In theory, these technologies relax the tension that currently hinders the potential of online commerce: consumers want greater control of personal information, while merchants want to use that information to improve their services and marketing.

This sounds great, but let’s also consider the challenges to the adoption of these technologies. It is obvious why most businesses are reluctant to embrace these technologies. Many internet companies have business models that are directly based on capitalizing on personal information. Even companies with traditional business models use this information to improve their marketing and analytics. Almost every business sees potential value in the personal information of consumers, and is therefore reluctant to relinquishing even partial access to this data.

Privacy advocates, on the other hand, love these technologies. For many years they have been pushing for tougher privacy laws and see in these technologies a way for merchants to preserve personal privacy without significantly compromising their business models. They would like to see legislation that puts the user in total control of their information.

So, how can we convince people that these technologies can resolve the tension between information privacy and information access? And what role, if any, the government should play?

In my view government, industry, and privacy advocates all have constructive roles to play.

Government has an important responsibility when it comes to privacy legislation. Current electronic privacy laws are outdated and must be revised to reflect changes in technology over the last two decades. Carefully designed privacy laws that respect legitimate business needs can spur innovation in technology, or even lead to new business models.

Businesses should realize the potential benefits of these technologies. In many cases, relinquishing partial access to information will reduce the need for compliance and expensive security controls without affecting underlying business models. This can lead to more trusted and cost-effective solutions. These technologies might even open doors to sensitive information that is off-limits today and enable completely new business opportunities.

Privacy advocates also have to realize that putting users in total control of their information is not a panacea. It can easily burden already-overwhelmed consumers with having to manage information and make decisions that they don’t have time or even the desire to make on a daily basis.

We should not give up, however. Online commerce and information-sharing has already demonstrated powerful and positive effects on the global economy and the livelihood of millions. New technologies that can reduce the friction between consumers and merchants can be catalysts for the creation of new services and business models that will lead to a more trustworthy business environment. That feels like something worth fighting for.

To be fair, companies often collect personal information to fulfill legitimate needs. For example, online service providers use personal information such as email or phone number to verify the identity of their customers. Merchants collect credit card numbers to charge for online purchases, pharmacies use medical history to fulfill prescriptions, and location services providers use physical location for navigation purposes. Finally consumers willingly store personal information at Google and Facebook for convenient access and sharing with family and friends.

A proliferation of online services has resulted in too much personal information being stored at too many places and this presents a new dilemma. Consumers worry that the information they willingly disclose is at risk for theft or accidental release and companies face onerous legal requirements to protect the personal information they have.

As a professional cryptographer (someone who specializes in digital security technology), this issue fascinates me. I’d like to share with you some new privacy enhancing technologies that can reduce this tension between consumers and companies. In my next blog post I will explore the implications of these technologies for the future of digital security.

These new privacy enhancing technologies are based on the principle of selective disclosure, i.e., instead of disclosing personal information, only disclose certain attributes of that information. For example, a user can prove to a service that she is at least 21 years old and a Connecticut resident, without revealing her actual birth date, name or address. Or a student can get online access to her college library by proving that she is a current student without revealing her student ID or name.

Similar technologies can also enhance privacy in business transactions. Instead of providing an actual credit card number, for example, the new technologies would disguise that number, while still verifying for the online merchant that the consumer possesses a valid credit card. The purchase can proceed, and the merchant is paid, but the merchant never sees the actual card number.

These technologies also apply to personal information that consumers store at sites like Google, Facebook and Amazon. This information, too, can be encrypted in new ways that allow it to be searched and processed selectively, minimizing the amount of personal data that is exposed to these service providers.

I should mention here that this gain in privacy does not come at the expense of accountability. Although these technologies provide some anonymity to consumers, privileged authorities always have the ability to revoke this anonymity in case of crime, suspected fraud, or emergency.

There are however, legitimate obstacles that we will have to overcome as a society before these technologies can get a serious foothold.

In order to keep employees engaged in innovation, you need to make it relevant to their work. At PB, we do this by connecting our innovation challenges to existing business unit goals. Early in the year, we asked each of our business units to identify one or more of their existing objectives where the path to success was not obvious. We called these Innovation Relevant Objectives or “IROs”. These objectives served as the basis for many of the employee challenges that we ran during the year and they ensured that our innovation activities were tightly aligned with our business goals.

After three years of running this program, we continue to be reminded that delivering real value requires a relentless pursuit of results. We knew that it was important to publish specific actions that would be taken as a result of every employee challenge, but we have found is that this alone is not enough. Each business unit needs to define a transparent process for tracking results against those actions. Rather than define a single corporate reporting structure, we are currently working with our business unit partners to define their own unique approach to tracking and reporting which will roll out in 2012.

These are just two of the insights gained through our experience with employee innovation. Even after processing over 4000 ideas with 6000 comments and initiating over 800 actions, we continue to learn and adapt. We are already working on plans for 2012 when we will make an even stronger connection between innovation and business objectives while we continue to pursue measurable results.

- Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point)

About 10 years ago, Malcolm Gladwell published his thesis that ideas “spread just like viruses do.” The Tipping Point is predicated on people, content (the idea), and context (situational environment). Last week, Pat McGrew tweeted that300K Finnish Itella NetPosti users can now use their iPhone, iPad & Android to get access to invoices, payslips, and letters.  On Friday, Norway Post announced that Norway Post is to launch a digital mail system, allowing customers to choose to receive mail in a digital mailbox as well as physically — with that digital mailbox based on a person’s street address and national ID number.

Moreover, we know that more than half of the population of Denmark is using their consumer consolidation servicewhich Pitney Bowes helped develop.  And most recently, Siemens Mobility and Swiss Post have agreed to pursue a joint marketing strategy of an automation offering for post and postal service providers that converts physical mail into electronic mail accessible from consumers mobile devices.

The context is clear: ubiquitous broadband (wired and 3G/4G), WiFi, and an explosion of smartphones and tablet computers.

The content is clear: secure access to my mail when, where, and how I want.

This idea - a fire lit in the Nordics some 10 years ago is now spreading like wildfire – and it looks like it is ready to reach American shores.

Is America at that tipping point?  We think so.  But viewed from our shores, the idea goes well beyond mail delivery. Our consumer research shows that how we as individuals organize, manage, retrieve, and interact with the critical electronic content in the home is just as important as the convenience of how we receive it.  And that research strongly influenced the design of the Volly digital delivery service.

Context: Check.  Content: Check.  In a few months it will be up to people – the Volly service users – to determine if we are headed for that tipping point.

-Bernie

For the past 18 months, I have been immersed in a project to help Pitney Bowes create something completely digital, and completely new. Today, I experienced real joy as we announced this new service to the world. It’s called Volly™, and it promises to bring the real advantages of digital delivery and interaction to the medium of physical mail.

You can read all about it in the press release that I have pasted below. If you’re a mailer, prepare yourself for a future in which you can have richer and more robust interactions with your customers, and at a much lower cost. If you’re a consumer, hang in there for a few more months. We’re putting the finishing touches on a service that will help you save time, save money, and put you in complete control of who markets to you.

Welcome to the future of customer communications. It’s called Volly.

Pitney Bowes to Launch Volly™: Secure Digital Delivery Service that Connects Mailers and Consumers

Pitney Bowes is not the only company relying on software and employee participation to develop innovative solutions for its business challenges. AT&T has 40,000 employees putting their heads together to develop a host of ideas that management then culls for further development, selecting the ones they consider to offer the greatest potential.

It is perhaps no coincidence that employee participation has spawned far greater results than originally anticipated. When colleagues in different Pitney Bowes divisions started exchanging ideas, the collaboration netted the company three contracts worth $383,940. As Murray explains, “It’s people connecting — and sometimes there are unintended consequences.” Then again, as we know, “Every connection is a new opportunity.”

Clearly, innovation in many companies is no longer restricted to an elite “brain trust” in upper management. By seeking out the advice of employees across the board, companies are reaping vast rewards and increasing morale. I’d like to hear your ideas on how businesses can connect with employees to develop innovative solutions for pressing business problems (and opportunities).

Theresa Amabile, Ph.D., from the Harvard Business School defines innovation as “…the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization.”  Note that creativity is certainly a part of innovation but true success requires a successful implementation program.  Implementation programs conjure up images of project managers, process experts, navigators of corporate hierarchies, …not  free-thinking artists and design gurus.

Below (in no particular order ) are five types of personalities that can really make a difference in innovation success:

Futurists – Futurists are the blue sky thinkers that focus on what could be possible.  They are often early adopters of technology and are strongly motivated by thinking about “what if…” and “just imagine if we could…”  In my experience, this is the group people naturally think of when they think of innovation.

Challengers – These are the people that constantly question the status quo.  Their favorite word has to be “why?” They may not be implementation experts but they have an innate ability to spot inefficiencies or ineffective ways of doing things.

Connectors – Connectors can be the glue that holds an innovation program together. They often know enough of the business challenges and technological underpinnings to serve as a bridge in the organization.  This is the group that can accelerate idea development by connecting the experts in the organization.

Tinkerers – Tinkerers enjoy the iterative aspects of innovation.  Typically these individuals are very methodical and structured in their thinking.  In developing the light bulb, Thomas Edison tested over 6,000 vegetable materials in search of the perfect filament (before settling on the metal Tungsten).  Tinkerers tend to work best when the new idea concept is pretty well defined but no one is quite sure on the best implementation.

Creative Salespeople – At the end of the day, an innovation’s success is measured by market response.  Creative salespeople are able to identify early adopters and describe new solutions in ways that resonate with these initial customers.  Creative salespeople often come from professional services teams where they’ve developed deep insights into customer pain points.

Innovation managers need to understand how and when these different innovator personalities should be engaged to take advantage of their skills.  These managers often need to reset their organizations’ perceptions around innovation and who is innovative.

What type of innovator are you?

While shorter development cycles are more cost effective and can drive efficiency (reducing need for re-work and re-design before production), the real prize is in getting better product to market faster than the competition.  Common characteristics of the top performers included:

• Pressure to shorten time-to-market schedules
• Involving key stakeholders (across the development value chain) in the product development decision making process
  Real-time visibility to product data and information for all stakeholders
• Published objectives for each stakeholder (again – across the development chain)
• Access to enabling technologies – Virtual meeting systems, Web 2.0 plug-ins (wikis, blogs, forums), Open Source applications, Product Lifecycle management solutions, Product Data Management solutions

The collaboration tools and processes espoused at the Aberdeen Leadership in Product Development Summit are intended to help manufacturers reach their ambitious 2011 goals of a 7.9 percent increase in revenue, while keeping job growth down to just 1.1 percent. In a jobless recovery, it’s what the best companies have to do to succeed in an economy still struggling to find its momentum. Using the summit’s techniques, these best-in-class companies are proving that it can be done. In looking at your own product development, what tools would you like to implement?

I wanted to know more about how cops were using sophisticated data collection and analysis and taking it to the streets, and I was told to talk to three police services in the Ontario, Canada, area, each using the PBBI Crime Analysis Bundle in surprising (and very crafty) ways, including actually predicting crimes before they happen.  Paul Sweet, chief of police for the Cobourg Police Service, told me, “We’re effectively leveraging crime data in ways we couldn’t do in the past.  We can take the randomness out of our patrols and prioritize patrol areas.” It’s not just crime; the Cobourg police concentrate as much on citizen protection. Recently, Cobourg police analyzing PBBI location intelligence data saw a sudden spike in car accidents in one neighborhood and, correlating the accidents to area demographics, figured out why: It was an aging neighborhood with many elderly drivers. More patrols were sent to keep a watchful eye out for older, somewhat shakier drivers.

With more than 50,000 residents, crime prevention is a top priority for the Belleville Police Service. The service had purchased new security cameras for the city’s downtown business area. The question was, where exactly should they put them? A Belleville police team worked with the city’s downtown business council to analyze crime data from the area, such as break-ins, auto theft and drunken driving. The data easily pinpointed areas that needed the close surveillance with the new security cameras, and the police continue to analyze the cameras’ effectiveness.

Probably the most intriguing story comes from the Owen Sound Police, who wanted an intuitive crime analysis that would actually anticipate what crimes would happen next—and where. Crime prevention is one thing; crime prediction is another. Determining crime trends once required personnel to study individual crime reports from the field to try to put the picture together. Now using the Pitney Bowes Business Insight Crime Analysis solution, officers can instantly create “hot spot” maps that show trending crime areas, the types of crimes, and even the time of day when most of these crimes occur. The service can pour patrols into these areas specifically when and where most crime occurs—knowing exactly what kind of behavior they’re looking for, ready to pounce.

The ability to analyze, map and interpret crime data almost instantly—virtually unimaginable just a few years ago—has become an essential tool for more and more police departments. There are only so many police on the streets, and PBBI solutions have become the tools of choice in deploying those cops to where they can effectively fight crime.

All the evidence about PBBI’s Crime Analysis tools is found here http://www.pbinsight.com/products/location-intelligence/applications/mapping-analytical/mapinfo-crime-profiler/ . And our investigation is ongoing: share your ideas about other ways data analysis and location intelligence can contribute to public safety in the comments section below.