“In the middle of the Facebook App frenzy (was that a whole 4 months ago?!) I wrote “Delusions of Facebook” to try to dissuade as many startups as possible from going down that path. I hate to say it, but man — I was right.”
See Michele’s fantastic notes from William Cockayne‘s excellent talk at LIFT about foresight, it’s connection to innovation and the roles that people tend to take within a product innovation cycle. Great stuff. I’m embedding the video here: 
It’s a great talk which gave me lots of food for thought. Michele took the time to recreate some of Cockayne’s images from his slides, the most important of which is the following which describes the four common roles of expert, breadth + depth, breakout and innovator:
Michele builds upon Cockayne’s foresight to innovation role/actor model to offer an alternative view of an innovation process that more closely reflects the subjective impressions of being part of a open, creative and chaordic system, which I think is genius! She describes it as a model to deliver “timely awesomeness”. (Michele is herself timely awesomeness!)
not flowing along a regulated path, each eddy is an iteration, receptive to changes in external and internal environs, and accept the nature of ambiguity as something to work with. larger eddies flow towards foresight and visioning, smaller eddies flow towards prototyping and design. research does not stop. the process ebbs and flows between the two.
And now you know why I want to work with Michele Perras, Super-Genius. I’ve always found linear innovation pipeline models to be not terribly useful to reflect the ambiguity observed actual creative work. While some industry innovation cycles do look like your standard pipeline or funnel model, the remixability, permanent ambiguity and limitlessness of digital materials mean that old models don’t offer much insight for a new world of digital objects and subjective human experiences of those objects. Michele is onto something here.
This appears entirely reasonable to me:
“We don’t think it’s a radical proposal. We’re interested in Canadian eyeballs for Canadian programs,” Lind told the commission. However, he added, “It’s confusing when everybody has their hand in the pie. To maximize Canadian audiences in primetime, social policy objectives need to be elsewhere.”
I’m no fan of Rogers anti-competitive behaviour in the mobile and broadband arena, but I have to agree with the tenor of their approach to the much-maligned CTF. I want to see top-quality Canadian content succeed on Canadian screens as well as around the world. I don’t think mixing economic and cultural policy agendas has been very successful to date and will become increasingly irrelevant unless some drastic changes are made. The CBC should focus on its mandate of telling Canadian stories to Canadians and be well-funded to do so.
But….
If the cablecos get their wish on CTF reform towards a more market-centric approach, then I think it is fair that those funds also be made available for indie producers for broadband distribution without discrimination or the requirement for broadcast network distribution deals.
Dear CTF: Open up the process, let viewers decide on what gets funded. Maybe the CTF (or some successor institution) could learn something from A Swarm of Angels or FilmRiot and actually innovate instead of foot-dragging on change.
This is the single biggest policy change that could support the emergence of a new generation of Canadian innovators in content and business models, who can develop quirky and compelling niche content on small budgets with potential global audience appeal. This is my dream – am I alone?
Upcoming event worthy of note:
March 19, 2008 08:30–4pm – Experience Tech 2008– at MaRS
Experience Tech 2008 brings you the plenary sessions and keynote via live broadcast from IDC’s annual Directions Conference in Boston combined with MaRS Master Classes in Toronto.
Tom (of WirelessNorth fame) ran a great workshop at LIFT08 on the future of wireless (sorry I missed it – so many choices!). The slides are on Slideshare:
I love digital ethnographers and anthropologists! LIFT08 had a strong program of anthropological and ethnographic research and practice. Genevieve Bell is an anthropologist at Intel (which sounds like a great gig!). She gave an insightful presentation about digital deception based upon a solid understanding of human behaviour around secrets and lies. She argues that understanding secrets and lies provides better insight into issues of privacy and security.
Fascinating stuff – watch the video:
Presentation notes after the jump…