Chroming Chromium, another network-centric competition story

It is not a surprise at all that Google is tapping the brains outside its campus to make its Chrome operating system a robust solutions.

A report from the New York Times suggests that Google fans and IT geeks from around the world are participating, albeit remote from each other, in enhancing the Chromium, a home brewed version of Chrome operating system. Some had already added solutions which were not anticipated by Google. Just wondering how many of them are from China, the country where Google had problems with the government due to its stand on Internet censorships.

It is interesting to note why these people are interested to chip in their brain power towards this project. Some see this as an opportunity to demonstrate their talents and ability, thus landing them with career opportunities in the software industry.

While tapping global brains would have its own risks and downside, organisations would have to balance between creating solutions with competitive edge which they have less control over lesser brain power with certainty of control. In this ever changing business world, those with braver hearts have better chance to lead the pack.

YTL Taps Global Brain in Search for Solutions

Following the trends of iTunes and Google Nexus, YTL Communication, a WIMAX operator in Malaysia is offering prizes to the total of US $1,000,000 for developer that could come up with winning applications to be used on the network.

This network-centric approach is a cheap way of tapping the talents and expertise of people who you do not know and control but could ended up creating huge value to the organisation.

At the same time it creates excitement in the innovators community about the potential for them to commercialise their talents and ideas. It also reduces the road blocks which prevent ideas reaching organisations with the resources to up scale discoveries into commercial offerings.

Follow the news here.

Applying the Network-Centric Competition concept in academic-industry collaboration

I was invited to share my view in how academic-industry collaboration could be further enhanced during the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia International Management Accounting Conference 5 in Kuala Lumpur recently.

In short, I proposed the academicians to sell the idea that they could be part of the knowledge based and external networks to enterprises. Given the challenges faced by enterprises, academicians could be to the table their research capabilities that would help to enhance the knowledge-based on which industry players could compete. Given that we are in the knowledge economy, academicians are natural partners to those who wish to transform knowledge and insights into competitive edge.

My presentation could be downloaded here.

Encouraging Consortium, A Step in the Right Direction

It is encouraging that the SMI Association of Malaysia would be assisting small medium enterprises (SMEs) to set up consortium in pulling their strengths to penetrate emerging economies such as China, Russia and India. It was indicated that the association would be studying the Japanese and Korean models.

This is similar to the effort made by Singapore as earlier discussed at this blog.

The key to the success of any form of groupings would be the value proposition of the grouping, its leadership, the protocol on how members of the group interact with each other and most importantly, how the value created is shared across the membership. Given that the main focus of business is to make profit and create value to shareholders, the final element is always the one that could make or break initiative of such nature.

It is hoped that the first request that would come out from this initiative is for government funding, as always the case in Malaysia. We should start thinking outside the norms and focus on our collective strengths rather than taking the easy way out by asking the government to provide the safety net to our businesses.

As the level of competitiveness gets more intense, outsourcing our success to the government may not be the wisest choice.

Now ASEAN Media Companies Joining the Network-Centric Competition Bandwagon

Media companies in six ASEAN countries have created SMART Alliance, which would bring benefits to is members through developing content, selling, marketing and technology.

In a press report, Magna Prima, a media conglomarate from Malaysia announced that it together with ABS-CBN (Philippines), BBTV (Thailand), International Media Corporation (Vietnam), Media Nusantara Citra (Indonesia) and MediaCorp (Singapore) — recently met in Singapore and signed a memorandum of understanding pledging to work on specific areas. Given that there are more than 500 million people in ASEAN, such initiative would enable the media players to be able to offer programmes that meet the needs of their viewers and listeners which reducing cost through economic of scale.

Lucas Chow, Chairman of MediaCorp and the chairman of SMART Alliance Steering Committee was quoted as saying that  the production costs are getting more and more expensive, more and more sophisticated, and it would be really wasteful if we just do the content for one country.

Such development reflects the viability of the network-centric competition concept and such approach provides members of the network access to intellectual capital, market as well as opportunities to be more cost effective.