My fourth and latest book, Insidious Competition – The Battle for Meaning and the Corporate Image, is scheduled to be published in June 2010. For more information about my new book, please click here to go to the book’s Web site.
In the book, I discuss nine different types of insidious competitors present in social media. One of those types of competitors is NGOs and Activists, the “irregular” competitors that are the basis of our discussions here at Telofski.com. In fact, it was from the research on Insidious Competition that the concept of irregular competition evolved.
Well, putting aside irregular competition for a moment, I’d just like to mention that one of the insidious competitor types I discuss in my book is Activist Stockholders, cousins of the irregular competitors NGOs and Activists. In reviewing my news feeds recently I discovered the article “Divided SEC Proposes Investor Access Plan” which talks about how Activist Stockholders may be gaining more strength in their struggles against corporate management.
This article is quite interesting and updates an issue which I have been following for a while. The issue pertains directly to the discussion of Activist Stockholders as it appears in the book. Summarizing, the article discusses relaxation of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations for shareholder balloting in annual public corporation elections. You know. The annual “proxy fight.” The proposed rule changes would make it simpler for various stockholder groups to gain access to the corporate board and thereby control certain corporate decisions.
In my new book’s discussion of this type of insidious competitor, I mentioned that there is a pending rule change. I also mentioned that that change may take place as soon as early 2010. From what this article says, it looks like I was right. When this regulation change is combined with the force and power of social media, as I pointed out in the book, the influence of the Activist Stockholder will increase tremendously. And because of this potential shift in power, it should be incumbent on all C-suite executives and corporate communications personnel to learn how to deal with this impending threat to corporate operations.
Insidious Competition – The Battle for Meaning and the Corporate Image discusses these “how-to’s” in detail.
I’ll keep you updated on the publication of the book.
This post picks up the story of how I became an analyst of “irregular competition” which we know here on Telofski.com to be anti-corporate activists and NGOs.
In the previous post, “You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume,” I discussed my foundational experiences and knowledge that support my current expertise in the analysis of anti-corporate digital activism. If you haven’t yet read that post, you may do so by clicking here.
Now, here in Part 2, I pick up the story where I left off. Here in Part 2, I describe how The Kahuna Content Company, Inc. and I evolved from an Internet content supplier to that of anti-corporate digital activism analysis.
Web 2.0 Appears
Through 2001 I had acquired quite a bit of experience in competitive intelligence analysis as well as an expertise in online business. In Kahuna Content’s early days as an independent supplier of online content, I learned about what people wanted from their online experiences. During that period of time the web was a relatively static communicator of information; there was little “interaction” due to the technologies that existed then. However, around 2005, as the web started to evolve into the more interactive environment that I knew it could and would ultimately become, I began to learn about and experience what later became known as “Web 2.0.” At that time the Internet was truly becoming an “environment,” a social one. Because of technology shifts, it was then that people began to convert the Internet into an “environment,” one which affected them and one which they affected back in return.
It was at that time, in that “2.0″ shift in the Internet, that Kahuna Content, and I, began to change focus. As the wave of what later came to be known as “user-generated content” rose, I saw that the need for independently supplied online content would fade. So, Kahuna Content made a gradual move away from content supply. Watching the rise of the “social web,” I saw that with the tools that were starting then to become available, people could and would transfer their human “conversational jones” for interaction from the real to the virtual, taking it global and making it a 24/7 activity. I saw that people would start talking about every thing under the sun, and out in public. Going back to my roots as a competitive intelligence analyst, this shift told me that people, everyday people, could become “competitors” to the very companies from which they bought their goods and services.
The Insidious Competitor Threatens
Now, I wasn’t really the first person to realize this. The Cluetrain Manifesto had forecasted this change about a half dozen years prior. But at this point in the story, I realized that individuals could actually do what the Cluetrain had predicted. When Cluetrain was written, the “social media” tools that could enable markets to “laugh” at the companies who supplied them weren’t fully configured enough
Continue reading You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume – Part 2
Recently, I’ve received some enquiries regarding my expertise in anti-corporate activism analysis, in competitive intelligence, and in the analysis of online media. Since this is an unusual profession, I can certainly understand the curiosity. I appreciate all of your questions and hope that I have responded satisfactorily. Knowing that FAQs are popular on many sites, I am today writing an FAQ of sorts.
Today, I write this post to help future enquirers and to give you some background on my previous experiences. In this post, you will learn about my credentials and the experiences I have had which have built my expertise in anti-corporate activism analysis, in general, and in digital anti-corporate activism analysis, in particular. You could say that this post serves as my “annotated resume.”
Educational Background
My specific experience for my profession began just before I received my MBA in Marketing from Rider University. While completing that degree, I worked as a Research Assistant for the Marketing Department. In that capacity, I extended what I learned from the classroom into the real world. Having learned much about performing objective research, with special attention paid toward the reliability and integrity of sourcing, I performed many market research studies across different product and service areas. Upon completing my MBA, I served several years as a faculty member at Monmouth University and at Georgian Court University. Between both of those schools I taught international economics, finance, and marketing courses.
Out-of-the-Ivory-Tower
After several years as an educator, I received an offer from a consulting unit of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority. This consulting unit was the Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (TAAC) which was a U.S. Department of Commerce program administered by the NJEDA. In my role there as a Senior Project Officer, my responsibility was to work with New Jersey manufacturers who were getting “hammered” by foreign competition. Specifically, I was tasked with the duty of analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of those manufacturers with the intention of creating strategic plans to accentuate their positives and eliminate their negatives.
It was at NJEDA that I first formally became involved with competitive intelligence. When writing the strategic plan (or the “adjustment plan” as it was called there), it was necessary for me not only to analyze my client’s strengths and weaknesses, but it was imperative for me to analyze those of the competitor, as well. Please note that those competitors were, of course, foreign. This was during the late 1980s, before the Internet became the research avenue it is today, and gaining critical, public-domain, information even on American companies was difficult. So, you can probably imagine that obtaining information on foreign companies was even more difficult. However, from my experience as an academic researcher, I knew how to dig and from my training as an MBA, I knew for what to dig. So I dug. And from my efforts I was able to uncover much information that went into my analyses and the creation of effective strategic plans
Continue reading You Could Say That This Post Serves as My Annotated Resume.
“Think Global(ly), Act Local(ly)” is the mantra of many NGOs and activist groups. Aside from yet another two adverbs taking it on the chin, this is a central theme to many of their strategies.
Recently the White House announced the signing of an executive order establishing a task force to fight childhood obesity. The executive order calls for the assistance of NGOs, as well as corporations, in fighting this problem. A worthy pursuit. But what about the mantra? The mantra states the solution.
Acting locally on childhood obesity, very locally, could be the solution to the problem if that local action was parents encouraging, and requiring, their children to exercise regularly (We used to call this “playtime.”) and discouraging (read that as “prohibiting“) their children from eating “garbage.” Discipline is not a word with which parents should be unfamiliar.
Perhaps if there was more very local, “household-local,” common-sensical, parental attention to the problem, people wouldn’t need yet another expensive government/NGO/corporate task force to tell them what they should already know.
|
|
