Tier 1 Micropatronage - (Beta) ((micropatronage))
This is a beta presentation for my Tier 1 Micropatronage service.
I am only offering this service to three organisations.
If you are interested, please give me a bell.
Eddie
Edward Harran |
Ideas - Inspiration - Insights |
Had a great time in Melbourne.
I did a presentation/workshop to @reachoutmh in Melbourne earlier this week, together with @stevehopkins and @joannespain, where we talked about Social Media and Mental Health Support.
Thanks to @servantofchaos and @sarahmoran for sharing their wisdom as well.
The term, 'Career', is outdated.
"Slow Thinking is intuitive, woolly and creative. It is what we do when the pressure is off, and there is time to let ideas simmer on the back burner. It yields rich, nuanced insights and sometimes surprising breakthroughs.esearch has shown that time pressure leads to tunnel vision and that people think more creatively when they are calm, unhurried and free from stress and distractions. We all know this from experience.
Your best ideas, those eureka moments that turn the world upside down, seldom come when you're juggling emails, rushing to meet the 5pm deadline or straining to make your voice heard in a high-stress meeting. They come when you're walking the dog, soaking in the bath or swinging in a hammock. The greatest thinkers in history certainly knew the value of shifting into a lower gear. Milan Kundera talked about "the wisdom of slowness." Albert Einstein spent hours just staring into space in his office at Princeton University. Charles Darwin described himself as a "slow thinker."Google belongs to a long and noble tradition of letting the mind wander.
Of course, Slow Thinking can be pointless without the rigors of Fast Thinking. You have to grasp, analyze and harness the ideas that bubble up from the subconscious -- and often you must do so quickly. Einstein appreciated the need to marry the two modes of thought: "Computers are incredibly fast, accurate, and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate, and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination." This balancing of fast and slow fits into a wider cultural shift. Everywhere, pe that slowing down at the right moment can help us work, play and live better.
Carl Honore's Full article here
When we get sick, our suffering can put us in touch with the pain of others. When things go well, however, our mind easily accepts this. Like oil absorbing into our skin, attachment to favorable circumstances blends smoothly and invisibly into our thoughts and feelings. Without realizing what's happening, we can become infatuated with our achievements, fame, and wealth. It's difficult to extricate ourselves from positive obstacles. If we could have everything we wish for—wealth, a comfortable house, nice clothing—he advises us to view this good fortune as illusory, like a beautiful dream, and not let it seduce us into complacency.
- Pema Chödrön, from "Cutting Ties: The Fruits of Solitude" (Winter, 2005)
Photo via Rubicon
You don’t think we can change the world. I know we can.
You will tell me that I can’t help everywhere. I will show you that I can help somewhere.
You will question, criticize, judge, and hate me because that’s what you do. I will take principled, calculated, and small steps forward because that’s what I do.
You will show me the statistics, charts, and numbers that show I’m not changing anything. I will take the genuine smile and relief of others as a sign that I am.
You will make individual people doubt their gifts and you will tear at the seams of commonality that bind us. I will rally, inspire, and lead others by building on the common bonds of our humanity.
You will focus on what I can’t do or should’ve done. I will focus on what I can do and what I am doing.
You will condemn me when I rest and scold me when I gain. I will take care of my needs and graciously take the gifts I receive along the way.
You will continue thinking that to share is to lose. I will find that to share is to gain.
You will wait for the right moment, opportunity, or permission to act. I will open the door and see serendipity waiting for me.
You will remember and catalog my mistakes. I will remember the lessons I’ve learned from experience.
You will let your fear and worry keep you safe and secure on the sidelines of history. I will carry them with me, knowing that there is more to life than sitting comfortably by the fire.
You will reach your final days and see that your inaction and dissuasion was a series of choices you wish you could change. I will be spent but proud of the flourishing life I lived making this journey better for others.
I am changing the world. Lead, follow, help, or get the hell out of the way.
This is a wake-up call; I will ring again. Take your first step toward doing epic shit and be the change you want to see.
Innovation: it's the ultimate source of advantage, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the economic ring. Innovation is what every organization should be ruthlessly pursuing, right? Wrong.
I'd like to advance a hypothesis: awesomeness is the new innovation.
Let's face it. "Innovation" feels like a relic of the industrial era. And it just might be the case that instead of chasing innovation, we should be innovating innovation — that innovation needs innovation. Why? When we examine the economics of innovation, three reasons emerge.
Innovation relies on obsolescence. Innovation was a concept pioneered by the great Joseph Schumpeter. And to subscribe to it requires us to accept his theory of creative destruction. Gales of innovation make yesterday's goods and services obsolete. Yet, that, in turn, means that the price of innovation is recession and depression. The business cycle might never be vanquished — but it is getting more vicious with every decade. In an interdependent world, obsolescence is what's obsolete.
Innovation dries up our seedcorn. Innovation in its purest Schumpeterian sense is undertaken by entrepreneurs. And so today, we've got an economy where everything's for sale. Yet, little fundamentally new is being created. Businesses focus obsessively on the entrepreneurial aspects of commerce: we are focused still on selling the same old toxic, industrial era junk in slightly better ways. Yet, the challenge of the 21st century isn't entrepreneurial as much as it is creative: learning to create fundamentally better stuff in the first place.
Innovation often isn't. Innovation means, naively, what is commercially novel. Yet, as the financial crisis proves, what is "innovative" is often value destructive and socially harmful. Financial "innovation" turned out to be unnovative: it has destroyed trillions in value - here are some staggering estimates from the IMF.
It's time to ask: have the costs of innovation exceeded the benefits?
A better concept, one built for a radically interdependent 21st century, is awesomeness. Here are the four pillars of awesomeness:
Ethical production. Innovation turns a blind eye to ethics — or, worse, actively denies ethics. That's a natural result of putting entrepreneurship above all. Buy low, sell high, create value. That's so 20th century. Awesome stuff is produced ethically — in fact, without an ethical component, awesomeness isn't possible. Starbucks is shifting to Fair Trade coffee beans, for example. Why? Starbucks isn't just trying to innovate yet another flavour of sugar-water: it's trying to gain awesomeness.
Insanely great stuff.What is innovative often fails to delight, inspire, and enlighten — because, as we've discussed, innovation is less concerned with raw creativity. Awesomeness puts creativity front and center. Awesome stuff evokes an emotive reaction because it's fundamentally new, unexpected, and 1000x better. Just ask Steve Jobs. The iPhone and iPod were pooh-poohed by analysts, who questioned how innovative they really were — but the Steve has turned multiple industries upside down through the power of awesomeness.
Love. You know what's funny about walking into an Apple Store? The people working there care. They don't just "work at the Apple store" — they love Apple. Contrast that with the alienating, soul-crushing experience of trying to buy something at Best Buy — where salespeople attack you out of greed. (Or, as editor extraordinaire Sarah Green put it, "where you wander around for a full half-hour unable to find anyone to help you before you finally get the attention of some blue-shirted 12-year old who turns out to know nothing about the products she sells and ultimately end up committing hara-kiri with a Wii controller"). Their goal is to sell; the goal of Apple Store employees is simply to show off their awesomeness, and let you share it. Love for what we do is the basis of all real value creation.
Thick value It's the most hackneyed phrase in the corporate lexicon: adding value. Let's face it: most value is an illusion. Nokia, Motorola, and Sony tried for a decade to "add value" to their phones — yet not a single feature did. Food producers and pharmaceutical companies claim they're "adding value," but mostly they're just mega-marketing.
The vast majority of companies — in my research, greater than 95% — can only create what I have termed thin value. Thick value is real, meaningful, and sustainable. It happens by making people authentically better off — not merely by adding more bells and whistles that your boss might like, but that cause customers to roll their eyes.
Let's summarize. What is awesomeness? Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. That's a better kind of innovation, built for 21st century economics.
I've talked to many boardrooms about awesomeness. Beancounters feel challenged and threatened by it, because it feels fuzzy and imprecise. Yet, it's anything but. Gen M knows "awesomeness" when we see it — that's why its part of our vernacular. It's a precise concept, with meaning, depth, and resonance.
What makes some stuff awesome and other stuff merely (yawn) innovative? I've outlined my answers, but they're far from the best, or even the only ones — so add your own thoughts in the comments.
You might be innovative — but are you awesome? For most, the answer is: no. Game over: in the 21st century, if you're merely innovative, prepare to be disrupted by awesomeness.
is an Attention Philanthropist. He is passionate about spreading and sharing awesomeness.
I am particularly interested in the intersection of social media, data, and social innovation.
My Trending Topics: #micropatronage, #socent, #4change #datavis, #TED, #awesome #nptech, #crushit , #slow, #passion, #people, #purpose
My Communities : #p5 #sandboxnetwork #4change #edgeware #datadj #nptech #edurelief
