This week he ran across a another organization's failure rate. That of, The Onion's. On a This American, Ira Glass talks to The Onion about their creation process. that tells of The Onion's failure rate. They aim for 18 stories each week; to get there, they start with around 600 ideas!

A link to This American Life.

. . . . . . . . . .

Related: Seth also blogged about failure today.

-from The IBM Way by Buck Rodgers and Robert Shook [out of print]

[hat tip: PowerShell Team Blog]

Earlier this summer, I had a chance to talk about Crowdsourcing with Jeff. That is, using the power of crowds to do work. Wikipedia is a good example. Or Threadless, the t-shirt company that's raking in over $10 million every year.

What fascinates me about crowdsourcing is the level of passion. People (consumers) don't want to stand by on the sidelines and passively consume. People want to be involved. They/we want to share what we know.

Crowdsourcing creates what Jeff calls, the perfect meritocracy. If you go back to F. A. Hayek's idea, it's impossible for each one of us to amass unlimited amounts of knowledge. In crowdsourcing, it matters not whether you are a rocket scientist or a high school dropout. What matters is what you know and how that knowledge is applied.

That's the story shared in Jeff's book. It was just released last week. Here's a trailer for the book. If you're interested, check out our conversation.

One of the pieces that stuck out in Jeff's book is a quote from economist F.A. Hayek, from his 1945 piece, The Use of Knowledge in Society:

Each member of society can have only a small fraction of the knowledge possessed by all, and each is therefore ignorant of most of the facts on which the working of society rests...civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess. And one of the ways in which civilization helps us to overcome that limitation on the extent of individual knowledge is by conquering ignorance, not by the acquisition of more knowledge, but by the utilization of knowledge which is and which remains widely dispersed among individuals.

Crowdsourcing brings together the scattered pockets of knowledge and everyone who is involved benefits. On the same day I interviewed Jeff, the NYTimes (perhaps they're psychic) posted an article about a company called InnoCentive, which also makes a regular appearance in Jeff's book.

InnoCentive is the embodiment of the civilization that Hayek talks about. It matches organizations together with innovators. The innovators are possible problem solvers for organizations like P&G and Eli Lilly (where the organization started). They come from around the world with diverse backgrounds and are rewarded if they find a solution. Amazing results when people come together.

Jeff posted more on the article over here. I'll post our podcast a bit closer to the book launch in late August.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The next Pecha Kucha Night is August 26 at the Hi Hat Garage.

From the introduction posted yesterday:

Crucially, we will need to work out how we can add value as publishers within a circular, networked environment.

One of the key perception shifts that publishers need to make, then, is about the book as 'product'. Whilst the book continues to be viewed as a definable object within covers, as a singular 'unit', publishers will continue to limit their role in its production and distribution, and this is a sure fire way for publishers to write themselves out of the future of content creation and dissemination.

This is a conversation we have quite often here. While we were handing out books at an author event recently, a gentleman walking by turned to us and said, "no one reads books anymore"--and, keep in mind, this man was there to see the author of the book speak. It's that sentiment that causes so much panic in our industry about the possible demise of the printed book, and I think that that panic sometimes clouds our vision of the future and what great possibilities it holds. So far, Sara Lloyd's essay has provided a very thoughtful and sober view of the situation. I'm looking forward to the next four posts.

And, speaking of the future of publishing, you can now browse inside HarperCollins books on your iPhone.

John's looking to start a conversation on innovation as a nationwide pursuit. (And what better time, than with the incoming of a new president?) Innovation, he explains, needs to be built up by the nation. Schools can't do it alone. Businesses can't do it alone. Nor can the government. Each body needs to come together to spare us from becoming the "Detroit of nations."

From a Q&A with John:

As someone who has been identified with the subject of innovation for some twenty-five years, I am appalled at the denial, indifference and ignorance I see surrounding this important topic. To quote from Innovation Nation:

"I see a crisis brewing, and it makes me angry. We should be doing better than we are. We have the talent, money, track record and infrastructure necessary for continued success. But we are rapidly becoming the fat, complacent Detroit of nations. We are losing a collective sense of purpose along with our fire, ambition, and determination to achieve."

The book is certainly a conversation starter. You can learn more with a quick video with John over at bnet. And if you're interested, John is a contributor to the Huffington Post.

-Twyla Tharp
The Creative Habit
(Our Jack Covert Selects of Creative Habit)

In her 2006 book, "Innovation Killer: How What We Know Limits What We Can Imagine -- and What Smart Companies Are Doing About It," Cynthia Barton Rabe proposes bringing in outsiders whom she calls zero-gravity thinkers to keep creativity and innovation on track.

When experts have to slow down and go back to basics to bring an outsider up to speed, she says, "it forces them to look at their world differently and, as a result, they come up with new solutions to old problems."

"The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age could well end long before the world runs out of oil." That statement pretty much sums up the argument made in Zoom, and ironically, it was not made by an environmentalist, but by former Saudi oil minister Sheik Yamani. Having built our economy on the internal combustion engine, which burns carbon-heavy fuel and emits harmful greenhouse gases, we are now facing a dilemma in our country. But, we are a nation of drivers, and not only would we not want to give up our cars, it would be impossible to do so considering the miles we are conditioned to traverse. This new book by two correspondents for The Economist suggests that a change of course is a must.

Their premise is simple enough. "Oil is the Problem. Cars are the solution." That may sound odd at first (big oil in Texas and the "big three" auto makers of Detroit have been so linked for the past century that they now seem inseparable), but it seems painfully obvious when you've finished the book. Zoom looks at the current state of affairs in Detroit, Texas, and Washington, and prescribes steps needed to move us toward the car of the future. A car that is healthier for us, better for business, and cleaner for the environment. They believe two separate approaches are needed:

Both top-down public policies and bottom-up marketplace innovations must play a role in propelling the world to the post-petroleum age of carbon-free cars. On the policy front, it looks like Washington politicians may finally be shamed into serious action by the clamor in states and cities for action on global warming, a real budding grassroots revolution. As for those marketplace innovations, will the dinosaurs of the car and oil industries finally learn to dance? Or will it be an unruly and disruptive bunch of upstarts, entrepreneurs, and innovators that leads the effort...?

Toyota surpassed GM earlier this year as the world's top auto seller, in part by addressing this need for a new approach, and is now forcing American auto makers to look at a world beyond petroleum. If Detroit wants to remain relevant and viable, the big three must come out of their entrenched positions and address the concerns of consumers and challenges of innovation. The authors believe that what they call the "Great Awakening" of American consumers will lead to a demand for change, "promising a clean-energy revolution even bigger than the telecommunications and Internet revolutions," and that belief--and this book--are infectious.

Here's a snippet of his Q&A with HBS on team dynamics. [fyi. We linked to this on Friday and thought it deserved another round of pointing to.]

In business we have the notion that we can create a healthy innovation dynamic where everybody's happy and everything goes well.

What we see here is not a story like that. We see a story that's full of unresolved tensions and people upset with each other. The music is exceedingly harmonious, but the process of making it could not be described as harmonious. There is something interesting in that. I think partly it is a result of striving for such extreme levels of performance.

Titled "Getting Things Done Guru David Allen and His Cult of Hyperefficiency", Wired Magazine profiles the author and Getting Things Done in the greatest detail I have seen in the major media. Allen has a huge following in the tech community which plays perfectly to Wired's core audience. If you are new to the cult, this is a must read.

Gary Hamel of Competing For The Future fame has a new book out from Harvard Business School Press called The Future of Management. The premise of the book, which is summarized nicely in a Fortune Magazine piece, is that the practice of management hasn't kept up with the times, but the stand-out companies of today (Google, Whole Foods, Gore) are leading the way into a new era.

Finally, Vijay Vaitheeswaran, the author of Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future, wrote a piece for Portfolio Magazine. Titled Big Green Machines, the article summarizes the automotive players and the energy-reducing technologies they are betting on.

Well, we've found another great book.

It's called Creativity Today. Published in the Netherlands (in English), the cover states that the book offers "tools for a creative attitude for business, education, industry, training, development, government, consultants, workers, thinkers, meetings, design, health..." Indeed, it's true. In fact, Creativity Today has inspired thousands of European managers, teachers and students, and has become the standard by which other creative thinking books are measured.

Paul Williams at Idea Sandbox (www.idea-sandbox.com) turned us on to this book. We're using it internally as a manual for how to approach any problem or situation creatively. Here are some of the many points in the book that stand-out to us:

- By definition, new ideas don't fit into existing schemes of thought. This means that judgment very often occurs too fast when new ideas are launched.

- Visual languages are generally less respected than verbal language. Yet, the ability to visualize may be the most important basic skill in the creative thinker's toolbox: no creative solution, simple as it may be, can be thought of, designed and realized without using imagery.

- Ideas need to evolve from an abstract, conceptual level to a concrete, practical level, otherwise they will always remain what they are: ideas.

With each of these points (and many, many others), the authors provide case studies and easy-to-follow instructions, analyzing problems through "The Series of Phases," applying "The COCD Box," and a variety of exercises and tests. This book is literally a textbook in creative thinking. They take on creative challenges such as fixing traffic jams, product creation and development, customers waiting too long at a checkout counter, how to make money, and many more. As a bonus, this edition includes an expanded section called "Creation Today" that applies the ideas of the book to organizational development.

You can't get this book anywhere in the States, so we decided to remedy that. 800-CEO-READ will sell it until a U.S. publisher picks it up. The cost is $39.95, but the first 100 people who type the code 8x2vf during checkout will get an additional $5 off. Click here to check the book out.

You can also visit the book's website for more info.

Thanks for considering this offer. We hope you can start practicing the lessons in this book soon and watch their effect on your business.

As we're thinking about ways to expand our online presence, Todd and I have been talking a lot about the best ways to approach new projects. It used to be that we decided to do something--print a new brochure, redesign a web site, incorporate a new technology--and then presented a plan to a designer. There might be some initial back-and-forth about needs and goals, but what the designer came back with in the end was essentially a finished product. We had to be sure we knew exactly what we wanted before we asked (and paid) for it. Today, though, there's a lot of wiggle room. Especially online, we can try and fail at something new without taking a significant hit (or any at all, sometimes).

A few weeks ago Todd wrote about a book called Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres:

http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/007328.html.

http://800ceoread.com/blog/archives/007292.html.

This week I opened up Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules (IBM Press). The subtitle might make you think "Um, where have you been?" but the author, Mike Moran, actually gets at something close to what Ayres talks about in Super Crunchers. Using a bow-and-arrow analogy, Moran suggests that the archer with three arrows has a higher chance of success than the archer with one. In other words, it's great if your shot in the dark hits the bull's eye, but chances are it won't every time. On the other hand, if you take three shots at the same time, you might not hit the bull's eye, but you'll score more points--and learn more along the way.

I'm probably not doing justice to the author's message, here, but I think that the important thing to take away is that it no longer makes sense to expect that even a carefully thought-through, well-executed marketing campaign will hit the target in today's world. In fact, Moran believes that the new marketing means getting away from the plan-then-execute approach, and starting to try lots of approaches at the same time. In addition to systematic ways of assessing your online marketing (conversions, metrics), you have to listen better to your customers. He talks about the social media phenomenon, incorporating multi-media approaches in your message, and creating deeper relationships with your customers by engaging them in a conversation.

As Moran puts it, "whether change gets your blood pumping or leaves you in a pool of sweat, marketing is undergoing a revolution more profound than any of us are likely to see the rest of our lives." Do It Wrong Quickly is a friendly invitation to that revolution.