As, always I’m looking to share with you quality information that helps increase our business development skills, enhance our level of business model innovation, and ultimately the quality of our professional relationships. While I never going into depth about the finds, I encourage you check them out if they sound interesting.
Slide over broadcasters and basic cable networks here comes YouTube. As it revs up its goal of bringing exceptional content to its users you can look for a cash heavy content aggregator to be on the prowl. It’s not going after the typical 13-week episodes – even though they launched a VOD service this spring – but the spectacular niche events that pull in extraordinary advertiser interest. The recently announced live streaming of Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits is just the crescendo of the opening salvo. It’s not hard to see them running after global retransmission rights to an Olympic-like event. After all in a 3-screen world they are just as well positioned as anyone else to monetize the content.
A growing number of companies and individuals are handling their data needs on a remote infrastructure, the cloud. There is no doubt that the freedom to access your data from almost any Internet connected device has dramatically increased productivity. And, more importantly has driven the need to cart around thumb drives, portable disks drives, and for those who have been around awhile the memories of stuffing your briefcase with 3 ¼ or 5 ½ inch floppy disks (Or, was it 3 ½ and 5 ¼?) out of our lives. In this past week’s ‘Monday Note’ Frédéric Filloux points out some of the downside that lay under the shiny surface of Cloud Computing. In particular the operational risks associated with associated with contractual shortfalls and the international legal maze that is virtually impossible to maneuver through without resources equivalent to that of the largest multi-national concerns. Frederic’s final word is that what we gain in convenience and efficiency, we should also gain in security.
Keeping to the Clouds there was a good piece in Epicenter this week. “The stakes are high and the players are ready” is how Tim Carmody closes out his piece. And none of us could argue otherwise. The next 12 to 24 months will be about building connection between the PC and post-PC devices. Just the other day I was in the Apple store and half of the display space was dedicated to the iPad. Not just any space the front of the store as well as the central corridor 85% of visitor utilize. Our behavior has already changed we expect to be able to connect to anyone and anything anywhere, a far cry from just 15 years ago when most of us still carried a few coins uncase we need to make an emergency call from a payphone. Today it’s about shared interfaces, bottomless storage, and syncing all items that are best handled by an infrastructure shifted to the cloud. If you think it is just about ‘social’ and remote based productivity software you really need to read this piece.
This is short and to the point. All too often we set historical observations as fact for our assumptions going forward. In this post Tim examples a perfect example of this behavior when it came to predicting the impact of Carmageddon.
It takes a mix of leaders and talent to pursue a variety of growth strategies. The question isn’t does your organization have the right one’s… although the study found that that was critical. The true question is what are the specific leadership traits that lead to exceptional performance.