Connected, empowered consumers—also known as of Generation C—have come to expect businesses to know them, to understand them, and to deliver what they want, where, when and how they want it. I recently published an ebook with IBM, The Connected Consumer and the New Decision-Making Cycle, that explores the new decision making cycle of connected customers. You can download it for free here. Thanks IBM! The goal of the ebook, and also this post, is to introduce readers to the differences…
Business Transformation: Why General Motors is Investing in Customer Experience
As editorial director and conference producer of The Pivot Conference, I have the privilege to meet with the people who are bringing about real change inside organizations. During the 2013 conference, I had the chance to interview Dr. Rebecca Harris (@RebeccaHarrisDr), who leads the Social Media Center of Expertise at General Motors in Detroit. Her role is all about transformation and integration as she works across brands and around the world on social strategy, social tools, social processes, points-of-view on…
2014 – The Embolden Years: Change agents lead the way for digital transformation
Happy New Year! 2014 is upon us and it’s once again time to share our (Altimeter Group) predictions for the year ahead. Except this time, predictions are moved aside in favor of important trends that are on the horizon. Let’s use this time together wisely in the hopes of prioritizing our investments in relevant strategies and the time and resources necessary to bring them to life this year and next. In 2013, Charlene Li and I published several reports, infographics,…
5 Steps to Improving the Customer Experience with Big Data
Guest post by Lisa Arthur, CMO of Teradata Applications and author of the new book Big Data Marketing (Wiley). Follow her on Twitter @LisaArthur. Technology advancements are making it easier for people to constantly, effortlessly and sometimes unknowingly generate massive amounts of data every second. Lurking in the sprawling data pipelines of global corporations are complex tangles of information that have the potential to become your company’s most profitable resource. The opportunity has never been greater for savvy marketers and…
The Future of Business is Creating Meaningful and Shareable Experiences
Special guest post by Peter Guber, noted business leader and author of best-seller, Tell to Win While everyone’s talking about social media, professional motivation, or the need for change in business, people who are actually looking for answers to bring about change are left to draw upon the classic treatises of Peter Drucker, Dale Carnegie, Geoffrey Moore, Tom Peters, et al. Yet, what those pundits don’t provide is the “how to” shape your role and opportunity in this evolving landscape…
![Time to Grow Up! Social businesses mature, yet many still lack a strategic foundation [infographic]](https://briansolis.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/All_sizes___Social_Media_Matures__Yet_Many_Companies_Still_Lack_a_Strategic_Foundation__Infographic____Flickr_-_Photo_Sharing_-1024x508.png)
Time to Grow Up! Social businesses mature, yet many still lack a strategic foundation [infographic]
This year has been particularly busy yet productive for Charlene Li and me having published two reports that detail the six stages of social business evolution and the true state of social business in 2013, an ebook on how successful social businesses are evolving, and an image-rich slide deck complete with all the graphs and charts you need to benchmark where you are compared to other social businesses. Now Charlene and I are proud to introduce our latest infographic that…
Social Business is not Dead: New charts and data reveal the real evolution of social businesses
In recent times, I’ve noticed a rise in discussions around the “death of social business” and also an increase in alternative “fill in the blank but don’t use the word social” businesses. Some of those discussions have been hosted here recently. There’s strong merit to the discussions of course, especially those I’ve hosted (be sure to read the comments). But as an analyst tracking the evolution of social businesses and equally the cause and effect of digital transformation overall, I’m…
Leadership Unplugged: Stripping out the noise to uncover a new direction
Guest post by Roland Deiser and Sylvain Newton Twenty years ago, on November 18th, 1993, the music band Nirvana agreed to an unplugged performance at the Sony Music Studios in New York City. It was part of a television series called “MTV Unplugged”, which invited popular music groups to perform their songs “naturally”. Unlike in a studio, the sound of instruments would not be electronically amplified and engineered; the artists had rather to rely on the “raw” performance of a…
17 Cartoons that Will Change Your Business
When writing my new book, What’s the Future of Business, Changing the way businesses create experiences, I felt that text wasn’t enough. So, I sought the wit and creativity of my good friend from the ole Web 2.0 days Hugh MacLeod aka @gapingvoid to help summarize each chapter in the form of a toon. Then we got to talking, why limit the cartoons to just the book? Hugh MacLeod is not only a dear friend but also one of my…
How to Foster a Culture of Contribution: Communities Take Investment and Engagement, Not Just Content
Guest post by Greg Narain (@gregarious), co-founder of Chute, a social media platform that helps brands and publishers obtain rights to UGC content. Customer-contributed stories are not only powerful, they’re also influential and important. Yesterday, customers conveyed their stories through text and voice. Today, we’ve moved to visually rich tools like photos and videos. While compelling to look at at face value, there’s quite a bit more hidden within. Ever one of these stories affords us much more than just…
