Established Organizations in a New World

Wednesday, May 31, 2006 9:00am-10:00am

Immoderator:

Scott Case, Board Chairman, Network for Good

Speakers:

Dan'l Lewin, Corporate Vice President, Strategic and Emerging Business Development, Microsoft

Guido Jouret, CTO, Emerging Markets Technology Group, Cisco

Note Taker:

Amit Asaravala, Manager of Editorial & Content Strategy, TechSoup

Key Points

Nonprofits Should Stop Reinventing the Wheel When it Comes to Technology -- Web 2.0 Can Help

According to Guide Jouret:

°      If you spend too much time reinventing the wheels, you may not be able to build value (services) on top of the stack.

°      Work toward interoperability (standards): this will reduce the amount of funding that you spend on dealing with the friction of transactions and partnerships.

°      The "pony" in the Web 2.0 phenomenon: Smaller organizations can get a lot of mileage by collaborating.

°      Nonprofit technologists should focus on XML and use it to share data with other organizations.

°      Example: RosettaNet for the IT industry.

°      If people could establish a social network, not between individuals, but between organizations, you could establish powerful collaborations.

According to Dan'l Lewin:

°      The Information Technology industry is switching from "info technology" to "info technology."

°      At the end of the day, the innovation you focus on should be core to your business.

"Open" Standards Doesn't Necessarily Mean They Were Created Openly -- And That Might Be Okay

According to Guido Jouret:

°      It's hard to "raise the bar" when you're "open from day one." (In other words, design by committee doesn't yield the highest quality standards.) That's why Cisco develops technology on its own for a while before releasing it openly.

°      "If we don't invent it first, we don't necessarily move the goalposts."

°      Examples: RSS, Linux, BitTorrent -- all have a "benevolent dictatorship" model and were guided by a single leader or group before being opened up. And even today, there is still one person or group making the tie-breaking decisions when necessary.

According to Dan'l Lewin:

°      It's clear that you can't begin a standards process in a large room with a lot of people.

°      You'll never gain general agreement when you start off with a crowd.

Focus on Mobile Technologies if You Want to Extend Your Reach

According to Guide Jouret:

°      Laptops are luxury devices: this is out of reach of most people in the world.

°      The first luxury device most people will acquire is their cell phone.

°      Example: farmers use mobile technologies to find pricing info.

°      In regions where there is a large illiteracy rate, the government could use podcasts to deliver information to citizens.

°      Municipalities or organized contractors could also use mobile technologies to broadcast local availability of jobs to day laborers.

Further Reading/Research

Books:

The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, by Thomas L. Friedman

http://www.thomaslfriedman.com/worldisflat.htm

Living on the Fault Line, by Geoffrey A. Moore

http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060087269

The Age of Unreason, by Charles Handy

http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml;jsessionid=5T1AYB0T11LUOAKRGWDR5VQBKE0YIISW?id=3018&referral=8636&_requestid=37723

The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki

http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/

Linked: The New Science of Networks, by Albert-László Barabási

Web:

MicrosoftStartupZone.com

http://microsoftstartupzone.com/

Cisco Systems Foundation

http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac48/about_cisco_cisco_foundation.html

ITConversations: Audio Podcasts on Information Technology and Business

http://www.itconversations.com/index.html

Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/