What makes a good school?

From the economist this week an in-depth look at the changing approaches to education. Very interesting reading for anyone interested in how children will (or won't) be educated in the coming years (Economist):

Above all, though, there has been a change in the quality of the debate. In particular, what might be called “the three great excuses” for bad schools have receded in importance. Teachers’ unions have long maintained that failures in Western education could be blamed on skimpy government spending, social class and cultures that did not value education. All these make a difference, but they do not determine outcomes by themselves.

The idea that good schooling is about spending money is the one that has been beaten back hardest. Many of the 20 leading economic performers in the OECD doubled or tripled their education spending in real terms between 1970 and 1994, yet outcomes in many countries stagnated—or went backwards. Educational performance varies widely even among countries that spend similar amounts per pupil. Such spending is highest in the United States—yet America lags behind other developed countries on overall outcomes in secondary education. Andreas Schleicher, head of analysis at PISA, thinks that only about 10% of the variation in pupil performance has anything to do with money.

Many still insist, though, that social class makes a difference. Martin Johnson, an education trade unionist, points to Britain’s “inequality between classes, which is among the largest in the wealthiest nations” as the main reason why its pupils underperform. A review of reforms over the past decade by researchers at Oxford University supports him. “Despite rising attainment levels,” it concludes, “there has been little narrowing of longstanding and sizeable attainment gaps. Those from disadvantaged backgrounds remain at higher risks of poor outcomes.” American studies confirm the point; Dan Goldhaber of the University of Washington claims that “non-school factors”, such as family income, account for as much as 60% of a child’s performance in school.

There is also a sobering league table (if your children live in Europe or the US) in the article:

Strategically Managing Data for Long Term Benefit

In this series of articles (1,2,3), I have attempted to describe the organization and development of a corporate-wide approach to data management. In doing so, I have suggested that product metadata is a good place to initiate a phase one approach to centralizing management of a business’s data. The underlying premise of this series is that data represents a core asset of any organization and, if effectively managed can produce incremental benefits to the organization as a whole.

In my view, the efforts detailed in the prior articles will have a material impact on the business in three ways: (i) The application of scale economies to the management of data; (ii) the attribution of control mechanisms (such as thesauri) and (iii) a greater ability to merge and mingle metadata to improve revenues. Below, I suggest how some of these benefits might be actualized:

Scale:

Centralizing metadata management allows the organization to take advantage of scale economies in factor costs, technology and expertise. Not every business unit can afford to acquire state of the art technology or the market’s best metadata expert but these types of decisions are almost encouraged if their benefits can be spread across the enterprise. The financial benefits of better data management can also be most appreciated and captured at the corporate level, thereby providing greater financial justification for the adoption of technology and staffing to support the data strategy.

Collective Dictionaries “You say tomato, I say tomato” - Thesauri, ontologies and the attribution of consistent cataloging rules:

Business units don’t speak to one another nearly enough and this is absolutely the case in the way they manage information about the products they sell. The manner and method one business unit may use to describe a product could be vastly different than that which a sister unit may apply to a similar or likely compatible product. Take, for example, a large legal publisher publishing journals and educational materials: It would make logical and strategic sense that the metadata used to describe these complimentary products would be produced using the same metadata language and dictionary, yet that is rarely the case. (Think of this as a ‘chart of accounts’ for data).

Additionally, the manner and method by which authors and contributors are required to compile (write) their authored materials are unlikely to take account of the potential for compatibility and consistency across content type. As is readily apparent, traditional content silos are breaking down as users are accorded more power in finding specific content and an organization will be significantly hampered if it cannot provide relevant material to customers irrespective of its format.

Inter-relationships and cross selling:

Companies frequently leave it up to channel partners to aggregate compatible or complimentary products. Naturally, at the retail level this activity happens across publishers; however, to not provide the supply chain with an integrated metadata file that represents the best complete presentation of all the company’s products suggests a contradiction with the wider corporate business strategy of acquiring or developing products that ‘fit’ with corporate objectives. In other words, why doesn’t the company’s data strategy support the corporate business strategy in managing a collection of related and complimentary products and services? To do this, data strategy should be a component of business strategy planning.

The opportunity inherent in managing data in this manner will be a real ability to sell more products and services to customers. Providing relevant “packages” of content that add related and complimentary products to the item originally sought will generate cross- and up-sell opportunities. Why rely on a hit-or-miss approach provided by your channel partners? (Or worse, an association with a competing product). This activity is only possible with good data yet; if done effectively, can become a significant competitive advantage with incremental sales. Return on investment would be seen in metrics such as average revenue per customer and/or average shopping cart revenues. Importantly, selling more products to a customer who is already interested in buying from you is always easier and more profitable than finding new customers.

Market, promotions and branding:

Combining a company’s products in a logical manner reinforces branding and messaging. If product information is disaggregated and disorganized, it is likely that the branding and messaging in the mind of consumers similarly lacks effectiveness.

Channel Partner Relationships:

A company may be able to exert more leverage with a channel partner if it is in a position to represent all of its products in a coordinated and managed manner than if this interaction is dispersed across the organization

Matching and marrying data with partners will be less problematic and more effective if data models can be allied – time to market will be significantly reduced and planned benefits of the relationships should accrue in shorter time frames.

Additionally, providing a well-managed metadata file that supplies the type of product descriptive cohesion described above is going to benefit your channel partners as well, not only making their lives easier but also make them money by selling more of your products.

Acquisitions – integration of new data:

Historically, the integration of companies and new products with respect to product metadata might have been a haphazard affair. At a consolidated level this task becomes much easier with the added benefit that connections between products, adoption of standard dictionaries and standards may have an immediate financial impact. As noted before, it is likely the justification for the acquisition of the company in the first place was its compatibility or consistency with a strategy and it is logical that this be reflected in the manner in which the products are managed.

It is likely we will see that companies with ‘best in class’ approaches to data asset management will be valued more than those without. Increasingly, companies will be asked about their data policies and management practices and those which ‘under-manage’ their data will be seen as less attractive – for acquisitions, partnerships and other relationships.

Those are some of the general benefits of better corporate data management and developing a corporate data strategy. The effort required to implement a data strategy program isn’t inconsequential and planning should be rational and realistic; however, as data management across a business becomes more and more ‘strategic’ the faster you adopt an approach, the faster your business will benefit. If you believe the tasks involved are difficult (or near impossible) now, they are only likely to get more so; therefore, it would be best to get started now.

MediaWeek (Vol 4, No 37): Scholarly Publishing, Project Gutenberg, Literary Festivals, Lawsuits, + More

The New York Times takes up the issue of "pricy" scholarly journals and leads with their view point (NYT):

After decades of healthy profits, the scholarly publishing industry now finds itself in the throes of a revolt led by the most unlikely campus revolutionaries: the librarians.

Whoever pays the bills, publishing is not free. Under the traditional business model most of the costs were met by subscribers, though some journals do also charge contributors, making scholarly publishing one of the most consistently profitable, if least noticed, corners of the business. Elsevier, for example, reported profits of £724 million on revenues of £2 billion last year alone. According the Mr. Suber converting to open access “will involve some cost shifting, But also considerable cost savings” for libraries and university budgets.

The traditional model does have its defenders. After George Monbiot, a British academic and journalist, published an article in The Guardian newspaper last month calling academic publishers “ruthless capitalists,” Graham Taylor, director of academic publishing at the London-based Publishers’ Association, told the journal Times Higher Education that all publishers “aspire to universal access” but that it would take time to find a “sustainable, scalable, funded” way to achieve it.

Writers at the Scholarly Kitchen blog, who are mostly involved in the less commercial end of publishing, said that although subscriptions for popular titles might be expensive, the cost for each individual reader remained very low.

They also noted that many titles with high fees for American or European readers were available free or at lower costs to researchers in the developing world through the Hinari program, a partnership of the World Health Organization and several major publishers including Elsevier, John Wiley and Blackwell.

Sir John Daniel, president of the Commonwealth of Learning, an organization that helps developing countries improve access to education, said such efforts did not go nearly far enough. “One of the major obstacles to education in the developing world is the lack of high quality teaching materials,” he said. “The countries we work with can’t afford journals; they’re already paying an arm and a leg for textbooks.”

“I’ve seen it from both sides,” said Sir John, who was once briefly on the board of Blackwell. “I saw the vast industry built up from publicly funded research, and it was never clear to me what value was being added. But if you needed the material, they had you over a barrel.”

On the whole this article meanders and doesn't offer any insight. The author notes the Elsevier profit numbers as de facto proof that academic publishers are blood-suckers.

Appreciation for Michael Hart the founder of Project Gutenberg from the Observer:

Those who knew him testify that Michael Hart was an extraordinary individual – idiosyncratic, original, humane, determined and generous to a fault. He never made much money, repaired his own car, had scant faith in medicine and built most of his own electronic gear from stuff he picked up in garage sales. On Saturday mornings over breakfast in the local diner, he would work out the optimum route to cover the maximum number of garage sales that day; it was his version of the travelling salesman problem in mathematics.In his obituary of Hart, his colleague Gregory Newby described him as an "unreasonable" man, in George Bernard Shaw's celebrated use of the term. "Reasonable people," wrote Shaw, "adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people."

From the Economist: It's good to have gatekeepers (Economist):

The more general question, however, is whether publishers like Amazon (and particularly Amazon) represent a threat to the older magazine model, in which a variety of articles are bundled together and sold for a price that, even on the newsstand, is lower than what a reader would expect to pay if buying everything piecemeal. Part of the reason readers buy magazines is because they are comfortable outsourcing some of the decision-making about content delivery, and welcome the fact that magazines curate the news. The last issue of the New Yorker, for example, included articles about Mr Perry, the gold standard, tarot cards, Wikipedia, Syria, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Virginia, and Rin Tin Tin.

According to the Economist there are a raft of regional literary festivals going on in Asia. I need an invite. (Economist):

In contrast to bleak conditions in Western book markets, the Indian divisions of international publishers are busy signing up new authors. London’s literary agencies have opened offices in India. Namita Gokhale, a novelist and one of the Jaipur festival’s organisers, says that South Asia is having a “literary moment”. It is “exploring its place in a new world” in English, while also maintaining traditions in the region’s native languages. She believes making sense of South Asia’s many upheavals has something to do with the outbreak of writing and reading.

Fellow traveler Peter Brantley is now writing for Publishers Weekly. Here on defining "library" (PW):

We are now engaged in acts of social reconstruction. Just as digital networks have forced us to deeply question the role of publishers, they also force us to reconsider the role and purpose of libraries, which developed in the modern era around the presumption of the Industrial Age book right along with publishing. A library fills many needs in its community; it is an after-school day care and gaming center, an employment hall and meeting space, offering shelter and privacy. It has also been a place with shelf upon shelf of CDs, newspapers, magazines, and books. Indeed, our understanding of libraries is so bound up in the physical world that their presumptive value has most often been measured through a single proxy: how many books they hold.

Statement from Paul Courant of the University of Michigan in response to the Authors Guild suit against scanning (UM):

“The University of Michigan library has been digitizing books for more than 20 years Sections 108 and 107 of the federal Copyright Act provide the guidance and the authority for this work, which supports our ability to preserve and to lawfully use the collections that we have purchased and maintained. Moreover, our digitization efforts enable us to make works accessible to people who have print disabilities because the overwhelming majority of works have never been available in an accessible format.

And from the twitter this week.

From InfoBoy: New Report from EU: Electronic Clearance of Orphan Works Significantly Accelerates Mass Digitization: Link

IBM starts its own NYC high school: http://bit.ly/qvl4Ad

Pearson buys virtual school co for $400 million | Reuters uk.reuters.com/article/2011/0…

....

And in sports, Lancashire County Cricket Club which hasn't won a championship for 77 years won one this week on a squeaker end to the season. For Mr PND Senior who is Chairman of the Club, I think this is almost a crowning achievement. And, they get to go to the Palace. (MEveningNews)

Corporate Data Program: Where to Start?

The following post represents the third installment of my data strategy presentation.

There are likely to be many approaches to initiating a corporate data strategy but, for my money, I would start with product metadata. Theoretically, this is data you maintain the most control over (you will find out if you actually do during your initial review). In my opinion, product metadata should be considered the basic foundation upon which to build a corporate data strategy.  

On this foundation, a “data value” can be assigned to all the data a business produces. Product data might also be seen as the data asset from which all other corporate data flows. For example, as businesses begin to generate more user/transaction data, this information will be far more valuable if it is tied back to robust product metadata. Establishing your corporate data strategy around product metadata also has another advantage in that the company is always best placed to manage the information that describes their products.

How companies describe and interrelate information about their products is increasingly viewed as the most proactive activity a company can impose on supply-chain partners (or directly to consumers) in order to positively impact sales. The deeper, more descriptive and interconnected the metadata is, the better all products will perform in a sales environment that is increasingly congested. Unfortunately, only a small number of companies manage their data in a uniform manner and, typically, descriptive metadata continues to be poorly managed and locked in silos deep within organizations. Ironically, if the logic of a “corporation” as a collection of assets makes sense from a financial point of view, isn’t that logic undermined by the disaggregation of information about the collective assets of the organization?

For many companies, this describes their product data management ‘philosophy’. As such, their data management is more reflective of their own internal structures rather than a pragmatic understanding of the mechanics of their markets. Just as consumers seek products and services – often via search – in the broadest sense and not in accordance with artificial corporate hierarchies, the smart approach to product metadata management would be to centralize it at a broad or corporate level. This approach would facilitate the most effective integration of all products so that the best combination of product options can be presented to a customer.

In choosing product data as the first practical implementation for your data-strategy effort, your team will also benefit from an existing set of methodologies, policies and procedures. (This wouldn’t necessarily be the case if you were to choose customer data or web traffic data, for example.) In launching this first initiative, your internal communications will want to explain to the individual business units and the business as a whole what benefits they will realize as the project becomes operational. All participants in the metadata initiative will be striving for a ‘future state’ where each business and constituency will be able to spend more time analyzing and leveraging better and more complete data. Thus, the future state will be materially different than the “legacy environment,” where staff spend their time chasing and remediating data rather than benefiting from value-added tasks supporting their business units.

In my next post, I will spell out in more detail what benefits may accrue from this initiative but, overall, they include the application of scale economies to the management of data, the attribution of control mechanisms (such as thesauri) and a greater ability to merge and mingle metadata to improve revenues.

MediaWeek (Vol 4, No 36): Amazon Digital Library, Piracy, Newspaper Disruption, Private Blackboard + More

Jeff Trachtenberg of the WSJ reports that Amazon may be looking to launch a digital lending library for books.

It's unclear how much traction the proposal has, the people said. Several publishing executives said they aren't enthusiastic about the idea because they believe it could lower the value of books and because it could strain their relationships with other retailers that sell their books, they said. Amazon didn't immediately respond to requests for comment Sunday. The proposal is another sign that retailers are looking for more ways to deliver content digitally, as customers increasingly read books and watch TV on computers, tablets and other electronic devices. Seattle-based Amazon makes the popular Kindle electronic reader and is expected to release a tablet to rival Apple Inc.'s iPad in coming weeks, people familiar with the gadget have said

Spotting The Pirates from The Economist and like most things piracy isn't simple:

Media piracy is more common in the developing world than in the rich world (see chart). The most piratical countries are places like China, Nigeria and Russia, where virtually all media that is not downloaded illegally is sold in the form of knock-off CDs and DVDs. But there is also great variation among rich countries. Piracy is far more widespread in the Mediterranean than it is in northern Europe, including Britain. America may be the least piratical country of all—oddly, since Napster was born there.
...
The result is that big labels have pruned their Spanish operations. Universal Music has shed a third of its Spanish staff. Max Hole, who runs Universal’s businesses outside America, says the firm is “holding out” in Spain, but largely in the hope that it will discover an artist who appeals to Hispanics in the United States. Mr Kassler says EMI is spending five or six times as much in Germany, a low-piracy market where music sales are declining more gently—by 11% between 2006 and 2010.

Again from The Economist their last essay in their recent special section on the Newspaper industry (Econ):

In the past decade the internet has disrupted this model and enabled the social aspect of media to reassert itself. In many ways news is going back to its pre-industrial form, but supercharged by the internet. Camera-phones and social media such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter may seem entirely new, but they echo the ways in which people used to collect, share and exchange information in the past. “Social media is nothing new, it’s just more widespread now,” says Craig Newmark. He likens John Locke, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin to modern bloggers. “By 2020 the media and political landscapes will be very different, because people who are accustomed to power will be complemented by social networks in different forms.” Julian Assange has said that WikiLeaks operates in the tradition of the radical pamphleteers of the English civil war who tried to “cast all the Mysteries and Secrets of Government” before the public.
News is also becoming more diverse as publishing tools become widely available, barriers to entry fall and new models become possible, as demonstrated by the astonishing rise of the Huffington Post, WikiLeaks and other newcomers in the past few years, not to mention millions of blogs. At the same time news is becoming more opinionated, polarised and partisan, as it used to be in the knockabout days of pamphleteering.
Not surprisingly, the conventional news organisations that grew up in the past 170 years are having a lot of trouble adjusting. The mass-media era now looks like a relatively brief and anomalous period that is coming to an end. But it was long enough for several generations of journalists to grow up within it, so the laws of the mass media came to be seen as the laws of media in general, says Jay Rosen. “And when you’ve built your whole career on that, it isn’t easy to say, ‘well, actually, that was just a phase’. That’s why a lot of us think that it’s only going to be generational change that’s going to solve this problem.” A new generation that has grown up with digital tools is already devising extraordinary new things to do with them, rather than simply using them to preserve the old models. Some existing media organisations will survive the transition; many will not.

From New York magazine and Boris Kachka on Why Debut Novels are Big Business Again:

But a funny thing happened on the way to austerity: growth. Book-publishing revenue is up almost 6 percent since 2008, and the monster advances are back, too—seven for first novels in the past year. “They’re coming back in a big way,” says Eric Simonoff, an agent at William Morris who sold a debut for more than $1 million in February. It may be that overspending isn’t such a luxury after all but a publicity pre­requisite, the only marketing gesture anyone believes anymore. HarperCollins’s Jonathan Burnham, who bid in the Harbach auction, often makes news by dropping seven figures on debuts, like Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones, which posted disappointing sales, and S. J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, which was more of a success. Burnham acknowledges the power of “measured overpaying”—“if it’s the right fit for the list, and it makes the right statement,” he says. “It creates a sort of sense of destiny, and in most cases, that’s a huge advantage. It becomes a source of gossip and excitement in the trade. Everyone’s twittering away about it—in the old-fashioned sense of twitter

Kachka refers to a Slate article entitled MFA vs NYC written by Chad Harbach (Slate)
The IHE hosted Digital Tweed blog has poses interesting set of speculations regarding the consequences of the privatization of Blackboard. This clip is from the intro of a long post: (DigitalTweed);

It’s been 20 days since the announcement that Providence Equity Partners would acquire Blackboard. The acquirer became the acquired in this transaction: Blackboard, which has spent more than a half a billion dollars over the past five years to buy a range of technology firms that focus on the education market (Angel Learning, Elluminate, iStrategy, NTI, Presidium, WebCT, and Wimba, among others) agreed to be purchased for approximately $1.64 billion.

Not surprisingly, the message from Blackboard, as reflected in a public letter from Blackboard CEO Michael Chasen, a blog post from Blackboard Learn president Ray Henderson, and an accompanying set of FAQs – is, in essence, that the sale to Providence will have little impact on the company’s relationship with clients. Chasen’s letter announced that he and the current management team “will remain in place and we do not anticipate any changes [in Blackboard’s] day-to-day operations.” Henderson’s blog provided some additional rationale for the financial deal, suggesting that private ownership frees management from the quarterly pressures to report continuously rising revenue and profits: “private equity now provides an alternative ownership model that’s more agile…firms like Providence include very long-term investors…willing to take longer-term perspectives.” Henderson also proclaimed that that the new owners “share our vision of improving the education experience for our clients, and of the mission critical role [Blackboard’s] platforms play in teaching and learning today.”

Repost from The Chronicle of Higher Ed: An Era of Ideas.

To mark the 10th anniversary of the September 11 attacks, The Chronicle Review asked a group of influential thinkers to reflect on some of the themes that were raised by those events and to meditate on their meaning, then and now. The result is a portrait of the culture and ideas of a decade born in trauma, but also the beginning of a new century, with all its possibilities and problems.

From the twitter this week:

Google to Buy Zagat: http://nyti.ms/rgpjIb

Elsevier's Scopus Data Drives Visualization of International Collaborative Research Networks for Max Planck MarketWatch http://bit.ly/pp9Bsv

HathiTrust full-text index to be integrated into OCLC services [OCLC]: http://bit.ly/oG4FxL

Amazon’s Future Is So Much Bigger Than a Tablet | Epicenter | Wired.com http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/09/amazon-bigger-than-tablet/

World Trade Center August 1991

Another weekly image from my archive. Click on it to make it larger.

There was never a reason to think the towers weren't permanent.

Flickr Set

In addition to the images I've posted on Flickr and those I've periodically posted on PND, I have now produced a Big Blurb Book: From the Archive 1960 -1980 of some of the images I really thought were special.

I now have an iPad version of this book for sale ($4.99) on the Blurb site which you can find here: STORE

I have to say, even on the iPad the book looks pretty good.

Setting the Data Strategy Agenda

The following post represents the second installment of my data strategy presentation.
Once a company has recognized the tangible value of its data, the CEO will assign the role to a direct report making this initiative his or her sole responsibility. As noted in my first post, managing data as an asset is so important that it requires direct senior management responsibility and should not be delegated to the head of marketing & sales or IT (in each or any case, both bias and conflict with their ‘real’ responsibilities will prevent the program's benefits accruing to the entire business). In addition, the ability to break down silos, confront the assumed internal politics and impose a solution will be greatly diminished if the executive in charge already has other functional responsibilities. In my view, if this is the approach of the CEO, the initiative will fail. By way of example, the Chief Data Officer at Dun & Bradstreet sits at the highest levels of the company in recognition of the importance of data to that organization and is evidence of the strategic importance of that data.

The first task of the “Chief Data Officer” (CDO) and their team would be to conduct a business-wide data audit to determine where data is being collected, both through internal efforts as well as externally by customers, vendors and other partners. This is an important first step and should be as expansive and specific as possible. Things to look for include not only the data sources themselves but their quality (perceived or explicit), frequency of update or creation, source/owner, format, whether the data conforms to any particular standard and whether the data is ever validated against this standard. Reviewing standards might also include not just the data’s technical framework but also whether it is subject to normalization – to a specific categorization method such as BISAC, for example. I once undertook an effort like this at a large educational publisher and the process took about six weeks and required site visits, interviews and the reviews of policies and procedures.

During this exercise, it is more than likely that some amount of ‘visioning’ will take place and this feedback should be captured during the analysis; however, at this early stage, the only really important aspect of this effort would be where someone might say ‘we currently make use of this particular data source, but we would really like to use this other one and can’t because our systems can’t handle it’. Questioning and challenging the current state should be the focus during this evaluation stage. There will be ample opportunities to focus on the ‘to be’ environment as the project evolves.

Out of this ‘baseline’ analysis will come several recommendations concerning how the data strategy initiative will roll out. The baseline analysis will define all existing data sources, the resources required to manage each effort, the tools deployed in support and perhaps an estimate of what would be required to centrally manage the data operations. In turn, this analysis will form the basis of the business operating plan for the data strategy program and, in common with any business plan, it will include a set of objectives, suggested approach or tactical plan and the requirements or measurements for success.

It is likely the initial plan will be progressive in terms of scope and complexity for several reasons: Firstly, this initiative is likely to face significant internal skepticism and, therefore, early observed success will be important in retaining support. Remember, the CEO has also placed his or her ‘reputation’ behind this initiative, and for this reason, the initial roll-out should be modest. Secondly, taking a full-scale approach is unlikely to result in benefits that anyone will support, and finding and assigning an appropriate level of resources to an initiative of that breadth would be cost prohibitive. As often happens, trying to ‘boil the ocean’ will fail. Thirdly, starting the project on a relatively small scale will enable the project team to select a project scope they feel they can comfortably deliver on.

There are likely to be varying approaches to initiating a corporate data strategy but, for my money, I would start with product meta-data, which I will discuss in my next post.

The above is the second of several posts (1) on data strategy which I have completed for a presentation later this year.

Corporate Data Strategy and The Chief Data Officer

Are you managing your data as a corporate asset? Is data – customer, product, user/transaction – even acknowledged by senior management? Responsibility for data within an organization reflects its importance; so, who manages your data?

Few companies recognize the tangible value of the data their organizations produce and generate. Some data, such as product meta-data, are seen as problematic necessities that generally support the sale of the company’s products; but management of much of the other data (such as information generated as a customer passes through the operations of the business) is often ad-hoc and creates only operational headaches rather than usable business intelligence. Yet, a few data aware companies are starting to understand the value of the data generated by their companies and are creating specific business strategies to manage their internal data.

Establishing an environment in which a corporate data strategy can flourish is not an inconsequential task. It requires strong, active senior-level sponsorship, a financial commitment and adoption of change-management principles to rethink how business operations manage and control internal data. Without CEO-level support, a uniform data-strategy program will never take off because inertia, internal politics and/or self-interest will conspire to undermine any effort. Which raises a question: “Why adopt a corporate data strategy program?”

In simple terms, more effectively managing proprietary data can help a company grow revenue, reduce expenses and improve operational activities (such as customer support.) In years past, company data may have been meaningless in so far that businesses did not or could not collect business information in an organized or coordinated manner. Corporate data warehouses, data stores and similar infrastructure improvements are now commonplace and, coupled with access to much more transaction information (from web traffic to consumer purchase data), these technological improvements have created environments where data benefits become tangible. In data-aware businesses, employees know where to look for the right data, are able to source and search it effectively and are often compensated for effectively managing it. Recognizing the potential value in data represents a critical first-step in establishing a data strategy and an increasing number of companies are building on this to create a corporate data strategy function.

Businesses embarking on a data-asset program will only do so successfully if the CEO assigns responsibility and accountability to a Corporate Data Officer. This position is a new management role and not additive to an existing manager’s responsibilities (such as the head of marketing or information technology). In order to be successful, this position carries with it the responsibility for organizing, aggregating and managing the organization’s corporate data to better effect communications with supply chain partners, customers and internal data users.

Impediments to implementing a corporate data strategy might include internal politics, inertia and a lack of commitment, all of which must be overcome by unequivocal support from the CEO. Business fundamentals should drive the initiative so that its expected benefits are captured explicitly. Those metrics might include revenue goals, expense savings, return on investment and other, narrower measures. In addition, operating procedures that define data policies and responsibilities should be established early in the project so that corporate ‘behavior’ can be articulated without the chance for mis- and/or self-interpretation.

Formulating a three-year strategic plan in support of this initiative should be considered a basic requirement that will establish clear objectives and goals. In addition, managing expectations for what is likely to be a complex initiative will be vital. Planning and then delivering will enable the program to build on iterative successes. Included in this plan will be a cohesive communication program to ensure the organization is routinely made aware of objectives, timing and achievements.

In general terms, there are likely to be four significant elements to this plan: (1) the identification and description of the existing data sources within an organization; (2) the development of data models supporting both individual businesses and the corporate entity; (3) the sourcing of technology and tools needed to enact the program to best effect; and then, finally, (4) a progressive plan to consolidate data and responsibility into a single entity. Around this effort would also be the implementation of policies and procedures to govern how each stakeholder in the process interacts with others.

While this effort may appear to have more relevance for very large companies, all companies should be able to generate value from the data their businesses produce. At larger companies the problems will be more complex and challenging but, in smaller companies, the opportunities may be more immediate and the implementation challenges more manageable. Importantly, as more of our business relationships assume a data component, data becomes integral to the way business itself is conducted. Big or small, establishing a data strategy with CEO-level sponsorship should become an important element of corporate strategy.

In my next post later this week, I’ll comment on ways to approach a data strategy initiative.

The above is one of several posts on data strategy which I have completed for a presentation later this year.

The following are the other articles in the series:

2: Setting the Data Strategy Agenda

3: Corporate Data Program: Where to Start?

4: Strategically Managing Data for Long Term Benefit

Bertelsmann Reports Half Year - Lowers Full Year Estimate

From the company's press release:

• Group revenues rise to €7.2 billion
• Operating EBIT high again at €737 million
• Return on sales continues in double digits at 10.3 percent
• Group profit improves to €269 million

In the first half of 2011, the international media company Bertelsmann built on the strong results of the previous year and further increased key indicators. For instance, the company increased its revenues and group profit once more and achieved a high level of operating profit again. 

Group revenues from continuing operations increased by 1.9 percent to €7.2 billion after €7.0 billion in the comparable period last year. Excluding portfolio and currency effects, organic growth came to 2.4 percent; all divisions contributed to this. Operating EBIT was €737 million, down only slightly from last year’s record figure of €754 million. Return on sales amounted to 10.3 percent (H1 2010: 10.7 percent), putting it in the double digits once again. The Group profit rose by €23 million or 9.3 percent, to €269 million. This was due primarily to Bertelsmann’s content businesses. A further contributor was a substantially improved financial result that reflects lower interest charges in the wake of successful debt reduction and the discontinuation of negative income effects from the buyback of profit participation certificates in early 2010. The Bertelsmann Value Added (BVA), which measures the profit realized above and beyond the cost of capital, reached €88 million in the first half of 2011 (H1 2010: €82 million).

Comments on Random House

• Random House profits rise substantially driven by U.S.
• Triple-digit percentage sales growth in e-books
• Digital revenue potential strengthened through acquisition of digital media agency Smashing Ideas

The world’s largest trade book publisher significantly increased its operating EBIT in the first half, while recording a slight dip in revenues due to unfavorable exchange-rate effects. Revenues reached €787 million (H1 2010: €791 million) and operating EBIT €69 million (H1 2010: €40 million). The Random House operating EBIT benefited from a strong U.S. performance despite insolvencies and ongoing consolidations in book retail. Overall gains were driven by an outstanding portfolio of titles worldwide, with several million-copy print bestsellers, and the continued rapid growth in e-book sales across all territories. In the U.S., digital sales accounted for more than 20 percent of all revenues. At the reporting date, Random House imprints had more than 27,000 e-books available worldwide. Random House placed 145 titles on the “New York Times” U.S. bestseller lists in the first six months of the year, including the #1 bestselling “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand, and sold nearly four million copies of U.S. author George R.R. Martin’s epic fantasy series “A Song of Ice and Fire.” Random House Group UK increased its year-on-year sales and profits and published more than a quarter of all “Sunday Times” bestsellers. In Germany, Verlagsgruppe Random House improved its revenues and market share in a difficult overall market, and Random House Mondadori also outperformed the market in Spain. During the period under review, Random House, Inc. author Jennifer Egan won a Fiction Pulitzer Prize for “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” and Philip Roth won the Man Booker International Prize.

MediaWeek (Vol 4, No 35) Distance Learning, Libraries and E-Books, Digital Textbooks + More

Online enterprises gain a foothold in traditional education (NYT):

While many students at the nascent institutions offer glowing reviews and success stories, a recent study by Teachers College at Columbia University that tracked 51,000 community college students in Washington State for five years found that those with the most online course credits were the least likely to graduate or transfer to a four-year institution. And traditional professors like Johann Neem, a historian at Western Washington University, see places like Western Governors University as anti-intellectual, noting that its advertising emphasizes how fast students can earn credits, not how much they will learn.
“Taking a course online, by yourself, is not the same as being in a classroom with a professor who can respond to you, present different viewpoints and push you to work a problem,” Professor Neem said. “There’s lots of porn and religion online, but people still have relationships and get married, and go to church and talk to a minister.”
But Anya Kamenetz, whose 2010 book, “DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education,” tracks the new wave of Web-based education efforts, says the new institutions will only continue to improve and expand. “For some people, it will mean going from a good education to a great one,” she said. “For others, it will mean getting some kind of education, instead of nothing.”

Trade publishers beginning to look hard at practical ways to deal with libraries for their electronic content (LJ):

David Young, the chairman and CEO of Hachette Book Group, acknowledged back in May, during a Publishing Point Meetup interview with Michael Healy, the executive director of the Book Rights Registry, that the company wanted an accommodation with libraries but that it was a challenge finding the right business model.
"That is, I think, a really really big question, and I wish I knew the answer to it. All I know is we're putting a lot of thought into it. I'm meeting the president of the ALA in New Orleans in June and we're talking with our various partners around that. I think it's something that needs a lot of careful thought because if you let that particular genie out of the bottle and get it wrong then you could get yourself in all sorts of trouble. Should there be a library solution? I'm certain there should be, but what it is we haven't figured it out. We're putting a lot of thought and effort into it."
Carrie Russell, the director of the American Library Association's Program on Public Access to Information, confirmed that then-ALA President Roberta Stevens and ALA Executive Director Keith Fiels met with representatives from Hachette and HarperCollins at the annual convention to discuss publisher-library collaboration.

The year of the digital textbook is upon us (IHEd):

In recent years, the focus on digital has been eclipsed by a surge in print textbook rentals. Companies such as Chegg.com and BookRenter.com — along with thousands of campus bookstores — have captured students who would prefer to consolidate the process of buying and then reselling textbooks into a single exchange at the outset of the semester. According to Student Monitor, 24 percent of students at four-year institutions rented at least one print textbook last spring — three times as many as purchased an e-textbook.
But recent search data from Google suggest that digital textbooks may prove to be a contender this year. According to the company, Web queries for “Kindle textbooks” are up 60 percent from this time last year. Same goes for “Nook textbooks.” Searches for “iPad textbooks” are up 40 percent. Whether or not students are buying e-textbooks this year, they seem to be shopping for them.
Google search data also suggest that more students are looking to curb costs by renting textbooks instead of buying them. Searches for "textbook rentals" are up 20 percent. Searches for "cheap textbook rentals" are up 40 percent.
So what happens when the digital and rental trends overlap?
One way of answering this question is to say that they already have. CourseSmart, a consortium that sells e-textbooks on behalf of the five major textbook publishers, has never sold permanent licenses for its digital textbooks. “Your use of the service does not give you any ownership rights in the e-textbooks; rather, you only have a limited right to access such e-textbooks,” CourseSmart asserts in its terms of service.
Another way of answering is to say that digital and rental will never overlap. That is because, unlike print, e-textbooks are never sold; they are licensed. Without the permissions conferred by the “First Sale Doctrine,” which bars publishers from dictating the terms of secondary sales (or rentals) of their books, Chegg and other vendors can only serve as alternative platforms through which students can buy or rent e-textbooks from publishers. They cannot set their own prices.

Fairfax County libraries switch focus to electronic content: WAPO

Electronic formatting has shown to be more popular in some genres, such as adult fiction, where it captured 13.6 percent of the net revenue market share. Area librarians said children’s books, specifically picture books, are not very popular among e-readers yet because the format does not translate as well as do text-only books.
“Our collection is driven by budget and demand,” said Trish Van Houten, assistant coordinator for collection management and acquisitions for the county library system.
In November, just before Christmas, the system had 2,177 electronic titles checked out. In July, more than 6,250 titles were checked out.
“It’s always interesting to watch new technologies take hold and become standards,” Van Houten said. “We saw the same thing 10 to 15 years ago with tapes and CDs. Any time there’s a new technology, everyone has to learn how to use it.”
Many public libraries use OverDrive, a digital distributor founded in Cleveland in the 1980s, to provide their digital stacks for readers. Learning to make the switch from buying e-books to renting them can take some getting used to, library staff said.
“I think the technology is in transition right now,” Smith-Cohen said. “It’s not where [readers] want it to be. It’s clumsy for most first-time users.”

Are research papers a waste of time? An online debate at the NYTimes:

The trouble with the question of whether research papers or essays are a better assessment of acquired knowledge is that it’s based on a false distinction. Any good research paper must have an argument, and any good essay must support its argument with evidence.

It’s certainly true that the nature of research changed with the advent of search engines that can do the looking and sorting and even some version of thinking — all things that students were once supposed to learn how to do for themselves. It doesn’t take long to gather lots of sources, fit them to whatever claim one wants to make, and thereby produce something that looks like the result of hours in the library spent reading and deriving conclusions from what one has read. But now, as in the past, a good teacher should be able to tell the difference between a phony piece of writing and an honest one.

From Twitter this week:

Why Did Borders Fail in S'pore? http://jglo.be/bgsg "tired selection of books confused music/film section relentless promo of bestsellers.

Ann Patchett’s Book Tour: NYT

Representative John Conyers Wants Copyright Law Revision: http://nyti.ms/mQ1DdT. Would it be consumer friendly though?

McGraw-Hill eyes education unit spin-off - FT.com -

John Newcombe Kooyong 1976

John Newcombe Kooyong 1976

Another weekly image from the archive. Click on it to make it larger.
Close readers of the blog will recall the PND family lived in Melbourne Australia between 1973-77. The Australian Open was held over Christmas and New Years in those days and I was lucky enough to be able to attend many matches at Kooyong where it was held. This day was a little more special than normal because I and the parents were sitting in a court side box. Someone in the box loaned me their camera that day and for the first time I was allowed to shoot my own 35mm images. Unfortunately my parents didn't take the hint and I had to go back to my Kodak instamatic once the day was done.

Here John Newcombe - who may have been number one in the world at this point - has just beaten a young guy named Ross Case 6-4, 6-4, 6-1 in the quarter finals. Newk made it all the way to the final where he was beaten by Mark Edmonson.

The rest of the images are located here.

In addition to the images I've posted on Flickr and those I've periodically posted on PND, I have now produced a Big Blurb Book: From the Archive 1960 -1980 of some of the images I really thought were special.

I now have an iPad version of this book for sale ($4.99) on the Blurb site which you can find here: STORE

I have to say, even on the iPad the book looks pretty good.

From BISG: Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading - Now Shipping

A comprehensive study of U.S. e-book consumer behavior and preferences:

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• How did e-books and e-readers fare after the 2010 holiday season?
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• What devices are they planning to buy in the near future?
• Where are consumers buying their e-books?
• How are customers using e-readers versus tablets?
• Which digital devices are most popular with readers, and why?
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