Creative Generalist

Generalists Unite!

2011-04-30T11:41:00.004-04:00

By their very nature generalists tend not to congregate. Our interests are so many and so varied that it's almost counter-intuitive to try to gather us around a common theme. But it is indeed possible and this site will prove it.

When I started this blog, Creative Generalist, in April 2002 I did so really just to bookmark websites and quotes that I found to be personally interesting. It was just my own solo link list, and having just quit my job and moved to Montreal (on a whim) I had a little free time to wander around - literally and digitally - and post such dispatches.

At the time I was a couple of years out of university and the web was becoming a really exciting place for exchanging ideas. I felt quite strongly that the world was over-specializing - partly because of a relentless bureaucratic push towards efficiency and partly because of the rapidly deepening technology-fueled push of innovation - and that a generalist perspective was not only valuable as a counter-balance but essential in understanding and maximizing such new ideas. So I posted about it - insights from others and my own opinions. (And by day I took up a job at Maisonneuve, a startup general-interest magazine.)

Over time I started to notice that other people were reading my blog posts (an audience?!) and some of them even took the time to email me - to challenge, to compliment, to share. In 2005 I wrote a ChangeThis manifesto called How Broad Thinking Leads to Big Ideas, from '06 to '08 I published the eclectic curiosity interviews, and in 2008 I presented my essay What Specifically Do Generalists Do? to Russell Davies' Interesting conference in London. All along the way the feedback I received was amazing and the best part was that it always came from incredibly bright, passionate, curious people with fascinating projects and stories. And these people identified themselves as creative generalists!

They're out there. You're not alone. You really should meet each other.

Over the past couple of years my career and life have gotten very busy and I gradually fell out of the routine of regularly feeding the blog beast. Besides that though I also felt that there were many more people championing the generalist mantra - including incredible minds like Dan Pink, Frans Johansson, Bruce Nussbaum, Tim Brown, Roger Martin, and many others. The whole big idea of T-shaped people and versatilists and holistic approaches and design/systems thinking really caught on. Meanwhile, this blog is mostly dormant and I've occasionally pondered if and how I might renew it.

A few conversations I've had with generalists over the past several months - in with particular Arnold Beekes - have inspired me to evolve Creative Generalist from personal soapbox to shared community. That's really the best part of it. And so I've established a niche social network, The Society of Creative Generalists, for generalists to introduce themselves, share a bit about what interests them, and converse with each other if so moved.

Why a standalone social network? Well, there are a few reason:

1. Facebook is too personal. SoCG is more than just a vanity badge to show friends.
2. LinkedIn is too professional. SoCG goes beyond work projects and job posts.
3. The Ning platform I'm using seems to be pretty versatile for the wide range of things a motley crew of generalists might use it for.

Some of you may know of the Creative Generalist group I formed on Facebook years ago. It has a few hundred members but is also fairly inactive. That's my fault. A good community needs active managers and moderators and fortunately Arnold (and soon others) has agreed to take on that role and ensure that this Society of Creative Generalists maintains its vibrancy - perhaps including some collective assignments around which to collaborate.

The community's goal is simply to define what it is to be a creative generalist and build a directory of sorts for all the people out there that specialize in everything. See you there!

The Virtual Choir

2011-04-17T18:26:00.002-04:00

A truly impressive project. Eric Whitacre and his forming of a choir around hundreds and then thousands of virtual voices. Via TED.

Cuddles Proxy

2011-04-16T18:18:00.000-04:00

My friend Aron is up to some mischief with his latest project: My After Sex Buddy doll. Be sure to check out the video.

Interdependence Commencement

2010-06-07T20:05:00.002-04:00

Tiffany Shlain's UC Berkeley keynote commencement speech...

Pause

2010-02-18T22:46:00.002-05:00

Well, it's certainly been a while since my last post. Yikes.

I used to hold to a pretty steady and disciplined regimen of about three posts a week - even long after that new blog smell faded away. But I've slowed over the last year - obviously - for, I suppose, a variety of fairly typical reasons: blog fatigue, Twitter distraction (@shardy12), info overload, very busy and engaging day job, little time to tap out anything worth reading (like now), and even some (happy) recognition that the generalist mantra which I felt was so under-represented several years ago is alive, well, and thriving widely these days.

Cheers to that, Creative Generalists!

Still, I miss the blog (and especially those of you I've met through it) and intend to keep with it - even if it means a bit more of a quiet period while I re-imagine it and carve out the right time to post. (How I admire those who blog often, thoughtfully, and thoroughly.) So, basically, all this is is really just the equivalent of a radar ping - to show that I'm still swimming around this big digital ocean even if I haven't called in for a while. Back soon.

Boundary Matrix

2009-11-23T11:03:00.005-05:00

How to overcome the challenges inherent to cross-disciplinary collaboration: Creating a boundary matrix.

(Illustration: Dave Gray)

1 Million FPS

2009-10-11T22:16:00.002-04:00

Some remarkable slow-motion footage:

(Thanks Ask)

Work in the Conceptual Age

2009-09-06T13:25:00.003-04:00

The three paragraphs on this page at gigaom offer a variety of links leading to some great posts touching on various aspects of generalism and work. As the intro lines state: "'Big-picture thinking and inventiveness are going to be the key to professional success in a new “conceptual age.' In a series of posts over at WebWorkerDaily, Imran Ali has been musing on the type of work that we might be doing in the future, the skills that will be required, and the type of teams we might be working in." (Hat tip to augustdiva!)

Separate but related - work in the conceptual age - is this TED Talk by Dan Pink. He speaks about how to motivate workers and how rewards for task-oriented people need to be one thing and rewards for creative people needs to be another.

The Cove

2009-09-04T19:37:00.003-04:00

The Cove. It's a remarkably restrained film in that most of it describes the teamwork, planning, and logistics involved with covertly documenting one of the grisliest activities on earth: Japan's slaughter of dolphins. Not much of the brutal footage is actually shown, and it's obvious that the producers spared us the especially gory bits, but what is seen quite vividly shows the ugliest and cruelest of what humanity can unleash upon another sentient, self-aware mammal.

The Cove centres on an Oceans 11 type team of photographers, ex-military, free divers, props designers, and others assembled by Director Louie Psihoyos and OPS (Oceanic Preservation Society) and their efforts to expose the brutal round-up of dolphins each year in a tiny cove in Taiji, Japan. Its lead character is Ric O'Barry, whose life's mission is to reverse the captivity, trade, and killing of dolphins that came about largely by the popularization of the creatures in his 60s TV series Flipper. Along the way, we see Taiji's and Japan's bureaucratic political shadiness and even self-destruction (they mislabel toxic mercury-soaked dolphin meat as whale meat and distribute it to school lunch programs).

A very powerful and disturbing movie.

Netflix Culture Manifesto

2009-08-05T19:57:00.002-04:00

Apparently NetFlix has a rather enlightened approach to HR and company culture. Exhibit A: this internal 128-slide presentation.

Culture

View more presentations from reed2001.

No Respect for Marketing

2009-07-27T16:07:00.002-04:00

An excellent Ad Age article by Al Reis on the often misunderstood key difference between marketing and advertising, and why GM doesn't get it.

I think he's wrong. Advertising at GM is not broken. Marketing is.

Marketing's job is to coordinate all the various disciplines inside a corporation in order to develop the right product, the right price, the right position, the right distribution strategy and the right brand name.

Advertising's job is to position that brand name in the minds of consumers.

Good marketing makes advertising relatively easy. Bad marketing makes advertising difficult, if not impossible.

(Thanks Dave)

Lookalikes

2009-07-26T22:42:00.002-04:00

From the display tables to the "Guru Bar", it's hard not to page through the leaked Powerpoint describing design plans for Microsoft's retail stores as highly imitative of Apple Stores.

Now, check out this excellent Adult Education ("a useless lecture series") talk by Gaylord Fields called "Yeah Yeah ... Uh, No: Exploring the Audiovisual Phenomenon of Beatles-Lookalike Long Playing Albums".

Shoes

2009-07-16T18:47:00.002-04:00

One of the trippiest, most wonderfully odd music videos ever...

Tiga "Shoes" from AlexandLiane on Vimeo.

23andMe

2009-07-09T18:53:00.000-04:00

It's an odd thing to spit into a vial and send your saliva FedEx across the continent. So it was that curiosity tempted me a few months ago to try out 23andMe's personal genetics test.

Basically, you order a kit online for $399. It arrives a couple weeks later. You spit in the special vial, seal it up, and send it off. And another few weeks later an email arrives that tells you that your online profile has been completed. Pretty easy, actually.

The confidential (yet privately shareable) report summarizes your genome scan and provides you with a variety of health, traits, and ancestry - complemented by a rich library of background research. My results confirmed simple things like my skin and eye colour, insights into my ancestry on both my mother's and father's side, and indicators about the likelihood that I may go bald or become diabetic, among other things. It offers both the novelty of science and the profundity of extreme self-awareness. Not for everyone, and not especially actionable, but highly interesting for those seeking the ultimate in insider information.

Competitive Advantage Is Fleeting

2009-06-19T11:44:00.001-04:00

Competitive Advantage Is Fleeting (And It's Okay to Admit It). An interesting HBS article by Rita McGrath.

One implication of hypercompetition that has not yet gotten the attention it deserves is that the skill of getting out of things and re-focusing your organization is likely to be just as important as spotting opportunities and moving to capture them. I suggest that the vast majority of companies struggle with letting go, while the more adroit strategists make the necessary judgment calls and move on.

Punk Rope

2009-06-17T12:38:00.001-04:00

Recess was the best, wasn't it? Ah, well, here's a pretty cool program out of New York that seems to be recapturing that fun and exercise for a wider audience: Punk Rope!

Punk Rope Salutes March Madness 3-31-09 from Tim Haft on Vimeo.

Punk Rope is a playful mash-up of recess and boot camp that’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Each class is a unique blend of creative calisthenics, group conditioning drills, relay races, rope jumping, and core training. Students come in all ages, shapes, sizes, and fitness levels. Everybody is welcome!

Wooden Arms

2009-06-15T16:55:00.000-04:00

I've posted previously about how great Patrick Watson songs and shows are (I've seen at least 14 of 'em!). It's been fun watching this band improve and earn the acclaim they are now almost universally receiving. Their latest album, Wooden Arms, dropped last month and is start-to-finish wonderful. If you like pop-piano-acoustic-percussive type tunes, take a listen. And watch this beautifully shot takeaway show by Vincent Moon.

Banksy in Bristol

2009-06-14T14:50:00.003-04:00

Banksy at the Bristol City Museum. Brilliant, yet again.

Gigundo Industries

2009-06-08T12:26:00.000-04:00

For all your New Yorker-style cartoon needs (for birthday cards, books, presentations...). Gigundo Industries Inc.

Publicacy

2009-06-05T11:54:00.001-04:00

The word "publicacy" was coined by Scott Cleland, author of the insightful web policy The Precursor Blog, as a needed antonym to "privacy". In the age of Web 2.0 social networks, mobile phone GPS, cload computing, and a growing variety of "wisdom of crowds" data analysis, the "publicacy ethos" - that "if technology innovation can make information public, it should be public and that there should be no permission or payment required to access, use or remix this new 'public' information" - becomes an increasingly important subject for discussion and debate. As this NY Times article explains, you're leaving a digital trail and tracking that trail is valuable learning - both commercially and societally.

Hello Wave

2009-06-02T23:47:00.006-04:00

If you haven't done so yet, set aside 80 minutes and watch the preview that Google delivered last week of its forthcoming Wave communication platform. You'll be hearing a lot about it soon, I'm sure. Wave may very well replace email and will certainly play some key role in consolidating the oodles of social media services competing for our attention.

Impressive in its scope and ambition, obviously, but also a very good sign that Google has created Wave to be open source and "federation" friendly.

Visual Futurists

2009-05-27T19:12:00.000-04:00

It's the industrial design equivalent of science fiction: 100 completely unreal inventions.

(Thanks Clay)

Crossing the Chasm

2009-05-23T17:48:00.002-04:00

Recently I re-read Geoffrey Moore's classic “Crossing the Chasm”, a great technology marketing book that came out in the 90s. It’s about marketing and selling disruptive technology products to mainstream customers. Although some of the case studies naturally date the book, it remains just as instructive now in 2009 as it did over a decade ago.

There are a few key sections worth highlighting (excerpts below): identifying the chasm, moving from early market to mainstream, niche segmenting, and creating a whole product. Food for thought...

What is the Chasm?...

“We have enough high-tech marketing history now to see where our model has gone wrong and how to fix it. To be specific, the point of greatest peril in the development of a high-tech market lies in making the transition from an early market dominated by a few visionary customers to a mainstream market dominated by a large block of customers who are predominantly pragmatists in orientation. The gap between these two markets, heretofore ignored, is in fact so significant as to warrant being called a chasm, and crossing this chasm must be the primary focus of any long-term high-tech marketing plan. A successful crossing is how high-tech fortunes are made...” [p.5]

“Every truly innovative high-tech product starts out as a fad – something with no known market value or purpose but with “great properties” that generate a lot of enthusiasm within an “in crowd.” That’s the early market. Then comes a period during which the rest of the world watches to see if anything can be made of this; that is the chasm. If in fact something does come out of it – if a value proposition is discovered that can predictably be delivered to a targetable set of customers at a reasonable price – then a new mainstream market forms, typically with a rapidity that allows its initial leaders to become very, very successful.” [p.6]

“One of the most important lessons about crossing the chasm is that the task ultimately requires achieving an unusual degree of company unity during the crossing period.” [p.7]

On the Early Market...

Technology enthusiasts “are the ones who first appreciate the architecture of your product and why it therefore has a competitive advantage over the current crop of products established in the marketplace. They are the ones who will spend hours trying to get products to work that, in all conscience, never should have shipped in the first place. They will forgive ghastly documentation, horrendously slow performance, ludicrous omissions in functionality, and bizarrely obtuse methods of invoking some needed function – all in the name of moving technology forward. They make great critics because they truly care. ... They pose fewer requirements than any other group in the adoption profile.” [p.31]

Visionaries “are not looking for an improvement; they are looking for a fundamental breakthrough. Technology is important only insomuch as it promises to deliver this dream... From the strategic leap forward it enables.” ... “Visionaries are easy to sell but very hard to please.” [p.34]

“Crossing the chasm requires moving from an environment of support among the visionaries back into one of skepticism among pragmatists. It means moving from familiar ground of product-oriented issues to the unfamiliar ground of market-oriented ones, and from the familiar audience of like-minded specialists to the unfamiliar audience of essentially uninterested generalists.” [p.137]

On segment-targeting...

“A market is: a set of actual or potential customers; for a given set of products or services; who have a common set of needs or wants; and who reference each other when making a buying decision.” [p.28]

“...The claim is made that, although niche strategy is generally best, we do not have time – or we cannot afford – to implement it now. This is a ruse, of course, the true answer being much simpler: We do not have, nor are we willing to adopt, any discipline that would ever require us to stop pursuing any sale at any time for any reason. We are, in other words, not a market-driven company; we are a sales-driven company. Now, how bad can this really be? I mean, sales are good, right? Surely things can just work themselves out, and we will discover our market, albeit retroactively, led to it by our customers, yes? The true answers to the previous questions are: (1) disastrous, (2) not always, and (3) never in a million years.
The consequences of being sales-driven during the chasm period are, to put it simply, fatal. Here’s why: The sole goal of the company during this stage of market development must be to secure a beachhead in a mainstream market – that is, to create a pragmatist customer base that is referenceable, people who can, in turn, provide us access to other mainstream prospects. To capture this reference base, we must ensure that our first set of customers completely satisfy their buying objectives. [p.68]

“The segment-targeting company can expect word-of-mouth leverage early in its crossing-the-chasm marketing effort, whereas the sales-driven company will get it much later, if at all. This lack of word of mouth, in turn, makes selling the product that much harder, thereby adding to the cost and unpredictability of sales. ... So, if we want market leadership early on – and we do, since we know pragmatists tend to buy from market leaders, and our number one marketing goal is to achieve a pragmatist installed base that can be referenced – the only right strategy is to take a “big fish, small pond” approach. Segment. Segment. Segment.” ... “Make a total commitment to the niche, and then do your best to meet everyone else’s needs with whatever resources you have left over.” [p.69]

“Winning the beachhead, knocking over the head pin, creates a dynamic of follow-on adoption, opening up new opportunities, in part from leveraging a solution from one niche to another, in part from word of mouth interaction between customers in adjacent niches.” ... “The fundamental principle for crossing the chasm is to target a specific niche market as your point of attack and focus all your resources on achieving the dominant leadership position in that segment.” [p.77]

“Can’t we go after more than one target? The simple answer is no... You cannot cross the chasm in two places.” Move into adjacent niches after you’ve conquered the first one. [p.99]

Direct sales is the best channel for crossing the chasm in high-tech. ... “It gives us maximum control over our own destiny.” ... “The retail system works optimally when its job is to fulfill demand rather than create it. ... Because it does not create demand, and because it does not help develop whole products, retail distribution is structurally unsuited to solving the chasm problem.” [p.169]

On the Whole Product Concept...

Generic product – what is shipped in the box
Expected product – what the consumer thinks they are buying
Augmented product – accessories, plug-ins, extras, technical support, etc.
Potential product – the product’s room for growth and enhancement

“At the introduction of any new type of product, the marketing battle takes place at the level of the generic product – the product itself. The hero in the battle for the early market. But as marketplaces develop, as we enter the mainstream market, products in the center (1) become more and more alike, and the battle shifts increasingly to the outer circles (4).” [p.110]

The single most important difference between early markets and mainstream markets is that the former are willing to take responsibility for piecing together the whole product (in return for getting the jump on their competition), whereas the latter are not. Failure to recognize this principle has been the downfall of many a high-tech enterprise. Too often companies throw their products into the market as if they were tossing bales of hay off the back of a truck. There is no planning for the whole product – just the hope that their product will be so wonderful that customers will rise up in legions to demand that third parties rally about it.” [p.112]

Lots of other good stuff - and interesting how one of the pivotal challenges in all of marketing ultimately boils down to transitioning from specialist to generalist appeal, and doing so with niche segmenting and a whole product. Again, a great book, well worth dusting off and scanning through again.

Random Facts

2009-04-18T19:00:00.000-04:00

Recycling: Each year, Americans throw out enough soda pop cans bottles to reach to the moon and back—twenty times.

Kissing: The science of kissing is called philematology.

Nutrition: A person will usually swallow around 250 times during dinner.

Dolphins: Just a tablespoon of water in a dolphin’s lung could drown it.

Volcanoes: Japan has 10% of the world’s active volcanoes.

One should learn something - at least one thing - new every day. That being the goal, this site of Random Facts, will overload your daily diet.

(Thanks Rose)

A Generalist President

2009-04-04T17:17:00.001-04:00

It's clear reading The Audacity of Hope that Barack Obama isn't just a good speaker but he's also a very good writer, exceptionally talented at conveying thoughts and ideas articulately, intelligently, and with flow. It's a book that so obviously framed his whole presidential campaign, which as we all know now has thankfully turned the page on the redacted scribbles of the Bush-Cheney years. It's a book about his background, experience, approach, beliefs, and aspirations.

Besides the obligatory pre-campaign introduction that most political personality books share, there are a couple things that really stand out about Obama in The Audacity of Hope.

The first is that this is a man who has a very keen understanding of history, especially American history. I blogged previously about a post at Pop Philosophy called The Return of History which summed up nicely the great value of studied hindsight on matters of the present and future. It would appear that Obama's relative young age as president is more than offset by his professorial knowledge of past presidents and of his nation's founding and subsequent journey.

The second thing that resonated throughout the book was that Obama most certainly possesses a generalist mindset. I've posted before about how leaders need to be generalists - including a vision of the big picture, a talent for "hiring" and delegation, and an openness and empathy towards differing ideas and perspectives. He covers sports, faith, economy, politics, power, science, family, and a number of other topics with ease and in balance with each other. This trait will serve him well as leader of a country with so many diverse challenges and opportunities.

Here are a few excerpts that illustrate the above further:

...[A]cross America a constant cross-pollination is occurring, a not entirely orderly but generally peaceful collision among people and cultures. Identities are scrambling, and then cohering in new ways. Beliefs keep slipping through the noose of predictability. Facile expectations and simple explanations are being constantly upended. Spend time actually talking to Americans, and you discover that most evangelicals are more tolerant than the media would have us believe, most secularists more spiritual. Most rich people want the poor to succeed, and most of the poor are both more self-critical and hold higher aspirations than the popular culture allows. Most Republican strongholds are 40 percent Democrat, and vice versa. The political labels of liberal and conservative rarely track people's personal attributes. (p63)

It is to say that after all the trappings of office - the titles, the staff, the security details - are stripped away, I find the President and those who surround him to be pretty much like everybody else, possessed of the same mix of virtues and vices, insecurities and long-buried injuries, as the rest of us. No matter how wrongheaded I might consider their policies to be - and no matter how much I might insist that they be held accountable for the results of such policies - I still find it possible, in talking to these men and women, to understand their motives, and to recognize in them values I share. This is not an easy posture to maintain in Washington. ... (p59)

As a country, we seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit. We wouldn't tolerate schools that don't teach, that are chronically underfunded and understaffed and underinspired, if we thought that the children in them were like our children. It's hard to imagine the CEO of a company giving himself a multimillion-dollar bonus while cutting health-care coverage for his workers if he thought they were in some sense his equals. And it's safe to assume that those in power would think longer and harder about launching a war if they envisioned their own sons and daughters in harm's way. ... Black leaders need to appreciate the legitimate fears that may cause some whites to resist affirmative action. Union representatives can't afford not to understand the competitive pressures their employers may be under. I am obligated to try to see the world through George Bush's eyes, no matter how much I may disagree with him. That's what empathy does... We are all forced beyond our limited vision. (p82)

Most of all, she [Obama's mother] possessed an abiding sense of wonder, a reverence for life and its precious, transitory nature that could properly described as devotional. During the course of the day, she might come across a painting, read a line of poetry, or hear a piece of music, and I would see tears well up in her eyes. Sometimes, as I was growing up, she would wake me in the middle of the night to have me gaze at a particularly spectacular moon, or she would have me close my eyes as we walked together at twilight to listen to the rustle of leaves. She loved to take children - any child - and sit them in her lap and tickle them or play games with them or examine their hands, tracing out the miracle of bone and tendon and skin and delighting at the truths to be found there. She saw mysteries everywhere and took joy in the sheer strangeness of life. (p243)