Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

Back around November 2009 read an article by Roger Martin promoting his new book, and posted about it here.

The book arrived and I read it some time ago, but some developments more recently prompted me to pick it up again.  Given the reliance our company has on product innovation, it was worth reading (even a 2nd time).

The Book	What we thought
“The Design of Business – Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage” by Roger Martin	Not a large book, but packs a punch

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Noticed this post from Shirlaws echoed through my Twitter account this evening, and it gave me pause for reflection on how far we’ve come in the 18+ months since Shirlaws first started helping us.

It’s a bit of a case of “half full, and half empty” in that we’ve come a long way – but still have so much further to go.

The Shirlaws post is pretty short, but does list the “7 Asset” framework that they use to describe the value of an enterprise.

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Stephen sent me a link to this presentation by Geoffrey Moore at the “Business of Software” conference in 2009.   Thanks for that!

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We were going to attend this conference in 2009, but it clashed with the commencement of our Autopsy 2 process, and as such we had to give it a miss. Geoffrey Moore is a well-known author that I was particularly looking forward to hearing present, and I am happy that this teaser was made available online. Perhaps the 2010 conference (October 4th, 5th and 6th in Boston)?!

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I posted on the main page that we will make the electricity market understandable, across many different locations around the world.

Here are some further details about what we will be like in reaching that “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” (BHAG).

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I posted, early in January, about where our bus is headed (you might refer to this as our Vision).  I have progressively refined this, since then, to improve the clarity of this core message.

For those who are interested, I have also started posting more details about some aspects of this Vision – as falling under any of these core headings.  Posts that have preceded this one are:
1)  I posted about my vision for growing clients (and revenues) 20x.

A key prerequisite for this to happen is that our team of employees also grows (in numbers – but more importantly in competency).

Based on the experience we have gained in the past 10 years, we think that our growth in client numbers can be achieved with an increase in staff numbers of only about 3-4x our current levels.

In “Good to Great”, Jim Collins calls this “getting the right people on the bus” … and then “into the right seats”.

We have some work to do in the next couple of years in this respect, as follows:

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I posted, early in January, about where our bus is headed (you might refer to this as our Vision).  I have progressively refined this, since then, to improve the clarity of this core message.

For those who are interested, I have also started posting more details about some aspects of this Vision – as falling under any of these core headings.  This post provides more details under the first heading.

As part of the navel-gazing we have been doing recently (to coincide with our 10th birthday, which is rapidly approaching) we have been contemplating this question.  For us, there are plenty of opportunities (some mutually exclusive – at least for a company our size).

Being New Year’s Day, I thought it would be of interest to you to post a few comments about where our bus is headed into the future. Call this our very own New Year’s resolution.

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It is a loaded term – it means different things to different people (here’s the Wikipedia reference, for instance).

To me, it seems that there are two competing “innovation camps” which I sum up as follows: read more »

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Here’s an interesting video (runs for an hour) promoting a new book “Glimmer:  How Design Can Transform Your Life, and Maybe Even the World” by Warren Berger (and Bruce Mau).

Seems like an interesting book, so have thrown it in our shopping cart, and will review it sometime in 2010.

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Perhaps more through good luck then good management, in our early days we put together the NEM-Watch product, which tends to be a product that “sells itself” – by generating a form of buzz.

Note that when I speak of buzz here, I do it within the framework of the industry in which we operate, which tends to have a staid image, as I discussed here.   Certainly our successes are not going to make it to the “Top Viral 100” list, if there is such a beast.

As a company with a small team of staff and a large number of clients, and aspirations to grow our number of clients further over the next few years, I have a keen interest in understanding how we can use principles of buzz to assist us in building up the profile of all of our products.

1)  Binary Review

Hence I found this book and excellent read.

The Book	What we thought
“The Anatomy of Buzz” by Emmanuel Rosen	Thought-provoking

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