Postnormal Disruption Calls For Postnormal Strategy

I am leery of pronouncements coming from Harvard Business Review, but I found a recent piece pretty smart:

Larry Downes and Paul F. Nunes, Big-Bang Disruption

The Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen warned incumbents to recognize new entrants’ picking off low-end customers as an early indicator of industry transformation—and as a signal to begin experimenting with emerging technologies while there was still time. Surviving disruption, his research showed, often required a separate organization to incubate a competitive response. If you did everything right and the stars aligned, you could then move the new product into the market using your company’s existing infrastructure and advantages of scale, making up quickly for lost time.

None of that was easy, but it was at least possible. Today, given the potential for “sudden death” from a big bang, you may have no time to develop an incubated alternative.

And the new footing for this postnormal age? The authors make some suggestions:

See it coming — Go find some visionaries — which the authors call ‘truth tellers —  because early market-based experiments will fail. They mention Yukiyasu Togo of Toyota, who pressed for the launch of Lexus, but had to threaten to quit to get them to listen.

Slow the disruptive innovation long enough to better it — You can’t stop it, but you can deflect. For example, an established company can lock customers in to long-term contracts based on lowering prices. But this is just a stalling technique, to buy time.

Get closer to the exits and be ready for a fast escape — Some times the only way to win is not to play at all. Instead of selling itself off while it still had value, Border was liquidated. 

Try a new kind of diversification — ‘Think again of Amazon, which isn’t so much a set of businesses as it is a technology platform that allows the company to repurpose its intangible assets—its expertise in e-business, its remarkable efficiency in forming collaborative partnerships with thousands of other businesses, and its leadership in software virtualization—as market conditions change.’

The authors offer this:

You can’t see big-bang disruption coming. You can’t stop it. You can’t overcome it. Old-style disruption posed the innovator’s dilemma. Big-bang disruption is the innovator’s disaster. And it will be keeping executives in every industry in a cold sweat for a long time to come.

In a world moving so quickly, and where everything is connected, the lag between the moment when all the factors in a market niche come together to allow a big bang change and the moment of widespread adoption of that innovation has fallen to just a year or so, today, and in the near future it could be even less.

Long-term strategic planning is obsolete. Near term strategies based around speculative design is the only hope, and yes, companies should be looking for ‘truth tellers’ who have consistently presaged major market shifts. That vision, to see the ‘turning point’ in markets, is the only means to future proof a company, now, not planning.

Source: hbr.org

22 March 2013 6 Permalink

Machines Of Loving Grace

Yesterday, I was doing a dress rehearsal for a webinar that will be live tomorrow. I was talking with Fred McClimans, Geoffrey Colon, and Alan Dickenson about the future of cloud computing and how that intersects with big data. This morning something occurred to me regarding the application of social data in the future.

Imagine that the workings of human social networks are finally figured out by crunching real data from really large social networks. And at the same time, the the deep forces of social influence are revealed, and the mathematics lurking below our interactions is cracked. And in parallel, imagine that continued research into cognitive science has led to more understanding of how social interaction is linked to brain chemistry, and for the first time, effective techniques are developed to make the sad happy, and the lonely loved.

Ok, I know, but let me finish the thought experiment.

So, imagine that researchers are able to create algorithms that can actually — with real success — influence our behaviors. Through a society-spanning combination of content marketing, social media, and targeted social network strategies, researchers are able to decrease cigarette smoking, or increase bike riding. And the unscrupulous or avaricious would be able to get people to chew one kind of gum, or watch a particular TV series.

Alright, let me add the last ‘what if’ to the scenario, although it is starting to sound like a chapter of Daniel Suarez’s Daemon. So, imagine that some global non-profit, like the Gates Foundation, builds a software system that leverages all this new-found knowledge about social influence and social cognition, and sets about changing us.

This system — let’s call it Grace — has access to the world’s major datasets, which contain millions of petabytes of social data in this hypothetical future. Grace would work surreptitiously and guardedly, applying social math to each of our private social contexts, convincing us to brush more often, to read to our kids, to help others in need. Grace would reward us at the physiological level, by convincing one person to touch another, unleashing oxytocin and building trust where none existed before. Teams would work more efficiently. Friends would make that extra effort, families would settle old differences. Politicians would reach out to their opponents to find common cause and to put aside partisan division. Warring factions in dusty far-away lands would lay down their AK-47s and make peace where there had been decades or millennia of war.

Cue the harps.

And the reason I called this system Grace is a nod to Richard Brautigan’s All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace:

I'd like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
   (right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
   (it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

In my version, Grace is operating behind the scenes, without our knowledge, nudging us to do good and make nice, an animatronic Jimminy Cricket, the invisible conscience we need to become more humane.

And the question is, if we could make such a thing happen, should we? There is no doubt that marketers will attempt to take our growing knowledge of social connection and neuroeconomics to try to sell baby food and sports cars. And dictators might use such mechanisms as mind control and hyper-efficient propaganda engines. But what if such tools could be used to make the world a better place?

Should we? Is it immoral to surreptitiously influence humanity, even if the result is a better place? Ultimately, the question becomes who gets to decide what better means, and so in my it-could-almost-be-a-novel scenario, it would likely be the choice of a solitary genius, as in Daemon, following personal convictions rather than some plebiscite.

What if it would only work if it was secret? What if the world could be bettered, famines averted, wars ended, climate change reversed, but only if the mechanism to do so was completely unknown to the world?

In my early morning musing, in the twilight stage between sleeping and waking, I envisioned Grace moving the world from exploitative, growth-at-all-costs hyper-capitalism toward a steady-state, sustainable economy and social compact, where we’d ramp down the population to a few billions over the next few decades, provide meaningful and interesting work rewilding the planet, building livable and beautiful cities, and growing healthy food and a smaller number of better-loved and better-fed babies. 

But I was dreaming, obviously.

5 September 2012 28 Permalink

Futurist Scenarios: Three Futures For China

A classic futurist scenario-based extrapolation of current trends across the event horizon, but it doesn’t really compel. Micheal Lee spins three scenarios, based on factors in the footnotes, but it’s all so top-down and disconnected to outside influences:

Michael Lee, Too Big to Succeed? Three China Scenarios to 2050

The fate of the 21st century is literally tied up with which future emerges for China between now and mid-century.

In the Runaway Train Future, China, obsessed with economic growth at all costs, and caught indecisively between the trajectories of evolving into a great civilisation or going deeper into a totalitarian nationalistic state, irretrievably damages its environment and the trust of its population leading to ecological and social collapse. In this scenario, China will self-implode, breaking down under its own weight and complexity. The Chinese Communist party would be unable to govern effectively following loss of control over the environment and its vast and diverse population.

Can the current system – the state, the CCP, the private sector and the environment– continue to support the growing economy and provide for the changing needs of the rapidly urbanising population in the midst of increased complexity?

If China’s consumption leads to the economy and industry outstripping the country’s carrying capacity – then its systems of order will collapse in an overshoot scenario.

In the Juggernaut Future, China becomes increasingly authoritarian, nationalistic and militarised, mercilessly crushing all domestic and international opposition in its rise to become an imperialistic global power. This scenario would radically destabilise geo-politics and would lead eventually to a Chinese Revolution and the violent overthrow of the Chinese Communist state. East Asia would become a fierce battleground, globalisation would unravel and loss of life through World War 3 would surely exceed that of World War 2.

Will the CCP complete the political reform process it has initiated and introduce the rule of law, political freedom and constitutional protection, or will the party back-track and revert to totalitarianism and excessive nationalism? Will the power of nationalism prove to be an intoxicating and fatal temptation to the CCP for holding on to power, playing on the sense of historic humiliation still very much present in the Chinese collective psyche? Will the need for resources outside China, from food to energy, lead to a more aggressive foreign policy?

If China seeks to manage its complexity through a repressive authoritarian one-party system, a growing disconnect between the state and the urban population, with its improved education, internet access and increased wealth, will develop. This path would lead eventually to a Chinese Revolution, with China turning in on itself to produce mass disturbances and eventual civil war. 

In the Xanadu Future, China evolves into a modern Middle Kingdom civilisation after centuries of historic humiliation. In this scenario, China establishes a new political system enshrining the rule of law and the core values of freedom, emancipating Chinese women, its religious population,  and its labour force within this current generation. Chinese civilisation would be a global powerhouse of education, science, technology and innovation. China would once again become a world of wonders as it was for Marco Polo on his 13th century travels to Asia. The world would admire China, as a model of progress, much more than it ever feared it. This Xanadu Future would keep China in a strong position for centuries, not just for decades.

But will China prize its civilisation more highly than its own global power and growing wealth? Will the expanded role of the Chinese intelligentsia shift the nation decisively towards political reform, especially as the power of education becomes linked to greater freedom and equality? Will a long-term and historic vision prevail over short-term emotional needs for nationalistic assertion and military expansion?

If China embraces the values of Confucius at the level of the state, seeking to create a modern, sustainable, devolved and free Chinese civilisation, it will have a positive impact on world progress and ensure its own long-term survival.

The good news is that the groundwork for the creation of a great Chinese civilisation is already in place. In the philosophy of Confucius (551-479 bc), the pragmatic and benevolent values of a society are ingrained in rules of social conduct and personal discipline. It has been said that to be Chinese is to know how to behave in all circumstances.

China also has 2,000 years of history to draw on (in futurological terms, it has a “memory” of its Xanadu future). China has been called a civilisation trying to be a nation-state.

Finally feels like the outcome of a workshop that ignored the outside world, and treats China as completely self-defined.

A better approach? Instead of playing what-if scenario games, consider an object — for example, a tourist guide to Beijing for Westerners, written in English — and develop three versions of it that reflect the hypothetical Chinas, and how an outsider of those three future worlds would perceive it. Because, if there are three Chinas, there are three Americas — and three Earths — as well. The various form factors might be very different, to reflect what’s what in these very different worlds.

• One would be made of cheap paper, dog-eared, and much used, taken from a library, from a dystopic future, where China and other major countries have exhausted resources, and we are living on mining the tailings and dumps for metal. 
• Another might be a shiny app, running on a obligatory and dedicated super cool tablet, pushing ads all the time: state capitalism gone wired in a ‘China-becomes-Singapore’ story. 
• And the third would be a distributed torrent of advice and recommendations from friends, connections, and friends of friends, streaming in real-time, often anonymous, in a time of great turmoil and confusion: the China Spring.

I am planning to use this as a technique to explore various alternative Europes based on what might happen to the euro, as well. Stay tuned.

3 September 2012 33 Permalink

Medium As A Bellwether

The boys at Obvious have launched a peek at a new experiment of theirs, called Medium.

Medium — to the degree that we can fool with it so far, or so far as they have fooled with it — is more of an indication of a new aesthetic that Obvious is pursuing than anything else. It has a iPad-like clean design — shared by all the curations that have been pulled together.

Reading between the lines, the Obvious Ones believe that the dynamic of old-school blogging — typified by Wordpress — is too restrictive, the shouting at Tumblr is too garish and loud, and the self-centeredness of Pinterest too Ayn Randian.

Something other is called for. But it’s not just a slightly different screwdriver, turning slightly more futuristic screws. This is a change where we give up on screws, we give up on hand-tooled websites, we give up on owning what we build.

I haven’t test been invited to post anything: at least for the present, you must be invited, another example of the dream that elitism and/or editors will lead to high quality, without the need for filters.

Certainly, in time, others will be allowed to play fully, but we don’t know what mechanisms will be used to limit or constrain people. Will every collection, like ‘Look What I Made’ in the image above, have gatekeepers who get to decide who gets to contribute? That’s how Tumblr topics work today, at least the popular, profitable ones.

Medium is a speculative design intended to challenge us to consider implications of the deep philosophy lurking within.

Will people be allowed to fool with the templates for collections, or are those fixed by the Editors-In-The-Sky?

Medium has an inbuilt voting scheme where viewers can ‘like’ something — although there is no like or upthrust thumb, only a numeric value showing how ‘interesting’ a post is, on a scale (I presume) of 1 to 10. 

Breaking with the blog norm of reverse chronological, Medium defaults to seeing what is more interesting. Which seems like a nod to Reddit and Digg.

I submit that this early version of Medium is a speculative design intended to challenge us to consider implications of the deep philosophy lurking within, rather than the test of a fully fleshed minimally-viable-product. The Obvious Ones have time and to spare. They are not threatened by a short runway of a few hundred G’s before having to show huge stickiness, or conversion to a Pro plan. They can rethink and reimagine a post-normal social media system, one that they believe will obsolete what we have come to think of as givens, like Pinterest, Wordpress, and Tumblr. 

Whether their twiddling will lead to a colossus, a killer app, remains to be seen. But we can be sure that something new and radically bold is coming, even if it’s not Medium.

Related articles

• 13 ways of looking at Medium, the new blogging/sharing/discovery platform from @ev and Obvious (Nieman Journalism Lab) One of the most insightful analyses of Medium, by Joshua Bentam, the director of the Nieman Journalism Lab
• Read-only Launch For Medium & Branch, But Twitter Founders Promise More (readwriteweb.com)
• Twitter Co-Founders Preview Medium, Their Publishing Platform That Gives Anyone An Audience (techcrunch.com)
• Twitter Cofounders Unveil Medium, A Publishing Platform That Feels Like Tumblr And Looks Like Pinterest (fastcompany.com)
• Twitter founders launch a blogging platform, Kevin Rose blogs about peeing (venturebeat.com)
• Twitter founders launch Medium: a cross between Pinterest and Reddit (wired.co.uk)

15 August 2012 28 Permalink