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Are NFTs the future of digital IP and the creative world, or just a remix of DRM and all its woes? (Part 5)
This is last in a series of posts to share some observations, opinions and conclusions on this intriguing technology which sits squarely at the intersection of digital, creativity and intellectual property. The topic is broken down into the following parts:
- What are NFTs (and the non-fungibility superpower)?
- What has this got to do with Intellectual Property (and content protection)?
- Does it mean that NFTs are like DRM remixed?
- How does it affect the creative industry today and in the future?
- Summary observations and conclusions.
Are NFTs the future of digital IP and the creative world, or just a remix of DRM and all its woes? (Part 4)
This is fourth in a series of posts to share some observations, opinions and conclusions from playing with this intriguing technology that sits squarely at the intersection of: digital technology, creative content and intellectual property. The topic is broken down into the following parts:
- What are NFTs (and the non-fungibility superpower)?
- What has this got to do with Intellectual Property (and content protection)?
- Does it mean that NFTs are like DRM remixed?
- How does it affect the creative industry today and in the future?
- Summary observations and conclusions.
Are NFTs the future of digital IP and the creative world, or just a remix of DRM and all its woes? (Part 3)
This is third in a series of posts to share some observations, opinions and conclusions from playing with this intriguing technology that sits squarely at the intersection of digital technology, creative content and intellectual property. The topic is broken down into the following parts:
- What are NFTs (and the non-fungibility superpower)?
- What has this got to do with Intellectual Property (and content protection)?
- Does it mean that NFTs are like DRM remixed?
- How does it affect the creative industry today and in the future?
- Summary observations and conclusions.
The World Beyond Blockchain – Part 2/3: The Eye of the Storm
- Increased regulation – There’s a looming threat or promise of tighter intervention by regulatory bodies and governments, especially for ICOs due to their conceptual proximity to the highly regulated securities industry. Other drivers include: reducing tax evasion, fraud, money laundering, anti-terrorism, as well as impact on PII (Personally Identifiable Information) data vs. the right to be forgotten and GDPR.
- Security – Also, many security concerns persist, particularly in light of regular headlines about hacking, outright theft and other malfeasance. Increased Cryptojacking, i.e. the practice of stealing other people’s device processing power to mine cryptocurrency, is also a concern.
- Scalability and fragmentation – it takes significant computing effort to mine Bitcoins, or to verify transactions, which has long raised concerns over its long term performance and scalability. The resulting splits or ‘ forks’ in that cryptocurrency have provided a vast array of competing coins (e.g.: Bitcoin! / Bitcoin XT / Bitcoin Unlimited / Bitcoin Cash / Segwit / Bitcoin Gold). Furthermore, there are myriad cryptocurrency wallets and exchanges to chose from, which can be rather daunting. Also the aforementioned next generation networks which use: Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG) / voting algorithms / gossip protocols to deliver more flexibility, scale and performance.
- Energy Consumption – Furthermore, the high cost of energy required to mine proof-of-work cryptocurrencies is another growing area of concern as it contributes to the spectre of global warming.
- Privacy – Finally, the early association of Bitcoin with illicit and subversive activities on darknet sites (such as the defunct Silk Road and Alphabay) hasn’t really gone away, especially with the rise of privacy focused cryptocurrencies such as: Monero, Dash, zCash, Verge and DeepOnion. Contrary to popular belief, Bitcoin itself does not guarantee privacy because transactions can be linked to individuals (albeit with some effort), and all Bitcoin transactions are recorded for posterity on a very public Blockchain.
Governing the Internet of Things.
Free, your new IP strategy: is this the future of Intellectual Property and Innovation?
I came across a blog post about electric automaker Tesla’s recent move to open up its patents by making them free to use by anyone, including competitors. According to founder, Elon Musk, “Technology leadership is not defined by patents, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers.”
I believe that while this move may have multiple strategic intent, (i.e. Tesla could have other IP cards up their sleeve), it also highlights limitations in the current systems of Intellectual Property, and it’ll require a fundamental shift in philosophy to fully appreciate where such trends could take us.
Obviously, I admire Tesla’s creativity and innovation, not least because their eco-friendly cars do not remind me quite so much of badly constipated turtles, but because their sheer guts and willingness to take risks (aka multiple leaps of faith) puts them ahead of the curve.
If technology leadership is no longer defined by a sizeable IP portfolio, then this presents some very real challenges to various foul strategies and current sharp practices for IP, such as: “weaponised IP”, Patent Trolls, industrial espionage, and so forth. According to author Don Peppers’ blog post on the topic, such “open source” and “free revealing” (aka free sharing) of otherwise competitive IP assets actually drive innovation “while patents, copyrights and other legal mechanisms seem to be holding us back.” He goes on to say: “This is big, everyone. If you don’t know how big this is, you haven’t been paying attention.”
In my opinion, a mindset of “share first then ask questions after” is vastly superior to the usual scarcity based approach to wealth creation, (i.e. “mine, mine, all mine” is not real wealth, just an illusion). True wealth, which is firmly based in abundance, actually favours the sharing mindset by motivating and empowering bright creative people to continue to do and share what they do best. Such a system fosters innovation, and is ultimately self replenishing, because it forces organisations to ensure they maintain the right ingredients to continue being innovative.
In such a world, an organisation may be deemed a failure when it no longer has the ability to innovate, regardless of the size of its bank balance, market capitalisation or IP portfolio. Instead, successful organisations will be ones which can establish and demonstrate a self-perpetuating culture for creativity and innovation. Such bold claims do however raise some serious questions over IP, e.g.:
- Should IP be granted with implicit right for others to use and reuse by default, (along with fair recompense or royalty to the owner)? And if this were feasible, would everyone play by the rules?
- Are we likely to see a situation whereby IP may be rescinded from organisations that do not actively use them to innovate? I can already imagine Patent Trolls, and their IP lawyers, screaming in anguish at the thought.
- If free sharing of IP became common practice, will it ultimately diminish the value of IP, and its raison d’etre, (i.e. a means to provide direct economic reward for creators and owners of IP)? Bear in mind that creators and owners of IP are not always one and the same.
These and other similar questions easily rise to the fore when you extrapolate the developing trend for free IP sharing and their implication for both individuals and organisations. The preceding points / questions are not solely relevant to organisations. Individuals, particularly those in the creative arts (e.g. authors, musicians and other artistes), are also affected especially as they increasingly chose to explore alternative funding models to finance their works.
TV presenter and author, Kate Russell (of BBC Click fame) takes it a step further by advocating the creation of new IP models based on crowd funding in her recent BCS blog post. Her exact words were: “With the online world still in freefall about how to solve digital rights protection and make sure artists get paid fairly for creative works, I genuinely believe that crowd funding could form the groundwork of a new intellectual property model”. In my opinion, this is another example of the shifting mindset that will ultimately bring about the evolution of a more suitable IP system for the digital world of today and tomorrow.
The Architect and Digital
I was very fortunate to participate in Capgemini’s recent Business Priority Week (BPW), alongside over 300 attendees from 22 countries, at the beautiful Les Fontaines retreat. The focus of the week was a new global service line called Digital Customer Experience (DCX), and we (from various business units, disciplines and competencies) were set a challenge to explore and articulate how we’ll work together to deliver this promise for clients.
The Digital Customer Experience
Being the clever people that architects are sometimes rumoured to be, the immediate response is directly related their role in a rapidly accelerating digital world. However, as an architect, I fear our time may be coming to an end unless we embrace the need to evolve the practice of architecture into something that clearly defines, assures and guides the digital customer experience for our organisation and our clients (incl. their customers / end-users). In order to do this properly, we must undertake an architectural journey to understand the context and key issues before deciding on the most appropriate response. Key questions to ask and answer include:
1. What is Digital and why is it such a game changer for our clients and our business?
A great story about rice, chess and an emperor was used to illustrate the impact of Moore’s Law to startling effect by revealing that we are only at the beginning of the digital journey, or as the authors of Race Against the Machine would say, “we ain’t seen nothing yet”.
2. Are established architecture approaches still relevant for digital?
The experience gained from several decades of putting together complex computer based systems was not lightly earned, and it would be spectacularly foolish to suggest that this is no longer required in the age of digital. If ever there was a time for true architecture it is right now, at the start of such an epic journey, however this implies a shift in the way architects engage clients and practice architecture.
3. So what is different about architecture for Digital and why is this important?
In a short answer – it needs a renewed focus on the business model. The role of architecture in digital is about getting closer to the business and helping achieve desired outcomes, (so far so normal), but this must be done at the exponential pace of digital, whilst maintaining ROI from existing technology investments. It is akin to walking atop the wall of a castle whilst juggling live cats and canaries, during an earthquake, and ducking missiles from inside and outside the castle. I’m sure you get the picture.
The above points indicate a necessary shift in mindset to handle the relative extremes in velocities at the interface of Digital vs. traditional IT systems. Among other things, the digital architect should:
- Provide enterprise technology governance framework as a key point of reference for the various agile projects and initiatives commonly found in the would-be digital enterprise.
- Utilise business modelling techniques (e.g. the business model canvas) along with time and velocity sensitive architecture principles to provide critical governance and to guide solutions from design right through to implementation, and beyond.
- Be mindful of legal and ethical issues that can arise in the digital space (e.g. contractual obligations for digital services, and / or the privacy concerns of end-users).
- Anticipate the needs of clients and their business in a fast changing environment, even when some stakeholders might challenge the need for architecture in any form.
In conclusion, it is my opinion that architecture has never been more critical than at this particular point in time. This therefore is a call to action for every organisation to challenge their architects to provide the governance and assurance needed to achieve the outstanding outcomes promised by Digital Customer Experience, whilst also protecting existing investment and core assets.
How to implement innovative business models
Back in 2011, I wrote a post about business model innovation in which I waxed lyrical about how a simple, straightforward business model canvas could be the perfect tool for any organisation to use in tackling the complexities of today’s business environment. So what has changed since then?
Absolutely nothing, and I still stand by what I said. If anything, ample proof exists in the growing number of user communities and tools (e.g. here and here) that employ this amazing technique to simplify and facilitate business model innovations. However, the one missing piece for me was how to easily translate valuable insights gleaned from using the business model canvas into something tangible, practical and immediately applicable to the actual work of business transformation. That problem appears to have been solved with the introduction of tools that can automate and facilitate the execution part of business model innovation.
Figure – The missing piece: executing business model innovation
Don’t get me wrong, the above missing piece is achievable by manually translating business model changes into the enterprise architecture (EA) and business process (BPM) landscape, but this implies hefty overheads in terms of people and effort required to implement even a simple change. Also, the evolving nature of the role played by EA and BPM functions, (within a dynamic and fast changing business environment), demands a more seamless interface with changing business models. Thankfully, the afore-mentioned tools should help to automate and provide such seamless linkage.
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a vendor webinar which actually prompted this blog post, because they described how their software suite was designed to deliver this capability, and below are some of my impressions from that event, including:
- The promise of business model canvas as the right approach to address the challenge of a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (aka VUCA) world.
- The shift away from products to business models as key differentiators
- Seven applications of the Business Model Canvas, including various business model innovation journeys and perspectives (e.g. offer / customer / revenue driven models)
- Business Model Mountain was the term used to describe how business model innovation falls over halfway between ideation and execution, (see diagram below).
Figure – Business Model Mountain (source: BizzDesign Webinar Slides)
According to the presenter, their software suite provide a more compelling way to engage business stakeholders with the end-to-end transformation process, by using business model canvas as the reference model for communication between business, process and technology stakeholders. It was also great to see a demo of the software suite, which allayed some of my fears about tools that attempt to do too much, by featuring different aspects (i.e. business model canvas, EA and BPM) as distinct tools that work well in their own right, but which can be combined to deliver end-to-end translation of the business model into real system components and processes.
Health Warning: Not having used this tool yet, (due to very busy day job, believe it or not), I’m unable to say more about real hands-on capabilities, but in terms of its potential to help realise the huge promise and benefits of business model innovation, this is certainly a step in the right direction, in my humble opinion.
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Note: this is another post in the innovation topic series, and more specifically, “tools for innovation”. Watch out for more on this and related topics, over the next few months.
Some relevant links:
- Blogpost: “The Innovative Art of Business Model Generation” – https://www.capgemini.com/blog/capping-it-off/2011/07/the-innovative-art-of-business-model-generation
- BizzDesign Webinar: “Business Model Innovation Webinar” – http://www.bizzdesign.com/blog/serviceline/business-model-management
- Bright talk Webinar: “Innovation and EA”- https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/679/32551
- Blogpost: “Developing a tradition for change” – http://www.bcs.org/content/conBlogPost/2204
- Blogpost: “Capabilities for Sustainable Innovation” – https://www.capgemini.com/blog/capping-it-off/2013/08/capabilities-for-sustainable-innovation
Creating an ecosystem for entrepreneurs, innovators and investors
Creating an ecosystem for entrepreneurs, innovators and investors
What do you get when you gather some entrepreneurs, serious investors, and innovators together at a jam-packed, invitation-only, event on entrepreneurship? Read on to find out…
Follow The Entrepreneur Summit 2013
I attended the third annual Follow the Entrepreneur Investor Summit, and wasn’t disappointed by the impressive speakers, entrepreneurs and location. The event focused on: “The New Common Sense” (why society needs to organise around the entrepreneur), and “The New Future” (how entrepreneurs are transforming the future of business). Among the superb array of speakers and topics, a few highlights include:
Former defence secretary, Dr Liam Fox MP, delivered a key note calling for the UK to focus more on growing the economy by encouraging entrepreneurship.
Dell’s entrepreneur in resident, Ingrid Vanderveldt, descibed how corporates can get into the action by providing the facility to connect startups with resources (e.g. Dell’s Entrepreneur Centre), and she wondered why more corporates were not already doing this.
Mark Hoffman, ceo of Oxygen Finance group, and founder of Sybase and Commerce One, explained how to make money from account payables, via an innovative new service
Panelist, Geoff Knott, recalled how social innovation and reform has always had the biggest impact on society, and called for entrepreneurs to “think broader than just business”.
Panelist, Frank Meehan, described how a 16 year old created a news summarisation service, and secured investment from Li-Kashing’s Horizons Venture. The service is set to be acquired by Yahoo!
Matternet Drones
Panellist, Andreas Raptopoulos presented a bold vision for radical transformation of the transport and logistics industry with Matternet, an AI enabled network of drones and ground stations that can be used to deliver medicine and other lightweight goods in remote or road challenged locations around the world. I said it was a bold vision.
Mary Turner, serial entrepreneur and former CEO of Tiscali UK, described a service that senses and alerts users to events at home. The sensing network being a key component of the intelligent home and the Internet of Things.
This event was full of entrepreneurs with fascinating ideas in different stages of maturity, and it felt very much like an innovations parade; one idea even better than the next. For example, I ran into the founder of Scoopshot, (a service providing crowd-sourced visual content – i.e. images and footage for breaking news); then heard from the founders of Quill (a service for bespoke, branded content, articles which has since raised £1M from Ariadne & partners), and Taggstar (a data rich, content tagging service that enables shopping, sharing, viewing and targeting). When combined with investors and established legal / media industry representatives, one could easily see the future of transmedia content publishing and usage business models all present together in the one room. The same could be said for any other industry e.g. health, defence, logistics or manufacturing you care to name.
In conclusion, I believe it is this sort of occasion and environment (with the right mix of investors, innovators and entrepreneurs) that some key connections and relationships are sparked off, which ultimately go on to impact the world.
Five Myths of Digital Technology and Enterprise Transformation
Digital technology has brought unprecedented change across all business sectors, and very few organisations can claim to be unaffected by the information age (e.g. via internet, mobile, social channels). However, this does not always translate to a need for that cause-all / cure-all catchphrase of technology or digital transformation.
Below are five commonly held myths associated with digital technology and enterprise transformation:
1 – Technology really drives the business
Only if your business is about creating and / or selling new technology, otherwise this is tantamount to placing the cart before the horse, or the tail wagging the dog – it may be possible, but not necessarily a good idea. The fact is that technology places way down the list of drivers for business change. Gartner’s Nexus of Forces which combine to impact businesses, although enabled by technology, relate mainly to changing paradigms (i.e. big data / cloud) and behaviours (i.e. social / mobility) rather than just pure technology
2 – Change technology; change your business
No, not really. Technology change is not the same thing as technology enabled change. The former relates to tools, whereas the latter is about the purpose for which said tools are used or acquired. For example, buying and using Salesforce will not automatically make yours a more customer centric organisation. Digital technology transformation is less about technology than the outcome of an architected approach to delivering fast, flexible and responsive services to customers
3 – Transform now or die!
Not all businesses will need to undergo an immediate or full blown technology change programme, as sometimes the only change required may just be around processes or service focus. A change in culture could have more significant and lasting impact in some organisations. For example, shifting from a reactive customer support environment towards proactive customer engagement will yield better results even if the tools remain the same!
4 – You need a team of tech-savvy whiz kids to transform your business
False. Most of the advantages of new digital technologies come from ability to provide fast and flexible services connected / delivered through standardised interfaces, which don’t require expert knowledge of the source system. The role of IT is fast evolving into an orchestrator and governor of the various external / internal services (including legacy systems / applications) that must work together to deliver said fast, flexible and responsive services to the internal / external customer
5 – The need for digital transformation will one day come to an end
No, no, no. There can be no real end to continuous digital evolution, especially when the rate of change is actually on the increase, no doubt spurred on by knock-on effects of fast changing technologies, user behaviours, customer expectations and competition. The ideal business lifecycle must embrace a process of continuous improvement with allowance for testing new business models, implementing changes (including technology related ones), evaluating the outcome, making further tweaks, and repeating the entire process all over. This cannot stop because as soon as an optimal solution is achieved the business environment changes again, thus necessitating another cycle
In summary, and perhaps somewhat ironically, digital technology is neither the root cause nor cure-all for many challenges facing organisations today. The need for transformation is often triggered by changing environments and / or behaviours (e.g. by customers, suppliers, partners or competitors), perhaps in combination with some innovation (technology based or otherwise), that ultimately impacts their bottom line.
Perhaps fittingly the real business impact of technology transformation comes from how it is deployed and used by the people within and outside the organisation. Each organisation must make the effort to understand its own particular situation, and to discover the right way forward. It is not an easy task, but with the right attitude and motivation from the top, it will be relatively less painful than just doing nothing.
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