Blog Assignment #5 - Collaboration and Collective Intelligence

Blog Assignment #5 (Due 4:00 pm Oct 20): Watch this video on collaboration and collective intelligence . Post a blog to summarize the key points your learn from the speakers.

I was very intrigued by the MIT video. The video discuss many key points surrounding collaboration and collective intelligence. One of the most common ways of collaborating these days is through social networking. That is one of the key points that come up in the video. Social Networking has become the new marketing scheme for a lot of companies and its taking the internet world by storm. In the video they discussed that people are providing their personal information and they are what is making the website popular but they are not seeing any of the profit. The idea that social networking should operate as non profit was also a issue that was brought up.

Another key point that was discussed was the virtual world of Second Life and how this is used in the corporate world. I know of companies who hold meeting inside of Second Life, which is odd but it’s another form of social networking and virtual gaming combined that show collaboration and Collective Intelligence. All in all I believe that Social Networking is a new phase that it here to stay because it is fueled by the youth, and its forever changing. Whenever Twitter or Facebook dies down as MySpace has now the next big thing will take over.

Blog Assignment #5 - Tony Hsieh

Talk about what you see and how you feel about the speech by relating to knowledge, experience, trust, learning, innovation, increasing returns, and competitive advantage.

The speech by Tony Hsieh was one of those moments where you really wish you were there. The knowledge and outlook on business that Tony has is incredible and one would love to have a sit down with him and just pick his brain because the knowledge he posses is priceless. From a knowledge standpoint Tony instructs you on the keys to a successful business. You don’t always want to go with what is cost efficient but you should strive for the best. Whether that means running your warehouse 24 hours a day to ensure the best customer service or weeding out the bad apples of employees by offering them a thousand dollars to quit, just to see if they are truly dedicated to a long term career. In order to have a good group of employees you have to build relationships with those employees and have a mutual trust. They trust you to continue to put them in the best situation to succeed and you trust them to continue to strive for excellence, so finding the bad apples is always better to do earlier than later. The mind and approach that Tony Hsieh has towards business is incredible and I'm glad I had the chance to hear some of his business tactics.

The speech in itself provides you with great insight into the mind of a great CEO, and he gives you years of experience that he has all in 55 minutes. The approach that Tony has is a great and new innovative approach to business. He's maximizing a quality product and quality service which is the best way to increase return. If you put a quality product on the market with great people to sell it, profit will take care of itself. This creates a competitive advantage for his company because he's selling a quality product at a reasonable price with sales reps that genially care about your customer satisfaction. You can’t really beat that.

Tony Hsieh's story is amazing because you can directly relate to it. Tony Hsieh started his journey to entrepreneurship by selling pizza's in his dorm room and now the CEO of Zappos. Zappos sells mostly shoes and other appeal online and has become one of the biggest online vendors to date. In listening to the interview you can really see that Tony Hsieh genuinely cares about his company and he is really selective of who he lets into his company as well as the product that he lets leave his company. Tony Hsieh's approach to running a business is astonishing and he has many different tactics and methods to ensure customer satisfaction and maximize the potential of his employees. I admire Tony Hsieh not only as a CEO but as a person as well.