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Naumi Haque
Nauman Haque is a senior analyst at New Paradigm focused on Enterprise 2.0 research. After graduating from business school he dabbled with a career in marketing, but has spent the past six years analyzing the point at which information technology and business strategy intersect. Prior to joining New Paradigm, Nauman spent several years as an analyst with Info-Tech Research Group helping IT managers with “green” data center technologies, IT governance issues, and the evaluation of emerging trends, including “all this Web 2.0 stuff.” Since becoming part of the Wikinomics team, Nauman is beginning to see the light and is now mostly content finding ways to disrupt business models using mass collaboration (and thus making life difficult for IT managers and CIOs everywhere). A demographic exile, Nauman is stuck smack between the Net Gen and Gen X. Not entirely comfortable with either group, but able to appreciate the best of both, he remains equally fond of his sleek video iPod and his “old-school” stereo with its menacingly large speakers and big shiny analog knobs.
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May 14th, 2008, 06:23pm
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I was having dinner last night with Nokia’s Business Capability Manager, Matthew Hanwell. We got to talking about blogging in the enterprise and Matt suggested that the real problem with blogging was the term “blog.” It sounds too geeky and doesn’t convey the business value of the technology. It’s a nomenclature issue; “thoughts” is a much better way to sell it, says Matt. Perhaps if we simply asked companies and employees if they wanted to share their thoughts or ideas online they would be more amenable to the idea of corporate “blogging.” It’s a good point. What organization would want to hamper idea sharing? What employee would pass up the opportunity to share their thoughts?
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May 14th, 2008, 12:36am
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I was doing some background research for an upcoming project on social networks and came across an interesting paragraph from a paper by renowned sociologist Mark Granovetter (“The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited”). The core of the argument (in the paragraph, not the paper) is that people develop strong social ties to those similar to themselves and since there are fewer individuals in the upper strata of society, those at the top have fewer close friends.
“‘Peter Blau has suggested that since the class structure of modern societies is pyramidal, and since we may expect individuals at all levels to be inclined toward homophily—the tendency to choose as friends those similar to oneself—it follows that the lower one’s class stratum, the greater the relative frequency of strong ties. This happens because homophilous ties are more likely to be strong and low-status individuals are so numerous that it is easier for them to pick and choose as friends others similar to themselves.’ A literal interpretation of this comment would lead us to expect upper-status individuals to have large numbers of weak ties, since there are so few others of high status; it would further follow that many of these weak ties would then be to others of lower status, since the latter would be so numerous. This conclusion does not accord with ethnographic accounts of upper-class life that stress the importance of strong ties to other members of the upper class. But it does suggest why the upper class must invest so much in institutions such as private clubs, special schools, and social registers; the effort to maintain a network of homophilous strong ties is more difficult here than for lower strata.”
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May 7th, 2008, 02:55pm
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Avid blogger and frequent Wikinomics reader Venkat has developed an interesting visualization that shows how various pieces of “2.0” literature fit together to form a cohesive view of the world to come. It provides a fairly good “must read” list for enterprises, scholars, futurists, and anyone interested in new paradigms and next generation thinking. An explanation of the diagram can be found here.
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April 29th, 2008, 03:23pm
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The idea that online social networks will make money selling eyeballs (advertising) or products is missing the entire value proposition of a social network. The real opportunity is in harnessing the rich data that is created by those participating in conversations and interacting with each other. I recently finished some research on two amazing social networks in the healthcare space – Sermo and PatientsLikeMe – that seems to have figured this out.
The model itself is not complex; both communities commercialize their value of relationship data by aggregating and anonymizing it, and then finding third parties that benefit from, and are willing to pay for the rich data created by the community. In the case of these healthcare communities, the third parties are pharmaceuticals, insurance companies, and financial services firms. Both companies do this in a completely transparent way that is clear to users. Unlike the traditional advertising model, the conversations and interactions create the value, not the number of members. If you think about traditional Web metrics such as hits or unique visitors as a measure of success, neither Sermo nor PatientsLikeMe would rank very high.
Now to Facebook – often balked at for its $10-$15 billion estimated valuation, and derided for its failure with the Beacon advertising platform – the social network has yet to identify a solid business model. The company recently announced a small analytic feature that presents aggregated, anonymous user data that could in fact be extremely valuable to companies. The Facebook Lexicon launched with little fanfare, but effectively allows users to chart “buzz” or the viral popularity of various terms (warning: this very cool tool has the potential to impede work productivity).
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April 18th, 2008, 11:34am
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Will citizen journalism be the force that brings down Obama? I don’t think so, but the question brings up some interesting points. Although the press has been saturated with stories about Barack Obama’s now infamous statement about how bitter middle-Americans “cling to guns and religion,” few have looked at the broader implication for political communication; namely the death of “off the record.”
For the candidate with the strongest Web 2.0 presence (leading in YouTube videos, Facebook friends, blog mentions on Technorati, and many other indicators), it’s ironic that another Web 2.0 force – citizen journalism – has dealt him the biggest blow to his campaign so far. Mayhill Fowler, the 61-year-old political blogger (and Obama supporter) that managed to record Barack Obama’s speech while at a fund-raising dinner is a member of Off The Bus, a collaborative project with the Huffington Post to cover the elections with a network of citizen journalists.
The fact that the fundraising event was technically “off the record” and journalists weren’t invited shows just how blurred the lines are becoming between official press and everyday citizens. As I said before, the idea of “off the record’ no longer exists. Every word that comes out of a candidate’s mouth must now be scrutinized by the PR/campaign machine. Just think about that for a second. What will future campaigns look like? Will the candidate of the future just be one of those crazy humanoid robots from Japan that spews pre-recorded sound bites?
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April 13th, 2008, 05:28pm
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I came across a book review in the NY Times last week that made me realize that the era of the American Dream might be coming to an end (has ended?), mostly due to a combination of Wikinomic forces; namely the global Net Generation and rising global economies/Worldsourcing.
The review in the Times, “Wonder Bread and Curry: Mingling Cultures, Conflicted Hearts,” speaks of immigrant children in the US and “the generational process of Americanization.” I can’t say anything good or bad about the book itself, having not read it, but the entire notion struck me as quaint. The idea of cultural awkwardness among Indian immigrant children in the US – the embarrassment of bringing a curry sandwich to school instead of PB&J – is sooo 1985. Having grown up in a predominantly Anglo-Saxon city myself (I was always one of two or three minorities in my class in grade school), I can sympathize with the author’s plight. However, reading through the book description, I couldn’t help but think that the whole idea of Indian-born parents wanting the American Dream for their children is becoming somewhat dated.
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April 2nd, 2008, 12:44pm
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This post is a couple of days overdue, but I just came across some neat pictures that I thought I’d share. We often talk about how climate change and the environment is the “first truly global cause,” creating a huge area of opportunity for Web 2.0 communities to bring global masses of concerned individuals together. That being said, the first global Earth Hour (2007 Earth Hour was in Sydney only), was very un-2.0. Over 20,000 businesses and some 300,000 individuals “signed up” on the official Earth Hour site, and almost a million people attended Earth Hour events on Facebook (there were several); however, the main clamour behind the event was as much a word-of-mouth effort as anything. Maybe it’s fitting, given that the goal of the initiative was all about putting technology aside for while to think about the planet and each other.
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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 23rd, 2008, 09:30pm
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Everyone is talking about an impending skills shortage. In the U.S., the gap is expected to be greater than 3 million workers by 2012, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (see chart below). In China, the workforce is expected to grow by less than 5% from now until 2015, by which time one-third of the population will be over the age of 50! The major concern is that the demographic “echo” of Net Geners won’t be enough to fill the shoes of retiring Baby Boomers. Even if the Net Gen’s numbers are strong, their skills are weak; the global Net Generation talent pool (mainly in India and China) is often lamented for its lack of critical language, communication, and technical skills required in today’s knowledge economy. The domestic talent of coddled youngsters is only marginally better.
What’s often missing from the talent crunch conversation is a discussion of Gen X and the implications for them. There’s a big chunk of talent that’s leaving the workforce at the top of the corporate food chain. But, all the talent coming in is at the bottom of the food chain, and many of them lack the requisite skills even to be functioning at an entry level. So, the people filling the Baby Boomers shoes (not to mention training the Net Gen) will be Gen Xers – a very small demographic of highly-trained professionals who will be in high demand for leadership positions. As we know, successful enterprises are driven by successful leaders, and these will soon be in short supply – the real talent crunch. What’s more, as Dan points out in his recent post “A digital generation?,” Gen Xers have mastered productive uses of the Internet to a much higher degree than the entertainment-focused Net Gen, and are the true drivers of technology innovation.
What does all this mean? Maybe, success will come, not only from hiring and retaining Net Gen talent, but also by focusing on retaining and cultivating Gen X leaders.
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March 3rd, 2008, 12:48am
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Chances are my kids will never know what a video rental store is; at least not in the traditional sense. With companies like MOD Systems and PortoMedia, not to mention iTunes Movie Store, it seems as though the days of riding your bike to the video store to rent (or return) a movie are over. The idea of a movie title being “all out” also seems preposterous in an era where physical media is giving way to infinitely replicable bits and bytes transferred online or via a MovieKey.
The Economist ran an excellent article last week, “Hollywood and the Internet: Coming Soon” that highlights the issue and talks about the opportunity for major studios to take advantage of the Internet revolution. Using online delivery mechanisms and direct-to-customer models like video kiosks the efficiencies ultimately lie in cutting out the video store middleman.
In the short run, retailers like Blockbuster will be squeezed by video rental kiosks that deliver “self-destructing” movies via flash drives. These kiosks can hold thousands of movie titles that are never out-of-stock and can upload them to portable keys in mere seconds – think ATMs for video rental.
Image source: MODSystems.com
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February 25th, 2008, 03:42pm
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If you started reading this post based on the title, you’ve already half proven the point I’m about to argue. Sensationalism combined with social media is killing the news. Sensational headlines have always captured eyeballs, even when the dominant media was newspapers. However, with online developments such as hyperlinks, RSS feeds, news aggregators, and online voting mechanisms like Digg, headlines are often all readers use when determining newsworthiness.
I’ve been doing some research lately on how political communication in evolving with Web 2.0. Going through my notes, I came across the following snippet from an interview with one of the co-founders of a leading political blog and social networking site:
“There is this whole debate about the destruction Digg is doing to how information is disseminated. You have all these people who are going through [the site] and reading sensationalized headlines that have to be fictionalized, by nature, to get promoted. These are accompanied by a very small summary that is usually not very well written, and again, slanted because most people, and I’m guilty as charged, are attracted to those types of stories. The people creating the headlines are just trying to drive traffic back to their sites.
[…] The problem is that the people reading the news [on Digg] feel that by scanning these headlines they’ve been informed. You could scan the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and get a sense of the news, whereas now if you scan Digg-type sites, you’re getting a very slanted sense of the news. You form an opinion about an issue without really reading about what happened. I think that’s what’s scary about these things. Of course, the counter argument is that in order to be portable you have to be precise and you have to be digestible. It’s the whole snack media notion that everybody’s taking, but there’s got to be a little substance behind this or it’s going to work against us.”
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February 14th, 2008, 04:19pm
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Thrasher Funds is a fund company aimed at capturing Net Gen investors with their trendy and targeted Gendex Mutual Fund. Holdings include youth-respected global brands such as Apple, Adidas, China Mobile, Coca Cola, Google, H&M, Louis Vuitton, Lulu Lemon, Time Warner, Toyota, and Volkswagon.
I say, smart move. The Fund basis its investment portfolio on what they call the “Demographic Convergence Thesis,” or more specifically:
“The investment thesis that believes that there are specific companies and industries that are taking advantage of the convergence between Generation X and Y’s newfound spending power and trend setting and the Baby Boomers’ desire to stay young forever and use their spending power to emulate the trends of the younger generations.”
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February 5th, 2008, 01:17pm
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Every year around January/February, the President of the United States gives his State of the Union address. For the incumbent administration it serves as an opportunity to educate the rest of the world on what issues are going to be important in the coming year. Each year, the pundits are out in full force, raising much speculation on what the President’s focus will be and what policies will get the biggest props.
Last week George W. Bush gave his final State of the Union address. And while the patina of this year’s address was somewhat dulled by the hoopla surrounding the 2008 Primaries and Caucuses (which really is turning into CNN’s version of the Oscars sans Brangelina), for many viewers the landmark State of the Union event still brought much excitement and anticipation.
As such, I thought this might be a good time to look back and reflect on some of the key themes that marked President Bush’s eight years in office.
Big Up the Terror
Without a doubt, Terror has been the clear overarching theme of the George W. Bush presidency, followed by Health, and Freedom; both of which have been slipping since strong showings in 2005. The Economy and Education are tied for fourth place. This year, the Economy had a strong start during the speech (7 mentions before Freedom or Terror even got a word in edgewise); however, the clear winner once again was Terror, recording 23 total mentions. For Education, the President has taken an interesting approach, whereby he tips his hat to the education system once every four years, and then largely ignores it for several years in between. Read More »
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January 27th, 2008, 10:55pm
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We were talking about call centers in the office last week and my colleague Alan made a very good observation: Why do call centers pay thousands of dollars to conduct consumer surveys, but ignore the feedback front-line call center employees get for free from irate customers?
Call center employees are probably the most underused resources in the enterprise. Most are college-educated individuals, but the collective brain power of this group is never used to its full potential. Not even close. Call center employees are rarely given the tools or autonomy needed to improve decision-making and customer service at the front-lines (basic CRM systems are not enough). Consider some of the possibilities: Wiki scripts, access to all cross-selling and up-selling channels, outlets to capture customer feedback, incentives that stress talk time and relationship-building over dials and traditional call resolution metrics, mentoring and collaborative call resolution, access to information that allows call center employees to build custom dashboards and reports, and mechanisms to impact product design based on customer feedback. Call centers really are the low-hanging fruit of Wikinomics. Read More »
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January 9th, 2008, 06:48pm
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Several factors converged today to inspire this post. First I owe Dan a blog post on politics, as per a settlement we reached earlier this week. More importantly, I was watching the news last night and two unrelated stories caught my attention. The first was the results from the New Hampshire primaries where Hillary made a “comeback” win.
What’s really interesting about the news yesterday is not the result, but rather the positioning. (Comeback from where? Wasn’t she supposed to win all along?) After a big win in Iowa, all the momentum seems to be in Obama’s direction, with most analysts “surprised” to see a Clinton win. Hmm… Could it be that my previous post about the campaign 2.0 bubble was <gasp> off the mark? Are Barack’s Web 2.0 efforts paying off? It’s still early days, but the results of the Presidential primaries are a great test case for the legitimacy of these new Web tools for political communication. With Barack clearly generating more popularity among young voters (see charts below), the primaries also provide an interesting venue for gauging the influence of Net Gen voters.
The second interesting piece of news from last night was this story about Alberta’s Premier Ed Stelmach suing University of Alberta student and political blogger Dave Cournoyer over the use of the domain name “edstelmach.ca.” More than anything, I think this is a bit embarrassing for Premier Stelmach. As a public figure, one of the most basic rules of the Web game is registering your domain name. This is really Politics 0.0 – one step before even having a Web site.
Going back to the U.S. Presidential race, I was surprised to find that, although all candidates have Web sites, several do not own their domain names. Shocking! The leading Republican candidate in the December polls, Rudy Giuliani, doesn’t own his .com domain name, neither does Fred Thompson or the Republican Web 2.0 poster boy Ron Paul. The Democrats fare slightly better, but if someone wants to make a quick buck, mikegravel.com is still up for grabs.
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January 3rd, 2008, 05:19pm
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After reading “Eight business technology trends to watch” in the most recent issue of the McKinsey Quarterly, I have to believe that either we have an uncanny ability to predict the technology market (which I like to think we do) or McKinsey analysts really do love Wikinomics (in which case, feel free to send along a cut of consulting revenues). Three of McKinsey’s top eight business technology trends certainly do echo chapters from the Wikinomics book. Consider the following:
- Distributing cocreation. “The Internet and related technologies give companies radical new ways to harvest the talents of innovators working outside corporate boundaries.”
- Using consumers as innovators. “Consumers also cocreate with companies; the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, for instance, could be viewed as a service or product created by its distributed customers.”
- Tapping into a world of talent. “As more and more sophisticated work takes place interactively online and new collaboration and communications tools emerge, companies can outsource increasingly specialized aspects of their work and still maintain organizational coherence.”
While this is old hat for Wikinomics readers, number seven on the list is something close to my heart and something that we don’t talk about much, but probably should: management metrics (or in McKinsey’s words, “putting more science into management”).
In my previous job, I used to write a lot about service level agreements (SLAs) and decision-making tools for IT managers. As part of this work, I often talked about using metrics to improve IT service management through various stages of maturity. The stages of maturity that we used for the IT service management model are probably fairly transferable to all levels of management. Generalized to be relevant to non-IT sectors, they would be as follows:
- Unmanaged: You pretty much have no clue and manage without any data inputs at all. The extent of your insight into how things are going is, “the lights are on.”
- Reactive: You are pretty much fighting fires and allocating resources without any pre-determined priority. Whatever your boss is yelling at you about the most inevitably gets done at the expense of everything else.
- Predictive: Automated metric gathering is in place to give you a basic view of operations. Resources are allocated in a predictable manner based on solid data that tells you at a high level what is important and what isn’t. You are now managing with the help of Spidey Sense.
- Proactive: This is a consolidated “single-pane-of-glass” view of operations. You understand what metrics are key and contribute to value creation. Patterns emerge that allow decision-makers to pre-empt problems.
- Optimized: Value-driven reporting provides cost vs. risk tradeoffs that help you make the best decisions. There is complete transparency into the metrics program.
I think it would be interesting to get back into looking at how technology can help managers reach the “optimized” stage. If anyone has any new ideas on this, or comes across any interesting examples of how Wikinomics and performance management are intersecting, please send them along.
And for those of you that want to start thinking about the top trends for 2009, I think Don’s new book should be coming out sometime this year ; )
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December 18th, 2007, 05:57pm
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The Net Generation is online at work and working at home. The combination of 1) Net Geners entering the workforce in growing numbers and 2) the pervasiveness of mobile technologies is causing a blurring between work time and personal time. On one hand, workers are demanding flexible work schedules, the opportunity to work from home, and a less draconian approach to time management while in the office. However, the irony is that the tools that enable mobility and flexibility are the same technologies that bind employees to an always-on, always connected virtual office.
Just like everything else, the chains too have become virtual. So, for example, an employee with a company-owned Blackberry or laptop has the ability to use the device for personal or work use, from any number of locations (home, the office, the train, or Starbucks), at whatever time suits their schedule. But, it’s a double edged sword. The employee’s boss and co-workers also have the ability to reach them anywhere and at any time, and may even expect a prompt response.
Given this paradox (especially among knowledge workers), it becomes very difficult to measure things like work hours, worker productivity, and work/life balance. As a society, are we getting lazier or working harder? Are we more efficient or simply defining work differently? These are the thoughts that went through my mind as I looked at some of the more recent data on time use in North America. Read More »
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December 7th, 2007, 05:01pm
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Building on Dan’s excellent post below, let’s not forget about Doctissimo.fr. Yep, that’s right, “.fr.” The French health community surpassed WebMD this year as the most visited online health site around. Key draws appear to be the blogs, forums, and chat, as well as DocTV which offers videos on various topics from preventative heath to cancer treatment.
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December 4th, 2007, 04:06pm
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Just another quick update to our previous post about Radiohead’s recent decision to let users set the price of their latest album In Rainbows. Commenting on the first update, “An update on Radiohead downloads,” reader Scott asked, “Any word on what the average person is paying for those 1.2M downloads? It will be interesting to see if this is more fiscally advantageous for the band than releasing under a major label.”
Well, as a matter of fact, “yes” there is some data on that. The folks at comScore recently reported that the average user who was willing to pay for the download forked out $6.00 for the album, or $0.60 per song. Among U.S. users, the average price was $8.05 for the album, or $0.81 per song. In comparison, songs sold through iTunes yield between $0.05 and $0.10 to the artist, depending on who you believe.
So, in terms of collecting money from those willing to pay, and excluding the promotional advantages of iTunes for up-and-coming artists, distributing music via the Radiohead model does seem to be more lucrative.
However, the comScore study also reports that only 38% of those people that downloaded the album via Radiohead’s site were actually willing to pay for the music. Furthermore, among those willing to pay, the largest proportion (17%) were only willing to spend under $4.00. This reminds me of the keg fridge my friends had in university, and the mostly empty donation jar that sat on top of it. As far as college students are concerned (and Radiohead fans… assuming the two are actually mutually exclusive), free is the best price around.
I think the main point here is that while this has proved somewhat successful for Radiohead, the model only works if you have an established fan base. Over 50% of the total revenues from downloads came from a small portion of loyal fans (12%) that willingly paid between $8.00 and $12.00 for the album. So, even if all music goes the way of the download, there will still be a role for music promoters. Although, I doubt these entities will look anything like the record labels of old.
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November 28th, 2007, 03:42pm
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Cyber Monday is the somewhat controversial term used by retailers and shoppers to describe the Monday after the U.S. Thanksgiving weekend (November 26th this year). It marks the “official” start to the online holiday shopping season; the online equivalent of brick-and-mortar retailers’ Black Friday (i.e. the day of bargain shopping that supposedly pushes many retailers to profitability for the year). However, many detractors say the whole concept of Cyber Mondays (which was started in 2005 by Shop.org) is a scam – a marketing ploy invented by the online retail industry to drum up sales. Why the Monday after Thanksgiving? According to DoubleClick:
“Most offline holiday shopping happens on the weekends, but not everyone buys in the stores; many go online Monday to purchase what they did not find over the weekend, price-check with competitors, and pursue deep online discounts and deals.”
So, is Cyber Monday a self-fulfilling prophesy driven by online promotions and discounts, or a behavioural-driven shopping trend? Recent data from DoubleClick shows that it’s both. In fact, the term Cyber Mondays (plural) might be more appropriate. As the chart below demonstrates, there is a clear spike in online shopping the first Monday after Thanksgiving; however, the trend of Monday shopping persists throughout the holiday season. According to Hitwise CEO Andrew Walsh, Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. is the biggest day for research online and the second week of December is the biggest week for shopping online.
The online shopping blitzes on Mondays might also mean the “bored at work generation” have something other than Facebook to check when they get to the office Monday morning. A recent survey conducted by Decision Analyst found that 46% of workers in the U.S. were expecting to shop for online bargains while at work on Cyber Monday. Further, those surveyed admitted they would spend nearly an hour (on average) shopping online instead of working… or maybe while working; fully 13% admitted to shopping online while on a conference call.
According to Shop.org, 55% of workers with Internet access will shop online while at work this holiday season, up from 51% in 2006. The trend is most prevalent among 18 to 24 year-olds, 72% of whom admitted to shopping online from work last year. Overall, comScore reports that online holiday shopping is up in 2007, despite a slightly weaker economy. Online retail spending in the U.S. hit $733 million on the first Cyber Monday of 2007, a 21% increase compared to last year, and an 84% increase compared to the average daily sales volume during the preceding four weeks. On the whole, comScore expects $29.5 billion will be spent online this holiday shopping season, up 20% from last year.
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