More Value at Upstream Layer in Technology Pyramid

Technology is the leader of the enterprising world. And it leads using a constitution. Unlike the traditional political structure, this constitution is Algorithms written by engineers, scientists, etc and not congressmen and politicians.

The global competition is largely who has the best technical group to write the best one; in this case, Algorithms, that comprise of patents, technical processes, tools, and so on. As a nation develops, adopts, applies and diffuses appropriately the contents of this constitution, it elevates the lives of its citizens. The more innovation a nation pursues, the more it refines this constitution.

Economists have shown a correlation between Knowledge Economy Index (KEI), productivity and standard of living. The challenge for any nation is to improve its KEI number. Doing that involves good education, economic regime and other variables that help to improve technology capability.

The age of natural resources dominating global commerce and industry is gone. What matters now is creating knowledge and applying it. Some nations will create, others will merely consume. But wealth is concentrated at the creative stage and nations that focus on consuming, without creating technology will not prosper.

Even with abundance of natural resources, which in many instances, the consuming nations cannot independently process without the knowledge partners will not change this trajectory of limited national wealth without technology creation.

On this basis, I separate the two layers where nations use and compete with technology as upstream and downstream layers. It is like a two layer pyramid where the downstream is at the bottom with the upstream seated on top. What happens here is that some nations focus on the downstream layer while others combine both the downstream and upstream layers.

The most advanced nations combine the two layers as they seek international competitiveness. They provide technology roadmap that looks at the future and have plans to take advantages that technology brings. They create and develop things and in the 21st century are classed as knowledge driven economies. In those nations, there is planning for continuity and technology succession.

For the other nations, usually developing, they compete at the technology pyramid primarily at the downstream layer. They lack the know-how to create things and commercialize technology intellectual properties. The nations are not driven by technology, rather commodities. They are prone to trade shocks and are usually economically non-vibrant. They fail to create wealth using technology and participate in the pyramid as consumers or prosumers.

Let me illustrate using Nigeria where they speak the language of petroleum. In the petroleum industry, there are the downstream and upstream sectors. While the upstream focuses on exploration of crude oil, downstream does the distribution and marketing.

The money is in the upstream sector, a major reason we have the foreign partners concentrated therein. That is where the knowledge creation is done and utilized in the industry. I am cautious to say, without the knowledge partners in Nigeria, helping to explore this crude oil, Nigeria cannot mine this product. Verdict: the oil will be there and of no tangible economic use.

This will follow a pattern where villages have water underneath them but no drilling expertise to harness the water for cooking and drinking. That is the problem of anchoring national strategy at the downstream level. It lacks inventiveness.

In Africa and many developing countries where ICT has been embraced, they rarely know that there is more value than what ICT gives them. Sure ICT has helped many developing countries to improve their business processes, tools and people. They are so excited on the powers of quicker and faster communication. They savor the wonders of email, Internet and mobile phone and many more. These experiences are primarily on marketing, distributing and installation of these ICT systems. They rarely make them and can only play at the downstream layer.

There economists point out repeatedly the innovations ICT has brought to the economies. I agree, ICT is wired for innovation in so many areas. Nonetheless, the good news is that there are more benefits up in the pyramid if you move up to the upstream layer. By not creating technology, our techno-economic benefits are limited and this will not change until we move up the pyramid.

Though this point can be illustrated with any technology, I will use the ICT because it is common and familiar to people. I have already illustrated the point in the petroleum industry where many developing nations depend on petroleum refining technology of the developed countries to extract the oil. Even if they develop technologies for the distribution, the upstream idea will triumph. Nations make more money to license technologies at the upstream level compared to the downstream.

Back to ICT, the upstream level will involve designing computing systems, cellphones, routers, device drivers, and all other infrastructures that enable ICT revolution. Instead of importing the latest cellphones, we will think how to design them. In 80% of the developing nations where mobile technology is used, less than 2% of the technologies are designed and manufactured there.

Yes, there are businesses that distribute and sale these gadgets and make marginal profits. They can import a laptop from China at $500 and sell to their customers at $650. Because the barrier to entry is so weak, the margins are small. Everyone is selling and there are shops everyone. They are technology firms to their nations because they can load the software and configure the networks and get the laptop working.

Compare that with giants like Intel and AMD that take a piece of sand (silica) and process it. At the end, that piece of sand of say a $1 can be sold for $3,000 because of the knowledge involved to transform the sand to a microprocessor. That is knowledge and the very best of human imagination and creativity. It is playing technology at the upstream level and that is where the value is.

Nations win at the upstream level because the sale margins are so huge because the products are niche and in most cases innovative with few players internationally. It is not just the trade or margins. Upstream technology layer create good jobs, whether in developed or developing nations. Some of the best jobs in Africa are in the oil giants where upstream technology rules. You create enviable good jobs for the citizens. They have the money to spend and lift other areas of the economy. They hold jobs that bring honor and dignity and they use their brains to shape the world.

You can make the same case for Pharmaceutical firms that mix elements, compounds, etc to create drugs. Some of the drugs are really expensive but the ingredients are cheap. People pay for the R&D invested in developing that drug. In developing nations, they focus on marketing and selling the drugs. As in petroleum, ICT, it is all about the downstream. Why the big Pharma can have margins of 1000%, these entities can barely command 6% margins.

So in essence, in this century, there are opportunities for nations. For developing nations, if they continue to compete at the downstream layer of the pyramid, they will find it hard to move forward since competition is basically synonymous with technology. There is more risk, more knowledge requirement and more value at the upstream. And we need to get there.

How do we do that? Our nations must have fundamental changes in our national policies on technical education or better Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). That is the answer. I believe in knowledge and education evolves it. It is about expansion of commitments on microelectronics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, mathematics, chemistry, physics, computer science, engineering, medicine, and so on and within a generation we can become players at the upstream level of technology pyramid. And reap that great value therein.

Dr. Ndubuisi Ekekwe blogs at Nkpuhe- a revelation on Africa, http://goafrit.wordpress.com

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Without Proper Recruiter Search, Monster’s BeKnown Facebook Professional Networking App Lacks Value

Late Saturday, employment website Monster.com launched a professional networking app on Facebook called BeKnown. Users can import work history details from Facebook, LinkedIn, and Monster.com, connect with contacts from these sites, Twitter, or their email, and browse jobs posted by these and their second degree connections.

However, BeKnown does not let recruiters search for job candidates by parameters such as qualifications or work history unless they’re already connected to them. This significantly reduces the service’s value to recruiters, which in turn reduces the value of maintaining a profile on the app to users, as there’s little chance of being passively recruited.

Users may therefore be better off joining a more populated professional network such as LinkedIn or BranchOut, or browsing job boards than having to rebuild their graph on BeKnown.

The social recruiting space has gotten some more attention lately with Facebook app BranchOut securing an $18 million Series B round of funding and briefly topping 200,000 daily active users. Monster is now hoping to offer exposure to Facebook users as part of its service offering to job posting clients by launching BeKnown with support for 35 countries and 19 languages.

Unfortunately, BeKnown is more of a Facebook portal to Monster.com than something truly effective for recruiters or job seekers. Its layout is almost identical to BranchOut’s, but less polished, with its home page displaying prompts to invite friends and endorse connections, a profile completion wizard, and updates from a user’s network. Both services let users can import their LinkedIn profile, though BeKnown also lets users pull profile info from Monster.com.

BeKnown’s job listing database appears to be smaller than BranchOut’s as well. A search for “software engineer” in San Francisco and the nearby area returned 463 listings on BeKnown, but 95 official listings posted to BranchOut and another 1864 listings that BranchOut aggregates through job search service Indeed.

BeKnown’s most useful feature, its “Social Referral Program” which isn’t live yet, will cause a company’s job listings to appear to the friends of every employee of that company. This means recruiters won’t have to direct employees how to repost listings themselves. However, since the referrals to the listings don’t actually come from a user’s friends, they’re less trusted.

The service has a somewhat unique take on endorsements wherein user check boxes to declare a friend has a general skill such as “vision” rather than writing a custom text recommendation. Users can also earn badges, not just for in-app behavior, but for job milestones such as working at one company for five years.

Building Trust, but Not Value

The major missing functionality of BeKnown is actually a conscious choice by Monster. The company has decided not to currently allow recruiters to search the profiles of all the app’s users for people who meet the criteria for certain jobs. This is ability is both crucial to recruiters who need to find candidates outside their network, and to users who want to be eligible for discovery based on their skills by recruiters they’re not connected to. Without this feature, users may as well just browse Monster.com.

Matt Mund, the company’s global VP of product and Tom Chavallier, global product manager, told us the reason this feature was left out was because “we want to make sure we’re building up trust, and are engaging you on your owns terms. You have to treat a network differently than a database.” While this respect for the privacy of users is admirable in concept, it somewhat defeats the purpose of the app.

With BranchOut launching its enterprise recruiting search solution on August 1st to compete with LinkedIn’s Recruiter, and Jobvite offering better options for distributing links to job listings on social networks, BeKnown’s position in the larger social recruiting space seems unclear. The 38.2 million Monster.com users with Facebook accounts may still find BeKnown useful to conduct searches of jobs posted by friends, but it’s the chance to stand out and be discovered for one’s competencies that makes a professional social network more valuable than a job listing site.

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The True Value Of Links

Do you know anyone who got their rankings back after Update Panda trashed their site?

There may be some, and there may be some people who get their rankings back eventually, but the problem is a fundamental one:

If the Google dragon flicks her tail in your direction, and all you rely on is rankings, you're screwed

That's life in SEO. Google flicks her tail, and some webmasters may never be heard from again. The solution to this problem isn't to hope and pray the dragon won't target you. The solution is to acknowledge that the dragon has the power to make your life miserable, and figure out ways to avoid that pain in future.

Develop Real Networks, Not Just Link Networks

Links are the arteries of the web. Traffic flows via links, be they PPC, hyperlinks, or Facebook friend requests.

Of course, SEO's worked out some time ago that hyperlinks have another value. Google uses links to "keep score". To paraphrase, if you have a lot of "good quality" links pointing to your page, Google gives you a high score, and rewards you with a high ranking.

This way of thinking can cause problems.

If our link building strategies only relate to ranking, and not link traffic, then we're vulnerable to changes in the way Google keeps score. If, however, we look at link building in terms of traffic, arriving via those links, then we're less vulnerable to Google's whims. If, for whatever reason, we are no longer ranked well, we'd still have traffic flows via the links.

This is not to say link building for the purposes of ranking is redundant. Google's not that clever. Yet. However, if we're overly focused on ranking, which is one form of traffic acquisition, and not spreading our traffic acquisition methods, then it leaves us vulnerable to Gogole's ranking methodology, over which we have no control.

What Is A Link?

A link is a connection between people.

Remember the six degrees of separation? The idea that everyone is approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, "a friend of a friend" statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.

The connection on the web is more like one-to-one, especially when you can "friend" the President Of The United States on Facebook. Well, one of his staffers, but you get my drift :)

We're not that far away from other people.

The ability to connect with anyone on the web, in one step, is profound and powerful. Once connections are made between people, stuff happens. The stronger the connection, the more great stuff can happen. But this doesn't happen if we just view a link as a means to get a high ranking. We miss the opportunity to build something with greater staying power:

Real relationships.

And if you believe the pundits, Google will be looking more carefully at real relationships, as opposed to the...cough..."manufactured" kind, in future.

Techniques & Strategy

Here a few ideas on how to add another layer to your link building activities.

1. Identify The Top People In Your Niche

Who writes about what you do? Think reporters, bloggers, forums, industry leaders, pundits and conference organizers.

These people are also highly likely to link to you, if you give them a good enough reason. A good enough reason is unlikely to be "I've linked to you, so please link back". Remember, our aim is not just to get links, it is to get links that produce traffic, too.

A good enough reason is that you interest them. In order to do that, you need to learn a bit about them, such as what they've linked to in the past, and why. What are the current hot topics? Industry talking points? Where is the industry heading? Make a list of the top ten ranking sites, trace their back-links back, and see who is talking about those sites, and why.

2. Give Forward

Link out to them.

Linking to someone is a great way to get on their radar. Do you follow your inbound links to see who is linking to your site, and why? Chances are, they do, too.

Don't use any old link. Link to them from a well-considered, thoughtful, in-depth piece about a current industry talking point. Because when they follow the link back, they're more likely to engage with you if you've given them something to interesting to engage with. They also may feel they owe you something, as you have done something for them.

Consider what might make this person engage. Perhaps you stroke their ego a little. If you make them look good, chances are they'll want to highlight this fact to others. You could challenge their point of view, so they engage in a debate with you by responding back to you on their own site.

3. Start A Conversation

You could view #2 as one-off tactic, but it's more lucrative if you see it as part of an on-going process.

The world of SEO could be likened to a conversation that's been going on since 1995. The conversation now has many participants, many of whom cover exactly the same ground, however it's the unique, authoritative voices that stand out.

Chances are, their "voice" didn't just happen overnight. They participate constantly, and have done so for years. They get in-front of the industry, regularly, wherever the industry happens to be looking.

They also tend to lead it. If you want a lot of links that you never have to ask for, then it's a good idea to first give people something really worth linking to, and talking about, on a regular basis.

4. Get A Story

But what happens to the people who run a sales catalog? A brochure website? No one links to such sites anymore!

The strategy I'm outlining is about networks of people, as opposed to link networks that have little value, besides ranking factors. Consider Zappos. Consider the founder, Nick Swinmurn. People talk about the company - and link to it. People talk about the founder and CEO - and link up.

Few people link to the shoes, and even if they did, that's not a make or break for Zappos. The story is the interesting thing, and that resonates through different media, and results in links. Real links - the kind of links people travel down and end up customers.

Ok, so Zappos were very successful. Silicon Valley loves talking about successful tech companies. But this can happen in small, local niches, too. So long as you have a memorable, compelling story, that you hussle, links - real links - will follow. Do you give to local charities? Have you created interesting processes that small business sites may like to profile? It might not relate directly to what you're trying to sell, but it does result in building up real networks of people.

5. Carry On The Conversation

Link building is a tactic. We can buy links. We can automate links. We can spam it up!

But when Google changes the game, as they often do, you're not left with much if your entire strategy is based on technical hacks. Perhaps the richer, more secure long-term approach is to seek another level of value from your links. Go back to the original idea of a link, which was a connection between two people. Someone saying "hey this is interesting!". Once someone does that, we can engage in a conversation, and it can build from there.

Google can't kill that.

If you're interesting, and other people find you interesting, then ranking is no longer a make or break position.

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