Ged Carroll

Category: ideas | 想法 | 생각 | 考える

Ideas were at the at the heart of why I started this blog. One of the first posts that I wrote there being a sweet spot in the complexity of products based on the ideas of Dan Greer. I wrote about the first online election fought by Howard Dean, which now looks like a precursor to the Obama and Trump presidential bids.

I articulated a belief I still have in the benefits of USB thumb drives as the Thumb Drive Gospel. The odd rant about IT, a reflection on the power of loose social networks, thoughts on internet freedom – an idea that that I have come back to touch on numerous times over the years as the online environment has changed.

Many of the ideas that I discussed came from books like Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy.

I was able to provide an insider perspective on Brad Garlinghouse’s infamous Peanut Butter-gate debacle. It says a lot about the lack of leadership that Garlinghouse didn’t get fired for what was a power play. Garlinghouse has gone on to become CEO of Ripple.

I built on initial thoughts by Stephen Davies on the intersection between online and public relations with a particular focus on definition to try and come up with unifying ideas.

Or why thought leadership is a less useful idea than demonstrating authority of a particular subject.

I touched on various retailing ideas including the massive expansion in private label products with grades of ‘premiumness’.

I’ve also spent a good deal of time thinking about the role of technology to separate us from the hoi polloi. But this was about active choice rather than an algorithmic filter bubble.

 

  • Bill and Dave by Michael Malone

    Bill and Dave were better known now by their surnames: Hewlett-Packard. It is familiar to consumers as a brand of printer, laptops and digital cameras sold in supermarkets up and down the country. Some may remember that they had a Watergate-type moment recently and a woman CEO who made a dogs dinner of things.

    I visited Boeblingen (near Stuttgart) – the European headquarters of Hewlett-Packard in the late 90s and left deeply unimpressed by a large but seemingly directionless technology behemoth. We were on the cusp of the internet, while they were talking about printing brochures on demand. While this was happening the best internet search engine at the time, Alta Vista, had been built by their long time rival Digital Equipment Corporation.

    Malone in his book Bill and Dave gave me a better appreciation of Hewlett-Packard. He brings into perspective how important Bill Hewlett and David Packard were to the technology sector and modern business practices.

    From a PR perspective, I found facinating the way Bill and David self-consciously built their own personal legends which helped support and extend the HP Way. The company’s culture was built, extended and modified in a deliberate, planned manner unparalleled in any other company. Their culture was what PR people would now call thought leadership – which feels very now given the start of interest around brand purpose.

    Bill and Dave wrote the book on corporate reputation without the help of big name agencies and invented the elements as they went along, combined with a wisdom worthy of Solomon. More book reviews here.

  • The Strength of the Wolf

    I chose The Strength of the Wolf  by Douglas Valentine as I needed a good paperback to read as I travelled back to Liverpool. It seemed strangely appropriate that I read a book about narcotics travelling there; given that Liverpool’s recent history and cultural renaissance has been intertwined with its association as the UK’s narcotic equivalent of the Square Mile. Characters like Curtis Warren as it’s big swinging dicks as Liars Poker author Michael Lewis would have called them.

    The premise of The Strength of the Wolf by Douglas Valentine is that the US and other foreign governments have had their fingers in the drug trafficking pie for hundreds of years.

    Indeed Great Britain fought two wars over the opium trade. However, this is thought to be history.

    The US as the 20th century empire ‘ruler’ is alleged to have carried on the practice supporting Chinese nationalists running heroin through the golden triangle, right-wing military figures in South America, friendly factions in the Middle East to smuggle opium to the French Connection and allowing the mafia a degree of freedom in return for using their supply.

    Valentine also describes how drugs were used as a way of controlling minorities and how politically-motivated drugs laws fanned demand in the US rather than choking it off.

    These allegations are made as Valentine tells the story of the FBN (the federal bureau of narcotics), its successes, it’s failures and its politics. How officers trod the line between doing their job, whilst not upsetting the establishment players who most benefited from the drug trade that they combated.

    The book covers the inner real politik that tore the FBN apart and the global narcotics market as it evolved from the early 20th century.

    Valentine eventually decides to pursue so many leads from Jack Ruby’s involvement with drugs, the CIA and narcotics business associates link with the Kennedy assassination (which sounds only slightly more credible than the Warren Commission finding that Oswald did it on his own with an Italian carbine), DeGaulle’s link with Corsican criminals to fund French intelligence work and Mossad’s alleged involvement with money launderers and Lebanese narco power-brokers.

    At times these allegations and avenues come out like a stream of consciousness and the thread of the plot leaps around like an epileptic break dancer. Whilst Valentine has obviously done a very thorough and comprehensive job in researching the book, it seems that he had too much material to work with in too little time.

    The book becomes hard to follow because of the huge amount of information and cross-linkages that it tries to convey and not exactly ideal reading material for travelling.

    I stuck with the book, not because of the drugs and intelligence drama, but the more human tale of how the agents careers were created and trashed like failed drafts being thrown in the paper basket. The book on balance, deserves the plaudits that have been heaped upon it, but who will recognise the achievements of the reader who pushes through to the end? More book reviews can be found here.

  • Peanut Buttergate


    Peanut Buttergate broke over the past few days. It is also better known as the Peanut Butter memorandum. What is it and why should you care? In the post below I write about it from my viewpoint as a former Yahoo! employee in the European marketing team focused on search. I am familiar with the business units and the personalities involved.

    Who is Brad Garlinghouse?

    Brad Garlinghouse is a natural and compelling presenter. I had seen him speak in internal presentations about Yahoo!’s communications and messenger products. Garlinghouse has written a four-page memorandum looking for internal change at Yahoo! which maps out a possible future direction for the firm.

    Brad Garlinghouse makes some very pertinent points in his now famous peanut butter memo about Yahoo!, but ultimately shows a more selfish agenda than ‘saving’ the company he loves.You can read the full memo here, but I have just pulled some of the key items out to provide a European perspective on some of the points that he made. YMG = Yahoo! Media Group – the team that Garlinghouse led at the time.

    Garlinghouse was frustrated with what he saw as competing products and approaches:

    • Flickr vs. Photos: To say that Photos competes with Flickr is ridiculous Yahoo! Photos was tired, boring and a pretty shoddy product

    • YMG video vs. Search video

    • Deli.cio.us vs. My Web

    • Messenger and plug-ins vs. sidebar and widgets

    • Social media vs. 360 and Groups

    • Front page vs. YMG

    • Global strategy from BU’vs. Global strategy from Int’l

    Part of the reason for this was a complex silo’ed matrix structure and an the result of an organisation struggling to fight a talent and ideas war against very strong adveraries like Google and Microsoft.

    Some of the Yahoo! products should have been killed off, whilst other duplications occurred because internal products like 360, Messenger and MyWeb sucked at crucial iterations in their product life.

    In addition, Yahoo!, particularly Music and the Comms & Community BU which Garlinghouse runs has a poor record of building products fit for early adopters like Music properties that aren’t Mac-compatiable, the new Yahoo! Mail which doesn’t work on Safari and a Messenger client which was much poorer than open source equivalents like Adium X making it hard to build a buzz that will trickle down to mainstream users.

    Develop a focus on the vision

    Absolutely, and drive this down into reinvigorating the brand for the 21st century. In the US, Yahoo! has a brand that resonates with consumers, but in Europe the Yahoo! brand doesn’t stand for anything. Whilst my former boss Georga could recite the values of the brand and we all had purple folders highlighting what they were, this hadn’t changed in consumer perceptions. Focus on the vision is the first part of making that work.

    Restore accountability and clarity of ownership

    Two things are needed here – measurements that ensure long-term thinking rather than stort-term performance peaks and selling the future. The right people in the right roles to fulfil this. In Europe, this means going from from the top down.

    Long-term thinking means building a brand to make Yahoo! a must-go online destination, rather than just using arbitrage calculations to buy clicks on Google. It means giving European users a higher quality user experience and prioritising the products users want rather than executive whims

    Redesign performance and incentive schemes: This is only any good if it is tied into the right measurements and I don’t think that Garlinghouse has got these measures right.

    Peanut Buttergate as part in power play

    This paragraph I found particularly interesting, yet has got the least publicity is ‘Align a set of new BU’s so that they are not competing against each other. Search focuses on search. Social media aligns with community and communications. No competing owners for Video, Photos, etc. And Front Page becomes Switzerland. This will be a delicate exercise — decentralization can create inefficiencies, but I believe we can find the right balance.’

    Garlinghouse is basically going for a power play here.

    Social media has been alligned to search because that’s where a lot of the smart people who get it are: community and communications from a product and technology perspective don’t get it.

    Search has embraced social media because the algorithimic war is one of attrition whereas social media offers a breakout situation. A more radical and business savvy play would be to adopt Google search again and augment it with social media.

    Garlinghouse blew it at that paragraph, its not about doing the best for the company, its about building his empire in the face of worthy opponents like Jeff Weiner who heads-up Search.

    It would make more sense to put Communications mail product and all the communities products into Search alongside desktop search.

    Final gaffe in Peanut Buttergate

    Finally being a marketing person I was horrified to see such a high profile marketing gaff ‘I love Yahoo! I’m proud to admit that I bleed purple and yellow.’ Yellow has not been an official corporate colour for over a year, somebody please give him a brand guide folder. More Yahoo! related content here.

  • Google Answers + more news

    Google Answers

    Google Answers decides to close up shop – Google Answers is an attempt to create high quality material for knowledge search and a monetisation model at the same time. At the top end, Google Answers looked like consultancy on the cheap. Given the size of the core Google business versus other media opportunities Google Answers was never going to be big. However closing Google Answers seems to be less a criticism of knowledge search and more a broader retrenchment to only focus on ‘Google-sized’ opportunities – effectively ossification of the business.

    Design

    x0xb0x– amazing improvement by German designers on Roland’s iconic TB-303

    How tos

    7 tips to save your cell phone battery life

    Lifehacker book

    Ideas

    Information Arbitrage: The Value of Eyeballs and Its Impact on Journalistic Motivation

    The interview: Robert Pirsig | Review | The Observer

    PodCastConUK 2006: Podcasting and the Citizen Journalist. Strange Attractor: Picking out patterns in the chaos

    Innovation

    EETimes.com – Study: Spend more, get more in R&D? Not always

    Media

    Downloading TV Shows leads to more TV watching at Torrentfreak

    IAC/Interactive Wins Fans

    I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Declassified | PBS – how Craigslist has affected local and classified advertising business model of newspapers

    Boing Boing: Record industry association declares DRM dead

    Online

    Bubblegeneration Strategy Lab

    Will Blogs Replace White Papers

    paidcontent: Pearson and major business schools pair up for WikiText experiment

    GigaOM » YouSendIt Bigger Than We Thought

    Monday Morning: First lessons from our Second Life

    Twitter: A Whole World in Your Hands

    Official Google Blog: Google Base turns 1

    Security

    NSS Group – Self-described ‘world’s foremost independent security testing organisation’

    Schools ban wi-fi networks after safety fears

    Software

    WordPress Takes On SixApart With Enterprise Edition and WordPress.com

    Stellarium – great planetarium programme

    Ajaxian » Open-jACOB Draw2D

    Daily Cup of Tech » FreeNAS

    PortableApps Suite | PortableApps.com – Portable software for USB drives

  • The Change Function by Pip Coburn

    Thinking about The Change Function as a book reminded me as an agency person, it is not enough only be a good, but to understand something about your clients. Are they a winner or a flamer?If they are a flamer, you want your cash up front and start contingency planning for how you replace them with another piece of business.

    If they are a winner, then you can be more flexible and possibly take a bath if they are going to be a flagship brand on your client list.

    What is the compelling reason to purchase their product or service.

    Rule one: Clients are generally too close to their products, consumers will work out how they become relevant to their own lives or not

    Rule two: The greatest lie after ‘I love you’ and ‘I can guarantee you coverage in the Financial Times’ is ‘Our product is unique’. If the problem can be solved another way, it means that the product is not unique because the customer has a substitute choice. Believe: flickr was not unique, it was an innovative way at looking at the same problem. The iPod was not unique, Compaq made the first hard drive-based MP3 player back in the late 90s and the Mac wasn’t unique because it got the queues from Doug Engelbart and Xerox PARC.

    The Change Function by Pip Coburn makes an interesting read as it shows by example why some technologies take off, while others flame out.

    What’s the crisis the product or services solves? People will generally only adopt the new, new thing if there is a compelling reason for them.

    Is the crisis one for real-world people, or just for rich people (who fly business class three days in every week and think that having a social life is messaging fellow college alumni on their Blackberry once every six weeks)?

    How high is the total perceived pain of adoption?

    Is your client user-centred: do they use language that shows they look at things from the users point of view?

    Do they have an iterative development cycle? (Do they roll out improvements on a regular basis, based on user feedback and their technological roadmap rather than blockbuster updates.)

    Pip Coburn elegantly codifies common sense; its the stuff you know instinctively, like the smartphone that you only use voice and texting on and yet still listen to music on your iPod, or the latest cool web 2.0 service that you registered for but then never seem to go back to. More book reviews can be found here.