In the Details

I would think all religious people on the planet readily agree on "the bigger picture".

That there is some Higher Power. That there are some things we may never understand. That there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that we all do eventually get our comeuppances.

Yet it's on the specifics that people butt heads.

Priest or Prophet or Redeemer? Is adoration the same as worship? Is there such a thing as infallibility? The list goes on and on, and at its worst can be the cause of much misunderstanding, if not animosity, between people of faith.

Ultimately, it's ironic. Is there any better proof than this that the devil is truly in the details?

Seizing the White Space

What I appreciate most about Seizing the White Space: Business Model Innovation for Growth and Renewal is its clarity. Mark Johnson's book is an unpretentious and straightforward reader on the crucial components of business model innovation and should be read by anyone concerned with corporate strategy.

The "white space" to which Johnson refers is "the range of potential activities not defined or addressed by [a] company's business model, that is, the opportunities outside its core and beyond its adjacencies that require a different business model to exploit." Thus, beginning with a simple framework of business models -- namely, that they comprise a customer value proposition, key processes, key resources and a profit formula -- Seizing the White Space offers a concise blueprint of how business model innovation enables companies to take advantage of opportunities whether from underserved customers in their core businesses ("the white space within"), from new markets ("the white space beyond"), or in the face of industry discontinuities arising from regulatory or environmental factors ("the white space between").

There's simply an element of polish inescapable in Johnson's ideas. It begins with the book's business model framework, carries on to the various concise case studies offered to make the book's key points more concrete, and ultimately comes together in a final chapter that amusingly (and compellingly) describes why new business ideas have a tendency not to thrive within a tried and tested business model. Overall, I'd say Seizing the White Space is an important book with as much to offer the seasoned MBA graduate as those without any formal business education. And it helps that it's enjoyable reading, too.

Why Is Overrated

When confronted with a previously unforeseen problem, "why?" is an important yet overrated question.

Let's face it: it's human nature for us to ask. When there's a screw up, when things don't go according to plan, when the totally random event takes us by surprise, we want to know why. Why did this happen? Why are we in the situation that we're in now? Why me?

The question is important because it's diagnostic. We're rational (and inquisitive) and thus have a compelling need to understand in order to function.

Yet the trouble with why is that it's about the past. It's about the sequence of events that got us to where we are now; often, this really doesn't matter anymore. Frankly, a lot of the time when we ask why, what we're really dying to know is who or what we can blame for our current predicament, which isn't entirely helpful.

If you were on your way from point A to point C and ended up stuck at point B, why doesn't matter. All that matters is that you aren't at point C yet. Q.E.D.

Rather than ask why, the more relevant question is to ask how, as in "How do I get out of this mess?" or, even more to the point, "How do I move forward in order to achieve my objective?" Unlike why, how is all about the future, about the next steps, about the solution and not the problem.

Semantics? Sure. But the mindset makes a world of difference. How? Ask yourself why.

Corruption in the Philippines [Presentation Thursdays]

View this presentations on Slideshare.

Lecture slide deck on corruption in the Philippines, circa my teaching days around 2003-2005.

Information in the slides reference 2002 data from Transparency International. If I were still using these slides to teach, I'd update the material.

From a design standpoint, the slides demonstrate that red on black is not a good idea for text. Also, Slideshare apparently has issues with the kerning of sans serif fonts, as evidenced by the slide headings.

[Confused about Presentation Thursdays? Then read the first in the series].

Review: I Live in the Future

For Nick Bilton to begin his book on how technology is affecting the trajectory of media and society with a chapter on the porn industry? Both unnecessary and, quite frankly, rather pathetic.

But to frame our use of technology in the context of storytelling and characterize online social networks as anchoring communities (akin to Benedict Anderson's notion of imagined communities) that help us filter the information we come across online? A smidgen short of brilliant.

Such is the dichotomy inherent in I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works. It covers similar ground as Nicholas Carr's The Shallows or Clay Shirky's Cognitive Surplus, but lacks the depth of discussion either book affords. Notwithstanding this, it offers an entertaining and observant journalist's perspective into where technology and society intersect, in a fashion similar to Steven Johnson's Everything Bad is Good for You. A chapter on the hypercustomization that technologies will increasingly afford, "Me Economics", particularly stands out, as does an epilogue that neatly ties together the book's main points with a flourish.

A concise NYTimes piece adapted from the book offers a substantial glimpse into Bilton's main points. The article itself is must-read material, and may very well convince you that the book is, too.

Let There Be

After sadness, joy.

After hardship, prosperity.

After confusion, clarity.

After perseverance, accomplishment.

After enjoyment, sobriety.

After scholarship, wisdom.

After longing, contentment.

After victory, humility.

After loss, hope.

After success, generosity.

After struggle, release.

After everything, peace.

Care

You're right: nobody pays you to care.

Therefore, if you do, you already have a huge leg up over the next guy (who doesn't).

Think about it.

Cognitive Surplus

"What are you doing with your free time?" might as well be the question that Clay Shirky asks of us in his book Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age.

Shirky argues that today's technologies have provided people with unprecedented means, motive and opportunity to use their free time for doing, sharing and creating things. This, in turn, compels us to reconsider our understanding of media as something that we passively consume to something that also enables us to produce and share what we have produced. "Media in the twentieth century," he writes, "was run as a single event: consumption."

"The animating question of media in that era was If we produce more, will you consume more? The answer to that question has generally been yes, as the average person consumed more TV with each passing year. But media is actually like a triathlon, with three different events: people like to consume, but they also like to produce, and to share."

Hence, people now have the ability to use their free time in productive ways that actually have value, whether for some niche group (as with most fan fiction sites or arguably even lolcats) or for society at large (think Wikipedia and open source software). By extension, this implies that the surplus free time of people, when aggregated, can actually be used to accomplish amazing things and further enable others to do the same. "The fusing of means, motive, and opportunity creates our cognitive surplus out of the raw material of accumulated free time," Shirky explains. "The real change comes from our awareness that this surplus creates unprecedented opportunities, or rather that it creates an unprecedented opportunity for us to create those opportunities for each other."

To some degree, it's a pity that Cognitive Surplus is developed more along the lines of a treatise on the social implications of twenty-first century media and based less on empirical study as such. But Shirky can be excused for this, seeing the acuteness of his observations, the cogency of his arguments and the vibrancy in his prose throughout his book. Granted, "prosumption" is already a much celebrated concept of the Internet age. Yet the historical and sociological perspective in which Shirky casts his discussion is noteworthy and particularly compelling.

Cognitive Surplus is easily required reading for those interested in the intersection of technology, society and 21st century media. Read it during your free time.

The Shallows

While reading through The Shallows, I'd sometimes catch myself just glossing over the text, distracted by some stray thought that somehow hijacked my attention.

"Oh heck," I'd react, fully aware of the irony. Such inability to focus is precisely evidence of what author Nicholas Carr attempts to argue in his book.

In a sense, there's nothing in The Shallows about how the Internet is affecting our brains that we don't already know. We know we're outsourcing memorization in favor of looking things up online. We know we're easily distracted and have become more impatient with anything slow or lengthy that we encounter on the Web . We know we've become increasingly addicted to our emails, feeds, IMs and status message. We know, in short that somehow the Internet is making us, well, shallow.

Yet The Shallows isn't your typical book about how de Interwebz are making us stoopid. Quite the opposite, in fact: Carr offers a holistic discussion on the subject based on both empirical findings and intelligent social commentary. The book's principal argument is first framed around the concept of neuroplasticity (i.e. how the brain can rewire itself), woven into a historical account of the democratization of knowledge occasioned by the Gutenberg press, and peppered throughout with research about how the Internet is simply not suited to deep reading. By the end of it all, The Shallows provides a more substantial account, again, of what we seem to know but have seldom articulated: that the Internet has a deleterious effect on our minds.

Some have scored Carr for neglecting to give due consideration to literature that elaborate on the positive effects that technology (in general) and the Internet (in particular) can have on human cognition. Personally, I don't take as much issue with this as Carr is certainly entitled to argue the negative. Instead, my qualm is with how The Shallows muddles the issue that just because the Internet can make us dumber it necessarily must be so. That's an important distinction, and one that Carr explains away (wrongly, I would think) by asserting that human adaptability is at best neutral. Ultimately, what The Shallows illustrates is that the way the Internet is put to use by most people these days can be a step backward rather than forward. But who is to say that we will keep using the Internet as we use it today, or that we'll never find the optimal way to put it to work for us?

Or did I miss the point, already irreparably damaged by the Internet so as to be distracted by fleeting conjecture? Who can say for sure? In the end, this is why The Shallows, at its core, is such intelligent and compelling material: by arguing the point that the Internet is making us stupid, we become better equipped to mitigate our online excesses -- and hopefully come out smarter in the process.

A Word on the Global Supply Chain

Getting my Kindle from Amazon at once provided a glimpse into what's right and what's wrong with the global supply chain.

First, what's right: obviously, that an order I place with an overseas retailer can make it to my doorstep with nary a hitch. 'Nuff said.

But then there's also what's wrong. Consider the circuitous route the Kindle had to take just to get to me: it was assembled in China, ultimately finding its way to a storage facility somewhere in Nevada (and we can safely presume it passed by several intermediate locations). Then I placed my order, with delivery serviced by DHL, prompting the unit to move from Nevada to San Francisco, then Cincinnati, then Hong Kong, then Taipei (DHL's Asia hub), ultimately making its way to the Philippines and into my hands.

In short: a product assembled in China had to go halfway around the world just to get to the Philippines – which is only hours away.

Economics dictates that the cost of all this movement is already built into whatever price I paid when I made my purchase. Perhaps. But economics also tells us that there are hidden costs (negative externalities) that aren't fully captured by what I paid, such as the environmental impact of the emissions from all the vehicles that took the package on its world tour, or the time I had to wait just to get my order, because there's no way to get the product shipped directly from its point of manufacture.

In other words, the sobering point is that the global supply chain, which is efficient on a grand scale, is actually rather inefficient at a micro level.

Amazing and screwy at the same time. Funny how the world works.