Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

“The notion of saying, ‘What’s the ROI of social media?’ is, at its broadest sense the right notion. But it’s the wrong question. You may as well ask what the ROI of putting your pants on every day is. You know there’s a value to it, but it’s hard to measure. It’s about what specific objectives we’re setting out, how we measure against those objectives, and how those all lead to a better reputation for the company, increasing market share, increasing excitement about the brand.”

Scott Monty, head of social media at Ford, in an interview with Marketing Magnified eJournal, August 2010

If these [new] technologies weren’t taken to market, their owners may never have found that better use,” Chesbrough writes in an e-mail. “Innovators need to learn how to play poker in pursuing these technologies, rather than playing chess, where the objectives and possibilities are clearly defined at the outset.”

Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Center for Open Innovation at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business

2) “How Blogging Can Help You Get a New Job” – The Wall Street Journal

Corporate recruiters have long surfed the Web to vet potential hires, but now they are also surfing blogs to unearth job candidates, expanding their talent pool and gaining insights they say they can’t get from résumés and interviews.

PR Blogger Kevin Duggan is quoted in the article. He says that his blog generates “about one job lead a month”. 

Blogging still plays a minor role for PR hiring practices in Canada. But the importance is growing. Blogging can definitely help people get a new PR job here, too. Just ask Chris Clarke or Michael O’Connor-Clarke or Tamera Kremer of Thornley Fallis.

“Innovation seems to be rediscovered in each managerial generation (about every six years) as a fundamental way to enable new growth. But each generation seems to have forgotten or never learned the mistakes of the past, so we see classic traps repeated over and over again. Some of these repeat offenders include burying innovation teams under too much bureaucracy, treating the innovators as more valued corporate citizens than those who work in the current business, and hiring leaders who don’t have the relationship and communications skills necessary to foster innovation.”

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ernest L. Arbuckle Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School in Lessons Not Learned About Innovation, an interview by Harvard Business School Working Knowledge for Business Leaders

Professor Kanter’s article on her research, Innovation: The Classic Traps, can be bought here.

-Telegraph Blogs: Blogging for Britain – Trying to create the biggest metablog of all time:

Yes, it [is] the One Day in History when the National Trust, English Heritage
and other charities, all supported by the Telegraph, want people to
record their impressions of this otherwise ordinary day and send it as a
blog to them at http://www.historymatters.org/.

Ben Fenton, Telegraph.co.uk

My interest in satellite radio is strong. I tired of listening to MP3 files downloaded from Kazaa long before the industry shut the system down; I concluded that having my own library was very nice, but I still needed some surprises, and satellite radio promised me a range of music that keeps introducing me to new artists as well as old ones I’d forgotten. I get much more satisfaction from satellite radio than from my MP3 collection. So a combination of radio and MP3 player sounds like a good idea…

Jack Kapica, Globeandmail.com: Satellite Radio Revisited, Oct 2, 2006

I agree with Jack. Mark Evans recently mused about the advantages of iPods over satellite radio in the car, and I’ve been exchanging comments with Rob Hyndman who thinks that iPod entertainment rules supreme. In my comments I argued along the same line as Jack in his article, although I’d say my satisfaction rate for satellite radio and mp3 is about the same. I love iPods/mp3 players but they are ultra-convenient storage devices, which is not the same as radio – even if you can download podcasts and music onto them. It’s not better or worse, it is different.

My prediction: in the car, the iPod will make the CD player (and DVD player) extinct. The CD did it to the tape which did it to the 8-track. Satellite radio has the potential to do the same to FM radio, which (almost) killed AM.

Today, many car manufacturers are installing iPod/mp3 connectors. But many are also installing satellite radio in new cars. I think there are enough people who are willing to pay for the convenience of being entertained without downloading content first. It may change in the future but I think this convenience factor still has a lot of mass market appeal.

Overall the iPod/mp3 vs. satellite radio debate reminds me a bit of the “bricks and mortar will die” discussions during the early e-commerce years. It isn’t always black and white; there is room for growth for both satellite radio and iPods/mp3 players. Like Jack, I think that a combination of satellite radio and mp3 player is a good idea.

[Full disclosure: No High Road client involved, I just personally like satellite radio (and iPods/mp3 players)]

- Why (most) training is useless

- Tips on managing people

His blog and more articles can be found here.

I found David Maister’s articles by reading a new blog called Managing the Professional Services Firm by Australian consultant Jim Belshaw. It features good insights on training and recruitment.