MWC – Mobiles, where they action is!

Today a representative of Nokia commented how dangerous is to bet on a single terminal …. obviously he was talking of Apple. However, is that true?

If you want a prove that in a medium-high complex environment a collaborative model for innovation works better than an integrated one, just go for a walk at MWC and take a look at the new Windows Mobile or Android terminals, a myriad of them!!! You’ll see really nice ideas materialize and the fruits of specialization: camera phones that are better than real cameras, etc …

You will also see that everybody has an app store … and finally Nokia’s Ovi is out!

After reading that you may be inclined to think that we are in the beginning of the end, that the sector is commoditizing and in a few months or years all mobile phones will be the same.  Sorry, I don’t agree. I am rather inclined to think that we are at the starting point, things like RF-ID, the next generation of Bluetooth, indoor gps, real ambient intelligence, translation services on requests, … are the ones who are going to make a difference now.

However, for many of these things to happen, we face the same kind of problems that with the electric car: infrastructure. The problem with infrastructure is that collaborative innovation cannot solve it, infrastructure is local, you cannot leverage in globalization. So, what’s next?

Yes, compared to the conservative world of computers … here is where the action is!

Microsoft goes retail

These days we are all bombarded by announcements of Microsoft going into retail. And coincidently, these days Microsoft seems more vulnerable than ever. Apple is reaching again a double digit market share with everybody’s astonishment, a market share that is mechanically and universally attributed to the ipod … while nobody is entirely convinced of this attribution. Also Android is also making some inroads beyond its original mobile phone incarnation and is being perceived more and more as a valid Windows CE replacement.

However, beyond its actual marketing problems due to a large extent to its recent pitfalls in areas such as Vista or Zune, we can consider why its innovation model doesn’t manage to create enough buzz in the industry.

In fact Microsoft has chosen a split model for its main products. MS develops the software and many other partners develop the hardware. This model has succeed in creating an ecosystem of partners and in promoting innovation for decades.

However, what about the adoptants? What about the customers? There we have seen how many innovations that the company has been pushing for, have failed to be adopted by a large enough segment of public, most notoriously the tablet pc. It can be a failure in execution, sure! But it also can be that the segment is mature enough and in mature segments, interfaces are hard to move. For example, nobody wants a car with 5 wheels or even it is widely know that the shift gear has a better place located in the steering wheel, it remains located where it always was, etc… Of course, part of it is a network effect and the difficulty of retraining that we all face, but also part of it is that the interfaces, although not optimal, are part of our vision of the world.

My point is that in a world of mature products where complexity has been reduced by standardization and modularization of products, there, an integrated approach probably works better. Apple is an integrated approach, so it is the Xbox.

No desperdiciemos esta crisis!!!!

Las crisis siempre son oportunidades de cambio, de todos es conocido el doble significado de la palabra en chino, crisis=oportunidad. Lo son porque son esos singulares momentos en la historia donde lo establecido parece ya no estar defendido por los hechos y por lo tanto es susceptible de ser cuestionado.

Si repasamos la historia reciente, veremos que muchas de las grandes compañías que admiramos surgieron en tiempos de crisis. Este fue el caso de Microsoft (en 1975), Compaq, Macromedia y más recientemente el lanzamiento del iPod (2002), Flickr o Skype.

Quizás en esas condiciones más difíciles es cuando se da más importancia a las buenas ideas más allá del pedigree de sus fundadores.

Algo parecido está pasando en nuestro país ahora. Pocas veces dispondremos de una oportunidad como ésta para redirigir nuestro modelo económico aprovechando aquellos elementos en los que somos fuertes para adentrarnos en otros que nos harán fuertes.

Sin duda las posibilidades son abundantes, la construcción puede ayudarnos a levantar una industria en las tecnologías alternativas aplicadas a la construcción, nuestra capacidad en la fabricación de automóviles y motocicletas es una oportunidad para la nueva generación de vehículos eléctricos, la necesidad de ahorrar costes y reducir el número de niveles de gestión de nuestras organizaciones son una excelente oportunidad para ahondar en el uso de las nuevas tecnologías, esa misma necesidad nos podría permitir el desarrollo y el uso masivo de la videoconferencia y la plena implantación de la banda ancha, etc…

Ahora bien, algo parecido sucede en el plano personal. También ahí las crisis son momentos preciosos para cambiar el rumbo, para adentrarnos en aquello que siempre habíamos querido hacer y nunca habíamos priorizado porque estábamos demasiado ocupados haciendo funcionar más deprisa lo que teníamos entre manos.

Por favor, no desperdiciemos esta crisis!!!