More info here: Dachis Group acquires XPLANE and be sure to check out the buzz on Twitter.

“The Carbon Economy” will be shown at The Economist’s upcoming Carbon Economy Summit on November 17 and 18, 2009 in Washington, D.C. The video is three minutes in length and includes simple visuals and a moving soundtrack to clearly convey the troubled state of global climate change and what steps must be taken to reach a positive outcome. The production was created using Apple’s Keynote software.

For more information on The Carbon Economy Summit, visit http://carboneconomy.economist.com.

“I spent more than two years crafting and fine-tuning the map, ensuring that it would thoroughly and accurately describe the essential elements of time- and self-management,” says David, “It’s as simple as I could get it, while still embodying the subtleties and complexities that have to be factored in, to make it real and useful. And the visual representation we’ve come up with I think is a highly effective way to make something this meaningful really clear.”

The poster was created by XPLANE, the visual thinking company. Visit www.xplane.com to learn more about how XPLANE clarifies complex business issues through visual collaboration.

Social Media Governance is a book that helps organizations find the right balance of empowerment and accountability in their social media efforts. It will be released in September 2009.

They’ve created a database of social media policies from dozens of companies, governments, non-profits.

As Garr Reynolds mentions over at Presentation Zen this morning, yes, this project was created with “off-the-shelf slideware” (Keynote and GarageBand, actually, along with Photoshop and Illustrator). Content by XPLANE, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. Design and development by XPLANE.

For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit The Economist’s Media Convergence conference site at mediaconvergence.economist.com, or stop by shifthappens.wikispaces.com for all things Did You Know.

Where do you start? That’s the question I get often when I’m asked how to help a company market using social media tools. The people who contact me are smart. They tell me things like, “Yeah, they said we should start with a blog, and we said, ‘like the blog we already have?’” But what comes next is rarely a simple choice. I wanted to take you through some thoughts on what the basic building blocks of social media might be for a business (in the context of marketing, but then stretching a bit further out).

Remember, roadmaps don’t work really well until you have a solid goal or destination in mind. None of this matters unless it feels right to you, regardless of my advice. You know your company’s boundaries. You know what your comfort levels are. Proceed at your organizational pace.

A little while ago, we had a great guest post here by Jason Cohen titled “Why Your Startup Shouldn’t Copy 37Signals or Fog Creek”. In it, Jason makes some great arguments on why you shouldn’t copy successful startups like 37signals. I (mostly) agree with Cohen. Blind copying just doesn’t work for reasons Jason Fried (CEO of 37signals) outlines in a follow-up article.

Here’s what Fried had to say:

“Here’s the problem with copying: Copying skips understanding. Understanding is how you grow. You have to understand why something works or why something is how it is. When you copy it, you miss that. You just repurpose the last layer instead of understanding all the layers underneath.”

The response to an earlier article “Startups: 10 Things MBA Schools Won’t Teach You” has been overwhelmingly positive. The article has now received about 150 comments across various websites (on the OnStartups.com site, in the OnStartups LinkedIn group, etc.) Unsurprisingly, many of the comments are much better than anything I could have ever come up with on my own.

So, to further the conversation and discussion, I decided to collect, edit and share some of the fantastic insights from reader comments.

XPLANE, in collaboration with Nitin Nohria, Richard P. Chapman Professor of Business Administration, and Co-Chair of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School, has created “Imagine Leadership,” an inspiring and thought-provoking video on the theme of global leadership. Nohria, working with Amanda Pepper, also a member of the Leadership Initiative, sought the support of XPLANE to create a visually appealing, provocative piece that would inspire viewers to take action, get involved and be motivated to lead.

Truth be told, most business plans fail to make much impression on potential investors. Most aren’t even read in full. Their shortcomings tend to be obvious even in a two-page executive summary, largely because they are written before enough real work has been done to create a solid foundation.

I set out to understand why most business plans don’t deliver. Drawing on the hundreds of plans and pitches that I’ve seen over many years of working with entrepreneurs and early-stage ventures, I searched for common patterns in plans that gained no traction. The result? Five oh-so-common varieties of plans that go quickly into the trash without further consideration.