A few weekend thoughts

Having attended a few sessions of the recently concluded London Business School Technology Summit, I had a couple of take-aways.

1.

The morning keynote by the Mckinsey speaker had a few interesting points of which I'd like to mention one - 'crowd-sourcing' - this could be a Q in the final quiz :). Crowd-sourcing, as I understood, is the process by which an organisation (Lego, P &G) or movement (Open Source) harness the power of the larger community by inviting them to contribute. The basic idea being that one of the ways to stay ahead of competition is for an organisation to look outside its own boundaries for the next innovation or in current jargon, next 'game-changing deal'. 

P & G has a comprehensive website on this topic here. Similarly, Lego taps into its followers loyalty by allowing/encouraging them to design, share and buy their very own custom Lego model. Pretty cool uh, see here.

A question to others who attended: I remember a social observation the speaker mentioned - Was it that, even in a 'crowd-sourcing' set-up, people prefer a hierarchy in terms of 'org' structure (even though there is no 'org' truly speaking) ? 

2.

In the panel discussion on the mobile topic, I was keen to understand as to how can mobile operators address the disintermediation effect brought about by the success of smart phones and the spike in mobile internet use - the effect being that mobile internet access has eliminated possible revenue stream/s for mobile operators.

One point of view from a panel member was that, as mobile internet access grows, the creation, deployment and management of mobile apps will play an increasing big role (I believe the iPhone currently has more than 20,000 apps !! ). For a wider perspective on the disintermediation effect, read a Deloitte report here.

A quick aside here: there was another point of view from the same panel that people will ncreasingly rely on trusted contacts to provide them with relevant/useful information rather than using a search engine. To illustrate, assume you have an application that shows the people you trust, on your mobile (an 'always-on' version of Facebook). Now, if you are in Drummond Street and want to eat nice spicy Indian food and could access/connect via mobile with these people you trust, you'd rely more on their recommendations rather than what a search engine would suggest. So, Google may not be that ubiquitous after all - possible ? Or, will Android and/or the GPhone become equally popular ?