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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Life is in Perpetual Beta, So Why Not Business?

Life is a perpetual beta.

In childhood, you're in alpha mode. You're just trying to find your footing, much like a technology product that's got lots of bugs.

From adolescence onwards, you're in a perpetual beta mode. As an adult you're constantly learning new skills and capabilities, even as you age. The best and brightest among us are constantly growing. As a human being, you really don't "ship" (as the technology parlance goes) until you're dead.

Everyone accepts that you are not perfect. You're allowed to make mistakes - hopefully not too many of them, but enough to learn and grow.

In business, however, the total opposite is true. Nobody wants to see a product or service learn and grow in the open, or worse, fail.

When a company releases a product or service, everyone wants, no expects it to be perfect. Who wants to fly a plane that doesn't reach it's final destination? Who wants to go to a restaurant where the service is always iffy? We constantly insist on perfection. However, the irony is businesses are made of people so how can they be perfect?

This week Apple, a company that certainly strives for perfection, launched a new beta version of its Safari Web browser. It's buggy on both the Mac and Windows and lots of people are grumpy. It even broke several of my Dashboard widgets.

Yet, Apple, as a technology company, seems to be allowed to make such mistakes. They are permitted to learn and grow out in the open by slapping the "beta" label on products and services. Everyone else, however, is expected to be perfect. That's like asking Curt Schilling to pitch a perfect game every outing. It's ludicrous.

Business, however, is evolving. In the new Web 2.0 landscape where everyone is connected, more and more companies will open kimono start to talk about their products and services before they even ship - and collaborate with their audiences in the process.

As business opens their communications, they will learn as will consumers that it's ok not to be constantly perfect - though certain things (like planes that fly) will remain non-negotiable.

Web 2.0 will facilitate openness and collaboration with consumers and hopefully soon business too will be able to operate in beta mode to a certain degree, just like humans and technology. PR will play a valuable role here.

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Life is in Perpetual Beta, So Why Not Business?:

» Safari on Windows... Oh dear.... from Andrew Lark
Turns out that Safari on Windows has been engineered to provide a very typical Windows experience.It's buggy, slow, and unusable on some of the systems I've installed it on. Is this acceptable? Steve seems to think so - it's beta [Read More]

» You Are in Perpetual Beta Mode from Escape Adulthood
If youre new to this blog, heres what its all about. You may also want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!The other day, Steve Rubel offered up the concept of life being a perpetual beta. For those of you non-tech ne... [Read More]

» Forse non lo sai ma sei un prodotto in fase from Blog sui Motori di Ricerca ed il Web Marketing
La nostra vita è perennemente in fase β. Noi non ci vogliamo pensare, così come non vogliamo pensare che prima o poi (ed auguro a tutti più poi che prima ) moriremo. La riflessione (forse anche banale) deriva dalla lettura di un posto molt... [Read More]

» The Faithful Camp Out to Buy the First iPhones - Even Scoble! from B.L. Ochman's weblog: Internet marketing strategy, social media trends, news and commentary.
Here's one thing I won't be doing this weekend. This is Dave Clayman, from Chicago, who's waiting three days (!!) outside the Apple store in SoHo to buy an iPhone. Uber-blogger Robert Scoble is heading to the line for a sleepover tonight. That certainl... [Read More]

» Better than you were yesterday from Speak Schmeak
Check out Steve Rubel's post on life and business in perpetual beta, and Jason Kotecki's expansion of the concept. Who says we have to be perfect all the time? [Read More]

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