Archive for January, 2010

For those of you that watch Football of the American kind, here’s an interesting stat from the WSJ — some have called the NFL “triumph of project management over sport”, I call it “the triumph of marketing over sport”. Here’s why:

According to a Wall Street Journal study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes.

In other words, if you tally up everything that happens between the time the ball is snapped and the play is whistled dead by the officials, there’s barely enough time to prepare a hard-boiled egg. In fact, the average telecast devotes 56% more time to showing replays…. the ratio of inaction to action is approximately 10 to 1.

Stowe flags a nice quote from John Hagel and Thomas Friedman that highlights the shift into the Participatory Era – a characteristic of which will be a move from “store” to “stream”.

John Hagel, the noted business writer and management consultant argues in his recently released “Shift Index” that we’re in the midst of “The Big Shift.” We are shifting from a world where the key source of strategic advantage was in protecting and extracting value from a given set of knowledge stocks — the sum total of what we know at any point in time, which is now depreciating at an accelerating pace — into a world in which the focus of value creation is effective participation in knowledge flows, which are constantly being renewed.

“Finding ways to connect with people and institutions possessing new knowledge becomes increasingly important,” says Hagel. “Since there are far more smart people outside any one organization than inside.” And in today’s flat world, you can now access them all. Therefore, the more your company or country can connect with relevant and diverse sources to create new knowledge, the more it will thrive. And if you don’t, others will.

And I agree with Stowe – a key determinant of business success will be the power of it’s network. I don’t think this will be defined in terms of, say, number of followers, but rather, degree of participation and contribution.

The much hyped decision to charge non-subscribers to the NYTimes for content is likely to set off a firestorm. I’m a subscriber so not impacted. But if you are used to surfing the times in any volume, you are going to hit a pay-to-go forward barrier.

While metering content is generally viewed as a negative, I don’t see it that way. Publishing is a business. If the economics of the current model don’t add-up, move to a different model.

I also don’t buy that it targets their “most loyal users”. Loyalty is earned on the basis of the business you are in – these folks are in the business of monetizing great content – the value equation must cut both ways for loyalty to be established. Their loyal users are by definition aren’t just those who visit, but also pay to visit. Paying for content isn’t a “burden” it is a requirement to supporting those who craft it for you. The thesis also assumes the most loyal users aren’t also paying subscribers – like me.

I would argue that it in fact targets those too lazy, cheap or disinterested in paying for content, but enjoying it enough to visit frequently. It also underscores the value of that content online relative to print. It is also a precursor to attaching value to content in a new world of tablets, eReaders and mobile devices. Something the FT has already done on the iPhone.

Love this… so right, and nicely put together… Thanks to Johnny for the pointer…

You can read more here…

Dell’s Data Center Solutions unit, has only 20 customers, but would be the third largest supplier of x86 servers in the U.S. if it were split out from Dell, said Forrest Norrod, the unit’s VP and general manager, in an interview. The only companies ahead it in shipping Intel or AMD servers would be HP and Dell itself.