G/localization talk at Etech

From the "Many to Many" blog, by Danah Boyd

"Last week, I gave a talk at O'Reilly's Etech on how large-scale digital communities can handle the tensions between global information networks and local interaction and culture. I've uploaded the crib for those who are interested in reading the talk: "G/localization: When Global Information and Local Interaction Collide".

This talk was written for designers and business folks working in social tech. I talk about the significance of culture and its role in online communities. I go through some of the successful qualities of Craiglist, Flickr and MySpace to lay out a critical practice: design through embedded observation. I then discuss a few issues that are playing out on tech and social levels.

Anyhow, enjoy! And let me know what you think!"

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I found this a fascinating piece on many different levels. Thanks, Danah.

Robert Altman

From Tom Peter's blog ...

"Mr Altman won the lifetime achievement award at the Oscars last night. I loved this from his acceptance remarks, and I paraphrase: "The role of the Director is to create a space where the actor or actress can become more than they've ever been before."

To me that's the essence of leadership—in any context".

Demographics: The Population Hourglass

From Fast Company, March 2006

"Your future is older, browner, and more feminine than you might have realized. That will make for some major lifestyle changes ("Welcome home, Mom!") and lots of huge opportunities for business.

It's the futurist's first rule: You can't understand the future without demographics. The composition of a society--whether its citizens are old or young, prosperous or declining, rural or urban--shapes every aspect of civic life, from politics, economics, and culture to the kinds of products, services, and businesses that are likely to succeed or fail. Demographics isn't destiny, but it's close. Our leaders, as a rule, completely miss the boat on demographics and how it informs their own organizations, customers, and constituencies. And it's not hard to see why: Most executives aren't trained to make sense of demographic forecasts (there are no courses on demographics at Harvard Business School or Wharton, for example), and the field itself does little to raise its own profile. Demographers frequently come across like accountants--without all that sex appeal.

But that doesn't mean exciting and important things aren't happening. The United States of 2016 will find itself in the throes of demographic shifts that will upend our political, economic, and technological priorities and redefine our markets. From our age distribution to the color of our skin, we will look dramatically different.

To get a sense of what lies ahead, consider a simple demographic tool: the "population pyramid." Imagine that we took all of the people in a given population and stacked them up by age, putting all the infants at the bottom and all the centenarians up top. For most stable, peacetime societies, the resulting figure would look like a pyramid, with the youngest people at the base and the oldest people up at the tip. And indeed, that is exactly what you see today in a place like India--a perfectly sloped pyramid with lots and lots of babies at the bottom and a handful of the ancient. By contrast, in what passes for a demographic joke (given our fondness for Fritos and Cinnabon), the current U.S. pyramid looks like an overweight contestant on The Biggest Loser, with the giant baby boom billowing out from its midsection.

Starting in the next decade, however, our flabby pyramid is quickly going to slim down. It will assume the form of an hourglass, with the largest number of older people in our society's history, the quasi-retired baby boomers, up top, and the largest generation of young people since the boomers--the millennials, or echo boomers--at the bottom. The beleaguered generation-Xers will form the "pinched waist" in the middle.

Read the rest of the article ....

Utilizing TRIZ as a Stretegic Innovation Tool

From the Innovation Weblog, by Chuck Frey

"David Silverstein, Neil DeCarlo and Michael Slocum, in their excellent book, InSourcing Innovation, point out that the TRIZ system of inventive problem solving isn't just a tactical tool, to help solve design challenges in new product development. It's also a very capable tool that can be used for strategic innovation planning:

'With tactical TRIZ, you use a very finite set of parameters and principles to solve a technical innovation problem. With strategic TRIZ, you use a very finite set of generic patterns to solve the managerial problem of 'where do we go from here?''

As the authors explain, strategic TRIZ follows a 5-step process to create a strategic innovation roadmap:

1. Define the existing conditions and parameters in the system to create the baseline for forecasting. At this stage, you can perform business and market analyses, and can create a synopsis of the evolution to date, both inside and outside of the company.
2. Map the maturity of the systems using data from major categories, such as financial, patents, risks and other key metrics. Your goal is to map this data into classic 'S' lifecycle curves, so you can determine which lifecycles can be expanded for further profitability, and where new lifecycle curves (disruptive innovations?) need to be created.
3. Apply patterns of evolution to create a technology roadmap, which can be used to identify overlooked opportunities and opportunities for hybridization of technologies. Then build a future state of the roadmap, identifying potential future paths, feasibility and risks.
4. Plot specific evolutionary paths based on the data you have collected to create a multi-generational product plan - one that identifies several generations of development, implementation stages and market readiness.
5. Implement the innovation roadmap, in conjunction with strategic planning, improvement and innovation tools. Use the metrics identified in the "Define" phase to track actual versus expected progress.

Based on the wording of the last phase in the book, it's clear that the authors intend this "DMAPI" strategic TRIZ methodology to be used primarily for incremental innovation. And that's OK. Not every innovation needs to be radical and game-changing. There's plenty of room for profitable, incremental innovation. DMAPI appears to be a well thought-out, common-sense framework for assessing your current technology assets and doing some "future scanning" to envision future iterations of your products and services."