Cyberposium 15 at Harvard Business School

Bostonist woke up a little late for Cyberposium 15 yesterday, but still managed to attend a number of informative sessions about “Navigating the Digital Storm.” This year’s theme, inspired by the escalating (but potentially halted) economic crisis, was designed to explore ways for technology companies to get through this tough time. Cyberposium is organized entirely by Harvard Business School students, and while their presence was strong at the conference, some normal folk (though many of them HBS alumni or MIT Sloan students) made their way in as well. Not many women were among the presenters—we saw absolutely none on the panels we attended, and there were only a handful involved in the conference overall. More heartening was the presence of female students in the audience; we hope that in a few years some of these women will be answering, not asking, the questions. Diversity was also lacking in panels but more prevalent in the audience, suggesting a more varied future for technology. We made to Spangler Hall it in time for a delicious lunch (one of the best conference lunches we’ve had—of course, this is Harvard, so you’d expect nothing less) and Chad Hurley’s keynote. Hurley co-founded YouTube after spending some time at PayPal in the days when people still feared giving out their credit card information online. Now that credit card numbers are given out like candy for everything from apps to virtual animals, PayPal may not be quite as much in demand—but YouTube has kept growing impressively. In his keynote, Hurley emphasized the need to remain open to growth by trying new things. He discussed the “paranoia” prompted by the internet, where companies fear each other’s endeavors to some extent and feel a need to maintain a degree of secrecy to retain competitive. Counterbalancing this paranoia may be a need for efficiency: finding ways to streamline and improve your product or service may sometimes involve cooperating with other companies in ways previously unthinkable. Hurley, a fine art major, presented a refreshingly non-MBA take on business, confirming that you don’t need credentials to success (ironically, though, Hurley’s younger brother is a first-year at HBS). Perhaps his most popular suggestion, judging from the retweets, was to “start building before you start pitching,” and to use a whiteboard to plan and develop your product before creating PowerPoint presentations to promote it. We’ve probably all had the experience of hearing product buzz before understanding what the platform was really about—Twitter, anyone?—so it was refreshing to see a major success state flat-out that there’s got to be method behind the marketing. After the jump, our experience at the “Cleantech/Greentech” and “Mobile Consumer” panels. Though not as well attended as the ecommerce panel seemed to be (judging, again, from Tweets), we felt the “Cleantech/Greentech” panel was possibly the most important of the day. Not only did it cover a critically important topic, but it also involve a number of local figures from important organizations, and was very successfully moderated by HBS professor Joe Lassiter. Among the panelists was Dan Goldman, CFO at Great Point Energy . Calling himself a “financial entrepreneur more than a technology entrepreneur,” Goldman says he looks for gaps in the financing of energy. Though it seems odd and indeed somewhat exploitative to look at the environment as an economic issue, it’s not likely that real progress will be made without either government intervention or a clear path for capitalizing on environmentally friendly goods and services. Most likely, it will take a combination of communism and capitalism to rectify our environmental troubles. Andrew Friendly of Advanced Technology Ventures and Bob McGrath from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory joined Goldman on the panel, as did Frank van Mierlo of 1366 Technologies and Nick D’Arbeloff from the Clean Energy Council . Perhaps atypically for technology companies, green companies require a certain amount of infrastructure and support to truly succeed. Rather than being able to found a Facebook in your dorm room, green technology is something that exists for a purpose both other than itself and other than making money. As a result, it may require a great degree of cooperation. Frank van Mierlo put it well: “My takeaway from [attending] MIT was that there were a lot of people smarter than me and it as good idea to start a company with one of them.” Image tagged Bostonist by RajRem As we tweeted yesterday, most panelists fear that nothing will happen to remedy the environmental crisis for far too long, as a result of concerns regarding health care, the economy, and immigration. Though Barack Obama appears committed to environmental causes, he’s under significant political pressure to address other issues first, and the environment may be neglected as a result. D’Arbeloff stressed that “anyone who thinks we can automatically walk into the 21st century and repeat [the practices of the 20th] is dreaming,” and we’ll need to make major adjustments to both our lives and our policies to remain competitive both economically and environmentally. Not surprisingly for a business school conference, this panel featured a distinct emphasis on promoting the economic benefits of environmentalism. McGrath suggested that we need carbon legislation soon or we’ll be “at a competitive disadvantage economically” with developing countries. Friendly lamented the disconnect between a focus on jobs and denunciation of environmental policy, suggesting that environmental regulations could lay a clear path for new “green” jobs rather than eliminate existing positions. It’s not just our businesses, our jobs, and our personal habits that need to change. McGrath pointed out that “existing buildings and infrastructure [are] responsible for 71% of our electricity production and 38% of our carbon emissions.” With modifications such as solid state lighting or advanced air conditioning systems, our buildings could stop being such a big environmental liability. As the conversation degenerated into a lamentation about the need to select one technological approach and stick with it—one company cannot necessarily specialize in solar, wind, and alternative fuels—D’Arbeloff brought it back to another crucial point. He described how deployment technologies enable the existence of companies focused on multiple approaches to resolving the crisis, and brought up “time of day” pricing as a critical component of raising awareness about energy use. An audience member raised the question of carbon capture and sequestration,

and Goldman responded with enthusiasm. His company has invested in storing CO2 in oil reservoirs, which promotes oil production and could be used to recover as many as 118 billion barrels of oil in the United States alone. He views this approach as a money-making opportunity, which means it may inspire greater adoption in the U.S. With regard to capitalist adoption of the environmental cause, Friendly brought up another obstacle: intellectual property. U.S. companies can be hesitant to implement their climate-protecting techniques in other countries for fear that those countries will steal them. Acknowledging the opportunities there, Friendly underscored the hesitation from the business side: “We don’t doubt that there are growing markets, but we need to make them pay for themselves in developed markets.” Lassiter encouraged panelists and audience members alike to “think internationally” in their approach to the climate crisis, and shared data reflecting the different approaches to climate change even within the U.S. In Boston and Northern California, audience members had“ voted” 80% to 20% in favor of quick government intervention to combat global warming. In contrast, the vote in NYC was split, with some folks fearing all our action would be undercut by pollution from China and Brazil. Our friends in Houston, not surprisingly, voted 80% to 20% against intervention. Lassiter summed up the panel well, saying “The future is a thing of our choosing; the past is a thing we have to live with.” By taking advice from today’s panelists and other experience figures in green technology, HBS students and other aspiring climate defenders can live with the vagaries of the past while crafting a planned, preferable future. Andrei Hagiu , who teaches strategy and technology at HBS, opened the “Mobile Consumer” panel by thanking everyone for attending despite the beautiful weather. He didn’t moderate as much as Lassiter had, leaving the panelists and audience members free to direct the conversation in their own direction. Todd Brix from Microsoft, an HBS grad, actually cofounded the conference in his days at Harvard and said it inspired him to “get out of engineering.” Glenn Broderick from AT&T brought a focus on games and the convergence of different devices in support of gaming, while Rich Miner represented the interests of the Google venture capitalists —aka the “so much richer than you’ll ever be” sector (some of whom, like Miner, may ironically be named Rich). Roger Letalien from IBM, Princeton dropout Seth Priebatch of SCVNGR (who called himself “pretty much unqualified to be here” despite his company’s approaching its first million in revenue), and MSpot ’s Daren Tsui rounded out the panel. Image tagged Bostonist by Chip Py The discussion stayed largely within three main topics: location, applications, and smartphones. Brix opened up the location-based services discussion by asserting that “Unlike any other kind of computing platform, location is most relevant on a mobile device.” Broderick discussed the implications of the mobile platform for games, noting the “enormous potential for growth” stressing the need to redesign the entire game development process to explicitly include tailoring to mobile devices. Miner shifted the conversation to a billing perspective, noting how the built-in billing system on mobile devices gives rise to easy, one-click consumption that can drive application and other purchases. Letalien expanded the one-click capabilities to encompass mobile banking, a major convenience for people in developing countries who may live 30 or more miles from the nearest bank, and discussed how IBM is working with credit card merchant FirstData to create a mobile payments ecosystem for buying anything with your phone. Tsui stressed the need for a more open system without need for permission from carriers. Priebatch broke down the purchasing process into three portions, perhaps unintentionally echoing the three-phase 1. Action 2. ???? 3. Profit meme. He cited enterprises, user-generated data for locations, and monetization as important components of the business process. Continuing on the monetization track, Brix emphasized the “need to have a healthy ecosystem for developers to get paid for their applications.” While one-click transactions support this from a technical perspective, there still need to be improved business plans to support applications. These might include social recommendation engines for apps, or app placement systems that echo the shelves at the grocery store—targeted at eye level, sugar-free or no-ad brands down low. Miner described how your 99 cent app could get downloaded a million times and make you a lot of money—but you still wouldn’t have a sustainable business model capable of producing returns for investors. From a venture capitalist perspective, it’s hard to justify investment in apps. The discussion then broke down into contemplation of the potentially limited market for advanced or smartphone-only applications. Tsui described us as being in a “transition period” toward smart phones, noting that the iPhone is only 5% of the U.S. market—so even if your app is rockin ‘on the iPhone you’re missing out on 95% of potential users. Priebatch’s company is unique in using a multi-tier approach to its technology, allowing it to run on everything from text messages to smartphones: “build one game and our game engine will scale it.” Texts account for 60% of SCVGR use, reflecting the significant demand for “applications” accessible via SMS. An audience member asked if applications would die out in favor of the web. Miner asserted that phone browsers are nearly as capable as desktop applications, but Tsui pointed out that browsers don’t accommodate technologies such as DRM—particularly critical to applications designed to provide music and movies to customers. In sum, the mobile market is open, evolving, and inconsistent. You can’t count on any one device or platform to represent the future, so it’s necessary to make smart choices in developing business plan. If focusing in a particular direction or on a specific technology, recognize that it may not remain central for long. Even more than other technology spheres, mobile is rabidly used and rapidly evolving, making it easy to take advantage of—but not necessarily for very long. The ephemeral mobile app and the enduring environment: our Cyberposium 15 experience contrasted these two elements, revealing the perpetual necessity of acknowledging the past and present while focusing, always, on the future.

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Cyberposium 15 at Harvard Business School