Here’s to the Crazy Ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world – are the ones who do.

Successful agencies and consultancies align closely with clients to stay abreast of trends and industry threats. In recent years, the explosion of digital trends and the significantly lowered barrier to entry has created an environment where there is a new client expectation that new innovations can get to the market quickly. This results in a small number of useful concepts in an otherwise unnavigable sea of noise.

Enter PSFK, a new breed of consultancy that specializes in mining opportunities. Unlike traditional research that either uses data sets too broad to create specific solutions or generic sources that don’t lead to differentiation, their approach is to be the de-facto source for creativity. They uses a lot of data points – to support their 2-pronged approach:

• Spotting ideas and change: finding the inspiration and new opportunities
• Understanding patterns in the data: determining why the opportunities emerge

Bottom line: This specialty addresses a niche but long-term challenge clients perpetually demand from agencies and consultancies alike. I see this an additional capability for strategists, planners and research analysts to develop. Similar to how social listening helps brands with sense-making, I see trend-spotting as a critical element to maintaining and progressing client relationships to the next level.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then there isn’t much else to say about the music industry. I will say that the industry had a good run. But over the last decade, they have favored lawsuits over innovation, and insisted on clinging on to a business model that forced consumers to buy a full album when they wanted a la carte songs. I’d say the industry is ripe for change and for new businesses to come in to reap the rewards.

Much has been said about the new partnership between Microsoft and Nokia. At first blush, it’s an odd pairing as both are struggling in the new mobile world order of iOS and Android. Nokia’s smartphone market share dropped from 36.6% to 27.1% in just a year, a trend that will likely continue. Meanwhile, Microsoft recently retooled its approach to mobile, and its new Windows Phone 7 product is now competitive with the likes of Android, iOS and WebOS. With just a few million WP7 devices out in the wild, it has to fight for market and mind share with its new, but successful incumbents.

Given the dominance of iOS and a crowded Android market, Nokia decided to take a different tack and partner with Microsoft to become the exclusive platform for WP7. From a strategic perspective it seems like an odd match as neither company currently has a tremendous amount of momentum in the mobile market. Most analysts thought Nokia would do better with Android, which has been on a roll as of late. So what are some strategic reasons why they decided to go with Microsoft?

Changes in senior management. Back in Sept 2010, Nokia shook things up installing Stephen Elop as CEO, formerly from Microsoft. This marked the first time an outsider has taken the top spot. While Elop denies being a “trojan horse,” other former Microsoft executives have been recruited to Nokia, including Chris Webber, who will run Nokia USA.

Money talks. Plain and simple, Nokia will accept what some have called “huge payments” in the form of billions of dollars from Microsoft for hardware exclusivity. No doubt this will help the balance sheet in the short term, but also free up some of its massive R&D budget for software and focus on hardware, its perennial strength.

Strategic positioning. Instead of following a me-too strategy and entering the Android foray with Motorola, Samsung, HTC and other heavyweights, Nokia is taking a completely different approach with the relatively new and unproven WP7. It is certainly a distinct position and if a vibrant application ecosystem is developed, could be enticing. For developers, they will need to see a clear path to profitability in order to add it to their list of supported platforms. One could argue that it is similar to MacOS, formerly occupying 4-5% marketshare yet still making it viable enough for developers. The real question is how much energy Microsoft will put behind WP7 and if they have leverage in certain markets that Apple and Google do not. For instance, if MS can flex its muscles in the enterprise markets to get Nokia in the door, this could help them tremendously. I also understand Nokia has deep penetration in Asian markets, where others do not.

Having gone through the potential benefits of the partnership, the industry consensus appears to disagree. At a time when its stock has taken a beating, dropping 14% on the partnership announcement. To be sure, a single-day stock adjustment is not necessarily indicative of long-term viability, but for a company whose stock has been on the decline without a hit product in years, it’s a significant blow ($4B+ in market capitalization).

History of partnerships. Microsoft has had rocky relationships with its hardware partners. Regardless of the intent at the outset, their partners always seem to end up suffering, while Microsoft has emerged relatively unscathed. Asymco outlines a number of casualties in the past decade .

Transition years. We are in Q1 of 2011 and Apple/Google own about 60% of the smartphone market, a figure many see continue growing. Due to the complexity and scope of the Nokia/Microsoft partnership, Elop says 2011/2012 will be “transition years,” a phrase that generally means no new product launches. Without a competitive Nokia/WP7 product on the market to stop the bleeding in what could be the peak years of smartphone adoption is a tough gestation period to endure.

It’s rather early to declare the fate of Nokia a few days after this announcement. Upon further reflection however, there were a number of other options they could have taken including acquiring HTC to get a foothold in Android while retooling their other future devices. They could have also approached Google to be the exclusive hardware provider to their own line of phones. The next couple of years will be critical for Nokia. Beginning as a paper pulp company back in 1865, it will once again have to remake itself into a new company, this time run by Microsoft.

I’ve been thinking about how outsourcing has been in place for technical work and there’s no doubt it’ll move up the value chain. One place I didn’t expect to see it happening though, was in the field of finance. In particular, equity analysis. A recent crop of bloggers and independent analysts have been making the news for their coverage of Apple. Over the past several quarters, this new breed of analysts using their own tools and methodologies, have more accurately predicted Apple’s earnings than nearly every professional equity analyst on Wall Street. By building a following through social media, blogs, Twitter and other means, it’s just a matter of time before they displace their incumbents whether or not they intend to do so. They are leveling the playing field and bringing democracy to a highly closed and exclusive business.

How valuable is an open business model, with an open API and an entrepreneurial mindset? Take a look at this Twitterverse graphic by Brian Solis. There are hundreds of companies that have built startups around Twitter, in 19 different categories spanning mobile applications to social CRM to search to geolocation. Suffice it to say, there is a significant halo around open products like Twitter and Facebook, growing the value of the service exponentially. This allows the core company to focus on platform, what it does best.I’ve worked with some clients who would benefit from this kind of thinking. It’s not unlike outsourcing certain functions where it doesn’t make sense to develop the capability if there’s no value add. It also works in reverse; some of the best products have become even more valuable than the platform. Take Mint.com as an example. Using Yodlee’s financial platform aggregation technology, they built a presentation layer that far exceeded what was available — and still does. It sold to Intuit for a cool $170M, a huge multiple more than the Yodlee license that powers Mint. How’s that for value creation?