Irrelevance
“I have been harping on for years – many years – that the terms BSS and OSS are defunct and should be replaced with something far more generic like MMB: Money Making Bits. You may laugh, but BSS (business support systems) and OSS (operational support systems) are leftovers from a bygone era when communications service […]
Augmented Reality meets Decision Support
In yesterday’s post we discussed how Virtual Reality (VR) can be utilised in OSS. Today we look at how OSS and Augmented Reality (AR) to be further augmented with decision support systems to help OSS operators. As a starting point for this exercise, we have to think about what OSS situations have a spatial reality […]
Virtual Reality meets Decision Support
Have you noticed that Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality seem to be the next big thing lately? Whilst the concept has been around for years, it seems to be trending strongly this year, perhaps because applications are starting to make use of recent technology advances. So where do these technologies fit into the future of […]
Doing things that don’t scale
We’re in tech right? Not just any tech, but O…S…S! Nah we’re in the people business. No matter where we sit in the org chart, we need to understand people to build solutions Paul Graham talks about doing the things that don’t scale. Does he have some great ideas or what? What doesn’t scale: Understanding […]
Looking to OSS’s flying cars
Earlier this week we discussed how Peter Thiel’s statement, “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters,” and how it related to the world of OSS. One of Peter’s ventures is the Founders Fund, a venture capital firm investing in smart people solving the world’s difficult problems. The Founders Fund Manifesto is an inspirational […]
We wanted flying cars
“We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.” Peter Thiel. This meme speaks of the innovation occurring in the world of technology. It seems that we are making fewer major innovations (flying cars) compared with the world-changing innovations that are really only minor in terms of technological breakthroughs (like Twitter’s 140 characters). When reading, […]
My six laws of data integrity
Data integrity law #1 – When being handled, the accuracy / integrity of a data set tends to degrade over time. Data integrity law #2 – To prevent rule #1 from making the data unusable, the data needs to be curated. Data integrity law #3 – Curating data always carries a cost. Data integrity law […]
Telcos spent all this money
“Telcos spent all this money, built all the infrastructure, hired all these clever people, imagined and planned and consulted for all of it, have all this market power, and they’ll get none of it.” Ben Evans talking about mobile Internet. Ben has a point. Telcos spent huge amounts of money building the infrastructure to support mobile […]
Critical OSS mass
The OSS market is segmented. That means its talent is too. The question I often ponder is how do we reach the critical mass of talent required to take OSS to its lofty potential? How do we get its virtuosos in a single place for months on end to solve its biggest problems (and there […]
A shortage of feedback
Why do so many of the new buzz technologies, such as Internet of Things and analytics exist to provide faster / better feedback but OSS generally doesn’t make more use of it? Sure, we provide dashboards and lists that provide customers with feedback, but are we using feedback enough to make our solutions better? We […]
OSS steam engine time
“Steam engine time is a period of time when many inventors all over the world, despite isolation from each other, and with no contact with each other in any way, begin inventing a similar technology with a coincidental commonality of ideas.” Urban Dictionary. Another perspective on steam engine time is a period where there are […]
Doing one thing well
“Doing one thing well is hard. Doing more than one thing well at the same time is exponentially harder. Clarity and focus are what generate excellence. They bring the attention to detail, dedication and obsession which begets success. It’s impossible to be obsessed about more than one thing at the same time. If you believe, […]
The bozo explosion
“A players hire A+ players.Actually, Steve believed that A players hire A players—that is people who are as good as they are. I refined this slightly—my theory is that A players hire people even better than themselves. It’s clear, though, that B players hire C players so they can feel superior to them, and C […]
Would Warren Buffett invest in OSS?
“I like to think that if I’d been at Kitty Hawk in 1903 when Orville Wright took off, I would have been farsighted enough, and public-spirited enough–I owed this to future capitalists–to shoot him down. I mean, Karl Marx couldn’t have done as much damage to capitalists as Orville did. I won’t dwell on other […]
Paradox of choice
“He [Barry Schwartz] suggests that because we are presented with so much information, the overload of options and data leads us to falsely believe that, even a fairly mundane task like shopping for toothpaste, has greater significance than it really does.” Howstuffworks.com. Why do 5-10yo kids know what profession they want to do but by […]
Creating assets
“Your financial planner, real estate agent, and accountant all call your house an asset. But in reality, an asset is only something that puts money in your pocket. If you have a house that you rent out to tenants, then it’s an asset. If you have a house, paid for or not, that you live […]
What would Warren Buffett’s OSS look like?
“Lethargy bordering on sloth remains the cornerstone of our investment style.” Warren Buffett in his 1990 Chairman’s Letter. It’s been said that 90% of Warren Buffett’s immense wealth has been derived from just 10 deals. That’s 10 deals in roughly 60 years of investing. Warren undoubtedly gets to see many opportunities but only invests in […]
Getting to genba
Efficiency experts refer to getting to genba (or gemba), a Japanese term for “the real place” or the place where the “real” work gets done. lt’s the place where every movement is vital and any inefficiency or waste is a target for improvement. In OSS, genba resides in two places – the product development and […]
Smart city OSS
A great friend of mine, Evan, and I recently caught up with Mike Lawrey, the Chairman of the TM Forum. Mike spoke to us about some interesting initiatives the TM Forum has in the pipeline, including some that build upon the success of their Smart City Forum. You may have noticed that I regularly discuss […]
The signal in the noise
In our life and our OSS we’re now bombarded with so much info that it can be overwhelming. We have to understand what really matters to know how to set up the right filters. Have you ever noticed how life in OSS, just like our email inboxes, is an endless stream of activities with a […]