This Blog Has Moved…

If you’re looking for newer content, I’ve exported all of these posts and began blogging again over at Nexxgen Media.  Come check it out.

Mommy, Mommy, The Diapers Are Talking To Me!

The New York Times website posted an interesting article this morning discussing the remarkable innovations in product packaging over the past few years.  Due largely to product commoditization, environmental awareness on the parts of both producers and consumers, the rise of the internet and infinite cable channels, and the short attention span of this generation of young people, marketers are being forced to become more and more creative in packaging products. 

We all know that the volume of information and amount of advertising vying for our attention everyday is way, way to much to process.  The average amount of time a product maintained the same packaging as late as the 1990s was 7 years; 10 years later the average is only 2 years because customers are constantly searching for “what’s new”.

If you are to walk through the aisles of your local grocery store today, you would probably notice that products that have maintained their exterior packaging designs for years and years have suddenly revamped their respective images to become completely different.  Unilever’s Suave shampoo bottles recently underwent a transformation for the first time in 25 years, Axe shower gel is now shaped like a video game joystick, and Coors Light cans now employ thermochromatic ink in it labeling so the color of the mountains on the label become blue as the temperature of the can decreases.

Eye Catching Designs On Bottles Of Mountain Dew (excerpted from New York Times Website, photo by Lars Klove) 

 

 In the next few years we may see Pepsi cans that emit a blast of pleasant odor or potentially water spray when we open them.  But the most disturbing image of creative packaging the article highlighted is computer chips and tiny speakers being implanted into packaging so the product can talk to customers!

That’s right.  Apparently some companies are currently experimenting with technologies that will allow companies to cross-promote their products.  The article used the example of a customer picking up a block of cheese which is simultaneously saying to the customer, “I go well with Triscuits”.  I think I would find this difficult to adapt to.  As Tracy Lovatt, director for behavioral planning at BBDO North America, an advertising agency in the Omnicom Group points out, “walking down a row in a supermarket and every package is screaming at you, it sounds like a terrifying, disgusting experience”.  I second that!

What does all of this tell us?  In the Conceptual Age, we can count on the commoditization of pretty much anything and everything out there.  No matter how innovative a product may be, it’s almost a guarantee that someone else will either copy it or improve on it to grab a share of your market.  That is why “design” is such a talked about concept these days.  It is also the reason behind the Heath Brothers’ (of Made To Stick fame) 105% rule.  They believe that any product or experience that is not at least 5% better than the norm is not worth talking about, meaning missing out on the miracles of word-of-mouth marketing.  So, this weekend add a little innovation to all of your activities, see how creative you can get.  A little exercising the “design” center in your brain is much needed if you plan to enter the world of business today and in the future!

800-CEO-READ’s 5 Most Important Reads For Execs

While we are on the topic of “must-reads”, here is the top 5 books for executives according to Todd Sattersten, vice president of 800-CEO-READ:

1. “Competitive Strategy” by Michael Porter
2. “Execution” by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck
3. “In Search Of Excellence” by Tom Peters and Bob Waterman
4. “Good To Great” by Jim Collins
5. “The Effective Executive” by Peter Drucker

For some background on the picks, check out the original posting.

Nightstand Material For The Next While

I talk about books fairly often on this blog, so it should come as no surprise that I’m an avid reader.  In fact I’ve been tinkering around with the “books” application for Facebook for the last 30 minutes.  WorldChanging.com published a list of books yesterday that their team of people has deemed “must-reads” over the past couple of years.  If you read Moving Into The Conceptual Age and find it at all interesting, check out this link to see what next up on your nightstand!

TED Conference Interview With William Kamkwamba

Back on July 19 I highlighted the amazing work of William Kamkwamba in his small village in Malawi.  Unable to afford schooling after age 14, William perservered and created a windmill adapted from a model in a library book that originally powered 4 lightbulbs and 2 radios in his families small hut.  Things have developed since then and William spoke at the TED conference in Arusha, Tanzania a couple months back and started a blog.  For those interested in this remarkable story, here is the link to the interview.

New Blog Network Means More Productivity

If you’re a fan of personal productivity/life skills blogs, LifeRemix has formed a network of bloggers/blogs such as Tim Ferriss, Dumb Little Man, Zen Habits, and No Impact Man that culminates in a tickertape-like site of original and useful productivity postings. 

Tim Ferriss, author of “The 4-Hour Work Week” which just hit #1 on the New York Times Best Seller’s List has an interesting posting today aptly named, “How Does a Bestseller Happen? A Case Study in Hitting #1 on the New York Times“.

Darwinian Evolution Connected To The Industrial Revolution?

One of the unresolved economic arguments of the Conceptual Age is the cause of the Industrial Revolution in Europe in the early 1800s and why not all countries in the world evolved economically after that.  Even sub-Saharan Africa was on pretty even terms with the rest of the world economically as of 1800.

Economic historian Dr. Gregory Clark, from the University of California-Davis has proposed that changes in the nature of human populations were the main reasoning behind the revolution.

Interestingly the theory is strongly connected to Darwin’s theory of evolution.  The connection lies in a 1798 work by Thomas Malthus from which the theory of natural selection was inspired.  Malthus believed that every time a new technology was introduced to a human population, the overall population would increase thus offsetting any benefits of technological development relegating humanity to a perpetual subsistence economy.  Clark analyzed the wills of English men starting around the year 1600 and concluded that men with higher incomes tended to have more surviving children than men with lower incomes.  Apparently, as a wealthier upper class began to outpopulate the lower income population, violence decreases and literacy increased.  These changes, combined with an apparent willingness on the part of the new population to work long hours and save more, led to the Industrial Revolution as gains in production efficiency outpaced population growth for the first time.

 The connection to natural selection is quite apparent with the original Malthusian trap of being permanently in a subsistence economy due to population growth outpacing increases in production efficiency and then the gradual move toward the Industrial Revolution as the wealthier upper class began to overshadow the population of the lower income class due to the wealthier having more surviving children.  For a full write-up and explanation, read today’s NYTimes.com article by Nicolas Wade, “In Dusty Archives, A Theory of Affluence“.

My question is if Clark’s theory is too narrow-minded?  Is natural selection really the reason behind the suffering in some of the poorest nations in the world today.  There are many sound economic arguments that make much more sense than Clark’s, but none are widely accepted as being absolutely correct.

Free Antibiotics For Those Who Can Pay, Death For Those Who Can’t!

Read this CNNMoney article about Publix Super Market offering free antibiotics to any pharmacy customer with a prescription.  Amazing that we can give people antibiotics for free who have the financial means to pay for them, but charge people prices way beyond their means in developing countries.

“Crowd Farm” Potential New Way To Harness Human Energy

The August long weekend in Canada is traditionally the last long weekend of summer to be spent camping.  Even though the weather tends to be fairly nice during the September long, for Canadians the mood has changed and we feel winter’s fury approaching.  That is why I’ve been camping this weekend and things have been pretty quiet.

Coming home this evening and going through my emails and feed reader brought to an extremely interesting, though possibly impractical on a large scale, example of sustainable urban design.

 Two grad students at MIT, James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk, both M. Arch candidates have come up with an interesting way of converting mechanical energy to electrical energy.  Called the “Crowd Farm“, the pair have developed a system of subflooring consisting of blocks that depress slightly under the pressure of human footsteps and by slipping against one another, generate power through the principle of the dynamo, a device that converts the energy of motion into that of an electric current.  This could, they believe, effectively utilize human movement in creating renewable energy.

Thaddeus Jusczyk and James Graham

Although similar flooring systems have been developed already, the students believe that the “Crowd Farm” can potentially “redefine urban space by adding a sense of fluidity and encouraging people to activate spaces with their movement”.

I’m Not A Producer Or A Consumer, I Am A Human Being! Another Picture Of The Base Of The Pyramid

Over the last couple of months I’ve written a number of postings alluding to the BOP (base of the pyramid) market of 4 billion citizens living in poverty, and how private sector business can not only profit from this huge market but help alleviate their poverty by assisting in economic development and providing a connection to the rest of the global economy.  I came across a blog posting at NextBillion.net by Rob Katz entitled, “BusinessWeek On BOP-A False Dichotomy?”.  Apparently he wasn’t impressed with the magazine’s simplistic portrayal, in the latest issue, of the BOP market using a definition similar to mine above.  Nor was he impressed with the “false dichotomy” created by discussing the BOP market as a consumer market and then introducing the opinion of Arneel Karnani, associate professor of strategy at the Ross School Of Business, who believes it should be viewed as a market of producers.  Katz has recommended in his posting that Business Week take a more “nuanced view of base of the pyramid strategy or practice” in the future.  I suppose using the comment they used to illustrate disagreement wasn’t the best.  Technically it does create a false dichotomy, but why not put a positive spin on the article rather than arguing logic and semantics?

In the BusinessWeek article, “On Campus, A Different Pyramid Scheme“, the magazine discusses the huge increase in both college classes offered relating to the BOP concept and student interest in the topic.  Whether or not the BOP concept is valid (I think it is), in the next 10-15 years we are going to see an increasing number of sharp business students and MBAs coming out of their post-secondary years full of purpose and yearning to find meaning by focusing their lives on helping those at the base of the pyramid.

You must admit, all those flocking towards this idea are looking for more than money.  The majority of this market earns less than $2 per day; obviously not a lot of money to spend.  The aim of this generation of students is to help, to serve, and to assist others have better lives.  It brings me back to the last aptitude in Dan Pink’s “A Whole New Mind”: meaning.  Meaning will play a tremendous role in the lives of young people today.  Not only because we search for products and experiences with some meaning central to our these days, but also because we all strive to find meaning and purpose in life and one of the best ways to find just that is to help others, to go beyond ourselves.

Forget about the logical failures in the article, and focus on the fact that there are more and more university and college students every year looking to spend their careers involved in one way or another with the BOP market.  The best place to start for these students and for Business Week, Rob Katz, and even Stuart Hart and C. K. Prahalad is to see this “market” as a population of human beings with real feelings that suffer the same highs and lows as the lucky ones in the developed world and we must aim to serve them in some way.  If that is through for-profit business, great.  I believe that is ultimately going to be the only way to connect this population to the rest of the global economy thus allowing them to develop the infrastructure, health care system, educational system, etc. that they will need to be self-sustaining in meeting their basic needs.

Business Week did a great thing by alerting us to these business programs and their rising popularity.  It’s just time that the 4 billion person, BOP market be viewed not as producers or consumer, but as human beings, real people.  Objectifying people by applying some business-related label to them is not the way to either help them or “penetrate the BOP market” they supposedly comprise.