I've been working on my Career Goals essay. As I have hinted about previously, it has been slightly torturous. It has forced me to think really hard about the time-line of my life leading to the MBA and afterwards. After reading around and a lot of thinking, I've finally gained some clarity. As unlikely as it would have seemed to me even months ago, in broad terms I am thinking of a Private Equity type role immediately beyond the MBA. In the much longer term, I fear I'm going to spew out the usual 'starting a company' spiel that I'm sure many candidates will give - but it is what makes sense for me to say.
So what helped me? Perhaps one of the most useful articles that I have found is Jaguar Paw's Career Goals essay framework. Although it is structured in a similar way to how I was already thinking about approaching the essay, it has made me think more about my Short Term Goal following the MBA. I have also been inspired by the posts of many people blogging out there on all manner of MBA-related things. Some people say they go to MBA school to reflect on their life. I think there is plenty of reflection to be done in simply applying!
Now all I need to do is finish writing this essay in "400 words", "1000 words", "2 pages" and whatever other forms that the different schools require it in.
I listened to a speech by the BBC's Mark Harrison (Head of the Multi-platform, Innovation & Development Studio) today and was impressed that someone has been thinking about the collision of the Internet and broadcast technologies in a similar way to me!
Mark pointed that all the substantial and popular web sites in the world today are platforms for content, e.g. Facebook and Youtube. None of the big sites are content providers. Yet, these platforms, particularly something like YouTube or VLogs, do not produce content of the quality that the BBC does. The BBC has significant expertise in producing quality TV programmes. Youtube and other sites hosting content do not host any content that matches the quality of the BBC's output. Mark stipulates that the big challenge in the coming years is producing a site or technology that successfully marries the Platform and the substantial content quality that is possible through BBC expertise in content production. If and when this becomes a reality, a 'creative dividend' will be realised that truely redefines what is possible and takes TV programme production to the next level.
My personal opinion is that YouTube makes it easy for people to upload and share their videos. However, to produce a quality programme requires many different skillsets, such as script writing, acting, directing and post-production to name a few. Very few people or groups of people have all these necessary skills to produce quality content. Instead, on Youtube we get clips that feature a few of these skills in isolation: perhaps a 3 minute video that features a great comic script or another video with inspiring photography. I expect that in the next ten years technology will emerge that will make it easier for different people with different skills to collaborate online to produce a quality programme. In the same way that software like Firefox is produced in an 'open source' environment, ways of producing 'open source' TV programmes will develop. In the same way that open source software like Firefox includes contributions from developers working for commercial companies, 'open source' TV progammes may feature skilled people from the BBC and commercial companies helping in the production.
If and when such a technology that allows for colloboration and creation of quality content emerges, this will truly reshape the way TV programmes are produced. If this method of production becomes widespread enough, it may even become a 'Youtube killer'.
I've been catching up on some of Marc Andreessen's posts; there is one in particular that stands out - career planning. It starts with:
The first rule of career planning: Do not plan your career.
There is irony in this for me. I'm looking at doing an MBA in year or so, and the one thing that almost all the business schools ask is for you to describe your career goal. In fact, the 'career goal essay' is considered one of the most important parts of any MBA application. He goes on to explain:
The world is an incredibly complex place and everything is changing all the time. You can't plan your career because you have no idea what's going to happen in the future. You have no idea what industries you'll enter, what companies you'll work for, what roles you'll have, where you'll live, or what you will ultimately contribute to the world. You'll change, industries will change, the world will change, and you can't possibly predict any of it.
…
Career planning = career limiting.
So what should you instead?
Instead of planning your career, focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities.
The rest of the article focuses on taking risks, because you can only really make your mark on the world by taking risks. Speaking to friends, it always seems easy to just ‘get comfortable’ – to stop pushing your career. Andreessen pushes us to take risks if you want to succeed. People don’t get ahead by not taking risks. Andreessen goes into some depth about risks, but the sum is as follows:
The issue is that without taking risk, you can't exploit any opportunities. You can live a quiet and reasonably happy life, but you are unlikely to create something new, and you are unlikely to make your mark on the world.
So this makes me wonder about the MBA career goal essay. Can it ever really be possible to define what your career goal should be?
How can companies get consumers enthused about their products as a way of boosting product sales? Seth points to the desperate attempts of Tide and the Chives Marketing Board to do just this. Tide has sent out an email to a number of customers to survey their laundry habits. The Chives Marketing Board has begun an advertising campaign to urge consumers to increase their daily chive intake.
Charles Leadbeater's We-Think and Don Tapscott's Wikinomics suggest that the social movement of the web will transform a number of industries such that it will become normal for consumers to be involved in the actual production of what they consume. The Linux operating system is a famous example of this, but there are other examples, such as OhMyNews - the South Korean news site that accepts articles from readers.
How can we apply this idea to Tide and the Chives Marketing Board?
Consumers of Tide could probably discuss online their laundry habits, rather than in a survey, and help distill what it is about the brand they like and don't like. This might then focus the researchers and technical teams at Tide to address the problems they have with their product, as well inspire them to satisfy any latent needs. A market like the washing powder market does innovate, even if slowly. However, how much of this is consumer led and meeting consumers' specific needs?
With respect to Chives, I think it is merely a matter of determining some great foods which use chives as an ingredient. Again - a recipe invention site where people can show off what people have come up with might re-ingite some interest in chives; something like the Simpsoniser for chives.
Are we now finally entering the age of programmatic sites driven by other sites, i.e. the age of the 'mash-up'?
Although more and more websites are now offering APIs that allow you to access the underlying data programmatically, very few of the 'mash-ups' that have arisen from these have had popular appeal. Google Maps is the exception, managing to offer an API that allows for every person and thing in the world to be easily represented on a map. Web sites that offer real estates to restaurants now look behind the times if they don't use this technology.
However, Groundswell is claiming that their prediction that social networks will be like air is about to come true: Facebook has announced that it will be launching Facebook Connect, a way to connect your Facebook identity to other sites. Imagine having your book reviews on Amazon tied to your Facebook account and seeing your friends' Amazon reviews via their Facebook profile. In many ways, if Facebook Connect works as well as it sounds, it could be like the Google Maps of the social networking world.
Both Google Maps and Facebook Connect provide an element to existing sites which would be difficult for these existing sites to do themselves. A restaurant site does not want to manage data on maps or build fancy social profiles of all their users. Perhaps this model of 'outsourcing' elements of interactivity that are non-core to a site is the way to do mashups? Read More >>
Infoweek reports that 90% of virtual world projects fail, including the many companies that rushed into building a virtual presence on virtual worlds such as Second Life and There.com.
It appears a lot of companies established a presence in virtual worlds simply because it was 'the thing to do'. These presences tended to be virtual locations, such as stores and exhibitions. In reality, what most people are interested in is collaborating with people. It is widely known that most 'collaboration' on Second Life is gambling and sex. How uses of virtual worlds will move beyond this to other things, such as for businesses promoting their products, remains a mystery.
CEO Eric Schmidt has made a presentation at the Annual Stockholders Meeting. Here are some of the highlights:
- Google expects that adverts will become more narrative, engaging and interactive.
- Eric suggest that the defining technological shift of our generation will be the shift from PC centric to internet centric. Why have things stored locally on different devices when you can access everything from any device? There are over 500,000 businesses are now using Google Apps for your domain.
- The emergence of mobile. Japan, which is seen as a front runner for technology, has 81% of people accessing the internet from their mobile. Also, the top three selling books over the last year first appeared for reading on mobiles before appearing in print.
- There are more smart people outside of Google than inside Google. Google is building a 'web platform': Android and other APIs allow the smart people outside Google to build on top of Google's technology.
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