BG's Profile

Great Post! As I think about LinkedIn’s growth potential I wonder if partnerships with MOOC’s as well as it’s own acquisition of Lynda.com is the path forward. In my mind, LinkedIn wants to be the one stop site for all things career related. They have recently integrated Pulse which provides articles/blogs based on one’s own interests (Influencers and Interests you follow) as well as those from your network. I think the next step is for LinkedIn to start thinking about what their users really want to do. Sure, they may have been a data scientist in the past but maybe they now want to become a user experience designer. How do they get their? What classes/certification do they need to work towards? I think leveraging Lynda.com and other potential partners is a great way to get into this personalized service. Beyond this, why not offer true career coaching. Given one’s network who should the user reach out to? LinkedIn has a top of opportunity and it will be interesting to see what direction it goes. Thanks for the insights!

Thanks for sharing Wendy! I’m glad you brought up the recent implementation of halocracy, as it does seem that it creates an incredible opportunity to develop new solutions to ideas. My question is how Zappos will maintain it’s current quality of service under this new operating structure? It seems like Managers are key for quality control and maintaining some semblance of best practices even if Personal Emotion Connection is a crucial piece of service. Will leaders still emerge without actual titles who will then drive their own agendas? Also, Amazon is known for it’s top down management model, how was Zappos able to convince their parent company that this change will improve satisfaction and drive growth?

Great choice and write up Kate! In the highly competitive space of Enterprise Communication Software, it is truly remarkable that a 2 year old start up has come to such prominence. As with any network/user based app, it is critical to get mass adoption within the company in order for the product to become truly sticky. While I think the user experience is nice, I think the true success of Slack comes from understanding their core user. Because Slack started off as an internal communication tool used primarily by the Product and Engineering team, they developed a product specifically tailored for technical people. As a result, they had a unique story to tell to key decision makers. The ability to integrate with other platforms truly appeals to the engineer at heart and creates a stronger ecosystem for Slack to survive. However, how many people outside of technical functions use Slack? Also, what percentage of the Fortune 500 have they been able to get on board. Can we perhaps make the claim that Slack’s growth is a direct result of the growth in start ups? Is the growth sustainable? What happens when dropbox comes out with it’s integrated collaboration platform for business? As a fan of Slack and someone who hates email, I’m rooting for them!