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Robin Good
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Robin Good: Back in March of 2011 Kevin Kelly wrote an interesting article entitled "The Satisfaction Paradox".
Within it, he points clearly at an emerging trend: content price becoming lower and lower, and increased ease-of-access to tons of good content, whether this may be books, music or films.
In such a new world of abundance, where valuable content is all around me, cheap and easily accessible, what is then the next value-creation frontier, he asks.
And this is the insightful view he offers: "...Netflix has more great movies a click away -- after I filter out the dross -- than I can watch in my lifetime.
What do I watch next?
Spotify and other music streaming services will have more fantastic, I-am-in-heaven music available everywhere all the time than I can ever listen to.
What do I listen to next?
Google will have every book ever published only an eight of a second away, and collaborative filtering, friends recommendations and a better Amazon engine, will narrow down those stacks to the best 10,000 books for me.
So what do I read next?
I believe that answering this question is what outfits like Amazon will be selling in the future.
For the price of a subscription you will subscribe to Amazon and have access to all the books in the world at a set price...(An individual book you want to read will be as if it was free, because it won't cost you extra.) The same will be true of movies (Netflix), or music (iTunes or Spotify or Rhapsody.) You won't be purchasing individual works.
Instead you will pay Amazon, or Netflix, or Spotify, or Google for their suggestions of what you should pay attention to next.
Amazon won't be selling books (which are marginally free); they will be selling their recommendations of what to read.
You'll pay the subscription fee in order to get access to their recommendations to the "free" works, which are also available elsewhere.
Their recommendations (assuming continual improvements by more collaboration and sharing of highlights, etc.) will be worth more than the individual books.
You won't buy movies; you'll buy cheap access and pay for personalized recommendations..."
I ask you: How close are these "recommendations" and "suggestions" to the work that many curators do?
Is curation then in the business of "what to pay attention to next"?
Must-read. 10/10
Full article: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2011/03/the_satsisfacti.php
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Robin Good
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Tom Krazit reports at PaidContent: "In an insanely crowded mobile apps marketplace, pricing is one of the ways to stand out from the competition: for better or worse. Distimo shared some data Thursday on app-pricing strategies as well as the old-fashioned retail concept of the sale."
The report entitled "The impact of app discounts and the impact of being a featured app" has indeed some useful information that can help you understand a what price level to offer your iPhone/iPad/Android app.
Download the report here: http://www.distimo.com/publications/
"Those who have erred on the high side and aren’t getting the response they would like should consider a sale: in Apple’s App Store average revenue rose 41 percent on the first day of a sale and by 22 percent over the course of 15 days, Distimo said in a new report on app pricing."
"...steep(er) cuts paid off: “For example, offering a discount of one dollar on an application that normally costs $7.99, lowers the revenue, whereas offering a discount of three dollars on average increased the revenue by 131 percent,”... Original source: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-distimo-when-its-time-for-a-mobile-app-sale-choose-your-price-wisely/
(Curated by Robin Good)
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Robin Good
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Robin Good: Cleeng is a service that allows content publishers to monetize their content by placing certain sections or specific content items on their site behind a paid wall. Payments can be made in one-click and Paypal, major credit cards, SMS payments are all supported.
"Cleeng patented solution allows publishers to hide specific part of their content between two tags: for example a blogger can monetize an entire article or just a part of it, a novelist can cover just a few pages.
With Cleeng, you define which part of the content is available for users and the price for each item of content.
...
When published the content item is hidden behind a secure Cleeng layer on your website, so the page remains completely visible to search engines."
Key features: http://cleeng.com/us/features/
Demo-examples: http://cleeng.com/us/features/demos/
Find out more: http://cleeng.com/
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Robin Good
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Fred Wilson writes:
"Making movies is expensive and risky. I totally get that the studios need to make a lot of money on those movies to make their business model work.
But denying customers the films they want, on the devices they want to watch them, when they want to watch them is not a great business model.
It leads to piracy, as we have discussed here many times, but more importantly it also leads to the loss of a transaction to a competing form of entertainment.
...I am sure there was a time when scarcity was a good business model for the film industry.
...I understand their muscle memory in terms of the scarcity business model.
But restricting access to content is a bad business model in the age of a global network that costs practically nothing to distribute on.
I've argued this point many times with film executives. They insist that they need their windows. They argue they need to manage access to their films to extract every last dollar from the market.
That just doesn't make sense to me.
If they went direct to their customers, offered their films at a reasonable price (say $5/view net to them), and if they made their films available day one everywhere in the world, I can't see how they wouldn't make more money."
Rightful. 8/10
Read the full article: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/01/scarcity-is-a-shitty-business-model.html
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Robin Good
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Alexander Osterwalder has just published the prototype concept of a new tool to be called the Customer Value Canvas. A perfect complement to the Business Model Canvas he is about to release. (reserve your seat here)
The Customer Value Canvas is a simple editable template which facilitates your job of mapping and identifying some key factors in your business model:
a) On the customer side:
- the need - job to be done - problem to be solved that your customer has
- the specific pains he has
- and the specific gains he is looking for
+
b) On your side (the business):
- the value proposition - product/service
- the specific pains it alleviates - the specific gains it brings
I find this schematization a perfect match to support any lean and innovative approach to business building especially in the online world.
I highly recommend this article which illustrates step by step the concept and use of this useful model-canvas.
Very useful. 9/10
Read the full article: http://www.businessmodelalchemist.com/2012/01/the-customer-value-canvas-v-0-8.html
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Robin Good
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Seth Godin writes:
"How much should an ebook cost?
This is the wrong question.
The right question is: How much will an ebook cost?
Because the answer isn’t up to one author or one publisher or even a price-fixing cartel. It’s up to the market, which is a far more complicated entity.
...In a market where the marginal cost is close to zero, prices tend to race to zero as well.
Except…
Except when there are no substitutes.
If you want Elvis Costello to call you on the phone and wish you a happy birthday, he can charge you whatever he wants, because even though it costs him very little, you have no alternatives. If you want Elvis, well, there’s only one. Take it or leave it."
Interesting. Insightful. 8/10
Read the full article: http://www.thedominoproject.com/2011/12/how-much-should-an-ebook-cost.html
An analysis of 32 startup failure post-mortems to identify the top 20 reasons for startup failure. Learn how you can avoid failure through these lessons.
Via Flavian Mihai
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Robin Good
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Robin Good: Deep inside this article from TopSpinMedia from February of 2011 there is really valuable stuff about how to seed the right soil to market to fans.
While the original presentation and article were created for a seminar targeted at independent musicians, the strategies and principles illustrated here are applicable to any service-oriented online business created around a value-creation proposition.
Here a few gems I have found in it. [I have replaced a few specific mentions of "music" with the word "stuff" as these principles can be applied to any indpendent value creation service online]
"...I wouldn’t recommend you start by selling expensive packages on your web site, Facebook page, or Mobile Roadie app.
In fact, I would recommend you start by selling NOTHING.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself…
...Artists of every size have exactly the same issue and feeling: “If more people would just hear this music, they would fall in love with it.” As Tim O’Reilly famously said, “An artist’s enemy is obscurity, not piracy.”
Your initial goal is to build awareness, get people to know you exist and to feel an affinity toward your art. If you are successful at building awareness you turn that awareness into fan connections and build a strong relationship with those fans by communicating with them.
Once you’ve established a relationship and trust (and not until then) you can turn some number of those fans into customers.
Step one is to take those people who have never heard of you and make them interested. Turn them from non-knowers into carers.
...The bad news is posting your music on iTunes, YouTube, Soundcloud, Facebook, Official.fm, Rapidshare, Angelfire, and MySpace doesn’t mean anyone is going to see it...
...What works is making great [stuff] and [illustrating and presenting it] until people start taking notice and naturally wanting to share their enthusiasm for what you do.
You can’t make people share something they don’t like, but you can make it easy for them to share your [stuff] with their friends should they be motivated to do so."
But there is a LOT more.
Must-read. 9/10
Read the full article: http://www.topspinmedia.com/2011/02/getting-practical-a-step-by-step-guide-to-building-an-online-marketing-plan-that-works-ians-presentation-from-new-music-seminar-los-angeles-february-2011
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Robin Good
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From the original article:
"Just before Thanksgiving, the PIXIES played a sold-out show at the intimate Music Box Theatre in Hollywood.
Were you there? Did you know about it?
Every single ticket to the show was sold by the band, via Topspin, direct to fans. There were no service charges, no print-at-home fees.
There was also no marketing budget to promote the show...
Fans found out about the show once tickets were on-sale (no lead up marketing, no advertising, no pre-sales), and quickly and easily purchased digital bar code tickets.
At the show, the door staff validated all 1,200 tickets with the free Topspin iOS ticket scanner, running on a couple of iPhones and an iPad. Easy. Accurate. Low cost."
Watch the video on this page: http://www.topspinmedia.com/2011/12/pixies-topspin-direct-to-fan-ticketing to get the full insight on this no-middleman approach to ticket selling from one of the Pixies band members.
Download the video: http://t.opsp.in/17r8V
What Topspin does:
a) Topspin media players stream high-quality audio and video, and can be played & shared anywhere – from websites and blogs to Facebook feeds and mobile phones.
b) Connect with fans via email, Facebook, or Twitter in exchange for free downloads. Analyze fan data and send targeted email blasts.
c) Customize a pro-grade online store with a few clicks, and distribute your offers across the web. Sell digital and physical media, merch, tickets, fan club memberships, or anything else you can dream up.
d) Topspin’s built-in fulfillment can ship orders anywhere around the world.
e) Sell on YouTube - see this video: http://cdn.topspin.net/api/v2/widget/player/94725?iframe=true&width=768&height=432
FAQ: http://www.topspinmedia.com/faq
Find out more: http://www.topspinmedia.com/
(Curated by Robin Good)
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Robin Good
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Jeff Jarvis at Buzz Machine considers the upside-down logic of paywalls at online newspapers, where low-value readers get their content for free while loyal, engaged readers are required to pay.
Instead Jarvis proposes that newspapers build the opposite — a system of credits that rewards readers for actions that show loyalty (and benefit) the publication, such as:
a) sharing stories across social media,
b) looking at ads,
c) reading more articles (which generates more ad inventory), and
d) sharing data about yourself that enables the paper to charge higher advertising rates.
Jeff Jarvis wites: "Imagine that you pay to get access to The Times. Everyone does.
You pay for one article.
Or you pay $20 as a deposit so you’re not bothered every time you come.
But whenever you add value to The Times, you earn a credit that delays the next bill.
* You see ads, you get credit.
* You click: more credit.
* You come back often and read many pages: credit.
* You promote The Times on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or your blog: credit. The more folks share what you’ve shared, the more credit you get.
* You buy merchandise via Times e-commerce: credit.
* You buy tickets to a Times event: credit.
* You hand over data that makes you more valuable to The Times and its advertisers (e.g., revealing where you’re going on your next trip): credit.
* You add pithy comment to articles that other readers appreciate: credit.
* You take on tasks in crowdsourced journalistic endeavors: credit.
* You answer a reporter’s question on Twitter and the reporter uses your information: credit.
* You correct an error in a story: credit.
* You give a news tip or an idea for an article The Times publishes: credit.
Maybe you never pay for The Times again because The Times has gained more value out of its relationship with you.
If, on the other hand, you hardly do any of those things, then you have to pay for using The Times."
...
"You see, that values the local reader over the remote reader.
My idea for the reverse meter values the engaged reader over the occasional reader — and even rewards greater engagement.
And therein lies, I think, the key strategic skill for news businesses online: understanding that all readers are not equal; knowing who your more valuable readers are; getting more of them; and making them more valuable."
...
"The key strategic opportunity for news sites is relationships — deeper, more valuable relationships with more (but not too many) people."
Must-read. 9/10
Read the full article: http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/12/19/why-not-a-reverse-meter/
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Robin Good
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Excerpted from the article: "Noah Kagan built two multi-million dollar online businesses before turning 28.
Mr. Noah has quite the start-up resume. He was employee #30 at Facebook, #4 at Mint, had previously worked for Intel (where he frequently took naps under his desk), and had turned down a six-figure offer from Yahoo.
...Noah’s helped create Gambit, an online gaming payment platform and a multi-million dollar business; and AppSumo, loved by entrepreneurs and moms everywhere...
The purpose of this post is simple: to teach you how to get a $1,000,000 business idea off the ground in one weekend, full of specific tools and tricks that Noah has used himself.
He will be your guide…"
....
"I’m going to suggest is that you start with a much simpler essence of your product over the course of a weekend, rather than wasting time building something for weeks… only to discover no one wants it."
Here the key steps:
Step 1: Find your (profitable) idea
Step 2: Find $1,000,000 worth of customers
Step 3: Assess your customer’s value
Step 4: Validate your idea
Read the full article (full examples and references) here: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2011/09/24/how-to-create-a-million-dollar-business-this-weekend-examples-appsumo-mint-chihuahuas/
(Curated by Robin Good)
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Robin Good
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from Seth Goding at the Domino Project (http://www.thedominoproject.com/2011/12/how-the-long-tail-cripples-bonus-contentmultimedia.html):
"Phil Simon sent along this interview with the head of Ingram books.
It’s filled with breathtaking visions of the future, and they are economically ridiculous.
The Long Tail creates acres of choice, so much as to make the number of options almost countless.
But at the same time, it embraces (in every format) much lower production values.
For what Michael Jackson and Sony paid to produce the Thriller album, today’s artists can make and market more than 5,000 songs.
You just can’t justify spending millions of dollars to produce a record in the long tail world.
[The only reason that movies still cost so much to make is the finite number of movie screens available to the studios (this choke point enforces the scarcity of the short head). Once the world is 100% Netflix, don't expect to see many more $200 million movies.]
...The quality is going to remain in the writing and in the bravery of ideas, not in teams of people making expensive digital books.
The market didn’t really make a conscious choice here, but the choice has been made: it’s not a few publishers putting out a few books for the masses.
No, the market for the foreseeable future is a million publishers publishing to 100 million readers.
Do the math. Lots of choice, not a lot of whistles. And no bells."
Must read: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/how-will-we-read-the-book_1_b_1163455.html
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Robin Good
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Here is a cool and immediately useful implementation of Ash Maurya and Alex Osterwalder's business model canvas to help startups map and document their business model key strategy components.
This web-based interactive template is immediately editable without any login or registration, giving the user the possibility to easily fill-in key information characterizing its business strategy. Without registering at all the model can be named, saved and further edited at will at a unique shareable URL.
Immediately useful. 9/10
Try it now: http://www.netprofess.com/canvas.php
(Reviewed by Robin Good)
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Robin Good
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From the article: "The problem of app discovery is not one to be overlooked.
To take an example , sorting through and finding the app you need from over 425,000 available on the iTunes store is a herculean task.
Add in the problem of gaining customer interest and you have another big task on your hand.
...
However Intel does have one trick up its sleeve and this just might be a game changer.
The idea here is to allow consumers to build their own sub app-stores.
Curating the best of apps from a particular genre and creating a sub app-store would let users with a specific interest find the top apps with ease.
So it will be possible to have sub appstores with special focus on music apps , medical apps and so on."
Full article: http://www.fonearena.com/blog/42727/intel-appup-and-the-problem-of-content-curation.html
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Robin Good
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Robin Good: Felix Salmon on the Reuters blogs has a short but insightful article on how content creation and distribution is changing and on the diminishing value of being an integrated silo that created, edits, publishes and distributes its own content.
He writes: "Facebook and Google have become two of the biggest media companies in the world in extremely short amounts of time, precisely because they don’t have much interest in owning any content.
Rupert Murdoch looks at Google and sees a pirate because he does everything: he both creates content (think 20th Century Fox), and also distributes it (think Sky TV). ...
While the social, digital world is one where the biggest media companies have a much lighter touch, and where the content creators with the broadest reach will be the ones who care the least about protecting their copyrights.
I suspect that we’re only in the very early days of seeing how this is going to disrupt just about every media organization built on the idea of hosting a website and selling ads, including highly socially-attuned ones like the Huffington Post. HuffPo is built on the idea that when stories are shared on Twitter or Facebook, that will drive traffic back to huffingtonpost.com, where it can then monetize that traffic by selling it to advertisers.
But in future, the most viral stories are going to have a life of their own, being shared across many different platforms and being read by people who will never visit the original site on which they were published."
Insightful. 9/10
Read the full article: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/01/23/how-sharing-disrupts-media/
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Robin Good
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Aizon.me is a free web-based tool that has been designed to help entrepreneurs and startuppers organize, plan and structure their new activity.
Aizon.me is made up of four modules that take care of specific areas including:
1) ocoach - online coach. Here you can find a checklist to start your business, a to-do list to help you with completing planned tasks, and a progress chart to keep you on track.
2) sb.plan – (simplified business plan) This is a simple and useful tool for collecting your thoughts, prioritizing your actions, and planning your business strategy.
3) b.model
The Business Model Canvas, is a strategic management and entrepreneurial tool. It allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot your business model. It is a visual template pre-formatted with the nine blocks of a business model.
4) bm.chart This is a page populated by four charts focusing on Profitability, Revenues (bu Customer Segment or by Stream), Costs. It helps the user estimate his market size, revenue streams, and costs — faster than any spreadsheet and it allows you to test the profitability of your ideas with a quick reporting dashboard.
Find out more: http://aizon.me/
(Reviewed by Robin Good)
If you’ve read any of the Facebook marketing case studies over the last year, you’ve seen examples of small business profits and boosts in ecommerce sales via Facebook sharing. If your business is ready to move toward Facebook profits, your next question should be: “What distinguishes profitable and unprofitable Facebook marketing campaigns?” There are a number of strategies companies use to do Facebook business effectively. Let’s look at five of them: 1. Advertising-Based Ecommerce: Marketers can leverage the massive reach and highly customizable targeting of Facebook’s ad platform. The ads-direct-to-websites option is often overlooked, but can be immediately profitable. 2. Fan Marketing Ecommerce: Some businesses have taken the radical step to start entirely new pages and use Facebook ads to grow a new and more targeted fan base. With their more sophisticated and up-to-date understanding of how to engage fans, they achieve better results than they had with their old page. 3. Facebook Ads and Email: Many companies already have email dialed in. They know how much the average email subscriber is worth to their company, and they have an email marketing process that’s profitable. 4. Facebook Ads and Text Messaging:
As example, users can respond to a coupon for a product or service. 5. Generating Traffic to Your Ad-Supported Site: If you’re a publisher or blogger, content is your stock in trade, and advertising is usually your bread and butter. Why not create a Facebook page for your site, grow that fan base, then post a link to every new article? This boosts traffic to your website.... Read the full article: http://j.mp/A1oIeE
(Curated by Giuseppe Mauriello)
Via Giuseppe Mauriello
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Robin Good
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Robin Good
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Robin Good
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Whether you're looking for inspiration, business models, or precedents, the Creative Commons Case Studies is a perfect place to start.
At the moment this resource lists over 350 case studies of companies, individuals and artists utilizing the Creative Commons license to support and to grow their own business.
Case studies in: - Photography
- Music
- Film
- Literature
- Government Usage
- Education
- GLAM: Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums
- Social Justice
- Data
- Journalism
- Technical Case Studies
Start from some of the best featured case studies here: http://bit.ly/rPKdc9 You can also contribute to write and add new case studies.
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Robin Good
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From the article:
"The most significant goal of a startup is finding a scalable and repeatable business model and the process for doing so follows the same validated learning loop.
You start by documenting a set of business model hypotheses, then systematically validate those assumptions against reality and make course-corrections, or pivots, along the way.
It is really important that you write these hypotheses down.
As Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits point out in their book: “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development”, storing them just in your mind is a “subconscious rationalization” trap.
I’ve experimented with a number of different ways now for documenting my hypotheses and this is how I go about doing it:
1) Start with worksheets All these worksheets more or less tackle the same set of questions with slight variations in approach. However, you choose to answer these questions, the point of this exercise is to free form your answers.
Then it’s time to get it down tighter.
2) Create a Business Model versus Business Plan Writing a business plan, at this stage (or ever?), is a form of waste – You can capture the same level of information in a 1 page business mode and have it be more portable and accessible.
But more importantly, it’s a lot harder to distill the essence of your business down to a single page which is great practice for articulating your hypotheses – whether you’re pitching a customer or investor, you only get a tiny slice of time to make your case."
...
Business Plan: A document investors make you write that they don’t read.
Business Model: A single diagram that describes your business.
Key elements around which to build a "sound" business model:
1. Problem: A brief description of the top 3 problems you’re addressing
2. Customer Segments: Who are the customers/users of this system? Can they be further segmented? For example, amateur photographers vs. pro photographers.
3. Unique Value Proposition: What is the product’s tagline or primary reason you are different and worth buying?
4. Solution: What is the minimum feature set (MVP) that demonstrates the UVP up above?
5. Key Activity: Describe the key action users take that maps to revenue or retention? For example, if you are a blogging platform, posting a blog entry would be a key activity.
6. Channels: List the FREE and PAID channels you can use to reach your customer.
7. Cost Structure: List out all your fixed and variable costs.
8. Revenue Streams: Identify your revenue model – subscription, ads, freemium, etc. and outline your back-of-the-envelope assumptions for life time value, gross margin, break-even point, etc.
9, Unfair Advantage: Most founders list things as competitive advantages that really aren’t. Anything that is worth copying will be copied. So what is a competitive advantage: Unfair Advantage: Something that cannot be copied or bought.
- Jason Cohen, A smart bear
Recommended. 8/10
Read the full article by Ash Maurya here: http://www.ashmaurya.com/2010/08/businessmodelcanvas/
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"In the old, narrow view of capitalism, business contributes to society by making a profit, which supports employment, wages, purchases, investments, and taxes.
Conducting business as usual is sufficient social benefit. A firm is largely a self-contained entity, and social or community issues fall outside its proper scope.
...
[But] in recent years business increasingly has been viewed as a major cause of social, environmental, and economic problems.
Companies are widely perceived to be prospering at the expense of the broader community.
Even worse, the more business has begun to embrace corporate responsibility, the more it has been blamed for society’s failures. The legitimacy of business has fallen to levels not seen in recent history.
This diminished trust in business leads political leaders to set policies that undermine competitiveness and sap economic growth. Business is caught in a vicious circle.
A big part of the problem lies with companies themselves, which remain trapped in an outdated approach to value creation that has emerged over the past few decades.
They continue to view value creation narrowly, optimizing short-term financial performance in a bubble while missing the most important customer needs and ignoring the broader influences that determine their longer-term success.
...
The solution lies in the principle of shared value, which involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society by addressing its needs and challenges.
Businesses must reconnect company success with social progress.
Shared value is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success.
It is not on the margin of what companies do but at the center."
Must read. 10/10.
Read the full article: http://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value/ar/1 (requires free registration)
(Curated by Robin Good)
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From the article intro: "Startup funds will be harder to come by in 2012, according to hundreds of venture capitalists polled in a recent survey by the National Venture Capital Association.
...
In spite of the gloomy funding forecasts, there's still hope for entrepreneurs in need of cash in 2012.
In fact, small-business financing options outside the venture capital industry are rapidly proliferating in the digital age.
With just a few clicks, anyone can pitch a business idea to the growing ranks of angel investors.
In addition, a number of Web services now provide platforms for entrepreneurs to raise small sums of money from large pools of people -- a process known as crowdfunding.
Even Congress is showing deference toward the Internet's capacity to connect businesses with capital, as lawmakers weigh rule-changes that would allow entrepreneurs to use social networks to sell stakes in their startups. (Under current securities law, entrepreneurs can only solicit donations.)
Still, a large share of startup funds continues to flow from the old-fashioned lender that small-business owners love to hate: banks.
...
So regardless of whether you run a tech startup on the hunt for strategic Silicon Valley investors or you own a local restaurant that's in need of nothing more than a simple bank loan, entrepreneurs must recognize that in the new year, the fund-raising game has changed."
Here are the new ways to raise in 2012: 1. Banks 2. Crowdfunding 3. Contest and Accelerator Programs 4. Online Pawn Shops 5. Friends and Family 6. Angel List 7. Revenue-Based Financing
Fibd out more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/23/startup-funding-7-ways-to-raise-money-in-2012_n_1161801.html#s563590&title=Banks
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From the article: "We create economic value out of information when we figure out an effective strategy that includes aggregating, filtering and connecting."
"Filtering is what helps us deal with the vast amount of information available to us."
"...the real question is, how do we design filters that let us find our way through this particular abundance of information?
And, you know, my answer to that question has been: the only group that can catalog everything is everybody." (Clay Shirky)
We try to filter information so that we end up with something that is relevant to us – it helps us learn something, it helps us solve a problem, it helps us develop a new hypothesis about the world around us.
These are all connections – and this is what really drives value creation.
However, we can’t connect without some filtering going on. So filtering is important, and it’s a term that includes several different sub-types. I can think of at least five forms of filtering.
...we can use these ideas about filtering to help with business model innovation by changing where it takes place in the value network.
One of Shirky’s points is that since Gutenberg, the economic logic of publishing required publishers (of books, music, movies) to act as filters in order to maximise their investment.
As publishing and filtering has shifted out to human networks, publishers no longer need to fill this role.
Someone (or some network) needs to, and since that creates value, it’s something that can perhaps be monetised.
You can see this in investing. You can put money in Berkshire-Hathaway, where investment choices are run through the personal expert filter of Warren Buffett. Or you can invest in individual stocks recommended by a broker- which is filtering through an expert network. Or you can take advantage of DIY investing, where you do your own filtering, probably aided by some heuristic filters as well. Three different investing business models based on three different filtering methods."
Check this video: http://vimeo.com/8748509
Read the full article by Tim Kastelle: http://timkastelle.org/blog/2010/04/five-forms-of-filtering
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Scooped by
Robin Good
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Curated from the original article by Robin Good: (access requires free registration)
"Systematically exploring alternative approaches to value creation can allow companies to find new opportunities for growth.
[recently a new approach to business growth] has emerged, one that we might label “business model experimentation”: the pursuit of growth through the methodical examination of alternative business models.
At its heart, business model experimentation is a means to explore alternative value creation approaches quickly, inexpensively and, to the extent possible, through “thought experiments.”
The process sheds new light on potential competitors and lowers the risk of taking the wrong or a lesser-potential road — all for an initial investment that is typically quite small relative to what can be gained."
"...[the goal of this report] is to demonstrate how an organization’s ability to methodically and routinely examine multiple business model alternatives — in other words, by treating the business model as a variable and not a constant — can serve as a critical enabler of growth, allowing executives to anticipate, adjust to and capitalize on new technologies or customer insights."
"By engaging in business model experimentation with a small, focused team, companies can accomplish three important goals.
First, they can understand the implications of different business models and make clearer, better informed decisions about where and how they want to compete.
Second, they can identify the business models that will create the most value for customers and themselves and appropriately leverage their existing resources.
And third, they can use business model innovation to extract the maximum potential from other growth-focused activities — their technical R&D, customer insight and strategic development efforts.
Given the high potential of business model innovation and how few companies have mastered it, we see business model experimentation as a potent source of competitive advantage."
Read the full original article here: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2012-winter/53214/how-to-identify-new-business-models/ (requires free registration)
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