Jess McMullin and Brandon Schauer Discuss Design Thinking, Strategy and More
This is an excellent interview/conversation between Jess McMullin and Brandon Schauer. One particular quote from Brandon that stood out to me:
... But the key is just realizing the world that your business partners come from, whether they're looking through a lens of finance or of operations or management, and being able to understand the issues they are dealing with. Having empathy with the issues that they come to the table with and actually being able to resonate with those by having read similar topics, having an appreciation for what their needs are and listening to them just as you would listen to a customer when you go out to do your research can really change how you work together.
My interests are increasingly gravitating towards the rapid developments of green technology taking place around the world right now. When first exploring a new topic of interest, it's sometimes shocking to realize just how little you know, but I'm now subscribed to several eco-related news feeds and blogs. Living in the Bay Area, there's an incredible amount of activity taking place as local start-ups, research organizations and universities, and, to a much lesser degree, large corporations invest in cleaner ways of developing energy.
Two weeks ago I watched "Who Killed the Electric Car" and learned about a living legend named Stan Ovshinsky who, over the course of his life, has led the development of numerous, major scientific breakthroughs related to the creation of environmentally friendly technologies. His company developed the updated version of the electric batteries that powered the EV-1 featured in the film. In his lifetime, Ovshinsky has earned over 200 patents according to an article from MIT. Now in his 80's, the rate at which he continues to earn patents has only slightly declined. In the film, he emphasizes the importance of getting students to learn science and technologies related to green technologies.
Headquartered in San Carlos, California, Tesla Motors was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. According to the their website, one startup idea they considered before starting Tesla Motors was developing smart sprinkler heads to aid in water consumption. Instead, they wind up deciding to conserve oil despite that neither one of them comes from an automotive background. Though the company's initial product will be a sports car, they're already at work on a high performance four-seater sedan with a 250 mile range -- all electric (source Yahoo! Autos).
From reading the Tesla Motor's website, it's clear that this company, similar to Ovshinsky, has a different perspective on the world. At the top of the About Us page on the website it states:
"Whether you're more concerned about global warming or about national security, there's one thing we can probably agree on: our dependence on oil is dangerous and costly. Right now 58% of our oil comes from other countries, so it's practically inevitable our foreign policy principles will be held ransom by our need to maintain domestic economic stability. When you consider that 68% of our oil is used for transportation, we believe gasoline-free cars are an ideal solution to these issues. Even a hybrid car, which still burns gasoline and emits carbon dioxide, doesn't solve our oil-related problems, it just postpones them. If you look hard at the numbers, it's clear that an electric car is the cleanest and most efficient kind of car in existence. We have done exhaustive "well to wheel" energy and emissions analyses, and the numbers are undeniable."
Featured recently in a brilliant article titled Elon Musk Is Betting His Fortune on a Mission Beyond Earth's Orbit, Musk is making two large investments right now that are of great interest to me: one is SpaceX, a space-transportation startup company, and the second is Tesla Motors. The bold financial backers of environmentally friendly technologies deserve great recognition for their vision, contributions and patience. Musk has contributed over $37 million to fund Tesla Motors -- a significant share of the overall $105 million needed to fund the company. In 2006, Exxon Mobil Corp recorded a record breaking $39.5 billion in profit.
If one takes Exxon's profits of $39,500,000,000 and divides it by 365 days in a year the resulting amount is $108,219,178 of profit per day for Exxon. According to my calculations, it would take only day's worth of Exxon's profits to fund Tesla Motors. My fellow residents of the planet Earth: what is wrong with this picture? Imagine if you performed a similar calculation that combined the total profit from the entire oil industry? If this doesn't make you as "mad as hell" then can anything?
Now imagine if the government developed a special R&D tax designed to specifically target profiteers like Exxon and set aside just a couple of weeks worth of their profits to Silicon Valley start-ups like Tesla Motors. These funds could be distributed through an X-Prize style competition or an idea marketplace. Who would run it? One thought would be to form a team led by top NASA scientists as well as leading universities that have demonstrated experience and leadership in the fields of physics, electrical and mechnical engineering, and other related fields of research. Top universities such as MIT, Cal Tech, Stanford, and Berkeley come to mind.
Of course, a few hundred million, even when provided to some of the smartest scientists on the planet, would not be enough to accomplish such goals. Who could require that such an organization form and what would the goals be anyway?
In my view, there is only one person that can make this happen: the president of the United States. Obviously the concepts I'm speaking about are incomprehensible to our current leader and I'd make the case that this was true of his predecessor as well (though less so). By comparison to the last several presidents we've had, I'm probably talking about someone who would be considered a true radical and visionary.
However, the American people were fortunate enough to have a president once that did in fact inspire a nation to achieve a goal that nearly all thought was impossible. There was a president who understood how important it was for America to affirm its technical and scientific leadership. There was a president bold enough to challenge every American to believe in a goal so grand that that they too would need to become bold in order to believe in it. And yes, he and his people succeeded.
When John F. Kennedy's presented his moon speech on September 12, 1962 at Rice Stadium, he not only outlined a mission to land on the moon within a decade of the day he proposed his goal, I believe he also provided a vision so inspiring that it can and should be applied to other seemingly impossible technical and scientific achievements for the duration of mankind. If you have not had the opportunity to see this speech or believe you have in the past but do not remember the specifics, please watch it now and listen to every word:
There are a few particular passages that are are especially important:
But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.
In a speech filled with stirring eloquence, JFK also states:
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.
Now consider this: imagine substituting out the mission from landing on the moon in ten years to eliminating our dependence on foreign resources to support our energy needs. That is to say, become energy independent. Nearly every aspect of Kennedy's vision could still apply. Would it require us to increase our national spending? Yes. Would it require a partnership between the private sector and government? Yes. Would it require Americans to make sacrifices and change their behavior? Yes. Would it require that laws be changed and atypical political bipartisanship? Yes and yes.
To put things in perspective, here's a telling summary that cites the cost of the moon race:
The US won the race to the Moon because, unlike the Soviet Union, it committed vast resources to a well thought-out "game plan" right from the start. NASA also stuck to that plan despite occasional technical and political problems. The foundation for Apollo's success was laid in 1962-67 when some 500,000 people from 20,000 companies built the spacecraft, Saturn carrier rocket and launch facilities. After this, the program was rapidly dismantled in just five years while the Apollo/Saturn system became operational, achieving President Kennedy's goal in July 1969 when Neil Armstrong became the first man on the Moon.
Though the costs of the moon race were high, this mission led to an era of great scientific discovery and technical leadership.
It concerns me greatly that I have not seen a political leader yet in my lifetime willing to take such a strong position on an important matter. The incredible environmental and political impact energy independence could have on this country is equally, if not more important, than the space race. And yet, our political leaders are either indifferent or oblivious, preferring to play political cat-and-mouse over moral issues.
The quality of life, both economically and environmentally, as well as national security depends on us taking immediate action. Though the president can drive this vision, it is a united people that share the vision I'm speaking to that must call it to his or her attention. It frustrates me that most people are not educated enough on this matter and that those that are passionate are not organized enough to assert their goals. I'm still optimistic that soon this has the potential to be addressed if the right people can come together. One needs only to watch JFK's remarkable speech in 1962, proclaiming a nearly impossible goal that was ultimately accomplished three years ahead of schedule, to know that nearly anything can be accomplished with the right leadership, motivation, people and resources.
Stanford's Autonomous Car Passes Initial Tests For DARPA's Urban Challenge
Wow, progress. Technology Review is running a wonderful article on Stanford's new autonomous car that's capable of making three-point turns and following the rules at a four-way stop. With nearly 42,000 people dying of vehicle related deaths per year in the United States alone, the research related to this project could prduce amazing results.
Importantly, says Thrun, Junior has a lot more "intelligence" than Stanley so that the computer can deal with intersections and traffic. Such tasks simply weren't a part of the previous race, which basically involved driving down a curvy desert road. This intelligence comes in the form of about 500 different probabilistic algorithms that process all the environmental information collected by the sensors and make the decision that is most likely to be the best. Thrun says that these decisions are made in less than 300 milliseconds, which is sufficient for slowing down or changing lanes if a car in another lane tries to merge into Junior's. "In the last race, you basically only had to decide whether to speed up or slow down," says Thrun, "but this time there are discrete decisions on top of that."
While skimming through recent stories tonight on Digg, I stumbled upon an interesting application called Fidg't Visualizer. This Java-based desktop application visualizes a user's social network using Flickr and LastFM tags. More than just a simple data visualization tool, it allows you to interact with the visual elements well and create dynamic relationships.
The Windows version of the application is not working on my machine, but I suspect that it has something to do with the wrong version of the Java virtual machine running on my computer. The authors of the application have clearly indicated that it's in alpha as well. Fortunately, they have made available a movie that demonstrates the application's capabilities. According to the movie, a Flash version will be available at some point.
Visually, the application is quite captivating and the design team is to be commended on coming up with the concept. More significantly, perhaps, the application teases at what will likely be an emerging trend in future rich internet applications: visual systems that communicate and allow for the interaction of complex data sets and meta data.
What makes Flickr so interesting for this type of application is the staggering amount of meta data it's already collecting. Some of this meta data is automatically generated such as the camera type and image settings for a photo as well as user submitted data including tags and GPS coordinates.
As a registered Flickr user, I often find myself frustrated by certain user interfaces such as the album generator. I often think "surely there must be an easier way to not only to create, but to share these photos with friends." With multi-touch technology still in its infancy and just barely around the corner, my first reaction to Fidg't Visualizer was that this would make an excellent example of a multi-touch screen application. In fact, it seems directly or indirectly inspired by Jeff Han's most recent multi-touch demonstration at TED.
If you have any thoughts on this topic, feel free to leave a comment. I finally re-enabled comments this weekend.
Mashable Posts a List of the 10 Coolest Apollo Apps
Mashable has posted The 10 Coolest Apollo Apps showing off some of the more interesting and imaginative experiments the Apollo developer community has already started to create. Given that the version of Apollo that's currently for download is still very early and not yet feature complete, the diversity of applications people are dreaming up is quite exciting. [From John Dowdell]
BusinessWeek: The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies
BusinessWeek and the Boston Consulting Group have compiled their list of the fifty most innovative companies in the world. Though the list is certainly interesting from the perspective of conversation, the methodology, described at the bottom of the page, seems intrinsically flawed. For example, I'm not sure that I can take a list that seriously contends ExxonMobil is an innovative company. How many billions in R&D have they wasted? A more interesting list would include smaller start-up companies challenging the status quo and introducing disruptive technologies and services like Tesla Motors and GlobeFunder.
If you're curious about what "Web 2.0" API's are available, I recommend checking out this list. The site allows visitors to register their own mash-ups. Click on the tab titled "By Mashup Count" to see some of the more popular API's being used. [link via Lee Brimelow]
As a follow-up to my last post, an alpha version of the Apollo runtime is now available for download on Adobe Labs. Apollo meet world. World meet Apollo.
Adobe Releases "Apollo for Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide"
Note: The Adobe Labs site appears to be down right now so those links are broken for the moment. I suspect they will be returning soon.
Adobe has been working on a very exciting technology known as Apollo that may have a significant impact on how people build rich internet applications for the desktop. Essentially it's a cross operating system run-time built on top of Flash, HTML and PDF. Though it will be possible to build applications completely using HTML/AJAX, most people will likely use Flex and ActionScript 3.
If you're interested in learning more, I recommend checking out the just released Apollo for Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide (free download). Tonight at our San Francisco office a special event took place targeting potential early adopters called Apollo Camp. If you're curious to seeing what took place at the event, attendees have been posting their photographs on Flickr. Those in attendance were also apparently presented with an early alpha build which is very exciting. Though I've been running early builds of Apollo at work, this is the first time I've seen an external .air file posted to a public site. The extension .air, by the way, is an Apollo installer application that will run on Windows, Mac and eventually Linux. The Apollo team has made it very easy to convert your existing Flex applications (web-based) to Apollo (desktop). Some developers are reporting that it takes less than five minutes. I'm looking forward to seeing what people start building with this new framework.
I had the very fortunate opportunity to spend the past two days at Adaptive Path’s“MX San Francisco: Managing Experience through Creative Leadership” conference in San Francisco. It was an all around outstanding experience and my hats off to everyone involved that make this event a huge success. Without hesitation, it's easy for me to say that this was an extremely relevant, thought-provoking conference that related directly to my job at hand.
My brain is chock-full of ideas triggered not only by the speakers, but also by the conversations that I had with other attendees. For those that haven't had the chance to seek out conferences or workshops related to their own profession, I highly recommend it. For me, it was a huge breath of fresh air.
Once I've had a chance to analyze my notes a bit more, I'll put up a summary of my key takeaways. One major theme that seemed to resonate with many people was just the continued pattern of organizations to think about "building products" instead of "designing experiences." However, designing experiences is much more than designers hypothesizing what they think users might want -- it's about designers testing their ideas with their target audience using user-centered design principles. Also, several discussions related to "experience strategy" arose that have challenged what I know about experience design, ethnographic research and design thinking.
Most of the attendees were either high-level managers responsible for experience design like programs at medium to large corporations (primarily in the technology or financial sectors). Other attendees included government agencies, consultants and even a couple of start-up companies.
I've uploaded some of the photos I took from the conference to Flickr.
It’s been quite awhile since I’ve had the opportunity to attend an industry related workshop or conference. To be fair, I did have the brief opportunity to cruise the Macworld floor the latter half of the day where Mr. Jobs’ introduced the iPhone. However, I mostly just explored the exhibit hall.
Last Friday, I stumbled upon Adaptive Path’s upcoming Managing Experience (MX) workshop that will be taking place in San Francisco on February 12-13th. The program sounded very intriguing as there are themes very much in line with the program I manage at my current job. As of Friday, only ten spots were available and I must have barely made it when I registered today because the website is currently showing this workshop as being sold out. There’s a second version of the workshop that will be taking place in Washington, D.C..
After the event, I’ll share my notes and thoughts on how the program went. There are several interesting sessions including one by Irene Au, Director of User Experience at Google, and “Innovation Through Design Thinking” by Tim Brown of IDEO.
Predictions on How Network Neutrality Will Encumber Innovation
Slashdotreferenced an interview posted to YouTube in which Robert Kahn, co-inventor of TCP/IP, was asked about his position on network neutrality. Kahn warns against net neutrality legislation because it could hinder experimentation and innovation. I've yet to hear a compelling case to counter Kahn's opinion which I also share. We're not alone in this opinion either.
According to the Save the Internet website, 1.49 million people have also contributed their names to a petition to counter the cable companies. That's only 500,000 from the organization's goal so I'd encourage you to learn more and get involved.
Wow, the video on demand space just keeps heating up. How does one even keep up? With dozens of major movie, television, software, networking and mobile device companies all focused on making it even easier for users to access their favorite content, I can't help but wonder if all of these industries are investing more R&D dollars than the market is prepared to reward.
TechCrunch is reporting that Netflix is rolling out a fairly revolutionary new service -- both in terms of media distribution but also in terms of evolving their own innovative business model:
But now Netflix has fired back with a really excellent new service that could swing momentum back in their direction. This morning, a select number of Netflix’s 6 million subscribers will have access to a new Watch Now product that will stream television shows and movies to a Windows PC. The remaining members will be given access over the next six months. About 1,000 movies and tv shows will initially be available (including some hits - NBC’s “The Office” is included, for example). Studios contributing to Netflix’s new service include NBC Universal, Sony Pictures, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Paramount Pictures, Warner Brothers, Lionsgate and New Line Cinema.The best part - it’s free.
If true, this is where the plot thickens:
Netflix is budgeting $40 million to cover licensing and overhead costs of the service over the next year, which will, by the way, wipe out most of their operating profit of $17 million or so per fiscal quarter. Unless of course this service results in millions of new subscribers.
As a fairly loyal Netflix customer, I'm looking forward to gaining access to this service. That being said, there's no doubt about: this is a *huge* gamble given the immediate overhead involved. If it fails miserably, is it possible that Netflix could fall to the wayside and be trampled by companies. TiVo is another company that earned incredible customer loyalty -- including from me. However, I haven't used by TiVo in a year since I invested in HD and just last week I upgraded to Comcast's HD DVR box for $5 more a month. While I miss the TiVo interface, the Comcast HD DVR has hit 80% of the primary use cases and I'm very happy with the product.
Though not expected to be available until the 2007 holiday season, Microsoft made a surprise announcement at CES that the Xbox 360 will support IPTV. For additional information, see the Gamespot article which details some of the interesting new features including:
Play games online while recording TV programs in the background
Watch a TV program while chatting with someone from their friends list
Browse channels using picture-in-picture
Search program by actor or director (sounds like TiVo)
John Dowdell noticed that Lee Brimelow has posted a very interesting example of how to integrate Adobe Flash movies with WPF/E using JavaScript. In his example, a Flash movie is positioned next to a WPF/E movie and a ball appears to move between the two seamlessly.
TechCrunch Spotlights Swivel, an Intriguing New Data Visualization Start-up
TechCrunch is spotlighting a start-up called Swivel that describes themselves as "YouTube for Data." My first thought was "wow, that sounds pitchy." However, the site, which will supposedly launch later this week, allows for visual analysis of data sets submitted by users. Of the many start-up ideas I've heard about lately, this is probably the most interesting. Of course, I'll reserve judgment until it's finally released to see how well they execute on the concept.
Data analysis is a critical function for many jobs, whether you're a business analyst or even an engineer striving to improve performance in your application. YouTube, however, is useful for entertainment purposes. If this tool succeeds at making it easier for more people to analyze and collaborate on data visually, this could grow into a disruptive service. Though the readers of TechCrunch tend to be a fervent crowd, judging by the comments, others are excited by and see the potential of this idea as well.
Since this tool is targeted at a community, users could benefit from the brilliant and even accidental creations of others. It could also lead to the exchange of difficult to find data sets such as those related to humanitarian efforts. For example, it might be revealing to plot data sets such as the number of deaths from AIDS in Africa versus dollars contributed from the World Bank to fight this epidemic.
Incidentally and stunningly, according to the recent Economist, AIDS has claimed the lives of over two million people living in Africa in 2005. According to Wikipedia, the population of San Jose is 953,679 and the population of San Francisco is 798,680. Imagine if the population of both these cities just disappeared in a year?
Bob Sutton explores how Billy Beane, the talented general manager of baseball's Oakland Athletics, is applying the scientific method to innovate his talent portfolio while still maintaining a profitable business. Beane is doing so well that he's even garnering the respect and admiration of the investment community.
Bob, whose blog I recently discovered and is fast becoming one of my favorites, writes:
There are many signs that the system works, for example, Oakland's cost per win in 2005 was $450,000 in salary, while the New York Yankees paid 1.4 million. The 2006 payrolls (when Oakland had a better season than the Yankees) were about 60 million for the A's and about 200 million for the Yankees. Bean and his staff do impressive analysis to make decisions that gain them cost advantages and increase their odds of success. For example, they stay away for star players that are coming out of high school and prefer college graduates because only 5% of baseball players drafted straight out of high school are in the major leagues in three years, while 17% of college graduates that are drafted make it to the majors.
Also, Bob references one quote from a recent Financial Times article that I particularly like that well summarizes Beane's philosophy to risk management:
So Beane and his statisticians invested their energy in analyzing defence, which is still by far the hardest aspect of the game to categorise numerically. Their efforts resulted last year in what was by common consent the best fielding team in the league. Fielding was under-priced, so once Beane and his team could find a way to measure it, they went out and bought it. “If I can’t measure it, I’m not going to invest in it. The intangibles – personally I don’t believe in it, but that’s just my opinion.”
The ability to quantify and positively react to risk better than one's competitors is clearly a major competitive advantage. The importance of defining success metrics to compare risk is something that I continually try to achieve in my own work, but it's easy to become dependent on predefined or "industry standard" metrics rather than developing new ones. My takeaway: differentiate yourself from others by applying creativity to metrics.
Congratulations to the Adobe Kuler team who recently released a community-based color themes service on Adobe Labs.
Kuler is basically still an experiment at this point and not a full-fledged service (hence its availability on Adobe Labs), but the basic idea is that you can search, rate and post color themes on a community-based service. Once you find a theme that you like, it's then possible to download an Adobe Swatch Exchange file with those colors that can then be imported directly into Illustrator, InDesign or Photoshop.
That being said, you could also easily apply this theme to a website by extracting the hexadecimal color values and including them in your CSS rules. It's very easy to explore the most popular, highest rated and newest themes.
In other words, its essentially a productivity service/tool that particularly benefits people that may not be naturally talented in color design. I created a theme called "sea house" that has shades of blue. If you're a designer, you might find this fairly immediately useful.
Digital cameras are finally beginning to show signs of maturity as evidenced by David Pogue of the New York Times who recently conducted an interesting experiment. Camera makers need to begin differentiating their products on more innovative features. How about HD video recording, GPS location stamping or automatic upload via wireless -- 802.11b/g for now and WiMAX in the future?
On the show, we did a test. We blew up a photograph to 16 x 24 inches at a professional photo lab. One print had 13-megapixel resolution; one had 8; the third had 5. Same exact photo, down-rezzed twice, all three printed at the same poster size. I wanted to hang them all on a wall in Times Square and challenge passersby to see if they could tell the difference.
Even the technician at the photo lab told me that I was crazy, that there’d be a huge difference between 5 megapixels and 13.
I’m prepared to give away the punch line of this segment, because hey—the show doesn’t air till February, and you’ll have forgotten all about what you read here today, right?
Anyway, we ran the test for about 45 minutes. Dozens of people stopped to take the test; a little crowd gathered. About 95 percent of the volunteers gave up, announcing that there was no possible way to tell the difference, even when mashing their faces right up against the prints. A handful of them attempted guesses—but were wrong. Only one person correctly ranked the prints in megapixel order, although (a) she was a photography professor, and (b) I believe she just got lucky.
Josh Tynjala is really making a name for himself as a world class Flex developer. He just announced an open source version of his Flex 2 TreeMap Component -- a component that caught my eye awhile back.
Data visualization is near and dear to my heart and I'm intrigued by tree maps in particular. It's a little slow due to the amount of processing, but this is an excellent example of Josh's TreeMap component in action. Now that it's open source, I'm looking forward to the opportunity of experimenting with it first hand.
Just when I when I had successfully figured out how to convert DivX and other formats to .wmv files to play back on the Xbox 360, Engadget reports that an even better solution is now available from Tversity that will transcode real-time!
[Via Ajaxian] OctaGate SiteTimer is a service hosted in Stockholm (Sweden) that performs page loads, and gives you detailed results. Very slick for anyone that might be going overboard with too many AJAX libraries or image files. The service is free to try.
The Download Squad has a brief overview of a bit torrent client, WinMobile Torrent 2.1, for Pocket PC's. As more and more smart phones ship with Windows Mobile and PocketPC, this presents some interesting opportunities for not only video on demand but P2P VOIP. It's impressive to see the capabilities of a smart phones match the PC's.
The .NET 3.0 framework has been released and is available for download. Amazingly, it was easier to find the break-down of new features from Wikipedia than from Microsoft's very own website. The new version includes support for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), formerly known as Avalon.It'll be interesting to see of the next-generation applications that begin to appear that take advantage of XAML and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) as users begin to upgrade to Vista.
It's quite impressive the degree to which you can compare countries over time based on data points such as life expectancy, income per capita, and phone users per 1000 people. It's interesting to see China and India move pretty dramatically, like the like the Jovian giants Jupiter and Saturn, based on their enormous economic growth in the past two decades. This is definitely worth checking out. Props to John Dowdell for the link.
WikiMapia makes it simple to add a Google map to a web page, blog posting or a wiki. Geoblogging will become particularly interesting when mobile devices integrate with data sources backed by social networks such as Yelp and trigger events based on proximity to a recorded event -- perhaps personalized with specific, tailored event triggers.
For example, imagine a use case where your cell phone automatically triggers an alert when you walk by a restaurant where a friend, unbeknownst to you, recently dined. Your mobile device vibrates indicating not a phone call, but a "social event" triggered." After reading the review, you notice your friend is online, through some kind of mobile presence system, and video conference with your friend while peeking in through the front window of the restaurant. "So, Steve -- I was reading your review of
Zachary's Chicago Pizza and I saw the photos you posted on Yelp. I'm out front and I'm going to check it out! Thanks for the tip!"
Or imagine if your mobile device automatically triggered posts back to your blog based on places you visit. For example, you configure your mobile device to automatically post back to your blog whenever you catch a Giants game or attend a concert. Or imagine while at the Giants game you're sitting in the left field bleachers and you're notified that a friend is sitting in the right field bleachers. You send a text message and decide to meet up for a drink after the game at The Ramp
News.com is running an articled titled “Google's antisocial downside” suggesting that the search giant appears missing in action from much of the innovation taking place around the marriage of services and social networks. I agree with assertion and believe that Google is showing signs of a company struggling to innovate at the rate that propelled them to superstardom just a few years ago.
As anyone visiting TechCrunch can attest, nearly every new, public-facing, services-based start-up has community based features baked in. In fact, it’s essentially a checkbox to be calling a Web 2.0 company along with AJAX and RSS. (Incidentally, my favorite Web 2.0 company with a strong social network continues to be Yelp.)
From when it was initially announced, I was cynical of Google’s foray into social networking with the Orkut service. It was hyped as a side project created by Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten and spread virally with the weight of Google behind it.
However, there were several blunders made by Google. One, it made a strategic error by not branding Orkut with the Google name within a few months after it was released. It’s a mistake to think that products, particularly services like the ones Google is trying to build out, can achieve escape velocity, that is mass-market success as a market leader, while remaining in perpetual beta. From the start, Orkut was functional, but also not terribly impressive to look at or engaging to use.
Many questions continue to confound me regarding the development of Orkut. Did Google ever really think that it was that original of a service? Friendster predated Orkut and had an arguably equal set of features. What was the business case for Orkut? Why was it never branded with the Google name? Why did Google release a service, even in beta, without ever intending to follow through and be the best in the world at it? How much user and market research had Google conducted prior to taking this public? Perhaps most importantly, how could Google not have anticipated the continued success of MySpace– something Google could have easily fended off by integrating an enhanced version of Orkut into popular existing services such as GMail using a Google brand?
Two, Google failed to enhance Orkut in the way that many users had come to expect from a Google service – which is sort of shocking given that it is known to be one of the most innovative companies in the world. My $.02: offering disruptive technology to the masses without first defining a significant business model is about the worst mistake a company can make. Did the great business minds at Google analyze the Orkut opportunity and decide to focus on other, “more lucrative” opportunities? For example, the launch of Yahoo Photos.
Yahoo, though not a leader is social networking, deserves credit for at least synchronizing the release of products with some form of marketing support and setting a clear expectation that it will continue to iterate its tools. When Yahoo announces a new service, it’s usually very obvious that engineering, marketing (and the extended business team), QA and support have partnered to release the product.
In my view, the mad scientist culture at Google is as self-destructive as it is innovative. Repeated mistakes by Google will send a perception to their customers and the next generation of entrepreneurs that they are no longer as cutting edge as they once were.
Now, MySpace accounts for 4.5 percent of all U.S. Internet domain name visits, according to the metrics company. In other words, the company has increased its market share by 4,300 percent in two years.
"MySpace continues its meteoric rise, to now claim the number one spot for all Internet visits in the U.S.," Bill Tancer, general manager of Global Research at Hitwise, said in a prepared statement. "We are still discovering the Internet laws of gravity as it relates to a site's potential to grow on the Internet. The fact that MySpace was virtually unknown by the mainstream Internet users two years ago and now claims the top position, demonstrates how hyper-competitive the Internet really is."
BusinessWeek Spotlights "World's Most Innovative Companies"
The latest issue of BusinessWeek features a brilliant article on "The World's Most Innovative Companies." Though I think the whole article is worth a read, there are a few sections I found particularly interesting:
The BusinessWeek-BCG survey is more than just a Who's Who list of innovators. It also focuses on the major obstacles to innovation that executives face today. While 72% of the senior executives in the survey named innovation as one of their top three priorities, almost half said they were dissatisfied with the returns on their investments in that area.
The No. 1 obstacle, according to our survey takers, is slow development times. Fast-changing consumer demands, global outsourcing, and open-source software make speed to market paramount today. Yet companies often can't organize themselves to move faster, says George Stalk Jr., a senior vice-president with BCG who has studied time-based competition for 25 years. Fast cycle times require taking bets even when huge payoffs aren't a certainty. "Some organizations are nearly immobilized by the notion that [they] can't do anything unless it moves the needle," says Stalk. In addition, he says, speed requires coordination from the hub: "Fast innovators organize the corporate center to drive growth. They don't wait for [it] to come up through the business units."
Indeed, a lack of coordination is the second-biggest barrier to innovation, according to the survey's findings. But collaboration requires much more than paying lip service to breaking down silos. The best innovators reroute reporting lines and create physical spaces for collaboration. They team up people from across the org chart and link rewards to innovation. Innovative companies build innovation cultures. "You have to be willing to get down into the plumbing of the organization and align the nervous system of the company," says James P. Andrew, who heads the innovation practice at BCG.
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