But tonight I was reading his latest article for The New Yorker and seem to have stumbled onto his new contention - that talent sometimes takes time to incubate and that the greatest artists/writers and creative people of all time tend to either be young geniuses or old masters. He notes in his article, however, that the young guns get much more celebrity and kudos because they are young than those who become masters late in life. In his New Yorker article, he compares artists Picasso and Cezanne, who came to creative mastery at polar opposite stages in life.

We here in Australia also share this preponderance to celebrate youth more than they often deserve - from the AFL Draft and the mystery and news paper inches filled with wondering about who will pick up the latest talent, to the fresh celebrity of a new graduate employee who holds a certain ’something’ that makes them more important or valuable than the older stage-rs.

Col Duthie posted last week at the Ergo Blog about how HR departments often try to ‘fix’ people within their companies by attending to their weaknesses with training programs and development course, when they should really be trying to leverage people for their strengths. I agree with this kind of thinking, but the Gladwell article has served to make me pause before blindly calling halt to working on my weaknesses. What is the best type of talent strategy to leverage your company towards a more innovative organisation?

Is it to find the best talent, perhaps the best marketer, creative or even administrative assistant and deal with the variants on performance such personality types experience? Or should HR functions search for people on the path towards their ultimate mastery, and thus pick people up who are still learning and can be funneled into ‘learning and development’ programs?

Perhaps more broadly, is it better for people to create the right environment and pursue their dreams of being ‘the’ person in their field? This is the kind of thinking I am most enamoured with lately. Pat Allan (whilst he will claim he is far from there) is doing it with gusto. Tim Ferris has made a living from giving himself space to ‘be’ and created a huge bread-crumb trail for people to follow with his 4-Hour Work week. Julian Cole seems to be carving out a great niche in something he loves, Sandra Arico is making amazing waves in the world of consulting whilst Ross Hill has become ‘the’ Ross Hill recently with the continued baby steps of Yabble. My question - how do you create that environment? Gladwells book should provide yet more fodder for the brain, but right now do you prefer the young-genius route or the old-master route…and which path are you on?

As I sit at home, exhausted after a huge last week and begin (finally) preparing my post for Blog Action Day, I have been contemplating a comment sent to me by my dear friend, Melina Chan recently. Melina is current located in Cambodia, working on an AYAD program around micro-finance lending and community development to alleviate poverty. She is an amazing person, and a true ’squiggly thinker’ - she’s absolutely amazing at creating organic, win-win, high value relationships with good people to solve complex problems, and someone I have learned a lot from in the time I have known her.

She commented on one of my posts late last week asking for advice on how the many different AYAD participants, who are spread geographically around the Asia-Pacific region, could better communicate and share learning’s across timezones, locations and dodgy-internet. Specifically, she says:

“We are often isolated geographically, with limited internet access (ie. dial up speeds, unreliable connections, downtime in power shortages and thunderstorms), and are often the only native English speakers in our organisations.”

So, on Blog Action Day, I thought what better way to act than post about the problems Mel is having in Cambodia and hopefully, with your comments, provide her with information and possible solutions she can use in the fight against poverty. Please comment with any suggestions, technologies or any other ideas you may have. This is for her! Some of my suggestions are below, which I’ve tried to create based on three key issues Mel will be facing in the field:

1) Limited/sensitive connectivity means the internet can drop out or be unavailable at anytime. Thus, any service used must either be a) mobile web enabled or b) remain intact and accessible even if some people with the AYAD network can’t access it for a time.

2) Remain time-independent. The AYADs often travel in-country, and would often be away from a computer for days/weeks/months on end. Thus, organising time for the whole network to meet will almost certainly be impossible.

3) Whilst it will be tough for the whole network to group together at once, it should be easier to form small groups of conversations/sharing. Even just 2 person conversations are hugely valuable.  

Dealing with limited internet access

Obviously, this will be the toughest problem to solve. Tim Costello, in one of our interviews with him for the Learn About Poverty blog, commented that a reportedly better solution to poverty was to buy mobile phones for everyone in need due to the devices ability to connect people for trade, business and political opportunities.

So in this case, I would suggest giving some mobile connectivity devices such as twitter a go. World Vision International were using twitter for a time to communicate to a small internal audience with status reports from the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was an experiment, which was curtailed afterwards because of it’s inability to scale but the technology still worked. Perhaps, you could create a small twitter account which AYADs could update to with links or asks for help. ie: “Does anyone have a strategic planning framework to use when facilitating?”

Creating tacit knowledge ’sinks’ 

The other option, if it eventuates that twitter doesn’t work, is actually a tool I posted about on the digital-flexi-tools post, Campfire. Campfire is a relatively low bandwidth program, which opens up a chat and allows you to swap files (hard under the conditions you’re in) and chat with people live. The real beauty of campfire, is that those conversations are recorded, so the history of your conversation remains there for other AYADs to view, creating instant, global access to tacit knowledge. I subject I know you (Mel) are very keen on!  You can create a sink of knowledge, but constantly having conversations on your campfire site, and encouraging other AYADs to do the same.

Unlike normal IM programs, Campfire can be organised by emailing a link to people and perhaps organising a time to meet there. Just like a true campfire, it tends to be used as a destination to meet. Once around the campfire, you can chat and discuss issues you need to, and share links etc etc on a low-bandwidth connection. If you had internet connection, I’m certain this would work (let us know how you go).

Utilise Google Docs to create copy-paste content

This is a tougher one. Google docs is a pretty awesome place to share documents without needing to send huge files over email etc. I would suggest that you move any documents you have, which may be valuable to other AYADs, to a google docs account. This way, you can include AYADs on any edits that take place, as well as allow people to copy-paste format independent content into whatever business/program/proposal template they may happen to be writing.

They can then add their own content back, and share it with you when you are ready. This is a key feature. Just like campfire, the content you put into the google docs account stays there, so it doesn’t require large active members, online live, to become a useful service. All you would need is the internet to be working (granted, not a guarantee) and you can access templates and content anytime, without needing to connect with others then. Again, this doesn’t need a huge number of people active within the community to be immensely valuable, and once you have two or three people adding content, the resource suddenly becomes much more powerful and more useful for others to see and add to.

Start small. Don’t expect to get to home base on the first date

Getting every member of the local AYAD network on board at the conception stage of these tools will be really tough. You’ll be better off Mel taking some advice from Ross Hill and just start small, with a simple idea of what you want to achieve. 

You might: Get up a campfire, and invite one other person in your time zone to join in. Discuss something of value to both of you, and then once you have that conversation ‘in the sink’ forward another invite and repeat it with someone else, building on the first conversation. Soon, you’ll have a comprehensive, recorded text discussion of how people would approach your topic. People will then flock to the campfire to remember what they discussed, copy-paste any useful content and generally use the service to improve their work. Once you have this in place, you can grow to including full business proposals on Google Docs etc etc, but start simple. You don’t expect to get to home base on the first date, so don’t expect it here

That’s some of my thoughts. Please, I’m want to hear your thoughts out there about how Melina could keep communication up between AYADs to improve their knowledge and sharing abilities. Hopefully, we can create a great ‘knowledge sink’ ourselves which Melina can use to make things happen and better deal with poverty.

So, what we’re my big take aways from the day? What have I learned about innovation and making it happen? Here’s my top 5:

1) Innovation happens best with limited time:

Innovation is something that everyone has. It’s not a special function, and it’s not a gift. The act of creating something new, that provides a new and better solution for an old problem is one that is entirely dependant on the cool people around you to help ideate and the amount of time you have to spend on it.

Ideation doesn’t have to be long. We can get caught up with slick processes and drawn out market research, but in the end there is nothing like a time limit to provoke new creations and group cohesion around a product. At SUCM, we had about 3 hours to form a new company, find a venture idea we liked, register the domain (etc) and then begin planning our attack. If you are stuck with a problem or in an ‘opportunity drought’ try creating a spare half hour, move off for a brainstorm and force yourself to come up with something in the alloted time. You’ll be surprised by the results.

2) Can you exit after 2 days?

This one is a bee in my bonnet. Can you ideate a new venture, do the market research and lay the strategy down, write the business plan, build a working (!) prototype and then…down tools and sell your work to a strategic buyer in the industry you’re new creation was set to play in?

We created the new web-app-service, www.abitofpluck.com. The amazing guys working on the prototype (such as Michael Specht, ‘George’ Provoost, Jason Brownlee, Pieter and John Sherwood) whipped up a working service app that would have (I think) some interest to Twitter. Yes, the business has no traffic, and no brand - but the very fact they experimented with the technology, created a phase 1 working prototype and had about 20 first time users within the first few hours proves the concept may have legs. Would it be possible to sell our progress so far to Twitter for 10k+?

I think it’s a key area for corporate innovation units to focus on in the coming years - both how to find and buy cool immature prototypes from gun innovators OR sell their own internal innovations to existing suitors within the corporate world to leverage new revenue streams and business relationships. Why not?

3) Evaluate opportunities based on revenue streams…not passion

We selected www.abitofpluck.com based largely on the fact that we wanted the challenge of building the business case and prototype for it over the next 48-60 hours. SUCM is largely an experience best used for learning as opposed to revenue creation, so the idea of working on a dull idea which may generate cash wasn’t too appealing to the group. 

We would have created a much more valuable (potentially trad-able value…see point 2) business had we started by picking the idea we could generate the most number of revenue streams from. Not most revenue…but the most streams. In the end, we struggled to find more than 3 real revenue streams for www.abitofpluck.com - in hindsight, we should have brainstormed the maximum number of ways we could generate cash (fast) from our ideas at stage one, and picked the business which had the highest number of associated ways to create revenue.

4) Reduce the risk, increase the comfort

When pitching to the angel investor, Jordan Green, I realised that many of us hadn’t prepared to reduce the risk to the investor, whilst raising their comfort. Whilst this one is pretty ‘pitch’ focused, internal innovation still speaks to the need to be transparent with weaknesses and market threats that may upset the apple cart when your new venture launches.

Especially, I found:

- Highlight your Weaknesses and Threats in your SWOT more than your Strengths and Opportunities. Once your weak points are highlighted, link how you will mitigate them with the inherent strengths and industry opportunities of your venture.

- Openly discuss your Critical Success Factors, and then continue to explain how you will ensure that your venture achieves each one. Ask ‘what would kill our new venture?’ and then find strengths and strategies to meet these success factors.

5) Be agile and tell a story

This is a shout to the talented programers named above who I worked with on www.bitofpluck.com. These guys were able to create what they did (from my perspective) because they had a clear idea of the story needed to be told to the user. By breaking down the venture into a clear story, the guys we’re able to split up the tasks required for the user, and then develop the parts in conjunction. As such, we we’re the only group to present a working prototype at events end, because we only created parts of the business required to get us to the simplest form of opperation. This is an existing methodology, and not particularly new in the tech world.

But, where innovation is concerned, try creating each revenue stream as an addition to the whole user story and then split the business planning process up to ensure that each revenue stream is scoped and contributing towards the creation of a sustainable competitive advantage. Try it out and see. Myself and Duncan Riley found this approach worked well during the event.

So that’s it. All up, the event was pretty amazing and the group of people assembled was top notch. A huge shout out to Bart Jellema for seeding the idea for the group (from Sydney) and leading the charge and to Maxim Shklyar for being the ideal host for the opportunity hungry mob that descended on his studio for the weekend. Top marks also to the aforementioned Michael Specht for playing a large hand in organising the event, and making sure the right people knew of it’s existence. Here’s to the next one!!!

The ‘Innovation System’ is incredibly complex, and I’m not even going to begin to pretend to be an expert on it. But in an interview with Smart Company recently, Cutler referred to some areas where such remodeling should take place. Innovation is a funny game, and the following are some of my thoughts on where the whole innovation thing is headed.

1) International Firms = International Communities

Cutler talks about how many of the firms within Australia are not globally orientated, which leads to poorer innovation outcomes. I have to say that a lot of what happens in Australia is quite ‘aussie focused’ but I think it depends on what you define as ‘firms.’ The larger firms in Australia tend to advertise that they are global, and some truly are, but many only dabble in international business. I think we are just discovering that the greatest of untapped resources are in small, organic communities that are springing up around the world at the moment and providing real concept innovation opportunities to those willing to be a part of them. The nascent but growing Ruby on Rails network is one such example of a small network of real industry pioneers, connecting and working collaboratively around the world.

How we create and participate in new communities such as these, is a key innovation question for me. Funky business indeed. The challenge for ‘innovative global firms’ is how to connect with such small communities.

The mining boom = by definition an innovation opportunity

Cutler refers to the mining boom as hiding problems we have, because of the sheer increase in revenue generated from it. It’s true that whilst good times are rolling people can often put off innovation because of the assumed success in the way things are going. Many large companies struggle with this exact problem, putting off till tomorrow a systemic problem which needs to be solved sooner, rather than when it festers later.

The key is, to continue to scour the landscape for new opportunities whilst the gravy train is-a-coming. In mining, we have a unique opportunity to lead the conversation around how to make mining more sustainable and efficient. Bio-mimicry is now a known idea, with a key community following it around the world. A community
(see point 1 above) which could hold real possibilities for the Australian mining scene. Our best talent is making its way to Perth and WA to be a part of the boom. Perhaps it’s time to launch a idea-harvest around how mining can learn from nature, and swing in those funky folk who ‘get’ bio mimicry?

Export and the infatuation with Scandinavia

We here in Australia have a real inferiority complex with the rest of the world. Australians can do their very best work here in oz and go unrecognised. But, once they do something that receives ANY slight amount of plaudits from anywhere else in the world (especially in the US) we laud them as being ‘ours’ and being ‘amazing.’

Which is why this whole infatuation with the Scandinavians frustrates me slightly. Yes, the Fins, Norwegians et al have an amazing innovation culture. They ‘outsource talent’ and their biggest export industry is ‘knowledge.’ Finland especially has moved from a resource driven economy to a knowledge driven economy very quickly. But, this is easier to do in a country so close geographically to the Europe Union and other locations. It is harder to do down here in Australia. People continue to refer to the Fins as the example that we should copy but clearly there are some things we need to differently:

1. Communicate better with Asia. About a third of the worlds population live just above our Australian heads. Why haven’t you (or I, for that matter) visited Thailand, Hong-Kong, Indonesia, The Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore or the obvious India and China yet? Many people are, but not enough.
2. Finland invested heavily in ICT’s. Australia claim to be, but with only 5-6% of the population understanding what RSS is, I think we are a long way off. Don’t even mention our dawdling broadband network and the politicking between the G9 to fix the problem.
3. See International Organisation = International Communities again. We need more communication between communities of people, internationally.

These are just some of my observations about the whole innovation game here in Australia. I’d be interested to hear about any other innovation systems you might have heard of, especially as they are involved within large organisations.

Hugh McLeod wrote recently about Digital Nomands whilst a blog he referred to in that post, Digital Nomads, contained a post from Jay White discussing how he went about mixing his personal and professional life, which I found interesting. Cameron McGrane is also always up-to-date on different ways to get create value from anywhere. So, I thought I would add to the chorus and discuss how I am trying to get a little less ‘place bound’ and more ‘value orientated’ as we move towards a vocational community future.

iGoogle and GMail: Jay alluded to this in his post, and I probably don’t utilise it enough, but the fact that it holds and presents my personal email to me as well as my RSS feeds and other apps means that I can access my conversations (not just my emails) easily from anywhere. In the future, I’m keen to continue adding to the functions I use iGoogle for.

 eLance:I’ve only just discovered this, and truth be-told, I haven’t yet won work on it or contracted work out through it but it is certainly a space I will utilise going forwards. The ability to easily delegate and sub-contract work out is huge for me and promises much. I look forward to experimenting with uses for this in the coming months.

twitter:Is on my Treo primarily, which goes with me everywhere. It’s a mobile community, and allows me to keep in touch with most things going on to a key group of people in my life. It also allows me to connect with new, interesting people for both work and play.

campfire: Again, I’ve just discovered this but look forward to using it more to have (and record) conversations from anywhere. It’s been helpful mainly at the moment working with Ross Hill on a variety of different things, but promises much in terms of creating global discussions (read, facilitating vocational communities).

Monkey on the back: This one is a fun one, but helps in keeping things on the agenda. You can place a monkey on someones back, which kindly reminds people to complete or do the tasks you set them. It’s passive aggressive, and puts a smile on peoples faces rather than invoking that ‘crap, I forgot to do that’ feeling commonly associated with forgotten tasks.

Crumpler bag: This one is often forgotten by many digital nomads, but is probably one of the most important. I upgraded to a Crumpler backpack earlier this year and have not looked back. It carries everything I need: Laptop, cords, books, notebooks, jumpers etc as well as numerous other things which you may or may not need to include on a day out. Check out flickr for more evidence of people using their bags to carry their lives.

I also use a host of others, such as delicious, friendfeed, facebook, amazon, iTunes, laptops, skype and many more. Above, I have tried to highlight some of the other tools which may prove useful for your use in creating a less location based work-life.

The book is Liars Poker, by Michael Lewis, and so far it has been an interesting read. The book is set in the heady days of the 80’s based in the Salomon Brothers trading firm on Wall St. As for the authors tone, imagine everything Gordon Gecko meets a less polished Moneyball.

The book traces the path of a young graduate employee at Salomon Brothers who has fallen into the position through sheer luck. The author, in this case, is actually writing from the first person which provides great interest to me as a fan of Michael Lewis’ later work, Moneyball and The Blind Side. This first person voice provides a great perspective on a lot of the things that went on in the 80’s generally, including the rise and rise of the mortgage market in the US at the time, as well as the effects of capitalism on the elite traders of the world. It actually really helped by basic understand of the mess we’re in now with the Sub-Prime Crisis, as most of the damage has stemmed from the decisions made by guys Lewis writes about in Liars Poker.

All up, the book so far is another gem and goes on the list of highly recommended. It hasn’t has such great takeaways as far as ‘things I can put into use’ but still provides a different way to view the world for a time and better understand the system of global finance. 3.5 squiggly-lines our of 5!

As most of you will know by now, I’m a huge advocate of the Brand Me lifestyle. Tom Peters wrote the seminal article in Fast Company some 12 years ago now, but Chris’s latest work comes from a place of true experience rather than the ‘Practicum/Theory’ piece from Tom. Have a read and see what you think - I particularly liked the following points:

 1) Your Own Company: Each opportunity is a chance to learn a new skill and add a new experience. I too don’t really see a resume in the traditional sense. I want a story to tell someone about what I have done. I try to hunt for interesting projects as often as I can.

2) Innovate and be a scout. I’ve read a lot about this recently. I think it falls upon you as a personal brand to be innovative and blaze a new trail…even if the trail is small/not often used or even entirely uninteresting to most people. The fact that you have created the path is evidence of another option or experience someone might use in their own project. Blaze often, blaze weird things and then see where the path takes you. Often, I find several paths I beat seem to come together to create one really valuable path for my client/project/partners.

3) Read widely: I read often. Someone once told me that the average Corporate CEO reads about 12 books a year. As CEO of Brand You, it’s a responsibility that you must accept. Check out different blogs like 800-CEO-read and build an Amazon wish-list which people can check out on Friendfeed etc etc to build a list of good titles that may pique your business professional bone, then link/blog about them. Get Love is the Killer Ap for a good introduction to the professional-reading world, and become a love cat.

Finally - follow interesting brands on the net. Chris alludes to many in his eBook but some of my favourites are: Pat Allan, who is living the next installment of the brand me life by connecting with a truly (amazing) global vocational community, Col Duthie. who is trying to help blaze a trail of international co-existence between the business, government and non-profit sectors and Ross Hill , who has just gotten back on the blogging-bike to better discuss his growing internet empire.

As most of you would be aware, I work at World Vision Australia, which focuses on providing life in all it’s fullness for children all over the world. We aim to help alleviate global, endemic poverty and do this through a number of ways, namely Child Sponsorship. Whilst I don’t always love the place, and at times find my ‘Brand Me Personality’ keen to escape to more naturally innovative pastures, I really enjoy my time here being a part of an organisation that plays a huge role internationally in making stuff happen to combat poverty and it’s terrible symptoms. There are some amazing people around who are literally saving the world, and working in that environment is pretty fascinating.

Which is why I’m really pumped for the Blog Action Day on October 15th. I plan to use the day to hopefully open a dialogue about how NGO’s in the poverty alleviation space can work in innovative ways to further leverage their advantages and resources towards making poverty history.

I’m not quite sure yet what my plan is for the day, but I’ll let you know what will be happening on this blog in due course. Until then (wait for the sizzle), keep thinking about what you can do on the day to contribute to a huge buzz about how we can fight poverty together from our keyboards. You can get involved here.

As you would know, and as many others are discussing now, Brand Me is real. People are defining their working lives not as professions or roles, but brands and value added. What you can do and what value you can create for an organisation are very different propositions. Often, to create real and systemic value in an organisation you have to embed it in the culture of the place (or group). To do this, you often have to introduce new infrastructure - whether that’s mental (new mental models to solve problems), Physical (new office space or way of organising your physical space to maximise flow) or technological (technical introductions or enhancements that help you do work better).

There’s plenty of examples here to draw from. Keith Don, a fellow colleague at World Vision, was hired to project manage our new digital strategy. Whilst Keith had brought a huge amount of knowledge to the role, the key piece of infrastructure he has brought is his strategic frame of view. He has forced many in the organisation to, for the first time, consider WHY they want a new website, WHY they want to do this piece of social media or WHY do people want to do whatever it is they, well, want to do. That strategic framework is hugely important when trying to create an innovation culture. I’ve had the privilege to get beside ‘Kbama’ and push my shoulder against the Jim Collins flywheel to help create change, and through his work we have begun to see mindsets and mental models shift to very cool places. This is just one example of someone installing new mental infrastructure to an organisation. Alice Clements, now of Scaffidi Hugh-Jones, has introduced Skype to her work environment to increase the knowledge sharing and virtual communication between herself and her peers. Col Duthie, of Ergo, moved his whole business to a new physical location to help drive a new identity after a re-branding. He now writes very succinctly and insightfully at the Ergo blog.  The list goes on…

So, when you next go into an organisation, consider this question. What do you, as a brand and person, install that helps move things towards a better outcome?

A friend of mine, Nat, was recently in Vanuatu as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development working to help a non-profit organisation develop good business practices to further help lead their clients towards a better living. One of Nat’s pearls from her time in country was how things that we’re successful because they were different and innovative at a point in time, actually became so popular that their returns diminished quickly for the rest of the community, simply because the whole community was doing it. In Nat’s experience, it was goats.

Goats provide enormous relief and opportunity to small communities in developing countries. They provide milk and all of its by-products, as well as other goats and meat when the goat ‘comes of age.’ Unfortunately, as more and more people witness the success had by those people that had goats, more and more people would find a way to secure their own. The result? A community full of goats and an excess of supply of all its products. Because we find it difficult to think beyond our own situations, these examples tend to replicate in society. To me, something similar is now happening with The Big Issue and it’s sale. The program has been enormously successful, but is seemingly (to me) becoming a victim of its own success. There seems to be a Big Issue vendor on the corner of each city block now, including 4 on each corner at the intersection of Elisabeth and Bourke St.

To me, I wonder how sustainable this is for those people selling the magazine. Increasingly, these heroic people have become marginalised by their own relief and are now spending more and more time on the street to sell less and less magazines per person. I ask, have we suffered the same results as those in Vanuatu? Do we have too many goats and not enough of a market? In a more systemic view of the situation, what else could our society’s marginalised people be doing? Will they be able to come to a new conclusion themselves, or will they simply continue to sell less and less magazines until they find it completely unsustainable? What are your thoughts? And how could we find a more systemic solution that solved one of society’s greatest problems?