Facebook, we are frequently told, is a disruptive technology. Twitter is a disruptive technology. Tunisia and Tahrir Square could never have happened without the disruptive influence of flashmobs and mobile technology. Blogs utterly disrupted the daily business of journalism and newspapers, and traditional media are finally mainstreaming the meme: February’s Forbes “30 Under 30” cover is subbed “Meet the Disruptors”—as if it’s a game show! And February’s Technology Review, that stalwart bastion of scientific bastardization from MIT, touts “Disruptive Technology” on its cover, anchoring an entire section of the magazine with an excerpt from a new anthology of the very book that inaugurated the term “disruptive innovation”: HBS professor Clayton Christensen’s 1995 The Innovator’s Dilemma.

Disruption is in the air, but it’s not always clear what it means. Even Christensen had his doubts. When I interviewed him nearly a decade ago, he was ambivalent about the word, if not the idea. Intel’s Andy Grove once gave a speech lauding him, but Christensen told me that even Grove was critical of the word, noting that there were too many “prior connotations to disruption,” and declining to use it internally. “People do misunderstand it,” Christensen told me, “but it said what we wanted it to say.”

The seed of that ambivalence is still growing 20 years later. To some ears, the disruption vogue smacks of the same revolutionary zeal embodied in another coinage prevalent at the birth of the web some 19 years ago: disintermediation. Consumers could break out the bubbly because the web was about to remove the middle man! Of course, it soon became clear that disintermediation was just another form of mediation, albeit one with cheaper advertising and new channels and digital gatekeepers, portals and the digital agencies that popped up to support them. We may have been removing the middle man, but we were far from sticking it to the man. Instead, like most revolutions, we’d just done a 360, replacing one regime for another.

Fortunately, the current vogue for disruption holds a different promise, one that creates tremendous opportunity, for brands or governments. Despite its fierce-sounding nomenclature, disruption is not ultimately a harbinger of revolution but rather the basis of a competitive reset founded on the fundamentals of good customer—or citizen—engagement.

To understand why, it’s necessary to go back to the Innovator’s Dilemma. As Christensen saw it, the innovator’s dilemma is that incumbent companies are caught in a web of their own success. Incumbents are terrific at staying one step ahead of threats to their business through what Christensen called “sustaining innovations”—the rational investments companies make each day to create more useful products: airplanes that fly farther, computers that work faster, mobile phones with longer-lasting batteries… whatever they think the market and its customers are telling them to do.

Disruptive innovators see the incrementalism in these innovations as a bloody red target. Disruptors see the telltale signs of historical change behind the incumbents’ incrementalism. To a disruptor, a hybrid car is a costly and inaccurate response to the need for low-cost, energy efficient automotion. To a disruptor, a newspaper blog is at best a  misguided response to the realities of instantaneous 24/7 networked reporting. Disruptors take aim at these targets with innovation based on the job that the incumbents are incapable or unwilling to fulfill through their value networks, and they do it for much lower cost: think Zipcar or Flipboard. Disruptors solve a job that would put the incumbents out of business if they were to try the same strategy. (Zip and Flip aren’t “advanced technologies” but  clever, cheap, off-the-shelf combinations of technology that work well in a fledgling market, and if Hertz or the New York Times bet their businesses on them, they’d fail miserably.) The incumbents see the virtues of disruption quite well, thanks much, they just can’t execute on them or they’d go bust. Hence, the innovator’s dilemma.

Historically, it seems we’ve arrived at a moment where disruption has succeeded revolution as a meme of historical change, providing us with better results and a fresher understanding of who our customers are and what they need.

Are there people who historically haven’t been able to do this thing for themselves and so have gone without it or let others do it for them? What products do your customers really want—and what are the best products for those customers? How do we structure our organization and whose money will we take to fund our business? Which parts of the value chain shall we outsource, and which need to be integrated?

Not coincidentally, this is one reason why advanced metrics for analyzing customer engagement—based on direct observation of literally hundreds of social signals swimming in the sea of unstructured consumer data that arises through social networks—are now emerging. (In future posts, I’ll be talking about some of those.) Dachis Group’s Social Business Index and Social Performance Monitor are designed precisely to help companies get out of the expensive incremental experimentation business and jump directly into the hearts and minds of their customers to figure out what jobs they really need to be done. With real, direct, actionable customer intelligence in hand—the Social Performance Monitor actually dives into the actual components that make up relative brand performance, specifically, Brand Awareness, Brand Love, Brand Mindshare, and Brand Advocacy—companies can practice innovation in ways that allow them to build good theories, find patterns and anomalies that will guide them to predictable success, avoid the bogeyman of commoditization, and teach them to migrate from vertical organizations and proprietary technologies to interdependencies and modular architectures.

When you put it like that, of course, disruption sounds a lot less radical and a lot more like hard-assed social business intelligence. As Occupy Wall Street discovered, it’s easy to make a big noise, but something altogether different when you need to make real change actionable. To disrupt, and not just to shake things up. Without deep insight into the job your customers (or citizens) need you to do, disruption either can be a cover for impotent viral expression or an expression of  needs the status quo can’t even imagine. The question is, what kind of disruption will you choose in 2012? Tell me here in comments or @craigbromberg on Twitter.

At Dachis Group, we’re working with a major enterprise client who is in the long process of shifting their business model from being a manufacturer of a single line of devices, to one who needs to harness innovation to create a range of ever more relevant consumer products. The 100, 000+ employee organization (Let’s call them Unitrode) has a lot of work to do. Their desired transformation requires a major internal re-think of every possible process, including how marketing and innovation resources can be re-aligned and harnessed to confront this new reality.  This company needs independent thinkers, who have an active stance toward change and innovation.  Allowing a passive population of cube-dwellers is a major risk to transformation.

Content is King

Outside the business case for change, and the communications platforms necessary to even launch such a project, one common element at the core of this transformation is the value and motivational quality of content.  All organizations struggle to share IP, and move thoughts and innovations to the groups that need it.

Vast networks struggle to keep up with the load, as PowerPoint decks and meeting requests flood in-boxes. So enamored are we with deliverables that conference rooms are designed around the projected screen, with large leather chairs in which to sit back and take it all in. All of this passive consumption has its costs, creating apathy and a sense of disenfranchisement within organizations.

Innovators are Critical to Success

What’s missing in this equation is the value of the ideas at the core of all this activity.  Ideas are the core of IP- presentation is not.  We’ve been working hard in our partnership with Unitrode to define what valuable content IS, and what are the factors that go into creating it.  Since the efficient and compelling movement of ideas is paramount to transformation, we’ve put in some time focusing on how an idea moves, what makes it compelling, and what forms the ultimate value to a company in the long term.

Deliverables waste energy

Consider the standard PowerPoint deck that we’re all subjected to on a regular basis. If it is created and merely uploaded to a location online, (maybe the lonely and under-used Wiki), it rises to the standard of Available, and perhaps Accessible (as long as the creator sends out an email about it to everyone on a distribution list.)  True, people can find it, but then what?  Will anyone bother? Is it possible to quickly understand the core points, and its relevance to the reader? How does any of it create new behaviors or innovation?  Is any of it owned by an individual, backed up by passion and dedication?

Content with Empathy is Motivation

We’ve discovered a relationship among three points that can help recover idea-value for an organization:

• Empathy
• Accountability
• Engagement

Consider the following diagram:

The higher one can be on this diagram the better, as you will see.

You’ll notice that in our deliverable example above, the level of content value is relatively low, since it is not tied to any audience or outcome. The time and effort in creating the deliverable is wasted, and the idea-value is potentially lost. In fact, the mere existence of this semi-relevant item on the network has a negative effect. It creates a culture of apathy as successive deliverables keep happening with so little apparent value to the reader. Where are the ideas?

This is a pretty common practice at Unitrode, and I would hazard a guess at your organization too.

Empathy Fosters Engagement

What if we consider the packaging of an idea differently? What if we can tie outcomes to the value of personal input and collaboration? What if we invite colleagues in, and ask for input along the way? Who says it needs to be polished and presented on a projector? What if we work in low-res, on sketches and on white-boards? By not focusing on the deliverable value, but on the quality of the idea within, we stand to motivate and engage people to a much higher degree. By helping focus colleagues on the value of their direct input, we stand to create a sense of accountability as ideas spread and evolve.

Remember the deck that someone posted on the Wiki? What if it came with this email attached?

By simply providing respect to others’ contributions and time, we hope to foster a sense of collaboration and active ownership of IP. By inviting others into a dialog, and tying success to their contributions, we hope to overcome apathy and create engaged innovators.

What you can do with this

We’re working with Unitrode to help everyone involved see the value in this model. It seems like a simple step to add a few lines to an email, but try it in your environment. Consider the model as you create anything for consumption. What are you asking your reader to do? Do they have critical input?  Is there something that relies on their expertise directly for success?  By inviting others in to a process, we stand to benefit from the value of their engagement and contributions. This is the core of collaboration- the sharing and development of ideas.

- LL Cool J

While I founded the company several months earlier, this week marks 3 years since I announced the formation of Dachis Group.

To put things in perspective:

Over the last 17 years, I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with some of the world’s most talented professionals for some of the largest companies in the world helping to pioneer the nascent digital communications field we know today.

I’ve been lucky enough to be able to play a small role in helping shape the way businesses navigate the most profound and exciting shift in the communications landscape in the history of mankind.

From digital change management, user experience design, information architecture, mobile application development, eCommerce, eBusiness, SEO, SEM, and digital advertising, to Web 2.0, E 2.0, Social Networks, Social Business and Social Business Design, not everyone has always understood the profound and fundamental impact the shifts we experienced and were trying to define for clients, were having on the future of business.

That’s OK.  Re-contextualizing things can be a jarring experience. It’s not easy describing the future to those that are wedded to the past or without a view beyond the present.

Throughout the span of that time period, I have been un-wavering in my belief that the most exciting times are ahead of us and that these dramatic shifts we have seen over the past decade and a half have only been the precursors to the even more profound set of changes we have yet to see.

Social Business Opportunities Defined:

John Hagel, who recently spoke at our Social Business Summit, along with John Seely Brown has written about comparing the diminishing returns generated from an economic model based on ‘knowledge stocks’ to the increasing returns generated from ‘knowledge flows’ and moving from ‘stable environments’ to ‘dynamic environments’.

Dave Gray has spoken and written about the resilience of a connected company and how a more fluid, living breathing company that listens, connects, communicates, participates, engages, and creates actions to exchange value with its constituents is one that will survive longer and thrive.

Social Business Design is the intentional creation of socially calibrated organizations. The purposeful creation of organizations that are designed and organized to listen, connect, communicate, participate, engage, and create action from its constituents.

Why Social Business Design? 1) Simply put, because it’s not going to happen all by itself, and 2) Because a company that is set up and organized to be more engaged with its constituents will first create leveraged outcomes capturing dramatically greater market opportunities and dramatically more operational efficiencies by removing the friction in communications from the core functions of a business. Second, it will create emergent outcomes created from the serendipitous connections and communications that might not have come otherwise, thus pulling the business in dynamic new directions.

Social Businesses by design, will survive longer, thrive, and generate increasing returns.

We believe that every business will become a social business.

Thinking ahead:  Social Business Intelligence

Moving forward.

Initially, we have seen businesses exploring how to organize for Social Business by designing and experimenting with new methods, process, tools, and by testing strategy and engagement programs to find out what works and what doesn’t. Some businesses are just starting to experiment and others are further along a path. In many instances efforts are tactical, and in others, efforts are applied with a laser focus on proper strategy and getting things right for the future. We’ve seen some amazing successes and some fantastic failures across various business functions and industry verticals, but experimentation leads to figuring things out and we are seeing our clients get it right.

The real opportunities begin to realize value materialized from integrating and aggregating the strategies and tactics that worked well in the initial phases of the journey to operationalize them into the core functions of business. This involves deeply integrating forms of listening, connecting, communication, participation, engagement, and constituent action throughout all business functions.  This will take the form of an integrated Social Business stack.  Many businesses may not be staffed, trained, or have resources dedicated to managing Social Business, but will realize that these integrated and aggregated forms of Social Business are increasingly the mission critical components to operating and succeeding in this networked economy and seek solutions to manage these efforts.

Going forward, it isn’t enough to just simply connect or communicate.  An ongoing never ending effort will be required to optimize Social Business operations by gaining insights and intelligence derived from the analysis of operationalized social signal data in the Social Business Graph and driving action on the part of the company.  Social Business Intelligence is the key to the intentional creation of socially calibrated organizations.

Without question, every single day we have been 100% focused on building a company to harness the power of Social Business Intelligence because we have always believed that Social Business Intelligence driven insights and action will be what powers the business of the future.

http://softwarewiki.dachisgroup.com/

A big part of our work here at Dachis Group is to maintain an understanding of what sort of tools and platforms are available to our customers that can support their Social Business Design initiatives.

We provide a comprehensive set of technology research services including: software landscape mapping, feature analysis, security analysis, vendor analysis and tool selection.  We also develop alliances with vendors who we find we are recommending regularly, and finally, we are often engaged to manage the implementation of these tools directly.

Through all of this, we have assembled a list of tools that we believe are relevant to Social Business Design initiatives.

We thought it would be a good idea to share some high level results in the Dachis Group Social Software Resource Wiki to provide a resource for those exploring social technology tools and to ask for help in making it a better resource.

If you are considering deploying collaboration, community, listening, or other social tools inside your organization, we have several hundred companies and products listed.  We’d appreciate your help in curating this list by providing more details and submitting additional cases.

For more resources: Stay on top of the most current thinking on Social Business Design and subscribe to our Collaboratory feed.  To learn more about Social Business Design, download our Social Business Design white paper free of charge.

Find out how Dachis Group can help your business worldwide send email to moc.puorgsihcad@seiriuqni, or download our fact sheet and contact us.