Kooaba image recognition for mobile.

Social Media: Haiti's First Responder

Awesome Square demo video.

Social Development vs. Financial Sustainability

I stumbled on to a fascinating study by Kentaro Toyama, a researcher in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley and the assistant managing director of Microsoft Research India. The paper called Integrating Social Development and Financial Sustainability: The Challenges of Rural Computer Kiosks in Kerala, examines the social and political challenges related to the implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) kiosk projects for rural development in India. The project has two goals: social development through increased access to computers for rural people and financial viability through entrepreneurship. The findings are quite interesting and illustrate the tension between social development and financial sustainability.

“The tension exists because entrepreneurs who emphasize the social development goals of the project, such as e-literacy, may not be financially successful and may continue to expect government subsidies. The more business-oriented entrepreneurs address the commercial goals of the project by targeting those customers that will help them generate a profit. Specifically, since the people in need of development services are often distinct from the people who can help a kiosk financially, entrepreneurs face branding challenges to attract both groups of people. On the one hand, they must recover their costs, which requires selling to wealthier clients who expect a state-of-the-art facility with high-end services. On the other hand, kiosk operators are also being asked to serve the poor, who expect the state to provide free or subsidized development services.”

Somewhere in the middle was a group of “balance-driven” entrepreneurs, who tried to combine the two goals of social development and financial sustainability. They provided subsidies to the poorest users and also tried to maximize their profits from higher-class users. This group saw the initiative as a partnership with the government, expecting them to provide some assistance, but more reliant on their own skills to attract business.

A final point illustrates the branding tensions that exist with such efforts. There were more problems when try trying to serve both populations – the ones in need and the ones who can make it profitable. The imagery associated with state-led development programs (those helping poor people with free, low quality services) proved to be detrimental to the profitability.

I love reading about things like this that seem so far removed from my daily reading routine of digital and media blogs, etc. It reminds me that there are learnings and lessons everywhere. 

A collaborative list of mobile trends for the next decade.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Reenvisioned for the 21st Century.

Steve Rubel wrote about Apple’s supposed iTablet, and wonders why people are so excited. He makes some great points about needs and the psychology surrounding a meme. Rubel states, “Perhaps part of the reason there has been so much debate is that the economy has slowed the pace of industry innovation and so what's in front of us can't meet the expectations of a select, yet influential few - the early adopters.” He goes on to say, “All of this is a fascinating study in the psychology of our times and how conversation drives the news and the hype cycle, potentially setting up everyone to fail given the outlandish expectations. Perhaps only divine intervention will give us what we want, even if we may not need it.”

I agree with Rubel that the hype machine, when fully charged, can create a market for a product we may not need. We find ourselves getting sucked into the vortex of TechCrunch reviews and spy photos, only to retweet them at lightening pace, fueling the hype machine even more. All of this, as Rubel puts it, makes us salivate over the new shiny object. You can liken it to a Pavlovian response, where the press and public are the bell...

We’ve generally accepted the same doctrines and philosophies around needs for decades. Folks like Pavlov and Maslow continue get quoted in marketing and advertising books, presentations and pitches. You might recall Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs - a theory in psychology in which Maslow attempted to formulate a needs-based framework of human motivation and based upon his clinical experiences with people. The basis of Maslow's motivation theory is that human beings are motivated by unsatisfied needs, and that certain lower factors need to be satisfied before higher needs can be satisfied.

“Human needs arrange themselves in hierarchies of pre-potency. That is to say, the appearance of one need usually rests on the prior satisfaction of another, more pre-potent need. Man is a perpetually wanting animal. Also no need or drive can be treated as if it were isolated or discrete; every drive is related to the state of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of other drives.”

Well I have a new suggestion, or at least an addition. When Maslow published his Theory of Human Motivation in 1942, times were vastly different. Today, technology fulfills many of the the needs in Maslow’s hierarchy. Below is my “new” hierarchy of needs. 

My iPhone, for example, helps me solve problems (Self-actualization), in some circles gets me respect by others (Esteem), helps me connect with friends and family (Love/Belonging), helps me locate food, water and places to excrete - public toilet finding apps - (Physiological). 

I realize that this isn’t scientific, nor is it proven. It’s simply meant to illustrate the point that technology is playing a critical role in our lives and that we value it more and more without even realizing it. With each new innovation, we slowly (and quickly) become more dependent and reliant upon technology to get us through the day. It gives Apple’s slogan “There’s an app for that” profound meaning.

Maslow said that motivation theory is not synonymous with behavior theory - that motivations are only one set of factors that determine behavior. His final point in the study is that while behavior is almost always motivated, it is also almost always biologically, culturally and situationally determined as well.

Nothing could be truer today – January 3, 2010 – where human behavior is rapidly changing to suit technology, not the other way around. This is the technological situation we live in today. 

So to answer @BBHLab's question, "Do we actually need an Apple tablet? What need will it satisfy?" - the answer is yes, all of them.

Digital Magazines: Mag+ Prototype

Most Contagious 2009

Disruptive technology, inflection points and Great Danes.

There's a great op-ed column in today's NYTimes by Thomas L. Friedman, author of The World is Flat and Hot, Flat, and Crowded. In it, Friedman describes the "Great Inflection" as the "mass diffusion of low-cost, high-powered innovation technologies plus cheap connectivity." The column goes on about how the Great Inflection coupled with the Great Recession is causing businesses to take advantage of technologies at lightening speed, making them more innovative than ever.

An inflection point is literally a point on a curve at which the curvature changes from convex to concave or vice versa. From a marketing perspective, its a moment of dramatic change, especially in the development of an industry or market. Andy Grove, Founder of Intel, says an inflection point is “an event that changes the way we think and act.” When I think of things that have changed the way we think and act, I can’t help but think about social media. It is perhaps the most disruptive technology/innovation since Al Gore invented the Internet. 

Disruptive technology is a term coined by Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen to describe a new technology that displaces an established technology in ways that the market does not expect. In his book, The Innovator's Dilemma, Christensen puts new technology into two categories: sustaining and disruptive. Sustaining technology relies on incremental improvements to an already established technology. Disruptive technology lacks refinement, often has performance problems because it is new, appeals to a limited audience, and may not yet have a proven practical application. 

Here again, social media (in it’s most talked about form) comes to mind. Social media didn’t set out to change the world, it just happened. Just think about social media’s darling, Twitter, and it’s ascent to near-mainstream use. Sure, tens of millions of users is small by comparison to platforms like Facebook, but Twitter continues to innovate. They’re adding new services and experiences and proving its worth as a practical application, and a poster child for iterative development. What’s more, social media has matured as whole and we’re finding it more and more useful (truly useful). It has gone far beyond the mundane and is offering us great utility.

So, what about brands? Christensen argues that corporations are designed to work with sustaining technologies, not disruptive ones – that they excel at developing existing technology and have trouble capitalizing on new marketing opportunities created by “low-margin” disruptive technologies. This seems at odds with Friedman’s point about the Great Recession/Inflection, where companies seem to be capitalizing quickly and smartly. Perhaps THAT much has changed since Christensen published his book in 2007. Brands are not dismissing the value of social media as a disruptive technology. They’re acknowledging that it’s maturing, growing in size and scope and threatening the status quo. And most importantly, they’re beginning to see that it can reinforce brand goals and drive ROI.

A final thought...

Robert Pool, author of Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology, once said, “As I said in the book, [technology] is like having a Great Dane in the room. It may be friendly, but you've got to be very careful to put your breakables out of reach. Another major change in technology is the complexity...And with that complexity comes an uncertainty in how technology is going to behave. When you start to build something, you can never quite be sure how it's going to act. You have to try it and see what happens, and even after five or 10 years with a particular machine, you can't always be sure what's going to happen. So that risk, coupled with the complexity, makes technology a very different sort of creature.”

Google Goggles: Search what you see.