The Public Trust Partnership

Putting toothpaste back in the tube Mr Murdoch - X Factor is missing

Paying for web content has been described as putting toothpaste back in the tube. But business and individuals would pay for good intelligence and that is the difference that Rupert Murdoch needs to grasp.The X factor is still missing.

Mr Murdoch beyond charging for access to The Wall Street Journal, has talked about forming a partnership with a single search engine, which would pay him for the rights to the news and entertainment programming produced by his company, the News Corporation.

But if you change the tube and provide better "different" toothpaste it can be done.

Recent reading like" Now is Gone" by Livingston with Brian Solis explains this but Andrew McAfee  the principal research scientist at the Center for Digital Business at MIT  has a widerperspective .andrewmcafee.org/blog

Arianna Huffington,founder and editor in chief of The Huffington Post, says some of the plans now being put forward might work, but she does form the view that some of them would just alienate the Internet users who click from one site to another, wherever links and their curiosity take them.

The much admired Jeff Jarvis says this is another reason that the future of news is entrepreneurial.

We are in an  age where Mr Murdoch cannot dictate or can he ? I am currently reading Andrew Ross Sorkin's "Too Big To Fail ". Mr Murdoch is big but he does not like failure. Lehman Brothers, HBOS, Royal Bank of Scotland and Northern Rock and others confirm big companies fail nowadays if they take eyes off the ball or let egos rule and Mr Murdoch is well aware of this. Simon Cowell in the UK entertainment business understands this,he seems to be saving ITV on his own as wellas creating and finding talent.Take it over Mr Cowell.But companies like Google and Facebook look to have more influence on the future and have crept up on the world economy as they have created new ways of thinking.We admire the course correction going on where small is big.Smaller individuals each find a role and contribute.

This is why I believe new toothpaste is on its way as are new tubes.Will we be cleaning our teeth in the same way? Or getting intelligence on the Web in the same way? Not if the "new" 21st Century  Moguls have their way but for them it is not about dominance and direction. For me what is needed is easier technology to use.The i technology is here and we might be cleaning our teeth with an attachment soon.Sooner clean our brains and pay for good intelligence.

"Size, we are told, is not a crime.But size may, at least. become noxious by reason of the means through which it was attained or the uses to which it is put."-Louis Brandeis,1913 from  Andrew Ross Sorkin "Too Big To Fail - Inside the Battle to Save Wall Street. 2009 "

Did Wales get what it wanted for Christmas?

Cardiff celebrated the opening of the new centre of retail shopping with some amazing attendances and compliments mostly from shoppers. Targets set pre-recession by incoming businesses have been achieved in Cardiff.The sentiment attached to retail economics  is fascinating with retail being a growth economic sector in the UK but mostly undervalued by those in charge of economic development or those who promote Cardiff who have lost direction.The work of Liverpool is an example of what can be achieved in place marketing and retail.

John Lewis Partnership created between 700 and 800 jobs this year in Cardiff.Well trained and motivated staff judging by those who wrap gifts in the store.Retail is often the anchor for projects but governments are often in denial about its impact.The reason perhaps is retailers seem in their eyes to exploit the people. It is, of course, not the case.People will only shop where they want if offered choice. When in Russia and Poland last year I was struck by the lack of food and retail choice and poor service.Well trained staff and quality communication make a difference and the UK offers so much in this sector.

But what about the individual ? Some comments you may agree or not agree with which explores the individual economic thinking hit me today.It is of course people that buy goods and services -increasingly discerning on line or off.This from Nancy Folbre is an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst struck me.She says in New York Times.

"If you were among the many gift givers/receivers participating in the biggest retail event of the year, you might want to tally up exactly what you got.

How much is it worth to you, compared to the amount a friend or family member paid for it (assuming you can figure out what the actual price was)?

Economists have devoted considerable time and effort to this question, often starting from the premise that gifts are always inefficient, because no one can possibly know what you want better than you do.

By this reasoning, cash is the most logical of gifts. Of course, if everybody gave cash while observing the general principle of reciprocity, most gifts would cancel out. So why bother?

Yet economists, predictably, disagree. Research by the Wharton School professor  Joel Waldfogel showing that students value Christmas gifts (excluding their sentimental value) less than their actual cost has been challenged by others who show that much depends on the wording of the question and the sample of respondents.

Hypothetical questions about the value of gifts often yield very different estimates than results from actual auctions. Apparently, it’s pretty hard for individuals to separate the sentimental from other forms of value.

Professor Waldfogel’s recent book, “Scroogenomics,” enjoyed some positive press this season. The book is not as killjoy as it sounds. It points out that money you spend on gifts to people who you don’t see often or feel close to might well be misspent. "

Full article in New York Times http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/what-you-got-for-christmas/?hp

The Guardian: Wales opts to save transplant patients

Full article from the Guardian newspaper yesterday. Thank you Alison Goldsworthy. Link for comments:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/22/wales-opt-out-organ-donation?showallcomments=true#comment-51

Every 11 days someone in Wales dies waiting for an organ transplant. Across the UK, three people die a day. It's a brutal reality that there simply are not enough organs to give life to those waiting. Despite seven in 10 people in Wales wanting to be on the register, just 810,000 people are on it. Similar gaps exist in Scotland, England and Northern Ireland.

Today the Welsh assembly's health minister, Edwina Hart, took a bold step. Wales is to become the first place in the UK to move from a system of opt-in to opt-out organ donation. The system she announced, one of "soft opt-out", means that people are presumed to want to be organ donors unless either they have joined a opt-out register, they cannot be identified, their wishes can be proven to have changed or immediate relatives object. These exemptions are crucial; they mean that only those who want to donate do so.

This system is commonplace in other European countries. When Belgium introduced the opt-out system in 1986 its national rate of organ donation rose by 55% within five years. Belgians can take themselves off the register but only 2% have. In Spain, where a similar system exists, there are 35 donors per million compared with just 13 in Wales and 14.9 in the UK as a whole.

Spain didn't just achieve this by switching to a soft opt-out system. It built its infrastructure to ensure that loved ones were asked and organs co-ordinated so that they could be used to save someone else's life. The Organ Donor Implementation Taskforce and the NHS are responsible for making sure our infrastructure works sensitively and appropriately. Hart has thrown down the gauntlet to them to deliver – patients deserve no less.

There are people who have their concerns about a move to this system. There is the peculiarly British awkwardness around death. Some people fear, incorrectly, that doctors would fight less hard to save them if they knew their organs could go to someone else. There is no evidence of this, but the government has recently given clarification to doctors to further allay any fears. People visiting Wales from other parts of the UK will be treated exactly as British people are currently when they visit countries such as Spain. That is, their organs would not be taken without the knowledge that they wanted to donate them and the support of a loved one. While some people do have these reservations, Welsh people support a move to soft opt-out two to one.

American experts predict soft opt-out will increase the number of organs available by 16% – it will save lives. The Welsh could go it alone with this switch, or will the rest of the UK be joining them?

Information architect required to grow information economy

 

Wales needs an "Information Architect" of  innovative technology solutions to help solve problems.Why?This is how you grow an economy in the 21st Century.The evidence in countries such India and the USA in information technology is compelling.India grew from $150 million in 1991 to more than $5.7 billion in 2000.Corporations like Infosys,Wipro,Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) propelled India industry.

We need Chief Technology Officer for Wales, perhaps as an adviser to the First Minister. This is one of those  ideas that seems glaringly obvious  –  of course if Wales wishes to become the most technically advanced, innovative, and computer intensive economy  with ambition we should have a high-ranking official in the government dedicated to technology issues.Why haven’t we had one since the dawn of the mainframe, PC, or Internet? Still, much better late than never he/she  who can rally both technologists and standard  bureaucrats around a common purpose.

 

If we had a pick of the United States, this is the top ten superstars we would have in mind and who will be  by now close to the President.But personally I would want Nandan Nilekaniof Bangalore and of course Infosys.

10. Shai Agassi

This former technology head of SAP has the business experience and the interest in larger societal issues to do well as America’s CTO. However, he’s recently founded his own company, Better Place, to create an entirely new business model and power system to run the electric cars of the future. Because of his passion for that project, it’s doubtful he would want much else.

9. Larry Lessig

Lessig, a Stanford Law professor, is the founder of Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society and has been an outspoken commentator on U.S. technology policy. Although Le At times, he has even been rumored as a candidate for numerous political offices himself. He would be an excellent tech policy wonk and a decent visionary, but he does not have a traditional tech background and that would likely hurt him in gaining the respect of the federal tech executives that he would have to lead.

8. Padmasree Warrior

Warrior is one of only two candidates on this list who is currently serving as a CTO. She was previously CTO at Motorola and in 2008 moved over to the CTO job at Cisco, where she is tasked with driving technology strategy and innovation and serving as an evangelist of what’s possible in the future.

7. Shane Robison

The other current CTO on this list, Robison is the executive vice president of technology and strategy at Hewlett-Packard. All of the CTOs of the various HP business units report up through Robison, as does the forward-looking HP Labs and the company’s corporate marketing department. That kind of breadth of experience would serve Robison very well as U.S. CTO. He’s also a visionary who understands the larger context of the current technology revolution and its impact on business and society.

6. Vint Cerf

Cerf is sometimes called the “Father of the Internet” because he and Bob Kahn designed the TCP/IP architecture that made the Internet possible. Cerf, who currently works as Chief Internet Evangelist at Google, was awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1997 by President Clinton and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005 by President Bush. He has outstanding technical chops and extensive experience working with government technology agencies.

5. John Chambers

One of the technology industry’s most passionate characters, Chambers has a will of steel that would help him cut through the bureaucratic stone walls. The Cisco CEO is a terrific visionary and one of tech’s most effective leaders when it comes to getting a team to execute.

4. Ed Felten

A Princeton computer science professor, Felton founded Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policyand is a leading researcher, commentator, and bloggeron technology law and policy. He famously served as the Department of Justice’s leading technology witness in its antitrust suit against Microsoft.

3. Bill Gates

The biggest name, the former Microsoft leader who retired from his full-time post at Microsoft in June 2008 so that he could devote his energies to the Gates Foundation. He obviously has his sight set on larger societal impact. What better way to make that happen than helping define the critical technology policies of the next decade? Melinda can handle the foundation. Gates has the vision, the iron will, and the ability to rally the troops that would make him a successful CTO. The only problem is that he is still technically the chairman of Microsoft and it would be a conflict of interest to continue in that roll while serving as CTO.

2. Julius Genachowski

Genachowski went to Harvard Law School with Obama and served as an advisor to the Obama campaign on technology issues, even helping to draft Obama’s technology platform. He previously served as chief of business operations at InterActive Corp, was an FCC advisor during the Clinton administration, and founded his own company, LaunchBox Digital, to help tech start ups. 

1. Eric Schmidt

The Google CEO endorsed Obamaand has served as an unofficial advisor on economic and technology issues throughout the campaign. Since the election, Schmidt has served on Obama’s newly-formed economic advisory board. Schmidt is a pragmatic, low-key leader who can successfully work in collaboration with other leaders. He is not as much of a visionary or a bulldog.

 

For example,there are many ways to use technology to make government more open and visible to the people. The city of Washington, DC is a leader in this area, having made over 200 data feeds about the municipal government available for download and mashup.A national CTO would add great value by simply highlighting best practice like a Chief Medical Officer, showing how and why they work so well, distilling lessons learned and mistakes to be avoided, sharing this knowledge as widely as possible.