by Sören Stamer August 20, 2007 at 12:44 AM

I wish I was a student or a PhD student again. It seems to be the best time ever to think about the future of enterprises and our whole economy. So, it couldn't be more interesting to study Business Administration, Economics or related disciplines.

The paradigm shift labeled "Web 2.0" reached the shore of conventional enterprises mainly build upon hierarchies. Digital Natives enter conventional enterprises and the fun begins. They demand to work in the new paradigm and cause change. So, it would be good to be able to answer one important question: Why should any enterprise make intensive use of social software and transform itself into an Enterprise 2.0?

Well, I have been thinking about this for a while now and did what I had to do: I started to transform CoreMedia into an Enterprise 2.0.

The change management was all about changing the corporate culture. At the beginning, the use of social software was only a minor point. By now, it has emerged to a central aspect.

Through my own experience I came to the conclusion that the main aspect of Enterprise 2.0 is raising the order of connectivity between all stakeholders. And here is my hypothesis: With more and better connections between employees, managers, partners, customers and to the rest of the world, an enterprise will be more aware of its environment. It will be more agile and more creative. It will be more competitive and, therefore, stays longer alive. Well, at least on average.

I really like to put this hypothesis to a test through a study. I expect to find evidence that the rate of innovation and the customer orientation raises along with the order of connectivity.

And I expect to see some evidence "being connected" means "staying alive" in a networked economy and society.

Anyone interested in making this topic the topic of her/his thesis? Please contact me directly or through this blog.

by Sören Stamer August 14, 2007 at 10:54 PM

First things first: I do admire Google for what they have achieved in such a short time. And I still like all the people at Google that I know personally.

Well, I also like their search tools and most of their other amazingly innovative services like Google Earth, Google Maps, etc.

Google has fundamentally changed the world we live in. They made Bill Gates' vision "information at your fingertips" mainly come true. Actually, I was one of Google's big fans. I loved them for being different, for "don't be evil" and for all the smart and funny ideas around the Google logo.

However, something important has changed: I don't like Google anymore.

About 15 to 18 months ago they started to lose my friendship. I became more and more skeptical:

Was "don't be evil" great marketing or a great vision? What do they really think about transparency? Where can I see my own profile with all the profile data Google has collected about me over years now? Where can I delete all the entries about myself I dislike? Do they own my profile data? Do they provide my profile data to government authorities on request? Who is Google in person?

I’ve realized that it is way too dangerous in the long run to have a single company with such a huge power over all of us getting stronger and stronger. It simply feels wrong.

And we ain't seen nothing yet. For Google it seems to be pretty easy to enter and dominate also other markets. They offer more and more attractive services for free, collect even more and better profile data and sell a lot more ads. They started with search, added mail, maps, blogs, calendar, analytics, office applications, video, and the like. Then, they added billing and telephony. More to come. Now they are well positioned to become the biggest operator on earth.

Obviously, Google doesn't have to make any money with those services directly. It is enough to improve their user profiles and they will earn more with AdSense.

This makes it pretty tough to compete with Google due to Google's strategic positioning.

And it’s getting worse. If you are a mobile operator you can choose one of two evils: If you bring Google onto your phones your customers will be happy and Google gets stronger. So you lose ground. But if you block Google and promote your own search your customers won't be happy at all and so you lose ground again.

What about copying Google? Well, it is not very likely that another company can do what Google did. The existing network effects for Google are way too strong. And another huge search company won't solve the underlying problem. Such a highly centralized power seems to be way too dangerous for normal enterprises.

So if you want to beat Google you have to change the rules of the game. You can't outperform Google the Google way.

Here is my best guess for mobile operators and any other companies that are afraid of Google and want to compete:

Go open source

Google uses a lot of decentralized mechanisms to create innovations and they hire loads of smart people. However, the whole world is still smarter than Google alone. So let's go for open source to build an open and trusted alternative to Google.

Be transparent

Google is non-transparent and non-transparency kills trust. So let's make everything transparent to you as a user, the algorithms, the source code, the policies, your profile, etc. If someone wants to change his/her profile that is fine as well. If someone doesn't like to be profiled that is fine too.

Support the Wikipedia universe

Google is a global brand everyone knows and looks for. So we need to have an even better global brand with more trust. Wikipedia.

So let's spend some money to make Wikiasearch the world’s greatest search engine, the first one being open and trusted as well.

It will be a different game for Google: It is all about trust - an extremely powerful force. Fortunately, even Google cannot win this game against Wikipedia us all.

I am really curious how long it takes until the big operators will start to implement this plan.

Well, we ain't seen nothing yet.

by Sören Stamer August 06, 2007 at 11:07 PM

Recently, I have learned an interesting lesson about running a successful (beach club) business: Killing your business is pretty easy.

Beach clubs are a big thing in Germany for quite a while now. Hamburg has quite a few spots and they are still gaining momentum. (Actually, I wonder why nobody invented them earlier. With hindsight the idea to have a nice and clean beach with a fancy bar and happy people right next to your place seems to be a no-brainer.)

Some people may even say that being successful in the beach club business looks kind of easy. If the sun shines every beach club is pretty crowded anyway.

However, there are differences. Little differences, but important ones. With three separate beach clubs right next to each other, Hamburg offers a very good opportunity to feel the differences and discover a little bit of beach club wisdom.

I took the chance and tested three beach clubs in a row. It was a nice and warm Sunday evening a few weeks ago when a friend and I wanted to find our favorite beach club. We entered every single beach club for a few minutes and got a good first impression – enough to make a choice.

The first beach club offered a pretty good atmosphere. It was not too crowded since we arrived pretty late. However, all seats were taken and the mood was relaxed.

The second beach club was different. It was pretty crowded with loads of cool and stylish people. The music was louder and more aggressive. There were three security guys at the door and a lot of party people were sitting at the pool and tried to make a good impression. You can tell, all barkeepers were pretty busy.

The third beach club was well known to be the best place for families. Actually, it was not going too well that evening. To be frank: It looked pretty much dead when we arrived! Only very few seats were taken and – which was the worst part – the atmosphere was uneasy at best.

You may wonder, what was wrong with the third place. Why did they perform so badly? And what did they do about it?

Well, I guess they have struggled with their positioning and tried to fix it. It looks like they tried to attract more party people and therefore were not too happy with their family friendly image at all. Obviously, they really started to change their image (and their karma) with a big sign at the entrance:

“Dear parents and children, Our beach club is NO playground!”

It worked. At least they are not know to be the number one beach club for families anymore. Now, they are known to be the beach club with the worst karma ever.

I wonder if this sign would have served them a little better:

“Dear parents and children, playboys and playgirls, Enter YOUR PLAYGROUND and have fun!”

Well, I am still wondering what this tells me about the software business in general and CoreMedia's legal terms and conditions in detail.