Innovagle - Interactive Innovation Search

Fast Pencil as the Next Generation Publishing

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:21:00 +0000

Fast Pencil is the new generation of publishing that changes the way we think, which we name it as innovation because it opens a way that millions of people can publish online and offline easily and efficiently.

So, what does Fast Pencil gain ´´The Writers´´:

You are able to publish your blog as a book.
You have the guidance to write with easy to use tools.
When the layout is chosen, you simply start filling the blanks.
It is free.
You can publish either online or also offline with a hard copy.
Fast Pencil gives you the option to sell your products in major stores as Barnes&Nobles, Amazon, etc.
You can simply invite contributors or reviewers to review your work. So your work will be proof read by as many people as you want for free before you actually publish it.

Within the next few years, the face of publishing will change as innovations like scribd.com, kindle and fast pencil. Hence, if you want to be a writer or if you already are, then it is much easier and less costly to publish your written products and gain the real potential that you really have.

Fast Pencil Web

SEO Link Building Tips

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:11:00 +0000

One of the biggest keys to success in the world of SEO is differentiation. The reason for this is two-fold:

Potential linkers are much more likely to give you a link.
It will make a stronger impression on people who visit your site, and is therefore more likely to result in a conversion (i.e., they buy something, fill out a lead form, ask you to contact them, etc.).

The reason these things are true has to do with the intense competitiveness of the environment on the Internet today. Those who understand the basics of how search works are making a lot of money, and more people are investing serious dollars in their Web site marketing strategies. The result: Web sites are getting plentiful in virtually every category and subcategory you can imagine.
A Link Building Example
Imagine that you own a Web site in a market space selling golf clubs. The Web site has all the major brands of clubs, but so do 500 other sites. All 500 of those sites are, more or less, doing the exact same thing. There's no practical difference between them.
Now imagine a popular blog about golfing that writes golfing tips, and often talks about golf equipment in their posts. They aren't going to link to 500 sites selling clubs in their posts. They may pick one or two sites that they like and link to those.
In your link building efforts, you contact the golfing blog to tell them about your great golf club store, and that you have all kinds of clubs on your site. Their eyes will glaze over and they will delete your e-mail even as they label you as a dirty rotten spammer.
Instead, try three other ideas:

You implement a neat new widget to help people select the golf club that is right for them. You offer the golf blog the opportunity to put that widget directly on their site.
You notice in one of the blogger's posts that they're looking for detailed information on a particular golf club manufacturer. You happen to have it, or you go proactively dig up that information for them, and then you send them the answer to their question.
You put together a contest in which a person can win a set of golf clubs. You let the blogger know about it, and ask them if they would be willing to get involved in promoting it. Perhaps you offer them a scoop on announcing the contest.

In all of these scenarios, you've differentiated yourself from the pack. They still may be uninterested in what you're offering, but your chances of getting their attention have gone up significantly.
A Broader Strategic View
While tactical link building success should be a sufficient reason to look for ways to differentiate your Web site, there are broader strategic reasons to do so as well. If you plan on being in your business for the long term, you need to plan on being a leader in your space.
To continue our example, 500 golf club sites can't all survive, and there will be a shakeout where only a few players survive. Here are just some of the things you can expect to happen:

Consumers will become more Web savvy and more demanding of the Web sites they choose to frequent.
Social media sites will play a bigger role in helping consumers identify quality businesses (and Web sites).
Search engine algorithms will evolve. Links will continue to play a big role in search ranking, but social media signals will become more important as their penetration of society increases.
Web sites owners will also become more demanding in choosing which Web sites to give links.

All these shifting factors lead to an environment where differentiation is essential for survival, so don't limit your vision. Come up with a plan to make your Web site the best Web site in your market area. If you can't lead the space in its entirety, figure out how to lead a subsector of the space. Chances are that the success of your Web strategy depends on it.

The Future of Search According to Google

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:05:00 +0000

Google is the closest tool we use in our daily lives as artificial intelligence. There are great breakthroughs and according to Eric Schmidt, we are in the beginning of 100s of years of search for making the search really smart.

Here are the important quotes in a recent interview regarding his thoughts on the search market in the future:

Search is a science that will develop and advance over hundreds of years. Think of it like biology and physics in the 1500s or 1600s: it’s a new science where we make big and exciting breakthroughs all the time. However, it could be a hundred years or more before we have microscopes and an understanding of the proverbial molecules and atoms of search. Just like biology and physics several hundred years ago, the biggest advances are yet to come. That’s what makes the field of Internet search so exciting.

Now, Sergey argues that the correct thing to do is to just connect it straight to your brain. In other words, you know, wire it into your head. And so we joke about this and said, we have not quite figured out what that problem looks like…But that would solve the problem. In other words, if we just – if you had the thought and we knew what you meant, we could run it and we could run it in parallel.

So to me, the question is sort of, what’s next, is really basically how far does the artificial intelligence technology go here? How many signals can we get from who you are, where you are, what you’ve been, what you’ve done and so forth to refine that querying? And at the same time, you also have this enormous expansion of data sets. I think what people are missing is that the amount of information on the Internet is growing very, very rapidly…Because it gets more open, people put more data on it and so forth and so on and that’s wonderful. Also, you have all these dynamic databases that are now – they basically publish that at web pages and again index them as well.

The long term goal of Google search, he says, is to give the user one exactly right answer to a query:

So I don’t know how to characterize the next 10 years except to say that we’ll get to the point – the long-term goal is to be able to give you one answer, which is exactly the right answer over time. Okay, you know, the question I’ll ask today, how many Americans have – what percentage of Americans have passports?…The Google’s answer was a site, which was somebody who had attempted to answer that question and had multiple answers. It’s quite interesting actually to read…So you go to a very good definitive site. And what I’d like to do is to get to the point where we could read his site and then summarize what it says, and answer the question…Along with the citation and so forth and so on.

A New Search Market with Twitter?

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 12:36:00 +0000

In a way we are all virtual stock holders in Twitter. We all have a vested interest in its success. Facebook is soon to monopolize the social stream to the same extent that Google has done with search. That is not good for anyone, including Facebook. I have had many discussions with people in recent weeks about the face-off between twitter and Facebook and also about the high probability of Twitter cutting a deal with Google.

When I was asked by Erick Schonfeld at the Real Tiime Stream Crunchup (Video) event about my opinion on Twitter giving Google their firehose feed, I responded that they could do that if they don?t plan to sell their company in the future. In other words, it is my humble opinion that if Twitter was a publicly traded stock its value would drop by 75% the second that deal was announced and for good reason.

Twitter is important. How often does a company come along that really changes consumer behavior? That creates a new form of media consumption and connectivity? For all the thousands of startups covered on Techcrunch only a few have a profound impact on the arc of internet history. Twitter has earned its spot in that pantheon and now it remains to be seen if it can play a bigger role in how to monetize the stream and in the process build a real business.

At this moment in time, Twitter has such a stronghold on this new form of real-time consumption that it has the potential to dominate the category. But its window of opportunity is closing fast as Facebook and others hurl themselves at that prize. The experience of real-time communication and search, that sense you get of unfolding streams of relevant information to your interests and queries flowing in a digital river has arrived with Twitter coursing first through the rapids. But now that we have arrived at this new medium, what next? Does Twitter become an example of a utility that is emulated by others that already have a monetization engine, leaving Twitter to ultimately drift to a respected place in Wikipedia like Netscape? Or does it continue to push the boundaries and create a sustainable and growing business that will allow it to continue to ride the whitewater?

If twitter is to confine itself to being a communications medium, or even worse, a news distribution engine, it will surely perish. By analogy, Google as a business is not a search engine but an advertising business that is printing money at unprecedented rates. Google does this by owning the equivalent of distribution in the digital age. Its just that the meaning of the word ?distribution? in the digital age has shifted. Google, as the entry point for such a vast audience, effectively owns the distribution on the Internet as a business leader and brand. Its lead continues to grow as the audience grows.

Google's economics lay in the economy of intent. The intent of users to purchase a product or service when they use Google's search is what drives its money presses. The context of the users' actions and interests map to an intention which advertisers are eager to pay for. The ability to automate the placement of advertising next to relevant content and map consumer queries to useful advertising stands at the heart of Google's success.

This is something that has been notoriously missing on communication platforms. See AIM as an example. What was once an omnipresent juggernaut of a product is inching towards being a footnote in internet history. One that has always struggled to monetize its vast audience. The same is true for other communications platforms such as Hotmail and Gmail. They have become strategic traffic drivers in companies with a broader monetization engine. Look further into innovative news aggregation platforms such as Digg, Google News, and Techmeme and you see that it's pretty tough to generate significant revenues in news, certainly not Google-scale revenues. Even for pillars of the industry such as the New York Times, big online profits are elusive. So there are not many prospects for building a sustainable multi-billion dollar business for Twitter either as a communications platform or a news discovery engine.

The way to make Twitter into a sustainable business is to tap into the economy of intent. God knows Twitter has that potential, but it has a narrow window of opportunity in which to execute. The business promise is to create a new type of useful advertising for people that is consumed in the context of a new form of discovery?one that for the moment is unique to Twitter but, alas, not for long. If Twitter doesn't pick up the pace at this moment in time and take the path leading to building a business, it will begin to destroy its value. By doing a deal that will give Google unfettered access to real-time results from Twitter in Google search, Twitter will effectively be giving up the fight and losing the war. For if consumers can get the same experience that is currently unique to Twitter on Google, why would they need to go to Twitter to search? If they don?t bring their intentions to Twitter search, then Twitter is not participating in the Economy of Intent and as such will diminish its value to the single-digit millions.

At the risk of stating the obvious let me throw out some constructs. There has been much speculation about how Twitter will make money. From #pastryto #diabetes, the world of Twitter is self-organizing in a highly effective folksonomy that is vibrant and useful. Today, Twitter users are left to their own devices when it comes to unearthing these gems in the stream. As Twitter further develops its discovery(taxonomy) and search engine, the valuable content streams will be unearthed. Think of the simple impact of auto-complete in the search box to # tags. This is but one simple move which could start to drive traffic to focused streams of information, which could also map to useful advertising, just like on Google. Start with creating a marketplace for advertisers around the #tags, then search queries, and see how valuable the experience Twitter created really is. Throw in the recent evolution in geo-tagging and you add another layer of usefulness. Typing in "amazing restaurant" when you are in Soho should show a fresh stream of nearby locations, recommendations, and warnings. As Twitter make these changes, users will start focusing more on discovery, and it will become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Users will alter their behavior to capture the search queries. The notions of surfacing more advanced trends and audience recirculation present further opportunities. There is so much that can be done in this domain once Twitter has the critical mass of audience and data.

Twitter has a unique opportunity to innovate and create new forms of useful advertising that will truly help both users and advertisers. This was the key to Google's success and is the key to Twitter's future. It takes time for advertising to become useful as it requires a significant liquidity of ads. Twitter has to start soon to build up that liquidity in time for the face-off competition for the advertisers. They need for buyers to know they are the go-to place for in-stream advertising. Google is at a big disadvantage at this junction in time. One only needs to set a Google alert to see how latent their Twitter discovery is (I have seen alerts come in for tweets that are 3 days old). Google has not made it a secret that the strategic importance of the real-time web registers with them.

For Twitter to give away the farm (its firehose of Tweets) at this stage is tantamount to suicide and can only be defined as a form of creative laziness. Twitter, you got this far don?t get too comfortable with all that money in the bank. Get off your asses and push, you owe it to history. There are so many things you could be doing short of giving up and serving yourself up on a silver platter. If you must do it, if you do sell your data or yourself to Google ? make ?em pay, they can afford it. If you give away your data to the majors, they wont need to buy you anyway and if you don?t create a solid way to make money, you can't survive on your own.

Ref. Washington Post by Guest Author, Edo Segal

Innovation as Google´s Future

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:52:00 +0000

The search engine giant debuted on Aug. 19, 2004 at $85 a share. Today, the stock trades at about $445. That's a nearly 420% return during a time when the Nasdaq is up only 8%. And shares of top rival Yahoo! have been nearly cut in half during the past five years.

Yet, it doesn't look like all those Googleaires are too interested in celebrating their 5-year anniversary as a public company. Check out the Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) homepage and you don't see one of its usually witty cartoon renditions of the logo like you do on other "holidays."

I was hoping it would look like a tree carving or maybe a set of spoons, forks and knives since wood and silverware are the traditional five-year wedding anniversary gifts. (And yes, I Googled "wedding anniversary gifts" to find this out.)

Nonetheless, it's been an interesting five years for the search giant to say the least.

The company has used its strong stock price and mountain of cash reserves as currency to scoop up the likes of YouTube, DoubleClick and Postini to name a few.

It has watched Yahoo! (YHOO, Fortune 500) try (and fail) repeatedly to gain more market share in the lucrative world of search. It's weathered numerous challenges by Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) to do the same. And it's continued to be innovative, rolling out a slew of products such as Gmail, Google Maps and Google Docs.

All the while, Google has also remained relatively focused its core search business, resisting the temptation to go overboard in the glitzy, but not all that profitable, social networking business. And that's a good thing.

News Corp. (NWS, Fortune 500)-owned MySpace and Silicon Valley darlings Facebook and Twitter have all generated a googol of hype but none has figured out a way to make gobs of money from their users as Google has.

Of course, remaining on top in a business as dynamic as technology is not easy. Online pioneer AOL, which is set to soon split from my parent company Time Warner (TWX,Fortune 500), is now a distant also ran in the world of Internet advertising. (Although it will be interesting to see if former Google sales guru Tim Armstrong, who is now running AOL, can turn that company around.)

So Google is probably too busy trying to figure out how to stay ahead of the competition to look back.

Google is facing perhaps its most significant threat yet from Microsoft now that it has launched the new search engine Bing and finally inked a search partnership with The Purple One (Yahoo!, that is, not Prince or new Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre).

According to the most recent online search rankings from comScore, Microsoft did gain ground against Google in July. But its market share of 8.9% pales in comparison to Google's whopping 64.7%. And even if you add Yahoo's market share to Microsoft's, they have a combined share of just 28.2%

Steve Weinstein, an analyst with Pacific Crest Securities, said that the Microsoft-Yahoo alliance bears watching. But he believes that Google shouldn't be that worried. In fact, he thinks Google could take advantage of any turmoil that takes place while Microsoft and Yahoo! join forces.

"Google is still in a very strong position in search and they should continue to gain market share in the U.S.," he said. The Yahoo-Bing partnership will take a couple of years to implement, so there is plenty of risk of disruption for them during that time."

Still, Google's growth has slowed in recent years. Sure, part of that is simply the so-called law of large numbers, i.e. the bigger a company gets, the more difficult it is to keep posting gaudy percentage increases in sales and earnings.

Starbucks Metamorphosis with Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:32:00 +0000

Throughout 2009, Starbucks has been making waves about how much it is changing in response to new consumer spending patterns. First, it was the announcement that it planned to revisit the pricing of its coffee and baked goods and go back to basics with the re-introduction of Pike's Place coffee.

Then, it was the announcement that it would consider closing down some superfluous Starbucks stores and pursue other cost-cutting measures. This week, it was rumors on the Internet of a "stealth" Starbucks brand known as 15th Avenue E Coffee and Tea. But I literally spilled my (think) coffee this morning when I read that Starbucks was embracing Japanese-style "lean retailing" techniques as a way to break out of its funk. This is serious MBA-case study type of material.

All that talk about "lean retailing", of course, hearkens back to the 1980s, when U.S. companies by the hundreds embraced the "lean manufacturing" techniques of the Japanese in order to become more competitive. That, in fact, appears to be exactly what Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has in mind. Today's Wall Street Journal article even mentions that Starbucks has a "VP of Lean Thinking" who is an acolyte of the Toyota lean manufacturing system:

"Pushing Starbuck's drive is Scott Heydon, the company's "vice president of lean thinking," and a student of the Toyota production system, where lean manufacturing got its start. He and a 10-person "lean team" have been going from region to region armed with a stopwatch and a Mr. Potato Head toy that they challenge managers to put together and re-box in less than 45 seconds.

Mr. Heydon says reducing waste will free up time for baristas -- or "partners," as the company calls them -- to interact with customers and improve the Starbucks experience. "Motion and work are two different things. Thirty percent of the partners' time is motion; the walking, reaching, bending," he says. He wants to lower that.

If Starbucks can reduce the time each employee spends making a drink, he says, the company could make more drinks with the same number of workers or have fewer workers."

This is incredible, groundbreaking stuff. Starbucks is even doing all kinds of "motion studies," where they analyze how baristas move and where ingredients are located, to see if they can save a few seconds here and there, in order to make their coffee-making process more efficient. The lean retail experts are also analyzing the total time spent at Starbucks drive-in windows, to get that number down as much as possible. Around the cafe, they are utilizing timers, to make sure that fresh coffee gets brewed every eight minutes.

If it were a different company, say, Dunkin' Donuts or Mickey D's, I don't think the adoption of Japanese "lean retailing" methods would be so newsworthy. But this is Starbucks -- which staked a fortune on creating a global brand around $4 coffee and a leisurely, stay-all-you-want type of experience curated by knowledgeable baristas. If Starbucks is already embracing Japanese-style efficiency, look for other companies to take cover under the guise of "lean retailing" to pare back on just about everything...

Search Engine Satisfaction as of August, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 13:29:00 +0000

That's the conclusion reached by a survey of U.S. consumers conducted earlier this year by the American Customer Satisfaction Index and scheduled to be released Tuesday. The Internet portals and search engines category--made up of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft--scored an 83 on the index, far ahead of the score of 75 amassed by the PC industry.

Google leads the industry in both market share and customer satisfaction, posting a score of 86. That's one of the highest satisfaction scores recorded by any one company, said Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee Results, which interpreted the survey results. "What's interesting is that Google has really set an expectation with consumers and they've done a good job living up to it," he said.

Yahoo's search was second among listed companies, with a score of 77, while Microsoft's former MSN search ranked 75. The survey was conducted before both the launch of Bing as well as the search deal that will seeMicrosoft taking over search on Yahoo's pages, so next year's results should be particularly interesting, Freed said.

Overall, however, customer satisfaction with search is relatively high despite the fact that most search companies believe the experience could be greatly improved. "The simple definition of satisfaction is it's a combination of what you get and what you expect. Consumers are used to not finding what they expect" the first time they go to a search engine, Freed said.

That opens up opportunities for newcomers like Bing to win customers with a better product, Freed said. But they'll have a tough time going up against Google because the company's brand image is so strong and because the public continues to think highly of Google's product, he said.

Brazil as the 3rd Rising Star of Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 12:51:00 +0000

Over the last few years, China and India have emerged as the twin hot spots of emerging tech innovation. Now IBM is betting that one of the next big technology stars will be Brazil.

In the latest sign of Brazil's rising power, Big Blue is announcing on Aug. 18 a new initiative to stimulate the development of the country's technology sector. To kick off the effort, IBM is hosting its first-ever forum for venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in São Paulo along with FINEP, the Brazilian government agency that finances technology development. The daylong event will bring together more than 100 investors and dozens of new companies looking for investment and business advice.

IBM is also launching a Portuguese version of its developerWorks Web site, which provides free programs and online teaching guides that help programmers build skills in the Java programming language, the Linux operating system, and IBM products such as Lotus. To host the event, IBM has dispatched Claudia Fan Munce, managing director of IBM Venture Capital Group, and Steve Mills, senior vice-president and group executive of IBM's $20 billion Software Group, a clear sign of the growing importance of Brazil to the IBM portfolio.

"We have been watching Brazil for a while," says Munce, who grew up in Brazil. "The time is right."

EYEING OPPORTUNITY

In the past, Brazil has been hobbled by hyperinflation, rampant political corruption, and failed fiscal and monetary policies. But with a growing and stable economy in recent years, multinational corporations such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and venture capital and private equity players now see additional opportunity for technology innovation in the sun-drenched nation. "That potential is there," says Mills. "The university systems are strong. There is a level of interest in entrepreneurship that is growing."

Investors increasingly see Brazil as an attractive destination. As of the end of 2008 nearly 150 local and foreign investment firms had committed $28 billion in venture and private equity capital to Brazilian companies, according to the Brazilian Association for Private Equity & Venture Capital. That's up from $6 billion in 2004, amounting to a hearty 50% compound annual growth rate over the last four years. Investors have financed 500 Brazilian companies to date with venture or private equity capital, and there's $12 billion left to invest over the next few years from that $28 billion kitty.

Still, the country's business challenges, including high taxes and restrictive labor laws, could hamper growth. And native businesspeople say a Silicon Valley-like ecosystem where risk and creative thinking in technology are the norm remains elusive. "We do not have an ecosystem in place," says Berthier Ribiero-Neto, head of Google's Latin American research and development center, which is based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. "Most of the students go to work for the outsourcing companies. I would like to see more product development."

The IBM initiative is designed to help remedy some of those issues. The idea is to serve as a matchmaker and coach to the growing number of companies IBM works with in Brazil. In fact, IBM's Munce says that among the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), Brazil is seeing the highest growth in business partners that IBM works with, averaging 150% year over year.

TAPPING INTO BRAZIL

To help its partners raise money, IBM will introduce them to dozens of local and foreign private investors at the forum, including Intel Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Rio Bravo, and Darby Overseas Investments. And to design, build, and market new technologies for their businesses, IBM will invite its several thousand Brazilian business partners to visit its Innovation Center in São Paulo, which opened in February. At the center, entrepreneurs can gain access to training courses, consulting services, and technical seminars. "The center will help us tap into this huge growth market," says Munce.

Humberto Matsuda, founding partner with Performa Investimentos, a new Brazilian venture capital firm, says the IBM forum is a significant event for his country. "We are very excited to see how IBM will become a player in this industry," says Matsuda, who is closing an $8 million fund, with 40% of its capital coming from FINEP. "It is a very significant event, given the size of the players."

Matsuda, who helped IBM draw up a list of companies to invite to the forum, says startups have been hobbled in the recent past by a lack of capital and experienced entrepreneurs. But he says the IBM event is important because it will help foster more investment, training, and networking in the technology community. "They will make introductions to potential clients and offer training and services," says Matsuda. "You have to use a key player like IBM to teach companies."

IBM Sao Paolo Innovation Center Website

Comments?!

Innovation an ´´Indispensible´´ for Companies

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:41:00 +0000

CALL IT INNOVATION on steroids. Or innovation at warp speed. Or just the innovation of rapid innovation.

But the essential point remains: Technology is transforming innovation at its core, allowing companies to test new ideas at speeds—and prices—that were unimaginable even a decade ago. They can stick features on Web sites and tell within hours how customers respond. They can see results from in-store promotions, or efforts to boost process productivity, almost as quickly.

The result? Innovation initiatives that used to take months and megabucks to coordinate and launch can often be started in seconds for cents.

And that makes innovation, the lifeblood of growth, more efficient and cheaper. Companies are able to get a much better idea of how their customers behave and what they want. This gives new offerings and marketing efforts a better shot at success.

THE SPEED OF CHANGE

The Evolution: Technology is allowing companies to test new ideas at speeds—and prices—that were unimaginable even a decade ago.
The Effect: Innovation, the lifeblood of growth, is growing more efficient and cheaper.
What’s Ahead: Innovative companies will shift away from traditional research-and-development methods. Managers will change the way they solicit ideas. And much, much more.

Companies will also be willing to try new things, because the price of failure is so much lower. That will bring big changes for corporate culture—making it easier to challenge accepted wisdom, for instance, and forcing managers to give more employees a say in the innovation process.

There will be even better payoffs for customers: Their likes and dislikes will have much more impact on companies’ decisions. In globally competitive markets, they will ultimately end up getting products and services better tailored to their needs.

Already, this powerful new capability is changing the way some of the biggest companies in the world do business, inspiring new strategies and revolutionizing the research-and-development process.

“In the U.S., we do the vast majority of our concept testing online, which has created truly substantial savings in money and time,” says Joan Lewis, global consumer and market knowledge officer at Procter & Gamble Co.

Finding the Link
What does all of this experimentation look like in practice?

Consider Google Inc., which runs 50 to 200 search experiments at any given time. In one case, Google asked selected users how many search results they would like to see on a single screen. More, said the users, many more. So Google ran an experiment that tripled the number of search results per screen to 30. The company found that traffic declined.

What happened? On average it took about a third of a second longer for search results to appear—a seemingly insignificant delay that nonetheless upset many of the users. The greater number of results also made it more likely that a user would click on a page that did not have the information he or she was seeking.

In an environment where experimentation is this quick and efficient, many traditional practices make less economic sense. For instance, current research-and-development efforts are often driven by considerations that the company’s technicians think are important but customers really don’t care about. Mobile-phone companies, for one, had a reputation for piling on features that added more cost and complexity than value.

Real-World Results
But it’s not just Web-based companies that are taking advantage of technology to run crucial experiments.

Even retailers—who might seem to have tremendous logistical challenges implementing rapid experiments across lots of stores—can tap this new approach, thanks to the rise of sophisticated tracking systems that make measuring customer behavior more agile and less expensive.

These systems—which track everything from purchases at the cash register to how products move through the supply chain—allow stores to cheaply collect terabytes of data on their customer interactions, the performance of products in the field, employee productivity and other factors. Traditionally, companies have simply rooted through all of that data to look for patterns and trends; they’ve mined their data. But some retailers are beginning to realize that they can get much better results by using their digital systems to run experiments.

Take Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which frequently runs comparative in-store experiments with signage, displays and shelf layouts to see what influences shopper decisions. Wal-Mart can test different arrangements in a number of stores for a week or so to see which approach boosts sales the most. If different sign colors or unusual merchandise juxtapositions increase—or depress—relative sales, the stores can quickly share the information and implement the same plan. That said, store managers also have the ability to make decisions at their store to meet individual customer needs.

Experiments to Come
Where will all this lead? Experiments will become far more pervasive and persuasive as information technology improves and testing grows faster and cheaper. More companies—and more enterprising individuals who work in them—will recognize that experiments don’t have to be time-consuming and expensive, and they will propose more tests that exploit those economies.

Increasingly, the more innovative companies—the Googles and Harrah’s of tomorrow—will shift away from traditional research-and-development methods. Five years ago, for instance, a leadership team might have reviewed two or three “big” innovation proposals from consulting gurus; executive teams today might compare the outcomes of 50 or 60 real-world experiments to decide which ones to act upon.

All of which guarantees huge changes for corporate cultures. Challenging conventional wisdom, for one thing, becomes immeasurably faster, cheaper and easier. And there’s a subtle shift in how people view innovation. People don’t talk about running experiments months into the future—they’re into immediacy, because they see that they can test ideas right away, and the company culture starts to actively encourage speed. A provocative hypothesis proposed during a morning meeting might graduate into a full-blown experiment by day’s end.

Even if a test doesn’t produce a workable idea, there’s usually something important to be gleaned from it. “Genius is born from a thousand failures,” says Greg Linden, an entrepreneur who has been an innovator at both Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. “In each failed test, you learn something that helps you find something that will work. Constant, continuous, ubiquitous experimentation is the most important thing.”

Giving Up Control
This new environment also has big implications for managers. Simply put, bosses must be prepared to give up some control. With testing so cheap, easy and accessible, there’s less need to ration it as they have in the past. Managers used to directing the company’s innovation efforts must give their workers the freedom to come up with ideas on their own and pursue them without lots of red tape.

Some of the best experiments come from outside the chain of command. At Amazon, for instance, innovators initially developed the company’s recommendations feature—which suggests other products customers might want—without explicit approval from higher-ups.

Not only do we expect managers to solicit and welcome more ideas from lower down in the ranks, we expect that lots more people will be invited to review experiments and make changes. Customer-service and maintenance people, say, might chime in on experiments proposed by manufacturing or distribution.

That might seem hard to believe, given the turf battles that can arise over new ideas. But when experiments become more abundant—and easy and inexpensive to change—those proprietary issues won’t come up as much. Think of the difference between improving and sharing presentations back in the day of transparencies and 35mm slides versus PowerPoint presentations, which can be modified with a few clicks of a mouse.

As more people get involved in experimentation, companies will also need to change their focus in education and training efforts for innovation. Instead of just getting workers to creatively interpret large volumes of data, companies will need to help them develop the skills to rapidly design provocative experiments. Passive analysis will be subordinate to active experimentation.

Another crucial development down the road will be “scaling.” Digital technology, as we have seen, allows companies to test new ideas quickly and easily. But the technology also lets companies easily scale those ideas—or implement them rapidly and cheaply throughout the whole business. We predict that as companies realize the power of this idea, they will focus on experiments that not only can be tested rapidly but also can be put into wide effect just as quickly.

The most obvious example of scaling is a Web site. Companies can test out a new feature with a quick bit of programming and see how users respond. The change can then be replicated on billions of customer screens.

But that kind of scaling becomes rapidly possible in the bricks-and-mortar world, too, as more business processes become digital—supply-chain management, customer-relationship management and so forth. When a retailer identifies a better process for screening new employees, the company can embed the process in its human-resource-management software and have thousands of locations implementing the new plan the next morning.

We think the future of innovation and the future of experimentation will continue to evolve, thanks to the improving economics of digital technologies. As a result, the next decade of innovation in the global marketplace will be even more tumultuous than the last. That’s a great opportunity for innovators—and even better news for customers and consumers world-wide.

Ref. MIT Sloan Management Review

Comments?!

Go (Google Application) BillBoard

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:23:00 +0000

Google will use billboard advertising to promote Google Apps, the company's enterprise productivity suite. Google will use giant billboards in four U.S. cities to encourage business users to consider using the Google Apps package.

From Monday, commuters in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Boston will see a different message promoting Google Apps each weekday throughout August. Called "Going Google", the campaign targets IT managers stuck in traffic and informs on the benefits of switching to Google Apps.

Google introduced the Apps enterprise suite in 2007 and the company says over 1.75 million customers are now using it. But the undisputed king of online advertising is now turning a leaf from the more traditional marketing books with billboard advertising. Google said it doesn't plan to advertise in other print or broadcast media for now.

In aid of the campaign, the company also launched a Google Apps "Spread the Word" site, which offers promotional materials for enthusiasts such as posters, fact sheets and weekly giveaways.

In the past, Google used sparingly traditional ads, a more recent example being the Google Chrome TV spots. But the new campaign for Google Apps can be widely seen as a direct stab at Microsoft's productivity and email offerings, explaining the benefits of using cloud-computing solutions. Microsoft is also planning to launch Office Web Applications, free of charge, together with the 2010 of its desktop productivity suite.

See a Google Preview Video of how the Google BillBoard will look like.

Comments?!

Obama Continuing his Innovation Agenda

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:26:00 +0000

Unlike other politicians ignoring global warming, economic downturn, healthcare system, human rights and global peace, Obama has objectively took significant steps to resolve major problems that cumulated before his time from day 1. He did even better by taking the first and careful steps by selecting his team and starting to work on his presidential agenda as he was elected, which was 75 days before his inauguration.

We were through the first 100 days and then the first 6 months to analyze his presidential performance and even though the polls say his popularity has reduced within the last 1 month, he is still the most popular president in the history. This is impressive with respect to what he was handed as a major crisis of economics, financial system, deficit, war, global warming, wounded U.S. credibility in the world, etc. Overall, U.S. seems to find an incredible leader to resolve major problems and prosper once again in the coming years with Innovation in mind.

Obama is undoubtedly "a man of words", but also "a man of action" of what he says. He is extremely self-confident because he openly says what he will do and he selects the best people to work as a team.

His mind of innovation, marketing and economics can easily be deciphered by observing his presidential campaign. He became the biggest politician rock-star of all-times not because he was lucky because he worked collectively (built local and nationwide teams of supporters) and applied technology (youtube) and innovation (as micro donations from millions of Americans).

That´s because he is one of the only people who take care of his words. Therefore, it might be best to share his words of innovation, to follow his innovation agenda.

"We've got to build a new foundation strong enough to withstand future economic storms and support lasting prosy around renewable energy."

"it possible for entrepreneurs to innovate and businesses to compete without being saddled with skyrocketing insurance costs."

"Innovation has been essential to our prosperity in the past, and it will be essential to our prosperity in the future,"

"Future economic prosperity depends on building a new, stronger foundation and recapturing the spirit of innovation,"

References
Washington Post, Obama on Stimulus and Innovation

Google Hosted News, Innovation key to improving the economy

Kansascity, Innovation could save healthcare

Innovagle Information Technology and E-Marketing Consulting Services

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 21:33:00 +0000

Contact us for more information with your specific needs.

Our Services for Your Company
In the last 10 years, the face of marketing has changed dramatically with mostly the practical and efficient e-marketing and ever advancing information technology tools.Today, there is a wealth of ways to boost one business by taking remarkable steps of e-marketing and information technology with a relative low cost investment especially compared to the traditional path as direct marketing, other medias or incapable information systems followed by the majority of the companies. Today there exist (increasingly) ways that did not exist only a few years ago to maximize the efficiency and marketing of companies.

As Innovagle, we give consulting services in information technology and e-marketing solutions. As we work with you, there will be -before and after- effect that will highly increase the productivity of the work flow and efficiency of your organization by the new information technology tools being used.

Today most of the companies still use traditional ways to market their products. However, there exists numerous new ways to maximize your visibility by targeted consumers. Without a high conversion rate (the rate of purchasing customers over leads), visibility is only an image, but does not result with growing revenues. For this reason, we see e-marketing as a whole solution of increasing the visibility combined with maximizing the conversion rate in time.

Contact us with a concise description of your company and the (e-marketing and/or information technology) solution you seek. We will return to you in the mean time with an "efficient and practical" solution.

Best Regards,
Innovagle Technology Consulting Partners
info@innovagle.com

Innovagle Perspective on Efficient E-Marketing Solutions

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:45:00 +0000

E-Marketing Starts with Website Persuability
Persuability is the ability to persuade the potential customer to purchase the product of the respective company. This has many different ways including the web design, content and image placement, content, personal approach, customer guidance, sharing tools etc. You may have a good SEO, but it has no use if your website doesn´t have at least a ´´good enough´´ Persuability.

E-Marketing is no more a Luxury, but a Need!
In the last 10 years, the face of business and marketing has changed, and we now live in an online world. Web 2.0 officially started in 2003 and Web 3.0, which is more personalized semantic web, has already showed its first signs.As Innovagle, we follow the latest innovations as in our website and apply them to our E-Marketing services. E-marketing includes Google Adwords, Facebook Personal Ads, Posting Links and Information in the respective most used blogs and websites, Newsletters, Email marketing, Viral Marketing, Blogs, etc. What is productive and efficient about E-Marketing is that it costs dramatically less than direct and other media marketing as TV commercials. It is also more focused on the specific customers rather than other medias having much less focus.

SEO is where World Finds You!
We all know why Google is so successful because millions of people click on their links each day. This is also to mean that someone is searching for you. The majority of people do not click on the 2^ndpage of Google to find what they are looking for. There comes the competition for being in the first 10 results of Google. Google robots search for the most relevant results and they are highly successful in doing this by using more than 200 criteria. Innovagle is to provide you the right tools to achieve the highest ranking possible in search engines as Google.

Direct Marketing
People are still people. People need personal relations to trust in the company and its products especially in the beginning of the business relation. Innovagle helps achieve this goal in Barcelona with its personnel and give other cities in the world the consulting service with a team of its experienced MBAs depending on the business and product. Direct marketing may also be a guide to the website for e-retailers.

Contact Innovagle with your specific needs for more detailed information on our information technology and e-marketing solutions. As we receive your information, we will thoroughly work on your needs and offer you a customized infotech and/or e-marketing solution through our partners.

Information Technology Maintenance Services

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 20:26:00 +0000

Maintenance and Equipment Sales
Our technicians are highly skilled in maintaining and repairing equipment. Any incident occurring in your computers or computer accessories will be resolved quickly and effectively. Our service involves preventive and corrective maintenance and upgrade of computer equipment.

We have a wide range of Software that is available as a supplier of computers and accessories, advising on the basis of your business requirements in order to find the best solution for your company.

Networking and communications

Our field of action is the design, supply of equipment and materials, installation, configuration, certification, commissioning and maintenance of systems.
- Racks and structured cabling distribution
- Wireless
- Installation of fiber optic
- Electronics and network routing
- VoIP telephony and videoconferencing

Contact us with your specific needs today and we will return to you with efficient and customized solutions.

Hosting and Housing

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 19:57:00 +0000

Hosting
Innovagle Software Partners offers its customers a wide range of hosting services or hosting of high performance, adaptable to the requirements of any business, professional and dedicated servers.

Hosting service Innovagle Partners Software DELL and HP servers with the latest generation of websites and portals can accommodate all types. Building on the Windows 2003 platform supports the service in native mode language ASP, Database Access, and FrontPage. NET Framework. There's also support for other languages like PHP, JAVA, ASP.NET 2.0 and SQL Server databases, Oracle, MySQL and Open Source platforms such as DotNetNuke and phpnuke.

Dedicated Hosting Service enables our customers more freedom to set a good platform to their needs in way of rent, without having to make large investments in servers. Highlighted by studies of the needs of each client to adapt the platforms to not only current needs, but also future.

Housing
We have the optimal environment to host a server of your property. The most advanced facilities with physical security systems, fire prevention, environmental control and power availability.

The housing service provided Innovagle Partner Software enjoys more facilities network operators, providing the quality of traffic and safety of having the best conditions.

Contact us for your needs of hosting and/or housing for us to find the most efficient and practical customized solution for you.

Design and Creativity

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:41:00 +0000

Web Design
The site has some design principles to follow to obtain a quality result. Closely related to user behavior on the network, with key usability, consistency, accessibility and stability. Put another way, the network design is to serve the user.

The creative team of Innovagle Software Partners a process of conceptualization, creation, development and evaluation for each project requiring a web design. It works closely with the department of software development to achieve a seamless integration between the GUI and web programming.

Graphic Design
Graphic design is the key to visual communication between the company and the client should communicate the essence of your company and attract the attention of the visitor to stop at your business and not in another.

The creative team conceptualize and create graphic design for your business: corporate identity, catalogs, creative new products, etc..

Multimedia
The Multimedia provides endless creative possibilities, and support innovative new forms of communication:

- Interactive Presentations
- Virtual Catalogs
- Entertainment and Creativity.

Contact us with your specific needs of design and/or multimedia so that we find efficient and practical customized solutions for your specific needs.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software Consulting

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 16:34:00 +0000

An ERP (Enterprise Resource Planner) is a management software comprises various modules that provide solutions designed to support multiple business processes. It may contain modules for production management, customer management, purchasing, accounts payable and receivable, general accounting, billing, inventory management, human resources, payroll or when any other function is to be developed within the company.

Detecting when the company needs a management software of this type is the key. Several factors can warn of this need, but they all stem from optimized business processes little (lack of information for decision makers, departments that duplicate work, routine procedures with little or no automation, etc. ..).

Often these problems occur when the company is growing. The procedures implemented initially valid for very early stages of the company may cease to be valid when the company evolves. The growth of a business is a very delicate stage and it has to be very well controlled. Employees from different departments can no longer work independently, but all efforts should pursue the same purpose and it is here where the importance of an ERP.

Perhaps the biggest problem faced by companies when implementing an ERP (management software) is its rigidity, which often causes the need to adapt to business management software instead of software management business. Innovagle Software partners distribute, implement, and customize ERP Kais, a Business Management program, which is very versatile, able to adapt its business model with ease.

ERP Modules

Kaiser Logistic EVO

KAISER LOGISTIC EVO helps manage the sales administration, purchasing and stores. In addition, through various consultations and customizable access to the state statistics of the different processes of the company.

It has multiple modules adaptable to each business sector such as SAT, POS, Quality Shopping, Mobile Pre-Sales, Mobile Auto-sales or sales via the Internet (eKais).

KaisEvo Financials

The financial management KAISER EVO FINANCIALS manages accounting, forecasting, analytical, taxes, budgets, depreciation and items to create official documents in a single application.

Allows multi company, multi-and international locations.

KaisEvo Factory

KAISER FACTORY EVO is a powerful software designed to streamline production processes and daily production centers.

It is fully linked to business management, data capture and automation of plant processes.

Contact with us for more information for us to find efficient and practical customized solutions for your company.

Innovagle Web Development Services

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:37:00 +0000

Portals

Innovagle gives web development services by building your website, so you can offer to your users, as easy and intuitive as possible, access to your resources and services that you want to put at their disposal, which often include search engines, forums, documents, applications or tools of electronic commerce.

Portals tend to go to communities of users with some feature in common, so it will also help in defining the options to solve their specific needs.

Intranet - Extranet
Among our services are intranet and extranet, which will organize and manage information and communication of your company.

Intranets (Internal - employees) or Extranets (for external use - customers) are very interesting tools for information management. Based on the Web technology, they can be adapted to the needs of each enterprise, based on some basic options such as managing calls and contacts, schedules, email or document management, which can be extended with any specific functionality of the activity of your business.

Online Marketing
A key to the success of a project site is to reach potential customers. Our online marketing specialists will advise on the steps to achieve this by analyzing the activity of online competition by setting their marketing objectives and defining the online strategy to follow.

The two main strategies are the natural positioning of your site and sponsored links.

Natural Positioning
The position includes natural techniques to improve the website pages that allow search engines to index pages more easily. Any project that the user must locate through search engines requires this service. Keep in mind that the effects of implementing these techniques cannot be fully evaluated until after about 3 months.

Sponsored Links
Sponsored links cover all the tools to place ads on search engines or websites of third parties and obtain qualified visitors to a change of cost per visit or per number of impressions. The most common tool is AdWords, which allows you to insert ads on search results from Google. The publication of these ads is almost immediate, so your results may begin to value from day one.

Some Examples of the References of Our Partners

Case 1

Developed a website with a very attractive aesthetics and a complete management system that allows customers to keep track of the restaurants and bars to the last detail. Users will have a points program that allows them to redeem the points they made reservations or recommending the site, for dinner at different restaurants.

Customers have an extranet where they can manage information from the restaurants, availability and reservations that are told.

Case 2

Developed an Internet portal to sell music more modern and current as well as thousands of musical references in the catalogs more popular in recent decades.Thousands of categorized items loaded on the system is fully automated and available at the online store.

Subscribers with favorite playlist and shopping basket.RSS, newsletters, banners and more in a totally manageable.

Case 3

This application works as a web portal for online sales of cruises, synchronizing data in real time with the management application WINRAR (ERP of the company) as well as communicating with an external called GoldMine CRM.

This will avoid unnecessary duplication of data and hours lost by the whole management as integrated.

Case 4

The website was developed, administered in its entirety, incorporating a wide range of features, from the automatic catalog generation of products to which newsletters are automatically sent to their recipients.

Innovagle partners performed dynamic Web data, by changing the design and implementation of a Content Management System.

Case 5
The system developed by Innovagle Software Partners allows online Diary management agenda with several medical centers agendas at once. The application is fully customizable and allows the query and update data from the Internet by both patients and doctors and secretaries.

The website is available to patients, physicians and other health professionals, as well as the organizations that provide services: consultations, medical centers, clinics and hospitals with outpatient visits, a series of features to manage the entire lifecycle of care of patients in consultations.

Contact us with your needs of web development with a concise description of your company and specifics of the project for us to give you a detailed quote and guide you to the right solution.

Innovagle Technology Consulting Services

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:37:00 +0000

The quality of technologies used in a business is as important as the proper choice, implementation and use. These factors are essential to increase productivity and reduce costs.

Our specialists analyze the characteristics of your company, give you advise and guidance on software development, which is the most suitable to you.

ICT services
- Advice on New Technologies.
- Definition and adjustment of the Strategy in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
- Determination of optimum working platforms.
- Selection and development of software applications and more suitable to your business.

Application Development
Develoop Software helps to define the specific needs of each company to develop software using standard software when they are not sufficient or not there are applications that meet the requirements of the company.

- Development of software to measure, where the ERP and standards are inadequate or lacking.
- Additional modules to complete and integrated ERP.
- Integration of different systems of accounting standard.
- Links to custom billing systems.
- Links to the Web catalog management software.
- The relationship between software modules and Web Connection

Some Examples of the References of Our Partners

Case 1
Innovagle Technology Partners developed a desktop application. NET with SQL Server database so that employees could access Jover Union managing the files according to the permissions available to each. Developed some additional functionality, such as the export of information listed or the generation of alerts to warn of the closeness of the dates of review or the detection of excessive time intervals between the phases of a single control.

Case 2
Complex software system developed to measure the effect chroma done through software, applied for the realization of photomontages with football players.

Case 3
A management application has been implemented that has a dual functionality: For a structure and store a catalog of products so that it can serve as an engine for web data. Other tasks implemented have been building the catalog, manage the reserve system, portfolio turnover and the company.

Case 4
A management application has been developed that includes modules for purchasing, sales and manufacturing. The application communicates with the application Logic Win accounting performs data transfer with the application installed in the factory, creates budgets in Word, and maintains a stock control with automatic orders to suppliers.

Case 5
The division of Barcelona of this organization has been gathering information on various local organizations and Innovagle Technology Partners have designed an application in order to maintain and quickly locate this information. And generate labels, letters, and various listings. It has also been integrated with a Web application that allows data access to all users. The integration has been done through transfers.

Since the information is confidential, we cannot disclose the Company names.

Contact with us with your technology needs. Please include a concise description of your company and the solution you need in your email so that we can return to you as soon as possible with the most efficient solution possible.
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Brand Promotion Online

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 21:12:00 +0000

Why Branding?
Well, you may have heard it mentioned that Google wants to rank brand Web sites. It isn't so much that Google only wants to rank big brands. But they do like all of the signals that these big brands carry.
Big brands, more often than not, have very deep/informational Web sites and have their share of other Web sites linking to them. These are two very important "signals" of the authority of these Web sites.

See the larger version of the above scheme here.

What Makes Your Web Presence 'Special or Unique'?
How are you going about your brand management? Part of doing well, organically, in the search engines is having a deep, informational Web site that has plenty of (good) links to it.
Wikipedia certainly measures up to this, with around 47 million pages indexed in Yahoo! and 179 million backlinks, sitewide. This is the best example of creating good, unique content that people will want to link to as a reference (as I've just done).
There are other signals that make you a "big brand" to the search engines; things that can help you build a big brand online, without the expense of international marketing efforts that may have made Coca-Cola and others big, back in the days of traditional marketing only.
Today, it's possible -- even for smaller companies -- to build a big brand online at a greatly reduced price compared with what Coca-Cola had done through years of television, radio, and print advertising.
And, the nice thing about these "branding" efforts is that they can, at least indirectly, be measured as they impact your ability to rank in the search engines, gain quality traffic to your Web site, and grow your bottom line.
Expand Your Web Presence
Here's a list of some of the signals that you may want to begin strategizing against:

Blogging: This isn't new. Still today, however, some companies refuse to get into the blogging game for fear of what "might be said about them" or that they would have to divulge company secrets. Successful blogging requires that you provide something of value to your readers. When you provide useful information, and you promote it to the masses (social media marketing), you'll gain links to your Web site in much the same manner as Wikipedia.
Press Releases: "Traditional" press releases were for the benefit of reaching journalists in the hopes that they might write an article in their magazines/newspapers or cover it on television news/radio. Today, these press releases can be found in Google's universal results (if you select the proper method of distribution) and add quality links to your Web site (using quality anchor text within the press release; drive deep links to areas of your Web site that you would like to promote).
Social Media Channels: A quality post doesn't mean much if no one reads it or links to it. So, you must have access to a network of "friends" on Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others to make sure you have readers. Be sure that your posts also allow the reader to easily promote the posts to their network.
Link Building: Back in the old days, it was all about reciprocal link building (i.e., I add a link to your Web site and then request that you link back to me). What does this tell the search engines? That you're somehow affiliated or partnered with this company? Better still, that a number of people link to you and you aren't linking out to a number of people. Right? When that happens, it's probably a signal of your brand/authority. And, if a number of people that happen to be linking to you also happen to be within your industry, or are writing a blog post titled "Search Engine Optimization -- The Very Best Resource Available" and linking to http://searchenginewatch.com, that will probably be a good vote that Search Engine Watch is a great resource for "search engine optimization sources," right? If enough quality Web sites are doing this, that's a pretty strong signal to Google that you should be ranked.

All of these help you gain reach and frequency. More importantly, you'll reach those who are interested in your products and services.
This isn't a "run of network" buy. This is targeted "advertising." Many of these channels aren't directly measureable to ROI, and I know that the struggle is how do you budget for something like this, call it "search engine optimization," and not have it be directly measureable to a ROI.
The truth is, branding still works. And, there are methods to measure many of these to a ROI. But, the real benefits could be in the form of more people searching specifically for your brand.
As I believe you'll find, these visitors are most likely to do business with you. That's the power of branding. (1)

1. Search Engine Watch - Mark Jackson

Nokia on Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:55:00 +0000

Nokia set up an intranet soapbox last spring known as Blog-Hub, opening it to employee bloggers around the world. Posting under aliases such as the Hulk and the Needle, the workers can be savage as they flame their employer for everything from its purchasing practices to the speed of mobile-phone software. Rather than shutting them down, Nokia managers want them to fire away.

No charismatic leader, genius algorithm, or cultural quirk explains Nokia's dominance in mobile phones. Instead, company insiders credit its growth to a history of encouraging employees to say whatever's on their minds, with faith that smarter ideas will result. "I don't think you can mandate innovation," says Mary T. McDowell, a Nokia executive vice-president who is responsible for corporate strategy, including research and development. "Our role is to keep the skids greased."

Especially now. While the Espoo (Finland)-based company controls 38% of the global handset market—twice the share of No. 2 Samsung—it has lost an even bigger lead in high-end smartphones. Nokia launched the world's first smartphone with its Nseries in 2005, two years ahead of Apple's (AAPL) iPhone. Despite the head start, in the first quarter Nokia's smartphone share dropped to 37% from 41% a year earlier, as Apple and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion (RIMM) won over customers with easier-to-use devices.

Earnings for the quarter are down, too, plunging 96%, to $121 million, as customers around the world put phone purchases on hold. Revenue dropped 27%, to $12.6 billion, forcing job cuts at a company that for years did nothing but hire. Nokia closed an R&D center in Finland this year and is shedding more than 2,000 employees worldwide.

39,000 R&D WORKERS

But the company is fully maintaining its network of laboratories elsewhere, including in Helsinki, Beijing, and Palo Alto, Calif., and continuing to boost overall R&D spending, which hit 16.2% of sales in the first quarter of 2009. "Any intelligent company in high technology knows there is absolutely no way that research investment can fluctuate like other business investments," says Henry Tirri, head of Nokia Research Center. "Research is long-term."

The company hiked R&D spending by 35% from 2006 to 2008, to $7.6 billion, or 12% of its $50.7 billion in annual revenue. Almost one in three employees, or 39,000, works in research. Nokia sets challenges for them, such as inventing a service that's based on a customer's physical location or a handset shell that can't get grimy. Contest winners could receive bonuses every six months.

To regain lost ground, Nokia is hustling out new products. Its touchscreen 5800 XpressMusic handset has sold 3 million units since the device was launched last November. In June the company will begin selling its top-of-the-line N97 featuring a touchscreen as well as a slide-out miniature keyboard for writing e-mail. And Nokia is pushing ahead in emerging markets such as China and India where its North American competitors are bit players.

The company is also running with a suggestion that came from a company-sponsored social networking site dubbed Sphere, where workers are invited to offer up product ideas or post critiques. In October a sales rep in China logged on to ask why the styluses sold with touchscreen handsets are always gray. Why not offer customers a palette? Later this year Nokia will begin shipping phones with spare styluses in different colors.

Listening to people grumble can be tiresome, of course, but Nokia proves it's important to always keep an open ear: You never know what you might learn.

Micro Management of the Future Energy Industry

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:28:00 +0000

The way electric power is generated and distributed will change substantially over the next two decades. Power will be democratized, as small-scale production at the individual and community level moves from niche to normal.

The resulting “electron-democracy” will still have centralized power plants, but power grid activity will increasingly be dominated by innumerable incremental energy flows between small producers and consumers. This is likely to happen whether or not public policy mandates a shift away from dependence on fossil fuels.

Most centralized plants (hydro excepted) cannot easily adjust to demand fluctuations, leading to steeply discounted off-peak rates and the need to acquire additional plants for high-demand periods. More broadly, an expansive transmission grid dominated by a few central power plants is vulnerable to disruption from both natural phenomena and human malevolence.

In contrast, smaller-scale power generation can respond more nimbly to market demand, in a shorter time frame, with lower capital costs. Filling supplemental power needs with niche supplies rather than primary power facilities creates new generation options that that otherwise would be impractical. Finally, a grid fed by a broad, physically dispersed heterogeneous mixture of power sources would provide robust protection against disruption.¹

Putting these strands together and looking forward, the distributed grid might look like this: intermittent wind and solar power generation would be complemented by load-supplementing fuel cell plants, in much the same way that peak power and base load power plants interact today. Electric vehicles (EVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and batteries would serve as grid energy storage when excess energy is being produced. The latter is analogous to the role of pumped-storage hydroelectric in current utility systems, where water is pumped from a lower reservoir to a higher one for later use in generating hydroelectric power.

Considering the intensifying pace of climate change, governments should play an ambitious role in the transition from today’s grid to tomorrow’s electron democracy. Governments could coordinate with local business to develop centers of excellence for distributed power in targeted industries. Mechanisms such as feed-in tariffs—which grant favorable rates for those generating power from renewables and clean-tech sources—could facilitate the development of these regional technology clusters. They would bring ancillary economic benefits as well.

We are hopeful that by 2030, our energy system will be considerably less dependent on fossil fuels, particularly for electric power generation. Supported by a diverse array of renewables, our energy needs could be met with an overlapping set of complementary clean technologies. In doing so, we would strongly curb our global warming emissions. We would then be poised not only to stabilize the climate, but to transcend the Fossil Fuel Age entirely and open a new “Age of Sustainability” in our human story. (1)

1. McKinsey - What Matters by Matthew Klipenstein and Noordin Nanji

Comments?!

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China and India as Major Centers of Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 12:03:00 +0000

China and India will be important centers of innovation in the coming decades. Not only are both nations producing a rising share of key technological innovations, but they are also pioneering innovations in business models that allow their companies to prosper in low-income markets. These new models tend to be capital light while heavily leveraging technology.

The companies employing them produce goods and services at surprisingly low cost and use the vast scale of home markets to create new technology standards. These are practices that companies in developed nations will need to watch closely as they attempt to grow within China and India and as they meet new competitors from both countries in global markets.

There’s no formula for creativity and risk taking but there are conditions that encourage those traits. Many of those conditions are present today in China and India. Start with the basics. When an economy is growing at 8, 10, or even 12 percent a year, the environment for risk taking becomes much more forgiving. Even a moderately good innovation can succeed simply by rising with the tide. For innovations that need scale to pay off, there are few better places than China or India, with their immense populations. New services for mobile phones, for instance, can reach 100 million subscribers within a couple of years. As a result, even lower-margin businesses can generate returns on innovation that exceed those of companies in more developed midsize economies.

Then there’s the talent issue. Education levels are rising in both countries. China and India have world-class technical universities and produce a steady flow of talent at the top of the world’s academic pyramid. In addition, both cultures reward entrepreneurial risk taking. Innovators in China and India resemble first-generation immigrants to the United States or Europe in their drive and desire to succeed. Their commitment and focus on business execution make them notable entrepreneurs on the global stage. It helps that both China and India allow successful people to retain much of the wealth they create, though both governments expect contributions back to broader society from those who become millionaires or even billionaires.

Getting funds to entrepreneurs can still be difficult. China is rich in capital, and larger enterprises have ready access to the banking system. Start-ups can often tap networks of family and friends. The problem is midsize companies, which often need to finance themselves because they fall between the banks and family networks. In India, such self-funding is critical because the pool of domestic capital is smaller. Such constraints do have the benefit of seeding innovations that can flourish where capital is limited.

At present, neither India nor China has strong safeguards on intellectual property, though as the ranks of technology entrepreneurs grow, there are signs of improvement. Again, this apparent deficiency has been something of a plus, as it has skewed innovation toward business models that are protected through superior, faster execution rather than patents and licensing fees. The Chinese company Alibaba, for example, combines technology with cheap labor to help its customers—local midsize enterprises—tap international clients. Alibaba moved fast and early to build online services that have kept it ahead of international competitors.

There are lessons here for multinationals. These innovations are by no means limited to Chinese and Indian entrepreneurs and markets. Outsiders can study these models and transform their own innovation efforts. That’s a good reason to set up a “second home” in China or India. And these innovations won’t remain confined to those countries—many are applicable to the developed world, where there is plenty of demand for cheaper products and services.

Can India and China sustain this pace and eventually move to the next level of technological innovation? Absolutely. The talent is there, as are capital and effective government encouragement. With stronger protection and rewards for intellectual property—a likely development as international companies begin to license technology from Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs—the stage will be set for the next step forward.

Reference. McKinsey - What Really Matters! - Gordon Orr

Renewable Energy Start Ups rising with the U.S.Mentality

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:33:00 +0000

BusinessWeek teamed up with GreenBiz, a green business information service to analyze the growing renewable energy start ups. Since the companies are private, there are no public data on cash flow or profits. But innovators on the list have the brainpower, intellectual property, and ambition to play a role in the coming energy revolution.

Since the focus here is strictly under-the-radar, we have excluded famous green startups such as battery maker A123 and electric-car ventures Tesla Motors and Better Place. But like those well-publicized players, all the ones on this list have lined up significant venture backing. "These are companies that, so far, have survived the gauntlet of fund-raising, R&D, and the economic downturn," explains Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com, a unit of Greener World Media.

Some of the outfits, such as Southwest Windpower, Solyndra, and Clean Current Power Systems, are chipping away at the technological obstacles that have made alternative energy systems—wind, solar, and hydro power—too costly. Others, such as SolarCity, are reinventing the business model behind alternative power. Still others, including SmartSynch, Verdiem, and Fat Spaniel Technologies, are harnessing the Internet to help utilities remotely manage the energy consumption of their customers' PCs, office air conditioners, and factory lights. In addition, we've identified a handful of companies selling gizmos and services that help slash power usage, from Bridgelux—which makes low-cost solid-state lighting—to GridPoint, whose smart grid software can track and control electrical devices in your home, from appliances to electric cars and solar panels.

For the founders of these startups, the usual path to personal wealth—an initial public offering—is blocked for now. But some will make their fortunes when large companies swallow the small. And although there is enormous risk, there also will be new ways for ordinary investors to profit in this sector when capital markets finally thaw out.

A BOOST FROM THE FEDS

Even in a terrible business climate, several factors are bolstering the fortunes of cleantech companies that were up and running before the financial crisis hit. The $787 billion federal stimulus bill makes billions in funding available for everything from lithium-ion car batteries to green construction. And new federal and state tax incentives make the price of solar and wind power more competitive with fossil fuels. If passed, the carbon emissions trading system approved by the House of Representatives would increase pressure on both businesses and households to use any means they can to conserve energy or switch to cleaner fuels. Then there's the price of oil. For all the volatility, it's bound to rise again when global growth resumes and emerging economies kick back into high gear, says GreenBiz's Makower. (Disclosure: Makower is an adviser to VantagePoint Venture Partners and has a small financial interest in the firm. VantagePoint has investments in five companies on the list: Bridgelux, BrightSource Energy, MiaSolé, Solazyme, and Tendril.)

As the roster of 25 startups shows, advanced green technologies are finally graduating from the lab and taking root commercially. AltaRock Energy of Sausalito, Calif., is building its first U.S. power plant in Northern California, tapping geothermal heat in "basement rock" deep in the ground to boil water in artificial reservoirs. And Coulomb Technologies in Campbell, Calif., is on track to install more than 1,000 curbside recharging stations for electric cars across the U.S. this year, up from just 100 last year.

MAKING IT SIMPLE

Several startups say they are close to price parity with carbon-based fuels. One common benchmark is to produce electricity at around 10 cents per kilowatt hour. That would still be about 40% pricier than power from coal plants, but it's on a par with the gas-fired plants utilities rely on during peak times. "If you can make power that can compete with a gas-fired plant, you can have a huge market," says Joseph Laia, CEO of Santa Clara's (Calif.) MiaSolé, which is marketing solar panels made from low-cost, flexible materials.

As some innovators grapple with technology challenges, others are focusing on making clean energy systems easier for ordinary people to use. "The real innovation now won't be in making a better panel that is 10% cheaper," says SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive, who co-founded the company with his brother Peter. "Widespread adoption will come if you can take away the complexity and hassle of installing solar."

SolarCity's chief asset is computer automation. Working with satellite images of customer rooftops and utility-rate data, it cuts the process of designing each installation and obtaining building permits and government rebates from months to days. The software also estimates the return on solar investments for each customer and remotely monitors their use of power. The company says it makes a profit on the installations. SolarCity's advantage: It gets a volume discount on the panels, and its software tools help streamline costs.

Executives such as Perricone, a veteran of three previous Silicon Valley startups, know cynics have good reason to doubt bullish claims. In the past decade alone, investors have been burned by the hype over dot-coms and biotech. Many more will surely lose bets on green energy. But Perricone says he is being careful not to oversell the technology before the first commercial projects have been tested in the field. "Many of us remember the wild claims of the Internet," Perricone says. "There are terrific opportunities in this industry for those who execute, but before we go for more funding, we want the data to prove our technology works."

For now, many executives at the 25 startups say their chief worry is the broader economy. With venture funds tapped out, raising capital to develop products or simply keep operating can be tough. Bank financing to build power projects or ramp up production remains frozen, too. The sharp drop in oil prices from $147 per barrel last summer has also cooled enthusiasm for renewables. Numerous companies with promising technology already have gone dark for lack of funds. More will shut if the downturn persists.

The funding drought is especially frustrating for startups that struggled to overcome technical challenges. In 2007, Verdant Power installed prototype turbines to generate electricity from currents in New York's East River. But the river was more turbulent than Verdant expected, and the fiberglass turbine blades fractured. A new design with stronger blades made of an aluminum-magnesium alloy has generated power for the past year. Now Verdant is ready to install 30 more near U.N. headquarters. The recession "slowed us down," says Verdant President Trey Taylor. "We could do a lot more a lot faster if we had more money."

It is always risky to predict the fate of tiny startups in a fast-changing industry. That is true for all 25 companies on the BusinessWeek/GreenBiz list. But together they showcase both the potential breakthroughs and business models needed to make green energy viable.

Google on Innovation of Display Ads

noreply@blogger.com (saygin celen) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:12:00 +0000

For all its success selling text ads alongside search results, Google can't seem to make a go of it anywhere else in the ad world. In January, it shut down a two-year-old operation that sold print ads in newspapers. A few weeks later it abandoned an effort to buy and sell radio spots. And a TV ad project has been slow-going. To make matters worse, the economy has hit Google's mainstay search ads: First-quarter revenue growth of 6%, though better than many companies in the recession, is far below its high double-digit gains of years past.

Below is the Mobile Display Ad sizes of Google.

In its hunt for new growth, the search giant is redoubling efforts to grab a bigger piece of the largest online ad market it doesn't control: display ads, the pictorial banners and videos that account for more than a third of the $40 billion online ad market. "Google has won the search battle, so its whole future is display," says Jay Sears, executive vice-president for strategic products and business development with online ad firm ContextWeb.

Google faces a tough challenge. Yahoo! and Microsoft's MSN have a huge lead in display ads, largely because they can put ads on their own pages of content, like Yahoo Finance and MSN Money. Google hopes to place more display ads on its YouTube site as well as on thousands of partner sites, from small blogs to The New York Times.

MATCHING ADS TO BUYERS

But it aims to do more than simply help BMW, say, plaster brand ads on car videos or car sites. The fastest-growing kind of display ads, called performance ads, work more like search. They allow advertisers to use data analysis and user-tracking technologies to match ads more closely to likely buyers and measure mouse clicks and other actions so advertisers pay only when ads deliver. Google spies an opportunity to apply its mathematical wizardry to make those ads even more effective. The idea is to make display ads useful knowledge instead of visual clutter. "It's like search—matching people with information they want," says Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder and president of technology. "It just happens to be promotional."

This summer, Google will begin demonstrating what may be its most potent weapon in this emerging battle: an overhauled version of the advertising exchange that it picked up in the $3.2 billion acquisition of DoubleClick last year. Ad exchanges are sort of like stock exchanges for online ads. Web sites put ad space up for auction, and ad agencies, armed with demographic and behavioral data about the people who visit those sites, bid to place ads for their clients' campaigns. Yahoo, Microsoft, and others also run exchanges.

Until now, Google's and DoubleClick's ad-placement systems used different software, so ad agencies had to cobble together programs to place, monitor, and measure ads. In the revamped exchange, they'll be able to use the two systems seamlessly, making ad buys simpler. At the same time, Google is pushing Web publishers, which have been wary of putting prime ad space on the exchange for fear of turning it into a low-value commodity, to pony up more space. In return, Google is expected to give Web publishers more control over pricing and who can bid on the space.

Google will also help advertisers and agencies buy ads more easily and quickly: When ad space with price and audience demographics matches those advertisers set for a particular ad, the spot runs instantly. "The exchange will allow Google to make a go of it in display," says Michael Hayes, executive vice-president and managing director of digital for ad agency Initiative. "It really turns the business model on its head."

The exchange is part of Google's overriding goal to make display ads, which can be expensive to create and complex to manage, so easy that even the smallest businesses can use them. "Google's vision is to grow the pie for everybody," says Neal Mohan, Google's director of display products. For instance, Google introduced a free Display Ad Builder last fall that lets anyone use simple building blocks to create an ad.

Enter Google Display Ads Website (click here) and design your own Ad.

Some 80% of those using it had never bought a display ad before. Marc Loge, who handles online ads for the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Los Angeles, had run search ads exclusively and didn't want to bother with display. But at Google's urging he quickly created a bare-bones ad and ran it on Google's Web sites. "We've gotten great returns—even better than search," says Loge.

DEPARTING AD EXECS

At the same time, Google wants to bring onto the exchange more large Web sites, which control the bulk of display-ad revenues. DoubleClick's relationships with the biggest Web publishers may give it a leg up. "Google is very central to our strategy," says Curt Hecht, president of the tech development unit at VivaKi, ad agency Publicis Groupe's media and online operation.

Still, the exchange won't be an instant game-changer. Since exchanges require a new mindset at agencies and publishers, they may take time to catch on widely, says Mike Walrath, founder of Yahoo's Right Media exchange. And some think anything but search gets short shrift inside Google. "Display is still the redheaded stepchild of their ad initiatives," says Rob Leathern, CEO at CPM Advisors, which helps advertisers improve their online campaigns.

Insiders say that's partly why Google has seen a stream of departures of ad executives in the past two months who see more opportunities elsewhere. Most recently, David Rosenblatt, president of Google's display-ad efforts and former DoubleClick CEO, left in May. But Brin insists Google is serious. "Display is going to be a large business for us," he says. "It's not just an experiment."