The Network Garden - Mark Sigal's Blog

Getting to the Train Station on Time

In the pursuit of business success, we all struggle with it.

"It could be better."

"It's not quite ready."

"I have so much on my plate right now."

"I didn't get it done."

Sometimes, it's a case of 'better' being the enemy of 'good enough.'

Other times, it's a case of failing to see the forest from the trees.

But, know this.

Whether driven by over-reach, confusion, poor execution or inattention, you MUST recalibrate and lock in.

In moments like these, everything becomes subordinate to Getting to the Train Station on Time.

Your priorities must be clear.

Everyone must commit to a singular purpose.

Don't let anything cloud your intent and focus.

Be specfic on what Getting there means, and Get it Done.

Related

1. Innovation, Inevitability and Why R&D is So Hard
2. On Life as Art, Poetic Truths & Getting Rich
3. The Tyranny of the ALL or NONE: embracing the paradox of the AND in life.

Apple Q3, 2014 Earnings Call: It's About Continuity and Gratification

"Friends say he has a gift for delaying gratification."

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg once attributed a chunk of his success to delaying gratification. Where he could have monetized Facebook sooner - at the cost of building a bigger audience - he resisted the temptation.

Where he could have sold the company, and cashed out, he kept pursuing the "BHAG" (big, hairy audacious goal) of building the next Google, Apple or Microsoft.

Such was the narrative playing in my head, listening to the Apple's Third Quarter Earnings Call.

While others may see a company that can't possibly keep selling more devices, quarter after quarter after quarter, I see a company that has continually avoided the gratification of going for market share and sales at all costs (i.e., at the price of margins, profits and cashflow).

This is no small task when one considers that investors, the media and virtually every pundit in the blogosphere is not so adept at delaying gratification.

Give them a beautiful suit, and they'll see only a loose thread. 

Failure to seize a market - margins be damned - and the company gets dinged.

Unwillingness to be all things to all people - Amazon, Google and Facebook all rolled into one - and the company gets dinged.

Apple CEO Tim Cook is simultaneously unwilling to be his own man, and guilty of doing things that Steve would never do ("This would have never happened if Steve Jobs was still around).

But Apple in the iOS Era has always been about playing the long game. How else do you create a massive ecosystem of 800M devices that fit the lifestyle, daily flows and physical spaces of people at home, work, school and on the go? 

How else to catalyze an explosion of Apps, Accessories and Services, that are not only immense in scale, not only deliver a superior user experience, not only drive unparalled loyalty, but unfathomable sales margins.

How many multi-billion dollar lines of business can one company create before they inevitably, unquestionably go out of business?

But, there must be an end-game, right?

Ultimately, all of this delaying of gratification, of withholding the child-like joy of chasing every market, usurping every partner, and competing with any and all who enter its universe - read: Amazon, Google, Facebook - has to come at a price, right?

Isn't it written in the Torah somewhere that Apple ALWAYS loses because they fail to be a commodity, as God, Jesus and Mohammed demand?

Well, the end is near, and it's called Continuity.

Continuity is the idea that from Mac to Mobile to Tablet to Home to Health to Car to the Enterprise, there is a unity of experience, that is contiguous; it flows. 

Driving in your car? CarPlay kicks in. Walk into your living room, and HomeKit kicks in. Going for a jog, or visiting the doctor, and HealthKit kicks in. Walk into a Costco, and WalletKit kicks in (or whatever eWallet strategy Apple will set loose soon).

My point is this. UIltimately, the payoff of Post PC is that the devices get embedded to the point of invisibility...wait for it...because they just WORK. All the time.

Some believe that that renders the device moot, so Apple must lose.

I hold to the belief that the devices must be terrific, and the edge must be smart, specifically so we don't have to blindly trust a cloud to watch over us; to surveil us; and separate us from our data when things go haywire.

That's not to say that the Cloud doesn't matter, or that there aren't multitudes of problems that can't be solved when you intelligently bridge smart devices with a smarter cloud.

That's the big idea behind Continuity after all. 

But, it's the not so subtle distinction between the notion - captured in every Apple Ad and Apple Store experience - that the INDIVIDUAL is at the center of the universe, that the consumer is the centerpiece; and an alternate vision that we are destined to all be PAWNS in some sentient, faceless borg that calculates, decides and dictates on our behalf.

It's no coincidence then that along with a runaway successful device business, that the App Store (and the iTunes Software and Services business line that underlies it), is the fastest growing segment of Apple's business, and the linchpin of a Continuity play that has been baking for seven years, since iOS was announced.

It's the notion that Ecosystems matter, that the Consumer, the Developer, the Accessory Partner, the Corporate Customer, the Book Publisher, the Car Maker and the Enterprise are all motivated by their own need to not only survive, but to individuate.

And that's a good thing.

Related

1. iPhone: The first 'personal' computer
2. Apple's segmentation strategy, and the folly of conventional wisdom
3. No good deed goes unpunished at the iPhone company

Ruminations on Retail: Why We Launched BrightStreet Ventures

(Guest Column: Western Real Estate Business - July 2014)

Consider the plight of the retailer: the rise of Amazon has attacked the margins that local retailers count on for survival.

As a result, numerous segments, including video stores, music stores, computer stores, bookstores, electronics and office supplies are either dead or dying. Sadly, this is a trend that is permanent and accelerating.

Meanwhile, the ascendance of the smartphone, led by Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android is changing everything.

There are about five billion devices creating universal experiences that are social, real time, data smart, perpetual, personal and just-in-time capable via millions of mobile apps.

This emerging reality gets to a universal truth of our time; namely, that software is ‘eating the world,’ and in the process, reshaping virtually all industries.

It’s given rise to Uber, Amazon, Airbnb, Google, iTunes, Facebook, Maps, and Yelp, but can there be any doubt that retail, media, marketing, manufacturing, transportation and telecom are being forever changed in the process as well?

In retail, for example, mobile has given the consumer the power of all knowledge at their fingertips. With this power, he or she can discern fair price or pursue a better deal – often online – in very few clicks.

It’s also empowered consumers to act as social amplifiers of reputation and experience. An extra half-star rating on Yelp can cause restaurants to have a full house 19% more frequently.

Critically, though, mobile plays a game-changing role in what is known as omni-channel. In the world of omni-channel, the consumer’s frame of reference encompasses online, bricks-and-mortar and mobile possibilities.

When done right, omni-channel can yield a 6X sales lift from the customers that engage with the merchant on all channels, including online, via mobile and in store. Such has been the experience of Walgreens.

Similarly, the rise of big data and data science is changing the means of analyzing, targeting and customizing the field of play that exists between retailers, consumers and shopping center owners.

Mobile has also disrupted the traditional ways that merchants acquired and connected with customers.

The customer acquisition tool kit used to consist of yellow pages, direct mail and newspaper ads. While your eyes can tell you that these marketing segments are decidedly unhealthy, there’s an even more obvious barometer: ask yourself if your children have ANY connection to yellow pages, paper mail, or print newspapers?

This is the new reality for retail. Mobile, when combined with data and the cloud, completely changes the game.

This is also why is a shopping center developer decided to launch a technology affiliate like BrightStreet Ventures.

The simple truth is that we are working backwards from the consumer, what they expect and what is possible in this new era. We are also looking at the challenges that retailers face, and our role as owners and operators of shopping centers in fostering their success. That’s the defensive side of the equation.

In terms of offense, we believe the convergence of bricks and clicks represents one of the great opportunities of the next decade.

That is why every venture that emerges from our model needs to make sense as business offering enduring value.

We also believe that by sharing what we learn with our peers, a rising tide will lift all boats, which is very much in our interest.

That’s the backstory on why we created BrightStreet Ventures. The larger market has validated where we’re headed with mobile marketing innovation and real estate business intelligence (our company portal, powered by our Datex Property Solutions affiliate, garnered an ICSC MAXI nomination).

We had the opportunity to unveil this vision, and formally launch our new venture at ICSC RECON in Las Vegas, and the response was incredibly encouraging.

Mark Sigal is the Managing Director of BrightStreet Ventures in Woodland Hills, California.

Related

1. Understanding Retail's Reboot: Four 'Big Picture' Trends
2. Retail Needs a Reboot to Survive
3. How Uber is like Southwest Air - The Art of Reinventing an Industry

Understanding Retail's Reboot: Four 'Big Picture' Trends

Jeff Jordan of Andreessen Horowitz has written in a compelling piece that we are in the midst of a profound structural shift from physical to digital retail.

Having written about the need for the retail industry to undergo a reboot myself, he's preaching to the choir.

What the above graphic (from the article) illustrates are the segments of the market getting most disrupted by online.

Between 2007-2011, in these segments online gained $35B in sales, while bricks and mortar lost $30B in sales.

In the big picture, there are four trends that are transforming everthing in retail:

1. Ecommerce: Push button purchasing, payment and physical delivery is alive and real;
2. Mobile Cloud: Post PC is mobile, social, client, cloud and context. It's growing to 10 billion devices. The field of play has changed dramatically.
3. Generational Shift: The generation that read the paper, used the yellow pages and eagerly checked the mail is fading. That irrevocably changes how merchants connect with consumers. How could it not?
4. Big Data: The data 'firehose'' from back office to market facing is wide and deep. The ability to visualize the flow of a business and tune its mechanics will yield many new and interesting personalization, marketing and marketplace experiences.

Not to long ago, Marc Andreessen astutely observed that "Software Is Eating The World."

What's playing out in retail is emblematic of this truth.

Related

1. Retail needs a reboot to survive (GigaOM)
2. The Mobile Native Cloud (SlideShare)

The End of the Beginning

"Is That All There Is?" - Peggy Lee

Perspective changes everything.

Looked at up close, Apple is boring, Facebook is in decline, and Silicon Valley is more about serving up mouthwatering perks and "F-U" liquidity events than real innovation.

Yet, with a bit of perspective, we see how in a 30 year period, Apple has given rise to the PC, reinvented the phone, broke the hegemony of old media and telecom, and launched the Post PC era.

In fact, Apple is still growing so rapidly that in the last year alone, they generated three Fortune 500 companies worth of new income.

Now, the rumors are that they're launching a new payment system to take advantage of the 500 million iPhones and iPads in use today (many/most with a valid credit card on file).

iBeacon anyone?

Apple CEO Tim Cook has hinted at a new category. It could be anything from a personal monitoring 'companion' device to a set-top box for the living room. 

But, that's boring (conventional wisdom narrative), and Apple must be repeatedly punished for it.

Meanwhile, Facebook is the proverbial case of, "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

I still remember when ten million users represented an insanely large base for any service.

In fact, AOL, the gorilla of the early online era, never passed 30 million subscribers.

By contrast, Facebook has 1.2 BILLION monthly active users. That's 60 Floridas!

Despite all of the talk that Facebook's dominion dies with the desktop, 77% of its users are accessing the service from mobile devices, generating over half of their advertising revenue.

 

Is Innovation Dead?

Now, of course, growth and money do not equate to insanely great.

So, is innovation dead? Are we doomed to a decade of Snapchat clones and Instagram wanna-bes?

Up close, it may seem like it, but with the benefit of some perspective, you realize how we are really at the end of the BEGINNING of the next wave.

Want some perspective? Consider this thought-provoking interview with Kevin Kelly, who helped launch Wired, and is one of the sharpest thinkers of our time.

Here's his take:

"If we were sent back with a time machine, even 20 years, and reported to people what we have right now and describe what we were going to get in this device in our pocket—we'd have this free encyclopedia, and we'd have street maps to most of the cities of the world, and we'd have box scores in real time and stock quotes and weather reports, PDFs for every manual in the world—we'd make this very, very, very long list of things that we would say we would have and we get on this device in our pocket, and then we would tell them that most of this content was free. You would simply be declared insane. They would say there is no economic model to make this. What is the economics of this? It doesn't make any sense, and it seems far-fetched and nearly impossible."

Of course, he's right.

What we take for granted as obvious and inevitable, was heretical just twenty years ago.

Doubt this assertion? Do a google search on "silicon snake oil" or "clifford stoll" and see what I mean.

Today, Stoll's opinions sound as ridiculous as witch burners in the time of Salem's Lot.

But then, it was conventional wisdom.

This gets to the nut of Kelly's perspective, which he espouses in great detail, and brilliantly, in his book, 'What Technology Wants.'

What Technology Wants envisions the rise of machines, networks, robots, sensors, systems, data and intelligence EVERYWHERE to the point that they become part of the fabric of life itself (Kelly calls this the Technium).

In other words, you aint seen nothing yet.

As Kelly puts it, "The next twenty years are going to make this last twenty years just pale. We're just at the beginning of the beginning of all these kind of changes. There's a sense that all the big things have happened, but relatively speaking, nothing big has happened yet."

The Uber experience is a revelation today. Dropbox delivers constancy. Amazon amazes. Google Maps is simply magical.

But twenty years from now, every industry and almost every aspect of life will have been uberized, and we will have embedded this logic into our very fabric.

As this organism, the technium, begins to breathe, it will etch new paths, launch new vehicles and drive a new economy.

The future awaits, my friends, but we'll be ready. 

Related

1. Understanding New Mediums: Why Post PC is Not Merely the Web with a Native Wrapper
2. Progress Waits for No One, and Other Harsh Truths
3. 9 logical applications for iBeacons
4. Retail Needs a Reboot to Survive
5. How Uber is like Southwest Air - The Art of Reinventing an Industry

Understanding New Mediums: Why Post PC is Not Merely the Web with a Native Wrapper

This is a fable for a future truth.

There is an analog from the past that frames how I think about the rise of new mediums. It's the motion picture.

Once upon a time, our notion of the motion picture was that it was silent, with accompanying music to set the tone of the story, and sub-titles to stage specific scenes.

It was a simple medium that was inexpensive to distribute to theaters far and wide. It traveled well internationally, too (just "localize" a few text boxes).

Kind of like in the early days of the web.

Along comes the 'talkie,' and conventional wisdom saw the idea of driving movie narratives through talking actors as a fad at best, and an expensive gimmick at worst.

It required new types of actors, new approaches to filming and costly retrofitting of theaters.

Amazingly, in just four years the talkie subsumed the silent picture.

What's interesting is that this occurrence not only changed how movies were made, and the economics of the movie business, but it fundamentally changed our notion of a what a movie could BE.

It became a different medium.

The Rise of a New Medium

This is what the next wave will look like.

It will change our notion of what computing, connecting and communicating experiences can be.

The magical opporunities will come from figuring out the types of interactions that come to life when:

• Client and Cloud Converge;
• The field of play is 10 Billion Devices worldwide
• Our concept of an interaction can mean "Humans," "Machine-Assisted," or "Autonomous and Invisible."

The tendency for consumers, technologists, analysts and investors is to confuse attributes, like browsers and URLs, with outcomes.

But attributes are merely artifacts. 

Outcomes are aspirational; jobs to be defined; the embodiment of a medium.

The hot category of messaging apps, which Ben Evans talks about in his excellent post, 'Interaction, canvases and ecosystems,' is a good example of the emerging medium at work. (SEE: WhatsApp | Kik | SnapChat)

Why? Because such experiences have a notion of state, distribution, message and payload.

Here, I'd assert that there are a lot of interaction models and interesting workflows that this type of runtime structure can support.

It lends itself to new experiential forms that are the "talkies" to today's "silent" web.

What's Past is Prologue

Ironically, unlike the many mediums to get disrupted by digital - music, books, newspapers, magazines, broadcast television - the talkie, an early twentieth century creation, has stood the test of time.

It's proven elastic and durable across genre, geography, demographic and viewing screen.

This is something to think about as the Post PC era takes hold.

Related

1. (SLIDESHARE) The Mobile Native Cloud: An extensible computing model for the Post - PC Era
2. Progress Waits for No One, and Other Harsh Truths
3. The Mobile Broadband Era: It's About Messages, Mobility and The Cloud (O'Reilly)

No good deed goes unpunished at the iPhone company

The moral of the story when it comes to the Apple investor is that no good deed goes unpunished. Expect Apple stock to get hammered on Tuesday for what is a very real shortfall in the projections of analysts. 

Of course, the moral of the story here is that Apple specifically told its investors a year ago that it was no longer going to "manage" earnings expectations with pre-ordained beats.

So what happened in the most recent quarter? Apple hit its own sales projections, which if you take the company's specific proclamations at face value, was the real, achievable goal.

Given Apple's unparalleled track record, you'd think that they've earned some benefit of the doubt. Namely, that they actually know what they are doing.

But, purely as a stock, Apple is seen as the iPhone company.

And the picture there is decidedly more complex. At a minimum, iPhone sales growth is flattening (for now). China Mobile could be anything from a moonshot to mediocre.

Footnote: China Mobile is the largest network in the world, with over 750 million customers.

From the tenor of the call, it seems clear that the company misread consumer sentiment (and demand) for the iPhone 5c. What does that say about the Apple innovation engine post Steve?

Domestic sales were very strong, but flat, and there were some rumblings of carriers stretching out the time periods on consumer refresh cycles.

A lot of the attention shifts to emerging markets and Asia driving growth. Very possible, but not guaranteed.

At the same time, you have to be pretty dense to diminish what 51M iPhones in a quarter means in terms of the depth of the iOS platform.

This completely discounts the potential for Apple to culitvate an ewallet (read this story on Starbucks $1.4 billion in quarterly gift cards).

I'm starting to feel pretty strongly that mobile payments will be a front seat item for Apple very soon.

Oh, and there's iPad, which did pretty well too. If there's a device that embodies post pc computing, it's the iPad.

I would love to see the company put more energy towards developing integrator channels.

That way it can penetrate more enterprise-scale verticals, like medical, pharma, field sales, retail and training, where it already has footholds. 

The other big variable is that the Apple retail stores are still humming along.

They host 144 million visitors at their stores each quarter, or about 21,000 visitors per store, per week. 

With ~420 stores open, average revenue per store was $16.7 million, compared to $16.3 million in the year ago quarter. 

By design, Apple's end-to-end-ness remains its biggest advantage.

The company with $158.8 billion in cash (or equivalents), after adding $12 billion in the quarter should get hammered on Tuesday.

It's small thanks for being transparent, disciplined, prolific and purpose-driven.

Speaking of which, let me end this post with this answer from Apple CEO Tim Cook on whether the company is actively pursuing the Mobile Payments space:

"Let me sort of avoid the last part of your question, but in general, we’re seeing that people love being able to buy content, whether it’s music or movies or books, from their iPhone, using Touch ID. It’s incredibly simple and easy and elegant, and it’s clear that there’s a lot of opportunity there.

The mobile payments area in general is one that we’ve been intrigued with, and that was one of the thoughts behind Touch ID. But we’re not limiting ourselves just to that. So I don’t have anything specific to announce today, but you can tell by looking at the demographics of our customers and the amount of commerce that goes through iOS devices versus the competition that it’s a big opportunity on the platform."

Seems near term.

UPDATE: With rumors heating up about Apple’s Mobile Payments plans, PayPal wants in as an Apple partner (highly unlikely to happy). 

Related

1. 9 logical applications for iBeacons
2. NIKEiD and the Uber-ization of Global Logistics
3. Cry Babies: The Strange, Confusing Path of the Apple Investor

9 logical applications for iBeacons

As much as anything, the Internet of Things is about the rise of smart, connected sensors. Apple's iBeacon harnesses smart phones and super-cheap Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) sensory 'beacons' to bring location-aware services into a bunch of new categories.

They include: 

1. Get a coupon for 10 percent off a TV because you stood in the TV department.
2. Your home will automatically react to you.
3. Your phone will give you a tour of museums.
4. Organize neighborhood pick-up games for kids.
5. Tickets that automatically load as you enter sporting events.
6. Win something for visiting a car dealership.
7. Toys that are aware of each other.
8. Get a free cup of coffee or snack while pumping your gas.
9. Be warned that your bike or car is no longer in the garage.

'How iBeacons could change the world forever' is an excellent article on this topic. Well worth a read. 

10 questions to help you write better headlines

Let's face it, the headline is...the envelope, the tweet, the forward-along and the subject line.

It's the moment of truth when your audience either gets engaged, or moves on.

That's why this quicklist of 10 questions to ask while writing a headline is worth a read:

1. Is the headline accurate?
2. Does it work out of context?
3. How compelling a promise does it make?
4. How easy is it to parse?
5. Could it benefit from a number?
6. Are all the words necessary?
7. Does it obey the Proper Noun Rule?
8. Would it work better as an explanatory headline?
9. Does it focus on events or implications?
10. Could it benefit from one of these 10 words? Top, Why, How, Will, New, Secret, Future, Your, Best, Worst.

via poynter.org

Perpetually Synced Services: Ruminations on Ubiquity, Persistence and Composition

We are getting to the point where you and I can take for granted that our content, context and conversations are perpetually and autonomously synced across all of our devices.

Today, this means Photos, Contacts and Calendar. In many cases, it extends to Songs, Mail, File Sharing, Text Messages, Apps, eBooks, Maps and To-Do Lists. 

The systems that drive such syncronizations are part Client and Cloud.

At some point, we will build meta-platforms and marketplaces on top of this layer that give rise to entirely new categories of applications.

Owing to the rich strata that such systems will be able to mine and refine, the applications that emerge during this wave will for the first time, be built around Me, My Interests, My Content, My Recurring Workflows and My Extended Networks.

Phase one (happening now) is the emergence of these 'Perpetually Synced Services' as a utility that is every bit as reliable, boring and invisble as electricity.

Phase two is the rise of new vehicles that harness this utility.

My bet is that such systems will be built upon the backs of smarter messaging systems, a bit like the example of WeChat, where consumers can hail a taxi and pay for it while chatting with friends.

Every time you ride an Uber, and appreciate the seamless, almost magical, nature of that experience, or delight in the elegant simplicty of Dropbox, know that you are staring squarely into the future.

It's a fractal of a greater truth yet to be revealed.

Related:

1. The Mobile Native Cloud - An Extensible Model for the Post PC Era
2. How Uber is like Southwest Air - The Art of Reinventing an Industry

How to Build a Mass Movement Quickly

I love this blurb from Felix Salmon of Reuters:

To build a mass movement quickly, it helps to have an over-simplified, emotive narrative with a single demand. It also helps to tell people that by doing easy tasks -- sharing a link on Facebook, buying a bracelet -- they can make a material difference (e.g., save lives). Central to the formula is that the agency of "local actors" gets downplayed to hype up the importance of action by outsiders. 

via blogs.reuters.com

VALUATION METRICS: 10 factors to consider when assessing if a company is 10X Revenue Club material

Bill Gurley of Benchmark is one of the smartest VCs I know. His investments include Uber, DogVacay, GrubHub, Zillow and OpenTable.This is a great filter for assessing investing in private companies as well.

We created a list of 10 factors that public investors consider when trying to qualify if a company is deserved of such a prestigious and lofty valuation. These factors are:

1. Sustainable Competitive Advantage – how big is the competitive Moat?
2. Presence of Network Effects – does the model tip to a single vendor?
3. Visibility/Predictability – is the revenue consistent
4. Customer Lock-in / High Switching Costs – is it expensive to leave?
5. Gross margin levels – How much leverage exists is the business?
6. Marginal Profitability Calculation – is the leverage still expanding?
7. Customer Concentration – are there key dependencies?
8. Major Partner Dependencies – are there key dependencies here as well?
9. Organic Demand vs. Marketing Spend – is customer acquisition expensive?
10. Growth – how big will the future be?

via abovethecrowd.com

Triangulations: Quality of Life - Is There More to Life than "Winning"?

"Software devs be like, 'We can change the world! ...unless it involves race, gender or economic oppression, then that's just how it is.' - Benito Applenoms (‏@yeloson)

Life presents a Parodox. It really does.

Are you satisfied with exhibiting a well-executed Pose?

Do you demand Performance from yourself?

Do you pursue a directed Path?

How about holding your Peers to some measure of Accountability?

Are you willing to look the other way so that Wall Street can hide behind the credo that Capitalism has no duty to the Greater Good? Or, Society for that matter?

It's why Wall Street can unashamedly steal from its own government with impunity. Pure capitalism, after all, is about the pursuit of Profits and Growth over Everything Else.

It's a revolving door. A lotto ticket to be cashed in. You would, too. Or, would you?

Is the Social Contract Dead?

Is so, what then? What's the end-game for the "Losers" in the game of life?

Silly talk? Get with it. A non-trival percentage of the population doesn't see itself as being gated on any sort of social responsibility boundaries. The market cures all, after all. The great antiseptic.

It doesn't see funding Safety Nets and Education as an "Us" topic. But rather, a Them topic, or worse, tantamount to waste and dead-beatism.

It raises a fundamental question of what represents Quality of Life in our society.

Is it collecting Stuff?

Is it Pursuing Big Ideas?

Is it Family and Friends?

Does establishing a Collective sense of "We"-ness matter anymore?

SImple questions, but the practice of actually building truths that do it in an always-on, always connected, Mobile First world require a fresh take on systems design, workflow, marketplace structuring and economic models.

TED as Emblematic of the Empty Sound Bite

Which brings me to TED. And sadly, no, I am not talking about that Ted.

Writing in theguardian.com, Benjamin Bratton argues compellingly that science, philosophy and technology run on the model of American Idol – as embodied by TED talks – is a recipe for civilisational disaster.

Read the full article, which is rich and thought-provoking. This excerpt captures what Bratton is advocating:

"Instead of dumbing-down the future, we need to raise the level of general understanding to the level of complexity of the systems in which we are embedded and which are embedded in us. This is not about "personal stories of inspiration", it's about the difficult and uncertain work of demystification and reconceptualisation: the hard stuff that really changes how we think. "

Amen to that. This requires multi-generational thinking. Can WE do that?

I pledge to do my part in the Year Ahead.

How about YOU?

Two Reasons Why 2013 Wasn't A Lost Year for Tech

Quartz, The Atlantic's often-excellent sister publication, recently published a provocative piece arguing that 2013 was a lost year for tech. It generated tremendous buzz and is worth a read. So, too, is the counter-perspective piece by my friend, Om Malik of GigaOM.

So what to make of all of this?

I think that there are two things going on here. One is the natural backlash associated with the socio-economic disconnect between Silicon Valley, Alley and Beach, and the rest of America.

The gap between those inside the bubble and those outside of it has never been greater. That truth HAS to become a part of our societal narrative, right? 

Two is emblematic of the stage of the technology curve that we’re in. In 'Waves of Power' by David Moscella, he presents an axiom that technology segments move from being “Vertically Integrated” to “Horizontally Integrated” to “Embedded.”

This is because the first wave requires integration of all of the system layers to deliver a compelling solution (think: iPhone). It requires true magic.

As the technology matures, various solution providers can provide the piece parts needed in a relatively interchangeable fashion (think: Android and the Microsoft PC).

Once ubiquity is achieved, the technology fades into the background, often to the point of invisibility, and the solution is just expected to work (Google Search, Amazon).

In other words, "boring" is emblematic of success.

Then again, anyone who has taken an Uber, or pondered how AirBNB books more room nights than the entire Hilton Hotel chain, should think twice about dismissing what tech is doing.

If there is any sense of disappointment, it’s the lack of companies other than Amazon, Google, and Apple that are committed to building enduring, great, out of the box innovations.

We need more entrepreneurs that aspire for the "insanely great" and less that chase the quick hit.

Related

1. Google Glass will soon be invisible – and the new normal (GigaOM)
2. Pattern Recognition: Mobile Web v. Mobile Native; TV's Blind Spot; 'Invisible' Designs
3. Innovation, Inevitability and Why R&D is So Hard

How to Become the King of Your Domain

When you look at your life, the path that you've forged, and the direction that you are heading towards, do you feel like the King (or Queen) of your domain?

Or, do you feel like a serf; an empty vessel who is living someone else's dream (or nightmare), floating down a river whose current you don't control, carrying you to a place that has no clear beginning, middle or end?

Let me tell you a story that changed my life. Maybe it will help you get some clarity about your own life.

When I was in my last year of college, I had a burning desire to get into an industry that fit a narrative that I had about myself. So I reached out to everyone in my network to secure informational interviews with hiring managers at some of the companies that I was targeting.

In one of the interviews, I met with a gentleman who was a grizzled old veteran of the industry that I was targeting (advertising), and he asked me, "So why advertising? Why do you think that it's the right industry for you?"

I proceeded to chime off a littany of reasons, including how my mind sees a product, and instinctively constructs an ad; how it's in my nature to see what IS, to deconstruct it, and then reconconstuct it as something different; and how I love to sell ideas.

This nice man let me yammer on for a few minutes before stopping me, and putting forth a challenge.

"You've given me a bunch of reason why you are right for advertising, but I still don't have a clear picture on why advertising -- or any business -- is right for YOU."

I was confused, so he shared a simple idea, and challenged me to complete a simple exercise that's been one of my core recipes for happiness and success ever since.

Four Pieces of Paper

He had me set aside four pieces of paper, and on the first, he told me to write down the six things that I am really good at, and truly excel at doing. 

Then, he had me write down on the second piece of paper the six things that I really enjoy, that fill me with a sense of natural joy simply in the doing.

With the third piece of paper, he asked me to imagine a time far into the future, surrounded by friends and family at my funeral. What were the six things imagining that moment in the future that I would most want to be remembered for having accomplished, the things that I'd done that mattered most?

Finally, he asked me to think of the top two items from each of the three sheets of paper, and write them down on the fourth piece of paper. 

His sermon to me was that this list of six things was the roadmap for my life, for it built upon the things that I was most skilled at, got the greatest joy in doing and led me on a journey to accomplish the things that mattered most to me in life.

I have never forgotten this experience, and every time that I have faced a significant crossroads in life - and there have been a few such times - I have updated this exercise, and it's served me well.

My Sermon to You

Use the above excerise, as it's a simple, highly workable way of (re) calibrating where you are at relative to where you need to be.

To that, I'd add six simple wrinkles: 

1. What are you good at? Commit to mastering it. Become the best. 
2. What do you enjoy? Swim in that body of water. Don't be the right boat in the wrong ocean. 
3. What do you want to be remembered for? Make it your mantra, core to your narrative. Then make it your path. 
4. From here on out, think like the King of Your Own Domain. Once you know your truth, carrying it with pride and certitude is an essential step to becoming.
5. Don't make things any harder than necessary. Life is plenty hard. There are no extra rewards for doing things the hard way. Where you have advantages, take them. Where gravity is favorable, leverage it.
6. Choose the direct and most simple path. If you are not clear on your aim, and the road you take is muddled and mixed up, you may not recognize opportunity when it presents, nor arrive at the finish line in time to claim your prize. Be direct and keep things simple, wherever possible.

Peace, and may a good life await you. :-

(Sidebar: By King of your domain, I am not talking about the "master of your domain" punchline of the classic Seinfeld episode, 'The Contest.')

Related Posts:

1. On Life as Art, Poetic Truths & Getting Rich 
2. Metamorphosis: Change your Life