Walter Adamson

	| | | | | | Save to Mobile Scan my QR Code	I blog about the IT Industry & the Cloud Shift, customer engagement & social media , and business value & innovation, and in particular where they overlap.
Melbourne Lead for iGo2 Group - delivering to business social strategy, tactics, monitoring and tools. IT exec since way back, blogging since early 2004, Tweeting since 2007, certified social business strategist since 2009, still learning. CoFounder and Partner of the Social Business Consulting Group. Old eyes, new views. Give me a tweet. More bio here. Contact: walter@walteradamson.com  m: +61 403 345 632 Keywords: Social enterprise, social governance, social monitoring, community platforms, IT strategy, customer value proposition, SaaS, cloud strategy, go-to-market, digital engagement.

What Best Buy could learn from David Bowie

On the 10th of January 2012 The Next Web noted how "David Bowie’s 2002 predictions about the future of music were pretty close". Bowie predicted, in 2002, that "The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it".

Furthermore, as he rounded out his predictions he said something which really struck me, just as powerful as the predictions themselves:

"But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen".

The day before, in Forbes, Larry Downes wrote about Best Buy (The People vs. Best Buy, Round Two) where he described the reaction to his first article Why Best Buy is Going out of Business...Gradually.

The responses to my article could, in the hands of the right senior executives, form the playbook for a compelling new strategy for Best Buy, one that could do far more than simply preserve the company’s existing market share. But rather than drink in all that free advice, the company’s responses simply wish it away. It’s more denial, now tinged with a dose of anger. According to Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s classic psychiatric study, for a patient with a terminal diagnosis those are the first and second stages of grief.

In many years (OK, many, many years) as an entrepreneur, investor, and consultant working with Fortune 500 companies, I’ve found there are two kinds of senior executives. There are those who see mistakes as an opportunity to improve their business and those who waste their energy explaining away real problems.

Downes outlines reason after reason why best Buy needs to change, and how nothing they can do can change the progressions which are happening, for example:

• Online competitors are certainly part of Best Buy’s problem, but not for the reasons it thinks. What’s really going on is more basic. Best Buy just doesn’t understand its customers’ point of view.
• What I meant was that consumers easily adapt to alternative retail channels.  Before the Internet, there was catalog shopping and home shopping from television. For consumers, buying online was just the next step in an obvious progression of more convenient ways to buy.
• For brick-and-mortar retailers, however, the shift was jarring.  Moving online required new thinking, new management structures, and new strategies.
• To compete successfully against new online retailers, traditional retailers would also need to find ways to transform the expensive liabilities of physical locations with limited hours and high labor and inventory costs into assets that complemented rather than competed with the online experience.

Best Buy's leadership team's reaction, from what we see, is to create PR "crisis management" scripts for its staff, respond in rote, dig in, and deny. Nothing usual I suppose.

What is unusual is that David Bowie saw beyond his entire livelihood, his total current world view, and was able to articulate and to acknowledge its demise:

"Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again".

Astounding really. Best Buy need David Bowie's help, don't you think?

Let's run over that quote from David Bowie once again:

"But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen".

How do you break strong leadership teams out of their mindsets?

How do you demonstrate the "reality" which they cannot see?

What are the keys to action and follow-through and not just acknowledgement?

Please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeeme.com/walter

Help! How To Comment at New Facebook for iPad app

I've been keenly awaiting the new Facebook iPad app. It's OK. There's a quick and reasonable summary at LifeHacker.

But I'm stuck on one thing. I can't figure how to comment on posts!

See the screen shot to the right and also the video.

The Enter/Return doesn't work and there is no other way that I can see to enter the comment.

Who can help?

As LifeHacker says: "While not a revolutionary app by any means, if you love (or even just like) Facebook and have an iPad it's pretty much an obligatory download".

Agree - but I want to be able to comment!!

Please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeeme.com/walter

Review of @nealschaffer Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing

Through my observations and interactions in social media I have developed a high respect for Neal Schaffer, a true Linkedin expert. So when his latest book came out I pestered him for the Kindle release, and here is my review of Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing: An Unofficial, Practical Guide to Selling & Developing B2B Business on LinkedIn.

My review is quite short, and segmented into Positive, Negative, and Interesting.

Summary

Overall I rate the book very highly. There is a mountain of practical advice, and work if you follow-up on all that advice. I'm in the process of touching up my Linkedin profile and making more time for Linkedin again as a result of reading it. But I've deducted one star because of the Negatives. Those Negatives could have been easily avoided, so I assume that they are a conscious choice, and so I'm expressing a difference in opinion rather than fact.

Positive

The book reflects the author's deep knowledge of Linkedin and his own business results from using it in the way he describes. So this is a very practical guide for B2B.

It's segmented and easy to read - I read it in 2 hours - and includes specific Case Studies to illustrate the advice. It clearly explains how to get over the typical stumbling blocks, such as how people and their companies should be represented and interact, and reminds us about the value of the functions of Linkedin that we may have neglected, such as Questions and Answers, and Polls, for example.

Furthemore, by its practical nature it generates a big workload of audits and review and rethinking content and priorities and activies on Linkedin. That meaning that this book can deliver a big outcome if you take up its challenges.

I have developed myself a workload as a result of reading this book. That's a great outcome. If you want to brush up or learn about how to maximise your Linkedin presence value then I recommend this book.

Negative

There were a couple of aspects of the book which disappointed me. The least disappointing was the clear message by the author in the opening remarks, and then from time to time later, that this book is clearly intended to be a companion to his first book. I've never read Neal's first book, and I assumed that given his experience since then that the new one would be a superset. Actually it doesn't even matter what I think, but what I think does matter is that this point is not made clear in any of the product description on Amazon for example. I would not have been disappointed if this had been transparent when I bought the book.

The bigger disappointment was the constant repetition of basic points. The chapters all seem to have published as stand-alone pieces at some point in their life-cycle. They repeat the same things many times, up to 4 or 5, I lost count. They don't repeat them in a pedagogical way, rather, each seems completely blind to the existence of the previous occurrences. This was obviously a chosen format, but I found it distracting and disappointing, almost like things were begin padded out.

Interesting

Neal has strong views about managing your online personas, along the lines of "Linkedin for business, Facebook for personal". He explains this thoughtfully - at least it made me contemplate my point of view. And he provides a set of filters to run your posts through to ensure that you maintain your professional persona on Linkedin. 

It's interesting because personally I don't really subscribe to this theory. What I do agree with is that linking your Twitter to your Linkedin is not a good idea, and that there are things which you need to think twice about before posting on Linkedin. But ultimately everything will be exposed, so I'd rather put effort into working Linkedin to the max rather than worrying whether I should be saying something in Linkedin or my blog or Facebook or Twitter or Posterous etc etc. I think that you just be yourself but don't dance naked on the dinner table at a business meeting, or with friends that you've just met.

On Neal's side he has some compelling evidence to support what he says - and that is the business which he has built from following his own guidelines on Linkedin. That's irrefutable. You might be best to take his advice!

See my question on Quora.

What is your favorite tip for getting the most out of LinkedIn?

Please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeeme.com/walter

Unparalleled cloud opportunity in Australia - Parallels

The Parallels Australia SMB Cloud Insights survey caught my attention. It's released as a pre-conference marketing promotion but it still contains some useful unbiased results.

The fact that it's benchmarked to similar surveys across the developed world is what makes it most relevant and interesting. It turns out that Australia is a poor cousin when it comes to cloud adoption, particularly in SMBs with 20 to 250 employees. For example, In other developed countries 49% of those report using hosted servers, whereas in Australia the figure is 22%. For smaller Australian businesses the uptake is about 60-70% of the other developed countries.

Of course "hosted servers" aren't really "cloud" - but managing hosted servers is what Parallels sells. The figures can be taken as indicative of the general attitude toward broader cloud services, with hosted servers being used as an example.

I wanted to post a question on the Parallels' blog, but what grabbed my attention was this, which I've never seen before:

WOW! Nifty.I've never seen that before. It helps both parties SEO-wise, to get the cross links, and I think it encourages a response (like mine!).

My questions

1. Parallels concludes that the strongest growth opportunity among Australian SMBs is targeting small businesses with less than 50 employees. What are the signals that would tell a service provider that such a business is getting ready to buy?
   I don't mean cold calling asking the direct question. But what, for example, would be the indirect question and signals - would it be mobile adoption or an application upgrade for example?
2. The larger, up to 250 employee, businesses were the real laggards compared to the rest of the world. They have bigger budgets, but the implied inhibitor is their own IT staff. What are the key inhibitions of the IT staff and how should they be addressed? Knowing that would open up a much bigger set of opportunities.

Is Australia lagging everywhere?

At the same time as Parallels noted Australia lagging in cloud adoption, I saw this report Security Risks Lead To A Third Of Australian Employers Banning Social Media. The biggest trends of our time, which will dramatically effect how business is done, are cloud, social and mobile. So our businesses are behind in cloud and banning social media!

Next we only need employers to come out with a survey saying "Employers declare iPhone a work menace!" and we'd have to start shedding tears. But wait - Australian employers “paralysed” in the face of consumerisation of IT - oh NO!

Unisys Asia Pacific vice president and general manager of IT outsourcing, Lee Ward, said employers were "paralysed" by the BYOT challenge, "over the last 12 months, employers have moved from "blissful ignorance" to "paralysed awareness" in the face of consumerisation of IT", she said.

What does this spell out? Opportunity!

Opportunity opportunity opportunity

For those who understand the business shifts and gains from cloud, mobile and social this spells out an "unparralleled" opportunity to get well ahead of the pack.

I'll be interested to see more details of the final Parallels Australian report, which they are releasing at their APAC Summit.

Where do you think the best opportunities lie, in the less than or more than 50 employee SMBs?

Where do you see the best business opportunities at the convergence of cloud, social and mobile?

See my question on Quora.

Please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeeme.com/walter

Are Cloud Computing AND Social Enterprise both at Tipping Points?

A tipping point is when a small input related to a change pattern suddenly creates great change - perhaps takes off to critical mass. I wonder if Marc Benioff of Salesforce has done that within the last couple of weeks in relation to both cloud and social enterprise? My bones are stirring!

Security and privacy no longer a barrier

"... people erect these barriers around security and privacy, which in some ways are very unfounded. And the reason I think they’re unfounded and ridiculous ..."

Who said that - someone from Amazon, or Microsoft, or Salesforce?

No, it was said at a Dreamforce 2011 panel by the former US federal government chief information officer, Vivek Kundra.

He added:

... is because the United States government already has outsourced over 4700 systems. These systems are already in the hands of Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, Northrup-Grumman — you name it. Yet when it comes to Cloud, for some reason, these fears are raised.

To me that's huge. That's game over for governments everywhere.

Of course the US Government, and its cloud suppliers, can afford to have US-based storage and clear legal jurisdiction. Which means THAT issue is the fundamental issue for other governments to resolve and then they can plan their move to cloud.

Same story for business. But actually much less of a story since 99% of businesses aren't bound by the same restrictions and vanity requirements of governments.

The 10 years which Benoiff has been pushing cloud, and it's been a hard sell, may be about to pay off in a big way. And his efforts will take the whole industry forward with him across the whole spectrum of "cloud" services.

Social enterprise is suddenly everywhere, thanks to Dreamforce

Much more recently Benioff has become a leading advocate of social business and the social enterprise. The change just now is that at the 2001 Dreamworld social enterprise was everywhere! This spurned a huge lift in reporting e.g. Salesforce.com Steers Social Enterprise Movement Amid Cloudy Outlook. And see what Liza Sperling from Seesmic said:

Dreamforce 2011 is over, and many attendees are likely still reeling from the energy, enthusiasm and explosion of information about the social enterprise.

Most surprisingly to me was that the way it was reported was almost like fait accompli. Remarkable!

I completed my certification in Social Media Strategy back in 2009, from the Palo Alto-based Social Media Academy founded by Axel Schultze. Professionally I've benefited enormously from that superb business-based training program and the methodologies. But it's still been something which has to be pushed.

Much of my consulting is centered at the intersection of cloud computing, mobile, social business, and collaborative commerce, and what businesses need to do to prepare for and survive the impact of the coming shifts. And that's also been somewhat evangelical - I only see the innovative, forward-thinking types.

But I am getting a feeling that this is all heading mainstream right now, at least the cloud and the social enterprise parts of the equation. Mobile has a bit to go. It is being catalysed by the consumerization of IT, and Apple, but not yet at the tipping point. And collaborative commerce is still only early thinkers and adopters (as far as how all these impact "traditional" business models, I mean).

Social enterprise front, left and center

But in social business, social enteprise we hear this:

During the week-long Dreamforce, the common catch-all phrase from Salesforce.com executives was that Social Enterprise has become the rocket ship "that will propel the business of anyone associated with the vendor’s platform and applications strategies to stratospheric levels".

But we don't just hear and read it once, and just from Salesforce. We are starting to hear it everywhere and all sorts of business people are picking up the message - see here and see what you find on Google News.

Something is happening, and I think the next 12 months might be a lot less evangelical and a lot more practical, thanks to the education effort of players like Salesforce and Marc Benoiff.

What kind of sense do you feel about cloud, and social enterprise, as business trends?

Do you think we're near a tipping point for either and why?

See my question on Quora.

Please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeeme.com/walter

PS Some readers may think that Salesforce is just another quite shallow vendor hyping its latest Chatter enhancements with a show about social enterprise. In that case you should read some of the thoughts underlying it, in particular those of JP Rangaswami.

Image from www.enterpriseirregulars.com

Would the real cloud innovation please stand up!

The topic of "Innovation" has been trending ever since Steve Jobs announced he was quitting.

It makes a plethora of interesting reading about how companies innovate and how Apple is said to innovate, whether Jobs was critical to their innovation,and in fact the greatest CEO ever! There is even raging debate over the word itself including "creative disruptive" innovation! (It makes sense!). We have warnings against gamification of innovation, against democratization,  and in favour of democratization, and about the long nose of innovation. We read of encouraging positive deviance and emergent employees. And we even have debates about whether Henry Ford said or did not say "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses".

And then there's the cloud! Is it innovative or not?

Cloud innovation, real or not?

I'm a fan of Simon Wardley and Randy Bias on this (and throw in some Berard Golden). Cloud computing per se is not really disruptive innovation. That's not to say that it is not innovative. And it is certainly not to say that it is the same old thing we've had for years just rebadged by marketers.

Is Cloud Computing Old Hat?

That "old hat" line, used by the best salesmen in the old enterprise software and new private cloud vendor organisations, is simply a ploy. It's a sales ploy to keep the buyer in their comfort zone while they sell them some more "stuff" to keep them away from the real cloud.

Need to get your head into the value not the features

As far as the IT infrastructure goes it's fair to say that it is evolving, or sustaining, innovation and not disruptive innovation. Even though for the major cloud operators and providers e.g. Facebook or Amazon, it has required a lot of innovative pursuits, the result from the consumers' viewpoint is not disruptive innovation.

For instance, let's consider virtualization, because it is often discussed as the core "innovation" of cloud computing. I've picked it for 2 reasons. The first reason is that often becomes the sink hole for discussions on cloud, as the be-all and end-all, and the second reason is that it illustrates the point about evolving innovation.

Discussions about cloud often centre on virtualization. But cloud and virtualization are independent, especially as far as the potential of disruptive innovation is concerned, and I'll come to that later. Google, Facebook, Amazon don't use virtualisation. Why not? It's probably more complex but the reasoning at its simplest is that they can't afford to use it. It would increase their capital and operating costs and cut their margins by doing so - think of a 20% hit to each.

Why then, do so many big IT shops use virtualization. Good question!

Here's the uncommon answers  - firstly they have to clean up their mess, and secondly they haven't got the talent not to.

I'll explain:

• Cleaning up the mess. When you've built an infrastructure mess which is getting worse, it can become economically attractive to impose layers of inefficiency since those inefficiencies are less costly than continuing to build more mess. 
• Haven't got the talent. The big cloud providers are magnets for the top talent, and it takes talent to get all this right. The Amazon and the Googles and the Facebooks and the Microsofts have the most challenging cloud workloads on the planet - even the big banks don't rate at this scale. It takes talent to move your core systems into a real cloud environment and especially a super-efficient non-virtualized one a la Facebook.

Virtualization does offer a path forward for those "normal" big IT shops who have a mess to clean up. It's an effective way to get some mess under control and hopefully to get a tighter and more efficient architecture out of the transition going forward out of virtualization. But it is not fundamental to "cloud computing".

Conclusion, if you could do it, you often would be better to not virtualize anything in building your core services into a real cloud environment. At best virtualization is a feature, not a benefit.

The second reason I mentioned virtualization was to illustrate its evolutionary heritage. It's certainly not new.

Most often people reference the late 70's and IBM. But it was in commercial use in the early-70s by Burroughs, and by ICL of the UK. ICL's George 3 operating system allowed for multiple copies of its predecessor, the George 2 OS, to be hosted within it as a migration strategy. All the old programs could be run "as is" under George 2, while the system as a whole ran under George 3. This feature offered many advantages in systems administration, but was ineffecient. I know, because I was a George 2 and a George 3 systems programmer, and I wrote my Masters thesis on Machine Portability in the mid 70s.

So the point is that the myriad of developments needed to deliver cloud as a service are part of a chain of evolutionary innovation. This is of no interest to the business consumers of cloud, as these are simply features of cloud not benefits to the business user.

The key for business is that the delivery chain of cloud has now reached a point where it can enable disruptive innovation for the business.

It's about the business bozo!

That is, the features of cloud have been cleverly developed over a long time - they do represent something new in their combination. But the potential of cloud is in the benefit to business to create new business models, new services, new sources of wealth, and new agility.

Those can be disruptive, at the business and industry level. That's why business should be extremely interested in cloud and very uninterested in how it is delivered.

Does it interest you how telco carriers have evolved and developed the technology to deliver us better internet access? For 99.99999% of us the answer is no. But we are interested in how we can make money from having that asset, and particularly if we can layer on a disruptive business model.

Cloud is a vehicle for disruptive innovation by those higher up the value chain - not on the provider side but in the higher order application on the customer business model side.

In fact it's the biggest disruptive opportunity for business for the last 20 years. That's where the opportunity for real cloud innovation lies. And that's also the reason that those businesses which stick their heads in the sand about cloud may well be placing their business at risk of being attacked by more nimble and cost-effective competitors.

If you are driving your business forward and see innovation as an ingrained strength then you must come to grips, as soon as possible, with how cloud computing can help deliver shareholder value.

Why do so many firms find themselves debating cloud innovation rather than business innovation from cloud?

See my question on Quora.

Please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeesm.com/walter

Klout Perks launches in Australia - I got Perked!

I was going to write a more meaty post today but checking my email this morning I found one from Klout offering me a SIM card from Red Bull Mobile Australia as a Klout Perk. I was intrigued, and seems it is new in Australia.

Red Bull MOBILE is giving key Australian influencers a Ticket to the World of Red Bull.

You are receiving the perk because you are influential and have authority on topics related to the perk. You are welcome to tell the world you love the perk, you dislike the perk or say nothing at all.

So I'm surprised to find I am an influencer. Klout looks for "influencers" on topics related to the offer. I'm not sure what my relevant topic is as I only come up under "social media", "business", "consulting", and "cloud computing". Or maybe there were so few members in Australia they just sent to everyone above a certain level - say Klout of 50?

It seems that Klout Perks have been around for more than a year, but not in Australia. It's a logical idea.

The key to success for Klout is to attract the advertisers and also to have confidence that the Klout "topics" are in fact able to meaningfully segregate. For example I've seen many people with topics like "Australia" or "Japan" - they seem a bit broad.  For example, by looking at the Red Bull Mobile website I'm not sure I am really in their demographic - me being a baby boomer? But OK it worked at least I'm talking about them!

It's also interesting to ponder why Red Bull choose this Klout Perks path, as it's little known and I wonder how many people are "Klout active" in Australia. Based on my recent observations it seems that people ARE becoming more active on Klout - I'm not sure why this is happening.

The Klout offers come with "best practice" guidelines for touting the offer to your social web friends - the Influencer Code Of Ethics, which include this:

If you decide to talk about the perk, we will ask you to disclose that you received a sample.

Please check out the Red Bull Mobile offer, and I did receive a sample - well actually I have not received it yet, I have applied for it.

To be honest I don't really need a calling SIM card, I need an iPad data SIM card! But I signed up hoping that they may have been really out-of-the-box thinkers and would give me that option - which they did not! I was also curious about how Red Bull Mobile is going about their launch in Australia.

By using Klout they are showing some innovation, so what else are they doing in social media?

If you know what else Red Bull Mobile are doing in social media please comment below.

See my Question on Quora.

Please check my topics on Klout and confirm my influence on those you choose, thanks.

Want to know how to increase your Klout score? See this Answer on Quora.

Please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeesm.com/walter

Apple's success Dr Deming's legacy - continuous improvement

Innovation guru Clayton Christensen writes that "Jobs made Apple great by ignoring profit", and beyond the headline he actually makes the point that a tunnel vision on profits has been the downfall of many previous industry leaders. He thinks that acceptance, and even pursuit of "disruption", is the core of Apple's sustainability as a highly successful business. But I think there's more to it, especially in the case of Apple.

I agree with (almost) everything Christensen says. And the aspect of Apple he describes is evident in their public comments about the cannibalisation of Mac sales by the iPad.

It's Apple's view of the bigger picture which drives them forward, knowing that Mac sales in some segments will be cannibalized, but in other segments new markets for Mac will open up because of the iPhone and iPad.

I never cease to be appalled at the number of senior executives I meet who say something like "our strategy is very simple - it's to make a profit". Christensen's post is a good reference for them to understand why this may not be in their firm's best interest (that's not to say that the individual's interest and the firm's long-term interest are necessarily aligned!).

Of course there are always certain times when a focus on cash-flow and profitability is paramount. But that's a tactic, or perhaps a short-term strategy, and not a sustaining goal.

The iPod wasn't a device with no existing market

I disagree with one single part of Christensens' analysis, and that points to the big part which I think his post is missing - the role of continuous business improvement. 

The one part I don't agree with is his comment that the iPod was a device for which "a market did not even exist yet".

That's factually wrong. The iPod used a whole lot of technology from others who were already in the market with these devices. Just as with the app store, commercially launched by DoCoMo in Japan in 1999, and "iTunes" launched by KDDI in Japan in 2000 in response to DoCoMo's app store, Apple took the best of a lot of existing ideas and improved them.

The improvements were often small - but they add up.

And sometimes they are innovative enough to be patentable. In fact Apple's patents tell the story - if they invented everything that people commonly attributed to them then Apple would own the patents - and they don't. There is so much fluff and gushing in the blog-sphere and paid media about Apple's inventiveness around the iPhone, for example, which just isn't true. 

Continuous improvement is a key to Apple's success

What they do brilliantly is what Christensen describes, plus their approach to ingrained continuous improvement, as with the iPod and the iPhone (and some might say the iPad - a reinvented "tablet").

Most companies neglect this "ingrained continuous improvement". It's seen as too boring, or too trivial, or tainted by "quality control" or "being too Japanese" or any other reason that suits their desire to do something more spectacular. They go for "creativity" and "innovation departments".

That's why you see many of the most lifeless entities with big investments in Innovation VPs and Departments and creativity training etc - think banks, governments, metro transportation companies. These types of entities have zero continuous improvement and a big bet on "creativity" but are usually sustained, in fact, by some kind of monopolistic or oligopolistic structural position.

In these organisations, the main innovation is "the event". Here's what Cyril Bouquet concludes after a 5 year study of corporate innovation:

Paradoxically, innovation events can even prove damaging if the company does not have a system for acknowledging, assessing, and developing the bright ideas that emerge from them.

Continuous improvement does not exist in a vacuum

If a firm is truly after game-changing innovation, then a different set of rules and pre-conditions apply. But the reality is that 99% of firms can't execute even "incremental innovation" well and that's where the focus, for them, needs to be. There's no doubt that part of Apple, including Steve Jobs, applied game-changing innovation (see below) yet at the same time the bulk of the organisation is focused on continuous improvement.

But wait! There is a twist. That "bulk of the organisation" is not just a hapless bunch of micro-improvers. Well, they could be, but there is a difference in a highly successful organisation - they have a purpose. Not only a purpose but a clarity of purpose, and a consistency of actions.

Where there is strategic clarity and a compelling purpose in an organisation and the entire organization is aligned on achieving something of great social value beyond the tactical, people become incredibly committed to being successful and tend to ignore boundaries and "not invented here" limitations in order to achieve the purpose.

That is part of Apple's secret source in making continuous improvement deliver so much value, and why some say Why Apple Doesn't Need Steve Jobs. Without that secret source continuous improvements are diluted. It's that simple.

It's also true that the secret sauce does need some healthy additives from the leadership team.  Not all that bubbles up from below is going to make business sense at the time, nor can it all be funded. The skill is in how the leadership team can provide a "focus",  how they guide risk assessment to avoid irrelevant innovation, and how they decide what needs to be discontinued (since companies can't do it all). The HOW of those is critical to sustaining the motivation and momentum.

iPhone more about continuous improvement and little about invention

I think ingrained continuous improvement is mostly overlooked, yet it is far a more powerful and sustaining organisational force than "invention". And Apple is a leader in applying it.

For example the iPhone was mostly a result of continuous improvement. It bought together things which others had done, commercially, and reshaped them nicely into a smooth ecosystem. It was "smoother" than those from which it learnt. It didn't even have any exceptional new goals, compared to the DoCoMo app store or the KDDI music service - but it executed better and in the right market.

For example DoCoMo's i-mode (1999) was totally focused on the end-to-end experience and the user interface and they even tuned their network to ensure the handsets performed to delight the users. And they gave content providers 90% of the revenue because they wanted the content providers and their ecosystem to be as economically successful as possible.

The really remarkable innovations with the iPhone, for example, were that (1) it broke out from under the dead hand of the telcos - that was a revolution (a game-changing business model innovation), and (2) the extent of the media deals (or perhaps that was a continuous innovation from the iPod). The hard yards and the strength of the final whole offer were a product of a relentless focus and ingrained culture of continuous improvement. This spans the whole organisation, not just the Innovation Department.

I believe that much of Apple's success can be attributed to this attitude towards continuous improvement across the entire firm, plus the leadership's lack of fear of cannibalization as Christensen says (combined with their other assets and ability to execute).

Continuous improvement as an ingrained culture is old fashioned and unfashionable but Dr. Deming had it right - as Apple proves.

How important is continuous improvement to Apple's success, compared to say "invention"?

Why do so many firms find continuous improvement so hard to ingrain?

Please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeesm.com/walter

PS If you are interested in Cloud, and Clayton Christensen, read What Clayton Christensen Can Teach Us by Cloud expert @bernardgolden

HP+ Managing the HP fallout will take more than PR

In a huge week of IT industry news HP dropping the Touchpad was one of the biggest tsunamis. Especially since it came with news that HP will sell off its PC division.

Is that what you heard?

Well you may have it wrong. HP is mounting a PR war to counter that interpretation, which might seem futile to outsiders, but if you're an insider how could you do anything else?

But it will take more than PR to convince people otherwise, HP is going to have to go into overdrive with a new HP+!

People like Michael Dell heard the wrong version, according to this tweet:

 

HP's UK head of their PCG Group clarified things in The Guardian:

There have been a number of incorrect stories saying that HP is quitting the PC business. Let me be absolutely clear in saying that at no stage has HP said it is quitting the PC business. Three options are being investigated, and whether the company is spun off, sold or kept in the HP portfolio.

There. That's crystal clear, right? Michael Dell's interpretation, admittedly acting with self-interest, isn't far off is it? And if self-interest needs to be taken out of the equation then we'd have to heavily discount all the HP spin.

It's a touchy subject. HP's PR machine, through Bill Wohl who rightly describes himself as a "seasoned Chief Communications Officer for HP" took offence to this tweet via @rwang0 and @timbo2002.

But isn't that a seriously reasonable tweet?

From my observations Bill Wohl does a good job, and his Twitter stream is eclectic. I like a lot of his references. But he's really pulling the belt too tight to call a rational observation "wrong" and even "inappropriate".

As soon as he did that he just ran up the flag of PR mumbo jumbo and asked people to salute, which they won't these days.

Just Google it - this sentiment is out there everywhere. @rwang0 and @timbo2002 are no duds! Even this article which Bill Wohl praised for its positive take on the Autonomy acquisition had this to say "...effectively putting the PC business on the market". There's even a coherent argument by Bill Sydner at Infoworld postulating the HP breakup "The sharks are circling HP -- can anyone save it? "

If you are going to telegraph your punches then you better have an alternative strategy to surprise the attackers! Otherwise they are going to be all over you - like on UFC - ground and pound!

The question is how to come to grips with the sentiment and contribute and participate in where it is headed?

It's a very difficult position to be in, witness Nokia's self-initiated implosion when they forecast the end of their Symbian platform. Sales weren't supposed to drop like a stone, but they did. HP could be facing similar prospects in its PSG Division. It's frightening, considering that Nokia have lost 75% of their Western European smartphone sales in few months since making their ill-fated announcement - and Nokia want to stay in the business!! (See Why Europe Is So Critical to Nokia in Smartphones by Tomi Ahonen)

And the best way is for HP to be as decisive as they were in killing the Touchpad. Otherwise it is going to be a long hard haul to nowhere for the HP PR team.

HP should also get real about WebOS which is as dead as a dodo.

How do you think that HP can best handle the social media over PSG

Please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeesm.com/walter

Dangerous delusions - iPad is not just a PC

It's a dangerous path to think that the iPad is just a PC, as numerous sources quoted Steve Balmer as saying at the 2010 D8 Conference. I'm not sure that he actually said exactly that, but that was the most common byline after his session. Holding on to that interpretation is surely delusional and not in Microsoft's best interests?

I think that Balmer actually said something like everything you can do on an iPad you can do on a PC, and it's just about form factor. And in fact just a couple of days ago one of the senior PR gurus at Microsoft echoed those exact words, so I guess that IS the party line:

They [tablets] are each highly optimized to do a great job on a subset of things any PC can also do. Poor Frank Shaw got well and truly hammered in the blogsphere for his post.

Whereas Steve Jobs had described the PC as being "like trucks", Blamer countered by saying shared devices e.g. a PC  in the home are not going away, if only for cost reasons. (You know, Balmer should have said that there are some important things we do on a PC that are just a pain on an iPad - try blogging for example. But in any case his mental model is a liability.)

The mental model matters

So what's the problem in holding on to the mental model that the iPad is just a svelte PC?

For one, the iPad is making massive gains in market share, and creating new markets, and powering Apple to be an extremely serious competitor to Microsoft in some of it's core lines of business. Large corporations are buying large blocks of iPads and Apple cannot keep up with demand. The corporatization of IT is a big deal, and Apple is at the forefront of that wave.

And for another - the market doesn't believe you. Which means you will lose market share, even faster.

• Perth woman offers iPad for romance
• Sign a contract on your new Simonds home, you'll receive a FREE Apple iPad
• Or why not buy a home in the beautiful AMEN Estate in Lekki, Lagos and get TWO free iPads?
• Get a new iPad 2 Free, with EVERY HomeSec Caveat loan

Etc etc etc

Hey, would any of these work if we replaced "iPad" with "PC"?

NO.

That's why the iPad is not just a PC.

What IS the iPad?

It's something different, and Microsoft's challenge is to find out what it is an how different. If they don't start with that attitude then they are likely to never bridge the gap.

By the way I don't actually know what it is. It is all of these things but what else:

• a brand
• a fashion statement
• a geek statement
• a business statement
• a personal statement
• a business tool
• an entertainment tool and portal
• a great way to interact with your children
• a satisfying experience
• fun
• work
• simple
• quick
• sharp
• a personal assistant
• part of Apple
• not part of Microsoft.

What the "whole product" is, which is driving incredible wealth to Apple's bottom line, I don't quite know. Most obviously the iPad whole product is a LOT MORE than the device - which is what I think most of the other tablet makers don't quite get.

What the other tablets are IS just a piece of junk, a boat anchor - HP proved that! Of course Android will make some headway, and that headway depends on everything other than the tablet itself - the table is just a ticket to the game. But what is the game?

The "ecosystem" is a word, and a powerful one, which explains Apple's success. But it is not all. 

If Microsoft have a mental model which is focused on the device a la the PC world, and the concept that they are just remodelling the form factor, then that is surely doomed to failure. Even if they don't quite understand it, as I don't, then they should approach the iPad "whole product" with a mindset that this is something different.

Let''s face it, if you've been dissing your competitor for years, and then failed at everything you've done where they've been beyond successful, then something isn't quite right with how you view what they are doing. (Examples: Zune - total failure; Retail Stores - total failure; Tablets - total failure; Mobile Phones - significant relative failure)

This is a different world and we need to understand it.

To do otherwise is to dance on the head of a pin, while the spoils fall to Apple in bucketloads.

Adjust the mindset - let go

There's no rocket science here. I'm just saying that it takes a "simple" Peter Drucker-ish adjustment to the mindset, and then progress can be made by Microsoft. And good luck to them, sometimes Apple gets on my nerves with their crappy attitudes to customers.

But hey, I'm still "queueing up" for my iPhone 5 !!

So let's see the mental model that the iPad is not just a PC, and see what Microsoft can turn out with it's incredible resources. That would be exciting. Another form-factored PC as a tablet won't be.

What do you think the iPad "whole product" is - the secret sauce?

How should Microsoft think of the iPad in order to challenge it?

I'd like to hear your opinion, please comment below.

Walter @adamson
http://xeesm.com/walter

By the way I thought that the Simonds Home iPad promotion was very clever.  It may actually save them money! When new home buyers sign up, and receive their iPad they can

• "follow your new home being built on MySimonds;
• receive building updates;
• receive information alerts;
• receive one to one service from start to finish; and
• then your new home will be constantly at your fingertips."

Very neat ! And those interactions reduce the workload and costs on Simonds and the iPads pay for themselves many times over, and the customers are thrilled. Clever