Phil Simon's Blog, page 110
May 3, 2012
Inc. Article #6: Tech Bubbles and Funding Platforms
My sixth Inc. Magazine article is now live. Here’s an excerpt:
Are we currently in a tech start-up bubble?
It’s a fascinating question and, to be sure, opinions among learned folks run the gamut. Those in the affirmative look at Facebook’s billion-dollar acquisition of Instagram as Exhibit A. That much money for a company with zero revenue, much less profits? Call itdot-com 2.0. This evokes images of pets.com and other ill-fated startups.
Naysayers point to the fact that technology costs have dropped by several orders of magnitude, thus dramatically reducing the amount of capital required by startups. Count Marc Andreessen among those who believe that all of this bubble talk is overblown. And there are those who fall somewhere in the middle.
Click here to read the whole thing.
Millennials and the New Data Mind-Set
Let’s face it: As a group, Millennials don’t have the best of reputations, at least among many old-school cognoscenti. They’re always texting. They tweet too much and don’t read proper books. And we older folks believe that their collective dismissal of privacy will come back to bite them in the rear when they look for corporate jobs.
Or so the thinking goes.
To be sure, you can probably name many twenty-somethings who fit the build above. Yet, all of that time in front of screens (phones, computers, and televisions) has made many of them pretty tech- and data-savvy. As such, many are taking a different, data-oriented approach to their jobs that often challenges conventional wisdom.
Shattering the Myth of the Millennial Slacker
I was speaking with a few employees at Delivering Happiness, a company that, according to its website, “exist[s] to help people, organizations, and businesses apply the different frameworks of happiness to their lives.”
You’re probably thinking that DH doesn’t exactly sound like a data-driven company, right? Images of employees sitting around talking about existential matters probably spring to your mind. Maybe they’re reading Nietzsche or having prolonged philosophical debates.
Well, you’d be wrong. It turns out the company is rooted in testing and data analysis. One employee in particular astounded me with her knowledge of Google Analytics, A/B testing, and data in general–and she worked in the marketing department couldn’t have been 25 years old! In fact, during the course of our conversation, yours truly came across as a bit old school, particularly when I lamented the fact that I could not easily gauge the effectiveness of some of my own marketing moves.
I come across my fair share of organizations and people who refuse to believe that data can benefit them. Generally speaking, what exactly are they lacking?
The data? No.
The tools. No.
The need? No.
The mind-set? Bingo.
Simon Says
The number and cost of analytical tools today astound me. In the 1990s, only large organizations could afford these type of technologies. Today, that’s simply not true. Both mid-market firms as well as small companies (like those profiled in The New Small) are gleaning remarkable insights into their businesses through powerful, low-cost applications and systems.
On a different level, the intelligent use of data doesn’t obviate the need for judgment. Nor does uncertainly suddenly vanish. However, as I’ve seen throughout my consulting career, it certainly takes many traditional employees and people out of their comfort zones. So, I understand the reluctance of people in their 30s and beyond to embrace new ways of doing things–and data in particular. Maybe some of them were never good at math and thought they could avoid numbers by working in HR, marketing, or some other “soft” side of the business.
Think again.
When companies founded with the goal of increasing employee happiness make most of their decisions based on data, what’s your excuse for not doing so?
Feedback
What say you?
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.
May 1, 2012
Think Web
Photo Credit: gualtiero via Compfight
I was talking the other day to a friend of mine recently starting his own company when he asked me the following fairly innocuous question:
How do I email a PowerPoint presentation while protecting it?
My friend merely wanted to protect his IP. Fair enough, although I told him that just about every means of “locking down” a document could be circumvented one way or another. But why the focus on email? Why not put it on your site via Scribd, set desired permissions, and draw people to your new (and content-challenged) site? They may actually stay there and share that presentation–and others–with others. You may get discovered by others. Who knows what will happen? Not me.
To the web-challenged, here’s some unsolicited advice. Stop thinking about old tools like emails. Start thinking web. It’s not going anywhere.
April 28, 2012
The Applefication of the Enterprise, Part II: The Jobs’ Effect
Photo Credit: » Zitona «
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
–Leonardo da Vinci
In a series of posts over the next few months on MIKE2.0, I’ll be delving into a nascent trend: the Applefication of the Enterprise. Today’s introductory post lays a bit of the groundwork for the series. Here’s an excerpt of part two:
Steve Jobs despised focus groups. He was famous for not listening to what customers wanted, but telling them what they wanted. Today, Applephiles are taking a cue from their iconic leader and are increasingly doing the same thing at work. Technology at work is often unnecessarily complicated and they know that there’s a better, simpler way. They’re mad as hell and they’re not gonna take it anymore.
The key question is not whether Apple products can be tweaked to meet the current and complex needs of large, sophisticated organizations and their IT departments. That’s so 1999. Rather, Apple products and evangelists are forcing executives to ask themselves why their technology needs are so complex in the first place. Why do they need to maintain these bloated applications and byzantine requirements? And how everything can be dramatically simplified?
And here’s the funny thing. It’s actually working. Jobs is starting to change the very DNA of IT departments from the grave. Case in point: In the last six months, Apple’s enterprise sales have exploded almost by accident. This explosion is even more remarkable when you consider that historically Apple has not chased corporate clients at all. In this vein, the company is the antithesis of Dell, IBM, and Microsoft.
To read the entire post, click here.
Quote of the Day
“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.”
–Thomas Edison
No argument here. The genius of Twitter is that its founders didn’t quite know what they had created. Think about alternate uses for your content, inventions, and products.
April 27, 2012
Insanely Simple by Ken Segall
In a word, wow.
Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success
(affiliate link) by Ken Segall is that good. Here’s my video review.
April 25, 2012
The Age of the Platform: Korean Edition
한국 안녕하세요
I am pleased to announce that The Age of the Platform will be translated into Korean. JPub has purchased the Korean translation rights to the book with an anticipated release date of September of 2012. JPub has published a fair share of books that have done well in the United States.
I’m ecstatic that one of my books (and, I believe, my best one) will be translated. I hope to keep my recent momentum going.
April 24, 2012
Platform Man #3: A Visit from Charlie Sheen
Our superhero seems to spend an awful lot of time in bars these days…
April 23, 2012
Platform Man #2
Our superhero encounters a rival talking head.
