George Stalk of BCG - Five Future Strategies

I just came across a very interesting slim new book by George Stalk, Senior Partner at Boston Consulting Group. He and his colleagues at BCG originated the concept of "time-based competition" at the beginning of this decade.

In his new book, "Memo to the CEO: Five Future Strategies You Need Right Now", Stalk discusses five strategies that have not yet become widely practiced but are nonetheless worthy of management's attention now. He offers useful advice on how to identify and manage them while they still present opportunities to jump ahead of the competition. These five strategies are:
Addressing Supply Chain Deficiencies,
Sidestepping Economies of Scale,
Profiting from Dynamic Pricing,
Embracing Complexity,
Utilizing Infinite Bandwidth.

In future blog posts, I will describe each one of these strategies in some more detail along with the examples from Stalk's book.

Prediction Markets as a new tool to spot innovation

I wrote last Janaury, in this blog, about Prediction Markets. More organizations are beginning to embrace this tool for various business objectives. InformationWeek's cover story on Nov. 8, 2009, is an interesting read with several examples of companies using this - GE Research, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Harrah Entertainment, Quallcom etc.
The article also lists several major vendors of prediction market software, and some of the issues to explore with vendors. The vendors cited are: Accept, Consensus Point, HP, Inkling Markets, NewsFutures, Spigit and Xpee.

Predicting the election - with CNN's interactive map

This fabulous national election will be decided just two days from today. Barack Obama is the projected winner in most polls, as it looks likely he will get the required 270 electoral votes.

CNN has a neat interactive electoral map where you can pick the winner for each state and see how it all adds up.

In 48 hours we will all know the final totals

The Election and Prediction Markets

Last January, in this blog, I wrote about Prediction Markets. In this political season, people who like to prognosticate are getting into the game. An example is this item from the New York Times appropriately titled, Prediction Market game, for the election.

The Times also explains the math behind this.

Bill James and the Systematic study of baseball questions

Baseball fans know the name Bill James. His system of baseball analysis is called Sabermetrics. He has been the Senior Advisor to the Boston Red Sox for the past five years. This piece from the Boston Globe last week provides an interesting look at some of the interesting questions he is asking and providing answers.
James's new web-site is www.billjamesonline.net. He also has come out with a book of essays.
The web-site and the book are sure to provide countless hours of pleasure to the true Sabermetics fans.

CRM + Web 2.0

The latest issue of CRM magazine has an excellent article, by Barton Goldenberg on what Web 2.0 can do for CRM. The business model of the future is "business in an instant".

In a sidebar to the main article, John Chan offers examples of Web 2.o functionality that vendors or offering in their CRM applications with the aim of increasing online collaboration between users, content providers and organizations. He sites examples in the areas of: customer feedback, eCommerce, Open-Source software, Online collaboration, Real-time CRM etc.

Web 2.0 offers new technology tools such as blogs, wikis, videoa, RSS feeds, widgets, podcasts and so forth. According to Goldenberg, these technologies share these three basic tenets that will impact the future of CRM: user-generated content, social networking and disintermediation.

In a previous post, I referred to another Web 2.0 application area - namely BI.
Today's generation is "always-on, always-connected". There certainly will be more discussion of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 in the coming months.

Can the World Economy be controlled?

The news from the world's financial markets last week was not good - actually scary for many. In a lucid piece in today's Boston Globe, Professor Mihm of the University of Georgia writes that the world economy is being driven by a vast secretive web of investments that might be out of anyone's control.

In a sidebar to the article, Mihm has a brief field guide to the "the new financial jungle" - acronyms that we may be hearing more of in the next year - CDO (Collateralized debt obligation), CDS (Credit default swap) and SIV (Structured Investment Vehicles).
Buckle up for the ride!

Enterprise 3.0 and an excellent blog

Today, I spent some time browsing a few of the pieces in Sramana Mitra's informative and well-written blog. I especially like the pieces on Enterprise 3.0 and Web 3.0.
I am including a link to Sramana's blog in the blog roll on the right. Check it out.

Paying more when list prices are precise

When you are ready to sell your $485,000 house, don't list it for $485,000, but list it for $485,111. You may net an extra $1100. See this blog entry in Bostonglobe.com.

A higher price may actually net you more! There is some solid research behind this. Researchers at Cornell University found that people perceive specific numbers (such as $485,111) as being smaller than rounded numbers (such as $485,000). As a consequence, they were willing to pay a price closer to the specific number (because it seemed smaller) than to the rounded number.

You can download the research report here:

Prediction Markets - Tech Trend to watch?

Almost two years ago, I attended a Microsoft manager's presentation at a local PMI Chapter meeting. The topic was how Microsoft uses "Prediction Markets" to predict project milestone dates. Last week, I was reminded of this by this Freakonomics blog entry on several presentations and panel discussions having to do with Prediction Markets at last week's American Economic Association conference in New Orleans.

This post, from December 2006, in a ZDNET blog rightly points out that prediction markets are starting to gain traction in corporate settings. The post has several examples of the most popular prediction markets in addition to giving due credit to James Surowiecki and his book, "The Wisdom of Crowds".

Google's Bo Cowgill has been at the forefront of that company's work in prediction markets, to forecast product launch dates, new office openings, and " many other things of strategic importance to Google". By September 2005, more than a thousand Googlers have bid on 146 events in 43 different subject areas (no payment is required to play).

The venerable consultancy, McKinsey has weighed in also. In the latest McKinsey Quarterly, they have tabbed predictive markets one of the eight business technology trends to watch.
"Just as the Internet and productivity tools extend the reach of and provide leverage to desk-based workers, technology is helping managers exploit ever-greater amounts of data to make smarter decisions and develop the insights that create competitive advantages and new business models. From “ideagoras” (eBay-like marketplaces for ideas) to predictive markets to performance-management approaches, ubiquitous standards-based technologies promote aggregation, processing, and decision making based on the use of growing pools of rich data".

Definitely, something I will be keeping an eye on and following with interest.

SAAS making inroads into the enterprise

Happy New Year to all !

Andrew Conry-Murray writes in the StartupCity blog in Informationweek (December 18, 2007):
"SaaS has been making enterprise inroads for several years, and is now a serious contender with packaged software. And while Salesforce has long carried the flag, we may look back on 2007 as the year the banner passed to other hands. Just consider NetSuite's IPO, SAP 's entrance into the space, and the launch of new offerings from hot startups such as Workday"

SAP's entry is called "Business By Design", will be available sometime in 2008 and will cost $149/month per user. The Workday news release has this statistic: Gartner estimated in August 2007 that SAAS revenue will top $5.1 billion in 2007, a 21% increase over 2006.