Recently, I gave the opening keynote at the Crowdsourcing Week on Connecting the Crowd: The Future of Creativity and Innovation. Below are the slides for my keynote. Please note that the slides are intended as visual support to my presentation, and are not designed to be meaningful on their own. However, they may still be useful or of interest to those who did not attend the keynote.
Here are a few quick notes on what I covered:
1. Humanity
As computers transcend many human capabilities and work is dehumanized, we must focus on the skills and abilities where humans excel beyond any imaginable machine capability. At the heart of those human capabilities are creativity and innovation.
2. Crowds
Crowdsourcing, in ‘tapping the minds of many’ through a wide variety of mechanisms, can bring about an extraordinary degree of new connections from which creative ideas emerge. There is absolutely still a role for individual genius, and we need to explore further the domains in which individuals or small groups excel, and where crowds can create unique value.
3. Creativity
Studies show that creative abilities are on the wane in the US. To remedy that we must allow the sexual life of ideas to flourish, enabling connections and networks to form. Organizational network analysis helps us to design more innovative companies and business ecosystems.
4. Structure
There are two primary constraints on taking innovation to crowds: Intellectual Property and Context. The former is significant though IP protection is often over-emphasized. Context is often more critical, as innovation often requires rich organizational context. The two major domains of crowdsourcing for innovation are Defined Tasks and Distributed Ideas, each with a variety of different platforms available. Internal crowds are appropriate where innovation requires the most context.
5. Opportunities
There are a set of capabilities that organizations need to get better at to build their capabilities at creativity and innovation, including outcome definition, communication of context, crowd mechanisms, and getting broader participation. They must look beyond their boundaries in order to get the best ideas and outcomes.
A taxonomy of branded content and its role in the future of media
By Ross DawsonImmediately after my opening keynote on Creating the Future of News at INMA World Congress in New York last week was a very interesting plenary session from Neil Zuckerman of Boston Consulting Group (BCG) on branded content in the future of media, drawing on a recent multi-country study they have done. I had already emphasized the importance of branded content in my keynote, so it was a great segue into his detailed analysis.
Zuckerman began by running through the severe challenges for the news industry, going on to highlight branded content as the next source of growth for the industry. Below are a few slides from his excellent presenatation.
BCG sees branded content growing at a 21% rate over the next 5 years. I believe it is likely to grow faster than this.
Source: Boston Consulting Group
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Applying platform strategy to Facebook Instant Articles
By Ross DawsonProbably the most reported aspect of my opening keynote at INMA World Congress in New York last week on Creating the Future of News was my response to an audience question about how publishers should think about Facebook’s new offer to publishers to host their articles for mobile viewing.
An article in Sydney Morning Herald today titled Beware Facebook creep, publishers warned opened by describing the new Facebook Instant Articles and went on to quote me:
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Lessons from the transformation of Washington Post since its acquisition by Jeff Bezos
By Ross DawsonThe opening keynote on the second day was from Steve Hills, President of Washington Post, who spoke about the state of Washington Post since its acquisition in October 2013 by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos. He shared some fascinating insights that are highly relevant for any news publisher looking to create the future.
The big idea of what they are aiming to create is “A national edition optimized for mobile and for interestingness with a simple UX designed for stunning storytelling that is less work for the user to consume.” Bezos thinks it is critical to reduce ‘cognitive overhead’ for their readers.
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Keynote slides: Creating the Future of News
By Ross DawsonTomorrow I am giving the opening keynote at International News Media Association (INMA) World Congress in New York.
Over 400 senior news executives from 45 countries are gathering to gain insights into the leading edge and path forward for news organizations globally.
My keynote provides a highly positive perspective on the extraordinary opportunities for the news industry. I am currently refocusing on the future of news and media, and will be sharing a lot more on this topic during this year.
For now, here are the slides to my keynote. As always, note that my slides are designed to accompany my keynote and not to stand alone, and also contain many videos that do not show in the slides below. However they may still be of interest to people who are not attending my keynote.
The need for innovation across boundaries and the power of big data analytics
By Ross DawsonI attended a very interesting lunch today hosted by EMC launching a study and report on Information Generation, drawing on a survey of 3,600 executives globally looking at what will drive their business in coming years.
The primary themes of the report were around spotting opportunities, innovation, transparency and trust, personalization, and 24/7 availability, and the implications for business.
One of the interesting insights from the study was on what executives believe their organizations can best do to foster innovation.
Source: EMC Information Generation
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Crowds and the future of creativity and innovation
By Ross DawsonRecently, I gave the opening keynote at the Crowdsourcing Week on Connecting the Crowd: The Future of Creativity and Innovation. Below are the slides for my keynote. Please note that the slides are intended as visual support to my presentation, and are not designed to be meaningful on their own. However, they may still be useful or of interest to those who did not attend the keynote.
Here are a few quick notes on what I covered:
1. Humanity
As computers transcend many human capabilities and work is dehumanized, we must focus on the skills and abilities where humans excel beyond any imaginable machine capability. At the heart of those human capabilities are creativity and innovation.
2. Crowds
Crowdsourcing, in ‘tapping the minds of many’ through a wide variety of mechanisms, can bring about an extraordinary degree of new connections from which creative ideas emerge. There is absolutely still a role for individual genius, and we need to explore further the domains in which individuals or small groups excel, and where crowds can create unique value.
3. Creativity
Studies show that creative abilities are on the wane in the US. To remedy that we must allow the sexual life of ideas to flourish, enabling connections and networks to form. Organizational network analysis helps us to design more innovative companies and business ecosystems.
4. Structure
There are two primary constraints on taking innovation to crowds: Intellectual Property and Context. The former is significant though IP protection is often over-emphasized. Context is often more critical, as innovation often requires rich organizational context. The two major domains of crowdsourcing for innovation are Defined Tasks and Distributed Ideas, each with a variety of different platforms available. Internal crowds are appropriate where innovation requires the most context.
5. Opportunities
There are a set of capabilities that organizations need to get better at to build their capabilities at creativity and innovation, including outcome definition, communication of context, crowd mechanisms, and getting broader participation. They must look beyond their boundaries in order to get the best ideas and outcomes.
Cities reconfigured: How changing work, shopping, community, and transport will transform our collective lives
By Ross DawsonOne of our companies, Future Exploration Network, recently created a detailed report for a client delving into the most important shifts shaping the next decade and beyond.
One of the themes was Cities Reconfigured. The section began:
Urbanisation has proved to be a dominant global force, shaping both developed and developing countries. We know cities are both spreading out and become denser at their centres, but radical shifts are now reshaping the structure and shape of cities. The rise of flexible, remote and freelance work and shifts where and how people shop and socialise are significantly changing travel patterns. The widespread deployment of data sensors is providing real-time insights into environmental, traffic and infrastructure conditions, enabling rapid response and a deeply-needed increase in urban efficiency.
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Using testable hypotheses to bring lean startup into the enterprise
By Ross DawsonLast week I ran a brief workshop at the strategy offsite of a professional services organization, with their top 100 executives in attendance. They wanted to understand major business trends and the implications for both their own organization as well as the services that will be valuable for their clients.
In a highly interactive session I ran through major trends in technology, business, and society, went into depth on the lessons emerging from lean startups and crowd-based models, and then facilitated groups in generating high-potential ideas for new service lines and creating a high-performance organization.
While many of the concepts of lean startups feel quite foreign within many established organizations, a useful way to help shift thinking is to focus on the concept of ‘testable hypotheses’. This is central to how dynamic startups function, and can fairly readily be introduced into large organizations – and their clients – without seeming overly radical.
In introducing the idea into enterprise I have found it useful to frame testable hypotheses as 5 steps:
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Crowdsourcing Pioneer Trada Closes Down: Insights and Implications
By Steve BynghallCrowdsourced search engine marketing company defunct after $17m in funding.
For those following Trada’s recent activities, the news of the company’s demise doesn’t come as a huge surprise. In late 2013 there were significant layoffs and hints at a restructure, and a change in direction around a product called PPCPath. This new emphasis was clearly not enough to reverse Trada’s fortunes and after seven years the firm has shut down.
An early pioneer
When we wrote the first edition of “Getting Results from Crowds” in 2011, Trada was one of the pioneering crowdsourcing companies which looked like one of the most likely to succeed. It’s model of using a crowd of pay-per-click experts (called “Optimizers”) to create web adverts, identify the right keywords and then refine results was a first.
This model seemed well-poised to give small and medium-sized companies a decent ROI and also reward the best Optimizers. It also meant companies could leverage the crowd at short notice to get campaigns up and running quickly, and get a wide set of perspectives to uncover new keywords.
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Building richer mental models is the heart of strategy – the role of scenario planning
By Ross DawsonStrategy is an intrinsically human task. Setting successful strategies is based on our ability to think effectively, both individually and collectively, about extraordinarily complex domains.
In a recent keynote I did for clients of New Scientist magazine on Science and Leadership for the Future, I discussed how executives can think effectively about strategy.
The following video is one of a series of 7 videos that captured the entire keynote.
In the video I note:
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