Versatile Amphibian

I was talking to a couple of colleagues about how to change the culture of businesses the other day (as you do). Someone commented that they didn’t know how to make the culture of a client ‘digital’. His implication was that there needed to be uniformity of culture in order to succeed at making a transformation to a more productive operating model, which struck me as odd. Why would cultural uniformity be a good idea? What business actually has that today? What’s a 'digital culture' at all? Is also a good question. I currently describe it as something that’s outcome centric, that has hierarchy that serves to resolve areas of debate rather than for command and control and devolves leadership to everyone in the organisation based on philosophical alignment about what needs to be done. My description changes quite a lot, it’d be fair to say, but this is the June 2014 version. What about cultural uniformity, then? Well, I started to think about this and to be honest I could...

One of the problems we've found with digital strategy thus far is how to get organisations started. There are so many ways in which digital can transform a business, from radically transforming sales and service to automating a swathe of back office tasks that it can be overwhelming and doing nothing or something too small is tempting. To us as well, at times. So I've been thinking about the best way of biting off a meaningful chunk - these are thoughts in progress so comments are even more appreciated than usual! The first question I came to was whether to start at the value generating centre of the business or in a costly but unsexy back office area. My conclusion is the former. Why? Because energy and momentum is a crucial part of the journey to a digital culture and it's easier to advertise that direction somewhere visible. It's also arguably easier to make a conventional (basic ROI) business case in these areas - the cost of back office functions is often very murk...

The last couple of days have seen two remarkable developments in digital that I thought were worth covering. First, Google announced that it would be making 200 prototype self-driving city cars to its own design. Second, Microsoft revealed its plans to put he natty instant translation tech it showed off in China a couple of years back into Skype. Why were these titbits of news worth interrupting my holiday for? I've long been an advocate of self-driving vehicles and Google have long been the visible face of the technology. Their announcement will undoubtedly spur others to launch their own vehicles, most likely including Tesla, who have done for propulsion what Google have done for guidance. I would be now very surprised if a fully self-driving car was not available for purchase at an electric-sized price premium (c. 50%) vs the equivalent conventional car before 2020. Microsoft's translation announcement is also significant as it shows how quickly natural language algorithms h...

You might remember that we've been doing a series of consumer research pieces with the Associated Press on the future of news in various regions. This leg of the journey took us to the Middle East, where we covered three markets: UAE, KSA and Egypt. I presented this at the Arab Media Forum this afternoon. Major findings: Middle Eastern residents are avid consumers of the news - on average they'll take in 72 minutes a day, which is the same as their counterparts in Europe Trust is the most important driver for selecting a news channel. Interestingly, speed is almost irrelevant - only six percent of respondents said that it mattered, which goes against traditional thinking... ...and probably reflects the fact that social currency from news is gained by depth of understanding rather than being the first person to hear about it Half of online news users discover stories on social media and 45 percent of users share a story at least once a day This reflects the importance o...

I’m still trying to sort my thoughts about the Mobile World Congress. To start with, here’s my Match of the Day style summary of the two best things I saw at MWC and the two worst things I saw at MWC… I liked: Ubuntu Tablet Ubuntu is best known as a server O/S, but they also offer a smartphone and now a tablet version of the open source O/S. The tablet version is extremely slick and easy to navigate: apparently they have some partners ready to launch hardware for it this year (although it installs seamlessly on a Google Nexus tablet). I know it won’t catch on, but it was still really nice to see some innovation in interface design. I didn’t like: the way the industry is missing the point Mobile is the hot topic in many industries, particularly when it comes to providing very localized sales, marketing and other services. The cellular industry is in a prime place to enable this sort of new commerce market. So why was it nowhere to be seen at MWC? Because it seems that t...

I know the drill by now. Drink as much coffee as I can. Avoid any cooked foodstuffs.  The Nokia stand has the best freebies. These sage pieces of advice hold true at MWC 2014 and, while my brain is still on a caffeine high, I thought I’d jot down my impressions of day 1 at the FIRA. One – there are a lot of cars From ZTE to Telefonica to Qualcomm, everyone in the value chain has cars on their stand. TF win the cool stakes by having a Tesla Model S, which is an awesome piece of technology… but although automotive telematics is clearly a market that they all want to play in, no one is doing very much of substance. Telefonica provide a SIM card for the Model S. Qualcomm were showing off a stereo system and sat nav processor; ZTE an extremely weak connected car app. What I take from this is that cars are carrying much more computing and connectivity than ever before (no shit) and no one in the telecoms value chain has figured out how to make money out of them. Two ...

I read with interest Satya Nadella's first email to Microsoft staff as CEO. It's inspiring stuff and says a lot about his understanding of the future digital world that we'll  inhabit. He's much better equipped than Steve Ballmer to win in that world. He likes hoodies, for a start. But Satya's got a problem, and that problem is one of Microsoft's strongholds: the corporate IT department. I love all the words that he uses in his email - fun, excitement, clarity, the accomplishment of great things. Trouble is that the way most people experience Microsoft these days is at work. And that desktop and application experience is controlled by the IT department. And for the most part, that IT department will have created a "build" of services that stops the average Jo Bloggs doing very much that's exciting or fun. Accomplishing great things is pretty tough on a glacially slow Windows XP, Vista or 7 machine loaded with bloated apps and locked down aga...