In a conversation with John Seely Brown and Erick B this past week at a party in Westwood hosted by the Deloitte Center for the Edge, we talked about creating value at the edges of networks, where the flow of information is fiercest. (The new book, The Power of Pull, co-written by JSB with John Hagel and Lang Davison, explores this subject in depth. My review to follow.)
JSB asked Erick and me how social networks (Erick’s area of expertise) and improvisation (mine) create value.
I asked rhetorically in return, “Why do pictures have frames?”
The conversation continued for a minute or so and then JSB repeated, “Why do pictures have frames? That’s a good subject for an article!”
So here it is, JSB. An improviser’s answer to the question, “Why do pictures have frames?” (Erick B? You got anything? Bring it!)
Frames impose discipline. How many times have we all heard the phrase, “Think outside the box”? Scary many. Over the past ten years, it has succeeded “paradigm shift” as the #1 business cliché. Worse than a cliché, it’s bullshit, because it implies that a good creative process is not subject to restrictions. That it’s totally free. Random and unfettered. A good process, in fact, begins with restrictions.
A sculptor chooses a rock. The rock is a frame. The sculpture is already in the rock, and it’s the artist’s job to coax it out. The rock tells the artist what tools to use. How much time to allocate. How much force to apply to the coaxing process. The nature of the rock suggests where the sculpture will eventually live. The artist can only create within the limitations of the rock, and yet, within those limitations, there is unlimited potential to bring something delightful to life. The artist uses the frame of the rock to test his or her own limitations to make something of value. Our limitations are not in the rocks we choose, but in ourselves.
For improvisers, the game is the frame. The game liberates potential because players know that everything required for a great performance is already in the game, waiting to be discovered. In terms of business, ‘framing games’ put the emphasis where it belongs, on human potential, and not on a particular system or platform.
Frames create focus. The eye knows where to go. The geometry of the frame introduces–to both the artist and the beholder–spatial and temporal relationships. These relationships between the art and its environment, and between elements of design within the frame, give meaning to what’s inside the frame. Likewise, the act of framing helps define relationships within networks; and between a network and the business environment.
Frames provide context. Unless the immense amount of communication coursing through a network is given context, it tends to be read as raw data by platform- and metrics-obsessed managers. Data is not narrative. Data is not theme. Data without a framing game to give it context is meaningless, like water without a container. All it does is evaporate. The molecules are still there, but its usefulness vanishes into thin air.
Frames invite valuation. Let’s face it, business needs numbers. The margins must be there. How much is the time of a employee at the edge, in steady communication with players outside the company’s network, worth? Framing games make valuation possible. (Not easy. Possible.)
In The Power of Pull, JSB, Hagel and Davison describe ‘shaping strategies’ for networked organization, which are analogous to the framing games described above.
If this has whetted your appetite for the subject of ‘why pictures have frames,’ you can deepdive into this conversation between the renowned academics, David Bordwell and Henry Jenkins, part 3 of a series about framing transmedia narratives.
I got to the location of the conference, Boston University’s 
Catherine Stephens, a Disney executive, coined this phrase last week in casual conversation when she and I were discussing the studio’s new eco-brand, 
‘Flexible’ is what the improvisational brand has to be at the edges of its network. Continuing the tree analogy, flexibility is what you find in the tree’s outermost branches and leaves. For a business operating in the Networked World, the edge is where the action is. It is where creative disruption happens. Where innovation is most likely to find its inspiration. Most importantly, it is where a brand carries on conversations with its customers. This is where you find skunk works, social networks, and tweets. It is where buzz begins.
