NussbaumOnDesign - Businessweek

Backlash Against Facebook by Gen Yers?

News that there are more 55 plus boomers on Facebook than high school students shows the dynamism of change within social media. It also shows the clash of cultures. My students at Parsons are very sensitive to invasions of their social media space by "others," including potential employers, parents, teachers, other "older" figures of authority.

The question is--where are the young going in the social media space as they leave Facebook?

Valet Biking at Bryant Park?

Someone just told me that there was valet parking for bikes at the Bryant Park movie night in NYC on Monday. Valet biking--talk about an oxymoron. Is this true? Biking is all about NOT paying. But hey, LA, NYC, valet parking, valet biking. Know the culture.

Robert McNamara and Vietnam: The Lesson for Business

I met Robert McNamara once in the 90s at a presentation at the Council on Foreign Relations and was stunned at his continued hubris and inability to see how, as Department of Defense chief, his reliance on metrics and top-down planning brought tragedy to the US and Vietnam--and how, as head of the World Bank, it was continuing to bring tragedy to the Third World. He didn't get it.

What he didn't get is what most CEOs and political leaders don't get--understanding the culture and what its people want and need is far more important than measuring inputs and outcomes.

McNamara was a Harvard Business School professor before WW11 broke out and taught cost-effectiveness statistical control to the Army. It is an important thing, of course, cost-control, but not a process that allows people to adjust to unknown terrain, uncertain behaviors, and volatile circumstances.

I remember drinking in a bar in Manila in 1969 when a US Special Forces

]]> soldier on R&R came in. After a few, I asked him about the strange necklace he was wearing. The soldier said it was made up of ears, ears cut off from Viet Cong. That way, they could count the number of enemy killed. Metrics. McNamara's metrics.

The Special Forces soldier said it was all bull. Changing minds was the key and how do you measure that? And how do you change the minds of people who had been fighting the Chinese, the Japanese, the French and now the Americans for independence for centuries?

Special Forces people study culture to swim in the culture. That's what they do.

Business schools have been teaching metrics management for far to long and it has deeply hurt US companies. Efficiency, cost-controls and the "space" of corporations are important in mass marketing, mass manufacturing--mass. The rise of consumer control, co-creation, IT connection to real and digital communities and villages around the world obviates this model.

Shoshana Zuboff, former HBS professor for 25 years, has written a critical piece, in which she says:

"I have come to believe that much of what my colleagues and I taught has caused real suffering, suppressed wealth creation, destabilized the world economy, and accelerated the demise of the 20th century capitalism in which the U.S. played the leading role.

We weren't stupid and we weren't evil. Nevertheless we managed to produce a generation of managers and business professionals that is deeply mistrusted and despised by a majority of people in our society and around the world. This is a terrible failure."

We need to get back to culture--to where people live, to what they use, what they need and want. Design and Design Thinking has the anthropological focus to do this. It's time CEO's and business schools embraced the new methodology of design.

Twitter Vs. The New York Times

I spent more time on Twitter this morning than reading The New York Times. Wow, what does that mean?

It means that the people I've chosen to follow on Twitter provided me with more interesting insights and links to stories than the NYT.

I've created my own aggregation posse, my own smart group of people who do the screening of dozens and dozens of blogs, articles, videos, Web sites, whatever, for me.

OK venture capitalists out there, it's time to start valuing Bruce's AP--aggregation posse. What's it worth to others on the market, as Steve Baker would say? What are my "friends" worth compared to, let's say, Chris Anderson's (Wired and TED) or Malcolm Gladwell's? (Notice that I'm comparing myself to super-stars to up the value of my AG).

Seth Godin Vs. Malcolm Gladwell on Chris Anderson's Book, Free

Well, Seth backs Chris against Malcolm.

Or does he really? After playing out the "free" argument, Seth then says:

"People will pay for content if it is so unique they can't get it anywhere else, so fast they benefit from getting it before anyone else, or so related to their tribe that paying for it brings them closer to other people. We'll always be willing to pay for souvenirs of news, as well, things to go on a shelf or badges of honor to share."

That's another way of saying that people will pay for value-added and not commodity-type stuff. OK. I agree. That's always been at the core of capitalism--unique things or services we crave and pay for become over time commodities and cheap (almost free) and are replaced by new stuff, which we are willing to pay lots for.

Seth vs Gladwell on Anderson? Gladwell wins.

Jeff Immelt Pushes The "Reset" Button on The US Economy

General Electric's CEO Jeff Immelt gave a speech recently in Detroit in which he described a vision of America's economic future.

Get back to making things, invest in technology, reform the health care system, export stuff, curb the love for outsourcing--and more good ideas.

George Soros - Too Much Innovation in Finance Can Hurt

George Soros, the financial philosopher, supporter of civic culture and crusher of the Bank of England, spoke on Tuesday morning in NYC, warning that Americans are denying the magnitude of their problems.

He said “You can’t expect market participants to resist bubbles which is why you need an outside force to prevent them from going too far. Unlimited innovation can be harmful.”

Soros also believes that we now live in beta--constant change that is unforseen. " My theory is the future is unpredictable so I’m not going to predict it...it’s not the time to have firm conviction.” Hedge funds and Wall Street firms are not investing on fundamentals, he said, making markets more volatile.

So we shouldn't feel so relieved that the bottom has not dropped out of the global economy.

Gladwell Destroys Anderson's Free Argument

Drop everything and read the Malcolm Gladwell review of Chris Anderson's new book Free.

Gladwell challenges Anderson's key assertions: "Information wants to be free." Free for whom? Free for Google or Amazon who profit by its being free but not for the content generators.

People love free. Do they? The Wall Street Journal charges for access to its web site. The Economist costs a small fortune. People pay a buck per song on iTunes. Free?

Companies can do free and also generate profits? Really? It costs hundreds of millions of dollars for YouTube to distribute free videos and it has had to buy professionally made content to charge advertisers who don't want to advertise around free junk. Gladwell says that Credit Suisse estimates that YouTube will lose half a billion dollars this year.

I love enthusiasm. I am enthusiastic. Wired is one of my favorite magazines and Anderson one of my favorite writers. But being naive about technology and its power to change is a serious problem in a society besotted by high-tech fixes.

Of these three declarations, I can think of only one that turned out to be true.

"Information wants to be free." "Twitter will save Iran." "Rock and Roll will change the world."

And thanks to David Armano on Twitter to point me to Gladwell's review. Love that Twitter.

Obama is Failing to Innovate--Failing to Redesign our Financial and Social Systems

My scorecard for President Obama in his attempts at innovating America's failing economic, financial and social systems.

1- Redesign the failing financial system -- C.
Obama put the foxes in the hen house, appointing Wall Streeters and their supporters in the economics profession to reform the cult of speculation. They failed and we have band-aids and await another financial crisis in the years ahead.

2- Redesign the auto industry -- B minus.
Obama appointed an investment banker from Wall Street, not a cat nut, innovator or designer to solve a problem that has little to do with finance or numbers. In fact, GM is in trouble because it was run by numbers and not leaders who understood US and global car culture.

3- Redesign the system for curbing CO2 emissions and global warming -- B.
Obama is pushing for a cap-and-trade system that gives away so much to the polluters that it won't have much effect for nearly a decade.

4- Redesign the health system -- ? Who knows?
Obama is waffling on the one thing that is crucial to a better health system- a public option for health care. Without it, there won't be any real competition for the insurance companies who dominate our failing private system. Right now, there is a good chance that a public option won't even be offered.

No guts, no glory. Innovation requires leadership and the willingness to accept casualties in a battle for what is right. FDR did that. A.G. Lafley did that. President Obama, so far, has shown a preference for compromise before battle. He needs to take the heat to be an innovation leader.

From Social Media to Social Business Design -- A New Business Model

For a provocative and insightful look into what may be the future of business organization design, check out David Armano's piece on the next iteration of social media--social business.

This is one of the most important attempts to answer the key question of What Comes Next? What comes next after the great recession ends? What will be the New Normal for consumers, for businesses, for all global organizations.

In essence, David argues that it is not sufficient for companies to merely plug into and participate in the social media of its customers. Companies must BECOME social media and be organized as social media.

Wow. First we talked about flattening hierarchy by taking out layers. Now we're talking about having no layers, no middle.

We need curators of conversations, not managers of people.

OK. So how do we value all this stuff David? How do you value "friending," as my buddy Steve Baker asks. How to you value conversations, are they all equal and valuable? What does Brand mean and who creates it?

There is a great conference, Copenhagen Co'Creation in late August. I'll be there. Maybe David and other people thinking about Social Business Design should be there too.

Innovation From India's Tata Group -- Innovista

Jessie Scanlon has a great story on Tata's Innovation Contest, Innovista.

The contest involved answering the following brainteaser by three judges at Innovista:

What's more innovative: intelligent software designed to automate the buying and selling of telecom minutes; patented technology for unloading soda ash from railroad cars faster, safer, and cheaper; or a rebranding campaign that gained a company synonymous with black tea a 42% share of the fast-growing green tea market?

They were innovation questions from different parts of Tata's business empire.

What's the answer?

Boomers Love The Kindle. Why?

I was on the Jitney today and sat next to a woman from Hawaii who was about 60-something and she had her Kindle. Every time I see a Kindle, it is help by a Boomer (hey, it's usually a female Boomer at that). I asked her how she liked it and she immediately, an animatedly, showed me how it worked, why she loved it, and what it's deficiencies are. Her performance was exactly like a a young male geek showing me his latest iPhone app. I mean the same!

Boomers read and the Kindle satisfies this desire. It's a platform that is light, small, easy to use and better than carrying around heavy books (remember, pain is a constant, especially in the hands, from 55-onward).

But my evidence is anecdotal. Are there any stats showing which demographic is buying Kindle the most and why? And which gender?

BTW, this woman showed me all the FREE BOOKS available for Kindle. She reads 3-4 books a week and doesn't like spending $10 a book. FREE BOOKS. You won't find them on Amazon.

President Obama Failed to Redesign the Financial System

The "overhaul" of the financial regulatory system just proposed by President Obama avoids serious reform of the US banking system which rececently sent the world into the worst recession since the Depression. The opportunity to redesign and innovate a dangerous and out-of-control system is now lost. What FDR did in the 30's following the bank collapse, Obama is failing to do--make hard decisions, anger people, create new institutions that force new behaviors, put the nation above special interests.

The US needs a fresh approach to banking that makes all financial instruments transparent, limits leverage and lets bankers and bankers who fail--fail. It needs to stop the policy of allowing private banks and bankers to benefit from rising profits and push loses onto taxpayers (privatizing profits, socializing loses). None of the reforms proposed by Obama does this. In fact, as the proposal winds its way through Congress, it is likely to get even more diluted and less effective.

]]> What is needed is an end to the culture of speculation, a culture promoted by economists and policy-makers of both Democratic and Republican parties. But the culture of speculation goes much deeper than Washington policy or Wall Street. We, the people, changed the name of "gambling" to "gaming" somewhere in the 80s or 90s, legitimizing something our parents and grandparents disparaged. Poker became the favorite game of middle class kids. We embraced a culture of speculation that included debt, betting, leverage, poker, playing the odds. It is no accident that over the past 10-20 years, profits going to the financial sector doubled and tripled while profits going to innovative companies and manufacturing companies stagnated or fell.

We have to end the culture of speculation poisoning our society. But this overhaul of the financial system by the Obama Administration won't do it. The lobbying might of Wall Street and the ideological proclivities of the economic advisors inside the White House prevent it.

One can only wonder what will happen to health care reform. People who embraced social media to elect President Obama need to return to it to tell him that redesigning large social systems, such as the financial and health systems, requires innovative new ideas and the courage to face off and anger entrenched interests.

A.G. Lafley learned this at Procter & Gamble and did the hard stuff to transform his company. Can Obama, the great compromiser, be as tough?

Twitter's Role in Iran--Is The Medium Really The Message?

The blogosphere and mainstream media are ablaze with the news that Twitter is playing the key role in enabling the protest against the election fraud in Iran. This is social media's first revolution (or second or third, counting the Ukraine, Latvia and a few other countries). The open platform is so flexible that it can evade attempts to shut it down by the Tehran government authorities.

This is all true and to be applauded and celebrated. But I wonder if the medium is not the message we should be taking away from events in Iran.

In the revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran, the bazarre was the "social media" space that enabled people to secretly communicate and organize. It was the traditional middle class bizarre merchants who led the fight against the Shah, in part because they were losing out to the modernization he unleashed.

That revolution was captured by another--the Islamist takeover of the Iranian state and that was organized in the mosque, another "social media" space that enabled people to communicate and organize.

Now we have the first digital space, safe enough to enough people to communicate and organize to fight for change.

My conclusion is that Twitter is but the latest of many forms of social media spaces. Each generation is comfortable with its own communication forms and spaces. Each finds the cultural means of organizing to generate action. Twitter is the form comfortable with the young in Iran. The mosque was the form comfortable for the religious. The bizarre was the place most comfortable for the merchants.

The medium may appear to be the message to the techno-fetishists who marvel that their generation can communicate digitally (and yes, as one who blogs and twitters, it is a marvelous technology). But the deeper message is that the message finds the medium.

Each generation at each periuod of time uses the technology it is comfortable with, whether it is getting dates or organizing street demonstrations. For American Gen Yers looking for jobs in big corporations, they have to write. For Gen Yers starting their own companies (or organizing to elect President Obama), they have to visualize, communicate and engage digitally.

Is Design Too Important To Be Left Only To Designers? Part 11

I'm reposting a comment by Anne Burdick that links to her speech at Parsons which led me to say raise the issue of whether or not Design was becoming too important to be left just to designers.

Check it out.

"My comment is ancient by blog standards but nonetheless, if anyone is interested in reading the original talk that led to Bruce's post with the incendiary title, a pdf can be found at: http://www.burdickoffices.com/Design-wo-Designers/

I am interested in how the appropriation of design by non-designers may give us (designers) insight into the power and definition of design. I believe that our focus on developing a design profession in service to industry has interfered with our ability to understand and advocate for design in larger terms. If design practitioners, educators, and researchers don't expand thinking about the field, we risk its dissolution into other fields who may do a better job at claiming its powers.

Of course this isn't a process that can be controlled and I do believe that there is much to be learned through exchange and the testing of boundaries. But I do think that "makers of stuff" need to be better advocates for their unique way of engaging with the world so that the "thinkers" out there--as if making were distinct from thinking--don't get it in their heads that a few post-it notes and a white board are all one needs to be a designer."