Digital Digressions

Five Keys to Engaging the Customer to Produce Real Innovation: Lessons From LEGO

Many thanks to Helle Winding for sending me the link to this excellent post over at marketingprofs.com  where Leland D. Shaeffer takes a deeper look at five specific ways that Marketing can engage the customer in the innovation process, using examples from LEGO Group, where we continue to use these techniques successfully.

5 key points dominate the innovation process:

1. Learn from your Lead Customers
2. Co-design with your customers
3. Empower your customers to create their own designs
4. Let customers 'spead their wings'
5. Help your customers gain recognition for their designs

The article is an excellent insight in to the many initiatives running at LEGO. Only through walking the talk of 'None of us are as smart as all of us' is it possible to truly realise the potential of open source - by giving people a meaningful platform where they are listened to and empowered to collaborate with us. These are immensely inspiring times to be working at LEGO and what makes me want to get up in the morning is the commitment we all have in enabling people young and old to explore and harness their unique creativity. Read more 

Designers as Facilitators of Collective Creativity

Back in the day when I went to design school, the greatest aspiration uniting all my fellow students was to become the next Philippe Starck. The idea of the lone genius, the one people always called upon to create beauty and join form with function, the duck that consistently always laid golden eggs for his clients - this was, and in some circles still is, the ideal for designers.

Creativity and why designers are not artists
What's the difference you may ask. A good question to ask as both rely heavily on their creative skill to create solutions. According to Arthur Koestler, the most-cited authority on creativity, every creative act involves bisociation, a process that brings together and combines previously unrelated ideas. He contrasts bisociation with association, saying that association refers to previously established connections among ideas but that isociation involves making entirely new connections among ideas. Koestler’s definition addresses all forms of creativity, whether in art, science or humor.

So designers, artists, scientists, you name it all rely on creativity for coming up with solutions, but the difference between designers and artists is ego. Designers (at least good ones anyway) divorce their egos from a project early on to immerse themselves in research, ethnographic studies, insights of various sorts to come up with solutions that best serve the needs identified by users. Artists on the other hand delve in much greater luxury, not necessarily materially speaking, but in terms of accountability. Their works of art are born out personal briefs, passions and ideas - not a common need or problem and are specifically bought, because of their personal interpretation of the reality we all live in. It is their synthesis of subjects in to visual, interactive or 3 dimensional form that evokes an emotional and intellectual reaction in an audience. You can argue here that the above is similarly the reason why we buy certain products, because the name of the designer has become synonymous with compelling design that we appreciate. That is entirely correct, in some areas the roles are particularly blurred as is the case with fashion design for instance, where the designers behave more like artists (some more than others), but who are still commonly referred to as designers.

The Advent of Collective Creativity
Fast-forward to 2007 and our CEO at LEGO, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, speaking about collective creativity and its power to create stunning products and solutions; 'Why have 100 designers, when you can have a 100.000?', he poignantly asks. And I think: absolutely! Why not indeed - whereas I can in my mind's eye hear all those designers gasp quietly in the background, this is the sound of their dreams vanishing before them.

What does he mean? Knudstorp is referring to the power of collective creativity. Collective creativity occurs when bisociation is shared by two or more people. We are beginning to see that collective creativity can be very powerful and can lead to more culturally relevant results than individual creativity does. This is what happens with really good collaboration based on teamwork.

Liz Sanders from SonicRim articulates this very well her article on the subject. All people who touch and are touched by the “product” that is being designed should play a role in collective creativity. (By “product” I mean products, interfaces, spaces, etc.) These people fall into two main groups: “makers” and “users.” “Makers” include all the members of development teams from disciplines such as marketing, engineering and design. “Users” include people who shop for, buy and end up using the product.

Collective creativity is already being practiced in industry today by “makers.” In fact, most design firms sell their interdisciplinary product development experience. The biggest opportunity for improving the quality of products that we design today is to practice collective creativity with "users." Others agree. Design critic Rick Poynor has argued that "since design is something fundamental to being human, it can’t be left solely in the hands of designated practitioners."

Architect  Christopher Alexander writes “People need and have a right to determine and shape their own environment. . . . They are the only ones who know in a profound way what they need . . . .Good architecture can only come from wholehearted involvement of the users in the shaping of their buildings and streets.”   

Why is collective creativity important?
To quote Liz Sanders here: Collective creativity, when practiced with "users" in the design development process, can result in useful and relevant innovation. This is important because useful and relevant innovation can be commercially successful at the same time as it is culturally beneficial. The shift from individual to collective levels in thinking and doing is occurring today in many domains. We see this shift taking place especially today in the world of business. Design education needs to keep up with the shift to meet the challenges created by new levels of thought and action.

The changing role of the designer
The days of the super-star designer are numbered. The skills needed to facilitate collective creativity are very different from what the lone genius does in his corner. First there is humility and the profound appreciation of the role ordinary people should have in shaping and creating the project of their dreams. It is no longer the designer who tells the world what the solution should look like, it is the designer who uses his/her expertise in unlocking creativity to enable others, who perhaps habitually are less confident in the creative realm, to unlock their thoughts, ideas and creativity.

At LEGO work continues to expand the ability of ordinary people to create the product of their dreams. An approach pioneered by the Mindstorms NXT development process of involving the Mindstorms community in designing the hardware, software, the toy and pieces for the new robot, has rapidly continued into completely user-designed products sold through the company's LEGO Factory channel, where users can indeed create their very own LEGO model and buy exactly that model as well as be inspired by and buy the creations of others. This of course in parallel with existing product development of LEGO toys, still handled by designers themselves - but even here community interaction is becoming more and more commonplace as the insight and ideas coming from LEGO users are simply too valuable to ignore. Long gone are the days of the lone genius - instead here we are at the advent of collective creativity where the power of many creates far better products and experiences than any one of us could have dreamt up on our own.

What Makes Us Wise?

Recent quiet time on this blog induced by excessive cycling, the surrender to Facebook and a workload that simply refuses to diminish are my excuses for depriving you of my musings, hopefully some of you still haven't given up on me and will return to read this post... if so, Welcome back!

The autumn is almost upon us and if you live in the UK, it has been since about June. A lot of time for reflection in all this rain and a great quote by Yoko Ono I saw recently got me thinking about age, wisdom - why some grow wise and others just grow old.

Yoko Ono was asked recently whether age matters in her opinion, to which she answered: "The advancing of age matters when it gives you experience - the kind that adds wisdom, power and self-confidence to you - and thereby makes you a more attractive individual for the satisfaction and joy of you, your family, your friends and the world."

This captures the sensation I woke up with today - a dream of two racing cars, one symbolising the left brain and the other symbolising the right brain. These two cars were in a very close competition, side by side, each in turn inching away in front of the other only to be caught up and challenged again. The dream ended with a strong realisation about bridge-building, how wisdom is really about bridging the two halves of how we function.

On one hand we are emotional beings and emotions sometimes take control of us completely and experiences create many connections in the part of our brain which deals with emotion. Many religions, even psychoanalysis, tries to temper the emotions and make us think about the consequences of irrational, emotional behaviour - whether it is through ethics, thinking about treating others the way you wish to be treated and so on.

However, someone also recently pointed out that radicalisation is about emotions devoid of reason and why radicalism is so infectious particularly among younger people is that many don't have a clear understanding of the rational implications of radicalism, nor a strong ingrained will to prevent human suffering in all its forms. This expert continued to point out that the reason Islamic radicalism is so dangerous is because emotions have been infused with Islamic rationalisation, apparently lending legitimacy to otherwise irrational emotional desires of hurting fellow human beings. And the most depressing of all, whether we are talking about politicians, Islamic radicals or society at large is that the desire to eliminate human suffering, today and in the future is still not the top priority of our actions - we think human suffering can be justified in the name of the right cause.

On the other hand pure reason and rationalisation without the emotional dimension is no good either. I once read that the reason why Nazism was so destructive during WWII was through its ability to institutionalise and rationalise the process of elimination of those less desirable in Hitler's Germany. The cold rationalisation and institutionalising of the most horrific human atrocities somehow made it easier for people in all parts of the Nazi bureaucracy not to think of the human (emotional) consequences of their actions - how many lives were lost, families torn apart, contributions is science, literature, art, medicine etc. never realised as nascent careers or even young lives were snuffed out through an effective process of elimination, logistically perfect and emotionally completely sterile, revealing the horror of pure rationalisation unrestrained from emotional considerations.

How does one navigate this minefield of emotion and reason. How does one make sure in every case we ensure the consequences of our actions are always on the top of our minds and that we methodically strive to eliminate destructive thoughts and behaviour from ourselves and focus on nurturing the good in each of us? Is that was true wisdom is? The ability understand others and an ability to consistently choose a self-less path where we refrain from greed, jealousy, anger, hatred, aggression and so on. Is it that wisdom really gives us a distance to things, a weariness to react to soon, judge too quickly, but instead to be determined in looking for and seeing the big picture, understanding how many things are really interconnected and attacking one may indeed simply worsen the other thing we'd rather keep. Is wisdom the ability to understand cause and consequence, the capacity to judge emotion and reason side by side, not favouring either on the expense of the other - but indeed seeing the world as a whole and bigger than the sum of its parts?

The 5 Rules of Growth

What are the principles for creating growth? Or rather, what are the things you need to make sure your ideas for growth address in order for you to ensure they succeed?

Growth is a word that sooner or later begins buzzing around a company, because cost-cutting - although great for survival, won't get you anywhere in the long run. The world is constantly moving on around you and any company thinking they can sustain themselves in business by continuously doing the same thing, but at a cheaper price, will gradually watch their market wither away.

This is yet again one of those either-or arguments. The business world is rife with the proponents for one or the other and people seem to be reconciled to the fact that you can never have both, but much like my posting on Why the desire to simplify can inhibit innovation it is in fact exactly the opposite: to be able to grow you will need to figure out a way of achieving both: repositioning yourself in the marketplace to enable growth and doing this continuously at a more competitive price in order to stay there.

I would agree that there are people whose strengths lie in one of the two camps, you are either great at cost-cutting or at generating ideas for growth, but you seldom find people who are good at both. This, however, is not an absolute truth, but more a testament to the unwillingness of people to move out of their comfort zone. It's like saying: you are either a great pianist at birth or you will never become one. That's rubbish! Like any skill, sport or ability - you may have a set of 'tendencies', but it is your sheer hard work and determination that ensures those 'tendencies' destine you for greatness, not what you are born with. Same in business. So to be truly great in business, if your strength is to come up with brilliant ideas for growth - stretch yourself into thinking how you can deliver that growth idea through better use of supply chain, logistics, pricing, distribution, i.e how can you use what people do in cost-cutting exercises to generate entirely new business models that help you deliver that growth idea better than if you stuck with the existing set-up and simply did an iterative improvement?

OK - you see where I'm going with this? Before I stray too far, let's recap on those rules I mentioned earlier:

1. Sustainable?
No point going for a growth idea, which is not sustainable - i.e can you deliver this year after year, in a lean and efficient way without killing your staff, your company and moreover: do you know this idea is something people will ask for in 5 years time too? If not, then figure out now how you will evolve your growth idea over time to stay relevant. If you can't you know it's not sustainable.

2. Profitable?
Forgive me for stating the obvious here, but often people don't realise that new ideas for growth also sometimes call for new ways of measuring profit. Numbers can hide as much as they reveal sometimes. If you haven't accounted for all the things that eventually will cost you, you may not have an accurate picture of your profits. Many companies are in this dilemma now, because the rising focus on carbon footprints and greenhouse gases/global warming means that there are entire industries whose pricing policies do not reflect the toll they take on the environment. If we suddenly had a price assigned to products and services based on the carbon footprint they require in their manufacture for instance, many profits would instantly erode. Companies will need to start thinking about this very soon. You say: ah well, this will automatically favour the likes of Google whose business offering is entirely virtual and thus they have no pollution to worry about. Wrong! Google has to worry about this stuff too, because by nature of the size of their business they are now renting entire server farms to fuel their need to keep indexing the net and providing the service they do. Before we even get to whether those servers are using toxic components etc. these server farms use a lot of electricity, which has to come from somewhere - now Google's profits wouldn't perhaps be so mind-boggling anymore if the price of electricity suddenly began reflecting the toll it takes? Just a thought.

3. Capital Efficient?
Needless to say, there is no point having growth which is not.

4. Differentiated from Competition?
Me too ideas are often prompted by competition moving into an area and you feeling obliged to do the same. More choice in an area is not necessarily good if you cannot offer differentiation. In a worst-case scenario it means a price-war and less profits for all. Some deliberately go for this, but unless you are absolutely sure your business models allows for cheaper, faster, more cost-effective offers (because you are using a business model radically different from your competition in this area) there is no point to go for this. Falling prices in the long run mean a commoditisation of your product/service and distinctly less value attached to it by consumers, who generally become more vary paying for anything.

5. Innovative?
Everyone argues they have innovation, but innovation is a confusing word. It gets mistaken for creativity (the capacity to generate ideas) and simply going for iterative improvements. Adding another feature on a digital camera is not an innovation. The Ipod itself wasn't even an innovation, but orchestrating Itunes and a legal way for music downloads around an MP3 player was. It's about doing 'new'. Turning things on their head - ultimately it is about converting ideas into profitable growth. What does that mean? Well ideas are nothing unless people are willing to buy it and after having it bought it, coming back and buying more. Innovation is about taking that leap and creating something, which starts an external shift eventually snowballing into influencing previously unconnected industries.

What Marketeers Forget When Thinking of Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is on everyone's lips - it's attractive to users, because we become the authors, publishers, content creators and between us we can create infinitely more value for each other than a company can on its own. Context is the content. Marketeers are intrigued by this prospect too, because it means new, potentially more cost-effective ways to target their audiences, spreading word of mouth and if you are lucky, being able to measure the effect much more precisely than you ever could via say TV or print-advertising. There is a prospect of creating more bang for the buck and moreover, learning more about the likes and dislikes of your consumers.

In the wake of this growing phenomena, there is an exponential growth of seminars, lectures, conferences and events to explain what web 2.0 is, what you can do with it and how best to make use of it. Countless executives are invariably crammed into a room, where some net-savvy individual extols the virtues of blogging, viral marketing, you name it and the room is filled with various degrees of perplexed individuals who are beginning to realise that the entire paradigm they have structured their careers and lives around, is shifting into the unknown and many traditional practises will have to change if they are to survive.

Your Audience is Active - not passive
Traditional communications theory used to focus on measuring and analysing the effect of media on the people exposed to it. Audiences were considered passive and we all wanted to know what watching TV really does to you, does it make you buy more, more stupid, more obese etc? The truth is that audiences are active, they consume media based on its uses and gratifications gained. That goes for TV too these days - having a Tivo box makes the traditionally passive act of TV watching much more active as you can choose what you want to watch, when, skip the ads and teach the thing to tell you next time something is on that you might enjoy. This becomes even more acute when we move towards on-line media - users decide what they do, where they go, what they watch, who they talk to and so on. What others have said is easier for them to find out, and what is on their mind is easier to broadcast to everyone around them too.

If You Want to Talk, You Must Show You Care to Listen
Traditional marketing operating from a paradigm of passive consumers that need to be engaged, first be reminded of their inadequacies and then told how to overcome them still wants to approach Web 2.0 with the same attitude. It's still about trying to sell people some smokescreen and appeal to their fantasies and desires, but that will not work anymore, not in the traditional sense.

Imagine you are sitting at a table with a person you have never met. You begin a conversation, politely you try to find out who they are and so on. Imagine then if this person behaved as if you had just pushed the 'play' button, out comes some random message about who you should be, what you should do to be like that, what they are selling and how good it is. So you patiently wait till the end of this litany and ask again. You want to know about the person behind that statement. Are they nice, do they have integrity? Do they care about the same stuff you do? Again the same mantra. What that is, is a one-way broadcast, like radio and TV advertising, because the medium didn't allow talk-back - but nowhere is that approach becoming obsolete quicker than the web.

No longer is it about 'what do we want to communicate - it's about 'what do we want to facilitate!'
Web 2.0 is a dialogue, it's a start of a love-affair, it's a discussion that takes twists and turns depending on who is having the conversation and what the topic is. It's fun to talk to someone if they show they listen to what you have to say and respond accordingly. It's even better when they can put you in touch with other people just like you. It's extremely boring when you feel like you are talking to a wall. It's really that simple - but what it means is that smokescreens become harder to maintain. After all, not everyone is David Copperfield and besides, if everyone's rating everything and all views are public - you don't even want to be David Copperfield, you have to be you and be good, because what goes around comes around.

Build Good Karma
Buddhism is a very useful in this context and may even one day become the foundation of the new world-wide company ethic - but the basis is simple: refrain from bad behaviour, do good and remember that karma comes back to haunt you - good or bad. So can your company handle that level of openness, can you genuinely say that everyone in your company respects your consumers and tries their utmost to be fair, do the right thing and never lie? Marketing in this context becomes less about convincing people something is great, but more about setting the structure and motion in place for responding to what people want, encouraging them to work with you and always, always, always making sure you are honest, respectful and humble. In product design we  always used to joke that you are only as good as your last project. How true is that - in the world of web 2.0 you are only as good as the last consumer experience you delivered.

It takes a (global, connected) village to raise a child

No I'm not referring to Hillary Clinton's book, nor her speech on the topic of children - but I am borrowing the same (origin unknown) African proverb that claims it takes a village to raise a child. In fact, I'm building on it to refer to the Internet, the global connected village it has made the world, we are all connected, not necessarily by six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon but in fact by 3rd degree via LinkedIn (or Myspace, Bebo, Facebook or whatever takes your fancy).

For me it has been a revelation that by humbly starting to publish this blog here in my corner of London, UK, there are people as far as Kiribati who magically stumble on this site and moreover, can be bothered to read what I have to say. Truly humbling. Big up to Kiribati I say! This global village of ours has also taught me some very valuable lessons, some of which I agonise over in a previous post about the pain of trying to come up with consistently good quality material. Not sure I succeed consistently, but mainly due to the kindness and patience of my readers, I still have an audience..

I recently came across a brilliant study from Forrester research by a guy called Jaap Favier, Dutch perhaps I endeavour to guess? Anyway he has managed to pull together some great insights about how group dynamics are driving social media on the net and how this connectivity means companies need to change in order to stay relevant for their consumers. Sounds complicated, but on a larger scale I feel companies need to learn what the village has raised me to believe over the years:

Content is king -> CONTACT is king
It's not about the stuff, it's about whether you care to listen what people have to say, whether you can help put them in touch with each other and provide them with ways they can not only help each other, but create things together with you. Are you a good citizen and do people even want to know you? If you are evil, chances are they don't. Often only when you go look for friends do you discover what people really think about you. Don't let it get that far.

The Medium is the Message -> The RESPONSE is the message
Can you get people to care enough to get involved, can they respond to you, to others, do things change based on their response? You get what you give, if you are rude and deceitful, chances are you also foster that behaviour in people around you.

We call the shots -> THEY call the shots
Don't think you know it all. Don't even attempt. There are people out there who know your company, product, service you name it better than you do. They do call the shots whether you like it or not. A smart thing would be to learn from what they have to say and be humble.

KEEP IT REAL
Only if you are honest, true to what you promise and deliver it as good as you say it is, people trust you. To be trusted you have to keep it real, always. No lies, no cheating, no screwing people over - they find out soon enough and others even sooner, so be good and the world is good to you back. Most of the time anyway!

It's funny - yesterday we had the last episode of the Apprentice, (for now) where our pet magnate Sir Alan Sugar got himself a fresh faced new apprentice, Simon, willing to work 'his cotton socks off' as he bluntly put it when asked why he should be hired. Sugar, true to his name, subsequently presented Simon with some unsightly pairs of cotton socks that he could 'work off' in due course. Although not the most experienced of contestants, Simon's happy-go-lucky attitude and kindness got him quite far and moreover made him a master at dealing with some of the more prickly contestants in the show.

The complete opposite was Katie, fired from the show last week. It seems that in her case, common decency took a left-turn and avoided her altogether. Certainly, courtesy of having a blog you learn first-hand how quickly the Internet bites back and let's you know faster, sooner, and more sharply how much you suck, even when your best-friends stay silent. It felt almost sadistic and certainly voyeuristic to sit there watching Katie spouting her horrific comments about her fellow contestants to the camera and then select comments being revealed to the fellow contestants by programme directors.. pausing to focus on the furious candidate, squirming in their seat, rolling their eyes. It just amazes me that no one from the real or virtual village has played their part, taking Katie to one side, giving her a really good hiding and reminding her just what it means to be a citizen in the global village. Sir Alan Sugar did it sort of, a little yesterday - but all she did was smile. Knowingly. Thinking she still calls the shots. Think again.

Why the Desire to Simplify Can Inhibit Innovation

A friend recently postulated that having budget constraints can encourage better innovation than those with lots of money to burn as this provides a framework where automatically many things are out of bounds, because you can't afford them. He proceeded to point to many start-ups often don't have a lot of money, but make up for it in energy and determination and thus often end up coming up with solutions better, smarter and more relevant than their heavy-weight rivals. Stops you re-inventing the wheel I suppose.

Coming from a product design background I must agree that an essential component to innovation is first figuring out your constraints, the framework within which you intend to innovate. Before you know that, it is virtually impossible to determine, which of your million ideas is the best solution to a given problem.

Having smaller budgets certainly creates some immediate restraints on what the solution should be - i.e it can't cost more than X. That has a remarkable ability to focus a team. The trouble with this approach is often the desire to simplify too soon, which means that many important factors, which will in the end determine the success of the solution, are discarded too early from the process, and thus the solution ends up being more of the same, rather than truly groundbreaking.

One of my favourite quotes ever is that of F. Scott Fitzgerald, that for him 'the sign of a truly intelligent individual is one who has the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function'. Innovation is often just that, how to balance the constraints one has from an organisational, technical and financial point of view against the desires and demands of one's consumers. Often it is not a matter of either-or, but both, and the innovation is the process of coming up with just how that will be done.

Here the key is to be able to seek less obvious, but potentially relevant factors (that will give differentiation in the long run, although to start with will seem like they are adding more complexity to the topic), secondly it is the ability to consider multi-directional, non-linear relationships between these variables and seeing problems as a whole, examining how the parts fit together and how decisions affect one another, and then lastly: creatively resolve those conflicts between seemingly opposing ideas to generate innovative outcomes.

That sounds very complicated and at times, it is - and it is pivotal not to fear the complexity to start with and simplify too soon, thus ending up creating a solution which will only partially address the problem (and potentially give birth to an entirely new problem!), but to persist and strive to integrate, not divide. So constraints are good - but do you know all your constraints or have you simply settled for the most obvious ones?

The Elusive Concept of Premium

What does it mean to be a premium brand? What do premium products look like? What do companies need to do differently because they want to be premium?

These are all hard questions and ones we need to examine in detail, because they will determine the success or failure of establishing a company in the premium realm. For me, coming from a design background I see this as a multidimensional challenge, and one which we cannot successfully solve in each of our own specialisms, but something we can only reasonably tackle by thinking about how all elements in the products and services we offer come together, seamlessly, to create meaning and in that regard we need to be looking outside-in, rather than attempt it from our respective silos.

Owning a premium product used to signify status. Status these days is no longer just about hoarding as many luxury goods as possible and being able to pay vast prices for things in short supply. Kids are teaching us that status is to be had in many more ways than before, such as through experiences (it's not about what you own, it's the story you tell afterwards!), participation ("I was part of making this!" ex. LEGO Factory), skills (becoming really good at something and finding your own appreciative audience ex. blogs, flickr, youtube) and through networks (who connects to you and who you connect to, tribal-style ex. social network sites like Myspace).

So the notion of what it means to be a premium product or brand has changed too. To be premium is certainly to be able to deliver consistent, good quality in line with people's expectations, products that are easy and intuitive to use, but it's also about being treated with respect as a consumer. Moreover it is about being able to provide meaning to our consumers, co-creating value, connecting people in community, appealing to emotional, spiritual and social values, being tied to a person's self-image, highly personal and it's about empowering people to do things previously not possible.

As the bar for premium is raised ever higher by competing brands trying to innovate, by nigh-on complete price transparency and the growth of rating services for almost any and every kind of product or service - it becomes clear that to be premium is to be committed to a of motto 'Only the best is good enough'. Only now, our consumers know it and demand it, because as soon-to-be global consumers their frame of reference of what a good website does, will be the leader in the field, not necessarily another competitor in the same field as you, what quality means could be Apple, not your biggest rival, what good packaging/service/game is, yet another company we never previously considered our competitor and so on.

So being and staying premium is a hard task. It means that as a company, people need to come together to understand that consumers at different levels of affinity, want different things from you. For us the greatest challenge moving forwards will be reconciling the fact that it is not one or the other; addressing only the great masses or lead-users, but both together, at the right time in the right way. For that, we need to work as one company, organising ourselves around the needs of consumers, not our functional silos. And as employers, we need to attract and retain the very best of talent, because only then, by growing people and the roles we each play, can we consistenly deliver premium, year-after-year.

Scratch: Programming as Easy as Child's Play

Sounds too good to be true, right? I shall confess to my utter nerdiness by telling you a little secret about my childhood - I first got on to programming on a Commodore 64, back in the day when they still had tape drives to read programs. OK, this will confine me to the history books for some of you, but I can tell you that at the time I was very envious of my friend who had a 5.25" floppy drive.. OK OK, enough dwelling in the past, but needless to say - programming in those days involved either the Basic programming language with code on numbered lines and a lot of complex if this then goto something else, or if you were really hard core, you were into Machine code, which to the untrained eye simply looked like a jumble of letters and numbers. As the story went in those days, Basic was the long convoluted way to do things and Machine code was the efficient way to squeeze power out of the machine.

I know, I know - but in the day before we even had desktops and mice, it was simply wonderful to manage to get a sprite (the name for a graphic element made up of pixels) moving across the screen, but somehow incredibly painstaking and not very rewarding. READ: it didn't sustain my interest for very long. Instead I moved on to music and even figured out machine code, but only in terms of converting notes into music the computer would play. Sounds crazy, but the hexadecimal system was actually very efficient at dealing with notes, instruments and even how hard a note was played for such an otherwise simplistic system. Even to this day I believe you can still go on iTunes and subscribe to a pod-cast of tunes made exclusively with Commodore 64s..

Anyway - to make a long story short; my adventures into programming land started with Commodore 64 and remained somewhat sporadic until I got carried away with HTML, Macromedia Director and Flash, but still, simplicity was a far cry from what those programs required you to know and learn before even attempting to create functionality. If only things had been as simple and easy to get your head around as the newly launched Scratch programming language! Given the amount of interest exploding around this you may also want to check out this link, which goes to the weblog on Scratch.

The beauty of Scratch is that it is like building with LEGO bricks, each block is a behaviour or function - you just snap them together on screen, visually! rather than with complex strings of words and references - to create more complex behaviours and strings of functionality and moreover, you concentrate on WHAT you want the program to do rather than HOW to accomplish it. The how almost becomes an intuitive consequence of deciding what you want to do in the first place and kids all over the world are already embracing it, creating animations, games, movies all sorts of things from this great box of tools. A timely reminder of the fact that we should not get bogged down by our tools, but our tools should indeed be an intuitive interface to enact upon an idea.

Here are some links to articles written about the public launch of Scratch yesterday

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6647011.stm?ls
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/05/15/with_simplified_code_programming_becomes_childs_play/
  http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/15/1420238
  http://digg.com/software/Scratch_A_New_Programming_Language_to_Introduce_Kids_to_Coding
  http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9719468-7.html
  http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may07/comments/1817
  http://www.huliq.com/21750/creating-from-scratch
  http://www.macworld.co.uk/education/news/index.cfm?newsid=18035&pagtype=allchandate
  http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2070
  http://crunchgear.com/2007/05/15/scratch-because-your-kid-cant-do-fortran/

Why Innovation Cannot Remain in the Realm of the Few

Last week a long-standing dream of mine finally came true when I had a chance to visit the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. Even back in the day of studying product design at Central Saint Martins I was always intrigued by the level of experimentation, technical prowess and simply outright genre-busting design and thinking that was going on at the MIT Media Lab and I always wished I could have studied there too. As some of you know, the LEGO Group is a Consortia Research Sponsor and thus chance and fortune collided and enabled me to take part in both the fascinating H20 or Human 2.0 event last Wednesday and the Sponsor day on the Thursday. Both events gave me a unique insight into what it means to be human in the 21st century and how innovation is fuelled on a large scale, seemingly infecting all that enter the Media Lab premises.

Seeing all this made me think of innovation yet again and how the Media Lab was different from many other places I have visited in its attitude and relation to innovation. What strikes you when entering the premises is that innovation is seen a bit like oxygen - it's there, people don't even question it, everybody breathes it and moreover, everybody CAN breathe it, because it is natural. Too often, whether you are in a company or even browsing a bookstore for that matter - innovation seems like the new buzz word, something of a dark art that most people are mystified by, only few people master and more over, a billion-dollar industry exists to tell us how we can become better at it. Of course you will be amused to know that innovation is also part of my job-title, but rather than make me feel special or privileged I feel a strong, sometimes even daunting, responsibility in trying to engender it in everyone around me, empowering people to come with solutions themselves, acting more like a facilitator than some lone genius in an ivory tower.

A book I'm currently reading, called The Upside by Adrian Slywotzky delves into depth explaining what companies do to minimise risk when innovating. He very convincingly points out that not only is it a matter of identifying an opportunity and ceasing it, but how in fact most innovations are likely to fail, even when they are 90% right for the purpose they were developed. Slywotzky goes through a series of examples, including the development of the Prius, the Ipod and others, highlighting just how many steps were required to create these successes and how innovation was present in each and every one of those steps - proving conclusively that innovation has to happen at every level in a company to make such successes as the Ipod to really take off. A product innovation alone wouldn't have gotten Apple to where they are today, but instead a deliberate strategic application of innovation at successive steps of the process, towards the end involving over 50 people, a large project by Apple's standards, but essential in making sure that all parts of the business were optimised to deliver what we now know to have become a legendary example of innovation: the Ipod.

Slywotsky in fact lists a number of principles in his book, which seem to crop up again and again as an approach that works, a formula that ensures that Innovation doesn't remain in the realm of the few, but instead permeates an entire company and ensures that even the tiniest chances of success are systematically increased over time, step by step, by consistently and continuously involving everyone and ensuring that innovation is something everyone contributes to and is part of, rather than a select few.

1. Work fast to pre-empt competition - crazy deadlines mean you get people's undivided attention rather than the phenomenon of mission creep - when deadlines get drawn out, because people get involved in other things in the meantime
2. Share information freely, openly, between all - set up an email sphere in line with what the fifteenth-century mystic Nicolas of Cusa described as 'something whose circumference is nowhere and whose centre is everywhere. Everyone on the mailing list stands equally close to the centre of the action and everyone is capable of being the centre at a particular moment in time - able to draw energy from everyone else in the group to solve today's most pressing problem
3. Encourage young, flexible minds who like to challenge the norm and think in new ways - sometimes this is the only way to stop things being done the way we always have done them. In fact, encourage people to think this way whether they are young or old!
4. Always take pride in asking the toughest questions -about customers, their needs and interests, and the ways the company's business processes can serve those customers better.
5. Plan for version 2.0 - i.e learn from your mistakes and put the learning back in the organisation!
6. Design your business model (distribution, communication etc.) as shrewdly as you design your product!

Now these are very generic bits of advice and the really interesting thing is reading all the case studies and seeing what combination of general advice (above) was mixed in with strategic measures to address the specific weaknesses of the company mentioned. It's always a mix of both - but interestingly, in each of the successes mentioned, it was the deliberate involvement of all parties to the solution, early on in the process that created the necessary momentum to deal with everything else. Thus innovation should be, much like it is at the MIT, like the oxygen in an organisation - we all need to breathe it and we all CAN and SHOULD, because only then can breakthroughs happen!

The Rules of Creativity According to Kids

Recently I had the pleasure to meet Mitchel Resnick, a professor at the MIT, and listen to his presentation of the Lifelong Kindergarten project. Resnick is famous for his book Turtles Termites and Traffic Jams where he outlines how control emerges from apparently independent behaviour. Another book, by Kevin Kelly, called Out of Control also touches on the same topic and the central thesis in both works is the notion that you cannot know in advance every possible permutation of situations that can happen and subsequently devise centralised solutions for it, instead you can create adaptive intelligence by building seemingly simple layers of sensing and functionality on top of each other, enabling complex intelligence to emerge.

To put it more simply: How does a bird flock keep its movements so graceful and synchronized? Most people assume that the bird in front leads and the others follow. In fact, bird flocks don't have leaders: they are organized without an organizer, coordinated without a coordinator. And a surprising number of other systems, from termite colonies to traffic jams to economic systems, work the same decentralized way. Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams describes innovative new computational tools that can help people (even young children) explore the workings of such systems--and help them move beyond the centralized mindset.

His Lifelong Kindergarten project is a tribute to the value of the iterative (design) process - the power of such processes in enabling learning, creativity and innovation to take place. He explains this powerful notion in very simple terms, but they resonate across all spectrums, because of their inherent power to foster new thinking. Resnick argues that more of life should be like Kindergarten, not in the sense that it's all primary colours and very basic, but that we should strive to create more working environments, projects and creative spaces open to exploration, discovery and learning as opposed to those fixed mindset-inducing situations where people are measured as opposed to encouraged to grow, as I talk about in my previous post.

His take on the creative process is very simple, yet powerful:

1. Imagine - open your mind to possibilities, imagine, be creative - if you don't know how below are some great suggestions by kids who are part of the Computer Clubhouse project in how to come up with great ideas.
2. Create - Based on your ideas, create something!
3. Play with it, try it out, experiment with it, does it work like you intended, why? or why not?
4. Share it with others, find out what they think?
5. Reflect - what does it all mean, the experiences playing with it, sharing it, maybe something can be improved?
6. Imagine how it could be improved, what else could be done, start a new cycle of ideas.

This leads me to a great definition I came across recently - the difference between Creativity and Innovation:

• Creativity - the capacity to generate ideas

• Innovation - the capacity to generate ideas of value to others

This to me is pivotal and explains succinctly what makes great products, experiences, services and what are simply creative ways of approaching those subjects.

Now back to imagination - it can be daunting sometimes, but Resnick provides a great checklist, as developed by kids, on how to get you started:

1. Start Simple
2. Work on things you like
3. If you have no idea, fiddle around
4. Find a friend to work with, share ideas
5. It's OK to copy stuff (to give you ideas)
6. Build, take apart, rebuild
7. Lots of things can go wrong - stick with it.

Now that list of advice beautiful in its simplicity - no need to embellish it with fancy words and explanations, it is there, fair and square and totally valid whatever you are trying to get your head around!

Success is a Mindset

Why is it that some individuals become geniuses, others retire as millionaires, business empires get built seemingly from scratch and in other cases talented individuals never rise beyond mediocrity, regardless of their field or profession? Some attribute this to luck, others claim it is down to what talent we are born with or that we are either smart or not, but in all cases people are wrong. Success is not down to what you are born with, it's about what you make of the things you are born with. In other words, it's down to whether you have a fixed or a growth mindset.

A fascinating series of studies by Stanford Professor Carol S. Dweck have been collected in a newly released book titled Mindset - The New Psychology of Success   capturing the intricate, but crucial differences in how people with these mindsets look at the world and what effect that subsequently has on their lives, their chances to succeed and ultimately their happiness.

The Fixed Mindset
Believing that your qualities are carved in stone - the fixed mindset - creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. So many people are stuck with this all-consuming goal of proving themselves - in the classroom, in their careers, and in their relationships: every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality or character: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser? These aren't just things we pick up as we enter adulthood, but Dweck delicately points out that as a parent, you can have a profound impact on whether your child falls into the fixed or growth mindset, same in schools - in fact society at large seems to have conditioned us to think that talented people always get ahead and those smart enough don't have to work hard - they just do it. The truth is no one just does it - but how can learning even be fun when your whole being is at stake every time there is a test, a competition or a deadline?

The Growth Mindset
The people with a growth mindset have a far more open way of looking at the world and themselves in it - traits are not simply a hand you have been dealt and have to learn to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you are secretly worried it is a pair of tens. In the growth mindset, the hand you are dealt is just the starting point for development. It is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way - in their initial talents, and aptitudes, interests and temperaments - everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

Do people in this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person's true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it is impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil and training.

Did you know that Darwin and Tolstoy were considered ordinary children? That Ben Hogan, one of the greatest golfers of all time, was completely uncoordinated and graceless as a child? That the photographer Cindy Sherman, who has been on virtually every list of the most important artists of the twentieth century - failed her first photography course? That Geraldine Page, a great actress was advised to give it up for lack of talent?

You can see how the belief that cherished qualities can be developed creates a passion for learning. Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it is not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

Who has accurate views of their assets and limitations?
Interestingly, studies show that people are terrible at estimating their abilities. Professor Dweck and her students recently did a study to find out who most likely to have inflated views of their abilities and try for things they are not capable of? It turns out that those with the fixed mindset accounted for almost all the inaccuracy. The people with the growth mindset were amazingly accurate.

When you think about it, this makes sense. If, like those with the growth mindset, you believe you can develop yourself, then you are open to accurate information about your current abilities, even if it is unflattering. What's more, if you are oriented toward learning, you need accurate information about your current abilities in order to learn effectively. However, if everything is either good news or bad news about your precious traits - as it is with fixed-mindset people - distortion almost inevitably enters the picture. Some outcomes are magnified, others are explained away, and before you know it you don't know yourself at all. Howard Gardner, in his book Extraordinary Minds, concluded that exceptional individuals have 'a special talent for identifying their own strengths and weaknesses'. It's interesting that those with the growth mindset seem to have that talent.

The book
Rather than merely going over the differences between the two mindsets, Professor Dweck does an excellent job of also explaining the background to these mindsets, that we may in fact be riddled with both of them, but in different areas or parts of our lives. She further takes a very hands-on approach to explaining how to spot when you are in fixed mindset thinking and then how to move yourself in to the growth mindset thinking instead. The book is littered with case studies of people from all walks of life, explaining how people have conquered their fears of failure to become successful individuals. Despite Professor Dweck being an academic, the book is surprisingly straight-forward, even chatty in places, but ultimately a very approachable book and one of the most useful I have read in a long time. Not only do you learn to examine yourself and your own behaviour as a result of reading this, you also learn to be supportive to your friends, loved ones and partner, and moreover, how to turn your workplace into a positive environment where people thrive. I find my coaching skills have improved dramatically too - highly recommend reading this book!

A LEGO Universe On-line!

Some of you will have already heard the latest and most exciting news by the famous maker of coloured bricks: announced at the Game Developer Conference this year The LEGO Group and NetDevil have joined forces to bring the extra-ordinary and much-loved universe of LEGO to all as a Massively Multiplayer On-line Game (MMOG).

A vast effort is currently taking place to design and program the foundations for the largest, open-ended universe of endless possibilities ever to grace our screens - a universe as deep and creatively challenging as an ocean full of LEGO bricks! Something I always dreamed of as a child: an endless supply of LEGO bricks - perhaps physically a challenge to house, but no longer an impossibility when going on-line. It will be a wonderful place for experimenting, meeting your friends and joining in to play, and true to the LEGO values, if you can imagine it: you will be able to build it!

If you are interested in joining this effort to build and test this universe when we go into Beta, follow this link and sign-up with your e-mail address!

LEGO MMOG

From Insights to Innovation

Just back from a conference in lovely Amsterdam on the subject of 'Converting Insights into Actionable Results', my mind buzzing with two days' worth of presentations from the likes of Coca-Cola, Volvo, Sony-Ericsson, Procter & Gamble etc. on how they use insights in their respective companies.

In some respects it really sounds like Insights is the new buzzword replacing the now so droll-sounding 'market research', but in many ways people still treat it the same. They agonise over it, mine it, look for it, pay people to come up with it, talk to consumers in hope of finding it - but it seems the true gems of insight are hard to come by. They are retrospectively self-evident, as Coca-Cola likes to put it, but that statement itself makes insights hard to spot, because the ones that are really going to make the difference aren't yet the ones that you have the luxury of hindsight to identify them with.

What also surprised me about this conference is that there is a lot of emphasis on using insights on what consumers want, need and complain about in the beginning of a process to inspire solutions, but very few, if any, have actually set up any process to detail how this feedback changes as a result of action. We use the Net Promoter Score at LEGO to drive the development of our consumer touch-points and to evaluate how successful initiatives are in improving these scores. That is a simple way of validating whether what you thought addressed a fundamental insight, actually does any such thing.

So what is the point about insights anyway? You can take a starting point in anything, to help guide a problem-solving process - but you could say there is value to be had in understanding how to better meet consumers' needs. That in itself may not actually be something you can find out by asking consumers themselves. It is down to you to collect information, process it, digest it, sleep on it, combine it with other things and collectively emerge smarter by having a more compete understanding of the multi-faceted picture, which is the reality for us all these days.

The danger with what people perceive as insights (consumer research) is that they are confused with people's opinion on things. Opinions can change very quickly and aren't really fundamentally useful for anything long-term, as they hold truth only for short periods of time. This means that although you can have a quite healthy turnover and a bunch of seemingly happy customers, they may only stay with you until there is a better alternative around the corner. Their opinions are thus next to useless in telling you what you should be developing next.

A more useful area for insights is understanding people's lifestyles. These change too, but not too often, maybe 5 times in our entire lifetime - when we we are children, teens, life after university and before children, life with children, life after children have flown the nest - the lifestyles at these different life stages are quite different and they tend to last for a few years at least, before there is a significant change. The downside is that the change can be quite radical and both opinions and preferences held whilst in the previous life-stage, may change radically as a result of moving into a new lifestyle.

The most interesting area for insights are people's values. These change hardly at all. Children up to the age of 12 tend to mirror their parents' values almost exactly, whereas ages of 12-25 are characterised by the deliberate experimentation with and independent (from parents) search for your own values. After your 25th birthday you are very unlikely to change your fundamental values on things, and thus - gaining insights of these will be much more useful long-term than anything else. One could argue that this very fact is what creates mid-life crises in people as earlier years of life and career may be linked to highly extrinsic motivations (proving to the world you have made it), whereas lasting happiness in life comes from satisfying your intrinsic motivation. If you haven't discovered that, before settling on your values, you will feel a sense of conflict later on in life, but more about that in another post.

Transforming insights into innovation is another hurdle in its' own right - on one hand it is about finding those golden nuggets, then it's about defining and creating platforms where innovation can happen - areas where there is growth potential, where your company can bring something unique to the mix and which is in-line with where your company wants to go and its brand. After identifying these areas you almost have to start all over again - sifting through your existing body of research to work out what is relevant in the light of the platforms you have identified for innovation. Some will add more depth and relevance to what you have already identified, others will highlight areas where you need to find out more and lastly, any new concept based on these platforms may themselves end up generating more insights in the process of being developed and tested.

But in many cases we are not there yet - the community specialising in insights and research are often not the people charged with implementing activities based on the insights identified, change is hard to digest among these specialists and being put in charge of it is even harder for many. Thus we still end up in the same dilemma as before: we may know what is right, but are we capable of acting upon it?

How the Power of Imagination can Alter Your Brain

Many years ago as a kid I was confronted with a particularly grumpy old lady, whose grumpiness was not merely a set of behaviours, but had etched itself deep into to the lines of her face, her posture and general demeanour. Afterwards I told my mum '... that lady should think more happy thoughts!' and we laughed together about this. Little did I know how profound this statement was until now, almost 25 years later.

What caught my eye was an experiment explained in a recent issue of TIME magazine (February 12, 2007), devoted to exploring all sorts of topics pertaining to the brain and its' functionality. Let me quote:

It was a fairly modest experiment, as these things go, with volunteers trooping into the the lab at Harvard Medical School to learn and practise a little five-finger piano exercises. Neuroscientist Alvaro Pascual-Leone instructed the members of one group to play as fluidly as they could, trying to keep to the metronome's 60 beats per minute. Every day fro five days, the volunteers practised for two hours. Then they took a test.

At the end of each day's practise session, they sat beneath a coil of wire that sent a brief magnetic pulse into the motor cortex of their brain, located in a strip running from the crown of the head toward each ear. The so-called transcranial-magnetic-stimulation (TMS) test allows scientists to infer the functions of neurons just beneath the coil. In the piano players, the TMS mapped how much the motor cortex controlled the finger movements needed for the piano exercise. What the scientists found was that after a week of practise. the stretch of motor cortex devoted to these finger movements took over surrounding areas like dandelions on a suburban lawn.

The finding was in line with a growing number of discoveries at the time showing that greater use of a particular muscle causes the brain to devote more cortical real estate to it. But Pascual-Leone did not stop there. He extended the experiment by having another group of volunteers merely think about practising the piano exercise. They played the simple piece of music in their head, holding their hands still while imagining how they would move their fingers. Then they too sat beneath the TMS coil.

When the scientists compared the TMS data on the two groups - those who actually tickled the ivories and those who only imagined doing so - they glimpsed a revolutionary idea about the brain: the ability of mere thought to alter the physical structure and function of our gray matter. For what the TMS revealed was that the region of motor cortex that controls the piano-playing fingers also expanded in volunteers who imagined playing the music - just as it had in those who actually played it.

"Mental practise resulted in a similar reorganisation of the brain", Pascual-Leone later wrote. If his results hold for other forms of movement (and there is no reason to think they don't), then mentally practising a movement, a golf swing or a swim turn could lead to mastery with less physical practise. Even more profound, the discovery showed that mental training had the power to change the physical structure of the brain.

Where does this leave us? Well, it does highlight the profoundness of statements like Be mindful of your thought's, because according to this we, ourselves, are very much in charge and can influence how our brains will perform, by either allowing a set of thoughts to take place or consciously working to direct thinking and thus mental practise in another direction.

To bring back the grumpy lady from the beginning - it seems that many factors that contribute to this lady's grumpiness are things that are out of her control. Fair enough, but what is in her control is how she chooses to see those things. If she indeed allows herself to become grumpy, then next time something, however small, happens, she will get grumpy that much faster than before. Why? Because that connection in her mind is now stronger than the path where she tries to look on the bright side of the problem, for instance. By continuing to allow this to happen over time, over and over again, she would eventually become grumpy and indeed stay grumpy, all the time. Her health, demeanour, physique, all of it would be affected by the fact that in the beginning - a bout of intellectual laziness meant that she preferred to think the grumpy thought and remain in that frame of mind, rather than making a conscious effort to train her mind to think in a different way.

So is the truth then that we become our thoughts? To a large extent you could say yes, but that message contains hope, because being conscious and self-aware of one's own behaviour and thought patterns means one can also influence those. So we should indeed strive to become better by imagining ourselves not as we are, but as we would like to be and devote time to thinking about this and acting on it, rather than try to lull ourselves into some false belief that the world and our reality is what happens to us and we have no influence over it. Far from it. We may not have influence on the physical factors of this, but we certainly have a large influence over how our brains deal with and process that information and how we behave subsequently. And those behaviours may very well influence what happens afterwards, or as people like to joke 'if it didn't kill you, it'll make you stronger'.

Music Community 2.0 - Garageband.com

No, I don't mean Apple's lovely music-making software, but a community site called GarageBand, my latest addiction introduced to me by a friend only days ago. My music-making has seen a break recently, mainly because of other distractions, but also because when you are making your own tunes just for the fun of it, there's only so much you can shower your friends with and if they don't get what you are trying to do, your inspiration can take a dip. Not so say I only do tunes to get a pat on the back, it's more that when you are making music you really appreciate the feedback from fellow musicians.

That is also the beauty of this site - GarageBand excels where so many others have failed. It builds a community around independent music, people who haven't even got signed up yet, and the act of reviewing other people's songs before you even are allowed to upload songs yourself. Ahh, easy you say - but no, comments like 'this sucks' or ' your mother was a hamster' don't cut it on this site, as before your reviews go anywhere they have to be reviewed by other users who give you points on how well you articulate your points and how useful the review was to them.

True democracy - this helps not only the good stuff to trickle up to the top in the charts running on Garageband.com, but also all the bands to get useful feedback from their peers and not just some random comments or people trying to suck up to them. You have to complete 30 reviews, before you get to post your first song so this does take a bit of time to do, but again that is the beauty of it - good things come to those who wait. Too many sites instantly give away all their goodness to the extent that you lose interest in about a week, where other sites, like this one, grow on you.

So there you are, trying to be your most verbatim best, giving useful pointers and descriptions of stuff thrown at you (yes you can choose genres! I'm sure I wouldn't give very good ratings to the Country & Western lot, not because of malice - just because it isn't my thing) and having reviewed tracks in the Jazz, Electronic and Electronica genres I must say I'm particularly impressed with the quality of Jazz on Garageband.com.

A sad discovery, however, is that this site, a little weighted to the American audience, still doesn't have a genre called Drum&Bass, which does exist in America too, usually under the name 'Jungle' and a little too aggressive in my liking - but the really good stuff you'll find under the sub-genres of Jazz-step and Intelligent Drum & Bass - the output of which mainly comes from Europe. So once I'm as far as ready to upload my own tracks onto Garageband - I shall have to decide whether my Drum&Bass numbers should be classed as 'Electronic', 'Electronica', 'Dance', or 'Techno' to comply with Garageband's collection of genres.

Not sure what I'm on about? Go check out Beatport or TrackItDown for some great examples of what Drum & Bass can offer. Needless to say - this stuff is not mainstream in the sense that if you expect to hear it on Top 40 countdowns - forget it. That is also the beauty of Garageband.com - the real stuff, coming straight to you without some record company exec deciding what you should be listening to - for the people by the people, brought to you by web 2.0 put to the service of building a great community. Amen.

A Million Penguins - The First Ever Wiki Novel

"Everybody has a novel in them, so they say. Wouldn't it be better, though, for a million people to club together to write one? This is the theory behind an initiative launched this weekend by Penguin Books, in collaboration with students at De Montfort University in Leicester. They plan to create the world's first 'wiki' novel, fiction that will be concocted online by millions of contributors across the globe. Until the end of the month anyone can join in to help write the novel, which has the provisional title of A Million Penguins.

The site is A Million Penguins and, so far, just a few days into the experiment, the novel is into its seventh chapter. The project has been designed as part of a study module at the university. Students involved are based across the world and include the director of Booktrust, Chris Meade. The term 'wiki novel' has been coined for an online book from the internet term 'wiki' which is the name of a website that allows the visitors to add to and edit content, often without the need for registration.

Previous attempts to throw open the editorial process using the web have not had a smooth track record, however; chaos ensued when the Los Angeles Times threw open its editorial processes to internet readers. But Penguin is optimistic. The company's digital publisher, Jeremy Ettinghausen, said the contribution of the students on the university course had already been hugely helpful in shaping the launch of the novel." ( Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent, Sunday February 4, 2007, The Observer)

What I want to know is, is it any good? Listening to authors speak about their novels it is usually a complex affair, many interlocking threads are kept initially apart to entice the reader to gradually piece things together, then things get turned on their head and eventually the novel ends in a surprising way, which makes all the pieces fall in place and make sense again. Well, of course not all novels are like that - but to cite an example for the purpose of discussing: can those intricate turns and twists of a plot realistically be delivered by people who don't know each other, don't work together necessarily even to the same goal? I decided to take a peek and this is what greeted me in the prologue:

The Emperor gazed ponderously over the city of London. Although he had long grown bored of the invisible control he and his ancestors had exercised over the human race, since abdicating three hundred years ago he had become increasingly remorseful at his decision to set them free. For over three hundred years now the human race had been left to do what it wanted, severing the intricate planning of generations of past Emperors. They had proved themselves to be absolutely useless, relentlessly engaging in a nonsensical frottage of sex, violence and gimcrackery that they attempted to pass off as art and politics. And now the planet was melting. It was a mess.

For the past fifty years The Emperor had been patiently executing a plan to regain control. His plot was at a critical phase, one that could, if he could pull it off, re-establish coherency in the world. In his current guise as the director of Penguin Books, hiding his appearance with a hard hologram that enveloped his portly black and white body in that of a gregarious businessman, he was in a position of immense psychological power.

Just then came a knock at the door. He turned from his office window overlooking the Thames as Jeremy entered, the head of Penguin online. The Emperor had been judiciously manipulating Jeremy to develop a tool with which he intended to get the human race back on course and regain the benign, paternalistic control that was so badly needed – A Million Penguins. Outwardly A Million Penguins was an optimistic creative writing experiment. But in the depths of its structure lay the most powerful psychological weapon that had ever been invented.

Sounds like this could be fun. I like the little jibes at Penguin and the digital publisher, Jeremy Ettinghausen in all this - there is a taste of the beginning of a Batman movie hidden in there somewhere, or maybe it is just the reference to penguins that is setting my mind off. Also, let's presume this becomes a runaway success - how many more of these kinds of stunts can be done until people (rightly so) start demanding a share of the proceeds? Truly quality material needs to be matched with some reward or perhaps getting your name in print is enough? And what is it about Penguins - we had the March of the Penguins, then Happy Feet, now a Million of them... is the world obsessed with Penguins or ...?

Scrybe: Where Art Thou?

If you read my rant a while ago about Scrybe you must have gathered how excited I was about this - my problem is: I never made it into the Beta tester crowd! As you might have noticed any cool software worth having these days is something in a Beta mode, primarily housed on the Internet and combining cool functions and features you will have grown accustomed to being housed previously in several different programs (all at an extortionate price), this time all in one and probably for free. Or so it seems. That's why we love them: the promise of simplicity, user-friendliness, productivity with low or no (God forbid!) hassle.

Then you find your holy grail, like I did (see for yourself in this little movie clip below) and what happens? Absolutely nothing. For months. I mean, I have been waiting since about September! And I am cheeky, so every couple of months I go to the Scrybe website to add my email to their list of people who want to Beta test (in case they have lost my previous entry... or because there might be strength in numbers... or submitting entries more times might convince them I REALLY would like this piece of software RIGHT NOW) in any case: to no avail. Every time I type my email address in the little box, I get the kind little reminder - your email has already been submitted. Thank you.

This is sublime irony if there ever was any - so please please Scrybe people, if you have one of those nifty RSS trackers that pings your in-box with an extract every time some poor blogger is writing about your (excellent if I may add) software - here's another poor blogger desperate for all the features and functions you so effortlessly extol on your little video - please: release it already or I WILL throw my PC out the window..

Predict the World in 2007 Challenge

Back again, after a long work-induced break, this blog is hopefully once again up and running with more frequent posts than recently. 2007 has got off to a flying start for many of us, and wintery landscapes are finally reminding us Northern Europeans that it is in fact, still Winter - and what a great time to pull ourselves up in our armchairs with a hot cup of something and muse about the year ahead of us. What will be the big changes coming to our attention in 2007, how are our lives changing, or are they in fact changing at all?

Having delved into extensive research into trends and various fields related to my work, I feel like I have finally come up to the surface to breathe again after having been immersed in fact-finding for so long. The notion of mapping trends is actually very difficult and what I struggled with most was the notion that every day seemed to bring something new to my findings, sometimes even turning things completely upside down from how I had been looking at them before. One thing is of course finding examples of what is going on, but more importantly, the challenge is to try to make connections between different things and even attempt to explain why they are happening.

 

The Big Surprise for 2007
In my mind the most revolutionising develop­ment of 2007 is likely to come from a very un­expected quarter: Africa. Despite the philanthropic efforts of Microsoft and others, computers have failed to penetrate much beyond the urban middle class in east Africa. Laptops are targeted by thieves, desk­tops are stymied by power cuts and a lack of broadband access. This in itself makes the concept of OLPC *One Laptop Per Child, an effort by Nicholas Negroponte to get computers into the developing world potentially a red herring, but may in fact turn out to be the killer of products like LeapPad for kids, where the laptop has more mileage and is a better investment than the closed electronic platforms of children’s learning toys, but who knows?

Speculation aside, the truth is that mobile-phone operators in Africa are bullish. Except in restrictive Ethiopia and Eritrea, the market has taken off in the region, and 2007 will see the first high-speed access Internet access through mobiles. Some com­panies, such as South Africa’s Breakdesign, a developer of software for phones, predict that mobiles will become east Africa’s primary portal to the Internet.

The humble SMS will have an even greater effect on east Africa in 2007. Innovative use of SMS will allow people to move money by text message, to receive information on, say, maize prices, along with tips on planting, and to receive medical advice, a particular benefit to those living with tuberculosis or AIDS. (Source: the Economist, December 2006, ‘The World in 2007’.)

 
Connected Communities
Another big one, which is not really new for 2007, but growing explosively, is the phenomenon of connected communities. Over 1 billion people are now online as of June 2006 *see Internet World Stats  and the biggest growth in internet usage is coming from Africa, followed by the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. The sites receiving the biggest traffic are sites involving direct human interaction – sites like MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, but also blogging, Youtube and the like. People connect around contexts, things they have in common and their desire for knowledge, for communication and a sense of belonging – coupled with virtual and physical communities beginning to blend into one through the advent of internet-ready phones, Google maps and GPS, makes it possible to connect to people you have met online on Mesh Tennis offline – for a great game. The passion is what unites you. The internet is the enabler. Niches find their audiences, talented moviemakers their fans, bloggers their readers, geographically widely spread apart, but huge in numbers. Connected communities make it possible for word to travel fast, for good news or bad news to spread quickly, for brands to emerge one day and almost be buried the next, as employees equipped with cameraphones decide to publicise their gripe about a topic, as happened with the Starbucks employees highlighting the rat infestation at a Starbucks premise on Youtube. The transparency can become tyranny at the flick of a switch.

 
The rise of Homegrown Media
Sitcoms are in terminal decline and the only growth area is still reality TV - which, interesting­ly, shares a low-cost aesthetic and people-like us authenticity with much of web video. Indeed, the only thing keeping TV programmers off the sills of their skyscrapers is that the source of their income, marketers, have not embraced web video as quickly as have their viewers.

In 2007 TV will have its first ‘music mo­ment’ - the realisation that a core audience (the 18-34-year old male) has moved on-line, pos­sibly for good. The rise of Youtube and an army of other free video-hosting services has created a phenomenon of short user-created videos. These clips are creating a new kind of watching experience, on more about ‘snacking’ than half-hour sitcoms. They spread virally, by e-mail and blogs, rather than via billboards and prime-time scheduling. And most worryingly for the net­works, they are not accompanied by 30 second advertising spots, or any other advertising at all. This is television, but not as we’ve known it.

Few even care to comment on the absurdity of traditional TV business models (to say nothing of the risible model of interruption-based TV advertising itself; annoying 90% of the audience for the sake of reaching 10% who might care about your product) makes sense only when you’ve got a captive audience, which is no longer true.

If anyone figures out a way to combine Google-style advertising matched to the con­tent people choose to watch with the undenia­ble power of video commercials, then the house of cards that is the economics of the broadcast TV industry will come crashing down. (Source: The Economist: The World in 2007)

This time last year, Mashable was reporting on del.icio.us clones - where are they now? Jots? SpinSpy? These sites have died a slow death, since the low of cost of hosting means they can stay online forever, despite having no users. Jookster and Wink were forced to change their models, meanwhile, to include video and social networking. Likewise, all the unnecessary RSS readers either gave up or got consumed by a larger entity this year: Mashable expects the same to happen in the video space, with lots of consolidation in 2007.

YouTube Becomes Bigger Than MySpace
This is a ridiculous prediction to make, since YouTube is trailing MySpace by a long way, and MySpace Video is doing pretty well. It’s also extremely hard to measure this stuff, since all the stat providers disagree (in fact, Alexa actually reported that YouTube had overtaken MySpace earlier this year, despite the fact that it’s still a fraction of the size by most measures - as mentioned previously, Alexa has some problems). Another issue is that YouTube involves spending a few minutes on each page, while MySpace users can rack up at least 20 pageviews in 5 minutes. So this is a wild card to some extent.

For more of brilliant insights from Mashup follow the link:Mashable Predictions  

Fuel for thought
To move out from the online domain – the other really big thing is energy. The world uses a cubic mile of oil a year, cost­ing almost $2 trillion. Oil and cars are the world’s biggest and most entrenched industries. Yet, an inexorable half-century transition beyond oil has begun, squeezing oil between efficient use and alternative supplies. In 2007 Toyota will emerge as the leader in super-efficient plug-in hybrid cars: electric for short commutes, petrol-hybrid for long trips. This could double the already doubled petrol efficiency of a Prius. Next, make that car ultra light and its petrol efficiency redoubles. Biofuel it and you quadruple petrol efficiency again, to 30 times today’s norm. Oil prices will drop - but efficiency will remain cheaper still. Getting of oil- abating 42% of global carbon-dioxide emissions will be led by business for profit. That transition already shapes competi­tive strategy. Wal-Mart’s new heavy trucks will be a quarter more efficient in 2007 than in 2006.

By 2015 they will be twice as efficient, sav­ing over $300m a year. Next will come trebled efficiency, which yields a 60% internal rate of return. In 2007 Boeing’s 20%-more-efficient but same price 787 will take flight. Ford’s new chief executive, Alan Mulally, whose efficiency-based Boeing strategy is beating Airbus, will bring to Ford Boeing’s focus on ultralight materials (the 787 is 50% advanced composites), systems inte­gration and breakthrough design.

In Washington, DC, a surprisingly strong voice in 2007 for getting off oil will be the world’s biggest buyer both of oil and of renew­able energy - the Pentagon. The risk and cost of vulnerable fuel convoys, easy prey to roadside bombs, will persuade military leaders that only super-efficient platforms dragging dramatically slimmer fuel logistics tails, or none, can fight persistent, dispersed, affordable wars. This strategic shift will not just save hun­dreds of lives and tens of billions of dollars a year. It will also speed key technologies, like ul­tralight materials, that can triple the efficiency of civilian cars, trucks and planes - just as military R&D created the Internet, GPS, the jet and chip industries. Thus the Pentagon will start to lead America, and the world, off oil so nobody need fight over it.

But even if work begins in all these directions, as well as improving energy efficiency in industry and homes and the use of various small-scale alternative sources of energy, we cannot forget that the economies of developing countries will continue to grow, meaning there will not be any reduction in en­ergy prices in the near and medium term. The year ahead will show which strategy the devel­oped countries are going to choose to work their way out of their looming energy crisis.

1. Re-industrialisation based on a ‘new compet­itiveness’ deriving from an energy-efficient advantage over the industry of China and other developing countries.
2. New colonial wars - this time for energy re­sources
3. New leadership: abandonment of the model of increasing material consumption in favour of improvement in the quality of life, and increase in the intellectual component of the consumer basket.

Strategically speaking only the third way holds promise for the future. (Source: the Economist: The World in 2007)

More Predictions?
This is by no means an exhaustive list. What do you think are going to be the big ones for 2007? Add your comments below and let’s see how close to the mark we get a year from now.