How Amazon is Changing the Novel Format

In this interesting article ‘Is Amazon Changing the Novel?‘, the author takes a historical tack to explain how publishing media has always influenced the format of novels. And how the new diffusion channels like Amazon are now changing it again.

In the 19th century, novels were often published in episodes in newspapers or, as explained in the article, in several bands that could be borrowed from public libraries one at a time. This definitely had an influence on the way they were written, including the need to maintain attention through suspense at the end of each part.

Now “Amazon […] controlled almost three-quarters of new-adult-book sales online and almost half of all new-book sales in 2019” (in the US one can presume), and in particular through the publishing possibilities of e-books through Kindle publishing, is definitely changing how novels look like. What are the influences at play?

“The platform pays the author by the number of pages read, which creates a strong incentive for cliffhangers early on, and for generating as many pages as possible as quickly as possible. The writer is exhorted to produce not just one book or a series but something closer to a feed—what McGurl calls a “series of series.” In order to fully harness K.D.P.’s promotional algorithms, McGurl says, an author must publish a new novel every three months.” I also believe it tends to make novels shorter on average, as well as part of a series. A bit like Netflix promotes series over movies, with the result a much longer total time spent in front on the screen!

The rise of Amazon as a major publisher and a driving force in e-book publishing will shift the novel genre to shorter formats and new ways to consume them. The impact of the publishing media on the novel has always been there and continues.

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How our Stressful Experiences Leave Traces in our DNA, that can be transmitted to our children

There is increasing evidence that traumatic experiences leave traces in our genetic makeup. An exemple is developed in the article (in French) ‘Childhood abuse leaves scars in the DNA‘; this is also true of other forms of stress – for example this article from the US American Psychological Association ‘How chronic stress is harming our DNA‘

This has been observed for a decade now in particular regarding the expression of certain genes, and in general epigenetic changes, which can be transmitted although they don’t change the overall DNA codes. Those changes are deeper when stress is stronger and more repeated. There is now proof that these can be transmitted to children, but also that they can in a certain manner be reversible, as proven by certain studies on post-traumatic stress disorder and the actual impact of psychotherapy.

In the field of chamanism and trance, it is considered known that people can bear within themselves the consequences of acute stress suffered by one’s ascendants and some ceremonies are designed to manage this situation.

DNA expression modification linked to one’s environment is all quite a new investigative domain with interesting consequences on the eternal topic of determination and choice. Expect more to be understood and written on that topic in the next years!

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How To Develop the Skills of Successful Strategic Advisors

This article by Valeria Maltoni ‘The 12 Qualities of Extremely Valuable, Highly Paid Strategists’ provides an interesting insight into the skills of strategic advisors.

The skills she mentions are the following:

  • Know which problem the insight can solve
  • Have a broad and expanding scope of knowledge
  • Understand the psychology of leaders
  • Respect high-value experts
  • Improve the person, not just the project
  • Be fluent with language
  • Be adept with varied tools and techniques
  • Understand the power of words
  • Know how to write and present
  • Preserve the expert’s voice
  • Work fast
  • Work well

I find this list quite interesting, and in particular the statement “improve the person, not just the project”. It is something I have always felt, taking a coaching certification to enable this work on the client as a person in addition to working on harder stuff.

Certain skills make a huge difference when advising on strategy. And they are not about being better at strategy! A lot deals with interpersonal skills and asking the right questions.

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How Creativity Requires Writing Ability

Paul Graham’s post ‘Beyond Smart‘ addresses the issue of smartness and creativity. And in one passage I noted, it states that creativity requires writing ability.

Being very smart is not the same as having new ideas. “There are a lot of genuinely smart people who don’t achieve very much.” Paul Graham mentions that one of the conditions of creativity is certainly being smart, but it requires also other characteristics such as independent-mindedness, learning to develop one’s own projects and activities…

“One of the most surprising ingredients in having new ideas is writing ability. There’s a class of new ideas that are best discovered by writing essays and books. And that “by” is deliberate: you don’t think of the ideas first, and then merely write them down. There is a kind of thinking that one does by writing, and if you’re clumsy at writing, or don’t enjoy doing it, that will get in your way if you try to do this kind of thinking“

I personally tend to agree with this statement – I am generally more creative when I start writing down and ordering my thoughts. And this allows actual creative work by putting them into a consistent manner. This is also one of the reasons why I am writing this blog.

Develop your writing ability to become more creative. A non-obvious but important way to enhance creativity!

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How New Problems Require Clear Awareness

In this excellent post ‘New problems, old problems‘, Seth Godin distinguishes how we should approach known problems and new problems.: “a new problem doesn’t need fresh thinking, it needs clear awareness.”

Seth Godin underlines that most of the issues we face are known, or similar to issues we have already addressed. They don’t require much creativity. Except if we have to find another solution to solve a problem we could not overcome, or a problem which we have never seen. In that case, proper situation awareness is needed to ask the right questions and take the right actions. “We can begin by acknowledging we have a problem, identifying the constraints, the boundaries and the assets involved. And then we can go to work to solve it.”

Known problems can be addressed with known solutions. Resisting or new problems require creativity, and this starts with awareness.

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How Resilience is About Recharging

This popular HBR article ‘Resilience Is About How You Recharge, Not How You Endure‘ takes an interesting angle on the issue of personal resilience.

According to the authors speaking about the resilience of corporate employees, “the problem comes from a misunderstanding of what it means to be resilient, and the resulting impact of overworking.” While we tend to see resilience in a militaristic manner of a tough super-hero, research apparently shows that “there is a direct correlation between lack of recovery and increased incidence of health and safety problems. And lack of recovery — whether by disrupting sleep with thoughts of work or having continuous cognitive arousal by watching our phones — is costing our companies $62 billion a year (that’s billion, not million) in lost productivity.”

Thus, “the key to resilience is trying really hard, then stopping, recovering, and then trying again. This conclusion is based on biology.” And, “When the body is out of alignment from overworking, we waste a vast amount of mental and physical resources trying to return to balance before we can move forward.”

This is definitely an area where I need to improve: finding ways to really stop and most importantly, stop thinking about work-related issues.

Resilience – playing the long term game – requires recuperation and recharging between periods of intense work, on a daily, monthly and annual frequency. Quite an important lesson!

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How some Japan Companies Just Stops Using Floppy Disks

This astonishing piece of news ‘Tokyo says long goodbye to beloved floppy disks‘ reminds us that certain people or institutions stick to old and reliable technology much longer than one would believe.

“Meguro Ward plans to put all work involving floppies and other physical storage media online in fiscal 2021, and Chiyoda Ward plans a similar transition within the next few years. Minato Ward moved its payment procedures from floppies to online systems in 2019.”. Reliability is mentioned as one of the reasons why this outdated media is still being used – but also probably convenience out of habit!

In general in Japan I have not been overly impressed by the modernity of IT systems, like in the US when it comes to mobile handphone networks. It is a general rule that the location where something gets invented invests a lot in the infrastructure to support the first generations of the technology and then lags when it comes to adopting newer versions of the technology, because of the sunk cost in the existing infrastructure. Whereas those territories that adopt a technology later can directly invest into the newer versions.

We constantly underestimate how older technology remains hidden at the core of our modern life. I would not be astonished that many telecommunications companies still run 20- to 30 years old equipment in some core functions, just because they are reliable and maintainable.

This reminds us that technology transition to a new generation technology is never as complete and comprehensive as what we generally think, and that innovators tend to maintain older technologies online longer.

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How Splitting Megaprojects in Smaller, Shorter Projects Brings Huge Benefits

Following up from our posts ‘How Infrastructure Projects Cost Has Increased Dramatically in Developed Countries‘ and ‘How to Increase the Effectiveness of Infrastructure Projects in Developed Countries‘, this HBR article by Pr Bent Flyvbjerg provides some answers: ‘Make Megaprojects More Modular’

Bent Flyvbjerg is a Danish university professor that has been studying public infrastructure projects for a long time and is now professor at Oxford. He has written numerous articles showing that public infrastructure projects always have their cost underestimated and their benefits overestimated at investment decision, mainly for political reasons.

Anyway in this article, he explains the benefits of having smaller projects that also benefit from some series effect learning curve rather than going for very large, very long and one-of-a-kind projects that are necessarily going to suffer overruns and generate disappointments. “Two factors play a critical role in determining whether an organization will meet with success or failure: replicable modularity in design and speed in iteration. If a project can be delivered fast and in a modular manner, enabling experimentation and learning along the way, it is likely to succeed. If it is undertaken on a massive scale with one-off, highly integrated components, it is likely to be troubled or fail.”

Bent Flyvbjerg continues by explaining why speed is essential for megaprojects, because of our inability to predict the future beyond a few months or years. Iteration is also essential to improve, while picking existing and proven technology is also a major success factor.

There is a definite trend towards smaller infrastructure including series effect. Still, all projects cannot be made in a short time and using only proven technology. However, those are projects where we should accept a measure of cost and schedule overrun; most infrastructure projects can certainly be done using proven technology and on a smaller scale. The question of keeping consistency of a programme combining several smaller, shorter projects is also a challenge.

Still, to tackle excessive cost and delays of large infrastructure projects, splitting large projects into smaller, shorter projects using proven technology is certainly a way to go.

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How to Use Deepfake to Promote Local Business: an Indian Application

I love this initiative in India for Diwali (one of the most important annual celebrations). A company has provided a platform allowing local businesses to generate short films promoting their business and using the image of one of the biggest stars of the country, Shah Rukh Khan. Watch the video ‘Supporting Local Retailers This Diwali | Not Just A Cadbury Ad Campaign Video‘

The idea is that anyone can insert the name of the business and a deepfake is generated with this name being inserted in the video. If can then be used for promotion purpose.

This is just the start. Expect such deepfake technology to be deployed for adds that would be personalized and adapted to your immediate location. Don’t be surprised if you get called by your name by some local star when you walk in the street, suggesting you should visit some nearby store! I hope we will just be able to turn some of it off.

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How China Is Promoting a Government Spy App

This excellent Quartz paper ‘One of the world’s most popular iOS apps right now was developed by Chinese police’ exposes how chinese authorities heavily promote an app that basically spies on people phones, to the point that it is visible in download statistics.

While “targeted towards telecom scams, which are among the most rampant crimes in China. In 2020 alone, Chinese police reportedly cracked around 250,000 such cases“, “there are concerns over the extent to which the app is surveilling users.” The app is asking for a lot access and apparently is reacting whenever users do things like consulting foreign web sites.

This is an interesting example of what can happen when there are no strict laws regarding the use of personal data. Of course we all know that it is relatively easy to access phone data for someone with the capabilities to do it. However, having users installing an app with potentially a significant spying capability is something new at this scale.

This provides another example of the always delicate balance between the benefits of technology and its potential drawbacks, and how regulation is essential to protect citizens. The same issue is also of concern with Facebook and others. It is time for strict regulations to come into force that reflect our country view on personal freedom and the need for surveillance to avoid social disruption.

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How the Debate About Shorter Work Time Has Reignited

This Wired article promotes the 5-hours day: ‘The perfect number of hours to work every day? Five‘. Based on some experiments, the concept of compressed working is being more widely tested, sometimes with mixed results.

Some companies that have tested the concept reported mixed results. Shorter workdays result in people being more focused on their tasks, but also some stress about getting things done. There is also a debate between 4-day week and 5-hour days concepts.

Promoter of the 5-hours day assert that “Research indicates that five hours is about the maximum that most of us can concentrate hard on something. There are periods when you can push past that, but the reality is that most of us have about that good work time in us every day.” In that sense some organizations report significant effectiveness increase of having shorter days with no breaks. However “not all jobs are suitable to be done in five-hour bursts. Research may have found that people’s creativity dwindles after five hours of concentration, but not all jobs require people doing them to be creative. “There’s an awful lot of work that doesn’t require deep focus,” Pang says. In call centres, care homes and factory lines, staff are needed simply to get the work done and, as Ford Motor Company demonstrated, there is a very good reason to ask them to do it in eight-hour shifts“.

In any case, the debate about the best working timetable remains open. For creative work it would seem that shorter but more intense worktimes is favorable, and this needs then to fit around personal schedules.

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How Third Workplaces Become a Trend

‘Third Workplaces’ are alternative working environments, close to home but within a dedicated working space, co-working with other people. According to this article ‘The rise of “third workplaces”‘, they are clearly on the rise. “People aren’t working from the office, but they’re not working from home either.”

Third workplaces allow to work outside of home constraints, concentrate on work in an environment that provides the possibility of such focus, coffee and sustainable, and (optionally) exchange informally with other people doing the same.

In my working environment, I have observed how this is really needed for people that don’t have the space at home to have a working desk, or have small children and can’t concentrate on their work.

According to the article, there are even startups created to benefit from the trend, not to mention older startups created around the concept of co-working spaces.

I have been working in my consulting company for 10 years not having any other office than a home office, being mostly in client’s offices and otherwise meeting people in coffees. I welcome such ‘third workplaces’ concepts and I firmly believe this will be a strong trend in the years to come.

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