A recent MBA Newshour event at Babson got me thinking about the Kony 2012 campaign. Jason Russell and his team from Invisible Children worked really hard to become an overnight success with their Kony 2012 video. This video hit 100 million views in just six days. It brought attention to an important cause and negative publicity to Invisible Children and Jason Russell. It also taught us some interesting lessons.
With the abundance of information hitting us from all directions, people are struggling to separate signal from noise. Getting people's attention is the biggest challenge. Jason used children to draw the attention of their parents. I personally heard about this from my daughter. She insisted on me watching the video right away.
The message was also constructed as an adult explaining a complex matter to a child. There was some logic mixed with a lot of emotion. The use of words and graphics drew an emotional reaction from children.
The notion of action was also redefined. The very act of sharing was equated to involvement and action. Children are so used to social media and sharing photographs and videos. Now they used the same idea to support a cause.
Our information consumption habits are increasing dependent on the Internet and social media. The people we follow and the websites we visit regularly influence and in some cases are the sole sources for our news consumption. They are the filters to our world and help shape our opinion. Penetrating this filter bubble is key to getting attention.
An excellent infrastructure of technology mediated social networks was in place before this campaign. Invisible Children hadpre-existing support groups in schools across the country. These groups were primed to support and push a cause and rallied into action once activated.
Invisible Children also made use of technology to get the attention of influencers. Celebrities like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and Ryan Seacrest were targeting with Tweets. When these celebrities did their due diligence, they found the underlying support from school children. Now they were hooked and motivated to act.
There are some unintended negative consequences to drawing rapid attention. People have now put Invisible Children under immense scrutiny. Recent reports have Jason Russell is reported to have suffered a meltdown. People have questioned whether this should the most important cause for attention. Old rules still apply. Use you own moral compass for assessing such campaigns. Perform your own due diligence and verify facts before acting.
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For a workshop on wireless innovation sponsored by the wireless innovation council (WIC), I decided to sketch out the M-payment ecosystem. The list of platforms were obtained from virtualcurrencyplatforms.com and from other sites. Based on this, we (Simon Prentice helped with the data collection) put together a list of partners that were announced on their websites. The ecosystem shows that the space is still evolving. Key players have not emerged. Each platform provider is creating their own island. Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are hedging by connecting to multiple platforms. This could make them the key players in the ecosystem. Facebook has also connected to three platform providers, including AmexServe.
Some key points to consider. When considering any of these ecosystems, what are the key components necessary to support a customer value proposition? Is it being provided by the combination of the platform provider and partners affiliated to that ecosystem? Have the complementors opened their platform for third-party developers? What kinds of economic incentives do they provide? To make the ecosystem more useful, we have to keep track of network effects. The indirect network effects come from adoption by end-users. The direct effects would come from developers who use the APIs. Both these numbers should be tracked. In the mobile space, in addition to end-users and developers, we may have to track advertisers, too. These entities create positive feedback loops that result in a platform that "emerges" as the dominant one.
Based on evidence from other markets, more than one platform can emerge as dominant. Platforms that are both open and can exercise architectural control tend to dominate. Similarly, platforms that have attributes that leads to customer retention drives positive feedback loops. Google's opensocial standards is an example of how to create direct network effects by creating a larger pool of developers. Competitors can gain traction by catering to a segment of the market. For example, Facebook is big with virtual goods and they can use that to enter other areas. Multi-homing is challenging for both users and developers. Look for developments that hinder or support that strategy. Read more about platform wars and strategies in this article by Prof. Michael Cusumano.
Any platforms or companies missing from the picture? We have a total of 191 companies and 19 platforms represented. In the figure below, diamonds represent platforms, ellipses represent complementors and link color denotes different types of alliances (financial, strategic, developmental, marketing, etc.)
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I had a very interesting experience preparing a couple of new topics for my graduate class discussions. The two topics were Professional Digital Strategy and Gamification of Business. In both cases, after I decided to pursue it, I created a Powerpoint presentation and put it on SlideShare. I then let my Twitter followers know that I did that. Later I identified a few influencers on Twitter and told them about it. These influencers had a large following on social media and they brought my presentation to the attention of their followers. I also made sure that I used tags on SlideShare.
Readers who viewed the presentation sent their comments to me via email or left it as feedback on SlideShare. Each response led to revisions of my content. Since my presentations dealt with technology related topics, I had responses from technology vendors (after my presentations reached a critical mass of audience of over 1000 views). In the case of my presentation on Digital Strategy, I was able to use some of the responders themselves as examples to make my point. My presentation on gamification has been viewed over 1800 times so far and revised 25 times in a week! Before I presented Digital Strategy to students, I had over 1800 people view and propose changes to my presentation. In many instances, suggestions came from experts in the field. In earlier times, I would write a paper and present that in a conference or journal to get feedback and in many cases classroom presentations were not subject to such rigor.
Availability of social media platforms like Twitter and SlideShare have altered the landscape dramatically. I find the engagement and interaction encouraged by these platforms to be very rewarding. Faculty get to signal to the world about what they are doing within their classrooms. Students get material that has been qualified by many experts. The community benefits by the sharing of the content. In the digital age, relevance and reputation is highly influenced by the use of social platforms to prepare for sessions. What has been your experience? Do you see other benefits or drawbacks to this approach?
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I recently had the opportunity to present in workshop for Babson/Wellesley/Olin faculty. My topic was Digital Scholarly Identity and I used this presentation. The main focus of the presentation was on how scholars can broaden their impact using digital media and also get recognized for doing it. For scholars, impact is a combination of academic and practitioner recognition. Schools may allocate different weights to these factors, but they consider them important and recognize faculty for their impact.
In today's environment faculty have additional channels to make an impact. Social media platforms like blogging, Twitter and community platforms have the potential to help faculty influence the world. This, however, requires scholars to build a reputation online. Reputation can be built by putting out thoughtful, original content at a regular frequency. This content should drive people to action.
Communities are the new avenues for exhibiting and building one's expertise. Take Stackoverflow, for example. Today it is widely used by programmers to post and answer questions. In the process, they earn points that build their reputation within their community. This reputation could help them get new jobs or to get promoted. Similar communities will crop up for academics.
Scholars like Andy McAfee and John Gallaugher have been great at using this new channel to influence their communities. While the newer generation of scholars have adapted well to the digital world, the older generation is still struggling with the basics of these new platforms.
What is needed is a recognition of scholars who are good at using these new channels to build a reputation and impact the community. Rating systems like Klout, Indeed and others are useful in measuring the influence of users in general. What we need is tools customized for scholars. These tools should combine traditional and the new social metrics to create a combined score for impact.
Wonder if there are schools that currently recognize the use of these new channels for measuring impact.
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It would be interesting to study the value proposition offered by cloud computing from a stakeholder perspective. This would require us to look at cloud computing from the perspective of a customer, investor, employee, supplier and society.
From a customer perspective, cloud computing enables a company to provide its services based on how much they get used. This is great for consumers who are afraid to get locked-in. Customer can use (and get billed) for just what they use. Investors like cloud computing because they don't get into a deep hole by their fixed costs commitments to IT. This avoids the theory of escalating commitments -- just because they have made investments, they do not have to continue on the same path. If they feel that the ROI is bad, they can abandon the project. Employees prefer cloud based applications because they allow them to use the latest and greatest in technological developments. In addition, they are independent of the hardware devices. In fact, they can access their content and data from any device. Suppliers prefer to work with companies that provide transparency to their supply chain data. This allows them to collaboratively plan their resource management. Finally, society may benefit from green operations supported by cloud vendors.
My colleague Erik Noyes and I just wrote a case study on Appirio that highlighted the value of cloud services to Appirio. We will be undertaking this new study and interviewing entrepreneurs and investors to learn about the value proposition offered by cloud computing.
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Recently, I had to teach the Facebook case along with the Google case on the same day, as examples of commerce platforms. In many ways they are both similar and quite different in other. Almost everyone in the online world use these two sites. They are both highly successful companies with a strong engineering culture trying to attract from the same talent pool. Both companies have spent a great deal of money on building a flexible and adaptive infrastructure. This allows them to quickly develop, test, listen and iterate their products. Google and FB are able to build their products fast and test user experiences on the same infrastructure. They both fulfil a major user need for free search for information and make money from third-parties.
Facebook. mission is to make the world more open and connected. This allows users to connect and learn about new things from their social network. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible. People like to search and get instant answers to questions. Their mission statements cause them to look at the world differently. Google believes in the power of searching user generated information using sophisticated algorithms and powerful computers. Facebook, on the other hand, believes that every single service you use will be better when used with your social network. Wisdom of friends trumps wisdom of crowds. This results in Facebook creating products and services that allow people to exercise their core desire to express who they are and wanting to know what is going on with the people they care about. Google is more interested in gathering content and indexing them.
Their business models, while dependent on marketers for revenue, approach the solution from different directions. Marketers want to be found. Facebook uses referrals from friends to find and serve information. Google uses algorithms to search and find. Google is algorithms and machine learning while FB is relationships and information flows.
They are both huge threats to privacy. While they try to put in place policies that allow users to stay in control of their information, many unintended consequences have occurred. Facebook updates and Google's Street View have caused many privacy violations. Facebook has been pushing the boundary on what is acceptable. When faced with a backlash, they have rectified their policies. At the end, they both sit on huge treasure troves of user data that could one day be mined for commercial purposes.
Both have created a filter bubble. The information that we see is determined by what the search algorithms find from the sources that they cover in the case of Google. In the case of FB, the filter bubble is created by the friendship network.
Overall, we came out with the understanding that they compete on many fronts for user attention and third-party advertisers, but have different philosophies on information retrieval. In fact, social search may end up complementing algorithmic search.
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Here is a company that had an interesting value proposition and beat out Blockbuster and reached the top of the mountain. Before the market punished it, the stock was trading at over $300 and was a Wall Street darling. As with any company, we love them when they are the scrappy competitor fighting the market leader and the minute they win, we hate them.
Netflix has many stakeholders. They have over 23 million loyal customers that help them crowdsource content, academics and analysts who like their business model and investors with stake in the company. Their customers love their wide selections, user interface and interactive website. People who follow and appreciate their business model like the fact that they constantly innovate and keep adding new enhancements to their service.
With the recent price changes that were implemented, Netflix has failed to communicate well with the stakeholder groups separately. The customer group had to be prepared for the change in service plans through early and direct communication. In addition, they shouldn’t be asked to deal with two separate companies – Qwikster and Netflix. As far as they are concerned, they should not have to understand the inner workings and the re-organization of the company into separate business units. They should simply logon to one site and the system should recognize their status and provide them with Qwikster or Netflix services. In fact, Netflix could use interactions to cross-sell or up-sell to different segments.
To the business model aficionados, Netflix should explain their supply chain and point out the cost drivers. The simple reality is that content providers are asking for a bigger piece of the action, quite similar to what Facebook had to deal with in the case of Zynga. The only point of leverage that Netflix has is their loyal and growing base of customers. Do they have enough to bargain with content providers? Content providers, on the other hand, could threaten to go directly to customers. The question is who blinks first.
While Reed Hastings wrote a blog and sent an email apologizing, I feel that he did not consider the stakeholders as unique entities. He implemented the same communication strategy for both groups. While it seems that Netflix has been around for a long time, it is still a young company in an emerging market. Various entities in the supply chain are fighting to determine their profit margins while a value migration is taking place. The outcome was expected, the communication plan was bungled. .
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At Babson we are studying gamification as a concept and figuring out ways to incorporate into our learning experiences and applying it to improve engagement with our stakeholders. I was recently talking to Gene Begin, Digital Marketing Director at Babson College about what we doing with gamification. Here is the summary:
Babson is using the platform provided by SCVNGR college-wide as a location-based, gaming application to reward our community for engaging with Babson and completing challenges at a variety of our events and campus locations. SCVNGR is being used for Undergraduate School and Graduate School orientation programming during opening weekend and is being used at each event in a slightly different light. At Undergraduate Orientation, the tool is being used throughout the weekend to drive continuous engagement. At Graduate Orientation, the tool was used as a true two-hour scavenger hunt as an activity within their day of activities.
On the educational front, my colleague John Marthinsen and I are also planning to use the gamification concept for one of our signature learning experiences. In particular, we will explore game mechanics, the role of gamification platforms and the economic issues that it raises.
One particular issue that we will highlight from a economic perspective is virtual currencies. Virtual currencies have an especially interesting connection to macroeconomics because their development during the 21st century mirrors that of the United States banking system during the 19th century, when checking accounts (a virtual currency) eclipsed physical currency as the nation’s prime means of payment. Are virtual currencies “money” that should be included in the money supply statistics? Can Facebook, Zynga, and others create “money”? Should they be regulated as banks are regulated? Who should control them? Does the creation of virtual currencies affect a nation’s economy (e.g., inflation rate)? What are the implications for the national tax base and governments (federal, state, and local) that are desperate for revenues? Will the rise of virtual currencies affect the nation’s national income accounting (e.g., GDP) measures and business financial statements?
Concepts like gamification, platforms and virtual currencies can be used in non-game settings. Student teams will be asked to use these techniques and propose solutions for a societal problem. Currently, game mechanics are being proposed to promote safety by rewarding good driving behaviors in certain cities. Similar ideas could be used to promote fiscal responsibility, reduce poverty, curb tax evasion/money laundering, encourage healthy living, improve community engagement, and enhance education.
As part of our signature learning experience, each team will identify and research a business opportunity that utilizes gamification and solves a societal problem.
Wonder what some of the other schools are doing with gamification?
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I recently wanted to give my old iPod to my daughter's friend and ran into some unique problems because of the cloud. The first one was with my Appstore. Since my device was setup with the iTunes store for downloads, I could not disconnect that. Second, I had all my emails being downloaded by my Gmail App. The third problem that I encountered was in deleting my pictures and videos. It was not possible to eliminate them from the device with out deleting the originals.
How did we get here? With device independence using cloud based computing, it is possible to connect different devices to the cloud and replicate the exact set of applications and environments that you like. The good thing about this is that you can lose devices but still replicate your environments. The bad news is that it create extreme dependency to your devices.
Device independence should be a two way street. Just as you can upload information onto a device, we should also be able to disengage the device from the cloud -- zap all the custom information from the device. The big concern I have is that with a few bits of information, anyone can configure a device to replicate your environment.
Wonder how others have dealt with this problem dealing with their devices on the cloud.
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I am just teaching a class called Clouds, Platforms, and Networks. In that class, students pick a company or industry and draw out the ecosystem for that. The data is collected from public sources like websites or from Lexis/Nexis. They use Pajek to render the visuals. Here are a few of them that they created:
Rajesh Potti: Cisco Ecosystem
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