Point to Ponder

Joi Ito writes: "We all know that the network should be stupid. Network providers will be a basic utility like electricity, but they'll still make money if they stick to the network. Where is the next focus? In the hardware, content and tools. If the hardware companies are smart, they will support open standards and let the users create the content, let the community create the tools and provide API and support for open standards. Yes, they will give up some control and yes they will eventually become more of a commodity like the network, but the scale will increase and they will make money."

We Media

Writes Dan Gillmor:

In an emerging era of multidirectional, digital communications, the audience can be an integral part of the process. Call it “We Media.” Journalism is evolving away from its lecture mode — here’s the news, and you buy it or you don’t — to include a conversation.

Interactive technology — and the mostly young readers and viewers who use and understand it — are the catalysts. We Media augments traditional methods with new and yet-to-be invented collaboration tools ranging from e-mail to Web logs to digital video to peer-to-peer systems. But it boils down to something simple: our readers collectively know more than we do, and they don’t have to settle for half-baked coverage when they can come into the kitchen themselves. This is not a threat. It is an opportunity. And the evolution of We Media will oblige us all to adapt.

Blogs in Enterprises

Writes InfoWorld:

Building on the success of Weblogs for personal Web publishing, enterprises are starting to tap into blogs to streamline specific business processes such as intelligence gathering or to augment traditional content-and knowledge-management technologies.

Free or low-cost personal tools from pioneering software companies such as UserLand Software, Pyra Labs, Moveable Type, and others have fueled the thriving Weblog personal publishing movement since its emergence in the late 1990s.

While many freeware vendors also offer fee-based software and services for corporate users, a newer crop of vendors is stepping up to extend Weblogs to specific business processes such as corporate intelligence gathering and market research.

These enterprise-specific blogs from companies including Traction Software, Tech Dirt, and Trellix use the same core user-friendly Web publishing approach with added features to regulate access control and security and to bolster functions such as search.

Using time and topic as organizational themes, Weblogs allow users to easily collect and publish information to the Web from e-mail, Web sites, Microsoft Office documents, and other sources. In addition, Weblogs typically use XML to embed links from a variety of information sources.

Blogs could be a good way for enterprises for information sharing and knowledge management. In fact, blogs are quite malleable - depending on how the organisations want to leverage them. This year should start seeing some success stories coming out.

Consumer Electronics Future

Two articles on the recently concluded CES.

NYTimes: "It is now possible for nearly any bit of sight or sound to be disgorged by nearly any digital electronic device. And that sets the stage for the industry's next big opportunity: selling products that link all these digital devices into various forms of home networks." Its all about connections.

Business Week: "A digital revolution of epic proportions is shaking the consumer-electronics industry. Just about everything is going digital, and much of it is becoming networked. Consumer info-tech products and consumer electronics increasingly are becoming indistinguishable."

The home is where the action is in 2003.

Companies to Watch

Fortune's David Kirkpatrick writes about some of the companies he thinks will do well in 2003:

AMD: continues to challenge Intel with well-conceived designs for PC microprocessors.

BEA Systems: middleware for enterprise software widely regarded as the best, despite vigorous competition from IBM.

Borland: multi-platform application development tools are perfectly positioned.

Dell: taking market share in every area of standardized hardware, including storage and networking.

Logitech: unstoppable maker of consumer PC peripherals.

Mercury Interactive: software performance measurement extracts value from what companies already have.

Nokia: cellphones are hot and this remains the undisputed leader.

Salesforce.com: its Net-delivered sales automation is defining a new approach. Expect an IPO this year.

Veritas: storage software for the multi-platform future.

TECH TALK: Entrepreneur's Enigmas (Part 5)

Work-Life Balance

Perhaps the biggest enigma facing the entrepreneur facing is how to spend time with his family. More than a dilemma, it borders on guilt. Most entrepreneurs are taken up with a single-minded focus to making their venture succeed, and for this they sacrifice their personal and family life. Their always-active brain keeps thinking of work even at home. Is there a way out?

My recommendation may not be universally acceptable, but it is this: the entrepreneur must involve his spouse at some level in the venture. The spouse can be a great counter-weight, the balancing factor, and can provide a sounding board at all times. Of course, there can also be differences of opinion which can make things difficult, but the one factor which I feel is above all else is that the spouse is the only person in the entire venture with no axe to grind, thus leading to an honest and realistic assessment of the situation.

Head and Heart

On the one hand, numbers and facts. On the other, gut and instinct. Head vs Heart. Logic and Reason pitted against Intuition. What does the entrepreneur go by? It is a very difficult choice, indeed. Writes Thomas Stewart in Business 2.0:

People who make decisions for a living are coming to realize that in complex or chaotic situations -- a battlefield, a trading floor, or today's brutally competitive business environment -- intuition usually beats rational analysis.

Situations in which rules supply all the answers are becoming an endangered species, in business and everywhere else. Command-and-control management went out with tail fins. Risks are both greater and less predictable. As companies outsource, globalize, and form alliances, they become more interdependent -- simultaneously competitor and customer, drastically increasing the complexity of their relationships. More and more, all you can do is admit that you simply don't know and go with your gut.

In a world where decisions have to be made quickly, continuously and without having the complete picture, the entrepreneur must learn to trust his gut. It may mean, at times, going against conventional wisdom. Others may call it risk-taking. But for the entrepreneur, it is just another day at the office.

Calling it Quits

Most ventures fail. As a corollary, most entrepreneurs fail. The odds that an entrepreneur will have to call it quits are probably 99 out of 100. Of course, the natural optimism in most entrepreneurs makes each of them that they will be that singular exception! But at some point of time, the entrepreneur must come face-to-face reality if things are not going well. This is the hardest and most difficult part – accepting that he has failed.

The reason quitting is not easy is because it goes against everything that the entrepreneur has dreamt of so far. Failure is something most entrepreneurs don’t even consider – they feel if they think about it, it may actually happen. So, they wear blinkered lenses. This becomes their blind-spot. And when reality stares them in the face, it is too late because they’ve not seen it coming.

Entrepreneurs must realise that success and failure are two sides of the same coin. Failure can be a great teacher – if and when they choose to think through the venture and their actions. If anything, failure can make entrepreneurs even more determined to succeed – they have little else left to lose, and so much more to prove.

The entrepreneur’s journey has many stations but no destination. It is a continuum. A few of the stops may be suffixed with disappointments, but that in no way takes away the joy and thrill of the ride.

Related Entries:  [All]
TECH TALK: Entrepreneur's Enigmas (Part 4) [January 16, 2003]
TECH TALK: Entrepreneur's Enigmas (Part 3) [January 15, 2003]
TECH TALK: Entrepreneur's Enigmas (Part 2) [January 14, 2003]
TECH TALK: Entrepreneur's Enigmas [January 13, 2003]