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Conducting Strategy by Fiat: Thoughts on Industry Engineering

The other day I was driving and listening to an NPR story on the poor state of GM and the very uncertain future of Saturn (you can hear it here http://bit.ly/QLbXD). As the story went on I passed very quickly by both a Toyota Camry Hybrid and a Pontiac G8. Both very nice, but very different cars and it stated me wondering: “What is the strategy of the administration with respect to managing through this down economy in terms of automobile manufacturing in this country?” I’ve always been an admirer of cars and all things automotive so that wasn’t such a strange question for me to ponder. Until recently, I’ve been a subscriber to Car & Driver forever (since way before I could legally drive and continually even when not in the market for a new car). So I think I have some “street cred” as a semi-serious autophile, just not a fanatical one.

So this is my blog on strategy – so what’s the tie in you may ask? Am I going to opine about how poorly the Detroit 3 have done to grow market share, produce great cars, and capture automotive dreams of buyers? NOPE. Will I speak on how some see President Obama’s policies toward domestic automotive manufacturing as a clearly socialistic, certainly perplexing, and potentially bad for all? NOPE! Instead, I will offer my suggestions on what the Administration should consider with moving forward in helping car companies (and jobs survive in this country). Here I will look to the future, with an eye toward the past, and keep my fingers crossed and hope for success.

Chrysler and FIAT. Is that a match made in heaven or a shot-gun wedding between two failing companies? Chrysler has been saved by the government back in the 70s when it run by a very famous ex-Ford executive (who some wanted to run for president). Can you pick the exec out of this video?

Some short ten years after that initial bailout, Chrysler partnered with a niche Italian coachbuilders in producing the TC (Touring Coupe). The coachbuilder was Maserati, which at the time was a subsidiary of De Tomaso (maker of other very high end Italian muscle cars). Maserati also produced a rather up market version of the vehicle that was hoped to be a US entry-level complimentary vehicle for their high end sports cars. Both the Chrysler and the Maserati versions got bad reviews for fit, finish, and reliability/performance. They looked nice, but didn’t sell. Three years and less than 10,000 vehicles later the project was killed, and Maserati was sold to FIAT. Then Ferarri, Volkswagen and FIAT dance for controlling stake in the company, that would eventually lead to FIAT owning and controlling the company today.

So looking at FIAT’s history in the US car market wonders if they couldn’t be successful before, why now? FIAT is the owner of Alfa Romeo, Lancia and some other brands, but are famous for having given up trying to compete for US car buyers. Prior to any government mandated hook up, FIAT said it would be brining the Alfa’s back to the US as a premium brand. So having a high volume lower end brand in Chrysler could be very complementary.

Who knows, it could be really good. Do you remember Bertone? The Fiat X-19?

The Power to Work Together for Good or It's Already Been Done?

Subtitle: Is this Twitter for the Devloping World the Right Approach?

Ushahidi is a very interesting tool that was build to promote text based sharing of personal accounts of current events going on in Africa. The goal is to promote safety and transparency in real time event reporting. This is obviously important in places where the media, local and federal governments may not always have the resources or the will to report what actually happens. So give the power to the people. Great idea, right?

Its hard to fuss with that approach. The interesting thing is that their strategy seems to be build it and they will come. But others have done the same thing. So is there a business model there or merely a social enterprise model - to do good for goods sake. I'm not sure. Since I work for a non-profit that aims to work in the public interest with respect to federal acquisition and systems engineering, I can appreciate the social good approach. But everyone has to make money. Even Craigslist makes money (as they assist in driving most newspapers out of business).

So is Ushahidi a Twitter targeted at the 3rd World or merely one of the many overlay type apps on a Twitter like platform? You decide, but either way, I think its worth watching to see where they'll go. So far, they've been very collaborative in their approach to development and deployment as noted in this article. But can it scale to really reach the people it needs to have impact? This type of service can only benefit from Metcalf's law. Without scale, it suffers from the axiom, "If a tree falls in the woods..."

So with the ubiquity of mobiles in the developing world, here is how a firm plans to partner to help the locals.

The Power of Platforms over Products

Currently I’m at the ICTD conference in Doha, Qatar. I’m here with Ken Banks to do a joint demonstration on how Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS have both profited from partnering where it makes sense. Really, it’s about the power of open platforms and how separate ones can strengthen each other when they work together.

Brenda of FreedomFone, Erik of Ushahidi and Ken of FrontlineSMS

One of the discussion points that has kept coming up in conversations here is how powerful

More here

Quiet Game Changer - Innovation and Strategic Predictions

Quietly, technology tends to infiltrate our lives and we start to do things differently (and hopefully more efficiently). Some technologies have been referred to as disruptor's because they disrupt the status-quo, or shake up the dominant businesses in a particular industry. Such disruptor's of yesteryear could include the affordable VCR (for releasing the chain to TV scheduling & opening up home movies), the cellular radio (for obvious reasons), and automobile (freeing society from the horse and carriage).

More recently, the iPhone (for its many and growing capabilities), Twitter (for its unique view on communicating to hungry social web-ites) and the e-Book Reader. e-Book Reader, a disruptive technology you say? You are probably wondering to yourself, "what is this guy smoking?" e-Books are neither new (been around since the start of people sharing information via the web. And now there are a plethora of ebook readers. None of them stand out as great tools, due to screen size, color capabilities, or they lack the tactile nature of what people who love books so want. Note my first e-book read on any handheld device was The Underground by Suelette Dryfus. I read this @ 1998, so I'm no Al Gore (he having invented the Internet). So how is the eBook Reader disruptive?

Well, its not the current version of e-Book Readers that are disruptive. Its actually my predictions of whats next for eBook Readers. Its the melding of capabilities of having an electronic version of material that is accessible via a feature rich device that is not just connected to a store-front, but to others who are/have read that same book, similar material and subject matter throughout the world. That's my prediction for Kindle V3, or the iPhone (OS 4) or the Sony eBook Reader (V9). Such capability will change the way we read, share information, learn, work and educate ourselves as well as others around us. That's whats game changing here - its the promise of things to come.

As a start of the revolution, this article in the WSJ begins to speak to just that.

Here Comes the E-Book

By STEVEN JOHNSON

Every genuinely revolutionary technology implants some kind of "aha" moment in your memory -- the moment where you flip a switch and something magical happens, something that tells you in an instant that the rules have changed forever.

The Journal Report

• See the complete Technology report.

I still have vivid memories of many such moments: clicking on my first Web hyperlink in 1994 and instantly transporting to a page hosted on a server in Australia; using Google Earth to zoom in from space directly to the satellite image of my house; watching my 14-month-old master the page-flipping gesture on the iPhone's touch interface.

Read the rest here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123980920727621353.html