My burp of the day

After speaking about something I do not feel I should have, I came back on drawing, with simplicity, digitally

VCR - Power Play, Plug & Play

And what I view as a workable A4 Report for datas mining, and working datas:

Synthesis, applicable to Finance, Marketing, Project Management, Resources enablement (Human, Information, Financial) and well yes supporting the traditionnal Gantt-WBS Chart obviously

Simple Framing

Escalade

Online Biz, where size does matter

I would like to share my view on internet business, and current context are supporting me to describe it hereby quickly. 

Context: Microsoft (MSN) acquiring Skype for sth like 66 $ per user from what we are advised. Go there for more info; well in French, sure the English exists.: http://eco.rue89.com/2011/05/10/microsoft-rachete-skype-a-prix-fort-et-plante-google-203281.

Away from the standard M&A, I would like to tag along this event to discuss about a key an utterly most important parameter for internet only online businesses: critical mass.

To come back on definition, I am considering as critical mass the number of people required within a whole subset of connected people in order to make one thing essential and unavoidable for all. 

Microsoft is a prime example. I have to say on my side, I am using Microsoft tools because I know most can read it, simply as that, the network effect in the long term. and no I am not a Keynes fan, Keynes who kept saying "in the long term, we are all dead" or sth like that, in the long term.


So i don 't go as far as the long long term kind of useless here but the 5 10 years brackets. In the long term, we will be here, and more we will know more about bet we need to nurture, and how we will articulate promises becoming reality

So, compared to traditional business, I am taking traditional as business not only interacting via the online sphere, Amazon being at the critical border. Even for Amazon, what matters really is the critical mass the business needs to have, between fostering customer loyalty, and engaging new customers. 

I would take one example further: Apple is well known as a seller on the online, on the offline grid. Apple is making most of its revenues from a small share of an overall segment of IT user (if you disagree, please ask me for references and details), in brackets “selling premium products and services “ to engaged customers Critical mass and the network effect are part of the deal to optimize this business equation, still not only an online business.

Apple does it because in the real world you can. Any, only,online business is possibly facing the complacency challenge, in such a low switching, perhaps slight higher informal acquisition cost, environment.

What Microsoft buying Skype shows is a remake of the Darwinian formula for the life cycle of a product/services:. Get better, or get lost

Before the end of a cycle, on an untangible world like the internet, you have to find your rebound as good as you can, and hopefully before your product is dead, perhaps even better at the climax of the products/services business.

Below, I do assume, it might make an ass of u, of me, anyway I’ve warned you. I do believe Microsoft MSN so long onto the waves were targeting most entertainment while skype developped and fostered loyalty and its brands even through the business side promoting connection the business way, developing the same services adequately on two spheres, the personal and the professional, while MSN was perhaps mainly targeting personal use.

Now, many articles will go out. Merging and acquiring, when not failing, is about setting up a fruitful strategy and who knows between windows phone, an updated MSN. Most importantly cutting the grass under Google and Facebook feet, it should be a successful try if nurtured and developed the innovative way and not staying complacent as MSN did in the past decade.

Reason why I am not thinking that it is totally silly if, in 3 years time, Facebook might go if not off the grid, secondary to one huge thing. Simple as untangibles in a world of tangibles. Online biz shows it, it is a football market, if a good player, make the most money when you can, because everything is even more unsettling tomorrow.

Well I am not forcefully a google fan, still I do enjoy it a lot, Google orientated part of their business on sharing and contents, sharing documents online, not only pictures, comments, status and so on. And I do believe here Google is more ahead, like Skype was with MSN, because not only focusing on one type of customers (General one type please allow me this generality), but playing on both fields. I would be Zuckerberg, I would buy Linkedin straight and develop an ecosystem within the system and the communities. Or maybe not, it could kill straight both brands. No, P&G, Unilever show it on another segment, you can keep integrity of multibrands while ensuring the most valuable synergies from inside, so definitely a move to go for? to work on the fruitful manure the business segment of community is.

Still, this Skype move is not as bad for Facebook as for Google given the shares of Microsoft in Facebook, which offers great growth perspectives and ties for a well thought plan in the future.

PS: I wrote that quickly and would review that some times in the next few days, still i do believe you can grasp the essence of what i say. As put in the title of this blog, it s a possible view, only one.

An Apple and the worm, a modern tale.

Coming back to old times, Adam, Eve, the apple. Ok not so long ago, the apple. I consider applied philosophy as the narrative that brings in frame both the apple, the frame, and the worm in the story. Well, i took the simplifications here to take the worm singular, but obivously can replicate and be plural.

Because every situation needs a worm to treat or to be affected by. In business, call it the easement for the customers, in the context of customers goods and services.
-In the case of Apple, the worm is this trigger pushing you to buy everytime the brand is coming back, a worm avid of money, the customers avid to get the last updates to fit in the frame. I use the image of Apple given I used the tablet of my nephew and drew that

The tablet and the worm - Henri Moufettal 2011

And if you treat Adobe, as seen as a worm within Apple, is the best way the cut out? (coming back from a strategy homework i had to do on that Apple Adobe last year http://stotb.blogspot.com/2010/05/why-does-apple-risk-alienating-its.html)

-For rental services, the worm is to give what you need, and add what you didn t think you need, so that your expectations are getting higher, while your loyalty as well. Yes, a worm is very hungry.
-For a pub, the worm is the end feeling. No going there to be totally drunk, still there to enjoy a pint, or two, or three, and enjoy the delicacy of lightness, the worm, a frame from where we escape.
-For cigarettes, I do not think the worm is about nicotine, too much in the frame, the worm is sitting outside quite nicely, and solicits you to include in a gathering of people to enjoy a break, and relax, if that’s relaxing.

What I called applied philosophy. Applied to you? Applied to business, Examples above, applied to politics, using the worm to sustain the conversation, applied to information, especially now at a time we are all time connected, there is no longer curiosity, there is the deep feeling, oh sh.. I don t know, I ‘ve got to know, applied to these every little things that makes us hungry or envious, and taking its roots from outside the frame.

Pretty negative picture, no. the worm is beautiful, In fact Apple succeeded in presenting an appealing design to one piece of hardware that looked ugly for long. It s where applied philosophy is useful because it is taking roots in our culture, in the whole culture, bringing back perspectives from old times (the greek were so insightful) and rethinking, I don t say reinventing, the wheel with the new datas. Ok, here the importance of datas is one driver, still not the main one. I do like, and I am sure CRM, polls, comments and so on are insightful, still we need the force, thanks obi wan, to synthesize without deleting important informations.

Still, we should always be opened to the slight glimpse of details around. Like walking through an art gallery, looking around, being attracted by some details that give the whole flavor to the paintings.

PS: By the way, from where does the expression worm, as a virus, came in IT, is it one fan of Apple in the 80s who decided to replicate these things over and over to rally people around a system meeting less metldowns?

i-communities, i-dentities

i-community, community of i-dentities

it's all a matter of scale

my belief? when we are looking too much in details, we are missing what gives the perspective.

Theory of the opposite EN FR

Yes, speaking of one subject discussed here and there, still finding very interesting for all the possible truth it includes:

Part of reversal psychology made me enter another field: defining something by the existence of its contrary, starting from the imbalances that gives reason to exist to balance itself, and some other thought on the way on the too much.

The first two are very philosophical

1.       Too many laws makes law inefficient

2.       Too many liberties confuses liberty

And now, entering a field I particularly like, Applied Philosophy

3.       In a world of communication we are in, comes a question on what is required, what is too much because too much information invalidates the ultimate goal of information: communicate clearly one point of view.

4.       In the same frame, too many promises make each of it received with more doubts.

5.       In our capitalistic economy (is it a pleonasm?), Too many private actors focus too much power in private and uncontrollable hands, hence possibly skidding.

At the end, it is a question of balance, difficult to achieve by its own, and came another thought I had following the financial crisis:

To reach an equilibrium in point 5 , and avoid sliding too much off track, critical shares of any financial institutions around should be owned by the country itself, so that to regain power on an important field where Politics don’t have any now: the money world.

Hereby, I am breaking up the promise I made to myself 7 years ago when I went to work in the UK. Speaking of foreign politics if not even from the country. sometimes, external POVs are coming through my mind.


And coming to the politics sphere, for long, Bin Laden was thought to be counterpart of the US elected ones, more W Bush, now Obama with the statement and this question: Who is his counterpart within this religion to the US and more than that, to the elected representants of the western area? might be hard to find, useful to know. And here comes on point of interest,  religion is vast, and too much difficult to find the guy representing it, real and who on one side, people listens to, and on the other, would be recognized on the international scene. Bin Laden and W Bush put the theory of the opposite to a clash, because they appeared to be alike and standing on total opposite position. Still, I have to say, I don't like the way justice is perceived by what i see overseas... it s just the matter of perceptions, one extreme cheer, the other extreme will raise it as a hero. Facing the unknown, we just went backwards 3 cases. well perhaps it is only a matter of media.

Ok coming back on that, killing him prove simple as to avoid the whole trial and getting the other sides more and more disgusted, in a verdict that would be confused between the individuals and the islamic world. I am a humanist for the first day, still i cannot forget to be realist. Still, one view from washington blob, looking back on it, or where diplomacy or even actions in our modern days is difficult to achieve given special interests meddling all together:
http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2011/05/bin-laden-dead-why-didnt-we-get-him.html


Update 6th of May 2011: Reusing that, too far not too far? Is making the buzz more important, even if hampering the info?

In conclusion, from imbalances should always come a useful debate not led by the extremes of each side. And I believe there applied philosophy as part of the system would enable to have this long awaited constructive debate bringing us closer to the point of balance.

Théorie des contraires

Oui, je rabâche sur ce sujet, qui est quand même etonamment intéressant de vérité.

La psychologie des inverses, diablement existantes, m’a fait penser a un sujet: définir l’existence d’une valeur par son contraire. Tout en commençant par la notion d’équilibre qui tient son existence des déséquilibres alentour, et d’autres pensées qui viennent sur l’idée du trop:

Les deux premières sont purement philosophiques :

1.       Trop de lois font l’inefficacité des lois

2.       Trop de libertés apportent la confusion dans la notion de liberté.

Et donc la entrons dans un domaine que j’apprécie grandement, la philosophie appliquée

3.       Dans notre monde de la communication, idéal mais pas parfait et la c’est un sujet et de la question qu’est ce qui définit le nécessaire minimum : Trop d’informations desservent le but ultime de l’information : communiquer un point de vue.

4.       Dans le même cadre, trop de promesses font que la prochaine promesse est recu avec encore plus de doutes.

5.       En économie capitaliste (est-ce un pléonasme ?), trop de privatisations concentrent trop le prive entre eux et donc ouvre la porte aux dérapages possibles.

Donc, c’est une question d’équilibre, difficile de l’obtenir en se concentrant sur les acteurs principaux, et je poursuis avec ce que je pensais après la crise financière :

Pour se rapprocher de cet équilibre, une participation majoritaire de l’état dans le capital de toutes les banques permettrait mieux d’éviter les dérapages notés en 2007. Et cela permettrait aux états de retrouver un pouvoir sur un critère clé de notre monde, sur le flux de l’argent.

Bin laden, il était pensé comme la personne au statut contraire de celui des US, plus le contraire de W Bush, ce qui devient intéressant quand Obama introduit le concept de négociation et de discussion avec d’autres, j’y reviens dans ma conclusion. Et donc vient cette question : Qui est la personne au statut reconnu qui pourrait représenter cette religion aux élus de la partie occidentale ? Dur de trouver, intéressant a définir. Les religions prennent leur source d’un domaine vaste et inconnu, et il serait intéressant mettre un statut sur les personnes qui les représentent, personnes réelles, qui d’un cote sera écouté par ses fideles et de l’autre sera reconnu par la scène internationale. Bin Laden et W bush prouvent le point de la théorie des contraires poussée a son paroxysme, Bam le clash. Ils apparaissaient, et ca c’est juste mon avis, bien plus similaires qu on puisse le panser, et défendait, par l’attaque donc, des positions diamétralement opposées.

Pour revenir la-dessus, la balle n’était pas perdue, et ce fut peut être même la meilleure solution, même si je reste un humaniste du premier jour, on se doit d’être réaliste: Un procès aurait oublié les individualités et mis deux camps face a face dans un verdict qui prendrait effet sur une religion plutôt que sur l'individu. bref, au moins, ptet un raccourci utile.

En conclusion, les déséquilibres  doivent être pris en compte en toute honnêteté, avec respect pour donner naissance à un débat constructif, pas mené par les extrêmes de chaque camp et avec ce concept de philosophie appliquée, qui permet de se rapprocher de l’équilibre.

Oui, mon défaut principal, je suis attiré par mes contraires.

A story, a feeling, or not... still an end drawing :)

Quick template compiled when I finished my last book from the scriptfrenzy contest

Because whenever I finish writing, this is the feeling I ve got when I put the final dot.

Let the rhymes continue

If interested in a volume of burp buzz, check this post:

http://stotb.blogspot.com/2011/04/script-frenzy-burp-buzz-english-henri.html

A picture is worth 1000 words, and even more

Framing words on a cloudy weather - Henri Moufettal 2011