Category: entrepreneurship

I’m launching a new Telco Service here’s some of the features I’m hoping to include in my customer proposition.

• There will be no fixed line or cable access.
• While the service will have technical capability to call any phone number, you won’t be able to call just any number you want.
• We’ll have a directory with the numbers you can actually call on it. Some won’t be there, but many will, maybe a third of all the numbers you’d like to call.
• The provider of that phone number will need to have agreed to let us call up that number, if they say no, we won’t be able to list it.
• Some people will give us access to their phone numbers, on the condition that we don’t give access of that phone number to other Telco’s.
• Sometimes we’ll buy access to a set of phone numbers on the condition that the owners of those phone numbers don’t give anyone else access.
• While we’ll promote how many phone numbers we actually have – many thousands and millions, but you probably won’t be able to reach two thirds of the phone numbers you want to call.
• In order to get access to the phone numbers you want, you’ll probably have to sign up with at least 3 or more Telco’s – it turns out that all of us behave the same way.

In case you didn’t guess, the phone numbers are the content, and the Telco’s are the Entertainment Streaming Services. While this example is a bit extreme and nuanced, this is our current situation on entertainment in the home. If it seems upside down, that’s because it is. Both content providers and streaming services are literally solving their own problems and not that of their customers. Imagine a search engine which excludes sites on purpose? Or a drivers licences which only lets you on certain road networks? It’s archaic.

Hopefully sometime soon they’ll realise their are no shelves and limited space to what can be sold. I dream of the day when content providers decide to sell to anyone who wants to buy it, where they want to buy at the time it is released. It will go some way to stopping piracy too. Often there’s a big prize for organisations who actually listen to what the people actually paying want – especially when incumbents say it isn’t possible.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.

 

Almost everything we read on the web is the birth child of the Survivor Bias. What is it? It’s that story of how Startup X dominated the world with clever Strategy Y. Therefore if you undertake Strategy Y, you too will IPO like Startup X did. Ok, here’s a more formal definition for you: Survivorship Bias is the logical error of concentrating on the people or companies that “survived” some process and inadvertently overlooking those that did not because of their lack of visibility. 

When this comes to strategy, we can conclude that the strategy of the eventual winner is ‘what works’ while other companies may have used the same method and failed, yet we don’t hear that story or study them at all.

Sometimes the story of the survivor is valid. It works, and it can work again. We ought however use it as an allegory for the type of thinking that is needed, not a template to be followed. This is why philosophy is always superior to tactics. Tactics are the story of what happened in a particular time and in a particular place in certain conditions which many and may not be present today.  The problem with tactics is that the world is not a beaker, and rarely are two ingredients in different businesses exactly the same.

For every story we hear of a business surviving and thriving, there are probably thousands who had a similar strategy and still bit the dust. If you want a strategy that works, increase your odds by placing lots of small bets with the possibility asymmetric returns.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.

When it comes to business there are two distances we can travel. A little to far or not far enough. We can push just a little too far and suffer the consequences of exceeding the limit. We can not push hard enough and die wondering what could have been. So which ought we choose?

We should choose both. It’s more the order that matters. If we want to iterate and ultimately stay in the game, then should not push too far, but keep on pushing, a little further, a little further and invest more as we learn more. If we do this we can find out what the limit is before we cross it. Maybe we can get to it and achieve the outcome. If we push the limit from the start, we might just go over a cliff and never get the chance to try again.

Of course should aim is to find out what the limits are, but there are smarter ways than going all in to see what is over the edge.

Every now and again you read a book which changes your perspective on a lot of things.

This book below is one of those: Finite & Infinite games by James Carse.

You probably know this, but everything we do is some form of a game. Some are finite, and some are infinite. This book provides clarity on both the games we play and why we are playing them. Finite games are often played for the purpose of winning, where as with infinite games. the purpose is the game itself. Here’s some great quotes from it.

“A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.”

“Strength is paradoxical. I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to do what they wish in the course of my play with them.”

“War presents itself as necessary for self-protection, when in fact it is necessary for self-identification.”

“Finite players play within boundaries; infinite players play with boundaries.”

“There is no possibility of conversation with a loudspeaker.”

“To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself.”

“What Copernicus dispelled, however, were not myths but other explanations.”

“To use the machine for control is to be controlled by the machine.”

This book, all the way back from 1987 is a gold nugget that has been available to me to nearly 30 years, and yet it took my friend Nic Hodges to point it out to me. Another reminder that what is new, is not necessarily better, just more present.

You should totally read my book – The Great Fragmentation.