“Adventure Capitalist” Offers Strategies for Business Executives

Vancouver is loaded with new web start-ups and the related innovative thinkers. Among the vast assortment of talented folk is Troy Angrignon who recently released a manifesto entitled, “Web 2.0 - Strategies and Lesson for Business Leaders.”

In the report, Troy, along with some colleagues break down big picture of what is going on with all these exciting developments in collaboration, communication and how businesses can apply “Web 2.0″ goodness to enhance their corporate well-being as well as what might happen if companies don’t acknowledge and embrace this “sea change” (as Bill Gates proclaimed).

Troy describes himself as “an environmentally and socially active entrepreneur who mentors and advises startups.” The report demonstrates that he clearly knows the right questions to ask and listens well to the conversations as evidenced.

Much like ace Strategic Advisor Gord Janzen who I interviewed in a recent podcast, Troy has the unique ability of dexterously translating geek-speak into ceo-speak in an efficient, practical and hype-free manner and offers useful take away bits which most any corporation can utilize immediately.

More on Troy’s Report after the break …

He starts off by offering a definition of “Web2.0″ for the purpose of the report as:

“Web 2.0 is a group of economically, socially, and technologically driven changes in attitudes, tools, and applications that are allowing the Web to become the next platform for communication, collaboration, community, and cumulative learning.”

And, after discussing in frank terms how the industry arrived here and where it might be headed towards, he offers some practical ways for corporations of any kind to increase revenues using these new communication and collaboration tools:

• improve the customer experience by rebuilding your applications and systems to make them easier to use (which supports the point above);
• improve goodwill through active outreach and engagement with your ecosystem;
• adapt your current products for new channels (such as taking your current software and enabling it to be hosted as a service or rebuilding small subsets of them for smaller segments of the market that you have not addressed before);
• release some of your software for free to drive higher adoption;
• acquire people, technologies, and products that can help you jumpstart your efforts;
  build your software for the individual and small team (who are not currently buying your products) and then make it easy for them to invite their colleagues;
• blog your way to a thought leadership position in your industry - this attracts new customers, and can help you retain some others, and it also attracts good talent to your company when they see that you “get it”

The last one offers a worthy challenge to companies seeking to really serve their customers for mutual benefit, hold on cause it’s a doozy:

“Build a REAL online community. This means putting the resources into understanding your ecosystem of partners and customers and then building tools that support THEM and THEIR GOALS and that let them get THEIR work done. If you do this correctly (in real-space and online space), your passionate users will be the best product marketing team you have ever had. (WARNING: This is incredibly difficult to do because most companies think that their “forum” is an online community when in fact their forum is a tool to keep customers away from the phone. Be aware of your focus: is it on helping your ecosystem or serving your own needs?)”

Wisely, he released the document with a Creative Commons license meaning anyone may share and distribute the information but not alter or sell the work. By using this “copyleft” licensing, he removes a barrier to disseminating the information and as such, his words will reach a wider readership as a result.

Interested in more? Check out the whole manifesto from this “student of complexity, and advocate of simplicity” at (in .pdf format) at http://www.changethis.com/25.05.Web2.0 .