Your Business, Ubiquitous

~ Tricks For Treats ~The idea of having your business everywhere might not be the ideal for everyone, but for businesses that are building communities, offering servies, or leading tribes, we have to discuss ubiquitous business.

With the virtual/physical, online/offline worlds becoming so merged together, not only through the mobile, but through other home media devices, advertising, in store displays, and so on, there are new opportunities for your business to be at the water cooler – to be where conversations are taking place, capture and showcase those conversations and make something out of them, and actually provide your services to your customers when they are using these devices and be ‘the elbow of the deal’.

Where are People?

To do this, we need to answer the question, where are people? Not just “which social networks are they on?”, but where are people online, offline? For example, football fans at a game. People on the bus. In fact, where are they offline, like on the underground, where they can take what was gotten online, offline with them?

Where is not just a spatial term, it is a time term, an emotional term, a participatory term. We need to deeply understand our customer to really know where they are.

Once you know where they are, how can you get there? How can you socialise the channels that you use in order to get your content and service there?

A fine example is Absolute Radio, who take their Baddiel and Skinner radio show and turn it into a podcast, live stream, iPhone app, Nokia app, Sony Ericson app, etc. It’s a great move by them, because when someone can’t be online, the content has been put offline on their mobile device, which they use to listen to the podcasts in all those empty spaces throughout the day.

I consider their app-driven approach all the more pertinent as apps will take over browser use on mobile devices. When you’re using the iPad, you’ll quickly note how much nicer it is to use an app in many cases, than using the browser version, even on a desktop. (Full review of this here.)

Another way to be where people are is by having a platform that is trans-platform, i.e., it cross all other platforms. Absolute Radio touch on this above by having their content on multiple channels, however those channels are fixed. I’m really talking about the concept of a hashtag as a platform.

I was quoted in AdWeek last week, in a peice called ‘Learning to Speak on the Social Web‘ (penned by my friend Neal Rodriguez), where I described that the hashtag is a trans-platform platform, that means the platform exists where ever it is used. Ubquity comes through this, because we can tag anything that we say or do with “#likeminds”, and it becomes part of the platform.

What About Location Gaming?

There’s a big discussion to be had here (my fiend Carl Haggerty most recently adding some interesting thoughts), and many of the points are obvious: “people can check into your locations”, “people can see you exist when visiting your town”, etc etc.

Let’s answer the where question on this instead. Where are people? They are on their phones, when they go into any area that warrants a check in.

Do these people use it to find new places? No. They only use it to check into places.

Your Leading Thoughts

  1. Let’s begin by asking ourselves the question: where are you?
  2. What kind of services to you want to be ubiquitous? Do you want services to be with you, where ever you go?

Photo courtesy of ViaMoi

Social Innovation, Broadcast Duplication

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Mmnh3_aOVk

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

We talked yesterday about Innovation Over Tradition, but there is a danger is that in not understanding what the ‘traditions’ here are, and then moving away from anything that doesn’t seem ‘techie’ or ‘new’.

I believe that Social (the mindset before the media) is our default form of communication. Two ears, one mouth. Can’t follow a discussion of more than 10 people really. Some lead, some follow. The conversation changes as each person speaks. It’s fluid, dynamic, guided, adapting.

Then, we package the discussion up, put it on CD, ship it, and we have broadcast. It doesn’t change anymore.

Social is always changing, which is why I believe all innovation comes from social. Social innovation, broadcast duplication.

Your Leading Thoughts

  1. Do you agree? Can you look at your own history and find agreement with this theory?
  2. If so, what are the repercussions of this?

Innovation Over Tradition

Have you ever wondered how on earth moving your mouse makes a little pointer move across your screen? I actually don’t know, but I do know that the mouse, and the idea of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) were both controversial and criticised whilst they were being developed. Why? They changed the way things were in the name of moving towards something better, and both helped make computers accessible to the masses. In other words, they valued innovation over tradition.

Sometimes it’s easy for us to get lost in the hype of technology, especially in an age where talking about technology is made easier by the very technology we are talking about – it creates a perfect circular, the most pertinent example today being “I’m using social media to tell you how great social media is.” But as thinkers, we need to be able to step back from the buzz and think about the bigger picture – otherwise we run the risk of becoming clones and drones.

Clones and Drones

You know what I mean by clones and drones. The countless score of self-proclaimed ‘experts’ and ‘consultants’ out there, creating more noise than a batch of early 90′s servers. I’ll be honest with you – when I started out, I was one of these. I bought the myth of the digital personal brand and was trying to ‘create product’ to ‘ship’ to those who read my blog. I was using Twitter to ‘influence’ and ‘network’ in order to get exposure and sell my product, because someone else had done it successfully and now I was buying their 10 steps to do it myself.

This copycat behaviour has created a flocking effect that has widened the gap between those who are what I call ‘digitall’ and those I call ‘digicool’ – something some aliens once noted about us. The digitall are those who use tech for ‘all’ – their iPhones and iPads are filled with apps, their blogs overflowing with widgets (well, hey, they actually have blogs), they check Twitter infinitely more than they do Facebook, and they know what Augmented Reality is. The digicool, on the other hand, are those who use technology solely based on how ‘cool’ it is – like my wife who has an iPhone because it’s cool, is on Facebook because it’s cool, but doesn’t use Twitter because, unfortunately, it isn’t cool.

At the head of the digitall are the digeratti – the princely likes of Scoble, Rubel, Gray and the rest, who akin to the developers of the mouse, are challenging us to think in new and innovative ways. In actual fact, Scoble et al are just the ones telling us about the innovations – like the early days of Techcrunch where every Web 2.0 site was listed and reviewed. These technologies have changed the way the internet works – Wikipedia, Skype, Facebook, eBay, WordPress, Google – and in doing so, they have changed tradition.

The thing is, it isn’t the digitall that helped change tradition. It was the masses of digicools – the general population, if you will – that helped Facebook spread, realised the worth of Wikiepedia, and used Google because they couldn’t remember URLs (unlike the digitalls, who did). And here lies the decision for us all: are we going to talk about innovation and tradition, or be the ones who actually help put innovation over tradition?

The former only requires us to tweet, like, comment, retweet, blog. The second requires us to think. To think how we can take the wonderful innovations that are being used by a comparative handful of digitalls, and present them in an easy to understand way the digicools.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s the gap that needs filling, and the hands that fill it will not go unrecognised.

Your Leading Thoughts

  1. First of all, confession time: which are you? Where are you? Are you talking, or innovating?
  2. How, practically, can we fill this gap?

Video: Fashion and Technology Adoption

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bZ3jM8pMl0

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch direct on YouTube.

I had a great chat with Ed Barrow from Idio recently, in which Ed talked about fashion as one of the most powerful devices we know for bringing about mass market adoption.

Watching this video, you’ll get some valuable insights into how fashion can drive adoption, which I believe are affecting not just big brands, but startups and even local businesses. The main example that Ed uses is mobile phones, but I believe it applies to a lot more.

Let’s be honest: even picking one local web design agency over another, for instance, can be a matter of allegiance to a tribe or mindset that is informed by popularity, and the sale that this web design agency makes can then also be based on fashion (what everyone else is doing online.)

Your Leading Thoughts

  • Does Fashion play a role in why your customers are your customers? If so, describe this for us.
  • Has Fashion played a bigger role in modern technology and trends than 10 or 20 years ago, or has it always been this way?

The 5 Innovations of the iPad

iPad standThere’s been an iPad in my office for 2 months or so already, but with the UK release, I thought now would be a better time to talk about it. Whilst I’ll inevitably discuss some of the features, I want to keep to what I see as the key points of innovation, and draw some learning from those for future application.

Let me say right from the start: I think the iPad is a revolutionary device. Not so much for the device, actually, as it really is the culmination of 10 years of exceptional innovation from Apple that has created the right ecosystem to deliver the iPad. Without the ecosystem, it wouldn’t work.

So, here are the 5 innovations of the iPad:

1. You’re already using the iPad, even if you don’t have one

Because we are all pretty much accustomed to using some form of app store for our mobile device, whether it’s the iPhone or not, means that we are already using the iPad. You’ll understand what I mean when you get to holding the device, and then realise that there is no learning curve here – you already know how to use it, and if you’re on the iPhone, you already have a bunch of apps that are iPad apps that you know how to use and have installed.

This shows the power of the ecosystem that Apple have created – something that I would argue is actually Apple’s Real Asset that they’ve built over the last 10 years. They have easily tied in a new device into their existing ecosystem with such barrier-free adoption. I wonder what else they could do it with…

The fact that you already have been taught how to use it makes me think of Chip and Dan Heath in their book Switch, who say that it’s easier to start a journey that is already part of the way there, than start a shorter journey where you have to begin right at the beginning. With the iPad, it’s all the former. Once I installed the iPad from my iPhone backup, I had all my apps and settings in place, optimised for the new device. I’m already most of the way there. Continue reading

People, Not Parts

What A Team

The Dream Team – hanging out with some of the people at the Like Minds Summit 2010 at Bovey Castle.

Around the end of the last year I wrote a series of posts on ‘free from the factory‘, in which we talked about the shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy, and the change in business and society that followed.

The main point is that in a knowledge economy you don’t manage people like parts in a machine – you lead them and guide them, because unlike parts in a machine, they have the ability to develop and grow, rather than rust and break. It’s this difference in mindset, between managing production and leading people, that is the reason why most companies don’t get it.

The organisations that will thrive and are thriving are people-to-people. They value people, not parts. The news yesterday was that YouTube now has 2 billion views a day. Facebook is about to hit 500 million users. What causes their success? Factories that churn out products faster and cheaper (the way we compete in an industrial age), or are they teams of very skilled, highly motivated people whose synergy and vision creates communities and platforms with depth that better provide customised experiences that meet the emotional needs of other people (the way we compete in a knowledge age.) Continue reading

Polarising People: How Far Is Too Far?

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCpViu8kY3o

If you can’t see the video above, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

This video above is one of my favourites – by Apple Fellow, AllTop Founder and experienced startup entreprenuer Guy Kawasaki. The presentation is called “The Art of Innovation”, which contains a number of steps that I have adhered to for years now, and found them all to not only be true, but to be foundational truths that have taken me further than I would’ve gone without them.

One of Guy’s points is “Polarise People” – something I’ve talked about before. The idea is you want people to love you or hate you, but never to feel ambivalent about you. Jim Collins talks about this in From Good To Great (affiliate link) when he says that “good is the enemy of great” – meaning in today’s competitive market, having something that is just “good” is your enemy – you have to make it great. Continue reading

What is the Real Asset?

The Paper BoyIn talking to some newspapers recently, I’ve started challenging people to think about what their real asset is. As information becomes more and more commoditised, and price is no longer the differentiator that it once was, rethinking what a business’ real asset is is critical to staying alive today, let alone gaining a competitive advantage.

More often than not, the real asset is the thing that you can’t take away. Let’s consider some business types:

For Newspapers

If a newspaper thinks its asset is the delivery of news, then what happens when someone can deliver it that faster, sooner, more individualised and as it breaks? The newspaper can try and become more technologically aware or resist it like Murdoch, or it can understand that its real asset is the ability to gather to news.

Think about it – a local newspaper knows its local community like few others do. If it wanted to pull together and network local businesses, identify and rally around a cause, gather information about a happening, it could do so easily. Continue reading

Facebook’s Cohesive Web and Postmodern Epistemology

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPbwRYg7OaI

If you can’t see the video, click here.

In this video (filmed by Andrew Davies, and full of The Office jokes), I stumble through attempting to explain the idea that Facebook’s new Social Plugins are a powerful step for our post modern epistemology – in other words, the way that we get information. Continue reading

Virtually Present: Discussing The Digital Future

Changing gears from talk about politics and the UK General Election, I’ve been meaning some time to address a topic that I’ve been thinking on for about 6 months now - namely that of Virtual Participation. What I really want to do is get the conversation started before fleshing out these ideas, so here are my main threads of thought on this at the moment (which interestingly are all sparked from conversations with friends.) Continue reading