…through innovation. Thursday I attended Joris Craandijk’s seminar "Innovation, the new Passion in Business", where he looked back as project leader of the now highly successful Heineken BeerTender product. 
For his seminar Joris had lined up a number of interesting speakers. Some were able to refresh parts of our mind that other speakers cannot reach. Herman Wijffels, chairman of the SER (social economic advisory council) when he spoke about the economic innovation needed in the Netherlands: "Our current leaders are system managers of institutions that were effective in the past decades, but no longer are in today’s economy" and "The western world is in a state of confusion currently, it will take time for a new direction and new leadership to emerge". Or Eddie Obeng, Founder of the Virtual Business School while jumping around the room: "The pace of change is outperforming our speed of learning". Joris Craandijk closed the session presenting his BeerTender case, which convinced him that the beer industry "…cannot live for another fourty years on what’s been there for fourty years". About the Netherlands and innovation "We cannot compete on price with India and China in the Netherlands, it should be our country’s cutting edge to mobilize expertise available here and elsewhere". Thanks a lot for the invitation Joris, unfortunately I had to miss the final and most refreshing part of the agenda: Biertje?
(the headline of this post refers to Heineken’s successful marketing campaign in the UK)
On Friday evening we enjoyed a wonderful dinner at Erik & Hillie’s place. Only two weeks left before they will move to their new house with a view something like this. There’s no reason to expect Friday’s strawberries dessert will be our last course together, hopefully :-) We’ll continue “Demmeren” every first Thursday of the month with the other guys. “Next time Demmeren in Brussels?” Erik suggested on our way out. Be careful Erik, your quotes now become public…
There’s a saying in Dutch “Better a good neighbour, than a remote friend”. We are going to prove this saying to be wrong. And, we’re sort of still neighbours at 15 kilometers distance only.
We did not meet in cyberspace, but in zoo Dierenpark Amersfoort this Sunday, sort of in the middle between the villages where we each live. 
We met through the Internet since we are both holding a domain containing our last name: www.deelman.net (Bert) and www.deelman.com (me). It was quite funny to meet another Deelman as it’s quite a small family and we do did not have any direct ties. Sort of like the excitement of an Internet date I guess? Well, we each brought our kids to the zoo as ice breakers. We both share an interest in blogging, anything related to technology and Internet, we both measure approximately 2 meters and we are both interested in acquiring www.deelman.nl which is still unused. Perhaps we should create a Deelman foundation (or business ;-) for that domain, offering each Deelman in the Netherlands to have his or her own email address and blog space…
While I was in London Friday and Saturday for a number of Qelp business meetings, I selected these days in particular to be able to join Andrew Snoad and Tony Bicknell in celebrating the 10th anniversary of their firm Decision Tree Consulting (DTC). 
They invited all those who worked with DTC in the first 2 years of starting their company for a dinner tour on the Thames. Andrew refreshed my mind telling me that in fact I was their first large customer. I had them conduct a survey in 24 countries about the decision making process for videoconferencing equipment in multinational companies. I was working for Sony in those days, setting up their European business for videoconferencing systems and combatting with PictureTel who was the market leader. Sony had spotted videoconferencing as a potential mass market( it’s still a niche unfortunately), but had little experience in the telecoms market which is why I was brought in. DTC won the assignment for the survey while in competition with Anderson Consulting and Coopers who should have been able to leverage their international presence but didn’t.
Earlier that Friday I met for lunch with Osman Mardin, who supported me while I was conducting a tough financing round for ThreeFive Photonics in early 2003. Guess what? He reminded me that I was his launching customer after he left investment bank Robertson Stephens and started Sardis Capital, his current financing firm. Do I have a preference for selecting start-ups? Not necessarily –although I sympathize greatly with them- but if you award them the business you are more likely to get the undivided attention of the entrepreneur which can lead to more value for money. You don’t forget your first date, you don’t forget your first customer – it does create a special bond.
Last night I took my son Koen to the Champions League match AJAX - Arsenal. It was a birthday present we still owed him. After we had settled ourselves in the ArenA stadium for the match to start, SMS messages started to come in, from daughters Merel and Fleur and good friend Ronald. In fact Ronald was the one who introduced me to this mass hysteria last year for the first time, when he kindly invited me to the annual AJAX - Feyenoord match. It was fun watching the game with Koen, while at the same time exchanging SMSs with 3 people. By messages going back and forth, we actually found out more about players since we lacked the technology couch-potato-watchers at home have. So halfway the match I thought it would be fun to send a MMS of Koen with his live comments from my Treo. Shooting the picture and preparing the MMS went well, sending it not quite. After several attempts I got error messages saying that delivery could not be completed ("but we’ll continue trying"), I guess due to either missing handset settings of the receiving phones or compatibility issues between the different mobile networks. So I decided to send the picture as an email attachment from my phone. It took several minutes before it arrived with Merel and Ronald, but it worked fine. MMS-Email: 0-2. Despite all the camera phones, MMS has not come off the ground. I think mobile operators are probably better off investing money in getting email accepted as a mobile application than MMS. The Blackberry success illustrates the potential market. True, the tariffs are not at a premium like MMS. Here in the Netherlands MMS is offered at something like 40 Euro cents per message, while email is billed per KB. However, faster end-user adoption of email is quite likely to make up for the lower tariffs. Uhh…and what about AJAX - Arsenal? AJAX was defeated with 1-2, due to sleepy players in the first two minutes of the match, an unfair penalty and last but not least an arbiter who needs some basic football education This last piece of opinion comes from still famous Johan Cruyff, who watched the game instead of his mobile phone.
Phone camera’s already "outsell" regular digital camera’s, but mobile operators notice hardly any difference in their mobile data ARPU. How come? A lot of research has been published already about the root causes: complexity of the service, user interface, costs of a MMS, lack of a killer application etc. Seems that users actually have become quite creative in using their mobile phone camera for day-to-day applications that do not require any network connection:
- Remember where you parked your car
- Record the opening hours of that new store
- Document your favorite haircut
- …and many more household applications can be found here at 43 Folders
With all those new applications and tariffs for mobile data coming down, there must be hope for the telco’ s of this world that at some point in time people will want to share that offline creativity with their remote friends and family. Slow adoption from a mobile operator’s perspective, but compare the progress made since those good old days of the first black-and-white camera’s!
There’s growing speculation in the Valley about the next move(s) of Google. Although it’s a "public" company since the IPO, its business directions are still very secretive. So people are turning towards cold war behaviour, when we used to analyze the Kremlin’s (lack of) actions in great detail as it was the only information available. Here’s what some Google watchers are saying and concluding about where the company seems to be going:
- While dominating PC based search, Google also wants to become the mobile search czar for the 2 billion mobile phone users.
- BusinessWeek discovered that the company quietly acquired Android Inc., the 22-month old start-up ran by people coming from mobile device maker Danger, known for the SideKick smartphone (made famous by Paris Hilton when she lost it…)
- Buying dark fiber to connect antenna’s to support a WiFi or cellular network?
New Gmail accounts are now tied to US cell phone numbers if you want to use the new GoogleTalk instant messenger client - SilliconBeat reports that Google appears to have acquired a company called ZipDash which offers maps and traffic info for your mobile phone
- Raising $ 4 Bln. to make an acquisition of a mobile or wireless company, according to SilliconValleyWatcher because mobile phones tell your location and location is "everything" for advertisers, Google’s biggest customers
- Using the $ 4 Bln. to put up a nationwide (USA) WiFi network, GoogleNet, according to Om Malik
While it’s not yet entirely clear what Google’s plans are, there are a few others interested in this mass market, including Microsoft with its Windows Mobile phone platform and not to forget Yahoo!. Yahoo’s COO Dan Rosensweig said: "the mobile Internet industry is at a "tipping point." As mobile use continues to grow, more customers will want access to their Yahoo! services." Rosenweig also claimed, "The Internet has become essential. The industry is ready, and mobile usage is exploding". Earlier this month Yahoo head-hunted Nokia’s Christian Lindholm, known as the godfather of the Series 60 platform user interfaces, to head up the Global Mobile Products division at Yahoo.
So what are Google and Yahoo up to? Introducing a WiFi based mobile phone and network? Applications that run on a Linux mobile phone and pull you towards their portal or search engine? A Skype kind of solution for low cost calls based on VoIP? Interesting times for consumers, mobile phone companies and Google watchers!