Archive for July, 2010
by Jim McGee
July 12, 2010 at 1:20 pm · Filed under
Book Review
Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, Shirky, Clay
Anyone who can use lolcats to make a relevant and provocative intellectual point is worth paying attention to. Clay Shirky pulls it off in his latest book. Here’s his point:
Let’s nominate the process of making a lolcat as the stupidest possible creative act…. The stupidest possible creative act is still a creative act. [p.18]
Cognitive Surplus is a follow on to Shirky’s previous book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. In it, he explores the following thesis:
Imagine treating the free time of the world’s educated citizenry as an aggregate, a kind of cognitive surplus. How big would the surplus be? To figure it out, we need a unit of measurement, so let’s start with Wikipedia. Suppose we consider the total amount of time people have spent on it as a kind of unit – every edit made to every article, and every argument about those edits, for every language that Wikipedia exists it. That would represent something like one hundred million hours of human thought….One hundred million hours of cumulative thought is obviously a lot. How much is it, though compared to the amount of time we spend watching television?
Americans watch roughly two hundred billion hours of TV every year. That represents about two thousand Wikipedias’ projects’ worth of free time annually….One thing that makes the current age remarkable is that we can now treat free time as a general social asset that can be harnessed for large, communally created projects, rather than as a set of of individual minutes to be whiled away one person at a time. [pp.9-10]
Shirky takes this notion and uses it as a lever to pry beneath the surface of lolcats, the Apache project, PatientsLikeMe.com, and other examples to look for something beyond the obvious. What makes it work is Shirky’s willingness to stay in the questions long enough to see and articulate deeper linkages and possible root causes.
One of the things that makes this work is that Shirky understands technology well enough to distinguish between accidental and essential features of the technology (to borrow a notion from Fred Brooks). Where this ultimately leads him is away from technology to look deeper into human behavior and motivation.
Like everyone else who’s been paying attention, Shirky turns to the wealth of insights coming out of the broad area of behavioral economics to understand why so much of the what is apparently surprising about today’s technology environment rests in our crappy assumptions about human behavior. As he argues in a chapter titled "Opportunity" when we find new technology leading to uses that are "surprising," the surprise is located in an assumption about behavior and motivation rooted in an accident of history not a fundamental attribute of the human animal. For example, he neatly skewers both the RIAA’s and the techno-utopians analyses of Napster and concludes:
The rise of music sharing isn’t a social calamity involving general lawlessness; nor is it the dawn of a new age of human kindness. It’s just new opportunities linked to old motives via the right incentives. When you get that right, you can change the way people interact with one another in fairly fundamental ways, and you can shape people’s behavior around things as simple as sharing music and as complex as civic engagement. [p.126]
For those of you who prefer your arguments condensed for more rapid consumption, Shirky provides one in the following TED talk
(Clay Shirky at TED)
Shirky has his detractors. There are those who dismiss him as just another techno-utopian who imagines a world at odds with the practical realities of the day. At the level of a 20 minute keynote speech, that’s not an unwarranted takeaway. When you give his arguments a deeper reading, I think you’ll more likely to conclude they are worth your investment in wrapping your head around them.
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by Joe McKendrick
July 11, 2010 at 4:29 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Software, SOA, Social Computing, Social Media, User Revolution, Web 2.0
Leonardo da Vinci and Benjamin Franklin didn’t have social networking or Enterprise 2.0 technologies at their disposal. But they had a global, visionary way of thinking. Imagine how the power of their ideas would have been shared and spread if they did have such tools. That’s what’s happening these days.
With the multi-disciplinary talents they possessed, visionaries such as da Vinci, Franklin, and others shook the world. Now, the world demands new versatility. Today’s managers and professionals are in a prime position to capture that spirit and carry it forward, thanks to technology innovations, says Vinnie Mirchandani in his new book, The New Polymath: Profiles in Compound-Technology Innovations.
Today’s organizations are looking for new ways of competing in today’s crazy global economy — digitally, virtually, and analytically. Vinnie’s book points out how technology innovations are expanding beyond the bounds of managing operating and storage systems. (Polymath is a Greek word for one who excels in many disciplines.) Technology — thanks to the network effect — is driving many of the important changes now reshaping business and society.
For example, Vinnie takes a look at GE’s approach to corporate IT — not as a cost center, but as a profit center — which makes the business even more innovative. The company “is innovating based on savvy understanding of global technology economics and the astute leveraging of licensing and intellectual property rights.” For example, GE maintains a “professional networking platform” called SupportCentral that “has more than 50,000 communities with over 10,000 experts across almost 20,000 business process flows.” With 25 million hits a day in 20 languages from GE employees around the globe, SupportCentral, as Vinnie describes it, is “the biggest business-focused social network you have never heard of.”
The IT culture GE supports helps it to maintain its lead as one of the most innovative companies in the world. As Vinnie describes it, “in a world focused on light innovation around social networks and mobile devices, GE is making industrial innovation fashionable again…. Its internal IT innovates on its own and coaches its business unit on intellectual property and technology contracting issues as the businesses increasingly embed technology into their products.”
Vinnie also discusses the growing role of analytics in helping guide corporate decisions, but cautions that it takes knowledgeable humans to make the most of the capabilities the technology unleashes. “A wide range of analytical tools and technologies is available to enterprises today. Particularly encouraging is the progress around unstructured analytics, predictive analytics, and data visualization. Of course, recent misses in economic forecasting have reemphasized the need for ‘human intelligence.’ For that reason, it is nice to see a new generation of analytical ‘artists’ like Paul Kredrosky [author of the 'Infectious Greed' blog] emerge and the move to a decision-, not data-centric, analytical framework.”
Taking a cue from the Renaissance nature of the today’s technology, Vinnie distills much of his thinking into a RENAISSANCE Framework, which encompasses the following:
- Residence: “Homes better technologically equipped than the office.” As Vinnie describes it: “Enterprises are gradually waking up to the fact there is no law precluding them from using products aimed at consumers themselves, sometimes at startling savings.”
- Exotics: “Innovation from left field.”
- Networks: “Bluetooth to broadband.” Vinnie describes the revolution reshaping communications on all levels — limitless telco opportunities; mobile apps, entire countries joining the computer network, function-rich devices, and citizen journalism.
- “Arsonists” and other disruptors. Vinnie observes that “most rebels tend to be start-ups, but often larger, established vendors will go after one another, especially when they are trailing in a market or introducing a new product.” Vinnie quotes Seth Ravin: industries need to go through conversions, to go against what some would call today’s “evil empires.”
- Interfaces: “For all our services.” Beyond the iPad, Vinnie discusses technology-driven transportation, and even technology you can wear.
- Sustainability: “Delivering to both the ‘green’ and ‘gold’ agendas.” Social responsibility is not just a PR strategy; it’s baked into the business model of many organizations.
- Singularity: “The human-machine convergence.”
- Analytics: “Spreadsheets, search, and semantics.” Vinnie cites examples such as Best Buy, which “has 15-plus terabytes of data on over 75 million customers… its sophisticated analytics has allowed it to identify that a sliver—just seven percent of its customers—drive 43 percent of the company’s overall sales volume.”
- Networks: “Communities, crowds, contracts, and collaboration.” Vinnie quotes Paul Greenberg, who talks about the “Social CRM” phenomenon: “The customer is increasingly controlling the conversation… Classic” CRM was operational… Social CRM is not operational—it’s collaborative more often than not. It is based on the company and customer’s interplay. It’s no longer how do you manage a customer but how you engage that customer.”
- Clouds: “Technology-as-a-service.”
- Ethics: Essential in “an age of cyberwar and cloning.” Vinnie quotes Batya Friedman: “Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is a way of looking at systems that brings in human values — so informed consent, human dignity, physical and psychological well – being among others; designers can use VSD alongside their favorite design practices, doing their best technical and usability work.”
Image: Diagram of a random network containing components that all have approximately the same number of connectivity. Image courtesy of Panos Oikonomou and Philippe Cluzel, University of Chicago.
by Rob Paterson
July 9, 2010 at 7:37 am · Filed under
Adoption, Facebook, Social Media
The interview is staged – but the meaning is really important – no going back now.
I see no excuse anymore for government not to explore the use of social media to engage better with the public
by Rob Paterson
July 9, 2010 at 5:33 am · Filed under
Adoption, Enterprise Social Computing, FASTforward'09, Interview, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Objects
I think it is a given that Culture is the main barrier for most large organizations as they look at how to use Social media. As my colleague Joe reminds us there is real hesitancy in the mainstream. No large bureaucracy can be so bound by the fear of losing control than government. So it is interesting - to me anyway – to discover a Canadian Federal Government Agency, the Department of Veterans Affairs, that has got more than a toe in the water. They are well engaged in an area where it is relatively “safe” to find out how to do this. I think that their experience here will give them the right and the know how to expand this into their operational area and to give others in Government the experience-based confidence to follow.
When the public think of Veterans Affairs, many of us think of Battlefields and Memorials. I was one of many thousands who returned to Vimy Ridge for the 90th anniversary in 2007.
Like many who visited, I blogged about my experience and posted a lot of information. Of course in these days I was not alone. Today thousands of us post material. Many people are exceptionally knowledgeable. There is enormous wisdom and energy embedded in those who visit.
One of the first ahas of Keith Hillier and his team Teresa MacLean and Joey Mokler – was that they could enhance the experience by bringing the Battlefield to the public rather than focus only on bringing the public to the Battlefield.
This recognition that there could be a “safe” way to bring the public in had very early roots in VAC. Today “silverorange” is a global leader in designing social media platforms. They have sites designed for leading entertainers such as Feist and Sloan, have added design to Firefox and Ning, have leading edge sales sites and so on. But few know that silverorange got its start with Veterans Affairs. A long time ago when many who are now old men at silverorange were in their early teens, VAC put out a tender for kids to create a Virtual Memorial for all those that had died in Canada’s conflicts.
This is the entry for my wife’s uncle Bill.
These are the entries that I made on his behalf. So even before “Social Media” was a buzz word, VAC had created a site, using kids, where the public could find out about their loved ones online and where the public could not only look but participate.
The key issue here in terms of culture and barriers, is that this is quite real – the public are really contributing and the service is authentic and valuable – but that the risks are low. Above all that VAC is learning by doing how to get a start.
They are much further along now. When I first started work with VAC about 10 years ago, they had this wonderful archive of film that they had made of interviews with Vets from WWI, WWI and Korea. The question back then was what were they going to do with this.
The answer of course has been YouTube!
Over time this invaluable archive is being made available for all of us. Not just in a static way but in a way that we can all use and share.
So what about today? Canadian Forces have been in action for many years in Afghanistan. What about their story? What about their families?
The answer is of course Facebook! There are over 200,000 members right now. Much of this is very personal and touching.
Here we see a film made by young Canadians about what Vimy meant to people in New Brunswick followed by a piece on the Highway of Heroes – the route taken by our fallen as they return from Afghanistan.
So what is really going on behind the scenes at VAC and how can what they are doing help you? Here are a few “Tips” that I can see now after nearly a decade in this work.
1. Leadership - First of all the work is being lead by a very senior and trusted executive – Keith Hillier ADM. My experience is that skunk works don’t work. At VAC as at KETC and before at NPR – having the most senior executives as the real champions is essential. For there are organizational risks and there is big push back and fear. Having a very senior person lead the charge enables you to extend your reach.
2. Use Projects – Don’t try and change the world in one go. Have a real project that you can use to find our by discovery and trial and error that will not get people fired if things don’t go well. At VAC this began with the Virtual Memorial and then has been extended into putting the film archive online on YouTube and now with asking the public to participate on Facebook. Teresa told me of their fears of trolls on Facebook. Conventional wisdom is that if the community is sound enough, they will control the trolls. But of course you don’t know that for sure. The war in Afghanistan is a tricky topic right now and sure enough some came to the site to talk about this. But the community – who are there to support the troops and their families asked them to go away and they did!
3. New actions lead to new thinking not the other way around - You can plan for ever, you can imagine for ever but it is only when you do that you learn and by learning your mind gets changed. By choosing small projects that could be made “safe” VAC is doing the doing and so all at VAC, not just the members of the team, can experience the new for themselves.
4. Start small - The team behind Keith includesTeresa MacLean and Joey Mokler. The money behind this is tiny. But the support is big. I think this is the safer way ahead. Jesus was born in a manger. Moses was found in the Bullrushes. You keep the organizational risk and the naysayers quiet by not announcing the second coming up front.
5. Partner – The early partnership was with a group of local teen nerds – what a gift to them and what a gift to PEI. You will not have the skills inside when you start. Now VAC wish to extend this to their service delivery for Vets. They do not have the resources for this. So the plan is to Partner – Partner with other agencies that can help them build a robust service delivery platform.
6. Have a clear vision for the future where social media gives you the win – The vision for “Commemoration” (Memorials etc) was to bring the memorial to the Public. The Vision for “Commemoration” – offering meaning for the sacrifice and the lives of our vets was to give this to the public. The new service delivery goal will be to shift the web from being a big pamphlet to being the place where the services of VAC are enacted – where a vet can get what he or she needs. Finally the visions for the social needs of the vets – which in most cases exceed the program needs – is to use the web to help vets get connected to others like them so that they can help each other. So far so good!
I think that VAC have earned the right to go for the service goals now – don’t you?
I think that they offer us a process that any large organization can follow too – don’t you?
by Jon Husband
July 8, 2010 at 9:19 am · Filed under
FASTforward'09
The book Work 2.0 – Rewriting the Contract was published several years ago by Bill Jensen (@simpletonbill) which outlined four principles for the rapidly-approaching interconnected workplace of the near future.
That “near future” is now here and the impact of Jensen’s four principles are growing. The principles are:
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1. Embrace the Asset Revolution – this speaks to Peter Drucker’s observation that “knowledge workers (now) own the means of production”. It’s a two-way street now – employees are deciding where they’ll invest their time, energy and intellectual capital, just as does the employer.
2. Build My Work My Way – Employees know they own the means of production … and they don’t want to waste time, in a complex, ever-flowing world. They’ve got other things to do as well … like try to lead a balanced life … which they’ll define, thank you very much.
3. Deliver Peer-to-Peer Value – Increasingly, employees are aware of how being networked together via email, IM, PDA’s, the Internet and the corporate Intranet necessitates collaboration. They like collaborating, and they don’t want artificial barriers to collaboration to stop them from adding value.
4. Develop Extreme Leaders – Leaders must be accountable … to exercise that accountability in a networked world, leaders must be willing to listen and to be challenged regarding the way work gets done.
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The Interconnected Workplace – An Ever-Changing Flow
The new conditions of an interconnected workplace world – free-flowing information delivered via integrated information systems, linked together in networks of relationships – are rapidly redefining the nature of work.
Knowledge work happens in workers’ heads and in the interactions and communications in which they engage.
Carrying out knowledge work usually involves interacting with large integrated information systems and communicating via email and conversations (whether one-on-one or in meetings). These information systems (such as SAP and PeopleSoft) are now second or third-generations systems, designed to have greater flexibility and customizability than the versions that first appeared in the early to mid-90’s. Nevertheless, due to the nature of information and the paths along which it flows … from the markets and the customers inwards to the organization … the work activities demanded of employees are becoming more complex.
No amount of business process reengineering can prevent this, and no system will be infinitely flexible. Customers’ needs, wants and tastes change. Most business processes that are effective today will need to change over time, with a horizon of several years at the most.
In The Flow – Knowledge Work Keeps Changing
Let’s combine this view of how work has changed with the observation that in many organizations competency models have become as important or more important than the core job description. Competencies are the sets of skills, attributes and behaviours needed to provide flexibility and effective performance. Competency models are just that … models … and are often accompanied by Personal Development Plans. What we have is a new equation – from the employer’s side – about delivering focused performance and results.
Now, let’s look at it from the employee points of view.
During the past fifteen years or so, we’ve all experienced the large impacts of information and knowledge being brought to bear on most products and services that we need, want and use. We’ve learned about the one-to-one marketing relationships, in which what we consume is personalized to our “user profile”. We’ve witnessed an explosion of products and services available in all sorts of blended combinations, based on the understanding that personalization and a wide range of choice will enhance customer choice. This phenomenon is aided and abetted by the realization that tastes and appeal change rapidly – there’s a flow here too. Employees are the ones that buy Jones Soda, or move from one style of jeans to the next, depending upon what the latest buzz is.
The same dynamic is starting to appear in the workplace … and it seems as if it will be the way of the future. For at least the last five years (it actually started about ten years ago) people have been encouraged to:
- Forget about guaranteed employment … the business environment is unpredictable and unforgiving
- Think of themselves as a transferable set of knowledge and skills
- Focus on doing what they have a passion for, and take responsibility by believing first and foremost in themselves
Knowledge Workers Respond To The Flow
Today, a second wave of factors is combining to lend added impetus to these trends. The interconnectedness of networks, joined by the sophistication of information systems capabilities, is combining with a year-after-year wave of well-educated new employees entering the workforce. These employees are rapidly demonstrating that they know it’s their energy and their working capital that employers are using to drive organizational results.
They’re aware that it is their life energy, and their life choices, that are being impacted by the relentless demands for performance.
Guess what? – they like performing well, they like being competent and being well-rewarded, and they’re in tune with the markets out there. They usually know what it will take to deliver a good experience to a customer. They don’t have a lot of tolerance for policies and procedures that have been built to satisfy the company, not the customer.
They’ve been told, time and again, that they’ll have to be continuously learning. In order to learn continuously, they’ll tell you ! “I know how I learn best and work best, and I’d really appreciate it if you asked me how, rather than presuming to know“. People bring themselves to work each day.
What’s that famous line ?
“Treat your employees like volunteers, they can (often) choose whether or not to be at work each day“
The range of cultures, personalities and lifestyles in our society is vastly expanded compared to a decade ago, and it’s abundantly clear that people are infinitely variable. As this infinite variability continues to penetrate workplaces defined by business processes, individual employees will increasingly respond to continuous performance demands by needing, wanting and insisting on working their own way – in the way they know that they can deliver the best they have to offer. Their very own voice will be heard, their very own style will be seen.
The Mass Customization of Work is coming … a wide range of individual working / learning styles, combined in collaborative networks, generating a continuous flow of the necessary results.
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