David Chan » alliances

Solving the Education Crisis One Textbook At A Time – Information Alliances

DavidChan — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 23:05:00 +0000

Here’s another example of how information alliances can greatly improve the customer experience. Even more compelling is how information alliances can improve our children’s education, in light of budget cuts and the cut backs in government support.

School Districts Allowed to Delay Updating Textbooks. This was the headline in a recent Sacramento Bee article. The story reports how the Elk Grove school district will be allowed to delay adopting new textbooks until 2013. Budgets that were designated for upgrading 2002 and 2003 books will instead be used to save jobs in the district. The article goes on to suggest that by the time new books are adopted California schools may be using 15 year old math books and 9 year old history books.

The reality is that the publishing industry needs to be significantly overhauled, just like many other “closed networks”, such as the real estate and music industries. The education market would greatly benefit from Information alliances between publishers, writers, teachers, students, and many other collaborators who have skills and experience. The problem is that every old industry tries to hold on to as much of their empire for as long as possible. However, the ferocity of the Internet is conspiring to decimate these industries.

UC Davis has taken a unique approach to solving the “pricey textbook” problem. In the article Professors hope to turn page on pricey textbooks , I read that UC Davis professors have come up with a unique way to make textbooks more affordable. The article, written by Caitlin Cobb, goes on to say “Expensive, used textbooks have long been a bone of contention among college students.” Well … duh!

I’m not an expert on education, but it appears to me that their unique idea, of building information alliances between multiple authors, i.e. the wiki approach, makes complete sense. The Davis Enterprise elaborates on how the collaboration is amongst students from multiple colleges and universities.

“Students have to spend a lof of money on textbooks, and publishers will come out with a new version of the textbook, but really they are just playing around with the used book market.” This was a quote from Andrew Waldron, the vice chairman for undergraduate matters.

In my estimation, Mr. Waldron is all too correct. Information today is very fluid and dynamic. And, with the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, information flow and collaboration should be the mantra. In fact, let’s extrapolate the solution a bit further. What if the information alliances were extended to the local printing company, such as Kinko’s/FedEx? Those students who really wanted a “hard copy” of the textbook can select their favorite local printer; click a button and presto – instant textbook. It might even be bought at 1/2 the cost of the “publisher’s version” sans expensive book cover.

The idea of a collaborative textbook makes SO much sense. You now give the “intellectual power” to a collective whole, rather than limit it to a select few. It’s hard for me to fathom that any one publisher or any one author is the final and ultimate authority on a topic, especially in this new age of accelerated Internet discovery.

One other powerful offshoot of these textbook information alliances is that you’ve now engaged students at a much higher level than ever before. They now can take a sense of ownership in the materials and content. In this way, they may even learn and absorb more. Isn’t that what learning is all about anyway?

Is this a novel idea or an idea whose time has come? After all, aren’t we in the 21st century?

How to Fix Amtrak Through Information Alliances

DavidChan — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:48:29 +0000

I’ve been a long time Amtrak rider since moving to the burbs north of San Francisco seven years ago. I must admit that I hate driving and prefer to be driven. It would be great if I could own a limousine and hire a chauffeur, but alas, I’m limited to public transportation or driving my own car.

The problem with Amtrak and generally most public transportation is that they don’t really cater to their customers. The information alliances that they’ve built with partners are zero to none. For example, how often have you jumped on Amtrak, say from Sacramento, and got to your final destination in San Francisco, without missing some type of connection? An information alliance / business development effort with the San Francisco public transit system could solve this problem in a heartbeat.

I remember one day leaving San Francisco Fisherman’s Wharf on Amtrak and arriving in Richmond, CA only to have missed my connecting BART service by 52 seconds. Yes, that’s how long it took to get from the Amtrak track to the BART track … down one set of stairs … up another. Again, an information alliance, an exchange of data … bits … would have helped me to make my connection.

The problem, I’ve been told, is that each transit authority is only responsible for their little fiefdom. Forget about customer service. Let’s just get our trains there on time … our time, that is. An information alliance with other transit authorities does not help individual company’s “on time” schedules, but it would help us, “the customer.”

I recently read an article about the slippage of Amtrak train ridership on the Capitol Corridor route. The story was written up in the Davis Enterprise. The article states that while ridership is down this year, on-time arrivals are at an all-time high. It doesn’t take a brain scientist to see how easy that is to accomplish … ridership DOWN … on-time arrivals UP?

Amtrak, like so many other public transportation systems should consider themselves as being in the “people moving business”, as Jeff Jarvis would say, NOT in the train business. By building information alliances with BART, the San Francisco Muni, AC Transit, CalTrain, and countless other transportation companies, we all might take public transportation more often. And, after all, isn’t that what we all want for a greener America?

Here’s another information alliance that can be exploited. What if when you arrived at your final destination a rented bike rack was waiting at your disposal? Or, what if a Zipcar or heaven forbid, even another public transit system that was timed to meet up with a “foreign” transit system?

There is no easy answer to this problem. But, there is no way out without an answer. In other words, we have the ability to build information alliances and data exchange. Someone has to start this business development effort in order to change the “drive my car” mentality in California.

It’s outrageous to hear companies like Amtrak boast about on-time arrivals when the real end-to-end experience for the customer is what’s really lacking. An information alliance / exchange of data and a tad bit of planning would really enhance the experience for the customer. It might even perhaps raise ridership because customers would feel confident in getting to their final destination hassle free and timely, if not “on time.”

Why Alliances Are Important To Small Companies

DavidChan — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:36:50 +0000

Alliances are relationships created between companies to achieve an agreed upon goal. The goal could be to penetrate a country or industry together. It could also be to drive a new product line that was jointly developed. Or, the goal could simply be to complement each other in areas where the other is not as strong.

There are many reasons to develop alliances with other companies. The net result of developing an alliance is to pool resources. This is especially critical if you’re a small company with monetary or geographic limitations. For example, for a small startup company in Silicon Valley, your workforce might be limited to a handful of people and you also might be on a very tight budget. But, your product line might hold great possibilities to be sold in an emerging country, such as Vietnam or Cambodia.

In this example, a company may decide to enter an emerging company by selecting an alliance company that has what they lack. For example, language and geographic presence are obvious reasons to create an alliance. Other reasons could include a large, well-trained work force and rolodex of clients in your prime target area.

Just as importantly, though, is whether the alliance partner can train and support the clients in this geographic region. In fact, this is probably the most important aspect which needs to be addressed up front. While working for Oracle in Asia Pacific, I was tasked to find the build the right alliances in the multiple countries which we served. The upshot of finding strong alliance partners with both training and support expertise is that we spent less time supporting them directly, which translates into less direct costs.

A small company benefits from working with a larger company by leveraging the brand and market reach of the larger company. Using the same example above, Oracle developed alliances with hundreds, if not thousands of small companies, often in the area of systems integration work. The small systems integration company benefitted through association with a brand name like Oracle and the marketing prowess for which Oracle was known.

Strategic alliances are also very important to the success of a small company. Back in early 2000, I was at a hot, but small mobile startup company, called Everypath. At the time we only had 20 employees. Who would want to work with such a puny company? As VP of Biz Dev, I was tasked with signing up strategic partners. Strategic was the key word. Which companies out there would find our technology so compelling that they would build a business practice around our technology.

We proceeded to sign up some of the most prestigious companies, including Accenture, Cap Gemini Ernst and Young, Sun Microsystems, and Hewlett Packard. Not only did these alliances align strategically with us, we also received $20 million in venture capital and financing. This influx of strategic partners was the impetus to drive our company to next level of fund raising to the tune of $100 million. These same alliance partners also worked to drive market awareness and clients for this little 20 person company.

As you can see, alliances can be the catalyst that jumpstarts a company’s market awareness and revenue, if positioned strategically.