The Tender Future

Testing

2010-11-12T20:20:00.001-08:00

http://www2.wowlights.com/Flash/ChristmasPackage/128ChristmasPackage.flv

2010-04-20T16:31:00.001-07:00

"Define your fear you must, before vanquish it you can."

- Master Yoda

Of Long-Tails, Innovator’s Dilemmas and Network Effects

2010-03-15T15:15:00.001-07:00

A colleague of mine sent me this video to ponder. I especially love getting stuff from a couple of years ago that reinforce my current thinking. I’m so glad I didn’t think of it first, it means it might actually have a prayer of becoming reality!

If for some reason your browser won’t work with the embedded video, here’s the link: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid9774584001?bctid=18884159001

I’ve commented on the parts I think salient according to the timeline.

It is interesting to note that what Dr. Flake is actually doing is a kind of post-mortem or lessons learned. For those from cross’d the creek over yonder, it’s more liken a lesson learnt. ;-)

If anyone’s interested, I just finished the Google Story which actually goes into a lot of detail about this.

11:00 Dr. Flake offers a great analogy to explain the concepts of a Long Tail.

15:00 He gives a great overview of the Innovators Dilemma which I believe payments companies have faced multiple times.

19:45 He explains the Network effect, also known as Metcalfe’s Law.

21:20 He talks about the multi-sided network of Payors and Payees.

27:30 He gives a great example of a Payments / Transactions –> Analytics –> Insights virtuous circle which one can draw back to customers at the top.

29:00 He too surmises that Payments eventually can and will be FREE. A novel concept. Listen carefully as to why though… He’s crazy, right? ;-)

32:00 Will the Payment’s company go the way of the encyclopedia salesman? Interesting question!

Free to Grow. Made to Stick. How to be successful.

2010-02-25T11:19:00.001-08:00

Ok, so I’ve just finished reading FREE and it reminded me I needed to refresh (and really finish) Made to Stick. I’m doing that now, and I figured I’d capture the thoughts before they left me while I’m at it.

Now that it has finally hit the web, I can reference the wired article about Money wanting to be FREE. forget about TwitPay, that’s not the point… How do we turn more fees into FREE to help our clients GROW? We already compete with FREE whether we want to admit it or not. It will either kill us, or make us stronger.

ACM Computers, Freedom and Privacy 2010 Call for Proposals

2010-01-29T15:30:00.001-08:00

The 20th annual ACM Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference (CFP 2010) will take place June 15 to 18 in San Jose, California. With the theme "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy in the Networked Society," the conference seeks to address how constant connection in social, communication, information, and physical environments impacts freedom and privacy, and how computers can be used to improve freedom and privacy. A diverse set of panelists and new voices will offer a number of perspectives on challenging issues, and explore cutting-edge technology, legal, and policy issues. Possible topics include social networks, cloud computing, surveillance networks, anonymity in a networked world, ethics and computing, accessibility, open source, and media concentration, advertising, and political campaigning on the Internet. The final program will be assembled partly from the proposals. The final deadline for proposals is January 31, 2010.

Proposal Abstract

The Case for Proactive Personal Information Brokering, or, "even if you aren’t on the internet, I really can find out if you are a dog!”
“The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.”
Henry Ward Beecher, "Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit", US abolitionist & clergyman (1813 - 1887)

In the age of digital data, exformation emissions can be asdangerous, problematic and costly as their atomic carbon counterparts. What are exformation emissions? Exformation in its simplest form refers to the infinite set of observable data that is, by definition, explicitly discarded or implicitly not captured, stored or otherwise available for future retrieval or analysis. Paraphrasing Tor Nørretranders, the Danish physicist, exformation is the shared cultural, conceptual or cognitive context without which communication would be impossible.

Today, people, products and places carry or have about them, or sometimes implanted in them, devices capable of of either passively or actively emitting useful data which can be observed with the appropriate means. People carrying items such as computers, cell phones, watches or personal media or gaming devices are often completely unaware of the data transmissions being produced by their digital assistants. Certain types of radio frequency identification cards, contactless credit cards, “smart” passports, security badges and medical devices all all capable of emitting data signals. Some people actually have these “chips” or RFID “tags” implanted in their bodies for tracking and authentication applications very similar to the pets and livestock of modern life. Locations have both external geospatial telematics capabilities like GPS as well as both mobile and fixed networks for a variety of localizability applications.

For the most part, much of this emitted data is harmless noise. However, there is an increasing amount of contextual and individually useful data that, if captured, could become beneficial or harmful depending on the capturer’s intended use. Using readily available off-the-shelf technology, it is possible to create an even more oppressive if not equally frightening view of the future as portrayed in the dystopian future scenarios of such classics as Lucas’ THX 1138, Brazil and Orwell’s 1984. “Joe the Plumber” jokes aside, the notion of “Big Brother” isn’t as scary to this author as is the notion of “Big Database”. All three of these pieces offer great insights into possible misuse of digital data, and this paper seeks to provide a framework for candidate solutions. The notion of portable subscribable personas, brokered credential vaults, and the democratization of the tools of reputation will all be discussed.

A quick search of one’s self on an identity search aggregator like pipl.com will quickly dash any sense of personal privacy, whether one is a digital native, immigrant or a reluctant old-world digital denier. Even those that have never had an email account, never logged into a website or owned a mobile phone can be found.

There is an opportunity for the future defenders and issuers of identity to become the brokers, protectors and defenders of the management of access to one’s personal identity, citizenry, healthcare, financial, educational, vocational, geospatial, association and affiliation, reputational and loyalty information.

Exformative Friday morning musings

2010-01-22T06:25:00.001-08:00

Smart Money 2010: What’s Next in Global Payments?
1. Exabytes of Exformation: The Value of Analytics
2. Mobile Manifesto: The New Mobile Wallet and cloud-based Money
3. The Ubiquity of Mobile and Pervasive Devices
4. Small is the New Big: The Next Generation of Micropayments
5. Payment Streams, the Payment Attribution Registry and its Application
6. Portable Reputations, Transparency and Virtuous Reviews
7. The Virtuous Circle of Commerce: Search, Select, Discuss, Buy, Review
8. Vision of a cloud-based payments engine
9. The Enterprise User Experience: The Modern Self-service Channel
10. Merchant Feedback: A killer value added transaction service
11. Automagic Expenses: A killer commercial card application
12. Healthcare Payments Automation: A 21st Century Solution
13. Exforming Consumption: Survey of current social consumer sharing sites, blippy, yelp, ebay, amazon, Angie's list, boohrah, google, yahoo and bing.
14. Search-to-Purchase: The start of the Virtuous Cycle of Commerce.
15. The Democratization of the Tools of Personal Finance: Why we need less IRS, banks and regulation and more mint.com, TurboTax, and fiscal freedom.
16. Device Hybrid - The case for a universal card and the cloud that has your back.
17. Inverting the Prosumer Profile Relationship: Democratizing the tools of Reputation
18. Subscribable Personas: Getting paid not to get lost.
19. Moore & Metcalfe – Better, Faster, Cheaper, Everywhere.
20. The new self-acquired terminals - MPOS for the People
21. Standards, standards, everywhere, but nary a company to think
21.1 ISO20022 - The Global Supply Chain, B2B integrator
21.2 ISO14443 - NFC/RFID Universal Payments + Brandmark
21.3 XML webserivces, HTTPS, SSL, ESN & USIM
22. 9 Dimensions of Security
22.1 Multi-factor Authentication

2010-01-19T05:35:00.001-08:00

SPDC small bsiness camp 9-week "FastTrack"

2010-01-19T05:33:00.001-08:00

85% of your total healthcare costs are spent in the last 18 mos of your life.

2010-01-18T20:51:00.001-08:00

Why 360 in a circle, 60 seconds in 60 minutes for an hour? Blame the Babylonians c~2000bc for the sexagesimal (base 60) system!

2010-01-12T17:13:00.001-08:00

Outsourced hobbies, supplies, tools and experience, competitions

2010-01-12T16:56:00.001-08:00

Google X-Prize, Bot-ball, Robo-dancers, Ideagora, democracy, freedom & enterprise, capitalism, military tech, great battles, world history and modern competiton

2010-01-12T16:54:00.001-08:00

Puzzles, Mensa, Teasers, Problem Solving, RCA/Root Cause Analysis, NASA/Space, Aqua/oceaneering, geology, Science & Math news, careers and professions, life

2010-01-12T16:50:00.001-08:00

Batteries, power generation, technical writing, presentations, technical research & development, publishing & intellectual property, patents, r&d and innovation

2010-01-12T16:48:00.001-08:00

Catapults, trebuchets, pumpkin chunkin, potato guns, derigibles, ham radio, wireless, game development, security, srveilance, circuits, software, audio/video

2010-01-12T16:45:00.001-08:00

Robotics, Aeronautics, RC, Rockets, FRC, FTC, FLL, JFLL, PicoCrickets, Alice, LEGO Mindstorms, Machining, Mech-E, PhysicalScience, Physics, Electronics, Gadgets

2010-01-12T16:42:00.001-08:00

Braski Bros Evening Engineering
Bricks, Brains & Bots
Modelling, Programming, Designing, Building, Research, tuning, hacking, deconstruction
Drake & Jake's

“Issuing is Identity Management” Argumentation

2010-01-11T08:48:00.001-08:00

Ok, so here’s a rough draft of my “Future of Issuing is IDM”. This is one of the future scenarios I think we should consider in planning to prepare financial services products for the future.

Plastic Cards and Paper Statements are last century's innovative representations of accounts and transaction histories. I’m not suggesting they will go away entirely, but the economic value of issuing plastic and paper is diminishing.
The need to protect accounts and transaction history continues. Issuing has always been about Knowing Your Customer (KYC), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Customer Intimacy or Insight (CI) or whatever other buzzwords mean servicing customers. It has grown into being the business of provisioning, protecting and servicing those accounts ensuring compliance with anti-money laundering (AML), PCI, SAS-70, HIPAA and other related regulatory compliance guidelines.
The world is increasingly interconnected and moving towards real-time wireless access to everything. Otherwise known as ubiquitous or pervasive access. This drives the need for integration and usability (simplicity and ease-of-use).
Increasingly sophisticated multi-factor biometrically authenticated devices are self-acquired and provisioned, (i.e. people buy their own mobile phones). Even today’s most BASIC no-frills phone has multi-factor authentication (MFA) built-in to guard against fraudulent use and privacy.
Real-time risk and fraud detection and management become paramount.

The future of Issuing is, at its core, really about protecting and servicing Identities, Reputations and Relationships.

The company that architecturally dominates this capability will be a valuable part of the financial ecosystem.

Because that’s where the money is!

2010-01-11T07:33:00.001-08:00

A colleague of mine forwarded me the following this morning and I thought it worth sharing. http://www.finextra.com/News/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=20930

I’m not saying any of us are, but I love how collectively we are somehow surprised that a malicious application made it on to one of the hottest new development platforms for mobile anything…

To paraphrase the so-called “Sutton’s Law” based on the quote that never was, when asked why William “Slick Willie” Sutton robbed banks, the reporter made up the reply, “Because that’s where the money is!”

The future isn’t as bright or as dark as it used to be, but equally dysfunctional!

As I was telling Wayne this morning, I watched George Lucas’ THX 1138 on Netflix last night and it reminded me again of the problems with “Big Internet” or more specifically, “Big Database”. THX is visually and aurally stunning and all the more interesting considering it was made in 1971 – the year this blogger was born!. It does great job of portraying the possible misuse of digital data, much like the Orwellian and Brazil-ian views of a dystopian “Big Brother” future.

As I’ve shared with some of you, a quick search of yourself on pipl.com will quickly dash any sense of personal privacy, whether you have a footprint on the internet or NOT. Go ahead. Try it. Look up someone you KNOW is not an internet user. (Yes, they do exist…)

On the internet, even if YOUR not on it, we really DO know if you’re a dog…

You’ll see why I have become so adamant about the future of Issuing being that of brokering, protecting and defending the management of access to your personal identity, citizenry, healthcare, financial, educational, vocational, geospatial, association and affiliation, reputational and loyalty information.

2010-01-09T04:58:00.001-08:00

Selling $0.05 candy for $0.25, Trent Miller started UPillar.com and is a Glenn Beck sponsor. He did it to make his mother smile. ShartkTank

2010-01-09T04:36:00.001-08:00

Destination Imagination - Volunteer and Team Organization Aggregator? Groupon, Seamless Web, Cardlytics & Moneta+Equifax

Look east, young grasshopper, look east!

2010-01-05T12:09:00.000-08:00

After my asian trip, and after reading Capitalist China, by Jonathan Woetzel of McKinsey & Co., China, Inc. and Megatrends Asia, I wonder if the maybe the NEW saying should be “Go East, Young Man!”

Beijing’s Spring – Circa 1977, Deng Xiaoping began the revolutionary economic reforms that began to open up China. They beauty of of being new to this market (INMHO) is that we can once again look to larger market titans for clues as to how to understand and tap this market.

McKinsey & Co. has been the leading management consulting firm in China for over 2 decades. They helped IBM navigate the divestiture of the IBM PC Company to Lenovo and can save us a lot of time, position us to win, and save ourselves from the humiliation of having to EXIT this vast cultural cornucopia rich with thousands of years of healthcare, and vast growth opportunities resulting from the emergence of their new lower, middle and upper-middle-classes. As witnessed during the Olympics, they seem to be emerging with disposable income and a desire to import Western ideology, goods and services.

Many people thought that IBM had finally come to its senses and exited the consumer PC marketplace with the shedding of the money draining assets of the PC company. The reality is, IBM established a beachhead in one of the largest untapped markets of the world that had literally been copying its technology for decades and selling it for considerable profit.

Chinese Copyright and their interpretation of the public domain means “The Right to Copy”!

Because the Chinese legal perspective on intellectual property is very different than our own, it was practically impossible to police or get compensation for innovations or inventions that IBM had invested billions to research, develop and patent. Without the benefit of indigenous support for the protection of their intellectual property, IBM realized that the best way to gain the respect and honor of this culture was to participate in it and turn the inherent transparency of the Chinese interpretation of “copyright” as “the right to copy” to their advantage by taking the very assets that IBM had worked so hard to develop, some could argue literally GIVING THEM to the Chinese Technology Manufacturer Lenovo as part of the divestiture deal.

In so doing, IBM bought into a cultural mindset of sharing technology for the advancement of all, and simultaneously established a local partnership with a vested interest in policing how that IP was used, developed and sold. The free economy and local business interests began to police for IBM what IBM could not protect or enforce on its own.

It was a truly innovative win-win solution to a seemingly intractable lose-lose scenario.

IBM went pervasive.

And a foot note for the personal computer market: IBM didn’t leave it, it just went invisible. Much like payments companies being content with being the action behind the transaction, IBM is kinda like the “Intel inside” of a lot of things you might not even realize. Like every entertainment or gaming console out there from Sony’s PlayStation, PSPs and market winning BluRay technology to Nintendo’s GameCubes, Wiis and DSes to even Microsoft’s XBOXes. Yes, IBM is actually the primary component and chip licensor and provider for all three gaming platforms. IBMs cell-based CPU technology is also in most Java-enabled mobile devices and they are too many to list here. But more on that later…

The Asian Opportunity…

Imagine being able to tap into the largest emergent economy with the lowest penetration of our traditional products, in an environment hungry for change, with a population teeming with excitement and a newfound source of discretionary income exceeding the American economy.

Imagine being asked by the largest credit issuer and largest cellular operator in the world, to partner with them and help them make a vision of electronic payments and mobile acceptance a reality. This is exactly the position we can be at with China (or for that matter India). PayPal exited both China and Japan because they could figure out the market dynamics or how these economies worked or how to differentiate their products.

For inspiration and a preview of what the transformational nature and the future of mobile commerce looks like, we need only visit Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong or Shanghai to see how so-called 4G, or 4th generation, wireless broadband technologies, SmartCards, 2- and 3-D QR codes or barcodes, embedded radio tags and near field communications can be put to effective use right here at home. An example would be Sony’s FeliCa product, now a “legacy” technology in Asia, as it has been in production since 1996. 1996!

The South Korean’s, Japanese, Chinese and Taiwanese are moving ahead, essentially without us. What will our response be? Will the west lose the innovative edge?

2010-01-03T15:51:00.001-08:00

Zingo, blippy, reputations, rating, quality, feedback, closing the loop. Loopy! Why $500m for Yelp?

2010-01-03T15:33:00.001-08:00

CFV=Cash Flow Velocity. Amperage vs. Voltage and Watts. Measurement, pressure, capacity, throughput, thresholds.

2010 the year for Payments Innovation Tipping points convergence?

2010-01-01T11:23:00.000-08:00

Will the down economy be the ultimate catalyst for real payments innovation in 2010? there are lots of reasons to think so…

Intel Chairman Andy Grove’s Only the Paranoid Survive said that “ a strategic inflection point is when the balance of force shifts from the old structure, from the old ways of doing business and the old ways of competing, to the new. Before the strategic inflection point, the industry simply was more like the old. After it, it is more like the new. It is a point where the curve has subtly but profoundly changed, never to change back again.”

Looking back on the Payment Card industry it seems clear there have been at least two major Tipping Points. McNamara’s insight into getting cardholders and merchants on a single platform seems so obvious now, but in 1950 the notion of a credit card was far from obvious, in fact it seemed down right risky!

Dr. Evan’s book, Paying with Plastic, 2nd edition contends that the 2nd so-called discontinuous innovation came in the 1960’s with the emergence of American Express and the birth of co-opetition. He then goes on to speculate or hypothesize about a couple more that I’d like to share with you today. While they are all more or less technology driven, the first 3 are mostly technologically driven, and the last 4 are but what’s interesting to me, and hopefully exciting for you, is their implications and the unique potential I think we share in being able to capitalize on them.

Perhaps if you squint a little and tilt your head sideways, or take a step back you might see that we might be in the midst of a few more such inflection points, though when they might specifically occur is yet to be known.

Biometric Security, Trust & Confidence
Globally Ubiquitous & Unique Wireless
Mobile Everything (including commerce), and Smaller, Better, Faster, Cheaper
The democratization of the tools of payment acceptance, personal finance and choice
Viable alternatives for digital Cash Replacement

What do you think?

New Technology doesn’t deliver the ROI until it is applied in new ways.

2009-12-16T11:53:00.000-08:00

To paraphrase the now famous McKinsey report on the “Wal-mart Effect”, “the great economic boost in productivity in the late 20^th century didn’t come from the introduction of new and innovative internet or web technologies… it came from their practical application in boring and mundane industries.” Just ask Wal-mart: Computers, Networked Communications, Wireless Technology, Bar Code Scanning, Inventory Control and Accounting Systems had been around for multiple decades before Wal-mart figured out how to perfect their use. They weren’t the first to employ them. Sears, JC Penny’s, K-Mart, Macy’s, Montgomery Wards, Service Merchandise, Belk and countless others had all introduced those technologies, many even decades before Wal-mart “figured it out”.

I believe the telecommunications (specifically the broadband wireless and internet) and banking and finance industries (specifically payments and reputations) are at such a convergent “new way of doing things” tipping point as well. The card brands (Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express) have had nearly 50 years to till the ground and make it fertile for a universal payment device. Looking at the rapid (dare I say meteoric) expansion of China Union Pay and the emergent alternative brands like PayPal and OboPay, I’d say we’re poised for a payment brand shoot-out. Visa and MasterCard have enjoyed a significant duopoly for a good 30 years now and their relatively recent change in for-profit status dictates increased competition and differentiation.

Add to that the banks and their consolidation, they search for value and differentiation and their general “missing the boat” with respect to demography, marketing acumen and reputational integrity, many Millennials are looking at their pre-paid Payroll cards, local Wal-mart Money Center’s or 7-Eleven Holding’s corner market and wondering what’s the point of a bank, when their local mall kiosk, or the phone in their pocket can give them access to remote deposit and check capture, loans and mortgage options (like LendingTree), their credit union, money market account, alternative payment brand (think PayPal) or institutional trading account (like E*trade) and gives them everything they want or need in terms of financial services.

I think we are ready to do IT differently.