Thursday, January 28, 2010

Thoughts on the iPad

A few weeks ago, I made some predictions on what might be announced with the Apple tablet device. I tried to include a mix of new technologies, new usage models, and new business opportunities for both Apple and consumers. To a decent extent, I was in the ballpark on most of my predictions, with some of them still being possibilities at a later date.

Like many people, I read the comments from journalists and "experts" after the launch party. I made a mental checklist of items that appeared to be "missing", and features that appeared to be unique. The technologist in me was driving my evaluation. But then I went and watched the keynote by Steve Jobs. As he sat in the chair, surfing the web, it dawned on me that this would actually be the "Internet & media consumption" model of the future. While it was obviously staged, the experience of watching Jobs lose himself while he experienced the world offered a glimpse of the future. The experience appears to be a preview (or 1st generation) of the experience where the activity and the computing device begin to blur, and the computer no longer gets in the way. Marc Cuban seems to agree.

It doesn't do everything that previous devices do, but it does appear to do certain things uniquely well. The definition of a disruptive technology. It will get significantly better over time, just as the iPhone did between the 2G and 3GS models.

Sitting on my couch, typing this blog on my MacBook laptop, I wish I was using an iPad instead. My legs are too warm from the laptop, and the power cord keeps getting in my way. Yes in deed, it's time for a new device and a new paradigm.


Sunday, January 24, 2010

Weekly Links (Week of Jan.25, 2010)

This week's links are somewhat Internet-centric, but I've also tried to mix in some interesting ones on leadership, sustainability, quant/statistics and Internet marketing/measurement.

Role Models - (Fred Wilson, A VC Blog, Jan.2010) - I had a conversation with my wife (@GracelyGirl) the other day, as we're starting to see interests from our daughters in various topics. My point to her was if they are interested in things we don't have expertise in (science, art, etc.), we should find someone that can give them guidance and insight. Giving people a role model early in life is so important, especially someone in a nearby age-group, as it helps them understand that their passions and goals are obtainable.

Will the Internet F* with Wall Street? - (Chris Dixon Blog, Jan.2010) - I haven't written about this theme in a little while, so here goes. This article does a nice job of highlighting the difference between doing things differently with technology, and technology being the differentiator to truly disrupt an industry. The article highlights a company called Square (@square), created by the founder of Twitter, which is focused on creating a new way for SMBs and individuals to conduct monetary transactions. Square doesn't disrupt the previous financial industry, but it's thinking like this that could open the doors to new interaction models for the economy.

Will Amazon be the New Wal-Mart? - (GigaOm - Jan.2010) - while companies like WalMart and Best buy have been highlighted for their sustainability initiatives, maybe the company to begin focusing on is Amazon. With Amazon's revenues growing faster than their competitors, should they be driving the next stages of consumer/retail sustainability? Do they have any inherent advantage in this space because they are fundamentally virtual, as opposed to the huge physical footprints of Amazon and Best Buy?

How to Measure the Internet? - For anyone that is getting involved in a business that may drive revenue from online advertising, or will gain share because of online visibility, here are some interesting reads to get a deeper understanding about how the Internet is measure by external agencies. It also highlights how the measurement of the Internet has moved from a sampling-based model to a more direct measurement model.
How to Measure ROI - (Fred Wilson, A VC Blog, Jan.2010) - A quick Entrepreneurial refresher course for anyone starting a business and having to negotiate with investors (Angel, VC, etc.)

Re-examining the Value Chain - Apple Table (The Logical Idea - Jan.2010) - A nice look at how the recently announced Apple iPad show not be evaluated on it's technology, but on it's potential ability to change buying habits of readers of eBooks (or other reading-centric content). A strategic analysis of how it may help or hinder the publishing industry. (note: Some of my pre-announcement and post-announcement thoughts on the iPad)


Friday, January 22, 2010

Weekly Links (Week of Jan.18, 2010)

Find a Bright Spot, and Clone it (Fast Company, Jan.2010) - An excerpt from the upcoming book "Switch" by the Heath brothers (authors of "Made to Stick"). I highly recommend the book to all my classmates that are faced with leading changes in their business or their lives.

Shareholders vs. Stakeholders vs. Communities (January, 2010) - A follow-up to a case study in Global Strategy II, looking at the challenge of pharmaceuticals in emerging markets. This specific item looks at the trade offs between shareholder value, crowd-sourcing Intellectual Property and giving back to communities that can benefit from their older R&D.

New Pampers giving P&G Diaper Rash (January, 2010) - Following up to our Crisis Management discussions with Rick Amee, intertwined with the speed and power of Social Media. This looks at the mistakes P&G made in introducing their "new" Pampers without properly communicating to their customers about the changes and benefits. Plus this article seems especially relevant to teammate Portia Mount and her newborn baby :)

Pepsi Brings in the Health Police (Business Week, Jan.2010) - The current Dean of the Wake Forest Schools of Business hired current Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi. It's interesting to see how an international CEO is taking such dramatic steps to shift the company from US-centric lifestyle foods (soda, chips, pizza), which are less healthy, to a more International-centric approach to nutrition.

Will Walmart's "Sustainability Index" Really Work? (Fast Company, Jan.2010)- An initial look at the impact that Walmart's "Green" initiative is having on their suppliers, their product mix, and the future of supplier relations. It also looks at the difficulties of creating a universal "sustainability index" and labeling model across a breadth of products.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Weekly Links (Week of Jan.11, 2010)

Tonight our class will get back together to receive our diplomas at a ceremony in Winston-Salem, but before I make the two hour journey west on I-40, I thought I'd post a few links that I found interesting and relevant to recent areas we analyzed in class.

Best Buy Wants Your Junk (Fortune: Dec.2009) - A look at how Best Buy not only leverages the "green" movement as a mechanism to drive reputation, but also offers a glimpse into the concept of companies moving from product-centric to service-centric. Towards the end of the article, Best Buy talks about their vision of being directly involved with the recycling of customers old products as part of the overall "eco-value chain".

Can Farming Save Detroit? (Fortune, Dec.2009) - Having grown up near Detroit, and constantly seeing the abandoned houses (left over from the 1968 riots), I always wondered if that space would ever become productivity or useful again. The signs of problems have been visible in Detroit (and Michigan) for many years, with all their eggs in the automotive basket, but it's still amazing to see how quickly things have declined. While this concept is controversial, I am hopeful that it gets traction and begins to be a catalyst for other positive things in the area. It's going to take radical ideas to change a culture that has been embedded for 75 years, but some many incredible things have come from the area that I still hold out hope.

And in honor of our graduation tonight, I'll end with this link from Seth Godin, highlighting the most important aspect that each of us should have taken from the last 18 months. It seems to touch on one of the critical elements that we'd hear if we had a cool graduation speaker.

Stay hungry, Stay foolish my friends...

Monday, January 11, 2010

Where Middle Age and The Internet Collide

I've written before that one of the interesting aspects of an Executive MBA program is the challenge that student face between pursuing that "next big idea.." and existing obligations to family, debt, etc. In more cases than not (unfortunately), people tends to stick with something comfortable, a known entity. Forget the fact that the world doesn't reward people for security, and that the world moves faster now than ever before, but it seems to be the nature of many people to take the safe path.

In watching the drama at NBC unfold over their late-night schedule (Jay Leno, Conad O'Brien, Jimmy Fallon), it's interesting to see a similar set of decisions being made. On one hand you have the incumbant, NBC, acting like a middle-aged adult that doesn't want to deal with the new rules of life. Being protective, being predictable. On the other hand, you have newcomer Jimmy Fallon understanding that "Time doesn't matter to me...We're in a different age now." (reference to Internet video, DVRs, etc), being willing to explore the new rules of the game and accepting that things don't need to match the old behavior to be successful.

In a parallel thread, I've just started reading "Linchpin" by Seth Godin. I've written about Seth's influence on me during my MBA many times, but this book is really hitting home for me. The theme of the book is that greatness is the only thing that matters in business anymore. Everything else will be repeatable, and hence replaceable. So each of us need to look at ourselves and find that area of greatness, of passion, or uniqueness and pursuit is with reckless abandon. If you don't, then any short-term security you think you have is probably flawed and could disappear when the next down economy forces your company to rethink your role.

At times I think we all get lulled into thinking that security is good, and that only the little guys need to really be great or innovative. This is a dangerous trap and one that needs to be avoided in order to survive. The Internet only accelerates the pace at which that false sense of security can turn into non-competitive or non-innovative weakness. And besides, life is too short to not be passionate about the things that comsume so much time in our life.

Friday, January 8, 2010

Some Guesses on the Apple Tablet

This really has nothing to do with our MBA program, but everyone in our class knows that I was an Apple fanboy and spend a reasonable amount of time exploring how their latest strategy was changing various markets (music, communication, mobile computing, application distribution, etc.).

In talking to a colleague at work today, we made some predictions on what might get announced if an Apple tablet does hit the market early this year (rumors of announcements at the end of January). I thought it would be interesting to list some of these for comparison at a later time.
  1. I have a hard time believing that Apple would create a purpose built device (like a Kindle). I suspect they are trying to find the sweetspot between an iPhone and a MacBook. Mac OS / Phone OS has too much R&D to not reuse as much as possible. So a form-factor that is similar to a netbook (8-10"), but multi-purpose.
  2. The device will be more like an iPhone than a netbook in form factor. No need for keyboards, flip tops, hinges, etc. Everything will be wireless (Bluetooth, WiFi and 3G, similar to the Kindle).
  3. It will have two modes. The first (mobility) will be like a big iPhone, where you can sit it on your lap and type directly on the screen. All movement will be via gestures, or voice-recognition or the touchscreen. The second mode will include a docking station, which sits the device at a 45* or 60* angle for viewing, and the virtual keyboard and mouse-pad will be projected onto a flat surface (desk, table, floor, coffee-shop, etc.). All the multi-touch gestures will work on the virtual mouse-pad.
  4. By default it will come with an incredible eReader application (iRead). Beyond the Kindle-like features of great display and easy download, it will make reading a social activity by allowing people to easily discuss sections of a reading with communities of friends and like-minded people. Highlight a passage and see if other people have commented on it, asked questions about it, referenced it in other forums (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
  5. It will allow you to easily do all the things you can do with paper-based reading material today: Highlight passages, added notes and doodles (via text, voice-recognition, finger-gestures), earmark pages, etc.
  6. The future of education could be significantly changed by the social aspects of iRead, as the discussion of topics could be happening at almost anytime, with the full class or a subset. Teachers could introduce dynamic quizes &/or checkpoints into the readings to validate comprehension, discouraging a student from proceeding if they haven't grasped a basic concept before moving to an advanced topics.
  7. Through iTunes, it will introduce a self-publishing service for authors. Instead of having to use a publisher and pay for their overhead, it will offer a service to allow people to create professional quality content and distribute it through major channels. People already know how to do self-promotion today (blogs, Twitter, Facebook Fan pages, YouTube, etc.), but they may not have access to editors, graphic artists, speakers for audiobooks, etc. By offering an ala carte menu of services to authors, Apple could radically change the value chain for the publishing landscape, cutting out layers between the author and reader.
  8. By leveraging their existing customer knowledge from iTunes, and now location-based information (mobile device), combined with their recent acquisition of Quattro Wireless, Apple could potentially offer Apple tablet specific content to readers from sources like The New Yorker, The Economist, or other outlets committed to great journalism, not just chasing eyeballs. Revenue splits between Apple and the journalists could fund this.
  9. The tablet will have unique peer-2-peer networking capabilities to share gaming experiences with 6-8 other tablets within close proximity. New games will get written that provide shared experiences.
  10. One of the complaints about the iPhone is the lack of peer-2-peer video, similar to iChat or Skype. The Apple tablet will resolve this, as well as being a great form factor to watch TV/Videos on the train or bus.
Since everyone feels the need to give the new device a name, I'll throw my hat in the ring. Let's go with iBook, combining the concept of a netbook size with the incredible new reading experience and social aspects for consuming content.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Weekly Links (Week of Jan.4, 2010)

During our program, I used to annoy my classmates by constantly sending emails pointing to various links, stories and other content that related to the topics being discussed in class. In hopefully a less annoying manner, I plan to bring that content to this blog on a weekly basis.

One of the things Ram Baliga told us was that analytics would become one of the cornerstone technologies that MBA's should master in the 21st century. Here is a good write-up on the proliferation of data that is now available for analysis and how it will shape the future of business.

With Chet Miller we evaluated various employee evaluation models, including GE's A-B-C player model. This link explores NetFlix model of trying to hire, retain and compensate almost all "A" players and whether or not that is a good thing.

Following up from our case discussion about NetFlix and their eventual migration to a streaming model. Many elements at play here: short-term vs. long-term profits; customer input vs. decisions that lead to eventual business model changes; decisions that could lead to loses due to digital piracy or alternative models solving a customer demand.

This article explore the Nexus One phone from Google, in the context of how it will impact Google's overall strategy. VC Brian Gurley does an excellent job of looking at the broader impact of this device, but more importantly the strategic impact of the new business model. The Nexus One was an area of highlight in the final Global Strategy paper that I wrote with Ric Freeman and Wendy Perry.

Here's another Nexus One link that follows-up some of the cases we analyzed, including strategic challenges for HTC, Taiwan Semi-Conductor and Google. At least within the technology world, the spread of coopetition and partner/rival scenarios will continue to expand as the value chain is twisted in all sorts of new ways.

Stan Mandel taught us the underlying structures for funding and operating and entrepreneurial venture, but more so he focus on the mindset needed to be a successful entrepreneur. VC/Entrepreneur Mark Suster explorers his views of the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs.