Posts Categorized: Innovation

Published on January 12, 2011 by Scott Gould

The 5 Innovations of the App Store

Apple have now launched the Mac App Store – the translation of the hughely successful App Store designed to deliver apps for the iPhone and the iPad onto a full blown computer running a full blown operating system.

Whilst PC Mag has already produced a hands on walk through that I shan’t be repeating, and Techcrunch gave their treatment here, I’m going to keeping this to the innovations of the App Store and what it means for the future as opposed to today.

Let me say right off of the bat that I think this is industry changing. I wrote about the 5 Innovations of the iPad last year and predicted the arrival of the App Store on the Mac because of the ease and process of the ecosystem. I said that this new iOS ecosystem is “how computing should be” and now it’s come to fruition.

In many ways, this revolution is just a packaging of smaller innovations from Apple as well as others and a general shift towards apps – but – it is Apple who have made that all important first move. So let’s unpack them.

So here they are, tahe 5 Innovations of the App Store:

1. A truly complete ecosystem: the end of you being the family tech support

One of the benefits of Macs over PCs was that Apple could deliver a complete product – that from the hardware through to the software, it was designed and made to work harmoniously and seamlessly. But, when one moved away from iPhoto and Safari and the other preinstalled software, expertise was required that not everyone has. Files had to be downloaded, mounted and installed, accounts had to created and various payment gateways had to be navigated.

The long and short of this meant that those who are not early adopters or at least the daring early majority would not use the software that they had access to. My wife, for instance, despite being pretty savvy with her Mac just won’t go and install Chrome despite Safari’s sloth-like speed. My mother in law as well, who has mastered iPhoto, had no idea how to install a little plugin to make her photo books work better.

And even early adopters like you and I tire with having to search through Google or other sites to find new software, and then go through the rigmarole of creating an account, paying, managing updates on all the various programmes, etc.

But now consider that with the App Store, I have:

  • One place to find apps (and boy, is it a pleasure compared to Google or Apple’s own online listing)
  • One safe place to download apps
  • One account with which to purchase apps
  • One place to update apps
  • One place that combines with my iPhone and my iPad
  • One click technology that does it all (just like Amazon’s one click ordering)

And perhaps just as importantly as all the above – the App Store works in the same seamless, easy and delightful way that the iOS App Store works. Which leads to:

2. An existing ecosystem: you’re already using the App Store

I don’t know how many iPhone and iPad owners there are out there. But however many tens of millions of them that there are, they’ve all been using the App Store since they got their first device.

So perhaps that’s an incredible innovation right there: the app store isn’t really new, at least from the stand point that there’s barrier to entry. It gets all the power and novelty of new without the user support headache.

One can’t underestimate the power of this. For 7 years, since the launch of the iTunes Store, Apple has been training us for their future. So now whatever Apple releases through their ecosystem, we’ll buy it, with the strong selling point that we already know how to use it and like how it works.

3. A mirroring ecosystem: your life beyond than the cloud

Google’s Chrome netbook is one of many moves towards the cloud that sees more and more business being done exclusively online. Yet Apple have maintained a strong application focus, MobileMe being their only online software. Now, Apple and many of the apps that we use on iOS and our Macs, like Evernote or Dropbox, do use the cloud, but there’s something more than the cloud that I think the App Store is leading towards: mirroring.

Consider this rather regular scenario. You’re documents are on Google Docs, and normally you’re fine on the iPad. But for some reason the internet won’t work and bang – you’re fileless. Or how about you saved some pages in Safari for offline browsing, and when you opened them, they refreshed and you lost them. Or let’s say you DO have Google Docs – now you’re restricted because you’ve got to deal with the lame way that it works on the iPad.

The cloud is great but let’s be clear about it: it’s only for storage. What I love about Evernote is that it stores things in the cloud, but I’ve always got offline versions on my Mac and my iPad. And this is what mirroring is about.

Mirroring is having the same workflow and essential setup on your iPad as you do on your Mac.

iPad and MacTake for instance this screen capture of my iPad homescreen and my Mac dock – a lot of crossover here which means that my workflow can be consistent between the two.

When I talk about cloud to my wife she switches off. You know why she loves Evernote? It’s because it’s the same everywhere she uses it. And with the Mac App Store we are now moving to a place where your actual setup is the same no matter which device you are using.

Ecosystem, workflow and applications are the important words here. I am totally convinced that Apps will overtake the browser because they are purpose and custom built to the needs of the app. Take Evernote again as the example: it works so, so much better as a desktop or iPad app than the web version. And this is the case for pretty much every app. With a browser my workflow is very constricted (unless I’m a geek), but with apps I can have a real workflow. Take for instance the Mashable Mac App. My wife would chose this over a browser any day of the week (were she even just a jot interested in social media, that is.)

This is why I actually use my iPad better for organising my life because of the apps I have and the way they all interlink.

4. A win-win-win ecosystem: it benefits the developers, it benefits us, and it benefits Apple

According to Mashable, one million app downloads were made on day one of the Mac App Store. Evernote in particular have more than doubled their daily new users because of the App Store.

Developers win with the App Store. It means they are now in the easiest channel for their apps to be installed by consumers, and the same benefit that the iOS App Store has had for, let’s be honest, booming the app industry into an actual industry, will now extend that same benefit to desktop applications (or more likely, desktop versions of existing iOS apps, because people are becoming more familiar with them than desktop-only applications.)

We, the consumers, win because we get an easy to way to get apps. As in point 1 – I can’t wait to NOT have to offer as much tech support because my mother in law can now download apps herself without my help (well, once I’ve installed the update for her, that is!) I really do see this as a major step forward in making computing simple for all people.

I remember when I first moved to Mac that what marvelled me the most was the ability to just get on with my work and not have to keep maintaining my system. That same ‘I can just get on with it’ benefit is coming to the early and late majority through the App Store because now they can just get on with it.

And of course, Apple win hugely out of this arrangement – all the more reason for them to keep making things simpler and better.

5. An innovative ecosystem: it is new

This might be a bit of a no brainer, but the App Store actually is innovation. It’s taking learnings from other areas that have each been moving the baton forward and now applying them to the Mac platform. And importantly, it’s new. When I see a lot of Mac updates or Windows updates, often they are just ‘enhancements’, but this is truly an innovation. It changes the way people will consume applications.

What will the repercussions of this be? I think apps might become more disposable. At the moment, if I take time to download an app, I’ve probably done research before and then when it comes to downloading, the work that I’ve put in means I’ll give the app a good go.

But with one click downloads and a simple way to find new apps, I think they might become more disposable. Of course the upside is that these apps are more discoverable, but the emphasis now must be for them to really deliver. The apps that will do best here of course have already trained the user in using their app on the iPhone first.

Your Leading Thoughts

  • Pick one of my points and further it – what do you think is further down the line?
  • What innovations have you found that I’m missing?
Published on October 12, 2010 by Scott Gould

Ideas Don’t Equal Innovation: A Filter For What You Could Do, And What You Should Do

Exploring an ideaI love Mike Myatt’s blog. A leader’s leader, Mike has a wealth of leadership experience and insight that he boils down into quick but prudent lessons everyday. I remember speaking with him on the phone at the beginning of the year, and it was clear to me that whilst Mike works with top companies and is a revered figure in leadership theory circles, he walks his talk. The very fact that he time for a phone call with me also speaks volumes about him.

One of Mike’s main things is focus. This isn’t just a singular focus on one thing, but it’s about adjusting focus as a balance between near sighted and far sighted. He famously says that “It’s not leadership or management, it’s leadership and management. It’s not strategy or tactics, it’s strategy and tactics”, which gives you an idea about this approach.

It is on the subject of focus that I clipped this article of his that demands some treatment from the Friends here at our blog. In his post, “Ideas Don’t Equal Innovation“, Mike lays out 15 elements to measure what you could do against what you should do. We have no shortage of ideas today and thus the defining characteristic of strong leaders, particularly in the digital space, is a focus that is not deterred easily by what they could do. We’ve certainly all been in that place where we’ve been governed by could instead of should.

Mike’s 15 Filters

1. The idea should be generated within a solid framework for decisioning. It should be developed as a solution to a problem or to exploit an opportunity. The idea should be in alignment with the overall vision and mission of the enterprise.

2. If the idea doesn’t provide a unique competitive advantage it should at least bring you closer to an even playing field.

3. Any new idea should preferably add value to existing initiatives, and if not, it should show a significant enough return on investment to justify the dilutive effect of not keeping the main thing the main thing.

4. Put the idea through a risk/reward and cost/benefit analysis.

5. Whether the new idea is intended for your organization, vendors, suppliers, partners or customers it must easy to use. Usability drives adoptability, and therefore it pays to keep things simple.

6. Just because an idea sounds good doesn’t mean it is You should endeavor to validate proof of concept based upon detailed, credible research.

7. Nothing is without risk, and when you think something is without risk, that is when you’re most likely to end-up in trouble. All initiatives surrounding new ideas should include detailed risk management provisions.

8. Adopting a new idea should be based upon solid business logic that drives corresponding financial engineering and modeling. Be careful of high level, pie-in-the-sky projections.

9. Any new ideas should contain accountability provisions. Every task should be assigned and managed according to a plan and in the light of day.

10. Any new ideas being adopted must lead to measurable objectives. Deliverables, benchmarks, deadlines, and success metrics must be incorporated into the plan.

11. It must be detailed and deliverable on a schedule. The initiative should have a beginning, middle and end.

12. Ideas need to be incorporated into strategic initiatives and not constitute disparate systems. They should be incorporated into integrated solutions that eliminate redundancies, and build in tactical leverage points.

13. Ideas should contain a road-map for versioning and evolution that is in alignment with other strategic initiatives and the overall corporate mission.

14. A successful idea cannot remain in a strategic planning state. It must be actionable through tactical implementation.

15. Senior leadership must champion any new idea being adopted. If someone at the C-suite level is against the new idea, it will likely die on the cutting-room floor.

Your Leading Thoughts

I don’t want you to discuss all 15. You might want to clip this for later, but there’s too much here for you guys to take time out now to spend a length of time discussing, instead:

  • Pick 2 out of the 15 that are issues that you have faced recently and have had victory in. Share your story and your lessons so that we can learn form your practical implementation of these points.

Photo credit

Published on August 27, 2010 by Scott Gould

What Is Social? Well…

What with starting work this week on a manuscript for a book – “Social” being the working title – I want to share some of the content that I will make up the backbone of the book that I haven’t made public until now, as it’s been reserved for paying clients only.

[slideshare id=5063806&doc=whatissocial-100826163537-phpapp02]

If you can’t see the above slideshow, click here, or see it directly on Slideshare.

This is a short 12 slide presentation that explains succinctly what the difference between social and broadcast as – as mindsets before they are media – and then three lessons that we draw that help us understand social.

Social is a big topic for me. Everything I do keeps coming back to it – whether it’s learning, event design, social media, marketing, church, relationships – social is right in there. And it’s not that social is a new thing. Far from it. Social is our original and default method of communication. As our default method, it also is ruled by our default physical limitations (how loud we can speak, etc), and it is from these limitations that we create broadcast, which is a one way extension of what is socially created, for wider reach.

My basic premise is that we have social innovation and broadcast duplication. Social is the fluid conversation that is a real-time co-crated product. Broadcast is the recording of that conversation and duplicating it so more people can hear it. In social, the conversation can change. In broadcast, it does not.

What the book will then lead into is a discussion of the Social / Broadcast Matrix, and the three social strategies. And true to these three strategies, the book will function on one: socialised channels, socialised content and socialised culture. In other words, it’ll be available everywhere you’ll want to consume it, it’ll be full of UGC (i.e. YOU), and it’ll be open for you to use and build upon.

(You can watch a video of me discussing Social on a larger scale here)

Your Leading Thoughts

  1. Do you see holes in my premise? Given I’m basing a book on this, I need you input!
  2. How would you like to contribute to the creation of ‘Social’?
Published on August 23, 2010 by Scott Gould

Using Social Media to Extend and Enhance Offline Events and Experiences

Wow, that’s a mouthful. And that’s exactly what I’ll be discussing at the unGeeked Elite Retreat in Chicago on May 12 – 14, 2011.

How does Social Media extend offline experiences? Sure, you can get a long list of resources that will make your event what is called a ‘hybrid’ (a virtual and physical event), but how do you know which ones are the priority for you, and what is the strategy behind those tactics anyway?

In 2004 I was running a youth organisation that I started called Feedback. We’d already discovered that by putting bands in the show they’d bring their fans along, and that would increase our numbers, but it was when we latched onto MySpace that we discovered the ability to increase participation virtually, aside from the physical limitations of our monthly events. (You can see some old footage on our old MySpace profile still today!)

This really is the benefit of Social Media as an extension of an offline offering. An offline event or experience is typically a single point in space, time and matter, but through Social Media, it can be extended in all three of these areas.

We then need to know how to extend those three in a way that is meaningful and relevant to ‘the why‘ of the offline event in the first place. Perhaps the most helpful element in this is Joe Pine’s model on The Multiverse (For a fuller discussion of this, you read our discussion on ‘virtually present‘)

There are 8 possible configurations of merging time, space, matter with non-time, non-space, non-matter. Joe presents a video on it here, which I would recommend you watch should you have a spare 50 minutes to get acquainted with the future.

  • Space: virtual / physical. This is the mix between being physically there, and being virtually there. Being virtually there means that you don’t have to be restricted by:
  • Time: linear / non-linear. This means that I be at the event before the event, during the event, after the event. You get the idea. This also means that I lift the restriction of:
  • Matter: real / bits. This is about what things are made from. You can be in the same physical space but then still still experience bits – digital data – with which you can then contact those who are virtually present.

It can get very complex, which is what my talk certainly won’t be. I’ll be keeping things simple by getting back to the three core Social strategies that we’ve talked about recently, namely Socialising Channels, Socialising Content, and Socialising Culture. (I think things are easier to remember in threes, don’t you?)

I don’t want to share much more, but there’s a good taster for you here, and I’ll be sharing more of the content over the months, as we’ve got quite a bit of time until May!

Your Leading Thoughts

  1. What’s the best example that you know of, of Social Media extending an event?
  2. What would be you dream usage of Social Media as an enhancing of an offline experience?

Legendary photo courtesy of Benjamin Ellis

Published on August 17, 2010 by Scott Gould

Understanding Value In A Share-Economy

We had a discussion recently on sharing and creating content, and I asked the question “are you afraid to give it away?” There were some exceptional comments, but this one from Malcolm Sleath opened up a whole lot of understanding for me on what value really is in a share-economy.

I think share-economy is also the operative term, at least for now. Certainly a large portion of my work, with Like Minds and the River Dream Centre in particular (a community around a conference, and a church, respectively) is about sharing, and I feel the need to better understand what the real value is here.

I trust you’ll start thinking on Malcolm’s thoughts as much as I have. Enjoy:

Scott, I think you have put your finger on something that many people are wrestling with – but my hunch is that much of the agonising is misplaced. If people are clear about their own value, and what they value, then decisions become much more straightforward.

It comes down to understanding where your true added-value lies, understanding the value in sharing, and sharing on the basis of enlightened self-interest and personal values.

1 Understand where your true added-value lies.

For me, the first step in resolving the sharing dilemma was to understand where my true value-added lay. This understanding came from the free exchange of ideas with other people, and the slow realisation of what made my offering different and special. For me, sharing was inseparable from realising my own value.

To those who are reluctant to share, I would say that if your idea is so good that it changes the game it’s probably going to be rejected and not stolen – ask James Dyson. Simplifying slightly, Dyson found that people were reluctant to take up his game changing idea, so he took a huge financial risk and made the idea real – suddenly the idea had value and all the money he had earlier spent on patents proved to be a good investment. As Thomas Edison said, “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.”

In my experience it is really hard to ‘give away’ my true added-value. The value is in enabling people to use my ideas, not in the idea itself. Delivering the process takes know-how, work, resources and mutual commitment.

But, to get to a level of trust where I can begin the process of gaining commitment, I need a way to engage with people, which brings me to the other aspects of sharing.

2 Understand the value in sharing.

Sharing makes it easier to earn a share of mind. My IP is not diminished by suggesting how people can do some small but important thing better in an article that I don’t even get paid for.

In reality, many of the things experts ‘give away’ are intended to educate people in the value of what they do. The other things they offer in the mix keep people interested in them as a source. If only a few people make the transition from passive consumers to active clients, they are still winning. Ideas are seeds. Nature is wasteful. In the end it doesn’t matter because we all return to the earth.

True experts know stuff they don’t even know they know – so there is no way they are going to be able to tell you everything. And anyway, you would have to have achieved a certain level of understanding to make proper use of what they are telling you.

In other words, by helping you they are not losing. They still have their competitive advantage and can afford to be generous. In sharing, they are gaining in reputation and becoming known, liked and trusted. This does not mean that others suddenly want to start sending them dollar bills. There is no place for Twitter followers in the company balance sheet. But the perceived value of their activities earns a bigger share of attention/mind, they become an authority by default, and the value of their brand is enhanced – which means that people are more prepared to pay for their advice and services.

So when I share ideas with others, I am hoping to earn a bigger share of their mind. When, in return, I give others a bigger share of my mind, I am rewarded with access to resources, contacts, ideas, inspiration, and opportunities that I simply did not know about before. My current personal example is the #likeminds club and all that flows from that.

3 Share on the basis of enlightened self-interest and personal values.

Having achieved some confidence in my value, it then becomes relatively easy to decide whether my interest lies in (a) giving away an idea to help others or for mutual benefit (b) sharing it with relatively few people for money, or (c) keeping it to myself and gloating over it.

If you want to give an idea away, then treat the satisfaction of giving as its own reward. Don’t agonise about the selfishness of other people in not giving you credit. It is very hard to predict what others will value and you will become richer emotionally and financially by learning what they do value.

If you are really worried that giving ideas away will affect your financial or commercial well-being, then consult an intellectual property lawyer.

Your Leading Thoughts

  • Read over Malcom’s points: how do you rank on each of his three points? Where are you in this journey?
  • Like a trailer is the pitch for a movie, how much do you think sharing value before the sale will increase and become a part of the game in your industry?
Published on August 9, 2010 by Scott Gould

Ecosystems: Riding on Them, and Creating Them

Out they Come... After the RainMy friend Chris Brogan wrote a thinking peice last month on “Amazon and the Kindle Conspiracy” that many overlooked but I think warrants a deeper leadership discussion.

Chris discusses how Amazon went from book distributor to pretty much anything distributor, and how he suggests that the Kindle could do the same thing. He talks about how the Kindle also isn’t just a phyiscal device. You can have the Kindle on your iPhone, iPad, desktop, etc. It’s a distribution platform that lives on other platforms, something we talked about recently with Your Business, Ubiquitous.

That’s a big discussion there. Then Chris goes deeper into what is my favourite part of the post:

Don’t look at the device. Don’t fret about the device. Think of it as yet another way to gain ground in distribution. Keep your eyes on this, and also think about how this impacts your business. Think further on whether there are ways you could do distribution differently (better, partnered) and what that would give you.

This immediately makes me think of ecosystems. Consider Apple’s App Store and iTunes ecosystem. The devices that they can plug into this are potentially numerous, and as Chris suggests, it’s not really about the device – it’s the distribution of the ecosystem.

The way I see it, ecosystems are about flow of the river, the devices are the boat, and the person is the person. A good ecosystem means that a number of different boats can be on it in order to get people where they need to be. iTunes and the App Store is an ecosystem that allows many boats – the innovator boats, the late majority boats, the home boats, the work boats, etc.

I’m now seeing what were boats now become ecosystems in their own right. Consider Evernote, which is the handy note tool that remembers everything. Evernote created an API, and now with Evernote Trunk, serves as an ecosystem to boats that now ride upon it.

Facebook is an ecosystem, and so is Twitter. They are rivers that boats can flow on. Applications can be built for them. Communities live on them. You get the idea.

Riding on The Wave

The trick for startups and new things now is to use these ecosystems – to ride on their waves – in order to get our users to where they need to be. As Chris said in starting, the Kindle is about distribution. Why create a new ecosystem when a perfectly good ecosystem already exists that can distribute your boats where they need to be?

This is where socialising channels comes into play. Socialising our channels means getting your content to the places where people already are – the water coolers. If Facebook is where your people are, use that. If it’s Amazon, use that. If it’s the Kindle, use that. Ride the wave that gets your content distributed.

Creating Waves

The other option is to be the one building ecosystems – buliding the distribution channels that others can use. I’d be careful here. I’d only build an ecosystem where one doesn’t already exist.

That’s what we’re doing with Like Minds. I’ve noticed that the communities which are the most useful are the ones that become an ecosystem for others to sail on. The community and the events attached to it become enablers for the lives of others.

But the trick here is that we have to do it in a unique way – one of which being the Like Minds Club, something that I don’t know of any other event / community doing. The aim of the working club is to be an enabler for others to ride their  boats along – whatever business, endeavour, need, etc, they might have.

I would say therefore, if was trying to define an ecosystem in a digital way, I’d say they are a platform that enable third parties and users to build and live from in a way that enhances their productivity through synergy with other users and shared benefits.

Your Leading Thoughts

As a leading and thinking person, your input here is valued and adds to the discussion and to this blog. Focus in on ecosystems right now, and use these points to help the discussion:

  1. On a smaller scale, are blogs working as ecosystems?
  2. What are the prerequisites for calling something an ecosystem?
  3. What are the ecosystems that you are tied into?

Photo courtesy of Storm Crypt

Published on August 8, 2010 by Scott Gould

Video: Start With Why

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA

If you can’t see the above video, click here, or watch it directly on YouTube.

I caught this video earlier this year and all I can say is that it has changed how I run projects and decide what to do. It’s by Simon Sinek on the subject of “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Action”, after his book on the same thing (affiliate link.)

Simon basically says that great leaders don’t start with WHAT they start with WHY. I can identify with this on so many levels, the most pertinent being the work I do at The River Church in Exeter.

At our church, there are 101 things that we could do – ‘the whats’ – and most times, we’ve done things in the past because others were doing them and they seemed like good ideas. It’s not to say that we just did whatever came into our mind, but when you are running a church you are always looking for new ways to reach and help people, often on a tight budget, and when you see another church have success with a certain activity, you naturally want to emulate it. It’s not a surprise that many of things over the years have failed, probably the most memorable being when we went on TV for a year, which exhausted us and brought little gain in return.

Also, both in church and in my other ventures, there’s always the times when you’ve having a leadership discussion and you focus the whole meeting on a small part of ‘the whats’ while totally ignoring ‘the whys’. I guess the reason is that it’s easier to talk about a ‘what’ because it’s easier to change and more immediate to change.

What this video has helped me do is focus on ‘the whys’ first, and if there isn’t a satisfactory ‘why’, then to by no means look at ‘the whats’. Have you ever worked on a project without really knowing why? Have you found a task keeps changing because you don’t know the why? Have you found you do things without real purpose and direction? This video will help you as much as it’s helped me!

Your Leading Thoughts

  1. Be honest – where are you on this scale at the moment? What are your struggles and victories?
  2. What are you thoughts on the power of WHY? Are there times when you have harnessed it?
  3. If you have already seen this, how has it changed you?
Published on August 6, 2010 by Scott Gould

Are You Afraid To Give It Away?

TemptationI don’t know who first said it, but the idea of an open platform and being an active authority is that by equipping people with the best resources that aren’t your own – by sending them away – you get them back.

This is the premise that most of the digitalls on Twitter follow. They share links all day long, because by being active in their area and telling you where to go, the idea is that you’ll look to them as the authority. Beyond that, there’s a bit play in open innovation with co-creation too.

An Open World

It does, however, go a lot deeper than this. The idea of open platforms is one of open source, of creative commons, of open innovation. This isn’t giving information away in such a context that people can directly see where the source was – like a ReTweet – it’s a place where you are giving people to take your work and use it, and there’s no guarantee people won’t use it for their own gain without attributing you as the source.

It’s one thing sharing someone else’s content and then getting a kick back if someone likes the link. It’s another sharing your own content for free and not knowing what’ll happen with it.

I can tell a story from both sides of this fence. Being honest with you, I’ve been the one who has ripped the work off of others (back in my HTML days), and I’ve also been the one who has been too afraid to share my creations for fear of it being ripped off.

Last Saturday, on our discussion of “Together“, a friend I made in Helsinki, Johanna Kotipelto, made an exceptional statement with regards to people being too afraid to collaborate together. Joanna said, in what I think is a highly quotable phrase, “Sharing is still a threat: it’s like taking a Mona Lisa to an exhibition – unsigned.”

Johanna wrote more about it in her post on Man 2.0 where she examines some of these themes more – it’s well worth a read.

The thing is – do I agree? Do I believe that sharing is a threat?

The Fear is Laziness and Ego

I think the ultimate display of this fear (in the blogging world at least) is when bloggers never link to other blogs but there own (or rarely do it), and keep writing about their experience, their ideas, and never our experience or our ideas.

I consider this fear to actually be laziness and ego. When I read a feed for a few weeks and find they never link out and talk about anyone but themselves, I think that they are too lazy and too self consumed to actually focus on others and curate conversation for others.

This same laziness and ego, in my opinion, is also what stops people from sharing – because you know what – if you talked about what you consider to be your intelectual property enough, you’d be generating so much discussion about it that people would know you’re the source. I’ve started to see, for example, a lot of the ideas that we’ve discussed here talked about on blogs I’ve never heard of and from people I don’t know – but they know where the source is, and the conversation keeps coming back here. (Also, we need to loosen up a little – we often think our ideas are better than they actually are!)

And I think the people on the other side of the fence – who take other people’s work and pawn it off as their own – it’s laziness and ego on their own side, but it says I’m too lazy and too good to work hard and get this myself.

Your Leading Thoughts

  1. First of all – which side of the fence are you on? Where do you sit on this issue?
  2. What is the FIRST example that you think of where ‘giving it away’ has caused a win? (Mine currently is Guardian’s Open Platform)

Photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk

Published on August 3, 2010 by Scott Gould

Break It!

Death of a Light BulbThis isn’t for everyone, so if you’re not the daring type of person, then go and read something else and save yourself the stress. However, if you are a thinking person who likes to push the envelope that little bit further with each new thing you do, then this will be right up your street.

Innovation means breaking things. Nothing that you currently do can be holy. If it isn’t moving forward and moving the bottom line, you’ve got to break it.

Right now we’re working on Like Minds Conference, Autumn 2010. We’re breaking a lot of stuff. We’ve taken everyone of our assumptions about what traditionally makes a great event, and we’ve broken a lot of stuff.

One instance is panels. I’ve never been happy with how they work, and I’m so thankful for Dave Lutz who shared this post with me, the comments of which encouraged me to go ahead and break what I didn’t think worked in the first place.

Lesson? We need that nod from our peers to say – “yeah, break it.”

Breaking things means we find out what works. Consider good ideas that aren’t just profitable ideas. I remember telling one person this ‘incredible idea’ I had, but was so glad that he could help break it and instead move me onto an idea that was breaking and making new things.

I guess I’ve found that the best ideas of mine are those that break the norms.

Your Leading Thoughts

  1. What isn’t moving the bottom line? Why haven’t you broken it?
  2. What norms are you currently breaking?

Photo courtesy of lasszio

Published on August 2, 2010 by Scott Gould

The End Of The Age Of Content, Part 2

Burned textureThe last time we talked about the end of the age of content was in April this year, for me best summarised by one of my favourite quotes of the year from Jeff Jarvis:

The great stuff is already out there. Why remake it, except for ego?

Content is becoming has become a commodity. As I’ve been saying for over a year now, there’s too much of it. We’re over saturated. Trying to compete with content is a hard, hard game to win.

And the trouble about content is that all the digitalls have in front of their faces on Twitter all day. But for a second consider you are a digicool. How do you even find blogs like mine and yours? I would say relationship, or a very thin long tail.

Our Options

If it’s the end of age of content, then what is next, and what are our options?

1. Fight it. Keep saying that ‘Content Is King’ and tune up your personal brand and affiliate program, while you compete against the thousands upon thousands of others doing the same to promote your blog and product over theirs. If you’re trying to build a big blog or launch a community group, you also can’t start by fighting on this front, because others are doing it better than you already.

Ok, so perhaps that is a bit harsh – but my point is that you can’t fight on this level alone.

2. Relationally push. Every business starts out with friends as customers. If for the digicool it is through referral that blogs, etc, are discovered, then we lean on those relationships. The issue here through is that it doesn’t scale.

3. Go niche. Find focussed interest topics to specialise in. People are more prepared to go with specialist content as opposed to generalist. But writing about a niche subject doesn’t mean people will flock to you, nor trust you. Again, we are back to social authority.

Curation

Where we are going towards is curation. By having a good bit of fight, building relationship, finding niches, and then being a curator of the content and co-creation that is already happening, we find new meaning. The great stuff is already out there. Why remake it, except for ego?

Seth Godin posted an exceptional audio peice on “The New Dynamics Of Book Publishing” last month. I seriously recommend you listen to it.

From all the consulting that I have done with publishers of late, Seth’s insights are right on and encapsulate much of what I’ve been going through with these publishers.

If we take this into the Music Industry, for example, should’ve been curating experiences and communites rather than trying to create and sell music. The creation part is a comodity, the community curation part isn’t.

Your Leading Thoughts

  1. Are you a curator? Where are you curating and how are you doing it?
  2. Curation is a new buzz idea that’s going around at the moment – do you see it as the future?
  3. Content creation has it’s own challenges. What are the challenges of content curation?

Photo courtesy of irisb447

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