The Problem and Its Background
My thesis in conceiving the idea of a “problems and solutions” website revolves around two basic problems: (1) how can a website help “entreployees” and organizations transform themselves into effective problem-solvers describing themselves by the problems they solve rather than just by the product they sell or services they offer, and (2) how do we maintain a community website that is profitable for all its members and sustainable for the website owner.
The two problems complement each other in many ways. By being able to help organization increase their revenue growth and sales performance and helping individual members earn additional income by constantly participating in the ZendUse activities, the website in return is assured of profitability and sustainability.
Current Websites Patterns
A cursory look at the existing Business-to-business websites, and analyzing the problems of declining revenue growth and sales performance in many organization, Keith M. Eades and Robert E. Kear in their book entitled “Emergence of Pseudo-Solutions” examined about 200 B2B companies and their websites from the global 2000 and observed a pattern that suggest the following and I quote:
1. Most companies that claim to sell solutions continue to define who they are by what products they make or provide- more than half of the companies evaluated offered few specifics about what problems they actually solve, and only 1 percent of companies did an exceptional job of providing problem specifics.
2. Most companies assume buyers understand why they are experiencing their problems and what their needs are – 85% of sites offered very little to educate buyers about the causes of their problems.
3. Very few companies provide specific linkages between problems their customers are experiencing and the operational and financial impact of those problems – more than 80% of companies fail to provide material specifics about these linkages.
4. Companies do a reasonably good job of communicating what they provide in the way of capabilities, but again, the clear linkage between problems, their causes, and those capabilities is nearly nonexistent – more than 80% of companies fail to create coherent linkages between the capabilities of their offerings and problems.
Although the above patterns were observed thru samples taken from global 2000 companies’ websites, I believe that the trend applies to all including those websites owned by SME and individuals specially the so called “entreployees” of the informal economy.
The second problem of sustainability and profitability
For the website to be sustainable, target customers must be aware that it exists, it must contain valuable information through contribution from the community, likewise, community should be able to earn points convertible to dollar value, the website must be ever-present/ relevant, easy to use, and it must be easy to manage.
For the website to be profitable and achieve revenue growth, it must continue to meet the needs of the community, able to generate some form of income through sponsorships, donations, advertising, directory listings, subscriptions and grants.
ZendUse website is conceived with a value proposition that by focusing on problems creatively we can connect effectively with real customer’s problems and needs. We help everyone who wants to participate in “problem-solving” to frame their identity and purpose around customer problems and needs and be different. Give your clients unique customer experience by being more consultative in nature, creative and come out with authentic solutions.
ZendUse website is a search engine for problems and solutions that are of high value to its end users, be it an organization, individuals, or group of individuals.
ZendUse website is also a community portal serving the interest of various sectors, from students seeking solution to their school assignments, professionals trying to find an answer to their work-related problems, managers who are constantly facing the challenges of corporate life trying to find solutions to problems their current workforce cannot solve, the legislators, non-government organizations, and environmentalists.
ZendUse website is also a knowledge sharing and story-telling portal for problems that are successfully solved.
What is unexpected but interesting about ZendUse?
ZendUse website will serve as catalyst for knowledge works along the wider domains of infopreneurship – a trend that is sweeping the American continent and Europe today; and second, it promotes and serves the interest of the so called “entreployees” who are predominantly middle class workers trapped in a middle class prison. These two trends are back burners in our bid to compete in the global marketplace because the more problems-and-solutions information is created and exchanged the more we become competitive in the global economy.
This is unexpected and interesting because the ZendUse is not only about entertainment and advertisements that characterizes today’s websites. In fact, we who have access to Internet worldwide are already consumed by entertainment. We spend enormous amount of time on the Internet watching videos, listening to music, playing games, chatting with someone-you-don’t-know in the Internet just to pass time. In the end, problems still persists in our daily lives with no solutions in sight.
Supporting the rise of Cyberworks
Professor John M. McCann of Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, compiled articles around the topic on “Digital Work CyberTrends”, and I quote:
“Knowledge workers, selling their labor to new species of business that will flourish in the wired economy, may need to be ready to go at a moments notice…. Professor Thomas Malone of the Center for Coordination Science at MIT says such wired workers will form overnight armies of intellectual mercenaries. Imagine a company with a task that needs urgent attention – say, designing a lawnmower or writing a computer program. The company might not maintain a cadre within its ranks to do the job. Instead it trolls the net for talent, sending out a bulletin that describes the tasks to be done and the skills required of team members. The notice might go directly to qualified applicants, based on resumes filed online. Specialists anywhere in the world instantly submit bids to do a piece of the job, simultaneously triggering a query to their personal references. Winning bidders work together via video hookup, each at his or home base. The project might last a few weeks or a few days or a few hours. Afterwards the team disbands and the members melt back into the talent pool to bid on new job.”
Today, November 2007, we will chase those dreams by Prof. Thomas Malone, and make them happen through ZendUse website. We enable problem senders to describe the problems or tasks that need to be solved and break it down further into sub-tasks or sub-problems, trigger an email alert or SMS to invited bidders or to everyone in the community who are qualified to participate. Winning bidders from anywhere in the world work together in a borderless workspace, solve the problem, post their solution back into the website as one of their project portfolios, get paid, disbands and melt back into the community to bid on a new problem to solve.
A Cradle for Entreployees
My favorite futurist Alvin Toffler describes in vivid terms the rise of entreployees, and here I quote:
“We are moving into a world in which for many the job may no longer be the primary source of income. We are moving into a world in which the faster the rate of change, the more complex the society, the more information must be generated, stored and transformed into knowledge, the more information must be exchanged and the more competitive the global economy becomes. We are creating an economy with less and less room for uneducated or less skilled workers. Indeed, even highly skilled workers can have the wrong skills at the wrong place at the right time and find themselves vulnerable. We may be moving from an economy based on employment to one in which we do not have employees but have in fact “entreployees”, some cross between entrepreneur and employee”.
The above paragraph is lifted from Alvin Toffler’s Keynote address, “Future Shock in the Present Tense”, during the Cyberspace and the American Dream Aspen Summit ‘96.
ZendUse Problems and Solutions website is designed to provide every member the facility to generate, store, and transform knowledge in the form of problems and solutions (problems and their solutions are more intelligible, concrete, and easy to understand) by sending them to the portal and using them to compound on existing know-how and capability; enabling the society specially the middle class to compete head on in the global economy, in the words of Alvin, “the more information must be exchanged the more competitive the global economy becomes”.
Zenduse your ideas and thoughts about this concept and email to Nes_oidem@hotmail.com.
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