Everyone has ideas. What separates ideation from impact is action, community-building, and creating value. Ideas represent possibilities for alternate futures. Ideation stirs hope and forms pathways to change. But, the idea is just one part of transformation and innovation. It takes a village as they say. And the village must not only believe in the idea, but also believe in mission, the purpose, and the value they’ll experience as a result. In an era of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine…
Speaking To and Through People You Hope to Inspire: Analog-to-Digital Street Flyers That Hit Different
This is the week of SXSW 2021. Even though it’s a virtual event this year, it is still a special community bound by the spirit of entrepreneurship, creativity, ideation, friendship, and tacos (+ BBQ, queso, pedicabs, and late nights!) Since this is a very special week, I wanted to share a story with you that I don’t think I’ve ever talked about. Every year, going back to, 2007 I think, JESS3 and I would legally (on plastic coverings) post creative…
December 2020 is LifeScale Month 🙌: Let’s Make 2021 a More Creative and Happier Year
Dani Saveker developed Visual Synopsis to capture inspiring content in a beautiful, simple and memorable way. Did you know that half the human brain is directly or indirectly devoted to processing visual information? The brain can identify images seen for as little as 13 milliseconds. At least 65% of people are “visual learners.” In 2019, Dani Saveker, CEO and the founder of GLAS, and creator of Visual Synopsis, read LifeScale: How To Live a More Creative, Productive, and Happy Life. It…
Innovation Starts When You Step Outside Your Comfort Zone
Chase Jarvis is a long-time friend. A real friend. He’s also someone I deeply admire. His talents as a photographer, online persona, speaker, director and human being are raw and next level (check out his new book Creative Calling!) A few years ago, we spent some time together in Austin to talk about innovation and experience design. To this day, it is still one of my all-time favorite conversations. One of the reasons I’m sharing this post after all this…
Digital Darwinism: What Killed Borders, Blockbuster and Toys R Us and How to Survive
We live in an era of “digital Darwinism,” a time when technology and society are evolving faster than the ability of many organizations to adapt. It is for this reason (along with a myriad of other problems of course) that in fact killed Borders, Blockbuster, Toys “R” Us and the like. Not only did digital Darwinism cost us close to a half billion job, it’s only accelerating. As Leon C. Megginson once said in paraphrasing Charles Darwin’s Origin of the…
The Past, Present and Future of Social Media
A big part of my work as a digital analyst and anthropologist is to track emerging and disruptive technology trends and study their impact on business and society. In the early 2000s, much of that work was focused on what was Web 2.0, collaboration (office 2.0) and the rise of social media. It was a very special time in my career. I had the good fortune to be in the center of a very important shift in technology and culture….
What Makes a Truly Great Experience?
I’ve been working with IBM over the past several years on everything from the future of work to cognitive computing to social business to smarter commerce. Most recently, IBM and I have partnered on something a bit more experiential. The Commerce, Mobile and Social team at IBM selected X: The Experience When Business Meets Design as the company’s latest title for its monthly book club. As part of the club, IBM hosts a series of activities for employees and the…
![Time to Grow Up! Social businesses mature, yet many still lack a strategic foundation [infographic]](https://www.briansolis.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/All_sizes___Social_Media_Matures__Yet_Many_Companies_Still_Lack_a_Strategic_Foundation__Infographic____Flickr_-_Photo_Sharing_-1024x508.png)
Time to Grow Up! Social businesses mature, yet many still lack a strategic foundation [infographic]
This year has been particularly busy yet productive for Charlene Li and me having published two reports that detail the six stages of social business evolution and the true state of social business in 2013, an ebook on how successful social businesses are evolving, and an image-rich slide deck complete with all the graphs and charts you need to benchmark where you are compared to other social businesses. Now Charlene and I are proud to introduce our latest infographic that…
Visualizing the DNA of a Social Business Via Infographics
Recently, my Altimeter Group colleague Charlene Li and I published an ebook that revealed The Seven Success Factors of Social Business Strategy. To our pleasant surprise, the industry didn’t just react with positive feedback, but also with fantastic infographics that brought the core of the book to life. I wanted to share a few with you here. Over the years, we studied businesses endeavoring to master social media at various stages. We detailed our findings in our research report uncovering…
No Business is Too Big to Fail or Too Small to Succeed – Sobering stats on business failures
We live in an era of what I refer to as Digital Darwinism, a time when technology and society are evolving faster than the ability of many organizations to adapt. Over the years, I’ve studied how disruptive technology affects consumer behavior and decision-making. I’ve also researched how businesses react (or don’t) to these changes. What I’ve learned is that barring a few exceptional instances of complete ignorance, organizations are open to adaptation if there’s indeed a case made for it…
