I have to say I’ve been disappointed with the way the Republican presidential candidates have been handling the YouTube/CNN debate. When I first heard that only Ron Paul and John McCain were committed to appearing and how Romney wasn’t gonna answer no questions from no damn snowman, I immediately thought of Henry Jenkins.
Archive for the ‘innovation’ Category
An Humanizing Technology
Thursday, August 2nd, 2007Perceiving The Whole From The Parts
Thursday, July 26th, 2007John Hagel is giving rhetorical form to what I think are the most important issues at the confluence of business, economics, marketing and even epistemology. His “Unanswered Questions at Supernova 2007” post from a month ago is still consuming my thoughts even when I’m trying to do other things, like eat and sleep.
“just”
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007In the graceful, brutal arc of a doomed relationship (romantic, professional, abstract, etc.), there may not be a staccato thunderclap signaling that Things Just Went ‘Round The Bend. Most often, evidence of the downward spiral comes in the aggregate, the result of a slow leak from pressurized discontents. What starts with an uncompromised disagreement evolves into militant passive-aggression and thereafter degrades to bitter nothingness. This has been well chronicled in the Cure’s old stuff.
McKinsey Web 2.0 Survey
Tuesday, April 17th, 2007Here’s a recent McKinsey report on Web 2.0 in business. The highlight for me was that 42% of respondents said that they, “Invested at the right time but should have more in our companies internal capabilites,” and 24% said that they, “Should have invested sooner in technology that in the meantime had a significant impact on our industry.”
It’s the Humanity, Stupid!
Sunday, April 15th, 2007
I don’t know why I haven’t posted something about this before. I find myself talking about this all the time. Here’s the gist:
Marketing is dead. You can be humans again.
No, really. Not the practice of taking things to market; I mean “marketing, the paradigm”. Marketing, of necessity, has been about dealing with customers at arm’s length. This is a byproduct of the industrial revolution. In order to pass the value of economies of scale to customers, companies had to be big. They had to talk to a lot of people. Since Gutenberg, the only tools available for—indeed the only ways to even think about—talking to a lot of people have been unidirectional. These univalent tools are the currency of marketing. They offer really no meaningful dialogue.
No Wife, No Horse, No Mustache
Saturday, April 14th, 2007
Innovation demigods, IDEO, have available for purchase these jaunty “method cards”. We bought some from the fine folks here at William Stout Architectural Books. We shipped ground—because our CFO is just like that—and we waited.
When they arrived, I took a third of the deck and divided the remaining between Steve and Ben. We thumbed through the cards, nodding and occasionally shifting our weight from one foot to the other. Perhaps it was the 11am sun reflecting off the mirrors that cover every surface in Ben’s cube, or even all the Sangria from breakfast; but whatever the reason, we were rather shocked to discover these.
Ben soberly suggested they were simply misprints. Obviously, this was met with derision. Steve and I had quickly recognized them for what they are; origami unicorns—clues alluding to the presence of a higher concept. What is IDEO trying to tell us here? We know they’ve worked with some of the biggest companies around, and even the government. Have we been chosen for enlightenment? Is there a handshake we need to learn? Please help us make sense of these cards. Maybe an IDEO adept (preferably like a 33-degree-er with access to this kind of knowledge) can give us some more information. I, for one, feel like I’m finally seeing the fnords.
The Apple of Retail’s Eye
Sunday, March 18th, 2007In the new edition of Fortune they call out “America’s Most Admired Companies” and to nobody’s surprise; Apple is in the top 10. They have a great article on Apple’s success with retail. When they got into the retail game in 2001, industry experts where extremely critical of their approach and didn’t think they would succeed. I think the opening paragraph is worth repeating here:
“Sorry Steve, Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work,” BusinessWeek wrote with great certainty in 2001. “It’s desperation time in Cupertino, Calif.,” opined TheStreet.com. “I give [Apple] two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake,” predicted retail consultant David Goldstein.
as far as possible, and then some
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007I’ve been mercilessly threatened by thugs at the Hawaii Research Center for Futures Studies. They’re the ones in the swank flowery shirts. They insist that if I don’t consider the broadest possible multiplicity of potential outcomes, I may overlook the one I actually want to pursue. And while I couldn’t really hear over the howl of ukuleles, I think they said that if I don’t respect the almighty S in futures, they’ll rub a pineapple against my neck. Not lovingly, either, like Don Ho does to tourists in the front row.
Now, maybe I’ve got a bit of a Honolulu Syndrome thing going on, but I think all that talk of possibilities and pineapples has gone to my head. In a recent client-attended ideation session, all I could feel was the pull of the far-fetched and improbable.
Object Permanence and the Chrysalis
Sunday, March 4th, 2007So everything is changing. You may have heard. Technology, of course, is always changing. The communication culture is changing. Business is changing. Politics is changing. Change is changing.
So the hacker said to the economist…
Monday, February 19th, 2007Ahhhh, the wager is on. Can web 2.0 make money for companies? Will people continue to work for free?
If you believe Nicholas Carr, people will NOT work for free forever. The economy simply hasn’t figured out how to charge for the model yet.
If you side with Yochai Benkler and the gift economy, people will contribute for free for as long as they are appreciated and moving toward the perceived greater good. Or, in his exact words, the key is:
“managing the marriage of money and nonmoney without making nonmoney feel like a sucker”
I like him.