@T: ALWAYS THE TWAIN

Interested parties typically want to know the competitive opportunities for a business so instead of writing 1,000 words, here’s a picture for 360-2020:

This is the only strategy slide I’ll be sharing on @T and it’s a snapshot in time.

A business plan, financials, IP filed and a demo are all progressing. The numbers focus on the US$450+ billion annual global expenditure in online advertising, the smart tools are designed to quality filter and contextualize content and the marketing model focuses on how to service diverse cultural groups. Since I’m Chinese and speak several languages, 360-2020 has cultural perspective seeded into its systems DNA.

Additionally, one-click capture is what 360-2020 will aim for.

Now, I’ve analyzed enough case studies in business school, gained insights into dotcoms from direct experience and blogs, and even incubated-financed some techco’s to know that for startups there are usually 3 schools of practice:

(1.) Plan nothing on the basis of “Build it and they will come.”

===> sell to Google / MS / etc.

(2.) Plan everything but fall apart in execution and marketing.

===> hope seasoned angels will nurture it.

(3.) Parallel project manage the coding and the writing of the business plan, but both end up out of synch.

===> liquidate and learn nothing.

There are issues with each of the three practices, even before we take into account that the tech sector is unpredictable and no one can predict anything accurately 100%.

In the first instance, there’s a big old graveyard of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 ventures that were built in haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways, attracted millions of traffic hits (mostly ramped by spambots), didn’t have any plans for monetization and burned through VC cash like Vesuvius hit Pompeii (scorching the earth and making it nigh impossible for subsequent start-ups to attract money).

In the second, SMART EXECUTION AND MARKETING DO MATTER. We can all pick out the Apples from the others that do professionally dumb things such as disrespect their beta community by launching with marketing videos like “We organize that s***” and then fail to deliver on those very organizational tools — despite core users’ support, collaborative troubleshooting and continuous patience. It’s no surprise that companies like these shoot themselves in the foot and through the head and sabotage their own market opportunities.

[As a Libran, I can use diplomatic euphemisms as florally as the next person but DUMB is an appropriate word when a Marketing Manager uses the word "s***" to describe a community’s carefully collected and considered information treasures.

That s-word and that approach to the community will have NO PLACE in anything I'm involved with.

^{360-2020 will endeavor to engage quality people and collaborate with strategic partners who understand and respect its community, their needs and are committed to working together conducively towards better, smarter, symbiotic solutions.]}

In the third case, what happens in parallel project management is that the executives and the tech team may be parallel but they’re on different levels where strategic direction, navigation, execution, communication and consideration for each other’s efforts are concerned. Hence they end up at the wrong destinations.

NO ORACLE, SIMPLY AN EXPLORER

I don’t have the definitive “Do this and strike digital gold” answers because:

(1.) I’m human and therefore as fallible as anyone else.

(2.) No single company has THE killer answers (and any who claim to are snake oil salesmen).

(3.) That company would own the universe and no company owns the universe.

(4.) There’s no room for discovery, fun and learning from mistakes if those definitives already exist.

(5.) I’m only at the start of a journey and I can only share my analogy of the Twain approach as I tackle 360-2020.

It’s like a……..FRENCH BRAID.

In other words, we treat the business plan, the coding and the parties involved (target audience, strategic partnerships, investors, etc.) as synergistic strands of the whole. We progress them not in parallel but with re-iterative integration wherein each contributes to the development of the others synergistically and synchronistically. Yes, it means whoever’s hand(s) are doing the braiding — i.e. the team of VISIONARY LEADER-DRIVER-EXECUTORS — need to be reasonable, smart, dynamic, collaborative and operationally pragmatic to appreciate how each strand fits in with the other strands.

It also clearly involves male-female-X-Y combinatory organic synthesis wherein input-output are aligned.

This philosophy of synching strands may prove to be productive; we shall see in the long-term if this is so.

WHY CREATE 360-2020?

Well, the simple reason is that in addition to gaining 360 perspectives it’s also important to have 20/20 clarity of vision and coherence of connected information. The challenge and fun is to build and aspire towards this.

The more complex reason is that it is a necessary evolution to the bigger economic challenges.

Here are some facts about whether we have 20/20 clarity online at present: 5-star ratings, recommendation engines and institutional ratings mechanisms (e.g., S&P/Moodys credit, bank reputation, Interbrand’s analysis) are flawed at worst and non-smart at best. We know this because if they were smart, reliable, insightful and contextual these events would not be true:

* global financial crisis

o the credit agencies rated the toxic mortgage assets from AAA to ABB which made them seem more financially sound than they actually were. In fact, some of the products were…….sludge at best (and slag at the bottom of the oil distillation process at the worst).

* consumers buying items that rate a 3 and 4 rather than items that rate 5

o quality, price, human perceptions and aspirations are not captured in 5-star rating systems so whilst a 3 may seem to mean “average” it may also mean “affordable” and “non-niche”.

* Virgin, Newscorp and Hutchison Whampoa not appearing in the Top 100 of Interbrand’s survey whereas Zara does.

o those three diversified conglomerates have a lot more established marketing presence and revenue streams than Zara.

Therefore, social graphs and quantitative surveys like the ones below are constantly churning in my head whilst 360-2020 gestates and is built.

I believe online content can be filtered and connected in a much smarter way to reduce the noise, spam and nonsense for us all so that we have more time to genuinely collaborate, enjoy ourselves and collectively innovate………….

So building 360-2020 is one way to “walk the talk”.

START SMALL & SCALE SPHERICALLY

There is a plan in place for each of the 3 levels of the 360-2020 tools. The entry-level will have over a dozen classifications compared with the 5 classifications in 5-star rating systems and the 2 in -1/+1.

Over time, the number of classifications in 360-2020 will be increased within a realistic rollout.

CONVERSATIONS WITH CEOS & CONCERNS ABOUT IP PROTECTION

Whilst I’m keen to propagate 360-2020 as a concept and to source people who can collaborate in its realization, I’m also aware that some of them may try to appropriate (read STEAL) my methodology and innovations. This is a risk for all entrepreneurs and inventors and I am by no means the first or last person to happen upon these situations.

That’s why it’s advisable to have some helpful conversations with IP lawyers, be mindful of what you disclose as the inventor and FILE IP AS APPROPRIATE.

Without breaching any confidentiality let me share what the CEO of a financial platform said when I met him for an informal chat recently about what I’m doing with 360-2020:

It’s not an easy problem to solve. There are so many variables and dimensions involved. Plus there would be a bias in the sample population — especially since there’s research to say that only 1 percent of online users ever even bother to rate content with 5 star ratings in the first place, so how would you get people to use 360-2020? You’d need it to be on a site with millions of users………

I’m not a programmer so I don’t know what you’d need to you’d solve it. The person you should talk to is [name of X, a US high-end programmer].

This was broadly my reply:

I can program and I have a sense of the maths behind it and, well, actually [Mathematical Formula 1 which I studied at university and won’t disclose] and [Mathematical Framework 2 which I’ve applied in a challenging project before and won’t disclose] metrics can be applied to deal with the variability and confidence issues so even if it is an initially biased population sample, we can account for it and normalize the tool to extrapolate.

As for market potential, it could plug into something like Amazon or eBay recommendations as readily as just on someone’s personal blog. It just replaces where the 5-star bar sits now.

Plus it would actually have less bias than existing 5-star rating systems since that provides almost no qualitative or benchmarking information around the 2, 3 and 4 ratings — only the extremes of 1 and 5 — so that’s an area of ambiguity which, historically, has led to people buying goods or hedging a market with incomplete information, on the assumption that 1 is a “don’t trade/buy” and 5 is a “go ahead, trade/buy”.

Now, we can either stick with the status quo where all of the known ratings systems and the emerging Semantic Web Stack’s classifications have limitations and are not providing us with the context that we really need. Ergo, we can all continue to be frustrated by our and the machines’ inability to connect the dots and make sense of silo information — which invariably results in scenarios like a global financial crisis because people are trading, investing and transacting based on incomplete information (3 out of 6 perspectives on a Rubik’s cube) or it results in scenarios where companies are inferring our consumption behavior and end up either over-stocking or under-selling……….

OR………

We can approach it with the 360-2020 methodology, which approaches information contextualization differently — along DNA mechanisms rather than a Rubik cube’s rigidity. Yes, the computational mathematics involved is substantial — some of it will have to be invented anew — but it’s feasible and there are already components of it published. It’s just a matter of having the imagination and execution to synergize that.”

A week later and I’m still being a pragmatic optimist that that CEO will respect that 360-2020 is a proprietary solution and is covered by IP.

Moreover, only someone with my career insights, skills and knowhow would even originate and then attempt to executive such a solution! That’s not complacency, myopia, narcissism, delusion or bravura on my part. It is what it is……….

360-2020 = TWAIN

I did get 99% in my Probability + Statistics exams and the highest mark in my university class for my Econometrics project on Tiger economies, so…………………………….I have some sense of where and how to source the computational mathematics and the AJAX / PERL / PHP / SVGML / Flash AS4 / JSON / jScript / Pascal / Fortran / LISP / Squeak / Semantic Web Stack components etc. to solve and synch what is a non-trivial model and code challenge.

That and the fact that I can code means that 360-2020 is shaping up progressively. Importantly, I’m factoring in the need for the business model, reward reciprocity between company-consumer, neuroscience and other core components to fit into the whole so — in all seriousness — I am a critical component in 360-2020’s realization and potential success.

Now, returning to the relevance of what I’m trying to do wrt. the bigger economic challenges…………

BETTER INFORMATION => BETTER MARKETS

Now, without going into too much Adam Smith, what I realized whilst working in consumer-side companies and in banking is that the basic assumptions of capital markets and information about consumers are somewhat awry. This may partially explain why various global financial crisis happen.

The prime assumption being that there is so-called “perfect information” which we all have equal access to and choice over. The second one is that humans are “rational and make objective decisions” — so, for example, we don’t borrow mortgages we know we have no realistic chances of meeting the payments for. The third is that exchange between two parties happens following long distance and lengthy time negotiations.

Actually this is true:

* Market information is non-optimal.

* Humans are complex and make decisions based on ambiguous information, subjectivity and their emotions, which includes the emotions elicited by risk-return serotonin.

* Trading can happen instantaneously. We have been in real-time straight through processing for well over a decade. We swipe a credit card or press a button for “Buy” and the money is taken from our account immediately, it’s not like when there was a 7-day clearance for a check.

Anyway, I can either perpetuate the “market is perfect”-“Earth is flat”-”humans+machines-are-destined-to-stay-suboptimally-smart” stance or I can say:

ADAM SMITH WAS NOT AROUND WHEN THE WEB WAS INVENTED, SO NONE OF HIS THEORIES OR MODELS COULD POSSIBLY CAPTURE THAT THIS TECHNOLOGY WE CALL WWW CONTRIBUTED TO THE SPREADING OF IMPERFECT INFORMATION ABOUT THE US MORTAGE SECTOR BEYOND BORDERS AND TRADING JURISDICTIONS. MOREOVER, THE INTERDEPENDENCY OF NATIONAL ECONOMIES OVER THE SAME TOXIC ASSETS IS A PHENOMENON SMITH’S THEORIES COULD NOT POSSIBLY ACCOUNT FOR SINCE IN HIS DAYS THERE WAS NO WTO, GATT, NAFTA, EU ETC.

HE COULD ALSO NOT POSSIBLY HAVE PROJECTED HOW TECHNOLOGY WOULD FACILITATE THE VELOCITY AT WHICH MORTGAGE PRODUCTS WERE TRADED AND INFECTED THE GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM.

So…………………yes, as much as I respect Adam Smith as the godfather of capitalism, it is worth examining some of his core tenets to reflect the changes that the Web has brought.

Importantly, to contribute to the position that “We need tools to improve information quality” and “Humans+machines-can-become-smarter!” Since machines can only be as smart as their human inventors, we may have to “think-out-of-the-box”, “from left field”, “throw curve balls”, apply our imagination, cross-pollinate some concepts and innovate some tools to deal with……….

THE IMPERFECT INFORMATION SCENARIO

Now, when I look at the Web it’s obvious that there are all types of occurrences of imperfect information and this is manifested in everything from Google’s PageRanks algorithms to 5-star rating systems with their two extremes and through to recommendation threads where we have to plough through hundreds of non-consequential comments to get to any gold nuggets.

Then when I reflect on my experiences with semantic technologies and conversations I’ve engaged in with leading thinkers and practitioners on the issue of topic clustering rather than time stamping, this keeps distilling in my brain:

IMPERFECT INFORMATION PERSISTS because we haven’t yet built the tools that coalesce, contextualize and make sense of that information in a way which is coherent and inheritable in a way that’s also parseable and has dimension and extensibility.

A way that mimics the way DNA operates, actually. Hmmm……

Here’s a reminder of how the Linking Open Data group drew their own connections and then how I redrafted it as a DNA-esque model:

See? Even before any coding is involved, I visualize and architect the way objects and structures are related and interact in a different way from how some others see the same space.

So I have some choices:

(1.) Sit back and say, “Let’s hope that some brainiac guys from Harvard / MIT / Stanford / Imperial / Cambridge / Apple / Google / MS / FB / W3C figure it out before I die………..

So that my kids aren’t forced to use the same non-smart, imperfect information which means their generation will also cause another global financial crisis on the scales of 1939 and 2007” and corporate ignorance about their own consumer base and how to service culturally-diverse consumers persists; or

(2.) Go on vacation, catch a tan and enjoy long lunches.

(3.) Invent the solution for my generation and my kids’ generation.

They say that innovation is “borne out of necessity” so………..there it is and here we are.

360-2020 IS SO SIMPLE EVEN MY MOTHER GETS IT!

Given that my mother is a tech novice, the fact she says 360-2020 makes sense and is easy to use (from what I’ve shown her) is reassuring. Of course like that CEO she’s also said, “It’s not an easy problem to solve”.

“Yes, but when 360-2020 is fully realized, then imperfect information online will be reduced and whole new forms of computational mathematics and economic modeling that can marry with neuro-biochemical mechanisms will be invented!”

Surely that’s worth committing Twain knowhow and a lifetime to.

THE COMPUTATIONAL CHALLENGE + CAVEMEN

Well, when the tools don’t exist it’s our challenge, our imagination, our pragmatism, our collaboration and our journey to build them.

Otherwise we simply wouldn’t leave the caves!

Caves can offer us warmth, but the sun outside offers that, light, photosynthesis, Vitamin D and a whole world of opportunities and Enlightenment beyond the cave!!!

To close this blog post, below is a funny spoof video on how cavemen learnt to trade, followed by a link to a scene from ‘A Beautiful Mind’ in which Nash’s equilibrium is explicated with Adam Smith’s ‘Wealth of Nations’ to provide more clarity on HOW and WHY people make trading decisions and tackle Prisoner’s Dilemma-type issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7Z_UnshDlY

In a sense, we’re prisoners of the Web and its current limitations. There are three doors and here’s what’s behind them:

(1.) More of the same structure and Bayesian approaches to information ranking.

(2.) The same structure with information tagging (e.g., semantics) and scalar clustering and ranking (e.g., 5-stars) that don’t enable us to QUALIFY the context or meaning from the content — merely to quantify frequency of occurrence.

(3.) A revolution of structuring, contextualizing, quanti-qualifying and coalescing information that makes sense and coherence.

Since humans are intelligent and have life choices, I choose to build 360-2020 as a key for Door (3). Even though I’m not in the league of thinkers of the stature of Smith, Nash and other greats I’m hopeful that some people of that stature and those smarts will guide and support me along this journey.