Abstraction not Distraction

What I love about Apple and Steve Jobs  is their ongoing ability to tease out subtlety in our affections to reap enormous rewards.  This difference between merely  exploiting new technical improvements to make an electronics gadget better and leveraging the emotional connections and experiences that the electronic gadget makes simple and possible is how Apple continues to  drive demand for its products. Yup, I used the word experience because the easier and faster I get that experience, the happier I am. 

Upon reading the comments following a recent Mashable post on  yesterday's announcement at Apple's World wide Web Developer's conference,  I noticed how neatly they fall into this divide.
Apple Introduces iAds: “Mobile Ads with Emotion”

Yes, no one likes  pop-up ads but I interpreted the complaints more as limitations, manifest in  their inability to grasp abstraction. Pop-ups are distracting and that's why we tend to get annoyed and ultimately go out of our way to ignore them or change our browser settings to block them.  I believe, please correct me if I'm wrong, that the iAds are not serving up pop-ups...instead they are intended to evoke a memory, an emotion or conjure up an experience.  Not a distraction, rather an abstraction--defined as:

1. an abstract or general idea or term.
2. the act of considering something as a general quality or characteristic, apart from concrete realities, specific objects, or actual instances.
3. an impractical idea; something visionary and unrealistic.


As MIT Technology review expressed  "Ephemeral info-nuggets are the Web's new currency."  Apple will once again show us the way. 

Share the meaning not just the message

If you are like me, you are probably not shopping for life insurance. But that's not why I'm sharing the following interactive PR sample. Of late, I've been looking for examples that really evoke an experience. Ones that exemplify tangibly using various medium (print, video, audio, text etc) to connect the receiver(s) to the experience described. In other words, how can I share the meaning of my experience in a manner that evokes similar sentiments and possibly elicits similar reactions?

This morning, I decided the adjective that best expressed this affect was "sticky."
I realized that the metaphor of a fly hitting flypaper was precisely the image that might communicate what I'm feebly describing in words. I also hoped it might help me further tease out, convey my message and shared meaning. My Google search terms were animated flypaper; and to my surprise, I found a firm called flypaper that literally creates these type of interactive, experiential resonant, online materials. I checked out their samples and fell in love with the one below. No I wasn't impressed until I played a little. So I suggest you move your mouse to Our products on the left side menu, click, and then click again on the now open Life insurance link. If the video in the center of the frame doesn't begin, then there should be a button..but I believe it should open automatically.



At the very least, I hope you laugh.
At best? Share back. Tell me whether this example expresses the kind of evocative experience I'm trying to describe.

Thinking, sadly, is often under-rated

"Just like a fish doesn't know he's wet," David Kelley, founder of IDEO says, "we didn't realize that our real contribution was that the companies we worked for didn't think like us. And when they did, it really had a lot of advantages for them."

Fast Company's profile of David Kelley published in February of 2009, is the classic profile piece of a CEO overcoming adversity. What is odd to me, is how standard an approach Linda Tischler, the author, used to describe a guy whose thinking differently is synonymous with the value both Kelley and his firm IDEO consistently delivers.

Don't misunderstand, Linda writes well. She tells the story with authenticity, and though I'm in no position to judge, accurately. The emotional notes she strikes are appropriately toned, not too sharp and not too dramatic. There is enough variation in her prose that the composition, if written with musical notations, would sound lovely. I imagine it as a melody more memorable than easy listening but not very original or memorable.

Its the absence of originality that hit me as I began to think about the larger context and the essence of who is being profiled. David Kelley, the how and what he does is strikingly memorable. Linda's piece has made that clear. Still in spite of the time she spent with this icon of design--yes, I believe people can be icons though their thinking is probably iconic--Her style and process appears to have been unaffected.

How striking can Kelley then be if there is no enthusiasm or overt evidence in the piece? Is Kelley's essence and really just another CEO profile?  What thinking, which for me is the gist of the purpose and legacy of Kelley, is at work in her writing? Was it merely enough to synthesize a workable narrative, use her established thought processes to reinforce her existing competencies as a reporter, story teller and/or writer? But wait, this article appears in Fast Company. In spite of the originality of its conception, and the topics of content which I certainly appreciate, the magazine rarely models the very objects and findings that appear between the front and back covers. Since its founding, my own readership has varied from loyal, regular to now occasional. At present, I can't recall a single piece that demonstrated, escorted or personified the Fast or envelope pushing philosophies or ideas that they write about.

Is it any wonder that the world doesn't seem to think or understand innovation enough to actually be innovative? I'm not trying to be cranky, I'm just noticing that the mechanisms and institutions that are failing fail because they continue to apply their thinking in very limited domains. A different approach  offers a chance to capture opportunities and gain new advantages--ones that David Kelley's thinking notices and politely states is lost by many organizations who become clients.  The benefits are clear.  It may be work, but expanding our thinking activities can't hurt and David Kelley is eager to teach.

Re-imagining Schools

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Finding Needles in Haystacks

To get hired, chosen or "picked," we first must be noticed.
In order to get noticed, Seth Godin explains that we need to flaunt a distinguishing trait--that's why one one of his books is titled Purple Cow. Once noticed, the virtues of our differences are evaluated;both in relation to our peers, those that occupy our niche, and then turning on how well we are perceived to meet the needs of the evaluator.

Sometimes, the ordinary becomes important because just at the moment of need, inherent individual traits fit the bill. It is precisely why a pencil may end up as a support stick, or a piece of newsprint becomes the perfect window cleaner. In that vein, the report that enumerates the quantity of work being done readily fits our need to communicate productivity. In all cases, the availability is what made the item work, there was noting particular or special about it.

Satisfaction for our efforts is a difficult sentiment to predictably measure as well as achieve. Our satisfaction in one moment and one set of conditions does not guarantee repeat performance levels, even when circumstances are precisely replicated. Once we adjust, and we do quickly adjust to small changes, our standards also adjust and generally they adjust to a higher level.

Human nature compels us to always want more, and so our level of satisfaction with a particular heightened experience tends to wane over time. If this quarter is profitable, next quarter we promise to be even better, and so do our competitors. As fast as the purple cow appears, numerous impostors arise slowly and then surely erode the distinct advantage once enjoyed by the purple cow.

We may deploy technology to further differentiate, and maybe accelerate, our ability to generate purple cows. Caught up in the frenzy for differentiation or desire to be noticed, we fail to ask what we need. Why we set out to find those needles in the haystack and whether it is the needle or the hay that is most valued?

Ask yourself what your business really needs, Don't merely laud yourself when the numbers are all up, look a little deeper and specifically whether the measures you use are delivering absolute, not merely relative value

Balancing individual safety and freedom of choice

Valuation as a topic has been on my mind of late and so when I hear or see it as a topic of discussion I'm easily drawn in.  Today it was a story, actually an interview by Steve Inskeep, on NPR with Raj Patel who recently wrote The value of Nothing and "says that cheap, market prices let us avoid paying the true costs of things."

His argument goes beyond referencing including the price of externalities--it's one of indirect consequences of how we may enjoy something and yet not recognize the potential for harm it comprises.  His example is about potato chips or other foods and the consequence of eating too many resulting in diabetes and obesity and the subsequent impact on all of our health care costs.  I haven't read the book, but I have been reading Deborah Stone on the Policy of Paradox and recognize that there is some natural contradictions in freedom of choice.

In other words, if we eat the potato chips freely do we also freely accept that it may lead to obesity and perhaps diabetes?  Stone makes a far more elaborate argument on basic principles such as liberty, security and how to negotiate that line between intervention to avoid harm and preservation of what in America we believe to be fundamental inalienable rights...

To quote from the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Obviously,  how these things get balanced is very much a function of how Safety and Happiness are determined.