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Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Run With A Purpose!

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

Here’s the way it’s going to be one morning in the future:

While you’re lacing up your Google running shoes, or in the vernacular of this future, your ‘Googs,’ you get an alert on your mobile that there’s a major drought looming in Tibet, which is on track to record its lowest snowfall ever.

You program your Googs where to send the 1,000 foot-pounds of energy you’re going to generate during your 6K run. Around the world, millions of others who belong to the Himalayan Foundation like you do get the same alert, and trigger the same program on their Googs– and additionally via the movement generated by wearers of the 12 other shoe brands, two brands of workout machines, a theater seating company named Squirmigy, four flooring companies, and a wheelchair manufacturer–all of which the Himalayan Foundation has networked on the Donorgy platform.

For the next hour, the energy generated by the movement of the users of all these brands will be auctioned by the Himalayan Foundation and sold as futures on global commodity networks. At the end of the hour, the contracts will be delivered and all bets get paid off. With the money raised in a little over one hour, the Himalayan Foundation will be able to fund a fleet of gigantic solar powered cargo-cleaning blimps (known as Humptys) to pick up a billion metric tonnes of water from a flood in the Phillipines and clean and haul it to the farmers and communities of Tibet, who can now keep Buddha smiling for another season.

Okay, we’re not there yet, but we will be someday.

MEANWHILE…here’s what we got. We run for causes. The mechanism by which funds get transferred to various causes is to the aforementioned scenario what a Stanley Steamer is to a Lexus. We’ve got a ways to go, but we work with what we’ve got.

Kevin Wall

TOMORROW, SUNDAY, APRIL 18…Kevin Wall and his band of Live Earthlings will stage a Run for Water that will channel money to a number of organizations who dig wells and provide clean water for poor communities in Africa. It is the ‘opening act’ for the big concert Wall and Live Earth are producing to open the 2010 World Cup in Johannesburg in June. Proceeds from that concert will also flow to social networks supporting economic development in Africa.

The cynic in me says this is sponsored by Dow Chemical. Those Bophal people. The thing is, it takes big money to solve big problems. The waste and misallocation of the planet’s resources is a big problem, and Kevin Wall has a special genius for getting large organizations to direct big money at big problems. movement. Yea absolutely, the guy can be a pain in the ass to work with. Between him and Al Gore, there was pretty much no oxygen in the room on the Live Earth concerts (the plants were happy, though : ) That said, Kevin has a great heart, he is a master business improviser who causes a lot of unforeseen positive outcomes in the projects he does, and he deserves the support of anyone–from Tony Dow to Dow Finsterwald to Dow Jones to Dow Chemical to Daniel Dao–who wants to work on better ways of treating the planet.

And I will guarantee that when roller skates and skateboards start generating energy futures, Kevin Wall will be the first in line for that deal.

Until then…what are we going to do tomorrow?!…

If you run, or can walk 6K, and are in one of the many locations around the world where this run is happening, it will definitely be a good thing for you to do tomorrow morning. Program those Googs and throw some foot-pounds at the problem, why don’t ya!

Tags: Blimps, Daniel Dao, Dow Chemical, Dow Finsterwald, Dow Jones, Google, Googs, Himalayan Foundation, Humpers, Kevin Wall, Live Earth, Movement, Run for Water, Social Engineering, Tony Dow
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Environment, Games, Leadership, Movement, Networked World, Problem Solving | No Comments »

SXSW #7 – SOCIAL MEDIA AND HEALTH CARE

Sunday, March 22nd, 2009

GameChangers has a health care client, and because of that I am aware of this panel before my friend Josh Rose, head of digital media for Deutsch Advertising, who’s not attending SXSW this year, sends out a morning tweet asking his network if anyone’s planning to attend the ‘Social Media and Health Care’ discussion. I am grateful to Josh for the extra impetus, though, because this turns out to be my favorite discussion of the conference. Nothing is resolved, no consensus gained, no conclusions reached. But the quality of the questions posed, perspectives presented and the passion people bring to the subject are amazing and inspiring.

People here represent insurance companies, big pharma, start-ups, physician networks, social networks built around various health concerns, and NGOs. There are several physicians in the audience, and one guy, Vik Duggal (www.konstructr.com) from the construction business who makes a remark on which, the way I see it, the entire conversation pivots. Until Vik speaks, the focus has been on privacy issues. And then Vik says, “All of these comments about patient privacy and the relationship between employees and employers assume the current model. I’m in the construction business and I can tell you that everything about it is going to change in the next five years. What’s true today will not be true in the future.”

It’s like Vik dropped a lit cigarette into a gas tank. The room erupts in conversation that the moderator soon loses any chance of moderating. I had not planned to say anything, but when the moderator tries to calm things down by saying, “I’ve got to tell you, I’m not optimistic” I shout at him, just to keep things lively, “That’s your choice!”

A young physician from Brooklyn, Jay Parkinson, is launching his own social network, HelloHealth. He says, “Doctors like patients who come in already educated about what’s wrong with them. Education and prevention are the best medicines we have.”

Later I tell the story of how, at no cost to me, I healed myself of a case of Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo (BPPV) using Google search and a YouTube video of a treatment known as the Epley Maneuver; and how my accountant had paid over $6,000 to ‘the health care system’ to get healed of the same ailment. One guy jumps all over this. “And who would you have blamed if it hadn’t worked?” he asks accusatorily. “Myself!” I bark back at him over a whole chorus of people chiming in with anecdotes of their own.

At one point near the end of the session, a woman with an autistic child makes the following statement: “I can tell you that the parents of an autistic child typically know more about autism than the average physician, and in my experience, the average physician welcomes what the parents know.”

Tags: BPPV, Brooklyn, Google, Health Care, Innovation, konstructr.com, Social Media, Social Networks, Vik Duggal, YouTube
Posted in Communication, Dialogue, Emotion, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Networked World | 1 Comment »

Surfi Culture

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008

The idea that two seemingly unrelated or conflicting points of view can be synthesized into a new and rewarding perspective is at heart of improvisation. The ability to resolve conflict by identifying and playing productive games is the secret to creativity, innovation and, ultimately, entrepreneurship.

Warm heart of Disney animation meets Steve Jobs’ cool tech to produce Pixar.

Choir songbooks plus moribund 3M R&D project yields PostIt notes.

Simplicity of a 32-word landing page plus complexity of human language brands Google.

Here’s a great example that surfaced this week on the BBC showing how improvisers resolve conflict to conjure up fresh ideas. Thanks to our friend James Dean Conklin (iconic actor meets bop on the head to shape a uniquely evolved human being) for calling it to our attention.

Phillip George, a designer from Australia, was ‘inspired’ by a series of riots on Sydney beaches in 2005, in which the Surf crowd attacked the Sufi crowd. George has produced a series of surfboards featuring beautiful Arabic designs that’s being shown right now in Australia as a museum exhibit. Right on, duddah!

Tags: 2005, 3M, Australia, Conflict, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Google, Innovation, Phillip George, Pixar, Resolution, Riots, Steve Jobs, Surfboards, Surfi, Surfi Culture, Sydney
Posted in Agreement Principle, Character, Communication, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Gifts, Innovation | 1 Comment »

Context is King

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

June, 1985: At a conference on film financing, a banker from First Boston asks a crowd of film industry executives to name the most valuable thing in the movie business. None of them have the answer she’s looking for, an answer that was prescient at the time, and never more relevant than it is today. “The most valuable thing in the movie business,” the banker informs them, “is 52 weekends a year.” In the banker’s opinion, it is the film studios’ ability to capitalize on the 52 yearly opening weekends that determines their status in the marketplace. Not long after the banker makes this observation, the Weekend Boxoffice Report begins appearing for the first time in newspapers around the country. For better or worse, who ‘wins the weekends’ becomes a new metric for a film’s success, a new context for audiences to consider, and a driver of a film’s revenue in ancillary markets.

In the Networked World, as the costs of producing media and other forms of intellectual property dwindle, and your blog about your dog has the potential to reach as many people as Maureen Dowd’s column in the New York Times, the big business opportunities for brands and entrepreneurs are not so much in the creation of content, but in creating and owning context. (more…)

Tags: Branding, Connect and Develop, Content, Context, Context is King, Contextualization, Google, Innovation, Mochila, Morf, Networked World, P & G, Social Engineer, Social Networks, YouTube
Posted in Branding, Listening, Networked World, Suggestions From the Audience, Themes | 1 Comment »

Five Business Scenes Analyzed

Friday, May 30th, 2008

Yahoo1

Scene: Microhoogle. A strong player like Microsoft will usually dominate a scene with a weaker player confused about its identity like Yahoo is. By being the more aggressive player, Microsoft has painted Yahoo’s ‘character’ in their scene as, by turns, a ‘collegial acquisition’, ‘a hostile takeover’, ‘an unfaithful tart’, ‘an overpriced stock’ and, as of this week, ‘just friends who talk on the phone a lot but there’s nothing serious going on between us, swear…no seriously, you guys, swear!’ Yahoo tried to ignite a bidding war by introducing Google to the scene, but all it did was diminish Yahoo’s status in the eyes of the audience by reminding everyone that this scene is really about Microsoft vs. Google. The best Yahoo can do is control the timing and style of the edit (i.e. the selling strategy). When a confused player is onstage too long, an edit is inevitable. (more…)

Tags: , Analysis, Bush Administration, Business, Google, Mesa Energy, Microsoft, News, Oil, Scenes, T. Boone Pickens, War, Yahoo
Posted in Scenes | No Comments »

GameChanger of the Month, April 2008

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

It’s only the most valuable brand in the world these days, so in one sense any kind of accolade, even one as prestigious as the GameChanger of the Month Award (”The Gamey”) with its winning prize of this blog post, is pretty obvious and lame. Google3

What’s not so obvious or lame is how Google’s culture is built on fundamental concepts of improvisation. (more…)

Tags: April 2008, GameChanger of the Month, Games, Google, Googleplex, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, T-shirt
Posted in Branding, Dialogue, Emotion, Listening, Suggestions From the Audience | 1 Comment »

Hacking Improvisation

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

Every successful brand, organization and entrepreneur in the Networked World will succeed largely on the basis of their ability to hack improvisation. As my friend Gary Graf, quoting Walter Brennan in The Guns of Will Sonnet, likes to say: No brag, just fact. How do I know it’s fact? Because hacking improvisation has always been a key to breakthrough success in business.

Exhibit A: In 1920, Father Julius Nieuwland creates the polymers that make synthetic rubber possible when he accidentally leaves a pot boiling on a stove.

SynthRubberTire2

Exhibit B: In 1928, Walt Disney creates Mickey Mouse when his partner in the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon series double-crosses him. Mickey gets his name because Walt’s wife, Lily, hates the name ‘Mortimer’ that Walt had given him. (more…)

Tags: Business, GameChangers, Google, Hack, Improvisation, Julius Nieuland, Mickey Mouse, Mortimer, Networked World, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Post-It Notes, Synthetic Rubber, Taryn Rose, Walt Disney
Posted in Fundamentals, Issues, Networked World | No Comments »