Posts Tagged ‘Sustainability’
Sunday, October 2nd, 2011
Occupy Wall Street is, I think, a protest against Unsustainable Games (UGs).
When people say ’sustainability,’ they can be referring to a lot of different cosmetic concepts (monetary policy, geothermal energy, funding for education or manufacturing, urban gardening, solar power, vegetarianism, LED lighting, gender and sexual equality, etc. etc. etc.). In fact, we know this ‘multi-causism’ to be characteristic of the OWS scene. The meta concept is, for all these causes, the same: Are you playing constructive or de-constructive games? Zero sum or positive sum games? Are your games sustainable or not? OWS is, ultimately, itself a game, one designed to focus attention on the UGs of Wall Street.
The protesters arrested yesterday on the Brooklyn Bridge represent the most creative generation living in the most creative nation on earth. No doubt they have roots in every language, race, religion, culture, science, art form and evolutionary instinct in the human species. And daily, on Manhattan Island, they are forced to confront the 1-percenters who control 99 percent of the nation’s wealth, people who are, for the most part, not creators, but extractors. That’s what their games are designed to do—-extract. These people getting arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge? they’re doing it to point out the difference between where the money is and where it needs to be for us to get a bigger bang out of the creativity they represent. 99 percent of our creativity belongs to 99 percent of the people. That’s a biological fact, Jack. It’s the ultimate sustainable resource. The protesters know this and are calling it to our attention with one of the games they and their friends originated, flash mobbing.
The OWS players understand that if the ratio of ‘99 percent of the wealth to 1 percent of the people’ ratio stays where it is, we will never get out the doldrums economically, because we’re getting no Return on Creativity. No ROC. Because we are putting most of our money where 99 percent of our creativity isn’t. For the ratio to change, the game must change. The OWS players grew up on games. They are the gamingest people in the history of the world. You think they don’t know a bad game when they see one? Wall Street plays bad games. They want game change.
Game change will come about only when we find ways to invest in the creativity of the 99 percent. We cannot afford to have the most creative Americans sitting on the bench right now. We need them in the game. Just not the old games. New ones. The OWS players are screaming at the coaches to put them into a game they can play.
The old game, in addition to being unsustainable, has left a bitter taste in the mouth of the world. Those protesters sitting on the Brooklyn Bridge? They’re bitter too. They’re bitter because they have the ability to change the game and they know it. They understand the scope of the work ahead, and are in a hurry to get on with it.
They have good taste, let them cook with it, and bring the world to our table again. They have stories to tell that are not the same old stories, let them tell them. They have visions that are not blueprints of the past, let them build them. They hear music that has never been sung and have crazy ideas that no one else would even think of attempting. Let them sing. Let them try. We need that now. We need them. And every day the ‘1 percent to 99 percent ratio’ stays where it is, we are one step closer to losing them.
They are getting arrested for squatting on a symbol of America’s great creative past like birds who have come home to roost, when what they really want to do is fly.
Tags: 99 to 1, America, Brooklyn Bridge, Cosmetic, Creativity, Economy, Meta, Narrative, Occupy Wall Street, Protests, Ratio, Sustainability, Wall Street Protests
Posted in Emotion, Entrepreneurship, Games, Innovation, Issues, Levels of Meaning, Narrative | No Comments »
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
This is an important distinction for brands to make:
No more Consumers.
Customers.
Every time you refer to your ‘paying audience’ as Consumers, subtract one point from your brand’s Adaptability Index (AI). Every time you refer to them as Customers, add one point.
Here’s why:
Consuming stuff is so last century. The piggery and gluttony that came with relating material goods and conspicuous services to one’s status is totally unsustainable. It is a zero sum game.
Customizing stuff (and oneself), on the other hand, the honoring of customs and customers, is the engine that drives the sustainable economy. It is a generative process designed to conserve and make more efficient use of increasingly scarce resources.
Consumers consume. Customers customize. That’s it in a nutshell.
Here are some of the implications:
Brands who emphasize consumption contribute to obesity, both mental and physical. They represent an ever-larger drain on the planet’s resources. They introduce a lot of useless crap onto the world by manufacturing illusory needs. They associate levels of consumption with status. The biggest of this. The most of that. The hardest. The shiniest. The latest and greatest. These brands pay for the audience’s attention. Most significantly, they define the relationship between the brand and the audience using numbers.
I, Consumer, am a number of numbers. This is my number of average waking hours per day. A percentage of those waking hours belongs to you, a brand. During the percentage that belongs to you, I consume a percentage of the yearly sales of your product in my demographic. You spend a number to hold my attention. If that number stays below a certain acquisition price relative to the yearly value of the percentage of my day that I devote to you, you will keep spending it. If it gets too high, you will let my attention drift elsewhere. A computer program will tell you what to and then cover your tracks so that you’ll be blameless. No one will be able to lay a hot dog on you.
Brands who customize largely participate in customs that already exist, customs into which they’ve been invited by a customer. (The attempt to manufacture a custom is costly, with very low ROI.) The relationship between a brand and a customer is a conversation, a dialogue. These brands serve causes that cannot be defined by numbers (even as numerical values for what they contribute and receive as a result of their participation, can and must be assigned and evaluated continuously). Brands with customers understand that consumption of the brand’s product or service represents part of, but not the entirety of, their value to the customer. Consumption is one an element of a narrative that has many elements, most of which are outside the brand’s control. These brands prefer earning attention from their audience to paying for it.
I, Customer, am an individual. One of a kind. All my friends are one of a kind. I got my thing, you know, just like you got yours, just like everybody’s got their own. I am basically awake 24 hours a day, because I got plates in the air, you know. My homies in Bulgaria are coding some tracks we’re going to run off a honeypot server for which we are getting paid by a new label in Atlanta call Tso-Tso that does B-Boy tracks for mall shows and competitions all over the Southern U.S., Australia and the Philippines. Shit is off the hook. We get a dollar per download, and already this month we’ve made five thousand dollars. First thing in the morning, I am catching a plane to Fort Meyers to work with some friends down there who have a band and play clubs at night, and weatherize houses during the day for twenty bucks an hour. I’m producing their next album and they are paying me by getting me a job weatherizing houses for the summer. And on the weekends we take out one guy’s girlfriend’s family’s boat and party like animals. Any brand that’s down for this scene is welcome to roll with me.
In a sustainable economy, how we roll is going to be much more important than how much we roll. It used to be about the size your boat. Now it’s about boating like only you (and your crazy friends) know how.
Tags: Attention, B-boys, Branding, Brands, Broadcast, Consumer, Custom, Customer, Customization, Dialogue, Earned, Economy, Ft. Meyers, Honeypot, Hot Dog Eating Contest, Model, Paid, Sustainability
Posted in Branding, Dialogue, Narrative, Relationships, Sales | 4 Comments »
Friday, March 5th, 2010
This is from a blog post by our friend, Nilofer Merchant, author of the new book The New How: Creating Business Solutions Through Collaborative Strategy:
The challenge with people feeling powerless is this: we don’t see how we can contribute to solve problems. We believe it is “someone else’s” to own rather than something any of us can contribute to. Powerlessness leads to apathy on global issues and disdain on local issues.
Now check out this from Mick Napier’s classic book, Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out:
Two people…staring at each other and wondering who’s going to make the first move. Two people being nice to each other and allowing the other to start doing something. In that short amount of time, two humans have created themselves as powerless…Who has time? The audience is waiting. They don’t care about your support. They care about what you do. What you do now.
These two statements, made miles and years apart, reflect the timelessness of the concept: Do something! Participate! Add to the conversation! When you’re just getting started don’t worry about what the solution will be, or where the scene will take you. No one knows, and your audience doesn’t care. The most important thing is to bring to the scene whatever you’ve got.
The saying in improvisation is ‘take care of yourself first.’ This is not the same as being selfish. It is, rather, the recognition that making the first move, even if we are not always the one to make it, is always our responsibility.
Tags: Audience, Global, Improvisation: Scene from the Inside Out, Innovation, Local, Mick Napier, Nilofer Merchant, Power, Powerless, Powerlessness, Problem Solving, Support, Sustainability, Take Care of Yourself First, The New How
Posted in Agreement Principle, Communication, Dialogue, Entrepreneurship, Initiations, Innovation, Leadership, Relationships | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
Five years ago, Mona Hoffman quit a secure, high-paying, high-status job at a good old fashioned Midwestern manufacturing company where she was a valuable employee, and began a journey inspired by the book Concrete Countertops by Fu-Tung Cheng. Her journey has resulted, this year, in the formation of Rough Edges Design, which produces interior design items made of concrete. The first product line is lamps. Others are soon to follow.
Mona Hoffman is August’s GameChanger of the Month because her brand is an exploration of themes that matter. One of her responsibilities at her former company was sustainability, and the company, though appreciated as a major employer in the community where it’s headquartered, was not committed to moving in that direction (its major product lines are made of wood). Another of her passions is craftsmanship, the ability to turn readily available materials into something extraordinary. In transforming herself into an artisan who works with concrete, she combines the themes of sustainability and craftsmanship. The exploration of these two themes creates and informs the Rough Edges brand narrative.
Mona Hoffman is the GameChanger of the Month, because in forming her new company, she acted on what she is passionate about, yet she didn’t leap before looking. Rough Edges Design is grounded in diligent study and immersive apprenticing in the craft of concrete-shaping. The transition from cushy-and-corporate to rough-and-tumble is not one to make without a lot of preparation. Preparation is the key to a successful journey. Preparation gives you the ability to improvise in a way that a plan, no matter how meticulous and thought-through it is, cannot. A GameChanger prepares.
Works like The Unknown Craftsman, by Soetsu Yanagi informed Hoffman’s education. Yanagi’s words, though originally written in another language about artisans from a different culture, described a world familiar to her, one in which everyday objects and materials become sources of what Yanagi calls “calm and friendly beauty.”
Having spent her professional life in a world of zero-tolerance manufacturing and super-repeatable processes, Hoffman has created a brand where the production process, by design, yields unexpected results, where “flaws” are in fact an artifact of the human touch on the material, and are embraced as part of the product’s charm.
Mona Hoffman is the GameChanger of the Month because she interacts with the familiar in a way that makes it new and remarkable. This is the alchemy of improvisation. With its artful line of lamps, Rough Edges Design literally turns heavy material into objects of light. And if that ain’t changin’ the game, we don’t know what is.
Tags: Alchemy, August 2009, Bonifer, Concrete, Concrete Countertops, Craft, Fu Tung Cheng, GameChanger of the Month, Manufacturing, Mona Hoffman, Preparation, Process, Rough Edges Design, Soetsu Yanagi, Sustainability, Transformation, Unknown Craftsman
Posted in Branding, Creativity, Education, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Themes | No Comments »
Monday, July 13th, 2009
For months before we met for lunch last week, I had been hearing about Brian Hurd, mainly from Deep Patel of GoGreenSolar. Deep claims that Hurd is one of the sharpest tools in the shed. Has more experience than just about anyone in the solar industry. Knows as much as anyone in the world about the state of solar technology. Started the solar installation program at the East L.A. Skills Center, where he has trained more certified solar technicians than anyone in the U. S. Helped write the State of California certification tests for solar installers. Is a protege of Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, the former Congresswoman from California who admires the work he’s done to create jobs in the community. The web site for the company he founded, Hands On Solar, and the Google results page for ‘Brian Hurd Solar Technology’ bear out all this and more. (more…)
Tags: Brian Hurd, Character, Conversation, Deep Patel, Dialogue, Education, Gifts, GoGreenSolar, Hands On Solar, Information, Solar Technology, Solar The Sign, Strawbale Construction, Sustainability, Transformation
Posted in Character, Dialogue, Education, Entrepreneurship, Gifts, Listening, Scenes | 1 Comment »
Saturday, July 4th, 2009
A memory is only as good as our ability to turn it into action. We remember what we want to keep alive.
It has never been more important than it is on July 4, 2009, that we remember the founding of the United States of America as a Revolution, an overthrow of a distant ruling elite that had lost touch with the people.
Because today we need another Revolution.
We need a revolution against the kinds of businesses the U.S. has invested in way too heavily for the past 125 years, the businesses that sustained the oil-and-war economy built by people like George W. Bush’s granddad, businesses that President Eisenhower in the 1950s labeled the military-industrial complex. Today the news media is complicit in the complex. After all, what is more likely to keep you glued to the feeding tube than something scary happening right outside your front door? (more…)
Tags: 2009, Business, Change, Environment, George W. Bush, Green, Growth, Harry Reid, Indpendence Day, Innovation, John Boehner, July 4, legislation, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Revolution, Sustainability, Themes
Posted in Branding, Coaching, Communication, Creativity, Education, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Focus, Games, Innovation, Narrative, Speed, Themes, Uncategorized | No Comments »
Saturday, October 18th, 2008
John Culhane, a Rockford, Illinois-born journalist, author, and the model for the character of Mr. Snoops in the Disney animated film, The Rescuers, met his wife, Hind Rassam, a native of Baghdad, Iraq, when he reviewed her in a student performance of Antigone. John and Hind fell in love and had two sons, T. H. and Michael.
It is no surprise that the Culhane boys are born performers, a couple of very animated characters.
Once, as part of a story John did for the New York Times Magazine, he and the boys enrolled at Ringling Bros. Clown College in Sarasota, Florida, and T. H. and Michael became the youngest clowns ever to perform with Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey big show. (more…)
Tags: Animation, Antigone, Cairo, Character, Circus Guy, Disney, Frankfurt, Hind Rassam Culhane, John Culhane, Kilian Culhane, Michael Culhane, Middle East, Mr. Snoops, Rockford, Roles, Solar CITIES, Solar Power, Sustainability, Sybille Culhane, T. H. Culhane, UCLA, Urban Planning
Posted in Character, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Games, Innovation, Movement | 6 Comments »
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
Word on the street is that Nau, the sustainable clothing company, is coming back. Yes! Fantastic news. The brand has been purchased by Horny Toad Activewear of Santa Barbara, CA. Most of the original Nau team is on board and ramping up fast. The buoyancy of the support Nau got from its customers kept it afloat until Horny Toad hopped to the rescue.A great narrative will always find a way to continue.
And Nau is always the time.
Congratulations to my friends at Nau! Way to improvise, you guys!
Tags: Brand Narrative, Branding, Horny Toad, Nau, Storytelling, Sustainability, Sustainable Clothing
Posted in Branding, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Narrative | No Comments »
Friday, May 9th, 2008
In March of this year, I wrote a post extolling the virtues of the sustainable clothing company, Nau. Last week, unable to secure another round of financing, Nau filed for bankruptcy and on Saturday, May 3, 2008, closed its doors. It was a sad day, the death of a beautiful brand.I have no idea what factors went into the shut-down, whether there were supply chain issues, management conflicts, pricing issues, location issues, or whether Nau’s investors were capitalized by bad real estate loans and the company’s financing collapsed because of it — whatever the reasons, as a loyal customer, the fact that Nau was forced to close its doors pisses me off. (more…)
Tags: Branding, design, Exxon, Nau, Pisses Me Off, Store Closing, Sustainability, Sustainable Clothing, Wal-Mart
Posted in Branding, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Networked World | 2 Comments »
