A colleague added me to their network of trust on spock, one of the new people search engines, and so I had a play around. Spock and its competitors have come about on the premise that a large amount of search engine traffic is purely due to people: about 7% of all searches are for a person’s name, estimates search engine Ask.com. One percent of the search market is estimated to be worth a billion dollars, so this is a significant market opportunity.
Now take a step back into my mind this year. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about e-mail this past year: first as I explained to people why wikis and blogs are a better way to collaborate than via e-mail; and more recently, as I prepare a whitepaper for January 2008 proposing we replace using e-mail for our corporate communications with RSS. E-mail is the default tool at my firm and its opened up doors to do things we couldn’t do before, but it’s also why we have e-mail overload, as e-mail wasn’t designed to do this.
Can you now see something I am noticing? Established general technologies like search and e-mail – now being replaced by more specific functions. Some would say you are defining a previously unrecognised niche. That is afterall, what is means to be an entrepreneur.
Traditional Search and traditional e-mail are powerful tools. People over-use them to do all sorts of things that they couldn’t do before. As these general tools were adopted, people could experiment and push boundary’s in ways the inventors of the technologies never thought before. And bam – that’s why we have a love hate relationship with e-mail; and why search has become the default industry underlying the web economy. They are doing something we now need; but because they weren’t invented to deal with that specific need, it is more like a blunt tool being used when all is needed is a glass pick.
Innovation is coming
I’ve been told repeatedly that technology should not drive strategy. I agree to some extent. However, I’ve also proved the management at my firm wrong on that point by results. When I proposed a firm wiki, and it was approved, it was taken as a risk. All I needed was that gateway to get in behind the door, and just let it do its magic. I have witnessed first hand when you give people a wiki – or probably better said a mashup enabler – you will see them take to it because they can now do things they never imagined. A general tool like the wiki in its freedom to manipulate the structure, has allowed staff members to create new ways of satisfying their painpoints. Technology should not drive strategy – I agree. But one thing I am convinced of, is that you need to just drop a technology onto a userbase, and let them experiment. Give them the potential to do something – things you never thought they needed – and watch them take to it like honey to a bee. Technology can help drive innovation through (accidental) imagination, which in turn can drive strategy
How does this link with innovation? MacManus has lamented on the lack of innovation on the web. I’m thinking something else. As these general technology tools have been adopted by people, new niches are being discovered. As I responded to MacManus’s article: the guy that invented the wheel was brilliant; but the guy that attached another three was a genius.
Think innovation on the web is dead? I think it’s just starting.
Great points.
Profile search is going to be huge. Spock just found a load of my profiles that I'd forgotten I had even set up. I wouldn't be surprised if Google set up a profile search of its own fairly soon. This is one of the missing links in the whole social network or data portability issue
Replacing email with RSS is a great idea but it sort of raises the old problem that everyone needs to have blog in order to generate the feed.
There are so many web 2.0 technologies which have not been taken up by companies yet. It's dizzying to think of all the benefits to companies of things like networking sites, RSS, blogs, wikis, tagging, search and online storage. Imagine if all you needed to do your work was a web browser; they could give everyone ASUS eee's and save a fortune in hardware!
Great points.
Profile search is going to be huge. Spock just found a load of my profiles that I'd forgotten I had even set up. I wouldn't be surprised if Google set up a profile search of its own fairly soon. This is one of the missing links in the whole social network or data portability issue
Replacing email with RSS is a great idea but it sort of raises the old problem that everyone needs to have blog in order to generate the feed.
There are so many web 2.0 technologies which have not been taken up by companies yet. It's dizzying to think of all the benefits to companies of things like networking sites, RSS, blogs, wikis, tagging, search and online storage. Imagine if all you needed to do your work was a web browser; they could give everyone ASUS eee's and save a fortune in hardware!
I am having the same trouble and arguments. The two most popular themes i find are:
Folks are stuck in tunnel vision. Discussing with them the pros/cons of email and they are like a deer in headlights. "You mean we can't do everything in email?". It is time to break-out of the email lock and start using the right tool for the right purpose.
Fads. A lot of folks seem to be computer-drained. They have had so many buzzwords, new tools, and "big pushes" that they are skeptical. How does one differentiate themselves from this, "no seriously this one works".
I like that you opened the door to collaboration and people are using it. My trouble now is going from niche use to enterprise use. The average users are a lot harder to convince…
I am having the same trouble and arguments. The two most popular themes i find are:
Folks are stuck in tunnel vision. Discussing with them the pros/cons of email and they are like a deer in headlights. "You mean we can't do everything in email?". It is time to break-out of the email lock and start using the right tool for the right purpose.
Fads. A lot of folks seem to be computer-drained. They have had so many buzzwords, new tools, and "big pushes" that they are skeptical. How does one differentiate themselves from this, "no seriously this one works".
I like that you opened the door to collaboration and people are using it. My trouble now is going from niche use to enterprise use. The average users are a lot harder to convince…
Hey Elias,
Good article. Enterprise will get there, in fact I know that at a global level, they are pushing the innovation level within our firm to a high degree, but the tools they are evaluating don't provide the depth of functionality that the open source ones do today.
Here's the challenge — local territories aren't that interested as they've invested money in the road map that our enterprise vendors are providing, but the enterprise toolset isn't there yet.
Two years from now, all this will dissappear as the Enterprise class of tools provides enough of the functionality in the open-source innovation space today to meet the needs of 80% of the business.
For frustrated innovators like ourselves that want it all today (and know that you could have it if you took some chances and were more aggressive) the challenge is not so much convincing the money holders that they need it, but rather convincing them that it's worth facing the issues and forging ahead when two years down the track, the nice vendor we pay lots of money to will drop it in our laps — and address many of the things we care about (like security etc.).
Of course when this happens, we'll be riding the next wave and frustrated that the firm isn't keeping up!
Hey Elias,
Good article. Enterprise will get there, in fact I know that at a global level, they are pushing the innovation level within our firm to a high degree, but the tools they are evaluating don't provide the depth of functionality that the open source ones do today.
Here's the challenge — local territories aren't that interested as they've invested money in the road map that our enterprise vendors are providing, but the enterprise toolset isn't there yet.
Two years from now, all this will dissappear as the Enterprise class of tools provides enough of the functionality in the open-source innovation space today to meet the needs of 80% of the business.
For frustrated innovators like ourselves that want it all today (and know that you could have it if you took some chances and were more aggressive) the challenge is not so much convincing the money holders that they need it, but rather convincing them that it's worth facing the issues and forging ahead when two years down the track, the nice vendor we pay lots of money to will drop it in our laps — and address many of the things we care about (like security etc.).
Of course when this happens, we'll be riding the next wave and frustrated that the firm isn't keeping up!
[...] Search, email and wikis are the catalysts for innovation: General unstructured tools create niche tools afterward and consequently innovate new ways of doing things [...]