I am in a bit of pain today. I am a Phillies fan and it is disappointing that they lost the World Series to the Yankees last night. It got me thinking that my first blog post vacation[i] should be my anti-Lombardi thoughts. Vince Lombardi is often quoted, “Winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing”. I don’t think this way, in fact I would flat out say that if winning is your goal you will almost certainly fail. The problem if your goal is winning then you let someone else define yourself. To me this is inherently limiting. For example, if Usain Bolt had set his mind on winning, he never would have run the 100 meter in an astonishing 9.58. But winning wasn’t the goal it was something more. It was greatness, it was changing the world. So what does this have to do with anything? There will be a lot of press of the coming months about whether an open OS like Android can “win”. The press is asking the wrong question. The goal isn’t to win. The goal is to be great. The classic Clayton Christensen Innovator's Dilemma rises because the mature company makes decision based on winning rather than potential world changing greatness. This is what Android gets right. It isn’t about Google trying beat someone. It is about how they enable something great. So don’t make winning the only thing; we can do better.
My vision of the connected[i] future contains two types of devices, the generalist (mobile phone) and the specialist (a purpose built devices). Now there are some who believe that the mobile phone will be the end all be all device. A device where you can read books, watch movies or make payments. I completely agree. They then go one step further and say that this device eliminates the need for other consumer electronics. Here I completely disagree. For a great many people the mobile phone will be enough, the do everything generalist phone is great. However, the integrated camera on the phone will never as what is available in a purpose built camera. This specialist camera will be able connect to the internet, but it doesn’t have to have the optimal screen for reading books on or watch movies. It just needs to be able to take and share pictures. I bring this up today because I am very excited about the Nook announcement yesterday. The ability to adapt the open operating system to a variety of uses should make it incredibly attractive to developers of cool applications. The ability to write and adapt cool internet apps to a variety of devices makes the open operating system far more attractive to developers than the single device OS. For example, it is easy to imagine applications added to the Nook device that lets me read tweets from other readers before I buy the book or maybe bookstores become popular destinations on foursquare? The best thing about open operating systems and the Nook is the simple line that states it is “first[ii] Android™-based eReader”. First implies that this is one of the crowd. The truth of the matter is I don’t know if this device will be successful. But when you have multiple vendors delivering devices based on a shared operating system it doesn’t matter which device wins. The application development will not be wasted. Let’s look at my application to automatically update my presence information. One app can run on my book reader, my camera, my PSP and of course on my phone as well. This is the power of the move to open in the mobile space.
[i] All electronics will be connected to a network and all portable devices will be connected wirelessly.
No offense to Miss Cyrus[i], but the fact that she is quitting Twitter means nothing. I only bring this up because I have heard multiple times now that this is the beginning of the end for Twitter[ii]. Now, I don’t follow many celebrities. When I do it is usually because they are providing entertainment (@theauthorguy makes me laugh). For me what Twitter does is provide a vehicle for the democratization of identity and voice. Twitter gives anyone a voice in their community. Anyone can reach out and share thoughts with people interested in similar topics. Whether they agree with you or not, you can have a dialogue with others thinking about the same things. I can tell you now the last thing that Miley Cyrus needs is a vehicle to let people know what she is doing[iii]. So who do I follow? Guys like @monkchips who provides great insights into the community I am interested in. This is why Twitter is powerful, it gives people who don’t have paparazzi a vehicle to share ideas. Twitter is not a press release. It is a conversation. I find it hard to believe you can converse with Miley on Twitter. But I know I can share ideas on open source with @mjasay. Over time using your voice allows you to establish an identity. That identity allows you to connect to the global community in meaningful ways. When people know you, it gives you the opportunity to collaborate with them to change the world. So don’t bother with the celebrities other than @drewfromTV[iv].
[i] Who is on the TV in my house second only to Mr. SquarePants [ii] Usually the person saying this prefaces it by saying, “I am not into Twitter…” [iii] People, TigerBeat and Entertainment tonight have it covered for her. [iv] CBS had pledged a $1,000,000 to cancer research if he get 1,000,000 followers by year end. In fact this whole story is the best example for giving the little guy a voice I have seen.
A few days ago I got a great comment from MTrively - "aren't you supposed to pitch out your half developed, beta ideas and let us collaborate on them? :-)". You know he is absolutely right. So here is the idea (which I have started with someone already). Let's use Google Wave[i] to collaborate on a few blog posts. We can work the post together and then put it on our individual sites with links back to everyone's blog. The world is moving to crowd sourcing so let’s collaborate on ideas that we can give to the world to think about. If you have idea that you want to collaborate on send ajbraun a message on googlewave and we can take it from there.
[i] And yes it is not incredibly intuitive but how else do you learn if not by experimenting.
I have been playing Gran Turismo[i] on the PS3 recently. It is a visually spectacular game which if I am completely honest I suck at[ii]. So I asked for tips around the office. I was surprised to be given advice so profound that I need to share it here at Change the World. The driving tip I got was: To drive really fast you can’t look at the road in front of the hood; you have to look through the curves ahead of you in the distance. No one has a problem accelerating at full speed when on a straight away, but then when the curve is right on top of you there is no time to react. Interestingly, Moore’s Law speaks to much the same thing. Over time Moore’s Law had gone from a statement on transistor growth to one to generally represent the exponential growth of technology. In today’s mobile industry, handset capabilities are growing at exponential rates. If you want to bring something interesting to market you can’t address the need right in front of you, by the time you are done the opportunity will have passed. You have to look through the curve ahead[iii]. You must realize that you cannot project the future along a straight line of linear growth. Looking through the curve will give you enough time to react and get to market with something interesting. In the end you may not know exactly where the road heads after the curve so the important thing is to know the road ahead is not straight.
[i] Note to the FTC: I work for Sony Ericsson whose parent is Sony. I did not receive compensation from the PS3 folks but would be more than happy to. [ii] I am much better at strategy games than skill games [iii] And in reality it probably isn’t a simple curve so you may crash anyway
I gave presentation at a workshop on handset quality a few months back. The basis of my presentation was not to push how Sony Ericsson ensures quality but rather to present the market landscape that made quality so challenging. The premise was as follows: The wireless communication industry was at the forefront of a fundamental shift in the way the consumer values quality. In the basic landline days, quality was the feature of choice. Engineering always went in to improving quality. Tradeoffs were made between Cost, Features and Time to Market in the name of Quality. Cellular changed this trade-off. We went from “you can hear a pin drop” to “Can you even hear me?” But the consumer accepted this because there was a feature he wanted more than Quality. That feature was of course Mobility. There was some focus again on improving quality but we quickly re-entered a feature race. Music players, cameras, etc... Quality was still important of course, the user would forgive poor quality for features but only for a short time. But still the trade-off equation changed. Features ruled and Quality, Cost and Time to Market were the trade-off. I went on to explain that the shift to IP communications would change this paradigm even further. That today the primary object is Speed. "How do I get to market before anyone else?" How do I trade off on quality, features and cost to win the time to market race? Well this was a bit controversial at the meeting to say the least, but I felt it needed to be said. Here I was saying that "Quality is job 3" Quality is job 3. Strike that. During Twitter downtime today, I have refined my thinking a bit. I realized that the landscape is driving us to faster and faster deployment but instead of thinking about trade-offs, we should think of it as table stakes and differentiators.
How does modify the above? In today's market where services can grow exponentially and potentially use network effects to block competitors; time to market is certainly incredibly important. But you must come to market with the table stakes. For the most part I see the feature set as being table stakes today. If we look at smart phones, a great web experience is table stakes for example. That really leaves differentiators of cost and quality. I will argue elsewhere that it is exceeding difficult to compete on cost with software. That leaves the only one way to differentiate: Quality. So maybe it is saying the same thing, but quality isn’t so much a trade off as it is a differentiator. Remember that quality means many things from stability to ease of use. So you may have to trade off different aspects to ensure your table stakes are there, but it is critical to understand how you differentiate your product or experience by bringing the quality home.
I have fallen off the blogging horse thanks to a trip to Europe and more than a few half developed thoughts. Today I wanted to get back on that proverbial horse by celebrating one of the best technologies available today. I speak of Google Translate. Google Translate effectively shrinks the world. Yesterday I went to a colleague’s blog, instead of seeing Swedish I was greeted with something that passed for English. Google Translate, I think is incredibly representative of a couple trends we are seeing in the industry. Obviously globalization is a huge trend; the explosion of savvy developers has been due to the ease of information. Being able to Bring up the world’s idea in your language will accelerate innovation and perhaps more importantly its adoption. The other trend that is speeding innovation is broad access to beta quality. There used to be a different quality metric that was standard for releasing a product but that has morphed over time. Sure I don’t get great English but what I get is access to the service that is good enough and super easy to use. Now if I could just improve my Russian readership.
Who, What, How are all great questions. However, great development need to start with why. I like the way Guy Kawasaki puts it in this video. He said the most important thing is to create meaning. If you set out to create meaning you cannot start by asking who what or how.[i] How looks at what you have and tries to squeeze it into a solution, I think I have already stated why that is the Wrong Question. Who starts by figuring out the market before the product. What gets you to a product with no market. Neither is ideal to say the least. But Why is the way to start. If you start with Why, you can get to the right questions. Don’t confuse the way to use Why. The question isn’t “why will my app be downloaded a million times” or “why will user want this”. Instead the question needs to by “Why are things the way they are?” or “Why do I act this way each day” This type of Why leads to many more questions that can lead to many applications or services. As a trivial example, each morning I get up and check espn.com to see how the Phillies did.[ii] Why do I do this? Well I am obviously a fan, but this time of year I check each morning to see how the pennant race is progressing. Answering Why is a powerful starting spot. As we shift from finding information to information finding us, services that ask why will win. Why tells me that I am not only interested in my team but those close in the standings to my team. Why let’s me get the scores and highlights from not only my team but also those in the chase. In short, Why lets me create a What that has meaning to a Who[iii]? If you want to change the world, you have to start by asking Why
[i] When is a an interesting question but I will save that for my post on the shift in quality expectations [ii] Assuming that I didn’t watch the night before. [iii] Apologies to Abbott and Costello
We are the Borg[i]. We are Connected. As the Connected, our interests can be categorized in the 3 C’s. Creation, Consumption and Collaboration[ii]. Using the 3C’s, can help you avoid the Wrong Question. For example, don’t ask “How can the user get video on the phone?” the better question is “How does the user consume business news?” Creation – Creation is taking ideas and making something consumable. There is plenty opportunity for innovation in this area. For example, I will never write 500 words on today’s phone. “How can I blog from anywhere?” Consumption – Whether it is sports highlights, a twitter stream or stock quotes, consumption is why the majority users go to the internet. Consumption is an area that has exploded in the mobile arena. In fact, it is not unreasonable to assume that content should be created primarily for mobile consumption and adapted to desktop consumption (instead of today’s reversed paradigm) Collaboration – Early this month Roger Toennis had a great blog post. He describes his view that our primary habits are migrating from the personal (creating and consuming) to the interpersonal (Collaboration).Collaboration is the move from self creation/consumtion to community creation/consumtion. This shift will create more opportunities then any other in the future. Instead of thinking about screens and clouds and other technologies, I think about applications and services within the context of the 3C’s. The end result may be the same but I haven’t eliminated potential solutions or interesting paths before exploring them a bit. And you never know what path will change the world.
[i] Sure it is a geek reference but you are reading a blog on the Sony Ericsson developer website [ii] For those wondering about the 4th C, I consider Copulation to be part of Collaboration
This blog is a bit of a hobby for me. I want every post to be about the opportunities for success that are coming in the open world. One of my favorite blogs is Seth Godin's. I like it because it is short, to the point and makes me think. A few days back he wrote a post about the hierarchy of success. I thought it was pretty good, kind of obvious. A lot of Seth's work strikes me that way. He puts into words what I know to be true. However, this post gets truer (more true?) the longer I think about it. I am always looking to take on new responsibilities at work to drive Sony Ericsson's success. A respected colleague (ok my boss) asked what would be the deliverables associated with a new role. A great question? In my mind it is the Wrong Question[i]. In my mind the better question is "How will I know I am successful with the responsibility?". Well when starting something new I agree with Seth, success starts with attitude. How do I define success. My definition starts with an attitude. And that attitude: "Success is when you set out to Change the World" Since I am trying not to fail, it is time for a new blog title.
[i] I think it is actually a good question but pre-mature.
[ed note: This post is not a for or against statement on network neutrality policy]
With the debate around Network Neutrality heating up, I think now is the time to discuss the challenges of the carriers. The headlines are familiar (e.g. Like this Mashable article) and read "The Carrier overcharges and under delivers". My post is the other side of the story and is critical in understanding the forces at work in the open web environment. I am fortunate enough to work with some truly brilliant people, like Peter Karlsson. (If you are wondering why Peter is brilliant or if he is so brilliant why isn’t he writing this blog both answers are here.) Peter has helped me understand the carrier problem is quite simple: transporting bits over the air is in general more expensive than transporting bits over a wire. Operators talk very openly that unlimited data plans are not sustainable. Let's suppose it cost $8 for an operator to deliver 100 Mb. Unlimited data plans are great for the operator when the users are downloading 75 Mb a month move that number to 500 Mb a month and the math is not in their favor. On the feature phone of today 75Mb is a lot of data for the user to consume. However on the internet device of tomorrow it is nothing. This is why Network Neutrality scares the operator. The operator's margins are under siege. It is basic equation explains many of the headlines you see today. For example the talk around Verizon of 500% penetration rates, isn't a pipe dream it is required to maintain the models we as users expect. We expect an unlimited data connection. But operators will have trouble providing unlimited bandwidth as a reasonable cost without 4G technologies such as LTE. LTE is critically important. The headline is higher peak speeds but the more important piece is the spectral efficiency for operator, this could generate an order of magnitude in transport cost saving. Without this savings the unlimited data plans are a thing of the past. The open mobile ecosystem relies on the consumer not thinking about data consumption costs. Without unlimited data plans the growth of the mobile internet will be stymied.
I thought I would try something new on Mondays. In this blog, I write about what I think is happening in the mobile ecosystem. In each post, I try to convey the themes that will shape the next 3-5 years in our industry. In each of these areas, I believe there is a huge potential for small guy to change the world. Of course there are many out there in the ether with thoughts on the same topics. So, each Monday I will try to provide a few links and a couple comments. Since it is a new idea for this week, I only have one link for you. This post about changing the world from TechCrunch really provides a great example for my post on The Wrong Question. PS. Thanks to everyone who commented on my guest blog over at Symbian
Check out my guest post over at blog.symbian.org. It references The Who and Fight Club. It has to be great! http://bit.ly/UmduL
A few days ago I pontificated about the Wrong Question. Yesterday, I got a question so right that I had to comment on it today. MTrively commented "What difficult skill (like speedy, accurate typing) am i trying to obsolete?" This was brilliant. I think Marshall McLuhan put it best "Obsolescence never meant the end of anything, it's just the beginning." What would you like to eliminate to change the world for the better? When asking this question it is important to remember "You will Fail". In the auto industry for years people did a great job at improving traditional gas mileage, using a tried and true method of adapting new technologies to the problem. But what happens when some asks a new question "How do I obsolete gasoline?" Well when you start working on the obsolescing of gasoline you get change the world breakthroughs. The quest to obsolete gas is a failure. That failure is the hybrid engine. That failure is not the end, it is the beginning of something new. Now others can go and improve batteries, charging etc. but the real change the world moment came from failing to obsolete gasoline. What is our industry needs to be eliminated? [ed note Updated title: clearly spelling is not an obsolete skill yet]
I recently read a blog post by Matt Millar about the number of languages that are required to cover the market. His basic point was the development environment was fragmenting so that the developer had to write his app at least 6 times to cover the market. And this was to going to make the economics on the developer really tough. I think Matt made some excellent points but I fundamentally disagree.
To me we are in the golden age for mobile developer for two main reasons. Let’s look at 5 reasons why this is the golden age for mobile developers. - Limited barrier to entry. Of course, there is plenty of complaining about approval models at various app stores. The truth is that the current app store explosion has brought unprecedented opportunity to not only reach the customer but more importantly to be discovered by the customer.
- Quality threshold. As long as your app "behaves" you can get it out to the consumer and get feedback. The consumer is very forgiving for some initial hiccups if the app is compelling and you fix it early and often.
- Mind boggling market size. 4 billion is today's total market. Again the truth is no app is going to appeal to 4 billion. So some effort is need to match your market, but that will also help you eliminate 3 or 4 of the OS choices. Even when trimming the market down, your application's addressable market will dwarf that of a PC version.
- Price[i]. What? Price is a negative. In this case price is a positive. I am much more likely to try a $2.99 app then take a chance on something from Autodesk. I can develop the $2.99 app with a few people and address huge markets.
- HTML5/Javascript. As Google is fond of saying "the web is the platform". The Web will execute across OS. For an increasing number of applications and functions the developer needs only the technologies available on the web. This really cuts out fragmentation.
So there it is the 5 reasons I think now is the best time ever to be a developer. Will you create a cash cow like MS Office? No, but relatively speaking there is more opportunity than ever before to take your idea and get it front of a large audience to change the world.
[i] We are at an age where the availability of skilled developers is not bounded. More than anything that abundance puts pressure on price. I certainly understand the ability to make a successful business is a challenge when the going price for your work is $1-$5.
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