Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Supply chain time travel PART 1
In the next few postings I am going to discuss the topic I call, Supply Chain Time Travel. I'll talk through the evolutionary path I see from the Industrial Revolution to the present day ( approaching 12 on the clock metaphor) and then a look ahead to 3 O'Clock. Next posting, the Industrial Evolution.
Social networks beats Search (more)
A saying I use a lot these days. I have written about this before on one of my blogs but I had not thought deeper about why this would be the case. I think I have an answer.
I made the point last time that by using the term, 'social network' I was not referring exclusively to web2.0 websites, they are still at a primitive stage of evolution. I mean the personal interactions with individuals, whether be in person, land line or online call, email etc. It is that social network that find s the best information. People, people in the network are processing information that I do not have. People have great processing abilities and we can input impressive amounts of data from our senses, sight dominating information flow to the brain but all the other senses contribute. A machine + a bit of software code, is not on this level, well not yet. But even when they are it will be the priorities set by our social network interactions that biases the rules by which we want to receive information on. Our Senses give the social network the lead over key word search processing power.
I made the point last time that by using the term, 'social network' I was not referring exclusively to web2.0 websites, they are still at a primitive stage of evolution. I mean the personal interactions with individuals, whether be in person, land line or online call, email etc. It is that social network that find s the best information. People, people in the network are processing information that I do not have. People have great processing abilities and we can input impressive amounts of data from our senses, sight dominating information flow to the brain but all the other senses contribute. A machine + a bit of software code, is not on this level, well not yet. But even when they are it will be the priorities set by our social network interactions that biases the rules by which we want to receive information on. Our Senses give the social network the lead over key word search processing power.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Profit on the march
Today's use of the word profit has a definition that has become too narrow; money left after sales income minus expenditures. This is an extremely narrow definition. In Volition Science the word 'profit' is defined a lot broader, profit includes intellectual capital creation. This is a much more natural definition of the word.
Society is quite happy for a monetary value to be placed on commercial activities, mainly with a material object is at stake, e.g. a car to a human in a recruitment business. The one area where an Intangible services is making high monetary profits is online with targeted ad's. In effect the companies serving up these links are selling our attention data. Conclusion, the current world is expanding the meaning of profit, the first little steps and as the volume of attention data expands then that in itself will be where this expand profit definition will take hold. What will be the new currency after money? Influence?, it will be an intangible but as measurable as cash is today but the big difference being the biggest profits will be had in services derived from intellectual capital, the thoughts in your head minus the thoughts is another persons head. Step by step this will become the norm.
Profits natural definition and meaning is to value life, not physical token of exchange we call money, cash, cheques, digital cash etc.
Society is quite happy for a monetary value to be placed on commercial activities, mainly with a material object is at stake, e.g. a car to a human in a recruitment business. The one area where an Intangible services is making high monetary profits is online with targeted ad's. In effect the companies serving up these links are selling our attention data. Conclusion, the current world is expanding the meaning of profit, the first little steps and as the volume of attention data expands then that in itself will be where this expand profit definition will take hold. What will be the new currency after money? Influence?, it will be an intangible but as measurable as cash is today but the big difference being the biggest profits will be had in services derived from intellectual capital, the thoughts in your head minus the thoughts is another persons head. Step by step this will become the norm.
Profits natural definition and meaning is to value life, not physical token of exchange we call money, cash, cheques, digital cash etc.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Volition Science An introduction
Across on my personal blog, I wrote a posting on Volition . The book in question, Sic Itur Ad Astra by Galambos, Andrew J. I am now a few chapters in and have read more pages out of sequence. There is a lot to blog on and given the 'Power of the Individual' is key to volition science I have decided the natural home for my thoughts on Volition Science will be this blog.
What Andrew Galambos does in the first few chapters (lessons, the book is based on his lectures) is give precise definitions of words. You may agree or disagree with those but given what they are it allows for a robust intellectual framework. That framework, can create a 'natural society'. I'll post on topics along the way to that conclusion.
But to conclude for now, I found it interesting reading the amazon.com book review comments, 5 stars all the way.
What Andrew Galambos does in the first few chapters (lessons, the book is based on his lectures) is give precise definitions of words. You may agree or disagree with those but given what they are it allows for a robust intellectual framework. That framework, can create a 'natural society'. I'll post on topics along the way to that conclusion.
But to conclude for now, I found it interesting reading the amazon.com book review comments, 5 stars all the way.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Saturday, January 06, 2007
life capitalism
I am not sure whey I have not linked these words together before, life capitalism. Monetary capitalism has brought us thus far, it has been successful but reaching its limit of success. Life Capitalism has the intellectual framework to drive society forward, much further forward and under the rules of attention that we are just starting to understand.
More on this to come.
More on this to come.
Thursday, January 04, 2007
spinning too fast for money
P.Q = M.V
Brings me back to my days at University and monetary economics lectures. I listened to Michael Goldhaber at BayChi on the Emerging Attention Economy in July 2006 and one of his slides showed how in an attention economy, the number of transaction that happen are exponentially greater in volume than those in the current monetary/market based economy. I have been thinking about that slide and that lead me to recall the above equation. If you want some back ground on it, read the wikipedia entry.
are The half I was thinking about was the M.V and in particular the V. The velocity at which the speed of money needs to move. M is the amount of money in circulation. Then for economic progress to be made, lets simply say, that requires the number to get larger and increase over time. The point, I want to focus on. In today's economy, the framework has become too successful, we have the ability to make all the stuff (material) we need, in many cases, we are creating excess amounts. This means the V variable in the equation takes most, if not all the responsibility to contribute to 'making progress'. What happens? V spins, faster and faster and given the phyical nature of the cash, even digital cash this is creating an artificial sped up pace for economic life. We still are reving up the V, it seems to be still responding but the externalities are evident for all to see, from personal health to environmental imbalance.
Is there a way out? Yes, let assume we replace M with A. We replace Money with Attention. Attention is much lighter than cash (even digital cash). It is happy to spin quick, it can even spin at levels unimaginable to M. Given attention is human focused, the higher the rate of attention speed the better the social and I would speculate the wider environmental harmony will be put in place.
The intellectual equations are the easy part. However, I see plenty of evidence society is creating the necessary moves to allow A, Attention to replace money.
Brings me back to my days at University and monetary economics lectures. I listened to Michael Goldhaber at BayChi on the Emerging Attention Economy in July 2006 and one of his slides showed how in an attention economy, the number of transaction that happen are exponentially greater in volume than those in the current monetary/market based economy. I have been thinking about that slide and that lead me to recall the above equation. If you want some back ground on it, read the wikipedia entry.
are The half I was thinking about was the M.V and in particular the V. The velocity at which the speed of money needs to move. M is the amount of money in circulation. Then for economic progress to be made, lets simply say, that requires the number to get larger and increase over time. The point, I want to focus on. In today's economy, the framework has become too successful, we have the ability to make all the stuff (material) we need, in many cases, we are creating excess amounts. This means the V variable in the equation takes most, if not all the responsibility to contribute to 'making progress'. What happens? V spins, faster and faster and given the phyical nature of the cash, even digital cash this is creating an artificial sped up pace for economic life. We still are reving up the V, it seems to be still responding but the externalities are evident for all to see, from personal health to environmental imbalance.
Is there a way out? Yes, let assume we replace M with A. We replace Money with Attention. Attention is much lighter than cash (even digital cash). It is happy to spin quick, it can even spin at levels unimaginable to M. Given attention is human focused, the higher the rate of attention speed the better the social and I would speculate the wider environmental harmony will be put in place.
The intellectual equations are the easy part. However, I see plenty of evidence society is creating the necessary moves to allow A, Attention to replace money.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
social network beats search every time?
If there were only a choice between using my social network or a search engine to find a bit of information, for me the social network wins every time.
We are just at the very beginning of the creation of social networks online but combined with off line networks, whether it be looking for somewhere to stay or the right venture capitalist, social networks have proved the best results for me.
Of course the reality is that the social network and search and deeply intermixed and one without the other would be see a world with poorer information.
Watch out for impressive new social networking services, they are going to continue to be everywhere.
We are just at the very beginning of the creation of social networks online but combined with off line networks, whether it be looking for somewhere to stay or the right venture capitalist, social networks have proved the best results for me.
Of course the reality is that the social network and search and deeply intermixed and one without the other would be see a world with poorer information.
Watch out for impressive new social networking services, they are going to continue to be everywhere.
collaboration is the new competition
How many times have we heard economist to policitians espoucing that competition is the key influencer in keeping markets efficient and staving off monopoly tendencies. The classic story being how if a market is producing excess profits then that will encourage new market entrants in to share in those profit but the net effect is that prices lower and thus all end consumers benefit.
That is the economics of the market driven economy, the economics of the 'attention' economy will see collaboration as the new competition mantra by the attionomists and policitians. How will that story go?
An individual demands a new service. The current flow of service has never been asked for that service before, those with the skills and talents contribute to that new service by offering up their time. The service is delivered. Other individuals are inspired by the new service and add their demand. The colloborators devote more of their time to this new service. However, demand keep coming and it's not a mass flow for homogeneous service, these are individual, personalized service demands, new iterations or even new evolutions of the original. The existing collaborators can not serve all the demand, attention pricing does not increase because new collaborators enter to serve the demand, (time will have allowed for retraining of skills and automation of key limiting factors now in the new service creation) and all individuals receive the service they require.
That is the economics of the market driven economy, the economics of the 'attention' economy will see collaboration as the new competition mantra by the attionomists and policitians. How will that story go?
An individual demands a new service. The current flow of service has never been asked for that service before, those with the skills and talents contribute to that new service by offering up their time. The service is delivered. Other individuals are inspired by the new service and add their demand. The colloborators devote more of their time to this new service. However, demand keep coming and it's not a mass flow for homogeneous service, these are individual, personalized service demands, new iterations or even new evolutions of the original. The existing collaborators can not serve all the demand, attention pricing does not increase because new collaborators enter to serve the demand, (time will have allowed for retraining of skills and automation of key limiting factors now in the new service creation) and all individuals receive the service they require.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
the average paradox
The clothes manufacturers and retailers produce piles of the same products. Given this mass homogeneous economy I do find it interesting to observe that on any given day the individual choices produce no to same outfit next to one another on the streets. I call this the average paradox.
Friday, August 25, 2006
an economy content to deliver AVERAGE
The current economy is optimized to deliver 'average'. Mass economies of scale being the underlying economic rational, the pile them high, sell them low mantra. The economies of stock (think Just in Time, end consumer personalization), being the challenger.
I had an interesting conversation the other week that lead me to conclude there was another force at work too that was driving us towards 'average'. Scarcity is the constraining resource that the science of economics was built on. And while information, in my mind is limitless, the current economy sets out to minimize the availability of information, the logic being the less information there is, the more perceived scarcity is created and the end result is the ability to drive up prices. The case can be made that we now live in a world with unlimited resources, (we produce too many cars to clothing) and the current role of the corporate suppliers is to create the illusions of scarcity, while mass producing average, which they call maximizing profits.
That is the old game for the economy. We are now seeing the re-purposing of the economy to focus on LIFE. Life is unique, we are all unique. This economy is being grown from the grass roots up and is here and now if you want to participate.
I had an interesting conversation the other week that lead me to conclude there was another force at work too that was driving us towards 'average'. Scarcity is the constraining resource that the science of economics was built on. And while information, in my mind is limitless, the current economy sets out to minimize the availability of information, the logic being the less information there is, the more perceived scarcity is created and the end result is the ability to drive up prices. The case can be made that we now live in a world with unlimited resources, (we produce too many cars to clothing) and the current role of the corporate suppliers is to create the illusions of scarcity, while mass producing average, which they call maximizing profits.
That is the old game for the economy. We are now seeing the re-purposing of the economy to focus on LIFE. Life is unique, we are all unique. This economy is being grown from the grass roots up and is here and now if you want to participate.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Individuals ready for identity empowerment
A call to all identity visionaries, entrepreneurs and existing providers, stop all your technical to technical - business to business conversations and focus all that energy and talent on giving the individual the power to create their own identity. Let the individual users create the market, we will move faster, wider and thus create the environment for an explosion of innovation in this new market place.
Have the courage to take this path. Show leadership.
Have the courage to take this path. Show leadership.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
The empowerment industry
A whole new industry is going to form around empowering the individual. These businesses will provide indentity services, attention services, tools etc. The common nature of all will be that their goal will be to listen to the individual and to deliver the empowerment they need. It is highly unlikely that these businesses will be able to stride both empowering the individual and provide services to another business entity.
It is not because there services won't touch other businesses, they will do, many, maybe many more than exist today but that interaction will come from the empowered individual selecting to engage with a business to serve their demands.
It is not because there services won't touch other businesses, they will do, many, maybe many more than exist today but that interaction will come from the empowered individual selecting to engage with a business to serve their demands.
Empower the individual
I have put together this set of picture to illustrate my view on what empowering the individual is about.
h
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Center of the universe = The individual
That is the individual, living, breathing and real.
Not, a windows operating system.
Not, an attention operating system.
Not, an identity management operating system.
Us as individuals will tell what mix of the above and other services and tools we require. This will give the suppliers of such services the empowerment to do what they have to do deliver the demand.
I don't believe this world hardly even exists today. As for tomorrow? It will be the norm.
Not, a windows operating system.
Not, an attention operating system.
Not, an identity management operating system.
Us as individuals will tell what mix of the above and other services and tools we require. This will give the suppliers of such services the empowerment to do what they have to do deliver the demand.
I don't believe this world hardly even exists today. As for tomorrow? It will be the norm.
Pinko marketing = telling the truth
Tara Hunt gave a thoughtful presentation at the Attention Trust last night. What is PinkoMarketing? To me it is all about telling the truth. Tara sets out 5 guiding rules/principles guiding this new era of marketing:
1. Listening, listen to your customers, no out bound messages required whether they be advertisements on television, online or email etc.
2. Be community advocates, help your customers by listening to their feedback by participating with them
3. 100% authenticity, live with the highest of ethics
4. Think small, customers in the end of the day are individuals
5. Open source principles, empowering of individuals, no silos of data, no wall gardens to restict information flowing to the customer.
Tara is giving inspiring leadership as we enter this new era of honest information.
1. Listening, listen to your customers, no out bound messages required whether they be advertisements on television, online or email etc.
2. Be community advocates, help your customers by listening to their feedback by participating with them
3. 100% authenticity, live with the highest of ethics
4. Think small, customers in the end of the day are individuals
5. Open source principles, empowering of individuals, no silos of data, no wall gardens to restict information flowing to the customer.
Tara is giving inspiring leadership as we enter this new era of honest information.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
P to T to B, NOT TtoT + BtoB Identity empowerment
I have been soaking in all the information I can on where the world is with IDENTITY management. I am greatly encouraged that there is lots going on and it only seems a matter of time before empowered individuals have control over their identity online and on land.
Encouraged that there is a lot of individuals passionate about making this service real and the amount of technical brainpower being applied is vast. I may be calling this wrong based upon my limited involvement in meetings on the subject but I feel all the technical chat is taking our eye of the individual. As the technical chats then evolved to business-to-business chats, e.g. OK, we agree this ABC protocol, then your business and my business will adhere to that standard and then that will open up value to the end user.
I agree such chats are necessary in creating a new service but I feel this strategy is too disconnected from the end user, or individuals that are seeking to manage their identity for themselves.
Here is what I would like to see more of: Individuals are the starting point. We are demand the convenience and the promise of more personalised services and control our identities is a path we want to pursue to get to that value. The demand is here and now but what are we doing with it today? Nothing? We have to wait for until all the TtoT (technical to technical) stuff has been worked out and then for the businesses to act upon those changes. We are dis-empowering individuals from getting directly involved. I feel we could have a much stronger market adoption time line if we get individuals more involved today.
Here is a suggestion: The browsers all offer to remember our identity e.g. usernames and passwords. Why can we not release an identity service that is controlled by the individuals not the browser company today? The service would provide the 'glue' that would automate my log in to all the website I use today. OK, that's the win, no release of personalised information to the website to invite a personalized service as the standard are not complete at that level.
So, in connection with the individual use of the service we can aggregate the user power for website of share interest e.g. at flickr.com and that will show them that XX thousands of people are expressing demand. This will force change at the speed of the individual i.e. true demand and not of those of the technical standards or business deals. This expression of demand is missing for the current market I feel. If I am wrong please send me link to the sites that provide me with this expression of my empowerment.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Expectations & future mind warfare
How do we decide what we are going to do in the next second, minute, hour, day, tomorrow, weekend, next week, year in year out until the next second does not appear?
I think it will take the whole lifetime of this blog to answer but I want to focus on the role Advertising plays in the context of the question above.
My economics studies taught me there were two type of advertising, 1. Provide product/service information to the market, 2. Provides information to persuade demand to choose between products/services. If I recall rightly, the hypothesis is that the second adds no economics value to the wider economy, infect it could be argued it will reduce the size of the overall economy as scarce resources are allocated to create no.2 type advertising, labor, capital, natural resources and time.
By way of a sweeping generalization most income from Internet businesses is in the form of ad's. Well, those are the revenues I am going to focus on. Ad sense, introduced by google, on one hand can be seen as the savour of the Internet economy, a way has been found to make an internet business sustainable, more than that it is a corner stone of an investment portfolio with its Fortune 500 status. Question, is ad sense and the others, yahoo, msn, myspace etc. offering type 1 or type 2 advertising?
It's type 1. Millions upon millions of clicks on ads up to billions of dollars of revenue therefore, it must have provided the individuals with information that they were looking for.
It's type 2. These product/services are already 'real' and are competing for the right to be consumed. In short, they are adding to the cost of other individuals products and diverting scarce resources away from the 'fathering of mankind'.
Both right?
I feel the answer lies in the hands in each and every individual. Do you set out with the goal of building an experience you have aleady envisioned or are you at the mercy of others to influence the future decisions forming in your mind? If you can be persuaded to change via ads is that alright? Even if you know what you are seeking to create, ads can still provide information that will help you create the unique experience you would not be able to create on your own.
Individual empowerment and control suggests and I am of the opinion that type 2 advertising will soon disappear from economic models. What does this mean for ad based businesses? They will go out of business right? Could do, but the smart ones will realize they are in the individual empowering business and the ad income was a stepping stone route they chose to take along the way. The years ahead will tell if that evolution can be made or will a new start ups, pure to the individual empowerment vision arrive and take over?
Individuals will decide.
I think it will take the whole lifetime of this blog to answer but I want to focus on the role Advertising plays in the context of the question above.
My economics studies taught me there were two type of advertising, 1. Provide product/service information to the market, 2. Provides information to persuade demand to choose between products/services. If I recall rightly, the hypothesis is that the second adds no economics value to the wider economy, infect it could be argued it will reduce the size of the overall economy as scarce resources are allocated to create no.2 type advertising, labor, capital, natural resources and time.
By way of a sweeping generalization most income from Internet businesses is in the form of ad's. Well, those are the revenues I am going to focus on. Ad sense, introduced by google, on one hand can be seen as the savour of the Internet economy, a way has been found to make an internet business sustainable, more than that it is a corner stone of an investment portfolio with its Fortune 500 status. Question, is ad sense and the others, yahoo, msn, myspace etc. offering type 1 or type 2 advertising?
It's type 1. Millions upon millions of clicks on ads up to billions of dollars of revenue therefore, it must have provided the individuals with information that they were looking for.
It's type 2. These product/services are already 'real' and are competing for the right to be consumed. In short, they are adding to the cost of other individuals products and diverting scarce resources away from the 'fathering of mankind'.
Both right?
I feel the answer lies in the hands in each and every individual. Do you set out with the goal of building an experience you have aleady envisioned or are you at the mercy of others to influence the future decisions forming in your mind? If you can be persuaded to change via ads is that alright? Even if you know what you are seeking to create, ads can still provide information that will help you create the unique experience you would not be able to create on your own.
Individual empowerment and control suggests and I am of the opinion that type 2 advertising will soon disappear from economic models. What does this mean for ad based businesses? They will go out of business right? Could do, but the smart ones will realize they are in the individual empowering business and the ad income was a stepping stone route they chose to take along the way. The years ahead will tell if that evolution can be made or will a new start ups, pure to the individual empowerment vision arrive and take over?
Individuals will decide.
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