HP's aggressive determination to compete in the digital camera market took an abrupt turn a couple of weeks ago after flagging market share in recent years compelled the company to announce it would begin looking for a partner to make and market digital cameras under the HP name and shift the company's focus to its so-called "Print 2.0" posture. Here's a rundown from BetaNews:

Three years ago, Hewlett-Packard announced it would revamp its digital camera lineup and invest $1 billion in research and development over 18 months to become a leading vendor. In a stunning about-face today (Nov. 9), HP announced that it is now seeking an outside OEM to design and distribute HP branded digital cameras.

The company will continue to sell its own models through the holiday season, and then cease in the first half of 2008, when a partnership is intended to be in place. The company that will take over production has not yet been determined.

HP's reinvestment effort ironically only seemed to shrink its brand presence in digital cameras, after having been ranked #3 in sales in the US in 2001 by Infotrends/CAP. Today, HP is ranked #8 in the US with a meager 4% market share.

So the company is shifting its focus now toward its so-called Print 2.0 strategy,announced in May 2007. Falling in line with HP's strength in printing, and the current lack of Web-based printing technology, the Print 2.0 platform is seen by the company as a nearly $300 billion opportunity.

HP is already in development with ViaMichelin to improve printing of online maps and directions, as well as with SixApart, to integrate print functions into the popular Moveable Type blogging platform.
(read more)

Well, as my first conference on Prediction Markets this one left me a little puzzled, even with James Suroweicki and Robin Hanson there in person. So here are my thoughts, questions, and reactions to what was presented, talked about, questions asked and examples thrown out to us.

What seemed a way to learn about the concept and applications, successes and failures, ended up being a way for Google, Yahoo and other vendors to tout a process they just happened to have new tools for. The 4 hours seemed to be for the "true believers", and really glossed over PM 101, even though presentations by both Surowiecki and Hanson were meant to address the basics of the concept.

Reps from Microsoft and HP really had the most valuable lesson for me - they have been testing prediction markets in various forms and for various business functions, but neither are using them to make real business decisions at the group, department, business unit or corporate level. Yes, the markets can be very accurate, more so in many cases than internal and external "experts" (PM's are cheaper, too!), but no, they aren't taking over from the more entrenched ways of forecasting and decision making.

I heard a lot about how to get people to trade in the market, pros and cons of real money vs. other forms of "payoffs" (social standing and reputations), how to address the issues of risk attitudes and "quality" of trading over time (people getting it right, or close to it).

One really useful set of thoughts came from Adam Siegal of Inklingmarkets.com - lessons learned as to why PM's will fail within any group:

1. No concept of what a PM is
2. Using software that is too complex and not easy to use, to set up, trade in and run a market
3. Market structure was wrong
4. Asking for an opinion - questions must be quantifiable, even if just yes or no
5. Description or rules of the market not clear/understood by the trading populous
6. Questions posed are biased
7. Time frame of the market is too long - apathy over time and the market becomes static
8. No information is available for the traders to make a reasonable judgement - trades are based on information and knowledge (duh!)

Now this last one really struck me - I thought the whole idea in a PM was to bring out hidden tacit knowledge in an organization in a way to focus it on an issue or challenge to meet a specific business need. It would seem that there is a issue here of simply bad selections of the trading group members. I would also say there is a real issue on selected traders vs. self selected traders?(read more)

Since first posting a couple of weeks ago about the HP scandal after CEO Mark Hurd finally gave some voice to concerns about his involvement, I was astonished by the deluge of private emails I received about the subject and implications for the CI field. What was even more astonishing was the utter lack of commentary here, as comments to the original post. With that, I urge readers to weigh in with their opinions and let their voice be heard, particularly after 60 Minutes' piece last night.

CBS's 60 Minutes (video still available) Sunday night featured the dragon lady duo of Silicon Valley appearing in separate interviews going on the offensive in the wake of indictments by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer of former Hewlett-Packard chairman of the board, Patricia Dunn.(read more)