By Mark Bonchek  |  May 3, 2013

You may not know this, but Big Data has a little brother. And together, Big and Little Data are far more powerful than Big Data alone.

Big Data is what organizations know about people — be they customers, citizens, employees, or voters. Data is aggregated from a large number of sources, assembled into a massive data store, and analyzed for patterns. The results are more accurate predictions, more targeted communications, and more personalized services. Big Data is what enables banks to predict credit card fraud by analyzing billions of transactions, marketers to understand customer sentiment by analyzing millions of interactions on social media, and retailers to target promotions and offers by analyzing millions of purchases.
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By Mark Bonchek and Cara France  |  April 15, 2013

In the past, channels delivered messages to audiences. You either owned the pipe or paid to use someone else’s. You controlled the message all the way through that pipe.

In a digital and social age, pipes are less important. People are the channel. You don’t own or rent them. You can’t control them. You can only serve and support them.

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By Mark Bonchek  |  March 14, 2013

Companies are turning to “purpose” and “authenticity” as a way to engage consumers and employees. But it’s hard enough to find a purpose in life if you’re an individual, let alone an entire company. And being authentic is a bit like being cool — sometimes the harder you try, the less you are.

So what’s a leader to do?

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by Mark Bonchek and Chris Fussell  |  February 20, 2013

The “fog of war” describes the uncertainty faced by soldiers in the field of battle. In today’s markets, business leaders face a similar challenge: how to pierce through the “the fog of business.”

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by Mark Bonchek and Sangeet Paul Choudary  |  January 31, 2013

We typically think of companies competing over products — the proverbial “build a better mousetrap.” But in today’s networked age, competition is increasingly over platforms. Build a better platform, and you will have a decided advantage over the competition.

In construction, a platform is something that lifts you up and on which others can stand. The same is true in business. By building a digital platform, other businesses can easily connect their business with yours, build products and services on top of it, and co-create value. This ability to “plug-and-play” is a defining characteristic of Platform Thinking.

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by Mark Bonchek  |   January 16, 2013

Over 100 million phones will ship with NFC this year. Google has built NFC into the Android operating system. Nintendo uses NFC in the new Wii U gaming console. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show, Samsung, LG, and Sony unveiled NFC-enabled smartphones, televisions, and appliances.

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by Mark Bonchek and Chris Fussell  |  November 5, 2012

In nature, there’s a tradeoff between size and speed. Whales are slow. Birds are fast. But organizations today need to be big and fast. Is it possible? Can organizations be both agile and scalable?

There’s some good news. Science is revealing that biology doesn’t have to rule the marketplace. And new models of leadership are emerging from some unlikely places.

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by Mark Bonchek and Chris Fussell  |  October 15, 2012

We don’t usually think of consumers as a threat to our business. But thanks to social and mobile technologies, consumers are now “hyper-connected and super-empowered,” to use Thomas Friedman’s memorable phrase. No longer passive audiences, they can organize to overturn even the most strategic initiatives. The result is a fundamental change that has put executive teams and board directors on high alert.

We call this new dynamic “customer insurgency.” While this term may seem a bit dramatic, we don’t use it lightly or without experience. One of us (Chris) served as a U.S. Navy SEAL for 15 years and helped lead counter-insurgency forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The other has guided numerous companies through digital transformations, most recently as SVP of Communities and Networks at Sears Holdings.

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by Mark Bonchek  |  August 8, 2012

So you’ve got your brand on social media. You have a Facebook page and Twitter account. Maybe a Pinterest board. But now what? There has to be more to social media than posting coupons and running sweepstakes. How do you drive real customer engagement?

The answer may come not from Silicon Valley or Madison Avenue, but from places like the Trobriand Islands and the Pacific Northwest.

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by Mark Bonchek  |   May 16, 2012

Every day brings some new bit of information — or hype — about social business. If you actively follow the social space, it’s easy to get caught in the never-ending stream. If you don’t, you may find all the talk about social overwhelming. So it’s useful to step back, gain some perspective and see the bigger picture.

And it is a big picture. Communication revolutions like this have happened before, but you have to go back to Gutenberg in 1450 to find one as significant. Before Gutenberg’s printing press, monks laboriously produced written manuscripts and few people could read. The printing press changed all that, ushering in an era of mass communication.

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by Mark Bonchek  |  April 2, 2012

In a social age, people don’t like to be pushed. As described in my last post, top brands like Apple, Google, and Nike are using a new model based on pulling rather than pushing. They create a gravitational field that attracts customers into orbit around their brand.

This kind of social gravity isn’t just about how many likes you can get on Facebook. This is about enduring, meaningful, and authentic relationships with your customers and the people in their lives.

How can you shift from push to pull and create your own social gravity? With three basic steps: Purpose provides the Why; Platforms the What; and Partners the How.

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by Mark Bonchek  |  March 5, 2012

The most successful companies in business today have something in common. This trait doesn’t just make them better than the competition; it makes them fundamentally different.

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