Introduction The Pop Music Industry August 26	eBusiness Planning to Succeed The Always-On Commons How Information Flows Alphabet Soup RFID Tames the Bullwhip
Structure of the Industry August 31	Competitors Suppliers Buyers Substitutes New entrants
The transformation of business processes tearing down the walls September 7 September 14 September 21 September 28	elevator pitches - sept 7 Pressures on the music industry supply chain Economics / Markets Technology / Architecture - presentation sept 14 Politics / Laws / Policies Social culture / Norms
Key policy issues who's in charge? October 5 October 12	Ownership / Control IP: Copyrights and Patents Contracts and Licenses	- mission and vision - goals and keys to success - products and services - competitive advantage
Final presentations October 14	Business / Marketing Plan

Deliverables
August 31 - October 5	in-class presentations of web site(s) - 5 or 6 oral for 1 - 3 minutes to stimulate discussion	see tables below on this syllabus
September 28, October 5	some parts of business plan - 7	roundtables
October 5, 12	other parts of business plan - 4 oral / 1 - 3 minutes - taped	- mission and vision - goals and keys to success - products and services - competitive advantage
October 14	business plan	outline

Liberation Management: Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties
by Tom Peters

Today's organizational images stink. Not just those that derive from the military ('Kick ass and take names') and 'pyramids' (heavy, steep, immobile) but even the new 'network,' 'spiderweb,' 'Calder mobile.' These modern notions are a mighty step forward, but they still miss the core idea of tomorrow's surviving corporation: dynamism. How about company-as-carnival?

Say 'carnival' and you think energy, surprise, buzz, fun. The mark of the carnival -- and what makes it most different from a day in most offices -- is its dynamism. Dynamism is its signature, the reason we go back. To create and maintain a carnival is never to get an inch away from dynamic imagery.

Today's global economic dance is not Strauss waltz. It's break dancing accompanied by street rap. The effective firm is much more like Carnival in Rio than a pyramid along the Nile. The practical point for the firm's leaders: Constantly using dynamic imagery, thinking of yourself as running a carnival and stomping out all forms of static thinking and imagery will help point you toward the right structure and strategy for these woozy times.

These are nutty times. Nutty organizations, nutty people, capable of dealing with the fast, fleeting, fickle, are a requisite for survival. No one can escape the clutches of radically altered technologies, a completely turned-upside-down competitive context. And yet most of our organizations and their leaders are far from zany.

Bold times call for bold leaders. Bold times call for bold experiments. The time for incrementalism has passed. It's true, to be sure, that the march into the future will take place one step at a time. But those steps had better be in pursuit of a zany, bold future. Period.

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Night-by-Night

Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught.
-- Winston Churchill

Saturday, August 26

The end of the road - where we're headed

Two venues for your MBA 604 marketing presentation: popkomm and SXSW

Note that I have taken the liberty of scheduling you to do a presentation next Thursday, August 31.

Introduction to e-Business

How to Make Money in an Age of Transition

eBusiness | Planning to Succeed | The Always-On Commons
How Information Flows | Alphabet Soup | RFID Tames the Bullwhip

Slogans and Mantras

the network is the computer

hyperlinks subvert hierarchy

The Pop Music Industry

Port 80's Boardwalk
Popular Music

Your business plan does not have to describe operations in the U.S. Perhaps some regulatory arbitrage can help you reduce risk and expenses.

to do

weather report - Saturday, August 26, 2006

How did it go tonight? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

Bistro - Introduce yourself

roundtables

The Bullwhip Effect -- due ASAP

explore this course web, especially the Port 80 Boardwalk's pop music industry web, the rest of Ricci Street, and the WWW beyond

Get in the habit of viewing HTML source code.

Every so often, right-click and view the source code of a page and try to relate the code to what's displayed in the browser. After you download Microsoft's Web Accessories, you will be able to highlight parts of a page and view just that part of the source code.

software toolkit 

Download and install the parts that you don't have.

FrontPage settings

The working version of your Plaza web should be on your hard drive in a folder all to itself that FrontPage treats as a "FrontPage web". For the screenshot on the right, my web for Ricci Street is on my desktop, address C:\WINDOWS\Desktop\riccistreet.

The underscored folders _vti_cnf and _vti_pvt hold the glue that Front Page uses for many of its useful functions. You need those folders on your laptop or desktop for FPage to work. You do not need to FTP those folders to the server, though they won't do any harm if you happen to transfer them there.

Research on the Internet - taming the bitstream

What a search engine is, how it works, the difference between search engines and directories, and how to use Boolean keywords.

I recommend Google for all your search engine needs.

If you aren't using a browser like Opera or Firefox that has a Google search built in, try Dave Bau's Quick Search Deskbar.

This tiny textbox is designed for search hounds with weary mouse-fingers. Unlike the Google Toolbar, this little deskbar lets you launch searches without starting a web browser first, directly from your Windows Explorer Taskbar.

Don't forget Google Groups, which lets you search the Internet's newsgroups.

When you get to the end of the search engine's coverage, you have to go to specific sites and search their databases, especially the College library's online resources (student ID required). For this kind of basic business research, you will want to go to industry specific magazines and search their archives.

The research for the music industry comes from a variety of sources, especially Hoovers Online, the U.S. Census Bureau, and other sources. Please make sure you can get into Hoover's Online via the college library's web site. We will search Hoover's as well as several other databases full of business info -- especially the government's E-Stats site -- and others, such as:

The SmartMoney Map of the Market

If I could figure out where to make time for it ...

... we would examine weblogging as a way of "taking notes" while you're quickly surfing the Web doing this kind of business research and we would collaborate using a wiki.

Thursday, August 31 and the first hour of Thursday, September 7

How did the others vote in the poll about the legality and morality of downloading? Discuss it at the Bistro's First Night Poll Results forum.

course readings

Site of the Nite

MakeUpAlley

Makeupalley.com Becomes Independent Site

Since last March 26, 2000, the popular beauty community website, Makeupalley.com, is no longer owned by drugstore.com. Both parties reached an agreement where Makeupalley.com is become an independently owned and operated site by its original founder, Hara Glick.

Glick founded Makeupalley.com in 1999 which was purchased by Beauty.com later that year. Both companies were purchased by drugstore.com in January 2000. Glick held a Vice President position at the Beauty.com New York office, which was recently relocated to Seattle, WA.

Glick can now focus on building the Makeupalley brand and growing the community. Makeupalley.com is popular among consumers and retailers for unbiased beauty information.

No blind alleys: Unbiased beauty advice
by Deanna Larson
Nashvillecitypaper.com, November 30, 2004

The cosmetic-crazed members of this consumer-to-consumer Web site have already bought, used and rated more beauty products than I could ever try in a lifetime, warning me off bad products and steering me toward the ones that deliver as promised.

Women from all professions and walks of life contribute to the site, hoping to save another woman a waste of time or money.

CBS News: Hara Glick, the founder of Makeup Alley, says the Web site has seen more than a quarter million swaps since it started five years ago, and there's never been a health-related complaint.

Trading faces on the Internet
by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan
LJWolrd.com, August 6, 2001

Makeup swapping Web sites often have message boards where women chat about their favorite products or rant about ones they dislike. Sometimes, their conversations lead to product changes.

Maureen Kelly, president and creator of New York-based Tarte Cosmetics, said she has made several changes to her line of makeup thanks to messages on swapping sites.

A few months ago, after seeing swappers share their frustrations with how quickly they were using up Tarte lip glosses, Kelly changed the product from 1.9 grams to 3.5 grams at the same $19 price. Kelly also made the gloss wands longer and changed the product flavor from vanilla to natural after reading postings on swapping sites.

The Pop Music Industry (con'd)

Will you bring on new employees with over-inflated promises of the future or will you let them know about the true state of your finances and your ability to pay them over the time period they expect to be employed?

Port 80's New Venture Creation - resources for start-ups.

learn more about nuts and bolts: names and intellectual property

Pop Music Links - a loooong page of categorized links to a variety of relevant topics

Demo video archives

In 1991, Stewart Alsop changed the technology conference circuit by instituting a new event with new rules: DEMO would be about the products; would require timed, live demonstrations; and would not allow PowerPoint presentations! These rules still stand.

The Entrepreneurial Team
by Dana Blankenhorn
A-Clue.com, January 30, 2006

While it's true that anyone can launch a business, an entrepreneurial business must be a team from the start.

Sure, you need the entrepreneur, the idea person. You need someone who can find the money, who can sell the scheme, who can adjust to events, who can lead. You need someone of boundless energy, determination, ambition, and (especially) ruthlessness.

If your business is going to be on the Internet, you need a content guy. Having an Internet business without a content guy is like having a restaurant without a chef. ...

Having studied entrepreneurs for 30 years, close-up, I can say that they are really different from most of us. They generally have enormous energy, big egos, something of a messianic complex, along with a willingness to let go, not just of parts of their jobs but of the whole business. The best entrepreneurs are in it for the chase, not the money. They care about the thrill of the building, for the buying and selling, for the hunt rather than the kill.

True entrepreneurs aren't wedded to the business, but the process, the chase, the game.

It takes clear vision, a revenue model, luck, good timing, and an innovative, inventive management team. Money is one way of keeping score and buying time to do your next thing. If money is your goal, I believe that you're much less likely to make lots of it. Concentrate instead on providing people with a product or service that they are willing to pay for.

August 31 - Debate - 6:30 PM

debate Berkman scenarios

The success of a project depends a lot on events in the world outside the control of the company. While many futures can be imagined, only one will happen. So another way of saying it is that most projects fail -- whether a stand-alone start-up or a new product or service for an existing company -- partly because they require a future that doesn't happen. The trick for you, then, is to predict the future accurately. Doing so is good risk management; it will reduce the potential of outside events' causing your failure.

This report from the Berkman Center clusters possible futures into five scenarios and discusses the public policy implications of each. Your project for this course should posit one of or a blend of these scenarios.

Five Scenarios for Digital Media in a Post-Napster World
by the the Digital Media Project
Harvard's Berkman Center, November 2003

Several trajectories could guide the future of music and movies online. These five scenarios are the different models vying to shape the development of digital media.

Each of you will present a short explanation of your scenario -- try to "sell" it. Then as a class, we will discuss and finally vote on which we think will happen. It would make sense for the business model that you come up with to be consistent with the future that you think it will exist in.

pment of digital media.

August 31 - 7:30 - 10 PM Presentations

Based on what you find on the web by and about these companies / organizations, how are they dealing with the driving force of the Internet? By and about means that you should look at the corporate web site (by) as well as what Google News gives you access to (about).

Feel free to negotiate a trade with someone. As long as they all get addressed, I don't care who does which.

Elevator Pitch

On Thursday, September 7, each of you is going to pretend you are alone in an elevator with a venture capitalist. You will have thirty seconds between stops in the elevator to briefly explain your business idea. I'll ask someone to take notes and post them at the Bistro. Comparing the notes to your intention, you'll see how an elevator pitch is likely to be received by someone who will be far less interested than our class note taker was in paying close attention. Let me emphasize again that pitching new ideas can happen inside an organization as well as in a bank's loan office or a venture capitalist's boardroom. You have to make a positive impression in a short time.

This pitch will be videotaped.

scenario

Near the front desk of one of those skyscraping Los Angeles hotels, you saw a guy who everyone was hanging around like he was famous or something. So you asked and some dude said in a hushed whisper, "That's Steve Jurvetson."

"Who?" you asked.

Dude looked at you like you'd done some anatomically impossible act in public. "Steve Jurvetson is a managing director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Just about the most important venture capitalists in the whole state. Haven't you submitted your business plan to them? Everyone else has!"

Yeah, right. You should be so lucky. But then late that night, you were alone in the elevator and held it for a guy dashing through the lobby. He jumped in and pressed 46, and then you noticed that it was that Jurvetson guy.

As the elevator doors closed on just you two at the beginning of a long ride alone together, Steve Jurvetson turned toward you. "Thanks! Say, what do you do?"

And so you gave him your best on-the-spot pitch for your brand new business model.

to do

weather report - Thursday, August 31

How did it go tonight? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

readings

roundtables

The Bullwhip Effect -- due August 31

Government Stats -- due September 7

Business Models -- due September 7

upcoming: The Future Of Music, Inc. -- all three due September 28

PEST analysis

SWOT analysis

Force-Field analysis

September 7

Sites of the Nite

FON

FON

From Hot Spots to Fon Zones?
by Andy Reinhardt
Business Week, February 7, 2006

The CEO of Spanish startup Fon discusses why its unusual telecom biz model makes sense for consumers -- and big-name investors like Google.

On Feb. 6, a little-known Spanish startup called Fon made worldwide headlines because of an eye-popping equity investment. Internet giants Google and Skype, a unit of eBay, along with the prestigious venture-capital firms Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures, are pumping $21.5 million into the Madrid-based company to help it take off.

Wi-Fi Wonks Fon Home
by Cyrus Farivar
Wired, February 9, 2006

A new service could allow you to share your home internet connection and, in exchange, surf the web for free while on the road.

A Spanish company called Fon (pronounced like "phone") has devised a new way to provide Wi-Fi to local areas. The company announced earlier this week that it was able to obtain nearly $22 million in funding from Silicon Valley juggernauts including Sequoia Capital, Google and Skype.
 

Ultimate iPod accessories
By CNET staff, February 2, 2006

The market for iPod accessories is so huge that our offices can barely handle the periodic influx of new products (which coincide with new iPod announcements) that hope to enhance your iPod experience. Whether you're looking to transform the iPod into a fully functional stereo or just want to wrap it in a cool, scratch-resistant casing, you'll find the answer here.

vehicles

At Demo.com, I was looking at the line-up for next fall's show and saw this entry for Mp3Car.com.

1. Intel co-branded and developed automotive enabler.

2. Fujitsu Automotive docking station with StreetDeck.com software.

3. Single DIN rapid install car computer with StreetDeck.com software.

StreetDeck combines the features of navigation, satellite radio, vehicle diagnostics, Bluetooth phones, cameras, media ripping, audio playback, radio, DVDs, picture viewer and Wi-Fi syncing into an intuitive touch screen interface. StreetDeck builds on standardized hardware and provides a software development kit to allow additions with minimal development time.

Mp3Car.Com

Your source for mobile computing solutions. We provide hardware, software, and technical support to help you integrate your mobile computing needs into your car. Enjoy your stay and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

StreetDeck

Introducing the first all-in-one mobile electronics package. StreetDeck delivers all the extras you want and need in your car, so you can go from zero to loaded with one installation.

Features

* Touch Screen Control
* Navigation & Mapping
* Bluetooth Phone Integration
* Satellite Radio
* Vehicle Diagnostics
* Rear-view Camera Support
* CD player/MP3 Extraction
* MP3 Player
* FM Radio
* DVD/Video Player
* Picture Viewer
* WiFi Sync Support

web design

Now that you are finding a business model, you should start thinking about names, logos, and visual look-and-feel. For inspiration:

Current Style in Web Design

The great sites ... share the following design features:

Simple layout
3D effects, used sparingly
Soft, neutral background colours
Strong colour, used sparingly
Cute icons, used sparingly
Plenty of whitespace
Nice big text

Let's look at these features one by one. ...

Web Creme

CSS Beauty's Gallery

Thursday, September 7 - 6 PM

The Transformation of Business Processes: tearing down the walls

What's getting blown to bits?

What walls? The walls between:

departments in an organization
an organization and other organizations in its supply chain
an organization and its customers

Where do the walls come from? Tradition. The rise of the managerial corporation in the past hundred years. Fear fostered by lawyers and cost accountants and the threat of lawyers and cost accountants.

What do the walls do? Preserve territory. Control information flow. Power can come from my hoarding information, from knowing something you don't and not telling you.

When information was locked up in atoms, it was easier to control. Now that it's loose on a network, it's harder to control. Information wants to be free, as in unfettered.

Friedman's 10 Flatteners

White Collar Work
by Tayfun Demiroz

in 'Leading the Revolution', Gary Hamel argues that strategies of managing the bottom line and cost cutting that have characterised the past decade are now defunct. In effect, 'corporate aneroxia' has set in. Today, there is a need for dramatically different business concepts or dramatically new ways of differentiating existing business concepts. It is through 'business concept innovation' that strategic variety can be introduced into an industry. It is a time of revolution where there are industry 'incumbents' and 'insurgents'. "Dream, create, explore, invent, pioneer, imagine: do all these words describe what you do? If not, you are already irrelevant, and your organisation is probably becoming so." says Hamel.

At this stage, let's look at what the Australian Aborigine thinks of our current economic and social model:

"It seems business has become a hazard to Mutants (white man). Your businesses were started so people could get better items collectively than they could get for themselves and as a method to express individual talent, and become part of your money system. But now the goal of business is to stay in business. It seems so strange to us because we see the product as a real thing, and people as real things, but business isn't real. A business is only an idea, only an agreement, yet the goal of business is to stay in business regardless. Such beliefs are difficult to understand." 'Mutant Message Down Under', p105.

Well, it has taken almost two centuries for Western civilisation to come to the same conclusion.

Dead Man Walking -- the incumbents' problem

Setting the stage -- the incumbents' position

Internet Neutrality

Internet Neutrality

Net Neutrality
Full Committee Hearing
Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Tuesday, February 7 2006

software for an access-tiered, closed-garden Internet: p-cube start-up bought by Cisco

Consumer generated media

aka participatory media, user generated content

Rip, mix, burn

Blogging, wikis, social networking, tagging

old media

A content publisher gives you something you want in exchange for something you don't want while the publisher has a moment of your attention.

new media

Consumers unshackle content from time, place and manner restrictions.

Center for Digital Democracy's Declaration of Digital Democracy

Choice. Competition. Diversity. Equal Opportunity. Free Expression. Equitable Access. Self-Determination. These are among the basic values that must govern our communications systems in the digital age.

Municipal broadband deployments to double in 2006
by John Tilak
DigitalMediaEurope, January 27, 2006

There are over 400 cities worldwide currently planning to deploy municipal broadband networks, and that number will double in 2006, making community broadband initiatives a very real and significant trend, according to a report from market research firm Visiongain.

Despite legal opposition and intense lobbying from incumbent telcos and cable companies, municipal broadband is well on its way. As of the first quarter of 2006, there are over 100 city and regional wireless broadband networks operational worldwide, more than 40 of which are in the US.

Darknet

definitions

What's the difference between these often confused terms: sharing, piracy, counterfeiting, bootlegging, theft and stealing?

using or enjoying something jointly with others

the unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material

to make a copy of, usually with the intent to defraud; forge

the act of selling illegally or without permission

the act or an instance of stealing; larceny

the act of taking feloniously the personal property of another without his consent and knowledge; theft; larceny

$50 Million C-D Counterfeit Operation Shut Down; Satary Arrested
press release
U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia, November 13, 2003  

The indictment specifically charges that SATARY, AL-QUDAH, and AKRAM ABDELRAHMAN YACOUB manufactured and distributed counterfeit and pirate CDs, counterfeit audio cassette tapes, counterfeit labels and trademarks in various locations throughout the Atlanta metropolitan area, and in Macon, Georgia, and that DALTON MARK HOWELL, GARLAND WAYNE ETHRIDGE, and CARL WISDOM SMITH manufactured and distributed counterfeit CDs, labels and trademarks in various locations throughout the Atlanta metropolitan area.

The indictment charges from in or before April, 1999, through in or about February, 2003, SATARY and the co-defendants manufactured counterfeit compact discs (CDs) and counterfeit audio cassette tapes through the unauthorized recording of popular music protected by copyright and the unauthorized duplication of artwork, graphics, and photographs which was protected by copyright contained on labels of popular music, often manufacturing "compilation" recordings and individual recordings

RIAA’s Annual Commercial Piracy Report Shows Trafficking In Pirated Music Increasingly Sophisticated, Closer Ties To Criminal Syndicates
press release
RIAA, July 13, 2005

The RIAA reported a 58 percent increase in seizures of counterfeit CDs, the authentic CD look-alikes with high-quality artwork and packaging that make the product appear legitimate. Working together, local law enforcement agencies and RIAA investigators seized 1.2 million counterfeit discs in 2004. This pirate product is increasingly traced back to smaller CD copying plants. The growing number of these smaller-sized facilities over the past few years has created excess production capacity, and some unethical businesses have diverted this excess capacity to the production of high-quality pirate product.

Thursday, September 7 - 8 PM

Economics / Markets

Market imperfections

Context of the music industry

Government Regulation

Disruptive Technologies

Creative Destruction

Economics of Information Goods

Most business (non-start-up) failures are rational. That is, everyone made the correct decision. Therefore, the business failed.

Note | In a sense, all start-ups fail due to under-capitalization. They don't have enough capital to survive to profitability. They don't have enough capital to survive bad management, bad information, inability to find market, etc.

How the music industry uses marketing techniques as a means of control.

legit file sharing: BadBlue

In what ways will the future be different from the past? In what ways will they be similar?

Is the past a good guide to the future? If not, what is a good guide for the future?

Do we have a new economy forming?

Just a new economy, or a whole new economics?

What will it be based on that's so different? Are networked bits so different from atoms?

Two major driving forces. Yes, networked bits are so different from atoms that we need an economics of abundance in addition to the traditional economics of scarcity.

Home Nanofactory

The second is the loosening of capital markets, aka globally mobile capital, and the rise of transnational capitalism.

Public Policy

Yes, your organization's structure and culture can have a lot to do with the organization's ability to survive, adapt, and even thrive.

However, our society's structure and culture has a lot to do with it, too. Increasingly, that society is a global network.

Public policy context

how laws, institutions, customs, and regulations affect incentive, the creation of new knowledge, and the possibility of profiting from it

Economic context: capital formation and investment

the business of America is business, not your business

Rule of (which) law?

Who's in charge?

Of course, you say, national laws should prevail. Let's expand it a little.

We live in a globalized economy where international law should supercede national law (just as national law supercedes state law and state law supercedes local law).

We live in a globalized economy where national law (ex: US's freedom of speech; freedom of press; separation of church and state) should supercede international law or other countries' laws.

Golden Straitjacket

This was the only debate topic where I had to give thought to which side is red and which is blue. Basically, it doesn't matter, as I'll try to explain, so I couldn't use the same loose/tight dichotomy as I did with the others. This becomes the more generalized debate proposition within which the other four find their context.

In The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Thomas Friedman writes (p. 86) that one debate is over, and a winner is clear.

When it comes to the question of which system today is the most effective at generating rising standards of living, the historical debate is over. The answer is free-market capitalism. ... There can be different brands of free-market vanilla and you can adjust your society to it by going faster or slower. But, in the end, if you want higher standards of living in a world without walls, the free market is the only ideological alternative left. ...

When your country recognizes this fact, when it recognizes the rules of the free market in today's global economy and decides to abide by them, it puts on what I call the Golden Straitjacket. The Golden Straitjacket is the defining political-economic garment of this globalization era. ... If your country has not been fitted for one, it will be soon.

Golden Rules

Friedman describes the Golden Straitjacket by the rules it imposes on a country.

make the private sector the primary engine of economic growth
maintain a low rate of inflation and price stability
shrink the size of the state bureaucracy
balance the budget, if not have a surplus
eliminate import tariffs
remove restrictions on foreign investments
get rid of quotas and domestic monopolies
increase exports
privatize state-owned industries
deregulate capital markets
make the currency convertible
open industries and stock and bond markets to direct foreign ownership and investment
deregulate to promote domestic competition
eliminate government corruption, subsidies, and kickbacks
open banking and telecommunications systems to private ownership and competition
allow citizens to choose from an array of competing pension options and foreign-run pension and mutual funds

This op-ed piece in today's Buffalo News won't be available in a week or so, but it explains where Mexico is resisting the Golden Straightjacket and why that fuels the US immigration problem.

Mexican economy still struggling
by Robert Samuelson
Buffalo New, June 28, 2006

It's not that Mexico has made no progress. Its economy was once crisis-prone, inflation-ridden and heavily insulated from foreign trade. Now it has quelled inflation (about 4 percent), controlled government spending and opened up to trade. Before adoption of NAFTA in 1994, tariffs on covered imports averaged 12 percent; by 2001, they were 2 percent. In recent years, its economy has grown almost 4 percent annually.

Exploding the myths of offshoring
by Martin N. Baily and Diana Farrell
The McKinsey Quarterly, July 2004

Far from damaging the economy of the United States, offshoring should enable its companies to direct resources to next-generation technologies and ideas—if public policy doesn't get in the way.

Three Democratizations

Early in his book, Friedman writes about what caused the rise of free-market capitalism: the three democratizations, of technology, of finance, and of information. In short, the Internet let money move freely. The folks who cry "Save America's Jobs" are spitting into the wind, according to Friedman.

The venture capitalists at Parkside Partners are globalists, money movers. However, they live in the real world, where many people are fighting back. In Friedman's terms, those fighting back are more interested in their (local) olive trees than in another (global) Lexus.

Electronic Herd

You and I grew up in a world in which nations ruled and competed. Sure, there was a World Court and a United Nations and many treaties, but the nation-state was supreme. According to Friedman, those days are over. Look at the European Union. The ruler of a country has no more discretion than the governor of any one US state has in the face of the overwhelming superiority of the US Federal government. In this analogy, the Federal Government has been replaced on a global scale by what Friedman calls the Electronic Herd. Gathering in Supermarkets, this Herd has far less accountability than any nation-state ever did. At Parkside Partners, you are part of the Electronic Herd.

The Electronic Herd is made up of all the faceless stock, bond and currency traders sitting behind computer screens all over the globe, moving their money around with the click of a mouse from mutual funds to pension funds to emerging market funds, or trading from their basements on the Internet. And it consists of the big multinational corporations who now spread their factories around the world, constantly shifting them to the most efficient, low-cost producers.

This herd ... is beginning to replace governments as the primary source of capital for both companies and countries to grow. In order to thrive in today's globalization system a county not only has to put on the Golden Straitjacket, it also has to plug into this Electronic Herd.

What does this mean for our public policy debate? Friedman calls it synchronized swimming, which is why I had trouble assigning a red or a blue to these Rule of Law debate positions. According to Friedman, there is no debate.

Unfortunately, this Golden Straitjacket is pretty much "one size fit all". So it pinches certain groups, squeezes others and keeps a society under pressure to constantly streamline its economic institutions and upgrade its performance. it leaves people behind quicker than ever if they chuck it off, and it helps them catch up quicker than ever if they wear it right. It is not always pretty or gentle or comfortable. But it's here and it's the only model on the rack this historical season.

As your country puts on the Golden Straitjacket, two things tend to happen: your economy grows and your politics shrinks. That is, on the economic front the Golden Straitjacket usually fosters more growth and higher average incomes -- through more trade, foreign investment privatization and more efficient use of resources under the pressure of global competition. But on the political front, the Golden Straitjacket narrows the political and economic policy choices of those in power to relatively tight parameters. This is why it is increasingly difficult these days to find any real differences between ruing and opposition parties in those countries that have put on the Golden Straitjacket. Once your country puts on the Golden Straitjacket, its political choices get reduced to Pepsi or Coke -- to slight nuances of taste, slight nuances of policy, slight alterations in design to account for local traditions, some loosening here or there, but never any major deviation from the core golden rules. Governments ... which deviate too far from the core rules will see their investors stampede away, interest rates rise and sock market valuations fall. The only way to get more room to maneuver in the Golden Straitjacket is by growing it, and the only way to grow it is by keeping it on tight.

Thursday, September 7, 8 - 10 PM

Elevator Pitch

You get six minutes to stand up and, without any visual aids, tell us what your company is going to sell, to whom, and for about how much. What problem will it solve for those customers?

to do

weather report - Thursday, September 7

How did it go tonight? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

roundtables

The Future Of Music, Inc. -- all three due September 28

PEST analysis

SWOT analysis

Force-Field analysis

Thursday, September 14

In the News - Wireless Philadelphia, wireless Detroit, the death of the CD, what happened to LokiTorrent, and using Lessig's physical layer to control barriers to entry when you can't compete in the marketplace. Also, a review of the new Napster.

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The pervasive PEST analysis: At Wired News, the "subsets" on the left navigation bar are Technology, Culture, Business, and Politics. Substitute Social for Culture and Economics for Business and you have a PEST analysis.

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Note from last spring's class:

I hope you didn't take my shots at Republicans the wrong way last Thursday. When the Democrats were in the White House, I took shots at them for the same reason: to make you think, to make you realize that there are alternatives to the narrow two -- and very conservative -- choices offered at election time in this country. The double-speak of calling John Kerry a liberal is an example of what I mean. It's not the party in power that's the problem; it's government itself. Both parties are there to protect the status quo, the incumbents, the campaign contributors.

Having said that, the government is not monolithic nor are the parts always on the same page. The government that stifles innovation with the DMCA was the same government that funded early Internet research. When they were doing the funding in the 1970's and 1980's, no corporation or legislator saw the future clearly enough to perceive the threat that by 1998 would require passage of the DMCA to protect the incumbents from competition.

As an MBA, you need a worldview from 20,000 feet in the air, not from Buffalo NY wearing the rose-colored glasses of American media and American politics. The Web is not the US Wide Web, it's the World Wide Web. The threat is far larger than anything Congress or the Supreme Court can deal with let alone the two major parties. US businesses that get locked into an US-centric world view will not be able to compete effectively in that new world.

In short, if you want to make money and it's illegal here, try another country. But don't, please don't, let your fear of breaking a law discourage you from thinking and imagining.

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Technological / Architecture

Last week, we didn't have time to look in depth at how the battle between the old and new is being fought in the market place. We talked a little about the long tail and other ways in which digital goods bend the laws of economics. When it comes to the incumbents trying to beat the innovators on the battlefield of place, product, price, and promotion, we can see that the incumbents lose.

The Internet makes place irrelevant.
Digital products have trivial marginal costs, replacing scarcity with abundance.
As for price, how can the incumbents beat free in a world of abundance? Answer: create artificial scarcities, aka DRM, digital rights management
The Internet levels the promotional battlefield. No longer are the deep-pocket incumbents the only ones able to afford the old broadcast media. Every new entrant and substitute can have a professional looking and functioning web site with world-wide reach.

Thus, for all four P's of the marketplace, the advantage goes to the innovators.

This week, we will look at the computer infrastructure threatening the proprietary model and the control mechanisms for fighting back. You have to decide which will work better for your product/service and for the company you're setting up to deliver your product/service.

open - driving forces

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closed - restraining forces

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Passwords revealed by sweet deal
BBC News, April 20, 2004

More than 70% of people would reveal their computer password in exchange for a bar of chocolate, a survey has found.

It also showed that 34% of respondents volunteered their password when asked without even needing to be bribed.

A second survey found that 79% of people unwittingly gave away information that could be used to steal their identity when questioned.

Pizza Palace - superior customer service? or scary times we live in?

Can the boss be fired for blogging?

Spectrum Policy: Property or Commons?

An emerging consensus holds that one of the greatest limits on innovation is the government's method of allocating portions of electromagnetic spectrum. Since its discovery, small chunks of spectrum have been auctioned off to the highest bidder, or given away to commercial interests in exchange for their submission to government regulation. Laws prohibit the resale of spectrum, which means that unused spectrum cannot be transferred to others who want it, and is therefore wasted.

As a result, would-be innovators never know if spectrum will be available for their new inventions. Consequently, they can't factor it into a business plan, or build new wireless applications in their garage knowing that the necessary spectrum will be available to their future customers.

In an effort to encourage innovation, critics of the current model have proposed radical -- and radically different -- reforms. Some say spectrum should be treated like 'property', giving purchasers the same rights afforded any property owner, including the right to exclude others from using it, and the right to transfer ownership. In contrast, proponents of a 'commons' model argue that spectrum is like a stream that belongs to all of us, and that current technological innovations allow sharing of the resource -- a practical, not moral, argument.

Cat and mouse games

Speedbumps and how to fly over them

DRM's Achilles heel: in every technological system for controlling content, at some point consumers must be able to read, hear, or otherwise experience the content. Whenever that happens, the content is necessarily exposed, and it can then be captured and re-distributed without the DRM.

Banned IP Ranges

Tivo To Go

Extract television recordings from your networked Tivo device to your Windows XP PC for personal, noncommercial use. This web page isn't intended as a hardcore geek guide just a place get the average Tivo user pointed in the right direction by exposing some of our options, since our primary web resource is prohibiting these conversations. None of the products or methods listed on this page involve breaking Tivo's encryption nor do they describe the illegal distribution of video. This guide is intended to facilitate the personal, noncommercial viewing and archiving of television files that Tivo has recorded at your request.

Users bypass copy protection on portable Napster (no longer available)
Stuff, February 16, 2005

Users have found a way to skirt copy protection on Napster Inc's portable music subscription service just days after its high-profile launch, potentially letting them make CDs with hundreds of thousands of songs for free.

Such users are already providing instructions to other would-be song burners through technology websites like BoingBoing. ... Thwarting the intellectual property protections of the service is as easy as a free software patch.

Engadget.com said by installing the digital music programme Winamp and then adding a secondary programme to Winamp called Output Stacker, users could convert the digitally protected files from one format to another that can then be burned, unencumbered, onto CDs. ...

A spokeswoman for Napster said that such endeavours were nothing new and the company was not too concerned.

"The DRM (digital rights management) is intact. Basically, people are just recording off a sound card. This is nothing new and people could do this with any legitimate service if they want to use a sound card," she said.

Studios Using Digital Armor to Fight Piracy
by Amy Harmon
New York Times, January 5, 2003

"You're not buying music, you're buying a key," says Larry Kenswil, the president of the eLabs division of the Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company. ... "That's what digital rights management does: it enables business models."

The new Napster To Go has been available for a couple of weeks. It took that long for someone to explain how to beat it:

Burning through Napster's collection, free

Hundreds of music CDs, zero dollars*, obtained legally.
*Not including the cost of blank CDs

Three computers, one fast networked drive, and a few dedicated people: Turning Napster's 14-day free trial into 252 full 80-minute CDs of free music.

to do

weather reports - Thursday, September 14

How did it go tonight? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

roundtables

The Future Of Music, Inc. -- all three September 28

PEST analysis

SWOT analysis

Force-Field analysis

Thursday, September 21

In the News

Looking ahead: on October 5, you're going to stand and be taped while you give a 5-minute summary of your mission and vision. We'll do them in the order shown on the reports page, where you will see that there are still a lot of blanks for company names, slogans, NAICS codes, etc.

Blog of the day (with a poor name and slogan): A VC - Musings of a VC in NYC

Business idea of the day: Turn TiVo into the anti-cable

Cool site of the day (with a provocative name and slogan): 10x10 - A hundred words and pictures that define the times.

A Fluid Look at the News
by David Cohn
Wired News, February 22, 2005

Want to stay up on the latest news but think Google News is dry and boring? For something a little more visual, try 10x10. The site lets viewers scour the top headlines using photos, which combine to create a broad snapshot of the world every hour on the hour.

News at a glance has never been so literal, thanks to information architect Jonathan Harris, 25, creator of the site. 10x10 takes the most common words from major news outlets like BBC World Edition and New York Times International and couples them with pictures. The site lets users interactively search for the top stories by scrolling over pictures and the words associated with them.

Political / Laws

Is the Internet the end of the world as we knew it? Perhaps. For sure, according to Doc Searls and David Weinberger, it's The World of Ends:

The Nutshell

1. The Internet isn't complicated
2. The Internet isn't a thing. It's an agreement.
3. The Internet is stupid.
4. Adding value to the Internet lowers its value.
5. All the Internet's value grows on its edges.
6. Money moves to the suburbs.
7. The end of the world? Nah, the world of ends.
8. The Internet’s three virtues:
    a. No one owns it
    b. Everyone can use it
    c. Anyone can improve it
9. If the Internet is so simple, why have so many been so boneheaded about it?
10. Some mistakes we can stop making already.

Porter's barriers to entry

open vs closed, tight vs loose control of rights

privacy, secrecy, and security

Legal punishment is a kind of social policy.

Karl Wagenfuehr, who is not a lawyer, researched the penalties for shoplifting a DVD as compared to the penalties for downloading one.

What does this say about our values? About who has the stronger lobby? If downloading is theft, who is it theft from, the retailer or the label (copyright holder)?

Dumb Laws

Underwater bike ride to launch students' eight-week crime spree
by Gerard Seenan
The Guardian, February 26, 2005

As US coast-to-coast crimewaves go, it is not in the league of Bonnie and Clyde. It lacks both violence and avarice and is further hindered by an overabundance of pre-publicity.

Undeterred, a couple of students from Cornwall are intent on making American criminal history by spending their summer breaking as many US laws as possible. ...

"There are thousands of stupid laws in the United States, but we are limiting ourselves to breaking about 45 of them," said Richard Smith, from Portreath, Cornwall.

The legal chess match

Do you understand the differences between the different kinds of intellectual property: patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets?

proscribed behavior: counterfeiting, trademark/brand infringement, file copying

What laws and court decisions will help your business succeed?

You should have a corporate position on every relevant law and court case. After you learn more about the industry that you are in, you can rely on the appropriate trade associations and advocacy groups to represent "your" side. But as an entrepreneur, you must be aware of and able to discuss the issues and be especially aware of the implications for your business. In general, this awareness is part of risk assessment or risk management.

the latest:

Writers group sues Google over copyrights
by Globe Wire Services
Boston Globe, September 21, 2005

An organization of more than 8,000 authors accused Google Inc. yesterday of ''massive copyright infringement," saying the powerful Internet search engine cannot put its books in the public domain for commercial use without permission.

Gyuri asks:

Is there any difference between stealing a cd from a store (so taking it without paying fro it) and downloading it from the internet or ripping the music from another cd?

Public Law 108-419
108th Congress, 2004

D) To minimize any disruptive impact on the structure of the industries involved and on generally prevailing industry practices.

Note that for several of these topics, I have extensive links below the schedule. However, please don't look at only the resources I have provided. Go beyond them to look for especially more recent information about these cases and laws.

 

Nintendo DS looks beyond gamers
BBC News, February 16, 2006

Owners of Nintendo's DS game gadget could soon be using it to browse the web or watch TV.

By June, Nintendo will release an add-on card for the handheld that has Opera's web browsing software on it.

Following this, it will release another card with a TV tuner inside that picks up programmes broadcast for portable devices.

Muni Wireless

Municipal Broadband: Corporate or Local Control? (Note the map of states that have already legal barriers to Community Internet and states with pending anti-municipal broadband legislation.)

Faced with the expanding digital divide, many local officials have set out to directly provide high-speed broadband service through municipal networks. Whether building a wireless system, installing fiber directly to homes, or exploring broadband over power lines – or some combination of these options – local communities are finding they can get better service for less money if they do it themselves.

Big telecom and cable companies have responded by furiously working to slam the door on community wireless. The telephone and cable giants are trying to use their lobbying clout in state capitals to pre-empt local control, preserve higher prices and preclude competition.

Why Your Broadband Sucks: Telecom toadies (ahem, state officials) stifle competition to keep prices high.
by Lawrence Lessig
Wired, March 2005

You'll be pleased to know that communism was defeated in Pennsylvania last year. Governor Ed Rendell signed into law a bill prohibiting the Reds in local government from offering free Wi-Fi throughout their municipalities. The action came after Philadelphia, where more than 50 percent of neighborhoods don't have access to broadband, embarked on a $10 million wireless Internet project. City leaders had stepped in where the free market had failed. Of course, it's a slippery slope from free Internet access to Karl Marx. So Rendell, the telecom industry's latest toady, even while exempting the City of Brotherly Love, acted to spare Pennsylvania from this grave threat to its economic freedom.

Let's hope this is just the first step. For if you look closely, you'll see the communist menace has infiltrated governments everywhere. Ever notice those free photons as you walk the city at night? Ever think about the poor streetlamp companies, run out of business because municipalities deigned to do completely what private industry would do only incompletely? Or think about the scandal of public roads: How many tollbooth workers have lost their jobs because we no longer (since about the 18th century) fund all roads through private enterprise? Municipal buses compete with private taxis. City police departments hamper the growth at Pinkerton's (now Securitas). It's a national scandal.

So let the principle that guided Rendell guide governments everywhere: If private industry can provide a service, however poorly or incompletely, then ban the government from competing. What's true for Wi-Fi should be true for water.

WiMAX Trends

The leading information gateway for WiMAX. The IEEE 802.16 standard is a wireless metropolitan area network (MAN) technology that will provide a wireless alternative to cable, DSL and T1/E1 and is transforming the world of wireless broadband.

US Government policies

To follow up on what I said about last fall's MBA 600 students not being able to find which party -- Republicans or Democrats -- were running on policies that would better help new entrants. I'm not sure what Larry was reading from, but if I go to GOP.com and type "copyright" into the search box, I get no results. If I type "broadband", I get:

Promoting Innovation and Economic Security through Broadband Technology

If you read the page, you'll see that "innovation" refers to incumbents, not new entrants. For example,

Developing the most competitive broadband market in the world will provide American consumers with the most affordable and highest quality broadband service in the world.

What "competitive" means is the incumbents competing with each other. In the countries that do now currently have "the most affordable and highest quality broadband service in the world", you'll learn that the government has provided or subsidized it. They have not tried, as we are in the US, to create conditions for the incumbents to innovate when they get around to it. Note the "will provide" in the quotation, not "has provided".

Learn more: Internet World Stats

To give equal time to the Democrats ...

Democratic platform cites outsourcing, broadband issues
by Grant Gross
Computerworld, July , 2004

Some stands, including the call for universal broadband, mirror GOP positions.

When I search the official 2004 Democratic National Platform for America, I get no results for "copyright" and only one for "broadband".

Investing in technology to create good jobs. We will invest in the technologies of the future, from renewable energy to nanotechnology to biomedicine, and will work to make permanent the research and development tax credit. We will achieve universal access to broadband services, which could add $500 billion to our economy, generate 1.2 million jobs, and transform the way we learn and work. And we will put science ahead of ideology in research and policymaking.

Another bunch of pretty-sounding words. And meanwhile, other countries are going to out-compete us because their governments favor new entrants while the US government favors incumbents. Here's the key: the Internet is stupid and doesn't give a hoot for one country or another. The Web is world-wide, not subject to US jurisdiction.

RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use
EFF.org, February 15, 2006

It is no secret that the entertainment oligopolists are not happy about space-shifting and format-shifting. But surely ripping your own CDs to your own iPod passes muster, right? In fact, didn't they admit as much in front of the Supreme Court during the MGM v. Grokster argument last year?

Apparently not.

other countries' laws

Findlaw's International Protection

U.S. authors automatically receive copyright protection in all countries that are parties to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, or parties to the Universal Copyright Convention (UCC). Most countries belong to at least one of these conventions. Members of the two international copyright conventions have agreed to give nationals of member countries the same level of copyright protection they give their own nationals.

Most countries belong? So what we want to know is which ones don't.

UNESCO's Collection of National Copyright Laws

WIPO's Directory of National Copyright Administrations

Copyright Aid's Signatories Of The Berne Convention

Lest you think it somehow unpatriotic to profit from the difference between two countries' copyright laws, note that it has a distinguished American history:

Dickens's 1842 Reading Tour: Launching the Copyright Question in Tempestuous Seas
by Philip V. Allingham
The Victorian Web, January 2001

The first American "pirate" was probably Benjamin Franklin (1706-90), who was, among other things, a Philadelphia printer who re-published the works of British authors in the eighteenth century without seeking their permission or offering remuneration. Novelists, of course, were not the only writers affected. The complaints of poet William Wordsworth, for example, which began quietly in 1808, grew louder and more eloquent over the course of the next three and a half decades; by 1837 the matter had begun to absorb large amounts of his time and energy. He went to London to lobby the House of Commons, enlisting the aid of the popular dramatist Thomas Noon Talford as his parliamentary champion.

During both his North American reading tours of 1842 and 1867-68, Dickens lobbied the American Congress to recognize the copyright of British authors, but made little headway because American publishing was undercapitalized and needed to be able to plunder British and continental works in order to survive. Indeed, during his first visit Dickens's raising the controversial issue made him anathema in certain political circles and in the American press.

Selling DVDs Next to Pirates
Wired News Report, February 24, 2005

Taking its battle against rampant piracy of films and music to the front lines, Warner Home Video said it will sell cut-rate DVDs in China in a bid to compete on the counterfeiters' home turf.

Basic DVDs, to be available shortly after a film's theatrical release, will sell in China for as little as 22 yuan ($2.65), the company said. That's still more than the pirated versions readily available in China for 8 yuan ($1).

Warner's basic versions will not carry any DVD extras such as directors' interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, the company said. But versions with more features will be available a bit later for 28 yuan ($3.38).

According to the industry, theft in China of copyrights and patents cost Western companies an estimated $16 billion in lost sales each year. Despite sporadic arrests, counterfeit books, DVDs and music are easily available on almost every city street and even in shops.

Music on your phone
Red Herring, February 15, 2005

Surprise news from Nokia and Motorola’s “Rocker” plans make credible music player/phone hybrids sound possible -- and the iPod’s future feel shaky. ...

Putting music and cell phones together makes sense for both industries, said Loudeye CEO Mike Brochu. With more than 650 million handsets sold each year and more than 1.3 billion wireless subscribers, far more people own handsets than computers or MP3 players, especially in the target 16- to 35-year-old market, said Mr. Brochu. That makes the cell phone market ideal for selling music and other digital media, and will also help cell phone carriers sell airtime, he said. “Ring tones alone were a $3-billion business, so you can imagine what you will get with fully downloadable music and MP3 capabilities.”

The checks for the music industry's CD Price Fixing Settlement have finally been mailed out to millions of consumers. It's hard to trust RIAA when this Settlement is concrete evidence of the music industry's malfeasance, which consumers have known all along when they say CD's are overpriced.

Donate My Music Check

It's your Music. It's your Money. They can't be trusted with either. Protect your rights. Donate your check to the EFF.

to do

weather reports - Thursday, September 21

How did it go tonight? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

bistro

market research

All of you need to be doing market research for your proposed businesses.

Who is going to buy your product / service?
How many of potential buyers are there?
Where are they?
What else can you learn about them?
Most importantly, what can you infer from what you can learn?

Thursday, September 28

Your business plans

Names, logos, and slogans - flickr

Startup.com

In the News

Top music labels try to raise prices for downloads
by Scott Morrison in San Francisco and Tim Burt in London
Financial Times, February 28 2005

Some leading music labels are in talks with online retailers to raise wholesale prices for digital music downloads in an attempt to capitalise on burgeoning demand for legal online music.

The moves, which suggest the labels want a bigger slice of the fledgling market's spoils, has angered Steve Jobs, the Apple Computer chief executive behind the iTunes online music store.

Remote Surgery
by David Orenstein
Business 2.0, December 1, 2001

And you thought your doctor was distant? A pioneering surgical procedure, tested this fall, paired two surgeons in New York with a patient in Strasbourg, France.

Earlier this fall, 68-year-old Madeleine Schaal volunteered to make medical history by allowing Jacques Marescaux and Michel Gagner to remove her gall bladder. What's so unusual about that? Only that she lay on an operating table in her hometown of Strasbourg, France, while the two doctors performing the surgery were in New York.

Social Culture / Norms

The battleground for the hearts and minds of consumers: stealing vs sharing

advocacy and watchdog organizations

Several advocacy organizations are mentioned in this next article -- Public Knowledge, Consumer Electronics Association, and P2P United among the anti-Induce forces, and Mitch Glazier, senior vice president of government relations for the RIAA. He's the one who drafted the DMCA when he worked for a member of Congress.

U.S. Senate to Weigh Bill Targeting Web Song Swaps
by Reuters
NY Times, September 27, 2004

After weeks of negotiations, the U.S. Senate could take action this week on a bill that would make it easier to sue "peer-to-peer" networks like Kazaa and LimeWire that allow users to copy music and movies over the Internet.

The bill would give a boost to recording companies and movie studios, which so far have been unable to shut down the online file-trading networks in court.

What a Crappy Present - CDs Make Bad Gifts for Kids

The real issue: "Accept the fact that we are in control, not you."

What are you really selling?

Advocacy organizations

For this part of the course, we could also look at traditional newspaper and TV coverage of the social issues. From the other side of the lens, we could look at the communities of fans, where we would find some amazing viral marketing; Dave Matthews sites are the envy of the industry.

Instead, we're going to use our limited time to look at the web sites of various advocacy organizations competing for public mindshare.

Don't Mess With Librarians
by Adam L. Penenberg
Wired News, September 15, 2004

Jessamyn West is a 36-year-old librarian living in central Vermont. But she's not your stereotypical bespectacled research maven toiling behind a reference desk and offering expert advice on microfiche.

She's a "radical librarian" who has embraced the hacker credo that "information wants to be free." As a result, West and many of her colleagues are on the front lines in battling the USA Patriot Act, which a harried Congress passed a month after 9/11 even though most representatives hadn't even read the 300-page bill. It gave the government sweeping powers to pursue the "war on terror" but at a price: the loss of certain types of privacy we have long taken for granted.

What got many librarians' dander up was Section 215 of the law, which stipulates that government prosecutors and FBI agents can seek permission from a secret court created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to access personal records -- everything from medical histories to reading habits. They don't need a subpoena. In fact, they don't need to show that a crime has even been committed. And librarians, stymied by a gag order, are forbidden to tell anyone (except a lawyer).

I had been using pro and con to subdivide these topics. I have now switched to Lessig's terms old, favoring the incumbents, the status quo, and new, favoring the new entrants and substitutes, the disruptive disintermediators.

While clicking around the web site of the organization that you're showing us, answer three questions:

What is their main (soundbyte) message?
Who is their audience?
In order to influence social norms, what kinds of evidence and arguments are they using?

Note that you have five minutes.

Remix Culture

Remixing Culture: An Interview with Lawrence Lessig
by Richard Koman
O'Reilly Network, February 24, 2005

I'm not interested in peer-to-peer surviving for the purpose of enabling copyright infringement. But I am really eager that the technology be allowed to exist so that the many legal uses that it will encourage -- including uses that will support the remix culture -- will be able to take off.

This is not a constitutional question in the Grokster case at all. The Grokster case is just a question of whether the court should apply a secondary liability on the manufacturer because the product was used illegally by a customer. And that secondary liability in the context of the copyright arena has been narrowly construed, because in the Sony Betamax case the court said that as long as a technology is capable of substantial noninfringing uses, the technology itself would not be considered an infringement. Congress, of course, is free to decide that a particular technology does more harm than good. But the principle of Sony is that it is Congress that should make that judgment and not courts.

Now the real reason that is an important principle is that courts are extraordinarily expensive places to adjudicate these questions. And the best example of that is the case of ReplayTV. They produced what looks like a modern version of the VCR and they spent two years in litigation with content owners who claimed that they were producing a technology that people used to create copyright infringement, and that they should be held responsible for it. Two years of litigation is enough to sap out all the resources of a startup company, and they were eventually forced into bankruptcy. I think the case stands for the obvious points that the Sony Betamax case was trying to make--if you can pull somebody into court under some vague standard of liability just because the tools are being used by people to create copyright infringement, that's a very good way to block new innovation that might change the way copyright material gets distributed. So it's a strategic opportunity to exercise control over the future of content development and distribution, and not so much as a way of protecting copyrights.

Now again, in that case, as in the VCR case, as in the peer-to-peer case, it's open for the copyright holder--which, of course, is one of the most powerful lobbies in America--to go to Congress and get them to address the specific problem that they complain about. And we can have an argument in Congress about whether some law should be passed banning a particular technology, but if you make the courts the arbiter of whether a technology should be allowed or not, then the courts become a tool, a weapon to be used in the marketplace. And they will stifle new innovation and new creativity because manufacturers are afraid of losing their money to lawyers. (my emphasis)

Same Old Song
by Christiane Culhane
The New Republic, TNR Online, December 9, 2003

The recording industry has had a rough few years, with CD sales down 15 percent and industry-wide profits down twelve percent. And since this recent difficulty has coincided with a spike in pirating activity--enabled by the rise of digital music files like mp3s and file-sharing services like KaZaA--it's no surprise that record companies have identified pirating as the source of all their problems. As Hilary Rosen, head of the Recording Industry of America (RIAA), told Congress in September 2002, file-sharing is "an epidemic for the American economy and culture." But, in truth, piracy is only a symptom. The real problem facing the recording industry is that mp3s are changing the way people listen to and interact with music. Until the industry adapts, no amount of cracking down on piracy is going to help its bottom line....

to do

weather reports - Thursday, September 28

How did it go tonight? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

roundtables

Thursday, October 5

6:00 - 7:45

Wired's NextFest

roundtables

bullwhip

PEST | SWOT | FF

looking ahead to MBA 604:

MILIA trade show's technical manual for the construction of your stand (preparing for MBA 604)

South by Southwest (SWSW)'s marketing info -- exhibitor spaces, prices

business plan

name, logo, slogan

These are the three basic components of your branding effort. What makes a good one?

name of company - short, easy to pronounce and spell, no negative connotations

logos- simple shape, scalable, multi-colored

logos - each of you needs to develop a logo for your company and perhaps one for each branded product or service.

fonts as logos? trade-offs

slogan - short, you-oriented not we-oriented, punny

NAICS

What is your company's NAICS code?

NAICS Codes and Titles

US NAICS Keyword Search Engine

Putting your company in the center of Porter's model, list in groups the five forces at work on it: competitors, suppliers, buyers, new entrants, substitutes (likely source of disruption).

You may want to start with NAICS because the official description can give you a way to frame your mission/vision.

Mission Statement and Vision Statement

context: If a busy person -- such as a potential investor in an elevator -- asked, "Who do you work for? What does the company do?", how would you answer?

250 word maximum -  Here's where we are (mission). Here's where we're going (vision). Who will pay what for what? (revenue model)

What's your name and the name of your company?
Very briefly, what is the company going to make/do, and who is the company going to sell to? ("Everyone who is interested" is not an answer to that question.)
State and elaborate on your company's mission (present) and vision (future).
Wrap up by making a pitch for why this company is likely to return a substantial profit on an investment.

Your company's mission statement is oriented toward the present. What does your company exist to do (other than return value to investors)? Your company's vision statement is future oriented. Where are you headed in order to continue to return value to investors?

How to Write a Mission Statement
by Janel M. Radtke
Grantsmanship Center, 1998

A good mission statement should accurately explain why your organization exists and what it hopes to achieve in the future.  It articulates the organization's essential nature, its values, and its work.  ... An effective mission statement must resonate with the people working in and for the organization, as well as with the different constituencies that the organization hopes to affect.  It must express the organization's purpose in a way that inspires commitment, innovation, and courage -- not an easy task!

At the very least, your organization's mission statement should answer three key questions:

1. What are the opportunities or needs that we exist to address? (the purpose of the organization)
2. What are we doing to address these needs? (the business of the organization)
3. What principles or beliefs guide our work? (the values of the organization)

Mission Statement
Business Resource Software, Inc.

The mission statement should be a clear and succinct representation of the enterprise's purpose for existence. It should incorporate socially meaningful and measurable criteria addressing concepts such as the moral/ethical position of the enterprise, public image, the target market, products/services, the geographic domain and expectations of growth and profitability. ...

The following are some examples of mission statements from real enterprises.

3M - "To solve unsolved problems innovatively"
Mary Kay Cosmetics - "To give unlimited opportunity to women."
Merck - "To preserve and improve human life."
Wal-Mart - "To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same thing as rich people."
Walt Disney - "To make people happy."

These are the 'one-liners', but each is supported by a set of values that set the performance standards and direct the implementation of the mission.

Characteristics

How can you beat your competitors? Where will you enter this market?

Make a decision about and prepare bullet points for each of the questions below.

How big will you be?
How good will you be?
What will you be best known for?
Who will pay what for what to whom? (revenue model)
Who are the customers? Why will they choose you? Why will they choose you again? (customer acquisition model)
Who / what is the competition?

Let's pay special attention to the extent to which these businesses will depend on digitizable information. That's the extent to which they could be disintermediated by a digital network. Very risky.

How do we increase revenue?
How do we reduce expenses?
How do we bring in more customers?
How do we get more business out of each existing customer?
How do we increase shareholder value?

goals and keys to success

what must happen for the company to succeed

SMART Goals

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant to your mission
Timely (by when?)

Try for three or four goals, one sentence each, that contain all five attributes above.

Keys to Success

What must happen in order for your business plan to succeed? One way to approach this is to look at the PEST and SWOT analyses for your business and select the most critical points. Is there a key employee you must retain? Is there a key customer that you must get? Is there a law that must (or must not) pass? Is there an enabling technology that must be developed?

Another way to approach it is to think of possible failure. If your business fails, what would be the most likely and predictable causes? Having those not happen would then be the keys to your success.

competition

 

competitive advantage

Each of you will have three minutes to explain, on video, why your business model will work.

What will you do better, faster, or cheaper than your competition? One of the three is necessary. Two will greatly help you succeed. Three is not probable.

competitors

Who are they?

Links to their web sites

How do they share the market?

Do they have a trade association?

How will your company be different?

partners

What other companies will it be most advantageous for you to have a win-win relationship with? Roger has a special category that he calls affiliates.

What other companies within the MBA 600 class will it be most advantageous for you to have a win-win relationship with?

How to Start a Start-up
by Paul Graham

You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.

And that's kind of exciting, when you think about it, because all three are doable. Hard, but doable. And since a startup that succeeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies getting rich is doable too. Hard, but doable.

MusicBizplan.com

Since 1999, We have developed strategic marketing and business plans for unsigned artists, bands, independent record labels and production companies. We cater to all genres including Rock, Hip-Hop, R&B, Pop, Jazz, Gospel and all other forms of popular music. Our strategic marketing and business plans have helped many of our clients create the "buzz" needed to sign Major Recording Contracts and Distribution deals.

Start-ups blur lines between radio, music swapping
by John Borland
CNET News.com, March 4, 2005

A new generation of start-ups is taking a page from Apple Computer's iTunes playbook, allowing Net radio listeners to draw their programming at will from one another's hard drives.

At the head of a movement that could transform online radio, Live365 and start-up Grouper are the latest to blur these lines between Internet radio and online song-swapping, with an alliance aimed at turning the older companies' stable of amateur broadcasters into the hubs of peer-to-peer communities.

Dodgeball - connect with your friends

marketing research

What Is Your Market Opportunity And How Big Is It?

What do you know about your customers?

Who? (age/gender/SES) How many? Where? What else do they do?

What research would you buy if you could afford it?

What research organizations (analysts, trade press, professional associations) follow your industry? ... which is probably where you got the answers to the first question about your customers.

market research

brainstorm market research questions all the projects have in common

Market research - at this point, go for broad demographics. In MBA 604, we'll focus on specific user profiles.

for example, how many Americans have iPods and what do we know about them?

answer: Pods and MP3 Players storm the market
by Lee Rainie
Pew Internet, February 14, 2005

other resources

ClickZ's stats section

Center For Media Research

Kaiser Family Foundation's Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds

Pew Internet's ongoing series of reports

marketing research process

first task

Defining the research problem. What does the client (could be your company's CMO/CEO) want to know?

second task

Research objectives. The answers to what two or three specific measurable questions will solve the client's problem or help the CMO make a decision?

third task

Research design. What secondary research or primary research with focus groups and surveys will provide the data to answer the two or three measurable questions?

ex: survey 200 potential customers and measure their relative interest in six different attributes of the product/service as they influence their decision to purchase.

What do you want to know?

Exploratory

gain background information
define terms (ex: ease of use of web sites)
clarify problems and hypotheses (ex: market segments, variables for causal research)
establish research priorities

Descriptive

who your customers are
what they buy/use
why they buy/use your products
when they buy/use your products
where they buy/use your products
how they buy/use your products
how they find out about products

ex: Which is the better logo? Which is the better welcome page for the web site? What are the three best colors for this internet radio?

Causal

Experiments that manipulate variables against each other

ex: What will cause a change in your customers' attitude and behavior? What will cause an increase in market share or customer satisfaction or sales, etc.

8:00 - 9:00

Key Policy Issues

Who's in charge?

Ownership / Control

IP: Copyrights and Patents | Commons | Contracts | Licenses

Musicians, audience reach out to each other without radio's link
by John Boudreau
Knight Ridder, Buffalo News, October 17, 2005

GarageBand.com started in 1999 as a dot-com that was supposed to be a record label, but went bust in early 2002. Ali Partovi, whose previous start-up, LinkExchange, was acquired in 1998 by Microsoft for $265 million, bought the Web site's assets. Though he won't divulge revenues or investment details, Partovi said he has invested less than $1 million on reviving the operation so far. The company has four full-time employees and six part-timers. It has been profitable for about year.

GarageBand.com has more than a half-million registered users, and a catalog of well over 200,000 songs.

Apple Computer pays GarageBand.com for the rights to use the GarageBand name for its software that is used to record and mix music.

GarageBand.com added podcast technology this spring, allowing artists new ways to reach listeners. Musicians can podcast messages to their fans. Listeners can have music from favorite bands automatically downloaded, or podcast, to their digital music players. And amateur DJs can assemble podcast "radio" shows.

Since the podcast launch, GarageBand.com's monthly traffic has nearly doubled to about 2 million unique visitors a month, Partovi said.

Countdown to the Grokster Argument
EFF.org, March 2005

Ever since the Betamax ruling in 1984, inventors have been free to create new copying technologies as long as they are capable of substantial noninfringing (legal) uses. But by the end of this year, all that could change. In MGM v. Grokster, Hollywood and the recording industry are asking for the power to sue out of existence any technology that appears to be a threat, even if it passes the Betamax test. That puts at risk any copying technology that Betamax currently protects as well as any new technologies Hollywood doesn't like.

To raise awareness about what's at stake in the Grokster case, EFF is profiling one Betamax-protected gadget every weekday until the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on March 29. Some of these examples are in fun, some more serious, but all represent general-purpose technologies that can be used for both infringing and noninfringing purposes. Check them out and pass the word along.

The MPAA has deep pockets. But who's funding the other side? Who's paying for the EFF's fancy lawyers?

Let the truth be told…MGM vs Grokster
by Mark Cuban (self-made billionaire and owner, Dallas Mavericks NBA team)
Blog Maverick, March 26, 2005

We are a digital company that is platform agnostic. Bits are bits. We dont care how they are distributed, just that they are. We want our content to get to the customer in the way the customer wants to receive it, when they want to receive it, at a price that is of value to them. Simple business.

Unless Grokster loses to MGM in front of the Supreme Court. If Grokster loses, technological innovation might not die, but it will have such a significant price tag associated with it, it will be the domain of the big corporations only.

It wont be a good day when high school entrepreneurs have to get a fairness opinion from a technology oriented law firm to confirm that big music or movie studios wont sue you because they can come up with an angle that makes a judge believe the technology might impact the music business. It will be a sad day when American corporations start to hold their US digital innovations and inventions overseas to protect them from the RIAA, moving important jobs overseas with them.

Thats what is ahead of us if Grokster loses. Thats what happens if the RIAA is able to convince the Supreme Court of the USA that rather than the truth, which is, Software doesnt steal content, people steal content, they convince them that if it can impact the music business, it should be outlawed because somehow it will. It doesnt matter that the RIAA has been wrong about innovations and the perceived threat to their industry, EVERY SINGLE TIME. It just matters that they can spend more then everyone else on lawyers. Thats not the way it should be. So, the real reason of this blog. To let everyone know that the EFF and others came to me and asked if I would finance the legal effort against MGM. I said yes. I would provide them the money they need. So now the truth has been told. This isnt the big content companies against the technology companies. This is the big content companies, against me. Mark Cuban and my little content company. Its about our ability to use future innovations to compete vs their ability to use the courts to shut down our ability to compete. its that simple.

As mobile phones go Hollywood, who'll control the content?
by Bruce Meyerson
AP at SeattlePI.com, March 27, 2005

Walt Disney Co., for one, won't allow its wireless partners to deliver any of its ringtones, video games and other content to phones with Bluetooth or infrared, another technology for direct connections between devices, until the industry adopts a more secure format to prevent unauthorized sharing and copying.

The following questions could be the final exam for this course: Why is Disney boycotting Bluetooth? Is it in their best interests to do so? Here's one answer:

Disney dooms self with moronic Bluetooth boycott
by Cory Doctorow
Boing Boing, March 28, 2005

We live in a weird, temporary bubble during which it is actually possible to sell people ringtones and video and crap for their phones, because mobile phones usually come locked down and unlocking them isn't a common practice yet. So there's this temporary opportunity for media companies to bleed their customers for music and movies they already own in tiny, stripped down "mobile" versions, and any company that doesn't get in on the act now is gonna lose its chance soon, as market forces drive phones to more and more open states.

IP: Copyrights and Patents

Microsoft said to end music talks
by Reuters
CNN, October 4, 2005

Report: Breakdown raises speculation about when, or if, company will start subscription service. ... According to several people briefed on the matter, the labels separately were seeking royalty payments of $6 to $8 per user, per month. People close to the labels say that is in line with what existing subscription-music services pay.

Web titans race to put books on-line
by Simon Avery
Globe and Mail, October 4, 2005

A race has begun to make "all human knowledge" accessible with just a few clicks of a computer mouse.

Two technology giants are charting different courses to rush the content of the world's libraries onto the Internet and make it freely available to everyone on-line.

The latest effort, announced yesterday and led by Yahoo Inc., aims to have complete electronic copies of thousands of literary classics, videos and speeches ready for download before the year's end. ...

The goal is to "share, use and expand all human knowledge," said David Mandelbrot, vice-president of search content at Yahoo.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company, together with several archive organizations, technology firms and academic institutions, has created a international consortium called Open Content Alliance that is working to expand the reaches of the Web.

Last year, Yahoo's nemesis, Google Inc., began scanning books as part of a massive effort to create its own searchable and freely accessible global electronic library. Where Google has incurred the wrath of many authors who claim the company is violating copyright rules, Yahoo says the Open Content Alliance will only scan material that is out of copyright or has the approval of its creator.

In Challenge to Google, Yahoo Will Scan Books
by Katie Hafner
NY Times, October 3, 2005

An unusual alliance of corporations, nonprofit groups and universities plans to announce today an ambitious plan to digitize hundreds of thousands of books over the next several years and put them on the Internet, with the full text accessible to anyone.

The effort is being led by Yahoo, which appears to be taking direct aim at a similar project announced by its archrival, Google, whose own program to create searchable digital copies of entire collections at leading research libraries has run into a series of challenges since it was announced nine months ago.

The new project, called the Open Content Alliance, has the wide-ranging goal of digitizing historical works of fiction along with specialized technical papers. In addition to Yahoo, its members include the Internet Archive, the University of California, and the University of Toronto, as well as the National Archive in England and others.

Open Content Alliance - Brewster Kahle's announcement with lots of details

The OCA represents the collaborative efforts of a group of cultural, technology, nonprofit, and governmental organizations from around the world that will help build a permanent archive of multilingual digitized text and multimedia content. Content in the OCA archive will be accessible soon through this website and through Yahoo!

The OCA will encourage the greatest possible degree of access to and reuse of collections in the archive, while respecting the content owners and contributors.

Weed

Downloading on P2P networks, right or wrong? Note that I'm not specifying what is being downloaded or what network you're using or which legal jurisdiction anyone is in. You may want to split those hairs to clarify your view.

Last fall, the students all did this assignment at the Bistro: Downloading on P2P networks. I asked them to ...

Draft a short corporate policy statement.

First, what kind of company -- content owner? advertiser? musician? radio station? musicians' agent? maker of MP3 player?

Second, what policy would be in that company's best interests?

Third, and most importantly, justify that policy in a couple of sentences.

How could this struggle in the pop music industry end in a way that will be beneficial to all the parties? Or is this by nature a zero-sum game, where there must be winners and losers?

This fall, instead of everyone writing one of these policy statements, I'd like groups of you to take the best ideas from last fall's Bistro discussion Downloading on P2P networks and combine them into a short policy statement that would be best for your company, that is, most supportive of your proposed business model. In other words, you're going to mine the student ideas from last fall for the best ideas, which you are going to shape in your own way for your situation.

reading of the statements

open discussion

which of these two would be best for your company?

Advice to the students preparing the statements to read

Revealing your thought processes in public is important. If you sit there quietly and fearfully and if I have to repeatedly call on you to get you to express yourself, you will be doing yourself a great disservice. The questions we are discussing here do not have a single "correct" answer. Nor is it true that all opinions are equal.

All opinions need to be respected and listened to closely. But most emphatically, all opinions are not equal. A large part of what education is all about is enabling you to distinguish a good opinion from a bad one. How can you do that?

What are characteristics of good opinions? Think of the opinion as a gun. Waving a gun around isn't going to hurt anyone. To make the gun effective, you must load it with bullets. In my analogy, bullets are facts (back to the PEST again): statistics, laws, judges' decisions, technological realities of computers and the Internet, policies, market forces, ROI imperatives, fiduciary responsibilities, etc., all the stuff we've been looking at the last three weeks. By themselves though, loaded guns don't do much damage, either.

What does damage is pulling the trigger. That does not mean simply reasserting the opinion, that is, waving your gun around. Pulling the trigger means explaining the thinking that leads from the facts to the opinion. That's what you'll be expressing in class tonight, and that's what companies pay top management to do -- to think clearly and cogently. And to express that thinking well orally and verbally. And visually, remembering the girl who got the Crappy Present.

By revealing your thinking, you will be informing others what evidence you found persuasive and the manner in which you thought about it that led to your conclusion (opinion). Note that you aren't starting with an opinion and then justifying it. You are starting from the evidence and reasoning to the opinion. In other words, you are telling others how to think about downloading by showing us -- in public -- how you think about it.

This is the best way to change minds and to influence others.

commons

The commonwealth of ideas

food and fashion are in the public domain, why not music?

"Of course, we don't give copyright protection to fashions or food. We never have."

Ready to Share | Project Background

in public domain; not copyright protected: perfumes, furniture, car bodies, and monuments

Public Domain

MIT's OpenCourseWare

Implications of Open Copyrights: other open content

contracts

Generally speaking, you have contracts with your suppliers and you offer licenses to your buyers.

What will be your company's most advantageous contracts / licenses?

standard Big 5 contract- Future of Music's Major Label Contract Clause Critique

generic contract - How Recording Contracts Work

ASCAP contract/license - New Media / Internet

artist-friendly indie contract - Magna Tunes

sample music industry contracts

Let's listen to a very smart man who feels late to the party. Yet from the point of view of where he's coming from, the pop music industry, he's a pioneer and visionary. Listen to Sean Combs, aka P Diddy, accepting "Best Ringtone of The Year" award at this year's CTIA show. text | audio

Lesson: establish the relationship with the customers. Then figure out what to sell them. I challenge you to imagine what will happen when broadcast products legally become part of the internet on a massive scale. There's MIT's open courseware. But what about an organization like the BBC -- British Broadcast Corporation? They wouldn't just open up their vast archives, would they, without trying to profit from them. Would they?

What's your corporate policy for your own intellectual property? (Hint: MIT is giving away theirs.)

licenses

EULA - end user licensing agreement

I'm suggesting these four licenses, but please feel free to substitute others that may be more relevant to your business plan. For instance, Jim could talk about the jukebox licenses.

Rhapsody

5. TITLE TO CONTENT SERVED THROUGH THE APPLICATION

The Content served by Listen or third parties directly through the Application is the property of Listen, its licensors and its advertisers. Title, ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to such Content is the property of either Listen or third-party content owners and copyright holders and is protected by applicable copyright and other law. Other than as expressly provided herein, this Agreement gives you no express or implied license to the Content, including without limitation, any right to use, sell, rent, copy, distribute, broadcast, modify, perform or publicly display any Content.

Listen complies with copyright law and expects its users to do the same. You may not use the Application to help you infringe the copyrights of any third party. Unauthorized use, copying, distribution, modification, public display, or public performance of copyrighted works is an infringement of the copyright holders' rights and a violation of the law. You agree that you shall only use the Application in a manner that does not violate any third-party rights and that complies with all applicable laws in the jurisdiction in which you use the Application, including, but not limited to, applicable restrictions concerning copyrights and other intellectual property rights.

9. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY

THE APPLICATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT ANY REPRESENTATION OR WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO THE APPLICATION OR ITS OPERATION. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, LISTEN AND ITS DISTRIBUTION AND SYNDICATION PARTNERS DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

USE OF THE APPLICATION IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. LISTEN MAKES NO WARRANTY THAT THE APPLICATION WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS, OR THAT THE APPLICATION WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE, OR ERROR FREE; NOR DOES LISTEN MAKE ANY WARRANTY AS TO THE RESULTS THAT MAY BE OBTAINED FROM THE APPLICATION OR AS TO THE ACCURACY OR RELIABILITY OF ANY CONTENT OBTAINED THROUGH THE APPLICATION. LISTEN MAKES NO WARRANTY REGARDING ANY GOODS OR SERVICES PURCHASED OR OBTAINED THROUGH THE APPLICATION OR ANY TRANSACTIONS ENTERED INTO THROUGH THE APPLICATION.

AOL® Instant Messenger™ ("AIM") Terms of Service

Although you or the owner of the Content retain ownership of all right, title and interest in Content that you post to any AIM Product, AOL owns all right, title and interest in any compilation, collective work or other derivative work created by AOL using or incorporating this Content. In addition, by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy. You waive any right to inspect or approve uses of the Content or to be compensated for any such uses.

OpenNet Initiative - a not-for-profit that tracks banned sites

to do

weather report - Thursday, October 5

How did it go tonight? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

Thursday, October 12

products and services

We have all evening for these press conferences. They will be in the TV studio on the lower level of the Main Bldg. You will sit behind the table in groups. Digital projection will not be available but you are welcome to bring to the table any material that you would like to show while you talk.

You will get some practice in presenting your ideas to what used to be called "the press," meaning those who wrote for newspapers and magazines. In the new media world, there are even more outlets.

What won't change is the press conference, that is, an event where the newsmaker meets the news disseminator. A press conference can be done in person, online, or as a hybrid both f2f and online. It is often recorded, especially if TV or video bloggers attend. Usually, the newsmaker welcomes the video and audio recording. That's the point, to get attention.

In the marketplace of ideas, a press conference is where an exchange is made. The newsmaker gets to make an announcement. The news disseminators will consider reporting that announcement as news, NOT as an advertisement. In exchange, they get to ask whatever questions they want as long as they do it in a professional manner. An individual reporter may use any of the statements made by anyone during the conference unless it is explicitly designated as "off the record".

Each of you will have a minute or two to read your press release. "Your Company announces your products and services." ex: "Smart Jewelry announces Ring Thing (tm) line of high-end fashion earrings with built-in MP3 player and earbuds." Tell us, in under two minutes:

1) who you are, personally
2) what your company does (NAICS, slogan, mission, vision)
3) what you will make (products) or do (services) that customers will pay you for. Give the products and services names. List the major features and benefits.

Publicity Insider's How to Write a Great Press Release

press release example

Example: AMD's Max, a personal Internet communicator (PIC) description and specs. It's about the size of a box of tissues and is selling in Africa, Asia, and the Carribean for under $250 including 15" monitor, $185 without monitor.

Your classmates will be functioning as the assembled press corps. They will ask you questions such as:

What are the features and benefits of your products and services?
Where will you get these products or services? Buy them from a supplier/vendor/contractor? Buy and add value? Make them in-house, that is, employ all the production workers and professionals?
What country has the most favorable legal and regulatory environment for your company or for parts of your company? (ex: legal incorporation in one country, production facility in another country, servers/distribution in a third country)
Who are the customers? What is the first segment of those customers that you will engage with your marketing? How are you segmenting your customers? Age? Location?
Why, when, where, and how do they buy/use these products/services?
What is your policy on file sharing? Is it a competitive advantage or disadvantage? Will it drive or restrain your revenue?
How will you compete against a company that has a business model just like yours except it has a much looser, more customer-friendly policy on file sharing / IP ownership?
Are you going to have a lot of repeat customers or are you going to need to keep acquiring customers?
What is unique, different, special about your products/services?
You don't have a track record yet. How do you know your product/service will work?
Isn't some established company going to destroy you on price because they have the deep pockets to undercut you?
Aren't you playing it pretty safe legally? Could you push the envelope and make even more money?
If this company fails, what will be the most likely reason?
If you, the company's main evangelist, were to drop dead, would the company be able to survive?

I will be the moderator. The simulated venue here is the trade show. You are new entrants / substitutes in the industry who have rented booths and a presentation room at the trade show to announce/introduce your first product/services. To help the trade press (including bloggers) best accommodate everyone's busy schedule, the trade show organizers have set aside a room and time for collective press conferences.

Newcomers Showcase
Thursday evening, October 12, 6 - 10 PM
Medaille College TV studio, Main 006

At a press conference, the amount of time is limited and competition for it seems zero-sum. However, at a press conference, two factors are more important than amount of time you have at the microphone.

1 - whether the members of the press like you

If you project a positive, upbeat attitude, if you're having fun up there, if you come across as genuine, then all that's left is the chemistry, the implicit, unspoken desire of the press to help you because they like you.

2 - your ability to deliver sound bites

Are you quotable? Do you come up with interesting, pithy, punny phrases that they can include in their articles? At the actual press conference, people who can do this don't need to say more than these few words. In the published article, they'll get all the quotes and the whole article will seem to be about them.

Now's a great time to start branding! Give names to the products and services, and with names come characteristics and attitudes. They are brands and sub-brands.

Remember that in MBA 604 you're going to make marketing materials for your company. Logos, investors webs, commercials, space ads, etc.

press conferences
6:30 - 7:15	Communities	Colleen H | Rick Jon | Andrea
7:15 - 8	Retail	Natasha | Kara Colleen L | Lavon | LeMar
8:30 - 9:15	Professional Services	Tara | Laura Don | Katia
9:15 - 10	Online Services	Marc | Sean Bob | Mike | Matt

This works out to a little less than ten minutes each. Take no more than two minutes, preferably one, to read your press release. Then the moderator will open the floor to questions and try to make sure that the attention is spread more or less evenly.

As you know from video of politicians' and accused felons' lawyers' press conferences, they can sometimes be adversarial. Most, however, are pretty boring. They cover routine, predictable announcements.

That's the kind of press conference that we're going to conduct next week. Following along with our case:

What's the best way to maximize the creative power of a group? FOMI is in the enviable position where it can develop more than one product or service. This is not a zero-sum game with one winner and multiple losers. In that position, then, FOMI wants to encourage divergent thinking. More ideas are better in this phase. In a later phase, the ideas can be combined, split up, split off, prioritized, and sequenced.

As one of a dozen deep thinkers for FOMI, your task is to take responsibility for one business and marketing plan. You will be the principal author. However, all along the way you will tell the others what you are doing, the specific products and services that you are planning to offer. You will share readings, and discussions. Your plan will be similar in many paragraphs to other plans. There is no stealing here, only sharing.

Gaps and contradictions are acceptable and indeed are often fertile ground for the next revision of your business plan.

You can help each other by looking at Thursday evening as a mock press conference, a rehearsal where you prepare each other for what could happen (not what you hope will happen) when the members of the press get to ask questions about the products and services you are announcing. The harder the mock press conference is, the easier the real thing will be. The harder the questions are to answer during the mock press conference, the easier they will be to answer during the real thing.

Thus, you will be doing each other a favor by asking hard questions. When you are playing the role of the press during the other three groups' conferences, put yourself in the role of your readers. The story you write will be interesting if it gives answers to questions your readers would have if they were considering buying or recommending the product or using the service. Your editor may ask you to write a review of the product. Do you understand enough about it to do that? If not, the press conference is your opportunity to get it straight from the horses' mouths.

to do

weather report - Thursday, October 12

How did it go tonight? What was the cloudiest part? The clearest?

Saturday, October 14

Business / Marketing Plan

Final presentations

Several of you have asked why you get "only" fifteen minutes for a final presentation. I answer that fifteen minutes is three times as long as you'll get in the real world.

There's Gold, But You Gotta Dig
by Julie H. Case
Wired News, October 19, 2001

What could be more American than 12 startups, 12 venture capitalists and one hour to make a love connection? Make your pitch, sink or swim, live or die, all by the laws of the free-market jungle. ...

Luckily, there's no music, and, in theory, no one loses his seat after a round. Four-and-a-half minutes into each presentation the host calls "30 seconds," then "10 seconds ... OK, switch." The presenters stand up, shove a business card or business plan in front of the VC and move to the right.

For VCs it's quick, content-rich and relatively painless. It forces entrepreneurs to hone their message for a quick pitch. Interesting companies get a second chance; wallflowers go home and work on repositioning.

After you have finished your finely honed, exhaustively practiced presentation of your business plan, here are a dozen questions you might hear from someone who was considering investing in you: Venture Capital Pitches. The ideal situation is that you have the answer somewhere in the course of your presentation so that you can return to that web page.

If you don't answer these during your presentation, perhaps your classmates will ask them after your presentation:

What Is Your Vision?
What Is Your Market Opportunity And How Big Is It?
List Your Product/Service (list only; already discussed at press conference)
Who Is Your Customer?
What Is Your Value Proposition?
How Are You Selling?
How Do You Acquire Customers?
Who Is Your Management Team?
What Is Your Revenue Model?
What Stage Of Development Are You At?
What Are Your Plans For Fund Raising?
Who Is Your Competition?
What Partnerships Do You Have?

- in the Lecture Hall, videotaped
- 10-minute presentations, 5-minute Q&A and transition to next presenter

transition to MBA 604

last class, Saturday, October 14

What did we learn?

5 PM

Course eval, wrap-up and seque to marketing (was jan1503.htm but I need to update)

Don't forget your self-assessment!

to do

Send me an email at Doug@RicciStreet.net.

The email should contain your self-assessment; do it after you have done all the other work for this course.

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