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March 31st, 2008, 05:22pm
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For the past couple of years we have been watching the emergence and growth of online market places for solutions and talent. We call these Ideagoras. These markets connect companies with problems and skills shortages with solution providers - freelancers, retirees and people with some extra time on their hands. Examples abound: InnoCentive helps companies connect with scientists and engineers, Elance has a huge network of programmers, designers and translators and GLGroup provides access to consultants and industry experts. Leading companies such as P&G, Boeing, Dow and Kraft are using these markets to reach outside of their corporate boundaries.
The benefits are many - Ideagoras allow companies to quickly and dynamically connect with people who heave a unique solution for their particular problem or need. The model is a lot more flexible and cheaper than outsourcing or traditional supplier relationships. Companies also benefit by choosing their solution providers based on reputation ratings and feedback from other clients as opposed to marketing pitches or blind selection processes.
Despite obvious benefits, few similar services exist in the consumer space – with one notable exception. Rated People, a U.K based service, connects home owners with tradespeople such as plumbers, electricians and roofers. The site allows users to describe their project and get bids from several providers in their geographical area. The tradespeople are evaluated by other users on their quality, value and reliability, with their ratings displayed along side of customer comments.
While it is difficult to judge whether Rated People has the critical mass to become self-sustaining, the service illustrates how Ideagoras can be useful outside of a corporate setting. Ratings keep the tradespeople honest - maintain good reputation scores is a good way to keep work pipelines filled. Ideagoras for car mechanics, computer technicians or even medical professionals would go a long way in making the markets for those services more transparent and user friendly. Feel free to comment if you come across an Ideagora in the consumer space.
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March 31st, 2008, 04:08pm
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It’s easy to get blinded by the current surge in youth involvement in politics in the U.S., and draw the conclusion that these same trends are a global trend. Yet the most recent edition of the London-based Hansard Society’s Audit of Political Engagement shows otherwise.
Based on an in-person survey of 1,073 adults in Great Britain, the report highlights some sobering stats. Notably:
- Just one in eight people are politically active, (ie in the last two or three years they have done at least three political activities from a list of eight). Almost half of the public (48%) report not having done any of these activities.
- Only a third of people aged 18-24 (33%) say they are interested in politics, a sharp decline from 41% last year
- The likelihood of being a political activist tends to increase with age, with one in 20 18-24 year olds (4%) defined as activists, compared to 17% of 45-54 year olds and an average of 13% among people aged 55+
And sadly, independent of age, less than a third of the public believe that “when people like me get involved in politics, Read More »
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March 31st, 2008, 07:10am
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A few readers might have seen these quotes in last week’s press release, but I wanted to post them here as well:
“The old-school way of doing business hides problems and creates inefficiencies. Radical collaboration solves those problems. It brings the best minds together, exposes hidden risks, and accelerates innovation and growth. We’ve seen how it transforms industries, such as music and entertainment. But now it’s time to take the same approach to the most serious problems – problems with the gravest consequences for the economy and society. Leaders need to change their habits and open the curtain.”
“The subprime mess happened because big financial players hid the risks – they weren’t found until it was too late. If the same players had taken the radical step of sharing information about the bets they were structuring, the best minds – including economic policymakers – could have seen what was happening and taken steps to avert it.”
Does anyone have any thoughts on this argument that they’d like to share?
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March 30th, 2008, 06:53pm
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Chris Anderson’s Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business has drawn a lot of attention over the last month or so. If one wanted to make a joke on the topic, it would traditionally involve the line “make it up with volume!” somewhere, but Ted Rall has found a different take - it’s all going to be about T-shirts. While the (stating the obvious here) comic can’t be taken too seriously, it does manage to connect with that fear of the long tail / wikinomics future that a lot of people have - how are we all going to get paid?
At least it is for the countries that lose their dork sector… and don’t harness the other growth opportunities like plastic surgery for children. Or something like that. Read More »
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March 29th, 2008, 09:59am
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Earlier in the week I posted Chris Rasmussen’s wonderful depiction of the merits of wiki collaboration. I noted then how a participant at a recent talk I gave at Nokia had pointed out that the happy faces on the left of Chris’s diagram probably ought to be frowning. Chris then alerted me to an updated version of the diagram that reflects the personal and organizational pain that email so often inflicts (click on the thumbnail!)
True to form, the post generated an interesting debate about whether the emailers on the left side of Chris’s diagram should be frowning, or whether they are, in reality, quite content with the status quo:
Read More »
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March 29th, 2008, 08:37am
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Denis Hancock previously posted about “The death of the newspaper: murder or suicide?” and referenced an interesting article in the Washington Post by David Simon (the creator of the HBO series The Wire). In the past week there have been a number of events that have reminded me just how much things are changing.
This clip below from the The Simpsons provides a humorous view of what I think most people are already noticing. Nelson makes fun of a panelist at a political debate because he is a “print journalist from the Washington Post” and goes on to point out “HAHA, your medium is dying”.
Read More »
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March 28th, 2008, 03:10pm
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This week, Youtube announced that it’s launching Youtube Insight which will allow Youtube users to track more detailed statistics about their videos. Its goal is to enhance the way in which users create, post and manage their video. By using Insight, Youtube argues that,
[Y]ou can increase your videos’ view counts and improve your popularity on the site. For instance, you might learn that your videos are most popular on Wednesdays, that you have a huge following in Spain, or that new videos that play off previous content become more popular more quickly. With this information, you can concentrate on creating compelling new content that appeals to your target audiences, and post these videos on days you know these viewers are on the site. (Maybe even post your next video in Spanish?) Read More »
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March 28th, 2008, 12:07pm
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It seems that Canada may have finally woken up to the Net Neutrality issue that’s recieved far, far more press in the U.S. - though I’d still argue not enough. (If you want a really good detail on all the history behind Net Neutrality, the wikipedia page on this topic is amazing, right down to the 66 references and footnotes that could keep you reading for days.)
In short, my feelings are that a lack of Net Neutrality is something that damages the Internet experience for everyone, and by extension threatens many of the amazing innovations and collaborative tools that are trying to emerge. Thankfully, we might be reaching a point where this issue gets dealt with once and for all.
David Reed’s opening statement to the FCC Commissioners on Net Neutrality (with particular reference to what Comcast has been up to) is pointed in the right direction. To quote his three main points:
Read More »
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March 28th, 2008, 11:31am
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An interesting Businessweek article describes how researchers are tapping into mobile phone usage patterns to analyze the behavior of individuals. The article describes plenty of beneficial ways in which mobile usage data could be used such as identifying traffic congestion, tracking and preventing contagious illnesses and even helping event planners manage high budget conventions. Also known as ‘reality mining’, this practice provides an innovative way of collecting and analyzing data to more effectively predict and manage future outcomes.
Similarly, many entities are looking to use the collective intelligence of internet users and are finding innovative ways to harness this power. A good example is Google’s Image labeller game which pairs users against each other in a competition to label images thereby helping to improve the quality of google image results. Read More »
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March 28th, 2008, 07:20am
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Google Earth has become a platform for revealing atrocities in Dafur, tracking the spread of the avian flu, and analyzing the effect of climate change on sea levels, among dozens of other great applications. Recently the State of Alabama’s Homeland Security department opted to use Google Earth as a platform for emergency management.
The site threads together thousands of pieces of information from across the state - including maps, photos, traffic cameras, current weather and other databases. From fire and police departments responding to emergencies to emergency management agencies assessing damage from natural disasters, Virtual Alabama provides city, county and state officials with near instantaneous access to information ranging from building layouts to fire hydrant locations. Here’s how Alabama describes the possible benefits:
Read More »
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March 27th, 2008, 09:13pm
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I’ve heard a lot about Dell’s supply chain, so was interested to see it in action this week when I placed an order for my new desktop machine (their XPS 630 is a terrific machine if you make a few upgrades).
Dell has an order tracking page - so, anxious to see the status of my new arrival, I’ve been checking it a couple of times a day just to see what’s up. But strangely nothing seemed to be moving - I kept seeing that my order was “in production”. But finally this morning I got an email telling me my order had shipped:
Of course, I decided to check into Dell’s order page right away and see if there was any more detailed status (I thought I might find a delivery time estimate from the courier company). But here’s what I saw when I logged in: Read More »
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March 27th, 2008, 03:39pm
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Some time ago I was asked by the U.S. General Services Administration to write an article describing how I envision the role of public sector CIOs. The article has now been published (Role of the Public Sector CIO) along side articles by Karen Evans, John Suffolk, Bill Vajda, Teri Takai, P.K. Agarwal, Jerry Mechling, Ken Cochrane and other influential leaders in government. I highlighted four priorities: infusing web 2.0 principles into government service delivery strategies, wikifying the public sector workplace, providing an infrastructure of large-scale digital engagement, and tackling the thorny issues of security and privacy. If you don’t care to read the entire article, I’ve posted the punchline below:
Read More »
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March 27th, 2008, 01:48pm
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Not to be confused with the Wikinomics Blogroll report, this is just a quick tour around some of the place wikinomics is popping up around the blogosphere. Think of it as moving a little further down the long tail to see how people are applying wikinomics to whatever it is they do. Here are just a few from the last week or so:
A nice wikipage on Shifting the notion of what it means to teach by Will Richardson.
Gerd Leonhard on The End of Control Essays.
Spicy IP on how the wikinomics model has already made a difference for Bent and tens of thousands of African families.
Read More »
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March 27th, 2008, 09:39am
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The Economist has two very interesting articles out on social networking - Break down these walls, and Everywhere and Nowhere. The first focuses on the notion that social networking should follow the now well-trodden path on the Internet, where open standards trump “walled gardens.” They make a good point that companies like Facebook and Second Life look a lot like AOL in 1994, in terms of being closed worlds based on proprietary standards. The hope would be that, with history as a guide, the new upstarts might avoid being marginalized by the seemingly upstoppable momentum behind open standards.
But what makes this issue interesting is the second article, where the subtitle says it all- Social Networking will become a ubiquitous feature of online life. That does not mean it’s a business. Interesting comparisons are made to the evolution of email, a now fairly ubiquitous and critical technology that’s not making any real money. Read More »
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March 26th, 2008, 05:56pm
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I recently came across a new term, “Worldsourcing”, that expresses beautifully the next generation of global enterprises. Take a look here, on the Lenovo blog.
The idea behind Worldsourcing is really the dawn of the truly global enterprise. Global enterprises operate on a truly global scale; operate with porous corporate boundaries (interacting with “outside” partners in much the same collaborative way that “internal” departments work together); and bring that global approach to all functions (not just manufacturing and customer service). Let’s look at each in more detail: Read More »
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March 26th, 2008, 05:42pm
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They say a picture is worth a thousand words and I think this one sums up the power of wiki collaboration better than any 1,000 word essay ever could. The model is courtesy of Chris Rasmussen at US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. I presented this slide during a talk I gave at Nokia today and someone pointed out that the happy faces on the left probably ought to be frowning — he had a good point.
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March 26th, 2008, 05:21pm
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Here is a cool idea that is just getting started. The Time Space Map is kind of a combination of Wikipedia and Google Map mashups. It allows people to graph historical events in a temporal fashion. The picture below shows the growth of the Inca Empire. A good description can be found here.
I’m curious to see how this map of Napoleon’s advance and retreat to Russia (considered by many to be the greatest graphic ever) would look in this application. Read More »
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March 26th, 2008, 03:38pm
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The iPhone, Xbox, BlackBerries, and other proprietary, closed Internet-enabled devices are dooming the PC and taking the Internet with it; or so says Jonathan Zittrain. I’m currently reading an advance copy of Zittrain’s new book, “The Future of the Internet – And How to Stop It,” in which he discusses the trend away from the generative PC to “sterile appliances tethered to a network of control.”
The battle for the democratization of the internet – net neutrality – is fairly loud (although not nearly loud enough if you think about what is at stake). Similarly, there’s a lot of talk about open APIs and open platforms for customizable applications. However, the discussion around the transformation of the PC itself from an open platform to locked-down appliance is much more subdued. But, as Zittrain notes, “the endpoint matters.” Read More »
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March 25th, 2008, 01:21pm
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Here’s a fantastic application created by Gilles Bruno, a French media and IT buff, that maps media attention from some of the world’s largest newspapers. The result is a series of distorted cartograms that measure how much attention various newspapers from around the world are paying to individual countries. Moreover, it creates an interesting discussion about what matters in today’s world, and why.
For example, the image below highlights media attention from La Croix, a French catholic daily. If you compare this to a North American daily you can see a significant difference in the attention paid to French speaking countries and former colonies. The one constant seems to be attention on trade partners.
These cartograms are quite similar to work being done by Harvard/Berkman Centre fellow Ethan Zuckerman. Read More »
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March 25th, 2008, 08:34am
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Inspired partially by Mike’s Guitar Hero posts (1)(2) and endorsements, I had been searching for a Guitar Hero III for my Wii for weeks, when finally last week, I was able to find one at an Electronics Boutique in downtown Toronto.
I resisted playing the game for a couple of days as I knew I would get pulled in, but once I cracked, boy did I have fun. While I’ve only played for a cumulative three or 4 hours, I have had a blast doing so. Being the “hero” I knew I would be (sarcasm noted), after defeating Lou, the boss on Easy, I was ready to move on to the next bigger and better challenge, which I my case was Rock Band.
I had played the popular Harmonix game at a friend’s house on PS3 and was blown away when mid-way through a song, a friend suggested they wanted to hear an Oasis song, and lo and behold, to my astonishment, the owner of the game grabbed the PS controller, went online and purchased “The Oasis Pack” and within minutes, we were butchering the popular cover Wonderwall.
Read More »
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