Twitterpated!

An overused title, perhaps, but one that is apropos for my perspective on Twitter.

Having gone from barely noticing it to casual user to "Twooshing!" all over the place these last 5 months, I think I'm hooked.

And - I'm eager to explore new ways to leverage the platform - look for more updates in future columns. In the meantime, enjoy this one...

"...it came out freaking sweet!"

I think most of what is done in the automotive industry is boring & tired. Sure, I like gawking at the new body styles from certain manufacturers each year, but honestly most of what is coming out of that industry seems pretty staid to me.

Except for Scion and what they're doing with Scion Speak.

I like what they did when they introduced the car. I like how they have marketed the car. I like how they sell the car (using separate areas in Toyota show rooms). And I like how they are building customer loyalty around the car. I think they've done a good job of knowing what market they are going after and they hit it.

(TANGENT: this is available here through the NY Times, which should have a free sign up form if you can't already view the article; otherwise it's $1,000 USD to republish on the internet for 1 Year (maximum) - that's nuts! I feel another blog coming on...)

I think this is a great example of leveraging the Voice of their brand, and strengthening (and building more of?) their raving fan customers. This car is all-about self expression. It's a mass produced, customized ride.

But don't confusing "Marketing" (which is what we're talking about here) with "Sales" (which is a different part of the company and frankly, not doing all that well).

Scion has carved out a niche for itself that it should focus on. I see Scion Speak as one step on that path, and would like to see what they do with it next.

Would I buy one? Probably not. Would I try to emulate their marketing & sales techniques. I think you would be "Scichotic" not to...

This Is A Great Book – Read It!

I bought The Elephant and The Dragon: The Rise of India and China and What It Means for All of Us watching Author Robyn Meredith on a Charlie Rose interview last summer. It was a great interview and the next day I went to the bookstore 2 days later to buy it – and all the copies in the local surrounding bookstore were literally sold out (I asked the store manager check around for me).

Well researched, organized and written, Ms. Meredith has taken a complex topic and added just a little-more-than-sufficient detail into the historical context, that provides a great foundation for understanding contemporary realities. Her review of China strongly correlated with what I knew, and her review of India was enlightening.

I think it's a great introductory / intermediate text on the subject of outsourcing in general, and with respect to these two nations in particular. For more on Outsourcing and the role that India has created for itself in this industry, I still strongly recommend Bangalore Tiger by Steve Hamm. These are good companion texts - enjoy!

"I think that whole 'Internet-thing' is going to be big..."

Etta James.

She is timeless. Every time I hear her sing, I'm there in a jazz club in San Francisco, (1950-ish) and I can see the piano behind her a little bit, off to the right...the bassist on a small riser behind her on the right, low lights with cigarette smoke slowly wafting through the room...

That's Web 2.0, for you. One of my friends on Facebook (someone I literally haven't spoken to in 8 months, and at least a year before then) put together a song list that loaded up when I added Pandora to my Facebook page. Pandora's a music-suggestion generator from the Music Genome Project, where it will suggest music based on a variety of inputs (i.e. - tunes my friends suggest, tunes I've previously played, etc.). The bad news for me is that I already have over 98GB of music that I have purchased over the years (mostly CDs that I've converted to .MP3s) - not including all of my vinyl that I'm starting to convert. I can see that I'll be discovering and buying more music, in the coming months...

What does this mean (other than an increase in spending for me?!?! :P )?

Organization - the usual organizing principles we've used will increasingly matter less, and instead how we think about our organizing principles will matter more. "Technology" is an enabling catalyst. It's not just something with an On/Off switch and lots of blinking lights. The how we think of things...the organizing principles...the constructs and frameworks...the models - many of the current ones will become irrelevant with each new version of software, hardware, refined service offering, or social network. I think these will increasingly based on a combination of individual and group tastes...

Process - what won't become obsolete so easily is the process one uses to create these frameworks and constructs. I only see these becoming more refined with each new interaction. This iterative refinement will eventually yield entirely new processes to create new organizing principles. Due to human Nature, Behavior and Comprehension of these changes, assimilating new process(es) will take longer than assimilating technological advances and new organization structures. An effective juxtaposition of Creativity and Discipline (at both the individual and group level) will likewise be increasingly valued as a means for creating economic value.

Relationships - just like my friend can create a themed music list to share (either passively as it's stumbled upon, or actively by sending it to others or others to it), so to can anyone share more of themselves and their identity with "anyone else" - thus creating the potential for a new relationship. I think we will need a new way to manage these relationships (see "Organization" above). "Tags" if you will, for the various people and organizations that each individual knows. But even these are uni-dimensional and fail to adequately show the interactions and inter-relationships (their "inherent value", if you will) that contribute to an accurate measure of Value.

Capital - As momentum in these areas builds, I think this naturally gives rise to a redefinition of Capital. No longer is Capital in and of itself the only means to an economic end. Access to Capital - whether directly by the people and firms you know, or indirectly by the people or firms your contacts know - will become a more valued resource and leverage point. I think that's part of the reason why China (still a Communist nation) gave The Blackstone Group (a Private Equity firm - one of the large, bastions of Capitalism) $3 Billion USD this past May.

How does this tie in w/the Pandora application? It was through that application that I discovered a new dimension to two existing relationships, as well as expanded the possibility that I could create new ones along that same or similar dimension (musical interests).

Being able to understand and capitalize on this individual and community behavior will be directly tied to ones level of security, happiness and overall well-being as we move forward. This is how new markets, competitors, etc. will be discovered.

Easy, Entertaining, Informative Read - Check It Out!

One of my favorite books of the last 12 months is Bangalore Tiger by Steve Hamm. I bought it when it first came out and couldn't put it down. Well written, it describes Indian Outsourcing firm Wipro (specifically) and gives a detailed review of what's behind Outsourcing / Globalization (in general). I definitely recommend reading it. I'd consider it required reading for anyone providing Outsourcing services to customers, and am disappointed when I see that it's lessons aren't applied.

One of the best takeaways I enjoyed is how Wipro pragmatically applied disciplined approaches to production and quality, and saw great results. Were there failures & setbacks in their approach? I'm sure - but they learned from them and re-adjusted their approach. The examples they highlighted really aligned with what I have seen first-hand from Wipro consultants CMM, Six Sigma and Lean Sigma provide a good framework and set of tools (much like ITIL does), but it takes some skill to understand when and how to apply what tools for what effect.

There are other great points conveyed throughout various chapters in the book - "Growth: Keep a Thousand Fires Burning", "Adopt Ultrastrict Ethics to Build a Sterling Brand", "Reward Employees with Recognition and Respect", "Measure Everything Constantly", "Plan Three Years Ahead to Prepare for Rapid Growth", "Adopt the Best Ideas, Then Make Them Your Own Way", "Be Obsessive About Customers"...and there are others...

It's not so much that there were a lot of new or novel insights in the book - and that's the point! Much of what I read I have read before elsewhere - and so has Wipro. Wipro has tried, applied and "refried" these ideas to affect a positive force for consistent growth at their company, growing from $500 Million USD in 2000, to realizing a market capitalization of more than $20 Billion USD 6 years later - surpassing EDS' market capitalization of $13 Billion at that time (now at $10.91 Billion USD, as of this writing).

"We have a feeling that the platform we're on, offshoring, with price arbitrage, is a burning platform. It's only good for a few more years," says Chief Strategy Officer Sudip Nandy. "We need to do things differently to compete against international competition." (p. 69)

Well said, and a point that is easily lost on American Nationalists worried about "offshoring of work" - which (I believe) is itself a myopic, misanthropic term that prejudices the speaker into an inaccurate way of thinking about how the nature of work is changing.

Communication

"I believe companies should be as transparent as possible with information."

Okay, that's a nice platitude...but what does it really mean? It's benign-sounding enough so that it will be difficult to disagree with the statement. It's ambiguous enough that one can't really hold the speaker accountable without more specific information. Much is left up to the speaker to define the terms for themselves, ex post facto.

We're not quite at this point yet, but soon one will begin to argue that without a strong, fully diversified online presence, companies will not be doing all they can to communicate to their various constituents.

Here are several recent examples (and there are more I can share) of what I am talking about:
1. Look at what Sun Microsystems is doing
2. Look at what Toyota and Adidas are doing; even The Economist is taking note
3. Listen to what National Public Radio (NPR) had to say about it this morning

No, this isn't a plug for Second Life or it's non-virtual company, Linden Lab.

It's about being flexible enough to adjust your approach to reach your existing markets in new ways. It's about being courageous enough to let go or test firmly held opinions about "how things should be done".

That's a challenge in any world, with or without any kind of intervention - from government, the marketplace or otherwise.

What are you doing about it for your company and it's brand? What are you doing about it for you and your own brand? And how are you involving those important to your success - your customers, peers, etc. - versus just "going it alone?"

"Disintermediation" brought to you by You Tube, Google Video, etc.

Check this out...

When I was in the 6th. grade, I remember reading a story depicting a day-in-the-life of a student of similar age, only at some point "in the future".. They lived in houses where the beds were essentially built-in cushions in the floor, the showers were cubes with omni-directional jets of water and warm air (to wash and dry you off), and they wore spray-on clothing.

One of the things that I thought was really cool was the idea of going to school without leaving my house, which showed the student sitting in a room in their house with a television monitor showing their teacher and classmates.

We've had some form of interactive televised knowledge transmission for over 10 years now, with both the education and the medical fields leveraging the technology. But there's another reason why I find this new feature from Google interesting...

Disintermediation.

If ("when", actually) this gets coupled with better two-way, rather than one-way, knowledge transmission, Google has the ability to establish a great position for itself. MySpace is already filled with most of the demographic that want to get (or are already pursuing) college degrees. It's no great leap in logic for them to "naturally" look to the web for their course lectures (in fact, college students are citing Wikipedia references in scholarly papers, over the protests of their professors and the founder / editor of Wikipedia!). Professors can leave their entire lecture "on reserve" rather than just their written notes (which never convey the nuances of an idea).

This will also have an impact the pricing associated with getting a degree ("Eventually", anyway...). Will there be sufficient cachet associated with a degree earned this way? Yes, but it will take some time for the Majority to endorse the idea - at least in the U.S. Baby Boomers are going back to school in record numbers, for a variety of reasons. Other nations who don't have the infrastructure of estbalished universities, however, can now take advantage of this right now.

And so can anyone who has an internet connection.

Think about that for a moment...

True, they won't get the college credits for attending the class, nor the degree to "certify" their "knowledge acquisition". But they will gain the information that they can use.

And isn't that what learning's all about, anyway???

Opening The Xbox

“The revolution will come in fits and starts. It probably won't come from giving hardcore gamers more of what they already like. Doing a fighting game with better graphics isn't really a new invention. Yet much of the industry is currently afflicted with the illusion that it is. About 60 percent of the successful games now are either sequels or extensions of brands that exist in another medium. There is a real risk of what the IDSA'a Doug Lowenstein calls “creative ennui.”...The gaming industry has produced cultural icons before, from Pac Man to Pong, and it will do so again. As every gamer believes, the ideal game isn't here yet. It's just around the corner.” (p. 346 – 347).

I just got done reading Opening The Xbox. I found it to be a very readable book, with a very comfortable writing style. The descriptions of the what the project team went through, however, seemed very reminiscent of many other professional projects I have been involved with in my career, and not necessarily unique to Microsoft or the tech. industry. What was enjoyable and enlightening, however, was the detail which Mr. Takahashi provided. Liberally spiced with information that was outside of the inner mechanics at Microsoft (like the challenges with Nvidia, Flextronics' manufacturing capacity, the marketing and sales performance of competing platforms, etc.), provided the perfect backdrop to the whole story.

In the end, I found it to be an easy and enjoyable read. It provides great insight into Microsoft's launch of the Xbox, and an interesting perspective on the video games industry as a whole. I also appreciated the “personal face” Mr. Takhashi gave the story by providing interesting tidbits of the personalities and their lives, throughout the story. That technique not only made it very readable, but it also helped me relate to the story in a much more fulfilling way.

However, it's this blog's opening paragraph (which I quoted from the end of the book) that I think is really at the heart of the issue I think the video game industry faces, and this book didn't really address:

• self-confidence - quit believing and acting like you have to get “people” to take you “seriously”. Screw 'em! You're already a multi-billion dollar industry, so who really cares?

• The Big Set-up - the notion of “the killer game” is a set-up for failure, and “it” being “right around the corner” is even worse! You need to have people really get off on the “technology”, and others who are as passionate about the “business”, and have them work together. The video games themselves (whether it's a console or a piece of technology or some game art or whatever) is the real common ground to unite the project. Entertainment, art, interactivity, immersion – how this is defined is changing, and will continue to change over time.

Take me for example. I don't consider myself a “true gamer” necessarily, because I don't spend more than 20 hours a week playing video games, like some people I know; it's more like 10 – 15 hours per week (but who's really counting? :) ).

But do you know what I would spend 20 or more hours a week on? Creating new business ideas! I LOVE IT! I absolutely LOVE THAT! I love being able to take different ideas and putting them together in new ways. The by-product of that is interesting, and I and others have benefited in a number of different ways – non-profits I work with, to my current employer, and (I'm sure) to employers and customers whom I have yet to meet. So, while guys like Jonathan “Seamus” Blackley and Kevin Bachus got the lions share of the spotlight in the book (and rightly so), I related more to guys like Ted Hase, Rick Thompson, Ed Fries and Robbie Bach (the “business” / management folks). That is just fun for me!

Even at Sun Microsystems (where I've worked for a LONG time – it'll be 7 years this December...wow, that really IS a long time...), the things that have always drawn my interest and sparked my creativity the most have been new businesses and new business models, like our foray into Utility Computing and Managed Services. Project Darkstar is my latest muse (here is the “historic mugshot” that I found on my camera, from a few months ago; okay, shameless plug time – check out more details on this ground-breaking technology here and here).

The difference, though, between what I read in this book and what I see at companies like Sun and others, can be tied to two things:

• money – Microsoft had plenty and was willing to commit significant amounts of capital for long periods of time – not because they wanted to build a video game console, but rather because it was an integral part of a larger strategy. Microsoft wants to be the gateway to home mechanics (entertainment, finances, etc.), and they see the Xbox as a great way to enter and begin building on that vision

• strategic commitment – building on the above bullet, while near-term unit sales of consoles and titles are important, it's not the only thing. Sony, for example, has a potentially much broader and more strategic reach with it's movie and music entertainment business lines, which seem to continue throwing off cash regardless of poor economic conditions in any single market or geography it finds itself in.

If you want to move mountains and change the landscape, you can do it a spoonful at a time (which takes a while by yourself, but you gain speed the more people who pickup spoons) or with explosives (which is the equivalent to what Microsoft did). The latter is quicker, but it will still take a lot of time for people to join together in that new landscape and figure out what to do with it.

At E3 this year, I was over-whelmed by the presentation and volume of titles, and under-whelmed by the dearth of unique content. For the most part, it's all the same. In the four years since this book was published, not much has changed to hit that grand vision of new cultural icons and “games as art”. I don't see “Destroy All Humans” being reviewed by the New York Times' art critics. This is even a year in which we are seeing new console releases by Sony and Nintendo (although Sony just announced that they will again delay their launch – as seems to be typical with console launch announcements), but where are the new Space Invaders and Tetris (which were hits on multiple platforms)?

Still waiting for Aunt Bea's Quilting Smackdown! That would be a great one to see – have The Rock and Aunt Bea duking it out! Maybe someday...in the meantime, we'll just have to make do with more of the same.

The United States of America's Legacy

I met up with a friend of mine today, someone I hadn't seen in over 4 years. The last time we met, he and his business partner were trying to convince me to leave my employer and go with them to start a company, and they wanted me to be their CTO. It was a very attractive offer, but for a number of reasons I declined. And, except for an occasional email over the years, we kind of lost touch.

Well, I was in another meeting earlier this week, speaking with some people about working with Angel Investors in the start-up phase of a business, and someone pulled out an "example checklist" that they thought was a good evaluation guide that they used. The company name on the sheet? You guessed it - it was the company we were considering starting! So, of course I told my friend about it.

Anyway, as I was driving home from our meeting today, I came away with a number of different ideas. One of them was about the state of employment in the U.S.. For the last 80+ years, our society has nurtured the idea of a career working for a large corporation, through which we could have our financial security and other needs met. It worked well for a while, but it turned out that it's not a model that's sustainable over the long term. The engine of commerce has always had its roots in the small and medium sized enterprises.

With the growth of the technology sector, and some of the tools that are now freely available, the barriers to entry for an individual or even groups of individuals, to launch a new enterprise, have really fallen through the floor. Other than tangible inventory (if that's even relevant for your business), it is now possible to have a virtually "free" infrastructure for your startup:

- computers (most people have one; a pretty good one that could fit most of your needs can be acquired now for anywhere from $500 - $1500)
- phones (with a number of different Voice Over IP (VOIP) offerings now available, you actually have a choice of providers
- office productivity software (openoffice.org has a free word processing / spreadsheet / presentation software suite you can use; Google, Yahoo, etc. have free email and calendar applications you can use)
- office space (in most cases, you can literally work out of your home to get started)

So, if you ever wanted to start a business in the States, the minimum you have to do is to go and file your DBA with your local government, and your in business. Then, coupled with the above and your very own website, you can get your idea up and running. It's that simple.

So, if it's that simple, why don't more people do it?

Because it's not easy. It's very, very, very hard. For every 10 businesses that start, 9 will fail within their first two years of operation. But what's interesting is that for those individuals who start more than one business (generally 3 - 5), that statistic reverses itself - 9 out of 10 succeed into their fifth year! What's the difference?

Persistence.

Who's Sorry Now?

Apparently, the video game industry is. Still. And I'm not sure why.

It seems to me that most of the articles out there written about the video games industry generally have at least one of the following two themes present in the article:

1. “I'm sorry that video games seem so violent to you (a non-video game playing person or organization). They aren't to us (the video game industry), because we know that they are just made up worlds we've created to play in, and frankly we don't take ourselves that seriously anyway.”

2. “Hey everybody, we're a real industry and you should take us seriously!”

I think it's time to relinquish the second one. With video game budgets reaching the sizes of some feature film budgets, development cycles stretching out almost as long as feature films, and industry revenues in the same neighborhood as the motion pictures industry, I think the video game industry should admit that they have "grown up” somewhat and just get on with the business. I don't hear the likes of Youtube, Facebook or Myspace apologizing for a huge marketplace presence or multi-hundred million dollar valuations (after only a few months and a modest business model). Video games, as a genre, have been in existence for over 40 years (NOTE: for a brief, cool look at this, check out my friend's recent visit with a living legend – one of the, if not THE, industry founder – Ralph Baer).

The USA Today had two big stories today related to video games:

- one profiled the new Wii from Nintendo and a Q & A with Reginald Fils-Aime, Nintendo of Americas new President and Chief Operating Officer

- one profiled 4 video games as examples of how "games can be helpful"

See what I mean? I think these were pretty informative articles, but I don't hear similar undercurrents in articles about Ford, NTT Docomo, Pfizer, etc.

What I think is interesting about this, however, is that it seems to be ubiquitous; there isn't one particular writer, editor or publication taking this tack. It seems fairly prevalent.

So what's it going to to take to change this? I think the industry itself has to change and move itself forward. One of the things that struck me at E3 this year was not the ubiquitous Booth Babes. It was what I call the lack of originality in the content. Generally speaking, the new game releases broke out into the following categories:

1. Themes:
- "Dungeons and Dragons" genre (these would be the Worlds of Warcraft, etc.)
- "shooting games" (could be FPS' like Unreal Tournament, Call of Duty, the various vehicular combat simulations, etc.)

2. Line Extensions of Existing Franchises:
- almost any game that uses one or more of the following: Star Wars characters or story lines, Marvel comic heroes, Disney characters, any new movie or TV show release (Desperate Housewives??? Really? So "desperate housewives" are playing video games now, it's not just 13-year old kids in the basement?)

3. "Casual Games""
- in quotes because even though everyone in the industry seems to have a certain perception about it, it's coming across to me as "We know there's an undefiend market segment out there, and we think that it happens to be the bulk of our target market. However, since we can't quite define it very specifically, we're going to "throw a lot of stuff" at it (i.e. - subscription revenue models, ringtones, Bejeweled and "classic" game knock-offs (or re-published versions), etc.) and see what sticks". No risks here...these are all merely "investments in micro-markets."

One of the latest market perspectives to gain a lot of attention has been articulated by Chris Anderson, and his notion of long tail economics. With enabling technologies like the internet, I personally think this is the first era where we can actually see these dynamics play out in real-time. Examples:

Success - Cable TV. Bruce got it wrong when he said there were 57 channels with nuthin' on - there are literally over 500 channels (depending on your service provider and package) with nothing on - except those shows that are really of interest to you. And if you can find something unique enough for you, head over to Youtube or MySpace

(potential) Failure - Satellite Radio. What was supposed to be a great revolution to revitalize the medium is actually turning into a losing business venture (at least for the foreseeable future). What's great about satellite radio is the broader spectrum of offerings (literally). What's bad about it is getting it paid for - either through subscription revenue (which is another en vogue business concept these days, that shouldn't be applied as ubiquitously as people seem inclined to do so - but that's another blog I'm cooking up), or by charging advertisers higher rates to reach a more refined audience. The Wall Street Journal reported today that XM Satellite Radio and Sirius are losing significant amounts of money at a time when they forecasted to be making significant amounts of money.

What I object to, however, is this concept being applied "everywhere". The crisis isn't a lack of content, it's a dearth of creativity. It's imagination. The technology already exists. Stop apologizing and let's get on with the business already!

As I said to the panelists at E3, if I'm wrong and long tail economics apply here, then there really is a market for Aunt Bea's Quilting Smack-down!, and I will be here waiting to try it out, with virtual knitting needles on my cell phone...who's the Developer and Publisher willing to put their money where their mouth is?