Category Archives: Non-fiction

The Big Switch

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I finished reading Nicholas Carr‘s The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google back in June, but am just now getting to blogging my thoughts on this book. Something about shipping software… :-)

Carr carefully recounts how the electrical industry evolved, and focused on the personalities of early central players such as Thomas Edison and Samuel Insull, as if to personify the computing industry into those “DC like” and those “AC like.”

As I read this book, my thoughts centered mostly around the nature of centralized and distributed systems, and around the human desire to control and to be emancipated.

A frequently recurring conversation I have with ECM customers, concerns centralized versus distributed systems. Often this discussion is about delivering the right façades to satisfy the needs of a particular role (e.g. supporting centralized auditing and compliance functions for systems administrators, empowering line of business users via delegated (edge) administration, including user/group management, etc.).

While I get that switch refers to electricity (i.e. a light switch), I wonder if a better metaphor would involve a dial or a set of dials. I think that software delivery is becoming more adaptive and less binary (i.e. on premise and hosted, not or).

I’m reminded of the following visual by my colleague Michael Hackney that I sometimes refer to as “dialed in” software:

There are, of course, more variables (rows) than those listed above, including whether software runs on premise or is hosted (i.e. delivered as a service). I talk with customers who require unstructured content to be managed on premise and delivered via software as a service. So, I guess I take some issue with the binary nature of a switch metaphor.

As a software architect building enterprise software for such adaptation, I think about the subtle ways our perceptions, ideas, and language change whenever we begin using a new tool (e.g. writing software for a so-called cloud environment). Consider the difference between the emphases of the printed page versus the web page:

  • Printed page – emphasizes logic, sequence, history, exposition, objectivity, detachment and discipline
  • Web page – emphasizes immediacy, simultaneity, contingency, subjectivity, disposability and speed

Here are a few more thoughts about this kind of transformation and disruption that cloud computing can yield:

  • Carr’s chapter, “The Great Unbundling,” talks to some of my thoughts in this blog [1] [2].
  • Does unbundling and re-bundling of content–a form of personalization and reuse–amplify isolation or promote knowledge sharing? Am I inclined to go beyond a particular filter even if my initial need is satisfied, or do shield (block) myself from more meaningful collaboration and thought instead (i.e. divide knowledge and magnify it according to differences, content balkanization, content polarization, etc.)?
  • What are the social consequences of pervasive content (i.e. content always at my fingertips)? (I’m already a bit frustrated with my Blackberry-slinging friends who feel compelled to thumb through incoming email despite being in face-to-face meetings with others.)
  • Advances in IT that weaken central control, inevitably are followed by a reassertion of control. That is, control… disruption… reassertion… (repeat).
  • On the Web, anonymity is just a false façade (illusion). So, does that mean the Internet can become an “integrity catalyst”?
  • Consider the value of distributed content services (i.e. bringing services to content and also content to services) in light of Eric Schmidt’s statement, “When the network becomes as fast as the processor, the computer hollows out and spreads across the network.”
  • Trust takes on special meaning where reliability, scalability, responsiveness (both software and customer service)
  • Capacity planning becomes even more important (i.e. knowing how a function/feature contributes load, establishing the right model and metadata to track demand, load and diversity factors).
  • Parallel processing and virtualization become powerful ways to deal with narrow application sets (e.g. Google) and wide application sets (e.g. Amazon), respectively.
  • Let’s say that collective intelligence is something to generally foster in a consumer or corporate environment and that something fostering collective intelligence is “green.” Then how green is your content and your content services? For example, instead of just performing calculations or executing queries, does your content (services) contribute to collective “sense making” (i.e. providing answers without knowing questions), to increased knowledge sharing (explicitly and implicitly), etc.?

Lastly, as you might imagine, there have been a number of other reviews of this book. Here are a few I found interesting:

  • Charles Fitzgerald (now with EMC via its Pi Corp. acquisition, after being a GM of platform strategy at Microsoft) – who reminds us of the power of reinvention (e.g. Edison and General Electric)
  • Ross Mayfield – who raises issues of perception and subjective value given his work with customers at Socialtext
  • Tim Bray – who does a nice job of outlining Carr’s work and validating its engaging nature (by taking the time to blog despite personal bias)
  • Chuck Hollis – who emphasizes the thought-provoking nature of Carr’s work and who leveraged his interview with Carr to discuss “how,” not “if”

Update 12/1/2008: For more of my book reviews and to see what else is in my book library (i.e. just the business-related or software-related non-fiction therein), please visit my Books page.

Blue Ocean Strategy

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Before the end of 2007, I finished reading Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant, and then I promptly forgot to blog my thoughts (i.e. beyond this). :-)

Cirque du Soleil is the leading example of a business successfully applying blue ocean strategy to break away from the pack and to define new space market space (i.e. it’s not a circus…or is it? It’s not adult theater…or is it?). Having been to several Cirque shows both locally and in Las Vegas, I can’t think of a better model to reference.

The authors present various frameworks in support of their strategic model focused on blue oceans:

  • Four actions framework, featuring the eliminate-reduce-raise-create grid and focused on the analytics behind blue ocean realization
  • Six paths framework, focusing on the formulation and execution of blue ocean strategy by looking across alternative industries (e.g. trade-across dynamics), looking across strategic groups within industries (e.g. trade-up/trade-down dynamics), looking across the chain of buyers (i.e. purchasers + users + influencers), looking across complementary product and service offerings (e.g. identify and eliminate pain points), looking across functional or emotional appeal to buyers, and looking across time (i.e. trends of interest that are decisive to your business, irreversible, and have a clear trajectory)

Reading the emotional appeal that Cemex was able to produce with its 1998 launch of the Patrimonio Hoy program–the emotion that comes from a “gift of dreams”–caused me to think about potential ways to add emotion to my own profession.

I think that there is an opportunity, for example, to cast knowledge management today in a more emotional light. Baby boomers represent a significant amount of knowledge and part of that knowledge is professional and corporate. It seems to me that this “boomer generation” can be better incented to transfer its vast experience in business, for example, by projecting knowledge management as a social cause, casting subsequent generations in a cynical but also free spirited manner, etc.

Thinking about trends of interest, I wonder what new software and services will emerge to support an education process that continues to increase its basis upon teams and collaboration. For example:

  1. Support young students who already launch multiple IM windows to accomplish homework collectively with peers
  2. Shift toward open, public wikis and away from closed, private documents
  3. Shift toward shared authoring instead of solo authoring, increasing the need to promote proper attribution (i.e. credit where its due)–possibly beyond citations and bibliographies
  4. Promote original thought and study, establishing one’s reputation as a strong contributor, team player, leader, negotiator, etc.

According to authors Kim and Mauborgne, “To fundamentally shift the strategic canvas as an industry, you must begin by reorienting your strategic focus from competitors to alternatives, and from customers to noncustomers of the industry.”

I finished my previous post on this book by asking open questions to enterprise content management (ECM) noncustomers. In closing here, my question is simply, if you have addressed content management needs but have opted for a non-ECM solution, what alternative did you go with and why? What was/is missing from ECM that if provided would change that decision?

Update 12/1/2008: For more of my book reviews and to see what else is in my book library (i.e. just the business-related or software-related non-fiction therein), please visit my Books page.

The Myths of Innovation

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Scott Berkun’s The Myths of Innovation is a refreshingly unpretentious read–one that I accomplished straightaway in an afternoon (off).

Here are my takeaways–all quotes are Scott’s unless explicitly noted otherwise:

  • Innovation as an accumulation of smaller insights…connecting pieces…realizing picture (puzzle); therefore, take action to enable insights to occur more freely.
  • Work passionately and take breaks to let the mind wander and the allow the subconscious to work on our behalf.
  • Epiphany as an occasional bonus of working on tough problems
  • “It is an achievement to find a great idea, but it is a greater one to successfully use it to improve the world.”
  • “The secret tragedy of innovators is that their desire to improve the world is rarely matched by support from the people they hope to help.”
  • “The greater the potential of an idea, the harder it is to find anyone willing to try it.”
  • “Innovative idea are rarely rejected on their merits; they’re rejected because of how they make people feel.”
  • Is your desire to find new ideas to conquer greater than your desire to protect the success you already have?
  • “Wise innovators–driven by passion more than ego–initiate partnerships, collaborations, and humble studies of the past, raising their odds against the timeless challenges of innovation.”
  • Imagination > Knowledge > Information
  • I’ve put knowledge above information for some time know, but Albert Einstein’s belief that “imagination is more important than knowledge” (stated on page 83) captured my attention.
  • How can content-centric applications do a better job of capturing the user’s imagination, let alone increate the knowledge derivative?
  • “The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” -Linus Pauling
  • Does this sound like your team? “Ideas flow between people easily and in large volumes. Conversations are vibrant with questions and suggestions, prototypes and demos happen regularly, and people commit to finding and fighting for good ideas.” If not, why?
    • Actually commit reminds me of something U2 bassist Adam Clayton said while being interviewed on the How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb DVD. His comments are captured here, although I recall them to be slightly different on the DVD.
    • A group of people, a team or a band, has to commit before any real business can take place. Too often I see groups form for one reason or another without mutual commitment, and typically it’s just a matter of time until they disband, leaving some frustrated and others numb.
  • “Successful innovators compare their ambitions to their capital.”
  • “Sorting out the meaning and impact of innovations is more complex than the task of making the innovations themselves.”
    • “What problems does this innovation solve? Whose problems are they?”
    • “What problems does this innovation create? Whose problems are they?”

    Update 12/1/2008: For more of my book reviews and to see what else is in my book library (i.e. just the business-related or software-related non-fiction therein), please visit my Books page.

    Reach beyond existing demand

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    I just finished reading Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant, and it’s caused me to reevaluate the potential impact of ideas as related to content, its management and the value derived from both.

    While I will post more specific thoughts on Blue Ocean Strategy shortly, I thought it worth quoting the authors’ challenge of two conventional strategy practices: focusing on existing customers and driving for finer segmentation to accommodate buyer differences:

    To maximize the size of their blue oceans, companies need to take a reverse course. Instead of concentrating on customers, they need to look at noncustomers. And instead of focusing on customer differences, they need to build on powerful commonalities in what buyers value. That allows companies to reach beyond existing demand to unlock a new mass of customers that did not exist before.

    Do you struggle to maintain content, whether it be documents, pictures, videos, etc. at home or at work, yet you don’t see the point of a content management system? What makes you a noncustomer?

    Given ECM or content management in general, what do you value? Say it’s time. How could adopting ECM save you time or multiply your time to focus on other priorities? If you’ve already adopted ECM, how could your system demonstrate it values your time more? Where is your system costing you time rather than valuing it?

    Is ECM so unique as to only apply to an enterprise–whatever that means? If you have ECM deployed at work, what do you wish you could leverage at home? Is working with content outside the enterprise all that different from features and functionality you’ve come to rely on at work? What differences, if any, are perceived, not real? Why?

    Update 12/1/2008: For more of my book reviews and to see what else is in my book library (i.e. just the business-related or software-related non-fiction therein), please visit my Books page.

    Everything Is Miscellaneous

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    During my recent, reasonably long (and fully unplugged!) vacation, I was able to read David Weinberger’s latest work, Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. I enjoyed this book every bit as much as I enjoyed reading Small Pieces Loosely Joined.

    David begins by asking how our ideas, organizations, and knowledge itself might change if we could arrange such concepts without the “silent limitations of the physical.” He immediately suggests that in such a world, being free (as in freedom) is not the desired result; being miscellaneous is.

    In the process of making music miscellaneous, iTunes et al revealed that the natural unit of music is track, not album. Translating this to the world of ECM, what is the natural unit of content (or if you prefer, information)? Is it document, or is it something else? Does the answer depend on whether you sort it all out on the way in or sort it all out on the way out?

    One of the early solutions from Documentum–long before its acquisition by EMC–provided the ability to take a collection of PowerPoint presentations and present the end user with a filtered collection of individual slides to promote visibility of already authored content and therefore increase the likelihood of content reuse via assembly. (Fast forward to the present and an offering like SlideShare.) Since then, XML has taken center stage along with macro-formats like ODF and Open XML, increasing the potential for chunking, decomposition, remixing, etc.

    David defines three orders of order as follows:

    • First: organize things themselves
    • Second: separate information regarding first order objects (e.g. catalog)
    • Third: digitizing content and metadata then being extravagant about placement/categorization/fulfillment

    ECM operates largely in a third order world where traditional terms such as document, content and information are exploding–requiring long-held views to be rethought (e.g. are we talking about content or metadata? What is the difference between the two? What about indexing, full-text or otherwise?). Just when you near clarity the landscape shifts again (e.g. a binary/closed document format becomes a more open envelope of embedded documents–some content, some behavior, some presentation-related, etc.; a pivot occurs that swaps foreground concerns with background concerns–authors and publications, content and metadata, taxonomies and folksonomies, indices and relationships, etc.).

    Is it fair to continue talking about structured information and unstructured information in the way largely batted around today (e.g. structured information fits neatly into rows and columns, typically within a database)? Or is this characterization increasing less black and white (e.g. databases handling BLOB’s, document assembly at runtime via a managed (structured) process, etc.)?

    What other premises are accepted that can/should be re-thought (e.g. there is a set of appropriate criteria for finding–one right way to find)?

    Returning to iTunes, browsing Apple’s online music store requires a particular approach (i.e. genre, artist, album–in that order) to find tunes of interest to buy. However, once you return to the iTune music player software, there is more freedom to order and sort your collection–from Apple’s store and/or elsewhere. Better yet, you can create playlists (i.e. pure metadata collections) to share with family and friends–and this is so popular that practically every digital music player supports the creation, import and export of playlists.

    “Now that information is being commoditized, it has more value if it’s set free into the miscellaneous.” -David Weinberger

    Arguably there are a number of content-related playlists already (e.g. bookmarks/favorites and sites like Delicious, feeds based in Atom or RSS, subscription outlines in OPML). Does your content management system satisfy your playlist needs? How do you share content-related playlists at work or outside of work (e.g. like you would share an .m3u file with a friend)?

    I plan to post more about Everything Is Miscellaneous; there is certainly much more to this book.

    In the meantime, my feed reader is enriched thanks to David’s references to the following thought leaders: Danah Boyd, Peter Morville, and Thomas Vander Wal–plus David Weinberger, too. Of course, in keeping with this post, you’ll find my updated “playlist” with these inputs now, too. :-)

    Update 12/1/2008: For more of my book reviews and to see what else is in my book library (i.e. just the business-related or software-related non-fiction therein), please visit my Books page.