EIC 2012 Session: VRM and the Intention Economy - Now What?

Oh, only the very, very most important attendees of EIC today are in the auditorium.
There you go.
I don't know may maybe, maybe we should ask Andrea that they, they put a limit on drinking so that people actually show up in the morning and don't need to do overtime at the coffee bar to actually ingest enough caffeine to wake up. Okay, everybody welcome back from the coffee break. I'm very honored to have such a cool group of distinguished guys here on stage. On the second conference day, a rather cool panel we've put together here and we are going to talk about the intention economy. So stuff that is was foreshadowed in the last few days by doc. And thanks for that keynote, I really, really enjoyed it was really good. And we want to talk about how the vendor relation management that you came up with a few years ago and the intention economy, how that works out and how that actually puts a direction to what we are doing. So now what, where are we going? And I'd like to have a short introductory statement from you for that so we can start the discussion.
So for the last,
Really, for the last 150 years, ever since industry won the industrial revolution, we've had a mass market economy. We've had an economy where, where the economy's a scale that we're built into the way the industrial economy worked pretty much drove all of our assumptions. We had to, you know, you wanted to make the fewest number of products for the largest number of people. And you wanted to market those by getting their getting people's attention. You wanted do heavy branding and this carried over into the internet age, but an implication of the internet age, which is that anybody can talk to anybody. Anybody can find out whatever they want, anybody can form whatever social networks they want. Anybody can self educate that the promise of the, of, of the internet was not only further empowering sellers, which it inevitably did and gave us eCommerce and trillions of dollars of economic activity, but also promised to empower customers, not just in the sense that they have more choices of things that are sold by vendors, but they have more, more capacity to, to drive sellers in ways that only they can, they can express their intentions and intentions don't necessarily line up with what the mass marketers want to sell.
Almost always customers have very unique requirements, but they also bring intelligence to the marketplace that can't be guessed at. And at this moment in time, we're at the height of the, in the attention economy. This is the one where, where Google is going up growing like a tree of the sky. And Facebook's about to have an IPO. And a great deal of investment is going into big data, which is the data that's scraped off of our Chrome trails. As we walk, as we go around the net and as we use our mobile phones and the rest of it. And there's an assumption with that, that, that the Googles and Facebooks of the world can guess at what you want better than you know yourself and it's wrong. And I think that the intentions that we have, you know, that I need this power supply this afternoon.
I need a wheelbarrow. I need, you know, I need a car that's seats seven and not just six because I'm taking people skiing. I need the roof rack too. That kind of thing is a lot of what we call MLO money left on the table right now. And as that starts to become manifest and as individuals start putting their own personal data to use what a company in the us called personal.com calls, they're small data, not the big data, it puts it to you. It's not selling their data to marketers, but actually using their data to say what they intend to do that is going to cause a title shift. That there's gonna be a turn in the marketplace where suddenly the intentions of customers are going to be fully respected, which they aren't right now,
Craig mentioned yesterday in one of his presentations that what is going on in the API economy is sort of a tectonic shift, not just it's high thing
Shift
Same. So, so
Different metaphors, same point.
What I, what I was told when I studied economics, like, I don't know, many years ago, but, but there were already computers and, and we had an it department in economics. They said that such a thing as market transparency was impossible. Today we have that, has that changed the way resellers do business? What do you think, Phil?
So I think we have a lot more data and like you say, market transparency, but as doc pointed out, the way we're getting more data is by scraping crumbs together. As he was saying that I was thinking that you can't make a loaf of bread by scraping crumbs and matching them together. And really what we're trying to do with the intention economy, I think is create the right kind of transparency, right? Transparency that isn't created by inferring. What, what I want, but maybe asking me and letting me say what I want as I think about this whole, the world we've built in some ways, there's some disappointing things about how it's turned out. I was involved very early in e-commerce. I built one of the first online shopping mall thing called Imal. And we were quite successful in building tools that allowed merchants to go online.
And we, we had all of, I mean, when eCommerce started up, we had all of these dreams about how things were gonna be completely different online. But in fact, things aren't really different online commerce online is just scaled up mail order catalogs. It's really nothing more than that. Yeah. And you know, to take that analogy even further, Facebook is really nothing more than a souped up bulletin board. It it's kind of the same thing we had back in the eighties. We've just made it much bigger and scaled and, and made it, you know, taken out some of the friction. What we thought about e-commerce was this very different scenario where it might work completely differently. And that idea is what I'd like to say about that is that it's about ways not places. What we've built is all kind of places online to go out and shop. And those places are great. I buy a lot of things online, but in order to really change commerce, we have to create ways of transacting online. And that's really what the intention economy is about, is about coming up with and understanding the ways that people can transact online and, and more than transact interact online, relate online so that we create a, a real market, not just a bunch of silos where people go to shop, there's a difference between a market and mail order catalogs. Those are not the same thing.
Absolutely. So the, the interaction is, is what, what I'd be interested in drum. How do you think that that new technologies that help us build our online reputation, our online identity that we want to disclose? How could that help actually being more interactive in those silos we have today? How can, how, how can this help transform the silos into a marketplace? Where, where I go out buying shoes and they do not offer me same kind of shoe, but different color, but they offer me the trousers and the shirt to match, right.
I, I think the single biggest change that's gonna happen, that's gonna enable that is what it, it goes by various terms. But my favorite is personal cloud. I know that that key calls of personal domain, and I think we're talking the same thing there, but the shift that's gonna happen. And I think that's most gonna enable the intention economy is that we go from the interacting to the web as, as, as phising to those going to places with our little windows on those places. Okay. This is a very effective window. It's made that, that, that whole experience, you know, much better and more mobile, but it's still just a window under those places. Now this starts the trend of putting apps on this that are doing things for me, but it's still right here. And it's just to this device, I turn off this device. It's as soon as I turn around and say, wait a minute, what if I have my little piece of the cloud up there? Right? What if I have my personal cloud? What if my personal cloud then is a place where my personal data, not just, it doesn't all head, just still live there, but it's a dashboard for all that. What if that can actually communicate with the rest of the world similar to the way I use email today, only now it's actually data that can flow back and forth, but
It's under your control, right?
It's under your control and these, those new connections, which we call personal channels. Those are revolutionary because now when I go to a site today, there is one service that's made it tremendously convenient for me to go and connect with that site and actually share information. Even, even my social graph is Facebook connect. But every time I use Facebook connect, I'm putting Facebook in the middle of a relationship with a site out there. So Facebook is the one that's gathering all that data. They're sitting in the middle of that relationship. If I can go with my personal cloud and connect directly to that site, if, if they, when I showed up to that shoe store, right. And what I'm able to share in as little as one button click, or even none, if I've authorized that relationship is the information they know to say, oh, we understand your size. We understand you're actually looking for shoes. In fact, we understand what you're doing is you're preparing to go to a prom. Now they can really help me cuz they understand what my ultimate intention is. Right? I think that's personal clouds and personal channels are the single most enabling technology for that.
Okay. Scott, what do you think needs to change to actually get Facebook out of the way and, and, and get those personal channels up online and, and actually help me as a person online?
Well, the systems were built that was systems we have now were built ancillary to other business functions. So identity systems for banks were used for certain purposes. Identity systems for healthcare were used for certain purposes and now identity has its own independent value. So the bank and the telcos and everyone else has realized that data has value. It's not just their core business, it has value. So just like what happened with derivatives and software, those that value's being detached. But what we did is we built systems that had valves that were one way valves. So when I buy a book on Amazon, I am the consumer of a book, but now there's a backflow. And that backflow is data. I'm not a consumer of the data, I'm a producer of data. So there's, I think it's a condition in the heart condition called a mitral valve prolapse.
When you have a leaky valve, we have leaky valves, but we don't have a two way valve. It's not designed yet to be a valve that accommodates the data flow the other way. And so what we are doing, the, the piping, the blood vessel is both technology tools and legal rules that compose that container for the, for the data flow. And the challenge is that we're having data is increasing exponentially and it has value. So we have in our midst, an in something that's increasing in value exponentially, and we don't have any piping for it yet. And so what we need to do is be designing the system so that it can accommodate the flows both ways in recognizing that there are all sorts of different flows and value propositions that are existing in those systems. And since we're in Germany with a tradition of fine engineering, we need to be revisiting our engineering and our specifications, both legal and technical to accommodate those value flows.
So is it sort of that we, we now have sort of a half duplex way where I send data. I, I want to buy something, then I buy it. And then, well, I, I choose if I want to make this visible somewhere. You know, we all know the, the Amazon internal system works pretty well. People who bought this also bought this. Do you want to see like that? But how, how can we actually change the, the way we do business online today? Because as from your statements, I see that we do not have the, the, the capability of transforming this half duplex into a controlled, full duplex. How, how can we as hopefully maintainers and controllers of, of our own personal data contribute to the advancements of, of, of those technologies? How can, can we, as consumers make our demand visible that we want this, that, that we think this is, this is something that's beneficial for us, but we want to stay in control. Marcel, do you have an opinion on, on that?
Yes. I, I think what you're talking about here is putting the individual in control about their own data. And what is, what is, what is an important step to, to make is that you should be able to do smart things with it and looking at, at all kind of commercial activities. In that sense, you, you should also turn around the, the whole world concerning to advertising and to, to media, because in, in, in a model where you have this, this trust framework, where as a as, and you can be a note in the system, this also means that you can think of applications, which place you as a person in the role of your personal media agent. So when, when I can have all this data together, then I should not be forced to expose this data, but I, you should turn around the world little bit more and see that when we are used today to, to, to give data, to, to, to a company, to give data to a certain, a certain kind of knowledge, I believe that we are getting there, that the knowledge can come to my data. So, and this, this, this is a very interesting phenomenon because when, when knowledge can come to my data, all kind of parties now today gathering data can stop because the intention economy is, is about, is about relevancy and to, to be able to be relevant, you should know the one. And the nice thing of that is that to be relevant, you, you need a lot of data. And actually it's not about the data. It's about the relevancy. So relevancy in, in relation with privacy in relation with being a node in a system,
Makes, gives the opportunity to be very relevant without knowing anything about the one you have in front of you.
Absolutely. What, what just came to my mind is how, how absolutely broken that, that, that system is that we, that we have today, you know, you're going shopping online for something, let's say a new mobile phone, and you know, all those dreadful cookies, you buy that phone somewhere and four weeks afterwards, you still get those advertisements for that same phone. How stupid is that? It's, it's, it's just, it's so broken and I'd really be interested. What, what, what needs to change in the, in the plumbing of, of the system that, that we are using today to, to change that? How, how can my intentions be made visible to those who are interested in these relevant intentions that I have?
One thing I really want to make clear about the intention economy conversation and the tectonic shifts that I was talking about the other day is that this full duplex conversation between the relationships that get built based on agreement is not just about eCommerce. We're not just talking about things to purchase. This is about what KuppingerCole calls a life management platform. It's about what I'm up to, what I'm doing, my, the relationships with everyone, not just buyers and sellers. So it's really important, even though so far, every conversation we've had here now is about, you know, how, what, what is the process and the mechanisms and infrastructure used to, to buy things that we're talking about something much bigger than e-commerce. Yeah, this is, this is using technology and infrastructure to automate and form relationships that, that make life better and more richer and more rich without being tied up into the technology itself. It's, it's something much more than e-commerce. So
I wanted to point that maybe just tell me if I'm wrong, but looking at TripIt just telling the guys you trust that you are going somewhere, you're going to Munich on Leim to attend a conference. And Hey, there are more guys that I know going there. I can meet with them. Ain't that one big part of it.
It is, but also think about something like, you know, what it takes to, to do, give information about your medical history in a permissioned way, or to even deal with the, the community that, that manages your health and the things that you do in your life. And, and,
Oh, the restaurants that, that you are going to right. Allergies and stuff
Like that. Right? So travel, you know, there's all these things that you do in your life that aren't about I'm going out to buy something that, that needs to be included in this conversation of, of building infrastructure. That allows a two-way conversation that lets you know about what I'm up to, what the ways are not where I'm gonna travel to and pull out my card and buy.
So doc doesn't that mean that I'm trying to do what five star hotels used to do. I'm going there regularly. They, they keep on file everything. I do everything I like. I dislike next time I come there, they, they have the flowers. I love, they have the food. I love ain't that something
It's something like that. But it's not just that, that still makes the assumption that the seller is in charge of the other relationships
That I will, will do that, that I will let them know that
Stuff. But it's part of the full duplex. We don't even have a half duplex conversation right now. We have a simplex conversation with a few minimal feedback, largely in the form of cash and, and not much else. I mean that's, and that's, what's normative and has been for some time. And, and we've, we're at a, a funny stage in history where, where an awful lot of effort is going into improving, guesswork. And assuming that endlessly improved, guesswork is going to handle things. And, and what Craig's talking about is that there's a mistaken assumption that we are buying things all the time. We are not buying things all the time. This is what's really hurting Google right now, the assumption a that you're always buying something, which, which is really corrupted their search results at this point to the, to the point at which if you wanna look up a minor thing, like how to fix your computer, you're gonna go through five or six pages, even of crap.
That's all advertising at you. When all you want to get to is the, is a, a spec sheet, you know, or something somebody posted once on how to get the screws off your computer, that, and which five years ago, you'll be easy to find that stuff it's much harder now because the, the commercial web has overcome absolutely overcome the, the, the web of documents that it was in the first place and getting in the way of what it can be, which is a matrix of relationships that are voluntary between people and things and, and, and the world that we live in. And, you know, the, the original nature of a marketplace of a natural public marketplace was where we go to do business and make culture. We know some people who don't know some other people, but we are in charge of how we interact with that.
And we've barely begun to build out what that's going to be online. And what gets in the way is, is the assumption that we have enough technical stuff already. That's gonna kind of take care of that. We need several things that we don't have right now. One is a way of asserting our intentions around use of data and, and what a relationship is. And for example, look, I, I, I will let you know, my credit's good, even if you don't know who I am yet, I will let you know this amount of health there, health data about me, if that's interesting to you, but you're still not gonna know who I am, or if you do know who I am, and you're gonna have, you're gonna be able to use this data in a permitted way. That is also auditable. That's part of what some of us have been working on here.
So that, so that somebody misuses the data, it's essentially watermarked in a way so that, so that it can be found. So, and so there could be, so that could be followed, but even thinking about that requires that we give up on the cell side, on the corporate side, the notion that we are in charge, we're not, and, and, and I'm gonna broaden this out a little bit to bring in something Phil's been writing about lately, but it's an insight that a, a, a physicist named Jeffrey West came up with, which is an answer to the question of why companies die and cities live. You can bomb a city, you can fill it with disease and half the people die off. And yet cities tend to live. All companies die. Companies are not trees that grow to the sky. Every company will show you how they are a tree that grows this guy, but Facebook thinks it's a tree that grows. This guy, Facebook is going to die. The nature of its business means is probably gonna die. I think in the next five,
You've got somebody tweet that please. Yeah.
Face Facebook will die. Everybody. You heard it here last. I dunno, but anyway, but the, but so will Google. I mean, so will apple, so will every really successful company right now, they they're all gonna do, unless unless they become networks, the internet gave us a network that allows anybody to connect with anybody in a peer to peer way and become part of something larger that requires that every entity operating on it, be independent on autonomous and an ability and able to engage. That's what the intention economy is about. And that's what, we're just the earliest stages of, of people on this stage, frankly. And a few more out in the audience are just beginning to build out. Here's where here's a place where we keep data. Here's a, here's how trust network works. Here's another trust network. Here's some infrastructure. Here's a programming model. Here's here, here, here, here, here are ways of doing legal agreements. And we're just beginning to talk about that. But at some point there will be a flip and people will say, wait a minute, we've had this internet thing here for a while. And all been trying to do is trap and sell people. Maybe we could do better than that.
Yeah. Just, just one remark on that. Facebook will die thing. If, if you ever compare a fortune 500 list from the 1960s, with the ones that we have today, you rarely find any of those. You found in the sixties in that list today. And most of those died. They, they just didn't vanish. They died because a business models just vanished.
It's more, it's more than the business models, it's it? It's, it's the fact that they, the larger, they get the more energy they require to maintain for business that they're in. And they there's, what's called subline scaling networks scale in a super linear way. That's why the internet has succeeded the way it has. It's been super linear because nobody owned it. It was not, it was not a company. If a company ran the internet, it would be dead. Now,
Phil. Yeah. Okay.
Just, I was gonna, I was gonna remark. I, I think when you talk about travel and when was it Craig or dock? I can't remember talks about healthcare. I, I think those are both very important examples. I have a relationship with the healthcare professionals. I interact with that supersedes commerce. There is money that flows back and forth, but that's not, it, it's not a transaction like with Amazon, right? I mean, we, we tend to think the Internet's always about this transaction, not the relationship. Right. And, and healthcare and travel are both good examples. I think of places where relationships matter, you brought up trip. And I think it's a great, like microcosm in some ways of, of what we're talking about in the sense that, you know, a trip is much more than buying things. Absolutely. And I have to buy things to go on a trip, but that's not, you know, that's not the purpose.
Isn't the buying things. It's the travel. And you know, I go to the doctor, the purpose, isn't the buying something. It's what I'm trying to do. And you know, when Drummond talks, he gives, he gave a commerce example of the prom. I'm not going to the prom anytime soon, but, but you know, the, the, it's the going to the prom that matters not renting the tuxedo. And somehow the internet has become just about the transaction. I think partly because it's really good at, that's really good at the transaction. That's quick. Yeah. And, and it was really easy. I mean, you know, it wasn't trivial, but it was easy to figure out how to do the transaction. But, but the, but the creating the relationship and creating the market, the network right. And market is a network, not a single place. Okay. I went to the grocery store right next door. Is it Kaufman? Cal?
Yeah. Kaufland yeah.
Kaufland that's right. And, and I had an interesting experience. I, I bought an ice cream bar and a diet Coke, and I stick it on the, on the conveyor belt. And I, it goes down the conveyor belt, the checker rings it up. I pay for it. I give the checker a 50 Euro note. He asks me if I have anything smaller. I say, no. And then he asks me if I want a bag. I say, no. Now that sounds unremarkable. Except for the fact that he was speaking German and I don't speak German. So how did I know what to say when he asked me this? Well, the reason I knew what to say is because there's a protocol, right? There's a protocol for how we buy things at the grocery store. And it's the same in Germany as it is in the us. I knew when I handed him a 50 year old note and he asked me if he had any, if I had anything smaller, that that's what he was asking me. Even though I didn't understand a word that he was saying. And that's an example of what we have to build in order to create markets or networks of relationships online is we have to flesh out all of these protocols for how we're gonna interact with each other. So that even though you're speaking German and I'm speaking English, we can still get along.
It's it's the, the receivers and the, you need to have some sort of a translation service that actually gives you an understanding of that protocol. No matter what you give into that channel, into that full duplex line, it needs to be translated so that the receiver can understand what the intention was. Right.
That that's exactly right. So, so if we both speak the same protocol, the, the issue is Syntac, right? The, the checker example, it was purely syntactic. It was all form. The reason I could, or the reason we could cooperate was cuz it was all about the form of what we were doing, not the meaning of the words. Now, as soon as something weird happened, the protocol would break down and then we would need semantics. We would need language in order to negotiate, whatever exception happened in that process through party or, or, or something or yeah. Translator or something else. And I think you're exactly right, that what we have to have is we have to have a way of getting to protocol easier than what we have had in the past, because it it's always been about just creating this pure syntax. And I think that what Tim burner's lease saw maybe a decade ago, and many of us are only starting to realize now is why the semantic web that he called that is so important because, because it really is about that idea of translating between different protocols. That's, you know, and I, you know, I could go on and on about how it's been hijacked by the academics and everything else. Cause I am an academic, but, but that's a different issue. I mean, it, it is an, you you've hit on a very important point of translating between protocols is what's gonna make this viable, but,
But I really like to dig a little bit deeper into that semantics stuff, because if you, if you want to have a discussion about the semantics doesn't that require you to also talk about ontology don't don't you need to, to really talk about how we talk about don't. We need to make sure that what I say is understood by you. You know, I'm, I'm having a hard time speaking English because I'm a non-native speaker. And I try to talk with giants here and not lose it, but don't, we need to have a, a way a sort of a basic ontology that, that we need to all buy into to make this happen.
You don't, you don't necessarily need one, but you do need a way for the semantics to be understood throughout. I mean, so one of the challenges of moving to personal clouds is companies have the resources and every CRM system out there that is relating to us today has its schema. It's ontology. That's working against one of our gentleman that is working with on VM for quite a while. Ian Henderson in the UK has very deep experience with CRM and has designed and basically said if, if an individual wants to have everything that they would need to interact with CRM system, it's about 4,000 pieces of data. It's, it's a very large scheme it's but it's a perfectly reasonable, you know, task. It's just, that's really designed. They have a database, you have a database. If we're going to connect all these personal clouds, if we're gonna have a way of actually casting intent out there, like if I just casting intent out there club, right?
Well, are we talking a golf club? Are we talking a social club? I mean, what, what does that mean? Right. So we do have to have a way to, if, if, if I'm gonna be able to just go to my personal cloud and say talks for, for example. Yeah. It's, it's, you're gonna have to have the context. And if that goes out onto a channel, rather than me having to go to a site, then the different potential vendors that might actually want to say, okay, I wanna understand the intent to come back and offer you something. They are gonna have to understand that.
Yeah. Scott, you wanted to add something.
Yeah. I was something that occurred to me when you asked that question, we a universal language, right. And that occurred to me, tied into the conversation we had before. And I think the universal language here, and the reason we have commercial development on the web is that money is more translatable. Mathematics is more translatable. Where is the numerosity of it?
And intent is not
My son once got some cash for Christmas time. And he said, ah, cash, the universal gift card. And I thought that was really interesting cuz it's non it's non-enterprise based gift card. Right? So shows you as two lawyers as parents. But the, but the, but the point is, you know what, we've done that even though it seems like a, a prison in some ways, it'll also possibly be a path to liberation here. Cause you think about the Agora, the tradition of where commerce politics and social activities occur. Those we are paying for programming here with something Facebook and Google have the same model as CBS and NBC in the United States network TV called network, interestingly network TV. But the model is advertising pays for programming here. The programming is more interactive on Facebook and Google, but it's programming and the customer is not the person viewing the programming.
It's the advertiser exactly the same as network TV. But here it's a little bit different because of that counter flow. We have the opportunity for greater efficacy to be built in the consumer. What's now called the consumer and what is actually the data producer, because if we start having assistance, be reliable, then just as people will put money in a bank, if they see it as reliable, instead of keeping it home under a mattress, they'll put data into the system that will increase their efficacy because they'll be feeding the feed stock of the system. And again, it's a commercial vector for it and it's not the entire story, but there has to be a way to pay for the expansion of we're trying to accomplish here on the social and other sides. And I think that that kind of ties together. That issue we were talking about before, about the lamentation, about the commercial emphasis. I think what we're seeing is just the building of the Agora.
So we we've been talking about CRM quite a lot and how companies today are still trying to sell us something and building huge databases about all my preferences and well, they, they invested so heavily there. What do you think would, would we, as a community need to do to make them give up on that investment and say, you know, you could do better business with me if I just let you know what I want and you just don't try to figure it out right by yourself.
Well, that's, that's a very nice one because what, what, what we do today, living in, in hundreds of databases, we even don't know where we live. That's and you see that in, in very many ways, you see this, this happening and finding each other is, is very, is, is quite a task to, to where do I, where do I have to expose myself? And where do the other one has to ask his question because do we meet, have, do we have the chance to meet in that sense? There is such a lot of rubbish on, on the web it's it's, it's not, you are not able to meet and what, and this was a nice, we had a nice email conversation with my colleague Martin, about where we from from the key perspective, say, okay, CRM is actually is, is an old fashioned way of, of, of doing so when, when you are living in a digital world, you should be able to be there.
So when you have this ability to, to go to this process, to, to, to have this, to be this note in the system, and this note in the system can have this connection points to authentic data sources, which are yours, like your, your name or your street, where you live or whatever. Then I, I have this sources and I have the ability to make them available for someone who is relevant for me. So where, where, where Doug is talking about VRM we, without knowing that five, six years ago, we, we talked about CMR customer managed relation. So I, and I think those two terms are complementary to each other, but, but we, we like to think about the consumer customer individual centricity and from, and, and because the, the world is about people. And actually it's a bit of a holistic discussion here that, that it's so logical how it existed because all those companies, with all those efficiency they had to do had the money to start this whole thing.
When, when the internet protocol came, there was the money to invest in this mainframes and all those things. So when that started in, in the seventies and, and 25 years later, we got this worldwide web it's logical that, that the, the push was created. But then there was a, there is a lot of push and, and we are just at the beginning because the whole world of things is at the start now. So we, we have to turn this around and be able to be there and be in control and give data back. So I, I think personally, that's CRM systems should interface with me because I know best who I am.
It's, there's really nothing wrong with CRM. It's, it's what companies were trying to do to serve you better. Right? Let's gather the informa. I mean, the original problem CRM was solving was how does a company, especially a large one come up with a single view of a customer so it can serve it better. It's
A matter of time in
Time, but what, what Marcel's doing and what respect network is about doing at scale is saying, okay, that's what we could do before we had the internet before we had this ability to, to, for us as Marcel put, to be nodes on the system. As soon as we have that capability, now you can connect your CRM to me. Right? And, and, and that personal channel is if we talk about how we're actually gonna get there, I think the answer is we are gonna start as, as customers to offer that personal channel to the vendors and the vendors are gonna say, wait a minute, I have a competitive advantage over my competitor. If I go and get a personal channel to you first,
This is, this is just hilarious. All through your comments. I was thinking, I am a new user of Salesforce and I hate it. You know, I have to put all that data, all my Rolodex business cards into that tool. And I have to document everything I do with every one of you and I have to make others see what, what I did with you. So they are informed and probably 10 years down the road, you, you, somebody finds out, yeah, I should talk to Phil because I think he probably now needs this and that. I said, that's crazy. And I was, I was just thinking about how, how does that full duplex work? How do I give back? And that was just what you pointed out.
We,
As the ones who have a need, who have an intention need to have the capability to actually tell it to the relevant suppliers. But now here's, here's my question to you. How do I know who actually could serve that intent that I have? Who, how do I, as an educated user, as an educated consumer, be it an individual or a company, how do I find out who the best suppliers are? Who are the suppliers? How do I do that in the intention economy, same
Way you do now, it's called word of mouth.
Well, whoa,
There
Actually is a, but there is a, a term that we've been using called a personal RFP. It's just advertising in reverse. You know, I would, I would advertise that typical one that we talk about is, you know, I need a stroller for twins in, in downtown Munich in the next two hours, I have 200 euros who's coming through without giving up any personal or personally identifiable information, except to those vendors, with whom I already have a relationship. And that's, that's a protocol based thing to, to use Phil's terms. Who's
Working on that.
A lot of people are working on it mean this whole doing now.
And there is, is
How would that work with key right now, Marcel?
Well, I, I it's it's maybe we, we should, we should talk. We should, we'll
Make it work
Pitch. We have, we have, we have a very nice movie made about that because the advertising world, that's actually where we talking about and everybody is an advertiser and I'm an advertiser too. So it's, it's very nice to, to, to be able to profile yourself and, and to be able to, to make a split in identifying information and, and product information, as you wish. So what, what, what doc points out is, is okay. I, I, I put outside something, which so I'm not looking, I'm finding, so it's it's, this is the, this is the reverse way of doing okay.
Sebastian, one thing I wanted to point out was when you asked the question, shouldn't we get the CRM vendors to rethink this and, and reverse in what a bidirectional conversation go on. And that would also imply the people that, that supply data to companies who are trying to figure out how to communicate to you as a demographic, instead of a person, cuz they can't, there is no two-way conversation. So they want to, you know, peek into your life and where you went and what you did and, and, and put you in a container of age and group and buying practices based on where you live. And you know, some, some magic formula that will let them come up with the right advertisement that will extract that dollar from your wallet. You know, these people are so convinced that this is so magical and so important.
And so well thought out that I think they're gonna be the last ones to, to say, oh, sure, let's have a bidirectional communication. Not like that idea. No, they, you know, they're gonna going down that path until it's too late for them to do anything else. What, what I, what I expect to see happen is much more a, a, a new breed of thinkers that are saying, yeah, there's another way to go about this. That is an alternative to that while they're busy demographic, the planet to get their, their advertising dollar well spent. Okay. It's so inefficient and so crazy when you think about it,
Cause there's a new tweet coming up, sell CRM stock
Now. So I wanna add one quick thing here, and it's in support of what Craig says, but it's also in support of the people who in CRM see what's coming. And so, so CRM magazine may of 2010, almost the whole issue was devoted to VRM the cover of it was black and not, it had said, I am not an eyeball. They quoted large hunks of the clue trade manifesto, which I co-wrote with three other guys in 1999 calling for a lot of this stuff. The, but the thing is that they're not the, they're not the ones buying it. So CRM is an 18 billion business. That's a B2B sale to retailers and you know, and companies that are busy managing their salespeople and the demand for that stuff is still very high. And it's very so, so what's happening is that people at a lot of businesses is happening in broadcasting, is happening at Google and Facebook for that matter, it's happening with any large company where, where there's this split in our own heads.
It's like I'm over here being the customer. And I'm, I'm drowning in advertising and, and, and crap, that's guessing at what I want. And when I go to work, I'm producing that stuff. Right. And there's a market for it still. And that's the problem that Craig's talking about, which is, it doesn't matter today, how much they see the future. What people are buying now is the old stuff. Just like in 19, in 1982, a mainframes were way out selling PCs, but PCs came along and the end was obvious for what's gonna, what's gonna happen with computers. Great. So yeah, I just wanted to make one point of that. It's interesting while you guys were talking about that, I was thinking, well, it's interesting cuz if you have the personal RFP, it's kind of a mass customization kind of notion looking at the old kind of that's the conversion for the old paradigm in the new kind of thinking about it as in that way.
But it's the reality also is that when you want a ski rack, the ski rack doesn't magically appear because you summon it. There needs to be strategic decisions made to have inventories of ski racks manufactured. So when I go to the grocery store and I don't know what I want for dinner, I go in there and it helps. There are things already there. So there's an anticipation and needs that has to happen. Also what this, what all of these approaches enable is a higher resolution understanding of markets because groups still will make dis express preferences through markets. It's not just individual preferences, low sodium vegetables in a can are available because groups make pre requests for it. It's the same thing as the orphan drug problem. If you look at the gates foundation, they fund to create markets for orphan drugs or drugs that aren't developed, cuz the people won't be able to afford them. You, the creation of markets also helps drive preferences and drive the availability of things that are, can then be personal RFP. So there's a, here there's a higher resolution conversation that goes on as a result of these modalities that improves both sides of the equation.
But so, so that from my interpretation, that means that there is still a, a room in the market for CRM, for VRM enabled CRM in the way that I, as a valued customer of that organization, put out my personal RFPs, my personal RFPs. And through the way I issue those personal RFPs, that company could still learn what my desires are and probably come up with a very personalized ad for something that I didn't even put up a person at RFP yet because they just followed closely what I was advertising, what I needed. And then they could just say, oh, he bought this. And he bought that, oh, probably he needs that iPad connector for the TV, whatever. Right.
That's, there's a, a significant element of trust involved there, which is you're building that relationship. And then when I get recommendation from Amazon, I do a lot of shopping with Amazon. So I inherently know I have a trust relationship there that they probably know enough about me and I trust the brand enough that I'm going to give that recommendation some weight. So as we develop this, this network of empowered customers, personal clouds that are connecting trust does become a critical factor. And that's why reputation systems are gonna be, you know, a key element of what we're doing. That's connect that me is about starting to develop the socially verified reputation, which the next step will be to take it over to the vendors, take it over to the company.
That was another question I would pose because when, when I, as a, an individual go to connect me and try to get vouchers for, for, for certain traits for certain technologies that, that I may be an expert or not. And that would actually enable me to receive requests for consulting on that. Right. That's right. So why don't we just move that to the next level and do it for, for the companies. And I vouch that this service provider actually did great in delivering this or that service or delivering me this and that product. So they could be easier. It would be easier for another individual to find that vendor and actually address that person at RFP to them, right.
Especially your friends or contacts that have a trust relationship with you and therefore your recommendations carry even more weight with them.
So are you saying that a trust framework is digital word of mouth
Sort of
That's wow.
Right down. You nailed it. Okay. We are, we are already six minutes ahead of time. So no, just kidding. Yeah. That's that's about it, right? So yes, I, I, I read an article once that had the headline. Why trust is bad. Anyone of you read that one?
When, when, when did that come up?
I think it's, it's been a few years. Maybe late nineties. It was, I wouldn't trust it. Okay. It was more about PKI and stuff, you know? So trust fans and stuff like that, but it just came to my mind that, oh wow. Why trust is bad?
Yeah. See the guy who wrote that article, didn't really put that headline there, but the guy in advertising did. So he would buy that ad.
Well, read it as an attorney. I can help with the why trust is bad issue and
I'll including not attorneys, no pun intended. Right.
I'll let that hang in the air for a minute. The trust is bad because the potential for fraud, okay. It's misplaced trust. Or as the previous speaker was Mr. Boost, is that pronounced? I'm not sure pronunciation's last name, but he was talking about trust. So he was describing a situation. I might trust that Amazon has a situation. That's gonna send a book to me next day. No problems, no friction on the book purchase, but I might not trust other parts of the data collection part of it. So trust can be bad if it's transferred in a way that's inappropriate and it leads to a, a false expectation or expectation that can't be satisfied.
Well, I think we should spend another two minutes on, on that trust issue. Just there are commerce platforms online who establish their own internal trust systems, just like eBay, because large largest marketplace for that, you, you can earn your reputation through the, the good sales behavior you have. And there are so many cases of fraud where people were just summing up huge numbers of, of good recommendations, selling sent articles. And then they started selling really expensive articles and never delivering. How would that future system that we are establishing now be resilient against this kind of fraud German?
Well, that is, it's a challenge with reputation systems. And one of the things is, is, is you ever, if you have a reputation monoculture, like at eBay where it's all in one silo and there can be significant economic incentive to go in and game it in that way, I've had a number of people come up and talk about that exact case. And then I turn around and say, okay, well now let's look at a VRM network. Okay. Where it's the, the, the individual customers and the companies are triangulating that you have many different relationships, right? Many different social relationships have people voucher. Yeah. It's, it's not a silo. Okay. The network of trust, it's a network of trust. And therefore now you have to fool, not just one class of buyers on one dimension, you gotta fool all the people all
The time. So, so if I could, if I add that a little bit. So, so trust is an expectation of future behavior. Reputation is a measure of past behavior, right? And so what eBay is doing is they're measuring past behavior. They're, they're doing it in what, with what we call cheap pseudonyms. In other words, eBay uses pseudonyms, right? You don't know who the user is and they're cheap, meaning that there's no cost to getting another one in a system where there are cheap pseudonyms, bad reputations don't stick. Because as soon as I get a bad reputation, I just get another pseudonym. And so there's been a lot of study of eBay's reputation system. Nevertheless, eBay's reputation system is what made eBay without its reputation system, eBay would not exist. So, so what, what Drummond's talking about, and I think what an example we can use is Facebook for all of the negative things we say about Facebook.
Facebook has a very interesting property, and that is that it's very hard to be someone you're not on Facebook, because if, if you come and look at my profile and we share five friends in common, right? It's very hard for me to fool the five friends that you have into thinking I'm really somebody else with all of the various relationships we have. And of course, as that get, as that network gets tighter, it's very hard to be someone you're not on Facebook, which means that the pseudonyms, even if it's a pseudonym, the pseudonyms are not cheap, they're expensive because it takes time and effort to create that pseudonym. And so, and so, and so there are ways of creating systems where pseudonyms are not cheap and where we can measure past, past performance in order to establish some expectation of future behavior. Now, it won't be perfect. There's always gonna be opportunities for fraud because that's, I mean, we're all we're people, right? We're not creating a utopian society. We are just creating essentially a mirror of the world, but there are techniques that we can employ in order to create a system of trust that has a real underpinning and create, and is, is capable of at least detecting fraud at some point and auditing it and, and then prosecuting. So,
So what I would request then is sort of a disappointment button in those networks. So when I come to you and I I'd like to have some, some consultants work done by you and I'm disappointed, right? I'd actually liked my network to know that I was disappointed by the performance of Drummond. We need that then. Right? Because it hurts
The, the term we've. We have people coming today on connect me. You can only vouch. And we've had people come in and say, wait a minute. What about a grouch?
And it is, it's it, negative reputation is actually exponentially harder because it's, it's, it's much easier if you particularly in a commercial setting, I want to damage the reputation of my competitors. And it's much easier to game it if you can do it negatively. So what you have to build into the system is a, is a really high cost to do that. As in, you know, if that comes out, it's not my competitor's reputation's damage. Mine goes into trash. So you need to align all those incentives. And we are working with it, particularly when it comes to when you know, today it's only person to person on connect that meeting as we moved to the respect network companies join that. And, but you do need to have a way to say yes, I was disappointed. This did not work a complaint system. Yeah.
We're running out of time. So what I'd like to have for a closing is that besides trust and person at RFPs, I like to have each of each one of you mention one of the building blocks that we need to establish, to make the intention economy be supported and become real and, and effectively usable for us. And I'd like to start on that end.
I think reliability in both tools and rules to drive data leverage, I think settling on a simple set of terms and conditions that a user can assert
One page.
Oh yeah. Real, very much like creative comments has with copyright. Don't track me giving back my data when you're done simple things that are machine and human readable, that simple thing. And I think it's a, a requirement that we, we don't have it yet. We will.
Okay.
As a planet, we need to move from the thinking that that people and customers and employees are assets that are expendable to the thinking that people and, and employees and relat are relationships that are managed through agreements. And that those agreements are changeable and can work towards moving forward rather than controlling and, and in a hierarchy of this master slave client server design.
So I mentioned protocol earlier ways, not places. And I think what we need is a, a, a meta protocol, a way that we can create protocol easier, come to agreements quicker. And I think that lies in the semantic, you know, knowledge that you mentioned that that is so important to that.
I talked about personal channels earlier, and I think I'd be very specific if as soon as we can start connecting personal clouds with CRM systems and making it clear to, to companies, to vendors, how that is in their interest, then we'll start a dynamic where, you know, it's, it's like growing a social network only. It really is honest to goodness, a VRM network and the advantages are gonna start to multiply just the way they did with, as a social networks group.
Okay.
Okay. And my, my word should be independency to put people in control. I think it's very important to secure that.
Okay.
Can I just say love? All we need is love.
That's just great. Actually think it's better. Pizza CRUT. Okay. So closing, closing statement, the, the reason I gained so much insight on the VRM economy and the intention economy today is that I was standing on the shoulders of giants. Thank you so much for attending this panel and thank you for contributing and thanks for the attendees. Thank you so much, guys.