Small Business Labs

Mobile Computing Empowering Social Entrepreneurs

Social Edge, a blogfocused on social entrepreneurship from the Skoll Foundation, has a post on 3 mobile computing trends empowering social entrepreneurs.  These are:

1.  Mobile technology is expediting the reporting and response to human rights violations.

2.  Providing access to essential data to level the playing field in terms of access to opportunities and  knowledge.

3.  Giving communities new ways of addressing issues and contributing to the health of the community.

The post provides examples of each trend and further explanations of the trends.

10 Recent Smartphone and Mobile Computing Articles

Ok, so the new Palm Pre and iPhones are generating a lot of press.  But even eliminating these, there has a been a lot of recent coverage of the smartphone and mobile computing space. 

Here are the 10 recent stories not on the Pre or iPhone I find most interesting (in no particular order):

1.  Local mobile content usage up 51% and 20.7 million Americans used mobile browsers in March.   comScore research via Marketing Charts.

2.  NY Times article The Smartphone's Rapid Rise from Gadget to Necessity says despite the recession smartphone sales will increase 25% this year.

3.  Tech Crunch highlights a report from Juniper Research forecasting that cheap cellphone sales will reach 700 million units by 2014.

4.  The LA Times reports that Broadcasters compete to put TV on cellphones.  The switch to digital broadcasting is creating the opportunity.

5.  KnoxNews.com suggests that instead of banning cellphone use in schools we should use them to teach. 

6.  The SF Examiner reports Delta Airlines now lets passengers check in with cell phones, avoiding the need to carry paper boarding passes.  They call it "paperless, mobile check-in."

7.  PC World weighs in with their 2009 Smartphone forecast.  This reviews the latest smartphones and looks at what is coming. 

8.  The Washington Post Reports on a Yankee Group study forecasting 41% of North American consumers will purchase a smartphone as their next mobile device.

9.  The Wall Street Journal warns of the risk of "cellphone elbow" stress injuries.  While it doesn't mention it, it probably can be fixed with Tommy John surgery.

10.  And we will close with Experts Revive Debate over Cellphones and Cancer from the NY Times.  There continues to be concerns that kids in particular are at risk from too much cell phone use. 

The Connected Car

Good article in the Economist Technology Quarterly on the connected car.  The article points out that cars have become mobile computing platforms.  Modern cars have hundreds of sensors and a high end Lexus has over 60 microprocessors.

        

As the article points out, navigation systems are the best known connected car technology.  Over 33 million cars in the US have navigation systems, with over 90% being portable. 

Most navigation systems provide more than just directions.  They also provide a wide range of location-smart applications - including local business listings - and connect autos to the network.

This combination of computing power and network connectivity is creating new businessess and business model.  Key quote:

"There is also scope for new business models built around connected cars, from dynamic insurance and road pricing to car pooling and location-based advertising. “We can stop looking at a car as one system,” says Rahul Mangharam, an engineer at the University of Pennsylvania, “and look at it as a node in a network.”

With American spending an average of 45 hours per month in cars, it is no surprise that creating products and services to make that time more entertaining and productive is a growing business.

Social Entrepreneurs = Entrepreneurs

Social Entrepreneurship Revisited is a fascinating article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. It describes research on social entrepreneurs by NYU professor Paul Light.

What really jumped out at me about this article is the description of social entrepreneurs is almost exactly the same as most descriptions of private sector entrepreneurs.  Key quote:

Social entrepreneurs appear to make quite deliberate decisions to solve social problems, rather than simply stumbling into their work by accident or circumstance. They are often quite sober about their decision to attack a social problem, and they usually understand the consequences of challenging the status quo. I also find that social entrepreneurs are driven by a persistent, almost unshakable optimism. They persevere in large part because they truly believe that they will succeed in spite of messages to the contrary. This optimism can border on overconfidence, but is essential to their 24/7 commitment.

Sound familiar?  The article goes on to describe 5 or so other attributes of social entrepreneurship that sound pretty much the same aprivate sector entrepreneurship.

This doesn't surprise me.  It makes sense that the same type of person that pursues regular entrepreneurship is also the type to pursue social entrepreneurship.  And most of the great private sector entrepreneurs I've known have been driven in large part by a desire to change the world. 

But what is really interesting is that this is listed as a new insight in the article.  This seems to suggest that it is only recently that social entrepreneurship has attracted the type of entrepreneurs that are common in the private sector. 

We've recently started a deeper dive on social entrepreneurship.  Many of the experts and social entrepreneurs we've talked to feel we are entering a golden age of social entrepreneurship.  There are many reasons for this (more later).  But the key reason is simple - the sector appears to be attracting many more true entrepreneurs than in the past.   

Book Review - The Future Arrived Yesterday

Michael Malone's newest book is The Future Arrived Yesterday:  The Rise of the Protean Corporation and What it Means for You.  It describes Malone's vision of the future of the corporation. 

And according to Malone, the future corporation is "protean," which is an adjective meaning: 1. able to change form; variable or continuing changing in nature, appearance or behavior. 2. versatile; showing great variety and diversity.  

The protean corporation Malone describes consists of a series of rings.  At the center is a small group of long term employees that understand and guide the firm's culture, goals and strategy.  These core employees provide strategic direction and build and maintain the firm's business infrastructure.

The next ring is comprised of salaried workers with benefits.  They manage the day to day operation of the firm and have some job security, but are not as secure as core employees.

The outer ring consists of freelancers, contractors, suppliers and others that provide the firm with great flexibility and ability to quickly shift and change direction.  Malone describes this ring as the cloud, but in this case the cloud contains people and suppliers, not just computing resources.

From a small business perspective, the most interesting part of Malone's vision is the increasing role freelancers, contractors and small businesses will play.  Protean corporations will greatly increase their supplier and freelance employee base so they can more quickly shift and respond to changing market conditions.  

This view is very similar to our view that large and small companies will increasingly work together (see The New Artisan Economy research report for more details).  The major difference is Malone's is looking at these trends from the point of view of the large corporation and we look at them from the point of view small businesses and freelancers. 

But regardless of which direction you view it from, the result is more opportunity for small and personal businesses as large corporations expand their network of business partners. 

An excellent book that is fun and easy to read - and useful for small and personal business owners thinking about or wanting to work with larger corporations. 

Americans Watching More TV

Despite news of TVs demise, according to Nielsen Americans are actually spending more time watching TV.  They are also spending more time online, watching more online videos and taking advantage of time shifting technology to watch more TV and videos.

     

And for those who can't get enough data about the TV watching habits of Americans, a Nielsen multi-client study group calling itself the Center for Research Excellence released a really detailed study on TV viewing.

It too finds that we are spending more time watching TV and that TV dominates our video viewing habits.  It also has the most complex and desne data charts I've seen in a long time. 

A couple of points about the chart above:  (1) the TV time is for the average American watching at home in hours; (2) the Internet time is home and work; (3) watching video online is an average for those who watch video online; (4) watching video on a mobile phone is the average for those who watch video on a mobile phone.

The Importance of Incremental innovation

A recent academic research paper, The Curse of the First Mover; When Incremental Innovation Leads to Radical Change, argues that incremental technological innovations can sometimes have more influence than radical ones.

The paper defines incremental innovation as "refinements and extensions of established designs that result in substantial price or functional benefits to users."  The paper uses case studies from Apple and Google to illustrate their point.  Key quote on Google:

"Google...has never produced any radical innovation, but owes its success to incremental improvement of existing products (search engines, web mail, maps, etc.). 

Our research on small business innovation shows that many small businesses are continuous incremental innovators.  It has been suggested to us that incremental innovation is not "real" innovation and because of this most small businesses do not innovate.

We disagree and believe incremental innovation is extremely important.  It is nice to be able to point to academic researchers who agree. 

Maker Faire and Small Business

We attended Maker Faire over the  weekend.  For those not familiar with Maker Faire, it is billed as the largest do-it-yourself festival in the world and is sort of a cross between a state fair, craft show and a science fair.   It is sometimes goofy, often strange and always fun. 

We spent most of the time interviewing makers to better understand how the DIY movement is related to small business.

Not surprisingly, most of the exhibiting makers owned or worked for small businesses and their exhibits were designed at least in part to market their goods and services.

The 2nd largest group was educational groups, most of which were non-profits of some kind.  The third largest group were clubs.

There were few independent, hobbyist makers exhibiting.  This, of course, makes sense given the effort required to be a exhibitor. 

Lots of cool products, inventions and ideas.  And lots of people turning their passions, or hoping to turn their passions, into small businesses.

We will provide more details on our interviews in the near future.