{"id":15757,"date":"2013-09-15T12:08:24","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T19:08:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.web-strategist.com\/blog\/?p=15757"},"modified":"2013-09-16T07:21:59","modified_gmt":"2013-09-16T14:21:59","slug":"meet-the-resilient-corporations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/15\/meet-the-resilient-corporations\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Resilient Corporations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bamboo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(Read part one, Meet the Empowered People<\/a>, in this two-part series.)<\/em><\/p>\n

What’s a Resilient Corporation?<\/p>\n

It’s one that minimizes risk, moves quicker, and can grow faster than others.<\/p>\n

You may be asking, “How can corporations reduce risk, move quickly, and scale at the same time?” \u00a0I’ll be glad to answer that.<\/p>\n

With the acceleration of market changes from social media, new technologies, and increased competition, old-school corporations are at risk of becoming brittle and fragile. \u00a0 Traditionally-operated companies must establish resiliency by adapting to new models emerging in the marketplace. \u00a0To find inspiration from a resilient species, we should look at bamboo<\/a>\u00a0which is rapidly growing, able to withstand changing weather patterns, and adaptable to many environments. \u00a0Like bamboo, corporations must similarly adapt new modus operandi in order to remain in the mainstream of our rapidly changing business ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Resilient Companies Do Three Things: <\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Corporations, in their own essence, are collectives which are designed to reduce the risk of the individual. \u00a0The same principles that brought companies together can now be extended to the community, crowd, and marketplace that exist beyond employees and partners. \u00a0Corporations that tap into their own crowd the empowered people stand to gain in three distinct ways.<\/p>\n

1)\u00a0<\/strong>They connect, embracing ecosystem diversification.<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 Natural ecosystems that thrive during environmental stress often have characteristics of multiple failover points and have strength in bio-diversity, providing adaptability options for a variety of situations. \u00a0These natural systems can also self-mend, just as diversification is a catalyst for trying new solutions at a rapid pace. \u00a0Corporations that tap a broad, diverse crowd of customers, prospects, and partners for innovation are able to quickly create new ideas, solutions, and products beyond the scope of the more narrowly defined capabilities of a dedicated product team. \u00a0The roots of bamboo trees are interconnected, generating strength as one forest.<\/p>\n

What it means: \u00a0Corporations that tap their diverse ecosystems have built in fail safes,\u00a0diversity\u00a0in innovation, and can self-mend. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

2)\u00a0<\/strong>They adapt to changing market needs, on-demand.<\/strong>\u00a0 Crowds can quickly respond both with and to change, as the parts can quickly re-form or maneuver. \u00a0Unlike the slow process of hiring through HR, using online communities crowds can quickly be tapped into to meet sudden spikes in needs or quickly dispersed when not needed. \u00a0Companies that tap into the crowd are able to quickly change direction, rather than waiting for more formal partnerships and alliances. \u00a0This versatility allows for movement in many directions, as long as a community has already been fostered. \u00a0Savvy companies can also learn how to tap into new business models beyond ‘selling’ to rent their products, time, or space to the crowd, on demand, like Toyota, Marriott, BMW, and the W hotel have done. \u00a0Bamboo wood is flexible, bending to wind patterns, yet offering pliability and rigidity to grow tall.<\/p>\n

What it means: \u00a0Tapping a crowd means corporations can quickly change direction, as well as activate their own idle resources for returns\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

3) \u00a0<\/strong>They enable the crowd to carry a greater part of the load to grow in scale.<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0Crowds are powerful. \u00a0They’re a source of renewable energy that can sustain on-demand, if properly nurtured. \u00a0The passionate crowd will provide new ideas, resources, and even help to create and produce new products and services. \u00a0If done well, a company can empower the crowd to automatically market, sell, and promote without additional investment. \u00a0You can read all about how companies can provide a platform for their own customers, leveraging the crowd in effective new manners. \u00a0All plants rely on insects, animals, and natural cycles to fertilize, aid reproduction, and protect the ecosystem.<\/p>\n

What it means: \u00a0Corporations can obtain\u00a0scalable\u00a0yield by tapping the crowd to do their jobs. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Companies That Aren’t Resilient Are Fragile.<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0Rather than connected, these companies become increasingly more isolated, often without realizing it, like the example of Manganese Bronze<\/a>\u00a0as compared to resilient and “connected” Toyota. \u00a0They are inflexible, unable to adapt to the rapidly changing economic, social, technology changes that continue to emerge faster than ever. \u00a0Fragile corporations are able to scale only linearly, not exponentially as they need to do.\u00a0 They are limited to the staff they can hire, rather being able to tap into a renewable and ever-burgeoning crowd.<\/p>\n

What Resilient Corporations Look Like.<\/strong>\u00a0 The most apparent examples lie within the software technology field, like IBM, Salesforce, Adobe, Microsoft, Google, and Apple. \u00a0They all offer products on-demand, rather than selling boxed software. \u00a0They tap into partners to resell and scale. \u00a0They provide online communities so that their customers can support each other. \u00a0They provide developer platforms to the crowd so that the crowd can build new products, software, and companies on top of their systems. \u00a0But this same model shouldn’t be limited to software companies alone.\u00a0 Companies like\u00a0Barclays Card are tapping their crowd for innovation<\/a>. \u00a0GE has tapped their crowd for new forms of skill sharing.\u00a0 A\u00a0whole host of giant corporations I’m tracking are participating in the Collaborative Economy.<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0I’ll be investing the rest of my time learning and sharing how we can apply these same principles to all companies.<\/p>\n

What it means: \u00a0Corporations that tap their empowered crowd will benefit from marketplace resiliency by reducing risk through variability, being agile by flexing when needed, and scaling by leveraging others to handle the load.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0(Photo credits:\u00a0Foilman<\/a>, used with creative commons licensing)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Read part one, Meet the Empowered People, in this two-part series.) What’s a Resilient Corporation? It’s one that minimizes risk, moves quicker, and can grow faster than others. You may be asking, “How can corporations reduce risk, move quickly, and scale at the same time?” … Continue readingMeet the Resilient Corporations<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[198],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collaborative-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15757\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web-strategist.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}