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Corporate World Needs to Address Four-Day Work Week Movement

The remote work imperative--"Third Place Thursdays"--is a way for corporate America to co-opt the four-day work week movement.  Better to get in front than to be dragged from behind...

A Way to Cut Gas Costs and Auto Emissions by 20%--Third Place Thursdays

In my new book Jump Point, I argue that Internet "culture" is going to change the way we live, work and play in the next 1000 days.  I want to offer a specific opportunity right now: companies should set aside one day a week for employees to work remotely.  Let's call it "Third Place Thursdays."

At $5 for a gallon of gas, it is no longer a rational approach to business resource management to impel most office employees to spend time and gas (not to mention spewing millions of pounds of carbon compounds into the air) commuting an hour each day to an office complex where we warehouse them--heat them in the winter, cool them in the summer--only to have them spend the day emailing to (or otherwise networking with) colleagues in next door cubicles.  That is more than dumb, it is irresponsible.

The fact is, we have the technology today to reinvent the way we work.  We simply need to change our thinking.

Third Place Thursdays (Don't like Thursday? Pick a day) pays recognition to the possibility that technology can improve the way we work--and maybe save the planet too.

Thanks to the ubiquity of notebook computers, BlackBerrys, readily available WiFi, plain old mobile phones--it is now practicable to do productive work from a remote location.  Those of us who travel a lot do it all the time.  Why not take a day--20 percent of the work week--and allow employees to work from a "third place"--not the office, not necessarily the home.  Keeping employees off the highways and byways saves time, gas and the environment--and in all likelihood, will produce a better work product.  The effects could be life- and economy-changing.

Sample HR Policy:

Unless business conditions dictate otherwise, and at the discretion of supervisors, employees are encouraged to work remotely on Thursdays.  Please check with your managers and work teams to be sure remote work is both appropriate for and possible within your group.

Come gather you information workers and symbol manipulators: instead of inching along in mind-numbing freeway traffic just to attend an endless series of phone or online meetings, you could walk down to a neighborhood Starbucks, stroll to a nearby park bench, or take public transportation to the beach, crack open a networked computer and do the best work of your week.  Work long, work hard, get out of the house, avoid the office commute, be a human.  As an employee, what's not to like?

The benefits are even greater to organizations--and most are ready to adopt a remote work scheme.  In my career as an executive at companies like HP and Applied Materials, I have had hundreds of employees who worked away from me geographically.  In fact, in more than a few cases, due to geographic distribution I had never (ever) met face-to-face with some of my best, most loyal, most productive employees.  But, I interacted with them routinely throughout the day.  Being under my thumb didn't make people work harder or better.  Respect did.  And now technology can make remote work easier to imagine.

Progressive companies like Intel and US Cellular have implemented Email-Free Fridays, as a means to manage information overload.  That idea seems to be gaining traction.  As a way to tap technology culture to improve our lives, Third Place Thursdays goes that idea 10x better.  Propose the idea to your company management and let us know what happens.  It only takes an intrepid few to change the world.

Have an opinion or want to start a movement; write to me at tom@edgelings.com

Rapid Cell Phone Adoption Accelerates Arrival of the Jump Point Economy

Great item from the New York Times on the rapid adoption of cell phones leading up to the Jump Point.

To get a sense of how rapidly cellphones are penetrating the global marketplace, you need only to look at the sales figures. According to statistics from the market database Wireless Intelligence, it took about 20 years for the first billion mobile phones to sell worldwide. The second billion sold in four years, and the third billion sold in two.

How to Get Rich During this Recession

Recessions always tell us something.  This one is telling us that the world economy is changing and we are not ready. 

While disruptive, recessions often have a silver lining.  The upside to this slow down is that we get a needed breather to rethink and retool for the coming Jump Point economy.  In the transition period leading up to the 2011 inflection year, the way forward is less about what to do, more about what to change.  Want to get a leg up on the next economic boom?  Here are some major thematics from Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business:

• The convergence of personal computing and communications has created a worldwide network that allows people to connect directly to each other without middlemen, brokers or arbiters between them.  This is a lousy time to be a middleman, broker, or arbiter.

• Consumers, overwhelmed by information overload, struggle to reconcile the many competing claims for their attention in daily life. This is a bad time to be an attention-stealing, interruption advertiser.

• People don’t want anyone dictating when they do something, buy something, or watch something. This is an unfortunate time to be in an inflexible or time-bound business.

• People don’t want restrictions on how they use, enjoy, manipulate, store or share their property. Trying to command and control information rights is a losing proposition.

• Consumers are acutely aware of their power to change the equations, flip the ratios and obliterate the old market rules. Provide mechanisms for customer influence and expression . . . or go home.

• People don’t trust their governments, large corporations or political parties; they have an inherent trust in each other and in authenticity.  This is a dangerous time to be untrustworthy or shifty or phony –   especially if you are a large, established institution.

We are not in a business-as-usual recession.  This is the trembler before the tsunami.  You won't succeed by continuing to do after the recession what you did before it.  Use this period to rethink your business model, refine your value proposition, rework your go-to-market strategy, and get ready for the Jump Point and beyond. 

Coming up, we will look at some of the new strategies companies are adopting to win during and after this recession.

How Local Economies Can Compete After the Jump Point

As the founding chairman and CEO of the economic development network, Joint Venture: Silicon Valley, over the years I have often been asked what makes regional economies successful.  My answer invariably reduces down to a few essential characteristics.  As the global economy approaches the Jump Point in the next 1000 days, those qualities are more important than ever.

First, it should be understood that regions compete against regions in the new global economy.  In that view, a national GDP is actually the aggregate product of regional economies.  Successful regions have within them export-oriented, industry clusters—food chains of competitive and complementary players.  Economists call these agglomerations.  These clusters usually include industry leaders or innovators, a specialized workforce, specialized suppliers and often at least one major academic or research institution. 

The X factor is the support of the surrounding community, including local governments.  That support always includes a positive regulatory environment, but the most important feature—the one I focused on as head of JV:SV--is that the community promotes connectivity.  I don’t mean Internet connectivity here—although that is increasingly the medium of choice.  Here connectivity means helping the members of the community connect to each other and then helping the entire region connect to the outside world.  Communities can do many things to improve their regional economies and competitive position—everything from investing in research to providing superior or specialized infrastructure—but if they do one thing well it must be to connect participants and promote collaboration and cross-pollination. 

In the run up to the Jump Point, the global competition between regions is going to get more intense than ever.  The winning regions will be those localities that use the power of the network to organically grow new enterprises, attract new industries and jobs from elsewhere, and position local companies and products in global markets.

The Attention Rights Movement

I have written a piece on the emergence of an Attention Rights movement over on Nicole Ferraro's terrific microsite, InternetEvolution. Check it out and join the global conversation.

As marketers and advertisers hungrily explore ways to monetize online attention, they face mounting challenges. Consumers have migrated online precisely because they want more control over the media they consume. The old bargain -- content for attention -- is broken. Empowered viewers now reject TV’s standard promise of 22 minutes of content in exchange for eight minutes of brain-dead ads. With place- and time-shifting technology at their disposal, viewers, listeners, and readers do not want, nor need they endure, advertisements. As a result, online ads, be they behavioral, contextual, or declarative data-based, are all falling short. Give consumers the choice, and they would rather get information from a trusted friend or expert. This is giving the old Hollywood/Madison Avenue nexus fits. The ROI on a dollar of integrated advertising today, even when measurable, is dismal.

As a Concept, Prime Time Television is Dead

According to a recently released Digital Life America tracking study conducted by Solutions Research Group, nearly 80 million Americans (43 percent of the online population) have watched one of their favorite TV shows on the Internet, up significantly from 12 months ago when that figure was just 25 percent. One out of five Americans online said they watch TV on the web on a weekly basis, and that's not including the 14 percent who say they use cable's video-on-demand option.

From MediaPost Communications:

Those who viewed one of the leading 20 prime time shows in the past 24 hours were asked to identify the source of viewing. Overall, 25 percent of prime time viewing was time shifted using a DVR, broadband, mobile or similar. Among viewers 18-34, one-third (34 percent) of viewing was time-shifted. And among 18-49 households with a DVR, a remarkable 55 percent of the leading 20 shows were time-shifted.

If a household has a DVR and broadband, DVR is the preferred means of time-shifting. DVR users are becoming more aggressive in skipping commercials-65 percent say they "always" skip commercials compared to 52 percent a year ago.

Oscar's Weak Showing Speaks Volumes About State of TV, Movies

Jump points throughout history bring big change, but arrive in small doses. The trick is to watch the trend lines.

If we read the writing on the wall from two very fresh data points on popular media, TV and movies as we know them are in for a rough transition.

Point 1.

The overnight results announced today by Nielsen Media Research says preliminary ratings for the 80th annual Academy Awards telecast are 14 percent lower than the least-watched ceremony ever. In other words, TV that celebrates cinema is apparently a dud with viewers who would rather use their attention in new ways.

Point 2.

Meanwhile, a report from tech and media consultancy IDG issued a few days ago says that the Internet is where people spend the most time browsing--32.7 hours per week.

Results are based on a sample of 992 U.S. residents 15 years of age or older, who frequently use the Internet, including quotas by gender, age group, ethnicity, region, and income.

The firm says people spend 70.6 hours per week on average with all media. They spend 16.4 hours glued to television and 3.9 hours with newspapers and magazines.

Karsten Weide, the study's program director of digital media and entertainment, confirms what the ad media market has been doing for the past few years, as broadband Internet access has mostly supplanted narrower conduits making the Web a video medium. "This suggests that advertising budgets will continue to be shifted out of television, newspapers, and magazines into Internet advertising."

There is growing evidence that the old exchange of content for attention is changing and the resulting tsunami could wipe out those players who fail to pay heed to the trend lines. That means you Hollywood.

Maybe next year's Academy Awards celebration should be webcast instead.

Trust is the New Money (Part 4)

"Stupid people, you don't use a secure password."

The was the note left behind by a hacker on the Harvard University website Monday as a compressed 125 MB file described as the database for the Web site of Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences showed up on the Bit Torrent index, Pirate Bay. Apparently a lot of personal information about students was exposed. The hacker claims the stunt was intended to show the university's Crimson-faced IT department just how vulnerable they are. Not too often the Harvard folks get called stupid. Just another warning of the threats that come with the opportunities after the Jump Point -- and the obligations we all have to preserve trust as the coin of the new realm.

The post-Jump Point world will be populated by numerous scammers---so-called seeders and leechers, employing malware, adware, spam and spear-phishing to get the unguarded to give up valuable information. And nowhere is the new network more vulnerable than inside the social media sites that have emerged as the new market spaces. MySpace, Facebook, bebo, Hi-5, and the myriad communities like them are very attractive consolidations of consumers but they are also porous, unregulated frontier towns. And, frontier justice can be a bitch.

A warning today from an InfoWorld item:

"Companies need to adjust their security policies for Web 2.0 world today, they need to tailor their Internet use policies and create rules that include social Web sites, blogs, and all the other types of sites being created out there, the usage policies need to be spelled out specifically and enforced," said Paul Henry, vice president of technology evangelism at network gateway maker Secure Computing.

"Beyond that they need technical safeguards to back those policies, but the outlook for all this is still pretty grim," he said. "Most companies are barely providing sufficient protection in the context of Web 1.0."

The bottom line: After the Jump Point, three billion people will buy, sell, trade and exchange with each other directly--no government, middlemen or arbiters between them. And, they will do so, most of them, without ever coming face-to-face. Three billion strangers operating on one thing: trust. There are two sides to that coin. Be trustworthy, in fact be the most trusted source in your industry or segment. Make bank on trust. But you also have to be guarded and responsible stewards of trust. Don't be vulnerable and hackable. Remember old Ron Reagan's favorite Russian proverb, "doveryai, no proveryai." Trust but verify.

Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business

Today my new book, Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business, officially launches.

Jump Point is a book about change, particularly the sweeping changes our world will undergo in the next 1000 days. The book t ells the story of how our lives will be forever altered when the world is finally united in a single economic system: the Networked Economy. At the current rate of technology adoption, that historic event—the Jump Point--is expected to take place sometime before 2011.

After the Jump Point, three billion people—the world’s entire workforce-- will be able to connect—buy, sell and trade—with each other unimpeded by intermediaries, regulators or arbiters. In this new world, individuals trump institutions, old school scarcity economics is replaced with the new school network economics, and everything about the way we live, work and play will change.

The book is not about technology per se, but rather the social, political and cultural changes technology is rendering on the world. I see it as an adventure story.

One obvious change will be the mass influx of billions of new consumers and producers into the global mainstream. Many of these people will have been thrust into the modern global economy straight out of medieval times. For many, connection to the networked economy will be by the first piece of technology—probably a web-enabled mobile phone—they have ever used. That means the world market will soon be influenced by many new and strange demands and wants by consumers who are more likely to have eaten bat meat than a Big Mac.

Another big change will be the size of the economic pie. It will get much larger, as two billion more people contribute to the creation of wealth. The result will be a massive global marketplace of a scale we have never known before. The era will welcome our first million employee company, our first trillion-dollar company. And the world’s richest person? It will not be Bill Gates or any other American.

I hope you will not only pick up a copy of Jump Point and read it, I look forward to having an ongoing conversation--debate even--with you about the changes the next thousand days will bring us.

Yahoo Should Join Forces with Google to Defeat Microsoft

My message to Yahoo: Do No Evil Empire.

Okay, maybe it's a Silicon Valley thing, but for all the durm und strang surrounding the Microsoft seizure of Yahoo, has anyone fully thought about the unpleasant implications of a world where MFST rules the Net? For the press, the deal points are all the rage, along with he drama and the desperation (Yang eschews Ballmer for Murdoch?), but the ballyhoo has permitted a false premise to take hold. The rationale for the acquisition is that Microsoft needs Yahoo to protect itself from Google. Hell, after that, who is going to protect us from Microsoft? Fight on little friend, fight on. Maybe Yahoo and Google could Think Different and come up with an alternative scheme to save the world from the jack boots. Stranger things have happened.

Worst Super Bowl Ads Ever Constitute Attention Theft

My attention was stolen on Sunday and I can never get those lost moments back.  And I am riled up. 

Sorry, but that is how I feel about this year's crop of of anemic Super Bowl Ads.  I, like 100 million other people, allowed my attention to what I really cared about --the Game--to be hijacked every few minutes by mostly boring, often amateurish schlock.  After every change of ball possession, every injury, every time out, we viewers were assaulted with a parade of pathetic pitches--including wrap-arounds, embedded graphics and sponsorships.  What made it worse, is that I had high expectations that this annual display of what is supposed to be our best commercial videos would actually be entertaining, and therefore worth my attention.  It was not.  Computer-generated forest animals, talking babies and a sophomoric send-up with Carmen Electra?  That is the best Madison Avenue can do for $3 million a pop? 

As the worst year for overall ad quality in modern memory, this year's Big Game fallout gives us all a chance to reconsider the sanctity of our attention.  After my family, my attention--my capacity to receive new information--is the most precious thing in my busy life.  What advertisers did on Sunday was steal from me--and you.  And, the problem is bigger than the Super Bowl.  Look around.  Every time you are confronted with unwanted ads and misplaced messages, someone is trying to steal your attention for their benefit.  Ask yourself: what's in it for me?  In exchange for 22 minutes of mediocre television programming, we are bombarded with eight minutes of intelligence-draining dreck.  Is that a fair exchange of value for value?  I don't think so.  There has got to be a better way.  Life is too short to live in a fog of cognitive larceny.

It may be time to launch the Attention Rights Movement.

The Starbucks Effect: Don't Let Others Define Your World

You know you've become a cultural phenomenon when they name a sociological effect after you.

In the case of Starbucks, the pioneer in high-end coffee and street corner third places, their pricey espresso concoctions--costing an average of $3 per--gave rise to the so-called "latte effect" of incremental discretionary spending. Do without the $3 a day habit, financial advisors held, and you'd save a bundle over the course of a year. Spawning that sort of pop phenomenon is not what Starbucks had in mind. Letting it cure into folklore was their big mistake.

I am sure there are numerous economic theories governing the utility of a cup of joe. Who is to say that the pure enjoyment or cognitive boost from a hot foamy beverage doesn't yield productivity or other tangible benefits? I don't know. And who is to say that the thousand bucks saved on a year of lattes wouldn't be just as easily squandered on the NASDAQ--in less time than it takes a barrista to throw down a double mocha? What I do know is that Starbucks should have seen the latte effect as a genuine threat and should have done something about the percolating paradigm.

Over time, the message that a stop in Starbucks should be a sometime thing has caught on, putting pressure on the mermaid's ability to grow. Bad news for a for a company opening five new shops a day somewhere in the world.

Today, word dripped out that Starbucks would be experimenting with a $1 cup of brew and perhaps a free refill scheme. I don't think Dunkin' Donuts is wetting themselves with worry, but the move says that Starbucks needs to back track a bit. It is a risky move--price competition is a slippery slope. And, when it's a buck, it's a buck, no matter how elastic the costs become. It will be hard to get the same buzz with a $1.20 cup of Americano in two years. Besides, it is never a good idea to turn your core business into a loss leader. But I digress.

My real issue is not with matters of economics or pop culture, but rather the cautionary tale of letting untoward information live on uncontested on the Internet or anywhere else today. Leave an untruth or unattractive comment--or questionable economic law--go unaddressed for more than three months and it becomes a de facto truth in this day and age.

Remember the old three-second rule--retrieve dropped food from the ground in less than three seconds and it is still cool to eat? Well, we now have a three-month rule. Ignore a piece of FUD on the Internet for more than three months and it will stick forever, maybe even reshape reality. I call that the Starbucks Effect.

What Does Your TweetStream Say About You?

Ah, the "twittersphere."

You know a technology is catching on when a culture and food chain sprout up around it. To wit, love the work the guys at Character140 are doing to track patterns in the tweetstream of microblogging utility Twitter.

With the US presidential sweepstakes very much front and center, their Politweets site gives us a tweet-level view to which candidates are generating the most buzz. They also have a great site Twittertale that tracks the spew of dirty words in the twittersphere. Guess I better watch my twitter patter.

Are You Driving the Decision Curve in Your Industry, or is Someone Else?

Before Sony knew it, Apple was driving the "decision curve" in mobile music players. If Starbucks isn't careful, McDonalds is about to drive the industry agenda in third places. In fact, the destiny of every industry--including yours--is shaped by those few companies that step up to set the pace of industry growth and development. The question is, are you driving the decision curve in your industry?

Every industry turns on myriad decisions. Everything from standards to price competition. Some companies--often not the largest players, by the way--seem to wield disproportionate strategic influence and power. They may not be the market share leaders today, but one day they will be. When you drive the decision curve you set the agenda, set the pace of innovation and change, frame the terms of the debate and basically keep your competitors in a permanent reactive mode. Indeed, it can seem that companies that drive the decision curve get so deep into their competitors' heads that it is eerie. For every move, the decision driver has a preemptive strike. For every parry there is a thrust. By design those who drive the decision curve drive the competition to distraction.

This tendency for some to shape the strategic context is even more pronounced in times of transformational change like the period we are about to enter. As I lay out in my new book, Jump Point: How Network Culture is Revolutionizing Business (McGraw-Hill, February 2008), we are about to see such profound change in the business landscape that the status quo in most industries is about to be scrambled. We can easily expect a changing of the guard in most segments. Looking ahead to the next thousand days, you have to ask yourself, "am I driving the decision curve or am I being driven? Do I have what it takes to grab the mantle and drive the curve? How can I reset the terms and wrest the steering wheel from the current driver?"

Feel a headache coming on? Take a copy of my book and call me in the morning.