This is an interview with my friend Roger Magoulas, Director of Research with O’Reilly Media.  Roger discusses new devices that will change the world of work… Part of our discussion informed my recent Forbes article on mobility,

Meet your new laptop. Apple has not only opened a programming interface that allows developers to create applications that reside on the iPhone, the company has recently opened up the hardware interface. This means that, soon, attaching a keyboard and screen (among other things) to your iPhone literally will be a snap.

The staggering increase in processing and storage capacity per-square-inch, allied with the development of flexible OLED screens and palm-sized projectors, will allow our mobile devices to do more than our PCs. The mobile device is headed to dethrone the laptop as the de facto standard gear for knowledge work.

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2009 was the year that everything received a “social” prefix; social media, social web, social business and so on. I wanted to ask John Hagel – co-chair of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge – for his take on the significance of the term and its importance for business.
John starts with a great quote, “in many respects we are going back to the future:” the Internet began as a social tool with early bulletin boards that connected small groups with shared interests (mainly academic researchers).  Then the Worldwide Web came along and the population went boom. Millions of people flooded the system to look at basically static content… With the rise of social technologies like blogs, social networks, Twitter etc. we are just now rediscovering the web’s inherently social capabilities.  John goes on to talk about the value of social networks to connect people and surface tacit knowledge and the concept of serendipity on the Social Web.

This is the second in a series of interviews conducted at the Web 2.0 Summit last month.  First interview with John Hagel on the Real Time Web is here.  These interviews originally appeared as part of The Future At Work series.

I was fortunate enough to get a chance to sit down with John Hagel at last week’s Web 2.0 Summit and discuss a few big-ticket emerging trends: (1) the rise of the “real time” web, (2) the move from the information web (the web of documents) to the social web (the web of people) and (3) the continued promise of mobile devices.

John is the co-chair of Deloitte’s Center for Edge Innovation, has written,  numerous, influential books and is the co-author of the must-read blog, The Big Shift so I wanted him to analyze these trends from the lens of their potential impact on large organizations.

This first video discusses the rise of the real-time web which I am loosely defining as the convergence of three phenomena:

• Near zero latency communication protocols best embodied by something like Twitter but well described by Anil Dash as “The Pushbutton Web”
• Pervasive connectivity – our PCs are always on – able to send and receive up-to-the-minute with no barriers to “getting” online.
• Mobile access – Ubiquitous access to the web from mobile devices to view or create content wherever you are.

The effects of moving to the real time web are broad and deep.  Like the Internet itself there isn’t a single, totalizing meta-narrative to make sense of it.  John takes a slice of the real-time analysis and lays down an  argument that goes something like this:

A. The Internet as a global communications and computation platform has accelerated the rate of change for the enterprise –  faster product cycle times being one example

B. This accelerated rate of change depreciates the value of explicit knowledge (what I know – which can be summarized in documents, policies, procedures, workflow etc.) and privileges tacit knowledge (know how – the  “knowledge that is difficult to be transferred to another person by means of writing down or verbalizing”)

C. In this environment, the source of value for the enterprise is moving from what John calls, “stocks of knowledge” (what we know at any given point in time) toward flows of knowledge (what we know at this current moment in time).  Real-time “flows” of knowledge help an enterprise move at the pace of change but more importantly – they connect you to people – think about social CRM and being able to immediately recognize when you have customer issues (as opposed to surveys with huge lag times) and respond in the moment.   Real time flows provide real time feedback to assess effectiveness and recalibrate response.

John also talks about the “dark secret of the enterprise” – but you have to watch the video to get that insight.

I often say that on the social web there are no experts – only experiments.  The fastest learner wins.

We are living through a sea change in business – Think about media with music, newspapers and publishing – or manufacturing with Flip (nearly two guys in a garage – design, manufacture in China, market online – then hit the big box stores and finally sell to Cisco for 1/2 billion) Astro Gaming (similar story without the buyout yet), and the new crowdsourced Crunchpad- think about the ubiquity of mobile devices and their rapid evolution or the rise of Twitter and the first chink in Google’s armor etc.

In these conditions the only lasting advantage a company has lies in its ability to adapt rapidly.

Which brings me to Eric Ries.  I have had the privilege to do some work recently with Eric, author of the Lessons Learned blog — Eric’s basic premise is that a startup needs to maximize its resources and have a relentless focus on creating tight, iterative decision loops.  A lean startup is defined by

1. Leveraging already-existing software and services whenever possible (off the shelf, open source etc.)
2. Using Agile development to quickly prototype, test and deploy functional code
3. Aggressively testing reality every chance they get with REAL customers (aka customer development)

Startups obviously need to run lean – they have modest resources and no real idea if the products they are putting out will meet actual customer demand.

But these conditions (uncertainty and rapid change) and these practices (customer development, agile and rapid prototyping) are not only advantages for startups – As Eric points out, they can be defensive tools for an Enterprise.    This is an interview I ran with Eric on behalf of O’Reilly Media.  It originally appeared a few days ago in a post by Tim O’Reilly welcoming Eric to the Radar community.

Eric will be running Lean Startup Master Classes over the coming months — whether you are a startup or not – this is a game changing approach to product development.

The last time I saw Charlene Li was in the speaker’s lounge of the Web 2.0 conference.  It was March 2008 and her  defining book on social technologies, Groundswell, (co-authored with Josh Bernoff) was just being released.   There have been tectonic shifts in our economy (and Charlene has moved from Forrester to found the Altimeter group) since then so I wanted to get her sense of the state of social media today.

A couple of points from our conversation stand out to me.

• Social technologies (blogs, wikis, social networks and Twitter) are being utilized by more companies.   We are seeing these tools begin to go mainstream in the enterprise.
• When it comes to social media it is not about getting it right all the time.  It about the leadership and how they deal with failure.
• Salespeople natively understand how to work from relationships – Marketing departments don’t.  ( see Listening beats Talking on this point).  The real question now is how do we move those skills towards the center of the organization.
• In trying to allay the fears that come with employing social technologies Charlene performs a classic risk mitigation technique:  What are five or ten worst-case scenarios?  Are they realistic?  How might they be mitigated?  You can usually mitigate risks once you identify them.

Thanks to the good people at FastFoward for producing these videos during the FastForward 09 conference.

I spent much of last week on assignment in Las Vegas at the FastForward ’09 conference.  FastForward is devoted to Search (more on that in the next post – along with a mindbending, Minority Report style video on the future of search).   One of the highlights of the conference was this interview with Clay Shirky.  He is one of the most incisive and articulate thinkers regarding the impacts that technology is having on society and business.

Here are some of the items that we cover (The annotations below  were provided by Faheyr on his blog, Talkin’ Bout a Revolution.  I have made slight modifications to them).

• Clay’s essential thesis is that “Group Action Just Got Much Easier”.  Humans are inherently social, but historically there has been a significant hassle factor/transaction cost in grouping together. The Internet/Mobile technologies provides lots of new ways to lower this burden and efficiently coordinate group action.  The speed of communication and dramatically falling cost are creating massive disruptions for businesses.
• The traditional model for most businesses (and governments) is to “service the demand” e.g. Government creating services in response to citizen request.  The alternative that new collaboration makes possible is to make it easier for people to service themselves (i.e. by making information open and easy to consume). Examples include Apps for Democracy, Show us a better way, Fedspending.org.
• Businesses often ask the wrong questions when responding to disruption.  Typically the question is “how do we preserve our profession and the way it’s currently constituted?”   Thinking we can preserve the existing status quo (e.g. in Publishing) is unrealistic. The transition will be achieved by those with the lowest cost of experimentation with the highest value e.g. theguardian.   Additionally the solutions that each business finds will result in a wide variety of different businesses emerging from the same pond (publishers that survive will evolve into radically different looking businesses in 10 years)
• The winners and losers will be separated by who is learning and adapting the fastest through continuous experimentation.
• Information overload has been the normal case for literate citizens since the 1500s i.e. since there were more books than a person could read in a lifetime. Information has been expanding continuously for 500 years. Information overload is caused by a lack of effective filters. When someone says they’re experiencing Information overload (a normal life experience), what they are saying is, “there is a great business opportunity for someone to build a better filter through which I can find meaningful content.”

A big thanks to the fantastic FastForward Blog team for hosting me last week.

My first home/life insurance agent was an Allstate rep named Paul.

Paul had a heavy body contoured from years of deskwork.  He had a deep, rich voice and,true to his profession, Paul had a tendency to see the risk inherent in everything.   I once told him approvingly about the wide, stone stairs to our house that I had retiled and Paul said, “that’s all well and good until you fall on those hard tiles and break your knee into 300 pieces…”  Paul was an oddity in this world.  He saw risk first…

Generally speaking human beings consider possibility first and risk second… As a consequence we design for possibility and then retrofit for risk (if we are lucky).   Air travel is a good example; we built for the possibility of convenient, no-hassle travel.  This was designed into the architecture of our airports.  September 11 changed our relationship to travel by exposing some serious risk and we began the hard work of retrofitting.

Drew Bartkiewicz of The Hartford has been considering data security and privacy in the age of social networks; an age marked by the explosion of personally identifiable information (PII) uploaded by users on blogs, video sites, social networks etc.    Having customers help you build unique data sets is a core proposition behind Web 2.0 (see here) Companies that want to engage the social web should absolutely design for possibility – but it is important to acknowledge risk and be clear about the types of data you are collecting and how you plan to use it.  What’s more, companies should understand that they might have secondary liabilities (meaning, are you responsible for what someone else will do with the data that you have made available).  To wit; eBay’s multiple law suits.

Drew sums up much of his thinking when he says, “Credit is to the financial markets what privacy and trust are to Web 2.0″ (you can’t have one without the other).  Fittingly, we spoke in New York City the morning after Lehman Brothers went under.

Last week I took a walk with Tim O’Reilly (my boss) and cameraman Kirk Walter (who has perfected the art of walking backwards with a 15 pound camera on his shoulder!).  We spoke about a wide range of topics that will be released over the coming weeks.   This is the first in that series,  “Work on Stuff that Matters,”  a subject that Tim spoke about throughout 2008.   It seems even more relevant in 2009.   The original Radar post that I did is here.

Tim’s passion and focus is with the entrepreneurs who are working in garages and small businesses around the world on big, audacious projects.   This discussion really got me thinking about my own role in working on stuff that matters.  How do I as a consultant ensure that my work is done in service to stuff that matters and congruent with my values?   That post is coming up soon.
These videos are a companion piece to Tim’s recent blog post, of the same name.  A great read, especially for the comments that support the original post.

We will be releasing the other segments over the next few weeks. They will also live on at www.thefutureatwork.com (where the video series has a home).  There you can also download the files for offline viewing.

Part One:

Part Two:

Part

This is a cross post from Radar:

This interview is with April Allderdice, CEO and cofounder of MicroEnergy Credits. MicroEnergy Credits has developed a mechanism using microfinance institutions and GPS cell phones to allow carbon credits to reach small households in the developing world. Until now the relatively high transaction costs involved in set up and verification of a carbon trade has made the market available only to large companies.

During our interview I was reminded of another fantastic idea with similar characteristics. Simon Berry, CEO of ruralnet UK, proposes “that Coca-Cola use their distribution channels (which are amazing in developing countries) to distribute oral rehydration salts. Maybe by dedicating one compartment in every 10 crates as ‘the life saving’ compartment.” (join the Facebook group here to pressure Coca Cola) Once you plug into Coca Cola’s already-existing distribution channels the cost of delivering small amounts of vital medicines to remote parts of the world drops precipitously.

The genius of both of these ideas is that they are using something “old” to do something very new.

Imagine how many existing distribution networks could be “rented” out for their capacity to deliver needed goods/services at extraordinarily low cost.   If Zappos can syndicate customer experience and Amazon can syndicate their competence at online storage and computing… Why not Coca Cola, Walmart syndicating their distribution competence.?  As we begin the necessary journey to transform industry away from unsustainable consumption – this might be a step in the right direction.