Transparency and Morality in Business

Ross Gittins has an interesting article about the importance or requirement for moral values for a market to function properly. What struck me as interesting was the idea that markets function better when participants are able to judge the actions of other participants against social standards. This jives with what Umair Haque has written about numerous times around the DNA of businesses and the edge economy.

In previous posts, I've talked about the use of transparency of businesses to improve the DNA or the behaviour of businesses. The concept of being able to judge participants against social standards for honesty, trustworthiness etc. provide a strong foundation for judging what information participants need to provide about themselves.

By focusing on the information that allows judgments to be made about a company's behaviour meeting moral standards, we can avoid being inundated with information that is irrelevant and frankly unhelpful in creating better businesses and markets. Businesses are only as amoral as we allow them to be and there is no reason why a business has to amoral.

Tags: Transparency, Finance, Ross Gittins, Policy

iPhone Reverberations

It is now several days pass the announcement of Apple’s iPhone software roadmap. We are now firmly far enough away from the reality distortion field we can take stock of what it means and the possible ramifications. John Doerr certainly thinks that the iPhone is the next coming. And I am inclined to agree but I shall come back to my reasoning later on in the post.

The presentation came in two parts; the enterprise features and the SDK. I’ll consider each as both have different effects.

RIM

The enterprise features are aimed at the heart of RIM. Not only has Apple targeted the BlackBerry handsets but RIM’s whole push technology revenue. It is a classic pincer strategy and strangely enough not one that I’ve seen discussed much. By using ActiveSync Apple removes the intermediate steps of the RIM server and NOC. This will be cheaper for enterprises wanting to deploy push email and potentially more reliable, an issue that RIM has struggled with in the last 6 months.

Apple has created a viable alternative to RIM push email technology that is going to have a lower total cost of ownership. The software update is not going to be deployed until June 2008 so I expect that the update will include many other improvements to the iPhone that will make it even harder for RIM. I am interested in whether Apple will work with Google and Yahoo to bring push to the companies’ webmail. In particular push integration of Google Apps would almost make the iPhone a no-brainer for small to medium enterprises.

RIM has six months in which to respond and come up with a strategy to counter Apple. Steady as she goes is not a viable long term strategy. One possible idea is to give the RIM server software away for free/open source it and focus on providing maintenance contracts to enterprises looking for them. But it is not all plain sailing for RIM (and all the other handset manufacturers) as Apple not only announced the enterprise features but more importantly announced the SDK.

SDK

The enterprise features were about selling more iPhones and increasing access to the enterprise. The SDK is about changing the world. The SDK unlocks the power of the iPhone and turns it into a comprehensive mobile computing platform. John Doerr stated it was the third platform and I agree. Does it replace the other two platforms? Not at all. Instead it complements the other two platforms to create ubiquitous computing. Now we have the mobile platform with the computing platform and the cloud platform.

The SDK provides a little something for everyone. For enterprises it allows mobile versions of enterprise applications (ERP, CRM, SCM etc). More importantly the native applications will support offline processing allowing users to continue using the applications when not in range of large of large bandwidth connections. It also allows the applications to send only the necessary data (sync) between the central application and the iPhone version increasing the essential mobility of the platform.

For games developers it provides a mobile gaming console that with the mult-touch interface and 3D accelerometer and high resolution screen offers new gaming styles and game play. The Wii is a demonstration of how a change in interacting with a game opens up new game play. Perhaps the largest stumbling block will be Apple’s historical indifference to games on their platforms. Take a logical step further the iPhone could become a very interesting Wii-like controller for Mac based games. Imagine playing id’s Rage using the iPhone to steer and fire.

Application developers will be able to create applications and mobile versions of their applications that address specific computing needs when mobile. These applications will often be compliments of desktop and web applications. The inclusion of SQLite will do a lot to reduce the issues surrounding EDGE and intermittent connection.

In Conclusion

Like a butterfly flapping their wings only to create a storm, the true impact of the iPhone mobile computing platform is unpredictable. Like Jason said, this will play out over the next two decades. Not having “social” mentioned is hardly a reason to doubt the impact of the iPhone as Fred Wilson does. The point is the SDK is about the how of mobile computing not the what. The what is left up to the developers and users.

All that can be said for sure is how we think about computing and its involvement in our lives is going to radically change just as the PC platform and the Internet Platform changed computing before.

Tags: iPhone, iPhone SDK, Mobile Computing, Apple, RIM

Improving Transparency to Improve DNA (Umair's type)

The FT has an article today on Institute of Credit Management releasing tables on the payment performance of listed companies. This again follows the idea of using transparency to reform and improve the performance of businesses.

But it is not enough to have someone comb through annual reports to find this information. In the world of the web, this type of information should be provided in XML form on every companies website. Companies will scream that it is a bureaucratic hurdle but that isn't true. There will be an initial pain as companies adjust their systems to publish this information but then that only creates opportunities for new business to streamline the process.

Publishing information as XML is a trivial exercise and cannot be considered a viable argument. What most companies are really objecting to is the changes that this transparency will require them to make. To borrow Umair is terminology, the transparency will necesscitate a change to businesses DNA. Those that don't change will die.

tags: FT, Disruption, Business, Transparency