Category: Collaborative Age value production system

Creativity and Design by Subtraction

I bumped into a few references to the fact that creation and design is often powerfully achieved by subtraction.

creativity is subtraction
Creativity is subtraction, by Austin Kleon

In “Perfect Pitch“, a book about how to present advertising concepts and ideas, Jon Steel mentions his “belief that creativity is not, as many people believe, a process of invention from nothing. Instead, it is a painstaking exercise in reduction, of removing all the bits that don’t look like a great idea“. He uses the example of the unhewn rock that the sculptor will transform into a masterpiece.

Similarly, this quote of Jonathan Ive, the famous Apple designer: “A lot of what we seem to be doing in a product like [the iPhone] is actually getting design out of the way. And I think with that sort of reason — and they’re not just arbitrary shapes — it feels almost inevitable. It feels almost undesigned. It feels almost like, “Well, of course it’s that way. Why would it be any other way?”” (hat tip to Valeria Maltoni in this Conversation Agent post).

Maybe instead of constantly trying to add features to our lives and products we should take a deep breath and take out everything which is not indispensable – and thereby create great value. What do you think?

The picture is by Austin Kleon, an excellent writer on the topic of creativity, in books such as Newspaper Blackout or Steal Like An Artist.

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How the Subscription Economy is Spreading, Killing Ownership Further

Further to our successful blog post on The End of Ownership, John Warrillow proposes an interesting alternate view on the development of the Subscription Economy.

Increasingly, successful companies propose to clients to pay a subscription instead of buying individual items. John identifies 5 main business types associated with a subscription business model:

  • 35% of non-media digital product companies will generate revenue from subscription modelsflat fee to access an unlimited library of content,
  • sampling boxes,
  • automatic replenishment of consumables,
  • monitoring (e.g. antivirus etc),
  • reporting – access to information.

The most interesting evolution lies in the first type. Unlimited libraries of content have only been made possible through the Fourth Revolution. It looks increasingly like subscription is the model of the future for access to cultural and artistic products, leveraged by powerful algorithms that suggest further products based on what you have been using. It is the typical model of Netflix for video, and it seems that Amazon and online music broadcasters increasingly tend towards this model.

For example, Amazon Kindle proposes a program where customers can borrow titles and authors get compensated from an Amazon pot, proportionally to the popularity of their books.

Hence, not only do we own less and rent more, but the rent increasingly looks like a flat fee for a service, relatively independent of the usage intensity. A great business model that will further reinforce our dependence on rental.

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Re-imagining Work – Fourth Revolution applied (Video)

This excellent video from RSA Animate features Dave Coplin,  Chief Envisioning Officer at Microsoft, explaining the future of Work – how it shifts with the digital revolution.

This video gives another perspective on the fact that Work as we were envisioning it in the Industrial Age is going to be deeply transformed by the Fourth Revolution: “The ways we live our working life today has become outdated“. And, it mentions how the concept of productivity is obsolete – not only obsolete – “it is fast becoming the problem“. The video also presents some interesting considerations on office space!

Plus, you’ll really enjoy the great illustrations as usual with RSA talks!


If you can’t see the video, follow this link.

Hat tip to Valeria Maltoni for this nugget. In her post she adds more comments on how she sees the future of work – in particular, that “One thing is for sure, a culture of openness remains scary for most organizations, as well as the people who work in them.” Interesting thought!

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How to create disruption for billions in 18 months

Disruption happens ever more quickly. According to this excellent post on Asymco, Android is the third platform to reach 1 billion users.

New Products global deployment speedOnly that according to the graph, Android took 1.5 years to get there; Facebook took 3 years and Windows (two decades ago) probably something like 5 years.

1 billion user is planet-wide disruption. And today it only takes a few month for successful ecosystems to disrupt the planet and change our habits.

Do you remember the first version of the iPhone went on sale mid-2007? 6 years ago ONLY?

Food for thought.

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How to Overcome the Experts’ Confidence Conundrum?

“If someone’s confidence is high, we believe they are probably right; if they are less certain, we feel they are less reliable“, research suggests, as reported by Dan Gardner in ‘Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail – and Why We Believe Them Anyway‘.

low confidence expert“Obviously, this means we deem those who are dead certain the best forecasters, while those who make ‘probabilistic calls’ – like “it is probable this will happen but not certain” – must be less accurate, and anyone who dares to say the odds of something are 50-50 will be met with scorn“. The author goes on to add that it is not a conscious decision path.

So let’s summarize: we tend to believe those confident experts – who are probably wrong. And we tend to discredit those experts that don’t look too confident and who qualify their statements or speak about probabilities – who are probably closer to the truth or what can be said about it at the present moment. That’s quite an annoying situation, isn’t it?

I have personally drawn a personal conclusion: when too many experts agree with high confidence, I conclude that is groupthink and that it is worthwhile to take a contrarian position. At least you establish a noticeable difference with the bulk of the experts!

Be careful of experts that look too confident – they are probably wrong when it comes to predictions.

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From Blogger to Beauty Guru to Celebrity Businesswoman in 6 Years

August 2013 headlines: After six years of tutorials and millions of views, YouTube beauty guru Michelle Phan has launched her own 250-product line of makeup – backed by L’Oreal.

Michelle Phan tiger eyesI am not particularly a fan or expert on makeup (!) but I found it to be a great story to show the power of the Fourth Revolution. Michelle is clearly passionate about makeup. After some blogging she started posting videos on Youtube in 2007. Obviously there was a need! She has today  769 million views and has 4.6 million subscribers! And what was a passion became a business. AT 23 years old L’Orelas backed up her video making. And at 26 years old L’Oreal backs her up for a personal line of makeup.

This great post on Mashable explains her story. Her secret recipe is story-telling. “Success is like a lightning bolt. It’ll strike you when you least expect it, and you just have to keep the momentum going” she says! This other post is also quite instructive about her career.

Coming from a humble background, with passion and having obviously fun, Michelle created what will soon be an empire. She created tremendous value for many people (for free). And most of her fans are at the other end of the planet, in Asia. And all thanks to the Fourth Revolution!

Have a look at the promotional Youtube movie for her product line which recounts her journey and where she thanks the community she created around her for giving her all the ideas that founded her success and her product. Still don’t believe in the Fourth Revolution?

More material: Michelle has also her own Wikipedia page, here is the link to her Youtube channel, and her website.

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How Regulation is Used to Defend old Institutions

Avid readers of this blog will know how much we believe and observe that the Fourth Revolution will transform existing institutions. Older institutions do fight back though – and often through the usage of existing regulations, which do in fact tend to reinforce the status quo.

Older Institution in need of a facelift?
Older Institution in need of a facelift?

A good summary of the issues faced by a number of startups that intend to radically change the economics of certain sectors such as taxi (Uber), accommodation (Airbnb) is available in this post ‘New innovators face backlash‘.

Issues related to tax that are faced by the web leaders such as Google and Amazon can be added to the evidence. In fact it is amazing how existing regulations promote stability. And hence do promote deep instability when changes are so significant that the former order of things can’t work any more.

Would the legislative inflation that can be observed in many countries nowadays be another sign of the resistance against the Fourth Revolution?

In any case, really disruptive innovations will necessarily hit existing regulations as they become significant enough to be noticeable. Those countries that will be flexible enough will succeed quicker in the transition to the Collaborative Age. Which are they?

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Should your work be your (only) passion?

I stumbled upon another great post by Amber Naslund, ‘Do What You Love. Right? Almost.‘

work and passion
Should your work be your passion?

In the post she explains how she has difficulty accepting the mantra ‘your work should be your passion’. She describes some experiences where she converted her passion in work and it did not work out! Too much strain and too much focus almost killed her passion. Her advice is then to be careful and not necessarily mix the two together. And while work should be interesting, she states that it is also important to have a passion outside work.

The contrary argument of course, is that if you want to become good at what you are doing, you should be a minimum passionate about it otherwise you won’t put in the effort required.

All in all, and that’s an advice that can be found in several places, it is probably safe to say that you should be passionate about your work, AND at the same time, have a great passion outside work for the balance.

What about you?

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Why 3D objects’ piracy debate just starts!

In the last months there has been an increased attention and writing about piracy for 3D objects, following the continuous success and spread of 3D scanners and printers. A good summary of the 3D piracy issue is available in this Quartz post. A good summary of the development of 3D printing and the associated issues is available on the Economist here (although it dates back Sept’ 2012 it is still a good paper).

A Do-it-yourself 3-D printer
A Do-it-yourself 3-D printer

Authorities start to get worried (see this link on the US Copyright enforcer’s concerns). Because the issue is about sharing the files that describe the 3D objects freely, it would be possible to enforce the same type of measures than the ones currently enforced by the music and video industries regarding copyrighted material. However it will certainly prove more challenging to decide whether the file is really an infringement. It is probably more difficult to figure out what the object really looks like compared to a music or video stream!

Anyway, once again we observe that the Fourth Revolution is challenging traditional, established industries and institutions in a new way. There will be a struggle, there will be a debate, and finally we’ll see emerge a new balance between the needs to the creator and the industry that supports it. Let’s watch how other institutions will change!

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How the music industry transforms through the Fourth Revolution

I would like to share this excellent summary of the economics and of the transformations of the music industry in the last few years: Who killed the industry – an interactive explainer. It is a brilliant example of the transformation and of the questions raised by the Fourth Revolution.

music industry revenue per year
The music industry total revenue per year, by type of support

The interesting point is that from the point of view of the artists, it was pretty tough to earn any money in the previous setup. All the money was flowing to the industry.(“[in 2000, she estimated that if a band made an album, sold a million copies, went on tour, and made two music videos, the band might break even, but the record label would take home $6.6 million”!.., [and the band owns none of the work])

It seems there are more opportunities now to be heard, to connect with fans, and to make a living. However, the new forms of music streaming seem once again to forget to compensate the musicians!

In any case, if you thought you’d become rich by becoming a well known musician or singer, that will make you think twice!

Hat tip to Mitch Joel/Alistair Croll in their fantastic weekly “Six links worthy of your attention” on Mitch’s blog

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How a Single Person Can Now Create a Product useful for Millions of Users

Maybe you have been using the ‘Instapaper‘ application. It is an application that allows you to bookmark webpages and read them later, even when you are disconnected, from any device (more on Wikipedia).

InstapaperWhat you may not realize, is that this application was developed single-handedly by one person, Marco Arment, during 5 years, from 2008 to 2013. With no full-time employee, this self-funded startup attracted more than 2 million users!

Marco sold it in April 2013 to allow it to grow and in a very humble blog post tat is worth reading explains how that was needed to allow the product to grow and tackle competition (he still remains involved and has only sold a majority stake).

Think about it: “If a multi-million dollar business can be developed and managed by one person with a laptop in an apartment, what happens to your business and your job as this rapid innovation and digitization continues to ripple through every industry“? This question by Mitch Joel in his last book “Ctrl Alt Delete” is worth considering for a moment. In the Industrial Age, such product development would have required a large staff and a huge investment. Not any more.

And I have personally met a number of entrepreneurs running very profitable companies from home with the help of part-time contractors.

Indeed, the Fourth Revolution is marching on! Are you in?

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The End of Ownership

The Fourth Revolution is about the end of ownership as we know it traditionally. At least it is the trend for may of the amenities that we use on a day-to-day basis. Instead of owning, we rent. When we own, we share.

rentWe don’t own any more our music, our films – we rent them. In many towns people rent on an as-needed basis their transportation means: bicycles and cars – instead of owning them. In electrical cars we will probably rent the batteries instead of owning it – and exchange it instead of loading it. We won’t probably even own the car but lease it and share it.

When we don’t rent, the trend is to share in an effective manner – hence the services such as Airnb (sharing apartments or couches), or services that propose to share cars during the day instead of leaving them in the office parking…

This is all made possible by the online platforms made available by internet, powered up by mobile ubiquity. The number of these platforms is increasing at a rapid pace. Those that can offer a great quality of service thrive. These platforms lower the time and cost for coordination with other users. Our preferences can be known that optimize what’s available and even offer useful suggestions.

Not only will this trend decrease the number of items we will need collectively, it will result in less waste. It also means that our choices increase dramatically – owning, sharing or renting.

There are still certainly a lot of still unidentified opportunities in renting instead of buying, or sharing those amenities we use on a day-to-day basis. Any idea?

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