Work

business & working

On Economic Development

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There has been an ongoing debate in northern New Brunswick over the establishment of an incineration facility. Environmentalists and some community members are against the facility, while others see it as necessary economic development, in an area with chronic unemployment. I see a greater issue here – our perceived dependence on corporations.

We always seem to need "someone else" to come in and save our local economy. These external, disembodied corporations, which are only loyal to increasing shareholder value, have no stake in our communities. We continue to pressure our governments to create jobs, and they in turn go out looking for the largest corporation that will create the most jobs. Corporations, by their inherent structure, don’t give a darn about our communities. We need to grow our own industries, that are firmly rooted in our communities. We should focus on attracting people who will have a stake in their community, not inviting corporations temporarily to our region.

Instead of offering subsidized training for corporations to hire local employees, our money (since I doubt that the government will get out of economic development) should be used to encourage individuals to come here and set up shop. Let’s go for the slow food approach, not the quick fix. Even if there is the need for an incinerator, it should be our incineration company, developed in our community and responsible to our people and our envrironment. Everyone is welcome, but you will have to make the commitment of your complete physical presence to get any economic development funding.

Decentralization

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Both Jon Husband and Rob Paterson have referred to Terry Heaton’s post, “Decentralized Power is THE Issue of the Millenium”. For instance, the success of e-Bay is based on the fact that individuals now have the power to manage their sales on an international level, with minimal hassle and cost. e-Bay has removed the middle-man, charges a nomimal fee per user – and makes a lot of money. This is the real “disintermediation” that was discussed thoughout the 1990’s. The media industries (music, news, movies, etc) are fighting a rearguard action against decentralization (AKA fragmentation), but unless someone shuts down the internet, decentralization will continue.

Decentralization is a real opportunity for small, flexible, creative businesses. Unfortunately there is no sure-fire way to capitalize on this situation. The best advice that I’ve found comes from Dave Pollard’s Natural Enterprise articles. I’m working with clients and partners to take advantage of the situation as Jon Husband describes:

We are beginning to loosen and cast off the shackles of outmoded structures, and more often than not are struggling mightily with the opportunities and responsibilities this new set of conditions offers us.

I am seeing a greater willingness of small companies to network and conduct projects based on individual trust. Several times this year I have done work on only a handshake. Some of my partners have worked in large corporations and are not willing, or able, to go back. We are trying to create more sustainable decentralized business models and stay firmly rooted in our own communities. It is getting easier to do this. Small businesses have the means to compete with multinationals, but we haven’t figured out all of the details – yet.

With this opportunity we have responsibilities as well. Jon, Rob and Dave are using their blogs to inform the rest of us, for free – thank you. Let’s continue the conversation. If you are a small company, interested in a new way of doing business, then join in the conversations. You don’t have to blog, but you could add your comments.

Off-the-Shelf Content

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A few years back, the saying in the elearning world was that "content is king". Now you can purchase access to a suite of 10 elearning courses from ITdatacorp for one year for $(US)109.00, and for an additional $30 you get online mentoring (this adds some context to the learning process).

The low cost of content sure makes the value proposition for off-the-shelf learning content quite difficult for a business or an investor. Even adding mentoring won’t generate much more revenue, unless you have a huge customer base. This means the big players will continue to lower their prices in order to get more market share. I see this as one more reason to stay out of the commoditized learning/training business unless you have deep pockets and great distribution channels. The price keeps dropping.

There are still many ways to make a good living around the proposition of improving learning or work performance. It’s by solving business problems, one situation and one client at a time.

Via Jane Knight.

Innovation

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We have a local company, Genieo, a spin-off from the University of Moncton, that has developed some interesting products over the past decade or so. Their business model has evolved over time, but the organization has had to rely partially on government financial subsidization. One of the services that the company offers is rapid prototyping of machined parts using an expensive 3D modelling tool.

Rapid Prototyping is a multi-faceted 3-D fabrication process that enables the creation of a limited quantity of functional prototypes resembling production units. This show of quality, joined by a quick turnaround provides an effective springboard to kick-start your marketing and sales initiatives long before production ramp.

As I said, the company has had some challenges becoming profitable in the long term, in spite of some satisfied clients and a strong team of scientists and engineers. Now, along comes some innovation south of the border, that extends Genieo’s model just a little bit, and takes advantage of the internet. It’s called eMachine Shop.

eMachineShop is the remarkable new way to get the custom parts you need – the first true online machine shop. Download our free software, draw your part, and click to order – it’s that easy! Your part will be machined and delivered. Even better, your cost is low due to the Internet, software, and automated machines.

Given that Genieo is co-located with the National Research Council’s Institute for Information Technology (IIT), why didn’t a similar idea come from Canada? Some of the IIT’s stated core competencies are in 3D digitizing & visualization and e-business. In hindsight it sure looks logical to combine the access that the internet provides with the capability for 3-D modelling that Genieo has. Maybe it’s not too late.

The time is now

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From Seth Godin:

More than a year ago, I wrote this for Fast Company:

Here’s a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now. The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas?

Seth goes on to conclude:

So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That’s why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately looking for something exciting, something they feel passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in and engage with.

It may be the worst of times, but it can also be the best of times. This is good "get off your butt" advice.

Measuring Organisational Effectiveness

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I had previously mentioned Marshall McLuhan’s work in the context of forecasting for the elearning industry. A quick review of McLuhan’s Laws of Media tetrad:

Enhancement. What does the medium enhance, extend, enlarge or intensify?

Obsolescence. What does it make obsolete? When an old medium enters its obsolescence phase, it becomes more ubiquitous, often changing from a utilitarian to a recreational role (e.g. fountain pens).

Reversal. When something is extended beyond the limits of its potential, its characteristics are often reversed. For example, cars which promote greater freedom, when multiplied to the extreme can result in gridlock.

Retrieval. What medium that was previously rendered obsolete does the old medium retrieve from the past? This is usually something from the distant past.

Mark Federman shows how these laws could also be used as a metric to measure organisations:

The Laws of Media in particular allow us to anticipate and articulate the totality of effects, both those that we wish to bring into being, and those we might wish to avoid.
Organizational effectiveness can then be expressed (as a percentage or any other appropriately scientific measure) as the degree to which effects deemed desirable can be achieved, those deemed undesirable can be avoided or mitigated, and effects that were originally unanticipated can be anticipated prior to their occurrence and achieved/avoided as appropriate. Thus, with this conception, effectiveness measures the leadership’s ability to anticipate, execute, and perform the inevitable mid-course corrections as new information becomes available. Seems pretty effective to me!


So the measure of effectiveness could be whether an organisation was able to identify when its technology product was "extended beyond the limits of its potential" and shifted its focus to a new product or service. For instance, has Learning Management System technology become extended so far that it no longer manages training and educational requirements, and now hinders the sharing of learning experiences? Would an effective organisation shift away from a reliance on pushing this technology?

McLuhan’s tetradic lens judges everyone in the same way.

Innovation for eLearning

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In my previous post Community is King, I summarized Rob Paterson’s post on Reed’s Law and put it into the context of the elearning industry. Dave Pollard has added to Rob’s view of Reed’s Law and discusses what customers really value – service for the long-run.

What’s especially interesting is that customers know that high-value service cannot be outsourced (see my Dell story for an explanation of the internal distrust and finger-pointing that outsourcing inevitably produces) or offshored (no matter how competent they are, people in India can’t give me good service simply because they’re not here looking at the product that doesn’t work).

My take on this would be to stay as close as possible to your clients. Not just in terms of proximity but in understanding the culture.

Dave Pollard goes on to look at James Surowiecki’s book, The Wisdom of Crowds, and combines Reed’s Law to come up with two new processes in his Innovation Model. One is to help to create user communities, and use the wisdom of the crowd, as eBay has done. This means that you have to let the community self-define, and you stay out of the way. No mean feat for control freeks. The other is to poll the community/crowd in order to determine what next innovation will fly. This of course requires a mechanism that will be unobtrusive and used by the majority. Kind of like opting in to Google rankings.

For elearning companies, I think that innovation with this model is possible. We have seen some of it in the academic community, but it too has its walls and silos. Open source software is one way of keeping the community open; in that no one owns the structure, and will not feel locked-in. Since product price descends quickly to zero, then start at a zero product price anyway. When the product is free, you can’t complain. And if you have the source code, don’t complain, fix it.

Just using open source software will not be enough. You need to foster community. Blogs or other two-way communication tools can help communication, but what will you blog about? You have to find out what’s really important to your market. eBay found out that people want a trusted method to buy and sell things. An elearning example could be – what are the limitations of using Google for your learning needs? What could you add on to a Google search that gives just a little more learning value? This could be anything between the results of a web search and a structured online course. Anyway, the key seems to be to offer good service at a reasonable cost, to a community to which you are committed, that you understand and support. Easy, n’est-ce pas?

The Petition for Users’ Rights

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The Petition for Users’ Rights is being circulated for presentation to Parliament. Whether you agree or disagree with this petition, there is no doubt that most Canadians are unaware of the intricacies of copyright law. Here is the petition’s text:

To the House of Commons in Parliament Assembled

We, the undersigned residents of Canada draw attention of the House to the following:

THAT the Copyright Act is properly recognised as being a careful balance between the rights of
creators and the rights of the public (including viewers, readers and listeners);

THAT the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously affirmed this view in CCH Canadian Ltd v Law
Society of Upper Canada;

THAT digital technologies have recently given copyright holders the ability to upset the balance in the
Copyright Act by preventing Canadians from accessing works for purposes that have been legally
granted to them;

THAT the creation of original works is nourished by wide accessibility of earlier works, including a
vibrant public domain;

THAT dissemination of cultural ideas requires that they be preserved in a form that is accessible to
future generations; and

THAT historically consultations regarding changes to the Copyright Act have mostly taken place with
creators, intermediaries and only some special users (such as educators and librarians)

THEREFORE, your petitioners call upon Parliament to ensure generally that users are recognised as
interested parties and are meaningfully consulted about proposed changes to the Copyright Act and to
ensure in particular that any changes at least preserve all existing users’ rights, including the right to use
copyrighted materials under Fair Dealing and the right to make private copies of audio recordings. We
further call upon Parliament not to extend the term of copyright; and to recognise the right of citizens to
personally control their own communication devices.

For further reading go to iCommons Canada, Creative Commons or my previous post on copyright in education.

[Also, here is a UK perspective on music and copyright.]

Via Steve.

Blogs – The Killer App

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Maish Nichani, author of the well-known elearning post, has contributed this recent article on blogs:

Weblogs. They are everywhere. This humble publishing technology is proving to be the silent killer application of this decade. In this article I define what weblogs are and explore the malleable attributes that make them so remarkably flexible under various contexts.

This is a good read if you are new to blogs and wondering what they can do for your business. For instance Maish covers this year’s best blog pitch event, which sought out a succinct business rationale for blogging. He also refers to some excellent blog site examples and has links to blogs for project management. This is a good place to start on your understanding of the blog medium.

Some of my previous posts on blogging including one on blogging’s similarity to speaking enagagements and blogging as a tool for knowledge work.

Typology Maps for Learning

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I have referred to Don Clark’s site many times over the years, as it’s a great resource for instructional design and educational theories. I recently noticed that he has updated it with typology maps, some under construction, so you can watch them evolve. Check out Big Dog and Little Dog’s Bowl of Biscuits and see for yourself. I like the Performance Typology Map.

Now wouldn’t it be nice to have a wikipedia of typology maps that could be collaboratively developed?