Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 299

A Beautiful Business... And Mind

The constant battle of business ethics...

Can a business make a ton of money and do the right thing? At first blush we would say, "no way... it doesn't happen." When Tony Hsieh took over at Zappos (selling shoes online) in 1999, nobody thought a business like this could work. By 2009, the company was doing over a billion dollars in sales every year and by July of that same year, Amazon announced that it was buying the company for over one billion dollars. Zappos is mostly known as being one of the most consumer-centric companies in the world. It's a corporate culture that isn't just external facing, but internal as well (you don't even want to know the public shaming that happens in the company if someone dares to "replay-all" to an email). In 2010, Hsieh published his first bestselling business book, Delivering Happiness (full-disclosure: Hsieh and I share the same publisher and editor), which talks not only about his adventures with Zappos but with his other entrepreneurial endeavors as well. On the cusp of turning 40 years old, Hsieh's latest adventure is to revitalize the downtown area of Las Vegas - a one billion dollar investment, of which he has personally invested $350 million of his own money. In short (and this paragraph is but a sidenote to the true breadth and depth of his life), Hsieh is proving the traditional business world wrong. You can build a substantive business by having tons of sales, treating employees and customers as honest equals and trying to create a positive impact in your community. It's a choice. In this episode of the ever-fantastic Foundation podcast, Kevin Rose (ex. Digg and currently at Google Ventures) spends over forty minutes in what can only be described as a MBA-level conversation about what true business success should look like with Tony Hsieh.

Watch... and enjoy:

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tony hsieh

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Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #134

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

How Obama Won The Internet - BuzzFeed . "There's no doubt the Obama re-election campaign had its ups and downs. But one thing you can't fault it for is how it handled social media. This behind-the-scenes look at reddit 's biggest-ever AMA is heartening, not just because it was actually fairly genuine, but because I believe crowdsourced, unfiltered threads of discussions are our best hope of improving today's hopelessly flawed representative-democracy model. Hat Tip to Tara Hunt for pointing me at this." (Alistair for Hugh).

The Daily Routines of Famous Writers - Brain Pickings . "I don't know why I haven't been reading Brainpickings for longer. They're a beacon of long-form writing, digging through the past and finding surprisingly current answers. This post looks at what writers did to get themselves organized. I'm nearly finished writing a book with Ben Yoskovitz , and I actually locked myself away in a hotel in Santa Clara for a couple of days to focus. I envy these literary curmudgeons and their ability to turn off the world, embrace their quirks, and get stuff done--in a connected world, ADHD feels like a career." (Alistair for Mitch).

Vodafone Africa Becomes Profit Machine via Banking - Bloomberg . "UK-based Vodafone is one of the big mobile communications companies in the world, with business in Europe, the UK, the United States, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. Africa is poised to become their most profitable region in the next couple of years." (Hugh for Alistair).

America's Real Criminal Element: Lead - Mother Jones . "This might be cheating, since I got this link from a Twitter post Alistair made the other day... But it's probably the most interesting science story I've seen in ages. There is a puzzling thing in violent crime stats in the US (and elsewhere): a huge increase in violent crime from 1960 to 1990... and then a precipitous drop in violent crime from 1990 to today. No one really knows why, but here is a compelling theory: the introduction of leaded gasoline in the 1930s, and its phase out in the mid-seventies. There is a 20 year time-shift in the data, representing babies exposed to leaded gasoline growing up. The implications are huge, especially for parts of the world where leaded gasoline is still used, or places like Africa, where it was phased out only in 2006." (Hugh for Mitch).

Boy writes letter to LEGO after losing minifigure, gets awesome response - Yahoo . "When choosing my weekly picks for Hugh and Alistair, I tend to go to the fringe. I try to find something that is both very different from my usual reading selections and something that hasn't made its way throughout the zeitgeist (and back again). This week, I may be breaking my self-imposed rules, simply because I think this is so warm and perfect. For decades, I've encouraged brands to think about real interactions between real human beings (this is where businesses can truly win some lifetime value). LEGO is a brand unlike many others (it sits in the pantheons with Apple and Google , in my books). Read this exchange between LEGO and a customer. Now, make a list of the simple things you can do with your business to make yourself this awesome." (Mitch for Alistair).

The Winners' History of Rock and Roll, Part 1: Led Zeppelin - Grantland . "My close friend, Heath, turned me on to Grantland . I'm not a sports guy, so it took me a while to find my footing with this online publication. What I love about it, is how they dissect pop culture in a way that I have not seen in quite some time. This is one of those magnificent pieces of content on rock and roll. It will leave you with a fuzzy feeling that good journalism will certainly survive the disruptions that are shaking the newspaper and magazine industry. Behold this quote: 'When my brother handed me a cassette of Led Zeppelin IV for my 13th birthday, I did not know John Bonham had been dead for 10 years. Now he's been dead for 33 years, and I'm still not 100 percent certain that it is the correct prognosis. This is why Led Zeppelin belongs in the first chapter of the Winners' History of Rock and Roll. Every time you put on a Zeppelin record, the time-space continuum turns into the Washington Generals.' There's also a deep thought in here, and it's scary how true it is: Nickelback could well be our generation's Led Zeppelin. Before you starts throwing tomatoes in the comments section below, take a read on this." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

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led zeppelin

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nickelback

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yahoo

year one labs

The One Screen World - Take Two

How many screen are there? You've heard of the three screens? The four screens? The companion screen?

The three screens are: television, computer and mobile. The fourth screen became the tablet (it's debatable). The companion screen is whatever other screen is with you while your attention is occupied by another screen (think about watching TV while looking at Facebook on your iPhone). In my next business book, CTRL ALT Delete (out May 21st, 2013), I make the argument that we are quickly moving towards the one screen world. A world where the only screen that matters is the screen that is in front me. There are screens everywhere. These screens are all networked and we, the consumers, are able to move content from screen to screen as easily as you swipe across from app to app on a smartphone. But, what happens when the ability to deliver a screen anywhere starts becoming a reality?

It is a reality. Screens will be able to be placed anywhere.

One of the most mind-blowing things that was shown at CES this week in Las Vegas was a demo by Samsung of their new flexible display. Yes, a flexible, bendable and paper thin screen.

Watch this...

Is your mind blown?

Sure, this is nascent technology and won't be truly affordable for quite some time, but just imagine the true possibilities. Imagine when these screens are touch-enabled. Imagine when people are developing this as wearable technology. Imagine when these screens are networked and wirelessly enabled. Imagine the advancements these will be used for in medicine and science. Think about the business applications. Think about the contextual content it could deliver.

Think about the marketing implications.

As I was walking through the airport the other day, I noticed something. It's nothing out of the ordinary. It's probably something you have already picked up on. All of the menus at the fast food restaurants that hang on the walls over the cashiers were monitors. Not fixed menus, but TV screens... or big computer monitors. What message does that send? It is finally cheaper to hang up a bunch of screens and send the content to that screen via the Web, than it is have a fixed menu (something made of simple plastic and metal). Let's face it, TVs are cheap (and yes, this is a first world issue). The speed with which new technology is being introduced and the price of this technology dropping in price is staggering. With that comes many complex and bewildering issues about the global labor force, but without getting into that side of the controversial and disturbing conversation, it means that this type of flexible display technology could happen a lot sooner than most of us expect.

Right now, it's just super cool. Wait until it gets super functional.

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iphone

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technology pricing

television

three screens

touch screen

tv

tv screen

wearable technology

youm

Robots And Makers And Drones... Oh My!

Something new about something new.

At the beginning of this year, I started a new blog. Shhh, don't tell anyone ;) It's true. It's on tumblr and it's called: We, Robots. It's not a blog like Six Pixels of Separation is a blog and I'm sure many people will think that I'm not using tumblr in the way that it was created... all of that criticism would be accurate, but I don't care. In the past few years, I have become deeply interested in the maker movement, robots and drones and I've decided to place and comment on these industries over there.

That's only half-true.

What I'm really fascinated by is how the maker movement, robots and drones will make us all better at the work that we do. I have already written about this type of thinking right here:

From Atoms To Bits To Atoms.

Dances With Robots.

The Drone Wars... Business Style.

Right now, 3D printing is inaccessible to the average person. Having a "make" button as readily available as a "print" button on our desktop is in the future. At the same time, building robots is not easy, but everyone is talking about robots in terms of automation (meaning, stealing the jobs of hard working citizens). I believe that the true future of robotics is augmentation and not just automation: the ability for human to use robots to make us better at the work that we do. Drones are rightfully stigmatized as scary military weapons. Unmanned vehicles flying into hostile territories and killing other human beings, all being controlled by military personnel who are stationed in a Las Vegas bunker, and acting like they're playing a video game. Drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles) will soon move from the battlefield into our neighborhoods, and it's going to create an entirely new industry.

What all of this means.

Technology is getting physical. Very physical. If you've been watching the news coming out of CES this week, the focus has been on two key areas (that we've been talking about here for months): robots and connected appliances. These are fascinating times. If you still marvel everytime you slide to unlock your iPhone, have faith that technology is about to get even that much more interesting in the next decade.

What do robots, drones, makers and telepresence have to do with marketing? 

Everything. A marketers job is to somewhat rudimentary: to get consumers to buy, become loyal and evangelize a brand. More screens, more interactivity and more ways for message to be delivered creates more opportunities for marketers. No, this isn't about running ads on a robot, having drones buzz around the sky with your billboard, or running a display ad on a telepresence device. This is about understanding these new, complex and fascinating technologies that are being developed all over the world: from garages to skunkwork labs in some of the biggest organizations.

Nothing changes.

The introduction of We, Robots doesn't change anything. I will still be blogging here six times a week with a weekly audio podcast. I will still be a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post and other magazines and newspapers. We, Robots will be a curated space where I will link to the interesting world of robots, drones and makers in relation to business and making the world a better place for all of us (so, no military, security and law enforcement type of stuff - I'm still a tree hugger). The design of We. Robots is not final (I'm currently using a simple, default tumblr template), so please focus on the content (the good folks at Twist Image will get to the design soon enough). If you're interested in it, you can follow me over here: We, Robots.

Things are about to get a little bit more interesting (again). 

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3d printing

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automation

blog

brand evangelism

brand loyalty

ces

connected appliances

drones

harvard business review

iphone

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maker movement

makers

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newspaper

robot

robotic technology

skunkwork lab

telepresence

the huffington post

the internet of things

tumblr

unmanned aerial vehicles

unmanned vehicles

we robots

Maybe Nobody Knows Nothing

Consumers are fundamentally ahead of brands when it comes to technology and social media.

You may have heard this line before. I use this line in my presentations, in articles and in past blog posts. It is the battlecry by which us marketers hope to shake and wake brands up to the realities of our new world. Consumers are both connected (to the Internet and one another) and untethered (thank you, smartphones and tablets). Brands are still grappling with basic social media chops, better conversion on e-commerce sites and nearly nowhere to be found when it comes to providing value through a mobile device.

Maybe consumers are not as sophisticated as we would like to believe.

Before you laugh, slam your keyboard in disbelief or start ranting at me in the comments section below, please stop and think about it. How great are people at truly understanding the difference between a blog and a website? What about setting up and properly using channels like Facebook, Twitter, tumblr and beyond? Do consumers know which of their content is public and which parts are private (or by invitation only)? How many consumers do you think fully understand the process of downloading, using and managing their apps? According to a MediaPost news item published today titled, Study: Consumers Don't Fully Understand Social Media, Search, consumers may not be as great at this stuff as you might think.

Is it bad?

According to the news item: "Some 70% of adults online know how to post to a Facebook wall, but only 54% understand how Facebook generates revenue... Men demonstrate a higher understanding of Facebook's monetization strategies at 57%, versus women at 51%, according to findings from The Search Agency and Harris Interactive's study '2012 Online User Behavior and Engagement,' which analyzes consumer behavior and knowledge around social networks and search engines.... When asked how search engines make money, nearly 29% of survey respondents believe brands pay annual dues for use, while 20% believe that users pay for premium search features. More than one-third of U.S. online adults believe search engines sell users' personal data to marketers."

Lucy, you got some 'splaining to do...

Granted, this is a sampling of about 2000 people and I'm sure this is the type of research that people like Tom Webster (more on him here: SPOS #336 - Stats, Lies And Data With Tom Webster) can turn into Swiss cheese, but it's an interesting thought (regardless of how accurate the actual data is): are consumers that sophisticated and knowledgeable about how these social media channels work, how they make money and what their full (and true) capabilities are? Or, is this a non-starter for you? If we have millions upon millions of connected people using everything from the Internet to mobile devices as a way to stay connected (to friends, family, brands or whatever), but the majority (or a large minority) really don't know how to leverage that, does it make you change your brand strategy, engagement and more?

Playing to the one percent.

Maybe there's something beyond the financial one percent and we're living in the area of the digital one percent. Maybe, it's actually a small fraction of people (like you and I) who truly understand what they're doing, how what they publish makes them a media channel and just how empowered the individual now is? This research report reminds me of the constant strains I hear from executives about their marketing efforts: namely that they feel like they are behind and not adept at this brave new world. Perhaps the brands are not alone. Perhaps there is a vast majority of the population that feels the exact same way as these brands do.

It's something to think about. Seriously.

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The Future Of Marketing: You Connected To Your Toaster

What can media do?

I was driving on the highway and spotted a billboard. It was your average, run of the mills, type of billboard. It could have been for a local restaurant, something from the tourism council, a car dealership or even for a bottle of fine hooch. I can't remember. We see thousands (if not, hundreds of thousands) of messages on any given day. Our immunity is impressive. Some want to quantify all of these message as visual pollution. There are ongoing debates, along with areas of the world that are doing their very best to either cease the placement of new billboards or completely eradicate them from the landscape, to end the constant messaging.

There is no escape.

The sad truth is that marketers have - for decades on end - done ourselves in. No area is safe. They have advertising in the urinals and there is advertising in the security bin where you place your shoes as you make your way through airport security. Even the media channels that you love: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and here, at The Huffington Post, there are many fine marketers behind the scenes doing everything they can to figure out how to make you the product.

Yes, you: the product.

Tom Webster is a senior executive at Edison Research, and recently he had one of the more salient thoughts about media, marketing and communications. It was a simple line, and it goes like this: "if you do not pay for a service, you are the product they sell." We find ourselves in a world where we reject the notion of advertising on Twitter or chide Facebook for attempting to monetize their experience, and yet we - the loyal consumers - pay nothing for the product. It's a paradox of epic proportions for media companies. If they charge for the service, odds are that less people will play along. This makes the advertising revenue drop, because brands and media companies are looking for as many human beings to target a message in front. But, if users - who are getting a free service - become inundated with advertising that isn't relevant or worthwhile, they either leave (which means bye bye ads!) or stay, but do their very best to hate the brands that are disrupting their experience (which means, the ads are not as effective). For years, I've recommended a more balanced and integrated approach that would blend traditional advertising with non-advertising driven marketing initiatives, coupled with the brand's new ability to tell a better story in hopes of making that message connect. What does that translate into? Real interactions between real human beings.

Advertising is not dead.

Digital advertising is still in its infancy. Imagine that highway... that billboard. Imagine an experience where whatever is shown on it is bought and sold in a very different way. Right now, this is how it's done: the out of home placement is booked. The advertising and media agency ensure that the creative (and production of it) is both finalized, delivered and installed. Then, those agencies do their best to figure out the data and analytics behind the worth of that entire experience (which, is to date, is primarily done by measuring the volume of traffic and correlating that to the where the drivers are going based on the surrounding suburbs and businesses and then prophesying on a demographic). We've seen some minor adjustments to this with the introduction of digital signage. It is much easier to swap creative in and out, but the rest of the process is primarily the same. All marketers are excited about real-time bidding (the ability to purchase media, in an auction-like environment, that is both fully digitized and in real-time). Think about it this way: you want to run an ad, you plug in your parameters and - in real-time - you can bid on and place creative in as short of a timeline as it will take you to make and upload the file. This type of engagement will, without question, come to all media channels once they are both digital and inter-connected. The new network of these ads is going to make the current process seem archaic.

The Internet of things for media.

Everything is getting connected to the Internet. Not just these billboards, not just your smartphones, not just the signage at retail. Everything. From your toaster and home thermometer to your fridge and your car. As these appliances do "come online," can you even begin to imagine the media opportunities that arise from such a wealth of human information. When these connected devices understand everything from what's in your freezer to your driving trends (and are able to connect the dots), those boring billboards could (finally) come alive.

The AdWords of life. 

People don't mind Google AdWords because the message is contextual (based on the search) and it doesn't interrupt the user experience (it is above and to the side of the content you are trying to engage with, and it looks and feel the same as your search results). Brands like it for other reasons (and yes, there are some that feel that AdWords is no longer what it used to be). Brands like it because it is pay-per-click (if no one clicks, the advertiser doesn't pay) and it's performance driven (if not enough people ever click on the ad, Google bumps you off). This constant, real-time refinement of messaging has not only created an entire new industry within the marketing industry, it has also shed a light on what other media channels can do. If they are brave enough. If they invest in technology, If they truly understand and respect their consumer (and their privacy). If they take the time to innovate on the creative and how the story can unfold across multiple media channels. If only...

There's a lot of "if" in there.

What will be the breaking news coming out of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) this week from Las Vegas? The major hype that the CNN's of the world will focus on, may be self-driving cars or a thinner TV for your den, but the real story will be how many devices will suddenly become connected. Not just to the consumer, but to one another. And that, my dear media hackers, is going to create a whole new industry that is going to make things more exciting than they have ever been for marketers. We're at a point in time where social media, content marketing and more will blur away into the world of context through connected devices and individuals. Creepy? Yes. Opportunity to get it right? Absolutely.

So, how do you think the marketing industry is going to respond?

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post called, Media Hacker . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

The Huffington Post - The Future of Advertising: Messages on Your Toaster?

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contextual advertising

data

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edison research

facebook

google

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real time bidding

self driving cars

smartphones

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the huffington post

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tom webster

traditional media

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urinal advertising

user experience

visual pollution

youtube

Marketing Is Dead (Again)

Episode #339 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

When the Harvard Business Review posted the article, Marketing Is Dead, by Bill Lee, my heart sunk. I wrote my own, passionate, rebuttal to this ridiculous claim (you can read it right here: Marketing Is Dead). Lee's post generated a lot of attention and over six hundred comments. I wasn't alone in the rebuttals and, since the post went live in August of 2012, there is still conversation about the issue. I reached out to Lee, who is not just a contributor to the Harvard Business Review, but the head of the Customer Reference Forum and the author of, The Hidden Value Of Customers. He was gracious and willing to come on to the podcast to push, prod and debate the contents of his article even further. Enjoy the conversation...

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #339.

Tags:

advertising podcast

bill lee

blog

blogging

brand

business book

customer reference forum

david usher

digital marketing

facebook

harvard business review

itunes

marketing

marketing blogger

marketing is dead

marketing podcast

online social network

podcast

podcasting

social media

the hidden value of customers

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #133

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (PressBooks, LibriVox, iambik) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".

Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:

Aviary Ice - YouTube . "A couple of food-related links this week. My sister bought me Heston Blumenthal's outstanding cookbook , and my wife got me Nathan Myrvhold's epic five-volume compendium on molecular gastronomy, for the holidays. So you'll forgive me if I'm a big food-obsessed this week. First up, a beautiful, almost poetic, video about a Chicago foodie destination called Aviary , and the cool things they do with frozen liquids. It's also a nearly spiritual homage to True Hipster Love." (Alistair for Hugh).

Homaro Cantu + Ben Roche: Cooking as alchemy - TED Talk . "Across town from Aviary is another notorious destination, Homaro Cantu's Moto . This place is all about trickery: Monte Cristo sandwiches that look like, well, Monte Cristo cigars. Along with Ben Roche, Homaro likes to push the envelopes. Why, for example, can't we take what cows eat (beets, corn, and so on) and make a burger, without the cow? Here's a ten-minute TED talk they gave in 2011 that reminds me of a crazy dinner I had there a couple of years ago -- think gourmet food served by the Mythbusters cast. Oh, and now they're working on 3D printed food with NASA ." (Alistair for Mitch).

Debunking Nine Myths of the Gun-Control Debate - Bloomberg . "It's funny once you completely embrace the Lean Start-Up/analytics-driven way of thinking about the world, you stop having such faith in your intuitions. Intuitions are so often wrong; or they are as often right as they are wrong, and the trick of the Lean Start Up method is to define a testable hypothesis, set up measurable assumptions with analytics, and test. Then make your decision based on the results. (Hey, this sounds a lot like the scientific method!). Great start-ups are really good at this, and it goes for design decisions, feature decisions, pricing decisions, and much more. Because: everyone has an opinion, and you don't know what the answer is until you see how real people react. I've found myself increasingly uncertain about political issues. I tend to the left of spectrum, but my reaction now is to mistrust my tendencies and ask: where is the data? How do we test this? And so, after Sandy Hook, I found myself with the typical left response: the US needs better gun control; but also reacting to that reaction with: is there data to show that will stop things like Sandy Hook? How do we test this issue? Because, I just don't know if gun control is that answer. (Not to mention, it's hard to imagine how, say, banning assault rifles will have any impact on the 10,000 gun deaths a year in the US - there are already 300 million guns in that country!). Anyway. This was a refreshingly honest article... and I am not sure about all these myths, but we should all ask about getting more data about these myths in order to craft effective policy responses." (Hugh for Alistair).

The Internet - A Decade Later . "A great infographic about where we've come from, and where we are." (Hugh for Mitch).

NASA working on faster-than-light space travel, says warp drives are 'plausible' - ExtremeTech . "If you ever wake up, roll over and feel a little depressed, I want you to bookmark this news item. I want you to bookmark this news item, because if we are on the verge of getting warp speed travel in our lives, we're a few steps closer to having Star Trek become a reality. Now, you don't even have to be a nerd to have that make you shake your head, smile and say: 'it's good to be alive!' Warp speed. How awesome is that?" (Mitch for Alistair).

What to watch for in 2013 - The Shatzkin Files . "So, do people buy more books in their digital format or physical form? The debate rages on, and the true tipping point has yet to be firmly established. Are physical books done for? This is one of those fascinating reads about the publishing industry that will get you thinking and re-thinking everything (with the stats to back it up). Special thanks to Jeffrey Gitomer for turning me on to this post." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alistair croll

aviary

aviary ice

ben roche

bitcurrent

bloomberg

complete web monitoring

extremetech

gigaom

heston blumenthal

homaro cantu

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

jeffrey gitomer

librivox

link bait

link exchange

link sharing

managing bandwidth

media hacks

moto

mythbusters

nasa

nathan myrvhold

pressbooks

sandy hook

ted

ted talk

the shatzkin files

year one labs

youtube

The Drone Wars... Business Style

Drones are everywhere.

Less than a decade ago, The Pentagon had about fifty unmanned combat air vehicles (known as drones or uav). It is estimated that they currently have about seven thousand of them (Congress asked for about $5 billion worth of more drones in 2012). There's a scene in Showtime's hit television series, Homeland, where Nicholas Brody (the former prisoner of war and current United States congressman) is told by David Estes (the director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center) that the use of drones in the war on terrorism has moved from forty unmanned combat air vehicles to nearly four thousand in no time at all. While that was a fictitious scene, it was the type of statement that would make anybody raise an eyebrow. What makes that moment in the thriller all that more interesting, is that the numbers aren't even close to the staggering reality of how many drones are in operation. And, that's just the work being done by United States. the International Institute for Strategic Studies has identified fifty six different types of drones being used in over ten countries (and this data does not include places like China, Turkey and Russia). Now, drones are moving from the battlefield to your neighborhood, and it's about to create a brand new industry and big business right along with it.

FAA approval is pending.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the use of commercial drones in United States airspace could become official starting in 2015. On December 25th, 2012, The New York Times published an editorial titled, The Dawning of Domestic Drones, that states: "The drone go-ahead, signed in February by President Obama in the F.A.A. reauthorization law, envisions a $5 billion-plus industry of camera drones being used for all sorts of purposes from real estate advertising to crop dusting to environmental monitoring and police work." But, this is just the beginning as industry analysts feel that the market will double in less than a decade. We had mass adoption of the wristwatch post World War I when soldiers began attaching their pocket watches to their wrists for more practical purposes. The Internet's genesis has its roots dating back to the 1960s as a United States government commissioned program to build a better distributed computer network. A lot of the work and innovation coming out of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is created for military usage, but then becomes commercialized for business practicalities as well (this includes computer networking and the first hypertext system, which was an early form of the graphical user interface). With so many products that begin as something specialized for the military and then turned over to us, every day, citizens, it's becoming apparent that drones are on the verge of something big. 

What a drone-based business could look like.

Chris Anderson is the former editor-in-chief at Wired Magazine along with being a three-time bestselling business book author (The Long Tail, Free and Makers). He recently left his post at Wired to work on his own passion project (DIY Drones) turned startup called, 3D Robotics, that recently raised five million dollars in venture funding. This idea of drones being used as a commercial entity to help businesses come up with new and inventive ways to optimize their operations turns out to be something that the FAA is finally looking at nearly a half decade after the demand from corporations. In a blog post dated, February 12th, 2009 titled, Fred Smith: FedEx wants UAVs, you can feel the nascent thinking about just how powerful a drone-based network could be for businesses in the not-too-distant future. Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, wants drone usage in his business as quickly as possible. From the blog post: "Unmanned cargo freighters have lots of advantages for FedEx: safer, cheaper, and much larger capacity. The ideal form is the 'blended wing.' That design doesn't make a clear a distinction between wings and body, so almost all the interior of both can be used for cargo. The result is that the price premium for air over sea would fall from 10x to 2X (with all the speed advantages of air)." The blog post goes on to state: "the key thing is having NO people on board, not even as backup. A single person in the craft requires a completely different design, along with radically different economics and logistics. The efficiencies come with 100% robotic operation." Anderson doesn't think we're there, just yet. He's currently selling a $500 drone that is a small and light aircraft that is only usable in non-urbanized zones and must follow specific laws to not interfere with FAA authority (which includes carrying payloads and other uses that are illegal).

More automation and loss of jobs or more automation and the new work force?

It's important to remember that we will require a significant labor force to design, program, maintain and organize this type of business. In short, drone usage at the domestic work level, is going to create a significant amount of jobs where both the talent and title doesn't even exist today. Imagine the hybrid of aviation, logistics, technology, supply chain management and more that will be required to be an effective employee in the near-future for the drone industry? Will that amount of new labor be able to fully offset those who currently have jobs that can be replaced by drones? It depends on several unknown factors at this moment in time, but change is coming. Increasingly, the stuff we see in science fiction and comic books, becomes a business reality. Fast.

It's not just FedEx.

The fact remains, that with all of the privacy, legal and FAA hurdles that will have to be overcome, this is the dawn of a brand new industry where drone-like aircrafts will move from military use and the DIY culture into a brand new commercial industry. As Anderson has already stated on countless occasions: the advanced technology that encapsulates a smartphone (GPS, accelerometers, gyroscopes and simple-to-use software and interfaces mixed with sophisticated and light hardware) means that cheap solutions to unmanned air vehicles are a certainty. Once drones are being used in domestic settings beyond that of hobbyists - and citizens feel like their privacy is not being breached - it's not hard to imagine businesses and marketers coming up with new and inventive ways to use drones to better commercialize their businesses. Currently, Geologists like Jan Grygar are using drones to take high-definition photographs, while Simon Jardine and his business, Eye In The Sky, are using drones to sell aerial photography. Interestingly, both Grygar and Jardine have also started companies to manufacture and sell drones to other businesses. "The analogy is closer to the PC coming after the mainframe," Anderson concedes. "Which is to say, that these are not the most powerful drones in the world, but they will be the cheapest and they will be the ones available to regular people. Fundamentally, those people are going to find new applications for the platform that the traditional industries never thought of."

Now, we're beginning to see uses for drones in agriculture, 3D modeling, security (like saving the rhinos in South Africa), environmental analysis, news reporting, filming, human rights monitoring and more. Just imagine what will be as more venture capital, entrepreneurs, inventors and every day people start exploring the new business opportunities that drones will create.      

I, for one, welcome our new drone overlords.

The above posting is my twice-monthly column for the Harvard Business Review . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:

Harvard Business Review - The Booming Business of Drones.

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Build A Platform

There is one true, defendable thing you can do to avoid unemployment.

What do you think it is? Take a guess. A better education? Work for a secure company? Start your own business? Move to a more prosperous area? I would argue that an individual with a powerful platform is someone who will never be unemployed. Platforms used to be something that someone else had to bestow upon you. If you had a large audience that cared about you, it was because you were frequently published in the local newspaper, or if you were lucky enough to be a regular on a radio program. That was the traditional platform. But that platform wasn't your own (it still isn't). The platform was owned by the media company that published the newspaper or put the radio station on the air. It should come as no surprise that now -thanks to blogging, podcasting, Twitter, Facebook, tumblr and more - you can own the platform.

Back in the day.

Back in 2007, when I was first introduced to my literary agent, and we were working on the book proposal for what would become Six Pixels of Separation, he re-enforced that the author's platform was critical. Meaning: what kind of audience will the author leverage to sell books? The major book publishers were interested in everything from this blog, to my podcast to how many speaking events I do a year (and to whom), along with the types of corporate clients that Twist Image has engagements with. The platform was everything. It still is.

What's your platform like?

We have quickly entered into the age of the platform. This is a good thing, because we're (finally) putting to rest the hyperbole of social media and moving towards something a little bit more real and substantive than pageviews, likes, followers and more. No one knows this better than Michael Hyatt. Hyatt is the former Chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers (one of the largest book publishing companies in the U.S.), and he's also the author of the bestselling business book, Platform - Get Noticed in a Noisy World. He's taken his impressive knowledge of how to build a serious platform and turned it into something called, Platform University. To promote this new initiative, he has launched a series of online videos talking about the power of the platform and his thoughts on how he built his own. The first episode in the series was recently released. It's about twenty minutes long and worth every minute.

Watch this...

What I believe...

I believe that Hyatt is perfectly accurate. When you have a platform... and you own the platform, you are always employable. You are always someone that has information, knowledge and experience that others want... and expect.

What could be more powerful?

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