(Needless to say, because of the fiduciary responsibility most public companies adhere to exploitation vs exploration.)

While reading that, I came across this article on Slate.com profiling Jeff Bezos, Founder/CEO of Amazon and the Kindle.  Below is what he had to say about Amazon (and the creation of the Kindle).

“There are two ways that companies can extend what they’re doing. One is they can take an inventory of their skills and competencies, and then they can say, “OK, with this set of skills and competencies, what else can we do?” And that’s a very useful technique that all companies should use. But there’s a second method, which takes a longer-term orientation. It is to say, rather than ask what are we good at and what else can we do with that skill, you ask, who are our customers? What do they need? And then you say we’re going to give that to them regardless of whether we currently have the skills to do so, and we will learn those skills no matter how long it takes. Kindle is a great example of that. It’s been on the market for two years, but we worked on it for three years in earnest before that. We talked about it for a year before that. We had to go hire people to build a hardware- engineering team to build the device. We had to acquire new skills. There’s a tendency, I think, for executives to think that the right course of action is to stick to the knitting—stick with what you’re good at. That may be a generally good rule, but the problem is the world changes out from under you if you’re not constantly adding to your skill set.”

I love the convergence of learning, and here is Jeff Bezos talking about their strategy “rather than ask what are we good at and what else can we do with that skill, you ask, who are our customers? What do they need?” which is a near perfect example of an exploratory strategy.

I love it.

I caught a piece on eMarketer by Clark Fredricksen today about the dilemma of customer engagement companies face when moving into social media. The basis of the post is found in the video embedded below.  Tension ramps up between the desire to have a presence and the need to participate.  To quote the post:

What he says is entirely true, launching a presence on a social channel (i.e.. facebook, twitter, yelp, flickr, blogging) is a great thing for many companies and their customers, allowing them to mutually share and receive information.  The dilemma comes when a brand has to decide how, when, and who should engage.  In my opinion, if a brand is opening an account they are already in the game so there is not the option to not participate so the question becomes how and who.  This should adhere to some basic rules of responding to most mentions, answering questions, etc. and every company will have secondary rules they will need to explore that will work best for them.  Two great examples of this choice on engagement are Best Buy’s @twelpforce or Comcast’s @ComcastCares –  where they are defining their intent because while the CEO of Best Buy is on twitter – having the expectation that he’ll respond personally to every question/whim isn’t only crazy its incredibly of base.  Along that path, deciding to do customer service is a common tactic for those companies who use twitter.  This brings up the great point that Jeremiah Owyang of the Altimeter Group makes “As companies accelerate their social support efforts, responding to customers in public reinforces the behavior of complaining to everyone they know.”  I’m certainly not saying that responding to customers on twitter is a bad idea, but it’s an interesting idea to consider.

Something else to consider is that with the growth of web technology the last few years, the barriers to entry have dropped to a level for where for all intents and purposes it’s 0.  It requires very little technical skill to open an account on any of the pieces named above which presents the dichotomy that marketers face – the ease of use can quickly translate to accounts that amount to “hello world” but often get forgotten in the hustle and bustle of day to day work.  Without a focus on any account, those customers  (guests in Ruby Tuesday’s world) who were very excited at the entry of a company they cared about in a digital space – will quickly move from excitement to vocal anger as their tweets and comments go unanswered and seemingly uncared for.

Which means that brands must ask, and then quickly answer the question, “what type of social media engagement is right for our brand?”