The Software Abstractions Blog

"Connecting With Your Intimate Bot" - by Sramana Mitra

I've just started reading Sramana Mitra's new book, Entrepreneur Journeys. More thoughts on this to follow, but in the meantime, here is an excerpt.

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Connecting With Your Intimate Bot

We've all had this thought: When will technology slow down enough for me to catch up? Just managed to get a grip on Web 2.0 (or did I?), and already there are rumblings about Web 3.0.

But the Web's evolution slows for no one. Here's how to get ahead of the next wave.

There are numerous definitions of Web 3.0 floating around. Tim Berners-Lee, a father of the World Wide Web, talks about the "Semantic Web," a way that computers employ the meaning of words – not just pattern matching – along with logical rules to connect independent nuggets of data and so create more context for information. The formula that makes the most sense to me is this: Web 3.0 results from combining content, commerce, community and context, with personalization and vertical search. Or, to put it in a handy phrase: Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS).

Here's what it means.

Web 1.0 was all about driving online commerce and trying to find "anything" in the tangled jungle of the Web. It produced companies like Yahoo!, Amazon.com, eBay, Netflix and Blue Nile. The rush for dollars also resulted in the dot-com meltdown. Even so, people's habits of searching, buying and selling genuinely changed.

Web 2.0 has been a relatively niche phenomenon, with hundreds and thousands of tiny companies primarily focused on social networking through online communities. MySpace, Facebook and Digg, have been the most notable companies to emerge. But there are a plethora of others where you can "meet," "connect" and "make friends" online these days – habits no longer considered weird.

At the same time, we've seen a great deal of investment in vertical search companies. If you are looking for a job, you can go to a site like Indeed.com and search across various job portals and career sites. Or go to Kayak if you've got travel questions, or TheFind if you're seeking shopping advice. In each case, the sites have carefully customized search parameters (job seekers, for instance, can search on salary ranges, locations, job levels and so on). Therein lies the big difference with Google, a generic horizontal search engine.

Finally, Web 2.0 has brought an onslaught of user-generated content in the form of blogs, podcasts, appending comments at the bottom of articles, posting reviews of restaurants, movies, stores, and hotels. Media has become truly interactive, as opposed to the one-way world we were used to. Many more voices are being raised, and heard. The media industry, as we have known it, has been shaken to its roots.

The next wave – Web 3.0 – will organize itself around two different elements: context and the user.

By "context," I mean the intent that brings you to the Web, your reason for surfing. Looking for a job is "context," as is planning a trip or shopping for clothes. Fundamental to context is the user. And when you fuse a specific user with genuine context, you wind up with truly personalized service.

Imagine this: You are planning a trip to Rome. You are looking for a hotel around Piazza di Spagna, but not something large and impersonal – which rules out the Hassler Villa Medici. You like smaller bed-and-breakfasts, with charm, warmth, character. You want an online travel agent who can understand your needs and preferences, and find you not only the right hotel but really interesting restaurants, boutiques and shows all aligned with your taste. Normally, you use Guide du Routard as your travel guide, but today there is still a gulf between travel guides and online travel-booking sites – in other words, content and commerce are fragmented. In Web 3.0, you will see content and commerce finally come together in a big way, no longer forcing you to hop from site to site to get one job done.

On this same trip, you would love to meet local people who share your interests – say, cooking, jazz, opera. In Web 3.0, you will see the community elements of Web 2.0 pulled into context, making it as easy to find new friends with common interests, even in a distant city, as it is to book a hotel room.

Some user-generated content is already evolving into an integral part of travel planning today. At TripAdvisor, for instance, travelers report back on their experiences at hotels around the world. The missing element, however, is the notion of the individual user and his or her personal needs. You don't want to read reviews from anyone. You want to read reviews by people whose taste and judgment you trust.

In a Web 3.0 world, then, a personalized travel agent will help you find and book a highly customized itinerary, leveraging all the power of previous generations of Web technology –searching (both generic and vertical), community building, content and commerce. That's how I get Web 3.0 = (4C+P+VS) – the sum of content, commerce, community and context, with personalization and vertical search.

This is complex technology, requiring sophisticated artificial-intelligence algorithms. After all, your Web 3.0 travel agent will not be a "person" but a "bot", or intelligent agent.

But I suspect you will like your travel bot. And your career bot. And your shopping bot.

So be patient with the technology entrepreneurs around the world, who are working through these generations of the evolving Web, trying to bring about a dramatically better user experience. After all, they - and their bots - are working for you.
 :)

                      Entrepreneur Journeys
                           

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Enterprise 2.0 and the Culture of Collaboration - Part II

This is Part II of a synopsis of the book The Culture of Collaboration by Evan Rosen. This post is written by guest author Sham Karandikar. Here's the link to Part I.

Effects

True global companies go well beyond marketing, selling and supporting their wares worldwide. They design, assemble and produce both products and services concurrently around the world. Today's Global Collaborative Enterprise (GCE) is a collection of inter-dependent companies that engage in the shared creation of value, often in real-time. The GCE exploits time zones and global work-sharing to design, assemble and create products and services 24 hours a day.

For example, Boeing has re-invented itself as a global collaborative enterprise which includes the supply chain, customers and even the customer's customers (i.e. airline passengers). Boeing's largest multi-media room in Everett - where employees can participate in video and web conferences and share 3-dimensional CAD/CAM software - is named the Global Collaboration Center. Moscow, for instance, is almost exactly on the other side of the world from Everett, with a time difference of 11 hours; so, when Everett is sleeping, Moscow works; and vice versa.

Types of Collaboration

Collaboration can be classified into three types, based on the level of interaction among the participants:

1. Low-level:  Involves exchanging information through threaded text discussions, video conferencing, web conferencing and document-sharing.
2. Mid-level: Involves a more elaborate collaboration tool set, that allows companies to share information with external organizations via the web. These organizations may be partners on some projects and competitors on others.
3. High-level:  Involves designing parts, plans, tools and processes concurrently among global partners.

High-level collaboration is truly the highest form of sharing. At Toyota, product designers, manufacturing specialists and business partners connect globally through its visual and virtual communications system, which reduces cycle time, enhances product quality and boosts production efficiency. Toyota now manufactures vehicles at over 50 sites in 26 countries and must bridge many regional cultures as engineers collaborate.

Boeing and Toyota are setting the standard in the aerospace and automobile industries respectively, utilizing the best talent regardless of location.

Conclusion

As the culture of collaboration permeates work and life styles, our habits are changing faster than we realize. While asynchronous interaction has its place, collaboration is increasingly rich, real-time and spontaneous. Increasingly, businesses are rejecting bureaucracy as wasteful and costly. In contrast to red tape and a serial approach, we create greater value when we engage one another directly, design products concurrently and collaborate across functional, business unit, corporate and regional boundaries. The current economic trend is to exploit the best talent at the best price, regardless of geography. The clear lesson from Toyota, Boeing, Dow Chemicals, Mayo Clinic, Proctor & Gamble and other organizations is that good decisions include the perspective of people throughout the organization at every level. The necessity of maximizing time, talent and tools in the global economy gives the culture of collaboration an edge. The quest to innovate and create greater value drives the desire to collaborate as organizations embrace the global collaborative Enterprise.

This point - that the global collaborative enterprise has to design, assemble and create products and services concurrently around the world - is explained very well in Evan Rosen's book. Following the lessons of the leading corporations described in the many examples in this book is essential in order to survive and thrive in the economy of the future; I highly recommend this book. Good Luck.

                  

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Enterprise 2.0 and the Culture of Collaboration - Part I

This two-part article is a synopsis of the book The Culture of Collaboration by Evan Rosen. This post is written by guest author Sham Karandikar (my dad) - who has been active in the field of Information Technology longer than I've been living.

Introduction

The world is changing at an ever-increasing rate. New technology has changed our lifestyle completely.  It was not very long ago that the concept of Teleconferencing was beyond our imagination. But now you can chat, discuss and seek opinions from others all over the world as easily as you can from the person in the next office. At the same time, the world is getting so compressed that many corporations have become multinational - some of them operate in over 30 countries. In this situation, adopting a collaborative approach is imperative in order to get total involvement from employees located all over the world

This change is explained very well in the book, The Culture of Collaboration: Maximizing Time, Talent and Tools to Create Value in the Global Economy, by Evan Rosen. The book not only focuses on the theory of collaboration, but also provides lots of live examples to back it up.

The book explains how globalization has created unprecedented opportunities for maximizing resources. Realizing these opportunities however, requires a cultural shift. For example, the changing economics of the automobile industry required faster concept-to-delivery cycles; in response, BMW determined that tele-cooperation was the best way to achieve that goal. Thus, globalization is driving changes to business models, in order to maximize benefits by introducing the culture of collaboration. The name of the game in this changed world is real-time: shorten product development cycles, reduce response times, enhance interconnectivity and enable the free flow of ideas among global partners.

Examples

• The Mayo Clinic was founded on the principle of collaboration. The book spends some time exploring this use case. For example, the Mayo Clinic has already implemented a satellite-based video conferencing network; for each new case, the coordinating doctor immediately assembles a geographically distributed team to evaluate the problem. Because of its track record, and a culture that embraces collaboration, Mayo is experiencing soaring demand.
• Toyota is another company that has exported a collaborative culture: make decisions slowly by consensus. Toyota's culture provides a stark contrast to many organizational cultures that value internal competition; such as Enron, which hired and rewarded only the very best and brightest, and is now in bankruptcy. Internal competition delivers results in the short term but collaboration builds long term value. One outcome is that Toyota has a stable workforce, which is a significant competitive advantage.
• The Dow Chemical Company, which creates value through collaboration, was perhaps the first company of its size to conduct all of its video conferencing over a Converged IP network. Called Dow-Net, it introduced i-Rooms and digital white boards that let users in 43 countries connect via Polycom video conferencing equipment to any Dow site while collaborating on applications and data.
• Proctor & Gamble has embraced spontaneous interaction since the company first made instant messaging available to employees in 2000. P&G employees increasingly connect with each other in real-time so that ideas fly and team members concurrently make better, quicker decisions.
• The World Bank is comprised of 10,000 employees from 184 countries, who provide loans and share knowledge globally. To help developing nations deal with globalization, the World Bank  encourages collaboration among globally dispersed staff. Building trust is a critical success factor in effective collaboration. Drawing on their global knowledge, cross-cultural collaborators can spark synergies and create greater value.

Dissolving Barriers

Within organizations, barriers develop among departments and functions. Marketing develops its own culture but has difficulty in interacting with sales. Product Management and Engineering disagree over product direction and avoid interaction. There was a time when many organizations refused to give employees Internet access because of fears that people would surf the web instead of work - yet another manifestation of an archaic Command & Control approach. Most organizations now realize that blocking such access interferes with information flow and idea generation. Encouraging interaction among people with common interests reinforces cross-functional collaboration.

Taking the example of the Mayo Clinic, perhaps the most important role the SPARC unit plays is to break down the barriers among functions. Because of its methodology for innovation and a physical environment that encourages brainstorming, SPARC consistently succeeds in cross-functional collaboration. The convergence of voice, data and video over IP has forced people, who previously had little or no contact, to collaborate.

Another trend enabling collaboration and breaking down barriers is the implementation of common processes and systems throughout the organization. For example, the use of common processes and systems allows Boeing to easily move people from one aircraft program to another and to share tasks.

Thus the culture of collaboration dissolves the barriers of time and distance, delivers awesome results and creates value. Deriving these benefits, however, requires an understanding of both the potential and the limitations of the tools involved.

Continued in Part II.

                  

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Caution - Founders at work!

Seth Godin says that we should worry about coincidence .

Which is exactly what happened to me. Almost as a continuation of my previous post about the differing risk tolerances of startups and large companies  - and a related post  by my friend Jason Drohn at JDs blog, that carried the ball forward (thanks, Jason!) - I happened to read this short essay "Learning from Founders " by the inimitable Paul Graham [well, anyone who is a regular  reader of Paul's will agree that it is short by his standards]. Written as a foreword to Jessica Livingston's book "Founders at Work", Paul gives us, in his classic "no-bullshit" style, an under-the-covers look at how work really gets done in a small startup. Here's a brief snippet of the essay:

In fact, programming didn't get done by well-dressed people at clean desks during office hours. It got done by badly dressed people (I was notorious for programmming wearing just a towel) in offices strewn with junk at 2 in the morning. But no visitor would understand that. Not even investors, who are supposed to be able to recognize real productivity when they see it.

I highly recommend reading this piece - like all Paul Graham essays, this one is deceptively simple to read and yet offers some deep insights into the world of programming and startups. As for the book, I haven't read it yet - if someone has, I would love to get your opinion in the comments!

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