FIR Interviews

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Jeremiah Owyang founded CrowdCompanies as a council of large businesses that stood to be disrupted by the “sharing economy,” a class of businesses established based on the innovation of technology serving as the intermediary between people who have something (cars, spare rooms or apartments, free time) and people who want it (to get somewhere cheaper and faster than a cab, to stay somewhere more homey and less costly than a hotel room, to clean out a garage or scan photos, for example). Each of the members of CrowdCompanies needs to innovate to stave off disruption.

They asked Owyang “to look inside of companies, to find out how they are structured to respond to disruption trends.” The result is a report, “The Corporate Innovation Imperative: How Large Corporations Avoid Disruption by Strengthening Their Ecosystem” (which is available below). In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz and Jeremiah talk about the obstacles to innovation, some of the 10 types of innovation programs the study uncovered, the metrics for measuring innovation success, and more.
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The burgeoning cannabis industry is attracting a flood of entrepreneurs in the states where it is legal. Aliza Sherman, a pioneer digital marketer, is among them. Aliza — who founded Cybergrrl, the first woman-owned Internet company, in 1995 — has launched a new marketing agency, Spark The Creative, which provides marketing services specifically for the cannabis industry. Concurrently, she has created Her Canna Life, an online publication focusing on women in the industry. In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz talks with Aliza from her home in Alaska about the preparations she undertook before opening the doors of her new agency, why she’s keeping it separate from her existing enterprise, some of the challenges in working in an industry that, while legal in some states still violates federal law, and what it’s like working with businesses that have never considered marketing before.
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J. Kelly Hoey built a dream network and that network encouraged her to write a book about it. Within short order, “Build Y our Dream Network” went into a second printing, so her network evidently knew what it was talking about. In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz chats with Kelly (who was a panelist on FIR #72) to talk about dream networks, how to build them, and what you’ll get out of her book.
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“What people tell you may not be the most accurate estimate they could give you, and that’s where prediction markets can come in. They are a mechanism that cost modest resources and consistently give you more accurate answers to the questions you ask, especially when people have the incentive not to tell you their honest answer, and many companies have used prediction markets as a way to produce engagement. Participants have consistently found that they like participating and feel that they are listened to more.” Dr Robin Hanson.
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A conversation for our political times. A discussion about making government work better with Patri Friedman Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder of the Seasteading Institute about competitive governance in multi stack holder environments.
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Much has been written about how to deal with fake news, including one particularly level-headed framework for how PR should address it by Stephen Waddington, chief engagement officer at global PR agency Ketchum. In this FIR Interview, Wadds (as he’s known) offers his views on fake news and outlines what PR practitioners need to do to minimize its impact on their clients or employers.
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In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz talks to two hard-core data geeks — Edison Research Vice President Tom Webster and SHIFT Communications Vice President Christopher S. Penn — about 2016’s election polls and what communicators can learn from them, and how to ensure polls and surveys are used effectively in planning campaigns or using polls or surveys as elements of a campaign.
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In mid-November, PRSA unveiled its 2017-2019 Strategic Plan, “Framework for the Future.” A team of Society leaders reviewed a substantial body of research before laying out the plan with a focus on membership, professional growth, and thought leadership. In this FIR Interview, host Shel Holtz discussed the plan with 2017 PRSA Chair Jane Dvorak. Among the topics addressed in the interview were the impact the research review had on the plan, how PRSA’s plans accommodate the diversity of members (including those who aren’t geographically situated to attend chapter meetings), and how the organization can remain relevant when so much networking and professional development is available online for free.
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Effective December 1, some 4 million salaried U.S. workers will be subject to time-tracking and overtime pay who were exempt from those rules before. It’s likely that reading company news or other internal communication on a smartphone will be considered “work” under these rules — that is, if employees in this group aren’t paid for the time they spend consuming internal comms content aren’t compensated for it, your company could be subject to legal action by an employee or the Department of Labor.

In this FIR Interview, Shel Holtz talks with Simon Worsfold of TSheets about the new rules, who those 4 million employees are, how companies need to prepare, and what you need to consider when communicating the issue.
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This interview is the first in a series produced during a full-day workshop on podcasting for organizational communicators. The FIR Podcast Network’s Shel Holtz leads these workshops, part of which includes the recording, editing, and production of a podcast on-site. In this first session, held at the Gleacher Center in Chicago on October 28, 2016, Ryan Alford of Interprose (based in Chicago) volunteered to conduct the interview while Amy Bickers of Northern Trust Corporation (also in Chicago) offered to take Ryan’s questions on transformation communication, a subject in which she has expertise. The questions were generic and not related directly to her work with her employer.
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