How Cloud Computing Technologies are shifting the basis of Competitive Advantage
Expand to see inline the other posts in IT Management» Executives need to understand how the increasing availability and depth of Cloud Computing technologies are impacting their organizations’ competitive advantages. After responding to A. McAfee’s challenge of a good cloud computing metaphor in a previous post, I felt compelled to clarify and complete. My metaphor described this shift as if …
In search of a cloud computing metaphor? Think Harrods, with some twists
The metaphors used to describe any technology strongly shape its future, through their influence on executives. As Andrew McAfee (now at the MIT after Harvard) notes about Cloud Computing, different imageries are currently competing. As Andrew points out, the electric grid metaphor can influence business executives to view Cloud Computing as a commodification of a class of IT services. Treating …
Uservoice fails to seize the internal enterprise market (or "consuprise" take 3)
This week saw interesting news coming out from Uservoice: funding and white-label solutions for enterprises. Good direction, but not far enough to reach the internal enterprise market: this is a common strategic mistake that hurts both enterprises and start-ups with a potential on this market. Uservoice provides a quick, simple and very efficient means for users of a service to …
Return on Attention is a key metric in a world of Attention Scarcity
Expand to see inline the other posts in Strategic Shifts» Attention is increasing in relative scarcity (as explained in details in a previous post), and what is scarce is valuable. While any product, service or other activity costs attention to both the consumer and producer, attention is becoming increasingly valuable. It is hence essential to ensure that what you produce …
User Adoption risks are growing rapidly for IT projects
Expand to see inline the other posts in IT Management» Organizations tend to concentrate on 2 different risks for IT projects, while a third one may be impacting the most their chances of success. “Technical Risks” and “Business Risks” are widely used notions. The first comprises the risks that can affect the IT infrastructure (e.g., bring down the network, break …
Pace of change is accelerating: what if there is no equilibrium?
Expand to see inline the other posts in Fundamental Shifts» THE GIST Gist: The historical pattern of change has been one of disruptive changes followed by stabilization periods – punctuated equilibrium. The Equilibrium paradigm is the most used by executives, strategists, etc. Even in a punctuated equilibrium paradigm, there is a reversion to equilibrium after disruption, thus making it the …
Enterprise Social Computing Pricing: continuing the discussion
When writing blog posts, we usually reply to one or several other posts, quoting at most 2–3 extracts of them. In emails, it is fairly common to keep replying and articulating refinements as further thoughts are spurred. Why don’t we do it on blogs as well? I don’t know, but I’ll try here, and it may prove interesting. Let me …
TweetDeck should sell licenses to enterprises (to reach consumers)
Several really smart investors have recently funded TweetDeck, an advanced twitter client. The monetization in the consumer market is still an open question, as there are few barriers to entry and sustainable differentiation will be hard to achieve. Whatever the monetization option, it can already be accelerated and increased, by playing at the edge of the consumer and enterprise markets. …
Consuprise 2: Combine consumer and entreprise markets to multiply network effects
Expand to see inline the other posts in Strategic Shifts» How can web start-ups use the enterprise market to make inroads in the consumer market(s) they target? By playing at the edge, and using the enterprise market to strategically dominate competitors in the consumer market eventually targeted. The revenue streams created in the process (detailed in a previous post) are …
Umair Haque speaking in Stockholm
Umair Haque, which is fast becoming a reference, has been speaking at the Daytona conference. You can watch him in a very high quality video below. Though a lot of the material has been shared on his blog, I’ve taken some screenshots and a few notes of the slides while watching, if you can’t spend the hour on it. But it’s …