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April 2007 Archive

From Creative Destruction to Billionaire Creation

I've enjoyed writing in the past about Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction - a key aspect of capitalism, which is unique in that under this type of economy and society, we are ever churning and creating new businesses, even as the capitalist economy destroys the old ones. But when I read something like I just read tonight, that academic classic seems somewhat dated.

JP Rangaswami, current CIO of Global Services at BT, has a blog, Confused of Calcutta, which I read on occasion. He had a great "musing" that I read tonight that I thought was highly complementary of Schumpeter's work from 40 years ago - updating it somewhat, if you will. The gist is to focus on the creation of great wealth and the value that comes about from the destruction of change and churn.

When hardware meant money, there were hardware billionaires. They made money Shifting Tin, and gave software away for free. And one day there wasn't any margin left in hardware.

Software ruled.

When software meant money, there were software billionaires. They made money Shifting Code, and gave services away for free. And one day there wasn't any margin left in software.

Services ruled.

When services meant money, there were services billionaires. And so on and so forth.

Infrastructure commoditises and is itself commoditised. Otherwise it wouldn't be infrastructure. When you dominate a market, you run the risk of becoming part of the infrastructure, and margins collapse as people look for differentiation beyond that infrastructure.

This process of active commoditisation takes place in every economic cycle, changing scarcities to abundances and, in the process, creating new scarcities. The latest scarcity is talent, human ingenuity. Not something that is going to be commoditised in a hurry. Musing about Open Source Billionaires, from Confused of Calcutta, a blog about information

With those thoughts in mind, think about the connection between Metropoitan Broadband and Attracting Talent, which I've written a lot about in the past month. If Talent is the current scarcity, then we should all be thinking about how to attract it - that is, if we want to be more competitive. And isn't it elegant to create a new abundance, broadband access, by abolishing a former scarcity with new infrastructure, and in so doing, address this new scarcity, access to talent?

Posted on April 28, 2007 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

New Spectrum to the Rescue

Dare we hope that the FCC may finally act in the public interest and bring us some sound public policy when it comes to spectrum management? Spectrum Policy may well be one of the biggest barriers to popular understanding of wireless broadband. Is there a more arcane and complex topic?

Check out this website, Fractals of Change, for one of the most accessible explanations of potential upcoming changes in spectrum policy that just may hold promise for us all. In his post entitled "Good News from the FCC," blogger Tom Evslin describes the events this week at the FCC, where - finally - they have laid out plans to have a real dialogue on what to do with the 700 MHz spectrum swatches that will become avaialble when analogue TV spectrum are reallocated in 2009.

To find out why this is vital to our national prospects for broadband access, I encourage you to read not only Tom's current post, but also the two links he has at the tail end of his article, which provide very good background for the novice to better understand spectrum policy and the physics of radio frequency (RF). See Spectrum Serendipity from April 11, 2007, as well as Internet 2.0 is Open Spectrum from September 25, 2006.

I encourage you to brew up a nice cup of hot tea and sit down for a good read. Or grab a cold brew, if that is more your speed. However you read it, you will find it time well spent.

Posted on April 28, 2007 at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

So, What's Next Then?

Here's what I see on the horizon, as Earthlink takes a poca siesta after all its hard work (see my previous post). I make these conclusions based on my observations in Texas, which I believe is a pretty strong indicator for the rest of the nation.

First, the market is stimulated. There are literally hundreds of city leaders who are actively looking at this topic at this point, and not just in Texas. The prospect of a free lunch is a powerful stimulant (if not all the way into what we would call an attractive aphrodisiac). So, EarthLink got a lot of attention from cities, and like the Belle of the Ball, she now wishes to retire to her table to contemplate her next set of dance partners. Makes sense. Understood.

Second, a number of choices for engagement in metropolitan broadband loom before those city leaders newly interested in connectivity infrastructure. Sure, the Public Private Partnership model may have been the Model Du Jour, as long as cities thought they could get a great deal from service providers. And while many projects will not let go of that hope too quickly, the smart city leaders are already moving on and considering their alternatives.

Medium-sized ciites have realized they need a full-boat of engaged parties to attract a private partner - they may just take all those agitated and excited anchor tenant parties down a different path, into a new and different business model discussion, like say, a city-owned network - a bond issue or a grant proposal is not out of the question with sufficient community support. Other cities will no doubt strike up a dialogue with their incumbent broadband service providers, challenging them to expand their purview and vision for their particular service territory, based on all this newfound interest. And some of those discussions will bear fruit.

Third, wireless broadband applications are getting almost as much attention these days as the wireless broadband network technology itself. As the market matures and general understanding of Wi Fi mesh and WiMAX gains ground, city leaders shift their attention to the business case and the applications that will run on the networks. This is a rich area that is bound to see much more attention during the remainder of this year.

And finally, another big player may just come along to partner with these big cities who have active plans for metropolitan broadband. There are a limited number of attractive markets in the US and we are falling further behind in broadband penetration. And, watch for some medium-sized players to get more active with the smaller cities. I'm not convinced that the Public Private Partnership model is dead, just because EarthLink took a breather.

So, if just these four trends play out as described above, will we view the impact of EarthLink's announcement with a positive or negative spin after six months? Is it so bad if motivated cities maintain their momentum and take control of their destiny, engaging their communities in a healthy strategic discussion? If new business models emerge and gain press attention? If new, exciting wireless broadband applications stimulate new dialogue about the impacts of anytime, anywhere broadband networks? What is the true potential of public and private sector joint innovation? This is a national discussion on the future of broadband in the US that has been needed for quite some time, after all. So let's keep on talking!

There's much more to come, but like EarthLink, I need to take a short break right now and go check on my hamburgers, smoking out on the grill. It is Saturday evening, after all, and burnt hamburgers for the Cooper clan, while not as significant as a corporate catastrophe, are certainly a more immediate and personal risk for me!

Posted on April 28, 2007 at 06:46 PM | Comments (0)

Earthlink Sneezes and the Municipal Wireless Market Catches Cold? Not so Fast ....

I felt the need to share my opinion on this one.

Esme Vos wrote a piece on MuniWireless regarding the recent announcement by Earthlink. Titled, "EarthLink to evaluate performance of muni Wi-Fi business," the article carried the shocking news that Earthlink is operating like a well-run publicly traded company. Namely, they intend to pursue business practices that are in their best interest and have no intention of going off willy-nilly, chasing every Tom, Dick, and Harry municipal RFP. This is news?

Here's what Earthlink said, according to the San Jose Mercury News:

EarthLink Inc. said Thursday it will study the performance of its municipal wireless Internet networks in four cities - Philadelphia, New Orleans and California's Anaheim and Milpitas - before deciding how to move forward with similar Wi-Fi networks elsewhere.

While more cities are expressing interest in striking deals with the company, EarthLink is "not yet able to establish that comfort level" that the investments are really profitable, said Kevin Dotts, EarthLink's chief financial officer.

That doesn't mean EarthLink is pulling the plug on cities under contract, like Houston, which would eventually be the nation's largest network at about 600 square miles, Dotts said. Instead, the company wants to review a range of factors to determine where it would be most profitable to invest what Dotts estimates are up to $40 million a year in capital expenditure.

Esme provided good analysis, if I can summarize here: the day of the free lunch is over - Earthlink is not withdrawing from the market, but they will be selective in their market focus, and will show a preference for large, dense, broadband-using cities. No kidding. I'm not suprised - these projects cost money, and Earthlink has access to a lot of money, but there is a bottom to that barrel of cash.

Sadly, Earthlink has provided much of what we would call excitement in the first phase of this new industry. Many times I have thought - "Thank God for Earthlink." So when they announce that they have enough to chew on, thank you, and will be taking a more - shall we say "balanced" view of the market - I'm not surprised. They are hitting limits in their cash, in their strategic focus, and in their ability to staff these engagements. Indeed, there will be some ripples for the cities.

One final paragraph caught my eye in the Mercury story: He added the company will closely study the four designated markets over the next few months before defining its strategy. He said it will probably focus any expansion on large metropolitan areas like Chicago.

Focus on large cities...so, medium-sized cities like those I've been writing about on these pages will not see the Godzilla of Municipal Wireless bidding on their projects...I'm betting that these city officials are not surprised either, although they are probably more than a little disappointed. So, it's not the end of the world, but rather a return to normal business behavior. That's the way I see it, and I believe that the sane city officials out there will see the same picture. The bigger story is that there are so many cities eager for Earthlink to work with them - hello, that's called "market demand." We may need to haggle on price, but its still a sign of demand. Who will step in to fill it? That's what I want to know...

Here are my comments on Esme's article, for the record. My first paragraph addressed an alarmist who commented first, claiming that this announcement is a death knell for the industry. I beg to differ.

First, to address the brief but highly inaccurate note above from RickT - those with closed minds and tightly-held opinions are bound to see any news or setbacks in this industry as confirmation of their opinions. But it's a far stretch to get from the Earthlink announcement to Rick's "muni Wi Fi projects are dying quickly across the country." Give me a break!

What I see is one more sign of an industry that is evolving fairly rapidly. From the surprise offer of Earthlink to fund the Philadelphia network a few short years ago to any number of city projects that sought to negotiate a similar free lunch, we all knew this was a phase in the birth of a new industry, a phase not meant to last for long. How long could one-sided deals last, after all?

A more balanced read of the situation is that these networks are tools that can accomplish a lot, but projects have to be fiscally sound and widely demanded in a community, just like with any other major capital project. They're not for everyone. But for those towns and cities with real interest, and there are a lot of them out there now, wireless mesh networks offer an alternative to speed up deployment of broadband. We're in the middle of a paradigm shift, and we're not sure what it looks like on the other end.

Projects will require more effort but I believe they will continue, because many projects make a lot of sense, and there is definite interest around, which I encounter daily. Earthlink, exciting as it has been and still is, is not the only game in town, and it has its limits. Cities are newly empowered and are open to new possibilities, and there's no putting this toothpaste back in the tube.

Also, I commented on the San Jose article as follows:

EarthLink is to be applauded for stepping out into a new industry and making waves, and now, stepping back to evaluate its first phase of engagement. I call that good business sense.

Thanks in part to the initiative of EarthLink, there are now hundreds of cities engaged in a lively debate about their appropriate role in expanding broadband infrastructure in their cities. Before EarthLink's foray into municipal broadband, cities by and large deferred to their cable and telecom franchisees and hoped to get noticed for broadband expansion. After EarthLink's recent activity, cities have a new perspective and sense of empowerment - the paradigm has shifted.

My question - who will step up next and push the envelope out a little further? EarthLink opened the door onto this new market, but now they need to stop to catch their breath.

But as they paused, they left the door open for another to take some initiative and gain some press in the coming months. Who will it be?

Posted on April 28, 2007 at 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

Inspiration at the Beach

I went to my first TAGITM annual meeting this week. It felt a little like that first trip to meet the parents after you've been dating that special someone, in so much as the gathering had a family feel to it, and I was clearly new to the party and not even a public sector employee - an outsider on two fronts. But I was warmly received and felt at home from the start.

And a party it was...The Texas Association of Government IT Managers clearly knows how to have a good time and still get some work done. It was a blast, and I met some very nice people. It didn't hurt that we were in South Padre Island, a Spring Break getaway at the southernmost tip of Texas, and the weather was as pleasant as it could be. I came back yesterday evening tired, but with my fill of shrimp, sun, and cold beer.

And I came back inspired, because my vision of what municipal wireless networks can be here in Texas was confirmed. One interesting analogy came to me this morning, as I reflected on the week.

On Tuesday afternoon, I participated in a sandcastle building contest, which was really a teambuilding exercise. It turned out great - they had a Sandcastle Consultant (your mental image is correct - think Robinson Crusoe and you're not far off) start things off by giving us a 15-minute Basics course, and then we had a sandcastle expert assigned to each of the five teams. Good start.

The team captains were designated according to which person on each team had signed up first - the most motivated were our leaders? Good start. As we milled about, I whispered in our team leader's ear that I had received cudos in the past for a sand octopus I had built on a previous vacation, and it was pretty easy to do. Could we work that into the project guidelines?

The contest gave each 10-person team a set of tools and a consultant and a common goal of building a sand object with a "computer-based" theme. What if our octopus were typing on a laptop? He went with my idea and I volunteered to go up to my suite to bring down some beer. Ten minutes later, I show up with a twelve-pack and the octopus was already taking shape. As I watched the consultant and another working on the laptop and the head, I saw the majority of the team working on one tentacle each. The teambuilding part was working well. We were ahead of the competition, and had ample time to work on details. The tentacles spread out, looking like wires to me. What if the tentacles turned into cables - I spread the suggestion that we have some fun with the tentacles - one ended up sporting an RJ45 terminal.

Each of the other tentacles took on its own ending: besides the two tentacles typing on the laptop, we had one holding a Blackberry, another a cell phone, one with a can of Bud Light, a curled tentacle holding a pen, and finally, the piece de resistance, a tentacle grasping a pair of crimping pliers. The finishing touch had the Octopus sporting a big grin and a badge that read "CIO." After all, what CIO wouldn't be happy with eight arms to help him/her get all their work done?

Through some mix up in the judging, we ended up with a second-place trophy. I won't go into the winning team's design, but clearly, there had been some bribing of judges going on. In the end, the exercise worked and we had a lot of fun playing in the sand.

It was a fun exercise, and for me, it showed both the organic nature of creativity and the concept of emergence. From a kernel of an idea and a vision, the team went on to create personal touches and add florishes that only came to mind as they built the tentacles. I couldn't have imagined a better outcome.

I see the same process unfolding in the wireless projects at hand here in Texas. An important first step is to establish some clear project guidelines and an open spirit of teamwork and cooperation. Everyone involved should have a say and the project should be flexible enough to include flashes of inspiration. The end should not be pre-ordained, but should have a goal in mind to start with.

Once a process like a metropolitan broadband network is kicked off, it's impossible to say where the chemistry of the project will take it. The leaders should maintain sufficient flexibility and an open mind, so that when a better idea or modification floats up from the surface, it can be accommodated and added in, as long as it conforms to the general idea, is acceptable to most on the team, and is an improvement. That way, the project truly will reflect the interests and desires of the local community and they will have a sense of ownership and authorship.

The cooperation, team spirit and sense of fun that I saw from this group of public sector IT professionals bodes well for Texas and its connected broadband future. As long as we find a way to let everyone contribute, I think our future is in good hands and we will see plenty of creative energy and innovation shaping the outcomes.

Posted on April 27, 2007 at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)

Why Fi? It's Where the Growth Is

We continue to see so much focus in the news on wireless activity in the "larger urban centers" - witness the news this week regarding Earthlink and ATT competing to win Chicago (here and here ), Boston's RFI last week (here and here), Cleveland's RFP this week (here), and Houston's City Council approve the Wi Fi deal struck with Earthlink (here), not to mention plans for Los Angeles a couple of months ago (here).

But I'm telling you, mid-sized cities can really transform themselves with these technologies, and given the tightly-knit societies they enjoy relative to the larger cities, they have an even better opportunity to achieve a more complete transformation. It may not make the national press when a mid-sized city launches a wireless project, but it's big news in the local market, and it will continue to be as more and more local leaders realize the potential of wireless broadband and their ability to start a project immediately. It's not just about the big cities, although they draw the interest of the big companies and that makes those projects newsworthy.

Why all the fuss, for the big or the little cities? Wireless is the next frontier, as broadband matures and more and more get used to the broadband lifestyle.

"More and more of the larger urban centers within these markets will continue to see developments in their wireless infrastructure such as municipal Wi-Fi and WiMax networks, which will not only make it more attractive for non-users to get online, but also introduce new users to richer content offerings from the start of their online experience," Cruikshank said. "The implications from a content and overall online experience are profound."
EE Times: Wired broadband adoption to slow, but wireless shows potential

This well-written article describes Ipso Impact's annual Face of the Web study, released this week. Key findings are that broadband usage among Internet users has climbed to 77% (up 7 percentage points), while dial-up has declined among that same group to 21%. As broadband becomes the overwhelmingly dominant form of Internet access, it's inevitable that the growth rate decline.

But it's a different story when it comes to Wireless Internet access:

Only 15% of Internet users connect with wireless devices today, but the growth of household laptop ownership (34%) and the growing popularity of mobile browsing could change that, according to the study. One in three adults had accessed the Internet through mobile devices by the end of last year, the study found.

Wireless, quite simply, is where the growth is in the Internet world today.

And wireless usage is driven by productivity, according to this article, which covers another angle from the same survey.

Considering a wide range of innovations over the past 50 years, respondents said the following have had the most significant impact in terms of saving them time and increasing their productivity (up to three responses were possible):

* Internet - 60 percent
* Personal computers/laptops - 50 percent
* Mobile phones - 43 percent
* E-mail - 23 percent
* Cars and motorcycles - 22 percent.

In the coming five years, respondents predicted the following will have the most significant impact on productivity and saving time (up to three responses were possible):

* Wireless networks - 50 percent
* Greater computing speed - 44 percent
* Smart cards - 41 percent
* Internet/broadband - 40 percent
* All forms of portable computing - 39 percent.

Wireless Will Deliver Next Big Productivity Boost, Says Global Survey - Apr 19, 2007

People will use the Wireless Broadband Internet more and more, the more access they have to it, and the better they understand it. And they will be seeking greater productivity. And that is why cities are pursuing these projects.

While all cities can benefit from this trend, it is the smaller, more cohesive and activist cities that will get there first and reap the largest gains.

Posted on April 22, 2007 at 08:25 AM | Comments (0)

Striving for the Top v. Avoiding the Bottom

It strikes me that there is a corrollary in how we look at the public sector's role in society and how we look at broadband's potential to play a role. I think what I've been promoting in my last month or so of blogging is that there is a middle road, where the public sector plays a Catalyst Role.

When a city government pursues more government efficiency through a project to expand the broadband infrastructure to which it has access, it stimulates a debate and a broader vision in the community to seek a more functional level. That potential for debate and dialogue can be left to just sit there, or it can be leveraged for greater good.

And while I clearly favor the visionary approach using Best Practices and Standards of Excellence, I don't think that government is the solution to all of our problems. I think that harnessing multiple viewpoints and public / private synergies is a path to the solutions and represents a more functional view of local government and society.

There are no doubt a world of possibilities in looking at different perspectives a society can have, but two dominant approaches could be defined as follows.

First, there is a perspective of setting an optimal standard for public sector activity based on best practices and ideals - Striving for a Goal - you might call this perspective "Solution-Oriented." If you believe "Reach for the Stars" could be your catch phrase, this one's for you. Visionaries fall in this camp.

And second, there's a perspective of setting a minimal standard for public sector activity based on avoiding negative outcomes when they threaten to disrupt society - Avoiding the Basement - and you could call this perspective "Problem-Oriented." If you think "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." better describes your view, then you would probably describe yourself as a Realist.

My perspective on leadership is that those in positions of power in a society should actively anticipate problems and stimulate the conditions and infrastructure that will optimally avoid those problems. And if that's not possible, then they should mitigate those problems to the degree possible. I think we are all guilty of holding our leaders to too low a standard. The same could be said for the expectations we place on our society. Why do we simply assume that nothing can be done about so many things, that problems are intractable because they have not yet been addressed adequately?

I think one thing all these municipal wireless projects have in common is that there is some element of hope in their local environments. Either at the leadership level, or emergent in their societies, there are one or more passionate people who want to change the status quo and get out in front by bringing in new technology like wireless broadband. It is the presence of such a spark that I've been trying to define as the beginning of some major changes in cities that go down this path, if they choose to fan the spark into a flame.

The MetroNetwork Approach - I called it the Metropolitan Broadband Triple Play three weeks ago in another blog - challenges leaders to expand their vision beyond an IT project, to look at broadband as a first step in moving their city to a higher standard of performance.

In the end, I guess I view government and the public sector as an extension of the "public." They're not some third-party, but "our" elected representatives and the professional staff "we" hire to do "our" business for "us." When one looks at government, school districts, and universities in this way, it's different than when one sits apart and criticizes them for poor performance, without taking some ownership and offering solutions.

And just imagine what could happen when all three of these public entitites - municipal government, public schools, and universities - unite to work together with business leaders and other elements of the community under a common vision based on best practices and stretch goals. Now that community is focused on a Standard of Excellence and a commitment to improve, and all can rest assured that they're doing all they can with what they have to work with.

Metropolitan Broadband is a highly versatile tool, but it is not a panacea, nor is it a substitute for the hard work of building community. But it is a great way to get a dialogue started about the future: how can a city engage in a project like this without first establishing a common vision of the future?

I think that we'll see a lot more of these projects if we're able to expand the industry's vision beyond simple IT infrastructure projects and the technology itself, to embrace a broader view of what can be done with the tools (i.e., solutions), including what happens to a society that tackles problems with these new tools.

Such a broader view includes those who would use wireless solutions to enable more broadband to reach more people. And it embraces others who would use this tool to promote economic development and their regional advantages. This perspective is in the end more in tune with the potential of this technology and such a broad approach will both magnify any positive impacts that may accrue when a community goes down this path and minimize any negatives.

Posted on April 21, 2007 at 11:42 AM | Comments (0)

Emergent Wisdom for University Towns

Towns that have been around for a while are often located in scenic spots - the forefathers had a vast canvas of opportunity on which to paint their new town visions, and more often than not, they picked their sites based on major travel routes, hilltops, rivers, and other scenic beauty. Wouldn't you if you could?

The location of San Marcos, established by the founders in the early days of the Texas Republic, is a continuing benefit to their descendants. It sits on the edge of the Balcones Fault, on the road in between Austin and San Antonio, now the I-35 corridor. The fault line thing is important because it cuts through Central Texas like a big gash, from the Northwest to the Southeast - the impact on towns that sit on the edge of the "Hill Country," as we call it, is to divide the town in half: the northwest half of town is hilly and the southeast half is flat. Different soil, different vegetation too. It's the same in Austin, and its quite appealing to the eye.

And make no mistake, location is one of the key economic drivers for the future, and it means more today than it ever has. San Marcos has gone from being one of the signs along the highway in between those two large cities, to being smack in the middle of economic growth that is joining those two cities, filling in the gaps as it were. In Austin's sphere of growth more than San Antonio's, San Marcos is an attractive area and can generate its own economic boom with some proactive internal decisions. On the other hand, if it remains impassive, it will grow nevertheless, but in organic fashion, acted on by others. Either way it is going to grow, because of the giants to the north and south.

A second element of change, one that all cities face in 2007 and beyond, is the impact of digitization and the Internet. The technology changes that we take for granted in Austin ripple through every city economy today. Those cities that embrace this dynamic landscape first will have a number of advantages over other cities. Those that fail to acknowledge this element of change will inevitably lag behind. Those that have an opportunistic attitude will find ways to benefit while others will be forced to spend more to accommodate the changes, making the changes either neutral or negative in total impact.

It just so happens that a subset of cities, those towns that have a university inside them or adjoining them - college towns, we like to call them - have an advantage that non-college towns lack. These towns, both large and small, have a mass of young inquisitive minds (who are also early adopters of technology) and they have a trained faculty and administration who have access to a budget and self-determination. Universities, by and large, are early adopters of wireless mesh networks for their campuses. The key is getting city leaders into harmony with university leaders and transferring some of their experience in networks, to expand that campus network into a city network. It can be done, but it's not easy.

Back to San Marcos. The question for these citizens is not if they can fight the changes of this new century, but if they can shape them to conform to their collective vision of their city and region and take advantage of the energy the changes bring to put themselves in an advantaged position.

Vision is the essence of leadership. I talk about leadership and vision a lot on these pages, it's one of my favorite topics. But to get to a collective vision requires the community to come together and have a healthy discussion. And there needs to be a sense of urgency around this task, in my opinion, lest the squabbles and disputes of old delay the community in its task and prevent it from influencing inevitable changes. I draw a lot on my own experience with dysfunction. One of the first steps out of an unproductive behavior is to acknowledge that something is wrong and focus attention on fixing the situation. It's important to replace old unhealthy habits with new, healthy ones.

In facing change, a city needs to start with an honest internal assessment of what makes it special and what qualities they want to preserve. I believe there's an easy consensus on some of those things in San Marcos, like preserving the San Marcos River. Finding early consensus can generate more consensus and momentum, helping citizens come to see what they have in common and the benefits of working together.

Another strength that we see from the outside looking in when looking at San Marcos is the dynamic Texas State University, the largest employer and home to nearly half the city's residents. I think some San Marcos citizens have become blinded over the years to the dynamic potential of this university, and conversely, some at the university underestimate the importance of their surrounding community to their future. This is another area of focus for planning, vision discussions, and consensus building.

A city facing change also needs to identify the negatives that will impact growth, the impediments or constraints that hold it back. Again, I think citizens know what they are, but making the constraints explicit will allow all to focus on them. This is one of the hardest conversations to have, and I think most towns just haven't yet had a sustained, honest and explicit conversation to define challenges, rank order them, and have a frank discussion about how best to address them or mitigate their negative aspects. This is where outsiders (consultants) can be a big help, because a third party, not unlike a counselor, can dispassionately walk them through a process to discuss these issues and put them into a context of a bigger picture of growth and the benefits it can bring. But this will be a hard pill to swallow. It's like doing sit-ups: a painful and unpleasant task, but one that provides undeniable benefits if practiced regularly.

Wireless broadband comes into this discussion because it offers a focal point for collective visioning discussions that the city needs to have. Such a project can serve as a catalyst for economic and community development. I think bringing a community together and forcing a vision conversation are implicit benefits in some successful projects around the country to date, but that such positive aspects have been largely overlooked and undervalued when bringing a citywide cloud to an area. The citizen stakeholder focus groups, public forums, and press releases about wireless broadband that we have already started in San Marcos provide an opportunity to bring into the discussion some of these other items about the community's vision for the future.

We can gently turn the discussion in that direction, if city leaders make a deliberate and conscious effort to bring out these other items. We can gain an extra benefit from listening to each other and exploring these issues while we talk about broadband, but it will be a delicate political task.

I'm convinced that harnessing and leveraging the energy and leadership inside universities is the key for college towns like San Marcos. A wireless project puts the university front and center and begs the question of how and if leaders in both the city and the university will place a priority on working together to make change happen. A wireless project will ask that question of the leadership and hopefully provide an answer to benefit the whole community in far-reaching ways.

Posted on April 20, 2007 at 07:30 AM | Comments (0)

Building Bridges to the Future

I live about a mile from an iconic bridge that arches over beautiful Lake Austin, as Hwy 360 cuts through limestone cliffs and the green links of Austin Country Club lay below on the shores of the lake. A friend has called this highway just west of Austin one of the prettiest stretches in Texas and I can't disagree - click here for some views of the bridge and highway and my neighborhood.

It's nice to come home to this. I have a watercolor of that bridge on my living room wall, painted by an artist who specializes in local Austin scenes like this. Spectacular. So as I was writing my last blog, it occurred to me that bridges are not only highly valuable for our physical mobility, but they are also a powerful metaphor as well for how we think about the future. The future is something we need to get to, and for some of us, we need a bridge to get there.

Sometimes I think of the future as some distant island, laying out there across the water. On vacation in Kauai a few years ago, you can stand on the beach and see Niihau, another island off in the distance. But without a boat or a bridge, I was left to wonder what it was like over on that island - I could only imagine . Going back to the early 1980s, as a young adult (bum) I lived and worked on a yacht anchored in busy Nassau Harbor in the Bahamas, and the iconic bridge there stretched from New Providence, the big island where Nassau sat, over to Paradise Island, where the casinos and Club Med were. By the way, before the bridge was built, the island was Hog Island, but after the bridge, developers came in and the name changed to Paradise Island. What a difference a name makes!

For years the island stood completely undeveloped, its beaches and tropical splendor unnoticed by the world. Suddenly, with the addition of luxurious hotels and a sparkling casino, it was transformed into one of the most glamorous and celebrated resort centers in the world, combining exclusive tranquillity and lots of action. Nassau/Paradise Island - history

For the people of the Bahamas, at least when it comes to paradise, the future is what you make of it. They decided that "Hog Island" was not the future they had in mind, but "Paradise Island" was, and they built a bridge to get there.

So here in the present, we sit on the shore and wonder what it's like over there, in the future. Our children, the next generation, will get to go across to see what's there, but we won't, not unless the bridge gets built. Technology is one bridge to help us reach the future sooner. Young people who bring innovation and embrace change bring energy to a community and help us reach across the water to the other side. Young people are another bridge to the future. A community can choose to accelerate its progress and bring the future in sooner than it would otherwise come on its own. Few do, however.

The bottom line decision for most cities these days is the need to embrace change, which has always been a constant in our lives, but the changes just moved so much slower in earlier times. Technology has put us all on a treadmill that seems to get turned up another notch with each revolution of the Earth around the Sun. Doesn't it seem that changes happen faster now that the Internet is out there? Think about the pace of your own life over the past ten years.

I believe this constant ratcheting up of the pace of change causes a sense of disempowerment: what can any of us do in the face of such a phenomenon? Well, some of us check out for the night and tune into Reality TV and the like. But city leaders have a responsibility to their constitutents and they can't check out. They have to pay attention and figure out what to do.

And as they ponder, I think they wonder what the impact of these changes will be and how they can build a bridge to the future that will position them with some advantages. We try to imagine the future and make changes now so we're better off - that's what we do with our investments, isn't it? We bet on a future outcome by putting our hard-earned cash in places where we think it will grow fastest.

Personally, I'm betting on the future at this time by paying my kids' private school tuition, which eats up money that would otherwise go into other investments. But I'm not complaining, it's a personal choice I make, because we see those two as our own bridges to the future, and I'm not alone in that assessment.

Wi Fi Mesh, Municipal Wireless, Metropolitan Broadband ... pick the name, they all imply the same thing, which is another bridge to the future. In this new industry, there is currently a fascination with how the technology works and how it will impact our lives, in much the same way that there was a fascination with how electricity worked, or how the Brooklyn Bridge could be built. Initially, the technology was fascinating, but in time, it faded into the woodwork and we began to assume it was there to stay, and that new invention became another tool to accomplish tasks and make our lives better. That's where we are today, as wireless applications start to enter the conversation in a more serious way.

Metropolitan broadband in university towns is a Killer App, because it combines two of the best bridges to the future - youth and technology - and it offers the fastest path for a city looking to get to the other side in a hurry. Efforts in this regard will pay a handsome return on investment, because they will let those early investors see what is on that island called the future, in advance of competing cities and regions, and they will have a head start in this very competitive race we call Economic Development.

Once this wireless broadband network is in place in San Marcos, home of Texas State University, where I've been spending most of my time lately, we'll all get to start using it for new and excting things, and watching that happen will be like looking into the future of the rest of the country and the world. And that, my friends, is what I call a competitive advantage.

Posted on April 19, 2007 at 04:22 PM | Comments (0)

Chasing the Key Demographic for a Sustainable Future

What will it take for your city to attract and retain more young talent? Do you even want to go to the trouble to do so? Were you even aware that there is gold in keeping your youth at home, or in attracting dynamic young workers to town?

I think the smart city leaders will spend a lot of time pondering this one, and here's why: Young people, smart young people, understand technology and innovation, are in touch with the marketplace of new ideas, and they bring tremendous amounts of energy and excitement to a city, and their presence attracts even more of the same - the definition of sustainability.

That's the message of Richard Florida's work (see Wi Fi Mesh + the Birds and the Bees = Creative Class Attraction): young people like to live and work where there are exciting and stimulating activies, rich and diverse job opportunities, other young people, friendly people, and ... drum roll here ... a technology rich environment like what metropolitan broadband and widely availabile Wi Fi bring - Florida describes it more succinctly as the Three Ts: Talent, Technology, and Tolerance.

I can offer a more succinct example based on my own experience within my church community, a microcosm if you will to demonstrate the value of the youth demographic to a community's future.

Every church struggles with growth - they are all in competition for a portion of the population; they can grow by winning over new members from other churches or by active recruitment of the 'non-churched." I've been a member of my small neighborhood Episcopal church in South Austin for about 18 years, and a leader off and on during that time. Most members are called on to be leaders at some point or another.

Ten years ago, one Sunday morning in 1997, it was my Sunday to usher, so there I was, standing in the back of the church listening to a visiting bishop talk to the congregation about the diocesan goal to grow the diocese by an impressive amount. At the time, we had a small congregation in our neighborhood church with an aging population. Some of the founders from the 1950s were still in attendance, but the dominant demographic were parents and grandparents who had joined in the 1960s and 1970s. There was a smattering of families with young children, including my own, who attended on a regular basis. While the church seats a little over 200 when full, the pews were only half-full that day, with average attendance hovering somewhere over 100, in a single 10:00 am service. Growth was less of an issue to the congregation than the comfort of a community where we all knew and cared for each other. Were we really ready for this message of growth?

As we all do, I interpret the world based on my own experience. As I listened to the bishop, I couldn't help but reflect on my family's experience. With two small children under the age of 3, we were wavering as members of the church. We loved the community, but the accommodations were terrible for a young family with babies. My wife changed diapers either on the floor of the church office or out in the car. She nursed our kids - try telling a crying infant to "wait till we get home" - in the only private place available - again, out in our car, with the engine running so that she had air conditioning.

Fresh out of graduate business school, I reasoned that if our church community were to take on the challenge of the bishop and grow, it would need to decide what it wanted to be - a "business plan" - and it would need a marketing strategy. As it was, it had grown somewhat comfortable with itself and was a really good church for the old-timers, but not such a good environment for newcomers, especially newcomers with young children. Lesson One: The beginning of a solution is an honest assessment of the problem and a willingness to take action to pursue the solution.

If it wanted to recruit more of the older set, to continue the prevailing trend, as it were, it could spend a lot of energy to do so, but the new recruits would not add anything new. It made more sense to recruit younger folks for a sustaining strategy, but to do so, the community would need to make some changes to be more welcoming to that group. For young couples in our situation, who so desperately want to be a part of a welcoming church community during such a trying time in life, also have to face the fact that they need a good fit for their special needs on a Sunday morning, so they select based on their particular needs. Lesson Two: Time spent in crafting the strategy that fits best is not wasted time, but an investment in bettering the odds for success.

We decided to take on the challenge to stimulate change in OUR church rather than leave and find a more accommodating church. I wrote a memo to the new rector suggesting a strategy to recruit young familes with children. We organized a group - the existing 10 families with young children - and gave it a name: "Young Families" (clever, huh), and designed a pretty simple strategy. We added diaper changing platforms in each bathroom and pooled our money to buy a glider (fancy rocking chair) for the church library, where a mother could close the door for privacy in nursing. We set up a monthly "parent's night out" with group babysitting and staged a few seasonal group events. That was all it took for community to begin to form and for young families to find our church. Lesson Three: Start simple and focus on making important, often simple changes to make a more welcoming environment to generate success and build momentum that will energize your community to take on more change.

Ten years later, as we look back, that group has become a sustaining force for growth in our community. To accommodate the growth from this group and others, we had to shift to a 9:00 and 11:00 service schedule, and now average attendance is approaching 300. The "young family" demographic has become the dominant demographic in our church, having grown to more than 60 famillies. And the new families that have joined populate the ranks of our committees and church groups. Lesson Four: Community formation is a conscious activity that requires a deliberate strategy and focus, but once started, community activity is contagious and generates energy.

We recognized that people go where their needs are met, they go where they feel welcomed, and they go where there is a community of like persons, because humans are social creatures. And young people, with their whole lives in front of them, realize that their choices of location and association are strategic decisions that greatly affect their lives and futures. Lesson Five: To attract a targeted demographic, spend time to understand their needs and then create the conditions that will attract or retain them - the underlying infrastructure is a good place to start.

At St. Mark's, we focused on foundational infrastructure, in our own simple way. We addressed the immediate concerns - diaper changing and nursing on a Sunday morning - as well as the longer term: community formation and socialization with "parent nights out" and what were in effect community support groups. The result was a clear signal to visiting young families that this church had a welcoming environment where their investment of time, energy, and money would provide a sustainable return and would prove a good investment. Lesson Six: Keep it Simple and focus on opportunities to create synergy and socially reinforcing behavior patterns, and work together as a community.

Every church community (and every town) has a certain set of characteristics that makes it special and unique. But without a strategy and a shared sense of purpose among the community, the odds of that special-ness translating into solid economic growth are slim to none. Lesson Seven: To stand out and enjoy sustainable growth in the highly competitive 21st Century, a community needs leadership, initiatiive, a business plan and strategy, commitment, and mobilization of all the resources in the community.

Epilogue: Several years ago, I was part of a delegation from our church asked to attend a diocesan retreat to discuss growth; we had been identified as a parish with best practices. Indeed, I think we have one of the healthiest community environments around, thanks to our pulling together when it mattered.

Community formation and sustainable growth don't just happen on their own, you have to make them happen. And these days when it comes to communities and sustainable growth strategies, I'm with Richard Florida: the keys to that future are found in defined strategies that foster an environment of Talent, Technology, and Tolerance.

Posted on April 14, 2007 at 08:51 AM | Comments (0)

Living for Today, Leading for Tomorrow

Leadership is a curious thing. Some leaders are born into the role, others acquire the skills over time, and still others find themselves thrust into a position of leadership because of events beyond their control. Leaders in cities and communities come from all walks of life.

Don't be fooled by official titles. Leadership comes officially from the top down - from the mayor and city manager, from the university president and the school district superintendant - and unoffiically from the bottom up, from motivated university students and faculty, from city workers who realize there is a better way and that they're empowered to make a positive change, from citizen activists who step up to promote positive change in the community.

I finally got up the gumption to watch United 93 tonight with my wife, the film about the everyday people who became heroes and leaders, as they stepped up to take back their plane that had been hijacked by the 9/11 terrorists. Their plane ultimately crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, instead of its intended target: the US Capitol. They didn't survive their ordeal, but those brave individuals took on the difficult role of leadership when it was thrust upon them and acted with dispatch to do what needed to be done.

The nature of leadership is taking charge when the situation demands it - of one's own life, one's situation, a needed effort - leaders take charge and motivate others with a common, inspiring vision. They show the way forward. They do what is necessary and what is right.

This movie shows us that leadership potential is imbedded in all of us - the key is stepping up and accepting the necessary role that is presented. It was difficult to watch this movie, but I'm glad I did, and I urge you to rent the DVD and watch it yourself.

A clear message of the film, besides the sacrifice and leadership those heroes demonstrated, is the fragile nature of our lives and the idea that we should live each day as if it were our last, because it may be. It sounds trite and appears a cliche, but, hey, it's true.

I was struck by the expressions of love by those hijacked in their last moments, as well. We just don't know when it will all end. I think that when one strives to live each day that way, as hard as that is to do, it becomes easier to step up and take the mantle of leadership.

In the end, why not be a leader? What does one have to lose? Leadership, when it's needed, when it's based on principles, is about doing the right thing, with an eye to what's important and a singular vision and a goal, and a willingness to act.

Posted on April 11, 2007 at 11:41 PM | Comments (0)

What's in a Name? A Lot, if it Signifies an Attitude and an Approach

The IT Director or CIO of a mid-sized city has a daunting task. He/she must work within a limited budget with limited means in order to manage an evolving job description with evolving tools, for a client base not entirely sure what it is they really want. Make no mistake, in these days and times, public sector budgets ARE limited, but the tasks are expanding, especially in areas of high growth. Such is the nature of the beast when it comes to managing High Tech in 2007.

And public sector IT managers do all of this under the scrutiny of a demanding public, a sometimes entrenched bureaucracy, and a political environment that can turn reality on its head in its worst moments. An ISP representative told me yesterday that once a City Council member told them he was going to oppose the city's wireless project - for the simple reason that the mayor supported it - and he always OPPOSED EVERYTHING the mayor supported, as a matter of principle! Insanity Rules.

Why bother to work in such an environment? Because service in the public sector is fundamentally a noble cause, and in particular, service in applying technology to the tasks of the public sector is increasingly an enjoyable challenge. People that do this job do it for more than the money, it's more than a job, it's a mission.

The advent of Metropolitan Broadband networks changes the environmental dynamic of the city IT Director or CIO, making their job both bigger and ultimately, easier. Now their task of using high technology to help city departments accomplish their goals can use the same infrastructure that the rest of the city will use for other tasks. Do we talk about city streets as a private network that is there to get city workers around to accomplish their city tasks? Is the electric grid a private network? Indeed, city streets and electric grids are apt metaphors for the city Local Area Network (LAN) that is used as a shared common infrastructure.

So, imagine this paradigm shift driven by a simple name change. What if we look at a Metropolitan Broadband Network not as an IT Project led by the IT team, with backing from city government leaders, to accomplish the laudable city goals of more efficient city government? What if instead we start of thinking of the task as a Community and Economic Development Project, led by a cross-section of government, business, and community leaders, to provide not only efficient city government, but also widespread access to broadband for all citizens, as well as long-term, sustainable economic development? Now the perspective shifts, and the IT Director / CIO becomes a leader and technology adviser to a much broader project, and one member of a much larger team.

MetroNetIQ is using just such a shift in focus to give a new perspective to metropolitan broadband projects. There are trade-offs that come with this shift, but they are worth it. The project will take longer and will have more up-front expenses. But it is likely to turn out better in the end and pay long-term dividends. As we begin to understand better the nature of deploying a citywide common broadband infrastructure, it makes sense to incorporate lessons learned from earlier projects and challenge the assumptions that developed in the early years. Let me detail briefly some of the benefits that flow from this paradigm shift.

First, a community that works well together can accomplish anything. When a community is united behind a common goal and a compelling vision, it leaves behind the rancor and disagreement that can become a habit and paralyze a less unified city. There will still be rumblings and eruptions of discord from the disaffected minority, and the road may be bumpy, but such disturbances will pale in comparison to the unified voice of the majority, no longer silent.

When a community starts listening to each other, acknowledging the views and opinions of all groups and focusing on the future and its children, dreaming of a possible new future in the 21st Century, a spirit of hope begins to define its vision, and good will creeps back in - it starts to feel like a community again instead of a city, and there is a signficant difference in that name change.

Second, beginning with an orientation to consensus and a deliberate sense of purpose innoculates the project and its leaders from a potential political hijacking down the road by an opportunist when the project hits a snag, as they all will at some point. Politics can turn these projects into inspiring political visions or damaging political fights. When a broad majority of the community understands and supports the project, it becomes bullet proof to negativity. The political aspect of these projects should not be minimized; going in with one's eyes wide open with a strategy for addressing potential problems is a sign of good leadership.

Finally, these projects often end up in different places than they intended, as they take the community into new and positive directions. They start off with a vision and a set of objectives and goals, like all good projects, but they inevitably morph as new discoveries are made and advances in technology open up new possibilities. By starting off with an inclusive attitude and an open mind, inviting in all stakeholders to participate in what is in essence a grand experiment in leveraging technology for a better society, project leaders acknowledge what we have learned in the past three years: one rarely ends up where one was pointed when one began one's project. The reason is not poor project management, it is the very plastic nature of this broadband infrastructure that allows it to be turned to so many ends by so many people.

Last night at the Men's Group monthly dinner at my church, we had a lively discussion about the past and how these metropolitan broadband projects compare to the advent of electricity in the early part of the 20th Century. The older men reflected on their early childhoods in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. They could recall visiting their grandparents in the summer, and the excitement that filled the air when the small town out in the country watched as high-voltage wires were mounted on towers and they approached the town. There was a buzz in the air that these elderly gentlemen remembered - not from the electricity on the lines, but from the prospect of leaving behind the back-breaking work of hauling water from the well, and the tedious task of cleaning kerosene lanterns and trimming wicks, mundane tasks that often fell to the children. Finally getting the benefits of modern life that city dwellers had grown accustomed to years before, these townspeople understood that electricity was their future.

With metropolitan broadband coming to our mid-sized cities, the impact may well be less dramatic in this more modern age. But our children today are likely to look back and remember how bringing a citywide broadband network to town had a more far-reaching impact than the leaders of the time could have begun to imagine without the benefit of hindsight. Metropolitan broadband is rapidly becoming the essential utility of the 21st Century, not unlike the way that electricity ultimately became the essential utilitiy of the 20th Century.

Energy and Information are the two fundamental qualities of life, so the infrastructure that brings them into a community should not be underestimated or delayed. Imagining this change as a shared responsibility of all community stakeholders, not just the city's IT Department, is a first step in making this vision a reality.

This name change implies a different, more expansive vision, where the metropolitan broadband project becomes a community-wide project, not a limited IT project for better city government. While efficient city government is a laudable goal, keeping the project bottled up in city government limits its potential and raises unnecessary risks. Better to move slower, give up some control, but in so doing, share the project's glory and spread the project's risk with the community at large.

Posted on April 10, 2007 at 07:24 AM | Comments (0)

Nature Abhors a Vacuum, so does Capitalism

...the idea of "Nature abhors a vacuum" came from the ancient Greeks ...In a letter to a friend, Descartes said Pascal had "too much vacuum in his head." from a website titled, "Pascal's Triangle: From Top to Bottom"

The website above is a great example of the abundance of bizarre webstes there are out there - who knew Pascal and Descartes had this personal-conflict thing going on? I never cease to be amazed to see where I end up when I Google a term. How strange!

"Nature Abhors a Vacuum" highlights the connection between the order of natural laws and the changing order we see happening in the business world - in our capitalist society, there is churn, as highlighted in my last post. One could just as well say, "a capitalist economy abhors a vacuum," and indeed, I believe it has been said. Problems beg solutions, and new problems beg new, innovative solutions.

This came up in conversation today, as I tried to explain the potential future of a community after a metropolitan broadband network is deployed. In nature, a dramatic change in the environment creates openings for new species to come in and exploit. And so it goes in business. A metropolitan broadband network creates a new playing field, reshuffling the deck as it were. This dynamic restructuring of the local market place and the new infrastructure combine to open up the local economy to new web-based service models and businesses. Get ready.

In nature, we see regional ecosystems where every species has a place in the food chain and in the natural order of things. Nature enjoys harmony and balance, but when there is a new niche to be filled, plant and animal species rush in to find a way to fill it. In fact, there's a term that describes the occurence of different creatures that all fill roles in an ecosystem: "Species Diversity." Nature abhors a vacuum, indeed.

Two hundred years ago, biologists of the day spent their time marvelling at the variety of birds and insects, cataloguing them, but not able to explain WHY there were so many different species. That is, until Darwin came along with his revolutionary theory, and his groundbreaking book, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" in 1859. They ate it up. We tend to think of the modern controversies regarding evolution, creationism, and natural selection when we think of Darwin, but HIS big motivator at the time he wrote his book wasn't to upset the apple cart of society, but to explain his observations on why he thought there was so much diversity of species in nature.

There's no doubt we have an abundance of business "species" to fill the niches in our national economy. But at the micro-level, local economies can suffer from a lack of diversity and struggle to get out of a hole. Watch these new metropolitan broadband networks in the next five years, especially in cities that have a preponderance of one or two types of jobs. There will be new businesses, new products, and new services that will move in to the fresh economic territory created by the networks. They will arise to take advantage of the new capabilities of these metropolitan networks. Beyond their original intentions with these networks, cities will come to appreciate the economic diversity these networks bring.

As a footnote, for my friends at Texas State University, check out the taxonomy of the Bobcat, another bit of "Google Serendipity" I found while surfing....

Posted on April 07, 2007 at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)

Fumbling the Future or Forging Ahead: Eyes (and Minds) Wide Open

The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it's not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.

At this point, it may be too late to win back disgruntled music lovers no matter what they do. As one music industry lawyer, Ken Hertz, said recently, "The consumer's conscience, which is all we had left, that's gone, too."

It's tempting for us to gloat. By worrying more about quarterly profits than the bigger picture, by protecting their short-term interests without thinking about how to survive and prosper in the long run, record-industry bigwigs have got what was coming to them. It's a disaster they brought upon themselves. Spinning into Oblivion - New York Times April 5, 2007 Subscription Required

The authors of this article speak from experience - they owned a small record store that ultimately went bust, and now operate an on-line music service. The story of how the advance of the Internet is bringing on the decline of the recording industry is instructive beyond the impact it is having on how we buy and listen to music. This is not an isolated incident.

Reading this article, I was reminded of one of my favorite books from business school 15 years ago. Fumbling the Future describes how Xerox invented the PC, the graphic user interface, the keyboard and mouse - all these things we take for granted now were novel in the 1970s. In 1973, Xerox had billions of dollars from the copier monopoly, and had brought together scientists at their Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) to do great things. What they didn't have was a culture to adopt and take advantage of some of the fascinating breakthroughs they were making in computer science and high tech. One of the hardest things to do is to have the perspective to realize when you are in the midst of something revolutionary.

But Steve Jobs had that perspective, and after visiting PARC in 1979, he went on to drive the creation of the Macintosh computer and the rest is, as they say, history.

The visitors from Apple saw a computer that was designed to be easy to use, a machine that anybody could operate and find friendly...even the French.

Bill Atkinson
Designer, Macintosh Development Team
I think mostly what...what we got in that hour and a half was inspiration and just sort of basically a bolstering of our convictions that a more graphical way to do things would make this business computer more accessible.

Larry Tesler
After an hour looking at demos they understood our technology, and what it meant more than any Xerox executive understood after years of showing it to them.

Steve Jobs
Basically they were copier heads that just had no clue about a computer or what it could do. And so they just grabbed eh grabbed defeat from the greatest victory in the computer industry. Xerox could have owned the entire computer industry today. Could have been you know a company ten times its size. Could have been IBM - could have been the IBM of the nineties. Could have been the Microsoft of the nineties.

For Steve Jobs the road to Damascus passed through Palo Alto. He persuaded the Apple board to invest in technology copying what he'd seen at Xerox Parc - his instrument of change. They hired a hundred engineers and started developing a new PC codenamed Lisa. But there were problems. They couldn't get it to work properly and the pricetag was heading toward $10,000 - way too much for the average PC buyer. Jobs' domineering style drove everyone nutstoo so the board ousted him from his own pet project.

Steve Jobs
You know I brooded for a few months, but it was not very long after that that it really occurred to me that if we didn't do something here the Apple 2 was running out of gas and we needed to do something with this technology fast or else Apple might cease to exist as the company that it was.

Jobs found his answer from Jeff Raskin, Apple employee number 31. Raskin's idea was a $600 computer - as easy to use as a toaster - code-named Macintosh, after America's favourite apple. Jobs liked the price but not Raskin's design ideas. So Steve took over the Macintosh project, determined to make it a cheaper Lisa. Triumph of the Nerds, Part III

Oh, by the way, Steve Jobs also invested $10 million in a company that he turned into Pixar, which he later sold to Disney for $7.4 billion. And, under his direction, Apple brought us the iPod. Sure, he's one in 10 Billion, but the key here is his attitude and willingness to keep an open mind, connect the dots, stick to his principles, and forge ahead. Just this week, Apple brought the EMI catalogue on-line without digital rights management (DRM), which by the way is a technology designed to preserve the status quo and resist the impact of change.

To drive home this lesson of keeping an open mind, they taught us the lesson of Xerox in my Organizational Change class. The impact of conventional group thinking on our paradigms and assumptions is stronger than we realize. Just how significant is the maturing Internet and this growing trend of Metropolitan Broadband? I believe it is more dramatic than we can acknowledge right now, because like the executives at Xerox, we lack the imagination to conceptualize such a dramatic change.

Two years ago, I tried to start knitting together the different threads into a more holistic interpretation of what we are going through. The argument in the NY Times article conforms to my white paper from May 2005, On Structural Change.

In that paper, I pointed out that the continuing advances of the maturing Internet imply that all network-based enterprises, indeed all companies that distribute digital content in its many forms, are bound to come under increasing pressure from the Internet. It is inevitable. We've already seen venerable institutions like Encyclopedia Brittanica and AT&T succumb with surprising speed. We're watching other businesses come under increasing pressure, like the lead article describes. The challenge for all of us is to envision the dramatic new future these trends point to and start making changes now.

The new metropolitan broadband industry is driven by such foundational change, both for its beneficial impact on government efficiency, and for other economic and societal benefits. The new businesses that will follow the installation of these networks will increasingly challenge traditional business models. Those cities that get on board this train are betting on this future and will capture more benefit from change than those who opt out or delay. They're playing out the drama of Joseph's Schumpeter's Creative Destruction, which says that a fundamental aspect of capitalism is the churn of old business ideas and the new ideas that arise to challenge them.

But in capitalist reality as distinguished from its textbook picture, it is not that kind of competition which counts [price competition] but the competition from the new commodity, the new technology, the new source of supply, the new type of organization (the largest-scale unit of control for instance)-competition which commands a decisive cost or quality advantage and which strikes not at the margins of the profits and the outputs of the existing firms but at their foundations and their very lives. Joseph Schumpeter

The upcoming changes and disruptions to local economies brought about by Metropolitan Broadband are the kernel of the new Economic Development opportunity that these cities will enjoy.

The big question facing cities is not IF this change will occur, but HOW FAST it will occur and HOW it will happen, and the potential for local impact, good or bad, and as always, the Devil is in the Details. City leaders will increasingly face a choice: a) Deny Change and Fumble the Future; or b) Accept Change and Move Forward Deliberately. City leaders who guess correctly and position their cities in the face of upcoming trends, like San Marcos and other cities adopting metropolitan broadband, are taking a calculated gamble.

The question for all city leaders these days is whether to delay in order to gather more information or to take prudent action now, while they continue to learn more.

My question is "Why aren't more cities taking the requisite first steps: a) becoming more aware of the potential and the alternatives they face; and b) mobilizing their populations to prepare for change?" Because I believe the coming changes will be dramatic, and will happen faster than we can imagine. In my opinion, there is less risk in starting now and moving with deliberation and prudence, than in waiting any longer.

Posted on April 05, 2007 at 09:19 PM | Comments (0)