Business Decisions

Steve Jobs fired the latest salvo in the ongoing Apple-Adobe spat today, with his "Thoughts on Flash" posted on the Apple site. In short, he says that Adobe looking out just for its own interests in drawing developers to its "100% proprietary" Flash ecosystem while Apple supports a great, open standards-based world. But just as we pointed out a couple of weeks ago when Apple moved to block cross-platform development tools, regardless of what Apple says, its interest is locking developers into its Apple-controlled and dominated ecosystem. Nearly every accusation Jobs levels at Adobe and its products can be made about Apple and the way it seeks to control iPhone app development. Jobs brings up Apple's support for open Web standards, but that's really little more than a red herring to distract attention from how Apple wants to lock down developers into its own ecosystem. Jobs makes it clear that he has no interest in developers using any platform apart from the iPhone, and any tool that helps them do so is worthy of his scorn. So for him to talk about supporting Web standards -- with the point being that they're standards, available across platforms -- is disingenuous when Apple's strategy for apps is guilty of pretty much everything he accuses Adobe of. None of this, on a strategic level, is particularly reprehensible, they're just business decisions (even if we don't agree with the approach). But Apple's apparent insistence on playing by a different set of rules to everyone else, and the hot air that accompanies it, grates just a little bit.

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Got an Exit Strategy? Lessons From Foursquare and Yahoo —

Last week when it was reported that Foursquare was considering a sale to Yahoo, there were a flurry of posts with analysis and advice on whether or not Foursquare founders should sell or not, and if they would be wise to sell to Yahoo or not.

The debate about the future of Foursquare and questions about the potential profitability of location-based social networking aside, the buzz about Foursquare and Yahoo should serve as a reminder to startups about the importance of having an exit strategy.

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Even if you have founded your dream company and can't imagine doing anything else, having an exit strategy established will help you make good business decisions. Knowing how and when you plan to exit - whether it's "soon" or "at retirement" - can help you shape the direction for your company's growth. Furthermore, most outside investors will want to know your exit strategy plans so they can anticipate how and when they can realize a return on their investment.

The most common exit strategies are:

• Initial Public Offering (IPO)


• Merger & Acquisition (M&A)


• Selling to another individual


• Liquidating and closing

While the idea of an exit strategy might sound negative, crafting one can help you plan how to make the most out of a good situation, not simply escape a bad one. But as the comments on the TechCrunch post on the potential Foursquare sale indicate, there is little consensus on what constitutes "a good situation," good timing, or a good exit strategy.

Some may frown on all this emphasis placed on exit strategies, arguing that you'll never build an empire by always having an eye out for the exit. But whether you want to quickly move on to pursue your next great startup idea or whether you stay with a business for the long-term, it is important to think about your next steps and to have a succession plan - for you and for your business. As bplans.com founder Tim Berry notes, "every entrepreneur eventually needs an exit." .

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How Companies are Using Social Media to Make Better Decisions —

Mat Fogarty is the Founder and CEO of Crowdcast, a leading provider of collective intelligence and prediction market solutions.  You can read more of Mat’s posts on the Crowdcast blog or follow @crowdcastinc.

Collaboration and crowdsourcing are the realities of today’s public Internet, and the trend is now gaining real traction in the workplace.  Smart companies increasingly understand that their richest source of insight, ideas, data, and information is within their own employees. They are the ones whose talent, work, and daily interactions with the product make the business what it is.

Just as so many of us look to the Yelp community to figure out where to make our dinner reservations, companies are increasingly looking to the employee crowd for the knowledge and insight to make better business decisions.

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Enterprise Social Networks

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“If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive.” – Lew Platt, Former CEO of HP

As the social enterprise builds momentum, the big question is: How will companies effectively tap the employee crowd to become more productive?  

Enterprise social networks arm companies with social media functionality, allowing them to collaborate with their employees around up-to-the-minute information. Late last year, Salesforce stirred up some buzz around enterprise social networking with the announcement of its Chatter Collaboration Platform.  Currently in beta, Chatter aims to bring together elements of Facebook, Twitter and other real-time services. By integrating profiles, feeds and groups across its platform, Salesforce offers its end users the same functionality they already use to share ideas and information on public social networks. 

While social networking functionality excels at connecting teams around projects, information, and qualitative data, it falls short in its ability to drive quantitative, actionable insights — the holy grail for project managers and enterprise forecasting groups.

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Prediction Markets

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Prediction markets are all about tapping the crowd to source hard, unbiased quantitative metrics about the future of projects and business initiatives.  A prediction market works like a stock market of sorts, allowing employees to anonymously place “bets” on key forecasts: When will the product really ship? How much will we sell in Q1? Will our competitor enter the market in 2010? And so forth.

Business leaders rely on metrics and data to inform decisions around new products and opportunities, but traditional forecasting methods suffer from bias and lack of first-hand information. That’s why business forecasting is an ideal target for the application of crowd wisdom.  While bets are made anonymously, some prediction market software applications have built-in reward systems for accurate forecasters. And the accuracy of prediction markets over traditional forecasting methods is proven again and again.  

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Crowdsourcing the Next Big Idea

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There’s a good chance that a company’s next big idea could be hidden within the people who are most engaged with its product and brand. More companies are turning to the crowd for ideas on all aspects of their business by creating online public forums. In 2008, Starbucks launched a major initiative to enhance their services with a website called My Starbucks Idea that polls members on decisions that would most directly impact them.

This kind of innovation sourcing applies to the enterprise as well.  Companies like Brightidea and InnoCentive are helping their customers tap resources to inspire, gather, and manage ideas and innovation from within their employee ranks. 

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The Future

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As collaborative technologies gain traction, the future of enterprise will include internal social networks, prediction markets, and idea management platforms.  In this vision, social networks will be the default location for a collaborative employee community. Think of it as a wide and deep pool of employee knowledge and ideas.

Prediction markets will then aggregate this knowledge to produce actionable, people-powered forecasts. The result is an ultra-rich information source that will lay the foundation for smarter, better-informed company decisions. We are already seeing the first movement towards this integrated vision with products like 12sprints from SAP.

The ability to manage and profit from employee knowledge through social networks, idea funnels, and prediction markets will be the defining competitive advantage for this decade.  Employees will have a voice and enterprises will truly leverage their most valuable assets.

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More business resources from Mashable:

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- 3 Crisis Survival Lessons for the Social Media Age
- 5 Ways to Avoid Sabotaging Your Personal Brand Online
- 4 Elements of a Successful Business Web Presence
- HOW TO: Implement a Social Media Business Strategy
- Google Buzz: 5 Opportunities for Small Businesses

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, alexsl

Tags: business, crowdsourcing, enterprise, facebook, small business, social media, social networks, twitter

In Fortune Magazine’s annual ranking of “most admired companies”, Apple has once again walked away with the top spot. Apple was voted #1 for the third year in a row in a poll of executives, industry analysts and company directors. This year, Apple actually took pole position by its widest margin ever.

Other companies that ranked high on Fortune’s list include Google at #2 and Amazon.com at #5.

Check out this video from Fortune that explains a little more about the process and provides some insights into why certain companies are so admired:

Consumer and business trust, strong customer loyalty and the ability to transform new markets are all reasons that Apple was voted “most admired.” Apple easily topped the survey by scoring 51% of the vote.

Because this survey was taken before Apple filed suit against HTC, its recent legal actions obviously weren’t taken into consideration.

Apple, Google and Amazon.com all represent strong brands and strong feelings of loyalty amongst customers — plus good business decisions and balances sheets that appeal to investors.

Tags: amazon.com, apple, branding, Google, most admired companies