If there’s one thing Claudia Kotcha will tell you about building apps that employees want to use, it’s to think about your employees really want. Kotcha ought to know — she spent years creating products that millions of actual consumers loved. Read more »
Which applications are best for scaling a business from a tiny startup to an enterprise powerhouse? And how do you get your employees to use them? For most companies, success will come from adopting those which are easiest to use, and which employees are already using. Read more »
Today, things tend to trickle up as far as enterprise software selection goes: Businesses are increasingly taking cues from their employees when it comes to choosing enterprise software. Many employees, now, prefer software that incorporates the social and collaborative aspects they use in their personal lives. Read more »
When it comes to users, transparency is important for taking reputation with them across sites. Being chattygirl32 in the New York Times comments section isn’t so helpful when you try to leverage online reputation elsewhere. A real name, however, might stick. Read more »
How do you get the most out of collaborative teams? It helps if you can quantify their performance and provide feedback to workers. At GigaOM’s Net:Work 2011, executives from LiveOps and Rypple said measurement was key to improving collaboration between teams of contract workers and experts. Read more »
A simple emoticon can tell you wonders about the emotional state of your company. Socialcast experimented with such a test in a Japanese factory asking employees to rate their work day with a happy, average, or sad face. The simple question gleaned enormous insight. Read more »
Smartphones are the key to making intelligent connections between tomorrow’s workforce and employers, says Ariel Seidman, co-founder and CEO of Gigwalk. That’s because the way we look for work, track and show off our skills, and the needs of employers are all changing. Read more »
A few years back, people had to more or less lie to their boss if they wanted to work at a co-working facility. These days, coworking is increasingly adopted by big corporations who value increased productivity just as much as any potential cost savings. Read more »
The idea of physically manipulating digital data through gestures, as shown in the movie Minority Report, may seem like sci-fi, but there’s much that applies to the desktop of tomorrow. Oblong’s John Underkoffler envisioned the future at the GigaOM Net:Work event on Thursday. Read more »
Companies are realizing that gamification, or the use of key game concepts to engage users and solve problems, can be a powerful way to create happiness and innovation and spur on results and education among their workforce, said Gabe Zichermann, CEO of Gamification.Co. Read more »
InterContinental Hotels Group, the luxury hotel chain, has spent the last five and half years creating a technology platform for its business that helps it span multiple brands, cultures and continents, according to Tom Conophy, EVP and CIO of the hotel company. Read more »
With so many remote workers using so many different cloud-based services to manage every aspect of their jobs, it’s possible companies are losing access to lots of valuable information. That means there’s a business opportunity for someone willing to step up and solve the problem. Read more »
Box.net’s CEO Aaron Levie told the Net:Work conference that the key to making better enterprise software is to learn from consumer software and service companies, and make tools that are easy for users instead of just trying to lock them in to a specific platform. Read more »
Podio CEO Tommy Ahlers is looking to a very unlikely place to figure out the future of social software in the enterprise: Excel. Spreadsheets have been inspiring people for years to customize solutions to their needs. Now it’s time to take that spirit to enterprise apps. Read more »
Social is no guarantee of effectiveness in an organization because it creates unnecessary friction as people try to figure out how to work in new ways, according to David Gutelius, the Chief Social Scientist at Jive Software, speaking at the GigaOM Net:Work event. Read more »
Imagine a future where you could take over the body of a robot from home and use it to do work at your office. Even better, when you finished your tasks, what if another remote employee could “beam in” to the same robot to get their tasks done? That’s not science fiction: It’s reality thanks to web-connected robots. Read more »
Getting enterprise customers excited about Chromebooks can be an uphill battle – but for Google’s Rajen Sheth, it’s a deja vu. Sheth is known as the father of Google apps, and said at Net:Work Thursday that Google’s enterprise product was initially met with similar resistance. Read more »
You might think that tech companies are more flexible and resourceful in seeking out the best talent. But you would be wrong, said Allen Delattre, global managing director for technology for Korn/Ferry International, the big executive recruitment firm. Read more »
Those of you who hate meetings and can’t stand endless PowerPoint-based presentations, there’s hope. Todd Barr, chief marketing officer of Alfresco had some encouraging solutions for how to improve them at GigaOM’s Net:Work 2011 conference on Thursday: use tablets. Read more »
Gary Swart, CEO of freelancer sourcing site oDesk took the stage at Net:Work 2011 to talk about how work is changing in the face of remote work trends. He started by pointing to a key competitive determinator all companies seek and must compete for: talent. Read more »
Freelancers, consultants and other independent workers account for 16 million people in the country now and will become a majority by 2020, predicts Gene Zaino, CEO of MBO Partners. The company projects there will be 65 to 70 million independent workers in the next decade Read more »
Thanks to global connectivity and networking sites like LinkedIn, workers now have more ability to take charge of their professional lives than ever before. At GigaOM’s Net:Work conference, LinkedIn SVP Deep Nishar highlighted how it’s trying to provide tools to make users more productive and successful. Read more »
Are any “naked intellectualists” running around at your company? If so, find them, treat them right, and they can help turn the old-document-centric style of work into a culture and work flow that is more collaborative, social and human-centric. Read more »
Today at Net:Work 2011, we’ll look at how many things once considered the future of work are already here, and what changes are headed our way in years to come. If you can’t attend in person, watch our live video coverage of the event here. Read more »
Will the future of work be filled with robots powered by remote humans? Will there even be a “place” to work, or will that shift online, too? Elance CEO, Fabio Rosati gives us some big thoughts on where the workplace is headed. Read more »
A year ago at Net: Work 2010 the audience crowned social task management product Cohuman with the people’s choice award. The company was also a Future Ideas Launchpad finalist. So what’s happened to the company since it made a big splash at last year’s conference? Read more »
Coworking is a well-established trend in some areas, yet as coworking spaces expand into new cities, the owners need to educate people about the benefits and engage in some creative marketing to lure entrepreneurs in. Read more »
