May 2, 2012 · 10:12 am

Bubbles

Many of you may have seen a bunch of articles asking if we’re in another tech bubble.  There was an excellent one today in The Silicon Alley Insider (they conclude we’re not and their reasoning is pretty sound and fact-based) and it got me thinking about the nature of “bubbles” and how tech is far from the only area to experience them.  In fact, I’m going to posit that your business may fall victim to them at times.  Let me explain.

Here is the definition of a bubble from the article:

…We have to ask what a bubble is. And the important thing to get is that a bubble is a mass delusion. Technology investor and visionary Peter Thiel has a good definition which boils down to this: a bubble is a) a widespread, intense belief that’s b) wrong.  In other words, a bubble is what happens when the vast majority of people believe (and are putting their money into) things based on a fundamentally wrong-headed notion.

I like that, and I think it’s applicable to people just as much as it is to businesses.  We can start with many of the “celebrities” that populate so much of our popular culture today.  Many people seem to believe things about them (they’re role models, they’ve got talent) that are fundamentally wrong.  Add most of the “artists” we hear who are incapable of performing without electronic enhancement if, in fact, they’re the ones performing their music at all.  Most of the time, they’ve taken a riff from someone else’s work and gone from there.

Then there are some “thought leaders” out there who haven’t had an original thought in a decade.  Unfortunately, a good portion of the traditional trade press (which makes a lot of its dough from subscriptions and ads from these some folks) doesn’t point out that these emperors are naked.  There is a leadership bubble in many sectors – an intense belief in people who are just wrong.

Sorry for the snark today but am I off-base?  Are we living in a time of mass delusion?  Or am I the only delusional one?

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May 1, 2012 · 11:02 am

Being Prepared

A very long time ago that seems like yesterday, I was a Boy Scout.  Given that it was the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, being a part of a quasimilitary organization (or even any organization other than a rock band) was a fairly brave thing to do on my part although I certainly didn’t see it as such at the time.  The thing that scouting impresses upon you almost from the outset is the need to BE PREPARED.  Yep, in caps.  Be prepared in mind, be prepared in body.

"A Boy Scout" Boy Scout Cigarette Card

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I got to thinking about that the other day as I left a meeting.  I had spent several hours getting ready – trying to anticipate questions I might be asked, learning about the company and person with whom I was meeting – and the prep work paid off.  We had a very productive session, hopefully the first of many more.  Rather than spend a lot of time going over preliminaries, we were able to move into the real questions each of us had for the other.

When you drive beyond a town you sometimes come across a sign for a new housing development that’s nothing more than some roads.  It’s easy to say “I have no clue what this is, what it will look like, if it’s worth thinking about, etc.”  But someone has to build the road first. Sure, it’s all empty lots, there’s not much around. But being prepared is building the road.  Equipment and workers can’t get in without a road; nothing much can happen in any project or meeting without prep.

I used to say I didn’t want to walk into any meeting where I hadn’t already answered the questions.  What I meant was that I always wanted my team to get ready in advance by thinking through all the possible options, the potential questions, and projected outcomes.  That wasn’t about predetermining the outcome.  It was about being ready to discuss any and all thinking.  More importantly, it was showing respect to the other participants in the room by not needing to get up to speed or to schedule another meeting because you need a lot more time to gather information.

So today’s thought is the scout motto:  be prepared.  As a teacher you learn that every hour teaching is preceded by an hour or more of prep.  It’s been a good lesson to carry forward into business – devote as much time to preparing as to doing.  You’ll be surprised how much more actually gets done.

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April 30, 2012 · 10:41 am

10 Years After

I was thinking over the weekend about what a very different place the world is going to be from a technical and media perspective in just a few years.  Of course, if you take a few minutes to think back and recall how the world was in 2002, just a decade ago, you’d be missing YouTube, iPhones, Facebook, Twitter, and hybrid cars.  Every one of those things is a daily part of my life and probably yours as well.

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...

Image via CrunchBase

What got me thinking about this was this:

New research from Leichtman Research Group finds that 38% of all U.S. households have at least one television set connected to the internet via a video game system, a Blu-ray player, an Apple TV, a Roku set-top box and/or the TV set itself. This number is up from 30% last year, and 24% from two years ago. Game consoles are the key devices within this category, as 28% of all households have a video game system connected to the web.

I spend some time each week watching Hulu+, Netflix, YouTube, and other services through my Xbox.  That time spent is not incremental to normal TV viewing – it’s content I find more interesting than what’s available.  That behavior ties in with the research:

  • 13% of Netflix subscribers would consider reducing spending on their multichannel video service because of Netflix, down from 21% last year.
  • 16% of all U.S. adults watch full-length TV shows online at least weekly, up from 12% last year.
  • 19% of mobile phone owners watch video on their phones on a weekly basis; while 9% of all U.S. adults watch video on an iPad/tablet.

So I sort of had this flash forward.  If traditional cable boxes become anachronisms, what else goes with them?  I think desktop computers will be history soon, as tablets and other mobile devices access cloud-based services and data.  Even though I have many computers in my home, I spend nearly all my time on a laptop and could very easily transition to a tablet with a keyboard.  Skype and Google Voice could replace my landline and just may shortly.  I’m sure you can add a few legacy technologies/services that need either to pivot or die.

In only 10 years, a lot of our behavior has been changed by a few services and technologies.  In another 10, it will all be different again.  Are you ready?  Is your business?

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