Europa kann kein High-Tech, glauben Investoren, das hätten die vergangenen Jahre gezeigt.

writes the FAZ about the Nokia “merger” with Microsoft is what analysts say. Since the German newspaper FAZ does not publish comments in case you criticize anything they write ( I tried 3-4 times and they never published my comments ) I write a little bit about this here. If that simplified statement would be true question is will that deficiency influence other non-high-tech industries sooner or later as well when these industries will become more competitive, faster moving and overall less predictable? I think so.

“Nokia is the victim of its own success” is another tale people tell and you can read about in the FAZ article. I don’t think that describes either the situation. What really has happened is that Nokia like many Western European companies are trapped in a state somewhere in between a very hierarchical (Apple, yes, even if it does not appear from the outside), process-oriented and a very open (Google) environment. As it turns out this state is inferior to these two other setups leading to long decision-making and at the end not better but only soso products coming out late even. It is easier to focus on process optimization and live the illusion that this would be all that is needed to be successful. Process optimization is something anybody can do nowadays and is doing (also Chinese firms). Being able to move fast and use the input of many smart people to find new ideas and implement these ideas first in the market is more difficult to do though also because it requires management that understands this and supports such environments. Which company can truly say that they are in a position to quickly collect the accumulated ideas from employees, customers and partners? Most companies still have the idea box based on false principles that originated from 1880. Putting an idea box into a web portal does not make it a more effective though and changes anything. It remains an unused “tool”.

I tried to sell to NOKIA a few times technology and visited them in Espoo. What I experienced there was an environment where people were scared to take new approaches and rather did not pursue new ideas at all. Also I always had the feeling there is a Finnish group of guys that hardly communicate with each other and even have a harder time to communicate to outsiders - like myself.

To me the Nokia case should be a last warning for many many complacent other companies showing them that things will turn bad for them quickly too if they only focus on process optimization and don’t think in idea and inovation management.

What happens to Nokia will now be determined in the next 2 years or so. I think they have a chance even if this first step was maybe not something the majority of bloggers and pundits consider as a smart move. Once again a few people were asked in Nokia (the new CEO and his peers) and made a decision. When is Nokia starting to ask its employees, customers and partners what it would take to change and be successful again? I hope for them they do that finally NOW.

BTW, I think also the FAZ should change their attitudes and let people voice their thoughts freely and comment on their site even if these thoughts are not in line with their content. This would help them write better articles that more people read, can take serious and probably more people are willing to pay for too.

Announced beginning of last year already I now found some time during the vacation to setup and test SAP’s new approach to providing software with its StreamWork collaboration solution. So here my initial work experience report, I will add more later when we gained some experience using it…

StreamWork tries to combine different things in one business collaboration solution. The way I started using it right away was by starting a team project where I invited a few people in to discuss and work on a new sales and marketing approach for a product we market. After I launched a Decision box entering what we need to discuss and decide on in this team exercise I added some more work items such as an Evernote note which contained to do’s for a freelancer, a Stakeholder Analysis to show how we need to treat each of the target customers key people during the sales process, a PPT presentation with some sales pitches and attention grabbers.

Shown below is the Stakeholder Analysis work item I picked and quickly set up. Also available would have been a SWOT Analysis, Product Portfolio or Cost Analysis among others.

The integration with Evernote works very well. All fonts and elements were imported and displayed absolutely correctly. This was impressive.

Once you have your project started you can Add work items, Upload files or Evernote notes, Add Action Items, Add Participants and select tools from a Tools Catalog:

You can Add these work/project related items shown on the left to your collaboration group.

Next to Evernote there are also Box.net and Got Decisions partner tools in the Tools Catalog available. If you decide to use them then your data will be automatically also uploaded to these companies clouds and stored there as well.  A better integrated version would be great but is not a must have, at least not for smaller companies. I think larger corporations would certainly have an issue though with this.

A vertical feedback button on the right hand side leads to either contacting SAP support OR, and that is very well done, an idea collection forum. This I really like.

One problem I faced too. After uploading a larger PPT file I caused this issue here.

“ This file is being processed for slide extraction.” Contacting support did not help yet resolve it.

Still at first sight this looks like a very useful software. The ideas within are of course not SAP’s but copied from lots of other software solutions out there already. Even the tagline sounds like I heard it before :-). And what I like the most the vertical Feedback button I am quite sure is not even from SAP itself but they use a support community service. Also one can expect that they either acquire some of the partners that they work with in this software or, and there SAP has a not a favorable reputation, simply copy all they do and then terminate the partnerships. Unless they change also their business ethics which would be nice but is maybe not realistic to assume. Could well be that this is the reason why they only have four partners so far with Evernote, WebEx, Box.net and Auguri.

It works very well and fast here at 39k feet. I paid $12.95 during this 5h flight with US Airways from the east to the west coast in the US. They have big ads about this service on all the seat tables so that you cannot miss it. And it looks like a few people are using it on this late afternoon flight. Great service.

Yesterday Samsung showcased its new iPad contender, the Samsung Galaxy Tab. As this comparison chart shows the product is a serious - albeit currently only - real competitor. It has also things that the Apple iPad does not have, notably:

• front and rear facing cameras
• Adobe flash support
• expandable storage
• GPS built in (iPad only in UMTS model)
• full multitasking support

The iPad arrived now also in Europe. One of our freelancers got one yesterday and he got a lot of milage out of it (after 18h of use the battery was still 50% full) and he answered my question on how you best hold the iPad (on the lap or in your hands):

ich habe ihn vor allem damit ich auf dem klo nicht tausend zeitschrifen und bücher herumliegen habe. (ganz im sinne meiner frau)
(I use it mainly in the bathroom to get rid of all the magazines and books there so also my wife likes that now)

>> CollegeHumor gets excited about the great, endless possibilities to make fun about the iPad and Apple now:

>> List of 10 funny iPad cartoons.

>> John Klossner’s Apple cartoons.

For the 30th anniversary of the legendary Pac-Man video game Google’s logo turns into a Pac-Man game itself. It will be shown for 48hours and seems to be a big hit. Update: Here a modified version you can still use now.

This week’s EURO mess showed a few things that one might have suspected beforehand but only became evident when the crisis hit, and there are good chances now to fix issues finally.

• German - French friendship seems more for political show than something Europe could rely on in a crisis.
• In contrast, the Swiss showed where their real interests lie and supported the Euro heavily with their national bank which already holds two thirds of its reserves in Euros.
• Deutsche Bank and others are actually more interested in making tons of money in such a situation than stabilizing the markets. Total trading transparency and control are inevitable in the near future meaning NOW to show who follows what interests.
• Even though the UK has just had a change of government it also became clear that Europe is somewhat a club without them. If one looks at the fall in the British pound in the last few years the Euro is a safe currency in comparison. I think the UK needs to decide if they want to really become part of a European system or stay isolated on their island somewhere in no man’s land between Europe and the US. It is their call.
• Without strict fiscal control of Euro countries and punishments when needed this will not work; it looks like Germany is taking on the role of watchdog, which might be a good thing for all in the end.
• Countries can become bankrupt and the financial institutions who lend them money can’t hope anymore so that the taxpayers pay for eventual losses; the same will be true for big banks.
• update: This here is a good contribution in the Swiss newspaper Tagesanzeiger. The author suggests that the EURO countries include into their constitutions a maximum debt threshold. That way - assuming the countries respect their constitutions -  each country can separate the discussion from politics since it becomes a law. Germany followed last year Switzerland doing exactly that.

This week a client of us attends the LTE World Summit event in Amsterdam. It is the major LTE conference and also has a vendor exhibition attached to it. The volcano ashes from Iceland came back though and the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam is closed. I just exchanged an e-mail with one of the speakers who can not come anymore and I suppose many others will also not make it.

What a mess for the exhibition organizers, the companies who brought their booths and also the speakers who prepared themselves and all booked flights and hotels and set up business meetings.

I think there is one clear solution now that also will not cost too much:

1. Provide a web presentation event

2. Offer a virtual exhibition event using a social community platform, where the vendors can showcase their products still

This would be totally independent of any airport and flight closures and also would be relatively inexpensive still. The other alternatives would be to cancel the event entirely and reimburse the people. Or reschedule with the risk that it will again not happen and of course I assume that the costs would be way too high as well to make this a viable option.

Update: the event could - fortunately - happen afterall when Schiphol airport reopened on Monday afternoon. Still, virtual events are an alternative, a backup and most importantly extend an event to an all year around meeting place increasing the number of people attending. Real example: VMWorld Virtual Pavilion