See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy
With the predicted announcement of the Iphone 6 in September 2014, will Apple finally have a device through which they can dominate the mobile payments market? Android OS has continued to prove its global dominance in most mobile payment markets which could expose Apple’s vulnerability especially as their device costs have the potential to alienate a large number of mobile users across the …
a new study suggests that the emergence of the “digital entrepreneurship" as a significant youth employment vehicle
See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy
Boho Five, the next phase of Middlesbrough’s DigitalCityBusiness (DCB) development, has started on site - a major milestone for a key strand in the town’s economic regeneration plans.
See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy
Report concludes UK enterprises need an extra 745,000 digitally skilled workers within the next three years
See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy
Engagement matters on the front end of innovation. Tangible results matter on the back end. Organizations that pursue the practice of collaborative innovation seek, ultimately, actionable ideas: ideas whose implementation yields benefits.
See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy
Recent news about the Tech Partnership.
See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy
David Willetts has announced £18 million Government support, alongside £11.5 million of private investment, for the Tech Partnership’s ambitious drive to bolster the nation’s digital skills development.
See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy
Boho Five will be open for business next April :: It will create 37 jobs by the end of 2015 and 105 jobs by the end of 2017
It’s a perfectly secure Internet that by definition cannot be penetrated by wiretaps and eavesdropping — and the US government has been sitting on it for the last two-and-a-half years.
The US government has been running a quantum Internet for over two years…quantum Internet that allows information to be transmitted with perfect security.
See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy
San Francisco Airport is testing out location-aware beacons to help visually-impaired people navigate around one of its newest terminals, a program it could roll out to the rest of the airport if… (RT @ubercool: Brilliant!
Advances in machine vision will let employers, governments, and advertisers spot you in photos and know exactly what you’re doing in them. All of us have become used to uploading photos and videos safe in the knowledge that we have privacy through obscurity, but as data-mining images becomes easy, they could come back to haunt us. I’ve been able to move on from my youthful missteps, but it could have been different if all the landlords, potential employers, and bureaucrats I’ve dealt with since then could have summoned photographic evidence of them all at the touch of a button.
…..as data-mining images becomes easy, they could well come back to haunt us.
See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy
Technology heavyweight Matt Banham joins mPayments innovators Omlis as chief technology officer | Technology | International | Bdaily UK | Business News
Plans for a state-of the-art centre for skills, leadership and innovation in emerging technology sectors have been given the green light by Government.
The Darlington-based National Horizons Centre (NHC) is a partnership between Teesside University, the Centre for Process Innovation, Darlington College, Darlington Borough Council and C-STATE, the Centre for Subsea Technology Awareness Training and Education.
Growth hacking is a new term that defines activities that drive growth but do not follow traditional marketing. What can marketers learn from it?
What can we learn from Growth Hacking?
Experts focus on how to best use EU research, innovation, and science policy to achieve growth.
The recently established Research, Innovation and Science Policy Experts (RISE) High Level Group has been created by merging three former high-level advisory groups on research and innovation policies in support of the Innovation Union objectives and the completion of the European Research Area (ERIAB, i4g, EFFLA).
The Group shall give direct strategic support to the European Commissioner for research, innovation, and science. It shall focus on how to best use EU research, innovation, and science policy to address the European growth model and to create the conditions for a different type of growth that is smart, economically and environmentally sustainable, and socially inclusive for the EU and associated countries within a globalised world.
A new investment scheme to support business growth across the Tees Valley has been launched. Tees Valley Business Compass, has secured £2.4m to deliver the Business Growth Investment Scheme, which offers between £25,000 and £1,000,000 of grant support to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) looking to invest in their business to achieve sustainable growth.
In this new social world, are small businesses completely exposed? Can malicious use of channels damage brands and livelihoods?
Can all your team’s hard work be taken down by a single social act?
I had the privilege of being invited to the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s (CIM) Digital Summit at Bloomberg’s beautiful office in London last week (7th June, 2014).
The CIM team did a great job and as you can imagine the line-up was exemplary, including great talks from the Guardian, YouGov, Direct line Group amongst others.
Topics covered were diverse ….but the message was very clear.
Social channels are pervasive and beyond marketing. They are affecting and transforming every aspect of business. Marketing is a champion of the impact of social media, content marketing and many aspects of digital communication BUT, can no longer own it or work in isolation.
It’s potential stretches far beyond the marketing department, and to be effectively used to create a ‘social business’ there is a requirement to let go and enable communities and stakeholders to publicly and openly share their views and content socially across many aspects of the business.
Previous employees, business partners and dissatisfied customers may be motivated by a strong sense of injustice and powerful emotions of anger, pain, and fear. Engaging with your brand may not have gone 'according to plan’ and created a perceived breach of trust. Today, any or all of these parties can profoundly damage your brands with little effort.
While there is an inevitable risk for all organisations in this, there is particular exposure and poor support for smaller businesses.
While larger organisations can deploy sophisticated governance, legal teams and policies, specialist insurance to support their brand, small resource constrained businesses and enterprise are significantly more at risk and are less able to respond to brand damaging commentary on third party websites, forums and reference sites.
The Federation of Small Businesses suggests 'Small and Medium Sized companies’ (SME’s) account for 99.9 per cent of of all private sector businesses in the UK. Approximately 7 million are sole proprietorships. Micro- businesses (those with less than 10 employees) represent the majority of businesses, and account for 32% of employment and 18% of UK business turnover.
With social media, issues never fade from view. Once a thread or conversation starts you’re going to be dealing with it forever as they are typically never taken down.
According to Thompson Reuters 'Findlaw’ service, a brand defamation case takes approximately 12 months from the issue of defamation court proceedings until trial. However, they also suggest it is not uncommon for defamation cases to take several years to reach completion.
Most consumer forums, hosting services and internet service providers are not responsive to requests for withdrawal of statements, threads and site content. Operational frameworks are carefully established in these forums to support consumer rights and the right of free speech. They’re often designed to support the denouncement of content responsibility except for the most extreme content, personal information or imagery.
However, you can very readily find examples of dubious commentary and critique of companies, products and organisations; for example, those in which social commentary is made by a 'new forum member with no profile or history’.
Yesterday at the gathering of thought leaders, one speaker suggested they personally ignore very positive and very negative commentary and feedback and considered this to be less credible, focussing on the less extreme feedback for practical insights to improve and enhance offerings and relationships.
I would ask whether SMEs can afford to do this and whether someone needs to help SMEs to better prepare for and manage social channel brand defamation and damage.
The CIM’s new 'Keep Social Honest’ campaign recognises there are issues and is encouraging the marketing industry to pro-actively improve corporate performance in this domain. However I consider there is equally a need to better arm and equip SME marketers and businesses with the tools to protect their brand in this new world.
Further I wonder what regulations and compliance such forums, reference sites and those responsible for social channels are truly beholden to.
Presently it seems that SMEs are exposed to rough treatment in social channels and there is little they can do to prevent malicious social acts and spreading of hearsay /inaccurate, informal and anonymous commentary damaging trust and potentially threatening the future of businesses and careers.
Needless to say - delighted to hear your thoughts and feedback on this subject.
See on Scoop.it - Thoughts from +ADD Strategy
The pace of change in digital marketing continues to increase and the impact of mobile and social media gets greater and greater.
From the North east, Paul Sutherland of +ADD Strategy and David Jeffries, Head of Digital City & Graduate Enterprise at Teesside University are attending this prestigious event as guests of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM).
Paul is part of a CIM rountable on SME marketing issues set to take place later this summer, and actively supports national research and insight agenda’s.
‘Digital marketing offers extensive opportunity but also great risks. The gathering at Bloomberg’s European head office in London brings together an impressive community and will explore a range of issues around honest use social media, multichannel marketing and importantly ….what’s coming next!’.
Paul Sutherland FCIM
Contributors include:
• Dara Nasr, Sales Director, Twitter UK
• Ash Roots, Director of Digital, Direct Line Group.
• Anne Godfrey, Chief Executive, CIM.
• Daniel Rowles, leading digital expert and curator of the Digital Marketing Podcast
• Thomas Brown, Associate Director, Research and Insights, CIM.
• Stewart Easterbrook, CEO, Starcom MediaVest Group.
The event offers an injection of the latest thinking, ideas and learnings on harnessing digital and social media to drive performance.
Click here to register for access to the live cast.
A move to new premises is spearheading growth plans for Newcastle-based technology firm Calibre
Great stuff - Well done to Steve and the team!
