I'm Neil Robinson and I'm an IT strategy consultant. I'm passionate about using the right technology to drive your business forward. "it's about using your information to make better business decisions."
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LANZen is my information technology strategy and design consultancy. I'm in Cheshire, in the North West UK. Since 2000, I've helped many clients, like banks in the City, Jamie Oliver, small and start up companies, even one-man operations discover new business IT strategies that work for them.
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Sorry, this is going to sound very cryptic. A kind of on-line gap analysis. But please, bear with me.
OK, put your phone and your credit/debit card in the palm of each hand and compare them. And when you’ve done that, look at your card alone. Tell me why you need it.
That’s all I’m saying at this point. I’ll be back to you later with that gap analysis I mentioned.
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on February 1st, 2010 at 5:23 pm
I know what your game is lanZen. You cant be bothered writing something yourself and want us to do the work for you. First its “guest posts” and now this.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time but do not push your luck.
on February 1st, 2010 at 6:27 pm
Why do I need my card? Well if ‘dI tried to use my mobile phone to clear the ice off my car windscreen this morning I’m sure it would have invalidated the warranty!
on February 1st, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Oh, Great. Thanks a bundle Martin!
I was going to say something about that to make the next part of my post more interesting. Have to rewrite the whole thing now…
But it does bring a brand new meaning to “screen scraping technology”. Phew. Got that in before you at least!
on February 1st, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Sorry, Dave, you’ll have to wait a bit longer for the next episode. A certain Mr Pickering’s nicked my script!
on February 2nd, 2010 at 7:23 pm
Pay for things with your phone. (Contactless technology)
Items go on your phone bill.
Pay off phone bill.
Tada!
Phone companies become banks.
(But of course many of the phone companies outsource their account and payment handling to banks as do some utility companies).
Sorry Dave..Couldn’t resist contributing…
on February 2nd, 2010 at 10:18 pm
Hey guys,
What helps keep me sane is that we all have a sense of humour, and even though we agree to disagree about things; that is creative and really healthy.
This is all part of the creative process, starting off at a tangent, a bit of lateral thinking and following it through.
So, we started off with an idea.
a) How can we get rid of the card?
b) The next step was we need the card for other things? E.g. scraping ice off the car.
c) We could put an ice scraper on the phone, more useful to some people than a camera?
d) A phone could incorporate an Ice Scraper and a Swiss army knife, and also function as a payment device?
As I am a bit of a hands free type person, I would personally like to get rid of the phone and the card, so I suppose I am leaning towards some form of biometrics.
The creative process is indeed tangential and it needs a culture of openness and allowing people to say what they think – whether we agree with each other or not, as it helps us all think, reflect and move on to the next thing..
So, as part of this experiment, let’s see where it goes next?
Hopefully, Neil, I have tuned into your idea correctly?
on February 2nd, 2010 at 10:49 pm
Excellent guys!
[For those who are wondering what's going on here, I'll let you into a little secret. The guys who have inadvertently contributed here all work for that government department I wrote about in the last post.]
What you’ve just demonstrated is true innovation via social networking, in this case, a blog. No “herded cats”, no hotel, no electronic voting. And significantly, not a crowd in site – and hey, I’ve just saved a load of public money because a senior exec didn’t have to fly up here to lead it all (even though the train would have been cheaper and quicker, but let’s not go there!).
But stay on board guys, I’ve a bit more to write about this card thing – but well done, Stephen and John, you’re on the right lines. But don’t jump too far ahead, there’s some due diligence to do on this idea!
You can help me with the anti-Groupthink devil’s advocate facit of this. I want you to look for the flaws in my argument. I don’t want that Crowd thing to sneak back in without us noticing!
on February 2nd, 2010 at 11:55 pm
Neil,
A couple of things I have noticed that have been misinterpreted.
a) I personally have no connection with the Department or the people you mention whatsoever, other than having worked there independently many years ago – something that for me is long in the past.
b) In terms of the wider context, there is a term called ‘Crowdcasting’ rather than ‘CrowdSourcing’ and whilst these things have many definitions they are normally a hybrid that can be augmented with other approaches including Delphi.
c) I noticed some contention in the dialogue, about credit and contribution; I interpreted this as two separate events (based on my reading), so I would like to see more clarity there e.g. Jon versus James.
In terms of influencing of outcomes and how decisions are made, there are many variables – each has its strengths and weaknesses and it really is a tightrope to walk for those who are involved in assurance and governance based on traditional methods.
Out of context, I have been looking at these sort of problems (e.g. how decisions get made) from a totally different perspective.
I would like to introduce you to an article in the Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123438338010974235.html
I reference the above article based on some other work in another hemisphere.
There are many things that influence outcomes, and I am afraid that is the complex soup of the world we might be in and the people involved.
Not trying to send you (or anyone else) off on another tangent, just to say the issue, term and interpretation of Crowdsourcing has many perspectives, and there are many other issues to think about in terms of the bigger picture and how decisions get made.
So let’s all cheer up and move onwards and upwards to discuss the role of the card – do we need it or not? and what might that mean?
on February 3rd, 2010 at 9:18 am
Thanks, Stephen, well researched, well said.
I agree with you 100% and the article you referenced identifies key factors in bad decision making very well.
I actually wrote a post about this a long, long time ago. It covered the reasons that cause projects to fail. Its all to do with Consistency theory.
You can read about it here.
And you’ve identified something I alluded to in my last post and was going to pick up on later – which was the cryptic message to Martin in the last post.
And that was that James wasn’t using Crowdsourcing at all. He’s merely picked up on something he’d clearly not researched and pushed ahead regardless. A bit of consistency syndrome there!
He was using actually Crowdcasting. Putting the questions to a closed, internal group of people. That’s why I stressed the word internal so much in my last post.
Crowdsourcing is something very different and involves the broadening of scope to an unknown, external audience and often with the promise of a reward involved. The NetFlix campaign is often used to illustrate this.
Anyway. On with the phone and credit card discussion!
on February 3rd, 2010 at 12:02 pm
[...] part 2 of our look at payments that I began in my previous post. Let’s look at specific [...]