Off Course-On Target

The Old Medium has become the New Content (Part 2)

In my previous entry, I pointed out that the current distinction between a TV and a “computer” is becomingly increasingly arbitrary and irrelevant. TV, the old medium, is transforming into content. An explosion of “digital surfaces” everywhere--on cell phones, cameras, desks, appliances, airplane seats, and billboards, and even mirrors—is just the beginning of Marshal McLuhan’s profound observation that as our communications evolve, the old medium becomes the new content.

Lest you should think that we have just about hit the limit of how many different screens, displays or digital surfaces you can be surrounded by, brace yourself for “digital paint” and “digital paper”!  Based on what I'm privilege to see in research labs for the past few years, the introduction of this technology into the marketplace can’t be far off. If you are not familiar with this concept, imagine a substance at the molecular level where each molecule is a tiny sphere where one half of its surface is black and the other half white. Each black and white sphere can easily be controlled by electrical input so that either the white or the black side is facing up. Now simply mix this substance into paint or wood pulp or plastic and you suddenly have the ability to make ANY surface digital and capable of displaying ANY image you’d like with almost infinite resolution.

You can see the possibilities. Imagine binding a few pages of digital paper together to create truly digital books!  Oh, and note that the images on this digital paper can move so suddenly that you can be watching “TV (the content) in a book.” Just throw in some other colors with those black and white molecular spheres and we’ve got color screens literally EVERYWHERE!  An equally frightening and exciting vision for most of us, I suspect.

To add even more to your degree of excitement—and fright—the surfaces will include “proximity detectors” that know it is YOU who is nearest to them so they can display highly customized content based on what you are “broadcasting” or what the system behind the surface knows about you.
I strongly recommend that we stop using these terms of TV and television to refer to a device or a medium and understand instead that this previous medium has now transformed into content (see Fortune magazine’s article “TV is Dying?  Long Live TV!”) While we are at it, let’s reconsider terms such as “computer” or “computer screen”. These too will soon be antiquities that future generations will find “cute” and “quaint”. Instead, let’s understand that McLuhan had it just right with his comment that the old medium becomes the new content.

My BIG question is this: “What content do you want and where and when do you want it?” Those of you who have read or listened to me previously know that I am passionately committed to:

• A lifelong vision of mass customization and ultimately, personalization of content, context, competencies.
• A future where every person on the planet is able to have deeply personalized learning experiences daily. 

So the challenge (and a grand one it is!) is how do we get what I call the Snowflake Effect: just the right stuff to just the right person(s) at just the right time in just the right way on just the right medium (and likely a few other “just rights”).

More to follow as always.

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Reversing Aging with Resveratol?

As if to show you how up-to-date you can be by checking in regularly here at Off Course – On Target, this month’s Fortune magazine contains a new article on resveratrol, a compound found in wine that is showing amazing abilities to reduce the aging process in yeast cells and mice. Astute and regular visitors to my blog will remember that I concluded my most recent podcast “Living in a World of Exponential Change” with a reference to some recent medical research on this compound. I referred to it in the context of exponential rates of change and how one of the areas where this is happening is in human longevity.

I’ll leave the science and the research up to these medical professionals and what I suspect are a growing number of entrepreneurial firms such as Sirtris that you can read about in the article. Hopefully this potential for increasing human longevity is yet another example of exponential rates of change.

For now I’m going to continue to enjoy my glass of red wine each evening and get back to working on the tremendous amounts of change we need to be making as our exponentially increasing longevity obviates most of our previous expectations for working, living, and learning. We may have a long way to go but it looks like we’ll also have a long time to get there!

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The Old Medium has become the New Content (Part 1)

With typical prescience and wisdom, Marshal McLuhan once made a profound observation that as our communications evolve, the old medium becomes the new content. I was reminded of this when I was reading a recent article in Fortune magazine “TV is Dying?  Long Live TV!”

In a previous entry “Books the NEW old medium”, I observed that whenever a significant innovation comes along, there is a tendency to predict that this new thing will replace the old. You know many of my previous examples, such as how radio was supposed to be replaced by TV based on the logic of “who would want a talking box when you can have talking movies?” We can see that the exact opposite has happened. Radio is stronger than ever as a medium. In fact with such things as radio stations streaming their programming via the Internet and satellite radio from the likes of XM and Sirius, radio is enjoying a genuine resurgence.

More recently, you might have read some opinions that the Internet was going to replace TV.  George Gilder, whom I read regularly and who is typically very astute and prescient in his observations, wrote a book in 1992 called “Life After Television” that predicted television’s demise and most people believed he was right. However, as with almost all the previous examples I can think if, exactly the opposite happened!

You may have heard some statistics last year that the amount of time spent watching TV had been exceeded by time spent “on the computer”. Yet as the aforementioned Fortune article noted, today people in North America (all I can find statistics for) are watching MORE plain, boring old TV content than ever!  The numbers are indeed staggering. The average US household watches eight hours and 14 minutes of television per day and the average individual watches four hours and 35 minutes. Both of these statistics are the highest ever and they DO NOT include the time spent watching TV on computers!

Geoff Colvin, author of the Fortune article, made an interesting and possibly appropriate comparison to what he calls his “Two-Liter Coke Principle”. Several years ago, the Coca-Cola company apparently was very successful in increasing the overall consumption of their brown beverage by switching from one liter to two liter bottles, so he theorized that “just getting more Coke in front of them increased their consumption.  It seems to be the same with TV.”

More and more of us ARE spending more time on the Internet and on the computer, and while predictions that more people would be spending more time on the likes of MySpace and Second Life have proven true, this time is NOT being subtracted from TV viewing time.  As Geoff succinctly put it, “We’re more likely to cut back on things we consider less important, like sleep.”

So what’s happening here? My comment, like McLuhan’s, would be that we are confusing the medium with the content. TV is the old medium and as McLuhan predicted, it is transforming into content. Or put another way, the current distinction between a TV and a “computer” is increasingly arbitrary and irrelevant. What we are seeing is a literal explosion of “screens” or more accurately what I typically refer to as “digital surfaces”.

I suspect this “explosion of screens” is yet another example of exponential rates of change. Look around your home, office, vehicle, airplane, mall, highway, etc.  Digital surfaces are everywhere and are taking up more and more of the available surface area. They are on your cell phone, your camera, your desk, in the kitchen, on the back seat of the airplane, on billboards on the highway, in every shop window and are starting to show up on mirrors. And I suspect that we are at the inflection point where this exponential curve begins to take off.

There's lots more to say about this topic, so I'll talk more about it next time.

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Trust is good!

In a previous posting, I talked about “trust as a competency” and my discussions with Stephen MR Covey about his recent book The Speed of Trust: the One Thing that Changes Everything. So I was intrigued by a recent article “Corporate Philanthropy Inspires Trust: Does It Also Prompt Higher Profits?”  on the Knowledge@Wharton web site. This article also ties in nicely with two topics that I will cover more in the future—trust and “doing good to do well”.

As summarized in the article's introduction:

"Wharton finance professor Vinay B. Nair and two other researchers looked at whether being charitable -- such as donating money to medical research or to organizations that promote economic self-sufficiency -- helps a company's financial picture. They concluded that it all depends on the type of industry.” 
And “They cite a survey last year by the Economist on corporate giving. Of the 135 executives and 65 investors who responded, 85% said corporate social responsibility was a "central" or "important" consideration in investment decisions. That figure was almost double the 44% who responded similarly five years before.  But Nair and his colleagues theorize in the paper that charitable giving may be good for the bottom line because it helps to convince consumers that a company and its products are trustworthy. Trust factors into many purchases, particularly when it is not obvious why one product is better than another. Nair uses the example of "natural food" products, which typically are priced higher than standard items even though they may not taste any better. Natural foods are a rapidly growing business."

While I’m very supportive of this notion of “doing well by doing good”, I think this article unfortunately exemplifies a very traditional approach to corporate philanthropy. In doing so, they miss an alternative model that can have much more impact for both sides and provide a very sustainable way for corporations to be very philanthropic. This alternative model is characterized by “enlightened self-interest” and is what I like to refer to as “strategic philanthropy”.

The Wharton research missed an opportunity when they specifically excluded from consideration:

“… good deeds that could also have the effect of boosting a company's productivity and, in turn, its profits. For instance, a company's decision to operate an environmentally friendly plant could increase efficiency. Likewise, a company that offers flex time and good maternity leave benefits may reap the benefits of a more loyal and productive workforce."

Strategic philanthropy is not an oxymoron!  Some define it as "how companies can provide money, capabilities, and partnerships to charitable causes in ways that sharpen their own competitive edge.”  One of the best explanations of this different approach to philanthropy was in a 2002 Harvard Business Review article “The Competitive Advantage of Corporate Philanthropy” by Michael Porter, University Professor, Harvard Business School, and Mark Kramer, Managing Director, Foundation Strategy Group.

In their article, they asked "Should corporations engage in philanthropy at all?" and argued that companies might be better off NOT engaging in traditional philanthropy if it is done in an ad hoc way, (such as a small amount of dollars being given to a charity or local cause) or is used just for public relations, advertising, or high profile sponsorships. However, Michael and Mark believe that when the philanthropy is strategic and tied to companies' social and business objectives, there are greater benefits.

Porter and Kramer found that only a few companies actually engage in strategic philanthropy. At the time, they cited Cisco as a company that has truly maximized the value of philanthropy by focusing on both its economic and social objectives through the development of the Cisco Networking Academy Program.

Since this Harvard Business Review article can only be ordered as a reprint , here is a good synopsis of the article:

“When it comes to philanthropy, executives increasingly see themselves as caught between critics demanding ever higher levels of "corporate social responsibility" and investors applying pressure to maximize short-term profits. Increasingly, philanthropy is used as a form of public relations or advertising, promoting a company's image through high-profile sponsorships. But there is a more truly strategic way to think about philanthropy. Corporations can use their charitable efforts to improve their competitive context—the quality of the business environment in the locations where they operate. Using philanthropy to enhance competitive context aligns social and economic goals and improves a company's long-term business prospects. Addressing context enables a company not only to give money but also leverage its capabilities and relationships in support of charitable causes. Taking this new direction requires fundamental changes in the way companies approach their contribution programs. Adopting a context-focused approach requires a far more disciplined approach than is prevalent today. But it can make a company's philanthropic activities far more effective.”

With this different model in mind, you might want to check into the “what and how” of your organization’s philanthropy.  I suspect that most of you will find that the traditional model is being practiced. And while I want to be clear that just about any form of philanthropy should be applauded (and certainly there is no end to the need for such giving back), I’d like you to consider how much more effective and lasting it could be if we were to adopt the model of strategic philanthropy. Wouldn't this approach be more effective, sustainable and able to increase over time?

As I mentioned at the outset, this topic of “doing well by doing good” and specifically this model of “strategic philanthropy” is one that I will return to in future postings. In the interim, please let me know if you have any examples or comments to support or refute this model.

For now, I’ll leave you with a great summary of philanthropy that I found on the web site of a company called Strategic Philanthropy:

An Effective Giving Strategy:

• Meets personal, corporate or organizational interests and passions
• Defines an essential mission, purpose and priorities
• Addresses/responds to real needs in local and world communities
• Incorporates clear, established rationale and operational procedures
• Integrates an ongoing evaluative component that is meaningful, flexible and accessible to all involved
• Benefits from, and contributes to, the experiences of others by connecting to the larger philanthropic community
• Is a journey of learning and listening

And…most importantly…is fun and deeply fulfilling.

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