Tony Fish is a member of Gerbsman Partners Board of Intellectual Capital and spend his days with AMF Ventures in London, UK.
I have just had the pleasure of spending a few days with the Ogilvy team at the MobileWorldCongress in Barcelona and though that you may wish to have my early thoughts!
Overall you get the impression that 2.0 thinking [the move from isolation, separation and solitude to engagement, relationship and conversation] is being taken seriously by all the players in the extended value chain – motivations being fear and greed. There is a definite awaking that customer ownership and indeed Brand Value is not about billing or handsets.
Innovation, being a good yard stick, would defiantly indicate that there is plenty of opportunity to capture both new value and leak it away from existing players, with an expectation that a ‘new entrant’ will emerge to capture a significant proportion of the value whilst the major global web and mobile players are diverted; fighting each other.
However my sense was that technology, which has been the heart of MWC in previous incarnations was not the driver this year. Indeed I would go as far as suggesting that ‘mashup’ was the focus as each of the key platforms [mobile, web, TV, print and radio], seek to own more the customers purse and mind share.
The question or debate remains however. ‘Is it open or something else?’ Our growing team http://www.amfventures.com is building and delivering strategy and knowledge on this topic as ‘Mobile Web 2.0’ is becoming main stream.
Whilst speaking with Sun, who is committed to “open”, I discovered that they are supporting a startupcamp, March 7-8th, with MySQL, Google and Saleforce all speaking, and aiming to attract startups who want to be the Google, given that many of the major 2.0 players already run on Sun! http://uk.sun.com/sunnews/events/2008/mar/startupcamp/
Widgets & Gadgets featured heavily at MWC as they have already had a significant impact on content distribution and the viral take up of new services such as social networks like Facebook and MySpace and with a number of widget only companies raising substantial VC funding recently. mashup* event is running an evening debate on Widgets, which looks to be another worth while event! http://www.mashupevent.com/event/mashup-event-widgets-gadgets
I am still looking for great blogs and content to link to our research page…… http://www.amfventures.com/20_research.html
Warmest Regards
Tony Fish
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