creativity | The Fourth Revolution Blog

6 key practices to leverage the value of Fourth Revolution communities

In the previous blog about “How the Fourth Revolution dramatically increases humankind problem-solving ability”, we’ve observed a great case-study of how leveraging the Fourth Revolution contribution capabilities led to a quick and effective solution to an unsolved problem.

What can we learn from this example on the conditions for this to happen?

Here are 6 key conditions:

have a large enough community because the percentage of people that are going to involve themselves deeply is small (the minimum size of the community depends on their initial level of engagement, but is at least a few thousand members). That might take some time to build up, which means giving out for some time as an investment; and any pre-existing network is clearly an asset;
make sure the community has an emotional engagement into the topic (due to personal or family history, the particular topic, or make the medium addictive in itself), and that the topic has a lot of meaning to them – aligned with their self-purpose;
allow the community members to communicate with each other transversely;
offer recognition to great community members contributions (not only external recognition: internal recognition inside the community is also appropriate); even better, allow community people to rate each other’s contributions;
interact with the community by responding in a reactive manner to issues and questions so as not to lest unwanted issues fester;
provide regularly challenging, unconventional problems that tie with the sense of meaning of the community.

Do the community network that you hope to leverage follow these 6 guidelines? What can you do today to improve the health of your network and benefit from the Fourth Revolution value?

Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas

“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”

This is a quote by Howard Aiken, and American scientist (1900-1973) who was very much involved in the computer and electronics field at its outset.

And, by experience, it is held to be true by all the players in front-edge products and companies.

It just means that if your idea is really original, people will just not believe in it. Not only that, but they will try to kill it and discourage you.

So don’t worry about the competition – at least if you pursue this visionary idea persistently. Your following will come. And when you will be successful, you will redefine the market.

An other meaning is that an idea is nothing without its execution. What’s really difficult is to put it in practice, implement, tweak, mature it – and to do it against the rest of the world. That’s where the value lies. Anybody can have fantastic ideas. Not so many will be able to implement them. It takes focus, time, patience and persistence.

The defining criteria of patents should not be any more that some kind of prototype has been produced, but whether it has been adopted by a large following. Nobody cares about an invention if it is not used, and it is not appropriate to have the inventor become rich because somebody else managed to use the idea to produce social value.

Let’s change intellectual property. Let’s make it social. Ultimately, that’s where value lies.

How patent litigation cost half a trillion dollar inefficiency in the last 20 years!

Following the popular last blog post on patent trolls, I have found very interesting data and reviews on arstechnica.com.

The first paper is titled: “Study: patent trolls have cost innovators half a trillion dollars since 1990”.

Let’s repeat: the cost of defending innovation has been 500,000,000,000 (500 billion) dollars for publicly traded defendants since 1990! And it has increased over time to a staggering 83,000,000,000 (83 billion) dollars per year in the last four years!

And some researchers (Bessen and Meurer in their book Patent Failure) have shown that showed that, outside the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, the cost of patent litigation had already begun to exceed the rewards to inventors by the year 2000. Their new work suggests that the problem has gotten much, much worse since then. And that the intellectual property system is definitely broken. It is supposed to bring wealth to society; actually is stymies it!!

The book “Patent Failure” is reviewed here. I can’t help copying in this post – with all due respect to copyright – a stunning graph from the book (other industries refer to other than chemical and pharmaceutical – mainly software):

Patent litigation costs explosion — Patent litigation costs are now far higher than benefits

No doubt. The intellectual property system is deeply broken and needs to be mended. Otherwise innovation might just be scared away by a bunch of parasites.

And… what better illustration for the Fourth Revolution ignition?!?

No doubt – that’s an area where the Fourth Revolution is already there and deep institutional changes are required, and fast.

Patent trolls and the end of conventional intellectual property

Have you read lately about “patent trolls” (companies that make their living by doing nothing, just sitting on a few juicy patents)? Or the battles between Apple and Samsung, Google and Microsoft, to win ownership of treasure troves of patents, avoid long and costly legal battles about patent rights… Or the billions of dollars earned by lawyers in the field of patents in the gigantic battles that are ongoing?

For those of you that would like to learn a bit more about patent trolls, here is the transcript of an investigation of the broadcast “this american life” about “when patents attack”. It is bit long, but quite fun and enlightening.

In the Fourth Revolution Book, we relate how similar situations arose at the onset of revolutionary inventions, like how the patent for automobile was unduly exploited by Mr Selden who made a living by selling expensive licenses for building automobiles. That, until a certain Mr Ford just went ahead and filed lawsuit after lawsuit against him…

So, the current situation is not entirely new.

First, it confirms that something is happening that is revolutionary, in rupture with the usual slow improvement that is best suited for our intellectual property regime.

Still, it shows that the patent regime currently acts against public good, instead of acting in favor. Apple does not really need patents to be the largest market capitalization in the US. This time, the patents conundrum might become so problematic that a complete revamping of intellectual property might ensue. We can’t afford any more to give an exclusive right to an idea for 20 years in particular if this idea is vague or general. Resistance against changing the law will come primarily from lawyers, not consumers or companies. But change is inevitable. Because ideas are now produced collectively, and competitive advantage is based on speed of execution, quality of the product, and not any more on static defense of one’s position.

Which legislator will be bold enough to engage this much-needed change of the intellectual property regime? Shorten the timeframes, ensure that the patents are really specific, that the product described has really been produced, put some limits to the monopoly situation that ensues… such are the directions for a change.

A new media: interactive e-books

The future is in interactive e-books. Watch this e-book demonstration at TED by Mike Matas.

Interactive e-books need the contribution of a production team.

The richness of this media is that a book becomes a door to access the vast amounts of information on the internet. The interaction with the device also leverages our emotions and creates an entirely new interaction with the book.

Still, what makes a book different? In a recent blog, Seth Godin makes the point that a book is the work of a single author. That’s what makes it different from collaborative creations. And even in the Collaborative Age, we need to be able to hear the divergent voices of individuals.

When do you start raising your voice in the world?

10 tactics to overcome ‘Resistance’

Here are my 10 current tactics to overcome my ‘Resistance’ to really do the Creative Work (if you have not read my blog post on “the War of Art” by Steven Pressfield, follow the link)

First, I have identified my potentially main time wasting activities which ‘Resistance’ is too happy to entertain:

aimless internet surfing (‘Resistance’ likes so much losing time following all the interesting hyperlinks without purpose)
aimless television – and watching movies on airplanes just for the sake of passing the time
social networks usage, which includes online chatting, and email

So my tactics are:

limit those potentially time wasting activities to a predefined duration or context so that they are useful to my goals – plan the day accordingly;
spend dedicated time looking for ideas, purposefully reading, watching or surfing what I have chosen (yes, chosen) to read, watch or surf on. Creativity feeds into other’s ideas so it’s important to watch and listen, but to be effective in doing that;
switch off voluntarily internet, television and social networks when doing the Creative Work (and also the nasty email notifications!);
rest well and exercise regularly to foster creativity, dynamism and balance – makes it easier to recognize Creative Work as the most important thing to do;
make at least a 2 hours span of uninterrupted time for Creative Work – often in my hotel room at night when I travel, or after the children are in bed at home. When ‘Resistance’ makes me realize that less time is available, it generally wins;
put on some music to isolate from the outside during Creative Work (don’t ask me what I have been listening though!);
always have something to note thoughts and ideas on, in particular just after Creative Work when ideas still pour in (I now use Evernote to centralize all my ideas on the Cloud and have them available from anywhere)
when doing Creative Work, focus on one piece of Creative Work at a time (for example, a set of blog posts, or writing my book). Got it? ‘Resistance’ wants you to switch, so that the flow of Creativity stops and has to be started again; focus instead!
when doing Creative Work, ‘Resistance’ would like us to abandon, thinking what we are doing is crap. Don’t get bothered about the quality of the newly created material, and wait for at least one night to review what has been done, to bring perspective. Just go on creating;
when you find Creating hard, when the blank sheet or screen is watching, resist the urge to switch to something else. Stay concentrated. Start writing. Once you open the flow of Creativity, it will not stop.

That’s it! Also, what works for me is that it is difficult to get into creative mode, but after a few minutes I dive into the real, concentrated creation work. After 15-20 mins I am in the flow, I don’t see the time passing. What’s tough is to get in Creative Mode and start.

I still have a lot of progress to do to tame my ‘Resistance’, who still win too often, but I am on my way. As is my second book, and a number of other things I want to create. And you, what are your tactics?

How “The War of Art” changed me

This summer I read “The War of Art“, a tiny book by Steven Pressfield.

War of Art cover — War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Tiny, short, but really powerful.

I read a lot, that’s one of the few books that get you thinking, WOWed, increase tremendously your self-awareness, and… change you.

In essence, Steven Pressfield explains how something called the ‘Resistance’ is within us, trying to stop us from performing any kind of creative activity.

The subtitle explains it: “Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles”.

Creating something is hard, tough. Our ‘Resistance’ does all it can to avoid us doing it. Steven describes all sorts of costumes the ‘Resistance’ cloaks itself with. Luckily ‘Resistance’ can be overcome, it takes discipline and perseverance, and overcoming one’s ego.

What did this book change for me? I have now a name to put on all the more or less conscious attempts to avoid doing real work, to procrastinate. I have now developed tactics to have more quality time sitting at my computer, writing creatively, with no disturbances. I travel a lot and have a lot of activities; I can’t have a daily regular discipline like the one Steven describes for himself; putting a name on ‘Resistance’ has dramatically increased my productivity and creativity. And my self-awareness of when I win and of when I lose the battle with my ‘Resistance’

“The War of Art“, a tiny book by Steven Pressfield. It’s worth much more than its price or the time you’ll spend reading it. Read it! today!

… and don’t listen to your ‘Resistance’ who just told you you had other things to do! They are not so important!

Establishing effective co-located teams is not in contradiction with the Fourth Revolution

There is a misunderstanding hanging around.

The Fourth Revolution allows long-distance communication, the creation of networks and communities across incredible distances.

Yet for the process of creativity to unfold, when something really challenging needs to be done, nothing can beat the geographical co-location of effective teams.

That’s not a contradiction. These are just two complementary ways of connecting.

For challenging work, for emotional work to be done, tight connection is needed, of the kind that can almost only be happening in a face-to-face relationship. This is primordial. And around these temporary, closely linked teams, a wide-ranging network of less involved contributors also helps.

This is the model of the Fourth Revolution. Travel and relocation is not dead. It is even more important. It is necessary. And it comes in complement to virtual, long distance communication.

When do you move closer to a team to produce something really exceptional?

Ideas multiplication – by George Bernard Shaw

We speak a lot about creativity and the fact that creativity happens when two unrelated ideas meet.

I like that quote from George Bernard Shaw:
“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas”

Think about it. A century ago ideas met at the rate of a man on a horse. Today ideas meet millions or billions times more often in the same timespan. The Fourth Revolution is there. Ineluctable.

Go out and encounter new ideas! And create new ones! And share…

The power of the fable and telling stories

I just read ‘Our Iceberg is Melting’, a short fable by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber (a name which coincidentally in German, means advice-giver!).

John Kotter is a change guru that has written a bunch of serious business books about Change. Yet is seems that his ideas spread more rapidly and effectively in the form of a short fable with large illustrations about a bunch of penguins living on an iceberg.

Now comes the difficult question: what is the best, having the greatest idea backed by 20 years of careful research and put down in a series of long serious books, or simplified and put down in a nice attractive simple book counting a memorable story, that can be read in one hour?

The best answer is certainly – both. But if you can’t do both then certainly the fable is the best medium to get your idea across. Marketing is key to get the interest. Then only the depth of your understanding will come to light when people will start asking questions.

It is amazing how a fable can be a wonderful educational and marketing tool. Our ancestors new about the educational. Why don’t we use it more for marketing our ideas?

When do you start counting stories around?

Co-creation or the Fourth Revolution in action

I cannot recommend enough the book “The Power of Co-Creation” by Venkat Ramaswamy and Francis Gouillard.

The power of co-creation cover — The power of co-creation book cover

This book is a perfect illustration of the Fourth Revolution at work. It shows how companies and organizations are leveraging the power of co-creating with their customers, suppliers and other stakeholders to create unprecedented value. Value not just for them, but also for the entire community they create.

Furthermore the book is packed with case studies and examples from a variety of industries and types of organizations.

For those that would still doubt it just demonstrates that the future lies in open, fluid organizations that actively co-create with a community extending beyond their boundaries.

Read again part V of the Fourth Revolution Manifesto: the open, fluid organization!

When do you start co-creating the unprecedented value of the Collaborative Age?

Modern collaboration tools… going against the Fourth Revolution!

There is an amusing contradiction.

We could think that all virtual collaboration tools should be bringing us toward the Fourth Revolution, into the Collaborative Age. On the contrary, some virtual tools do in fact keep us in the Industrial Age mindset.

distributing work to be done (old fashioned)

Most tools that have been developed to enhance long distance collaboration, in particular when it comes to project management, are in fact deeply ingrained into the Industrial mindset. Look at most tools for virtual collaboration: they enhance this tendency to breakdown the work into tasks and asking individuals to address them based on their competency.

This will never lead to the incredible creativity of people working together, closely, emotionally connected, toward a challenging goal. This makes real, effective teams an impossibility. This makes creating technological ruptures and devising astoundingly clever ideas completely impossible.

Amazingly, a vast array of virtual tools continue to propagate the Industrial Age mindset. When will it stop? When will we understand that these tools are obsolete when it comes to creating the real value of the Fourth Revolution?

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