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The Internet does not make much sense… On pricing digital goods and other illogicalities

Vincent van Wylick — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:14:49 +0000

“From my cold, dead hands…” It’s something that came to mind as I was thinking about writing this post. The part that doesn’t make sense about the Internet, today and perhaps since ever, is that American concept of “Freedom,” of independence and lack of governance.

In my post on piracy, my point was not complete. YES, historically, there has been a trend in every industry towards eliminating inefficiencies and yes, in some ways making things digital is just another step down that line, but NO, as @ksilvennoinen pointed out in the comments, digital goods do have a value greater than zero, the question is how to find a way to recuperate that value from customers.

To me value equals investment, but that is not the way pricing works. Unfortunately, I managed to misplace my pricing bible some months ago and can’t seem to recall most of the rules of pricing, but there is a strong psychological component to it. And the psychological part is what I am confused about. To get another book in here, it’s just like “Positioning: the battle for the mind,” if online goods are ‘positioned’ against a never-ending slew of free content, how do you position yourself to be priced at a value greater than zero?

On the one hand, it’s not so hard. You position yourself in such a way that a comparison does not make sense. Let’s take digital books, an area I actually don’t consider as threatened as publishers and media-outlets would like you to believe. The reason is that as soon as you download a digital book and view it on a PC, it immediately becomes an inferior product. Unlike a TV-show or movie, which I can frankly watch on a post-stamp (no matter what David Lynch says), reading and eyes work best together on either paper or e-paper (haven’t tried reading on the iPad, though I really like doing it on the iPhone). Of course the real threat to e-books in a PC environment is websites, but that’s a story for another day.

To get back to it, e-books work best in a dedicated reading environment, which immediately creates opportunities for platforms and putting walls around those. Platforms ensure that there is a network effect of content, walls ensure that there is no inter-leakage between the quality-controlled inside and the dark-waters-of-piracy outside. And that mechanism allows digital goods to be priced to recuperate investment and more. But…

Where it gets confusing again is how very open the Internet is. This openness allows you to create an app in a day, it also allows you to jailbreak an iPhone (now with US-gov. support), and it allows for me to get a movie that Chinese kid 107-xg46-*** released 5 minutes ago on the torrentZ. Amazon was built on this openness, as was OS X, as was pretty much anything that was stolen out of the Xerox labs 35 years ago. While there is a trend of eliminating barriers in general, it is even more prevalent on the Internet.

So, what I am asking myself here is the following questions:

Is this 1969 again, where hippies roamed free, sex was consequence-less, and there is an Aids-epidemic on the horizon, which will make us go back to the 50s in terms of promiscuity?
Are platforms doomed? I’m just talking platforms, not walls around them. Twitter is an example of an open platform.
Are the walls around platforms doomed? So: iTunes & iOS-devices, Amazon & Kindles, Facebook & human relationships, every online retailer in the world…
Is pricing digital goods a logical thing when taking into consideration how it is positioned against other digital goods?
Should digital goods be free and prices be set for things that cannot be spread digitally: iOS devices, Kindles, Disk-media, other consumption-devices…
And many more questions…

Getting back to value equals investment in my third paragraph. In any chain that leads from idea to the user, there are value points, which come from some kind of investment. In the embroidery example, a strong value point appears to be the creator. Without that person, there would be no creation. And, of course, there are plenty of examples on that. In the case of iPhone, strong value points are both the conceptualisation (R&D expenditure) and the production costs. In the case of Amazon, the website (presentation, distribution, etc.) is a strong value point. The end-product can still be digital, as it is in the case of the embroiderer’s designs, the iPhone apps, and the Kinde-ebooks, but the investment in certain parts of the chain is very much real.

And the value to consumers, which the crux of the matter, is equally real. If I compare 2010 to 1995, we live in the era of digital convenience. From e-banking, to restaurant-reviews, to TV-shows, to software, we undeniably live in a better world, but one where, ironically, we are less willing to spend as much on it. But there is another side to this as well. Let’s say, everything that exists is walled off. You’d have to pay to get access to every blog-post, to every youtube-video, to everything else that is already being charged for. I would sincerely start to question whether it was all worth it.

The Internet continues to be confusing to me, part shopping bonanza, part free-for-all utopia. Writing this has brought a little clarity, but if you have stuff to add that clears it up even more, please feel free to share it in a comment.

E’ship diary part 6: on the important matter of product design

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:43:03 +0000

I made a fairly big mistake with my company at the start, I tried to segment functions in the company too fast. Maybe it was my business education, maybe it was books like “The E-myth Revisited,” and certainly it was my lack of management experience, but I tried to keep my area focussed on business development and away from technology for which “I have a CTO.”

But startups don’t work this way and the entire reason for working in a team is that you share the work and hopefully create synergetic effects (1+1=3!) in the process.

And the truth is that even as for non-technologist like myself (I am a geek though) designing products is not so hard.

I had a discussion with an industrial designer (my all time fav. people to hang around with) concerning the term ‘a perfect product.’ Her field understands the term as a product that functions perfectly, I choose to add “for the customer” to that definition.

The start of product design is always to ask: “so is this cool for people?“, meaning will they like it, do they need it, will they pay for it? I don’t think all question can be answered from the start, except the one of “is this cool?”

A very big part of entrepreneurship is sales, and as they say: you have to believe in what you sell. Easier when you already have a product, I’d love to sell Apple computers for a living, but when the product doesn’t exist, you have one of two choices: one, you design the product yourself, starting with “is it cool?”; two, you trust that your CTO can design something cool.

That’s not a problem, except for one thing: is cool something we decide or the market decides? It is of course the latter and one bullet point in an entrepreneur’s job description missing from that of the CTO’s is keeping a close eye on the market.

Therefore, product design is absolutely something entrepreneurs cannot delegate! And on that short note, I’ll leave it.

All my entrepreneurship diary posts can be followed under the tag ‘Vincent’s eDiary.’ I don’t write about what we do as a company on purpose, but you can always ask in the comments or via the email address on the right. Picture courtesy of The Esoteric Church (of all places!).

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IDEA GENERATION: what is your workflow?

Vincent van Wylick — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:56:11 +0000

I asked yesterday for a more graphical and intuitive way to plan out costs for products and projects. The reason lies in an essay I co-authored several years ago with Jeremy Fein, co-founder of this blog. I forget the exact title of the thing, but its premise was that good entrepreneurial teams are composed of both brains & brawn (Asterix and Obelix, in other words). It has since become my philosophy towards entrepreneurship and building teams.

Good ideas also reside in intersections between different modes of thinking. I don’t know who made up the idea of the ‘execution multiplier for ideas‘ (Derek Sivers posted it on his blog once), but an idea is worth little without someone carrying it out. Similarly, in Neil Fiore’s book “The Now Habit” (the ONLY self-help book I would ever recommend to people) he writes about the source of good ideas, which often come when you least expect it: on your breaks, your holidays, anywhere which is not work-related.

While productivity is a great thing and crucial to executing ideas, idea-generation itself is actually not very compatible with the productive mind. But it’s not impossible to combine the two either.

Let’s look at a sample workflow from problem to idea generation to product (product meaning the outcome of idea generation, which has to lead somewhere):

1. You have a problem (duh… no really, don’t come up with an idea if it doesn’t solve a problem!)
2. You discuss it with people to try to figure out it’s parameters —what is the true gist of the problem?

This is a good time to get stuck. Where do you go from here? Do you go the left-brained route — the super-rational approach that would e.g. benefit from some number crunching in Excel? Or do you take a right-brained approach — the artistic approach of drawing out the problem further on a white board or an outliner?

It of course depends on the complexity of the problem, but it isn’t time yet to go super-rational all of a sudden. It breaks you out of creative solution mode and gets you into execution mode, which is really brain-dead “getting things done” mode. Before you get things done, you have to define “things” much further.

The next step in my process would be:
3. draw out several solutions, preferably in a group, and discuss them and the logic behind it. Is it an elegant solution to the problem? Does it solve it or does it complicate it? What scenarios are there and what are its parameters?

As soon as you come to scenarios, we come into process mode. And this is where a more left-brained approach of calculating resource-allocation (people, time, money) absolutely makes sense. In my last post, I was hoping that someone would have a good way of making this more compatible with step 3, I am still waiting for someone to come up with a good solution, however.

4. calculate it out. What are the costs associated with each solution, what are the benefits of each solution?

Costs vs. benefits could also be called expenses vs. income on a financial projection for a startup. Solid resource allocation is ultimately the lifeblood of a company, however in an early stage it is also the language to use when looking for funding for your company.

I don’t want to be too rigid about this; I’ve struggled with the process of “problem -> idea generation -> execution -> product” in the past and think that it’s an area that benefits from several approaches and also leads to more-than-several pseudo-suggestions on how to approach this.

Rather, I thought to expand a little on yesterday’s post and clarify why I really do want a more visual Excel (for lack of a better term). If you want to combine right- and left-brained perspectives, a white board alone won’t do it and Excel alone won’t do it. I want software that does both.

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Enterprise 2.0 Vs Diffusion of Innovation

ceciiil — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 09:32:04 +0000

After reading the excellent Andrew McAfee Enterprise 2.0 book, I was wondering if there was any point for Heavy Mental to publish yet another review. There already are plenty around with Venkatesh Rao’s on Enterprise 2.0 blog and Gil Yehuda’s probably being the most interesting ones.

It might be more valuable to offer a perspective focussing on the Adoption part of the book. By and large, the adoption topic has been the one sparking off most of the conversations and thinking on the Enterprise 2.0 topic. The idea is to confront McAfee work with a reference on the topic of adoption of innovation : Diffusion of Innovation : by Everett Rogers.

In all fairness, I haven’t read Diffusion of Innovation. I only know it through Scott Berkun presentation on innovation (already mentioned in a post on the subject). Scott quotes Everett Rogers work :

The diffusion of innovation is based more on sociology and psychology than on technology. Here are the things technologists hate : whenever they come with innovation, the main forces against the innovation adoption are sociological ones : ego, envy, fear, pride, politics, security etc …

These are the factors according to E. Rodgers to evaluate how likely your solution is bound to be adopted :

Relative advantage : what value does it bring ?
Compatibility : how much effort to transition to this innovation ?
Complexity : how much learning is required to apply it ?
Triability : How easy is it to try the innovation ?
Observability : How visible are the results ?

Enterprise 2.0 represents innovative ways to communicate, collaborate and share knowledge among distributed teams in the organizations. So let’s see how Mc Afee writings answer these questions …

Relative advantage : What value does it bring ?

Andrew Mc Afee mentions Bob Kaplan who co-authored Converting Intangible Assets Into Tangible Outcomes. In this book, Kaplan argues that

None of these intangible assets (human, organizational and informational capital – i.e databases, Information systems, networks, technology infrastructure) has value that can be measured separately or independently.

Baseline : you just can’t build a regular business case for IT with Enterprise 2.0.

Mc Afee still recommend to build some kind of business case with the following elements :

Costs and time lines : if benefits can’t be estimated, effort should be put in place to have some cost estimates. How long the project will lasts, what are the milestones, number of people involved. Even though one knows that these estimates must be considered very carefully. Remember General Eisenhower quote : plans are useless, but planning is indispensable
Expected benefits : Here McAfee recommends to include short cases studies or example. A great one could be Cisco Economics of Collaboration, reporting a whopping $US691M of operating savings and 4.9% of productivity increase in 2008 thanks to the introduction of Web 2.0 tools into the enterprise.
Technology footprint : the scale of a technology reach from geographical, organisational and functional perspectives. Enterprise Social Networks are like e-mail : they are supposed to be used all over the company. So their technological footprint is quite large.

Tech It Easy Comment

Mc Kinsey have published a comprehensive report on How companies can benefit from Web 2.0 . This could be a good entry point to provide some visibility of Enterprise 2.0 benefits.

Compatibility : How much effort to transition to this innovation ?

McAfee refers to Harvard Business School Marketing professor John Gourville and his article in Harvard Business Review “Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers“. Gourville looked into research on behavioral economics and reported the three principles of people solutions evaluation :

People make relative evaluations
Reference point is status quo
People are loss-adverse : a prospective loss of X is 3 times more painful that a gain of X is pleasurable.

These elements lead to the fact that we value what we have far more highly that what we could have instead. The result is what Gourville calls the 9x effect : people rate what they have 3 times more than their actual value and prospective items three times less than what they’re actually worth. A new item must therefore be at least 9 times better to justify the (perceived) effort required for the adoption.

Here, the risk is to overvalue prospective new tools (Wikis, Blogs, Twitter-like, Professional Profiles) in a view to increase or chance the reach the 9x threshold. Gourville thinks this may have disastrous consequences.

As a result, McAfee quotes Gourville and recommends not to oversell the collaborative platform and make it clear that the adoption will be a long phase.

Tech It Easy Comment

I also think the overselling approach is not good but for other reasons : this might alter the perception of our speech (buzzword, vaporware, consultants concepts etc …) and have opposite effects within our audience.

Instead, I am a firm believer that we should help knowledge workers rationalize their perceived value of the collaboration and communication tools they’ve been using for the last 15 years : MS Office, e-mails, Network File Repositories, Intranet etc …

Not by telling them these tools are not appropriate but rather by asking them painful questions. The objectives is to help them realize that these tools are the root cause of many of their daily work frustrations.

Once this frustration has surfaced and has been clearly described by the people, it will be natural for them to decrease the perceived value of these enterprise 1.0 tools. Therefore the value threshold Enterprise 2.0 tools need to meet to reach the 9 times value will decrease accordingly. And the effort to transition to E20 as well.

The Five Elevator Pitches suggests some of these painful questions to help rationalizing the perceived value of today’s enterprise tools.

Then you can ask what they are doing about these communication/organizational / knowledge sharing problems or what are they planning to do. Are they giving up despite all the new communication tools available ? Then you can talk about how Enterprise 2.0 can foster knowledge management, innovation, collaboration and productivity.

Complexity : How much learning is required to apply it ?

This is one of the main advantages of Enterprise 2.0 in terms of adoption. These tools are dead easy to use. This is the first of the three trends that yield better tools according to McAfee. It also is the A (Authorship) part of the S.L.A.T.E definition : ensuring every worker has easy access to enterprise 2.0 platforms.

Wiki, blogs, FAQ, Real Time Web, Personal Profile. Their universal adoption on the internet is a solid proof of how easy these platforms are.

Trialability : How easy is it to try the innovation ?

Again : it is extremely easy to test these tools. You can install main Enterprise 2.0 software solutions for free for 30 days and have people try the solution.

McAfee describes the case of Serena Software using public platforms (Facebook) with appropriate security settings as enterprise platform. If your company is happy with this approach, the trial can even be easier.

Tech It Easy comment

The concern with 30 days trial is that on such a small time frame, network effect won’t have the time to foster full benefits. These systems become more valuable as the number of users and the volume of injected data grows.

So a 30 days trial might not be enough to see the full benefits of such solutions. However it can still proves how easy it is to use them.

Observability : How visible are the results ?

A good strategy to make the results visible is to locate some teams of social networks enthusiasts (IT or HR departments might be a first good guess). And start to deploy the solution on such narrow teams.

Andrew McAfee recommends to measure the progress (number of blog posts, comments, wiki pages, personal profiles etc …) rather than the ROI. Besides, McAfee strongly encourages leadership in the form of valueing the people that enrich the platforms.

Tech It Easy Comment

In a transparency and observability purpose, it might be a good idea to monitor the knowledge workers perceived value of their tools and measure the progress. Preparing a questionnaire with a set of questions around the subject of collaboration, innovation, productivity and knowledge management could be a good starting point.

Organization employees could then answer these questions before and after the launch of the E20 solution and then on a regular basis. This could be a good solution to see if E20 solution helps in reducing the frustration of knowledge workers in their daily work.

The final score

The end result is that McAffe book is the perfect entry point to set up a corporate Enterprise 2.0 strategy. It describes clearly and perfectly the tools, the context in which they were born and how appropriate they are within knowledge workers organizations, via some real life examples.

In terms of diffusion, McAfee provides all the principles and examples required to answer most of Everett Rogers questions.

What would you recommend to help diffuse Enterprise 2.0 ?

(Hi It’s Cecil here. A copy of this post is available on my blog Heavy Mental)

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An e’diary part 2: what are the responsibilities of an entrepreneur

Vincent van Wylick — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:06:23 +0000

This post is part of a series, a diary of starting a business if you will. It follows part 1, the decision of becoming an entrepreneur.

One thing I found out is that it’s hard to put your responsibilities down on paper… there are so many!!! There is of course a basic job-description, which more or less sounds like that of a project manager/pull-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat magician: “make it happen that we go from this thing on paper to the product in the hands of customers.” “Make it happen” is a super-loaded phrase, which can mean countless things.

There is a continuous struggle between micro-management and keeping the overview. Micro, because it is your responsibility that every (little) thing is carried out by your employees (if you have them). Overview, because You the entrepreneur are The Organisation. There is a third struggle that shouldn’t exist really, that between your professional life and your personal life. I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to do this thing well is to focus on it exclusively. Friends, family, love, …blogging… it’s a nice luxury to have, but it comes second place.

The responsibility of an entrepreneur are thus: have a goal and make sure that everything is executed to get to that goal.

In a technology company, there are matters of technology and business (really, in what business except for strategy consulting isn’t there a mix of “technology,” which can mean anything from cooking to software development, and the commercial side of things, which is meant to pay for everything?). What I found was that as someone with a business background, who sort-of-kind-of has an idea about product development, and has a better grasp of business development, I still can’t let go of the reigns of product development entirely.

Product development ties in directly with business development. People are unwilling to pay for something that doesn’t exist and similarly our budget is supposed to last us until we have something worth paying for or investing in. Therefore, as an entrepreneur I have to make sure that product development stays on track. The absolute best way to do this is to have a capable product development manager in charge. The truth of it is that startups by their nature are resource-poor, which includes tripple-A product development managers (probably employed at multinational X or Y somewhere), and there is a lot of learning/training on the job. Learning/training means that the (hopefully) existing product development manager (in our case yes) still has to be managed, through schedules and regular meetings. In any case, product development is in its conceptual stage a very brainstorm-friendly activity, which means the more the merrier. But ultimately, a startup must get beyond this stage, respecting the entire resource-poor situation that a startup usually faces.

So, responsibilities of an entrepreneur as far as the technological product development is concerned: If you have a product development manager, you have to make sure that he works under the realities of the business. If you don’t, which I imagine many 1-person software startups operate under (as well as those lucky strategy consultants), well then you have to do the job of product development as well, keeping a close eye on the business realities.

OK, the business part of things. My role is fairly well-defined here as I come from a business background and approach startups from a business perspective. Assume that role 101 is having a firm grasp on everything that goes on, which can be phrased as “where are resources (people, time, money) being expended at and is it wise to do so.” This entails having a good budget plan and sticking to that.

Role 102 is to build the business, which I call business development, but that often gets confused with sales as that that is what it says in job adverts. Business development is the building of the business, which includes sales, but also includes building the company and all that entails.

So, we are trying to get from point A to point P, how do we go about it? If product development is about turning an idea into a product, business development is building a business plan into a business. Business plans are total BS unless they contain validated information. Some key-chapters in business plans are the market overview, the market approach, the time-line, and the financial need to meet all these objectives. Business plans can serve as a. cannon fodder, b. a plan of approach, c. one of several signals to attract investment. For c. no investor will take a look at your business unless you have a plan of approach (b.). On that plan, there should be a time-line, which you are following (predictability!) and there should be a goal: the market you are targeting and your approach.

The market section of the business plan presents a big problem for technology entrepreneurs. Because (non!) customers often don’t know what they want. I can ask a target group “what kind of air do you like to breathe?” and it wouldn’t surprise me if a significant number of responses would say: “I like to breathe air that smells like perfume.” OK, that’s a terrible question, but what I mean is that people sometimes make up answers that have nothing to do with reality (that said, both the perfume business and the fast-food industry have made lots of money from essentially selling air that smells good. Scent is also plays a very important part in memory, but I digress…)

What I’m a big fan of is validated market data, which is data gathered from actual customer experience with your product or part of it. That brings forth another problem of a bias towards early (and over-excited) adopters, something which the book “crossing the chasm” deals with, but is really not something that I think is realistic to address at an early stage, except that validated market data can also come from experts in the markets you are targeting.

The implication is also that product development is again completely tied in with business development which leads us down the path of rapid prototyping, another practice that works great in software / on the web, not as easily (though not impossible) with hardware. In any case, the experts in this area most well-known today are:

- Steve Blank, who wrote “The Four Steps to Epiphany” and is currently hosting the excellent Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminars (btw. Steve Blank also writes a great blog on customer-focussed development, which I’ve only just started reading.
- Eric Ries, who authors the blog Startup Lessons Learned and has some great articles on responsible (=lean) development.
- And Donald Reinertsen, who wrote an incredibly dense book called “Principles of Product Development Flow,” a book which is clearly an authority in the field, but which I cannot recommend to any sensible entrepreneur with a 60hr/week schedule. Those principles, by the by, number in the 100+.

As well as of course Toyota and plenty of other experts out there, I’m sure, many of which are referenced by the people mentioned.

I think that it can safely be said that task 3 or a sub-task of business development is working towards the customer, the lifeblood of a business.

There are other tasks of course, which have to do with human resources, legal work, accounting, etc. Some of which can be outsourced, some of which can be done half-heartedly (oh no, I didn’t say that), some of which are really-really important, etc.

All these tasks, however, require a certain authority. The entrepreneur’s responsibility is to either be an authority on a task level or to be sure to work with authorities, either in the company or in an (informal) consulting fashion, so that they are carried out responsibly.

Task 4 can thus be entitled: be an authority on the tasks that need to be carried out or have access to one.

So, a whole can of worms starting a company can be and it is vital that it does not interfere with the single most important thing that you must do as a human being: be healthy! Health is part sleep, part exercise, part food, part love. There is no yin without yang and vice versa. Thus forget everything I said about personal life being no. 2. The best is if it reinforces what you do in your work. Health leads to happiness and happiness leads to optimism: a key-quality in entrepreneurship if there ever was one.

So the responsibilities of an entrepreneur summarised:

100: keep your eye on both sides of the court: the goal & the resources needed to get to that goal
101: align Product development with Business development
102: always validate your market data by staying close to your customers
103: be an authority on the tasks that need carrying out or have access to one
104: stay healthy and happy.

This was written in a single session with minimal editing. I hope it kind of makes sense. Part 3 of my e’diary will be on the topic of: can you prepare for entrepreneurship? As I have a master in entrepreneurship, I thought it might make for an interesting perspective. All my entrepreneurial diary posts can be followed under the tag ‘Vincent’s eDiary.’ By choice, I’m being mysterious about my company. If you have questions, feel free to comment or write to me via the email address on the right.

Picture courtesy of Be The Dream.

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Thoughts on the (iTablet) iPad – connectivity, apps, multitasking, integrating with Macs

Vincent van Wylick — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 10:54:10 +0000

The following is a draft I wrote prior to the announcement of the iPad, but which I didn’t publish because it was a series of hypotheses based on an as yet non-existing product. It’s a series of thoughts on how an interface of a touchscreen larger than an iPhone might look like. It is inspired by both my experiences with Macs and since recently with an iPod Touch. Here goes.

A couple of thoughts I had last night (written on 13.01.2010) about interfaces, the current state of development for the iPhone OS, how Apple could build a hybrid of Mac and iPhone OS, and how the company could build multi-tasking into its rumoured tablet. My thought were the following:

a. A new category: I don’t think the iTablet, if it exists, will be either a Mac or an iPhone. My super-superficial reason: it doesn’t fit in the Mac line-up depicted on the online Apple Store (see pic), but a more underlying reason is that I don’t see space for it in either a Mac-category or a Mobile phone/media player category. Which is not to say that it won’t do either well, but I think it will more fall into the class of Netbooks, though of course with the purpose of bombing those low-tech, low-innovation devices out of the water… just like Apple did with MP3 players and with Phones. Note from today: as it turns out, the iPad is depicted below the iPod, iPhone, and Mac lines, but time will tell where it will be once it’s on sale.

b. The Keyboard: I think that any 10″ screen will demand more connectivity to secondary (Apple) devices than the iPhone allows for. That means, an external keyboard and mouse, which transforms the tablet into a desktop. I have less complaints about the software-keyboard now, after working with a Touch for a while, but I still don’t see it as an alternative for longer texts, which a larger screen would warrant. Some months ago, I made a stupid mock-up of the iPhone + a keyboard (see pic), which is how I envision it looking (only better).

c. The App Store: 3 Billion Apps downloaded, Apple just reported, which also suggests a kind of lock-in. For better or worse, developers have accepted the App-store and I think it works for several reasons for both, namely more protection from pirates, more predictability for developers when developing for the black hole that is Apple, and more control by Apple, which is what Apple likes, not to mention new income streams for both. I think the App Store will continue to exist and will present new challenges when talking about a larger screen. Note from today: I don’t believe that what we will get to see in less than two months will be that what people were playing around with after the Apple keynote. iPhone apps inflated to a larger screen, come on?

d: The User Interface: I’ve written previously about Quick Look in Snow Leopard and how I also dug its slight innovation in terms of in-icon playing of media. Previously, OS X also introduced Dashboard into Tiger (I believe), whose interface, on the surface at least, resembles the iPhone. My view is that Apple will give developers the option to just keep the same resolution apps as they have offered before, though not exclusively of course. But imagine “Quick Looking” an app and still having it run inside its “Icon,” while the user does something else. For the rest, I of course think that full-screen Apps will exist, which is where Dashboard comes in, or at least a type of Dashboard. (Note: that was wrong. More below.)

e. Integration with the Mac: One of the most underused interfaces, at least on my Mac, is Dashboard, which allows people to have continuously open widgets on anything from news, to games, to radio, to system monitoring. It’s useful for those purposes, but not really something i spend more than a few minutes at a time with. Yet the first thing that came to mind when thinking of a “Tablet,” using both iPhone and Mac interface components, was Dashboard. It creates a new layer on top of a traditional desktop, allowing for user-input and information display. When I envision someone running the apps that would work on the “iTablet” also, I think of it either being that you open up a new layer on your Mac and run the very same apps on it through something like a Dashboard-like interface. Or, and the simplest solution is usually the best, through having the Tablet sync through iTunes with regular applications on the Mac.

Note from today: well, obviously this was wrong, but there have been several theories aired of having a type of Dashboard on the iPad for apps like calculator and weather, which don’t at all make sense to run in single focus on a larger screen than the iPhone.

Further thoughts from today: I do think that we will see a new OS update for both the iPhone and iPad before the release of the iPad. This will address the concerns that people have about it just being a larger iPod Touch. For the rest, to me the only downside to this device is the lack of a front-facing camera for video-calling, and some minor things. And I also think it’s the perfect “parent device!” What the Wii was to gaming, the iPad is to computing, addressing a very very blue ocean.

As previously stated, I’m still in line to get one this year, though only after trying one first.

Vincent

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My computing context and what I think about the iPad

Vincent van Wylick — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 09:31:53 +0000

OK, time to write a few words about the iPad. In true spirit of fanboyishness I started (and finished) writing this post in bed on my iPod Touch. Let me start by saying that with reservations I want the iPad. Reservations include that like you, I haven’t actually used the device, and that it doesn’t include a front facing camera which is a real shame. Flash… Pah! I really don’t care. Anyone who experienced the professional look, feel and support you get even from a €0.79 game on the Touch or iPhone isn’t going back to freeware flash (read my Farmville review as an example).

I’m not trying to provoke you by being so dismissive of flash, even though I feel a lot of people really really hate how the iPad turned out. I am only writing out of my own current and past context and reserving final judgement until it’s in my hands.

My context is several. I was born into an age when there weren’t any personal computers. As a matter of fact, Apple had only just been conceived when I was born. I grew up without computers, until I got a toy Amiga at 13, and a very buggy 1st PC at 15. It ran DOS mostly and crashed a lot in Windows 3.1. I mention this because people in my generation suffer from a curse. We were forced to learn a zillion crappy commands as teens, which made our parents and family members consider us computer geniusses and not a week goes by when I don’t get at least 1 question about a bug in a computer. Last week, I spent maybe 5 hours trying to get a Wifi card to communicate with an Internet radio, I will have to set up skype VOIP at my parents’ house this year and who knows what else.

My no. 2 reason for getting an iPad? To give it to my parents and save me future headaches (knock on wood).

My no. 1 reason is different. Last December, my MacBook was lost on a train. I’m using an older MacBook from work at the moment and digging this iPod Touch a lot. In many ways I do more on the Touch now. It has its flaws of course, and no it has nothing to do with “openness” or flash. The screen is too small and there are times (less than you would think) where I need a physical keyboard.

So picture my context. I travel a fair amount, I think the MacBook is not always neccessary but the Touch/iPhone is not always enough. The Touch meets my casual gaming needs (serious games, that’s what consoles are built for), it kind of meets my wordprocessing needs (still typing on the Touch …). So why on earth, for that price, wouldn’t I want an iPad?

Truth be told, I was considering getting a sleek MacBook Pro to replace my lost MacBook. But for years, I’ve secretely lusted after a shiny iMac as well, never being able to justify having both a laptop and a desktop. The iPad is not a standalone PC. It needs to be synced with one (every week or so). But it also gives me a chance not not restrict computing to a small 13-15″ screen and buy a “real” computer so that makes sense to me.

In my UNIQUE context, the iPad makes sense. In my less unique context regarding my parents, it makes sense. 2010 is hopefully a year of less computing headaches and more of just getting things done.

the end
Vincent

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Political & Commercial World Powers and the Dynamics of Education

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:33:38 +0000

As is usual when I take a long break from writing, my blog posts end up becoming insanely long. Take it as you will, but I’ve tried to make it as coherent a post as possible. P.S. this is a post written under de cover of my “leave of absence,” which means I still write, but less frequently. – - Vincent.

A good friend of mine, Zihni Ozdil from the Netherlands / Turkey, Historian Extraordinaire, is now publishing his wisdom online. If history, politics, and culture (“beyond the superficial”) is something you find interesting, I encourage you to check it out. On his site, I found an article entitled ‘the real Evil Empire,’ which, ignoring the provocative title, deals with the interesting topic of the cold war and the ‘demonification’ of Russia and communism at that time.

Yesterday, I had an interesting discussion with some Canadian Swedes that moved to Florida with their kids and had trouble finding a school. The only way, it seemed, to guarantee that their kid ended up in a good one is to have an A-class school in your district (which you can find via a website that profiles attendees according to race and economic background… wow…) and to have paid your electricity bills. It worked out well for them, but clearly suggests the underlying problem of a long-term selection bias.

Last night, meeting the Canadian Swedes, where I was also in the company of a Russian and a Japanese, I noted that it was strange that while both Russia and Japan, being superpowers in their own right, have infamously challenging education systems, which result in some pretty smart people graduating from either country, the US does not seem to follow that pattern, at least not at the high school level, and certainly not across all demographics. Yet, by all accounts, the US is a superpower, if not the superpower of this and the last century.

My post today is not about comparing countries’ education systems, it’s more about the strategic purpose of education. Many people don’t know this about me, but I don’t vote and I don’t generally care about (regional) politics. To me, our planet should be one country, where anyone can move and work anywhere, and services don’t have to be moved just because you physically moved XX km/miles to another country. But I do recognise the power of competition and how that can lead to excellence. Versus a ‘group think’-like mediocrity where everyone just tries to be like everyone else and no one exceeds. So, in a way, I endorse a system of divided regions, because I think it leads to competition and thus excellence.

Education plays a strong role on the competitive advantage of nations, as it does in certain companies. Last year, applying to a lot of consultancy companies and working as one myself, I was struck at the importance that the accumulation of knowledge plays in this industry. If I were to start my own consultancy, continuous education of the staff would most certainly be a cornerstone of the business strategy, because knowledge is your product as a consultant.

I know that this thinking plays a strong part in government circles as well: how to make your/our country as strong as possible, not (just) in military terms, but in the sense of knowledge, mostly measured by the no. of graduates and the no. of patents that are published every year (as well the commercialisation thereof, which doesn’t go quite as smoothly).

I know that the no. of graduates coming out of Chinese universities is tremendous, and the no. of patents coming out of US ones is among the highest in the world also. So clearly, the US, superpower extraordinaire, is doing something right. I don’t however entirely understand why the primary/secondary school system is so abysmal then in the US. My only explanation is that, in academic circles, there are no national boundaries, and a Russian researcher can just as well (if not better) produce patents in the US as anywhere else.

There are other dimensions to the US superpower status as well, of course. It’s a military superpower, it is a cultural superpower (in terms of films, music, and literature), it has a large consumer-base. These three dimensions—safety through military strength, an easily adopted culture, a consumer’s paradise—also have the effect that they serve as an attraction point for outside academic or other talent. And while other countries may have strong educational bases, the other aspects are perhaps ignored just a little too much, still making the US a prime export location for knowlegde.

In the strategic literature, there is the concept of the resource-based view, which stipulates that company strategies are nothing more than a collection of resources, some of which are internalised and some that are not. I think that in the context of the US and education, the resources that must be internalised are those that lead to the commercial exploitation of technological advantage, which sounds abstract, but basically means making sure that the best technology/knowledge is produced in-house and generates economic benefits in-house as well.

But there other resources that must most certainly not be held onto in-house. These include standards, which facilitate the assimilation of knowledge. In education, the standards that we use are the bachelor-master-phd system, which can easily be studied in different combinations and locations. And text-books, which as many students know, are often from US-origins.

In many ways, the cultural exports from the US—movies, music, literature—are nothing more than the spreading of a standard, that of a language and a way of thinking, which makes assimilation of outside talent easier. And as long as that outside talent is used for the benefit of the US, in the form of patent exploitation, the US benefits, even if their own primary/secondary education system is quite uneven.

As mentioned, I don’t care about politics, country-differences, or governments. But if my logic is correct, I wonder if a metaphor exists for commercial superpowers, i.e. companies that are market leaders and remain so by attracting the greatest talent and finding ways to turn that into economic benefits.

Organisations are not complete economies like governments are and also have the benefit of being mobile—by law they are considered single persons, which have residence, pay taxes, etc. just like everyone else. So, as long as they obey the law, they can choose where they stay and choose to ignore local conditions, much like, I theorise, some governments do, instead focussing on the bottom-line: attracting excellence and turning that into profit, while keeping ‘unnecessary’ expenses as low as possible. Well, at least that is the stereotype of an organisation, while pressures have certainly lead some to adopt a more socially-responsible attitude.

Clearly, the question of talent, whether attracting or training it, remains a vital one for both countries and organisations. But I don’t think there is necessarily a correlation between talent and local conditions.. at all.. though local conditions do play a part in the quality of life, or lack thereof, which affects the talent’s in question desire for a certain location.

Vincent out.

(Picture courtesy of thehindubusinessline.com)

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Think different – Nokia was the Apple of mobile phones

Kari Silvennoinen — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 11:00:13 +0000

What many of you might not know is that the reason Nokia became the biggest mobile phone manufacturer is because of Apple. When all their competitors were standing still, Nokia decided to think a bit differently. This story was one of the hidden gems in “Fast Strategy“, a book co-authored by Mikko Kosonen, a former executive at Nokia, and it tells the story how Nokia was able to challenge Motorola, Ericsson and other big players of yesteryear.

“When everyone saw mobile telephony as a professional service, Nokia’s leadership saw mobile phones as consumer – almost fashion – products. Rather than predict five or ten percent maximum penetration rate, Nokia quickly imagined everyone in the world having one – or why not several? – mobile phones for personal as well as professional use.” (page 3)

“[On the importance of strategic insight] Some insight may result from intense personal awareness and conviction, such as Pekka Ala-Pieitilä at Nokia being an avid Mac user and seeing the potential for Nokia to turn mobile phones into mass market consumer goods the way Apple was doing for personal computers.” (page 21)

One has to wonder why this Mac-love was only visible in the strategic thinking while Nokia’s Mac-support (PC Suite and other things) has been abysmal throughout the years.

So, what has changed so dramatically that blogs and business newspapers are declaring doom on Nokia? First of all, Nokia’s DNA changed the moment the became #1 mobile phone manufacturer in the world. Before that they were a challenger, trying out

The Nokia 1100, the best selling consumer electronics device in the world

different things and taking risks. But now they are playing defensive, trying to maintain their market share. According to Kosonen, Nokia is trying to counter this by being “strategically agile”.

But it isn’t just that. The backwaters of mobile innovation, USA, suddenly became relevant. I would argue that this is mostly due to Blackberry and iPhone and the huge domestic market. Also, one has to remember that the US is overpresented on the internet, so once the web broke through to mobile devices and Apple started to market the idea of software apps on mobile devices, things seemed to change a bit. Nokia has never been strong in the US, or for that matter in any market where consumers do not choose their own phones and where Nokia has never been able to work with operators. That’s probably the only thing that has been constant.

Couple of weeks ago yet another analyst group forecasted how Apple could pass Nokia in as soon as 2011. Now, this fantasy was based on how iPod users would convert to iPhone users and how Apple should launch low-cost iPhones (especially to developing countries) and sell customized ringtones and overall act in a non-Apple way (and eerily like Nokia). And yet, we’re still talking about smart phones which so far represent a tiny minority of total mobile market.

Sure, Nokia needs to get its act together, especially on the services front, but it’s too early to say that they’re doomed. Especially when you consider that Nokia is pretty strong in the developing countries. My prediction is that it’s not Nokia that will be irrelevant in the mobile phone market in the future, but the US market ‘s importance will fade and it is the mobile players that win elsewhere that continue to matter. The sheer size of mobile phone markets in Africa just boggles the mind.

In the new world of the mobile web, Nokia’s biggest problem is their own legacy, something that slowed Ericsson and Motorola down when Nokia was decided to bring mobile phones to the masses. Apple, on the other hand has shown that it can take advantage of market discontinuities in many different markets where traditional barriers to entry are crumbling down.

“For decades, the dominant players were EMI and RCA, and more recently Sony Music, which had built up the assets and capabilities … In today’s digital world, however, companies like Apple, which have none of the traditional music industry capabilities, are becoming leading players.”

In summary, it’s all about bringing technology to the masses. Apple did that for smartphones, but Nokia, inspired by Apple’s success bringing personal computing to masses, did and continues to do that for mobile phones. It’s just Nokia struggles with the US and smartphones for the rest of us. In Fast Strategy, Cisco’s Corporate Vice President Strategic Allainces, Steve Steinhilber is quoted to have said “…five years ago could Nokia really have expected Apple to be the main threat to their high end phone business?”

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The Dynamics of Blogging and the Dynamics of Doing Business

Vincent van Wylick — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:05:07 +0000

I hate breaks in anything I do, blogging, work, sports, love, etc., because it’s always harder to return back into the zone. Similarly, I already knew subconsciously that it would be hard to return back to blogging after the proposed hiatus. Routines are good and when they are moved aside, they get replaced by something else.

The human body is a machine and everything, from hours in the day, to food and exercise, to making money, to relationships, are all pieces in the machine of life. There’s only so many hours in the day is a well-familiar phrase to most of us and reflects the difficulty in balancing different activities and responsibilities, with some just falling off the map.

I am not saying that I plan to stop blogging, but I do think that we all need to make choices in our lives which will affect other, previous ones, like domino blocks.

Dynamics…

I just bookmarked a blog post on delicious on forming sales teams in a startup. It’s a good one and you should all read it. As I tagged and bookmarked however, I immediately thought, hey, I’m pretty sure no one on my company will read it. Why? Maybe because we already figured it out… Maybe because we figure stuff out as we are doing it… Your choice.

Blogging or any kind of writing for public purposes brings several complications to business people:

it is public knowledge, meaning that the competitive advantages are slim: I don’t think this is a major factor, as most innovations are combinations of different ingredients that may or may not be public knowledge. Great artists steal, as they say.
Writing is processed explicit knowledge from something that was previously implicit and needs to be made implicit again by the reader for it to be useful in a practical context: I’ve written about the knowledge-generating company and the knowledge spiral twice before. Another phrase, “You can’t help yourself, because your *self* sucks!” also comes to mind.

It’s the latter that represents the greatest challenge to authors and consumers of their work. I’ve also previously written about the benefit of formal education, which, I think, tries to recreate the knowledge spiral, turning explicit knowledge into the implicit kind, to be used by students in their work later on.

The dynamics of business is that there are expenses—YOU, the team, the office, etc.—which need to be recuperated by your work—the work you do for customers, after which they pay you. It leaves very little time for reflection, e.g. through blogging, etc., and for making things explicit, e.g. through blogging, etc.

I’m still a big fan of Michael Gerber’s E-myth revisited, which is really about writing that franchise manual for your business, so you can both understand the processes happening in your company, and expand on those, by more easily passing on knowledge. It’s Taylorism, of course, or Scientific Management, or any of the other management methodologies that followed in the past century.

But these activities require time, time which people inside organisations usually do not have, and hence prefer to outsource to outside consultants, who then need to make their knowledge explicit and again implicit in the minds and methods of their clients’ organisation.

It’s a real nightmare for people (like me) who think to much and always aim for something higher. And who want to blog. And who want to do good business…

Thoughts?
Vincent

(Picture courtesy of Fisica & Psychica)

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Why Universities work and Self-Study doesn’t

Vincent van Wylick — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 09:23:34 +0000

Just briefly, as the only reason I’m standing is due to the fumes of caffeine, rather than a good night’s sleep.

I just finished going through the Lesson’s Learned blog post on “The Principles of Product Development Flow,” which I think is an excellent review of a book that I does not seem to be on public release yet for us Europeans. Well, you could order it from Amazon.com.

I’m fascinated with things like lean manufacturing, total quality management, agile development, etc. Basically, product development, which Eric enticed me with, as it’s the crucial link between invention and commercialisation (aka the definition of innovation).

That said, product development is something that you best learn in university and not (just) from a book. Several reasons:

anyone can say that they read a book
there are no tests at the end of books, no accreditation for you.
it’s a singular view at a problem, while in a course you (hopefully) get presented with multiple views
you equally don’t have your peers or teachers to discuss problems and solutions with.
And, the most important reasons of all, a good university provides a link between theory and application, by providing you with opportunities for doing internships and/or jobs.

None of this is sadly provided by books and is why I feel that reading a book on product development and management will only help someone actively engaged in this activity and/or doing a study in this field.

That said, I think that those are all areas where bloggers, authors, companies, and educational institutes can do a lot about improving the system of learning and particularly the link between learning and application.

Just my point of view, I’d love to hear yours.
Vincent
(Picture courtesy of sinesoflearning.blogspot.com)

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On Having Heroes in Your Craft

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:01:14 +0000

I think I’ve just discovered a new hero of mine in the area of blogging. Her name is Penelope Trunk and I really like her writing style as well as the focus of her blog/site/company, called The Brazen Careerist. Previous heroes include Fred Wilson, whom I also like for his style of writing, and, I’m a little ashamed to say, Robert Scoble.

The way that heroism works for me is that I start writing like these people. Scoble has this habit of asking himself questions like “Why do I like Friendfeed? Here’s 120 reasons..” Somewhat banal, when you think about it, because it’s like you’re saying “Why am I so right? Here’s 1 million reasons…” I actually adopted it for a few blog-posts, then I dropped it. Fred Wilson writes essays, shorter than Paul Graham’s (thank god), but still I like the flow of the text. And for a while, I’m sure, I tried to sound like Fred Wilson. And Penelope Trunk just has a very personable style, for lack of a better word.

That’s not to say that I will now try to write like Ms. Trunk, or that I even do it intentionally. Back when I was a kid and tried to write fiction, I always remember that it read like Stephen King, J.R.R. Tolkien, or Isaac Asimov, depending on who I was reading at the time. It wasn’t on purpose, it was more like my brain adopted the writing style more easily than say, if I spent time with an accountant and tried to replicate what he/she did.

I think each of us have brain-patterns that fit a certain craft best and for me it happens to be writing. Which is interesting, because I also read and talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, yet I am not one right now and wondering if I ever will be. Food for thought.

Have you experienced the same thing in your craft? How do you take in information from your heroes, though conversations, reading, observation, interaction, or other means? How effective has it been for you? And is it something that stays with you always or just in the beginning of your life? And, the most important question of them all… Who are Your Heroes?

Vincent

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What would an Always-On Device look like? Do we even want it?

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:18:47 +0000

It’s funny how our thoughts evolve from one day to the next. Which reminds me that we need to adapt our About page to reflect that a little more, as it’s about 2 years old. My thinking about Always-On Devices comes from a simple pain that I feel when I miss “a moment.” Sometimes I wish that I could… well Andy Warhol in Miraclemen phrases it much better than me.

In Alan Moore’s & Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel, Warhol’s existence is not painted in a very colourful light (pun intended). He has been resurrected as a machine into a society where money no longer plays a role and is very depressed. So his ability to record everything is really not very meaningful to him. Having only read this part of the comic last night, already my sentiments about Always-On are changing towards… and what would it accomplish?

I recently visited an Art Exhibition of independent artists in Maastricht and tested out a little what an Always-On Device would look like to me. I used my camera, a Canon 870 IS, as a recording device, which I held in front of me while walking through the crowd.

I managed to capture the people experiencing an exhibition, a piano player who was adding atmosphere to a room full of art, just hypnotically playing a few notes over and over. What actually intrigued me the most, I captured maybe two dozen miniature sets for the Maastricht Opera house. It was very surreal, the sets which were made out of cardboard and wood mostly, were 3-dimensional, and I was floating with my camera device around it and through it even, capturing it all at angles never deemed possible to me before. As if I was my own film-director.

Of course, apart from the disappointing battery-life on my camera, clearly not designed for video-recording, and the occasionally funny looks that I got, the real challenge is to make that data actionable—a big priority in everything I do. It is a matter of transforming the raw footage into a tight package that can be consumed by others, and the question is really, should this be the responsibility of the creator or of the consumer…?

With us having reached and surpassed the age of the mashup, it makes less and less sense to continue to try and re-invent the wheel, rather delegating that task across far more… interested people (in the area of video-editing at least), of which there is no shortage, as long as the tools and the specific community exists. Clearly, that kind of methodology requires a lax attitude about copyright.

To recap, so that it doesn’t seem like I’m entirely floating in thoughts, an Always-On Device would need:

A willing human recorder
A recording device designed for capturing experiences
A way to process that information into “usable bits”
A favourable legal environment
And a willing consumer

I’ll leave the question of “do we even want it?” for smarter people than me to decide. In the mean time, I will continue my search for point 2 and 3 on that list (more on this blog, if successful).

Until after Paris,
Vincent

Some questions to finance geeks out there – on learning about investing

Vincent van Wylick — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 11:03:26 +0000

Hey guys,

I wanted to pose this question on Twitter, but couldn’t describe it in 140 characters. Basically, if I want to learn about investing, what would be the best way to go about it?

I noticed, reading Business Accounting for Dummies, that accounting is a topic that is very nationally driven. Sure, there are general standards, but there will be subtle legal differences for each country and in the end you have to learn something twice or thrice (depending on how often you move).

Is it the same for investing? Am I better off talking to my local bank and seeing what my options are there? I have to say, I prefer being already informed before letting myself be sold service X or Y, so what is a good way to find out about investing via books or otherwise?

I’m not a Dummies-freak or anything, but I did like Consulting for Dummies a lot (review here) and some chapters in the (British) Business Accounting for Dummies book. Would you endorse reading the Investing for Dummies book or another one (bear in mind, that I am a “dummy” as far as investing is concerned!)?

In any case, those were my questions, which wouldn’t have fit the 140 character format. Any advice you can give is welcome!

Vincent

P.S. we are now on a new server, which shouldn’t affect your experience one bit. We may post more polls though :p

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Random thoughts on: Men's vs. Women's fashion statements, 'Virtual' Offices, and (corporate) Centres of Knowledge

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 12:24:30 +0000

We’ll be migrating Tech IT Easy from wordpress.com to a self-hosted solution these coming days, so I won’t be posting much, I don’t think. In the mean time, here are a few things flying through my head.

Men can’t get away with this !!

Jason Kottke pointed me towards an anti-fashion-industry trend lead by some women: the wearing-one-dress-slightly-altered-day-in-day-out-trend. Somewhat jealous, because it seems so efficient (and thus manly), but I don’t think men can get away with doing something like that, do you? Then again, men also don’t look quite as attractive…

Factors influencing the ‘virtual office’

I’ve heard several stories of entrepreneurs setting up their companies that they can operate it independently from a location, and if you’ve read some of my posts on “designing companies” and mobility, you know that I feel very strongly about doing something similar. In VAT-law, there’s the rule that you can’t locate your VAT-payments to a VAT-friendly country if you’re doing significant business in the VAT-unfriendly country. I’m guessing it’s quite similar with virtual offices. If your business activities tie you to a particular location, than that is a ‘tax’ that you have to pay.

Since there are plenty of smart tax-lawyers around who know their way around the loop-holes, perhaps it’s time for some ‘expert-consultants’ that help entrepreneurs become location-free?? The 4-hour workweek guy comes to mind.

On building (corporate) Knowledge Centres

I grew up in a library, one which my father built, so I may have a different perspective from people growing up in the more digital, paper-free world. But, to me, libraries are magical and comforting. One of the first things I did, moving to Luxembourg, was to move many of my books here (with more on the way) and asking my boss whether we can set up a library.

More broadly, a library to me stands for building and storing knowledge, whether for individuals or groups, and is a source of creativity, innovation, and also trust. Large consultancies are most famous for doing such things and if you saw the virtual universities some of them have train their staff, you’d be amazed.

No great point to this story, except that I hope that as an entrepreneur/manager/CEO you’ll also consider how to improve the lives of your employees sometimes, as well as consider that your company, which is essentially a living organism, will only benefit from having more knowledge inside of it.

On that philosophical note, I.. am.. out.

Vincent

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One way to improve your writing

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:11:37 +0000

As someone entirely new to the world of finance (apart from the theory of course), I get a lot of beginner tasks to do. One of these, I found, has had a dramatic effect on my writing (in the positive sense), and basically consists of transcribing a 40-page legal document from (tree-)paper to Word.

This simple repetitive action of typing I don’t know how many words per minute for several hours a day, along with the entire (for lack of a better word) boringness of the subject-matter, means that, pretty soon, your fingers-muscles become as strong as Arnie in his hay day (picture), allowing you to write up your thoughts that much faster. I imagine a similar effect arises from coding and would think that the coders on this blog would find more time to write.. but hey.

The greater point to all of this is that there are no short-cuts to getting better in any craft, apart from more and more and more practice. There are plenty of books on grammar and how to write a novel, which are probably useful to read in regards to the structure of sentences and longer texts. But in the end, the most pleasurable thing of it all is to not have to spend too much time thinking about where the keys are located on your keyboard and instead be able to focus on the greater point of your writing: what you are trying to say!

Vincent

P.S. One negative thing to add: I don’t particularly think that typing all day is very good for the fingers. Can anyone suggest an RSI-preventative keyboard or is any extensive physical finger-labour bound to end up in walking around with the claw all day?

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What "The Mailroom" makes me think about

Vincent van Wylick — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 14:09:24 +0000

At the moment of writing, I’m on page XXII, what some of you may recognise as the introductory pages of the book. Not nearly enough to write a review. But I discovered the title in the FT weekend edition and reading a few pages it already feels alive with the buzz of making it big from the bottom up to the most powerful circles of Hollywood. For that is the topic of the book, tales of those people that started in the mailroom and now rule the woods of holly.

What the mailroom made me think about was IBM. I read the autobiography (I think it’s this one) of the founding of IBM around 15 years ago while lounging on the beaches of Cuba. It made a strong impression on me because it was raw. The book was also badly bound, falling apart bit by bit, which no doubt added to the memory. But what made the IBM story so compelling is that it wasn’t about the “consulting biz” it is now, having gotten rid of 95% of its hardware business, but it was about going from typing machines, to calculators, to huge room-filling computers, to the personal computer. Like the Mailroom, the story is maybe a little dated, but both are about dreaming big and thinking about and experiencing the radical steps that life, business, an industry, society can make. As such, still being on page XXII of the Mailroom, I can still say that it is an inspiring read.

The other thing the Mailroom reminded me of is my love for post-1900 history. Nothing like Word War I, II, of the Cold War, I’m not very interested in humanities continuous attempts to destroy themselves. More about the chaos that made lots of adventures possible. Business opportunities like the ones that Ray Croc discovered in plastic cups and McDonalds, crime in the early 20s and 30s which was really entrepreneurism, the development of cinema as discussed in my Hitchcock / Truffaut pieces. The Mailroom, IBM.

When I look at today, (P.S. I’m just lounging in the garden in the burning sun, reading the book and pounding away at this post), it all seems rather dull in comparison. The real opportunities, which often come from unplanned chaos, seem to be more located in emerging economies like China and India, than in European countries like France where when you get fired you get a (scandalous) 50,000 euro “bonus.” Even the Internet, which has attracted a lot of free spirits in the past and present, seems to continue to get more consolidated, structured, encumbered by taxation and the personal interests of national organisations operating in a nationless environment. OK, I’m drifting…

Read the Mailroom! I predict it’s a good read, particularly during the hopefully more chilled out summer days.

Vincent

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"The knowledge-creating company" — does it work in practice?

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 29 May 2009 10:27:48 +0000

I think I must be a geek because I like creating order (that doesn’t automatically mean that I’m a very orderly person, rather the opposite).

One of my first priorities in my new position was to orientate myself in the “order” of things, or rather to have a good view on what the process from customer generation to customer acquisition is (my interpretation of the lifeblood of every company).

So my questions, very formal, covered following three elements:

what is the profile of a customer most valuable to our company?
what are the USPs of our company for these customers?
what is the process of converting potential customers into actual customers?

The answer was that there is no simple answer to the question, except that over time I would learn to understand what was possible or not.

It kind of follows the paradigm that the famous Harvard Business Review article called “The Knowledge-Creating Company” introduces, where experts possess a lot of tacit knowledge, which they use to do their job (Incidentally, the HBR-article is authored by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, who are the original protagonists of the Scrum approach).

In other words, over time, by accumulating experience, I would be able to develop a type of instinct regarding stuff like what a good customer is, what optimal solution is for him, and how the internal process works of customer conversion.

But the article takes it further (and is also my inspiration) in that from tacit or implicit you move to explicit knowledge, meaning that processes are documented and standardised. A kind of spiral forms, indicated in the picture below. This also reminds of Gerber’s franchise methodology in the E-Myth Revisited.

The question is what internal and environmental conditions have to exist for this spiral to function properly, and whether it can be applied universally to all company processes. I do not think so and would ague that in environments that are constantly changing, like global finance or when starting a company, making things too explicit undermines the speed-advantage that the tacit approach brings.

A little academic perhaps (you know me… ), but what do you think? What company processes typically need to be made explicit, and which are not served by this?

Vincent

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What I dislike about business plans [addendum]

Vincent van Wylick — Tue, 26 May 2009 09:05:21 +0000

First, what I love about business plans. I contains four elements very close to my heart: Writing, talking to people, innovation, and entrepreneurship. That is not to say that writing business plans is a fun activity that should be taken lightly. The crux of writing a business plan is that it needs to be executed upon. And that is where the complication arises.

One of my last freelance projects was amazing fun and in two ways very rewarding. Financially, because the investment that followed it, far exceeded the more than generous fee I was paid. Creatively, because my involvement lead to a lot of focus product- and strategy-wise, and we developed what I thought was a clear timeline as to the execution of the plan in different phases of product and market development.

But, as mentioned, writing a plan does not mean that it reflects the reality. I was reminded of this again, listening to a venture hacks podcast on “pitching hacks” (you can watch and listen to the presentation here). Business plans are worth squat, because a. there’s a lot of them, and b. the proportion that is executed upon is fairly small.

In theory, business-plans serve as a way to make the strategy of a young company explicit. Kind of like Gerber’s “Franchise manual” for startups in the E-Myth Revisited, it allows you to solidify what you do while you’re doing it. But, I don’t think it automatically leads to a (better or actual) business…

…

Those three dots is where I stopped writing some three weeks ago, and I have in the mean time developed my thoughts further on this. I think that the gist of good business planning is taking ownership of the project. And the single most important key-component of the business plan is the timeline section. And the single most important action as an entrepreneur is to already have at least 10-30% completed of that timeline.

In other words:

if you’re an entrepreneur you should write your own business plan: you cannot outsource this!

The most well-developed section of your plan should be your timeline: as conservative and realistic as possible!

The best way to illustrate the value of your plan (and timeline) is to already be following it: actions scream much louder than written words!

If those three components are in place, I think that the world of business planning and entrepreneurship would be a much better place.

End braindump…

Vincent

Addentum: The problem of multiple agendas! I should also add that another complication is that plans are written with a singular vision in mind, perhaps alternative scenarios are included, but it still very often reflects a singular approach to “doing things.” But… many companies are composed of multiple people, who may or may not have multiple agendas. I still think it can belong to taking ownership of the idea, in the sense that the plan is worked on together and perfected until everyone agrees with it. But more often than not, the business function is delegated to certain individuals, meaning that this isn’t the case.

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If you're following me on Twitter and I'm not following you, it's because…

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 20 May 2009 08:31:27 +0000

…We haven’t exchanged a single word with each other. I’m trying a new thing and my inspiration for this is a picture I took from the latest Wired “Mystery” edition.

Apart from it being a smart picture, what I found more interesting is how the effect was achieved. Note the amount of people that Mr. sampotts is following, ca. 50. Having previously followed over 200 (now shrunk down to ca. 35), it was impossible for me to “listen” to a single word people were saying. My only two pieces of salvation were if you @vincentvw’d me (in which case an rss-feed would catch it) or if I added you to Friendfeed, where you can set up friendlists and place (imaginary) friends from Twitter inside.

Twitter is badly designed for this kind of collaborative effort, unless you minimise the amount of people you follow or find workarounds. Even so, those workarounds mean that you cheat 80% of your “friends” as you just push them into a corner where you listen to them less or not at all. E.g. on Friendfeed, I “follow” ca. 300 people, but really only read about 5. I’m sure 90% of Friendfeed users do the same.

My method, for now, is to restrict myself to people whose blog I read or with whom I chat (hopefully) on a regular basis. In the future, perhaps I’ll add a few people that I want to talk to, we’ll see. But the ultimate aim is to get the same effect that sampotts has, that I can ask a question and get answers from the hive mind.

If you remember, that was my vision of Twitter the first time I wrote about it on Tech IT Easy, nearly two years ago. I hope I can regain some of that innocent utopian vision.

For now, the best way to get me to follow you, is to say (smart) things to me, via Twitter, mail, this blog, or in real life!

Vincent

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An (informal) Entrepreneurial Brainstorming Session No. 1: Book summaries that are stories

Vincent van Wylick — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:10:47 +0000

I know I wrote about rebooting the entrepreneurial brainstorming sessions. I kind of prefer an informal style of ‘idea generation’ though… Today, the subject is literature, of which there arguably is way too much. Sometimes it’s nice to read a ‘thin book,’ like The One Minute Manager or even The Alchemist.

What those books have in common is that they give you lessons in a very compressed space. But it works, because rather than doing a dry, point-by-point summary of the content published in much longer books, they do so in story-format. The One Minute Manager is about a man trying to learn about management and he goes on a kind of exploratory adventure to uncover the secrets. According to the book there’s only really three elements to effective one-to-one management [there's another book in the series, I'm reading now, on one-to-many management also], but I won’t bore you with them. The only thing to note is that I REMEMBER the lessons in the book perfectly!

The Alchemist is not a management book, it’s a self-help book about finding happiness and the meaning to your life. It’s again about an adventure and you follow this kid across the desert. Very simple principles, clothed in the format of an entertaining and exciting story.

No wonder these two books are best-sellers!

These last decades have seen a tremendous rise on various fronts involving the mass-education of mankind. From MBAs, to millions of published books, to billions of informational websites, it’s understandably overwhelming. As a result, you now get books teaching you (supposedly) “MBAs in a nutshell”, you get websites that sell you books in audio-format. And you also get websites that sell you book summaries for the busy executive.

Having read several of these, I have to say that I’m not impressed. Sure, I can read Crossing the Chasm in 5 pages, but what have I actually learned? How do the lessons that I read in bullet-point format translate into a language that my brain understands and remembers?

The answer is, if you ask me, to start a business that translates (boring / long) books into shorter books and doing so in story-form. Nothing is as exciting to business-folk like me, than reading a Harvard Business Review case-study. Because, it’s a (nearly) living example. I place myself into the antagonist’s point of view and learn about the challenges he/she has to face!

So this is my first “entrepreneurial brainstorming” topic: start a business that translates longer books into shorter entertaining stories and sells them to executives!

What do you think?

Vincent

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10 Traits of Great Teams

Vincent van Wylick — Thu, 07 May 2009 08:40:00 +0000

I don’t know if you can really generalise across all teams what makes them great. I’m still young and learn something new about teams every day. That said, this is what I’ve learned so far and these are values that I try to keep in my own work, and encourage in others. This topic is inspired by the ‘thin book(tm)’, “The one minute manager builds high performing teams.”

My criteria for the following 10 traits are the ultimate outcome, not necessarily just working with great, smart people:

Ownership of the idea: that should be clear. In my experience, the kind of people who take ownership are the kind that pull all-nighters to get things done.

Clarity of goals: having a clear idea of what we want to achieve, with the understanding that these things need to be discussed regularly, is invaluable as far motivation and focussed work is concerned.

A strong work-ethic: by which I mean, being an honest, hard worker, and also someone who keeps others on track.

Open communication: nothing kills teams as much as frustrations, problems, or compliments left unspoken.

Trust: not the same as open communication, often you need to be able to count on your team-members, blindly, rather than having to tell them what to do. And vice versa!

Multi-disciplinary backgrounds: I still believe in the three core-disciplines of teams being: detail, social, and vision, but I also think working with people, who have a different (educational / work) background to your own, can be tremendously rewarding in terms of thinking out of the box.

A both fuzzy and clear division of tasks: Sometimes, it’s needed that people pull themselves away from their own tasks and help others. Overall speaking, I think it’s very useful to have a clear division of tasks, with everyone in the team being aware of what they have to do.

Broad-mindedness: Maybe I’m biased here, but there’s nothing like working with people that have an international background, who think beyond boundaries. This trait can also be developed by just keeping an open mind though.

Competitiveness towards the outside: as a team, our goal is to win.

Reduced ego on the inside: as a team, no one is better than the other, and the best synergies are developed when egos are left at the door.

I’d love to hear about some of the traits that you discovered in great teams you worked with.

Vincent

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My biggest nightmare if I ran a startup, and what I would probably do about it

Vincent van Wylick — Mon, 04 May 2009 11:12:14 +0000

“The strategy and tactics of pricing” is the toughest book I’ve ever read. Not tough as in boring, what most books regarding finance, accounting, law, programming, and other subjects I’m bad at end up being. But tough like Chess, you have think more than a few moves ahead. The fun part about chess is that it’s a game and you can fail without much pain, but with Pricing… it’s better not to make too many mistakes.

Picture this nightmare scenario, an example I just read about in the book [paraphrased]:

A large building products manufacturer is operating in a commoditised market, but has continuously been profitable due to banking on perceived technical excellence and exceptional customer service. Still, market share has been going down due to aggressive price cutting by competitors.

How would you address this problem? Well, this is what the new management of the company did:

Whenever an account was seriously threatened, sales manager were authorised to negotiate “special deals,” that would retain the business at lower, but still profitable prices. It seemed successful, and market share increased by a few points over the next few quarters.

But what happened in the long-term?

The company tried to minimise damage, by not making this a public policy. But still, customers eventually ended up talking and found out that other customers got the same quality and service for less. Worse, those customers that negotiated by threatening to go to the competition, were the ones that got the lowest prices!

Long term effects were that customers decided to no longer get “taken” by the company. Whatever previous loyalty existed, eroded, and customers opened up their doors to competitors, which had previously been closed. The company had ended up creating a financial incentive for its buyers to become more informed and less loyal, and customers responded.

Something that seemed like a smart move in the short-term, had turned into a nightmare over the long term.

Now the book goes on to say that any strategic move you make, pricing wise, must be one that weighs the short-term vs. the long-term consequences. The difficulty is that pricing is an area often dominated by sales people, who use the sport-analogy in doing business: “there can only be one winner, and it must be me!” Pricing, as the example above shows, isn’t just about winning in the short-term however, it’s about operating in a triangular fashion, respecting your bottom-line, understanding what your customer needs, and dealing with the competition. In the words of the book, it requires a “diplomat,” rather than a general to manage this area of strategy.

Reading this book would probably take 1 month full time. It would take ca. 3 months total to understand what is being said. And it would probably take another 3 months to try and implement it in your business. No sane CEO / startup founder would have time learn this stuff! They’re busy enough managing other aspects of the business, such as cash flow and people. So what I would do, if I were the founder of a startup and wanted to master pricing strategy [and you really should], I would hire an intern and make that his job: take 1 month to read the book, take another 5 to develop a pricing strategy for our business.. Then, if successful, hire the kid as the pricing strategist for your company. I’m 100% sure that it will pay itself back and now consider pricing as one of the corner-stones of any company’s strategy.

This was just a brain-dump. Love to hear your thoughts on this.
Vincent

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Hitchcock / Truffaut on the perversion of new mediums

Vincent van Wylick — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:23:19 +0000

No great point to this post; I occasionally grab this book and read a few pages, as I’m an avid film-fan and interested how they are made. This piece, where Alfred Hitchcock talks about silent films and what was lost after sound was introduced, reminded me a little of the experimentation that has been happening on the web and whether or not that is a good or bad thing. I think that those that were masters of the previous mediums, in this case print and all kinds of analog media, will certainly have a strong opinion about what is happening today, just like Hitchcock did, after silent pictures, which he started with, were displaced by the more noisy kind.

Here goes:

Alfred Hitchcock: The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema; the only thing they lacked was the sound of people talking and the noises. But this slight imperfection did not warrant the major changes that sound brought in. In other words, since all that was missing was the simple natural sound, there was no need to go to the other extreme and completely abandon the technique of the pure motion picture, the way they did when sound came in.

François Truffaut: I agree. In the final era of silent movies, the great film-makers—in fact, almost the whole production—had reached something near perfection. The introduction of sound, in a way, jeopardized that perfection. I mean that this was precisely the time when the high screen standards of so many brilliant directors showed up the woeful inadequacy of the others, and the lesser talents were gradually being eliminated from the field. In this sense one might say that mediocrity came back into its own with the advent of sound.

Alfred Hitchcock: I agree absolutely. In my opinion, that’s true even today. In many of the films now being made, there is very little cinema: they are mostly what I call “photographs of people talking.” When we tell a story in cinema, we should resort to dialogue only when it’s impossible to do otherwise. I always try to first to tell a story in the cinematic way, though a succession of shots and bits of film in between.
……
In writing a screenplay, it is essential to separate clearly the dialogue from the visual elements and whenever possible, to rely more on the visual than on the dialogue. Whichever way you may choose to stage the action, you main concern is to hold the audience’s fullest attention.
Summing it up, one might say that the screen rectangle must be charged with emotion.

While I’m on this wavelength, this piece also reminds me of another essay, I read recently, this time on making solid investment decisions. The piece, by Andy Kessler, was on the concept of elasticity, which is not only used in evaluating customer decision making under different conditions, but is also relevant when shifts in technology occur, allowing for drastic development on that new platform. From semiconductors, to phones-that-are-computers, each allowed for explosive innovation to happen, displacing the masters of the previous era. But there is still a place for masterdom, I feel, as the example of Hitchcock, a director that will likely never be forgotten, clearly illustrates.

Taking opportunity of opening markets makes a lot of sense; becoming the master of your medium, gives meaning to what you do.
Vincent

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Thoughts on the work-life balance

Vincent van Wylick — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:07:14 +0000

Rule 101 of blogging: Never write about how you’re planning to lead your life. In my experience, this process of externalising your thoughts, as opposed to internalising them, often leads to people shoving it away from their minds. So, rather than going to deeply into the sh^t that I have to deal with myself, and which would be entirely boring to you, I’ll go across some ‘influences’ for my thinking on work-life balance.

An attractive woman on a plane once told me that life is a like a bunch of rooms in a house (no, not a box of chocolates), each representing one area in your life and each to be kept separate and clean, in order to have a fulfilling life. Since she was beautiful and because it made sense, I try to follow this philosophy as much as possible, with both successes and failures to show for it.

The one book which has been most influential in my approach towards work is called “The Now Habit” by Neil Fiore. It introduced me to a concept called ‘the Unschedule,’ which basically means that you plan your work around set routines, rather than planning routines around work (which always ends up coming first place). If there’s one complication with this ‘un-scheduling’ approach, it’s this concept of “the economy as a machine,” which always has to keep on turning and turning, making human workers nothing more than replaceable parts in that machine. I think there’s something principally wrong and outdated about this idea, a relic from the industrial age, and will make it my life-mission to change it… at least for myself (if successful, I’ll write a book).

The second book [which I haven't read, but am planning to] is called “the 4-Hour Workweek,” by Tim Ferris, which introduces us to the concept of “personal task outsourcing,” as opposed to outsourcing on an organisational scale. The perhaps third book is “The E-Myth Revisited,” by Michael Gerber, which I’ve written about extensively before, and which deals with developing a type of franchising approach regarding the starting and running of companies. I’m strongly for the idea of dedicating a set amount of my income towards personal assistants, because I think it will allow for more brain-work, which is also better paid, and the whole reason why people go to college, to use their brains.

If there’s a recurring theme to all of these approaches, it’s that they require a clear understanding of one’s capabilities, non-capabilities, and the strength of character to say “yes” and “no” to things. Many self-help books teach you about [identifying] the first two, but can’t help you much about the third. I think I’ll leave it with the stance that I think that the best decisions are made when people are well-slept, well-fed, well-exercised, and made happy by other unmentioned activities. You can read books all you want, but if you don’t maintain those basic ingredients to life, no methodology will ever work that well.

End of thought for today. I’d love to hear yours on what has been influential on your [path towards] work-life balance.

Vincent

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