Author of machiavelli.net, proud father of three, interested in shaping network society. Welcome to my blog.Pitching Whatever, Wherever
These days it seems that everybody is pitching something. A new graduate school, an interdisciplinary research project, a book project that was started last year, new forms of governance, an executive program, etc. So it makes sense, to revisit the basics (and for that I always go to David Hornik’s blog):
A good elevator pitch contains the same content as a good executive summary contains the same content as a good PowerPoint contains the same content as a good business plan. The distinction among these business descriptions is not the substance, it is the degree to which the essential elements are fleshed out. Each document contains slightly more detail than the preceding.
Elevator Pitch –> Executive Summary –> PowerPoint –> Business Plan
What, then, are the essential elements that make up a good PowerPoint, a persuasive elevator pitch, a compelling executive summary? I have no doubt that VCs will differ somewhat on the precise list, as well as the order and the emphasis. But at its core, I believe that a successful business description should include the following elements:
1. Introduction
2. Team
3. Product
4. Market
5. Business Model
6. Competition
7. Financials
8. ConclusionIf you are pitching a VC, start with these 8 slides. If you are writing an executive summary, start with these 8 headings.
Facebooking Davos
In the long history of web 2.0, A-Small-World (ASW) has been the most “bcbg” social network. But no longer. Klaus Schwab’s executive assistant Fiona Paua has been emailing power brokers and academics to set up global agenda councils on their new social network WELCOM, co-sponsored by Microsoft, Infosys, Adobe, etc. The idea is that the global agenda councils deal with the big global problems in quarterly video-conferences (and not just in January). Think of Techdirt’s Insight Community writ LARGE. The question is, when will the invitations show up on ebay? And is there a Big-World equivalent for non-behaving members?
Transforming Academia in Germany
it is the end of the world as we know it (REM 1987, Wallerstein 1999). As we are running around like headless chicken, it might make sense to step back, take a comparative approach, and reflect on changing times (Chinese proverb, Hobsbawm 2002). Lawrence Solum of Legal Theory fame, just posted a brillant blog on the historical development of U.S. legal education. This type of text has the chance to increase the quality of our discourse.
Last Lessig Talk on Free Culture
Larry Lessig, the Stanford Law Professor is giving his last talk on the topic (he is moving on to corruption) on January 31st. If you cannot afford to go, watch his November 2007 TED presentation. If you do have time… sign up.
A Political Theory of Forking
Forking is the nuclear bomb of open source development projects and the ultimate test of openness. Wikipedia defines it as,
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software.
This seemingly innocent definition is the glue that holds software development projects together. The threat of the possibility of any team member to take the source code and part of the team and set up a competing project works as a centripetal force holding projects together. There are several issues to be analyzed, from a political theory perspective:
(a) where does the salience of the threat come from?
(b) what is the difference between branching (think of different linux distributions) and forking?
(c) How is forking used as a speech act?
(d) Do we have analog situations in historical societies (tribes, migration, etc.)?
(e) In how far will “forking” play an important role in networked politics beyond open source/open content projects?
Assessing the intellectual capital of filesharing
Do Check out the interview with Rick Falkvinge, the head of the pirate bay party in Sweden.
Semantic Wars and the Political Economy of Creativity
The battle for the institutional ecology of the digital environment is a semantic war. Some questions are:
a. what is creativity?
b. in how far is creative output analog to property?
c. what type of legal framework should govern the (re)usage of creative output?
d. what does piracy mean? what does file-sharing mean?
e. what alternative worlds are imaginable?
f. what are technological drivers shaping our world?
g. what trajectories and strategies exist?
Do watch Steal-this-Film Part I
and Part II
Check out the Swedish parliamentarians opinions and re-read Kevin Kelly’s classic from 1997 “new rules for the new economy.” And do not forget John Theranian’s article Infringement Nation: Copyright Reform and the Law/Norm Gap
linux on the notebook
theoretically, linux works great and ubuntu is wonderful. After needing a new hard-drive and being super annoyed with XP, I gave it a try. It installed beautifully, everything worked right “out of the box.” However, after 6 weeks, I am a bit disenchanted:
a. there are all these applications that supposedly work with my ipod (classic), but they don’t (and if you go into the fora, they all give lame excuses). Think Floola, GTPod, Banshee, etc.
b. wine and codeweaver’s crossover supposedly allow you to run windows software natively in linux, it is just that microsoft office 2007 and itunes are not supported (and nobody writes about this).
c. I have now downloaded 7 different applications to watch movies and I have been able to mix-and-match and actually found applications that were able to play movies without turning my kids into blue zombies or decoupling the sound from the video, however, when I connected the computer to the projector nothing happened.
d. flash sometimes works and sometimes does not.
e. facebook works sometimes.
Revisiting Municipal Wireless in the City Upon a Hill
The reasons why the concept of municipal wireless is under attack today are manifold. However, under the radar there are interesting success stories (think for example Bristol). But until the fog lifts, do read the new study of the New America Foundation on Philadelphia, formerly the city upon the hill.
Vendor Driven Theorizing
[VENDOR-DRIVEN Theory]: a vendor’s conception or mental scheme of something to be done, or of the method of doing it;
As we are moving into network society, we need to be aware of the phenomenon of vendor-driven theorizing and able to critically reflect vendor-driven theories.
- When we talk about theory, it makes sense to distinguish between theories observing the world and theories shaping the world. Let us call the first, explanatory theories (e.g. Newtonian Physics) and the second constitutive theories ( Liberal Democracy). Of course, most theories are hybrids (think Marxism, Liberalism, or Confucianism), but we can distinguish when hybrid theories observe or shape.
- I use the term vendor-driven theories to talk about situations in which a supposedly neutral software application or management approach introduces a substantive theory into a process. Think of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management in the business world in the 1990s as examples of how the software changed the theory of how business was done.
- ERP and CRM vendors, integrated solution providers, and consulting firms have recently discovered the public sector as the next market for existing software applications. ERP has been re-christened GRP, as in Government Resource Planning and CRM, CiRM, as in Citizen Relationship Management. Government officials and public administrators have been happy to take up the ideas pitched to them and are implementing.
- What is interesting is to ask of course, in how far the analogy between ERP and GRP and CRM and CiRM works and where it breaks down? We also have to ask in how far these vendor-driven theories carry transformative potential and if it corresponds with our ideas about how governance should be organized.
This posting is indebted to Alexander Schellong, Hasnain Bokhari, and Philipp Zimmermann. In discussions with them I developed an appreciation for the amazing/scary transformative power of vendor driven theorizing. I believe it is an important term to introduce into the debate, which I hereby do.
