Re: [projectvrm] Microsoft's Personal Health Care Records

Thanks, Joe. I think that explains it rather well. I am currently obsessing 
about the tools, infrastructure and such, in order to start the process. And 
also because I believe that just as the media has been changing its 
relationship with audience and users (for better or for worse) as a result of 
blogging, social web etc, similar pressure will be needed to change the 
nature of relationships of business to, well, people..

 We cannot be that on our own, but we can think of tools and applications 
that might seed it and speed it up.

So I want the tools to manage my data better because I could make use of it 
today. But it is the independence it gives me from vendors and a potential to 
redefine my relationship with them that excites me about it as an individual 
customer.

Axx
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-----Original Message-----
From: "Joe Andrieu" 
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Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2007 10:23:02 
To:<
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Cc:"'ProjectVRM list'" 
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Subject: RE: [projectvrm] Microsoft's Personal Health Care Records


Alan, 
  
I think the usefulness of "relationship" in VRM is in using the 
vendor-customer relationship as a focal point and filter to manage the scope 
of our activities. 
  
You state: 
== 
But it is not necessarily 'predicated on relationship'. Instead, it is 
predicated on providing individuals with the tools they need to gather and 
manage information (including their own personal data) far more efficiently 
and effectively than they can today. 
== 
  
The point of VRM isn't about gathering and managing information generally. 
That's a huge problem, arguably the uber-myth behind the semantic web.  
Instead, VRM is specifically about the information as it pertains to 
vendor/customer or (buyer/seller) interactions, e.g., vendor-customer 
relationships.  It's this focus that has allowed us to get traction and, IMO, 
will continue to allow us to move beyond the theoretical into practical 
implementations. 
  
-j 
--
Joe Andrieu
SwitchBook Software
http://www.switchbook.com <http://www.switchbook.com/> 

 
+1 (805) 705-8651 
 
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Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 9:38 AM
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Subject: Re: [projectvrm] Microsoft's Personal Health Care Records

 
This is an interesting one: I am not so sure VRM has to be predicated on the 
idea of relationship. 
  
Here is a different angle: for the last hundred years our commercial system 
has revolved around a persuasion paradigm - where sellers send out messages 
attempting to persuade buyers to buy their particular products; employers 
send messages to employees telling them what to do; poltiicians send messages 
to citizens urging them to vote for me, and so on. All top down. 
  
Thanks to all the technology advances that we have been discussing, we are 
now evolving towards a personal-decision making paradigm. Here the epicentre 
of added value lies in helping individuals gather, sift, judge and compare 
the information they need to make better decisions, and then to implement 
these decisions as efficienlty and effectively as possible. 
  
This shifts the focus from organisations' definitions of value and purposes 
to individuals' definitions of value and purposes. But it doesn't stop there, 
of course, because in pursuit of personal value, people want to do business 
with each other and with suppliers. They want to buy and use things. And the 
fact that individuals are able to go to market with all this rich, real time 
accurate information about the exact nature and source of demand creates 
enormous opportunities for suppliers - to talk to the right people about the 
right things at the right times; to develop the right products and distribute 
them to the right places and so on. 
  
So it naturally leads to new types of win-win relationship. But it is not 
necessarily 'predicated on relationship'. Instead, it is predicated on 
providing individuals with the tools they need to gather and manage 
information (including their own personal data) far more efficiently and 
effectively than they can today. 
  
Angels on a pin-head? Perhaps. But it is a slightly different focus. 
  
Alan M