Photo: Daniel Wildman | Stock.xchng

When the dragons start their interrogation of entrepreneurs, one of the most essential questions they ask is “How do you make a profit?” In other words: How is it a business? How do you make your money in this setup? What is your business model?

The past seven seasons have, of course, brought a variety of entrepreneurs into the den, so we’ve had the privilege to see many business models falling under the scrutiny of the investors. Franchises, exclusive clubs, licensing, retail, and pyramid (!) schemes are just some of the many models presented before our fierce five. Very often, after a thorough dissection of them, the dragons are simply unconvinced that they could work, i.e., that they could make money.

It’s really very important to determine what the business model is from the outset. Just today, I was reviewing another DD episode, when I came upon a father-and-son team hoping to sell their ladder box invention. When Theo Paphitis asked them what their plan was (to make money, of course), the son answered, “We’ll sell lots of them”. Nice quick answer but very ambiguous. After all, every business IS supposed to sell something (product or service), but the how-to of it must be nailed down pat to leave no room for doubt as to its viability. That’s what a business model answers.

Again, flashback to my early days as an entrepreneur. It’s now cringe-worthy that in those times, I used to talk at length about the quality of CAN-DO! but very little about how it could be profitable. And, of course, these days, with publishing establishments falling by the wayside almost every week, I can’t just simply rely on selling the usual advert space, even if advertising is the recognised bloodline of magazine publishing. So one of the primary questions I’ve now learned to ask myself: What is my business model here? How do I intend to make money from this?

Very soon, a new thing will start with CAN-DO! (Teaser!) And even as I’m excited about its possibilities, I’m making sure that my entrepreneurial neck is steadily holding up my head. I have to focus on the fact that the new thing is not just an opportunity to be more creative. The bottom line question is “Is there a solid business model behind this new thing?”

I’ll end this point of reflection by sharing a link my assistant gave me today. It’s a short article in a Kenyan newspaper, detailing a “futuristic” business model, appropriate for e-commerce entities like CAN-DO! It’s something I’m currently marinating on as I figure out the new business model for our new thing in CAN-DO!

http://www.nation.co.ke/blogs/-/445642/687968/-/view/asBlogPost/-/wqumpp/-/index.html

RUSNANO and AmBAR Announce the Business Plan Competition of Nanotech Projects 

    AmBAR creates a unique platform to facilitate the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and business contacts between technology entrepreneurs, professionals, and investors. The organization is also dedicated to accelerating access to capital for innovative projects and developing technology partnerships between Russia, Ukraine and other FSU countries and the United States. Through various seminars and conferences AmBAR provides educational programs that help entrepreneurs refine their business plans, and advance their product development and marketing efforts.

Ambar’s Mission:

·       To provide a networking platform for technology entrepreneurs, venture capital investors, and other business professionals from Russian, Ukraine and other CIS countries who are interested in innovation and commercialization of high technology products.

·       To educate, showcase, and support entrepreneurs in Russia, Ukraine and other CIS countries as they seek equity capital, corporate partners, and grow their companies globally.

·       To enhance all aspects of technology partnership between the United States and the countries of the former Soviet Union. 

SVOD Conference is right around the corner and we have an amazing lineup of speakers! Register today and don’t miss out on this unique networking opportunity!

 

    This is a not to be missed event for the entrepreneurs and the Venture Capital community. This year’s theme will drive a very exciting Agenda exploring “re-invention” as it affects the startup process on multiple levels — technologies, business models, financing, monetizing and team building.

 

 

• Vinod Khosla, Founding Partner, Khosla Ventures
• Charles Giancarlo, Managing Director, Silver Lake
• Steve Blank, Serial Entrepreneur; Founder, Epiphany; Lecturer, Stanford University, Graduate School of Engineering
• Sergei Beloussov, CEO, Parallels
• Ron Conway, Founding General Partner, Angel Investors LP
• Jason Pressman, General Partner, Shasta Ventures
• Adam Lashinsky, Editor at large, Fortune magazine; regular panelist and business commentator for Fox network programs
• Esther Dyson, Director, 23andMe, Principal, EDventure Holdings (sold to CNet), investor in Flickr and del.icio.us (both sold to Yahoo!) & Medstory (sold to Microsoft)
• Jeff Crow, General Partner, Norwest Venture Partners
• Vivek Mehra, General Partner, August Capital
• Ping Li, General Partner, Accel Partners
• Kittu Kolluri, General Partner, New Enterprise Associates
• Franklin Pitch Johnson, Founding Partner, Asset Management Company
• Peter Loukianoff, Partner, Almaz Capital Partners
• Guy Kawasaki, Managing Director, Garage Technology Ventures
• Pavel Pogodin, Partner, Sughrue Mion LLP
• Dmitry Dubograev, Partner, Femida LLP
• Leonid Gozman, Board Member, RUSNANO
• Mikhail Chuchkevich, Director, Project Office, RUSNANO
• Dmitry Vasuytinsky, Managing Partner, Allianz Asset Management
• Yan Ryazantsev, Investment Director, Russian Venture Company
• Bo Parker, Managing Director, Center for Technology and Innovation, PriceWaterhouseCoopers
• Phil Libin, CEO, Evernote
• Vlad Shmunis, CEO, RingCentral, Sequoia-backed company
• Matthew Trevithick, General Partner, Venrock
• Eric Buatois, General Partner, Sofinnova Ventures
• Vish Makhijani, COO, Zynga
• Vimal Solanki, Vice President, McAfee
• Evgeni Utkin, CEO, Kvazar-Micro, acquired by Sitronics, voted the Best Ukrainian Entrepreneur
• Greg Shenkman, General Partner, Exigen Capital, formerly CEO of Genesys, sold to Alcatel for $1.9B
• Mike Selfridge, Northern California Region Manager, Silicon Valley Bank

Whether you are looking for a deal flow, funding, information or networking – SVOD 2009 is the place to be! - WWW.SVOD.ORG 

 

 

Date: December 9-10, 2009

Location: Computer History Museum, Mountain View, Silicon Valley, CA

To Register: http://www.svod.org/

 

Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies (RUSNANO) and American Business Association of Russian-speaking Professionals (AmBAR) announce the Business Plan Competition cor projects and companies working in the field of nanotechnology. Origination of the project may come from any country or person all over the world, but its implementation or some part of implementation has to be completed in Russia. In 2009 the nominees for the contest are pre-selected by AmBAR among the participants of the Fifth Annual High Tech Investment Conference SVOD 2009. For more information, please go to: http://www.svod.org/ or e-mail to info@ambarclub.org

The projects are evaluated by the following criteria:

• nanotechnology application;
• scientific and technical feasibility of the project;
• quality and feasibility of the business-plan;
• steps already made towards project implementation.

The winner of the competition receives the RUSNANO award and the prize in the amount of 300,000 rubles (~$10,000).

For more details, please see the Contest terms and conditions (in Russian)

As we approach the end of 2009, this question becomes all the more relevant. With a full year of advertising revenues down, subscriptions and renewals declining and staff being laid off to cut costs, there have to be questions as to how the publishing industry can survive.

One thing is certain – the business model of old will have to change. Thanks to technology, people today are relying on instant news – yesterday’s news (as found in the printed newspaper) or last week’s news (as found in weekly magazines) is no longer a saleable commodity, and if the public don’t want to read it, advertisers won’t pay to advertise in it.

Of course, Rupert Murdoch’s recent comments about charging for access to his news online and preventing Google from finding his stories have further fuelled speculation as to the future of the printed word.

However, far from fearing the new technologies, publishers should be embracing them – after all, do the new technologies not extend the potential reach of any publication or broadcast platform to the entire globe?

What’s needed, and what people are looking for, in this info-saturated world is not just more information, but more useful, focused and targeted information. Instead of newspapers all trying to produce the same news for the same geographic audience, focus. That’s how Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, for example, have been able to charge for much of their content – they focus on the news that businessmen need now. If a publisher can provide knowledge, as opposed to just information, people will pay for it.

Just as general broadcast TV has given way to cable/satellite subscription services, providing more focused channel selections, so should publishers look to provide focused services that people will pay for. What’s more, such focused audiences provide a richer platform for advertisers.

I’m not for one moment suggesting that printing is dead – at least not for the foreseeable future. Like just about everyone else I speak with, there’s something about being able to read the printed word on paper that is far too appealing to me. A combination of convenience, feel, smell, I suppose. What I am suggesting is that publishers need to use technology to complement their print editions.

Knowledge has a shelf-life, and can be printed for future reference purposes (witness my stacks of magazines – National Geographic, Fast Company, Fortune, Plane & Pilot, Travel & Leisure, etc.). News, or information, is immediate and best consumed quickly – and this is where the electron should play its part (whether Internet or Broadcast). But, again, there’s no reason electronic media should not drive its audience to print, and vice-versa. I see them as, ideally, complementary rather than simply competing.

News media, rather than cutting journalists, should seek out the best they can find and encourage them to provide knowledge as well as information. Magazines should give tantalizing glimpses of what they offer to an online audience, while encouraging them to subscribe to the printed word (after all, for example, aren’t the images in a National Geographic magazine so much better than those online?). Broadcast media should encourage audiences to seek out more information than they can cover in the broadcast, driving audiences online and to print for this knowledge. And, of course, printed media should not be shy of encouraging readers to enrich their knowledge through broadcast segments, internet updates and the like.

We talk about mankind’s knowledge increasing at an exponential rate, but I suspect that much of this is just the same bits of information being repeated over and over again. We have the tools for a much richer information and knowledge environment and we should use them.

In order to write about various business models, I though the first exercise can be to enlist all the different business models.

Ireland is a place that has marked me forever. It has been the backdrop to my coming of age (a year in Dublin), happy moments with my family (holidays in Kerry), and where I met the girl I hope to spend the rest of my life with (if she’ll have me!).

The door is always open in Ireland, although, this may have more to do with my name than the politeness of Celtic folk; type Martin Cahill into Google and you will see what I mean. I haven’t always liked Ireland though. In fact, I used to hate it when I was younger. A trip to Ireland typically meant cold rain, scary aunts who would plant those sloppy kisses on your cheek, and extended stays in Kate’s (the local pub). My patience (at the age of 8 or 9) was bought with Club Orange, Tayto crisps and coins for the pool table. These days I visit Kate’s for the same reason my Dad did before. The Guinness is great, yes, but more than that – it’s the conversation. Local farmers walk through the door and into the warmth of Kate’s bar. The atmosphere can sometimes be quiet. Subdued even. There is no hurry to engage in wit and banter. Sometimes a period of reflection is the first order.

Kate also maintains a kitchen behind the bar. I don’t know how she does it, but she can go back there and within a few minutes provide a plate of steaming hot stew, potatoes and veg. Most surprising, is the customer did not even ask for it, but they certainly welcome it. Kate then communicates events from the day. What has been said by Farmer Connolley and the latest prices from the mart. She is a knowledge hub. An RSS feed in traditional Irish style. Another customer arrives and the conversation continues. A community of neighbours all ready to highlight changes in the market, economy, and even the weather. The local radio sits in the corner relaying the local news and the death list (those who have recently passed and the time of the mass and burial). Comment is passed, drinks are finished and people are back on their way. Back out to the land. Back to practice.

Kate’s bar – A School? … And the only piece of technology in sight – the radio.

The experience was reflected in London some time ago. It was my first visit to the Apple Store. As I walked through the door teenagers were typing and clicking on the new range of Mac laptops and iMacs on display. They were emailing and facebook’ing. To my right was a genius bar. A whole workbench of Mac geeks ready to fix your machine or answer your Mac related questions. I walked up the stairs and entered a creative zone. A place where photographers and movie-makers could learn and share tips in relation to their creative pursuits. Further along was a lecture theatre. A speaker was clicking through the latest features of iWork. Some were listening, others were posting online, networking, thinking.

Apple Store – A School? … Technology is on sale, but the centre-piece is people and knowledge.

I arrived in Sydney six months ago. In those early months I was looking for work and networking across the city. I was using both traditional and modern methods. One evening, over too many bottles of Cabernet a new friend asked me “If you could do anything, what would your working week look like?”. Great question, I thought. My response surprised me. “Well”, I said, “If I could do anything then I would like to open an Alternative School of Business. A place where talented folk across Sydney’s new and emerging industries could meet and a space where those looking for work could ‘hang-out’. People would be presenting – perhaps a new business idea. Others would critique and hopefully offer new ideas or routes to making it happen. Industry Pecha Kuchas would play out, events, and possibly corporate off-sites. It should be a hive of learning. A place where folk would come, enjoy a hot meal, and go back to the land. Back to practice. There are no corridors. No offices and no static zones. Just movement, progression and space”. “I would spend my time there”, I said, “and the rest of the week I’d pick up my camera and notepad and go venture” (that though is another story).

An Alternative Business School? Perhaps not so dissimilar to what we have now, you might say? Still, since talking to managers, analysts and talented folk across Sydney’s media, hi-tech, and social innovation scene I still hear a call for change. All cite the importance of an MBA and how they would benefit from such an experience. The good stuff like learning from other industries, making new connections, challenging their thinking, tackling tough problems etc. However, I was reminded of the gulf (supposed) between academia and practice, the pressures brought to bear on families and marriages, the untimeliness of case based learning and the fees!

I think the sector is ripe for great change, but we must avoid the McDonaldisation of education, just as Ireland must avoid the McDonalidation of its Celtic ways. Technology should never replace our human needs for social contact and social spaces. Technology should only ever fuel the conversation, peoples understanding and our overall pot of knowledge. It should only ever be the radio in the corner. What is interesting about today’s technology, is it makes the alternative business school self-organise. There is no need for administration or administrative teams. The school is open. Groups gather around themes. People subscribe. People unsubscribe. This is the magic of new social technology.

Are you as fascinated as I am by the non-profit journalism trend, how foundations and NGOs (broadly defined) are supporting and even becoming journalism operations, and the implications for strategic communications?

Then take a look at NGOs and the News: Exploring a Changing Communications Landscape, a series of essays that Penn’s Annenberg School and Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab have put together exploring some of the big-picture issues that such initiatives raise.

The latest essay in the series, by Natalie Fenton of Goldmiths, University of London, was just published and looks at how the internet has changed how NGOs work with established media (her take: “not enough”).

Previous pieces in the series, which began earlier this month and came to my attention through a Big Think post, include:

• The framing essay on NGOs as newsmakers by Monroe Price, of Annenberg and the Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University; Libby Morgan, also from Annenberg; and Kristina Klinkforth of Freie Universität Berlin.
• Kimberly Abbott of the International Crisis Group on how NGOs can work with journalists to create stronger international reporting.
• Simon Cottle of the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies and David Nolan of the University of Melbourne, Australia, on how media codes and rules influence the way NGOs work.

This series is a useful complement and offers important context for the seemingly daily reports on the fast-evolving non-profit journalism landscape (see Bruce Trachtenberg’s October 20 post on the Communications Network blog for a very helpful oveview).

And added bonus from the Nieman Journalism Lab site –  Jim Barnett weighs in on a planned Dec. 1-2 Federal Trade Commission workshop on how journalism will survive in the Internet age. The bigger question: is two days enough to figure it out? Stay tuned.

Sounds to me like Tesla is going public. Here is some coverage on the topic from The GreenBeat blog at WSJ Online.

“Rumors are swirling today that Tesla Motors is seriously considering an initial public offering sometime soon. The talk has been tracked to two anonymous sources, who say the six-year-old company could cash in big on the battery-powered car trend before electric and hybrid models from companies like General Motors, Mitsubishi and Nissan make it to market.

Tesla has officially denied the prediction, calling the IPO chatter “rumor and speculation.” That said, going public in 2010 would give the San Carlos, Calif. company several distinct advantages. First, it would solidify its position as the electric car player to watch. It’s already been casually anointed as the leader by industry observers and the Department of Energy, which granted it $465 million in stimulus funds in its first round of low-interest loans for advanced transportation projects. Second, it could use the sale to raise money to get its hotly anticipated Model S sedan out the door by its 2011 due date.

Tesla is one of several cleantech companies anticipated to go public as soon as next year. When A123Systems shocked the market with its blockbuster IPO in late Sepember (its share price jumped 50 percent on opening day), many analysts, including the Cleantech Group, said that the biggest public offerings in 2010 will probably come out of the green sector. In addition to Tesla, solar system maker Solyndra — which received $535 million in loan guarantees from the DOE in March — and smart grid communications provider Silver Spring Networks have also been named as likely candidates.”

Read the full article here.

GigaOm also covers this topic saying:

“Last Friday, buzz about an imminent IPO for electric car startup Tesla Motors hit the Interwebs, courtesy of two anonymous sources familiar with the plans who spoke with Reuters. As in several previous stories about its possible plans for a public offering, the company has declined to comment.

But if and when Tesla goes through with its long-discussed goal of going public, it could be the biggest and possibly the first public offering for a U.S. car company since Ford Motor’s IPO more than 50 years ago. The event will also offer a glimpse at the role IPOs will play in the nascent green car market — is the classic venture capital model (invest early and find a big exit in the form of an acquisition or an IPO) viable for this sector, or will a green-car IPO be more about feeding big capital needs and branding?

Hopes for a Google-like moneymaker in cleantech (Google took only $25 million in venture capital to make millionaires of 1,000 employees and billionaires of its two co-founders in a wildly successful IPO) have already started to fade for some in the sector. Stephan Dolezalek, managing director of VantagePoint Venture Partners, which has invested in Tesla, told Reuters in September that public offerings now serve more as “financing events” for alternative energy and other cleantech startups rather than a way for investors and founders to cash in on equity.”

Read their version here.

Guest post by Jack Rutter, co-founder of  Cutmedia.com

The idea for this blog post came from the reems and reems of online column inches i have come across recently covering hyperlocal. Having an interest in it myself via Cutmedia.com and the first flagship publication Kingsroad.co.uk, i thought i should give my thoughts and allow anybody that is interested to check out the stories I have come across recently.

Recently I went to an event held at Channel 4 by 4ip where they are very keen to try and help young start ups with funding on projects that will help to shape the media industry. Whilst working out if Cutmedia.com could benefit from a partnership with 4ip i met a lecturer from Goldsmiths University called Angela Phillips. She is currently looking for funding with one of her projects, which is also focussed on hyperlocal, although that is all she would tell me!

We discussed the opportunity of hyperlocal and after a while got on to the topic of journalists and how they need to be innovative and play a more proactive role on the business side of their media work. I certainly think they need to pay more attention to how money and profit is generated as part of their business.

Many people in and around journalism fall in love with the romantic idea of the discipline and fail to understand how money and their wages are paid, which i think is  very dangerous. For them journalism is firstly about holding people in power to account, getting a scoop before anybody else and producing killer articles that demostrate the written skills they were born with and secondly a business. I think that this is naive,  especially in the light of the redundancies that have happen across the industry over the last year or so.

There are many ways in which publishers can generate revenue for their businesses and i expect that they will keep evolving over time as the publishing industry reinvigorates itself. The main task publishers face is to create robust products that can pay for for editorial so journalists can go and hold people in power to account, get that scoop and show us all what great writers they are.

Content alone does not pay the wages and the quicker they learn that the better.

New business models for journalism is something that has been discussed in the following articles:

• http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/11/01/the-future-of-journalism-is-entrepreneurial – Jeff Jarvis
• http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com/blog/?p=1264 – Unlimitedmagazine.com
• http://www.groundreport.com/Media_and_Tech/The-Hyperlocal-News-Market-Key-Players-and-What-Th/2910236 – Rachel Stern

• George Monbiot: Local newspapers are dying – but are they worth saving? (blogs.journalism.co.uk)

Last month I blogged about innovation in media, including the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) move to develop widgets for users to aggregate ABC content on their social network sites. As I’ve said before, this is a smart move by the ABC. In taking this initiative, the ABC appears to have recognised the reality that social networks are the new hub for news and entertainment.

So it is interesting to contrast this strategy with the ABC’s primary vision to become Australia’s “virtual town square” – a hub for user-generated content. In May 2009, Mark Scott, Managing Director of the ABC, described the virtual town square as “a place where Australians can come to speak and be heard, to listen and learn from one another”. By November 2009, planning had advanced to the point where the ABC is to employ digital media trainers around the country to teach Australians how to upload their own content to the ABC’s website.

What strikes me about the virtual town square idea is that conceptually it is not  a new. Local radio chat shows are a long-standing example of user-generated content in media. The town square idea also rests on media institutions continuing to provide the hub or the space for people to use.  I just wonder how congruent the strategy is with social media has it continues to grow in importance in the everyday lives of Australians.

For when it comes to creating and uploading content, people are already doing this for themselves. The emerging social media hub is a personalised place, one that is open to friends, family, coworkers and other associates in the work place and in the community. The social media hub has user-generated photos and videos, status updates and wall posts for expressing views about whatever is of interest.  It’s a place to join groups of interest and for political activism. It’s a place where users aggregate  news feeds, music and videos from third parties, updates from their other social media sites, and feeds from people they connect with. It’s a place that links data from all over the web. In Australia, that could well mean some content from the ABC. It may well mean that data is collated and shared within user-created and run virtual communities. Users doing it for themselves.

Where might social network site aggregation and sharing go? Steve Rubel has suggested that user preferences for personalised social network sites may mean that the next great media company will not have a website, they will be “all spokes and no hub”. I’d say that is a good call.  With the widget initiative, the ABC is positioning to play in the user-defined media hub space. The corporation is doing that as well as playing host to virtual town squares on its own website. It will be interesting to see how these two plays pan out over the next couple of years.

In nature, with every second something lives for, it’s probability of continued life increases exponentially.

The lessons for startups is simple, do the stuff that keeps you alive longest. And the most important thing we can do for our startup is keep our costs low. Low cost operations gives us the advantage of time. And time is the most important asset when it comes to working out our business model. Not capital, not technology, not employees, not research. Just time.

The idea for this blog post came from the reems and reems of online column inches i have come across recently covering hyperlocal. Having an interest in it myself via Cutmedia.com and the first flagship publication Kingsroad.co.uk, i thought i should give my thoughts and allow anybody that is interested to check out the stories I have come across recently.

Recently I went to an event held at Channel 4 by 4ip where they are very keen to try and help young start ups with funding on projects that will help to shape the media industry. Whilst working out if Cutmedia.com could benefit from a partnership with 4ip i met a lecturer from Goldsmiths University called Angela Phillips. She is currently looking for funding with one of her projects, which is also focussed on hyperlocal, although that is all she would tell me!

We discussed the opportunity of hyperlocal and after a while got on to the topic of journalists and how they need to be innovative and play a more proactive role on the business side of their media work. I certainly think they need to pay more attention to how money and profit is generated as part of their business.

Many people in and around journalism fall in love with the romantic idea of the discipline and fail to understand how money and their wages are paid, which i think is  very dangerous. For them journalism is firstly about holding people in power to account, getting a scoop before anybody else and producing killer articles that demostrate the written skills they were born with and secondly a business. I think that this is naive,  especially in the light of the redundancies that have happen across the industry over the last year or so.

There are many ways in which publishers can generate revenue for their businesses and i expect that they will keep evolving over time as the publishing industry reinvigorates itself. The main task publishers face is to create robust products that can pay for for editorial so journalists can go and hold people in power to account, get that scoop and show us all what great writers they are.

Content alone does not pay the wages and the quicker they learn that the better.

New business models for journalism is something that has been discussed in the following articles:

• http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/11/01/the-future-of-journalism-is-entrepreneurial – Jeff jarvis
• http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com/blog/?p=1264 – Unlimitedmagazine.com
• http://www.groundreport.com/Media_and_Tech/The-Hyperlocal-News-Market-Key-Players-and-What-Th/2910236 – Rachel Stern

• George Monbiot: Local newspapers are dying – but are they worth saving? (blogs.journalism.co.uk)

Per President Obama’s trip to the People’s Republic of China, Karl Marx did say that we free-capitalists would sell his ideologues the rope they would use to hang us with.  Perhaps he was right in that we are doing that exact thing with China right now.  By being our primary financial benefactor these days, China pretty much owns us and is also beating us at our own game via its controlled (or state) version of capitalism (i.e., definitely a competitive edge for the Chinese government-owned businesses).  So in the end, it might take the ”nationalizing” of China’s huge investments in US Treasury securities and Dollars in order to get the rope removed from the vicinity of our proverbial neck.  And if things do take a turn for the worse, then why not;  other debtor nations tend to invoke the “nationalizing” card on our investments in them quite frequently once the timing is right.

An American academic by the name of Steven Kerr wrote a profound article in 1975 entitled ‘On the folly of Rewarding A while Hoping for B’

Central to the content of the article is the reality that reward systems exist which encourage behavior contrary to what is wanted/desired. The behaviours that are desired are frequently not rewarded at all. Steve’s article provided examples of these ‘fouled up systems’ within politics, in war, in medicine, in universities, in consulting, in sports, in government and in business.

I’ve been promoting the fact for many years that one of the only ways of creating sustainable competitive advantage is through the design and delivery of a unique and distinctive customer experience. Achieving this outcome is a consequence of enlightened leadership and organizational design based upon systemic thinking such that all business resources and capabilities are aligned, embedded and mobilized in order to achieve the business purpose. The only way to achieve this is by creating and managing ratios and metrics that drive the appropriate behaviours to achieve the ultimate objective.

In today’s world (and more importantly in tomorrow’s world) this becomes even more important if businesses are going to differentiate themselves and become more accountable for their actions. I think it was Lou Gerstner, IBM turnaround fame, who said that ‘you get what you inspect, not what you expect.’

So, until businesses establish some ‘balance’ in their ‘un-balanced’ scorecards, until businesses truly start collaborating and co-creating with a real commitment and understanding of the ‘meaning’ behind their stated vision, mission and strategic intent, until businesses start seeing and understanding the critically important links across systems, resources, processes, policies AND their strategic  objectives and until organizations establish metrics that underpin EXACTLY those behaviours that they desire, we will continue to see ‘more of the same!’ When the rate of change inside the organization is less than the rate of change outside the organization, that organization is living on borrowed time. Sadly, the consequence is that you and I, as consumers, will continue to suffer mediocre and random experiences at best. AND, that sucks!

This is the third in a series of reports examining the potential and risk of the smart enabler role. In our first and second reports, The role of smart enabler: positioning for growth in the open mobile market and The role of smart enabler: the framework unwrapped, we created a smart enabler framework and examined the enablers which are being developed. In this report we provide an overview of the vendors providing solutions in the smart enabler market.
 
 
Table of Contents : 
Executive summary
In a nutshell
Key messages
The smart enabler role is complex
There are significant risks for specialist players
Larger diversified players: lower risks, leverage existing assets
Operators are not the only ‘smart enablers’ in town
Beware the hype
Smart enabler vendors: overview
Case studies
Vendor positioning
Aepona: universal service platform
Player evaluation
Company credentials
Company strategy
The platform is at the heart of its strategy
Expanding platform capabilities
Partners: building momentum with application developers
Operator customers
Business models
Amdocs Interactive app store
Player evaluation
Company credentials
Application store strategy
GetJar
Player evaluation
Company credentials
Company strategy
The GetJar ecosystem
A scalable model
The business model
mBlox: aggregator for the new model
Player evaluation
Company credentials
Company strategy
mBlox solutions
Future services: preparing the way
Ericsson IPX: multimedia brokering
Player evaluation
Company credentials
Company strategy
Ericsson IPX’s customer base
Business models

For more information please visit:
http://www.aarkstore.com/reports/The-role-of-smart-enabler-supply-side-case-studies-31328.html

I am adding a new category: book reviews. I read a lot on business, social change, & etc.–I just read a lot. So I am going to express my opinions here, as well as on amazon.com.

Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigner

Written by two guys from Switzerland together with 470 contributers from around the world, this book is not your typical business innovation book. First, it is very accessible, intuitive, and easy to use. It is indeed a “handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers”!

The essense of the book is the “Business Model Canvas”–a simple framework that solves the problem of defining what business model, creates a shared language, and spurs innovation. Here’s what it looks like:

The Canvas consist of nine blocks:

• Customers
• Value Proposition
• Distribution Channels
• Relationships
• Key Activities
• Key Partners
• Key Resources
• Cost Structure
• Revenue Structure

Any business model can then be described using these blocks. But the most important thing is that it allows people from different backgrounds to create business models together. If you are looking for a brainstorming activity, that involves hundreds of post-its, divers group of people, and gallons of coffee–add this book to the list!

The strong sides of the book:

• Clear, concise, simple approach to business model innovation
• Tested, re-tested, and refined–no bullshit
• Great design by  The Movement–it’s a pleasure to read and fun to work with!

The weak sides:

• Puts external context (market forces, etc.) outside–easy to get carried away and ignore the outside world
• Uncompromising about where to each aspect of the business, which can potentially split the team.

Let me give an example of the last point. At the workshop, the author have said that the brand goes into Key Resources, but a marketing person behind me wasn’t satisfied. “You don’t have a business if you don’t have a brand!”–he said. Of course, a finance guy would have said the same about finance: we don’t put financing the separate box either. But putting each aspect of the business into a separate box would have made the canvas a mess. To illustrate that brand is not always a part of the business model: how many have heard about Hon Hai? I am sure far more people own stuff they’ve made.

Anyway. Overall, I really like this book. Tomorrow, I am going to put it into practice and brainstorm business models with social mission–I am excited to see how it works in a group!

Oh, the best part is that Alexander Osterwalder puts all his slides online! There he has also stuff on business models beyond profit and lots of other interesting stuff.

Enjoy!

Photo by Toobydoo

It is funny how sometimes ideas comes from different directions and connect in ways you could not have guessed they will before.

A few months ago I went to have dinner with two colleagues of mine from my AGSM MBA class. We had a wonderful dinner and an even better intellectual discussion. I don’t really remember how we got to the subject by I mentioned Larry Lessig’s talk on TED about User Generated Content (how the law is choking creativity) where he claims that our society is turning kids into criminal by illegalizing activities that are natural to them.

A few days ago I gave a session to a number of people from our Public Speaking & Debating Club about modern techniques in presentation delivery. One of the examples I used to illustrate my point and stimulate the discussion was the same lecture by Lessig from TED which brought the ideas back to my mind.

This morning, as I was going over my Google Reader reading list, I came by Seth Godin’s post titled: “Teaching the market a lesson“. Here is a small sample:

Some book publishers don’t like the Kindle. Either they’re afraid of it or they’ve crunched the numbers and they don’t like what they see. (Some days, 95% of the top selling Kindle titles are free… demonstrating that digital goods with zero marginal cost and plentiful substitutes tend to move to zero in price).

Worried about the medium, they hold back, delay or even refuse to support it.

A few minutes after that, I got an e-mail from my dear friends Ajaya, one of my   colleagues from the dinner a few months ago. This is what he wrote in the e-mail:

Remember talking about illegal downloads and what the fact that almost all kids break the law means to society. Finally, it seems the music industry is figuring it out.

And the email had a link to an article from The Economist titled: “How to sink pirates“. The article describes how the music industry is finally starting to relinquish its fight against piracy, starting to use a model of streaming music, gaining money from advertisements. And it ends with this conclusion:

All of this offers a lesson for other types of media, such as films and video games. Piracy thrives because it satisfies an unmet demand. The best way to discourage it is to offer a diverse range of attractive, legal alternatives. The music industry has taken a decade to work this out, but it has now done so. Other industries should benefit from its experience—and follow its example.

Suddenly, it dawned on me. The points just seemed to connect. These lessons keep repeating themselves:

1. The world is changing. You can jump on the boat. But you cannot stop it. The past will always try to stop the future. Be it the music industry, the book publishing industry or shop owners in 19^th century France. They will fail. The answer to change is change and not more of the same.
2. Peter Drucker wrote that you can never know how a product that was created in one field could be used in another field. Products and technologies will continue to move across industries destroying business models. The answer will not be found in barricading industries and business models, but in inventing new business models.
3. “Free” is changing the world in more ways than we can imagine.
4. Law, legal proceedings and fear can only take you so far. Options, Transparency and self fulfillment will win eventfully. It might take time, but it will happen.

You think that the smart people running some of these industries would have learned these lessons by now.

Elad

The best business model for media today combines high quality content production, expert filtering of content from other sources and community loyalty. However, hybrid models are complicated to administer, particularly for dinosaurs with insitutional ways of working more suited to the days of fewer channels and higher barriers of entry to the media market. Thus instead of adapting to the idea of a new networked economy some organisations and individuals are trying to wrestle the internet into a shape that suits their old revenue models.

Mike Butcher over at Techcrunch reports on a meeting that took place between Microsoft/Bing and some big newspapers in Europe, regarding ACAP (the Automated Content Access Protocol), which aims to give publishers control over how search engines access their content.

“This is the more granular version of the robots.txt protocol which has been proposed by publishers to enable them to have a more sophisticated response to search engine crawlers….  “Some call it the “DRM of newspaper web sites”. That said some 1,600 traditional publishers have signed up to using ACAP.”

Badda Bing! Microsoft woos newspapers by funding their stick to beat Google 

Lose-lose

Basically ACAP will assist publishers who want to charge a premium for their content and control if and how search engines can index it. This development seems to be a lose-lose for all involved:

• The publisher: The publisher is restricting the ability for people online to learn about the existence of their content. This will likely impact an important stage of the ‘user flow’ I describe below, awareness.
• The user: The user of the web will not know that a website has some content she wants. This user may actually have been willing to pay for the content, if they only knew it were out there. Or, the user may have been inclined to read the content for free, but could have been persuaded towards paying in some way, given the understanding that doing so will be of benefit to the publisher.
• The search engine: By producing results manipulated by ‘big media’ the chances are web users will simply go elsewhere. If I notice 5 out of 10 search results I get from Bing are taking me to content I cannot read in full, or I learn it is not even indexing a lot of the content I want, I doubt it will be very long before I give up on it. As pointed out by a commenter below Mike’s article, with only 3.25% (Sept 2009) of market share, this is an even bigger risk for Microsoft’s Bing than it would be for Google, who thankfully are not currently being so evil.

Consider the users

So how can a publisher producing quality content, but seeing falling ad-revenue, move towards win-win?

They could do much worse than consider the users.

Note, I said users (plural). Where once we considered how ’the user‘ interacts with our website, now we must consider how ‘the users‘ interact with us, our website, and eachother.

Be social

What is different about today’s media is the proliferation of many-to-many interaction opportunities. A capacity to feedback on a product / interest area, to have a conversation around it, and to influence it, is what people now expect and want. Users may not utilise the ability a website provides them to comment (see the 90-9-1 rule), but having that line open encourages trust in the content, product or service on offer.

Media organisations need sustainable business models that work with current market conditions: and part of that means being social.

Turning community loyalty into revenue

In my post on Community user flow: attending to every stage I looked at how social websites can succeed by paying attention to every potential step of a user’s relationship with them: awareness, visit, repeat visit, membership and active membership (participant).

Further to this a website needs to consider how to generate revenue, and hows its efforts to tend to user flow can translate into revenue.

If the organisation is not-for-profit, this might be as simple as generating funding via sponsorship, and proving to its funders that its online publishing activities are attracting a sufficient audience. However, most websites will need to adopt a model which draws revenue from many sources, including individual purchases or donations. In this case attending to the user flow and building community loyalty can generate revenue from many sources:

In conclusion, publishers spending their time looking into ACAP might well be wise to consider how the portion of their revenue that comes from premium content might be protected. However, they need to view this revenue alongside other potential sources of income. They also need to be cognizant that making money in one way can cut off another, in this case impacting on traffic and loyalty, resulting in an overall net loss of revenue.