Another Power Law for the collection

It’s Not Easy Being Popular. 77 Percent Of Facebook Fan Pages Have Under 1,000 Fans
Here it is, what's new? Power Law dominates the world of connectivity ( see other entries, I am colecting examples.....)

Dr Leandro Herrero to speak at Imaginatik's Global Forum, February 2010

Dr Leandro Herrero has been invited to provide a keynote speech at Imaginatik's Global Forum in London in 2010.

Entitled "Innovactions Cultures. Viral Innovation and Organisational Transformation: Talk Less, Do More".

Further information will be made available soon.

Dr Leandro Herrero to provide Keynote Speech at Eyeforpharma's 8th Annual SFE Conference in Barcelona, April 2010

Dr Leandro Herrero has once again been invited to provide a keynote speech at eyeforpharma's annual SFE Conference at Hotel Rey Juan Carlos, Barcelona, Spain on 27-29th April 2010. Specifically tailored for the Pharmaceutical Industry, Dr Herrero will provide his presentation entitled: "Viral ChangeTM Inside as overriding core competence: Why speed of business transformation in the era of permanent instability is not negotiable."

If you would like to attend this event, or for further information please go to the following link to view the full brochure http://www.eyeforpharma.com/sales/the-brochure.php

Innovation is a perfect focus for Viral Change- Innovation behaviours Lesson 1

Innovation is a perfect focus for Viral ChangeTM. Defining a relatively small set of ‘innovation behaviours’ that can be copied and spread via a champions community is the fastest way to create a true culture of innovation.

Example: imagine 1000 people systematically asking the question ‘Can it (could it) be done differently? Faster? Cheaper? Better?’ at the end of meetings, at the creation of business plans, at the post-mortem review of projects... Systematically, virally embedded, tipping points created = ‘it is the norm’. A true internal epidemic of curiosity and inquiry. That is an innovation culture.

To look at Google (which I like big time anyway) or 3M as a ‘model of innovation culture’ is plain distraction, very well spread by people who don’t have much to say about innovation...

[Ages ago in my previous life I attended several Business School Executive courses. It was customary at that time to show videos of Saint Jack Welch, then CEO of GE, and hundreds of slides about how clever ABB was . I promised that if I found myself in another forum where Jack Welch was mentioned I would walk out. So I did several times. It seemed to me that the invocation to the Saint was ALL people had to say about managing things properly (and I had lots of question marks on this by the way). Today, many years later, I am about to make the same promise to myself of walking out of innovation conferences/meetings/presentations where 3M-cum-post-Its is brought in. I could be more tolerant with Google since there is a lot to learn and the presenter may, after all, surprise me but please, please, could presenters/speakers/so-called-gurus get at least a bit deeper in the famous example of the 15% or 20% time that those employees enjoy, to ‘their own projects’?? Most people still think that this is ‘the answer to innovation’, without realising how ‘strict’ this rule is to companies that use it... OK, digression as usual, I am coming back.]

A typical ‘lesson 1’ I use in workshops/preparations/uncovering non negotiable behaviours work in the innovation/viral change area is the discussion around the saying ‘When the only thing you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. Seth’s blog post expands it in an interesting angle looking at publishing. As usual, it is difficult to put it better than Seth.
Seth's Blog: Hammer time


PS. My new book ‘Innovactions: escaping the me-too company’ – where I address innovation from the behavioural+viral side - wont be ready until February, sorry!

Almost hilarious comments to the article' Let’s Kill “Viral”: It’s Time For a New Word

Tech Crunch has published an article entitled: Lets kill viral, it is time for a new word

Written by guest post author Adam L. Penenberg, who is the author of the book Viral Loop. Mr Penenbergs complains that his publisher wants to change the title to ‘Share’ because they are worried about the negative connotations of Viral in the context of H1N1 flue or swine flu as we call it ‘over here’.

Probably with good intentions, if naïve, he declares that it is time to kill ‘Viral’ and asks the audience/readership for alternative terms. The comments, long list, are mostly hilarious. Only one or two out of dozens and dozens take him seriously. Most think it is a stupid idea. One comment insinuates how cynical it is to try to kill viral and start a sort of viral campaign to look for an alternative name!

Most of the comments are of the sort ‘mock, tease, ridicule or scoff’ which is what Wikipedia tells me I should write down in politically correct style instead of what I wanted to write down. Here is a very short list of alternatives: fungal, orgasmeme, tidal, spamsplosive, avalanche, H1M1, social loops, wildfire marketing, contagious, sticky, parasitic, or herpetic. And this is a small sample.

I have left a humble comment (un-moderated yet) feeling sorry for him and for the publishers decision which I said it has the solidity of a cream cake. Hey, there is nothing better than ‘viral’ and we at Viral Change (TM) practitioners feel very strongly about or brand! Mmmmm, I think we will stick to Viral .... for a few years. The fact that ‘everybody is using viral’, far from a problem, is... good! But there is only one Viral Change (TM)

A long and winding road to successful change? I think not.

Mahatma Gandhi:

"Your beliefs become your thoughts
Your thoughts become your words
Your words become your actions
Your actions become your habits
Your habits become your values
Your values become your destiny."

Let me begin by saying I am no behavioural expert; I am also considerably better at asking questions than providing answers. This said, based on a quick Google search on the subject, it apparently takes an individual 21- to 30-days to successfully entrench a new habit. It all depends on whether the underlying belief can be successfully changed, as illustrated by the words of Gandhi above. My question is this: how long will it take one Change Champion to successfully influence people, and thereby sustainably entrench change in an organisation?

In theory, if one Champion influences 7/10 connections, and those seven influence 3/5, and those three influence 1/3, then "the total impact is 50 well connected-and-infected people" in a mere 63-days (21+21+21)! And if those 50 have the power to infect 2500 people in 21-days - that's 84-days to successful change for 2500 people! Okay, perhaps a bit of a stretch. However, it is definitely feasible that this many people can successfully change their behaviour in six-months.

Are we being served?

We recently had an accident with our car. It wasn't our fault and the other (somewhat tearful) person accepted liability. It all seemed very straightforward... Until the other driver put in her claim form to her insurers blaming us! Since then we have had tens of phonecalls and emails. To her, her insurers, our insurers, our insurance brokers, the repair garage etc. Two weeks after the accident there is no end in sight.
So why am I telling you this sad and often (I am told) repeated saga?
The communication between all the interested parties has been diabolical. I have received three letters from the insurers and two phone calls. All from different people, in different departments with totally contradictory messages. The insurance broker doesn't fill me with confidence when she says 'don't worry they always do that they are just keeping their options open.' I am particularly annoyed as the broker is supposed to deal with the insurer on my behalf and isn't doing!
It's time for a change. In this situation (fortunately for us no-one was injured) someone needs to take control and handle the transactions. If it has to be me, the customer, then so be it. But let me know and I'll stop paying the broker's commission.
We need to move into a world where teams co-operate across disciplines and companies and where there is a sense of responsibility and care. Top down hierarchical companies are doomed to failure. They do not motivate and energise the people within them and they foster labyrinthine reporting structures.

Another Power Law: Twitter this time

Another Power Law for 'the collection' mentioned in a previous post. This is not surprising but, again, both remembering this pattern for anything to do with connectivity. Impossible to ignore when referring to organisations. 'The Power Law inside' is obvious and so relevant to Viral Change (TM). But this is the summary of the study:

"Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production. To put Twitter in perspective, consider an unlikely analogue - Wikipedia. There, the top 15% of the most prolific editors account for 90% of Wikipedia's edits ii. In other words, the pattern of contributions on Twitter is more concentrated among the few top users than is the case on Wikipedia, even though Wikipedia is clearly not a communications tool."

The Power Law of Viral Change (TM) is also the Power Law of 'Facebook distance' and 'email distance'. Wonderful data!

One of the key components of the Viral Change™ maths is the Power Law that governs most of the connectedness phenomena seeing in organisations, external social networks, electronic networks, the long tail economy, the web etc. As stated in the Viral Change™ book that means that a small group of individuals within the organisation are going to be relatively well connected whilst the majority (long tail) are not. For social influence, ditto.

Head and tail are powerful economic models as well. Amazon is a head and tail economy. It sells thousands of copies of Harry Potter as well as 4 copies of Pottery in Cumbria (bought by the girlfriend of the author, the author himself and two relatives). It makes money in both. My local village bookshop is definitely a head economy in the shelves: only Harries and the like can be afforded space (although his computer can access the long tail in the distributor). Obama campaign as mainly tail economy: millions of $10 donations vs the head economy of few $100 million. He was also viral:’ a family at a time, a person at a time’. Power laws explain blog life: a few well connected and reads, most poorly connected and read by few. Our change champions model entails the use of the ‘few well connected’ to spread new behaviours through their (powerful) social networks, creating critical masses of ‘new routines’.

Whilst anybody with a background in maths/physics/computer sciences etc would see the Power Law/logarithmic distribution as obvious as breakfast cereals, many people are hooked into the Bell curve/normal distribution as the one should be expected to find ‘everywhere’ (well publicised by the distribution of IQ (intelligence) where by design ‘100’ is the norm.

Due to the importance of understanding the Power Law of connectivity and influence, I am always collecting ‘powerful’ examples of power law distributions that may come in front of our noses as a way to illustrate: you see, influence/connectivity works the same way. This is why I was delighted to find in my scrolling ‘Google Fast Flip’ two wonderful examples

Summary: Experimenters studied data from 100,000 participants that were both Facebook users and email users. They found that most Facebook users' friends are within several miles of their location. They also found that emailing followed the same pattern: 41% of the emails that participants sent were within their own city.

('Most people use the web to talk to people nearby' Fast Company, 26 October 2009) )

Wonderful!

Simultaneous translators virally infected

Just back for a three days Change Champions Conference with a client in Italy. All work in Italian. Great simultaneous translation. At the end of the last workshop the translators approached me: we are infected, we will spread the word; we feel we know it ‘all’.

What a wonderful feeling of ‘infecting’ people who are not close to the real day to day work of change!

Viral change is viral. Not a discovery I know, but worth noticing!

Homo Imitans

This is an interesting piece that refers amongst other things to the study on obesity as a form of social copying. I use this data all the time in my Viral Change presentations to highlight the real social switch of the century: Homo Sapiens to Homo Imitans

Book Review - 'Connected,' by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler - Review - NYTimes.com

IDEAS ROMPEDORAS: LAS REGLAS DEL CAMBIO VIRAL PARA TRANSFORMAR OR GANIZACIONES: en su libreria Casa del Libro

'Disruptive Ideas' in Spanish is here

IDEAS ROMPEDORAS: LAS REGLAS DEL CAMBIO VIRAL PARA TRANSFORMAR OR GANIZACIONES: en su libreria Casa del Libro

Key Viral Change(TM) Principles - another summary!

1. There is no change unless it is behavioural

2. Change behaviours; get culture; not the other way around

3. Behaviours sustain processes, not the other way around

4. A small set of behaviours has the ‘non-linear’ power to create high impact

5. A relatively small number of individuals within any organisation have great power in the creation of change. This power is related to various factors such as high connectivity with others, high trust, or moral, non-hierarchical authority

6. Behaviours endorsed and spread by that small group of individuals within an organisation (‘champions’) create ‘social tipping points’ where those new behaviours become established as a norm. ‘Critical masses’ of individuals adopting those new behaviours are created via imitation and social copying in similar ways as trends or fashions are created in the macro-social arena

7. The role of the formal hierarchy, management and leadership, is to support those small groups of highly influential employees who ‘infect’ the organisation with the changes they have endorsed. It is therefore a role largely back-staged or ‘invisible’

8. Peer to peer viral change works better when is spread informally (but orchestrated; we call it a process of ‘designed informality’). Viral Change must not be a formally labelled ‘Change Management Programme’

9. Viral change is neither top-down nor strictly speaking bottom-up, but multi-centric and distributed across the organisation.

10. Stories are the best currency of change. Story-capturing and story-telling is key to viral change.

11. Viral Change distinguishes itself from simple ‘viral communications’ since it goes beyond ‘information cascades’ to engage people in mutual commitment to action. In other words, endorsement of the need for change and its communication (‘activism’) is necessary but not sufficient for Viral Change™. Mutual commitment and action (‘activism’) is required.

12. Viral change as a methodology consists on the tailored combination of activities or interventions around the previous principles which create faster and more sustainable change. In a nutshell it entails (a) the uncovering and articulation of a small set of (‘non negotiable’) behaviours to sustain the change goals, (b) the identification of and reaching out to a small number of well connected and influencing employees, (c) the ongoing coaching and support to that community of champions and (d) the capturing of changes and tracking of progress via stories and other means

13. The leaders of the process (internal project team and external Viral Change consultants in whatever combination) work directly with (a) the leadership of the organisation, (b) the community of champions, (c) the supporting functions such as HR or OD or IT

14. In the digital era, Viral Change is greatly supported by a dedicated IT infrastructure such as the ones provided by the Web 2.0/Enterprise 2.0, for example, internal social networking, collaborative software, IM/blogging/real time input (twitter). The existence of these digital platforms in organisations is a bonus but not a condition sine qua non for Viral Change to work

15. Viral Change™ has been pioneered by The Chalfont Project as a way to create fast and sustainable change in organizations whether business, public or private sectors. Its principles also apply to the macro-social arena

New Viral Change short summary

Many people has asked for a short(er) text to summarise the Viral Change philosophy. Here is one:


Viral Change™


Decades of mechanistic ‘change management programmes’ in organisations, based upon the sequential following of ‘step’s and ‘initiatives’ have not accrued much success. The rate of failures or ‘below expectations’ results is high across industries. There are many reasons that explain this but the conventional assumption that it is mainly due to lack of strategy doesn’t hold water. Besides the standard logic of the need for leadership, three factors are key for the success of change in organisations

One is that change is behavioural based. There is effectively no change unless it is a change in behaviours. Process and system change, or structural change, are usually the easy part. The key is to ensure that people, from top to bottom, do things in a different way.

The second factor is the choice of influence mechanisms. Whilst top management hold the hierarchical power, this does nor necessarily correlates with degree of influence in making changes for the ‘new ways of doing’. Peer to peer influence is far more powerful and sustainable.

The third factor is conceptual. The real organisation is not the ‘plumbing system’ represented by the organisation chart but a series of overlapping collaborative spaces, networks of individual and group connections, some of them visible, most of them invisible to the management activity. In this network of connections, a relatively small number of individuals hold a disproportionate high number of connections, and therefore influence potential, whilst the majority of individuals have few connections.

However, many traditional change management processes are neither behavioural based nor using peer to peer influence enough, if at all. They also are biased towards the top-down hierarchical organisation where the only clusters of connections that count are the visible ‘collaboration by design’ of teams and committees. The flattening of the organisation or the abandoning of the command and control language is not guarantee of true shift in the mental model.

Viral Change™ is the only alternative to the traditional, mechanistic, process driven, top down change management. It delivers sustainable change faster; it is a far less painful process and is by far more cost-effective.

In the traditional models of ‘change management’, a set of initiatives (usually many of them) are cascaded down form the top of the organisation and communicated to all employees via massive communication programmes. All layers of management are involved and the higher ranks ‘communicate’ and ‘present’ to lower ones in an orchestrated communication cascade. Workshops take place, actions are decided and implementations are expected following what amounts to an often colossal effort of rational appeal: ‘B is better that A, we should go B, this is how’. It all makes sense in the context of an organisation understood, consciously or unconsciously, as a top-down designed system with visible ‘communication pipes’ and ‘recipients’ of the information. Unfortunately, change that has this model embedded doesn’t work well at all.

In Viral Change™, a small set of behaviours is spread by a relatively small number of individuals (those with higher connectivity) via their own networks of influence in the same way as a virus spread or ideas are adopted in the form of fashions or new social norms. Those non-negotiable behaviours are ‘uncovered’ case by case as the ones which will be needed to support the desired changes: cultural change, effectiveness goals, redesign of working processes etc. In Viral Change™ mode, that small percentage of influencing individuals is the true engine of change. They do not correlate with positions of management and usually you find them across all layers and ‘job descriptions’ within the organisation.

Whilst the spread of factual information (‘These are the 5 goals of the strategic plan’) sits well in formal communication channels, the spread of behaviours doesn’t happen via stacks of Powerpoints. Behaviours are imitated, consciously or unconsciously. Once the initial spread and imitation has taken place via the small community of people with high degree of connectivity and influence, other people follow and adopt, suddenly creating organisational tipping points when ‘the new way becomes the norm’. Social fashions follow the same mechanism – there is no top level command an control that dictates them. In Viral Change™, the terminology of ‘let’s make a,b,c within the company fashionable’ is used normally. Viral Change™ is truly about creating ‘an internal epidemic of X’, ‘a (social) infection’.

An additional factor that contributes to the highly effective and successful Viral Change™ is the use of stories. Stories travel extraordinarily well within the organisation, carrying ‘behavioural models’ in them. Stories are the real currency of Viral Change™.

The viral spread of new behaviours that create the new ways of working, a new culture or a radical improvement in productivity, for example, is magnified if the process is relatively silent. Viral Change™ is not another form of programme but a system of engineered informality where the focus of attention and energy is on the peer-to-peer spread and infection.

Viral Change™ inevitably challenges traditional assumptions such as the role of management and leadership, which for Viral Change™ to work requires a greater form of ‘back-stage’ in the form of support and facilitation of the work of the ‘highly connected’. These individuals are usually called ‘change champions’ – however the existence of the ‘change champions’ terminology in a given organisation doesn’t make it per se a Viral Change™ way of life.

Viral Change™ has been pioneered by The Chalfont Project, an organisational consulting group led by Dr Leandro Herrero, author of the book of the same title, now in its second edition[1] .Additional insights can be found in www.viralchange.net and www.thechalfontproject.com

Contact +44 1494 73099 or ukoffice@thechalfontpeoject.com
[1]

Innovactions changes behaviours into continuing innovation

London – July21, 2009 - Innovation is back on the radar in many organizations, driven in part by recent movements such as ‘crowdsourcing’, open innovation and the wikinomic world. Interesting is that a lot of airtime is given to ‘processes for innovation’, which are focused on generating and capturing so-called ‘innovative ideas’.

In Innovactions, Leandro Herrero explains that capturing those ideas will only take your organization so far. “Processes and skills are indeed valuable,” he admits, “but creating an environment that is wide open to inquiry, curiosity and perpetual re-invention will ensure that innovation is no longer a word in your organization, but a behaviour. And not just any behaviour, but one that will lead your company to flourish.”

In this new book, the author focuses on analyzing the components that are needed to create a culture of innovation, with a heavy emphasis on what people do (or don’t do) to achieve (or miss) a goal. These innovative behaviours the author describes as ‘disruptive’, following the thread in his previous book Disruptive Ideas.

Debunking the myth that the capacity to innovate is allegedly connected to the size of the organization or the type of industry, Innovactions will appeal to any manager and leader interested in creating the socio-environmental conditions for innovation within their company. The simple management tools provided by the book will help them create a culture in which different forms and degrees of innovation can co-exist and flourish.

Leandro Herrero was a practicing psychiatrist for many years before holding senior leadership positions in top league business organizations. He is currently CEO of The Chalfont Project Ltd, an international group of organizational consultants, which he co-founded. His previous books include The Leader with Seven Faces, Viral Change, New Leaders Wanted – Now Hiring! and Disruptive Ideas, also published by meetingminds.

Innovactions - Escape from the me-too company
meetingminds, October 2009
£20.00/US $29.00 - Paperback, 200 pages
ISBN: 978-1-905776-06-1
Available to pre-order at: www.waterstones.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, www.amazon.co.uk, www.amazon.com, www.meetingminds.com and many other (online) bookshops and outlets.

The Viral Change Partnership - A call to join a start up – could you help us to find the right people?

The Chalfont Project carves out Viral Change™ creating a separate dedicated LLP company. The timetable for the start up has started

Having pioneered Viral Change™ and created substantial market presence and implementation experience (www.viralchange.net) we have taken the decision within The Chalfont Project (www.thechalfontproject.com ) to create a new company exclusively dedicated to the expansion of Viral Change™ across industries and geographies.

The new company will be de facto a start up in the form of an LLP (Limited Liability Partnership) The majority partner will be The Chalfont Project but we are looking for a very small number of exceptional start up partners who can see this unique opportunity and are willing to take over our Viral Change™ IP assets, develop them, create business and share risk and profits with the rest of the partners.

Partners will be full time dedicated to The Viral Change Partnership LLP and will be directly responsible for its revenue growth, owning part of the new company in terms agreed in accordance with their contributions. If you know of anybody who is an exceptional professional with sufficient experience and gravitas to become a partner, please forward this email and ask him/her to get in touch with me at leandro-herrero@thechalfontproject.com so that I can share a more detailed information blueprint.

In parallel to this search for exceptional partners, The Viral Change Partnership will be setting up a selected number of associations with individuals or organisations which could not fit the exclusive time commitment but who however wish to establish a close and formal relationship with us. Please feel free to share this call as well with who may be interested

From Penny Power, founder of ecademy

Penny Power [ 25-May-09 8:47pm ] On 22nd May 2009 I shared the stage with Dr Herrero, I followed his talk. It was the most inspiring talk I have heard. his understanding of the new world and the need for mass behavioral change was articulated at a level that moved minds in the room. The time is now for Dr.Herrero, he is the perfect messenger for the people who fully understand what is actually happening in the Social Networking world. I feel honored to know him and hope that one day he will speak for us at our London Event.

Organisational Change: New Approaches and Role of CEOs

An old review of Viral Change now found! The book is reviewed together with Lynda Grayton's Hot Spots in the context of MBA materials
Organisational Change: New Approaches and Role of CEOs

From my presentation at CIB

Wonderful people at the CIB conference, a professional body of internal (external) communicators

Dr Leandro Herrero says viral change is infectious

CIPR Inside event an evening with Viral Change author Leandro Herrero

Se Lee's Smith call to this meeting
Deliggted to be back to CIPR
Leandro
Talking Internal Communication...: Free CIPR Inside event an evening with Viral Change author Leandro Herrero

Viral Change and internal social networks

An article by Computing guru David Tebbutt

Social computing - start small, think big - Networks - Breaking Business and Technology News at silicon.com

Most people have an opinion about social computing - a term I use to refer to social networking as well as web 2.0 communication tools such as blogging and wikis. 'Dangerous', 'liberating' and 'time-wasting' are three of the most common reactions to using these technologies within businesses.
The problem with such blanket reactions is that they inhibit adoption. If the boss says a technology is a waste of people's time, IT has no choice but to disregard it. Unfortunately, users that want it have no such inhibitions. They will still find ways of introducing it, usually by subscribing to web-based third-party services which cheerfully tunnel through the firewall.
It's better by far for management to give the green light to social computing in principle, allowing IT to exercise a measure of control over the proceedings and, perhaps, limiting its use to certain members of staff.
The main issue behind the decision to adopt social computing techs is that of command-and-control versus self-organisation. And hidden behind this is the issue of trust.
The workforce and management are moving from command-and-control to self-organisation at different speeds and it will be a source of tension for many years to come. Wholesale change will, in the main, come about slowly. Some say 10 years, some say 50. This week I even heard a podcast in which one pundit - Euan Semple - said it could take as long as a 100 years for the transition to be complete.
Social computing is not just an IT issue, though - it's a behavioural issue as well. If a company decides at a high level that some kind of collaborative computing is required, then certain people within the organisation will respond positively to this. As they infect others, so the culture will shift as a result.
This reminds me of a book called Viral Change, in which author Dr Leandro Herrero explains how ideas spread within organisations - and, more importantly, how to make them spread rapidly. Because he has a background in psychiatry and business management, he focuses more on human processes than any IT that underpins them. Yet the book resonates well with social computing, although it owes little, if anything, to the subject.
Herrero presents the idea that it is a small minority of people who bring about change and innovation in organisations. These individuals discuss and champion new behaviours - the only things which actually result in new organisational outputs. These people need to walk the talk as well, otherwise others have no behaviours to mimic. They also engage with visible sceptics - if they get them to change, then it gives permission to all their followers to change as well.

Continue reading the rest of the article

I'll be in Princeton, NJ, 2-5 May

I'll be in Princeton. NJ, 2-5 May .... (if you are around?)

Dr Herrero Keynote Speaker at Sales Force Effectiveness Summit, USA May 4th-5th, 2009
Leandro

30 little, effective explosions

See what Jack Vinson makes of DISRUPTIVE IDEAS. Thanks Jack

30 little, effective explosions - Knowledge Jolt with Jack

Imagine having your pick of 30 different fireworks. Each has its own effects, but taken in combinations, they can really light up the sky. That's the idea behind Leandro Herrero's Disruptive Ideas - 10+10+10=1000: the maths of Viral Change that transform organisations, a how-to follow-on to Viral Change. There is a book website where most of the book contents are posted, and readers are encouraged to comment. I was sent a review copy last year and have finally gotten around to it.
What makes a disruptive idea? It's something that changes the way the business runs, and it's something that can be started easily and create a wildfire of change (viral) through the organization. It is definitely NOT something that requires a large implementation. Each idea is described through stories around how the idea might impact an organization. Herrero often touches upon popular management literature and turns it around with suggestions like "talk the walk" instead of the usual "walk the talk."

Read the rest here: http://blog.jackvinson.com/archives/2009/04/07/30_little_effective_explosions.html

Gary Hamel on Managing Generation Y - the Facebook Generation - Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 - WSJ

Gary Hamel on Managing Generation Y - the Facebook Generation - Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 - WSJ


See this post. The question of how Generation F (or others for that matter) have social-interaction expectations is important when crafting Viral Change™ programmes. See also McAfee’s comments. This conversation is worth following for anybody interested in Viral Change™

Ideas Rompedoras is Disruptive Ideas in Spanish. To be published soon

We Urano will publish the book in Spanish in June 09

My favourite G20 picture: one at a time ( = Viral)

Can’t remember any other time when anybody being pictured arriving to 10 Downing street, official residence of British Prime Ministers, was done so shaking hands with the policemen at the door. It may have happened but haven’t seen it.... Here you have it now. This is the best of G20, believe me. Obama gets it. Obama is viral in nature – here my Viral Change™ interest. In his presidential routes he promised to people A, and B and C ... and then added, ‘whatever it takes, on a person at a time, one family at a time’. Contrast this with our management practices. When was the last time you heard ‘an employee at a time, an individual at a time’? We go for everybody, everywhere in those massive change management or communication programmes, the antithesis of Viral Change™. Viral Change is indeed one-at-at-time change.... Role modelling provided by Change Champions... One generates three, generates 5 etc. It is viral influence. It is this handshake of the picture.

A wealth of ideas on innovation

Working on my new book INNOVACTIONS and multiples innovation workshops and recent consultng work, I have reviewed and used Jeff Jarvis book. Excellent source of ideas and challenges of business models. Not the usual business book bought in airports and quitely left behind on the plane

Dr Leandro Herrero will run an ‘Innovactions’ Workshop at the eyeforpharma conference in Barcelona on the 3rd of March 2009

Dr Leandro Herrero will run the following workshop on the 3rd of March 2009 in Barcelona, at the eyeforpharma conference ‘Sales Force Effectiveness 2009’ (Europe).

Innovactions: last person leaving the me-too company, please switch off the lights!

• Creating an innovation fabric by identifying innovation behaviours
• Re-designing ‘structures’ with focus on innovation
• Killing process that prevent innovation
• New skills for a non-me-too company: the new people you need and where to find them
• Continuous improvement is prolonged agony: creating transformation now
• How a new pharma company is possible now, and how to build one.
  

Innovactions is a new book by Dr Leandro Herrero to be published in 2009 by meetingminds (www.meetingminds.com)

Eyeforpharma is a leading provider of strategic information for pharmaceutical companies and the organiser of annual conferences such as this one entitled ‘Sales Force Effectiveness 2009’ (Europe)

Dr Leandro Herrero to deliver a key note address at the eyeforpharma conference in Barcelona on the 3rd March 2009

Dr Leandro Herrero will deliver a key note address at the eyeforpharma conference ‘Sales Force Effectiveness 2009’ in Barcelona on the 3rd March 2009. Under the title ‘Viral, beta and long tail: how to invent the nee pharma company’ , Dr Herrero will address the challenges which pharmaceutical companies face to differentiate themselves. The key points for this presentation are:

• Viral, beta and long tail: inventing the new pharma company
• Experimenting with business models and living with several coexisting ones
• Neither top-down, nor flat: viral centres of leadership and collective imagination
• The revenge of the niches
• The long tile of people inside, its HR nightmare, and the (almost) end of the internal ladder
• Non-negotiable core: all the rest in beta mode

Eyeforpharma is a leading provider of strategic information for pharmaceutical companies and the organiser of annual conferences such as this one entitled ‘Sales Force Effectiveness 2009’ (Europe)