Subtraction.com: A Good Day’s Busy Work Quote: … Apparently, it means a compulsive dedication to what essentially amounts to busy work: checking in with your followers or friends repeatedly and often, authoring bursts of quasi-communiqués at all hours of the day, continually updating your statuses, tending a limitless onslaught of friend requests, managing an unyielding firehose of housekeeping tasks. It just means spending a lot of time just wasting time. And not just that, but it also means creating all of this busy work for other people, too; creating or updating or inputting more stuff for everyone to read — or more accurately, for everyone to feel they have to keep up with. We’re all blindsiding ourselves and one another with trivial obligations. (categories: twittercommunicationcultureproductivity )
The Old Solutions Have Become the New Problems – BusinessWeek Some interesting rules that may relate to social business software: No. 1: Race to I-Space: Business is no longer just about the product. Now it’s about solutions for the individual. Economic value is hidden in consumers’ unmet needs and is released by providing people with the means to fulfill those needs. New Rule No. 2: Advocate, Don’t Alienate. "Who are you? What do you need? How can I help?" This creates a dynamic of advocacy and mutual accountability. The more trust you build, the more value you release, and the more wealth you create. New Rule No. 3: Collaborate and Federate to Compete. When you’re in I-Space, you need to collaborate and federate to provide the support individuals need. You can’t do it alone because the needs of individuals don’t conform to existing organizational and industry boundaries. This means learning how to manage what you don’t control or own. These economies of trust are becoming even more important than economies of scale. (categories: businessinnovationeconomyharvardcollaborationmanagement )