The Matrix: Always Connected, or Die!

When we are talking about the internet world, it is impossible to miss out The Matrix trilogy. This film is dissecting technical things and cyber-world philosophy. This trilogy was directed by the two brothers of Larry and Andy Wachowski and has becoming a cult film for its geeks like hackers and cyberpunk.

This science-fiction stories is a bit complex, in general the superhero is Neo or “The One”, who was starred by Keanu Reeves. He is hardly fighting against his enemies, whether they are machines, human and mainly virtual human. In facing his enemies, Neo should be on-and-off entering the real world and virtual world.

These real world and virtual world in this film is pictured in parallel life. If they want to enter the virtual world, Neo and his partners should be connected to the machines through their brains. But if they are in the virtual world and want to back to the real world, they have to pickup the telephone call from a friend on the real world.

When these heroes are in the real world, their physical body is still in the real world (which is connected to that machines), but their spirit is in the virtual world. Though their worlds are separated, the physical body and the spirit is actually still be united. If the spirit is wounded in fighting against the enemies in the virtual world or even die, the physical body can also be wounded or die. And in other hand, if the physical body is unplugged from that machine, the spirit will also die.

The Matrix can give inspiration that in this new wave marketing era, the connection between virtual world (online) and real world (offline) should be without interruption or even totally dropped, always-on connection. This connection shall also be a mobile connection, not fixed connection anymore. Therefore mobile connector is needed in-order easier us to access the changes happened in the business landscapes.

This mobile connector can be a cellular telephone, laptop, smart-phone or other devices that enable people to do online connection in wireless mode, for instance Kindle device from Amazone.com.

Nowadays more people are becoming road warrior. Work location is no longer limited in the offices, but can be at home, cafes, client premises, or even while we are on the car.

This is also driven by technology advancement that enables mobile connector devices more conveniently used. Laptop is getting lighter and its battery life is getting longer. Smartphone is also easier to be used and its features are already supported for internet access. In short, from the point of view of supply and demand of this mobile connector is already supporting each other.

Based on its offering, the mobile connector can be categorized into three types: Ad-based, Content-based, and Reward-based. Ad-based is any kind of advertisements offered through our mobile connector. The forms can be text like SMS, pictures, photos, or videos.

However, quoting from Seth Godin, it should be a permission marketing, not only interruption marketing. The incoming ads to the cellular phones or to the laptop when we are online, as much as possible will not annoying but should be benefits for the user.

This kind of thing has been practiced by Virgin Mobile in the US since last 2007. This cellular telephone is offering user to choose whether receiving SMS ads or see 45 sec video ads when they are browsing the internet over the cell-phone. As the reward, they will get 1 minute free talk-time. And those who are willing to participate online questionnaire will get addition 5 minutes free talk-time.

Content-based is a service that offering content to user. For instance the most popular one is ring back tone. Or in iPhone, this would be applications like iLighter that can displayed the flames like lighter to be waved during to music concert or Koi Pond showing the Koi fishes moving in the pond.

Reward-based is the services that can give reward, not only to customers but also to merchants for a rebate or point-reward accumulation. MORE (Mobile Rewards Exchange) program of Mr. Kendro Hendra’s inTouch is the real example for this reward-based.

This mobile connector has been one of the important elements in this new wave landscape. Mobile connector as part of Connectors will be more enable companies to access the other three elements: Change, Competitor and Customer.

By Hermawan Kartajaya @ Kompas.Com - 2008/10/08

When Disruptive Meets Innovation

The words of “disruptive” and “innovation” have different individual meanings. The “disruptive” is associated to negative meanings meanwhile the “innovation” is normally associated to more positive meanings. When they are mixed together, still having a paradoxical meaning as a so-called “Disruptive Innovation”.

Taken the definition from Wikipedia, the Disruptive Innovation is a technological innovation, product, or service that eventually overturns the existing dominant technology or status quo product in the market.

In terms of its target market, there are two kinds of Disruptive Innovation; they are aiming to 1). Lower-End Market and 2). New-Market. The Lower-End Disruptive Innovation is aimed at mainstream customers who were ignored by established companies. While a New-Market Disruptive Innovation is often aimed at non-consumption.

The disruptive technology is expected to dominate existing market by: 1). Filling a role that the older technology could not fill, or 2). Successively moving up-market through performance improvements until finally displacing the market incumbents.

Some market analysts believe that the challenge in grabbing wider (lower-end) market or new market can be reached through this Disruptive Innovation. In the developed country like Indonesia, the wider market comes from the middle-lower market segment as illustrated as the bigger middle-bottom pie of pyramidal shape. In this case the positive meanings of this Disruptive Innovation shall be enjoyed by customer/public. Meanwhile paradoxically it shall have more negative meanings for market incumbents.

As of lower investment and fast deployment for network infrastructure expansion, Telkom was introducing Telkom Flexi as fixed-wireless access (FWA) using CDMA-based technology platform. This strategy is believed as one option to catch-up the lagging of Indonesian telecommunication density amongst ASEAN countries. And this technology then was followed by Indosat StarOne which in-parallel is also become the second-positioned market incumbent of cellular. And when Mobile-8 Fren and Bakrie Telecom Esia came in-to the telecommunication market, this was the beginning of market disruption which changes the competitive landscape of both cellular/full- mobility and fixed-wireless providers.

If the market overturns of disruptive innovation strategy can not be achieved by new comers, eventually it could sacrifice the market with the intense unfair marketing campaigns/promises or delivering low quality of products and services. This phenomenon might be the major key driven of the growing demand of low-cost products and services. Unfortunately low quality products and services may only works for voice-based communication as haircut strategy to initiate the market share, but for further data/video streaming applications that need higher QoS (Quality of Service) it seems can no longer be maintained.

Next Generation Network (NGN) – Grabbing the Wider Market

One of the Japanese telecommunication giant makers claims that NGN concept is a win-win solution in-order to match the interests amongst public, telecommunication players and the government. Technologically it will have innovative solutions for existing Fixed Line and Wireless (GSM/CDMA/3G) migration which able to deliver Triple Plays as well as Fixed Mobile Convergence Solutions.

Some European world-wide telecommunication makers are also believing that the next billions broadband telecommunication market shall be occupied by those who are in the lower income as illustrated in the pyramidal shape.

NGN is an IP (Internet Protocol)-based of multi-service platform capable of any traffic type and services which able to support telephony, mobile, internet and broadcasting services. At the end this NGN solution shall change the competitive landscape in telecommunication industry.

In social aspects, according to ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union Standardization), NGN shall promote fair competition, equality of opportunity to the citizen, diversities; its capability to meet various regulatory requirements, recognizing the necessity of worldwide cooperation with particular attention to less developed countries. It is also expected to reduce or lower the capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operational expenditure (OPEX).

Indonesia consists of scattered islands which and need lower cost of rural telecommunication solution to overcome the reach of affordable connectivity of less income population. Commercially this NGN platform is feasible and even may bring more profit for telecommunication industry because it enables the possible migration and interoperatibility amongst their existing networks.