Odds and Ends

Some updates on topics we've been following:

The Google Bamboozle Continues
Google has added Google Docs and Spreadsheets to "Google Apps for Your Domain" and has renamed the suite "Google Apps Premier Edition." GAYD included Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Page Creator. This new incarnation of "Google Office" thus bundles word processing, spreadsheet, email, calendar, instant messaging and web page authoring at a per user subscription cost of $50 a year, targeted at small businesses. There is also a free ad-supported version available to the general public.

As we have previously discussed (Bookman's Business: Google Bamboozles Microsoft, Bookman's Business: Bamboozle Update, Bookman's Business: Bamboozle Update 2), Google continues to give Microsoft fits with its bamboozle attack on Microsoft Office. This attack is intended to divert some Microsoft resources away from improving search to instead defend Office against the Google threat. This theme is amplified in the previous posts on this subject.

This announcement tweaks the Softies just as Office 2007 is rolling out. Google does not care about making much money on this venture. They do care about protecting their crown jewels, advertising-supported search. Distracting Microsoft with the Google Office bamboozle is a great way to do this at little cost to Google.

Apple and Cisco Agree To Share
Cisco Systems has agreed to allow Apple to use its trademarked iPhone name for its new cell phone. According to the announcement, Cisco continues to also be able to use the iPhone name. Cisco won some concessions for future interoperability with Apple products, though the details were vague. Apple does not have a history of playing well with others, so I suspect Cisco won some major concessions from the Cupertino control freaks. For background on this, see Bookman's Business: Perhaps It Is Cisco That Is Silly.

Attacking The Crown Jewels Is Off To Be Printed
My new book on strategic competitive defense, Attacking The Crown Jewels, had gone gold and is in the printing process. It should be available in about a month. For more information, see AttackingTheCrownJewels.com.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco

Strategy 101 - Mission Without Vision

Mission without vision is surviving. If you can craft a mission statement but cannot articulate a vision, don’t try to force one. There is no value in a vision statement that is either disconnected from the reality of what the business does or that no one, in particular the organization’s leadership, believes is real. This sort of disconnect only sows confusion and cynicism.

Indeed, many companies do just fine without vision but with solid mission(s). They just lack inspiration and the motivating passion vision can arouse. Some company leaders are not visionaries, they are missionaries. These leaders can drive successful businesses that are characterized by a relatively short-term focus. If your try to impose a vision on such a leader, it will not stick for long. They must come to it by themselves or not at all.

Mission without vision is common in two kinds of companies. Start-ups are predominately mission driven. It takes incredibly short-term focus to birth a business. True vision often comes later as the business takes hold and finds its identity and customers.

Established companies with more than one distinct mission frequently cannot develop a vision statement because there is not much of a common thread that links product lines. Such businesses are often run as financially-focused conglomerates, even if they are very small. Such conglomerates should separate out their parts and allow each to develop its own vision and mission.

When it comes to running a business, mission trumps vision. There is something to be said for survival.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning

Strategy 101 - Vision Without Mission

Vision without mission is dreaming. If you have a vision statement that spells out a clear, inspirational, long-term goal, but cannot come up with a mission statement, what to do depends upon the stage of your business.

If you have not yet started the business or are in early start-up mode, vision without mission means you have a dream but have not worked out how to pursue it. Focus on developing a mission to launch you on your quest.

If you have an ongoing business, follow these steps:

1. Analyze what the business actually does, who it does it for and how it does it differently from others. Write a mission statement for each set of "what, who and how" you come up with. Each of these describe your current actual mission or missions. You may find you are pursuing several missions, some of which may have little to do with your vision.

2-a. If you have multiple mission statements, ask which of these lead towards your vision and which do not. Those that do are the ones your strategy should focus on and enhance. Those that do not should be sold, treated as cash cows or phased out. Once you have gone through this thinking, you should be able to write your current mission statement, embracing those current activities that move you towards your vision. Yes, this means omitting those product lines and activities that need to be de-emphasized as you move forward.

2-b. If you have a single mission statement but it does not connect with your vision, you have a decision to make. Either the actual mission needs to drive a new vision, or the actual vision dictates transitioning out of the current mission and into a new one that advances toward your dream.

Caution: be careful not to rationalize espousing a fuzzy vision for the sake of hanging on to your current mission(s). It would be better to have no vision at all.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning.

Samsung Trumps iPhone

Apple's much ballyhooed iPhone announcement last month left many wondering how people would react to typing on a touch-screen with no tactile feedback. Samsung yesterday announced a new touch-screen phone that directly addresses that issue. The Samsung Ultra Smart F700 uses technology called VibeTonz from Immersion Corporation that sends tiny vibrations to your fingertips when you touch on-screen keys.

The F700 looks a lot like an iPhone, with a similar form factor. The front has one small button below a large screen. It also sports a slide-out keyboard, which makes me think that Samsung is responding to iPhone by accelerating implementation of VibeTonz in a phone that was originally intended to be more traditional.

Samsung's announcement, coupled with last month's LG Prada touch-screen phone announcement, makes it clear that Apple has no corner on the touch-screen smartphone market. Steve Jobs may have announced the next generation in cell phones, gotten our attention and given its form legitimacy, but Apple will have a lot of competition from established vendors who are not intimidated and actually think Apple has something to prove on their turf, not vice-versa.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Technorati: Business Strategy, Apple, Samsung, SmartPhone, iPhone.

The Year The Video World Changed

2007 looks like it will mark a turning point in video content distribution. In January, Microsoft announced that Xbox 360 will be able to download IPTV content by the end of this year, Apple announced more details of AppleTV, a box that will let you download iTunes video, and NetFlix announced its video download service for PCs. This week, Wal-Mart announced a PC video download service. Yesterday, Amazon and Tivo announced Amazon Unbox on Tivo, a service that will enable Tivo users to download video content from Amazon.

By the end of this year, you should be able to download content to your HVB (Home Video Box - think DVR on steroids) and play it on your TVs and computers. It will not be neat and clean. Some HVBs will only work with certain devices (Windows PCs but not Macs, or vice-versa, for example). Some will only handle content from certain sources. DRM issues will be ugly, and Steve Jobs will not jawbone the problem away. But the market will rule, and those who build annoying limitations into their systems will ultimately lose out to those who are open. Network effects trump proprietary considerations.

TVs, PCs and ultimately any electronic device with a video display will function as home network appliances that can be used to play content from your HVB. HVBs will proliferate with varied capabilities. Some will also serve as game consoles, some as home network backup devices, some as wireless routers and hubs for the home (dare I say "server?"). Look for lots of innovation and confusion as this all sorts itself out over the next few years.

This has immense implications for any business that touches the home video market. From the broadcast and cable networks, to the cable and phone service providers, to the advertisers and production studios, to the PC, TV, game console, handheld device and network firms, the world changed in 2007.

And it's only February.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, Video Technology.

Strategy 101 - Vision And Mission Example

Opera Software is based in Oslo, Norway. It develops web browser software for a wide variety of devices, from PCs to cell phones. Here are Opera's vision and mission statements, as they appeared on their web site in 2007:

Vision
Our vision is to deliver the best Internet experience on any device on all major platforms.

Mission
We strive to develop a superior Internet browser for our users through state-of-the-art technology, innovation, leadership and partnerships.

The vision is simply and clearly stated. Whatever the state of the art is in Internet technology, Opera's goal is to provide the best "experience" pretty much everywhere ("on any device on all major platforms"). Today, that experience means a web browser, but note that the vision is more open ended. The implication of always being the best also implies forever leading in innovation.

The mission statement spells out how Opera is pursuing its mission now. The "what" and "who" are directly stated in the phrase "a superior Internet browser for our users." The "how" is equally straightforward: "through state-of-the-art technology, innovation, leadership and partnerships."

This is an excellent example of how vision drives mission. If you work for Opera, the vision statement makes clear where your company is going and the mission statement is an unambiguous guide you can use in the present to make decisions and focus on what is important to the company's success.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, Opera Software.

Yahoo Announces New Fuzzy Mission

On Tuesday, Yahoo announced to journalists with a bit of fanfare that it had a new mission statement it had developed last year as part of its management restructuring. Here is the previous Yahoo mission statement:

"Our mission is to be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses."

This was vague enough to cover just about any Internet activity and what makes a service "essential" is surely in the eyes of the beholder. No one could operate on the basis of this fuzz, though it could be used with slight tweaking as a vision statement.

Now here is the new Yahoo mission statement:

"Yahoo's mission is to connect people to their passions, their communities, and the world's knowledge. To ensure this, Yahoo offers a broad and deep array of products and services to create unique and differentiated user experiences and consumer insights by leveraging connections, data, and user participation."

A mission statement must communicate three essential ideas:

• What the organization does
• Who it does it for
• How it does it differently from others

The new Yahoo mission statement attempts to do this. It drops the reference to businesses and aims at consumers, so there is a bit more clarity as to the "who."

The first "what" is "connect to passion." This surely is intended to imply entertainment, but the Yahoos could not simply say that. Then again, perhaps they did not want to limit themselves and intend to appeal to other forms of passion, which I leave to the reader's imagination. The second "what" is "connect to communities," which again casts a wide net, though it is likely a pitch for Web 2.0 relevance. The final "what" is "connect to the world's knowledge," which is so Google-esque that we get that it means "compete effectively with Google in search."

As for the "how," the Yahoos used 31 words in their second sentence to be as fuzzy and broad as possible. They will do almost anything for which the Internet can be used.

Mission statements beg for clear, unambiguous language. If you work for Yahoo, how do you use this mission statement to help you make decisions? By trying to be the sun, the moon and the stars, Yahoo has crafted a mission statement that assures continuing lack of focus. They continue to suffer from a grandiose fuzziness of mission, as we discussed last November in Peanut Butter Portals.

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning, Yahoo.

Strategy 101 - Mission Examples

A strategic vision is a desired end result with a decade-long time horizon. The strategic mission describes how the organization intends to move toward that goal with a three to five year time horizon. Just as there are many different ways to get from San Jose to New York City, organizations with identical visions can have very different missions.

Consider this example from the Vision post: Our vision is a world without hunger.

Recall that a mission statement communicates three essential ideas:

• What the organization does
• Who it does it for
• How it does it differently from others

Here are mission statements that three different organizations might have to implement this vision:

A Multinational Agricultural Supplier
"We provide farmers worldwide with seed, fertilizer, pesticides and related products to increase their productivity. We are the largest and most geographically diverse manufacturer and distributor of these products. We use our volume, distribution network and research capability to assure that our products are the most cost effective a farmer can buy."

An International Non-Profit Program Developer
"We develop localized, culturally relevant model programs for feeding poor and hungry people all over the world. We help local groups implement these programs by providing information, training, hands-on start-up management assistance, monitoring and networking."

A Global Grocery Superstore Chain
"We operate a global chain of grocery superstores. We use our vast distribution network and purchasing power to drive down the cost of groceries and assure fresh, high quality and wholesome products to all our customers. We strive to be the low price leader in all our markets."

Each of these organizations has a very different idea about how to eliminate hunger in the world.

(The examples used above are made up by the author unless explicitly attributed. Any similarity of these fictional examples to those used by actual organizations is coincidental and unintentional.)

Copyright © 2007 Philip Bookman

Technorati: Business Strategy, Strategic Planning.