The Week in Geek – August 31, 2008 (special book preview edition)
We’re back to school & the WiG summer hiatus is over. Those curious about my book project are welcome to check out draft chapters & cases at www.gallaugher.com/chapters.html. These materials available free online to students and faculty for non-commercial use. A low-cost, more professionally formatted, ‘dead-tree’ version will be available next year from Flat World Knowledge. If you check out the material, please let me know what you think!
The Facebook Case
Several of you were so kind to provide your input & experiences as I wrote the Facebook Case. It’s one of the chapters available online, and was one of the first alpha-tested by the Flat World Knowledge folks. The case covers the introduction of Feeds, the F8 platform effort, and Facebook Beacon. Advertising prospects for social networks are also explored in detail. I hope you like it!
How Obama Really Did It
Just look at the Technology Review chart above, offering a comparison of Obama, McCain, Gravel, Nadar, and Clinton, and it’s clear that a massive number of Obama supporters are engaged online. According to TR, Obama used social networking technology to decisive effect in a way that will redefine how political campaigns are conducted. Obama’s strong showing in Texas should be a staple case study. Hillary Clinton had 20,000 volunteers in Texas, but some 104,000 Texans had signed on to Obama’s social networking site, my.barackobama.com (rather unflatteringly referred to internally as MyBO). MyBO gave Obama’s Texas supporters a ‘playbook’ of marching orders and encouraged them to overwhelm caucus meetings (Texas delegates were awarded based on popular vote and caucus participation). So while Clinton won Texas 51 to 47 percent, Obama people flooded the caucuses, scoring an overall victory in delegates – 99 to 94.
Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes helped the Obama team develop its technology. Daily care and feeding for the site comes from Boston’s Fort Point Channel-based Blue State Digital. According to the firm, MyBO.com had logged over a million accounts and has facilitated 75,000 local events. The analysis is contrasted with online gaffes from McCain and Ron Paul. The latter had a strong online following, but a poor integration of the tech effort with the campaign’s overall strategy. Opportunity squandered (note to conspiracy theorists – there’s no political agenda here. In the past four years BC has hosted both Barack Obama and John McCain, who is also mentioned below, as freshmen convocation speakers. Of course, George Bush was only 70,000 Ohio votes away from being defeated by BC Alum John Kerry…). Get to work, Eagles, we want a BC alum at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Moore’s Law & Moore: Fast, Cheap Computing, and what it Means for the Manager
A quick managerial overview on why Moore’s Law and non-silicon, low-cost advances in storage and telecom, are critical to strategic thinking. The ‘’death’ of Moore’s Law and efforts to extend the principle are also discussed. This is a significant update of a chapter I’ve used in class for the past year.
A Chip Too Far
Fortune underscores problems I’ve cited in the chapter above regarding the challenge of using multi-core chips. Sure processors with multiple brains are fast and sip less power, but the ‘parallel programming’ required to optomize programs for them is brutally difficult. Why? Tasks must be divdided up so that each core (brain) on a processor handles a portion of the work. Fortune offers a creepy analogy “In conceptual terms, traditional coding could be compared to a woman being pregnant for nine months and producing a baby. Parallel programming might take nine women, have each of them be pregnant for a month, and somehow produce a baby”. Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer, claims that writing for multi-core processors is the most ‘conceptually different’ change ‘in the history of modern computing’. Stanford Professor Kunle Olukotun says “[the computer industry should be] panicked because it’s not obvious what the solution is going to look like and whether we will get there in time for these new machines”. Now we’re starting to see delays in the software product pipeline. EA delayed the release of NBA Live during the peak basketball season as it struggled to write for multi-core chips. Another game maker, Oddworld Inhabitants discontinued Abe’s Oddysee after it couldn’t get the game to function under multi-core chips.
The Zara Case
A class favorite, studying Zara is always a semester highlight. The Zara case is now online. And in an update, Zara is now bigger than Gap. The case covers how Inditex, now the world’s largest clothing retailer, used technology to create a counter-intuitive business model that is creaming the competition.
The Netflix Case
A former undergrad studnet of mine told me that when she had her group case for McKinsey, it was on Netflix. Here’s a version I’ve put together based on our classwork on Netflix, a firm we’ve covered nearly since Hastings founded the firm. How was Netflix, an Internet startup, able to beat back threats from giants Blockbuster and Wal-Mart? This case explores how technology can create resources for competitive advantage. Concepts examined include The Long Tail, collaborative filtering, the value of the data asset, relationships with suppliers, and scalability. The case ends by examining the firm’s vulnerabilities and opportunities as streaming media moves to one day replace the DVD.
Lessons from NetFlix Fail Week
For three days straight, the category-killer recently suffered an outage that halted its ability to serve most of its 8.4 million customers. According to Brad Stone’s blog at the NY Times, the firm handled the glitch with aplomb and its stock actually bounced up. Netflix quickly and profusely apologized to customers, explaining it was on the case and working toward a solution. Customers received a 15% credit (which will cost the firm about $6 million). The firm’s killer brand (see the NetFlix Case) has helped Netflix build up goodwill, and most customers were reasonably patient, giving the firm the benefit of the doubt. Firms that rely on tech can get hosed if systems break down. But the firm’s skill in handling the glitch is a lesson to all.
Strategy and Technology
Also offered is an expansion and revision of the foundation chapter I’ve used in my course for a couple of years now. I’m delighted that faculty have replaced outdated and wrong-headed readings like Carr’s “IT Doesn’t Matter” with what I hope is a more balanced and practical assessment of how strategy & technology work together. The new update includes a minicase on FreshDirect in NYC (1/3 of NYC grocery stores have closed since the firm started business). Plus a look at why Google beat Yahoo, why Dell failed, and why it’s not the tech or the technology, but what you do with the tech and technology.
Don’t Cry for Us Silicon Valley
With Diane Greene out at VM Ware (one of the hottest IPOs of 2007), and Meg Whitman retiring this year, some may think the Valley is no longer a place for women (perhaps they’re going to the McCain campaign – both former eBay CEO Whitman, and Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of HP, are McCain advisors). But BusinessWeek’s Sarah Lacy (who wrote one of my favorite recent reads “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good” – a book about the current generation of Valley entrepreneurs) claims it’s not all that bad. Flickr, blogging giant Six Apart, and social networking hotshot Ning are among the firms founded or helmed by someone without a “Y” chromosome. Marissa Meyer has a vital power-role at Google, and firms from J&J to NBC have women running their most significant online efforts. In fact, Newsweek recently wrote a piece on Revenge of the Nerdettes. Smart, and dare we say hip, young women who fearlessly defy dweebiness to put their stamp on tech & science. BC verifies the trend. This year’s highly competitive Undergrad TechTrek program had an enrollment of 50% women – a rate not only higher than women studying tech, higher than women studying management! You go, girls. My brilliant daughter Maya (pictured) can never have enough role models!