Hype Cycles

The technology maturity hype cycles of 2009 from Gartner were just released. Since working as a consultant during the boom years around Y2K the hype cycle model has fascinated.

It is such a simple way to chart a very complex phenomena and convey a smart insight at the same time.

Highlights this year is that cloud computing and e-book readers are at inflated exceptions and are about to crash. Another assertion is that microblogging services like Twitter/Facebook are about to crashing this instant due to spam and noise. Wikis on the other hand are on the return.

Gartner might be right about their predictions and they are probably wrong on several as well, but that is not the only point. Thanks to this model, discussions start and new ideas pop up. Sit down and design your own hype cycle it in your business area, and its almost magical how the pieces fall into place and insights start to flow.

Access to more info at: http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1124212

90-9-1 Community!

As described here before [1], power laws are very potent at describing many type of phenomena. Latest principle is the 90-9-1 principle of online communities [2].

The concept is simple. In an online community, 1 percent are creators of content, 9 percent are editors of content and the remaining 90 percent are just the curious audience watching. The phenomenal thing is that this rule seems to be proportional, so that getting more creators to a site, increases the editors and the audience.


My bet is that many users act in different roles depending on the site they use, but that there is a small minority of heroes out there that generates most of the community content - and hence drives the traffic.


[1] The Vital Few or the Trivial Many?
[2] 90-9-1 Principle

Principles of the Greatest Companies

What makes a company truly great?

The research by Jim Collins presented in his book Good to Great [1] from 2000 gives me a lot of inspiration. Collins researched the stock market and found the companies that had beat their market segment by 7 to 15 times over a 15 year period. The team then found the common qualities the great companies shared. Some of the results were really surprising. Interestingly, the list did not include companies like GE, Coca Cola and Microsoft. These did not qualify.

Below are the qualities :

1. Level five leadership
2. First Who, Then What. Pick the right leadership team
3. Confront the brutal facts - Murphy's Law
4. Hedgehog Concept (Strategy)
5. Discipline in culture
6. Use technology to accelerate

See [2] for a thorough walk through of the complete set of ideas that were introduced in the book. The book is also a very good read.

[1] Good to Great - cool study of the greatest business transformations.
[2] Jim Collins' web site