When visitors come to Mzinga offices today, they see a building complex with purple and green painted walls, various conference rooms named after board games, and sections of cubicles within what we playfully call, “The Hive.” With about 200 employees today, it's hard to imagine what this company was like exactly seven years ago. On a Monday morning, very much like the one today, I sat in a Cambridge, MA basement and founded Rapid Insights, the predecessor company to Mzinga. It was a startup bas ...     Read entire post

Recently released numbers show fairly solid figures from Microsoft - $60 billion dollars a year in revenue with $15.84 billion for the fiscal fourth quarter.  Despite this growth, I find it interesting that I keep observing headlines like the one in today's WSJ that reads,  "Microsoft Shakeup Won't Lead to Big Changes for Business." Some cynics expresss skepticism towards Microsoft's financial outlook, but I haven't given up hope on the industry giant yet.  In my opinio ...     Read entire post

I have been building on-line communities for organization since 2001 when I started the company now known as Mzinga.  Since then I have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t in building business and not-for-profit human networks (I'm the wrong guy to ask if you want to know about physical networks like those run by ATT, Sprint and Cisco).  Recently, I had the pleasure to have the basic principles for success distilled by a gentlemen who runs Wharton’s Alumni Net ...     Read entire post

As much as I hate to admit this, I'm not a great blogger. This is evidenced by the fact that prior to my last post, I hadn't updated this in over a year. I could go on about all of the things that happened that got in the way of posting - things like growing Mzinga into the leading provider of business social media solutions, joining the board at Innocentive, becoming a faculty member at Wharton, etc. - but what ultimately matters is that I'm back. There are two questions some of you may be ask ...     Read entire post

Wow, summer is officially here and school is out. Even though students are taking a break from the classroom, many of them are learning new lessons in other environments, in particular, the working world. I've had the opportunity to observe three young individuals who are doing this and as a result, I'm revisiting some of the lessons that I've encountered in my own career: Lesson 1: To be the best, you have to train the hardest. A rising senior at Harvard, my oldest son Michael is spend ...     Read entire post