Monthly Archives: February 2009

Mistakes, Change, Trial & Error

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I have been reading a great book on the neuroscience behind decision making. I was reading that the brain likes to be right. It wants to predict outcomes. Dopamine secretion happens when events work according to the brain’s expectation (i.e. dopamine is a reward). The secretions stop or change when things don’t work as planned. This abrupt reduction in dopamine is experienced as a jarring change by the body. Here, the brain modifies its expectations to try and be right the next time (and to keep the dopamine flowing).

So it seems that the brain’s use of dopamine is tied to learning via trial and error. Mistakes, to the brain, are useful (and necessary) learning tools provided we choose to learn from them. In fact, this type of learning often gives rise to the ‘instinctual’ reactions well-experience professionals make in athletics, combat, or emergencies.

In thinking about this idea of learning from mistakes, I couldn’t help being reminded of the ‘Now Not New‘ concept I organize many of my own business perspectives on.

In business terms, ‘Now Not New’ is a revenue-centric outlook that leverages the trials and errors of those focusing on ‘new’ to provide real solutions ‘now’. By my way of thinking, pioneers take big risks, probe the unknown, and most often fail. For some people the high-risk excitment of being on the bleeding edge is a great motivator.  Certainly our culture’s willingness to reward those people with hype and praise adds to the appeal.

For businesses, these pioneers provide great learning that can be refined and redirected with a higher probability of tangible success (see my earlier bit on inventions). In this sense, businesses focused on ‘Now Not New’ may not get the first wave of buzz that pioneers attract, but they tend to make the money and build new business categories. Hulu is doing it now against YouTube. YouTube you’ll recall got a lot of hype and market valuation but still isn’t making anyone much money. Conversely, because it is making money Hulu is getting plenty of hype. Which, as an executive would you prefer?

Related, it seems that neurologically speaking unpredictable outcomes – either from mistakes or change beyond our control – are jarring. It’s no surprise then that human beings tend to dislike making mistakes or coping with change despite lip service otherwise.

Companies, by extension, also seem to prefer homeostasis. Yes, there are plenty of people and books and seminars preaching the embrace of change and the positive benefit of mistake making. But between the lines, what they’re selling is a means of ‘expecting the unexpected’ which is in fact fighting the jarring feeling of mistakes and change and attempting to make it predictable.

Switching gears for a moment, in stories about wilderness survival, most tragedies stem from the endangered person’s refusal to acknowledge the change in their circumstances or to learn from a mistake once they’ve made it. They can’t let go of what was supposed to happen and won’t accept what is now happening. In this state of denial they become disoriented to the reality around them, make poor choices, and often pay the ultimate price.

Transferring this knowledge from the wilderness frontier to the business frontier: On the topic of expertise, it might make sense to be wary of anyone claiming to be an expert in an industry that hasn’t been around long. Expertise comes with experience which is an accumulation of a lot of trial and error. In businesses (and I’m thinking social media) that haven’t been around very long, it’s simply impossible to have made enough mistakes to be considered an expert at this nacent stage.

Second, we should admit when we’re lost, confused or uncomfortable. Denial in business leads to paying its own ultimate price. Once we acknowledge being lost, we can start looking for a way out.

Third, we should build mechanisms into our organizations that allow us to learn from mistakes.

Lastly, acknowledge and behave according to the fact that nothing is consistently predictable. This means setting up operational mechanisms to observe and asses at regular intervals. It also means thinking hard about how to adapt to change knowing that everyone in the company will be uncomfortable with it.

In mistakes, change and trial and error lie opportunities for business poised to see and solve for the problems of now which in turn will lead to growth and revenue (the dopamine of industry).

Old school.

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Apropos of nothing, I find it interesting that many of my late 30-something friends have taken to scanning and posting old photos from grade school, high school, college etc. on Facebook.

Keep in mind, these pictures all pre-date digital cameras and offer an entertaining glimpse into life in the 80s and early 90s – before this Interwebs thing took hold.

It’s curious to me though, that this desire to share these images from the past is so compelling that people will actually root around through photo albums, plop them on a scanner and upload them.

Working as I do in and around marketing, most brands would throw a lot of money into an idea that commanded that kind of input and commitment from consumers. So here’s a freebie thought:

It seems to me that there’s a nice opportunity in here for some brand (Kodak are you listening?) to offer a simple means (think NetFlix-like operations) for people to send in, get digitized, and have available online, their old school print pictures. I realize some cottage industries do this locally, but advertising the service through Facebook, I’m guessing you could get a lot of play if the price was right.

And a brand that pulled that off could do more than sell a simple service, it could *own* the idea of enduring friendship and all the trappings and emotional stickiness that brings. It could also take and make relevant in the 21st century an older, venerable brand that’s lost its place in modern culture (um… did I mention Kodak?).

Inventions

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I’ve been picking away at Guns Germs & Steel since the holidays. Last night I happened to be reading it again after some time. The author was discussing how successful inventions often have nothing to do with the gifts of a single inventor but are rather the accumulation of prior inventiveness which is improved upon and finally ‘tips’ at a point when the culture is ready to accept the innovation. To quote:

“My two main conclusions are that technology develops cumulatively, rather than in isolated heroic acts, and that it finds most of its users after it has been invented, rather than being invented to meet a forseen need.”

This is particularly interesting in light Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the other darlings of the social media revolution.

It seems clear that none of them was invented with the intention of becoming global platforms. After all, none of them had a revenue model baked in. In that sense, they were invented first and found their audience after (and in my opinion quite by accident).

In Jared Diamond’s book he details how the dominant use of many technologies isn’t what the inventor intended. This seems as relevant to Facebook or YouTube as in this historical example,

“A good example is the history of Thomas Edison’s phonograph, the most original invention of the great inventor of modern times. When Edison built his first photograph in 1877, he published an article proposing ten uses to which his invention might be put. They included preserving the last words of dying people, recording books for blind people to hear, announcing clock time and teaching spelling.”

Edison never saw Elvis coming. In fact, resent was his initial reaction to the phonograph being used for liesure enjoyment of music,

“A few years later Edison told his assistant that his invention had no commercial value. Within a few years he changed his mind and did enter business to sell phonographs – but for use as office dictating machines. When other entrepreneurs created jukeboxes by arranging for a phonograph to play popular music at the drop of a coin, Edison objected to this debasement, which apparently detracted from serious office use of his invention.”

In the same way, a website for garagebands to post music (MySpace) or college kids to see who else was at their school (Facebook) quickly morphed from its original intention into something else. And, as is well documented, the first colonists on those sites moved on once the masses arrived. Twitter’s original users are beginning to grumble now as well.

More interesting, though, is the idea that social networks, micro blogging and media sharing may not have yet found their true calling. Right now  most of the big name sites are purely recreational plays. And because revenue was not a part of the pact in at the beginning, it’s proving very hard to get users to start paying now. (Heck, the entire Internet has that problem on a macro level. Advertisers try to force their way in, but the only real advertising success story – unless you consider fractions of one percent click through success – is paid search which looks and feels less like advertising and more like ballot stuffing.)

What if the utility of social media is also (or better) suited for something else besides ‘social’ use? No one seems to be talking about that. What if all these technologies find their greatest utility in R&D? Operations? Human Resources? Governance? Compliance?

What if these inventions are not businesses unto themselves but enablers of business? TechCrunch and Mashable are full of small companies spending a lot of venture money trying to make widgets that are all conceptually banking on ‘social’ being the business need (and of course that people will suddenly decide to pay for it!). It might be. But what if it isn’t? What if the social applications of this technology are just the table stakes? What if, like email, instant messaging and web browsing, everyone will have it, but no one will pay for it? It sure seems to be trending that way.

Email and instant messaging technology don’t make money for many people. But they enable a lot of people to do interesting things within their existing businesses. Microblogging might be the same – destined not to make much money per se, but rather to enable businesses to make money (Zappos’ recent acclaim for masterful Twittering being an example).

In terms of finding a blue ocean in this crowded market, one place to focus might be a step or two back from the bleeding edge. It’s not as popular and you might not find yourself being invited to speak alongside the Biz Stones, Mark Zuckerbergs and Chad Hurleys of the world, but it’s an under-served market right now.

It took Edison twenty years to concede that his phonograph was well suited for listening to music. Today our cultural A.D.D. has us all moving on to the next thing within months, if not days. What opportunities are being missed?

My bet is, there’s plenty of money to be made finding out how to use technologies that exist today to solve problems now.

Now not new.

You heard it here first.

From Social Spotwelding to Data Stream Contraception

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File this under questionably relevant observations:
I just, for the first time ever, made an online social media connection with someone I’ve not first met offline. I realize many people do this habitually but I am a privacy junkie and am pretty cautious about such things. I must’ve been feeling reckless today (all that caffeine). So I’ve lost my virginity again, but am I a stud or a loose skank? (My feminist friends will no doubt immediately snap to the male/female assumption built into that dichotomy… rant on my friends!)

Anyhow, what struck me was that the connection process felt like spot welding…

First I posted a comment on this guy’s blog thanking him for a nice experience I had.

He emailed back thanking me for thanking him.

I emailed him back once more with a short quip.

Secretly delighted that he’d responded to my humble comment, and enjoying the brief exchange of emails, I then Facebooked him and requested a friendship.

He hit me up through LinkedIn nearly simultaneously.

We both accepted each other’s requests.

I’ve not logged into Twitter yet but my guess is that that weld will be next.

Anyhow, this series of welded connection points set me off to thinking again (never a good sign)…

First, if you’re ‘in’ social media, you’re in in a number of places (FB, MS, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. etc.) which is pretty freakin’ labor intensive I must say. It seems that all this talk of pervasive connectivity seems to miss the point that it’s through MORE not fewer devices and channels which makes maintenance a real drag on personal bandwidth.

Second, the whole spot welding process had an interesting tempo. If it were an EKG it showed a few small, preliminary spikes (the blog comment and email back) and then a flurry of activity (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter) and will now settle into a stable, if weak, pulse (we’ll both be broadcasting out to our little baseball card collection of friends and  will occasionally see something from one another). Such is the nature of the low maintenance relationships online. It also feels a little like ‘hooking up’ in college. A few flirtatious glances, some heavy petting, and the next morning, well, there’s less to say and we’ll probably smile as we pass each other on campus.

Lastly, I am wondering about making a connection with a ‘stranger’ this way. Not that this fellow aroused any suspicion in me. On the contrary he seemed very much on the up and up and frankly from his blog, I’m guessing we’d have much to talk about over coffee or whatever.

But let me extend the college hook-up metaphor too far here (as if going from spot welding to a tryst wasn’t an abrupt enough jump)…

Remember the old AIDS-scare idea that when you slept with someone, you slept with everyone they ever slept with? In a way, personal data streams work similarly. In friending someone you expose yourself, even slightly, to all that person’s friends.

The ‘privacy settings’ allowed by most of these applications are at best flimsy [insertcheap condom metaphor here].

Now, lest I sound like a conspiracy freak, I’m really not. But, think about running for President. Right now, in 2009, our lovely bipartisan system digs up a lot of dirt on candidates and these tend to be old white dudes without much exposure in the socialsphere (though the Big ‘O’ is changing that). Can you imagine how much easier we’re making mudslinging in the future?

No doubt if I continue to connect with people online I will eventually be tied to Al Quaeda, Acorn, a religious cult that poisons acolytes with Kool Aid, gun runners in Congo, a street gang with impossibly violent initiation rights and a porn star.

I will also, of course, be connected with a future mother Theresa, the doctor who finds a cure of cancer, and the selfless hero who walks into a burning building to save a sleeping child.

It’s fascinating. And scary. And the more that I think about it, it’s also pretty much out of my control. If I don’t participate in the socialsphere I am a disconnected Luddite and the world moves forward without me. That’s no good.

If I do connect, I commit to the work involved in maintaining that online ‘self’ and I am climbing in bed with everyone I connect to and everyone they’re connected with.

I realize it probably isn’t as extreme as I’m making it above, but you can’t tell me there’s not a LOT to think about as we all feverishly spotweld ourselves together. Spot welds might be weak bonds, but they’re bonds nonetheless.

As that EKG of this spotwelding frenzy of activity settles into a weak pulse, my question is: Is there a sleeper cell of good fortune or big trouble forming out there for me? And if it comes, will the bond be strong enough to take advantage of it, or weak enough that I can get away from it if I want to?

This inquiring mind wants to know.