Floozy Speak!: SPOTTED

MINI_ext1

MINI_ext2

The extendo-cab mini has been spotted! What’s this mean?!? Station-me-mini on the verge of happening?!?! Maybe? Could be? Probably ya… Is it milking the mini franchise?!! I dunno. Should be interesting really.

Well everyone have a good weekend? eh? Maybe? Sorta? Mary & I and her friends hit the Greek festival for some good eats and much random shopping. Some cool stuff to get there. I’ll upload some pictures of Mary’s KungPowPurse here in a few days. In some sad news my Sony DSC-M1 has a bit of a fault in it. Sadly, the shutter on it is stuck open. So while I can take pictures and all just fine, the closing shutter wont close so i cant hook it up to the cradle to off load pics cause the camera is always in “operation” mode and wont submit to “usb” mode. Sucks really. I’ll be takin that back to Circut City soon to swap for another one.

I hate moving stuff. I have a ton of odds and ends that well, either need to be given to good will (which alot are slated to do, alot of clothes and shoes that is) and the rest I think will be going to GOT JUNK. I feel the need to get minimal again. Let everything that needs to go.. GO.

Top 10 Biz Trends to be.. soon… taken from David Pollard’s blog, which i found out from Emergic via bloglines. A tasty list really, and David’s got a good piece on Katrina making people nuts as well. Good stuff.

Trend	Importance, and What to Watch For
1. Open-Source Business	Open-Source Business isn't about software, or about reducing costs and prices to zero, it's about open partnerships with those outside and inside the organization who can help the business provide better products and services to customers. The Open Source model (transparency of operations, collaboration with customers and others to manage the business and set priorities, and giving 'commodities' away free) can allow leading-edge businesses to make the transition to tomorrow's Gift Economy effectively and painlessly. Much more about Open Source Business (about which very little has yet been written) in an article next week.
2. Disruptive Innovation	Clay Christensen's research shows the total futility of trying to create barriers to protect your turf from competitors, some of whom don't yet even exist. The history of business shows that organizations that can find ways to serve the low end of the market for any product, or ways to bring existing products and services to entirely new customer groups, will eventually cannibalize incumbents' markets from below or from without. Entrepreneurs: use this as your roadmap to success. Incumbents: do it to your own markets, or look out.
3. Complexity	Dave Snowden is pioneering work that shows that existing business strategies and processes are designed to deal with 'complicated systems', and that a radically new approach is needed to deal with 'complex systems'. Such an approach could successfully address previously insuperable and intractable problems and challenges in business, and in society. AHA!
4. Corporate Reform	Something much bigger is lurking behind Enron and other disgraceful corporate behaviour, and Sarbanes-Oxley and other feeble attempts to address the problem. The corporation itself has become dysfunctional, even pathological, and corporate laws and charters need a complete overhaul. As consumers use exploding knowledge and connectivity to flex their muscles in dealings with suppliers, and as more horrific corporate abuses come to light, consumers will grow increasingly intolerant of 'self-regulated' corporatism and demand drastic corporate reform.
5. Innovation Incubation	Innovation is risky, and incumbents dislike risk, which is why entrepreneurs (with some notable exceptions) have always been at the vanguard of innovation. But incumbents can, and must, get into the innovation game as well, and the way to do that is through innovation incubators, running as autonomous, separate divisions with a different kind of people and a different success model from the ones that dictate behaviour in the organizational mainstream. For many large organizations, such incubators will be the difference between sustainable success and stagnation.
6. Social Networking and Personal Productivity Improvement	It's all about the people, stupid. Forget the hierarchy and the cult of leadership. Forget about 'organizational knowledge' and 'organizational learning'. Everyone in today's organization knows how to do their job better than their 'leader'. The modern organization is the sum of the capabilities and actions of its people, and modern management must be about setting clear, prioritized, achievable goals, providing effective processes and technologies, getting rid of organizational roadblocks, and then staying out of the way. Drucker says it's the greatest management challenge of our century. Social network technologies (including weblogs and simple virtual presence), personalized productivity coaching, stories, and self-management processes like Open Space are the new tools of this trade.
7. Wisdom of Crowds	The customer is always right, but today that's usually only realized in hindsight. Recognizing the wisdom of crowds can allow organizations to tap into the collective knowledge of customers, employees, and society as a whole, and there's plenty of evidence that doing so yields better business decisions at lower cost than either overtaxed, overpriced executives or unfamiliar outside consultants.
8. Channel Customization	One size does not fit all. The future price of any manufactured commodity (and renewable natural commodities as well) trends to zero. The opportunity for profit, and the real 'value-added' is in customizing offerings to the unique needs of every consumer. Instead of a broadcast channel, delivering the same thing to everyone, the new model is narrow-casting to audiences of one, and allowing the customer to take ownership of the channel that brings your products and services to them. How do you market in such a world? You don't -- you let your customers tell the world how good you are, in their personal context, powerfully and virally.
9. Customer Relationship Management	Most businesses still think their purpose is to sell products or services to a reluctant market. Smart businesses understand that their purpose is to identify and respond uniquely to human needs. The key to this is relationship -- trust, deep knowledge, lots of conversations, face-time, time spent probing, listening, asking "what if". That's what real CRM is about, not databases of historical information.
10. Execution	The modern corporation is like a refinery for small, incremental, insubstantial changes. For substantial changes it is a minefield. Most ideas, including the best and the boldest, get blown up quickly. Execution is about navigating a great idea through the organizational minefield. It takes enormous skill, tact, patience, strong networks and persuasion. Very few have what it takes.

Floozy Speak!

Ramble On: From Biz Ideas to Trends to People and Technology - this is the flooz.

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