Category: Four pillars

Dennis Howlett raised a question after my post on Pip Coburn’s book. [BTW it was by no means an attempt to critique the book, I haven’t even finished reading it yet.]

Let me try and put my point forward differently, see if it makes sense to you.

A change function has to bridge two or more different states.

TPPA, in the Coburn definition, is part of this function.

So far so good. And while some of it may seem “obvious” I have no problem with “obvious”, give me more.

I was then musing about the different states, the before and after.

And I came to this realisation.

Before Generation M, the before state and the after state were both “within the organisation”. So TPPA looked at what one used to do within the organisation as part of the basis for determining pain of adoption.

With Generation M, the before state is at home and the after state is at work. And with consumerisation and increased mobility, multitasking support and use of multimedia, with social software and opensource, the whole adoption model for Generation M is different. Where the before state is outside the firm and generational, TPPA is very high. This is not an issue of training. Generation M will resist what doesn’t make sense to them and vote with their feet and their fingers.

Does that help?

I’ve been reading the Change Function by Pip Coburn. Well worth a read.

Pip defines change as a function of the perceived crisis versus the total perceived pain of adoption, which he calls TPPA.

I find TPPA fascinating. Not because of what it means to fogeys like me, but because of its importance to Generation M.

TPPA is by definition relative to current installed software and the alternate version sought to be implemented.

Generation M will have high TPPA in the context of traditional enterprise architectures, tools and techniques. High TPPA in the context of current enterprise monocultures. Low TPPA in the context of social software and Web 2.0.

This time around, it is the enterprise that has to adjust itself in order to reduce TPA, whereas until now the onus of relieving TPA has been borne by the new entrant.

Interesting times.

I’ve always enjoyed the Francis Bacon quotation:

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

It seems to mean more to me as I grow older. Odd, that.

And it was with this quotation in mind that I resonated with Doc Searls’s statement that blogs are essentially provisional in nature, and I try and behave that way.

So you can imagine how I felt when I read in Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography:
….And as the chief ends of conversation are to inform or to be informed, to please or to persuade, I wish well-meaning and sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive assuming manner that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat most of those purposes for which speech was given to us.

In fact, if you wish to instruct others, a positive dogmatical manner in advancing your sentiments may occasion opposition and prevent a candid attention.

If you desire instruction and improvement from others, you should not at the same time express yourself fixed in your present opinions. Modest and sensible men, who do not love disputation, will  leave you undisturbed in the possession of your errors. In adopting such a manner, you can seldom expect to please hearers or obtain the concurrence you desire.

Pope judiciously observes: Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.

Interesting sentiments. And how pleasant to be able to quote them without having to worry about copyright, I think even retrospective Son-of-Mickey-Mouse Acts will leave Benjamin Franklin alone. But maybe I’m wrong.

Tristan Robinson brought this to my notice. Thanks Tristan.
In Memoriam.

Yup, the blog’s gone. For now at least.

Here’s what Fake Steve has to say about it:

Dudes, I had no idea this blog was getting read so widely. I’m being held in captivity during the WWDC — scary story of rendition etc., which will be my firt new post. Anyway, I will relaunch soon, not sure where yet. Will keep you friggin informed. Like, with a post here or whatever. And FYI this is NOT an Apple publicity stunt. You really don’t think they have that much sense of humor, do you?
Cheers–
Fake Steve.

Nature abhors a vacuum. So don’t be surprised to see many where there was one.

Clarence Fisher provided the kernel for this particular post, telling me about Bookmooch.

And it made me think. About books and the web. [An aside. When Amazon entered the Fortune 500 whom did they replace? AT&T…..)
First we had Amazon, a way of discovering and acquiring new books. For a while we also had ZShops as part of Amazon, followed by Amazon Marketplace.
Then we had eBay, which allowed us to acquire used and out-of-print books and a whole lot more.

So along came abebooks, concentrating solely on the purchase of new and second-hand books.

Then we had librarything, allowing individuals to catalogue what they had and share that catalogue, without having to remember ISBN codes. You might as well memorise pi if that’s what gets your rocks off.
Somewhere in between we had bookcrossing, allowing almost-serendipitous discovery of books to read.

Now we have bookmooch.

[Anyone else have more names to add to this, feel free to comment].

So we have different levels of granularity in the discovery of inventory, in the discovery and setting of price, in the taxonomy of the inventory, in exchange models. We have different “currencies” in use for fulfilment, from cash to near-cash to points to nothing at all. As with many other markets, liquidity is critical and specialisation brings its own risks and benefits.

We’ve also learnt a lot about ratings and reviews and collaborative filtering as part of this bookmarket. As we see more pseudocurrencies we will see exchange rates emerge, and some form of title transfer a la Navio.

So what next, besides the obvious use of location/context-sensitive services and greater mobile access to the services?

I guess I’m less worried about the what next, what concerns me is the what Not Next.

• Please, no attempts at vertical integration. It is the competition between horizontal layers that makes this market exciting.
• Please, no attempts at putting more garden walls around the information. Less is definitely more. Let the customer keep control of his information.
• Please, no attempts at bringing DRM into what is a physical delivery market, particularly via the back-door of some of these sites.

In a classic HughTrain mode, micromarkets and microniches will emerge around the book sector; they will associate themselves with different “currencies” and different liquidity pools, different models for making money, different ways of fulfilling transactions. From Assembly Line through to Serendipity. From Free to Exoensive-Because-You-Like-To-Pay-Through-Your-Nose. It’s only a matter of time before someone comes up with a market concentrating on left-handed between-the-wars original pulp cover art, and finds a way of making money out of it. Because Of rather than With.

I try and learn from all these things. Who has the most comprehensive inventory. Who allows me to discover the best price. Who is most likely to guarantee fulfilment of the transaction. Where collaborative filtering gives me the best value.

And I’m looking for a lot more. Simpler ways of cataloguing, valuing and pricing what I have. Even easier ways of adding to, or subtracting from, my inventory. More ways to discover new authors and out-of-print books. More convenient fulfilment methods.

It will happen.

An aside. For many years I dreamt of setting up a bookshop as and when I was put out to grass by Big Business. And I wanted it to be different. No prices at all. Just three types of book:

• Over My Dead Body: You can look, touch, even read, but it’s Not For Sale.
• Make Me An Offer: Prepared to trade, if the price is right.
• Take It Away Jose: Just pay for the bag :-)

But that was a long time ago. Now I dream of setting up a school. Which is why I read people like Clarence Fisher. And when I have that school up and running, I will retain my book-connection by having a library in that school. (And a little book-restoration workshop on the side, as a hobby).