Disruptive Technologies

Many incumbents fall prey or victim to not developing new technologies which could result in new firms knocking out the incumbent market leaders. The incumbents create blockades to embracing new technology because it tends to violate core capabilities, it shifts the current paradigm, and lacks incentives. Incumbent market leaders need to review customer preferences to indentify possible disruptive situations.

This whole disruptive technologies reminds me of our strategy course and our discussion of “Blue Oceans.” By adopting new technologies, incumbents move themselves from the “Red Ocean” into a Blue Ocean position. For further information, see the encapsulated version at http://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/

Uses of Innovation

Innovation comes from sheer mass of users/customers tapping into the collective knowledge; the outstanding issue is what to do with that knowledge and how to apply it. There are four aspects to tap into that innovation: active or passive; negative or positive. This 4x4 grid is most beneficial when active and positive are combined; this is typically only seen when it’s a business to business environment.

Hardware costs and software costs no longer the money makers; consulting, training, programming/customization, certification and business solutions are the new source. Open Source is allowing for free use of tools which created a new market.

Results as a fundamental shift of rethinking of the process:

Fast development
High quality of work product
Size and scale
Free resource

Word of the Day

wabi sabi

The beauty of imperfection

Collective Intelligence

The success of collective is the diversity of opinion – it is critically important to bring one’s own opinion even if it’s eccentric. The process of offering independent opinions, a decentralization of sources, and then the aggregation of the information makes for a successful collection of information. Eventually, over time it takes away the noise for the clear signal to come out.

An interesting side note is that experts are not as good as the collective because of the tendency to discard good information and ideas.

Clinton or Obama?

My predictive modeling is all about who's going to win the Democratic nomination. To track activities, I've added a constantly streaming update of news articles on either Clinton or Obama and added that news feed to my site. Please check the updates frequently for the latest information.

And, in case there was a question about who I support, I also added a link to my favourite candidate.

Word of the Day

wiki wiki


Hawaiian for fast.

Knowledge Management and Socrates

The way in which knowledge is developed and shared is something new online, but the format seems old. A cycle with active participants captures light knowledge rather than deep understanding; however it turns conversations and dialogue into knowledge development. The tools used for this are a growth from data mining, and now uses tools such as google-docs and knowledge centres like Wikipedia.

It seems like a very Socratic method of learning and gaining knowledge: asking questions, developing answers, and therefore cultivating knowledge. It is like a liberal arts education where people learn a little about a lot – perfect for cocktail party conversations.