It is said that the aboriginal people of Australia use songs to navigate their way around the desert landscape. Walking along in the featureless plains they will sing a song to themselves, feeling how the song flows not only through them but also through the environment around them. They then navigate by this feeling of connectedness. When the song feels out of tune, or does not fit they know that they have taken a wrong turn or have gone too far. Feeling "in tune", feeling a resonant connection with the world around them is essential to tracking their way through this ancient wilderness.
Resonance can be a powerful thing. All young engineering students are imprinted with the fantastic images of the Tacoma Narrow Bridge progressively ripping itself apart. Cars are thrown from the bridge as concrete is turned into jelly as the resonant energy progressively builds in amplitude.
As the human species moves progressively from relying purely on the innate abilities of our bodies to a more augmented experience of time/space we will surely develop a new form of resonance with our environment. During the great Tsunami there were some interesting observations about ancient tribes, especially the Andamanese, surviving the onslaught due to innate awareness of the impending disaster. A nearby tribe, assimilated into more western lifestyles were struck badly, as their innate senses were dulled.
Psychogeology has played a fundamental role in the development of man's consciousness. Louis Liebenberg wrote a phenomenal book on how tracking is the origin of science. Our orientation in space is one of the first challenges we face as babies. As we grow up and evolve we develop a more intricate way of finding our way about, even defining ourselves by the piece of political geography we are born in.
Increasingly however this link is becoming more tenuous. Geography is no longer destiny. As greater distances develop between the cause and consequences of our daily lives, it becomes harder to pinpoint the exact location of our awareness. Weren't we all in New York on 9/11. Are we not all sharing in the 14 hour day of the sneaker stitchery?
The new map of the world, with shifted experiences, assimilated awareness's and a sharing of emotional insecurity is heralding a new form of tracking. We still carry songs with us as we navigate the urban landscape. The songs are now entering an open source plug and play environment with mobile devices becomming our most intimate confession booths.
Songs are important because they provide an emotional resonance. The church and before that the shamans knew this. Religion, rituals and a connection with god is so innately connected with music that they are indistinguishable. The Resurrection of Apple was entirely defined by it's embrace of music. Interestingly, Steve Jobs's brief for the first Macintosh computer to Harmut Esslinger was "Make it look like a Bob Dylan song sounds". Shape and sound, sound and resonance, resonance and shape. A closed loop where things are shaped by the resonance of their ambient sounds.
Defining the shape of the future consumer experience is the interesting thing from the marketing point of view. The interplay between shape and sound is what gives resonance it's power. How do we incarnate the emotions that are locked up in music? How do we provide physical reality to emotional engagement? Will we provide the urban soundtrack for the day? Walking through town looking for a new coat, the songs will guide me to perfect match for my budget and style? When I walk off Oxford street I start hearing 80's tunes?
Increasingly however the resonance we seek, the emotional resonance, will match a process and not just a well designed product. Sustainable production processes, green and eco profiles that connect beyond the immediate moment of gratification. Perhaps the new form of navigating an emotional landscape is the evolutionary necessity for surviving in a world plagued by climate crisis and individual isolation?
Monday, 29 January 2007
Wednesday, 24 January 2007
Mapping moving markets, or Magellan 2
It is said that the true innovation that lead to Ferdinand Magellan's historic circumnavigation was the ingenious use of an underlying grid to map the geographical layout of the continents. This essential open source technology allowed people to pull together personal experience in a way that connected each individual experience in a meaningful way.
Think about it. Before the use of a universal grid, each traveller had to
rely on simple routes, outlined with simple observations. The spacial accuracy was never guaranteed as the scale was not applied consistently. The river that looks so huge in one sketch can be a minor stream in another traveler's sketch book observation. Confronted with disparate pieces of information the confused adventurer had to make it up as he or she went along. The resulting maps were patchworks that have little relation to the real space as this map of 1544 shows.
By unifying all these observations in an open source environment it was possible for a traveller to know exactly where they are relative to landmarks and destinations. They could plan and interact in a way that was unprecedented in an age where everything over the horizon, or beyond the amateur sketches of personal experience contained dragons.
I believe that google maps and it's sisters google earth and wikimapia will prove to be the most significant innovations of this century. They structure context. This enables people to pinpoint personal experiences and relate those to the local knowledge of others against the backdrop of a defined open source realworld reference. (The interplay between IRL and URL) By overlaying this basic grid of human endeavour, we now have immediate context of our daily adventures. The key has been delivering access to this context in a live and interactive way. Think about your own travels, and the power that individuals have when they have "the in" on the local know how. The iPhone has shown the way, and many more such devices will follow to enable quick access to such local know how. An enhanced reality where we begin to see in four dimensions. The accumulation of information over time will enhance the experience to give depth and options to every moment.
The real revolution however will only come when the environment becomes intelligent as well, responding to the people who move through it. Websites do it now. The cookies and data that warn a site of who is about to enter it is used to "customise" the experience for the visitor. How long will it take before the environment starts showing more intelligence and responds in kind. This was often talked about in the heady days when MIT medialab was an iconic reference point. Will we need to wait for Samsung to show us all the way?
For the marketer this will be unprecedented. Where the word "marketing" literally means "to bring to the market place" we have an opportunity to redefine the design and operation of the organisation to stay in step with the moving market. Rethinking communication and display, packaging and distribution in line with an intelligent environment, sensitive to the actual people in it. This impact will be most pronounced in the poor countries where existing infrastructure is being leapfrogged for an open, mobile infrastructure. Have you figured out how to make money in India and China?
Think about it. Before the use of a universal grid, each traveller had to
rely on simple routes, outlined with simple observations. The spacial accuracy was never guaranteed as the scale was not applied consistently. The river that looks so huge in one sketch can be a minor stream in another traveler's sketch book observation. Confronted with disparate pieces of information the confused adventurer had to make it up as he or she went along. The resulting maps were patchworks that have little relation to the real space as this map of 1544 shows.By unifying all these observations in an open source environment it was possible for a traveller to know exactly where they are relative to landmarks and destinations. They could plan and interact in a way that was unprecedented in an age where everything over the horizon, or beyond the amateur sketches of personal experience contained dragons.
I believe that google maps and it's sisters google earth and wikimapia will prove to be the most significant innovations of this century. They structure context. This enables people to pinpoint personal experiences and relate those to the local knowledge of others against the backdrop of a defined open source realworld reference. (The interplay between IRL and URL) By overlaying this basic grid of human endeavour, we now have immediate context of our daily adventures. The key has been delivering access to this context in a live and interactive way. Think about your own travels, and the power that individuals have when they have "the in" on the local know how. The iPhone has shown the way, and many more such devices will follow to enable quick access to such local know how. An enhanced reality where we begin to see in four dimensions. The accumulation of information over time will enhance the experience to give depth and options to every moment.
The real revolution however will only come when the environment becomes intelligent as well, responding to the people who move through it. Websites do it now. The cookies and data that warn a site of who is about to enter it is used to "customise" the experience for the visitor. How long will it take before the environment starts showing more intelligence and responds in kind. This was often talked about in the heady days when MIT medialab was an iconic reference point. Will we need to wait for Samsung to show us all the way?
For the marketer this will be unprecedented. Where the word "marketing" literally means "to bring to the market place" we have an opportunity to redefine the design and operation of the organisation to stay in step with the moving market. Rethinking communication and display, packaging and distribution in line with an intelligent environment, sensitive to the actual people in it. This impact will be most pronounced in the poor countries where existing infrastructure is being leapfrogged for an open, mobile infrastructure. Have you figured out how to make money in India and China?
Sunday, 21 January 2007
Moving ahead
A lot of thought was put into how people move when Karl Schwanzer designed the iconic BMW building in Munich (Olympic Tower). Shaping the outside of the building like a four cylinder engine only reflected the internal intent of the organisation working like a well oiled machine. The workflows, connections between departments and culture determined where people sat, and ultimately how they interacted.
We can only begin to conceive the long term impact this has had on the independent car maker. In the words of the company, the building represents "Prosperity, Autonomy and technical perfection". The incarnation of essence, supported by a flow of information and energy which all aligns with the intent of the organisation. Very few companies begin to understand this fundamental resonance between form and content, between sign and intent. Why is it that most workshops take place in stuffy rooms, with crap coffee (if any) using pieces of paper and random thoughts that happen to enter the mind of the participants on that day. The context, flow and intent of the assembled energy is hardly ever considered. How can one not but develop explosive ideas when you are sitting in a combustion engine? And how can one but repeat history if the process is repetitive and purely intellectual?
Years ago a friend observed that we are all doing the same work in essence these days. If an alien had to come down and look at humans at work they would see little difference between a doctor, an engineer, and bank clerk. We all assume a position in front of a terminal (lovely word that) and push buttons arranged into neat rows.
Brian Eno said ages ago, the problem with computers is that there is not enough Africa in them. The kineasthetic nature of human learning has been surgically removed from our productive output.
An interesting thing happened to P&G a few years ago when A G Lafley took over the reigns. The organisation quickly adopted an open plan policy. Meetings took place in little huddle rooms. The interface was complete. You could not hide from the people working with you. This emphasis on the human interaction seems to have come at the same time when P&G managed to move ahead of Unilever, and open a commanding lead.
How do we track the impact of coffee breaks and photo copier runs. The random interactions that happen when the corporate corpus is in motion. When the individuals are forced to meet each other and interact, by the very shape of their workspace. P&G managers also spend a lot more time than anyone I know listing to consumers. They travel intensely, spending time in people's houses and research groups. This is the movement of an open system, an organisation open to assimilating learning and information from it's context.
So back to the original question, how do we bring more movement, the whole body, into corporate behavior which ultimately leads to potent brands?
We can only begin to conceive the long term impact this has had on the independent car maker. In the words of the company, the building represents "Prosperity, Autonomy and technical perfection". The incarnation of essence, supported by a flow of information and energy which all aligns with the intent of the organisation. Very few companies begin to understand this fundamental resonance between form and content, between sign and intent. Why is it that most workshops take place in stuffy rooms, with crap coffee (if any) using pieces of paper and random thoughts that happen to enter the mind of the participants on that day. The context, flow and intent of the assembled energy is hardly ever considered. How can one not but develop explosive ideas when you are sitting in a combustion engine? And how can one but repeat history if the process is repetitive and purely intellectual?
Years ago a friend observed that we are all doing the same work in essence these days. If an alien had to come down and look at humans at work they would see little difference between a doctor, an engineer, and bank clerk. We all assume a position in front of a terminal (lovely word that) and push buttons arranged into neat rows.
Brian Eno said ages ago, the problem with computers is that there is not enough Africa in them. The kineasthetic nature of human learning has been surgically removed from our productive output.
An interesting thing happened to P&G a few years ago when A G Lafley took over the reigns. The organisation quickly adopted an open plan policy. Meetings took place in little huddle rooms. The interface was complete. You could not hide from the people working with you. This emphasis on the human interaction seems to have come at the same time when P&G managed to move ahead of Unilever, and open a commanding lead.
How do we track the impact of coffee breaks and photo copier runs. The random interactions that happen when the corporate corpus is in motion. When the individuals are forced to meet each other and interact, by the very shape of their workspace. P&G managers also spend a lot more time than anyone I know listing to consumers. They travel intensely, spending time in people's houses and research groups. This is the movement of an open system, an organisation open to assimilating learning and information from it's context.
So back to the original question, how do we bring more movement, the whole body, into corporate behavior which ultimately leads to potent brands?
Friday, 19 January 2007
Kinaesthetic Brands
Funny thought occurred to me today as I was walking. What if organisations used different forms of learning in the same way that people do. This thought came to me after watching the TED clip about educating for the future.
Sir Ken Robinson did an extremely good job at showing how the universities have created education systems in their own image. All humans are designed to learn in different ways. Some learn best through motion, some through visual observation, some through talking. It is interesting that although this is well documented, very little has been done to apply this knowledge to effect on children, let alone adults and organisations.
Very often companies will call in some management guru who most likely connects with whatever style the top dog uses to learn. In the 80’s companies went off on a lot of team building trials where a lot of movement was involved, but this was seen as team building and not used as a conscious form of problem solving/learning. How does an organisation develop a healthy, natural relationship with this form of learning?
Sir Ken Robinson did an extremely good job at showing how the universities have created education systems in their own image. All humans are designed to learn in different ways. Some learn best through motion, some through visual observation, some through talking. It is interesting that although this is well documented, very little has been done to apply this knowledge to effect on children, let alone adults and organisations.
Very often companies will call in some management guru who most likely connects with whatever style the top dog uses to learn. In the 80’s companies went off on a lot of team building trials where a lot of movement was involved, but this was seen as team building and not used as a conscious form of problem solving/learning. How does an organisation develop a healthy, natural relationship with this form of learning?
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