Esteban Kolsky
Esteban Kolsky is the founder and principal of thinkJar, a Customer Strategy consulting and think tank organization helping vendors and user successfully become better, more open, and more collaborative organizations. More information about thinkJar
May I Recruit Your Help in a Knowledge Management Research Project?
Late in 2011 I conducted my first market research project on Knowledge Management. I wanted to get an idea of what was going on in the world, what projects you (royal you, not you personally) were working on, what projects you were going to invest money in, and (more than anything) what was affecting your [...]
IBM Heralds The Mainstreaming of (Not Social) Business in Orlando
I was at IBM Connect 2013 last week in Orlando. A wonderful experience where IBM brought together partners, customers, suppliers (also known as consultants and system integrator and analysts. It was a good event from many perspectives, but I want to highlight three things I noticed in the time I was there: (Social) Business is Now [...]
The Changing World of Knowledge, Let’s Talk About It
Knowledge Management never worked. In the past 25+ years I must have tried a dozen or more different models of knowledge management and collaboration . In spite of the relative success of most of them – I will claim to have not succeeded 100% of the time by my standards, even if the client got [...]
How To Lose Credibility When Using Data
I have been saying for a while that data is the next big thing. No, not data by itself (which we have been talking about forever) or even “Big Data” (which is thankfully past the prime of hype and beginning to decline and going back to its maiden name: Data). We are talking about how we [...]
Can SAP Really Get Social This Time?
Before digging into the analysis of where Salesforce is and where it is going, and how the message at DreamForce was — what’s the word I am looking for… no, I won’t give it away yet (got a good analogy to introduce you to it, trust me). Anyways, before doing that – I want to [...]
Twitter, Facebook, Customer Service and Surgery
Yeah, yeah, yeah — been long, I know. Busy, you know? Plenty going on, plenty behind us and even more ahead of us — going to be a banner year this 2011 (what? it is? August of 2012? really?) — I meant, this 2012… So, I had a great chat yesterday with a friend and [...]
Social Media Adoption in Business – Wanna Know?
Social Media is reaching mainstream adoption in the enterprise – right? Do we really know that? Or are we just speculating? Until now, we were just speculating – we assumed, presumed, and deducted from most research or projects we have seen thrown around in the press, quoted ad-nausea in presentations, and generally not knowing for sure. [...]
KANA Acquires Sword Ciboodle: My Very Long (but Insightful) Take
First off, both companies are clients of mine – and fairly active clients. Second, I have a very long history with KANA; I covered them at Gartner and I worked for a wholly-owned subsidiary of KANA for about a year when I left Gartner (eVergance, later became KANA Professional Services). I continue to cover them [...]
Question: Why Are You In Social Channels?
I was moderating a great panel recently at the Inbound Marketing Summit: “How Does Inbound Marketing Affect SCRM?”. The speakers were superb – thanks Sameer Pattel, Kirk Mosher, and Chris Spears – but the audience was outstanding. I hate to ask questions of panelists since it basically bores the audience with pre-packaged statements, I prefer [...]
Microsoft Bamboozled by Yammer in $1.2 Billion Purchase
Well, after that title — what else is there to say? Lots, hear me out – I’d like to tell you why I am going against all the optimists out there (although I do consider myself an optimist) and why I liken this deal to AOL acquiring Time Warner (and we all know how well [...]
