blogging at O'Reilly Radar for a bit

I'll be guest blogging on the O'Reilly Radar blog for a little while.

You can see my first post here.

Is language a function of your networking?

David Gravel is quoted as thinking so given the massive efficiency to shared languages in a global world.  It's a tidy and nice argument.

If you picked two people at random off the face of the earth and asked them to pick one language in which to communicate with someone they knew nothing about, which language would each person choose? The language they’d pick would depend on a series of “reciprocal expectations” — best guesses not just about which language you suppose the other person speaks but which language he thinks you suppose he will speak — which depends, in turn, on which one you think he thinks you suppose he will speak. And so on, until your head swims.

In today’s globalizing world, the probability is increasing that two random people would choose English for their best chance at unplanned linguistic coordination. And this isn’t merely a thought experiment: it’s being played out, with more information among the parties, in the decisions of hundreds of millions of people now learning English as a second language.

It reminds me a bit of David Foster Wallace's wonderful argument that grammar, too, is a function of your social setting (the pre-SNA way of saying networking).

You'll need a Harper's Subscription to view the link, but you should have one of those anyway.

These arguments make me wonder if, given this powerful network effect protecting the English language, there's any need to mandate a single language in the U.S., Britain. I'm also wondering just how the Quebecois intend to maintain French over time.

Indian Firms, Where Innovation Goes to Die

The Navi Radjou at the Harvard Business Blog writes about the dearth of innovation going on in India. It's a structure problem according to the analysis. The culprit works out to be family-run, risk adverse firms with nepotistic power structures.  

No doubt. 

The solution: bring on "Web 2.0" software to break apart the power structure and liberate the wisdom of crowds. 

No doubt, again, except....

...it seems to me that the real culprit is the "family-run, risk adverse" part. These power structures form when shareholders have few legally enforceable rights, so power is only transferred from an owner to trusted family agents, regardless of skill.  So you, the clever underling will never get at taking the reins of the company, lessening your desire to take on the risk of dramatically changing the direction of a firm.  (The counter point firm, Nokia, is not a "family-run" firm).

All the software in the world can't release innovation without incentives on the part of your clever workers, and in fact, the lack of leadership opportunities likely creates pressures on clever employees to take their ideas outside of the firm.  (It's interesting to note that overall innovation is strong in India, just not within established firms - with  venture investments in 2007  up 166% over 2006)

My takeaway - software is great, but culture and structure are far more important determinants of entrepreneurial success in a firm.  Firmer rule of law would free up the family-restricted transfers of power, and open up new incentives for Indian workers to donate their ideas to their firms.

when mbas go wrong

On a related note, my technology strategy professor laughed at the idea that Apple might have a competive advantage in "style and taste".

apparently i could be more interesting

Worth noting is that the bounce rate on "jesper andersen" is 75%. They're searching for a different one. Great news for my friend Rob and his company Knowledge Bid, though.

in which i get too snarky by half on the web

Last night I got up nervous about my interview for yet another Kauffman Fellow position, this time up in Canada.

To kill some time I cleaned out my rss reader and caught an interesting post by Fred Wilson here, regarding a rather poor (I believe) HBS post here.

I sleepily banged out a snarky message regarding what I thought of the HBS posting and posted it to twitter. It read:

apologies to @fredwilson but does anyone understand the economics of this post? http://tinyurl.com/333y9c seems naive, lacking perspective

By which I was referring to the HBS post. I think that got lost because when I arrived in Toronto I got these tweets:

@jandersen the way I use my blog is to 'think outloud' and have other correct me. It works like a charm.
@jandersen the post may be naive but the comments are great

Whoops. That wasn't what I meant. But at least someone was listening.

What I actually think is that Fred pulls out the only salient points in the HBS post and draws out an interesting forward looking thesis. I'm just not clear on what in the HBS article warrants all that attention. I'm of the opinion that the post isn't novel or particularly correct.

It's not novel in that its essentially a restatement of creative destruction. Things work until profits get competed away and you exist because you make just enough to exceed your liquidation value. It's a common phenomena that has nothing to with creating competitive advantage and everything to do with losing it. The industries that Umair Haque mentions are very mature industries that have undergone economically predictable consolidation and margin reduction phases that have nothing to do with their strategic choices and everything to do with competitive entry.

It's not correct because there's almost nothing you could do over a 100 year period to maintain the sort of margins that avoid the situation he's describing. It's inevitable. You don't have IP protection, other industries are churning to create entrant opportunities, and, frankly, its far too long of a timespan for anyone to care about anyway.

It's entirely possible that technology is speeding things up a bit, but even so, I'm not sure that it's the same effect.

In a nutshell, Fred's right, there's something disruptive going on and there's very likely to be some interesting investment theses there, but it seems to me to be a natural business cycle disruption, and not a new movement. This seems like its going to work out a lot like the oil shock effects in the very early 80's begetting many numerous startups, and it's up to someone to make the next Staples that will cater to all of their needs.

Also, for the record, Fred's commenters are smart. No doubt.

Twitter's growing faster than you think

I recently told my friend Lane Becker that I didn't think Twitter was growing much anymore. I was wrong

Twitter's growing at a very healthy rate. And in this case, the compete numbers, even if absolutely correct, don't tell the whole story. The first thing any serious twitter user does is download a desktop client, or start using TwitterIm or Hahlo and being relying on the Twitter API, whose usage isn't reflected in Compete statistics. So the Twitter growth is really a measure of some baseline passive users, and the flux of new users entering the system, which means that Twitter's attracting a linear number of users each month, or better.

Congrats to Twitter. Now can someone please explain what Twitter is to all my friends, because I'm failing at it.