Posts Tagged ‘theory’

Getting brand communities right

Saturday, October 24th, 2009

My eye was caught on on article in the Harvard Business Review of last april. ‘Getting brand communties right. The authors gave seven myth about communities.

Myth #1: A brand community is a marketing strategy.
The Reality: A brand community is a business strategy.

Myth #2: A brand community exists to serve the business.
The Reality: A brand community exists to serve the people in it.

Myth #3: Build the brand, and the community will follow.
The Reality: Engineer the community and the brand will be strong.

Myth #4: Brand communities should be love-fests for faithful brand advocates.
The Reality: Smart companies embrace the conflicts that make communities thrive.

Myth #5: Opinion leaders build strong communities.
The Reality: Communities are strongest when everyone plays a role.

Myth #6: Successful brand communities are tightly managed and controlled.
The Reality: Online networks are just one tool, not a community strategy.

Myth #7: A brand community is a marketing strategy.
The Reality: Of and by the people, communities defy managerial control.

Myth #6 is an interesting one. Online people often think online is the only thing there is. Fournier and Lee give great examples for non-web communities. Apple enthousiasts, Republicans or Democrats, Ironman traithletes are part of a so called Pool community. Oprah or Deepak Chopra followers are part of a Hub community and Facebook members of the Web community. Here you find also a video about the video.

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Posted in Community, marketing, media | No Comments »

Ted.com evening

Saturday, May 23rd, 2009

Last week, i had a Ted night. The whole evening i watched Ted video’s. Two video’s inspired me the most.

The first impressive video was from ‘psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz’s estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.’

Ted advised me to watch Dan Gilbert after Schwartz. He ‘challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our “psychological immune system” lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.’ Funny part are the 4 reasons to be happy:
1. Accrue wealth, power, and prestige. Then lose it.
2. Spend as much of your life in prison as you possibly can.
3. Make someone else really, really rich.
4. Never ever join the Beatles.

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Posted in leadership, psychology | No Comments »

Carpe diem synergy theorie

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
Sometimes you have to come up with a theory. I thought about reaching goals, being the master of you own destiny and wondering why some people think that you get success by setting a goal and doing the things to achieve that goal. This one-dimensional, lineair approach needed another view. I came up with the carpe diem synergy theory.
carpe diem synergy theory

carpe diem synergy theory

It (still) starts with the end goal. In the past, think of the industrialization, the end goal was clear and SMART. You win or you lose. Nothing in between. Now the end goal depends on your perspective and it will be influenced on a daily basis by your thoughts, but it will also be influenced through political, personal, social or technological changes. You can see it as a cloud in the future that can have another shape but it is still a cloud.

Now the question: how  do we come to this cloud? Time will help a lot. But when you do nothing you will end on a cloud you don’t like, so when you want to achieve you personal (or company, or society) cloud you have to follow the right stream. You can see the streams as roads. There are a lot of roads to the cloud. Roads as: highways, dirt roads, secondary roads, small roads, hairpin roads, etc. It is the art in life to choose the right road at the right time. Sometimes you need to be on the dirt road, you need to slow down, feel the mud to step over after a while you take the highway. You have to do that conscious, but you also have to be very adaptable, open for new roads. I fact you have to presense  if you are on the right road, when you are on the right road you have to enjoy the effective ride.

Now the question: who is taking that road? There are many roads, you have to be very adaptable to new roads and the cloud is unclear also. For a stable progress the person, organization or society who is going to the cloud need to know very well who they are, what they are doing and why they are doing there ‘thing’. This core can change but like a personality of a human being; it is hard to change the essence of your being.

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Lifecycle

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

I heard recently on BNR that the Netherlands has a lot of companies with a gross revenue until euro 20 million. Between euro 20 and euro 300 it is difficult for Dutch companies and the Netherlands has relatively a large amount of companies bigger then euro 300.

I immediately thought about the lifecycle theory of Adizes. He compares the lifecycle of humans with company lifecycles. In the Netherlands most companies are somewhere between the Go-Go and the Adolescence phase. Issues like Founders trap and unfulfilled entrepreneur come around the corner.

To achieve the optimum phase, the Prime phase, you have to overcome a few issues:
1. Decentralization of authority.
2. Change in leadership from entrepreneurship to professional management.
3. Goal displacement.

I think the most important reason is the high score on individualism as one of Hofstedes culture dimension.
When companies would like to grow bigger you have to create a more collective culture.

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Posted in business | No Comments »