stargeek
THE SALON BLOG SILLY EASTER EGG HUNTTHE SALON
|
 Here's
a silly publicity stunt I dreamed up to motivate people to check out
more of the wonderful Salon Blogs. Last night I 'hid' 10 eggs, like
the
one at left, one in each of 10 selected Salon Bloggers' comments
threads. They are numbered 1 to 10
inclusively. The posts in which they are 'hidden' are no more
than one week old (April 2 or more recent). Your challenge is to be
the
first to find them.
When
you do,
come back here and 'claim' the easter egg by posting, in the comments
thread below, which Salon
Blog you found it in, and its number.
Then, when you've claimed it, it's your job to hide another egg, in another Salon Blog comment thread (remember -- no going back further than April 2 or it gets too hard). Here's how you do it:
Happy Easter! <img
src="http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/images/egg.gif"> xx
Theoretically, we could end up with an egg in the comments of every
active Salon Blog. Remember, to claim the egg you have to be the first
one to do so in the comments thread
below -- if you e-mailed me about it or commented on it
elsewhere it doesn't count.where xx is the number ten greater than the egg you found, e.g. if you found egg 7 then the egg you hide would be 17. This is just for fun -- no prizes, except the discovery of some great, and underappreciated, blogs. The hunt ends Easter Sunday. Happy Easter, everyone. |
 I have just updated
the full Dire
ctory
of Active Salon Blogs. You can download it in Excel format by
clicking on the link at the top of the right sidebar just below my
e-mail link. It contains current information on the owner and subject
of each blog, plus current sortable data on hits/month and
inbound blog counts. Please send
me details of any missing and new Salon Blogs, and any errors in the
Directory. I promise to post any updates I receive to the Directory
spreadsheet regularly. Here are the summary statistics for the last
month:
Schnauzer Logic
#3435
If I've missed your Salon Blog, or if you know of any active (posted
within the last month) active Salon Blogs not in the directory, please
let me know.
There's just one day left to find the missing Easter eggs (see post
below), and a few of them are hidden in the above newbie blogs.Connecting the Dots 3437 Vanitas Personae 3446 Cassandra Predicts 3456 Two Fawn's American Indian Movement Pages 3467 Mindboggling Adventure Tales 3488 Bartholomew's Notes on Religion 3494 Saunter & Repose 3517 Avon Calling 3522 Bill Penrose's Radio Weblog 3530 The Cassandra Frost Collection 3531 Lumberg Boinked Her 3552 Screwing the Pooch 3557 Poli Sigh 3566 The Outer Edge 3573 Matriarch 3577 Oh My Stars 3580 The Poche 3591 Bob Rich's Weblog 3592 Douglas Moran's Radio Weblog 3597 XXX Rated Realist 3602 Rich Whiteley's Radio Weblog 3605 Manhattan Waiter 3612 The Grace Pages 3622 Lucy 3627 Vietnam Moving Wall in Worland WY 3628 Ashent TwentyThree's Radio Weblog 3632 What's in Scott's Head 3635 Monkey Labs 3637 Carnival Knowledge 3641 Infidelia 3744 1.21 Giggawats 3746 Docta Puella 3751 Enough 3752 Steve Simard's Radio Weblog 3753 Heart Attack Diaries 3757 |
I have just updated the
full Dire
ctory of Active Salon Blogs.
You can download it in Excel format by clicking on the link at the top
of the right sidebar just below my e-mail link. It contains current
information on the owner and subject of each blog, plus current
sortable data on hits/month and inbound blog counts. Please send
me details of any missing and new Salon Blogs, and any errors in the
Directory. I promise to post any updates I receive to the Directory
spreadsheet regularly. Here are the summary statistics for the last
month:
Insights from Today's
Gospel (#3342)
Boomer Mom / Suburban Malaise (#3343) Tales of a Stone Pilgrim (#3346) Reading A1 (#3364) Fortinbras Radio Weblog (#3368) The Fix-It Chicks (#3378) What Would Dick Think (#3379) Reggie E. Scott's Radio Weblog (#3388) I Cover the Blackboard (#3398) The Irregulars Blog (#3403) Post-Coital with a Modern Primitive (#3409) The Adventures of Sophie's Dildo (#3411) If I've missed your Salon Blog, or if you know of any active (posted within the last month) active Salon Blogs not in the directory, please let me know. |
| I've updated the Dire
ctory
of Active Salon Blogs. Please send
me details on any missing and new Salon Blogs, and errors in the
Directory. I promise to post any updates I receive at
least once a week. There are now 159 active (updated in the last month, or officially on vacation but returning) Salon Blogs. Comings & Goings this past month:
Some stats for this past month:
P.S. I've also updated my Tables of Contents (see top left of my blog). Since Google has, for some reason, stopped crawling How to Save the World, Google is no longer a reliable way to find things in my archives. I'm going to test some other search engines and change my search bar accordingly. |
| Well, thanks to readers much
more tech-savvy than I am, I think I may be able to get Google to
start
picking up my posts again, and, by tightening up the code of my
blogroll, also make the page load faster for those patient readers
with
dial-up access. So far I have moved the blogroll to the right hand
column, so Google will not get bogged down in the blogroll code and
give up before it gets to the actual posts. In the process I messed up
the masthead, so I've adopted a simple one-piece masthead
temporarily. If this post works properly, I'll then make an additional change to my blogroll, stripping out the table HTML and replacing it with a simple list separated by line breaks. Next post will report on the results of that. Keep your fingers crossed for me. |
| (Something light to mark the first anniversary of How
to Save the World.) IMPORTANT INSTRUCTIONS - DO NOT DISCARD  WARNINGExplosion, Bodily Injury and/or Property Damage may result if these instructions are ignored! Congratulations on the purchase of this fine product. With proper care and handling it will give you a lifetime of carefree and enjoyable service! Please note it is your responsibility to see that it is properly assembled, installed and cared for. Secure hair above shoulder length. Secure or remove loose clothing, and jewelry or clothing with loosely hanging ties, straps, tassels etc. They can be caught in moving parts. Long pants and sleeves, boots and gloves, and safety leg guards are recommended when operating. Always wear eye protection. DO NOT operate barefoot or while wearing sandals. DO NOT operate when you are tired, ill, or under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or medication. Wear hearing protection if you regularly use it more than 1 - 1 1/2 hours per day. If you smell a foul odour coming from this device, immediately shut it off and extinguish any open flame. If odour continues, immediately call the fire department and evacuate small children and pets from the vicinity. Then carefully test for leaks. Do not check for leaks with a match or open flame. Very fine materials may clog up this product and prevent it from working properly. Ensure filters are properly installed and functioning to prevent such materials from damaging this unit. Replace the old bag when it becomes full and no longer provides adequate suction. Never use blades or flailing devices with this product. Objects impacted can cause blindness or injury. Keep firm footing and balance at all times. Do not over-reach. Do not raise the center of balance of the unit above your waist. Never leave it unattended while in operation. Warning: Loose screws or wing nuts can cause product to unwind and may result in damage or injury. Inspect carefully before each use to ensure all connections are secure. Always start this unit in 'full choke' position. Remain erect while operating. Do not bend over -- injury may result. Keep combustible materials, people and animals at least 50 feet away while operating. Keep oil and grease off working surfaces. Product comes pre-oiled and needs no further lubrication to operate properly. Keep operating area well ventilated and never smoke while operating. Do not use in garages, sheds, or breezeways. Do not install or use in recreational vehicles or boats. Product must be equipped with a safety relief valve. Failure to install and use this valve voids your warranty. If your model has an (optional) Viewing Window: Do not use sharp tools to remove sales materials from Viewing Window, and avoid using in heavy rain. If Window shatters, any food in the area should not be eaten. Before each use, look for and replace damaged and loose parts. After each use, scrub thoroughly with a long-handled brass brush. Do not use commercial oven cleaners. Spiders' webs can block flow - remove with pipe cleaner. Break product in gently before first major use. Avoid serious impact. Keep it level and stable at all times. Move only with extreme care. Some intermittent snapping and popping noises are normal. Do not allow a fixed picture to remain on the screen for a prolonged period. Shock, or sparks visible at contact points, is evidence of improper grounding. If snow is visible, you may be operating in a fringe area. If this unit is to remain unused for an extended period of time, it should be lightly oiled, wrapped in paper and stored in a cool, dry place. And as with any dangerous and complex equipment, keep this product out of reach of children. We hope you enjoy your new purchase. Should you encounter any problems during assembly or operation, our friendly 24-hour service staff will be pleased to resolve them to your complete satisfaction. Postscript Warning: The exhaust from this product contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, and other reproductive harm. (All of the 'warnings' in this post have been taken verbatim from various manuals for household appliances that, for some reason, I have kept) |
 Regular readers know that my mantra for entrepreneurial success is Fill an Unmet Need. A couple of readers have suggested that this might also be the formula for blogging success. I got some confirmation that this might be true from reading the results of an exhaustiv e survey of 17,000 readers of 50 top political blogs conducted by WebAds. Key findings for this unique category of readers:
So if you're one of those bloggers (or prospective bloggers) who defines 'success' as a lot of readers, how do you go about finding out what current (and prospective) blog readers' needs are? I suggest you can do this the same way you identify unmet business needs: by doing focused research and getting creative. Here's where to look for unmet needs (this is exactly the advice I gave budding and struggling entrepreneurs looking for unmet consumer needs, except I've changed the word 'business' to 'blog' and 'buy' to 'read'):
And here's a reminder about what, from my own previous research and experience, blog readers want to see more of (each of which implies unmet needs):
But what if you don't care how many readers you have? I would suggest that, in that case, blogging fills an unmet internal need for you personally. Whether that's the ability to think out loud and clarify your own thoughts, or to keep in touch with a small circle of friends you can't meet face-to-face as often as you'd like, or to practice your writing skills, or to organize and document your personal filing cabinet or your 'personal memory' before information and ideas are lost or misplaced, these are important personal needs (for some of us, anyway) that blogging fills. But you might just find, as I did, that in the process of filling those personal needs, you also fill the unmet needs of others, and your audience becomes surprisingly large. And then, like me, you'll begin to feel a responsibility to continue to fill that unmet need for your readers. That's when you know you're hooked on blogging. And if you quit blogging, as most bloggers do, I'll bet it's because either you, or your readers, have found something else that meets your, or their, unmet needs better. Photo from Agence France Presse via the excellent Glob al Policy Forum, a reminder that for many of us, there are unmet needs more urgent than information, inspiration and entertainment. |
 If
you're a regular reader of this blog, you probably know that I'm
opposed to unregulated 'free' trade, very worried about the
extraterritoriality of the WTO, NAFTA, Davos and other corporatist
captives, strongly opposed to domestic corporations 'offshoring' jobs,
using influence with the Bush regime and other right-wing governments
to circumvent social and environmental laws and responsibilities, and
a
great believer in taking the pledge to buy local, and in community
self-sufficiency.At the same time, I'm a strong supporter of the UN and other multi-lateral NGOs, and I believe that we each have a responsibility for the well-being of all the people and creatures of this world. Some readers have said this view is inconsistent, and I wasn't quite sure how to respond to such charges. Fortunately, Peter Singer, in his recent book on global ethics, I'll have more to say next week about Bush's fraudulent and despicable Earth Day media blitz, and the major media's shameless lack of critical evaluation of the utter nonsense that his propaganda machine has been churning out this week on the environment -- newspeak of Orwellian proportions. The first part of Singer's book deals with environmental responsibility, and his prescription for increasing it -- immediate ratification of Kyoto by the US and other holdout countries, and introduction of an emissions trading mechanism to make the realization of Kyoto feasible (subject to the need for some oversight on the disposition of the proceeds of such trading when it involves autocratic governments). The second part of the book deals with the global economy, and Singer adroitly tears apart the Economist's (and other neocons') naive assertion that economic globalization somehow benefits both rich and poor countries. He then goes on to prescribe a substantial reform of the WTO and the GATT, which could actually lead to more equitable distribution of wealth and more efficient production of economic goods, while safeguarding human rights, labour and the environment. Unfortunately, the multi-national corporations and corporatists who hold sway in the WTO would never tolerate Singer's prescription, since it would entirely divert the benefits of economic globalization from their pockets to those of the world's poor. The third part of the book deals with international law, and Singer lashes out at Bush for his unconscionable refusal to ratify the International Court of Justice, and for the UN's continued hesitancy to accept a duty (not a right) to intervene in situations of genocide and other humanitarian crises, even within a single nation. Singer is sanguine about the limitations and dangers of 'global government', but supports strengthening the UN to enable it to act as a 'protector of last resort', and including in its mandate the responsibility to supervise elections in all member nations. The fourth and final part goes back to ethical principles and proposes that countries must, in this world where national boundaries no longer have any logistic meaning, set aside national interest and embrace, once and for all, global interest, impartially. That does not mean cultural homogenization, but imposes a responsibility for the reduction of inequality, both of economic resources and personal rights and freedoms. Always the pragmatist, Singer concludes by worrying out loud about how the responsibility for a global ethic could be managed: It
is widely believed that a world government would be, at best, an
unchecked bureaucratic behemoth that would make the bureaucracy of the
EU look lean and efficient. At worst, it would become a global
tyranny,
unchecked and unchallengeable. These thoughts have to be taken
seriously. How to prevent global bodies becoming either dangerous
tyrannies or self-aggrandizing bureaucracies, and instead make them
effective and responsive to the people whose lives they affect? It is
a
challenge that should not be beyond the best minds in the fields of
political science and public administration.
I'd like to believe that this was possible, because if it isn't, we're in serious trouble. We cannot expect national governments to set aside parochial interests, especially when this entails accepting a responsibility that would, for the richer nations, inevitably lead to a drastic redistribution of wealth to poorer nations and hence a sudden and sharp reduction in, at least, economic living standards (if not necessarily well-being). But as John Ralston Saul has so eloquently argued, larger organizations and institutions, whether public or private, are almost always, and inherently, less efficient, less agile, more resistant to change, more hierarchic, and less transparent than smaller organizations. So the challenge is to achieve the best of both worlds, having organizations of global scope and authority and responsibility, but broken up into sufficiently small, autonomous and dynamic units that they are sensitive, resilient, responsible and responsive to the people and communities they serve. We can only hope that "the best minds in the fields of political science and public administration", wherever they are, are up to the task. |
 As promised in February, here's an update on the US employment data. After a lot of ballyhoo in recent months, the US Department of Labour has released terrible July employment growth data, and quietly revised downwards the employment data for the previous two months. The latest 'preliminary' (subject to additional revision) numbers for June and July are 131.24 and 131.27 million respectively. Even assuming a resumption of the very modest increase rate in the Spring, employment is unlikely to reach 132 million by the end of the year. This compares to 132.4 million when Bush 'took' office four years ago, and 135.3 million promised last January (though by one interpretation of his mangled speech, he was really only promising 132.5 million). This would make Bush the first president since the great depression to record an absolute loss in total employment during his administration. In order just to match the 150 thousand new entrants to the labour force each month due to population increase, employment should be rising by 1.8 million per year, and should now be nearing 139 million. What's worse, the quality of the new jobs created has been exceptionally poor. Rather than creating high value, knowledge-intensive jobs to replace the jobs offshored to lower-wage countries, nine out of ten of the highest-growth sectors of employment are low-wage, low-expectation jobs (food service, secretarial etc.) Most growth continues to be in part-time and temporary jobs. No surprise that so many have just given up looking for work. So much for trickle-down economics, and the promised stimulus of Bush's tax giveaway to his rich friends. Yet a recent AP-Ipsos poll reports 46% of Americans 'approve' of Bush's handling of the economy. Who are these people and what have they been smoking? |
 I've written twice before about suicide, and a new 'advice column' in Salon.com has provoked me to write about it again. The gist of my earlier articles:
Sentimentalizing
suicide only encourages others who, weak-minded, pained, lacking the
ability to see how foolish and wrong it is, might succeed all too well
in their feeble attempts. What fucking gall, Mr. Tennis -- and
such cruel and inflammatory language. Those who commit suicide are not
weak-minded, and if this 'advice columnist' had the faintest inkling
what it is like to live with suicidal depression he would know better.
And who the hell does he think he is to judge the actions of someone
he
has never met as 'foolish and wrong'? When they go by suicide, they leave us in an insult of dust. Mr. Tennis should also know that suicide is almost never an 'insult' to anyone. It is an act of desperation, usually after years of unimaginable suffering, to escape a living hell that the victim -- yes, victim -- can no longer bear. It usually has nothing to do with anyone else, so the last thing it is is an insult to others. To counsel people, especially people in pain after an unexpected and shocking loss, to hate and blame the deceased is an affront to human dignity, an abuse of trust, and an offense to the memory of someone who was a victim, not a 'murderer'. There is a perverse character flaw in some people to always assuage grief by transferring it to anger and blame. Grief is internal, and it can eat you alive. Anger and blame are externally focused. They are much easier emotions to handle. And in some cases -- like rechanneling the grief over 9/11 into anger at Osama bin Ladin -- such transferance is quite rational. But although the exploitative 'vengeance' religions would have you believe otherwise, when people suffer and die there is often no one to blame, no one to get angry at. And reaching closure, like dealing with grief, is an internal process. It is about personally coming to grips with loss, with the realization that the toxic 'what might have been' is irrelevant, a fiction, closed. It is a slow, painful healing process. And it is a process best undertaken honestly. Using some cheap trick like transferring the pain to anger and blame of a phony straw man merely perverts and delays the process, and stirs up inappropriate emotions that can only confuse and inflame, not heal. Some advice, we're better off without. |
This
is the second in a series of articles that will be published
intermittently this month.
This article summarizes what I believe were the most important ideas
of
2003 in the world of politics and
economics. The first article in the
series covered the world of blogs &
blogging, and future articles will cover business, the arts &
sciences, and the environment.  POLITICS & ECONOMICS -- THE TEN MOST IMPORTANT IDEAS OF 2003  I make no apologies for the fact that this list reflects my perspective on the political compass (-8.2, -8.0). Those with conservative or authoritarian views are welcome to make their own lists.
|
 A few
interesting lefty sites to look at as weekend reading:The indomitable Bill Moyers tells why progressives should be angry, and not complacent, about what has happened to the political, social, educational and economic systems in the US in the past few decades. My favourite excerpts: A profound transformation is
occurring in America: the balance between wealth and the commonwealth
is being upended. By design. Deliberately. We have been subjected to
what the Commonwealth Foundation calls “a fanatical drive to
dismantle
the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the
intellectual and cultural frameworks that have shaped public
responsibility for social harms arising from the excesses of private
power.” From land, water and other natural resources, to media
and the
broadcast and digital spectrums, to scientific discovery and medical
breakthroughs, and to politics itself, a broad range of the American
commons is undergoing a powerful shift toward private and corporate
control. And with little public debate. Indeed, what passes for
‘political debate’ in this country has become a cynical
charade behind
which the real business goes on –the not-so scrupulous business
of
getting and keeping power in order to divide up the
spoils...Let’s face
the reality: If ripping off the public trust; if distributing tax
breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor; if driving the
country into deficits deliberately to starve social benefits; if
requiring states to balance their budgets on the backs of the poor; if
squeezing the wages of workers until the labor force resembles a
nation
of serfs – if this isn’t class war, what is? It’s
un-American. It’s
unpatriotic. And it’s wrong...What we need is a mass movement of
people
like you. Get mad, yes – there’s plenty to be mad about.
Then get
organized and get busy. This is the fight of our lives.
And he quotes this gem from Time magazine: “When powerful interests
shower
Washington with millions in campaign contributions, they often get
what
they want. But it’s ordinary citizens and firms that pay the
price and most of them never see it coming. This is what
happens if you don’t contribute to their campaigns or spend
generously
on lobbying. You pick up a disproportionate share of America’s
tax bill. You pay higher
prices for a broad range of products from peanuts to prescriptions.
You
pay taxes that others in a similar situation have been excused from
paying. You’re compelled to abide by laws while others are
granted
immunity from them. You must pay debts that you incur while others do
not. You’re barred from writing off on your tax returns some of
the
money spent on necessities while others deduct the cost of their
entertainment. You must run your business by one set of rules, while
the government creates another set for your competitors. In contrast,
the fortunate few who contribute to the right politicians and hire the
right
lobbyists enjoy all the benefits of their special status. Make a bad
business deal; the government bails
them out. If they want to hire workers at below market wages, the government provides the means to do so. If they want more time to pay their debts, the government gives them an extension. If they want immunity from certain laws, the government gives it. If they want to ignore rules their competition must comply with, the government gives its approval. If they want to kill legislation that is intended for the public, it gets killed.” This is part of the Demos website. Thanks to Ge ntleBreeze's excellent blog for the link. And once they're angry enough, American Progressives now have an organizing body to do something about this travesty: The Progressive Vote PAC's United Progressive Alliance is working at the grassroots level to reform the Democratic Party into a genuinely progressive party, or at least get some progressive planks in its platform, from the bottom up. |
| Four
years ago I wrote a well-received paper entitled A Prescription for Business Innovation:
Creating
Technologies that Solve Basic Human Needs. I've updated it,
broken it into three manageable pieces, and present the third part
below. The first part, which reviewed the history of human innovation
and technology, is here,
the second part, which described the current environment for
innovation, is here. Six: Prescription for an Innovative Organization  The
first four years of the century have seen some serious setbacks in
business innovation. The corporatist-backed Bush administration has
introduced legislation to reduce corporate liability to consumers, and
has been extremely lax in enforcing social and environmental laws.
Organizations like the RIAA and Nike have showed that the courts will
allow large corporations great latitude to sue customers (including
infringing on their privacy rights) and to lie to customers in their
advertising (about sweatshop operations, offshoring etc.) Corporations
like Enron have abused public trust and destroyed thousands of
families' livelihoods and life savings. And massive defense and
security expenditures have siphoned off funds that might have been
invested in innovation, and have made corporations and lenders nervous
about any investment while governments and corporations are so
seriously overextended and exposed to interest rate fluctuations. The
result is a climate of great animosity between corporations and
customers, and unprecedented risk aversion.At the same time, recent surveys indicate a growing corporate awareness that "you cannot cut (or offshore) your way to greatness", that the limit to improving profitability by reducing costs and margins has now more or less been reached, and that innovation must again move to the forefront if corporations are to have any hope of sustaining that profitability. So corporations are looking for low-cost, effective ways to develop new products, new processes, new delivery channels and new technologies that will meet important human needs, provide real value to customers, and be affordable by those customers. This challenge occurs at a time when the distribution of wealth among customers is massively skewed, both within and between nations, towards a tiny elite, when many governments and most corporations and individuals are buried under a crushing debt load, and when the need for innovation to solve critical environmental, social and political problems has never been higher. Simply put, we are living in an age when we cannot afford innovation, and cannot afford to be without it. Perhaps the most critical innovation need therefore is for creative mechanisms to finance, price and pay for the costs of innovation itself. Funding, pricing, and cost management are now inseparable parts of the innovation process. The prescription I propose draws on a wide variety of innovation processes that have been advanced by thought leaders on the subject, especially during the 1990s when the appetite for investment in innovation peaked, including Peter Drucker's, Cap Gemini's, Credit Suisse's, Gary Hamel's, and others listed in the bibliography below. This prescription draws as well from several innovation processes that I am personally aware of from my years working with Ernst & Young and its clients, and some lessons from how nature, which has been innovating since long before we appeared on the planet, goes about it. This prescription has eighteen steps in eight stages illustrated in the chart above: Listen, Understand, Organize, Create, Experiment, Listen Again, Design, and Implement. The three stages shown in blue -- Understanding, Organizing and Implementing -- are analytical processes, well-suited to the left-brained deductive thinkers who predominate in most organizations. The three stages shown in green -- Creating, Experimenting, and Designing -- are creative processes, better suited to right-brained inductive thinkers who are relatively scarce in most organizations. The two Listening stages shown in red are communication processes, that need to involve customers and other stakeholders, and everyone in the organization involved in the innovation process. Assigning (or contracting) the right people for each stage in the process is essential to its effectiveness, and to its affordability. If it's done well, it can draw on the strengths of everyone inside and outside the organization who has a stake in a successful innovation effort. Here are the eighteen steps. They are in reasonably sequential order, but are somewhat recursive: For example, as part of creating alternative solutions (step 12) it may be necessary to go back and scan for some additional ideas (step 1). Who should do each step depends to some extent on the industry and size of your organization: Large organizations may benefit from having a dedicated Innovation Team responsible for this, while in a very small organization it may be a scheduled part-time task of the whole management team, drawing as well on the diverse backgrounds and ideas of an informal Advisory Board. Listen 1. Listen broadly for ideas: Appoint your Innovation Team and have them set up an 'environmental scan' that systematically looks for innovations and connections not only in your industry but also outside it, outside your country, outside of business entirely. Have the Team read about, learn about, and meet with people from the broadest possible spectrum of human enterprise and natural discovery. Subscribe to journals like Innovation, and the RSS feeds of periodicals and websites that report ideas and new technologies from a wide range of disciplines. Reward members of the Team for serendipitous readings and meetings, debrief with them promptly and regularly, filter, refine and inventory their ideas and learnings for consideration at the Understand, Create and Design stages of the innovation process. Inputs: readings, newsfeeds, conferences, interviews, meetings. Outputs: a manageable inventory of ideas and insights (categorized and contextualized appropriately so that they can be simply understood and practically applied). 2. Listen to 'pathfinder' customers, competitors, and colleagues: Plug yourself in to the 'voice of the customer'. Set a minimum time quota for everyone in your organization to spend face-to-face with business customers, or with customers' customers or end consumers. Identify 'pathfinder' customers -- those who are most attuned to their organization's future direction and its need to change. Employ a 'Think the Customer Ahead' program that engenders effective listening, elicitation skills, story-telling skills, and creative thinking skills , a capacity explained in Imparato & Harari's book Jumping the Curve. Often the customer isn't able to articulate his or her needs in a way that lends itself to quick technology solution development. Listening to the customer is an iterative process, that entails learning about the customer's business, understanding the things that keep them awake at night, suggesting a lot of 'what if's', proffering opportunities, points-of-view and possibilities, not just asking baldly about needs and offering off-the-shelf solutions. Connect with customers indirectly as well, using all the media at your disposal -- phone surveys, e-mail, website surveys, customer satisfaction surveys (with lots of open-ended questions), self-diagnostic tools, videoconferences, etc., to capture as much information as you can about your customers, their customers, and their markets. Inputs: conversations, interviews, surveys. Outputs: needs, ideas, stories, industry future state visions, five-forces and SWOT analyses. 3. Listen to the front lines: Talk with the people who hear directly from customers and other stakeholders every day -- people in sales, customer service, even delivery and reception staff. Ask them what they're hearing, and what they think most needs improvement or rethinking. Create 'space' -- physical and electronic -- where everyone in the organization can surface, discuss and advance problems, needs and ideas collaboratively. Let anyone 'subscribe' to the inventory of news and ideas created in step 1 above. Consider maintaining a running list of the company's Top 10 Challenges to encourage focus and creative thought from everyone in the organization. Make sure top-level executive sponsorship for innovation is visible to everyone on the front lines. Give people time off their 'regular work' to focus on organized innovation projects, and tools and process guidance to use that time effectively. Reward front-line people for new product and other innovative ideas that they surface from their conversations with customers and others. Inputs: conversations, idea & collaboration spaces, interviews. Outputs: needs, ideas, stories. Understand 4. Understand who your actual and potential customers are: Study companies like The Body Shop that know their customers, their needs, their buying preferences and criteria intimately. These are companies that spend a lot of face time with customers and have rigorous processes in place to capture what they learn, probe what they need, and explore the potential market for new innovations. And identify and get out and meet with potential customers as well, to understand why they're not already customers and what could change that. And then have your Innovation Team cast a wider net and ask who might be customers that are currently not served by either your company or your competitors. Learn the lessons of Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma and The Innovator's Solution -- how disruptive innovations can (sometimes inadvertently) transform whole industries, and how that presents your company with both threats and opportunities that could completely change the profile or even definition of your customers. Inputs/Outputs: list of actual and potential customers and what they currently buy, could be buying, and will and won't be buying in the future, and why. 5. Understand and respect what end-consumers want and need: and based on that 6. Understand what immediate customers will need: Start with the end-consumer of your products and services, and the end-consumer of the products of your immediate customers. Their buying patterns, needs and preferences will determine the success of your customers, and that will in turn determine their buying patterns, needs and preferences. The end-consumer has the ultimate power, and, unlike corporations', their buying decisions are based on broader and more subjective criteria than business need and affordability. They buy things they want, not just things they need. If you sell to the auto industry, you need to understand why consumers, against all logic, buy SUVs. And if your company is making money from sweatshop labour or old growth forests, better come clean now. Business needs to end its abusive relationship with consumers -- overcharging them, misleading them, suing them, and selling them inferior, imported merchandise and services. Once consumers realize their true marketplace power, they will get back at adversarial suppliers with a vengeance. Business needs to respect them, respond to them, and be responsible members of the communities in which they operate. The Reputation Economy isn't here yet, but it's coming. If you cause consumers to dislike you or distrust you, you'll soon be dead. Inputs/Outputs: current state analysis and future state vision of wants and needs for both current and future immediate customers, and end-consumers, and a resultant future state vision and emerging needs profile for your industry. 7. Understand why these wants and needs aren't already met: Here's the hard part. Things are usually the way they are for a reason. You know there are wants and needs that aren't being met. The challenge is not to throw in the towel when you find out why. The technology doesn't exist? The solution would be very costly or risky to develop? The solution is not affordable to customers? The solution is too radical for customers to accept or too complex for them to understand? The organization currently lacks the capacity or competencies to produce the solution? That's what innovation is about. Take up the challenge with your eyes open about what must be overcome, but take up the challenge. If it was easy someone else would have already done it. Inputs/Outputs: list of challenges. Organize 8. Organize those with a stake in solving the problem: Now you know what needs to be done, the next step is to organize the troops. Who can help solve the problem, assess the alternatives, provide the needed resources? Outputs: project team member list, including 'pathfinder' customers and other outsiders. (Note that the project team is responsible for solving a specific problem or need, while the Innovation Team has oversight over the entire innovation effort of the organization -- they aren't the same group). 9. Organize the program for solving the problem: There are a lot of techniques and methods that you can use to break through a problem and come up with solutions. The bibliography below is replete with them. In my experience, creative minds need a very broad framework (schedule, budget, high-level process) and a lot of freedom to figure out how to solve the problem within that framework. Self-organizing, self-managed innovation project teams seem to work well in some organizations but not in others. If you insist on imposing more discipline on the process, more hoops to jump through, control points and early-stage go/no-go filters, make sure the people you're imposing it on see the value in these constraints, and that they don't squeeze the boldest and potentially most successful ideas out in the process. Outputs: project schedule, budget, program. 10. Organize the resources needed to solve the problem: The project team needs sufficient tools and knowledge to be able to understand the problem, the customer need, and the variables that could impact the potential solutions. Inputs: all the Outputs from steps 1-7 above, redrafted into a cogent and digestible form. Create 11. Create an environment and capability for innovation: Give the Innovation Team and the project teams permission to fail, and teach them how to fail early and inexpensively. Prevent executives from pushing their 'pet' projects to the detriment of others. Don't let the 'black hats' deep-six good, hairy, audacious ideas prematurely, and ensure that 'black hat' behaviours are not rewarded by senior management. Help the team avoid slipping into excessive caution or incrementalism. Keep the marketing group from unduly influencing the process with antiquated ideas for 'creating market demand' and launching products with press releases and self-serving promotional and advertising campaigns -- In the emerging customer-driven market these techniques will no longer make a mediocre product a success. Provide rewards and incentives for team members, and for other contributors to the innovation effort. Don't tolerate hoarding of ideas and knowledge, or inter-department 'charges' that block knowledge transfer and cross-functional collaboration. Share credit for good ideas and successes, and don't make innovation an area of internal competition. Help bright, creative, quiet people find their voice, and let people promote 'crazy' ideas without fear of ridicule. Teach the Innovation Team and the project teams (and others in the organization who show interest) techniques that will enhance their creativity and improve the innovation process, and give them time and resources to discover other techniques and try them out. Invest adequate, patient capital and resources for innovation. Give ideas sufficient time to find their market but don't throw good money after bad, no matter how well-intentioned. Understand sunk costs and learn from failures. Consider letting those involved in the innovation 'invest' personally in return for a share of the ultimate revenues or profits: Having some 'skin in the game' can be very motivating and empowering. Inputs: time, training, tools, space, sponsorship, leadership and resources. Outputs: people who are inspired, capable and encouraged to contribute productively to the innovation effort. 12. Create lots of alternative solutions: Don't put everything at risk on one option. Use scenario planning and other techniques to identify and assess alternatives. Don't reject the really far-out alternatives prematurely -- cost/risk/benefit decisions usually can't be properly made until the customers have had the chance to say their piece again in step 15 below. Outputs: alternative solutions. Experiment 13. Experiment: Try many things, learn fast from failures, tinker, iterate, combine, transfer: Try several alternatives simultaneously in different markets to speed up the assessment process. Use rapid prototyping and other iteration techniques to expose as many alternatives to the market as possible. Outputs: test results. Listen Again 14. Listen to potential customers and help them imagine: Use prototypes and stories to make the innovative product, service, channel or technology as concrete as possible. Beware customers' propensity to say 'yes' at this stage when there's no required commitment. Go back to what you learned from customers in steps 1-7 and recite what you heard back to the customers for confirmation, explaining how the innovation addresses the need articulated by the customers. Listen objectively for confirmation or dissonance. Outputs: customer evaluations 15. Listen to acceptance criteria -- the ‘if’s: If the product appears to meet the need, the next task is to assess the customers' buying criteria: price and affordability, convenience, options, delivery time, upgradability etc. Some of these criteria may be show-stoppers that will require re-invention or other creative brainstorming, while others may be able to be addressed in the design stage below. Outputs: customer buying criteria 16. Listen to ‘what could go wrong’: Here's where you let the 'black hats' say their piece: What competitive threats exist or could arise? Is the innovation vulnerable to disruptive innovation from unexpected sources? Are there unforeseen production, quality control, political, regulatory, financial, marketing, or servicing landmines? What's the shelf-life? Could it become a commodity prematurely? Will it be prohibitively expensive to produce or to buy? Will it cannibalize existing product sales? Is it a strategic fit for the organization? Some of these 'what could go wrongs' may require re-invention or other creative resolution by the project team, while others may be able to be addressed in the design stage below. Outputs: list of threats and risks, and resolution plan. Design 17. Design: consider customer-valued attributes, cost, intuitive ease of use, ease of change, ease of enhancement: The greatest idea in the world can still be torpedoed by bad design. The designer has to be told, in no uncertain terms, what attributes are important to the customer, how much at most the solution can cost, and the trade-off between ease-of-use and power. Technology products especially are often over-engineered because additional functions and features are easy and inexpensive to add, but they add complexity disproportionate to the benefits of the additional functionality, often to the point of turning off potential customers. And in this age of constant upgrades and inter-operability requirements, the solution must be easy to change, redesign and enhance. Inputs: specifications based on Outputs from steps 12-16 above. Outputs: completed designs. Implement 18. Make the final go/no-go decision, then implement: If there are still several alternatives on the drawing board, whittle them down to a manageable number. If necessary, send the idea back for reinvention (step 11), re-testing (step 13) or redesign (step 17). If the previous steps have been done properly, this step should be the easiest. Once the decision has been made to go, the set-up, production, viral marketing, sales, distribution, employee and user training, partnering, after-sales service, success measurement and continuous improvement should be problem-free, since the 'what could go wrong' possibilities have already been considered and addressed, and people from all functional areas of the organization should have been involved and consulted during the Create and Design stages. Seven: Applying the Prescription: Some Examples To give you a flavour for how this prescription could work in practice, here are eight fundamental business problems from different industries, and some innovations that have recently been (or are currently being) successfully commercialized to solve them. In each case, the solution shown could reasonably have been derived using the principles and process in the prescription above:
Conclusion This presentation was itself the result of addressing an unmet need: After reading dozens of books on innovation, I was unable to find one source that explained in clear terms what innovation is, in a business context, conveyed the urgent need for businesses to become more innovative, and provided an actionable prescription for doing so. This paper was initially developed to provide the Core Innovation Team of Ernst & Young with background on the history, current state and leading practices in business innovation, and I am now using it to develop part of a core curriculum on entrepreneurship, of which innovation is a critical element. I hope this analysis has given you a better understanding of the subject and its importance, and some useful tools and ideas that you can use to make your organization more innovative as well. I would welcome the opportunity to continue the discussion on this subject, by e-mail or through the comments thread below. You can find more of my writings on business innovation in this index. While I'm optimistic that this prescription will work within business and other organizations, large and small, I am less convinced that it will work to solve some of the more deep-seated human needs and inexorable problems that plague us today, such as global warming, pollution, the energy crisis, biodegradation, endemic war, violence, mental illness and disease, animal cruelty, urban sprawl and decay, crime, unemployment, and the inequitable distribution of resources, income, wealth and power. While the process should work in principle, it is unlikely that this process can be followed with sufficient rigour or resources without (a) a willingness by governments to spend much more money (paid for by taxes) to solve these problems, (b) a political will to solve such problems creatively and by consensus, rather than leaving it to private interests to address them or dealing with them by brute force, and (c) a much greater awareness, commitment and sense of responsibility by the body politic of the urgency and opportunity to solve these problems. But just as business will be driven once again to invest in innovation in the search to sustain profitability, it is likely that private citizens and public institutions will ultimately be driven to invest together in innovation in the search for a liveable, sustainable world. The process they then use will probably look a lot like this prescription. Bibliography
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 A member of the Derrick Jensen mailing list pointed out a brilliantly-written letter to the editor of a small Virginia community newspaper, describing new laws to increase penalties for 'eco-terrorism', a vaguely defined term which appears to include acts of sabotage to corporate 'property', even if they do no harm to any individual. The law was apparently designed to discourage acts against the property of logging, mining, and factory farm corporations, developers and SUV retailers. Here's the letter in its entirety.
Last week, you used the term "ecoterrorist"
with
regard to the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). A note on semantics: The
Department of Defense defines terrorism as "The unlawful use or
threatened use of force or violence against individuals or property to
coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to
achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives."
Somehow, burning a bulldozer fails to meet these criteria. Unlawful and ideological, yes. But they intended to coerce corporate entities (United Land, Virginia Land, Kessler Group, Regency Centers, and Dierman Realty Group), not governments or societies. Do you feel "terrorized" by the loss of the Land Company's trackhoe? Even developer Wendell Wood seems non-plussed. "You can go buy another." What is scary is how terms like "ecoterrorist," "cyber-terrorist," "narco-terrorist" and "special-interest terrorist" are slipping into our vernacular. Know this: "Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act" legislation was proposed in Texas and New York, to officially label many forms of advocacy as "terrorism." Plus, President Bush's proposed Patriot Act II hopes to broaden the definition of terrorism and make it easier to sentence such "terrorists" to death. Now, who's scaring who? Indeed, the ELF is the FBI's top priority regarding domestic terrorism. But I, for one, would hope they'd instead focus more on whoever mailed U.S. military-manufactured anthrax and ricin to Congress. Truth is, most people agree with ELF's intentions. A recent national survey found that two out of three people think the environment is more important than property rights, corporate profits, or even creating jobs. The ELF usually targets only the most egregious of industrial polluters and ecology-destroying profiteers. Take Nestle's Ice Mountain bottled water, which built a plant in Michigan's Mecosta County (despite a 2-1 resident vote to deny them zoning) and then proceeded to violate state and federal water rights by siphoning from public rivers and streams. ELF activists, after exhausting legal avenues of dissent, tried to blow up the plant. Is the sprawling Hollymead Center as bad? No. But Richmond's SUVs were arguably an environmental and social menace. Objectively speaking, SUVs kill more Americans than al-Qaeda does. The last word: There was a time when we had a very different term for those who sabotage avaricious corporations. As John Adams said of the Sons of Liberty who dunked East India Company tea into Boston harbor: "There is a dignity, a majesty, a sublimity in this last effort of the patriots that I greatly admire." Brian Wimer Charlottesville P.S. This week, Bush's Education Secretary called the National Education Association teachers union a "Terrorist Organization" for criticizing the shortcomings of Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. Who's next? Editorialists? |
This
is the first of five
articles in a series that will be published intermittently this month.
This article summarizes what I believe were the most important ideas
of
2003 in the world of blogs and blogging. The other articles in
the
series will propose the most
important ideas of the year in:
BLOGS & BLOGGING -- THE TEN MOST IMPORTANT IDEAS OF 2003  During the year, the blogosphere doubled in size, and began to mature into a true alternative medium for information and connection. My nominations for the most important ideas of the year* in blogs & blogging are:
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