IBM is at an entirely different level than what people would assume. Totally closer to an Apple or Amazon than a Microsoft or Yahoo.
4 reasons:
This column is a glimpse of the thinking behind some of the major steps I.B.M. has taken under Mr. Palmisano’s leadership, based on two recent interviews with him.
He says his guiding framework boils down to four questions:
• “Why would someone spend their money with you — so what is unique about you?”
• “Why would somebody work for you?”
• “Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography — their country?”
• “And why would somebody invest their money with you?”
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The four questions, he explains, were a way to focus thinking and prod the company beyond its comfort zone and to make I.B.M. pre-eminent again. He presented the four-question framework to the company’s top 300 managers at a meeting in early 2003 in Boca Raton, Fla.
“This needs to be our mission and goal, to make I.B.M. a great company,” he said, according to executives who attended the gathering.
THE pursuit of excellence in those four dimensions shaped the strategy. To focus on doing unique work, with its higher profits, meant getting out of low-margin businesses that were fading. I.B.M.’s long-range technology assessment in 2002 concluded that the personal computer business would no longer present much opportunity for innovation, at least not in the corporate market.
Pretty much ego, hubris, vanity, hype & the lack of imagination.
It occurs to me at the beginning of 2012 that the most obvious business decisions in 2011 are the decisions that needed the most scrutiny and thoughtful analysis. Coming up with a disruptive web product or a business idea can’t be obvious nor can it be simple; they should be both brutally ridiculed and as Fred Wilson notes, mocked and misunderstood.
My lesson from 2011 is the obvious products and ideas that are praised for their simplicity are stripped of their disruptive quality that only the unknown can offer. And when building a disruptive product or idea, the unknown is far more limitless than what is known.
Going forward, this framework sounds like an excellent litmus test to make the most disruptive and challenging ideas come to life. There is something that should be uncomfortable about building the obvious to everyone idea because it truly indicates that the upside is nil.
(via A VC: Mocked And Misunderstood)
“Shift the dynamic of business away from gaming the expectations market and back to doing the real job of delighting customers.”
The Economist’s Special Report on Games. Read the whole thing but here are some why you should read it highlights:
- Gaming is a $50+ billion industry
- It’s filled with tech people
- They’ve already figured out what everyone else hasn’t
Some elegant answers but this part nails it:
1. People’s lives are improved by fun apps and games, in the same way they are by movies, music, food, and books. We don’t usually ask why people waste time in those fields. Kirsten Dunst is never asked why she makes movies instead of working on gene therapy. Nor do we suggest that we stop making movies because we already have plenty of those.
2. And, what starts out as trivial often ends up being the most impactful of all, asYishan Wong pointed out in one of the comments. Examples:
- “Trade Pez dispensers online” -> a marketplace larger than many national economies (eBay)
- “Tell your friends what you are doing” -> a global communications network (Twitter)
- “Hook up at Harvard” -> a billion person network, disrupting governments (Facebook)
- “Send money to your friends” -> disruptive payment network (Paypal)
I thought it could best be summed up with these two articles. Read both full articles but for the lazy:
Daring Fireball: The Just-Buy-Our-Devices Model
I see Apple “monetizing” Siri simply as a way to sell more devices — more iPhones now, more iPads (and who knows, maybe Macs?) in the future. Siri could be the interface to future products, like tiny little Nano-sized devices, or home entertainment systems. Google’s ad-driven model disrupted Microsoft’s pay-for-software-licenses model. Apple’s just-buy-our-devices-and-look-at-all-the-cool-shit-you-get-with-them model could disrupt Google’s ad-driven model.
…
Siri doesn’t need to lead to advertising in order to add to Apple’s bottom line. Consider iCloud — Apple now offers free-of-charge online services ad-free. It’s a sunk cost in the name of the overall experience for Apple device buyers.
TidBITS Opinion: Will Siri Change the Rules of the Search Game?
Siri and search companies both compete to control your contact point with the Internet. Search does this through deep integration with Web browsers; even to the point (with Google) of producing entire operating systems whose primary goal is to serve as your conduit to the Internet and drive you towards Google services. The value to Google in producing Chrome OS and Android is in increasing usage of Google for the purpose of gaining access to your activities and delivering more targeted advertising.
Siri is a new user interface designed to increase the usefulness of the iPhone, and it’s hard to imagine it won’t eventually come to other products. The Internet is only one of its potential components, which also include on-device data and apps like calendars and reminders. Siri tracks your activity to improve its accuracy, not to deliver advertising. The value to Apple is in selling more devices.
These are completely different financial models, even though both systems track and analyze your activities. One is funded by advertising, the other with device sales. (And both, perhaps, with licensing to drive users to particular partners.)
Now argue that Apple cares about advertising at all. I wouldn’t say Apple is gunning for Google, Apple just doesn’t need Google in order to make Siri work.
VentureBeat
This has a nice ring to it doesn’t it?
