I agree with you Ardath. I'm an ex-HubSpot customer and a big fan, and it always amazes me that people say they don't do any advertising, which is false. Either way to your point... Anything where messages are being sent out is outbound is it not? As you said there's a line between pushy sales outbound marketing and value providing outbound, say an advertisement to a piece of opt-in content, something I've seen HubSpot do. For many companies a combination of inbound/outbound is perfect for lead generation and sales. The key to it all is in building the relationship.

It's interesting how all 5 of these go together, especially the first four. Communication is now real-time, and people are talking more often to a growing audience. That means more points of view on existing problems and issues. People know they are not alone in their struggles, and are letting companies know their banding together. Thanks for the post.

Great post Roland. I agree that economics and consumerism has greatly shifted and continues to shift, and that businesses need to overhaul the way they've been operating for decades. The music industry found this out the hard way, as did the real estate industry here in the U.S.. Too many companies have grown fat and bloated, and we're seeing a ringing out of things now, which is going to continue as the global economic downturn continues. I hope that the lessons learned today by those that survive and succeed are not tossed aside when things do improve. I hope that the mindshift occurring now is permanent.

I wish I was listening to this panel as it looks awesome. If you record it please post it for those of us unable to attend. One item that I would add to your list is at least a minimum understanding of business. A team should not have to rely on the PM or ScrumMaster explaining to a product owner why more things cannot be put into a sprint or why certain items have dependencies that need to be completed first. The team should be able to negotiate on their own behalf. For that, they need to understand the motivations of business and communicate effectively. Gone are the days when a developer (or tester or UI engineer) can only perform their craft.

Great post Jurgen, if not a bit over my head :) Would you say then that self-organizing teams are emergent, or that the properties of self-organizing teams by virtue of their being self-organizing, are emergent? Or am I making any sense at all?

Long story short: being innovative means doing something different than everybody else. Simple in concept, hard in practice. It can be done, as evidenced by Apple, Dyson, and others.

Thanks for the link to the report Frank. I wonder if the reason that customers are a great source of innovation is due to their outside perspective on the products and services they purchase? Who is more in tune with the customers' needs than the customer? The job of a company is translating those needs into sellable products and services.

I've really got to see that movie. And just in case a zombie apocalypse occurs, I have my ninja sword handy. And no, I'm not kidding. A great post. I've seen many highly technical folks fail at management for the reasons that you mention, but also because they don't want to be a manager. The story is familiar in the startup world, where a technical founder flounders as a CEO. Once they take on the CTO position and hire a new CEO, the business kicks into high gear. Before promoting someone to management be sure that's a move they really want to make.

It's good to know who these surveys are surveying. I personally know many small business people here in Orlando, many of which are 1-2 person companies, that have no idea how to get into social media and don't use it. I also know many tech savvy small businesses here (< 10 employees) that heavily use social media. All numbers need to be given context, otherwise they are hard to rely on.

In a perfect world we wouldn't have to sell it to the CEO. However showing the monetary benefits can always work with the c-level folks I find. If I learned anything from my MBA, it's using numbers to make the case. While not all of the benefits of active listening can be measured quantitatively, you can see them anecdotally. So for an agile team, it means not going in a direction that's going to be wasting time and money. I think a CEO can relate to that.

Great point about learning to listen carefully for fast improvement John. I believe that for marketing, or any other business function, the listening part comes first, followed by quick action. Listening is what tells you what you need to respond to. Once you know that, and determine how to respond, you can put that plan into action.