President + Partner, New Kind
Wikipedia is among the world’s most widely recognized examples of mass collaboration. Most people also know Wikipedia is open for anyone to contribute. But what does open mean? What are the rules? Who writes them? And how do they solve inevitable disputes over content?
I came across an interesting concept recently: the Law of Two Feet. Brilliantly simple, it says any time you’re in a meeting where you’re not contributing nor adding value–you are encouraged to use your two feet and find a place where you can. In other words, if it’s not meaningful, and you’re not doing your part to make it meaningful, move on.
Continue reading “Darwin meets Dilbert: Applying the Law of Two Feet to your next meeting”
Open source communities are often compared to gift economies. You participate. You solve shared problems. Others do the same.
In many ways, you give to get.
Continue reading “Participating in a gift economy: Are you giving enough?”
Companies that are creating massive value typically aren’t building a better mousetrap. They’re not improving on existing technologies or simply adding new features. Instead, they’re changing the business model. This was the message behind Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst’s keynote at today’s CED Venture 2010 Conference.
Continue reading “Jim Whitehurst: Don’t build a better mousetrap. Change the business model.”
The world of work has changed, but in many ways the model of motivation hasn’t. Are the traditional rewards of today’s organizations up to the challenge of motivating people to complete creative, complex tasks in creative ways? And can the open source way offer inspiration?
Daniel Pink is a bestselling author and one of the country’s top business speakers. His latest book is Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. You can watch him deliver an insightful and entertaining introduction to Drive at the TED Conference.
Continue reading “Upgrading the motivational operating system: A conversation with Daniel Pink”
A tide is turning for the state of business. We have come to realize the old ways of innovating and competing are no longer moving fast enough. We’re looking for new answers, and more importantly, new ways of finding them.
This past week I had the pleasure of attending the 25th annual Emerging Issues Forum in Raleigh. The forum brought together business and government leaders from across the state to discuss the challenges facing our economy as we race to compete in a changing world.
Continue reading “Meeting our business challenges with creativity”
The project was called Kind of Bloop. An 8-bit tribute to the Miles Davis masterpiece “Kind of Blue”. Yes, the same sound you remember from first-generation Nintendo games.
Re-imagining “Kind of Blue” was an idea Andy Baio always dreamed about. Baio is a journalist, programmer, and also the CTO of Kickstarter, a funding platform for creative projects.
Continue reading “Giving creative projects a community kickstart”
You see the headlines in Twitter all the time: “Top 5 WordPress themes for small businesses.” “10 ways to build your personal brand.” The lists go on. Especially right now when best-of and worst-of lists are everywhere. Not to be outdone, Time Magazine created a list of lists, the Top 10 of everything in 2009.
We can’t resist clicking on these headlines. Why? What makes lists such a compelling way for bloggers and magazines to deliver content? And if we know this is true, how can more organizations take advantage of the format to get their messages read and remembered?
Continue reading “Why do we love lists? Here are 5 reasons.”
Essential products. Minimalist sensibility. Restrained beauty and effortless simplicity. MUJI may just be the world’s most poetic brand.
And it’s not a brand at all. Or at least they reject all of the traditional definitions. MUJI is a Japanese company whose name means “no brand quality goods.” For MUJI, it’s not about being a brand, but about promoting a philosophy.
Continue reading “Lessons from my favorite brands: Be more than a brand. Be a philosophy. – MUJI”
Design is too powerful to be used by designers alone. This is the essential idea behind the theory of design thinking–applying the principles and techniques of design to help organizations innovate, solve problems, and create positive change.
Tim Brown, CEO and President of IDEO, should know. His new book, Change By Design, is about how Design Thinking works, and how design consultancy IDEO has put design thinking to work in organizations around the world. The book provides a useful, comprehensive overview on the power and value of design thinking.
Continue reading “Change By Design–How to put design thinking to work”
Jonathan Opp 