Matter/Anti-Matter

Almost three years after Jeff Howe coined the term in his seminal article "The Rise of Crowdsourcing," and, ironically, in the very week 1,300 handpicked scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, and other thinkers, movers, and shakers assembled at the TED conference in Long Beach, the term "crowdsourcing" yielded more than 1 million search results on Google.

That's quite an accomplishment. Crowdsourcing is no longer an exclusive noun for a few in the know, it has become a verb for the crowd. Mom-and pop shops, SME's, and large corporations, receptionists, interns, middle managers, and CEOs – everyone's crowdsourcing these days and calling it so (even if they just ask a few friends to particpate in a mini-survey...).

Here's a little piece of nostalgia, THE crowdsourcing primer starring Jeff Howe:

Interestingly, the power of the crowd has not translated yet into the one realm whose decisions have arguably the biggest power to impact the crowd: politics. Since Obama's masterful use of social media helped restore trust in the American ideal of democracy, and his emphatic election fomented expectations of all-inclusive "power-to-the-people" digital governance, most of the attempts to establish an effective crowdsourced model of policy-making have fallen flat, at least so far. While the new US president has issued several executive orders introducing a new level of transparency to governance (on this topic, for a divergent opinion, it is worth reading Noah Feldman's "In Defense of Secrecy" essay in the NY Times Magazine), the mechanisms of collaborative political decision-making have yet to find a proper forum on the social web.

Sure, there are dozens of open forums that aggregate input and funnel it to the decision-makers – from Public Agenda to the rather light-hearted advertising riff "Dear Mr. President" (Pepsi). And on change.gov, there were Obama's invitation during the transition to submit input for his political agenda ("share your vision") as well as Tom Daschle's video responses to people's suggestions on healthcare ("citizen briefing book"). Perhaps the most ambitious project so far, however, was MySpace and Change.org's "Ideas for America" initiative. The site yielded 7,875 ideas by way of crowdsourcing and then distilled them down (through 675,943 votes) to ten ideas presented to the administration. Yet even though a blog is tracking the progress, it is somewhat unclear if and when the top ten ideas are actually becoming action items incorporated into national policy.

What's lacking is transparency when it matters. If all the crowdsourced ideas remain in a sand box without visible, actionable outcome, the enthusiasm to engage in politics (that was so salient during the presidential campaign) will slowly fade. Yet the missing link between input and outcome is not an easy task given the many legal and bureaucratic restrictions the administration is facing. For the time being, it is the experts who govern. The crowd will have to wait before its ideas will make a real difference in setting the national agenda.

I was interviewed by BrandWeek the other day for a story on the recent hype around “Design Thinking” in marketing. They were looking for a skeptic and found me. First of all, it is worth noting that the term “design thinking” is of course a clever marketing buzzword. It’s ironic that marketers themselves embrace it as the next big thing as it doesn’t create a new marketing paradigm so much as it proves that marketers are prone to being persuaded by their very own tricks. “Design Thinking” has become a brand, and brands are all the more powerful when they present themselves as memes.

But what does “design thinking” actually mean? Let’s rely on the wisdom of crowds and see how Wikipedia defines it: “Design thinking is a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an improved future result.” Wow. Isn’t that what every single task in business is about? Or, for that matter, every single action in life? The rest of the paragraph adds some more specifics: “Unlike analytical thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the ‘building up’ of ideas. There are no judgments in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation. Outside the box thinking is encouraged in this process since this can often lead to creative solutions.” Hmm…ok.

Some Design Thinkers herald Design Thinking as the ultimate problem solver for business, social, and political challenges. The current financial meltdown? A lack of design thinking. Our health care sytem? Design Thinking can fix it. The HIV crisis in Africa? Make sure to apply Design Thinking. Granted, design is a fundamental responsibility for organizations in all sectors of our society, and it is absolutely critical in addressing problems of all kinds. But the quest that everybody should think like a designer is not the non plus ultra formula. Or, as Raymond Loewy, the famous industrial designer, pointed out wryly: “Design is too important to be left to designers.”

Today’s marketers need to be experts in what Design Thinkers may define as “a creative process based around the ‘building up’ of ideas.” But the trend towards more participatory product development, consumer engagement, crowdsourcing, etc. goes far beyond just a trendy label – it marks a significant shift in consumer culture and in the way we do business. Good marketers know that and are masters in outside-the-box thinking by definition. In this respect, marketing was design thinking long before Design Thinking was even thought of. As a marketer, you need an in-depth understanding of your audiences, their needs, habits, and desires; you need to develop a storyline and a conversation that engages them; and then you need to establish the channels of interaction. Ultimately, it’s all about desiging interactions between brands and consumers. It has become much more complicated in a highly fragmented, digitized, and fast-paced world of social media, but that’s what it’s still about. Yes, as a marketer you benefit from a holistic, cross-disciplinary view. And you better be creative. The big idea is still big, no matter what.

For marketing is an art, not a science. It is a multi-dimensional, dialogic (or even multi-logic), multi-lateral activity that, at its best, encompasses all touch points with external audiences across all business functions. Marketing is the big integrator, a diplomat within the organiziation but the partisan friend of customers. Marketing needs to innovate or it is just manufacturing. It needs to put customers front and center and give them a say. They hold the truth about your brand so let them design it. You might call this Design Thinking. I call it Marketing 101.

(Credit: Plan Spark)

Now that the exhaustively inspirational Pop!Tech 2008  is over, it’s worthwhile taking a look at what’s next, in other words, at the conference's theme for 2009. The organizers’ choice is pretty telling and may be indicative of a larger shift among not only the elite thinkers gathering at Pop!Tech, but also broader public opinion. Succeeding this year’s theme “Scarcity and Abundance” will be “America Reimagined,” a “top-to-bottom look at America’s opportunities, its challenges, and its future” that promises to explore what it means to be a “superpower in the age of the Second Superpower -- the Internet.”

This theme reflects many of the informal conversations that took place at this year’s Pop!Tech where the predominantly American attendees were wondering whether in light of the depressing news on the economy every morning they maybe ought to spend more time thinking about how to solve critical domestic issues rather than trying to save the rest of the world. The Pop!Tech curators obviously recognized this latent mood and acknowledged that the pendulum has begun to swing back from innovation at the bottom of the pyramid to innovation here at home, where the top of the pyramid has gotten bloated and all of it poisoned with debt. Concerns about a new isolationism, however, are not warranted: “There is not a single global challenge that can be addressed without the US,” as the Pop!Tech site points out.

That’s true, although the relationship between the US and the rest of the world has mutated from a dependence on America to a dependence of America. “Over the past decade, America has made itself a savings-poor country and will be running financial deficits with the rest of the world for the foreseeable future,” writes economist Charles R. Morris in his book, “The Trillion Dollar Meltdown,” which -- released in February of this year -- offers a both sober and prophetic account of the crisis: “The United States, the ‘hyperpower,’ the global leader in the efficiency of its markets and the productivity of its business and workers, hopelessly in hock to some of the world’s most unsavory regimes. (…) that’s where a quarter-century of diligent sacrifice to the gods of free market has brought us. It’s a disgrace.”

And no one can say we haven’t been warned of the coming agony: “For more than a decade, the international financial cop, the International Monetary Fund, forecast a hurricane was heading toward US shores, as did many heads of the treasury and the Fed,” writes economist Juan Enriquez in an op-ed piece for the Boston Globe. “There are five basic drivers of these crises, all based on excess: high income concentration, too much debt, too much reliance on foreign money, not enough tax revenue, and reckless government spending. Time after time governments believe they are different. They are bombarded by warnings but ignore, postpone, spend even more, and crash.”

Now the great unwinding is ahead of us. The US is an over-leveraged economy that has been spending 5 to 7 percent more each year than it earns. A $1,000 investment in Freddie Mac is presently worth less than the return on the bottle deposit of $1,000 worth of beer bottles. With so much debt as assets on the balance sheets, and most of it collateralized as “toxic waste,” as the financial wizards call it, it will take more than social innovation to prevent Allan Greenspan’s “flaw” from becoming an apocalyptic systemic failure – it will take a drastic behavior change.

The US requires a massive restructuring to address its debt, cutting back on its borrowing, spending, and wars. The alternative is “ugly,” as Enriquez stated in his Pop!Tech address. His analysis of the downturn and his passionate plea to the new administration (and the American people) was the emotional highlight of the conference and a welcome grounding in a distressing reality. Enriquez was agitated and the Q&A after his session just didn’t want to end. Fortunately, he also presented concrete solutions to fix the mess, in the form of his “ten commandments:”

“1 - Save the dollar
2 - Fundamentally and brutally restructure debt
3 - All entitlements are fair game:
- If you are 60-65, you probably just lost big chunks of your nest egg
- Social Security/Medicare benefits are intact
- If you are 55-60, we need two more years’ work from you
- If you’re 55 and under, we need three more years
4 - Cut back military by 2% per year for 10 years
5 - Cap medical costs at 18% GNP
6 - Triage our support for companies (do not attempt to save dying whales)
7 - The program has to be bipartisan. It has to make both Democrats and Republicans unhappy.
8 - Simplify and broadly apply Sarbanes Oxley, apply it to government, apply it to hedge funds.
9 - Invest in growing start-up companies (which create most jobs)
10 - Treat education as a varsity sport (and continue to recruit foreign PhDs)”

Download his presentation as pdf

See the full video:
Juan Enriquez (2008) Pop!Tech Pop!Cast from PopTech on Vimeo.

Immediate action is of the essence: The new administration has 30 days, Enrique noted, to make significant changes based on these commandments. If it fails to do so, the consequences will be a breakdown of public infrastructure, a hike in unemployment rates, and social tensions. "Every great empire has fallen by going into bankruptcy," he stated.

Yet the damage is not only materialistic, it is spiritual. The American people need to rebuild America, but, maybe more importantly, they need to re-imagine it -- with confidence and utmost transparency. The covert irrational exuberance in the financial markets, which has occurred outside of regulatory oversight and is now gradually revealed, has shattered trust in institutions both in the business and public sector. "Supercapitalism has spilled over into politics, and has engulfed democracy,” as Robert Reich, Clinton’s first secretary of labor, diagnoses. Public policy debates have become, Reich observes, “on closer inspection, matters of mundane competitive advantage in pursuit of corporate profit,” with the notion of the "common good" disappearing.

In 2009, citizens and consumers alike will therefore ask for more transparency, more accountability from any kind of governance, as well as for more platforms to actively participate in the process of governance themselves. The rising power of amateurs, the emergence of mass-collaboration, crowdsourcing, user-generated content, and prosumers will extend to the political realm, and the open-source nature that the Obama campaign pioneered on such impressive scale, will extend to the new administration, setting up a social media-enabled “new deal” between citizens and government based on transparency and collective civic intelligence. Applying emerging technologies and new communication paradigms to the realm of governance will likely see a renaissance. More than a decade after visions of digital democracy and e-governance were rendered hopelessly visionary, they will be put forward again with reinvigorated momentum and new practical relevance in a brave new politics 2.0 world. America can and must lead this effort.

It’s a sign of troubling times when it is science that gives you faith. Another Pop!Tech speaker, the British neuro-scientist Peter Whybrow, explained in his talk how markets rely on basic human instincts that reside in the Reptilian brain and how a “buy now, pay later” mentality has led to an abundance that remains unquestioned because we tricked ourselves into a positive feedback loop. The good news from Whybrow though is: It’s only during times of scarcity that we use our human intelligence to its full effect. You can also say: scarcity is the mother of innovation. This presents a unique historic opportunity for the creative class. Reimagining America will be followed by Rebranding and Redesigning America, and all will be daunting tasks that require the skills of artists, entrepreneurs, designers, architects, writers, and marketers. Innovation is no longer only a critical economic factor, it has become a moral obligation for all creative people. 

(Credit: Pop!Tech)

My grandparents in England had cows on their farm so I've always had a lot of affection for them, and was delighted to read this story from the Los Angeles Times indicating a "hidden cow power." Turns out cows may have internal compasses much like birds and bees do for orienting themselves to magnetic north.

Using satellite images on Google Earth, German scientists were able to see that all over the planet, cows stand with their bodies pointing to magnetic north.

Studying photographs of 8,510 cattle in 308 herds from around the world, zoologists Sabine Begall and Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen and their colleagues found that two out of every three animals in the pictures were oriented in a direction roughly pointing to magnetic north.

The resolution of the images was not sufficient to tell which ends of the cows were pointing north, however.

You have probably seen how cows will tend to face together in the same direction in a field, usually to face head on into a wind (reduces heat loss) or sideways to the sun (maximize heat gain), but because the photos on Google Earth are so widespread and taken in generally good weather, it appears that cows have a "default setting" of north-south orientation when local conditions don't override it.

As one of the researchers said, "This is an incredibly neat use of Google Earth. This is a study we would not have dreamed about doing five years ago."

Not just crowd-sourcing -- it's herd-sourcing!

Remember the movie The Game, with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn as unlikely brothers, shot before the backdrop of vertiginous San Francisco?

Well, here's a new interface for the city by the Bay: SFZero is "a new representation for the data that's already there. Your mind is full of inaccurate representations that are affecting the way you use the San Francisco data flow, steering you away from interaction and collaboration and toward unproductive reflexive data loops.

SFZero designers are working double shifts to engineer this next-generation interface that will bring you together with your cohabitants to experience the freedom that is hard-coded into San Francisco's protocol."

Sounds enigmatic, looks enigmatic, and is enigmatic. I am therefore not sure if I fully get it, but in any case, SFZero seems to be a new kind of ARG (alternate-reality game)--a "Collaborative Production Game," as they call it.

"Let Someone Else Plan Your Day!" SFZero says. "Release total control of your life to an anonymous source that supplies you with instructions and directions!"

How can you not sign up for that?

Hat tip to Chelsea Holden Baker.

One may wonder whether this fixation on the main competitor shows (over-)confidence or the lack thereof. In any case, it is a bold and unprecedented move towards leading and preempting conversations about the competitor in the blogosphere. And what might easily be derided as a lame attempt to be cutting-edge, actually works. That is because the blog has a genuine voice and Miller isn't sneaky about its ownership. In fact, just the opposite: A prominent statement on the blog's homepage proudly reveals whose blog this is. Moreover, the Brew Blog introduces an element of "horse race" drama known from political campaigning into the battle of the brands. The blog doesn't have to go negative -- it suffices to leak news or to pre- or re-frame the competitor's strategic moves. Consumers may find this new playing-field refreshing and enjoyable.

So are we going to see the emergence of a whole new category of corporate blogs? Adversarial or "adver-blogs," devoted solely to deconstructing the adversary's PR machine? "Good brajavascript:addParagraphTags(document.blogForm.body)

tagsnds always have one big enemy," the saying goes, so why not bolster one's bravado by fighting super-transparent communication wars in the public arena? Adidas vs. Nike, BP vs. Shell, Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi, Starbucks vs. McDonalds -- who's next?

There's another thing you can take away from the Brew Blog: brands are increasingly trying to circumvent the news gatekeepers, not only traditional media but also influential bloggers. The trend goes towards fully branded infotainment. Although Bud TV failed miserably, the overriding rationale was on the mark -- many pundits predict brands will soon have their own channels (online video, radio/podcasts, TV, print) in order to get their messages to their target audiences.

Of course you can dismiss this as a serious threat to a free, pluralist society, but you could also interpret it as another twist in the saga of the "wisdom of crowds." If brands become content networks that speak about each other as much as they speak about themselves, it may indeed usher in a more balanced and transparent view that aggregates company blog, competitor blog, plus all brand rants in the blogosphere into one equalized view. Absent the media watchdogs, brands can act as brand stewards for their competitors, ultimately raising the accountability of all players in the market. Is it naive to think that more PR can lead to less PR spin?

Crowdsourcing has entered the mainstream big-time. It has become daunting to find a brand these days that does NOT have some crowdsourcing program in place.

My Starbucks Idea is just the latest example: Starbucks asks its consumers for advice, and besides certainly receiving a lot of good ideas, the troubled coffee chain makes consumers feel part of the brand remake.

It's the same template as usual: engage your community, harness its creativity, and let it create the content for you.

It works, sure, but it's getting stale. For some reason, marketing trends take two to three years before they are fully embraced, but if they are, then they become annoyingly ubiquitous (remember the "Tipping Point"?).

The reason is simple: Marketing executives are notoriously risk-averse (Seth Godin once reckoned that only if you're willing to put your job on the line will you do something truly innovative in marketing), and a model like crowdsourcing provides the right balance between safety net ("many others are doing it") and cutting edge ("crowdsourcing?" the CEO shrugged).

Crowdsourcing was a disruptive innovation two years ago, but now it's time to innovate crowdsourcing. It is a viable trend that has implications far beyond the marketing profession, but someone needs to take it to the next level.

So in the spirit of crowdsourcing, let me ask you: in the next stage, what could be a more innovative application of crowdsourcing?

(Credit: Greatdreams)

"At Davos this year, four luminaries in the world of design were asked to predict what the future of design will be. The themes that arose from this discussion seemed to coalesce into two distinct categories that I'd venture to call 'internal' and 'external.' On the one hand, the speakers emphasized the importance of privacy and personal convenience -- a degree of customization we've not seen before, that will first be available, as usual, to the world's wealthiest 10%. Designers will create ingenious objects with hidden multi-functionality, devices that, for one reason or another, cloak what they can really do. We'll also see designers pressed to find ways to better protect trade secrets and the valued expertise of the genius creator -- in other words, designers will be designing objects that actually enhance their own professional lives and buttress their privileged position in society.

This vision of a rather elitist future of design was counterbalanced by a set of notions that implied a very different path for the world's creative future -- one that many designers with an instinct for self-preservation may treat with some dismay. On this end of the prediction spectrum I noticed a concentration on the external -- an emphasis on transparency and simplicity and social responsibility. A belief that design that communicates its utility to the poorest 90% of the world will take precedence, and that mass design collaborations will serve a vaster public than professional designers have ever reached. This future of design would be world-changing and would mark a new direction for the practice of design -- one that might not require designers.

Much has been made of the consequences of democratizing design. Already, the designer's responsibility has shifted from creating objects and experiences to creating the conditions for innovation -- putting into the hands of the masses the tools to make their own designs. However, the threat to the livelihood of designers may well go beyond packs of online amateurs.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil has predicted that $1,000 worth of computation in the 2020s will be 1,000 times more powerful than the human brain. The result? By 2020, greatly extended human longevity (and a cure for the common cold, thank God); by 2030, nanobots that can repair our bodies on the fly; by 2040, machine back-ups of human memories. In the same time frame, we'll spend less time in front of computers and more time inside of them, working and playing in virtual worlds.

And what comes along with all this amazing progress? A fear that we won't be able to stay ahead of the game. As countless movies and sci-fi stories have told us, the terrorists could use this technology against us or the powerful computers that we've created could take over. While some critics have claimed that this is basically 'the Rapture for nerds,' Kurzweil -- whose fan club includes Bill Gates, Marvin Minsky, and folks at the National Institute of Health -- expects that by 2045, non-biological intelligence will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today. Stanford's Paul Saffo has asked, will this super intelligence treat us like pets or like food?

This presents an obvious quandary to designers, who may be regarded as the agents of our salvation or our destruction when 'the Singularity' (or the nerdocalypse) arrives. As Mary Shelley so brilliantly depicted in Frankenstein, playing God can have tremendous costs. If we're the first species to take over our own evolution, will designers live like Gods or be chronically unemployed?"