innovation playground Idris Mootee

Are You Suffering From Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD)?

A growing body of research in the area of addiction suggests that Internet Addiction Disorder is becoming a real problem, it is a psychophysiological disorder involving tolerance; withdrawal symptoms; affective disturbances; and interruption of social relationships. The most common one is Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD). 

To be diagnosed as having Facebook Addiction Disorder, a person must meet certain criteria. At least 2 or 3 of the following 6 criteria must be present at any time during a 6-8 months period:

1/. The first thing is tolerance. This refers to the need for increasing amounts of time on Facebook to achieve satisfaction and/or significantly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of time/ The often have multiple Facebook windows opened at any one time. 3 is usually a sign and over 5 you're helpless.

2/. After reduction of Facebook use or cessation, it causes distress or impair social, personal or occupational functioning such as wondering why your Vista is so fast and improved etc. These include anxiety; obsessive thinking about what is written on your wall on Facebook etc.

3/. Important social or recreational activities are greatly reduced and or migrated to Facebook. Instead of sending an email you post a message on your friend’s page about canceling a lunch appointment. You now stop answering your phone call from your Mom and insist she should contact you through Facebook chat.

4/ This is getting serious if you start kiss your girlfriend's home page or a VRML virtual walk through a park is your idea of a date.

5/ Your bookmark takes 20 minutes just to scroll from top to bottom or 8 of 10 people in your friend's list you have no idea of who they are.

6/ When you meet people you start introducing yourself by following "see you in Facebook" or your dog has its own Facebook profile. You invite anyone you've met and any notifications, messages and invites reward you with an unpredictable high, much like gambling.

As we spend more and more time online no questions it can be addictive. Some say that there is no such thing as Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD). I am not sure we’ve any answer for that yet. I am sure the pharma companies will be quick to say that there is medication solution out there with psychoactive drugs.

So how many kinds of disorders are out there? Are they really disorders of just the pharma companies twant us to believe there are. Here are my list and don't count that they will make it to the medical dictionary. May be a start-up can come up with an idea to help solve this problem.

• Facebook Addiction Disorder (FAD)
• Youtube Addiction Disorder (YAD)
• Google Search Addiction Disorder (GSAD)
• Widget Addiction Disorder (WAD)
• Twitter Addiction Disorder (TAD)
• Blackberry Addiction Disorder (BAD)

I did not include the Mac Addiction Disorder (MAD) as there is no cure for this. I have many friends who are suffering this and there's no sign that they are getting out. When we walk into an Apple store we realize that there’s nothing else for us to buy. That’s the first sign of MDD and I know many people suffer from this one without knowing it. The only cure is keep buying the next Mac products whatever it is. Is addiction a problem or information overload is the bigger problem? Between blogs, RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, MSN, LinkedIn, Digg, and whatever next new social networking apps, we can keep ourselves busy 24 by 7. There is still much hand-wringing and second-guessing among those who spend a lot of their lives online both at work and at home as to whether their online activities is any addiction problem. When telephone was available for the mass for the first time, a lot of people started spending a lot of time on the phone, was that addiction problem? Is iPod an addiction? There are people in my office listening to their iPods while at work and my teenager sons pretty much using their iPods 24 hrs, they listen to it even when they go to bed. Is that also addiction? Or it is just a fetish?

Call it Facebook addiction or fetish, I see this as progress of enlightenment for the modern life. Our modern culture is unconsciously penetrated by the information (useful and useless) and we are all struggling with them. Social networks collapse the difference between culture and practical life and our culture is codified and distributed through the Internet. As a result the ‘culture’ industry is now being expanded beyond fashion, music and magazines.

Many of these information that we’re exposed to on the Internet does not at all ‘signify’ true information or freedom from deception but it has reduced significantly the impact of any mass deception. The needs of people to connect, along with the growth of social connectivity, would raise the quality of the social whole to a new and higher level.The organic composition of our social networks is growing. That determines network as means of finding self-identities and not only as resources. Addiction may not be such a bad thing after all.

Have a great weekend.

We Are Carrying Too Many Cards? Someone Needs To Solve This Problem.

 
I've come up with two great ideas today. Here’s a big one for Facebook ....create a digital card that can replaces all the membership cards to replace all the cards that we carry and jam our wallets. Make it the size of an iPhone and I can just flip through my card on a touch screen. Or make that application reside on an iPhone.  My membership links all shows up on my Facebook page as an Icon and so that becomes the central place for me to look at my points from 6 hotel chains, 4 department stores, 4 airlines and 2 car rental companies. That gives me another reason to spend more time on Facebook.  Think about it, all membership cards in this world should be digital (all you need is a number anyway) and member can be connected through a social network. Customer or member support communications should happen on Facebook too.  Of course, this is just an idea and I don’t think it is happening anytime soon, but I definitely think it's an idea worth playing with.

Another idea is about emails. When email was first invented, it was a great tool for business and personal communications. The came web-base email, which makes it better. It makes it easier for us to share information and we are becoming more casual about it. Imagine if I have to pick up the phone or write you a fax to tell you a piece of news, I probably won’t do that unless it is important. Today, all we do is click forward and information gets circulated and God knows who. Is that good or bad? Imagine, we can track these information and analyze why and to whom they’re being shared? What new information will that give us?


These interactions reveal characteristics not only about the individual, but their social networks. Yet, this data is often obfuscated by the system, making it difficult for people to easily grasp the patterns and social interactions that they engage in daily. Imagine if a global company can track their 10,000 workers across the globe and how information is shared as well as the patterns. Imagine a system can text-mine these emails (without some one looking at them) and give a general mood of how key managers are responding to a certain idea or policy? A system that explicitly revealing the social networks patterns that emerge in email, and emphasizing the structural forms of one's network and providing an interactive tool for people to reflect on their own habits. Imagine we allow people to manage their social network as one aspect of managing the context of their work and lives. This is another $100 million dollar idea. What do knowledge workers learn? How do they decide what to learn next? What motivates them to share ideas? These questions are central to the challenges of knowledge-based organization.

Look under within the social fabric of any organization that connects people to people and people to content and turn content into knowledge. Relationships, trust and serendipity are key. This is the connective tissue of Enterprise 2.0.

The structure of one's social network conveys a great deal about an individual both personal and professional lives. How often does the individual maintain distinct relationships between groups of people? Do they have a few close friends or a large collection of less regular interactions? Are clusters within one's network separated based on roles or interest?  Is he or she a connector? Someone that has the power to shape and mobilize.

What about tools that allow us to curate our social network image? What are those tools looks like. ‘curation’ of one’s identity and self-image among different (both work and play)) social networks is a very interesting concept. Better not talk too much and save the idea for the next incubation project.

Customer Communities Are The Message, The Medium AND Your Marketing Platform

People talk about marketing but not discussing enough about creating customer value. What is customer value? To start we need to evaluate the value that flows between the value chain players and discover which customer-value segments exist, based on their value needs, expectations and aspirations and how we want to serve those segments.

This goes beyond conventional quantitative surveys or focus groups. It requires laser sharp attentiveness to customer requirements and needs (both articulated and unarticulated), as well as lots of creativity and imagination.

Three major components in the discovery process: 1/ the market  2/ customer behavior and three what jobs they are trying to accomplish. 3/ Then we can start the process of market mapping. The goal is to identify clusters of customers with similar needs and change our view of target buyers from a random aggregation to a linear plot, from those most likely to respond to your customer-value propositions, and eliminate those who will never respond. Relentless fine tune your USPs until we get it right.

The exercise includes high-level map describing all the needs, value expectations, loyalty behavior as well as the category level of involvement. With this info, we can work down to the next deeper levels of detail. The map is a just a starting point — you may also need to know what substitutions customer use or why their behavior switch overtime, and what unmet or poorly or painfully met needs they have. Questions like these can help you discover and define customer segments. At Idea Couture we have a great tool kit to do this. There is science and there is art. That's why we have a Resident Anthropologist in house.



Customers are not just the people who happen to want to spend money and buy your products; they are any member of the customer value chain who directly, or indirectly, purchases or influences the purchases of your products and services. Every customer today is part of your value chain as they are part of the customer communities that shapes other decisions. Successful marketers effectively converse with their community through blogs, social networks and countless other forms of media. Customers are the message, the medium AND your marketing platform.

Food for thought: We also need to rethink traditional corporate functions and culture. You cannot have an effective community strategy if you’re working with an inflexible corporate structure or lots of organization silos. To benefit from leveraging the power of community, companies must have a change plan otherwise you can be stuck forever unless you know how to carefully cultivate internal chaos.

Can Startbucks Be Saved? Howard, Let Me Treat You Breakfast At The Al's Cafe.

 

Howard Schultz needs a little help. Starbucks did not lose its magic overnight and we all see it coming. I see people lining up in those stores in the morning (without the aroma of coffee) just like people lining up to get cash from ATM machines. I am not sure what the average wait time is today particularly in rush hours, it is not the Starbucks I used to know.  Last time I was near a Starbucks was in an upscale neighborhood in Southern California, the experience was awful. The refrigerator was noisy, there was a smell of detergent and the lighting was terrible. Big contrast compare to my experiences at Peets.

We owe it to Starbucks to give it a second chance. You have a great brand and a great culture. Use your strong cash flow smartly in reinvention of the Starbucks experience. Don’t just look into your core but also look outside your core. Don’t be blind sighted by the organization’s inertia. It takes an outsider to see this. Where’s the theatre of coffee making? It used to be a live theater where barristers celebrate the art of coffee making, but over the years it has been reduced to more like DVD rental. You need to put the art of theatre back into the stores and may be get the customer to participate. Mr. Schultz, here’s an inspiration for you.



My friend told me about this Al’s Café for a long time and I finally got a chance to see this last week while I was in Minnesota.  This place is one of a kind, nestled between an Espresso Royale Cafe and a bookstore. This place was built between two buildings and is one of the narrowest restaurants in the world (a width of ten feet or 3 m serving full-service breakfast with counter-only) and I was told that they never have to pay land tax. They were hit with a big tax bill and the governor jumped in to save them.

It is crammed into a former alleyway between two relatively larger buildings and is located in the city's Dinkytown neighborhood. The restaurant's 14 stools have seated generations of students, along with notable figures including writer James Lileks and former governor Wendell Anderson. The recipes and short-order cooking style that Al Bergstrom developed in 1950 remain the same today.

I love the experience as it is one of a kind. The small place has its walls covered with old photos, reviews, drawings, etc., and the air smells of decades of pancakes and eggs whipped up on the grill.  The two guys working in the front of the restaurant, switching off at the grill and taking orders, carry on a constant witty banter and chat with the diners. They were friendly (not the superficial kind) to the core and that makes it special.


You cannot get more exclusive that this….only 14 stools in the whole restaurant.  Everyone stand and wait in the back. And when there’s a spot opens up, the man or woman behind the counter will tell people to move so to provide double seating. Here’s some review I’ve come across from a site (ok this guy didn't appreciate it):

"Our friends invited us to Al's Breakfast because of the great reviews. None of us had ever been there before - and we won't be back. The wait was terrible and our party of four was separated - leaving me standing in line. Since I was on call for work, I got a phone call (on vibrate) - another taboo in this place. I was first singled out, then ridiculed behind my back - and when my wife explained the situation she was told ‘I don't care.’”

This place is a theater and the show has been running for 30 years. Aroma of breakfast is everywhere (thanks to the lack of ventilation). The place has an attitude, they don’t care how important you are, loyalty customers get preferred treatment and that doesn't get you in the line first, just some attitudinal different in treatment. The experience is 120% human. No one that works there has been trained in what we refer as customer service but all they do is treat everyone human. Howard, suggest you spend a day there with your executive team and you will be inspired. Let me know if my friend can reserve 2 stools for you.

Talking about coffee, a small design firm here was jsut hired by an unusual client with an unconventional request: The Ethiopian government commissioned Brandhouse to come up with a brand that will make consumers feel like they are drinking a "luxury" when they have Ethiopian coffee. This month, the Ethiopian government is releasing the logos for three varieties of Ethiopian coffee beans that it hopes will eventually appear from the burlap sacks that are used to transport coffee beans to coffee cups in cafes. It is the first time the country has introduced a brand for its major export.

Look Inside The "Black Box" Of Today's Organization And You'll Understand What's Wrong.

How is an organization born? Is it usually by design? What's inside that black box of an organization? Do we think about how organization should be organized in the first place .... or we just take any org chart and add titles? How often people try to invent a new organizational form to fit their needs? Not very common.  No wonder why companies can break out of their performance trap.

The N-form organization design helped solve many interactions problem through institutionalized teamwork and inclusion of lower level employees. But the form still has some weakness such as lack of cohesive vision. Any redesign of a organization can profoundly affect its performance. What innovations in corporate design are likely to succeed in today’s crazy business environment of the next decade? Organizational design needs to look inside the "black box" of the corporation by examining the task of motivating and coordinating human activity and harnessing creativity.

The whole idea of organization design is to align the people and the organization hierarchy /functions to match the form of the organization as closely as possible to the purpose(s) the organization seeks to achieve.  Purpose before strategy, through the design process, organizations act to improve the productivity and the long-term performance of the businesses.


Today’s organization designs have been heavily influenced by the "command and control" structure of the military (wonder why there is a problem). Most organizations today are designed as a bureaucracy (machine) in which authority and responsibility are arranged in a hierarchical fashion. Within the hierarchy rules and policies are impersonally applied to exert control over people’s behaviors.  Activities are organized within business or functional units in which people perform specialized functions such as marketing, sales, or operations. People who perform similar tasks are put together. This has been working for a while and is causing problem. The first problem is silos get bigger as divisions get more efficient. Multi-disciplinary development is hard to achieve. Some companies have set up business units in order to boost initiative, but have then struggled to bring about the interaction between units on which knowledge generation and value creation depend.

Organization design starts with the creation of a strategy — a set of decision logic on how to do business by which mangers follow. The strategy is derived from a usually unarticulated purpose (sometimes expressed as vision or mission). Strategy unifies the intent of the organization and focuses members toward actions designed to accomplish desired outcomes. The strategy encourages actions that support the purpose and discourages those that do not. Having a business strategy does not mean designing the organization. You have to open that "black box". The business model does not specify how specifically to connect people with each other in meaningful and purposeful ways and encouraging sharing of ideas and collective imagination.  What we are talking here is every organization design is in fact a social network. And often today, these social networks are virtual.

Organizations are just an invention of man. They are contrived social systems through which groups seek to exert influence or achieve a stated purpose.  Companies have moral obligations to the environment, community, societies, customers and employees. A "strategy" helps a company to maintain focus and competitive and economic viability while a "purpose" helps a company to keep its moral compass and aligns its stakeholders.

The emerging of "Corporate Social Responsibility" is help achieve that balance. How those interests are balanced is not an easy task. The current system is too heavily in favor of the shareholders. Most importantly, I believe we need to increase the importance of the purpose or at the very least provide some minimum level of corporate social responsibility. Shareholder activism should help but the alignment is not there today.

How many companies understand the importance of blending business concerns -- “the need to make money to reward those who’ve trusted us with investment” -- with a socially responsible mission. A good business fulfills its purpose “by providing goods/services/experiences at a price people can “afford” in a manner which makes these activities “sustainable”.

The question is what sorts of organization would result from the systematic reinforcement of “purposes’? Economists speak of “the modern firm’” as a federated body rather than a single hierarchical enterprise—one where the decisions of constituent units often precede or powerfully influence those of top management and shareholders.

What Do You Know About Business Strategy? It Ain't What They Teach You In B-Schools

Myth No. 1: Every CEO is a strategist. It is true that most CEOs are strategically minded, but many are not big picture strategist. Their job is to maintain the balance between winning today (operations) and winning tomorrow (innovation) plus developing talents and building capabilities for the future. That alone is more than a full time job. That's why CEOs hire strategy consultants and people like me have always been the secret services equivalent for CEOs. 

Myth No. 2: Strategy is a competitive exercise. Half-right for this one. As much as it a competitive exercise to maintain market leadership, it is even more important to what disruptions are coming your way and how to deal with them. It is crucial for any business (more so for technology-based and time-based competition) to see what new value curves that organizations have blind-sighted due to corporate inertia. 

Myth No 3: Every MBA is a strategist. 100% wrong for this one. In my experience (which I've hired over 500+ MBAs over the years) MBA school have provide good business fundamentals, they don't make everyone a strategist. I have seen many MFAs that think more like strategists. Strategy has nothing to be with business schools, well, a little bit. 

As an economist by training, I find this is probably the most relevant discipline to strategy development. The infusion of industrial economics concepts has been powering strategy for years, providing considerable rigor and substance to business strategy. Understanding industry structure and source of market power are key to strategy but over emphasis of that create a new problem, which is the larger sense of purpose for a business and its reason to exist in the world. 

Purpose is really the heart of any business strategy and should provide the guiding principle for corporate strategy (and brand). A business must have a clear purpose and with then comes a direction. A business without a purpose is like a flight without a destination. If purpose is not there, executives and front line managers will not be able to make the right trade-offs. What's a purpose? It is what a company's reason to exist and what the people deeply believe in. It is also something that makes the company truly distinctive. And guide how much they are willing to compromise. It is like soul-searching sometimes, but a company needs a soul too (although many function without one). This one requires more than the left-brain thinking of MBAs and also the left-brian thinking of a creative artist. It is a human endeavor in the deepest sense of the term. 

For many once great companies, the founder usually have a clear (sometimes unarticuated) purpose. As the company grows and professional managers take on the day-to-day running of the company, somehow that is lost. So there's a need to re-create these purposes. Purpose is crucial because of its scope and ubiquity. It is large, much larger than any other elements in a business model. One can argue you cannot have a business model innovation without re-create the purpose. 

Creating purpose is much harder than creating a strategy. There is no textbook for it. It is much more involving. It is a choice to pursue your destiny--the ultimate destination for yourself and the organization you and your partners founded... It draws equally upon your emotional commitment and intellectual whole--it calls upon everything you are (you training, your life experience and your very core)…everything you've experienced and everything you believe in.

What Is A Business Model And What Makes A Great One?

The term ‘business models' is commonly used today but it did not exist twenty-five years when I started out in the strategy consulting world. What’s the difference between a business model and business strategy?

Business strategies are constantly challenged by discontinuity disruptive business models and often used interchangeably with business strategy, but are they the same?

What about hierarchy? Does ‘business strategy’ comes before ‘business model’ or vice versa?  Business models are perhaps the most discussed and least understood aspect of business.  The term started in the early days of the Internet when there were many discussion of how the web empowers new business models.  Internet and now Web 2.0 are drivers of change, value chains were broken up and reconfigured; Innovative information-rich or -enriched products and services appeared and new distribution channels emerged. Ultimately this lead to intense competition, but as described above it also led to more ways of doing business. In other words, there is a larger variety of action a company can take that shape their business models.

In the most basic sense, a ‘business model’ is the creation and distribution of economic value within a business system and it also involves what capital investment is needed and how a business sustains itself.  The business model should also spells-out how a company makes money by specifying its role within the value chain. It is also a simplified representation of business is being conducted and what economic rent it can collect. It involves:

- The value proposition of what is offered to the market (customer unmet needs);

- The profitable target customer segments addressed by the value proposition;

- The communication and distribution channels to reach customers and offer the value proposition;

- The access to and/or relationships with customers;

- The core capabilities needed to make the business model possible;

- The configuration of activities to implement the business model;

- The partners and their motivations of coming together to make a business model happen;

- The revenue streams generated by the business model constituting the revenue model;

- The cost structure resulting of the business model.


For executives this means that they have a whole new creative ways to design their businesses so they can compete differently rather than directly, which results in innovative and competing business models in the same industries.  Industry structures play a role deciding on profitability of businesses, but today it is simply not sufficient to choose a lucrative industry, you must have a good business design.

What are characteristics of a good business model? I was asked this questions probably a couple hundreds times. First, they must answer to a customer unmet needs and deliver value against those needs. So it is not just another company delivery similar product at similar prices.  Second, it simply cannot not be easily copied. By having some competitive advantages such as protectable knowledge or special access are two examples. Finally, great business mode must be sustainable from only from a financial or operational perspectives, it needs to be able to attract strong talents. These attractions must be built-into the business design.

What's The Difference Between Platform Strategy Vs. Business Strategy Vs. Product Strategy?

Platform is fairly new word in the world of business strategy. It has existed in the engineering world for a long time.  What is a Platform? Social network is a platform (Facebook, Ning etc)? Is brand a platform (Easy Jet, Virgin etc)? And there’s product platform (Blackberry) and standard (Blueray). Windows Mobile is a platform. Is Apple a platform? Or is Lotus Notes a platform? Is Nike Air a platform? Is Oprah a platform? Is Google's new Open Social a platform? What about Kiva, is that a platform too?

We have never properly defined what a platform is. Check it out in the dictionary and you will get: "a raised horizontal surface of wood, stone or metal;" or "a statement of principals and policies, especially of a political party." The first refers to stage and the second refers to public issues.

But neither definition really covers what I refer to in world of business strategy, so it looks like I just have to take a shot and offer my own definition, a third one, one that matches the way we use day-to-day, and I think this will evolve over time.

In the product engineering world, product architecture, platforms and commonality can help a firm deploy and manage a family of products in a competitive manner. Obviously there are both strategic as well as implementation aspects of the challenge. A key strategy is to develop and manufacture a family of product variants derived from a common platform and/or modular architecture. Reuse of components, processes and design solutions leads to advantages in learning curves and economies of scale, which have to be carefully balanced against the desire for product customization and competitive pressures. Additionally, platform strategies can lead to innovation and generation of new revenue growth, by intelligently leveraging existing brands, modules, and sub-system technologies.

What's the difference between a Platform Strategy Vs. Business Strategy Vs. Product Strategy? This is a worthy discussion as the three are different but interrelated.  A product platform is basically a broad range of products designed based on a common core technology or design and it is sometimes share by competitors. When it is adopted by a number of key players it has become an industry platform and at that point, you starting to lose control of the platform, as the influence will shift to the industry group although you do own some proprietary IPs.

For software, sometimes they don’t become a platform until they are massive adoption. They need to intensify adoption not only for users but also through out the ecosystem for others to participate. An example would be when Skype was opening up its platform in 2005 to anyone who wants to integrate Skype’s presence and instant messaging services into their application. By opening up Skype’s platform to the web, it made it easy for anyone to connect to Skype’s fast growing member base, which passed 51 mil people in only 2 years. By opening up its platform to the web, Skype was instantly creating the largest open instant messaging platform in the world.

Most industries today operate on certain platforms and platform owners means market power and usually benefit from economic gain.  Many are quick t call their products platforms in a casual manner, but here are some of the key characteristics:

- It must perform one or more critical function in a superior fashion within an industry
- It must define certain “standards” and has influence over the overall architecture
- It must be open or semi-open for others to build upon
- The economics must allow the complementors in the ecosystem to see some upside in order to attract them to participate
- Early momentum is key for any platform strategy so a lot of negotiation needs to take place to make business trade offs.

Game theory is most useful in any platform strategy as competition between players are often intense as players see the big win and everyone is motivated to give up more in the short term. All sides compete by giving away value hoping to get market lock-in. Sustain complementors incentives require creativity and become a key part of the strategy. There is also anti-trust consideration when there are only 2 or 3 players involved. In todays technology-driven competitive environment, every company will come across a time to consider growing to become a platform leader in their space. Not only companies require a compelling and realistic vision of the future, they also need the ability and the commitment to design a defensible and vibrant eco-system by evangelizing an industry model (not only a business model) that works for all complementors. It is a function of selling a collective destiny with enough payout for all members.

The Future of PC 2010 - When Is The Mouse Going Away?

People often ask about the new new thing…I wonder what will happen to the PC we use today in 2 years? When is the mouse going away (it is 40 years old)?  What does the next generation of keyboard looks like (current QWERSTY is more than 100 years old) ?

Will touch screen go mainstream? What about browser (there has been little innovation since the first browser)? What about “eye-tapping” technology which is laser-based and allows the eye to function simultaneously as if it were a display and a camera?

The current PC experience sucks as we know it although many of us are so used to it that we stopped complaining. Think about it, hard drives die without warning often at the worst time. Can we use a dozen of flash card instead?

Current PCs were designed for man (forget all those pink and red) and I can imagine how different they will be if they were designed for women. The first PC designed for female will probably become the most popular PC used by both male and female. Believe me.

Since landfills are filling up with abandoned toxic electronics, the next-gen PCs should be made out of recyclable material with a built-in small solar power screen.

Your future PC will not run on Vista as it will be discontinued in 09 and MSFT will declare that it is a complete failure. You will most likely be using Windows 2010.

Your future PC should have no cables.  All files synchronization will be done through wireless.

And if you PC catch a virus, the Center of Computer Disease Control (CCDC) will be alerted and a man in uniform will show up on your door in 10 minutes and snatch your PC and put it under quarantine for 10 days. They will be returned to you for a fee if proved cleaned.

Or in the future, PCs will be free. All you need to do is to sign up with a social networks and opt-in for some ads then you will get a free FaceBook PC?

Or by 2010 PC will cease to exist and computing will be embedded in all appliances and all you need is a terminal. Back to future, the network is your computer. The social network is your gateway to your connections.

Social Networks 2.0 - Data Portability and Gated Social Networks

I have so many responses from my last post, I wanted to explore that subject more next week so for those who sent me emails or posted here plese bear with me and I will get back to you on those discussions. For now, I want to share some thoughts on social networks. There's also rumor that Comcast's acquisition Plaxo will happen very soon, its Pulse social network service, with 1.5 million active monthly users, has been under the radar for a while. It's a smart move by Comcast, which can enhance the user experience across its 14 million high-speed Internet subscribers, 3 million voice customers, and 24.2 million cable subscribers. We are all wondering how social networking is likely to evolve once we get past the current hype cycle. It is always good to start from the motivations of these social networks.

I see five distinct types of motivation:

1/ I want to stay in touch with the cool people that I know and trust
2/ I want to meet new people for shared interest or expand business contacts
3/ I want to increase my online presence and publicize my persona
4/ I want to provide knowledge or share stories to help others
5/ I want to get some help

A recent pool shows that 87% respondents (Prospectiv surveyed nearly 3,000 users of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Hi5 and others) feel that very few (58%) or none (29%) of the ads and offers they see on social networking sites match their specific interests and preferences. These results clarify that members of social networking sites are open to ads as long as they are properly targeted to their interests. Of those surveyed, 58% said that very few ads match consumers' interests and preferences, while 29% said that none of the ads match consumers' interests and preferences. Only13% said most ads match consumers' interests and preferences. As a result 54% of consumers never click on ads on social networks, while 39% occasionally will respond to ads.

Ad model-based social networks is not a problem, 85% of consumers said they are more likely to join a free social networking site supported by advertisements and offers targeted to their interests rather than a paid social networking site without ads. Social networks are more sensitive to ads. Unethical marketing practices on social media websites usually backfire.  The relevance and context is particularly sensitive and any non-targeted, spam marketing will create more damage to the site and its advertisers.  I know many industries including pharma are dying to figure out how to use SN to market their products. On the other hand, their lawyers are struggling with liability issues.

Ad spending on social-networking sites will reach $2.15 billion in 2010 (this year forecast at $14 bil), according to eMarketer. MySpace will continue to dominate, accounting for 60% of total U.S. online social-network ad spend this year but it might change. Worldwide, social-network ad spending is forecast to $2.8 billion, that’s a lot of money. Social networks must put adequate ROI measures in place if the flow of ad dollars is to continue, says Debra Williamson, eMarketer analyst and author of the report. An updated report estimates $40 mil for Facebook widget and application ad spending in 2008, up from $15 million last year. I believe the are under pressure to develop an adequate ROI metrics to accommodate how to measure “engagement” and not “eyeballs”. Currently Facebook and MySpace together account for 72% of social network ad dollars.

Facebook and MySpace just announced their plans to make your social networking data portable and Google has announced “Friend Connect,” a similar service that will officially this week. Friend Connect is a tool which enables any website owner to add some code to their site and get a number of social features. All that stuff you usually can’t be bothered to install plugins for: user registration, invites, members gallery, reviews, message posting, and - most importantly - third party OpenSocial apps.

What does that mean? In practice, this is an intrastate to create common connection which means that anyone will be able to log in, for example, with their OpenID on some blog, and converse with their Gtalk, Facbeook or Linkedin etc.

Remember the first local social network Dodgeball which got bought by Google and threw away? Then there was Twitter. It’s evolved so much more that “what are you doing now?” which I still don’t understand the value. Yahoo! launched its own play FireEagle in private beta which is starting the location-craze again — with plans to have multiple input/output methods looming across the web and devices. So another “where are you application”.

The desire to network is as old as humanity and online social networking sites is now part of our life. The question remains will these communities will eventually be gated and what will be the implications? However, the trust issue for companies remains very real. You cannot simply allow everybody to see everything. The question follow is around data portability, that is allowing users to share their list with other websites. Let’s say if I visit a site as a member of a particular group I will receive special group treatments. That is a very powerful concept. It is like every site will have the power to personalize based on the information that this person carries and marketers can negotiate with these groups for permissions to market to. The Data Portability Project is a grass-roots advocacy group pushing the idea for users to be able choose to share some of their data between the services and being able to do so with peace of mind, security and safety.

What about Facebook and Google sharing information with each other (not that this will happen soon as they are about to go to war) -- why would anyone want that to happen? Google has all your search data, but they don't know about your friends. And conversely, Facebook knows who are friends are but nothing about your searches. You can imagine the power of the two.

Let me know if you like this scenario. Pls share your thoughts.

Can We Fix Marketing? Most Best Practices Are In Fact Worst Practices.

On average I received 2 calls a night if I am lucky enough to be having dinner at home and not traveling, these calls are properly timed so they know I will be having candlelight dinner with my family and that’s exactly the time for interruption.  This direct-to-consumer telemarketing business should never be allowed, the worst thing is they call you and put you on hold while they finish up their other call.  (Business-to-Business is a whole different story as often they do have a value exchange and conduct in a very professional manner). They don’t know or care what I want or my interest and only interested in a "yes" answer after reading their script to me. Is this (direct) marketing?

Dear direct/tele marketers, are you really proud of what you do for a living? You build your career primarily by using late night direct TV commercials targeting the elderly and the vulnerable. Direct marketing is in trouble as they kill million of trees and bombard our mail boxes with garbage that no one reads let alone buy. These marketing firms belongs to the same category to used car dealerships, both are in the business of fishing for some vulnerable folks and sell them something they don’t want, need or will ever use.

You think there's nothing you can do with the telemarketers, in most cases they don't leave messages and will simply call you back, resulting in an endless cycle of you not knowing who's calling and having to call back to find out--something you're unlikely to do.  Here's Web 2.0 answer to this problem, solution, introducing Caller Complaints, a crowd-sourced index of the phone numbers of law breaking companies that have called folks on the do-not-call list. Users list these numbers, what was being pitched--and the frequency of the calls. If you find someone else has already listed the number and shared their negative experience, you can pile on and leave your experience, which votes it up.

The most popular (or in this case unpopular) companies rise to the top and are tracked on leaderboards. Users can also browse by area code and what type of call it was, from political phone spam to prank calls and debt collectors. The idea is that there will be enough resources to help you get to the bottom of who's calling to either leave a complaint with your carrier or simply blacklist the number from calling again. So far the site has amassed nearly 200,000 number searches from curious call recipients.

Here's some advice to marketers in general, please stop describing your product/company/service as "world-class" or "state-of-the-art." State-of-the-art lasts about 30 days today and what does world-class really mean? “ The "latest technology” means something I need to invest 50 hours to learn how to use it. “Free” means you will end up charging my credit card if I forget to cancel the services and that’s what you’ve factored in your marketing plan.

Stop calling me to subscribe to your magazine or newspaper. I have something new at home called the Internet (it has plenty of free content just in case you don’t know) and I can cut and save any content for future use. Besides, I am already subscribed to 18 publications from Harvard Business Review to Wired Magazine; I don’t need a general lifestyle magazine because I don’t have a general lifestyle. You must be able to see the problem as the economics of direct mail are failing rapidly and it costs too much to mail, and fewer response.

Having said all that, there are still many smart applications of direct marketing including the Blackberry campaign below. I am mostly referring to the bad practices of the industry.

Stop knocking on my front door while I am in a middle of an important battle with my Halo 3. Stop telling me I need to buy this energy-protection plan or replace my windows. Only Microsoft can tell when to replace my windows, not you. Police in some parts of Nothingham, UK are setting up four "no cold calling zones" in a bid to rid vulnerable residents of uninvited doorstep visitors. I really like this idea. Householders are being asked to ignore uninvited callers - and put stickers in their windows telling potential doorstep sellers they are not welcome. They can report suspicious behavior to a special trading standards hotline.

And for those electronic retailers, stop trying to sell me that warranty. The odds are small that I will remember that I have a warranty, know where I placed the receipts, or even bother to file the paperwork. I was buying a MacBook the other day from a retailer and he was trying so hard to sell me their extended warranty and tell me it is better than Apple care because they have better service. They don’t even service those products. Now even if I buy a CD or battery, they still try to sell me warranty. I guess they sell everything else at costs.

Advertising is not working even when it migrates to the virtual world. When Coldwell Banker hung out a shingle on the site as “the first national real estate company to sell homes within the community.” The real estate firm is in good company. H&R Block, Adidas, IBM, Dell, Reebok, American Apparel, Toyota are among the dozens of firms already there.  More than 70% of the site’s users say they are disappointed with the marketing that goes on in SL, according to a survey by Komjuniti, a Hamburg, Germany, research firm. This could be because companies are approaching it like a traditional marketing channel. Advertising is still advertising, it is losing its power. These brand sites on Second Life currently look like they’re being treated in pretty much the same way as traditional ads.

Many ad guys still believes that television is still the most important medium and will still e the most important medium for the next 20 years because: a) people have them; including people abroad and b) people know how to use them. Now that’s the kind of BS from the old school ad agencies.  The engagement power of television has been drastically reduced and they have now been reduced to digital wallpaper. The future of advertising is NOT in the advertising; it is in “Service Design”. Service Deign is like advertising in the mid 50s, no one knows enough about but sooner of later it be turned into an industry. It will be the backbone of what “Engagement” is all about. There will be no creative director in that world as marketing communications will not be built on one cute idea, it becomes “experiential”. User Experience Director replaces Creative Director.

Most customer experiences today are simply revolting, sometimes disgusting, particularly banks, airlines, telecom and many more. The idea now is (instead of) just focusing on a 30-second TV spot, to start a simple idea to engage, empower and energize customers. These Three Es is the future. It is NOT a creative director’s job to come up with an idea; it is the multi-disciplinary creative class that gets the job done.  Advertising agencies need to move from a factory model back to the idea model, put down the 50 years legacy and collective egos (creative awards ) and look to the future. You are in the ideas business. We live in the age of the idea. “Service Design” is the new discipline for the manifestation of the idea business, not product design alone and "Social Networks" are where circle of trust will be formed. That's where the game is.

On a closing note, here is great guerrilla promotion for the DVD release of the movie Death Proof is gory, attention-getting and totally appropriate for the movie it promotes.  Marketing meets "Happening Performance Art". Have a great weekend.

Consumer Gadgets Needs To Think Sustainability Seriously

In two weeks (May 19), Material ConneXion and Li Edelkoort partner to bring to life LEFT/BRAIN/RIGHT, an event on the greening of architecture and design.  The event will discuss the sustainable materials and technologies that are transforming design today and tomorrow. In Greening Perspectives 2010, trend forecaster Li Edelkoort will offer an emotional and human perspective on how green thinking is changing the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us.

The green movement has taken off significantly in virtually every industry but I still wonder the real impact to date. Think about hybrids, alternative energy, and green design and architecture. Consumer interest in greener goods has retailers scrambling to fill their shelves with sustainable products in almost every category although I question many of these so claimed green products. Even Wal-Mart's announced that in 08 their buyers will begin evaluating consumer electronics products with sustainability scorecard the $150 billion dollar consumer electronics industry is poised for rapid transformation. The electronic gadget industry should move quicker as less than 1% of these products have a sustainable design. Buying some carbon offsets and biodegradable forks hardly begins to address the environmental impacts of this industry, it is just not enough. We need to start from the drawing board.

Sadly most of these new electronic gizmos are loaded with toxins, have short life spans and are not designed for recycling. We need longer product lifetimes and modular components so we can upgrade instead of thro away. The opportunity horizon is wide open to leadership in green products that do more than incremental energy efficiency or recyclability,  Here's an example, designer Tom Kenworthy has come up with a Sustainable Flash Memory Card Holder that is made from recycled vending cups. A single holder requires seven plastic cups to construct, and best of all is, you will help reduce the amount of waste in our environment while holding the plethora of memory cards that are currently floating around the market. I guess it all depends on your creativity on how you want it to look like.

Here's a sustainable PC. A computer with smaller motherboard that means less toxin - Like most electronics the product contains elements which can be environmentally damaging, but since it’s 16% the size of a standard motherboard, there’s a lot less damage. Everything is made on one assembly line, reducing the amount of carbon emissions needed to produce this workstation.  This PC requires next to zero technical know-how. It is available with portable solar panel, low-power LCD, and 14 hour battery that can be deployed anywhere. Are you ready for this?

I am convinced that there are plenty of opportunities for the consumer electronics industry to go green and big opportunity exists for companies that position their products to meet the global shift towards sustainable products and socially responsible supply chain practices. Green is the new black, in fact it is more than the new black.

Is Social Innovation Ready For Prime Time? We Need More Business That Better The World.

Is Social Innovation such as Kiva ready for prime time? (Kiva offers peer-to-peer micro-loans, and Thamel.com facilitates in-kind remittances from the Nepalese Diaspora to family members back home) These innovations are primarily powered by the rise of social networks and these networks grow and transform into active, collaborative communities. In a couple of years, we should anticipate massive change through emergence of these networks. At some point, suddenly and surprisingly a new system emerges at a greater level of scale. Let’s not get too much into the theory.

These social ventures must also understand the fundamentals of market orientation and business economics. There needs to be a big enough market that will pay enough money to make the business financially viable and sustainable. No matter how well meaning this higher ground was, if it didn't make a good product or a good user experience that was competitively priced and easy to use, no one would buy/use it, and moreover, no one would notice your message. That is why they are called social ventures -- they need to be treated like any business ventures. Watch out for the next generation of Social Ventures, unlike the past, these are started by smart young MBAs (not the power hungry types) with a mission and a strong market focus, powered up exploding social connectivity and new capital that wants to see change.

There were a few health-related enterprises started the last two years. Sprinkles Global Healthcare Initiative from Canada manufactures sachets of micronutrients for home fortification of foods to improve the health of women and children. Claudia pointed out that micronutrient deficiency is a factor in over 2 million deaths per year- more than malaria- and affects over 750 mm children. MDF is estimated to reduce GDP by at least 2% in developing countries, and is the #2 global health priority after HIV/AIDS according to the WHO.

There’s the Whirlwind Wheelchair International, which is one of the original appropriate technology initiatives targeting health care needs in developing countries, started by SFSU design star Ralf Hotchkiss. Whirlwind is implementing a franchise model of locally owned workshops that produce robust high-performance wheelchairs that enable the disabled to participate in economic and social activities in developing countries. Their vision is to make it possible for every person in the developing world who needs a wheelchair to obtain one that will lead to maximum personal independence and integration into society. In order to fulfill this mission, WWI seeks to give wheelchair riders a central role in all of its projects and activitieYou’ll be amazed at what Whirlwind’s wheelchairs can do.

Don't you want to have a Kiva Mastercard? I definitely want to get one. That's the power of social innovation. Every enterprise should have more than one bottom line. There's always the Financial Bottom Line. The business operates like a for profit enterprise by selling goods or services to its customers and should make a decent return on capital investments. The Social Bottom Line is about achieving balances between its financial mission with a clearly defined social mission. There is a lot of opportunities at the bottom of the pyramid.

The same holds true for healthcare delivery strategies in the U.S. (which is messy today) as much as the developing world. More innovation effort is needed to look at viability of business strategies that engage the bottom of the pyramid and draw on user-inspired innovations to deliver tangible value to consumers.

Three Lenses To Look At The Emerging Discipline of Service Design

There were lots of talks around Software as a Service and it is actually becoming part of a major transformation of the software industry and yet many still don’t fully understand what it takes capture these opportunities. Service activities (both digital and non-digital) are essential for value creation not only in software-based businesses but also other industry from Telco to Financial Services and Business Services. With IP Telephony going mainstream and further convergence of data and voice, this is happening fast. Every bite of data has the the potential of becoming part of the delivery of a service.

Service Design is still an emerging discipline that lacks common methodology, tools and definitions. In the face of Web 2.0 empowered customers and a push for transparency; companies are facing a crisis in customer interaction and relationship management.  Service Design is part of part of front-office revolution as described by Rayport who authored the book “Best Face Forward”, Service Design is the core driver of any customer experiences.

The NY Times has an interview with a social psychologist Daniel Gilbert who talks about the difference between experiences and products (At Harvard, he is known as Professor Happiness)  According to Gilber, "Another thing we know from studies is that people tend to take more pleasure in experiences than in things. So if you have “x” amount of dollars to spend on a vacation or a good meal or movies, it will get you more happiness than a durable good or an object. One reason for this is that experiences tend to be shared with other people and objects usually aren’t." I think this it is such as un-American or un-Canadian notion but it may be changing.

Service design is an emerging field that includes different design disciplines (graphic, product, information, interaction, brand, customer service, interiorl) working together to create the tangible and intangible artifacts of service…sort of Hotel School meets Design School. I don’t think Service Design belongs to traditional service design as in retail and hospitality industries, it goes beyond that.  It is fair to say that “Service Design” is multi-disciplinary in nature. I don’t think it is like the service design as in retail or hospitality industries. I think it is more multi-disciplinary in nature. It is important to look at the boundaries of “Service Design” from the following lens:

The first lens is information design and visualization. Web 2.0 brings many interesting challenges to information design. Think about it, today many Web 2.0 services are based on participation and that usually comprises of content created by these conversations and these conversations create content. These content are part of service design and the community is in fact the service platform  not the technology.

The second lens is product design. Many of today’s products are either informational product or it is a product that serves as a node to a system. Industrial design uses a lot of artifacts and these artifacts start to develop context and consequences. How does these artifacts establish relationships among people within a virtual community? How do we use these artifacts to build on these conversations to create a service?

The third lens is business management. I am not sure where I am going on this one. Is good service design simply means good common sense and good business design? I first came across “service management” was during my Operations Management Courses taught by Kim Warren at London Business School which focused a lot on operational design. I also remember sitting in Jeffrey Rayport’s “Service Management” classes at Harvard Business School which he put a lot of focus in customer service design as part of marketing strategy. Both were drastically different from the “Service Design” we are talking here. Both put an emphasis on service redesign and closing the gap between the demand chain and the supply chain, examining the difference between a factory and a custom job shop. Should “Service Design” simply need to be part of business? Should business strategy itself becoming just another kind of multi-disciplinary design activity.

What Schools Of Design Are You From? What Is A Designer: Objects, Functions, Meanings?

I have not written about post on design for a few while. I do enjoy writing about design rather than business and strategy. May be I've written everything about that in my previous life.  I was drinking from this beautiful limited Evian bottles (limited edition designed by Christian Lacroix, click on the picture above to see the details) that I purchased from Whole Foods two weeks ago and it sparks a few thoughts on design. I also talked to some creative folks from OCAD at the Innovation Exchange and I think there’s a lot of exciting thing going on there. I plan to follow up with a visit in the next few weeks. Now back to design.

I recall reading a book on Design by Bryan Lawson a while ago, he is both an architect and a psychologist. Many of his ideas can apply to interaction design as well as other design discipline.  He acknowledges that design is “an everyday activity that we all do.” However, “professional designers also design for other people rather than just themselves,” and “are better educated and trained.” This juxtaposition serves me as I have a similar view on this.

Lawson believes that the models of design are too logical and not actually useful for practitioners. Lawson says, “Designing is far too complex to be describable by a simple diagram.” This idea is in part my motivation for my paper, having encountered quite a few models that illustrate the design process only to feel like they weren’t quite right, and certainly, never actually using them when it comes to the actual process. “We probably work best when we think least about our technique.”

I’ve seen hundreds of design processes that are anti-design in nature. They force a linear process-driven approach to design as if it is a production line (Six Sigma for Design? No thanks)  Process schools like a form-driven problem-solving approach. This school trace their linage back to the advanced program of the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel (Switzerland).  This Swiss-style process schools thrived mainly as response to the slickness of the portfolio schools.  The portfolio school has a different approach and is more mercenary in my view and end-product driven. The problem-solving approach is more conceptual and the product rather than the process is king.  The two schools don’t get along well naturally. 

Doesn’t matter which school you are from, if you think that every problem in this world has a pure visual solution that exists outside the cultural context, you have a serious problem.  That’s often the biggest limitation of designers.  Designers’ job is to translate everything within a special user and cultural context.  Design is not process-driven and any methods of science are in fact unhelpful to the designers. There are intimate relationships between observing, reflections and inquiring and this is how design happens. “Good designers tend to be at ease with the lack of resolution of their ideas for most of the design process,” says Lawson. And for those who are not at ease, the design process is painful and the unproductive.

Massimo Vignelli (Martin Scorcese of Graphic Design, see his work below) earlier declared that "Helvetica in the morning, Bodoni at night" in response to a panelist asking what his favorite typeface is, but the most brilliant response was Vignelli's "In the States" when asked what was the worst use of Helvetica he had ever seen.
Here are good nuggets from Massimo Vignelli when he spoke at an AIGA event, the comments in bracket are mine:

“Without a grid I’m lost” (I use a grid not only for design but also for strategy mapping. I often swap tools from different disciplines and it works for me all the time)

“A chair is more important for your head than it is for your ass.” Discussing his love for a Rietvelt chair. (This one is interesting. Everybody should be designed for the head first)

“Design and fashion are big enemies” (Oh yes, good design should be anti-fashion, if it ends up being fashionable it should only be by accident)

“The culture of refinement is much bigger than the culture of change.” (Think about incremental innovation vs radical innovation)

“There is no room for irresponsible design.” (Design has a long history of addressing issues relating to social responsibility such as  ecodesign, inclusive design, design for disability, and eco-efficient innovation, design against crime and design for lower income etc.)

“The opposite of modern is contemporary. Contemporary is trendy” (The opposite of trendy would be -- fascination with old things --be called? Gentrophili. And that could be trendy too)

“We never figured out how to make politicians modern. They’re still old farts. Except Gore, we miss him.” (Gore is an exception. We need more politician like him)

I love the last one.  It is time to make politician modern. It is time to make government modern. It is time to make every Non-Profit Organization modern. It is time to make a B-School modern.
If you ask me what is a designer?  Here is my answer:

Design is about “translation”. Designers are “translators”. They translate needs, culture and meanings into products and services.  The design process is a “translation” process. Yoshiaki Koizumi (director of Nintendo's biggest Wii game yet, Super Mario Galaxy) sees his job requires him to "translate" the maestro's often-inscrutable insights into real-world gameplay.

Design is more than simply a form-giving activity—it is a strategic issue related to changing from existing to preferred states. Design is concerned with imagining how things can be different (for the better), and transforming strategic aspirations and desired futures into reality in a social responsible manner.