MiniTrends Conference: “Go for the booty and discover new, uncharted lands”*

November 12, 2013

MiniTrends 2013 Conference Panel “Taking the Plunge” – (l-rt) Christopher Justice, Founder/CEO, Sparksight, Inc.; Andre Angel, Founder/CEO,Tango Tab; Stacy Zoern, Founder/CEO, Community Cars; Jeffrey Fry, Founder/Principal, Help Find Care; Steve Pearson, Founder/CEO, The Pearson Strategy Group;

I was honored to participate in this year’s MiniTrends Conference, an exciting gathering based on exposing that sweet spot where new and established businesses can find the tools and directional choices to profit and inspire themselves and their employees.

The message that making money does not require tossing out your social responsibility was uplifting and contagious. The conference attendees I met were especially eager to learn more about being successful while making a positive difference.

We heard excellent keynotes by Jani Byrne, Gary Hoover and Dr. John Vanston that provided the structure of the conference.

A total of 17 speakers presented and all of their slides can be found at http://minitrends.com/minitrends-2013-slides/

Carrie Vanston, MiniTrends Conference Director, was her usual self: a powerhouse of preparedness and always carrying a smile.

As for me, I was pleased to be invited to be the moderator for Expert Panel Two: “Taking the Plunge: What you can learn from those who have initiated successful, value-driven businesses.”

The enthusiastic panelists were all knowledgeable and spoke from strong entrepreneurial backgrounds.

• Andre Angel, Co-founder/CEO at TangoTab; Co-Founder/Chairman, WorkMeter; Co-founder, Servoyant, LLC; Co-Founder/Chairman, CODEKKO Software
• Jeffrey Fry, Principal, Help Find Care; Chief Executive, Profit Prophet; Director/CMO, MainGain; Board Member, baqpak; Executive Dir, Firefly Funds; Executive Dir, SHINE Night; President, SEDA RICO, LLC
• Christopher Justice, Chief Executive Officer at Sparksight, Inc.
• Stacy Zoern, CEO, Community Cars

They had great advice, but here are their key points:

1. Trust your gut.
2. Listen and change your course when needed.
3. It’s not about YOU. Remove your ego.
4. Fail often. Test and try.
5. Be flexible.
6. Choose your team wisely.
7. Manage your stress, your health is important.

I can’t wait to continue the conversation at next year’s conference.

—Steve Pearson, Lead Strategist and Founder of The Pearson Strategy Group, LLC.

*My favorite take-away was Jeffrey Fry’s adjustment to a Steve Jobs quote: “[Being an entrepreneur] is like being a pirate…go for the booty and discover new, uncharted lands.”

MiniTrends 2013 Conference – Carrie Vanston, Conf. Dir., VP Communications, TFI, Steve Pearson, Founder, CEO, Pearson Strategy, John Vanston, Conf. Chair, Chairman, TFI

This blog post originally appeared in Pearson’s Strategy News.

 

MiniTrends 2013 Conference – Thank You & Presentation Slides

October 30, 2013

MiniTrends 2013 – Keynote Speaker, Jani Byrne, Dir., IBM

Thank you to everyone who helped make MiniTrends 2013: The Integration of Profit & Social Responsibility such a huge success! The conference slides are up!

Conference Chair Dr. John Vanston and I enjoyed interacting with everyone and appreciated the contagious enthusiasm. The speakers were fantastic, the synergy between attendees exciting, and the overall response great. Now let’s build on the connections we made and all we learned!

Lt-Rt: Carrie Vanston, Media/Mkt Dir., TFI, Conf Dir; Barbara Springer, TechBA, UT at Austin; Keynote Gary Hoover, CEO, Bigwig GameEntrepreneur; Vanessa Manley, MSTC, McCombs School of Business, UT at Austin, Dr. Gary Cadenhead, Dir, MSTC, McCombs School of Business, UT at Austin. Dr. John Vanston, Chairman, TFI, Conf. Chair

A special shout-out goes to our Keynotes Jani Byrne, Gary Hoover, and John Vanston whose excellent presentations provided the structure of the conference. We also greatly appreciate our wonderful Sponsors and Partners, Planning Committee, and Advisory Board for their integral role in making this such a valuable and fun event.

MiniTrends 2013 Conference Exercise – Impact Wheels

Let’s use the LinkedIn MiniTrends Group to continue to network and keep the energy going until MiniTrends 2014. Please feel free to share thoughts and your own minitrends, experiences, and resources with other members of the LinkedIn MiniTrends Group.

We also have a Facebook Page that we welcome you to “like.” We will be posting pictures from the conference and will let you know when they are up. Twitter is @MiniTrendsBook, #minitrends.

MiniTrends 2013 Panel 2 — l-r: Steve Pearson, CEO, The Pearson Strategy Group, Christopher Justice, CEO, Sparksight, Inc., Andre Angel, CEO, TangoTab, Stacy Zoern, CEO, Community Cars, Jeffrey Fry, Principal, Help Find Care (Photo by Dee Ann Hoeft, Dee Ann’s Photography Studio)

We also encourage you to sign up for our MiniTrends Blog.

Thanks for everyone who handed in evaluation sheets! We appreciated the feedback. Please let us know if you have any more input on how the event went. We welcome ideas from attendees and blog readers on what you would like to see next year.

Hopefully everyone has had a chance to take a look at the MINITRENDS book you received at the conference. A quick read of the Preface (Page xxi) and Chapter 10 (Pg 185-186) gives a good overall theme of the book.)

Please let us know progress you make with minitrends, particularly those using concepts from the book and conference. We use examples in our talks, guest blogs, and/or they may be speaking subjects for you next year.

Also please let us know if your organization or one you know would be interested in meeting with us to find out how we might help bring a MiniTrends Mindset to your organization through presentations, workshops, and/or other in-house services.

We are excited to have you in our MiniTrends Circle! We look forward to continuing the connection. In the meantime, please feel free to contact John, Helen Mary, or me with any thoughts or comments.

Warm regards,

Carrie and the TFI/MiniTrends Team

Top 10 reasons to attend MiniTrends 2013 – Oct 2-3, Austin, TX

September 26, 2013

1: Get 1/2 off by registering now! Limited number of passes. Thanks to our generous sponsors, we have a limited number of 1/2 price passes to MiniTrends 2013 Conference & Master Workshop. Use Code  “SuperHalfOff” while they last! For maximum savings, combine with Early Bird Special which ends tomorrow, Sept 26, at 11:55 pm and attend MiniTrends 2013Conference (Oct 2) for $148 or the Conference & Master Workshop (Oct 2-3) for $173. Prices for Non-profits, Academic, Government, and Students are even lower.

2: Listen to Outstanding Keynote Speakers.

—Jani Byrne, Ph.D. is Director, Marketing – Global Mid-Market, MSP, and Enterprise at IBM. A visionary who marries deep technological innovations and insights with a profound understanding of human and market psychology… an extraordinarily passionate thought-leader who can also simply “get stuff done.” Jani is our morning keynote speaking on “The Next Generation IT Innovations and What’s In It ForYou.” —Gary Hoover is Founder, CEO, Chief Game Designer at Bigwig Games, Inc.; Entrepreneurship Teacher, Hoover Institute; Entrepreneur-in-Residence, School of Information, The University of Texas. He is renowned for founding BOOKSTOP, the leading-edge book superstore that revolutionized the nature of bookshopping, and Hoover’s, the world’s largest Internet-based provider of information about enterprises. Gary’s afternoon keynote is “Making a Difference Through Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Leadership.” —John H. Vanston, Ph.D., MiniTrends Conference Chair, Founder and Chairman of Technology Futures, Inc. (celebrating it’s 35th year), and author of the award winning book, MINITRENDS, kicks off the Conference with “The Importance of MiniTrends and Seven Ways You Can Find Them.”  Other presentations include “Becoming a MiniTrends Master,” and “Planning Your MiniTrends Success.”

3: Great Networking Opportunities.  Meet, mingle, network, and share ideas with speakers and other innovative and entrepreneurial-minded individuals during continental breakfasts, break out groups, breaks, discussions, provided lunch, and the MiniTrends 2013 reception overlooking beautiful Lady Bird Lake. See what all the excitement is about! Watch the video and hear what our MiniTrends 2012 Conference attendees say!! 4: Meet Inspiring Featured Speakers. At the MiniTrends Conference (October 2)

–Jeffrey Fry, Principal, Help Find Care; Chief Executive, Profit Prophet; Director/CMO, MainGain; Executive Director, Firefly Funds; Executive Director, SHINE Night; President, SEDA RICO, LLC. Jeffrey will present “Detecting 10 MiniTrends Using a Tachyon Field.”  –Tarja Meristö, Corporate Futurist, Principal Lecturer at Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Finland. Tarja will present “Exploiting Trends for the Future – Finnish Experiences.” At the MiniTrends Master Workshop (October 3)

—Steve Pearson, Lead Strategist, Founder, The Pearson Strategy Group, “Monitoring Your MiniTrends for Success.” –Carrie Vanston, MiniTrends 2013 Conference Director and Media and Marketing Director, Technology Futures, Inc., “Where MiniTrends Hide: Eight Information Sources.”  –Lawrence Vanston, Ph.D. , President, Technology Futures, Inc., “Analyzing MiniTrends: Drivers & Constraints” 5: Meet and listen to expert panelists discussing how profit and social good combine for the good of all stakeholders. Expert Panel One: The Integration of Profit and Social Responsibility

–(Moderator) Ty Rarick, Founder/CEO TSR Consulting –Amy George, Founder/CEO, Blue Avocado –Elijah May, Chief Brand Officer & Host, SocialGood.TV –Cristián Méndez Sâbre, Chief Marketing Officer, Verb Inc.— Dell Education Challenge and Dell Empowering Women Challenge –Joy Stoddard, Development & Outreach Director, Whole Foods Foundationat Whole Foods Market 6: Visit with representatives of our sponsor/partners who share our vision and have helped develop and ensure the success of MiniTrends 2013.

7: Learn how other organizations are being profitable while also being socially responsible. Expert Panel Two: Taking the Plunge: What you can learn from those who have initiated successful value-driven businesses

–(Moderator) Steve Pearson, Lead Strategist, Founder, The Pearson Strategy Group –Andre Angel, Co-founder/CEO at TangoTab; Co-Founder/Chairman, WorkMeter; Co-founder, Servoyant, LLC; Co-Founder/Chairman, CODEKKO Software –Jeffrey Fry, Principal, Help Find Care; Chief Executive, Profit Prophet; Director/CMO, MainGain; Executive Director, Firefly Funds; Executive Director, SHINE Night; President, SEDA RICO, LLC; –Christopher Justice, Chief Executive Officer at Sparksight, Inc.–Stacy Zoern, CEO, Community Cars (Kengura “drive from wheelchair” vehicles)

8: Join in fun group and individual exercises that help you create ideas and provide opportunities to follow your bliss! Individual and group activities at the MiniTrends 2013 Conference & Master Workshopwill help you generate ideas, consider their potential as MiniTrends, develop partnerships, and leave with actionable plans. 9: Hear how and where innovators and entrepreneurs like yourself can get advice and assistance for translating your ideas into successful and satisfying endeavors. Expert Panel Three: Help is Here: How and where you can get advice and assistance for translating an uncovered minitrend into a successful, value-driven business opportunity

–(Moderator) Vicki Flaugher, Digital Strategist, Speaker, and Author of “Famous in Your Niche: Building Your Digital Celebrity For Fun and Profit.” –Bijoy Goswami, Cofounder & Evangelist at ATX Equation, The Bootstrap, Aviri Consulting; Founder/Organizer, Bootstrap Network; CEO, Aviri Inc. –Joy Miller, Marketing and Outreach Coordinator, City of Austin Small Business Development Program –Eve Richter, VP of Community & Partnerships, door64; Executive Director at Austin Economic Club

11: Bonus!! A chance to enjoy beautiful Austin Texas! Our MiniTrends 2013 meeting and reception will overlook beautiful Lady Bird Lake. The Holiday Inn Austin Town Lake (800-593-5676) is in a wonderful location to experience Austin’s major attractions. The hotel has direct access to the lake’s hike & bike trails and is a mile from Austin’s famous 6th Street entertainment district.

Again, get ½ off by registering today!! Use Code “SuperHalfOff” while they last! For maximum savings, combine with Early Bird Special which ends tomorrow, Sept 26, at 11:55 pm and attend MiniTrends 2013 Conference (Oct 2) for $148 or the Conference & Master Workshop (Oct 2-3) for $173. Prices for Non-profits, Academic, and Government are $98 and $123, and Students $45 and $53. Early bird ends 9/26, but 1/2 off discount good until event starts or special passes are gone. Day 1: MiniTrends 2013 Conference Wed., Oct. 2, 8:30 am-5:30 pm followed by reception (lunch provided)  Day 1 & 2: MiniTrends 2013 Conference & Master Workshop Wed., Oct. 2, 8:30 am-5:30 pm followed by reception (lunch provided) and Thurs., Oct 3, 8:30 am – 12:00 pm Contact TFI at info@tfi.com or (512) 258-8898 or visit Minitrends 2013 for more information.

WorldFuture 2013: Master Course: Succeeding in a New Normal World – July 19, Chicago

July 12, 2013

Join us for our Pre-Conference Master Course: Succeeding in a New Normal World on July 19 with David Pearce Snyder, Dr. John Vanston, and Carrie Vanston

The World Future Society’s annual conference WorldFuture 2013: Exploring the Next Horizon brings together the world’s premier minds to discuss the long-range future of science, technology, humanity, government, religion and many other topics.

MiniTrends’ leaders Dr. John Vanston and Carrie Vanston are co-presenting with top futurist David Snyder at the Pre-Conference Master Course: Succeeding in a New Normal World on July 19, 8:00 a.m.-5:00 pm. (The additional fee is $245.)

This session describes the New Normal, the forces driving it, and how you can use the MiniTrends Concept to discover and profit from emerging trends within these forces. These minitrends offer opportunities to be successful personally and professionally, while making a postive difference in this changing world.

The session increases understanding of the principles and practices covered and  allows participants to take advantage of the experiences and insights of the group.

Highlights: What Attendees Will Learn from this Session:

• How forces are predictably reshaping our demography, economic structure, technology advances, and decision-making processes.
• How these forces can assist participants in identifying and taking advantage of emerging trends and attractive business opportunities.
  
• How participants can apply the information, ideas, and insights presented in the class as guidance for business, personal career, and investment decisions.

Presenters:

David Pearce Snyder
Consulting Futurist;
The Snyder Family Enterprise
Contributing Editor, The Futurist

 

Dr. John Vanston
Chairman, Technology Futures, Inc.
Conference Chair, MiniTrends 2013: The Integration of Profit & Social Responsibility

Author, MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends

 

Carrie Vanston
Media & Mktg Director, Technology Futures, Inc.
Conference Director: MiniTrends 2013: The Integration of Profit & Social Responsibility
Co-Author, MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends

____________

We hope you will join us in attending WorldFuture 2013: Exploring the Next Horizon and signing up for our Pre-Conference Master Course: Succeeding in a New Normal World.

Oct. 2-3: MiniTrends 2013: The Integration of Profit & Social Responsibility

June 21, 2013

Second Annual MiniTrends Conference

MiniTrends 2013: The Integration of Profit & Social Responsibility

October 2-3, Holiday Inn Town Lake, Austin, Texas

Discover, Profit, Do Good!

Wednesday, October 2, 2013
8:30 am – 5:30 pm, Reception 5:30 – 7:15 pm

You CAN be profitable and socially responsible. This event exposes that sweet spot where new and established businesses can find the tools and directional choices to profit and inspire themselves and their employees in whatever their line of business.

Join us in Austin, the place Forbes’ calls the “Best Big City for Jobs,” to listen and participate as all-star business leaders and forward thinkers reveal how to start new ventures and grow established organizations leveraging MiniTrends.

By understanding MiniTrends—emerging trends that will soon become important, but not yet widely recognized—you will discover effective ways to balance capitalism with complementary social values and philanthropy in your business.

Find out what future trends and convergences are on the horizon and, of equal importance, how you can find profitable emerging trends of your own integrated with socially responsible values.

Austin is an exciting, growing entrepreneurial hub that offers a culture built on collaboration, innovation, creativity, and caring. What better place to find out how you, too, can develop a Minitrends Mindset!

You Should Attend if You are a Value-Driven:

• Entrepreneur wishing to identify, assess, and exploit attractive new business opportunities
• Decision Making Executive, Director, Manager, or in a Small or Mid-Size Business wanting to gain advantage by recognizing and utilizing emerging trends
• Innovative Thinking Executive, Director, Manager, or Professional in a Larger Business aspiring to distinguish yourself by your special insights and perceptiveness
• Investor interested in uncovering attractive new investment opportunities
• Job Seeker wishing to define employment opportunities

What You will Gain:

• A creative mind-set and resources for finding and taking advantage of emerging trends and opportunities relating to your own area of expertise and interest.
• An understanding of how to integrate profit and socially responsible purpose and value in your business.
• A preview of MiniTrends that thought leaders see developing.
• Experience from innovative leaders sharing how they use emerging trends to start new ventures or grow established organizations for profit with attention to all stakeholders.
• Tactics to identify untapped business opportunities from converging trends in the business and social arenas.
• Interaction with speakers and fellow participants to learn, mix, and share ideas.
• Strategy and insights to create or grow your organization and, in the process, find your bliss.
• An opportunity to enjoy the Live Music Capital of the World!

Post-Conference Methods MiniTrends Workshop (Optional)

MiniTrends Workshop: How to Discover & Profit From Emerging Trends

Thursday, October 3, 2013, 8:30 am – 12:00 pm

Go the next step to starting your own MiniTrends Adventure by attending this excellent applications workshop. In this session, we discuss basic MiniTrends principles and participants have hands-on opportunities to find, analyze, and profit from emerging trends that also offer a socially responsible aspect. Participants leave with a solid basis for developing their own “Minitrends Mindset.”

MiniTrends Workshop BONUS!! Copy of award-winning book MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends.

To encourage you to attend this valuable post-conference half-day workshop, we are offering it at an exceptionally low price! Only $75 early bird for general admission attendees! ($100 after Sept. 1.)

___________________

Free MiniTrends RISE Conference Session – Austin, TX, Tues., May 14, 4-5:30 pm

May 10, 2013

RISE Conference 

Presents a free session with

MiniTrends: How to Discover & Profit From Business & TechnologyTrends

In this presentation, award winning author Dr. John H. Vanston, Chairman, and Carrie Vanston, Marketing Director, Technology Futures, Inc. discuss MiniTrends — the concept that helps you find and act on great ideas by inspiring a creative mindset and providing a practical process for discovering and exploiting emerging trends that will become significantly important within 2-5 years.

Attendees learn and practice:

• How and where to search for MiniTrends.
• How to evaluate the business attractiveness of a MiniTrend.
• How to develop an effective MiniTrend Exploitation Scheme.
• How to turn the scheme into a profitable business opportunity.

You should attend if you are:

• An Entrepreneur wishing to identify, assess, and exploit attractive new business opportunities.
• An Executive, Director, Manager, or Professional seeking to take advantage of important emerging trends.
• An Innovative Thinker interested in gaining recognition for originality and perceptiveness.
• An Investor interested in uncovering attractive new investment opportunities.
• A Job Seeker wishing to define emerging employment possibilities.

Participants will leave with a solid basis for developing their own “MiniTrends Mindset.”

The presentation is based on John’s more than 30 years of experience in identifying and applying technical, social, and business trends and the book MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends authored by John and Carrie.

Sign Up for the RISE MiniTrends Session Now!

Directions: Go north on Hwy 183, take the Lake Creek Blvd. exit and do a u-turn under 183, go a short distance and turn right into the Lake Creek Office Complex (just past Chase bank). You will run directly into the meeting room building which is in the center of the complex. Meeting room entrance is on the left side of the building. (Note: there are 2-3 steps at the entrance of the building.)

RISE is a non-profit program whose cornerstone is its annual “un-conference” — scheduled May 13-17 this year — in which seasoned entrepreneurs and experts volunteer to host small-group sessions on any topic of their choice at any location of their choice throughout Austin. Sessions are free and limited to 25 to promote a highly collaborative experience.

MINITRENDS Wins Pinnacle Best Business Book Award

December 22, 2011

MINITRENDS wins Pinnacle Book Achievement Best Business Book Award by helping readers find new trends & business opportunities

Technology Futures, Inc. is pleased to announce that MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends by Dr. John H. Vanston with Carrie Vanston has won the Pinnacle Book Acheivement Best Business Book Award. This award is in addition to several earlier book awards received this year.

According to Dr. Vanston, “Many people will be starting the New Year with resolutions to achieve new goals. I am gratified with the attention MINITRENDS is receiving because I believe the book provides a path to make those goals a reality. The best way for individuals and businesses seeking to start new ventures or keep existing business innovative and competitive is to be constantly on the lookout for emerging trends that are not yet widely recognized. MINITRENDS helps people do just that by providing a mindset and process for initial idea generation and techniques to analyze and exploit these ideas.”

Based on Dr. Vanston’s more than 30 years of experience in identifying and applying technical, social, and business trends, MINITRENDS provides practical guidance to individuals and organizations of all sizes for extracting business opportunities from emerging trends that have a realistic chance of becoming profitable in the next 2-5 years. The book assists the reader in launching their own exciting, profitable “Minitrend Adventure” using their creativity, foresight, innovative nature, and basic good sense.

Additional accolades for MINITRENDS include an Eric Hoffer Business Book of the Year Award and finalist nods from ForeWord Reviews’ Business Book of the Year, USA Book News’ Entrepreneurship & Small Business Book of the Year, and Dan Poytner’s Global eBook Awards Business Book of the Year. Excellent endorsements and testimonials have also been received from top futurists Joseph Coates and David Pearce Snyder and many other opinion leaders and publications.

For more information on Minitrends, please visit the Minitrends Website or contact us by e-mail or (512) 258-8898.  (Click here to purchase book.)

For 33 years, TFI has helped organizations plan for the future by offering outstanding technology and telecommunications forecasting services and custom forecasts for key trends to high-technology and telecom organizations.

PRESS, MEDIA, BLOGGERS: Please contact Carrie Vanston at info@tfi.com or (512) 258-8898 if you are interested in doing a Minitrends article, to request an interview with Dr. Vanston, or to request a review copy of MINITRENDS.

InnoTech Conference Teeming With Emerging Trends

October 25, 2011

Sean Lowry, Exe. Dir., Innotech and Carrie Vanston, Co-Author, MINITRENDS at Innotech Conference, Photo by Sloan Foster

I’ve attended the InnoTech Conference and Expo and its associated eMarketing Summit for several years now and always learn a lot. This year I wanted to pass on some comments from experts that I heard yesterday relating to emerging trends that are becoming more and more important:

Sean Lowry, of the very successful InnoTech series, always does a great job of making sure everything runs smoothly. I was even able to steal him for a minute to ask what emerging trends he saw coming. He told me, “I see continued convergence of all the different technologies we are seeing here today. Development of mobile applications and host applications in the cloud are particularly important. There is so much video activity and a lot of it is being hosted in the cloud now.”

I asked Giovanni Galluci, social media expert and Dallas photographer what he thinks the next trend in social media is going to be. He said, “Getting over it. Everyone is burnt out with all the hype and now people are looking for more meaning in social media. Twitter is ridiculous. Those who do marketing are beginning to realize it. Online social media is becoming part of the umbrella of marketing, which is where it belongs. Social media is becoming more commodatized—as in more of a commodity.”

He gave several great hints about Facebook including that Facebook ads are the best way to grow a fan base; Facebook is the 2nd largest search engine, so take advantage of it (including using pictures with metatags, main key words in description, etc.); and put Facebook info on all your printed matter including cards and bills.

I chatted with William Leake, CEO of Apogee Search Marketing, and his take was that “More and more advertising presence is going to be driven by physical location. If you don’t have a physical location strategy, you are going to lose.”

Craig Wax, CEO of Invodo and a video expert, had a lot to say about the future of video marketing. According to Craig, “In the future, no one is going to stand in line anymore. Offline and online is no longer relevant. This is already starting to happen and it is going to become ubiquous.” He added that “QR readers are going to be incorporated into devices and the present obstacles to their use will be chipped away.” (On a side note, Craig was most recently the Senior Vice President and General Manager at Match.com. That had to be an interesting job!)

According to Pat Scherer, Web and Mobile Deployment Manager at The Detail Person,  “Mobile space is going to be huge. With the explosion of devices, I think it’s going to make a huge impact on the retail industry. Not only for payments, but for creating local-based experiences utilizing mobile social media. I anticipate this leveling the playing field with e-commerce.”

Finally, I got to chat briefly with siblings Kevin Olsen and Kerri Olsen, Co-Founders of the Austin Grand Prix. Having Formula 1 in Austin exciting!

Cheers,

Carrie Vanston
Media/Marketing Director, Technology Futures, Inc.
Co-Author, MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends

Is Google a Monopoly? EC Launches Investigation

December 2, 2010

We monitor technology trends on this blog. One of the biggest tech trends of late is accusing Google of having a monopoly, or monopolies (plural), which begs the question of what, exactly, Google has a monopoly over? Most of the accusations center around search.

“Google ‘owns’ search,” says Columbia Law Professor, Tim Wu, in a November 13 piece for The Wall Street Journal‘s WSJ “Review” section. Wu’s new book, The Master Switch, is sounding the “Google as monopoly” bell which rang loudly before the U.S. Presidential elections in 2008 but has quieted down since.

Wu’s definition of “ownership” is quite a bit looser than a pure monopoly. Google “owns” less than two-thirds of the search market, according to ComScore. In June of this year, Google held 62.6% of search queries; Yahoo held 18.9%; and Microsoft’s Bing has grown to an impressive 12.7%. Having a dominant position in a field with few barriers to entry is not a monopoly. Just ask MySpace.

Two days ago, however, the accusations that Google has a monopoly moved from the rhetoric to real threat as the European Commission opened an investigation into whether Google has abused its position as the dominant search engine by intentionally skewing search results to benefit entities it owns. From the EC’s press release announcing inquiry launch:

The Commission will investigate whether Google has abused a dominant market position in online search by allegedly lowering the ranking of unpaid search results of competing services which are specialised in providing users with specific online content such as price comparisons (so-called vertical search services) and by according preferential placement to the results of its own vertical search services in order to shut out competing services. The Commission will also look into allegations that Google lowered the ‘Quality Score’ for sponsored links of competing vertical search services. The Quality Score is one of the factors that determine the price paid to Google by advertisers.

The argument here is not that Google is a monopoly because of its size. Rather, that Google has used illegal means to penalize competitors, which is what eventually gets so-called monopolies in trouble. I have long suspected that Google Blog Search favors blogs on the Google-owned Blogger/BlogSpot platform over rival WordPress. The EC review is based on favoring Google’s price comparison results over rival Foundem.

Two Google vice presidents have posted a response to the EC’s announcement on the Google Public Policy Blog, but they do not dispute the EC’s claim of favoritism. It was Microsoft’s exclusionary sales contracts that required PC makers to install its operating system and not competing software that got the software maker into antitrust trouble, not its market share.

As long as consumers have access to alternatives, does Google really have a monopoly on search? Does Facebook have a monopoly on social networking? The same could have been said of MySpace three years ago. MySpace has suffered hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for owner News Corp. Facebook could fade just as fast and, believe it or not, so could Google. In a previous post on this blog, we cited Morgan Stanley’s Mary Meeker as noting that seven of the top 15 Internet companies by market capitalization in 2004 are not in the top 15 today.

The primary reason for the demise of [Fortune 100] companies has been a failure to recognize and react to changing trends.

Those words come from the new book, MINITRENDS, by futurist John Vanston with Carrie Vanston. One of the main reasons the Vanstons wrote this book was to give large companies a formula for staying innovative. It’s easy for entrepreneurs to pioneer new ideas, and often much harder for those ideas to come from within giant organizations. But it can be done, and MINITRENDS provides a process these giants can use to identify and develop new methods and markets.

It has been Microsoft’s argument against the antitrust regulators that, absent criminal barriers to entry, its businesses are open to competition and subject to decline unless Microsoft continually innovates. Bill Gates, who is no stranger to the issues now facing Google, lashed out at Matt Ridley, author of the new book, The Rational Optimist, in last weekend’s WSJ Review:

Like many other authors who write about innovation, Mr. Ridley suggests that all innovation comes from new companies, with no contribution from established companies. As you might expect, I disagree with this view.

Gates knows that Facebook’s advertising network could upend Google’s fragile hold over the online advertising market, and that Facebook itself could fade as fast as MySpace did in a matter of a few years. For those companies who hope to stay ahead of the game, as Apple and Microsoft have consistently done, MINITRENDS provides a way of nurturing innovation — a process that itself is a significant innovation — in the quest to remain competitive.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “In the Grip of the New Monopolists,” The Wall Street Journal, 11/13/10
Source: “Search engine Bing gains market share,” BBC Technology News, 07/14/10
Source: “Antitrust: Commission probes allegations of antitrust violations by Google,” EUROPA Press Releases, 11/30/10
Source: “MySpace losses lead way down for News Corp.,” Los Angeles Times, 08/05/09
Source: MINITRENDS: How Innovators & Entrepreneurs Discover & Profit From Business & Technology Trends, Technology Futures, Inc., p. 13.
Source: “Africa Needs Aid, Not Flawed Theories,” The Wall Street Journal, 11/27/10
Image by cambodia4kidsorg, used under its Creative Commons license.

New Employment Trend: No Employment

November 19, 2010

A pair of stories in The Wall Street Journal on Friday, November 19, illustrate a growing trend for startup companies: avoiding hiring any employees.

Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist, Mark Whitehouse, who recently joined the Journal‘s New York office as a senior economics correspondent after years working in Russia, profiled financial analysis startup, MCAP Research, in Montclair, New Jersey, which epitomizes the lean, new startup environment by eschewing any significant capital investments or hiring employees.

The firm was started two years ago by Efrem Meretab, a native of Eritrea, who gave up his job as a stock analyst to open the ultra-lean company. Whitehouse says,

His experience demonstrates how advances in technology and communications are allowing some small companies to sell products world-wide without creating many jobs in the U.S. or spending much money on things made in the U.S.

Whitehouse cites two main factors driving the company’s lean profile: outsourcing programming to the Ukraine and Pakistan while taking advantage of Amazon’s cloud instead of purchasing servers. We have discussed the trend toward cloud computing in many posts on this blog, but never for the solopreneur.

A related story also written by Mark Whitehouse with Justin Lahart, a former CNN/Money correspondent who covers economics for the Journal, reports that startups are not contributing to the growth in employment usually associated with periods of economic recovery.

The number of companies with at least one employee fell by 100,000, or 2%, in the year that ended March 31, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That was the second worst performance in 18 years, the worst being the 3.4% drop in the previous year.

Startups were first hammered by the recession, with more closing that opening since 2008, then strangled by tight capital markets. Angel investing still has not recovered, according to the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, which reports that less has been invested in the first half of 2010 than during the recession years of 2008 and 2009.

In their new book, MINITRENDS, John and Carrie Vanston devote a significant portion of the book to new business opportunities serving a growing work-at-home workforce. In a previous post on this blog, we discussed how cloud computing has enabled temp agencies to apply the same just-in-time inventory to the workforce that auto companies have brought to manufacturing.

Without capital to grow their businesses, and with access to a global marketplace of contract workers, companies have learned to prosper by renting rather than buying assets and outsourcing services. If the Vanstons are correct — and their track record (PDF) on such predictions is excellent — the solopreneur will no longer be a trend coming out of this recession but the new standard operating procedure.

We welcome your thoughts about this ultra-lean method of bootstrapping high-tech businesses.

STEVE O’KEEFE
News Editor, Minitrends Blog

Source: “Starting a Global Business, With No U.S. Employees,” The Wall Street Journal, 11/19/10
Source: “Few Businesses Sprout, With Even Fewer Jobs,” The Wall Street Journal, 11/19/10
Photo courtesy of psd (Paul Downey), used under its Creative Commons license.

« Previous Page — Next Page »