Category: business foundations

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Overcoming barriers to collaboration

Let’s talk about collaboration and how to avoid obstacles in the way of working together.

The 13 barriers to collaboration in companies, are summarized in:

1. Sense of ownership
2. Lack of trust or respect
3. Culture of internal competition
4. Long-term vision
5. Different and not aligned priorities
6. Everything is confidential
7. Organizational charts hierarchical and compartmentalized
8. Bottlenecks
9. Ego
10. Objectives and variable remuneration
11. Lack of tools
12. We don’t have bridgeheads
13. Too much “ seriousness”

I would only add, in line with the phrase WANTING IS POWER, that values ​​such as EGOISM (I, my, me, with me) must be absent in the DNA of collaboration, where only personal interest is looked at and nothing or little of the collective, and present values ​​such as GENEROSITY AND HEIGHT OF SIGHTS, as explained in the previous post.

COLLABORATION FACTORS

Once the two previous points have been overcome, see that it is a good time to collaborate, and be predisposed to it by breaking down the 13 barriers mentioned, the next step will be to see how to do it successfully. The good practices of cooperation networks show that the success of a cooperation network largely depends on five interrelated factors:

1st. WIN-WIN: BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES must be identified and realized
New business opportunities are the reason why companies join a network. A possible lack of a concrete foundation business model must always be compensated by a clear strategy that leads to business opportunities in the future. In any case, cooperation has to pay off, otherwise companies lose interest soon.

2nd. MANAGEMENT: The MANAGEMENT OF THE NETWORK has to be in place, consistent and trusted
Cooperative networks are lightweight organizations with a small hierarchy and centralized management functions. However, a common understanding of how to handle business as well as conflict situations is crucial for success. Therefore, it is necessary to define the basic functions and establish some rules. Network management also plays a critical role in the initiation process where orientation and training is required before the rules are put into operation.

3rd. COMMITMENT: COMMITMENT must be ensured with active cooperation
The active participation of all participants and the sufficient allocation of resources (time and personnel) are essential for a network, to identify and realize business opportunities. One of the most important aspects that defines commitment is whether the network strategy has been well aligned with the individual strategic objectives of the participating companies. This strategic objective must be secured in the initial phases.

4th. TRUST: TRUST must be developed as the basis for cooperative behavior
Trust has been recognized as an important factor for success in any type of cooperation. How quickly trust develops and spreads depends on the personalities of the people involved and the relationships between them. In any case, companies have to get to know each other and work together in order to build trust. Particularly in the initiation phase, personal interviews and social gatherings facilitate this process. However, networks must not only be based on personal trust, but rules must also be established to institutionalize trust.

5th. TRANSPARENCY: THE EXCHANGE OF INFORMATION has to be intensive and transparent
Open communication is a basic factor in trusting relationships. In the early days of network formation, enough information that they need should be shared among the network of potential members to get to know each other well. The network manager can make a significant contribution to improving the flow of information at this stage. In the next stages, basic IT tools can be used to support this task.

To finish, just a reference to our activity carried out at AIMME for 16 years, always seeking that collaborative spirit with all the agents involved in our technology transfer projects: either we look for the best organizations or companies, or we they bring us closer, it is a two-way path, of the scope:

– ICT OFFER: that they offer a new incipient technology that could represent a significant advance in the competitiveness of the metal companies we serve.

– ICT DEMAND: proposing problems that can be solved by applying a new ICT not yet developed by anyone.

Are you collaborating with us? If so, go thinking about what and we talk, like:

– R & D projects: propose new projects (individual or collective) where we can add value with our complementary know-how to yours.

– Innovative services : propose new services offered by you where we collaborate in the dissemination, and implementation if appropriate.

-Training on the application of new ICT : propose new courses taught by you, we provide everything else (dissemination, classroom, students, etc.).

Please join our directory today.

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How companies grow online without spending money

business growth graphic

With this suggestive headline I refer to two excellent posts that I have read in recent weeks that could well be added in this third party as we are beginning to glimpse the last keys of the NEW ELDORADO , by which the participation of users is automatically in a PORTAL, based on gathering crowds (CROWD) to solve a specific problem of an EMPLOYER, where all parties win (PORTAL-WIN, COMPANY-WIN, CROWD-WIN).

We presented that same idea recently at the SOCOTE Congress organized by the ITIO-DOE-UPV Research Group , through a scientific article published in OTEA: with the purpose of transferring to the companies of our environment the keys so that they can grow alone by Internet without spending money, as Indicates the title of the post, not only about new businesses but also to boost current ones based on incorporating these dynamics into their innovation processes.

That is the basis of the business models that are beginning to flourish in Silicon Valley, within the framework of annual events such as CROWDCONF (in USA-San Francisco and Europe-Berlin, but at the same time, we must observe them with caution, because of the ” Deja Vu ” about “excessive” expectations, so as not to make the same mistakes of 2000 when the PuntoCom bubble burst. These businesses are also starting to flourish in Spain as it collects using collective intelligence.

Say Deja Vu, because it is not sustainable, as shown by a USA foundation repair company in Cleveland, Ohio. Over time new business models based on crowdsourcing where any of the 3 elements is not WIN (NOWIN), in the style:
– PORTAL-NOWIN, COMPANY-WIN, CROWD-WIN: as those based on offering free services to try to get an audience, and payment services (PREMIUM) do not arouse interest.
– PORTAL-WIN, EMPRESA- NOWIN , CROWD-WIN: as those based on exploiting companies in the same sector to force them to reduce their prices based on meeting demand.
– PORTAL-WIN, EMPRESA-WIN, CROWD- NOWIN : as those based on exploiting the crowd in an unethical way to pay only for the best design. There are cracks in the wall.

The first post written by Marta Dominguez, masterfully describes 5 keys that we must not forget if we want a business to grow only through the Internet:

“There is a certainty that uniforms business in Internet and off the Internet: the ideas that propagate win and those that do not go anywhere lose.From there, a digital business has its own key rules.Ignoring the rules of the Internet is like carrying a sailboat without motor When the ship stays in a zone of zero breeze, it does not matter the effort that is invested and the additional resources that are invested: it will remain stagnant while other ships, that have used their machines on board, have found the current of air in favor and sail in the stern.The 5 great rules of the Internet: 

1- Great content
2- Be new all the time
3- Find the tribe or community itself
4- Disruptions that deserve the attention of a headline 
5- Constant adaptation to the new market conditions “

The second post written by Enrique Estellés:

“The correct expression would be do ut des (which would be translated by” I give so that you des “), but the important thing is that both expressions serve to illustrate one of the fundamental bases of crowdsourcing: reciprocity, this reciprocity, defined as” correspondence “. mutuality of one person or thing with another “is based on the fact that any crowdsourcing activity carried out by a crowdworker, where it will bring work, money, knowledge and / or experience, must be rewarded in some way by the crowdsourcer. I indicated in the post about the definition of crowdsourcing, this reward may be economic, social recognition, self-esteem or development of personal abilities. “

makes reference to one of the keys described at the beginning of this post, the RECIPROCITY, that is, WIN-WIN-WIN, as explained in the article that we present in SOCOTE:
– Adequately reward the participation: 90-9 (little) -1 (much).
– All the agents involved must win: WIN (company) -WIN (crowd) -WIN (portal).

As an example, on the debate on whether or not YouTube is Crowdsourcing (extrapolated to the rest of the portals with continuous growth in number of users and content), we provide below our vision obtained through our experience, in case you can throw a little of light on this:

– PORTAL: earns the income of Google Adwords advertisers that overlap ads in the most viewed videos.

– CROWD: is entertained and learns new things for free (in the USA for years there are more searches on YouTube than on GOOGLE, people prefer to tell things to read to learn and learn).

– COMPANY: it publishes its videos there, that is to say it works for Youtube free uploading it and in exchange it obtains:

1) Visualizations of your product / service / brand for free (every day you can see more from the living room at home using a laptop, Netbook, iPad or TV with Internet).

2) You can send a link by email (public or private) to your contacts to see your video, a problem if it takes more than 10MBytes and can not be sent by email because of the limitations of the mail servers.
3) You can insert an embedded video on your website or blog, and other bloggers do the same.

Finally, I do it with a video that magnificently illustrates where good ideas come from, highlighting the two masterful phrases:

  • “A hunch needs to collide with another hunch, through a system that allows these hunches to join and transform into something more great that the sums of the parts “
  • ” The luck favors the connected mind “.