FIRE Conference - San Diego

I recently was invited to the FIRE (Future in Review) conference in San Diego. (See photos)My company was nominated as a Firestarter company - a fast growth technology company in the 'one to watch' category.

I'm going to sit down and write more on this later, but in general, my observations were:

- this is a very cool technology conference with an eclectic bunch of speakers and attendees
- you get to see very cool toys (think watching a Leonardo Da Vinci painting being analyzed by the world's leading art expert on a mamouth sized screen)
- you get to network with bright, cool people
- you get to showcase your thoughts (but not your products - it is not a sales conference) to some very smart people
- and if you are good, you get to come back next year

I strongly urge you to check out the FIRE conference, see their online content, and sign up to Mark Andersen's excellent Strategic News Service.

More to follow (catching up from some travel)

Why Prizes do not Work - why the X-Prize approach will not spur human development as much as some think

There has been a tremendous amount of interest in using large monetary prizes to help solve some of the world’s thorniest problems. Everyone has probably heard of the X-Prize, a multi-million dollar price to encourage the private development of space technology to put people into orbit. Some may have heard of Sir Richard Branson’s $25m Earth prize to find ways of converting CO2 into something more useful that destructive greenhouse gas.

In terms of behavioural theory on rewards, the prize should be an attractive stimulus to encourage individuals to take an interest in the problem, and devote their own resources to solving the problem. Some prizes may be primarily financial, others may focus more on the recognition aspect. An example of recognition would be the story of the math professor (whose name escapes me) who used to give $100 checks for students to solve very complex problems. The professor was so famous, that the very fact that one received a check from the master for solving the problem, was recognition enough, and many never cashed the check.

The problem, and I will shorten my response as I have some time constraints today, is that the winner-takes-all nature of the prize means that there is virtually no sharing between the parties working to solve the problem. Indeed sharing any information could disadvantage any or all of the players, to the extend that all the behavioural components are in place to prevent any form of sharing, beneficial or otherwise.

Now, if one looks at the real issue, one must question the intent of the prize. If the goal is to solve the problem, the prize approach itself is just one incentive method to achieving the goal. There are other, potentially better, ways of incenting behavior to achieve the same goal. These methods may be safer, less damaging to individuals, easier to explain, and faster to solving the problem itself.

In terms of problem solving, the critical behavior that has been removed from the incentive scheme is that of sharing, ‘connecting the dots’. I am a huge believer, based on a decade worth of my own research and practice at Imaginatik and before that at Cass Business School in London, in the power of collaborative innovation, joining a diverse set of brainpower and concentrating that brain energy on a specific problem.

To solve the ultimate problem, one must connect brains together.

The top prize approach stops this from happening.

Ergo, prizes are a bad approach.

Ergo, for those people with the wisdom and desire to help the world solve its thorniest problems – and who love prizes (you know who you are, I met some of you at Davos) – think again whether the ‘prize’ solution to solving the actual problem is the right approach.

Coming Soon: Imaginatik the Documentary + Reminiscences of being a student

I just worked with a group of talented students on doing a Masters of Management course at Cass Business School, at the City University (London). I am an alumni of Cass, and I enjoy supporting various programs, certainly more than I did when I had to study and turn in coursework on the undergraduate course.

The students have to make a documentary on Imaginatik, and Idea Central. The formal showing is March 5th in London. I get to attend in person (and I really hope there’ll be a red carpet waiting).

The nice thing is that we get to post the documentary on our soon-to-be-annouced Imaginatik YouTube Channel. This digital world is a great thing.

A word on being a student. When I joined the business school as an undergraduate, the Dean gave an opening speech to all the new students. “You can be smart, or you can be hard wording”, he intoned. “If you are smart, and don’t work hard, you will get a 2:1” (known as an Upper Second class degree). “If you are hard working, and not that smart, you will get a 2:1 as well”. Now at this point, I could see a few options opening up, as I continued to listen. “Only the smartest and most hard working students will get a First Class degree”. And with that, he sat down.

My eighteen year-old brain quickly switched into gear. I knew I had a certain smarts, and could work really hard when needs be. The uncertainty of the end result concerned me, though. What if I worked really hard for three years, and then found out right at the end that I was not smart enough to get a First? All that work for nothing? The disappointment!

So, at that moment, before I had even bought my first textbook, I decided to work as hard as needs be, and be happy at school. And, at the end of my third year, when I was told I had failed to get a First by a fraction of a percent, I did not appeal, I did not cry (although in retrospect an appeal would have been a good idea). Instead I was happy that I had achieved all I wanted to achieve at university, and could now carry on my way in the world, unburdened by large-scale disappointment. There would always be a next time :)

World Economic Forum: Employee / Consumer Engagement Focus Area: Expert Query Survey

I have been asked to be a Discussion Leader at the World Economic Forum on the topic of ‘Employee and Consumer Engagement’. Session attendees are expected to include the CEOs of firms including Timberland, Best Buy, Archer Daniels Midland, FEMSA, General Mills, Henkel, and Monsanto.

As part of the preparation, the Discussion Leaders were asked to submit their thoughts on key areas. In the spirit of openness, fitting the goals of the WEF, I thought it might be interesting for those who are not CEO’s of giant corporations to see what my thoughts are. Or maybe not… only you can tell!

Employee / Consumer Engagement Focus Area: Expert Query Survey

1. What are the key forces among consumers, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers and other stakeholders that are shaping the sustainability landscape in this focus area?

• Role of new Internet tools & uses – collaboration, social networks, cameras everywhere, free bandwidth, near free mobile bandwidth
• New social phenomena – crowdsourcing, flash mobs, at global scale
• Shifting demographics – boomer generation retires as richest retired generation, impact of Gen-X and Gen-Y with different life views, such as the Gen-Y desire for authenticity and trusted brands (to help them through Attention Deficit Disorder – ADD – myriad of choices)

2. Where do you see the key opportunities to improve sustainability along this part of the value chain?

• Potential for transparency at scale
• Leverage consumer passion
• Leverage the long tail of consumer needs / production

3. What are some of the challenges and obstacles to improve sustainability along this part of the value chain, in particular in regards to the opportunities identified above?

• Notion of control – what can be controlled? What should be controlled?
• How will mainstream, large enterprise CPG / retailers handle the ultimate in user-generated content – products, retail channels

“Imagine two 12-year olds…

1. In Berlin, a heart surgeon’s son is a Lego wizzkid, he and his father build models, upload them to Lego Factory, and sell them on the Lego Factory store. They have used a ‘consultant’ on craigslist who helped optimize the model and the cost. The son uses an internet challenge site to design a box, which is uploaded to the Lego site. Lego give the son a cut of sales – which he boosts with an internet web site and eBay store. After 12 months, using viral marketing, his products are a hit, and he is earning half as much as his father.

2. In England, a 12-year old loves drawing and playing on his WII. His uncle offers him a deal – if you design a WII add-on, he will fund $10K to take it to market. The child draws his design, and a contractor, uncovered on guru.net, turns the drawing into a CAD file. The CAD file is used with an outsourced 3-D modelling company, who use a stereolithography machine to turn the CAD file into physical mock-ups – in three different countries. The contractor also makes a 3-D visualization model. The models are used to support virtual focus groups, involving 1,000 target customers, selected using the Orchid psychographic tool, collecting input and ideas using Idea Central. The successful design is uploaded to a Chinese trading site, where manufacturers bid to produce the product. A contractor is used to design the package. An internet site is set up to sell the product, and a viral marketing campaign using Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube kick-start online sales. The 12-year old is glad his uncle had a budget of $10,000 – he has saved $4,000 form this money, and the revenue from sales will more than put him (and his brothers and sisters) through college.

• How can mainstream retailers / CPG respond to joined-up thinking in the general public about sustainability in the value chain, prompted by viral initiatives like www.historyofstuff.com

Tom Davenport on Prediction Markets + Mark Turrell's viewpoint

Recently I came across a discussion group entry on prediction markets by Tom Davenport, a professor at Babson, and author of The Next Big Thing. His comments on prediction markets are here. My comments are... waiting to be authorized for publication. They were great ones, I assure you. I'll keep an eye on the posting and hopefully remember to add them.

Help Out Please - Information Overload Study from Basex

I am an avid fan of Basex and their TechWatch newsletter. They are conducting a survey on Information Overload and I strongly urge you to participate. I've copied the text of his latest editorial below - and to take the survey:

"The survey can be found at http://www.basex.com/btwiosurv1 and survey
takers are eligible to win a Palm Treo 750 smartphone with Windows Mobile
6."


BASEX:COMMENTARY-OF-THE-WEEK BY JONATHAN B. SPIRA AND DAVID M. GOLDES

THE CRISIS OF INFORMATION OVERLOAD: TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING

In December 2003, we named spam e-mail our Product-of-the-Year for 2004,
explaining that this was akin to Time magazine's naming Adolf Hitler Man of
the Year in 1938. Spam, we wrote back then, was "a disruptive force that
has had a major impact on almost everyone who uses a computer."

The Product-of-the-Year designation is meant to recognize technologies that
have had a major impact on how we work using information technology - and
nothing has had a more profound effect than the disruptive nature of spam.
Until now, that is.

This week we named Information Overload as the 2008 Problem-of-the-Year.

Whether sitting at a desk in the office, in a conference room, in one's
home office, or at a client, the likelihood of being able to complete a
task (what many call "work") without interruption is nil. Content creation
has gone off the charts and new forms of content are being pushed towards
us at a rapid pace. It's not just e-mail, junk mail, text messages, phone
calls, and monthly reports anymore.

Intel, a company with 94,000 employees, sees Information Overload as a
serious problem. "At Intel we estimated the impact of information overload
on each knowledge worker at up to eight hours a week," says Nathan Zeldes,
a Principal Engineer focusing on computing productivity issues at Intel.
"We are now looking at applying new work behaviors that can help reduce
this impact".

Shari Lawrence Pfleeger, a senior information scientist at the RAND
Corporation, sees Information Overload as an impediment to getting her work
done. "We are more connected than ever, but we must manage not only our
connections but also the increasing volumes of information flowing over
them. We continue to sort useful mail from junk mail, but we are
additionally stressed by sorting useful phone calls from junk calls, useful
email from spam, and in general useful from useless (and even dangerous)
information. To get really important work done, I find it helpful to take
a holiday from my connections so that I can focus on the work at hand."

We believe that 2008 will be the year we begin to solve the problem of
information overload in a substantive way.

In conjunction with the Problem-of-the-Year announcement, Basex is
announcing a survey on information overload and today's work environment
challenges. Ironically, the latest office productivity tools designed to
increase productivity are often having the opposite effect.

The survey can be found at http://www.basex.com/btwiosurv1 and survey
takers are eligible to win a Palm Treo 750 smartphone with Windows Mobile
6.

Please take the survey today (http://www.basex.com/btwiosurv1) and feel
free to share this link with colleagues. The more input we get via the
survey, the more we can do to solve the problem of Information Overload
together.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex. He can be reached at
jspira@basex.com
David M. Goldes is the president of Basex. He can be reached at
dgoldes@basex.com