Jason Moriber

When I produce my Applied Cultural Economics work, I use a set of tools to help determine what tasks I need to focus on. One tool I use frequently is the below “map.” This tool allows me to identify where a client’s efforts reside on the map and what steps I need to take to help them be successful.

Below, through a few “white-board” drawings, I’ll illustrate the flow of impact through the map. Each circle represents a role, a behavior of a person or organization that creates and has influence on the impact. Simply, impact moves from left to right.

In an ideal Cultural Economics flow, the impact starts all the way at the left and flows all the way to the right. To keep it simple, I label the “thing” that needs to be guided across the map a “spark,” but in most cases a spark is a piece of creative content. These sparks could  originate throughout the flow, and there are unique strategies to ensure these sparks create impact based on where they originate. In the ideal, these sparks originate at the “Trailblazer” layer as this allows the spark to be infused with the most momentum as it travels across the map. The spark can catch a fire, be homogenized, or it can fizzle out quickly.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the roles labeled in the map (these roles are updated from an earlier post I did on this topic found here):

Trailblazers: These are the fiercely innovative individuals and organizations who are inventing the next “thing.” Their greatest concerns are for newness and innovation. They are the artists of their specific disciplines, the cutting-edge. They aim to bring new ideas (or new combinations of ideas) into the world.

Futurists: These are the discoverers of the cutting-edge who eagerly seek to share their findings with their audiences. The result/rewards of this sharing is more about social capital and the value of their sharing than financial.  Their goal is to gather their findings into insightful, thought-leadership bundles before anyone else does. They amplify and provide trajectory to the life of the spark, often modifying the initial spark to map to their own agenda.

Pundits: This group sifts through the happenings of the Futurists to identify which sparks would resonate with their audiences. The pundits work to reconfigure the sparks within their own brand for personal or organizational gain. They are reliant on the futurists to do the initial filtering, but take it the step further to create ingestible, adoptable packets of information for their markets and audiences. The Pundits layer is where a spark can become a revenue driver.

Think-Sharers: This is currently the most active group on the map and where a spark can gain the most boost. Think-Sharers are the new “word-of-mouth” layer now with greater strength through the power of social media. People who play this role are actively sifting through the “firehose” of social data (news, links, thoughts) and sharing and/or re-sharing the sparks that resonate most with them and potentially with their audiences. Think-sharers are also powered by social-capital (like the Futurist) versus financial gains. Think-Sharers are seeking to gain recognition by the sparks they share.

Consumers: This is the largest, yet passive layer. This is the dense-middle that sparks have to traverse to remain relevant. Consumers are typically the last stop for a spark as they are ones who consume it, typically for pleasure, leisure, or intelligence. In many cases the initial spark has been corrupted/assimilated from its original form in order to become adopted by consumers. In unique, and potentially ideal, cases the initial spark remains mostly intact.

Late Adopters: If a spark is successfully consumed, there will be a group of late adopters who will eventually consume the spark as well. In some cases these Late Adopters can breath new life into a spark, like a reverb effect.

Lurkers: This layer is the very last stop for a spark. The most passive of all roles the lurker chooses to engage with the spark after its greatest relevance has passed.

Let’s walk through a spark scenario. I’ll use the metaphor of a “rock band” to guide us through the flow.

Four friends have a spark, they decide they want to start a band, write new songs, and change the world. The spark is driven by their passion to make music. Making money would be cool, but that’s not the driver for their decision.They write songs, rehearse them, post mp3s online and gain some gigs at local clubs. They share their spark with their immediate world. They are the Trailblazers.

Then, a local music blogger searching the listings for local clubs sees the name of this new band. She searches for them online and finds their sample mp3s. She listens to them and writes up a blurb about their sound and recommends people go to the show. Another music fan also happens upon the listings, finds the mp3, and shares it with her twitter list and facebook friends. A good friend of the band also shares the mp3s with his coworkers to showcase the “cool new band” he found. They all go to the show and share their experience of seeing the band with their followers (checkins, tweets, updates, blog posts). These Futurists are multiplying the instances of the spark, giving it momentum, while also adding their own unique layer to the spark.

Through the activity of the three Futurists, a growing number of people are hearing about the band and listening to their songs and going to the gigs. The Pundits are now interested in the activity. More established music bloggers, a local alt-weekly music critic, and a few folks with large social followings start going to the shows. The Pundits write their reviews and share the music with their audiences. They’ve added new layers to the spark, such as wider context of the music, it’s relationships to other bands, where they predict the band (and it’s spark) will go (which audiences will like it). This context might corrupt the original spark, but now the spark has momentum and new audiences.

If the Pundits have done their role well, the spark has now been heard by a widening audience of music fans. This next layer of fans, the Think-Sharers, will compound this amplification by sharing the links to Pundits’s reviews with their audiences via tweets, checkins and status updates. If all goes well, the spark will remain intact and the band’s music will continue its momentum into finding a wider audience. If all doesn’t go well, the Think-Sharers either don’t share what the Pundits have posted, or they share the links with muted interest. As example, they compare the band to less favorable bands or only give the band a simple, passionless mention. The spark then decays and loses momentum.

This is a highly sensitive and important aspect to the flow…the Think-Sharers have tremendous impact on the momentum of the spark into the realm of the passive Consumers. If the spark doesn’t resonate with the Think-Sharers the odds the the spark will decay increases. This could be caused by which Pundits found the spark initially and/or how they wrote about the spark…which is impacted by the Futurists who spotted the spark. One layer impacts the next. If the “wrong” Futurist finds the spark, and the “wrong” Pundit writes about the spark, the spark might never get the chance it deserved.

If the spark is strong, and has found the right advocates in Futurists, Pundits and Think-Sharers, it will reach through the entire map. This is the goal of any spark. This is the focus of Applied Cultural Economists; to help sparks navigate their way across the map. The map is one tool towards this end, I rely on it all the time.

They key steps to use this map is to determine where on the map the spark is and then to identify which roles need to be mobilized to add momentum to the spark. I’ve created a PDF version of a blank map for you to download if you want to give it a try: http://jasn.it/QsqSlw.

Creative Social Design (v1.0), An Introduction.

(In this post I’ll share a basic overview of the Creative Social Design framework. In upcoming posts I’ll walk you through specific exercises to get started using this framework.)

What is Creative Social Design?

Creative Social Design (CSD) is the framework for creating, launching and sustaining a holistic social media program. The CSD framework was built for a business-to-business audience, but CSD methods can be applied to any person or organization seeking to succeed in the transition to, and adoption of, social media.

With CSD, all elements of a program are built on the foundation of strong insights. There should be a guiding principle, even if aspirational, that drives the program through each step. There are four main steps to CSD:

• Insights: Discovering and modeling the unique data points. Using this data to unveil the strong foundation upon which to build actionable strategies.
• Strategy: Defining the path to reach the ideal outcomes anchored to business goals.
• Planning: Drafting and finalizing the blueprint for the team, setting the metrics for success. This step includes education/workshops for the individuals and teams that need to improve specific social skillsets based on the blueprint.
• Activation: Putting the blueprint into action with scheduled audits to ensure nimbleness.

When CSD is done well, Activation won’t be set in motion without Planning. Planning won’t be configured without Strategy. Strategy won’t be set without Insights.

A simple way to start planning your social media program within the CSM framework is to create a document with four columns. From left to right, label the top of each Insights, Strategy, Planning, and Activation. You could also do this exercise on a whiteboard. Here’s an example:

The rule is simple; you need to add the data on the left in order to take a step to the right. Give it a try and see what you can do on your own.

Here’s an example to help you get started:

On my next post on CSM Next post I’ll cover techniques on how to discover and model insightful data.

You Say Disruption, I say Revolution (for Greg Satell (https://twitter.com/Digitaltonto/)

“Disruption” has become a popular buzzword over the past five years. It’s been used to label the agressive shifts of free-market competition. These “disruptive” economic shifts have been around for centuries. They’re sometimes labeled as periods of innovation, sometimes they are truly revolutions. As these shifts have become more prevalent within our current era, the term “disruption” has reached heightened usage. In the past, pre-1950s, the impact of disruption would be spread over a generation or two. The “pain” of the disruption could be absorbed over a lifetime. This cycle of disruption and absorption has accelerated, exponentially, starting during the post-war economy of the 1950s.

As example, the ice barons of the 19^th century (http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/20311) withstood a “lifetime” disruption and absorption cycle. These barons, who shipped New England ice all over the world, did not invent electric refrigeration. The ice industry was disrupted by refrigeration. This harshest part of the disruption, the collapse of the ice industry as the primary source of non-electric refrigeration, took place over a “soft landing” period of 50 years. By the 1950s electric refrigeration was the norm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator).

Using the computer as an example of disruption we can witness, in slow motion, the increasing influence of ever-more-powerful computers starting in the early 70s up until the 90s with the adoption of the PC. Then the disruption accelerates with the rampant adoption of PCs all the way up to their recent offshoots (tablets, smart phones). In the 80’s we could expect a computer-related disruption every five years, now we expect a computer-related disruption within every six months.

The downside to these disruptions is the negative impact. The impact is typically unevenly spread within the population causing “winners” and “losers.” Some of the negative impact is obvious, but many aspects are inapparent, and often separated from the disruption. As example, the creators of email didn’t set out to negatively impact the US postal service. The Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter), in his writings from the 1940s, predicted this disruptive cycle of winners and losers. He labeled it “Creative Destruction” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction). He concluded these cycles would continue to accelerate until the forces of capitalism destroyed itself.

It is not the fault, and potentially not the intent, of the inventors who create disruptions to foresee the winner and losers. Nevertheless, all disruptions will, even if the goal is benign.

The pertinent insight from our era is how companies are adopting strategies that allow them to thrive within an economic environment of accelerated disruptions versus being negated by them. The next wave of entrepreneurs will ideally take this to the next level and figure out models that include reducing the negative impact caused by these disruptive innovations. This trend is seen within the organic food movement and LEED certification in architecture.

Companies, such as Apple, are brilliant students of Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction. Rather than allowing the external forces of competition to drive the disruption, they choose to disrupt themselves, regularly reinventing their products, both from a design and functionality perspective. This allows them to contradict Schumpeter’s prediction. They are thriving. This thriving through self-disruption is actually a 20^th century revolutionary theory. Marxists such as Trotsky and Mao deeply believed in the theory of “Permanent Revolution” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_revolution) as the only means to enable and accelerate innovation while also stabilizing the wider economy.

Companies such as Facebook or Twitter have also invented clever variations to the Apple-way to alleviate this disruption. They are disrupting themselves by adopting and absorbing user behavior into their services. This allows them to be part of the disruption versus being affected by it. Their nimbleness allows them to thrive.

In our era these disruptions are taking place on a national, if not a global scale. If business leaders seek to shift their enterprises and initiatives to both align to and shield themselves from the radical disruptions of our era they have to make radical changes to their operations and/or make radical changes to the macro-economic arena within which they function. We are in an accelerated disruptive era, calling it “revolutionary” or “innovative” are choices of nuanced phrasing to explain their aspirations to their constituents.

The rewards of our era are for those who can shift to align with disruption, to thrive off the positives while mitigating the negative effects. Those that can do both will be the successful benefactors of our era.

Chris Cornell is a musical genius. Yes, I was raised on the heavier music of the post-punk pre-Nirvana-breakthrough wave, and therefore have a preference for these tones, but what Chris Cornell has accomplished as a “Futurist” is extraordinary.

If you listen to Chris’s first popular band, Soundgarden, you might fight it off as “heavy metal.” If you listen carefully you realize the band is practicing the art of dissonance. Practicing, or at least being able to identify, dissonance is the anchor to being a Futurist. Each Soundgarden (and his solo stuff, and his time with Audioslave) record, performance, and song is an exercise of dissonance. He is weaving into the mainstream-songbook the external forces of marginalized sounds. Nearly of all of his songs, the structures, the chords, the vocal ranges, are built on dissonant chords that find moments of serene resolution, and then break back apart into dissonance.

There are many historical examples of weaving dissonance into the mainstream. Specifically related to Chris, is one that has been replicated since the birth of “print-making” and is now found in Instagram. Let’s use punk-rock bass playing as the pivot point.

Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols didn’t know how to play the bass. It didn’t matter. The band had a strong drummer and guitar player; both “professional” studio musicians. They were the forces of resolve… weaving Sid’s dissonance into the mainstream. This allowed Sid, and Johnny Rotten, to be the “punks” they are now famous for being. If you listen to Sid’s playing you realize that he can’t play, but what he did bring to the band is the historical print-making technique of, “over-biting,” or “foul-biting.”

Way back when, when people realized they could duplicate things, they relied on the printing press to be their duplication machine. They eagerly attempted to make things perfect. The key problem of early print techniques is it required the use of acids to burn the texts or images into the metal printing plates. When all went well, the ink would remain within the cracks, scratches, and acid-made lines in the plates. These plates were then used to press the ink into paper. But acid is volatile, and it would leak, run, and escape the lines the printmaker carefully laid. Somewhere along the way, dissonant printmakers found a beauty in the overrun of acid. They created techniques to make it happen on purpose. They were our culture’s early punk-rockers.

This overrun is called over-biting or foul-biting. It added a genuine quality to the prints; it added an unseen force, a “filter” to their images that was out of their control, but still exciting, and even beautiful to the eye. If you should browse through Instagram, you are made acutely aware that this dissonance trend is in full force. Thousands, if not millions, of images are struck with an over-bite layer to give them that “old school” quality. It’s as old as people making prints, any type of prints. And it is an obvious example of the weaving in of dissonance into the mainstream, or potentially the other way around. This specific “print” wave took around two hundred years to crest.

Back to music…Sid Vicious was the over-bitten plate. Chris Cornell is Instagram.

Through Chris’s songwriting and performance, he continues this over-bite tradition and elevates it to a genius level. Through following Chris’s career, as an exercise of dissonance, you could predict Instagram. The western culture is becoming more and more dissonant as the voices of difference become available on social networks. This effect is illustrated within the adoption of filters on Instagram.

Even so, dissonance works both ways. And if we look to Chris Cornell as the trailblazer of the dissonant wave, it seems the next step is to take the popular, resolutive sounds of our day and to weave them backwards into the force of dissonance. This is an unwinding, a drawing out of the dissonance from the popular and putting it back into the wave of change. Like a tornado pulling up the hot ground-air from the plains to power its might, the next wave will be a powerful change, a shift to the marginalized, a shift away from a one hegemonic force and into the facets of a multi-force web of cultures, people, and voices.

Case in point: Chris is currently on tour. On the news of Whitney Houston’s death, Chris learned one of her songs, overnight, but wove it through his dissonance filter. The outcome is still her song, some of his song, but ultimately a genius moment where a futurist listened deeply to his surroundings, found the resolutive force, and pulled it back into the roots of dissonance.

Chris Cornell, live, San Francisco, 2/16/12, “I will always love you”

http://www.youtube.com/user/concertkid2#p/a/u/1/vgFAq9Q8l8U

Super, freaking, genius.

Klout is the Sugar Cereal of Social Nutrition*

I like sugar cereal, I do. In my family home we were rarely allowed to have it. The rule was if sugar appeared as one of the first two ingredients on the box, then that cereal was unfit for our bodies. As soon as I was a grown up and had rented my own apartment, one of the first things I purchased, one of the first things I deserved, was to eat sugar cereals. Because I could, because they were delicious, because it was what all the ads I watched on TV and billboards and the radio said I should do. “4 out of 5 doctors who eat cereal say…” “100 Million people have Klout…”

Kellogg’s cereal was born from a sanitarium in 1877. It was a health-food. In 1909 Swiss physician Maximilian Bircher-Benner prescribed Muesli for his patients. Health food. Cocoa Puffs? Trix?

Modern day social-dietitians prescribe lots of tactics to increase your social health. Some are solidly nutritious, some are attractive AND nutritious, some are deliciously sweet, and vibrant, but are really just empty calories. Can you tell the difference? Tony the tiger says, “They’re great!”

Reading the Klout ingredients, it’s mostly sugar. I ignore the logic, I’m tempted by it. I reach for its colorful box, its game-like content scribed across its front. I sneak it late at night when no one is watching. I know its really not good for me, but its seductive. Its magical powers map to those puzzle holes in my brain, the receptors, that make me feel better. See, I have a score! And I can control it, I can manufacture my own destiny through a handful of activities that increases my value to…um…my impact on…to…other folks who check Klout scores? Community! That’s it. It increases my value and impact to a community of other people who value algorithmic scores as the indicator of value and impact to a community.

C’mon, the social space is so vast, so uncharted, so full of disruption and change, who can really deal with its unfathomable nature? I want, I require, the simple answer. Having to analyze people, messages, and behaviors is hard. I’d much rather just know their Klout score and call it a day’s work. Is that so wrong?

Listen, sometimes I need a crutch to lean on, a respite from thinking, a break from the healthy-body healthy-mind regime. We all do. I like sugar cereal, I also brush my teeth. In the meantime 19% of US children between the ages of 2 and 19 have untreated dental cavities. Children below the poverty line have a significantly higher rate of untreated cavities. In 2010, an estimated $108 billion was spent on dental services in the United States. In 2008, on average, 68.5% of US citizens visit the dentist each year (CT was the highest, Oklahoma was the lowest). That must be a good business to be in. Now only if we can take that model and layer it on everything else…

Oh Klout. There you sit on the shelf, burgeoning in your adoption. Social-dietitians professing your whole-body goodness while armies of social-dentists and social-rewardsmen hover at the door, waiting to provide the trinkets and salve for the eventual ailments. What to do? I’m torn between wellness and sweetness! I want to check my Klout score!

Nay, fly to Altars; there they’ll talk you dead;
For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread.

—–
Untreated Dental Caries (Cavities) in Children Ages 2-19, United States
http://www.cdc.gov/Features/dsUntreatedCavitiesKids/

Adults aged 18+ who have visited a dentist or dental clinic in the past year
http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/nohss/ListV.asp?qkey=5&DataSet=2

An Essay on Criticism, by Alexander Pope
http://poetry.eserver.org/essay-on-criticism.html

*Social Nutrition is a TM of Jason Moriber