I was born in South Africa and left the country in 1984 during the darkest time of Apartheid. When I left, I didn't see any hope for the country. It appeared to be headed for ruin.  Little did I know.

For me, Nelson Mandela represents the highest order of humankind.

Here is a man who spent 27 years behind bars fighting against the evil of Apartheid and when he emerged from prison to become the President of South Africa in 1994, what did he do?

Instead of pursuing a path of vengeance and retribution (as most people feared and what a lesser man would have chosen), he pursued a path of reconciliation and unity.

His leadership and example actualized one of the most powerful miracles in human history - He transformed an entire nation.

I have always marveled at how Mandela, who had gone through so much personal pain, loss and anguish, could rise above it all, become such a powerful leader and force for positive change.

He pursued the "heroic path" as described in David Lapin's new book, Lead by Greatness, How character can power your success.

As we approach 2012, the world is facing major challenges and we seem to have lost all faith and trust in our leaders and institutions, be they political or corporate.

We are all searching for new models, new paradigms and new structures for the post-industrial age.  We've exhausted our natural resources, our financial resources and exploited our technology.

What's the next frontier of innovation and growth? Humanity itself, or more specifically, our human character. This is the thesis of David Lapin's book and it is profound. He shows us how we can all become heroic leaders and transform ourselves, those around us and ultimately our entire world.

Mandela demonstrates the eight character traits that David Lapin discusses in his book: Authenticity, destiny, mastery, humility, vulnerability, generosity, awareness and wisdom. Too many leaders today have tipped the scale in the other direction with stories in the news every day about some new scandal, ponzi scheme or corrupt behavior. We obviously need more people like Mandela. People who have the courage, vision and resolve to take the heroic path. People with similar character traits to help lead us to a better place.

David Lapin's book provides us with a unified roadmap that can take all of us on this much needed heroic journey. He fuses together ancient spiritual principles, modern business philosophy and twenty years of practical, global application to provide us with the roadmap.

This book should be mandatory reading for all of us who seek to transform our own life and the institutions we build.

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The image above is of President Nelson Mandela shaking hands with the Springbok captain, Francois Pienaar, during the 2005 Rugby World Club. Mandela enlisted the national rugby team in a unique venture to unite the apartheid-torn land. This powerful story was captured in the movie Invictus which was directed by Clint Eastwood and starred Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as Pienaar.

Here's the Amazon price for the Steve Jobs autobiography that is sure to become an instant bestseller:

On Amazon.co.uk: (50% off regular price) [ = USD $19.96 as of midnight October 24, 2011 ]

On Amazon.ca: (37% off regular price) [ = USD $23.07 as of midnight October 24, 2011 ]

On Amazon.com: (48.9% off regular price)

Yesterday, on the day when Apple became the most valuable brand in the World, I had a personal experience that reinforced why Apple IS the most valuable brand in the World.

I recently lost my iPhone and called my mobile provider to arrange to get a replacement. After a 30 minute conversation with their customer service rep on the phone, I was assured that everything was in order and that all I needed to do was to go to one of their stores and pick up my new phone.  When I got to the provider's store, they told me that they didn't have any stock of the new white iPhone 4 and that I would have to go to an Apple Store to get one.

I walked into my local Apple Store which was buzzing as usual and Matthew came up to me and asked how he could help me.  I explained that I'd lost my iPhone and that I needed a replacement phone. I told him that my mobile provider had sent me to Apple Store as they didn't have stock.  His first words to me were, "No problem, I'll be happy to help get you setup." He led me to the closest iMac and launched an app which connected him directly with my mobile provider's backend. He typed away for 30 seconds and discovered that there was no record of my 30 minute conversation with the provider.  He got on the phone to them and went back and forth with them to solve my problem.

I stopped for a second and realized that this was an Apple employee in an Apple Store solving my problem with my mobile provider on my behalf.  While he was on hold, he pulled out his iPod Touch and hit a few keys. Within 30 seconds, one of his colleagues emerged from the back of the store carrying my new iPhone.

Not once did Matthew stop and say, "Sorry sir, there's a problem with XYZ Mobile company. You'll have to call them to resolve it."  He just took care of business and apologized to me for the delay!

No passing buck.

No "it's not my problem".

No attitude.

No excuses.

Only superb customer service above and beyond anything I've ever experienced.

His actions reinforced why I love Apple so much and validated why Apple is the most valuable brand in the World. Yes, they build and distribute magical products that are beautifully designed. Yes, their retail stores are gorgeous and they have the highest gross sales per square foot of any other retail store. But most importantly, they have a culture of excellence, a culture of zero-defect, a culture of service and they attract and nurture employees who share these values and beliefs.

Thank you Matthew! You have made a very personal connection and reinforced why Apple is the most valuable brand in the world.

We all know that Facebook has 500+ million members and that 50% of them use the site on a daily basis.  The stats are overwhelming. There can be no question that Facebook is the powerhouse of social media and that people are addicted to it. Just look at how Zynga's leveraged Facebook's phenomenal growth to reach a reported pre-IPO valuation of $10 billion.

So, what does this mean for brands? Mark Zuckerberg said the following at the Web 2.0 Summit late last year:

I think that over the next 5 years, most industries are going to get rethought to be social and designed around people. This is kind of the evolution we’ve seen at Facebook.

Anyone paying attention to what's happened in the world over the past 5 years would have to agree with the Facebook founder. I know I do --- I've founded two businesses in the past 18 months that are both focused exclusively on innovation within the social business web.

The current hype around Facebook for business reminds me of the glory days of AOL back in the 1990s.

Can you remember that far back?

At the peak, every TV ad seemed to have those AOL keywords which are analogous to today's Facebook fan pages. We all know what happened to that strategy.

Every agency is telling its clients to "fish where the fish are" and the fish are definitely on Facebook.  We've seen gigantic growth of Facebook fan pages and the top 50 corporate brands on Facebook have a collective 458,033,721 fans who "liked" them!  There are very successful startups who are capitalizing on the Facebook fanpage phenomenon ... Increasingly I'm hearing people suggest that the corporate website is dead and that all the action is now taking place out on the social networks, with the Facebook platform being the key benefactor.

So, should your brand jump on the Facebook bandwagon?  Should you abandon your own website and simply set up a Facebook fan page instead?

Many brands seem to be following this path and on the surface who can argue with that 458 Million number.

What's Zynga thinking today? It is looking to hedge its bets and create it's own platform.

I'm suggesting that you do the same thing for your brand too.

Build your own social business platform.

Yes, the social phenomenon is real and it will transform the way business operates. It's already done that and I'm a strong believer that we are only at the beginning.  We will see dramatic innovation within the social business arena over the next few years. So, instead of just relying on Facebook to be your "social voice", look to build your own social platform that you can control and tailor to your own unique business needs. Why do I say this?

Bottom line, social platforms are the way of the future. My advice is to build your own social platform and hold your brand's destiny in your own hands.

I spent most of Tuesday flying across North America going through three airports and traveling on two different airlines.

Those of us who travel frequently (seem to) have resigned ourselves to the inhumane travel experience:

• The atrocious TSA experience which resemble human assembly lines ... people lining up, taking off their clothes, putting on their clothes, being scanned, prodded, searched and treated like criminals
• The planes which resemble the cliched old Greyhound buses with broken seats, broken lights, smelly toilets
• Flight departure delays; seemingly endless circling on arrival that adds 15 - 30 minutes to your flight
• The list goes on and on ...

The last one hour flight I took at 9pm revealed the missing link in air travel.  All the logistics, planes, terminals and gates have made us forget the key ingredient : The Human Connection.  Air travel is fundamentally a service industry and the power to innovate and improve this experience lies in the hands of people - many people in many roles.

There was one key person who actually made that human connection on Tuesday:

The flight attendant on my United Express flight out of Houston was phenomenal. She's been in the industry for 20 years and one would have expected her to be jaded, tired and robotic. Instead, she was funny, energetic, helpful and caring. She engaged passengers with an authentic empathy and I saw her actively solving problems and helping people. As she walked by me, she saw that I was struggling to read my book in the poor light. Without being asked, she unscrewed the light fitting so that I could have more light to read. "Don't tell the maintenance people I did that", she said.

A simple human gesture that literally shone Light on my day.  Thank you.

We all seem to suffer from information overload. The channels and amount of information we are expected to absorb, analyze and react to in real-time or near real-time seem to just keep increasing exponentially over time.  We're overwhelmed.

So what do we do?

Clay Shirky is famous for saying that the problem isn't information overload - it's filter failure.

I just started playing with the beta of ifttt.com ("If This Then That") which seems to offer an elegant, automated solution to at least a portion of the problem.

The site takes the cause-and-effect function we find in code (IF x condition is true [trigger] THEN do y [action]) and translates it into a human tool to manage our information channels and link them causally in an intelligent way.

Ifttt.com lets you track activities in the following channels and build automated trigger-action rules:

For example:

• If [AAPL stock exceeds $350] Then [Send me a text message]
• If [someone mentions me on Twitter] Then [Call me]

You get the idea.

I love the simplicity of the ifttt experience and look forward to seeing how they evolve their offering.

What do you think?  I have a few invites available so if you want one, leave a comment.

We all talk about how powerful social (media) is and how it's changing the world.

I recently gave the following presentation at a workshop where we explored how rapidly social and business have merged and are now effectively the same thing.

The presentation shows the journey taken by seven major brands as they rediscover the human connection with their customers and staff.

If your company is currently exploring how to embrace social, how to best build a social entreprise and operationalize human connections, we're available to help you on your journey.

(Thanks to the Slideshare editorial staff for featuring this on your Business and Management page)

I wrote about why I'm excited about Groupon last month and it's become the most read blog post I've ever written - Thank you!

Time for a quick update on the whole group buying frenzy:

Lots of activity, lots of deals, lots of hype ...

I wonder if Google will be successful?

What do you think?

Groupon's recent rejection of Google's $6 Billion acquisition has certainly raised many eyebrows. Has the Chicago-based startup drunk too much of it's own Koolaid? What's the big fuss all about? It's just a coupon company, right? Its huge valuation is just a symptom of the current frothy Twitter-Facebook-Zynga social mania. right? It's just Google's hunger to finally have success in the social web, right?  Let's peel back the onion a little and examine what all the fuss is all about.

Here's a company that, in two years, is reported (by Forbes) to be the fastest growing company ... EVER!

In two years it has accumulated 35+ million subscribers, will have reported revenues of anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion in 2010 and has spawned hundreds of clones across the Globe (yes, literally hundreds of clones).

So, why am I excited about Groupon? Well, not for the reasons that you may think:

It's Not A Tech Company

Groupon has 3,000 employees.

It uses old-fashioned email lists and email distribution to reach its 35 million customers.

Yes, it does use Twitter and Facebook and certainly leverages social to drive it's business but it's not a tech company.

Who are these 3,000 employees? What do they do?

They aren't all sophisticated PhDs building proprietary algorithms.

They aren't all Silicon Valley engineers building cool apps or cool social media code.

No.

The majority of them are ...

"Old World" Sales Reps

The vast majority of their staff are focused on selling, not coding. Groupon has at least 2,500 sales reps calling local merchants across hundreds of markets across the Globe.  Compare that to Twitter, Foursquare and even Facebook.

It's a classical business doing the hard slog of sales the old-fashioned way --- using the phone to build relationships with local vendors one at a time.

It Has Revenue And Profits (and lots of both)

The press has reported that Groupon will book $500 million in revenue in 2010.  What emerged from the Google acquisition, it that the revenue numbers are closer to $1 billion and will likely be $1.5 billion in 2011.

It has created an incredibly profitable business model that delivers significant bottom line profits.

Why Has It Grown So Fast?

1. Insight

When you look at the "hyperlocal" market, you see a lot of competition - Yelp, Google, Yellow Pages and others - all going after small business advertising. It's a crowded market with search services, listing services, SEO services and coupon services all vying for the same small business advertising budgets.

For Google, this market is forecasted to slow their spend in the future.  The majority of small vendors in local markets cannot afford to spend $1,000+ per month buying Adwords on Google.

Here's the genius of Groupon:

What Groupon offers its merchants is exactly what they want --- Customers. Period.  Especially in these recessionary times. Not expensive monthly advertising that hopefully generates leads.  Not complicated programs.  Just customers walking through the door of their respective establishments. And Groupon delivers customers in droves, via the power of group buying and discounting.

From the consumers' perspective, Groupon is offering huge discounts + a big incentive to spread the message (you need a minimum group of people to buy before the deal "fires").  The offers are pushed out in a combination of push and pull vehicles : via email, on iPhone apps, on the web and via social networks.

2. Simplicity

The "Daily Deal" is simple for vendors to understand and simple for customers to understand.  Its simplicity is a major contributor to its success. Vendors know how much it costs them and how many customers they get out of the deal.  Consumers love the simplicity and the ease with which they can share it with their friends.

3. Sense of humor / humanity

Groupon's use of humor and its humanity are key differentiators for its business.  From their whacky cat to their humorous and witty copy in their emails to the whacky things they do at their offices, the team at Groupon is leveraging their humanity and sense of humor.  Once again, this reinforces that they are not a boring tech startup of old but a group of highly energetic, smart people with superb businesses brains.

4. Social leverage

Groupon is leveraging the social graph to drive sales in the local market.  It's one of the first times we've seen social being leveraged at this scale to drive sales - not just connection, conversation and engagement.  It's the holy grail of social leverage.

Groupon's Future

So, what about the future?  Is the whole group-buying coupon thing just an Internet fad that will fizzle out?  What about coupon fatigue / "deal" fatigue and the long-term detrimental effect of discounting?  A lot has been written about the negative effects for merchants who use Groupon. Are the stories true that Groupon isn't seeing a lot of repeat business?  Will the growth of all the clones eat into Groupon's share or is the market growing fast enough to allow all to benefit?  Lots of questions.

Groupon is adapting it's business model to address some of these:

It recently announced "Groupon Stores" where vendors will be able to create their own programs and manage them via self-service. How this will affect Groupon's margins is to be seen.

It is actively acquiring competitors in Europe and Asia.  According the latest stats, it currently owns approximately 80% of the market despite having 200+ known clones across the Globe.

What This Means For Businesses Of The Future

Regardless of whether Groupon continues to dominate, it has taught all of us a great lesson. A lesson that applies to all business today, not just the tech startups of the day.

For me, Groupon is one of the first new wave of companies that synthesizes the old world and new world of business.  They have taken the best of the old world (sales reps, push marketing, clever copywriting) and married them successfully with the new world of social / group dynamics in a fun and insightful way that scales profitably.

I believe it's possible for any business today to use these same techniques to its advantage to drive sales and transform its business model while retaining the best of the traditional ways of doing business that exist in companies today.

The classic image of Netflix's attack on Blockbuster, seen above, can be viewed as the poster child of the disruptive force of new business models and the power of the Internet to shake up dominant players in industry after industry.

It reminds me of a sketch I used in a business pitch to a major retailer back in 1998. They were the dominant brand in their marketplace. They sold their products exclusively through traditional bricks-and-mortar stores and were "somewhat concerned" by the emergence of online stores.

The naive drawing conveyed the disruptive force of the Internet --- Prior to the web, industries typically operated in silos with their own business models, power structures, sales cycles and ecosystems. Each industry had their unique combination of Michael Porter's Five Forces

and companies within each industry competed to maximize their market share and profitability.

The Internet has turned this neat picture on its head.

It opened up channels between industries and shook up each of the five forces.

Let's go back to the Netflix - Blockbuster example.

Netflix has innovated it's business model again, once again changing the nature of it's business and establishing itself as a major competitor to a new group of companies.

Shark Attack! The New Reality of Hyper-Competition In the Internet Age

Industries have morphed and increasingly we've seen a merging of industry forces and business models. The competitive advantage a company has spent decades building in its industry can evaporate almost overnight. Companies in unrelated industries can suddenly enter and emerge as significant competitive threats to the current industry leaders. Business models from one industry can be applied very effectively to a previously unrelated industry.

Netflix initially innovated the movie rental business by attacking Blockbuster clients' key pain: late fees. No more late fees.  Next, they used the US Postal service as their major distribution network.  No more driving to and from the video store. Next, they used the Amazon "long-tail" concept and provided movie lovers with a huge inventory of choice, more than you would typically find on the shelf in your local Blockbuster store.

Blockbuster tried to replicate the Netflix business model but couldn't.  Walmart entered the space but they haven't been able to disrupt Netflix's rise.

Now we've seen the next step in Netflix's innovation : unlimited online streaming of movies for a fixed monthly fee ($7.99!). They first tested their online streaming in Canada (where it consumed up to 95% of total online bandwidth) before launching in the US. Netflix represents more than 20% of downstream Internet traffic during peak times in the U.S. -- and is heaviest in the primetime hours of 8 to 10 p.m., according to a new report from bandwidth management equipment vendor Sandvine.

Who's enabling Netflix to stream all this content? Akamai took the Netflix distribution business away from Level 3 at the beginning of the year.  NetFlix just announced that Level 3 And Limelight will now be their vendors of choice to get you your latest and greatest movie.

Netflix has now jumped into a whole new competitive space competing with cable companies and the batch of "new TV" players like Hulu and Boxee. In addition, they are now competing with Apple and Google for ownership of the digital HDTV in our living rooms.

Netflix is effectively cannibalizing its own hugely successful DVD business, disrupting itself and fundamentally changing the economics of the game as it goes after a whole new group of competitors.

According to Sandvine, "Netflix, which had approximately 16.9 million subscribers at of the end of September 2010, provides its “Watch Now” Internet streaming service on more than 100 devices, including TiVo DVRs, Roku, Apple TV, Google TV, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation3, Nintendo Wii, and many Internet-connected TVs and Blu-ray Disc players."

Reed Hastings, Netflix's CEO, has been voted the "Business Person of the Year" by Fortune Magazine.  The secret of his success? "He never stops looking over his shoulder."

Good advice to all in this new hyper-connected World.

If you're not looking, you'll see blood (most probably your own) in the water before you can shout "Shark Attack!"