The Tao of Innovation

Sexual Response, Motivation and Innovation

Moses Ma — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 05:36:14 +0000

Where exactly does the motivation for innovation come from? Is the act of inventing buried deep within our evolutionary context? Is there an "invention gene" that makes certain people better at inventing fire, steam engines, iPhones and social network engines? How are the brain functions for creativity and procreativity - aka sexual response - similar?

More importantly, how can one use the answers to these questions, to find a way to achieve a state of mastery in innovation, so ideation becomes a meditation, like for a zen master at the archery range?

These questions are difficult to answer because in spite of the vast research performed on the subject, motivation is not well understood. Why? Because to understand motivation is to understand human nature itself. However, these questions are vital to ask, because some understanding of human nature is the prerequisite to effective employee motivation in the workplace and therefore the key to effective management and leadership.

The simplest way to understand the current understanding of motivation is to relate the Theory X/Y/Z model.

Traditional theory X is attributable to Frederick Winslow Taylor, who invented the practice of scientific management. It's pretty reductionist - according to his system, a worker's motivation is solely determined by pay, and therefore management need not consider psychological or social aspects of work. In essence, scientific management bases human motivation wholly on extrinsic rewards and discards the idea of intrinsic fulfillment. As a result, theory X assumes that people are lazy; they hate work to the extent that they avoid it; they have no ambition, wish to take no initiative and usually avoid taking any responsibility; and all they want is security. To get them to do any work at all, they must be rewarded, coerced, intimidated and punished. This is the so-called 'stick and carrot' philosophy of management.

Fortunately, modern management theory has evolved beyond this initial model. In one of the most elaborate studies on employee motivation, involving 40,000 employees, the Minneapolis Gas Company sought to determine what their potential employees desire most from a job. This study was carried out during a 20 year period from 1945 to 1965 and revealed that most considered security, not pay, as the highest rated factor. The next three factors were advancement, the type of work, and to be at a company they could be proud of, indicating that financial gain is not the deepest motivator.

This led to the development of theory Y, in which psychologist Douglas McGregor proposed that people prefer to earn rewards not so much in cash payments, but with the freedom to master challenging work by themselves. Thus, the managers job is to dovetail the human desire for self-improvement into the organization's need for maximum productive efficiency. The basic objectives of both are therefore met and with imagination and sincerity, enormous potential can be tapped.

Following successful results emanating from experiments to validate Theory Y, Abraham Maslow developed Theory Z. Maslow totally rejected the reductionist approach of Theory X, and became the founder of the humanistic school, or the "third force", which revolves around the meaning and significance of human work.

Maslow's theory of human motivation is based on a hierarchy of human needs, that span from physiological needs (lowest), through love and esteem, and all the way to self-actualization needs (highest). The highest state of self-actualization is characterized by integrity, responsibility, magnanimity, simplicity and naturalness.

Now, how does all of this relate to innovation?

Innovation potential could be considered to be a function of inventiveness and motivation, thus:

Innovation = f(inventiveness, motivation)

Both of these factors have intrinsic and extrinsic components. For example, inventiveness is partially based on inherent creativity, which you are either blessed with or not, but that innate potential can be realized and expanded by education and training, which is externally driven. Similarly, motivation itself is based on an inner capacity of indefatigability, as well as external motivators like compensation, career advancement, and so on.

Incidentally, one clever external motivational tool is Instant Motivator, a service which sends text message reminders to fight negative thoughts (eg, ruminating thoughts that kindle depression) with positive thoughts can create new neural pathways in your brain. Those new positive pathways now have a chance to dominate in your brain, due to the personal coach in your pocket. The company notes that effects can be seen in as little as a few weeks.

However, it's intrinsic motivation is the most fascinating part of the puzzle. It's based on rewards inherent to a task or activity itself - the enjoyment of solving a puzzle or the love of playing a piano or even sexual pleasure, for example. One is said to be intrinsically motivated when engaging in an activity "with no apparent reward to the external observer except for the activity itself".

My personal theory is that invention is an organic and biological act. And like all other biological activities that release endorphins into the brain, there are distinct phases associated with that act. For example, the sexual reaction cycle can be divided into four general phases: the arousal phase, the plateau phase, the orgasm phase and the relaxation phase. The act of inventing something should probably follow the same process and structure as sexual response.

Thus, for innovators, the arousal phase starts with that first inkling of an idea, that germinates and itches in your mind. The plateau phase consists working possible solutions in your mind, constructing a mental map of the solution in your mind. This is where you work it in your head, over and over, in and out, back and forth... until you reach the Eureka! phase and start shouting.

Finally, there's the relaxation phase... until you realize that with your invention, world domination just might be possible.

More than just an analogy

But seriously, it's actually more than just a funny analogy. The brain works the way it works for a reason. Neurohormones require time and a certain activation process to work, as well as stimulation and climax processes... followed by a refractory period before you can do it again. There are clearly similarities between creation and procreation, and the similarities are so similar, you wonder why psychologists and neuroscientists haven't looked at this sooner. So this leads us to ask, what other similarities can we derive between the processes of say, invention and sexuality?

Well, first off, both are pretty fun. And when you come up with a great idea, there's that sweet burst of pleasure, when your brain is suddenly awash in norepinephrine. This little carrot is clearly an evolutionary adaptation that insures we use our brains regularly. Also, it usually turns out more fun if you don't take yourself too seriously. Those who can laugh while doing it, usually enjoy themselves more and do a better job of it too. And finally, if you're innovating as a team, communication is vital if you want to achieve that simultaneous Eureka! But what else? How far can we push this analogy?

I believe that a lot about the art of innovation can be learned by studying the art of tantra. Yeah, you read that right. Think about it, who is more likely to really understand sex, tantric masters (like Sting, reputedly) - who are able to make love for eight hours at a stretch - or some university professor armed with a plethysmograph?

However, there aren't too many places to study tantra in depth, online. New age spirituality sites like Belief.net and intent.com tend to shy away from sexuality, and offer only a few random blog posts. I think that the best source for teachers, discussion and case histories is probably OneTantra.com, which is attempting to become the definitive portal for tantra education online. [Disclosure: I'm a minority stockholder in this company... but that's where I got this idea.]

If you enter this tantric learning community/social network, you'll find that tantra practitioners generally pursue a penultimate, ecstatic sexual experience so meaningful, that it is eventually imbued with a sense of deep meaning and spirituality. It's as if the sexual response becomes so expanded, that practitioners begin to have religious experiences during lovemaking. Another factor that's interesting: for these tantra masters, it's not about racking up notches on the bedpost, it's really about being present and in clear communication. These tantric practitioners are like Zen archers, seeking a state of deep meditation and connectedness through sexuality. But hitting that, ahem, bullseye every time.

This has always made sense to me, because most of the great inventors and innovators I've met are kind of like Zen masters - deeply present, great communicators of vision, and the reason they're into it isn't for the money- it's because the pursuit has transcended to an art, to a passion, to a priesthood. When doing their work, great masters of invention and innovation are usually deep in a state of play, deep in a state of flow and peak performance, and deep in a state of presence. All the neurohormones are flowing at full speed. Ideation becomes meditation. Brainstorming becomes an ecstatic dance.

Post Theory Z Models for Motivation

This new approach might lead us to a new perspective - a post Theory Z view of motivation - specifically for stimulating innovation. Instead of using carrots and sticks and focusing on the extrinsic factors, perhaps management theorists and psychologists should look at the neurophysiology of invention and creativity. Maybe instead of coffee and donuts, maybe we should stock the fridge with smart drinks? Maybe we should encourage acupuncture, qigong and meditation to keep the hormones and internal energies flowing? Maybe we should encourage innovation as an inner pursuit, for expanding the intrinsic potential for creativity and inventiveness? Maybe we should look at kundalini as the biological basis for genius? Would this lead to a new Theory Omega for motivation? It's like a friend of mine says, "The most interesting areas are where science and wuu wuu collide."

With this in mind, here are some initial practices that can help move your culture toward one where innovation is becomes an inner game, an inner pursuit, a meditation for product breakthroughs. Six initial practices toward a martial arts of business creativity and innovation:

1. Value Every Employee's Ideas
Managers who are aggressive about eliciting the ideas of their staff will find that getting everyone involved as innovators will have an amplification effect overall on innovation at the company. This weaves a tighter, more cohesive, more loyal organization.

2. Teach Everyone How to Innovate
Managers should make it a clear mandate in everyone's work requirements to take a hard look at the overall operation and make recommendations for improvements. But at the same time, they should provide meaningful training in innovation skills to everyone.

3. Pervasive Customer Insight
Another mechanism managers can use to elicit great suggestions is to have every employee participate in an ethnographic expedition to see customers using your product, in the field. This will increase agility from the grass roots level.

4. Give People Time to Think
If at possible, give people time to think up ideas. The bottom line is that you can't do any quality thinking if you're, for example, in meetings non-stop. (One way to create more time is to look at how you run meetings, and create a "smart meetings" culture, that minimize expensive meeting time. The average number of meetings per day, for the typical middle manager is three. What's your average?) Dedicate that time saved to quality thinking time, or even better... quality time for NOT THINKING, like during figure drawing, yoga or tai chi classes.

5. Reward Energy with Energy
It is also important to find a way to reward or recognize employees on an ongoing basis, whose suggestions help improve the operation. One option is to establish a Killer Idea Award and give the recipient a customized certificate, as well as a small prize. But better yet, instead of only cash and recognition, energize them by maybe giving them access to the innovation lab, or more thinking time, like Google did with that free day every two weeks.

6. Don't Forget the Implementation
A crucial part of this equation is the actual implementation of the great ideas generated by employees. Without follow-through, the organization simply ends up with a long list of unused suggestions - and an even longer list of frustrated employees. And put the person who suggested a great idea in charge of the implementation. The initiator of an innovative idea usually has a sense of ownership and will usually do whatever it takes to see their idea become successful.

If you have thoughts about a new theory of motivation, please contact me, it's a fascinating subject!

Innovation Loves a Crisis

Moses Ma — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 05:46:26 +0000

In 1970, about 200,000 mi from Earth and in the lonely dark emptiness of space, the number two oxygen tank of Apollo 13 exploded. A fault in the electrical system. A radio transmission by astronaut Lovell, "Houston, we've had a problem," started off the most dramatic demonstration of crisis innovation in the 20th century. Under great hardship - and with limited power, loss of cabin heat and a shortage of potable water - astronauts, flight directors and ground crews raced against time and the odds, to bring them safely home. Considerable ingenuity under extreme pressure was required for the safe return.

One of the major issues they faced in this crisis was a shortage of lithium hydroxide (LiOH), for scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air supply. In the landing module - where the crew was marooned - the internal stock of LiOH canisters would not support the crew until return, and the remainder was stored in the descent stage, out of reach. In a stunning display of raw brain power, the scientists in the ground crew rapidly improvised a way to use a different LiOH canister by drawing air through them with a suit return hose. The astronauts called the jury-rigged device "the mailbox", in what was a stunning demonstration that innovation is amplified during a crisis.

Evolutionary Basis for Innovation

I believe there's an evolutionary reason for the amplification of innovation during crises. There's a term in neurophysiology called plasticity. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's capacity to modify its organization, pertaining to the acquisition of new skills and learning. Several decades ago, the consensus was that the neocortical areas were immutable after a certain stage of development. However, recent studies determined that environmental changes could alter cognition by modifying neuron connections in adults. What's more, it was determined that stress is the key factor in boosting plasticity, and learning, in the nervous system.

In other words, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. The brain says to itself: "Oh, my survival is at risk, so I'd better start thinking and learning really hard right now." It's only when you have skin in the game that you'll really focus and learn.

This lesson was obviously learned by Jong-Yong Yun, the CEO of Samsung, who is building a culture of perpetual crisis at Samsung Electronics, which has become the worlds largest consumer electronics company. As an innovator, Samsung racked up more patents than Intel, spent an astounding 9% of revenue on R&D, and employs around 27,000 researchers, 40% of its global workforce.

Yun relentlessly admonishes his team that disaster is just around the corner - markets could implode overnight, competitors can catch up, China can grab the electronics commodity market, that success breeds complacency and gives birth to the possibility of failure. The only way to survive is to succeed, to achieve both cost reduction and product innovation.

"Innovation loves a crisis" isn't a saying to Jong-Yong Yun, it's a mantra.

Another example is Nokia. This is because the company had to be innovative to survive, like an elk in the icy winter or a Finnish resistance fighter undercover. The company has reinvented itself four times, first as a manufacturer of boots, then televisions, then computers, and finally mobile phones. As a result of this, the company is very serious about innovation, simply because they realize that their survival depends upon that next killer product line. As a result of this, innovativeness has been written into the DNA of the organization.

31 Flavors of Innovation

Most innovation experts tell you that there are two kinds of innovation, incremental innovation and radical innovation... which are now called "little i" and "Big I" in the innovation biz.

But there's also process vs product innovation. There's white space vs blue ocean innovation. There's disruptive research. Rapid execution. Business model innovation. Service innovation. Sales innovation. Marketing innovation. And at every company, there are probably several different flavors or approaches to innovation, the combination of which defines the very character of that organization.

However, the most interesting flavor of innovation is one without a name. It's the aha! that saves your behind exactly when things start falling apart. It may not be the perfect idea, but rapidly executed, it's the one that saves your bacon. I'd like to give this form of innovation a name... emergency innovation. It's 911 for management, when you tell your go-to team that everything is riding on them.

This is Sparta

Quite frankly, emergency innovation requires nerves of steel. Let's consider humanity's finest example of courage in the face of despair - the Battle of Thermopylae. Maybe you've seen the movie 300? You know, it's the one about the three hundred Spartan warriors who held off the army of King Xerxes of Persian in 480 BC at a narrow pass by the sea. The army of Xerxes was so large - estimated by some scholars to be as large as a million soldiers - his soldiers would drink rivers dry. When his archers let fly, the arrows would block out the sun. To this, a Spartan warrior named Dieneces retorted, "Excellent, then we will be able to fight in the shade." This small band of 300 warriors held off the army of Xerxes long enough to allow Greece the time it needed to marshal the forces necessary to win the larger war.

Now, imagine your company under the pressure of the worst recession in decades (I guess that one doesn't require too much imagination). Sales projections look ugly. Your customers are going under. Another wave of layoffs is imminent. What does the rank and file do? Get scared and demotivated? Dust off the resumes just in case? Start drinking heavily?

Everyone talks about corporate antibodies that resist innovation, but what about corporate white blood cells? The ones that will defend you from your worst dangers? What have you done for them? What programs have you created to allow courage and innovation to rise up? Imagine - what if - your three hundred most courageous employees rose up, and formed a cadre of engineers and product marketers, to say, "we know there's a salary and hiring freeze, but aren't afraid -- we want to help, we want to work nights and weekends, we want to create breakthrough innovations, we want to find new ways to accelerate sales... we want to bring the battle to them!"

What if your three hundred best and brightest said to you, "when the economy hits us this hard, it only makes us want to do is hit back harder!"

Now, wouldn't that moment choke you up, just a little bit?

This is why we say that the core of innovation is courage.

I have slowly learned the truth that the primary ingredient in innovation isn't brains, but guts. As a result, we added motivational exercises to our workshops to help our clients overcome deeply embedded psychological fears - group exercises like firewalking, walking over broken glass and breaking boards with bare hands. The psycho-emotional breakthrough possible by combining Tony Robbins style firewalking with world class innovation should be breath-taking.

Sure, we maintain the traditional components of innovation consulting, like ideation skills training and collaboration software applications, but it was clear to us that the next level of tenacity, teamwork and creativity can be achieved only by allowing courage to rise and be proven, in a way that unlocks the power of the human mind and the potential of the human spirit. It's the kind of courage that doesn't lose heart when you hear the words, "Houston, we have a problem."

[Note: a special thanks to Kirsten Sandberg, who provided the inspiration for this article.]

Wrapping It Up: The Psychology of Twitter

Moses Ma — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:35:20 +0000

I promised a number of Twitter users who befriended me that I'd share the findings of the survey I launched about twitter usage. And so, I thought I'd wrap up this three part article on the Psychology of Twitter by discussing the results of the survey and sharing a few final observations about this new modality for compressed communication.

Here is the my first article on the social phenomenon of Twitter and here is the followup article that dealt with the neurophysiological aspect of twittering.

So, let's talk about the survey. We received 63 responses, with people contributing major essays about twitter usage. So it's more of an in-depth ethnographic study than a longitudinal study. Of these users, 83% identified themselves as moderate to heavy users of Twitter. One user said, "I spurt, so I go from heavy to moderate usage - sometimes my life is more interesting than others :D" The average respondent has about 1000 followers, and has tweeted about 1500 times. The most popular tweeter had 17,000 followers.

Now, as to reasons for twittering... the number one reason - stated by 56% of the respondents - was because it's fun. This was followed by 50% saying they do it to meet new people, and 44% saying they do it to stay in touch with friends. And a full 42% use it as a marketing channel. And a small number are using it to track keyword trends or twitter meme (aka twemes). Using the # function, people are looking for others for professional and non-professional colleagues to network with. Another user stated, "I'm self employed and often work from home. it's my virtual water cooler." Yet another heavy user says, "Twitter has completely changed my life. I've found new friends thanks twitter, I've found several jobs thanks twitter." Another user agrees that Twitter is not a bad channel for finding work, "I found a client through Twitter for the first time. I now get many job offers a week." A third user shared a sentiment that captures the value of Twitter quite well, "It's the best anti depressant on the market. And it's free!!"

Since I brought up the idea of a Maslovian hierarchy around Twitter, I thought I'd ask where on the pyramid our users were playing. The primary impacts were entertainment & creativity (in the high 70s), followed by "gaining a sense of belonging", self-actualization and livelihood (I expect this means all the savvy twitter marketers out there). Interestingly, finding love ranked VERY low. Some examples include, "My best friends are on twitter. Every time I need advice, help, suggestions or to inform them what Im gonna do, I do it that way." An artist/designer shares, "When I needed positive feedback on one of my new designs (I was at the point that I was about to give up), I asked the opinion of my followers, and I was met with immense positive reactions. The design was a success!" This shows that the difficult path of the artist can be supported by community.

In terms of self esteem, one user shared, "When I discovered that I was a total stranger's 'first follow', it totally boosted my self esteem!" She continues to share, rather poignantly, "I do sometimes use Twitter as emotional anesthesia: When my life as a stay at home mom to 6 children under 10 has its truly absurd moments, it can help to tweet a general cry of despair. It helps me to step back, and not take everything so seriously." Another shares, "When people retweet my blog posts or put me on a #followfriday, I feel very validated." It's amazing how people interpret the number of followers as an indication of social status, sometimes, as a validation of yourself in life.

In terms of assuaging despair, one user shared something quite interesting, "When my grandmother died, my friends sent supportive tweets to me. It was easier - emotionally - reading their messages, than it would have been receiving phone calls from them." That's something I never considered... that certain forms of communication are emotionally less trying than others.

For me, the most interesting responses were, "Twitter gives me a vague sense of myself as an entity who's left a trail in time and space", and "I look at Twitter as a casual diary or log or journal, providing a narrative for my life." There's definitely some existential angst being relieved by twittering, as it provides a way to validate yourself and type into the ether, "I am! I exist! I like yogurt!"

So that brings us to it. I asked people to share their deepest philosophical insights about Twitter, and they came through. My fave was "Twitter is so revealing. It's addictive, frivolous and exposes our depth (or lack of it) in the space of 140*infinity characters." Very Zen. Another advises, "Twitter is like an enormous cocktail party. Just don't barge in and start talking about yourself!" Another: "Jung was right about the collective consciousness! Perhaps not in the ways he'd dreamt, though." One user shared a particularly pithy review, "Twitter is simply a communication tool that greatly decreases the friction that time, place and meeting contributes to communication. Its primary contribution to social change is the unpredictable transmission patterns and velocities of ideas, moods and memes through the social network."

Here's another brilliant observation: "I have two philosophical observations... First, Twitter serves a vital individualistic function of announcing an open communication channel. The act of twittering, regardless of content, communicates that this person is ready to engage. The maintenance of open channels, or awareness of when they are closed, can be an overlooked aspect of communication. Second, with each tweet by each new user, we are learning to become a more transparent culture. I used to maintain separate identities in separate circles, but my stress levels went way down when I just started representing myself as a single identity and learning to share. Twitter is an excellent tool for this because of the opt-out, asymmetrical nature of the follow network."

A Myers-Briggs Certified Administrator shared, "I believe a lot of people in the Twitterverse are not behaving according to their type in the social media world. This forum allows those who do not normally openly network or get out in larger social audiences to feel completely comfortable in the privacy of their home or office by themselves to connect in ways they wouldn't in person. Many of us who DO enjoy the face to face networking and exposure are struggling with social media because we want the face to face connection as much as we want the networking." An astute observation.

Some negative comments were interesting. For example, "Bottom line... narcissistic all over the board! It's not so much that everyone has issues and comes to twitter. It's a very strange phenomenon that is occurring in this arena." Or this contribution: "Lifestreaming is not my thing; I don't care what every celeb and his dog had for breakfast. I enjoy the intellectual community of like-minded individuals who can add insight and material to my writing and teaching." Here's one more: "Twitter is yet another technology that has the potential to distract us and leave us less time for deep thinking and deep relationships. Google may not be 'making us stoopid' (to quote Nicholas Carr) but Twitter could."

But one user summed it up perfectly, "I think we are all trying to organize the new information age. We want to establish our online existence, and all these social networking sites are helping us do that. This will pass and one day become just part of life. We will all be given a place on the internet at birth, and all our virtual world will be connected at that place. We all have to express ourselves, in one way or another. Currently people do so mostly by pretending to be social marketing experts, or by showing their cleverness in finding cool websites made by others. But soon we will have art and music and other kind of expressions more easily coming through."

Finally, there was a cute comment in response to my proposition that each of us acting like a single neuron in humanity's brain, slowly struggling toward a great awakening. The respondent shared, "I haven't been using Twitter for very long, but am starting to feel like a well-connected neuron enjoying the ability to selectively develop synapses in a virtual global cortex." Funny!

I'll finish up this three part article by sharing that I believe that the sense of meaning and meaninglessness are actually internally generated mental states. In fact, the sense of meaning may be an evolutionary adaptation to increase our survival. The Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl (1905-1997) based his life's work on the belief that humans were able to find meaning even in the most horrific circumstances. Frankl was incarcerated in Auschwitz during World War II, where he observed that fellow inmates with a developed sense of spiritual meaning were far more likely to survive. His work tells us that without this sense of meaning, our capacity to withstand profound trauma is significantly diminished.

For example, why is a sunset beautiful? Why does a redder sunset trigger a sense of meaning and beatitude? I believe that it's because we are carbon-based machines that generate meaning. Currently, research is being done to explore the involvement of endorphins in depression, in how they might be involved in detachment, dispassion, and emotional numbness. Where is the research on the neurophysiology of contentment, peace and fulfillment? What is the effect of elevated oxytocin? Perhaps it's released during childbirth to imbue a sense of great meaning on both parents to help insure the survival of infants? And how's it all fit with peak experiences, kundalini, states of samadhi?

So if someone tweets, "I'm at Trader Joe's and remembering that I LOVE greek yogurt", it could seem pretty banal to most, or it could appear as a beautiful haiku or an amazing koan to others.

Try this experiment with me... let's tweak our mindstate around internet interactivity and the generation of the sense of meaning... just keep reading and open yourself to the possibility of changing your mindstate at will, as we enter a guided visualization...

When I see a singing bird, I can feel the beauty of life. Now see that twitter tweets are simply the songs of this odd and beautiful species called homo sapien. Now imagine the millions of twitter users, each in their own beautiful and tragic and tearful and happy road of "pain and then no pain". Let this feeling of beauty multiply, like maybe after years of traveling - you arrive at a place in time and space, so you can experience an entire rainforest of rare birds in song.

In such a state of techno-satori, all we can see is beauty, so every tweet is beautiful. Even the poor spammers trying to put food on the table - we feel their desperation during this recession, and our response is compassion. And now, it all begins to hold an increasing level of meaning. Or rather, we are now creating the hormones that generate a sense of meaning, and inject this sense of meaning into every tweet, and we feel greater and greater respect for every tweeting bird in the forest of humanity. With every tweet you read, you allow yourself to feel the complete totality of humanity within that person behind the tweet. Their pains, their joys. Open yourself to respecting and loving each and every profile picture in Twitter you see. Be the Dalai Lama. Let agape or bliss or wisdom overwhelm you and flow that divine love and respect to every being on your Tweetdeck screen, to every being using Twitter, to every being on the Internet, to every being in the world.

At this point, something funny happens... this sense of meaning turns around, and finally, I am able to see the meaning and beauty in what I am writing right now, right here, with these words - as I finally see that I am not an observer, but a participant in this immense beauty that is life. Now let that sense of meaning turn around again, and see your own meaning as you participate in the amazing twittering dance of life by ten billon neurons in your brain, by ten billion people on this planet, by ten billion planets with sentient life in our universe, by ten billion universes that occur over and over as the universe implodes and big bangs every 100 billion years or so.

It's all so incredibly beautiful! You are beautiful! Tweet away.

Thanks for reading this series of articles about Twitter! Next week, I'll return to discussing the psychology of innovation...

And I apologize that I wasn't able to provide @eddresses for the quotes, due to the limitations of my survey software. So if you'd like to take credit for your quote, just add a comment and supply your twitter address for people to follow! And thanks for participating!

More on the Psychology of Twitter

Moses Ma — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 03:10:44 +0000

In my last article on the social phenomenon of Twitter, I described its information stream as a river of human consciousness. Following this analogy, I found that most people simply dip a toe in to gauge the tweetgeist, but I can't help notice that advanced users are pretty happy out there, swimming in the deep part of the twitter waters. New Twitter user @maartenelout describes a typical beginner's experience, "10 minutes a day max to scan what's been floating by, find interesting blog posts and leave a tweet, more than that drives me nuts..." Amrita Grace, who hasn't even ventured into the Twitter waters yet, remarks, "I have not dared to go there yet......I'm concerned about the time suck.....scary!"

However, advanced swimmers, like @DougH, sing a different, more confident tune. I asked Doug how he managed to collect over 13,000 followers and generate over 20,000 posts. He notes, "I started out be following people I knew directly. Then from there I looked at follower lists of people who were in PR and marketing like me, to find like-minded people to network with. At one point - somewhere around 300-700 followers - it hit a kind of critical mass, and I didn't need to actively seek out followers anymore. The network grew by itself from there. It took about two years to get to where I am now, investing about an hour a day twittering."

But why go to so much trouble when it's such a significant "time suck"? Well, according to research by @indymike, Twitter users who leverage it as a marketing channel experience an average 4% clickthrough rate. Now, compared to the .1% clickthrough rate on FaceBook, you can see why so many PR and marketing types are rushing to Twitter. It's well over an order of magnitude more effective for marketing and promotion. Plus, it's still free, so it's the new digital land grab. Get your forty cyber-acres while you can!

My Experiment

I decided to jump in and see what it might be like in the deeper part of the river - sink or swim. Well, the current is pretty strong out there. However, Twitter usage manages its own learning curve by matching the numbers of followers and followees you have. A newbie, like me, would normally have only a few dozen follows, generating a post every few minutes. But a heavy twitter user, with 10,000 follows and followers, might be processing something like a post per second. It's a bewildering rate of information; most twitter users don't even use the concept of backlog, like in email.

Following some trusted tweet advisors, I installed Tweetdeck - sort of a Bloomberg for trading tweets. With this power tool and two large monitors, I was able to follow and keep up with a half dozen simultaneous conversations... all while monitoring email, Facebook and trying to get work done on the side. The effect is quite mesmerizing and I fell into a peak experience of social networking.

A few empirical observations about swimming in the deep end:

First, it's genuinely an addictive process. I used to design videogames, so I'm pretty good at tuning gameplay "action"... Twitter is definitely designed to encourage addictive usage. When I designed games, we would measure eyeblink rates to see if the player was entering a state of "flow" during gameplay. If the blink rate dropped precipitously after a few minutes of play, the game would most likely be a hit. And if you test a heavy twitter user in the same way, I'll bet that a similar thing is happening - a drop in the blink rate, some pupil dilation, and a surge in neuro-adrenaline.

Second, Twitter differs from regular chatrooms and instant messaging because it removes the idea of boundaries. In a chatroom, you can see that you're in a room titled "Golf in the Kingdom" and there are 25 people. So you can get a sense of the crowd and subject matter. In Twitter, no such virtual boundaries exist... you're simply talking into the stream, and anyone at all might talk back. The more followers you have, the greater the likelihood that somebody's listening, but it's much more like CB radio than a cocktail party. You simply don't know who's listening or might reply... and there are absolutely no moderators out there.

Third, on the Internet, you run into all sorts of interesting people. But on Twitter, you do it so much faster. Once I installed Tweetdeck, I only spent four hours twittering in high speed, but managed to interact with perhaps ten times the normal number of people I'd expect to run into via chatrooms. The innovation guru John Kao once told me that serendipity is what makes innovation go faster... and often wished for a serendipity pedal that he could step on to increase random connections at companies. Twitter is serendipity on steroids.

I started my experiment tuning into the #haiku channel. @twitterhaiku wrote:

twitter followers...
from all over the planet...
how cool! hello, all!

Another entry, a bit more prosaic but reminiscent of the typical tweet, by @keithvassallo:

went to the movies...
saw monsters vs aliens...
nacho cheese was cold

I contributed one:

I sit and twitter
talking to everybody
and nobody too

This is cool. Kind of fun. Then I watched what was happening in #innovation. (Not much.) And then I chitchatted with people at random, as they flowed by. Eventually, I ran into a very intellectually stimulating woman named Alexa, and chatted with her while allowing myself to feel a little smitten for a bit. Yeah, this is definitely entertaining.

Then I ran into a glitch. As a newbie, I had mixed up reply with direct reply. It's a twitter faux pas equivalent to leaving the microphone on after a speech. A couple of kind souls explained what I was doing wrong and after clarifying the UI, I was able to turn off the mic. However, one power user - whose online personal is somewhat reminiscent of Meryl Streep's character in the film Doubt - decided to raise a virtual pitchfork and literally banish me from twitterland (known as a "suspension"). She was relentless, ignoring every apology and gesture of peace, and even stalked me on the web for a bit... a bit like someone who missed taking her meds.

For me, it was kind of exciting, "Wow, my first hatetweet! I'm finally a celebrity!"

But all joking aside, there are some power users out there who are deadly serious about their little corner of the twitterverse, and emotional flareups can happen with just as much intensity as email flaming. This brings me to the primary thesis of this article, that twitter is significant because it amplifies whatever effect computer interactivity has on people... Twitter is the first tweetch game of social networking.

The Neurophysiology of Twitter

In fact, there's a neuroscientist saying that there is a neurophysiological basis for such concerns. The Baroness Susan Greenfield, professor of synaptic pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford, and director of the Royal Institution, recently testified to members of the British government that social network sites risk "infantilising the mid-21st century mind, leaving it characterised by short attention spans, sensationalism, inability to empathise and a shaky sense of identity". (Ref: The Guardian)

Greenfield told the House of Lords that social network sites are putting attention spans in jeopardy, warning: "If the young brain is exposed from the outset to a world of fast action and reaction... such rapid interchange might accustom the brain to operate over such timescales. Perhaps when in the real world such responses are not immediately forthcoming, we will see such behaviours and call them attention-deficit disorder. It might be helpful to investigate whether the near total submersion of our culture in [such] technologies over the last decade might in some way be linked to the threefold increase over this period in prescriptions for methylphenidate, the drug prescribed for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder."

More importantly, Lady Greenfield also warned there is a risk of loss of empathy, which I believe is due to the fact that in cyber life, you can't see the subtle emotional cues on the faces of your victims as you send off that deliciously sarcastic email or get someone suspended for the hell of it. In linguistic theory, there are these rich facial and auditory gestures called phatics. It's the nod of the head or "uh huh" that tells the speaker that you're getting the message, it's clear-to-send, so keep it coming.

With face to face communications, the speaker is able to rely on the expression of the slightest note of distress on the listener's face, or even the silence on the phone, to realize that something he or she just said upset the listener. You know that silence. It's when your heart starts palpitating and you whine into your Bluetooth headset, "Honey? Honey? Are you there? Are you mad at me?"

That dance of rich metalinguistic feedback allows complex emotional communication to flow optimally, and without it, we end up with a worst case senario for humanity that Lady Greenfield envisions. The real world of touch and phatics and eye gazing provides emotional richness that simply does not exist in the cyberworld.

If the minds of our children are reinforced by too much twitter time and not enough running around in the backyard time, slowly trained to operate without metalinguistic nuances... is there a chance we'll raise a generation of kids with Asperger's syndrome? Are we inexorably marching toward a dystopian future, promising an ample supply of virtual flamewars, limited empathy, borderline personalities, and who knows... maybe even the key ingredient for an entire series of Columbine massacres?

Now ask yourself, in order to see where Lady Greenfield is coming from, how much more emotionally limited can you be, than in a cyberverse limited to 140 characters?

Personally, I think that Lady Greenfield is overstating the risk. I think that the situation is similar to the development of freeways. Imagine transporting someone from the 1900s, and sticking them behind the wheel of a car today, speeding down the freeway... Obviously, it would be a terrifying experience for our time traveler. Now, ask yourself, could someone in the 19th century even imagine a world where millions of teenagers happily drive down such freeways while applying lipstick?

The human brain is an amazingly adaptive system, and will surely be able to accommodate virtually any acceleration of information and scope of multi-tasking over time. In twenty years, we humans will adapt to handle what now looks like an indigestible volume of information without even breaking a sweat... you can bet on that, for sure.

The Twitter Singularity?

Perhaps Twitter is even part of our evolutionary process, like that initial adaptation we now call neuro-plasticity during that first evolutionary venture, during that first mutation of brain cells? For those who don't feel like looking it up on wikipedia, neuro-plasticity relates to how the brain learns, by adding or removing connections, or adding cells. Researchers have discovered that norepinephrine, a neuro-adrenaline dubbed "the stress hormone", increases brain plasticity. But that's kind of obvious... when you're life's threatened, of course your brain is going to want to remember everything that's just about to happen.

Perhaps our brains, in a similar way, require stress and pressure to expand its capacities, and so we are now being pushed by new applications like Twitter to increase our base processing speeds – enabling a global network of brains that advance in lock step with the increasing speed of computer processors and search engines? Like the boundary-less twitterverse, where exactly is the boundary between our brains and the Internet?

Wow, big questions, huh? As for me, I'm leaning toward quitting the twitting. R.D. Laing once said, "Mystics and schizophrenics find themselves in the same ocean, but the mystics swim whereas the schizophrenics drown." The same could be said for the Internet and this river of human awareness. Twitter really is a significant time sink, and honestly, I'm more Zen than zap these days. I prefer to be the mystic reflecting quietly on my life and coming up with "My 25 List" on Facebook, than multitasking myself into a schizophrenic, shouting to everybody and nobody at the same time, listening to voices in the aether.

Thanks for reading!

Here's a link to Part III of this article where I share the results of our survey on Twitter usage, and providing concluding thoughts.

Understanding the Psychology of Twitter

Moses Ma — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:59:40 +0000

Twitter has officially become the next big thing in terms of Internet social phenomena, so I can't resist writing about it... just like everyone else. Understanding the psychology of Twitter as a case study helps innovators learn how to better predict and even invent emerging white space market opportunities. And so, this is an exploration into the existential psychology of and underlying meaning - and meaninglessness - of Twitter, to understand its meteoric rise in the Internet world.

First of all, if you've never used or even heard of Twitter, don't worry, you're not alone. As of now, less than 10 percent of American Internet users actually Twitter, but it's growing like crazy: unique visitors to Twitter increased 1,382 percent year-over-year, from 475,000 unique visitors in February 2008 to 7 million in February 2009, making it the fastest growing social media site in the world.

Essentially, Twitter is an automated service for sharing of short 140-character communications. Why the 140 character limit? So you can send tweets from your cell phone as well as your computer. Pretty much every major celebrity has a twitter channel, from Britney Spears to Stephen Coubert and John Cleese, as the system has become the promotional channel du jour. In fact, Twitter's greatest challenge is the risk of collapsing under its own weight, as servers crash due to the unprecedented volume of traffic and the complexity of revenue models beckon.

Some feel that Twitter is the killer app for killing time, filling any moment with useless drivel - "boy, I love lightly scrambled eggs", "appletini or dirty martini? reply now to tell what I should order", "stop & shop is out of weight watchers brownies, but price chopper has 'em." I mean, it's crazy. NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program even figured out how to get plants to twitter when they're thirsty!

Most interesting is how the Twitter system acts to fill a deep psychological need in our society. The unfortunate reality is that we are a culture starved for real community. For hundreds of thousands of years, human beings have resided in tribes of about 30-70 people. Our brains are wired to operate within the social context of community - programming both crucial and ancient for human survival.

However, the tribal context of life was subverted during the Industrial Revolution, when the extended family was torn apart in order to move laborers into the cities. But a deep evolutionary need for community continues to express itself, through feelings of community generated by your workplace, your church, your sports team, and now... the twitterverse. This is why people feel so compelled to tweet, to facebook or even to check their email incessantly. We crave connection.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

It's useful to dig a bit deeper into our need for community. In fact, needs analysis one of the most powerful tools for innovators to understand, which invariably leads to the meaning of their products. So let's look at Twitter in the context of Abraham Maslow's concept of a hierarchy of needs, first presented in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation."

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is most often displayed as a pyramid, with lowest levels of the pyramid made up of the most basic needs and more complex needs are at the top of the pyramid. Needs at the bottom of the pyramid are basic physical requirements including the need for food, water, sleep and warmth. Once these lower-level needs have been met, people can move on to higher levels of needs, which become increasingly psychological and social. Soon, the need for love, friendship and intimacy become important. Further up the pyramid, the need for personal esteem and feelings of accomplishment become important. Finally, Maslow emphasized the importance of self-actualization, which is a process of growing and developing as a person to achieve individual potential.

Twitter aims primarily at social needs, like those for belonging, love, and affection. Relationships such as friendships, romantic attachments and families help fulfill this need for companionship and acceptance, as does involvement in social, community or religious groups. Clearly, feeling connected to people via Twitter helps to fulfill some of this need to belong and feel cared about.

An even higher level of need, related to self-esteem and social recognition, is also leveraged by Twitter. Twitter allows normal people to feel like celebrities. At its worst, Twitter is an exercise in unconditional narcissism - the idea that others might actually care about the minutiae of our daily lives. I believe that this phenomena of micro-celebrity is driven by existential anxiety. I twitter, therefore I am. I matter. I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggoneit, people like me!

"We are the most narcissistic age ever," agrees Dr David Lewis, a cognitive neuropsychologist and director of research based at the University of Sussex. "Using Twitter suggests a level of insecurity whereby, unless people recognize you, you cease to exist. It may stave off insecurity in the short term, but it won't cure it."

This leads me to a few other problems I have with Twitter and social activity monitoring in general. First, it makes it much easier for stalkers to follow you. Stalkers give me the willies, and better tools need to be in place to identify those you don't want following your every move. However, in Los Angeles, most people celebrate their first official stalker as a benchmark of success. Second, there is a remarkable loss of focus and presence that comes with the information overload that multi-tasking brings. Twitter is like digital crack that invariably turns you into a tweetker - no matter how much of it you get, you'll never be satisfied. If you've ever woken up at 3 am to check your email or read tweets, you know what I mean. You know the cold clammy fingers of existential anxiety.

Self-Actualization via Tweets

A more valuable technology tool for humanity might be the opposite of Twitter - an application that removes distractions from life, reconnects you to real relationships and human touch, and helps you find the time to focus on what really matters in life. It's an old joke, "Second Life, heck! I can't even keep up with my first one!"

Which leads me to return to the remaining highest level in the Maslovian hierarchy of needs - how people might use Twitter to self-actualize. Currently, there are over 200 marketing guru's teaching about how to use Twitter as a marketing channel. How far behind could the spiritual guru's be? The spiritually ubiquitous Deepak Chopra has a twitter channel. So does the motivational guru Tony Robbins. Existential psychology theory explains that the core tendency of the self-actualizing person is to achieve authentic being. Can Twitter possibly aid in achieving authentic being, or is it fundamentally "mitwelt" - reinforcing the social and interpersonal aspects of life, and thus a distraction from "eigenwelt" - where the treasure of the self is hidden? What would Rollo May do? What would Heidegger say?

Perhaps this is the highest meaning of Twitter: it's really just a massive social art project. It's really nothing more than a fun and immersive conceptual art installation about humanity and by humanity, composed of individual 140 character haikus. (In fact, there's even a name for the perfect tweet haiku... twoosh! It's when your tweet hits exactly 140 characters and makes that sound. Tweet + swoosh. Nothing but net.) In fact, all the twooshes in the world add up into a giant global pachinko machine, made all the more addictive because Twitter's software designers were clever enough to program in tenacious intermittent reward systems, so you end up like a loser in Vegas, behaviorally trapped at the slot machines of life.

Ask yourself, when you twitter, are you tweeting like a caged bird or exclaiming your passion and enjoying the spaciality of existence? Medard Boss, a Swiss psychiatrist who developed daseinsanalysis and who coined the term, wrote, "Openness constitutes the true nature of spatiality in the human world. I am more open to my distant friend and he is clearer to me than my neighbor is." Isn't that exactly what the openness of the Internet enables - making distant friends clearer than the neighbor next door?

Perhaps the key distinction lies in whether you are truly enjoying humanity's meta-haiku, or is the motivation to twitter actually a fear of being alone? Kierkegaard once said that true heroism is "daring to be entirely oneself, alone before God." Is Twitter actually powered by a global case of monophobia?

Perhaps a more enlightened way to look at it is that you aren't adding to the spam or garbage-in-garbage-out overload, you're really just enjoying a cyber-zen moment of mindfulness to be present and tweet thyself. We're all interconnected now - each of us acting like a single neuron in humanity's brain, firing bits of electricity at one another, slowly coadunating and collectively struggling toward a great awakening. That awakening could turn out to be the next stage in our evolution, and a single tweet the butterfly's wings that eventually leads to a big bang of global meta-consciousness.

To me, the twitterverse is like a river of human awareness, composed of billions of tiny 140 character molecules - each a snapshot of life or a thought or a reflection. A river of pure information that equals energy, according to the laws of quantum thermodynamics and stochastic processes. A river of life flowing by us as we meditate at its bank like some Siddhartha wannabe, in tattered jeans and Oakley sunglasses instead of orchid robes and begging bowl. And now, after long last, we see.

We see the beauty of the river, that some now call ambient awareness.

We reach in and touch the water of human consciousness.

Little eddies form - those are called tweetclouds.

We can be one with the river.

Or not.

It's all good.

PS, here's a link to Part II of this article where we delve into issues like the neuroscience of twittering, advanced usage, psycholinguistics of emotional communication and empathy.

Finally, if you'd like to watch a delightful cartoon editorial about the Twitter rage, go to: Current TV's season premiere of SuperNews!, the Twouble with Twitter.

Extreme Innovation

Moses Ma — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:04:30 +0000

When you delve into snowboarding or base-jumping, or any other extreme sport, you'll find many parallels to the art of innovation. In essence, innovation and extreme sports are pursuits that require energy, skill and courage (in spades), along with a healthy dose of inner skepticism.

When you compare extreme sports to the strategies and execution philosophies of successful companies, you find that success in either domain requires knowing the environment, the strength and limitations of your equipment, your level of skill, your risk appetite, your guide's knowledge and management skills, the team's ability to function as one, what you can and can't control, and finally, listening to your gut instinct. In that final analysis, you'll find that both activities rely heavily on feel and expecting the unexpected.

I caught up recently with Steve Ellis, an executive vice president at Wells Fargo, who manages the bank's wholesale banking technology and just happens to be... an avid heli-boarder. I wanted to discuss these parallels, and learn about what it takes to make innovation occur on a regular basis at a behemoth financial services company. Steve and his team have a proven track record of being first-to-market with new financial service products.

Steve is one of the most energetic guys I've met - the kind of guy who wants to live fully in the moment of every minute of every day. When I asked him for the formula for Wells Fargo's secret sauce for extreme innovation, he explained, "There's no secret sauce... but there are three basic tenets that we operate from, when it comes to developing new products and services. First, innovation takes belief, that there is 'something' in the idea that will add value for customers, even when a traditional ROI model would tell you to not pursue the idea. Second, innovation is more about hard work than thinking up an idea, it's more about execution than inspiration. And third, it is important to get active and rapid feedback during the process.

"So you're right, innovating and snowboarding down a mountain of virgin powder deliver similar kinds of highs; it's the thrill of the being somewhere 'new'. It's about strategy and execution, and tapping into continual feedback loops. Once you hit the zone, once you feel you have 'something' -- whether you're snowboarding or innovating -- it is an incredible rush, to ride the breathtaking flow of peak performance and what I'd call instinctual execution."

Steve's team developed the Wells Fargo Commercial Electronic Office (aka the CEO) in 2000. The initial small group was able to build from scratch a single sign on portal to a half dozen financial services in 6 months. Since that time in 2000, the group has delivered 34 new releases of the portal, continually feeding new ideas and customer feedback into the CEO experience. The team has also taken these learnings to other endeavors, like an internal unified desktop for its employees, a holistic customer view connecting over 50 disparate databases, and re-engineering its antiquated credit processes into a modernized electronic workflow.

Steve continues, "On the other hand, you have to pace yourself as you're learning. It takes a while for people to get comfortable with new ways of doing things and it's best to learn in incremental steps. Start with simple things, master them, and then build more complex structures off the original base leveraging user and other feedback as an integral part of the process. But always keep in mind, that like snowboarding, innovation is sometimes actually safer when you do it just a little faster than your comfort zone. You won't fall off as much and you will learn something new.

"When you snowboard down a mountain of virgin powder... this is the perfect opportunity to learn how to listen harder. On the snow, it's about the feel of the mountain and reacting to the texture of the snow. In business, it's about listening closely to the customer. For example, we perform ethnography studies at client sites. We send a small group of people to literally camp out at a customer site for several days to observe how employees do their jobs. We look for ways to re-shape our services."

Real innovation is about getting past the hype of a new idea, to learn how to see how things really work. These principles for innovation are in fact are quite simple to follow. Most are either innate, part of our natural make-up, or learned more at a subconscious level and are not acquired by going to business school or anything. Once you have these basic principles down, they can become the prime bedrock for creating successful and lasting businesses.

How “Open” Should Innovation Be?

Moses Ma — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:37:07 +0000

The latest entry for corporate buzzword bingo is the term “open innovation”. So let’s ask the question… what the heck is open innovation, anyway? Also, is open innovation really an obviously good thing, like having an open heart, or maybe a more complicated thing, like asking your spouse for an open marriage?

Open innovation is a powerful term. Apparently, combining two buzzwords, sort of like cold fusion, produces more buzz than if you just used the terms separately. Its opposite – closed innovation – evokes images of silos, cowardly decision making, and not leveraging the power of open networks. How could anyone question the wisdom of opening up innovation?

But you have to admit, the intellectual property system has been pretty useful to companies for the last couple of hundred years… is it really time to retire the patent process and live the open source dream? Let's start by looking at a couple of examples...

One early example of open innovation is Procter & Gamble’s innovation platform C+D (ie, Connect and Develop), which allows customers and partners to co-create products at P&G. Their position is that not all the smart people work for P&G, so the quickest way to grow was to leverage outside talent and move from knowledge generation to knowledge brokering. Currently, they’ve increased their share of external innovation from 10% in 2000 to 35% today.

Another example is DVD rental powerhouse, Netflix, which recently invited outsiders to help them improve an important algorithm for their movie recommendation system. The kicker was offering a $1 million prize to whoever improves the accuracy of their current film recommendation system at least 10%, in a publicity move reminiscent of the Clay Institute’s million dollar prize for solving unsolved math problems like the Poincaré Conjecture and the Riemann Hypothesis.

But do these models really work, or are they possibly aiding and abetting your competitors to beat you to your own best ideas? The key to understanding open innovation is to dig beneath the buzzwords to truly understand the meaning of openness and to deconstruct the structure of the collaborative process.

A terrific example of understanding openness can come by studying the goal of digitizing medical records, which is part of the Obama economic stimulus package. At first, something like digitizing musty old boxes of yellowing health records doesn’t sound like a particularly exciting or innovative idea. But it’s exactly what’s needed to build out the “last mile” of an information highway for medicine.

Therefore, open health isn’t at all about making private health records more open, and hence less private. It’s about creating standards that allow medical systems used by doctors, hospitals, patients, and others to easily "talk" with one another. It’s about enabling the system to proactively search for drug interactions that cause hard to detect complications. It’s about eliminating the bureaucratic paperwork via automated claim submission. Finally, it’s about creating a more intelligent and secure system for health records.

Therefore, openness in innovation isn’t about opening the kimono to potential competitors or about irrevocably committing to the open source model… it’s really about three enabling factors that can transform the collaborative process at your company, especially around innovation. First, it’s about increasing the diffusion of innovation by making both internal and external corporate boundaries more porous. Second, it’s about developing more refined non-binary trust models that let you digitize the paperwork of innovation. And third, it’s about creating open standards for automating the innovation process just like Obama hopes to do with health records.

The diffusivity of innovation isn’t measured only in terms of letting external innovation in, but also in allowing innovation to move from the top down, from peer to peer, from the bottom up, and from the inside out. We call this 360˚ innovation, and if ideas aren’t flowing smoothly in any of these directions, your collaboration systems need an oil change. Finally, the flow of IP from within the organization to outside should always be subject to great vigilance and strategic forethought.

Non-binary trust models really have to do with simplifying the management of intellectual property, in order to build a win-win culture where everyone benefits in equal measure – management, employees, partners, customers and shareholders. The key to digitizing innovation, is actually to design an electronic IP policy server and the key to enabling openness, is to deploy an enterprise social extranet. This is actually the most compelling part of the open innovation promise – to fundamentally change the nature of social networks to allow you to more reliably locate partners you can trust and who won’t let you down.

Open standards for automating the innovation process don’t mean anything unless you actually have one. A formal and automated process, that is. For example, has your company bought one of those fancy idea catching applications? If so, can you get your data back out of it? Was it off the shelf or custom fitted to your culture? Here’s a tough one – can it enable an enterprise social extranet that hot deploys new innovation applications via a Web 2.0 infrastructure? And are these capabilities even on your roadmap?

Open innovation holds great promise for re-invigorating the enterprise, but it requires great vision in its design, deployment and management. This is one of the areas I think about a lot these days, so please feel free to contact me if you’d like to create a dialogue around this fascinating arena!

Big and Bold Enough to Meet the Challenge

Moses Ma — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:34:26 +0000

President Barack Obama, in selling his historic $787 billion economic stimulus bill, said that the budget had to be big enough and bold enough to meet the size of the economic challenge we face. The same is true for companies seeking to stimulate innovation and a turnaround in a recession.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is among the most significant legislative accomplishments since FDR overhauled the U.S. government in his first 100 days, and spent an equivalent of $2 trillion*, in today's dollars, to stimulate the U.S. economy out of the Great Depression.

In the middle of a recession, tax cuts alone will not create jobs, because business owners are simply going to save that cash for a rainy day. The only way to profoundly impact and maybe reverse this situation - according to Keynesian economy theory - is to do something big and bold enough to change the rules of the game and dramatically create millions of jobs. The only way to stop the cascade of layoffs is to shift businesses from fear into hope, and begin hiring again because there are an increasing number of newly employed people willing to buy their stuff. Economic stimulation worked for Bill Clinton, who was able to create 23 million jobs over his eight year term. By the way, no House Republicans voted for Bill Clinton's 1993 economic stimulus bill either.

The reason bold action is required is because the economy is stuck in what Nobel economist John Nash called a "non-cooperative equilibrium", a term used in game theory. Basically, if the economy is healthy, everyone spends to keep up with the competition. But if the economy contracts, everyone battens down the hatches - and starts doing layoffs to prepare for the loss of revenues caused by everyone else doing layoffs. It's like the prisoner's dilemma game, in which anyone who acts altruistically gets shafted by everyone else who acts selfishly, in their own best interest. Here's a Ted Rall cartoon that explains the idea.

Similarly for companies seeking a turnaround or turning around recession-think, management has to be courageous enough to do something big enough and bold enough to meet the size of the challenge they're facing. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the action required. And like the larger economy, companies face an attitudinal shift once things go into a tailspin. Employees generally start becoming less loyal, or go into a period of non-productive shock after a wave of layoffs.

In game theory, it's all about "executing a non-linear transition to a Pareto optimal state". For the economy, it's passing a stimulus package big and bold enough to create millions of jobs and possibly make naysaying House Republicans apoplectic. And for your company, it's executing an innovation stimulus program big and bold enough to raise eyebrows as well as hopes.

What does an innovation stimulus package need to include to be effective? How big and bold does it need to be, to bring hope back to the equation? How much money do you need to spend to get your employees to start thinking "Yes, we can!" again?

Fortunately, it doesn't have to cost a lot of money to make innovation happen in a storm. This is because it really doesn't take that much to shift your employee's survival instinct from flight to fight. What it takes is showing them that you're serious about controlling the direction and destiny of your company, instead of letting the storm decide for you. What it takes is finding "good men - and women - in a storm" and giving them what they need to move into action. What it takes is demonstrating courage and encouraging hope. What it takes is leadership!

What you need to do is implement the 8 C's of Change, that enumerate the individual shifts that need to happen throughout the organization. Just doing lip service about innovation isn't enough. You need to commit to a program of comprehensive change that spans the entire enterprise, and reaches deep into the psyche and culture of the organization. Management needs to rise to the challenge of leadership.

For a company to fully rebound from a downturn, the following C changes are required...

You have to send out the message - with evocative executive Communications that express true vision and leadership - and hammers home the message that Change is Coming and that anything is possible if we only work together to make it happen.

You have to take the time to develop deeper Customer insight - helping you find unarticulated needs and desires to build more compelling products and services.

During a slowdown, it's time to train and re-train for business Creativity, Collaboration and Continuous learning - to help your employees turn themselves into a 21st century labor force.

Also, you need to think about acquiring or building some Cool innovation tools, aka "revolutionary software applications for innovation management". It's the latest Web 2.0 thing, and based on open source, it's much cheaper than you'd imagine.

The most important C is to re-invent Compensation for creativity. It's not just about having the CEO work for a buck a year... it's really about coming up with a way to truly reward disruptive creativity throughout the organization, by sharing the upside rewards of successful deployments, improvements and spinoffs. If you don't have the cash, think about profit-sharing bonuses based on the implementations of your employee's radical innovations.

The final C that wraps it all up is Constructive leadership. Just like we needed FDR to lead us out of the Great Depression, and Barack Obama to get us out of our current pickle... your company needs you to rise to the challenge, to spread the call to action, to encourage your employees to hold fast, to be brave, and to work harder. It doesn't really help to hire lots of consultants... it's really up to the CEO and the CEO alone - to bring hope to the employees, and to show them that the only thing we have to fear... is fear itself.

Go ahead and give it a try... Yes we can! YES we can!

Note:

* It might be useful to see how I developed this $2 trillion figure for what FDR proposed as a stimulus. The US Public Works Administration, part of the National Industrial Recovery Act, was a $3.3 billion program that employed 2 million people. Now, most Republican economists will simply use the inflation multiplier from 1933 - eg, in the 1930's, a dozen eggs cost around a quarter. However, I believe that you have to include a GDP deflator, as well as compensating for the increase in population, in order to measure the psychological impact of the FDR stimulus package. In 1933, the US population was 125.6 million, and it's now over 300 million. Thus, we need to multiply the CPI index against a GDP deflator, and increase that by 2.4x to reflect the growth of the population, in terms of the impact of a stimulus. This works out to about $2.2 trillion, in today's dollars. This is why some of Obama's economists argue that even $800 billion is not big or bold enough, to counteract the $2 trillion that we'll be losing in economic contraction over the next few years.

Breaking Away

Moses Ma — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:11:20 +0000

There's a saying that "entrepreneurs are like teabags - you never know how strong they are until you put them in hot water." Well, we're all in hot water now. The next year or two should provide us with a remarkable opportunity to test our mettle.

The funny thing is, despite all the grumbling that accompanies a capital crunch, lean years are actually good for new companies. Many major brands like 3M, General Motors, IBM, General Electric, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems all got their start during the lean times of recession. The worst recession since World War II was from 1973 to 1975, when the country's gross domestic product dropped 3.1 percent. This is when both Microsoft and Apple were founded.

One of the reasons why better companies come out of recessions can be explained by the structure of the human brain. A group of people - working together - will sometimes mimic the underlying functionality of the human brain. There's a term in neurophysiology called plasticity. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's capacity to modify its organization, pertaining to the acquisition of new skills and learning.

Several decades ago, the consensus was that the neocortical areas were immutable after a certain stage of development. However, recent studies have determined that environmental changes could alter behavior and cognition by modifying neuron connections in adults. Therefore, the adult brain is not static, but rather, can be reshaped by experience.

In this research, it was determined that stress is the key factor in altering plasticity in the nervous system. The research indicates that the application of mild to moderate levels of stress actually facilitates neuroplasticity, but on the other hand, severe and/or prolonged stress will impair hippocampal- dependent plasticity.

In other words, when the going gets tough, the tough start adapting and making new connections. The brain says to itself: "Oh, my survival is at risk, so I'd better start adapting and learning really hard right now." It's only when you have skin in the game that you'll really focus and learn.

Similarly, groups of brains will react in the same fashion. Under the stress of a recession, those groups of brains called companies sometimes react with an immediate urge to retract and contract, attempting to avoid becoming victims of natural selection.

But those groups of brains that respond by expanding their innovative capacity will probably not only survive but will strengthen their skills of adaptivity through the experience, likely to reap extraordinary returns during extraordinary times.

So the normal corporate knee-jerk reaction to immediately lay off staff, cut marketing costs, and postpone innovation initiatives - in other words, to batten down the hatches - may not be a surefire strategy for survival or success. Actually, there's a pretty good reason for courageously increasing your innovation and strategic marketing efforts during a recession.

The reason is similar to the rule that Lance Armstrong uses to win Tour de France competitions - you always make your move on a hill.

In competitive biking, all riders begin together as part of the peloton - i.e., the bunching of riders formed during a cycling road race. Because riders remain tightly grouped in the peloton, only the few who are in the front at any one time face the full effects of wind resistance. Those drafting behind, like a school of fish or V formation of birds, can more easily maintain the peloton's pace.

Usually, it is very difficult for those lead riders to escape the peloton, except when encountering a steep hill. This is because as the riders slow, the effect of drafting is lessened, giving a chance for the strongest riders to break away and outdistance the peloton.

The same goes for business, you often need a hill - in this case a recession - to breakaway from the herd and strengthen your brand. And there's evidence to support this strategy. There was a study by McGraw Hill that found that advertising during a recession yields an amplification of sales growth for those gutsy enough to make their move, compared to competitors who cut back. The gain, or lift as they call it, was found to be 135% to 275% better if you stepped up advertising, rather than cutting it back. This means that advertising packs twice the wallop during a recession.

The most famous example of contrarian thinking comes from Adolph Ochs, the publisher of The New York Times during the early 1900s. Following the stock market crash in 1929, he issued a memo to his staff: "We must set an example of optimism. Please urge every department to go ahead as if we thought the best year in the world is ahead of us." Sending out a memo like this today would likely cause the Board to have the CEO committed.

It wasn't easy for Ochs. Although major advertisers cancelled their contracts, Ochs mitigated employee layoffs opting to use a vital $12 million surplus he had built during the roaring 1920s to pay salaries. More important, he attempted to improve the editorial quality of the paper, even though advertising had fallen off. Amusingly, the paper also became a "better product" because it contained fewer advertisements.

Finally, he focused on positive stories rather than spinning the financial horror story of the day. For example, he declared the most important story of 1929 to be Admiral Richard Byrd's successful exploration of Antarctica. What an optimist, huh?

When the Great Depression finally ended, The New York Times found itself enjoying more readers than any other newspaper in the country-which translated into higher advertising rates. By the way, when Ochs bought the paper, it was only the eighth largest newspaper in New York. Ochs had the courage to breakaway and go for the gold.

So, do you have what it takes to breakaway? Remember, it's a difficult but effective tactic, and the best time to attempt it... is up a steep hill. The steeper the better. And so, a recession is actually an opportunity... an opportunity not only to outpace the competition but to prove what you're made of! So man up and go for it.