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NPR and frog design Host Digital Think-In to Explore Future of Public Radio

"NPR is a brand to die for," as a colleague of mine said. Enjoying the authority of a well-established public media vanguard with a broad and extremely loyal listenership, it has also managed to become an agile innovator that is embracing (and even pioneering) the new rules of the digital era of broadcasting. NPR's social media footprint is constantly widening, its API much acclaimed, and its recent iPhone app has already surpassed that of the New York Times and other news outlets in terms of popularity.

It is thus not surprising (but still absolutely commendable) that NPR is experimenting with further opening its brand and in fact holding a full-blown digital strategy session in the public limelight, as it did this Friday with the NPR Digital Think In in San Francisco. I was priviliged to be involved in the planning and organization of the event, on behalf of my employer, frog design, which co-hosted the event. We facilitated the workshop sessions, provided our studio facilities, and also helped NPR connect with key thought leaders from the Bay Area tech and design communities.

The Digital Think In brought together 60 thought leaders at the intersection of media and technology to explore new approaches to content creation, distribution, and funding for NPR and NPR member stations. Hosted by NPR CEO and President Vivian Schiller and Digital Media SVP and General Manager Kinsey Wilson, the Think In harnessed the collective expertise and creativity of an exceptional group of entrepreneurs, executives, and innovators. Participants included leaders at the leading edge of technology and media innovation from academia, venture capital, internet design, public media, social media, and research. Notable participants contributing to the day-long brainstorm included: Craig Newmark, Founder of craigslist; Reid Hoffman, Chairman and co-Founder of LinkedIn; Roger McNamee, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Elevation Partners; Chris Beard, Chief Innovation Officer of Mozilla; Krishna Bharat, Principal Scientist and creator of Google News; and Sue Gardner, Executive Director of Wikimedia Foundation, among many others.

Here's how NPR's Kinsey Wilson framed their mission:

"Historic changes in technology and the rapid growth in digital media have had a profoundly disruptive effect on journalism, calling into question the news media's ability to fulfill its time-honored function as civic watchdog. Hardly a week goes by that we don’t hear of yet another major news organization cutting staff, curtailing coverage or closing its doors. As traditional news organizations struggle to adapt, new, non-traditional outlets are beginning to take their place. As a not-for-profit with a distinct business model, National Public Radio has benefited from the disruption and seen its audience grow. Americans now spend more time with NPR than any other news source. But it's hardly immune from the technological challenges of the era. And it's clear that the rise of digital media will ultimately disrupt NPR's business model as well. NPR has responded by recruiting digital leaders to serve the top of the organization, embarking on an unprecedented staff training program and overhauling its digital media strategy. It is poised to take further steps to ensure it remains a vital source of news on every platform."

The Digital Think In explored five main topics that are significant to NPR's ecosystem and its future: social media and connection to the audience, the organization's national network of more than 800 stations, the potential of its open API, expansion of platforms, and its diversified revenue model. After an NPR overview and an opening session, participants broke out into small groups to develop concepts that NPR can incorporate into its organizational road map.

Closing out the day, NPR's Vivian Schiller suggested to call the next gathering "Open-mic Night," given the stand-up performances of the presenters. She said she was overwhelmed by the ideas that came out of the event and that some of them could be implemented soon. Kinsey Wilson assured everyone that their efforts will not end up tossed in a dusty drawer and forgotten. So be it!

The event was live-blogged on the Think In micro-site which also featured live video streams of the opening and closing sessions. In addition, attendees were tweeting the event throughout the day using the hashtag #nprthinkin (and there was a lively conversation going on between on-site and remote participants; also check out the NPR Facebook page for comments).

You can view pictures of the event on Flickr.

The Power of the Crowd, Revisited

Almost three years after Jeff Howe coined the term in his seminal article "The Rise of Crowdsourcing," and, ironically, in the very week 1,300 handpicked scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, and other thinkers, movers, and shakers assembled at the TED conference in Long Beach, the term "crowdsourcing" yielded more than one million search results on Google.

That's quite an accomplishment. Crowdsourcing is no longer an exclusive noun for a few in the know, it has become a verb for the crowd. Mom-and pop shops, SME's, and large corporations, receptionists, interns, middle managers, and CEOs – everyone's crowdsourcing these days and calling it so (even if they just ask a few friends to particpate in a mini-survey...).

Here's a little piece of nostalgia, THE crowdsourcing primer starring Jeff Howe:

Interestingly, the power of the crowd has not translated yet into the one realm whose decisions have arguably the biggest power to impact the crowd: politics. Since Obama's masterful use of social media helped restore trust in the American ideal of democracy, and his emphatic election fomented expectations of all-inclusive "power-to-the-people" digital governance, most of the attempts to establish an effective crowdsourced model of policy-making have fallen flat, at least so far. While the new US president has issued several executive orders introducing a new level of transparency to governance (on this topic, for a divergent opinion, it is worth reading Noah Feldman's "In Defense of Secrecy" essay in the NY Times Magazine), the mechanisms of collaborative political decision-making have yet to find a proper forum on the social web.

Sure, there are dozens of open forums that aggregate input and funnel it to the decision-makers – from Public Agenda to the rather light-hearted advertising riff "Dear Mr. President" (Pepsi). And on change.gov, there were Obama's invitation during the transition to submit input for his political agenda ("share your vision") as well as Tom Daschle's video responses to people's suggestions on healthcare ("citizen briefing book"). Perhaps the most ambitious project so far, however, was MySpace and Change.org's "Ideas for America" initiative. The site yielded 7,875 ideas by way of crowdsourcing and then distilled them down (through 675,943 votes) to ten ideas presented to the administration. Yet even though a blog is tracking the progress, it is somewhat unclear if and when the top ten ideas are actually becoming action items incorporated into national policy.

What's lacking is transparency when it matters. If all the crowdsourced ideas remain in a sand box without visible, actionable outcome, the enthusiasm to engage in politics (that was so salient during the presidential campaign) will slowly fade. Yet the missing link between input and outcome is not an easy task given the many legal and bureaucratic restrictions the administration is facing. For the time being, it is the experts who govern. The crowd will have to wait before its ideas will make a real difference in setting the national agenda.

The Big (Uneasy) Idea(s)

In contrast to what some people say, having ideas is not easy. Creativity is not a commodity – it is a rare gift and a scarce resource. People who have the ability to come up with ideas – those kinds of ideas that spark genuine excitement – and to generate them consistently, are very hard to find.

The "wisdom of crowds" may breed a significant amount of ideas because it reaches a mass critical enough to include some key idea people in it, but the creativity of micro-crowds, smaller groups of alleged creative thinkers, is frequently exaggerated. Think of the workshops and brainstorming sessions you've participated in recently, and you will have to admit that idea generation rarely is a collective effort. In contrast to idea qualification, the aggressive filtering of ideas through educated commentary and feedback, the Eureka moment, can most often be attributed to one single person. I love this line about conventional ad agencies from the website of boutique agency School of Thought: "Every meeting had ten people, when two would have sufficed. We were those two."

Idea people usually become entrepreneurs; people who think they have ideas (but don’t really do) love to participate in brainstorming sessions. But all they really do is become experts in the ideation process – in other words, they become adept at managing the generation of a lot of mediocre ideas rather than producing a single big one. Mind-mapping, flow charts, association techniques, and "lateral thinking" typically produce a vast number of creative associations and document them well but that cannot preclude the fact that only a few (really good) ideas eventually survive this process.

And yet, companies continue to launch innovation centers and idea forums. They gather hundreds or thousands of assumed idea generators only to generate ideas that truly creative people have already had. I cannot tell you how much time I've seen wasted in the evaluation process of ideas that seemed big at the beginning and then began to lose their appeal the longer they were analyzed. This time is crucial, don't squander it – while your organization spends months on due diligence and research, entrepreneurs and start-ups are already moving to make these very ideas real. They are the ones who rapidly prototype while you just demonstrate the stereotypical inertia of a big organization. If someone has an idea, let him or her run with it.

Now, you may argue that the age of big ideas is over (as Alain de Botton does in this recent BBC Radio 4 interview). He's referring to the big ideologies, the grand narratives and assumptions that shape our time and determine the intellectual discourse – and he has a point. But on a less philosophical level, I would argue that ALL ideas need to be big in order to be ideas. Or, to put it differently, even small ideas need to FEEL big in the moment they're presented. The world of ideas does not know the principle of relativity. Relativity is a department, or better, a division of the left brain, an analytical act that classifies ideas. Ideas, in their essence, are absolute. It is the qualification, the analytical examination, that divides them into small and big ones. And maybe the biggest ideas are the ones that enable ideas, as many as possible – crowd-sourcing, the Internet are such examples.

Note that what is arguably the world's most prominent forum for ideas, the annual TED conference, does not conduct group ideation activities – what it does is present individuals and their ideas to a broader community and make sure that these ideas "spread" and ultimately become a reality. Having ideas remains a lonely act. Most people have the ability to see the practical limitations to ideas. Rare are those who have the ability to see the future despite the practical limitations of today. They're called visionaries.

"A Better World by Design" Summons Change Agents from Various Sectors

"A Better World by Design" is a first-of-its-kind conference on "globally conscious design," as the organizers call it. Held at Brown University/RISD from November 7-9, it aims to generate innovative solutions to issues facing today's world, including extreme poverty, access to basic resources, and environmental degradation.

The conference wants to attract academics and professionals interested in learning and discussing ways in which user-centric and affordable technology can improve the world around us. It will bring together such far-ranging fields as social entrepreneurship, engineering, design, economics, development, and environmental studies in search of new opportunities for the private and voluntary sectors.

The organizers expect 300 attendees. Confirmed speakers include Bernard Amadei (Engineers Without Borders), Ken Banks (Kiwanja), Cameron Sinclair (Architecture for Humanity and Open Architecture Network), Denise DeLuca (Biomimicry Institute), Steve Glenn (LivingHomes), Erik Hersman (Afrigadget, White African, and Ushahidi), Paul Polak (International Development Enterprises and D-Rev), and others.

Boredom is the Mother of Creativity

I had an interesting conversation with a professor this week at the eMarketing conference. We were talking about shrinking attention spans, the rise of snack-size media, and the tyranny of output. “Never are we bored these days,” the professor said, referring to the over-supply of distraction. “That’s a problem,” he maintained, ”because boredom is the mother of creativity. There is no creativity without boredom.”

The One Thing (Question) For A Better World

In fin d'année mood, saving the world is en vogue -- and asking the "one thing" question obviously, too.

Inspired by Leonardo DiCaprio's gloom and doom documentary "The 11th Hour," OnEarth magazine asked a panel of leading scientists and activists to move beyond bleak diagnoses and offer concrete proposals for a sustainable future:

"Which one thing would you do to save the world?"

You can read a transcript of the entire conversation here.

Slightly modifying OnEarth's impetus (and oddly phrasing it), The World Economic Forum (WEF) asks the "Davos Question:"

"What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?"

Unlike OnEarth, however, the WEF does not seek the advice of experts and instead relies on the crowd. Everyone can upload suggestions on YouTube and make his/her "voice heard in Davos." The highest rated videos will be screened on January 23-27 during the Forum. The world leaders will then be asked to video-respond on YouTube.

Technology in Wartime Conference at Stanford

What better way to spend a Sunday than attending a conference on "Technology in Wartime"? Seriously, this conference, held at Stanford on January 26, promises to be a great forum for spotting "the next big thing." It's no news that the military is a big innovation driver (remember the Internet?), and that defense and enforcement technology, in particular, fund and adopt emerging technologies which may years later shape the mainstream consumer experience.

Aside from that, the conference seeks to examine the ethical implications of high-tech warfare (the official announcement says, "Ultimately we want to engage a pressing question of our time: What should socially-responsible computer professionals do in a time of high tech warfare?"). This should be an interesting discussion given the roster of participants, which ranges from computer scientists, policy makers, and military professionals, to human rights workers, civil liberties legal activists, and academics. Speakers will include Bruce Schneier (Counterpane Security), Barbara Simons (ACM), Herb Lin (National Academy of Sciences), Cindy Cohn (Electronic Frontier Foundation), Patrick Ball (Benetech), Terry Winograd (Stanford University), Neil Rowe (Naval Defense Academy), Nick Mathewson (the Tor project), Ronald Arkin (Georgia Tech's Mobile Robots Lab), and Noah Shachtman (Wired magazine's war correspondent).

View the detailed program

Registration is open.

See you there!

The CEO as Cognitive Coach

There's a great article on Cognitive Fitness in this month's Harvard Business Review. The authors, Roderick Gilkey and Clint Kilts, call for a "brain-positive" corporate culture and contend that "the future belongs to companies with leaders who develop cognitive fitness for themselves and their organizations. CEOs need to be cognitive coaches to those whose work and decisions collectively create and propel the company’s strategy."

While you should definitely read the full article, here are the four steps to cognitive fitness that the article proposes:

1. Understand how experience makes the brain grow
2. Work hard at play
3. Search for patterns
4. Seek novelty and innovation

The last step may be the most challenging one, and it entails a valuable lesson for innovators: "To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly," wrote the philosopher Henri Bergson. Accordingly, Gilkey and Kilts argue that "The people who remain engaged in life consistently display an attitude of openness to new and unexpected experiences." This "open attitude" requires a "beginner’s mind:" "In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are a few."

The Economist's (Not So Disruptive) Take on Innovation

The Economist has a special report on innovation in this week's issue, and it's good to see the magazine recognizing "open innovation" as the perhaps most important current trend in this space:

"Rapid and disruptive change is now happening across new and old businesses. Innovation (…) is becoming both more accessible and more global. This is good news because its democratization releases the untapped ingenuity of people everywhere and that could help solve some of the world's weightiest problems."

The report is an expansive tour de force through the entire innovation landscape, covering a lot of ground (open innovation, mass- or user-driven innovation, product vs. process innovation, creativity vs. operational excellence, innovation policy, innovation in Asia, innovation in developing countries, Six Sigma, innovation measurement, the "Innovators Dilemma," the importance of "Fast Failing," etc.) and quoting the usual suspects (GE, P&G, Eric Von Hippel, Toyota, Doblin, Nokia, etc.).

For my taste, the articles would have benefited from the very "open innovation" spirit they describe, for example by adding some guest authors from different disciplines to the mix. Ironically, the debate about innovation appears to sometimes suffer from the same "Not Invented Here" syndrome that hampers innovation itself and prevents disruptive ideas from getting to market.

The Economist concludes with a seemingly trivial recommendation for putting "the debate over creativity versus execution" to rest: "For a start: firms need to do both. But that does not mean they have to do it all themselves. On the contrary, the double act is best managed with a loose and open approach during the wild and woolly idea-generation phase, and a tighter, more concentrated one to turn ideas into products or services." John Kao, author of "Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity," likens the process to playing jazz: "There is no fixed score in any given improvisation, but that does not mean there are no underlying principles either."

So, open, yes, but also rigorous and tightly managed. But is that really news? And what about Apple, arguably the most innovative company in the world and yet the most un-open you can imagine?

At the end, innovation remains a fuzzy concept, or as one of the quoted senior executives puts it in the famous words of Potter Stewart: "Like pornography, I know it when I see it." And in contrast to the Economist's claim, I don't think there is much evidence that the innovation process will be "steadily becoming a practical science to be measured, taught, and managed" any time soon.

Asking the Right Questions?

It was Henry Kissinger who said that “if I give interviews, I expect the reporters to have the questions for my answers.” And I’m sure Cicero had something wise to say about the philosophical importance of questions, as well. John Hagel, who runs the wonderful Edge Perspectives blog and has just joined Deloitte & Touche with a mandate to establish a major new research center in Silicon Valley, puts it this way:

“It's appropriate to step back occasionally and reflect on what we don't know, rather than simply sharing what we know. In times of rapid change, asking the right questions is often as important as the answers – at least they help us figure out where we might start looking for answers. There is no shortage of questions – the key is to focus on questions that are not just intellectually interesting, but also where significant economic impact is at stake.”

Hence Hagel presents his preliminary research agenda as a set of questions including “What if there is no equilibrium?” “Are all ecosystems created equal?” “If the world is so flat, why are spikes becoming more prominent?” and “As L curves replace Bell curves, what are the most promising routes to the head?” Hagel also wonders how we can “measure success when so many of the rules are changing,” proposing new indicators such as return on attention (ROA), return on information (ROI) and return on skills (ROS). Anyway, read the full post. GREAT stuff.

From Edge Perspectives to Edge. Edge is an online forum for the world’s leading thinkers. In the spirit of the above, every year the Edge World Question Center sends out the so-called Edge question to its members. In 2006, the question was “What’s your most dangerous idea?”

“The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?”

The responses, varying from 50 words to multiple pages in length and now compiled into a book, are literally mind-boggling. Among the myriad provocative ideas are many neuro-scientific and bio-genetic assumptions (“We have no souls,” “Marionettes on Genetic String,” “The genetic basis of human behavior,” “Brains can become minds without bodies”) as well as meta-physical shockers (“We are entirely alone,” and “This is all there is”). My favorite idea, however, is the following: “The idea that we should all share our most dangerous ideas.”