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Julián de Cabo

Pues eso ... que por primera vez en la historia, Europa registra un descenso significativo en la venta de terminales móviles. Algo más de un 15% con mayor incidencia en los terminales de gama alta y 3G.

En las zonas económicamente boyantes, sube, como no podía ser de otro modo. China, India, Latam ... todas las zonas donde la economía crece y se parte de una base instalada pequeña crecen en penetración y en número de unidades. Aunque con foco en tecnologías 2G.

¿Qué debería traer esto en Europa? Pues si las cosas son como espero, el definitivo despegue de las tecnologías 3G. Dada la relación simbiótica que existe entre terminales y consumo de comunicaciones, creo que sólo la rebaja de precios de 3G tiraría del consumo de cosas como el correo o la navegación móvil que sigue estando limitado a un grupo de usuarios muy de empresa y de terminal de gama alta. Y si ello es como pienso, ese descenso haría repuntar la venta de terminales adaptados a los nuevos servicios.

La situación, en el fondo, no es tan diferente de lo que se vivió en la telefonía fija en la época en que se solapaba el negocio de banda ancha con la caída de los ingresos por llamadas en telefonía tradicional. Y el resultado está a la vista. ¿Quien será el primero en atreverse esta vez?

Ricardo Perez Garrido

We finished our visit to Google, of course, having lunch at the main cafeteria. I had been there already, but it is all you might expect: people from all over the world, food also from everywhere... and a combination between fast and slow, work and fun, that is so difficult to achieve...

We went back to our hotel in SF, where Rob Weiner, Chief Evangelist and Innovation officer for Genesys offered his vision on how to manage innovation in mature industries. This is a compelling and interesting vision combining the role of engeneering and management teams and the life cycles of products and industries. They have managed to lead their industry for decades and now is trying to keep ahead of the market as part of a group (Alcatel-Lucent) that is not doing so well and is struggling to maintain its position and create a culture of innovation (remember, this is the same company that owns Bell Labs…).

The next day we move to the entertainment industry: Electronic Arst and The Sims management/development teams. Again the culture and the approach to the market are key. We spent some time with Steve Seabolt, VP Brand Development for the Sim Franchise. He has been in the industry for years, and the vision of how seriously they take the customer was very interesting. A couple of interesting projects with Ford and Ikea are a signal of the times to come, with more advertising into the game –the good one. Later on, Ben Bell, Sims3 executive producer, guided us through the evolution of the game, its nature as a play-alone game, and the efforts to coordinate and motivate a team of +200, with different profiles and interests. The industry is becoming more and more like a film studio, with long and expensive projects where big bets are placed in each project.

As always one of the most interesting parts of the day was the visit to the development teams, where in the same floor you have creative staff, management, programming, testing… and again a feeling of freedom and at the same time tight control over timing and results… tough combination to manage. Probably it has something to do with their position as leaders. The combination of really advanced software development methodologies with the creative aspects of a game was somehow challenging, but apparently it worked very well. The key point: creating a common vision of the game to pursue as a team. Thanks to Bart Menayas for his engagement and openness. He is one of the producers of the Sims (coming to EA from Maxis) and added great value to our understanding of the industry and the process of creating a successful game in a very competitive environment.

Ricardo Perez Garrido

Our second day in Silicon Valley started with a bus ride from our hotel -two blocks from Union Square- to Google's headquarters. As always the visit started with a brief tour of some of the main buildings in the main area (close to the main cafeteria). Yes, we did see the famous map to conquer the world...

The main talks for the day were from Luis Garcia, International Product manager at Youtube. You can see the presentation and some comments on the event at Marco's blog. The message was clear: this is about communities, trying fast and failing soon to be able to give new stuff to the public sooner than the rest of the market. Some of the questions were oriented towards the special culture of innovation and openness of Google and how it permeates Youtube. The answer, implicit, is that youtube was too young to have a strong culture and Google's appealing approach to dealing with projects and people has been adopted.

The next confernce was by Bernardo Hernandez, recently appointed to lead the geomarketing efforts of Gooble. Bernardo was the personification of the vision and ambition of Google in this field, sending a compelling message to the group on the possibilities of the combination of information in context with maps. Marco has also posted some info and even a video of Bernardo's presentation.

in all, a strong message of the value of UGC combined with a strong management of content and a platform that is ready to monetize these efforts and even share it with the ones that create traffic. Not bad for a company that is still in its infancy... learning how to solve big problems for humanity.

Julián de Cabo

Denominamos red social a una gama de refinados instrumentos de tortura cuyas utilidades abarcan desde ligar y/o hacer el indio (en este caso se conocen como redes sociales personales) hasta ser molestado por desconocidos que pretenden incordiar a nuestros amigos (éstas se denominan redes sociales profesionales), pasando por otras cuya función es destrozar nuestra agenda electrónica duplicando sus contactos y/o cambiando aleatoriamente las fechas de los cumpleaños de la gente a la que apreciamos.

Por alguna razón que se me escapa (probablemente se trate de una razón 2.0), esta amalgama de cosas ha recibido no sólo la unánime atención de los comentaristas, sino el consenso de los analistas en cuanto a que deberían ser seguidas con atención. Creo que en esto último sí estoy de acuerdo; hay que estar atento para que nos enreden lo menos posible.

Porque no sé si a nuestros amables lectores les pasa igual, pero para mí está por llegar el momento en que estas cosas me reporten algún tipo de utilidad real. Lejos de ello, su proliferación ha hecho que pase de mirarlas con curiosidad a tener que gestionar el aluvión de peticiones y comunicados absurdos y/o intrascendentes que recibo de aquellas en las que cometí el error de apuntarme.

Después de pensar en ello un rato, creo que parte del problema está donde siempre: en que se trata de instrumentos concebidos desde la oferta y no desde la demanda. Están pensados para que una empresa venda publicidad segmentada y no tanto para intentar dar una respuesta de conjunto a una serie de necesidades que sí existen en muchos de nosotros, como la de mantener nuestros contactos al día, la de poder conectar con facilidad con nuestros conocidos con independencia de dispositivo y lugar, o la de ayudarnos a recordar con sencillez información sobre gente que nos interesa, sin molestarles.

En fin, que cada vez tengo más la sensación de que falta mucho por hacer para que las redes sociales cumplan con la promesa que nos hacían ... y la esperanza de que no me den mucho más la lata mientras se ponen de acuerdo en cómo hacerlo.

Ricardo Perez Garrido

Our first day was oriented to understand what is the "secret sauce" of silicon valley, what makes it a special place on earth where everybody in the technology world is eager to go and create "the next big thing". On this day (last monday) we had a number of conferences: personal perspectives during the morning, success stories in the afternoon.

During the morning trying to understand it form the personal perspective of two visions of the valley: Marco Marinucci, entrepreneur and now in Google, and Philipp Stauffer, with a long career at Accenture and now working as a sort of bridge between startups and big 500 companies that Accenture collaborates with. The perspective is somewhat clear: part of the secret is the money and the legal/financial system, part of it is the special culture of risk and failure. Where in most other places you will be considered a failure after you tried, here it this failure can become positive, help you in your next endeavor. Cultural shock coming from Spain, where failure is... let's say not a good thing for your career even as an entrepreneur.

During the afternoon we had Jaleh Rezaei-Homami, from VMWare and Babur Odzen, CEO of Berggi and Naverggi. You all know Vmware. Great success story and they are just becoming bigger and better. One thing that was interesting about their approach was that they considered their main competitor... Microsoft. Which to me is a sign that there is still a number of issues to be said in the OS arena before Microsoft loses its leadership.
Berggi is a different story. They are still small, they create applications for mobile phones, and their story is about comming to the valley for the contacts, the money and the image. Very interesting approach by Babur, who has development teams all around the world working to be the fastest... management innovation to compete in a market where differentiation is difficult and speed is everything. I am sure they will be very successful.

Great start for our adventure. One of the first conclusions that will stay with us all the week was openness. The approach to sharing information and ideas is totally open, creating and environment of collaboration and positive feedback that is very interesting and different to a mora traditional "closed" approach.

Ricardo Perez Garrido

After a week on long days filled with company visits and conferences we are back to madrid, with something equivalent to a battery charge: the energy that the abundance of talent, the openness and the love and passion for innovation and pushing the limits that are essential ingredients of the "secret sauce" for the success of this special region of the world.

After spending time in companies with a lot of management innovation like Google, Linden Lab or EA, and others with lots of technological innovations like Cisco, Vmware or SUN, one of clear concussions I draw from these days is that people is what matters, and although capital and top universities are also important, the key to maintaining success is the people that have assimilated that trying to create the next big thing is the way to go, no matter if you fail, the next one will be better.

I will try to summarize for you in the following days some of the issues covered and companies visited. Let's see if we can travel there together.

Ricardo Perez Garrido

Next week the Master and Executive Master in Telecom and Digital Business Management will be in San Francisco and Silicon Valley for a study trip, with conferences and company visits to Cisco*, Google, Electronic Arts, Sun, Linden Labs, VMWare, Genesys Labs, Accenture*, Berggi and Global Startups.

The theme of the week will be how these companies manage innovation and make it work. All of them have participated in the creation of true competitive advantages in their industries, with groundbreaking use of technologies, business models, even creating whole new markets.

I will be blogging from San Francisco trying to summarize some of their messages, and the experience. As you know this is the second year we organize this study trip (info about last year in several posts of this blog). It's a privilege for us to have the opportunity to discuss the evolution and future of these companies with some of their key executives, and a great learning experience. One interesting fact is the openness in which they share their ideas and approach questions and comments. I guess this is part of the spirit of the area, and one of the secret ingredients for its success: sharing your ideas is not bad, it can help you improve them.

* Accenture and Cisco are sponsors of the Master in Telecom and Digital Business Management..

Ricardo Perez Garrido

Las noticias de los movimientos corporativos entre Microsoft y Yahoo, que parece que ya han terminado, no han hecho más que remover en la mente de todos algo que parece inevitable: uno de los puntos de contacto clave de las marcas con sus clientes en un futuro -proximo, muy proximo- va a ser el mundo online, solo o en combinación con otros, pero ganando una importancia que algunos (los de siempre, los de las estrategias GYM) tienen muy clara y están luchando desde ya para quedarse con el pastel. O al menos el pedazo más grande que les dejen.

Como decía hace unos días, uno de los resultados claros de mirar al mercado de medios, y de preguntarle a sus responsables, es que la complejidad va a ir en aumento. Esta complejidad, traducida a términos del cliente, significa que cada vez es más complicado captar nuestra atención. Nada nuevo ¿No? Seguro que para muchos de los que leen esto no es nuevo. Pero recordad que hay otras realidades ahí fuera. Y esas realidades hablan de que la televisión sigue siendo la que acumula mayor inversión publicitaria. Y en televisión, todos sabemos qué tipo de programas acumulan mayores cantidades de espectadores. No son precisamente los más relacionados con la Web 2.0 o 3.0, ni con la multitarea, la alta tecnología o las tendencias de las que escribimos los que estamos en este mundillo.

Así que nos toca relativizar. Y la pregunta clave entonces está en torno a la velocidad del cambio. USA o UK parece que marcan el camino, con cuotas de inversión en publicidad online mucho más altas. Ganarán aquellos que sean capaces de invertir ahora en entender el mercado, a los que marcan las tendencias, y diseñar nuevas formas de contacto con las "tribus" de hoy-si, las tribus han vuelto, más globales, pero al tiempo más locales, más conectadas, más sociales.

Yahoo tiene muchas de las herramientas para lograrlo. Con propiedades donde la gente pasa mucho tiempo. Es decir, invierte su atención y su escaso tiempo, y seguramente será más receptiva a propuestas interesantes que estos lugares le puedan hacer. Ahora queda que los demás implicados en la cadena trabajen para que la realidad de la intrusión y poca efectividad dejen paso al mito del contexto y la idoneidad... a que en lugar de interferir en lo que estamos haciendo, los mensajes nos faciliten la vida y se integren con lo que hacemos y lo que somos.

Microsoft lo tiene también claro y quiere una plataforma para ponerlo en práctica, y asegurarse un lugar en las nuevas guerras del software, que ahora son abiertas y se juegan en internet, lejos de las cajas de CD's con las que todavía es una empresa muy poderosa. Si el cambio viene como algunos lo pintan, habrá que cambiar de nuevo de campo de batalla (y de fuente de ingresos). Como siempre, la velocidad del cambio es lo más complicado de predecir. ¿Alguno por ahí fuera con una bola de cristal y un buen talonario?