Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The false divide of Enterprise and Consumer

These days consumerization of the enterprise is so oft-discussed it is almost passé; clearly enterprise software is borrowing tricks from the consumer web to the point where, in certain cases, they are becoming indistinguishable.

Yet people continue to think of companies as either consumer or enterprise. Isn't that itself old fashioned?

Let's tease apart what most people mean by this distinction when they ask:




I maintain that things have fundamentally shifted. When starting a company you can basically pick and choose the attributes you want, and you're an idiot if you choose too many from the Enterprise column.

Similarly, the people you assemble for the company need to come from background suited to the attribute, not the antiquated enterprise vs. consumer divide.

Here are the attributes for a couple of the opportunities I am looking at.



So I'm thinking the right question isn't enterprise or consumer. It is disruptive or disrupted. And I feel like there has never been a better time to be disruptive.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Choosing my own adventure...

After two and a half years and many adventures at SAP, this chapter has drawing to a close. But like the fun books of our youth, the next chapter is not yet clear...



The stairs seem boring; the window seems right. I'll let you know when I figure it out.