innovation playground Idris Mootee

10 Big Reasons Why Most Innovative Products / Services Fail? How Many Of Them Are Avoidable?

Why innovative new products fail? Because marketers believe they know the industry, the product market and the customer and their needs.  And after going through cycles of input gathering and any orginal innovative ideas were ultimately turned into something that a lot like their existing products with minor improvisation. Sounds familiar?

Too many firms “innovate” with very few real insight about the market, their customers, or customers’ aspirations, needs or wants. Rather than go out and understand what customers need and expect, they rely on anecdotal evidence and market research, or simply perform some "ethngographic" study performed by traditional marekting research companies. "ethnographic" field work performed withour an anthropologist is like goging to bungee jump without an instructor.  This is a ley failure point of the first order, like jogging on the rooftop blindly down a path that ends off the building.

What leads some innovative products and servies to succeed and others to fail? The answer to this question encompasses a number of different factors. In some cases, the product cannot deliver the promised performance, capability or attract sufficient interest.

Even if potential can be demonstrated early on, it may take a substantial amount of time to reach the projected adoption figures. Or the product’s innovative feature is being replicated by an existing product as an added function and there is no need for a stand alone new product. Or the economics of the new product is not attractive enough and cannot hit a critical mass. Insight into the minds of the early adopters can greatly reduce the risks of failure, which is generally due to one or more of the following reasons:

1. The innovative new products are not shown in the right user context thus creating a misunderstanding of the applications
2. The new technologies behind the innovative product are not linked to an exciting and worthwhile market opportunity or are too niche
3. The innovative new products are not positioned within any product category and also fail to open up a completely new category
4. There is insufficient knowledge and resources for marketers to drive consumer adoption
5. The core functions of the innovative new products cannot support themselves as stand alone products and only work as features.
6. The promised performance of the innovative new product does not materialize and does not provide enough customer value
7. The innovative new products were distributed through the wrong channel and compromise the value propositions
8. The innovative new products perform only a small function and can be included by others in other products as an additional feature thus diminishing the demand
9. The expectation of consumers adopting the new products is over estimated
10. Products are pushed to a skeptical customer group and fail to neutralize the perceived risks associated with the new product.

The innovative new products require an ecosystem of support which did not exist or were not built fast enough. Determining the suitability of market research for innovative new products or services is a challenge. Insights are not only needed in the early phase of ideas gathering, it is equally critical at the pilot stage. Many traditional market research methods are inherently more tactically focused (orientation on the customers of today) and lead to the development of small improvements in existing products and the big ideas eventually diluted. Read more of this in the next big INSIGHT issue of M/I/S/C available in bookstores in 28 countries.

You Think Innovation Is Hard. Business Transformation Is A Hundred Times More Difficult. And In Fact It Is The Number One Barrier For Strategic Innovation.

People think innovation is almost just about new ideas. Funny how many think Blue Ocean Strategy is a big wake-up call when all it does is communicating the very the basic and simple idea of strategic innovation – how not to compete with your competitors in the same game and instead create a new game.

A strategist has the choice between getting back into the fight with existing competitors or creating a new space when there is no competition AND no proven customer demand. This is the hardest part - "no proven customer demand" and let's see what the board has to say when you tell them that your strategy cannot be validated quantitatively. New game strategy is extremely difficult to make happen for a number of reasons:

• It is hard to convince the board to bet on a market that has yet to exist
• Successful founders CEOs are stuck seeing things with an old mental and underestimaing the threats
• It is hard to change the minds of people who wanted (and have vested interest in) the old business to work and not willing to give up
• It is hard to make the switch as it requires new mindset, capabilities and organization design
• It is hard to be credible using the the current brand entering or creating the new market space
• There is the question of how sustainable the new value logic from a customer and market perspective

Looking back at the history of industrial revolution or our information or technology revolution, red oceans vs. blue oceans or a better way to describe it is “today cash flow" vs. "future cash flow" or "defender vs. "attacker" etc. Avoiding competitions in the red oceans give rise to innovation opportunities that create new market space and could triggers a new round of industrial transformation. The author did not address the dynamics of the industry transformation.

Straegy is never that simple as red and blue oceans, organizations are increasingly inter-connected as they leverage brand, patent, talent, technology, knowledge, channels, products and services from each other often located in disparate parts of the world. These complicated inter-connections often prevent companies to reinvent themselves even the opportunity is obvious.

There are many hurdles and barriers for transformation including cognitive, resource, capabilities, motivation and political ones that prevent making a new game strategy implementable. Idea Couture Brand-driven Strategic Transformation goes beyond creating, communicating and maintaining a sense of identity and belonging for the employees, we bring foresights into the process and connect the align the brand with the business strategy and the strategic futures.

The brand is used like a savings account for emotional equity while we develop an engaging and energizing feeling of commitment to the organization by creating and co-creating a shared destiny; this is where it creates the highest impact. Conventional visioning and mission writing exercises often fall short to drive transformation. The idea is to get executives and senior managers in front line employees to move beyond empty, slogan-driven communications, which are more likely to lead to detached cynicism than to engagement, and to help them develop a clear personal commitment to an organizational purpose that will reflect in all aspect of managerial actions.

Business transformation is the execution of an integrated, corporate-wide program aimed at aligning the present and future as well as the organization, strategy and brand, it ensures alignment and internal consistency by reshaping the leadership, strategy, finances, organization and operations of businesses as a whole. It is not a Power Point, it is the energy flow of an oranization.

Microsoft's Next Big Innovation: Google Maps Meets Grand Theft Auto

What's new with GPS? There were the 3D maps, then traffic information with live refresh every two minutes so to help others to avoid heavy traffic jams and GPS watch? What’s next?

Surprise the next big innovation will come from Microsoft. It is Grand Theft Auto meets Google Map. The company just granted a patent that is designed to make its maps more pedestrian-friendly meaning not only just when you’re driving, even walking. I think this is a truly innovative idea. This feature is designed to help you t avoid certain dangerous area. You know two blocks can make big differences in many cities.

This "mind-the-ghetto" feature will be killer applications in future Windows phones. So while you’re roaming the streets of LA or Chicago, your smart phones will send GPS into to a system that maps the crime statistics as well as nature of crime, day of time happened and frequency. Not sure how this will impact real estate prices or retail rent.

And they may allow you to do a trial run in the neighborhood as downloadable scenes in Grand Theft Auto on your X-Box? I am sure there is a disclaimant that you need to click ‘accept’ meaning if you do get mugged in what was identified as a safe area would not be their fault.

It is definitely a useful feature for parents to make sure the kids are not allowed hanging out in those areas and it will prompt them and send a message to the parents? If you use a little more imagination, there is so much untapped innovation with LBS and GPS.

GPS is not legal everywhere. Apple will be selling its iPhone in Egypt, people there will have to go without one of the star features: GPS navigation. Yes, because GPS is illegal in Egypt (Can you believe this?) and I think it is the only country in the world but I might be wrong. Apple is forced to take out the feature because there is a ban on the import of all GPS-enabled devices into Egypt. The ban has been in effect for years.

The Egyptian govertment considers GPS a military-grade technology that can be used to help pinpoint the location of government facilities. But if you so happen to be travelling in the desert, you’re advised to buy one, but only from the black market which you need a GPS to locate.

The Tablet War Is Moving To The Next Level. It Is Not Just A Game Of Interface And Content, It Is A Service Platform Game. It Will Be Google, Apple And Amazon.

Idea Couture San Francisco was excited to sponsor and host the Tofu event last week. The Tofu Project is a nicely curated boutique program created by TokyoMango journalist Lisa Katayama and designer Tomo Saito that brings 10 of the most innovative young entrepreneurs from Japan to the San Francisco Bay Area for a 7-day design thinking and innovation boot camp.

These isn't just another Silicon Valley-meets-Japan tour or incubator. It is not just a start-up meet and share, it is more of collaborative think tank where cool Japanese people and experts on Japanese culture from all different sectors gather together to re-imagine the future of Japanese innovation and globalization. I wish I was there. Here are some pictures to share.

A busy day driving to Waterloo for a several meetings and everytime I stopped at a book store I wonder how the tablet war will evolve in the next 12 months. The tablet war is moving to level two and there are only 3 finalists. Samsung and Amazon are the only two that are strategically qualified to play this game. Sony’s new tablet may have a small chance; if it does it will be domestically. Sony has been sleeping at the wheels and has no idea what the world is like.

Amazon's forthcoming Kindle Fire tablet will be hurting the sales of iPad and put price pressure on Apple. They might end up having to reduce the price to keep shares. I don’t see any new features that can keep iPad ahead of the game or sustain the growth. Many will hold off the purchase of iPad for themselves or chose to buy Fire because it is a great alternative.

Kindle Fire, launching next week at a price of $199. They are using a Gilette strategy of subsidizing the tablet and make money from content. Apple will never do that. And for the Nook, I am not sure. It is nicely designed and engineered product, a lot of good thinking on the UI level too but lacking a strategy to play this game. Yet the sales jumped 140% the first quarter due to overall demand growth.

Amazon Fire will have a dual-core processor, a fast browser, a good display, and lots and lots of content. Preorder is already tracking to exceed a million. Amazon will build a big user base and leverage this to launch a service platform. They are not viewing the tablet as an eReader game like Nook, they see this one piece of a larger emerging strategy to go against Apple. Amazon just purchased a voice startup Yap few months ago, a technology that could transcribe voice commands into text. Amazon is quietly building out its voice-recognition service platform and will be competing with Apple Siri. That’s the next big game.

The New Game Of Strategy: Applied Design Thinking In Business Innovation And Transformation

Just when I thought I can have 2 days in an office then I realized I have to be In NYC tomorrow for a few days. I am writing this post on a flight after missing my connection in Houston, and just finished teaching a three days Strategy graduate course with a focus on strategic innovation and design thinking. What I did was bringing the Harvard Business School case study method of teaching and apply it to design thinking and innovation, it is really interesting and probably an innovation itself because innovation means going against the conventional analytical thinking.

The shift from teaching competitive strategy to strategic innovation changes how the case studies were originally written for. I am using the same teaching material but instead applying atotally different pedagogical focus – which is how to avoid the very obvious and how to develop and apply ‘New Game’ in strategy making. It was intense for the students but they were liking it. I theorize, practice and teach these concepts and so for me, it is not academic, it is real.

Strategy is never that simple as picking the right competitive positioning, segments or competing on different dimensions. It is often complicated because it involves changing of mindset and mental models – mindsets that inspire individuals and teams to think imaginatively, to take risks, to seek out, and to expand the boundaries of a business or redefining customer value. It is hard.

Then there are structural, systems and processes for sharing of ideas, sense-making of data and working together. This includes developing new perspectives and collaborate on ‘white space mapping’ which was never taught at business schools. The very nature of competitive advantaged has changed and I challenged anyone who tell me if they really have a real and relevant competitive advantage that they thought they have.

The information revolution continues and is enabling companies to easily (and sometimes cheaply) match current competitive differentiators and rapidly create new ones. The result is that competitive advantage is evolving from simply focusing on differentiation, low cost or focus. The idea is to do all, the stuck in the middle can be a desirable position if you understand the underlying economic forces. Most business school students and even professors hardly understand how to apply the Five-Forces properly and let alone adapting it to a very different business environment where speed, empathy and community become key strategic elements in addition to bargaining powers and competitive dynamics. We need a new framework that takes into consideration the use of community in business strategy development. I’ve used cases including Method, Microsoft X-Box, Loco Motor and a few others to illustrate the concepts.

I think I should start developing teaching notes based on the original case study but with a different teaching emphasis. Classic views on strategy include Joseph Schumpeter focuses attention on innovation and entrepreneurialism. He suggested that bigger the company the more resources and diversification one can bring to R&D and as a result get better return on innovation. Michael Porter, following Alfred Chandler, focuses attention on business organization and competitive strategy and introduces the concept of cluster to explain competitiveness.

Today’s the nature of strategy and competitive advantage is drastically shaped by strategic innovation -- powered by customer co-creation; desire of consumer to change the status quo and powerful social innovation networks; integrates customer deep into business organization; demand chain into supply chain and contrasts inter-firm relations in terms of market, and closed or semi-closed and open-networks.

The attempt to develop competitive advantage is only the first step. It is sustaining the advantage that is far more challenging. How often companies invested millions and millions of dollars to create barriers for entry only to find out they lasted only for a short a few months. Waking up one morning seeing that your industry value chain was being reconfigured and the expiry date of your business model was last week is not exactly a fun thing. If you find that every six months you have to innovate on something the market will embrace is too exhausting, it is time to embrace design thinking.

The Economics of Co-Creation. Can What Happened To Microbrewery Happens To The Auto Industry?

A lot of talk and interest around the concept of co-creation. It is no question that this is going to have asting implications of how products and experiences are designed, developed and marketed. In 3-5 years, customer co-creation will be the part the norm of everyday business. Much like early days of ecommerce when people struggled with the legal, technical, operational issues. Slowly these issues will work their way out and we would look back and say “that’s simple…. makes perfect sese.”

What’s a great example of co-creation? Let’s first try to define it here as sometimes people refers it to anything from idea crowd-sourcing to technical expert groups to simple product/service/marketing customization. One good example of real co-creation is a company called Loco Motor.

I met Jay Rogers (founder and CEO) at the PDMA Co-creation Conference when I was moderating a panel. He was hosting the event and I was extremely impressed with what he is trying to do and has achieved to date. It is the first co-creative automobile design and purchase experience in the world. Just as the auto industry is dying for new ideas and change and Detroit needs a new strategy and it is more than making a better car. There are many structural issues to deal with and it is complicated. Jay is attempting to disrupt the auto industry by using co-creation as the strategic core.

The people in the car industry that have tried to innovate in the last 100 years and mostly fail, what makes him think he has a chance? Perhaps Detroit should concentrate on redesigning the business model and the whole experience before redesigning cars.

The first product Rally Fighter sells for just under $60,000. It’s an incredible car that looks like a life size HotWheel and gives me fond memory of my childhood. Remember the Hot Wheels yellow track?

The Rally Fighter is designed by the online community and ismanufacture at the microfactory in Phoenix, Arizona with a sustainable and highly efficient process. Jay wanted to build cars all his life, after raising $10 million seed capital, he launched the company with a simple idea that is extremely difficult to pull off. Loco Motors hosts a passionate online group of car-lovers or fanatics who compete to design vehicles for some regional communities in contests that run about once a month. The winning designs is then produced and sold to the communities.

There is more than to the flexible and customizable micro-factory, the concept here is when you give people tools, a strong community network with shared passion, some inspiration, small incentive you are in game. In fact, he is reinventing the customer co-creation experience for automotive. There are more than needs to be done in order to reinvent the economics of the industry. I think every business should look at Loco Motots and see what is relevant for their industries.

Will Loco Motors remains to be a niche business or eventually springing into a platform that supports a auto-cottage industries I don’t know. But we also need to think how we reduce traffic including rethinking local supplies network for certain products and cutting down unnecessary traffic.

An example is to look at how we replace pizza or UPS delivery with perhaps flying delivery drones – pizza right through to your windows. I am not sure if someone has thought about flying delivery drones man by 14 year old part-time students that doesn’t even have a driving license. The military drones can be converted to do the job. It is more realistic than flying personal transport, because in the event of an accident the worst is you don’t get your pizza. May be this is another idea of Jay, his Marine Corps background can be very useful. A central drone delivery operations theater that supports the nation’s takeout industry.

Cisco Did The Right Thing Resetting Their Focus. Also The Right Time To Rethink Their White Space.

The news today about Cisco decided to get rid of the Flip video business came as no surprise to me. When I first heard that Cisco was purchasing Pure Digital (maker of the flash-based camera Flip) I was wondering what was the strategic logic behind it. 

Not sure how much $590 million paid could be recovered. Looking back, it was not difficult to play out thescenario that HD video feature would eventually be equipped in every smart phone, point and shoot camera and even watch and even keychain. Why Cisco wanted that company? What were they planning to do with it? John Chamber’s decision to get rid of that business was a very smart one. There is nothing worth keeping and it brings up the question of whether it was a white space move or unrelated and unstrategic move?

This is where the art and science of white space mapping and analysis that can be applied to help making these decisions. People are concerned about the unknowns of white space because they lack the tools to help them to seewhat conclusions can be drawn. The two extremes are:

1. No one wants to take any risks and naturally retreate to their core and reject anything that does not belong to the core. Deciding what's the core is an art and then deciding what's considered adjacencies is another art. Do we look at the core from competencies, access, brand or assets?
2. They simply look at pockets of high growth markets and quickly point to it and say we need to move into that business. It is never that simple and people are not looking at strategically enough and these acquisitions are often based on false logic and most of all missing foresights. This is what strategic foresights is key when making acquisitions to compete for the future.

Case in point, was Intel’s acquisition of the Infineon Technologies AG Wireless Solutions business strategic? What foresight was the decision based upon? WLS is a leading provider of cellular platforms to top-tier makers, and forms part of Intel’s strategy to accelerate the always-connected computing platforms that span a variety of device and market segments, including laptops, cars, smart phones, tablets and smart TVs. It is move for Intel to secure their competitive position in the continuously proliferation of connected devices including device category that has yet to be invented. Complimentary assets, distinct capabilities and growth potential are all part of the logic. That makes perfect sense.

Back to Cisco, I am guessing the logic for them was to expand into media-enabled consumer lifestyle and to capture the consumer market transition from photo to video sharing and social networking. But why do we think that the video camera needs to be standing alone device?  The low end of video is the most vulnerable and before we know the Flip camera is a $30 promotion gift. And the Wi-Fi enabled memory card, still not hitting critical mass, can network enabled any camera. Why a Flip?

It is easy to say Cisco can develop a next generation of consumer video gadgets?  You need to first answer the question of what and why? Even combined with Linksys and other consumer products, it still lacks a strong customer value proposition for Cisco consumer business.  Cisco made the right move cutting their losses.  I think they should continue to focus on enterprise and there are plenty of attractive white spaces around it. It is time to redefine the core and reexamine the white space.

 

There's Gotta Be Easier And Cooler Ways To Transfer Files Between Devices. A Lot Of People Are Working On It.

When people talk about innovation generally people are quick to refer to something completely new. The question is how many new ideas are really new? Or recanation of old ideas or new applications of old ideas? Or just new ways to package old ideas? It is not uncommon that multiple companies or people are working on the same new idea but no one knows each other are working on the same thing?

So many people are working on innovative ways to send and receive files over a wireless network which is done through Bluetooth or infrared or whatever. Some engineers are playing with the idea of using the optical spectrum that offers better security and higher transfer rates. Engineers from Pennsylvania State University have now succeeded in moving data outside the usual line of sight restrictions at speeds of over one gigabit per second, more than double the max speed available today.

The engineers have developed a system where a high-powered laser diode transmits data by converting electricity into infrared light, which then bounces off any walls and surfaces before being received by an avalanche photo diode, where it's converted back into electricity and translated into usable data. Using it in a room with no windows will ensure that any transmitted signals do not escape and cannot be intercepted or less interferences. Not sure how many rooms are completely closed with no windows.

One creative application could be the "wireless projection of HD television. Currently, two high definition broadcasts exceed the bandwidth of any radio system, but with a 1.6 gigabit per second gigabit system, two HD channels could be broadcast," according to Professor of Electrical Engineering Mohshen Kavehrad.

At Idea Couture we’ve been playing with the idea for more than 18 months exploring new ways to transfer files between devices using simple touch gestures. We called it “Touch-and-Send”. Obviously there must have been dozens of start-ups or labs working on solving file transfer problems or creative ways to do that using similar approach. Currently there is no simple way to move things, plugging into the USB is still the simplest way and requires no set up. 

But a new research project at MIT called Sparsh is also working to fix the file transfer problem. Sparsh (Hindi word for "touch") is a virtual cloud-based clipboard where any data, like a phone number or photograph, can temporarily live until it's "pasted" to another device. It is kind of like the mailroom.

To make it work, both devices need to be Sparsh-enabled and the person touches data on a device, such as a picture or a music file can be sent through the cloud and receive by another device. Right now, Sparsh is at a concept satge at MIT's Media Research Lab. Very exciting idea indeed.

Expect to see many more innovations enabled by the cloud. The sky is the limit.

The Next Time You Pick Up The Phone To Call A Customer Service Agent You Might End Up Talking To An Inmate In Tijar, India.

Global customer servicing outsourcing is touching us everyday and sometimes you don’t know who you’re talking to on the phone or online when you call your service provider. I have had good experiences as well bad ones and the business case for companies are obvious and the continuous drive for lower costs are pushing companies to be creative and look for emerging destinations beyond the popular candidates such as India and Philiphines despite their relative advantage in English proficiency.

India is trying to move up the food chain and trying to provide higher value outsourcing jobs while in the Philippines, but moreover in Malaysia, Thailand and increasingly Vietnam and Indonesia, all want a piece of the still gorwing pie. We are seeing some anti-outsourcing sentiment due to the high unemployment rate at home recede to historical norms. The cost saving justification needs to be significant these days but it is not easy as the standard of living in India and Vietnam are quickly rising. That’s when you need to be creative.

Now they are doing a pilot program in India recruiting inmates with some good IT skills to try them doing basic data entry, customer service and support. They need to start with changing the policy of allowing Internet access in prisons. Those who participate will get paid more than what they could earn doing other jobs in the prisons. This is still at pilot stage and I wonder how they will select the people to participate beyond their skills, will they have to say something like “Sir, before we continue on, I’d like you to know that I am special customer service agent and a convict and previously robbed and bank and shot the manager. I need to confirm that you would like to continue on to allow me to help you with your banking transaction here?”

According to Gopinath Reddy, director general of prisons in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, he told the Guardian in the UK that inmates' knowledge should be used for the benefit of "the nation." The pressure to lower cost and perceptions of lowering capital investment make outsourcing an almost irresistible impulse for service businesses and manufacturers. Global access to vendors, falling interaction costs, and improved information technologies and communications links are giving companies unprecedented choice in designing their operations. Theses strategies are too easy for many taking an extra few cents out but it is time to rethink outsourcing. We need the jobs back and let’s talk smartsourcing. The next outsourcing RFPs will go to top prisons in the US, India and Philipphines to competete against each other perhaps. That's innovation.

The Future Battle Of Seach Will Be In Social Mobile. Does Social Search Make Any Sense?

A friend of mine visited me from Japan and our conversation was around mobile search, since Apple’s acquisition of Siri, a company that makes voice-operated personal assistant app for the iPhone, people wonder what’s Apple intent was. This move has big implications for the future of mobile search and is just a first step into the game.

This space is where Google is not winning as generalized search is not working and so people have to resort to specialized apps. It can be super-local for hyper-specialized and need-based. It is more than just getting information but getting some jobs done. It is two steps within minutes versus most online search is the first step. Whether it is about finding a nearby pub, getting a movie ticket or getting a dinner reservation through OpenTable, context is crucial. So business model is pretty much based around affiliate commissions from partners.

There are still a lot of usability issues to solve and there is little tolerance to sifting through irrelevant search results and they include: How to create clear quick access action buttons? How do you combine motion and gestures into the usability language? How to use limited real estate particular there are a lot of information to display? How to meet the user’s needs quickly? He or she has less than 3 minutes to get what they want. How to deal with user mistakes? It is not just a backward button?

Is social search the answer? I don’t know and I am not sure. There are apps that go out there and search for rankings and aggregate them and translate them into usable data. I think there are some apps that simply go through social networks and find out what people are recommending. Adding social layers onto search results is one option but I don’t think it is an effective solution. I am not sure I know what is the best filtering technique? I think location matters. What people are tweeting is often irrelevant. Searching for ‘likes’ in Facebook can’t be too useful. We are still a few years away from AI search.

Researchers at IBM have been working on a machine called Watson that can sift through a terabyte of data and crank out answers to complicated questions in a few seconds. A version of the software that runs Watson could reside on a doctor's tablet computer in 3-5 years, analyzing test results to proffer a diagnosis, according to Dave Ferrucci, a senior manager at IBM.

Smartphones are getting more prevalent and powerful enough to handle complex tasks. More than 70% of Americans will own a smartphone by the end of 2013 and mobile tablets sport more powerful processors that let users run complex artificial intelligence apps on them. Ai will be available at the palm of your hands.. .in no more that 2 -3 years I hope.

In the meantime, Google will be buying up anything that helps the to colonized the mobile space. Anytime you need to use any of these services on your Android devices, you need to log into your Google account. That means all your location history, browsing history, and preferences are available for Google to use so that they can show you send advertisements your way.

Social Technologies Are Changing Many Aspects Of The Future Of Enterprises. We Have Yet To Understand The Full Implications. But It Is Not Happening Fast.

I came across a recent article “Making Social Business Strategy Work” posted on AMA and I forgot who wrote it because I didn’t want to know. The title is bad enough but it managed to attract me to spend three minutes reading the article. The article was written by a ‘consultant’ obviously and advocating that formulating a sound social business strategy requires understanding the key factors driving current market opportunity which includes the following:

• The changing nature of work. We have shifted to an “always-on” culture, where definitions of where and how jobs get done have radically evolved. Time-shifting, hoteling, and telecommuting are increasingly accepted as life-style choices, not just cost-cutting tactics.
• A shift to cultures of public sharing. Social psychology tells us that humans harbor a fundamental need to connect. In more analog times, the public display of this inclination was a 6,000-card Rolodex on an executive’s desk. Maybe two. Today, professionals put their networks on display via LinkedIn.
• Evolution of personal technology. The Blackberry that most executives carry around in their pocket packs more computing power than many of the international business machines that helped them rise up through the corporate ranks. We are living in the midst of a perfect storm combining powerful hardware, fast networks, and robust applications, allowing productivity to skyrocket.

What is new here? Well the changing nature of work didn’t happen yesterday just in case the author didn’t realize. Since the days of Lotus Notes, VPN and laptops, people like me have been doing this for 20 years. The migration of Rolodex to Linkededin happened long time ago, did he just notice that? Let me check his total number of linkedin contacts and when he first joined Linkedin.

And the evolution of personal technologies ..ah Blackberry… it doesn’t do much other than allowing me to read word doc (barely), and I got my first Blackberry in 1999. I don’t think there are any drastic changes in the way I use my Blackberries (Yes, I am using two) – which are primarily used for reading and sending emails and making calls and sending a few texts. OK may be a few pics upload once in a while. What perfect storm?

If I was sitting in a boardroom and some dude showed up and asked me “What’s our Social Business Strategy?” I would probably kick him out of the room.

A business strategy is a business strategy, it is about scanning for shifts and looking deeper into needs of customers and signals for change. Then making the choice (and trade offs) of where and how to compete and then analyzing the capability and resource gaps to get to the future state. So we don’t need to call it ‘Social Business Strategy”. If we need to address any environmental shift, that's part of strategic planning. If we start doing this we will soon be asking whether we have “Business Strategy for Cloud Computing” or “Business Strategy for Social Change” or “iPad Business Strategy”.

Social technologies are slowly impacting organizations, on how people collaborate, share ideas and make decisions, but it is not a business strategy. And it is not about linkedin, Blackberries and Facebook.There are huge implications over the long term, but the article failed to illuminate the deeper implications.

The author talked about parsing signal from noise, articles like this is definitely all noise.

In 2012, Facebook Will Give New Meanings To 'Social Services' And Will Pass Yahoo In Revenue And A Key Player In Mobile Space.

A week away from Christmas and we're not slowing down yet. Still plenty of things going on and I plan to spend the next 5 days in the office (a first in a year). This is the time I usually make predictions and I am working on a long one to share with our clients. Give you some ideas of what I am looking at:

At the end of 2012, there is the mass push to the clouds and consolidation will happen and India will probably own 25% of the world’s market. Not finished with my spreadsheet models, 25% is close.

At the end of 2012, the idea pf 'customer engagement' will finally emerge as a disciline that sits on top of all CRM, direct marketing, brand activiation or social media marketing activities. Big agencies continue to struggle as they are far behind the curve.

At the end of 2012, social innocation will hit a new high as corporations come to realization that CSR needs to be more than just corporate public relations. It is about issues management, stakeholders dialogue and social empowerment through emerging technologies and interactions design. True experts will emerge to help corporations to navigate this landscape.

At the end of 2012, Yahoo will not exist as a public company and will reach the end of a slow death; its valuation would dropped drastically and ultimately get acquired. The shareholder value destroyed over the next 18 months will be significant and they wish they’d sold it earlier.

By the end of 2012, smart phones/pads will significantly take away from PCs as the most common Web access device globally both from consumer device sales and usage.

By the end of 2012, someone will figurte out how to use iPad as a platform for education. It is a school for everyone and everywhere. Earn your credits or even degree with just your iPad. And free iTunes music for high score students?

By the end of 2012, Facebook will be a key player in the mobile space. What’s the big idea? They will have a platform that includes hundreds of standalone cross-platform applications for iPhone, Android and Blackberries. They would provide mobile developers with tools and support to create and push new 'social' apps.

Today Facebook generates only a little less than $3 per user per year in revenues while Google generates about $25 per user per year (more than $25 billion in revenue from about 1 billion users). Facebook has plenty of rooms to rethink and create new “media” space to capture some of that money. Facebook targeting potential is more attractive and it is an always on for many user (including me) already, it is far better than TVs.

But the bigger disruption is outside the 'media' space; it is payment and shopping – FB social shopping and payment mechanism. Imagine if they plug in product targeting (with what they know about you) and allow users (to be categorized as searchers/opinion shapers/advocates) to use some form of Facebook money to pay for it. Do the math here: FB Shopping + FB Mobile + FB Money.

Facebook will give new meanings to 'social services' and create new shareholder value. Facebook’s value (currently privately held valued between $35-$50 billion) would surely surpass Yahoo’s (publicly held current valued at $21 billion with operating margin at 12%) revenue by end of 2012 and Facebook can get a margin of 37%, multiply that by a moderate 14X P/E and you get a sense of what’s Facebook worth.

If you're interested in trends and forecast, here's a company TrendHunter that produced a good general trend reports and used by many firms. Will provide a review of some of the themes in the next two weeks.

Expect To See A Next Generation Of Lighter And Tougher IPads, IPhones and iMacs. All Made With Carbon Fiber.

Do you ever wonder why everything I getting lighter and lighter and that include the airplane that you fly in and your car? If you ever get a chance to fly Qantas in an A380, you’ll find the economy class seats are all carbon fiber. It is very commonly used in planes due to lightweight.

Carbon fiber is basically plastic, it refers to plastic reinforced by a graphite textile. It is also know as alternatively as carbon fiber reinforced plastic or carbon fiber composite. Carbon fiber is not cheap, but has a fantastic weight-to-strength ratio and that’s why they are used in high-quality cars, boats, bicycles, and planes, including popular Formula One racecars. A small piece can withstand an impact of many tons and still deform minimally. Carbon fiber composite is currently the best material that the world can produce in appreciable quantities. Introducing carbon nanotubes into the fiber is currently in late research stages, and may offer improved ratios of 10 times or greater – a space age material indeed.

Apple engineer Kevin M. Kenney sees the future of carbon fiber and tablets, they are applying for a patent called simply "Reinforced Device Housing" that describes a way for various weaves to be backed by carbon "spine" to provide greater torsional rigidity -- to keep you from twisting it and cracking an LCD. Imagine the next generation of lightweight iPad, iMac and iPhone. IMac is still have a weight and heat issue. In face, Panasonic started making a ultra lightweight laptop many years back, but not for export. Some needs to overcome the perception that plastic is cheap as this is no ordinary plastic. Sony as early as 2005 launched two new VAIO TX series notebooks both made of carbon fiber making them the strongest and lightest with the least amount of thickness. They were ahead of Apple.

Apple’s patent text is pretty broad and it raises some issue: Embodiments may house any number of electronic components. For example, certain embodiments may be used to form the exterior surface of a mobile telephone, a laptop or notebook computer, a tablet computing device, a desktop computer, a television, a stereo receiver, or practically any other electronic device. Expect to see a generation of lighter and stronger Mac products soon.

What Designers And Design Thinkers Can Learn From Complex Adaptive Systems?

Early 1995, I was obsessed with the new science of complexity and have spent a lot of time on cellula automata and was looking for new clues to illuminate strategy making when emerging technologies were causing uncertainties in the world of business. I questioned the relevance as well as applicability of many social science theories and economic theories in understanding the nature of change bought by complex systems.

Complexity science seems to shed some lights on the behaviors of network effects of people/computers, immune systems and termite colonies. I was intrigued by what I was seeing and ended up writing a book on its complexity theories and business strategy. It helps to explain the role of network influences and behavior, connections and interactions. Fascinating to the business applications of concepts of emerging orders, self-organizing, nonlinearit, I realize the value of pattern recognition, difference between the whole and the mere sum of the parts, the value of outliers and diversity, and the way some very small inputs can lead to big changes.

15 years later, now when I revisit the ideas, these concepts seem to make more sense as we see with what’s doing on around us. It is important to understand that this science is not a single theory or a theory of everything. It is a lose combination of different ideas, theories and concepts from a variety of disciplines--biology, anthropology, economy, sociology, management that together helps explain complex adaptive system.

What does it mean for designers and design thinkers? The new science (or art) helps us to understand how complex adaptive systems work the patterns of relationships within them, how they are sustained, how they self-organize and how outcomes emerge. It is highly relevant when we are dealing with introducing a highly innovative products/technologies to the market where different elements interact to create a new behavior. Until they use the products, it is hard to see how it will be actually used rather than what was envisioned. It invites us to examine the unpredictable, disorderly and unstable aspects of organizations and human behavior.

Think social media and think sustainability. Think how activities at a local level can shape individual change and activate organizational capacities of communities and ultimate affect structural change. If Blockbuster understands these ideas, they might have a good chance of not letting Netflex eats their lunch. If GM understands these ideas, the might have come up with a new business model. If Visa understands these ideas, their market cap could be doubled from the current market valuation. If LG understands this, they can create the next tablet that beats iPad.

What Is The Future Of Mobile Phones? Will There Be A Physical Phone? The Future Is Interesting.

Where is mobile going? It is the hottest space right now to be in and will remain so for another 10 years as it evolves and converges. Not sure what mobile means when most devices will have the wireless networking capability be it 4G or 5G. VOIP will remain a disruption for years to come as it takes over older telco infrastructures now threatening mobile operators that have yet to embrace VoIP and will suffer the consequences. Frost & Sullivan sees a bright future where mobile VoIP will generate $29.57 billion by 2015. iPhone and iPad and the apps that are now allowed to make VoIP calls is a series threat to carriers’ revenue and they will try every way top create barriers including surcharges on VoIP usage over the data networks.

And for the banks, the adoption rate of mobile financial services is surpassing that of other financial service innovations such as online banking and ATMS. So it will soon take over as the main channel with ATM being the second. Come the year 2015, the United States will have a penetration of some 149 million WiFi enabled mobile phones according to a recent study performed by Coda Research, it means the US will account for 66% of all WiFi enabled mobile phone shipments in the year 2015 with a growth rate of 25 percent CAGR between now and 2015. 
 Obviously a big part of that growth will be in the smartphone sector with two thirds of WiFi hotspot connections coming through smartphones in 2015.

So what is next for mobile? What would the next generation of mobile phones look like? We have been doing a lot of research and prototyping imagining new c=behaviors that drive new design and features. Some of the ideas are so exciting but unfortunately I can’t share that here for obvious reasons.

We have been studying the changing global cultural trends and socio-economic factors, how our lives and communities are changing and how the mobile phone evolves to fit that or drive change to that. 

 Bigger screens or better screen, foldable screens or no screens? Will the ultimate device would be entirely virtual and it follows me, from my sunglasses to my windshield and desktops or bedside alarm clocks? Or something like interactive holographs that pop out like a ghost? Yes augmented reality phones and seeing a video voice mail from someone who has passed away for years?

What about keyboards? Will they disappear with the screen? Or we still want to type? Voice input will make physical keyboards almost entirely redundant but we still want to type if I have to make a prediction. For those of you who like to express themselves with gestures, gesture recognition is another big one. Imagine sending a middle finger virtually? What about eye-focus tracking that will provide virtual full-size keyboards so no more fingers will be needed. So how do we exercise our fingers?

We definitely need to move away from silicon to biological processors, open your phone’s battery compartment you will find a few ants working to produce energy? The computer you inject is more likely to resemble a specialized virus than a tiny silicon chip. This gives you a taste of what Idea Couture’s future mobile experience prototyping playbook looks like. I wish I could share more.