COMS 562

Journal Assignments Instructions

Modern organizations need leaders who understand disruption, embody agility, and are naturals with new digital tools.[footnoteRef:1] [1: Staff, V. (2015). The key to rapid growth: Disrupt an industry. VentureBeat. Retrieved 14 August 2015, from http://venturebeat.com/2015/08/14/the-key-to-rapid-growth-disrupt-an-industry/]

Disruption is increasingly the new norm in the global marketplaces inhabited by organizations/goods/services. The dynamic field of interactive communication is the leading channel of change, tools and tactics to compete, whether your organization is for-profit or non-profit. More on this can be found simply by going to your favorite search engine and entering “technology disruption” or “technology disruption effects.”

Your charge in this set of Journal Assignments is to research, understand, analyze, and apply these new net/web ideas to an existing organization, product or service of your choice.

You will write four journal assignments, proceeding in this way:

1. Choose a topic. It will be an organization and or goods or service that you think best displays (or has displayed) the disruption to the current status quo that results from technology. Somewhere along the way, in the area that you choose, technology has been used to either craft an approach/produc and/or communicate to a market…or both! Some obvious examples:

a. The introduction of the iPhone

b. The use of social media and mobile by President Donald Trump’s successful campaign

c. Thomas Road Church and the use of new video techniques both online and in the church

d. A church’s use of podcasts to expand its reach in its region

e. Any Nike or Coke campaign, most of which use multimedia approaches involving digital communication technologies

f. And many, many more!

2. Through Journal Assignments, walk your topic through a complete analysis of how and why this particular use of technology succeeded in disrupting the market. Each Journal Assignment is a critical area to consider when evaluating the use of technology in disrupting (read: increasing market share) a market:

a. Journal Assignment #1: Audience (viewer/consumer/end-user) demographics

i. So tell us: what product, consumer marketing category, organization (for-profit or non-profit), or service is ripe for disruption by technology? Where do you think a technology adaptation, adoption, and/or breakthrough will turn existing relationships, consumer behaviors, and/or attitudes upside down? And why.

b. Journal Assignment #2: Social Media and Organizational Growth

i. TOPIC: Investigate the use of social media to grow the sales/donations/membership of an organization that you are either interested in or affiliated with. Ideally, I’d like you to use the same organization as you wrote about in your first journal effort—but it’s up to you. In the first week, you focused on a particular targeted slice of the market. Now, connect an organizational target—potential customer, member, donor, etc.—with the use of a specific social medium (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) to engage that target… and DISRUPT that target’s thoughts, behavior, buying/serving/consumption/donating patterns. Describe the social media strategy and tactics used by the organization to produce growth.

c. Journal Assignment #3: Emerging Technologies

i. TOPIC: What are the technologies that have allowed your choice to succeed in the market? What technology choices have they made that positioned them to better appeal to the market, to grow in sales/revenues/donations/membership/etc.?

d. Journal Assignment #4: Recognizing Future Disruption

i. TOPIC: The one constant of technology is that it changes. Better, more, faster—all ways to describe innovation in this area. How has your topic harnessed that innovation, used technology or positioned itself to use future technologies to even more effectively disrupt its market and grow?

*For each: You will write a journal entry of at least 2 pages (reminder: 12 pt. Times New Roman double-spaced) in current APA format that focuses on that module/week’s topic. Evaluation will center on the degree to which the entry demonstrates a full understanding of the topic as well as the potential for successful application of technology.