SaaS, Business, Strategy, Web 2.0, Collaboration and a whole lot more
Over on Smoothspan is this interesting post mooting the concept of allowing facebook customers to pay to NOT receive inline adds.
I haven’t double checked Bob’s maths but what he states is that;
It’s a novel and innovative concept – nice thinking Bob.
We’re in the middle of baking muffins after which we’re all going for nice family walk up Mt Grey.
Tonight it’s a “sort of” celebratory dinner at the ‘norwester – celebratng what? Life in general, Life 2.0 in particular….
So the latest iPhone update looks “likely” to kill unlocked phones. Reports suggest that the update may also prove detrimental to legitimate locked phones.
The hyperbole has already started to fly, claiming Apple (last weeks wunderkind) is now in fact the evil empire.
Let’s be rationale here and look backwards bit.
I can imagine AT&T had to bend over backwards to get an iPhone exclusive. I know the modern economy is all about participation and the power of the community (hey – it’s a platform that I spend much of my time thinking about, talking about and planning for) but there are some commercial realities here.
I would be very surprised if AT&T didn’t have a locked solid agreement that compels Apple to do everything in its power to stop unauthorised usage of the iPhone for a certain period of time. Apple, to a certain extent, has it’s hands tied.
If he update does in fact brick unlocked phones there is nothing anyone can moan about – people knew (or should have) the risks of unlocking the 1st generation phones.
If the update causes problems with locked phones that is different and is a QA issue. Apple should have tested and retested the update to ensure its efficacy. If thy haven’t I’m sure they’ll put things right quick smart.
Lesson from all of this – in a total business 2.0 model bad things don’t happen because collaboration is king and the biggest form of IP. We’re not there yet so we still need to accept that commercial realities will sometimes get in the way of community building ideals.
Hat tip to Zoli on this one.
Jay Parkinson is a perfect example of Web 2.0. A doctor who has a web presence from where he engages with patients, arranges house calls and has some fancy schmancy techniques to ensure lowest cost specialists fees for things he can’t deal with.
He blogs and he’s building a network of other health practitioners to join in with what he does. This is precisely the sort of thing that will provide true value to 2.0 social networking.
The thing it lacks is a bigger platform but that will come…. believe me it will come.
Bet that got a fair few pulses racing.
Over on JKOnTheRun, JK wrote this excellent post where he details the core functional requirements (as he sees them) for a HHC;
He sees that this would best be met through a device with the following attributes;
He also sees that Apple is the natural place for this device to be conceived from.
I kind of disagree, putting on my “in the clouds” hat, and leading on from previous concept posts about the OS (or not) of the future, here’s how I see the perfect HHC looking
For all of these reasons I actually see the perfect HHC coming out of the Google labs – they understand the cloud”, they have no vested interests in operating systems, they understand the connectivity issues and frankly they, of all of the potential players, are the least “old legacy”.
Mark my words……
I posted yesterday about the proposed merger of two of New Zealand’s bigger unions. My point of view was that unions are generally legacy organisations that do little or nothing to progress employees longer term personal strategic interests.
Lucy replied with the following question…
“I have to say I agree with you 120% there. What would it take to get an employee value culture embedded nationally do you think? Who does it well”
Being a glutton for punishment I agreed to give my perspective on this debate.
My viewpoint was initiated many years ago after reading Ricardo Semlar’s book Semco. To give a synopsis of the book, Semlar inherited a large diversified business in South America. He proceeded to tear it apart, allowing employees autonomy and in many cases sponsoring their establishment of independent businesses that could supply both the mother company and it’s competitors. Basically Semlar developed self-determination at a micro level across the business.
My thinking was further developed by some experiments around employee autonomy and profit sharing at a medium sized New Zealand manufacturer. Similarly the sweat-equity structures of many high-tech businesses were contributing ideas.
Upon further reflection I’m not completely convinced by the above approaches. The Semlar approach fails to react to the fact that a significant proportion of blue collar workers want to be just that. Don’t ask for or want responsibility and prefer to be told what to do (a proportion I said – not all). How does the Semlar model take account of these workers?
Similarly profit share seems inequitable – unless people are prepared to ride both the highs and the lows of the business roller coaster, it seems profit sharing is a one sided solution. Sweat equity similarly hasome detracting features – some workers are not in a position to salary-sacrifice for equity – thus an inequity is introduced into the system between those who can forego salary and those who cannot.
Recently I did some consultancy work at an organisation in Napier. This business is 100% owned by one individual but what struck me about the business is how committed and “bought in” all the employees I talked to were.
So what did it take in the case of that business? Things I saw which must have helped;
So….. what does the that leave us with? Back to Wikinomics I guess. Trying to find a new paradigm for a networked, collaborative, dynamic and rewarding organisation.
Anyone keen to change the world with me?
A discussion yesterday afternoon got me thinking. The origination of the discussion was some comments around Google’s corporate motto “don’t be evil”.
In the “old economy”, business took a relatively long time to achieve scale. This time enabled them to learn some business ethical norms that resulted in them being “good corporate citizens” once fully grown.
The paradigm has changed and we have businesses achieving top-of-the-pyramid scale a mere handful of years into their operation. This fact results in something of a disconnect.
If it took many decades for an organisation of old to reach this scale and influence, they would, as a matter of course, have encountered many ethically challenging situations, and have developed robust processes for dealing with those ethical issues.
The supersonic growth companies of today do not have this learning curve and are therefore thrust into positions of huge power, potentially without the corporate maturity to deal with it.
I have no answer, and am sure someone will bring up Enron as an example that old economy businesses weren’t always lily white – however it’s an interesting area and one that is perhaps worthy of more thought and comment….
Unreasonable men posted this excellent article on the OpenSource/SaaS concept. (Thanks for the flattery by the way!)
The central premise of the post is that through utilising an OpenSource component to SaaS development or delivery, companies will be able to reduce costs, provide added value, achieve better buy in/lock in and general better their offering to the market place. They considered the SaaS/OpenSource concept as a borader base to aggregate diverse offerings/strengths/abilities to produce a customer offering. They visually represented the concept thus;
The post is excellent and a perfect extension of the OpenSource/SaaS dialogue.
As a post script the following was posted;
“I thought about this more over lunch. If what I say above is true, the downside would be that the current prevailing SaaS model is wrong. The model above is more akin to software virtualisation in its delivery than the one big customised software platform… or am i wrong?”
My take on the question is thus; any startup needs to create a product that works within its fundamental paradigm. This paradigm is broader than a conceptual framework but includes such trivialities as funding, revenue streams, time to revenue, palatability to the market etc etc. As such it is my contention that the current SaaS model isn’t necessarily wrong, rather it is in context with the current paradigm. While SaaS has been called a paradigm shift enabler, it still has to work to a certain extent within the constraints of the existing paradigm.
The challenge (as with all dot com businesses) is to find some method to monetization. Thus far the overwhelming majority of startups do this through locking up some part of their IP. The OpenSource community is the exception but I contend that some fundamental factors would need to change before the OpenSource methodology could be adopted given that the revenue streams from OpenSource are just a little too unusual/undefined/unclear.
What the current SaaS model does however risk is becoming irrelevant. If for example a new situation could eventuate, where a singificant sector could, en masse, become proponents of the community developed methodology, if they could build something without any short term revenue expectation, if they could fund without the constraints of tight capital, then the current SaaS model would be flawed.
As this is clearly not the case, the SaaS businesses of today are doing what they need to do. One piece of advice I would give them however would be to continue to be nimble and to continually assess the state of their space and to be ready to change the model as, and when, required.
Over on SaaS blogs, Sinclair posted an excellent discussion continuing the SaaS/OpenSource discussion.
As part of his post, Sinclair developed this model to describe the steps and routes from development to implementation;
You’ll see that we can trace multiple routes and mash up the way we develop, sell, deliver and use a software product.
None of the combinations are necessarily wrong however one thing that Sinclair, Bob and myself agree upon. As do, I suspect, the majority of people who can stand back and look at it from a dispassionate, user-centric viewpoint. That thing is embodied in the diagram below. The traditional software development and delivery model that is becoming rapidly irrelevant.
Bob and Sinclair posted comments discussing the fact that a community developed product is dependent on having a community of interested, committed and participatory individuals. Clearly a SaaS/OpenSource mashup is predicated on this community existing, or being able to be created.
My presentation to BarCamp was all about SaaS.
Marek videoed the day and he’s posted edited vid’s on his website. The camera wasn’t the best but if you’re interested in SaaS check out my presentation here.
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