Oh yes, they know how we click and tick …
Read a Googler’s view on open standards, open source, and open information – important because it’s Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President of Product Management. Extremely interesting in terms of strategy definition, open communication (and admitting that Google isn’t there yet):
There are two components to our definition of open: open technology and open information. Open technology includes open source, meaning we release and actively support code that helps grow the Internet, and open standards, meaning we adhere to accepted standards and, if none exist, work to create standards that improve the entire Internet (and not just benefit Google). Open information means that when we have information about users we use it to provide something that is valuable to them, we are transparent about what information we have about them, and we give them ultimate control over their information. These are the things we should be doing. In many cases we aren’t there, but I hope that with this note we can start working to close the gap between reality and aspiration.
Sure this dialog on openness may seem like the PR part of the “do no evil” message, but I believe them that it’s not a message alone but an approach to business.
Picture above by http://www.flickr.com/photos/paperstringcloth/ / CC BY-NC 2.0
… about the cloud, cloud OSes and open source code – this week Google opened up its Chromium OS, VirtualBox images and all and every good consultant is writing and talking about it.
It can boot in seconds (and should be run with solid-state hard drives) …
and is supposed to “live in the cloud“:
Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.
See, for now it’s Canonical who are doing engineering on a contract basis (via lockergnome) – partners in business model innovation and shaping the “future of computing” …
via completewaveguide.com via Oliver’s bookmarks
Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani is giving us a “preview edition” – all the things we never dared to ask about the wave.
via slideshare.net
I like the three derived strategies on slide 16 – they are sound, yet the underlying starting points and rationales are a bit flawed I think:
1. Open source OS are left out of the strategic analysis (and this has different implications for the contenders) – think of Jolicloud, UbuntuNetbookRemix, Moblin, and YES Google Chrome OS
2. the usage scenarios (ie. the arrows depicting how low or high a specific OS can go) aren’t a function of technical issues alone – licensing matters a lot in this space, think the prolongation of XP by Microsoft or the continued resistance of Apple to open up their iPhone platform.
3. and last – competitive marketplaces don’t care much about single companies wishes. So, even when Apple wants to avoid netbooks they can’t do this for long. Netbooks are here to stay, so they better find ways to embrace this innovation (even when it’s at the cost of an established, well-running business model).
Dieter Rams offers 10 commandments for good design, well, rather ten important criteria, among them:
Good Design is as Little Design as Possible
Dieter Rams, designer – Cold War Modern from Victoria and Albert Museum on Vimeo.
Yet simplicity is hard to do, as is good design … ask Douglas Bowman, who just quit his job at Google due to basic, deep-set cultural differences:
Without a person at (or near) the helm who thoroughly understands the principles and elements of Design, a company eventually runs out of reasons for design decisions. [...] When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data. Data in your favor? Ok, launch it. Data shows negative effects? Back to the drawing board. And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.
For more design-thinking see “What is good design?“ at Metropolismag
The 20th-century definition of “good design” was driven primarily by form. Today the stakes are too high, and the world too complex, for a superficial response.
One of the most interesting things about going to conferences like OSMB is the smalltalk you do during lunch time. And today I’ve had the good luck to meet someone with an equal interest in Open Innovation. Triggered me into debunking one of the drafts I’ve pondered to long, as framework for my notes of John Lilly’s tech keynote about Mozilla. One connection is obvious, the Mozilla foundation manages to attract a lot of contributions and innovations from people outside the actual organization. Heck, even key decision-makers rest factually outside the “official” organization.
Speaking of the draft, take a peek at this Google project as another example of companies exploring open innovation (see Dell and Starbucks for other examples).
Well, Project 10100 was a call for ideas sponsored by Google in autumn 2008 to change the world by helping as many people as possible. Over 100,000 ideas were submitted and public voting will begin on March 17th, 2009. Then, an advisory board will select up to five final ideas and Google will help bring these ideas to life by committing $10 million to implement the projects. Neat …
Yes, the focus is on gathering and evaluating ideas. And while generic idea management software exists that will conduct the whole process from requesting ideas, through evaluation and into the implementation stage, I am thinking more and more about the potentials social software like e.g. wikis and (micro-)blogs offer here. Well, can’t deny being an Enterprise 2.0 consultant, can I? And this is of course an area of increasing corporate interest – in this economic situation the search for more able business models only gets stronger.
