SAP & InnoCentive

Jevon at Socialwrite recently wrote about SAP's partnership with InnoCentive. My my, how things have changed. It wasn't too long ago that I was sitting down with SAP and listening to their philosophy on business practices which was the furthest thing away from crowdsource thinking like InnoCentive.

SAP had traditionally been about "best practices". According to SAP, companies stand to gain from SAP's global customer base and taking what is context for others and making it core for them. For example, what large scale operation would "build" their own inventory management system or human resource management system instead of buying it? You would spend much more effort and dollars to accomplish only a fraction of what a company like SAP has already been able to do. In addition, you benefit from their global R&D and refinement of best practices.

To fully reap the value of leveraging pre-packaged best practices however often requires you to minimize customization. Over customization would diminish the value of having a set best-practice to start with. Hence companies that just adopt the SAP practices would tend to benefit from higher levels of efficiencies. Or so goes the philosophy...

As I've written previously, the challenge with this thinking is that it limits innovation. Sure, you could argue innovation only matters around what is "core" to your business. But that line of distinction can be a bit fuzzy, and strong delineation could mean missed opportunities of taking what was "context" and transforming into "core". For example, if your core was manufacturing PC's and distribution was really context for you, you may miss out on creating a competitive differentiator by drastically changing the distribution practices.

For me it's been quite interesting to see how SAP has been on a road to "re-inventing" itself. The focus on SOA & BPM over the last few years and this most recent partnership with InnoCentive to crowdsource innovation could be a sign of things to come for all enterprises. If the world's biggest enterprise software giant whose core is around best-practices is now crowdsourcing for new practices... What are the implications to your organization?

Or perhaps it's just hoopla and SAP may not really be all that serious around crowdsourcing and is just doing this for appearances. Jevon ends his post by quoting Mark Yolton, Senior VP of the SAP community network, “We will only be posting problems which are not core to our business”. I hope not. As Clay Shirky stated, the old thinking was to focus on 80% gain for 20% effort but the new thinking is, why give up that last 20% of gain? Thoughts?

Mesh07: Edelman's PR advice applied to Enterprise 2.0

Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman, the worlds largest independent public relations (PR) firm kicked things off this morning at Mesh 07. I am not a PR person myself but his insight can be applied to any enterprise looking at adopting Web 2.0 technologies (i.e. Enterprise 2.0) such as blogging, and social forums. Here are some of his comments and my corporate view to them.

"Don't leave the whole conversation up to the opposition."


You may be bold enough to introduce corporate blogging but how would you respond if you started receiving several extremely negative comments? Some "purists" would argue that you must never "govern" these comments. Personally, I believe that if a comment is inappropriate and adds little to the conversation, it should be removed. Definitely, Techcrunch personality, Mike Arrington was upfront with the audience yesterday in saying that he regularly re-edits his comments after-the-fact.

At a minimum, you SHOULD provide the counter arguments and support for your blog. Being accepting of criticism doesn't mean just hiding until the bombing subsides. Your supporters will be looking for your support and want to hear your side of the story.

Another important point... THINK before you blog or crowdsource. For example, providing an opportunity for anyone to create a commercial for the Chevy Tahoe in a climate where there is heavy evangelism over environmentalism isn't the wisest move. For those who know the story, several "creative" people took up the offer from GM but created attack ads that put the Tahoe in a very negative environmental light. Perhaps another communication medium would have been better.


"There is a trade-off between Control and Credibility"

Edelman suggested middle management would be a good place to start blogging. He talked to the Microsoft example in which Robert Scoble, gained credibility by being transparent and genuine as illustrated in his public attack on his own company. In the long-run, Microsoft may have benefited from letting Scoble's opinion flow instead of shutting down the conversation.

Another example was the Dove campaign on YouTube, "In search of real beauty". The Dove brand rose considerably with this transparent approach.

In the end, Edelman gave 3 points of advice.

1. Make your stories visual. Go beyond the words.

2. Don’t let yourself be defeated by set backs. You will fall a few times.

3. Don’t let clients put you in a box. Stand your ground.

This was just the kick-off. No Doubt you will see many more blogs coming out of Mesh 07!

Citizens of the World.... Unite! - IBM & Business Objects crowdsource to help the world.

Can we make a difference?



I was reminded of this video today, as I was reading the following e-mail from BusinessObjects:

"Global Warming. World Hunger. Childhood Education. Clean Drinking Water. Human Rights. Extreme Poverty. Basic Healthcare.

THE WISDOM OF THE CROWD VERSUS THE PROBLEMS OF THE PLANET.

On May 15th, join Bernard Liautaud, Don Tapscott, John Schwarz and others as they gather to see if our collective intelligence can be put to a higher purpose—solving the world’s great problems.

Learn more about this in a video message from John Schwarz. We invite you to become part of an exciting new online community dedicated to seeing what happens if data lovers, business thinkers, technologists, academics, visual artists and others put their brains together to discover new ways of sharing ideas, analyzing information, and working together in a global mind grid.

Our goal is to change the way problems get solved, to work on issues that have a global impact, and to challenge the conventions and paradigms of online communities. "

I also have been sent information from IBM on their "Global Innovation Outlook" which asks "Have you ever thought about changing the world? Or maybe just one continent at time? How about Africa? ". IBM plans to use crowdsourcing to gather ideas on how help Africa through business development that will be discussed by thought leaders around the globe.

Both of these appear to be noble causes, but I can't help being skeptical whenever there appears to be "product placement" in the requests. Perhaps it's a small price to pay for the opportunity to truly help the world? A word of caution, if the "marketing" of their corporate services goes to far, it will turn people off and potentially turn them off from other future attempts at global crowdsourcing.

I hope for the best and plan on participating as well.

Time will tell us the outcome.

Quick Chat #3: Crowdsourcing, Chaos & Central Limit Theorem

I had an on-line chat with my friend Chris who posed the question, "Is there a danger "crowdsourcing" degenerates into so much noise that there appears to be no order to it, just thousands of disjointed opinions and mini-cliques? Does order always follow chaos? "

Interesting question. My personal opinion (although some quick research would be interesting here) is that ideas and concepts follow the same patterns as displayed in nature, specifically that they follow the central limit theorem and the normal distribution.

But this answer, draws even more concerns over crowdsourcing focusing on the average. Which depends on the situation and is an opportunity to re-think crowdsourcing and improving upon it.

American Idol: The day the music died?

Today I saw the Queen musical "We Will Rock You" which takes place 300 years in the future. In this future, all original music is banned, and replaced with only music programmed by GlobalSoft, "Where our business is the complete appropriation of your imagination...". It even starts with a timeline that goes through some of the greatest rock milestones sprinkled with corporate manufactured examples such as Milli Vanilli, and "boy bands". At one point in the musical, one of the "bohemians" explains how they were able to track back the exact day that music died, and it was when something called... "American Idol". I am sure my friends are thinking... "Please don't say that this musical has anything to do with web 2.0?"... Well, this does..

I know I've commented on the business model of American Idol which I believe is brilliant (right up there with the way banks charge you for borrowing your money, which they lend to others, and heck let's charge them too). But what about the creativity? What about the art? Does this new collaboration mean art could succumb to corporate desires for quick profits? Unfortunately, to an extent it already has. BUT, it also provides opportunity for more artists to leverage new channels. If this is true, then we should already be starting to see indie musicians (not attached to a record label) gaining popularity, and momentum. Do we?

Crowdsourced music and art can create mass consumption products digestible by many but has no longevity or notable impact on the future of the art. It's creating the simple wine that will sold to many but the exceptional wine which requires the trained palette to appreciate could be pushed aside forever. From Mozart to Hendrix there are several examples in all genres of edgy artists pushing the limits of music who's radical art would require time to enter mainstream acceptance. If we made "America vote" as a pre-requisite for access to music would we have truly listened to the pioneers of hip-hop? As Don McLean questioned in American Pie, "Do you recall what was revealed the day the music died?"



On the other hand, I also read an article recently in the National Post about the band Arcade Fire. The article discussed how the band leveraged social forums to gather mainstream acceptance. This indie band may be an example of finally overcoming the "expert" tyranny of record labels and allowing the artists a better chance for their art to be heard before it's completely re-packaged for mass adoption. Another indie act that appears to be gaining mainstream acceptance (and is one of my favourite new bands) is Silversun Pickups pictured here.





Closer to home, a friend of mine (Dan Gagnon) a local musician has leveraged MySpace as a personal space and a digital home for his music. Only in this web 2.0 space could an individual create a global channel so quickly. He's received some very positive feedback from other more established (famous) artists. Of course simply opening up the music alone doesn't result in mass opportunity for the art to be heard. Can the long-tail be applied to his music as a pre-cursor to mainstream appeal?



The "build it and they will come" philosophy is often false and adoption usually requires active promotion. Of course promotion can also be done through several web 2.0 means as well. The 2.0 world provides coverage over the 4 P's (Price, Promotion, Place/Distribution,Product) providing freedom for the independent artist.


It will be interesting to see the clash between big corporate music and legions of independent artists both of which are leveraging the unique opportunities offered by Web 2.0.


Time will tell...

"I've been waiting for this moment all my life... But it's not quite right"
- Lazy Eye by Silversun Pickups.

Wikinomics: Don Tapscott at Univ of Toronto April 13, 2007.

Early this morning I had an opportunity to listen to Don Tapscott speak at the University of Toronto on the topic of how collaboration drives changes in the markets. It was also named as Don's Canadian book launch for Wikinomics which was released in December of last year.

He reinforced the content of his book and discussed, how the perfect storm is comprised of the clashing web 2.0, the social revolution, the economic revolution and the net-generation. In addition to the discussion and examples, he hosted a panel comprised of an executive from HP, Oracle and Cisco (all of which were co-sponsor's of the event hand picked by Mr. Tapscott for their leadership in the wiki-revolution).

The presentation was good with some excellent examples, but I found the Panel discussion not entirely engaging. In fairness to the panel however the discussion was cut short due to time before they could really get into some deeper discussions.

When Don talked to the Oracle representative about if there was any fear from "mass collaboration" and "open source databases", the Oracle representative discussed that volume increases value and the need for companies to understand at what point to monetize value. For example, the value piece for Oracle may be in the support which they could provide and any customization would be given back to the community. The value from giving back would be to "raise the water levels" for all the boats. Personally, I still don't get the value proposition that Oracle provides here. Why don't I crowdsource the support as well?

To demonstrate the wisdom of crowds, the Oracle representative used an example that compared it to "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" game show which apparently the "Ask an Expert" provided correct answers 53% of the time versus the "Poll the Audience" which provided correct answers 91% of the time. Of course, to nitpick, it would be interesting to know when the contestants used these options (if they selected poll the audience for simple questions and ask an expert for hard question the results could be due to complexity of question)

Sun had some good examples and very progressive actions. They not only allow for corporate blogging for all employees but they actually encourage it. This would surely give most corporate lawyers a decent scare. The policy appeared to be straight forward 1 pager around using common sense, adding links to facilitate collaboration, be an active consumer as well as a producer, write about things you know and are of interest, write well, and in the end remember the blogger represents Sun even with all the disclaimers.

Cisco, had a couple of homegrown enterprise 2.0 applications they talked about. One called IZONE which sounds similar to the ID-ah!(tm) platform that I had discussed earlier. It attempts to harness the collective intelligence of the entire employee base within Cisco. Another one was CVision a YouTube for internal Cisco use. As for Web 2.0, Cisco talked about their involvement with Second Life.

I won't re-cycle through Don's material as it was very similar to his book. But I will highlight a couple of interesting stories he used.

- Geo Spatiality and digital stickiness will allow us to put a sticky on anything. Practical application is Intellizone which leverages GPS in wireless devices to determine traffic flow and therefore route planning.

- When asking a Net-Gen'er if the used e-mail. They said... Not Really. E-Mail is kind of formal. It's like writing a thank-you letter to your friends parents.

- 1/3 of Amazon.com's revenues now come from it's Open API.

- Marketocracy creates crowd sourced mutual fund.

- Pre-Release of his book Wikinomics, one of his staff decided to enter the term Wikinomics into Wikipedia and it was promptly deleted. Why? You can read the log to find out. There simply was not enough support to have it into an encyclopedia yet.

- Obscenities in WikiPedia are removed on average under 2 minutes.

- Don recently did a presentation on SecondLife complete with virtual book signing and a virtual cocktail party.

Don did spend a bit of time discussing the Economics of Mass Collaboration. With the perfect storm and the technology revolution enabling the social revolution, the economic revolution is inevitable. Ronald Coase, which Don refers to in his book as well is cited and he reiterates that the transaction costs (the costs for collaboration) that justified vertical integration have evaporated to almost nothing. In fact the cost of integration will outweigh the cost of personal outsourcing now available through the web and Ideagoras.

In the end, Don did circle back to his previous work on "The Naked Corporation" and made a last point that... In a world where you are naked... You had better be buff and know your stuff because there is nowhere to hide...

Crowdsourcing not just for technology...

It was my turn to feed my youngest daughter today and I picked up the new jar of baby food my wife had purchased and realized a new label... It was Heinz's "Mom's Recipe"(TM) and it was a quick reminder that crowdsourcing was not limited to just technology. Here is Heinz, being innovative by creating new baby foods based on recipes submitted by real moms.

Other examples I've blogged about in the past include the multitude of reality television shows where the audience selects the winner (American Idol et al), and CrowdSpirit which uses crowdsourcing for consumer electronics. Another interesting crowdsouring example is Fluevog's open source shoes where you design the shoe and several other examples are discussed on the Read/WriteWeb blog.

One of the challenges with crowdsourcing however is when it comes to truly disruptive technology or radical designs. Crowds may not be able to comprehend the concepts that a visionary provides. Steve Jobs for example was adamant that there be NO ON/OFF button on the IPod even though all the designers thought it was a must do. Some popular musicians also experienced harsh initial criticism prior to mass adoption.

All I can say is that my daughter really really liked her dinner so in this case, it seems to have paid off.

Move over SaaS.... Meet YaaS (You As A Service)

YOU ARE A SERVICE.

It's not a new concept but to say it makes me think...

Those reading this blog are likely familiar with the concept of Software as a Service (SaaS). This blog is NOT about SaaS, the notion that with advances in reliability, security & efficiency of the Internet, there is a growing opportunity to run applications, on-demand, via the web with no installations, or even IT support staff. Although the term SaaS is still a bit in flux, the same value proposition that makes SaaS an interesting concept can be applied to the you. Yes... You... You can be (if you aren't already) a service. Introducing YaaS, "You as a Service". Even when we speak of "mass collaboration" it ultimately comes down to you.

What makes You-As-A-Service a reality? Scale & Efficiency...

1. Scale: For the same reason that Gartner predicts SaaS to be the delivery model for 25% of all business applications by 2011. As big as a company is, it can't possibly hire everyone. What if it needed one idea from one person and that was it. Would you hire them? Would you even consult with them? Even if a company could hire everyone, what kind of bureaucracy would be required? By tapping into things like Innocentive, individuals become their own services.

2. Efficiency: For the same reason Ronald Coase won a Nobel prize in economics in explaining why firms exist. The need to vertically or horizontally integrate was spurn because of cost inefficiencies. It was simply more efficient to buy out the partners or hire them then it would be to create contracts with everyone you worked this. This is now changing. To the extreme there are now companies with virtually no employees such as CrowdSpirit.

You can now be a service. A thought source. A problem solver. A creative entrepreneur. And the globe is your marketplace. What a fascinating world it is when we can all hang up our own "Open for business" signs.