Duncan Pierce duncanpierce.org

A short snippet from an article in the Economist that links a new hobby of ‘tinkering’ with possible disruption.  This is something that we could easily see a few years back and identified as part of the Shell Technology Futures programme in 2007.  It’s fascinating to see it unfolding:

“The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit,” writes Chris Anderson, the editor of Wired magazine.

It is easy to laugh at the idea that hobbyists with 3D printers will change the world. But the original industrial revolution grew out of piecework done at home, and look what became of the clunky computers of the 1970s. The maker movement is worth watching.

via Monitor: More than just digital quilting | The Economist.

I missed this article in the New York Times when it came out a couple of weeks ago, but it’s well worth a read for a view on innovation and creativity.  The overall theme is that introverts and lone geniuses are often the ones that lead innovation.  It also has insights about working environments that lead on from this

Privacy also makes us productive. In a fascinating study known as the Coding War Games, consultants Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister compared the work of more than 600 computer programmers at 92 companies. They found that people from the same companies performed at roughly the same level — but that there was an enormous performance gap between organizations. What distinguished programmers at the top-performing companies wasn’t greater experience or better pay. It was how much privacy, personal workspace and freedom from interruption they enjoyed. Sixty-two percent of the best performers said their workspace was sufficiently private compared with only 19 percent of the worst performers.

Leading on from this article there’s some informed commentary on the formula for innovation at Fast Company where Fabio Sergio from Frog summarises:

The idea that visionary geniuses are best-poised for radical innovation is simply misleading. Maybe Jobs or Steve Wozniak were visionary geniuses working in uninterrupted solitary isolation … when they weren’t busy working crazy-long hours with the rest of their über-talented crews in the cultural cradle of high-tech innovation.

The answer lies in harnessing positive tension. It’s an art that only a group of talented individuals have proven to be capable of mastering.

Both articles are well worth reading, and highlight the complexity around creating a culture of innovation.

Quick update that has implications for distributed manufacturing, supply chains and last, but not least, intellectual property:

The Pirate Bay, announced a new, legitimate direction yesterday: It’s going to host physibles, downloadable models for constructing 3D objects.

 The Pirate Bay’s move into physibles breaks new ground, since 3D printing is territory copyright lawyers have barely begun to fathom.

A “physible” is a digital plan for an object that can either be designed on a computer or uploaded with a 3D scanner. Those plans can be downloaded and used to assemble real, tangible objects using a 3D printer. Printers are getting more affordable, but they’re still limited by the kinds of materials they can use. But that just means it’s the dawn of this technology, and The Pirate Bay is getting in early. “We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare [parts] for your vehicles,” TPB writes on its blog. “You will download your sneakers within 20 years.”

via Forget MP3s: Soon You’ll Download Your Sneakers From The Pirate Bay.

The topic of serendipity and technology was raised again recently in The Atlantic, with one writer pointing out that the advent of the GPS on phones, combined with services such as Yelp, increase the filtering process that in turn lessens the chance of accidental discovery:

Everywhere you go these days, people are waving their phones around like dowsing devices, trying to find a place to eat, or a subway stop, or a bookstore. Are they finding them? Yes. My question is, what are they not finding? What serendipitous journeys are they not taking?

via GPS, Smartphones, and the Dumbing Down of Personal Navigation – Technology – The Atlantic Cities.

It’s an interesting segue back to my blog post below which outlines three simple ways to increase serendipity in your life.

Ian Leslie has penned a lovely piece for Intelligent Life about serendipity, and why it matters in the digital age.  As a serendipity architect it’s tempting to repost the entire piece, but I’ve pulled the highlights out below:

Google can answer almost anything you ask it, but it can’t tell you what you ought to be asking. Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Centre for Civic Media at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a long-time evangelist for the internet, points out that it doesn’t match the ability of the printed media to bring you information you didn’t know you wanted to know. He calls the front page of a newspaper a “discovery engine”: the lead story tells you something you’re almost certain to be interested in—the imminent collapse of the global economy, or Lady Gaga’s latest choice of outfit—and elsewhere on the page you learn that revolution has broken out in a country of whose existence you were barely aware. Editors with an eye for such things, what Zuckerman calls “curators”, are being superseded by “friends”—people like you, who probably already share your interests and world view—delivered by Facebook. Twitter is better at leading us to the interests of people beyond our social circle, but our tendency to associate with others who think in similar ways—what sociologists call our “value homophily”—means most of us end up with a feed that feels like an extended dinner party.

[...]

…But when everyone can get the same information in more or less the same way, it becomes harder to be original; innovation thrives on the serendipitous collision of ideas. Zuckerman told me about a speech on serendipity he recently gave to an audience of investment managers. As he started on his theme he feared he might lose their attention, but he was pleasantly surprised to find that they hung on every word. It soon became clear why. “In finance, everyone reads Bloomberg, so everyone sees the same information.” Zuckerman said. “What they’re looking for are strategies for finding inspiration from outside the information orbit.”

(via IN SEARCH OF SERENDIPITY | More Intelligent Life.)

So what should you learn from this?  Here’s my top three ways to create serendipity:

1. Browse the magazine rack at airports or train stations before you’re taking a journey.  Pull out a couple of magazines that you’d never normally read and browse them cover to cover.  Seek out articles/photos or advertisements that could have some relevance to your interests or work.  You’d be surprised what can come out of this simple exercise.
2. Change the route you take to work each day.  Look for items of interest along the way  – I find that seeking novelty often sparks new ways of thinking.
3. Mingle at parties. Network at functions.  Start conversations with anyone and everyone.  My preferred technique for doing this starts with looking for the odd person out.  If you’re at an unconference and everyone is wearing jeans and t-shirts, start talking to the guy who came dressed in a suit (this is based on an actual situation where I got totally drawn in to a conversation about religion 2.0).  If everyone is dressed in a suit, talk to the guy in the jeans.

What’s your best tip for creating serendipity?

Booz and Co published a study back in October that’s been on my reading list for a while. It’s had an interesting but not surprising conclusion -spending more on R&D won’t drive results. The most crucial factors are strategic alignment and a culture that supports innovation.

To quote the study:

36 percent of all respondents to our survey admitted that their innovation strategy is not well aligned to their company’s overall strategy, and 47 percent said their company’s culture does not support their innovation strategy. Not surprisingly, companies saddled with both poor alignment and poor cultural support perform at a much lower level than well-aligned companies. In fact, companies with both highly aligned cultures and highly aligned innovation strategies have 30 percent higher enterprise value growth and 17 percent higher profit growth than companies with low degrees of alignment.

via The Global Innovation 1000: Why Culture Is Key.

In October last year the Singapore Government held it’s first ‘Foresight Week.’  I was invited to both the International Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning Symposium, but, more interestingly, also the Foresight Conference.   I make this observation about the latter event because it was organised by a team in the Prime Minister’s Office called the Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF). While the Risk Symposium was attended by a couple of hundred people from around the world, the Foresight Conference was held over three days and had an invite-only audience of about thirty.

Included in this thirty were the likes of Paul Saffo, Peter Schwartz, Jeremy Bentham, Neal Stephenson, Dave Snowden and Ian Goldin. The mix of people, backgrounds and theories in the room was extraordinary, and here’s my long overdue notes from the session (note that it was Chatham House Rules so no specific attributions are made).

The richness of the sessions made for one hell of a mind map, and looking at it now I’m only going to pull out the highlights that caught my attention:

• naturally there was lots of discussion about China: is it too big to govern, how do people participate in China, what will social technology do to the society etc.  One of the more interesting points was that China has never been conquered, and it’s not out of the question to consider a war between China and the USA.  Chinese entrepreneurs also came under examination: apparently 14% of startups in Silicon Valley are “Chinese Chinese” (as opposed to American Chinese. Indian startups are around 17%.
• The USA is distracted at the moment with economic difficulties and foreign wars.  China is not distracted by either.
• There is the potential for a new model of international relations based on continual “co-operation – conflict – competition.”  All three of these could happen at the same time but in different arenas.
• Russia apparently has the highest number if university educated 25 year-olds in the world.
• We are moving to a ‘G0′ world (as opposed to G8) where no single country or group of countries has power.  More interestingly a group called the ‘I8′ – US billionaires who are big philanthropists – have a combined spend that is equivalent to the entire US Foreign Aid programme.

However the overriding theme through the three days was complexity and how it impacts the world today.  The world today is not the world of 50 years ago, however the governance structures that create order in the world today were created when the world was much more stable.  What do governments of the future look like in a world that screams complexity at every turn?

I don’t know the answer to that but would like to finish my notes with two quotes that resonated with me over the week in Singapore:

“Religions are like operating systems for societies”

and

“Risk is the price you pay for opportunity.”

Heston Blumenthal apparently presented recently at the Marketing Society’s 2011 Global Leadership Conference in London with a presentation about pure creativity.  In case you’re wondering who he is, Blumenthal is one of the world’s top chefs.  Coverage of his presentation at the conference mentioned his insights about serendipity:

Blumenthal believes innovation more often than not comes from the places you least expect. “You need to be aware that innovation can happen on any level and ideas can come from anywhere; from seeing a leaf fall from a tree to the most cutting-edge design,” he says. “I am personally at my most creative when interacting with creative people from completely different disciplines to my own, whether that be a perfumier, a scriptwriter, a magician or an experimental psychologist.

via SAY Media / Blog / Heston Blumenthal: Innovation in Unexpected Places.

In New Zealand the invitations have just gone out for Kiwi Foo Camp in February. As always there will be a mix of first timers and old hands attending. I’ve been very privileged to be invited to a few Foo Camps in the States and also in New Zealand, and one of the things that strikes me at every Foo is that for many first-timers the idea of running a session is daunting.

Most recently at Science Foo this year I spent time talking to two people around the bar at the hotel before the  event kicked off. They were first timers, and weren’t even thinking of running sessions.  However they were fascinating to talk to and I encouraged them both to run something.  Both of them ended up doing so, and one person even went so far to kindly email me and thank me:

Thanks for encouraging me to give the seminar.  I felt I was not perfectly prepared for the presentation although adequately prepared for the conversation as led on by excellent questions.

With that in mind I thought it was worth putting a few pointers online to encourage people to run sessions. Here’s my Ten Top Tips for first time Foo attendees:

1. Above all else, think about what you can run a session on before you arrive.  I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen people paralysed by inaction as the session board opens and they left wondering what to write.
2. Once you’ve got a session idea, put it online on the Foo wiki.  Check back and see what comments other people make.  Don’t be afraid to edit your session idea once it’s on the wiki.
3. Check the attendee list to see if there are any potential collaborators attending.  I’ve found that people are very receptive to the idea of helping to run a session.
4. Don’t think that you have to have an hour of material to run a session.  The best sessions I’ve seen involve someone talking for about fifteen minutes and then throwing the session open to discussion.
5. When you actually arrive at Foo spend some time talking to people about your session.  It’s far more interesting (and fun) if you can drum up some attendees by doing little sales pitches.
6. When you post your session idea on the board, make sure it is catchy enough to attract attention, but not too over the top that it becomes worthy of a tabloid headline.
7. If you can run a session without using slides, then do so.  If you really feel the need to use PowerPoint then show pictures, not bullet points (the only good use for a bullet point is to shoot the presenter).
8. The success of your session is not dictated by the quantity of attendees, but by the quality of the conversation.
9. Don’t be intimidated if people leave your session half way through.  Others may join half way through.  It’s not a sign of something wrong, it’s just that there’s so much on that people may be splitting their time across a number of sessions.

What’s your top tip that could be number ten?

It’s been a busy year on the publishing front.  Firstly there was Really Bad Workshops (and how to avoid them) which I self published mid-year, and now there’s Sustaining Innovation.

It’s a collection of insights from various innovation initiatives around the world.  I wrote a chapter on the Shell GameChanger Technology Futures programme, and co-authored it with my colleagues Tim Jones and Leo Roodart, the recently retired head of GameChanger.

It’s on pre-order here:

Amazon.com: Sustaining Innovation: Collaboration Models for a Complex World (Innovation, Technology, and Knowledge Management)

UPDATE: You can now read the chapter online here.

This is a fascinating and highly relevant study about the psychological constructs that people use when engaging with complex and urgent issues.  The paper has just been published in the American Psychological Association’s  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

A summary extract of the paper states:

The less people know about important complex issues such as the economy, energy consumption and the environment, the more they want to avoid becoming well-informed.

And the more urgent the issue, the more people want to remain unaware,

Through a series of five studies conducted in 2010 and 2011 with 511 adults in the United States and Canada, the researchers described “a chain reaction from ignorance about a subject to dependence on and trust in the government to deal with the issue.”

In one study, participants who felt most affected by the economic recession avoided information challenging the government’s ability to manage the economy. However, they did not avoid positive information, the study said. This study comprised 197 Americans with a mean age of 35 (111 women and 89 men), who had received complex information about the economy and had answered a question about how the economy is affecting them directly.

To test the links among dependence, trust and avoidance, researchers provided either a complex or simple description of the economy to a group of 58 Canadians, mean age 42, composed of 20 men and 38 women. The participants who received the complex description indicated higher levels of perceived helplessness in getting through the economic downturn, more dependence on and trust in the government to manage the economy, and less desire to learn more about the issue.

via Ignorance is Bliss When it Comes to Challenging Social Issues.

In Switzerland a tiny village of 80 people spent just CHF10,000 and gained over CHF2.4million of media exposure from a very simple marketing campaign.  I love this story as it shows that you don’t need to spend the bank in order to get great results – often it’s the reverse.  Limited resources force you to think more creatively and the results can far exceed what you’d create if you had an unlimited budget.  Enjoy the video…

Jung von Matt/Limmat: Obermutten. A little village goes global. – YouTube.

Here’s a great video about how a large corporation has created a nimble innovation lab that’s free from the shackles of bureaucracy that normally stifle innovation.  The  full story is here  but watch the video first:

File this under “the future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”

Using the viewfinders of their smartphones, gamers can view paranormal activity layered over their surrounding environment and join a massive multi-player game that requires completing location-based missions and casting spells on real-world locations. Missions are generated in any real world location, asking players to complete challenges in order advance the story line, gain new spells, and earn status points. The game can be played anywhere in the world, enabling multiple players to compete and collaborate in the global battle between good and evil.

Read more about this fascinating combination of technologies in an interview with the developers at PSFK here: Game Creates Worldwide Zombie Hunt Using Augmented Reality.

This post is for attendees of the workshop for Leadership NZ on 28 Oct.  It’s a list of resources that may be of use when thinking about different ways to think about the future, and how to tell your story.  Firstly, here’s a list of organisations that think about the future, and share that thinking:

• Shell energy scenarios can be accessed here.
• The Institute for the Future in California publishes a wide range of information, including it’s Maps of the Decade.
• The team from the Ministry of Trade and Industry in the Singapore Government do some outstanding work.  they blog here and publish in a range of places, including here.
• The Sustainable Future Institute has a robust and fascinating series of publications that address the future of NZ, and you can access them via the website here.

With regards to telling rich stories that resonate, here’s a list of the links I referenced in my presentation:

• Dave Snowden mentions his see-attend-act model (if you Google it you will find more details)
• The website for the excellent book Made to Stick is here, along with some great free downloads.
• The Singapore MTI group have put one of their outstanding publications online here.
• Last, but not least, is the NZ PPTA animated video on YouTube.

Crowdsourcing innovation internally can be extremely productive for large organisations. Over the last year I’ve started to work very closely with Spigit – a US company that has the leading tool in the innovation crowdsourcing market. Last week the Wall Street Journal had a nice summary of why organisations are buying into the idea of innovation from within:

It’s often the employees—rather than outside consultants—who know a company’s products and processes best. According to management experts, many of the most innovative companies tend to solicit ideas from staff throughout the organization, not just the executive ranks.

But it’s often hard for rank and file workers to be heard: Research has found that the average U.S. employee’s ideas, big or small, are implemented only once every six years, says Alan G. Robinson, a professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Now though, more companies are realizing the value of their workers’ input. Spurring the process are so-called innovation-management programs such as BrainBank Inc., InnoCentive Inc. and Spigit Inc., which help companies set up online idea-submissions systems in which employees can enter, comment and vote on ideas.

Spigit was also the subject of another article in Canada, which referenced an airline implementing the software.  The interesting thing about this example is that it mentions the return on investment from just two ideas:

WestJet has implemented a number of employees ideas, including getting rid of ticket jackets – which saves about $700,000 a year – and making the employee standby travel line automated, rather than going through the call centre. Tilbury says that reduces costs by about $1 million a year and freed up the centre by removing about 18 per cent of its calls.

You can read more about the Wall Street article here and the full story from Canada here.

The wonderful London gaming studio Six to Start is working on a project that has been funded by Kickstarter. It’s a game called Zombies, Run!, and is an augmented audio running game for the iPhone, iPod Touch and Android that challenges users to rebuild civilization after a zombie apocalypse by completing location-specific tasks while running in the real world.

Users cue the app and don headphones to collect medicine, ammo, batteries, and spare parts which can be used to build up and expand their base — all while getting orders, clues, and a story through their headphones. Missions last around 20-30 minutes and can be played in any city. The platform additionally records the distance, time, pace, and calories burned during all runs.

This is a wonderful mix of many interesting trends: crowdsourced funding, augmented reality, and mobile computing combining to create a game with real world goals.

via Augmented Audio Game Spurs Fitness By Immersing Runners In Zombie Infested World @PSFK.

Just quickly, there’s a great short read on strategy at the London Business School Business Strategy Review.  It’s titled “So, you think you have a strategy” and here’s the highlights:

I often wonder why such bright CEOs and their deputies miss the most basic necessities of cogent and executable strategy. They fail because they:

• Are not really making choices
• Are stuck in the status quo
• Have no relationship to value creation
• Are mistaking objectives for strategy
• Keep it a secret

The full article is here.

John Hagel III and John Seely Brown have a nice, readable piece on HBR today about how to actively increase serendipity in your life.  Their five tips are:

1. Audit and re-shape your social network.

2. Revise your conference calendar.

3. Get more out of your social gatherings.

4. Act out diverse facets of yourself.

5. Share an experience in an unfamiliar situation

My favourite tip is number one:

Scan the periphery of your social network and explore those “weak ties” — the people you may have met briefly and who come from very different environments. Who are some of the most diverse people on the periphery of your network that you might benefit from getting to know better? How could you use online social networks to reach out to people you have never even met but who are engaged in arenas adjacent to your own interests? Each week, resolve to introduce yourself to a friend of a friend on an online network who seems to be the most interesting and most different from you.

via Five Tips to Break Through Your Filter(s) – John Hagel III and John Seely Brown – John Hagel III and John Seely Brown – Harvard Business Review.