innovation playground Idris Mootee

Media Disruption Is Not Slowing Down. Mobile Is Now The Center Of A New Ecosystem.

The media business is not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel yet. When people asked me about my magazine and the economics of that, they were saying why am I in publishing business. Well that is not my core business, just a hobby. It has been almost three years since the first publication of MISC and readership is growing nicely. We're now in 28 countries and we have have the digital version. I am getting a lot of positive feedback from readers from all over the world. Perhaps I should make the next issue the thickest one. This is the first cover that was shot in Milan. And the next cover will be shot in Shanghai.

The media business is certainly not easy with the never-ending technological disruptions we are experiencing and new behaviors keep evolving, we are nowhere near the end of it. The word social media makes no sense anymore as it is already main stream doesn’t matter how you look at it. Many traditional media types continue to cling to an old way of doing things, based largely on making minor adaptation to existing approaches and some are relentlessly experimenting with finding new revenue stream, largely still through advertising or sponsorship.

There aren’t many new opportunities for business model innovation if you take a strategic view, people are still thinking about advertising or sponsorship. Yahoo and Google are the same. The hybrid model of readers’ empowerment and buttoned-down professional journalism is already fullyoptimized. Media executives are spending a lot of time thinking about the future of their industry and what it will look like in 2020. 

Five years ago everyone is thinking about the online model and suddenly the tablets came and changed everything. And what’s next? Multiple screens device, new interactivity through voice, gestures and more external data sources, and glasses and watches etc. No one knows how content discovery and consumption model will evolve given the abundance of choice consumers have today. Neutrality is probably not the best interest for the media industry.

Media business is still suffering from an identity crisis, at least for another decade. The business model will not change, we will still end up paying for content through transactional, subscription or advertising models although there will be more flexibility on how we purchase them. With every person with a smart phone also has a video camera that can turn them into amateur journalists, news will become real-time and shows us different views of any event. And contextual bits will be consistently updated and events unfold. The Twitters of the world are the instant updates and these short bursts will create more noises than news value and readers need someone to break them down into manageable pieces.

Audience now lives in a multi-screens world. They can choose between raw news and organized news. The three key drivers of mobile disruption are hyper-local (geolocation), integration with home appliances and digital payments. The three together can put mobile at the center of an entirely new ecosystem. It is not merely another form factor. It is the biggest leap forward since writing first arrived about 7,000 years ago, which only impacted a tiny percentage of our population. Word of mouth was the only “information system” for most of humanity and now that will be turbo-charged by mobile as it unlocks an incredibly deep desire and capacity among us (humans) to share personally relevant information and feelings such as “I am waking up happy to a sunny morning” etc. These personal information is competing for attention with other news. And for me, I'd rather be reading what my friends are saying than the news. CNN is depressing.

With Our Increasingly Reliance On Smart Devices And Gadgets, And We Are Becoming More And More Vulnerable.

You’ve seen all the time in movies when the bad guys hacked into public surveillance cameras and could see what’s going on out there. It is actually not difficult to hack into most security surveillance systems for commercial or residential buildings and particularly those wireless ones. Theses cameras that are used by retailers, hotels, and elevators, are often configured insecurely. Many are preconfigured with simple to access passwords and you can try as many times as you wish to attempt to guess it. Start with “1111”, “1010”, “1234” or “1001” or try “admin”.

And the same problem exists for video conferencing systems, imagine you’re on a conference call with your team on developing the next secret product. Sometimes you can random call in and get access to these conference calls where VCs are talking to start-ups or people are pitching their latest ideas. .

What about all those smart gadgets or devices that we increasing rely on in our everyday's work.  Not only do we store a large amount of information on our gadgets, they are increasingly becoming our gateway to online services. Our smartphones stay with us 24 hours a day, giving us ample opportunity to leave them behind in a gym, taxi or bar. If the device is lost our information is vulnerable. Most smart device users aren't prepared to handle the multitude of technical and security challenges that come with carrying one.

Smartphones that aren’t properly decommissioned also leave us vulnerable. As smartphone use becomes even more prevalent, we can expect to see more malware and other viruses targeting both Android and Apple devices. A serious security flaw was recently uncovered, affecting some Samsung Android smartphones. The flaw allowed hackers to erase the device remotely, simply by sending an SMS or getting the user to click on a URL. How many employees have personal phones on the corporate network that you don't know about? While the use of smart devices may keep employees connected, efficient and, in most cases, productive, allowing a personal device to connect to the corporate network without vetting could compromise your business.

Threats to mobile security aren’t always obvious. It’s surprisingly easy to hack a smart device. Easier still for users to download a game or another similarly innocuous app that, once installed, turns that phone into a bug. PlaceRaider, a malware created by the United States Navy to showcase Android vulnerabilities, does just that. The app activates the phone's camera and other sensors, collects data to create a 3D image of the phone's physical location including sensitive data that may be visible on computer monitors or desks.

And we all use some Bluebooth enabled accessories. Bluetooth is a key vulnerability, there is a hack called Blue Scanner that searches out for the Bluetooth enabled devices and then  extract as the much information as possible for a each newly discovered device. It is easy to do.

We love our gadgets but, at the risk of sounding dramatic, they have the potential to turn against us. Your smart phone probbaly knows more about your than Google. So from now on, just assume that everything is hackable. So when you need to be in secretive meeting, put all your electornics in a bag and make sure the room has not video confenecing or security cameras installed.

Idea Couture Is Ready To Take Innovation And Design Thinking To The Next Level.

This has been a very tough two months for me in terms of time and I have not been spending much time writing my blog as much as I used to. It is getting a bit difficult to find the time as we were going through a reorganization, adding new offices, putting new management system in place and at the same time trying to finish my two books on the weekends which will be published in May and Oct this year.

I am excited about my new Design Thinking and Strategic Innovation book that I hope to fill a gap in the market place. And management of the company is taking more and more of my time. So the time I can afford to touch projects is shrinking, I think I only spend 25-30% on projects these days instead of 40%. And people think I spend a lot of time on my MISC magazine, the reality is it is less than 2% of my time. I have a great team helping me with that. I only pick the theme, cover girl and the designs.

We have always designed Idea Couture to be a company that is agile, high style and deserve great love. But we recognize this is an ambitious goal because we want style, speed and substance. Not everyone can make it. I remember someone said something like "Out of difficulties and impossibilities grow miracles." Perhaps we’re naïve. Idea Couture is not a place for small thinkers or people with big egos. It is place for people who believe in being AWESOME and won’t spend time fighting for excuses.

I take pride of seeing people that I mentor growing everyday. We’ve come a long way since launching what we called an innovation firm – whatever that means. It is not a design firm with MBAs; or management consulting firms with some designers or digital agencies calling themselves innovation agencies. We are built from the ground up to do what we’re supposed to do – we work with organizations to uncover innovative ideas that sustainably grow market share or create new markets through powerful customer experiences innovation. We are close to the completion of our reorganization and I am very excited to wait for more new people joining us every week.

Our technology team is amazing and we’re now adapting new methodologies so we can deliver better and faster cross-platform solutions. Our strategy team is growing and growing and have so much untapped potential (unsolicited resumes are flying in dozens everyday).

Our design team is world class and I personally make sure they will remain the best all the time. They not only produce great work, but also open minded and egoless, and fun. At Idea Couture, design is at our very core, not the surface. Design here is under transformation and it is not done within a studio, it is done in the real world in future tense. Design is where technology and art breakeven and where love and logic intersects.

Our insight team is AWESOME with all capital and it is our intellectual powerhouse. When the company advanced forward to a new stage, our foresight capability was not meeting the standard that I required both in terms of strategic knowledge and professionalism. So we needed a full upgrade. Now we have a new global team and a plan to fully integrate that into our innovation process.

We have no time for amateurism. People are committed to giving their best. We just launched our idea couture culture page, which is my personal most favorite part of our site that best represents us. It shows us who we are as individuals which really what this company is all about. People are here for a reason, not for a job. They find their best and it is our job to bring out their bests. It is not always easy. It is how they find meanings. There is a strong correlation between job satisfaction and meaning.

We refuse to act like a "grown-up" company; however at times the company and will always want to think we’re small even though we have 6 offices around the world.

We refuse to act like a “think tank" as we don’t just think, we do.We don't just produce report, we ation on them. We use visual output for sensemaking and mobilizing change that increases organization adaptability and agility.

We refuse to act like we "know it all" but we believe we are equipped to find the best available solutions.

We refuse to accept any "best practices" as we are the one who invent “next practices”.

We refuse to accept that “amateur foresights” is better than no foresights. Actually it is better to have no foresights than wasting time on amateur futurists.

We refuse to accept that "ideas are everything", in fact ideas don’t worth much. They are cheap. There are no shortage of people with ideas and can never execute anything. The art of jump starting innovation is strategic commitment and it is more valuable because nothing happens until someone do something.

We refuse to accept people with "big egos", it is simply not part of our culture. But there is one nice thing about egotists is that they don’t talk and think about other people at all.

Idea Couture is a working prototype and will remain a working prototype in time to come.

Apple's Magic Is Not Repeatable. Innovation Means Reinvention. Not Taking A Page From Someone's Playbook. Here's The Proof.

Apple magic is not repeatable. And even if you think by poaching senior talents from them. The same can be applied to many great companies large and small. It is too simplistic to think that stealing talent from great companies larger or small can help a company to repeat the magic.

Here is a good example when Ron Johnson, former head of Apple retail joined JC Penny as CEO, his plan was to reinvent the company. From when Johnson took the reins Nov 1, 2011, the stock price dropped in half. He received $53.3 million in compensation for 2011 and his pay package for 2012 was $1.9 million, no bonus after the company booked a $1 billion loss for the year. Yes a $1 billion loss!

Johnson's strategy to bring some Apple Store magic to JCPenney was not innovative or strategic. His strategy was to move away from price and he started by taking off any discounts and introduce a store-within-a-store design that emphasized experience over value. According to him,"Inherently, department stores have significant advantages compared to all other retailers." I don't agree with that statement with the exception in some markets such as China, Korea and Latin America.

When he took over the job of the CEO, he said that successful retailers will be "the ones that start from scratch and figure out how to create fundamentally new types of value for customers" by asking "how do we reinvent the store to enrich our customers' lives?" Good questions to start with but did they end up with the right stategy? JCPenney’s business model needs reinvention, not just the retail format or taking a page from Apple’s playbook.

It takes more than that to transform a very out-dated business model. It was a bad idea in the first place to abandon the discounting that customers had come to expect, it’s a behavior they are not going to change. Instead they should embrace the idea of “discounting” and innovate around it. JCPenny wants their customers to feel "special" about discovering these discounts. And not getting rid of it. Reinvent it! Make it fun! Make it social! I can give you 10 ideas of how to innovate around the “discounting”. The backlash against this tactic was so strong that Johnson was forced to bring back sales and discounts last quarter. That was a big mistake. Innovation needs to be strategic. Design without strategy is useless.

JCPenny needs to rethink the needs of these middle-class shoppers that are shrinking in both total size and wallet. It should move down to aim at the expanding highest of the lower income group.This is where the opportunities are.

Retail is a tough business overall and there weren't a lot of innovation happening. Those giant interactive screens, talking mannequins and RFID tags are bringing the virtual into ‘real’ retail spaces and tablet computers are turning up at pos’ from independent boutiques to multi-national chains. There are also companies working on virtual ‘touch’ for users to ‘feel’ the texture of products they want to buy. While still in development stage, the innovation would address one of the main problems of shopping online. Shopping is as much a tactile experience as a visual one.

In a creepy addition to the tech enabled retail experience, mannequins may now be watching you as you browse. Via built in cameras and facial recognition software mannequins are now able to collect data on your race, age, gender and shopping habits to assist retailers in their marketing strategies. While it’s not quite new, retailers have been using in store cameras to collect data for years, the addition of facial recognition is making it a simpler process. Big brother/sister is watching you shop!

Will The Facebook Phone works? And For Microsoft and Samsung, The Future Of Smartphones Is Dual-Screen.

The Facebook phone is here.The Facebook phone rumor has been around for a while and it is a matter of time it becomes real. I think they should have done it earlier and should have larger ambition other than just trying to design a ‘home’ for Android.  Home sounds like a PaaS personalization tool and not sure how many FB users will want this. FB see the potential for them but it is hardly a threat for others but Android might modify their terms so this won’t happen again in the future.

With FB already commands more than 20% share of people's time on mobile devices (excluding Instagram), it can further boost FB mobile usage particular for younger users. Will FB take over 20% of all Android phones, we have yet to find out. For now, FB is pretty convinced that people will want a phone designed around it and perhaps with additional hardware feature that is uniquely FB. 

FB should really be making its own phone, it is reported that they are working with mobile chipmaker Spreadtrum to pre-optimize its software for the cheapest Android handsets. It is hard to compete on the high end with Samsung and Apple, if Facebook prodcued its own low end phone, though, it could create a new business model in the mobile market and FB could negotiate better data plans for their members or partially subsidize them with advertising. This is not easy for Facebook to jump in and get carriers to agree to sell its phone.  For me, I see no reason to have a FB phone.

For Microsoft, they are waiting to see how well Nokia's Lumia phones Windows Phone 8x and 8s sell before making a strategic decision to enter the smartphone market on its own. I think it makes perfect sense for them to decide to play in the hardware space. They have made that decision with  Surface tablets. It is a matter of time that they will play in this smartphone market, they risk becoming irrelevant as market is switching into different computing format.

Microsoft is thinking dual-screen and has applied to patent a dual-screen phone interface. One screen for device interface and the other as a monitor and is detachable. NEC is making one and is marketing them as the "best cloud device," the dual-screen Android from NEC handset also has a super powered battery to keep both displays running.

It will be interesting to see what can we do with two screens. We're already designing dualscreen user experience models and I think this is catch on. The mobile industry is changing faster than anyone could have imagined and the interface paradigms there have been static. Here is the opportunity for us to introduce new ways of interacting with others and new ways these machines can understand what we need.

 

This Is Just The Begining Of The Mobile OS Battle. Plenty Of New Players Will Join The Game.

The mobile OS war is getting more interesting and the current market share battle is between iOS and Android will go on for a while. Will there be a breakout of it will be more like a Pepsi vs. Coca Cola market share battle that has been lasting for decades? Android is getting better momentum the last two years and I expect that to continue. I think the overall market share is stabilizing and the other two Windows and Blackberry will remain niche players. Newcomers will join the game and there are three in the US and they are Mozilla, Tizen and Canonical. There are a few emerging ones in Asia and they all worth keeping a close watch, especially those up and coming companies in China.

In China Android accounts for 86% of all new smartphones sales and there are three times as many Android users than the US. The business model is basically freemium, developers hoping to make money from in-app purchase. The Android ecosystem is growing like crazy as people find iPhone is getting a little boring and may be too restricted.  

There will be surprises that in the next 12 months perhaps cool smart phones from China that came from nowhere selling for half the price and have even better performance.  There was a private lab test done on the top 10 most popular smartphone in China a few months back and the result was 5 of the 10 most popular Android devices from local Chinese manufacturers perform better than the imports. They include the Lenovo A750 and the XIAOMI MI 1S.  

Apple is watching the market closely and also struggling whether to add a stylus for the next iPhone,  it will be a tough one as they have always been strongly against it and the Samsung Galazy stylus is nicely designed. There are no definite right or wrong in this business and the behavior changes so quickly.

Expect some big design shift for the next iteration of Android that leverages more of the Hybrid Card layout.  Android needs to jump into the next game in terms of user experience and it demands a shift in overall visual language from current Jelly Bean paradigms to something really different. The jump from Gingerbread to Ice Cream Sandwich was a big jump. I believe Android will be looking at gestures control beyond the screen, perhaps the back and even the side. Apple already has a patent filed 2006 relating to using gestures on its back and a recent Google patent might bring that concept to next generation of Android phones. The principle is as easy as touching the back casing of the Android device in order to interact with the gadget and that can drastically improve the user experience. Imagine back tapping to change page or call list etc. It will be powerful when combined with acoustic feedback. The battle of mobile interfaces design has barely begun. And Facebook is joining the party.

How Imagination Can Create The Future? Start With Those Old Comic Books and Sci-Fi VHS Tapes From The Flea Markets.

For centuries we show our human spirit with stories about our glories,hopes, desires and dreams for a better future, one filled with modern machines that enable us to do things we long to do from being invisible or traveling in flying cars or telepods (may be not telepods as I always worried that something would go missing during the transmission). These stories manifested itself in art, comics, fictions, movies and even science discoveries.

What was known as “futurism” is the artistic movement that began in Italy and Russia that fast-forward us to the future of the machine age into progressive state of mind. Futurism also championed speed, technology, science, youth and also a lot of uncertainties. It's mantra was that the answers to humankind’s problems lay in the future driven by technology – and not the past. The main literary work of the movement was Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, published in 1909, and generally considered the beginning of Futurism. I still enjoy reading that once in a while.

To invent the futures that we desire, business and government leaders need to see things in new ways that trigger their imagination to dream of new possibilities. Many of them are too "stuck" in the present. That’s when Design Thinking comes into play. Design Thinking is not just about understanding  people's needs.  It can also be used to bring people's imagination to propel us into the future. To see the future, Design Thinkers are equipped to creating guidepost for developing strategic foresight. It is called Future Casting.

Future Casting is how people from the past thought of the future. I remember visiting an exhibition in Prague where artists from the former USSR were imagining how the future was like with its futuristic art of space vehicles. Those Russian Futurists were fascinated with the optimism, speed, and restlessness of modern machines and urban life. They were actually performing Future Casting for the public.

I grew up watching Thunderbird and Ultramen and as a boy and they were the only things that were available for me that I could use as a guidepost for imagination. Funny enough, Ironman is like an unfinished prototype based on Ultraman design with the same battery problem. Ultraman highlighted the bottleneck of all technologies decades ago which is the battery. From iPhone to the latest Boeing 787 we still have not solved the battery problem.

We have always tried to look into the future and try to figure out what comes next. Sometimes we create fictions, fantasies of what may come. Will some of these fictions ultimately become real? There is no scientific evidence for this, I suspect the percentage of fiction becomes real is way higher that some thought our research based predictions that never made it close to become real. These materials open a window into the past and in term a perspective of the future… how the future should have been or their fears of how they were afraid it would turn out.

The realities of tomorrow are the fictions of today. If you want to have good strategic foresights, don’t hire designers or futurists. Hire Sci-Fi writers! And pair them up with behavioral economists and anthropologists and you will get good foresights.

The latest issue of MISC The Gadget Issue which has a special design feature Project 2020 about the future of sex, social and beauty. There is also the main feature How New Technologies With The Power To Evolve, Disolve, Disrupt and Democratie Industy which is fun to read. MISC is now in bookstores in 26 countries. And you can get it from Amazon too.

Strategic Foresights Is Used To Make Sense Of Patterns Of Threats And Opportunites. Companies Barely Understand How To Use It.

“Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.”   ― Alain de Botton

What's the future of interactive glass windows, interactive eyeglasses and 3D mirrors etc? Via a pair of glasses information and apps can be projected into the air and controlled by gestures and eye movement or just a thought? It is hard to imagine what's the future of Nokia, Ericsson or even Blackberry. What does strategy mean to these companies when there are so much unknowns?

Strategic planning is changing and many organizations are not designed or equipped for the changes we see happening. And with many business models going out of date in such rapid mode, every manager is trying to find ways to see the future. And they must adopt a different approach and mental mindset as it tries to embrace disequilibrium. The ability to imagine, analyse and prepare for the future is becoming very important. It does not only apply to technology or biotech industries. It is about survival for every business.

Preactivity basically guides all approaches to future studies, forecasting, scenario planning and strategic foresight. Proactivity aims to bring about the desired changes by means of strategic planning to effectively deal with not just the speed of change but also complexity, uncertainty and paradox and that's the reason why Strategic Foresight goes hand-in-hand with Deisgn Thinking. The future arises from a constant stream of individual, organizational and policy decisions, strategies and commitments that have to be made in the present, with as much understanding of risks, possibilities, wisdom and foresight as possible.

Strategic Foresight is not a tool kit. Or some wild card ideas.It is not fancy (and useless) diagrams or algorithm. It is both a process (transformational) and an outcome (results in knowledge and artifacts for, from, and about the future). Strategic Foresight is not about predicting the future. Rather it is more about framing, reframing, informing, opening up minds, and inspiring strategic dialogues about possible futures. You still need a good understanding of industry economics in order to apply it. It is not a design exercsie.

Strategic Foresights is still in its early stage of adoption and takes a while before it comes a core part of strategic planning. It enables companies to use weak signals to identify opportunities and threats. Weak signals are defined as poorly understood drivers of change and/or signals which are currently unconnected with a trend, industry or market and appear irrelevant on the surface. The identification and correct interpretation of weak signals can be vital to the success or survival of an organization.

An executive team equipped with powerful foresight capability will be able to make sense of, and respond to, the emerging pattern of threats and opportunities, and to use this understanding to manage risk and capitalize on opportunitie. It is not just about keeping the bad from not happening, afterall business is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual reframig and reshaping your plan.

The Future Of Retail Is Full Of Challanges As Well As Opportunities.

Retailers are goign through strutural changes as many proven formats are out dated and "showromming" is impacting many. The massive pentration of smartphones are driving showroomers for comparing prices and features. Amazon has even given users of its mobile shopping app the ability to simplify price lookups on its site by letting them scan product bar codes using their smartphone cameras. So we end up having 1/ the Amazons of the world where they have full range of products at a super competitive price of 2/ Experience-based stores that people that offers more than making a purchase. They provide a very different kinds of retail relationships with different brands and it is Cirque du Soleil meets Nordstrom.

There are no shortage innovations happening in the word of retail design. Most aim to integrate online retail with the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ experience. Giant interactive screens, talking mannequins and RFID tags are bringing the virtual into ‘real’ retail spaces and tablet computers are turning up at pos’ from independent boutiques to multi-national chains.

Stores such as Tesco in the UK have introduced a ‘scan as you shop’ system that allows shoppers to bypass checkout lines; SK Telecom, a South Korean mobile tech company, are trialing a ‘smart cart’ a trolley complete with wi-fi enabled tablet computer that provides product information and collects data as people shop; Nordstrom, Harrods and Target are all trialing in-store navigation smart phone apps to give product location and stock information.

And for those who don’t like trying on clothes, there’s now a virtual answer: The AR Door prototype. UK high street store Top Shop introduced the virtual change room to shoppers in Moscow last year. Using Kinect motion sensor technology together with an Xbox console, the prototype allows shoppers to see how clothes will look without trying them on, via a full-length mirror/screen. There are also companies working on virtual ‘touch’ for users to ‘feel’ the texture of products they want to buy. While still in development stage, the innovation would address one of the main problems of shopping online. Shopping is as much a tactile experience as a visual one. 

Mobile payment systems are also infiltrating retail spaces. US hardware giant, Home Depot introduced PayPal to almost 2,000 stores last year. Square, the mobile payment system, that streamlines point-of-sale payments, has recently partnered with Starbucks to implement a smart phone app allowing Starbucks customers to pay via QR code or NFC-tap.

It’s not just bricks and mortar retailers breaking down digital barriers in retail, online retailers, such as the online grocery store Peapod, are establishing a physical retail presence. Product images and QR codes line the walls of transit stops in the US, shoppers can simply scan items to order while they wait for their train.

In a creepy addition to the tech enabled retail experience, mannequins may now be watching you as you browse. Via built in cameras and facial recognition software mannequins are now able to collect data on your race, age, gender and shopping habits to assist retailers in their marketing strategies. While it’s not quite new, retailers have been using in store cameras to collect data for years, the addition of facial recognition is making it a simpler process. So watch out for those mannequins!

 

3 Paths Towards A Creative Life. It's Not The "Aha" Moments Or Being Perfect.

You want to be more creative? Sometimes it is not about trying harder to act creative. I see a lot of people trying too hard. Sometimes it’s not just about giving one the space to be creative.  Sometimes it is just being strategic. And sometimes it means apply a healthy dosage of common sense. 

Strategic creativity is more valuable than creativity.  Not everyone needs to be “creative” the same way as other think you should be “creative”. It is not about ideas. It is an attitude. Everyone can live a creative life and be creative how he/she sees live. It seems that when creative people (artist) with certain carft try to solve a problem or achieve a certain end result, particularly when the goal is related to their craft or specialized skills, they have an advantage. But when the problem is too big for them, it takes strategic creativity on a more sophisticated level.

Creativity is in such demand today and it is not the years of schooling or what art schools you attend. The word “Creatives” is used in advertising world to describe those who work on creating advertising campaign or providing craft for production. People in these roles like to believe that they are more creative than others. It is not the case at all.

Creativity is not a job title, crafts, capability or skills. Creativity is state of mind, which you can use in everything you see and do. People should live a creative life rather being creative. By living a creative life and having that state of mind, one naturally becomes creative. Creative is independent of discipline, culture and tools.

So how do you live a creative life? Here are three specific ways that can help you to live a creative life.

1. Be Bipolar. A little madness yield great artists, designers, inventors and scientists. The evidence is growing for a significant link between bipolar disorder and creative temperament and achievements. Seeing the extremes of both sides of anything help you to understand the spectrum of choices and options.  Go to places you don’t normally go and use that space. It is not available for everyone.
2. Be Foolish. Be lazy. Everywhere people are telling you rules and the right ways to do things.  Be acting silly and even lazy can sometimes help you to see easy paths to complex problems. Agatha Christie wrote, “I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.”
3. Be Strategic. Most people see this as the opposite of creative. This is total rubbish. Being strategic can also be creative. And being strategic you need to be very creative. The best strategists are often most creative people who can apply creativity in the context of a specific problem. They don’t’ dress in a funny way or even trying to act like artists. They may wear suits and even a tie, but they could also be the super creative types.

Creativity is not just about “aha” moments or interesting ways to look at things. Creativity is about putting empathy to work. Creativity is not about perfection. Weisberg and Csikszentmihalyi both talked the importance of motivation in creative performance. A notion of Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of creative flow is that reaching peak performance is “autotelic”, meaning it is enjoyable for its own sake. So the ‘creative person’ is simply someone who enjoys creativity and therefore does it all the time, even with no reasons and gains nothing from it. Someone just want to be creative all the time. That's different from peope who are strategic in applying creativity. Nothing good of bad. Just two very diffferent creative types.

Creativity is not about opening new doors because something said creativity people have no doors and doors are for those without imagination.

Can Gadgets Save Healthcare? What's The Next Big Disruptive Technology That Can Reinvent Healthcare? But The Fact Remains That Our Health Care System Sucks, And Will Continue To Suck.

I like the lastest Bond movie and the only thing I missed is smart gadgets. Bond needs to have latest tech toys. I don’t want to see Bond becoming Jet Li. Half the fun of watching a Bond movie is reveling in the odd ingenuity of the clever devices. Bond needs all the tech innovation he could use. Her Majesty's government is not investing enough in innovation for sure. Mi5 has a lot of catch up to do. Perhaps they should retain Idea Couture to develop an innovation roadmap? I might get a call from Sir Jonathan Evan!

In Bond's world, the smart phones have access to intelligent databases; miniaturized radio homing beacons operate on their own encrypted frequencies, the cars come equipped with bullet proof glass—semi-autonomous or remotely controlled—and become invisible to the naked eye. Implantable, traceable RFID chips confirm your identity and carry your medical history. And a smart scan to show when enemies are nearby too. And no, Bond does not need speed dating gadgets at all.

Bond gadgets may have once seemed far-fetched, but in our tech-addled age most are at least possible, if not realized already. In 2009 Harvard Chemists collaborated to successfully develop a low cost micro-fluidic "lab-on-a-chip" (actually it was on paper) solution to identify various biomarkers related to the AIDS virus. This idea of a miniaturized bio-chemical lab is a solution currently being funded and developed by DARPA to get ahead of the bio-weapons curve.

In Casino Royal, a similar device helped save Bond's life after he was poisoned. After plugging into a cell phone, the data from his blood sample was transmitted in real-time back to HQ for analysis. A dedicated team of medical professionals including molecular biologists; immunologists, neurologists and virologists provided advice on how to mitigate the sticky situation of being infected with a designer biological agent from half a world away. The biggest idea here is this can become the premium health service for those who can afford it, specialists are all standing by and all one click away to saving your life. That’s an innovation.

Today, self-diagnostic technologies in tandem with the hundreds of personal health and wellbeing apps have emerged to take advantage of our over-connectivity. We are all a click away from massive global expert networks for information and advice related to described symptoms. Our helathcare economics is not working doesn't matter becasue the cost is too high and doesn't matter who is paying for it. The biggest opportunity for smartphone is not smartphone, it is Personal Health Device. That’s a $20 billion plus industry from the start. We need geniuses and mad scientists and designers to make his real and affordable.

“All the greatest men are maniacs. They are possessed by a mania which drives them forward towards thier goal. The great scientists, the philosophers, the religious leaders - all maniacs. What else but a blind singlenee of purpose could have given focus to thier genius, would have kept them in the groove of purpose. Mania ... is as priceless as genius.”

                                            ― Ian Fleming, Doctor No

This is anexcerpt from an article co-written with M. Lincez to be appeared in the March issue of MISC magazine the Gadget Issue.

I Imagine Over 95% Of All Patents That Apple Filed Are Useless. Here's A Good Example.

The patent wars are continuing as we speak. With the proliferation of cheap sensors people are talking about putting them everything. We use them in our cars to see if the tire pressure is correct and washroom etc. It is part of our everyday lives already.

Apple just filed a patent application to put sensors in your sneakers so they can send signals to your iPhone to tell you it is time for a new pair. If I am Nike, I would file 100 patents to put sensor in everything from sneakers to sport pants. Is this patent really useful? I think we all have a pretty good sense when do we need to replace them just by looking at it. I don't need sensors to tell me.

The application describes a "Shoe wear-out sensor, body-bar sensing system, unitless activity assessment and associated methods." The application's summary describes the system thus:

A body bar sensing system for sensing movement of a body bar may be provided. The body bar sensing system may include a housing having a coupling mechanism operative to couple to the body bar, a detector disposed within the housing and operative to sense movement of the body bar when the housing is coupled to the body bar, and a processor operative to determine a number of repetitions of the movement based on the sensed movement. In one embodiment, a shoe wear out sensor includes at least one detector for sensing a physical metric that changes as a shoe wears out, a processor configured to process the physical metric, over time, to determine if the shoe is worn out, and an alarm for informing a user of the shoe when the sole is worn out.

I really think this is a pretty useless patent. Perhaps a more useful one is we can have them in our leather shoes and it sends a warning signal to me when the pavement is slippery just like my Mercedes. Today’s sensors are mostly simple designed for specific purposes, like measuring temperature, gas, light or tyre pressure.

Most sensors are designed as part of a closed system design and not connected to any networks. Future network sensors will drastically expand the possibilities by using wireless, radio waves, ultra sound and infrared signals to connec to big systems, we can do a lot with the information that they collect.

The most fascinating ones are those we can put under out skin. LifeCare in Bergen is working on the development of a new type of sensor that can be placed under the skin for measuring the blood glucose level.  It is small enough to be injected underneath the skin and no operation is needed. A nano membrane moves when the blood sugar concentration is irregular. One big challenge is power supply because all sensor needs energy. You don’t want to rely on battery. Some researchers have consequently developed wireless energy transfer between the glucose sensor and a bracelet carrying a battery. 

What I find really cool is the EPOC's Neuroheadset. It is the next competitive field in gaming. The headset features 14 saline-based sensors and a gyroscope and is primarily designed to gamers. Think shoot and think jump! Another application is to help people with disabilities to regain control of their lives. It includes EmoKey, which is a lightweight application running in your computer's background to allow user ot to map out thought-controlled keystrokes. This headset is the used by the Dartmouth Mobile Sensing Group, which created a brain-to-mobile interface that allows you to call your friends by thinking about them. Imagine I am looking at other people’s Facebook pages and it will leave a comment or 'like' for you.

Now I Can Read Your Tweet On Your Dress. Or You Can Program Your Dress For Any Special Occasions.

It was at least 10 years since I was talking about wearing technology and fashion in conferences and 10 years later we don't see any mass commercialised products out there. It is another example of innovative technologies usually takes way longer that we imagine for diffusion for a number of reasons. May be this is the year we start to see it coming.

There are a few out there working hard to make it happen. CuteCircuit is one of them. It is a wearable technology and design company based in Shoreditch, London. Founded by Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz, the company incorporates LEDs, telecommunications, and smart textiles into fashion, bringing a sense of style and tech fun to wearable tech. I visited their studio a month ago and talked to them about the challenge and opportunity.

Rosella's background is in fashion, having worked at Valentino and Esprit, while Genz was an artist and anthropologist. The pair met while studying interactive design at the Interaction Design Institute in Ivrea, Italy in 2001 and began to collaborate almost immediately. The first collection Rosella and Genz designed, called TransforMe, was based on the idea that garments could change shape, color or illuminate during the course of the day in response to the mood and activity of the wearer.

The most well known piece from the collection is the Kinetic Dress, a dress with embroidered electroluminescent fibers that light up in response to the wearer's movement. The dress features Victorian style mutton-sleeves and a train, and is made from black elastic that creates a sleek, body hugging silhouette. And their famous “Aurora Dress”  which was designed for an opera singer, features 10,000 LED lights and hundreds of Swarovski crystals.

The fashion industry’s manufacturing system has been using the same supply chain design for many years, disrupting this process, even slightly, has to be done slowly. Facing the manufacturing process has helped refine the products and streamline designs, and has given the opportunity to create viable products. Like any other industry innovation, the biggest barrier is always the supply chain. The industry needs a new flexible supply network to achieve scale. Perhaps in another 3-5 years. May be more. I can't wait to see when we all have a "smart" wardrobe.

 

At CES Everything Is Touch, Touch, Touch. Will Touchscreens Make Typing Obsolete Soon?

At CES this year everything is touchscreen, TV, laptops, tablets and kitchen appliances. Is the future of interfaces is moving to touchscreen? Is this the end of keyboards? We are seeing a completing transition in the design of user experiences to software based and touchscreens. The notebook computer is the final piece of the migration. Most people would find no reasons to touch a screen on a laptop or notebook, but we are also increasing used to the habit of touching screen even most of the time even we’re not aware of. Thanks to the iPhone and iPad.

Our view will change even when we don’t think touchscreens on laptops are useful; just see someone use a keyboard with an iPad or Galaxy. For many, it just feels more natural to touch the screen. I sometimes find myself touching the screen forgetting that it is not a touchscreen device.

Blackberry will join it even they will still keep the keyboard as an option for people like me. Automobile entertainment will move there too. Your next laptop will likely be touchscreen and you might not have any choice, whether you like it or not. I wonder when will Apple launch a touch screen macbook? I think it is only a matter of time before all laptops become touch-enabled. LG was showing a prototype of interactive retail display so you can try differetn outfits without going into the changing room.

With touchscreens, we will never worry about spilling coffee onto your keyboard but will have to deal with the problems of greasy fingers. I think touch will become the key user experiences but there is still a lot of room for innovation. Touch-enabled devices will accelerate adoption in the enterprise market and next will be education market. The next generation of workers will forget what a physical keyboard looks like.

Hong Tan, a professor at Purdue University who works for Microsoft came up with an interesting way to add the feel of buttons and other physical controls to a touch screen by using vibrating piezoelectric actuators installed on the side of a normal screen generate friction at the point of contact with a finger. The nice thing about the innovation is it can make an ordinary sheet of glass feel as if it has physical buttons or even a physical slider with different levels of resistance. That is a bug jump forward from just touchscreens. The haptic feedback could help users find the right control on compact or enable the use of a touch screen without needing to look at it.

RIM is working really hard to win this. They called it a “writing without typing”, a technology only apply to the keyboardless Blackberry London devices. This is a riksy bet as Blackberry loyalist (like me) likes typing on physical keyboards rather than tapping on a screen. I am eager to get my hands on the new Blackberry London... a few weeks I will know if that works for me.

More Gadgets..Smarter Devices...CES Doesn't Want Us To Stop! Where Do We Go Next?

In Vegas for the CES, it is exhausting. I skipped last year but didn’t feel I missed anything. I was not a fan of 3D TV and not impressed with the Microsoft / Ford automobile operating system. It has been a crazy first week this Jan with lots of management stuff to get done as well as finalizing the March issue of MISC magazine to print. It is the GADGET issue. Very happy with it and couldn’t wait to see it out in bookstores and newsstands in eight weeks.

Here I am prepared to be exposed to all kinds of crazy gadgets once I set foot on CES, as usual many are useless and hopeless. There is distinction between the two. “Useless” is product that does not answer to any customer unmet needs, it is just novelty. “Hopeless” is me-too product that tries to compete on price. I hate to think how many tablets will end up going to the landfill. With no Apple presence, it is like everyone here is try to compete with Apple. It is the world against Apple.

Many of these consumer electronic gadgets solve our problems. Problems that we know and problems that we know we have. Often they create new ones while solving the old ones. Humans are supposed to be good at problem solving but we’ve become so reliant on the gadgets in our lives that there are problems we find ourselves unable to solve without them. Sometime in the not too distant future gadgets will not just respond to our commands, they will be able to understand our mood, read our minds and learn our preferences.

When I was sitting at Starbucks, my mind was trying to visually map all those data exchanges between Macs, tablets, mobile devices, watches, cameras, and people. The visual just blows my mind and we forgot how crazy and connected we are.

Never before we have that much access (and speed) to information and knowledge at the palm of our hands and we can almost (yes almost) live our lives without thinking. We tether our brains and other senses to our smart devices and relying on them to tell us when we’re sad, confused, tired, hungry, where to go and what to buy. How far are we before we’re ready to raise the white flag and formally “surrender” to our cognitive independence? What about humanity?  

We are living in a technology-addled age, our gadgets are necessity. I wonder what’s the average number of apps for iPhone users? And how many of them they rely on in their everyday lives? We are becoming lazy. We do less walking because we have cars. Now we do less thinking because we have smart gadgets. Your brain is like a muscle. If you stop using your cognitive skills and instead rely on gadgets to do the thinking for you, in time, those skills will start to atrophy. For me, I used to be able to do complicated calculation looking at tons of numbers and within a few minutes come to sense of what it is telling me. Now I can’t even add up a restaurant bill without a calculator (app). I used to be able to map out the route mentally when I drive from one place to another, now I just listen to the command of my GPS. I used to be able to spell and thanks to auto correction, my spelling is worst than when I was 12.

May be the next innovation is not a product. Just like we’re try gin to think of ways to encourage people to walk or bike to make us more healthier and do less damage to our environment, we should be thinking about applying design thinking to help us to use our brain more – and use less gadgets. What does computational humanity means? Time to get back to the show.

 

Forget About Being A "Manager". You Need To Become An "Innopreneur". There Is A Huge Demand For Corporate Entrepreneurs / Innovators Everywhere.

The time for New Year resolutions is here again, not sure if we're all up for the challenge as we can expect more intensified competition, more uncertainty both in politics and economicsl and more disruptive re-organization for all big companies. It is the time for self-reflection and thinking about what do you really want to accomplish this year and what how to bring out the best in you.  If you’re an emerging manager or young leader you should read this.

Drop whatever idea you might have of "what is a manager" in your mind. You don't want to be a "manager". Manager is really not the right title although “managing” is part of the job but a smaller part of it. You are a manager, a knowledge worker, a leader and an entrepreneur. It is easy to learn the skills of being a manager, but very hard to be a great leader and an entrepreneur.

Let me clarify. An entrepreneur doesn’t mean you should be running your own business or start-up; what I am talking is a state of mind. Look around you, do you find a lot of “entrepreneurs” around you? Is your team comprised of people who take ownership of any project or task that comes across their desk or inbox and apply design thinking skills to accomplish them? Do they embrace complex challenges, team skills, and take personal responsibility – for successes and failures alike? Do they think about the good of the larger them than optimzign for their own career gain? Do they provide leadership even they do not have the formal authority?

Corporate entrepreneurs are basically innovators. These “innopreneurs” are hard to find and it is far more difficult to be a corporate entrepreneur than a start-up person. It is relatively easy to say let’s have your start-up and honestly most of them are no more than just an excuse or a way to escape. Entrepreneurship is not about proving a job for yourself, it is about aligning your passion with the right capability and resources that link that to a big idea that create economic value. And not afraid of the challenge of working with the elephant.

A corporate entrepreneur s someone who works in a large corporate setting and his/her job is to create new growth opportunities from coming with the big ideas to launching/managing a corporate venture that is distinct from the parent company either at an adjacency or something that could disrupt the corporate parent. He/she needs to be creative about how to leverage the parent’s assets, market position, core capabilities, brand, channel or other resources. I am estimating that less than 1% of corporate managers are corporate entrepreneurial material or has the quality to sustain as one.

“Corporate innopreneurship” requires the following attributes: (1) a leader that are comfortably to act without authority; (2) a design thinker that enjoy solving complex business challenges with limited information; (3) a manager who understands his everyday job is to resolve dilemmas and not just dreamers; (4) an explorer who can navigate even there are changes in scenarios; and (5) an organizer who can manage people and resources in an agile manner. Every company needs a few of these to achieve innovation-led growth.  Everyday I look around me and try to identify them. The difference may be not only the way they think and self-motivate, but they way they’re being nurtured.

If last year wasn't a great one for you, don't think back. No one can go back in time to change what has happened. So work on your present to make yourself a wonderful future. Happy New Year!

Preparing For The End Of The World.

Today is supposedly the last day for all of us - the end of the world. The silly story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but then moved to Dec 21, 2012. It is estimated that 15% of our population is buying this story. I guess even it doesn't happen there is always an opportunity for an extension and the same 15% people will believe there is the next date.

If you really believe in this, you should attend the End of the World Party at Village Underground. It is the perfect doomsday event with less eating and more drinking and dancing. No one will exchange phone numbers as there is no point for obvious reasons. There’ll be live DJs, great music, a Last Wish room and a countdown so you can keep track of your impending finale. Tickets will cost £4 and make sure you use credit card.

Idea Couture hosted our Christmas party a day before the end of the world just in case it happens people will still have time to post their photos on Facebook to share with friends. The fact is that the Mayans never predicted the end of the world and people don’t know they more than 20 calendars and this one finishes a cycle of 5,200 years and the new one begins on Saturday. So technically speaking Saturday is a good day for personal reinvention as it is the start of another new cycle. 

In case if you believe there is a chance the world will end, this is what I think you should do:

Update your Facebook - In case Facebook databank will be recovered a few hundred years later, make sure you’ve a chance to say what you want to say and make sure your legacy includes good looking photos.

FInd a ticket to get out - Who knows someone will offer some last minute seat on a flight to leave earth if you have the cash. It won’t be on Expedia but you can try Groupon. They take cash only.

Drink the best wine - If you have saved that bottle of 2004 Block 42, this is the time to drink it. Share it with someone special.

Watch your favorite movie - Check out your library of DVDs and pick one that you wanted to watch again. Enjoy your last movie.

Call Visa/Master?Amex to cancel all your credit cards - Because you won’t need it.

Text those special people and tell them you love or hate them - Family, friends, lovers, employers, mentors: Whomever you have in your life, text them.

If the world does end, it is probably not December, and I love how it's December and no one even cares about the end of the world anymore. I'd better to back to writing my strategy plan for 2013, if the world doesn’t end in the next 6 hours, I have a PPT deliverable.

I Am Not A Gadget! Or Am I Becoming One? How Close Are We From A Full Blown Computional Culture?

Sometimes I feel like I am a gadget. We all performing various specialist and general tasks everyday and somehow you feel each of these tasks are not related. And the worst part of our job is to perform something that is so tedius and doesn’t really require any creativity, analytic and imagination. And you wonder why this work cannot be done by a gadget. Or if I am doing the job, does it mean I am a gadget?

There are over 600,000+ personal pocket gadgets out there for whatever purposes and over 700,000 apps for iPhone 7000,000; Android and 99,500 Blackberrys to turn your smartphone into a gadget. There's an app for almost anything and someday my resume will look like my iPhone and people will look at how many apps I have to decide whether I qualify for that job.

Human is supposed to be good at problem solving. Or at least we think we are, I am not getting into that debate. There are differences between the different types of problem solving from pure creativity to system level thinking or analytical processing.  Creativity requires periodic, temporary “encapsulation” as opposed to constant calculation or recalculation. You need time for working privately as well as times for group ideation. Encapsulation is what allows for the possibility of self-testing that enables a quest for excellence.

The big question is will the proliferation of gadgets push us towards a more creative culture where our time is better spend on the creative side while our gadgets take care of the rest or in another scenario where these micro-computing machines (gadgets) will take over and we will be pushed towards a computational culture?

All these micro devices, bit data-warehouses and pervasive communication facilities are now omnipresent in our daily activities. The way we live, work, play, communicate and interact with each other is in permanent flux due to the influence of these cool gadgets. Historically speaking, technologies are developed as a result of the need for faster means of calculation to achieve the unachievable before the world emerging into a full-blown computational culture. Emerging in its modern form in the seventeenth century after the introduction of typography, that culture, it is here argued, remains dominant today.

Can future gadgets evolve to a point that they understand our feelings and not just commands and preferences? As part of our extended mind and heart and algorithm that can add feeling to an otherwise mathematical, non-physical, and consequently non-aesthetic, thought? This is the theme of the next issue of MISC for March. Look out for the big Gadget Issue.

Are Fashion’s Signs Of The Times Changing? From DKNY And Yves St Laurent To Chanel And Burberry.... They Are All Part Of Our Meaning Creation Journeys.

Fashion is central to our very human desire to express identity through and make meaning from symbols. It is social. It is cultural. And its standards and styles are always shifting with the times.

To maintain its relevance and desire, fashion’s survival needs to be with, and even ahead of, style and culture. To use that most hyperbolic of terms, it must be forever sharpened and wielded at the ‘cutting edge’. But in recent years, arguably since most of us logged on to the Internet and gained instant access to the latest styles and the cultures that birthed them, the cutting edge has become duller and duller as some of the exclusivities of haute couture and subculture dissolved.

Depending on your carbon dating of subculture – the hooligans of late 1800s England or the hot-rodders of 1950s America – youth groups throughout modern history have been defining themselves in opposition to a so-called mainstream by striving to be oxymoronically unfashionable. For them, transgressive, disheveled, apathetic or just plain grungy styles or anti-fashions have been an instant way to communicate values, behaviors and meanings that sit far to the left or right of the Ralph Lauren equestrian blazer crowd.

Inevitably, however, the styles of subcultures are co-opted or adopted for wear and sale by the very mainstream that young, culturally creative rebels sought to distinguish themselves from in the first place: those James Dean jeans are now acceptable office wear; the Doc Martens of bad-boy Brit skinheads are now for sale on shoe shelves everywhere, right next to Crocs; and the mohawks that punk rockers used to scare the shit out of old ladies in the late 1970s have been neatly trimmed down to fit on the heads of teen idols everywhere.

Back in the day, Plato observed that truth does not reside in what we simply see. Like most of his favorite topics and like the many other philosophers who sought to identify the true qualities of objects, he was correct. The idea that clothes make the man or that platform shoes with a 6-inch heel establish unassailable sexiness is nonsense. They don’t. We only think they do.

Culture bridges the distance between style and consumption. More specifically, style – the information we send out by wearing clothes – is an arbitrary agreement made by the social majority to see things as filled with meaning. This importance and meaning is supported only by convention, what Roland Barthes would have called a mythology. People see such signs as stylish, fashionable or valuable only because, as parts of symbolic language, we have decided this is what they are supposed to tell us. If we all woke up tomorrow with collective amnesia, having forgotten this social agreement, these things would have no meaning.

 “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” These lines from Shakespeare’s As You Like It illustrate Erving Goffman’s sociological theory of dramaturgy – that social identity is created as it is performed both to our selves and to others. Using the theatre as a metaphor to analyze social interactions, he described people as actors playing roles on stages of everyday life: back stage, where performances like getting dressed in the morning occur privately; and front stage, where rocking Louboutins on the street is a public statement. As symbolic enactments through which our experiences are ordered and we represent who we are, all action is meaningful social expression and all spaces, places and objects help make that meaning. In these performances, our preferred products and brands function as props that communicate cultural narratives of identity. For Goffman, we make the most of our performances and props to control or guide the impression that other people will have of us.

Adapted from an article by Idris Mootee and Paul Hartley in the upcoming Dec isseu of MISC the STYLE issue available in bookstores in 28 countries or ipad edition.

Introducing The 4P’s of Management: Peanut, Peter, Penis, and Perfection.


I used to interview between 200 to 350 fresh MBA grads a year, and many barely understand the basic principles of management let alone strategy and organization design. Most people developed some functional skills attending B-schools but most fail to develop a senior management perspectives despite those case studies method of teaching. Here’s the 4Ps that they need to teach in B-schools.

Here’s the Management 4Ps which I invented to train young managers: The Peanut Effect, The Peter Principles, The Penis Theory, and The Perfectionist Syndrome. If you have not heard all or any one of them, don't worry.


The Peanut Effect can be best described when referring to the lottery. The main reason why so many people play the lottery is because they place disproportionate weight on small probabilities. People don’t realize the true cost of a lottery ticket is a “peanut” and they don’t realize how the cost adds up over time. The same can be applied to buying snacks, coffee, magazines and other “cheap” items. If you are marketing your product or services, what you can learn from this is that you need find a way to emphasize the big benefits even if the probability to reap them is low. This can apply to bringing a vision to the company. Think big. Think possibilities and not only probabilities.

The Peter Principle is a belief that, in an organization where promotion is based on achievement, success, and merit, that organization's members will eventually be promoted beyond their level of ability. The principle is commonly phrased, "employees tend to rise to their level of incompetence." In more formal parlance, the effect could be stated as: employees tend to be given more authority until they cannot continue to work competently. It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their book The Peter Principle, a humorous treatise. Make sure you promote people to a job that is beyond their level of ability no matter how they try to justify the case. It doesn’t matter how long people have been on a job, sometimes younger manager can rise to the challenge in a shorter time. Experience helps .. but not always.

The Penis Theory is about finding your core. Penis envy in Freudian psychoanalysis refers to the theorized reaction of a girl, during her psychosexual development, to the realization that she does not have a penis. Freud considers this realization a defining moment in the development of gender and sexual identity for women. In contemporary culture, the term is sometimes used metaphorically to refer to women who wish they had a penis – lucky you don't need one to succeed in business. What you can learn from this is that too many marketers are spending too much time trying to be someone else. Often companies try and emulate the “big-wigs” and try to be like Apple, Amazon, or even Google. These companies however are spending too much time and too many resources trying to be something they are not.  It is more productive to understand who you really are – and what’s your core?

The Perfectionist Syndrome is common among high performance workplace. I have come across many high performers who are perfectionists – but not perfectionists in the true sense because when you look at their work, it is evident that they are too afraid to make calculated mistakes. And as a result, they often reach a performance ceiling. Perfectionism muffles our ability to hear, listen and learn and what you can lean from this is that perfectionism is impossible.

Let me tell you the dirty secret of management – forget about in search of excellence. There’s not a business anywhere in the world that is without problems or a business model that is perfect. Business is complex and imperfect. You can make a spreadsheet perfect but not the financials. Every business is managed by imperfect human beings and exists by providing a product or service to other imperfect consumers. Empathy makes up for the imperfection. Business is not a machine.