Innovator's Dilemma - Big Brother Zucker

Heard about Facebook's quietly released feature "Seen By"? http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/11/facebook-groups-let-you-see-exactly-who-has-viewed-your-photos-too/

U.C. Santa Barbara Professor Ben Zhao noted it’s “just another step in the ‘Zuckering’ of our social norms, slowly eroding what most people consider to be over-the-line from a privacy perspective.” (In his work, Zhao happens to specialize in “large-distributed networks and systems, data mining and modeling, security and privacy, and wireless/mobile systems,” with current projects focused on “querying, modeling and mining massive graphs, analysis of social networks and online communities, and wireless systems and protocols.”)

 

A question and an observation about "Seen By":
 

1) If one visits a Group and sees a new post in the Group's feed that includes a link and/or picture, BUT, you do not click on that post, you  have seen at least some or all of the post, but, does Facebook count that as 'Seen by' if you didn't open it? (Similar to seeing email in your inbox but unless you open it, it's still unread.)
 

2) Imagine if former Egyptian leader Mubarack, Libyan dictator Kadaffi or other totalitarian leaders across the Middle East and North Africa  had access to "Seen by" about 2 years ago and had "authorities" monitor who was viewing what group posts (currently, the "Seen by" feature allows any of us to see every single Facebook user who had viewed a group post). Social media was the revolutionary driving force behind the grassroots organizing/uprising of the Arab Spring ... and now Syria's Assad (along with Russian & Chinese leaders who are blocking U.N. action against Syria's Assad) now can exploit "Seen by" to garner significant intelligence of civilians who may have been basing their survival on communicating via Facebook . 

 

"Seen by" and other privacy intrusion features introduced on social media (and the trend these features portend) turn back the clock on online privacy and fundamental privacy in general ... giving authoritarians a significant new 1984-ish advantage in monitoring who is communicating with who in the new online social media frontier that was just beginning to be leveraged to overcome generations of oppression by dictatorial tyrants (all under the guise of "protecting us" from now being able to see who viewed the picture of the precious child shown in the swing [a picture that the photographer choose to put out there in the first place]).
 

Familiar with hoovers.com?  Ever purchase a subscription from this business profiling and prospecting social media platform?  If you did and your work involves global business, you may have noticed that while email, telephone number and other contact information about business leaders (from C-levels to managers) is exhaustive for US based companies, contact information on all levels of leaders for non-US companies is not available in Hoovers.  Why?  A major reason is elected officials from other nations have institutionalized vastly more protective privacy laws that prohibit any entities from data gathering, profiling, monitoring people ... which raises a 3rd question: How are other nations addressing Facebook's ongoing encroachments into privacy?  (Maybe there are quiet mandates that force companies to comply with standards in those nations, or face the prospect of having these services banned in those nations.)

Facebook's "Seen by" feature can be viewed as 'chilling'. Facebook's ongoing approach to quietly slip these privacy violating capabilities into production virtually unannounced is instructive (as was Facebook's approach to mandating Timeline).

A silver lining? Maybe these relentless Facebook privacy encroachments on the new frontier of social media will inspire innovators to introduce competitive social media platforms or even new paradigms that meet a growing market need of privacy (that Facebook and other platforms continue to erode).

 

 

Innovator's Dilemma - Where Innovators' Focus Is Shifting

With all the hype and excitement surrounding the Facebook IPO, the publisher of Forbes (Rich Karlgaard) had an interesting opinion piece in the May 17th, 2012 WSJ entitled:

The Future Is More Than Facebook

Social media is already passé in Silicon Valley. America's innovation engine is now focused on transportation, energy and manufacturing.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304371504577406142515388550.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet_bot

Here are just a few of Mr. Karlgaard's thoughts and observations:

* America's innovation engine, Silicon Valley, is again overheating. Evidence: Last month Facebook swapped $1 billion in pre-IPO shares and some cash for Instagram, a two-year-old start-up with 11 employees and no revenue.

* A week later, another Silicon Valley start-up called Splunk, slyly allied with the decades' two hottest buzz generators—cloud computing and big data—went public at a $1.5 billion value on just $121 million in sales this year. Yet shareholders swooned for Splunk and bid up its $17 IPO share price to $37 in the first two days of trading.

* Can it (American innovation) go mainstream and transform the really big things: transportation, energy, electricity, food production, water delivery, health care and education?

* If it (American innovation) can't do that—or if it is thwarted by high taxes and complex regulation—then welcome to the new normal of 2% annual growth. Our future will become sadly familiar. Just follow Spain, France and Great Britain down history's sinkhole of lost status and influence.

* There's a growing interest among bright minds to apply "exponential technologies" to solve problems much larger than whom to friend on Facebook. Transportation is one of those big deals. Would you rather own a car, an iPad or a Facebook membership? Thought so. By 2050 the planet will have nine billion inhabitants and three billion cars. This will create huge demand for fuel and road access.

* Silicon Valley's biggest new thing, therefore, is not Instagram or Splunk but Google's robot-driven car ... a technology with a rate of progress over the last 4 years that is normal in the algorithmic world, but it is new in the physical world.

* Rising labor rates in China, along with rising oil/transportation costs will be a windfall for "Made in the USA" as the global economic playing field enters a period of ebbing.

These and other concepts and trends shared do convey magnificent opportunity for innovators everywhere and anywhere, however, as Rich also points out, taxation and regulation policies do have significant impact on the pace of innovation.

Innovator's Dilemma - So emotional

Whitney Houston - dead at age 48 - Words cannot express the numbness.
http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/stop-the-presses/blood-sweat-dishevelment-whitney-houston-tumultuous-final-days-144148765.html

"Run To You": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9rCobRl-ng
Can't you feel the hurt in me, I feel so all alone.

"So Emotional": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YjSHbA6HQQ
Ain't it shocking what love can do?

"I'm Your Baby Tonight": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0dhp8NeQkc&feature=related
What ever you want from me, I'm giving you everything.

"I Will Always Love You": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QaI-M9sxW4
If I should stay, I'll only be in you way, so I'll go ...

... and I will always love you ...

Innovator's Dilemma: Lin-lessons

After the first night there was a buzz in the metro NYC area. By the second night this story began to compete with aftermath coverage of the NY Giants' dramatic Super Bowl 46 victory and subsequent celebrations (i.e.: ticker-tape parade through Lower Manhattan's Canyon of Heroes, then follow-up festivities at the Giants' home - Metlife Stadium in NJ). With the 3rd consecutive victory ... and his significant impact ... Jeremy Lin had become a folk hero in the NY sports scene ... as anticipation mounted ... because Kobe and The Lakers were coming to town.


Lin's "Game 4" rocked The-Garden (New York's Madison Square Garden - The Cathedral of Basketball) , scoring 38, breaking a NBA record for most points scored in the first 4 games by any player in NBA history. Knicks beat Kobe and the Lakers ... and the remainder of this post will resonate with those committed to driving innovation (from Forbes.com contributor Eric Jackson) entitled:

Just Lin, Baby! 10 Lessons Jeremy Lin Can Teach Us Before We Go To Work Monday Morning

"Lin-sanity has swept up the NBA over the last week.

Friday’s 38 point performance by Harvard grad Jeremy Lin for the New York Knicks against the LA Lakers was his greatest performance yet as a starter, since he burst on to the scene and propelled the team to 4 straight wins.

But what can all of us learn from this story of this incredible young man — and how can we apply the same lessons to our own lives when we go back to work on Monday morning?

1. Believe in yourself when no one else does. Lin’s only the 3rd graduate from Harvard to make it to the NBA. He’s also one of only a handful of Asian-Americans to make it. He was sent by the Knicks to play for their D-League team 3 weeks ago in Erie,PA. He’d already been cut by two other NBA teams before joining the Knicks this year. You’ve got to believe in yourself, even when no one else does.

2. Seize the opportunity when it comes up. Lin got to start for the Knicks because they had to start him. They had too many injuries. Baron Davis was gone. The other point guards were out. Carmello Anthony was injured.

Amare Stoudemire had to leave the team because of a family death. Lin could have squandered the opportunity and we would have never have noticed. But he made the most of it. You never know when opportunities are going to arise in life. Often, they’re when you least expect them. Make the most of them. Don’t fritter them away.

3. Your family will always be there for you, so be there for them.

It wasn't until a few days ago that Lin got his contract guaranteed by the Knicks for the rest of the season. Before that, he could have been cut at any time. He had to sleep on his brother’s couch on the Lower East Side to get by. His family always believed in him and picked him up when he could have gotten down on himself. That made him continue to believe. If you want your family to believe in you like that, you’ve got to be there for them too when they need it.

4. Find the system that works for your style. Lin isn’t Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant.

He’s not a pure scorer. He’s a passer and distributor – who can also score very well. It didn’t work for him in Golden State or Houston – where he was before landing at the Knicks. But Mike D’Antoni’s system at the Knicks has been perfect for him to show off his strengths. You’ve got to do your best to understand what your strengths are and then ensure that you’re in a system (a job or organization or industry) that is a good fit for those strengths. Otherwise, people overlook the talents you bring to the table.

5. Don’t overlook talent that might exist around you today on your team. You probably manage people at your own company today. Are you sure you don’t have a Jeremy Lin living among you now? How do you know that "Mike" couldn't do amazing things if you gave him a him a new project to run with?

How do you know “Sarah” isn’t the right person to take the open job in London that you've been talking over with your colleagues? We put people around us in boxes.

He’s from Harvard. He’s Asian-American. Not sure he can play. How many assumptions have you made about talent around you? Don’t be like the General Managers in Golden State and Houston, and let talent slip through your fingers.

6. People will love you for being an original, not trying to be someone else.

You’ve got to be you. You can’t be some 2nd rate copy of Michael Jordan. There will never be another Michael Jordan. Just be Jeremy Lin — your self. Whatever that is. That doesn’t mean you don’t work hard — it just means you find what you’re good at and do it. Fans will love you for being you, just like they love Jeremy Lin.

7. Stay humble. If you one day are lucky enough to have newspapers want to put you on the cover in order to sell more, don’t let it get to your head. It’s been remarkable watching how humble Lin remains through all this media frenzy. It makes his teammates and fans love him that much more.

8. When you make others around you look good, they will love you forever. I didn’t know how good Tyson Chandler was, until I saw him playing with Jeremy Lin. Lin has set Chandler up many times over the last week for easy dunks because he drew the defense and then passed the ball. That’s partly why the Knicks are playing so well. They are working

harder to share the ball with others. And it’s beautiful to watch. And when the media swarms Lin, he tells them how good his teammates are. Do the same with your peers and reports.

9. Never forget about the importance of luck or fate in life. Some people believe in God, some in destiny, some in luck. Whatever you believe in it, be grateful for it.

10. Work your butt off. Lin couldn’t have seized his opportunity if he hadn’t worked like crazy for years perfecting his skills. There are no short cuts to hard work. Success is a by product of that.

I hope the Lin-sanity continues. And I hope we all can apply these lessons to our own work and family life. Go team."

---

Quite the write-up to appear in Forbes.com, huh?!

Innovator's Dilemma - Esse Quam Videri .... & the emerging Chief Innovation Officer

From a current inc.com story: "... at the country's fastest-growing companies, you see a new kind of CIO springing up. Not the "information"-warden-type CIO, but rather, a Chief "Innovation" Officer. It's a sign that corporations and governments are wringing their hands and sharpening their focus, all on the hunt for new ideas."

Now decades into globalization, the mountains and valleys of differentiated costs for producing at better margins (facilitated by free trade agreements that toppled tariff barriers, communications technologies that allowed access to inexpensive human resources in emerging nations, as well as policy agreements that opened access to inexpensive nations that do not support full freedoms and liberties) are gradually leveling off globally (i.e.: outsourcing firms based in India are scrambling to find cheaper human resources in 2nd & 3rd tier remote Indian communities, as well in lower cost of living areas of impoverished Eastern Europe ... in response to competitive pressures from outsourcing firms in Vietnam, China and other lower cost of living areas).

Recorded history is fundamentally about development where "building-up" areas present bigger and better opportunities than "built-up" areas (i.e.: a new bridge project provides opportunity for jobs - until the bridge is completed ... then bridge workers must either find the next bridge project or change careers). On the macro level, peoples have migrated from homelands throughout recorded history to find opportunity to earn income.

In the USA, the American Heartland started to be coined 'The Rust Belt' back in the 1970s as the ripple effect of the OPEC oil embargo began to change the economics of everything that depended upon the this natural resource beginning primarily with the automobile industry. Pressure grew to offset the cost-shock increases in oil (including the igniting of the domestic Sun Belt boom as businesses and homeowners considered relocation based on the escalating factor energy costs were having on budgets). Besides domestic relocation to warmer climates (often with local break tax incentives as well), from automation innovation to process innovation (then eventually international relocation/off-shoring which really began to accelerate in the 1990s), the nation that evolved over generations to eventually have one of the world's highest standards of living was now ripe for economic alternatives (again, also facilitated by the emerging and embraced notion of globalization). The latest example of a historical pattern repeating again.

The inc.com story's mention of the emergence of the new CIO (Chief Innovation Officer) is evidence that the decades old approach to cost reduction innovation via Chief Information Officer focus is beginning to run it's functional life cycle. Longer term, assuming relatively open global free trade, regional cost advantage gaps will continue to narrow ... putting increasing importance on growth to pivot from the late 20th Century's generational focus on cost reduction innovation ... to pure new product innovation.

While Steve Jobs has been heralded as our generation's Edison, do not fail to also understand that Jobs was a do-it-cheaper zealot beginning with his computer in the 1980s when he demanded his folks produce a desktop that had the power and functionality of a $12K device ... for about $5K (still pricy at that time but point being that even the great innovator Jobs viewed cost advantage as vital). To many, Jobs' greatest lesson may have been his differentiated approach to totally controlling end-to-end with in-house/turnkey ecosystems ... what one could call process innovation.

Of course Jobs' products were innovative as well ... but from my vantage point, I sat in AT&T HQ planning meetings back in the 1980s where we envisioned and began planning for how to get legacy IT infrastructure to support the inevitable multi-functional hand held PDAs. Jobs wasn't the only one who saw the need and envisioned the ideas manifested in the iPhone, but Jobs had the ability to control his company's climate to facilitate seizing opportunity in this area better and faster than corporate telecom titans who had at least 3 strikes against them:

1) Back to Clayton Christianson's concept in his book 'Innovators Dilemma' that is fundamentally about the business politics of self cannibalization (creative destruction) that stalls innovation until the last drop is squeezed out of the turnip/business plan of the prior innovation (a strategy that's fine if you have no competition),

2) Post deregulation break-up challenges to be competitive, and

3) Chasing the financial ghost that at the time was MCI/Worldcom ... the historic corporate financial fraud that handicapped/severely wounded the telecom industry's ability to innovate because relentless cost cutting into bone was the priority-order from on high for years in response to trying to meet shareholder/investor demands as all were fooled by the criminal financials perpetrated by MCI/Worldcom's deceitful leadership.

As the 4 year old Great Recession continues with continued record unemployment, real estate values continuing to plunge, about 100 more US bank closures in 2011, ominous signs from the EU and beyond, the emerging Chief Innovation Officer will have one of the most important roles in the 21st Century and beyond to help get out of the current global economic quagmire and envision not only new products, but innovative policy and strategy to facilitate sustainable long term growth, as well as the broader challenge to evolve business thinking, investor thinking in terms of paradigms that define true, sustainable success.

Innovator's Dilemma - Tebowing conventional wisdom

As a lifetime sports fan, it's rare that I recall a professional athlete being so questioned, so mocked, so criticized (and worse) than Tim Tebow. Wearing his religion on his sleeve puts a big target on him for many, while in parallel this young man has become a magnet to many parents and kids starved for a role model. This brief commentary will focus on Tebow's playing skills, strengths and results.

With the University of Florida, Tebow led the Gators to the top of the SEC (Southeastern Conference) - the best collegiate football conference in the nation, and 2 national championships. Thanks in large part to Tebow, Coach Urban Myer rose to the top tier of college football (a case could even be made that Tebow indirectly helped revive the legendary Michigan Wolverine - Ohio State Buckeye rivalry as a result of former Gator coach Myer being hired recently by the Buckeyes. The old ' war' between all time coaching greats Woody Hayes vs. Bo Schembechler is now talk of the town with Myer coming on board for the 2012 season to face the resurrected Wolverines by new coach Brady Hoke who just led Michigan to a 10-2 season - their best in memory. (While Myer's resume is 2 national titles with Tebow & Florida, Hoke took Ball State and San Diego State to high national rankings.) Assist Tebow.

Back to Tebow. A quarterback, his strength is his size and power (& leadership enthusiasm). That works at the college level said the experts, but at the pro level, Tebow's speed and power are common across pro players. Tebow was viewed (and still is) as having very little potential to be a successful quarterback in the NFL.

Last year as a rookie, Tebow captured the imagination of many as he began his career with the Denver Broncos as a back up. Tebow's presence had the impact of immediate star power to may fans but he did not play much. Coming into this season, news came out that even the Denver Bronco leadership was loosing their confidence in Tebow, relegating him to 3rd string.

As the 2001 season unfolded, the Denver Broncos started miserably with a 1-4 record. A decision was made to try Tebow (nothing else was working). The firestorm of attacks and ridicule was unleashed again. Tebow was a joke ... yet in spite of the relentless condemnation, Tebow forged on. With the benefit of a strong Bronco defense, games stayed within reach of winning late into 4th quarter. That said, it still takes leadership to engineer long game winning scoring drives as time winds down. How has Tebow responded? With one of the most remarkable, memorable runs the NFL has seen in memory.

Focusing primarily on his strengths, Tebow has set NFL records for rushes by a quarterback. While the NFL is now a passing game fought in the air, Tebow has turned convention wisdom on its head with his quarterback running game, and select passing that has earned him an impressive quarterback rating.


Does Tebow win with conventional style points? No (in one recent victory Tebow only completed 2 passes ... unthinkable!). Does Tebow win? Not only does he win, he wins with a dramatic flare. Today Tebow marched the Broncos down the field against the Minnesota Vikings on three consecutive scoring drives in the 4th quarter. On the touchdown drive, a Tebow touchdown throw was followed by a Tebow run for a 2 point conversion to tie. After a drive that tied the game again with a field goal, the Broncos won with a field goal at the end of regulation.

Since Tebow took over as the starting quarterback of the Denver Broncos, their record is 6-1 and the Broncos are now tied for first place in the AFC West. At least 4 of those victories required Tebow to engineer a late comeback scoring drive ... an achievement viewed as impressive by quarterback greats from Montana, Marino and Elway, to Brady, Manning, Rogers and others. While all of those past and current greats were prolific passers, Tebow has been mocked as a one-trick pony. Call him what they do ... he wins. The NFL is starting to take notice.
Repeat National Championships in any collegiate sport are a rare feat. Tebow earned 2 and was very close to 3. Now Tebow is slowly beginning to influence the thinking of some that there are other ways to win ... an inspiration to any innovator with the vision and determination to make-it-happen with the hand he/she was dealt.