blogs.the-organization.com blogs

FutureFear (tm)

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 02:53:34 -0700

We have a rather obvious global crisis. War in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya. Terror in London, New York, Madrid. Riots in Paris. And thats just what I saw in the news in the last few days. There is no way to deny that our civilization has issues.

Look at the future. Look a few years ahead. Do you see anything but fear ? Do you see more war, more anti-terrorist laws, rising oceans and energy crises? Do you see anything good, do you have any hope ? I don't know many who do. We are all afraid of tomorrow.

We avoid the issues in the world around us by just working harder and focusing on the priorities of consumerism. Or, if we live on the other side, we see nothing but this encroaching capitalist monster destroying culture after culture. Either way it's hopeless. When you have no hope, when you live on nothing but fear - you will do whatever it takes.

What's in a name ?

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 08:25:48 -0700

We are looking to set up a new Drupal services company, and as usual, there is the endless circling around finding a good name that is avaliable as a .com. We are all over the place, playing with words in every way we can. So far.....zilch.

Robert Castello from CortextCommunications did have a pretty good bit of advice though...

The client's website is CRITICAL to their business, and all they can see is some cryptic error message when they visit the site - the manager turns to the assistant and says "give <- name-> a call, tell them we need this back up urgently!"

Other People's Bedrooms

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 10:35:59 -0700

At university I lived in a house with only bedrooms. It was cheap. Where there had been a lounge, now there was just a bigger bedroom that was rented out for a little more. It was great. But there was something missing.

I have always felt a bit odd visiting other people's bedrooms. (There are some times when this is a very good thing, but I am not talking about those times.) When you are in my bedroom, you are in my space. I define the rules, I can kick you out. Private spaces are not democratic spaces.

Most of our social networking tools are about private spaces (my spaces and your spaces), very few, if any deal with Our Spaces. Some builitien boards are public spaces, some community sites are public spaces, but most are not. Most are simply controlled open spaces, not unlike a restuarant or a mall. You may sit here, you may talk, but you are not allowed to bring your own food or play a musical instrument.

What makes a publc space ? How do we find the commons in a socail network ? Where do we build the villiage green that is free for citizens to use for all kinds of temporary purposes ?

We probably need to look for the origins of communinal living. What caused villiages to start in the first place, and how did they evolve to cope with more and more citizens. How were villiage greens used and managed ? With a little bit of work, we may be able to recreate those spaces in online communities.

Public spaces allow people to explore. They facilitate collaborative and competitive games. They bring together the population for festivities, they are used as markets and meeting places.

Phase Change

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 15:16:10 -0800

In Jan 2006, for the first time, a computer managed to simulate phase change in a fluid. (http://www.rochester.edu/news/show.php?id=2384) This transformation is so complex that it has simply not been possible to achieve this previously. We have computers to simulate weather patterns, atomic bombs and map the human genome - but modelling the change from a liquid to a gas is even bigger!

There is a massive amount of energy involved in the transition from one phase/state to another - in any environment. I believe that this applied equally well to organizations and economics. The energy lost at the edge, when energy is transferred from outside the organization to within it, and vise-versa, is immense.

Have you any idea who you're aiming for?

Thu, 12 Jan 2006 08:16:15 -0800

Have you any idea who you're aiming for?

3G is useless in a country where people cannot afford the handsets and where almost no 3G network exists.
The reuse and recycle principle is important here, there is more money to be made from diversifying and expanding upon very popular existing GSM and SMS markets than trying to invent new ones. Companies should be looking at ways of better exploiting what already exists than jumping on the newest technology and trying to force feed it to an unwilling market.
If you are a company involved in such activity maybe its time you reviewed where your resources are going a little more carefully. Are you making the most of what you already have and have you explored all the avenues available through it?

You're having a laugh mate!

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 16:31:41 -0800

I recently came across a full page advert in the FT digital business section placed by BT, the headline of which read 'Innovate or die: the new strategy for 21st century business'. This is incredibly ironic considering their own track record of being left behind in innovation...perhaps in this statement they are in fact speaking from personal experience?
In the advert Gary Bullard, BT's UK managing director of Global services mentions the success of on-line gambling websites over high street betting shops as proof that new competitors with updated networks will automatically out perform traditional companies who do not make sufficient use of technology, and, without any quantifiable qualification, states that "new entrants [to markets] are increasingly going to spring from nowhere". Ironic then that in the same issue of the FT there is an article about the ailing and continued downward spiral of the on-line gambling market, the bubble for which has definitely burst.

Marketing Made Not So Simple

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 08:17:46 -0800

Providing services is one thing, but making sure that those services are correctly targeted and capable of making a return is quite another.

On a recent trip to Poland I discovered a wealth of home-grown on-line applications and services on offer. Everything from Polish equivalents of Ebay to MSN and MySpace designed for Poles by Poles have been created, launched and are proving to be incredibly popular when compared to their U.S. designed counterparts. Although broadband internet and numerous Polish specific on-line web services have been available in Poland for sometime, the market is just beginning to try and find its feet so far as on-line sales and revenue goes, and is still looking for the right formula so far as marketing on-line services to public or business users is concerned. Herein lies an important challenge to this new market, and one that doesn't just apply to them, but to us all. How do you best attach value to, and extract revenue from your product? Many of the Polish services on offer are incredibly popular in their native country, in some cases having a total monopoly on the market for a particular type of application or service. However, despite their dominant position, many application and service providers have yet to attach any revenue mechanism to their products. This is partly to do with the tremendous under funding and resourcing of the entire e-commerce and internet services sector in Poland, with many companies being under-staffed, as in the example of one of Poland's most popular native on-line messaging services which is owned and operated entirely by the man that originally designed it, and staff being generally under valued and under paid. However, it is also to do with the unusual nature of the Polish market. In Poland consumerism is a relatively new concept. The highly developed consumer wants and needs of most evolved western markets, and the consumer models and marketing strategies that accompany them do not necessarily apply here. For example, having an on-line map service which shows you homes for sale in an area each time you try and look up a street is hardly going to be useful in a country where most people live in small shared rented apartments and have little in the way of bankable securities. As such a more in depth consideration of revenue strategy opportunities must be undertaken for this specific market, based on its individual qualities, needs and desires.

Lucrative future for people network orientated services

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 07:45:38 -0800

Over the past few weeks Yahoo has purchased a number of small startup 'social community' orientated websites/webservices, including Flickr and delicious. In an article in The Guardian technology section about the bright future of online people network services in light of Yahoo's recent acquisitions, journalist Bobbie Johnson talks to Yahoo's senior director of technology development, and speculates on the future importance of online social software services that use tags.

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Excerpts from 'Searching for a fresher taste' by Bobbie Johnson

Peer Rights

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 06:46:40 -0800

I've started buying people subscriptions to last.fm for their birthdays now. I'm slowly getting my friends to become my music recommenders, and I am enjoying exploring music more than I have in years.

Last.fm builds you your own private radio station based on the music you listen to in winamp or iTunes. It suggests new music based on the music profiles of those listen to similar music.

I keep finding myself thinking, "How will this effect the big publishers?". How will this effect radio stations? If we all begin to recieve custom media, will the big content producers still manage to maintain their control? How will a producer manage to engineer a song's popularity if most people get music tailored to what those around them are listening to?

The speed of change will increase, until we choose to stop.

Sat, 22 Oct 2005 11:33:54 -0700

This is my assumption: Things will only get faster. Within our economic and organizational envioronment, we will not cease in our race to become more effective, more efficient and more agile. This need will be driven by commercial factors, businesses less able to adapt to changing environments will be replaced. There is no option to stop or slow down. (Not as organisations, but as inidividuals, we can choose the slow way .)

This push to move faster will favour collaboration. Yes, it is competition that powers the system, but it is through co-operation that the victors will emerge. This evolution is obvious in the online world. The whole emergence of Web 2.0 is all about collaboration( but then, the very word "Inter-net" should have given that away a long time ago). The ideologies so obvious in the online world must now seep back into the old, offline world.

The New Metaphor

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 15:46:41 -0700

Every aspect of modern business is wasteful. Energy and resources of every kind are left to ferment, thrown away unused. Resources have been in abundance, there was little need to worry about the inefficiencies of the system. We are however entering a period when resources are becoming scarce once more, and the overarching metaphors of our culture are changing.

In times of scarcity, it is not raw power that counts, but efficiency and effectiveness. Burning up all your fuel, squandering all your venture capital, leaping up the corporate ladder at the expense of all else, these will no longer win out over careful, efficient harnessing of resources. Speed is still important, but that speed must be sustained.

What they're not telling you

Sat, 15 Oct 2005 13:39:07 -0700

Things move fast in the telecoms industry. So fast that the next big thing can easily become old hat before it has even reached customers, and so quickly that companies with their assets tied into heavy infrastructure can be top of the pile one day and scrabbling in fear of being left behind the next.
I first heard about WiMax about a year ago. At the time widespread excitement amongst businesses was just beginning, as the fantastic range of possibilities WiFi's standardised and certified version of wireless networking could offer was slowly being realised and standardised high capability broadband wireless was merely being whispered about by a few as a distant dream being slowly built towards.

Art is the ultimate business

Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:43:55 -0700

A commercially successfull artist creates wealth out of imagination. All they need to do is think, explore and express their ideas. Once they are "big" enough, everything they create has great value. The fact that the creation is an echo of the artist's thoughts is enough.

How can we recreate this value source? How can we create artists, and how can an organisation become an artist in it's own right. In an online world where the only constant is change, where any innivation can be duplicated in the blink of an eye, the only way to stay ahead is constant creativity.

The key to future commercial success is the combination business and art.