Career / Opinions

Let's face it, not every company will succeed. Sometimes there's a fine line between success and failure. Many factors can stop a good idea in its tracks – sometimes it's just dumb luck. There are countless examples of failed business attempts that you can learn from, but we've picked five notable businesses from Autopsy - Lessons from Failed Startups -- a website that documents the demise of startups and the reasons they fail -- that seemingly had it all but couldn't gain traction with their customers.

This column is a little cheerful, slightly analytical, both confident and tentative and just a tiny bit angry. But mostly, it's open, agreeable and conscientious. At least that's what IBM's Watson thinks.

When I started working on my undergraduate degree, one areas I focused on was manpower management -- the study of how to manage and motivate people. A lot of work went into understanding what got employees up and focused and how to match people to the jobs they would most enjoy.

We've always been big supporters of the idea that, when it comes to being a CIO, what got you here won't keep you here. Still, that statement has its limitations: No, talking up your technical know-how won't win you points in the C-suite, but many of the investments made during the leadership journey can pay big dividends at the executive level.

There are two levels at which Google excites. There is a systematic stream of advances, such as those presented at the 2015 <a href="https://events.google.com/io2015/">Google I/O event</a> earlier this year -- Android M, Google Photos and the like.

Are you a bit disappointed with your new Apple iPhone 6 or Samsung Galaxy S6? If so, you're not alone. An analysis of more than 600,000 online reviews and comments posted by smartphone buyers during the past six months suggests consumers are jumping off the upgrade merry-go-round.

Widespread adoption of mobile payments among enterprises and consumers alike will take time. But when you've got Apple, Google, Facebook, Samsung and (most likely) Microsoft jumping into the market, you've got traction.

I've had an incredibly varied and generally fascinating career. I dropped out of college after two years to work full time at Disney. When they fired everyone in management who didn't have a degree, I walked off the job and went back and finished my Associate in Arts degree. Then I went on to earn a Bachelor of Science degree and ended up working in commercial real estate after turning down an interview with the firm that would eventually become Microsoft. (Yes, I still kick myself in the butt for that one.)

You're a senior executive wondering what might come next in your career. Positions at your level are rarely advertised or posted. So you contact a search firm or two. You tell them you're, "not actively looking" but might be interested in a new position, should the right one present itself. You email them your resume. They promise to keep you in mind. While many times there may be no results from the exchange for months, if ever.

Since it's inception in 1995, eBay has always attracted a flurry of activity. Just recently, the company has seen an uptick in user counts and their stock price. For the analytics company Terapeak, which provides the official sales-tracking dashboard, that rise in popularity could have been a challenge as more and more seller tools joined the fray. Fortunately, they figured out how to ride the wave of success, make smart business decisions, and almost single-handedly prove the freemium model does work by attracting 300,000 non-paying customers in 18 months.

Most companies' social media policies, if they exist at all, are highly inadequate, outdated or both.

Today, more than ever, businesses are dependent on technology to drive transformations that are anything but incremental. For CIOs, that means a tremendous opportunity to guide and help their businesses harness technology to realize the multiplier effect that new technologies offer as well as their digital ambitions.

Something is working at When I Work. The scheduling app for use with hourly employees has tripled its customer counts in just three years. Chad Halvorson was a grocery store clerk when, at just age 15, he realized how many employees came in on Sunday to check their schedules. By 16, he bought the wheniwork.com domain. Flash forward to 2010, and he built the app and launched the company that year.

If you are running an on-premise ERP system, you need to determine if you should upgrade it again or look to implement a new modern solution. In this blog series, you will find step by step guidance on how to make that decision.

By all accounts, mobile app usage has significant traction. The challenge enterprise marketers face, though, is how to leverage that traction in meaningful ways.

Organizations should know how to budget and pay for IT products and services -- they've been doing so for more than 50 years. This is not rocket science. Unfortunately, many organizations continue to make the same mistakes year after year.

Are your vendors one of the most important reasons why your organization is successful? If not, you may have a huge opportunity to unleash untapped capabilities that are already at your disposal. The ideas in this article will help you differentiate your organization in the eyes of your vendors so they pay more attention to your problems and help you achieve better results.

Enough about AirBnB already! A competing service in France called NightSwapping has a different twist on sharing rooms with strangers, and it is beginning to fire on all cylinders. The company uses a different business model from AirBnB -- it's all about hosting other travelers for free as a way to earn free accommodations all over the world. There's a social aspect, since you "meet" online first and discuss arrangements.

"Holy s#!t."

Of all of the digitization projects in the industry, the most significant might be the one being tackled by the U.S. Postal Service. As an entity, the USPS is getting hit from all sides, with new technologies and competitors impinging on all the things we used to rely on the post office for.