I was just reading Michio Kaku’s 2008 bestseller, Physics of the Impossible. He’s an excellent writer, researcher and scientist. For those that don’t know him, even if you don’t have a scientific or astrophysicist bent, you’re sure to find his writings stimulating. He draws from some of the greatest scientists in the world, so it’s not just his thinking.

In this book, he talks about three levels of impossibilities. A Class I impossibility is something that we can’t do now, but probably will come about in few generations to a few hundred years, such as teleportation and anti-matter engines. A Class II impossibility is one that may take man a few millennia to achieve – such as hyper travel, and a third level is way, way out there in the future –if at all. They sound like forever, but in universe time, it’s not even a blink of an eye.

As I was reading his book, I kept analogizing on a few things. One of which is, what does business look like in five to ten generations from now and what does it look like in a few thousand years when some Class II impossibilities start kicking in?

It’s difficult at least for me to think that far in the future. But let’s look at some Class I impossibilities and see where that leads us.

Suppose we solve three of the ten Class I impossibilities that Kaku proposes.

• Teleportation of inanimate objects
• Advanced intelligent robotics and nanobots
• Antimatter power sources

All three have projects in the works and are rudimentarily being done.

Now let’s take a look at these three in combination. Teleportation would ease the distribution of small quantities of objects worldwide or speed the movement of small critical items in the event of an emergency.  Advanced robotics could provide us with the ability to move large objects and quantities of materials safely and without intense human intervention. Finally harnessing anti-matter (or perhaps fission) as a usable and viable power further decreases our dependence on expensive and depleted fossil fuels. Businesses such as trucking and transportation could look quite different as well as construction if it employed nanobot technology.

I am also intrigued by how we will be marketing and selling products and services and how we communicate, distribute and record these events. Obviously computers will be a major element, but even computers may look or feel different when quantum computers take root. And what will be the effect of virtual businesses on our society and how we interact with another. It leaves me at least with a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of conjecture. But I’m not sure the Brave New World of Huxley in 2540 AD, some 500 years from now, withstands the acid test of future personal relationships anymore. I think there is more to hope for, a lot more!

Newsweek and Intel collaborated on this Global Innovation Survey that polled 4800 adults in the U.S., China, Germany and the U.K.

Two of the more interesting survey findings included:

While most Americans (73%) believe the U.S. is technologically innovative, more Chinese do (82%) and a significant majority of Chinese believe we are staying ahead of China when it comes to innovation as opposed to less than a majority of Americans (41%).

In addition, many Americans (52%) blame poor math and science education as the reason for our falling behind, while more Chinese than Americans (45% to 18%) believe that creative problem solving is more important to innovation.

Perhaps a majority of Chinese value creative problem solving and Americans math and science since these are each areas of complimentary necessities to create, innovate and invent. And of course it’s something that each of these societies wants more of.

Originally being schooled as a mathematician and engineer, and having worked at one of the great think tanks – Bell Laboratories – it always seemed to me that balance would ultimately prevail over one or another extreme. However, over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that it is actually more important to be extremely great at both – not necessarily the same individual of course – and then build an organization through people that have a balance, using them to connect innovation to the real world, by continuously collecting business requirements, and creatively marketing products so that the economic engine behind the innovation remains continuously fueled.

One thing I’m sure of is that seed and venture capital are key to priming this engine and the world’s economy is quite dependent on our business risk takers.

Over the past 3 months I’ve talked to over 25 companies primarily in the Business-to-Business (B2B) space and mostly technology companies (software and hardware).

 Specifically, I was asking questions including:

• What types of traditional marketing activities are you maintaining (webinars, website development, paper-based sales and marketing collateral, seminars, etc.)?
• What types of digital marketing activities are you engaged in (blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn lead generation, Facebook, partner driven digital marketing, SEO/SEM, etc.)?
• Are you combining the two disciplines and in what ways?

 The types of responses were a little surprising as I thought there would be more push toward exercising these emerging techniques around digital marketing.

 What I found was the following in regards to digital marketing:

1. Most companies were taking a wait-and-see strategy. That is they were waiting to see what their partners or competitors were doing before they invested a lot of time and effort.
2. They were unclear about the ROI from digital marketing activities. Some said that they didn’t see any early returns from looking at how their market was engaged in these activities.
3. They were indeed monitoring digital trends and activities – usually informally – until the time they thought would be appropriate for them to take the plunge.
4. In general, they didn’t see the value in Twitter but did see some value in LinkedIn – as this was a professional community – one that they could have meaningful discussions through. However, even with LinkedIn, almost none of them had anything truly formal going on.
5. There seemed to be an executive gap. Mid-level managers and rank and file employees were more apt to use informal social media communication than senior management. Security and trust were important issues at the senior level.

There were some clear trends that I plan on illustrating in some follow-up blogs and reports, but this is a quick readout of what I found.  Keep in touch or sign up for my future reports.

And please add your comments as I’d appreciate what you’ve found.

Note to above: About 15 of these discussions were formal – that is they followed a prescribed set of questions that lasted approximately one hour. Discussions with the remaining 10 companies were more informal although in general the same types of questions were asked.

And there are always more than a few good articles at B2B Magazine for which I used their logo as an illustration above.

After taking the Labor Day week off, it’s back to writing my regular weekly blog and maybe even catching up sometime by doubling up on my blog one week soon.

In any case, this is a continuation of the theme of 5’s on alliance building and partnerships. This one focused on Alliance Warning Signs. So here are several of my favorite warning signs. I look forward to reading about yours.

I think there are quite a few warning signs that alliance managers have to be aware of. Part of the problem in any relationship, personal or business, is recognizing which ones are most telling and which ones appear to be important but can be dismissed. Some apparently troubling signs initially can actually be double entendres.  Notice how each of these signs can be interpreted differently and produce equally positive or negative results.

Significant Financial Changes: this is easier to read when your alliance partner is a publicly traded company. Earnings reports, stock prices, etc are powerful barometers of business performance. A couple of quarters of negative earnings can spell cutbacks or imply customer defections. On the other hand, perhaps poor earnings were due to an inflated acquisition or writedown. So it’s important to look at the situation thoroughly. Even if it is negative, it might turn out that your partner will turn to their best partnerships and if you’re in that class then indeed this could easily turn out to be a clear win for you – especially if they make a comeback.

Senior Management Change: this is an obvious caution sign. New CEO’s often bring in teams that are more closely aligned to their past history and strategy. If your new partner CEO had a closer relationship with your competitor for instance, that could easily spell trouble, especially if your relationship is not well secured. On the other hand, change in upper management could just as well be a plus for you if the tenor of the new team has a positive past with you or your company.

Internal Turnover: always be on the look out for internal changes, especially when it comes to either the key people you deal with or other key influencers on your partner’s team. On the other hand again, if you’ve been stagnating lately with some of your partner’s counterparts – a change could be just what the doctor ordered.

Customer Complaints: perhaps the number one area of caution is when a joint customer is undergoing issues with your partner or their products or services, particularly if those problems also impact you and that same customer. Nothing seems to derail a partnership more than a customer with problems. On the other hand, solving customer issues with your partner quickly can be a powerful force for your future joint efforts and forge an enduring bond.

Significant Market Condition Changes or Major New Competitors: we’ve seen a lot of this occurring over the past 12- 18 months. Many companies quickly righted their ship while others slowly struggled and muddled through these business situations. Most importantly, negative economic and competitive situations will always arise. It’s how you work through them with your partner that ultimately matters most and getting through some tough and trying situations usually builds character and a lasting relationship in the long run.

Let me know what your favorites are.

To start this out (and to be totally above board), I’ve had the opportunity to work for Sun from 1995 – 1999 in New York City. And until very recently owned shares in the company. I still own shares of Oracle and my advisor just suggested I purchase some more a couple of weeks ago. So I hope this bodes well for both companies, their employees and customers. Here’s my analysis:

Culture: this should be one of the great cultural fits. Oracle and Sun were always linked tightly together and the employees were always encouraged to work closely together. Sun’s and Oracle’s sales forces both took the gun slinger approach, and their R&D plant was based on UNIX/Solaris, C/C++ and Java, not (dot)Net for instance. Both tended to be thin on marketing (perhaps not so much for Oracle – but similar). I think the entire marketing plan for Sun when I was first there was about 5 pages. So they tend to be less bureaucratic – although that has changed over the years. All in all looks like a natural marriage.

Products: for the most part their product suites are highly complimentary, except for Sun’s acquisition of MySQL, an open source database software, which put Larry Ellison slightly on edge. However, that hiccup should be so minor that it isn’t worth talking about. Oracle uses Java oriented software and Oracle has no hardware company, so Sun can continue to sell its wares. Oracle’s high end database software needs the compute cycles that a Sun server delivers. Again potentially all good stuff.

Leadership: Larry and Scott McNealy have typically been on the same side and are neighbors in Silcon Valley so to speak, but the top leadership will rest in Larry’s hands ( I would assume). Since the product sets are complimentary, most of the mid-senior level managers may have already been purged by Sun in their recent round of layoffs. As a result, it appears that a lot of the downsizing has already been captured pre-deal, although it’s likely that some expensive and redundant mid-layers may be further shedded.

Market: while it’s a tough market, Oracle got Sun for a decent price. It’s doing $10+B in business and with the recent cuts it could be a win-win for the customer long term. More stability for the customer, better integrated product sets and a re-focus on innovation and R&D could be forthcoming.

Cons: it doesn’t address the soft side of the business for Oracle (professional services) which is the big cash generator in today’s IT market. The EDS acquisition by HP for example. The acquisition also throws a wrench into the recently extolled relationship with HP that Oracle has been talking about (as a result of Sun’s MySQL foray mostly). But nevertheless both HP and IBM compete head to head against Sun on the hardware side, so this will not make either ecstatic. Ditto EMC, who has been an arch enemy of Sun for years. So let’s hope Oracle, while buying a great company, didn’t paint itself into a corner with its other alliance partners.

Personally, I feel that the IBM acquisition would have benefitted both companies more, vis-a-vis the entire market landscape in general, especially as IBM could have reaped some economies of scale from its own server sales units as well as having a full armament of professional services to back it up (Oracle doesn’t). This is beginning to sound like I’m about to short Oracle, but Larry’s a tough and savvy guy. I think I’ll sit tight – maybe he has another move up his sleeve to buy a services firm.