Faster Future: Possibilities now and beyond: social business innovation awards

Showing posts with label social business innovation awards. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Can you help design the future?

I've been lucky enough to bag myself a place at the SOMESSO / Headshift Social Business Summit in London on March 18.
Places are limited to 100 and keynote speakers include Jeff Dachis and JP Rangaswami. It's very much not just a passive consumption event though. Attendees are expected to help design the future.
If you'd like to join us, I do have a limited number of discount codes available to distribute.
To get one, drop me an email (davidpcushman AT gmail DOT com) and - if you don't feel I know you already - outline why you think you should be there.
See you on March 18.

If you're US-based, can I point you at an event which Ninety Ten (the company I work for) is supporting in New York on April 19: Social Business Edge. It's run by 90:10 collaborator Stowe Boyd.

And if you've got your social biz thinking cap on, please consider submitting a nominee for the latest round of the Social Business Innovation Awards. Thanks.

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Nominate a social business innovator

It's March. So it must be time for the next (the second!) monthly Social Business Innovation Award.
And, just as last month, they can't happen without you.
Right now we need to work together on nominations; making them and attracting suggestions from others. Later in the month we'll need to join together to vote.

Last month found a worthy winner in BusinessCard2.0.

This month let's focus on businesses and organisations which have created,, or significantly improved, their products or services using digital social tools - from forums, microblogs, blogs and ideas platforms to social networks, email and SMS.

As last month, please nominate, with any relevant links, by posting a comment below.
Those that appear in the final nominees list will be entitled to display the badge you see here.

Please call on your friends to join in.

What are these awards all about?

Social business innovation: Efficiency and tranformation through the use of social tools.

We have the best set of tools in history for people to find each other and act together to create and improve on the things that matter to them.

What are we doing with them?

Some businesses and organisations are grasping them to wikifix their products and services, to deliver best-fit R&D and NPD and join in waste-free people-powered communications and marketing. The wikifixing of the world has begun.

Those engaging in the process reach new levels of efficiency thanks to an ever-better fit with the needs of their partners - those formerly known as the customer. (By way of disclosure, that's what we at 90:10 Group help organisations with).

I hope you will join with me to celebrate the best of them - and through this find a path to the communities-of-purpose-driven future of the organisation.

So each month this blog will host a Social Business Innovation of The Month award, nominated by you and voted on by you. The format is very much inspired by Neil Perkin's ThinkTank.

The awards are to recognise great work in open/social business/organisational design/innovation/tranformation/efficiency using social technologies.

The winners will enter a case-study Hall of Fame to be shared with all - and in which the winners can revel in the glory of their peers' admiration ;-). More importantly, we can all get inspiration and guidance.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Social Business Innovation Awards: Jan 2010 winner

We have a winner in the first Social Business Innovation Awards: January 2010. Securing 62% of the vote, the winner is...

Image via CrunchBase

BusinessCard2.

I haven't used it myself but... in a nutshell: LinkedIn taken beyond the silo.

It beat off better known (at least to me) challengers Twelpforce (2nd with 14%) and Local Motors (with 10%).

Check out all the January 2010 nominations here (along with the purpose of the awards).

If nothing else, January's vote has served to surface something new to me - and likely new to you too. We're discovering stuff we didn't know we needed to know about.

So BusinessCard2 becomes the first to enter our Social Business Innovation Hall of Fame. The process of selecting the next to join it will be started when we open nominations later this month for the February 2010 award. Please join in.

Here's BusinessCard2 co-founder Lief C Larson (of Workface Inc) on what makes BusinessCard2 a good example of social business innovation:

How our model works:
"Individual-level transparency is a major opportunity in the future of social business. We have created BusinessCard2, a service that helps professionals network and exchange business cards online without face to face interaction.
"Tens of thousands of users have created a card with us. The card acts as a web container that holds all the information that makes us digitally distinct: a utility to inform and educate. Customers and prospects use it to peer deeper into the great people behind the company. Fundamentally we believe business is about two people forming new connections.
"To help BusinessCard2 users reach more customers and prospects, we built unique technology that makes the card portable. For instance, those with a card can visit BusinessCard2-enabled websites and drop their card. BusinessCard2 was built to most closely mimic the process of sharing business cards in the real world, but as a process on the internet.

How social tools are used to innovate:
"BusinessCard2 is itself a social tool. It has been designed to provide portability beyond any singular walled garden social network. However, we have also implemented ways that BusinessCard2 can be shared in existing social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter.
"From my perspective, business isn't just about those you all ready know (the current social network), but also about reaching out to those you don't yet know (the network potential). Our technology road map is focused on using the social infrastructure to build visibility within specific markets and help give our users the tools to form new connections.

Case study:
We are not focused on specific user case studies at this time. There are so many different use cases for BusinessCard2 that calling out specific instances does a disservice to it's potential. Rather, we are focused on how BusinessCard2 is incorporated into many different social situations: from social networks like Facebook, to high-traffic websites, to CMS (such as blogs, wordpress, etc.). I have a three minute video here that shows how to integrate BusinessCard2:

"I also have a brief video here that helps you understand what BusinessCard2 looks like.

BusinessCard2 on Social Business:
One of our core beliefs is that business is not just about companies, products, and services - but about meaningful connections between two people. At the organizational level, a company is defined as the sum of its parts.
"The parts are the people. We seek individual-level freedom and transparency at the professional level. We aspire to help power the autonomy of any person engaged in business to take their identity with them across the web. We hope to help help encourage social business by giving the public open access to the millions of incredible people behind the companies, products, and services we use every day.
"Each person who creates a BusinessCard2 has formed a social compact where they have complete control over their identity, and agree to expose that identity openly across the web. You do not need to log in to BusinessCard2 to view a person's card. Anyone with a BusinessCard can take their card anywhere they wish and share it freely."

Monday, February 01, 2010

Vote in the first social business innovation awards

Name the Social Business Innovation Award winner for Jan 2010(polls)

The nominations are now closed and the voting is now open in the first ever Social Business Innovation Awards. Don't worry if your favourites aren't on the list, we all get the chance to nominate again for the next month's when the voting closes on this round on Feb 11.

For those who missed the nomination phase, to reiterate, this is what it's all about:

Social business innovation: Efficiency and tranformation through the use of social tools.

We have the best set of tools in history for people to find each other and act together to create and improve on the things that matter to them.

What are we doing with them?

Some businesses and organisations are grasping them to wikifix their products and services, to deliver best-fit R&D and NPD and join in waste-free people-powered communications and marketing. The wikifixing of the world has begun.

Those engaging in the process reach new levels of efficiency thanks to an ever-better fit with the needs of their partners - those formerly known as the customer. (By way of disclosure, that's what we at 90:10 Group help organisations with).

I hope you will join with me to celebrate the best of them - and through this find a path to the communities-of-purpose-driven future of the organisation.

So each month this blog will host a Social Business Innovation of The Month award, nominated by you and voted on by you. The format is very much inspired by Neil Perkin's ThinkTank.

The awards are to recognise great work in open/social business/organisational design/innovation/tranformation/efficiency using social technologies.

The winners will enter a case-study Hall of Fame to be shared with all - and in which the winners can revel in the glory of their peers' admiration ;-). More importantly, we can all get inspiration and guidance.

The winner will enter a Hall of Fame where we can collectively gawp upon fine thinking, share opinions and get inspired.

So, here are this month's nominees (note they do not have to be from the last month (at least initially), the monthly cycle is just to keep this rolling and keep us collectively scouring.

The Nominations are:

1. The City Square Project

Proposed by Eaon Pritchard
Eaon said: Tiny steps but i was interested to see this initiative from developers in my home town of Aberdeen using the web to gather input from the people of the city into making a plan to potentially transform a city centre space.

2. Best Buy (Twelpforce)

Proposed by Ted Shelton: I'd like to suggest that large companies should get kudos for doing brave things and Best Buy has really gone all out. Every Best Buy store now has a sign up on the front door about their Twitter initiative, Twelpforce.



3. Local Motors

Proposed by Neil Perkin

A great example that I have been recently obsessing about is Local Motors in the US who crowdsource design for their models, and whom I wrote about here: http://bit.ly/7v8eBq




4. BusinessCard2 Nominated anonymously (?): BusinessCard2 is helping make small business, social business. Check them out here: http://BusinessCard2.com

5. Snausages
Nominated by me and shared by Josh Bernoff; Del Monte developed the newest product in its Snausages line, Breakfast Bites, using input from a social network of dog owners it formed. According to an Advertising Age video and article, Del Monte developed its new Breakfast Bites product in just six weeks with the guidance of the exclusively formed group of pet consumers.

VOTING CLOSES ON February 11, 2010. Nominations for the next (February 2010) award will open shortly after.

Name the Social Business Innovation Award winner for Jan 2010(polls)

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Stowe Boyd backs inaugural Social Business Innovation Awards

Great news for the newly-launched Social Business Innovation Awards - Stowe Boyd will be featuring winners on his blog, too.

Nominations for the first month's are now open and are coming in thick and fast. Check the comments on this post for the latest entries.

If you'd like to nominate there are three simple ways:

1: Post as a comment on this post

2. email me (check out what we're looking for here first)

3. Tweet. Point us with a link and label it with the #SBIA

At the end of the month I'll be opening the voting which will take place on this blog. You have until then to continue with your nominations - and continue telling friends who may care :-)