Versatile Amphibian

As 2015 winds to a close I've been reflecting on what I've learned this year. For succinctness, I'll keep this post just to 'learned about the Digital Economy'. Enjoy, and thanks for reading in 2015! This is taking ages... I've been amazed by the slow pace of change to digital economy cultures amongst organisations in all sectors. Having been thinking about this for years I take for granted that ideas like Lean Startup are the norm in management, but it seems not. I realise that I've been unrealistic. These kinds of massive changes take decades and I suspect I'll be advising on this phase for much of the next ten years of my career. The fundamental lessons are the same in every industry. This year, my team and I have worked in a huge range of industries, from government departments to construction machinery, snake bites to sportswear, groceries to car manufacturer, appliances to social media, and in most cases we've come in as generalists. And t...

As promised in a previous post about information symmetry , I’ve now completed my first-draft framework for assessing the success of digital economies.  Digital education was quite a tough ask as it’s a broad ranging subject. I think it condenses into three topics, though: Higher education , because we’re in an age of discovery and people need to be both intellectually inquisitive and able to learn. My view is that a properly thought out higher education system which emphasises self-study is fundamental to the success of nations. I have major issues with the idea that those who wish to learn should have to pay for that learning excessively as it encourages competition based on perceived rather than real outcomes (why go to a college where it’s harder to get a good grade?)… but I accept that I’m a throwback in this regard and that commercial undergraduate education is here to stay. I don’t care about what subjects are being studied either – it’s simplistic to suggest...

In previous posts I've written about presentations on the trajectories of digital economies in Africa and Norway . Both of these were based on an unfinished framework I've been developing that tries to describe the success factors for national economies in the Early Digital Economy. I won't recap this framework in detail as its described in the posts linked above, but at the highest level it breaks the success factors into four categories: Pervasive access to computing Information symmetry Innovative AND entrepreneurial culture Digital skills and education In order to complete the framework and starting building a broader data set to test it I've now populated one of the two missing sections, information symmetry . This topic breaks into 4: Unfiltered access to information, enabling people to have open conversations and access (if not a preference for) content from every potential point of view. This is vital for true innovation as a fear of repercussions ...

I'm on my way back from Oslo, where I presented a keynote on the Digital Economy at the DND IT-lederkonferansen 2015 conference. Rather than do a standard Eight Traits presentation I decided to build on the work on success factors for digital economies that I prepared for SATNAC last month. You can find the presentation here . The structure of my argument was as follows: Norway was one of the greatest beneficiaries of the Industrial Economy. Before 1770 GDP per capita was on the same level as Mexico or Portugal; now it is more than twice that of the latter and three times the former. (I had to show 2003 numbers on the chart as doing 2015 made it look crazy!) But now the system is changing away from automation of physical processes into automation of mental ones. This will cause great disruption as it will polarise the productivity and hence the success of companies and countries. So how well set up is Norway? Success for digital economies is driven by four main factors: ac...

This is just a simple post to relay some thoughts I had on the ways in which digital publisher models will evolve over the next couple of years. I presented them at event this week and they seemed to resonate with the audience of publisher leaders. Comments much appreciated: Consumption trends: Mobile users interact c.3.5x more with services than regular online users, so we should expect massively greater consumption as the mass market becomes familiar Aggregation is now happening at the handset, rather than on a service UX/ UI becoming increasingly faddy, mirroring social and mobile gaming trends Short form video playing an increasingly important role, disrupting much of the low-quality TV audience… …short term upsurge in vlogging may turn into a longer trend if grey vloggers capture an older audience Social media is fragmenting and the role of advertisers is increasingly seen to be negative News encompasses a much broader range of topics… but many of them are highly pers...

A common concern my clients express is how a large business with its engrained culture and rigorous risk processes can compete with fast-moving start ups. The latter are unimpeded by the organisational strata that come with scale and therefore can act fast to access market opportunities. They are also unimpeded by incumbency and therefore are free to disrupt your business with impunity. In my experience, the reason behind the lack of organisational agility that is at the root of the problem is based on how personal risk and reward is calculated in a business. It is also rather soluble, provided that underlying psychology is understood. Managers in a start-up actually have it rather hard. If they don’t hit their targets then after a very short time they won’t be able to pay the wages. Cash flow is a key challenge for most start-ups, even those that are comparatively well funded. What this challenge breeds is an institutional attitude that they must rapidly seek out the “low...