Most Important Trends in Business

Dave Pollard picks his 10:

1. Open-Source Business
2. Disruptive Innovation
3. Complexity
4. Corporate Reform
5. Innovation Incubation
6. Social Networking and Personal Productivity Improvement
7. Wisdom of Crowds
8. Channel Customization
9. Customer Relationship Management
10. Execution

Internet Decade

The New York Times has a column by Henry Blodget who writes: "The growth of the Internet has paralleled that of most industries based on revolutionary technology. Canals, railroads, telegraphs, telephones, cars, radios, personal computers - all progressed (or are progressing) through four phases of development: boom, bust, mature growth and decay."

Mobiles for Converged Services

WSJ writes:

Nokia Corp. plans to have phones that can switch between mobile and fixed networks available for consumers next year, as telecoms operators increasingly try to woo customers with converged services.

The world's largest handset maker will start selling a dual-network phone targeted at corporate users this year, and one for consumers is due in the first half of 2006, Olli-Pekka Lintula, director of strategic marketing at the technology platforms division, told Dow Jones Newswires.

"All future phones for enterprises from Nokia will also be wi-fi equipped," Lintula said.

Convergence is the buzzword in the telecoms industry. In June, U.K. telephone company BT Group PLC (BT) launched a service using a Motorola Inc. (MOT) handset that functions as a mobile phone outside the home but switches on to a cheaper broadband fixed line inside the house.

The initiative is being watched closely as it could help fixed-line operators like BT stem contract cancellations and win back market share from wireless companies.
...
Nokia predicts there will be speedy growth for phone calls transported over Internet-based wireless networks.

Intuit's Healthcare Plans

The Economist writes about Intuit's disruptive plans:

America's health-care industry, says Steve Bennett, Intuit's chief executive, is a great “white space” in which Intuit can do some disrupting. The system is broken, he argues, because “it's a third-party payer system.” Most other rich countries have some form of single-payer health-care system (such as Britain's NHS), which may have its drawbacks but at least keeps paperwork down for patients. America has a fragmented industry of private and public insurers and providers, each with an incentive to pass the buck to somebody else in the chain, which leaves patients with long paper trails of confrontational forms and huge anxiety.
..
Intuit's name for the yin element personified by Mr Cook is “customer-driven invention”. Intuit has small armies of researchers who follow, literally, people home to watch them do things—struggle to complete their hospital claims, for instance—and then bring back the tales to head office for some out-of-the-box thinking on how to improve this. Intuit thereby comes up with answers to questions that consumers themselves do not even know to ask. The yang element—in essence, Mr Bennett—is called “net promoter”: an obsessive methodology for measuring how happy customers are and for making them even happier so that they recommend the product to friends, becoming, in effect, Intuit's unpaid salesforce.

Dodgeball and Social Life

Steven Johnson writes in Discover about Dodgeball, which was bought by Google a few months ago:

If you’ve ever lived in a big city, chances are you know the feeling: You’re walking around downtown with a few hours to spare at the end of the day, and you know that somewhere nearby—perhaps only a few blocks away—there’s a great bar or café that’s packed with interesting people. If it’s your hometown, you might even suspect that a few of your friends, or friends of your friends, are hanging out there. But there’s no easy way to find it, other than by roaming the streets and peering into windows.

This is what economists would call an inefficient market. You have, on the one hand, a service that the city provides: bars and cafés filled with cool people. And you have a buyer willing to pay for that service. Yet most of the time, the buyer ends up schlepping home unsatisfied because there’s no way to connect with the service he seeks.

A pair of tech-savvy twentysomethings named Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert created a solution to this problem. They call it Dodgeball. The service is a mix of social network tools (à la Friendster), simple cell phone messaging, and mapping software. Dodgeball has a playful, hipster veneer, but the underlying premise behind the service gives a fascinating glimpse of the way mobile wireless computing promises to transform city life.

TECH TALK: Internet Tea Leaves: Google’s Intent

Many people (other than Google’s own staff!) have commented on Google’s future plans based on their past product offerings and brought sharply into focus with their decision to raise $4 billion and launch the Sidebar and IM offerings. Let us sample some of the writings.

Walter Mossberg wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

For most Internet users, Google is synonymous with online search. Millions of people begin every Web session at Google's famous, plain home page.
But that's not good enough for the bright young upstarts who run Google. They want Google to be your constant companion even if searching or browsing the Web is the furthest thing from your mind. They are working hard to make Google software a fixture on computer desktops.

That is the aim of two new, free products the search giant released this week. One is an instant-messaging program called Google Talk, intended to be your primary means of real-time digital communication. The other is an information-management utility called Google Desktop 2, designed to become a permanent part of your desktop, grabbing space from Microsoft's Windows desktop.

David Pogue wrote in the New York Times: “In a single week, then, Google, the software company, addressed deficiencies in Windows, tried to create a grand unified chat and voice network, and opened up its clean, capable, capacious e-mail system to all comers. All of this software is beautifully done, quick to download and fun to use - not to mention free…Wish they'd cut it out. Trying to figure out what this company's really up to is enough to drive you crazy.”

Greg Sterling wrote:

People are out there this morning second-guessing this: What is it; is it a preview of the rumored Google Browser or OS? Putting aside that speculation, this is a tool that functionally sits somewhere in between a toolbar and a browser (with a taste of OS functionality), allowing users to do a bunch of things without having to go to separate places on their machines or on the Web.

The tool gives users a running inventory of email, recent files and Web pages viewed, photos, stocks, weather, personalized news and RSS reader ("Web Clips") and several other tools. In one way of looking at it, it’s an alternative version of the Google Personalized Homepage and Search History with an RSS reader thrown in.
…
Now that Google is the dominant search engine and making gobs of money people have become suspicious of the company’s motives ("But what are they really doing here?"). From speaking to the product manager, Nikhil Bhatla, I don’t believe that there’s a hidden motivation or agenda behind this product.
It’s a helpful tool that brings together a great deal of useful information in an accessible way. Of course, if users download and adopt it, it will reinforce Google usage. And that will necessarily come at the expense of some of Google’s competitors.

David Card (Jupiter Research) wrote:

I guess the plan is to demote browser to "rendering engine," and combine all its other functions into "desktop search," er, that is, "Google Desktop." Gee, it wasn't that long ago when Microsoft set the agenda for personal technology nomenclature. What's next, "operating system" becomes "device drivers" and "graphics libraries?" (File system functions are already under assault...)
I reiterate the mantra that built Microsoft: who controls the UI controls the user; who controls the API controls the programmer. Great businesses are made of this.

Tomorrow: Google’s Intent (continued)

Related Entries:  [All]
TECH TALK: Internet Tea Leaves: Endgame [September 16, 2005]
TECH TALK: Internet Tea Leaves: Defining Themes (Part 2) [September 15, 2005]
TECH TALK: Internet Tea Leaves: Defining Themes [September 14, 2005]
TECH TALK: Internet Tea Leaves: The New Internet (Part 2) [September 13, 2005]
TECH TALK: Internet Tea Leaves: The New Internet [September 12, 2005]