/ee/ CSC Blog en pgustafs@gmail.com Copyright 2009 2009-04-24T21:40:40-05:00 http://www.csc.com/ee/lef/the_dark_side_of_new_media/ New media is terrific for its viral distribution, but there is a dark side if what’s being distributed is unsavory. The Domino’s video that made its way around the ether, starting with YouTube last week, was a PR nightmare (see USA Today article).  The video had over half a million views in its first three days, with folks eager to see what the video creators claimed was a hoax but what Domino’s took extremely seriously.  When you see food in a restaurant being tampered with in its preparation, that puts fear into the national psyche (though some viewers no doubt found the crude video funny).  Two things happened that illustrate Digital Disruptions trends: 1) the video spread like wildfire (New Media), and 2) Domino’s response was swift and strong (Information Transparency).  New media, with its content unfiltered and uncensored, fosters a transparent environment, which means that companies that find themselves on the receiving end of something unpleasant – whether a nefarious act by employees or a legitimate customer complaint – need to act pronto.  As we wrote, having so much information free-flowing on the Internet “puts pressure on corporations to tell the truth and rectify problems quickly.” To Domino’s credit, the company responded immediately and posted its own video on YouTube two days later showing the CEO responding.  The original video was ordered by YouTube to be removed, but it has surfaced on other video sites (à la New Media).  Word of warning: Be careful what you post on the Internet because it doesn’t go away.  That will be a continuing problem for companies like Dominos who are maligned, not to mention the perpetrators, two 30-somethings who were fired and who had warrants issued for their arrest. Is the answer removing video cameras from Dominos stores?  The USA Today article reported that Dominos was considering that, but the problem is one of behavior, not technology.  New media is a world of new policies, so having an HR policy about employee use of video cameras, blogs and social networking sites is entirely appropriate.  Viral media is where the opportunity lies, but when it crosses over to the dark side, then countering the speed of viral media is the ultimate test. Digital Disruptions 2009-04-24T22:40:40-05:00 http://www.csc.com/ee/lef/we_connect/ If I had to distill into a single theme the unprecedented power disruptive technologies have given us in the 21st century, it would be the power to connect. Ever-more powerful wired and wireless communication technologies (e.g., IPv6, WiMax, WiFi, NFC, GPS, UWB, SDR), combined with ever-more powerful and easy-to-use social Web 2.O. and new media development and distribution tools, underpin our newfound ability to connect instantly. We can now connect with people – people we know, people we used to know, people we want to know, potential collaborators, customers, anyone – and information – information about people, places, things, actions and transactions – at any time, from anywhere in the world. As Mark Zuckerberg put it in 2006 on turning down the $1 billion offer Yahoo made for Facebook, which he launched from his Harvard dorm room in 2004, how many times in your life do you have a chance to fundamentally change the way people communicate? The now-familiar term “social networking” doesn’t begin to do justice to the capability first used by the net generation to keep up with friends, as its collaborative possibilities are now being leveraged for serious work by major corporations. Here at CSC, WikonnecT is one prominent example. Just recognized with CSC’s highest honor, the Chairman’s Award for Excellence, WikonnecT is an enterprise application that joins the CSC Property & Casualty product development team and more than 5,000 members representing 368 P&C and general insurance companies into one application lifecycle management community. Linked to customers by WikonnecT’s more than 100 active message boards, 41 community spaces, and 30 blogs, the CSC P&C team rapidly logs and manages issues, be they bugs or requests for enhancements, moving them to work items; prioritizing the work items; and adding the work items to projects, where they are scheduled, completed and released. Though not exactly a social network per se, Wikonnect harnesses social (collaborative) power in a big way. WikonnecT is an agile open source software product development community for CSC and its industry clients, resulting in continuous small-dose improvements based on customer demand. WikonnecT is deserving of the Chairman’s Award not only because of its proven record of improving quality and reducing costs and delays in servicing the P&C industry, but because it serves as a valuable new disruptive delivery model for all CSC areas and other companies to adopt. Imaginatik is another way we CSC’ers connect. Imaginatik is an ideation platform we use internally to gather and promote the best ideas from among our over 90,000 employees worldwide. An ideation event is planned for a particular topic, where ideas are proffered, filtered, rated, prioritize, budgeted and executed. We recently held an event, called CSC & Green, on how we might make CSC more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly, and develop our internal solutions into an offering to help our clients do the same. The CSC & Green initiative was so successful, a CSC Green Way Board was established to steer CSC’s green strategy into action; to provide a forum for incubating, vetting and sharing green activities around the world; and to exemplify, and therefore encourage, a collaborative and proactive culture. In various ways, CSC connects on a regular basis with the best minds throughout the company, our partner companies and our customer base. We connect. How do you connect? Digital Disruptions 2009-03-30T15:44:31-05:00 http://www.csc.com/ee/lef/a_crucial_misconception/ While it is flattering to receive favorable reviews, it is often more instructive to consider critiques, and the nature of a blog is to stimulate honest dialogue which encompasses both. In that spirit, I would like to focus on a point raised by Mike Treder, co-founder and Executive Director of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. On his blog (http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/science_technology/) he states: Alex Fuss, lead researcher for CSC’s Digital Disruptions report, offers some interesting predictions about the future in this interview published by Financial Times. [Hat tip to Nanotechnology Now]    Among other things, he says: We will be able to print out toys, parts, furniture, designs and more from the net using three-dimensional printers. Today 3D printers cost $20,000 and can only print prototypes. But maybe beyond 2013 you’ll actually be able to print a pair of sneakers in your size. . . There will be no more lies. You’ll still be able to have secrets but only if you can keep them off the net. Privacy will be available but only to those who can afford to pay for it. For most people, privacy will end in 2013, or a little beyond that. . . Quantum computing will shatter current encryption techniques, jeopardising anything that relies on encryption, such as credit card transactions, and requiring new approaches to information security. Using an electron spin as opposed to an electron charge in quantum computing would mean all the cryptography we have today would have to be rethought. . . Unfortunately, he gets one thing very wrong: From 2025 to 2050 and beyond, nanotechnology will give us the capability to create anything, molecule by molecule, atom by atom. The technology is at very early stages but it is definitely going to happen. For example, it will be possible to create a piece of wood. But self-replication is crucial, otherwise the technology won’t scale up. What’s needed is nano parts that self-assemble—that way you can mass-produce anything. [emphasis added] This is a common misconception that still persists although it has been obsolete for a decade and half. Obviously, Alex Fuss has not read Nanosystems (published in 1992), nor any of the hundreds of pages on our website and others that expound on those ideas. But all he really needs to know is contained in a press release issued by CRN a few years ago, titled “Leading nanotech experts put ‘grey goo’ in perspective.“ Here is the key paragraph: Contrary to previous understanding, self-replication is unnecessary for building an efficient and effective molecular manufacturing system. Instead of building lots of tiny, complex, free-floating robots to manufacture products, it will be more practical to use simple robot arms inside desktop-size factories. A robot arm removed from such a factory would be as inert as a light bulb pulled from its socket. The factory as a whole would be no more mobile than a desktop printer and would require a supply of purified raw materials to build anything. Self-replication is not crucial for the technology to scale up. Advanced nanotechnology—exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing—will be achievable without it. And perhaps even sooner than Fuss expects. I was given the benefit of the doubt and my position somewhat defended in a comment by Brian Wang posted in response to Treder’s blog entry:  It might be possible that he was speaking about self-replication in simpler terms. For instance when the first nanofactory is built we will have to start somewhere. We will not build each nanofactory arm by human guidance because it would cost too much time and money. So maybe he just meant that nano systems would construct other nanosystems in a factory setting with no danger of run away replication. For the record, Treder is correct in saying that I did not read K. E. Drexler’s Nanosystems (Wiley-Interscience, 1992), but I did read Nanofuture: What’s next for Nanotechnology (Prometheus Books, 2005) by J. Storrs Hall, which includes a foreword by K. E. Drexler. In that book, Hall, following Moshe Sipper, distinguishes between reproduction, self-replication, and autogenous replication.  “[R]eproduction involves making, on purpose, imperfect copies for the purposes of evolution, whereas replication is the similar mechanical process of making an exact copy.” In a self reproducing cell, the parts that the cell factory produces, protein molecules, “are not picked off the production machine and carefully conveyed to meet the next part in the process. Instead they float loose to bump randomly into other parts until they meet one they click together with, in a process called self-assembly. In a nanomachine, as in a human sized ‘factory,‘ parts are never loose to drift around. They are moved by robotic arms, shuttles, and conveyor belts from spot to predetermined spot and are assembled by mechanical force….The nanomachine is a lot faster and simpler in some ways than the machinery of the cell. On the other hand, [the nanomachine] has a big disadvantage: it can’t evolve.” Once we build the first nanofactory that can build all the parts to produce a second nanofactory, and can assemble that second factory and transmit to the second factory the instructions for doing same, we have an autogenous system where “[t]he system as a whole can extend or repair itself,” even though “it does not contain a single machine that can replicate on an individual basis.”  It is to thit capability that I was referring in the Digital Disruptions report upon which the UK Financial Times article was loosely based. In the report we wrote about “atomically-precise manufacturing and self-assembly”.  In my interview with the UK Financial Times, that somehow became “self-replication,” probably through a slip of my tongue. As Hall points out, something that makes copies of itself is very different than something that makes copies by itself. Thank you, Mike, for pointing that out and noting that exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing will be achievable perhaps even sooner than I project. Incidentally, subsequent to the completion of Digital Disruptions, I came across Adrian Bowyer’s Replicating Rapid prototype (www.reprap.org), a 3-D printer that “prints” all the parts needed to build a copy of itself except the screws needed to hold it together. Currently, a human with a screw driver is required to assemble the parts to produce the “son-of-printer” printer, but one can imagine it won’t be long, relatively speaking, before we see truly autogenous factories on both the macro and nanoscale.     Digital Disruptions 2009-02-06T23:27:49-05:00 http://www.csc.com/ee/lef/how_do_you_compete_with_free/ It’s flattering that over the past couple of months our Digital Disruptions report has received attention by the press – most recently in a provocative article featured in the Digital Business section of the December 3 edition of the Financial Times – and has generated inquiries from CSC clients, potential clients, and CSC Account Executives planning C-level innovation strategy events. A few weeks ago, a company in the financial software sector seeking to understand how to deal with some major disruptions it was facing asked me to discuss possible strategies for advancing its business in the digital era.  The main challenge: how do you compete with Free? Free open source software that approached the company’s financial application capabilities was being produced by volunteer developers across the Internet in the same manner that the Linux operating system – highly successful in challenging Microsoft, IBM and Apple dominance – was developed in the early ‘90s. Ostensibly “free” [1] open source development is progressing from the realm of computer infrastructure software to the business application realm.[2]  What’s a company to do? Experience Beats Product The answer, we are learning, is for companies to: • Innovate to provide value they are uniquely positioned to provide. • Provide a platform upon which a community can form whose members collaboratively help to improve proprietary offerings and support each other. • Create a complete customer experience that is greater than the sum of the company’s products and services. For example, if a company sells accounting software that is being challenged by open source alternatives, why not position its new offering as not merely a software accounting product or service, but as the on ramp to the go-to place on the net for accounting information and advice, and the place to hang out with people who share an interest in accounting issues. (Where Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion disappeared to would probably be a very popular question there right now.) Maybe start with an Accountapedia, a Wikipedia for accounting terms, issues, case studies, etc., accessed through the company’s Internet accounting site.  Set up an accounting-related social network à la Facebook, or maybe link with Facebook and MySpace and have the company’s accounting experts participate in discussions and advise its constituents. What about extending the relationship you have with customers via their computer to their mobile device, which they have with them 18 hours a day? What about hosting informative and entertaining events in virtual worlds, and providing various kinds of actual person-to-person support in the real world?  What about leveraging viral media so that, for example, people pass around links to your YouTube video that explains certain accounting concepts, or embed the video in their blogs? The idea is to develop relationships with and among one’s customers that cannot easily be reproduced by software that is merely well-functioning and inexpensive. Empathize with your customers’ life and business challenges and provide a rich experience, not just a sterile product or service, that addresses these challenges.  Customers and advertisers may feel it’s worth paying for what you offer, despite the availability of Free. Two Can Play at Open Source At the same time, nothing is stopping companies from reducing their own costs by leveraging the abundance of open source software at their disposal. If as a traditional business you’ve had the upper hand until now, the trick, as in a game of chess, is not to obsess about holding onto your current and possibly fleeting advantage, but to translate your current advantage into a new one. You have at your disposal all the means your competition has, plus the unique characteristics with which you started out. Isn’t free enterprise wonderful?! __________ [1] Open source software may not have an initial purchase price, but there are often other usage costs involved. [2] Fore more on other products and services trending to free, see Chris Anderson’s cover article in Wired March 2008. Digital Disruptions 2008-12-19T23:51:55-05:00 http://www.csc.com/ee/lef/no_shortage_of_disruptions_in_the_news_today/ Though disruptions are not inherently negative – if I disrupt what you’re doing to present you with a check for $1 million, I think you would deem that disruption positive – they typically present challenges before they surface opportunities (remember going from A to chaos to B). The three major disruptions in the news today, I would say, are: global warming, the presidential election in the United States (although this is primarily a domestic event for us in the US of A, indubitably our choice will impact world events), and the financial crisis. Leaving out global warming for now, let’s see whether digital technologies are involved in the other two. New Media and New Campaigns Unquestionably, the US presidential candidates had to embrace the digital disruption presented by online New Media (New Media is a disruption in the Digital Disruptions report) or risk falling behind in raising money and getting their messages out, as well as risk being deemed out of touch with their increasingly tech-savvy constituencies. Obama jumped on the Internet early but McCain has come back strong, according to an article in Online Media Daily: Barack Obama trounced John McCain in online media and advertising during the first six months of the year, according to a new comScore study. The Web ratings service found Obama’s online display ads drew 92 million views monthly on average from January through June 2008, compared to just 7.3 million for McCain. The Obama campaign appeared to ramp up online efforts in May and June as ad impressions surged to 150 million and 244 million, respectively, while McCain’s fell to a low of 3.2 million in June. Obama also outstripped McCain in the average number of monthly visitors to their respective campaign sites (2.2 million to 583,000) and searches of “Obama” versus “McCain” (5.3 million to 1.3 million). . . . One area where McCain turned the tables was video. His site had more than triple the video views of Obama’s at 2.1 million to 612,000. ComScore attributed the Republican presidential nominee’s online upset to video being featured more prominently on the home page of JohnMcCain.com than on BarackObama.com. McCain has also been closing the gap more recently in video views on YouTube, where Obama has far more ads and original shorts. In the last month he had 6.5 million views to Obama’s 9.8 million, according to video tracking site TubeMogul. Though one could argue that this does not represent a shift to a new grassroots political model as was initially thought – after all, we increasingly purchase online, so online donations merely reflect that trend (see article) – no one would dispute that New Media technologies represent one of the fastest, most effective ways to bolster a campaign. Information Transparency and Financial Transparency As for the financial crisis, I would argue that it was created in part by digital technologies, and I think it will be resolved by them as well. In the late 80s and early 90s I worked on Wall Street for Bankers Trust – often credited with inventing derivatives: customized, complex securities such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations.  I managed the design and implementation of C-Trac, the first collateral management system for these exotic offerings and learned that without powerful computers it would have been impossible to craft, value, pool, strip into traunches, and mark to market all but the simplest of these, not to mention track the collateral that was being rehypothicated on a daily basis – i.e., passed around institutions to back whichever deals’ change in net present value required additional risk mitigation. What was lacking then is lacking now: information transparency (another of our digital disruptions).  When Bankers Trust’s clients started to lose money on these initially highly lucrative deals that turned corporate treasury departments into huge profit centers, they claimed they didn’t understand the risks they had been taking. Very few outsiders were aware of the huge risks to which the increasingly unregulated investment banks and hedge funds exposed themselves and their investors, and many of those who were aware were profiting handsomely from the risky transactions and weren’t about to blow the whistle. This is changing. The New York Times started a blog on Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and the bailout. Web sites like factcheck.org and glassdoor.com, which aggregates insights anonymously provided by employees and is consulted by the press and, it is hoped, the Securities and Exchange Commission, are exposing in real time what CEOs and CFOs may be withholding from their shareholders and the government. Last week the Federal Reserve Bank of New York met with Eurex, NYSE Euronext, CME Group/Citadel, IntercontinentalExchange/the Clearing Corp., representatives from the major dealers who sell Collateralized Debt Securities contracts, buyers of the contracts, and representatives from the SEC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the European Central Bank to discuss setting up a clearinghouse for the hitherto unregulated $55 trillion market for credit derivatives.  (See article.) This is a first step in exposing to players, investors, industry and government the day-to-day market value of these complex assets, and the leverage that players and investors have taken on. I envision something like a software RFID-like tag for securities that allows the world at large to track every detail of what is going on in the financial markets, in the same manner that Wal-Mart tracks products from initial order to production, sale and restock. This follows, too, the much publicised example of information transparency, the Goldcorp turn around. When in March 2000 the mining company Goldcorp exposed all of its geological data to the world and launched the Goldcorp Challenge, with prize money for those who provided the best methods and estimates for mining Goldcorp’s property, it was a huge success.  More than 1,000 virtual prospectors from 50 countries helped propel the “under-performing $100 million company into a $9 billion juggernaut while transforming a backward mining site in Northern Ontario into one of the most innovative and profitable properties in the industry.”  (See article.)  Similarly, by leveraging some of the technologies reviewed in our Digital Disruptions report, and others, a new level of information transparency and collective expertise can be brought to bear on the financial markets, making them once again the safe and liquid engines that finance and reward innovation. Digital Disruptions 2008-10-20T19:37:00-05:00 http://www.csc.com/ee/lef/the_train_has_left_the_station/ In this blog I expect we will come up with some guidelines for understanding the plethora of digital disruptions we are facing and will face, as well as for managing them to advantage in our respective businesses. When we do, let’s highlight the former in bold at the latter in italics. I’ll start us off. You can’t stop disruptive technologies. About five years ago, the price of powerful hardware dropped so precipitously, and a myriad of software productivity tools became so widely available through consumer channels that, while employers struggled to evaluate and integrate it all, employees quickly outfitted themselves with state-of-the-art home offices and leading edge communications gear. These very tech-savvy employees, many of whom never knew a world without the Internet or cell phones, were not content to leave their gadgets at home, and brought them into the corporation, policies prohibiting them notwithstanding. These technologies – instant messaging, Internet e-mail, cell phones, PDAs, flash drives, GPS, portable hubs and MP3 players,* to name a few early ones** – were helping employees get more work done faster, and get it done anywhere, anytime. If the corporation was withholding support for all this unauthorized equipment, so be it. The employees could and did support it themselves. What’s a corporation to do? One of our clients decided to decouple tried-and-true-but-slower-moving IT from early-adopter employee purchasing by giving employees a budget to buy their own equipment, with the provisions that a) they could not call the help desk for support; b) anything that disrupted the corporate network would be shut down, and c) employees were required to sign an agreement saying that to the best of their ability they would use the technology securely and responsibly. This arrangement, they say, has been working well. Lesson learned: Plan to give up some control, and trust your employees to move your company forward in the digital age – though stay involved to make sure the infrastructure you do provide is not compromised. Again, expect some chaos as you move from business model A to business model B. For example, commenting on the illegal use of a laptop in Notre Dame’s coaching box, the New York Times reported, “…the N.C.A.A. appears more reluctant than professional sport leagues – and even some high schools – to welcome the latest available technology.” The article observed, “In many aspects, football keeps technology at arm’s length, particularly at a time when it might be most useful – on game day.” You can bet this will change. You can’t stop the technology, so be creative in figuring out the best way to harness it. __________ *Note the blurring distinction between entertainment equipment and productivity tools.  MP3 players, first used to listen to music, were quickly adopted to replay corporate briefings and seminars. **See the Digital Disruptions report for the latest innovations you can expect to see soon. Digital Disruptions 2008-10-10T18:52:00-05:00 http://www.csc.com/ee/lef/get_on_board_digital_trust_is_leavin_the_station/ I hope you’re watching the announcements about security as they fly onto your workstation through email, RSS and various postings.  Every week there is a new “discovery” about the need for security services and technology to help create value for the enterprise.  Just this week there are two powerful reminders (and it’s only Tuesday)!  In both cases, the message of Digital Trust is echoed over and over.  In particular, these announcements reinforce three of the four strategic conclusions of the Digital Trust research program as reported in Volume 8, the final volume of the Digital Trust report series: * First, digital trust is real.  The presence (or absence) of digital trust has real, direct impact on the ability of the enterprise to achieve competitive advantage and “make business happen.”  The findings of the third quarter 2008 Online Customer Respect Study of life insurance industry Web sites has a specific warning about the impact of a lack of (digital) trust for this industry. * Second, aim high and first with a digital trust strategy to get the payoffs.  In a summary report from the Security for Business Innovation Council, published earlier this year by RSA, 10 security leaders from different industry sectors have declared that security teams must now become “full partners in the business innovation process.”  When you read further, you will discover that this is their way of saying “apply a digital trust strategy.”  In the words of the press release, “In this landscape, the security focus must move from solely mitigating risk to also maximizing business reward.” * Third, security governance structures prevent digital trust strategies from being used more widely.  A more recent companion report also published by RSA tries to develop and explain a “risk/reward equation” based on a foundation of enterprise information risk management.  Once again each of the 10 council members offers his or her advice about how to maximize the returns from such a strategy.  Compare this to the foundation equations of digital trust presented in Volume 1 of the Digital Trust report series (see “Not Your Father’s Information Risk Management” on p. 6), and to the results shown over and over in each of the succeeding volumes.  (All Digital Trust volumes can be found here.)  There are some important differences between the two in just what “value” is targeted, but both insist on an organizational and governance structure that makes security teams aware of business objectives (not just operational objectives) and assigns them the responsibility for attention to value in prioritizing security actions. Ten “thumbs up” for digital trust RSA established a Security for Business Innovation Council in 2008.  The membership was selected by RSA from among security executives representing companies that had extensive security programs, regulatory issues, substantial investment in intellectual property, and an acknowledgement that “information security needs to be part of their business innovation process, ” as the summary report said.  Interviews with each of the 10 executives led to the conclusions of the first (summary) report and recommendations about risk/reward in the second report.  In quote after quote from each of the 10 members in their first report, obligations to recognize business impact and (at least) not hinder business operation unnecessarily are promoted.  It’s a very tiny step between the words of the council members and the conclusions and recommendations of Digital Trust. In the second report, the council members promote an “information risk management” methodology as a way of balancing risk/reward for information security.  While it does move security service away from being an innovation inhibitor, it still falls short of the digital trust reality (and equations) that include and account for enterprise value creation with security services and technology rather than incremental (even cost justified) reductions in risk exposure over enterprise value that already exists.  Despite this difference, there is strong and compelling agreement on the need to rearrange IT security/risk governance so that the security teams are directly connected to business objectives and value targets.  Only then can they more fully contribute to innovation within the enterprise. A digital trust deficit for the life insurance industry The Customer Respect Group “measures and reports on the behavior of corporate websites in relation to the treatment of the online customer and their personal data.” (www.customerrespect.com)  As part of this measurement, the Customer Respect Group has invented a Customer Respect Index (CRI) rating.  For the past five years, the Customer Respect Group has reviewed and measured corporate Web sites, including life insurance industry Web sites. While this latest study indicates that at least some life insurance Web sites have begun to improve their performance according to the CRI, the study also lists two items as its “most surprising results.”  One has to do with the speed of innovation.  The other, however, is listed as “not enough emphasis on trust.”  Since the study is based on an examination of Web sites (in this case insurance company Web sites), the kind of trust deficit being declared is a digital trust deficit.  And, that deficit is penalizing life insurance companies by limiting leads for offline business. Despite the generally weak CRI scores of life insurance companies, five companies were noted as making good improvements. The top five life insurance Web sites and their CRI scores (10 is best) are: —Western & Southern Life (7.7)—Nationwide (6.7)—Metropolitan Life (6.7)—New York Life (6.4)—Principal Financial (6.4) In the Digital Trust report series, Volume 7, “Transparency and Assurance,” examines how digital trust can be created, conveyed, lost and reclaimed.  Although four main techniques for the creation of digital trust are explored, special attention is given to the topic of digital trust creation for Web sites.  Even though the five insurance companies listed have begun to rise on the CRI ranking ladder, digital trust creation techniques are readily evident in only two of them (Nationwide and Principal Financial).  Even then, their use of those techniques falls short of the best applications as described in the digital trust reports. There’s sure room for more value creation with digital trust in insurance company Web sites.  I wonder what the rankings could be if digital trust techniques were applied thoroughly?! The sound of digital trust on the move Can you hear it?  The sounds of digital trust and digital trust strategies are getting louder and louder as they move forward into more widespread application, with the recognition that security services and technology can, indeed, create value for the enterprise.  Be sure your enterprise “hops on board” before the last digital trust cars leave the station. Digital Trust 2008-10-07T21:23:01-05:00 http://www.csc.com/ee/lef/throwing_20th_century_business_models_into_turmoil/ Before they will power 21st century business, technology innovations will first disrupt 20th century business models. As NYU media pundit Clay Shirkey puts it, disruptions don’t typically take us cleanly from current business model A to new business model B, but from business model A to chaos to business model B. It is often the case that before we can progress in a new direction we must retrace some steps and take time to map out a new route, and this likely will be the case in spades in the digital millennium. Strikes and law suits are often signs of disruption.  When they are prompted by innovative digital technologies that threaten the status quo, defensive maneuvering by the establishment is not only expected but called for – until a new order emerges that capitalizes on the advantages brought by unstoppable innovations yet assures their fair and responsible use. The billion-dollar law suit for “massive intentional copyright infringement” brought last year by Viacom against Google/YouTube for providing access to Viacom content illegally uploaded by fans is a case in point. To address the issue, Google introduced a copyright identification system called Video ID, which tracks unauthorized videos. It enables a copyright owner to either block the clip, leave it up, or enable YouTube to sell ads linked to the material and share the revenue. According to a CNET News blog post, “Google said on its blog… that copyright owners were choosing to turn a buck from unauthorized clips 90 percent of the time.“ The CNET News post quoted Google, “It’s clear to our (more than 300) Video ID partners that our technology has created a framework that allows copyright holders to sanction the creativity of their biggest fans…These partners now have a new way to successfully distribute and market their content online.”  The CNET News post went on to report, “Several start-ups are working on technology that will track unauthorized videos wherever they exist on the Web and then insert an advertisement into the clips.“ Digital content actually allows for tighter owner control then ever. In the past, media giants whose terms of sale legally prohibited certain personal uses of content could not discover such illegal uses nor enforce their claims, but now copyright owners can do so via the Internet. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (1998) supports this new-found ability, a result of the powerful lobbying muscle of the media industry. Ultimately, though, the consumer will not be put back in his box, and a win-win solution, such as Google/Viacom’s, will be hashed out for the Writers Guild strikers in Hollywood (they so far won minor concessions for Internet distribution), the New York City cab drivers (they so far lost their battle to shun imposed GPS devices in their cars), and countless conflicts to come. The immense disruptive potential of digital innovation, however, will take much time to address – 50 years, according to a gathering of prominent CEOs at the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos – and I agree. What do you think? Digital Disruptions 2008-09-29T21:47:01-05:00 http://www.csc.com/ee/lef/value_beyond_the_uncopyable/ “Trust” Means …? “Trust” is a gut word.  It’s one of those words we use all the time, but often struggle to define in the context of its use.  When asked about exactly what we mean, we often mumble through some confused description that often includes such words as “assurance,” “belief,” “confidence,” “faith,” “reliance,” “reliability” or even “security” as we try to invoke an empathic nod from listeners. We love this word.  It has the power to evoke an approving response in all kinds of circumstances, even if we don’t exactly know what we mean!  For example, banks have historically had “trust” as part of their name (e.g., SunTrust Bank, Pacific Trust Bank, California Bank and Trust, Branch Banking and Trust) to help us feel confident in letting them hold and manage our money.  Today, that application of the word “trust” has been adopted by dozens and dozens of technology and Internet companies as part of their company name, invoking the power of the word “trust” to support presumed market predispositions.  (See Volume 1 or Volume 7 of the Digital Trust report series for a sample of companies using “trust” in their name.) For a long time we have acknowledged the important sociological and psychological dimensions of the word “trust” and the ability to apply trust as a “quality” for people or institutions.  But, even in this application, we are not quite sure what we mean.  And, we have a lot of choices.  For example, Google reports more than 27,000 “hits” when a search for “definition of trust” is pursued! Uncopyable?! In an essay in “The Technium” called “Better Than Free,” Kevin Kelly uses “trust” as an example of a quality (of a person or enterprise) that is intangible and uncopyable, and which therefore can have value in a network economy that copies everything over and over and thereby makes things “worthless.”  He goes on to name eight values (qualities), not including trust, as attributes that cannot be copied, and which therefore add value to free copies … making the copies “better than free.”  It is an interesting point of view, and certainly worthy of reading. Digital Trust Value for Real Notwithstanding the soft claims of value for intangible, uncopyable qualities (even including trust), there is a trust contributor that delivers a real, measurable payoff in new value created through security services and technology.  This is the trust created and delivered by security technology and service.  This is digital trust as defined by the Digital Trust research program and report volumes.  (See all the Digital Trust volumes here.)  Specifically, digital trust is evidence-based confidence that systems operate as advertised, and that no unadvertised functions are occurring.  It is: *  Announced with features and functions. *  Completed with life cycle characteristics of design, development, deployment and operation. *  Capable of value creation beyond a reduction in the risk of loss. Digital trust is an important contributor to the full fabric of trust in any context.  But, when examined by itself, digital trust contradicts popular notions about how trust is created, conveyed and valued.  Unlike the “uncopyable” quality that is described in Kevin Kelly’s essay, we find that: *  Digital trust is hard, real and quantifiable.  It measurably affects both speed and cost, and can create value in other ways as well. *  Digital trust is fast.  In fact, “nothing is as fast as the speed of digital trust.” [1] *  Digital trust can be purchased (with money and effort) in at least four ways as seen in Volume 7 of the Digital Trust report series (see “How Much Does Digital Trust Weigh?” on pages 2-5). Better Than “Better Than Free” So, “better than free” is certainly an attractive notion to contemplate.  But, once we know what digital trust really is, the value that can be created, conveyed and sustained with digital trust is even better than that! —————————————————- 1 This phrase is adapted from the original “Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust” as seen in Stephen M.R. Covey, The Speed of Trust (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006). Digital Trust 2008-09-19T22:20:00-05:00 http://www.csc.com/ee/lef/coming_in_october_digital_disruptions_research_report1/ Digital Disruptions: Technology Innovations Powering 21st Century Business Complete with its own blog by Alex Fuss, 2008 LEF Associate on Digital Disruptions, and all of you who contribute to this dialogue on disruptive technologies—those technologies that, per Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, introduce to the market very different value propositions than were previously available. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me (Alex, here) kick this blog off with an excerpt from a presentation I gave in April at an LEF Client Forum: The digital disruptions begun with the Internet’s launch at the end of the 20th century and responsible for a tremendous spike in global productivity promise a second-round impact in the 21st century that we can only begin to imagine.  At CSC we have identified seven categories of digital disruptions that are rapidly impacting today’s business models: 1. New Media 2. Augmented Reality 3. Social Power 4. Information Transparency 5. Digital Spectrum 6. Platform Makeover 7. Smart(er) World The year-long research effort by CSC’s LEF to identify these categories and delve into the implications of specific technologies they comprise will result in the Digital Disruptions research report, to be released in October 2008.  Looking back, having worked on the Digital Disruptions report for over a year has undoubtedly broadened my horizons, deepened my research and analysis skills, greatly expanded my network of technology innovators and pundits, and left me with some new habits that should serve me well long after the report is officially released.  Foremost among these habits is the tendency to scour the news daily for any and all technology breakthroughs and filter the announcements and pronouncements through the prism of the report, defracting them through the gradients of its seven themes. Leveraging the blog, I will, in true Web 2.0-fashion, share my personal thoughts on the implications of relevant industry events as they occur, and solicit your personal and professional comments. I am by no means an expert on the subject – “Digital Disruptions” is too broad and too fast-changing a topic for anyone to master – and look to the collective wisdom of all to help us understand the technology landscape forming before us, and how to best use that shared knowledge to advantage. Though the report is not out yet, if you would like to familiarize yourself with the report’s themes, you can listen to the podcast of the research preview I gave in April by subscribing to the LEF RSS feed (/lefpodcast) and adding the podcast from the LEF Forum, April 2008, podcast 12 “Digital Disruptions.”  In addition, Clayton Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma provides a good foundation for understanding disruption in the context of technology innovations. I’m looking forward to a stimulating collective discussion, an actualization of theme 3 above: Social Power. À la prochaine (until next time)…     Digital Disruptions 2008-09-11T14:51:01-05:00