Bruce MacVarish Notes

The Story of Nike+

Stefan Olander is VP of Digital Sport at Nike and co-author of The Laws of Velocity.  Under his leadership, Nike is transitioning to a digital product + services company and is innovating in a number of ways to change their relationship with users.

"It used to be that when you bought a product, that was the end of the relationship. It's classic marketing. 'Great, you bought the product. See you in a year, when the next campaign comes along.' That thinking has flipped on its head.

Now, the purchase of any Nike product needs to be the beginning of the relationship we have with the consumer."

Stefan Olander, @soland

The Story of Nike+ and the lessons learned during Nike's shift from innovating products to innovating at the intersection of user experiences, behaviors and goals is inspirational and instructive.

 

Stefan Olander: Running Nike's Digital Strategy

 

Cooperation Flows

I've posted before of the shift toward conversations and relationships within the enterprise and how new value and productivity would come from flow based collaboration apps.

I believe the enterprise is:

• Being redefined around people - not tasks or processes
• Improving productivity by unlocking people's conversations and relationships - not focusing on transactions
• Delivering new value through the flow of my many, loosely coupled interactions of cooperation - not tightly coupled, structured constraints of collaboration.

I found alignment and agreement with these points when reading JP Rangaswami's insightful summary of how workflows of the past are different from collaboration flows of today.

 

JP writes:

"Workflows, like trains, worked in well-defined, closed systems.

Collaboration flows, on the other hand, are like rivers and oceans.

As the Cluetrain guys said, markets are conversations. The oceans and rivers of collaboration flows include all these conversations. The conversations themselves are manifestations of relationships, some bilateral, some multilateral. Sometimes they lead to transactions, surfaced by the capability as seen in the context.

What are these conversations? There’s nothing special about them. Here’s a loose classification of the types of conversations one would see in the workplace:

• Questions needing answers (Hey, how do I do this? Here’s how. Where can I find this? Here it is. Who really knows this? Here’s who)
• Sharing of experiences (I just installed this app, and it was *useless*. Here’s why. I just read this book and it was *fantastic. Here’s why)
• Feedback (I really found your answer helpful. I couldn’t have done this without you.)
• Social filtering (I rate this answer more than the others. I think you should see this so I will +1 it or Like it or RT it.)
• Status reporting (I’m here doing this, I’m there doing that)
• Alerts potentially needing action (If THIS then THAT, coming from a litany of sources)

...and a little later...

These conversations have been going on for aeons. But there’s one major difference. And that is this: the conversations are recorded. Persisted. Archived. So they’re auditable. Searchable. Findable. Besides this, there are other significant differences:

• The conversations are made visible immediately , in real-time
• They come wrapped in context, auto date and time stamped, author identified, location mapped, topic tagged
• The context can be enriched by other participants
• They’re channel- and device-independent; conversations can start in one medium, move to another. They can start on blogs, move to twitter, move to synchronous sound.
• They’re time- and space-shiftable. Synchronous and asynchronous. Mobile in design.
• They work on “publish-subscribe” networked models rather than broadcast and hierarch

I'm also reminded of this comparison of Collaboration vs. Cooperation by @shiftctrlesc and a number of posts by Stowe Boyd about cooperation, flows and the future of work.

As a result of the above, while JP makes a distinction between workflows and collaboration flows, I believe we should make the same type of distinction between collaboration flows and cooperation flows.

For me, the enterprise is being rebuilt around people, conversations and relationships powered by many, many loosely coupled interactions and cooperation flows.

Social by Design: Design Thinking & Business

I came across another insightful presentation from David Armano (@armano) ... this time on Design Thinking & Business.

My favorite line:

"Design Thinking gets us thinking holistically and differently".

Social by Design: Design Thinking & Business

View more presentations from David Armano

Google Unlocks Voice Data

Google announced that starting today, you can download a copy of all your Google Voice and other communications data.  

This is a huge move by Google that unlocks new value for end users, for application vendors and advertisers by enabling new ways to benefit from our communications and conversation data.

The value of voice communications is no longer found in the connecting of conversations but rather in the data, analytics and relevance derived from the conversation content.

 

 

 

Games @ Work

I wanted to refresh my thinking on the Guiding Principles of Game Design @ Work from my earlier post. 

 

The Guiding Principles for Games @ Work were focused on making it easy for collaboration leaders and business users to:

1. Define clear boundaries, shared problem(s) and a community of collaborative business users

 

2. Assign satisfying tasks or roles that enable business users to excel and be part of something "Bigger"

 

3. Build nonmonetary incentives into a game economy to strongly motivate individuals to accomplish group aims.

 

4. Deliver hyper- transparency of information about users' skills and teams’ real-time performance 

 

5. Create a virtual economic marketplace for information and collaboration

 

6. Open multiple real-time sources of information and communication upon which to make decisions

 

7. Structure as a project-oriented organization that can easily be disbanded and reformed based on tasks and skills

 

8. Recognize individual, group and company achievements in a clear, specific way

 

9. Open visibility into all skills / project / social networks of communication across an organization

 

10. Adapt multiple, purpose-specific communications mediums to improve speed and efficiency of collaboration. 

 

With a little vision, strategy and design, it is not hard to see how game design principles will be shaping the future of communication and collaboration applications.

 

Evolution of the Enterprise Applications Industry

John Mancini, the President of AIIM International, provides his perspective on the evolution of enterprise IT in one slide:

Personally, I like the way John describes the shift from managing "a web page" to managing "a conversation" as we see systems of engagement emerge in the enterprise... but...

While the balance of the slide is specific to Enterprise IT and the companies that define the era include traditional enterprise players like IBM, Digital and Microsoft, it isn't clear to me that Google and Facebook have had the same level of ENTERPRISE impact (yet?).

If you dig a little at this line of thinking, you clearly see that each era was/is defined by a number of different sources of value and competitive advantage.  

With a hat-tip to insights gained from the work of Geoffrey Moore, Umair Haque, John Hagel, Valdis Krebs and others, I like to describe the transition we're seeing in the enterprise applications industry this way:

 

Combining the two models, we have a hint at the opportunity for enterprise application vendors moving forward.   Helping users manage conversations, relationships and transactions with and across the enterprise is a significant source of new value and growth.

A couple of questions to consider as the enterprise application industry evolves to a "network of information nodes":

1. Will Google or Facebook be "the best known" enterprise vendor as outlined by John in the Social and Cloud era?

2. What comes after the Social and Cloud era?

LoSoPhoMo and Mobile Enterprise Pure-Plays

Steve Rubel believes the next media disruptors are Mobile Pure-Plays.  I agree.  

From Steve's post:

"Now a new era is under way.

The next wave of media disruptors are laser focused on being tailored, rather than retrofitted, for mobile devices. They start out sometimes just as apps, creating a strong beachhead in your pocket. Then they use these platforms to springboard into other ancillary media ventures. This means they're cut from a different cloth than older stalwarts that often need to retrofit themselves for mobile.

With Internet consumption on mobile devices set to surpass the same on PCs next year, according to Morgan Stanley, and US smart phone penetration to hit 50%, Nielsen says, mobile is no longer the tail on the media dog. For the next wave of media upstarts, it's the dog and the rest is the tail.

We're at the very beginning of a new era in media; one where mobile is the primary distribution platform. What's more, we have a perfect storm of technologies coming together that combine local, social, photo and mobile (what we call "LoSoPhoMo") and this is sure to spur even more media companies that are pure-plays at least at the start."

Steve is focused on the next wave of media.  For me, the question is what does a disruptive mobile pure-play strategy look like for the enterprise when it takes advantage of the very same LoSoPhoMo - local, social, photo and mobile technologies Steve identifies as drivers for media disruption.

In many ways, the emergence and evolution of consumer focused Web 2.0 applications and strategy served as a proxy for key elements of Enterprise 2.0.  

So, it is not too far of a stretch that the emergence of Mobile Pure-Plays and their evolution along a new transmedia arc may provide insight into the evolution of the mobile enterprise.

For example, one strategy could be starting as a Mobile Enterprise Pure-Play and evolving to a --->

    - Mobile Enterprise Web App ---> 

    - Mobile Enterprise Cloud --->

    - Mobile Enterprise Device --->

    - Mobile Enterprise ?

Ambient & Incidental Media

“We look at the near future, a universe next door in which media travels freely onto surfaces in everyday life. A world of media that speaks more often, and more quietly..."

“In contrast to a Minority Report future of aggressive messages competing for a conspicuously finite attention, these sketches show a landscape of ignorable surfaces capitalising on their context, timing and your history to quietly play and present in the corners of our lives.”

Media surfaces: Incidental Media from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

It is interesting to think about how ambient and incidental design could improve contextual communication applications that integrate location, social and personal data.

(via Bruce Sterling )

Designing for Displayers (not Consumers)

Luke Wroblewski points to Geoffrey Miller's presentation at the Warm Gun Design Conference and his opening keynote "Evolution & The Central 6 Traits that Make Consumers Tick" on how evolutionary psychology explains why people put their possessions on display for others.

While Luke and Geoffrey focus on consumers, it is interesting to think about how this approach to design might influence product design for business users.  

Clearly, "business displayers" exist within the enterprise.  As the consumerization of IT continues to evolve, treating business users as "business displayers" may dramatically change the approach and design of business products.   

Here's a video of Professor Miller's presentation:

 

In addition, Luke does a nice job summarizing Miller's points.  I highlight a few below: 

Display not Consumption

People don’t buy products just to consume them. They buy them to display them.

Consumption (as in consumer) is a misleading term. While it’s true most animals spend all their time foraging for things to consume, display reaches much more deeply. Display is a highly natural instinct it pervades the animal world in mating, territory marking, and more.

What People Display

What do consumers want to display about themselves?

Central six mental traits: we are driven unconsciously to display these traits to anyone who will listen:

1.  
   1. intelligence,
   2. openness, 
   3. conscientiousness, 
   4. agreeableness, 
   5. stability, 
   6. extraversion. 

The last five are “the big 5” personality traits.

All 6 of these traits are fundamental and ancient across all species; they are genetically heritable; stable across life & cultures; attractive to mates, friends, kin; and can be judged and measured accurately.

If you are unhappy with someone it is usually because they fall short on some of these traits. We have evolved thousands of words to describe these traits.

Intelligence: verbal, spatial, social, emotional. All of these are correlated.

Openness: novelty, fantasy, aesthetics, liberalism, globalism. Most product creators are more open then their audience. Any advertisement that feature openness will appeal to some and alienate others. Openness drives rapid acceleration of new brands.

Conscientiousness: discipline, planning, ambition, order. The ability to plan ahead.

Agreeableness: kindness, honesty, modesty, tenderness.

Extraversion: last surviving trait from Myer Briggs. Shy vs. outgoing. Get positive feedback from act of talking. Plays out in consumer world through analytics, word of mouth, etc.

Everyone in business will overestimate openness, conscientiousness, etc. as they tend to over index on these traits.

Facebook Phone - A Social Filter Device

(Photo by Lucascepeda and modified with permission)

I believe we will see more and more application specific mobile devices over the next 24 months.  

As both consumers and business users deal with "social exhaustion" and look for help filtering the streams of information coming their way, some will seek purpose built, integrated application + mobile device solutions as their filter.

With all the chatter on the potential of a Facebook Phone, I thought I'd dig around for earlier thinking on the concept and reasoning.  

I found posts by Arrington, Rubel and Sanford helpful.   Some of their key points:

Michael Arrington on Facebook secretly building a Phone:

 

"Facebook is building a mobile phone, says a source who has knowledge of the project. Or rather, they’re building the software for the phone and working with a third party to actually build the hardware. Which is exactly what Apple and everyone else does, too.

Specifically, Facebook wants to integrate deeply into the contacts list and other core functions of the phone. It can only do that if it controls the operating system.

Two high level Facebook employees – Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos – are said to be secretly working on the project, which is unknown even to most Facebook staff.

Both have deep operating system experience.

Hewitt helped create the Firefox browser and was working on Parakey before it was acquired by Facebook in 2007. Parakey, which never launched, was described as a “Web-based operating system.” Hewitt also created all of Facebook’s iPhone web apps and then native apps, but finally quit building for the iPhone in disgust late last year. But he knows operating systems and he knows mobile.

Papakipos also has a perfect background for this project. He was leading the Google Chrome OS project until June. He then quit and went to Facebook. Papakipos is considered a rockstar developer, and there are any number of jobs he’d be able to do at Facebook.

But that doesn’t answer the question of why he’d leave the Chrome OS project before it was finished. It would have taken something really interesting to lure him away. Something like a Facebook Phone, for example.

So what might this phone look and feel like? We don’t know yet. When will it be announced? Don’t know. But I’d speculate that it would be a lower end phone, something very affordable, that lets people fully integrate into their Facebook world. You call your friend’s name, not some ancient seven digit code, for example. I’d imagine Facebook wanting these things to get into as many hands as possible, so I’d expect a model at a less than $50 price. Pay your bill with Facebook Credits. Etc.

As for timing, the holiday season is always a good time to launch new products. But that may be too soon.

All we know for sure is that Hewitt and Papakipos are working on something very stealthy together. And we have a source that tells us that stealthy thing is a Facebook phone.

We’re also not discounting possible partnerships around this. Spotify was said to be working on a phone with INQ last year based on a shared investor, Li Ka-Shing. It turns out Li Ka-Shing is also a sizeable investor in Facebook. So an INQ/Facebook partnership on a phone certainly wouldn’t be a surprise."

 

and Steve Rubel speculated about how Facebook will need to pursue a Facebook Phone:

"...if the desktop was the battleground in the 1990s and the web was in the 2000s then mobile is where the battle for dominance will take place next. 

Consider these three data points, all of which are fresh...

• According to Mary Meeker, more people will connect to the Internet via mobile devices than PCs in five years
• Forrester reports that 17% of US consumers have smartphones. (That means that 83% don't.)
• And Pew says that 55% of Americans connect wirelessly (And 45% therefore don't)

And that's just the US. Combine these three trends on a global level and it's obvious that mobile is the future. Mobile is a far far larger market than mainframes, PCs or even the web. It will have lots and lots of winners in hardware, software and services. This is why I believe Facebook can't sit on the sidelines anymore.

They will be on every device, but they eventually will try to launch their own hardware too.

... and Jamie Sanford outlines why he sees a Facebook Pad / Phone on the horizon:

 

Let’s face it – Facebook is almost a complete OS in and of itself.  With a little development of a Lnux kernel to get a device booted and loading the Facebook environment, you’d be able to simply turn on the phone and be “in” Facebook.  Think about what you use your phone/pad device for now:

Contacts

You already have contacts in Facebook.  They may have phone numbers in profiles (they may have them hidden to you via privacy settings).  So, how hard would it be to simply build off of that for dialing?  Now all of your contact management becomes embedded in Facebook.  It becomes the hub of your human interactions and that is simply used as part of the FacePad.

Location-Based Services

Facebook announced last month that it was going to start integrating more of its location-based services into the platform.  Share your location and now you are leveraging a network of people to find information that is relative to where you are right now.  Did a Facebook friend of yours 'like' a certain restaurant you’re near?  Suddenly, that restaurant review has relevance because it’s not a stranger reviewing it – it’s a Facebook friend who you have some trust with already.  The value of location-based services with friendship affinity tied to it is tremendous in creating weight of a review.

Mapping/Navigation

Remember in June of 2009 when Facebook announced that it would start showing Bing search results in Facebook?  How far off do you think that Bing Maps are from being integrated into Facebook as well?  And what if these maps integrated the results of the location-based services mentioned above?  Yikes. 

Voice Chat

Last year, Facebook announced the Vivox voice chat functionality that was coming to the site.  Think of how this could now integrate into the FacePad.  It would be akin to having Skype built in and could leverage your network connection vs. airtime with the cellular provider.

Once again, why is this important?

I believe we will see more and more application specific mobile devices over the next 24 months.  

As both consumers and business users look for help filtering the streams of information coming their way, some will seek purpose built, integrated application + mobile device solutions as their filter.

Can a Salesforce Phone built in cooperation with RIMM be far behind?

 

UPDATE 9/24 - Om summarizes what he believes will be the user experience on the Facebook (INQ) Phone:

The Facebook layer, as Zuckerberg describes, will run on a thin, stripped-down version of Android. Though, if I’m Nokia, I would be making a beeline to Zuckerberg’s office right about now.

What Facebook has to do is not build the OS, but instead build a user experience based on HTML5. WebOS did a good job of building a mobile experience based on web technologies.

A consumer’s Facebook ID becomes more important than the phone number itself. Login with Facebook ID, and your social network auto-magically syncs up with the phone. (Android users have seen their Google phones do this since day one. Stacey finds it annoying.)

Facebook becomes the address book or the contact list for the phone, giving Facebook users an option to call, IM, SMS, or mail their network via the data connection. Since Facebook already has our phone numbers, it can make it easy to call other cell phones or landlines. (Again, not a big deal for Android users who have this feature at their disposal.)

As Clearspring CEO and one of our readers, Hooman Radfar, so aptly said, “Facebook is effectively a set of applications with an underlying common messaging and authentication infrastructure. So, by definition, Facebook also is a set of disparate applications (photos, inbox, chat) that is connected by a social layer.” That is why you will see Facebook apps will be separated into individual apps and subsumed into the phone experience.

For instance, Facebook photos will communicate directly with the camera and become the repository for photos, with almost no difference in the cloud and the local photo storage. Take a picture and save it to Facebook.

As Liz pointed out, Facebook can give phones presence-based intelligence based on location, scheduled events and meetings, and of course, the time of the day. You’ll see some of that in the new phone.

The news feed, too, will become part of the mobile experience. I’d say it would be a more evolved experience compared to Moto BLUR and other such efforts.

Using GPS chips, the phone will give you the ability to locate your friends. It can help get you discount coupons for local eateries and bars for example.  That is why I think Facebook Places is an important initiative for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, and why it ended up acquiring the Hot Potato team.