Trend: Methaphors were/are/will be the triggers that enable primed systems/segments/societies to collectively move at an accelerated pace in the direction they were moving already unconciously.

The above talk with George Soros also bring to light something obvious, yet very interesting. The fact that false positive stories (ineffective stories – who for whatever reason, be it through distribution, interpretation take on different meaning- measured against the goal the story was suppose the help pave action and thinking) can actually succeeded, and become triggers for unintented action.

Worse even is the fact that false positive stories, also increase ‘false negative’ stories. Stories that showed promise of becoming internalized in the intended manner, but who get ignored, or stopped, due to the force of action the more succesfull false positives take up.

Am even inclined to call the end of marketing and advertising that does. Meta strategy (getting the thought right, that sparked a thousand thoughts that drive actions to flow from them) is (again, nothing new to it, really) where it will be at, in an world of oversupply of solutions, initiatives and people wanting to act (as seen in the rise of impact philanthropy.

Think Slow Food or transition towns as it begets entire markets, social, commercial, academic, practical, instead of Make.Believe.

Even recent event is Tunisia are an example of how trigger stories (in this case combined) can become an infrastructure for an primed system to break out..combine documents, with food prices, faulty self amplifiyng stories that the system wants to hear and decades old year systems breaks.

Though just to play devil’s advocate to all this abstraction, the Ipad Youtube and Twitter seem like the first in what is likely to be very disprutive inverse antropomorphic tools.

Tools (though the name tool does not quite fit as a tool implies a preset function, perhaps object comes closer) that create infrastructures out of thoughts so that primed systems can achieve enough leverage to break through the robustness of said system. Be it a business like Flipboard or a social change as discribed above.

Sidenote: This could be the achilles heel of Facebook. It is to defined, to controlled, to arrogantly unaware of its coming demise, to survive. It can’t be rewritten so it will stop being read at some point?

The issue of control (and implicit responsability for how it is used ), which these tools still (need to) have will be an interesting point of future friction between users and provider, just as humans struggle with their own mortality and morality, whether it be man against Maker or man against nature.

The increasing power of frames is something I touched upon here a bit, but did not push the thought to its most logical concuslusion: becoming compost. At ease with being disbanded when it has served own needs, so it can become the catalyst for more, different ideas. This seems like the minimum on which we must judge the potential of an idea, both for good and bad outcomes.

Spotting actual and mood movement of people so that false negative stories don’t die and false postive frames don’t get a chance in ever anger primed societal systems is going to be the next thing for strategist, and researchers, because in our urge for ever faster and ever tranparenter collective actions, time for thought is decreasing.

All in all the above is nowhere near a finished thought..just wanted it written to get back to as it seems fertile ground for thought as we enter a period of volitile complex (not complicated) times with a growing need for resilience and patience .

herd, ideas that do, trickster and all that..

Alfredo Jaar: Skoghall Konsthall from Cientodiez on Vimeo.

What do you do when the people of a town, whose mayor wants a museum, say that they don’t need one?

What is the goal? Permanent museum
What are the barriers? Apathy, lack of perceived value
How do we remove those barriers? Enthusiasm, real life experience
How do we get the right behaviour to reach the goal? Take it away from the people and let them remind themselves how great it was and could be again.

Two year after the public intervention, the paper museum was voted the most important building in the history of Skoghall. Seven years later Alfredo Jaar is building a permanent one.

Anger is indeed energy.

His life is turned upside down when a young MBA (played by Anna Kendrick) comes in and figures out that by doing the firing online and from one central location, the cost of business can be reduced by 85%. Clooney tries to convince her that this is not as clearcut as Kendrick thinks it is.

The contrast between Clooney and Kendrick serves as a nice backdrop for some practices we all know but sometimes need reminding of*:

Change vs Status Quo Plan for transitions

Kendrick is positioned as the new, naive and better way of doing stuff. Clooney is the guy who is set in his ways and tries to keep the boat from rocking.

But the lesson here is that when it comes to the art of business it is not about about the binary. About embracing change or status quo..it is about the transitions. Change as we all know is constant.

Plenty of businesses, unfortunately, have picked one side or the other. Musiclabels, newspapers, the dotcom era of burn to earn. But this ignores one important insight idea.

The money is in the transition. From one to another. I once heard said about the Iphone that this was what Apple figured out and are making a killing of.

The Iphone, could be argued, has no innovative seperate things to it: phone new. Internet new. mp3 new, touch new. But they made it easy and seamless for us to transition from one position to the next.

From: “Who would need or want all this hightech stuff, I just want a phone to call and got a pc to do web stuff” to the next position: “WoW, this is very handy indeed, how did I ever do without”.

While Apple is always cheered for its ability to create evangelists out of their (cutting edge loving) customers they did not become big till they focused on the casually convert(ing)ed consumer.

The type that goes to church maybe twice a year (instead of every week), but leaves a donation everytime he does go, because that is his way of showing that he is still cares enough about, but is not totaly goverend by the church (or the next big revolutionary trend). Kinda like indulgences.

Know where the money is. It is in a lot of industries, still somewhere around the middle. They are blandish for a reason. They wish not to be, but are afraid to rock the boat to much. Help them makes sense and fun of the transitions in life and chances are you will be rewarded. In this life or the next.

*For arguments sake I leave the morality of working for/with a company that fires people for a living out of the equation. Same goes for the actual movie. No accounting for taste.