To push people outside of their comfort zones.

To push people outside of their comfort zones. You will learn very quickly that your team can accomplish much more than you think IF you push them and support them. Did you ever wonder why people hire personal fitness trainers instead of working out on their own? It’s simple. The trainer pushes them beyond their comfort zone and can get them to do much more than they thought was possible. Why do people need someone to motivate them? I am not sure, but when it’s done right that person can do much more. While it’s the same body doing the same exercises someone is putting them in a different mindset. The trainer is telling them they can do it. They believe it and that belief allows them to achieve much more. This is also effective at work. People can meet tighter deadlines. They can add more features. They can build a better customer experience. They just don’t believe they can do it because it would require them to be uncomfortable. Get them comfortable being uncomfortable with EVERYTHING they are doing. How do you do this? You understand their specific role and their particular set of skills. Ask yourself: what else can they do that is a step beyond what they are doing today that leverages those skills? Is this person tapped out in their capabilities or is the project not big enough and THAT’s what tapped out. I do this frequently at Demand Media. For instance, we had a very successful young general manager who was responsible for one of our smaller web sites. He showed that he could think outside of the box and manage differently than our more seasoned executives. What did I do? I took a chance and told him he was now running our largest property (5 times as big), and he was a little taken aback. I told him I believed he could do it and why (remember always be specific and metric driven) and that I would make sure he was successful. He was hesitant, but I kept pushing and telling him I would support him and provide the resources he needed to do it his way. He accepted and within six months, I was asking myself how I could push him more. Push and push hard. Most people don’t want to stretch beyond their skill set if it involves risking their existing position. Encourage them to “lean in” to the opportunity and discover what else they can do beyond the status quo. The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it. ~ Michelangelo Most people, when left to their own devices, will choose to stay inside of their comfort zone. However, there is nothing motivating about someone doing the same thing they’ve done before, and long term they will be unhappy. So, do them a favor, do yourself a favor, and push them where they are entirely uncomfortable.

Being Human...RIchard Branson

1. Politeness Matters. As mentioned, Richard Branson was unfailingly polite. He mentioned to me that when he was a kid, if he criticized someone, his mother would make him stand in front of the mirror at home and say, "what you're seeing in others is really what you're seeing in yourself. So look in the mirror." This educated him on the key leadership habit of looking for - and then encouraging - the gifts and talents within other people. 2. Be Massively Independent. When Richard was just four years old, his mother stopped her car and instructed him to find his own way home, over many miles. When he was about 12, she told him to cycle 100 miles to Bournemouth alone, to visit a relative. He expressed to me that these childhood experiences were his mother's way of growing his self-reliance. And building the invincible inner core that has served him so well as an entrepreneur. 3. Screw It - Just Do It. What makes a great company (and great life) isn't so much the inspiring idea as the flawless execution around the big idea. As Edison once said: "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." Richard shared that much of his success came from his philosophy to disregard the naysayers and those telling him his dream was impossible and just get the dream done. (Please remember: the impossible is generally just the untried). This is a man with a giant bias towards action. 4. Lavish Praise on People. I know you know this: the bigger the dream, the more important the team. Having worked with many of the best entrepreneurs in the world, I've learned that every single one of them gets that you can't do it alone. Beautiful to have a brave vision. But the real key is finding the genius-level talent to get that vision delivered into reality. And if all you know how to surround yourself with is mediocre people, you're destined to experience mediocre results. Richard is brilliant at finding the right people that bring his targets of opportunity to life. And he confirmed that once they are on his team, "I lavish them with praise." Our takeaway: relentlessly celebrate+develop+inspire your people. 5. Be a Radical Innovator. When he was a young entrepreneur with nothing more than the little college newspaper THE STUDENT, he still showed a lust for disregarding all the rules. He challenged the status quo. And disrupted what was considered normal. An example: he somehow was able to get John Lennon to do an original piece of music for him. He then put the song on a special disc and packaged it into the newspaper, right next to the interview he'd done on the rock 'n roll legend. At Virgin Records, he recruited the Sex Pistols and reinvented a whole category of music. At Virgin Atlantic, he gave passengers massages on airplanes and dropped them home in limos. And with Virgin Galactic, he's taking people into space. Very cool. Fantastically bold. At the Bucharest meeting, he told the 2500+ people in the concert hall that "sometime in your lifetime, every one of you will have visited other parts of the universe." And I believe it. 6. Build Your Brand. Richard Branson gets branding. He knows what he - and the Virgin name - stands for. Fun. Good Value. Strong customer service. And so at every possible opportunity, he evangelizes all it stands for. Oh, and he's also clearly a master of getting attention. From hot air balloon adventures that made global news to showing up at a press conference nearly naked to promote Virgin mobile, this Remarkable Entrepreneur gets the value of owning a share of our brain cells. 7. Find Your Necker Island. Get this: Branson paid roughly $300,000 for his beloved Necker Island. He and his then girlfriend Joan were visiting the Caribbean on a getaway. They fell in love with Necker - but it was about $4,000,000. But he wouldn't give up (let's never discount the power of a ridiculous amount of persistence around your most closely loved goals). A few months later, the owner needed cash. Branson made his deeply discounted offer. It has served as his retreat away from the world for many years. Here's the real point: in the world of so much noise and complexity, find your personal retreat (even if it's an aged wooded bench in a public garden) where you can withdraw to think+create+renew+rest. 8. Lucky Wins. We make luck. Enough said. 9. Don't Do It If It's Not Fun. Branson wears a smile pretty much all the time. He laughs naturally. And radiates happiness. Zero doubt: he loves his life - and all that's in it (George Clooney said he'd swap his life for Richard Branson's - much to the delight of Richard's wife). The lesson for us: life's just too short to be doing work that destroys your soul. This is the best time in the history of the world to become an entrepreneur. Find work you adore. And get busy changing with world with it. 10. With Gifts Come Responsibilities. OK, so Richard Branson's one of the richest people on the planet. But he gets that being good trumps shiny toys. He mentioned to me that, "with great wealth comes great responsibility." And so he's spending a lot of his days evangelizing Virgin Unite, his foundation that helps kids in need. Reminds me of what my amazing father taught me - using the words of the great poet Tagore - growing up: "Robin, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Son, live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice."

How Taobao bested Ebay in China

Financial Times THE CASE STUDY March 12, 2012 8:55 pm Financial Times THE CASE STUDY March 12, 2012 8:55 pm How Taobao bested Ebay in China By Mark Greeven, Shengyun Yang, Tao Yue, Eric van Heck and Barbara Krug The story. Taobao.com was founded in 2003 by Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, as a defensive move against its US rival Ebay, which had set up in China the previous year. The challenge. When Ebay launched in China it had global revenues of more than $2bn. As a young, domestic entity, Taobao was taking on a huge rival while also fending off many similar small competitors in the sector, where barriers to entry were low. The strategic response. Noting that Ebay in China was charging users to list products and services, Taobao allowed them to list for free in order to build a big cohort of sellers and buyers. Critical mass would eventually attract revenue-generating activities, such as online advertisements. Taobao also presented itself as very much a Chinese enterprise. For instance, the screen names of online moderators were derived from characters in popular Chinese kung-fu novels. Next, Taobao aimed to be more innovative than Ebay in customer service. In 2003 Taobao started Aliwangwang, its instant communication tool, to help buyers and sellers interact. It also introduced the online payment system Alipay a year later. Online credit card or debit card payment was very rare in China and customers usually paid cash on delivery. Alipay formed partnerships with leading Chinese banks and signed a long-term agreement with China Post, which meant customers without a debit or bank card could fund their Alipay accounts at any of its 66,000 offices. What happened. Taobao developed into a diverse e-commerce platform where businesses sell a very wide range of items to online shop owners who then sell on to consumers. At the end of 2006, Ebay shut its main website in China and formed a joint venture with Hong Kong- headquartered Tom Online. Taobao continued to build a network of ventures around its core operations. In 2007 it set up Alisoft.com, where small Taobao sellers could buy customised software from independent vendors to help with functions such as customer relations or managing inventory. In 2008 Taobao integrated Alimama.com, an online ad company with a network of more than 400,000 specialised websites where Taobao sellers could affordably post ads to reach their target audiences. These complementary ventures formed a network, with Taobao at the centre surrounded by interlinked companies. All cross-sold and cross-marketed each other’s services and offered packaged deals to Taobao sellers. As this “ecosystem” developed it attracted other businesses to use Taobao, Alipay, Alisoft and Alimama’s platforms to provide further customised services to Taobao sellers. The extent and reach of the ecosystem became too hard for rivals to replicate. By 2010 Taobao served more than 80 per cent of China’s e-commerce market, with 170m registered users and revenues of more than Rmb20bn from online advertising and fee-paying services such as shop design and sales training. Meanwhile, Ebay moved its business focus to cross-border e-commerce, where Chinese consumers sell to overseas consumers. It holds a leading position in that segment. Key lessons. How Taobao kept Ebay out of the market and became China’s dominant e-commerce platform in a relatively short space of time holds lessons for Chinese and western companies alike. First, Taobao provided services and solved problems for the smaller businesses that are the driving force behind China’s economic boom. For instance, Alipay enabled people to pay for goods and services easily. Second, Taobao set up or integrated services that complemented each other and used this ecosystem to create a bar to competition. Third, Taobao identified how to help people buy and sell. By making online shopping easy, safe and fun it helped many first-time online buyers build confidence in e-commerce. By Mark Greeven, Shengyun Yang, Tao Yue, Eric van Heck and Barbara Krug The story. Taobao.com was founded in 2003 by Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, as a defensive move against its US rival Ebay, which had set up in China the previous year. The challenge. When Ebay launched in China it had global revenues of more than $2bn. As a young, domestic entity, Taobao was taking on a huge rival while also fending off many similar small competitors in the sector, where barriers to entry were low. The strategic response. Noting that Ebay in China was charging users to list products and services, Taobao allowed them to list for free in order to build a big cohort of sellers and buyers. Critical mass would eventually attract revenue-generating activities, such as online advertisements. Taobao also presented itself as very much a Chinese enterprise. For instance, the screen names of online moderators were derived from characters in popular Chinese kung-fu novels. Next, Taobao aimed to be more innovative than Ebay in customer service. In 2003 Taobao started Aliwangwang, its instant communication tool, to help buyers and sellers interact. It also introduced the online payment system Alipay a year later. Online credit card or debit card payment was very rare in China and customers usually paid cash on delivery. Alipay formed partnerships with leading Chinese banks and signed a long-term agreement with China Post, which meant customers without a debit or bank card could fund their Alipay accounts at any of its 66,000 offices. What happened. Taobao developed into a diverse e-commerce platform where businesses sell a very wide range of items to online shop owners who then sell on to consumers. At the end of 2006, Ebay shut its main website in China and formed a joint venture with Hong Kong- headquartered Tom Online. Taobao continued to build a network of ventures around its core operations. In 2007 it set up Alisoft.com, where small Taobao sellers could buy customised software from independent vendors to help with functions such as customer relations or managing inventory. In 2008 Taobao integrated Alimama.com, an online ad company with a network of more than 400,000 specialised websites where Taobao sellers could affordably post ads to reach their target audiences. These complementary ventures formed a network, with Taobao at the centre surrounded by interlinked companies. All cross-sold and cross-marketed each other’s services and offered packaged deals to Taobao sellers. As this “ecosystem” developed it attracted other businesses to use Taobao, Alipay, Alisoft and Alimama’s platforms to provide further customised services to Taobao sellers. The extent and reach of the ecosystem became too hard for rivals to replicate. By 2010 Taobao served more than 80 per cent of China’s e-commerce market, with 170m registered users and revenues of more than Rmb20bn from online advertising and fee-paying services such as shop design and sales training. Meanwhile, Ebay moved its business focus to cross-border e-commerce, where Chinese consumers sell to overseas consumers. It holds a leading position in that segment. Key lessons. How Taobao kept Ebay out of the market and became China’s dominant e-commerce platform in a relatively short space of time holds lessons for Chinese and western companies alike. First, Taobao provided services and solved problems for the smaller businesses that are the driving force behind China’s economic boom. For instance, Alipay enabled people to pay for goods and services easily. Second, Taobao set up or integrated services that complemented each other and used this ecosystem to create a bar to competition. Third, Taobao identified how to help people buy and sell. By making online shopping easy, safe and fun it helped many first-time online buyers build confidence in e-commerce.

Why You Need to Make Your Life More Automatic (TONY SCHWARTZ)

(original link http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2012/03/why-you-need-to-make-your-life.html?cm_sp=blog_flyout-_-schwartz-_-why_you_need_to_make_your_life) Why is it that three prominent books published just during the past several months focused on the subject of willpower? The first answer is that neuroscience has finally begun to open a window into the complex way our brains respond to temptation and what it takes to successfully exercise choice. Second, a raft of recent studies have shown that the capacity for self-control — even more than genetic endowment or material advantage — fuels a range of positive outcomes in life, including more stable relationships, higher paying and more satisfying work, more resilience in the face of setbacks, better health, and greater happiness. Finally, these books — Willpower, The Willpower Instinct, and The Power of Habit — are a response to an increasingly evident need. Demand in our lives is truly outpacing our capacity. The sheer number of choices we must make each day — what foods to eat, what products to buy, what information merits our attention, what tasks to prioritize — can be overwhelming. As Roy Baumeister puts it in Willpower, "Self-regulation failure is the major social pathology of our time." Each of these books provides compelling studies and fascinating stories that illustrate the challenges we face in exercising more self-control. All of them also come to the same paradoxical conclusion that I did two years ago in a book of my own, Be Excellent at Anything, and that I've often written about here. Put simply, the more conscious willpower we have to exert each day, the less energy we have left over to resist our brain's primitive and powerful pull to instant gratification. According to one study, we spend at least one-quarter of each waking day just trying to resist our desires — often unsuccessfully. Conversely, the more of our key behaviors we can put under the automatic and more efficient control of habit — by building something I call "Energy Rituals" — the more likely we are to accomplish the things that truly matter to us. How different would your life be, after all, if you could get yourself to sleep 8 hours at night, exercise every day, eat healthy foods in the right portions, take time for reflection and renewal, remain calm and positive under stress, focus without interruption for sustained periods of time, and prioritize the work that matters most? Right now, the vast majority of what we do each day occurs automatically. We're often triggered, as these authors make vividly clear, by subtle cues we're not even aware of — a smell, a visual image, a familiar sight. These cues prompt us to move away from any potential pain and discomfort, no matter how minimal, and toward immediate reward and gratification, no matter how fleeting. The primary role of our prefrontal cortex is to bias the brain towards doing the "harder" thing. Unfortunately, our rational capacity is often overwhelmed by the power of our own most visceral and primitive desires. We're often captive to our biochemistry. When the neurotransmitter dopamine is triggered, for example, what we feel is craving, not pleasure. This explains not just why we fall into a range of self-destructive addictions, but also why we don't take better care of ourselves and make wiser choices day in and day out. The solution is to learn how to co-opt the more primitive habit-forming regions of our brains, so that rather than reinforcing our negative impulses, they become the soil in which we build positive rituals that serve our long term interests. So how do you get started? The first step is simply to understand better what you are up against. That requires slowing down. Speed is the enemy of reflection, understanding and intentionality. When we slow down, we can begin to notice both what's driving us, and how to take back the wheel. Eat slower, for example, and you not only begin to notice how rarely you savor the food you eat, but also how often you eat for reasons other than hunger and how rarely you notice when you've had enough. To begin strengthening your capacity for self-observation, take two or three minutes at several designated times a day to breathe in to a count of three and out a count of six with your eyes closed. Notice the thoughts, feelings or sensations that arise, name them, and then let them pass. Return to the breath. You're training mindfulness. We each have an infinite capacity for self-deception — endless ways that the awesome power of our desires cause our prefrontal cortex to defend the indefensible and rationalize behaviors that aren't serving us well. The first step to building willpower and self-control is recognizing how little we currently have. You can't change what you don't notice. BOOKS MENTIONED HERE: Willpower by Roy F Baumeister and John Tierney The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal Ph.D. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg Be Excellent at Anything by Tony Schwartz

Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? Edward Jay Epstein | Feb 1, 1982

The diamond invention—the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem—is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade. Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only in a few riverbeds in India and in the jungles of Brazil, and the entire world production of gem diamonds amounted to a few pounds a year. In 1870, however, huge diamond mines were discovered near the Orange River, in South Africa, where diamonds were soon being scooped out by the ton. Suddenly, the market was deluged with diamonds. The British financiers who had organized the South African mines quickly realized that their investment was endangered; diamonds had little intrinsic value—and their price depended almost entirely on their scarcity. The financiers feared that when new mines were developed in South Africa, diamonds would become at best only semiprecious gems. The major investors in the diamond mines realized that they had no alternative but to merge their interests into a single entity that would be powerful enough to control production and perpetuate the illusion of scarcity of diamonds. The instrument they created, in 1888, was called De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd., incorporated in South Africa. As De Beers took control of all aspects of the world diamond trade, it assumed many forms. In London, it operated under the innocuous name of the Diamond Trading Company. In Israel, it was known as "The Syndicate." In Europe, it was called the "C.S.O." -- initials referring to the Central Selling Organization, which was an arm of the Diamond Trading Company. And in black Africa, it disguised its South African origins under subsidiaries with names like Diamond Development Corporation and Mining Services, Inc. At its height -- for most of this century -- it not only either directly owned or controlled all the diamond mines in southern Africa but also owned diamond trading companies in England, Portugal, Israel, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland. De Beers proved to be the most successful cartel arrangement in the annals of modern commerce. While other commodities, such as gold, silver, copper, rubber, and grains, fluctuated wildly in response to economic conditions, diamonds have continued, with few exceptions, to advance upward in price every year since the Depression. Indeed, the cartel seemed so superbly in control of prices -- and unassailable -- that, in the late 1970s, even speculators began buying diamonds as a guard against the vagaries of inflation and recession. The diamond invention is far more than a monopoly for fixing diamond prices; it is a mechanism for converting tiny crystals of carbon into universally recognized tokens of wealth, power, and romance. To achieve this goal, De Beers had to control demand as well as supply. Both women and men had to be made to perceive diamonds not as marketable precious stones but as an inseparable part of courtship and married life. To stabilize the market, De Beers had to endow these stones with a sentiment that would inhibit the public from ever reselling them. The illusion had to be created that diamonds were forever -- "forever" in the sense that they should never be resold. In September of 1938, Harry Oppenheimer, son of the founder of De Beers and then twenty-nine, traveled from Johannesburg to New York City, to meet with Gerold M. Lauck, the president of N. W. Ayer, a leading advertising agency in the United States. Lauck and N. W. Ayer had been recommended to Oppenheimer by the Morgan Bank, which had helped his father consolidate the De Beers financial empire. His bankers were concerned about the price of diamonds, which had declined worldwide. In Europe, where diamond prices had collapsed during the Depression, there seemed little possibility of restoring public confidence in diamonds. In Germany, Austria, Italy, and Spain, the notion of giving a diamond ring to commemorate an engagement had never taken hold. In England and France, diamonds were still presumed to be jewels for aristocrats rather than the masses. Furthermore, Europe was on the verge of war, and there seemed little possibility of expanding diamond sales. This left the United States as the only real market for De Beers's diamonds. In fact, in 1938 some three quarters of all the cartel's diamonds were sold for engagement rings in the United States. Most of these stones, however, were smaller and of poorer quality than those bought in Europe, and had an average price of $80 apiece. Oppenheimer and the bankers believed that an advertising campaign could persuade Americans to buy more expensive diamonds. Oppenheimer suggested to Lauck that his agency prepare a plan for creating a new image for diamonds among Americans. He assured Lauck that De Beers had not called on any other American advertising agency with this proposal, and that if the plan met with his father's approval, N. W. Ayer would be the exclusive agents for the placement of newspaper and radio advertisements in the United States. Oppenheimer agreed to underwrite the costs of the research necessary for developing the campaign. Lauck instantly accepted the offer. In their subsequent investigation of the American diamond market, the staff of N. W. Ayer found that since the end of World War I, in 1919, the total amount of diamonds sold in America, measured in carats, had declined by 50 percent; at the same time, the quality of the diamonds, measured in dollar value, had declined by nearly 100 percent. An Ayer memo concluded that the depressed state of the market for diamonds was "the result of the economy, changes in social attitudes and the promotion of competitive luxuries." Although it could do little about the state of the economy, N. W. Ayer suggested that through a well-orchestrated advertising and public-relations campaign it could have a significant impact on the "social attitudes of the public at large and thereby channel American spending toward larger and more expensive diamonds instead of "competitive luxuries." Specifically, the Ayer study stressed the need to strengthen the association in the public's mind of diamonds with romance. Since "young men buy over 90% of all engagement rings" it would be crucial to inculcate in them the idea that diamonds were a gift of love: the larger and finer the diamond, the greater the expression of love. Similarly, young women had to be encouraged to view diamonds as an integral part of any romantic courtship. Since the Ayer plan to romanticize diamonds required subtly altering the public's picture of the way a man courts -- and wins -- a woman, the advertising agency strongly suggested exploiting the relatively new medium of motion pictures. Movie idols, the paragons of romance for the mass audience, would be given diamonds to use as their symbols of indestructible love. In addition, the agency suggested offering stories and society photographs to selected magazines and newspapers which would reinforce the link between diamonds and romance. Stories would stress the size of diamonds that celebrities presented to their loved ones, and photographs would conspicuously show the glittering stone on the hand of a well-known woman. Fashion designers would talk on radio programs about the "trend towards diamonds" that Ayer planned to start. The Ayer plan also envisioned using the British royal family to help foster the romantic allure of diamonds. An Ayer memo said, "Since Great Britain has such an important interest in the diamond industry, the royal couple could be of tremendous assistance to this British industry by wearing diamonds rather than other jewels." Queen Elizabeth later went on a well-publicized trip to several South African diamond mines, and she accepted a diamond from Oppenheimer. In addition to putting these plans into action, N. W. Ayer placed a series of lush four-color advertisements in magazines that were presumed to mold elite opinion, featuring reproductions of famous paintings by such artists as Picasso, Derain, Dali, and Dufy. The advertisements were intended to convey the idea that diamonds, like paintings, were unique works of art.

Being Human....Robin Sharma

As William Penn once noted: "I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again." #1. Be Real Call it being authentic. Call it being yourself. The fact is that few things are as powerful as standing in the presence of a person who is really really comfortable in their own skin. What I'm suggesting is that you speak with your unique voice and that you live under your true values and that you present the real you to the world around you. Please trust me on this one. I promise you that when you get to the last hour of your last day, you will regret having lived the life society sold you versus the life that you knew deep within was meant for you. #2. Smile Sure this sounds obvious. But what makes greatness is the daily executing around simple ideas. And if smiling during good and hard times was so easy, then why is it so hard for most people? I travel across the planet constantly. But no matter whether I'm in Qatar or Napa, Buenos Aires or Malaysia, Mumbai or Amsterdam, a quick and genuine smile to a stranger always connects. Unites. Uplifts. #3. Use People's Names The fantastic Dale Carnegie taught us well. He observed that a person's name is the sweetest sound to their ears. And yet, it's so very easy to forget to go the extra mile and remember - and then use - someone's name. World-class communicators get that when they address people by name, it brings them closer. And makes them stand out. #4. Look People In The Eye Okay. I really need to rant mildly on this one. Sure we all have our smart phones and iPods and PCs. But this new way of communicating where our mouths move while we speak to the person in front of us but our eyes stay on the screens before us sends a message to that person that they just are not that important. The best gift you can give a customer+teammate+loved one is the gift of your presence. In this age of easy digitization, giving the human being you're communicating with 1000% of your attention is a spectacular method to lead the field. So, look people in the eye. Engage with what they are saying. Make them feel special. No, make them feel--for the brief moments they interact with you - that they are the most important person in the world. #5. Be Honest Again, simple, I know. But leadership and success really does come down to the daily doing of a series of fundamentals staggeringly well. Be the most honest person you know. Let your ethics drive your behavior. And please remember, anyone can be honest when times are easy. The true measure of your leadership is how honest you are when everything's falling apart. #6. Choose Good Words I was up in the mountains last weekend. Wanted to get some breakfast. Walked into a new Italian restaurant that advertised breakfast until 11:30 am. It was 11:40. I asked the man behind the counter: "Is it possible to still get breakfast?" His instant reply: "Absolutely not." Now I understand this man wasn't trying to be rude. He was most likely unskilled with his words. Just not a great communicator. But his words had impact (as all words do). A more effective communicator could have said, "I wish we could but we've just switched over to the lunch menu. I think you'll love it. C'mon in and give it a try." It's all in the languaging. Instead, his words caused me to try his competitor. And to think that this is a restaurant that just doesn't care that much.

China will be the world’s biggest app market, and other predictions for Asia in 2012 13TH JANUARY 2012 by JON RUSSELL

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve run a series of features looking back at 2011 and forward to 2012 from a number of different angles. We have already reviewed the last year in Asia, and took some time out to get the thoughts of Bubble Motion CEO Tom Clayton on what the next twelve months could hold for the Internet in the region. For those that are not familiar with Bubble Motion, the company runs Bubbly, a voice microblogging service that allows users to send short messages from a smartphone or regular phone. The Singapore-head quartered firm has 12 million users and is particularly popular in Asia, making Clayton a well qualified pundit on the region’s tech scene. Twitter will grow substantially in key markets Asia Pacific is notable for having the world’s highest mobile penetration (registered numbers to people) and Clayton believes that mobile will help extend Twitter beyond the already strong numbers that it enjoys across the region, particularly amongst Indonesia’s 240 million population. “Thanks to limited Internet users and very mobile-centric populations, Twitter use in Indonesia will overtake the US and Brazil in number of tweet volume,” predicts Clayton, before explaining that Japan will also see more growth. Twitter is already huge in Japan, where it has partnered with leading domestic social network Mixi, but the Bubble Motion boss sees the country developer further still, becoming key to Twitter in Asia. The accelerating growth in Japan will be even more impressive, as it will contribute more revenue to the company than all other countries in Asia combined. With over 27 percent of Japanese online population and 22 percent of the Indonesian online population using the network, Twitter will be the first “foreign” social media service to really make huge inroads relative to the entrenched “Big 3″ locally” Facebook will dominate all of Asia by the end of the year Facebook is already colossal in Asia but there are some key pockets and significant markets where it is not yet dominant, while China remains a big issue for it, like many other Western firms. In our Facebook 2012 preview, we foretold that the company will begin to look at the issue of China, putting a strategy on the table in the next twelve months. While Clayton believes that no progress will be made there, unless it partners up, he does feels that Japan, Korea and Taiwan are ripe for the taking: 2012 is the year Facebook takes over the last 3 major Asian countries and dominates the sub-continent. If Facebook can buy a Chinese social network or do a joint venture in China, they may well displace all other local networks. Asia to pass 3 billion mobile users and account for half worldwide Having said that mobile is already big in Asia, the stage is set for the communications medium to develop even further across the continent and account for half of all mobile phone users worldwide, according to Clayton. He believes that “significant economic development across the region”, alongside the increasing sophistication of mobile networks — 4G is already available in Korea and soon to launch in Singapore, for example — and the increasing affordability of devices will drive higher adoption rates. But it isn’t just more users, Clayton foresees that a change in how many Asians will interact with Web is coming. Mobile broadband is growing rapidly to increase the number of Asian mobile Internet users beyond what is already a huge number: In September 2011, China alone surpassed 100M 3G subscriptions, which makes up just 10 percent of its total mobile population. India has reached 859M mobile subscriptions, and Indonesia and Japan each have well over 100M users. With such rapid growth in handheld devices, mobile phone usage far surpasses fixed-line PC usage. For example, In India there are only 70 million Internet users, but there are over 700 million mobile subscribers. Smartphone penetration will remain low but pass 500 million devices While the smartphones will grow beyond the current rate of 19 percent of Asia’s mobile market, Clayton thinks that, outside of major countries, growth will continue but at a lower rate: Singapore, Korea and Malaysia will lead the pack but the largest markets China, India and Indonesia still lag significantly with all of them in single digits in percentage terms. However, when you view it from the absolute number of smartphone devices, the numbers are significant. Taking India as an example, a 9 percent smartphone penetration would equal around 80 million devices. The American expects that smartphone ownership in ‘advanced’ Asia markets like Korea and Japan, will grow beyond 50 percent to mirror its rate in North America and across parts of Europe. It may surprise some but neither Japan nor Korea has a long history of smartphones, although Apple and Google are leading the revolution, as he reveals: Most of their phones, while packed with exhaustive features, are not technically considered smartphones, but rather very capable, feature-rich feature phones. However, iPhone and Android phones are on fire in each country and there seems to be no signs of this growth slowing anytime soon. Apps: China will become world’s biggest market, Asia will keep growing Last year, a report from Flurry found China to be the world’s second largest downloader of apps, and you can see the country’s potential by the fact that China Mobile’s own store has 149 million users. Clayton believes that the time is right for China to overtake the US to take the top spot, while Asia will continue to be an important focus as the only region posting significant growth in app downloads: While app download growth has flattened and even begun to decline in some countries in the Western world, Asia will continue to grow at a break-neck pace, as 3G deployments and coverage are solidified in the emerging markets and more and more users add data plans. Android shipments to Asia grew massively in 2011, tripling in Southeast Asia, and Clayton cites the Google-owned system as being a key part behind the growth of apps, by providing affordable devices for consumers: The MediaTek ecosystem will soon produce numerous sub-$90 Android-powered smartphones that will fuel even further Android growth in the region. Monetization of apps will remain a challenge, but we already see many app providers in the region (like our own), figuring out creative ways to solve that problem. What do you think: Do you agree with Tom Clayton’s predictions, or do you have other ideas of areas that are set to be significant this year in Asia? http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/01/13/china-will-be-the-worlds-biggest-app-market-and-other-predictions-for-asia-in-2012/ JOIN TNW ASIA ON: OR RSS ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jon Russell is the Asia Editor of The Next Web. Jon has been commenting on and writing about Asia's internet, technology and start-up scenes since he swapped London for Bangkok in 2008. You can reach him through Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn or by emailing jon@thenextweb.com.