Reviewing the Groundswell

One danger of reviewing a book is the reality that the reviews ultimately say more about the reviewer, and the book he or she wishes had been written, than they do about the book which actually was written. It’s in that context that I offer this review of Groundswell, by Forrester Research analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, published by Harvard Business Press (note: disclaimers at the end of the post).

To start with the positive: This is a really solid business book, which sets out a clear methodology (including the Social Technographics Profile and the POST method with which Forrester clients / subscribers are already familiar), walks through a broad range of well explained case studies, and situates the business benefits of the different approaches.

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Prepare for the New Openness

Optaros is sponsoring (with Red Hat) a webinar on Wednesday: Are Your Products Open or Closed? How to Respond to the New Openness

Registration (free) is required.
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Living in the age of the Groundswell

Josh Bernoff’s day 2 keynote from Forrester Consumer Forum.

Key point: Objectives, not technology, need to lead your effort

Don’t build a community just because your competitors do. Don’t just try to “generate buzz” – what is the goal you hope that buzz will accomplish? Figuring out what you’re trying to achieve will let you then measure what you are doing.

It isn’t “how do we get involved in the groundswell” but what problem are we trying to solve or what opportunities are we trying to create.

These are the main objectives:

1. Listening
2. Talking
3. Energizing
4. Supporting
5. Embracing

Analogies to organizational roles:

Research -> Listening
Marketing -> Talking
Sales -> Energizing
Support -> Supporting
Development -> Embracing

In the groundswell (ie, in the web 2.0 era), each of these needs to be transformed a bit. He went through each of them with some examples, including vendors.

Unfortunately, I didn’t hear a single mention of the use of open source to help deliver on these objectives – each objective ended with a brief table listing approaches and vendors – but no mention of assembling your own solutions with open source frameworks, despite the reality that open source frameworks are often the best solutions in many of these spaces.

I know Forrester hasn’t historically focused on open source and I don’t expect them to – but buying product solutions from proprietary vendors isn’t the entire universe. He also didn’t really cover how you integrate these solutions together – so that you don’t end up with five siloed solutions but a cohesive strategy and integrated set of applications which exchange and share data. [Note: this did come up during the Q & A - see the end of the notes below.]

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