Future communications strategy

Roland Selmer
roland.selmer@gmail.com
Friday, 13 September 13

How did we get here?

10,000 years ago
Formation of neolithic villages
2,000 years ago
Roman empire
20 years ago
The internet
becomes available
Today
grunting
speech
drawings
writing
GSM
email
...
IM
Text
Mobile
Social
Blogs
...
A quick history lesson

Connection based Connectionless
•Large monolithic systems
•Point to point circuit switched
communications
•Telephone numbers
•Distributed systems
•Fully meshed all IP
networks
•IP addresses (SIP URI’s)
The external environment changes

My Phone Number My SIP URI
Now IPV6 LTE networks
+447930511519
Identity becomes portable, transmutable
roland.selmer@gmail.com

#1 OTT apps cost operators $13.9bn in lost SMS revenues
atYE11.This total will have risen to $54bn by 2016.
#2 By 2020 we expect OTTVoIP will have cost the global
telecoms industry $73bn in lost revenues.
Source: Ovum

Communications
Service Provider
Utility

1. {NETWORKS}
2. IDENTITY
3. CONNECTEDNESS
4. COMMUNICATION(S)

The way we currently build
products is linear and
homogenous. Like GSM. Soulmates
Helpmates
Associates
Fun friends
Viber
Skype
WhatsApp
But people communicate in a
non linear fashion...
speaking to different
audiences...
using different tools.
Paul Adams

Social has changed how we communicate

Volume
Quality
Time
Everything is commoditised...Communications

Behaviors are changing
First Direct

Predicting the future and transformation

“...it is precisely the telecommunications operators that are in a
position to meet these expectations, based on transparency and
non-discrimination in the context of the new ecosystem...”
COOTelefónica

“...the history of every dead and dying 'growth' industry shows a self-
deceiving cycle of bountiful expansion and undetected decay...”
“...a score of non-utility companies are well advanced toward
developing a powerful chemical fuel cell, which could sit in some
hidden closet of every home silently ticking off electric power...”
Theodore Levitt

Petroleum Energy
Exhibit: British Petroleum

So what business are we in?
Telephone calls ?
Comms
Entertainment
Information
...

Laplaces Demon "We may regard the present state of the
universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future.An
intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set
nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is
composed ... for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and
the future just like the past would be present before its eyes."
“The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely
the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.”
Heisenberg
Laplace’s Demon

Willful Ignorance...when it all goes wrong
•Financial instruments e.g. CDO’s grouped into pools
•Pool X is a collection of morgates with varied ratings A, B+ etc.
•Bet is that all default (least probable, safest bet)
•The ratings agencies assumed that mortgage defaults are not
correlated and rate Pool X AAA
Case Study:The 2008 ﬁnancial crisis

Willful ignorance
US Smartphone market

PC
F+t
e u OutputInput
-
+
Feedback and delay in dynamic systems
Business Unit
Customers
Observations & insights

PRODUCT VS CUSTOMER ORIENTATED

"How small? How simple?
We advise startups to launch when they've added a quantum of
utility: when there is at least some set of users who would be excited
to hear about it, because they can now do something they couldn't do
before. "
Paul Graham,Y-Combinator

•Connectors, are the people in a community who know large
numbers of people and who are in the habit of making introductions.
•Mavens are "information specialists", or "people we rely upon to
connect us with new information."
•Salesmen are "persuaders", charismatic people with powerful
negotiation skills.They tend to have an indeﬁnable trait that goes
beyond what they say
The law of the few
Malcom Gladwell

CULTURAL STRATEGY

Crossing the cultural chasm
•Bill Bowerman tinkered with shoes. Phil Knight was the athlete
•Initial strategy was to build better mousetraps (innovation
through technology)
•Appealed to performance athletes; Failed to ignite mass market
•Social disruption allowed them to leap the cultural chasm
•Combative solo willpower became the innovation ideology (‘Just do
it’)
•They go back to building better mousetraps and fail (casual
trainers)
Case Study: Nike
Douglas Holt

Cultural trickle down
•Started in Seattle by 3 coffee aﬁcionados wanting to share
artisanal cosmopolitan coffee subculture
•Go to the Bay area and immerse themselves in the art
•Howard Shultz comes along and immediately recognizes the
opportunity to scale
•Buys out the 3 and the Starbucks name and launches a few
more artisanal stores but fail
•Launches more culturally accessible versions (e.g. latte’s) packed
in artisan sophistication codes (grande/venti, Ethiopian blends)
Case Study: Starbucks

Cultural CapitalEconomic Capital
SocialClassEconomic trickle down Cultural trickle down
Cultural Capital
Economic
Elite
Cultural
Elite

CHANGINGTHE WAYYOU WORK

The Concept Car Paradigm

To earn the right to call itself a couture house and to use the term
haute couture in its advertising and any other way, members of the
Chambre syndicale de la haute couture must follow these rules:
• Design made-to-order for private clients
• Have a workshop (atelier) in Paris that employs at least ﬁfteen
people full-time
• Must have twenty full-time technical people in at least one atelier
• Each season, present a collection to the Paris press
Rules of engagement

CULTURE

Information
Decision
Rights
Motivators Structure
The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution
by Gary L. Neilson, Karla L. Martin, and Elizabeth Powers, HBR 2008
26,0000 people in
31 companies
#1 Everyone has a good idea
of the decisions and actions
for which he or she is
responsible
#2 Important information
gets disseminated quickly
#3 Once made, decisions
rarely get second guessed

A polemic is a contentious argument that is intended to establish
the truth of a speciﬁc understanding and the falsity of the
contrary position. Polemics are mostly seen in arguments about
very controversial topics.
Communication

Personal mastery – create an environment that encourages personal and
organisational goals to be developed and realised in partnership
Mental models – know that a person’s 'internal' picture of their environment
will shape their decisions and behaviour
Shared vision – build a sense of group commitment by developing shared
images of the future
Team learning – transform conversational and collective thinking skills, so that a
group’s capacity to reliably develop intelligence and ability is greater than the sum
of its individual member's talents
System thinking – develop the ability to see the 'big picture' within an
organisation and understand how changes in one area affect the whole system.
Towards a learning organisation
Peter Senge

SO WHAT SHOULDYOU DO?

• Reduce the friction between business units through managing
knowledge and insight
• Immerse yourselves in your customers’ culture
• Satisfy customer needs by delivering truly useful products and
great customer experiences (this is hard)
• Move from a product focus to a customer focus
• Be clear on the problem you are trying to solve
• Solidify your identity and speak a common language
• Encourage learning organisational behaviours

Future communications strategy

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