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The Future of the City / New Cities Summit in Paris

Accelerated innovation and adoption of ubiquitous computing, mobile devices, and rich sources of data are changing how we live, work, and play in urban environments. Increasingly, a digital landscape overlays our physical world and is expanding to offer ever-richer experiences that augment—and in some cases, replace—the physical experience: “The city is the platform, the network, the sensors, and the interface,” as frog creative director Rob McIntosh put it in a recent talk.

Many metropolitan regions and infrastructure players have joined forces and announced ambitious projects, and the (pop-)cultural debate is zooming in on it: See Cisco’s strategic initiative with the city of Barcelona, this film by Ericsson on “Thinking Cities”, or Gary Hustwit’s new documentary “Urbanized.” TED awarded its 2012 TED Prize to “The City” (for the first time it didn’t go to a person), and The Atlantic devotes an entire section to it.

I attended the New Cities Summit in Paris a couple of weeks ago, the inaugural annual conference of the New Cities Foundation. The New Cities Foundation (NCF) is a new global platform for innovation and exchange on the future of urbanization. NCF’s membership base includes GE, Cisco, Ericsson, Orange, GDF Suez, Citynove – Groupe Galeries Lafayette, the Ford Foundation, Metropolis, NYU, the SENSEable City Lab at MIT, CITRIS, HEC Paris, the Urban China Initiative, the Climate Group, and USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, and, my company, frog. The Summit in Paris brought together thought leaders in technology, infrastructure, architecture, energy, transport, national and local government, the media, academia, and the non-profit sector from all regions of the world.

As part of frog’s partnership with the NCF, we published a special online issue of our design mind magazine, devoted to “The Future of the City." Online magazine The Urban Times is republishing the issue as a series of articles this week.

design mind: http://designmind.frogdesign.com/articles/series/the-future-of-the-city

Urban Times: http://www.theurbn.com/2012/05/the-future-of-the-city-1/

Hope for the Quantified Self

The fate of the ‘moral economy’ lies squarely in the hand of software engineers – all the more reason to appreciate intangible value.

This month, the emerging Pirates party in Germany was able to garner 8.2% share of the votes in elections in the rural German state of Schleswig-Holstein. It was the latest manifestation of the broader civic protest sentiment sweeping through the West. Like Spain’s Los Indignados and Occupy Wall Street, the Pirates are a largely leaderless movement that has a shared purpose but no clearly articulated agenda. It is absorbing general dissatisfaction amongst citizens, but also, for the first time, asserting ‘transparency’ as a democratically legitimatized political platform. Four years after the Obama election, Hope has become a bottom-up vector. The Generation Meaning is assuming places of power but still has to figure out what exactly it is looking for.

At any rate, the moral economy is in popular demand: With debt and inequality undermining social contracts and eroding social capital worldwide, citizens and consumers alike expect more inclusive models of decision-making, higher standards of integrity, and fairer mechanisms of creation and redistribution of wealth. The various protest movements are self-organizing themselves and seeking to demonstrate the very values-based behaviors and organizational principles they find lacking in their institutional counterparts. At the corporate level, alternative forms of ‘doing business’ are burgeoning – from the social entrepreneur to the social intrapreneur, the hybrid for/non-profit to the B Corp, from Gary Hamel’s Management Innovation XChange (MIX), Ashoka’s Corporate Change-Makers, to frog’s Reinvent Business hackathon – in a quest to rethink business from within, ‘socialize’ corporate gain, and yield ‘shared value’ (Michael Porter), or ‘thick value’ (Umair Haque), instead of maximizing shareholder value as the ultimate moral obligation of business.

Value

All of these alternatives, at their core, aim to renegotiate the definition of value. Technology publisher and social web godfather Tim O’ Reilly suggests that the quintessential moral challenge for the 21st century enterprise might be to ensure that those who capture value are the ones who create it. It may never be the perfect congruence, he cautions, but the closer the proximity of these two positions on the ‘values continuum,’ the more beneficial the outcome. Ideally, companies (and economies) “create more value than they capture” so that they can nurture the communal ecosystem that is their lifeblood. “If you have too small of a group capturing value, then the whole ecosystem breaks down,” he contends.

Of course the prerequisite for this is that really all value is externalized, captured, and properly recognized – in particular the value that may not be readily qualified within the canon of current business accounting and not yet exploited through the capture of Big Personal Data on the web and on Facebook, the network that shapes the digital uber-narrative of the stories of our lives. Think of the vast amounts of social capital created by other, perhaps smaller, online networks that may be harder to monetize and yet strengthen the fabric of civic society. Think of the social value YouTube generates by virtue of offering a free platform for the dissemination of educational content. Think of investigative journalists, the hard work of parents, teachers, and others whose contributions to society are generally undervalued. Think of books, movies, dance, plays, or other pieces of art and cultural artifacts that make people happy and thereby contribute to the well-being of societies, but typically represent an asymmetrical economic relationship between value-creator and benefactor.

And even within companies, why is it that numbers always favor the ones with the numbers while there are no numbers to measure the social value created by those whose contributions are outside of the common ROI vocabulary? The sales person who has missed his targets but is popular amongst his colleagues, and widely seen as integral to team morale in the workplace. The CEO who inspires and instills hope for thousands of employees but has failed to meet the board’s growth expectations. The manager who shares the credit for a completed project with her team but has gone over budget in delivering it. Why is being a good person, why is character, not considered an economic asset in a time when trust and reputation are widely heralded as crucial assets, as competitive advantages for companies?

Integrity

It is striking that the apparent growing desire for purpose and meaning does not yet correspond with companies’ mental models of their customers and employees. Companies turn people (data) into products, segment individuals into uniform clusters, create services for the ‘Quantified Self,’ and conduct elaborate ‘employee engagement’ studies on why their employees (don’t) like them. On the employee side, in particular, this myopic belief in data may distract businesses from what really matters. Instead of winning the ill-named ‘war for talent,’ Dov Seidman, the author of the book How, suggests companies should focus on trust and integrity, on employing the full and true selves of the people who make up their organizations. If they succeed, they will be rewarded with employees who don’t withhold anything; who put their full selves at work, with all their passions, beliefs, and vulnerabilities. Matching internal and external character, purpose and action, words and deeds, these whole selves will no longer tolerate a chasm between idealism and pragmatism, between principles and practical reasons. As hyper-connectivity and social networks tear down the boundaries between professional and private lives, only those who are complete are able to compete.

Integrity is the only sustainable position in the modern business world, and trust is both its enabler and result. Trust is an act of believing, which means not (really) knowing. Paradoxically, the entire enterprise seems to be convinced that more effective knowledge sharing might unleash a more social, a more human enterprise, when it is in fact the sharing of intimate beliefs – an exchange of trust – that facilitates human interaction and enables the concept of the company as an intricately woven, sympathetic community of purpose-driven individuals and their ideas and passions. We like to be in good company when we pursue our ambitions. What we need then are not knowledge workers but trust workers, and instead of knowledge management, trust management. An organization with high trust levels is made up of people who not only believe in the organization’s values but, more importantly, believe in each other; and only then it is believable – credible – to the outside world.

This is not to be underestimated. Credibility, the scarcest resource in the information age, is the only real differentiator in a marketplace saturated with efficiency and excellence. With credibility you can sell anything, except that you no longer have to. When your credibility is strong, when people believe (in) you, in spite of their (lack of) knowledge, then your character, your ethos becomes your most powerful – your only – product.

Medicine

The importance of ethos is also the main theme of Jonathan Harris’ wonderful essay Modern Medicine, in which he draws an analogy between software and medicine based on their dual capacities to heal and to hurt. Given the power that software designers are presently wielding over the masses, he argues that “software engineers” should be considered “social engineers“:

“Through the software they design and introduce to the world, these engineers transform the daily routines of hundreds of millions of people. Previously, this kind of mass transformation of human behavior was the sole domain of war, famine, disease, and religion, but now it happens more quietly, through the software we use every day, which affects how we spend our time, and what we do, think, and feel.”

Their technology is addictive:

“In its capacity to transform the behavior of people, software is a kind of drug — a new kind of drug. As there are many kinds of drugs (caffeine, echinacea, Tylenol, Viagra, heroin, crack), so are there many kinds of software, feeding different urges and creating different outcomes.”

When Harris proposes engineers be trained to grasp the full social implications of their work, inferring “the ethics of code,” he directs attention to the externalities of our online behaviors. What we consider to be “of value” is a question of social engineering, a question of software design. Our moral compass is (in) the code. The actions of future generations are determined by today’s networked interactions. The moral economy lies squarely in the hands of software engineers. As companies are transforming into software companies, Harris, imagines a new role for them – to serve as “medicine men for the species”:

“A medicine man company would observe a given community, society, or even a whole civilization, and try to sense what's ailing it. Then, it would create technological interventions to counteract those ailments. It would use software as a kind of medicine, traveling into the world and subtly altering the behavior of people. A medicine man company would become a new kind of healthcare provider, helping people heal.”

The medicine man’s biggest value is the ability to offer empathy, intimacy, and compassion, and to inspire behavior change for the better. And this indeed is the very challenge for software engineers, or social engineers, amidst a sea of data and outcome-oriented, financial metrics.

Anticipation

To capture and reward the value of ‘the modern medicine men,’ we need to identify metrics for those intangible assets that have the capacity to ‘heal’ us; metrics that measure the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual benefits of our products and services. In light of research showing that activities rather than possessions enrich our memories and give our lives significance, we need to appreciate experiences over material goods, access over ownership, essence over form, and the journey over the destination.

The travel industry is uniquely positioned to do so. A pioneering effort is American Express’ Nextpedition service, launched earlier this year, which relies on serendipity to create meaningful experiences for consumers. Instead of a fixed itinerary usually provided by conventional travel sites, Nextpedition offers a succession of surprises that highlight the open-ended nature of the trip. The service does not tell the user where he is going until the last minute, and information is given just in time. The set up reminds of the film The Game – nothing is what you think it is. An envelope appears, pushed under the door of the hotel room, or a message alerts the user from his smartphone. The experience is full of deviances from the norm – and hence meaningful.

In his analysis of Nextpediton in a recent Harvard Business Review blog post, Grant McCracken, the author of the book Culturematic, explains why the value proposition of serendipity is so strong:

“Standardizing production was the great objective of the second industrial revolution. It almost always made the product or experience better because in those days, randomness was enemy of consumer satisfaction. But as consumers, it turns out, we are totally ungrateful. No sooner do we get perfection, sometime in the mid-20th century, than we tire of it. Enter Joe Pine's mass customization and eventually Etsy. Now it feels like we are on the verge of another revolution. Call it the Culturematic revolution. Now we want not just customization, but noise in the system, things that emerge (apparently) in real time, and the world to resist expectation.”

He concludes that “This may require a new kind of manager. Managerial capitalism asks everyone to leave randomness at home and come to work as a hard-headed pragmatist, a heat-seeking problem solver. But managing, creating, and delivering randomness means living with variation. It means asking people to get in touch with their differences instead of asking them, as we usually do, to converge on a shared facsimile of selfhood.”

From serendipity it is only a small step to anticipation. When violations are constantly broken, anticipation grows stronger. In other words: The level of anticipation is inversely proportional to the predictability of outcomes.

This is a powerful design principle, and the travel industry is not the only one taking advantage of it. Other consumer-facing sectors, such as online retail, are beginning to design products around anticipation. The UK-based start-up Fantasy Shopper, for example, has introduced the idea of a virtual social wardrobe: Consumes who sift through online stores can select clothing items and other goods they find attractive, and add them to a virtual wardrobe they can share with their Facebook friends. In effect, users indicate what they intend to buy, start a conversation on the virtual purchases with their friends, and then decide whether they want to buy the items at all. The Fantasy Shopper service effectively moves the purchase decision to the stage of anticipation, and it allows consumers to socially validate their purchase decision before they actually make the purchase (in fact, even if they never will).

Hope

The social status derived from the virtual acquisition of a product turns into a powerful intangible asset. The Self becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Buying without buying is the epitome of the ‘anticipation economy’ where the mere declaration of intent replaces action, and what could happen becomes infinitely more important than whatever eventually happens.

There is a name for it: Hope.

[image credit: Judith Horstman]

A Hackathon to “Reinvent Business”

Can social technology enable companies and the people within them to make better decisions? Can it improve corporate behavior? Can it perhaps even help restore the social contract between business and society? These are just some of the questions to be tackled by the “Reinvent Business” hackathon – a collaborative, rapid ideation and programming workshop – to be held in San Francisco on June 9-10, Hosted by frog and LRN, in partnership with BSR, Carnegie Mellon University, Dachis Group, Net Impact, Silicon Valley Bank, Fast Company, and the World Economic Forum, the two-day event will bring together software developers, designers, gamers, film makers, writers, business leaders, and other creative minds to imagine, design, and build a more human and truly social enterprise. The goal is both simple and bold: to develop concepts and prototypes for innovative products and services that have the capacity to transform business from within.

The World Economic Forum formed a Global Agenda Council on Values in Decision-Making (of which I am a member) in response to the current economic crisis to realign our collective mindset and develop practical approaches for a more moral economy. It has developed an ambitious agenda to help organizations translate human values into practices and behaviors that strengthen our institutions and positively impact the state of the world. New challenges call for new approaches, and we hope that with this hackathon as the starting point, we can engage the tech and creative communities in an ongoing constructive dialogue on how technology, and especially social technology, can change corporate behavior.

This need for behavior change, for “reinventing business,” is an urgent one, considering the growing number of voices that observe a crisis of capitalism and demand its fundamental transformation. In an op-ed piece for the Huffington Post, “The End of Capitalism – What Comes Next?,” World Economic Forum Founder and Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab draws a clear line between the original, defensible idea of the free market economy and the worrisome decoupling of the financial system and value-creation that makes an overhaul of its technical aspects mandatory. But he also argues that simply correcting excesses is not enough – we need a more radical reset. Schwab reminds us of the Stakeholder Principle he introduced in 1971, which is now more relevant than ever, propelled by the rise of social technologies: “In an age when social networks are enabling greater participation and transparency, companies will only be able to achieve economic success if they can generate long-term benefits not just for their shareholders, but also for the common good.”

While most companies will subscribe to that point of view rhetorically, the disconnection between business and society (and, as studies show, between management and employees) is indisputable. From Occupy Wall Street to public resignation letters in the New York Times, the widening ‘trust gap’ between business and society can’t be ignored. In a recent column, The Economist contends that companies should worry less about their reputations and more about how they do business. And indeed, increasingly, consumers and citizens demand that companies match their words to their actions, far beyond just Mission Statements, Codes of Conduct, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs. For today’s consumers and citizens, integrity means that a firm’s decisions and behaviors are fundamentally and consistently aligned with its values and principles as well as those of its stakeholders (which include society at large).

Yet the crisis of capitalism is not only a crisis of integrity, it is also one of meaning. “It is the job of companies to produce meaning,” writes management philosopher John Hagel, and with a growing number of consumers and employees expressing a strong desire for purpose beyond profits, and even the Harvard Business Review espousing happiness as a new economic paradigm, this appears to be a ripe time for reinvention. As the world becomes more interconnected and interdependent, the lines between the corporate and the social, the professional and the personal blur, and the younger generation of netizens in particular expects heightened levels of transparency, responsibility, and inspiration – both as consumers and employees. Being “In Search of Excellence” therefore no longer suffices; companies and their leaders now need to pursue significance.

Achieving this vision requires changes in two key dimensions of our economy: what we consider to be “value” and the values that guide how we create it. We need a more inclusive value definition that is respectful of all stakeholders’ needs, fully aligned with human values, and transcending the merely transactional; and we need inclusive models of value-creation that are inherently social.

At the national level, Bhutan’s Gross Happiness Index, as an alternative to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), has gained many admirers, and both the French and the UK governments have begun to emulate it. Moreover, there are supra-national organizations and NGOs such as the New Economics Foundation in the UK that have long proposed new indicators of economic progress grounded in the belief that we need a more holistic, integrated understanding of the economy instead of one that is purely based on financial terms.

At the corporate level, social media and networks have disrupted traditional paradigms of productivity and organizational behavior, and enabled participatory models of value creation that fully harness human potential by leveraging social technologies to maximize social capital (e.g. enterprise social networks, crowdsourcing). Consequently, the social enterprise of the 21st century recognizes social capital – in other words: talent, inside and outside of the organization – as its key asset. In his article, Klaus Schwab describes this as a significant paradigm shift:

“Capital is being superseded by creativity and the ability to innovate – and therefore by human talents – as the most important factors of production. If talent is becoming the decisive competitive factor, we can be confident in stating that capitalism is being replaced by ‘talentism.’ Just as capital replaced manual trades during the process of industrialization, capital is now giving way to human talent. I am convinced that this process of transformation will also lead to new approaches within the field of economics. It is indisputable that an ideology founded on personal freedom and social responsibility gives both individuals and the economy the greatest possible scope to develop.”

With the rise of “talentism,” the need for a real understanding of the common human values that connect organizations and individuals is becoming ever more important. Transparency, inclusivity, individual empowerment, and organizational responsiveness are crucial in nurturing businesses’ social fabric and facilitating empathy and collaboration. Yet, the challenge remains: How do we translate these values into day-to-day corporate behavior and into tangible, personal experiences? How can companies become open organizations that harness and build social capital both inside and outside of their institutional boundaries?

This is where our “Reinvent Business” hackathon comes in. Whether it is a mobile app that uses real-time peer feedback from social networks to help address ethical dilemmas, or a tracker that captures and measures alternative types of value, or a data visualization tool that illustrates the unintended consequences and the externalities of decisions, or an ‘empathy app’ that lets you see the world through someone else’s eyes, we hope for concepts that radically rethink the current business frameworks while at the same time offering practical solutions to business leaders and employees.

To be clear: We don’t expect this hackathon to produce any silver bullets, nor do we aim to “productize away” the deep and complex challenges of a moral economy and a more human enterprise. But we are poised to spawn a conversation by tackling concrete problem spaces that might inspire further-reaching, broader solutions.

Learn more about the "Reinvent Business" hackathon: http://www.reinventbusinesshackathon.com/overview.html

To participate in the "Reinvent Business" hackathon, apply here: http://www.reinventbusinesshackathon.com/apply.html

"Passion" - The New Design Mind Issue

I'm very proud of the latest issue of the design mind magazine, the award-winning publication of global design and innovation firm frog that I help curate.

The new issue, devoted to the theme of "Passion," explores the subjects, materials, concepts, and ideas that inspire and motivate us with original articles, poster-sized infographics, and interviews with technology and cultural luminaries. These range from the quest to balance work and life interests, to understanding the aesthetics of ugliness, to exploring how fashion relates to invention, to coping with a devastating personal health crisis, to helping our cities evolve and improve, to discovering what communities have high rates of innovation-and more.

This issue was written, designed, and produced by frog's designers, strategists, and technologists, with special contributors including innovation expert and thought leader John Hagel and cognitive psychologist Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman.

The magazine features a rare behind-the-scenes look at what ideas motivate and inspire frog's creative directors, innovation experts, engineers, and designers, from a very personal angle-and how these passions relate to and inform frog's award-winning work for the world's leading companies, including Disney, GE, Microsoft, MTV, Intel, and numerous other Fortune 500 brands.

Check it out!

Reinvent Business - A Special Hackathon

From Occupy Wall Street to corporate breakup letters in The New York Times, the widening “trust gap” between business and society can’t be ignored. Almost half a decade of financial fallout has diminished companies’ social capital while dramatically redefining the challenges they face. As we grow more interconnected and interdependent, the lines between the corporate and the social blur. Still, despite countless social responsibility pacts and codes of conduct, businesses continually make decisions disconnected from society’s needs.

In this crisis of corporate meaning, the need for a real understanding of the common human values that connect business and society grows increasingly significant. Transparency, inclusivity, individual empowerment, and organizational responsiveness are crucial in restoring trust between civic society and business. Yet, the challenge remains: how do we translate these values into day-to-day corporate behavior? What are the tools necessary to transform business from within?

On June 8-9, Reinvent Business, an interdisciplinary hackathon, will harness the power of social technology to fully realize the human potential within business. We’re challenging software developers, designers, academics, gamers, film-makers, writers, leaders in business and other clever problem solvers to imagine, design, and build a truly social enterprise.

Join us.

Walking Like Senna

I walked a Formula One race track last fall in Abu Dhabi, in the blistering evening desert heat. The city of Abu Dhabi opens the track a couple of days a week for bikers and joggers. I, however, was walking, due to a lack of appropriate sportswear, gasping for air, and happy to make it through even just one round. It was a surreal experience, not only because I was the odd outlier amidst hundreds of bikers and joggers, but also because it turned the purpose of the race track on its head – as my own private 'slow movement' against the race of the machines, fundamentally opposing the design intent of the venue. It felt like a meditation that turned the split seconds which typically frame the Formula One drivers’ quasi-automated blink decisions into an extended once-in-a-lifetime moment.

It took me an hour to complete the lap, and I relished every single minute of it. 'Going against the grain,' walking a Formula One track, turned out to be a fitting mental model violation, an almost situationist rebellion against time and space, and therefore a meaningful experience, a trance-like crescendo of happiness.

Speed, like happiness, is relative. Motion, on the other hand, is happiness’ absolute requirement. Motion is what holds it all together. Nations, cultures, organizations, relationships – and bodies. As the wonderful book of the same title suggests, the heart – the quintessential mechanism of motion – is a Sublime Engine, the enabler and ultimate jury of all life: it can stop anytime, for no rhyme or reason, and when it does, there is no more moving on.

It remains a mystery at what point motion becomes speed; perhaps when it exceeds the perceptional comprehension of the human sensory apparatus, when it becomes too fast to be felt, to be made sense of.

A couple of months later, on board an 800 miles per hour sky-rocketing 747 aircraft over the Atlantic, I was watching the documentary, Senna, about the legendary Brazilian Formula One race driver Ayrton Senna. True to its subject, the movie never slows down, and instead of a voice-over narrating the driver’s moved life, it simply races from frame to frame while slowly uncovering the essence of the story: the heart and soul of a passionate genius, a ‘man on a wire,’ full of concentration and determination, and of a fervent passion that’s always on the verge to its dark side, obsession. The devoted Christian Senna was a fanatic who raced to stand still and “just couldn’t quit” until he, as he put it, became a “complete man,” in perfect tune with God; a soul-searcher who touched those close and far from him with his humble but assertive heart that was beating so much faster than most others.

The documentary shows the last moments of Senna’s life, viewed from his car’s onboard camera, the painful elegy of a life that is about to pass every second (generally as professional risk and literally in this very sequence), a slow-motion blues that ends with an abrupt and absurd accident when Senna’s car fails (the exact reasons are unresolved to date) and crashes like a projectile straight into a wall. His death was as fast as his life.

Senna was a one-of-a-kind rebel, and he epitomizes the allure of the contrarian way of doing things your way: walk when others run, stay silent when others talk, be absent when others pursue presence by all means, disappear when others enter. Maybe that’s the ultimate differentiator in our fast-moving, over-loaded, hyper-charged, and ultra-saturated markets, for brands, companies, organizations, and leaders alike: to determine that it’s game over before it has even begun. Reclusiveness as the ultimate exclusivity. And maybe that is the very difference between being smart and being wise: Smart organizations and leaders are highly adaptive and thrive on constant feedback. Smart is fast. But wise is slow. Wise organizations and leaders need time and take it. Time for pause, for reflection. Time for not doing anything. Time to be quiet. Time to find the signal amid all the noise. Time to be the signal.

From Linda Stone’s “continuous partial attention” to FOMO (the Fear-of-Missing-Out) to Jonathan Harris’ long-form storytelling that propagates a “deeper, more reciprocal means of communication than shouting into a disconnected social media void,” from Speed-Dating to Slow-Dating, the Slow Books Manifesto, the Slow Food Movement, Slow Design, Slow Travel, Slow Money, Slow Living, Slow Brands. Motion may enable happiness, speed may accelerate it, but it is the counter-movement that grants us significance – and that, at the end, is the difference between a meaningful life and a life lived in vain.

[image credit: Forbes]

Hindu Business Line: "Marketing without Marketing is the Best"

The Indian business daily Hindu Business Line interviewed me for its CMO Corner column:

My most memorable marketing initiative

The launch of the Aricent Group brand last year. We honoured the Aricent brand's legacy — which goes all the way back to Hughes Software Systems — and yet managed to reinvent and elevate it with new values and a fresh identity. It was a challenging initiative with many stakeholders and a short amount of time. I will always remember the passion of everyone involved, and the enthusiastic response from our employees when it launched. There's nothing more powerful than an aspirational brand story to shape a company culture of inspiration and excellence.

My most exciting digital marketing project

My most exciting digital marketing initiative has been the award-winning design mind platform I helped create for the design and innovation firm frog — an online portal featuring articles, blogs, and videos at the intersection of business, technology, and design. Augmented through social media distribution, it became a popular and very effective vehicle to softly market our thought leadership without hard-selling our services. We indeed live in the age of conversations, and only if you have something meaningful to say, will you have dialogue with your constituents. Marketing without marketing is the best marketing.

My first product launch

My first product launch was a 3D visualisation for Deutsche Bank I worked on during my time as concept developer for an Internet agency in Berlin (during the heyday of dotcoms). Everything interactive was ‘hot' back then — and now it's taken for granted. What has not changed, though, is the importance of storytelling. The more data you deal with, the stronger the need for storytellers who make sense of it all. Perhaps, that's the biggest value marketers can bring to the table.

A great idea that never took off

A few years ago, inspired by Twitter, I came up with the idea of launching a service that would ask users: “What are you going to do?” Basically, a micro-blogging tool that predicts the future by aggregating user's intentions. I lacked the time and focus to develop it, and just last week at the SXSW conference in the US, I saw the app Forecast, which does exactly what I had envisioned. I guess the key lesson from this is: Just do it! Don't overthink your ideas, don't get hung up on too much diligence, move fast, experiment, prototype, and see if your idea sticks.

A setback I have learnt from

I haven't had a major setback (except maybe for a failed music career when I was young) — knock on wood — but there are minor setbacks every day. They keep you humble … and motivated.

My marketing idol

In theory: Peter Drucker, the brilliant management thinker. In practice: Beth Comstock, the CMO of GE, who has proven that marketing can be an innovation force in large organisations; and on stage: the band Radiohead, because it's constantly exploring new marketing formats for music and keeps re-inventing itself.

Where I get my insights from

Travel to new places, serendipitous encounters at conferences, books, movies, and moments of quietness. I also find blogging very inspirational. Only by writing something down one really starts to think.

How much has B-school helped me in my career?

Well, I never went to business school, and my biggest takeaway is that I still don't know if I should have gone ...

How will a marketer have to prepare for 2020?

Marketers will need to be fully immersed in the latest technology. Ideally, they will be software developers with a passion for driving behaviour change. At the same time, technology and big data will be useless if they are not made sense of by a creative, imaginative mind that can synthesise, empathise, and galvanise. The marketer of 2020 will be a Chief Meaning Officer — someone who can inspire employees and customers alike by charging marketing with purpose.

Humanity in the Code

My South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) experience began on the “nerdbird” – the flight from San Francisco to Austin. At high altitude and in even higher amplitude, the techies sitting a row behind me were speed-outsmarting each other, jumping from database mining, the UX challenge of creating a human-friendly pixel resolution, the myth of interferences for avionics, to the “stupid-smart Nathans” in their lives (sorry, guys, it was hard not to eavesdrop). I first listened with intrigue (because these guys were really, really smart, and I might as well just transcribe their conversation into a comprehensive SXSW summary post), but after a while I began to resist the unsolicited expertise, and browsing through the conference program I couldn’t help but think of my two favorite session titles this year: “Co-Founder Speed Dating” and “The Evolution of the Douchebag in Modern Cinema.” Giving up on my way-too-thin headphones, I craved an enclave that would offer asylum from the forced intimacy of all the power-chatter, a simple switch-off that would disconnect me from verbal deluge and provides some kind of digital refuge from the very human analogue conversation. With all the new services that enable ‘controlled serendipity,’ it seems ironic that social filtering assumes we constantly want to meet people. I wanted to un-meet. Now. And there was no app for that.

Obviously, the signs of the times are different. Social discovery was a main theme of SXSWi this year. Start-ups from Uberlife, Sonar, to Crowded Room were vying for the pole position in the race to become the de-facto in-situ connectors. The winner, I would submit, will be the one service that manages to balance the need to “find the like-minded” (predictability) with the desire to “discover the unexpected” (serendipity). The path between the two is where true meaning occurs. Being a social utility is not enough – the best matchmakers understand that their job is to put on a great game, not to predict its outcome.

Another theme was the browser vs. OS war, extending the conversation from Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that had preceded SXSWi. In light of the emergence of HTML 5 and Mozilla’s recently announced, much gushed about Open Web Devices (OWD) partnership with Spanish carrier Telefonica, the browser-OS web apps vs. native apps showdown drew a lot of attention. As Wireless Watch writes: “HTML5 is coming close to delivering the same quality of experience for web apps as native ones, and with its cross-platform nature can, theoretically at least, break the ties with the OS and allow non-platform owners such as operators or web service providers to create their own brand and distinctive offerings for any device.” My colleague Scott Jenson, creative director at frog, and a speaker at SXSWi, expects this trend to deliver on the promise of “just-in-time interaction,” allowing a far more seamless, personalized, and localized user experience than the super-fragmented native apps ecosystem can deliver today.

SXSWi was bigger, noisier, and messier than ever, and it was hard not get frustrated by the abundance of options and the scarcity of seats. But while there were some pleasant surprises (e.g. a session with “Catch Me If You Can” con artist Frank Abagnale), some panel topics are apparently evergreen. You could still find panels on crowdsourcing and branding in a social media world. The tone, however, was distinct this time: the digital literacy has increased exponentially, far beyond the tech in-crowd. The confidence and techno-swagger were staggering. And everyone, I mean, really everyone, was in town – hardcore digerati, outliers, cultural observers, and more and more business bigwigs. Location matters, and there is no place like SXSWi. Somewhere between hubris and pragmatism, the tech pilgrimage to Austin forms a unique geekipedia, a vast knowledge library, a mega-download of the future to come.

Speaking of which, the “Future of Work” was subject of a dedicated program track this year, and strikingly, eight years after the release of Thomas Malone’s seminal book, the main takeaway from the sessions was that the Future of Work may have already arrived – without us noticing it and indeed not evenly distributed. This became most apparent in a panel on “Decentralized Organizations - Do They Work?” with representatives from Zappos, Burning Man, Second Life-founder Philip Rosedale’s new company Coffee & Power, a marketplace for “small jobs”, and Malone himself. After several failed attempts to get a discussion going beyond just sharing anecdotes, a simple show of hands by the audience made clear that the session title was a rhetorical question. Of course decentralized organizations work. At least for a crowd like SXSWi, for which job title is oh-so-yesterday and even the online social status seems antiquated. The new currency is your latest venture.

Most of the people in the room appeared acutely aware of what Malone described as the historic opportunity in front of us: “For the first time we can combine the benefits of large organizations with the benefits of decentralized individual decision-making.” Indeed, if you combine economies of scale with the value of intimacy, you yield the “Economics of Emotion,” as Alan Zorfas coins them. In his recent article, he references a recent IBM survey poll of 1,700 CMOs who emphasized that building an enduring emotional connection with consumers is fast becoming a top business imperative.

Ironically, the very emotional bond, the very humanity we espouse as value in organizational designs, may be threatened by the technology we create: “True love is a lack of desire to check one's smartphone in another's presence,” the ever witty philosopher and writer Alain de Botton poignantly tweeted during the conference (perhaps during a date gone awry).

Keynote speaker Baratunde Thurston (The Onion) heralded the power of “laughter against the machine,” the importance of “artful ridicule,” of “comedy in the code”, and presented examples from various countries – from China to Afghanistan, Iran to Egypt. Not just coding or decoding, aggregating or analyzing, but “reading the world,” he argued, was an ever more important task in this day and age of big data, and as both institutions and experts experience an erosion of their authority, he demanded comedians step in as the new sense makers, the new interpreters who laugh off the tragic with humor. Thurston cited an Old Roman proverb, and his points were not breaking new ground by any means. But his humble and genuine delivery captivated the audience and was touching. As history has told us, it is the fools who speak the truth and foresee the future. Or you can just use Forecast, a social tool that asks “What are you going to do?” and thus captures a valuable aggregation of the likely future based on intentions.

Aside from all that, another key insight from SXSWi this year was that, as with every human enterprise, the effects of horserace politics have begun to kick in. It is now the Super Bowl for tech marketers. From political theatre to tech theatre – the backstory has become the actual story: Egos, plots, gossip, and campaigns trump the actual program. This year’s most controversial “meta-story” was BBH Lab’s Homeless HotSpots campaign – a “social experiment” that had been launched before SXSWi but reached a broader and more critical audience here that was quick in dismissing it as a ludicrous exploitation of homeless people. It is interesting to read The Atlantic’s analysis of how the public’s reaction went through all of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross' five stages of grief, but whatever you think of the appropriateness of the idea, the HotSpots campaign presented a welcome counterpoint to the dominant techno-optimism at the show – a gloomy and inadvertently comical question-mark amidst all the exclamation points. The same audience that had laughed about Baratunde Thurston’s irreverence was irritated by the absurd theater of the Homeless HotSpots, and the discomfort expressed in many blogs represented an underlying sentiment that may have gotten lost otherwise at SXSWi: social technology has invaded our lives, but it may not be the great socializer. Or as a colleague admitted over dinner: “Here I am with 17,000 like-minded souls and a dozen of social discovery tools, but when I wander through the halls, I couldn’t help but feel lonely at times.”

[image credit: Digital Journal]

‘The Meaning of Business’ - A Collection of Essays

I’m very happy to announce the premiere edition of The Meaning of Business – A Collection of Essays on New Models of Leadership, Collaboration, and Value Creation that I helped curate.

The texts featured in the debut issue have appeared in frog’s design mind magazine over the past three years, and they include contributions from Chip Conley (founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, and author of Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow), Umair Haque (director of the Havas Media Lab, founder of Bubblegeneration, and a writer for the Harvard Business Review), Matthew E. May (author of In Pursuit of Elegance and The Elegant Solution), Dev Patnaik (founder and principal of Jump Associates and author of Wired to Care), Roberto Verganti (professor of the management of innovation at Polytechnic University of Milan, a member of the board of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management, and author of Design-Driven Innovation), and Beth Comstock (CMO and SVP of GE). 

The booklet is available in print and online. You can download a pdf copy here:

Download "The Meaning of_Business"

[Special thanks to Megan Lynch for the beautiful graphic design!]

Davos Debrief: Data, Power, Happiness – It’s Getting Personal

 

Following a year in which “people power” was the rallying cry from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting 2012 in Davos, which ended last Sunday, might seem like an elitist anachronism, but it is worth noting how the WEF over the past few years has tried in earnest to include voices from civil society as well as younger generations – from new, very active communities within the WEF such as the Young Global Leaders and the Global Shapers to – this year – even Occupy Davos. The result: As a “platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue between business, society, and politics” (in the words of WEF founder and executive chairman Professor Klaus Schwab), the WEF is more relevant than ever (full disclosure: I am a member of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Values in Decision-Making).

That said, the Annual Meeting in the luxurious Swiss ski resort remains the “the world’s most exclusive gathering,” and it is hard not to be star-struck by a cast that this year included the likes of Bill Gates, Timothy Geithner, Christine Lagarde, David Cameron, Angela Merkel, the CEOs of most Fortune 500 companies, and – yes – Mick Jagger.

This year’s theme was The Great Transformation (borrowed from Karl Polanyi’s seminal 1944 book), inspired by the urgent need to explore new models of leadership and value-creation in the wake of a fundamental (identity, confidence, moral?) crisis of capitalism (sovereign debt crisis, lack of trust in business, growing inequality, etc.). Consequently, Professor Schwab remarked in his opening speech: “Davos is the world’s sanatorium,” referring to the local facility that rose to world-literature fame through Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain. The mood was definitely somber, at least in the beginning, and lightened up only a few days into the conference when the intense debates and working sessions brought forward more optimistic approaches to solving the world’s pressing problems.

The main topics in Davos were the Euro crisis (of course); the Network Economy; Big (Personal) Data and its implications for our concepts of privacy, productivity, and collaboration; and Values (converging several strands such as Michael Porter’s more integrative “Shared Values” notion of corporate social responsibility, the rise of social entrepreneurship, or the quest to explore happiness as an alternative metric for measuring economic progress, both at a national and company level - more on that later).

If there was one overarching theme for all these tropes, then it was the dialectic relationship between the potential and the risks of technological innovation. One the one hand, optimists were bullish about the digital revolution that has given amateurs unprecedented access to technology, as Neil Gershenfeld, Director, The Center for Bits and Atoms, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), noted: “Technology is allowing ordinary people to change and improve the world.” This becomes manifest in digital literacy, grassroots innovation movements such as Maker Faire, 3D printing, the mobile apps developer ecosystem, open data, and hackers-for-good communities. And the emergence of cloud computing means than anyone can quickly launch data-intensive businesses, which is accelerating innovation, product cycles, and competition.

On the other hand, the gap between individual understanding and technological progress seems to be growing. People’s fears about misuse of personal data, which led the European Commission to propose rather draconian data protection laws for Internet service providers and other data collectors, is creating a “huge barrier to progress,” observed David Blumenthal, Professor of Medicine and Professor of Health Policy at the Harvard Medical School, and a member of the WEF Global Agenda Council on Digital Health. The general public needs to better understand science and technology, he urged.

Public Parts-author and digeratus emeritus Jeff Jarvis sees the digital revolution disrupt every single industry and institution, and believes that technology is leading to an “efficiency over growth” paradigm, with far-reaching implications: “Productivity will improve. Companies will be more profitable. Wealth will be created. But employment will suffer.” Jarvis acknowledges that great wealth can be created by serving millions of people with relatively small staff – see Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other icons of the digital economy – but he cautions that this might just further widen the income and capital disparity, which is “just wide enough today to cause unrest around the world,” as he writes on his blog. “That’s much of what #Occupy_WEF et al is about. That’s what is causing such tsuris and uncertainty on the stages of the world (Economic Forum). That’s what is causing the institutions represented here to fear, resist, and regulate technology in the hopes of forestalling the change it is bringing. There is the root of the disruption we’re witnessing now even in Davos.”

The Arab Spring exemplifies the ambivalence societies presently face when it comes to technology. Yes, technology has given ordinary people, particularly the youth, a voice to question the status quo and the power to even topple regimes. It has created and amplified (a sense of) urgency, and it has opened the door to being part of emerging governance, but as we witness in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, it has not necessarily enabled the creation of stable, truly inclusive governments and economies that produce the kind of steep job growth these countries so desperately need.

Technological innovation is also overshadowed by widespread pessimism and a credibility deficit that have resulted from the failure of institutions to effectively deal with a number of the recent economic and environmental crises. Trust in government and business has further plummeted, reports the Edelman Trust Barometer 2012, and there appears to be a fundamental loss of confidence in decision-making, with large parts of society – particularly young people and the majority of the impoverished – feeling that they’re being left out of the process, despite the democratizing effects of social technology and media. Some in Davos therefore called for a new “social covenant” that mandates fairness and mutual benefit for all, but not only by redistributing wealth more evenly, but by including all parts of society in the creation of wealth (“inclusive growth”) and the decisions that drive it.

But here’s the problem, as far as business is concerned: While there is broad consensus on corporations’ means (and responsibility) to positively impact society (the leadership role of business, so to speak), business leaders themselves may no longer be the right people to spearhead it. Sure, corporate bosses still hold considerable sway over creating a meaningful experience for their employees (they can “create and kill meaning,” asserts the McKinsey Quarterly). But although CEOs are undoubtedly held more accountable than ever, they are facing not only an erosion of trust but also an erosion of their power. A recent Economist article describes these "shackled CEOs" as Gullivers who are tied down by Lilliputian forces – whether these are powerful boards, empowered employees, or a public that demands radical transparency. Consequently, among the world’s 2,500 biggest public companies, the average job tenure for departing CEOs has fallen from 8.1 years in 2000 to 6.6 years today, according to consultancy Booz & Company. In light of this trend, buzz words such as “humble leadership,” “servant leadership,” “open leadership,” and “bottom-up leadership” make the rounds, and Doreen Lorenzo, the president of frog, contends that the increased complexity of decision-making will lead to a “post-CEO world” where companies must move “from a guru model to one based on team leadership.”

Ironically, at the political level, the most inclusive model, democracy, is losing its halo, as it becomes pressured by ever-more demanding citizens whose frustration with their elected representatives and more publicized cases of corruption, nepotism, and decision paralysis is nowadays quickly amplified by social technologies. The Euro zone may be on the brink of disintegration, and the democratic legitimacy of the European Union, with so much policy-making power delegated to supranational authorities in Brussels, remains questionable.

The potent alternatives were on show in Davos, but not everybody may 'like' them: For one thing, there is state capitalism, which can claim credits for driving recent history’s most remarkable economic success stories: Singapore, Russia, Brazil, the UAE, and of course China. Over the past three decades China’s GDP has grown at an average rate of 9.5% a year, and over the past ten years its GDP has more than trebled to $11 trillion. This makes it the world’s second-biggest economy, and the world’s biggest market for many consumer goods.

A digital governance alternative is Facebook, arguably the world’s most powerful transnational organization, with a network of users that would count as the world’s third largest country. It already stores more data than any national government alone, and with its popularity, network effects, and comprehensive analytics, it holds significant deterministic powers: it can mobilize communities, influence constituents, predict trends and events, and draw a possibly discriminatory line between inclusivity and exclusivity (“weblining,” as law professor Lori Andrews calls it in her NY Times article “Facebook is Using You”). Like Google, it is inevitably evolving into the “The Matrix” or the uber-stream of what David Gelernter prophetically anticipated in 1990 as “Lifestreams” – albeit with little to no space left for ambiguity: the vision of a data-centric universe is one where human decision-making will be binary, with targeting so chirurgical that every '(life)stream of consciousness' will end with a clear ‘yes.’

Conversely, optimists herald the same personal data as a potential source for human development (e.g., through e-philanthropy or open-data initiatives such as the Worldbank’s) and refer to the rise of social innovation, social entrepreneurship, for-profit activism, and the concept of the Social Enterprise (as in Marc Benioff’s “Speedy-Open-Collaboration-Individuals-Alignment-Leadership” line). All of which are all fueled by the “new oil” data, if only it is put in the right hands.

And data can propel happiness, which has emerged as the buzzword de jour in business circles, also in Davos. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh has established it as his mission and primary business objective (shoes are just a means to an end), and his book Delivering Happiness was a national bestseller. Virgin, Coca-Cola, and other consumer brands have made it their core brand promise. Healthcare companies, and other industries, are looking into social products and services to promote it. After the King of Bhutan pioneered a Gross National Happiness Index in 1972, initially subject to much ridicule, NGOs such as the New Economics Foundation have been promoting it, and more and more corporations and governments (UK, India, France, etc.) are now exploring happiness as a holistic metric for economic progress and effective governance. And the Harvard Business Review, in its current issue, even devotes a special report to the "Value of Happiness,” arguing that employee well-being can boost productivity, customer loyalty, and ultimately profits. Two years ago, who would have thought that this publication had a cover on happiness! It seems as if the tougher the times, the harder the soft topics become. This is encouraging.

Sinnfabriken

Last Friday, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Germany’s leading daily with a circulation of 420k copies and 1.2 million readers, published my essay (in German) about meaningful brands and "the production of meaning." The article appeared on the cover page of the Feuilleton (Arts & Essays) section, as part of the paper's Davos coverage.

Here it is:

Sinnfabriken

Warum die Bedeutung einer Marke längst mehr wert ist als Geld

 Wenn sich die Wirtschafts- und Politikelite diese Woche unter dem Motto "The Great Transformation" zum Weltwirtschaftsforum in Davos trifft, bezieht sie sich auf Karl Polanyis Grundlagenwerk der Soziologie mit dem selben Titel. Polanyi beschrieb 1944 den grundlegenden Wandel, der sich im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert mit der Industrialisierung vollzog. Solch einen Wandel gibt es nun wieder. Und vor dem Hintergrund der Occupy-Bewegung, der Eurokrise und allgemeinen Sinnsuche des Kapitalismus ist die Debatte um die Transformation von Wirtschaft nicht nur für die Eliten dringlich.

In der Privatwirtschaft wird diese Debatte schon länger geführt, ist in vielen Punkten auch weiter als die Politik. Naomi Kleins Kapitalismuskritik "No Logo" griff 2000 das Herz der Wirtschaftswelt ganz direkt an – die Marken. Die müssen heute mehr bieten als clevere Logos und eine Erlebniswelt. Es geht um gesellschaftliche Relevanz, um Gemeinschaftsgefühle und um Ideale. Kurz - es geht um Bedeutung.

Der Wirtschaftsphilosoph John Hagel beschrieb das mit den Worten: "Die entscheidende Führungsaufgabe ist heute nicht mehr, Geld zu machen, sondern Bedeutung zu schaffen." Es geht also buchstäblich um die Produktion von Bedeutung.

Der Begriff für diese Produktion heißt "Meaningful Branding". Letztlich geht es immer noch um die klassischen Markentheorien. Die American Marketing Association definiert die Marke schlicht als "Name, Begriff, Symbol oder anderes Element, das ein Produkt oder eine Dienstleistung deutlich vom Mitbewerber unterscheidet". Solche Marken gibt es schon seit mehr als 250 Jahren.

Strategische Markenführung gehörte in den achtziger Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts zum Kern der Wirtschaftsphilosophien. Bald gehörten immer mehr Elemente zu dieser Strategie, so wie die Kundenerfahrung, die Unternehmenskultur und das Geschäftsgebahren. Als erste Studien in den neunziger Jahren den Zusammenhang zwischen Kaufentscheidungen und der ethischen Integrität einer Marke nachwiesen, wurde die Marke nicht mehr nur als das Erscheinungsbild und das Bewusstsein einer Firma behandelt, sondern als ihr Gewissen. Mit dem Schlagwort der Corporate Social Responsibility wurden nun ganze Abteilungen für die Produktion von Bedeutung geschaffen. Von der "guten Marke" war es dann nur ein kleiner Schritt zur Weltanschauung als Alleinstellungsmerkmal.

In ihrem Buch "Cultural Strategy" argumentierten die Branding-Experten Douglas Holt und Douglas Cameron am Beispiel der Geschichten von Firmen wie Nike, Starbucks und Jack Daniels, dass Marken eine eigene Ideologie mit einer These vertreten sollten. Für Google wäre das zum Beispiel: "Die Welt ist lebenswerter, wenn alle Informationen jederzeit für alle Menschen verfügbar sind."

Kevin Roberts, Chef der Werbeagentur Saatchi & Saatchi prägte dann 2005 den Begriff "Love Marks", mit dem er Marken regelrecht romantische Qualitäten zusprach, wie das Geheimnis, die Sinnlichkeit und die Intimität. Die emotionale Markenbotschaft war geboren, die nicht nur auf vorübergehende Attraktivität aus war.

Mit der Allgegenwärtigkeit der sozialen Medien wird diese emotionalisierte Markenloyalität und die Glaubwürdigkeit, die ihr zu Grunde liegt, auf eine harte Probe gestellt. Wie das "Cluetrain Manifesto" einer Gruppe Autoren um den Harvard-Philosophen David Weinberger schon vor zehn Jahren voraussagte, ist die Marke in Zeiten der Forderungen nach radikaler Transparenz, der "Netizens" und der Dauerkonversation auf Blogs, Twitter und Facebook nun keine Botschaft mehr, sondern ein Dialog. Der aber findet mit den sozialen Medien rund um die Uhr statt.

Die Bedeutung einer Marke greift nun direkt an der Schnittstelle von sozialem Bewusstsein und sozialer Technologie, die von einer moralischen Ökonomie und einer Kultur des Teilens geprägt ist. Der Marktforschungsbericht Trendwatching Report beschreibt das als "Geben ist das neue Nehmen und Teilen ist das neue Geben".

Es geht um die "Generation G", wobei das G für Großzügigkeit steht. Die hat genug von der Gier der Marktakteure und nutzt das Social Web, um zu teilen und zu kollaborieren. So entstehen Crowdsourcing-Projekte wie Wikipedia, aber auch Phänomene wie das Filesharing von Kulturprodukten. In dieser Wirtschaft des Teilens mit ihren immer komplexeren Beziehungsgeflechten, sind Empathie und soziale Intelligenz entscheidend für jede Form von Erfolg.

Weil soziale Medien aber nicht mehr als Vertriebswege funktionieren, sondern Designprinzipien geworden sind, ist Wertschöpfung ein kooperativer Akt geworden, der über Crowdsourcing und andere Interaktionen im sozialen Netz intellektuelle, emotionale und spirituelle Bedeutungen schafft.

Sogenannte "Meaningful Brands", sinnstiftende Marken, begreifen diese Bedeutungen als eine neue Dimension der Maslowschen Bedürfnispyramide, die über die materiellen Notwendigkeiten und die Selbstverwirklichung hinausgeht. Solche Marken handeln eben nicht nur moralisch, sie produzieren Moral. Durch Netzwerke, die Kooperation möglich machen, und durch die Pflege von Gemeinschaften schaffen sie immaterielles Kapital. Das ergibt eine Gleichung, die im "entzauberten" Kapitalismus Seltenheitswert hat: echte Werte für echten Wert, Glück als Anreiz und Bedeutung als Rendite.

Wenn Marken solche Bedeutung schaffen wollen, brauchen sie vier Elemente: Überraschung, Seltenheitswert, soziale Intelligenz und Transzendenz. Die Überraschung durchbricht eingefahrene Denk- und Erfahrungsmuster. Bedeutung lebt aber auch von einem Seltenheitswert, der die Grundlage für das soziale Moment bildet, eine bedeutende Erfahrung mit anderen zu teilen. Die Transzendenz wiederum überhöht das Erlebnis des Einzelnen, indem es auf etwas hindeutet, das größer ist als der Einzelne oder die Marke. Gerade die Kollektive des arabischen Frühlings und der Occupy-Bewegung haben gezeigt, wie wichtig die Sinnstiftung einer solchen übergeordneten Bedeutung sein kann.

Sinnstiftende Marken engagieren sich als profitorientierte Aktivisten. Der selbsternannte "Philantrokapitalist" Richard Branson hat mit Virgin ein Firmenimperium geschaffen, dessen Marke längst nicht mehr an Produkten hängt.

Ähnlich operiert der amerikanische Schuh- und Bekleidungsvetrieb Zappos, der sich ganz der Bedeutungsproduktion verschrieben hat. Firmenchef Tony Hsieh schreibt in seinem Buch "Delivering Happiness", dass sich Zappos als Lieferant von Glücksmomenten versteht. Schuhe sind da nur ein Mittel zum Zweck.

Und klassische Effizienz ist ein Anachronismus, der nicht immer zum Geschäftsmodell des Glücksmoments passt. Da rühmen sich die Mitarbeiter mit dem längsten Kundengespräch der Woche. Zappos-Mitarbeiter bekommen ein 480 Seiten starkes "Culture Book". Hsieh schreibt: "Wenn die Kultur stimmt, funktioniert alles andere automatisch."

Es ist kein Zufall, dass der Ruf nach Sinnstiftung im Kapitalismus mit Versuchen einhergeht, den gesellschaftlichen Beitrag der Wirtschaft mit neuen Kriterien wie Happiness-Indexen oder dem Bruttosozialglück zu messen.

Wenn die Harvard Business Review in ihrer jüngsten Ausgabe das Glücklichsein von Kunden und Mitarbeitern zum unternehmerischen Erfolgskriterium erklärt, ist das ein Zeichen, dass Bedeutung auf dem Weg zum wirtschaftlichen Standard ist.

Was sich in der Markenstrategie abzeichnet, könnte zum Leitfaden für eine humanere Ökonomie werden, deren Wert sich nicht nur nach materiellem Wachstum bemisst, sondern nach dem Grad an Bedeutung, den sie schafft.

Der Autor ist Mitglied des Global Agenda Council on Values des Weltwirtschaftsforums, Marketingchef der Innovationsfirma Frog und Herausgeber des Magazins "Design Mind".

Push to Pull

In light of the Arab Spring and the rise of India and China, and propelled by social technologies, the concept of ‘soft power’ (the phrase was coined by Joseph Nye in his 1990 book, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power; defined as “the ability to obtain what one wants through co-option and attraction”) is ever more relevant. Or, in marketing terms, Push is out, Pull is in. If an idea, aspiration, product, goal, ideology, culture, narrative, or national identity is attractive to its constituents, it minimizes the need for constant reinforcement and regulation – whether that is advertising, promotions, and other persuasive efforts, or bureaucracy, command-and-control, and coercion. Pull is powerful (as John Hagel illustrates in his riveting book The Power of Pull). It has a lot of Pull (pun intended) because one doesn’t have to push. It saves energy that can be invested otherwise, for example, in whatever “it” is that creates Pull. No surprise then that individuals, organizations, societies, and entire nations wish they could rely on it more.

But how does one create Pull? Even the most ardent Pull apostle will admit that Pull doesn’t just emanate from nowhere. How much hard power do you have to leverage to create soft power? How much Push is needed to generate Pull? I conducted a mini-poll on Facebook asking that exact question, and the responses ranged from “the answer to this you can only feel” to “a lot.” I sketched a diagram for myself to better understand the forces at work between this power couple, and I came up with three Push-to-Pull ratios that may help you get your “Pull-Push balance” right.

- Positive push-to-pull ratio: If you deploy more Push strategies than the Pull that they generate, then you over-invest in Push and inevitably create an undercurrent, a backlash that can even decrease the current amount of Pull you have. You risk dissolving the entropy of the overall system. Your idea, your narrative, your brand will be seen as intrusive, and in the worst case, as spam.

- Neutral push-to-pull ratio: If your Push and Pull energy levels are in balance, then you achieve the perfect equilibrium. You don’t generate any incremental Pull but you also don’t lose any. You need to be vigilant not to overdo your Push efforts, or you compromise your Pull. One could also say that the very point at which Push threatens to exceed Pull is the demarcation line between ‘cool’ and ‘uncool.’

- Negative push-to pull ratio: The last and ideal state is have Pull exceed Push. This happens after a long period of Push when the scale of Push needed to create Pull decreases. Or when the idea, aspiration, narrative, and culture is so strong that it sustains and amplifies itself. If that’s the case, your job is to simply enable connections for the “idea” (in this case, refering to brands, you can speak of “brand ideologies” or “intrinsic brands” such as IKEA, Nike, Apple, or Starbucks).

These three relationships sit along a continuum, and perhaps it makes sense to consider them to be stages in the evolution of organizations. Fledgling start-ups will rely more on Pull (for they often lack resources to invest in Push), but as they mature, they will inevitably explore means to amplify their intrinsic Pull with Push. Eventually they are so established that they can rely solely, or mainly, on Pull, however now with far bigger impact than the one they were able to achieve as start-ups. There are two critical junctures on this continuum and corresponding decisions: When exactly, in the early stage of an organizational or brand development, do you start to invest in Push? And at what point do you decrease the level of Push so you don’t “push too hard,” over-reach, and jeopardize the valuable Pull you’ve generated? (Ever come across an ad from a brand that you adore and disappointed that the company had to advertise in the first place?)

Pull is a function of cultural power, of the routines and rituals, of the energy that is flowing through an organization. Energy here translates to intensity: not only the level of activity (knowledge flows, productivity, social interactions), but also the tension between actors, the battles between conflicting ideas. If your organization experiences tension, then it is “intense.” An intense organization is always stretched, intellectually and resource-wise, and it is constantly operating at capacity of what it is able to imagine and execute on – it is in a state of emergence, a permanent crisis, with a heavy dose of ambiguity, uncertainty, and even paranoia. This is a good thing: the fearful are paralyzed, the paranoid are proactive (and creative).

Pull comes from an original idea, a compelling story, a contagious meme. Astrophysicist and philosopher David Deutsch defines a meme as "an idea that is a replicator." “A rational meme replicates because people find it valuable,” he writes in The Beginning of Infinity. “An anti-rational meme replicates by disabling its holder's rational thinking so that one has no choice but to spread it.” That’s the difference between Pull and Push, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, empowerment and enforcement, creativity and bureaucracy. Brands, countries, and movements that are built on rational memes have real Pull – and almost infinite staying power. The others will be pushed out sooner or later.

[image credit: timmonsandcompanyblog.com]

Marketing's Big Plays in 2012: The Year of the AND...

India's leading business daily newspaper, the Hindu Business Line, quoted me in a story on the new challenges that CMOs will face in 2012, based on a contribution to Jessie Paul's excellent Paul Writer marketing blog.

Here's what I wrote (and think):

“In 2012, CMOs will continue to face a fragile world economy, hyper-connectivity, growing complexity, the fragmentation of audiences, and multiple truths. This is why it will be the year of the AND: Innovation AND traditional channels. Marketing AND un-marketing. Big Data AND big intuition. ROI AND imagination. Money AND meaning. Openness AND privacy. Leadership AND leaderless movements. Iron principles AND super-flexibility. And, and, and….”

India Design Forum 2012

I am delighted to speak at the India Design Forum, which will take place in New Delhi on March 9-10, 2012, with the goal of bringing the international discourse on design to India.

The IDF will comprise of a Design Trail (March 2-10, 2012) featuring public exhibitions, workshops, and perfomances in the heart of New Delhi, as well as a two-day conference (March 9-10, 2012). The speaker line-up includes architects Rem Kohlhaas and Thomas Heatherwick, MoMA curator Paola Antonelli, luxury designer Christian Louboutin, Adam Bly from Seed Media, Tom Dixon, and Karim Rashid, among many others.

The IDF founders Rajshree Pathy and Mitra Khoubrou envision the event to be an open, cross-disciplinary conversation between designers to identify the elements that define contemporary design in India. The IDF is conceived of as a platform to improve India’s access to the global design community and help it become a leader in shaping the global design agenda.

Here’s more info about the IDF: indiadesignforum.com

Embracing Openness

Rotman magazine, the print and online quarterly of the Rotman School of Management, has just released its new (Winter) issue, devoted to the theme “Open.” Openness has been a buzzword for a while, ever since Henry Chesbrough wrote his seminal book on Open Innovation, but, to apply Gartner’s Hype-Cycle terminology, now it seems as if Openness has finally reached a plateau of productivity after going through years of troughs of disillusion.

The Rotman issue is thus timely, and it is wise to (re-)frame the topic as “culture (and economy) of sharing,” as the foreword does:

“The fundamental rules that govern how relationships work between organizations and stakeholders are being rewritten: computation, storage and communication capacity – the basic means necessary to produce information, knowledge and culture – are now in the hands of every connected person worldwide (30 per cent of the world’s population of seven billion people.) The result: a culture of sharing powered by ubiquitous access to information that empowers stakeholders and demands radical transparency.

Unfortunately, many business leaders remain flummoxed in the face of stakeholders empowered by new tools that once seemed unimaginable: blogs, Facebook and Twitter, to name a few. Make no mistake, as your stakeholders become more adept at using these tools, they will demand that you become more open about your activities, and that you engage them in conversations that matter. With one billion new middle-class consumers set to enter the global economy in the next decade, the more you understand the new culture of sharing, the better off you and your organization will be.“

Amongst other contributions, the Openness issue features articles from management guru and Rotman dean Roger Martin and Wikinomics author Don Tapscott, as well as interviews with Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group and author of Open Leadership, and Linus Torvalds, the godfather of Linux. (Full disclosure, it also includes an article I originally wrote for design mind, “Openness or How to Design for the Loss of Control”).

Only if you’re open, you can share and be shared with. And if you share, you shall receive the greatest benefit, the greatest gift of all – someone else sharing something with you: their knowledge, their networks, their passion, their ideas. It is worth noting that the TEDGlobal conference 2012 – committed to sharing “Ideas Worth Spreading” – in Edinburgh will be held under the theme Radical Openness: “The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and open. Radically open – manifesting itself in open borders, open culture, open-source, open data, open science, open world, open minds. With the loss of privacy that it implies, openness carries its own dangers. But it breeds transparency, authenticity, creativity, and collaboration.”

My company, frog, is embracing Openness, too. We share our thinking with more than 330,000 followers on Twitter; more than 60% of our employees engage on Yammer in conversations that range from water-cooler topics to crowdsourced insights research firms would kill for; and design mind, the outlet you’re reading, is an open forum for all of our employees to publish their thoughts. We also recently launched SpeedMe, our own ‘speed-dating’ activity, to faciliate the bonding between new hires and ‘old frogs.’ In the words of our NY-based Associate Creative Director Dino Sanchez: “frog has grown quite a bit over the past year and with all our busy schedules it’s been difficult to keep up with new hires. Creativity is something that hinges on critique and in some cases brutal honesty, so knowing your colleagues and being comfortable with them is essential to a productive process.” Openness needs to be designed for.

At a the recent i7 Innovation Summit near Paris, frog ran a session at the beginning of the conference where we asked the conference attendees to break out into pairs and interview each other based on a questionnaire that we had prepared. Questions spanned the professional (e.g. “When was the last time you fired someone?” or “What was your biggest failure with the greatest learning?”) and the more personal (“What is your favorite movie?” – “What was your biggest lie”? etc.). The pairs had to fill in the answers in poster-size sheets which were subsequently mounted to a huge wall in the lobby, as a sort of “physical Facebook.”

David Rowan, editor of Wired UK, ran a similar exercise at WPP Stream in Athens, and in both instances the exercises were true ice-breakers for the attendees, forcing them to experience the implications of Openness first-hand: How open do I want to be? At what point does Openness become uncomfortable? What do I consider private in public? How much do I have to give in order to receive? Rowan argued that this kind of interactive, public data-mining would benefit any gathering as social interactions are typically more valuable when they’re facilitated by even a basic level of familiarity and trust among strangers. (On a related note, I’ve begun lately to ask job candidates to fill out the Proust questionnaire. Sure, professional qualifications matter the most, but at the end of the day you want to know who the person is you hire because chances are you’ll spend more time with them than with your own family.)

Yet pretending that Openness is just like any other business initiative that you can plan and execute would be disingenuous. It is a massive cultural change and requires a whole new mindset. The real challenges await the advocates of Openness after the first glitch, when things, very openly, go awry, and the conservative minds quickly come out of the closet to stigmatize one-time errors as systematic flaws. With every failure of Openness, the power of those who prefer Control rises exponentially. There is no doubt about it – openness, true, radical openness, hurts. It makes you uncomfortable, vulnerable, weak, and deprives you of the subtleties that came with control – but the benefits are huge. Pick the moments of Openness carefully: they will be your worst enemies and your best friends.

Marketer sind die Feuilletonisten der Wirtschaft

The German Werteindex blog has published an interview with me (in two parts, in German) about values-based-based leadership and how marketers can act as “chief meaning officers” to fight the disentchantment of business.

Part 1

Herr Leberecht, Sie bezeichnen ein “meaning surplus”als grundlegend für zukünftige Markenloyalität. Und während sich unser gesamtes Wirtschaftssystem im Umbruch befindet, rufen sie gerade Marketer dazu auf, diesen Prozess des Wandeln federführend zu gestalten – als Interface zwischen Kunden und Unternehmen. Was ist das Neue an der Idee von “Meaning”? Inwiefern unterscheidet sich dieses Meaning von anderen emotionalen Markenbotschaften?

Ich sehe “Meaning” als ein vorgelagertes oder weitergreifendes Konzept. Emotionale Markenbotschaften sind Instrumente zur Verbreitung von Meaning. Aber die Botschaft ist nicht die Marke. Erfolgreiche emotionale Markenbotschaften berühren den Konsumenten nur dann, wenn der Markenkern für ihn von Bedeutung (“Meaning”) ist. Die unmittelbare Erfahrung der Marke kann (und sollte,  im Idealfall) emotional sein, aber der Markenkern – die Werte, die die Marke verkörpert und der Sinn, den sie stiftet – sind eher langfristiger und übergeordneter Natur. Die beiden Ebenen sind interdependent: Emotionale Momente in der Markenerfahrung verstärken die spirituelle Grundbindung an die Marke, und die bisweilen religiöse Bindung zur Marke (siehe Apple) manifestiert und festigt sich in emotionalen Marken-Momenten.

Aber das Neue am Meaning-Konzept ist nicht der Wertekatalog der Marke. Wirtschaft ist per definitionem kein wertefreier Raum (niemand wusste dies besser als der Moralphilosoph Adam Smith, der ja bezeichnenderweise vor Wealth of Nations eine moralphilosophische Schrift mit dem Title Theory of Moral Sentiments veröffentlichte). Schon immer haben Werte die Entscheidungen von Unternehmen und Organisationen geprägt: vom nach innen gewandten Arbeitsethos – wie arbeiten wir miteinander und behandeln wir unsere Mitarbeiter? – zum nach aussen gewandten moralischen Kodex – wie gehen wir mit unseren Stakeholdern um, und welche Werte liegen unseren Produkten und Dienstleistungen zugrunde? Seitdem zahlreiche Studien aufzeigten, dass Konsumenten “moralische” Marken bevorzugen, haben Unternehmen verinnerlicht, dass die Triple-Bottom-Line-Ausrichtung einen echten Wettbewerbsvorteil darstellt (“doing well by doing good”) und durch Modelle wie CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) und zuletzt Values-Based Management Werte externalisiert und ethisches Handeln zunehmend als strategischen Erfolgsfaktor in ihr operatives Geschäft integriert. Noch einen Schritt weiter geht der stark wachsende Bereich der Social Enterpreneurship: for-profit Firmen, deren Geschäftsmodell einzig und allein auf der Schaffung sozialen Mehrwerts basiert. Schon jetzt sind 10% aller europäischen Firmen Social Enterprises (mit insgesamt 11 Millionen Angestellten), und die Europäische Union hat gerade eine neue Social Business Policy erlassen, die diesen Sektor weiter stärken wird.

Was das Chief Meaning Officer-Konzept von all diesen Paradigmen unterscheidet, ist, dass es das Unternehmen – und hier Marketing als die treibende Kraft – als den Urheber von “Bedeutung” begreift, der aktiv Moral schafft, und zwar nicht nur als Grundlage und Checkpoint für die Moralität des Geschäftsgebarens, sondern als vorrangiges, philosophisches Ziel der gesamten Unternehmung, jenseits von CSR und Social Enterpreneurship: “The job of leadership today is not just to make money. It is to make meaning”, schreibt der US-Autor und Consultant John Hagel. Meaning ist nicht auf die soziale Verantwortung eines Unternehmens begrenzt, sondern reicht weiter und meint die Produktion von Bedeutung. Diese kann sich in einer intellektuellen, emotionalen, spirituellen oder ethischen Kategorie manifestieren, oder idealerweise in allen gleichzeitig. Unternehmen sind nicht nur ein moralischer Kompass für Konsumbürger und bieten Orientierung; Meaning Officers produzieren selber Moral und stiften Sinn. Sie setzen auf intrinsische Motivation und erweitern die Maslow’sche Pyramide um Meaning – um eine transzendente Erfahrung, die über materielle Bedürfnisse und die Selbstverwirklichung hinausgeht.

Wie können Meaning Officers das bewerkstelligen?

Dies kann durch umweltfreundliches Handeln geschehen, durch das Wahrnehmen von Verantwortung in der örtlichen Kommune oder die Achtung von Menschenrechten, aber eben auch durch individuelle Sinnstiftungen abseits der großen CSR-Themen, wie z.B. die Schaffung von kleinen Ritualen. Ein bisschen ist das wie Religion for Atheists, um den Titel des jüngst erschienenen Buches des britischen Philosophen Alain de Botton zu zitieren, der eine Art Gebrauchsanleitung zur praktischen Re-Spiritualisierung  unserer säkularisierten westlichen Gesellschaft verfasst hat. Chief Meaning Officers kämpfen gegen die “Entzauberung” der Wirtschaft, gegen die Diktatur von ROI und Excel-Tabellen, und gegen Marketing als objektive Wissenschaft. Sie bringen die Kultur zurück in die Technokratie, verbreiten Ambiguität und Geheimnis in einer weitgehend prozessbestimmten, zweckorientierten Arena, und schaffen Erfahrungen von Intimität und Exklusivität in aller Öffentlichkeit.

Diese neue Art von Leadership gewinnt an Bedeutung vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Ereignisse – von Lehmann Brothers zur Euro-Krise, dem Arabischen Frühling zu Occupy Wall Street. Wir erleben den Autoritäts- und Vertrauensverlust der traditionellen Institutionen und eine fundamentale Legitimitätserosion des Kapitalismus, und beides sind letztlich moralische Krisen. Konsumenten und Bürger erwarten mehr von der Wirtschaft, aber nicht nur im Sinne von praktizierter Umwelt- und Sozialverantwortung, von “guten” Produkten und moralischer Orientierung. Es geht um die Transformation von Wirtschaft an und für sich, um die ‘raison d’etre’ von Unternehmen, um die “Moral von der Geschichte”. Und da legen es die jüngsten politisch-ökonomischen Entwicklungen nahe, ein radikaleres Umdenken zu fordern. Was ist, wenn der Sinn des Wirtschaftens in der Sinnstiftung liegt? Oder aus der Marketing-Perspektive: Machen Marken nur dann Sinn, wenn sie Sinn machen? Der amerikanische Ökonom Robert C. Solomon argumentiert in seinem Buch A Better Way to Think About Business – How Values Become Virtues, dass das Marktsystem sich nicht durch Effizienz oder Profit rechtfertigen lässt, sondern nur dadurch, dass Menschen vor allem soziale und emotionale Wesen sind. Märkte bieten ihnen einen Mechanismus, eine “sympathetic community”, wie er das nennt, zum sozialen Austausch.

Wer in diesen Communities, diesen Netzwerken, florieren will, muss eine eigene, identifizierbare Kultur pflegen und jede Menge Sozialkapital mit einbringen. Marketing – ganz im Sinne des in jeglicher Hinsicht prophetischen Cluetrain Manifestos von 2001 – ist daher immer eine kulturelle Leistung, ein Diskurs. Chief Meaning Officers sind die Feuilletonisten der Wirtschaft. Sie schaffen die Soft Power, die den langfristigen Erfolg des Unternehmens gewährleistet. Das mag sich in der Tat “soft” anhören, aber in der Network Economy, mit ihrer zunehmenden Komplexität von Beziehungsgeflechten zwischen Konsumenten, Produzenten, Konkurrenten und Partnern, sind Sozialkapital und soziale Intelligenz zu entscheidenden Erfolgskriterien geworden.

Inwiefern sind auch Werbe- und Kommunikationsagenturen gefordert, “Meaning Agencies” zu werden? Was machen Agenturen heute schon richtig? Was machen die meisten noch immer falsch?

Viele machen vieles richtig. Die Branche ist viel smarter als ihr Ruf, und vordergründige pseudo-soziale Kampagnen wie Pepsi’s Refresh Project sind eher seltene Ausrutscher. Wie Wieden + Kennedy für Nike authentische Sub-Kulturen begriffen und behauptet hat, verdient höchste Anerkennung. Toll ist auch die Dachis Group, die den Begriff des Social Business konsequent auf alle Bereiche des Unternehmens augedehnt und eine einflussreiche Plattform aufgebaut hat, die unter anderem den Social Business Index und zahlreiche wegweisende Veröffentlichungen beinhaltet. Oder die Ads Worth Spreading Kampagne von TED (“ads so good you choose to watch!”).

Werbe – und Kommunikationsagenturen sind, glaube ich, insgesamt einen Schritt voraus und haben “Meaning Production” schon lange zu ihrer Domäne gemacht. Allerdings bleiben Agenturen aufgrund ihres beschränkten Einflusses letztlich nur Impulsgeber; die Hauptverantwortung liegt bei den Inhouse Marketing Departments – und die tun sich schwer, von traditionellen Marketing-Konventionen abzurücken, weil in der Konzernzentrale oft der Mut zum innovativen “meaningful marketing” fehlt und ihnen daher das Mandat zum umfassenden Change Management versagt bleibt.

Wo sind die größten Hemmschwellen auf dem Weg zum “Chief Meaning Officer“?

Die größten Hürden für den Meaning Officer sind jedenfalls intern. Da stoßen Meaning Officer naturgemäß auf jede Menge Skepsis, und es ist nicht immer einfach, den Zynismus der eigenen Mitarbeiter, die Kluft zwischen den Glaubensbekenntnissen der Geschäftsleitung und der tatsächlichen Kultur des Unternehmens, zu überwinden. Ein Bekenntnis zum Anderssein, kreative Risikofreudigkeit, der Mut zu sozialem Marketing und der Drang zum Experimentieren sind die Charakteristika des Chief Meaning Officers. Wie Marketing-Guru Seth Godin so schön treffend formuliert: ‚Wer sich nicht der Gefahr aussetzt, wegen seiner Idee gefeuert zu werden, dessen Idee ist nicht wirklich originell.‘ Ich weiß, das ist leichter gesagt als getan, aber Marketer müssen endlich aus der Defensive heraus und selbstbewusster ihre Philosophie vertreten – und anstelle des ständigen Nachweises des Wertes von Marketing neue Werte definieren, einfordern und schaffen.

Part 2

Herr Leberecht, Sie fordern Unternehmen auf, mehr meaning zu produzieren statt neuer Produkte. Den Marketer sehen Sie als zentrales Interface zwischen Kunden und Unternehmen, der den Prozess der meaning production führt.

 Haben Marketer überhaupt ausreichend Einfluss auf die Praxis ihrer Unternehmen in Bereichen außerhalb der Marketing-Abteilung?

Die Irrelevanz-Falle ist allgegenwärtig, aber inwieweit man reintappt hängt vom Selbstverständnis des Marketers ab. Marketing wird ja oft fälschlicherweise als Cost Center gebrandmarkt, als Luxus-Funktion für gute Zeiten, dabei ist es ein kritischer Erfolgsfaktor (wir wissen von zahlreichen Studien, dass der Erfolg oder das Scheitern von Unternehmen stark vom Marketing abhängt) und im Idealfall eine der wenigen Funktionen, die eine ganzheitliche Sicht auf das Unternehmen haben. Das sollten sich Marketers zu nutze machen. Sie sollten Beziehungen aufbauen zu anderen Funktionen und auf (Marken)Kontrolle verzichten, um somit mehr Einfluss auszuüben.

Das einflussreichste Marketing ist Marketing ohne Marketing: Marketing, das sich mehr als ein Netzwerk versteht als eine Funktion. Ich sage meinem Team immer, dass wir unser Ziel nicht erreicht haben, wenn unsere Funktion unternehmensweit an Macht gewinnt, sondern wenn das ganze Unternehmen zur Marketingorganisation geworden ist und wie ein Marketer denkt und fühlt.

Was zeichnet Unternehmen aus, in denen Marketer erfolgreich ganzheitlich gestalten können?

Erfolgreiche CMOs wie Beth Comstock bei GE sind für Geschäftsfeldbestimmung, Produktentwicklung und strategische Wachstumsinitiativen verantwortlich, in enger Zusammenarbeit mit den Business Units. Wie es Comstock vorgemacht hat, sollte Marketing nahe beim Kunden sein, eine langfristige Sicht einnehmen (und sich darin deutlich von Vertrieb/Sales unterscheiden) und als ein Change Agent agieren. Dies trifft insbesondere auf den Bereich Digitale Transformation zu: Ein jüngste Studie von Cap Gemini/MIT besagt, das zwei Drittel aller globalen Konzerne mit der Transformation zum digitalen Unternehmen erhebliche Schwierigkeiten haben. Das Thema Enterprise 2.0 – also der Einzug sozialer Medien in den IT-Mainstream und die Auswirkungen sozialer Technologien im allgemeinen – bereiten Chef-Etagen erhebliche Kopfzerbrechen. Wie Business zu Social Business wird, und nicht nur im Sinne von Social Responsibility, sondern viel weitreichender, im Sinne einer kompletten Neu-Definierung von Wertschöpfung – durch Ko-Kreation mit dem Kunden, Crowdsourcing, radikale Transparenz, usw. – diesen Wandel können Marketer als Meaning Officers entscheidend mit antreiben.

Unterliegen nicht auch Werte und Sinnstiftungen der Gefahr, austauschbar zu werden? Z. B. Umweltbewusstsein ist schon längst kein USP mehr. Welche kritischen Erfolgsfaktoren gibt es ist in der Positionierung von Werten und “Meaning” zu beachten?

Meaning hat kein Verfallsdatum. Die Produktion von Bedeutung kann nicht austauschbar werden, weil sie eigentlich immer austauschbar ist. Es ist ein Template. Mit anderen Worten: Was zählt, ist die Erfahrung, der Moment des Sinnstiftens an sich, das “Unterschiedmachen”. Mit welchen Werten und Ideen das im einzelnen geschieht, sollte jedes Unternehmen für sich entscheiden. Apple steht für die Humanisierung von Technologie, IBM für die globalisierte Nutzung von Technologie im Dienste eines “Smart Planets”, Coca-Cola für Happiness und so weiter. Marken müssen ihre These finden und dann jene Argumente im kollektiven Bewusstsein verorten, die ihnen recht geben.

Aber über diese allgemeinen Markenassoziationen hinaus: Wie produziert man Bedeutung? Was macht Bedeutung aus?  Vereinfacht gesagt, sind das, denke ich, vier Komponenten: Disruption, Seltenheit, Soziabilität und Transzendenz. Disruption bedeutet die Abweichung von der Routine, die Verletzung einer „mental map“, eines standardisierten kognitiven Modells. Zum Beispiel: Das iPhone stellte die mental maps von Computer und Telefon in Frage und verband beide zu etwas Ungesehenem, einer neuen Kategorie, die eine „dritte Bedeutung“ schuf.

Sehgewohnheiten und kognitive Muster brechen – so funktioniert Werbung. Meaning braucht daher noch weitere Dimensionen. Nehmen Sie das Beispiel der deutschen Nationalmannschaft: Hört sich trivial an, aber was würde den EM-Sieg des Teams bedeutungsvoll machen? Nun, zum einen, Seltenheit. Die deutsche Elf hat schon seit 1990 keinen internationales Turnier mehr gewonnen. Meaning ist umgekehrt proportional zum Auftreten von bedeutenden Ereignissen.

Und der Seltenheitswert eines Ereignisses potenziert sich, wenn er teilbar wird, d.h. ein soziales Moment hat. Dies kann auf vier Arten geschehen: durch die Möglichkeit, an Bedeutung teilzuhaben und sie aktiv mitzugestalten; durch das Teilen einer bedeutenden Erfahrung mit anderen (Bedeutung entsteht immer im Austausch mit anderen, ist ein soziales Phänomen – siehe „Fanmeile“); durch Großzügigkeit (wenn man mehr gibt als nimmt, entsteht ein Bedeutungsexzess, ein “meaning surplus”); und durch den sozialen Mehrwert, den Beitrag zur Gesellschaft, zum allgemeinen Wohl oder dem von benachteiligten sozialen Gruppierungen.

Letzteres führt zum Kriterium der Transzendenz: Es kann ein gesellschaftliches Ziel sein, das das individuelle Ereignis überhöht, eine Ideologie, oder eine abstrakte, universale Wahrheit. Bedeutende Erlebnisse deuten immer auf eine übergreifende Vision, eine „dritte Bedeutung” hin. Sie stehen nie nur für sich selbst. Warum wird eine Fussball-WM zum “Sommermärchen” und ein Team zum „Weltmeister der Herzen“? Das ist ja kein reiner PR-Spin, sondern eine echte emotionale Bewegung. Das konnte man auch bei Steve Jobs Tod sehen, als die kollektive Trauer fast schon ekstatische Züge annahm, oder in Obamas vieldiskutierter Präsidentschaftskampagne von 2008, in der sich Hunderttausende von jungen Amerikanern engagierten, weil sie von der Vision von “Hope” – von der Machbarkeit echten Wandels – inspiriert waren. Oder zuletzt Occupy Wall Street. Es gibt einfach diese Momente, die eine tiefe innere Wahrheit in uns bloßlegen.

Chief Meaning Officers behalten alle diese Faktoren – Disruption, Seltenheit, Soziabilität und Transzendenz – bei ihren Aktivitäten immer im Auge. Aber ein fünfter fehlt noch: Echtheit. Nur wenn die Intentionen des Unternehmens ehrlich sind, wird die Authentizität der Marke fühlbar. Ansonsten ist Meaning bedeutungslos.

Wie passt die Entwicklung zu mehr Meaning zur ansonsten ebenso immer öfter hörbaren Forderung nach mehr Meßbarkeit und effektiven ROI?

Zunächst einmal: Ich schenke der geläufigen Formel, dass man nur das managen kann, was man messen kann, keinen Glauben. Im Gegenteil: Die besten Manager sind Experten im Managen des Nicht-Messbaren. Um es noch etwas mehr zuzuspitzen: ROI ist eine Schimäre und in der Regel ein Alibi, um Chefs zufriedenzustellen. Wer keine Ideen und keine Vision hat, der hat eben Zahlen. Verstehen Sie mich nicht falsch, ich bin nicht grundsätzlich gegen die Quantifizierung der Wirkung von Marketing-Programmen. Aber nur, wenn man im Hinterkopf behält, dass diese Zahlen immer nur eine Annäherung dastellen, eine Interpretation, aber niemals eine objektive Wahrheit. Der ROI bleibt zwangsläufig oft “intangible” (Anm. d. Red.: immateriell). Wobei selbst der Sprachgebrauch zweifelhaft ist. Dass die vermeintlichen “tangible assets” (Anm. d. Red.: materielle Vermögenswerte) unter Umständen wesentlich volatiler sind als die “intangibles” hat die jüngste Finanzkrise ja nachdrücklich bewiesen. (Sie hat uns auch daran erinnert, dass ein Grossteil der Buchhaltungswerte eines Unternehmens sich als vollkommen virtuell herausstellen kann.)

Das schöne deutsche Wort der “Wertschätzung” wird immer noch unterschätzt im Vergleich zu den sogenannten “harten” Metrics wie Leads, Funnel Contribution oder Revenue Contribution. Goodwill, Reputation, Customer Lifetime Value (der Wert eines einzelnen Kunden über den gesamten Zeitraum der Kundenbeziehung), soziales Kapital oder “organizational capital” (wie es der US-Finanztheoretiker Baruch Lev nennt) – diese Werte sind meiner Meinung nach wesentlich aussagekräftiger, wenn auch ebenso schwer präzise zu messen.

Hinzu kommt, dass die meisten ROI Messungen meist kurzfristig gedacht und allein auf das Quartalsergebnis oder die unmittelbare Wirkung von Marketingaktivitäten bezogen sind. Aber das Quartal (und wie überhaupt der gesamte übliche Budgetrahmen von einem Jahr) sind recht willkürliche Planungseinheiten, die nur selten mit der Realität eines Unternehmens übereinstimmen. Der Markt steht niemals still, Kunden denken und handeln in unterschiedlichen zeitlichen Perspektiven, und die Investition in Marken, in die Beziehung zu Kunden, in intellektuelle und emotionale Erfahrungen, lässt sich nur schwer formal erfassen. Jeder Marketer, der erklärt, genau zu wissen, mit welchem Effekt er wo investiert, lügt. Der ROI von Marketing ist letztlich immer eine Scheinkalkulation.

Und dennoch machen die meisten Marketingleute das Spiel mit – weil sie durch die Machtkonventionen in ihren Unternehmen dazu gezwungen werden und glauben, sonst ihr Mitspracherecht bei strategischen Entscheidungen zu verlieren. Wer Zahlen hat, gewinnt.

Ich bin mir sicher, dass viele Marketingabteilungen 50% ihrer Zeit damit verbringen, ihre Programme zu evaluieren und ROI Reports für das Management-Team zu erstellen. Stellen Sie sich vor, wie viel mehr sie erreichen würden, wenn sie auch nur die Hälfte dieser Zeit nicht für Reporting, sondern für kreative Marketing-Aktivitäten aufbrächten! Wie viel mehr Bedeutung könnten sie produzieren, wie viel neue Kunden könnten sie schaffen und wie viele existierende Kundenbeziehungen stärken? Ich kenne viele Kollegen, die gezwungen werden, detaillierte ROI Analysen zu erstellen, bevor sie überhaupt Geld ausgeben können – aber dann ist es meistens schon zu spät. Im Zeitalter des Social Web hat das Marketing keine Zeit mehr für ausgiebige Planung – alles was passiert, passiert jetzt. Just do it! Der Marketing-Mix ändert sich jeden Tag. Das einzig konstante sind Experimente – und die Werte, die sich in langfristigen Beziehungen zu Kunden und Öffentlichkeit ausdrücken.

Ein letzter Gedanke noch: Trotz des ganzen Hypes um Big Data und die totale, Echtzeit-nahe Erfassung und Analyse von Kundendaten, sollte man nicht vergessen, dass Daten immer nur reaktives Verhalten ermöglichen; selbst die datenbasierte Zukunftsplanung ist eine Reaktion. Statt auf Big Data setze ich auf Big Intuition! Wer wirklich innovativ sein will und etwas verändern will, vertraut seiner Intuition. Die ist nämlich schneller als alle Daten. Paradoxerweise gilt in der Wissensgesellschaft: Intuition sticht Wissen aus. Chief Meaning Officers wissen das. Sie erahnen Trends, bevor diese messbar werden, vertrauen ihrem (Mit)Gefühl und machen somit den Unterschied aus, der dann in ein echtes Differenzierungsmerkmal mündet. Wer nur Daten analysiert, ahmt das Bestehende nach. Wer selbstbewusst genug ist, um Daten zu ignorieren, kann Verhalten beeinflussen und tatsächlich etwas Neues schaffen. Henry Ford hatte Recht: ‚Wenn ich auf meine Kunden gehört hätte, hätte ich schnellere Pferde produziert‘. Daten helfen uns zu verstehen, wie die Welt ist; Innovatoren und Visionäre aber (und Chief Meaning Officers sind beides!) sehen die Welt, wie sie nicht ist.

 

Bridging the Values Gap

[This post also appeeared on the Forumblog of the World Economic Forum]

The current economic crisis presents an opportunity to realign our collective moral compass. First, by understanding the values that underlie our economies. Second, by reconciling the agendas of business with the true needs of individuals.

Clearly, the bond between society and business is broken, and the legitimacy of companies is at a new low point. Movements such as Occupy Wall Street express a growing indignation over the disconnect between the perks for a few and the rights of many. When Harvard undergraduate students stage a walkout of an Economics 101 class in sympathy with the Occupy movement to protest the ‘corporatization’ of education, it might indeed indicate the beginning of a “New Progressive Movement.” It is not just the redistribution of wealth that’s being scrutinized, however. What citizens, in the U.S. and elsewhere, demand are new, more collaborative and inclusive models of value creation that produce meaning as much as profits.

Many leading business thinkers, from Gary Hamel to Michael Porter are listening to this groundswell. Beyond conventional concepts of corporate social responsibility, the discourse has shifted to more fundamental questions that prompt us to rethink the very gestalt of the enterprise. Hamel proclaims the “reinvention of management” to make our organizations more human-oriented, Porter promotes the concept of “Shared Value,” and Umair Haque heralds the “Meaning Organization.” Rosabeth Moss Kanter, in a signature piece for a special issue of the Harvard Business Review on the ‘Good Company,’ makes the case for the enterprise as a “social institution” that thrives on a shared social purpose, a long-term view, emotional engagement of all stakeholders, community-building, innovation, and self-organization. In a similar vein, but at the macro-level, the economist Robert C. Solomon, in his book A Better Way to Think About Business – How Values Become Virtues, asserts that “Market systems are justified not because of efficiencies and profits, but because humans are first and foremost social and emotional beings, and markets provide a sympathetic community for social exchange.”

And yet, the reality in many companies today is that there appears to be a gap between the articulation of lofty principles and their application, despite all the talk about purpose, social power, emotional engagement, and community-building. A 2010 survey by Deloitte showed that nearly half of the workers polled who plan to seek out a new job say they have been motivated by a loss of trust in their employer. Startlingly, 46 percent of those surveyed reported a lack of transparency in their current company’s internal communications. Forty percent said they have been treated unethically by their employer.

It is important to understand the Values Gap, which manifests itself in several ways: First of all, the high-level frameworks designed to support shared values at the corporate level (e.g. the Codes of Conduct crafted by most Fortune 500 companies) often fall short of being meaningful at the individual level. A recent study conducted by the Boston Research Group, surveying thousands of U.S. professionals across industries and hierarchy levels, found that 43% of them described their company culture as “based on command-and-control, top-down management, or leadership by coercion,” and 54% as top-down, but with “skilled leadership, lots of rules, and a mix of carrots and sticks.” Only a modest 3% believed their firm to have a culture of “self-governance,” in which everyone is guided by a “set of core principles and values that inspire everyone to align around a company’s mission.”

But even if employees genuinely buy into the values of their company, self-governance remains challenging, since well-articulated and generally supported principles—from transparency to corporate social responsibility—are hard to translate into day-to-day individual decision-making. The ‘netizens,’ or the digital generation of Millenials, in particular, are keen on doing ‘good business,’ but may be at odds with their managers, making it harder to practice universal moral principles in the workplace. A 2010 IBM study, for instance, found that young people born after 1980 found were 35 percent more likely than CEOs to include sustainability in their lists of top three leadership qualities.

The good news is that the pervasiveness of social networks and micro-blogs, ubiquitous computing, and smart devices present a new opportunity to drive adoption of values-centered management. The transparency and reciprocity inherent in these social technologies have created new, innovative models of ‘prosumption’ (the consumer as producer) that can not only engage business professionals in a dialogue on values but also provide them with practical tools to make more values-based decisions every day. These tools can be software apps and services that take advantage of network effects, instant feedback, and peer pressure, as well as insights from behavioral economics and gaming to design compelling interactions and user experiences.

Think of a mobile app that uses real-time peer feedback from social networks to help business professionals resolve ethical dilemmas; an online portal serving as a repository of case studies tailored to users’ respective business context; a web-based Happiness Index that measures the happiness and well-being of employees on a regular basis; a data visualization tool that illustrates the unintended consequences or the externalities of decisions at a global level; an augmented reality app that maps out and archives decision-making paths; a web service that personalizes a company’s Code of Conduct, etc. If we can make the moral economy tangible for users, we can make it real.

Lastly, the most acute and possibly widening gap is between individuals and governmental institutions. People—and not only young people who grew up online—are adapting quickly to social technologies; think of Facebook’s population, at more than 800 million to date, nearly triple that of the U.S. and rapidly approaching those of India or China. In a hyper-connected, trans-national world, people move faster than institutions, as we have witnessed in the Arab Spring and experience on the Social Web every day. Social power evolves into movements long before institutions decide where they want to move, and in the lack of action, activism is born.

The new social movements may be leaderless and have multiple and even conflicting agendas (see Occupy Wall Street) but it doesn’t matter when the platform is the medium and social technology-enabled collective action, bottom-up, is driving radical, immediate change that can be aligned with a more succinct purpose later. The point at which agency becomes more important than agenda is the very point at which social power becomes stronger than institutional authority. This is a true leveling of the playing-field. As economist Bernard Lietaer pointed out in a recent talk at the Poptech conference: “In the information age, every country is developing. There are some who realize that and some who don’t.”

Those who do, trust the power of social technologies, the principles of self-governance, and the passions of entrepreneurs and other change-makers to restore trust in business and create the social capital we need for a new social covenant. Only if we move from a merely transactional to an interactional concept of business, will our economies produce the morale we need to live in connected, happy, and sustainable societies, and the Values Gap will come closer to closing.

[image credit: Adbusters]

The Smartest Brands Embrace Paradox

Delighted that Wired Uk ran my article below in their November issue:

The Connected Age has arrived. A world connected through ubiquitous, real-time and social computing, with soon close to 100 billion devices on the Internet of Things. Products and services are increasingly multifunctional, multilayered and linked to ecosystems of surrounding products, applications and services. Everything is getting smarter by becoming highly connected and instantly adaptable. What does this mean for branding, which has traditionally sought to create a carefully crafted, durable image? How can brands become more connected and flexible? What are the attributes of a smart brand?

To answer that requires debunking some of marketing's most cherished beliefs. First: the need for a tightly controlled overarching strategy. It is fine to have a strategy, as long as you can modify it -- even give it up. The smart brand develops superflexible strategies. Changing its marketing mix every day, it operates like a modern software organisation that has replaced linear, static planning with agile, decentralised methods that can be readily upgraded. Zara, the Spanish clothing chain, uses in-store customer feedback to adapt instantly its line of clothes.

The smart brand is open and adept at managing the loss of control. Instead of trying to do everything in-house, it works with others (including other brands), identifying and activating connections that are mutually valuable. Case in point: Lady Gaga, who straddles multiple industries (fashion, tech, music), partnered with other connectors such as Google, Facebook, Zynga and Starbucks for her latest album release. Or take conference network TED, which open-sourced its exclusive brand by launching the TEDx franchise. The more control it gave up, the more influence it gained. The value of a smart brand is not measured by how much uncertainty it can eliminate, but how much uncertainty it can tolerate.

This challenges the second cornerstone of marketers: consistency. Marketers assert that consumer trust is earned by predictable behaviour. But they are confusing substance with form. Yes, brands need principles -- but rather than always exhibiting the same look and feel, the smart brand looks and feels different all the time, while staying true to its underlying values. The smart brand is skilled at detecting behavioural cues. It can identify and easily join conversations, and, through its behaviour, recognise, activate and move networks. The smart brand is multipolar, with several centres of gravity. Guerrilla-like, it stays unpredictable and intersperses its public persona with seemingly random acts that make it human: Interflora, for instance, monitored Twitter to identify users who needed cheering up and then sent them a surprise bouquet of flowers.

The third big marketing myth is that data leads to knowledge, which leads to power. Paradoxically, the Connected Age pits Big Intuition against Big Data. With markets as conversations and social media as the über-conversation, the smart brand pursues what Sherry Turkle calls "distributed presence": using a multichannel, always-on strategy to be in the right place at the right time. In the connected world, with its rapidly growing complexity, power comes from knowledge that is situational.

The smart brand remains ephemeral because it understands that, despite the deluge of aggregated and personal data at its disposal, it is more about sensing than hard knowledge, more art than science. Hyper-connected, hyper-social, distributed and omnipresent, the smart brand anticipates desires, senses mood shifts, preempts knowledge, and quickly directs attention to significant market events and conversations -- because whenever something happens or is being talked about, the smart brand is already there.

The Opposite House

Otherness and other pillars of a new moral economy

“So, what is the reason for your existence?” the German professor at a Chinese business school reception in Shanghai asked me, to start a conversation. I felt like ad man Don Draper in the TV series Mad Men when his false identity is unveiled. Who are you really? Caught off guard, I answered: “I’m a marketer.” The conversation moved on, others had wittier sound bites to contribute, and my unease continued. It had been weighing on me since I had put my foot on Chinese soil a few days earlier, and here in this beautiful mansion, confiscated by the government from the corrupt former mayor of Shanghai, it was a steady companion.

You may think that the homogenized cosmopolitan settings of the tier one cities Beijing and Shanghai would seem familiar and comforting to a seasoned Western business traveler like me, but this time the glitzy, uber-capitalist façade did not alleviate my profound sense of dislocation and alienation. I was a stranger and everything was strange to me. This sentiment was exacerbated when I checked into the Opposite House, a chic designer hotel in Beijing’s Sanlitun village district that literally comprises of two opposing halves, each housing generous rooms, connected through a vast space underneath, which is used as both art gallery and lobby. Designed by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma and catering to the ‘global soul,’ it was meant to make you feel at home in an open, accessible space of kindness, but it did the opposite to me. It manifested the Otherness of my being here, in the heart of this strange city, with other strangers, who, like me, probably had no clue and so, like me, just marveled at the strangeness of it all.

It occurred to me that the Opposite House was a metaphor for some of the issues I had been pondering for the past few months. “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, and while his words were infinitely wise, I thought that a more intelligent mind than mine may very well hold the two opposites, in Beijing or anywhere, but perhaps even the most intelligent mind would not necessarily be happy in doing so. It’s hard to be happy if you are denied a happy ending, and it’s an unpleasant, arduous task to withstand the temptation to reconcile dual or multiple truths. We are hardwired to believe – and to believe in one truth.

Having just worked through the intricacies of integrating a marketing function and harmonizing two brands (and very different business cultures), I know how exhausting it can be when there is always ‘the other side of the story.’ This ‘other side’ can be the externalization of effects (responsibility), or it can mean putting yourself in someone else’s shoes (empathy). What the other side rarely appreciates is how hard you have worked to be on yours, and how much effort it has been for you to truly believe in it. Whatever it takes then to make you switch sides (or at least recognize the opposite one), it must include some kind of reimbursement for the intellectual and emotional work that went into asserting and upholding your one truth. The grass may or may not be greener on the other side of the fence – the path there, the ‘empathy dividend,’ better be worthwhile. This is true for conflict management at the individual, institutional, societal, and international level: Israel and the Arab world, Shiites and Sunni, Pakistan and India, China and the US, North and South Korea, Occupy Wall Street versus the 1%, and the list goes on – the world is conveniently framed by antagonisms, by dualities that stubbornly resist both reconciliation and the parallel truths that Fitzgerald heralded.

China resolves dualities by grasping Yin and Yang as complementary, interconnected forces, and its defiance of dichotomous moral judgments is not always easy to accept for the Western mind. Henry Kissinger’s views On China are a notable exception to the many books (e.g. Martin Jacques’ When China Rules the World and James Kynge’s China Shakes the World) that have recently examined how an ascendant and increasingly confident China could affect the rest of us. Kissinger seeks to understand China’s place in the world from the conditions of China’s complicated history and rich culture, not through the lens of Western morale. Kissinger does not portray China as hegemonial power but as an introverted nation that aims at protecting its ideal of a ‘harmonious society’ by making calculated offensive moves. He compares them to the Chinese board game Weiqi where the onus is on strategic encirclement rather than the black and white of absolute victory or defeat. Morality, essentially, deals with the question of how we treat the Other – the one who is not identical with us. Empathy, or even sympathy, is its foundation. With respect to China, this raises the question: To what extent can you leave your comfort zone, your moral center of gravity, to understand the Other before your absolute truth becomes relative, your ethical behavior situational, and your moral compass rudderless?

Moreover, a concept of morality based on Otherness presumes the Cartesian continuum of Ego and Self. But what if the line between Self and Other is fuzzy? In his writings, the British moral philosopher Derek Parfit (who became famous through his teleporter thought experiment and was recently portrayed in this stunning New Yorker article) rejects the integrity of personal identity and instead proposes a reductionist view of human life that renders the Kantian concept of the Self’s moral autonomy obsolete. If parts of your brain cells were to be transplanted into another body, he wonders, what would that do to yours and the other body’s personal identity? Who would be you? Parfit claims there would be two Selves (or none). Consequently, morality, in his view, is meta-personal and non-relational, and can only be derived from universal truths. To him, the loss of the concept of a separate Self is liberating, which puts him him in close proximity to Buddhists, who identify and recognize themselves in the Other:

“My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness... [However] When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.” [Derek Parfit]

Sam Harris’ latest book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values covers reductionist terrain as well, albeit from a very different vantage point. Harris seeks to constitute moral relevance from the alleged objectivity of scientific findings. But do we really want to entrust science all of our moral decisions? Science is not an authority on morality; it is its very subject. The moral landscape is not as flat as Harris wants us to believe. Or to riff on William Gibson: “Morality is here, it is just not very evenly distributed.”

Steven Pinker, in his recent book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, argues that the spread of literacy led to a “circle of empathy,” propelled by many rights movements of 20th century that brandished immoral behavior as anti-social and by doing so accomplished to largely ban it from Western societies. If you look at the Occupy Wall Street movement – as nascent as it may appear – one wonders if we may see a similar social norm-shifting phenomenon emerge in the corporate world. Writer and Techonomy conference curator David Kirkpatrick wrote a poignant piece on how the new social power we witnessed in the Arab Spring may lead to a corporate revolution, and indeed one may wonder: Will the American Fall usher in the demise of the corporation as we know it?

Trade is an arbiter of peace, as Pinker argues. Collaboration and inclusion produce morale, an effect that is amplified by the tremendous amount of social capital generated by social media and in particular through the principle of reciprocity at work on social networking sites. Facebook, through this lens, can be viewed as the biggest morale producer of our times, not in the sense of giving to charities or supporting causes one click at a time – the so-often-derided ‘clicktivism’ – but through rich interactions and an appreciation and experience of Otherness that is made possible through the voyeurism emanating from the transparency of individual behaviors at public display.

On the other hand, hyper-connectivity may yield the opposite effect: When everything and everyone is connected all the time, will the individual moral Self be neutralized by a seamless collective that absorbs Otherness into Sameness? In this vein, Eli Pariser argues that the Social Web is a self-selecting Filter Bubble, and that rather than experiencing the Other, we’re just experiencing an increasingly narrow projection of ourselves, so that our social graph, based on our web history of purchases, clicks, friends, and likes, will ultimately become congruent with the social universe of One. Then our lives and the lives of others will be identical, and even with our identity spread beyond our Selves, it will not occur in the way Parfit envisioned it.

This debate on the Other is the main debate we ought to have in light of the crisis of our economies. A ‘moral economy’ puts the Other at the center of all its activities, and if it truly does, it will no longer need the qualifier ‘moral.’ However, our largely secularized and rationalized economy is struggling to restore its moral and spiritual acumen (see Umair Haque’s musings on The Meaning Organization and my own piece on the Chief Meaning Officer), and simply borrowing best practices from religion as proposed by Alain de Botton’s “Atheism 2.0” (see a good rebuttal here) won’t suffice when what we are really lacking is not a practical “god-free” tool kit but an idealistic and spiritual vision, a social contract that is meaningful at the personal level. Economist Robert C. Solomon described it aptly: “Markets systems are justified not because of efficiencies and profits but because humans are first and foremost social and emotional beings, and markets provide a sympathetic community for social exchange.” Consequently, Brad McLane, in a recent Huffington Post article, makes the case for the role of a “Chief Community Officer,” a leader who can reconcile individual interests with the satisfaction of trusted cooperation (research has shown that trust and trustworthiness produce oxytocin, the “hormone of love”).

Embracing Otherness has been the foundation for business since its inception – business serves the Other, as in the customer, or the stakeholders of today and tomorrow (future generations), but it has gained new relevance. Another, perhaps more important side to it is innovation. Otherness is the very source of innovation. The deviation from the normal, the conventional, and the routine is how new and different ideas are born – ideas that change the world for the better, which at the end of the day is the entrepreneur’s fundamental moral obligation. This is the legacy of Steve Jobs and other “fools” who “saw the world as it is not” – and changed it.

The new moral leadership starts with business school education. Harvard Business School professor Rakesh Khurana therefore asks for a “reprofessionalization of the manager,” so that he can overcome the self-interest-driven homo economicus, the self-inflicted Machiavellian mechanisms of competition and short-term gain, and instead focus again on his true task – to build and nurture long-term cooperative relationships that allow an economy, a plurality of interactions and transactions between trusted and trusting Others guided by shared values, to thrive.

Back to the initial question: what justifies my existence? As a marketer, it is my responsibility to understand the Others and connect them through many parallel truths – even if it’s just for a moment, a flickering desire, a shared passion and experience, or a common purpose. I am an engineer of trust, and I enjoy communicating for the very act of communicating. I can create and cultivate “sympathetic communities” that rely on “woven interactions” rather than “vector communications.” In the best case, I can help build a house of opposites on the basis of the social capital and goodwill generated by meaningful brands that serve as moral stewards, embrace paradox, and balance the dialectic forces of competition and cooperation, codified behavior and open-ended innovation. I am not here to generate impressions; I am here to reward attention with lasting value.

(c) picture by Coolhunting

Fake Christo?

Does faking the fake make it real? [Hong Kong, September 17, 2011]