IS714-2009.blogspot.com

Disney Buys Into Hulu. YouTube Should Be Worried.

2009-05-02T22:52:00.002-04:00

Hulu is climbing the ladder in popularity and is ready to be No.2 .

Disney just bought into Hulu and will provide it with the content (including Mickey Mouse I hope).

Youtube watch out.

Verizon and Microsoft

2009-04-29T09:13:00.005-04:00

Vivek commented below on Apple and Verizon teaming up. Here is an article about Verizon and Microsoft teaming up to make a zune-ish phone... We'll see which of these happens, if not both. Verizon noted in their quarterly results the subscriber gains, which were larger than AT&T and iPhone last quarter by 100,000 subscribers or about 8%. A surprise given the popularity of the iphone.

It'll be interesting to see if this settles into a Microsoft-Verizon vs. Apple-AT&T battle. If both articles are correct it's a different dynamic Verizon is setting up by partnering with both Microsoft and Apple. Perhaps that's the smarter move but in the era of exclusive deals it seems unlikely Microsoft or Apple would be all that pleased about the dual approach. I can't imagine they woudl be competing products, but we'll see what happens...

Apple and Verizon

2009-04-27T22:31:00.002-04:00

Newsweek reporter Spencer E. Ante reports that Apple and Verizon are in the discussion to launch two devices; an 'iPhone Lite' and a 'Media Pad'.

The article does a good job of laying out the resons for the success and failure of the possible partnership.

But, what if the partnership does happen. Is Mr. Jobs diluting the apple brand with partnering with multiple partners or is he knows hte market and thinks this is the right time to caputre all the consumers at different pricing poits in the market.

A media pad with the ability to make calls using WiFi is the second product that is expected to be launched this summer.

Amazon Kindle, Kindle app for iPhone, Sony reader and now the Apple media pad, are all these complementers, comeptitors or both?

I will update the blog with developments on this front.

Open Stream API (News on Facebook)

2009-04-27T13:40:00.002-04:00

With Facebooks new redesign, users are getting more and more data pushed to them in the live feed section of their page. While there have been articles saying that this redesign is both a failure and a success, it is hard to argue that with all of this data available developers could make a new generation of Facebooks apps.

That is what is happening now, as Facebook is giving developers access to all of the data that is streamed and expects them to introduce apps that utilize a whole new realm of previously unavailable data.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10228056-36.html

Memo to Renault CEO

2009-04-27T09:53:00.005-04:00

(For those that still have free time to read some extra stuff)

Putting the consumer in the driver’s seat

As I started doing research about your company and the automotive industry in general I noticed that car innovations in the last decades have been focused on achieving car efficiencies and complying with environmental regulations. While Renault have spent a significant amount of money in research and development, on par with industry average, the results have been rather disappointing for the end consumer. In order for Renault to gain a significant competitive advantage in the auto industry I believe that it needs to change its design process and start putting the end consumer in the driver’s seat.

In the next lines I will develop my argument and explain what I mean by putting the consumer in the driver’s seat. The ideas that you will read might sound unrealistic at first, but you will realize that while they might be too futuristic for the present times, Renault has to invest in the future and change the ways the auto industry has operated since Ford created the production lines, Sloan announced GM mass customization and Toyota perfected the industry with its lean production system.

Why Renault, Why now

Renault is, without a doubt, one of the most significant players in the auto industry today. Its global positioning and access to world talent gives the company the minimum set of tools necessary to survive. However, in order to step ahead and differentiate, those attributes are not enough anymore and they will become less and less important as we move on. Renault’s history of innovation and futuristic design is a great foundation for the challenges ahead. Renault couldn’t be in a better position to set a precedent in the history of the automobile.

Now is the perfect time to invest. While Renault is doing so today in many different arenas, it seems to be doing so in the car of tomorrow but not on the car of the future. Green technologies, safety and efficiencies are mandatory investments today to survive, but I don’t see how any of these technologies are really revolutionizing the way we use and drive cars today.

Other car makers have started to do more for their customers, like GM’s OnStar, but that has not changed fundamentally the way we think about cars. Instead, it has simply broadened the spectrum of possibilities about what a car is and what can it do for its owner. Looking at history, cars are essentially the same as in the 1930’s, a compact steel mass with 4 wheels, an engine and a steering wheel. The panel provides drivers with basically the same information about speed, gas level, and total mileage, with some modernization, of course! I will grant here that the technologies that make the whole work are very different but the essence of the whole hasn’t changed much.

A massive amount of resources is being spent today in the development of a single technology, electric vehicles. So much could be gained if automakers could agree in one standard from the get-go and allocate the extra resources to the development of really revolutionizing technology. Renault could take the lead and start a major change.

The Driver of Tomorrow

Stop for a second to think. Do you believe 100 years from now people will drive cars the same way they do it today? The level of drivers’ sophistication and expectations will be completely different and companies will have to adapt to those user demands. Companies that don’t adapt will die and new players with innovative products and different ways of thinking will rise.

As an example, look at the kind of investment Honda is making today in brain machine interface technology. Simply imagine the possibilities and the impact of such technology in the automotive industry. Another breakthrough idea is self-driving cars. There has not being enough research and investment in this area, and especially big auto makers don’t seems to understand that this vision is not too far away.

The way I see it, there will be 2 well differentiated needs from the driver of tomorrow. First, the “urban driver”, that simply needs a way to get to and from home to the workplace. This need is very basic but important. People don’t want to get stuck wasting time in traffic and focus on driving. Instead, they want to use that time more productively by reading the news, connecting with other people (for work or personal affairs), read a book, etc. Public transportation is very inconvenient and people want the flexibility of having their own mean of transportation. In the future, I believe that “public transportation” will have a very different meaning.

Second, the “weekend driver”, that wants to enjoy driving in the open roads and have control over the automobile. However, the needs of this driver are completely different than today. This driver, even if s/he is in control of the car, s/he still wants easy access to road information, facilities and communication links with multiple other devices and people seamlessly.

Does this mean that each person will have 2 different cars? Maybe, I don’t have the answer and this is what Renault needs to figure out. The solution could be a vehicle that is able to adapt to the different needs.

Smart Roads, Smart Homes

We all know that movements towards a more integrated road system are on its way. Any vehicle will be able to exchange information with other vehicles in the road and with the road itself and the uses of this kind of technology are numerous. However, big auto makers don’t seem to see this as a priority and are delaying innovation. In the case of Renault, I have not found any information indicating that the company understands the need to change the type of innovation in which it invests.

Talking about interconnectivity, vehicles will not only be able to exchange information about the driving conditions, but they will connect with multiple devices at home, work and other locations. For example, a vehicle can retrieve food stock information from the house’s fridge, send the list of products to the supermarket while the driver is going out of work and going home. Smart homes will become more prevalent and cars will become part of the smart home interconnectivity.

Now the question is: can Renault do this alone? The answer is obviously no. I propose two approaches to take on this problem. First, Renault should forge new partnerships with a whole new set of players. Second, open the R&D lab.

Partnerships

In order to achieve high level of success and be a player in every sector of the market, Renault will have to create new links with players that it would not have imagined before. Let me start with an easy and obvious one, Microsoft. Microsoft Auto is helping to change the user experience in the cars by integrating seamlessly car functions with external devices.

Global telecommunication companies like Vodafone will also be of significant importance in the future. Vehicles will need to be connected all the time and exchange information with other devices (in and outside the car) nearby and faraway.

Other high tech companies like Sony, HP or IBM can help Renault to change the rules of the game. Rethinking new ways of satisfying drivers and integrating technologies that these companies already master well in their own domain should be adapted and incorporated in the vehicles of tomorrow.

If you think of data storage and processing, partnering with Google or Amazon could be a smart move from Renault. Renault doesn’t have to become an expert on things that already exist today and it doesn’t have to spend large amount of capital building infrastructure that can be accessed at a very low cost. Finally, with the advent of social networks, Renault could use Facebook or even Twitter to boost a new community of innovators working for Renault. This lead me to the last point: open design

Open Design

As of today, car makers are very secretive about their new designs and innovations. A small group of people spend years in an R&D lab before any of those ideas see the light of the day in a commercial vehicle. Many of those ideas don’t even see the light of the day and die in the lab. The main reason? They were not needed in the first place or they are way too expensive to commercialize. As you see in the graph below, only 17% of the options in cars today are actually sold to consumers.

Figure 1 - Source: http://www.car-innovation.com/pdf/studie_car_innovation_2015.pdf (Page 16)

In my opinion, if Renault were to use the same resources it dedicates to R&D today to foster an external community to brainstorm ideas and collaborate, the return on investment of those resources could double, if not triple. This way Renault would have access to a large pool of talent at a lower rate. Even more, ideas could come directly from Renault customers (or any driver) without them being design experts. Sometimes the smarter idea doesn’t come from the expert in the field.

By adopting this approach, Renault would lose part of what makes its cars unique but it has a lot more to gain. Producing cars that exactly match the needs of its customers and include many more useful features than any competitor can be a clear competitive advantage. Renault wouldn’t even need to produce the car itself, it could outsource that part of the process and become just the hub of ideas and development of final products.

Summing up

The goal of this memo is to start the conversation about the kind of investments Renault should make in the future and what should be the focus of the company in the years to come. Renault today masters the technologies of tomorrow, such as hybrid and electric cars and will be able to monetize those in the short term; I have no doubt about that. However, other auto makers are already thinking ahead and Renault needs to take an overarching vision of the auto industry. In the future, only the auto makers that are able to integrate with other technologies and think as cars in a completely different way, to the point of putting in danger their own business models, are the ones that will be able to reap the benefits of the change.

A cool video from Honda about the future of mobility (a large part of my memo is based on this)

2009-04-27T09:46:00.001-04:00

Intel's View of Media (and TV)

2009-04-27T08:22:00.002-04:00

Intel's view on media.

--
Enjoy.

Memo to Mayor Adrian Fenty, Washington, DC City Government (Final Version)

2009-04-27T07:22:00.004-04:00

Elected officials are often re-elected on their ability to avoid economic vicious cycles and create virtuous cycles. In the coming years, IT is going to play a major role for cities that wish to reinforce their virtuous circles of growth. Governments are going to have to become even more open while protecting privacy, increasing security, and facilitating business. All this will have to happen in the mist of cutting costs and reducing the overall burden of government.

Mr. Mayor, your next CTO should be someone who not only manages IT for the city government, but also helps set strategic priorities and implement organizational change for all departments. The next wave of IT for the city is not simple re-engineering the way groups of people do business, it will be about re-engineering the way the entire city government works.

Even the General Service Administration has recognized the intersection of IT and strategic priorities. In a recent report they argued that the country needs to: 1) create an open technology environment, 2) treat data as a national asset, and 3) foster a culture and framework for collaboration.

Swimming in Data

Cities collect massive amounts of data on their citizens and businesses. However, today much of this information remains in data silos, inaccessible to other government entities and the public at large. As both bandwidth and processing power increase, the ability to send much of this data over networks is getting easier.

Once upon a time, cutting edge things like posting land records and ordering duplicate drivers licenses online are now par for the course. Today's cutting edge cities are using this power to streamline complex approval processes, like the city of Brampton has done. Some governments are even employing agile methods to reduce the time to design and deliver. The sheer scale increases in processing power and network bandwidth are opening more and more doors. This will allow cities to set up more one-stop-shops, interact with citizens more online, and reduce frustrations and runarounds. In fact, Consolidation and Shared services are the top two priorities for state CIOs today.

Mashups represent one way of sharing and consolidating services. Mashups publish data and allow the community to create links between data as it suits their needs. Mashups are fast, flexible and provide rich information. Yet, they require a lot of granularity. Many powerful ideas came out of DC's own mashup contest. Imagine how much more could be accomplished if more data were made available.

Yet, mashups require some way of linking two pieces of information, so when it comes to individual people red flags go up. For a time, social security numbers were a de-facto national ID number that could be used to link data on individuals. Civil libertarians are concerned about the idea of a centralized ID number, in light of identity theft and the possibility that other sensitive information about a person could be released. Today the Federal government is revisiting the Federal ID mandate due in part to lack of funding and concerns from civil libertarians. Even still, governments need to find ways to make their databases interoperable while addressing privacy concerns.

Concerns surrounding privacy and security are justifiable and the mayor and CTO are going to have to work together to help define comprehensive rules. It seems that no data is truly safe in light of recent hackers' success in breaching pentagon war planes. Yet almost all records that the government maintains today are digitized in disparate databases. Keeping such information in a less-structured format does not make it more secure. In fact most of it is probably less secure than if it were subject to a comprehensive set of security rules.

So, is it important enough to risk political capital and wade into a morass of privacy issues? Yes. DC has a choice, it can help shape public issue life-cycle or it can wait and have a set of rules thrust upon it once the federal government and other states have set them. Many people have already begun to search for ways of both meeting privacy concerns and publishing valuable information. This isn't just a technology issue, it is a political issue that requires heavy involvement of the political establishment.

The next CTO should establish a working group to outline comprehensive guidelines for working with confidential records. Such a group should include some of the civil libertarians who are opposed to the creation of a national ID, elected officials, and of course technologists. The group will work to ensure that only the right people have access to confidential information.

Once government databases can talk to each other more effectively, governments can aggregate data, make it anonymous, and publish it for study. Civil society can help answer some of the most pressing questions and in some cases, using data that spans decades: How can we reduce the amount of government services a person will need over their lifetime? What predictive factors are there for certain undesirable activities such as crime, bankruptcy or even chronic diseases? We have much of this information today, but it isn't accessible. By studying such data we can contribute to a virtuous cycle by finding better ways of investing in people, developing their self sufficiency, and preventing some from ever falling ill. Otherwise, we will remain behind the curve, doling out cash when people get sick, wind up bankrupt or worse, after a crime has been committed.

Cities will also be able to build better predictive economic models. How much can we expect to collect in taxes from an individual (NPV of a taxpayer)? What programs will increase that person’s earning-power? If economic growth decreases, how much money will the city need to cope with increases in support payments such as unemployment and welfare? Which individuals are more likely to lose their jobs? Which individuals are more likely to lose their homes? What can be done to help them in advance? What neighborhoods are more likely to see an increase in crime?

We are just scratching the surface of such questions today. Having the answers to these questions represents a shift from reactive government to proactive government. And as we begun this post, governments that can be proactive will be able to support virtuous economic cycles. It will also allow government to help people to help other people.

Shared Services

Because the value of physical and social networks is high (proportional to the square of the number of participants) cities must not overlook the power of their own residents. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter may be a powerful tool to reshape the culture of cities and drive the decisions of business and social services.

Today, the District government relies on third-party organizations to supply services such as education, drug treatment and mental health. In the future, cities will be able to facilitate peer to peer networks to increase the quality of support and decrease the burden on government coffers. For example, Chicago uses a peer to peer network to monitor elderly during inclement weather. Similar efforts are in use to help those living with certain diseases, mental health illnesses, survivors of violent crimes and so forth.

Social networks also help industries to congregate, just as many pharmaceuticals have recently relocated around New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It isn’t enough today to make an attempt to attract knowledge workers, all cities are making similar attempts. The District must target specific knowledge workers who can benefit from being closer to people with similar interests and work experience, as well as being integrated into DC’s current fabric of workers.

Social networking is also being used by law enforcement to publicize the activities of criminals and monitor the activities of high-school children. Police and neighborhood activists can coordinate to increase the amount of information on neighborhood crimes while limiting access to appropriate levels. This requires close coordination in addition to the ability to maintain confidential records.

Given the increasing prominence of social networking, perhaps the government should investigate the possibility of building an open-source government social networking platform to get more value out of the data in current silos. Then, just like Facebook, developers could write miniature applications to enhance performance. Such a system would undoubtedly prove more reliable and more comprehensive way of organization information than many of the methods we use today.

Change Management

Earlier we discussed how state CIO priorities are consolidation and shared services. This is going to require government agencies to open up even more than before. Resistance to change, especially sweeping changes, is often enough to derail such an undertaking. It isn't simply the technology of change that will be daunting; it is the internal politics of change too. Undoubtedly, workers will feel that their jobs and livelihood will be threatened, in some cases rightly and in some cases not.

To counter this resistance, the Mayor and CTO will need to coordinate closely. The next CTO is going to have to be skilled at establishing a vision for non-IT staff, negotiating with key agents, and building a guiding coalition. The District is going to need to step up spending on retraining staff for new roles. The greatest issues facing the CTO stem from the politics that have arisen because of the technology available today. If the CTO sees his role as battling civil libertarians then he will be doomed to failure. The CTO will need to see himself as a coalition builder who can lead a fractured group uncertain of its own destination.

Final Thoughts

Mr. Mayor, I hope this post has been useful for you. I've included a lot of links to relevant articles.

I hope that when you select your next CTO, you will choose someone who has the soft skills to succeed in addition to the technical skills. The next CTO will need your support to set strategic priorities and implement organizational change for all departments. You should work closely with the CTO to create groups that can tackle divisive issues such as a universal ID number. Remember, the next wave of IT for the city is not simple re-engineering the way groups of people do business, it will be about re-engineering the way the entire city government works.

PS, the posting below was for class discussion.

DC City Government

2009-04-23T10:04:00.002-04:00

As a city government, profits are not a relevant way to measure performance. But we can examine revenues vs costs as a salient substitute. Costs and revenues provide feedback for each other. For example, in the late 1980’s the real estate market collapsed and DC soon began to run into fiscal problems. The cuts to city services drove many middle class black families out of the city and the subsequent loss of income taxes further exacerbated the fiscal problems. Abandoned and boarded up houses attracted crime and violence. The city soon had the highest per capita murder rate, highest per capita HIV/AIDS rate and one of the highest high school drop-out rates in the country. Ironically, the city’s decline benefited neighboring jurisdictions as young professionals moved to the suburbs for better schools and safer neighborhoods. The DC government eventually was forced to give up power to a financial control board. The control board, free from the types of political pressures an elected government turned around city finances and economy1.

Given that revenues stem from income taxes, corporate taxes, sales taxes, property taxes (based on home values), and fees the core competence of a government is its ability to bolster the local economy.

Therefore, this paper will examine how Moore’s Law, Metcalfe’s Law and Bandwidth law can reinforce a positive or negative feedback loop in a city economy. I believe that four of the items in the exhibit have the potential to revolutionize the way that city governments perform.
Cities collect massive amounts of data on their citizens and businesses. Such information include licensures, use of services, location, payment of taxes, qualifications for and receipt of city services. However, today much of this information remains in data silo’s, inaccessible to other government entities and even public researchers seeking to find solutions to problems facing cities. As both bandwidth and processing power increase, the ability to send much of this data over networks is also enhanced, provided that such information can be linked together.

For a time, social security numbers were a de-facto national id number. Governments are going to increasingly search for ways to make their databases interoperable. This will allow them to set up more one-stop shops and reduce frustrations and runarounds.

Once such linkages are created, governments can aggregate data, make it anonymous, and publish it for study. Society at large can help governments answer some of their most pressing questions and in some cases, using data that spans decades. How can we reduce the amount of government services a person will need over their lifetime? What predictive factors are there for certain undesirable activities (crime, bankruptcy…).

Cities will be able to facilitate peer to peer networks to decrease the burden on government coffers. Today, Chicago uses a peer to peer network to monitor elderly during inclement weather. Similar efforts are in use to help those living with certain diseases, mental health illnesses, survivors of violent crimes and so forth. Social networking is also being used by federal agencies to monitor the activities of criminals. Police and neighborhood activists can coordinate to increase the amount of information on neighborhood crimes while limiting access to appropriate levels. Further, social networks can be used to enforce compliance

Cities will be able to develop predictive economic models. How much can we expect to collect in taxes from an individual (NPV of a taxpayer)? What programs will increase that person’s earning-power? If economic growth decreases, how much money will the city need to cope with increases in support payments such as unemployment and welfare? Which individuals are more likely to lose their jobs? Which of them are more likely to lose their homes? What can be done to help them in advance? What neighborhoods are more likely to see an increase in crime?

Update on Shaws Supermarkets

2009-04-23T00:00:00.001-04:00

Though my thoughts are finalized on this yet, here's an update on where I'm going with this at the moment.

Based on Scott and Prof Venkat’s comments, I have expanded my thinking away from the consumer a bit to include other ways a grocery chain can adopt its business model. Although I still think technological changes at the consumer level could have a greater immediate impact to Shaw’s profitability, it’s true that utilizing technology to develop new ways to expand the normal “sell food” business model of grocery stores has very significant longer term potential as well.

I plan to discuss what Shaws can do on a consumer level to get up to speed and even push boundaries in terms of technology, while also exploring what B2B side services can be enabled by technology improvements throughout the value chain.

I've previously mentioned many consumer technology related ideas. On the business side, I have a number of ideas related to Shaw's role of data capturere and retailer of other's goods.

For example, take the shopping data that Shaw's collects. if Shaws were to open or sell access to real-time customer shopping data, companies could add extra value to the shopping experience through coupons and suggestions that influence other products to be purchased. This would give the food suppliers a truly dynamic way to interact with customers and is an example of one of the ancillary revenue streams that Scott and Prof Venkat suggested. Additional examples could include allowing other retail partners access to information such as letting Weber cross sell grill equipment to people who buy lots of hamburgers, etc... At the core, Shaws knows food and retail, and should not deviate too far from their strength, however, creating value through the data they already collect (or will collect once their technology is updated) could be an intersting way to expand the business model. There is one example - I'm working on developing other ideas and ways they can expand their B2B offerings and create value.

Memo to Bernard Arnault Chairman and CEO of LVMH (1st Draft)

2009-04-22T21:29:00.001-04:00

Memo to Bernard Arnault Chairman and CEO of LVMH

Introduction

LVMH is composed of a fashion side (LV) and a spirits side (MH). This recommendation pertains to the fashion side of LVMH, though could easily be expanded to incorporate the spirits side as well. The LV side of LVMH is made up of:

Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, Pucci, Fendi, StefanoBi, Thomas Pink, Donna Karen, eluxury, Dior, Loewe, Celine, Berluti, Kenzo, Givenchy, Guerlian, Benefit, Fresh, Make Up For Ever, Acqua di Parma, Tag, Zenith, HUBLOT, Fred, Chaumet, De Beers, DSF, Sephora, MCS, La Bon Marche, Samaritaine and Groupe Les Echos along with various other sub brands within these companies, such as Dior Watches.

The future of retailing is of course uncertain, but there is certainty in that the industry is evolving in multiple different directions and no one can predict exactly what path it will follow.
Without an options strategy LV will not be poised to maintain their leadership in the ever-changing retail world, as their company is a behemoth without the ability to move in one cohesive direction. Whether it is Facebook apps, RFID, mirrors that talk to your friends and make fashion recommendations, or some unforeseen game changer, LVMH is not poised to successfully operate in the future.

Basis for Recommendation: The Dire Need for Change
My recommendation is to poise LVMH be completely integrated and nimble enough to turn on a dime and adapt to any new technology. It’s a small victory to be first to implement a new retail technology, but it is a major competitive advantage to organize your internal systems to be able to quickly utilize any new technology, thus ensuring that if your competitors implement something new, you are never far behind with a better iteration. The multi-year, one-brand-at-a-time technology adoption approach is archaic, and by the time the last brand implements a change, it is already out of date.

Currently each brand operates independently or semi-independently with various levels of corporate oversight. LVMH’s role in the fashion empire is essentially to manage each brand and maximize profit. Going forward their role needs to change to one of information broker, central corporate hub, and strategic innovator. LVMH should have pristine companywide data in which to analyze trends and modify their options strategy.

When Sephora has a customer, LVMH may eventually get their customer history and run some reports, but this customer will be entered separately in every brands POS system, and the data is not truly combined in any meaningful way.

Recommendation
I am proposing that LVMH uses their massive computing power from running over 50 separate companies, thousands of servers, massive citrix farms, and multiple underground data centers, and gets into the cloud computing business. LVMH’s job would be to maintain the cloud openly within its brands allowing for mass customization and development. In the long run they could offer cloud computing as an external service. While this is currently outside the scope of this recommendation, it is a feasible option with the computing power they currently control.
LVMH would use the POS system they developed in-house called RMS and host it as SaaS for all of their brands to connect to. Instead of dozens of POS systems and databases there is now only one. Each brand would no longer need their own technicians and legacy systems and would also not need to maintain their own servers and software.

An open API would be provided to every brand to customize the POS system to fit their individual needs. This could go as far as each sales associate and manager having a completely different POS interface when they log into the system.

Data fields such as customer name and address would run from one database provided as a service to all brands. While the display is customized, the data is uniform, and you now have corporate customers instead of individual brand customers. Inventory would be coded per brand for ease of use, but visible to all brands so that a “mirror of the future” can offer suggestions in the store from any of the brands and all items can be ordered on the spot.

System Flexibility: Cascading Benefits
The goal again is not to create a system that will work with the above mentioned mirror, but to create a system that will easily adapt to any new technology that arises. Using the mirror as an example, imagine if you are in Dior buying a dress and the mirror outfits you with Benefit makeup, an LV purse, a Fendi wallet, a Tag watch, a Marc Jacob coat and a De Beers diamond necklace. You friends give you the thumbs up, and The Dior sales associate then sells you this entire order. The dress is wrapped up for you and all of the other merchandise is shipped to your house. A sale of one item now turned into a profit for seven different LVMH brands, and the sales commission of that associate just skyrocketed.

The system provides the ability for your sales associates to make more money, thus increasing their motivation and their loyalty to the company and of course corporate profit. Brands become cross-promoted and the fashion empire becomes one integrated kingdom instead of 50 separate fiefdoms.

“Facebook-like” and “Facebook the Omnipresent”
The POS system would function in the same regard as Facebook with the open API that would allow LVMH to be increasingly more nimble. With Facebook everyone logs into the same site, but everyone’s experience is completely customized with unique apps, different preferences and unique pages. Data is shared in real time and users can talk about their experiences. The LVMH POS system will act in this exact way, having a common underpinning, but allowing for both direct and indirect network effects though the ability of any associate to create value capturing application.

For example say that an associate at Fendi creates an app that allows him to track the weather during each sale. Other Fendi stores like the idea and soon Fendi’s associates and LVMH corporate are rating and talking about the benefits of this app related to staffing and merchandising. This app is of course available for all other brands to utilize.

Next a sales associate at Pucci reads one of these reviews on his homepage, and adds the app to his computer. Shortly thereafter all weather data from both Fendi and Pucci is being captured and analyzed.

If the idea catches on, more and more brands could add this app. You have now given the brands a platform to create dynamic capabilities for the entire corporation. One sales associate can now influence the entire future of LVMH though the creation of these apps.
Furthermore data capture is no longer forced onto an entire brand. If only 5-10 stores from a few brands try a new app LVMH is still provided with great data to analyze. Maybe they deduce that sales are up an average of 7% in malls when it rains since people want to be inside and thus flock to shopping havens. This nugget of info appears for all brands to see and stores that did not even know about the weather app now reap the benefits of more accurate staffing and merchandising.

Retailers have trouble with distinguishing garbage data from useful data and another issue with being able to do anything useful with either type of data. Forcing all brands to track the weather may turn out to be pointless, but if one brand proves it useful others can join in. On the other side, apps that prove fruitless can be abandoned just as easily without other brands having to test them and waste time capturing useless data. This useless data can then be purged from the source system at a much lower cost than having thousands of POS terminals remove the weather flag from their system.

The advantage that this type of data agility gives LVMH is immeasurable. In the past one brand would come with an idea, another may adapt that idea to their legacy system and later both may find out that it was useless data. Now you have two systems with useless non-compatible data. On the other hand, if the data is useful now 50 other brands need to alter their legacy systems to track this new data, thus creating 50 non-compatible databases of the same data.
This system would also be directly linked to an actual Facebook app. Customers would add the app on Facebook, search for themselves in the LVMH database or add themselves as a new customer. They can then get shopping tips, alerts about sales, and track their history. LVMH can directly communicate with each customer, and gain even more information about them.
Shopping Experience

As a customer, when I walk into Thomas Pink, the associates will have my shopping history from all LVMH brands, and will be able to analyze my needs and wants with aggregated data. I would image that being a VIP at Dior and then walking into Fendi for the first time and being treated like a nobody is a big turn off to someone who spends thousands of dollars at a time shopping. This lack of data may quite possibly cost Fendi a large sale.

This new system would adapt to stop this situation. With an RFID store card from any brand the customer is instantly recognized by the system, the sales associates are alerted to the customer name and status, and a New York 5th Avenue Fashionista, can be treated as they are expect when they walk into a new store of a new LVMH brand in LA.

The New Role of LVMH
With the creation of this system the role of LVMH changes as noted above. They are now charged with maintaining data integrity, spotting emerging trends, enabling the system to adapt to these trends, and constantly innovating and adding features that advance the industry. As Apple has migrated from a hardware/software/manufacturing company to a design firm, so will LVMH migrate from a corporate enforcer to a constant innovator and player of the options game.

RFID, Facebook and intelligent mirrors are all potential options, and LVMH can interpret the data for themselves and decide which ones to invest in. However, this integrated SaaS system in the cloud allows LVMH to take an options strategy and quickly adapt to new technologies. No longer will 50 brands across thousands of store in dozens of countries have to individually upgrade their systems, and no longer will Benefit Cosmetics have to maintain a clone install of their POS machines and reapply this clone to every register worldwide upon every tiny change. Now all cosmetic modifications can be made at the associate level, but enterprise wide upgrades are made only once and are accessible to all stores.

These enterprise-wide upgrades will be along the lines of adding RFID functionality, or creating an interface to the personal mirror. As noted LVMH will be trying to predict the future, but they will now be armed with an organization that can quickly adapt to change, can instantly test pilot ideas across the globe, and can interact as never before.

CEO Memo for Gap

2009-04-22T21:24:00.001-04:00

Mr. Glenn Murphy, CEO of Gap,

The retail industry was originally a specialized model operating in local markets and offering limited selection – requiring shoppers to visit the local cheese shop to purchase cheese and the butcher for meat. The industry then gravitated to mass economies of scale and standardization. This had a tremendous effect on improving operational efficiencies, but at the cost of losing the intimate relationship with the customer. Today the industry, driven by the consumer’s appeal for self-identity and differentiation, is moving back towards specialization sparking initiatives of customer involvement and customization.

Gap is suffering from an identity crisis. It has terminated its unsuccessful Forth & Towne brand only a few years after its launch. For its three core brands, including its flagship Gap brand as well as Old Navy and Banana Republic, the company is undergoing store closings after years of overexpansion. No longer can it rely on producing khaki’s and chino’s on a mass scale. There are too many competent players with superior brand equity who have entered this space forcing Gap to compete on price.

Gap added piperlime.com last year as a continuing initiative to develop its online presence. By combining all three of its brands’ websites and with the addition of piperlime.com, Gap is trying to become an Amazon.com influenced one-stop marketplace for fashion apparel, accessories and footwear. Piperlime sells shoes and handbags, a market that had been underserved by Gap. Interestingly, Piperlime does not sell its own products, but rather is simply a marketplace selling third party branded products. Gap customers can select designer brand items to complete their entire wardrobe without leaving Gap’s domain. However, it is questionable whether Piperlime will be a success as it fails to help Gap differentiate itself from other competing online stores.

To succeed, I argue the need for Gap to rebuild its relationship with its customers by taking advantage of today’s interconnectedness. Gap can inexpensively leverage its scale with suppliers to offer a personalized solution to meet the popular consumer trend for customized clothing to suite the desire of individualism. Gap needs to leverage the expertise of its customer base through several social networking initiatives, two of which will be central to this memo; auction markets and customer design.

For too long retail has been getting innovation wrong by focusing on low order innovation, such as marginally improving the process of design, manufacture, or logistics. Small revolutionary retailers such as Netflix or Threadless have challenged the status quo, leaving past leading retailers behind. These unresponsive modes of behavior and self-defeating habits lead to the failure of retailers to meet the challenge of re-invention.

As a leading retailer, Gap ought to be at the forefront of this trend by innovating in ways that will create a more sustainable model of growth. A CEO ought not to focus on the lower end/reactionary innovations, but rather innovation of a different order. Simply having a Facebook page is not enough. To leverage the network through consumer engagement within their business model can be only accomplished with the stewardship of the CEO leading the transformation of Gap from a firm centric approach of design and innovation to a more network based approach.

Empowering the customer in the design process is a critical component to improving customer loyalty. Gap should offer customers a way to design and customize their clothing, such as modifying size, color, pockets, and other specs. Utilize social networking and social retailing to involve the customer in the design process. This should help control inventory by avoiding spoilage as well as reduce the need for discounting which tarnishes the brand in the long-run. Most importantly, customer design provides the customer with the feeling of involvement with the brand. Customers are more loyal to support a brand they feel a part of and have a stake in its success.

As fashion is a fickle industry it is a challenge for any design team to accurately predict the popular trends. Gap can leverage auction markets to better forecast demand. This will result in direct benefits such as a more efficient design process and an improved optimization of shelf space with the clothes that are most likely going to sell well. Having a better assessment of what will sell reduces inventory risk. Auction markets should not only be utilized prior to the new fashion season, but should be continued throughout the season to get a sense of consumer behavior, enabling Gap the flexibility to change what it manufacturers to reflect real time shifts in consumer preference and sales patterns. Speed to market and having the dynamic capabilities to adapt to changing conditions is as important as choosing the correct fashion.

Along with the auction system, Gap should consider holding design contests to help globalize their design department. This model is similar to Threadless, but with Gap’s globally recognized name, such a model could dramatically alter their design program. Rather than rely on a couple hundred designers in one of two locations, Gap could utilize millions of aspirational designers across the world. Gap’s design team decides which designs fit the Gap brand and which are feasible for production, and then allows the market to decide which design Gap should produce for the upcoming season. This should bring more traffic to the site as more and more people will be drawn to provide their input as well as should drive traffic into the stores as consumers are more willing to support a brand they feel they have a vested interest in seeing succeed.

What is most remarkable regarding the above recommendations is that they aren’t new ideas. In fact, these technologies are currently out in the marketplace and being used by companies in multiple industries across the world. With the advances we have seen in bandwidth, Metcalfe and Moore’s laws, the network infrastructure allows companies of all sizes to revolutionize their fundamental models. The critical success factor for companies is having a leader who believes in this shift to the network and is willing to change an organization that has been accustomed to its set of ways.

Textron CEO Memo Update

2009-04-22T19:09:00.000-04:00

Textron's long history has given them years of experience designing and repairing many of their products, including the world's most popular aircraft, the Cessna 172. While I believe they have leveraged IT within their organization, I cannot find any information that they have been able to use IT to leverage their vast customer base. For example, there are clubs dedicated to many of their products where users can share their experiences and knowledge of operating Textron products, but the company itself offers no such service nor does it seem to interact with these clubs in any way. I believe creating a network for larger scale customer interaction could allow Textron to do anything from maintain good customer relations to conduct analytics on equipment performance. This would enable the company to take advantage of a vast array of information currently only accessible to owners and local repair personnel.

In my memo, I plan to describe a strategy for the company to take advantage of many of the recent changes in information technology to allow the company to take advantage of their long running customer base. In addition to access to information, I believe this would allow Textron to pull a thread through areas of the value chain where they currently do not have a presence (such as with many localized service centers around the world).

Thoughts on CEO Memo

2009-04-22T17:30:00.001-04:00

In thinking about my CEO memo for ThermoFisher Scientific, my mind keeps going back to the business shifts that have happened in both the financial industry and the retail industry where large amounts of processing capacity and bandwidth have dramatically altered the way that value propositions need to be made in those industries. The element that interests me the most is how the build up of processing power in the hands of Amazon led them to exploit cloud processing models, which was completely out of their original line of business, but has placed them at the forefront of an emerging new ecosystem of services.

In thinking about ThermoFisher, one of the worlds largest producers of scientific analysis equipment, I can't shake the thought that each one of these analysis assets (which is found in every biotech, pharmaceutical, hosipital, etc.) has a datasystem hooked up to it which in the past decade has been engineered to pool scientific data from multiple units for integrative analysis. If one follows the trends that we have discussed in this class to their logical conclusion, then a potential service must exist where a player could pool all of that scientific analysis together and run massive collective research functions at a cloud-based service structure and charge on a transaction basis, much in the same way Amazon is doing. This would allow for smaller laboratories to access massive amounts of research without making a huge investment in processing power (a business that ThermoFisher does not get anyway since they do not make computers) and also allow larger businesses to save money by being able to divest their server farms. This would also provide massive postive feedback effects to Thermo, since they would be able to get real-time live analysis of what kind of research is being done and therefore be able to invest their R&D dollars in the proper place (much like GE and the smart jet engines).

Is our information safe?

2009-04-22T08:14:00.001-04:00

I was surprised to see on cnn.com this morning and article that said, "hackers stole data on Pentagon's newest fighter jet". The article went on to say that, "thousands of confidential files on the U.S. military's most technologically advanced fighter aircraft have been compromised by unknown computer hackers over the past two years". Although no classified information was accessed, it is scary to think that the US government's "most technologically advanced fighter aircraft" is not impervious to attacks.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/04/21/pentagon.hacked/index.html

CEO Memo - New Balance

2009-04-21T16:38:00.000-04:00

I have decided to change the company of my CEO memo to New Balance. I interned at New Balance over the summer so I have insights into the company both as an employee and consumer. Some of the issues I will focus on are: social networks, co-creation and data management.

Health 2.0

2009-04-21T16:15:00.000-04:00

Following up on our previous discussions on health care and the use of social networks for patients and doctors, EHR, take a look at this article on health communities:

http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13437940

Oracle Sun Mashup

2009-04-21T03:51:00.000-04:00

How come nobody has written about the Oracle Sun deal yet?! With this latest acquisition, Oracle will be all over that Microsoft chart from Prof. Venkat's class. This NYTimes article talks about how enterprises now prefer to get all their software and hardware needs from a single company. Although, wouldn't this make you highly dependent on your provider? They say Oracle has taken over Sun to enter into the hardware business. But along with all those cloud computing servers, comes Sun's pretty impressive software. Java, on which many software systems and mobile platforms run (including Oracle's own middleware), comes with this deal. MySQL the popular and free database from Sun, which has been a pain for database providers like Oracle, is also under Oracle's control now. Oracle could very well choose to "kill MySQL from neglect". This could have an impact on all those technologies (especially open source), which use MySQL.

Oracle acted quickly after IBM's failed attempt to grab Sun, and has put itself in an advantageous position against IBM (which is a strong competitor with its DB2).

Healthcare and IT

2009-04-20T16:43:00.000-04:00

There is an interesting section in the latest Economist on Healthcare and IT. The synopsis starts as follows.. "The convergence of biology and engineering is turning health care into an information industry..." It covers some of the ideas that we have discussed in class-including personalized medicine and health 2.0. It is of interest to not only the two groups that focused on the transformation of healthcare but also those developing their memos to the CEOs in the healthcare sector.

John Deere Memo Update

2009-04-20T16:17:00.000-04:00

Over the last 10 years, John Deere, a maker of agricultural and construction equipment, has been an industry leader in using IT to maximize productivity and minimize costs for its customers. For Deere, the most important strategic question is not how it can create value for its customers w/IT - Deere has done a great job of that and will likely continue to be a leader in this area - the most important strategic questions are: 1) what can Deere do to capture its fair share of this value; 2) how can Deere maximize the total value it creates for its customers and, in turn, for itself; and 3) how can Deere ensure that it will continue to capture this value in the future?

I will focus on the agricultural sector in the memo and have come up with a recommendation that I think does a good job of addressing questions 1) and 2):

Deere's tractors are currently interface with 2 major IT systems: a telemetrics system, which is developed and operated in partnership with Qualcomm, and farm management software, which runs as standalone applications that process field data collected by sensors on the tractors. Since the tractors are GPS-enabled, the farm management software can determine exactly how each square foot of soil should be prepared the following year. This leads to significant reductions in pesticide and fertilizer costs and higher crop yields for the farmer.

I plan to recommend that Deere merge its farm management software with its telemetrics system so that it can offer the software as a service. This would allow Deere to charge on a per-acre basis each year (capture its fair share of the value) and would allow it to sell the service to farms of all sizes (maximize the total value by selling to all segments). The part I haven't quite figured out yet is how Deere can ensure that it will continue to capture the value into the future, which gets at the question of open vs. closed architecture.

So far, Deere has kept its architecture entirely open. This has served the company well, since it has enabled advanced operation of third party equipment, like sprayers and fertilizers, from the driver's seat. It has also allowed third-party software to be easily integrated with Deere's equipment to offer key functionality. However, an entirely open architecture could potentially allow 3rd parties to offer the same farm management software services as Deere, which would lead to lost revenue and pressure on margins. So, the question is should Deere change its open architecture policy and become "strategically open" to protect its software services business? If so, which services should it protect and what changes are required to do so?

My current thinking is that Deere should somehow close the architecture around data that can only be collected by its tractors (i.e. machine diagnostics and crop/soil info, although the latter gets a little tricky since it could also be collected by peripheral equipment) and remain open in all other areas so that Deere can continue to integrate with 3rd party operating software, equipment, and subcomponents. If anyone has thoughts on this I'd appreciate your comments.

Ford Bets the Fiesta on Social Networking

2009-04-18T11:42:00.002-04:00

Wired has an interesting article on Ford's efforts to make their cars appeal to the millennial generation. Part of their efforts to create buzz about the upcoming Fiesta models included giving 100 cars away to people who would discuss their experiences through their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr accounts.

Pirate Bay verdict and its impact on Google

2009-04-18T11:42:00.001-04:00

The owners and operators of Thepiratebay.org were sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay compensation and damages in totalling $3.6 million dollars.

Piratebay DOES not hold content but only provides index to the data stored on individual computers.Google provides similar indexing facility, thus there is abig debate about 'who is the bigger"pirate"?'.

Check out the news at

Why Google Is The New Pirate Bay

http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/17/pirate-bay-google-technology-internet-pirate-bay.html

This verdict has again raised the same questions gain;

1. Will the law be able to keep up to technological developments.

2. What kind of revenue model can solve the problem without putting unnecessary load on the justice system time and time again.

Google has already been notified by the Newspaper industry to start paying up for the news that it aggregates , now with this verdict threatening the basic search model of Google, how will the whole industry shape up?

A Discussion on Healthcare and IT

2009-04-16T08:18:00.000-04:00

This blogpost from Microsoft elaborates on some of the issues that we have discussed in our class about the need for interoperability of data within the healthcare system. The two key issues holding us back are:

First, there is the “it’s-my-data” wall put up by hospitals, insurance plans, pharmacy benefit managers, and others......

The second wall is the “waiting-for-the-right-standards-set-by-government” wall. There are multiple excuses buttressing this wall; the core of which come down to technology, standards or policy excuses.

The blog is worth reviewing for those dealing with healthcare IT and in other sectors where similar ideas may be holding us back from making significant strides.

Reinventing the Home Phone? (Verizon)

2009-04-15T12:48:00.000-04:00

Here is the businessweek article discussing the Verizon Hub. It shows that the hub even limits some functionality that Verizon already has built into their phones.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_15/b4126065685084.htm

Thought it would be useful to read after todays discussion.
--jz

eBay Spinning Off Skype

2009-04-14T22:01:00.001-04:00

Skype was mentioned again in the mobile presentation Monday, and eBay just announced that they will spin off Skype next year through an IPO. As most of you are aware, eBay has struggled to justify the price they paid for Skype and they later had to write down much of that value, and this "un-doing" of the acquisition is due to limited synergies with eBay's other services. However, Skype is still growing at a rapid pace, and it'll be interesting to see how this IPO will go down, especially during the current economic environment with very few IPOs taking place.

Thinking of a Social Network Strategy for your memos?

2009-04-14T12:50:00.000-04:00

For those of you thinking of building a Social Network strategy for your memos I wanted to share with you this link to Forrester Research which gives some insight of how social network activity can be segmented and where should money be spend.

Disrupters: No more phone bills

2009-04-13T22:39:00.000-04:00

Vonage, MagicJack and other such VoIP services are already luring customers away from traditional wireline phone services, but they all require users to pay a monthly/yearly fee. But there's a disrupter which only requires users to pay for the cost of the device - and no service fees thereafter.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/09/technology/copeland_ooma.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008120915

CEO Memo to GE Healthcare

2009-04-13T11:46:00.000-04:00

At the end of today's class we talked briefly about the importance of data in healthcare. The value of our health information cannot be underestimated and the ability for providers to access data literally saves lives. This is the reason why you hear about EHR's constantly. GE provides an EHR along with a suite of software solutions that are supposed to encompass the needs of an entire hospital (and its affiliated provider practices). Yet, many providers still prefer best of breed solutions rather than all-in-one packages. With interoperability in healthcare still a mess and the government pumping billions into EHR's across the country (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10161233-38.html) how does GE position itself to capture the market?

I suggest one area they should consider is moving its solutions to the cloud. We all know about SaaS and the success of Salesforce.com, but in healthcare these ideas are relatively untapped (check athenahealth.com http://athenahealth.com/). GE still prefers the model of selling full software suites to consumers then adding maintenance service on top. I think there could be a mjor shift away from this model over the enxt ten years and I am not sure GE is positioned well to transition. Thoughts are welcome.

Sony Counters Amazon

2009-04-12T13:13:00.000-04:00

As anticipated, Sony has countered Amazon's launch of Kindle 2: in partnership with Google, Sony has added 500,000 new titles to the 100,000 e-books currently available on the Sony Reader. Sony is giving away the books for free. Here's a link to the article.

More trouble for big-name publishers?

2009-04-12T12:30:00.000-04:00

This article, published in BusinessWeek last week, predicts a big drop in the prices that major online publishers can charge for banner ads. Part of the disruptive force that is putting pressure on prices is a company called Quantcast, which uses cookies, mathematical models, and billions of direct observations each day to determine the demographic characteristics of the people that visit the millions of websites that it tracks (all of the data is anonymous). The article's theory is that if advertisers have access to this data, they will no longer need to place banners ads on marquee sites to reach their target customers.

The article also contends that publishers could use information like the data collected by Quantcast to sell ads for untapped reader segments. However, I doubt that these additional revenues would offset the revenue lost by big publishers due to the banner ad price reductions. It looks like more trouble for the big-name publishers...

Military to Adopt Electronic Health-Care Records

2009-04-12T10:05:00.000-04:00

Last Friday, WSJ posted an interesting article about the plan to let the military adopt electronic medical records. The concept of EMR is still new and needs more efforts to make it available to everyone. So the plan probably could build a model for the civilian health care and be an important factor for the success of EMR.

More at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123929168372205381.html#articleTabs%3Dcomments

Should Banking Be Mad Boring?

2009-04-10T14:19:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, Paul Krugman argued in the NY Times that banking should be made boring again. Essentially, he thinks that the best financial reform would create a system that lessens household debt and the incentives for people to develop sophisticated and complex financial instruments that may lead to a recession like the one we're currently experiencing.

Do you believe this will happen? I think that to some extent that it may be a good idea to decrease the risk, but at the same time I don't think the innovation within the financial industry will (or should) be stopped. We discussed micro-financing during the presentation the other day as a relatively new phenomenon which has both its advantages (available credit and relatively good returns) and disadvantages (people increasing their debt even further), but I'm not sure that Krugman would agree that these kind of developments would be beneficial to the society as a whole.

True/Slant Tests Another Model Of Web Journalism

2009-04-10T09:06:00.000-04:00

I thought this demand based approach is an interesting way to ensure the survival of quality journalism on the internet.

-Scott

True/Slant Tests Another Model Of Web Journalism
By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

As newspapers, magazines and TV stations face dire economic challenges, and journalism moves increasingly online, debates are raging about how best to preserve quality news and commentary while still making money.
There's lots of experimentation with different approaches. Many journalists, old and new, are operating as stand-alone bloggers, but finding it hard to make a living. Web advertising has weakened with the economy, and often can't cover the costs of expensive reporting. A couple of respected traditional publications have successfully attracted large numbers of paid subscribers online, but many others who have tried have failed.
Web publisher True/Slant stands out in several ways, Walt Mossberg says. For starters, it treats its journalists as independent entrepreneurs and splits ad revenues with them.
Meanwhile, advertisers also are scrambling to figure out the best way to sell their products online, in a manner that both attracts potential customers and blends in well with the content and style of news sites. And publishers are trying to capture the conversation and sense of community that permeate services like Facebook and Twitter.
This week, a new Web news site is entering the fray, with a novel approach to journalistic entrepreneurship, new forms of advertising, and an effort to blend journalism and social networking.
The site, called True/Slant, at trueslant.com, is opening its doors via an odd preliminary status it calls an "open alpha." This means it's rough around the edges, and not yet taking in revenue, but hopes to attract enough participation to hone its design and operation.
True/Slant is run by a former news executive at America Online who worked at a variety of publications, including The Wall Street Journal. It covers a wide range of topics, such as politics, culture, sports, business, health, science and food.
It is launching with 65 journalists, or "knowledge experts," assigned to specific topics. Each of these contributors gets a page to house their journalism and, it is hoped, an active social network of followers who will regularly discuss the articles they read there. Each page also will feature headlines of stories elsewhere on the Web selected by the contributors. These "headline grabs" link back to the originating outside site.
The initial group of contributors includes current or former writers for publications such as the Financial Times, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Time magazine and the Boston Globe.
Readers can go directly to the page of their favorite contributor, but the site's home page will knit together popular content and contributors, and each reader will be able to track multiple topics and contributors through a streaming feed called "I'm following."
True/Slant will run regular Web ads throughout. But, in a highly unusual move, the site plans to offer advertisers their own entire pages where they can run blogs and try to attract a network of followers. These will have the same design and features of the journalists' pages, but will be labeled as ad content.
The journalists are paid a small amount, but the plan is to turn them into minipublishers under the True/Slant umbrella. They will be offered a share of the advertising and sponsorship revenues their individual pages generate and, in some cases, equity in True/Slant, which is backed by venture capital.
Mossberg's Mailbox
Downloading Video Files
These contributors are allowed to keep writing elsewhere, either online or in traditional media, and even to promote these outside efforts on True/Slant. But they are expected to post original commentary and analysis to True/Slant. They also are allowed to arrange for their own advertising or sponsorships, in addition to what True/Slant can sell, and even, in some cases, to add other authors to their pages.
In another unusual move, the contributors also are required to actively engage with readers on the site. They must post a minimum number of comments in reader discussions about their articles and curate the comments, giving prominence to the most interesting. They are even expected to comment on each other's posts.
This required engagement is an attempt to capture some of the excitement of a social network, and it ties in directly with a contributor's success. On the home page, and elsewhere throughout the site, True/Slant promotes not only the most popular contributors, but also the most active ones. High rankings in these categories can lead to higher traffic on each contributor's page, and, indirectly, to higher income.
Readers who are active commenters can also gain prominence on the site, especially if those comments are popular or called out for special attention. A front-page panel will highlight the most active commenters, and the most called-out comments.
The layout of the site is clean and handsome, a decent effort to meld a news site and a social network. One layout flaw the company hopes to fix: There's no easy way to find a list of all topics, only those it considers hot at any moment.
It's way too early to know if True/Slant will succeed. For one thing, it is still dependent on advertising, not subscriptions. And ethical questions could arise, because the site's operators don't edit or preapprove the content, and the model of blended journalism and advertising could prove problematic.
But it's another example of how the Web is changing traditional media, and might be worth a look.

Broken Record

2009-04-07T22:32:00.000-04:00

Just an update on what has quickly gone from a cold war to a very hot one. A week after The Guardian asked the UK to look into news aggregators use of other people's original content to drive revenues, Rupert Murdoch suggested that services like Google News should start paying for content. A couple of days later the AP said they'd "pursue legal and legislative actions" against aggregators who use member content without permission. Google's response? Quit whining and create a product readers want. With newspapers going belly up left and right this is going to come to a head very soon. Stay tuned.

Social Media Marketing

2009-04-07T01:06:00.000-04:00

In preparation for the presentation about the retailing industry, check some examples on how youtube, facebook and twitter are providing social media marketing:

http://www.youtube.com/TargetCorp

http://www.youtube.com/user/RLTVralphlauren

http://www.facebook.com/jcpenney

http://www.facebook.com/bestbuy

http://twitter.com/SearsOutlet

some videos on bluecasting and interactive billboards, storefront windows..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ3da2T4v74&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9anoYblzl8I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg4ip8MlgE4

Enjoy!

Google Health expands deal with CVS

2009-04-06T16:26:00.001-04:00

Electronic Health Records may not be a standards war but is a war nonetheless and Google has landed the first blow by partnering with CVS.

By partnering with CVS google has improved on the use of Health records. Now the health records do not just sit on some google server for fun , but can be used for prescription at CVS.

Microsft..your turn!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10213205-92.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

iPhone Apps for Healthcare

2009-04-06T11:39:00.000-04:00

---
I wonder if any of you have researched and compared different healthcare-related apps on Facebook (or Apple iPhone). I was interested to see what your assessment was as you develop insights on IT-enabled transformation in healthcare or your recommendations for the CEOs in the health sector..

retailing, role of consumer and the CEO Challenges

2009-04-06T11:27:00.000-04:00

This ties back to the IBM CEO study that we reviewed at the beginning of the course.

--
Enjoy!

Threat to Globe

2009-04-06T09:15:00.000-04:00

There was an article in the Boston Globe last Saturday that addressed consumer concerns regarding the possibility of shutting down the Boston Globe. (After daily publishing for 137 years!)

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/04/05/threat_to_globe_triggers_flood_of_feelings/

GE QuietCare Video

2009-04-06T08:42:00.000-04:00

A recent set of videos on IT in healthcare, which further elaborates on some of the ideas that we discussed in class.

--

Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems details his vision for Sun

2009-04-06T08:15:00.000-04:00

Not many CEOs blog as regularly and as insightfully as Jonathan Schwartz of Sun (in my opinion). Do take a look at his recent blogposts. I like to hear your reactions and responses..

The iPhone Gold Rush

2009-04-05T09:13:00.000-04:00

Good article for all those game developers out there
-Scott

April 5, 2009
The iPhone Gold Rush
By JENNA WORTHAM
IS there a good way to nail down a steady income? In this economy?
Try writing a successful program for the iPhone.
Last August, Ethan Nicholas and his wife, Nicole, were having trouble making their mortgage payments. Medical bills from the birth of their younger son were piling up. After learning that his employer, Sun Microsystems, was suspending employee bonuses for the year, Mr. Nicholas considered looking for a new job and putting their house in Wake Forest, N.C., on the market.
Then he remembered reading about the guy who had made a quarter-million dollars in a hurry by writing a video game called Trism for the iPhone. “I figured if I could even make a fraction of that, we’d be able to make ends meet,” he said.
Although he had years of programming experience, Mr. Nicholas, who is 30, had never built a game in Objective-C, the coding language of the iPhone. So he searched the Internet for tips and informal guides, and used them to figure out the iPhone software development kit that Apple puts out.
Because he grew up playing shoot-em-up computer games, he decided to write an artillery game. He sketched out some graphics and bought inexpensive stock photos and audio files.
For six weeks, he worked “morning, noon and night” — by day at his job on the Java development team at Sun, and after-hours on his side project. In the evenings he would relieve his wife by caring for their two sons, sometimes coding feverishly at his computer with one hand, while the other rocked baby Gavin to sleep or held his toddler, Spencer, on his lap.
After the project was finished, Mr. Nicholas sent it to Apple for approval, quickly granted, and iShoot was released into the online Apple store on Oct. 19.
When he checked his account with Apple to see how many copies the game had sold, Mr. Nicholas’s jaw dropped: On its first day, iShoot sold enough copies at $4.99 each to net him $1,000. He and Nicole were practically “dancing in the street,” he said.
The second day, his portion of the day’s sales was about $2,000.
On the third day, the figure slid down to $50, where it hovered for the next several weeks. “That’s nothing to sneeze at, but I wondered if we could do better,” Mr. Nicholas said.
In January, he released a free version of the game with fewer features, hoping to spark sales of the paid version. It worked: iShoot Lite has been downloaded more than 2 million times, and many people have upgraded to the paid version, which now costs $2.99. On its peak day — Jan. 11 — iShoot sold nearly 17,000 copies, which meant a $35,000 day’s take for Mr. Nicholas.
“That’s when I called my boss and said, ‘We need to talk,’ ” Mr. Nicholas said. “And I quit my job.”
To people who know a thing or two about computer code, stories like his are as tantalizing as a late-night infomercial, as full of promise as an Anthony Robbins self-help book. The first iPhones came out in June 2007, but it wasn’t until July 2008 that people could buy programs built by outsiders, which were introduced in an online market — called the App Store — along with the new iPhone 3G. (The store is also open to owners of the iPod Touch, which does everything that the iPhone does except make phone calls and incur a monthly bill from AT&T.)
There are now more than 25,000 programs, or applications, in the iPhone App Store, many of them written by people like Mr. Nicholas whose modern Horatio Alger dreams revolve around a SIM card. But the chances of hitting the iPhone jackpot keep getting slimmer: the Apple store is already crowded with look-alike games and kitschy applications, and fresh inventory keeps arriving daily. Many of the simple but clever concepts that sell briskly — applications, for instance, that make the iPhone screen look like a frothing pint of beer or a koi pond — are already taken.
And for every iShoot, which earned Mr. Nicholas $800,000 in five months, “there are hundreds or thousands who put all their efforts into creating something, and it just gets ignored in the store,” said Erica Sadun, a programmer and the author of “The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook.”
The long-shot odds haven’t stopped people from stampeding to classes and conferences about writing iPhone programs. At Stanford University, an undergraduate course called Computer Science 193P: iPhone Application Programming attracted 150 students for only 50 spots when it was introduced last fall.
“It completely surpassed our expectations,” said Troy Brant, a graduate student who helped teach the course. Turnout has been equally strong this semester, he said.
As early as the summer of 2007 — a week after the iPhone first hit the market, and long before Apple let outsiders sell software for it — Raven Zachary, a technology consultant, decided to organize an informal get-together for fans of the device. The event, held in San Francisco, drew nearly 500 people.
Since then, he said, dozens of similar conferences have taken place around the world. “The concept has spread quite far and wide,” said Mr. Zachary, who boasts on his Web site that he “directed the launch of two top-20 iPhone applications,” including one for the Obama campaign. He expects the turnout at his conference this summer to be huge. “We may have to find a larger venue and hold simultaneous satellite events to accommodate attendees,” he said.
The rush to stake a claim on the iPhone is a lot like what happened in Silicon Valley in the early dot-com era, said Matt Murphy, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who oversees the iFund, a $100 million investment pot reserved for iPhone applications.
“People are realizing that by developing in their garage with a couple dollars, they could be the next Facebook,” he said. “It’s still early days for mobile development, but those days are coming.”
This time, however, the scale may be smaller. While iShoot is never going to be the next Google or Facebook, it is the type of program that people with minimal expertise view as within their reach. The fact that Apple handles the financial side of the transactions makes it particularly easy for mom-and-pop developers to sell their homemade software all around the world. (Apple keeps 30 percent of the revenue from each sale and gives the rest to the developer.)
“Even if you’re not a programming guru, you can still cobble something together and potentially have great success,” said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communications Studies at Rutgers University.
If there is ever an iPhone hall of fame, Mr. Nicholas’s portrait might hang next to that of Kostas Eleftheriou, a young Greek entrepreneur who lives in London. He and two friends wrote a program in seven days called iSteam, which fogs up the face of an iPhone like a bathroom mirror. They made more than $100,000 in three months.
It is little more than a party trick. When someone swipes a finger across the phone’s surface, iSteam’s pretend moisture is wiped away with a realistic-sounding squeak. When the phone is tipped on its side, droplets of condensation roll as if pulled by gravity. “It’s quite a good illusion,” Mr. Eleftheriou said. “Everyone wants to show their friends.”
The application hit the App Store in late December, and already Mr. Eleftheriou, who is 25, has decided to postpone graduate school and seek his fortune as an iPhone developer. He and his friends Vassilis Samolis and Bill Rappos, both 22, have set up a company called GreatApps and have hired two more developers.
“We don’t want to stop with iSteam,” Mr. Eleftheriou said. “Our next step is to establish ourselves as a big player in the application store.”
Both the iSteam team and Mr. Nicholas were spurred by the success of Steve Demeter, an inspiration for starry-eyed iPhone developers. Mr. Demeter, who is 30, wrote the game called Trism, which involves aligning rows of brightly colored triangles; he released it into the App Store last July and says he made $250,000 in the first two months. He immediately quit his job writing software for Wells Fargo and started his own iPhone game development company, Demiforce.
It doesn’t take much money to write these programs, Mr. Demeter said, and a larger budget doesn’t always mean more success. “Novel concepts that come out of left field are going viral,” he said. “These are the kinds of applications that will endure.”
The mobile frenzy hasn’t gone unnoticed by other major cellphone and software companies. Last week, Research in Motion opened an application store for the BlackBerry. Google recently began selling applications based on Android, its operating system for cellphones. Nokia is in the early stages of opening a store for its handsets, and Microsoft is creating a store for phones running Windows Mobile.
As for Mr. Nicholas, he has sprung for a family vacation to Washington, hired a nanny and founded a company called Naughty Bits Software to keep developing iPhone programs (so far he is the only employee). “Oh, and I bought myself a new laptop,” he said. “I figured I deserved that.”
He is in talks to adapt iShoot to systems other than the iPhone, and says that investors and big video game companies have approached him about financing his sophomore effort. He is also in full-swing inventor mode, working on a new game that he will not describe for fear that another developer might poach it.
“I’m going to milk the gold rush as long as I can,” Mr. Nicholas said. “It’d be foolish not to.”

Newpaper's Future

2009-04-03T17:00:00.001-04:00

This video is worth watching--if you have not seen it already.

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Intelligent Medical Devices

2009-04-02T18:40:00.000-04:00

As reported on Apr 2, 2009, one of the world's best chip makers, Intel, formed an alliance with GE Healthcare. To me, computer chips and medical devices should to higher intelligence in health devices; each company focusing on its core expertise. The result will be innovative ways for industry leaders to deliver personalized care based on prevention.

The monetary value of the partnership is relatively low, but the significance is high.

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From the web:

"The technologies are designed to help seniors live independently and patients with chronic conditions manage their care from their own homes, the companies said.

GE Healthcare will sell and market the Intel Health Guide, a care management tool designed for health care professionals who manage patients with chronic conditions. The companies also said they will combine "skill sets and extensive research resources to accelerate the innovation and commercialization of next-generation home health technologies."

Disney-YouTube Deal

2009-04-02T15:21:00.000-04:00

When we were discussing different control points in the media and entertainment architecture, I separated unlicensed content from licensed content and highlighted YouTube as a key player dealing with the former. But, we know that monetization is rather fuzzy with just unlicensed content and YouTube (Google) needs to figure out a way to be a key player in the way licensed content is distributed through hulu and others.
So, it is not surprising to see Disney enter into a landmark deal recently. This announcement (via BBC) highlights some of the key details.

Walt Disney and YouTube have signed a new deal to allow Disney to launch its own channels on the video sharing website. Highlights from Disney's ESPN sports channel and clips from its TV shows will be made available to watch over the next couple of months. A key part of the agreement is that Disney will have the right to put adverts in its output.
YouTube is keen to be seen as an outlet for high quality video. In a statement, a Disney spokesperson said the deal offers "the opportunity to reach a broader, online audience as well as extend the reach of our advertisers". YouTube is by far the world's most popular video sharing website. However, it's coming under more pressure from Google to start converting its huge user numbers into cash.

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It should not surprise us at all to see more deals..

Publishers find innovative, new revenue streams

2009-04-02T09:36:00.000-04:00

During our multimedia discussions last week, I often thought about what the future will look like for publishers and music labels. Will they disappear all together? It was easy to see that their production and distribution monopolies are evaporating, but I wondered about the other services they offer, such as content-filtering and marketing, and whether there might be a continuing role for them to play.

While I was browsing the web trying to get smart about this, I found this article about how some publishers are successfully responding to decreased advertising revenues. The companies are essentially leveraging their internal knowledge, industry expertise, and client base to move beyond their traditional business and generate new revenue streams, mostly in marketing services. Worth taking a look at if you're interested in how publishers are responding to internet disruption.

China's Desire to Leapfrog with Electric Cars

2009-04-02T09:03:00.000-04:00

An interesting news item in the NY Times today about China's desire to lead with electric cars

Chinese leaders have adopted a plan aimed at turning the country into one of the leading producers of hybrid and all-electric vehicles within three years, and making it the world leader in electric cars and buses after that.

...
What caught my eye was their plan to create tomorrow (exploration) while the incumbent industry participants tinker to fine-tune current business models (exploitation).

To some extent, China is making a virtue of a liability. It is behind the United States, Japan and other countries when it comes to making gas-powered vehicles, but by skipping the current technology, China hopes to get a jump on the next.

...
One of the key messages of IT-enabled transformation is: Do we think of IT's role as rectifying current weaknesses through fine-tuning the established business model or use it to create the future business model. We laid out the shift in the automotive DNA in class and this move seems to indicate that China is not keen to produce low-cost cars within the pre-established paradigm--perhaps leaving that to Tata Nano while positioning to lead in the emerging auto industry.
...
The same article mentions that:

The United States Department of Energy has its own $25 billion program to develop electric-powered cars and improve battery technology, and will receive another $2 billion for battery development as part of the economic stimulus program enacted by Congress.

We need the stimulus to be directed more at creating the future auto sector if we have to compete effectively against what China may offer in the world market in the coming decade.

Cisco Telepresence in the home

2009-04-01T20:58:00.000-04:00

I've been reading Dr. Halamka's blog Life as a Healthcare CIO since he spoke to our class during the summer intensive. He's just had Cisco Telepresence installed in his home basement so that he can telecommute to his many meetings and conferences. Although we've discussed Telepresence in the office it's interesting to think about having it in one's own home. Talk about reducing your carbon footprint! Here is an earlier posting in which Dr. Halamka mentions his plan to install Telepresence in his home.

I encourage you to subscribe to his blog if you haven't already; it's quite interesting. He blogs mostly about innovations in IT (particularly in healthcare) but also discusses green technology and his own lifestyle as a locavore.

Vitality GlowCap

2009-04-01T18:03:00.000-04:00

Vitality GlowCap is a product to remind users to take their medicine. The product fits right on top of standard prescription bottles. It can wirelessly connect over 900MHz band to a USB stick on your PC to:

Send a weekly update to a friend, family member or caregiver

Remind you to reorder your prescription when running low

Email you and your doctor a report detailing your adherence to the prescription

Check out the company website above, or this SlashGear article.

HBR - Multi-Sided Platforms - Your Google Strategy

2009-04-01T09:50:00.000-04:00

Harvard Business Review decided to go for a snappy title even though it's evident in the first paragraph that it is not about Google but about multi-sided platforms (MSPs) in general.

Regardless, the article helps to get you thinking about what you should outsource vs build in house. Especially as we think about Moore's law and Metcalf's law and separating our infrastructure from what we run on it.

Google Launches Free, Legal Music Downloads in China

2009-03-31T20:11:00.000-04:00

In another small step forward on its unrelenting march toward worldwide media domination, Google has launched a free music download service in China with the cooperation of major music labels there. According to the article, Google hopes to draw users to its service with better quality in a country where 99 percent of all music files distributed are pirated. In addition, the company hopes that this service will help it compete with its rival, Baidu.com, which unlike Google, offers mp3 searching and downloading abilities.

Skype for the iPhone

2009-03-31T20:02:00.000-04:00

This is something we talked about last year in IS717. Free Skype for the iPhone is now available. A blackberry version is expected in May.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/30/skype.iphone/index.html
http://www.pcworld.com/article/162179/sneak_peek_at_skype_for_iphone_available_tuesday.html

Creators vs. Aggregators

2009-03-31T19:17:00.000-04:00

Last week during our presentation on Media & Entertainment, my team and I posited that newspaper publishers and other professional content creators were going to want to get a piece of the value captured by aggregators like Google News and Digg. It looks like that tug of war is getting underway: Guardian wants Government to look at Google News. It'll be really interesting to see how this plays out in the UK and if we'll see a similar move by one of the big players on this side of the pond any time soon.

H-P May Use Google's Android for Some Netbooks

2009-03-31T18:14:00.002-04:00

There've been rumors of something like this for the last couple of years. That being said, I think this time around the timing might be right, and it could mean that Android is the distribution that finally brings Linux to the mainstream. A lot of netbooks running Linux end up getting returned because the OS either doesn't run the applications the users are used to or doesn't have native driver support for their periferals. Android faces similar problems, but I think the Google brand, coupled with an increasingly rapid transition to browser based applications (think Google Docs, webmail, or even Andy's post last week about OnLive), could give Android the boost it needs to be a real player in this space. Imagine an Android netbook preloaded with Google Desktop, Google Chrome, a selection of Android apps, and Gears versions of Google Docs. We're already seeing netbooks subsidized by major carriers in exchange for 2-year data plan contracts. Would you be surprised to see H-P and Verizon team up to offer those Android netbooks for $100 in the next year? Oh yeah, here's the story I'm referring to: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123852934905974845.html.

Of course, how long are netbooks even going to matter? In all likelihood, netbooks are going to be transitional devices that fill the gap between full featured laptops and smartphones until the two completely converge. When you don't have physical media and all your processing is done in the cloud, the only thing you'd be missing in a smartphone that you get in a laptop is the interface (keyboard & mouse) and the larger screen. How many years before we see periferals for our phones that take care of that problem?

Samsung TV with Internet Conenctions

2009-03-31T16:44:00.001-04:00

This is one of the shifts that we discussed.

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I am sure we will see more convergence in the coming months..

Can Second Life help teach doctors to treat patients?

2009-03-30T14:14:00.000-04:00

This article is about medical students in England htat are supplementing their studies by treating patients in second life. Students can see patients, order X-rays, consult with colleagues and make diagnoses. Their professors can observe them so they can correct any mistakes.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/03/30/doctors.second.life/index.html

Robots Preforming Surgery: Bandwidth Law

2009-03-30T12:56:00.000-04:00

This article from portfolio.com does a good job of illustrating the bandwidth law on the advancement of surgery. They have robots who currently perform surgery while being operated by a surgeon (ie the robot is not thinking, the doctor is).

What they want to do is have the best doctor anywhere in the world perform a surgery from afar but any packet loss or a delay of any sort can be critical to the survival of the patient.

Regardless of feelings about having someone thousands of miles away performing surgery on you, this is an interesting way to think of the bandwidth law, and will this every be good enough to trust your life with, since any risk of a interference or signal degradation would be a to big a risk for many people to trust.

http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/dual-perspectives/2009/03/03/Outsourcing-The-Surgeon

Twitter Terrorism

2009-03-30T09:07:00.000-04:00

In our discussion about news and Twitter being used for the dispersion of news, I couldn't stop thinking about how we are pushing the publishing time of information being digested as news to a shorter and shorter period of time that does not allow for proper fact checking. As we have seen in the example about the flood (which is being repeated for the Fargo flood), a news event can be reported and virally spread through Twitter users at a very fast rate. To me, this leaves open the risk of having people (for whatever reason) utilize Twitter to cause havoc by reporting false events and having them rip through the Twitter ecosystem quickly without proper time for verification.

Let's say that you are a retail store chain and one of your competitors is opening a new store in an area downtown. You don't want this to be successful, so you hire a random college student to create a program reports on Twitter that a large fire is happening on that city block. That student had ripped the usernames and passwords of other local college students so they have access to many accounts, or they have skillfully created real looking people that local groups have started following due to their image and comments (perhaps even through engineered false Facebook pages). The accounts that this person has control over quickly spread the rumor about the fire and immediately the fire is verified through the chain by simulated other people. This could dramatically effect new store sales, eh?

This could even take a more dramatic turn if one believes a US Army report speaking about how Twitter (with its relative anonymity) could be used to manage terrorist attacks in real time. (link)

For Lauren :-)

2009-03-28T23:16:00.000-04:00

I have posted this on Facebook... but I little bit of humor won't hurt our blog... So in case you missed it here it is again... enjoy

I actually think this is a great opportunity to get Lauren excited for some cool discussion

More on Twitter

2009-03-28T12:56:00.000-04:00

It's funny - I could never really understand the appeal with Twitter. The way I see it, who am I to presume that others (aside from possibly my parents) want to read about the daily minutia of my life? It makes sense, then that there's some heavy - and candid - twittering amongst celebrities. This recent NYT article provides some interesting insight into the "Celebrity Twitter Ecosystem".

Twitter...again

2009-03-27T13:55:00.000-04:00

To follow up on our discussion of Twitter the other day (which spilled out into the hallway and eventually ended up in the grad lounge), it's going to finally start cashing in on its popularity. Twitter's preparing to offer enhanced services to commercial users, for a price. They haven't set a date, but it's expected that these services will be launched sometime in 2009. On another note, I think the evolution of Twitter's demographics has been really interesting. A year ago middle aged men were the biggest group of users on the service. This year, the largest group of users are now 18-34 year old males. It started out as a tool of the technocrati, and I think those roots are reflected in these demographics. I also find it interesting that the majority of users make over $60k per year, with 28% making over $100k. On the flip side, young people aren't using this service, with only 1% of their users coming from the 12-17 age bracket. By comparison, 30% of Facebook's users come from that age group. What does that mean for Twitter going forward, as those 12-17 year olds grow up? I'm also really curious about how the vast ecosystem of Twitter based applications are going to respond if twitter starts charging for access to their APIs?

I know, enough about Twitter. Just one more thing: I wouldn't be surprised if the Twitter brand fades into the background, supplanted by the vast and growing ecosystem of apps and services based on their technology. I fully expect that "tweeting" will be the generic term for microblogging by the time those 12 to 17 year olds start entering the work force.

Lost in the Clouds

2009-03-26T18:19:00.000-04:00

The article attached below summarizes the growing confusion over the definition of “cloud” computing. The idea of the cloud is not a new one and has been used for years to represent a nebulous area outside of one’s immediate systems. The widespread adoption of this metaphor has spurred companies to invent such creative names for new offering as Stratus, OpenCirrus, and Azure.

With the overuse of this term and the uncertain meaning behind it, Cloud computing may evaporate as quickly as Web 2.0 and cyberspace.

Wall Street Journal- March 26, 2009

Moving beyond portals

2009-03-26T10:18:00.000-04:00

As I was listening to our team's presentation and the other media group's, I was noting the number of 'portals' mentioned throughout the presentations. TV portals, movie portals, user generated video portals, news portals. The value in having these portals is clear, I don't need to go to 20 sites to watch user generated videos, just YouTube. But, if I want news, time to move on to the news portal, and if I want tech news, well, time to go to the tech news portal, and so on... This seems highly inefficient.

I may just be getting back to our discussion on Google News and customizing the articles by choosing your source of choice, etc, but there must be a better way to do it than visit 10 portals, 3 different types of aggregaters, and a dozen other random sites I visit.

Maybe there are solutions out there already that I am unaware of, or maybe all I'm looking for here is some kind of hybrid mix of RSS feeds and mashups with many content types, but if had a way to customize a mix of content and different types of sources (video, audio, news, etc) to a central location there would definitely be some value there.

Anyhow, just thinking out loud here...

Game consoles a thing of the past?

2009-03-26T10:01:00.000-04:00

Picking up on Mitch's piece from yesterdayI caught this on Cnet last night. Official company website here. The basic idea (see graphic below, sorry it's fuzzy) is that they house the games on their servers and stream them to your computer, set top box, whatever... They've already lined up some content providers to work with it as well (EA, take-two, Ubisoft, etc). As far as video games and consoles go, it's an interesting idea. Why should I bother having a particular console if I can stream the same to my living room without a console? (Except of course their streaming box "console"). If I can get all the games that are currently platform specific through one system without buying three consoles, it's a compelling idea if I'm a gamer. The details are not fully fleshed out yet, and it's true that some of the value of an Xbox 360 is through network effects of the online interaction, but clearly with gadgets like this around the corner console makers are going to need to provide more services and capabilities to get people to buy.

Newspapers May be a Thing of the Past in Michigan

2009-03-25T23:23:00.000-04:00

To piggyback onto Zack’s point from class today about daily newspapers moving to web-based models, four markets in Michigan will cease or drastically reduce their printed circulation and move to an online model where the emphasis will be on reader input and community forums. It was announced Monday that starting in July, the 174 year-old Ann Arbor News will become AnnArbor.com, and will only produce printed editions two days a week. The Ann Arbor News has a weekday circulation of 45,000. The Flint Journal, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times will also be reducing their daily printing to Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays only. In addition, these three papers plan to lay off 35% of their workforce.

Media Sector and Open APIs

2009-03-25T14:55:00.001-04:00

I thought we had a good overview and spirited discussions on the transformations underway in the media sector. Here's a presentation from Guardian Newspapers in the UK that discusses 'open' strategy and touches on some of the ideas that we have covered in our course so far. Hope you find this useful as part of our discussions of IT-enabled (driven) business transformations.

The Open Strategy

View more presentations from mattmcalister.

Memo to the CEO-- Sovereignbank

2009-03-25T09:16:00.001-04:00

I choose Sovereignbank for a couple of reasons:
1. my interest in financial intermediation industry (esp. in banking). Given the current global financial meltdown, it is a time of restructuring and reshaping for the industry. How banking can better use the technology available to better serve its stakeholders is an interesting path to investigate.
2. Sovereignbank came as a natural choice as I’ve done my summer internship with them. Also, in the end of February 2009, they were acquired by Banco Santander, one of the few global banks who reported stable profits in 2008. Again, it’s a moment of opportunity, of change for the bank.
Some initial thoughts to choose from for the Memo are: how data mining capabilities are used for price versioning towards business clients (the interest& fees are mainly influenced by credit history and business performance, but also by others factors), how the anticipated move towards more traditional business model banking can be leveraged by technology capabilities, “democratization of finance” (Stiller).

Missing the Point with Print Media

2009-03-24T18:00:00.001-04:00

Here is a related article to our discussion of the newspaper industry and a fine example of your elected representatives comprehension of the changing world we live in. The AP reports that a senator has suggested making the newspaper industry tax-free in an attempt to help them survive. Other than the obvious fact that taxes are paid on profit, which newspapers are not making, there are additional issues that touch on where newspapers will place themselves within the layers of the industry. One glaring example is how papers continue to focus on their editorial content or will use editorial content as one area in which they will be able to extract value. Non-profit status will greatly limit the types of editorials they can run due to campaign finance regualtions [the non-profit info is down towards the end].
To add one final point, notice where I found the article, Google News. Though this is probably no surprise since the industry's own advocacy association shows 67% of subscribers are over the age of 45, which in my opinion will only increase in the future.
Legislation like this will not help a failing industry.

On-demand cloud gaming

2009-03-24T13:51:00.000-04:00

A company called OnLive will be launching a remotely-hosted gaming experience, essentially gaming as a service. Using your normal computer, inputs from the controller are sent to a remote server and graphical output is sent back.

This would all be fairly uninteresting, if it weren't for the fact that they are partnering with high-end gaming companies such as EA, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Epic, and Atari. Even graphically intense games are supported by this system, like Prince of Persia or Call of Duty. All you need is a 1.5Mbps connection for 480p video and 4-5Mbps for 720p video.

This will be quite cool if it works as well as they say it does. More info can be found on SlashGear and engadget. Here's a demo video:

A Recent Overview of Google's Android in the Mobile Space

2009-03-23T14:54:00.000-04:00

This video is a good overview that highlights some of the discussions we had in the course.

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Enjoy it.

March Madness for Social Media

2009-03-23T12:43:00.000-04:00

This is an interesting article on the future of social media. It pulls different social sites and runs a bracket in the style of March Madness to see who the general public thinks will win the social media battle.

Take a look at the wins of losses of each site, it goes though and shows the current strengths and weaknesses of sites such as youtube and twitter.

You can also vote as this gets to the final 4.

http://searchenginewatch.com/3633168

Cisco Acquires Another Consumer Electronics Company

2009-03-23T08:21:00.000-04:00

I thought this was interesting given the discussion we had about Cisco's "Human Network". Last week Cisco Systems bought Pure Digital Technologies (PDT) for $590M in stock. For those of you unfamiliar with the company, PDT sells a line of low end, simple to use, small form factor digital video cameras (Flip cameras). These devices are perfect for creating web videos, and, in Cisco's world, should fit nicely with their existing video conferencing business. It will be interesting to see if they release "good enough" video conferencing devices for the consumer market or if they simply maintain PDT's current focus. Here's an article about this acquisition: A Tiny Camcorder Has a Big Payday

“Do You Want Fries With That?” Outsourcing in the Fast-Food Industry

2009-03-22T13:20:00.000-04:00

Outsourcing is commonplace in some industries, such as high-tech and services. However, one industry that seems like an unlikely candidate for outsourcing is fast food. Yet, several chains such as Jack in the Box, Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr. are either experimenting with the idea or have implemented the idea in their drive-through windows.

These companies see many advantages to outsourcing such as improved speed and accuracy of order taking, in addition to freeing up restaurant employees to do other jobs such as take payments. Another major benefit of outsourcing for the industry has been the elimination of the language barrier that sometimes occurs between a native English speaking customer and a non-native English speaking employee. “According to Hudson Riehle, SVP of Research for the National Restaurant Association, remote order-taking can shave drive-through time by milliseconds, which can add up to millions for the fast food industry.”

So the next time you go through the drive-through at your favorite fast-food restaurant, be aware that you may be speaking with someone half-way across the globe.

Batteries Now Included

2009-03-21T09:59:00.000-04:00

In our team presentation on the automotive industry, Kel Frazier discussed the constraints of hybrid and fully electric vehicles at a high level. The issues of travel distance and battery charge time cause many customers to hesitate in making the conversion. The article attached below discusses the latest advancements that seek to eliminate the bottleneck of electron movement in lithium ion batteries and significantly decrease charge time. Rapid charge times may eliminate the need for batteries capable of holding complete battery power for long trips. In the future, long road trips may require quick charging stops similar to refilling a gas tank. Good news for all the truck stops across the nation.

Economist- March 12, 2009

Two striking news at the end of this week

2009-03-20T16:19:00.000-04:00

First one, IBM maybe buying Sun Microsystems. This is very strange to me since IBM has been moving into software and services and we know Sun is mainly a hardware company. In the article they say that IBM wants to leverage Sun servers to sell more services and add some of the software applications (Java, MySQL) to its product offering. To me, it looks more like a monopolistic move to try to erase the benefits HP is getting from the EDS acquisition.

Second one, Sony partnered with Google to offer content for its digital book reader. I am suprised that Sony made the first move to partner with Google. To me, it would have been more natural to see Amazon partnering with Google. I guess I was wrong. Amazon already has the content, so it doesn't need to partner with anyone. However, Sony is entering yet another battle to fight for a standard (as they did with Betamax and BluRay DVD). By partnering with Google, will they win??

Cadillac In-car Internet Coming Soon

2009-03-19T17:24:00.000-04:00

I saw this article on SlashGear about a new feature that Cadillac will be offering in their CTS Sports Sedan. The hardware is provided by a company called AutoNet, who will also be selling the device for $499 to retrofit on other automobiles. Service will cost $29 per month.

While other devices like this have been made available at retail before, this is one of the first to be provided by a top-tier carmaker. This could potentially lead to more widespread adoption across GM's product line, as we saw with OnStar.

Health and Crowdsourcing

2009-03-18T10:46:00.000-04:00

To me, the idea described in this article is incredibly exciting. Many organizations have begun to exploit the talent and knowledge that exists outside of our 'physical' and 'social' spheres/networks. How many better decisions could be made with a standardized information about genes? That is the question Friend hopes to answer and he believes that quite a bit can be gained. I tend to agree based on the experience of innovation on the Internet.

Thoughts?

The article describes:

"If Merck’s Stephen Friend gets his way, about five years from now, he will have ushered in a new era in which biologists work together to make drugs that are better than any company can today inside its walls."

---

"Sage is built on the premise that vast networks of genes get perturbed, or thrown off-kilter, in complex diseases like cancer, diabetes, and obesity. Scientists can’t just pick one faulty gene or protein and make a magic bullet to shut it down. But what if researchers around the world capturing genomic profiles on patients could get all of their data to talk to each other through a free, open database? A researcher in Seattle looking at how all 35,000 genes in breast cancer patients are dialed on or off at a certain stage of illness might be able to make critical comparisons by stacking results up against a deeper and broader data pool that integrates clinical, genetic, and other molecular data from peers in, say, San Francisco, New Haven, CT, or anywhere else.

Besides helping scientists aim higher, this will make medicine more transparent than ever, Friend says. Physicians from around the world could look at genetic profiles from their patients, match it up with the Sage database, and then prescribe the medicine most likely to work, Friend says. The FDA could look for insight into the proper balance between the risk and benefit of a drug. Health insurers could look at drugs for certain patients that have the greatest likelihood of success, and pay for ones that work. Drug companies could use the database to weed out treatments that are bound to fail or cause side effects for patients with certain genetic profiles, potentially saving years of wasted effort and hundreds of millions of dollars.

“We see this becoming like the Google of biological science. It will be such an informative platform, you won’t be able to make decisions without it,” Schadt says. He adds: “We want this to be like the Internet. Nobody owns it.”"

Major Technology Player: The Discovery Channel?

2009-03-18T09:12:00.001-04:00

When we spoke about the various large players in the technology market, who else should have been included in that market spectrum? Well, recent legal incidents might have us adding the Discovery Channel to that list. Yes, it is true, the same channel that brings us French-Canadian wildernessmen eating bugs and raw fish in the woods and endless hours of savanna lion copulation footage, is currently suing Amazon.com for patent infringement for various features that the Kindle possesses. Apparently, Discovery Communications (the parent company to the discovery channel) has some pretty impressive IP around digital content copy protection.

It will be interesting to see how this battle plays out, because who knows what kind of essential IP is being held by various companies that have not been considered technology players due to their inactivity. Perhaps they have the patent, but the bandwidth or networks had not existed to make their ideas reality. As entrepreneurs and larger firms react to the trends that we have discussed in this class, we will have to see if they end up tripping over a lattice of hidden IP traps held by various unknown players.

Article: Slashdot

Reinventing the Automobile: GM's View

2009-03-18T05:51:00.000-04:00

Here is a presentation from GM on 'reinventing the automobile.'

Converging on Sustainability: The New DNA of the Automobile

View more presentations from generalmotors.

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It builds on the discussions of the connected vehicle and the shift to the electric car as well as the role of electronics at the center of the new DNA.

Mr. Hulu Gets a New Gig: Former NBC Digital Boss George Kliavkoff Goes To Hearst

2009-03-16T10:59:00.001-04:00

Mr. Hulu Gets a New Gig: Former NBC Digital Boss George Kliavkoff Goes To Hearst

Posted using ShareThis

“The Cloud Is The New Dotcom” (Video Highlights)

2009-03-16T09:09:00.001-04:00

“The Cloud Is The New Dotcom” (Video Highlights)

Posted using ShareThis

Blellow: Social Project-Based Networking

2009-03-16T08:10:00.000-04:00

There is a new service called Blellow (must have found that name at the bottom of the .COM name bin) that mixes professional social networking like LinkedIn with a tool like Yammer (a professional sort of Twitter) and gears it towards fluid employment opportunities like independent contracts and temporary work. It allows for the dynamic creation of temporary project teams and provides social networking tools to promote and help facilitate the short-term team during the project.

From the various trends that we have been evaluating in this class and their many effects, we can clearly see the position that Blellow is taking. They are recognizing the labor is becoming less geographically anchored and that through the bandwidth law, there is more and more freedom to collaborate effectively through additional feature sets. It also leverages the value of the "network" of professionals idea in its most primal sense.

It will be interesting to see how the service does and also to see what effect it has on the other members of the social networking sphere.

Resources:

TechCrunch

Memo to CEO - PNC

2009-03-15T21:14:00.000-04:00

PNC is a financial services corporation. The memo to the CEO of PNC will mainly deal with the following:

1. In order to excel in the value discipline of customer intimacy it is imperative to customize services according to customer needs. This requires extensive customer knowledge gathering and flexibility. Information systems can play a vital role in understanding the customers better and identify new market opportunities. Expanding services available over the web, product innovation, customer relation improvement and identification of new technology and aligning IT with business needs will help PNC to improve customer satisfaction.
2. Better portfolio and documentation management and risk management software can help in making better investment decisions.
3. Leveraging IT to centralize regulatory information and high level communication by management and educating business executives of company objectives can improve the learning measures.
4. Mergers cannot be successful without proper IT integration. Survival of redundant applications can result in increased complexity, duplication of effort, separation of IT capabilities and also inhibit scalability. Investment for standardizing enterprise data and systems can ensure
flexibility and scalability.

Memo to Disney CEO Robert Iger

2009-03-15T19:41:00.000-04:00

I plan on sending a memo to Disney CEO Robert Iger regarding the role that IT will play in developing his espn360.com site.

1. I think developing the live streaming video capabilities will prove valuable in the future as technological advances will accommodate content on demand from computers as a replacement to more traditional entertainment options.

2. Developing the availability of archived video on demand will be a natural evolution of this technology as older content is converted into the digital realm.

3. Addressing the move to an online digital player from traditional television network in the future needs to begin now and with such players like netflix already taking this step increases the urgency for this transition.

4. The increased demand for all games to be digitally streamed will increase in the future. By becoming the leader in this market, espn360.com can be established as the premier oinline provider of digital media.

Memo to CEO - Suzlon

2009-03-15T17:33:00.000-04:00

Suzlon is the one of the largest players in the Wind Energy sector. The company is based out of India and has expanded its operations all over thw world.

Before the current meltdown, the demand for Wind Turbines worldwide was more than the supply and hence the company had the benefit to choose its customers. Surprisingly even the current economic situation, the company has reported a very profitable Q3 and is growing.

This is the perfect time for the company to leverage its current position in capturing more market share and making in-roads in new market segments and enter into the service part of business.

I plan to focus on the still developing service part of the business and identify how IT can play a significant role inthe same.

Suzlon can enter into the service part of the Wind Turbines, similar to GE into the jet engines servicing business.

Suzlon can use IT significantly to help companies mover from the traditional servicing model.

Right now the serivicing model is based onregular time interval and on-call. This can be modified by monitoring the wind turbines and managing the servicing in a more cost effective manner.

Moreover, IT can be used to better managed their current resources spread across the world. They manufacture parts of a turbine across the globe and then assemble them at the closest manufacturing facility and ship the product to the client.Using IT they can stramline their production and delivery model to be more cost effective and serve more customers.

IT can also be used for Marketing. They currently have negligible presence on the web and the marketing plan is not leveraging the power of the WEB. An integrated marketing plan can go a long way in creating the Brand , but it is not possible without using IT effectively.

CEO Memo - Office Depot

2009-03-15T14:50:00.001-04:00

I have chosen Office Depot as my company for writing the CEO memo assignment. The office supplies industry is indeed facing some really interesting times. Staples by far has been the most successful of the three big firms in this space (other two being Office Depot and Office Max). All the three players also offer technology products. With cirucit city going out of business and Staples trying to enter this segment through the test marketing of its technology stores, the industry is indeed changing rapidly. As the economy continues to contract and businesses cut spending I see a big role that technology needs to play to make Office Deport successful in comparison to its competitors. Some of the key things I will look to address in my memo are:

1. Rationalizing and Re-prioritizing IT projects to reflect the new economy. Office Depot is faced with a major liquidity crunch and in this era of slowing economy I would look to rationalize the portfolio of IT projects. The focus would be definitely on projects which require lower capital investments and have quicker turnaround in terms of ROI.

2. There has been a major focus on closing down unprofitable stores by the 3 major players. I believe IT systems can be leveraged for data mining the vast amount for sales and margin information from each store to better understand the profitability of each store. This will help rationalize the portfolio of stores in a more systematic fashion rather than ad-hoc store closures to cut costs.

3. Real Estate prices have declined significantly and this would also be a good time to invest in new store locations. As organizations close unprofitable stores and when the economy gets revived (hopefully) IT systems could be leveraged to build statistical models to predict profitability of new store locations based on historical data. Building such IT capabilities would help Office Depot better invest in opening new stores and improve profitability.

3. Improving Supply Chain would also be a big focus of my recommendation. Moica Luechtefeld who was appointed the Executive VP of IT was also recently (in 2007) made in-charge of Supply Chain and has an extensive background in Business Development and Supply Chain. This can be leveraged by developing IT projects to better manage the supply chain. One example would be analyzing the sales and profitability based on products categories in stories across North Aamerica and trim the unprofitable product lines. This will greatly improve liquidity which has been the Achilles' heel of Office Depot in recent times.

4. Online sales and e-commerce partnerships would be another major focus. Office Depot which was the largest e-retailer has been overtaken by Staples in recent times in terms of sales through online purchases. Online sales have higher margins and help better manage the Supply Chain. This will help boost Office Depot's profitability and will also help improve the liquidity situation.

Please feel free to comment and give suggestions as to more avenues I should explore or how to improve the above mentioned initiatives.

IT innovations help Kiva expand microfinance mission

2009-03-15T12:34:00.001-04:00

I came across an article on how Kiva is using facebook to expand microfinance mission. One of the major problems confronting microfinance institutions is to get funding for the investors. Facebook can help Kiva connect the investors to the MFIs.

http://www.cio.com.au/article/279526/it_innovations_help_kiva_expand_microfinance_mission?rid=-154

Is facebook closed to rest of the world?

2009-03-15T11:15:00.000-04:00

I came across an article which shows that US visits to Facebook grew by 149 percent in market share.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10196184-2.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0

The social networking site is expected to be ubiquitous in a few years time. I was wondering how facebook can have a valuation of $15b based only on advertising. Perhaps facebook is using its large user base to make more profits by marketing analytics rather than concentrating on advertising alone. Are these sites closed to rest of the world? This video link might help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwnTWZ1-UWY

While you were away on spring break, the web turned 20

2009-03-15T09:30:00.000-04:00

While you were away on spring break, the web turned 20. Yes, if you define the origin as the date that Sir Tim Berners-Lee's submission of a proposal to CERN titled "Information Management: A proposal."
--
He discusses what now needs to be done to unlock the potential of the web, focused on Linked Data.
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Here's the video of his talk.

--

Some useful links for you.
DBpedia that shows linkages within wikipedia and other databases. Here is a useful picture with links of relationships.
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Linked Data
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I wanted you to think about what these developments may mean for the company that you are tracking as well as the industry transformations that we will be discussing over the next four weeks.

Eric Schmidt on Learning and Teaching

2009-03-14T12:37:00.000-04:00

This is a video worth perusing

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Enjoy.

Google Voice!

2009-03-13T10:11:00.000-04:00

Goolge has recently announced that it will soon introduce Google Vocie!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10194446-2.html?tag=mncol

It is a new service which Goolge is providing for FREE!You can register and will be assigned a number which users can call. It provides all the features that a typical phone or cell phone provides and more.

In the most basic avtar when a user calls on the number , all phones registerd with that number will ring simultaneously. You can list the single number on your visintg card instead of the dozen numbers .

We knew that goolge is after the Mobile space but this is beyond mobile OS and handsets.

A few direct imapcts;

1. You can switch your mobile carrier without having to worry about your change in number because your google number will stay the same.

2.New revenue streams for goolge by voice based search and maybe audio advertisments.

3.In future when VOIP takes over big time, the first compnay to benefit will be Goolge because you are already using it.

Make sure you get your number before all the good ones are taken.

Memo to CEO of Cigna Healthcare

2009-03-10T11:28:00.000-04:00

Over the course of the MS-MBA we have discussed many of the issues involved in taking a product company to a service based strategy. In my view much of this entails thinking about what information you have and understanding its value to your customers. For a traditional product company it could be the design or the ability to service your product.
Cigna Healthcare is already considered a service based company. At their core they process medical claims, however there are many opportunities for them to leverage their IT infrastructure in new ways in which to leverage the contextual knowledge abilities of a national medical insurance carrier.
The basis of my recommendation is for them to open up their claims rules engine to the provider customer. Making the codified knowledge within the engine open removes many administrative layers that cause frustration and cost to both parties. Allowing access gives providers the opportunity to streamline the billing aspects of there business and improves revenue cycle management. Cigna can monitor, now in real time, provider billing and, tangentially, treatment. This gives the company an advantage when creating plans tailored for the businesses that carry the employee's/patient's coverage.
The second advantage is with the right infrastructure adjustments to make the engine a platform allowing for providers to create their own applications. With the move towards evidence based medicine, and payment based on physicians following accepted guidelines, customer apps can utilize the claims rules to ensure their internal processes adhere to said guidelines.
There is significant value to be obtained by providing the base rules to the customer and using the new information flows to improve medical care, insurance products, and consulting capabilities to Cigna clients.

Leveraging IT at John Deere

2009-03-09T20:12:00.000-04:00

I selected John Deere for the CEO memo assignment because I wanted to explore how IT can be applied to a traditional, industrial business.

Here are some examples of how Deere has already begun to leverage IT in its products:

This GPS-enabled tractor uses sensors to collect data on crop health and yield and then uses the data to determine exactly how each square foot of soil should be prepared the following year. It creates value for the farmer in two ways: it both reduces pesticide and fertilizer costs and increases crop yields.
This cotton harvester streamlines the harvesting, bailing and wrapping process. Some of the harvester’s tech features: it adds smart tags to bales that provide info such as whether the cotton is organic or grown with pesticides; it also communicates to a base station to signal when service is required.

Part of my memo will address how John Deere can continue to create value for its customers with IT. I plan to approach this by first identifying information that is currently not available to Deere’s customers but that could be accessed and leveraged through IT to make them more efficient and effective.

I'd also like to explore how Deere can use IT to create value for itself. For example, instead of having the GPS-enabled tractor send a repair signal to a base station, maybe it should send the info to a central server that is monitored by Deere. Under that scenario, Deere could still notify the farmers via diagnostic emails while collecting valuable information on the performance of its product. Perhaps there are also ways that Deere can use IT to make internal operations more efficient and improve collaboration which could lead to better product designs and faster development cycles.

Before the break, I thought about how Deere could possibly leverage facebook but no good ideas came to mind. If anyone has thoughts on this I'd appreciate your comments. Any other comments are welcome as well.

Automakers and Facebook???

2009-03-09T11:34:00.000-04:00

Well, I have been thinking about this (I explain in a second) and my brain is short of ideas.

How can Renault leverage Facebook???

First, I don't think Facebook has caught up in France at the same level of other parts of the world yet. I couldn't find any information that links Renault to Facebook besides the obvious fans pages.

However, I didn't find if any of the US automakers are using Facebook either.

Renault, as well as Peugeot and Citroen, has entered in the digital media world. I guess the idea is to create brand loyalty and provide customers with a more inside view of what the company does.

The only "innovative" way I could think of any automaker leveraging Facebook is to create an app that let you customers retrieve data from his/her car, such as number of miles, when is the next change of oil, tire pressure, and other services. However, you don't really need facebook for this. This could be very well hosted in the company site.

Is there anyway you could think of Renault linking the two (Facebook and Personalize Service Site) in order to take advantage of the Facebook user community and, maybe, incentivize sales??

HELP!

Back to the smart roads discussion

2009-03-09T11:10:00.000-04:00

So, a couple of weeks ago I was reading this article in the WSJ about smart roads, smart bridges, smart grids.

It seems like the future is not too far away and technology already exists. I guess the question now is how are we (they) going to commercialize and monetize this technology.

For those of you that don't want to read the article you can get a sense by watching this short video.

Beyond Facebook: The Micro-sociology of Networks

2009-03-08T14:02:00.000-04:00

I am glad to see posts on how companies can leverage Facebook. Please continue blogging on that.
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Here is a good presentation that lays out some of the broader trends that we will focus on after the spring break.
It is worth reviewing.

The Micro-Sociology of Networks

View more presentations from David Armano. (tags: behavior human)

What shoud Your Company Do with Facebook? -- Can you help NPR?

2009-03-06T03:58:00.000-05:00

During our Wednesday class, we asked--'what should your company do with Facebook?' It turns out to be the same question that NPR is asking its listeners..

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if any of you had any thoughts on what else NPR should be doing on Facebook. We've got a lot of people who've signed up as fans to our official NPR page, which is really great, and we probably could be doing even more activities than what we've got posted here. For example, would you want to see more of our content appearing automatically and available for your profile pages? Should we use the discussions to host chats with NPR personalities? Are there any tools you think we should develop?

Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts on how NPR can improve its Facebook presence. You can use the following link to tell us what you think:

Thanks in advance,

Andy Carvin
NPR social media desk

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As you think about the question for your company, if you have some good ideas for NPR, please do tell NPR. A good public service!
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We may revisit the issue when we get to the media and entertainment sector after the sbreak. Cheers.

Facebook changing its home page..

2009-03-05T10:02:00.001-05:00

Facebook is comming up with a changed interface for the homepage. Instead of pushing it on to the users they decide to put a small note on every ones profile that the home page is going to change. They also put a link to preview the new homepage.

This fosters discussions in the facebook blogs by the users. The facebook executives can then have a first cut view of users reactions on it.

"Changes to the Home page are coming soon

Learn about the new features ahead of time. This is happening soon; check out the home page tour now."

http://www.facebook.com/sitetour/homepage_tour.php

I guess this is why face book wins over other social networking webportals. --
I just added the photo of the forthcoming changes to the blogpost (Venkat)

Thoughts about Technology at Shaw's Supermarkets

2009-03-04T21:01:00.000-05:00

As I considered a memo to a company CEO I wanted to find something that is comparatively low tech vs. most of the high tech companies we discuss in class. Shaw's supermarkets jumped out at me because Shaw's (or another supermarket) is an experience that almost everyone has at some time or another, and the experience is largely unchanged from many years ago. Yes there are now 60 types of crackers on the shelves instead of 4 (for more on the concept of too many products and choices I recommend "The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More" or a video summary here), and we have some self checkout lanes, but you still show up with your grocery list, go through the isles, pick what you want, checkout, load it into your car, drive home, and unload your groceries.

Looking at the industry, what differentiates stores and chains? In my opinion two aspects, price and quality, decide where people shop. I live less than a mile from a Shaw's and another

grocer store, yet I shop at Shaw's because the quality is essentially close enough between the two and prices are lower at my Shaw's. The brand name means very little to me however. The slogan seen above "crazy about food" means even less to me. If Shaw's were to raise their prices, I'd take a left turn instead of a right and bring my business elsewhere.

Technology now in place at grocery stores is pretty limited to the ubiquitous discount cards where you scan your card and get products at a "discount" for having the card. However, usage of these cards is generally limited to sending out some discounts when you reach a certain dollar amount spent - hardly a worthwhile usage of all the data they could be collecting.

So, I have a few thoughts on technology and supermarkets.

1) Discount cards - why is there not greater mining of the data there? This is a no brainer for most online companies. Why am I not getting emailed recipes utilizing things I buy regularly, or suggestions of meals based on what I purchase, or suggestions for sides that go along with my purchases? How about dietary tips based on my purchases? Where is the next level of analysis that I would actually find worthwhile and might lead me to shop at one store over another?

2) What else could they be doing with technology? Lots. How about meal recommendations based on what I purchase? How about weekly menu suggestions tied into the delivery service where I don't even have to go to the store but my weekly groceries are delivered to my house. Why not give me suggestions based on a diet I'm currently on and allow me to have those automatically delivered as well. Where is my weekly list of suggestions for healthy meals or suggestions for beef based meals, or seafood meals, etc. Why is there no connection between what I order and telling me how to best prepare meals with it? If I'm planning to have friends for a dinner party, why can't we go onto the Shaw's facebook app and plan meals together while scheduling delivery of the ingredients? Where is the option to deliver my

"super bowl pack" of goodies and foods for the big game. Why are these things not automated so that when I start to think about Thanksgiving dinner, I've already had an email from Shaw's with a list of ingredients I can one-click to order? Again I wonder, where are the extra value added services that would make it worthwhile for me to bring my business to one store over another?

In short, what I'm really talking about is grocery stores moving beyond pure commodities to provide services. We've discussed how it can be difficult for a product company to branch into services, but grocery stores aren't quite pure product companies and I think it could work. Just a sampling of thoughts I'm having regarding Shaw's...comments welcome.

Skittles Cozies Up to Social Media

2009-03-04T11:56:00.000-05:00

From our conversation today on facebook, I thought this article on how Mars is using social networking to provide the content and buzz on Skittles was interesting. Though the article uses twitter as its example of social networking, you can easily replace it with facebook.

-Scott

WSJ
MARCH 3, 2009
Skittles Cozies Up to Social Media
Candy's Site Is Built on Consumer-Created Content From Twitter, Facebook
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604377921415283.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

By EMILY STEEL
For years, Skittles has encouraged consumers to "Taste the Rainbow." Now, the candy brand wants people to "Chat the Rainbow."
Mars Snackfood, maker of the chewy, multicolored candies, launched a new homepage at Skittles.com on Thursday that may represent the closest embrace of social media yet by a mainstream marketer. Instead of a typical product site that highlights information about or videos and games related to a product, Skittles.com features content created by consumers -- most of it gleaned from other Web sites.

Posted on the site last week was the Skittles article from Wikipedia, the user-created Web encyclopedia. On Monday, Skittles.com featured postings from the social-messaging site Twitter that include the word "skittles."
Mars Snackfood says it redesigned the site to better connect with its core teenage audience, which spends a lot of time using social media. "The teen audience relies heavily on their peers for advice on products. This is a unique, unexpected way to engage and to be a part of the conversation," says spokesman Ryan Bowling.
More
Digits: What Are You Doing? (#Skittles)
"It is a very bold campaign in the sense that they are letting consumers speak on behalf of the brand," says Chad Stoller, executive director of emerging platforms at Organic, a digital-marketing firm owned by Omnicom Group, whose digital-ad shop Agency.com created the site.
Most brands don't dare go so far, says Charlene Li, founder of digital-media consulting firm Altimeter Group. "They are getting so much buzz on it, it is unbelievable. ... They are really showing people, this is redefining the way you think about brands."
On Monday, the term "Skittles" was among the most popular topics discussed on Twitter, according to Twitter Search. Nielsen Online also noted a sharp increase in online buzz related to Skittles since the new site's launch.
Other marketers have experimented with featuring consumer-created content on their Web sites. Online retailer Zappos spotlights its Twitter mentions on a section of its site. The Web site for Chrysler's Jeep brand features user-generated photos from Flickr or video from Google's YouTube online video site. But few marketers have built their homepages around messages, videos and other content created by consumers.

The strategy involves plenty of risks, digital-marketing executives say. Skittles has little control over who participates and what they say.
Other experts say Skittles is taking the wrong approach to social media. Instead of encouraging teens to have a conversation about Skittles, it is encouraging false conversations about the brand, says Shiv Singh, vice president and global social-media lead at Razorfish, a digital-marketing firm owned by Microsoft. "Everyone is having a field day and writing 'Skittles' on Twitter just to get attention," he says.
Sure enough, the site became the target of Internet pranks on Monday. The way the "Chatter" portion of the Skittles.com site is built, any Twitter user who mentions the word "Skittles" is featured on the homepage.
At least one Web site has been launched by pranksters encouraging Web users to post negative comments about the candy. The comments range from the thoughtful to the outlandish. "Skittles taste terrible. If you eat Skittles you support killing kittens and puppies," wrote a Twitter user named kingshane.
The new site design has sparked controversy on the candy's Wikipedia page, among users who are concerned that marketers will destroy the integrity of the site "If every corporation does this, Wikipedia will be just a collection of advertising pages 'controlled' by corporate employees, who can monitor their pages 24/7 and edit out what they don't 'approve,'" wrote a Wikipedia user with the handle ConcernedCitizenry.
Skittles.com acts as a filter on top of a slew of other social-media sites, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The brand says it is monitoring its site but not changing any of the content.
The type of content featured on the new Skittles.com homepage varies according to what's generating buzz. For example, if Skittles launches a new TV commercial, the homepage that day might be Skittles's page on YouTube.
Whether Skittles has reached its target audience remains to be seen, digital-marketing executives say. The Skittles.com site doesn't usually generate much traffic. In January, Skittles.com attracted 20,000 unique U.S. visitors, according to comScore.
Moreover, the Twitter audience is still small. The messaging site had 2.6 million unique U.S. visitors in January. Much of the conversation Monday about the new Skittles site appeared to be coming from ad-industry insiders.
"We live in an echo chamber where we think Twitter is the biggest thing. But the reality of the situation is it is not yet. It is an experiment," says Ian Schafer, chief executive of Deep Focus, an independent New York digital-ad firm.
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I just added what I thought was an important graph from the WSJ article.. (Venkat)