This ability to connect the dots, to find coherence from a variety of seemingly unconnected sources, reminds me of Sir Ken Robinson on creativity and education. In it, he talks about the modern world’s obsession with a linear narrative – the belief that if you go to a good school you will get a good job etc. But here’s the thing what if every planner in London, went to a good school, went to good university, and went straight into planning? The chances are you would end up with consistently good advertising, but limiting the opportunity for great thinking that only comes from an outside perspective.

In an earlier post I described the 7 points on planning as described by Jon Steel. Point 5 was to have an experience of real life. Get out of the office to experience the real world and understand the people you want to experience.

By all means read every recommended guide to planning, but it’s the stuff outside of planning that makes great planners.

DRM 0.1 (Pre -1996)

Prior to 1996, DRM as we know it today was a more innocent cat and mouse game, played out by software houses and crackers. The onus was on software houses to come up with ingenious ways to stop their software being copied or (modified to allow for copying) in the absence of any firm copyright legislation specifically designed for software/hardware.

Software companies would come up with preventative measures only for crackers to by-pass the security. In the distance past I even remember having to type the correct key combination based on the location of a letters and numbers in the software manual. The point being if you lost or damaged the manual, you effectively rendered the software useless.

DRM 1.0 (Post 1996)

Software companies had been lobbying governments hard to protect their business, but the real shift came about from the entertainment corps who were beginning to see the internet as a threat to their operating model. I’ve written in the past on the challenges facing entertainment studios in an age where the means of production and distribution have reduced costs drastically.

In 1996 the top 5 grossing movies were:

1. Independence Day ($817m)
2. Twister ($495m)
3. Mission Impossible ($458m)
4. The Rock ($335m)
5. The Hunchback of Notre Dame ($325m)

Giving a gross figure of $2.4 billion compared with $1.7 billion for the top 5 the previous year (an increase of 41%). No wonder the studios wanted to maintain their position of dominance. Not only were entertainment studios pressing law makers to change copyright law but were also legitimising surveillance on those that did copy and distribute online.

The most infamous example of this was Sony BMG’s DRM Rootkit, that installed spyware on a consumer’s machine without their consent. If that wasn’t bad enough, this effectively opened a gateway for malware to become a real threat to the integrity of a user’s machine, without their knowledge.

Panopticon

Foucault spoke of the modern age being characterised by the “unequal gaze” of constant observation as a means of control in Discipline and Punishment (1975). The key to maintaining control for these disciplinary institutions was to a) constantly observe and record and b) tailoring the approach to get the appropriate response.

The ability for others to monitor what we do with a piece of software or hardware paints a bleak future ahead for personal freedom. Essentially this is the modern version of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon that – “observes and normalises” in order to maintain control. This is no different to what Cory Doctorow illustrated and the real danger of certain regimes or big business who would welcome the ability to centralise surveilance on how people use technology in order to enforce control.

We want to be able to make informed choices that the actions we perform using technology at our disposal brings no harm to others. The 3D printing examples Cory used in which it would be possible to make components in the production of weapons or to have access to plans for creating a meth lab, plays at the extremes of civil society.

The threat of successive copyright laws paving the way for legitimising constant observation and control over what we can do poses a bigger risk to our freedom than the extreme examples that law makers seek to protect the majority from.

Educating our children to make an informed choices in the future is key, but Doctorow indicated that the fight for our children’s right to make those choices is at threat today. There is the very real possibility of copyright laws assuming we and our children are not responsible enough to make those choices on our own and that Cory Doctorow explained is why we have a responsibility to scrutinise and challenge those laws.

The provision of healthcare by the UK government is estimated at 8% of GDP, which roughly equates to GBP100 billion. This has led to successive UK governments looking to cut the cost of the NHS, whilst on the other be seen not to excessively punish the tobacco and drinks industries through taxation. Preventative healthcare through apps that harnesses an individual’s data could feasibly reduce that cost. However persuading enough people to adopt the use of such health apps means it is highly unlikely to have an impact on reducing the overall cost of health care any time soon.

The ability to overcome the privacy concerns of individuals is key to the adoption of health apps going forward, whether it’s incentivising the consumers with rewards or providing a clear benefit. The NHS Quit Smoking App, successfully applied the idea of loss aversion to demonstrate how much money a user saves by not smoking.

Providing a suitable incentive for consumers to opt into a service in exchange for their data is nothing new. For some time now, Google has been regarded as the top dog when it comes to a value exchange model built on data. Now we are seeing that approach applied to traditional sectors. For example insurance companies are promising cheaper car insurance for consumers in exchange for a modified blackbox being hardwired into their car, that collects data on their driving habits.

Clearly as the example above demonstrates consumers are prepared to engage in a value exchange. However privacy concerns around an individual’s health cannot be underestimated. Plugging lifestyle data into a medical care program or health service demands clear value for the consumer participating. I wouldn’t discount the possibility of health insurance firms becoming lifestyle providers where consumers would be able to select their rewards above and beyond cheaper insurance rates based on how active a consumer has been over a period of time.

Delivering new ways of measuring and tailoring health programs to the need of the individual is likely to be another key trend going forward. At the Google Firestarters session earlier this year there was a talk from Adil Abrar on Sidekick Studios Buddy project. The Buddy project allows for a patient’s wellbeing to be monitored remotely by their primary contact. This serves two important activities: firstly it allows a log of a patient’s mental health to be logged over time and a programme of treatment to be devised more accurately; secondly patients are reminded to attend their assessment sessions as part of the service.

What the Buddy Project illustrates is that an effective healthcare program can be provided relatively cheaply. In July 2011 OpenIDEO  reached out to it’s online audience to crowdsource healthcare solutions to help low income income areas of Columbia. Again what’s fascinating about some of the winning concepts is enabling medical knowledge to be easily transmitted at a low cost.

As the demand for healthcare becomes ever greater, new solutions for delivering targeted programs for individual consumers that is cost effective becomes key. Future healthcare solutions will therefore need to tread a balance between a patient’s data offering targeted value with the highly sensitive concerns patient’s have around their medical data.

The modus operandi for most business schools is to teach how you run or create a successful business. The question why plays second fiddle to a common set of rules, methodologies, and connections that enable business graduates to make scaleable business models. This throws up an interesting dilemma because the majority of business graduates tend to gravitate towards mainstream business sectors e.g. banking, consultancy, and insurance. It begs the question whether business schools are effectively homogenising entrepreneurship?

If the focus for business schools continues to be on exit strategies and path to maturity where does that leave the question of why someone embarks on creating a product or service? It was the question why, that provided the glue between the eclectic mix of speakers at the first Google Firestarters of 2012. David Hiette of the Do Lectures eloquently spoke of the need to frame the question why, before he could start his new denim business from scratch. The question why was expressed in the quality and the craftsmanship of his products, that could only come from people with the experience and pride in what they do.

Asking the question why differentiates the enterprises willing to look at the world slightly differently. Rather than slavishly wandering down a well travelled path, there is an opportunity as Adil Abrar paraphrased to “head for the ditch”. Essentially for entrepreneurs to play at the edges and work inwards towards the mainstream. That’s where the really interesting stuff happens. Toby Barnes to took the concept of playing at the edges with passion even further by suggesting that in today’s connected world it’s never been easier to scale niche hobbies. His key message was to designed for an audience of one and scale outwards, as oppose to broadcast to the widest possible audience.

I’ve spoken in the past of “Fetishising the Physical” – a growing interest in making things as a reaction to the intangibility of our digital lives. All of the speakers at Google Firestarters demonstrated examples where digital is firmly integrated into a physical and emotional experience. David Hiette spoke of objects telling stories too. We already invest our emotions into objects we love and have a story to tell.  What if objects were tagged with the memories of previous users that can be accessed to create their own timeline and sense of history.

It’s this space between the intangible and the tangible that opens up new opportunities and thinking. The term Entrepreneurship has been rooted in the traditional economic construct of labour and capital since the 19th Century. However as the relationship between labour and capital has changed in the digital age, entrepreneurship to me means opening up new areas of play for enterprises.

This idea of a new space for enterprises to operate in can only come about through making something you passionately believe in available. By bringing ideas, no matter how left field, into the mainstream shines a light on a brighter and more exciting future.

Photo Courtesy of Brian Littmann (Flickr)

In my  last post, I wrote about how good product design bends technology to it’s will to create something that is both functional and beautiful. The counter argument to that is what happens when form and function ceases to be relevant in the modern age?

In the recent case of Kodak the answer appears to be the death of an industry giant, unable to get to grips with the digitisation of it’s business. However, rather than simply putting the blame at the door of digital technology, I believe that it’s malaise was symptomatic of a cultural shift in how traditional business continues to operate when compared with the modern definition of startups.

The old way of creating successful business models in the 19th-20th Centuries was to limit the means of production to the few who could afford it. This is beginning to look increasingly out of place in the digital age. There is a shift to a more open and connected philosophy of conducting business.

Writing in Gigaom, Om Malik said:

Kodak, like many other businesses that have failed before it, made one fatal mistake – it forgot the true purpose of its business and instead focused on features, SKUs and products. Kodak continued to define itself by “film” when all it should have done is define itself with “photos” or moments.

The economist, by contrast, paints a picture of Kodak being a rabbit caught in the headlights of modern progress, despite coming up with the concept of digital photography as early as 1979.

Both Kodak and it’s main rival FujiFilm recognised that digital photography was going to have an impact on their traditional business model, both firms also recognised that digital photography in itself was not going to be very profitable when compared to traditional film. But the key difference between the two photo giants was that Fuji was prepared to adapt more readily to the changing appetite for digital photography.

This got me thinking as to whether the key to Kodak’s decline was due to the fact it was a product of it’s day – a US business model of selling stuff to the rest of the world while ensuring it enjoyed the benefits of protectionism from foreign competitors? Add on top of this a corporate culture of risk avoidance and product perfectionism, it’s no wonder Kodak slid into the role of ‘complacent monopolist‘.

In the same way that General Motors epitomised US big business, Kodak found itself increasingly at odds with the liberalisation of trade and information across the world. A different business mindset was required. Kodak should have aimed to be an international business who happens to be based in the US. Instead it maintained a course of resisting change until it became too late.

Fuji’s willingness to adapt to changing conditions is rooted in Japanese management culture as a whole. There are two key planks to this perspective: 1) a proactive attitude to collaboration and information sharing (hourensou) 2) and a philosophy of (genchi genbutsu) where everyone is expected to be involved in solving the problem across all levels of the business.

Aspects of this Japanese business philosophy has undoubtedly been applied to the concept of the lean startup. With the focus on rapid iterations in response to changing requirements, agile or lean software development has formed the basis for many tech startups. But fundamentally the culture is less inward looking (a la Kodak) and more outward focused .

Instagram created a new market for digital photography whilst playing in the space that Kodak abandoned – a homage to the original Kodak Instamatic and Polaroid cameras of the past. From an initial investment of $500,000 in 2010 and a further $7,000,000 in 2011, Instagram was able to capture 5 million users and an estimated 150 million images have been uploaded to it’s service. Effectively the management team of Instagram created not just a product/service, but a scaleable platform where anyone is free to use and build upon the Instagram API.

It’s within this new operating environment, built on openness, problem solving, and frequent iterations that highlight just where Fuji Film and Instagram went right, and where Kodak went wrong.

To say that digital killed Kodak is misleading, and there are a whole range of other factors to consider that outside of this topic. Nevertheless the business culture of Kodak, was rooted in the old US centric form of thinking. In this connected world with free global trade and information, you could no longer have a situation where a product is valued simply on being from country x. Information on price, quality, design, and utility have levelled the playing field for consumers to make those purchase decisions.

Fundamentally advancement in digital technology played a contributing role but was not the main factor in Kodak’s decline. Rather Kodak became a cultural relic of big business practice in the US. It struggled to recognise that the world had moved on, and now its memory will fade.

Curating a number of different product examples it’s fascinating to see that despite the advancement in technology, the design principles that underpin them have remained constant. Take for example the image below of one of the first examples of the calculator.

Now compare it with the One child – one laptop below. I think there something quite fascinating in the tension between technology and design. Whilst the pace of technology continues to accelerate, I think people forget that design grounds technology, through an aesthetic ideal.

Courtesy of Svenstorm via Flickr

For a child who grew up in the 80s, with the obligatory bad taste in hair, music and clothes, I remember reading these fantastical books on tomorrow’s world. They were full of vivid illustrations of moon bases, of flying cars, and mega cities. The future that was illustrated was bright, full optimism, with unlimited resources and boundless imagination.

Over the past few days I’ve been collating and evaluating future trends for 2012, with a view to providing a curated service for clients at work. There are number of findings that were uncovered that lends weight to a more pragmatic and dare I say it less optimistic view of humanity and the future:

1. Future trends from different sources have certain common themes at the core with more outlandish thinking at the edges
2. Big future thinking of the past has been replaced by smaller ideas
3. Real value in trend prediction comes not from focusing on technology but giving equal weighting to social-political and economic influences

Boxing up Trends

What was surprising going through the number of trend reports was the commonality on certain themes. Whilst sources sometimes contradicted themselves on a perspective, it was easy to box up the points of views into broader themes. For example, in our increasingly connected online lives, there is a whole range of thinking as to how this will be develop in the future, from the concept of Big Data where everything about a consumer’s habits is known and used, to the always on, always available flow of data at our finger tips.

But what was of interest within the context of this broader theme of digital were those contrary examples that went against the grain of conventional trend thinking. For example we uncovered examples of consumers fetishising the physical. As our music, films, photos, and memories (Facebook Timeline) become increasingly intangible in nature, there is a subtle move to get back to the tangible.

Another interesting example that ran counter to an all pervasive connected life was the concept of embracing ‘cold spots’, e.g. people deliberately seeking to find or create a space where they are temporarily disconnected from disruption.

It was these left field trends that in my opinion provide the real validation of the broader trend themes that we uncovered, that elevated them from the superficial and the trivial.

Sum of Parts

What has struck me, and I still don’t know the answer, is whether the big ideas on future thinking have given way to smaller ideas. The big ideas of my childhood revolved around a bright future for humanity, with unlimited resources, increased leisure time, and expansive exploration into space. A lot of the trends we evaluated and rejected from our 2012 curated list were narrow in scope. They were too focused on innovation in a particular product or service space that meant it was difficult to truly disassociate them from their origins and elevate them to a broader trend. If, for example, tougher plastics are the future how is that applicable to the categories of trends?

Perhaps the sum of these smaller ideas are greater then the whole? This could be regarded as a positive step by demonstrating that innovation and change is more diffuse and democratic. That a broad base of smaller ideas and concepts shape the future. Or it could be that the big vision, much like the thinking around big government in the 1960-80′s, became passé.

The End of History

It’s been over 20 years since Francis Fukuyama wrote that with the fall of communism, a new chapter in humanity had arrived and that the future would be characterised by boredom in the absence of conflict. Political philosopher John Gray argued that the trouble with Fukuyama’s assertion, was that it rooted in the myth that humanity was on the path to reaching a universal set of values and institutions.

As progress continues, these supposedly hard-headed people believe the gains that have been made in the past will be conserved, while lingering evils will gradually diminish.

Current political, economic, and sociological events paint a very different picture to such a utopian vision.

However, it is these (gradual or seismic) shifts in socio-political and economic in values and institutions that contextualises trend thinking. When curating the list of trends, talking about technological advancements in isolation is of little value. Real value comes from assessing the impact of these technologies will have socio-political and economic life and vice versa.

A good example would be a trend towards self diagnosis and lifestyle monitoring. With an ageing population, and the rising cost of health care, governments, insurance companies, and employers are already giving serious consideration towards people taking responsibility themselves for monitoring their health.

Final Thoughts

In this uncertain world we live in, people and organisations are crying out for clarity in understanding where the future will take them. Trend reporting in that respect is like an insurance policy that we can take (false) comfort in. Hedging your bets that technology in itself will bring a new dawn is wishful thinking (sorry).

However it is the broader themes influenced by the combination of technology, and political-economic and social factors that offers real value.

P.S. The trend report I’m formulating on behalf of G2 Joshua will be available on request

1. A truly fascinating post by Luke Wroblewski on how tablets and other mobile devices impacts our reading patterns. The twice daily commute contributes to a significant spike in online news consumption. The secondly trend is how mobile consumers of LinkedIn peak at the end of the working day as they contemplate moving on after a tough day at work.
2. Simple ideas can be obscured by bigger more expensive ideas according to Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland in this TedTalk.
3. Echoing some of my more recent thoughts (here, here, here), Peter Thiel has written a thoughtful piece on creativity, risk, innovation and entrepreneurism
4. I’m a big fan of Steven Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From. He’s written some thoughts about how ideas are inherently social in nature here.
5. Finally for irreverent and seasonal fun check out The Art of  Dancing video advent calendar.

Earlier this week my agency had an external talker put forward the view that there is will no longer be a need for long term strategic thinking by planners because the world will have moved on. Granted you can never say never, and indeed the role of the advertising planner may evolve into something more or something less. Indeed it has been suggested that it’s highly likely that our children in school today will perform a job or role that hasn’t come into existance yet.

But far from powering down Powerpoint or keynote for one last time, I do believe that having a long-term plan does have a valid place going forward. Jon Steel, in Truth, Lies, and Advertising, credits planners are being:

…the architects and guardians of their clients’ brands, the detectives who uncovered long-hidden clues in the data and gently coerced consumers into revealing their inner secrets, and the warriors who stood up and fought for the integrity of their strategic vision. They had the logical, analytical skills to consume and synthesize vast amounts of data, and the lateral and intuitive skills to interpret that data in an interesting and innovative way.

Being the voice of the consumer as Jon Steel says is the key distinction. There is a certain scientific creativity at work within the planners role that develops advertising and keeps it relevant. Be it digital or non digital. Both Agile as a methodology and planning as a discipline have the end-consumer in mind when it comes to the output that makes them compatible regardless of looking through the lens of long-term or short-term thinking.

There’s been a lot of positive press around Design Studio Berg’s Little Printer. The concept is simple, your tweets, RSS feeds, messages, and online subscriptions are physically printed out on paper at a touch of a button. Apart from being superbly designed, the hook is to bridge the online with the offline in an engaging way which I think it succeeds at.

The mistake that some agencies still make is to assume digital campaigns lives and breath in the online space only. Yet to my mind there is rich space to transcend this narrow view and deliver a tactile experience for the consumer. Given the 5 senses human’s have, in the digital space there is a tendency to exploit only sight and sound. Little Printer and the recent Heinz Get Well Soon campaign, exploit a rich area of opportunity to appeal to our other senses in an entirely natural way. I’m sure it can be replicated for the other senses

There is the fallacy that modern technological improves and supersedes how we use to do things in the past. Yet to limited ourselves to such a narrow way of experiencing things through the digital space challenges this view. The digital space can act as a gateway to give us these sensorial experiences in a creative way.

To live in a purely online world devoid of taste, touch and smell is to limit the horizon of what good digital strategy can achieve.