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Santiago Iñiguez, Dean and Professor of Strategy

Ricardo Perez´ accounts of the recent trip of his "Master of Management in Telecom & Digital Business", especially that of the visit to the GooglePlex (its Google Maps link), should make this bit of news more interesting for you.

Linus Upson, engineering director at Google said: "It's been a long time since the web has gained new fundamental capabilities. I think it's been about 10 years".

ZDnet description of the release: (ZDnet blogger "Game has changed")

"Google engineers have enabled what internet surfers for years have yearned for — web applications that work offline."

The search giant on Wednesday launched Google Gears, a browser plug-in that will let people run web applications when they're connected to the internet or not.

The company released the source code for the Google Gears software in conjunction with Google Developer Day (Today), a day-long conference in 10 locations.

The goal of Google Gears is to create a single, standardised way to add offline capabilities to web applications, said Linus Upson, engineering director at Google."

Financial Times: "Google moves to take on Microsoft"
Techcrunch: "Google Gears Lets Developers Take Apps Offline"
GigaOM:"Google goes offline on purpose"

Julián de Cabo

No sé ni cómo llegué a ello, pero me tropiezo con un artículo en "La Coctelera" donde se habla de software libre, que me resulta interesante. Puede leerse aquí.

¿Conclusiones? Pues un poco las que hemos apuntado aquí en alguna ocasión. De las que termina por destacar siempre la misma: que guste o no, aun a fecha de hoy existe más campo para el Open Source del lado del servidor que del de los clientes. Y no es una aproximación religiosa, sino el producto de la experimentación personal directa.

Cuanto más pequeña y menos técnica la compañía, más improbable que las aplicaciones libres de escritorio lleguen a cuajar en ella. Cuanto más grande y más técnica, más probable que sus "servidores IP" se gestionen con software abierto. Supongo que al final la pregunta es si el futuro viene desde la red al terminal o viceversa. Sólo el tiempo lo dirá.

Pero de momento, el artículo al que me refiero tiene ya -como siempre- sus descalificaciones religiosas de quien espeta al autor "que no tiene ni idea". Y es que lamentablemente algunos defensores del software libre tienen una idea muy particular de lo que sea la libertad.

Ricardo Perez Garrido

Finally the last day of our visit we spend time talking about venture capital and financial support in the valley versus some of the examples we could share from the different perspectives of the students. We also visited Electronic Arts and had the opportunity to share some time with the group working in the Sims – Survivor game. Finally, we spent the rest of the day at Ideo, working with them to understand the type of work they do with clients and the processes they apply to help them find new ideas and make them work.
Michele Libraro, CEO and Founder of Globalstartups, helped us understand the flow of money and the changes that the crisis of 2001 brought up to the capital investment in the area. In fact the changes have been important, from the flamboyant times where you could be bought only because you had an office space, to today, where projects are well scrutinized and followed by the venture capital companies that are placing a lot of effort and experience in trying not to fall again for the excess of past times. Some of the interesting trends is the drive to find connections from different countries to the valley, in the case of Michele the links are to Europe.
We moved on to visit EA Games. Imagine the feeling of the group. They have grown up with the products of this company being part of their life, even of some of their best moments. As I mentioned before, we had the opportunity to share some time with the team that is working in the production of the next big Sims product, an island/survival game based on the successful TV. We had the opportunity to analyze with their help the evolution of the industry and the challenges they face. It was interesting seeing how the human team required to produce a top level game has grown to more than two hundred, meaning it is approaching the complexity of a film production, and also its budget.
This growing size is also placing a lot of pressure in companies to come up with successes, which in turn mean using the previous successes to build series of sequels (and as you know EA is extremely good at this). But the process is also making it difficult to risk it all with new games, and even more when non-traditional products like Wrold of Warcraft or Second Life are bringing new dynamics (pay-per-month) to the market, and impacting the traditional life cycle of a product.
At EA you could again feel the spirit of a very creative company, with the working space of the group really having the feel and even the looks of an island, lots of shared spaces, lots of fun and openness. Even the spirit during the visit, very open and fun, helped build the stage for an impression of a company that really wants to do different things and needs people bringing different skills to the table, not just doing the stuff, but thinking differently.
Our last visit was to Ideo, where we were part of an innovation workshop, a reduced version of what clients will experience in real projects, and had the opportunity to walk around the company while everybody was dealing with clients. The conclusion again is that setting up the stage is extremely important for results (the good ones). Small things are important, and the fact that they had a textures and interesting materials cabinet was a proof of that: anything interesting was placed there, with a small note of the composition and why it was there (things like how it felt, its special properties, why it was cool…).
All this experiences had a common point of how you link innovation to the market, with customers and technologies changing so fast that you cannot afford product cycles that are really long. The different answers we saw there had much to do with how you get the best people to do what they love for you, and help them be really creative. For most companies that I know, this means including the word innovation and creativity in their annual reports, maybe hiring some people to build an innovation department, but then manage the accounts, clients and workers as always… I am curious to see how long it will take for more “traditional” companies to realize that they have to learn to treat people and ideas differently. We have seen first hand how you can do it well and be successful.

Ricardo Perez Garrido

Our third day in the valley started with a visit to... yes, the GooglePlex. Thanks to the collaboration of Marco Marinucci (he has posted a couple of videos of our visit in his blog), IE Alumni working at Google, we had the opportunity not only to walk around the facilities with help from a volunteer guide (anybody can help out with this in the company, as I guess the place has become sort of "the place to go" when you are around from anywhere in the world, but also to meet and discuss with several executives from the company.

As you may expect if you know the company, the conversation was very open at all times, and the pride of being at a company leading the industry that it had previously changed, was obvious and created a great feeling in the group. The fact that the whole framework of buildings, offices and services has been created to help googlers feel at home and be able to work and interact at all times is more than a note on the strategy of the company. Though one can discuss if this is appropriate for all companies, probably not, those that want to improve creativity and innovation (and many companies in the world say they want to do so), should have a good look at this place.

The philosophy of the company is something you all know, but probably one thing you can understand better after being there is the magic recipe of flexibility and agility in terms of being able to ask anybody about anything and feeling really close to "the action". I wonder what will happen when all this great group of young geniuses grow up and change a bit their priorities, but for know you can see this is a company difficult to beat, at least their spirit.

While we were at Google, we had the opportunity (thanks again Marco) of meeting Fabrizio Capobianco, founder of Funambol. Open source and mobility connected to making money. That sounds improbable enough to be successful. And they are. Fabrizio's passion for his ideas, and the possibilities of development with capital from the valley and intellectual capital from Europe (the development team is in Italy), were a great lesson on how to use the spikes of this not-so-flat world to your advantage.

Finally we spent the afternoon with HP, looking at their latest products (I loved the Misto prototype, great product for the digital living room). One thing that was extremely interesting was the approach to simple solutions for the living room that is going to change the way we interact with our digital life. I wonder how long it will take until you can find a touch screen like this in every house… that will be an interesting change, and also a generational gap for all of us…

We also had the opportunity to experience their videoconference/telepresence product Halo (on Monday we had a meeting with London from Cisco’s offices in the valley, and the differences in approach are extremely interesting, being both solutions a real step forward towards avoiding all those business trips), and finally we spend time talking about their strategy in the Telecom and media markets. What is interesting is how they are building and delivering the concept of platform to help large telcos move faster towards new business and revenue models that can leave behind the memories of the before-the-flat-rate times.

Again a great day, and many thanks to Google, Funambol and HP for their help building it.

Ricardo Perez Garrido

Our second day in San Francisco was a mix of conferences and a visit to Sun Microsystem's headquarters. For the conferences we had the opportunity to talk about the innovation process and its link with regional clusters with Marco Marinucci, IE Alumni working for Google and dealing mainly with content acquisition activities for the company; Philipp Stauffer, a member of the Strategy group with Accenture at their offices in San Francisco, and finally Robert Winder, in charge of innovation for Genesys, the leader in technology solutions for call centers in the telecom industry.

The first part of the morning was devoted to understanding what is special in terms of the working, social and cultural environment about the region we call Silicon Valley. Marco and Philipp helped us in that effort, both of them being Europeans attracted to the area either by and entrepreneurial spirit -the case of Marco- or by the great professional opportunities that come when you are very successful in a multinational consulting company helping others build what is differential about the region - the case of Philip. The fact that Marco is also an IE alumnus created a strong connection with the group which helped the conversation. The discussion ranged from the work ethics of the long hours to the myths and realities of the garage companies, and one of the ideas that was mentioned several times during the week kept being part of the conversation: the approach to risk by individuals, organizations and, most of all, the venture capital money funding all the entrepreneurship going on. We have discussed this issue here several times before, but it still strikes me as one of the key competitive advantages that countries can build: what happens when you fail? The rule is: if you fail, at least you tried and now you have the experience, try again. The approach is quite different from many cultures and countries. Their vision helped us understand some of the big issues behind the success of the ecosystem: work mobility, pool of talent, access to funds, low aversion to risk, a push to share ideas, world class universities in the area… difficult to find in the same place at the same time, and a big force to create and develop ideas and products that change entire industries.

With Robert we changed gears towards a specific example: Genesys. The industry might seem boring, but they actually redefined it, helping companies understand in a different way what they could do with their call centers. This approach, based on innovation and knowledge of the industry, has been so successful that they are by far world leaders in their industry and expanding to other rapidly. The passion of Robert for finding new ideas and new talent was a reflection of the type of approach that companies need to create if they want to really do “different” things.

After lunch we moved on to visit Sun Microsystems, interested in listening to their approach to the market after several years of being in trouble… but that will be the subject of a different post.

Ricardo Perez Garrido

As I mentioned last week, we have spent a week at Silicon Valley visiting companies, amongst them Cisco, Sun, HP, Google, Electronic Arts or Ideo. This is the first post trying to describe the most interesting points (that are within the NDA's we signed) we covered there.

Our first day (monday) was all about Cisco. As you know they are the leaders in providing the technology that makes the internet what it is today, and looking at their plans, they have a lot to do in terms of what internet will look like in the future, helping telecoms and other companies improve their communications, and, more importantly, make them simple and based on the user context.

The visit started the day before, when the group (remember, our Master of Management in Telecom and Digital Business) had the opportunity to share dinner with Alberto Mazagatos, country manager of Cisco Spain. During the conversation one idea was clear: Cisco is willing to explore new opportunities in different industries and is not afraid of change, something we had the opportunity to see the following day.

During our time at Cisco we had the opportunity to talk to several executives from different business areas about their specific strategies related to the Telecom industry, and their position in the market as a partner more than a provider of many of the key companies in the industry. A couple of those meetings used their Telepresence solution, in the real internal rooms they will use for internal meetings. A quite interesting experience, in which after some time you almost forget the distance from your counterpart (we were connecting to London).

But one of the most interesting parts of the visit was a discussion on diversity and retention of the workforce and their approach to the "new office", where open spaces, shared spaces and a concept of a shared purpose and shared environment was key. This is not new or a strategy that only this company can claim, but the fact that a leader in the market is investing and paying that much attention to new ways of collaboration and the needs of those working with them... well gives a hint of what is going to take to keep being first in an industry based on invention and innovation. Their motto "welcome to the human network" is something you see reflected in every conversation you have there, which also talks to the way you build a culture in a young company.

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean and Professor of Strategy

Someone kindly passed me this news that I believe will be interesting for you, particularly in light of the post of Ricardo Perez of 18th April, which refers to the similar case of Google buying DoubleClick: "More on Google and DoubleClick"

Press Release from the Microsoft website "...Plans to Build Internet-Wide Advertising Platform for Advertisers, Publishers and Ad Agencies."

REDMOND, Wash. — May 18, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. today announced it will acquire aQuantive, Inc., for $66.50 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $6 billion. This deal expands upon the Company’s previously outlined vision to provide the advertising industry with a world class, Internet-wide advertising platform, as well as a set of tools and services that help its constituents generate the highest possible return on their advertising investments.

One of the leading bloggers in the world (66th), Om Malik wrote today his commentaries on this in "Of Mad Money & Ad Networks":

In 2006, according to Internet Advertising Bureau, the advertising revenues reached an all time high of $16.8 billion. In comparison, $11 billion has been spent by various players in buying out ad networks. Don’t be surprised if this number rises even higher. Welcome to the mad-money phase of the eyeball boom!

The latest jaw-dropping move comes from Microsoft that has bought aQuantive, another ad network, based in Microsoft’s backyard, Seattle, for $6 billion and change. The move is a reaction to losing DoubleClick ($3.1 billion) to Google. Earlier this week, WPP bought 24/7 Real Media for $650 million.

Julián de Cabo

Por paradójico que resulte, vivimos un mundo en que uno desconoce a sus vecinos en la gran ciudad, a la par que utiliza la Internet para hacer amigos.

Quizá sea forzar un poco, pero es como si la tecnología más sofisticada que el ser humano fue capaz de concebir la estuviéramos usando para reencontrarnos con una realidad tan sencilla como el ser humano. Que a todos nos gusta que nos quieran y nos valoren por lo que somos.

Y llega un momento en que uno no sabe si lo que está mal es un modelo de "sociedad real" que no nos permite satisfacer nuestros anhelos más elementales, o un modelo de "mundo virtual" donde no hay modo de saber quien es en realidad la persona que tenemos enfrente. En un ámbito tropezamos con quienes quieren ser pero tal vez no sean, mientras que en otro esquivamos a los que tenemos cerca porque no sabemos si en realidad son lo que parecen.

Extraño mundo de equívocos este en que nos toca vivir.

Ricardo Perez Garrido

When you think about regions in the world that have some impact in the technology we will be using during the following years, imnediatly the region around San Jose, in California, comes to mind. The have built one of these spikes that make the difference when you try to understand the wolrd's evolution.

This week we will experience that reality with the students of the Master of Management in Telecom and Digital Business, during a study trip in which we will be visiting companies such as Cisco, Sun, Google, HP, EA Games or Ideo, and receiving speakers such as Dan Elron from Accenture, one of the partner companies of the Master.

I think this is interesting enough to spend some time detailing some of the aspects of the visits and workshops in this forum... and that is what I plan to do. Which means that this week the blog will be a sort of diary of our visit. Hopefully it will be interesting enough.

Today we will spend our time at Cisco's headquarters, talking about their strategy and experiencing some of their newest products. More information tonight...

Julián de Cabo

En una etapa anterior de mi vida me tocó ser el responsable de la "versión Internet" de un programa de televisión innovador que se llama "Gran Hermano".

Era el año 2.000, Endemol había sido comprada por la Telefónica de Juan Villalonga, y los chicos de La Trinca eran desde Gestmusic los responsables de poner en marcha el programa de Televisión. Toda una historia extraña donde Antena 3 quedó al margen pese a ser tan propiedad de Telefónica Media como la propia Endemol.

Pero de los muchos debates que podrían abrirse hoy sobre lo sucedido en aquellos días, tal vez el más actual es el que llega hasta hoy en torno al papel más activo que van tomando los que anteriormente eran sólo consumidores de información. Al menos, personalmente no puedo evitar la sensación de que Gran Hermano vino a ser para la televisión lo que la "web 2.0" representa hoy para la prensa tradicional: el acceso de los consumidores al protagonismo en una especie de inversión del orden preestablecido.

Y la pregunta inmediata es si las cosas van a terminar como lo hicieron los protagonistas de aquella odisea televisiva. ¿No empezamos a tener la sensación de que no hay tantos Bisbales ahí fuera, y sí muchos Bustamantes?

Ricardo Perez Garrido

Hemos hablado aquí anteriormente de la Long Tail que describe Chris Anderson. Hoy este tema aparece relacionado de forma similar a lo que hemos hecho aquí en otras ocasiones, y también heredero del trabajo de Albert Lazlo Barabasi, por John Hagel III en su blog. John Hagel, autor de entre otros, del libro "The only sustainable edge", que explica de forma muy clara las implicaciones de las nuevas formas de entender la gestión de información y los sistemas de información para las empresas, sobre todo para su capacidad de reacción ante el mercado y la competencia, y su capacidad de colaboración.

Mi visión del artículo es que profundiza en un tema por el que todos estamos preocupados: el mundo empieza a explicarse con leyes distintas a las que estamos acostumbrados. Y el impacto es mayor en tanto que estas leyes las hemos utilizado no solo para catalogar a nuestros clientes, sino para tomar todo tipo de decisiones, y, con el cambio, nos quedamos sin referentes claros, con un hueco en nuestra forma de razonar con respecto a los clientes y los mercados. Tenemos que empezar a entrenar de nuevo y mirar al mercado con nuevos ojos, con nueva energía... seguro que hay oportunidades esperando que no habíamos contemplado.

Julián de Cabo

Hace unos días, hice llegar a un amigo italiano un carburador para su moto española, que le fue remitido por un comerciante americano que conocía a otro americano y por ello sabía que éste había comprado la pieza a un recambista griego.

Palabra que no es un trabalenguas. Es un ejemplo real de lo que está sucediendo con la creación de comunidades online. Puede que no resulte tan visible cuando se trata de comunidades de "amplio espectro" donde la base de integrantes es amplia, pero que llama poderosamente la atención cuando examinamos grupos de ámbito más reducido.

Los cinco individuos de que hablo más arriba no se conocen físicamente, y no tenían relación previa entre sí antes de que yo interviniera a modo de conector entre ellos. Es más, uno de los americanos me dejó "opaco" al otro deliberadamente (aunque podría saber quien es porque al griego sí lo conozco). Tampoco los cinco proceden del mismo ámbito: unos fueron contactados a través de Ebay, otros de foros de motociclismo, y otros proceden de contactos de otros contactos a través de correo electrónico.

La "cara B" de eta historia es que mi amigo italiano pagó menos de la mitad de lo que hubiera costado la pieza en el caso -más que improbable- de que hubiera salido al circuito comercial normal. Y añado otro dato para mejor confusión: al menos tres de los intervinientes tenemos título master por una escuela de prestigio. Bocconi, Houston y el Instituto.

Todo ello imposible diez años atrás. Pero la pregunta hoy es: ¿todo ello es producto de la simple casualidad?

Sin intentar mediatizar la respuesta de cada uno, hace años que dejé de creer en las casualidades.