The power of Enterprise Mashups

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Many people seem to think that Enterprise 2.0 is about blogs and wikis. There are many other technologies supporting the shift to more collaborative and productive organizations. One of the most important of these, and one which perhaps does more to change the role of IT in the enterprise, is mashups.

In out Web 2.0 Framework, we define mashups as a “combination of different types of content or data, usually from different sources, to create something new.”

In a consumer web situation, this involves taking content from different online sources, often merging all sorts of data with locations, using a mapping application such as Google Maps. In the enterprise, it often brings together enterprise data (sales, market research, transactions etc. etc.) with information off the public web, though it can also integrate information from different sources within the organization.

The most important implication of this is that it gives power to the end-user. The IT department no longer needs to be asked on bended knee to create applications that will be useful for the company. Staff can quickly and easily do it for themselves. In effect users can become programmers, as I’ve spoken about in previous keynotes on Enterprise 2.0.

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Relaunch of Future Exploration Network website!

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These things always take longer than we’d like. But finally the new Future Exploration Network website is up! There are some new features to the site that I’ll point out in subsequent posts, and a couple of final tweaks yet to make. Please let us know in the comments here or by email if there’s anything that doesn’t work properly or you have any suggestions – thanks!

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Keynote at Managing Partners Forum: Creating the Future of Professional Services

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Yesterday I gave the opening keynote at the Managing Partners Forum at Byron Bay, on the topic of Creating the Future of Professional Services, focusing on how to create differentiation in a highly competitive globalized market. The event brought together a small and exclusive group of the Managing Partners of a wide variety of major law firms. The two presentations following my keynote were from Gavin Bell, the Managing Partner of Freehills, Australia’s largest law firm, and David Childs, the Managing Partner of Clifford Chance, the largest law firm in the world. The organizers, Chilli, told me they’d turned away many registrations, keeping the attendee level exclusively at top executive level.

Unfortunately I was only able to stay for these first three sessions, however the themes of the presentations and the subsequent free-wheeling discussion between attending managing partners underlined some of the major issues for law firms today:

* Effectively developing and implementing strategy in a partnership, and the degree to which the strategy process is centralized.

* Strategic choices in geographical expansion (e.g. into China) in a world of law firm globalization.

* Defining the role and ability to enforce policies of the Managing Partner in a broad-based partnership.

* Choices between lock-step (seniority-based) and performance-based compensation, taking into account propensity to collaborate and retaining senior partners.

* Whether and how to outsource both back-office functions and legal support to low-cost countries.

* New capital structures, including public listing.

* Managing cultural change in firmly established organizational structures.

* The ability to attract and retain talented staff as the ultimate driver of firm success, in the face of global competition for talent.

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The future of adult entertainment

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Richard Watson, Chief Futurist at Future Exploration Network, has found that his newly launched bestseller Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years, has generated a very diverse range of interesting opportunities. One of the enquiries was from AVN, a publishing company that focuses on the adult entertainment industry, wanting insights into where their world was heading. Richard invited me to co-write the article on The Future of Adult Entertainment [NOTE: Link deleted as it became even less workplace-friendly]. (The link is not entirely workplace-friendly, even though the article itself is mainly about social and technological trends, so I’ve posted the full article below.)

The Future of Adult Entertainment

New technologies could take it almost anywhere.

Richard Watson and Ross Dawson

We are told the world we live in is changing like never before. We have become exquisitely dependent on technology, which is increasingly pervasive and exponentially fast. Whether this is true is open to debate, but it seems reasonably certain that technology will be one of the key forces shaping how people meet and interact with one another in the future. Hence, technology will heavily influence the future of sex and, with it, the future of adult entertainment – or perhaps vice versa.

The future always has been deeply embedded in the present, and physical relationships are no exception. For example, according to one source, 30 percent of recently married American couples met online. Intimate relationships now can be developed online via email, text messaging and phone sex, and they can be ended this way, too. A few years ago in Malaysia, a man sent his wife a divorce via an SMS message, although a court later said this communication was not legally binding.

Similarly, many a relationship has been terminated because one party (quite often, a woman, it seems) finds evidence of physical or virtual infidelity in sent messages. Will this get worse in the future? It certainly seems so. So-called Internet-porn addiction already is straining some relationships, and it will be interesting to see how future technologies will impact our definitions of virginity, celibacy, adultery and the like.

Of course, technology has a history of being put to unintended uses.

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Why online reputation systems have a long way to go

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eBay will eliminate negative rankings from May, according to the BBC. This makes what was barely useful into something practically useless.

It’s interesting that when you talk about reputation systems, most people refer to eBay’s feedback and ratings system. It was in fact clear years ago that eBay’s ratings had very little value. The essence of the problem was that there was no incentive to rate people poorly. Since buyers and sellers rate each other, any negative rating can – and often is – reciprocated with another negative rating. However a positive rating is also likely to be reciprocated. Because anyone with any experience on eBay well understands this, almost no-one gives negative ratings, so there is very little correlation between eBay ratings and how good a trading partner people actually are.

Now eBay has recognized this publicly, rather than pretending that its ratings are valid, and is explicitly pointing to users’ retaliation to negative reviews. The BBC article says that eBay says that there are other mechanisms to protect users:

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What a Microsoft – Yahoo! merger would mean for innovation, technology entrepreneurs, and start-ups

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SmartCompany have just published an article based on an interview with me, titled What a Microsoft and Yahoo merger means for entrepreneurs.

The full article is worth a read – below are the direct quotes from me.

There will be fewer exits but more start ups for entrepreneurs in the digital world if the proposed Microsoft takeover of Yahoo goes ahead, says technology futurist Ross Dawson.

…

If the deal gets through the competition regulators, it could substantially change the acquisition landscape for technology entrepreneurs, says Dawson. “Yahoo has said that it intends to buy 50 companies a year; if Microsoft buys Yahoo, that will change.

“While Microsoft has been buying start-ups, [the deal] signals a shift in its strategy and it will focus on digestion of Yahoo.”

…

“While Microsoft is preoccupied, there could be increasing opportunities for start-ups to carve opportunities by being innovators – although it is hard to see how they might exit [at this stage],” says Dawson.

…

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Interview on SBS TV World News tonight: What the Microsoft Yahoo! bid really means

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I have just been interviewed by SBS TV about Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo! The interview will appear on their World News program tonight as part of their coverage of the story.

I’m not sure what parts of the interview they’ll use, but some of the points I raised were:

* This is a massive deal. It would be the second largest media merger in history, after the $106 billion AOL – Time Warner merger in 2000. The next biggest after that, as shown in our analysis of the largest media transactions over the last 15 years, is Viacom’s $38 billion acquisition of CBS (with the two companies splitting again in 2005).

* There are three possibilities of what will happen from here. The first and most likely is that the bid succeeds. When Yahoo! turned down overtures from Microsoft around a year ago, it was a reasonable stance to say they could do better alone than owned by Microsoft. The last year, and in particular the last six months, have created an entirely different picture. Yahoo!’s stock has declined 44% since its highs last October, its profits have fallen, and the company doesn’t appear to have a clear, differentiated strategy. In contrast, Google’s fourth-quarter results showed revenues up over 50% year-on-year. Given the 62% premium that Microsoft is offering, constrasted with a falling stock price, it would be very difficult for the board to justify turning the offer down.

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How looking at the computer games we play can predict the future

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I occasionally compile interesting quotes. I was just adding one to my list today and I came across a gem I mined some years ago:

“Computer games don’t affect kids; I mean, if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music”.

– Kristian Wilson, Nintendo Inc, 1989

So perhaps all we need to do is to look at the computer games of today to predict the future… :-)

Predictions for the future of the home and immersive technologies

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Connected Home magazine’s January/ February issue has a feature article titled Beyond Tomorrow, based on a presentation I gave at the Influence conference on Six Trends that are Transforming Online (the link has some more detail on what I covered), followed by an interview with me. The intro reads:

“Techno ‘crystal ball gazers’ have got their predictions horribly wrong in the past, but this has not put off one commentator. Ross Dawson puts himself on the line talking to Paul Skelton about ‘immersive’ technology in the automated home of the future.”

Unfortunately the article is not on the web, so below are the parts of the article that directly quote me – the rest of article consists of anecdotes about futurists and references to specific current technologies that illustrate my ideas.

“Rather than dwelling on fantastical ideas, Future Exploration Network chairman Ross Dawson, the best-selling author of Living Networks and the award-winning Developing Knowledge-Based Client Relationships, has made it his business to realistically predict how technology will affect our lives in the future.

Speaking in September at the Media Connect IT industry’s Influence Forum in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales, Ross said Internet protocol (IP) and home entertainment technology will become a much more immersive experience.

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We’re looking for an Extremely Talented Part-Time Office/ Events/ Digital Media Assistant in Sydney – please pass on!

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This year looks set to be a very interesting – perhaps transitional – period for my organizations Future Exploration Network and Advanced Human Technologies. While they currently function as highly virtual firms with only a small core team, they may start to grow more as we do larger projects and also get involved in some online ventures. Our strategy is to largely hire people in part-time roles, which gives us access to a whole pool of students, parents, enterpreneurs, and deviants who find it hard to get stimulating and challenging work within their constraints, and keeps us fluid and flexible.

We’ll be advertising a couple more roles in the next little while. For now please pass on this ad to anyone who you think might be interested – thanks!

Extremely Talented Office/ Events/ Digital Media Assistant – Part-Time

Media | Internet | Strategy| Events | Future : Work in a boutique international firm in a highly diverse role including administration and using your talents

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