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Thursday, December 29, 2005 |
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Genographic Project - Update
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The Genographic Project
If you remember back to high school biology class, we get half our genes from our father and half from our mother. Each half is a "shuffled deck" of DNA that comes down to us from our ancestors. Ever wonder where your ancestors came from? Not just one hundred years ago but 30,000 years ago? As we move around the world, get married, have children who marry and so on, things will get blurred. Some people really care about figuring out the lines of descent before they are too blurred to decode. IBM cares a lot about this and helped launch the Genographic Project in collaboration with the National Geographic Society. The study combines linguists, paleontologists, genealogists, cultural anthropologists and other scientific researchers working together to explore the migration patterns of the human race. To get the data needed to unravel the mysteries of our line of descent, the genographic project is collecting DNA from the public. To participate, you can purchase a kit for $99.95 (helps fund important research around the world) and "open the door to the ancient past of your own genetic background". After submitting your DNA using a simple and painless cheek swab you can track your sample through a secure, private, and anonymous system at the Genographic Project. More than 50,000 kits were acquired by the public within the first few months of the project. New research from the DNA is already revealing some surprises. For example, it now appears that before reaching Europe, modern humans arrived in India, where they created some of the earliest human culture. Another study showed that Europeans owe their ancestry mainly to Stone Age hunters, not to later farmers as had been previously thought. My own "Certificate of Y-chromosome DNA testing" revealed that I belong to Haplogroup R1b (M343). For a bit of light reading over the holiday weekend, I am going to try to figure out what this means. Like all of us men, my line of ancestry began in Africa with "Eurasian Adam" between 31,000 and 79,000 years ago. |
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Saturday, December 24, 2005 |
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Five Percent
In spite of the rosy online sales stories, we still have a very long way to go. I actually feel we have most of the way to go -- we have only seen five percent of what we are going to see -- in both our business and personal lives. Although growing at double digit rates, the e-commerce sales in the third quarter accounted for just 2.3 percent of total sales. It will be very interesting to see what the final numbers show for all of 2005. (See Census Bureau for data on this). Whatever the numbers may show, the real point is that businesses and their websites have a long way to go to become on demand at meeting our rapidly rising expectations. While it is truly amazing what many websites have achieved, we continue to see some things that make us scratch our heads. Any of us could cite personal cases. Here are a few examples I experienced in just the last couple of weeks. A major financial services company had the following at the top of a financial statement -- "ONLINE STATEMENT this is not a legal statement". Huh? A hotel (for of a global chain) in Philadelphia told me they can't access any of my account information and that their headquarters can not access any hotel information. On purpose, they said. I emailed their customer service about it and here is what they said -- "I apologize that the hotel was unable to locate your account information, and I apologize that our online sales office doesn't have access to your personal billing information at hotels. Some of our hotels, per our members request, require written authorization, with your signature, in order to protect your privacy. As such, we are unable to view records of your stays at hotels or add missing stays without a copy of your hotel receipts". Still not convinced we are only five percent of the way there? One of the world's largest parcel delivery company's website said "Pickup is not available in your area". I had entered a nine-digit zip code. The website wanted five digits. Rather than saying I had made an error or just looking at the first five, they processed the zip code and concluded they didn't deliver there. I could not convince customer service that this was a website problem. They said it was my fault for entering it wrong. A giant healthcare website has a list of their providers "online". After calling the doctor's office for an appointment, they said "He hasn't worked at the practice for two years". Meanwhile the advertisers are getting desperate to get our attention. Pop-up boxes and flash movies that we have to watch or click to get to what we want. "Contact Us" forms require a mini-survey and pre-categorization of our question before we can ask it, and then a message is sent to them with no copy to us. We have a long way to go -- the good news is that it is happening -- steady progress is being made. Already companies are being judged by their websites and the final numbers for 2005 will encourage even more competition to get us moving toward ten percent! |
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Monday, December 19, 2005 |
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The Internet Division
Before getting into the history, I must say how proud I am to see how ibm.com has evolved from a small computer under the desk at IBM Headquarters in Armonk to a global powerhouse of a communications medium. I can't say that I foresaw even a fraction of the amazing capabilities of the Internet but one thing I was sure of -- it was an amazing breakthrough in how to communicate with people both inside and outside of the company. It was May 24, 1994 when ibm.com came to life after a lot of hard work by my colleagues. (take a look at an ibm.com page from 1996). The history of the effort has been reported in a number of magazines and books, including a story in the Harvard Business Review. The effort was inspired, in part, by a paper called "Get Connected" which I wrote in late 1993. The concepts described in the paper seem very primitive now, but at the time most people thought they were revolutionary or radical or even weird. There were many firsts on ibm.com. It was not the first website but it was a very early pioneer in the commercial exploitation of the web. It was first to have a CEO give an audio message on the homepage, first of the top largest companies in the world to put it's annual report on the web and provide an online employment application form. Back in those days Microsoft was saying that the web would not amount to much because it was too slow and too insecure. There were many "heroes" in the pioneering days of Internet technology at IBM and I was privileged to be part of the group. There was a grassroots knowledge of the Internet in the company and I became the "spiritual leader" that helped them to be heard. Irving was the executive who enabled me to be heard. Last month Irving and I spent a morning being interviewed by some of the ibm.com team on our opinions about the subject of innovation. A video of the interviews and podcast are posted here. And now for a bit of the history. (read more) |
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Friday, December 16, 2005 |
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Vienna Webcast
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Thursday, December 15, 2005 |
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Bubble-2 ?
In The Bubble - Reconsidering the Boom and the Bust, I made the point that the bubble burst had nothing to do with the Internet. It had to do with flawed business models. There were CEO's who had lost of sight of making money the old fashioned way -- by gaining revenue that exceeded costs and expenses. In fact many of them got confused between revenue from customers and incremental investment funds from venture capitalists. Many had a vision of making water run up hill or turning sand into gold. It was a belief in these radical ideas that caused the bubble, not the promise and potential of the Internet. The reason I don't think we are entering "bubble-2" is that entrepreneurs and investors alike have learned a great deal from "bubble-1". One of the lessons of the bubble is that the basics of business have not changed. I have always thought of making money as requiring five simple ideas. First is to segment the market and understand the needs and wants of customers in each segment. Second is to have pricing that meets the competition. Next is to manage to a unit cost structure that is less than the price. Efficient distribution is key whether the product is physical, data-based, or service oriented. Finally, is the essential ingredient of great customer service. If a business can do those five things it will make money, otherwise it will lose. If you are interested in forming your own opinion about new technology companies and their prospects for making money, I highly recommend that you attend the Demo Conference. Demo conferences allow entrepreneurs to show off new gadgets, software, hardware and business ideas and enables the press, analysts, investors, and technology enthusiasts to assess what they see. Demo has always been my favorite conference and I am looking forward to the next one -- to be held in Phoenix, February 6-8, 2006.
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Monday, December 12, 2005 |
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Which Side Are You On?
The EV-DO feature provides wireless broadband in locations where there is no WiFi. It works very well in trains and cars. Currently Verizon Wireless is the leading provider for EV-DO coverage, with more than sixty major cities. Sprint is rolling out coverage to compete. EV-DO has numerous advantages over WiFi -- the main one being seamless roaming across the country since the signal travels on same cell sites as cell phones. One disadvantage of EV-DO has been the need for an expensive card to plug into your laptop. Now with the Z60 it is built in -- in addition to having WiFi. |
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Friday, December 9, 2005 |
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The Search
Rather than a typical "keynote" speech, John was interviewed by SG Cowen in a fireside chat format. In response to how "old media" is doing versus "new media" John cited boingboing.net as an example of where things are headed. Boingboing has two million readers and yet most people have never heard of it. The content ranges all over the map and the advertisers love it, not because they care about the content, but because there is such a large community of 25-40 year old visitors that represent a very nice market. Several of the audience questions were about Google, as expected. John said the biggest risk they face is themselves. "Google has to do something spectacularly dumb" and get it over with to prove they are a "grown up" company. The Google search engine is their revenue engine and the "clickstream" may be the next big signal from the Internet of a sea change. The clickstream is described in detail in John's book but basically it is the database of every mouse click of everyone in the world. John and I have both been talking about the print business for a long time but he speaks about it with incredible creditability. "The print business is not a business" he said. "Kids know Google but don't know print". He also described how he sees Yellow Pages being replaced by the "local" versions of Google and Yahoo!. John was more sanguine than I would have thought about the newspaper business. He agrees they are in a nose-down dive but feels they are beginning to make the right moves and if they make the painful crossing of the gap to a lower cost structure and revenues shifted to the Internet that they will survive. |
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Thursday, December 8, 2005 |
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Palladium Caching
Each page of the Palladium web site has a link to pages that provide a tutorial about geocaching. The pages display each of nine shoe styles in a "home city" and provide travel information and cache clues for that city. Palladium is placing clues on non-Palladium sites and clues will be hidden in different retailer-determined locations and announced on public geocaching sites. Posters will go up in the cities where the hidden caches are placed. The target market is "Urban Nomads" ages 22 to 38. The tag line for their advertising campaign is "The Destination is the Journey".Palladium has has taken an innovative approach to "advertising" packaged with valuable information in a non-intrusive way. Ironically, there shoes are nice looking but don't seem up to the challenges of any serious hiking. Maybe I would find them more appealing if I was 22-38 instead of 22+38! |
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Saturday, December 3, 2005 |
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IBM Happenings: November 2005  The month of November was another incredibly busy month for IBM, with a slew of announcements in hardware, software, services, acquisitions, and corporate initiatives including one help find a cure for cancer. There have eight acquisitions year-to-date, thirty-five in the past five years, and forty-eight in the past ten years. Here are the announcements made by the company during the month. The complete index of prior IBM Happenings is here.
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Sarbox-2
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Friday, December 2, 2005 |
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A Chat With The SAC
In the early days a secretary might take dictation, type letters, arrange the bosses desk, and pour coffee - even make coffee. Today's administrative assistant performs information research and retrieval, plans and books travel, collaborates with colleagues to optimize the use of their principal's time, anticipates the needs of those they support, handles inquiries from inside and outside of the company, prepares presentation materials, and takes online courses to improve their skills. That is just a sampling. Administrative assistants are invaluable assets that leverage the scarce resources of the organization they are part of. These are just a few of the reasons that I have always had the greatest respect for administrative assistants. Once a year I am privileged to spend an hour in an interview with Lillian Davis who is responsible for Site Administrative Services at IBM in Austin, Texas. That is her day job but she also serves as the doyen of the Senior Administrative Council. This group of 100+ administrative assistants from all parts of IBM serve as the thought leaders for thousands of other assistants and they share their expertise as well as make suggestions to the company for improved procedures. Aside from all that, when you hear Lillian on this podcast you will think she is a major network news anchor. |
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Thursday, December 1, 2005 |
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Sarbox - A Silver Lining?
The part that causes the most challenge for businesses is Section 404: Management Assessment Of Internal Controls. Among other things, "404" requires the annual report of a public company to contain an "internal control report" which states the responsibility of management for establishing and maintaining an adequate internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting and contains an assessment of the effectiveness of the company's internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting. Not only is this a mouthful, it is very hard to be able to attest to. In order to say that things are "under control" it is necessary to first gain an understanding of exactly how things work. The "things" are business processes -- things like accounts receivable, tax calculations, invoicing, pension disbursements, credit card processing, etc. Companies have thousands of processes and sub-processes. Some of them are decades old, some are done by hand or with spreadsheets, faxes, forms, and antiquated procedures. Companies that have made acquisitions have even more processes because they have multiple processes for doing the same thing. On the one hand, 404 is a giant headache, but on the other hand it is an opportunity. In fact according to a CIO Insight/Gartner survey, 51 percent of companies are attempting to "take advantage of Sarbanes-Oxley initiatives to achieve better business performance". This is the silver lining in the cloud. The requirement to analyze processes in order to certify that they are working presents the opportunity to automate them. Many IT companies are jumping on the opportunity and offering tools and services to insure compliance and also automate the manual reporting and certification steps that are now done manually. For example, IBM has been making a number of acquisitions of companies that provide linkage between the IT systems and the actual business processes themselves. Inefficient processes are not only costly and prone to error, and thereby present a Sarbox exposure, but they also usually manifest themselves in poor customer satisfaction or inconvenience in some way. A search on "fax this form" results in 225,000,000 matches! We have a long way to go. |
Within ten minutes of posting the story, I got an update from Kris Lichter at 
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