do_matic

Line2 in three words: Disruptive. Innovation. Whoa.

When you've been doing this for long enough, your bar for what is simple, good, surprising and disruptive. I've seen a lot of ideas by this point in my career.

Then I read David Pogue's personal technology article yesterday (after being pointed to it by my colleague Sarah L) and simply said "Whoa." I hadn't finished reading it before I started sharing it. Here's an excerpt:

So you have a second line on your iPhone. But that’s not the best part.

Line2 also turns the iPhone into a dual-mode phone. That is, it can make and receive calls either using either the AT&T airwaves as usual, or — now this is the best part — over the Internet. Any time you’re in a wireless hot spot, Line2 places its calls over Wi-Fi instead of AT&T’s network.

That’s a game-changer. Where, after all, is cellphone reception generally the worst? Right — indoors. In your house or your office building, precisely where you have Wi-Fi. Line2 in Wi-Fi means rock-solid, confident reception indoors.

Line2 also runs on the iPod Touch. When you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot, your Touch is now a full-blown cellphone, and you don’t owe AT&T a penny.

It's a big, big deal. It could fundamentally change: the customer experience, the competitive dynamics within a few industries and the margin model within those industries.

Why is it on the iPhone? Who knows, but it were me it would be because: it's not Google and it isn't a carrier. Dumb pipes.

But wait - maybe not. Time Warner Cable announced yesterday free WiFi in New York City for Cable subscribers.

Horizon Three Innovation: A today problem or a tomorrow problem?

I've been working with a lot of clients lately that use the "Three Horizons" growth framework explained first (?) in The Alchemy of Growth, a book by a set of McKinsey consultants from the late 1990s. Here is McKinsey's enduring ideas explanation of the framework.

For the most part, I'm seeing people misuse this framework. Rather than managing the horizons concurrently, people are using the horizons as a taxonomy for organizing ideas (sounds like a "horizon three idea") rather than to assess relative activity ("do we have a steady stream of S-curves stacked up on the horizon?"). In a sense, they are using the framework to do exactly what it's meant to prevent.

Horizon Three innovation is here today. You just aren't working on it.