Prototyping Social Capital

Playing for Change

Over the weekend I helped organize LaidOffCamp NY, an event where people rallied around "doing it ourselves", drawing expertise from all over and pooling it together. In ultra light conferences (and most others), the richest resource is the group of people attending. Expertise is everywhere. The trick is pulling it together.

NPR ran a story yesterday that shows how Mark Johnson tapped expertise from all over. Instead of bringing musicians to the studio, he brought the studio to musicians. From Roger Ridley who played on the streets of Santa Monica, to Grandpa Elliot on the streets of New Orleans, to a tribe of Zuni Indians, Johnson enabled them to collaborate on the same songs remotely, on-site, by bringing all of the tracks and tools to them.

The result is a collection that's stirring not only for the way music can bring people together, but also for how it was made -- connecting experts and their voices in ways they likely would never have done themselves.

Nudge: In crisis, opportunity

What do conservative thinkers David Frum and David Brooks, and progressive thinkers Hendrik Hertzberg and Robert Reich have in common? They're thinking big picture about what opportunities for good the cratering economy may be able to bring us. In particular, they're wondering aloud whether there's a political opportunity to shift taxes away from adding friction to things we want (e.g. payroll tax friction on jobs), and adding it to things we want less of (e.g. taxes on emissions with large carrying-costs).

In his New Yorker article, Hertzberg reports on the idea of taking a payroll tax holiday as a way to provide a direct spending stimulus into the sagging economy (it would return ~15% of taxed income to employees). He then takes it a step further suggesting we redesign the tax structure to map it more closely to certain types of consumption. The political argument will naturally be in defining what "certain types" means. Nevertheless he's invoking the nudge thinking that Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein discuss in their great book of the same name.

Sunstein and Thaler talk about creating a choice architecture that allows people to make decisions beneficial to themselves without restricting their freedom of choice. If you've ever watched a parent in action getting a 4-year old ready to leave the house, you've seen choice architecture at work. A related example is the physical environment (no windows, oxygen, lighting, eye-level elements) that casinos use to maximize gaming play -- though this type of nudge is not to the benefit of the gamer, but given the odds, to the benefit of the house. A positive choice architecture takes outcomes that data show to be beneficial to the individual, and makes it easier for the individual to make up their own mind up toward selecting actions that lead to the positive outcomes. Crucially, the decisions are not forced on the person. Sometimes a Shack burger with bacon is exactly what you want, and you should be able to have it.

What's exciting for me is the prospect of even considering such a fundamental national change. Because of the entrenched partisan poison, on both sides of the aisle, that commonly favors the preservation or regaining of power over all else, these kinds of political portals do not come around often. But if Frum and Hertzberg can agree on something, and the economic upheaval makes enough people open to really trying something new, then we may be able to transform the crisis into a portkey that structurally puts us in a better place than when the collapse began. From carnage, renewal. It's not clear yet whether the tax shifting idea would indeed be the right call -- there's a lot of numbers to run. But bold moves? I like it.

Incidentally, choice architecture is in part what we're providing to Endeavor Prep customers. My goal is for people to make more creative, more informed decisions about their work life.

If you want to learn more about nudge, read this interview (scroll down) or check out this quick overview here from Ashoka's Changemakers:

U2 Way - Back in New York City

The boys are back in town, this time with some good PR and love heaped on by Mayor Bloomberg from the city. For the week on 53rd and Broadway, the block has been re-christened U2 Way.

Welcome back. It's great to have you here.

Follow your Bliss

Made a post over at Daily Endeavor about some Jonathan Harris projects, and in particular some follow your bliss advice he gave in a talk a few months back. I've included his summary below.

One of the main places people get tripped up (or sometimes forget to even examine): Once you have learned how to speak, what will you say?

Every Generation Refreshes the World

Pepsi has a new commercial out that adds another twist on the phrase "may you stay forever young." My read: may you keep learning, growing and taking risks. They're all different descriptions of similar activity -- trying something new, then seeing how that goes.

I made a post on it over at Daily Endeavor.

Ahoy Young Professionals and College Students in NYC

The first courses of 2009 are open over at Endeavor Prep.

If you're on the job search, recently laid off, or simply asking the question "What do I want to do?", it could be for you.

Don't Settle. Do what you love.

(cross-posted over at Daily Endeavor)

On September 11, 2003, I made a guest post on my friend Ross' blog. What's transpired since then is a long and varied tale, but in many ways centers around the very question in that post:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

For me, the answer to Mary Oliver's venerable question can be distilled to: Don't settle, do what you love. It's one of the true engines that powers people's lives and the economies and world we live in.

This blog is going to tell a story. It's going to take a few years because, as it turns out, it's a story that's never been written before. It's the story of how 100 million people sought out and did what they loved.

Here's where the story starts. There are three parts that you need to know.

First, who? There is a tremendous force arriving on the scene, and at just about the right time. It's the sheer creative force of people coming into their own. Maybe they're 24, or maybe they're 19. Maybe they're your friend, your brother or daughter. Or maybe it's you. This great wave of individuals goes by many names (Millennials, Gen Y, Net Gens, you name it). The labels are not so important, it's the individuals that are at the center of the story -- who they are, and what they choose to do. This generation is going to re-shape the world as we know it. It's already begun, and it's fantastic.

Second, have you ever wondered why is it some people truly thrive in their work life, while others do not? This is the question we set out to answer as part of a research project at Harvard over three years ago. The pattern we found isn't a lack of talent (there is tons) or opportunity (there are more types of jobs today than ever before). We found most people never discover what they truly want to do. Too many people settle. That's a problem -- not only is there great cost to the individual ("wow, my job really sucks"), but also to their companies, colleagues and the economy.

Consider the alternative. What if more people found a career path of genuine interest, however they define it? What if more people were able to find work that lit them up -- how would their lives be different?

In our experience, these people excel, and not just economically. These people have more opportunities to grow and more ways to -- dare we say it -- be happy. They make better colleagues, managers, entrepreneurs, and probably neighbors too. Because they're working from abundance, not scarcity, there's an unmistakable productivity that's unleashed.

As a result, we set about addressing the unmet need -- helping people answer the question "What do I want to do?" --  which led us to develop Endeavor Prep, the career search prep course.

Lastly, why now? Most people (96% when we asked) want to find the right job for them, yet many (too many) people wake up at 30 or 50 and say "I guess this is what I do." Figuring out what you want to do is a crucial rite of passage that, crucially, many people are missing. It's not something to figure out in one hour, or even in one job. It's an iterative process that you can learn. Because it's iterative, tremendous gains accrue to those who start early. We want those gains to accrue to  you. In fact we want them to accrue to the entire generation.

Plain and simple: We want to see 100 million people thrive.

Though we've been at it for a while, we're just getting started. And we can't do it alone. I hope you'll come along for the ride.

Abstract City, con leche

Christoph Niemann is a genius with napkins (and more). He's doing some fun stuff over Abstract City on the NYT.

 

(thanks, Mark ;)

How President-elect Obama can use the Internet to govern

Social*Signal has a roundup of 50 suggestions for how President-elect Obama can use the Internet to govern. Tim Bonnemann makes a good call for wiki-like recent changes.

The Chinese Comet

What happens when China moves the US out of the #1 economic spot? US education wakes from its 125-year sleep.

As Joseph Schumpeter tells it, in a cycle there is growth, followed by destruction, followed by more growth, with innovation the underlying driver throughout. He called it creative destruction. It's a story that's been told by many, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Michael Rothschild to the Lion King. Something comparatively better becomes the new attraction and the action migrates from one place to the next -- causing growth where it lands and leaving decay behind. It happens in ecosystems, it happens in advance of high school proms all over the country, and yes it happens in economies.

In this week's FORTUNE, Geoff Colvin discusses in part how it's happening the US. He points out that by some measures (like Angus Maddison's accounting for purchasing power parity), China will take over the #1 economy spot from the US not in 2050 as estimated, but in seven years -- in 2015.

Clearly it doesn't all happen at a single moment like a power switch. It's a distribution of events spread out over time. And if you're an architect, a commodities trader, or a t-shirt or device manufacturer, you can vouch for the fact that the action has already begun to move heavily there.

So what of it? If Schumpeter is right, and the last 4.5 billion years are any guide, there will be tremendous economic upheaval for the US. As the #1 economy, China (and India and elsewhere) with its low cost / high growth magnet will increasingly attract more industries, more companies and more jobs relative to the US. As a result, in the US many sub-industries will go extinct and entire job types will evaporate. Like the comet that piled into Yucatan Peninsula 65M years ago, significantly altering the environment and causing all land-based animals over 25kg to go away, the career and job environment in the US are going to structurally change.

Some people may think this is alarmist hand-waving rooted in fear. I don't. It's the opposite -- this magnificent change necessarily spells magnificent opportunity. Just as China is passed the crown, two generations in the US -- Gen X and the Millenials (and I wouldn't count out the Boomers just yet) -- are passed the baton to innovate, to make something different and valuable. What could you do with the #2 economy, the world's best universities, access to capital and your ability to learn? A lot.

It's this last part though that gives me pause -- faith in one's ability to learn.

I'm bullish on all the people who make it through high school, into college and out, to take up the call. They're confident they can learn. But how many people age 30-60 have forgotten they can learn? Or worse, how many people coming through the K-12 system never prove to themselves that they can?

If these numbers are big, we've got a problem. Here's why. We've seen the Creative Destruction movie before. We know how it ends. The way out of the destruction (and into new growth) is adaptation, and specifically, specialization. It's creating a comparative advantage -- in what you do or how you do it -- in something that is recognized as valuable in the global economy. Adaptation and specialization come from learning. Not textbooks and slide-rules, but on the job, in the plant, in the studio, in the team room, on the whiteboard, at the customer site. So if Taiwan becomes dominant in making iPhones (it already has) and London-Abu Dhabi becomes the finance corridor, what new markets will we carve out to dominate?

This question is very difficult to answer if a significant percentage of the US population views themselves as fixed: "This is what I do. This is what I'm good at. I can't/won't put in the investment to do something else because it won't work." If people don't believe they can learn, they're going to have a tough time surviving and advancing to the next round. There are many reasons adults curb their learning, but at minimum the lack of a growth mindset is in part a K-12 failure. K-12 education is first and foremost the institution charged with showing people they are not fixed. People first learn at home with whatever family is around, but K-12 schooling is where people validate the idea they've learned how to learn.

Enter the Chinese Comet. Knocking the US off the throne, and picking off pockets of the economy in the short-term, will have a net positive effect -- if we choose to respond and build off our strengths. Companies, due to living in a relentlessly competitive environment, will no doubt adapt. However, it's education, K-12 in particular, that will now have the conditions to change.

Since 1890 when the US ascended to #1, our education system has operated in relative comfort. When sitting atop the largest economy there is little urgency to change more than the minimum. In fact the incentive is the opposite -- "we've got a good thing going, let's maintain it" -- the same reason Switzerland is astonishingly beautiful but not a Silicon Valley. When China ascends, the cocoon for US K-12 starts to crack. The 125-year sedative begins to wear off. There will be new conditions that will provide the legions of good people inside K-12 a rallying call: "Let's get it back!" or for the less ambitious "Let's stay relevant!" as they see the official slipping on the global leaderboard, as they see their neighbors', friends' and family's jobs migrate East, as they see the need for all of us to adapt and invent new advantages.

Changing the momentum from sliding-backward into forward-gain is certainly possible. After all, it was China who was #1 over 100 years ago when the US took over, and they've managed to pull it off another time. Actually, I sincerely hope we do learn from China. As they slid in the late 1800s, they chose to turn inward and blame globalization. Blaming the outside is always convenient and politically expedient. Instead of adapting, they closed themselves off. There have already been voices in the US promoting similar protectionist views. Erecting tariffs and penalties to protect jobs is about as effective as early man throwing spears at the comet to change its course. For China, it meant abject poverty for most people between 1890-1970 and delaying real growth for over a century. What will it mean for the US at this time in history?

The debate isn't whether the creative/destructive phase change is occurring. The debate is how do we want to respond. Education, as a service and a sector, is the way forward. How you get involved in education, whether as a student, an entrepreneur, an investor or a service provider, will dictate the quality of life for both you and your kids' generation -- or for your kids' next 4 generations.

Expectation Design

Russell Davies has a great post about designing the "pre-experience". Mashing up Peterme's thinking at dconstruct with Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, he reflects on how expectation shapes our perception of experiences:

This is not new news. This is just how the brain works. Our feelings, our 'experience of experiences' is shaped by our expectations and it would sensible, if we're trying to create great experiences, that we align the expectations to help the case we want to make.

Genuine marketers have been carrying the "pre" torch for a long time. The difference is, Russell does a good job at underscoring the scope of the experience. It begins the second someone learns about the thing -- using a Mac, going to Vegas, shopping at Whole Foods -- and continues all the way through the doing of it (and then going forward).

Piers Fawkes goes on to highlight the need for product teams and marketing teams to coordinate. Amen. But don't stop there. Build a whole team around all the primary touch points, including especially anybody customer-facing, like sales reps and customer service. The customer experience team should have the purview (and rewards + accountability) from expectation through delivery.

Gel 2008 Recap

Mark Hurst and team ran another Good Experience Live (GEL) conference last week here in NY. Head here for a good recap of speakers, posts and photos. Kareem Mayan put together a slideshow of Day 1 as well.

Impossible is nothing

Adidas remixes the American dream for a global audience. Nothing could be better.

I've always been a fan of, and susceptible to, good copy writing. In February 2004 I remember being struck by a campaign that grabbed me in the same infiltrating way only a favorite song can. It was the wide-open, you-and-we-can-create-anything mantra taking up position on every flat surface in sight: Impossible is nothing.

Impossible is not a fact, it's an opinion.
Impossible is not a declaration, it's a dare.
Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men
Who find it easier to live in a world they've been given
Than to explore the power they have to change it.

Impossible is potential.
Impossible is temporary.
Impossible is nothing.

At the core, Adidas tapped into what many of the presidential candidates have been feverishly working to do since Obama's Iowa speech: Hope. Yet they understood what many often miss -- hope is more than a noun, it's an emotion. Hope forms when imagination mixes with gut. More so than something simply rational, it has the power to stir our insides. It's head and heart. Hope also has one other elusive feature that makes it a triple threat that Dan and Chip Heath could love -- it's infectious. Hope isn't limited to our internal experience. It's communicable. Like any powerful meme, people are the carriers.

When I read "Impossible is nothing," it's like an anthem. I hear a rallying call. I see individuals taking up the invitation to do what others believe to be unattainable. I see people who, sometimes despite feeling small, have made a choice to pursue something they want. Like the American dream, it takes the power to act in and places it into the hand of the individual. There is no waiting around for others to do it for you, it's a call to action to prove the nay-sayers wrong. "It's a dare" that is available to all: put in the effort, learn, perform, gain experience, perform better, then achieve. I like that it's a dare; it's not a guarantee for success. Instead of a saccharine promise, it's a realistic assessment -- impossible is far, many think beyond reach, there's risk, yet despite all of it that, what are you going to do?

The invitation, I hope, is not rhetorical. There are many conversations happening today where it could be applied straight away: if you're waking up to improvise with Israel and Palestine; if you're brokering an acceptable outcome to the Kenyan elections; if you're 15 and thinking about being the first to go to college; if you're a junior in college and want to design a career that uniquely develops your talents or one that out-earns the previous generation; or if you're starting a business, like I am, where the odds are so stacked against you that best you can do you is take to heart each day "impossible is temporary." It's not rhetorical, it's today.

So when I saw Marc Schiller's video post this morning that confirms it's infecting China (at least those who have TV), and I hope many others around the world, I had a big smile. Impossible just got a global wake-up call.

My FreeRice Addiction

Some people get hooked on shopping, others online poker. I'm hooked on vocab. It's geeky to be sure, but I'm happy to come clean about that. John Breen developed a simple game, FreeRice , that promotes vocabulary and along the way generates funds for the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). Since its inception on October 7, 2007, FreeRice, advertisers, the UNWFP and people like you who use the net have together generated 9,123,269,430 grains of free rice. He's created a good, simple user experience. He's directing it towards doing good. It's awesome. NPR has the backstory today.

It's official, and then some

I am absolutely thrilled to share that Michael Idinopulos has taken over for me at Socialtext to run the Professional Services business. We looked far and wide to find someone of his strong caliber and we were very fortunate for all the timing to work out. Michael comes to Socialtext from running knowledge technology globally for McKinsey & Company. We met almost two years ago, initially through a private technology conference Jerry Michalski produced, then over subsequent conversations about the interesting work they're doing inside the firm. Proserv at ST is part customer & organizational insight and part teaching collaboration, both of which Michael is uniquely qualified to do. He's going to do great.

The news isn't exactly breaking. We've been planning the transition since the Summer and Michael and I worked together throughout September while I had already begun work on my newco. Though some time has elapsed what hasn't is my great appreciation for the team at Socialtext. The company has been fortunate to attract a very talented team -- engineering, marketing, sales, customer service, proserv are all top percentile performers.  I know I gained much personally through the relentlessly honest and sharp conversations that are happening constantly.

In my particular sphere I want to especially thank Kirsten Jones, Chris Dent and Casey West for their engineering prowess and general human mojo. It was a delight to pair with Brandon Noard on any customer operations matter. Kris Duggan and Paul Wescott are expertly powering excellent growth. And I give a gracious bow and high five to the stalwart entrepreneurs Ross Mayfield, Pete Kaminski and Adina Levin with whom I spent countless hours, all of them always focused on how to do well by the customer and improve the company. Their energy is limitless, spidey sense strong and they've got soul. I owe special thanks to Ross for unapologetically dragging me into social software in 2002. If I end up with a fraction of the vision or start-up ninja that Ross possesses I will be a lucky kid. It was really great to pair with you guys.

So even though I'll still be working with Paul from time to time on business development, I'm full throttle into a newco that's been a long time in gestation. The kernel and approach were developed in the Spring of 2005. Over the past few months the meat has been going on the bones. More to share soon, but in short I want people to do what they love.