Limping or leaping?

In these rapidly changing times, more and more organizations are facing the troublesome question of whether to limp on with the products they have or go for the big leap.

Back in 1987 when Richard Foster wrote The Attackers Advantage, breakthrough products and services occurred rarely, but when they did they leapfrogged the competition with productivity gains in the 100-1000% range.

Now they are the norm. 

Foster was one of the first to apply Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions to business. His S-curve model explained how new technologies - every so often - transform markets. Like electricity, the motor car and the computer. And are many times more productive or efficient.  

Foster showed that new, "breakthrough" products or services appear "out of nowhere" without any warning. They cannibalize the market for the products they displace, and several others at the same time. Think the photocopier which wiped out carbon paper, the spirit duplicator and much of what we knew as small offset printing. 

S-curves come in pairs. They describe the adoption trajectories of old and new technologies. 

There is gap between each curve, a discontinuity. It is here that the fate of incumbents and attackers is decided. Sometimes the first mover wins because they gain so much momentum. Sometimes the incumbents win because they have resources. Even old technologies can sustain a miraculous recovery and persist long beyond their "use-by" dates, like the very persistent "knowledge telling" model of school education.

Richard Ogle, author of Smart World, sees breakthrough ideas in terms of new "idea spaces" which emerge out of several earlier and mature "idea spaces" and which offer a better explanation for how the world works. Think the realization that the DNA molecule was a double helix, or how light and matter are connected in the theory of relativity.

New breakthrough products are often "clunky" at first. But as they gather support over a half dozen or so years, they gain momentum. Critical customers come on board, and little-by-little they shed the clunkiness, until one day, after many iterations, the product becomes so simple, so easy to use and easy to acquire, it captures everyone's attention and imagination. And starts to fly off the shelf.

Like the iPhone, which at last count had 174,000 applications available. This amazing portable device combines the computer, phone, video and music entertainment, global positioning system, banking portal and is challenging dozens of product and service segments simultaneously.

But there are dangers in moving too early, before an idea space is mature, and ripe for re-invention. Dudley Lynch and Paul Kordis, make this point in their book, the Strategy of the Dolphin. Early movers can burn through a lot of resources if their brilliant idea is too far ahead of the times. Late movers may never recover because the are so far behind the leaders. Those who start just ahead of the changing times, have a reasonable chance of success, but can also be overtaken by financially well-resourced and powerful copyists.

 So here's a workshop to explore whether you are safe (or not) from a challenge:

1. In what ways are your customers unhappy, angry or concerned about your product or service, and what would they like to be different?

2. Thinking about what your customers would like to be different, what new products or services are emerging or available which may meet your customer's needs better, and make them happy or delighted?

3. Thinking about your product or service, what are the latest scientific theories about your "idea space" and to what extent are you in alignment or not?

4. If there is a new theory in your idea space that supports a radical new manufacturing method, distribution method or product feature, what is it and what could it allow someone else to do (and which you can't do)?

5. What minor challenges are you currently facing in the marketplace from products or services in different categories to your products/services that seem to encroaching on your space, just a little?

6. What evidence do you have for new jobs being created around other new products/services?

7. What evidence do you have for declining work opportunities for people who use your products or services or supply them as part of their work?

8. What idea spaces appear to be coming together? Describe them.

9. To what extent are the new products/services well before the times, ahead of the times, or with the times?

10 What idea spaces could/should you bring together in order to create a product that survives new challenges?

The power of the warm-up...

Just before the show begins on American Idol, Oprah or Letterman, there's a warm-up. To get the audience in the mood. And to learn to applaud or laugh on cue.

Without the audience "reaction" such shows would be deadly dull.

Athletes, dancers and musicians warm up before they perform. To focus the mind and prepare the body for a complex sequence of motor actions.

Why then, is there so much resistance from the corporate world to a "warm up" routine that puts people in the mood for creative and intuitive leaps.

Some see play as wasting time. Not really work. Sinful, childish or pointless. It's a hangover from our puritanical past, a consequence of what we valued during the Age of Reason. 

Surgeons don't operate on your brain and pilots don't fly planes without rehearsal. So why should participants in vital corporate meetings just show up? And decide what's best for their staff, customers and shareholders without knowing how to collectively perform decision making in the best way possible?

In the world of Zing we use warm-up questions at the start of our electronic meetings, to practice a protocol that orchestrates/co-ordinates the conversations, unleashes the creative juices and teaches a powerful kind of discourse that helps people create new knowledge faster and more reliably.

We ask three questions, in ascending richness and complexity, which accelerate the norming, storming and performing process. Fifteen minutes of organized fun helps poorly organized groups become a top performing team. Before we start the day's real work.

Here's the warm up sequence:

1. Play: Type anything you like, the words of your favorite song, a list of what you had for breakfast or The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

2. Etiquette: What's your favorite story? Name, author and why?

3. If you could be a fairytale, movie, TV or cartoon character who would you be and what would you be like to live with?

Our discourse protocol - Talk-Type-Read-Review - quickly becomes the norm. We learn to discuss questions in pairs so there's lots of variety and connection. Everyone talks and types at the same time so we all get a global picture of what everyone thinks or feels. We learn to create new ideas across the boundaries of our differences and make sense of what we collectively know, feel or mean.

It's these kinds of intuitive leaps that are now critical to organization success. As Richard Ogle, in Smart World observes: "Working together, intuition and imagination give rise to insight, the quintessential phenomenon of breakthrough creativity, the eureka moment, the sudden flash that brings new light to what was previously darkness......Imagination, guided by the pattern-recognizing powers of intuition, boldly jumps across intervening space to connect to whole new networks of meaning. And so suddenly the breakthrough occurs. A new space is born."

Here's an example of how it works. The blue squares represent ideas generated in response to an open-ended question. The red dots are people. The arrows show who generated which ideas. The highly cross-linked concepts (blue cluster at the center of the network map) is the emergent new knowledge being created collectively by the five different factions (red clusters).

It is this community building process - simultaneously bridging different ideas spaces and mental models that establishes and then reinforces the affective links between people - which makes Zing an incredibly powerful tool. But like any tool, it can be used poorly. The results can be less than impressive if we deviate too far from the prescribed questions and the protocol.

The structure of the initial questions is critical to success. Ideally a session should begin with a simple activity to discover where each keyboard types on the screen. Our research shows that people find it hard to learn how to use a new tool AND use it for a real activity. They perform best when the learning and the doing are separated.

Next, participants learn the etiquette or meeting protocol by responding to a warm-up activity that presents an easy-to answer question. They become familiar with the tool and comfortable about exposing their thinking/opinions/feelings to people they may not know, or don't know very well. A second "self-revealing" warm-up activity reinforces the etiquette, shifts the role of reading ideas to the participants and builds affective connections across the community!

Here's what we also do (and no one notices, because the methods are built into the protocol and the questions):

* the warm-up activity lets people know its time to play. Collective play is a way of simultaneously creating new knowledge together, exploring novel scenarios and developing closer relationships with others. People soon discover it's OK to let down their guard and be more open to each other, which accelerates the rate at which we develop affective links.

* we replace the outmoded brainstorming rules of the last three decades with a powerful new model of knowledge creation. The old way is to freewheel and generate hundreds of ideas at random, but too often the ideas are 2-3 word snippets out of context, that have little meaning. Instead, we engage in a kind of deliberate creative thinking....or serious creativity. We raise the demand on the participants and ask them to craft complex, extraordinary, meaningful ideas from what Wittgenstein called "language games", the families of concepts that belong to different ideas spaces. The more different and emergent the better, like biomimicry (emulating nature), complexity (autocatalytic) or wisdom (wise application of knowledge). We create super-concepts that richly combine simpler ideas, so they leap off the page in a year's time. It's called dialectical discourse, the basis of all knowledge creation.

* we learn to use analogical/metaphorical thinking to see something as something else. It's the process by which stunning new concepts are created along the way to a new theory or model. The cartoon character question helps us practice this "IF, THEN" thinking. For example, if we were a cartoon character....then what would we be like to live with? Or if the next wave of change is the "Wisdom Age", then what is a "wisdom job" or a "wisdom tool" and how might they function?

* we firmly establish a conversation process of talking in pairs which generates more and richer ideas than taking turns around the table. It also ensures everyone is heard.

* we learn how to look for patterns in the ideas or "common themes", to make sense of what they mean. This starts the new model/theory building process. It also helps people recognize the value in other contributions or world views and make the intuitive leap to the Eureka idea.

* the question sequences are designed like a game with built-in rewards, that propel us further into the game, and make us want to keep on playing. These are right-brain tasks that are a bit of a stretch but doable, which result in Flow, a state of optimal experience, first identified by psychologist Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, author of Boredom and Anxiety*, (see image below). If the warm-up questions are too boring - too logical or corporate - we don't get the dopamine flowing and dont get into Flow, and we're stuck with our old analytical, automatic thinking patterns controlled by our left-brain.

* we deliberately practice right brain thinking (simultaneous processing) using the cartoon question. The concepts/prompts act as catalysts that stimulate our imagination. We are reminded of multiple characters from our experience of TV, film and fairy tales. We recall their characteristics and try to match them with our own. It's the kind of thinking required to make collective intuitive leaps.

* the warm-up practice helps the meeting process become automatic...a left-brain activity...so we don't have to think about it any more. We can then devote all of the brain's resources to energy-consuming right-brain (simultaneous) processing to achieve the required leaps of intuition across the boundaries of all of our mental models and constraints.

Here are some more warm-up questions to choose from in the Dreams, Memes & Themes title, which contains 50 meetings for transforming any organization. You can download a trial applet from

www.anyzing.com/DreamsMemesThemes

1. Play: Type the words of your favorite song OR what you had for breakfast OR The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

2. What is your favorite story? Title, author and why in 30 words or less.

3. If you could be a fairytale, cartoon or movie character who would you be and what would you be like to live with?

4. What is the most spectacular thing you have ever done and why?

5. How do you embarrass yourself?

6. Explain a beautiful spring day to a blind person?

7. If you could live to 1,000 what would you do differently?

8. What is your favourite saying and how does it affect your life?

9. Who is your hero or heroine and why are they so important to you?

10. If you could make a momentous discovery, what would it be?

11. What could you do to become very famous?

12. How would you catch a falling star?

13. What for you is the $64 million dollar question?

14. What is at the end of your rainbow?

15. How do you get to be over the moon?

16. What good turn for you would deserve another?

17. If you had a four-leaf clover what would you wish for?

18. You have been dumped by the love of your life. What do you now do?

19. Tomorrow you are to meet Jim Carrey. How do you prepare?

20. You are now your country's leader. What is the first thing you will do?

21. How do you sing for your supper?

22. They are to make a movie of your life. What is the title?

23. If you entered a popularity contest, why would you lose?

24. How do you end up in the doghouse?

25. What is the most creative thing you have ever done?

26. You have transformed into something nasty by a wicked witch. What are you now and how can you use it to your advantage?

27. What kind of animal are you most like and why?

28. If you could be a fly on a wall, whose wall would you like to be on and why?

29. What is your worst kept secret?

30. Use only five words to describe yourself.

31. What is the most precious thing for you in the whole world?

32. If you became the boss for a day, and for only a day, what would you do?

33. Describe a fate worse than death for your favourite politician.

34. What captures your imagination and why?

35. What was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you? Who did it and why?

And some more questions, especially for corporate organizations that are stuck in the "play is not work" era:

36. During the time you have worked for (name of organization), what was the most fun, amazing or incredible experience/event that happened to you/for you?

37. What for you was the most amazing creative leap or "aha" that now helps you see the world in rich new ways?

38. If our organization was a movie, fairytale, TV or cartoon character, who would it be and how does it engage wth the world?

39. What words of wisdom, mental models, thinking processes, or ways of seeing the world could you  contribute today that might be helpful to the future of our organization?

*  Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály (1975). Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. Experiencing Flow in Work and Play. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.


Image of the conductor, created by Allan Lam, for Dreams,Memes & Themes, 50 meetings to transform your organization, Zing, 2002.

An experiment to see our brains at work

Here's an experiment to explore what A.R.Luria, the Russian neurophysiologist identified as right brain (simultaneous) and left brain (successive) processing.

I use Soundball, my favorite Improv routine, as a warm up for my interactive workshops. To get the dopamine and the creativity flowing. And to observe how our brains work.

I begin by forming and throwing an imaginary ball to a  member of the audience, and make a sound like "whee" or "whooo". She catches the ball with the same sound, then throws the ball to another person, with a different sound. And we keep the process going for as long as possible, with as few mistakes as possible.

At the beginning, chaos reigns! People become frozen, unable to move. Some catch the ball and forget what to do. Others throw the ball to no one in particular, so no one catches it. Some correct their mistakes. Some make the same sound coming and going. Others don't make a sound atall.

Then, as we learn what to do, our performances improve and soon the whole room is synchronized perfection. But if I start too many new Soundballs going too early, it all fizzles out.

It seems like we can't pay attention to too many moving targets at the same time.

Usually, after a few minutes, our collective performances improve, even when we never get to throw the ball in rehearsal. We learn by imitation, via Broca's area of the brain, just above the left ear, where the same mirror neurons fire off when you watch and perform an activity. So, watching is almost as good as doing.

Last week I ran a session for about 90 people. I was in a hurry, and started too many Soundballs going without enough practice or feedback.  The result. Chaos. Too much diverted attention.

The problematic result started me wondering if practicing in small groups would help. Or co-visualizing success could be even better, in the same way that athletes practice winning by rehearsing their performance in their "mind's eye".

So here's an experiment and some feedback questions to test this theory:

1. The facilitator explains how Soundball works. Create an "imaginary ball" with both hands. About 12 inches in diameter and demonstrate to the room the purpose of the game. You throw the ball with a sound like "yabba dabba do", they receive the ball with the same sound as the sender, then send the ball to another person with a new sound, such as "Wowee".

2. Experiment 1 - Ask the participants to observe their performances. Start a Soundball in one part of the room. Then start another somewhere else.

3. Feedback - What happened when people began to receive and send soundballs?

4. Feedback - What explanations can you offer for the success or failure of the exercise?

5. Experiment 2 - Ask the group to divide into threes to practice Soundball. One person in the triad starts the Soundball, each takes it in turns to receive with the same sound, send with a different sound, and keep the exercise going for 2-3 minutes. Observe your performances.

6. Feedback - What happened when people practised Soundballs in threes.

7. Experiment 3 - Now repeat Experiment 1 with the whole group. Again observe your performances.

8. Feedback - What happened when people began to receive and send soundballs?

9. Feedback - What explanation can you offer for the success or failure of the exercise?

10.Experiment 4 - Ask the group to divide into threes, then all close their eyes and imagine the group of three playing Soundball according to the rules, until they are mentally performing the task perfectly. After 2-3 minutes practice, repeat Experiment 1.

11. Feedback - Thinking about our performance, when did we perform poorly and what was happening at the time?

12. Feedback - Thinking about our performance, when did we perform really well and what was happening at the time?

13. Theory development: Explain what was/not happening in terms of left brain processing (simultaneous processing, dealing with novel situations), right brain processing (automatic learned routines, successive processing), and mirror neuron processing (empathy, imitation) for each experiment.

Bridging the great spiritual divide

Oh, what a waste of time and energy. Of the fire and brimstone kind. On the question "Is there a God?" One side says emphatically Yes! The other, just as loudly. No!

If only the energy invested in attacking each other were devoted to a more creative cause.

I recently invested a whole evening to hear the conservative commentator Dinesh D'Souza deliver a lecture, "What's so great about Christianity?", the title of one of his books. He spoke to a "home-town" audience at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix Arizona, which very successfully offers a university education with a religious flavor. It's one of the fastest growing universities in the USA.

D'Souza, a darling of the Reagan Administration, is noted for challenging prominent atheists and philosophers in public debates. He takes on the likes of Christopher Hitchens (God is not Great) and Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion) as well as "radical" philosophers Dan Dennett (Breaking the Spell - Religion as a Natural Phenomenon) and Peter Singer (Practical Ethics).

He lays the blame for some of history's biggest debacles squarely at the feet of non-believers. In much the same way that atheists set out to show religion as the root cause of much human conflict and misery.

Yet, when the beliefs of both sides are subjected to closer examination, you discover they have more in common than each might imagine. Both are interested in "who am I?" and "what is my place/role in the universe?" "Is there life after death? "How did the universe, life and everything come into existence?' "What are the best rules for living and being?"

Imagine if organizations had a Department for Deciding and Promulgating New Beliefs. Atheists and believers would probably both be hired for the jobs in the same way that computerists or programmers - Mac, Windows, Linux and Cobol - work in IT, or copy writers, PR writers and artists work happily together in Public Relations and Advertising or accountants, economists, actuaries and managerial finance graduates co-exist in Finance.

So what if both sides joined up to explore what could be done together, to heal the rift? And then go looking for better solutions for humanity and the planet, that combine the best of what each has to offer. What if we could more deeply understand life, the universe and everything by starting out with an open mind and a preparedness to take on-board new knowledge we collectively create, and narrow the gap between what we know and don't know?

So here is a workshop to explore the gulf between us, no matter what you believe:

1. What big questions do atheists and believers in God both ask e.g. What is the purpose of life?

2. If the answer is 42, what is the question? (P.S. Thanks Douglas Adams, deceased, author of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).

3. Brainstorm a list of urgent projects of immense importance to human society which atheists and those who believe in God could profitably address. Jointly.

4. If someone/something e.g. Douglas Adam's Electronic Monk could do your believing for you, who and what would you be?

5. How do we know what we know?

6. Describe the differences between concepts, theories, knowledge, faith and justified true belief?

7. What new kinds of Wisdom Age (wise application of knowledge) products or services could be created  that would serve the interests of atheists, those who believe in God, and the rest of us?

8. Brainstorm a list of options for the creation of the universe, e.g. self-organizing, a designer/creator of some kind, and explain how each would work.

9. What is the purpose of life? And how does this relate to the purpose of the universe?

10. What is the difference between a mystery and a miracle and how might the two be reconciled?

11. What might be the rules of engagement, standards of proof etc. that might be adopted by atheists and those who believe in God in order to pursue useful joint investigations?

A new breed of entrepreneur

If you have made up your mind about something and refuse to budge, watch out!

The Wisdom Age entrepreneurs are heading your way. To convert your theories and beliefs into products and services that incorporate conflicting and contradictory world views, even the beliefs of your most entrenched foes.

These "connectapreneurs" use contradictions as the creative source for their new-to-the-world products and services. They mix the old with the new, the traditional with the leading edge, the beautiful with the ugly, the happy with the sad. Think atheism vs a belief in God. Or monarchy vs anarchy. Or Glamour vs. Glitz.

They search for and discover over-arching ideas that resolve the contradictions between models, theories and beliefs, and in the process, invent new knowledge. Then work out how to apply it wisely.

Wisdom work - and the tools that help people make wise decisions - is one of the fastest expanding sectors of the economy. Which will automate your Knowledge Age job, as well as jobs in IT, mining, construction, manufacturing and agriculture. Because they've found an even smarter way to do stuff than anyone could possibly have imagined.

Google any of these kinds of jobs and see what you find: green, ethical, renewable energy, corporate governance, humanitarian, peace or conflict resolution, social responsibility and social justice. These jobs are designed to solve some of our worst, most wicked problems.

There's a whole bunch of websites which advertise ethical and green jobs. Like ethicaljobs.net, greenjobs.net and organicfoodjobs.org. Certified ethical hacker. Sustainability engineer. Healthy eating specialist. Ecological footprint auditor. Ethics officer. Organic food quality tester.

Don't for one moment think these people are righteous do-gooders who want to ban dangerous, risky, weird or downright crazy activities. No, not at all. This new breed of entrepreneur merely seeks to trawl the depths of your desires as the creative inspiration for new businesses that are highly connected, empathic, playful, engaging, exciting and downright amazing, that eliminate the pain and misery created by greed, corruption and fundamentalist beliefs that take people back to before the Dark Ages.

They are all for extremes, just so long as they are dialectically resolved into a higher order principle or concept, and  tempered with the mantra, "in what ways can you do it wisely" so it is of benefit not only to yourself but to others. So that it helps to bake a bigger cake for all.

There are five rules for the creation of these new products and services:

• Combine: Mix multiple ideas from different fields, especially contradictory ideas, theories, concepts etc and jump to a higher level to create an over-arching idea that contains and respects the vital essences of their forebears/ancestors/subsidiary ideas.
• Complete:  Incorporate all the bits of the jigsaw. Don't leave any out that are inconvenient or don't fit your personal model or world view. There has to be a bigger and better world view that ensures you don't make giant mistakes like the big banks or auto makers, who ignored inconvenient truths.
• Fit: Make sure all the parts of a new product or service are a compact, neat, beautiful, elegant solution. There are very few best fit designs. For example, the tail, wings, fuel, pilot, passengers and engines of an aircraft all have their own unique place in the overall schema.  
• Wise: The new product or service must serve, not only the needs of the maker and the user, but all others. A win-win-win outcome.
• Connected: All new-to-the-world products or services need to live within a nested ecology of other products and services. e.g. the motor car goes with shopping malls, freeways, gas stations, tires, engines etc. So when you develop your product idea, develop what goes with it at the same time or otherwise it may never get off the ground. Like electric cars need charging stations everywhere, or fax machines only work when a critical mass of people have one.

This new kind of entrepreneur wants to keep people out of prison by creating products and services that help young people develop the language, leadership and team work skills that allow them to be fully engaged in society, as valuable contributors to wealth and wellness creation. Ensure you are fit and healthy and live to a ripe old age. Help politicians get out the the rut they are in, and change the rules of the game, so the clammy hand of government plays less of a role in our lives, simply because personally and collectively we are all more capable of doing stuff for ourselves.

So what are some of the ways to success as an entrepreneur in a Wisdom Age world? It pays to remember these five principles:

• Change is accelerating. 
• Complexity is running rampant. 
• We all collectively create the future together. It's not someone else's responsibility. 
• New simple stuff arises from unusual complex combinations.
• Play is the way to create new ideas and road test each scenario.

Here's some strategies that use these core principles:

* Solve big world problems: Some of the best opportunities resolve major world problems simply because they remain unsolved.

* Find solutions in strange places. Some of the best product and services ideas come from the most unlikely places. Look to the boundaries between major conflicts, where no one dares to look. For example, to create a spiritually satisfying technology, look at what religious fundamentalists and atheists have in common.

* Integrate multiple unique ideas, methods and technologies:  Breakthrough products attack many categories at once. For example, the photocopier attacked carbon copy paper, spirit duplicators and small offset printers. The computer dealt a blow to calculators, adding machines, typewriters and fax machines.

* Productize services. Create products that add a knowledge creation or ethical dilemma resolution tool, or embed complex thinking or decision making processes in silicon or biology.

* Co-invent with the customer. Collectively create the future together. Involve the customer as a prod-user or localizer-customizer. Work with customers so their customers get to experience your product or service.

* Run simulations. Play games to try out the possibilities. Check which is the one most likely to attract customers and support or complementary products and services. What other products are a perfect fit in a new ecology?

* Start many projects. Some will win, most will lose. Back the ones that race away the fastest, that garner the most support, that are contagious.

* Plan, Plan, Plan. Never stop planning. Do it daily, if necessary hourly. Rethink your strategy constantly. Learn from every customer or supplier, because they will help you perfect the product or service and how to take it to market. Perfect the vision until you live it. And be prepared to scrap a plan if it's wrong.

* Sell prototypes. Start making money as soon as possible. There's no point waiting around for an investor. You are the investor. Promise your first customer free upgrades to the next three versions. Your first website and product leaflet don't need to be glossy. They can be a single page with the basics. The features. Benefits. Price.

* Discover and promote new uses. You may believe you thought of everything, but people discover new uses you never ever considered.

* Work with others who have resources. There's a whole bunch of people out there who have the skills and tools you need to get started. And they won't cost as much as you think. Or they may be prepared to contribute to the project, especially if they stand to gain revenue from your ongoing success.

* Loyalty pays. Be really loyal to the people that help you and forgive those that fail you.

* Don't delay. Start today. Don't worry about the patents and trade marks: It may be handy to get a patent for your new idea or a trade mark for your logo/brand, but it costs a lot of money and takes a very long time, as long as a decade, and if someone infringes your patent, it costs even more money and diverts your attention to pursue them.

So here's an unstructured workshop to create a new Wisdom Age opportunity. Just apply the rules and go for it.

You have been given the task of creating a new Wisdom Age product or service? What is it and how will you take it to market?

Or a structured version....like the short session we ran this week with Professor Abe Tawil's business class at Baruch College, City University of New York. Thanks everyone! You were great!


1. Brainstorm a list of things that make you as a customer unhappy, angry, concerned or frustrated?
2. Describe a problem that is being created for people and society by accelerating change and increasing complexity.
3. Brainstorm a list of the world's UNSOLVED PROBLEMS e.g. poverty or war or CONTRADICTIONS e.g. disputes between atheists and religious people?
4. Give an example of a product or service which 20 years from now people will laugh at and explain why it is silly, clunky, quaint or ridiculous.
5. Make a list of things people valued 50-1000 years ago that we no longer value, but might value again.
6. Brainstorm a list of products/services which are commodities (all the same) and may be ripe for re-invention.
7. Choose 1 or 2 new technologies that have yet to be widely implemented (eg. biomimicry, nanotechnology, ethical dialectical discourse) to add to your mix.
8. Craft an idea for a wisdom age product/service that overcomes a customer dissatisfier, solves a major world problem or contradiction, that people will no longer laugh at, was ripe for reinvention, revisits old values, and includes a new technology and helps people APPLY KNOWLEDGE WISELY.  (Name + 25 word description please).
9. How can you get all the products and services to fit together as an ecology, interdependent, connected as a self-supporting, self-developing system. Choose one or two of the product ideas and describe how to connect them?
10. Choose one of the new product ideas and develop new ideas for connected products and services that could support it as part of a new system.
11. Write a four-line rap song for your best idea to explain how it works/benefits the customer. e.g. The new Apple Ipad, really is glamorous, it makes us want to be, platonically amorous.

The recursive brain

Imagine it. Create it. That's what humans do. We make tools that continue to upgrade the human brain, to ever-higher levels of capability.

Alexei Nikolaevich Leont'ev (1903–1979), the Russian psychologist who is regarded as a father of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory shows our unconscious automatic actions eventually becomes crystallized as tools.

The finger used to dig a hole in the ground, is replaced by a stick. We learn to use a sharp rock to cut materials. Then someone realizes that a sharp rock attached to a stick makes it easier to catch a fish or kill a wild beast. We make the switch from diggers and cutters to spearers and throwers.

Each new improvement to a tool displaces an earlier activity performed by a body part or a simpler tool.

More powerful tools are created out of new combinations of simpler tools, and the method of use changes. A motor car may have wheels similar to a chariot but it has an engine and drive train instead of a horse, a steering wheel instead of reins, and a horn instead of a shout.

Human brains and tools co-invent each other to ever-higher levels of capability, in a kind of race to the top. Christiansen & Chater, in a paper available from the Santa Fe Institute website (a research center that studies the laws of complexity), say that the brain and language are symbiotic (co-dependent) and one helps to co-create and leverage the other, recursively. I have added the tool development steps to their original diagram to show that tool development closely follows language development. In fact, as new technologies become more widely adopted, so do the words that describe them and their use.

When the method of use changes so does the nature of work. This determines the roles we play in life. A stick can be a sword (soldier/warrior), or a digging implement (farmer/miner) or a baton (policeman), wand (witch/magician), a conductor’s baton (musician/conductor of an orchestra) or joystick (computer gamer/pilot).

This is how the brain-tool partnership works. When we face a new situation that instinctive or automatic left-brain routines can't handle, the right frontal lobes help develop a new way to deal with the problem, using what the Russian neurophysiologist, A.R. Luira (and colleague of Leont'ev) called "simultaneous processing". The left frontal lobes automate the new sequence, in a process Luria called "successive processing". So the next time we encounter the same situation, our left-brain automatic "zombie" will play the action sequence for us.

Over time, we begin to use tools in new ways the original designer did not anticipate. We find ways to use the tool with less effort, or new tasks. Some are inspired to develop smarter, faster tools that combine our tool with other new tools. We use the simultaneous processing capabilities of our right frontal lobes to discover a new way of doing things, automate the process, then using the planning capabilities of our right frontal lobes, develop a plan, a step- by-step process to make an even better tool. See the picture below.

It takes two trips through the brain for a new set of automatic thoughts to become a tool! It's like double-loop inventing.

Then, by combining several tools we create more complex tools. We can, for example, take our simple man-powered "sharp-stick" plough and add a horse, leather straps and harness to create a better tool. Our role shifts from tiller/digger to ploughman. Then, if we want our new tool to be really useful, we can create an ecology of interdependent tools that act in concert with the tool. Paddocks and fences to isolate the crop from foraging animals while it is growing, silos to store the grain so it is safe from weevils, animals or thieves and tools for crushing the wheat and turning it into flour, ready to be baked as bread, biscuits or cakes. 

And so the tool becomes more complex, powerful and the work more automated.

It’s recursive. The outputs from the last round of invention become the inputs to the next.

As any doctor, facilitator, university lecturer or jumbo jet pilot will tell you, it takes 20 years of education and then many years of practice to operate at the highest levels human society has to offer.

And which has little to do with genetics, because people are able to rise to these exalted heights from any race or socio-economic status, given the same opportunities. Basically human brains start off very much the same with minor variations, but with equal potential to develop.

But what makes a difference is how effectively you are nurtured and what you learn along the way. It also has much to do with how many specialized words you know, and whether your earliest interactions with others were positive or negative. And of course the opportunities that you were presented with and choose to (not) take up.

So here are some questions to explore how we can capitalize on this knowledge:

1. Brainstorm a list of words that came into use with the invention of the motor car e.g. engine, hood, freeway.

2. Brainstorm a list of words that fell into disuse with the replacement of the horse and buggy by the motor car. e.g. harness etc.

3. Make a list of all the high-level actions that you perform automatically (do without thinking), especially the really complex ones like facilitating a group meeting, teaching maths or programming, that are easy for some to do, but not for everyone.

4. Choose a very complex, high level process and describe a product that could automate it.
5. Thinking about how our thoughts and the actions they control ultimately become tools, invent a new innovation process that capitalizes on this idea.

6. What kinds of tools could we create to help make our brains even smarter than they are now and ready for a Wisdom Age world with what competitive advantage?

7. Make a list of the kinds of chores that you would like to see automated, that waste your time, are irrelevant to your life, and which you would love a new tool to help you do it faster and better.

Christiansen, M.H., &; Chater, N. (2007). Language as shaped by the brain. SFI Working Paper, Retrieved April 13, 2008 from the Santa Fe Institute website, http://www.santafe.edu/research/publications/workingpapers/07-01-001.pdf

Glowing together

You know the feeling when it happens. A kind of "aligned presence". You resonate with others on the same wavelength. You tune into each other's way of being and acting. You often start acting in unison.

Just like a choir singing in perfect harmony, a mother and child delighting in each other's smiles, a basketball team whose every perfect play seems to be controlled and co-ordinated by a magic force.

You see it sometimes when a politician, head of state, religious leader, star of stage and screen, or a power couple enters the room. Everyone turns. They seem to be larger than life, head-and shoulders above the crowd, glowing with a subtle, serene certainty, so comfortable within their own skins, and at ease with us, the crowd. They have a sparkle in their eye, a confident step, they smile easily. Not only do they attract our attention, but they attract us. It's as if every cell in our bodies is tuned to the same frequency.

Couples that operate this way seem larger than life. They seem  to "glow together" as if connected by invisible force fields. Where one amplifies the other. They exude a kind of abundant aura which is contagious to those that come close to them. They serve each other's interests, valuing the other, not only for what they can do alone, but what they are able to achieve together. They talk about the other, as if each new moment of every day is a brand new awakening, surprises to be savored, taste sensations to be enjoyed, worlds to invented and play within.

It's the exact opposite of the sniping and put-downs of couples headed for the divorce court, leaders whose charisma fades when they look out for themselves ahead of their people, and teams that focus on their own personal performance instead of serving the interests of each other. It's the exact opposite of football teams where every player is out for themselves. It's the exact opposite of the teacher who controls her class with threats, sarcasm and put downs.

A candidate for this kind of close connectedness is Broca's area of the brain, sometimes called the empathy centre, where the same mirror neurons fire off when we watch someone perform certain actions, as when we perform the actions ourselves.

"Glowing together" seems to be a feedback effect between the empathy center of our brains. I empathize with you, you with me, me with you. Like being in love....radiating "love beams", for all we are worth.

Interestingly, it is Broca's area where the speech and motor actions are orchestrated, which also makes sense, as speech is just another motor action, but a very complicated one, because the brain has to control how the lips, tongue, jaw, cheeks, larynx and lungs move/work together. What first began as a mother's smile, or words of warning, has developed into a series of automatic responses in which both gesture and speech play a role. They are often co-generated, one representing or emphazing aspects of the other.

The cerebellum may also have a role for it is here where fine motor tuning is managed. It's not uniquely human. Its a very old capability that we share with other species. We know that birds flock and fish shoal by following simple rules, such as maintaining a fixed distance from other birds or fish and making constant adjustments for changes in direction, so their heading is always aligned.

We also know that intra-group resonance is not unusual. Choristers listen carefully to each other so their voices resonate and harmonise with each other. The dance troupe co-ordinates not only by moving their bodies in-time/synchronization with with the music, but also by simultaneously observing and moving in unison with the movements of others. The football team anticipate each other and the ball's movements. They move into positions ahead of time where the maximum number of connections is possible.

So here is an experimental workshop to explore this idea:

1. Fix your gaze on a person somewhere else in the room and give them a really big happy smile. How did this make you feel when someone smiled at you?
2. Arrange for a member of your group to leave the room, and re-enter looking really happy. What were your first thoughts when this happened? How did it make you feel?
3. Arrange for a different member of your group to leave the room and re-enter looking really sad. What were your first thoughts when this happened? How did it make you feel?
4. What could account for the differences in your interaction with the happy and sad people?
5. Choose a song that everyone knows and sing it (and clap it together) together, with great enthusiasm. How did it make you feel when you did this?
6. Give examples from your own experiences of people "mimicking" the actions/gestures of others, recall when this mimicking occurs and what might have led up to it happening.
7. Give examples of any kind of animal acting in unison or resonance with another. e.g. birds flocking, fish shoaling.
8. Give examples of humans acting in unison or resonance with others e.g. singing in a choir.
9. What might acting in unison or resonance have to do with music?