by Adam L Stanley | Feb 6, 2018 | Leadership, Teamwork, Technology, Vendors and Partners
The Big-D hit list: Disrupting the word disruption
Purging overused buzzwords is a big step we can take to open our minds to the realities and challenges of succeeding in business today.
The problem with business jargon, which most of us use ad nauseam, is that it’s not merely annoying, it carries the real potential to block progress. Those nifty little words and phrases may make us sound ingenious within our respective tribes (and own minds), but they can also narrow our thinking to the point where we start cramming our strategies and plans into the same universally-defined small boxes. So, just when we believe we’re thinking “outside of the box,” we’re not!
OK, in the name of creative thinking and staying focused on what matters, like our clients and growing our businesses, the time has come to retire some long-hacked-to-death words. In my first blog, I summarily purged the word “digital.” This time, it’s my pleasure to join a growing mob that can’t wait to see “disruption” in the rear-view mirror. Please, by all means, agree, disagree and/or share your own hit-list words.
“Disruptive innovation,” a term coined by Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen in 1997, describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.
Don’t we love talking about disruption! Very rarely does a day go by when the word doesn’t pop up, and it’s applied to everything, from cool new apps to getting a new dog. There are copious books on the subject that everyone, including me, reference a lot. Christensen and his theories on how disruptive innovation are upending large incumbent companies is a favorite.
Here’s the rub: Disruption makes sense when you’re talking about revolutionary change that takes place over months and years. Christensen defined the difference between sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. The sustaining side is what established market leaders do by listening to their customers and creating products that satisfy their “predicted” needs in new and exciting ways.
Disruptive innovators create markets that initially appear too small to attract the interest of established firms, which are more focused on delivering steady returns and growth to their shareholders. It isn’t easy for larger firms to justify the risk and investment needed to launch a new concept, which ironically gives smaller firms and start-ups a head start at cornering a market.
Major disruption occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s when new players suddenly burst on the scene with products and services that revolutionized traditional industries. BlackBerry disrupted the mobile telephony market, iPhone disrupted Blackberry and Kodak in digital photography, and so on. The big companies didn’t see it coming.
You could say that Moore’s Law, introduced way back in 1965, gave us the first idea on what disruption would look like. Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, nailed the speed of change we were about to experience when he observed that it would take a year (later revised to 18 months) for costs to be cut in half and productivity to double, and that this rate of growth would continue for decades. Welcome to the early days of the information age! Today, such changes can double in months instead of years. And, as I discussed in a prior blog, just wait until quantum computing hits the scene. It will be like comparing texting to snail mail. Point being, we’ve been in this “disruptive” bubble since the ‘60s!
So, let’s get over “disruption.” Let’s see it as a constant and rise to the challenge of operating in a world where change will only escalate. It’s business-as-usual in the high-tech fast lane and we need a firm grip. Our jobs as business leaders is to know our customers across the spectrum better than ever before; scan emerging markets; watch for new competition; react, not over-react; proactively search for new opportunities; and invest wisely in systems and strategies that are agile enough to withstand the change bombardment. For that, it always comes down to having the best and brightest people on your team.
Disruption is the second word on by Big D Hit List, following Digital. For my next blog, I’ll dig into another longer word that’s been choking conversation particularly in the business world for too long: Disintermediation.
Be well. Lead on.
Adam
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by Adam L Stanley | Oct 2, 2017 | Leadership, Relationships, Technology, Vendors and Partners
What Makes a Great Partnership?
The business world today is in a state of flux. New companies enter the ecosystem every day, bringing with them new technologies and business models, any one of which could transform an entire industry from the ground up. Most companies want to use this current of change to drive innovation. But the magic bullet is elusive as ever — the question is how best to drive innovation. For many, acquisition seems the only path to take through these disruptive forces of change. But I’d argue there is a different and more flexible way forward: PARTNERSHIP.
Partners help a large organization pivot and adapt in today’s constantly changing business environment. Great outside partners help navigate rapidly changing waters. Those partners could include universities whose research expertise can be leveraged into game-changing R&D, accelerators that can source bleeding-edge innovations from all around the world, and agile startups that can experiment nimbly with new processes and ideas. By collaborating with smart organizations of all sizes, corporations drive productivity gains both for their customers and for their own professionals. It’s a win-win for all parties.
So how do you build a successful partnership? Still no magic bullet and I am by no means saying I’m the best at this. However, based on my experience forging partnerships with startups, tech accelerators, universities, and more, here are four elements I believe are essential:
Mutual benefit
In a good partnership, both partners should gain, emerging from the relationship better than they were before. To ensure this, it’s vital to define all parties’ goals clearly and upfront. According to a KPMG study, some of the most common goals for startups partnering with corporates are gaining access to the market (65%), raising capital (54%) or taking advantage of economies of scale (54%). Meanwhile universities pursuing outside partnerships may be seeking funding to replace public and government sources that have dried up in recent years. You’ll never know what any particular partner wants to get out of the relationship, though, unless you ask—every relationship is different.
Corporations should do some soul-searching too and figure out what their strategic objectives for the partnership are beyond broadly promoting innovation. What unmet client needs will your partner help address? How will the partnership augment your company’s own internal resources and processes? Great partnerships are based on a solid business case, not irrational impulse.
Trust
True partnerships depend on trust and faith, not just carefully worded contracts. You and your partner will be engaging with each other at a deeper level than a simple vendor/customer relationship, and that means you won’t just share goals and objectives but common values, too. Don’t hold back that deeper bond with too much red tape. As a 2016 Imaginatik/MassChallenge report on the state of startup/corporate collaboration puts it: “Lengthy up-front negotiations over IP concerns, access to talent, and expected time commitments may protect against exposure, but almost always lead to gridlock and failure.” Though it is important to define the terms of the relationship up front, a great partnership shouldn’t be micromanaged. Mutual understanding and trust should be your guide.
Evolution
This goes hand-in-hand with the trust element. You can never know at the beginning exactly how the relationship will develop—it continues to evolve as you and your partner learn more about each other. Many corporations will need to adapt their processes to suit the needs of their partners over time. For instance, some experts suggest creating special “fast-track” versions of processes like procurement and invoices specifically for startup partners, which often need to move faster than the large organizations with which you might be used to working. By contrast, university academic research often proceeds at a slower pace than corporations are used to. A study published in MIT Sloan Review suggests corporate partners define a specific timescale for each university engagement with an eye to encouraging more long-term instead of short-term involvement. Overall, the key is: adapt, adapt, adapt. You’ve invested in this partner, so do what it takes to make the relationship work for you.
Rough spots
No matter how successful your partnership ends up being, you will have down days that cause you to question the relationship. That’s okay—that is part of the process. Heck, I certainly don’t know of a perfect personal relationship and a corporate/startup partnership is completely optional for both parties. Leverage some of that trust and faith to talk through issues with your partner and brainstorm possible solutions. Do they need more access to mentors and advocates in your organization? Closer connections to clients? Faster turnaround on invoicing? Do what you can to make it happen.
It’s possible, of course, that the problems go deeper than that. Sometimes, a rough spot turns into a series of rough spots, which then turns into a sense that neither partner is getting the things out of this relationship that they wanted. That’s okay, too. Partnerships don’t have to last forever to be worthwhile—they can be for a season. Just remember to end things with your former partner on good terms: you never know when you might want to collaborate with them again in the future.
There’s no way around it: building great partnerships takes a lot of time and effort. When it’s done right, however, the results speak for themselves. Partnerships are probably the most effective way a large organization can drive innovation and adapt to today’s changing tech landscape—getting there just takes a bit of dedication and faith.
Be well. Lead On.
Adam
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by Adam L Stanley | Nov 21, 2016 | Leadership, Technology, Vendors and Partners
Information-based analytics trump Big Data
I don’t use the term “big data,” which long ago became an overused buzzword anyway along with its cousin “The Cloud”. It’s not that I dont think data is important. Its just that Big Data by itself is like a basket of whole wheat flour without eggs, butter and milk. Just like you can’t eat just the flour, you can’t consume Big Data. You need a recipe to take the raw ingredients and a means to transform it into something yummy.
Recently, the Altus Group CRE Innovation Report showed that 89% of the firms surveyed faced major impediments to collecting and utilizing data to drive improved asset and investment management decision-making. This is in line with previous research that big data may actually be slowing down decision-making, as opposed to making it more effective.
The No. 1 goal of any CIO right now shouldn’t be achieving some big data-tied deliverable. It shouldn’t be implementing a massive data warehouse or finding a big data platform that can gather millions of information points for future analyses. Rather, it is about being smarter. One of my mentors, another executive at Cushman & Wakefield, says that an organization is often like a large brain using about 10% of its capacity. Harnessing the power of the rest should be the goal of any analytics program. So much of the information you really need for effective decision-making lies in the heads of thousands of professionals in dozens of different offices (or homes … or coffee shops … or cars) all over the globe.
The primary goal of a CIO, then, is finding ways for those professionals to come together, share the information they have, and solve complex problems. That may well involve a platform approach, but it’s not necessarily a big data platform.
I prefer to start with the questions, as most good strategy does. In our business, it all begins with: What are some of the models we might be able to build that help our clients more effectively manage their real estate assets? Once we have the right questions defined, we build the data models and refine existing — or create new — data collection mechanisms. In this way, instead of “big data” we can focus on “information-based analytics” that more immediately drive value in decision-making.
Silos are a large part of the problem
The Altus report found a lack of integrated data approaches. 80% of firms surveyed said their business could eliminate or reduce data silos through better integration and standardization. Four out of every 5 people complaining about silos, especially in an era where firms compete largely on data, is a very telling number. But it is also a sad reality. Many organizations are formed from a series of acquisitions. Over time, legacy systems build up and a patchwork quilt of interfaces is developed to keep them humming in unison.
But these patchwork quilts do not have to constrain or define your analytics strategy and practices. Instead, I try to think like a startup. Startups often gain that disruptive edge because their decision-making is better and faster, and they can move to market (and refine once there) quicker than an enterprise, legacy company. In the course of this happening, startups are often building their own analytic systems — as opposed to relying on third-party vendors. Why can’t this happen in legacy companies? The reason you hear most is “process”. And that is in fact a major problem. Sometimes we let process overwhelm actual notions of productivity, which is a bad play for all involved. Process should only exist to better business performance, not to hinder it or run your people in circles.
Data integration and standardization is obviously a challenge for firms, but the bigger challenge is a concept we don’t discuss as much: data model and taxonomy standardization. If one business unit thinks in terms of cost per square utilized foot and another one thinks cost per square gross foot but both simply refer to their data as cost per square foot, the analysis will be off because the data is off. Disparate systems with a common data taxonomy can get you pretty far. On the other hand, one global system with multiple data taxonomies can lead to bad analysis. You may have won the battle but you will lose the war.
This may sound corny, but it’s totally true: data is power, but only if used for good. Stephen Dubner, famous from Freakonomics, has been discussing this idea for years. We have a tendency in business towards more, more, more, but in this case it doesn’t work. That’s another reason I don’t like the term big data. Just collecting data essentially for the sake of having it, with no end goal in mind around improved decisions or processes, is complete folly.
The challenge for our industry is this: how do we take the lessons of the investment shops, insurance brokerages, and even the residential real estate business and translate it into what we do, while at the same time not losing the connection with tremendous local leaders?
I think we’ll continue to see more approaches around data — look at a model like Zillow and the amount of data they crunch — but my hope is that this idea of “big data” fades into buzzword obscurity and we focus on the right things at the CIO level. We should be connecting stakeholders and moving towards information-based analytics.
Be well. Lead On.
Adam
Related Posts:
Disruption: Thinking like our ancestors
Riding a Wave of Change
Innovations Changing Our Industry
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by Adam L Stanley | Feb 3, 2013 | Technology, Vendors and Partners
I have now had my BlackBerry Z10 device for a few days and am beginning to get a sense of the device functionality and the overall experience. I am not a professional reviewer but like to share. I’m reserving my final judgement and not ready to decide for sure that I will be moving away from iPhone to this however I will say it is a pretty good device with some serious limitations I will cover.
The Hub
A big highlight in the advertising for the new device is the Hub, basically one spot where all of your email, social networking, and text messaging updates can be found. It is fairly easy to use, and quite convenient in allowing a simple view of all of the information you need to ignore (LOL) for the day. Is it absolutely amazing, best thing since sliced bread? Not really. But it is an improvement over iPhone where you would have to seperately open LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, email, and messaging to get the same content. And even viewing the actual apps is easier on Blackbery Z10 because you can have up to 8 applications open at the same time.
Setup for Facebook and LinkedIn are incredibly easy, by the way. And, when I set up LinkedIn, the phone asked me if I also wanted to add the email address I used for linked in to my device email accounts. I clicked ok and setup took seconds! Only question is why it did not do the same for FaceBook.
The Hub
Email and Typing
Confident now to say that text recognition is better than iPhone. It is intuitive and suggests words not just on the letters I type but on the context of the sentence. If you start typing the quick brown fox, it knows you are about to write jumps over the lazy … pretty cool. And with some keyboard under the keyboard functionality, it learns how your fingers work and begins to correct the keyboard. So if your fat fingers always type Q when you mean to type W, it begins to shift the keyboard over to the right a little. Its coll and it just works. Plus it is SO easy to delete words and whole sentences with a slide of the finger. Finally, email addressing feature rocks. It remembers some of the last people who wrote you or you wrote and suggests they may be the ones you want to draft a new note to.
Cons:
1) Annoying that I can’t just refresh to mark things like Facebook and LinkedIn updates as “read”. Drawback of the Hub is that email and social media feeds are treated the same.
2) The work/personal thing comes back to be annoying here as well as you cannot even see the work address list without unlocking Work. (See notes on Balance functionality below). This is good for those who want to let their children play with the device but since I do not do that, it just annoys me.
Balance Feature
So, on to Balance …. Balance allows you to partition your device between work and personal. This is EXACTLY what I have been looking for over the years. I carry a personal device and a work device because I just like to keep things seperate. With a swipe down from the top of the screen and a quick click of either the WOrk or Personal tab, you can go from your always open personally controlled apps and social networking things to a container that is locked down and segmented for Work. When in personal, you cannot access certain things in the Work side. And you can’t cut and paste between the two sides. But switching is very easy and only Work requires a password beyond the device password. You can choose whether to make it the same password for both getting into the device and getting into Work (though most Corporate security functions will not allow this … they shouldn’t!).
From a security perspective this function and its restrictions are great. Basically, things you do and emails you receive in your work world stay in your work world. This is very different from the iPhone experience without a container app like Good but similar to what you would experience with Good or Mobile Iron. If you have had a limited lockdown experience as many corporate iPhone users have, this Balance Feature may take some getting used to.
For instance, I emailed a photo from iPhone to the blackberry, saved it, but it is saved in work side. I kept saving it and thinking I had done something wrong because every time I tried to use it for my BBM profile photo, I couldn’t find it. It took me a while to figure out how to save a photo in personal side other than those I take with the camera.
Perhaps more frustrating is that I can’t even see my work calendar or contacts when in personal mode. To view details for an item I have to enter the work password. Again, from a security perspective, this is nice, but it can be a pain at first. Also limits the convenience of the Hub when BlackBerry Messenger is only in the personal side and the corporate version is still in beta. I assume the enterprise messenger would also be in the Hub however.
BlackBerry Messenger
BBM is pretty darn cool if you have other friends that use it. Like Whatsapp and now Facebook Messenger, it allows you to chat with contacts and share photos, voice notes, appointments, and other files less than a 6 MB. Given the ease with which you can take a video of yourself, you could send a video message as well. Strange that they did not add that explicitly as an option in BBM. The only way it seems you can send a video is to create one in Story Maker or Camera and then attach it as a file. It is easy to invite multiple colleagues to a chat and can even have a video or voice conversation.
WAY COOL application HOWEVER it only works with others that have a BlackBerry. So, it does not replace Whatsapp and/or Facebook Messenger given, frankly, not that many people have BlackBerry devices these days.
Navigation and Speed
Navigating will be hard for those uses to iPhones and likely easier if you’re coming from android or windows phone. But after a few days of using it, the peek and flow navigtion actually grows on you. And if you had an Android, I’m guessing it woudl be even easier to adapt to the BB10 gestures. Without the iOs style home button, the screen does get more space and navigation is done via any of the frame area on the device, which is pretty cool.
Cons:
1) Speed going between screens in an app is a bit slow and I can’t tell if it is a network or software issue.
2) Every once and a while the screen will not rotate. Not sure what it is but it just gets locked up and no matter how I move the phone it stays in portrait mode. In some apps, like Story Maker, this is intentional albeit still annoying. But others, it just seems like a flaw.
3) The App Store is PAINFULLY slow. And then you find out why … Almost like they were embarrassed to show you the limited selection so made it open very slowly …
BlackBerry World
The good news is that many major applications are there. The ones everyone would expect: Fcebook (though not as robust as in iphone), twitter, LinkedIn, foursquare, YouTube, Adobe Reader, and of course Angry Birds. And native apps for photos, videos, and messaging are strong. Docs To Go blows most of the iphone editing apps out of the water.
The bad news is that it is still a very tiny (I mean minuscule) store compared to iphone and Android. And unless I am missing something, Whatsapp and Kindle are still not there. They announced at the launch event these apps would be supported on BB10 but not they are certainly not in the store yet. Disappointing. If the plan is they will come soon, I think it would have been better for Blackberry to wait to launch. This will hurt their ability to drive excitement.
Highlights of Missing Applications
Banking and Finance: Citibank, PayPal, Capital One, Fidelity were missing. To confirm it wasn’t just my American biased apps missing on my UK device, I also checked (and did not find) apps for any of the major UK banks. Emirates Bank was there …
Shopping: no eBay or Amazon (really????) but they did have Ocado, a winner for Uk grocery delivery. The other shopping apps were so random and obscure it literally looked as if Blackberry went door to door in several third world countries and asked for volunteers.
News: CNN, BBC News, Wall Street Journal, and Bloomberg were noticeably absent. The BBC iplayer was available though I must admit I’m not a big fan of that poor navigation system from BBC. Many of the dailies were there, including the London Evening Standard.
Communications: I did not find Skype, Whatsapp, or Viber. No yammer. No ooVoo.
Travel: No TripIt, TripAvisor, hotels.com, American Airlines or seat guru apps. Lots of off small apps but none of the big ones available on iPhone and Android. and, sadly, my ESSENTIAL Hailo app for booking London taxis is not there yet. That is a must before I give up the iPhone.
Most disappointing to me was THERE IS NO KINDLE APP. But, overall, I am highly disappointed in the apps available. This may be a known limitation for long term blackberry users but having been with iPhone for the past 4 years or so, sorry this is a nonstarter.
Oh, and No Google Maps but thus far the native map application seems at least to be better than the awful one embedded in iOs 6. And it has voice instructions. Only issue is that it is very very very slow to get started. Not sure if that is a network or device issue.
Music and Movies
Noticably weaker than the missing apps is the limited entertainment options in the store. That said, whilst the music and video stores are embarassingly limited, this does not matter as much to me as the missing apps. I thought perhaps I had put on a filter of some sort as the television shows available were the common ones that seem to be available EVERYWHERE. There is literally not an online service (or airline) in the world that doesn’t offer Modern Family, American Dad, and How I Met Your Mother…. and I’m just not interested in either! This must drastically improve before there is an easy move from iTunes. Especially given thus far, I can’t transfer my iTunes content to the new device. That’s Apple’s fault, of course, with their proprietary format. #Annoyed. I bought it and should be able to use it wherever I want to …
Social Networking
Integration of social networking into the device is great, with four easy icons automatically added on the home screen and easy setup. The tiles allow uyou to have multiple social networking sites open on the phone at once, which is great. And Hub gives you all of your updates in one place.
Cons:
1) Facebook – Inability to hold down on an image in Facebook and save to the phone is frustrating. Inability to add photos to an album from within the app. Also, if I did not tag a photo when uploadng it (via another device or my PC), I cannot tag it using the Blackberry Facebook app. Nor can I edit tags in the app.
2) Twitter – Cannot edit my profile to change text or photo, nor can I add another Twitter account so that I can easily change between, for instance, a work group and personal twitter handle. Both of these things I can do on my iPhone.
3) LinkedIn – just not as good as the one on iphone. Navigation and content limited.
Summary of the Good
1) StoryMaker is really really cool. So easy to take photos, add music and quickly create movies for sharing via text, email, Facebook, YouTube, etc. My family and friends will likely get quickly tired of my photo montages.
2) Navigation is fairly easy once you get used to it and it is great to be able to easily switch between applications that remain open (up to 8)
3) Calendar is great, with nice view of individuals in the meeting and any connections you have with that person (email, LinkedIn, etc). It also has lists of any emails relating to the meeting, and shows adjacent events in an easy view.
4) The Hub is convenient and allows for easy view of all of the information overload with which we must deal.
5) Screen size is fantastic and the images are fairly crisp. I want to try it out for watching a movie or TV show but of course the options are crap so I will wait on that!
6) Nice browser experience with easy to use navigation and settings.
7) FLASH!!! Yes, I know people have moved on but it sure is nice to be back to a device that supports Flash.
8) Ability to make calls and conference calls very easily from the address book, home screen, within calendar entries, etc. Also I forgot how much I had missed the ease with which Blackberry integrates into corporate conference call systems with the ability to program the number and password in a calendar or contact book entry.
9) The size, weight and look of the device. Cooler than any BlackBerry ever and just as cool as the other phones out there today. Smaller than a Nokia 920 and just slightly bigger than the iPhone 5.
10) Proprietary without being annoying like Apple. I can use a standard micro-USB charger!
Summary of the Bad
1) App Store is pitiful, with many critical apps missing. I mean truly truly truly pitiful.
2) App Store
3) App Store
4) Music store is limited.
5) Movie and television show options are limited in a really sad, almost pathetic, way. BUt I could deal with this if more content services were available on the device. Most of what I watch on my iPhone is via CNN and BBC news apps, neither of which are available on this device.
6) BlackBerry Link, the tool with which you sync your device with your PC, is not intuitive, has relatively poor navigation and just doesn’t have the functionality and convenience out of the box that iTunes has. ***Update 5Feb12: Finding this is more of a user education issue. Having been 5 years since I had a blackberry, the Link functionality is different. Getting used to it now. This is not longer viewed as a weakness as much as a reminder of the annoying proprietary nature of iTunes and the iOS ecosystem.
7) While the camera is nice, and the new functionality pretty cool, the quality of the photos thus far did not seem as good as the iPhone 5, or even the iPhone 4G.
8) I REALLY miss the screen capture functionality of the iPhone. This is key for sharing some things and even for this blog, I had to go online to get photos of screens on the device that on an iPhone I could have gotten via screen capture. ***Update 5Feb12: User education issue, pointed out by Paul in comments below. I can do this, just had to know how. Nice!
9) Going between apps and sometimes opening them in the first place can be somewhat slow.
10) Nothing further found to dislike thus far…..
Overall, I think this is a great looking device with some cool functionality and special features. It is slick, relatively easy to use, and has fantastic blend of the good things from iOs and Windows phone with a bit of Android thrown in. Call quality and camera are strong and integration with social media is superb. But the app store will make or break this device. Without apps, Blackberry will remain “great for email”. And for those that truly just need a device for email, the Z10 is still not the best for them (though the pending Q10 may be).
So I would say the jury is still out. I love the device and really want to consider it for permanent iPhone replacement. If Kindle, Whatsapp, skype, TripAdvisor, Amazon, Hailo, and a few more critical missing apps are added to the store, I will definitely consider it and be happy to revisit this review. For now, I’m in “Neutral” on the BlackBerry Z10. ***Update 5Feb12: Neutral trending up.
If you have tried it out, I would love to hear what you think! Post your comments below.
Be Well. Lead On.
Adam
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The business world today is in a state of flux. New companies enter the ecosystem every day, bringing with them new technologies and business models, any one of which could transform an entire industry from the ground up. Most companies want to use this current of change to drive innovation. But the magic bullet is elusive as ever — the question is how best to drive innovation. For many, acquisition seems the only path to take through these disruptive forces of change. But I’d argue there is a different and more flexible way forward: PARTNERSHIP.
This goes hand-in-hand with the trust element. You can never know at the beginning exactly how the relationship will develop—it continues to evolve as you and your partner learn more about each other. Many corporations will need to adapt their processes to suit the needs of their partners over time. For instance, some experts suggest creating special “fast-track” versions of processes like procurement and invoices specifically for startup partners, which often need to move faster than the large organizations with which you might be used to working. By contrast, university academic research often proceeds at a slower pace than corporations are used to. A study published in 
I don’t use the term “big data,” which long ago 
This may sound corny, but it’s totally true: data is power, but only if used for good. Stephen Dubner, famous from Freakonomics, 
Hello. My name is Adam Stanley and I have a problem. I get excited by new technology. All the time. Well, I guess that’s not really the problem. The problem is that I get bored by the constant debates about which is better. And, with all due respect to Gartner, the technology quadrants REALLY bore me.
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