Umair Haque on Google, China, Control and 21st Century Business Paradigms

Another brilliant post by Umair Haque via the Harvard Business Review - he spells out a lot of stuff that keeps coming up in my presentations, as well; so here's a bit of a remix of this juicy post, my comments are [...]

"On one side is the old high ground of the industrial era capitalism; on the other, the new high(er) ground of next-generation capitalism. The yawning chasm in between them is the gap between the 20th century and the 21st" [I call this the EGOSystem vs the ECOsystem, see more here and here]

"Currency intervention, breaking Copenhagen, crackdowns , collusion, corruption, coercion, and censorship: China's ongoing bad behavior as global citizen is, when we connect the dots, the gigantic elephant in the world's boardroom. What's driving it? The quest for monopoly, monopsony, and control" [I wrote about something quite similar in my 2007/2008 blog-book "The  End of Control", check out the free online chapters here, and a related presentation, here]

"That's yesterday's high ground, and China's focused like a laser beam on it. China's moves are the textbook stuff of b-school's blackest arts. Through larger distribution, fiercer litigation, greater exclusivity, cheaper and faster production, a bigger cash pile, advantage is gained. But the high ground has shifted. The new high ground is an ethical edge. It's not about having more; it's about doing better. It's not about protecting exports, pressuring buyers and suppliers, price discriminating against the powerless, and programming consumers to buy, buy, buy — it's about making people, communities, and society authentically better off. It's not about caring less — but caring more. It's not about ruthlessness. It's about mindfulness" [Couldn't have said it better, myself; here are just a few things I would add: in this new ecosystem that Umair is describing, we will need to develop web-native economic models and entirely new metrics for  evaluating them, friction will indeed be fiction (to a very large degree) and the importance of control will be utterly eroded by the steadily increasing power of trust, engagement and transparency]

"The old high ground was built for 20th century economics: sell more junk, earn more profit, "grow" — and then crash. An ethical edge operates at a higher economic level. It is concerned with what we sell, how profits are earned, and which authentic, human benefits "grow." It's a concept built for the economics of an interdependent world" [A key term, imo: an interdependent  world, i.e. not a broadcast world but a connected and networked world]

"An ethical edge just might be the ultimate cause of advantage. It's how better distribution, production, marketing, and pricing — all just proximate causes of advantage — ultimately happen. Jim Chanos's investment thesis says: without an ethical edge, new value cannot be created — old value can only be shuffled around (hi, Wall Street)....So here's the single question everyone should be asking. The old high ground is the new low ground. Yesterday's mountain is today's valley. Are you ascending to the new high ground?"

via blogs.hbr.org

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Crucial Intelligence: the latest Internet & Economy Trends by Morgan Stanley (via Web 2.0 summit)

Once again, great stuff by Mary Meeker and her Internet team at Morgan Stanley, via the Web2.0 summit. The video, embedded below, is good, too, but in my opinion it's the the slides that matter most: every single page packs a punch and makes you think. Great mix of facts, statistics and some key foresights. A must-read (and then... digest). Techcrunch has some great comments on this presentation, here.

Economy & Internet Trends - Morgan Stanley Presentation

View more presentations from kvjs.

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New mobile lifestreaming page now available: get all my shared stuff on your mobile device

I met Michael Reinsch and the other cool guys from Mobalean at Tokyo 2.0 back in August 09. Now, they have put together a pretty nice mobile version of my Lifestream Page (see the regular version above) that makes it very easy to view all my latest updates on your iPhone,  Blackberry or Android phones. This includes all the stuff that I share via many different platforms, incl. Twitter, Slideshare, Twitpic, Google Reader etc.  We are using the Friendfeed API here, in case you were wondering. Check it out, and please let me know how you like it! 

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Gerd Leonhard's Life-Stream via kwout

15 year-old summarizes media trends in Morgan Stanley report. Read. Think. Act.

Download the free report here.

Twitter / Gerd Leonhard: Buzz-Making Morgan Stanley ... via kwout

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Joi Ito on Technology's Next Investment Opportunities (some key messages for the content industry)

Joi Ito is a great resource and inspiring thought leader. Here is a great video with 2.6 Minutes of solid wisdoms. The nuggets:

• People now want to pay to express themselves - not just to consume (and yes, this is generational)
• Open, mobile platforms will come, soon, for sure, and will become even more of a key trend, going forward
• Things that help you express, things that are mobile, things that are global, are the key to future success
• We are shifting emphasis from Content to Context; content commerce becomes less 'copy' and copyright-oriented and more personal and timely (Twitter has little content value but lots of context value!)

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Itay Talgam at PICNIC08: Conducting Creativity (great video)

Itay talks about his Maestro Program and explains how business has changed, using the example of how conductors interact with their orchestras. From Itay's site:  The “Maestro programs” were founded on the belief that, in the orchestra as in the work place, music has the power to create community and reinforce shared values. Music embodies knowledge and innovation, individual effort and collective achievement, and offers a work-environment that is full of opportunities for excellence and self-actualization – same as any successful business. These programs offer a unique learning experience that explores the magical relationship between conductor, musician and audience to achieve inspiring new insights into leadership, management, and teamwork".  Great stuff.

I saw his presentation at PICNIC 08, and it was the high-light of this entire event, imho. Well worth watching.

Itay Talgam at PICNIC08: Conducting Creativity from PICNICCrossmediaweek on Vimeo.

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2009 predictions and trends: sharing some good links

Image by gleonhard via Flickr

I am using Twitter to share links pretty much on a daily basis. However, if you are not (yet) into Twitter and just want to follow what I write in my blog posts, here are a few links that I think are worth sharing as we move into the new year:

Steve Rosenbaum at AO: 2009 - 5 Trends That Will Change Media | AlwaysOn. Great stuff in here, and I like his summary:  "2009 will be a year of gut wrenching,  dramatic, roller-coast change. Big things will get smaller, or die.  Little things will survive and start to grow. Consumers will become creators.  Lurkers will become participants.  The volume of voices will expand exponentially  -  and the need for clarity and trusted filters will go from being useful to being essential.  Just as MP3s turned the music industry on its ear, and Craigs List turned newspapers upside-down,  the emergence of personal publishing and new forms of both trusted and Community Curation will have an immediate and long-lasting impact on media, commerce,  community and politics"

More gloomy but still with a dash of hope: EMarketer on Advertising Trends in 2009 (see some of their stats below)

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SMS Revenues were $100 Billion in 2007 (bigger than DVD sales, box office, music industry...)

An astounding number, taken from this slideshow on slideshare.net

An iPhone App that really rocks: Instapaper (read bookmarked websites offline, on your iPhone)

While there are many things I really hate about my new iPhone 3G (which is why I am still using my trusted Nokias and SEs and the Blackberry, too ;), the applications really make it worthwhile to experiment with it. My current favorite is Instapaper which allows you to bookmark a webpage and read it on your iPhone later even if you are offline (!), and in a much easier to read mobile screen format. This makes it really easy to catch up on some website reading when traveling, and not even have the usual costs associated with roaming (here in Europe, that's still huge) - and a much reduced temptation to click away, too.  Since this can be done with PDFs, too, is this a new way of reading (albeit still with a very small screen;)   The PRO version is well worth it btw - tilting the phone will scroll the text - cool!  Some more details from another blogger, here

Using Wordle.net to visualize my strongest keywords

In a nutshell, this is what I do... according to Wordle (which turns text into visualized tags) - see the page on Wordle

Amazon Video Widget - with ads for books

Amazon has just added Video Widgets that allow you to upload your own videos and the insert small ads for Amazon products (books etc). The ad integration is quite interesting and not at all interruptive, imho.  Check out this video with 2 of my books and 2 other book as 'ads', below.  I think this is a perfect example of how advertising will (and can) provide free content - the viewer trades his attention for free content. Now, the next step would be the VIEWER picking the 'ads' (or rather, contverts) he wants to see.

Update: Amazon seems to have some tech problems here - the products don't always come up ;)

HearWhere - find live music anywhere (cool mashup)

Take Google Maps + Myspace Music Streams and make a live-concert guide : HearWhere - find live music anywhere.

  Widget-it, too:

gleonhard.muxtape.com: great new way to share my audio pontifications

Link: gleonhard.muxtape.com.
Muxtape Rocks. Plain. Easy. Probably to be sued soon (not because of MY MP3s though;)))

Here is the Technorati widget that shows Muxtape's blog buzz Posts that contain Muxtape per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

User Generated Music (video)

Interesting new app - got this from their PR people; will give it a try. MusicShake is an online music creation service that provides music composing solutions aimed at the general public without previous musical knowledge or expertise. The service lets users create personalized, professional quality music using various tools and pattern-combination methods. Musicshake is based in Seoul, South Korea, with offices in Los Angeles, CA

Cisco Telepresence Video Magic: Virtual presence anywhere?

Wow!