I Love My iPad Mini

So There is No Reason Why I Won't Like My iPad. Just Add A Camera.

by Idris Mootee

Some are comparing the iPad to Netbooks, but it is not a fair comparison. I don't like Netbooks myself. I used to have a Sony one 14 years ago. It was a very powerful mini notebook with a built-in camera (a first at that time). It costs me $2,300 when I purchased that from a now bankrupt computer store chain in San Jose. It was a good one except keyboard was too small and battery life short. According to the guy at a local Best Buy store, 8 out of 10 Netbooks sold are returned. I am sure that's not the case in Asia. I think many people have the wrong expectations, and are not aware of the limitations of Netbooks.

There was one kid working at Best Buy who asked me if I like the iPod Touch Jumbo, he was referring to iPad. I said I like the iPad mini (iPod Touch) that I have now, so I think I will like the iPad. The only disappointment for me is the lack of a camera, because I think if I carry that all the time and being able to use Skype is great plus. It doesn't add much to the cost. The camera needs to be in the front obviously. It is still a little heavy; adding 1.5 lbs to my Louis Vuitton briefcase is pushing it. No video output is a negative; the other Lenovo Ideapad I bought has an HDMI output. The Lenovo tablet is a pretty good one with robust design for business use. Even with many criticisms, iPad will be an isntant success. I guarantee you the iPad is not another Newton.

iPad preorders are pouring in. Investor Village's AAPL Sanity board (subscription needed) noted that iPad pre-orders dropped from an estimated 25,000 per hour on Friday, the first day of availability, to around 1,000 per hour over the weekend. For the three-day period, the cumulative total was estimated at 152,000. That's pretty good.

I think the iPad will open up opportunities for print media and help shape portable media experiences. I can't read magazines from my Blackberry of iPhone, but with the iPad, it is a different story. The iPad platform has more than enough screen real estate and resolution to build interesting media sharing and communication experiences. Of course we have choices of other manufacturers - Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, Lenovo, and almost everyone else, are all working iPad-like devices - in addition to those who have products in the market (such as Amazon).

Microsoft's Courier is an interesting one, currently in "late prototype" stage of development. At least they are not making the tablet mistake, the dual 7-inch screens are multitouch, and designed for writing, flicking and drawing with a stylus, in addition to fingers. There is a camera at the back too (sorry Apple). Currently, Microsoft is working on the user experience and showing design concepts to outside agencies. Microsoft's tablet heritage is digital ink-oriented, and this interface, while unlike anything we've seen before, clearly draws from that, its work with the Surface touch computer and even the Zune HD.

Sony is doing some catch-up although they are stuck with their paradigm of competitive advanatage. The Wall Street Journal reports that Sony is working on a device that's described as being part Netbook, part e-reader and part PlayStation Portable. Sources within the electronic giant also report that Sony is working on a "PlayStation Phone," which would be capable of downloading and playing PlayStation games. Sony needs help.


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Keep Moving Forward - Apple, Microsoft, Google, RIM, Hearst

by Adam Hartung

Did you ever notice how often a large company will introduce a new solution (often a new technology), but then retrench from promoting it? Frequently, the market is developed by an alternate company that captures most of the value. We can see that behavior looking at smartphones.


Source: Silicon Alley Insider

In 2008, three early leaders were Microsoft, RIM and Palm. But Microsoft chose to invest in Defending & Extending its PC software business - with updates to the operating system in Vista and OS 7. As the market has shifted toward mobile computing, Microsoft has been clobbered. But largely because it remained stuck trying to protect its "core" while the market shifted away. Palm also tried to Defend & Extend (D&E) its early position with updates, but because it did not follow the pathway to greater usage with new applications it also has seen dramatic share decline.

Meanwhile, RIM has promoted new uses within the corporate world for mobility, and thus grown its market share. And Apple has made a huge impact by bringing forward dozens of new mobile applications, closely followed by Google. What we see is a classic example of the early entrant fading largely because they decided to Defend the old market, rather than investing in the new one. Really too bad for shareholders in Microsoft (losing 20 share points) and Palm (losing 10 share points), while good for shareholders of RIM, Apple and Google.

And in Apple's case we can see that the company continues using White Space to grow revenues by expanding the new marketplace. The iPad is off to a very strong start, with tens of thousands of units ordered last week. But of greater importance is how Apple is promoting the shift to mobile devices from traditional PC devices. At SeekingAlpha.com, in "How the iPad, Slates Will Evolve the Next Two Years," the reporter projects how demand for all laptop products will decline as more capability and functionality is added to mobile devices like smartphones and these new slate products.

Microsoft can keep trying to Defend & Extend PC technology, but it won't be long before their efforts largely won't matter. Don't forget that once Cray computers was a rapidly growing super-computer company. But increasing performance from much alternative products eventually made Cray irrelevant. Same for Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems.

Today the market capitalization of Microsoft is about $250B, about 4x sales. Apple's market cap is just over $200B, about 6x sales. Google's market cap is about $180B, about 8x sales. All reflect investor expectations about future growth. The D&E company is simply not expected to grow - and in fact is much more likely to disappoint than the companies growing share in growing markets toward which customers are shifting.

And any company can choose to participate in growth, versus Defend & Extend. While Tribune Corporation is trying to find a way out of bankruptcy, and struggling to figure out how to deal with market shifts away from newspapers, Hearst is taking positive action. The Wall Street Journal reports in "Hearst Jumps Into the Apps Business" how the old-line newspaper company has set up a White Space project, complete with dedicated people and its own funding, to begin developing mobile applications for news!

Even when business leaders see a market shift, far too many choose to Defend & Extend the "core." Unfortunately, that leads to disappointments. Keep in mind Microsoft and its rapid loss of Smartphone share as users move increasingly to mobile devices from PCs. To succeed leaders need to drive their organizations in the direction of market shifts, and growth. Like Apple, Google and even Hearst.


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Adam Hartung, author of "Create Marketplace Disruption", is a Faculty and Board member of the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, Managing Partner of Spark Partners, and writes for "Forbes" and the "Journal for Innovation Science."

Are You Prepared to Lose Control of the Idea?

Photo by chavals
by Glen Stansberry

People are awfully protective of their ideas (myself definitely included). There are plenty of reasons for not sharing ideas:

• We're afraid people won't like them, or worse, won't understand them.
  
• Someone might steal them
  
• They might, in reality, be total crap
  
• They're hard to explain, especially when the proverbial ink is still dry in the mind
  
• etc., etc., etc.

But the biggest fear I have of sharing ideas is losing control.

There is an awful lot of ego that gets attached to our ideas, (see: the God Complex), and the thought of losing that grip is crippling.

One of the most intoxicating aspects of having an idea is having control over the idea. We thrive on building, planning, analyzing, almost anything but actually doing.

It's not just little companies or amateurs that struggle with letting go. Some of the biggest companies in the world suffer from these 'idea insecurities' listed above.


Microsoft's Decline In Innovation

I read an interesting sad article about the causes of the downward spiral of Microsoft's innovation. For the past ten years, Microsoft has been playing catch-up to companies like Google and Apple. Instead of creating breakthrough products that once made the software giant famous, the company has relied on a monkey-see, monkey-do approach to production.

The article goes on to explain that the top brass at Microsoft were directly responsible for the void of innovation, simply by harboring the fears listed above. Products were never made because of petty differences between divisions. The main reason for the lack of innovation was the stubbornness of division heads to work together on technologies.

They were afraid of losing their ideas in favor of someone else's better idea.


Letting Go of the Idea

Some people never understand that if they hand over control of the original idea, something better might come out of it. Flickr was set to be a gaming company until the founders discovered a really efficient way to serve photos. There are plenty of examples of this happening throughout history.

Letting go is one of the absolute hardest concepts to grasp as an entrepreneur. But sometimes our idea outgrows us. The trick is to swallow the thick pride and embrace the potential of what could happen.

If the powerful suits at Microsoft had put aside petty differences and allowed other departments to improve their products, who knows what Microsoft would be today. They might have had a Google killer, or the iPod. We'll never know.

This wasn't an excuse to single out Microsoft. Every single company and entrepreneur deals with control issues at some point. I know I have. The important thing is recognizing when we're holding on a bit too tightly on what's "ours" and not recognizing the full potential of the idea, with the help of others.

Related article - Microsoft and Creative Destruction - by Scott Berkun


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Glen Stansberry writes at LifeDev, a blog that helps people make their ideas happen. You can follow him on Twitter here.

Microsoft and Creative Destruction

by Scott Berkun

A recent NYT article by former Microsoft VP Dick Brass has caused quite the stir, but for the wrong reasons. Every follow up article I've read, including one from Microsoft, gets much of it wrong some key things wrong.

The premise: The core point of the Brass article is how the introduction of middle management and bureaucracy has killed innovation at Microsoft.

My counterargument: Microsoft has always been a conservative, platforms company. Visionary design and creative leaders think in terms of great products, which Microsoft has never been good at. Brass assumes the challenges that hampered Tablet PC were new and local, but they have always been there. Microsoft's best, and most creative, work has come when a competitor forced one of the few Renaissance-VPs (VPs who were not over-promoted engineers but actually had a diversity of management skills) to take product design seriously.

My credentials: I worked at MSFT 1994 to 2003. I was on the IE 1.0 to IE 5.0 team among others (Windows, MSN, and MSTE/Best Practices, where I worked with many groups across the company). I wrote a bestselling book about Innovation and I've spoken and consulted with various groups at the company dozens of times since I left in 2003.

My take:

1. The primary problem at Microsoft regarding good design & innovation is the diffusion of creative authority. The problem is not the numbers of people at the company, or the layers of management, as many gripe about. Layers don't help, but it's not the problem. The real issue is the inability to grant creative authority to the few people worthy of it. Microsoft has always been a place that gives way too many people a say in matters of design, vision and user experience, and it shows in the pervasive mediocrity of the majority of its products. Films need directors. Orchestras need conductors. But if you divide things into 30 pieces and ask 30 people to play creative visionary, mediocrity ensues. The better products at Microsoft are the ones where VPs modify the distribution of authority to create clear creative authority.


2. Few VPs are qualified to be creative leaders, at Microsoft or elsewhere. And there is no creative lead role at Microsoft. There never has been. This is not new, it has always been true (at least since 1994 when I started). This is why when brilliant, genius type software designers come to the company, they are baffled by how little creative power they can earn, so they retreat to research or future thinking groups that have no skin in the game (e.g. Bill Buxton, Steve Capps, Ray Ozzie, Jim Gray (RIP), etc.). Microsoft is simply a hard place for to accumulate wide authority over design, which is required to make coherent visions, user experiences and innovations come true. Worse, it's rare for leaders to acknowledge death by too many cooks since those who have never worked elsewhere, and have no conception of creative process, can't imagine any other way. The culture has always been a heavily consensus/collaboration driven place for managers, which waters down ideas, and shifts what goes out the door heavily towards conservation.


3. Management at Microsoft is fat with inbred managers who are not worthy of their title, but this has always been true. If you are hired to manage version 5 of something, you inherit a host of decisions made with skills you do not have, yet get credit for anyway. If the team you inherit does good work, and you happen to be the manager, you receive credit, regardless of how little you did. Entire unprofitable, failed divisions, funded by the rest of the company, promote people out of corporate obligation, creating the existence of middle managers who have never actually successfully managed anything in the marketplace. For the 90s, this was MSN and Consumer products, which were perennial failures. The quality pool of people who managed in those divisions was below average and as the company aged more of these groups were born. Microsoft, like all companies, has suffered from the Peter principle, or worse, perhaps the Paul Principle (people who are lousy at even simple management skills but inherit mediocre projects they don't understand, and simply manage not to get fired via their team's noble but unheralded efforts, which hide their shortcomings). As a result, there are line level managers at Microsoft who are more competent than some middle or senior managers. But this has always been true, given the diversity of the company. It's worse now because of the size.


4. Real layoffs would be a blessing. In 1999 when I left the Internet Explorer team (before the ill-fated IE 6.0 release), I looked around the company for other teams to work on. I couldn't believe how many lost, misguided, sad, self-destructive teams I saw. This was in 1999! The company has more than tripled in size since then. Mini-Microsoft is so clearly on the mark about his core ambitions. I don't wish unemployment on anyone, but I'd say a) the ratio of managers to programmers is insanely out of whack b) The number of projects and divisions that have never made profit and are market laggards is obscene. If the company were split apart, few groups are competent enough to survive a year. This defeats the "strategic value" these properties supposedly have, as dumping of buckets of money earned by Office and Windows profits into their bonfires of incompetence does not a strategy make. You need basic leadership competence, which all too many groups at Microsoft don't have (and many never did).


5. Microsoft's best and most inventive work has often been driven by competition. A visible and serious threat is the only situation where leadership, historically, was forced to be creatively aggressive, giving a chance for creatives to obtain enough power to do good work. Windows 95, Office 95, Internet Explorer 5.0, MS Natural Keyboard, XBOX 360 were all excellent products by most standards, and were made possible by strong competition. The question executives need to ask is why divisions like Mobile & MSN,or the entire Vietnam like 15 year history of imploding efforts of web search (there is a great book to be written by someone about this), have been disasters despite clear and strong competition - this is the analysis to post on every office door at the rest of the company.


6. It's lazy arguing to assume an organization of 10,000 or 100,000 is uniform in any way. Groups at Microsoft have a different culture, and some have been wildly more successful than others (e.g. Office vs. MSN/Live/whatever it's called this week) in part because their leaders have developed superior cultures that diverge widely from other groups. Windows 7 is an excellent product no matter how it stands in comparison to Apple's work, and the turnaround from Windows Vista, which many heralded as the end of MSFT, was beyond noteworthy. If Windows 7 or XBOX 360 is made in the same company that makes all the products you hate, you have to realize the limits of painting broad strokes. This is where many critiques of Microsoft fall short, including the one by Brass. They assume uniformity, projecting a local set of experiences in part of the company as the model for the entire company.


7. If you talk only to people who quit and were disgruntled you can't possibly have the whole story. I've never met Dick Brass, but I know the Tablet PC was a commercial failure. As smart as Dick is, its likely he never understood how IE beat Netscape (it was more than the monopoly stuff), or Office beat Lotus/WordPerfect etc. He also might not know the long history of Windows and Office rejecting most requests from most other teams as a matter of both basic sanity and arrogance. Specific to Tablet PC, it started as a Bill Gates pet project. Working with Bill, who Dick curiously never mentions, was no treat, and unlike Steve Jobs, his direct involvement in matters of design is likely not a godsend. Articles like this one reads too much into corporate policies, as many of them are old (e.g. the review process) and good managers have always had ways to work within these rules to reward good employees. I'd agree the processes could be improved, but all the good VPs find ways to bend rules into loopholes.


8. The greatest disease at Microsoft is lack of sharing lessons from failure, especially where innovation is concerned. Microsoft has made many big, visible bets. Many of them have failed, but that's par for the course. The problem is these expensive lessons are swept under the rug, encouraging others in the company to repeat the same mistakes. Everyone loves to make fun of Microsoft Bob, but few can articulate why it failed. If you don't understand why it failed, you don't have any reason for laughing so hard, and you likely aren't half as smart as you think you are. A case study on Vista, MSN Search, Microsoft Bob, The Tablet PC, etc. should be produced by an outside consultant, and stapled on the forehead of every manager at the company, once a day, until they read them all word for word. Then they'd take advantage of Microsoft's so called experience and wisdom. Otherwise, they are being set up to make the same expensive mistakes again and again.


9. The idea of Innovation, and Innovation Systems, is a distraction. Success in the market is a better scorecard and the most reliable source of criticism. Innovation, as the word is used in these articles, is a matter of taste. You can be very inventive and still get your ass kicked. Or do a great job with mostly conventional ideas, and kick more interesting competitors off the field. Apple, if you study their choices, doesn't pull things out of the sky (digital music players, cell phones, and tablet PCs were all established ideas). They enter games others are already playing and kick their ass. But innovation is the least useful lens. The best criticism of Microsoft's management is how, or how not, they've done against their competitors in terms of customer satisfaction. If innovation matters as much as people seem to claim it does, it's well reflected in either market success or customer satisfaction, so worry more about those solid measures, rather than the ethereal notion of who is innovative and who isn't.

Editor's Note: Scott Berkun will be speaking at The Economist's event - "Innovation Fresh Thinking For the Ideas Economy" at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley on March 23-24, 2010. As an added value for our loyal Blogging Innovation readers, we have negotiated a $150 discount when you register using our discount code - "BLINN" - register now.

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Scott Berkun is the bestselling author of "The Myths of Innovation" and "Confessions of a Public Speaker." His blog and lectures can be found at scottberkun.com.

Entrepreneurs and Innovation

"Mr. Edison, please tell me what laboratory rules you want me to observe?"

by Janine de Nysschen

A good friend of mine once sat down to lunch with Stephen Covey and a group of fellow executives. During the course of the meal, one of the men commented on the unusual tablespoons, and said "Look at the backend of it." All the people at the table flipped their spoons over, but my friend - quite unintentionally - angled it up so he could look at the bottom tip of it. Laughter ensued. But Covey raised a hand and pointed out that my friend's actions suggested something interesting in his behavior: the ability to look at the world in an unexpected way. So I guess it's not surprising to hear my friend is one of the most innovative entrepreneurs I know, as well as a successful millionaire who has transformed the industry he is in.

The story reminds me of an important fact. Entrepreneurs are often at the forefront of innovation. They possess a unique set of skills that lends itself to inspired invention and driven change. Really good business solutions and radical transformations in history have one thing in common. Somewhere, someone believed that you could do something better, different or completely new. Someone challenged the status quo or saw failure as an opportunity to try again. Often, those people were entrepreneurs.

One reason is that entrepreneurs tend to see the world around them differently. As Thomas Edison said to his laboratory assistant:


"There ain't no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish somep'n!"


Innovation is most often simply a matter of having a different perspective than everyone else, and the perseverance to make it happen. For example, some of the most creative people I know had learning disabilities growing up. Forced to adapt so they could fit into a rigid school format, many developed alternative ways of making sense of the world.

Tony Buzan, father of the world-renowned creative technique of Mind Mapping, is a point in case. Tony admits he came up with mind maps because he was "doing badly at school." He was also smart enough to realize that the way people were measuring intelligence was rather limited. Quick experiment: in your mind's eye, picture the moon, the sun, the earth and a lemon. Which one is different? While you may be like most people and select lemon as the odd-one-out, Tony would point out that if you were using color as your filter, earth would be odd because it's not yellow.

Innovation is therefore inspired by understanding that there's not always only one right answer. Or realizing you may have an answer to a problem that doesn't yet exist. Did you know that the parachute was invented before powered flight? In a "fascinating facts" piece about Sir James Dyson, you'll read that his inspiration for cyclonic technology happened one day while he was vacuuming his house (in itself, fascinating!) and he realized his top-of-the-line machine was losing suction and getting clogged. Dyson refused to accept there was only one good way to build a vacuum cleaner, and the cyclonic suction, roller-ball Dyson vacuum cleaner was born.

Innovation is also about seeing an idea for what it's really worth. Think about all those stories of accidental invention. Like Wilson Greatbatch back in 1956, who was experimenting with a device he was building to record heartbeats. He grabbed the wrong resistor and connected it, and discovered that the circuit emitted a pulse. Voila, Greatbatch realized his device could be used to control heartbeat, and the pacemaker was invented.

Which brings me to a final point on inspired innovation. I believe the most profound and valuable innovation and creativity has to come from a sense of purpose or a powerful cause - it is unbounded thinking about how to make life and the world more meaningful that leads us to solve great challenges and achieve impossible objectives. Just look at how one company's mission transformed the lives of millions of people: Microsoft, with its tagline of "A PC on every desk." And behind that audacious goal, an inspired cause to find ways for people and things to achieve their greatest potential.

Innovation comes in many forms and is a tool that's wielded well by many entrepreneurs. Having a different perspective has inspired many of Apple's products - simply because Steve Jobs refused to accept that everyday things such as radios and phones and computers had to be mundane and ugly. Ergo: Apple is synonymous with easy, simple and beautiful. Sometimes the entrepreneurial way out has to be invented. Understanding that there's not always only one right answer gave us solutions like Galileo's telescope and Sir James Dyson's vacuum cleaner. Then there are the accidental innovations, like 3M's experimental polymer that turned out to be less of an adhesive and more of a sticky fix that today everyone calls a Post-It^TM note. Ultimately, there's the kind of innovation that really makes this world a better place, because it comes from a passionate sense of purpose. Like Google's search engine, motivated by the cause of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful.

Because entrepreneurs have had the courage to ask questions and take risks - wheels were invented, men learned to fly, machines were made to work more efficiently, and the world has moved forward. The spirit to invent and innovate lies at the heart of true entrepreneurship. Or, to loosely paraphrase Peter Drucker:


innovation is the specific tool that entrepreneurs use to increase their capacity to create wealth.


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Janine de Nysschen uses purpose dynamics to create unique change strategies for difficult problems, helping CEOs and companies increase their impact and performance.

2010 - Beginning of a Touch and Gesture Future?

by Idris Mootee

With the proliferation of multi-touch technologies and innovations, we face an exciting new future of physical interactivity that will be like doing tai-chi.

Will multi-touch become the mainstream interactive experience on small devices? The holy grail of touch interactivity is bringing together the simplicity of hand gestures with deep navigation. Will multitouch create a new user language much as we learn how to type? Imagine when multi-touch is deployed in home appliances such as washing machines and microwave ovens? Gestural commands can be much less obvious to users than those written on buttons and menus and can create a whole new set of challenges. It means more challenge for human factors people.

It is interesting to envision how a broad-based, mass-scale utilization of the technology beyond the iPhone/iTouch/iPad/iDesk. I want to see a digital desk where there are no computers, the surface is the computer and my smartphone connects to the cloud. And I want the desk to look like a Herman Miller Sense desk. I want to have a built-in Skype conference call widget and... oh yes, Facebook on my desk. I guess we need to retrain ourselves to use this, as we need to create a set of hand gestures standards in order to be productive with our digital desk.

Asus already has a dual-screen laptop, still in concept stage, but with a touchscreen instead of a keyboard, opting for a virtual keyboard just like the iPhone. This is a step towards the digital desk. The dual panel offers a flexible working space in which users can adapt to suit their prevailing usage scenarios, for example adjusting the size of the virtual touchpad and keyboard. Through hand gestures, handwriting recognition and multi-touch, users are given with a control surface that is both flexible and intuitive.

The touchscreen display market will be growing from US$2.2 billion this year to US$3.4 billion in 2014 according to NanoMarkets, a research firm. The growing demand for touch-screen technologies in mobile and portable computing will create new opportunities for suppliers of conductive coatings, substrates and sensors in addition to the display firms themselves. Mainstream display makers have begun to develop their own "in-pixel" technologies as an alternative to the current industry practice in which third-party suppliers add a touch sensor subsystem on top of an LCD display and then sell to OEMs. Instead of supplying companies such as HP, LG, Samsung, Toshiba and Sony, these mid-size touchscreen OEM manufacturers may end up competing against them. These companies include FlatFrog, RPO, Microsoft, NextWindow, TouchCo and Vissumo.

In the next 24 months we can expect to see the increasing prevalence of physical and gestural interactivity, beyond the Wii and the iPad. One thing for sure is that we're all going to be dealing with the fun as well as the challenge of interacting with and designing devices in different ways. One big challenge is simply due to the lack of transparency into the "commands" or actions available with a given device or environment, we don't see a switch in the air and there is nothing for us to touch.

Looking into the exciting new future of physical and special interactivity, we will need to create idioms and new vocabulary that are as discoverable and useful as possible. We will find out in 10 years time whether these new touch-based interactive paradigms such as gestural interfaces will be making life easier for us or creating a new interactivity divide between those who can use it and whose who gave up on it. Instead of learning to type like my parent's generation, the next generation may be learning how to do the 'tai-chi' of interactive gestures. Human Factors guys now need to learn tai-chi.


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Bill Gates Coming out of Retirement?

by an Anonymous Microsoftie

When I saw the op-end piece in The New York Times this morning by Dick Brass, I thought it was time to submit an article somewhere about this pattern of facts. I came across Blogging Innovation today and thought it might make an interesting place to cast some daylight on the possibilities. I shouldn't get into any trouble because I am just stating facts and asking questions, and I don't even mention certain names.

So here goes...

Just in the past month there have been some really strange things that by themselves might not amount to much, but if you look at the facts as a collection, it starts to make one wonder if something is up over at Microsoft. Microsoft is in fact my employer and I am the first to admit that I don't know of any secrets on this subject. I am just seeing some odd patterns, and I started to wonder if they add up to Bill Gates coming out of "retirement" to fix Microsoft.





The facts exist in a couple of different categories, and the first is the signs of trouble internally:

1. Systemic problems. In The New York Times today, a former Microsoft executive wrote a lengthy opinion piece called "Microsoft's Creative Destruction" where he lays out some vivid examples of problems within the company - specifically that the Office and Windows franchises have run their course and there are no obvious heirs, despite several attempts that were quashed for personal and political reasons. Very compelling. But it does beg the question - why now? What is the reason for that op-ed piece?


2. Executives are leaving. CFO Chris Liddell did an amazing job as CFO and just left to be the CFO of General Motors, where it has been widely speculated that he will be their next CEO. Senior Vice President Bill Veghte, an almost 20 year veteran also just resigned because he also wants to be the CEO of an organization. Again, why now? Were Liddell and Veghte told that they weren't candidates to be the next CEO? There aren't many people who can come in and take that job.


3. Wall Street disapproval. With a brand new CFO, last week Microsoft announced much higher than expected profits, and the stock dropped. Why? Some have speculated that any time a company like Microsoft misses expectations in either direction that substantially, it is a sign that they don't have a real handle on what's going on. Who has the credibility to get Wall Street excited about Microsoft, there are not a lot of people who could do it quickly.


4. Mostly flat stock for ten years. There have been some big fluctuations, but if you look back at the last ten years, the stock has been basically flat, and that isn't sustainable. Could you imagine what the stock would do if Bill Gates came back to be the CEO?

The other side of this that's intriguing is that Bill Gates has taken on a dramatically more public persona related to his foundation work, from Twitter, to Facebook, to The Daily Show (where he was engaging and funny). Here are some facts that are interesting:

1. Foundation CEO is a close, trusted friend of Bill. Last year, former Microsoft executive Jeff Raikes took the job as CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and for some odd reason agreed to a really big salary even though he made a huge pile of money at Microsoft. So if Bill puts one of his most trusted former Microsoft execs in charge of the foundation, that then makes it possible for him to make time to go fix his "baby" - Microsoft. Why wouldn't Raikes be the one pushing all of these messages for the foundation?


2. Bill is rebranding. For many years, Bill Gates had a bit of a Darth Vader reputation. People literally called Microsoft "the evil empire" and Bill was the leader for all of the anti-competitive things that were alleged to have happen in those days. Now Microsoft is seen by many as irrelevant in discussions about Apple, Google, and IBM. So now, Bill goes out and talks about all of the incredibly cool things his foundation is doing, people are becoming "fans" of his on Facebook by the thousands every day, he's being buddy-buddy with Jon Stewart and he is becoming really cool and really popular, while still being one of the smartest guys in the world. What a great story to have Joe Cool go in to fix his ailing "baby"


3. It wouldn't be the first time. Michael Dell came back to Dell, Jerry Yang came back to Yahoo!, and there are others who have come out of retirement to fix their creation (though not always with storybook endings). Bill is only 53, he's still not that old and he has all of the credibility in the world to come back in and reinvigorate the masses. Why wouldn't he do that with the foundation in the competent hands of Jeff Raikes and Bill's wife Melinda?

As I said, I haven't heard any rumors about this, but it certainly makes for an interesting narrative and it would explain a lot of the above. Personally, I think it would be great to see and Microsoft people would do backflips to have Bill back at the helm, Google would cringe, and Wall Street would cheer and I would bet on a storybook ending.

So hopefully Bill is considering coming out of retirement, and he can take Bill Brass's op-ed piece as input into imagining what is needed at Microsoft.


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Our Anonymous Microsoftie would prefer to remain anonymous so we have not included his or her picture here. If you have any inside information to add, please add a comment or contact us.

Will Apple or Microsoft Dominate Home Energy Management?

by Idris Mootee

Home energy management is hot and I've seen more than a dozen of companies having a very similar approach. It is almost hopeless for small start-ups to play this same, as many deep pockets have been working on this for a long time. Whirlpool and energy retailer Direct Energy have joined forces to showcase what the energy efficient home of the future will look like at the CES. I've seen some cool stuff from them.

I don't think anyone have nailed it yet. Whirlpool Home Energy Manager (HEM) includes appliances that tap into a unified network to communicate how much energy they are using, when, why, and how much it is costing. This type of data transmission is what will eventually make it possible for your clothing dryer to know to turn on after your washing machine has finished the cycle. Or let you finish watching your 7.2 Dolby home movie before the oven starts baking. The goal is to optimize the use the of energy between all appliances.



User experience design is still one big challenge and OpenPeak is doing a pretty decent job. They have an iPhone like touch-screen dashboard to manage appliances to run at certain times, use that to change settings and to display consumption data. There are many other players such as Tendril, EnergyHub, People Power, Control4, and OPOWER. Whirlpool appliances, Lennox thermostats and OpenPeak dashboards together create the product package and Direct Energy will be testing the market in Houston.


The latest player, guess who, is Apple. They just filed an application this week called the Intelligent Power Monitoring that allow people to reduce energy use by giving them tools to manage how connected devices are powered. Users could get recommendations on when to schedule gadget charging to take advantage of off-peak rates, for example. Or the electronics controller could put devices in hibernate mode after a set amount of time. Users could have a display, such as an LCD screen, or a movable projector to control these tasks and monitor electricity use. No question this will be the coolest one.



Apple talks about power management in its patent application as: "Some personal computers sometimes are being left on simply to serve as power supplies for the charging of the aforementioned portable devices via connections, such as USB connections, that provide power in addition to data (rather than charging those devices from the household electric service using their dedicated chargers), even though the power supply of a personal computer is much larger than is needed for such a function, and as such draws much more power than such a function would otherwise demand. As the price of electricity increases, such uses of power can cost users more."



This is definitely going to be another platform play, both from a standard and user experience perspectives. Microsoft is also active in this space and giving away its energy management tool Hohm to consumers for free. Distribution is a key factor here and both Apple and Microsoft has no apparent advantages. Is this going to be Microsoft vs Apple all over gain?


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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Innovation Perspectives - 911 Call for Innovation and Revolution

This is the fourth of several 'Innovation Perspectives' articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on 'What product or sector is in desperate need of innovation?'. Here is the next perspective in the series:

by Ric Merrifield

I define innovation as figuring out a way to accomplish the same outcome, the "what" we do, in a way that doesn't resemble "how" we used to do it. Flight check-in over the web doesn't resemble the experience of talking to the airline employee at the counter, but it accomplishes the same three outcomes (confirming a reservation, conducting a survey, and managing logistics when there is luggage). A revolution, by contrast, I would define as an innovation that results in a dramatically different, or richer experience. E-mail and text messaging haven't just replaced prior forms of communication, they have revolutionized the way we communicate in ways we couldn't imagine 20 years ago.

Right now, I see very distinct places where innovation is desperately needed, and at the same time, I see a place where a revolution isn't quite overdue, but it's getting there.

The most urgent innovation needs are in U.S. health care and energy. People in Washington are chipping away at ways to improve the administration of health care and the role of insurers and doctor incentives, and while I will grant that those are all big messes that need cleaning up, that's not where the greatest need is. The greatest need is to stop people from needing to see the doctor in the first place and the way to do that is managing wellness in a structured, disciplined way. People get there insurance through their work in the US, and the companies should mandate regular checkups and the insurers should provide statistics (not at the individual level - for obvious privacy reasons) as to where the risks are and then invest in wellness programs accordingly.

Just at Microsoft alone, if they don't take action on diabetes and obesity alone, in less than six years they will have to spend about $70 million more each year - and most of that will be avoided if the high risk employees lose just six pounds before they turn 46 (source: The American Diabetes Association, and Microsoft Corporation). People ask about the return on investment from wellness programs - there it is. Energy - this one is harder but more obvious. The car replaced the horse, we need something to replace our dependency on petrochemicals. I don't know where it will come from, waves, wind, cold fusion, whatever, but we need it soon.

As for where the revolution is needed, or why, I would say we need it because we are in a new era - the era I will call post-decentralization.

We grew up in a world of a finite number of TV stations, the record labels decided what music we would listen to, and we all got newspapers (all very centralized sources of news, entertainment, music, and information). Now, we are in a very different world that includes social networking, YouTube, blogs, iTunes, and the iPhone. Most of the sources information, music and content have become almost cartoonishly decentralized.

That's great from a control perspective, but except for those who are really on top of it all, it's hard for people to feel comfortable that they are getting connected to the right stuff that's most aligned with their needs and interests. We need innovations to do better match making between consumers and all of these decentralized sources of apps and content. I shouldn't have to find the best news articles, blogs, video clips, and music, they should find me based on who I am and what I am interested in. I happen to have some ideas on how that will happen - but that is going to allow us to really fulfill the potential of the internet, and it will be awesome.


You can check out all of the 'Innovation Perspectives' articles from the different contributing authors on 'What product or sector is in desperate need of innovation?' by clicking the link in this sentence.

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Ric Merrifield is known at the "Business Scientist" at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA and is the author of "Rethink". He blogs about ways to rethink through getting out of what he calls "the 'how' trap".

Microsoft - Apple - Google in Tablet Battle

by Braden Kelley

2010 may be the year of the man purse, and it will be very interesting to see what people to choose to put in the new gadget bag they will keep close at hand.

In this article we've got a video sneak preview of another potential Apple Tablet application, and two videos of what Microsoft's entry into the tablet wars might look like. Microsoft might actually fire the first shot in the tablet wars at this week's Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Apple (iSlate) and Microsoft (along with HP) are both already trying to re-imagine what my be possible in the mobile computing environment, and I'm sure Google with join the fray soon (along with HTC). The key thing to watch here though is not the technology that the companies come up with, but the changes that we are going to start seeing in people's computing behavior. That will be the fascinating bit. Computing is about to undergo a major transformation, and while I would rather see an extensible mobile phone than a proliferation of new devices, I think they'll help us get there.

First let's take a look at a video sneak preview of Microsoft's Courier:





And then here is another video showing a conceptualization of how Microsoft thinks people might use it:





And finally, Coursesmart, a digital-publishing joint venture of five major textbook publishers,looks to move beyond their current iPhone and iPod Touch offerings to woo students to adopt their planned eTextbooks for the planned Apple Tablet in place of regular textbooks. Check out the video here:





So what do you think?

Which device would you like to have close at hand in your gadget bag?

Follow the link for another sneak preview of a magazine application for the Apple Tablet.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

What Innovation Could an Apple Tablet Offer?

by Braden Kelley

With all of the internet chatter about Apple's rumored tablet computer, I've been asking myself two questions:

1. Does it make sense for Apple to make a tablet computer?
2. What innovation could an Apple tablet offer?

These questions are not as easy to answer as they may appear at first glance. The main reason? When it comes to technology, just because technically you can make something, it doesn't mean commercially that you should. Technology often begins maturing before consumers are aware of the need or pain that the solution addresses and before the minds of consumers can visualize how it fits into their lives. So, when we look at the Apple tablet chatter and Question #1, we have to ask ourselves:

What is the proven or imminent customer need that an Apple table computer would resolve?

Tablet computers have been around for decades and Tablet PCs have been around since 2001 (offered by multiple vendors including Toshiba, HP, etc.). Tablet PC's have achieved very low market penetration in that eight years (outside of certain vertical success stories), but still every manufacturer has one.

There is already a MacOS driven tablet computer for sale - the Modbook - and it is not exactly flying off the shelves. Competitors are making noise about new tablet computers, too. Microsoft is reportedly working to launch a new Tablet PC platform called Microsoft Courier and there are reports of Android-based tablets coming soon too. All this noise despite Tablet PC sales being only a small fraction of overall PC sales. So what gives?

Well, computer manufacturers believe that a shift may occur to a new computing form factor in the same way that PC sales started shifting from desktop computers to laptop computers a few years ago. But despite Tablet PC's being out before netbooks by several years, it was the netbook that took off, not the Tablet PC.

At the same time, consumers are shifting a portion of their computing from desktops and laptops (and even netbooks) to the emerging class of always-connected handheld computers (Apple iPhone, Motorola Droid, new Blackberry devices, Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, etc.). Hardware manufacturers are making their bets now and have been for the last several years to maintain a complete product range and guard against any potential shift away from desktop and laptop PC's. There are even rumors that Dell may make a mobile phone.

If Apple launches a Tablet PC, they will not be successful, but I don't think that a traditional Tablet PC is what Apple is looking at. Apple does not launch me-too products. Apple seeks to launch products that offer greater value than the competition and products with new benefits so that they can justify higher prices and margins than the competition.

In isolation, my answer to Question #1 would be - No, it does not make sense, for Apple to make a tablet computer. There is no proven customer need that an Apple Tablet PC could solve.

BUT, there are some imminent customer needs that Apple could solve, IF it could create enough compelling innovation (see Question #2).


So what innovation could Apple offer and how would it satisfy imminent customer needs?

Well, electronic book readers haven't exactly taken off yet (Amazon still won't disclose how many Kindles they've sold - always a sign of hype), but prices are dropping and the recognition of their value in the minds of consumers is growing.

At the same time, most households own one or more portable DVD players and often one or more gaming consoles (including portable gaming devices) and one or more portable music devices. These taken together with the emerging market for electronic book readers, represents a huge number of portable entertainment devices.

Now, the screens for an electronic book reader and other portable entertainment devices are very different, but could Apple find a way to combine the two types of screens together in a single device? The Barnes & Noble Nook does this in a very primitive way. Apple could create some very interesting innovations to create a whole new form factor and create a whole new portable entertainment device category at the same time, one that:

1. Combines an e-ink display with a color LED-backlit LCD


2. Wirelessly connects to an iMac, Macbook, wireless keyboard, projector or other peripherals


3. Connects to your HD television


4. Is good enough at gaming to challenge game consoles for living room supremacy


5. Would provide a better video viewing experience than an iPod Touch or iPhone


6. Has the potential to disrupt the book industry even further


7. Has the potential to disrupt the video gaming and DVD markets even further


8. Has the potential to disrupt the Mac applications market (expanded App Store anyone?)


9. Integrates new human-computer interfaces like the iPhone did when it came out


10. Does something else that I can't imagine because I'm not close enough to the technology

This list, along with the imminent customer needs, makes it look reasonable for Apple to launch another portable form factor, but it doesn't make sense to bring out a device in the $1,000-$2,000 price range. So, if Apple comes out with a tablet, it won't be a computer per se, but more likely a portable entertainment device that happens to also have some computing capabilities. Kind of like the iPhone...

What do you think? Will Apple do it?

Will new display technology like that of Pixel Qi allow Apple to disrupt the Kindle by offering a device that combines the readability of an e-ink screen with the color and video capabilities of an LCD?

Will you buy one in the $499-599 price range? What about for $299-399 range if it is subsidized by a mobile carrier (probably Verizon or Sprint)?

Can this concept succeed until 4G is broadly available (2011 or 2012 for the USA)?

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Is Search Killing the Planet?

Everytime you search on Google, you are adding to the consumption of 1% of the world's energy

by Idris Mootee

Here is a lesser-known fact. Data centers use up tons of energy just for cooling, and in a typical data center only 40-45% of energy use is for the actual computing - the rest is used mostly for cooling down the servers. Data centers' emissions of carbon dioxide have been running at around one third of those of airlines, but are growing 10% a year and now approach levels of entire countries such as Argentina or the Netherlands.

Apple is building its own server farm. Apple has secured a $300 million tax cut from North Carolina politicians in exchange for investing $1 billion over nine years for a so-called technology "hub." Wonder why Apple needs such a big server farm? There's only one reason, Apple is contemplating a large-scale strategic shift to deliver multiple applications as a service on an enhanced Apple device, which I think will be entertainment related.

Back to the energy saving topic, here's one of the greenest data centers on earth which will be housed in a massive cave beneath an orthodox Christian cathedral in Helsinki. It is a former bomb shelter carved into the rock by the fire brigade in World War Two as a refuge for city officials from Russian air raids. Excess heat from hundreds of computer servers will be captured and fed into the district's heating network, a system of water-heated pipes used to warm homes in the city. This makes perfect sense and I don't see why these server farms need to be in California. Should we move all our servers to Scandinavia, Northern Canada and Alaska?

Data centers such as those run by Google already use around 1% of the world's energy, and their demand for power is rising fast with the trend to outsource computing. Every time you search on Google, you are adding to the consumption of that 1%. Research firm Gartner issued four recommendations for improving energy management for corporations:

• Raise the temperature at the server inlet point up to 71 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius), but use sensors to monitor potential hotspots.


• Develop a dashboard of datacenter energy-efficient metrics that provides appropriate data to different levels of IT and financial management.


• Use the SPECpower benchmark to evaluate the relative energy efficiency of servers.


• Improve the use of the existing infrastructure through consolidation and virtualization before building out or buying new/additional datacenter floor space.

Some called this the Moore's Law of data centers, the growth of cooling requirements parallels the growth of computing power, which roughly doubles every 18 months. That has brought the energy challenge of data centers to the top of the list. Have you come across any innovation allows waste heat from servers or data centers to be recycled (or managed) in a non-traditional way that conserves energy? There must be a solution.

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Idris Mootee is the CEO of idea couture, a strategic innovation and experience design firm. He is the author of four books, tens of published articles, and a frequent speaker at business conferences and executive retreats.

Optimizing Innovation - Joe Boggio and Michael Steep of Microsoft

by Braden Kelley


We are happy to bring you some of the key points and insights from Joe Boggio and Michael Steep's talk at the Optimizing Innovation Conference, which was held October 21-22, 2009 in New York City.

Joe Boggio, Director of Innovation Management Solutions and Michael Steep, Chief of Operations at Microsoft spoke about:

• Innovation at Microsoft


• Building Open Innovation Competencies


• Technology Enabled Innovation

Mike Steep sits on a team that looks at cross-Microsoft innovations. Innovation at Microsoft from amongst its 90,000 people, breaks down time horizons as follows:

• Present -> Product Groups (40,000 in product groups)


• 2-4 yrs -> Microsoft Labs (maybe 200 in the lab environment)


• 5-10 yrs -> Microsoft Research (800-1000)

The challenge Microsoft has is leveraging their technical capability to lead the industry in a new way in the future, while working against the challenge of the short-term focus of each product group.

There are three main innovation processes at Microsoft:

1. Think Week - any employee can write a paper about a topic - 300+ papers used to be read by Bill Gates, but Steve Ballmer and execs do now


2. High level architecure process


3. Trying to figure out ways to bring customers into the process

Microsoft is in all of the top 100 companies and unfortunately, talking to our customers sometimes results in more short-term thinking being fed back by customers.

They've built a new Innovation Outreach Program:

• They talked to lots of the leading 100 companies and their innovation leaders


• They themselves as matchmakers in matching people newer to innovation with those farther along


• Strategy & implementation are key challenges for innovation leaders


• They now are engaged with 15 companies and out of that 6 joint ventures have emerged from among the companies


• After bringing together ten non-competing companies and government agencies, the biggest value they said was the ability for them to talk to each other. They didn't tend to call each other before the gathering.


• They've found the business model discussion to be as important as the technical discussion (the Innovation Outreach Program)

The Microsoft approach to innovation management leverages SharePoint:


Engage -> Evolve -> Evaluate -> Execute


Microsoft is leveraging partner network to create business models for product prototypes they are working on, and bringing their offering to market as software via Codeplex and as services via Microsoft Consulting.

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Microsoft's Vision for 2019

I found this video showing how Microsoft imagines we might interact with technology in the world in 2019, and I can't say that I agree with what they find to be compelling real world uses for future technology.

As I watched the video, I saw lots of things that were visually interesting but very little that would deliver increased productivity or true value in terms of time or money savings.



Most of what they are imagining I find to be visual noise, that would actually decrease productivity and overload the brain.

The most compelling thing I saw was the digital white board that they quickly skipped over.

Second most compelling was the plant identification by video input example. If you expand that to showing the computer just about anything and receiving back information about what you are seeing, it could be a very valuable educational tool.

What do you see in this video that is compelling?

@innovate

My Experience with Cisco TelePresence

I had the opportunity to experience a conference today using Cisco's TelePresence to connect four locations (New York, New Jersey, Seattle, and Silicon Valley) and Cisco's WebEx to connect scores more people on the internet. It was supposed to be five physical locations, but London got ten inches of snow overnight and so they did not join.

The conference ran for five hours and I must say that the high definition video ran flawlessly, and there were only minor glitches in getting people's computers synched up with the projector. The system seamlessly switched amongst the four locations on our three flat panels, based on who was talking, and the sound was crystal clear.

Not bad for $300,000 (for the 3-screen Cisco TelePresence 3000). I'm sure it will get cheaper over time, but I can only imagine that there must be renewed interest with the reduced travel budgets at most companies today.

It is hard to fully explain the experience, but life-size imagery and high-definition with directional audio is a leap ahead of any video conferencing system I've experienced (including Microsoft Office Roundtable). The additional benefits of Microsoft Outlook integration, screen sharing and easy operation would make it a very intriguing purchase for any company with distributed teams.

Additional Links:
On-stage experience
Promotional Video (more details)

What do you think?

@innovate

Innovating Through Downturns

While most individuals and organizations natural reaction to an economic downturn is fear and retrenchment, they also present a time of great opportunity.

Where would Microsoft be if they hadn't continued investing through the downturn of the early 90's?

• Microsoft may never have finished the hugely successful Windows 95.

Where would Apple be if they hadn't continued investing through the technology crash of 2001-2003?

• Apple may never have fully realized the promise of the iPod and subsequent iPhone.

When a recession arrives, great opportunity presents itself:

• The unemployment rate increases (more available workers)


• Interest rates drop (lower cost of capital)


• People become fearful of losing their jobs making it easier to recruit from companies reducing or eliminating their innovation investments (increased labor mobility)


• People are more open to moving if a spouse's job is eliminated or at risk (increased labor mobility)


• When a recession arrives, it is easier to acquire tax breaks or other incentives for expansion, new sites, etc. (lower investment costs)

So, if companies have positive cash flows or significant amounts of cash on their balance sheet, or promising ideas to invest in, then there is no better time to invest. Companies with the courage and financial capability to invest in innovation through a downturn, absolutely should.

In addition to all of the other benefits, there is no better opportunity to achieve competitive separation through continued investment in innovation.

It does, however, take a strong CEO and steady board to have the courage and conviction to make such an investment. Innovation is not a perfect science and requires a tolerance for failure and a long-term commitment.

In today's short-term Wall Street quarterly profit-driven corporate reality, investors' short-term outlook may be the biggest impediment of all. But, smart organizations will find strategic solutions to overcome this impediment.

Organizations should take the following strategic actions to maintain or expand their innovation initiatives, despite the current global economic downturn:

1. Secure the leadership flexibility capable of continuing to invest in innovation despite financial pressures


2. Identify resources that you would like to have had access to during good times, that you might now have access to such as:


• Labor in scarce specialties


• Affordable capital


• Scarce real estate


3. Increase competitive monitoring to identify opportunities that may be created in areas where the competition reduces previous innovation investment


4. Increase customer research to identify opportunities to refine your ability to deliver products and services that deliver increased customer value, ideally at lower cost


5. Improve your innovation processes to improve your ability to innovate more quickly and effectively than your competition


6. Improve your organizational agility to increase its flexibility to adapt to changes in market conditions caused by the downturn and to shift resources efficiently and with increased speed

Organizations that take these necessary strategic actions, will come out the other side stronger than the competition, stronger than ever before, and create opportunities to preserve or attain market leadership.

Happy innovating!

Floating Storage

I came across an interesting article highlighting that the global power consumption of the data centers comprising the Internet consumed 1 percent of the world's electricity in 2005. The growth in broadband and multimedia usage would put the 2008 number closer to 2-3% of the total by my estimation. According to McKinsey, the carbon footprint of the Internet will be larger than that of air travel by 2020.

The other focus of the article was how:

- Sun Microsystems is putting a data center in an abandoned coal mine to cut electricity costs in half of what the would be at ground level
- Microsoft is investigating putting data centers in the cold climate of Siberia
- Google is investigating the creation of "data barges" that would utilize wave energy and escape property taxes by being stationed seven miles offshore

It is good that big data center technology consumers like Microsoft and Google are looking into power conservation at the same time that hardware vendors like Sun and Intel are finally starting to pay at least a little attention to how much energy their components or solutions consume.

Now what we need is Google to combine the wave action power with solar panels on five sides and maybe a wind turbine or two on masts for good measure.

Or maybe burying them might be a bit easier...

What do you think?

Follow-up: Other People's Money

Just came across a Seattle Times article talking about how Microsoft is going to produce digital short films for Xbox Live.

Buried in the article in a single sentence was the following:

"The pilots will also be distributed over MSN and Zune."

So, Microsoft is halfway home by starting to produce content that people might find interesting.

Now they should leverage the infrastructure they are putting in place to produce content and partner with Microsoft Advertising to make and distribute content that site owners will find useful.

As we discussed in the original article, producing and syndicating useful content in key verticals then might encourage small site owners in those verticals to switch from Google Adwords, and lead to a larger query share for Live Search down the road...

What do you think?

Other People's Money

As Google's share of the search business approaches 70%, Microsoft is left needing a bold move to remain relevant.

While Live Search is a good product, Cashback will not save them from the Google monster.

Let's look at the problem that they are trying to solve. Or rather, let's look at what Microsoft is trying to achieve in the search business. Ultimately, Microsoft is trying to become the ad platform of choice. Being the search engine of choice would be nice too, but it is not their primary goal.

So if Microsoft wants to be the ad platform of choice, what do they need to do?

Well, first they need to become the number one choice for contextual advertising distribution. This should be the primary goal. Moving up in search engine popularity should be a secondary goal. If Microsoft marshalled their resources towards dominating contextual advertising, search popularity would follow as a byproduct. Why?

Well, if you run a blog or some other kind of site, and Microsoft is sending you a check every month, are you not at least a little more likely to use Microsoft Live Search as your default search engine?

What then happens if Microsoft offers to add cashback from personal Live Search behavior to contextual advertising syndication payment accounts?

What then happens if Microsoft partners with Amazon or NewEgg to offer discounts on Microsoft merchandise to contextual advertising distributors through a gift certificate conversion scheme?

Finally, what then happens if Microsoft tries to help solve the content creation challenge that millions of small site operators face?

It costs money to create content for your site. What if Microsoft offered site owners relevant ad-supported content for their site for free (possibly focusing on key verticals)?

Mmmm.... It's starting to add up...

More content on site... More visitors...

Would that be a bad thing? Wouldn't everyone win?

So, what are you waiting for Microsoft?

Your opportunity is here, your opportunity is now...

What do you think?

Battle for Mobile Dominance Escalates

Lest anyone thought that Apple and Google's latest assaults on Nokia's dominance in the mobile space would go unchallenged, news came out today that Nokia is acquiring the rest of Symbian that it did not already own.

This would be interesting news by itself, but Nokia, recognizing that its future as a handset manufacturer is at risk ratcheted up the competition at the same time.

How are they doing this?

By making the bold and correct move of making Symbian instantly the largest open source mobile platform through its transfer to an entity called the Symbian Foundation. Nokia really has no other choice but to make this move. RIM is evolving to become a more capable competitor, PALM and Motorola are both making their last ditch efforts to save themselves, Samsung and HTC continue to gather strength, Apple is opening up and poised to gain significant share, and Google has already launched an open source platform.

So who stands to lose the most as a result of Nokia's move?

Probably Google...

Google launched the android platform to try and ensure their search advertising dominance moves from the desktop/laptop world into the mobile world. Developers looking for an open source solution for their applications (corporate or otherwise) are more likely to choose a more robust and widely adopted OS like Symbian now that they have the choice.

And also Microsoft...

Windows Mobile has the advantage of trying to pair with Windows Live and Windows Vista, but with open source Symbian on one side and Apple on the other, Microsoft may end up stuck in the middle. Not quite as a elegant as the Apple offering, and more expensive and closed than the Symbian offering. Now of course Linux hasn't overtaken Windows in the PC market, but the mobile market is more of a green field and people are still defining their expectations of a mobile OS. Unfortunately this environment favors Symbian and Apple.

Which of those two will win the race, remains to be seen...

What do you think?

iPhone Pro Update

For those skeptics out there who doubt that Apple will launch an iPhone Pro sometime between October 2008 and January 2009 at Macworld, check out this BusinessWeek article. The synopsis is that the iPhone 3G is $53/unit cheaper to manufacture than the original iPhone according to analysts. This puts the cost to produce the iPhone 3G at $173 versus $226 for the original iPhone, and they go further to predict that iPhone 3G costs will fall to $148 in 2009. They go further to estimate that Apple is selling the iPhone 3G to Apple for $499, leaving Apple a huge $281 profit per unit (or about 56%).

This means there is plenty of room for Apple to drop the price of the iPhone 3G to AT&T when they are ready to launch the iPhone Pro, in order to support AT&T dropping the iPhone 3G 8GB to $99, $49 or even free.

Now that Apple has embraced the subsidy model and launched the AppStore, they have a lot to gain by getting to a free phone as soon as possible to boost their volume and increase their chance of winning the mobile application platform battle. Even if Apple doesn't win this battle and only continues on their current desktop/laptop share accumulation trajectory they stand to make big money through increased desktop and laptop sales.

Microsoft has good reason to be obsessed with Apple...