Jan 3, 2011 | Collaboration, Innovation, Marketing, Social Media
The Microsoft business model has resisted all efforts to introduce open innovation practices into its markets, and many would argue, has stunted its growth and innovative potential as a result.
How rapidly things can change, even when you resist from a position of strength.
Microsoft introduced “Kinect” in the US just before Christmas, with the objective of wresting back some of the gamer/activity market into its X-Box offering which has suffered at the hands of the Wii. At the heart of Kinect is a chip with advanced capabilities, and very quickly hackers have found how to add open source access those capabilities, and are starting to explore applications that would not have occurred to Microsoft, or would have cost too much to pursue.
U-Tube is being used extensively to communicate the astonishing stuff being done, this one being the use of the Kinect chip extracted from a Kinect device bought for $150, to create 3-D images.
The message in all this is simply that open source innovation that engages the crowd outside the boundaries of your ability to harness IP is the exploding as the driver of innovation.
IP is almost unprotectable nowadays, the management task is now a question in two parts,
- “How do we create the conditions for the development of Intellectual Capital around our “patch”? ,
- ” How do we evolve our business model and monetarise it?
Jan 1, 2011 | Change, Management, Social Media, Strategy
20th century marketing tools have their place, in the 20th century; they will be progressively less effective as we progress through the 21st. Mass media, mass distribution, superficial differentiation, and all the rest are failing to excite in the 21st.
You need to do more than, not just more of.
Apple has done a great job over 30 years, and particularly the last 10 of engaging consumers, often to the point of illogical connection to and engagement with, the brand, and they have done it again with their “friend store” designed to ensure once you become an Apple user, you do not leave.
Contrast Apple to the boring, sterile, and just plain ordinary marketing executed by their competitors in computing, telephony, and music devices, and the value of “more than” becomes obvious. Apple in fact sells things that do not really fall into these simplistic manufacturing designated categories, they redefine the boundaries of their products, and the way they market by being committed and passionate, as well as different.
As you consider how to attack the challenges of the new year, think “more than” rather than just more of the same.
Dec 30, 2010 | Communication, Marketing, Social Media
On the eve of a new decade, it is perhaps useful to consider the changes that have occurred, recognise that the pace of change is still accelerating. For myself, and I suspect most of my readers, to even try and anticipate the changes to come in the next decade, on top of absorbing the impact of the last decade, just hurts the old brain.
However, where there is change, there is opportunity, and the opportunities that emerge will all require that the individual and the group is “connected” and using the communication and collaboration tools of the new decade. Part of the challenge here is throwing off the pre-conceptions of a disconnected world, the one we have all lived in to date, and to see the world through a different lens.
Chance favors the connected mind, so in 2011, get connected!
Dec 28, 2010 | Communication, Personal Rant, Social Media
Around a BBQ over the Christmas break, a bunch of us were chatting about what we would ban as a New Years resolution, as you do. Some innovative solutions to intractable problems emerged, peace in the middle east, an end to nuclear Iran/Korea/Pakistan, a clean coal technology, and so on. Light refreshments were involved.
One that struck me was when someone suggested we ban “Spin Doctors” particularly political ones that set out to persuade us that black is white, that what happened was not as it seemed, that somebody else was to blame, people had not contributed to climate change, and any number of other “Goebbelesque” distortions.
It occurred to me that the problem here was ours, as consumers of information and the media by which it is communicated, we accept the interpretation of data by those with a point of view, and often no knowledge just an outcome in mind. We allow those in positions of influence to distort data to their own purposes, when the opportunity is available to us to consider the data ourselves, and process it into information we are comfortable with.
Data is not information, it is just data to be interpreted to become information, and when used properly, usually with further processing, knowledge.
In this age of data availability and transparency, we only have ourselves to blame when we accept as the truth some dodgy interpretation of data by a dill with an agenda.
Dec 21, 2010 | Change, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Operations, Social Media, Strategy
It is that time of year, when we look back and try and understand the forces that have driven our decisions and behavior in the past year, and that will continue to have a potentially disruptive influence in the coming year.
In the spirit of the time, following is my list of the emergent forces that are shaping our world, in no particular order.
- Touchy-feely. Suddenly, the electronic devices we became used to using with keyboards became touchy! The iphone started it, followed by everything “I” and all its imitators. I cannot but wonder if this is an electronic substitute for the human contact, the physicality of it, that we have lost. The fact that it makes all this stuff easier is a side benefit.
- Global retailing becomes more than a cliché. For years we have been talking about the retail revolution driven by the globalisation of retailers, and the “e-retail” phenomenon stated by Amazon, and pushed by E-bay and now thousands of others. Suddenly in this Christmas retail season, the box retailers have woken up to the impact of e-retailing in categories other than music and books, as consumers buy clothing and footwear, electronic devices, furniture, white goods, and huge ranges of knick-knacks over the net, overseas, avoiding the distribution margins and tax collection function of the box retailers. This has all been facilitated by the advances in supply chain management driven by product codes and GPS powered by the net, and increasing confidence in net security and integrity of e-tailers.
- Net advertising rules. Advertising on the net will have overtaken TV as the biggest type of advertising by the middle of 2011. Broadcast advertising replaced by tightly targeted, 2 way communication with the capacity to evolve based on the immediacy of the interaction response and potential to engage on a personal level will continue to profoundly change the way we interact with brands and their marketers.
- Social media comes of age. No longer is social media the province of the under 20’s, it has become mainstream as grandparents connect to face book to see their scattered grandchildren, professionals connect via linked-in, twitter takes over as the first source of news of interest, then goes on to follow where the news leads rather than becoming chip wrapper the following day. Whilst this phenomenon appears to continue to grow exponentially, it does bother me a bit that it appears to be a substitute for the humanity of individual contact for many, and what we surrender in privacy and the richness of relationships with the few in favor of being “friends” with the many we will only know with the benefit of hindsight.
- The cloud rolled in. Over the course of 2010, the newest iteration of web 2.0 in the shape of cloud computing appears to have rolled in. Enterprise computing has suddenly evolved from servers inside a business with all the attendant costs and investment requirements, to having the potential to put all that stuff on the web have somebody else manage the IT whilst you just pay for the service, and improve productivity of those using the applications. I think we are just at the beginning of the revolutions that the cloud will bring.
- Data mining. The huge pools of data that are being accumulated by businesses, organisations and institutions offer the opportunity to be mined for all sorts of information about us, our behavior, frustrations, successes, and locations in ways not previously considered possible. This mining is starting, our ability to understand and predict outcomes across a wide range of situations and simulations of behavior and outcomes are becoming more accurate, based on the huge amounts of data being collected and analysed using emerging applications and technology capabilities.
- Crowdsourcing. Again, web 2.0 has enabled a revolution in the way we go about accumulating and leveraging information to serve an objective. In the past, R&D occurred in the confines of the labs and commercial departments of businesses, but R&D is rapidly being replaced by “E&S “, Experiment and Scale. If you have an idea, a problem, a hypothesis, it can be put to the crowd for comment, ideas and unconsidered alternatives. Linux started the trend, but in the last short period, it has been picked up by many who are seeking to push the boundaries quickly, and worry less about the IP involved, simply because IP is really pretty “sticky” in the sense that it does not necessarily work outside its environment.
- Two speed Australia. It really bothers me that around the traps I see all the symptoms of a recession in the trading activity, whilst the official numbers tell us that not only is all well, but it is booming. The non economist in me says that the cash in the joint is a result of digging up stuff and selling it to China, reaping short term rewards as demand has outstripped supply, surely the economic equivalent of a one trick pony!. Supply of mined commodities will increase dramatically over the next few years from Africa and South America, and then the prices we get will come back to the historical trend line, and meanwhile, we will have pissed away the benefits from mining, and when the crunch comes, when the super-cash injections of mining prosperity are over, it will become nasty indeed, before the official figures suggest to the superannuated pollies and bureaucrats that something in their beloved economic models is stuffed.
- Climate change is a reality, prepare to deal with it. Typically, the political responses will be way behind the commercial ones, so there is both opportunity and risk for all, and the only certainty is increased costs. What is unknown is how much costs will increase, how will that compare to our international competitors, how will they react to the changes, and when .
- All of the above urging re-regulation. Certainty in our lives has been removed by all this new stuff, then along comes the disturbing visions of long term food and water security around the world, followed by the GFC, and suddenly we want some certainty back, so there is a groundswell in favor of re-regulation of the things that delivered us prosperity after their de-regulation in the 70’s and 80’s. When you consider at the same time the economic and social impact of the rise of China and India, the picture gets cloudier. China is not about to de-regulate any time soon, keeping its ability to direct resources without the political concerns of re-election, the huge bureaucracy of India fighting a rear guard action to maintain its power, and we have the elements of some considerable disruption and conflict emerging as the “developed economies” struggle with the debt incurred supporting recurrent expenditure .
To the few dedicated readers of my blog, I wish you a great Christmas, and a prosperous 2011. I hope that my ravings have given you some food for thought, a contrarian view, and an occasional smirk amongst the urge to have me certified. Thanks for your support, feedback, and honesty.
Allen Roberts.
Dec 9, 2010 | Change, Social Media
Julian Assange has thrown the cat amongst the pigeons, but it was always going to happen at some time.
The transparency capability delivered by the web has forever changed most commercial operations. It is naive to think that so called “classified” documents that Governments would prefer to be held close to the chest for a variety of reasons, many spurious, would be able to withstand the tsunami of information and knowledge democratisation that has swept over us over the last decade.
The cat is out of the bag, legal action to gag Wikileaks, incarcerate Assange, and stop the leaks may succeed in the short term, but are destined to fail, as has every other effort to prevent the inevitable.
The current political blathering about prosecuting Assange, if it comes to pass, will be as effective as the music industry prosecuting their customers for downloading music, and smacks of a conspiracy to prevent something they do not like, were not ready for, and will cause them pain. The reaction is understandable, but destined to fail, and demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the behavorial changes driven by the web.
The world has changed, Governments need to change with it. Assange delivered his philosophy potently in this TED talk posted back in July, so these leaks, following those a few months ago relating to the activities of the US military effort in the Gulf should not come as a surprise.
Irrespective of your views on the rights and wrongs of Wikileaks releasing these documents, the horse has bolted, get used to it.
