Who is this guy?

I’m Hutch Carpenter, and this is my blog.

I am the Director of Marketing and Online Communications for Spigit. Spigit helps companies manage innovation, providing idea management and prediction market software for enterprises. The goal is enable easy capture of ideas by employees, customers and partners, and convert the most promising to innovative initiatives.

For good empirical evidence on how social networks improve the quality of ideas, read What Enterprise Social Networks Do Well: Produce Higher Quality Ideas. This post describes the pioneering work of University of Chicago Professor Ronald Burt.

This presentation provides information on the idea management space, and how companies benefit from tapping communities for ideas:

——–

Aside from this blog, you can also find me on:

• twitter.com/bhc3
• friendfeed.com/bhc3
• LinkedIn

——–

Here’s a bit more of my background:

I got my MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, where I managed to receive the Faculty Award for Academic Excellence awarded to the top 10% of the graduating class. Out of school, I worked my way up to Vice President for Banc of America Securities doing something called syndicated loans. I left BofA in 2000 after the NationsBank acquisition.

Since then, I’ve been deeply involved in the software industry with several interesting companies. My first tech job was with eFinance (now Identrust), where I designed statistical credit scorecards for Hertz Equipment Rental and collections workflow optimization for Automated Data Processing (the folks that handle your paycheck). After eFinance, I spent a couple years with Pay By Touch, where I was the Senior Product Manager for the SmartShop Recommendation System. This system matched shoppers’ purchase histories against a pool of discounts provided by grocers and consumer packaged goods (CPGs) manufacturers. We brought to the offline world of grocery the benefits of recommendation systems that companies like Amazon.com enjoy.

After Pay By Touch, I worked with BEA Systems as a Senior Product Marketing Manager for its Enterprise 2.o products. It’s that job that made me start blogging on February 9, 2008, and I’ve been enjoying it ever since.

After Oracle bought BEA Systems, I went to work for Connectbeam, as a Senior Product Manager, a job I got through social media. Connectbeam ties together the social software applications of companies, adding a new layer of value to them and increasing their adoption.

I don’t talk about hard core tech stuff here like php or dojo, but I do enjoy exploring the functionality of apps and thinking about their business aspects.

There’s a simple categorization scheme on this blog: ‘geek‘ or ‘mba‘. The category cloud on the right side of each page will guide you to posts for either one.