Innovation - Servant of Chaos

Chatroulette – It Isn’t What You Think

FutureVisions, Innovation, Social Media, Strategy

When Malcolm Gladwell wrote Blink, it changed the way that we think. It made us realise that first impressions really do count – and in fact, we only have the blink of an eye before our conditioning, our prejudices and our expectations kick in.

So it is hardly surprising then that a site like Chatroulette is generating a lot of buzz and, in the process, generating as much fear as excitement. It is a site that works on the level of the blink – randomly selecting two participants and allowing them to share their webcams. If you see something that you don’t wish to, you can click the Next button and skip to another, anonymous webcam.

When I first heard about it, there were various reports of voyeurism, exhibitionism and so on. It sounded like the early days of the internet – but with video. However, just weeks later, there is a certain level of “gaming” starting to take place – with participants seeking to surprise, confuse and even challenge others.

Take a look at this video. Think about the experience of the participants. What are they expecting? What are they hoping for? Is there a power relationship at play? What are the participants exchanging?

What we are seeing, already, is a maturing not necessarily of the TECHNOLOGY but of the PARTICIPANTS. Our capacity to work with and then transform the relationship we have with technology is accelerating (at least in pockets) – and those who are socially savvy on the web are engaging and challenging other participants. This is a trend that is not likely to end anytime soon.

The important thing to think about is not what the technology is doing, but which behaviours are these technologies enabling? Then you need to think about your business and whether there is a connection with your brands, opportunities for your products/marketing or a thin slice of innovation that you can apply to the way you do business. Platforms like Chatroulette may not not appear to have much value at first glance, but then neither did email 20 years ago. The challenge for us all is to find the value that lies underneath. It’s there. You just need to look below the surface.

Stop and Think

Branding, Innovation, Science, Social Media

You know what it is like. There are thousands of messages seeking your ever diminishing attention – email, twitter, advertising, friends, family, phone calls – you name it, it wants you. And the demands seem to mount ever higher.

Think about technology and social media. Think about the way the next new thing arrives and sweeps us along. Do you jump early? Do you sign up for the beta program so that you can brag to your friends on Facebook? Or do you wait … see what the early adopters say and determine where to spend your precious attention?

What’s your personal strategy?

To many people, the pursuit of the latest, shiny thing seems ludicrous. You can almost hear them thinking “don’t change what isn’t broke”. But it appears there is more than ego and self interest at play in our ongoing obsession with the new, new thing.

For those who are new to social media (or technology or even any other field of endeavour), coping with the constant change and innovation can be overwhelming. It presents as “noise” rather than signal”. But recent research in the field of cognitive fluency suggests that the very act of submitting ourselves to the unfamiliar has the effect of making the unfamiliar, familiar. Cognitive fluency is a measure of how easy it is for us to think about something. Where there is a “blockage” in our processing, we experience this as a “sense” of disfluency – we have to allocate our scarce cognitive resources to analyse and process the information. It triggers a sensory alarm which urges us to trust less.

The interesting aspect here is that cognitive fluency manifests largely as what we would call “gut instinct”. This means that almost any stimulus, from the shape of a face to the typography of a sign can cause us to intuitively TRUST or DISTRUST what we see/hear/feel.

The impact of truly understanding cognitive fluency (and its opposite) for marketers is profound. If we transfer a sense of “difficulty” to do with wording, typeface, design etc to a product, then this will impact our sense of the brand and its role (or potential) in our lives. Some DISFLUENCY may even be useful for some products or services where you really want people to think through and consider what’s on offer.

The interesting thing is that we can modify and work with cognitive fluency. We can employ marketing and communications techniques to transform the way that people “understand” our products ands services. We can work to change not just behaviour but also response and engagement.

All we need to do is stop and think.

Consumers are the Apple of Our Eye

FutureVisions, Innovation, Strategy

The iPad seems to turn its back on the creative classes which populate Apple's fan base. But this is the next step in a strategy from Apple which seeks to embrace a wide consumer base.

I have been watching the unfolding conversations around the new Apple iPad with disinterest. You see, I have never been a huge fan of Apple. Sure I have an iPod, and the iPhone looks great and seems to work well – but they have never been must have devices for me. And my flirtation with their computers has only ever ended in disappointment.

However, I often find myself recommending Apple products. Why? I am a firm believer that ease of use drives consumption – so if a non-tech person (such as my mother) wants a computer, I am going to suggest a Mac. If an uncle wants to get the internet on his phone, then I’m going to suggest an iPhone. It’s easier for them to use (and I get fewer questions later). This philosophy also provides a path for users of technology – who can start with a simple, relatively “dumb” device, and graduate to more powerful devices as their skill and confidence grows.

So I was wondering why there was so much noise around the iPad. It’s a poorly chosen name, certainly. And it elicited broad (and vocal) disappointment with the early adopters – but there seemed to be something more personal in the response to the iPad launch. Something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

At a recent Coffee Morning, I was discussing this with Tim Longhurst who seemed to nail it for me. I have paraphrased and consolidated our conversation:

The iPod transformed Apple. It gave it mass appeal. It pumped up the share price and rebuilt the company in its present shape. But there is a marked shift in the focus of the company and its products from the iPod forward. While Apple built its following and fan base by empowering the producers – the creators of content – the iPod was firmly targeted at the consumers of that content.

The iPhone is a hybrid – but the iPad boldly pushes further into the consumer space. There are no bells and whistles for the producers. No cameras. No inputs. Instead, Apple applies its design flourishes to the non-geek user – the mums and dads of the internet world. The silver surfers and retired baby boomers who can happily read their favourite websites while on extended holiday.

Why is this significant?

Alvin Toffler coined the term “prosumer” back in the 80s, and Joseph Jaffe extended this in his Join the Conversation. As Joseph explained (p 38):

The prosumers help us understand phenomena like consumer generated content, blogs, podcasting, social networking, wikis and so on. And it is only by understanding both generation i and its prosumer class that we will ever be able to figure out what to do next.

When David Armano visualised our changing sense of identity in a Web 2.0 world, it seemed obvious that we were becoming increasingly comfortable with our multi-skilled roles.

Yet while use of social technologies continues to grow, there are a significant number of people who do not engage in social technologies – or who are limited in their use (and therefore their behaviour) of these social tools. For example, we may BUY something using eBay, but are unlikely to SELL. We are happy to look at family photos on Facebook but unwilling (or wary about) uploading our own.

In this case, the iPad may turn out to be the perfect device. It’s a device that allows people to CONSUME social technologies and services – but not contribute to them. In a way, Apple are simply targeting the largest customer niche – the non-producing consumer. And while the NY Times trumpets Apple’s elitist approach to innovation – I have a feeling that the iPad may very well be the most egalitarian of products. And if that drives greater (and deeper) interest in social technologies, then all the better.

Rethinking Branding through Radical Innovation

Creativity, Innovation, Strategy

You know what it’s like – the brief hits your desk and you know it’s going to hurt you. The client wants impact. Results. Creativity to burn. It needs to be original, classy and out of left field – but you also need to bring this baby in on budget. And quickly. This is a competitive pitch and there are three other agencies lining up against you.

If I was you, I’d read the brief and jot down my first ideas on a post-it note, then file it away in my notepad. Then I’d talk to the team.

Rethinking innovation

But Umair Haque, economist and Director of the Havas Media Labs, suggests that we need to rethink everything we do. A proponent of “radical innovation”, Haque’s approach is to question the foundations of our actions – in short – to question how we innovate (and therefore what it means for us, our clients and our businesses).

Take for example, Haque’s well-known Smart Growth Manifesto where he turns notions of innovation on their heads:

Outcomes, not income
Connections, not transactions
People, not product
Creativity, not productivity

In some ways this seems obvious, but operationalising such innovation requires broader and deeper business thinking. If you focus not on income but on other measurements (such as outcomes) – then this means inventing new metrics as part of the process. How do we measure sustainability for example? What about happiness or wellbeing? The same with focusing on creativity over productivity – or the other two pillars.

This is not to say that such efforts should not be taken. Quite the opposite. You see, embracing such approaches will FORCE you to think and work through the consequences. In the short term, this will lead you to find equivalences – you will create and manage outcomes but find linkages to income. You will focus on people and their ideas, inspiration and energies, yet match it to their productivity and so on. But this journey will not be undertaken UNLESS you take the first step.

Rethinking branding

But how do we apply this thinking to the problems and challenges of branding? This recent post from Umair Haque on Twitter’s Ten Rules for Radical Innovation provides some pointers.

Ideals beat strategies: What is the core problem that your brand is trying address. How is it making the world better in its small niche? Concentrate on the idea and let the strategy come.
Open beats closed: Find the points of interdependence – between brands and their consumers, employees and their customers, executives and their teams. Share and tell the stories that emerge.
Connection beats transaction: The underlying currency of this new way of thinking is TRUST. Build transactions into your branding by facilitating a sense of trust. Do this as a precursor to transactions. Do it without expectation.
Simplicity beats complexity: Your customers want to do business with you. Don’t make it difficult for them. Design your offerings around the experience that your customers can share with others. Make sure that your communications are clear.
Neighbourhoods beat networks: Most brands haven’t figured out that there are real people behind the avatars that flash across a Twitterstream. The network is nice but remembering that we are tribal – and above all – local – means that you have to think, act and behave as if everyone knows where you live. Really. Think of the consequences and revisit your brief.

There are another five rules that Haque shares in his article – but I will leave these to your imagination.

Returning to the brief

In many ways we operate in an echo chamber. We all read the same blogs, websites, forums and magazines. We watch the same TEDtalks and download the same iPhone apps. How do we then, out-innovate when it comes to our clients?

Chances are that your three competitors will be entering their own creative brainstorming space in the same mindset as your own team. Your best chance at out-thinking your competition is to question the foundations of your own work. Rethink thinking. Rethink creativity. Rethink strategy.

Oh, and just as you go to start work on your response to the brief, take out that original post-it note and read what you wrote. That’s your gut instinct. Sometimes you’ve got to just go with that too.

Re-intermediating the Media

Community, Digital Strategy, FutureVisions, Innovation, Media, Old Media, Social Media

One of the things that most excited me about the World Wide Web was the way it crushed the distance between an idea and its reality.

The mere fact that I could, with a few spare hours and a scrapper’s knowledge of HTML, create a website – a “place” on the internet where nothing was before – seemed to me, a revelation.

Over the last 20 years we have seen a dramatic transformation in the media landscape. The promise of the early web has been delivered. Now, you or I can produce web pages and whole sites without the need of complex programming or large scale resources. We can produce “media” or what largely passes for media, using a $50 webcam, a microphone borrowed in the downtime between Singstar sessions, and a point of view all held together with a dash of passion.

The easy availability of technology and the digital publishing platforms sent waves of transformation through all forms of publishing – from books, magazines and newspapers to radio, TV and beyond. The full effect of this slow moving tsunami is yet to be seen or accounted for – but the lasting transformation is in the nature of power.

In the wake of these changes, the power that was once centralised in the hands of the publishers and broadcasters has been fragmented – tossed like so many pins into a new global haystack of content, opinion and conjecture. As Ben Shepherd points out, the winner here has been the search engines and content organisers like Google:

Google came in and created a tool that allowed internet users to find what they needed quickly and easily. It reinvented search and has allowed consumers to get anything they want, whenever they want, and for the price they want – generally for free.

But we are now experiencing another wave of transformation. Where the first wave shifted the base of power away from the broadcasters towards the content organisers, this next wave of disintermediation is moving information – and recommendation – away from the search engines. As a result we are seeing people powered networks (best characterised by sites like Twitter and Facebook) benefitting from this new shift in the locus of power. Tom Ewing describes it simply:

This shift is best interested, I think, in thinking about the difference between corporate brands and ‘personal brands’. The corporate brand entering social media is urged to give up control, to surrender some of its autonomy. But Twitter’s most popular users – its A-Listers, the celebrities – are using it to regain a level of control over their presentation and perception, through disintermediation.

This trend, while still small, will have Google worried, for while they seem to struggle with the human dimension of the social web, they certainly understand the power principles inherent in social network design and its resulting viral expansion loop. Interestingly, however, most social media participants, once they reach a certain scale, invest in the creation of what can best be termed “old-school media properties” – turning what little influence they do hold into a business modelled around advertising, sponsorship and editorial.

This seems to be a zero sum game to me – properties built on new foundations seem to sit uncomfortably within business models that they themselves, helped discredit. But what has been missing is a way to re-intermediate the new media – bridging the gap between business, brands, advertising, media buying and planning, and these long tail publishers. In the last few weeks two new players have stepped into this space. MediaScope, the brainchild of Denise Shrivell is “an online directory connecting advertisers, marketers and small business to 'alternative' media opportunities in niche, below the line, emerging and independant platforms.” It is due to launch in the coming days.

Media Cafe is also staking a claim in this space – but bringing perhaps a fuller community based publishing model to market. Currently in pre-release mode, Media Cafe is also open for the population of data ahead of a launch. Interestingly, Media Cafe appears to be putting new social properties on the same footing as traditional media properties. This aspect alone is likely to raise eyebrows, but will it unleash a new wave of innovation and transformation. No doubt both MediaScope and Media Cafe are banking on it.

The Pillars of Awesomeness

Innovation, Smart Bloggers, Storytelling, Strategy

Umair Haque has thrown open a unique challenge:

Send me your thoughts on awesomeness. A sentence, a paragraph, an essay. Positive, negative, explanatory, or exploratory. Your own real-world examples, or your vision of awesomeness.

Here are some questions to get you started thinking:

What resonated most (or least) with you about the idea of awesomeness?

Who do you think is awesome — versus just merely innovative?

What are your pillars of awesomeness?

I like the concept of awesomeness – at least in the context of the Awesomeness Manifesto. Having worked in the fields of business innovation, process improvement, creativity and advertising for well over a decade now, it certainly feels that the term “innovation” suffers from its industrial age underpinnings. It is not JUST that innovation relies on obsolescence – but more that innovation can occur almost without human agency. This is especially true in business where workflows are automated, connections are streamlined and processes optimised.

“Awesomeness” for me implies that sense of “awe” – as if we are looking into the eye of a newly living beast and not quite knowing whether to cheer or to run. And while I have attempted to systematise creative processes for continuous digital strategy or for digital storytelling (P-L-A-Y), I always aim to leave a little space for the disruption of human creativity. It is, after all, the human dimension that brings awesomeness out of the conceptual realm and introduces it to life.

Swallowing the Truth

Authenticity, Community, Innovation, Life

Anyone involved in marketing, in transformation or change management knows that there is a simple fact – change is hard. Getting someone to understand that their product, job or world has changed is an enormous challenge. It requires not just logic, but also an emotional response. We need to change our hearts as well as our minds – and it is easy for us to KNOW something but very difficult for us to ACT on that knowledge.

What we need to do is swallow the truth. We need to consume it, to bring it into the depths of our beings. We need to give “new truth” the chance to spread through every fibre, infect every synapse and tingle each fold of skin.

And you know what? Our “gut” tells us a great deal about the “truthiness” of truth. Items that are unsavoury are expelled quickly in an impulsive response. “Heavy” items are digested slowly and over time.

Seth Godin suggests that the future is just like the past, but shinier:

Your industry has been completely and permanently altered by the connections offered by the internet. Your non-profit, your political campaign, your service business. Not a little different, not just email enabled or website marketed, but overhauled.

But the future – or more precisely, the true future, is not just shiny. It is tasty. We are hungry for it and for the sustenance it brings. Ask yourself not just how you are forging a future for yourself, your business and your community – also ask exactly what it is that we should swallow. If it’s not the truth, it won’t stay down for long!

What Motivates You?

Creativity, Innovation, Life, Rant

Earlier this week I spent some time talking to a recruitment agent. It wasn’t for a new job – I was providing a reference for a friend who used to work for me. It was an interesting conversation – not the run of the mill kind of discussion, but one which delved deeper … into motivation, needs and how they manifest for us in the workplace. It made me think about success – about why some people achieve things that others don’t or can’t.

Whenever I have been in charge of teams, I instinctively seek out those who have the type of energy that I can work with. I am attracted to those who have intrinsic motivation – a sense of drive – and tend to make a hiring decision based on the way that people walk into a room.

In this video, Dan Pink, talks about autonomy, mastery and purpose – and how they combine in an individual – and what this means for those of us who manage, direct or energise teams as part of our daily work. Sure there are times where we can take the standard managerial approach – offering rewards for good performance and disincentives for poor performance, but Dan Pink suggests a need to adjust our management styles according to the type of work being performed.

Mark McGuiness also points out, that while the carrot and stick approach works for simple working arrangements, when it comes to complex problem solving and challenging or creative industries, we need to think outside the box:

… the rules are mystifying, the solution, if it exists, is surprising and not obvious – [for this kind of problem] those ‘If… then’ rewards, the things around which we have build so many of our businesses, DON’T WORK!

This is not a feeling… this is not a philosophy… this is a FACT!

There is a double edged sword here, of course. We all like to be paid handsomely for the work that we do – but few of us are willing to prioritise our desire for autonomy, our mastery and skill and our sense of purpose above income. Or am I wrong?

What’s your motivation for doing what you do? And what would you change if you could?

It’s Not Where You Take Things From – It’s Where You Take Them To

Creativity, Innovation

A reminder from two creative greats of the 20th Century – Jean-Luc Goddard and Jim Jarmusch – caught momentarily on one of my new favourite blogs.