Professional

The Way Forward for Innovation in Australia

Old innovation ecosystem models are broken, it is time to realise the open models based around startups (particularly scalable global product based tech startups) are the key to our future. the-way-forward-for-innovation-in-australia

The above diagram by StartupCommons summarises the change in focus at a macro level, we also need to look at the basics of our cultural approach to select digital natives from diverse global backgrounds to represent our interests. Run your eye over most of our nation’s government and industry bodies and the focus and representation is a woeful, old, monoculture with computing science degrees a rarity and real recent internet entrepreneurship dangerously absent, they are similarly rarely constituted of independent non-aligned experts with fresh experience.

If these people can’t serve real customers ever let alone recently (in the last decade) how can they serve our society?

This path forward is so obvious other nations have ‘productised’ the right approach in order to give (and sell) to the world.

Read the full (non country specific) report from StartupCommons here.

Internet Trends Analysis

Here at Cooper & Co we have a long standing appreciation of the work of Mary Meeker who is now @KPCB and continues to produce her excellent Internet Trends report on a semi regular basis.

Here are our top points extracted from the rather wonderful 164 pages of charts Mary and her team provided.

Many of these points are stating the bleeding obvious but now they are fact not opinions. Most are underlined with not just 50%+ pa movements but often by 2x and 4x trends.

Real-time and personal is the new norm.
Daily/Weekly consumption of information e.g. email, facebook is moving to mobile and realtime as the new norm for most people led by you guessed it – the young and trendy and connected millennials.
Intimate and easy is the new norm.
The social graph (and associated broadcast of information) as represented by facebook is being replaced by the contacts list on mobile with more frequent communication to a smaller more intimate audience as represented by whatsapp, snapchat and the like. Larger sophsticated apps and sites and being smashed by simpler single function apps that (often in the background) get used more often.
Mobile has won. Globally. Led by US firms for now, but soon CN.
The move from web to mobile is happening much faster than expected with more than a third of traffic now mobile and growing at 25% pa and accelerating. This is accompanied by the real-time trend and powered by an explosion of sensors (from 1-3 in early smartphones to 5-10 now) which is driving a new age of transparency, privacy challenges and also safety and market insights. All major companies are leading with mobile, simple functionality, multi-platform apps. US leads operating systems but challengers are expected especially from China which dominates with 80% mobile and 4 of the top ten firms garnered in just a few short years. Media channels are increasingly consumer more as apps than linear TV with multi-screen consumption now the norm. Cameras are dead, phones won years ago, the new messaging apps are underlining that with three orders of magnitude.
Integrated commerce wins.
Destination shopping is fading fast, integrated content plus community plus commerce is winning. Audiences (consumers on linear timelines) are being killed by fanbases (who share, comment, curate and create) all the time.
Cloud wins.
Cost reductions year on year of 30-40% (repeatedly for decades now) mean all three major inputs to innovative technology enabled businesses are being smashed: processing power (CPU), persistence (storage) and passing stuff around (bandwidth) means big data, disruptive mobile startups and cloud computing have never been more competitive and hence easier and cheaper. Amazon web services is winning with innovation, volume, market share, investment, pricing and product range – for example just their s3 persistence service has 3 trillion objects (files, movies, photos etc) in that product alone now.

Thats about it, the report is information dense a wonderful read if you get time. We loved it as usual. But most of the themes fit in above.

Just one last note on China, in the 1820s it was a third of the world’s economy now it has overtaken India and Latin America combined again and is about to overtake US and Europe but more importantly will exceed all four combined in less than 20 years on current trajectories.

http:/kpcb.com/InternetTrends is the latest report, happy reading. Or call us and we can help you adjust your business to incorporate these and other meaningful insights.

New Tech Landscape

The New Technology Landscape Guide by Cooper & Co

All stereotypes are wrong we can confidently predict with tongue firmly planted in cheek. When it comes to technology industry classifications this is certainly the case but we decided to publish this New Information & Communications Technology Landscape Guide to help people understand the changes the industry is undergoing.

No longer is it simply enterprise/business with their major suppliers and smaller nimble suppliers.

Now the position of the major suppliers is no longer disputed, they are at the top of the stock exchange food chain and are the leading enterprises in their own right dominating markets globally.

What is not clear and is consistently underestimated is the role of the digital creative (typically entertainment or ex-advertising and marketing centric and usually providing services or services bundled with a complete deliverable e.g campaign, game, movie, television advertisement – of which they only do a relatively small number each year) and the tech startups (typically disruptive innovation and product centric and since it is standardised/productised and usually internet software and software/hardware focused they are typically scalable to very large numbers).

Think of the difference between ‘digital creative’ and ‘tech and tech enabled startup’ to be something like the differences between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Or in the case of advertising perhaps New York and Silicon Valley. They both have some level of entrepreneurship and technology but the differences are stark when it comes to scale, productisation, mindset, methodologies, talent portfolio and language.

To all you industry observers and commentators in all sectors, we hope you find this useful. Comments very welcome.

Note: Originally published Mar 12, 2013. Revised to correct typos and add more context (language, timeframes, stakeholders).

If you like this you might also be interested in how to manage it with Enpoma for Apps.

Rapid Security Review Package

Running a web based or web enabled business?

Consider this comprehensive and proven risk analysis, identification and prioritisation service.

Help prevent serious security risks from online attacks that could slow or cripple your business or negatively impact your reputation.

We will run an on-premise or web based workshop to identify major architecture elements (depending on your location).

We will design and run a scan of all your major providers and a reasonable number of dedicated internet accessible infrastructure that you specify.

You will receive an itemised report by major infrastructure group prioritising the risk areas tactically and strategically.

In less than a week you could receive the peace of mind that comes from knowing your risk levels and the specific areas you can address to reduce your risk level.

Cost $4,890.

Notes:

Not to be used in conjunction with any other offer.
Order this services means you agree to have your infrastructure scanned via the web on all accessible end points.
We only use tier-one automated scan services from global recognised specialist providers in conjunction with proprietary tools and information services
Limit of one legal entity per customer per purchase and limit of three days professional services commitment per package purchase.
Prices are ex-GST.

SydStart by Cooper & Co.

Cooper & Co are proud to be the founding and long term sponsors of the largest professional tech startup event in Australia – SydStart.

This event is something we support because we want to grow the startup ecosystem in Australia and it is undergoing a dramatic growth phase, due in no small part to the hyper connectedness and accelerated learning we try to encourage via SydStart events.

The SydStart site has recently been move to wordpress.com and refreshed and for events prior to 2012 you can also still get to the old archive google sites version.