Dis - Aggregation

Last night we launched the Big Potatoes Innovation Manifesto (main site here, summary of manifesto here).

For those who are not familiar with it, essentially we believe that "Innovation" today has often been watered down to not a lot more that "continuous improvement that won't rock the boats", and we need to do a lot better than that - and the view we can use today's technologies - to solve the problems today

from our point of view, the main thing is to create a debate, so we tend to the moer definite thought 0 ans ome of our views are counter intuitive and others are just plain provocative. Here are some of the interesting points that people made last night in response:

Additions

- The unmentioned "elephant in the room" in the manifesto is Organisational Behaviour - the reason Innovation is in trouble is due to the structure of modern institutions (cf The Corporation)

- Ethics: we are too light on ethics, in that not all innovation is "good" and we need to do more about that

Criticisms

- We are too rude about the Precautionary principle, tere is a place for it when the risks are very material

- Ditto the agreed level of Global warming science (our view is that its hubris to believe that the science is now settled and there is no space for further innovation, as the one thing history has proven is that the minute one believes the science is a done deal, along comes something that proves it isn't)

- We are also too rude about regulation. Our view is that it seems to always be either prone to creating the effect it was trying to avoid, or (and?) usurped by vested (usually traditional) interests

- We are not specific enough on defining the differenece betewwn Research, Development, Innovation, Invention etc. But then thsi person also said that Innovation is not risky if you know ewhat customers want and is all about making money - which is exactly the view of Innovation we object to - we unapologetically want to take Innovation back to what it meant up to 20-odd years ago, when it stood for change, and potentially creatively destructive, change.

- Intellectual Property laws are a big issue and we gloss over the ramifications of it on Innovation

- We are also too rude about Open Innovation (we believe it has distinct limitations and is not a panacea.)

- "Blue Sky" research needs to be aimed (we believe it is an option you play, investing a proportion of your resorce - and that any research doen to fix real problems is not wasted.
Observations

- Munita Mirza from the London Mayor's Office noted that "Creativity" has been abused and diluted in the Arts in a similar way that Innovation has in the enterprise world.

- Fewer potential MP's than ever before in 100 years have science or engineering a background in this election (I don't know if its true) so what chance has technology based innovation got vs the policy and regulation wonks

- The "Fetishisation" of youth and of lack of expertise today in popular society is a big problem, you have to know the rules to break them.

I'll leave you with this comment from afterwards.

"There is a deep disquiet in the population at large that current institutions, politicians etc can no longer deliver the srevices we need. People are recombining in new ways to solve this. You guys (ie Big Potatoes nnovation Mainifesto ) are not only a part of any solution set, but also and a part of this trend of people self organising to drive new ideas.

I have long believed that what many people these days call "Innovation" is often just "continuous improvement that won't rock the boat". Thus over the last year or so I collaborated with a team of talents - Norman Lewis, Nico Macdonald, Martyn Perks, Mitchell Sava, James Woudhuysen (we first worked together looking at the role of Innovation in the Great Depression for NESTA) - and we have authored Big Potatoes: The London Manifesto for Innovation

The Manifesto can be read on the Big Potatoes website and we want your responses to it - urgently. We are also on Twitter over here and on Facebook over here

We are going to launch it next Tuesday night from 6.45 at the The Royal Society (7 Carlton House Terrace, London - book here ) and over the next few months we will also be hosting public discussions and debates around the themes of the Manifesto in London and beyond. And during the forthcoming UK general election we will be challenging those who propose to lead us out of recession to respond to the Manifesto principles.

Later in the year we will publish an updated Manifesto, having determined the scope of the challenge we face and started to change the culture around and climate for innovation globally.

The link above goes to the main manifesto, but below is my precis of it:

1. Think Big

Innovation must set its sights high, and can never do things by halves.

Today, too much of what many people (especially in Corporates) call Innovation could instead be called “Continuous Improvement”. Business expenditure on research and development (R&D), taken as a fraction of GDP, and has been stagnant in America and Europe for 15 years or more. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development talks up what it calls ‘the central importance of non technological innovation’. We argue that it’s not enough – it’s essential to uphold the powerful improvements, above all in productivity, that both new techniques and technologies can bring.

2. Go beyond the post-war legacy of innovation

We believe that Innovation today no longer means what it did in 1909, 1949 or 1969.

Many people believe that today there is more innovation and more change than ever before. Our research shows that view is not true, however (see here). There was a huge spurt of innovation roughly 100 years ago that produced many, even most, of the innovations that still define our world today - electric power and motors, organic chemistry and synthetics, the internal combustion engine and automotive devices, aircraft, telephones, radio, organised labour, female and black emancipation, public health and universal education all emerged around 1900

World War Two and the Cold War period also drove huge levels of innovation, for example in aerospace, space technology and its multiple offshoots, operations research, information technology, The first moon landing and the first DARPANet (the internet) transmission were both in 1969.

Today Innovation too often means “doing things a bit better” at best, and at worst is a politically acceptable means of ensuring a comfortable lack of boat rocking as things slide.


3. Principles not Models

Innovation is based on new knowledge, or it is nothing.

Innovation cannot prosper without curiosity, serendipity, unpredictable outcomes, inspiring vision, and sheer hard work. But these things are principles, not models of innovation. Today’s over-focus on short term market forces limit innovation, it is too big to be placed on a hockey stick of initial loss followed by profitability, or on a tapering S-curve of market saturation.

Nor should the state insist that innovation fit into the straitjackets it lays down. In practice one model of innovation dominates today – that it’s wrong to focus on pioneering new technologies. For examples, Britain’s National Endowment For Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) tells us to emphasise ‘business innovation’, not the technological sort..


4. We’re For Useless Research

Innovation is nothing without unremitting curiosity and tenacious application.

The fundamental unpredictability of research nourishes new experimental methods, turns up new problems, and opens up fresh avenues of enquiry. As a result, research creates not simply incremental advance, but, in many cases, whole new industries.

What have we learned from the last 100 years if not that what may be thought ‘useless’ research today may, in two or more decades’ time, become profoundly useful.


5. Innovation is Hard Work

Innovation is not done in a day. It is a struggle uphill, one step forward for every two back, and there is plenty that is noble in that.

It offends contemporary sensibilities to say so, but what Thomas Edison famously said of genius – that it is one per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration – remains largely true of innovation. But nor does innovation grow on trees. Serendipity is important in science, but as Louis Pasteur said,

In the field of observation, chance favours only the prepared mind’
There is no need to revive the moralism of the Protestant work ethic. But there is a need to destroy the myth that creativity is simply the playful re-combination of existing elements.. Innovation cannot just consist of combination; and anyway, combining the old takes a lot of hard work.


6. For success, expect lots of failures

In innovation, every failure is a success of sorts.

Today, innovation often feels called upon to apologise for the drain on resources it represents, and for the dangers it may bring. No wonder it just as often strives to portray itself as broadly predictable.

To gain support, it can pretend to be a smooth process, uninterrupted by false turns, intractable difficulties, personal clashes, or budgetary mishaps.

In fact, though, a single serious innovation is invariably preceded by multiple failures. There is no need to be sentimental about failure being a badge of honour in Silicon Valley, or to be fascinated by failure. Insights were gained by these “failures, that led to new successes”. In the future, separate innovations may help re-set this set of poor results, or that project stupidly terminated, in a brighter context.


7. Regard chance and surprise as allies

For Innovation, the concept of the unexpected deserves continued acclaim, for that shows confidence in human ingenuity.

In 1928, while on holiday, the Scots biologist and pharmacologist Alexander Fleming accidentally left a number of cultures of staphylococcus bacteria uncovered. He returned to find the growth of bacteria in one dish inhibited a growing blue-green fungus, Penicillium notatum. From the microwave oven through the Post-it note and on to the Viagra pill, serendipity – a random turn of events that proves fortuitous – has played a major role in the process of innovation.

Yet though 21st century managers always say they’re ready for ‘out of the box’ thinking, in practice many bridle at the idea of an innovation project moving sideways. Why should chance, tangential discoveries absorb researchers in the unexpected, the unfamiliar, the difficult, and the costly?


8. Take risks

We believe that we risk major difficulties today not because of too much innovation, but because of too little.

In 2005, China’s engineers and scientists completed a new railway. Splicing through mountains five kilometres high and underground rock formations where the temperatures run at -30°C, the new line stretches from Golmud in the province of Qinghai to Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. No fewer than 1,142 km long, it was finished three years ahead of schedule. The railway is a triumph not just of engineering, but also of conscious risk-taking. Barriers thought very hard to overcome were proved surmountable.

But that sequence of events, in which risks are confronted, is a relative rarity these days.
For some years even before the credit crunch, organisations made the management of risk into a fearful obsession. Heaven forbid we should actually take a risk in Innovation.


9. Leadership

Innovation demands not further empathy, trust or Key Performance Indicators, but vision, commitment, brains and, yes, a little personal heroism too.

The more the cult of celebrity extends into everyday life, it seems, the more distaste grows for celebrating leaders of innovation. Yet for some years the trend in general management theory has been away from the charismatic leader and toward the servant leader or the self-confessedly incomplete one. Today, the leader is vulnerable or he is nothing. There are enough New Age experts on leadership today, too. Some believe that happiness and managing your energy levels are two of the five dimensions of leadership.
In fact what innovation needs now, if it is to be game-changing, unique and unexpected, is leaders with resolve, not managers with finely balanced scalpels and balanced energy levels.


10. Innovation is everybody’s responsibility

Innovation is not just a concern for private firms, large and small. In different ways, it is also for nations, public sector organisations, and for other, ‘third sector’ bodies.

If innovation is for every substantial body in society, it is not for everyone, sadly enough. After all, science and technology require specialisation, so that not every person can be an innovator. Anyway, innovation is, as we have said, bigger than science and technology alone. It encompasses changes in organisation. It can include changes in design.

The role of design and branding, however, is not to engage in special pleading that would make them a substitute for new technology. They should stop wringing their hands about involving users and saving the planet, and instead start taking seriously their role as the humanising handmaidens of technological innovation.


11. Trust the people, not regulation

The desire and energy to innovate come from neither the unconscious hand of the market, nor the restless malfeasance of the modern bureaucratic state. It comes from you, me, or someone yet more qualified

The Regulators do not trust the people, the people do not trust the Regulators. Partisans of innovation need to take the right side in this dispute. It’s time for them to state unequivocally that further state laws and regulations around innovation are in general likely to circumscribe it and slow it down, not enhance it. You don’t even have to be a believer in free market forces to agree with that.
The failures of regulation, its tendency to produce perverse results, its tendency to reinforce powerful interests – these things are much more given in regulation than they are in innovation. Right now, the world has too much of the wrong kind of regulation, and not enough of any kind of innovation.


12. Think Global, Act Global

Innovation needs to be internationalist in thought and deed.

The innovator should aim to benefit the whole world, not any particular purse or nation. He or she should know about and uphold the achievements of innovators abroad, and oppose all attempts to pervert or stunt innovation there.

Innovations come from people. That those people operate in corporate or government buildings should not be a restriction


13. The spirit of innovation knows no limits

Innovation must be open to anything and everything.

Since 1972, the self-evident fact that there is only one Earth has been repeated like a mantra. In 2008 the WWF introduced its state of the world report with the amazing observation that ‘We have only one planet’. It went on to argue that ‘by the mid-2030s we will need the equivalent of two planets to maintain our lifestyles,’ and today insists that ‘Humanity’s demands exceed our planet’s capacity to sustain us’. Similarly we see complaints that research in Space is wasted and would be better spent on the people.

These accounts do little justice to the role of innovation, which must mediate between human beings and the planet. Where, as with climate change, genuine environmental problems exist, innovation should never be underrated in its ability to deal with them.


14. By, For, With Humanity

Innovation is done by human beings, and not by nature or by machines.

‘Discontent’, Oscar Wilde said, ‘is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation’. Although not a force for democracy in itself, innovation has nevertheless assisted when it is done with the participation of more people. Innovation is for humanity.

In 1625, the philosopher Francis Bacon wrote an essay called Of Superstition. He held that the causes of superstition arose, in part, from what he called ‘barbarous times, especially joined with calamities and disasters’. This Manifesto is issued because humanity faces such times now.

This Manifesto is a call to arms. Let all those who agree with most of it stand up and be counted.

We are not advocating any policies… at this point. ‘What policies are you advocating?’ is always the battle cry of the impatient entrepreneur or government official. This debate is too important for it to become enmeshed in policy discussions. We need this debate in order to clarify the issues at stake, and to scope what needs to be done to reinvigorate a culture of innovation in contemporary society. Innovation is not something that can be turned on and off like a tap. It is a complex interplay between economics, politics and culture – from how we inspire and educate younger generations, to our attitude towards scientific discovery and risk-taking, from the arts to long-term thinking and investment – and pursuing it requires clarity of thought and purpose.

We hope BIG POTATOES will help inspire a debate that illuminates the scope of this challenge. Only then will it be meaningful and practical to talk about the policy implications of these insights.

So - come along next Tuesday evening. Speakers so far include Steven Cousins, managing director, Axon Automotive Ltd; Eliot Forster, CEO, Solace Pharmaceuticals; Norman Lewis, Chief Innovation Officer, Open-Knowledge (and BIG POTATOES co-author); Munira Mirza, advisor for arts and culture to the Mayor of London; Stefan Stern, management columnist, Financial Times; and James Wilsdon, Director of the Science Policy Centre, The Royal Society.

So, will you chip in to the Big Potatoes debate? Should be a good night, we think!

Kevin Anderson on the fluffy thinking by media companies that think the iPad is their Saviour Device:

Those who view their primary business as selling content believe that not only can they charge for it but that they can actually charge the same or more for it, just because it is on the iPad. Time, for example, is charging $4.99 a week for their iPad ‘magazine’.

Scott Karp, CEO of Publish2 and editor of Publishing2.0, put it as clearly as it needs to be put on Twitter:

Paying $4.99 for magazine on newsstand includes cost of printing/distribution. Now you pay for iPad instead, so magazine should cost less.

What do you get for $4.99 a week?

Unique interactivity including landscape and portrait mode, scroll navigation and customizable font size

Oh, I’ve never seen that in a mobile web browser, I say with incalculable levels of sarcasm.

Couldn't put it better (including the snark) so I won't

But of course, we have said it before now...........the slide said above is from the last talk I gave on the subject some weeks ago. Follow this link to the commentary on the slideset.

But to Kevin's point - the most cursory examination of the Schumpeterian creative destruction of the media over the last 10 years (make that 15) will tell you that the hope that a new internet based technology will maintain old media margins is a forlorn one. What is most shocking is that the Old Print Media choose still to believe it.

There was a piece on Daring Fireball about the increasing rivalry between Google and Apple - commenting on an earlier NYT article he notes:

That last bit, regarding a general belief that Apple is gearing up for war against Google, echoes what I’ve heard lately from several sources who work at Apple. I know that conflict between companies — particularly big companies, and even more particularly big interesting companies like Apple and Google — tends to get played up in the press, often to the point of sensationalism, because conflict is interesting. But I’ve got the growing sense that there’s nothing sensational about it. I think Steve Jobs genuinely sees Google as threatening Apple’s core business. It doesn’t really matter whether he’s right (although the more I consider it, the more I think he is). Jobs believes it, and so Apple is going to war.

Hence the patent suit against HTC. That’s all about Google — about creating a situation where Android is no longer a free operating system for handset makers in the U.S., because the cost of using it is an expensive legal defense against Apple.

The article is called "Hope You Enjoy the Smell of Napalm in the Morning", and I thought it may be worth extending the military analogies.

At the same time as this, we have been following the rattling of virtual sabres as Google, via its proxy YouTube, squares off to Viacom in the hot/cold war between Olde Media and New. And then there is Buzz, aimed as other Social media players, there is Chrome and Google Docs aimed at Microsoft, there is a scrap brewing on data storage, handling and privacy with the European Union. Then there is the spat with China, the increasingly messy campaign against the Book Publishing industry, the start of a scrap with the ISP industry.

And all this against a backdrop of continuing skirmishes with Yahoo in the traditional battlegrounds of Search.

So what can Hitler teach Google? Quite simple - that it is possible to take on too enemies at once, over-reach oneself and the resulting implosion is not pretty. A quick recap:

(i) Germany is far better prepared for the "New Ways" of fighting than its opponents, and builds more modern equipment, infrastructure, methodologies etc. In Googleterms, they came into the New Media game later than many of their major opponents and are arguably one of the best equipped and smartest (in hired IQ terms) than any company before.

(ii) Initially, Germany took on fairly weak opposition that was on its borders - in fact the first forays were more "power diplomacy" into Austria and Czechoslovakia than actual warfare - these Anschlussii were almost "acquisitions" in International Relations speak. In Googleterms this is the purchase of various assets that help bolster the search advertising business at the expense of competitors. Major players like Yahoo (cf France, England) cede assets to it because they don't see Google as a particular threat in their space

(iii) Germany's first major military escapade is to agree to partition nearby territory between itself and other great powers, and the invasion as such (Poland) is relatively bloodless, In Google terms this is the ripping into the early search advertising market, partitioning it with the major players of the time (Yahoo, Microsoft)

(iv) Germany then invades the low countries and France in a rapid campaign, deploying its new weaponry and approach (Blitzkrieg) and rapidly outmanouvering the major opponents. It takes one major opponent (France) out the war and inflicts major reverses on another (Great Britain). In Googleterms this is the taking on of Yahoo, the ceding of the rich Alsace Lorraine area has its parallels with Google helping itself to Overture (a Yahoo company)'s, technology. Microsoft's MSN is a small part of this fight and is outmanouvred.

At this point it all looks very sustainable - Germany with its conquests has the economic resources to fight Great Britain and her empire to a standstill, and the access to the French resources gives it a major advantage - over time it will be the major power, all it has to do is exert continuous pressure over time and it will achive European hegemony. But it is still worried, as it knows that over the horizon is a great fight that will eventually emerge, with Soviet Russia. This is winnable, but there is a risk with letting the Soviets re-arm, It is very tempting to attack them now, while they are weak (Stalin having shot many of his senior officers), comparatively ill equipped (their military technology is one generation earlier).

Translating this into Googleterms, this is the fight vs Microsoft - steady pressure will give Google hegemony in its area. They are economically comparable. Over the horizon is the Olde Media empire, who are still woefully disorganised and poorly equipped. All the visionaries within it have been fired or sidelined after dotcom One, and their assets are all of that era. Attacking them now is very tempting.

But the hubris and arrogance of all the easy wins pushes Hitler to greater and bigger dreams, and he starts to make strategic mistakes:

(v) The last thing Hitler should have gone for at this point is a diversion, but he does - he fights the Battle of Britain and loses, and props up Italy as it's African empire collapses to the British Empire's counterattacks. Propping up Italy is a major diversion of Germany's energy, and it finds itself having to fight all sorts of small actions against a major power.

In Googleterms, this is the opening up of the Google Docs front against Microsoft. The Googlepanzers start to park on the Microsoft Empire's lawns, but this is home turf and much more comfortable ground for Microsoft. This is a high cost fight.

(vi) The decision is taken to fight the Old Empire is taken, and Russia is invaded - it is a huge play, a massive invasion, and initially things go well as the opposition is scattered, dispersed, poorly prepared - but the sheer size of the enemy terrain starts to tell on their resources. Winter, an enemy that starts to learn how to fight better, and their embrace of equal technology is a massive drain on German resources.

In Googleterms this is the acquisition of YouTube - a massive play into the heart of the video Old Media. Initially it sweeps all before it, but they start to get better and better at countering Google, and their resources to fight with are immense.

These were the 2 major strategic mistakes Germany made, and were in themselves enough to doom it's expansion plans - there is no ways it has the resources to fight against Great Britain and Soviet Russia at the same time. But this is still a Good Old European War, and the likely outcome - arguably - can still be penning Germany back into its own historic boundaries and re-establishing the status quo until the next time. Europe has been doing this for 400 years, after all. This is not the time to get the USA to fight you too......

So, here we have Google fighting the TV/Movie industry and ViacomGrad is looming, the Microsoft fight is see-sawing back and forth, but at El AlaBing, Microsoft lands the first tanks on Google's turf. Google does not have the resources to take on Microsoft and the whole Entertainment industry, but it could still negotiate a reasonable settlement by ceding the more controversial terrain back to the major opponent industries, and coming to terms with them.

So why, at this point, do you want to then also go to war against huge powers from far way - the whole Apple spat, pushing Android panzers into the Mobile/Telecoms/ISP industry, trying to outfight the Social Media industry with Buzz-bombs and taking on the European Union over data privacy?. This is overexpansion of resources at a level that even Hitler would probably have admired.

From 1943 to 1945, an alliance of powers that were only the most uneasy of allies first got even and then surpassed German technology and methods, but their sheer economic size made eventual victory certain even if they only had "good enough" stuff, as this war was one of attrition which Germany could not win.

From 2010 to 2013, its is predictable therefore that this ring of opponents facing Google (see picture above) will be able to equal and then surpass them - and the threat that Google has posed will drive all of them to want a fairly terminal solution. Besides, the wealth that is up for grabs within the Googlereich is too, too tempting to be passed over.

Here endeth the (future) history lesson.....

Update - bit of backchannel conversation and a few additional thoughts around "So what should Google Do"?. Clearly they have been putting a lot of ooomph behind a wide range of strategic options, and at some point you have to cull. My thoughts would be:

Firstly, get out of unnecessary conflicts and try not to fight on more than one major front at a time .

(i) Make peace with the EU, they have history on their side - and recapture a bit of te "don't be evil" dust as well

(ii) Does Google really want to be an ISP and a Telco? It is not their game, they are downstream players.

Secondly, try and create alliances where they cannot win:

(i) Social Media - is this really Google's bailiwick? They have been cr*p at nearly everything they have done in this space. Better to make alliances than enemies out of the existing players

(ii) WebTV - the TV Freeconomics play is over, the regulatory pendulum is swinging against rampant piracy globally, and YouTube is a major drain on resources. Make your peace and make alliances. They overpaid by a stupid amount, but its a sunk cost - make sure it doesn't sink the rest of the opportunities.

Thirdly, decide where your One Front will be

(i) Is it really SaaS for Microsoft Office? Is that the highest value they can obtain for their effort? If so, prepare for a major scrap, Microsoft will go for their weak spots, and has the resources to do so.

(ii) Is Planet Mobile where they are headed? If so, they need some allies - like Russia, this is too big to take on, on their own, They are competing with their own supply chain, have no distribution, and no after sale customer care capability. Do Google really want to fight Apple, Nokia, all the Mobile telcos?

I don't have Google's internal economics so its hard to know the ROI of these various areas, but I suspect none are profitable right now. The question is which will return the greatest return and cost least to fund in the next 3-5 years

*Keith McMahon has pointed out that Google now taking on Apple is akin to Germany deciding to declare war on Japan.

I've been following the "YouTube Roolz" blogfest with extreme boredom, its clearly pre-emptive posturing before the Viacom court case - but this response shot from Viacom piqued my curiosity as its sets out the Viacom position:

YouTube was intentionally built on infringement and there are countless internal YouTube communications demonstrating that YouTube’s founders and its employees intended to profit from that infringement. By their own admission, the site contained “truckloads” of infringing content and founder Steve Chen explained that YouTube needed to “steal” videos because those videos make “our traffic soar.”

Google bought YouTube because it was a haven of infringement. Google knew that YouTube’s popularity depended on infringing materials with several senior Google executives warning that YouTube was a “rogue enabler of content theft.” Instead of complying with the law, Google willfully and knowingly chose to continue YouTube’s illegal practices.

Google and YouTube had the technology to stop infringement at any time but deliberately chose not to use it. They would only offer to protect Viacom’s content if Viacom agreed to license those works, effectively holding copyright protection as ransom for a license.

The law is clear that Google and YouTube are liable for their infringement. The Supreme Court unanimously held in Grokster that a service that intends infringement is liable for that infringement. No case has ever suggested that the DMCA immunizes rampant intentional infringement of the sort Google and YouTube have engaged in.

These facts are undisputed. The statements by Google regarding Viacom activities are merely red herrings and have no relevance on the legal facts of this case.

Its interesting because it is in essence implying that even adopting the piracy business model is a de Jure illegal act. It has a huge impact - if you go back to our work on the evolution of the Web TV world, you will see that we assume that the very turbulent "Pirate World" holds sway in the next few years, and quite a few of the winners longer term are effectively the corporates bankrolling these Pirates (what we call Privateer Plays as a more accurate term here than Pirates). Google and YouTube being the prime example.

This is significant - when we build scenarios we add in "milestones" or "signposts" you have to watch for, and one of them that signals a shift back to The Olde Worlde media is important.

This is such. One of the conditions in our "Pirate World" and "New Model Media" scenarios was that the regulatory regimes did not shift to the side of existing rightsholders (when we did the work in 2008 the regulatory regime was fairly hands off, but its behaviour globally has been by and large increasingly "for" the rights of the rightsholder since then as country after country has become unwilling to lose the revenues from these large industries).

Thus, a 2 year refresh of our work would be to increase the probability of Olde Media doing better, and if Viacom wins this - with significant enough damages - it may put the kibosh on Privateer plays completely.

Arrr, so the winds be a-shiftin, Jim Lad. That'll send a shiver down the corporate timbers at Social Media Central.....but the pure Pirates, it seems, will be forever with us.

It would seem that the e-Book industry has taken a good, hard look at what happened to the music industry in the Noughties - and decided to follow down the same road - NYT:

In the battle over the pricing of electronic books, publishers appear to have won the first round. The price of many new releases and best sellers is about to go up, to as much as $14.99 from $9.99.

Like all good plans in this space though, this one will probably not survive contact with the enemy - that is, us:

...there may be an insurgency waiting to pounce: e-book buyers.

Over the last year, the most voracious readers of e-books have shown a reflexive hostility to prices higher than the $9.99 set by Amazon.com and other online retailers for popular titles.

When digital editions have cost more, or have been delayed until after the release of hardcover versions, these raucous readers have organized impromptu boycotts and gone to the Web sites of Amazon and Barnes & Noble to leave one-star ratings and negative comments for those books and their authors.

It is totally daft - as with digital music, the punters know it doesn't cost as much to produce so are buggered if they can see why they should pay top hardcover whack. And on the Kindle there is no discounted shelf, no second hand eBookstore, no paperback version (though it will probably come).

In other words, the publishers have calculated that the margin on selling overpriced eBooks to the suckers who bought Kindles etc will more than make up for the smaller volumes. Trouble is, the suckers know this too.

And of course, as has been proven over and over again, if the public don't like the price, they opt for Piracy.

My prediction - this is yet another market full of F*ckwits (sorry, professional managers) who, by their short sighted behaviour over the next 2-3 years, will guarantee that an Apple iPod type play with the iPad or something like it, and a decent media pricing plan, will take them out.

Like the Medieval French nobility who charged English longbowmen in three battles with the same sad result, the Publishing industry seems to have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from the slings and arrows of their past misfortunes.

attended the TED first morning screening in London this evening. David Cameron gave his talk live and we patched into Long Beach for the rest of the session. I will cover Cameron's talk separately as it has Government 2.0/Social Media implications. Two of the other three talks were on behavioural economics & happiness (which also featured heavily in Cameron's talk), these are my notes:

Daniel Kahneman

Happiness is the new black, but it has a number of cognitive traps:

- failure to admit complexity, happiness covers too many areas
- confuse experience and memory (happiness about vs happiness in life)
- focus delusion - exagerrate importance of anything thought about

There are two types of self - the rembering and experiencing self - that have different happiness optima
- experiencing self has very short lived units of memory, 3 seconds or so, happiness is now.
- the remembering self stores memories of happiness which drives choices
- thoughts of the future are an anticipation of memories

Thought Expereriment - if your memory afterwards was destroyed, would you go on the same vacation vs if your memory stayed?

Because of the 2 selves, there are 2 happiness states - different optima - can't reconcile

- Can measure happiness of experiencing self physiologically
- Much harder to measure satisfaction of the measuring self eg about your life

Satisfaction differs between the 2 selves so optimizing them differs
- money (doesn't impact experiencing self, does impact remembering self)
- goals
- spending time with people you like

0.5 correlation between the two statistically for any one "happiness" vector, for example:

- climate is not important to experiencing self but is to memory self
- Gallup survey - feelings vary with income - above $60k pa flatlines experienced happiness, but remembering self likes reflecting on wealth

My Thought - So what will be optimized by policy wonks? David Cameron started to lay out his stall, but I will deal with it separately

Michael Shermer Global Sceptic

Belief is the natural state of things, science/scepticism is uncomfortable - we have evolved this way by natural selection. We have two cognitively dissonanent traits:

1. Patternicity

- We find patterns with random rewards
- Lion in the long grass evolutionary choice

- false positive (rustle in grass, assume since as Lion is unlikely, that there is no lion until evidence)
- false negative (every rustle in grass is a Lion - run).

We are designed to opt for Type 2 ie all patterns are real until proven false

Some behavioural psychology:

- Studies show that people who are more disposed to believe in ESP, UFOs etc are more likely to see patterns where there are none.

- Corporate environments study - people who feel they are out of control are more likely to see patterns in things

- More significant patterns seen by RH side of brain

2. Agenticity - the tendency to assume that its not chance or inanimate objects that do things

- We infuse patterns we see but don't understand with active agents eg angels, conspiracy theories, etc.

It is literally all in the mind - for example if you stimulate temporal lobe and you get Oot Of Body Experiences

Anyway, those are the notes.

Forrester is cutting back on the ability of its analysts to create Personal MicroBrands, says Sage Circle:

Forrester CEO George Colony is well aware that savvy analysts can build their personal brands via their positions as Forrester analysts amplified by social media (see the post on “Altimeter Envy”). As a consequence, a Forrester policy that tries to restrict analysts’ personally-branded research blogs works to reduce the possibility that the analysts will build a valuable personal brand leading to their departure. In addition, forcing analysts to only blog on Forrester-branded blogs concentrates intellectual property onto Forrester properties increasing the value of the Forrester brand.

Dennis Howlett notes (that's where I read this) that Forrester may not have their Econometer correctly tuned:

I won’t discuss the precise numbers here but let’s say that neither the people I mention [Jeremiah Owyang, Ray Wang] were benefiting more than 5% of the revenue they brought in, often with zero support from sales. In other words, Forrester had 90-95% margin on the back of personal blogs but against which it was not prepared to compensate two hard workers. The same was true for Charlene Li the year before. Given what Ray and Jeremiah were doing, that should have sent a loud red flag signal to Forrester exec. Apparently not.

Possibly, but the IP ownership issues go deep - expect more of this in future. I await the Forrester Report on the topic with Eager Anticipation

Update - not a Forrester Report, but a response of sorts on the Forrester blog Groundswell, which was started by one of those who have left (Charlene Li). Anyway, it says:

But for Forrester, it serves our clients better to be able to get to all our blogs from one place, and to know the opinions of analysts that they see are part of the other opinions they read in our reports, in press quotes, and in everywhere else we talk.

Forrester does not yet have individual analyst blogs on our site, but that's coming quite soon. This is why it's so ironic to read comments that "We don't let analysts have individual blogs" or "Forrester should read Groundswell." I cowrote Groundswell, and I believe our policy is the right one. Groundswell says that your employees will be blogging -- it doesn't say that content companies should have their content creators blog anywhere they want. If you're creating content for a content company, that company ought to host your blog.

So, byelines on the company blog then. Seems like the best solution over all, after all newspapers and magazines have used it for many, many years.

Very interesting discussion going on about a NYT article on Microsoft's inability to innovate vs Apple:

But the much more important question is why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter.

The NYT offer up:

Good old silo sieges....

When we were building the tablet PC in 2001, the vice president in charge of Office at the time decided he didn’t like the concept. The tablet required a stylus, and he much preferred keyboards to pens and thought our efforts doomed. To guarantee they were, he refused to modify the popular Office applications to work properly with the tablet. So if you wanted to enter a number into a spreadsheet or correct a word in an e-mail message, you had to write it in a special pop-up box, which then transferred the information to Office. Annoying, clumsy and slow.

...but you get those in every company, thats a given. What you need is something in the knitting that stops the legacy business silos (which have the big budgets) from squashing the New Things.

Unlike other companies, Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation. Despite having one of the largest and best corporate laboratories in the world, and the luxury of not one but three chief technology officers, the company routinely manages to frustrate the efforts of its visionary thinkers.

But even then its not a Microsoft thing only, and its not enough just to squish the Barons - Apple was in the Doldrums after Jobs left, and perked up when he came back. Ballmer is no Jobs (nor a Gates, for that matter), he's an excellent Operator of What Is, but not a Visionary of What Is Not. Ozzie has not had enough impact (Vista, anyone?). Excellently executing the Status Quo makes not much issue over 2 years but makes a big difference over 10 years (to paraphrase Bill Gates), which is why share price has been falling for years. Take the endgame of that tablet story:

...even though our tablet had the enthusiastic support of top management and had cost hundreds of millions to develop, it was essentially allowed to be sabotaged. To this day, you still can’t use Office directly on a Tablet PC. And despite the certainty that an Apple tablet was coming this year, the tablet group at Microsoft was eliminated.

Thats not the fault of silos, thats an inability of top management to get the big battalion barons off the pot. That can only be solved by the absolutely resolute Top Management - ie the CEO.

I think this one is also a key point:

Part of the problem is a historic preference to develop (highly profitable) software without undertaking (highly risky) hardware. This made economic sense when the company was founded in 1975, but now makes it far more difficult to create tightly integrated, beautifully designed products like an iPhone or TiVo. And, yes, part of the problem has been an understandable caution in the wake of the antitrust settlement. Timing has also been poor — too soon on Web TV, too late on iPods.

The value chain is now far more integrated. Its not clear to me that Microsoft needs to own the hardware (like Gates, I agree its very risky) but what they do need to do is be able to do is build great software as a fast follower.

Why is it Android, not a Microsoft OS in the competing smartphones to the iPhone? Where are they in lightweight e-Readers and tablets? As Stowe Boyd points out, they should (and could) have done a lot better in the Social Media tools arena.

No, I think this is Microsoft's top management being too keen on keeping the fat profits of the existing products but forgetting to watch the disruptive stuff closely enough. The irony is that Microsoft (and Sun et al) profited from the last generation of IT companies falling into the same trap. IBM and the BUNCH (Burroughs, Univac, NCR, etc), DEC et al were so wedded to the margins of their existing mini and mainframes they just couldn't bring themselves to invest (and cannibalise) their own revenues with DOS and UNIX boxes and got nailed. IBM had a cathartic shift - a Creative Destruction Moment if ever there was one- and the rest went to the wall. Microsoft now faces that challenge, and doesn't have a Jobs it can recall. Who will play Gerstner for Microsoft then?

And before anyone praises Google too much, that's them in 10 years or so - we are already seeing their inability to make money and great products outside of their core competence of search Ads.

(Incidentally, re Disruption Management, I spent some time last year working with Adriana Lukas (one of the other contributors to the Social Media in Enterprises event this week) trying to piece together how companies might manage themselves through all this. More Later, as they say.

I tried posting a comment on Mashable's post about 4 "Major Trends in Technology" but its one of those sites where you have to log in to comment, so I took my comment and posted it here instead

Anyway, the article posits 4 trends. But, while these look like "no brainer" trends, I'm afraid that they are falling into the classic trap of just assuming that what has happened in the immediate past will thus predict the future. I can think of a number of forces pushing against them - in brief, per trend these are:

1. Web accessible everywhere - requires infrastructure buildout, that's not cheap, and ROI is a diminishing returns game. Ignores developing world economic issues.

2. Web access not in the computer - in reality, you need computer power to make the Web more than barely usable (see Mobile phones, failure of till iPhone), and you keep on needing more - it's more accurate to say the computer will not always be in the computer anymore?

3. Web being Mediacentric - well, in the sense that it is all media, sure. But if you mean video as opposed to text I think that is less likely - for so many applications, text can be parsed far faster. And Time is the non renewable resource. In many ways time spent consuming video media is what we do with our "junk" - ie low value time. Follow the money.

4. Social Media will be its largest component - bah humbug - the "killer app" of the internet - apart from Porn - is that people just want to talk to each other. The current bottle this old wine is in is called "Social Media", in a few years time it will have morphed as the technology shifts. And of course email is dead, not

And then there are the "known" and "unknown" unknowns, where:

- "known" equal predictable surprise shifts that you can see coming, eg what happens when today's smartphone power is a $5 commodity and the size of a peppermint (Moore's law redux); and

-"unknown are, well, unknown, But try this one - in the last c 150 years, a totally revolutionary comms medium has been invented about every 30 years (Telegraph, Radio, Cinema, TV, Internet). The 'Net is 40 years old, the Web is 20.

What's Next?

The error here is a common one in pop-punditry - look at the last 10 years or so and assume the next 10 will be the same, just more so - the trick is to look at the last 100 years or so and see the patterns and waveforms. As Santayana said, those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it.