I’m at the O’Reilly conference of Emerging Technology and it’s giving me just the right setting (and time away from the day job of leading Rubicon) to capture an idea I’ve been brewing for some time. Because the work I do is about helping companies to win markets, I pay a lot of attention to [...]
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Dinosaur Defense Strategy / Consumer Software Companies
A colleague who works within one of my company’s clients writes this email to me about a month ago: “I still find myself scratching my head at how to apply this line of advice (referring to a white paper I sent on permeable markets) to a large highly profitable business. In the last session [Spark [...]
Cluetrain 2007: Ten Commandments Revised
Seven years ago, Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger posted an online document called the Cluetrain Manifesto. It laid out 95 principles for communicating with customers online. The Manifesto created big stir, was signed by a lot of people working in the tech industry, and turned into a book that sold well at the height of the Internet bubble. But since then it has been largely forgotten.
Seven years later, the Manifesto is a mixed bag. Some of its maxims are seriously out of date, and a few are just plain wrong. There are also some things missing. Because the document is long, and parts of it are badly off target, we’re reluctant to refer any of our clients to it today.
However, parts of the Manifesto are just plain brilliant, and deserve to be spray-painted on the walls of corporations around the world.
Multiplier Developer Ecosystems
In grade school, one of the key determinants of popularity on the playground was how quickly you were selected when the time came to choose up sides for basketball, baseball or soccer. In the same way, the developing business model for the next ten years depends hugely on which set of developer and ecosystem partners pick you.
However, unlike grade school, you might have more ability to influence this selection.
Go-to-market in Web 2.0 Era
It’s been 40+ years since E. Jerome McCarthy published Basic Marketing, the business book that introduced the “4 Ps” (product, price, place/distribution and promotion) to the world. While the categories still hold true, what was once considered the leading edge has drastically evolved. Web 2.0 has also impacted the paradigm by changing what product definitions [...]