Why is this important? It shows direction in art. Away from post-modernist ‘I am a painter so why do I bother to paint?‘ thinking that typified the 90s. The 90s were however that kind of decade perhaps…!

Even moreso it shows a return to seeking meaning. It’s tiring looking at noir films, drinking black coffee and talk about meaninglessness.

Remember the artist is always the avant-garde on the Innovation curve…

The Zeitgeist is the human figure and here’s why…

The Figure is the Zeitgeist of Modern Art

Now the figure is returning to art. I was in Leipzig last year. (and I might add Leipzig was our “Most improved innovator” in the Global Innovation Hub City Rankings).

Neo Rauch and the Leipzig School have been marking a return to the figurative.

Viewing art is very much one of my interests, but I was there for research.

The so-called Leipzig School learnt to draw under communism, so weren’t subject to the same ‘non-instruction’ many modern artists get. Brilliant draftsmen, but without the leash of communism, now masters of narrative.

Some have said that one should be able to draw the human figure before deconstructing it, like Picasso. This is controversial in some art schools globally!

In a sense the new-new is a modernized reconstructed figure.

Further in sites like stumbleupon (SU), this is what gets voted for. SU contains a large artists sub-community; selectors of art like WasChabad (http://waschabad.stumbleupon.com/) and Clovia (http://clovia.stumbleupon.com/)

One of the strengths of Web 2.0 (’users creating content and communities’ the 2thinknow definition) is that communities decide what they like. It gives freedom to viewers and consumers, in this case, artists and art-lovers.

Artists can choose their taste rather than a limited pool of critics selecting who is shown. It allows once again artists to build followings and sell now internationally without such a long process or wait.

I also saw this figurative art in the West Coast USA, where it is a secondary art capital after New York. Wow! Some of the figurative artists in San Francisco. Undiscovered knock-outs.

Back to Web 2.0 — sites like DeviantArt.com are also forming international artist communities. Even myspace is ‘in’ on this.

I had written quite a lot in the limited distribution review on ‘cultural relativism’, but it now seems superfluous. The headspace I was at almost a year ago, artists have been capturing and creating works about in the major international Arts centres.

So I have decided to update some of that writing, and include it here.

The Roots of Figure in Art

This is not unusual as the human figure is a source of countless artworks in countless forms. In Paris, the powerful Raft of Medusa by Géricault or Manet’s works in the Musée d’Orsay; in Munich Rubens or Raphael; in Rome Rubens or most critically Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel; in Melbourne Tiepolo’s stand-out Banquet of Cleopatra.

Wander through the sculpture garden of any truly international art gallery in a major city, and it is to wander through a waltz of human forms.

Culture relativism, or equivalency of cultures, where no culture or artistic endeavour is considered any better than any other, is difficult to reconcile with this tide of human forms, often naked or mythically dressed in the finest Renaissance sense.

It is hard to defend cultural relativism once you have seen the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo. Duchamps’ urinal becomes an amusing distraction. Fine for the time, but now somehow a forlorn museum piece for those on the avant-garde.

And the best art is on the edge, and the edge is now figurative. Notice I did not say literal. I did say figurative.

There is Other Art of Course…

The problem is just the ‘equivalency’ idea. Concepts of equivalency are fine, but if all pictorial representations were equal people would be queuing to see the covers of magazines in the newsagent, or soup can labels in the supermarket.

Some modernist artist will one day set-up a ’supermarket gallery’ — and auction real soup cans!

Our love of art is often based on ‘aha’ moments it creates. The Pompidou in Paris does that for me in modern terms, but no more than the Louvre.

And before we dismiss any modern art, it is important to see great art in great galleries. Melbourne just hosted a Guggenheim exhibition I wrote about here; as well as some great UBS works at the current time. Not all of this was figurative…

Most importantly, these ‘inspiration’ moments where something strikes one as ‘obvious and true’. Figurative art has something to say about our lives and our humanity…

But often judgment of artistic merit is an instinct, and it is important that culture and art elevate; and bring out the higher elements of our nature; art that demonstrates a single idea to the point of repetition is an art of the mundane, for the mundane.

The new, the memorable in art, is the figurative. Grids and dots are fine museum pieces, but their time has passed as avant-garde or the zeitgeist.

And it is not innovation to equate the ugly, desperate and forlorn mass-produced as equal to the beautiful and elevating objet d’art. We have accepted the points of pop-art and abstract expressionism, and the ‘American Century’ and a new one is dawning.

Even in in Architecture the figurative, the sculptural, the curved is returning.

In architectural terms no person can visit the Austrian National State library and say with a straight face that this is the cultural equivalent of the Melbourne Museum or Federation Square in Melbourne. But some modern works are trying to extract themsleves from modernism, gleaming steel and the tyranny of the straight line.

Want to Get involved in Figurative Art?

Join StumbleUpon.com and select arts or painting as your interest.

Stumble-Upon selects pages related to an interest you may have, as bookmarked and voted by other users. It works because SU has a good community…

Enjoy the figure in art. It’s time is with us again.

Take care,

Christopher

If you feel Web 2.0 is a buzzword. it is. But then again unlike most, this one is useful.

What is Web 2.0?

In short Web 2.0 is the new new printing press, wireless and TV Tube.

Specifically, Web 2.0 is user’s creating content and communities.

Content like blogs, wikis, citizen media, citizen journalism, niche weblogs, vertical portals, social bookmarking, bulletin boards, web communities, virtual groups, etc. Trans-national border-less country kind of content.

It’s not a place to dump marketing messages, as users have choices to view and vote or not.

It is Stumbleupon: – a social bookmarking service.

It is Wikipedia: – a useful encyclopedia

It is Wordpress: – a personal publishing system (ie. blog)

They are some of the useful ones, but like any new market you are spoilt for choice.

These sites are good places to start. They are useful.

Why care?

Well people are spending time here at work, at home, at uni.

Instead of the TV or newspaper.

It is Generation Y yes. but also retirees. And also families with children. it’s a broad group.

Web 2.0 is social networks, and social communities and user generated media.

It’s part of Tim Berners-Lee broader ideas such as the Semantic web.

Bottom Line:

In short more and more people are here. like this blog.

Readers in 975 cities as at October 2007. That’s pretty cool.

You could be reading this in Kiev, New York, Montreal, Tallinn, Sao Paolo, anywhere…

If you like comment or email me and let me know where you are.

And chances are you’ll see more of Web 2.0.

I am giving speeches and seminars on the topic of web 2.0 as part of 2thinknow ® research into trends and innovation.

Notice I didn’t say fads. Fads don’t last.

And the good news is you don’t need to be a geek to ‘get it’.

Web 2.0 is open to anyone of any age anywhere there is internet.

Take care

Christopher

If you want to understand the future of the internet, as a communication medium then read Berners-Lee’s book, “Weaving the Web”.

Here’s the Amazon bio on it. Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web Get his book.

I have his book sit on my shelf, right on top of a swag of ebusiness books; but his book is the classic and the real deal.

Berners Lee’s Vision of a Web of Data talking to Data about Data

The same employer of Bern, CERN, where alongside Boston’s MIT and other US institutions including US ARPA, did a lot of foundation work on the World Wide Web.

Technology is allowing a lot of the prophetic visions in Berners-Lee thinking, and his 199 book, to come true. The book can be heavy going for non-technical or non-visionaries, but give it a try, it’s a great read.

Both here in this blog in my post on the Semantic Web (data talking about data and to data), and in my presentations since 1999 for clients of Simple (www.simple.net.au) and I’ve been long talking about this.

More than a few of you may remember this stuff from the first 45 minutes of my HTML or Adobe classes in 2000/2001…

Why is this SO important to the future?

The web is an enabling technology, not replacing what went before, but like phones enabling whole new types of commerce, art, media, communications, ideas.

Now technology is catching up to possibility. CERN more or less said so.

The Rise of the Interest Site

This is an effect. Global Aggregation of interest. One of those is the rise of interest in hobbies and entertainments like magic, poker, bridge and card games.

The massive online communities that enjoy these activities allow them to acquire new participants in the offline world.

My ventures online have shown me globally that much of the mainstream news media is out of touch with what really interests media consumers.

Poker took the mainstream media by storm, yet came out of left field.

Interest Groups according 2thinknow

There’s a whole list of predictions that could be made about emerging industries that will take off. It’s not coolhunting, which is basically looking for ‘fads’ not ‘trends’.

Fads don’t become the future. Trends are underlying forces that do.

But to get into these industries businesses have to turn around the ships of industry, which favors more the small nimble firm or nimble teams within big firms.

There’s a whole new paradigm developing here. Small business and flexible innovation.

And a lot of it derives from Sir (yes he was knighted) Tim Berners-Lee’s magnificent and magnanimous contribution. What I like most about Berners-Lee is his tireless dedication to outcomes and sharing technology so that all of us can use it.

Broadband Enabling Knowledge Sharing

Now it seems Berners-Lee vision is being enabled further by broadband. Which is why we need to fight for better broadband in Australia, as well as large areas of the USA and many European countries.

Broadband enables traditional keepers of knowledge, like universities to have new ways to share and collaborate globally.

Quoting from Vu-Net, a brief article:

The growth in high-speed internet access around the world has changed the way business and academics collaborate, and led to a “globalisation of innovation”, according to a department head at Cern.

David Foster, head of communications and networks at Cern, claimed that the scientific community is as much affected as business.

“What we are seeing is a globalisation of innovation,” he said. “From our own perspective, the availability of high-packet network broadband is causing major changes in business models. This is also true of science.”

“Communications now means that you can actually do global research without storing sections of your papers in one location,” he said.

So that says it.

It’s a brave new world. Rules will be changed, fortunes made and lost.

And Web 2.0 or the next name for the future of Berners-Lee vision will roll onwards.

Take care,

Christopher

Cell phones on trains.

Cell phones (or mobiles if you prefer) in restaurants.

Famously, I once heard a man chatting up a woman in a toilet cubicle with the door closed at a cinema. I first thought she was in there with him, then he came out holding a phone.

I wonder what she thought of the loud ‘flush’?

The Market Opportunity for Quiet

Expect a pendulum swing back to quiet and focus.

In the meantime expect a rise in products offering peace & quiet, tranquility and rest.

Expect added devices that give control over a person’s micro-environment ie. The space around them.

Expect ideas like quiet zones and others.

I noticed even the more peaceful European capitals now had noisy cell phone users. Recent surveys have shown Germans too are seeking peace & quiet.

A conversation with French people in Paris in August, turned to the stresses of modern life.

Peace & quiet will be a big opportunity. The value lies in identifying how solutions to that opportunity should be implemented in global and local markets.

The extrapolation into outcomes like new global manners and etiquette, also highlights important social trends.

Open plan offices are a practical example of a countervailing force against peace & quiet, depending on how they are implemented. They will be effected.

But mobiles and cell phones have been the ‘poster-child’ for the broader movement of individualism (look at me I am important), which is also part of numerous nascent countervailing trends.

A further analysis by 2thinknow would unearth numerous market and product opportunities in line with this nascent current to 8 year trend in various global markets.

Don’t mind the noise of a dozen others in a din?

So why is peace & quiet important to innovation?

Peace & Quiet needed for Inspiration

If you want to concentrate you need peace & quiet.

As I write this I am in a library. Been researching. The librarians are gossiping loudly. Nowhere is quiet these days.

Why can’t we get peace?

We underrate the need to concentrate. We need peace.

On trams and trains now public transport users loudly discuss their social lives.

Of course this is worse in some countries.

In my global experience, Australians from Sydney & Melbourne are the loudest, most rude mobile phone talkers in the world.

Cell Phone Abusers on Trains – no innovation here

Before I used to enjoy a quiet trip to read a book or magazine.

Now it is nigh-impossible as men, but more often women, recant their social lives loudly into a device.

Twenty years ago it would have been a sign of madness. Now judging by some of the conversations I overhear, it probably still is!

If you want any proof that mental illness is a new epidemic (as many politicians in Australia privately believe), listen to the mildly psychotic rantings of a few vocal public transport users who share too much.

Quite often I think people do it to show off their social lives, as if to say I am so very busy and therefore very attractive to others / very important.

Oh well, in Australia we like to head over the cliffs with the herd. Anything not to be lonely or ‘out of the herd’.

The new low point in Peace & Quiet

I often head on a plane, and write voluminous amounts of material.

Both on the plane and at the airport before.

The quiet and change of scenery allows me to shift focus & gain new insight.

Now according to numerous articles, but specifically Conde Nast Traveller magazine, in plane cell phone calls may be a reality.

The Europeans are testing the device.

Sure it is up to individual callers, but one of the great defenses of air travel has always been, ‘I can’t talk as I am Boarding the plane’ and the resultant time difference.

On long haul flights this can buy you an almost uninterrupted day.

Now if there’s no excuse for false urgency you can expect that professionals will need to become available during the previously relaxing flying time.

The last quite place is about to be taken away.

Oh well, I guess there is a market opportunity.

But I’d prefer peace & quiet now.

Take care

Christopher

This is the first part of a regular series on how to speak the language of ideas in coming weeks. How to be an Ideas Person.

Ideas and an intellectual education are important no matter how old we are. Both help us make better decisions in terms of positive change in our societies.

How do we personally understand what is positive change and what is not?

We talk incessantly about success, about wanting positive change.

We talk about love, relationships, children, families, kids and a variety of other serious topics.

Also about negatives: why the trains are late, why language is in decline,why schools are poor, why traffic is bad, why the Earth is polluted… or more sanguinely why we look fat in the morning.

But where do our tools to understand our modern world come from?

Where do we get the ideas of what is a positive or negative change?

Modern media and texts

No matter where we live we have a variety of texts and tools to understand the modern world. But too often our society’s ideas come from flawed, incomplete, pedestrian text and opinionated media with all the intellectual power of a 10W lightbulb.

Innovation starts in the Good Ideas of Past

To be grounded in innovation and understanding which changes are likely to be positive, we need to stand on the shoulders of giants.

An Example from the Past

Today I was speaking to an older gentleman, Roger, 89 years old in fact, who is a member of a club I belong to. He reminded me of a different world.

Roger recounted how when he studied Arts/Philosophy at Melbourne University they spent a lot of time on the classics.

One Year on Plato in fact.

He also shared with me a poem by Milton from his high school days.

Roger was a spritely 89, and well-versed in the language of ideas.

The Classics, Languages (he used to be fluent German speaker), arts, culture were once important. Why no longer?

Culture relativism in English Speaking countries like Australia is the problem. The idea that all ideas are equal.

The Simpsons as text is as enlightening as Plato? No.

Desperate Housewives is equal to Macbeth? No.

Machiavellis and Sun Tzu’s advice on War would have seen the Iraq War planned far better, or perhaps not attempted at all.

And that advice is centuries old, but must be read as ideas, not literally.

Instead we took Bart Simpsons’ advice in Iraq, and we had a cow, man.

Most of Europe is ahead of America, and cannot understand America’s (and English-speaking countries) fascination with the puerile cr*p we call media.

The Internet Presents: NEW opportunities

Instead we should take our ideas form the great ideas of the past.

Plato, Shakespeare, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Freud, Jung, Smith, Hume, Locke, Mills, Franklin, Aristotle, Homer and we can argue over the list later.

And once you have Internet access it is all laid out before you.
Before we get to that let’s examine why media may assume we are less-interested in learning.

The problem: Why do we play Russian Roulette with Ideas?

This is simply because we as a society are less educated than we used to be.There are many reasons for our our disengagement with idea we could identify in a full analysis. But let’s take one.

Vocational Learning is limiting

We in English-speaking countries are focussed on vocational learning.

How to be an accountant, a lawyer, a doctor. But also how to be a PE teacher, a nurse, a horticulturalist, a hairdresser.

So we can get a job. And start paying off all the money we owe our big credit card debts, or our university loans.

We hardly have time to learn for knowledge’s sake, and our right-wing governments are often not investing in educating people any more. ‘User-pays’ forces us to choose vocational choices over educational choices.

The days of a long-term vision in the current elected Governments sometimes seem long gone.

One plaudit and round of applause though: Melbourne University have bravely decided to follow the Ivy league system of general degrees followed by specialization.

Learn to learn first, then learn your job.

But not everyone can go back to uni.

If you missed out on this in school and instead read limited media & texts like The Simpsons or He Died With a Felafel in his Hand you deserve better.

How to start though.

Start with the Language of Ideas

We in UK, Australia and USA are in most cities not focused on the language of ideas.

Because we are taught (at least in Australia) all ideas are equal. Everyone can be smart.

A theory observed in the breach.

The fact is is everyone can be smarter. Not equal, but all can improve. Any individual can be more educated and more enlightened.

There is an alternative for all of us.

But Plato is hard.

And therein lies the problem.

But the answer is with the great Ben Franklin, the first published self-made man of the Enlightenment. A man of intellect with no university degree. A printers apprentice.

Ben Franklin once said,that he suspected it was easier to learn Latin, the classical language of ideas, by Learning French, Spanish, Italian and other European langauges first.

The point is start with what you can. And that’s what I’ll be sharing with you now and in coming weeks.

I am learning French at current, but half our class is struggling as they do not know what a verb is.

They have stopped teaching grammar in Australian public schools, you see, in the last decade.

So how do you learn?

Start with what is accessible. 6 things right now:

1) Try a language class.

2) But also watch The West Wing. Listen to the dialogue. Understand it.

3) Read online intelligent sites like this one.

4) Read an intelligent broadsheet instead of the tabloid monster.

5) Buy a dictionary. A thick one. Learn a new random word once a day

6) Visit an art gallery. Try to understand what the artists is saying. Even if you think the work is cr*p try to understand what he /she is saying.

In the next part of the series, in a few days, I will be giving you some more concrete steps. And a program.

And best of all all the material is all on the internet.

It’s not difficult, but instead of accepting the media you can start to be as educated as those in power or those with ivy league degrees.

Even if you are you might find a cultural tour interesting. I hop at least.
We need to talk about the language of ideas.

take care,

Christopher

Rather than reduce use of oil we go into a war using oil to fight for more oil supplies so we can have more plastic goods made from oil.

This itself increases global oil consumption further reducing oil supply.

Huh?

Does that Sound rational? Read it out aloud. No.

Economically it is not rational. Common sense tells you it is not rational.

Sounds like a panic because we might run out of oil to:

a) drive our big cars/SUVs/motor homes

b) manufacture more plastic cr*p we don’t need

c) drive to the mall in our SUV and buy plastic cr*p we don’t need

But there are other ways forward.

It doesn’t need to mean the end of the world. Even if your world is the mall…

The answer is about our choices.

One simple answer. Which company is doing better?

Who is doing better Toyota or GM?

Toyota. And their cars generally use less fuel than GM gas-guzzlers.

GM in the USA is just being stubborn. They do not want to change.

I’d like to think there was an alternative to a spiraling war being waged to secure future Oil Supplies. And there is.

So where IS the innovation here?

Use less energy and water.

That would mean consume less.

Turn off lights in big office towers

Plant lots of trees of the right sort to be a carbon-sink.
Anecdotally, each tree soaks up one-ton of emissions over its life.

Stop buying plastic cr*p

Stop purchasing Chinese made goods we do not need that travel huge distances to reach us

Walk to the shops don’t drive

Walk or bicycle where you can

Buy goods that last

Travel by public transport where it is efficient to do so

I am not saying to stop living our lives.

Start with the easy stuff.

Offices use a lot of electricity

There was a recent report suggesting a few key major uses of energy are:

a) Electric lights in Office Blocks (especially after hours).

b) Add to that desktop computers and monitors left on 24/7.

c) Then add the mobile phone and other chargers that have no phone attached

A device that is plugged in still draws power.

Turn them all off at the end of the day.

Computer. Monitor. Lights. Chargers.

Unplug or switch off  at the wall all electric appliances. Have the cleaners turn off all lights.

Simple. No impact on operations.

Massive reduction in energy consumption.

If you’re a manager, you can make this policy. Create a policy manual for your team.

It is the waste we should start with before the clever tricky means of energy reduction.

And Get personal with products:

And I am not saying to stop buying your favorite chocolate bar.

But think before you consume.

Reward companies that make responsible decisions.

Rewards companies that use local produce. Companies who reduce packaging.

Who allow you to supply your own containers rather than over-packaged disposables. 

Buy from local markets who support local producers. 

We can act. Today.

The time of waste for wastes sake is over.

Learn to live with less waste before supply-side constraints forces massive price rises.

Take care

Christopher 

But someone forgot to tell those 1950s-loving industrialist neo-cons.

The innovation zeitgeist is with the Creative Age.

Let’s look at where that innovation is for a moment.

So I don’t yet get it: what is innovation again?

It is not coolhunting — looking for the next plastic disposable item.

Innovation is ideas leading to positive change.

Positive change in business. And in society.

Right now our big-wigs in the White house and in Detroit are stuck in a big funk.

It’s a funk-up really. Iraq’s not going well.

We don’t need some modernist, oil and chemical-fueled economy for the next 50 years. We are smarter than that.

But we also don’t need to go around running around with starting fires and living in caves. We can solve this problem.

Here’s a starting point: Ideas don’t pollute.

And unlike the Neo-Cons I actually believe mankind is fundamentally creative.

We all hate what the Bush White-House has done

The withered stump of a shrivelled vision held up by the Neo-Conservatives is that mankind is too stupid to be trusted and brute force must be used to secure mankinds future by securing oil supplies.

That’s a vision not even fit for a postage stamp.

I don’t hate Bush himself, I hate the fact that he was foisted on us as a president.

Let me translate the Neo-Con vision:

“We’ll destroy the world, melt the ice-caps, but by-golly we’ll have a lot of plastic cr*p and a great-big car to drive around in. Pass the Pretzels…”

I’d rather be happy and have clean air and not make work the centre of my life.

And is playing office politics, selling more plastic cr*p or food-in-a-can really living?

European leadership – La Dolce Vita

In Europe, people know how to live.

And increasingly in managing the environment we must look to Europe, but also Silicon Valley, Boston, and all those places innovation lives and breathes.

Places where bright ideas get sowed as seeds that grow to trees.

And now we get to the point: the ultimate place.

The Internet. The Borderless Country.The Frontier!

Good things always happen on the Frontier.

Where even if you live in the smallest two-horse town, as long as you get an internet connection you can find like-minds.

Why is all this important? Why do we need innovation?

We as a people can solve problems.

We can be intelligent, and solve global warming, and other issues.

We can create positive social change.

In other words, we can innovate.

So this will be different to the Web 2.0 you’ve seen. We’re here (very soon).

Take care,

Christopher

That’s because we’re trying to understand it with modernist 1950s metaphors from the age of the soon-to-be-gone Oil Economy.

The Neo-Cons were really the last hurrah, and just look how well Iraq is working out for them.

That’s despite all the freedoms they managed to crush in Western countries by invoking a straw man of terrorism and turning a blind eye to some desert-dwelling nutcases.

But the fact is they don’t get it. The modern world. The internet. Or trends.

They just want to use an old tool war and suppression of rights to secure oil supplies because they think the World will end without it and that we’re all too dumb to get the answer.

We are not. We are smart. I believe we are innately creative and all but the last few years of Bush-idity back that up.

How do we get trends and innovation?

There’s been a lot of discussions about how trends both in the real world and Internet are formed.

Being human we intend to assume that everyone else is ‘like us’, whatever us is, or are else too broad to group.

This is true in part, but it is also not that useful to aiding knowledge and understanding.

2thinknow TM have some exciting new models but more on that later. For now, the internet is a useful way to understand trends, so let’s focus on that.

But how to usefully discuss the elusive internet?

First of all, it is hard to categorize or generalize the people on the net. And too often categories seem too inclusive of everyone or too exclusive of all.

One example: I am grouped as Generation X, but practically I feel the label is so broad as to be useless. In a recent post I had a similar reaction from those who fall within the Baby Boomer generation.

In traveling the world, and in much of our online feedback, most people have felt the same. Labels and categories are too limiting.

But if we don’t create yet another 5, 4, 7 or 10 category magic model (models like The Ten Faces of Innovation) what can we do?

(Aristotelian categorization and classification is useful, but it is also not the only framework that best captures internet-phenomenons or modern trends.)

And we all need some structure to understand the internet (and broader trends).

A preview of 2thinknow analysis of internet (and innovation)

I’ve worked a lot in corporates, small business, big business, charities and government broadly as a consultant or educator. 350+ organizations in fact.

Organizations like:

Multi-nationals, 3 banks, 4 global insurance companies, many global finance companies, a few FMCG, a stack of Government, agricultural co-ops, the Anglican and Catholic Churches and countless more…

Which is why I have been working on 2thinknow ^TM (whilst doing my main job of running an IT consulting firm working for many organizations) for many years now…

2thinknow ^TM started with a hand-inked logo, and a whole bunch of notes, then overseas trips, trademarks, legal, more overseas trips, some interviews, and so-on and so forth…

Now after recent overseas fact-finding trips 2thinknow ^TM is to be launched fully.

2thinknow ^TM have created some alternate models to the very modernist and classical frameworks trotted out by every consultant and book-peddler out there.

Why, When, What?

2thinknow ^TM analysis will deal with explaining, understanding and creating positive social change. In other words creating innovation.

It’s what I have learnt, researched and read from those 350+ organizations, and researching countless cities worldwide as well as visiting:

Boston, New York, Paris, Edinburgh, Rome, Vienna, Verona, Tirana, Leipzig, Munich, Berlin, LA, Sydney, Melbourne, San Francisco, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, Florence, Brisbane, Adelaide, London and a whole lot more places besides.

But mainly 2thinknow ^TM includes models, classifications and tools I have created to make up for a lack of satisfactory innovation model anywhere in current publication.

All will be revealed when our new website is launched with the analysis & research, very soon.

But for now let’s take an example to see in brief how 2thinknow ^TM Innovation models will help us all understand the very strength of the Internet.

What is the Web 2.0 Internet’s strength?

The Web 2.0 internet’s strongest point is that it is a many-to-many series of overlapping individual conversations between people.

That definition is not something many people get. Media are still dumping ideas.

But how to further explain the internet and Web 2.0?

Categorisation does not work. Nor do simple matrices.

One of our models can be used to understand and explain the concurrent and overlapping trends all over the internet.

The model uses simple visual tools to explain the complexity of the internet in a non-linear way. Once it’s release I can then say more about what it is.

What 2thinknow Innovation Models are Not:

They are not for selling more plastic cr*p.

Product innovation, a bolt-on brand extension is not really innovation.

Product innovation by multi-nationals never was innovation.

Multi-nationals are structures for implementing innovation not so much creating it.
So-called product innovation is more often about crowding out shelf-space to keep real innovations off the shelf. Provide enough varieties and you can cover the fact that you are dominating choice by controlling channels.

Above all else these corporation has to co-opt ideas from external innovators or at least small subsidiaries or pockets within themselves as very few originate from within the broader organization once they are huge sized monoliths.

Monolithic corporations can be the best tool for implementation with their global reach. They can also kill the idea though.

The leading-edge innovation corporations are different, of course. We’ll be talking about those at a later date.

How will you get this analysis & research?

When we launch our new website we’ll launch our new research & analysis, some of which is available already in printed form, but is now much expanded.

2thinknow ^TM innovation analysis will be more open than universities and closed door academics, and ‘journals’. And more current.

A lot of this analysis and research from 2thinknow is the very latest thinking from around the world, and will not be found in bookstores in the ‘10 XYZ models’ category.

I have sought out the very latest thinking ahead of the curve.

The analysis will also take the best part of business-thinking: the insistence on practicality. (which many zeitgeist-dwellers don’t)

Analysis will be available to anyone as a brief overview version online on the new site.

The analysis will be cutting edge, but structured in an organized way.

A lot of it will apply to web 2.0 which is the tool for global ideas and themes.

How you can get you some new thinking:

We will be making these ideas available as to everyone…

You will be free to quote us broadly and widely for academic, commercial and other purposes.

But I’d like to point out also that this analysis & research has taken a lot of time, money and effort to develop. So you will be asked to quote responsibly. And we will however be protecting the analysis against copyright infringement.

There will be paid in-depth versions available for purchase that provide the nuts and bolts as well as advisory services available.

Why protect Ideas? Napster anyone…?

Writers and artists, and especially innovators have to see financial returns on their innovations, which is why idea-theft is to be treated seriously.

At the same time students and other need access to ideas freely, and that is the balance we are striking. We will provide overviews of ideas free to all and encourage debate.

This blog will always have the latest ideas before they become new analysis, and will always be free to all.

Ideas don’t pollute, but they are not always free, someone is footing the bill, even if it’s for a web-server. It may be a silent partner or a donor, but like artists of the 18th century, their needs to be a model for the creative people to eat.

If you want to leave the modernist oil-driven mass-production economy the problem of business models for the new Creative Age economy needs to be solved. Without all that resource-intensive mass production.

And the fact is the ultimate investment in our economy is a single good idea… with a framework for execution and a potentially viable audience.

Ideas even get bankers excited for a potential windfall..

And then get involved…

And you will be able to get to involved. Your ideas will add to and shape the research.

They already have, those of you who have responded to early drafts or posts on this blog, either publicly or privately, and media like Fast Company who featured us on their website front-page and main blog, and also any feedback from other forthcoming interviews.

But I want to hear from you either here, or anywhere on the net…

Take care,

Christopher

This is because our modernist global economic system in English-speaking countries largely runs on the manufacture and mass consumption of cheap low-priced goods made from oil-based plastics.

Think about that for a second. What really happens?

The following chain of events was loosely based on media reports of the China pet food story, Fisher Price scandal, and recent other events.

Here is one average scenario:

A company in your city anywhere in the world gets an idea for a new product.

The company fly an award-winning designer over to design the product to be produced in a Chinese factory.

The Chinese factory signs a contract negotiated at the lowest possible cost. They have to, as the large company can always find a cheaper manufacturer.

To make or increase their profit, the factory owner in the distant Chinese factory substitutes paint or other ingredients to lower the cost.

The workers in the Chinese factory get small wages, and become sick from the toxic substances used (the human body does not like petroleum by-products, chemicals like formaldehyde or metals like lead.)

The designed goods are mass-produced and packaged in cardboard crates made by clear-felling forests and polluting pulp mills.

Via shipping containers on massive tankers, the goods finally arrive in the USA and western markets where they are shipped to their final destinations via road transport (because the governments won’t invest in railways).

The big company launches a huge marketing campaign with massive media-buys to market the new product to it’s core 15-19 y.o. female demographic at a price-point of USD $3.50 for which the factory gets 7c per unit.

In the local Walmart distracted ‘tween female consumers discuss whether the latest new betty-boo-thingamebob they do not need is worth $3.50 USD.

Walmart forces the company to initiate a promotional price-drop after they are not selling, to a new price of $1.99

The company re-negotiates its price even lower with the Chinese factory to around 4c per unit.

The factory increases the length of shifts and figures out new and unsafe production techniques to increase production.

At $1.99 the products walk off the shelves. And everybody congratulates themselves.

Postscript or how it ends:

The designer wins an award for innovative ‘tween design.

The big company executives vote themselves a bonus for ‘their’ product.

Walmart sets up a new store shutting down ‘main-street’ shops selling local products.

A few Chinese workers become sick. A father dies in an accident.

The Chinese factory owner buys a BMW.

More oil is imported by the Chinese to meet massive factory demand further driving up oil prices and forcing peak oil situation. (Plastics use oil)

The teenage consumer, taking the whole supply chain for granted throws away the product after the week.

After a few weeks betty-boo-thingamebob’s are broken everywhere.

By the end of the year 1 Million betty-boo-thingamebob’s are in landfill.
Being made of plastic they never decompose.

So that’s it. Depressing isn’t it?

Consider then this whole process happens every minute or more often. How many products are over-produced globally?

Too often we feel powerless. What can we do? You? Me?

Plenty.

Change the Rules… it has already started

Well global business is something humans designed. And we can change the rules.

Fact is Web 2.0 and the Creative Age are already changing the rules.

The Phone changed the rules. the Internet is changing the rules.

Steam powered industrial thinking changed the rules in 19th century England. Modernism changed the rules. But we are still stuck in modernism. or reacting against it (post-modernism).

The zeitgeist is with a creative age.

Here’s a starting point on how to join in, feel free to add your own ways.

First things first:

1. Stop buying plastic cr*p you do not need. Educate your children to do the same. Talk about it with your online and real world friends.

2. Go to local markets. Buy handmade goods of quality from local producers.

3. Don’t shop at Walmart, Coles, Woolworths, K-mart or Target for everything.

4. Do not buy bulk purchases of intensive production products such as meat, unless you actually eat them. Buy smaller portions. Buy from markets or butchers so you can know where the meat is from.

If you can’t see the cow then don’t eat it.

5. Food does not come in a packet. It grows in or on the ground. Food walks around.

6. Make sure your kids understand how much work goes into plastic cr*p and cheap clothing.

7. Don’t buy cheap clothing or other items because they are cheap. Buy something of quality that lasts.

This chain of events relies on US. Our Families.

The fact is companies manufacture cr*p we buy. They may use advertising to manipulate us to buy.

But you say, what about the economy?

I am not saying don’t buy or don’t shop. I am say Buy to Last!

But if you work as a cog in the chain of a big company manufacturing rubbish, and you are miserable, why not quit?

A number of friends and colleagues have done this. Not every one is cut out for a lifetime of politics, back-stabbing and crawling over broken bodies.

Earn less perhaps, spend less for sure. Coporate paypackets require expensive expenditure to maintain a lifestyle.

The new status symbol in the creative age will be the artist. So get a head start. Even corporates will want the corporate innovator. Corporates must co-opt innovation agents as they are vehicles for implementation, not inspiration. People create inspiration.

People have started already. It’s called downshifting or tree-changing and is part of a broader trend.

We as people are not the problem, it’s the systems people work in that are. but we have a small part to play in keeping an old system going.

We need to transition to a creative economy based less on manufacturing and consuming wasteful plastic cr*p.

So if you’re an innovator start out about designing a new system. You won’t be alone.

Second steps: be educated.

Read the book by David Bosshart “Cheap”.

Watch or read “An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore.

Read “The Ethics of What We Eat”.

We don’t do something because we think we can’t.

We can. We do. We wrote the rules. We can change them.

Creative production and output in Western countries is ahead of industrial output.

Creative products don’t pollute the Earth as much as 1 million pieces of plastic cr*p.

Become part of the global innovation.

I hear there is still a market for a great buggy whip.

If you think not yet, remember the bell tolls for thee.

Take care,

Christopher

This can be as broad as current global themes of: environmental or climate change issues, food supply, public transport, air travel, activism, business, new technology, Web 2.0, library 2.0, social networks, Social ideas, creative ideas, art & cultural ideas.

In short, ideas & inspiration for the intellectually curious with a global mindset.

What you may not be aware is I bookmark all sorts of industry and general innovation resources in a place where they can be seen from any web-browser.

I tend to take a pluralistic viewpoint, that is I post an article that is intelligent and interesting, but that I may not personally or professionally agree with.

Innovation links:

There are a variety of topics with an innovation focus, both social & business.These are not all the links we review or read.

There are quite a few links I think might be interesting to others, including all our latest postings on the Global innovation Conversation.

The links are stored in the social bookmarking service StumbleUpon:

innovatorau.stumbleupon.com

You can use the tag-cloud of topics at right to find specific topics, or simply browse.

Let me know if you find them interesting.

Take care,

Christopher