Virtual Worlds, Actual Trouble?

Second Life. Ironically, I was just talking to my good friend, Mike, about Second Life before we started this Omnium module in a great breakfast place in Victoria, BC. Mike's doing his joint MBA/LLB at UVic, we're old friends from a European exchange we did in undergrad and don't get to see each other too often. We had a great time walking around Victoria, B.C., the sun was shining and the sleepy little city smelled like the ocean. Not that much had really changed since the last time I was there (8 yrs ago! yikes!) The coffee was lovely, as well as the Mediterranean omlette and conversation. Get my point? This is REAL life. Mike got pretty animated (he does that a little!) about Second Life, actually. His basic point: why make/spend time/money/energy on a second life, when there's so much still to be done in the first one?

Second Life is a strangely compelling business model, for marketing new concepts, earning speculative dough on real estate, collaborating on research topics, advertising, etc. However, it just feels too weird! You can read the facts about Linden Lab and the development of Second Life, but a few of the stranger-than-fictions for me are:

• It's a chat room with visuals and though the stuff of sci-fi, there's over 10 million users (only 1 million active within any given week). I'm visualizing the dwindling labour supply curve right now...
• 250L$ = 1US$ -- you can buy fake money with real money and then make it grow? A freely convertible currency makes this a capitalist fantasy! It's only countries that issue currency in the real world, but Second Life has an economy larger than some real places on earth, so it may be considered qualified to print cash.
• International appeal -- the Chinese Second Life is unbelievably popular (Wikipedia's still off-limits in that country though...sigh...)

The hype seems to be levelling off, as real companies and people learn more about how Second Life may be useful and how it is not. It's also early days for the technology, which can be crash-prone and sluggish with too many users in one space. However, companies like Scheutze's are actually integrating the environment into their recruiting and marketing strategies, which argues that there is a place for this tool. I agree with CW -- be aware. And I would take it one step further -- decide what you think. It's all of our opinions and the resulting behaviours that determine the place of these new technologies in life. Real life, that is.

Kindle your imagination?

This is amazing. Seriously, amazing.

Kinder Surprises About Mash-ups

What is a mash-up? We learned with Kinder Surprises (yummy!), a mash-up is combining two or more components to create value-add (think: chocolate AND a toy). This can be especially powerful when it comes to information, reducing the requirement for sequential searching in order to find what you're looking for and providing more than you are looking for. Some examples include Zillow (providing information on US properties by combining details from property tax records, real estate sales, maps and photographs), Zoominfo (which compiles resumes for individuals from various public sources -- quick test: about 75% accurate), Local.ch (a Swiss version based on the public phone book), and things like Google maps and Amazon.com which leverage search patterns and purchase histories to make recommendations to users.

Who's using these crazy sources of compiled information? That's a big question, and the answer includes everything from reporters looking for the 'social' angle on the news to prospective employers who are vetting candidates to the generally curious among us. Obviously, we had questions about why?

There are serious privacy concerns to this amount of information being available on the Internet (why didn't we just call Mike Zuckerberg at home...oh, right, it's 3 am in NY!) There is some liability involved to support the responsible use of public domain information, but you'd have to know there was a violation happening to enforce it. Some privacy laws do forbid repurposing information, and allow the subject to access/correct/request removals of data. However, privacy has been an ongoing issue as long as there has been information sharing -- the first famous US (the land of lawyers!) libel case happened in 1734, and the 'Old World' was all over protecting monarchs from slander, etc. However, do we get more desensitized to the publication of personal information as the volume of information grows? Is blogging and virtual lives and the feeling of anonymity anesthetizing us against the risks of putting our lives online? I'll save that discussion for the next session on virtual worlds...

There are people working on these issues, such as the fine folks at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, the First Amendment, and constitutional values. There are lots of less official bits of advice available on how to keep track of your online presence. We're boardering on paranoia here but you can always set up a Google Alert on yourself, or leverage a tool like those available from Something Simpler. Here's a few more tips and tricks:

• How to clean up your digital dirt article
• Have a say in what Google says about you article

teehee

Excel 2007 bug shows wrong answers to simple multiplications...

Disruptive Innovation

Today we discussed disruptive innovation, those great leaps forward in technology that take advantage of "blue oceans" to change the who, what, where, when, why and how of our daily lives. And they're everywhere! We looked at disuptive innovations in machine tools (where the breakthrough was HOW machines were operation, not what they did) to video games (where Nintendo's Wii reprioritized what was important in a video game experience -- fun, over graphics quality -- challenging the PlayStation platform and tipping the balance toward the blu ray dvd format).

There are lots of motivations to innovate, but there are also lots of barriers to understanding or accepting the innovations, particularly among incumbents. These range from the normal resistance to change and arrogance of superiority, to incentive systems that discourage innovation or corporate scale that sacrifices flexibility/the ability to react. David's blog has a good discussion of what's going on with media distribution between traditional providers like tv networks and upstarts like YouTube, and how existing players can "misunderstand the new paradigm." My only comment would be (and here I betray myself as something of a luddite) that, as a content viewer, I'm not far enough along the changing trend to want or need to view media on my mobile PDA (NOT an iPhone!) and I don't have TiVo. I actually appreciate the ability to watch some tv shows online, from my computer, on my own time, should I choose. The tv networks may not be fully understanding their industry changes, but they are providing value-add to those customers who are lagging the bleeding edge of the trend, and likely curbing the full impact of these disruptive innovations.

This all brings to mind one of my favourite scenes from one of my favourite tv shows, the West Wing (couldn't find the clip on YouTube, sadly!):

Leo: My generation never got the future it was promised... Thirty-five years later, cars, air travel is exactly the same. We don't even have the Concorde anymore. Technology stopped.
Josh: There is the personal computer...
Leo: A more efficient delivery system for gossip and pornography? Where's my jet pack, my colonies on the Moon?

I think we can safely conclude that disruptive innovation rarely looks the way we think it will, but -- based on our group presentations, anyway -- it can look like almost anything!

Joint Innovation -- Issues and Inspiration!

Today, we talked about Joint Innovation, in industries ranging from computer programming (the obvious 'open source' example) to automotive (Hack That Prius, Matterhorn!) to shipping/delivery (FedEx furniture!). There are obvious challenges to joint innovation, including liability, loss of IP and privacy concerns (this would be top of mind in financial services, where clients expect discretion rather than participation in their transactions!). I did some quick searching (Google, of course!) to see if there were any news items or examples about liability issues faced in joint innovation situations and I couldn't find much...this is a truly bleeding edge issue. The only materials I could find described how liability laws in general discouraged innovation in manufacturing and how anti-trust rules can discourage innovation between competitors. It seems that engaging customers or suppliers in product or process development is still quite new!

I personally think there's a lot to be said for engaging customers or suppliers, particularly as big corporations (cough-Microsoft-cough) start providing 'plain vanilla' products on the global market that make their customers feel like they have no choice or less choice than they should in what they buy. Think: why are we all going to the tailor in Hong Kong? Because we want suits made just for us, and this involvement and customization is important to us as consumers. Corporations could win, at the most great ideas and at the least some consumer goodwill, by actively encouraging innovation!

And who gets involved? Lead users and creative customers. I've had the opportunity to interview some of my clients about an online research environment that I was building at Canaccord, and I did find the feedback helpful. I've also had the chance to be heavily involved in customizing some of the technology products that we use (for example, our CRM) and the responsiveness of the vendor has gone a long way to build our continuing working relationship. This obviously takes some time and effort, and participants do need to be incentivized to participate. In my case, I was building client relationships by "listening to concerns"; the information I received actually reinforced my initial plans for our portal. With the vendor, being involved in design, specs and testing meant I would get exactly the product I wanted at a cost savings. There were both tangible and intangible incentives at work and helpful is as helpful does, I guess!

The online research environment that I mentioned is almost ready to launch at Canaccord. It's a closed-loop, client-access website that updates our research ratings, financial data and document library in real-time as research is published from our internal authoring tool. It allows for interactive searching and screening of our coverage universe and research department data (for example, analyst biographies or macro overviews of our focus sectors). It will be accessed by 6 distinct internal and external client groups and, in some cases, content will be screened and presented to match user preferences.
Initially, the joint innovation here is going to be passive on behalf of our customers or sneaky on behalf of Canaccord, depending on how you look at it. We're going to use web analytics to track which clients read what research or use what screens on the site, to tailor our product to what is popular or relevant among our client base. We're also going to be able to use web analytics to monitor clients' usage of the site, and make sure that we're billing for it! However, in future, we're planning to have more interactive ways of innovation online, including hosting group chats between experts and clients, or providing online statements/confirms to eco-friendly clients rather than sending them mail. There are clearly limits to joint innovation in financial services, but we're consciously exploring them in an effort to provide value-added services.

Ultimately, I do think responsible corporations need to err on the side of caution and, as Matterhorn recommended in our Toyota policy re: Prius modifications, stay informed and involved (if not in-downright-control) of product/process innovations. There is a lot at risk, and a huge assumption of benevolent contribution here that needs to stand the test of time before becoming more mainstream.

Final thought: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." -- Winston Churchill

Happy innovating!

You are what you Google?!?

oh my...

How long is 15 mins of fame in web 2.0?

Quigo is an online advertising agency that allows clients to

i) decide where on the Internet to show their ads and
ii) doesn't brand them as "Powered by Quigo."

Google does both of those things, or used to, until they altered their approach with certain customers to adjust to this new player in their market. Quigo was recently acquired by AOL for $300 million.

http://www.quigo.com/

Game on.

Example: Blogging Gone Wrong

Have you read about Queen of the Skies?

Lessons Learned: User Adoption and CRM

We talked today about some great technologies, and there were a few questions about what types of businesses or users would find them relevant. There was even less discussion or information available about quantifiable returns or profits to be made through utilizing tools like wikis, collective intelligence and social network analysis. Ultimately, each business needs to decide how "bleeding edge" they should be. But, in my experience, even the most standard, relevant and profit-driving tools can be a challenge to implement:

For the past three years, I've been working on building and deploying a customer relationship management (CRM) solution for institutional equities to three business lines across three countries. The tool is best-in-class, combining client contact information, research distribution, trading platform integration and deal participation history with the ability to record contact with clients as part of the traditional workflow (i.e. sending an email). The project has been extremely challenging because, despite a clear vision -- and even clearer, quantifiable ROI -- we have had problems driving user adoption.

We focused on a few key things in selecting our vendor. Simplicity was paramount, and we wanted a "no bells and whistles" application that focused on our core needs. We defined the purpose of the tool as 'quantifying client service' (allowing us to record when we communicate with clients, in order to 'bill back') and 'improving internal communication' (through alerts to internal stakeholders when clients are contacted): together, these approaches help us get paid where we spend our time and spend our time where we get paid. Management is vocally supportive of this project, and a team of full-time administrators are available to train using interactive guides. So...

...what's the problem? Technology is still dependent on the people using it. Work habits are hard to change, particularly when they attempt to move individualistic people toward collective goals. In this case, the CRM required users to aggregate information about their client relationships that was previously perceived as part of their 'personal' competitive advantage. Users like my high-maintenance financial services types, can be incredibly intolerant of any problems, opinionated about how things should be done and generally uninterested in the "technical details" that they feel are unrelated to their business. So...

...what have I learned? Be patient, be very, very patient. Have strong management support for change. Know your client, and make sure the technology you're implementing is relevant (not just cool!). Everything is sales. Focus on convincing each user why the tool is important to them.

When I was little...

...I wanted to be Carmen Sandiego.

How many Omnium students does it take to make a Google doc?

The Omnium4 class is using Google Docs to make a list of our blognames, with 25 people editing the same document in an online space, private to users but public to search engines.

What's so great about these virtual spaces? For Google, it's access to information about relationships (Google guangxi!), users and their interests, used to:

a) generate advertising revenue
b) weaken competition by keeping users online in the Google environment
c) sell data and analytics about consumer interests/behaviours to interested parties (i.e. retailers)
d) sell web services, such as email, intranet, platform for collaboration docs (web 2.0)

What's so bad? For users, it's

a) privacy concerns -- Google's reading our emails!
b) potential for identity theft
c) if your Internet access is interrupted, you can't access your documents

This technology can be very useful -- I'm thinking in particular of SMEs, non-profits, and any informal group that wants to collaborate while keeping costs low. This wouldn't be appropriate, however, for any group that has confidentiality or access concerns. For example, in financial services, we can't have "enforced amnesia" after a certain period of time. We're under regulatory obligations to protect client confidentiality, archive all our communications and enforce internal information barriers. These collaborative tools do pose, at the very least, an administrative challenge when there is a requirement for specific user permissioning by role.

Internet advertising is a tough one -- inflated illusion of an industry or legitimate, effective way to reach people? Here's what one research analyst thinks. I'm still on the fence.

moral of the story: choose your username wisely!

Blogging is a verb

8:56am. City University. Good morning, Hong Kong. Thought I'd be studying, but here I am blogging. :)