The Economist debates Innovation

The Economist is hosting a debate on the proposition:

that innovation works best when Government does least.

See here - http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/168/Innovation.

FCC tests broadband barriers in America

CNN reports 'Cost is a major barrier to broadband adoption'.

The FCC conducted a survey (pdf) of 5000 landline and mobile users "in an effort to understand the state of broadband adoption and use, as well as barriers facing those who do not have broadband at home". The report found 67% of American households have broadband, with only 6% have dialup. Interestingly 13% of households earning over $75,000 do not have broadband, suggesting greatest internet problems were: pornography and other inappropriate material, and identity theft.

FCC define broadband as 200k up or down. See more at FCC Broadband home here.

I have found cost or price to be a universal value dimension, but one of twelve. Other universal value dimensions include function, service/reliability and time. Other value dimensions include beauty, emotion, simplicity, newness, duty, power, community and need.

Tipping Point found in Value model: Attitude counts

It's been a big january with the target rewrite. With the tight deadline, I had to dramatically shrink and focus the Ch3 results, with surprising result.

I focussed on two things.
1. The properties of Value.
2. A single value connection between Value and Attitude.
This connection is the simplest two concept model of value. I excluded the other six value concepts (social network, consumer strategy, innovator strategy, value assessment, action and context) and will include this as a complex value model in an Appendix.

I analysed the Value attitude connection through three propositions.
P1: Value is stored as attitude
P2: Value is stored as a single result.
P2a: Value is stored as a multiple result.
P3: Value shifts with new relevant value information. ie Attitude endures
P3a: Attitude degrades over time.

This has meant some reanalysis (of interviews, and other tech consumer comments), and complete (part 3.2) rewrite, which is almost but not quite done. ANother few days.

Significant new results:
1. Attitude exists at two levels: general, and specific (or sub-attitude). The latter linked to value dimensions, and the former not.
2. Attitude is mainly a single result ie general attitude, but some people have a multiple general attitudes - simultaneous opposing general attitude eg 'necessary evil'
3. The connection between sub and general attitude is the key to the 'tipping point'. General attitude tips or flips between positive and negative, while multiple sub-attitudes are possible against multiple value dimensions ie happy with price, unhappy with reliability, happy with service, unhappy with convenience etc etc etc overall either happy or not. Have excluded from thesis scope the link between sub and overall attitude. Think this is a whole thesis on its own.

Prefer not to have to cover attitude literature ie whole new lit review but may have to, subject to your feedback.
Att lit eg cognitive dissonance Festinger 1957, theory of reasoned action (multi attribute ie multiple attitudes) Fishbein and Ajzen 1975, balance theory Heider 1946, congruity theory Osgood, Suci and Tannenbaum 1957. From Lawson, Tidwell et al Consumer Behaviour in Aust/NZ 1996.

4. General attitude would include tacit knowledge, while sub-attitude is explicit knowledge. if space/time would like to link to Polanyi. Perhaps in conclusion.
5. Attitude endures over time. No disconfirming evidence found. Though hard to prove a negative ie Popper.

I am conscious of my supervisor's need for quality, and my wife is cracking the time whip. I am in the middle.

I hope that now I have sufficient results for a significant contribution, while being simple (and tight) enough for the examiners to follow. And it will all fit in 80k words.

Revised Value Models: Properties and relationships

Value Model: Concepts / Properties:
(percentages represent how often the concept was found in consumers' experiences with 3G mobile phones; N=75,000 words).

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Value Model: Concepts / Relationships:

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Comments gratefully accepted....

Community vs Function: value dimensions contesting

'Monks', Apple loving fans, put off a Windows user, who prefers an inferior product 'I know Windows is awful' to being part of their community.

Good value leads to recommendations, but recommendations steal time and push one community's perspective onto outsiders, who may prefer to be outside, not inside that community.

Guardian writer, Charlie Brooker, explores his feelings towards the Mac evangelists, and towards Windows here. And covered on Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog here. Emotions sometimes trumps reason, so better products do not always make better sales (in the short term at least).

Simplicity: a value dimension

Da Vinci, 500 years ago said,
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

Simplicity is one of twelve value dimensions.

Who says value can't sell t-shirts. Buy t-shirt at link above ($18). Is the t-shirt good value? Did the price change your attitude? Stronger/weaker, positive/negative?

Attitude has two dimensions - strong/weak, positive/negative. New information creates a value assessment which shifts attitude. Attitude also endures, until new relevant information comes along.

Value model: 2D or 3D?

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Which number of dimensions do you prefer? The value concepts have been scaled in 2D so the relative size of circles relates to the relative frequency of the value concepts in the transcript data (first 2000 data points). In the 3D graph, the size of the spheres relative to each other shows relative frequency of concepts to each other, and to the unit cube (which shows 100%). Which do you prefer? I think the 2D version is simpler but less evocative. The 2D version shows a greater disparity between the central value concept and the lesser non-core concepts. Both are accurate in their own degree of dimensions.