Groupon is hoping for a $20 billion valuation in its coming IPO. Yes, the company is growing fast, but as I wrote last month that its business model is suspect. And now, in addition to Amazon-backed Living Social, a host of niche competitors are nibbling at Groupon’s heels. More significantly, both Google and Facebook are getting into the online couponing ...

How will Facebook and the global economy interact in the future? There has been much speculation recently about the role Facebook Credits could play in becoming a global virtual currency, and even the possibility of Facebook becoming a bank. In many ways, it already is becoming a bank – just not in the traditional sense. Facebook is harnessing the power ...

Like many of you I participate in the social media world. That world has opened up new relationships and new sources of information for me that were completely unexpected. I’ve learned a lot from individuals on Twitter and Facebook and Linkedin, and I’ve become a real believer in the use of social media to support innovation. I was following a ...

This is the thirteenth of several ‘Innovation Perspectives‘ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on ‘What are three specific actions that a non-innovative company can take to become more innovative?’. Here is the next perspective in the series: by Rocco Tarasi When we think of innovative companies we think of the Apple, Google, ...

Social Networking was well represented at the World Innovation Forum including discussion of Web 2.0 from former Amazon Chief Scientist Andreas Weigend, technology venture capitalist Brian Shawn Cohen and Twitter co-founder @Biz Stone. At events, I use Twitter for taking notes (I’ll quote a few in this post). RT @stephenshapiro: Biz stone from twitter on the stage. Surreal tweeting about ...

I came across the following video of a BMW advertising installation thanks to a tweet from Blogging Innovation contributor @RowanGibson and I think it serves as a perfect case study of how one firm – in this case BMW – can succeed and fail in utilizing some of the modern incremental innovations in the traditional marketing methods (including social media) ...

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is just a fancy name for a customer data management system. CRM systems don’t do anything for most people as a customer. Now it’s time for CRM to get social. Remember 8 years ago every VCs were pouring money into CRM (Customer Relationship Management), I never liked that word. It is a fancy name for some ...