When should you stop desperately clinging to a failing business model?

There’s been a lot written in the news recently about Blackberry. Research in Motion (better known as RIM) the makers of Blackberry smartphones have had a torrid time lately. First they had a replacement CEO along with a board “shake up” (which was too much of a gentle stir in my opinion) and now there’s news that RIM has warned of financial losses and significant job cuts.

Before Apple and Google decided to get into mobile devices, Blackberry was the dominant player in smartphones. They had a range of devices that had tiny but surprisingly useable keyboards and allowed business people to send and receive emails while on the move.

RIM was actually Canada’s most profitable company for a while with a share price of $150 a share. Today, their share price is barely $10 (in my opinion it’s likely to slip more in coming weeks).

So where did it all go wrong?

Blackberry was one of the must have devices of the mid 2000’s for a lot of business people. The first Blackberry (the 850) was actually a 2 way pager and was launched around 1999 it allowed email communication but was very basic. It ran on a proprietary data only network so could never be capable of being a phone.

Later, RIM brought out devices that used GSM networks (normal 2G mobile networks) which meant that they could start to offer a device that was a phone as well as being an email platform and these devices were very popular.

Because Blackberry grew from a dedicated data network, they charged differently and as such, they managed the charging for the data connections and provided software at an extra cost to allow you to link your email server into their service. This worked really well for a good while but then Apple and Google arrived to spoil the party.

In 2007, Apple brought along the iPhone which was only 2G (the same as Blackberrys at the time) but crucially had no keyboard and relied on a touch screen for everything. This makes a lot of sense for some applications because for things like web browsing or photo viewing, the keyboard is pointless and just takes up space when it’s not needed. That said, the Blackberry was still firmly aimed at corporate email types so they were different beasts really.

The biggest problem for Blackberry was that the iPhone was also very good at emailing. Being able to view full HTML emails was a really useful feature when a lot of other mobile platforms couldn’t do anything like that.

These days, Apple and Android have pretty much taken over the smartphone world with Android being the best-selling mobile operating system and iPhone being the single most popular phone.

Unfortunately for Blackberry, the World has moved on considerably and they seem to be desperately clinging to an outdated business model in the hope that something will change. The bad news is that it won’t. 

On non-Blackberry smartphones, I can connect the phone to my email account and, when I spend all day in front of my real computer reading my email, those emails will show up as “read” in my mobile inbox. Not on a Blackberry unless I go to the trouble of having special software installed on the server. Sadly for me I’m the sort of person who likes a nice tidy inbox with no messages showing as unread so this is a real problem. All other smartphones can do this without extra software – why can’t Blackberry?

My Android or Apple phone can connect to the internet, download apps, send messages/etc with just a data connection from my mobile provider or Wi-Fi. A Blackberry can’t – I have to have a subscription to the Blackberry service. Recently I was playing with a Blackberry phone on a pay as you go SIM card and even though I had a full Wi-Fi connection I wasn’t allowed to update the phone’s software or connect to the app store without paying for a connection through the phone network.

There have been high profile incidents where Blackberry smartphones couldn’t do anything with web or email for days because of failures in the Blackberry network. In my opinion, the business model of having to subscribe to their service is now outdated and wrong. When you look at the history, it’s easy to see why they did it but things moved on and they should have too.

Sadly now it’s probably too late for them to change. They must derive huge revenues from this model and despite the fact that their market share is practically in free-fall, changing that business model is a very scary proposition that the board probably aren’t brave enough to do.

I think this is a real shame. My wife has a Blackberry Torch which I actually like. In day to day terms, it is useable and having a touch screen, a keyboard and the little thumb pad is really nice.

I find that there are lots of silly little usability problems with the Blackberry OS but I’m going to cover some of that stuff in a different blog post. For the most part, it’s not a bad device at all. The problem is – it just isn’t good enough compared to the Android and iPhone devices on the market.

RIM is in the process of demonstrating their latest (and long overdue) operating system to the World – BB10. Can they halt the decline? I seriously doubt it.

This isn’t a new story, throughout the business world the same thing has happened over and over again. Markets change, technology evolves and can kill or seriously maim massive companies because they fail to adapt to the changes – either because they don’t see the changes coming or because they hope they will go away!

Polaroid, Kodak, Blockbuster, Motorola, Nokia, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo, Altavista, Borders and Waterstones are some examples. The list of companies that have suffered massive market share losses goes on and on.

Sometimes, we have to take some very tough and brave decisions in order to move with the times. If we don’t, failure will follow.

Another year another fantastic IMEX Frankfurt

Well it’s that time of year again when the great and the good of the events industry descend on Frankfurt to visit IMEX. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been involved in IMEX for a long time and so I know the organising team very well and enjoy an excellent relationship with everyone there – you couldn’t wish to meet a nicer bunch of people and they are all passionate about the show!

This is the 10th anniversary of IMEX Frankfurt and as you’d expect, there have been a number of changes over the years. A couple of the most noticeable changes have been a change of halls (originally Hall 3 and now Hall 8 when the show grew). Also a change of dates as the show was originally in April but having to change hall to expand also meant the show moved into May.

Probably more startling and a lot harder to spot are the tiny incremental changes that happen every year. The IMEX team work relentlessly on their whole offering all year round and a huge amount of work goes into the website making sure that as much as realistically possible, the site moves forwards and incorporates new technologies and ideas.

It is difficult building a website that people from very diverse cultures all around the World can all get on with relatively easily. There are notable differences in terminology and thought patterns between the Frankfurt and America websites for example. It’s also important to remember that most people only use the show websites for a few weeks a year meaning they have probably forgotten most of what they’d learned last year about how to use it!

Over the past 10 years there have also been some big changes in the World that have had an effect on the events industry too. When IMEX launched in April 2003, who would have thought that 4 years later in 2007, Steve Jobs would unveil paradigm shift in mobile phones?

We’re not talking so much about the actual technology in the phone. It wasn’t massively advanced compared to some other devices at the time “what! No 3G?” was a cry that was heard from techies everywhere when the original iPhone launched.

What it did do was start a whole new world that we today know as “Apps”. Of course, computers have always had “applications” which are the programs that run on the computer, but with phones they became known as “Apps”, came from a single “App Store” and have become far more widespread than anything before.

I honestly don’t think that even Steve Jobs himself could have predicted how that would change the World. Now there are apps for almost anything you can think of, from hundreds of categories, with some lucky developers capturing the public’s imagination and earning a large fortune from them.

Then came the iPad – another device that has made a big impact in the meetings industry. I was walking around the show floor during build-up and there were plenty of stand contractors with iPads for email, stand plans, notes, to do lists and many other things – some were probably even flinging birds at pigs in between building stands. After the show opened there were even more of these devices around as people network and stay connected.

The iPhone and iPad weren’t new ideas though – they brought together a number of existing ideas into a single, very elegantly executed package.

When you think about it, there aren’t actually too many genuinely new ideas. Most things are just a refinement of something else, or a merging of other ideas. A significant fact here for me, is that although there are lots of ideas – the good and well thought through ones are few and far between.

One idea that has bothered me for a long time is that of a virtual reality exhibition. Years ago, there were a lot of companies trying to sell such a thing – there may still be. Their idea was that you could have a computer based 3d modelled environment that you could “virtually” walk around. It would look like the exhibition it represented with the stand layouts/etc.

The big problem with those ideas was that they failed to understand a lot of what an exhibition is about. It’s true that at any exhibition, there is an element of walking around looking for interesting products and services but, there is often a much more important element – networking.

It is invaluable to meet up with people you haven’t seen for a while (perhaps since the last show) and getting the chance to grab 10 minutes and update each other on what you’re both doing. Sending a cold email to someone – even if you know them, doesn’t have the same impact as bumping into them and chatting about new opportunities. Let’s be honest, there are plenty of acquaintances that you may see at an exhibition and talk to but wouldn’t necessarily feel comfortable emailing out of the blue.

Similarly for many years now, there has been talk of video conferencing eliminating travelling for face to face meetings. Will it ever really happen? I don’t think so. The power of sitting in a room with someone and chatting while being able to observe all of the nuances of expression and body language often outweighs the travelling time for me.

There’s something impersonal about being on a video screen looking at the person you’re meeting and it will never be the same as being there. I know that video conferencing does add something and there are circumstances where it’s better than a phone call. Now that there are free tools (like Skype and Microsoft Instant Messenger) and most new laptops have a webcam built in, it’s never been easier.

That said, it is just another tool that can be used to enhance communication. It should never replace actual meetings in my opinion. The opportunity to chit-chat about life in general between meetings strengthens bonds and builds friendships. I don’t think it works the same way when you’re digitally separated.

In a world where we have an ever increasing number of ways to communicate through an almost infinite number of channels – sometimes it’s nice to get back to basics and wander around an exhibition hall, recognise people you know and say hi!

I was wrong about the iron in the hotel….or was I?

A couple of days ago I blogged about my experiences in the hotel in Frankfurt. How I had to travel down to reception to get someone to let me up to the 2nd floor where I could use the pressing room to iron my clothes.

It turns out that wasn’t entirely correct but this raises some interesting points which I believe are illustrative of many problems with software and processes in any organisation.

First, let’s look at what happened. In the interests of brevity I omitted a couple of facts about the iron situation in my other blog post. The most relevant of which was that I actually phoned reception and asked how to get to the “Pressing Room” on the 2nd floor. The person at reception answered me accurately with “come down to reception and someone will activate the lift to the 2nd floor for you”.

The problem this illustrates is that human nature is that every question about how to do something is treated as if you were asking for directions. If you ask someone for directions to get to somewhere then they will obviously say “you go down here, turn right/etc”. The point is that you can’t give someone directions to somewhere without knowing where they are to start with.

Unfortunately, with IT and many other things “where you are” is often not the best place to start. As Henry Ford elegantly put it “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, the answer would have been a faster horse”.

This is what we see with people trying to spec software a lot of the time. Frequently they say “can we just have a checkbox for this?” where they should be saying “I need to achieve this, what’s the best solution?”. It’s a subtle change but one that can make a huge difference.

In the iron example, when I rang reception and asked how to get to the pressing room, the best answer would be to say “come to reception and someone will activate the lift to the 2nd floor. However, we can send an iron and ironing board to your room if you prefer”. 

While they answered my specific question accurately, they didn't realise that I knew there was a pressing room and had assumed that meant they couldn’t send an iron to my room. Basically, I was asking the wrong question and if they had thought a bit more about why I was asking the question, they could have given me a better answer.

In life, everything we do is coloured by assumptions. That means we often don’t ask the right questions because we ask the question we want answered based on the assumptions we have made. In the same way, the person hearing the question will have their own assumptions that colour how they hear the question.

The interesting thing is that one of the main skills of a good systems architect is to look beyond the question that’s being asked. It’s not possible to change human nature and get someone to ask better questions all of the time. So the systems architect has to actually work out what is being asked and what the person asking it really wants to achieve, which is often not what they’re asking for.

So yes, I was wrong about the iron – I should have asked a better question!

Hotels need to take a good look at themselves and their competition

Being a fairly regular traveller for both work and pleasure, I find myself staying in a variety of hotels. Right now, I'm staying in a 4* hotel near Messe Frankfurt while I work at IMEX Frankfurt 2012 (www.imex-frankfurt.com).

I'm proud to say that I've a long association with IMEX and the fantastic team that run the show and I've been at every IMEX show since the first one in 2003 so I've stayed at this hotel a number of times over the years.

This hotel has barely changed at all over the years. The only change I’ve noticed at all is that there is now a kettle in the room – impressive progress for 10 years! Don’t get me wrong, this is a very nice hotel with good décor, comfortable beds, nice furniture and a decent bathroom.

There are only really three problems with the hotel for me. The first one is fairly simple and that is that there isn’t an iron in the room. Nor can you have an iron in the room – the only thing you can do is to go to the “Pressing room” on the 2nd floor.

That doesn’t sound too bad but if you’re not in a room on the 2nd floor, this means you have to go down to reception carrying the clothes you need to iron where you can hopefully find a member of staff who will activate the lift for you (there is a clever key card security system on the lifts so that you can’t go to another floor except your own).

Given that the hotel now has reached the dizzy heights of having a kettle in the rooms, it doesn’t seem a big stretch to have an iron and ironing board in the room too. This hotel is primarily a hotel for business travellers so I can’t see this being a problem unique to me!

The next problem is more annoying and is unfortunately common in chain hotels. The guest rooms are advertised as having air-conditioning. The truth is – the rooms are air-conditioned some of the year when the hotel’s management deems that it is warm enough to justify the air-conditioning being switched on.

Despite this, every room has a thermostatic control with different fan settings that optimistically promise a wide variety of temperatures. Alas, all you can have in my room is “hot” or “off”.

There are a growing number of Premier Inn hotels in the UK that have air-conditioning in the room and I’ve yet to find one where I can’t change the temperature to be whatever I want at any time of the year. It’s worth remembering that we’re talking about a budget hotel chain yet they have grasped the fact that people are different and some like it warmer and others like it cooler. It’s no wonder they are the biggest UK hotel chain and my first port of call if I ever need a hotel in the UK.

Yet in “business class” hotels all over the World, business travellers will be well used to hearing that the air-conditioning isn’t switched on until June (or whenever). Even worse, there seems to be almost fanatical adhesion to these rules. I’ve also stayed in hotels where there has been abnormally warm weather earlier in the year but the hotel management still won’t turn the air-conditioning on.

The final problem is again, there is a growing number of hotels that offer free or cheap wifi. Given that I carry 3 devices with me that can consume wifi, free wifi around the hotel would be really useful. Instead, they charge €15 per 24 hour period for wifi – that seems expensive these days – especially when the connection is pretty poor (about 0.5Mbps).

The hotel industry needs to wake up and take notice that the world is changing and people have more choice more easily. Added to that, websites like TripAdvisor are allowing people all over the World to share experiences of the hotels.

How many "poor" or "terrible" reviews does it take to affect whether the hotel gets that big conference contract or not?