Capitalists networks that rule the world

An interesting article in the new scientist: shows who the key players are based on cross ownership data. Another example of how relationship data can provide new areas of intelligence.

I did something similar (on a much smaller scale) with the Australian media industry using cross ownership data, with similar interesting results. I'll have to think about updating that one or evening broadening it.

Poking holes in the walls of industry

I had a CEO once who was a champion for knowledge sharing but at the same time appreciated the value of the conventional business unit structures, that are often referred to as "silos". He would often say "silos aren't bad...we just need to poke a few holes in the sides to get some sharing happening". In some ways the lines between the objects on our industry maps (which are usually companies) could be seen as these "holes" in action.

Holes seem to work equally well for things flowing in and out. In the network world maybe its who has their hands on the 'tap', rather than the 'tiller' that will determine whether an organisation thrives or dies?

Mining Industry Analysis

We have just dome some analysis of the Australian mining industry. The first link shows how suppliers are clustered according to the services that they provide. The second is a complementary map showing how services are clustered according to the number of common suppliers.

Service Providers:

http://www.optimice.com.au/mining_services.php

Services Portfolio:
www.optimice.com.au/mining_services_portfolio.php

Visual Markets Report now available for Free Download

Our Visual Markets report on the Australian IT&T marketplace is now over 12 months old, with some of the data no longer current. The novel network based techniques used for this market research however, are as fresh as ever. Those following this blog have no doubt now seen many examples of the approach. This report however provides many more case study examples, some new ways of assessing competitiveness, merger and acquisition impacts and much more.

The report is available from www.visualmarkets.com.au

Please feel free to download, read and provide feedback here.

Mapping Channels into China

Met with Len Rust today. He just returned for hosting a trade mission to China. All he could say was that everyone is going there looking for business opportunities. Agencies are important in China, so if you can leverage off someone else's trusted agent then the process could be simplified significantly.

On the same topic I was in a 4 way Skype call with the Bazilian trade centre, along with some partners in Italy and China. They also have just been in China. Their challenge is to facilitate many agricultural co-operatives into a focused apporach to exporting to countries like China.

There is definitely an opportunity for Industry Mapping here. All we need is the data!Sounds like a CRM system with a visual network front end to me.

We are working on it! Have a look at this:

http://www.optimice.com.au/industrymapping.php

Industry Map of the Tourist Industry

My wife and I love travelling, so we spend a lot of time surfing the Internet for deals etc.. We are often torn between using the faithful local travel agent to do this work or hitting the net ourselves looking for a better deal. What becomes obvious very quickly is how interconnected the industry is, but also how hard it is to see all of these connections. So I was intrigued recently when offered the opportunity to suggest a way of mapping the Italian Tourist Industry. Italy is one of our favourite destinations, so I could imagine that if it works out well the rewards could be significant. But the big question is, who will benefit from the increased visibility that we may be able to bring to this industry? The experience with trying to gain more business transparency in the larger capital markets has been resisted by the advisory sector who make their living out of selectively providing privately gained information. A former CEO of mine use to say "there is margin in the mystery" and therefore this increased transparency may in fact be resisted by some companies profiting from the complexity of the tourism network.

I think we'll try and do it anyway!

A new way of visualising competitiveness

How would you hope to show vendor competitiveness, say in the IT outsourcing market? Perhaps you would have a bar chart showing relative revenues and market shares. This is useful, but is that enough to act on? Continuing my extracts from our Visual markets publication, here is a view of market competitiveness you will never have seen before.



Just looking at vendor contracts and joint ventures, this map plots the % of a vendor's connections that are unique to them against their total number of connections. Clearly the ideal competitiveness is indicated by multiple monopoly situations, so vendors are measured on this map against this ideal. The nodes are sized by revenues for added information.

What do you think? Any new insights? ... my recommendations? avoid the bottom left corner, not many clients or partners, none of whom are unique to you.