While the ongoing world economic crisis has left many business leaders sweating (or worse), John Chambers is rolling up his sleeves in anticipation of an eventual recovery. After every economic challenge, he says, Cisco has come out with dramatic gains in market share. This time won’t be different, if Chambers’ bets pay off.
In the 1990s, he predicted that networks would transform the way the world works, becoming platforms for communications and other IT, and Chambers placed Cisco at the center of that transformation. Today, he envisions a Web 2.0 premised on collaboration and social networking that will similarly transfigure all business life. Since 2001, he’s been positioning Cisco to catch this massive market transition, and indeed, is “betting the company’s future on it.”
In “phase two of the Internet,” says Chambers, “Content will find me; I will not search for it.” Any device, anywhere, will be able to receive any kind of content. We will be dealing with licenses for things like music, rather than worrying about compatibility issues between our digital tools and what’s streaming through them. Web 2.0 will also bring “effective collaboration,” by which Chambers means network-enabled visual tools, which will make “working together for a common goal truly possible.” Expect much faster business processes and revved up productivity, says Chambers.
Based on Cisco’s own experience in the past several years, organizations will completely restructure around these new capabilities. Indeed, he offers up his company as a paradigm of this vision. Once a hierarchical, command and control-based organization, Cisco is now much flatter, a company running “off of social networking groups.” Councils with cross-functional responsibilities suggest and take on many more projects (from emerging markets, to video, and smart grid boards); from one to two major ventures per year, to this year’s 26 launches. The next generation company is “built around the visual.” Cisco employees do non-stop teleconferencing with collaborators around the world. The company hosts 2500 such virtual meetings per week. It also employs Webex, Wikis and blogging to move work along.
With this kind of communication and carefully managed process to match, “operations can be turned on a head,” says Chambers. It’s the recipe for market-dominating speed and scale. Chambers is “loading the pipeline” with projects that assume other companies will want what Cisco has and makes. “If we’re right, we’re developing a huge wave of revenue opportunity.” Perhaps this is one reason why he’s “an optimist on global productivity, global economy and our ability to handle the challenges.”
For Adobe Systems, mobile phone is a critical field the company needs to cover in pursuing its user interaction platform strategy. Being able to support iPhone (given the phone's dominantly popularity) is therefore important at this moment. However, Apple is of course not so hasty about helping Adobe to make this happens.
Greed clashed, Adobe in its Adobe Systems' MAX developer's conference early October 2009, has demonstrated its tough position toward Apple. The keynote addresses included Adobe's plans to bring the Flash Player to most of the major smartphone platforms, i.e. RIM, Symbian, Windows Mobile, Google's Android, and Palm's webOS. Apple's iPhone was absent from the list. In other words, Adobe left the matter of supporting Flash on iPhone Safari browser to Apple.
According to Rich Tretola of Everything Flex blog Adobe had to create a way to allow for applications built on the Flash Player to act as native iPhone applications. This was only possible by actually embedding the Flash Player within the application and then submitting the whole thing for approval to Apple just as any other application that goes to Apple for approval.
And here is another interesting fact worthy to note. Adobe recently changed the message iPhone users receive when they go to Adobe's web page to install Flash. The text now states: “Flash Player not available for your device. Apple restricts use of technologies required by products like Flash Player. Until Apple eliminates these restrictions, Adobe cannot provide Flash Player for the iPhone or iPod Touch.”
The bottom line is, if one wants to develop Flash for mobile phones, application may well be one's only choice when it comes to iPhone. Web pages with Flash contents will continue to look ugly on iPhone for quite some time.
In this post, I synthesize the research data related to US and sometimes worldwide mobile Internet, "wired" Internet and smartphone users, to depict a profile of US mobile Internet users. Using the underlying factors and data about mobile Internet and mobile phone market in Vietnam, the second part of the post will project characteristics of Vietnamese mobile Internet users.
Now, let's start with US mobile Internet user profile:
Gender: more male than female
Income: widely distributed (high income is not a differentiating factor)
Lifestyle: more active people, less heavy internet users
Content consumed: News and social network
Phone: Still many "dummy" phone and increasingly smartphones; large and extra large screens; and mainly with iPhoneOS, Android and Symbian OS
Gender: more male than female
According to The Nielsen Company, worldwide mobile Internet users are slightly more likely male than female. The male bias of mobile Internet use is consistent across markets and is most pronounced in European markets. In Brazil, Russia, India and China, as well, males are more likely than females to browse the mobile Internet.
This gender bias, can be explained by:
(Nielsen) Gender bias of traditional "wired" Internet users
(My explanation) Higher ratio of public-transported commuting males explains the higher difference in European countries, where public transportation is very popular (my interpretation)
Income: high income is not a differentiating factor
Also, according to Nielsen (2008), the US mobile Internet audience is not, as some expect, overly concentrated in high-income households:
24% of all mobile Internet users have household incomes of $100,000 or more
26% of all mobile Internet users have a household income of under $50,000
This I think is caused mainly by low barrier of entry. US mobile providers' flat-rate mobile data programs with affordable price. These programs often also bundle voice, which make them more attractive even to medium-end phone users.
Lifestyle: more active people, less heavy internet users
In her presentation at the Web 2.0 Summit, Mary Meeker, Morgan Stanley's Managing Director, noted that we’re in a new computing cycle with the mobile web.
Here are her key points related to mobile Internet:
Mobile internet will be bigger than most think. She thoght the mobile web will be 10 times as big as the more traditional desktop Internet, and that it would grow much faster. She also noted that the technologies around it are exploding: Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G, Bluetooth, etc. even during an economic ressesion. Location-based services are the “secret sauce” of what makes the mobile web interesting.
Next generation platforms (Social Networking + Mobile) driving unprecedented change in Communications + Commerce
3G adoption/trends vary by geography. In her opinion, Asia Pacific market (exclude Japan) would reach its adoption inflection point in 2011 or 2012.
Controversial may his decisions be, I still think Bernanke sets a great example of leadership. Having probably the toughest job in the world, in the face of great uncertainty and unfavorable public opinion, he led a series of bold actions, without an eye blink.
Collective problem
solving sessions, ranging from formal workshops to brainstorming meetings and
online forum discussions, are often not effective. There are a few common
mistakes that I saw happening again and again. Some of them are due to bad
problem solving method and some others are due to lack of a systemic approach.
This post will serve as a "what not to do" list with tips to make
such sessions more effective applying systems thinking in problem solving.
Complex problems often require a bigger group with different views to
participate into brainstorming, discussion and formulating solutions. However,
many sessions go off the main topic, lots of discussions but no clear result,
or worse, create/deepen conflicts and force compromise. These often lead to
pessimism about collective problem solving and lead to using less effective
mechanisms such as upper management intervention or hard sell an one-sided
plan.
From my observation and
experience leading sessions with widely diverse groups, here are components of
a formula for unsuccessful collective problem solving:
1. No clear process of
problem solving
To bring in different views effectively in a short time requires a careful
design of the inquiry and problem solving process. This process is often
reflected in an agenda. Having no agenda or spending not enough time to explain
and reiterate where the group is in the process is prescription for random
conversations while important inputs are not appropriately voiced.
Tips: Scaffolding the working session.
Careful develop a detailed agenda that takes into account not only the process
but also group dynamics and contribution that each group of participants can
make. Make sure you have the right mix of participants to understand, explore,
validate and decide. Whenever possible, synchronize the agenda in advance and
make sure participants come prepared with information and thoughts. This step
is as important as scaffolding before starting to build.
During the session, spend
ample time to explain to participants each step and intended purpose of each
step in reaching the final goals. The facilitator(s) needs to keep the flow but
allow flexibility to accommodate useful conversations and changes without major
deviation from the original process. Summarize results so far and clarify the
following steps once in a while to make sure that participants can follow the
process.
2. No upfront common
understanding of the objectives, value drivers and constraints Assuming that every
participant has the same understanding about the background, especially
objectives and constraints, often lead to unproductive arguments and
conversations.
Tips: Define purpose and system
boundary. Start off the session by asking the sponsor to set the ground and
talk about the value drivers and objectives of the problem solving exercise.
Explain and agree on the constraints, but at the same time make sure everyone
understands why the constraints exist, just in case some of them need to be
revisited later (see point 5 below).
3. Jump to solution
discussion before the problem is properly understood
Sounds very simple, this is the most common mistake I observed. Under the
action imperative, especially when there are many experts in the room, groups
tend to start immediately discussing about solutions. In addition, to be
objective and avoid conflict, participants are often request to present data
related to their argument. However, participants with different mental models
interpret data differently, resulting in grid-lock arguments and conflicts.
Tips: Bring everyone to a helicopter
view of the system. Build a systemic problem model visually before solution
discussion. Data presented should be positioned against the appropriate part of
the model. Once presented against the model, data will help not only to give a
detail picture, but also to develop and verify the model of the problem. This
is like taking people out from their local views to a helicopter view of the
whole problem. Once the system is properly understood (and optimally documented
visually), the solutions normally emerge naturally.
4. No clear view of the
outcomes
Discussions often are divergent and take long to go to conclusion, sometimes
still not good enough to be used in the next steps when participants have no
clear view of the desired outcomes. Words are normally NOT enough.
Tips: Visualize and build the
outcomes as the discussion goes. Visualize and discuss early in the session
how the outcomes should look like. Design the process so that each step will
help to move the group closer to the outcome. Result-based conversation are
more productive, and visualization of each step toward the outcome will help
participants appreciate the progress much more.
5. Try to solve problem
at the wrong level/area and avoid to solve problem at a different level/area
Many issues that people try to solve are only symptoms of problems somewhere
else. For example, process exceptions in many cases are created by breakdown in
related processes or wrong organization structure. Trying to accommodate the
process exceptions will not make the problem go away, even make it more
difficult later to address the root cause.
Sometimes, recognizing that
the problem needs to be addressed elsewhere, narrowly-defined boundaries, rigid
deadline and lack of upper-management support, the team still create a
quick-fix and avoid the root cause.
Tips: Solve the problem of different
systems at the same time. While examining the problem in the current
context, it is important to put the system of inquiry in a bigger perspective.
Bring people with broader view and responsibilities to the process. Diagnose
the other related or incorporating (i.e. mother) systems, take not only
functional but also structural view of the problem. Once problems elsewhere are
identified, come up with careful analysis of dependencies and plan to initiate
problem solving at different levels and locations in parallel. Contingency
planning is important to make this happen without compromising, breaking the
deadline or exploding the scope of the project.
After all, collective
problem solving involving different views and functions requires a lot of
preparation, thoughts and skills that most people think. Inadequate attention
to these often result in frustrations, conflicts, compromise, and
create/reinforce boundaries and cylos. The tips presented here are a starting
point to think about a more effective process.
Uploaded from
Heidelberg
, after my
favorite soccer team, Croatian, lost its match in Euro 2008.
It has been a while since I blogged and many people asked me about what I have been doing recently.
To answer, here are some of the things I have been doing since end of last year in no particular order:
Networking, finding leads, talking to many people and doing due diligence for my future job. Finally, I finalized my plan to move back to Vietnam to work in operations for a young online company.
Preparing for my transition from every front, namely work, home, family, etc.
Training and coaching some people to take up my current tasks when I leave.
Preparing for a new member of my family. We are expecting another baby by October.
Lots of project works and traveling (mainly to US). We finally took our Business Systems Consulting services to mainstream and position it to many big corporations.
As a part of my USGuide volunteer activities, helping MBA applicants
(mainly US applicants) to plan their career and ask critical questions
about if and how MBA could help, as well as doing some mock admission
interviews. Lots of works, interesting moments and many success cases.
Networking and planning with my mentors, friends and colleagues about future contact.
Consolidating my experience and knowledge, generalizing methods and tools for wide application scope.
Identifying gaps in my knowledge and skills, starting to fill in some and setting up support network for each area. I also practice Precision Questioning after taking a workshop with Vervago.
Transition is a fun process though I have been through many, and again, I will strive to live up to the challenges to prove who I am.
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