Filed under: Digital culture, Innovative stimulus, Social media, Thinking | Tags: Digital culture, Google, lynete webb, online
For those of you who don’t know Lynette Webb, the insights manager at Google – you can read the previous posts here and here. For those of you who do, here’s another doozy:
“The idea for this slide came from a recent article in the NYT about how the internet is impacting literacy:
“Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends. Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”
It’s a nice thought. When you think about how you read, surf, scan, think and communicate online . . it’s anything but linear. In fact, there’s a sense in which much of the activity that happens online is about joining the dots and redrawing them, than it is reaching some tangible end or defined goal. I like Lynette’s pics because they also pick a poignant point and sum it up perfectly with a great quote and an emotive image. She’s a great resource for inspiration stimulus if you want to get people thinking differently, especially about the impact of the net.
Check out the live link here
Filed under: Borrow this, Digital culture, Emergent media, Future of Media, Future of Work, Futures, Google, Innovation, Innovative stimulus, Looking for insights, Macro trends, Social media, Thinking, Trends stuff, creativity, open source | Tags: Advertising, Clay shirky, Google, Here comes everybody, insights manager, Lynette web, Russell Davies, the future of media, THe power of organising without organisations, typepad, UK
Another good piece of innovation stimulus from the lovely Lynette Webb, Insights Manager at Google who created a Flickr site called “Interesting Snippets”. I’ve profiled her before and this is the latest image to her collection. It comes to us with a great quote from Russell Davies’ blog entry about Clay Shirky’s book Here Comes Everybody.
For those of you who haven’t heard about it, Clay’s book is about what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures. When the traditional obstacles are broken down and we can all connect, engage and speak freely. What does this mean for the way we interact? For the way media publishers direct content? What happens when our unrestricted right to access, to connect and to speak is not only realised, but assumed?
It’s worth checking out Russell’s post on the book here
And if you haven’t read Clay’s blog you should definitely wet your whistle with a little of this
Filed under: Lifestyle trends, Looking for insights, Research Presentations, Thinking, Trends stuff, Trendy Trend sites | Tags: 2008, consumer, now and next, nowandnext, Richard watson, shanghai, social trends, trend map, trend report, trends, what's next
A trendy map . .
The latest Trends Report from Richard Watson of “What’s Next” has just been uploaded. It explores a bunch of social consumer trends and has fancy planning tools like this trend map which is quite spiffy and looks very smart. If you fancy a look you can find the latest trend research here
Filed under: Digital culture, Future of Media, Future of Work, Geek stuff, Social media, Thinking, Trends stuff, Work Futures, geek | Tags: digital curator, micropersuasion, steve rubel
A great post borrowed from Steve Rubel who writes Micropersuasion
Credit: Met by jesst7Content: it’s everywhere. Content is in your inbox, your feed reader, outdoor media, your living room, your pocket and, increasingly, on every web site you visit. It also increasingly resides on sites built and managed by your favorite brands, which are bypassing the media and going direct.
The democratization of publishing is without a doubt a revolution. When we’re all dead and gone, the 21st Century will be remembered as a Digital Renaissance – one that rivals the original that preceded it by 700 years.
The Internet has empowered billions of people and is distributing their creativity across millions of niches and dozens of formats. Quality and accuracy, of course, can vary. However, virtually every subject either is or will be addressed with excellence – by someone, somewhere.
However, the glut of content as we all know also has a major downside. Our information and entertainment options greatly outweigh the time we have to consume it. Even if one were to only focus on micro-niche interests and snack on bite-sized content, demand could never ever scale to match the supply. Content is a commodity. The Attention Crash is real and – make no mistake – it will deepen.
Enter the Digital Curator.
Filed under: Advertising, Agency structure, Future of Work, Geek stuff, Innovation, Innovative co., Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Looking for insights, Macro trends, Research Methods, Thinking, Trends stuff, Work Futures | Tags: feeder, ideas, Innovation, innovation feeder, innovation research, innovative, ivy ross, jody turner, Macro trends, old navy, social trends, trends, trendspotter, Work Futures
Whether you work in advertising, marketing, innovation or new product development, one of the most difficult things is having to come up with new ideas & perspectives all the time. There’s often a mad scramble to find innovation examples, social commentary or macro trends when we have pitches on or a presentation due, but the reality is that this kind of information is most useful & valuable when it’s applied consistently throughout the entire working process.
When we’re exposed to a bunch of different points of view, different modes of thinking & different models of expressing that thinking, we approach things differently from the start. We interrogate the client’s brief in more detail, we set the boundaries for the strategy more decisively, we look for creative & strategic stimulus in places others may not necessarily have thought of & think outside the intellectual systems & structures that we would normally fall back on when we just ‘use what we have’ or even worse, ‘what we’ve done before’.
So why don’t companies take this kind of role more seriously? My guess is because it seems like a role that anyone could do & everyone should do. And they’re right. Except that nobody does. The reality is that every advertising planner or innovation strategist can read ten blogs a day, keep up to date on general social trends & emergent media & keep abreast of what the trendy trendspotters like to call ‘contemporary cultural zeitgeist’ but they don’t. It’s human nature to get bogged down in the projects piling up on our desk & the whoosh of the deadlines as they go rushing past. To jump from one mindset to another in normal day-to-day work is extraordinarily difficult. Of course it can be done, by any smartie pants in fact, the difference is that the state of mind needed to write clearly defined project presentations, manage clients & the creative process is quite different to the open-ended permanently curious & steadily expanding mindset of the researcher or the information geek. It’s almost as if one mindset is about connecting the dots (those who have a
formal planning or strategy role), whereas the other is about drawing new dots, which take a while to be connected, sometimes if at all.
The definition of a “Feeder” is one who stimulates people’s minds with a constant supply of new trends & ideas. At least that’s how the big cheeses at Business Week define it. So how can you get around this in your own company?
Filed under: Genius, Thinking, Trendy Trend sites | Tags: Blogroll, Innovation, Research, Resource listing, Resources, trends
Whilst I’m in the sharing mode, check out this stormer of a site. It’s called Creax and it’s basically a hub of creativity & innovation sites. It includes some fantastic links, many of which cover social research, innovation tools, trend sites and science resources. Some of the sites I’d seen before but many were new to me. This is one site you most definitely want on your resources blogroll.
You can find it here
Filed under: Brand, Community, Digital culture, Emergent media, FMCG innovation, Future of Media, Geek stuff, Innovation, Innovative marketing, Lifestyle trends, Macro trends, Nice Design, Social, Social media, Thinking, Work Futures, beta, content communities, creativity, geek, neophiliac, new product | Tags: beta, Beta-culture, Facebook, Forrester Consumer Forum, Google, Innovation, MySpace, Radiohead, social networking, trends, Twitter
The idea of being in beta has become a broad cultural phenomenon. Many new products never make it beyond trial stage, and the trial and error beta-approach that helps Google and other alpha innovators to out-fail and thereby out-innovate the competition, is as much an attribute of successful organizations as it is a sign of our time.
But it’s not only analysts and conference organizers who are switching instantly from micro to macro, picking up nascent trends and elevating them to a must-deal-with core competence that transcends the current fad (just see all the Facebook conferences that are mushrooming right now). What I find even more interesting is how the media and blogosphere deal with it. If everything’s in beta, the public doesn’t have the patience anymore to wait for the alpha. As the media are increasingly forced to immediately widen the scope and view every innovation in a larger context as it occurs, the boundaries between reporters and commentators, bloggers and industry analysts are fading.
Some examples: Not too long ago, Twitter was all the rage, and it was stunning to see that just shortly after the initial coverage during SXSW in March, reporters were already elaborating on the concept of micro-blogging, wondering what the new “radical transparency” meant for business. Nowadays, there is a great chance that you will stumble upon a Facebook story when you open just about any publication: It’s Facebook vs. MySpace, the implications of social networking on the borders between work and personal life, reflections on the “Facebook economy,” Facebook vs. iTunes, and maybe a philosophical piece on Facebook “as a post-modern book” or the future of social networking, which, for TIME, equals the future of the Internet. It is only a small step from MySpace to the “MySpace generation,” and from Facebook to the “Facebook generation” and then to the “Fakebook generation.” Similarly, the recent buzz around Radiohead’s “pay what you want” online release has instantly led to the coining of a “Radiohead Generation” and praise for the band “as a pioneer of the digital revolution.” And there are hundreds of articles discussing if Radiohead’s decision ushers in the definite end of the record industry. The stories about the radical distribution model appear to eclipse the actual music on the album–in this case, too, the reviews are in before the story is told.
Evidently, the media need to cope with the current while also putting forward a vision for the up and coming. The time between observation and conclusion, between description and prediction, however, has shrunk to almost zero. There are no more lapses between news, analysis, background story, industry trend story, and intellectual dissection; they have become one and the same, at the same time. Not only is beta the new alpha–beta has gone meta.
Filed under: Borrow this, Designers, Digital culture, Future of Media, Google, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Nice Design, Social media, Thinking, Trends stuff, Trendy Trend sites | Tags: 2008 web trends map, beta, Information Architects, Japan, Tokyo, trends
The Information Architects, a strategic design agency in Tokyo, Japan have just released the beta version of their 2008 web trends map. They’ve taken 300 of the most influential and successful websites & pinned them down to the greater Tokyo-area train map. Needless o say Google remains at the centre of the universe [or in this case Tokyo] with various ‘train’ lines such as ‘Social Networks’ line, ‘Game Technology’ line, Adobe & File Sharing lines.
It’s a beautiful thing for the mind & the eyes.
Check it out here
Filed under: Borrow this, Geek stuff, Gen Research, Looking for insights, Research Methods, Thinking, creativity, steal or borrow info
Just saw this posted this morning & had to share it. It’s a periodic table of all the visualisation methods you’ll ever need as a strategic planner or innovation type person. (Well, maybe almost).
Check it out here
Filed under: Thinking
Every time I’ve searched for places to post my freelance details online I’ve come up with nothing. Nada. Zip. Nil. Now I know there are freelance directory sites for film peeps, creatives & designers and recruiters (not that I want to register at a recruitment site), but I can’t find anything for strategists, people who work in innovation – a general Australian freelancers directory. So I made one this afternoon.
The URL is www.australianfreelancers.wordpress.com
So if you’re self-employed, a freelancer or a small co-op, please do check it out and drop me a line if you’d like to list your details. This is not a money making exercise (obviously) but just aimed at connecting freelancers & giving us somewhere to put our bios online (aside from our blogs, facebook, myspace, linkedin etc etc). And if you’re looking for freelancers check it out too, although it’s quite a sad sight at the moment with just a friend and myself in the directory. If you know of anyone else who might find this useful, please pass the link on to them too.
many thanks & best, Jen
