Connectivity, collaboration and innovation; how will it change us?

Collaboration used to be”hype”. Nowadays it’s social media and the iPad/ Kindle e-readers. The speed of innovation is increasing.  It’s getting harder and harder to divide these topics. In my eyes they are interconnected, and will become even more woven together. How will this change us?

We have moved from a closed in collaboration (software for use only within the organization, document sharing and workflow) towards a more open and including form of collaboration, where Twitter now seems to be in the forefront of the development. The best forms of collaborative activities are those who appear from nowhere, that aren’t planned, in short are anarchistic in their form. That doesn’t mean that they are purposeless, it means that the collaborative need develops from an individual (or small group) that has a motif for finding answers and solutions quickly. The most effective way to get there is to search for other people that might have the answer,a part of an answer or/ and a benefit from participating with you to solve a topic. Because of the relational interaction, collaboration starts to develop. The blending of collaboration and community (social media) happened in the process, because it’s the most effective way to get to the goal.

What we see is that this kind of mindsets can be used generic. It will enable far better ways of knowledge management, collaboration, innovation, product development, project management and so forth. Furthermore it will be put into effect within all kinds of businesses, from education, media business, commercials and nonprofit organizations, production of renewable energy, car production and so forth, all will very soon see the connective collaboration and community as one arena of relational co- existence, where things aren’t as pre- planned as we used to do things. New technology, new tools and the semantic web will be forces that drive this development, or is it the other way around? I don’t think it matters, but I do think that it is what’s happening around us is as we speak.

I’ve spoken of Charles Leadbeater before. I won’t stop doing so, because what he’s been speaking about (innovation and mass creativity) is one of the things we see happens around us in an increasing speed. So I’d advise you to have a look at his homepage HERE. Seen from a different perspective I would highly advise you to look at Kevin Kelly from Wired magazine, a very interesting speech he had in 2008 that can be found at Youtube HERE. Kevin Kelly explains what the web really is in a philosophical way, and where it’s heading (web 3.0). In my eyes both are speaking of something that is going on, not about some distant future, which might happen. We are afraid, afraid of the value that disappeared; now everything is “free” on the web, how to make revenue? Newspaper people are asking this several times a day. Publishers fight the development of “free” Educational institutions are, and corporations are afraid that their competitive advantage is gone if you share all knowledge. I think it’s wrong, I think it’s missing the point of what this leads to.  I do like the postulate Kevin make in the speech “the value is beyond “free” Kevin Kelly argues that the web is, and will even more become something – not “out there” but something that embody us, that we are inside of. What is of value change, and I believe that holding on to what used to be “of value” no longer is a good idea. The change is, as you might guess – tremendous for all of us.

I found the blog of Umar Haque (Director of the Havas Media Lab and founder of  Bubblegeneration) and the posting in Harward Business review  “Twitter’s Ten Rules For Radical Innovators”  and discover that it seems to be a guideline worth while reading for all of us. It just migt give us some hints of how to focus of finding value, and making a living by changing what, why and how we do business into the future.  I suggest you read it for yourself, but here are the bullet points:

• Ideals beat strategies
• Open beats closed
• Connection beats transaction
• Simplicity beats complexity
• Neighborhoods beat networks
• Circuits beat channels
• Laziness beats business
• Public beats private
• Messy beats clean
• Good beats evil

E – Readers will not only invade us – but will innovate us as well

Amazon.com reports that they sold more e – titles than paper titles for this Christmas. That’s amazing!  The American Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) predicted the good times will continue in 2010 as e-reader sales double again according to Yahoo news

There are many E – readers out there in the market, and Apple is doing it again; We are all waiting, holding our breath, being excited, and hoping for the device Apple will release the 27^th of January. They better show of something that gives the “Wow effect” once again!

Skiff and telecom giant Sprint said they will team up to provide newspapers, magazines and e-books over 3G networks for the Skiff Reader. And HERE are some predictions from @martinlangeveld (and others) how the Media owners will do in 2010.

And the E reader isn’t just some electronic paper. It will contribute to speed up the changes I’ve been writing about for quite some time. Just have a look at that Time inc.  is working on in this video HERE

I would hope that we now could skip the cycle of competition of owning the market in terms of hard ware (devise, software, content battle) and jump directly to what’s matter, but it seems like our capitalism isn’t quite ready for that yet. It’s a pity and now we consumers will have to mess around with this for yet some years, until everyone understands that it’s not the device – it’s the added value that counts.

All in all it’s good news in my eyes; these enable content producers of all kind to integrate various kinds of content into one experience. It provides the market to find various revenue streams, easier. This will change brodcasting, news, publishing, music and film industries completely. And as everyone has predicted – We are getting Mobile in 2010!

My question is: How long will it take until we have a completely integrated interactive reading/ participating solution that includes what is now called “social media” ?

Think green IT and data center location

It’s said that Google owns 2% of all data servers in the world. They’ve been working on energy saving programs for a long time, with success. ICT Norway has suggested that Norway could be a perfect location for large server localizations for large enterprises. I couldn’t agree more!

Why would Norway be a “perfect” place to locate e.g. Google’s large server centers? Well there are a lot of good reasons for that.

Norway has a pleasant temperature in summer, and has cold – long winters. That alone reduces the need of cooling of hardware. As we know – cooling needs energy, lot’s of energy. We all know that energy is expensive, and it’s a source of pollution in most areas of the world. Not so in Norway where 99% of all energy is produced by hydro power. It’s hard to find a place with such stable and sustainable source of energy anywhere else in the world.

Norway is a safe and stable country politically. This is important, since nobody as large as Google, IBM, HP and so forth would like to risk placing their core business equipment in a country that is politically unstable area. The same goes for geographical threats, such as earth quakes, flooding, hurricanes, that would threat the supply of energy and the infrastructure of data flow

In Norway we have the knowhow in all areas needed. We have a well developed infrastructure, and Telenor as the fifth largest Telecom company in the world,  the technology aspects are well covered. We have the knowhow within the areas of running large data centers, to maintain and support such facilities. And we have crucial knowhow within all aspects of security. This includes the terror threats that is of great importance. Our military defense has the very best possibility to protect our interests also in this manner.

At last, but not least we have plenty of space. Norway is a waste country with mountains halls ready to be used for the purpose. The need as HP has expressed it is that the location of their data parks shouldn’t be public information, due to the risk that could represent isn’t a problem. “Hiding” a server center in Norway, just have a look at the map!