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December 31 Getting beyond modern management.....Peter Drucker began to define and describe "modern management" for us all when he studied General Motors for 18 months in the early to mid 1940s. He wrote about what he found at GM in "The concept of the corporation" published in 1946. The essence of modern management was explored there. This book helped people, at the time, to better understand and describe what was happening around them - at work and in their private lives. Today the notions of "modern management" do not help you and me better understand nor describe what is happening around us. Today there is a discord between what is actually happening and how we talk about those events. We are trying to understand contemporary events with outdated concepts, models, and experiences. What we see, describe, and experience today is not what Drucker wrote about in 1946 - yet we still try to push our current events through his outdated sieve. When we talk about events we use our knowledge, know-how, and knowing to help us understand what is going on. We (each of us) will likely interpret the key events of our times very differently - eg the sub-prime meltdown, the murder of Benazir Bhutto, the decision by Congress to only partially fund US troops in Iraq, the decisions of the US reserve to cut interest rates to underpin the stock market, rising food/energy prices due Climate Change, etc. All these events are separate and yet linked - they are separate events in history but they are all linked in their impact on our short-term futures. I don't yet know what impact each one of those events will have on my future - I have no possible way of knowing what any combination of those events will mean for me tomorrow. But I know for sure and for certain that if I am to better understand, describe, and experience the real impact of those events on my life and my work I must get beyond the notions of "modern management". I am currently trapped in "modern management" mindsets, habits, and ways of being in the world - I must find a way out of there if I am to comprehend the emerging threats and opportunities of 2008. December 29 Clear Space Thinking brings its own issues.....Clear Space Thinking is the term I began using in the 1980s to describe the strange ways I think.... People often asked me at workshops and public speaking gigs - I do neither today because I no longer want to become a celebrity - what books I have read and who had influenced the way I think.... I chronicled the influence of De Bono, Toffler, Drucker, Beer, Etzioni, Simon, Musgrave (Richard and Peggy), and so on... No they would say that is not it they all provide you with illustrations of the ways you think but you do something different - how do you do that? How do I do what? I had to think about the ways that I think.... My first discovery was that I often held two contradictory ideas in my head at the same time and argued for each one on its merits... Sometimes I found a new concept this way.... Sometimes I found a dead-end.... Mostly I had the pleasure of sinking deep into my own thoughts.... How I do what I do is not that much clearer to me today than it was back then.... I know now that if I had been more confident of my ideas and importantly of my thinking processes I would have achieved much more than I have over the last nearly thirty years.... But it is hard to be confident about ideas that run counter to the prevailing wisdom - often my ideas run counter to my own experience gained in the trenches with the troops. Indeed that is the first real issue with Clear Space Thinking as a universal strategy, tactic, or way of being in the world. It demands that you be able to slough off past experiences - most people can not. Most people do not have that many experiences - they have repeated experiences rather than a clutch of them (I have written missives about this before)... Most of us work for 35 years at a job and talk at length about all the experience we have acquired - in reality it is probably 1 year of experience repeated 35 times.... Where I do what I do is much clearer to me today than it was back then.... I am a naturally lazy person - I do not place much store in networking my way into the "right places" or into situations where I will be with the "right people". So my best successes with Clear Space Thinking happened when other people promoted me into the limelight - they urged people with the right kinds of issues to take on the madman with the crazy ideas... When people have really pressing issues to cope with they will take on crazy ideas... Thus I have learned that I tend to "hang with the wrong people" to get much traction from Clear Space Thinking.... If I was to "hang with big picture people in positions of influence and power" then I would do more good work. Where do I want to go now with Clear Space Thinking? First and foremost I want to influence the political outcomes in my own country over next decade.... The next 10 years are a critical time for the world... I want my country to be successful - I want my fellow country men and women to be the very best they can be in a time of crisis ahead (crisis is a mix of opportunities and threats and I want them to take the opportunities and dispatch the threats).... Also I want to work with people who understand the networked economy..... The people who are building it at the global level do understand it.... These people live at Google, eBay, Amazon, Skype, etc - the key figure at these places understand all too well what this new entity means for the world.... But all of them would be quick to admit that we can do it better than we are at present.... I want Clear Space Thinking to become an integral part of the solution to many issues that lie ahead of those who are building a new socio-economic regime for our world. I have a big ambitions for Clear Space Thinking but I also have a realistic view of its limitations.... Clear Space Thinking is not for most people - it is only for those of you who can change your mindsets, habits, and ways of being in the world. December 28 Don't follow the mob.....In 2008 you will do better in business if you don't follow the mob. The mob will be locked into mindsets, habits, and ways of being in the world that will bring more grief than prosperity. Why? Because cause and effect are no longer connected in the ways we expect. In a Nation-State economy we understand the "cause and effect" links for falling interest rates, rising balance of payments deficits, inflationary pressures, asset deflation, tight credit, political cycle, etc. The US economy can be explained to the mob in simple terms - but how do you explain the sub-prime meltdown and infusion of funds from China into America's AAA rated banks? Unfortunately the answer is you have to educate them about the emerging digital networked economy. The new economy does not follow the old rules. The mob will analyse and then try to comprehend the aftermath of the 2007 sub-prime meltdown in Nation-State terms. They will be "all over" their traditional economic indicators as they look to better explain and understand what is going on in business in 2008-09. The impact of rapid deflation on housing assets. The impact of tight credit on consumer spending. The impact of lower interest rates on business. The impact of rising energy costs. The impact of Climate Change on an urban-industrial economy. All this analysis will lead them into
group think and it will prove to be wrong. It will be wrong because
what is going on is not able to be explained in Nation-State terms.
December 24 People will complain all the way to heaven.....By his own admission Tom Peters says he made a small fortune complaining about customer service in the 1980s. Go to the Tom Peters website and you will see he is still complaining about it today. Why? Tom is a master showman and he knows a simple truth about himself and all of us - we all love to complain. He is the master of complaining and he has achieved celebrity status because of it. But on the subject of "customer service" like so many other areas of contemporary organisation Tom Peters, his friends, you, and me (sad to say) are complaining about the degree or level of pampering we get - compared with the 1980s the degree or level of pampering we get in 2007 is heavenly. We have effectively complained our way into heaven and yeah we are all still complaining. Warren Buffet is an individual who is not big on complaining. Why? He lives a simple life. He works at what he loves. He makes money so he can re-invest it not so that he can buy more pampering. He is never swimming with the mob so he is never competing for attention. His stories are about his investments and the people who make them work for him, and his investors, not about the shortcomings of modern business. He is a throw back to a simpler age when people were happy doing what they had to do with little spare time for worrying about what others do unless and until it impacts directly on their investments. December 23 The new cost of "free"....The world moves on - often it moves in circles as what was old is new again.... What was old is Milton Friedman's claim "there is no such thing as a free lunch"..... What is new again is "there is no such thing as a free lunch because 'they' have just found out some new ways to make you pay for it".... The internet was a "free zone" until around 2005.... Sure their were advertisements but they were banner types or low key intrusions - they posed at best a minor inconvenience to most users in time and essentially they bore no dollar cost.... This was like free TV way back when I was a kid.... Sometimes the advertisements were better than the content back then... Back then I watched the advertisements and became attached to certain brands so when I went shopping I paid a premium for my goods or services... I paid for the advertisements whenever I went shopping.... That was the old way to pay for free... The new way to pay for free is more pervasive.... I have free access to a newspaper over the Internet where they have commercial videos running in the background of each page I read.... I never click on the advertisements, well very rarely, so I should not have to pay for them in any way shape or form - they are there but they are provided to me free right? Well wrong.... They are provided free but they are constant downloads while I read so they are recorded by my Internet Service Provider (ISP) and if I break my limit as happened to me this month I do pay.... I can pay with dollars or with a downgrade in the speed of my internet service.... This is the new cost of free - it is a cost that most of us might not see but will, eventually, force us all to change our mindsets, habits, and ways of being on the Internet so that free is truly free.... The new cost of "free" is just one of the many amazing things I have discovered about "clear space enterprises" in 2007.... December 19 Pouring petrol onto the fire......Sub-prime lending has turned into a fire storm. This fire storm is raging around the globe. It is burning out tangible assets from homes to shopping malls. It is melting down the share prices of property trusts, banks, and mortgage brokers. It is a financial contagion. Sub-prime lending is indirectly the product of too much money in the banking system. Money was pumped into the global banking system after 9/11. More was pumped in during a series of major and minor financial crises ever since. What do bankers do with money? Yeah they lent it. What do bankers do with an excess of cheap money? They invent the sub-prime lending regime. What do bankers do when they get a sniff that their peers have some bad debts? They stop lending money. What do free markets do when bankers stop lending money? They raise the price of money. What happens when the price of money rises sharply but bankers do not trust their peers? The trouble within the sub-prime lending regime turns into a financial contagion. What happens when the western world faces a financial contagion? The Reserve/Central Banks pump more money into their respective banking systems. What happens when the Reserve/Central Banks pumps billions into their banking systems but banks still do not trust each? The banking system forces a credit squeeze onto investors, customers, and consumers. What happens when the billions in the banking system is not shared around because bankers do not trust each other? The price of money rises and these costs flow on through the economy - households, corporates, and investment houses go into meltdown. What happens when you pour petrol on the fire? The state of the fire quickly gets beyond anyone's direct control....... December 18 Google Inc has the wrong culture for its future.....Google Inc is an icon that will continue to be successful to a degree the world has not seen before. Microsoft is not in the same league as Google Inc. Why? Because Google Inc is the first of the next evolution of business models - it is a purely networked business model. Microsoft is a mass production business model - Bill Gates explains the difference between Microsoft and Google very succinctly when he says the later has users not customers. Microsoft, says Bill Gates, provides us with free goods and services until the last mile of the journey and that is where the customer gets the "value add" which has made his company great. Google is totally different because it is free all the way for its users as they search the internet - its revenue model is attached not an integral part of its business model. Google invites us to stop being "free riders" on its search engine by clicking on its advertisements. But Eric Schmidt (CEO Google Inc) knows all too well that we will only do that if there is "use value" in the click through advertisements alongside the free search results his colleagues provide. Google Inc is a digital networked economy that is growing fast but it is anchored down by its inappropriate corporate culture and the whole notion of their Googleplex headquarters. Google Inc has the wrong corporate culture to grow its economy. The culture within the Googleplex is not as open as it needs to be to build a cooperative use value economy. Google's long-term problem has two elements - first the whole notion of having a Googleplex culture is at odds with the now pressing need to be a networked entity and second the management team did not cut their teeth on open networked cultures. December 17 Hang on to your party hats - 2008 is going to be a ripper...Its party time as 2007 concludes.... It was the year of living dangerously but ahead lies a real danger year for most of us...... Hang on to your party hats folks because 2008 promises to become a "real ripper" of a year.... It is hard to predict just how your life will have changed by the end of 2008 - what is certain is you will have changed.... Given that most of us do not embrace change this coming year will pose challenges for all of us.... Just look at the challenges ahead and you will see what I am talking about here.... Recession in the US economy is a distinct possibility. A nasty run into the Presidential Elections is shaping as a probability - the professionals versus the new bloods on both sides of American politics are about to slug it out in what could become a "dirt filled" campaign. Climate change is now a perception - it has transcended reality to take on its own importance and so the changes that flow from this happening will be significant. Trade wars are on the cards as the US and Europe dip into recession while China and India continue to expand. Sub-prime meltdowns have consequences and some of those are heading your way in 2008 - you don't have a sub-prime loan but you do have a sub-prime problem. New governments have sprung up like mushrooms after the rain in 2007 and all of them are about to be tested - some will not do well at their 2008 examinations. One reasonable strategy may be to simply keep your Christmas/New Year hat on for all of 2008 and just party, party, party..... There are two economies......Yeah, there are two economies - the one we all know and pretend to understand and the one we don't. The one we all think we know - the traditional economy - is now booming in Asia and coming off in Europe and the US. The reason for the boom in Asia is fairly simple - the developed countries have systematically shifted their production capacity offshore over the last decade. The reason for doing this was also simple - the cost of production was so much cheaper in China and India than in the USA or Europe. The results of these shifts are a repeat of what happened when Japan expanded capacity in the early 1980s. Japan opened markets with cheap goods and services but then climbed the quality curve. Japanese cars were the most quoted example of success in the USA in the early 1908s - they were building smaller, cheaper, and more fuel efficient cars than their American competitors. Japanese cars first won market share in the US from their rivals - later they won the respect of American car owners because they were reliable and as their service networks grew they were accepted as a viable alternative to the local product. In 2007 Japanese cars are accepted in the US as the equal and often as superior to the local product. Korea is climbing the same curve of acceptance as they improve the design, finish, and quality of their cars and other mass produced goods. China is at a very early stage in this progression but it will doubtless follow the same or a very similar course. In the traditional economy the developed countries have had boom times as the cost of mass produced goods and services has fallen due to an excess of imports. This has helped maintain the standard of living in developed countries at unprecedented levels. China, India, and Korea have gifted a "developing countries dividend" to most developed economies over the past decade. However the outlook for 2008 and beyond is suddenly very different - new cost pressures are building up within developed and developing economies. Cost increases due to carbon emissions, crude oil prices, expensive labour, etc. are reconfiguring all these traditional economies. Where this is all leading us is not yet clear but we all think we understand the traditional economy and its cycles so we all have an educated guess as to what it will mean for us and our industry. The other economy is a complete mystery to most of us - even those who are in the forefront of creating the global digital economy are not too sure about just how it all works. It works in such fundamentally different ways to the traditional economy that there is no real point of comparison. The traditional economy is based on tangible assets and all intangible assets are in a sense derivatives. But the global digital economy is based on intangible assets - the core of which is information. Tangible assets are more likely to be the derivatives in this economy. Information is either free or fully priced in this economy - how can that be? It can be because this economy is networked and thus any or all assets are abundant. In the traditional economy all assets are deemed to be scarce or made that way by the price mechanism (supply and demand). When exclusion is not feasible we have market failure - in the case of market failure the assets are held by governments in some form of public ownership. Exclude people from a concert with a wall or perimeter and the audience must pay a price for their enjoyment of the event - that is the traditional economy. The level of satisfaction (the utility) derived from the concert by each individual determines the price of a ticket. When people can not be excluded - because the concert is held in the open air of a public park - then people may be pressed to volunteer a payment but if they refuse they are simply "free riders" in the system. In the global digital economy everyone is essentially a free rider - I am a free rider on iGoogle unless or until I volunteer to click on an advertisement and thus earn the company a penny or two. The same is true for much of the offerings from Skype, eBay, Amazon, etc. These are networked entities - they are not bound by Nation-State boundaries or any of the other traditional economy exclusion barriers. Their income stream is passive - their revenue model is attached to their core activity not buried within it. The core activity at iGoogle is free search - the passive revenue is advertising or assisted search for me if and only if I click through a Google Inc advertisement to purchase goods or services. Skype quickly had nearly 100 million users for its free VoiP services - these users later became customers for a Skype mobile. The global digital economy is based on networks, abundance, and use value not value add. This economy is about the inclusion principle not the exclusion principle - it is based on "clusters of user" not Nation-State boundaries. The rule of the game are totally different to those in the traditional economy - in networks the more users the better. When your network is large and it has to compete with other very large networks for attention then what you are networking has to be both relevant and remarkable. In this economy ownership is subsumed by the constant need to invent, innovate, experiment, prototype, etc. Virginia there is no Santa Claus however there are two economies. December 13 Read about life in the 1950s....If you want to understand what I am on about here with my notion of "clear space enterprises" you could do no better than read about life in the 1950s. Life in the 1950s was about community, family, local enterprise, and cooperation. If you wanted to build a new family house you got your friends around to help. If you wanted to build a new business you made it a family enterprise. If you want to be successful you first had to understand what was relevant and remarkable for your neighbours. In 1950s people often gathered in the street outside a retail store to watch TV. If you had TV at home you had friends drop in to watch it with you. If you wanted a good job/business you probably became a TV repair specialist. If you built that business into a roaring success you did it because of the "good experiences" your customers had with you and your repairers not necessarily because you were any better at fixing TV sets or antennas. You gave your customers "use value" - you were relevant to their lives because you fixed their precious TV set and you were remarkable because you did your job with humour and friendship. Your marketing was done by your customers not by advertising on their TV sets. The 1950s
was a prosperous time for most families. The inventions of the war
years were coming into industry. There was great hope and expectation
of a better life ahead for parents and their kids. The anchor of life
was local - the community was the hub of these times and if you wanted to
succeed you had to be relevant and remarkable within that community. December 12 Business unusual....Business is getting to be unusual. Business is now about being quirky. It is about being relevant. It is about being remarkable. Growing up I remember "Tony the Fruiterer" - he was Italian, full of fun, and he had a great sense of giving. He gave free samples of everything - he was almost offended if you did not try the strawberries, pears, peaches, plums, etc. He was never offended if you did not buy much but he showed every sign of being "put out" if you did not try his best wares. He was a natural businessman - he engaged people, he found out what they felt was relevant for them, and then he stocked his horse-drawn cart to the max with the remarkable examples of what people wanted to buy. He made an ample living and in the process he lived a relevant and remarkable life. For me he was business as usual. But looking back he was in fact a perfect example of permission marketing and business unusual. Today the key to "business unusual" is the same as it was for "Tony the Fruiterer" - seek permission from your customers to tell them what is remarkable this week at the fruit market. Having gained their permission make sure you discover what is relevant for each and everyone of them. When you know what is both relevant and remarkable for your customers you can build a "clear space enterprise" - you can continuously prototype your business unusual. December 11 Customer clusters.....If you understand "Customer Clusters" you understand C21st business. The challenge is threefold:- create them, secure them, and build off them. 1) Create them....... Customer clusters are incompatible with mass production systems. Why? Because they form around "use value" not price points, brands, demographics, etc. They form because a group of customers have had the same or a very similar experience. Disney creates great experiences - when customers go home from Disneyland in Southern California they form clusters. Within them are those who have had a great experience and want it again, those who have not yet had their great experience but are just "hanging out for it", and those who just love to recount their great experience to whomever will listen. The important thing to note is the customers create the clusters not Disney Inc. Disney creates the "great experience" that ultimately translates into "use value" for these existing and potential customers. 2) Secure them....... The problem with these raw clusters is they will implode as quickly as they were created if their inherent "use value" is not maintained. Sometimes the "use value" can be maintained by simply repeating "great experience" but more often the original experience has to be innovated. Thus the key to securing a "customer cluster" is to innovate the core experience of using your products or services. Each experience of your product or service has to be totally fulfilling. Any hint of a stale or inadequate experience by a user is potentially lethal to your customer cluster. 3) Build off them..... Customer clusters can be built off if and only if you can network them. Clusters are independent entities even though they relate back to the same experience. Remember the lesson that Mathew taught us about clusters in the Park on Sundays. All the clusters are there for the same great experience - Sunday in the Park - but each cluster is a distinctly separate entity. Italians cluster under the trees so the men can play bocchi. English cluster near the green patches to play cricket. Americans cluster near the bike track to play baseball. The multi-cultural mixture forms a cluster over near the river bank because they all like to feed the Black Swans. Each cluster is unique but they are all there to enjoy one great experience - Sunday in the Park. If you can access these clusters and link them then you will increase the "use value" they all get from their Sundays in the Park. How might you link them? Well imagine that you provided a great experience that innovated their Sunday in the Park. Imagine you put on a open air play - the first one was Alice in Wonderland. You sold tickets to the event. You staged the event in the trees, along the river bank, on the island in the river, and just near the bike path. Each venue had a separate scene of the story and it played all day. People could stroll up to each scene whenever they preferred. You would have clusters forming at regular intervals to partake of the great experience of seeing Alice in Wonderland. All these cluster would include people from each of the regular clusters in the Park - the whole thing is now networked. The original clusters have been built off. December 10 Walls - repeated here (again) by request....Historically the great walls were formed to keep the hordes out. Today the walls are formed to keep the hordes in. Historically the great walls were built with stones. Today they are built with opinions. Historically the great walls were circumvented by new technologies. Today they are propagated by new technologies. Historically the great walls signalled progress. Today they signal regress. Historically the great walls protected communities. Today they constrain communities. Historically the great walls limited ideas, innovation, diversity, etc. Today they limit ideas, innovation, diversity, etc. Think about more than your talent.....What a wonderful time of change we live in right now. But as always with changing times the changes do not suit everyone. There will be dislocations brought about by these changes as with any other. The biggest change is from the "war on talent" to the "war on ideas" - essentially from the search for talented people to the search for innovative ideas. Talent will be needed less and less at all levels of business - indeed people will be needed less and less. We are indeed getting over the need for people in business that started with the industrial revolution. The mass employment of people in factories has been a boost to the nation-state economy. Things were mass produced for people beyond your locality, region, and nation. Nation-state trade has been conducted for most of this time with tariff barriers and other protection measure for these factory workers. By the beginning of this century though such protective measures were being de-constructed or by-pass with the formation of a global economy. The global economy is not a simple amalgam of nation-state capacities as we all suspected it would be in the 1970s. Back then the notion of a world car was being muted and this concept did rely on nation-state cooperation. Our emerging global economy is different. Assembly is where the labour is plentiful and cheap. Design is concentrated where labour is scarce and expensive (this will change too by 2050). The global economy is still emerging but already we can see it works in new ways. Global networks are being built to last not built to flip. They are likely to become bigger not smaller. They will become bigger and at the same time employ few people. The biggest global networks will employ the fewest people on a revenue per person basis that the world has seen. The major pools of employees will be at the network-user interface - where the "rubber hits the road" in terms of providing "use value". The people employed here will have to ensure the customer has a relevant and remarkable experience. December 09 Experiential snowflakes from Google Inc....At Google Inc they are building "an experiential snowflake" with their new focus on personal search. Personal search is all about the questions in my mind - these are not perfectly formed so the results from iGoogle are a bit of "a lucky dip". It is a great experience when the results fit my question - not so flash otherwise. So the "i" is all about me - what is the real question in my head and what is the answer I am looking for with this search. One way to get better results for me is to learn from my past experiences - my history on Google's search engine may well indicate, in broad terms, what I may be looking for on this occasion too. The results of my, yours, and several billion other users of Google's search engine has led them to tweak their ranking algorithms. The Google team has set new parameters for all our searches to better serve all our personal search needs. It also better serves their passive revenue income streams if they match your mind's eye questions to their advertiser's ranked results. Here is the change that most users will not ever notice or care about but I would like you to notice and to think long and hard about. Google is a brand like Yahoo in the search engine industry. Those two brands competed against each other on the same playing field. Both brands provided a service to you or me and to their clients who pay for "click through" advertising. Google did well with its brand and grew. But that game is over. Google Inc is now playing a new game with its own rules and on a playing field of its making. With the advent of iGoogle the company has moved on from being a brand. The movement at Google Inc is towards creating, securing, and building on the experience you have when answering your latest personal search questions. Google Inc is building an experiential snowflake for you and me around personal search - it is called iGoogle. Soon it will be available to us on a hand-held device - the experience of having personal search work for us when we are on the move, with friends at leisure, out shopping in the mall, or looking for a motel for the night is about to be awesome. Google Inc is building a "clear space enterprise" - Yahoo is not providing an experiential snowflake and so there is no competition for Google Inc in the new personal search industry. December 07 Floating exchange rates....Moving to a "floating exchange rate" was a complete "no brainer" for my country. It was floated at a time when the currency was about par with the mighty $US. Subsequently it fell below 50c to a $US. It was a disaster for those, like me, who wanted to travel to America - the cost of any trip seemed to go up each and every day as our currency continued to slide. But the exporters of wool, wheat, iron ore, oil, etc who wrote their contracts in $US were happy to take the extra income this afforded them. So the conventional wisdom is that a sliding currency is good for exporters and bad for importers - so in theory it leads to a balance of trade. I have been thinking about our rising currency - the so called "experts" say we are headed back to parity with a weakening $US over the next few years. The exporters are crying "foul" - the importers are happy. I am delighted because I still want to spend time in America. But what does this mean this time around? This time around the country has GDP growth running at near 4%, full employment, low but rising interest rates (in part this is helping our currency appreciate against $US), inflationary pressures due to Climate Change and energy cost pressures, high consumer debt but savings are starting to lift, national government debt is zero, and finally a huge deficit on our balance of trade. Overall this is a healthy position. Some have a concern with our balance of payments deficit but others look to the overseas investments being made by our nationals and the local investment in business. Inflation is the wild card - it is still contained but it is poised to become a problem. The deflationary impact of cheap goods and services from China and India is fading and those benefits may be reversed as inflationary pressures force their internal costs to rise. Lots of balance and imbalance to consider in all that but what of the argument about the strength of our currency per se. I take the view that a strong currency is a positive. It is a positive if and only if we can rearrange our economic outcomes to favour "use value" not "value add". Most of the economic activity that is adversely affected by our rising currency is low or no value add. When our currency was low we exported high volumes of low or no value added goods and services. When our currency is high we must switch to exporting high "use value" goods and services. When the use value is high the price paid is also high. When use value is high the volume can be low. Low volumes of goods and services with use value that is high is the key to our exports. Additionally once we concentrate our minds on use value goods and services we will move offshore and provide these economic benefits in the countries were they are most profitable. Thus we will end up doing two relevant and remarkable things because we have a strong currency - we will think and produce "use value" and we will increasingly seek to do it in the countries where it is valued the most. The more our country provides "use value" to the world the higher our currency will climb in comparison to all our free trade partners - this will be a good thing long term for me, my kids, and eventually their kids. Experiential snowflakes.....When you experience something both relevant and remarkable you want to share it with others. You experience a good communal feeling at the local Church even if you are not a Christian and you want to tell others about it. If that great experience is repeated time and time again you may even think about joining that community. You experience good service with your search on the internet through iGoogle and so you tell others how thrilled you are about it and they introduce you to Gmail. You find Gmail - the email system from Google Inc - so good with all its memory and features that you introduce others to it too. You experience a good time on Facebook - it is fun and you re-connect with people who you have not been in touch with for some time. Facebook links you to people who know people you know and so long as that is a good experience too you add them to your networks. You love the experience you get with Skype as they provide free "voice over the internet" (VoiP) access to all your regular contacts at home and abroad. You build up a Skype network of callers and it grows the more you come to rely on it. Finally you get yourself a Skype (VoiP) mobile device. Each of those experiences is a separate entity but gradually they become an integral and repeatable part of your work and home life so you inevitably build a experiential snowflake - a network based on personal experiences. Experiential snowflakes are always solo happenings - they can be connected or disconnected. What they are is the future of business because they from into loose networks that are based on good experiences. Good experiences are replacing brands. Good experiences are the yeast of viral marketing which is replacing mass marketing. Good experiences is a local phenomenon which is often connected to a global digital system - by acting together they are forming "the next big thing". Good experiences is what is binding together what I refer to as "experiential snowflakes". December 06 My basic snowflake models.....I have three basic snowflake models: 1) Experiential snowflakes - these form clusters around personal moments. 2) Purpose-driven snowflakes - these form clusters around communal activities. 3) Facilitated snowflakes - these form clusters around group events. The experiential snowflake is anchored by knowledge - soft touch screens, automated self-serve, multi-media access, and broadband connections. The purpose-driven snowflake is anchored by know-how - group dynamics, shared values, common goals, and a disciplined culture. The facilitated snowflake is anchored by knowing - collegial learning, informal education, participative discussion, and interactive teaching. December 05 Ideas need context, frameworks, and execution.....Clear Space Thinking is about three things - context, frameworks, and execution. When you think you have a good idea you need to put it into context. Is this idea relevant to an industry, community, demographic, etc? Once you have established its context you must provide frameworks or models that fit with that context. Decide whether this best fits a local or global context - the former is all about people and the latter is all about systems. Once you have prototyped and tested your frameworks you have to execute - switch it on and learn on the job. Digital frameworks are based on clusters and networks. Global clusters and networks are all about access where local clusters and networks are all about connection. When the two are combined they are literally impossible to compete against if they are maintained to a high standard. Digital networks are forming rapidly at both the local and the global levels - they are forming linked clusters that span across nation-state borders and in the process create entirely new economies. The economics of networked clusters on a global and local scale is yet to be invented so this is "clear space enterprising". Google is the best example in the world today of "clear space enterprising" but it is not the only one. There is no way to know what the limits to growth are for the new Google economy. Remember Google started out as an idea in a post-graduates mind - it was given a context (free search), it was given a framework (Google Inc with its passive revenue models), and it was executed (Googleplex). Once the idea was put into a proper context, a framework could be fashioned, and only then could the idea be properly executed. Thanks....I just want to say "thanks" .... I am constantly amazed at just how many people give me some of their time each day. I know "thinking" is tough work - in our 24/7 world thinking is being subjugated by the apparent need to engage the world right here, right now and thus to be action orientated. Action is good but taking action without powerful and perceptive ideas can mean we end up settling for second best or worse. My action is all about the act of thinking - not thinking things through but thinking about "why this not that" and "why that not this". The purpose of my thinking is to move myself and others from our present lines of continuity if that enhances our lives. Those of you who are happy to fill your lives 24/7 with a blackberry and activities I can only encourage you to continue to do so but I urge you to take some "time out" every so often to ponder the state of your world. Those of you who are more like me and err on the side of 24/7 locked into our own head space then what can I say but every so often we all need to do some physical stuff too and in the process to build something. I sense we now live with a raging "war on ideas" everywhere we look - religion, climate, energy, politics, financial instruments, community, etc. I urge you therefore to use your mind power to find and formulate your own ideas - your own clear space - so you can ignore the chanting mob and find your own inner peace. Thanks........ |
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