Apple have now launched the Mac App Store – the translation of the hughely successful App Store designed to deliver apps for the iPhone and the iPad onto a full blown computer running a full blown operating system.

Whilst PC Mag has already produced a hands on walk through that I shan’t be repeating, and Techcrunch gave their treatment here, I’m going to keeping this to the innovations of the App Store and what it means for the future as opposed to today.

Let me say right off of the bat that I think this is industry changing. I wrote about the 5 Innovations of the iPad last year and predicted the arrival of the App Store on the Mac because of the ease and process of the ecosystem. I said that this new iOS ecosystem is “how computing should be” and now it’s come to fruition.

In many ways, this revolution is just a packaging of smaller innovations from Apple as well as others and a general shift towards apps – but – it is Apple who have made that all important first move. So let’s unpack them.

So here they are, tahe 5 Innovations of the App Store:

1. A truly complete ecosystem: the end of you being the family tech support

One of the benefits of Macs over PCs was that Apple could deliver a complete product – that from the hardware through to the software, it was designed and made to work harmoniously and seamlessly. But, when one moved away from iPhoto and Safari and the other preinstalled software, expertise was required that not everyone has. Files had to be downloaded, mounted and installed, accounts had to created and various payment gateways had to be navigated.

The long and short of this meant that those who are not early adopters or at least the daring early majority would not use the software that they had access to. My wife, for instance, despite being pretty savvy with her Mac just won’t go and install Chrome despite Safari’s sloth-like speed. My mother in law as well, who has mastered iPhoto, had no idea how to install a little plugin to make her photo books work better.

And even early adopters like you and I tire with having to search through Google or other sites to find new software, and then go through the rigmarole of creating an account, paying, managing updates on all the various programmes, etc.

But now consider that with the App Store, I have:

• One place to find apps (and boy, is it a pleasure compared to Google or Apple’s own online listing)
• One safe place to download apps
• One account with which to purchase apps
• One place to update apps
• One place that combines with my iPhone and my iPad
• One click technology that does it all (just like Amazon’s one click ordering)

And perhaps just as importantly as all the above – the App Store works in the same seamless, easy and delightful way that the iOS App Store works. Which leads to:

2. An existing ecosystem: you’re already using the App Store

I don’t know how many iPhone and iPad owners there are out there. But however many tens of millions of them that there are, they’ve all been using the App Store since they got their first device.

So perhaps that’s an incredible innovation right there: the app store isn’t really new, at least from the stand point that there’s barrier to entry. It gets all the power and novelty of new without the user support headache.

One can’t underestimate the power of this. For 7 years, since the launch of the iTunes Store, Apple has been training us for their future. So now whatever Apple releases through their ecosystem, we’ll buy it, with the strong selling point that we already know how to use it and like how it works.

3. A mirroring ecosystem: your life beyond than the cloud

Google’s Chrome netbook is one of many moves towards the cloud that sees more and more business being done exclusively online. Yet Apple have maintained a strong application focus, MobileMe being their only online software. Now, Apple and many of the apps that we use on iOS and our Macs, like Evernote or Dropbox, do use the cloud, but there’s something more than the cloud that I think the App Store is leading towards: mirroring.

Consider this rather regular scenario. You’re documents are on Google Docs, and normally you’re fine on the iPad. But for some reason the internet won’t work and bang – you’re fileless. Or how about you saved some pages in Safari for offline browsing, and when you opened them, they refreshed and you lost them. Or let’s say you DO have Google Docs – now you’re restricted because you’ve got to deal with the lame way that it works on the iPad.

The cloud is great but let’s be clear about it: it’s only for storage. What I love about Evernote is that it stores things in the cloud, but I’ve always got offline versions on my Mac and my iPad. And this is what mirroring is about.

Mirroring is having the same workflow and essential setup on your iPad as you do on your Mac.

Take for instance this screen capture of my iPad homescreen and my Mac dock – a lot of crossover here which means that my workflow can be consistent between the two.

When I talk about cloud to my wife she switches off. You know why she loves Evernote? It’s because it’s the same everywhere she uses it. And with the Mac App Store we are now moving to a place where your actual setup is the same no matter which device you are using.

Ecosystem, workflow and applications are the important words here. I am totally convinced that Apps will overtake the browser because they are purpose and custom built to the needs of the app. Take Evernote again as the example: it works so, so much better as a desktop or iPad app than the web version. And this is the case for pretty much every app. With a browser my workflow is very constricted (unless I’m a geek), but with apps I can have a real workflow. Take for instance the Mashable Mac App. My wife would chose this over a browser any day of the week (were she even just a jot interested in social media, that is.)

This is why I actually use my iPad better for organising my life because of the apps I have and the way they all interlink.

4. A win-win-win ecosystem: it benefits the developers, it benefits us, and it benefits Apple

According to Mashable, one million app downloads were made on day one of the Mac App Store. Evernote in particular have more than doubled their daily new users because of the App Store.

Developers win with the App Store. It means they are now in the easiest channel for their apps to be installed by consumers, and the same benefit that the iOS App Store has had for, let’s be honest, booming the app industry into an actual industry, will now extend that same benefit to desktop applications (or more likely, desktop versions of existing iOS apps, because people are becoming more familiar with them than desktop-only applications.)

We, the consumers, win because we get an easy to way to get apps. As in point 1 – I can’t wait to NOT have to offer as much tech support because my mother in law can now download apps herself without my help (well, once I’ve installed the update for her, that is!) I really do see this as a major step forward in making computing simple for all people.

I remember when I first moved to Mac that what marvelled me the most was the ability to just get on with my work and not have to keep maintaining my system. That same ‘I can just get on with it’ benefit is coming to the early and late majority through the App Store because now they can just get on with it.

And of course, Apple win hugely out of this arrangement – all the more reason for them to keep making things simpler and better.

5. An innovative ecosystem: it is new

This might be a bit of a no brainer, but the App Store actually is innovation. It’s taking learnings from other areas that have each been moving the baton forward and now applying them to the Mac platform. And importantly, it’s new. When I see a lot of Mac updates or Windows updates, often they are just ‘enhancements’, but this is truly an innovation. It changes the way people will consume applications.

What will the repercussions of this be? I think apps might become more disposable. At the moment, if I take time to download an app, I’ve probably done research before and then when it comes to downloading, the work that I’ve put in means I’ll give the app a good go.

But with one click downloads and a simple way to find new apps, I think they might become more disposable. Of course the upside is that these apps are more discoverable, but the emphasis now must be for them to really deliver. The apps that will do best here of course have already trained the user in using their app on the iPhone first.

Your Leading Thoughts

• Pick one of my points and further it – what do you think is further down the line?
• What innovations have you found that I’m missing?

One of Mike’s main things is focus. This isn’t just a singular focus on one thing, but it’s about adjusting focus as a balance between near sighted and far sighted. He famously says that “It’s not leadership or management, it’s leadership and management. It’s not strategy or tactics, it’s strategy and tactics”, which gives you an idea about this approach.

It is on the subject of focus that I clipped this article of his that demands some treatment from the Friends here at our blog. In his post, “Ideas Don’t Equal Innovation“, Mike lays out 15 elements to measure what you could do against what you should do. We have no shortage of ideas today and thus the defining characteristic of strong leaders, particularly in the digital space, is a focus that is not deterred easily by what they could do. We’ve certainly all been in that place where we’ve been governed by could instead of should.

Mike’s 15 Filters

1. The idea should be generated within a solid framework for decisioning. It should be developed as a solution to a problem or to exploit an opportunity. The idea should be in alignment with the overall vision and mission of the enterprise.

2. If the idea doesn’t provide a unique competitive advantage it should at least bring you closer to an even playing field.

3. Any new idea should preferably add value to existing initiatives, and if not, it should show a significant enough return on investment to justify the dilutive effect of not keeping the main thing the main thing.

4. Put the idea through a risk/reward and cost/benefit analysis.

5. Whether the new idea is intended for your organization, vendors, suppliers, partners or customers it must easy to use. Usability drives adoptability, and therefore it pays to keep things simple.

6. Just because an idea sounds good doesn’t mean it is You should endeavor to validate proof of concept based upon detailed, credible research.

7. Nothing is without risk, and when you think something is without risk, that is when you’re most likely to end-up in trouble. All initiatives surrounding new ideas should include detailed risk management provisions.

8. Adopting a new idea should be based upon solid business logic that drives corresponding financial engineering and modeling. Be careful of high level, pie-in-the-sky projections.

9. Any new ideas should contain accountability provisions. Every task should be assigned and managed according to a plan and in the light of day.

10. Any new ideas being adopted must lead to measurable objectives. Deliverables, benchmarks, deadlines, and success metrics must be incorporated into the plan.

11. It must be detailed and deliverable on a schedule. The initiative should have a beginning, middle and end.

12. Ideas need to be incorporated into strategic initiatives and not constitute disparate systems. They should be incorporated into integrated solutions that eliminate redundancies, and build in tactical leverage points.

13. Ideas should contain a road-map for versioning and evolution that is in alignment with other strategic initiatives and the overall corporate mission.

14. A successful idea cannot remain in a strategic planning state. It must be actionable through tactical implementation.

15. Senior leadership must champion any new idea being adopted. If someone at the C-suite level is against the new idea, it will likely die on the cutting-room floor.

Your Leading Thoughts

I don’t want you to discuss all 15. You might want to clip this for later, but there’s too much here for you guys to take time out now to spend a length of time discussing, instead:

• Pick 2 out of the 15 that are issues that you have faced recently and have had victory in. Share your story and your lessons so that we can learn form your practical implementation of these points.

Photo credit

[slideshare id=5063806&doc=whatissocial-100826163537-phpapp02]

If you can’t see the above slideshow, click here, or see it directly on Slideshare.

This is a short 12 slide presentation that explains succinctly what the difference between social and broadcast as – as mindsets before they are media – and then three lessons that we draw that help us understand social.

Social is a big topic for me. Everything I do keeps coming back to it – whether it’s learning, event design, social media, marketing, church, relationships – social is right in there. And it’s not that social is a new thing. Far from it. Social is our original and default method of communication. As our default method, it also is ruled by our default physical limitations (how loud we can speak, etc), and it is from these limitations that we create broadcast, which is a one way extension of what is socially created, for wider reach.

My basic premise is that we have social innovation and broadcast duplication. Social is the fluid conversation that is a real-time co-crated product. Broadcast is the recording of that conversation and duplicating it so more people can hear it. In social, the conversation can change. In broadcast, it does not.

What the book will then lead into is a discussion of the Social / Broadcast Matrix, and the three social strategies. And true to these three strategies, the book will function on one: socialised channels, socialised content and socialised culture. In other words, it’ll be available everywhere you’ll want to consume it, it’ll be full of UGC (i.e. YOU), and it’ll be open for you to use and build upon.

(You can watch a video of me discussing Social on a larger scale here)

Your Leading Thoughts

1. Do you see holes in my premise? Given I’m basing a book on this, I need you input!
2. How would you like to contribute to the creation of ‘Social’?

How does Social Media extend offline experiences? Sure, you can get a long list of resources that will make your event what is called a ‘hybrid’ (a virtual and physical event), but how do you know which ones are the priority for you, and what is the strategy behind those tactics anyway?

In 2004 I was running a youth organisation that I started called Feedback. We’d already discovered that by putting bands in the show they’d bring their fans along, and that would increase our numbers, but it was when we latched onto MySpace that we discovered the ability to increase participation virtually, aside from the physical limitations of our monthly events. (You can see some old footage on our old MySpace profile still today!)

This really is the benefit of Social Media as an extension of an offline offering. An offline event or experience is typically a single point in space, time and matter, but through Social Media, it can be extended in all three of these areas.

We then need to know how to extend those three in a way that is meaningful and relevant to ‘the why‘ of the offline event in the first place. Perhaps the most helpful element in this is Joe Pine’s model on The Multiverse (For a fuller discussion of this, you read our discussion on ‘virtually present‘)

There are 8 possible configurations of merging time, space, matter with non-time, non-space, non-matter. Joe presents a video on it here, which I would recommend you watch should you have a spare 50 minutes to get acquainted with the future.

• Space: virtual / physical. This is the mix between being physically there, and being virtually there. Being virtually there means that you don’t have to be restricted by:
• Time: linear / non-linear. This means that I be at the event before the event, during the event, after the event. You get the idea. This also means that I lift the restriction of:
• Matter: real / bits. This is about what things are made from. You can be in the same physical space but then still still experience bits – digital data – with which you can then contact those who are virtually present.

It can get very complex, which is what my talk certainly won’t be. I’ll be keeping things simple by getting back to the three core Social strategies that we’ve talked about recently, namely Socialising Channels, Socialising Content, and Socialising Culture. (I think things are easier to remember in threes, don’t you?)

I don’t want to share much more, but there’s a good taster for you here, and I’ll be sharing more of the content over the months, as we’ve got quite a bit of time until May!

Your Leading Thoughts

1. What’s the best example that you know of, of Social Media extending an event?
2. What would be you dream usage of Social Media as an enhancing of an offline experience?

Legendary photo courtesy of Benjamin Ellis

Seth writes on the levels of failure that we should have:

FAIL OFTEN: Ideas that challenge the status quo. Proposals. Brainstorms. Concepts that open doors.
FAIL FREQUENTLY: Prototypes. Spreadsheets. Sample ads and copy.
FAIL OCCASIONALLY: Working mockups. Playtesting sessions. Board meetings.
FAIL RARELY: Interactions with small groups of actual users and customers.
FAIL NEVER: Keeping promises to your constituents.

This reminds me of a book I read many years ago by acclaimed leadership expert John Maxwell called Failing Forward (affiliate link). In it, John discussed the mindset and the methods of making failure a positive – to literally ’fail forward.’

I remember being so afraid of failure that I would go to any length to avoid it (even if a project clearly was going to fail, I put an overload of resources in to minimise its failure, which of course took precious resources from other projects), and I’d certainly cover my failures up. One day, if we get time to sit down and chat, I’ll go through the list with you!

The point was that reading Failing Forward, I began to think very differently about failure, and actually began to see it as being part of success. You can’t talk of this and not, of course, think of Google who celebrate failure. In fact they don’t just celebrate it – they see failure as a necessary part of success – which when you think about it is very true. You have to fail to succeed.

Seth’s post, John’s book, Google’s philosophy – they all serve to help us embrace failure and learn from it, rather than fear it. I find, however, than many embrace failure but still don’t learn from it. It’s easy to say “FAIL OFTEN”, but how do you fail often?

Your Leading Thoughts

1. When, exactly, did you start failing forward? What changed your mindset about failure?
2. How have you learnt to learn from your mistakes? What methods fo you have in place?

This is the premise that most of the digitalls on Twitter follow. They share links all day long, because by being active in their area and telling you where to go, the idea is that you’ll look to them as the authority. Beyond that, there’s a bit play in open innovation with co-creation too.

An Open World

It does, however, go a lot deeper than this. The idea of open platforms is one of open source, of creative commons, of open innovation. This isn’t giving information away in such a context that people can directly see where the source was – like a ReTweet – it’s a place where you are giving people to take your work and use it, and there’s no guarantee people won’t use it for their own gain without attributing you as the source.

It’s one thing sharing someone else’s content and then getting a kick back if someone likes the link. It’s another sharing your own content for free and not knowing what’ll happen with it.

I can tell a story from both sides of this fence. Being honest with you, I’ve been the one who has ripped the work off of others (back in my HTML days), and I’ve also been the one who has been too afraid to share my creations for fear of it being ripped off.

Last Saturday, on our discussion of “Together“, a friend I made in Helsinki, Johanna Kotipelto, made an exceptional statement with regards to people being too afraid to collaborate together. Joanna said, in what I think is a highly quotable phrase, “Sharing is still a threat: it’s like taking a Mona Lisa to an exhibition – unsigned.”

Johanna wrote more about it in her post on Man 2.0 where she examines some of these themes more – it’s well worth a read.

The thing is – do I agree? Do I believe that sharing is a threat?

The Fear is Laziness and Ego

I think the ultimate display of this fear (in the blogging world at least) is when bloggers never link to other blogs but there own (or rarely do it), and keep writing about their experience, their ideas, and never our experience or our ideas.

I consider this fear to actually be laziness and ego. When I read a feed for a few weeks and find they never link out and talk about anyone but themselves, I think that they are too lazy and too self consumed to actually focus on others and curate conversation for others.

This same laziness and ego, in my opinion, is also what stops people from sharing – because you know what – if you talked about what you consider to be your intelectual property enough, you’d be generating so much discussion about it that people would know you’re the source. I’ve started to see, for example, a lot of the ideas that we’ve discussed here talked about on blogs I’ve never heard of and from people I don’t know – but they know where the source is, and the conversation keeps coming back here. (Also, we need to loosen up a little – we often think our ideas are better than they actually are!)

And I think the people on the other side of the fence – who take other people’s work and pawn it off as their own – it’s laziness and ego on their own side, but it says I’m too lazy and too good to work hard and get this myself.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. First of all – which side of the fence are you on? Where do you sit on this issue?
2. What is the FIRST example that you think of where ‘giving it away’ has caused a win? (Mine currently is Guardian’s Open Platform)

Photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk

Innovation means breaking things. Nothing that you currently do can be holy. If it isn’t moving forward and moving the bottom line, you’ve got to break it.

Right now we’re working on Like Minds Conference, Autumn 2010. We’re breaking a lot of stuff. We’ve taken everyone of our assumptions about what traditionally makes a great event, and we’ve broken a lot of stuff.

One instance is panels. I’ve never been happy with how they work, and I’m so thankful for Dave Lutz who shared this post with me, the comments of which encouraged me to go ahead and break what I didn’t think worked in the first place.

Lesson? We need that nod from our peers to say – “yeah, break it.”

Breaking things means we find out what works. Consider good ideas that aren’t just profitable ideas. I remember telling one person this ‘incredible idea’ I had, but was so glad that he could help break it and instead move me onto an idea that was breaking and making new things.

I guess I’ve found that the best ideas of mine are those that break the norms.

Your Leading Thoughts

1. What isn’t moving the bottom line? Why haven’t you broken it?
2. What norms are you currently breaking?

Photo courtesy of lasszio

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?

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

Last Friday I spoke at the second Creative Brkfst, down in Plymouth, UK, upon the kind invitation of my friend and founder of Creative Brksft, Nathaniel Davis.

The video is a bit slow for the first minute or slow, as I was being introduced, but we quickly begin to get into things.

I talked about What Social Means for Broadcast Business, which I broke into three main sections: the history of Social and Broadcast, key concepts and truths, using the Social / Broadcast Matrix to become Social.

Most of the content is stuff that we’ve already discussed here on this blog and I’ve spoken on before, but there were also some new ideas that I introduced that I wanted to make sure you got in the video above, mainly these:

1. Social innovates, Broadcast duplicates. All innovation begins in Social, and then Broadcast duplicates and publishes it.
2. What starts as value in Social, technology or ego turn into volume with Broadcast. Power is a massive part of this.
3. There are three ways to go from Broadcast to Social: socialise you content, socialise your channel, or socialise both.

We’ll probably pick up on these ideas over the coming weeks.

Enjoy the talk,
Scott

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

Compelling is not synonymous with what is good. My favourite book, the Bible, records some pretty bad stuff. Bad, but compelling. In business we want to create good experiences. Actually, scratch that – we want to create great experiences. But the reality is that in life, it is often the most distressing bad experiences that compel you the most.

What you don’t want is boring. Boring is lost and forgotten, wasted to the pages of FAIL and such stuff.

Good and bad are both compelling. Tony Robbins, the life-transformation guru, wrote in Unlimited Power that people either move towards pleasure, or away from pain. One of Guy Kawasaki’s points in the video follows a similar though: polarize people. In other words, compel people to hate your product, or love it.

Good and bad – just to philosophise the debate – are generally subjective. Apple’s iPad announcement for many is life-changingly good, but others will find holes with, despise it, and not support it at all.

Watching this video from Guy (a personal favourite of mine), one gets very inspired to get on the edge of innovation. It’s the same feeling you get when reading Seth Godin’s Purple Cow (affiliate). Cue inspirational one liners: Being safe is being risky. The middle is crowded. Be different. Be purple. Do something remarkable.

Here’s the rub: it’s easy to say ‘be good and bad but not boring’, and it’s easy to do it when you have a flexible organisations with brands that clearly live in these places of polarisation (everything I do lives there, so I know it well.) But many companies can’t do it. Their mindsets don’t permit it, their guts don’t permit it, and perhaps their companies just don’t need it.

I don’t know. So, let me hear from you. Here’s some questions to spark some discussion:

1. Is poliarisation (being good and bad) a sustainable, long term strategy?
2. Do businesses need to innovate remarkable products? Is just delivering a good service remarkable?
3. Is remarkable just hype? Does boring sell?