The People's Supermarket?

I co-wrote a book about the future of retail many years ago: didn't think we'd come this far, so soon.

Tesco has said it sees the future of its online offering as an open platform to which anyone can contribute.

From New Media Age. Interviewed Tesco and they were always ahead of the game but...

Tesco, along with its digital agency EMC Conchango, Microsoft and Nesta, is inviting developers to an open day, called T-Jam, in August to introduce them to the initiative.

Nick Lansley, Tesco.com head of research and development and head of special projects, told new media age, “We’re opening up our affiliate programme to allow people to develop for whatever device they want, whether it’s a website, mobile phone or set-top box, and make money for each new customer that comes to us as a result.

“The reason we’re doing this is that although we have lots of ideas we don’t necessarily have the resources to do them ourselves,” he added. “So the new API allows developers to write whatever they want, benefit us but also make money off the back of it.”

Great stuff.

DB response from NESTA, harnessing the digital in positive ways

'Digital Britain is no longer a marginal issue. It lies at the heart of unlocking economic potential and radically reshaping how we deliver public services. Get this right and people will no longer accept being passive consumers of services, but will become a part of the solution.

The challenge for policymakers is to harness this new power in a positive way. It's time for Britons to get digital'.

Following the publication of Digital Britain, NESTA will take forward a practical set of solutions that will:

Develop a rights framework, along with other organisations, for publicly procured new media content which will allow secondary commercial exploitation and create extra public revenues;

Work with the TSB (Technology Strategy Board) on the development of a Next Generation Digital Testbed where the telecoms industry and digital innovators can experiment with novel product ideas and revenue models, intellectual property frameworks and new models of partnership that will enable UK businesses to become global leaders in the digital markets.

In addition, NESTA will launch 'Reboot Britain' in early July which will use the opportunities offered by digitisation to find practical solutions to some of the intractable social challenges we face, for example, providing public services which are more efficient and shaped by the people who use them.

From the NESTA wesbite.
This has to be right: We've seen the consumer voice in these debates infrequently, and yet consumers are the economic and social drivers of the digital experience and the behaviours that result (which appear to be different from behaviours in the physical/material world). New research into what people do, and how they respond to innovative ideas - technology take ups, for example - must be part of the process of making us digital. Much of the response to DB has been, ok a tax, what else? In fact there are many interesting ideas buried in the (large) document. The detail is not the devil; the devil is in the ongoing consultations that will follow DB: such as those over the licence fee, the Ofcom stance on "file-sharing". And, of course, the dreaded 2Mbs...

Pipes not Poetry

The Digital Britain report is about pipes, not poetry, and spreads an underwhelming layer of digital varnish across a hopelessly wide range of services. It has stopped short of shoring up unsustainable businesses – Channel 4 and the BBC can form a partnership if they wish, but little pressure here and certainly no forced marriages. The BBC should be a public service partner to media companies, not a virulent competitor, says the report. There should be more focus on a new model for local news which will please some regional newspaper groups but will not begin to replace the money they have already lost and will continue to lose.

It isn't much of an electrifying vision, more a well-intentioned attempt to square the impossible circle of supporting innovation and disruption while exercising crowd control so the feeble and ailing don't all get trampled in the rush. Those who might be classified as "at risk" which includes the majority of existing UK media brands in one way or another, might all find a crumb of comfort somewhere in the 237 pages, but there is nothing here likely to sustain those who are unable or unwilling to institute some fairly radical self-help.

From Emily Bell in the Guardian.

So how does the radical "self help" begin? Now there's the question. Particularly taken with the NESTA stuff in DB. "Test-beds" et al. More, later. To go poetry rather than pipe, this report is for recollection in tranquility, not shrill blasts.