innovation playground Idris Mootee

How Do You Know If Your Business Model Is Out-Dated? Are You Acting To Fail Or Failing To Act?

The title of this book caught my attention when I saw it in a book store in Hong Kong. I didn't open or buy the book, just thought the title was funny. I was not sure if it was "Dead Ideas From New CEOs" or "New Ideas From Dead CEOs".

Meeting with a couple of friends here in Asia and the common topic was business is getting tougher and tougher. Out of the half-a-dozen people I've talked to you, all six of them are executing on business strategies that are not creating value in the long term. They are smart people but somehow their businesses have lost market power, operating with a lack of perspectives of the future and underperforming from both ROE and ROA perspectives. And all without an exit plan. Luckily they all realized their business models are outdated and are working on fixing it. The night scene of Hong Kong is beautiful particularly at night, probbaly prettier than NYC.

The question I always ask is "How do you know if you business models are truly creating value?" Why everyone is busy struggling with surviving carrying/maintaining yesterday’s legacies. Many industries and companies are now reaching their industry breakpoints with or without knowing it. It means there are bit changes ahead of them. Improving execution of a strategy based on any outdated business models that gives you only incremental gains is a sure way to fail. Nor are most mergers and acquisitions that put two weak companies together and in fact, the preoccupation with M&A integration inhibits companies from focusing on innovation and seeing the future.

Business Models are based on existing dominant logics, which are their latent beliefs about business. With that they can see what is applicable in the future and what’s not.  Over time successful business recipes become irrelevant and successes leadsto business structures that may become dysfunctional. They are slow to repsond to external change. With external shocks that can now happen overnight instead of over a period of 10 years.

To survive and prosper, companies must do three things:

• To learn about the breakpoints potential in the industry and have a sense about when it will happen. They need to develop a set of perspectives about how the changes could happen and how it could impact an industry.
• Assemble the leadership team to commit to making a quantum organizational change (a “reset” in Jeff Immelt’s word and I am using this more and more). This includes re-assessing the market served and underserved, customer unmet needs and technological-enabled disruptions.
• Maintain a minimum level of stability with the core economic engine (cash flow) to sustain this transformation. You need a war chest to make it happen. Any business model transformation requires an investment period before there is any payoff.

The fun part of Idea Couture’s business is our eclectic team of thinkers, business strategists, multi-disciplinary designers, anthropologists, business foresight analysts, experience architects, human factor specialists, market researchers, technologists working together to tackle wicked problems for industries from healthcare to consumer packaged goods, fashion to financial services. We have in our toolbox proprietary tools and artifacts, among them brand personability cards, large-size visual artifacts, unconventional workshops, and immersive customer environments. After all, transformation should be fun. Although it usually come with quite a bit of pain too.

Apple Has A Dilemma. Should They Make A Netbook? Or Just Make A Big iTouch? I Think We Can Expect A 9 Inches iTouch.

Apple has a dilemma, should they put out products to push Apple towards the mass to appeal to Window users or pushing the innovating envelope on products that their loyal followers really want, or need? Netbook sales is growing fast particularly in Asia and prices have dropped to US$150 to $250. Meanwhile, Microsoft has said that it would rather not use the Netbook name any more, choosing "low-cost small notebook PC" instead. It is easy to see why.

How many years since Apple fans have been begging for a mid-sized, mid-priced upgradeable Mac Pro? How long have Apple fans have been asking for a small footprint $650 range entry Macbook?  How long Apple fans have been asking for a $1600 range tablet that works like a big iPod touch? Apple will not play the netbook game, instead it will expand the iPhone/iTouch platform and develop a big iBook, something that can be used as a large touch screen media device.

Apple will continue to exercise its brand power and design as a tax for those loyal customers. The only time they might attempt at a low cost strategy is probably at the education market. Apple will continue to test the upward limits on how much we can tolerate the Apple premium. I think this strategy is working for them.

It is unlikely that Apple will release a Netbook and instead they might enter with something different. Netbook is a really a low cost pursuit of a mini laptop. On the other hand with the massive popularity of Netbooks particularly in the high school segment, do they want to lose out to these very important customers of the future? 5-6 years from now many of these young adults will become part of Apple’s core customer segment. Wouldn’t it be a good idea for Apple to offer a Netbook killer at this critical junction so they get as many people using Apple products as possible?

This is Apple’s dilemma. But they are covering future options. The US Patent and Trademark Office has just officially published a series of nine newly granted patents for Apple.  The most interesting one is the one that covers an Ink Phase Termination Engine that supports Apple’s Inkwell technology and a future Tablet device supporting handwriting applications. The evidence for Apple’s interest for an Apple based Smartbook-Tablet hybrid device is apparent. But this will not come soon. The next logical step is a large size iPhone. Call it iBook, iReader, iPad, iScreen or IPanel.

Apple’s granted patent generally relates to an ink manager for acquiring and organizing pen-based ink information for use by pen-aware and other applications. Although the current iPhone is dependent upon using your finger as the input stylus, a future larger tablet could in fact accommodate a stylus or pen-based input system as well so as to address both handwriting and drawing applications. Such a system would be able to tap into Apple’s Inkwell application that is noted a as a key technology under OS X Snow Leopard. The illustration filed shows us that the tablet could provide a series of horizontal lines to assist users align their handwriting. Various control buttons could provide commands for scrolling purposes or to call up any apps.

Apple’s working concept of a Smartbook-Tablet Hybrid was illustrated in a series of three patents covering gestures, scrolling and Synchronization. When you combine Apple’s granted patent 7,564,995 published this week with a more current 2008 patent revealing a tablet-smartbook hybrid, it becomes clear that Apple is seriously contemplating a move into the smartbook market. But it will not look like a tablet for sure.

The key question with the tablet device is that what does it replace  or it replaces anything at all. We have the iPhone or iTouch or Blackberry for email and we usually have a laptop, why do we need a tablet? You're still going to need a real computer and a cell phone to get things done or for lounging-around-consuming-junk-media. And real laptops are only going to get lighter and thinner, why do we need a tablet? There are now multiple speculation that an Apple tablet would be essentially an oversize iPod Touch, and will cost somewhere between a $299 iPhone/iPod Touch and the $999 MacBook. I am guessing a $500+ iBook or iPad or iReader with touch screen capability and Wi-Fi and 3G. And hopefully in different colors too. We will find out if I am wrong.

The Future Is Not More Gadgets. Future Gadgets Will Do Things Such As Enhanced Cognitive Assistance And Collaborative Filtering. And That Gadget Is Probably Your Phone.

Japan is always the best place for new inspirations. My rental phone also acts as a translator and all I need is to point the built-in camera to any Japanese characters. It exchanges personal information that works like business cards. It also reads 3D barcode and gets me all the information that I need as long as they provide them. It is so popular here from real estate agents to consumer package goods and even Louis Vuitton store has them for their special collections.  But what works here usually won’t work elsewhere and vice versa in most cases. But one universal truth holds for the Japanese market as well as Europe or North Americas, people are simply not buying new gadgets, but actually trying to do things with them or getting jobs done. As technology advances as if there are no limits of they can do, there are tremendous gap exist between the potential of these gadgets (whether they are converging into cell phones of diverging into separate devices) versus the limited ways we use them today. We have yet to see how these gadgets will change the way we live, work and socialize.

Marketers are jumping into the bandwagon. MasterCard just launched their first corporate iPhone app. Using the theme of its well-known "Priceless" campaign Priceless Picks pairs GPS and 3D maps to show you local deals, dining, and other points of interest in your immediate vicinity.  It allows you to soar around the map in quasi-street view or bird's-eye view, identifying locations as the color-coordinated bubble pops up. Red for dining, blue for shopping, orange for "Priceless" items, and so on. It is supposed to point you to interesting sources for wine sampling via vending machine or a local jazz club etc. It is a cool app.

Best Buys understands the power of gadgets beyond gadgets. Shari Ballard EVP/Retail channel believes individual gadgets don't mean as much as marketers think they do. Instead, "we see tremendous opportunity around how those devices work with each other, and with content people already own," says Ballard, "People are trying to do things with their technology products, not just acquire them." Best Buy is looking at many ways it can bring those connections to the center of the store, in formats that are easy for consumers to see and touch. "There is major work to do in helping customers see what today is mostly invisible. Now, we describe these products with a lot of hand motions and 'imagine this.' We need a physical way for people to interact with invisible solutions."

The question is how we untangle the future of consumer (and social) technologies to uncover unarticulated, unmet or yet-to-exist customer needs? And in the process of untangling the future we will become more tangled up with more technologies driving new behavior that we cannot even imagine? What are the next practices to imagine these new behaviors? And how do we know if some of these behaviors will be ending up mainstream?

The future is not more gadgets, but more integrated and modular designs. We will see a wide variety of innovative tools and apps that will emerge to help us leverage the information glut to our benefit. These new devices, systems, and services will enable us to alleviate the symptoms of cognitive overload and compensate errors and weaknesses in everyday life human decision-making. Much like a pilot relies more and more on computers to fly planes, technologies will allow us all to become smarter.

They will come in all forms and functions including enhanced cognitive assistance and collaborative filtering, surface-based three dimensional data visualization and display, reputation-based recommendation systems, personal productivity improvement software, affordable context-aware devices, social software tools, and systems that leverage social intelligence.

This is a future that is happening fast. It is not something that will only happen in Japan, but around the world. Tens of billions of economic value will be created, are you in for it?

In Japan, Even Robots Are Affected By Continuing Job Losses.

Here's the view form the 51F of Roppongi Hills Club. I have lunches with some old friends here in Tokyo and talking about the challenges technologies companies are facing here. Many things have changed since I worked here in the early 80s. One thing that has not changed here in Japan, the country still has a pretty formal attire culture for business much like London. They are slow in adopting the dressing down trend, probably 5 years behind America. Most businessmen and women still insisted on fully suiting up despite the searing heat and enervating humidity during the summer months.  Now some Japan’s office workers are finally embracing the ‘no necktie, no jacket’ concept, promoted by the government’s ‘Cool Biz’ campaign started five years ago. The goal is to save energy and and reduce global warming by cutting down on greenhouse emission.

During the four month period (May to Oct), government offices and private companies that sign up to the campaign are expected to keep their thermostats no lower than 28 degrees Celsius (83 degrees Fahrenheit ).  Many older generation Japanese managers are not comfortable without the customary coat and tie. They compromise by go only with removing their ties but holding on to their jackets. Phase one is the tie and phase two is the jacket. For many Japanese managers, particularly with the recession, feel they still need to dress up formally in order to drum up business.  For the Japanese non-human workers - Japan’s fleet of robots (the world’s largest fleet of mechanized workers) the future is looking grim.

Unlike human, people that have less to do in a recession generally produce more babies, the robots have stopped producing more robots. At a large Yaskawa Electric factory on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, where robots once churned out more robots, these robotic workers with steely arms are all frozen in midair. A depressing scene indeed and they could be out of work for a long time.  In terms of job lost, robots are the first to go as companies protect their human workers. Fortunately humans still make these decisions and that could change.

At some point in the future, they will start competing with humans for jobs. Fuji Heavy Industries currently sells a giant automated cleaning robot that can use elevators to travel between floors on its own. The wheeled robot, which resembles a small street-cleaning car, already works at several skyscrapers in Tokyo and is providing a good return-on-investments. They estimate you can save enough to pay for the cost of robot in just 3 years. Who says jobs are coming back?

Japan's Future Depends On How Fast They Can Innovate Through Rapid Conversion Of Their Advanced Industrial Technologies For Consumer Use.

I have not been in Tokyo for a little more than a year, summer is not the best time of the year but this week the weather is good. But the economy is not. Japan's economy has suffered its worst quarterly performance since records began more than five decades ago. Their economy struggles as structural changes continue. The Japanese economy has long been known for its unique business traditions such as keiretsu, "main bank" system, lifetime employment, promotion by seniority, and memorization-oriented education. These practices once functioned well to facilitate Japan’s rapid economic growth in the postwar era. However, after the bubble burst in the early 1990s, these traditional business practices quickly became the focus of criticism and barriers to innovation.

Many young Japanese who lost their jobs were in precarious “temporary” positions that were the product of a decade-long deregulation. This year alone, Toyota replaced its bosses, halted all skunk projects and temporarily cut production in Japan almost in half.  Sony plans to cut 50% of its suppliers this year alone. Most companies have cut back on employees who had only ever been promised a paycheck, not a job for life. Japan is never going to the same again. I used to travel to this country every month for many years, that Japan was very different.

Over the years, It has gotten better at the art of responding to a slow-growth environment. There are a few bright spots. Video gaming industry is doing well such as Nintendo.  Another thriving business sector is the love hotels, or in our world it is the equivalent to what we called the “Third Place”.  There are estimated around 25,000 in the country and they charge $30 for a brief stopover for two. So far sales have gone up and you need to book a few days in advance I was told.

Who’s doing well?  Kirin created an innovative free product - Kirin Free. An innovative new product by Japan's second-biggest brewer Kirin Brewery that claims is the world's first truly alcohol-free beer. The 0.00 percent alcohol beverage became an instant hit with pregnant women, professional drivers and even with teachers and hospital patients. That reduces drinking and drive. They have quickly reached the initial sales target of 1.6 million cases. They simply discovered a latent need that was lying dormant for a long time. This free innovation is an instant success.

This is a process innovation as much as a product innovation. Skipping the usual yeast fermentation process, which normally creates alcohol and instead they invent and employ some new technologies. The company is filing a few patents on those technologies. Kirin has managed to reproduce the full-bodied malt presence, the hops flavor and the caramel color with enough white foam to throw off even real beer lovers. The entire market for low-alcohol beer is estimated to expand to nearly 7% in 09 to 2.7 million cases, more than half of which it expects to dominate with Kirin Free while the overall beer industry is struggling to galvanize new demand. Another good example of how innovation can change a game.

There are plenty other opportunities for innovation in Japan, they need to quickly convert their advanced industrial technologies to the civic use. The Japan's robotics technologies in the manufacturing sector have unique capabilities that can translate into new industries supporting general office or the aging consumer market. Take the field of elderly care, Dr. Yoshiyuki Sankai, Professor of Tsukuba University, has commercialized the robotic suits for the elderly care. May be Gundams can help create the next Microsoft.

According to the Economist, they predict that all four (US, China Japan and Sweden) leading innovators will retain their rankings in 2011, but that China, which has already overtaken Japan to become the world's second-largest investor after the United States in research and development in absolute terms, is a country to watch in terms of acceleration in the innovation market. And Shanghai is the world's next innovaiton hot spot.

Is The Freeconomics Real? We're Seeing It Everywhere.

Just three minutes walking down Baker Street in London I saw signs of free offer eveywhere (see pictures). Is free the future? Or just a reflection of the current economy? It has been 4-5 years since Chris Anderson, the author of The Long Tail, first brought up the idea of the free economy. Technology is offering consumers better deals and enabling innovative business models that are reshaping economic theory. In this economy, free is definitely attractive to many consumers.

Here are the big questions:  How is free changing consumer expectations and behavior? 
How is free changing the economics of businesses? How can free be part of viable business model? 
When the price drops to zero, what else do customers value? How do you beat the free? Where is free headed in the next 5 years?

“Google is not a media company - most of its business is software and services - but it has used the media business model of advertising to ensure that it never shows up on your credit card," according to Anderson. "The psychology of free is incredibly powerful. Traditional marketing says this is awesome, you are going to love it but you can't try it until you pay. Free says this is what it is, I think you are going to like it, but try it out. When it comes time to pay, you are already price insensitive, you are a committed customer, you are engaged."

Anderson suggested free is the future as the increasing availability of open source software and the rise of cloud computing had made the barriers to entry for digital companies very low. But it doesn’t mean you have a viable business. If Anderson practices what he preaches, he should give away his new book for free. But who’s paying for it?

What happens to the economics of goods when scarcity is removed? How is the case difference for digital goods versus physical goods? In both cases, free encourages consumption and expand market share, if your competitor do it and they will take up larger share of the market. This can easily be modeled from a game-theoretic perspective. If you and your competitor both choose the same strategy, you are both on equal footing, consumers win. 

Nash equilibrium does benefit the consumers, who enjoy more free products or services. But is this sustainable? Free is just another form of competition and forces companies to find creative ways to have them subsidized. Just like radio and broadcast TV. Social technologies allow companies to reorganize itself around getting people to work or co-create for “non-monetary rewards and distribution can cost nothing? The book keeper will not work for free? And office supplies are sponsored by Staples?? Someone still need to pay for keeping the lights on. High performance servers are provided free? OK advertisers can subsidize them, we're back to the ad model.

Free is a competitive marketing strategy, but not a business strategy.

An Ethnographer Is More Than A Lab Rat With A Notebook Or A Lab Bat With A Hard Drive. Who Is An Ethnographer?

Ethnography is hot. Many are quick to claim that they do ethnography by observing people. It is like saying anyone who drives a taxi in NY is a screenwriter. Or anyone who knows how to operate a camera can be a photojournalist.

Who is an ethnographer? First an ethnographer needs to have some idea about what he thinks he is doing  (Spindler and Spindler), without a unique subject matter as well as a methodology, there is no discipline.  It is just people watching people.

The strength of the discipline must depend partly on its adaptability and flexibility, as well as openness to different ways of working; there must be some professional practices. Cultures are extremely complex and multi-faceted and using different lenses show different things.  It is hard to determine a beginning and an end to fieldwork and who knows when participants have exhausted the topic relevance to the research. It is like a film director deciding what is a good take, an ethnographer will keep watching, listening, questioning, and so on until he feels he have enough to make sense of what is going on. A lot of real time sensemaking is required and this is the art of ethnography.

Well think about it, who you are affects what topic you choose and the methods you like best. Here’s the picture in your head: A lab rat taking notes on you or a lab bat watching you at night. People are being observed. People are being stereotyped. People are being analyzed. You are approximately in as much control of what other people think of you as your subjects are of your research. And you thought it was a problem when folks ran around with their camera equipped cell phones?  The best ethnographer doesn’t need a camera, he is the camera.  He records what he sees, hears, experiences in a journal or field book.

Here’s a great idea. The folks at MIT have developed a fabric made of a mesh of light-sensitive fibers that collectively act like a rudimentary camera. The fibers, which each can detect two frequencies of light, produced signals that when amplified and processed by a computer reproduced an image of a smiley face near the mesh. According to Yoel Fink, a prof in materials science at MIT, "This is the first time that anybody has demonstrated that a single plane of fibers, or 'fabric,' can collect images just like a camera but without a lens".  You can imagine if an ethnographer just walk around wearing a jacket camera and interact naturally with people around him/her and how useful such as tool can become. 

The technology uses fibers less than a millimeter in diameter, stretched into thin form from a thicker cylinder. Within the fibers are two cylindrical shells of semiconductor material, each connected to the outside world with four built-in metal electrodes. Another application would be for reporters and security forces. So instead of installing tens of thousands of CCTV like what they did in London, we can have hundreds of people wearing the jacket and walking around in NYC?  In a few years, you don't need to bring a camera with you for your vacation, just the Leica M9 jacket.

The photo abvove shows two rings of light-sensitive semiconductor material in the fiber. Photo: MIT

It is Becoming Clear That Our Turbulent, Agitated, Unbridled-capitalist Age Needs Some Serious Fixing.

I went to my son’s high school graduation ceremony last week and was bored by bad speeches. I wonder why can’t they at least say something more useful than those shallow motivational speak for these 17 year olds. Graduation often brings mixed feelings. Some move on to universities and some will enter into the workplace. They can use a few words of wisdom. More than half of these kids will earn themselves a Bachelor degree in four years, what’s next?

Not sure you know, the origin of the terms "bachelor," "master," and "doctor" were first introduced at the University of Paris, the "mother" of English, American and European universities. By the thirteenth century, these terms were commonly use throughout the world. The term "bachelor" derived from the Latin for "cowherder" (surviving with its original denotation in the Spanish word "vaquero") and denoted an “unschooled individual” who had no specific occupation and few prospects for gainful employment.  You’re not supposed to be prepared for the workplace by attending university. We forgot what universities were for.

A bachelor would be allowed to begin his studies in philosophy and upon completion to receive a degree of Master of Arts and a teaching license or "licentiate."  The term "doctor" meant "teacher." Initially, it was an honorary title which medieval faculties used to designate distinguished colleagues.

Other than an honorary designation, the term "doctor" was first used by the University of Paris to designate masters who had completed a prescribed course of study in theology (then called the "Queen of the Sciences", I like this better) and who had proven their intellectual and teaching skills by publicly defending a thesis before the theology faculty.  Except in England, where the doctorate retained its honorary character until the nineteenth century.

What’s a good speech? Here’s one. The late Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Russian writer who exposed Stalin's prison system in his novels and spent 20 years in exile, delivered the following June 1978 on the occasion of Class Day Afternoon Exercises at Harvard University. (Transcription by Michael E. Eidenmuller from AmercicamRhetoric.com) Here’s s small excerpt. There's never a better time to reread this and rethink our paths:

Convergence
But the blindness of superiority continues in spite of all and upholds the belief that the vast regions everywhere on our planet should develop and mature to the level of present day Western systems, which in theory are the best and in practice the most attractive. There is this belief that all those other worlds are only being temporarily prevented (by wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity and incomprehension) from taking the way of Western pluralistic democracy and from adopting the Western way of life.

Countries are judged on the merit of their progress in this direction. However, it is a conception which develops out of Western incomprehension of the essence of other worlds, out of the mistake of measuring them all with a Western yardstick. The real picture of our planet's development is quite different and which about our divided world gave birth to the theory of convergence between leading Western countries and the Soviet Union. It is a soothing theory which overlooks the fact that these worlds are not at all developing into similarity. Neither one can be transformed into the other without the use of violence. Besides, convergence inevitably means acceptance of the other side's defects, too, and this is hardly desirable. If I were today addressing an audience in my country, examining the overall pattern of the world's rifts, I would have concentrated on the East's calamities. But since my forced exile in the West has now lasted four years and since my audience is a Western one, I think it may be of greater interest to concentrate on certain aspects of the West, in our days, such as I see them.

A Decline In Courage
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course, there are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.

Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable, as well as intellectually and even morally worn it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and with countries not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tonguetied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Social Technologies Such As Facebook Are Changing How Organizations Communicate, Including Those Secret Agencies.

Social Technologies are changing every organization and allow them to more open and transparent. Well not every organization can afford to be transparent. The new head of MI6 (The British equivalent of CIA) Sir John Sawers has been left exposed by a major personal security breach after his wife decided to publish some photos on Facebook. 

The funny thing about it is that his wife's did not put any privacy protection on her account, making all photos visible to anone who chose to be in the open-access 'London' network. I am sure they are smarter than this; this must be a strategy to extend their intelligence network. I searched Facebook and see if I could find any 008 or 009 tagged.Try the tag 'spy'.

The new intelligence chief (who will be codenamed 'C)' will soon issue a memo to all spies to give them directives of what to put in Facebook and when to blurr a face and under what circumstances you should include a friend's photo.

His wife revealed on Facebook the location of their London flat used by the couple and the whereabouts of their children and his parents. She also posted 19 pictures of the couple on holiday with their friends in the West Country earlier that month. And the next day, she added another 26 pics, including one of Sir John playing on the beach in his swimming trucks chatting with friends (not sure it is work or business).This is all new to MI6.

MI6 has been using social networking site Facebook to recruit employees in its most recent attempt to diversify its base of applicants. For some years the UK secret service has been attempting to recruit more women and people from ethnic backgrounds with a series of high-profile advertising campaigns, which eschew its Oxbridge 'tap on the shoulder' image. The latest pop-up ads on Facebook state: "A career in world events? Help influence world events (and) protect the country. Operational officer roles are collecting and analyzing global intelligence."

Earlier in April this year the UK government announced that it planned to use social networking sites such as Facebook to interact with the public as part of a new communication plan.  And for the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency, where bosses are encouraging their staff members to use a new social-networking site designed for the not-so-secret world of spying. The program is called A-Space, and it's a social-networking site for analysts within the 16 US intelligence agencies. "It's every bit Facebook and YouTube for spies, but it's much, much more," According to  Michael Wertheimer, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analysis. There must be a widget in Facebook for spies to encrypt their photos.

Media Disruption Continues As Attackers Fail And Defenders Wonder What's Coming Next?

I am just counting how many industries today are getting near their industry breakpoints, accelerated by the current crisis and changes in consumer attitude towards anything.  With macro forces pushing a collision between previously unrelated industries and the smart ones know a reset is necessary. Media is on top of the list.

We are not only talking about company reconfiguration, but also industry reconfigure itself as value chains are breaking up and co-creation is happening up and down the value chain. Social Technologies are the key enablers for openness and cross-participation. I am certain that the faces of media and publishing, personal banking, music, healthcare, auto, telecom will be very different in just a few short years.

I was meeting with a number of clients while in London and we talked about how Twitter and whatever future versions of that are becoming a part of our life.  Almost any content is available now at our finger tips and it takes me literally a few seconds to call up from YouTube a video of anything. 
And I remember as a kid, I was watching everything they tried to put on TV until 1 am and then the Queen showed up and that’s bedtime. I wish it were the same for the Internet, imagine if the Queen shows up on my sons’ computer after 2am and shut down their network. Young adults have a problem with consuming unlimited amount of junk from the Internet. I need the Queen back.

Has TV and the Intent converged it? Mobile TV hasn’t really happened or do we really need it? iPhone is kind of doing that. Where’s interactive TV? That’s old. How about social TV? How can we make watching TV social?  I have almost forgotten that TV is so boring here in the UK and thank God there’s the Internet.  Will the future of Apple TV give us more? So far it is quite disappointing and Apple doesn’t want to talk about it. I’ve thrown out all my TV recording devices (PVRs) because I really don’t need them although they were pricey when I bought them.

I want to see faster and better convergence. I don’t want my TV to work like my computer and I don’t want my computer to work like a TV too. So what kind of convergence am I looking for? I am not sure.  Let me try to imagine for a second how convergence makes sense for me. For me, my choices need to follow me.  I don’t want to flip stations (and I have too many remote controllers) and I want to decide what to watch now and what to watch later, or what to watch with someone. I don’t just mean watching physically with someone in one place, it can be remote.  I want to be able to know how each episode is related and if possible go back to the last one for a refresh. I’d like to see and rank each Episode of Flashpoint based on its popularity or how people like the ending etc.

Joost, the provider of interactive TV experience on the web just announced that it would shift from a consumer strategy to licensing its technology to cable and satellite broadcasters. This is a shift in business model signifying the failure of their disruptive strategy. They were the first third-party web company to sign online-distribution deals with media companies such as CBS and Viacom, which also made equity investments in the company.  Even the disruptors struggle to make that work.

Fragmentation and experimentation are creating chaos in the media business and a complete rethink of the economic underpinnings of the $300+ billion TV industry. To rethink the viewer proposition based on when, what, where, and how? The complex redesign of the distribution will be characterized by organizing complex channel carriage agreements to something that enables global distribution in an organic and network-based distribution model leveraging search and social media.

The media folks need to make these disruptions and uncertainties their friend. To do that they need to step back and have context of things to see how things make sense. I don’t think an “all-media-in-one” idea is the answer. Media will never be the same again.