Let’s say you are thinking about a problem.  Inspiration comes and now you have what you think is a meaningful solution.  Yet, where did it come from? Lateral thinking expert De Bono reminds us that it’s a change in our neurons (or whatever) that produces the shift from one thought to the next.  You can actually teach your brain to move between concepts laterally when you solve problems to different and better interpretations.   We can use concepts to drive strategy.  But often these kinds of synthesis are hard to navigate, I want to talk about the ways in which concepts begin.   Why can I sit at this Macbook Pro and write this without considering the words I am going to type next.  Because I don’t proofread?  I don’t think so… because they are creative.

David Lynch said that he often would sit down and ideas would come and he would work hard to capture them, so that he could hold on to them.  Isn’t that interesting.  I often have my best thinking when I am driving, in the shower, on the throne or elsewhere.  I don’t really care how it works or why it does but I find these times when ideas just come are often not synthesis.  I am growing to dislike the way we use that word. It’s more like a description of a ‘product’ of something else.  Think about Chemicals.  We call the hybrid ‘synthesis’ (I hope) and use that as a way of describing a process.  I would argue that synthesis is the outcome of creativity in some cases. Human beings are creative.  We make stuff.  A lot of stuff.   So this presents two problems in my limited mind.

1. Stuff comes from somewhere

2. Not all stuff comes from somewhere, some stuff just comes.
I am often impressed by the word, ‘variegation’.  It reminds that two things can be true at the same time and the other thing can also be true as well.  What?  Well we often frame our problems as thus: ‘It’s either this or that’.  This invites synthesis.  Combine the ideas and create a new perspective.  But in design, we often make new ideas that other people engage with and this process of making ‘new’ ideas is not necessarily a process of combining old ideas.  It’s something else. Inspiration, creativity and new ways of thinking are often hard to conceptualise for an academic, we follow the patterns and contribute to others.  Our arguments don’t often synthesise the texts either, sometimes they contradict and refute.  This process leads me to think that thinking and creativity are deep.

I am reminded of perspectives, how they shape and inform, how they create and divide logic.  How interesting that we ever thought a rational process could explain irrational humans?  What of rhetoric?  Ok that last micro sentence was silly.  Anyway, remember that combining things and looking for new interpretations leads to synthesis.  Synthesis is not the combining of old ideas and new ones, it’s the emergent process of creativity which is beyond my intelligence to comprehend.  We use words like inspiration too loosely.

Synthesis, leads us to new interpretations but sometimes new interpretations come because of some other reason.  When I figure that out, I will more than likely be dead.  Now there’s a concept.

I think I have neglected this blog, which is a shame because I have always found this space rewarding.   When I started three years ago, I felt as if I was trying to be somebody I wasn’t or write something I shouldn’t.   I was trying to write up a paper this morning on my experiences in a failed business attempt when I realised something.   In a lot of areas of my life, including this one, I often come across as though I am someone else.   It’s formal, not informal, complex and creative yet not me.  The posts which are the most like me are the one’s that I think get read less.

Is it a crime to write as though you were someone else online?

No. But what does it say about the bloated doctor on the other end of the keyboard typing this sentence?  So what is the bloody point if you aren’t going to do or say the things you think need to be done and said?  You get depressed, tired, withdrawn and overall very weird.   Yet, there is a timing and wisdom in this that involves taking the time to find your voice.  You start with copying, trying on ‘dad’s shoes’, pretending and so on until you realise, this is me.  I am the kind of person who has a hard time selling out and my body lets me know almost immediately if I am doing it.  I get depressed, can’t sleep, get angry and so forth.  When you begin to find your voice, it’s a good feeling, you are you and know it.  You settle in on some things.  The words flow from the chubby fingers to the keyboard with ease, the revisions seem less important and you even begin to like the editing process a little bit.

The voice is like the sweet spot on a picked lock.   Perhaps the wrong metaphor, yet the obscuring face of the lock from what lies behind is more than likely apt.  Consider then that on the other side of this metaphorical door lies the chamber of secrets to your voice.  What key wouldn’t you try?  Yet, the only way you can find your voice is to use it until you get the key that fits.  Unless of course the lock is in another room, behind a gate, guarded by a moat filled with alligators (or crocs if you are from Australia).  The point is: you are you and you should tell you not to sell you out for a few dollars.  Be you, yes you, because you have to live with you.  Don’t YOU forget that.

I was at a retreat the other day listening to the sea of voices from a variety of Artificial Intelligence scholars and I kept thinking how funny it is that we all want to be unique and how different we all are.  Just like the person sitting next to you on the bus, you are unique.   We are all different, unique and interesting just like everyone else.  My grandfather could build a house, was excellent at Maths, do pottery, take photos, make his own beer, make statues, garden, cook and fix cars.  He was a smart man… very unique, just like my aunt who teaches disabled children, my friend who designed his renovations and is a programmer and so on.

My point is we all have something to use, a talent that needs polishing, ideas that need explaining and a host of other things that constitute our uniqueness.  One guy I saw at this retreat/conference was making a robot fish to find pollutants in rivers where humans couldn’t go and of course for commercial reasons (SKYNET!).   How unique and interesting!  There was a man studying glycomics, another looking at the semantic web and me doing whatever I can to avoid work.

Why don’t you begin to be unique and special, just like everyone else.  Don’t stop doing something because it makes no money or because it’s going nowhere.  If you believe it’s you, you should want to do it just to be unique and different.  It’s the different things that make this world so interesting, at least to a boring academic like me!  There are no guarantees of success but at least you can be happy within yourself.  Don’t throw it all away, just spend one hour a week being unique, then build it up to 190,000 hours.  Before you know it you will as unique as everyone else!

But it’s not impossible?  I was in a meeting today talking about research and it occured to me why we need to think and keep on thinking about how we think about thinking in problem solving.

Why?

A situation arose where a tough issue was up for the committee to discuss and the chair rightly made the statement that it’s probably too hard.   Often they are.   The kind of issues that require a lot of stakeholders, key input from a variety of people and large scale discussions of lots of people and many perspectives.    Reaching consensus becomes hard, finding agreement becomes difficult and navigating the terrain of politics becomes very messy.  In a hierarchy it’s even worse.   The balance of power rests on the shoulders of those at the top who often are framing problems under pressure and as such go for what looks like the best option for everyone.  This leads to compromise, satisificing and a situation where we all get some of what we want sometimes and everyone sacrifices something to keep the other group of people happy.   In one way this kind of problem solving is negotiation and fails to really handle the deep issue that’s being discussed.   Yet, in most situations I have been in, this kind of situation is exactly what we have to live with.

The too hard basket: Decisions that will never be made

True creativity that involves finding new perspectives and better ideas are often missing.  Why?  It’s too-hard to argue, it’s too hard to fight, it’s too hard to offend people, it’s too hard to be creative, it’s too hard to upset a risk averse culture, it’s too hard to risk the failure that might hold up my promotion, it’s too hard to risk the mortgage, it’s too hard to challenge people because they might not like me, it’s too hard to face up to reality that innovation requires a big risk with a small chance of reward, it’s too hard to create leadership and vision in an apathetic culture and so on and so on and so on.   What’s too hard?  Problem solving is too hard so we don’t do it.  We work around it.  We never make the decisions that need to be made because it’s too hard.

What constraints are there?  Political, social, cultural…?  Lots, that’s what makes it too hard.   The cult of ‘balance’ and ‘feasibility’ will tell you that ‘it’s too hard’.  They are right it is.  We shouldn’t be ashamed of making these kinds of decisions because the opportunity to truly creative isn’t something you will find at most universities, businesses or fund raising events.  No, it’s something you will have to search for.

True Creativity and Problem Solving means using the too hard basket

Rules are good except when they stand in the way of change.  To be truly creative we need to be making decisions where we have the guts to reframe.  Have you heard the saying don’t throw the baby out with the bath water?   In most circumstances I have been in we empty a little bit of the water, keep the baby when we should have really tossed the kid and drained the tub.  That’s not a good picture is it?  Yet, that hidden assumption that things are generally ok is so bad it’s toxic.  Sometimes, things are pretty far from ok.  They are not ok.  They are failing.

Failure is the signpost of change that says: this didn’t work.  It’s like Microsoft Windows really or a badly leaking dingy… just patch it up!  The bastard is sinking and water is coming in the boat but hey that’s ok because we have a lot of tape in here and that will keep this thing floating until the next poor sucker comes along and patches it up.  The problem is…. it’s too hard to change when it’s easier to get people to agree, which in itself is very, very hard.

So what are we to do?

I don’t know.  But I know this: things don’t always get worse before they get better, sometimes they keep getting worse until they become bottom of the fridge nasty.   So we are faced with a tough choice.  Do we innovate, negotiate or detonate?  These are tough choices.  In my meeting experience this morning I caught a glimpse of how hard it is to be innovative and create new directions when you answer to so many people.  It’s difficult and requires support.   In my limited experience, real problem solving means: bringing out the concern, the perspectives that construct it, the stakeholders and finding ways to reach a place where the problem is no longer a problem.  It sounds simple?  It isn’t!

In television, they have a saying for when the show ‘breaks the fourth wall’ or involves the audience in the entertainment.  The following clip is from Ferris Bueller:

This technique breaks down the relationship between the audience and the viewer.  Filmmaker David Lynch does this too but he breaks the brain (sounds out sorry):

Although what he is saying comes from transcendental meditation, which I am iffy on, he makes a very good point and this is what I consider breaking the fourth wall to be.   The fourth wall is the assumption that we are watching a movie or being entertained, or doing what we should.  Breaking that wall is breaking the assumptions that hold the illusions together.   You can create fancy ideas about innovation, leadership and management but you can also challenge what is known and why it’s known to make new temporary patterns in knowledge.  Why would you want to do this?

Breaking old patterns Making New Ideas = Synthesis and (New) Creations

Breaking the fourth wall is hard work.  It makes you the enemy of bosses, clients, managers and investors.   It’s a risk but the reward is worth it.  Of course it doesn’t always work does it?  Some ideas fail.  Nevertheless in the on-going pursuit of ideas and learning you can suffer worse than not to try.  I should know I have spent the last three years not trying.  If you try you may succeed.   New creations and synthesis of old ideas can help, but breaking the fourth wall is hard work.

Think of the some key examples of our time.  Apple did with the iPod and then the iPhone and then the iPad (no they didn’t). I have been very blessed to have been working with someone who has broken my fourth wall constantly.  I have learned a great deal from this experience and it’s something I won’t ever forget… except for the un-lecture we did. Yet, I am still proud to say that we did that… it was breaking the fourth wall.   What fourth walls do you have?  Are they worth breaking?  If so they do it, if not then do it and see what happens.   We need more creativity and joy in this blue ball of ours because at the moment it’s run by efficiency minded nano adminobots.

My challenge is to keep doing this in my teaching, research, service and other work.  I am truly committed to breaking this wall.  Even though I don’t know it.

This is a great example and funny (expletives therein – you have been warned) of human creativity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32vpgNiAH60

Thoughts?

The recent hyperbole about free business models has gotten me more than a little excited.  I have read a great deal about it, though I still haven’t found the time to listen or read Chris Anderson’s new(ish) book.  One of the things though I have noticed that’s absent from debates about ‘free business models’ is the cost that comes with running, developing and diffusing new ideas.  There is a cost.  And that cost is value.

If you want to be a leading writer, you have to write and keep at it until you get good enough.  That will take a lot of time.  If you want to sing and be the best you can, you need to practice.  Anything that’s easy or ‘at hand’ is usually simple to learn and master.   The cost versus the benefit in that equation is something like this:

Simple thing + Low Skill = Low Benefit.

However, if we raise the barrier it should look like this:

Hard thing + hard skill = High Benefit.

However, there is something missing from that equation and it’s this:

Value + Hard thing + Hard Skill = High Benefit.

You could say it this way, the more value increases the higher the cost to you and to your consumers, students, partners, chickens and whatever other relevant category you would to shove in here.

Now I have added another cost to the learning of a skill that has been overlooked.  The free business model idea hinges on value, as do most other ideas.  Without value you can work as hard as you like at giving things away and it won’t matter a damn.   If we take a poorly written book or a bad movie and say, ‘I don’t know how anyone can like that’, the answer is value.

So what is the cost associated with value?

Often when we come to teach at University we think we need to find ‘cool things’ or some trick to get them engaged.  This isn’t true.  Consider Xtranormal.  This first video was my reflection on the semester… I think it worked well and acted as a way to get them talking:

A colleague whom I teach with made one also:

These videos were well received, at least by me   The following was one we made with the whole class, including myself and Alison, inputting their ideas as we discussed them:

The only point I have is this: it doesn’t have to be boring, and it doesn’t have to be trendy, ok that’s two points.  Be clever and work collaboratively, you may be surprised what you learn.

In my previous post on Hits and Misses, I talked about Pipe Size. In this post I plan on talking about ‘engagement’ and why things become popular.

Engagement

The level of excitement we feel for something and the degree of participation that it causes us due to that excitement, is what I like to call engagement.   Engagement is not purely participation, that connotes mere activity; engagement is more an emotional and social response to things that excite us because it provokes activity.  When you watch the news for example there will be a story on it at some point that grips you.  It will grab a hold of you and shake you in some way.  For me, it’s stories on the housing market.  Stories such as how there will be another boom.  It causes me to swear, rise up out of my seat, and wave two fingers at the presenter.  It engages me and causes me to engage.  The biggest reason things fail is lack of engagement.

Examples of lack of engagement

Whether it be the failing of a university program (INFORMATION SYSTEMS) or the decline in interest in television shows, the ultimate failure of any mass produced vehicle is the result of declining engagement.  Great, you say, that’s wonderful… I already knew that.   Ok smart ass, what then is the primary reason why people stop engaging?  Interest?  Probably, I believe it’s because the program in question no longer creates ‘engagement’ space for participants.   This means creating new opportunities for conversations and new examples of how to create those conversations.  A key example of this can be found in the recent movie, ‘Tenacious D: Pick of Destiny.’

The movie itself is largely for fans, herein lies the problem.  The fan base for Tenacious D probably couldn’t generate 40 million dollars worth of movie dollars. Why?  Well the movie didn’t create the engagement space for people who weren’t fans.  Watching it, I loved it because I am a fan, and I could relate to at least 60% of all the jokes on screen.  I had seen it before, I had heard the riffs that are used as cues in important parts of the movie and I was aware of the history.  If my wife watched that she would have no engagement space there because she has no idea about Tenacious D or their history.  In all honesty, Tenacious D probably should have made the movie more accessible to non-fans.   Then again, maybe they still wouldn’t have engaged because they didn’t know who they were anyway?  On the other hand maybe they can’t grow their fan base?

Another example of how to maintain an engagement or to put it simply: keep people talking, can be found in the on-going popularity of Lost.  At each turn they introduced something new, exciting and interesting, that create the engagement space for on-going conversations.  There was a point at which it did seem like Lost was, ‘everything happens for a season.’  But now, the bigger picture is being unveiled and it’s creating conversations.  This doesn’t just apply to movies either, can you do something where you work to create conversations?

Why Things Become Popular

Ok, so I don’t have a social psychology background or enough of an idea to explain why things become super popular.  Here’s what I know, for me it comes down to a few key things.

1. Creating Engagement Space (or creating conversations)

All of human kind communicate.  They share information with each other and have done for centuries.  In order to facilitate the popularity of something you need to have something that people will talk about.  This is why excellent service increases business overtime and why programs fail … it works both ways.  The concept of leverage provides a useful metaphor here.  If you have something that people want, you have leverage and provided you find a way they can talk about it, they will.  This works in the negative and the positive.  For instance, if you have a degree program that is failing the first thing to do is to find out why.  How do you find that out?  By talking at length to participants.  My first instinct is: why aren’t you spreading the word about how great we are?

Sure you might be tempted to make a whole lot of people redundant, transfer load or worst do nothing.  Find out why people aren’t talking positively about your stuff and boom I guarantee you will turn things around… if you catch it in time. Negative leverage is as easy to create as positive leverage… especially in a social network where trust, sharing and conversation abound.

2. Facilitating the conversation

You can’t control what people say but you can control what you do in order to help them say what they say.  Here’s an example: I went to sea-world last year and I wanted a coffee.  What I got was hot watery milk.  I went to Borders the other day and asked for a book (Outliers) and I already had $200 worth of books in my arms.  The lady told me it was out the back and promptly returned to doing something else.  See?  Now I have told you because Borders made it easy for me to facilitate a negative conversation.  Sure, I could just suck it up but I was amazed that they didn’t want another sale… I left after that because I didn’t want to spend any more of my faculties money!  They didn’t want me to spend my money.

3. Making the transition from conversation to action easy

William James said that the truth was something that happens to an idea.  It’s the active part.  When we go from talking about something to using it, if we find it difficult and hard to manage.  When I was in business last time this was the single flaw that stood out more than others.  What I was trying to sell wasn’t easy to use.  I could start conversations but they would always end in a bad experience for the customer.  It isn’t enough to create conversations, you have to make it easy for people to access and use what you are talking about.  Make it hard and the engagement fails and people will begin talking about alternatives.

4. Maintaining the conversation

Once we have access to the material, keep us there.  You know amazon made a fortune of it’s recommendation engine?  It nearly went broke until it realised (or they realised) that selling things to existing customers helps your bottom line.  Maintenance… simple maintenance!  Things become popular and stay there because we ‘maintain’ the conversation.  Stop doing that, yes you who don’t answer your email or respond to customer queries online… YOU, and people will talk about something else.  Keep the flow of customer interaction going.  Don’t believe me?  Go to twitter search and look for a product.  You’ll see why Dell made 3 million dollars off twitter.

5. Creating new spaces for engagement and innovating conversations

In closing this second part it’s important to look for ways to create new conversations and use those to develop innovation.  Things maintain popularity because they keep us talking and constantly create new ways for us to do so.  Without discourse and then action you have nothing.  New conversations must continue the old ones and add something interesting to the existing one.  The Lost people do this by keeping us guessing.  Others are much better at this and do it by testing the boundaries of the audience.

In the final part of my epic blog trilogy I want to talk about the ‘cutthroat island’ problem and some things that are conversation worthy don’t become popular.

The theory of the day is the long tail, a reworking of the Pareto Principle (i.e. 80% of the wealth of Italian landowners is concentrated in the hands of 20% of the people), which seeks to explain why hits and misses wind up where they do.  In real terms the idea is a useful w to explain why, in theory, 80% of all that’s consumed accounts for 20% of all products and so on.  Ironically, this is not a reflection on taste as the following video explains, it’s a reflection of the method of distribution and supply (I call it pipe size).  Yet this is not what determines a ‘hit’.  Not in my opinion.  A hit is determined by many different things… which I will talk about in a minute.

Pipe size has to do with a number of things.  We all have a certain amount of influence and as such we can distribute messages to people via our own methods of communication.  When someone in the family dies or a baby comes along, the pipes of family communication get to work and the word spreads.  Some us are more influential ‘sneezers’ as Seth Godin calls them, and we can have a broader impact.  But it’s not a formula and neither is it a constant reason why.  The concept of ‘engagement’ or ‘resonance’ as someone else I know put it, explains why things are spread around.   We participate.  When this occurs on a massive scale the network gets bigger, the pipes get bigger and massive demand is generated.

The long tail works as a technical explanation quite well, that is, it explains how ‘pipe size’ and demand and supply corroborate to create ‘hits’.  Yet, it fails to adequately explain why hits occur.  This fails in the realm of the unpredictability of human ‘systems’.   Human systems form groups, make meaning and do what I call ‘engage’.  William James said it this way, ‘the truth is something that happens to an idea… not the idea itself’ (that’s a paraphrase by the way).  While I don’t wish to debate the idea of what truth is, I want to touch on what James was saying in my lateral understanding of it anyway.  Why things become popular can be stated as: they become popular because we engage with it on a massive scale (big pipes), we spread it around and share it (talking –> see Tipping Point, Idea Virus), and we resonate or engage with it.   This latter concept, the idea of engagement is the most understated yet most powerful because big pipes don’t guarantee a hit, engagement does.  What level of participation do people have in an idea?  A high amount, then you have success, a low amount depending on the context you have a different kind of success, or you have a failure.

Success and failure come down to audience engagement yet we cannot ignore pipe size, marketing or methods of supply.  We have to consider these as important, yet the level of engagement, discussion and talk around a product or idea and the overall level of activity, is what propels a product to success.  This is what the publishing, music and other industries know and exploit all the time.  Consider this qoute from a well known literary Agent Donald Maas:

The fact is that roughly two-thirds of all fiction purchases are made because the customer is already familiar with the author.  In other words, readers are buying brand-name authors whose work they have already read and enjoyed.  The next biggest reason folks buy fiction is that it has been personally recommended to them by a friend, family member or bookstore employee.  That process is called word of mouth.  Savvy publishers understand its power and try to facilitate its effect with advance reading copies … samplers, first chapters circulated by email, Web sites and the like.  In most cases, someone reads a novel, gets excited about it, and tells a friend. (Taken from Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maas).

Now we know this and we can reliably track all success (yes I said ALL!) down to people.  You know why, everything social is social.  Wow, it took three degrees for me to work that out but it’s true.  Everything social is social.  Nothing happens without people.  We have fancy ideas such as those found on the shelves of Borders yet in reality the process of sharing information and excitement has not changed ever.   What is hard to know is what is likely to be a hit and what is likely to be a miss.  Pipe size has a lot to do with it of course.  The bigger the pipes, the bigger the exposure.  Yet, in this world of media falling apart and the growing disintermediation of media, the pipes are awfully big and the potential for sharing for word of mouth is the biggest and most responsive it has ever been thanks to the internet.   Still this is no guarantee of resonance, or engagement, big pipes don’t guarantee success

I will finish part 1 with a story on the recent television phenomenon Flash Forward.

A colleague of mine pointed me towards twitter search a while ago and sent me a link when Flash Forward was on.  I watched as real time feedback about the show, jokes and other randomness came up one tweet at a time.   I saw people saying what they liked and didn’t like about the show to their friends on the twitter (sorry couldn’t resist) and then sharing with others in other networks these thoughts.  Watching the conversations go through in real time showed me how unpredictable and different we really are, and how the idea of the long tail is relevant.   Now on to Part 2… Coming Soon: Engagement and why things become popular!