BI | Bertrand Duperrin's Notepad

The death of serendipity ?

September 16, 2011 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : Serendipity is finding things without knowing they exist and without looking for them. On the web this phenomenon is embodies by the multiple links that makes us browse from an idea to another until we find something we would never have look for. However, the recent evolution of search engines and social networking sites can be seen as a real threat : by proposing results filtered according to people’s social profile, they segment the web and may threaten idea spreading and discovery. By relying on proximity and popularity, these tools are bringing us away from relevance. The problem will even be more critical in an enterprise context. To limit the amount of information on a relevance bases without building invisible social filters and barriers, efforts have to be made on context and correlation.

Serendipity is the ability to find something while ignoring its existence, without looking for it. We all experienced it at least once on the web : searching for something, finding a resultt and then, from one link to another, finding something which existence was unexpected until then. Serendipity relies on both the human factor and trust.

Human factor because these links that make us discover new things are made by people. Trust because depending on what we know of a person we’ll give more or less credit to what he/she says and the sources being suggested. Of course, it’s a long term mechanisms because reputation needs time to form, so does trust. This as also some things in common with curation.

Today,, the way we’re looking for information on the web is evolving. To be more precise, that’s the way information is proposed to us that’s changing. With the masses of information that search engines or social networking platforms like Facebook have about us, our contacts,habits, the results that are pushed to us are filtered to correspond to what we are. Among the masses or information that will match my search, those that come from people that are similar to me, those that will please me will be prioritized. If you wonder why, for the same search, Google gives different results to you and your friends, now you know why. The same logic applies to what appears on your Facebook homepage and what does not.

The more this logic is becoming mainstream, the less one will have any chance to discover things that come from people who don’t think the same way or think of different things. What raises two problems to me

• First one if about being locked up into a trend, ignoring what’s being said elsewhere

• The second is to be unable to access to a wide part of the information available on a given topic.

Google (and the other of its kind), desiring to please me despite of me, are ignoring the difference between what would please me and what I would need to know;

This issue is not neutral at all for internal business purposes too.e.

Business awareness : the social signal without relationship

September 28, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : Everytime we talk about social media we focus on rich relationships and exchanges, conversations, community feeling, what are very heavy and complex things to make happen. That’s forgetting that there’s a lighter and at least as productive way to use social channels : a short, factual social signal that aims at informing hand helping people to visualize their environment without engaging too much. Social media can be awesome “business awareness” tools without needing strong interpersonnal relationships.

The assumption is easy to get : social tools bring more intensity and flexibility in the way people and information behave, get organizaed, interact and thats makes it easier to invent new way of collaborating within any organization or between a business and its ecosystem. Social networks that provide lots of tool to support interpersonal relationships has become the incarnation of these approaches to such an extent that they’re often shown as the solution to any problem.

But is the monolithic vision of social networking that comes with social media relevant.

1°) Does a social network need to be conversational

It started with a conversation I had with a friend about a general public tool on the web but it can also apply to enterprise tools. We were talking about foursquare and a friend told me : “why do you use foursquare ? xxxx is much better and more engaging”. My answer “Humm…I’m not convinced”. “Yes Bertrand, on foursquare people usually check in to say where they are while on XXXXX they say things, share their state of mind, share photos, have conversations”. “How to say…In fact I don’t care at all about all these things”.

Let me explain : what I like in such tools is that I can know who is where. Everything else ils superfluous and pollutes the signal. On Foursquqre I’m looking for location information and not digressions about moods or the state of mind of M. So-and-so. There are other channels for that.

These tools are “ambient awareness” tools : they have to send short and low signals (not aggressive or intrusive), coming from my ecosystem and too much information and conversation kills the signal, making it hard to hear.

That reminds me off the conversation I had years ago with Reid Hoffman about what he called “Business Intelligence for People”. Today, I’d rather say “business awarness” but the fact remains : being social does not always mean having lots of conversation and engaging a lot but receiving / sharing a clear and short signal in order to visualize / help others to visualize what is their informational context, what’s happening in their relational environment.

So there’s a wide part of the social activity that has not to be conversationnal, rich in terms of content and interaction, and where, in fact, interactions are rather the exception than the nom. What matters there is to improve people awareness about something (business in this case) with a a clear and not overloading signal.

2°) Do social networks need to be bijective and global ? No. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Management & HR, Web & Usages Tagged With: ambient awareness, BI, business awareness, business intelligence, microblogging, signal, social computing, Social Networking, social signal, twitter

What social Media Lack ? Intelligence

September 10, 2010 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Summary : the increasing quantity of information generated by social media and the need for dealing with all this information regardless to its source is a barrier to an effective use that relies on users ability to priorize, classify and organize things into a hierarchy. Because of that, only a little minority is not scared by the flows that flow on their screens. To make future information systems usable we need to embed a kind of intelligence in the product rather than relying on the ability of a few people to use the tools in order to channel the flows and highlight what matters to each user, the ultimate step being to build conversing tools. After having tried to use the 2.0 logic to improve BI, now it’s time to use BI to improve 2.0 tools.

One of the main barriers to the use of social media in the workplace and to the transformation of work is that users feel lost. Two points are hidden behind this vague concept :

- lack of context. I won’t elaborate this point because Sameer Patel wrote an excellent post about this issue. Originally about Google Wave it can, in fact, apply to a wide range of things.

- fear of the mass of information that’s generated, of not being able to deal with it and manage it.

I think most people agree on the first point (now just wait to see how it will be turned into actual features), so let’s talk about the second.

If you are familiar with these tools, would it be at home or at work, you know that quantity is not a problem and is rather an opportunity once you know how to filter and prioritize. It can be done technically with the right functiunalities or tools, humanly by relying on the social filter made of your network. Information is like water, what matters is not to have less but to regulate the flow.

Now try to imagine the average user (what means 90% of users), facing any kind of stream (twitter, friendfeed or Facebool) and how his face’s going pale. Of course, these users can be trained, of ourse as time goes by more and more users will be comfortable with information flows. But what matters is today, and today it’s rather complicated. Missing the latest hilarious video shared by one’s uncle is not prejudial but things are not the same in the workplace. Add to that the the fear of admitting in front of colleagues that one didn’t see such or such important information, and you understand why there is a real problem.

The value of social media in the workplace relies on intelligence on two aspects :

- the intelligence people share with the tools

- the intelligence they use to survive in the flow and separate the wheat from the chaff.

Today the more active users on enterprise social platforms are those who meet the second criteria, sometimes because they already do it in their personal use of the web, sometimes because they learn quickly. That poses two problems :

IT interests : good news but too much compartmentalization

October 30, 2009 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

I recently came across this this chart about what IT departments are currently thinking about. What inspires me some thoughts.

First point, as mentioned in the post where I found this document, there’s nothing really new. Many of these issues have been discussed for years, some are more recent but even when names change, the topics themselves don’t.

Second point : cloud computing is on the top of the list. That’s the evidence, but did we need some more, that the topic is really a true current concern. But we have to be careful and don’t make numbers say what they don’t : being interested in something does not mean adopting it, it even may mean finding arguments to find it. As a friend of mine who works as a plane pilot, often says : “The reason why I’m interested in plane crashes is because I want to avoid them, not because I want to have one”. Behind, nothing emerges (I don’t consider the difference between 47% and 51% as significant).

Third point, the most interesting one in my opinion : the link between many of these topics. BI and BPM : don’t you think that one the the current challenges is to enrich BPM with BI ? Aren’t wikis, blogs etc.. and collaboration tools the two sides of one only thing ? By the way, to enrich BI, isn’t it necessary to harness the value contained into the unstructured information carried by blogs, wikis and social networks ? Good news : social networks come one rank behind. As for content management, isn’t it the formal alter ego of social medias ? Here again, two sides of one global issued.

So, at first sight, there’s a kind of coherence that is a good news. On the other side I’m afraid that all these issues may be thought independantly, without any articulation between one and another just when they must be thought jointly if we don’t want to see things that are complementary by nature confront each other. Keep in mind that operations are expecting such a coherent and integrated approach from the IT depts instead of technological projects isolated the one from the other which lack of coherence have negative impacts on adoption and value creation.

Filed Under: Software & Tools, Web & Usages Tagged With: BI, blogs, bpm, business intelligence, cloud computing, social networks, Software & Tools

How to link formal and informal within the enterprise : the “still” company

May 12, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

Since intangible assets only create value when they support formal business process, enterprises don’t have to create an enterprise 2.0 organization relying on informal but a system allowing formal and structured activities to take advantage from what isn’t.

If we want to visualize that, the “still” metaphor seems very relevant to me.

Enterprise is not a closed system : the Starbucks example

March 22, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN 2 Comments

No company can (sur)vive isolating itself from the outside. In the other hand it has to grow richer because of all its ecosystem and consider it as an allied, not an enemy. There are many reasons for that.

- improve the way it benchmarks by taking the most of ideas and feedbacks coming from what’s essentiel : its market, its clients, its community.

- avoid being overtakes : whatever people talk. It’s better joining the discussion and learn from it than turning a deaf ear. Doing disconnects a company from its ecosystem and doesn’t help building a welcoming brand.

- keep control : it’s useless putting barriers where a tidal wave is coming : there are many chances for barrage gives away. In the other hand, by funnelling the wave you can create energy.

- starting a costless BI approach.

That’s exactly what Starbucks is doing with MyStarbucksIdea et dont Pascal Veilleux nous parle ici. Pas besoin d’en dire plus, son article résume fort bien la situation. As its CEO says :

Welcome to MyStarbucksIdea.com. This is your invitation to help us transform the future of Starbucks with your ideas-and build upon our history of co-creating the Starbucks Experience together.

And just like in our stores, our curious and passionate Starbucks partners are here. Engaging in daily conversation-bringing the warm, human connection of a great Starbucks experience to this online community.

So, pull up a comfortable chair and participate in My Starbucks Idea. We’re here, we’re engaged, and we’re taking it seriously.

Some say there’s a risk to see competitors come and take Startbucks’ ideas. It’s a wrong problem : the same facts must not have the same consequences for two companies. Depending on their culture, two companies having the same information are supposed to act two different ways. Just cloning one’s competitors lead to failure. The approach my be the same, results have to be different instead one don’t assume the importance of corporate culture.

But first, information has to be gathered.

Whatever, information marketplaces are a very heavy trend, a young model that will take more and more importance.

Filed Under: Innovation, Management & HR Tagged With: BI, Communities, corporate culture, culture, innovatio, marketplaces, strarbucks

Connecting formal and informal knowlegde to create business value.

March 4, 2008 By Bertrand DUPERRIN Leave a Comment

If enterprise 2.0 is to develop informal networks and tacit knowledge formalization within the enterprise, there’s still one question to be answered : how does all the spent energy contributes to create business value ?

Actually, I consider it as a keypoint in every project I manage : the use of all this intangible patrimony for formal business needs has to be organized. Because value creation will always be something structured.

Saying that, I don’t think that the “spent energy” words are quite relevant. I think “recycled energy” would be better. In fact, social networks already exist but are not used except in a very small perimeter, tacit knowledge exists too but only at an individual scale, but there are not valuable at the organization scale.

Let go back to our purpose : using informal and tacit assets in a formal business context, whitout which everything that has to do with enterprise 2.0 is useless.

Enterprise is not a closed system : the Starbucks example

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