Is that IP worth Protecting?

I attempted to watch the movie Hancock before its theater release. I say attempted because I was doing this online at one of the bootleg movie distribution sites, it wasn't exactly the entertaining experience I'd hoped for. The movie was distributed in three separate streams/downloads and the quality was very poor, but I got the gist of the movie and decided after watching the first stream that I should probably go see it at the theater.


The experience got me thinking though, why don't movies theaters release a low quality, multiple stream versions of the movies before release? Would the movie do better or worse at the box office as a result? Isn't this low quality version similar to giving away free samples of your product or content? If they are concerned about their brand why not just support the bootleg sites? My guess is that the main blocking issue is protecting the copyright.


These thoughts/questions led me to other question closer home; why don't we publish our product documentation online on the company's website? I asked a few folks here at work and the response I got was we didn't post the documentation to protect our intellectual property (IP) and maintain our competitive advantage. Does this really give us a competitive advantage or is the IP captured in our product documentation after the product is released really worth protecting? My personal opinion is that we stand to gain more from sharing the documentations than we stand to gain by not sharing. I believe it gives potential customers an opportunity to evaluate the product and be more prepared to ask questions based on an understanding of the literature. It is also a great complement to our scripted demo which covers the products only at a very high level and showcasing the features we consider most appealing.


In any case, it looks like the product documentation will make it online with the next revision of the company's website. I might even get luck and talk people into release portions of our source code as well. Doing that might encourage some rogue Developer to build SharePoint integration application using our source code as the foundation and we might be able to charge him/her good bucks if/when they get stuck ...... who knows.

Controlled or Valuable? That is the question

I got the following feedback on an article I'm writing for KMWorld (which arose out of my The Long Tail Of Enterprise Content Posts) and thought it was interesting enough to share the feedback and my response to it:



Comment:

Ok, there is something bothering me about the word “Value” all content within an organization is valuable, that is the point of SharePoint, our connectors and search working together. Is the left axis really value or “Controlled”.



My Response:

I agree that organizations have typically “Controlled” ( the 80/20 rule I mentioned) content in the enterprise to varying degrees, the question is how what is controlled is determined. It is in answering the question of what to control and how the long tail theory applies to content in the enterprise that I’ve used the content’s value which can be determined through computation e.g. risk analysis. We are also in agreement that all content within an organization is valuable, however I believe the relative value of content differs ( i.e. some more valuable than others) hence the tail of the curve, although it tends to zero it never touches the zero value line (i.e. the x-axis).

Content to control, in my opinion, is determined by the value of that content to the enterprise e.g. if regulation requires that the content be placed under control and there is a penalty for non compliance, then the relative value of the content is higher than content not subject to the regulation. Other factors as I indicated in the article can also be used to determine the value of a piece of content and hence if it should be controlled or not.

If, as you are suggesting, you graph the decision made after the content’s value is determined i.e. what goes into the Advanced ECM systems (typically the controlled content in the enterprise) versus what does not (typically the less controlled content in SharePoint and other non Advanced ECM repositories), you will not have curve let alone a long tail. You will end up with a bar graph or pie chart of categories of controlled content which does not lend itself to analyzing The Long Tail theory and it’s applicability to enterprise content.

Heaven Sent?

I like the song Heaven Sent by Keyshia Cole so much that I wanted to know the lyrics. Since this is the year 2008 I searched the internet for it, found it and in the confines of my bedroom belt out the lyrics to the song. Interestingly though, it brought back memories of the times before the internet, the days before CDs, DVD, MP3 etc.

Back in the day, my whole family would congregate around a tape recorder (yes I'm that young!) trying to decipher the lyrics of our favorite song. There usually was an operator, a scribe and the rest of us listening. Those where the good old days when we would simply wear out the tape from several Play, Stop, Pause, Rewind, Fast Forward sequence or worse still have the tape jammed and delicately remove it from the tape recorder's head. Deciphering the lyrics to songs was certainly a family activity we all participated in and probably enjoyed with each of us listening intently to the song till we completely build out the lyrics to the song and then on to the next song, till we completely an album (sometimes) - I think we did this for Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down album.

The internet is definitely Heaven Sent, it saved me hours of trying to do this, especially since I would have done it alone - see we are all grown now, live in different countries and don't have much spare time - plus tape recorders are pretty much extint now. My simply search also gave me a bunch of information on the artist. It however won't replace the memories of a time I shared with my siblings. Anyone up for a tape recorder reunion?

The Long Tail Debate

Anita Elberse's recent piece Should You Invest in the Long Tail?, Harvard Business Review July-August 2008 has stirred up a debate among long-tail enthusiasts and critics. Prof. Elberse's academic work on the Long tail is great for the Long Tail theory. With such academic challenges of the Long Tail theory, Chris Anderson - who coined the term/theory - gets a good chance to defend the theory giving the new context and data presented by challengers. It is through such challenges that the theory gets refined and the boundaries of the theory's applicability defined.

Prof. Elberse's research validated the Long Tail theory and reveals additional patterns about consumption in the long tail: (1) the long-tail is long but extremely flat and (2) light users have a disproportionately strong preference for the more popular offerings. Her definition of what constitutes the "head" (and hence the tail) of the power curve is certainly a point of contention/difference between the Long tail theory and her analysis. She defines the head as the top 10% of titles in her data set while Chris considers the head as akin to the amount of content that can be shelved at the largest wal-mart store. I believe his definition is a better base-line especially when considering how the internet is lowering distribution cost and the fact that this is probably the theoretical limit of a brick and mortal store.

In her advice to producers and retailers she offers nothing new in the way of strategy implication/formulation which I was looking forward to. Overall it was a good piece and I'm only surprised at the level of criticism especially since she didn't invalidate the Long Tail but rather offered some new data to support it as well as tease out some additional conclusions.

Product Roadmaping

Kids do not try this at home without the supervision of a responsible adult. Why, you ask? You won't have to take responsibility for getting it all wrong.


I presented the product roadmap to the management team today. I won't tell you if I was booed and kicked out of the room or fired for my crazy ideas but I figured at best I should share my experience with anyone who cares to read my blog. I wouldn't recommend my approach only because I figured there has got to be a better way to doing this than flying solo and blindfolded. It would have been great to have a research team pouring over customer survey data, industry analyst banter etc but as my luck goes none was available so I had to distill whatever information I could find internally and on the internet and make the best of it.

We had commissioned Forrester to do some work for us on an unrelated project a couple of months ago so I had data from that exercise which was quite helpful. Although I'm sure innovation technology purist will tell you these analysts can't provide good data on new and groundbreaking technology but I needed a place to start and that was the most recent data I had so I went with it. In addition, I read my hearts out, AIIM website and magazine, CIO Insight, KM World etc. It at least gave me an idea of where the industry is likely to go and also because I know our customers are reading those magazines as well (nothing wrong with getting on the same page with your customers). Then the fun part was condensing all that to product features and a timeline to deliver innovative solutions which address the problems no one else has been able to solve for your customers and make lots of money!!

My final slide deck consisted of the following titles:

>Industry Trends and Competition
Quick summary of what is going on in the industry and what product attributes your competitions are touting to your customers.

>What do customers want?
What business problem have your customers told you they want to solve? I like to have customers explain what they need accomplished instead of the rundown of features that they sometimes give. I believe this will help you focus on the product attributes that will be of value to them.

>Things to Keep In Mind
Since I made some assumptions, this slide was essentially my disclaimer slide as well as what I plan to do to edge against any failed assumptions. At least you can always point to this if you are ever acused of not getting it right.

>Project Vision
Every product should have one.

>Key Scenarios
The customer scenarios will are going to address with the features planned for release

>Product Roadmap
Your project timeline including project goals

It will certainly take months to deliver on what was outlined in the roadmap and many more months after to find out if customers respond to the products with their pocket books.

Books I've read lately and will recommend

The Euro Cup finals is on right now, howver it is half time now so I figure I'll kick off this post before the game resumes. A friend asked me to recommend business books to read, he's the JD type and works for an Insurance company, so I'm guessing he wants to know what other people read and I'm probably the closest person to other people that he can come up with ( he's entire family and friends are JDs ). Anyway here is my list:

Business Strategy/Excecution
- Innovator's Delimma (C. Christensen)
- Innovator's Solution (C. Christensen)
- Crossing the Chasm ( G.A. Moore)
- Information Rules (C. Shapiro, H.R. Varian)
- Seeing What's Next (C. Christensen et al)
- Blue Ocean Stategy ( W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne)
- Competitve Strategy ( M.E. Porter)
- Freakenomics ( S. D. Levitt, S. J. Dubner)
- The Long Tail (C. Anderson)
- Enterprise Architecture as a Strategy (J. W. Ross, P. Weill, D. Robertson)
- Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (R. Charan, L. Bossidy )

Leadership
- Leadership and Self Deception (Arbinger Institute)

Finance
- Financial Intelligence (Karen Berman, Joe Knight, and John Case)
- Ahead of the Curve ( J.H. Ellis)

Software Development
- Microsoft Secrets (M. A. Cusumano, R. W. Selby)
- Agile Project Managemet with Scrum (K. Schwaber)
- Agile Estimating and Planning (Mike Cohn)
- Applied User Stories ( Mike Cohn)
- Software Project Survical Guide ( Steve McConnell)
- ShipIt! (J. Richardson, W. Gwaltney Jr.)

Start-up
- Bootstrap ( K. L. Hess )
- The Art Of The Start (Guy Kawasaki)

I'll add more titles in the future.

Happy Reading Bro!!!!!

Taming Off-line Content

In my posts on the long tail of enterprise content it appears I neglected to address the issue of content stored on the desktop, flash drives and other storage devices (off-line content) of employees. Although it is difficult to assess the value of these content, I believe that, for the most part, these content simply extend the long tail to the right of the curve. The challenge with this situation is still the same as for any content in the long tail: how does the organization ensure that content that meets its criteria for risk (or other value attribute) is placed under control of the designated systems. However, content stored on an employee's chosen device, outside of the control of the enterprise content management system, presents an additional challenge for discovery, retention and destruction. Locating this content when the time comes to take action, such as destruction, can be a problem. Think about a document that an employee as copied to their flash drive for "safe-keeping", if the organization is required to retain this document for 3 years, how does the organization ensure that all copies of the document including the one taken off-line is destroyed at the end of the retention period?. The organization can certainly define policies for document handling and also block port access to prevent external storage devices from been attached to company issued computers etc. It may also consider blocking e-mail with attachments and locking down computer hard disk so nothing can be stored on it (good luck with that one!).


Gaining Control: Self-Containing/Describing Content

So far organizations have managed to get a good handle on content sent as e-mail attachments (at least somewhat), however there does not appear to be an easy answer for off-line content without doing something so drastic that any productivity gain an organization had anticipated is largely eroded. The more I think about this issue the more I'm convinced that the silver bullet (if there was ever such a thing) is to have content that can tell you everything about itself. Content that can carry around with it more just its metadata (e.g. author, department, type, age etc) but also information such as: (1) its access control list; (2) the application that was used to create it (not just the mime type or document extension); (3) what business processes it participates in; (4) what organization owns it and (4) what organizations are allows to read it etc. These metadata must be persisted with the content and readable by any operating system and/or application software.

The implementation of this concept will require cooperation by leading vendors in both application and operating system software and standards organizations. Existing technologies such as XML, DRM contain aspects of what is required to implement this concept but portability of DRM solutions today remains an issue for various reasons. WinFS, a technology from Microsoft (MSFT) has some of the critical operating system support needed for this, it has however had its own share of problems. XML is really not self-describing especially because to consume a piece of XML you must first understand its structure and the relationship between the elements to get any meaning out of it.

In any case, while we wait around for the industry to provide the necessary infrastructure support for true self-describing content, organizations can either reward employees for not taking content off-line or punish employees who do so. I'm not advocating either approach to solving the problem, just a suggestion.