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The Collapse of Complex Business Models

The Collapse of Complex Business Models
I gave a talk last year to a group of TV executives gathered for an annual conference. From the Q&A after, it was clear that for them, the question wasn’t whether the internet was going to alter their business, but about the mode and tempo of that alteration. Against that background, though, they were worried about a much more practical matter: When, they asked, would online video generate enough money to cover their current costs? That kind of question comes up a lot. It’s a tough one to answer, not just because the answer is unlikely to make anybody happy, but because the premise is more important than the question itself. There are two essential bits of background here. Here’s why. In 1988, Joseph Tainter wrote a chilling book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. The answer he arrived at was that they hadn’t collapsed despite their cultural sophistication, they’d collapsed because of it. The ‘and them some’ is what causes the trouble. Dr. Or it might not.

Lee Hower - Blog - The Institutionalization of Social Games... Get Used to It The Institutionalization of Social Games… Get Used to It July 29, 2010 The social games market has exploded onto the startup scene in the last three years. We all know about the remarkable growth of companies in this space, yet we tend to forget that Zynga was founded in July 2007. But the social games business has clearly entered a new phase of institutionalization. I don’t mean just consolidation via EA acquisition of Playfish, Disney acquisition of Playdom, huge strategic investments from Google & SOFTBANK in Zynga, and plus countless smaller consolidations. 1) Production Values Going Up – Every social game developer I speak to agrees that production values are increasing. 2) Low/No Cost Customer Acquisition Is Largely Gone – This has been true for some time (6-12mo), as social networks like Facebook changed the way in-game activity could be published to status feeds. 3) IP Starts to Matter – Disney didn’t buy Playdom for a huge user base or massive current revenue stream.

Valence Theory of Organization / FrontPage The Mobile Web vs. the Objective-C Web – Cameron Moll: Designer, Business Model Innovation – A New Way of Creating and Capturing Value in Organizations There are numerous claims that Business Model Innovation is extremely important if you want to stay competitive and increase your revenues. Some would even say that Business Model Innovation has a stronger impact on margin growth than product and service innovations and at the same time can disrupt established industries. InnovationManagement asked Business Model Innovation guru Alexander Osterwalder a few questions. How would you shortly describe the main content or cornerstones in Business Model Innovation? - Business Model Innovation is actually really simple: it’s about new ways of creating and capturing value in organizations. Why is that important? - Firstly, companies need to find new ways to grow and stay competitive. As a company you need to be prepared for those industry shifts - Secondly, industries are increasingly transforming because of new trends and new insurgents that compete with totally new business models. - Thirdly, traditional industry boundaries are disappearing.

Canada 3.0 & The Collapse of Complex Business Models If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage everyone to go read Clay Shirky’s The Collapse of Complex Business Models. I just read it while finishing up this piece and it articulates much of what underpins it in the usual brilliant Shirky manner. I’ve been reflecting a lot on Canada 3.0 (think SXSWi meets government and big business) since the conference’s end. I want to open by saying there were a number of positive highlights. But these moments aside, the more I reflect on the conference the more troubled I feel. But, secondly, even when judged in commercial terms, the conference, in my mind, failed. No, the conference’s main problem was that, at the core of many conversations lay an untested assumption: That we can manage the transition of broadcast media (by this I mean movies, books, newspaper & magazines, television) as well as other industries from an (a) broadcast economy to a (b) networked/digital economy. And that’s why Canada 3.0 isn’t about planning for 3.0 at all.

Q&A on Micro-VC Funds, With Someone Who Actually Invests In Them We’ve spent a lot of time lately discussing micro-VCs, including last week’s news on Floodgate ($73m fund close) and 500 Startups (new $30m fund being raised). So I spent some time discussing the phenomenon with Chris Douvos, who invests in mico-VC funds through his role as a managing director with The Investment Fund for Foundations: How long have you been investing in micro-VC funds, or super-angel, funds?? We’ve been active in this space since around 2005, and have invested over time in several of the archetypal managers. Who are those archetypical managers? Well, the main one is someone we actually haven’t given money to: Ron Conway. I love the O’Reilly AlphaTech guys, whose differential is that they’re leveraging the larger O’Reilly ecosystem. How do you define a micro-VC fund? I was at a Silicon Valley Bank shindig the other day, and people were talking about segmenting the space. The idea wasn’t necessarily to supplant VCs, but to be a value-added early processor of companies.

Solitude and Leadership: an article by William Deresiewicz | The American Scholar Essays - Spring 2010 Print If you want others to follow, learn to be alone with your thoughts By William Deresiewicz The lecture below was delivered to the plebe class at the United States Military Academy at West Point in October 2009. My title must seem like a contradiction. Leadership is what you are here to learn—the qualities of character and mind that will make you fit to command a platoon, and beyond that, perhaps, a company, a battalion, or, if you leave the military, a corporation, a foundation, a department of government. We need to begin by talking about what leadership really means. So I began to wonder, as I taught at Yale, what leadership really consists of. See, things have changed since I went to college in the ’80s. So what I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. That is exactly what places like Yale mean when they talk about training leaders. But I think there’s something desperately wrong, and even dangerous, about that idea.

An open letter to the people of Dear human race, First of all, you’re welcome. In the last few days I’ve been overwhelmed by your letters and calls expressing your gratitude to Apple, and mostly to me personally, for inventing yet another life-changing, mind-altering product. All I can tell you is that with iPad, as with all of our products, all we did was create something that we want to use. Some pundits have posed the question: Why do anyone need this thing? But let’s get back to you people who are waiting in line. The truth is, this is all about spiritual emptiness. The truth is, all over the world, across every culture, there exists a sense of yearning. I’d also like to take a moment to thank all of the engineers and designers and programmers inside Apple who worked so tirelessly on this product, toiling way in total secrecy. Hold your iPad. Dear Leader

Don Tapscott: Business Models for Five Industries in Crisis - The Source Don Tapscott Author, Don Tapscott. By Don Tapscott Editor’s Note: Mr. In our 2006 book Wikinomics, Anthony D. However, in the five years since the book’s publication, we’ve noticed something striking: the rate of business model innovation has not accelerated. We’re beginning to understand the reason. 1. Pharmaceutical companies are about to drop off what’s called “the patent cliff”. The global biomedical community is generating about 25 new medicines per year, but only a handful of these are “pioneer drugs” rather than “follow-on drugs”–variants, formulations or combinations of existing therapies. Despite increased research spending the impact on the number of new medicines approved is negligible. It is in everyone’s interest that those involved in the quest for pioneer drugs share rather than hoard information. Nor is the clinical trial process as open as it could be. 2. Used properly, the Internet could deepen the bond between musicians and their fans. 3. 4. 5.

Clay Shirky and Accountability Journalism NYU Professor Clay Shirky published an essay, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable“, that suggested that journalists needed to radically rethink the assumptions that have made market-supported newspapers possible. It was a bombshell, cited and commented on thousands of times. Today, Clay outlined the arguments of the essay at the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School and filled a room with journalists, scholars and others interested in his views. Clay’s focus is the future of “accountability journalism”, the sort of serious investigative journalism that prevents corruption and keeps the powerful in check. His fear is that the model we’ve had through the 20th century to produce this accountability journalism is irretrievably broken. These monopoly rents allowed newspapers to do speculative work which might or might not lead to stories like the Catholic priest scandal broken by the Globe. Not only have advertisers been overcharged by newspapers, they’ve been underserved.

The Founder Institute: Helping Founders to Build Great Companies Microsoft BizSpark - Microsoft BizSpark is a global program that helps software startups succeed by giving them access to Microsoft software development tools, connecting them with key industry players, including investors, and providing marketing visibility to help entrepreneurs starting a business. Microsoft BizSpark is a worldwide partner of the Founder Institute, providing software, support, facilities, and mentoring to many entrprenuers within the Fouder Insitute network. Learn more about our partnership here, and sign-up for BizSpark here. Créée en 1989, Brunswick Société d’Avocats accompagne ses clients - investisseurs financiers et PME françaises et internationales et leurs dirigeants - dans leur quotidien et dans leur développement. Cap Digital est le pôle de compétitivité de la filière des contenus et services numériques.

Valence Theory of Organization / Effective Theory In an earlier chapter, I describe how Inter Pares considers the issue of scaling and growth, and suggest this comparison between BAH and UCaPP organizations: With BAH organizations, effectiveness is measured in terms of owned or controlled resources that are deployed in the pursuit of defined objectives and goals. UCaPP organizations, it seems, feel a lesser need to control or own the means – including people – that enable the creation and dissemination of its intended effects which are based in shared values and participation in common cause. In a contemporary context, it is appropriate to question whether the traditional construction of organizational effectiveness – having to do with access and deployment of resources, or achievement of stated goals and objectives, or combinations of both – provides the most useful guidance for a UCaPP world. …is itself transforming, that is changing the innovator as he or she seeks to change the world. Sensory Revision

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