Reality Check: The “therefore” expedition

Editor’s Note: Welcome to our weekly Reality Check column. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile industry to give their insights into the marketplace.
Thanks to search, we have a lot of opportunities to find things. Some are useful, and others, well – a recent Microsoft Bing commercial put it best – we are in overload. We have learned a lot about a lot, thanks to the Internet. But regurgitation isn’t innovation. Value is not created by restating, but by re-casting, re-investing, re-engineering and re-discovering.
It’s time for a “therefore” expedition. It’s time to answer: “What should we conclude from all of the information we just read/ saw/ heard? How will we behave differently? What’s the therefore?”
Like expeditions past and present, we have no idea how to get to our destination, and may not even know once we have reached it. We need training and gear – rigorous mental calisthenics and analytical discernment – if we want to prevail. We should expect the unexpected – dark corners of risk and uncertainty, frightening creatures of competition, nothing where we expected something, the list goes on. Also, we should expect to be tempted to give up, go back to the perceived safety and security of today’s beliefs, and declare our fanciful ambitions to be childish, na