Search is ripe for Innovation

In the recent financial analyst meeting Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer talked about something closer to my heart “Innovation”. In the past I have posted few blogs on Innovation, the Microsoft style. But this one is different from all of them because, the possibilities Steve highlighted sounded like a sci-fi movie.

 

“Search is ripe for innovation. It has not been the most innovative category in the world. I mean, think back, what did search look like five years ago, 10 blue links on the left, some ads on the right, and maybe some ads on the top. What does it look like now, 10 blue links on the left, some ads on the right, and maybe something on the top. It is ripe for innovation. If you say to yourself, five years from now, 10 years from now will search be as humdrum, hard, 50 percent of searches don't actually lead to an answer to somebody's problem, is this an area that's ripe for innovation, in user experience, natural language, semantic understanding, consumer experience? The business model hasn't been touched”

here is what I would say...

Search is really ripe for innovation: Over the years, though the noise has been growing, I have NOT seen any breakthrough innovations in search as an end user.

50% Searches do not lead to an answer to a problem: This is true as the search engines do the ranking but do not take care of the context which could be different for each user.

Whatever, few more things that made sense to me as a technology tracker.

Search User Experience to Query needs innovation: There is hardly any change in the way we search for information has changed other than few fancy Browser Add In’s. When will search engines understand my 8 year old son’s query? When do they understand natural language queries?

Searching for information needs innovation: Today we have to go to multiple places to search for what one needs – For Text, for Pictures, for videos, for news, for location and so on. When will users be able to see all the results in a contextual sense in one single interface?

Search Result Viewing needs innovation: It is this simple list at all times when it comes to seeing search results. When will we be able to see search results in a faceted browsing experience?

Searching itself needs innovation: Today, searching means searching for text based information. As the web has grown from simple text based documents to pictures and now to videos, when do we get to see searching on the photos and videos? Then move on to friends, locations, directions, places of interest etc?

Search Advertising needs innovation: Did you ever get what you wanted in the advertising relevance? Since there is no scope for search context, today’s technology never will be able deliver what we need.

Search History needs innovation: Search is about looking for some information. But what happens once we get the information we need? Do you know what you have searched for in the past? Where do you park all your search results? Bookmark? That’s an old way of doing things. When do we have a seamless way of marking all the answers to our search queries so that I do not have to search from the scratch all over again?

Search needs innovation to integrate to your other information sources: When do we see search picking up context from location, time, day, calendar, mood etc? Enough interesting scenarios emerge when you put all of them together…

Devices integration with search needs innovation: As we move from desktop computing to mobile computing, with mobile computing power increasing each month, with mobile computers getting 3G bandwidth, with mobile computing getting global positioning system chips integrated, with mobile computing devices having built-in wireless network adaptors,  where do you see search going?

Searching by talking and listening for results, search engine knowing your exact position and connecting your next appointment to give you driving directions? Search engine  knowing that its lunch time and showing restaurants nearby for the meeting? Search suggesting a particular restaurant and menu based on your taste buds and the occasion and the person you are going to meet?

Search needs business model innovation: one of the points that Steve mentions is that paying back some revenue generated to the end users. That’s an innovative piece on the business model.

Search needs Content Rating Innovation: we have almost many of the web sites and their content rated. But when do we see search results taking into consideration that my 8 year old son is using the search and show only rated content for him?

Search needs innovation on content authenticity: Search just throws out results from the index. It is the responsibility of the user to validate that the content from authentic source. When do we get to see authenticity ratings for the content result that we get?

Today every search player has some pieces of Jigsaw puzzle. Only time will tell when we get to see the full picture…

Search is indeed ripe for Innovation...

MOSS 2007 = MS Access 1995 ?

SharePoint Technologies has always been my favourite product since its early days way back from 2001 to today’s MOSS 2007.

This product has come a long way since then from be it on the storage (File based WebDav system to SQL based query system) or on the front end(ASP to ASP.NET) or on the design tools(from No support to Front Page

which is now the dedicated SharePoint Designer) or WorkFlow(just from document approval serial / parallel to full-fledged WF engine) or content management (from nothing to reasonable support) or search (from primitive to extensive). Things like integrating Live communicator is the icing on the cake.

Any CIO or Chief knowledge officer who invested on SharePoint would be beaming with happy that he has met his biggest objective of creating a culture of moving user generated unstructured information from individual desktop to centralized SharePoint Storage.

Once deployed and open to users, SharePoint spreads like wildfire. Particularly it’s a darling for collaborative teams spread across different locations. It is quite easy to understand start using it.

Here are few observations

SharePoint spreads like wild fire. Once in, enterprise CIO’s and CKO’s can never get rid of SharePoint. It’s just not that easy. I would say it has achieved the distinction of today’s Lotus Notes.

It will be a real pain if deployment not planned well. Given its ASP.Net based front end and central SQL based storage, if not planned well for scalability and storage, users will start seeing huge performance degradation which may lead to huge dissatisfaction issues.

User education will lead to better usage and ROI. Users need some amount of training in smartly using, customizing and configuring it. For example, instead of creating multiple document libraries, one could create additional column for document taxonomies. Some excellent features like Excel Services and InfoPath Form Server will go unutilised without proper user training.

Worry about manageability training – if not prepared, like any other internet application, you will start seeing sudden performance and use dissatisfaction issues as the user base increases. Getting your IT staff up to speed on Planning / Deploying / Managing / administering / Performance tuning is very important so that they know how to address these things when things go out of control

Power of Web Parts – Out of the box web parts will quickly run out of their use. Users will need more and more as the start using SharePoint. This is one area Microsoft is lagging behind and they have not invested into providing more web parts. Listen to your users and get some custom web parts developed to suite your organization needs. There is already a shortage of SharePoint design skills though it follows the same ASP.NET web development model.

Leverage BI Capabilities - SharePoint has tremendous capabilities to deliver BI to the masses inside your enterprise. Use capabilities such as BDC to connect to your back end systems like SAP and deliver BI to your users. Connecting to a SQL Cube is a cake walk.

Transactional Systems on MOSS –I am already seeing requests around ways to integrate Transactional systems within MOSS. While BDC (Business Data Catalogs) come handy in reporting, they have their own limitations. Get your teams to think about how to handle such requests.

I am not surprised that in their recent review Forrester advising IT heads to gear up for supporting MOSS like how MS Access apps grew uncontrolled in 1990s…

Innovation = Execution and Commercialization

Recently I read an article how Microsoft was never an innovative organization and why they can never be innovative. This was more than enough for me to get started into some research on the topic. This one from Wall Street Journal got my attention

"Is Microsoft Driving Innovation Or Playing Catch-Up With Rivals?"

This is a 2006 conversation between Dave Winner and Robert Scoble. Few highlights are;

• Microsoft made a bet against the Web back about five years ago and Microsoft is struggling with that mistake

• When you see things like photosynth, you realize Microsoft can come back and be innovative. They have a lot of smart people, and huge resources”

• Xbox Live, for instance, is very innovative. I can't see the gamer scores of players on any other system. That is innovation.

• Apple will come out with iTV next year, after Microsoft has been doing Media Center for more than two years. I bet Apple will get credit for their "innovation" first, though, cause it's not fun to give Microsoft credit for innovation.

• People at Microsoft are more interested in keeping things nice and predictable, they care too much about manners, and innovation is anything but predictable, or mannerly

• I hate is Microsoft's URLs, Google definitely out-innovates it there

And they conclude with some interesting observations and I particularly like these.

No one technology company dominates. Lots of individual try out all kinds of things.

Innovation comes from those individuals and is commercialized by companies

Microsoft is known for their success in commercializing innovations, with a proven track record of 54 Billion revenue.

It’s 1 Billon each week… that’s a heck a lot of money.

Ever wonder, if you were to be the CEO how would you get this 1 billion / week ticking and show double digit growth year-on-year?

Looking at history, the secret lies in their acquisitions…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_microsoft_acquisitions

“An idea becomes an innovation only when it is implemented and cash is generated”

“Microsoft innovation comes from acquiring, integrating, packaging and commercializing”

Otherwise how could they be consistantly on the list of "Most Innovative Companies in the World"?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_17/b3981413.htm
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/123/the-worlds-most-innovative-companies.html