Hutch Carpenter
VP of Product at Spigit. Father of two young 'uns who misses running marathons. Living in San Francisco, CA, Hutch blogs @ I'm Not Actually a Geek.
Goal Setting Stimulates Employee Innovation
In a recent post on the Harvard Business Review blog, Why I Don’t Innovate at Work, Andrew O’Connell writes about some disturbing research: We relentlessly work to avoid “image risks,” to borrow a term from business researchers Feirong Yuan of the University of Kansas and Richard W. Woodman of Texas A&M. They use the phrase [...]
Why Ideas Are Core to Enterprise 2.0
Brian Solis spoke recently on what the future of social networks will be. Ideas, it turns out. As I wrote on another blog post: Solis, leading thinker in the integration of social media and PR, recently spoke on an intriguing concept: ideas connect us more than relationships. The premise of his argument is that ideas [...]
Four Models for Competitive Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is heating up in terms of corporate interest. Pepsi’s decision to skip the Super Bowl in favor of a crowdsourced ideas initiative – Pepsi Refresh – is an example of the interest in the market. Digital strategy, marketing and design firm Last Exit called crowdsourcing a top digital marketing trend for 2010. Contests are [...]
Apple iPad and the Radical Innovation of Meaning
Ultimately, the iPad is a large iPod touch: a great device to draw your inspiration from, but perhaps not the seismic shift in technology that we were expecting. Claudine Beaumont, Apple iPad review, The Telegraph The much anticipated announcement of Apple’s iPad tablet was met with a resounding…”ho hum” or worse from much of the [...]
Cisco’s I-Prize – the Next Wave of Open Innovation
Cisco has launched its second I-Prize global innovation contest, which is being powered by Spigit (disclosure: I work for Spigit). The I-Prize is a competition where entrepreneurs put forth their ideas for businesses related to one of the following: The future of work: solutions that will change the way companies and organizations do business The [...]
In the Future We’ll All Have Online Reputation Scores
In a recent interview with EMC’s Stu Miniman about the future of the web, I predicted that in 20 years, we’ll all have online reputation scores. Little badges, numbers that communicate our level of authority, this sort of thing. And these reputations will have tangible impact. Three different trends come together at some point in [...]
Why SMBs Need Social Software – Dunbar’s Number Limits Metcalfe’s Law
A general observation of collaborative work is this: The larger and more diverse are your personal network of contacts, the higher the quality of your ideas and project work. In the enterprise market, the opportunity being seized by companies is to better connect employees. The sheer size of these firms makes it obvious that they [...]
Ideas as the Basis for Social Networks
Brian Solis, leading thinker in the integration of social media and PR, recently spoke on an intriguing concept: ideas connect us more than relationships. The premise of his argument is that ideas are what elicit passion in people. They animate us, and if we find someone with a similar interest in a given idea, we [...]
There Really Is Nothing that Cannot Be Innovated
In a recent post, Four Quadrants of Innovation, I described one type of innovation as leveraging existing technologies, serving existing customers. In popular culture, this type of innovation is..well, frankly it’s boring. No cool new advances, no new stuff you haven’t tried before. But what is compelling about this type of innovation is how well [...]
Three Designs for Presenting Tweets in Search Results
In a recent post, I described some ways in which tweets should be ranked in search results. A good follow-on question is… How should tweets be presented in search results? It’s an interesting question – how exactly would you want to see tweets in your Google and Bing search results? And it’s an important question, [...]
Google Real-Time Tweet Search Identifies the Tech Elite
Want to know if you’re truly in the technology elite? Let Google tell you! Try this: Go to Google Type in your name and the word ‘twitter’ (e.g. hutch carpenter twitter) Look at the results If you see real-time search results at the top of the page, congratulations! You’re a VIP! If not, well, sorry [...]
Three Enterprise 2.0 Themes You Should Be Watching in 2010
Enterprise 2.0 continued its growth and maturation in 2009. We saw the rise of the Enterprise 2.0 consultancies, including Dachis Group, Altimeter Group and Pragmatic Enterprise 2.0. Andrew McAfee published his book about Enterprise 2.0. We saw the rise of the 2.0 Adoption Council. And based on what can be gleaned from vendors, more enterprises [...]
Designing for Innovation through Competitive Collaboration
In a recent blog post by Intel’s Enterprise 2.0 manager Laurie Buczek, she reviewed her organization’s 2009 experience with social software. One item caught my eye: My entire year has been a quest to find quantifiable ROI. I swear I have nightmares with the “Where’s the Beef” lady crackling out a “Where’s the ROI?!” In [...]
Foursquare + Square = Killer Small Business Social CRM
Parker Smith wrote a piece that got me thinking. In Foursquare: Democratizing the Loyalty Program, he posits that Foursquare could be the loyalty program provider to small businesses. I think he’s right. Then I noticed these identical product benefits touted by the companies themselves, Foursquare and Jack Dorsey’s Square: For example, foursquare can tell you [...]
ComMetrics on Crowdsourcing Innovation: You’re Doing It Wrong
ComMetrics is a social media analytics company, a division of CyTRAP Labs GmbH. ComMetrics is well-known in the industry, including its FT ComMetrics Blog Index. The company published a useful piece, Crowd-wisdom fails businesses. The basic premise is that crowds do not innovate. It’s useful, because it contains both truths and misconceptions about the role [...]
