David Armano has just written a piece called Maybe Agencies should be more like blue chip companies. The title is self-explanatory and it is in response to the popular idea that Ad agencies need to become more like start-ups. I don’t want to spend too much time on the contents simply because I think it has fundamentally… [Read more…]
June 29, 2011
I was taking a look at this year’s Cannes award-winning TVC from DoCoMo and I couldn’t help but recall the Pong Game from that other clip we had a look at last week. The one about machine enabled group think and the Californian Hive Mind. The DoCoMo ad is all about a network of crafts people to create a wooden… [Read more…]
June 29, 2011
We’ve spent a lot of time exploring why Facebook isn’t disrupting Google. So with the (pre?) launch of Google+ earlier today let’s ask the question Will Google+ disrupt Facebook? The simple answer comes in the form of another question. Will Google+ provide young girls between the ages of 11-16 (and even some older ones between… [Read more…]
June 28, 2011
In the past when clients have asked my advice on their wiz bang new Location Based Services business I have often replied the reason most of these LBS start-ups fail is simply because they make the big mistake of confusing the presentation layer for a business model. Let’s face it in the LBS game harvesting customer data… [Read more…]
June 28, 2011
Of course one of the key ideas in Gladwell’s Outliers is the 10,000 hours rule (i.e. you have to put in at least 10,000 hours to achieve mastery of a craft). The obvious question being if we apply this rule to the “Hive Mind” will we achieve the same outcome? (e.g. Could you crowdsource the writing… [Read more…]
June 28, 2011
I was re-reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers this morning and the name Eric Schmidt popped up in that list of the class of ’55 that shaped the future of Silicon Valley. It was at that point I wondered to myself we will be seeing books being written in 10 to 20 years time that explain how Eric Schmidt single-handedly saved… [Read more…]
June 27, 2011
Over the weekend AllthingsD published a quality piece of analysis on the disruptive influence of Facebook on the rest of the web. The article also discusses how growth across the “desktop” web has stalled in 2010 as the users go mobile. The analysis confirmed what we have been saying here for some time. Firstly: Facebook is not disrupting Google… [Read more…]
June 24, 2011
Some time back. Well before the first personal computer and the internet. Sigmund Freud came up with a theory about a psychological defence mechanism called projection. It is the simple idea that we project our deepest fears and expectations onto others and in doing so we come to believe that they are the source of those fears… [Read more…]
June 23, 2011
Somebody asked me to explain the MobCon in 25 words or less so here it is. Or at least what it looked like back in 2007 when the iPhone was launched. Notice that it is the device and not the customer that is at the heart of the challenge. It is how you add to… [Read more…]
June 23, 2011
If you are TechCrunch follower you may have read Sarah Lacy’s piece earlier in the month on Yawn: How Did Big Tech Companies Turn into Big Boring Banks? It was an Op:ed piece on how the Big Tech Brands in Silicon Valley had now matured into utility stocks and it was the new crop of start-ups… [Read more…]
June 30, 2011
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