DIDW, 24 Sept 2006 1
Managing the Decentralizatio
n of Identity — The VRM Revolution —
(Thank you, Phil!)
DIDW, 24 Sept 2006 2
Let’s say we all get Identity worked out.
For what is all this necessary but insufficient?
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We’ve got identity worked out. Now what?
We pick up the gauntlet thrown down by Chris Locke in 1999:
DIDW, 24 Sept 2006 4
How do we deal with human beingswhose reach exceeds our grasp?
We take the axes out of our own heads.This is us:
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To de-axe our heads, we take the wayback machine to Alvin Toffler in
1980:”The Industrial Age…violently
split apart two aspects of our lives that had always been one... production and consumption...
In so doing, it drove a giant invisible wedge into our economy, our psyches ...
it ripped apart the underlying unity of society, creating a way of life filled with economic tension."
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The tension is between control and freedom.
Between dependence and independence.
We have to stop thinking of business as a way to imprison customers.
We have to stop thinking about lock-in as the best form of leverage with customers.
DIDW, 24 Sept 2006 7
What does identity have to do with independence?
Nothing, unless we use it to build the opposite of a prison.
Namely a real public marketplace.Not just a bigger/better collection of private ones.
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Clue: Private “social networks”do not make a marketplace.
This isn’t a market.It’s a highly managed
walled garden.
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Markets are what?
And relationships are the frontier.They’re what the information age is about.
They’re what remove the axes from our heads.
DIDW, 24 Sept 2006 10
To be in a relationship you have to be… What?
TrustworthyLoyal
CaringInterested
HelpfulCourteous…
Sound familiar?It’s the Boy Scout’s Law!
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Scouting rules aren’t bad for a marketplace.
Scout’s Law —A Scout is:• Trustworthy• Loyal• Helpful• Friendly• Courteous• Kind• Obedient• Cheerful• Thrifty• Brave• Clean, and• Reverent.”
Scout Motto:• Be Prepared!
Scout Slogan:• Do a Good Turn
Daily!
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What if sellers were good scouts?
Scout’s Law —A Scout is:• Trustworthy• Loyal• Helpful• Friendly• Courteous• Kind• Obedient• Cheerful• Thrifty• Brave• Clean, and• Reverent.”
Scout Motto:• Be Prepared!
Scout Slogan:• Do a Good Turn
Daily!
DIDW, 24 Sept 2006 13
Of course we tend to see businessesas creatures other than boy scouts.
Or at least we used to.
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The habitat looks a little differentin the networked world.
“I used to wrestle with alligators. Then I got nibbled to death by guppies.” — Lou Cole, former MIS director,
1986
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“Somewhere along the line, we confused going to work with building a fort.” —
David WeinbergerStrip away the financial jibber-jabber
and the management corpo-speak, and here’s our fundamental image of business:
• It’s in an imposing office building that towers over the landscape.
• Inside is everything we need.• That’s good because the outside is
dangerous.• This fort is, at its heart, a place
apart. We report there every morning and spend the next eight, ten, or twelve hours inaccessible to the "real" world.
• Yet…
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Since the PC, we’ve been watchingDrucker proven right.
Corporations are human communities.Managemernt is like conducting an
orchestra.Business exists to make customers and
employ people, not just to make a profit.
Workers are assets, not costs.Healthy organizations rely on everybody
learning.The modern corporation is barely more
than a century old, and still not a proven form of business life.
The primary advantages of a large corporation — access to captital,
global communications reach, providing benefits to workers — are
eroding away.
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We’ve been quoting Drucker but inside companies rather than outside
them.Business is “other people’s money”
In a period of upheaeaval, change is the norm.Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and
increased constantly, or it vanishes.Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every
level.Management by objective works - if you know the
objectives. Ninety percent of the time you don't.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Most discussions of decision making assume that only senior executives make decisions or that only senior executives' decisions matter. This
is a dangerous mistake.Most of what we call management consists of
making it difficult for people to get their work done.
So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. The most important thing in communication is
hearing what isn't said.The purpose of a business is to create and keep a
customer.There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that
which should not be done at all.We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong
process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to
learn.
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The customer needs to take the lead.
Because the customer is the other person with the money.
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How can the customer take the lead?
With tools that make each of us both independent of sellers…
And better able to relate to sellers.Are these (and others I insult by not finding their logos)
those tools?Will these make sellers into good scouts?
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For the customers to relate, they’ll need to be independent of CRM jails
Because CRM — “Customer” “Relationship” “Management” — isn’t about management of
the Drucker sort.It’s about control.
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Independence isn’t about “power”.
As Neo said to the architect,It’s about choice.
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The customer needs to bethe Point of Integration
Making the customer the point of integrationWill give CRM systems something real to relate
to.
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VRM is the customer’s RM, for vendors.
Not of vendors. Key difference.
It’s what humanizes sellers AND buyers.It’s what turns Fort Business into whatever works
better in real markets…Where sellers and buyers are both human.
Again.
CRM VRM
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VRM doesn’t exist yet.But it will.
There’s a project of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School.
See http://projectvrm.org.We have a community, a wiki, a blog, conference
calls…It grew out of this community.
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A few use cases…
• Fixing raising support of (and market involvment with) public broadcasting. Especially radio.
• Putting patients in control of their own health care data.
• Putting travellers in control of offerings that might come their way.
• Helping telcos and cablecos find benefits to incumbency other than customer control.
• Removing guesswork from retailing (and, in the process, killing off unnecessary advertising)
• Making messaging relationship-based.
DIDW, 24 Sept 2006 26
Let’s talk.
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