Blogs

Tags > strategy

Who's using your API?

"Who's using your API" was the title of my presentation at the API Strategy & Practice Conference that happened on February 21 and 22, 2013 in New York City. One of the conference takeaways was the concern that almost everybody...

Commerce Weekly: Same-day delivery war heats up

Here are a few stories that caught my attention in the commerce space this week. The high price of instant gratification The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Bensinger took a look this week at the e-commerce same-day delivery trend, a service …

Publishing News: Amazon gets a brick-and-mortar bookstore, sort of

Here are a few stories from the publishing space that caught my attention this week. U.K. bookstore teams up with Amazon Charlotte Williams and Lisa Campbell report this week at The Bookseller that Waterstones bookstore in the U.K. launched its …

Four short links: 28 September 2012

Mobile Content Strategy — Mobile is a catalyst that can help you make your content tighter without loss of clarity or information. If you make your content work well on mobile, it will work everywhere. Excellent presentation, one I want …

Four short links: 7 April 2011

The Freight Train That is Android -- Google’s aim is defensive not offensive. They are not trying to make a profit on Android or Chrome. They want to take any layer that lives between themselves and the consumer and make it free (or even less than free). [...] In essence, they are not just building a moat; Google is...

Interim report card on O'Reilly's IT transformation

Implementing O'Reilly's new IT strategy is like swapping out airplane wings mid-flight. We're making considerable change, but at the same time we can't disrupt the services and projects that are already underway.

Four short links: 27 December 2010

emscripten -- LLVM to Javascript compiler. Any code that compiles to LLVM can run in the browser (Python, Lua, C++). LLVM is open source virtual machine that Apple bought into (literally, they hired the developer). 30 Lessons Learned in Computing Over The Last 10 Years -- Backup every day at the minimum, and test restores every week. I don't...

The four pillars of O'Reilly's IT strategy

O'Reilly's new IT strategy had to consider the company's culture of innovation while introducing the right level of predictability. Too much unmanaged innovation or codified predictability would limit our ability to grow and be a recipe for IT failure.

When and What is "Good Enough"

There is an axiom that it is more important to focus on doing the "right things" than on having to do everything "perfectly right." But, this begs a question. At what point is "good enough" achieved? Read on...

How to Compete with Apple, Adobe or Amazon

When a company like Apple launches that sexy new product (iPad), one can be reactive (Amazon) or be caught flat-footed (Adobe). It's easy to look at today's market situation and say who's winning or losing. The more interesting conversation is to determine what someone can do to compete or take advantage of this changed topography.

Environment Variables: On Surplus, Scarcity, Fear & Greed

I am big believer that markets gravitate between FEAR and GREED, and that industries are driven by core assumptions about the SCARCITY or SURPLUS of enabling resources. Think about the stock market in terms of the former (it's heavily outlook driven), and the evolution of computing, as afforded by the latter (i.e., the commoditization of processing, storage and bandwidth).

Built-to-Thrive - The Standard Bearers: Apple, Google, Amazon

When you think of companies that are not only built to last, but rather, built to thrive - in good times and bad - what companies logically sit at the top of the pyramid? Equally important, what should be the criteria for assessing them? Let me propose a straw man for assessing the "Built-to-Thrive" bunch...

Apply Sparingly: Open Standards (and When to Use Them)

The great thing about standards is that there are "so many to choose from." While it may be convenient to default to aphorisms like proprietary is evil, open is good, I am here to tell you that there are only three reasons to embrace open standards.

The Goodness of Artificial Milestones

A friend of mine in startup-land had a really important meeting with a prospective partner. Knowing the one-shot nature of these things, he literally moved mountains in just a few days, achieving a transformational milestone for his fledging, early-stage company. How did he do it? Read on...

Zappos: If You Are Great at Something - Let It Go... (Or Resell It)

I am fascinated by what I see as Zappos' ongoing evolution from a simple, online retailer to a leading online innovator. A few months back I wrote about Zappos pioneering what I called “Experience Syndication" with their Powered by Zappos (PBZ) service. In brief, PBZ syndicates the end-to-end value of shopping with Zappos - from the online store experience...

Online Communities: The Tribalization of Business

Recently I spoke with Francois Gossieaux of Beeline Labs about the role of online communities in the enterprise. Francois has been evangelizing the learning gained from his recent study “The Tribalization of Business” (see here for the Slideshare presentation). The interview is broken into three parts. Francois is a great storyteller, bringing case studies in to support nearly every point....

A Star is Born? NY Times syndicates outside blogs but that's not enough

Recently the New York Times announced that it will be syndicating content from three well-known blogs, Read/Write Web, Giga Om and Venture Beat. The New York Times is using these blogs as an extra-sensory organ; they can dial into what is happening in the tech sector (and particularly the West Coast with this trio) without allocating a lot of internal...

Customer Service is the New Marketing: Interview with Lane Becker

The Internet changes the power relations between companies and customers. Social technologies like blogs, social networks, ratings and reviews etc. allow customers to share experiences; good and bad to the 1.4 billion people on the Internet. Zappos exemplifies the positive benefits of extraordinary customer service while Comcast shines a light on the perils of getting it wrong. Lane (co-founder of...

Getting Web 2.0 right: The hard stuff vs. the harder stuff

I had a powerful conversation recently in Europe with one of the top executives of a major industrial company. They have 100K+ employees in over 50 countries. When he joined five years ago their business was struggling and in need of major transformation; their stock was at two dollars a share, they had ethics issues and product quality problems -...

Open beats Closed: Best Buy’s new APIs

Welcome to Joshua-Michéle Ross, who joins the Radar team with a focus on how Web 2.0 is affecting business strategy - Sara Winge Best Buy is a pioneer when it comes to unleashing the talent of their own staff; from the Loop Marketplace that allows employees to submit ideas for Digg-style ranking AND funding across divisions (for example an HR...