Liquid Data

Too often what passes for great insight on strategy firms' websites is simply a rehash of previously published material using different words. What is too often lackng is new truth that when said for the first time is something most people intuitively understand, yet recognize as breakthrough thinking. That doesn't necessarily take a lot of empirical research -- as the late Peter Drucker proved. He was famous for saying great original truth and he did it without the resources of the big research firms who often end up just reinventing the same old stuff over again. (When asked how he learned, Peter Drucker responded, "I listen." Which after a short pause was followed by, "To myself.")

"But the Web is not the Internet. The Internet itself is a simple, elegant, extensible, scalable, technology-neutral networking system that will do exactly what it was designed to do for the indefinite futue. The same cannot be said of the Web, which is essentially an application running on top of the Internet. It is hardly the only possble Internet applcation, nor is it the most profound one conceiveable."

-- Harbor Research

I bring this up because I am again impressed by the quality of the writing at Harbor Research. I previously posted on their October HBR article, "Four Strategies for the Age of Smart Services." The article was about a very obvious idea that yet seems to be missing at a lot of companies which are inexplicably leaving a big share of customers' wallets on the table. (An example of a smart service is the BMW phoning home to say it's time for an oil change.)

A month earlier, HR wrote about something that I think will be much bigger and that is the idea of what's next after client/server, the web, web services, middleware, and virtualization. It's also pretty obvious, once you think about it. You could probably sum this up in (my words) as liquid data. That's information products that are as easy to move around and to reformulate into different products as, well, liquids.

The idea is genuinely original, although not with Harbor Research. However, HR is probably the first to tie together all the various elements on which that idea is based. As a writer I appreciate that this could not have been easy to do. The liquid data idea is a force that will flatten the world in ways that even Tom Friedman doesn't talk about -- and maybe technology-based organizations ought to begin factoring it their strategies. (Talk about disruptive innovation!)

Rather than be guilty of rehashing myself, I'll direct you to the original paper at Harbor Research. It's entitled "Desiging the Future of Information, the Internet beyond the Web." You can download it from this page.

It's a real treat for the Holiday Season.