Roundup: March 21 – June 16

Here is a quick review of the 27 articles I posted between March 21 and June 16. I have given up trying to be regular, let alone frequent, with these roundups. And to think, when I started this blog about a year ago, I thought I’d be doing weekly roundups. Ha ha. So expect these roundups when you see them (at least until I can afford to hire a regular editor, or somebody volunteers)!

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Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

Probably the best thing about Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies is its cover, by Stephani Finks (I hope I linked to the right profile on Facebook). The contents aren’t too shabby either — the book officially bumps Naked Conversations from the top position in the Marketing 2.0 category in my mildly-famous World 2.0 canon post. As you know if you are a regular, I am a sucker for a good metaphor, and when it is accompanied by visual imagery that gets it just right, and clearly conveys the high concept at hand, it’s a you had me at hello situation. Let’s deconstruct the ‘hello’ for a minute, before diving into the review.

Why does this cover work so beautifully for a book about tapping into social media?

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How Geniuses Think

Guest post by Michael Michalko

How do geniuses come up with ideas? What is common to the thinking style that produced “Mona Lisa,” as well as the one that spawned the theory of relativity? What characterizes the thinking strategies of the Einsteins, Edisons, da Vincis, Darwins, Picassos, Michelangelos, Galileos, Freuds, and Mozarts of history? What can we learn from them?

For years, scholars and researchers have tried to study genius by giving its vital statistics, as if piles of data somehow illuminated genius. In his 1904 study of genius, Havelock Ellis noted that most geniuses are fathered by men older than 30; had mothers younger than 25 and were usually sickly as children. Other scholars reported that many were celibate (Descartes), others were fatherless (Dickens) or motherless (Darwin). In the end, the piles of data illuminated nothing.

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Context-Switching Metaphors for Work-Life Blending

I have previously written about/drawn cartoons about the evolution of work-life attitudes. I also drilled down into the issue within the Gen X framing of ‘balance’ using the surfing, juggling and spinning plates metaphors. Let’s now try and visualize the ‘work-life blending’ framing. Blending inevitably involves very frequent context switching, so we need metaphors for both the blending itself, and for understanding the context switching. Let’s talk about it with two graphics. For the blending, the communications-technology metaphor of time-division multiplexing is probably the easiest one to start with. For context-switching, we’ll use metaphors like unwind and unplug.

worklifeblending.jpg

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Three Great Jobs in the Fourth Xerox Revolution

In the history of innovation, Xerox (where I work) has starred in three stories so far: Xerography, personal computing and production digital printing. The first created the modern workplace, the second destroyed and recreated it. The third, probably the least familiar to end-consumers, since it is an industrial technology, might end up topping the first two — the technology is on the verge of dethroning the venerable Gutenberg press. But that’s all old hat. Let’s talk about how Xerox is poised to launch a FOURTH history-making disruption (*gasp*, most companies have trouble doing it once): making social media grow up from its chicken-throwing infancy (sorry Facebook widget coders; couldn’t resist that dig!), and turning the world of services-work upside down. And how, if you have the right skills, you can join my buddies and me in the eye of the perfect storm. Call this a Job Posting 2.0, or a Kool-Aid infomercial — I am helping recruit for 3 seriously exciting positions in the lab I work in. The kind for which you should ditch your startup idea.
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Outsider Innovation 101

This article is an introduction to an idea — outsider innovation — whose time has come. I’ll present the idea, and along the way include short reviews of three fun books about innovation (Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko, Make us More Innovative by Jeffery Phillips, and Awake at the Wheel by Mitch Ditkoff) that belong at what I would call the 101 level. These are books that treat the subject at extremely basic levels, compared to the advanced end of the literature that full-time researchers like me try to keep up with (and which I review more often here). I almost decided not to review them, until I suddenly realized, while taking a walk, why such books are extremely important today in enabling an economy based on true ‘innovation everywhere’ principles. Or as I prefer to call it at its current stage of evolution, ‘outsider innovation,’ by analogy to outsider art. If you are an ‘insider’ this article should help you prepare for the coming ‘outsider’ fueled models. If you are an outsider eagerly awaiting the democratization of innovation, and itching to one-up us smug PhDs, this should help you get started.

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Information Overload and the FOOD IS THOUGHT Metaphor

If you’ve ever used phrases like, “that’s serious food for thought” or “I need to digest that” or “there’s no meat on that argument,” you’ve used the FOOD IS THOUGHT (FIT) conceptual metaphor. In this piece, I hope to convince you that there is no such thing as information overload — it is an imaginary problem that goes away once you learn to think about information with the FIT metaphor. It takes some time, practice and acceptance of a different approach to getting value out of information. Let me explain.

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The Evolution of Work-Life

Most people think of only one notion relating work and life: the work-life balance notion. You and I of course, are smarter, and we know that the relationship has been evolving over time. Here’s a picture of this evolution. I’ll leave it for you to figure out how to correlate this to generational attitudes and important technological enabling events.

Work-life

(Feel free to use the graphic for your own purposes. Linkbacks appreciated).

Megacommunities and Macrotrends

Big and complex problems sometimes do require require big and complex solutions. This thought was hammered home for me powerfully last week by way of a triple-punch: a conference I was attending, a book I was reading, and the earthquake in China. The conference was the IRI Annual Meeting, where I was part of a panel of speakers on the theme of “Networked World.” The theme of the conference was “Macrotrends Creating Opportunities.” On the flight out and back, I was reading Megacommunities: How Leaders of Government, Business and Non-Profits Can Tackle Today’s Global Challenges Together by Mark Gerencser, Reginald Van Lee, Fernando Napolitano and Christopher Kelly, all consultants with Booz Allen Hamilton. The book is among the most original, thoughtful and necessary books I have read in a long time. Reading it at this particular conference underlined its importance even more. As for the earthquake, the deep connections between global and local today also hit home, since a Chinese colleague at work was directly affected. I actually happened to mention earthquakes in my talk to make a particular point, before I caught up with the developing news.

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What Got You Here Won’t Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith

I am not much of a video game fan, but I’ve noticed that skills you learn that enable you to kill the aliens at Level 1 often become liabilities at Level 2. Everyday life in a corporation, unfortunately, is not quite as explicit as your favorite video game in signaling level changes. Wouldn’t it be nice if one fine day, when you boot up in the morning, you get a big message saying, “You are now in Level 2” instead of the Windows welcome screen? Wishful thinking aside, Marshall Goldsmith’s “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” is as good a guide as you could hope for, for navigating Level changes in the career game. The book is interesting whether you are an obsessed careerist who wants to “Get There,” or merely curious about workplace psychology and sociology (I put myself in the latter bucket; being “There” seems like a lot of work, though I don’t mind occasional tourist visits).

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