trends for the future of IT:

1. Tech is all about mobile: “Twitter is a mobile-first company” and thriving he said, “Facebook isn’t and is suffering”. 10% of Internet traffic is made of mobile traffic. Yet, 25% of US users are using the Web from mobile only, but in Egypt, this number soars up to 70%, and India is close to 60%! And 68% place their mobile next to their bed while sleeping at night.
2. The default is now social: and social meets mobile (over 50% of smartphones connect to Facebook). Social graph (Facebook), interest graph (Twitter) and influence graph (Klout) are the new frontiers of the Web and “they are here to stay … for a long time” Nahon said. For many, Facebook is the new web (“find us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter). What is the future of search? it is social and both Google and Microsoft are working on it… “and Facebook search is coming fast” Nahon added.
3. Another Web: At the same time, traditional web development is slowing down, and Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Mobile will continue develop their “non-searchable adjacent webs” as Nahon called it.
4. The Cloud as a new frontier: “The new guys are Amazon, Zynga, Rackspace and even people like Google were taken by surprise” Nahon said. But there are even newer guys you may never heard of such as Bluejeans, Alfresco, Joyent and many many more. Explosive data growth is also forcing companies to develop solutions for data reduction. And “the next big thing isn’t Software, it’s data” Nahon concluded on that subject.
5. All video will be on the Net: most players in that field are coming from the Internet world, not the media world. “We think that the future of TV is to be streamed” Nahon said. There is more innovation than ever before in that area he said. Nahon added though that the concept of app-centric TV on smart TVs wasn’t entirely convincing. Time Warner see their future in apps but another trend is Social TV (described by Nahon as “a descendant of interactive TV which never worked”. 85% of tablet owners use their device while watching TV he said. What are they doing? Social websites, Zynga, Search, Craigslits (an old web survivor!) according to Nielsen.

the future of the World Wide Web

So, what is the future of the Web? Georges Nahon highlighted 10 trends in that area too:

1. the web is becoming data centric
2. apps will rule consumer and entreprise innovations and html5 will infiltrate apps and web services
3. non searchable adjacent webs will continue to develop and the web will be fragmented and site-less (mobile, apps)
4. the web of sites is dead and Facebook like buttons are the new hyper links
5. Real-time multi-user game cloud platforms will influence enterprise cloud technologies: the main issue will be “latency” ‘as already explained on that blog)
6. 4G/LTE (which we all were using to day via local mifi devives) will trigger innovation
7. mobile payment will kick off from 2015
8. all video will be on the web
9. Enterprise IT will shift to the cloud.
10. Facebook will rule the web during the next 2 years and Google will be in catch-up mode and within 3 years they will be “Yahooed!” Nahon said
11. Amazon will continue to diversify and will create more online commerce/entertainment clouds and mobile devices (tablets/phones). “Amazon is belittled in Europe” Nahon added, “and it should be considered as a major player, for Bezos is the new Steve Jobs”.

Started as an R&D organisation and evolved towards what they are today (scouting organisation). 60 people, 40 of  which are in a position to file patents and they file 20 per annum. Often, it’s about reviewing the strategy. Statement from Prussian general “no plan survives contact with the enemy” e.g. 5 years ago, no one had seen the iPhone coming. Even analysts. An none of these people has seen Apple becoming a major player in the Telecom industry => be prepared for the unexpected. There were times in which you telcos could go to the ITU organisation and get things sorted but this isn’t the case anymore.

Essentially Orange wants to get prepared for the future. One of the key elements for Silicon Valley is capital investment. In Bay Area only, venture investments represent $3.2 bn 46% of total investments in the USA (San Jose chronicle on Q2 results). Texas only represents $ 179 m (3%) despite the huge tech firms in that state. The core subjects is ICT and media but not only.

The software industry in Q2 of this year received the highest level of funding. (34 out of 39% other source) $2.37 bn i.e. 32% of the total.

Market capitalisation: Apple + Cisco +Oracle +Google +Intel have a total of $ 1,261.82 bn (IBM is only $236b or FTE $37b). What this hides is the myriad of small companies which help these companies become what they are.

Air France super business lounge welcomes our bloggers – #blogbus

On our way to San Francisco, all our French bloggers had a pit stop at the Air France super lounge at the end of terminal E in Charles de Gaulle Airport, as a matter of fact, Air France’s biggest in the whole world. And when I say big, I mean what I say!

The lounge was opened at the very end of June 2012 and we were part of the happy few who are allowed to relax, read, eat and even take a nap on location. When I write happy few, this isn’t quite right though, because the new Air France lounge at the end of the so-called ‘K.L.M’ satellite of terminal E is in fact massive (with its 3,483 square metres and close to 700 seats!). The brand new extension of the Air France hub was opened recently in order to accommodate all internal long-haul flights passengers of the airline. The ‘K.L.M’ moniker is intended as a pun and “a way to celebrate the Franco-Dutch alliance” the Air France lounge manager told me.

Photo 1: the lofty Air France lounge with plenty of leg-room and beautifully crafted designer spaces

I was shown around by the personnel who gave us a very warm welcome and I had a chance to take these pictures which are now available on our online live.orange.com gallery thanks to the Orange Wifi service conveniently placed at the users’ disposal.

From airfrance

Photo album: a visit of the exclusive super Air France lounge at CDG airport (all photos by Yann Gourvennec for the Live Orange Blog)

‘CDG’ – as the airport is known to be called by airline professionals – is in constant reconfiguration since it is one of the only European airports in Europe with space available around it. Terminals A, B, C have been left by the French company and D will be closed by October 2012. All of Air France is now moving to terminals E and F, from which all their international flights now depart. Terminal E is now dedicated to both the US and Africa. “€ 560m went into the new development and more than 7.5 million passengers will be transiting via the airport each year!” the lounge staff told me. This is the reason why Air France decided to build that second-to-none business lounge for its ‘elite’ customers. The lounge, so far, is only opened from 5.00 am till 2.00 pm CET but opening hours will be extended later, the staff told me.

The lounge is not only beautifully designed (by Noé Duchauffour Lawrance), it can also boast wide-ranging kinds of foods (Asian visitors will feast on Chinese noodles for instance), a broad selection of newspapers and various amenities such as free showers (something like 14 booths are made available to clients!), Desktop and Tablet computers, relaxing couches, a customer service desk, and even complimentary massages and other beauty services by Air France partner Clarins.

No wonder that early visitors to the lounge have covered the guest book in praises about the service, comparing it to that of Emirates’s. A well deserved compliment in my mind and that of the blogger bus tour bloggers who were with me today.

my views on the Silicon Valley Blogger Bus tour – #blogbus (2/2)

For those who don’t know yet, I (as Director, Web & Social Media at Orange), I will be part of the Silicon Valley Blogger Bus Tour 2012, which will take place in September (17-22) as a blogger … and the organiser of that tour. Here is my take on why I am participating and what I am expecting to do/see there:

I’m a Jack of all trades. I’m not just a blogger, I’m also the organizer of the Tour. On this Tour we’re dealing with blogger PR in a different way than it usually is done in big companies like this.

What we do here is we partner with the bloggers : we work together as a team, and the fact that I’m also a blogger makes it possible. It’s a matter of us going over there together, reporting and sharing our enthusiasm and content.

To me this is very important : it’s how good content is produced and engrossing stories started. And I’m not even talking about the friendships that are being initiated between members. Undoubtedly those who are taking part in these tours are invited to other tours, depending on their skills and focus.

my views on the Silicon Valley Blogger Bus tour 20    12 as an organiser

We also want to look at the way we organise the tour. A member of my team is going to have a subjective look at what other bloggers are seeing, through their blogs and contents. So we’ll be able to tell a story about the story as well.

And finally, how are we going to tackle the main subject, which is innovation in the Valley? I really wanted to give a different angle about this SoLoMo (social,local,mobile) approach in the Valley, so we’re going to see many innovators to understand whether or not innovation is still thriving in the Valley although I don’t have much doubt about that, knowing how it is over there.

It’s my 7^th time there and I’m sure we’re going to have an exciting time. So stay tuned to the live.orange.com and don’t miss a thing about the Orange Blogger Bus tour 2012.

my views on the Silicon Valley Blogger Bus tour – #blogbus (1/2)

For those who don’t know yet, I (as Director, Web & Social Media at Orange), I will be part of the Silicon Valley Blogger Bus Tour 2012, which will take place in September (17-22) as a blogger … and the organiser of that tour. Here is my take on why I am participating and what I am expecting to do/see there:

The way I look at the Silicon Valley Blogger Bus tour 2012 is actually two-fold. On the one hand I’m also a blogger, I’ve been writing on the Internet for 17 years on visionarymarketing.com, live.orange.com and the Orange Business Services blogs (which I created in 2008).

The way I look at this is how innovation happens in the Valley at the moment. Much has been talked about what’s happening in the Valley right now. Some like Steve Blank have even ventured to say that all the money and innovation was being pumped up by Facebook and their friends, and I think to a certain level this has been overstated.

So this is what we want to check out on the field with a group of 13 bloggers from all around the world : France, England, Australia, China and Romania.

So this is what I’m interested in: I want to understand how innovation is thriving beyond Facebook, Twitter and Google, which are the over-hyped companies. I want to see something else.

I also want to see how this innovation is thriving through the eyes of my colleagues from around the world so I think a lot of background is going to be thrown into that.

social media will be part of everything we do

On May 16, I attended and delivered a keynote at the Ronewmedia conference in Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Ronewmedia will actually change names, in order to become ICEEFEST, that is to say the Interactive Central and Eastern European Festival. The change is far from being trivial. As Dragos Stanca, founder of Ronewmedia states  in his introduction – click front page on the left: Social Media is no longer new, it’s not just about media and the conference has gained enough momentum to gather people from all the region (there were representatives from many other Central and Eastern European countries among the delegates as well as from Western Europe and America). I had prepared an interview for them, which was published in their magazine. Here it is:

How important is social media now for companies and brands ?

Well, to start with, social media is not something new at Orange. We’ve been working around this subject, whether it be content marketing around blogs and stuff like that, or social networks and internal social networks, for more than five years. So it’s really important, and we’re now in the third stage of the development of social media at our company.

The first stage was around convincing management that something had to be done, so we had to prove a point, and prove a concept really : “we’ve done this and that, and it works”. Then the second stage was around the development of our communities. To an extent, a lot of companies are still there at this moment. They’re trying to develop their fans base to the maximum, but we’re not really there anymore, it’s something of the past. Now we’ve moved on to another stage which is the structuring of our social media initiatives, whether it be at group level or country level.

Social media is in everything we do : marketing, product marketing, customer relationship management and communications of course, but not only, so it’s really important to us.

And how do you see the role of social media in the near future ?

I see it as really evolving. I see the future of social media a bit like the future of the Internet. When we were talking about the Internet 15 years ago, we were talking about something which was done for experts. So a certain number of people, usually geeks, were doing that stuff and nobody else understood it.

Now, the Internet is in everything we do. You can’t actually think about doing marketing without doing online marketing. I even know companies which are in B2B for instance, and do nothing else but online marketing, because it’s more effective, it’s cheaper, it’s better, it’s faster… So, even for B2C companies, online has now become part of everything we do, and social media will be just like that. I suspect that within three to five years, we won’t talk about social media anymore. And I think one of the future aspects of it is that you won’t have a social media in one particular social media team, but it will be spread across the entire organization.

So how does Orange manage its social media activity ?

To start with, the social media activity at Orange group is something which is very dynamic and which involves a lot of people. I think there are about 200 people in charge of community management at Orange, at different levels, in different parts of the organization in all parts of the world. We have 35 countries, and Orange Business Services in 220 countries and territories.

Most of my role is about the coordination of this. It’s not something which you can actually scale at Group level, so it wouldn’t make sense for us to manage social media for the entire world, it wouldn’t be possible for anyone to do this. What we do is liaise and create some sort of network of people working on social media in the whole world.

So what does that mean at Group level ?

At group level it means we have a team here which is aimed at developing our social media presence and traction, as engagement is very important, but not just in isolation. We work on social media engagement in order to support our other online activities and content strategy. So I don’t think that social media as something being separate from the rest of the digital online activities; on that level, from the website down to Pinterest, everything is covered by the team. We don’t have one special community manager on each and every platform; we actually manage several communities and link everything together, which makes it easier.

Another part of our work, which is probably more than 50% of what we do, is to work on coordination and governance, and liaise with others through what we call the “Social Media Champions”. This program is aimed at turning all our employees into ambassadors for the group and the brand, as long as they want it.

So how do you personally use social media for your job ?

I’ve been using social media for quite a long time now. I’ve been writing online for 17 years, and if I consider the rise of social media in 2004, then I’ve been using social media ever since, beginning with Linkedin, and then Twitter, in the year 2006 or 2007, and then Facebook and other tools. In fact, I use social media all the time, and it probably means that I work all the time!

I use it a lot for my business and for a variety of things; in fact, it’s a bit like my backbone. Social networks and social activity is the backbone of marketing. Marketing is about talking to people, interacting with people: be they customers, vendors or your peers, you want to exchange with these people.

Before I come to work in the morning, I usually write on my blog, www.visionarymarketing.com, and I’ve been doing this for a long time now and honestly, I wouldn’t understand life without this, because everything you want to do you want to share with people. So sharing is my middle name…

And so what are the major benefits of using social media in your private life ?

The fact is I use very little social media in my private life. I do a lot of e-reputation and work on contact management and content which I’m interested in, like marketing and e-marketing for instance, which are my main subjects.

The most personal things I do on social media is probably my blog about paintings, pictures and photographs and not much else really. I tend to use the Internet for personal reasons in a very limited way. I don’t want to mix up my personal and professional life, and I usually tend to keep private things private. For example when I take pictures of buildings, architecture or landscapes, then I put them online and I share them on Picasa mainly or Flickr. Then they go through all the blogs, Twitter and everything else. And I use Instagram a lot of course. If I take pictures of people, then I don’t share them, it’s as simple as that.

So to conclude, do you have any advice to give regarding the use of social media in a professional environment ?

Your professional environment is something you have to be very careful about. You always have to give a positive image of what you do. So if you really feel like tweeting something dodgy, then just don’t do it.

• download a summarised pdf version of RONEWMEdia Magazine including a printed version of this interview

e-health happening at last and coming to our homes #mwc #mwc12

This post was originally written for the live.orange.com blog, reporting live from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

E-health is no longer a dream and we had further evidence of this at Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona while visiting the “connected house” pavilion. And guess who’s behind this in terms of communications? Orange of course (disclosure: I work for Orange). Let’s zoom into these solutions of a very very near future in which our health and namely that of elderly citizens will be (ethically) monitored and surveyed at a distance.

Qualcomm is an interesting company. Its history goes back to the late 1980’s a time at which it was doing m2m (machine to machine communications) for the transportation sector under the omnitracs brand name. The early 1990’s saw Qualcomm moving into the mobile chips business (in actual fact, they even produced handsets before selling that division to Ericsson) for which it is known to all but their recent move is a radical one and it’s called Qualcommlife. Qualcommlife is an independent spin off from the main company with a funding of $100m (out of the total $500m which are part of the Qualcomm VC fund) I was told by the Qualcomm representative on their stand at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Qualcomm life launched towards the end of 2011 and has now signed an agreement with Orange regarding its brand new NET2 platform, as depicted in the press announcement on the Orange.com website.

health monitoring made easy

Health monitoring isn’t completely new I must admit. I remember our first demos at Orange labs in Paris more than 7 or 8 years ago! Yet this technology is slowly and surely becoming mainstream and this is made possible through the understanding that users want technology to get the job done and not spend hours fixing the wifi or bluetooth interface of their phone. This is exactly what NET2 is doing for you: “grandma doesn’t want to fiddle about with the wifi so we had to build an intelligent device which would pair automatically” the Qualcommlife representative declared. The Net2 gateway (which will be powered by Orange from a network point of view) is meant to do just that.

NET2 is a platform which enables patients to connect their devices (weight scales, blood pressure monitor, glucose monitoring device, …) directly without any complex pairing procedures. “All you have to do is plug in the gateway and it will find the patient’s device automatically Qualcommlife said.

But there are more than many ways of connecting to your GP than the NET2 gateway: standard mobile devices, embedded devices are also possible. You may even connect your treadmill to a remote monitoring device and record your data as seen in the following picture taken in the Connected House pavilion.

At last, here is a simple and promising way of enabling remote health checks, enforcing the remote monitoring and the surveying of patients with a diabetes or a heart condition for instance, in a seamless and easy way. At the end of the day, “national health authorities might even be enticed to encourage the development of such systems in order to enforce country-wide health programs” the Qualcommlife representative added.

This is a major step forward and one more proof that innovations take approximately 10 years to settle and disseminate.

Top Blogging Team at Mobile World Congress for Live Orange Blog

In the telecommunications industry, everybody knows about the mobile world congress. The yearly event, which has been hosted in Barcelona for quite a few years now, is the obligatory focal point for all the players in that industry: carriers, service providers, infrastructure and equipment manufacturers, software vendors etc. In a word, this is where it all happens. The 2012 edition of MWC is bound to be even more exciting for all our live.orange.com readers because we have decided to send a team of high profile bloggers on location who will be reporting live from Barcelona. So if you want to know in near real time what is happening at MWC all you have to do is tune in to live.orange.com and read our coverage of some of the most interesting announcements as well as of what is happening behind the scenes on location. Some of our partners English, some not, but most of our content will be posted in 4 different languages as usual. Don’t forget to follow our @orange twitter account for live news about this blog and our live coverage. Let’s find out who our blogging partners are in this introductory post (in no random order):

It’s not everyday one gets someone from Asia (in this case, Australasia too) in one’s team and I have thought it to be an interesting experiment to bring in a partner from China, after a discussion with our representatives at Orange lab in Beijing. Jason Lim has been an Editor at TechNode since December 2010, a prominent Chinese tech blog written in English . Jason’s area of expertise is very broad and covers are start-ups, e-commerce and emerging technologies. Jason is also the Developer Relations Manager for AppStoreConnect, a white-label Android app store in China that powers brands such as HTC, BenQ and Wondermedia Flytouch. Before coming to China,  he was a management consultant in strategy, operations and marketing as well as an accountant with Ernst & Young in Sydney, Australia. Jason currently lives in Beijing. Technode’s Twitter handle is @technodechina. for a sample post from Jason, check this piece on mobile payment on the TechNode blog

Mohamed Ali Sousissi is from Tunisia and is the facilitator of the Tunisian blog malissonline.com. Judging by the football shirt, Mohamed is bound to be a good team player. Mohamed can be traced on Twitter at @MedAliSouissi and on  Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/Mohamed.Ali.Souissi. Malissoline.com is Tunisian portal written in French which specialises in local and international high tech news. Mohamed’s positioning resides in its ability to explain the high tech world in simple terms, understandable to all.

Anybody in the French-speaking blogosphere knows (or at least knows of) Eric Dupin who is the creator and facilitator of the second to none “presse citron” blog. Presse Citron has established a serious reputation in the high tech world and it is often one of the first to break the news that side of the Channel. Eric writes in French but is fluent in English. His posts will be duly translated in other languages. Our French-speaking readers can get a flavour of “Presse Citron” at http://www.presse-citron.net/microsoft-presente-le-logo-de-windows-8, a post in which Eric and his teams disclose the forthcoming Windows 8 logo. Eric’s twitter handle is @pressecitron. Eric works and lives in Lyon, in the south of France. Eric is a long time partner of the Orange team.

Leigh Geary is the editor and founder of Coolsmartphone a well famed blog in Britain with a (very) cool domain name. Leigh is of his own admission “the one who films hands-on videos in the car” but we assure him that London Police officers aren’t reading this blog. Leigh is passionate about everything mobile, be it smartphones, tablets, phone-related innovations etc. Leigh’s Twitter handle is @gears which makes him once again number one in the name coining exercise. For a sample of the coolsmartphone blog I recommend this piece on how easier it is now to take pictures with IOS5 (Apple’s latest OS for the iPhone). Well spotted!

Frederic Lardinois despite his Gallic sounding name was born in Germany and is a graduate of Potsdam. He is a PhD student at the university of Connecticut and the writer of SiliconFilter, a blog which focuses on consumer technology related to the Internet, and deals with Web apps, mobile apps and devices, as well as Web-connected TVs, cars and similar technologies. Frederic Lardinois, has written, 1,500 stories for the highly acclaimed ReadWriteWeb tech blog before starting his own venture.

[picture courtesy of Olivier Ezratty]

Philippe Lagane (Twitter handle @philippe_lagane) is the creator – amongst many others – of the Accessoweb blog. He is one of our most knowledgeable experts and having done business with him, I can assure his work and that of his teams are really top notch. Tune in to Accessoweb if you are a French speaking reader, and you want to know everything about devices, mobile services, mobility in general and all things relevant to that domain. Philippe will be teaming with Christos Ionnitis (@newsmobile) who already was one of our reporters at Le Web 2011 last December. Philippe lives near Perpignan in the South West of France, Christos in Annemasse, in the South East. Both Philippe and Christos blog in French but their reports will be adapted to other languages. French readers should check this piece on the ZTE smartphone announcement by Accessoweb (available in French only).

[picture Some rights reserved by Frédéric de Villamil]

Glenn Le Santo (@lesanto on Twitter) is our high tech events wizard. Glenn has had a very lively and varied business life. He is a seasoned reported who is passionate about technology, usage and innovation. He is the Twitter driving force behind Exeter Like Minds events (at which I met him) as well as the successful organiser of LincUpLive (check the February conference schedule here) in Lincoln, England. Glenn has been a long time partner of Orange at our Orange Business Live events as well as Le Web 2011.

Raphaelle Laubie is French but she mostly blogs in English. She is probably one of the most passionate business person I have ever met and her range of skills is amazing. She is a Health 2.0 Entrepreneur and her business – a registrar in the heath Internet industry – has even filed an application for the new dotmed “gTLD” (a new generic top level domain which will be devoted to healthcare, due to ICANN’s decision to open the registration of new extensions on top of existing ones (.com, .info, .net etc.). You are invited to check Raphaelle’s blogs on management at http://raphaellelaubie.com/category/marketing/branding-management. Raphaelle is also affiliate Lecturer at ESCP Europe and has even a Doctorate in Progress… On her spare time, Raphaelle is also helping with the Orange team with the coverage of live events.

Stewart Baines (@stewartbaines)  is both the co-organiser of our trip to MWC and a contributor to the live.orange.com blog and the Orange Business blogs.  He is one of the founders of Futurity Media with Anthony Plewes (@antonyplewes) who will also be present with us. Stewart has been writing about technology for 15 years.  His focus is in emerging technologies, social media and future gazing. As a graduate of philosophy & science, he has studied futurology & foresight to post-grad level. Stewart is bound to be our futurologist in that team and will tell us about the future trends in high tech. Check his numerous contributions on behalf of Orange Business Services on the connecting technology blog, the Orange Business Live Blog [French] or the Orange Business Virtualisation blog [French].

Yann Gourvennec (that’s me), is Director, Web, Digital & Social Media at Orange and an Internet writer since 1996. He writes in English and French on his Website (http://visionarymarketing.com) and blogs. He writes in English and French, mostly about Marketing, Web, e-commerce, Management and Change Management.

Social Media Dashboard: Dec. 2011 version and Analysis

A few months ago, towards the end of 2011, as I delivered a pitch on social media ROI/ROE at the iStrategy conference in Amsterdam, I asked my team at Orange to put a social media dashboard together, one that would be monthly, more appealing to managers than the weekly slapdash XL fires were produce for ourselves, and yet would be a useful tool for decision-making. Here is – below – its December 2011 version.

As I pointed out in my presentation in Amsterdam, this dashboard is in work-in-progress mode, and will always be. It is not meant to be used to show that we are stronger, better or unduly proud of ourselves but on the contrary, that we aim at doing well and getting better.

to Klout or not to Klout?

A lot of the metrics in this dashboard are here, for want of a better purpose, to underline that new metrics are needed. Sometimes, these metrics merely require fine tuning. Klout for instance, has been heavily criticised, including by myself. We aim to use Edelman’s Tweetlevel as a replacement very soon, because of the level of noise and fuzziness around the Klout measure, and because nonetheless we need some kind of measurement. Edelman provides this, without the hype.

engagement rates … what are we measuring here?

As to engagement rates, this is yet another kettle of fish. We realised, in the course of our comparisons, that we were being penalised by social bakers for the wrong reasons. For instance, our account was filed as a British account (vs. global) which was penalising us. Secondly, we use polls a lot and they are supposedly not considered as part of the engagement rates by the system. Yet, we have found repeatedly that polls are a very valid way of engaging with our community and we have no intention to suppress them. Last but not least, our account is multilingual and multinational. This is perfectly normal for a company which is operating globally, that is to say in 35 countries from the B2C perspective, and 220 countries and territories from the B2B point of view. Whereas many of our competitors are not that global and therefore enjoy a much better engagement rate which is not justified, we actually choose to speak Polish to the Poles, Spanish to the Spaniards and French to the French-speaking audiences of Africa and other countries as well as English to everybody else, and to us this is perfectly normal ; yet, we are being penalised for this by social bakers.

note: no hard feelings against social bakers I think this is a very good tool, and a great company. I’m a happy customer. I am only aiming at improving the system/measure.

We are trying to work with them in order to correct this measurement, but might also introduce our own calculation in which we will introduce a new way of measuring engagement rates in order to correct this bias.

What we’re trying to prove here is not that measuring return on engagement and social media isn’t worth doing, on the contrary, but that there is a lot in our plates in order to correct all these numbers and systems, before we can rely on these numbers and move forward.

here is our Orange december 2011 dashboard:

Thorniley updates us on the state of the global economy

reporting live from Orange Business Live in Munich

Daniel Thorniley (left) runs his own private business consultancy, but in his own words, he is not a “loser”. He as 235 Corporate clients even though he is on his own. He was able to acquire so many clients because he knew them through partnership and trust and he had known them for many years.

How’s business?

What is going on in the world. The IT industry is doing well ane even extremely well in emerging markets. Pharmeutical and health is doing vell. Industrial and b2b products are doing rather well but b2c is more sluggish. There are several reasons why business ie emerging slowly from recession:

Reason 1 is that the banking sector is not yet functioning properly. Big companies need banks to borrow money. Whereas emerging countries like China or India are trying to slow down growth, western countries would like to be able to borrow more money to whip up the economy,

Consumption is strong in many emerging countries, but in many others like Britain, consumers are not doing that well. Interest on savings is very weak, unemployment is coming down slightly but is still strong. In the US, 9-10% of workers are jobless. But what is the average number of hours worked in US is the lowest number since 1945 with only 32 hours per week (37.5 hours in Austria, 35.6 in France, UK 41 hours). Just because people have been kept in jobs in the US doesn’t mean that they are happy and ready to spend more. The value of the housing market has fallen dramatically since 2006. The Greek issue shot up because of corruption and misspending.

BRIC should include Mexico too!

BRIC should also include Mexico. Emerging markets are low volume, fast growth, whereas western countries will be high volume and low growth. We cannot apply our western patterns to the emerging markets. In the middle East, competition is coming from new markets (BRIC and Eastern and Central Europe) competing on low quality and prices.

Thornliley’s advice for working in emerging markets

Daniel Thorniley delivered the following advice to companies which want to do business properly in emerging markets:

• Don’t overburden yourself with KPI’s
• talents in the emerging markets are great! give more independence to local staff on the ground
• avoid short-termism: Quarterly reporting isn’t working in the emerging markets

the status of Social Media in the Middle East straight from the Arabian horse’s mouth in Cairo

I have just come back from Cairo, where I was invited by the heads of the Cairo Orange Labs (see the video here) and their French counterparts in order to perform a presentation of what we do at Orange Business Services in the field of social media for a large carrier. I had the opportunity to present in front of a panel of representatives its form various carriers from the region including our local partner Mobinil. In this presentation, I not only presented what we do at Orange Business Services in Western Europe and in the United States, but also what is happening in the Middle East itself, as seen through the eyes of this excellent report entitled the Media Arab Outlook, the third edition of which can be accessed from this link.

The exchange of views that we had during that meeting was quite frank and quite direct and very eye-opening on the status of social media in the region. As a matter of fact, the development of social media in the Middle East is a bit schizophrenic. On the one hand, the uptake social media sites like Facebook in the Middle East, and particularly in Egypt is tremendous. The numbers which are quoted by the Media Arab Outlook report are even probably grossly underestimated. The report quotes something like 900,000 Egyptian users of Facebook whereas the audience mentioned almost immediately that this number was far below what it really is.

Of course, the status of broadand adoption (see picture below) in these countries is not at all what we are witnessing in Western Europe and the United States, which is easily understandable. If we except a few places in which broadband equipment is close to 0 because of local warfare or particularly difficult situations like the one in Sudan, Egypt is unfortunately coming at the bottom of the list in terms of broadband adoption namely.

Optimists would see that as a tremendous opportunity for carriers to equip the country with better broadband and better Internet access in general. Yet, it seems that in this kind countries the usage of the Internet is collective, a bit like what happened in India 10+ years ago and is still happening now in poorer areas; I suspect that people are grouping together around one Internet access and lend each other computers. The cybercafe, I was told by some attendees, has become so central to the life of villagers in Egypt and other Arab countries, that “cybercafe” itself was turned into a verb in Arabic, and is now part of the everyday vocabulary, and is commonly used by farmers and workers alike. Sometimes in India, it’s even shop owners who actually resell their Internet access to their clients when they shop. I also witnessed in Lebanon, more than 10 years ago, that people went to each other’s homes to look at the computer, check their mail and do things on the Internet.

Therefore, on the one hand, we have a tremendous uptake of social websites like Facebook, at the same time a terrible lack of broadband in countries like Egypt, and other countries doing a little bit better like Saudi Arabia and others doing a lot better, understandbly, like Qatar and the  United Arab Emirates.

There is also this widespread feeling that there is a terrible lack of content in Arabic available, because the vast majority of the country does not and will not speak and write in English. After all, Germans prefer to StudyVZ and Xing to respectively Facebook and LinkedIN, so it is perfectly understandable that Arab people favour local platforms. At the same time, local versions of the equivalent of Facebook and the like, are few and far between. There is one successful platform coming out of Jordan (Jeeran, see the report on page 72), and there is the famous Maktoob which was taken over by Yahoo! recently (important question: will it survive this change?).

Facebook in itself is not an issue in the Middle East: people type either in English or in Arabic on the same walls and fan pages and it doesn’t really matter to them. But the main question is that of the ownership of Facebook which is definitely seen as American, which poses problems not only in terms of “not invented here” syndrome, but also from a political point of view (think about who created Facebook for instance and his origins even though he considers himself an atheist, and imagine how it resonates in the Arab world, regardless of westernised political correctness if I am allowed).

So, at the end of the day, there are tremendous opportunities in the Middle East for the development of social networks, in an area where conversations are anything but a view of the mind. It’s a way of life, which preexisted in real life way before the Internet arrived. Those service providers who will be able to seize this opportunity and provide social media platforms and services in Arabic, from/in partnership with independent Arab-owned media companies, will reap the harvest of a booming sector and, judging by the liveliness of the Facebook fan page of Orange Tunisia, which has now reached a little bit more than 110,000 users in just a few months, we can imagine what can be done in terms of advertising, brand loyalty programmes and co-creation.

Credit crunch could be beneficial to telecom sector expert says

buy buy sell sell

 

It’s the most extraordinary bubble burst ever since the end of the 1920′s and it might even take a few more years before we start feeling the angst to the full; for we should remember that the heart of the great depression was 1934 and not 1929. Yet, despite the incessant stream of gloom and voicing of bad news – which is reminiscent of Kal’s excellent frontpage for the Economist dated November 1997, i.e. the midst of the previous global meltdown in Asia – there is no guarantee that history will repeat itself. Thank God for that. ICT expert Stewart Baines from London even goes one step further suggesting that certain sectors – and the telecom sector in particular – is bound to benefit from the crash.

This question has attracted quite a few comments on the part of more experts on Linkedin (check here for details), which shows that the topic is hot and deserves more than just the gloom being delivered on the media (listening to ‘wake up to money’ on BBC radio 5 early in the morning produces the same result as a stroll in the temple of doom in the midst of Halloween). So the question is not to evaluate whether the slump is bad or awful, it’s about evaluating how we can do better business during these troubled times and focus on positive factors.

Read on on the Orange Live Blog dedicated to business value and ICT

Green IT

urban sprawl - Yann Gourvennec's Antimuseum

(by Stewart Baines) A green baseline is critical if IT leaders want to transform their IT estate, reckons analyst Forrester. Its new report, “Is Green IT Your Emperor with No Clothes?” argues that what you can’t control you can’t measure. In other words, if you don’t know how much power a PC consumes, or what the cooling costs are for your data centre, you will struggle to create a strategic plan to reduce the footprint of either.

• read more at the Orange Business Value & ICT blog [http://www.blogs.orange-business.com/live/]

golden rules for corporate blogging: do’s and don’ts (3/3)

the do’s and don’ts of Internet Blog writing

Writing in a blog is not very complex, but there are a few guidelines which should be respected as much as can be.  This list of do’s and don’ts of Internet blog writing can be used as a Vademecum (literally in Latin ‘come with me’, a manual which you can take with you at all times) for expert Internet writers.  It could also be treated as a Charter describing which rules to follow, and each expert should confirm that they have read these guidelines.

• one: do not try and sell your products. Writing on the blog has to be natural and have to be closer to the spoken language. Avoid using cheap marketing arguments at all costs. Don’t even think about listing the qualities or benefits of your products. A blog, let alone an expert blog, is not made for this, but to establish expertise through examples,
• two: publish as much as you can. The more articles you will reduce and deliver, the greater your promotion on the web. A professional corporate blog which starts will only have a few articles referenced/indexed within Google, whereas an older blog or website will already have hundreds or more,
• three: avoid typos and spelling/grammar mistakes at all cost. this is a very common mistake. A lot of bloggers think that because you’re in a hurry you don’t have to worry so much about spelling or grammar. But this is a very bad habit. Mainly if you have a corporate blog and you are projecting a corporate image. The writing has to be natural, which doesn’t mean that it has to be bad. And if your articles are very pertinent and interesting but badly written, you will attract many impertinent and unpleasant comments on this. Being a corporation also helps as it should enable youto get others to proof read your text. However, I strongly recommend that you avoid rewriting expert text to give a communications flavour to it. This would be very unbecoming,
• four: layout is important. It is advised to use Microsoft Word or another word processor in order to check your spelling. However, if you copy and paste text from word into the blog, I would recommend that you start copying it into notepad first in order to clean the text from all unnecessary Microsoft word formatting. Another way of doing this, is to use Firefox and its very convenient language packs which enable you to check your spelling directly into the entry box of your blog,
• five: keep your articles brief. Blogs are not for long articles. Websites are more adapted for very lengthy articles. However, you could still post a large article on a blog and then use the “see more” function which will break up the text into different pages in order to make the reading easier. it is also possible to break up your article into several instalments, which will have the advantage of forcing your users and visitors to return to the blog,
• six: straight to the point. You had rather publish small or medium-sized articles 2 to 3 times a week than one or two large in-depth ones per month. You can also choose to publish your articles in instalments, it’s a good idea if you want to have returning visitors. Google likes it when the frequency of updates of updates on your blog is high, because it will entice its bots (technical name for the search engine indexing robots that come and index your pages) to visit your blog more often… and your visitors too!
• seven: summarise and bulletise to maximise on-screen readability. Don’t hesitate to add a downloadable pdf file for readers who wish to print out your stuff and read it,
• eight: keyword presence in titles, tags, categories and page copy. First 10 lines are most important. Use emphasis to highlight important keywords
• nine: headlines are taglines! here are some recommended titles for your posts:

• X tips and tricks to improve your corporate security, etc.
• X tips and tricks to reach 50% benefit/ROI, reap X million $, etc.
• X things you should know/do before …
• X steps/golden rules to achieve …
• Golden rules for Excellence in …
• Do’s and don’ts of this or the other
• Check-list for …
• X tools to improve your Internet/Corporate network security etc.
• …

Once more, think about your important keywords, because they should be found in your titles.

• ten: High update frequency doesn’t mean your experts should write only for the sake of it.  A list of topics has to be prepared in advance in order to ensure that quality will be maintained throughout the life of your expert corporate blog. Don’t hesitate to quarantine articles which you think are not up to scratch by leaving them in the draft list and updating them later
• eleven: propose subjects which link to other popular subjects to attract new visitors, i.e. even those who wouldn’t normally be interested in it. But avoid entering posts unrelated to your main objective or topic at all cost. Not only would that be irrelevant but it could also be damageable for your brand.
• twelve: use so-called keyword ‘fragmentation bomb’ technique by adding synonyms and varying keywords and titles. This will increase your chances of being found and read. I.e. if your subject is about security ensure that not just the security keyword is present but also others such as intrusion, Trojan, encryption, hacking, network protection, data integrity etc.
• thirteen: in order to make it easy for your experts to feed your newly created corporate blog, your experts should get themselves organised so as to produce as much content as possible on a regular basis.  To this end and recommend that you set up a wiki website for them to keep track of the list of articles that they should write, who does what, at what time, and also when it is going to be published.  As a matter of fact, if you need to deliver many an article, it is probably a good idea that you get your experts to write quite a few of them in advance in order to ensure that the source will not run dry and also to avoid putting too much pressure on the writers.  Lastly, if you have blogs in multiple languages, and if some of the content on either of these languages bears relation to the other blogs in other languages in terms of context, then I would recommend that you use translation services in order to make your teams benefit from the content that other teams have written.  Do not overestimate the usability of a particular content which is made available in a particular language for another.  As a matter of fact, translation is not sufficient, you would also need to adapt the context of the original post to make it relevant, and only experts can deliver that.  Use translation services make the first cut translation and then send the text to your experts said that they can adapt it and change it to their heart’s content.
• fourteen: create the event and bring interactivity.  You could for instance organise contests whereby you’re asking your readers to write posts and submit them to you so that you would give them an ability to be published on your blog.  You could also ask your readers to vote for some of your articles.  Contests and suchlike would generate visits an increase reader loyalty,
• fifteen: be careful about those pictures!  Don’t believe that if an image can be picked up easily from the Internet (via Google images for instance) you would be to use it freely on your blog.  This is not true, and if you’re working for a big logo you should be aware that using an image for which you haven’t got the rights would make your company liable for damages.  Conversely, I do not recommend either that you use images from the corporate standard database because they don’t give a expert look to the blog but instead make it look like advertising, and this is not consistent with the tone of voice of an expert blogging exercise.  Illustrations would do nicely, but more importantly functional and business diagrams, preferably user and expert generated, because they will add to the professionalism of the blog, its readability and the overall understanding.  Mainly if your subject is technical.  As the saying goes, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, but remember that it’s only true if image usage is right. Professional image databanks (such as Getty or Corbis for instance) are serious about that, and rightfully so.  If you want to include an image and your company doesn’t own its own image database, and you want to add professional looking illustrations to it then I would recommend that you use online image databanks like http://www.fotolia.com,
• sixteen: about bad language.  Bad language should be avoided at all cost, needless to say.  Any form of defamation, strong language, criticism, or even downright critical opinion of a competitor, partner, and/or co-worker or peer is just unthinkable.  It means that you will have to understand and practise how to deliver interesting and professional opinions without criticising others.  Be very careful about that, because writing anything on the Internet leaves traces.  And you don’t want these traces to be bad ones.  In other words, you have to be careful about the directness of your Internet writing.  It has to remain interesting and straight to the point, but not too much.  It’s a bit like walking between two walls; the left one is the boundary beyond which Internet writing becomes uninteresting and bland and there is no value.  The right one is the limit beyond which too much is said, and could be used against you too.  It is absolutely obligatory that each expert adheres to rule number 15.
• seventeen: about third party products/companies.  Following rule number fifteen, do not draw the conclusion however that you should avoid commenting on other products and any company.  Yet, you should ensure that these comments are based on facts and numbers, serious and professional. They should also be proven and undeniable, or otherwise they should open the debate in a fair and open way.  Once again, strong language against third party products and all companies should be avoided at all cost,
• eighteen: about comments, freedom of speech, openness and pragmatism.  In corporate blogging, comments, or rather the fear of receiving comments about one’s Internet writing is usually the source for paranoia.  Usually, it’s not so much the experts who are paranoiac, but their management.  To an extent, it is normal since it is difficult for management to assess the level of risk which is associated with these external comments.  However, if your subject is a niche subject that is really professional and b2b orientated, the main issue they will come across is not that related to having fierce comments, but that of having too few comments or even any at all.  Secondly you have to make freedom of speech in your comment available.  If it is not open, and it is not free, then it will show and your blog will be so bland that it will attract no visitors and no interest.  A little debate is a good thing, and you mustn’t be afraid of other experts or professionals, even ordinary readers voicing their opinion.  After all if somebody disagrees with what is said, doesn’t possibly mean that it’s true.  So don’t panic, be open and pragmatic.  At the other end, corporate blog managers should ensure that all comments are moderated.  Openness and freedom of speech don’t mean that you shouldn’t control anything.  This moderation feature would protect you and your management from trouble and it should be enabled.  However, moderation doesn’t mean censorship.  Only moderate these posts which contain strong language, if your blog content filter hasn’t catered for this already.  Delete strong language and comments which are not adding anything to the debate.  At the end of the day, having quality comments on your posts is also adding to the quality of the posts themselves, having bad quality comments is withdrawing value from your posts.

ideagoras: pushing the r&d envelope

 (innovation presentation at Thales University on March 13, 2008)

This morning I delivered my speech on innovation at Thales University in the southwest of Paris for the second time since 2007. On top of the usual presentation describing what is meant by innovation, how one defines it, and what are the expectations of the clients (mainly in outsourcing), as well as the methodology for joint innovation programmes I have introduced new parts in this presentation regarding ideagoras and open innovation. An ideagora is literally a marketplace of ideas. The term was coined by Don Tapscott in his latest book, entitled wikinomics (www.wikinomics.com). This presentation of ideagoras was particularly apt; for the audience was made of a mixture of English and French r&d representatives of the Thales organisation. Thales is the result of the merger of a number of companies including Racal (payment systems) and Thomson CSF, the major defence systems provider. Thales, beyond these two sectors, is also present in the field of consulting services. The reason why ideagoras such as innocentive, or yet2.com was so important is that, in the light of my presentation, this is a revelator that the landscape for research and innovation in general, is being reshaped by the Internet, and collaboration in such an open environment. The audience was really interested in seeing how we organised ourselves at Orange, to create ideagoras internally and how much positive feedback we were getting from this. Orange’s system, entitled IDclic (literally translated, click4ideas) has received awards and praises, and is claiming 150 solved challenges and net savings worth €450,000,000 for 2007.

Obviously, innocentive is taking this concept one step higher by making innovation players penetrate into the world of open innovation. With systems like in innocentive and the like, innovation is no longer carried out by the sole representatives of research and development departments, but is actually open to external players. In the course of this presentation I gave examples of solved challenges at Solvay (a Belgian chemical manufacturer) and the BOGO (buy one get one) light bulb mentioned in Time magazine this month. As I said in my presentation, I do not think that ideagoras will take the jobs of people such as those who were listening to the conference. More importantly, I think this will change the way that they work. They are increasingly challenged by their management be it at Thales or anywhere else, in order to produce better results and make innovation more directly profitable to the entire company. Ideagoras are a step forward in the right direction. Internal ideagoras to start with are there to ensure that people are talking to one another and that they have exploited internal competencies to the full. But external ideagoras are taking thingsfurther and they come as a complement to internal r&d. I do not believe in full innovation and product development outsourcing. It would be silly as it would deprive a company from its competitive advantage and its ability to improve and evolve its product and service lines. I believe in ideagoras coming on top of internal processes. It may even be grabbing something in the regions of 10 to 15% of current r&d budgets if all goes well. Actually, it is possible that these 10-15% will not go to one particular ideagora, but to several of them as companies will want to spread risk across different services and different communities, and they will want to use their different business models and processes.

A spin-off of Eli Lilly, innocentive is a system of crowdsourcing, where “problems are waiting for a solution”. With innocentive, seekers are asking questions and they are waiting for solvers to post their answers to their challenges. Other business models exist such as yet2.com, which is devoted to bringing “solutions in need of a problem”. I can’t think that the two models are mutually exclusive. As a matter of fact, I think they have a lot in common, and that they could be combined for greater benefit. It seems that it is the route chosen by Procter & Gamble which seem to be clients of many an ideagora.

At the end of the day, the distinction between technologically-driven innovation (solutions in need of a problem), and business-driven innovation (problems in search of a solution) is the real gist of the problem, and one which we addressed through the joint innovation programme methodology described in our White Paper. It all hinges on the need to describe innovation and what it means, and the absolute necessity to define objectives, which need to be smart (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound) objectives.

I enjoyed this presentation thoroughly, and I am looking forward to the next iteration of the technical leadership programme at Thales University.

innovation in outsourcing: definitely not a pipe-dream

At Cisco France’s request I wrote this brief article (see per below) on the role that innovation can play in customer relationships. This article will be published shortly in the client publication, which is entitled Ciscomag. In order to write this article, I used the material developed for a previous interview carried out in September 2007 for NextTimes, which is the Orange equivalent of Ciscomag for Orange Business Services (click here to read the September issue of NextTimes, the article being on page 2).

I have added a few recent references to this core material. The main purpose of this article is to lay the stress on our clients’ requests for outsourcing and how they evolve. This is not the only goal however. In a recent article entitled, “is innovative outsourcing a pipe dream” (that title in itself in fact is causing an issue, because one wonders whether the journalist is referring to innovative outsourcing, i.e. outsourcing done differently, versus innovation within outsourcing, which is in fact the true subject), Stephanie Overby describes how difficult it is to execute on an innovation strategy within outsourcing. In essence, the future outsourced client wants his or her savings delivered (standard outsourcing savings being 20% on average, in this kind of contracts), and the vendor is therefore making a lot of promises with regard to innovation, which according to Stephanie Overby will seldom if ever be implemented. As soon as the contract is signed, the outsourcing service provider is caught in the daily woes of delivery and has literally no bandwidth left for innovation implementation. In many cases, Overby is right – and that was the case for the December client mentioned in my article (client name will remain hidden).

joint innovation presentation at INSEAD

Yesterday, 12th of December 2007 was a great day in my recent career as a lecturer in marketing and innovation which started last April with the 360° analysis of the marketing of ICT products and services (click here to access the files). Indeed, I was invited by Pr Manuel Sosa to pitch on the subject of joint innovation at Orange business services, in order to present our activities in front of the students of the executive MBA of INSEAD. This is one of the world’s leading eMBAs, number 9 to be precise according to the FT eMBA 2007 ranking (click here to display the eMba FT 2007 World ranking). I was most impressed with the school. What I saw there was really amazing in terms of facilities, campus, quality of teaching, and above all interaction with the students. The good thing with executive MBAs is that you’re not really teaching to students, but rather exchanging ideas with your peers. All the students are professionals and executives in some of the world’s most prestigious firms, and they come from all four corners of the world.

My pitch started with a little quiz, asking participants to name a few innovative companies in their eyes. Naming them was not enough, they also had to tell me why they were deemed innovative, and also whether this ‘innovativeness’ was sustainable. This little exercise was far less innocuous than it seemed. By asking this simple question, we very quickly, in less than one hour, put our fingers on all the questions surrounding the difficulty to define, nurture, and deploy sustainable innovation in and outside the enterprise.

This exchange was extremely fruitful, because all of the participants had already thought about these problems, and they could easily relate to most of them. The rest of the presentation was more standard, and consisted of a capability statement of what Orange business services is able to do in terms of joint innovation with its clients, mainly in the large projects business unit, to which I belong. I gave examples of what in my eyes, and in the eyes of our clients, innovation means when it comes to large projects and outsourcing. I was also able to show the audience my innovation wiki repository, and interesting and passionate discussions were Triggered around the genesis and definition of wiki webs, the perspectives that collaboration is making possible in the enterprise, and the expected results. I was able to reuse some of my examples and materials which are developed either at Paris University (click here) or the Paris graduate school of management (click here).

The presentation lasted four hours, and we were also able to exchange quite a few business cards in the process. In the evening, I was invited at a special cocktail party, where INSEAD alumni and current students were present, and were welcoming prospective students who had come to the school in order to investigate with regard to the executive MBA. This exchange was very exciting, very open and very pleasant, and it gave us an opportunity to exchange on business, on the course, on our lives and experience. To sum it up in a few words, I really liked everything about the school. The people and the recruitment process is just outstanding. People from all over the world were there, and the quality of our exchanges was absolutely dazzling. I am looking forward to another session at INSEAD soon, probably next year.

joint innovation: a client perspective in real-time

A brand new version of the Orange innovation whitepaper for business services – which I have co-authored with Jean-François Fava Verde – has just been made available (click here to download). This latest version of the whitepaper was distributed at Connect 2007, the worldwide event for Orange Business Services clients which took place in Lisbon on June 4-6, 2007. The event was extremely successful. Many break-out sessions (see photo on the left-hand side) took place on location, at the Corinthia Hotel Lisbon, and Innovation was on the agenda of many a presentation by our top Execs. The whitepaper was widely distributed (many thanks to Mark Wigington, our VP for IT services, for his renewed support) and our break-out session was also extremely successful and triggered interesting discussions with clients about how to handle and foster innovation jointly. The break out that Jean François and I had organised with the help of Orange Labs and our partner 123interview was also a success.

 

The climax of that presentation was an interactive session where we asked attendees to show us their vision of innovation through a survey which contained 4 main sets of questions: 1) about our clients’ views on the lifespan of innovation (from short to long term, what I have also called the ‘innometer’) 2) about our clients’ 3 most important business issues where innovation could play a role 3) about the 3 main technologies which were on our clients’ radar screen in order to solve their business issues (hence question 2) 4) about how favourable or unfavourable our clients were with regard to working jointly with one of their vendor. But it was no ordinary old fashioned paper-based survey, nor even was it a plain-vanilla online Internet survey.