Throughout 2011, it was clear that Google+ was mostly a male bastion. Mashable reported that if you were to throw a dart at Google+, it would be more than twice as likely to land on a man’s profile as a woman’s profile. Ensue hue and cry. This week, the Wall Street Journal puts Google+ on ghost …
Everything is a remix
We live in an age with daunting problems. We need the best ideas possible, we need them now, we need them to spread fast. The common good is a meme that was overwhelmed by intellectual property. It needs to spread again. If the meme prospers, our laws, our norms, our society, they all transform. That’s …
Brand democracy is not brand anarchy.
Just read The Role of Brand in the Nonprofit Sector which pointed to the emerging acceptance of brand as strategic asset that goes beyond tactical fundraising tool. There’s an interesting tension between the rise of individual voices through social media, and a dated perception that messaging hierarchies mandate institutional lockstep. This is definitely a top FAQ: “why …
Welcome to the age of big data
It’s a revolution,” says Gary King, director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. “We’re really just getting under way. But the march of quantification, made possible by enormous new sources of data, will sweep through academia, business and government. There is no area that is going to be untouched. – New York Times on big data
What new leadership looks like
Last week I was lucky to hear two fascinating talks: from Bill George, HBS prof and author of True North, and Wael Ghonim, the Google employee and internet activist who energized pro-democracy demonstrations in Egypt just over a year ago. The theme that emerged for me was distributed leadership. George spoke about IBM’s collaborative organizational structure and shifting definition of …
Weekend, unplugged
Only kind of conflict resolution I’m interested in engaging in on a sunny Saturday afternoon…