Versatile Amphibian

How about that for a headline, eh? Sensational, but true, I'm afraid to say. This year I’ve been working with Google on some research about the role of collaboration tools in the workplace. This has just been published in six European markets (English version here ). It even made it into Italian Wired ! To whet your appetites, I thought it’d be good to summarise what we found from interviewing 3,600 employees of large businesses and 30 of their bosses. Convention means that I should have three points. But I don’t. I have two. Better make them good, then… One. The average European business is un-innovative and un-collaborative This was the major finding: just under sixty percent of employees in major European employers feel that they work in an environment where they are discouraged from innovating and rarely collaborate effectively with each other outside of basic team interactions. I wish I could say I was surprised by this, but I’m afraid most large businesses remain...

The pace and breadth of change in technology and media is awesome right now, so my view is that people in the industry need to read widely to get a sense of what’s going on. To that end, here’s the stories that caught my eye. This week: Macy’s becomes Minority, HBO struggles in Sweden, self-driving cars by 2020, inkjet-printed electronics and digital puzzle baffles Internet Business models Macy’s becomes the first big store to trial iBeacon, Apple’s new in-premise presence technology… cue Minority Report comparisons galore. In seriousness, this kind of store based presence technology should be a godsend for retailers as it can link online experiences to physical in a much more engaging way. http://gigaom.com/2013/11/20/macys-is-the-first-retailer-to-use-apples-ibeacon-for-in-store-presence/ The ultimate narcissism, combining Kinect, 3D printing and $59 to create a figurine of yourself. http://www.gizmag.com/shapify-kinect-3d-printing-selfie-statue/29885/ Not really a business...

I’m in the process of developing some predictions for what will happen in digital in 2014 and thought that I’d post them here to get some wisdom from my readers! Some of these will be positive, some might be busting some myths about categories that have captured the zeitgeist. Now, more than ever, comments will be greatly appreciated. First up: personal health monitoring My prediction: although they will be the subject of much media interest, personal health monitoring devices will remain niche in 2014, with sales in the category remaining below $250Mn globally. What am I talking about? Personal health monitors are wearable devices that measure the movement of the body in order to inform the user about their level of activity and its relation to their wellbeing. The most common type are bracelets that measure steps, for example Nike Fuel Band, Jawbone Up and FitBit, but there are more specialised devices such Spire, which measures breathing and Sensoria, a connected sock that s...

I’ve had another week of travelling so a slightly truncated reading list again today, nevertheless, this week: Under Armor connects, Xbox One is watching you, weaponised Internet and psychedelic techno speakers. Business models All this outrage about the NSA weaponising the Internet is stupid. It’s like complaining that in order to provide security they’ve invested in secret weapons they’ve not told anyone about in case they really need to defend us. When the US reveals a new spy plane we all go: cool! When it turns out they’re using the Internet to spy on people and developing digital weapons we get our underwear all twisted. If they weren’t doing it, they’d be failing in their duty. Anyway, here’s what the (digitally) smoking gun looks like. And the spy plane. http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/11/this-is-how-the-internet-backbone-has-been-turned-into-a-weapon/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24803511 Everyone is getting into the technology incubator game these day...

I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at News Xchange 2013 in Marrakech. One of the sessions I managed to attend was on the idea of “video first, bulletins next”, the idea being that it’s better to shoot video then assemble it into a story for TV later, rather than deciding on the TV needs and then shooting for them. The panellists were from NOS in the Netherlands, DR in Denmark and YLE in Finland, all of which are publicly funded broadcasters. The Danish take on this subject was to divide the newsroom into specialist subject areas – politics, economics and so on – nothing new there, except that they also have a “news engine” team, who’s role is to create raw feeds on stories – sometimes from the specialists, but mainly from their own journalists and then assemble that at the behest of DR channels. It’s an interesting concept in that the news engine acts as a kind of internal news marketplace, where content is placed for use by any of the programmes or channels in DR. On slow new...

I’ve had a week of travelling so a slightly truncated reading list today, nevertheless, this week: invisible jobs, Tesla’s IT, collaborative economies, iPad Air thin but unrepairable and Sony blows up volcano Business models Oh sh*t. Here we go again. Patent wars kick off once more. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/01/rockstar_consortium_patent_suit_battery/ New business models Tesla is a really inspirational digital company. It has used the freedom that the connected world enables to totally reinvent the car company. It also develops most of its IT systems from scratch to give it differential capabilities. Those who are still buying into the big, old fashioned ERP, finance, CRM etc… systems take note. http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/31/being-a-cio-at-tesla-motors-a-startup-that-builds-cars-and-its-own-it/ An excellent article about invisible jobs: the increasing number of people taking advantage of digital marketplaces like AirBnB, Etsy and Uber to make an additional incom...

This week: PS4 aims to create gaming celebs, NASA connects moon, Nokia arrives at party 3 years late, electric bikes and self-assembly game consoles Business models An interview with one of the designers of the new Sony PS4, which is intended to ‘celebritize’ gamers. I like the idea and it’ll be a tiny benefit to a subset of gamers. Ultimately though, the PS4 will win or lose on the quality of its games. Simples. www.fastcompany.com/3020236/tech-forecast/building-a-console-from-the-ground-up-playstations-top-priority-was-to-make-ga Some useful data points about when people visit mobile websites versus desktop. Not ground breaking, but nice to have. http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/online/when-are-mobile-owners-visiting-retail-sites-37655/ Now this is interesting: Twitter is now a more important social network than Facebook amongst teenagers. http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/online/twitter-overtakes-facebook-as-teens-most-important-social-network-37352/ Facebook ad performan...

Digital’s a broad church and I think you need to read widely to get a sense of the changes it’s bringing. This week: Google wants your face, Internet advertising is doomed, Korean killer robots, hovering rockets & Wes’ new movie Traditional business models A sneak peek at Apple’s new headquarters. Berliner… http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_24290808/apple-offers-sneak-peek-at-its-new-headquarters#! Apple also announced this week that it’s hired Burberry’s CEO to be their Head of Retail. Burberry have been notably successful in creating a unique luxury retail experience, so this move makes a lot of sense for Apple in my view. http://gigaom.com/2013/10/15/apple-poaches-burberry-ceo-ahrendts-to-be-its-new-retail-chief/ New business models Every self-respecting internet ad platform has the ability to self-serve, now FourSquare has one too. This might finally make the service useful outside of the USA. As an aside: although I rather like checking in, I don’...

I sat in on an interview with Danny Cohen at the RTS last night. The topic was the future of the BBC and there were a few nuggets on channels, iPlayer and the BBC online that I felt like sharing. Here goes: Channels still have relevance In general, channels are still important - people are launching them rather than shutting them down. The BBC will also be using iPlayer to create permanent channels for their big brands, like Radio 1 and pop-up channels for big events like Wimbledon, Glastonbury and the Proms. Program moves will continue to occur - for example Great British Bake Off is moving from BBC 2 to BBC 1 - even though it regularly hits a 7 million audience on the former, Danny believes that the shift to 1 will boost that audience even further. Even in a digital, multi-platform world the channel brand and EPG position is an important factor in people's decisions about what to watch. He gave the example of Andy Murray tennis matches, which sometimes start on 2 and move t...

Last week was a bit of a busy one, but I still had chance for a bit of reading. Here’s a brief roundup of stories from the TMT industry that caught my eye. This week: Google vs Facebook in Internet Risk, goodbye  Google TV, cars drive themselves (but not in Canada), kids break Murdoch’s tabs Traditional business models FT says that its print product will henceforth derive from the digital. I’m not so sure that’s really practical. There’s a big difference between the fast twitch, unlimited word count world of the web and the more structured, quality-first print product. There’ll be two newsrooms for a long time yet. http://gigaom.com/2013/10/09/financial-times-our-print-product-will-derive-from-the-web-offering-not-vice-versa/ BT bows to the inevitable and goes back into mobile. I think they’ll do well, since BT Retail has seemingly figured out how to do product marketing. Bad signs for O2 though, who now have the poorest spectrum asset in the UK and seem to be goin...

A number of people have asked for a transcript of my speech from this year's RTS Cambridge on the future of TV. Here's the edited highlights (because the visual gags just don't work in text ;) ) ---START--- What television is today is little changed from a decade ago; and, at the same time, TV is profoundly different:   A decade ago , the majority of TV sets sold were 25 inches or smaller. [i]   16 million homes received analogue TV signal. [ii]   Sixty per cent of the country only had five channels. [iii]   High Definition TV was yet to launch. Netflix was a US based company that used the post to distribute DVDs to its 1.5 million customers. [iv]   YouTube had not been founded.   Google – who’d buy Youtube for $1.65 billion in 2006 - had just broken the $1 billion revenue barrier, for the first time. [v] There were two million broadband households [vi] …   … but broadband speeds started at 128 Kbit/s , that’s one eighth of a ...