With all the talk of Android’s wild success….

A pause for some data:    

• 60%  of developers
• 70,000 apps
• 1 billion+ downloads
• 33% share in North America
• +4% in operating system share in May 2010, vs. -1% for Apple
• Android-enabled shipments exceeding iPhone (analyst estimates)

… I thought I’d dig up from the files an analysis I did of Google’s early actions around the Android, dated from December 2007, one month after launch.  At the time, despite widespread dubiousness, we assessed a relatively high probability of their eventual success.  In hindsight, the analysis is a bit simplistic but with much being spoken about the phenomenal execution of the Android team, it's worthwhile to review how they started in light of their later success:

The analytical framework was implicitly based on the research I was doing at the time with the Center for the Edge with John Hagel, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison on Shaping Strategies, i.e. how to mobilize players around a shaping platform, which ended up as a Harvard Business Review article:
http://www.johnseelybrown.com/shapingstrategy.pdf 
 
Looking back, the “current challenges” back in December 2007 are revealing  (italics added later):

• Will Apple open the iPhone platform in response to the openness of the Android? [Yes]
• Can a consortium of 34 companies really execute on the promise of open-source mobile applications and hardware? [Yes - but still unclear whether a non-fragmentation agreement is sufficient]
• Does announcing the initiative this early in the development process promote rumors of vaporware?  [It did, with rumors fanned by competitors, but they overcame them by executing]
• Should Google combat the disappointment in “just a software package” (as opposed to a Gphone as rumored) by articulating its vision more strongly?  [It seems like it didn't matter]     
• Does Verizon’s "open" announcement increase risk to potential Android adopters?  Are aspiring shapers vulnerable to an announcement of a competing platform until lock-in takes place?  [Google was more credible and did a better job of executing - unclear whether there is a broader lesson here]

This part of the island is not so different from the recognized part, the south.  I’m told the lifestyle is similar, laidback, friendly, family-oriented – the kind you find in many towns with sunny climes and beaches the world over.  It is more modern than you would expect, dotted with Internet cafes, gleaming restaurants, and even a few casinos.  The people here feel forgotten though, as if the world is moving on without them.  They look south at the two-thirds of the island that is Greek Cyprus, which is part of the European Union, and think it strange that they share a small island but not membership to the EU.  

Yesterday, July 20, was the anniversary of what they call their day of independence in 1974, when Turkey intervened in the intercommunal conflict between Greek and Turkish Cypriots.  The intervention was backed by both the United States and NATO.  Turkey still keep 30,000 troops stationed here, though you never see them.  When I make my way down the cobbled streets alone, I feel safe.

Yesterday I sat outside in the dusky warm evening at a candlelit table on the Kyrenia (Girne) harbor, with a frosty glass of Efes, the local beer, and a cigarette.  My new friend E. was telling me stories of North Cyprus; we had just finished a meal of fresh hot kebabs including my favorite and local speciality sheftali kebab, minced lamb in spices cooked in skin over charcoal.  The harbor is quiet, full of fishing boats, but we can hear the faint sounds of celebration from across the water.  It is a holiday today.  E. tells me of his grandparents, now in their nineties, who live in a village where ‘it is as if time has stopped.’  He and his wife visit often – the island is not very large – and bring their children to see their great-grandparents.  ‘Seeing the kids keeps them active, alive.’  

His daughter is in a private school and stays with her grandparents during the week.  His son just started university in England and is doing a degree in sports management.  His son was an athlete as a teenager, excelling in track and field.  E. beams with pride.  Sending his son to school is expensive, like a mortgage, but education and family are paramount here.  He and his wife just want their son to be happy, even if that means staying in England for work after university.  Opportunities in North Cyprus are thin on the ground.  Many people want to work for the government; it is a stable and dependable career.  Though the border between North Cyprus and South Cyprus can now be crossed with relative ease, the history of the island and the uncertain political state deters both tourism and investment.        

In North Cyprus today, you see perhaps 80% Turkish Cypriots and 15% Turkish mainlanders, with a bare smattering of expats and tourists such as myself.  Everyone can tell in a quick blink whether you are Turkish Cypriot or mainlander.  Some say the Turkish Cypriot men are more attractive and the Turkish mainlander women are more attractive, but there’s obvious bias.  There are still villages where Turkish and Greek Cypriots live side by side.  Some people think that the Cypriots have more in common with each other than they do with their mother countries.  They share an emphasis on family, generous hospitality, education, and openness to strangers.   People here remember that before the violence of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, the two ethnic communities lived together in peace.  

Here, among the minority group, they remember what happened during the violence but those I spoke to had no bitterness.  They want to move on but are pessimistic about whether the politicians on both sides can.  I can’t help but be reminded of the war of my parents in Vietnam, which was semi-synchronous with the Cypriot conflict, and caused an untold and well-documented devastation among its people that lasts until today.  Murder, mutilation, chemical disfigurement, rape, displacement, all the worst of war was represented in this slender country of rice paddies and fisherman.  My parents became refugees, losing everything.  Saigon fell nine months after the Turkish intervention here in Cyprus, in April 1975.  When I return to Vietnam as an American, they remember, of course they do, but as a society are ready to move on.  Everyone was done wrong but it has been 35 long years and there is no advantage to looking back.

We talk into the night, about trust and what is needed to put the island back together.  Tourism, story-telling, private enterprise, university exchange programs, and it always comes back to people, individuals, gestures, gifts, looking someone in the eye.  It is seeing yourself in the other, and saying ‘I go against my interests because I value this relationship.’  It is the first step, with no ask for response or recompense.  It is hard, he says, that first step.  But this is why it has such weight.  

When the bill comes, he snatches it away and refuses to let me pay.  I am mock angry, but we’ll have another meal and I’ll get it next time.

I just returned from a lovely week at TEDGlobal in Oxford.  Some of the better talks are already up on the website – I recommend Julian Assange on Why the World Needs Wikileaks and Matt Ridley on When Ideas Have Sex.  Other favorites included Tan Le, Chris Anderson, Sugata Mitra, Ze Frank, and Zainab Salbi.  Look out for their release.

One of my most favorite and least favorite things about these conferences is the TED bookstore.  I’m drawn to it like a cat getting his meth-buzz off catnip (google cat + catnip for some videos).  But my list of books to read keeps getting ever longer and somewhere deep down I know this is not sustainable.

I picked up Alain de Botton’s highly readable Status Anxiety, which I’ve been meaning to read anyway, and plowed through it on my flight to North Cyprus.  It was a more personal and philosophical take on the Status Syndrome, first coined by Michael Marmot and described in his so-titled book.  Marmot is by training a social epidemiologist and draws links between our status (with its correlated autonomy) and our health.  Geoffrey Miller in the Mating Mind suggests that the fundamental biological underpinnings of the Status Syndrome lie in our evolutionary driven impulse to compete for mates.  In contrast to these more scientifically oriented tomes, Botton potters his way through history, society and politics, revealing somewhat endearingly his own set of status-related insecurities.

At one point, Botton appears to agree with Marx that how status is defined in any society is prescribed by the ideological beliefs of the ruling class.  In societies with a landed class, the nobility of landed wealth is taken for granted.  In mercantile societies, entrepreneurship is held on high.  To paraphrase Marx, the ruling ideas are the ideas of those who rule.

However, “these ideas would never come to rule if they were seen to rule too forcefully.  The essence of ideological statements is that, unless our political senses are developed, we will fail to spot them.  Ideology is released into society like a colourless, odourless gas.  It is embedded in newspapers, advertisements, television programmes and textbooks – where it makes light of its partial, perhaps illogical or unjust, take on the world; where it meekly implies that it is simply stating age-old truths with which only a fool or maniac would disagree.”

It reminded me of the classic four dimensions of power, so classified in the academic literature of sociology and social psychology.  I once led a discussion group on these four dimensions and their relation to workplace empowerment.  It’s a terribly dry and boring topic, which explains why it hasn’t gained much traction in mass-market literature.

In my presentation of the topic, I related the four dimensions of power to Fight Club, the excellent movie with three of my favorite actors, Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter.  I recognize that in my analogy, I butcher a highly nuanced and academically complex topic – but this is how I think about power.

First Dimension of Power:  Muscle & Speed

The first dimension is about ownership of resources to influence decision outcomes and ability to mobilize these resources.  Conflict is assumed.  The question is how to position yourself to win the conflict.  In a fight, you exercise, practice, build your physical physique.  In business, you gain access to assets, people, knowledge.

Second Dimension of Power:  Picking the Game and/or Defining the Rules

The second dimension is about controlling the agenda and decision processes.  Conflict is still assumed.  The question is how to fix the game in such a way that your winning is an inevitable outcome.  In a fight, you choose Brazilian jiu jitsu when you’re a black belt and your opponent is short-armed boxer.  Or you tack on a mandatory race for a flag when your opponent has no legs.  In other arenas, you might arrange the rules of a bidding contest or auction so your firm is the only one that could possibly win.  Or you might lead a country down a dead-end path toward unsustainably high debt-to-GDP ratios.  

Third Dimension of Power:  The Man

The third dimension is about legitimation of power through cultural and normative assumptions.  Conflict is not obvious – there is apparent consensus.  Dominant power is used to prevent conflict.  This is the Marxist view that Botton highlights in his book.  The question, as Botton writes, is how to make your views ‘a colourless, odourless gas.’  They should be so subtle that they are obvious.  In Fight Club, you are the man that runs the ring.  No one would even think to challenge you in a fight; it wouldn’t even occur to them.  In other arenas, slaveowners might propagate the prevailing view that Africans are lesser beings.  Men might kindly write about the need to protect the frailties and sacredness of women.  Western societies might point at the extreme outcomes of Communist undertakings.

Fourth Dimension of Power:  The Nebulous Social Matrix

The fourth dimension is about power as a network of social relations.  None of us are free of this web, not the researcher, not the observer, not the rich or the poor, not the educated or ignorant.  Those of us who are not pathological are all socially constituted.  Power is not a convenient, manipulable, deterministic resource.  We all act upon each other, and every action being subject to the Law of Unintended Consequences, we will never know the full effect of our choices.  In this way, conflict is never necessary but it happens, nevertheless, all the time and in-between.  We each have enormous power in this world in our ability to influence each other, but at the same time, we are all subject to each other.  In my Fight Club, it is the doorman who got the barman his job, the barman whose wife’s sister is married to the fighter, the fighter who feels guilty because the barman knows he’s cheating on his wife with the dancer and in his defensiveness tries to refuse to fight on this night, and angers the owner who is only calmed down by the doorman who knows the whole story.  In another arena, it is a boy who likes airplanes and American movies, who secretly loves Western culture in spite of his father, who is a pharmacist that is jaded by what he has seen of American culture and who is killed along with the boy’s mother in collateral damage by an American bomb, and the boy goes to live with his older brother, who he worships and meets all of his brother’s friends, who treat him as a brother as well, and grows up to strap a bomb to his chest and kill 26 people in an open market.