Wednesday, March 28, 2012

A RETURN TO BUZZWORD BINGO

Another week, another business conference. Don't get me wrong, as a recovering geek I find these events incredibly interesting, and the people who send me seem to like the reports that I write.

However, one scourge that stalks these events is that of corporate buzzwords which have either entered into the world of cliche, or are otherwise completely meaningless.

I am glad to report that "low-hanging fruit" appears to have fallen out of fashion, but - sadly - there are any number of cobblers phrases just lining up to take its place. For example, these were heard in one single day's hard conferencing (get your bingo cards ready), and starting off with a few easy ones...

Going forward

Value chain

Walled gardens
And on to the hard stuff...

Baked-in contract

Elevator pitch

X is the new Y

Ten foot experience

Deep-dive review

Thought leader

Gamification layer

Splinternet
Unfortunately, for the last two, the conference-appointed sniper was on his tea break, and the perpetrators survived to buzzword another day.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT A SPLINTERNET IS

7 comments:

Brew Wales said...

During one especially boring meeting I once suggested 'taking a helicopter view up into the blue-sky thinking where we could drop thought grenades into the crowd-source below'.
'That's a very good idea' came a reply from someone who could not appreciate sarcasm, 'Why don't you put the idea in writing for the next meeting?'

Keith said...

Taking a turn on the ideas carousel is one that stirs homicidal feelings in me.

No Good Boyo said...

I'm still plugging "top-shelf thinking".

I Am Evil said...

I'm really afraid to ask what a ten foot experience is... Sounds painful

Dr Si said...

Splinternet sounds like some kind of medaeval torture device...

Anonymous said...

Splinternets are non-connected virtual subnets in a firm (intranets for each dept.) afaik.

MarkMcLellan said...

A major corporation I once worked for published the results of their employee satisfaction survey including, bravely, the comments. My favourite was to the question "Do you think --- provides Thought Leadership" to which one respondent replied "Orwellian psycho-bollocks". A phrase I have treasured ever since.