Portable Computing?

I recently completed my order for a new Dell laptop, in order to free me from using the less than modern device I have at my current client and the desktop I have at home. Yes, I am a little behind the times in purchasing a personal laptop, but until now, I wasn't able to justify one... The one I ordered is your standard laptop - 15.4 monitor, but somehow in my browsing I missed this beast. Definitely a niche audience for this device. Maybe this is Dell's answer to the long tail of laptops? Although this probably isn't the mobile device for most business folks out there, I would be willing to bet more than a few gamers will be eying this so they can have an 'at home' experience as they sit for hours in the local coffee shop playing Everquest or WoW. Hopefully they don't have to walk or bike around town... On the business end one probable group of folk that would have a real need for something like this might be mobile architects. Imagine showing up at the construction site with this 'little' gem.

In a world where technology continues to get smaller, this defies the trend, and is reminiscent of the cell phone bricks people use to carry around. However if you use this as a replacement for your Stereo, TV and home PC combined, then I guess the rule still applies.

Long Tail Snipits

This is one of the most thought provoking books I have read in a while. Here are a few tidbits that will make you think. (some are direct quotes while others are summarized points, but all are attributed to the author, or references within the book)

• Broadcast is very good at bringing one show to millions of people with unmatched efficiency. But it cant do the opposite – bring a million shows to one person each. This is exactly what the Internet does so well.
• Three main observations about the long tail:
• the tail of availability is far longer than we realize
• its now within reach economically
• all those niches when aggregated can make up a significant market
• The Long Tail is just culture unfiltered by economic scarcity.
• 3 forces are creating the long tail:
  
• Democratizing the tools of productions (eg PC) = more stuff available (lengthen the tail)
• Cutting the cost of consumption by democratizing distribution (eg Internet) = more access to niches (fatten the tail)
  
• Connecting Supply and Demand (eg Search) = Driving Business from Hits to Niches
  
• The motives to create are not the same in the head as they are in the tail. One economic model does not fit all. You can think of the Long Tail starting as a traditional monetary economy at the head and ending in a non monetary economy in the tail.
  
• The Long tail promises to become the crucible of creativity, a place where ideas form and grow before evolving into commercial form.
  
• The traditional line between producers and consumers has blurred. Consumers are also producers.
  
• We are entering an era of radical change for marketers. Faith in advertising and the institutions that pay for it is waning, while faith in individuals is on the rise. Peers trust peers. Top-down messaging is losing traction, while bottom up buzz is gaining power.
  
• We are leaving the Information age and entering the recommendation age. Information gathering is no longer the issues – making smart decisions based on the information is now the trick.
  
• The day when magazine, newspaper and TV editors decide what makes it to market and what doesn’t is fading. Soon everything will make it to market and the real opportunity will be sorting it all out.
  
• We are seeing a shift from mass culture to massively parallel culture. Every one of us – no matter how mainstream we might think we are – actually goes super niche in some part of our lives.
  
• The secret to creating a thriving long tail business can be summarized in two imperatives:
  
• make everything available
• help me find it
  
• More information is better, but only when its presented in a way that helps order choice, not confuse it further.

Data Visualization Maps

Data visualization tools will take business intelligence to the masses. It takes a search concept and then shows related items in a visual map. Some of the first items on the web were focused on music. Companies such as Live Plasma started with music, and have now moved into movies as well as a recent partnership with CNet called The Big Picture mapping related news articles. It uses size and color to show relationships. Another player is Dimvision with their music map, that has actual cd images. Both Dimvision and Live Plasma utilize Amazon.com's database to build the maps. Now there is another tool out there that is doing the same for books. It is called amaznode, and also taps into Amazon's database.

Tag Clouds are also data visualization of key words used to describe or tag content. They are typically user driven, but can be aggregated to show trends on perception. There are becoming common place, with such companies as newzingo.com and techzingo.com tapping Google's information. TagClound (the company) will also build/maintain tag clouds for organizations. In addition there is opensource code available so that it can be pretty much integrated into any web application.

I think there is tremendous opportunity out there to expand this type of visualization into other companies and industries. What about tapping REI's database and doing visual mapping for sports/outdoor equipment purchases, or tapping a grocery chains customer database to build visual food maps. Beyond just the cool factor, there is real opportunity for money. As with music, and movies, people want to find items in their same niche interests. Amazon does it internally on their site with "Customers who bought this book also liked...", but the visual map has a much information. When using Live plasma, if offers links back into Amazon to buy the items found on the maps.

Think like a child...

I believe the key to creativity is thinking like a child. If we as adults could have the knowledge we have now, but be able to have the unconstrained mind of a child, imagine what ideas we could come up with.

Unfortunately, I think it is often our gain in knowledge of the world as we get older that often constrains our thinking. Here are 101 ways to brew up a new idea (which somehow were printed on a coffee mug). If you notice, many of the items are related to children's activities... Even if the activities on the list don't produce the next great idea for you, I think there is something to be said for keeping your mind malleable to new ways of thinking, which unfortunately, often seems to have a negative correlation with increased age. (see previous post on maintaining the status quo)

The Anti-Blogger How-to

I have a few Google gadget items added to my Google search page. One of these puts up random 'how to's' from WikiHow. One that caught my attention this mornings was entitled: How to Dissuade Yourself From Becoming a Blogger. Here is an excerpt:

• Find five completely random blogs, and read them daily for a month. After thirty days, you will absolutely dread your self-imposed requirement to read all that dreck. Any blog you create will most likely be on par with what you've been reading. Don't put anyone through that.

Among other things, it suggests that bloggers are often craving attention and validation... me - I'm just looking for a way to capture ideas, and thoughts. If no one reads them, its still helps me clarify my own thoughts. One suggestion they have which I have been contemplating for a while now is moving from a blog to an online wiki format - much more collaborative...

Framing The Ambiguous

I love frameworks.... Learning new ones, applying them, and creating ones in ambiguous territory. Frameworks are part of the toolkit that allows me to jump off a cliff, and make up the water on the way down, when taking on new challenges.

Frameworks help take concepts that appear cloudy and make them clear. I remember early in my consulting career having some colleagues that worked on organizational change management. I remember thinking that must have been a 'fuzzy' job, comforting employees through a change, but a couple years ago, I decided to expand my knowledge base in this area, and got certified with Prosci on their change management methodology. Wow! - a framework for helping people adjust to change! And it worked - it helped get a handle on what needed to be done and how to make it efficient. What makes frameworks great is that they aren't a recipe on how to do something (which is why some people don't like them), but it gives you a point of reference and then allows you to adjust for your needs and fill in the details.

I have started looking for modern frameworks around organizational design, business models and business strategy, in a knowledge based economy which are often hard to find, since it is a shift from traditional thinking on business strategy.

I have came across a great framework or ontology for business modeling recently by Alex Osterwalder, who has a consulting company called Business Model Design. I have found that the term 'business model' is often a loaded, and over-used term. People use it for many different things. Alex has a great summary of what a business model is and a framework for analyzing and creating business models. There is also an excellent case study of applying the framework to analyzing the Skype business model. His site also links to some interesting business modeling tools, which I am currently experimenting with.

With the technology startup I am working on, this discovery has came at the right time. I have been looking for a mechanism to describe our business model via a simple framework. As with many technology startups, the business model is often hard to describe to potential investors since they are operating in a non traditional space. (It would be much easier if we were selling running shoes.) I am attempting to utilize this model to not only clarify our model but also use it to compare against our competition and potentially complimentary models.

Guild Based Management

The Autumn issue of Booze Allen's Strategy+Business has a great biographical article about entrepreneur Joi Ito. Near the end of the article there is an interesting discussion about how his current obsession with World of Warcraft - a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), is allowing him to experiment with new org design and team management techniques through his WoW guild. This guild is made up of (currently) 250 members from all backgrounds from around the globe including a "raid leader" who is an emergency room nurse, and another important player who is an unemployed bartender.

Mr Ito: "I'm playing with all different kinds of management ideas I've had for companies, with a bunch of people who are actually very dedicated. They will set their alarm clocks for 3 a.m. to run a raid of 40 people. They are committed to each other like people in a normal company wouldn't be committed to each other. So as a test bed for these ideas this is actually pretty amazing".

Personally I am not a member of this online gaming sub-culture, (my wife would kill me) but this concept of guild base management fascinates me. Developing that level of passion in work, and utilizing the concepts to manage, and collaborate has interesting possibilities, as we experience a shrinkage in workforce, globalization, virtual work, and managing people and teams with this level of efficiency.

Cyclic Creativity

I have found that creativity ebbs and flows like the waves on a beach. Wouldn’t it be great to be creative all the time, but probably even artists and musicians go through creative cycles.

My level of creativity often tends to be inversely correlated with the level of thinking I need to do at work. The more complex thinking I need to do on a topic at work, the less cycles I seem to have for creative ideas.

Airplanes however, are an anomaly for me, since this typically means I am traveling for work, putting in longer days and hours, but for some reason, when I read/think in the air I tend to get better idea flow than if I am reading at work or on my front porch at home – hence I tend to scribble many thoughts in the margins, on drink napkins or whatever I happen to have.

A friend of mine says that he has creative ‘seasons’ – times of the year when he tends to be more creative – typically in the spring and early summer for him. I haven’t been able to find if this is true for me. My creativity seems more sporadic, and is something that I just started to really tap into as I begin to covet entrepreneurialism but I also feel like it is something that can be honed, and improved.

It even seems to change day to day… My business partner often knows when my creative juices are flowing. On a high flow day, he may get half dozen ideas or thoughts emailed to him within the span of the morning. Usually if I get one or two – I get a bunch, by often playing off on previous streams of thought.

Cyclic creativity is a good reason for working on ideas collaboratively, since everyone isn’t always ‘up’ at the same time. When all parties are up, it is truly magic or chaotic, but since this is less likely to occur, collaboration can ensure that progress is still happening.

Status Quo...

We all know these folks - the ones who love the status quo and will try anything to keep it that way. Seth Godin has a great list ways people defend the status quo.

Thought Shift

Well, its been over a month since my last post, and I don't want to be another technorati statistic of bloggers who start and drop off after 3 months, so why not begin posting about my current thoughts. My thought focus has shifted to a business idea in the Web2.0 social software space, I have been hatching for the past few months, that is finally starting to get some traction to move me down the entrepreneurial path. Getting a startup going is hard work! ... To me, it is frustratingly slow wading through the entrepreneurial process quagmire. However in retrospect, it seems to be moving along at a decent pace.

So what did I do to start moving... After I had the idea somewhat fleshed out in my own head (enough so that I could describe it in oh 30... minutes or so:) I put together a concept deck and started going to peers to get their thoughts on if the idea was viable. Once I had talked over the idea with almost a dozen people, and had a number of shifts and refinements, I felt like it might be worth continuing. Plus, I now had my elevator speech down to about 10-15 minutes, so if I was in empire state building I might be able to tell someone about it. I then decided to move ahead and start drafting a business plan and recruit a team to help breath life into the concept.

This is the start of a very interesting journey (that hopefully keeps going) and its amazing all the things you learn, so after some coaxing from a colleague, I am going to start journaling some of these here. In the mean time, for other new entrepreneurs, here is a quick read no nonsense article that just came out around building a bulletproof startup. It would have been nice to have this a couple months ago, but in reading it, I felt better as my path seemed similar so far...