Infrastructure management

The infrastructure component of the business model is comprised of the different resources, activities, and partnerships needed to support the value proposition. Without them the company cannot create and deliver the proposed value to their customers.

12.4.2.1 Key Resources

As stated in the theory section, resources are not just of the tangible and monetary type. Intangible and human resources are equally important and often relate to exceptional skillsets and know-how available to the company. We will combine human resource with intangible and have identified the following key resources available to Qwiki.

Intangible (and human) key resources

Financial and strategic partnerships: Since Qwiki won the TechCrunch Disrupt award in 2010, successful Internet pioneers have sponsored the Qwiki team both in terms of capital but also in terms of knowledge and expertise. Prior to the TechCrunch event Doug team up with the Louis Monier, founder

5 Director of Love is a title Qwiki have invented and refers to the position of spreading the word and being a nice person spreading “love” for externally.

70 of AltaVista, a pioneer in the search engine industry. After the QR demonstration at TechCrunch, other founders of giant and successful Internet companies (e.g. Facebook and YouTube) have supported the

‘Qwiki cause’ to turn information into an experience and story. As Doug states:

“Our new financial partners will help provide the resources, independence and strategic know-how to grow Qwiki to the next

level and forever improve the way the world consumes information.”

(Qwiki, 2011, A)

Access to these valuable resources in terms of expertise and guidance has been vital for Qwiki’s success.

Patent for QR: On October the 13’th 2010, two weeks after Qwiki won the TechCrunch Disrupt event, and a week prior to the private alpha test release for the QR, Qwiki filed a patent for the QR system (Patentstorm, 2013, A). The patent was issued May 19^th 2011. The patent can potentially protect them against imitators.

Strong visions and leadership (Doug Imbruce): Having met Doug Imbruce personally, we can safely say that he is a very charismatic man with a mission in life: to turn information into an experience. Doug is exceptional at convincing people of his vision and mission (his strategic partnerships are perfect examples of this) and inspiring his team. Without Doug they would probably not have been where they are today. Doug has very inspiring visions on how information is to be consumed, created, and shared in the perfect world.

Skillful web and iOS developers and designer: Qwiki’s team of programmers is top quality and everyone has prior to joining the Qwiki team contributed to other major successful web or app-based companies.

Skillful PR and promotion team (The “Directors of Love”): Through different PR techniques Qwiki have generated a lot of hype and awareness around themselves since they won the TechCrunch Disrupt Award.

Proprietary software on their own servers: Qwiki have kept their software engines proprietary, which makes it harder for others to imitate. Having an open platform or open source based engines could easily

71 jeopardize the novelty of Qwiki’s “information experience” if others were to imitate or enhance their products.

Tangible key resource:

Tangible resources are the ones you can touch, see, and feel. These resources are equipment, building, and cash reserves. Qwiki has many types of tangible resources at their disposal but not any that are of key importance. As an example, Qwiki does not own an innovative production plant that can greatly reduce production costs so the company can dump product prices and kill the competition.

12.4.2.2 Key Activities

Osterwalder (2004) identifies three different types of value configurations a firm can have that determine the nature of the company’s activities. Firms that have the configuration of value networks activities provide networks for buyers and suppliers e.g. Amazon.com. These companies function like a brokerage between the network members and controls and monitor the network and interaction patterns (Stabell & Fjeldstad, 1998). Value shop activity configuration are used by firms where the customer needs and problems are varying, e.g. through customized solutions where standardized solution are not applicable (Stabell & Fjeldstad, 1998). Dell Inc. is an example of a firm employing the value shop activity configuration. The last type of activity configuration proposed by Osterwalder (2004) is the classical value chain that describes how a company adds value to their products in the sequential transformation process of input to output (Porter, 2001). Qwiki is neither a brokerage firm nor provides customized solutions, so the only logical way to analyze Qwiki’s key activities is through the value chain configuration. Qwiki’s offerings transform highly structured and formalized input into standardized output in a sequential manner based on a template. The primary activities in the value chain are comprised of inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and after sales and service. Qwiki’s two products and value propositions are very different in term of purpose.

The QR generates qwikies based on topical search and the QM lets users generate their own qwikies, which is why we will classify which value proposition an activity relates to in value chain analysis, which will be described in the following. The activities are analyzed and identified based on the QR patent (Patentstorm, 2013, A), our feedback from the QC when we visited Qwiki (Appendix I & II), and from statements from Qwiki’s previous PR/Marketing director (Quora, 2012, A)

Inbound logistics

Inbound logistics are activities associated with receiving, storing, and disseminating inputs to the product:

72 Activity 1A – Acceptance of topical input string (QR): When a user initiates a QR search he types in a topical string to the QR system. This is the only input for the QR.

Activity 1B – User choice of automatic generated content or customization (QM): The QM app gives the user a choice of automatically generating a Qwiki or letting the user choose the desired content.

Operation

Operation consists of activities associated with transforming inputs into the final product form.

Activity 2A – Collection of content based on user query (QR): When a user has submitted the desired topic, the QR system web-crawls different sources for content relating to the topic, e.g. textual information, pictures, and videos.

Activity 3A – Packaging of information from multiple sources (QR): The collected content is packaged into an interactive video stream with a text-to-speech feature turning the information into an experience ready to be consumed.

Activity 2B – Integration with smartphone video and photo content (QM): The QM app integrates with the “photo stream” application on the iPhone so the QM automation process or the user can access and use content for the generated qwiki.

Activity 3B.1 – Automatic content generation (QM): The application can intelligent select related content (based on time period and GPS location captions) and automatically generate a qwiki mixing it with an audio sequence, pacing between content and captions.

Activity 3B.2 – User-generated content (QM): The user can chose to personally create and format the qwiki with desired content and format the content with desired audio sequences, pacing’s and captions.

Outbound logistics

Outbound logistics are associated with collecting, storing, and physically distributing the product to users.

Activity 4 A&B – qwiki playback (QR & QM): The generated qwiki can be viewed via Qwiki’s own platform.

73 Activity 5 A – sharing a QR link or embedding it on a webpage (QR): A user can share the QR link or embed it on their own webpage through the API.

Activity 5 B – Storing and sharing the qwiki (QM): When the user (or app) has generated a qwiki, the finalized “story” can be saved in the device for later playback and/or shared via different mediums like Twitter, Facebook, and email.

Marketing and sales

Marketing and sales are activities associated with providing a means by which customers can purchase the product and inducing them to do so.

None of Qwiki’s products can be bought since they are for free, but the QM app can be “purchased”

i.e. downloaded via App Store. In a manner of speaking, this activity has been outsourced to Apple.

Activity 6 A&B – Generating hype and awareness around themselves and their products:

Qwiki demonstrates excellence in their approach to generate awareness to themselves and their products with PR strategies to promote their cause. They gained momentum from winning TechCrunch Disrupt Award and started to build communities and partnerships with bloggers, news sites, and Microsoft Bing to create a hype around their products and cause.

After sales and service

After sales and service are activities associated with providing service to enhance or maintain the value of the product

Activity 7 A&B – Engaging with their customers: Qwiki uses social media sites to directly engage and interact with current and potential users, posting updates, NPD (new product development) initiatives, and post instructions for signing up for early invites for test purposes. These mediums also functions as feedback channels where the customer’s voice can be heard.

These activities outline the different functions that are preformed to transform a user input (query string or desire to generate a qwiki story) into a finalized “product”. The activities related to content packaging, PR/marketing, and interacting with their users, are the most important activities Qwiki performs. These activities are responsible for the uniqueness and novelty Qwiki offers in information creation and consumption, and establishing a user-base through strong PR initiatives and interaction.

74 12.4.2.3 Key Partners

We have on numerous occasions described Qwiki’s different strategic partnerships with Bing, ABC News, Apple App Store, bloggers and the different investors. All of these partnerships are of the type referred to as strategic alliance between non-competitors, and a thorough analysis of these partnerships are not of importance, since they are all non-competitors and primarily help to promote Qwiki’s products.