But wouldn't it be cool if...

Unfortunately, the enterprise world often seems to lack the pizazz of the consumer world.  Here's a nonsensical, completely unproductive idea I've been tossing around:

Trivial Audacity

OK, so the name needs help, but I don't think the idea does.

The television shows I find most interesting generally have the common thread of frequent historical or pop cultural references.  Frequently, I'm left scratching my head wondering what the reference actually meant.  Family Guy is one of the worst offenders.  See this page or this video for some examples.

It would be both entertaining and educational if you could Shazam any TV show, live or recorded, and get information on the specific interval of video you were watching.  Such information could be a combination of social-media generated and producer provided.  Shazam appears to be heading in this direction already, allowing people to tag pretty much any audio stream with any content, but a more solid producer-side relationship could yield a truly interesting development in how the general population experiences media.

Enterprise-focused startups are in demand

A few weeks ago, this article on TechCrunch caught my attention.  In it, Sequoia Capital's Jim Goetz indicates surprise at the lack of focus on the enterprise in the startup community.  The comment from Palo Alto Networks founder Nir Zuk regarding enterprise vs. consumer time-to-market is particularly interesting.

Building a consumer-focused mobile application isn't difficult.  It requires focus and commitment to be sure, but the barrier to entry is low, and the learning curve associated with learning a new language or platform is shallow.  In my few years in the monolithic corporate software world, I've discovered that robustness, customizability, security, and interoperability are difficult goals to achieve, and thus take time.

Here's an idea in the enterprise space that I've been tossing around in my head for a while:

Self-Organizing Wikis

Knowledge sharing in enterprise environments is both essential and difficult.  Products like Atlassian's Confluence platform provide functionality for allowing employees to contribute and search content, track tasks, etc.  The challenge lies in keeping all of this content organized.  The Google philosophy of "search, don't organize" doesn't hold up in the enterprise due to the frequent scenario of someone not knowing what information is out there, or what has already been tried.  A wiki which recognized viewing trends, topic associations, and potentially related postings would be useful.