Category Archives: Creativity

Singing From the Inside Out – The Personal, the Public, The Private and The Penal: The Innovation Interview with Julian Arahanga, Ruia Aperahama and Evan Rhys Davies

Posted on June 9, 2012 | 1 comment

Innovation and Inspiration can be sought, and found, in some of the most surprising places. Of course, it will come as no surprise to regular readers of the ‘Capital I’ Innovation Series, that I am a firm believe in the necessity of innovation in all things, be it in art, technology, science, education or social sciences.

I shall be ever grateful to my Kiwi connection, Steve Gray, for introducing me to ‘Songs From the Inside,’ a music therapy programme in New Zealand, which brings established musicians into the Rimutaka and Arohata correction facilities to teach songwriting to prisoners. Though music therapy is used in correctional facilities worldwide, this is the first time established musicians have been brought in and the program recorded for public viewing.

‘Songs From the Inside‘ Artists: Ruia Aperahama, Maisey Rika, Anika Moa and Warren Maxwell,

Screened on Mauri TV, and also available online, ‘Songs From the Inside,’ brilliantly follows and films musicians Ruia Aperahama, Warren Maxwell (original lead singer with Trinity Roots and founding member of Fat Freddy’s Drop), Anika Moa and Maisey Rika along with ten prisoners, through their workshops, challenges and culminating outcomes.

In the thirteenth episode, an hour-long special, songs that the prisoners wrote, sang and recorded will be revealed, with an album released and available to download the next day, June 11.

I have had the immense pleasure to interview the programme director, Julian Arahanga; participating musician, Ruia Aperahama; and the instigator of the Innovative program, Evan Rhys Davies. Speaking with each of them was both inspiring, enticing, exciting and deeply moving – I hope you find following our conversations as interesting as did having them.

Songs From the Inside: Capital I Interview Series – Number 19

PART ONE: JULIAN ARAHANGA – DIRECTOR

Congratulations on the project! I just think it’s magnificent work. I can only imagine how proud you must be of it.

Thank you very much. I do feel proud. I always knew that we were doing something good but it turned out quite a bit bigger than what I’d originally envisioned.

I knew there was the possibility of it being a breakthrough type of show… Everybody is always very interested in what goes on inside prisons, and with the quality of the musicians that we had… I always thought that if we were able to weave those elements together we were going to come out with something powerful.

And you did! One of the things that shines through, along with the quality of the musicians artistry, is their quality as human beings. The level to which they gave of themselves so generously to the project is extremely beautiful.

That was part of selection criteria that we had. We didn’t want to select pop stars per say. The people that we needed, to make show successful, were people who had a social consciousness and who had lived a little; they had some life experiences, and a world view of their own to fall back on.

Maisey Rika

From the very early stages, as a group, we talked about the type of things we were setting out to do. Everybody knew we were trying to get a little deeper than just the surface. To do that we needed to reach out and make ourselves vulnerable in order to achieve our goal of getting these people [the prisoners] to open up.

If you were to look at the programme as a journey, was there a place along that road you hoped the prisoners involved would reach?

I think there were a few goals. The first was hinged around the music. With the musicians our goal was to help these people [the prisoners] create and produce music that only they, as individuals, could have made… songs that were written from the heart.

Secondly, it was about showing the human side of the prisoners… Showing that they’re not just stats and numbers but actual human beings who are very much like you and I. They have their ups and downs, but various circumstances and their actions have landed them in this place.

Another goal we had for the project was to show people at home, even if just subconsciously, how to write their own songs. I hope that from watching the show people will be able to understand what a hook line is, what a bridge is and why you need one… we gave them the basic tools to be able to create their own song. Anyone can write a song and everybody has got at least one song in them.

It’s a whole new take on ‘The Voice’ or ‘The Idol’ franchises. It’s the ultimate reality in reality television. You’ve brought clarity to a genre that has, at best, been muddied, and that is to be applauded.

I think that reality TV can be a different experience to how we perceive it currently.

I can only assume that there were many issues you had to deal with due to the fact that your subjects were incarcerated… even such mundane things as having a shortened filming period. Did these issues necessitate you having to come up with different ways of approaching the production?

Certainly. Every production has its challenges. We just adapted to the playing field that was given to us. If we were filming soldiers in Iraq, we’d be dealing with a whole lot of circumstances there. You’ve just got to evaluate the situation and find the solutions to the parameters you’re given.

The shortened day was a big issue… we only had three or four hours with our students, so that was when the cameras pretty much didn’t stop rolling. We were constantly evaluating what worked and what didn’t… because if one of the cameras hadn’t got the shot when it happened then we didn’t have it… it’s not in the show.

The biggest challenge, which was at the heart of the show, was to make a connection with, and gain the trust of, our students. That was the true challenge because without that connection and trust we really wouldn’t have had a show.

Was there a danger of the artists connecting too much, or being overwhelmed and drowning in the prisoners’ stories and personal dramas? And, if so, how did you help them to protect themselves from those dangers?

Think that danger was very present. So, we had mentors… we had Jim Moriarty who has worked in prisons for 25 years. He has taught male and female prisoners drama – a situation where you really try to evoke emotions, such as anger – and has worked with both medium and high risk offenders.

During the process of making ‘Songs From the Inside,’ if we felt that anyone was feeling under pressure and in need of assistance the mentors were there for them.

As Maori people we’re very giving and open. We treated the people that we dealt with in prison like they were our cousin, our brother, uncle, auntie or sister. Once we had met them and begun the process, the barrier perception: “They’re prisoners and they’re bad,” was pretty much nonexistent.

So many of the prisoners are, at least to a certain extent, Maori. Do you think that was important in being able to achieve the level of connection you did? I ask that because I wonder if the programme could be replicated in another part of the world, where that brother/cousin connection is not so strong – if there at all.

I have no doubt that the process can be replicated in any country where there are prisons and people who love music.

I think that, in trying to connect with them, it helped us immensely that our students were Maori. But I’m hopeful that next year we’ll do another series of ‘Songs From the Inside’ at a different location in New Zealand where we will have a more mixed representation of ethnicities.

I think by the end of that process we will have proven the theory that we have developed: that the process of song writing, and drawing out songs from people’s hearts, can work with anybody in any scenario.

It’s a very inspirational, Innovative process. Were you looking to make a change within the correction system when you set out to do the project.

Well, you aim high with everything that you do.

I didn’t know how we might be able to affect the Corrections Department in New Zealand but I think that, by getting them involved in the process, we’ve already made some form of change.

Have you had feedback from the correction system?

The Corrections Department is 100% behind the project, and they’re already behind the second series. Their CEO has even used the project in his speeches to prison managers nationally.

Frankly, I’d like to see music departments in every prison in New Zealand. Long term, on a national scale, I’d like to see music departments, instruments and tutors going in, using song writing, poetry, writing and music.

I don’t like to call it rehabilitation or reforming people. I’m not a criminal psychologist; I don’t know how you determine whether someone is rehabilitated or reformed. What I do know is that life is about steps and this is one step.

The programme and the people involved had been given a commendation from the New Zealand Parliament, which must be quite marvellous to receive. Did receiving it come as a surprise to you?

It was a surprise… a very nice surprise that was very welcomed by everybody in the whole production, along with our supporters and our families.

Along with that, the programme is being talked about a lot internationally. That too may have been something of a surprise as was screened on Maori TV rather than on large, national channel. Though, I understand it is has large, international online viewer numbers – which is where was able to watch the episodes.

I’m currently close to having a team ready in Ireland. We’ve got a prison in Dublin that houses male and female prisoners that is interested in replicating the program. They’ve been able to watch the episodes on the Maori Television website, and they get it. They’re from another culture, and they’ve got different sensibilities, but they get it and they know it would work in Ireland.

We’re also trying to have it made in Australia. We’ve got one correctional facility already on board, we just need to get a female correctional facility and then I think we can make it there next year.

When you look back I imagine that there are all sorts of memories that jump out. What are some of your strongest ones?

If I use a timeline as my guide, I think talking with Evan [Rhys Davies] while he was living in Hong Kong… I told him I’d like to make a television series based loosely around the music programme that he ran in Spring Hill Prison in the Waikato. That’s when I really thought this could work.

There are just so many moments, like the day when I signed all the artists… And they didn’t have to think twice!

I sent them a few paragraphs about what we wanted to do and they all wrote back saying: “Yes, I want to be a part of this!” Obviously, the day we got funded which meant it was happening… The first day of filming, when we all came together.

A super highlight was the day we went into the prison. The amount of emotion in there and the amount of belief, openness, forgiveness and willingness to learn. That was a very special day.

And of course, the recording day, when we recorded everybody’s songs. That’s the big payoff for everybody who buys into and watches the series. When you get to episode 13, you get paid off for your loyalty; I think that’s going be really rewarding for viewers.

I’m told there are some very beautiful songs well worth watching for and I’m very much looking forward to their release.

Prior to speaking to you, I did a small, online search of songs either written about, from, or just after release from prison. Many of them gave me goosebumps. They were very different pieces… be it the Ska of ‘54-46 That’s My Number’ or the rockabilly-blues of ‘Folsom Prison Blues‘ for instance. And yet there was a reality – a truth – that they shared.

Some of the songs are so personal, nobody else could have written them.

It’s not the kind of album that you’re going to be having a party to. It’s the kind you set aside some time in your day to sit down and listen to. You can pull out the booklet, read the lyrics as it’s all going down, and enjoy the whole experience. If you watched the TV series, you can relive the experience in a new way.

When is the album going to be released?

The 13th episode is on the June 10th and the album will be in stores on the 11th. It will be downloadable from iTunes at midnight (NZST).

How exciting! I can hear from you voice that it means a great deal to you. Do you feel that being involved with the programme has changed you in some way?

Definitely. This particular project has shown me the value in people… in lifting others up, trying to enhance their lives and give them opportunity

I’ve been involved with a lot of projects and generally every one changes you in some way, but I feel like this project has given me the clarity to know what I want to do with my life. I’m going to focus a lot more on projects that deal with social issues… Not just for Maori people but for all people, particularly in New Zealand, but on a global scale as well.

It’s a great culmination and conjoining of both artistry and activism; it’s Innovative and Inspiring!

You know what the good thing is? We’re ‘good’ from both sides!

The Corrections [department] love us. We’re the best thing that’s happened to them in years because, lets face it, they don’t get a lot of good press. Even the Sensible Sentencing Trust haven’t slammed the project, and they’re about as right-wing as you can get in terms of recognised groups with a media voice.

Maybe it’s because the project is so sincere and honest. It’s people talking about their lives and trying to help one another. And it goes both ways – the musicians get an amazing life experience; they’re being challenged in all kinds of ways, so everybody is growing together.

PART TWO: EVAN RHYS DAVIES – INSTIGATOR

Songs From the Inside seems a perfect synthesis of your talents as a teacher, musician and activist.

First and foremost I’m interested in people. My motivation comes from believing that people have an intrinsic value and we need to find a way to let people know that. For me that connection with, and working with, the prisoners was an extension of what I feel passionately about: connecting with people and helping them find their place in the world.

‘Songs From the Inside’ is based on a programme you devised earlier. What was your impetus for beginning it; was there something that happened, something you saw or heard that made you think this was a necessary thing to do?

I got a call from a friend saying: “We’ve got this pilot programme at Spring Hill prison… Would you be interested in teaching creative writing and maybe branch into song writing? You can pretty well write the programme. What do you think?” I thought: Yes!

In the first class there were about 20 guys and a lot of them had issues with writing in general. In the second there were eight to ten guys and they just rocked up to class; there’d be eight guys and three guitars. They’d heard the words ‘song writing’ and missed the creative writing part, so straight away I was getting these guys offering me songs.

The first song one of the guys played had the lyrics “It’s your birthday today and I’m not with you.” It was to his two year old daughter, and I just thought, what a start to a song! No one else is going to come up with a lyric like that.

In the first class we mainly focused on developing technical skills the guys could take away to use to express themselves better. We focused the second class more on song writing. One guy, who had barely said a word for seven weeks agreed to share a song one day. When he did, he sounded like Jack Johnson; he had an amazing voice and it was a beautiful song about saying sorry. That’s when I knew we had to record the songs.

At first the idea raised a few eyebrows, but eventually the officials gave me clearance for my gear. I took in an engineer and we did it. We called the album “If These Walls Could Speak – Live Recordings from Spring Hill Prison.” One of the guys made it pretty clear when he said, “Next to having kids this is the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”

Then a few months later I got a call from Awa, the Songs From the Inside production company, who said: “We were really moved by the project. We’re not quite sure what format we’re looking at but we’re keen to discuss a television show or film.”

What was your goal for the project? Was it mainly to fill the prisoners’ time and bring them some peace while they’re inside, or was there a view to them being able to use these skills in some way once they get outside?

I know that the ‘Songs From the Inside’ production team would say that they aren’t trying to reduce the crime rate dramatically in New Zealand. The idea is that we’re trying to give people tools and one of the most powerful tools is self-expression.

I’m sure anyone would recognise that if you can express yourself well… if you can understand how to say what you want to say – what you need to say! – then you’re going to be a lot healthier on the inside. You’re a lot likelier to get along with people rather, than getting on top of them, and a lot less likely to get yourself in situations where you express yourself through other [more aggressive] means.

How important has it been to have Julian Arahanga involved?

He is obviously a very talented director but, more importantly, he’s a guy who is more interested in the welfare of the prisoners than making his television show. Of course he is an incredible professional and he’s doing a great job on the TV show, but the way he handles and respects people has really blown me away.

Throughout the programme Maori was being spoken and, as a viewer, I revelled in how beautiful and musical that language is. That must have been interesting to you, due to your love of language and music.

Ruia Aperahama, one of the musicians involved in the project, is an incredible guy… An amazing storyteller, and an incredible linguist as well. He speaks fluent French and Maori as well as English.

One minute he’d be talking to us in English, then get a call from someone in New Caledonia about music and he’d switch to French, then turn to his eight year old son and talk to him in Maori. He’s very interested in language and the musicality of it.

Through the series you see that he’s an incredible orator and communicator. He really engages with language and helps other people to do so as well.

And he’s also incredibly talented in the use of body language.

Very much so. You have to see the last episode… I was crying like a baby because it was just beautiful, there were so many amazing moments.

Ruia came to these occasions with a heart for the people, especially for the Maori, who were inside the prisons. Because, let’s be honest, we need to look at other ways of trying to restore faith and confidence in a lot of disenfranchised Maori people who’ve ended up in prison. That’s not a generalisation – that’s a fact.

PART THREE: RUIA APERAHAMA – ARTIST

‘Songs From the Inside,’ which is such a success, seems to reflect something of New Zealand culture – and certainly of Maori culture – in that it celebrates and honours coming together as a community. Was that part of what led you to get involved in the project, and did that affect how you approached it?

I come from a strong Maori community, from a Marae which has significance in New Zealand history. And, I’ve had some previous experience in prisons, and other places, helping out second chance seekers.

To do a project of this nature… To go in with a teaching angle – sharing, facilitating and creating opportunities – while working with other high-profile artists, for me was a once in a lifetime experience. Though, I hope that we might be able to do something similar again.

We all knew it was going to have some impact on our lives… And not just for us, not just for the inmates but for everyone that worked on the project.

As well as being a gifted musician I understand that you trained as a teacher. The project must have been a quite serendipitous melding of the two paths in your life.

I trained at teachers college in the eighties, so when Julian asked me if I wanted to do this project and described what we would be doing, I jumped at it very quickly.

I was honoured to be asked to go into the prison because most of our [New Zealand] prison population is made up of our [Maori] people. I’ve got relations and family who are either in the system as prison officers, administrators or in some kind of government departments; but they’re also somehow related to and connected to inmates. So, at the end of the day, it was a blessing to be asked to share that environment with our relations.

When you began the project were you able to walk in clean and clear without any assumptions about potential outcomes?

There were some anxieties about the unknown, but that’s part of taking risks and not having much control over the environment we were going into.

We were pretty limited in what we could shoot, so we had to create opportunities, while we were challenged with the concept of having to deliver almost a ‘wonderful world of rehabilitation’ type of programme.

When I say rehabilitation, I mean that there are components for inmates not only to learn about constructing and creating songs, but also to learn how to conduct their life. When you’re composing songs you have to do a lot of collaborating and with collaborating you have to learn to compromise. You have to learn how to share and when to step back. You learn that it’s not just about the artist or the singer; it’s an industry. You’ve got directors producers, engineers, technicians, programme managers… There are a whole lot of people in the industry.

If they wanted, the inmates can explore this further. We’ve just given them a taste of an alternative lifestyle; an option outside of the prison and outside of gangs. Hopefully at the end of the day we gave them an insight, just as the programme gives the New Zealand public an insight into prison culture.

They [the prisoners] have made mistakes – that’s why they’re in prison and paying for their crime. In my opinion, the programme not only shows some different options and alternative lifestyles that inmates might choose outside of prison, but it also helps to humanise the inmate.

I don’t think that after seeing the programme you can generalise any longer about ‘them and us’.

One of my strongest memories from the programme is in the initial episode when you acknowledged everyone within a speaking circle. It seemed to be incredibly important in building the initial bridge between the project makers and the inmates. Is that something that you set out to do consciously or was that just a natural thing that happened?

That’s the opportunity I think that our culture and our customs provide. In our [Maori] culture, through our customs and rituals, the art of oratory speech making has an obligation to create and an opportunity to acknowledge things that should be acknowledged.

For me it reminds us how important our humanness is. It doesn’t matter whether you’re an inmate, a high-profile musician, an administrator, a prison officer or anybody else involved in the justice system. What’s important is to reconnect to being human.

I wanted to challenge the stereotypes of prison inmates and prison guards. I certainly saw not only the opportunity and the willingness to change in the inmates, but I also saw the human side of the prison guards every time we came through security. It is very important to make all people feel valued.

You were able to empower the prisoners to give expression to their feelings, hopes and fears in ways that, perhaps, they’ve never done before – or at least had never been acknowledged for doing so before.

I know many males find it very difficult connecting with, for lack of a better word, their feminine side… To connect to feelings instead of lashing out, using verbal abuse or other forms of violence, like the ones that put them in prison in the first place.

Instead of using those tactics in communicating they had to learn that vulnerability is the first thing to transform your life. We showed that only when you’re vulnerable can you surrender; only when you surrender can you make transformation and change in your life, so you can make different choices. Otherwise you just become part of the high statistics and vicious cycle of reoffending.

Personal Innovation, at a very deep, core level, can touch anyone anywhere.

I agree.

Reaching back to my culture and upbringing on the Marae… It’s not an excuse, but the history and colonisation that happened in our country, for me, has contributed to the large percent of Maori making up our prison population. For me that’s a driving factor to make a change – to make a difference.

As I understand it, a Marae is a sacred meeting place. Is that correct?

It’s the central point of our community. It’s represented by a tribal house, which is the focal point, and would usually be the main ancestor of the region that the Marae stands on. Through that, through the genealogical line of that ancestor, you can connect to members of different communities.

Is it possible to carry a Marae with you? The reason I ask is, it seems to me that in some way you brought the spirit and strength of your Marae with you into the prison.

I understand, and yeah, I agree.

A Marae isn’t just a physical location. Marae is a lifestyle, its how we choose to live our lives and interact with each other.

You bring a deep, palpable level of emotional strength to the programme, which is very inspiring.

Without getting too profound, in our vulnerability and humanness there are lot of exciting things we can share and give one another whether we are inmates, rich, poor, celebrity or not. There are wonderful moments that we can give one another and, certainly in ‘Songs From the Inside,’ there were a lot of those moments that will continue to help me on my journey.

What are your strongest memories of the project?

The strongest memories would be the connecting and the humanness, the breaking down of barriers and stereotypes; and there are a lot of stereotypes out there about prisons.

The hardest time was having to leave every day; going back to our families, to our sense of freedom and the normality in our lives after having spent a day taking on board the things that the guys needed to talk about. We’d have touched on vulnerability and surrendering and that’s not easy for anybody… admitting that you’re wrong or you have things you need to improve on.

Of course if you want to sing from the inside, from your heart and soul, you have to break down all of your stereotypes and your barriers so that you can connect and access what you want to say and how you want to say it. The crafting of that, and helping to develop people’s personality and characters, was a wonderful experience.

If it was difficult to leave at the end of each day’s filming, how was it to leave on the final day? That must have been particularly emotive.

For me, the last episode was reaching a milestone. It was a time to summarise everything: Did we achieve what we set out to do? Did we make an impact and change in somebody’s life somehow?

I was really excited because I could see how hard the inmates had worked and how far they had come! The result of having produced and recorded a song, in allowing and admitting their vulnerabilities – and our vulnerabilities – created a collective strength. The programme and album is, I suppose, a montage of that journey.

To be a part of that, to celebrate people’s successes and the changes that they’ve made, is not only an honour but, to be able to help, them along the journey… that’s an even greater blessing.

Have you been changed by the project?

It’s certainly helped me to have more gratitude about what I have in my life. It helped me reconnect and see how important it is to reach out and be a part of people’s lives… networking, growing and learning something every day.

But, most of all, I think the whole experience is about humanness. It underlined how it is in our humanness that we are all vulnerable, and when we are all being vulnerable we are all equal.

Kim, Julian, Evan and Ruia Skyped from their homes in Sydney and New Zealand.

Songs From the Inside is available for download purchase from iTunes; the CD and DVD can be purchased from Amplifier.

———————————————————————————————-

This is the final interview in the ‘Capital I’ Innovation Interview Series, as due to its popularity the series grew into the book, Innovation: How Innovators Think, Act and Change Our World (published in print, and as an eBook by Kogan Page in October 2013).

It introduces readers to a select number of pioneers who have broken the mould, led the pack, and moved their own particular mountains in a wide range of fields (including business, technology and travel, engineering and energy, government and social policy, the arts and advertising, media, medicine and more).

It is also available as an innovative, industry-first, Enhanced Edition/ Online Ecosystem, which integrates the latest interactivity, web publishing, cloud, mobile and responsive technologies along with KimmiC’s FlatWorld ‘secret sauce’ and SmartMarks – interactive, intelligent bookmarks.

Innovation: How Innovators Think, Act and Change Our World, recently won a Best Business Book award and was translated into Korean for sale in that market.

I’d like to thank the many thousands of series fans and readers, who were integral in making the book possible!

I AM NOW HARD AT WORK ON MY NEXT BOOK, (DUE TO BE PUBLISHED BY KOGAN PAGE IN DECEMBER, 2015), WHICH EXPLORES COLLABORATION AND FLAT WORLD NAVIGATION – WATCH THIS SPACE FOR DETAILS!

UNTIL THEN, I WISH YOU ALL NOTHING BUT THE BEST INNOVATION IN EVERYTHING YOU DO!!

1 Comment

Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Digital Media, Innovation

Tagged 54-46 That's My Number, Anika Moa, Corrections Department, Evan Rhys Davies, Fat Freddy's Drop, Folsom Prison Blues, innovation, Inspiration, Jim Moriarty, Julian Arahanga, Kiwi, Maisey Rika, Maori, Maori TV, marae, music, music therapy, New Zealand, New Zealand Parliament, prison, prisoners, reality TV, Ruia Aperahama, self-expression, Social Science, song writing, songs, Songs From the Inside, Steve Gray, Trinity Roots, vulnerability, Warren Maxwell

Computer Mediated to Computer Meditated: Innovation Interview with Ajit Jaokar, author of ‘Meditation in the Age of Facebook and Twitter – From Shamanism to Transhumanism’

Posted on May 18, 2012 | 2 comments

World renowned as a thought leader in the area of Mobile Applications, Ajit Jaokar has long been recognised as a thought leader in the Mobile Data Industry. Among other things, he has chaired Oxford University’s Next Generation Mobile Applications Panel, acts as an advisor to mobile startups, governments and trade missions around the world. In 2009, he was invited to be a part of the World Economic Forum’s Future of the Internet Council.

Ajit Jaokar: Capital I Interview Series – Number 18

Ajit is a man on a mission, and that mission is as multifaceted as it is fascinating. At the heart of all of his projects and practices is a deep felt belief in the need to make a positive difference. This is resoundingly reflected in futuretext, the publishing and consulting firm, which he co founded in 1999. Most recently, Ajit has authored, ‘Meditation in the Age of Facebook and Twitter – From Shamanism to Transhumanism,’ which explores the efforts and effects of attempting to manage life in the digital age through meditation.

His sixth book, it looks at the potential of Innovating meditation, through neural techniques, so as to assist society as a whole, and individuals in particular, in making the most out of our technologically expanding – and for many, overwhelming – world. It is no mean feat to bind together meditation and technology, and yet that is what Ajit has managed to do; if his mission is not yet complete, it is certainly ‘game on.’

Ajit, welcome to the Capital I Innovation Series!

Firstly, many thanks Kim for the insightful questions you sent me about the ideas covered in my book. I shall cover many of these ideas, but since they and the book are evolving, I will try to extend my thinking beyond the book in this interview.

In the book you posit that meditation cannot be separated from society. Why?

Meditation, as I describe it in this book, is a technique for personal development and reflective of a wider social change that we see today. In that sense, the idea of meditation i.e. introspection – is based on the cultural context.

The traditional view of meditation is that of a monk who renounces the world and maintains a state of calm, peaceful demeanour. But, here is another viewpoint: In January 2009, due to a bird strike, US Airways Flight 1549 was forced to land in the Hudson River in New York City; it did so successfully, with no loss of life. When I first heard of this incident, I was fascinated by it. The actual technique of landing the plane is complex enough, but even more interesting for me is the mind-set of the pilot and the pilot’s perspective.

The metaphor of an airline pilot (Captain Chesley Sullenberger) is an excellent example of a meditative mind. While most of us will never have to deal with a situation remotely as complex as landing a plane on a river, the incident points to how the meditative state of mind is absolutely relevant today.

Captain Chesley Sullenberger (Image courtesy of Time.com)

In a curious sense, the situation is like our work today: we have many distractions, the stakes are high and we have to focus on the relevant instead of trying to shut down the distractions. Thus, there is a need to bring the mind-set of meditation to the (more complex) age of today

Do you think meditation has to evolve to be compatible with today’s social networks, or should social networks be made to evolve to be compatible with meditative/calm states?

We have always had ‘social networks’. Even the smallest village has a social network – we call it gossip. The issue is more that of a ‘rate of change’.

However, if you phrase the question as an ‘either – or’ i.e. should meditation evolve or should social networks evolve – the answer is the former. The rate of change of society will accelerate. This is independent of ‘social networks’ but is rather a function of technology in general.

In his book Future Shock (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), Alvin Toffler argued back in 1970 that society was undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a ‘super-industrial society.’ He predicted this change would overwhelm people, with the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaving them disconnected and suffering from ‘shattering stress and disorientation.’ Toffler called this the ‘future shock.’ and stated that the majority of social problems were symptoms of this future shock. He also popularised the term ‘information overload.’

Alvin Toffler

Toffler’s shortest definition of future shock is a personal perception of “too much change in too short a period of time.” For many, that sounds familiar – they are indeed living in a Toffleresque world. Living in such a world is very relevant to meditation because meditation involves detachment, the ability to ‘unplug.’ So, meditation will evolve to meet these new challenges.

Will true mastery of our digital presence require an Innovation of our neural networks, be it within the context of dreams, meditation, and/or awareness?

There are two aspects to my response here. I view a common theme in all networks, a leitmotif if you will. In that sense, if we see that we are living in a world of networks with a breakdown of hierarchies – we are becoming aware of the significance of neural networks.

Another way to look at this idea is to think of the unified theory of science. In simplistic terms, the unified theory (or a theory of everything) is a superset of existing theories in physics. The term was coined by Einstein, who attempted to unify the general theory of relativity with electromagnetism, hoping to recover an approximation for quantum theory. So too, I see ‘networks’ unifying many aspects of our world – both neural and social.

Secondly, many authors such as Nicholas Carr worry about what the Internet is doing to our brains [as he posited] in his book The Shallows. Others, like the neuroscientist Susan Greenfield [Baroness Greenfield, CBE] claim that social sites such as Facebook are causing alarming changes in the brains of little children. It appears that many of us are now left with a longing to disconnect, to unplug, and academics and gurus are tapping into that trend.

Nicholas Carr

Thus, if you take the view of the ‘scaremongering’ experts like Carr and Greenfield – then there is a negative relationship between social networks and the brain. I do not agree to this view.

I take a more optimistic view that the brain is evolving to higher domains because social networks facilitate more connections – and these connections will cause a positive innovation in our neural networks because as we have more elements to connect – we create innovations from new combinations of existing ideas.

For many, mediation and networking are mutually exclusive as mediation is individual and internal and networking is collective and external? What are your views on this perspective?

Here is a question: Were monks ever meant to be on Facebook and Twitter? Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, the Japanese author and teacher of Buddhism, describes the traditional lifestyle of a monk eloquently in his book ‘The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk’, when he emphasises the importance of begging.

Traditionally, a monk needs very few possessions. These include a bamboo hat, straw sandals, and cotton leggings. He dresses in traveling attire, and even when modern transportation is available, he walks. These and other meagre possessions are designed to be carried in a bundle on the monk’s back. The monk limits his possessions to a minimum and thereby also limits his desire to possess. He (and yes, monks were always male) leads a life of humility and also often makes his income through begging.

The point is: The monks’ original lifestyle (a frugal existence based on begging) is not compatible with our current lifestyle. By that I mean, we want to meditate but not beg! Thus, while all meditation involves looking inwards, I believe that the act of looking inwards will strengthen our outward interactions and we have to accept that these outward interactions have changed and will continue to evolve – and hence so will our inward introspection.

As individuals are attempting to retain and/or regain power over their own data and online privacy, is there a correlation between this and using mediation to regain control over our own attention economy?

The attention economy, as defined by marketers, is a more serious threat to our online attention rather than merely social media. There is a common factor between media/marketing and social networks (I define ‘social networks’ here loosely as a collection of your friends).

The common factor is: both play on ‘emotion’ i.e. you like your friends’ posts because you have some emotional connection with your friend. Media does the same – but for commercial reasons. It is increasingly difficult for media to get attention with so much choice – so media has to make content more outrageous, violent etc etc. Thus, while both appeal to emotion – and both lead to ‘distraction of attention’ – with social media you can choose – with traditional media – the choice is made for you.

Thus, I see meditation as an attempt to gain more power over our own attention – but not necessarily our data. Having said that, there are already advertising companies trying to gain understanding of their customers through ‘neural’ data. However, I think the power of meditation and brain wave meditation is better used for us to manage our attention

How do you see meditation enhancing our powers of intuition and thus our power to ‘thin slice’ all the information we are receiving, to determine what does and does not need our attention?

Intuition is an important goal in today’s world. In general, Intuition is seen to be ‘positive’ i.e. you benefit from hidden insights or insights ‘under the radar’. Intuition will also be an important part of my thinking in subsequent versions of this book.

The question I want to address is: How can intuition be improved in a world of social media? I believe that more connections equal more intelligence as long as you can process the inputs from the connections. Here is where meditation is extremely valuable in today’s context.

There is an excellent book I read with great interest recently, ‘Thinking Fast and Slow‘ by [Nobel Laureate] Daniel Kahneman. In this book, Daniel talks of two modes of thought – “System 1” and “System 2“. System 1 is fast; it’s intuitive, associative, metaphorical, automatic, impressionistic, and it can’t be switched off. Its operations involve no sense of intentional control, but it’s the “secret author of many of the choices and judgments you make“. System 2 is slow, deliberate, effortful. Its operations require attention.

One of the key points of the book is: We identify with System 2 but we are really profoundly System 1. So, System 2 is seen to be a supporting character, it needs a lot of effort to activate and gets tired easily. System 1 is active most of the time and it is right – most of the time. But it is also error prone because it has to work fast and loves to simplify.

At the conclusion of the book, Kahneman links ‘watercooler conversations’ to ‘better decisions’ – which depend on intuition – when he refers to the idea of creating valuable insights/decisions based on water cooler conversations.

Now, let’s consider this: today we have many, many such ‘water cooler’ conversations on social media. How can they be used to create better intuitive judgements? Furthermore, is it possible that we could integrate both these systems in meditation and thereby gain new intuition?

What do you believe is the impact of social technologies on meditation and how does that reflect on what you term emergence and synchronisation?

I have always been interested in the wider implications of the mind/evolution. Especially on the theories of emergence – which are network based and are at the edges of current scientific thinking.

Arthur Winfree, a scientist who studies biological rhythms, studied the problem of coupled oscillators across many different domains. Specifically, he studied the problem of biological oscillators, i.e. the ability of neurons and fireflies and other organisms to synchronise with each other on a massive scale.

Prior to Winfree’s work, scientists had restricted their investigations to two oscillators or a small number of oscillators. Winfree conducted his experiments with a system comprising a very large number of oscillators with a range of frequencies. His objective was to see under what conditions these oscillators synchronised. He discovered that such oscillators display a cooperative behaviour and that at a certain threshold the oscillators begin to synchronise spontaneously.

This is one of the first examples of a self-organising system observed under experimental conditions. The phenomenon applies to many domains like the circadian rhythm (body clock) and in general to all fields where natural oscillators are seen. Winfree’s work is significant because he was the first scientist to explore the phenomenon mathematically, and by increasing coupling, all oscillators in his experiment became locked.

If we view the brain as an oscillator, I speculate we may see the same effect with the brain at some point, especially if the brain capacity is enhanced by BCI [Brain Computer Interface] – probably as implants. This may sound far-fetched, but many of the elements exist – and I have faith in the limitless possibility of the human mind!

You discuss mediation being enhanced by BCI technology, which you say is the ‘next generation of neuro-social networks.’ How do you see this giving us an advantage, as individuals, and as a society?

I am a big believer of using BCI technology in understanding and improving meditation. It is the next natural evolution in mediation. But I also believe in understanding the past and the future together. In that sense, my thinking differs from current thinking (which focusses on either the past or the future).

It also makes the book very comprehensive i.e. it needs a lot of research to look at BOTH the past and the future (from Shamanism to Transhumanism). I already describe in the book a lot of work I am exploring with [biosensor manufacturer] NeuroSky. Today, an individual is the most granular unit of a social network. But, in future, what if you could extend this to a neural level? To take social networking to the neural level (Facebook of the connected mind), we need the ability to do the following:

record brainwaves and see them
create a visual representation of the mind at a point in time (a thought form)
share that thought form with others
do so cheaply and globally
possibly, do so using a neural implant, i.e. without a headset (using implants)

This image would look like a ‘shared hologram,’ i.e. your state of mind projected as a three-dimensional object which can be viewed by others with whom you share it. This means you will get biofeedback at two levels: 1) the individual level and 2) the social level. The very act of sharing your ‘neural profile’ with others will create the opportunity to build a shared/social/collective profile. Here, meditation using the brain as an object of meditation has two roles: at an individual level, with the ability to develop the mind; but likewise it also has a role at the social level where meditation becomes a shared/collective experience.

You might want to check the work by Brainbot, originating out of Stanford University, who also use BCI technology with monks.

You suggest that meditation, networks and technology could be used together to increase our intelligence. What makes you believe that this greater intelligence would be used in a positive way for the greater good?

Actually, the goal of my thinking is to adapt existing knowledge to the world of today – and ultimately to extend it to the future. In that sense it is agnostic of good or bad. However, networks lead to connectivity and connectivity leads to empathy – hence an overall tendency towards good.

What is your vision of the future for mankind, if, as you posit, the evolution of our neural networks through meditation and social/digital technology brings about a liberalised, borderless global society with more independent thought and fewer hierarchies?

Yes, we see the rise of the liberal mind-set as seen in many areas: the rise of women, green issues, the “springs”(Arab springs) etc. I am optimistic about the future of mankind because this is not the first time that we, as a species, have been united. The last time that happened 70,000 years ago, when we undertook a quantum leap in our evolution.

Around 70,000 to 80,000 years ago, the Toba super volcano erupted in what is now Lake Toba, Indonesia, causing a six- to ten-year-long global winter that led to a near extinction of the human population. The survivors, probably numbering as low as 1,000 individuals, were most likely forced to live and work together to overcome the dire climatic conditions. In doing so, they evolved language and social skills that we, their descendants, inherited.

So, crisis brought all humanity together and when we did connect together as a species there was a quantum leap in human evolution via networking. This evolution also impacted our brains because, in general, the more complex the society and its communication patterns, the more evolved the brain. It led to development of culture. Around 70,000 years ago, human beings deviated from other primates by evolving a culture such as is evident in the rock paintings in the Blombos Caves of South Africa.

Blombos Cave Rock Painting

After 70,000 years, humanity is being connected together again, but not by a crisis – by technology. Once again, like we did so many years ago, we can expect a quantum uptake in intelligence, adoption of new identities, and a new culture.

It has been posited that social networks may, in the future, lessen the onset of wars as it is thought that it will be more difficult to invade and kill someone you’ve ‘friended’ on Facebook. Is this what you meant when you wrote, “Once we are able to see conflicting points of view through networks, our sense of local identity is complemented by a sense of global identity”?

Ok. I love a song by Sting called the ‘Russians’ especially the section:

How can I save my little boy from Oppenheimer’s deadly toy

There is no monopoly in common sense

On either side of the political fence

We share the same biology

Regardless of ideology

Believe me when I say to you

I hope the Russians love their children too

I think the song encapsulates the sentiment i.e. once we see conflicting points of view – we have hope for humanity. People who meditate are more likely to look for weapons of mass distraction – rather than weapons of mass destruction – and find them too.

You cite Howard Rheingold in your book, noting that he helped you understand “communities from first principals.” You also mention that, prior to his 1993 book, researchers focussed on ‘computer mediated communication.’ Are you envisaging a future where the focus changes to ‘computed meditative’ communication?

In a nutshell – yes. Howard is a great visionary and a mentor. He knows networks from first principles – long before the ‘Internet’ was created, and he understands the ethos of the Internet more than most.

Deep Blue vs Kasparov

We are seeing a continuum in the evolution of the Internet. However, there is one interesting fork on the road. Currently we have a dichotomy of ‘man vs. machine’ – such as in a chess game of human (Kasparov) vs machine (the IBM Deep Blue computer). When it comes to man vs. machine, we want the human to win! But we could soon have machines complementing human ability.

This is already happening with the Cochlear Implant – the bionic ear – and could happen with future neural implants. In that sense, I agree with the question that we could see increased computer mediated communication.

To come back to the origins of the Internet, the visions of the original founders of the Internet were based on socially utopian ideas (the ‘Hippie’ counterculture). Those ideas have survived and thrived through technology – Steve Jobs is an example of this – and they will continue to evolve.

If we take it as a given that positive thoughts have a positive effect on neural networks, do you think positive thoughts may come to have an effect on digital/social networks?

The short answer is – I don’t know. There is a co-relation between positive thinking and the brain – so I would presume that there is a relationship between thoughts and social networks – but I do not know.

How are your suggestions being received by the general public and the ‘establishment’? They could be seen as somewhat frightening to the former and dangerous by the latter.

Interesting you should ask this .. I think people relate to different aspects of the book. Some, who practised mediation in the seventies, see it as an evolution of meditation. Younger people see it in a totally new context (i.e. with no previous reference to compare with). Professionals see it for pragmatic reasons (being able to focus better in a world of distractions). I think the real impact on the ‘establishment’ is yet to be felt.

I cover this in the last segment of the book ‘Living in a Post Tipping Point World’. I think in many cases, people are beginning to see the impact of grassroots change (and not just from meditation). However, most people steeped in traditional structures will never see the impact until it is upon them. This is because network led changes are based on science – but do not follow the scientific principle of ‘cause and effect’.

Global warming is a good example of a change at the network level: events leading to global warming are interconnected, but their impact is felt only over a long period of time. When we do see the impact, it is often felt separately from the changes that trigger it. For instance you cannot know exactly how the ozone layer will change due to every plastic bag that you fail to recycle, but most people would agree that the environment is impacted by every plastic bag that ends up on the ocean floor.

I believe that these changes will be ‘under the radar’ until they reach a tipping point – at which time the establishment notices! Having said that, the effects of meditation can only be beneficial – so it is a good thing.

And finally Ajit, do you believe that mastery of meditation can have an effect on our digital presence, thus enabling and empowering Innovation in Collaboration and Cooperation?

Yes, as I alluded to earlier. If we consider that networks are holistic and that neural and social networks have common properties – and furthermore, networks lead to more connections, which in turn leads to more innovation; then we are empowered by meditation and social networks.

And may I add finally, many thanks for your insightful questions! You made me think even beyond my current book!

You can learn more about Ajit via his blog and Tweets. You can purchase a copy of ‘Meditation in the Age of Facebook and Twitter – From Shamanism to Transhumanism’ on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

2 Comments

Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Innovation, Technology

Tagged Ajit Jaokar, Alvin Toffler, Arab spring, Arthur Winfree, attention economy, awareness, ‘The Training of the Zen Buddhist Monk, BCI, biofeedback, biosensor, Blombos Caves, Brain Computer Interface technology, Brainbot, brainwaves, Captain Chesley Sullenberger, circadian rhythm, cochlear implant, cognitive capability, collaboration, computing, cooperation, counterculture, Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, Daniel Kahneman, data, Deep Blue, digital presence, digital technology, dreams, emergence, Future of the Internet Council, Future Shock, futuretext, global warming, global winter, Hippies, Howard Rheingold, IBM, innovation, introspection, intuition, Kasparov, Lake Toba, liberal, meditation, Meditation in the Age of Facebook and Twitter - From Shamanism to Transhumanism, Mobile Applications, monk, neural implant, neural networks, neural-social network, NeuroSky, Next Generation Mobile Applications Panel, Nicholas Carr, online privacy, oscillators, Oxford University, personal development, Russians, Shamanism, social media, social networks, society, Sting, Susan Greenfield, synchronisation, Technology, The Shallows, thin slice, Thinking Fast and Slow, Toba super volcano, Transhumanism, unified theory, US Airways Flight 1549, World Economic Forum

Golden Nuggets: The ‘Mini Inny’* Innovation Interview with Howard Rheingold

Posted on April 6, 2012 | 5 comments

The life and times of Howard Rheingold encapsulate so much of our technological, online world, that at times it seems simpler to list what he hasn’t done, rather than attempt to encapsulate all that he has. That said, I shall attempt to corral a part of his wild ride into a few sentences.

To say that Howard is a freelance journalist is like saying that Steve Jobs sold computers. Yes, he is, but that goes nowhere near encapsulating his influence over defining social media and virtual communities, which he began detailing in his 1985 work Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind Expanding Technology (revised in 2000) and 1993’s The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier.

Howard’s influence and enthusiasm have not slackened, and his writing continues to interest and inform. This writer, teacher, artist and critic was one of the first to understand and explain the potential of an online and engaged community, in his use of San Francisco’s Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link (WELL) in 1993. [The WELL is one of the oldest, continually running online communities. Founded by Larry Brilliant and Stewart Brand (of Whole Earth Catalog fame), The WELL is currently owned by Salon.com. An early site for the merging of online and counter culture, WELL was a well known meeting place for fans of the Grateful Dead – Deadheads – in the 1980s and 1990s.]

Howard has continued to be a thought leader in the technology, mobile tech in particular, and what effects it will have on society and individuals. Net Smart: How to Thrive Online is Howard’s most recent publication [2012]. Within its pages, he shares the answers he has gleaned to questions he has been asking for many years: “how to use social media intelligently, humanely, and above all mindfully.”

Howard Rheingold: Capital I Interview Series – Number 16 (A ‘Mini Inny’ Interview)

Among many things, ‘Net Smart: How to Thrive Online’ looks to enable and empower us to manage our social media, rather than allow it to manage us. How do you manage your social media?

I manage my attention. At the beginning of each day, I write down in a few words my two or three goals for the day — what I want or need to get accomplished. I put the piece of paper on my desk at the periphery of my vision. When my eye catches sight of the paper, later in the day, I ask myself where my attention is pointing and whether the way I am deploying my attention at the moment is helping me achieve my own goals.

At first, the exercise is nothing more than that — training myself to ask myself what I am paying attention to and comparing it to what I have decided I need to pay attention to. Repetition of this process grows a new habit of being self-aware of how I am using online media — mindfulness or metacognition. The best news about information-attention (infotention) training is that any amount of self-awareness of your media practices at all is far better than no awareness of how media are dragging your mind from place to place.

Will our learning to manage our digital presence enable Innovation in digital technology. And if so, how do you see this evolving?

Doug Engelbart, who invented much of personal computing and digital networks, wrote in his 1962 paper “Augmenting Human Intellect,” that humans are self-reprogramming, self-amplifying innovators through our use of “artifacts, methodology, and training.”

The artifacts (personal computers, communication media) have evolved multi-billion-fold since Engelbart’s time, but the language, methodology, and training — the literacy of using these media by billions of people — is evolving more slowly.

Doug Engelbart (image courtesy of New Media Consortium - nme.org)

With virtual communities, smart mobs, and collective intelligence, we’re seeing the beginning of what people are learning to do with our new technologies. Most important is the lowering of barriers to collective action of all kinds: people will be able to organize and act together with others socially, politically, economically in ways, on scales, and in places never before possible.

Will true mastery of our digital presence require an Innovation of our neural networks be it within the context of dreams, meditation, and or awareness?

Dreams and meditation ARE forms of awareness. Knowing how to read and right is a highly trained synchroniztion of different cognitive capabilities. A similar highly trained synchronization of human minds, media, and social objectives requires a more widespread and sophisticated individual awareness of how minds and media interact. From that awareness, innovations will emerge, just as they did after the literacies of writing, the alphabet, and print spread.

You can learn more about Howard via his website, Tweets and the Rheingold U site. You can download an introduction to Net Smart here, and purchase a copy on Amazon.

*Mini Innys (mini interviews) are bite-sized interview-lettes.

5 Comments

Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Digital Media, Innovation, Technology

Tagged cognitive capability, computing, Deadheads, digital presence, digital technology, Doug Engelbart, dreams, Grateful Dead, Howard Rheingold, innovation, meditation, Net Smart, Net Smart: How to Thrive Online, neural networks, social media, Technology, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind Expanding Technology, WELL

Zen and the Art of Software: The Innovation Interview with Grady Booch (Part 3)

Posted on March 9, 2012 | 9 comments

In parts one and two of our chat with software star Grady Booch, we discussed his magnum opus project COMPUTING: The Human Experience, Innovation, the Computer History Museum and the possible changing brain structure of Millennials, among many other things.

In this, the final segment of our discussion with him, we look at software – and software architecture – in general, Grady’s relationship with it in particular, the troubles facing Google and Facebook, the web, and his views on the SOPA, PIPA and ACTA bills.

To view the full introduction to this multi-part interview with Grady: Click here:

Grady Booch: Capital I Interview Series – Number 14

[This was a joint conversation between Grady, Michael and myself. I’ve italicised Michael’s questions to Ora so you are able to differentiate between us – though, I think it will become obvious as you read – lol!]

Grady, You are credited with the building, writing and architecting of so much technology; of all of those things, what is it that you are most proud of?

There are three things. The first one is very personal. My godson – he would have been eight or nine at the time – was given a task at his school to write about a hero, and he wrote about me. That was pretty cool! Everything else is details, but I’m really proud of that one.

On a technical basis, I’m pleased with the creation of the UML, not just because of the thing we created, but the whole idea and industry around it that being able to visualise and reason about software-intensive systems in this way is a good thing. So, I think we lifted the tide for a lot of folks.

UML Diagrams

I contributed to the notion of architecture and looking at it from multiple views, and how to represent it. I feel good about the whole thing around modelling and architecture and abstraction. I think I helped people and I feel good about that.

UML was certainly a game changer. I remember when it came in, before you got bought up by IBM. It was like a wave going across the globe. It made a profound difference.

And it’s different now because it’s part of the oxygen. Not everybody is using it, that’s okay – not everybody is using C++ or Java and that’s fine – but I think we changed the way people think.

Our estimates are that UML has a penetration of somewhere around 15 to 20 percent of the marketplace. That’s a nice number. We’ve changed the way people build things.

Absolutely, especially at the big end of the market.

Yeah. I wrote an article in my architecture column, that tells the story of when I was dealing with my aneurysm. I was laying in a CT scan machine in the Mayo Clinic, looking up and saying: “My gosh, I know the people who wrote the software for this, and they’ve used my methods.” That’s a very humbling concept.

It’s a pretty much a pretty good Acid test, isn’t it.

Yes, it is.

And your work is continuing in architecture…

Correct. I continue on with the handbook of software architecture, and a lot of what I do, in both the research side and with customers, is to help them in the transformation of their architectures.

For IBM the last nine months or so I’ve been working with the Watson team – the Jeopardy playing game – and helping the teams that are commercialising their technology.

How do you take this two-million line code base, built by 25 men and women, drop it in another domain and give it to a set of people who know nothing about that system. This is exactly the kind of stuff that I do for customers, and I’ve been helping IBM in that regard.

That would be very challenging. You’d need somebody with your brain power to actually manage that, I imagine.

Well, it’s not an issue of brain power, it’s an issue of: how does one look at systems like this and reason about them in a meaningful way. And after the UML comes in – because it allows us to visualise it and the whole notion of architecture as used from multiple dimensions – all these things come together. That make a two million line code base understandable to the point where I can know where the load-bearing walls are and I can manipulate them.

That is pretty impressive! You’ve found a way of managing the slicing and dicing of the codebase.

That’s a problem that every organisation faces. I have an article that talks about the challenges Facebook is going to have. Because they…. every software-intensive system is a legacy system. The moment I write a line of code, it becomes part of my legacy…

Especially if you’re successful upfront and gets massive growth, like they did.

Yes, and having large piles of money in your revenue stream often masks the ills of your development process.

Absolutely.

Google’s faced that, Facebook is facing that. They have about a million lines of [the programming language] PHP that drives the core Facebook.com system – which is really not a lot of code – still built on top of MySQL, and it’s grown and grown over time.

I think, as they split to develop across the coast – because they’re opening up a big office in New York City – that very activity changes the game. No longer will all of the developers fit within one building, so the social dynamics change.

Inside Facebook's Madison Avenue Offices

Ultimately, what fascinates me about the whole architecture side of it is that it is a problem that lies on the cusp of technology and society. It’s a technical problem on the one hand – so there are days I’ll show up as an uber geek – and on the other hand, it’s a problem that’s intensely social in nature, so I’ll show up as a ‘Doctor Phil’.

To follow-up on one of Kim’s questions: if you look at the backlog of IT, I think every company of moderate size is still struggling to deliver on business demands. Do you think that architecture helps or, does it actually contributes to the problem?

Architecture can help in two ways.

I’ll give you one good example. There is a company called OOCL (Orient Overseas Container Line) that I worked with some years ago to help them devise an architecture for their system that tracks containers and all these kind of things. Their CEO had this brilliant notion: what would happen if we were to take this system and extract all of the domain-specific bits of it and then sell that platform?

By having a focused-upon architecture, they were able to devise a platform – this is a decade before Salesforce.com and these kind of things – and they could then go into a completely new business and dominate that side of the marketplace. Here is an example where a focused-upon architecture has a real, material, strategic business implication.

The other thing focused-upon architecture offers is, it is allows you to capture the institutional memory of a piece of software. The code is the truth, but the code is not the whole truth. So, in so far as we can retain the tribal memory of why things are the way they are, it helps you preserve the investment you made in building that software in the first place.

What sort of size company are you talking about? It sounds like the telco space… large Tier 1 and Tier 2 companies.

It could be anybody that wants to dominate a particular business. Salesforce.com built a platform in that space. Look at Autostar as another example. Autostar was an attempt by BMW, and others, to define a common architectural platform, hardware and software, for in-car electronics. By virtue of having that focused-upon architecture, all of a sudden you have unified the marketplace and made the marketplace bigger, because now it’s a platform against which others can plug and play.

There is a similar effort with MARSSA, which is an attempt to develop a common architectural platform for electronics for boats and yachts. Again, it eliminates the competition of the marketplace by having a set of standards against which, people can play well together. In the end, you’ve made the marketplace bigger because it’s now more stable.

I agree. Also, an architectural approach separates the data from an application specific way of looking at things.

It used to be the case that we’d have fierce discussions about operating systems. Operating systems are part of the plumbing; I don’t care about them that much anymore. But, what I do care about is the level of plumbing above that.

My observations of what’s happening is that you see domain-specific architectures popping up that provide islands against which people can build things. Amazon is a good example of such a platform. Facebook could become that, if they figure out how to do it right – but they haven’t gotten there yet. I think that’s one of the weaknesses and blind spots Facebook has.

I also think that they are, to a certain extent, a first generation. I think the web, in terms of connectivity, is not being utilised to its fullest potential. I don’t see any reason why, for example, any form of smart device shouldn’t be viewed as being a data source that should be able to plug in to these architectures.

Exactly!

Would that be an example of a collaborative development environment?

Well, that’s a different beast altogether.

With regards to collaborative development environments, what led me to interest in that space is emphasising the social side of architecture. Alan Brown [IBM engineer and rational expert] and I wrote a paper on collaborative environments almost ten years ago, so it was kind of ahead of its time.

Alan Brown

The reason my thinking was in that space was extrapolating the problem of large-scale software development, as we’re becoming more and more distributed, to just how does one attend to the social problems therein. If I can’t fit everybody in the same room, which is ideal, then what are the kinds of things that I do that can help me build systems.

I’ve observed two things that are fundamental to crack to make this successful. The first is the notion of trust: in so far as I can work well with someone, it’s because I trust them. You, Kim, trust your husband Michael, and therefore there is this unspoken language between the two of you that allows you to do things that no other two people can do together.

Now, move that up to a development team, where you work and labour together in a room, where you understand one another well. The problem comes – like with Facebook, and what we’ve done in outsourcing – when you break apart your teams (for financial reasons) across the country or across the world. Then, all of a sudden, you’ve changed the normal mechanisms we have for building trust. Then the question on the table is: what can one do to provide mechanisms to provide building of trust? That’s what drives a lot of ideas in collaborative development environments.

The other thing is the importance of serendipity – the opportunity to connect with people in ways that are unanticipated, this option of ‘just trying things out’. You need to have that ability too. The way we split teams across the world doesn’t encourage either trust or serendipity. So, a lot of ideas regarding collaborative environments were simply: “What can we do to inject those two very human elements into this scheme?”

As we have been talking about trust, I’m curious as to your opinion on the SOPA, PIPA and ACTA bills.

I’ve Tweeted about it, and I’m pretty clear that I think those bills are so ill-structured as to be dangerous.

I get the concept, I understand the issues of privacy and the like, and I think something needs to be done here. But I’m disturbed by both the process that got us there and the results. Disturbed by the process in the sense that the people who created the bills seemed to actively ignore advice from the technical community, and were more interested in hearing the voices of those whose financial interest would be protected by such a bill.

The analogy I make would be as if all of a sudden you make roads illegal because people do illegal things in their cars. It’s stupid the way the process that led up to this bill was set, I think, because it was very, very political. From a technical perspective, while I respect what needs to be done here, the actual details of it are so wrong – they lead you to do things to the web that are very, very destructive indeed. That’s why I’m strongly, strongly opposed to it. And I have to say that this is my personal opinion, not that of IBM, etc.

This is the final segment of our multi-part interview with Grady Booch. Part One can be read here, and Part Two can be read here.

You can learn more about Grady via the COMPUTING: The Human Experience website, Grady’s blog and his Twitter feed. Be sure to keep your eye on the COMPUTING: The Human Experience YouTube channel where Grady’s lecture series will be posted.

[Kim, Michael and Grady Skyped from their homes in Sydney and Hawaii.]

9 Comments

Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Innovation, Technology, Vint Cerf

Tagged ACTA, alan Brown, Autostar, Booch Method, C++, collaborative development environment, Computer HIstory Museum, computing, COMPUTING: The Human Experience, CT Scan, digital generation, Facebook, Google, Grady Booch, handbook of software architecture, IASA, IBM, IEEE, Jan Booch, Java, Jeopardy, John Hollar, John Toole, Jolt Award, Kickstarter, KimmiC, legacy system, Lt. Gen. William Lord, MARSSA, Mayo Clinic, Millenials, MySQL, OOCL, OOD, OOP, operating systems, outsourcing, PHP, PIPA, Seth Friedman, smart device, software, Software architecture, SOPA, Tim O'Reilly, trust, UML, Watson, Watson Research Center, Woven on the Loom of Sorrow: The Co-Evolution of Computing and Conflict, YouTube, Zen

Zen and the Art of Software: The Innovation Interview with Grady Booch (Part 2)

Posted on March 2, 2012 | 3 comments

In the pantheon of world-famous computer scientist’s, Grady Booch is the star who co-authored the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and co-developed object-oriented programming (OOP). He is a Fellow of IBM, ACM, the IEEE, the author of six books, hundreds of articles and papers and the Booch Method of Software engineering. Grady serves on several boards, including that of the Computer History Museum and is the author, narrator and co-creator of what could be seen as a historical magnum opus of the technological world, COMPUTING: The Human Experience.

To view the full introduction to this multi-part interview with Grady, and Part 1 of the series: Click here:

Grady Booch: Capital I Interview Series – Number 14

Grady, lets begin with the very basics. As this is the Innovation Interview Series, let’s start with: how do you define innovation?

Ecclesiastes 1:9 has this great phrase:

“What has been will be again. What has been done before will be done again. There is nothing new under the Sun“.

The way I take it is that innovation – really deep innovation – is about warming the Earth with the Sun of your own making. And to that end, that’s how I distinguish the ‘small i’ from the ‘Big I’.

The ‘small i’ therefore means: I may have a brilliant idea and it warms me, but the ‘Big I’ Innovation is where I can start warming others. There are new suns possible; there are new ways of warming the Earth… And I think innovation is about doing so.

One of my heroes is the physicist Richard Feynman. If you read any of his stuff or watch his physics lectures – which are just absolutely incredible [Ed. Note: As is his series: The Pleasure of Finding Things Out] – there are some conclusions you can draw (and there is a delightful article someone wrote about the nine things they learned from Feynman. The way I frame it is to say that I admire him and his innovation because he was intensely curious but at the same time he was bold, he was not fearful of going down a path that interested him. At the same time (too) he was also very child-like and very, very playful. In the end what really inspires me from Feynman’s work is he was never afraid to fail, but much like Joseph Campbell observes, he followed his bliss.

Richard Feynman

I think that many innovators are often isolated because we’re the ones who are following our bliss; we really don’t care if others have that same bliss. We are so consumed by that, that we follow it where it leads us, and we do so in a very innocent, playful way… We are not afraid to fail.

I’ve noticed that there is often a level of audacity and a lack of fear within innovators, but sometimes I wonder if that audacity and lack of fear could frighten general society.

Well, I think there’s a fine line between audacity and madness.

And that depends on what side of the fence you’re on.

Exactly. It also depends upon the cultural times. Because, what Galileo said in his time [that the earth and planets revolve around the sun] was not just audacious, it was threatening.

To the church, absolutely.

In a different time and place [the response to] Galileo would have been: “Well, yeah, that’s right. Let’s move on now”. [Instead of being tried by the Inquisition, found suspect of heresy, forced to recant and spend the rest of his life under house arrest.] The sad thing is you may have the most brilliant idea in the world, but you will never go anywhere.

Take a look historically at Charles Babbage. I think he was a brilliant man who had some wonderful ideas; he was very audacious, and yet he’s a tragic figure because he never really understood how to turn his ideas into reality. [A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and engineer; Babbage originated the idea of a programmable computer.] That’s what ‘Capital I’ mean to me. I think that’s why Steve Jobs was so brilliant; it’s not just that he had cool ideas, but he knew how to turn that into an industry.

We have a golden rule that it really doesn’t matter how cool your tech is if nobody’s using it. And it’s a shame because there are some incredible innovations out there, but so many innovators haven’t learned the Job’s magic of marketing.

KimmiC rule: It doesn’t matter how ‘bright the light’ if no one is using it to read.

I think that’s especially true of our domain of computing systems, because we are ones who are most comfortable – as a gross generalisation – with controlling our machines. Being able to connect with humans is a very different skill set. To find people who have the ability to do both is very, very challenging indeed.

Zuckerberg is a brilliant programmer, and he had the sense to surround himself with the right people so that he could make those things [Facebook] manifest. There are probably dozens upon dozens of Zuckerbergs out there, who had similar ideas at the same time, but they didn’t know how to turn them into reality.

The same thing could be said of Tim Berners-Lee: a brilliant man, a nice man… He was in the right time at the right place and he knew how to push the technology that he was doing. He was developing things that were in a vast primordial soup of ideas.

Tim Berners-Lee

HyperCard was out; and why didn’t HyperCard succeed while Tim’s work did? Part of it is technical, part of it just the will of Apple, and part was his [Tim] being in the right place at the right time.

And HyperCard influenced Tim. Even Bill Atkinson, creator of HyperCard, said: if only he had come up with the notion of being able to link across [Hyper]card decks, then he would have invented the prototypical web. But, he didn’t do it, he didn’t think about it.

Do you feel that you are ‘in the right time, at the right place’?

There are times that I think I was born in the wrong century, but I know that if I had been born in the Middle Ages, at my age, I would be long dead.

So, yes, I can say from a very philosophical basis: I am quite content with the time in which I am now living, because I cannot conceive of any other time in which I could have been successful.

I read a quote on Wikipedia… a story you apparently told:

“… I pounded the doors at the local IBM sales office until a salesman took pity on me. After we chatted for a while, he handed me a Fortran [manual]. I’m sure he gave it to me thinking, “I’ll never hear from this kid again.” I returned the following week saying, “This is really cool. I’ve read the whole thing and have written a small program. Where can I find a computer?” The fellow, to my delight, found me programming time on an IBM 1130 on weekends and late-evening hours. That was my first programming experience, and I must thank that anonymous IBM salesman for launching my career.”

It sounds like you were quite fortunate to have bumped into someone who was willing to take a chance with you very early on.

I think that’s fair to say. Though, if it hadn’t been that person, I imagine the universe would have conspired to find me another person, because I was so driven. Looking backward upon fifty-some years passed, that was the right time and place. It may have just happened to be that was the right time and guy. But there would have been others.

Grady Presenting

[But] I haven’t told you about the missteps I had and the people who rejected me; we just talk about the successes. Historians are the ones who write history. Because it’s the history of the winners, we don’t tend to write about the failures. But even Edison pointed out… I forget the exact quote, but the reason he succeeded so much is he’s done so much and he’s failed; he’s failed more than others on an absolute basis, but he tried more.

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” ― Thomas A. Edison

What, in your view, gets in the way of the success of innovation?

I think the main thing is the fear of failure. I run across people like Babbage for example… or this gentleman I was mentoring earlier today, who are so fearful that they’re not doing something absolutely perfect, they are afraid to turn it into a reality. I think some innovators are so enamoured with perfection they are afraid to fail and therefore never do anything.

Within this milieu you seem to have had your fingers in many interesting pies. One that I think must be especially fascinating is your work with the Computer History Museum. How did you get involved in that?

In a way they came to me. My interest has been in software, it always has been. I forget the circumstances but, some years ago, I connected with John Toole, who was the original CEO of the Computer History Museum when it was in the Bay Area. He showed me around the warehouse that they had set aside at Moffett Airfield.

Not long before that they had shipped a lot of the materials from the old computer museum in Boston out to the Bay Area. Gordon Moore [co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of Intel] and others had said they wanted to make a museum, and they funded that effort. So, I was around the edges of it in the early days. I thought it was fascinating.

I think the reason it attracted me in the first place, in general, is that I have an interest in the appreciation of history, not just the history of technology, but just the history of humanity.

As I went to the exhibits I remember making the observation to John that I thought their plans were great, but, projecting out to one or two generations, there wasn’t going to be too much that was interesting to display in the museum because, by then, all of the hardware would have shrunk to a tiny size and we’d need microscopes in the exhibits.

“And so, therefore, John”, I said, “what are you doing about preserving the history of software,” which is a very ephemeral thing.

Think about getting the original source code to the [IBM Operating System] 360, or the original source code to Facebook. Because these are such ephemeral things, people throw them away. In fact we, IBM, no longer have the original source code to the first version of OS/360; it’s gone. There are later versions but not the original one.

Facebook Source Code

When Microsoft decided to stop production on the Microsoft Flight Simulator, I mean, this was a ground-breaking program, I wrote off to Ray Ozzie [Microsoft CTO and CTA from 2005 – 2010] and said: “What are you guys going to do with the software? Can we have it?” He munched around for a while, but I think it’s lost for all time.

We’re in an interesting period of time and my passion, which has led me to the museum, is to say: Now is to time to preserve software! We don’t know how to present it, we don’t know what to do with it once we have it, but let’s worry about that in future generations and just capture it now.

It’s very similar to what Hollywood has found with a lot of their film stock. A lot of it was just being lost or destroyed, but there is so much cultural history in those records.

Yes, exactly. So, prior to being on the board, I set up a workshop at the museum looking at the preservation of classic software. I wrote to 500 of my ‘closest friends’… people ranging from Marvin Minsky [cognitive scientist in the field of AI] to some other developers I knew, and everybody in between, and asked: “What software would you preserve for future generations?”

We came up with a long list. I think that very idea inspired Len Shustek, who’s the president of the museum, to invite me on to be on the board of trustees.

What is your favourite exhibit in the museum?

I like the [IBM] 1401 reproduction. They have a couple of 1401 machines and they’ve gotten them running again. It’s fun to be in a place where there is something dynamic and alive and runs and you can be in the midst of it. Just walking into the room, you smell old computers; and that’s a pretty cool kind of smell. So, is the fact it’s running and clacking away.

The 1401

Fred Brooks [IBM software engineer] and I had an interesting discussion once, in which I lamented the fact that our computers make no noise, because – and I know I sound like an old guy, but – I remember you could hear some of the earlier computers I worked on. They were clattering in one way or another, be it their hard drives or their tapes, and you could get a feel for where the program was just by listening.

You can’t do that now with our machines; they are all very, very quiet. So, the 1401 exhibit has this wonderful visceral immersive display, in which you hear it and smell it as it processes.

I’ve actually seen people get a little misty-eyed just thinking about a dial-up tone, and you certainly seem to have some ‘misty memories’ too. But, let’s look forward now. What new things do you think may be exhibited in ten years time.

I think that’s the next interesting challenge. We know how to display physical things, but there aren’t that many more things like old machines, to collect because they are disappearing.

If you go to the exhibits, you’ll see things get smaller and smaller and there is more of an interest in software. I think the interesting problem for the museum to attempt is: how do we present software to the general public so that we open the curtain on it and show some of the magic and the mystery therein. I think software can be very beautiful, but how do I explain that to someone who can’t see software. That’s an interesting challenge.

You’ve got to look at it it like an art form. Source code, especially some of the well-written stuff, looks physically beautiful; forget about what it actually does. There are many different dimensions you can look at try to get people’s interest.

[Editors Challenge to artists: here is a piece of code I’ve ‘mucked about with’

– why not see what code inspires you to create and send us a picture, which we’ll share with our readers, Grady Booch and the Computer History Museum!]

I think it’s very much like modern art because you can look at a bit of an impressionistic painting and you may not get it. Often the reactions are: “My kid could do that kind of thing.”

Well, not exactly; because the more you learn about it, the more you learn how much that painting – or whatever the art form is – speaks to you and tells you stories. It requires a little bit of education.

There is a visceral reaction at first to some art but the more you know about it, the more you can appreciate its subtlety. I think the same is true of software. We (the museum) have collected the original source code to Mac Paint, which turns out to be a really beautiful piece of software.

I’m using a phrase here that has meaning to me – beautiful – but requires explanation to the general public to say: why is this a beautiful piece of code, why does it look so well-formed? I think that’s a responsibility we have as insiders to explain and teach that kind of beauty.

What are your thoughts about the emerging trends in Innovation and technology?

Well, the web has been an amazing multiplier, and yet at the same time it’s also increased the noise. Therefore, the ability to find the real gems in the midst of all this madness is increasingly challenging. For example, with the computing project [COMPUTING: The Human Experience] we’ve done, we crowdsourced some initial seed funding for our work.

We could not have done this in the past without something like the web. We put this appeal out to the world and it gave us access to people, otherwise we could not have done it. I think the web has produced an amazing primordial soup of ideas into which we can tap; and that is so game-changing in so many ways. That’s probably the biggest thing. [You can contribute to and volunteer for the project here.]

The web has changed everything; and those who don’t keep up are doomed to be buggy web producers.

Yes, exactly. Or companies like Kodak.

I had the opportunity to speak to Kodak’s developers about 15 years ago. It was a small group of people who were in the computer side of Kodak, and I remember saying to them: “Look guys, the future of Kodak is in your hands… so, what are you going to do about it?”

I Tweeted about it not too long ago with a sort of “I told you so.” And yet, I don’t know whether or not it was inevitable. It could be the case that some businesses simply die because they just don’t make sense any more.

And they should die sometimes. But I think early IBM was a good example of a company that understood what business it was in. I don’t think Kodak really understood what business it was in, towards the end, and that’s what killed it.

I agree, very much so.

Some web business models are founded on the idea that a company has a right to use and profit from an individuals data and personal information… What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that that’s a business model that’s sustainable? I believe that the general public is wising up to this very quickly and are soon going to expect some recompense from the use of their data.

I think there is a local issue and there is global issue that is even harder to tackle. In the case of the Facebooks and the Twitters of the world, the reality is when I subscribe to those services, I do have a choice – I can chose whether or not to use them. And, by the very fact that I’m using those services means I am giving up something in the process.

So, why should I be outraged if those companies are using my data, because I’m getting those services for free. It seems like a reasonable exchange here, and I, as an adult, have the responsibility of choice. Where it becomes nasty is when I no longer have choice; when that choice is taken away from me. That’s when it becomes outrageous: when my data is being used beyond my control [in a way] that I did not expect.

I think that will sort itself over time; capitalism has a wonderful way of sorting things. It’s also the case that we have a generation behind the three of us who are growing up, if not born, digital. They have a very different sense of privacy, so, I’m not so concerned about it. We have lots of ‘heat and smoke’ but it will resolve itself.

What I find curious is that the ‘heat and smoke’ and discussions are hardly any different from what was initially said about telephones or, for that matter, the printing of the book. Look at some histories of how phones were brought into the marketplace and you’ll find almost identical arguments to those that are going on today.

I trust the human spirit and the way capitalism works to find a way. What’s more challenging is the larger issue, and that is the reality that there are connections that can be made in the presence of this data that are simply beyond anybody’s control.

I may choose to share some information on a social media source, or I may use a credit card or whatever, but the very act of participating in the modern society leaves behind a trail of digital detritus. And I can’t stop that unless I choose to stop participating in the modern world.

I think this is a case where we’ll have politicians do some profoundly stupid things, and we’ll see lots of interesting cases around it. But, we’ll get used to it. I mean, people didn’t like the idea of putting their money in a bank for God’s sake, and we got used to it; I think the same thing will happen.

You brought up the Millennials – the digitised generation. What insights would you give them in being game-changers?”

Does any young adult ever want the advice of their elders?

I didn’t ask if they wanted it… 🙂

You know… I think, we laugh about it, but the reality is – and I think Jobs said it well: “Death is a wonderful invention because it allows us to get out of the way and let the next generation find their own way.” I’m comforted by that; I find great peace in that notion. They need to have the opportunity to fail and find their own way. If I were born a Millennial, I’d be growing up in an environment that’s vastly different than mine.

Though, in the end, we are all born, we all die, and we all live a human experience in various ways, there are common threads there… the stories are the same for all of us. I think those are the kinds of things that are passed on from generation to generation, but everything else is details.

I would not be surprised if the structuring of their brain is different to ours. I’ve been talking to guys that are 10 – 15 years younger than me, and the ability to hold their train of thought over weeks or months – when you’re doing some serious development or research – they seem to find that extremely difficult. So, I wonder if we’ll see any really big innovations coming through from those generations.

You could claim that it’s not just the web that’s done that, but it’s back to Sesame Street and the notion of bright, shiny objects that are in and out of our view in a very short time frame. Certainly I think a case can be made that our brains are changing; we are co-evolving with computing – we truly are.

But, at the same time, throw me in the woods and I couldn’t find my way out of it easily; I can’t track myself well, I can’t tell you what things are good to eat and what things aren’t. Those are survival skill that someone would have needed to have had a century or two ago. So, my brain has changed in that regard, just as the Millennials’ brains are changing. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? I’m not at a point to judge it, but it is a thing.

End of Part Two. Part Three will be published next week – sign up for the blog and it will be delivered directly to your inbox!

[Kim, Michael and Grady Skyped from their homes in Sydney and Hawaii.]

3 Comments

Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Innovation, Technology, Vint Cerf

Tagged 1401, ACM, AI, Air Force Academy, Alan Turning, Bill Atkinson, Booch Method, Carl Sagan, CDE, Charles Babbage, Cold War, Computer HIstory Museum, computing, COMPUTING: The Human Experience, Cosmos, Darryl K. Taft, digital generation, Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming, Flat World Navigating, Fred Brooks, funding, Galileo, Gordon Moore, Grady Booch, Herbert Simon, HyperCard, IASA, IBM, IEEE, Jan Booch, John Hollar, John Toole, Jolt Award, Kickstarter, KimmiC, Kodak, Len Shustek, Lt. Gen. William Lord, Mac Paint, Marvin Minsky, Mary Shaw, Millenials, OOD, OOP, OS/360, PBS, QED, Ray Ozzie, Sesame Street, Seth Friedman, software, Steve Jobs, Tim Berners-Lee, Tim O'Reilly, UML, warfare, Watson Research Center, World War II, Woven on the Loom of Sorrow: The Co-Evolution of Computing and Conflict, WTN, YouTube, Zen

Zen and the Art of Software: The Innovation Interview with Grady Booch (Part 1)

Posted on February 24, 2012 | 21 comments

One of the greatest things about ‘Flat World Navigating’ the internet, is that it enables connections with fascinating minds, even if from a distance. If you are able to then reach out to those magnificent minds and invite them to have a chat – the encounter can be transformational. Such was the case with Grady Booch, who is, I believe, a most genial genius – a man who brings Zen to Art of Software.

Grady Booch: Capital I Interview Series – Number 14

I first encountered Grady Booch via his project, COMPUTING: The Human Experience, “a transmedia project engaging audiences of all ages in the story of the technology that has changed humanity.” I was immediately hooked on the concept, and wanted to discover the mega-mind who thought to pull this off.

In the pantheon of world-famous computer scientist’s, Grady Booch is the star who co-authored the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and was one of the original developers of object-oriented programming (OOP). That alone would be immensely impressive, but it is far from the end of Grady’s long list of credits, which include being an IBM Fellow (IBM’s highest technical position) and Chief Scientist for Software Engineering at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

In fact, he’s quite a fella, being a fellow the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the World Technology Network (WTN) as well as being a Software Development Forum Visionary and recipient of Dr. Dobb’s Excellence in Programming Award and three – yes three! – Jolt Awards .

There is a rumour (one which he doesn’t discuss), that Grady was approached to takeover from Bill Gates as by Microsoft’s chief software architect. What is not a rumour, and what Grady does admit to, is that he taught himself to program in 1968 and had built his first computer a year earlier – at the age of 12.

He is the author of six books, hundreds of articles, and papers that originated in the term and practice of object-oriented design (OOD) and collaborative development environments (CDE), and the Booch Method of Software engineering. Grady serves on the advisory board of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA), the IEEE Software editorial boards and the board of the Computer History Museum.

Yes, with all that (and more) to his credit, Grady could quite comfortably sit on his laurels, and yet, instead he is the author, narrator and co-creator of what could be seen as a historical magnum opus of the technological world, COMPUTING: The Human Experience.

“At the intersection of humanity and technology is COMPUTING. From the abacus to the iPad, from Gutenberg to Google, from the Enigma machine designed to crack the codes of the Nazi SS to the Large Hadron Collider designed to crack the code of the universe, from Pong to Halo, we have created computing to count the uncountable, remember beyond our own experience, touch the invisible and see the unforeseeable. COMPUTING: The Human Experience is a brilliant and surprising insider view of the hidden stories of passion, greed, rebellion, rage and creation that created the technologies that are everywhere, transforming our world, our lives, and who we are as a species.”

Grady is not alone in this endeavour, working as he does with a tremendous creative team which includes, among others: Grammy Award winner, Seth Friedman; President of the Computer History Museum, John Hollar; and psychotherapist/theologian/social worker Jan Booch, Grady’s wife, co-writer and co-creator of this obvious labour of love. The series will include lectures, books, videos, an interactive website, and much more.

February 24, 2012 sees Grady launch the first in a series of lecture series at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View California. For those readers who are not lucky enough to be in the vicinity to attend ‘Woven on the Loom of Sorrow: The Co-Evolution of Computing and Conflict’, I hope you will enjoy reading this multi-part Innovation Interview with Grady as much as Michael and I enjoyed talking to him!

Grady Booch: Capital I Interview Series – Number 14

Grady, when I clicked on the link from your LinkedIn profile, I was extremely excited by the idea of the COMPUTING: The Human Experience and found it to be immensely interesting! What made you feel that it was important to compute the human experience?

I think it has to do a lot of where I am in my life. In the sense that I have nothing left to prove, if you will, and I could do what I want to do. I could just happily fade away into an existence here. But, I think part of it is wanting to give back to the community that has given so much to me; and being able to express to the general public my child-like joy and delight at what I do. That’s why I think I chose to go down this path of telling the story.

In the end, I’m a story teller, and I think there is a story to be told here. There’s probably some other factors that happened that led me in this direction. Just random stories… A side conversation with one of our goddaughters…

We were talking to her about computing stuff, and she said:

“Oh, I know everything there is to know about computing. Because I’ve taken a class.”
“Oh, what did you learn?”
“Well, in my class we learned how to write a Word document and how to surf the web.”
I was like: “Oh, my gosh; there is so much more!”

It’s things like that that have led me to say… We’ve created this technology, and I’m responsible for helping create that technology, and we as a civilisation have chosen to step inside and live inside it. We’ve created a world and yet most of people in the world don’t understand it and can’t understand how to use it to their advantage.

I think my goal is: let’s open the curtain and explain some of that matter, and the mystery, beauty, excitement, and human stories that lead to it.

I think there is a lot of latent interest there, that is untapped at the moment.

I think so; I hope so. Well, there is a lot of interest in anything. Why do you think we still watch celebrities like Paris Hilton? It’s amazing what people get interested in.

But I think here is a topic that has profoundly changed humanity, and we are at the time and place where we can talk about it. And the people who made these changes… many of them are still alive, so let’s get their stories and tell that to the world!

The phrase I often use is: “An educated populous is far better able to reconcile its past, reason about its present and shape its future.” And I want to help contribute to educating that populous.

You don’t shy away from contentious topics, either. Such as: computing and war, computing and faith, and computing and politics. What are your thoughts on these subjects?

It’s interesting you called them controversial, because I see them as simply part of human experience. The reality is that there are billions of people, a billion Muslims, a billion Christians, and lots of others who profess a faith of some sort. So, to not talk about faith denies an element of the human experience; to not talk about war denies the existence of warfare. It’s not intentionally controversial, it’s a recognition that this is part of the human experience, and that it’s reasonable for us to consider what role computing has played in it.

So, let’s take computing and war for example. This is the one that I’ll be giving my first lecture [Woven on the Loom of Sorrow: The Co-Evolution of Computing and Conflict] on at the Computer History Museum on February 24. My premise is that war is part of the human experience, for better or worse.

By the way, a background you must recognise was that I trained to be a warrior. I went to the Air Force Academy and I learned about war, and many of my classmates have killed people in anger in warfare. It’s part of the life in which I have lived.

And yet, if you look at the parallel story of computing and warfare, the conclusion I draw is that computing was, at one time, a companion to warfare; it now is a means of warfare, and it’s quickly becoming a place of warfare. I’d like to tell that story: an observation, from an insider, of how computing has both enabled and been shaped by warfare.

I think the average person would be surprised to know that your average smart phone, and a considerable amount of technology, exists simply because of what happened during the Cold War and World War II.

2012 is the centenary of Alan Turning's birth

There are surprises in those regards. There are also some incredible personal stories. The tragic story of Alan Turing... [considered to be the father of computer science and AI]

Absolutely!

Who changed the course of World War II. He saved a nation, and yet that very nation eventually condemned him because he was homosexual. Go figure!

Will the lecture be something that people around the world will be able to access?

Our intent is to make it available on our YouTube channel and the museum’s channel. And I believe the local PBS station, QED, has an interest in making it available on their channels as well.

Wonderful!

So, yeah, we’re going to see a wide distribution of this. Ultimately, you can view this as the alpha (or beta) of what we’re trying to do with the series. One of the main things we’d like to get out to the world is an eleven-part series for broadcast. This [lecture] is not the broadcast, but we’re talking about it and this is one of the lectures about it.

What is the end product, or goal, of the COMPUTING: The Human Experience project? Would you say that the series is the end product, or is it something that doesn’t necessarily have to have an end?

It won’t ever have an end because I hope we will develop a dialogue with the public that goes on far beyond this.

Look at Sagan’s Cosmos; it’s still being seen to this day. I hope, and I certainly strive, to produce something as interesting and as timeless that. So, I’ll put it in the terms of [political scientist] Herbert Simon: ‘What our intermediate stable forms are‘… We want to produce eleven one-hour episodes (that’s a big thing), have a book, an e-book, curriculum materials, some Aaps. Those are the physical things we’ll actually be delivering.

To that end, you’ve already gone through one very successful Kickstarter funding round. I’m sure there will be others, but, other than helping to fund the project, what can readers of the Innovation interviews do to help you, and the project, reach some of those goals?

I think there are two things: My wife Jan and I have self-funded this for the last four years, but we’ve now gone to funding, like with Kickstarter – the very process of doing a Kickstarter has brought a number of volunteers to us. In the next few years, we need to raise about eleven-million dollars to pull this off. We’re going to foundations, we’re talking to individuals, and we’ll continue on that path.

Grady and Jan Booch

In a recent interview with Grady, Darryl K. Taft noted, “Meanwhile, Jan’s role on the project is multi-faceted. As a social worker, she attends to issues of multiculturalism, inclusivism and the impact computing has had on society. As a psychotherapist, her focus is on how human desires and needs have shaped and continue to shape the development of computing technology. As a theologian, her focus is on the moral and ethical issues found in the story of computing. Finally, as a non-technical person, she assures that the stories will be approachable, understandable and interesting to the general public.”

Working on the book and lecture series allows us to continue story development in a very, very low-cost kind of way. So, one of the things that I hope people can do is to say: “Hey! I know a guy who knows a guy, who works for this person, and they may be interested.” I hope we can find some serendipitous connections to people with whom we can find some funding.

I know foundations within the US, but I don’t know what opportunities there are in other parts of the world; we’re telling a global story so I hope we can get some connections that way.

The second is: I hope that people will look at this and say: “This is interesting. I think you should tell this story or that story.” And so I hope from this people will come to us and help inform us as to what they thing the world should know about.

[They hope to collect more than 2,000 human experience videos for their YouTube channel, so don’t be shy, make a video!]

Along with a magnificent creative team, you have an extremely eminent board for the COMPUTING: The Human Experience project. In particular, I must note Vint Cerf, who helped me kick off the Innovation interview series and really was integral in its initial success. How did you gather those people around you?

My philosophy is to surround myself with people far smarter than I am, because they know things that I will never know. I want to be able to go to them for two reasons: one is as a source of information, and the second is as a source of contacts.

Tim O'Reilly

I reached out to this set of people and I’m going to be growing the board to around 20 or 30 total for people who have specific expertise and who have been game changers in certain domains.

I’ll give you a great example of how this has worked well: Vint, Tim O’Reilly and Mary Shaw have been particularly useful for me thus far, but for developing the lecture on computing and warfare, one of the people on my board is Lt. Gen. William Lord, who happens to be the Chief Information Officer and Chief War Fighting Officer of the Air Force.

Mary Shaw

He has helped me out because I wanted to get some information that simply doesn’t exist in ‘the literature’: what’s the current doctrine at the war colleges about the use of Predators… what are people thinking? He put me in touch with people who have that source of information.

Lt. Gen. William Lord

Tim has been able to do similar kinds of things. The computing community, at one level, is a relatively small community; we all kind of know all the movers and shakers. Well, let’s get them to be a part of this, because I’m also celebrating their story!

You can learn more about Grady via the COMPUTING: The Human Experience website, Grady’s blog and his Twitter feed.

This is part one of a multi-part interview with Grady, be sure to look out for the next instalment – Part Two can be viewed here and part three here.

If you’re in the San Francisco area on the 24th of February, I heartily suggest you try and attend Grady’s lecture. If you, like me, are unable to attend, be sure to keep your eye on the COMPUTING: The Human Experience YouTube channel where the lectures will be posted.

[Note: the lecture has now been posted on the Computer History Museum YouTube channel. Thanks to John Hollar for letting us know!]

[Kim, Michael and Grady Skyped from their homes in Sydney and Hawaii.]

21 Comments

Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Innovation, Technology, Vint Cerf

Tagged ACM, AI, Air Force Academy, Alan Turning, Booch Method, Carl Sagan, CDE, Cold War, Computer HIstory Museum, computing, COMPUTING: The Human Experience, Cosmos, Darryl K. Taft, Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming, Flat World Navigating, funding, Grady Booch, Herbert Simon, IASA, IBM, IEEE, Jan Booch, John Hollar, Jolt Award, Kickstarter, Lt. Gen. William Lord, Mary Shaw, OOD, OOP, PBS, QED, Seth Friedman, software, Tim O'Reilly, UML, warfare, Watson Research Center, World War II, Woven on the Loom of Sorrow: The Co-Evolution of Computing and Conflict, WTN, YouTube, Zen

Growing the Culture of Disruption: A chat with Linda Bernardi, a Most Personable Provocateur

Posted on January 6, 2012 | 12 comments

Linda Bernardi, author of ‘Provoke: Why the Global Culture of Disruption is the Only Hope for Innovation’, is undoubtably one the most personable provocateurs I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking with. The fact that she is as inspiring as she is interesting is a bonus. Once I read her insightful and thought provoking book, published in November of 2011, I knew I wanted her to launch the 2012 Season of the Innovation Interview Series.

Linda wears an wide variety of hats, she is: CEO of StraTerra Partners, a technology strategy consulting company focussed on new tech adoption; an an early-stage technology Angel Investor in the US, Europe and India; and a board member for several commercial and not-for-profit organizations. Her work with the Bernardi Leadership Institute sees her training in large enterprises and academia as well as engaging entrepreneurs internationally in Innovation Based Leadership™. If that weren’t enough, ConnecTerra, the company she founded in 2001, provides RFID tech to large enterprise IT. All of this underlines that Linda knows what she’s talking about when it comes to ‘Capital I’ Innovation – and yet, as engaging as all of that is, none of it is why I was so determined to interview her for this series.

The fact is, with all those feathers in her cap, Linda now also wears the hat of an author, and it is for that reason – once I had read Provoke – that I sought her out.

Linda Bernardi: Capital I Interview Series – Number 10

Throughout my reading of ‘Provoke‘, I found myself talking out loud and having a dialogue with the book, “Yeah, that’s right!”… “I know!” … “I’ve thought that for years!” But, to Linda’s credit, I also learned a great deal, and found myself rethinking certain ‘givens’, which perhaps aren’t given any longer. Credit where credit is due – I recommend Provoke to anyone interested in moving the economy, especially the economy of Innovation, forward.

Throughout this interview you will find ‘snippets’ from the book. I hope they inspire you to purchase a copy and dive into your place in the ‘Culture of Disruption’ [CofD] that Linda opens to her readers.

“You are already part of the Culture of Disruption. Just by reading this book, you’ve become a disruptive force.”

Congratulations on writing such an engaging and insightful book Linda. Provoke prompts readers to ask themselves, “What can I do to become part of, enhance, enrich and ensure a successful Culture of Disruption,” be that in their school or business, and regardless of whether that business is a startup or an entrenched, global corporation. You’ve defined the Culture of Disruption as:

“…the culture that invites and nurtures ideas and ways of thinking that continually disrupt convention wisdom and legacy models. A CofD needs to be part of any organization looking to innovate.”

Added to that, you have made clear that change is inevitably uncomfortable, at least initially, but Innovation is the responsibility of everyone involved in the ecosystem. This ecosystem encompasses entrepreneurs and employees, investors and Board of Directors, even academia and the media and, perhaps most importantly, Consumers – who are the market. As you see it, working together – collaborating – they can create an unstoppable Culture of Disruption.

You refer to Collaboration a great deal in Provoke. Why is collaboration so important in the Culture of Disruption?

Collaboration has very broad ramifications. Part of what I hope to do with Provoke is explain the different constituents in the ecosystem… and illustrate how things are changing. As things get more democratised and open, by nature they become more collaborative, and this includes decision making… even very fundamental decisions such as strategic acquisitions, product directions and market plans.

The process of making these decisions will become much more collaborative within companies. It will also become more collaborative with the consumer – the market component, because the market now has an immediate voice regarding anything that company does. Decisions that used to be non-collaborative, where a company produced something for the market and the market had to take it or leave it, are now commented upon and can be broken, or not, based on the input of the market. Social media enables bi-directional communication.

These forces, that we never had in the past, allow uni-directional decision making, development, and communication; it’s becoming very bi-directional and collaborative. For the first time we’re embracing intellectual development on all levels and planning strategic development at a collaborative, global level. We’re respecting, or learning to respect, the power within individuals – whether they’re within a company or collaborating with the company – and the market.

In opening up to collaboration in such a social way, things are moving very quickly. Do you see the CofD as evolutionary or revolutionary?

Parts of it are evolutionary, because it would be impossible to say that everybody has to stop what they’re doing and completely change tracks. If it’s a big company serving tens of millions of consumers, it’s inconceivable that they’d immediately stop what they’re doing, abandon the past, and develop anew. On the other hand, certain Cultures of Disruption can be revolutionary, because they don’t have a legacy burden or have to service a huge market.

“The 3 Is–Inspiration, Impact and Innovation in the CofD.”

To that extent, you see companies like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, new generation companies that can evolve their business model immediately. Because everything is very dynamic, smaller companies have the ability to be much more agile and evolve very rapidly. Added to that, the bigger the company becomes, the less likely they are to reward risk and innovation.

Do you think that innovation is always risky?

Actually, I don’t think it is at all. Innovation, fundamentally, is looking at something that doesn’t exist, or a new way of doing something… creating some new possibilities. Innovation should be inherent in anything we’re doing. [Unfortunately] bigger companies tend to think they’re not entrepreneurs.

When I give a lecture to a company where there may be a 100,000 employees, a common [theme] that comes up is, “I’m just an employee; I’m not an entrepreneur. This stuff does not apply to me. I can’t bring about change.”

“… a formula for figuring out the odds that a given acquisition will succeed, based on five conditions that exist when the ball gets rolling: 1. Purpose; 2. Plan; 3. Personality; 4. Players; and 5. Panic.”

Well, anyone and anything they do can be innovative. That is why companies hire them; why companies go to the best universities and hire the best people. They bring them in because they want their talent. Their talent means they have brilliant ways of solving problems. That is innovation!

But something happens in their journey, and within a year or two, these same individuals get frustrated and leave. It’s ironic because they go off and doing the most fantastic things, and when you ask them, “Why didn’t you do it while you were at work?” They come back to their line of thinking: “I’m not supposed to innovate. I’m not entrepreneurial. I’m an employee.”

Provoke is trying to break that mould… to say that innovation CAN emanate from within. One of the reasons that I wrote Provoke is to change the lethargic behaviour that we see in big corporations and conglomerates. Most of my clients have one-hundred-and-fifty to two-hundred thousand employees.

The Bernardi Leadership Institute

It is frightening when I enter these companies and see an attitude, which is much more about: “I’m here to do a job and collect a pay check,” versus: “I’m here because I’m super-bright. I’m here because I have enormous talent and enormous capacity.” I think they’re only operating at anywhere between 10 to 15 percent of their intellectual capacity in these types of companies.

There are reasons for this. Often there are a lot of barriers – which I talk about in Provoke – that prohibit people from being innovative. After I give a lecture people will approach me and start sharing their stories. They inevitably revolve around not having a supportive manager, having a leadership that’s disconnected, a system that does not reward risk taking or innovative thinking, and failed systems of capturing innovation from within.

“Smart leaders should be looking at a managing method I call “the baton”: orchestrating diverse groups, allowing expression within the boundaries of an overall plan, and making work emotionally appealing and creative…”

Think about it; if you have one-hundred thousand employees… if one percent of those people – just one thousand people – were to have one idea a year… that’s one thousand ideas per year! Yet if you look at the amount of innovation that’s actually captured within companies, it’s maybe three to four ideas per year.

To me, as an ex-CEO, it’s as if these company leaders are willing to bypass their most incredible source of innovation. Often they think, “Maybe I need to make an acquisition to do an innovation.” A lot of times the Innovation acquisitions that are made could have been accomplished within companies, but employees within the company were never consulted. Imagine their motivation level. The level of inspiration drops proportionally the less people are involved in innovation.

We have to disrupt this model, cultivate and inspire talent, and bring creative thinking out. Currently I believe this is incredibly dormant, both within the US as well as globally. Instead, it’s the big company model that prevails, on in which, for some reason, expressiveness and innovation go unrewarded and are even discouraged.

You must meet, at least initially, a great deal of scepticism in these larger corporations.

Well, scepticism is a lot easier than innovation, isn’t it? In fact, in the five stages of dealing with disruption, scepticism is one of the first stages. When cloud computing came out, it was very easy for people to be sceptical: “It’s not going to work. I’m not going to use it as my corporate enterprise system. It’s going to fail. Nobody is going to want it. There are security issues.” The list went on and on.

When Apple disrupted the music industry and brought out the iPod, it was an incredible revolution, it redefined the entire possibility landscape, it redefined distribution of music. And then it came up with the iPhone and redefined telcos.

My big clients in Europe all said: “Well, a computer company that’s a music company… they are never going to make it as a phone company. It’s not possible! We’re a phone company!”

And when Apple redefined the iPad the sceptics said: “No one is going to walk around with an iPad, and an iPhone, and a MacBook.” And what do you think are the most three prevalent devices at any meeting I go to? Those exact three devices! Then the sceptics said: “Nobody is going to abandon their iPhone just to get a new iPhone,” yet everybody does.

I’m so glad you brought up this question because there is so much scepticism and misunderstanding around innovation. Innovation – or disruption – doesn’t mean just coming up with a flaky idea, going off and doing something new without considering what the ramifications are.

Innovation (whether it’s by a small, medium or large company or an individual) looks at the possibility of developing something that doesn’t exist, or expanding on something that exists, and disrupting the model.

“Here are a few tips:

Try something that seems crazy.

Solve a problem.

Observe everything.

Ignore the naysayers.

Have a strategic plan and execute it

Expect more of yourself”

Look at companies like Kodak, which I talk about in Provoke, who owned the entire photography space, and I think about the myriad number of ways that Kodak could have taken digital photography and owned that space… It could have been the hub, the platform for all digital photos. Or, look at Blackberry, that owned the business of communication smart devices…

I think there are very few companies that are willing to take the broad risk of blatantly innovating in the face of scepticism, while understanding the heightened level of gratification they have to give to the consumer.

Speaking of the consumer, do you see a widening or lessening of the generation gap – between those of a ‘certain’ generation and those part of what you deem Generation I (the Generation of Innovation)?

I’m delighted by how intelligent the consumer is. Something magnificent is happening today, the like of which we’ve never seen before. When the first personal computers came out people that were over a certain age, who had never dealt with a computer, never learned. There was a very distinct gap.

Somehow, in the last five to ten years, with the help of social media, that gap is being bridged to the point where grandparents are revelling in the use of Skype… they know how to use their iPhones. They feel a part of it. And that’s fantastic! A nine-month-old can take an iPad and play a game. Of course there is a broad range of technical capabilities, but the generational gap is becoming less and less relevant. In my view, it’s because innovation is becoming more practical and end-user-oriented.

We’re developing things with the idea that the mass of people should be able to use them; things are becoming simpler to consume. With computers in the past, the art lay in buying the computer, loading the operating system, figuring out what program to buy, going through the heroic task of installing it and figuring out how to use it. Only a very small percentage of the population could actually do that.

It’s very different today with the ‘www.anything/anytime’ model, which allows anyone access to anything. The art is the use rather than the technical prowess to be ‘able’ to use; and that has really diminished the generational gap.

Unfortunately I think a great many technologists miss the fact that, regardless of how ‘smart’ their technology is, if people aren’t using it, it just won’t matter.

Exactly. If we ask the question, “what makes certain innovation distinct?” it is when you develop something that people use. In Provoke I discuss each of the constituents within the ecosystem of disruption, which is the enabling body of the Culture of Disruption. These include the leadership, the board, the investor and the employee.

I then talk about the market and its power, because it’s the market that is totally redefining advertising and marketing. The market has a tremendous impact. Look at what happened at Netflix within span of few days. The company came up with a new business plan, people revolted and called it back. Imagine if we could have done that ten years ago with hybrid cars.

“DISRUPTION = INNOVATION = EXCELLENCE”

When Innovation becomes practical and usable, it redefines everything. And the beauty of it is that, sooner or later, change is inevitable. The sooner you embrace the disruption the better. If you don’t believe in disruption, you’re fundamentally saying that you believe in nothing changing… companies that think like that are the companies that become extinct.

The business equivalent of the dodo bird.

Exactly.

That leads into my next question: is ego bad for innovation? As a consumer I have a great amount of ego because I feel, more and more, that I can have an effect – especially if I group together with other consumers. From my perspective as an innovator, I realise that if we (KimmiC) didn’t have ego, perhaps we wouldn’t be as audacious as we are in deciding that we can change the world.

On the other hand, perhaps part of the reason that people and companies feel they don’t need to change is the ego they have invested in their current offerings.

What are your thoughts?

It’s a very important question. If we were to define ego, I think competence, belief, passion and drive are necessary attributes… they’re critical for any of us to do anything significant. If you didn’t have those you wouldn’t be able to do what you believe you can do. You wouldn’t have the passion or the drive to do it; or the fundamental belief, as an entrepreneur, that: “I know this is risky but I really believe in the fundamental outcome. I’m going to do it and very little is going to stop me if anything”.

On the other hand there is the misplaced ego, which is ego by virtue of what you’ve been in the past, or what you think you are, or what you think you have to be. That’s wrong because that completely stifles growth. Those are the companies (or individuals) that are not innovating, because they believe that if they shatter that ego, everything will fall apart.

It’s necessary to know what you don’t know, to know that you have to learn, and to be eager to learn. Unfortunately, in the latter group of people (or companies), there’s very little learning or change going on because of their belief: “I’m company X. I’ve dominated this field. I own it. No one can be as good as me.”

At the same time there are some entrepreneurs that can be unfoundedly egotistical. They believe they know all the answers just because they’ve been successful in the past. These are the entrepreneurs that believe they’re going to take their social media company public and, suddenly, it’s going to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Those that wear their Google Goggles proudly!

Yeah. Or because they’re 20 years old, they got their Ph.D. at MIT and somebody told them they’re super-bright. They have expectations, at the age of 23, that they are going to be multi-millionaires on their yacht.

“The comfort and the recklessness born of wildly available capital are actually corrupting innovation. Obstacles and scarcity force us to be better, think creatively, and work harder.”

Silicon Valley, while it’s been enormous in bringing us tremendous innovation, is also the breeding ground for unfounded ego, both in entrepreneurs, corporations and investors. There are venture capitalists there that believe that, in some sense, they’re God! One of the things that inspires me about Asia (and some of the other continents) is that they are where Silicon Valley was about 20 years ago. There’s passion and hunger, but there’s also an incessant energy and drive. It’s extremely difficult to balance that with unfounded ego.

Talking about Asia brings me back to thinking about scepticism. I believe, and I think from reading Provoke and speaking to you that you probably have a similar view, that woe betide those who are sceptical of what is going on in Asia.

Right. One things that got me really worried and started me thinking about writing Provoke was a December 2010, CNN round table of six CEO’s from major companies in Silicon Valley – we’ll leave them unnamed. For an hour they were being spoke about the prowess of the U.S. versus the global market, and how the U.S. would never lose in the innovation game.

Clearly, they all have operations in various countries outside the U.S. and they definitely, as executives travel there, but the answers they rendered really left me baffled.

“Among giant companies, only Apple and Google seem to have mastered the deliberate act of balancing a youthful, wildly innovative, disruptive organizational ethos with the iron discipline and market focus that produces win after win… What my students and clients want to know is how to capture that same spirit.”

In my role as an investor in companies across the globe, I get a unique opportunity to look at entrepreneurism in various countries at a fundamental level. For instance, in India there were about 5,100 business plans submitted [to us] last year. We’re expecting this year to top 7,000. China, South America, Europe… Talent is everywhere. Genius is everywhere. So to think that it’s going to be in one place is a very dangerous game.

StraTerra Partners

Everything is available everywhere. So, for companies and the leadership of those companies to sit there and say things like: “We are going to be the leader. Nobody can catch up with us,” really showed enormous blindness.

It could be posited that the current state of the U.S. economy is, at least partially, reflective of that blindness.

Absolutely. Innovation is collaborative. Right now, just within my client list, there are three to four million employees. That’s a lot of people.

Just within that group of people, if I can start the process of active thinking and processing, just awakening people to the power that they have, and get them to believe in it… To believe that an entrepreneur is just somebody that thinks creatively; that they can be, and are, an entrepreneur in what they do. If the system around them is not designed to listen to them, they should create a system that is.

If enough people think like that… well, how could the leadership of a company resist 50,000 people wanting to express themselves. What are they going to do? Lay them all off… because they’re thinking creatively?

“People need to feel valuable, creative, inspired.”

Disruption is simply another way to look at something. Imagine if we’d never experimented… because that by default means disruption. We would have never had any discovery. That’s the power of the ‘what if’ culture. That’s what engineering and science is, it’s about experimentation. Disruption doesn’t mean disrupting the business, it just means opening up the business to new opportunities.

You mention in Provoke that you’d like an opportunity to rebuild the entire business school paradigm. How would you change it?

I can actually answer that question with a very concrete answer. I taught a number of classes last year at the University of Washington, in their MBA program. It went so well that they’ve now offered me a lecturer position and, starting at end of January, Provoke will be used as a textbook.

It was very interesting to go into a program that’s well-established. It’s very methodical, like every other MBA program, and I taught it completely differently. I wanted my audience to participate with me, I wanted the students to think.

I made them very uncomfortable because I told them I didn’t think they were thinking enough. At one point I turned around and said I found it completely boring being with them.

I know they’re bright but they were just sitting there waiting for me to teach them things. I said, “But you know everything! Let’s talk about how you can change things!” What ensued were incredible business plans; and I thought: “Oh my God! They’ve woken up. Look at what they can do!”

“Professors should pursue corporate relationships, explore creative funding options and worry more about impact and less about tenure.”

This is the first step. We’re going to incorporate it with formal teaching and, over the course of the year, I hope to expand it to other universities and other business programs. I really think that business programs have to be completely disrupted and revamped for the new world that we’re entering.

In Provoke you mention your respect for (The Daily Show’s) Jon Stewart. What is it about Jon that moved you to mention him in particular?

In addition to being a comedian, Jon played a very important role during a very difficult previous [Bush, Cheney] administration. His was probably the most unbiased and candid voice talking about what was going on in the administration, in congress, in politics in general.

Jon Stewart

Part of the comedy passport that he has allows him to bring things to the foreground and talk about them both in a way that audience connect with. He is able to make light of very complex things which, frankly, need to be made light of.

It’s ironic, but though he’s a comedian, he’s one of the cleanest source of political news. That frankness is also needed in discussions about business, Innovation and the Culture of Disruption.

He’s very much a provocateur, as are you. Like Jon, you don’t seem to have any reticence in voicing your opinion, nor qualms about how you may be perceived in doing this. That is not necessarily a position that a lot of women are comfortable taking.

I would say that, as we enter 2012, it’s really disturbing to me how few women do what I do.

When I look at technical conferences, and go through the list of keynote speakers, there are no women. We’re 50% of the workforce, yet we’re not there. When I sit around an investment table, I don’t have women investors with me. When I’m on a board of directors, I don’t have women with me. It’s disturbing to me that in a course of decades, instead of this becoming a non-issue, in fact it’s a real issue in that, women are still uncomfortable taking centre stage.

I’d like to have a lot more women doing what you’re doing – asking tough questions, putting themselves on the map. But generally women lack a desire for risk. Women dislike failure and want to play it safe – for a lot of historical reasons – yet women have enormous power. I’m hoping that, as the world becomes more and more collaborative, more and more women will come to centre stage.

How will you measure the success of Provoke in the Culture of Disruption?

I really believe in the power of the people and I want Provoke to have a role in it. So, if you ask me: “What would be a measure of success for me in a year?” it is how many people I might have touched with Provoke. How might I have helped them change their thinking around the inevitability of disruption and their positive role in the Culture of Disruption. To me, those would be incredible success factors.

“I’m a free thinker, not a Kool-Aid drinker”

If I can just provoke people to think differently, the mathematical combination of possibilities grows infinitely. I’m very pleased to see companies – some as large as federal agencies – saying: “You know what? We need to bring in innovative thinking.” In fact, they’re replacing my “Culture of Disruption” with “Culture of Innovation.” They’re saying: “You need to help us create our Culture of Innovation.” Right there, suddenly there’s a positive translation of my dream. The “Culture of Disruption” has now been translated into the “Culture of Innovation,” or, as you call it, the “Capital I”… which is huge!

Linda is giving a free gift of the first chapter of the Provoke eBook, along with a Culture of Disruption membership card, to any readers of this Innovation Interview who sign up for her monthly ‘Innovation Excellence’ newsletter by clicking this link!!

You can find out more about Linda, Provoke and the Culture of Disruption on her website and blog. You can also connect with Linda on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

(Kim and Linda Skype’d from their homes in Sydney and Seattle.)

12 Comments

Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Innovation, Technology

Tagged academia, Apple, Asia, Bernardi Leadership Institute, Board of Directors, Broadband, business school, Capital I innovation, cell phones, CEO, Cisco Systems, CNN, CofD, collaboration, communication, ConnecTerra, consumers, Culture of Disruption, Culture of Innovation, economy, ego, employees, Enterprise IT, entrepreneur, entrepreneurs, Facebook, futurist, generation gap, Generation I, Google Goggles, IBM, Innovation Based Leadership, Innovation Generation, investors, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Jon Stewart, KimmiC, Kodak, Linda Bernardi, LinkedIn, MacBook, market, MBA, media, mobile devices, Netflix, occupy-wall-streeinnovation-interview, Oracle, provocateur, Provoke, Provoke: Why the Global Culture of Disruption is the Only Hope for Innovation, RFID, scepticism, Silicon Valley, smart phones, Sony, start-ups, Steve Jobs, StraTerra Partners, tablets, tenure, The Daily Show, Twitter, University of Washington

Kent Healy – Maverick on a Mission

Posted on October 12, 2011 | 5 comments

A chat with author, publisher, entrepreneur, speaker, coach and real estate investor Kent Healy – a Maverick on a Mission

Capital I Innovation Interview Series – Number 7

The recent loss of an Innovation Giant in the technology world gave me pause. His name, so well known, was often mentioned in this series, in particular in answer to the question, “Who would you give a ‘Capital I’ Innovation Award to?” It also led me to ask, who next – who will step into, or at least grow into Steve Jobs’ shoes? Who is the next creative thinker, the ‘Capital I Innovator’ who thinks out of the box enough to engender real change?

With that question in mind, I chose to share my interview with a young man who leads the way in encouraging entrepreneurship and Innovation from a young age. Instead of teaching students how to pass standardized tests, Kent Healy believes in teaching them to think, to understand, to yearn to learn.

I’m going to begin with one of my ‘foundation’ questions, Kent. If you could give a ‘Capital I’ Innovation Award to anyone, who would that be?

Gosh, that’s a great question. There are so many people we rely on that remain nameless… people that don’t get the PR. [However] people who obviously come to mind immediately are Steve Jobs and Richard Branson.

[Editor’s Note: Steve Jobs was the entrepreneur Richard Branson most admired according to a recent statement by Mr. Branson.]

I say that because I use their products and every time I do, I think: “Duh!” I put my palm on my forehead and [think]: “Why didn’t someone do that earlier?”

How essential has innovation been in your career to date?

Extremely important. At fifteen, I was living in New Zealand… I went to California and saw skim boarding, which I loved and wanted to bring back to New Zealand. Once I returned I went to my surf shop and started looking for a skimboard. I couldn’t find the type that I was looking for anywhere, so I decided to make my own.

Long story short, my brother and I ended up making different models and selling them to local surf shops and internationally. It was a lot of fun. And that opportunity would never have come about if I didn’t ask: “How can I fix this problem?”

Kent Healy (right) with his brother Kyle (left)

When I was about nineteen I finished my first manuscript. I started working with an agent to get a publisher; I met with a lot of them but I just didn’t see eye to eye with what they wanted. I stuck to my guns and my brother and I started a publishing company. We did everything from the cover to the marketing, and I think it turned out to be a better product.

Why do you feel so strongly that collaboration is important?

It goes back to an underlying maxim, ‘one mind is never smarter than two or more combined’. I think that the mind is designed as a collaborative tool and I don’t think humans were made to live in isolation.

"We do better with collaboration and we feed off of different ideas."

The brain is a network filled with synapses taking one idea and trying to link it to another. I think there are many time when ideas are simply inspired… when a connection is made, which never would have been made if somebody else hadn’t thrown down a random idea, completely unrelated, that managed to bridge the two separate ideas.

When you’re thinking, it’s still somewhat linear if you’re on your own. If you’re working with other people the conversation can take many unexpected turns, and that can lead to an immense Innovation.

I think if you’re working on a specific solution isolated research can certainly help. But, if you want to improve something and do the giant Innovation, collaboration is extremely helpful.

That could be a useful example to young people who may feel disconnected, if you will, from the possible positive outcomes their Innovative ideas could develop.

Absolutely. I think that we learn so much from example. It’s easy to write about innovation, but it is a nebulous topic. It’s really hard to say: “This is how you innovate.” I think it’s much easier to say: “Here is something that this person did. Isn’t that great?” That’s what inspires me. Earlier you mentioned New Zealand, are you a natural born Kiwi?

I was born in northern California, San Jose. But, when I was ten, my family moved to New Zealand because they thought it would be a great place to raise kids. So, we packed up and left, not knowing anybody in New Zealand. We lived there for eight years. Those were my teenage years, which were very formative, so New Zealand is a big part of my life.

With that in mind, do you think that location matters… does Innovation have a nation?

Absolutely. In more ways than one. I think there is your immediate environment, be it a coffee shop, library or busy mall. I think all of those things, as energies, are going to influence the way that you think.

Culture is another big thing – how do people in that culture look at Innovation. Some people really encourage it, and some people don’t. I think it’s really important to be around a group of people that encourage it, that will say, “I like where you’re going with that,” and start looking for the benefits before they shoot down the idea. It’s always good to have a devil’s advocate, I agree; but you want more supporters than you do devil’s advocates, if you want innovation to continue to occur.

And then, finally, there are magnet cities that draw in certain like-minded people. Silicon Valley is an example probably everybody [knows]. If you want to do a start-up venture in the tech world, there really are a few places to be that are as buzzing and as influential as that.

Bearing that in mind, could you compare New Zealand to the US as far as being an ‘Innovation nation’?

That’s a really good question. In New Zealand I really admire the propensity that people have to come up with a solution. If it’s a problem… fix it! That means, go into your shed, pick up your tools and your tape, and try to figure it out by yourself before going to the store and buying a replacement. I was so young when I was there that I didn’t really notice the difference, but I do now.

I pretty much grew up in a shed. My neighbor had a massive shed full of tools and we would spend every day building something and improving it again and again and again. I developed the attitude, “where there’s a will, there’s a way,” which was very important.

I do think it’s a little different when it comes to business, though. I would say that business innovation is definitely more supported in The United States than it is in New Zealand, where there is still is a little bit of that ‘tall poppy’ syndrome. However, I think the global culture is starting to stamp that out a little.

For entrepreneurship I’ve found the States to have a very supportive community, which is now moving on-line, so it doesn’t really matter where you are.

Do you think there is such a thing as a ‘natural entrepreneur’?

I think that people vary so much in their natural abilities and their tendencies that it’s hard to generalize. [But] I’ve met some people who, to me, are absolutely born entrepreneurs; they just look at the world from a different perspective.

I’m pretty divided on the issue, but if I had to give a short answer I would say, as human beings we do have a propensity, a drive and an interest, to innovate. I think it becomes suppressed largely because of our environment. That includes culture, role models, authority and laws… all those things make a difference. As Pablo Picasso once said, “All children are born artists, the challenges is remaining one when we get older.”

That’s a lovely quote, and leads me quite tidily to ask you about your interactive eBook, ‘Maxims for Mavericks’. How did that inspirational bolt strike you? Maxims for Mavericks came about when I was really [getting] into quotations and thought: “Gosh, these are great; there is so much intelligence, and so much wisdom in so few words!” I started collecting quotes I thought were great, and then had the idea of writing a short reflection on each quotation.

What makes quotes unique is that they really express peoples’ personal belief systems. Once you understand, or adopt, a new belief system, everything about yourself and your life begins to change… your perception of yourself, your perception of the world around you.

How did the title come about?

The more research I did, the [more the word] ‘maxim’ came into my head, and then I always loved the concept of being a maverick. I married the two together and I thought: “Wow, that makes perfect sense.”

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it… unbranded cattle, then, were called ‘Maverick’s.’ The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand. – New York Times

I put a few together and published a little book, in physical form, that I would give away when I would speak. I started getting messages and e-mails from people around the world who really liked it, and I thought: “I need to make this more available. Now that we are in a digital age, let’s start applying this maverick mentality.” And that’s what I did.

I created an eBook to give away. I asked myself: “How can I reach more people efficiently and cost-effectively?” The obvious solution was to create it in digital form.

Would you then equate mavericks and innovators as being the same thing?

I definitely think there’s a huge amount of overlap.

I think a maverick is somebody who is simply original, [someone] who embraces who they are and is willing to take risks by pursuing something they think is important. They question the status quo, conventional thought, old systems and tired assumptions. That’s what mavericks do as people, and that leads to innovation.

Do you think your education assisted your savoring the maverick within you?

For me the division between education and action started at such an early age. It’s hard to say if education actually changed me. What I will say is that starting businesses at an early age changed the way that I looked at education and, therefore, it really changed my relationship with education.

If I were relying on my education to be innovative, to be a successful business person, I think I would fail miserably. I don’t think that school inspires or encourages the innovative entrepreneurial mentality.

So where would you direct young people to go to get inspiration or to find a path they can follow?

First of all, the earlier [they start] the better. Just like you develop physical habits, you can develop mental habits. Start young.

It pains me so much to hear a student say: “Well, I’m a student now, so I’m just going to enjoy. When I’m out of school then I’ll do ‘this’.” I call that the ‘defective student’ label.

If you’re a student that means that you’re trying to educate yourself, in some way, shape or form. And that’s exactly what you should be doing. Join groups! I think that business groups are fantastic to organize or be part of.

They have something called NFTE here in the States, the Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship, and it’s fantastic. Its an entrepreneurial program for people to get involved, to start thinking differently, at a young age. You can turn to books and you can also turn to places like Youtube… Yes, believe or not, there’s more than just animals doing silly things on there. There’s unbelievable videos that you can learn from: speeches, keynotes and so forth.

There is mentorship as well. Reach out to people and say: “Would you mind spending some time with me?” Once a week, twice a week, once a month. [Youth} can be a huge benefit here, you can use it to your advantage and get to people who wouldn’t normally do it, or who would normally charge a fee.

You’re proud of the relationships you’ve formed with world leaders in the field of personal development. Who are some of these world leaders and why did you seek them out in particular?

Just to name a few Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Richard Carlson. Those were the three most important. Of course I’ve met a lot of others along the way that I have exchanged e-mails and conversations with, but in terms of personal relationship, I’d identify those three. It started with each of then when I [began] writing my first book. When I started ‘Cool Stuff They Should Teach in School’ I was consumed [by] self-help and non-fiction. I would do anything: read it, listen to it, go to it, talk to somebody who embodied it.

It started to rub off on me and eventually I wanted to think bigger and bigger and bigger. So I asked myself: “Who is the leader in this field of self publishing?” Jack Canfield came to mind as co-creator of the ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ series, of course. I thought it would be excellent to meet this person, so that’s exactly what I did.

I put him on my vision board, sought him out and told him a little bit about my idea. That was pretty terrifying as a teenager, but I caught his attention. I asked for his support, he agreed and we stayed in touch. The same thing happened with Mark Victor Hansen, who is also the co-creator of the ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ series, and Richard Carlson, who was the creator of the ‘Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff’ series.

Unfortunately [Richard] passed away, but he was unbelievable as a role model in terms of showing me a bright, supportive, constructive side of the world.

Of course I’m going to have to ask, what is the ‘Cool Stuff They Should Teach in School’?

Good question. The book (since you’re referencing that) covers everything from basic ideas about psychology, motivation, attitude and goal setting to more practical skills such as money management and communication. Those were all topics I thought were extremely important that should be taught.

And where can people get their hands on the book?

It’s available at Amazon [and] at Coolstuffmedia.com.

Ironically it’s become required reading in schools. I never thought that was possible, but a lot of teachers have really embraced it. They order it every year and have classes based on it. In your eBook, you talk about the importance of unlearning. So, I’m wondering, what is the most unimportant peace of information you’ve unlearned.

Ironically, it’s that you don’t have to have a college degree to be educated. You don’t have to have college degree to do something important and to make a positive impact.

Growing up everything was about: “Get good grades and then work your way towards an excellent job.” That’s what I was told and I had to unlearn that.

I think unlearning that has been unbelievably liberating. It took a lot of pressure off. [But] the problem with doing that is you become very critical about what you are learning. Which is both good and bad. I now question everything. If it doesn’t make sense to me and I really can’t come up with a reason to do it, I’ll usually put up some sort of a fight until I can understand why it’s worth my time.

Is it safe to say that yours will be a never ending study of life?

Absolutely. I subscribe to the maxim that says: “Investment in self yields the greatest return.” I think you’d be silly to stop your education, because that’s the only edge you have. Without it, it’s really hard to stay inspired and be creative.

The Uncommon Life Blog

You can’t associate creativity and innovation with stagnation, it just doesn’t work. You need to be in motion at all times.

The minute you stop doing something I think you really put yourself in a very risky situation, both in your physical and mental health. This is why studies have shown that a lot of people end up dying within two to five years after their retirement. You know, they fail to engage in something.

With innovation that is absolutely true. You have to not only consciously try to be creative and innovative, but you have to seek it out, you have to look for it… you have to actually want to learn.

Steve Jobs… what a loss. Kent Healy, quite a find.

Kent Healy is twenty-eight years old. One can only imagine what he will accomplish in the coming decades!

Readers are invited to follow Kent on Twitter as well as join his The Uncommon Life groups on Facebook and LinkedIn and his Maxims for Mavericks group on Facebook.

If you would like to know what Kent’s favourite Maxims are, watch this video to find out!

5 Comments

Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Digital Media, Innovation, Marketing, Technology

Tagged Capital I innovation, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Cool Stuff Coaching Course, Cool Stuff Media, Cool Stuff They Should Teach in School, innovation, Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Marketing, Maxims for Mavericks, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, New Zealand, NFTE, quotations, Reactor, Richard Branson, Richard Carlson, Silicon Valley, startup, Steve Jobs, Technology, The One Minute Student, The Success Principles for Teens, The Uncommon Life

Barry Flaherty – A Trend Spotter’s Perspective

Posted on August 18, 2011 | 1 comment

Barry Flaherty has worn many hats on his route to his current incarnation as a digital media expert. These include being an International Business Development Director, and a technology early adopter for over 15 years, driving global innovative solutions in marketing, digital media, and mobile technology. His client experience has covered Vodafone, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Nike, and the Qatar Foundation to name but a few.

An avid blogger and trend spotter, Barry is currently engaged on projects with a variety of clients ranging from start-ups, fast growing organisations, corporates, broadcasters and digital media agencies in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. Added to this, he sits on the Advisory Boards of several high profile digital media networks.

Currently working with Mediaventura in London on M&A advisory work and fund raising for fast growing digital businesses, Barry is also crowd sourcing digital case studies for inclusion in a new version of ‘Understanding Digital Marketing’.

This follows hot on the heels of the recently launched, ‘The Best Digital Marketing Campaigns in the World‘ published by Kogan Page.

Barry, you’ve been searching for, and driving forward Innovation for many years. How do you define Innovation?

Innovation to me is like a Rubix Cube. Multi-faceted, full of different colours and almost impossible to crack UNLESS you happen to be very good; be that as an individual or an organisation. I suppose a good place to start is understanding the essence and meaning of Innovation.

A convenient definition, from an organisational perspective, is given by Luecke and Katz (2003):

“Innovation is generally understood as the successful introduction of a better thing or method. [It] is the embodiment, combination, or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes, or services.”

Do you think entrepreneurs are born or ‘made’?

Good question. Depends what life throws at you. There’s probably ten or twenty different ways in which entrepreneurs are created.

There’s a great quote from Twelfth Night:

“some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

Many entrepreneurs are born out of many years of relentless effort – pushing themselves, and those around them, to the limit – and of course, having many failed business ventures before they finally become successful.

Right now trying to raise money from the market is like a trip to the dentist for root canal surgery. So if you have got a rich mummy or daddy or family member who can set you up on the path, well…

Many of today’s so called Entrepreneurs have had a helping hand in life. Sometimes this comes from billionaire families or trust funds, which have allowed many to start with the necessary ‘oxygen’ and capital to make turning their ideas into reality that much easier. Stelios Haji-Ioannou from Easyjet is an example of this. Kerry Packer, the Australian media mogul, created an opening for his son James to flourish and take over the reins of their Empire.

Kerry and James Packer

We need entrepreneurs in society. They provide inspiration. They provide case studies for the plethora of Business Schools and MBA courses, and keep income rolling into the country. Innovation fosters dreams. The end product is a conveyor belt of ‘leaders of tomorrow’ entering the workplace armed with MBA’s and case studies in their heads from some of the world’s greatest innovators and entrepreneurs.

Speaking of a helping hand, you are about to become a father for the first time. What do you want to pass on to your child?

Common sense. This is where someone like Paul McCartney is a good example. He’s got hundreds of millions in the bank from years of royalties, and he still sent his kids to a normal school. Its about arming your kids for life.

Do you see a difference between ‘little i’ and ‘Capital I’ Innovation?

Innovation is an important topic in the study of most things in society, be that economics, business, entrepreneurship, design, technology, sociology or engineering.

Innovation is, unfortunately, one of those words that you hear lots but is rarely practiced. I’ve attended many Conferences at the European Union, and within industry, on the topic of Innovation; and there seems to be a whole industry of people hell-bent on commentating on Innovation and policy making to foster it. But, these are not the true innovators. I hardly think a policy ‘wonk’ in Brussels is going to become the next Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg.

Once innovation occurs, innovations may be spread from the innovator to other individuals and groups. This life cycle of innovations can be described using the ‘s-curve’ or diffusion curve. The s-curve maps growth of revenue or productivity against time.

In the early stage of a particular innovation, growth is relatively slow as the new product establishes itself. At some point customers begin to demand [it] and the product growth increases more rapidly. I think it would be fair to say that lots of little i’s make up one big I.

It could be argued that innovation is one continuous journey rather than the final destination. Innovation is fluid, continuous and ever evolving. It’s a shame the big CAPITAL I seems to be the one that gets most column inches as there are innovative discoveries and successes happening on this planet on an almost daily basis.

Do you think innovation is an overused term?

I think it would be fair to say that it’s a term that is timeless but slightly jaded around the edges. There are a lot of so called ‘ambulance chasers’ who like to pontificate and tell the world they are innovative without really demonstrating or executing this.

We like Innovation. It’s like a warm blanket on a cold night. We are proud of it and we like to tell the world how innovative we are.

So what do we like to do?

That’s right! We create awards. Here is a recent example of one from the www.d-media.co.uk network in the UK. We have become good at giving ourselves a good pat on the back for just about everything. There seem to be more award ceremonies, for just about everything, than there are Companies!

Enter the IET Innovation Awards to raise the profile of your invention amongst those leading the way in science, engineering and technology innovation. Typical Award categories include:

Asset Management
Built Environment
Electronics
Embedded and Critical Systems
Emerging Technologies
Healthcare Technologies
Information Technology
Measurement in Action
Power / Energy
Product Design
Software in Design
Sustainability
Team
Telecommunications
Transport

How essential has innovation been in your career to date; and how important do you envisage it being going forward?

I’ve leant towards creative industries and this has led me to come into contact with many entrepreneurs and creative minds that have built successful businesses from scratch, or created true measurable value for the Organisations they work for.

In the organisational context, innovation may be linked to positive changes in efficiency, productivity, quality, competitive positioning, market share, etc. All of which can be affected positively by innovative forces. All organisations can innovate, including, for example, hospitals, universities and local governments. Some will flourish under its influence. Other will die. It’s survival of the fittest.

In my digital world, the ‘King of the Jungle’ one minute can be obsolete the next. Take MySpace or Friends Re-United for example. They were top for a matter of months, then swept aside by the likes of Facebook and Google. And even they have reached saturation now in many mature markets. They need growth in developing countries to stay on target for their target of 1 billion users and their over justified and bloated valuations.

On a wider level, car companies and manufacturing industries are making way for knowledge economies, knowledge clusters and an increasingly mobile workforce. The travel industry has been taken over by online offerings, disinter-mediation is ripping through more industries and supply chains than ever before.

Going forward, I want to stay involved with working at the sharp end of Innovation, thus working in Mergers and Acquisitions with fast growing organizations. That way, I stay close to the capital markets and also get to court the Innovators and entrepreneurs, feeding my desire for knowledge and having a pulse on the future.

As an extremely avid fan, Barry also stays close to Celtic FC.

You can read Barry’s piece on Celtic and New Media in the August edition of CQ Magazine (pgs 38 & 39) here

What do you think is imperative to allow ‘Capital I’ Innovation to occur?

That is of course the million dollar conundrum. Innovation isn’t always welcome in practice, in my experience. I’ve spent/wasted years of my life delivering solutions that promise change and progress and, let me tell you, they’re not always welcome!

Governments talk about creating innovation, Science & Technology parks and Innovation parks and, to their credit, most governments in the Western world have built these. They’ve created jobs and been responsible for breakthroughs in medicine, technology, life sciences and so on. The UK has clusters of Innovation Centres and Science Parks, and the European Union is one big Innovation hub, mostly because it sits on budgets of billions to throw at ‘so called’ Innovation projects.

Innovation with a CAPITAL I without cash will never materialise – governments realise this. Expensive public sector modernisation projects, transport infrastructure, new schools and educational institutions need private enterprise and money to allow this.

In the digital world, places like Silicon Valley play a crucial role in funding innovation, leading to new frameworks including user centric design, interoperability, co-operation, portfolio management and processes to shorten product development cycles.

I was fortunate enough to spend some time in the Middle East working with the Qatar Foundation and other projects such as the Qatar Science Technology Park, Internet City in Dubai and AppsArabia in Abu Dhabi. They can attract the world’s brightest minds and talent as they can afford the money to prise the talent out of countries like the UK, Australia, USA and other western economies. Innovation tends to follow the talent and the capital, be that financial or human.

Private and public sector partnerships are crucial as not everybody has 100 years of liquefied natural gas (LNG) or oil sitting under their shores. We need only to look at Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Sudan, and Greece as examples of countries who do not have the manpower, innovation, cash or energy resources of the BRIC economies or a region like the Middle East.

On the upside are the new business models, which predominantly aren’t reliant on huge cost bases – you can set up a business today for ‘$17 online and in only 5 minutes’ – you don’t have to have an office, a factory, or lots of staff.

Does location matters?

Of course it matters. Being born into the right country at the right time is tantamount to winning the lottery.

That said, Innovation is universal. It’s being created, dreamt about and implemented in classrooms in China, the boardrooms of Brazil, universities in India and in R&D labs and Universities the world over. Innovation travels. It has a passport; it speaks many languages and knows no bounds.

Like all journeys in life, it’s not always plain sailing for Innovation. There are barriers, obstacles and challenges, yet with the right network, funding, energy and drive, Innovation does eventually prevail.

The internet has created a level playing field where SME’s and individuals can go toe to toe with large organisations. People have a direct line to brands, governments and people in authority. It’s power to the people, and the people holding the levers of power and control had better start listening.

The recent overthrow of governments in the Middle East and Asia demonstrated this. In this ever connected world, there is no hiding place.

A man not backwards in coming forward with his opinion, there is likely no hiding place from Barry Flaherty either.

1 Comment

Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Creativity, Digital Media, Innovation, Marketing, Technology

Tagged Abhu Dhabi, AppsArabia, BRIC, Capital I innovation, Celtic FC, CQ Magazine, Digital Media, Dubai, IET Innovation Awards, innovation, internet City, Kerry Packer, Marketing, Mediaventura, Middle East, Qatar Science Technology Park, s-curve, Silicon Valley, startup, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Technology, The Best Digital Marketing Campaign in the World, Understanding Digital Marketing, www.d-media.co.uk

Innovation in Marketing…. Cannes Do!

Posted on June 24, 2011 | 6 comments

Capital I Interview Series – No. 1:

KimmiC chats with multi-award winning, ‘Capital I’ Advertising Innovator, Matt Batten

Each day the average person is exposed to hundreds – some say thousands – of advertisements. Generally they range from boring to the utterly banal. In fact, I’d posit that most slide out of our consciousness without us realizing what it is they’re actually advertising.

However, occasionally there are a few fantastic pieces of artful, magical marketing, which embed themselves in the psyche of a nation – sometimes a generation.

Personally, when I think of favourite commercials, and yes, I have a few, each of them tends to reflect the times in which they were created – be it for bologna or beer. I know I’m not alone in thinking that occasionally the commercials are more entertaining than the purported entertainment they are slotted in around. There are, in fact, a myriad of websites dedicated to these entertaining, award winning ads from around the world.

Without doubt, the preeminent award ceremony for the advertising industry, is the annual, week-long, Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Its a time when global Innovators in advertising and marketing gather together to celebrate excellence in their industry and honour the most creative campaigns from around the world – in 2010 more than 24,000 entries were received.

This year, for the first year, Matt Batten, the Executive Creative Director of Wunderman Sydney, was invited to be a judge on the Cannes Lions Direct jury. On his return from Cannes we grabbed the opportunity to explore his thoughts on ‘Capital I’ Innovation in general, and how it applies to his creative industry in particular.

Matt’s impressive bio includes:

Creative of the Year 2010, APAC – Digital Media Awards, Beijing.
Collecting more trophies than any other Australian creative at the 2008 ADMA Awards.
Being the only Art Director in the world with two campaigns in the Top 10 of Won Report’s World’s 50 Best DM Campaigns 2005.

A man with a myriad of interests and talents, an intelligent eclectic, Matt is probably never short of a dinner party invitation. His many interests include antique books, all things old (and French) swordplay, archery, photography, screenwriting and winning – yes, definitely winning.

Matt, do you think that having a wide range of interests has helped you as a Capital I Innovator?
I’m a curious mind. I have a head for mathematics and science and often investigate the hidden relationships between numbers or objects. To that end I will always endeavor to find out the answer to something I don’t know.

This job is all about problem solving. Which is why my fellow Direct jurors and I
unanimously selected the ‘Rom‘ campaign for the Grand Prix. As did the separate Promo jury, totally independent of us

When it came down to three contenders (don’t ask who the other two were), one was an example of the technology and future of advertising, one was a perfect embodiment of the brand’s higher positioning, while the third, Rom, saved a business. And that’s what we do as advertisers. Every communication is to solve a business problem and prevent it from losing market share.

How was jury duty – what were the perks and the pesky problems?
This was my first time as a Cannes Lions juror. I found it exhilarating and draining at the same time – a 14 hour day followed by a 12 hour day.

The biggest perk is being in Cannes throughout the whole process in the lead up to the Festival and witnessing this town metamorphosis from sleepy seaside town to the largest and most opulent celebration of creative advertising. Following that is the honor of meeting and working alongside my fellow judges from around the world, all of whom are talented, interesting and funny people. Of all the judging panels I’ve been lucky enough to be part of, I have never laughed so hard than in the past five days with the Cannes Direct Lions jurors.

I like to think that the Cannes Lions crowd will be inundated with Capital I Innovators… am I right?

I hope so. These guys are our peers, and our future replacements who’d better be
twice as innovative as our generation of advertising Creatives has been.

What was your favourite campaign, and your favourite win?
When I first saw Ogilvy Argentina’s ‘Friendship Machine‘ for Coca-Cola, I thought I had found my pick for the Grand Prix. It’s honest, emotional, beautiful and effective. Then I saw Ferrorama’s campaign and suddenly had two choices for Grand Prix.

But when I thought hard about the campaign for Romanian chocolate bar ‘Rom‘, I knew the issue was solved. Here, an agency solved a true business issue in a creative way.

How do you define Innovation? Innovation is being the first to do or create something using the tools currently
available. In this way it differs from ‘invention’ which would be to create
something which doesn’t rely on existing technologies or understandings.

Do you see a difference between ‘little i’ and ‘Capital I’ Innovation in your field? A little i innovation is a small improvement on an existing technology that could
lead to new and useful ways of doing things. It doesn’t necessarily fundamentally
change the world but it could lead to change.

A Capital I innovation is when someone makes an enormous leap forward from the status quo and manages to change the world in some way.

Do you think innovation is an overused term?
That’s why I prefer ‘world first’.

How essential has innovation been in your career/business to date; and how important do you envisage it being going forward? Innovation is core to creativity. It’s about understanding the existing thinking and technologies and pushing them further to create originality. A lower case innovation isn’t different enough and is often met with the sentence “that’s just like…”

A Capital Innovation makes the idea transcend everything we have done to date. It is ‘gold’.

While most Creative Directors and their Creatives are always looking for ‘original
ideas’ – the little innovation – I’m constantly on the hunt for ‘world firsts’.
Capital Innovation.

In fact, my own office of Wunderman Sydney has produced several world firsts in the past year alone.

Wunderman prides itself “on being at the forefront of technology and creative thinking.” Why? Can you tell me about your favourite examples of this?
You don’t get to be one of the world’s largest agency networks without applying
innovation.

Coupled with insights and knowledge from our vast array of tech clients, including Microsoft and Nokia – two of the world’s leaders in technological innovation – Wunderman is well placed for applying creative muscle to future technologies in order to truly stay at the forefront.

In terms of Wunderman’s innovation, our work includes burying cash on the Internet in a world first campaign for Microsoft, inventing a media channel and whole new ‘fertilising’ printer’s ink for Earth Hour, and the world’s first audio-based Facebook app for Nokia – a campaign that simultaneously provided the social network with a whole new technology they hadn’t done themselves.

Can you be too innovative in marketing?
Never.

But you can get too complex with the marketing that envelops the innovation. You often see overly complicated campaigns wrapped around some technology, and the innovation gets buried under the complexity. There must always be a simple, relevant idea that requires the innovation – always idea first.

Are there agencies who stand head and shoulders above others with regard to how the incorporate Capital I Innovation? I think there are several agency networks with a proven track record of having a
great sense of applied innovation, including Weiden + Kennedy, Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, Crispin Porter, and DDB.

How have recent technological innovations changed the way you approach digital strategy?
There is a danger in using someone else’s innovations of simply replicating – the
original innovator and all the OTHER Creatives who also use that technology in their advertising. We must be inspired by innovation rather than re-use it. Inspired to either create our own or push existing technologies even further than anyone else ever has, or could.

Two years ago, when everyone else was using Augmented Reality to create pretty 3D images, we added geo-coding, personalization, live data streaming, and social
sharing to take the technology further than it had ever been, innovate a world
first, and create a totally immersive experience for our client.

The best way to approach a brief is to start the proposed solution with “what
if…”. And then find a way to make that crazy idea a reality. Sometimes that
involves researching for existing technologies and innovations that can achieve it, either in whole or in part and then extending or repurposing the technology to suit the campaign idea. Or create your own innovative solution.

And at the Cannes Lions awards, Ogilvy’s gold-winning ‘Watson’ for IBM campaign is a superb example of utilising existing technology AND creating your own innovation to make a brilliant piece of communication.

Where do you see Social Media being used most effectively? Social media is a tool through which brands can have a relationship with consumers, and through which consumers can share brand content.

This can bring a greater immediacy to the product being in the consumer’s hand when they want it. And it provides massive potential to spreading communications faster than ever before.

But with it comes a price. The consumer now controls the conversation. And as fast as brands want positive socio-viral spread for their comms, negative socio-viral spread will always be faster.

Brands cannot afford to do any wrong.

What piece of innovation did you expect to happen/take off, that didn’t? Tough question.

We live in a world that moves at such a fast pace, and advertising moves
considerably faster, especially in creativity. So what was an Innovation yesterday
is instantly de rigeur today, observed with the all too common “that’s been done
before.” This means that even the best Innovations (after winning an award or two) are no longer useful for original creativity and therefore they never ‘take off’.

However, there will always be capital Innovations that continue to be used as
Creatives attempt to squeeze every bit of life out of then with little innovations.
For example, Augmented Reality was a capital Innovation about 4 years ago and
continues to surface in award shows.

And QR codes will continue to be used by brands to show digital superiority and try to engage consumers, but in most cultures the QR code is ignored by consumers.

In judging the 2011 Cannes Direct Lions, we did discover a truly relevant and
superior use of QR codes in a Korean campaign for Tesco that the jury unanimously agreed was worthy of double gold.

But now that the QR code has been used so extensively by brands (and so successfully by Tesco), they will be the furthest thing from the minds of most Creatives.

If you could give a ‘Capital I’ Innovation Award to anyone, who would you nominate? This could be individuals, organizations and/or companies. Many would be quick to name Apple as an Innovator. But I think Microsoft is by far the greater Innovator. You may think I’m doing my duty of defending one of
Wunderman’s primary clients, but as Malcolm Gladwell said in his Cannes Lions
seminar, “Apple win by being late to every innovation. They perfect, not invent.”

Whereas, Microsoft invests serious money into R&D to produce technologies far beyond their competitors. Most consumers just don’t realise it.

I also think HBO is an innovator in terms original, quality and highly-watchable
content.

And there is probably no bigger innovator than Facebook. We’ve seen the movie and we’ve poked our friends and this brand continues to find new ways to engage and connect people and serve as a content and communication provider.

Do you think that location matters? Does Innovation have a home/nation?

Innovation exists in just one place in the world. The human mind. While that means location is irrelevant, there is obviously greater stimuli for the human mind to use for innovation in some cultures more than others. But to counter that, developing nations have a greater need for innovation and therefore potentially have a greater effort to achieve it.

On a personal note, there are two Wunderman campaigns in particular which I’m very fond of, one is the Legacy pitch for the Gruen Transfer – its aim, “to convince the Australian public to allow refugees arriving by boat into the country” – and one for one of Melbourne’s best kept foodie secrets, the Taco Truck , which turns up on random street corners, and purports to serves up “some of the best tacos this side of East LA” . What I want to know is – and I know its a purely selfish question, but:
Is the Taco Truck coming to Sydney? Please!

I’ll see what I can do.

Sí, sí, sí por favor!!!

For more information about Matt and his adventures, visit his website.

———————————————————————————————————————

If you could ask Vint Cerf ‘father of the internet’ any question, what would it be?

I am very pleased to announce that I will soon be interviewing Vint Cerf, known as ‘one of the fathers of the internet’, for the Capital I Interview series.

In the spirit of collaboration, and net neutrality, which Vint supports, I am offering followers of the KimmiC Blog the opportunity to ask Vint a question of their very own.

All you have to do is sign up to be a blog follower, and then post your question in the comment section below. The three best questions will be included in the interview. (Of course I will credit the person who asked the question!).

I look forward to exploring your ideas!

Capital I Innovation Series Introduction

6 Comments

Posted in 'Capital I' Innovation, Cannes Lions, Creativity, Innovation, Marketing, Technology, Uncategorized

Tagged ‘Capital I’ Innovation, Cannes Lions, Cloud Tech, Digital Economy, eBusiness, entrepreneurship, Flat World, Friendship Machine, global business, Gruen Transfer, Marketing, Matt Batten, QR code, Rom, Taco Truck, Technology, Vint Cerf, Wunderman Sydney

Category Archives: Creativity

Zen and the Art of Software: The Innovation Interview with Grady Booch (Part 3)

Zen and the Art of Software: The Innovation Interview with Grady Booch (Part 2)

Zen and the Art of Software: The Innovation Interview with Grady Booch (Part 1)

Growing the Culture of Disruption: A chat with Linda Bernardi, a Most Personable Provocateur

Kent Healy – Maverick on a Mission

Barry Flaherty – A Trend Spotter’s Perspective

CAPITAL I INNOVATION – the KimmiC definition:

Subscribe

KimmiCFlatWorld

KimmiC Facebook

Follow Blog via Email

About Kim Chandler McDonald

Pinterest

Recent Posts

Blogroll

Archives

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Categories

Network Blogs

Category Archives: Creativity

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

CAPITAL I INNOVATION – the KimmiC definition:

Subscribe

Follow Blog via Email

About Kim Chandler McDonald

Pinterest

Recent Posts

Blogroll

Archives