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Must read “Halo 3 Meets Second Life” by Baseline!

Yesterday I wrote a blog about the ability to understand cultures using virtual worlds. Today I am reading an article about a “video game platform is being used to prepare soldiers for much more genteel aspects of modern warfare.” This article called “Halo 3 Meets Second Life” appeared in Baseline magazine. “The goal is to make soldiers better thinkers and communicators under stress.” Think about this applied to your sales force. Could you use the same techniques improve relations with customers? I joined Toastmasters to have a safe environment to practice public speaking. I know the advantage of failing in front of a supportive group instead of failing where the damage can’t be undone. The concept is based on learning by doing. Halo 3 Meets Second Life follows the same concept. You learn by doing in a virtual environment. Expect to see more of this in the future.

Does open innovation need reinventing?

Does open innovation need reinventing?

 

I have been participating in several open innovation formats lately. It has been a learning experience, so I thought I would share what I have observed. First, in the market place of ideas you still have to sell. In the sites that allow other participants to comment and rank your solutions and ideas you have the tyranny of the masses. You think you have the greatest invention since that mousetrap only to find that no one is willing to back it. Later you find ideas that do not seem that good to you getting wide community support. It can be very damaging to ones ego if you take it personally. Many of these sites are setup to find the TOP dog or BEST solution. They depend on motivating people, which leads the level of participation that will make them work. Unfortunately, when you have many participants there can still only be one WINNER. Even if there are several useable solutions or ideas there still is only one WINNER.

It is this focus on winning that gets to me. In many industries there are successful companies that are not number one. In sports not everyone is the star player on the team. With idea management we focus on the number one solution. I see people who are consistently coming up with sound solutions and ideas over time. Unfortunately, their solutions are seldom ranked as the best solution by the masses. They consistently come in on the top ten solutions. Most of the motivation in these systems is to be the WINNER or to be the BEST. Over time the motivation to participate diminishes for these also rans. Some would say that is how it should be. We only want the best. But in life few problems have only one solution. What a group may perceive as the best may not work out to be the best. Identifying individuals who can consistently produce sound solutions may be as important to an organization as finding the person who can hit the home run. When I look at results on the sites that do ranking I see a consistent pattern.

• First you have the person who hits the home run and was the winner by providing a particular solution or idea. Many times the home run hitter was a one shot wonder. They had a great solution but you never see them getting a high ranking again.
• You have the extremely rare case of the person who consistently hit them out of the park. The come up with winning solution after winning solution. Like I said, these are rare and seem to be limited to recognized experts in their given field.
• You have the also rans who have sound solutions for different challenges or problems. These people are always posting solutions and their solutions make the top ten but never seem to make number one.
• Finally, there are the solutions that are ranked at the bottom of the heap. This is where the really bad or game changing solutions reside.

 

I have addressed what I see as wasted talent with the also rans. Over time they get tired of being an also ran and are no longer motivated to participate. Unless a reward structure can be created to provide incentives to this group they are likely to leave. It is these also rans who are one area of wasted talent. Think about it, you have a group who is consistently coming up with workable solutions. Should not this groups opinions of solutions count for something? If nothing else you want to cultivate this group and build it to harvest their insight and opinions on the WINNERS. You then develop two sets of measures in your evaluations, the tyranny of the masses and the voice of the consistent solvers. By keeping the consistent solvers in the game you have created a valuable resource while still having the potential of one of these people finally hitting a home run some time in the future.

 

The other area of talent waste may be even more important. It can be found in the solutions that sank to the bottom of the heap. Many times truly game changing innovations are rejected out of hand when they are first presented. Yet these are the ideas and solutions that provide the disruptive innovations that change whole industries. These are the solutions that require examining sacred cows and going beyond our current technology and business theory. Most make it to the bottom because there are few game changing ideas that are AH-HA moments. Ideas that when you see them everyone understands how great they are and are voted to the top as a WINNER. Normally disruptive innovations defy the current best practices because they will define the new best practices. It takes a special type of individual to examine the bottom of the heap. You have to have the skills to see the egg of a great idea from the mass of just plan bad ideas. Many times the egg is an idea in the very early stages of development. With some effort the person who put it forward may be able to hatch it out and give you a bird. An idea that is developed enough to survive on its own by being truly understood and appreciated.

 Well that is all the time I have today. Let me know what you think of this by leaving a comment. I always appreciate feedback.

Using iris scanning on your cell phone.

Oki Electric Industry company’s iris recognition software for mobile devices will change security as we know it?

 Your mobile device supplied by your employer has a GPS feature so they know where your are at and when. Before you submit your check-in, you preform an iris scan to verify you are who you say you are. Is this the future of time billing and tracking timesheets?

When I arrive at a clients site I scan myself in. When I leave a clients site I scan myself out. All by looking into my cell phone and hitting a few buttons? I have verified who I am and where I am. The information is sent to a server and the software on the server not only keeps track of my billable hours it provides my manager with a records of where I spent my time.

 For good or bad I expect this to become common in the next few years as security of information on mobile devices becomes more and more of an issue.

IBM introduces Bluegrass!

IBM introduced Bluegrass at the Lotusphere conference this week. From the little I have seen of it, IBM will provide a metaverse environment for Businesses. A virtual

demo of Bluegrass is also available on kiosks at IBM CODESTATION (slurl.com/secondlife/IBM%20CODESTATION/124/159/25/) in Second Life.

This was expected and should not be a big surprise. What will be interesting will be how business theory/practice develops for this new technology once it is finally available. Will it be used to create working environments that last for a complete project? Can enough communication tools be included so synchronous and asynchronous communication can take place? Does this really provide a means for expanding across time zones and continents? Only time will tell. However, I believe that you have just seen the beginning of the business metaverse.

Must read article by Baseline, Halo 3 Meets Second Life!

Yesterday I wrote a blog about the ability to understand cultures using virtual worlds. Today I am reading an article about a “video game platform is being used to prepare soldiers for much more genteel aspects of modern warfare.” This article called “Halo 3 Meets Second Life” appeared in Baseline magazine. “The goal is to make soldiers better thinkers and communicators under stress.” Think about this applied to your sales force. Could you use the same techniques improve relations with customers? I joined Toastmasters to have a safe environment to practice public speaking. I know the advantage of failing in front of a supportive group instead of failing where the damage can’t be undone. The concept is based on learning by doing. Halo 3 Meets Second Life follows the same concept. You learn by doing in a virtual environment. Expect to see more of this in the future.

Is Tesco driving innovation

Nice article by Convenience Store News about the 8 innovations in 2008. It begs the question of how much of a factor was Tesco in driving these innovations within the convenience store industry? Some of these changes have been kicked around for years with no real commitment. Now Tesco opens its doors in the US and innovations moves at a rapid pace. It will be interesting in 2008 to see who the driving force in the world of convenience stores will be.

Can you now become a part of a different culture without leaving home?

The Ecole de Langue Varadi – Institut de Linguistique Appliquée, one of the top Swiss language schools, will open in Second Life. This may seem like a small event. However, it has really major implications. If you really take the time to experience Second Life, you will find that Second Life is all about the experience it can deliver. When the Institut de Linguistique Appliquée begins teaching, it will be able to create an experience that was truly never possible before. You can live and totally become part of the culture without leaving your home. Not only can you learn a language, you can gain important understandings of the culture that is associated with the language. Is it as good as real life, maybe not. Will you have an opportunity that you could never have before without physically living in another culture? That is what will be determined. I believe that this will become an important factor for executives seeing to prepare themselves for international business. For not only can they learn in a formal environment, they can then take that learning into SIM’s that are popular with a set culture and where they can practice the language with real people from that culture.

MediaCart and Microsoft roll out new shopping cart

ShopRite will have an interesting experiment going on in 2008.  New shopping experiences are coming in 2008 and ShopeRite. Details can be found in Colloquy article.

What is interesting to me is not the faster check-out or the new shopping cart. It is the fact that customer loyalty data may begin to become an asset to the costomer. “A shopper would scan his or her card at the MediaCart, and receive ads and promotional offers based on past purchases and/or saved shopping lists that could be uploaded from a home PC.” Will the costomer information remain just a benifit to the business owning the data. Or will ways be developed to make the data really work for the customer? Targeted adds and promotions may provide the customer with new benifits and save wasted time. However, are they really designed to benifit the customer first? Could not the the same information be used to provide reminders for items regularly purchased? Maybe suggest some recipes based on items commonly purchased? Give you an idea of a lower calorie substitute for something you commonly use if you are on a diet?

I guess the question I am asking is does this technology put the customer first?

Second Life Romantic Picnic Experiment

For those few who have been following this blog I would like to explain the new direction this blog is going in. The past blogs have been on items that I have come across on my research that I wanted to share with a select few people. I have been offered an opportunity to work with the SIM 2.0 group in Second Life to develop some concepts in Transreality. For those of you reading this blog for the first time let me explain my view of Transreality.

In the simplest terms Transreality can be defined as “the combined Real World and Internet aspects that make up a product and/or service”. Some of the factors that have lead to Transreality are:

1.     Almost no product today is sold as just a product. Most are now a combination of product and service. Even a simple can of Dole pineapple has a label. The picture and information on the label is a service related to the product inside the can.

2.     Many times a consumer is not really purchasing a product. They are purchasing the ability to do something. Buying a drill bit enable someone to make a hole. A can of black beans may enable one to produce a seven bean salad. The purchase of a product may just be a means to an end.

3.     Service related to a product can begin long before a purchase. Many people use the Internet to obtain product information. It is now easy to compare features and prices when making a major purchase. Amazon and others have rating systems that let you know what other thought about a product or service. All of these are examples of services that are used before the product is purchased.

4.     Some products do not exist before they are purchased. We are now in the age of Mass Customization and Lean Manufacturing. This means they build it when the customer demands it and to the specifications the customer demands. Sort of like going into Burger King and getting a burger with no pickles.

5.     Some major manufacturers are now working directly with consumers to help define and develop new products. We have entered an era where mass production and mass marketing no longer work like they did before the Internet.

6.     The Internet has made some niche markets profitable. Netflicks can offer movies that a Real World Store could not afford to offer. This is because the Internet offers the opportunity to reach enough people in a given market segment to make it profitable enough to service that niche segment.

7.     Content is now King. The Internet has always been about communication and information. The success of the first PC’s in my opinion was related to the content that could be stored on the PC. Now we have entered an era where content on the Internet is more valuable to many people than the content on their PC. When you add cell phones and other means to access Internet content you can only expect this to increase.

8.     Internet content is now being examined and rated. The days of clever gimmicks may not be over but it will now only take you so far. Consumers are now demanding value from the content they spend their time on. Consumer time is now the currency of the Internet. Just look at www.digg.com, if consumers don’t Digg it, it doesn’t get exposure. You have to provide real value to last. That is the key to Web 2.0, providing content with real value.

9.     Consumers are now building and participating in Internet communities at an increasing rate. E-mail, IM, Blogs, YouTube, etc. are changing the way people define communities. Again time is the critical resource. Time, emotion, money, etc. is now being invested in these new digital communities instead of local real world communities.

So what is this SIM 2.0 Transreality experiment I am conducting in Second Life? The experiment is called “Romantic Picnic”. The theme is romantic picnics. I have created a site in Second Life on the SIM 2.0 Island that will be used to model a romantic beach picnic. The site will also allow discussions to be held to go over different aspects of romantic picnics. From participating in Second Life I have found that the picnic theme appears time and time again. There is also an element in Second Life that is attracted to romantic themes. Another interesting fact is 40 percent of the residents in Second Life create items in Second Life. I have noticed that a number of introductory classing in creating items is focused on creating simple items that can be used on picnics. I will start out by using group discussions to begin developing aspect of a Romantic Picnic in Second Life.

Romantic Picnic was also selected because there is a sizable amount of content on the Internet about this subject. A larger amount of this content is directly related to real life businesses. These business sell products related to;

1.     Items that can be used on a picnic. These items include food, beverage, blankets, baskets, etc. These can be considered the props that are needed to make a picnic. This is an important real world part of Transreality. Real Life picnics and Second Life picnics both require items to enable someone to obtain the complete romantic picnic experience.

2.     Vacation sites such as beach resorts, mountain lodges, and other romantic destinations. Location is everything to a picnic and these sites are all dealing with locations. This is another important real world part of Transreality. People think of these real locations when they picture a romantic picnic in their minds. A Second Life romantic picnic must take this into account. One can also enjoy pictures and video of these real locations in Second Life.

3.     Romance and/or Picnic advise, this is as much opinion as fact in most cases. Here is where it can be hard to tell good from bad. Many times an opinion is stated as fact and then repeated many times.

4.     Peoples experiences, here is a treasure trove of valuable content. People have put their romantic picnic experiences into Internet content. It now exists in YouTube, Flickr, Myspace, etc. These real life experiences can provide understanding and prove a valuable resource if they can be identified and shared.

I will attempt to bring images, video, etc. into Second Life. I have also created a new Blog “romanticpicnic.wordpress.com” to bring learning from Second Life into Web 2.0. As this project progresses I hope to be merging several Web 2.0 pieces into the competed experiment. Much of this will be a learning process. I will be posting the Lessons learned to this blog.

So starting on 10/07/2007 the posting on this blog will be about the “Romantic Picnic” experiment.