Google Glass has been very big on the news since 2012 and recently we've even seen venture capitalists claiming that its advent would create a new space for investment in start-ups. It's worth hearing how Sergey Brin presents that initiative and then consider things carefully from the standpoint of human behavior, not technology.
A fairly mundane debate sparked by a comment I made on Twitter about the (pathetic) "Gmail Man" campaign launched by Microsoft led to unexpected territory: philosophy about what defines identity.
One of my friends and partners, Fabian Tilmant, a Google hater, Apple zealot and Tech skeptic, who is currently working on a book outlining DICoDE a model aimed at decoding and reinventing content businesses, said something like "you are what you do". His claim came from the fact that I said Google has a weakness in the way most people perceive them as a company, replying to Fabian's opinion that Google is "increasingly perceived as an ad company". For the record I disagree with that statement and I'm looking for data about how Google is perceived, but I suspect people know the search engine, the billions made selling ad space and the issues with street view. Not too sure they'd spontaneously say "Oh yes! Google, the ad company"... Most people don't have a clue about things like AdWords, AdSense, the display network or retargeting... and even if they did, it's not an "ad company", whatever that may be.
Anyhow, are you what you do? Is a business what they do? Fabian thinks so and says "Public Opinion don't know vision/mission. They only see/feel/experiment touch points." He is quite right, but that does not mean that what consumers experiment is the core of a brand's or company's identity: it is the perception of the people. It is also the definition of the company in the consumer's mind. But it is not identity. Identity is something that is difficult to grasp most of the time, which is why we often use metaphor to define or convey it. Identity is on the inside, not defined by someone else's perception of a person, company or brand. Granted, identity, mission, vision all have important influence on the kind of goals and strategies a company can pursue. In turn strategies have an influence on the activities of a company, including products, services and cultural patterns of behavior, all of which impact market perception. But again someone else's perception of you is not your identity, no more than your clothes are part of your organism.
So in my opinion in order to succeed, particularly with Google Apps - an amazing platform that gives businesses of all sizes the IT firepower they could never hope to have paying for armies of sys admins to run the incumbent's products -, Google needs to fix the way it's perceived because much of what many people know of Google tends to make it possible for older incumbents like Microsoft to try to exploit fear and imply (falsely or at least without any proof at all) that people's and businesses' emails are "read" by Google, much like your postman would open your good old paper envelopes. And of course we know that Microsoft is not alone using fear tactics or trying to hit Google's reputation using questionable means. Their good friends at Facebook have been caught paying a PR company of questionable ethical standards to slander Google.
So, no you are not what you do: identity and image are not the same thing at all.
I found this very interesting quote today:
So, for good and for bad, I believe Blackberry is attached at the hip to Exchange. As Microsoft loses share to Google in the enterprise, something I believe is bound to happen, Blackberry will lose share to Android as well. Wil and I are cases in point.avc.com, A VC, Jan 2010
Aside from the fact that it does make a very valid point on the tight coupling between Exchange Server and Blackberry technologies, therefore about the likely evolution of RIM's market share as Google increases its share of the smartphone and mail server markets, this post reminded me of a thought I've had a number of times over the past few weeks. It deals with collateral damage. Collateral damage in technology products and their adoption that is.
In 2009 I decided to try Chrome as a browser. Initially it was just this: a trial. The point of fact is that 9 or 10 months later, I'm still browing the web on Chrome. For some reason, Google's browser was "sticky" enough for me to make it my main browser, even though for the first couple of weeks I missed some of the functionality provided by Firefox add-ons like Zotero, WiseStamp for HTML signatures with my email on Google Apps, ColorZilla, add-ons with web developer tools, enhanced analytics via a GreaseMonkey based add-on... and a couple of others. These add-ons are what I call collateral damage, because my intention was not to stop using them, but because they were tightly coupled with a platform product that I ditched for a better one, they went down the drain too and I adopted other ways of doing the things that these add-ons were designed to do. Collateral damage.
In practical terms, if you're in a role of product manager / product owner, this means that:
Exciting times! And by the way, do read all of Fred Wilson's post.
PS: I just love the way the Zemanta editor generates in-text links obviously doing some seriously good work in analyzing my babble. What I dislike is that Zemanta does not allow me to define the title of the post on my blog and does not support my defining categories for the re-blogging I'm doing.
You've got to love the way Chambers has been managing Cisco for the past couple of decades and also how he took the lessons of the IBM story doing a hell of a lot to permanently sharpen strategic thinking and execution. He states very clearly why a company cannot afford to miss a major market transition, which means that a company cannot possibly afford not to monitor, analyze, measure, discuss and decide on changes in its environment, something far too many companies actually do *not* do. Better watch this sequence of his interview.
Just read a piece about where Google might be in ten years and considering the success of Gmail between 2004 and now, the author might just be right even though his forecasts may seem wild at times (e.g. Android prevailing in the mobile OS wars). That gives me an opportunity to comment and discuss a bit further Google's amazing ability to execute beautifully a bold strategy of massive innovation to deliver on an audacious vision to organize the world's information.
Interestingly Devinda Hardawar (@devindra on Twitter), the post's author, reminds us that Gmail was launched only in 2004. Few people can argue it's gaining traction in the segment of people who use predominantly email in SaaS mode and even making inroads into the segment of more traditional users who are stuck with legacy solutions like Outlook Express. Gmail grew 43% in 2008 and took #3 spot in August leaving AOL behind. It's gaining momentum and is probably a good indication of what Google can do in terms of winning market share with a patient approach that it can afford thanks to its advertising revenues.
Furthermore Devindra makes a couple of very powerful statements regarding Google Wave, stating his belief that it's much more important than it may seem on the surface and could well revolutionize the way knowledge work gets done. In keeping with a recent post on this blog, I very much agree with him and do intend to spend more time testing Wave, not dismiss it as Scoble has done, foolishly in my opinion.
Google ability to consistently pursue specific targets is an amazing characteristic of the company. They've been able to roll out a number of major services over the past decade accomplishing key strategic targets with each of them:
Arguably, there's more and there are other ways of viewing what Google is doing, but in every case you'll find great consistency and clarity of purpose in strategy execution.
Looking at the string of their acquisitions over the past decade (another way to assess strategy execution), the consistency of purpose is obvious and their ability to integrate acquired companies and technologies is impressive. Some people tend to focus too much on plays that did not turn out to be successful and fail to see the bigger picture: Google successfully embeds 80% of its acquisitions in the Google system, when the market average is much much lower (I'd say 20% based on the business news I've followed for the past 20 years).
Significant and successful moves included:
Google is recorded as having purchased 59 companies for a total amount that is hard to assess but likely stands in the region of 15-18 billion USD. The track record of acquisitions can in no way be considered as bad. In fact I know only of one company that is better: Cisco. Both Google and Cisco are hugely analytical players, with extra smart employees on board, giving huge attention to recruitment and equally huge attention to acquisitions.
Another thing worth mentioning is Google's creation of an arm dedicated to early stage investments, which is called Google Ventures, a fund that started this year with 100 million USD. Google Ventures has made a couple of very smart bets in clean-tech with smart grid technology (Silver Spring Networks) and biotechnology (Adimab)...
Daniel Pink makes once again a great case for non-conventional thinking on the topic of the drivers of motivation. He debunks a number of assumptions that most of us take for granted just because we grew up in a world driven by the fallacy of rationality of economic agents, "carrot and stick" or "reward - punishment" paradigm. Pink shows how reward schemes actually force people to narrow their thinking down to obvious paths and therefore are mostly counter productive when it comes to really challenging situations, which is where rewards would be completely justified...
Perhaps an additional proof, if there was need for one, that money does not buy motivation, talent and ability to apply knowledge. There has to be something else. Something the builders of cathedrals in Europe knew centuries back when they were not only looking for capable craftsmen, but also looking for craftsmen that had a personal win in the success of the project to build a cathedral. And in a way Pink rediscovers and refines that by identifying three key aspects to motivation:
Furthermore Pink's points are highly compatible with the attributes of Resonant Leadership as discussed by Boyatzis & McKee.
Just watch a fascinating presentation:
"The wise learn from other people's mistakes and fools from their own." So goes an ancient proverb that some say was first written in Aramaic. As far as I'm concerned, I have been more often a fool than a wise person. That may be because I prefer experimentation to inertia, feeling that Randy Pausch was so right when he said in the Last Lecture that in life "experience is what you get when you you didn't get what you wanted". This post is about experience sharing and it was prompted by a visit to Genaro Bardy's recent post on a presentation made by Kevin Rose.
Few things are more valuable for entrepreneurs and venture investors than getting the account of some real-life experience, whether it speaks of "success" or "failure" is completely irrelevant so long as the content is genuine and the analysis honest. When speaking to customers during workshops, trainings or coaching sessions I often encourage them to examine cases of other entrepreneurs they might know. I also advise them to cut through the crap of accounts entrepreneurial successes and failures:
In this post, I'd like to comment a bit further on this matter of sharing experience and use a presentation made by Kevin Rose as an example of the practice of honest and factual sharing of experience gained through different entrepreneurial initiatives.
Accounts of how entrepreneurial ventures unfolded are interesting insofar as they allow us to see how a given entrepreneur acted, both successfully and unsuccessfully, through expected results and unexpected twists and turns of the economy, in the context of a specific industry.
In such accounts there are elements that are very peculiar to the industry or to the entrepreneur and could not possibly be replicated. For example, Steve Jobs has very peculiar ways of doing things and much of his ways cannot be replicated even if we try to immerse ourselves Inside Steve's Brain (very interesting book) and in the business of social marketing there are practices that work very well but could not possibly be applied to financial services where regulatory constraints set clear limits on the nature of open community driven interactions. On the other hand, entrepreneurs' account offer elements that can be replicated and can be used in other contexts, in other industries, by different people. Very often these elements are good practices, activities, initiatives and sets of assumptions about the business. For example, Jamendo's founders could teach volumes about their initial assumption that open sharing of content under Creative Commons licensing would pave the way for new forms of distribution of and interaction on music. Their input would be valid for other forms of content and could be used to examine the impact of social media on traditional media or to carry out an analysis of the current war between Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp, Google and Bing.
One great example of such account is Kevin Rose's presentation in which he shares his experience of practices that worked well at Digg, Twitter or WeFollow. His low key approach is great as he is giving us a perspective on what worked and what did not, to tell us how to go with the flow and listen to users in shaping a service and to honestly state he is on constant experimentation. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect in Kevin Rose's presentation lies in his relentless drive to speak of practice and not to preach for a theory or abstract construct. Practices can be replicated elsewhere giving due consideration to the peculiar aspects of a given business or industry.
Taking your Site from One to One Million Users by Kevin Rose
View more presentations from Carsonified Team.
Recently I posted some thoughts based on a case study that questioned the practices of P&G which stood accused of trying to fool customers by falsely stating that the new bottle type of Ariel contained "10% more product" (tan the previous type of bottle presumably).
Much to my surprise, I got an answer from somebody working for P&G who reacted within just a couple of hours and that's quite impressive since this blog has never been about building audience or making noise and is therefore not particularly influential. I'm absolutely WOWed by P&G ability to monitor online resources and take reasonable action on any alerts and that's the kind of defensive marketing tactics modern brand management should always feature. More often than not that's not the case.
In this post there's a quick analysis of the facts provided by P&G, which infirm the assertions of the presentation although they do not necessarily prove the accuracy of the "+10%" claim, which I'd rate as "almost true" or "true enough" if I were to run the "truth-o-meter". Naturally that means there is no reason to state that P&G is fooling their customers and the very fact that they engaged in a discussion with this blog shows that they're treating online sources and people out there in a very respectful manner.
First let me give you a copy of P&G's reply, which I found very well formulated, very factual and showing great respect for a very humble blogger without any influence whatsoever. To respect privacy I'm witholding the name and details of the author of the reply:
Dear Alex,
I’m working for Ariel (P&G France) and I’m regularly looking, thanks to a Google alert, what is said on the web about the brand. That”s how I’ve found a post you made on your blog and on slideshare.net about the “Ariel and the mathematics” French power point presentation. I also read your post titled “No you cannot fool your customers P&G... or whoever else”.
http://blog.businessquests.
com/ http://www.slideshare.net/
businessquests/ariel-et-les- mathmatiques-capitalistes I’m kindly writing to you to draw your attention on the fact that the data in the presentation are wrong. The author of the presentation, who lives in Germany, has already acknowledged his mistake, distances himself from the content of the presentation and regrets having circulated it.
What has happened?
The author of the presentation did not compare the Ariel bottle from 2009 (+10% more content; 1.4L content equalling 20 wash loads) with the real predecessor from 2008(1.26L content equalling 18 wash loads), but with an older bottle from 2005 (1.5L content equalling 20 wash loads), that he found in his house.
The compared Ariel bottles origin from different years and during those years we have launched several new product generations. According to the production code the featured old bottle was produced in the year 2005, the new product is from 2009. Our products are constantly improved to fulfil the increased consumer needs. In comparison to the product of the year 2005, new Ariel liquid 2009 offers a formula that has been constantly improved over five years, plus it offers an improved washing result by an even lower dosage per wash load (now 70mL per wash load versus for example 75mL still in 2005). This can be seen on the dosage instructions on the back of the bottle.
We hope we could clarify the misunderstanding with this statement and we would really appreciate if you could post this statement online or if you could delete the initial post itself.
Of course, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me for more information.
Best regards,
Now to translate the content's of P&G response into dry facts and figures I created the table below to try to assess the actual impact of changes to Ariel's bottling in terms of effective quantity of product provided to consumers. Since we do not have any idea of the evolution of the product's price in inflation adjusted terms we cannot say whether the 2009 bottling is a better deal or not, but depending on whether they could actually do 18 or 20 (18+2) wash loads with one bottle the effective quantity purchased could either be a real increase of 11.1% or an unchanged situation, but it is in no case a decrease of 5% to 7% in quantity provided as shown in the presentation:
Needless to say I'm very impressed that P&G was able to spot the post within only a few hours from its publication, that their response was so swift and effective and I can see why they've been so good at building world class super valuable brands: Ariel is #84 and worth close to 7.8 billion USD in the 2009 top 100 and Pampers is ranked #31 and valued at 18.8 billion USD. For your convenience I'm embedding the ranking of top 100 brands below:
Today I spent some time going through the "WTF is social media - one year later" presentation, which I find excellent. It's embedded below for your convenience and below are some of my thoughts on the matter.
The WTF material is really good stuff full of common sense, good thinking and it provides a sobering view of what this thing called social media could be used for. Focusing on fundamentals of business and on phenomena we've been able to observe over the past few months and years, the authors actually help business people who are a bit lost with all the chatter about social media and collaborative workspace. Observations and statements of what "social media" (for lack of a better word) could be used for are excellent and it's a pitty there is only little content about concrete ways in which to leverage the different aspects of social media... but of course who wouldn't understand that the authors would gladly provide that as part of their services at Brand Infiltration ;)
Now the presentation is also excellent food for thought and here are a couple of those that emerged going through the slides:
So social media is probably an excellent phenomenon for specific businesses and for a whole range of purposes and not only marcoms as rightly pointed out by the authors of the presentation... But it's only a tool and as such it's only as good and relevant as the skill with which it's applied to the pursuit of coherent objectives by congruent organizations who will make more than half-hearted committments to the new world of open participation. And that may not be a world for everyone, so expect to see more established organizations die as their environment changes to the point of transforming some long established practices into deadly sins.
- people gladly engage when there's a worthy cause for which there could not possibly be the slightest suspicion of commercial manipulation or commercial
- the rejection of initiatives that seem to be "remote-controlled" by major brands is almost immediate in many cases
- when a space is new like for example the blogosphere a few years ago or Twitter a couple of months ago, the signal / noise ratio is good enough to derive value out of that space with spectacular returns on investment whereas things become much more difficult when more people bring more content and more potential interactions
- the possibility of interactions does not means that there will be interactions, let alone true conversations where people actually listen to other people and truly seek to understand what they mean by what they say, an effort that requires focus of attention and that can be tedious enough to require far more time than is allowed by the culture of the immediate, fast and short of social media
- interactions don't mean transactions let alone economically useful or even profitable transactions
Business has a jargon like every field of human activity. But business has something else: a unique ability to distort and pervert words. In fact there are a few words that simply drive me nuts when I speak to customers and partners simply because they are often either meaningless or covering up realities we don't like to admit:
So to sum it up:
I just read this excellent report on the status of innovation in the US (link kindly provided by the excellent Leeander) and I find it just amazing that the authors show a great deal of analytical rigor both in assessing the past and suggesting ways for the future in the form of a public private partnership. The article is long but very well worth your time.
With this kind of approach I see the US going back to the very top of innovation performance. It's time we did a similar assessment in Europe instead of just celebrating innovation and creativity in a very institutional manner.
This is not only a good panel discussion, but also one that has some good news. The time might be close when people can resume investing. Perhaps it's also time for Europe to realize that our economic situation is way better than the US for a number of reasons starting with the fact that we are nowhere near the level of debt that prevails in the US be it government or private debt. It's just so sad we don't have anyone to carry the torch of recovery on the political front. As someone told me recently, a recession can be a self-fulfilling prophecy whereas business & economic progress does not happen by mere wishful thinking.
I came across Vopium today and from what I read on their site and elsewhere online:
Anyway, I downloaded the software on my E61i. More in a few days.
In the March 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review, there's a very interesting article about the relevance of distinguishing between processes that can be standardized (process as science) and processes that are and should remain flexible (process as art). The authors argue that it is a deadly mistake to try to standardize business activities that are expected to deliver highly customized output to customers while being run in contexts of highly variable environments.
The article also presents a simple tool to decide whether a process should be art of science, which the authors call the process matrix (click on the picture to see). This is all music to my ears because it provides some serious academic support to one of the core propositions of BusinessQuests, i.e. that each specific customer requires a highly tailored approach to achieve business progress. The authors of the Let me quote the authors:
"The movement to standardize processes has gone overboard. Some require an artist’s judgment—and should be managed accordingly." - Joseph M. Hall & M. Eric Johnson
Over the years working with innovative as well as more traditional privately owned European companies I realized how unproductive - perhaps even damaging - it can be to even try to express in a standard format like a process flow those processes that make a company different from its competitors. In fact, I came to call this "the spirit of craftsmanship" when facilitating a workshop with customers, which is also one of the reasons why I enjoyed so thoroughly Small Giants (more on that some other day or on my reading list on my profile). That's precisely one of the points made by the authors of the article and again, let me quote:
"What we call “art” is often described as “judgment-based work,” “craft work,” or “professional work.” The common thread in such work is variability in the process, its inputs, and its outputs. Art is needed in changeable environments (for example, when raw materials aren’t uniform and therefore require a craftsperson’s adjustments) and when customers value distinctive or unique output (in other words, all customers don’t want the product or service to perform or be performed the same way)."
The article mentions the following domains as areas in which processes ought to be treated as art rather than science precisely because much of the value they produce results from the flexibility and adaptability of the process to a given business environment:
I would probably add a few, which I'm sure are in the research (now impatient to read the book if these guys decide to publish one on this topic):
A most intriguing article in the latest issue of The Economist states that dating sites seem to be doing rather well in the recession. The correlation between the Dow Jones falling by more than 100 points and the increase in the traffic of one of the dating sites was arguably the most astonishing of all facts presented in this article.
Online-dating websites prosper in the recession
It may be that people have more time to devote to their private lives as the economy slows; that uncertain times increase the desire for companionship; or that living alone is expensive, whereas couples can split many of their costs.
25% of women said stress about the state of the economy made them more inclined to seek a long-term relationship. The company also noticed that the number of visits to its website was higher than average on days when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by more than 100 points.
Back in September, users were sending 6,000 on-site instant messages a day, says Sam Yagan, OkCupid’s boss. Now that number is over 18,000.
“The majority of relationship discord stems from economic troubles,” he says. Instead of fighting, married people are taking stock of their lives. “They want to do something that makes them feel better about themselves,” Mr Biderman says, “and $49 is a tiny expenditure for a life-altering affair.”
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Great piece by Stanley Bing. If we step back it's quite sad and probably yet another indication of the need for some radical changes in the financial system with a view to restoring the logical order of things, which is that finance should serve the economy, not lead it.
For the past fifteen years I've been in contact with friends and B-school alumni working for finance departments in quoted companies who had a mission every end of quarter: make sure their company's figures reached or exceeded the expectations of analysts working for major investment banks and brokers... So at least once a quarter their mission had nothing to do with their company's core business and everything to do with window dressing, to call thing the way they are. And of course poor implementation of standing legislation as well as bringing poor new legislative measures into force (read Sarbanes-Oxley) did nothing to improve things... which is why I wanted to share this video.
Today is one of these days when I can express better than on most other days why I carefully remain on a spot that is common frontier to several seemingly different worlds: business, marketing, technology, psychology, software development, complex adaptive systems, social media... At the end of the day this is also what defines BusinessQuests: the often treacherous area defined by 'business + innovation + technology', where starting from what drives people is a fundamental starting point. BusinessQuests is where people's quests drive business value and where people's values resonate with quests in business.
What a good day this was! Started early, spent the day in two cities
while cooperating with people in 7 different areas of the world and
discovering refreshing perspectives... I met some pretty creative and passionate entrepreneurs, got exposure to beautiful artistic creations including some nice stuff with Philippe Stark (an awesome super-passionate creator) and had a speedy meeting with Nicolas Martignole a leading practitioner of agile practices in the field of software development.
What's the common thread? Several things:
Apologies for being philosophical on this one, but some things need to be approached from a different angle and make it necessary to use the perenial principle of beautiful creation: COUS, that is Combination of Opposites and Union of Similars... More on that in a future post :)
Back to the Beta Group this evening at my Alma Mater, home of the B-school that has given me much useful knowledge at a time that feels like centuries ago for anyone who's been heavily involved with innovation in the past decade or so. There were more than 200 people in the room, which I find particularly positive for innovative ventures.
Again a couple of very interesting initiatives and very refreshingly most of them had credible business models. As I've said before on this blog I completely disagree with people downplaying the importance of a business model as they develop extreme positions to support the (correct IMHO) position that innovation needs to be supported regardless of the existence of a business model.
Let me give you my top 3 and some notes I took during the presentations...
The companies that have the very best prospects in my opinion are as follows:
One of the companies that was presenting today had big problems with the performance of their platform, part of which may have been caused by either the Internet connection or the browser, and I think that reflected negatively on the actual relevance of what they do. I'm talking about YourTour (now in private beta), whose tool will mean a lot to you if you've ever taken care of preparing and planning holidays or a short tour foryour family or of a group of friends. These guys have done some pretty clever work to develop a tool that optimizes your access to information to organize a tour with associated events, visits, sight-seeing...etc. Think of it as the combination of the dynamic web with your favorite tourist guides and driving directions / map tool. Quite intersting in fact. There was a good question about the trustworthiness of the information and advice they give their users for hotels, restaurants, places to visit...etc
Which bringgs me to where I think their next frontier lies and it's defined by the following points:
There was one initiative that left me largely unimpressed because it seems to be trying to do too many things and at the age of minimalism as expressed by Twitter ExtraFootball might need to think about what stuff should be dropped and integrated through other platforms. In other words I would advise them to streamline, streamline, streamline and focus, focus, focus and integrate, integrate, integrate with the rest of the world; in that respect Moodio's example should be good inspiration IMHO. They have a couple of points I like and would use if I were in their shoes:
An interesting presentation at TED by the evangelist-founder of Twitter. I came across this one as I was doing some research on existing analyses of the phenomenon and in particular the types of use cases that were "invented" by users who made extremely creative use of the minimalism of Twitter's design. To me it's an example of chaos, flow and emergence that I think will be a necessary ingredient in any initiative of the future.
