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Welcome! You are in the right place if you are
enrolled in Medaille College's
MBA 604 in Fall 2005
interested
in information technology and web marketing
interested
in Medaille's curriculum
this page
Hype | Anti-Hype | The Future? |
This Course
You learn how to do it right by doing it wrong while doing your best.
According to Microsoft, there's a difference between marketing and selling. ...
We're obviously going to spend a lot in marketing because we
think the product sells itself.
-- Jim Allchin
Group Vice President, Platforms
Microsoft Corp
Online
Info Spurs Offline Spending
Research Brief
Center for Media Research, October 20, 2004
Online product research by consumers this past year was
responsible for driving $180.7 billion in offline spending, compared to $106.5
billion in direct online consumer spending according to The American Interactive
Consumer Survey conducted by The Dieringer Research Group.
"The data confirm that the Internet's role as a consumer product information
utility is much larger than its role as a direct selling medium," Miller
explained.
Personalization. How's that for a five-dollar word? Also known as customer service, it refers to organizations that reorganize themselves around their customers. On the Web, for example, for many years, Amazon.com has been remodeling the store for every visitor.
As Ephraim Schwartz writes in the September 24, 1999, InfoWorld:
On hundred years ago, Henry Ford established a mantra for
mass production, "You buy what we make," and consumer choice has been
limited ever since. "A model-T Ford comes in any color as long as it is
black" is the classic example.
But as evidenced by the signing of an agreement between Ford and Microsoft,
announced last week, manufacturers are making fundamental changes to respond to
Internet-empowered consumers, who are now telling companies, "You make what
we buy."
The October 1999 issue (and final dead-tree issue) of New Media magazine has an interview with venture capitalist Roger McNamee. He's making a lot of money on this premise:
See, there are only two choices: You let the Internet cannibalize you either from the outside or from the inside. You either do it for yourself, or you allow your competitors to do it for you, right? Those are the two choices.
U2 Teaches the World About Texting
by Cory Treffiletti
MediaPost's Online Spin, April 13, 2005
This past weekend I was lucky enough to see U2 play a
sold-out show in San Jose. ...
During the show, Bono dedicated some microphone time to the topic of human
rights, and as part of their desire to raise awareness for this timely topic,
they asked everyone to take out their cell phones and text message their names
to the number 86483 to be added to a petition of people who pledge their support
to improving human rights around the globe. Bono stated they were looking for 1
million names and when I looked around the arena I think it's realistic that
they'll get it.
The cell phone is now as ubiquitous, and as useful at a concert, as the lighter
was in the '80s. What's more, 20 minutes later, the names of the people who had
texted themselves was scrolled across the big screen hovering over the band,
allowing the crowd to see their names in lights and tied forever in the image of
their minds to that show. As one of the people who saw his name in lights, I can
personally attest that the experience was fantastic and a one-of-a-kind feeling.
It allowed me to connect with my inner rock star, if only for a brief moment.
...
That night I witnessed just how integral the cell-phone has become and how
second thought it is for people to text message. ...
Our society is moving in this direction of immediate response - quick and
concise information sharing, and continuing to allow the audience to be in
control of the experience.
In the last year or so, it has been called Web 2.0, implying that everything until now has been the first version. Now we have a better idea. Using the printing press as a parallel, we're going to be at Web 10.0 before we reach the same level of media literacy that we had with verbal literacy.
A corollary: we must pass through Web 3.0, 4.0, etc., in order to get to Web 10.0.
We will pass through them much more quickly and universally than the West did after the printing press. What took three hundred years then may take only thirty or forty now. In the economic turmoil that accompanies this transition -- wave after wave of creative destruction -- there is lots of money to be made by those agile enough to keep re-inventing themselves. Roger McNamee gives good advice above.
MySpace (sold to Murdoch for 800 million) and YouTube (sold to Google for 1,600 million) did not make any money. They did not tell their users what to do. The companies provided the software, the database, the storage, and the web site. The users then organized themselves, massively violating copyright in the process.
The rollercoaster of creative destruction is too risky for most companies, indeed, for most employees. After awhile, they can't keep up. Change is happening too fast. Much of it is not good. Much of it is inefficient, burning through capital at alarming rates. For every MySpace or YouTube, there are a dozen Friendsters and a hundred others you never heard of and never will.
To me, that looks like an opportunity gain competitive advantage, for your company and for your career. I urge you to take that opportunity, especially early in your careers.
Meanwhile, with the exception of a handful of Webcentric organizations, here's the reality. The old models, the closed proprietary hierarchical businesses, will continue to make money. Many of you will find yourselves spending your whole career in such companies.
Indeed, most marketing departments operate more or less as they always have. They have networked their computers, but the same staff do the same things in the same way. Turns out that it's not just a question of training the employees to use computers. The departments have yet to rearrange their business model and re-design their work flows. The marketers have to ....
... have to what? That's what this course is about.
Smart marketing departments have been evolving all along, even if it meant using FedEx to overnight information on paper. In many organizations, marketing departments were the first, even before their IT departments, to discover the Web. The Internet is a faster, cheaper way of doing what they've already been doing. Not-so-smart marketing departments are going to have to run twice as fast just to catch up. The marketing departments that prosper will be the ones that start doing things they never did before, even if it means not being a department any more or not being in marketing any more.
Every web site should have a mandatory link: "How Does This Site Make Money?" It would also be interesting to know how much traffic it gets and how much revenue it had in the past quarter.
They've Hijacked
Your Inbox -- Is Your Browser Next?
by Sean Carton
ClickZ, April 8, 2002
Survey after survey shows consumers hate anything that
interferes with their online experience. There's no question consumers hate
unsolicited email. But people keep responding, and desperate marketers with
dreams of Internet riches keep using these irritating formats. For now.
Why? Online advertising was oversold from the beginning. Its much-touted
measurability was its Achilles' heel. In pre-Net days, advertisers knew
instinctively the old saw is true: "I know that half my advertising isn't
working... I just don't know which half." With the Net, we know exactly
what isn't working. But nobody wants to hear it (least of all, those
responsible).
Of course, for Web 2.0, we need Office 2.0. Google just announced online word processing and spreadsheets.
Office 2.0 Not About The Online Spreadsheets -- But The Next Attempt At Situated
Software
Office 2.0 Conference - October 10 -
12, 2006
What is Office 2.0?
Imagine a computer that never crashes, or gets infected by a virus. Imagine a
computer onto which you never have to install any application. Imagine a
computer that follows you wherever you go, be it at school, at work, abroad, or
back home. This computer does not exist today, but it will in the future, and
this future might be much closer than you think.
Logos of
sponsors
Office 2.0 database (the
industry's "space")
Championing a Wiki World
By Rob Hof
Business Week, October 19, 2004
Socialtext, Ross Mayfield's Web-collaboration outfit, is the
antithesis of the cash-fat startup, but its aims are hardly modest
At first glance, Socialtext doesn't look like a company running on a shoestring
budget. Founded less than two years ago, it now has more than 50 customers
around the world, including Walt Disney (DIS ) and Eastman Kodak (EK ), which
use its Web software to help people collaborate online. Yet a peek behind the
slick Web site reveals a truly virtual company: no offices, only 10 full-time
people -- all working at home, and a chief executive who answers the phone
himself.
Socialtext co-founder and CEO Ross Mayfield makes no apologies for the
threadbare setup. Increasingly inexpensive and ubiquitous information
technologies such as the Internet, wireless connections, and cheap computer
servers, he says, allow him to run the company with far less money and fewer
people than he could have a decade ago -- without scrimping on features or
quality. Says the 34-year-old serial entrepreneur: "This is the prototype of the
new Internet startup."
That's not a boast. It's the stark new reality for many tech entrepreneurs.
We've been cash-flow positive for two quarters, with 50
customers and 10 Fortune 1000 customers. We make money the old-fashioned way, by
focusing on serving and understanding customers.
Fun is getting things done together quickly as a team. No $1,000 chairs, no
custom architecture, no in-house masseurs. A distributed team of top-notch
developers, where we find them. We stay in touch with VoIP and wiki, no costume
parties or island retreats.
Vision, customers, execution and continuous improvement. We invest in good
people who are passionate about the solutions they create with great customers.
As Forrester Research's David Weisman said at a recent conference, marketing on the Web is just beginning and no one really knows what they're doing yet. In just two years, from 1999 through 2001, we went from dot-com to dot-bomb to dot-calm.
However, the next generation of consumers is internalizing the Web. They'll move from PCs and modems to embedded devices and broadband. To serve these customers, new business models are now developing. For example, one-to-one marketing technologies seem to work. Amazon.com is spending a lot of money to set the pace.
To get marketers to think differently about their customers and about information will take many years and cause many employees to find employment elsewhere. In the New Media interview mentioned above, Roger McNamee points out:
... there were all these industries being disrupted by the Net. The media business was a prime example. You could see that a lot of folks were going to have trouble making the transition. The Net was going to change the operating model of these businesses -- and probably the cultural model, too -- in a way that would not be accepted readily by the existing franchise players.
Note that phrase: "have trouble making the transition." For the latest, read InternetWeek's Transformation of the Enterprise feature. It begins:
The Internet isn't just transforming processes, cultures, pricing structures, distribution relationships and sales techniques. It's also redefining what companies sell -- information as well as products.
This series of articles dates from the late 1990's. Old history? Not relevant since the dot-com crash? Take another look because what some forward-looking companies were transforming in 1999, the majority of companies still have not begun transforming. Why? Because the people working for those companies don't want to change how they do business.
MBA 604 anticipates that you will spend most of your working life in an organization making this transition to customer-centered business processes and most of your private life making this transition to webcentric consumption.
This course does not, however, presume that such a transition is a good thing.
The milk of disruptive innovation doesn't flow from cash
cows.
-- David Isenberg
Have you seen the IBM TV commercial? The executive is telling his psychiatrist about his dream of being chased down a long hallway by a host of spectral, ghostly, skeletal creatures all wailing and moaning. They are his customers. They want, he tells the psychiatrist, "Everything. Now." He asks the psychiatrist what it all means.
The psychiatrist tells the executive, "You're too slow. You can't respond. And you're in denial."
In The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig writes:
This is not because a company is irrational or because it doesn't understand the nature of the market. The blindness that keeps the company fixed in a dying path is actually its clear understanding of probable returns. It sees real revenue from existing customers who need marginally better technology. It doesn't see the revenue from radically new technologies that depend upon unidentified or undeveloped markets. From its perspective, given its customers and reasonable expectations, these successful companies rationally fail.
Rational failure. Failing because you do everything right. Don't let it happen to you.
Find out all the official stuff. How is this course described in the college catalog? What are you going to know more about? What are you going to know how to do better? What's the self-assessment all about?
This is the page to bookmark. It will change often and be the place to learn what we're going to do in class and what you should do before class.
In this course, you'll learn by doing. We're going to continue the New Media Ventures, Inc. case from MBA 600. If the course were Mission Impossible, the Case page would be the tape-recorded message at the beginning, except that it wouldn't self-destruct until June 2005, when the course is over. "If you choose to accept this mission, ... ."
Carefully chosen words, crafted paragraphs, and logical arguments are terrific tools for communicating in organizations and for influencing others. This course addresses so many hot current issues and events that it's hard to know where to begin. The Roundtable gives you some common readings and focused questions to address yourselves to in an orderly manner.
The ideas at the top of this page are meant to be provocative. At the Ground Zero Bistro, you can talk about it. Ask questions and get answers.
In addition to the final website and presentation, you have several others to do in class and on the Web. What are the other teams doing? When are the reports due? How will they be evaluated?
I am always doing what I cannot do, in order that I may
learn how to do it.
-- Pablo Picasso
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