Strategize

Abstract

As mentioned in Chapter 23, there is a persistent fallacy within many organizations and certainly with regard to the adoption of technology in the organization that, to paraphrase the 1989 film Field of Dreams: “if you build it, they will come”. This was true in the early days of the world-wide web when organizations would create websites assuming their offline customers would come online. This was true during the dotcom boom when numerous start-ups created businesses based on the idea that they would generate thousands or millions of web visitors to view their unique content and that, therefore, they would be able to sell multiple advertising spaces to fund the start-up. This is true in the age of social technologies when organizations create Facebook pages assuming their customers will “Like” the page, which will somehow generate direct or indirect benefits for the company. This is true of organizations that create Twitter accounts and Tweet information on behalf of the company (be it special offers, announcing new content, or responding to customer queries) but don’t have a plan on how to get their customers (existing or potential) to follow their Twitter feed and actually experience the Tweets. This is true of the organizations that pay tens of thousands to create apps, which don’t get downloaded by their target audience.