THINK TANK ON MARKETING COMPUTER CONFERENCING
edited by Stefanie Kott


The book REINVENTING THE CORPORATION: TRANSFORMING YOUR JOB AND
YOUR COMPANY FOR THE NEW INFORMATION SOCIETY, by John Naisbitt
and Patricia Aburdene (Warner Books, New York, 1985) became the
focal point of an ongoing discussion about the future of
computer conferencing and, once again, the marketing of it, in
Naisbitt lists ten considerations in re-inventing the
corporation. Among them, he suggests that the top employees
("the best and brightest") want personal growth, psychic and
literal ownership in a company, and want to work for companies
that foster that. Naisbitt suggests that the role of managers
will become one of "coach, teacher, and mentor," and he states
that "authoritarian management is yielding to a networking
people style of management." He describes corporations in which
"quality will be paramount," and where "intuition and creativity
are challenging...business school philosophy."

Gordon said, "What Naisbitt's book tells me is that there is an
emerging group of corporations out there to which CC could be
marketed in such a way that its strengths could play directly
into the strong points of a newly emerging corporate paradigm."


Shoring Up the Cornerstone
==========================

Anthony Bay, reacting against the seemingly open-ended
endorsement of computer conferencing (CC), responded, "If we
want CC to become a mainstream technology, we have to face
certain business realities. We are not marketing computer
conferencing or computer-mediated communication. We are
marketing the ability to more effectively communicate, share,
and disseminate information within an organization in order to
increase the organization's probability of reaching its goals
and objectives."

Anthony advocated highlighting "specific benefits to specific
companies in specific situations. We must take our
understanding of the technology and the ways in which it can be
applied and then creatively evaluate specific situations where
it can be of value. This value must be simple to explain and
Anthony concluded by saying, "Although the overall vision of
enhancing the communications and the participatory environment
within an organization is important, in most situations it is
not strong enough to lead a company to adopt CC. The costs of
the hardware, software, network costs, training, and
organizational rethinking must be clearly offset by the
perceived benefit if a company is to take such action
responsibly."


Seizing the Moment
==================

Bennett Landsman said, "Anthony Bay's comments ring true in a
logical sense. However, I wouldn't want to limit introduction
of conferencing and e-mail to only logical, rational
application-oriented conferences or e-mail use.

Cornering the Market with Expertise
===================================

From Unison, Peggy Berk agreed with Anthony that "in order to
effectively leverage the medium a broad-based mass metaphor...is
required. But if you look at he problem from a service
presentation mode, rather than a product mode, it becomes
apparent that we're looking at the problem from the wrong
place."

refute the notion that any individual application, no matter how
popular its appeal, is sufficient to cover the marketplace."

On a sobering note, Peggy concluded, "This medium (those who
provide it, develop it, sell it, and so forth) suffers from a
lack of definition of 'expertise.'"

The conversation goes on (and is most interesting). In future
issues of NETWEAVER, I will report on its progress.