Manage To Change

Xfinity Remote

This morning PaidContent led with a story about the new Xfinity Remote app. 

Aside from having a clean and intuitive interface, it:

1. Does something useful: It's a remote for your cable box.
2. Solves a problem: Everyone knows you can't search for shows on Comcast onDemand which is incredibly frustrating.
3. Extends current capability: Allows you to share with others.

That’s what an app should do!

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Michael Hansen SIIA Keynote: What I Learned from Galileo Galilei

  Image via Wikipedia

Michael Hansen, CEO Elsevier Health Sciences opened the Software & Information Industry Association's (SIIA) Annual Information Industry Summit by reintroducing the audience to Galileo. His lessons from Galileo:

In a time of change, remember your roots. Galileo reminded Hansen of Elsevier's core strength to: "bring insights to the world and have those insights as a basis for better decisions." Elsevier published Galileo's controversial work in 1632.

In keeping with those roots, how can Elsevier, or any medical publisher, provide a valuable resource to a physician who only gets to spend approximately six minutes with a patient (generally considered a reliable statistic for primary care doctors)?  What can a publisher deliver in a fraction of that time that could benefit the physician and patient?

To address this need, Elsevier created a Clinical Decision Support business unit.  And, leading into the next Galileo lesson, this unit is not charged with simply delivering information at the point of care.  They are charged with "making information more to the point and more specific, as a recommendation."

In times of pressure and crisis, explore the counter intuitive.  Don't just follow conventional wisdom.

Those not familiar with medical publishing, may not realize that Hansen's example above, providing more specific recommendations to physicians, is very unconventional thinking. For many reasons, not the least of which is legal liability, this isn't often done.

In fact, I would argue it's the most unconventional idea he raised today. 

Below are two additional examples, that while interesting, are not uncommon practices in many organizations:

Hansen offered a sales example to highlight unconventional thinking, with a major client, the sales team took a more collaborative approach.  They analyzed the client's information assets and identified redundancies, resulting in a decrease in content costs of 10%.  His takeaway? "Forge new partnerships, relationships, and collaborations."

Of course, the revised content holdings included several Elsevier assets. 

Hansen's second example was related to people. Many companies say that people are their greatest resource, yet they don't communicate with them and are often reluctant to share bad news.

Elsevier found that in sharing concerns with their employees, they were able to identify savings offered up by people who were much better suited to identify savings opportunities than an isolated group of people in a conference room.  For example, staff were able to suggest cuts in travel that totaled almost 20% across the board.

While the second two examples might not be considered counter intuitive in many circles, that's irrelevant.  They were counter intuitive to Elsevier and, in pursuing them, Elsevier stepped out of their comfort zone.

Unconventional is in the eye of the beholder.

What are we doing to explore the counter intuitive, the unconventional, in a way that is consistent with our strengths (roots)?

Have our objectives changed? Should they have?

Have the methods by which we achieve our objectives changed? Should they have?

Hansen pointed out that the recession is bad but not as bad as the inquisition.  If Galileo could be unconventional, why can't we?

Perception, Reality, & Rory Sutherland

My husband recently pointed me to an interview with Rory Sutherland and the following video of his TED Talk.

Similar to Predictably Irrational and Nudge, Sutherland's view is that people don't make decisions on pure economic value alone.  Intangible value plays a large role, although many are loathe to admit it.

"There is a basic view that real value involves making things, involves labor.  It involves engineering.  It involves limited raw materials.  And that what we add on top is kind of false.  It's a fake version and there is a reason for some suspicion and uncertainty about it." [Quote transcribed from the video.]

Sutherland believes that 1) all value is relative, subjective, and 2) persuasion is better than compulsion.

"...how many problems of life can be solved by actually tinkering with perception rather than that tedious, hardworking, and messy business of actually trying to change reality."

While his extreme (and tongue-in-cheek) example of "placebo education" may seem dangerous and General Mill's approach to selling Shreddies (a cereal sold in Canada) may seem ridiculous, there is an element of value here - and some plain common sense.

"It's not that marketing-driven or advertising-led solutions can solve everything. That's absolutely not true. What seems strange to me, though, is that people don't at least try them first. Instead, governments try to solve their problems by compulsion. My view is that we should try and solve the problem by persuasion, and if that fails we can try compulsion or harder-level nudging."

It's worth the 16+ minutes to watch the video.  His examples are both brilliant and incredibly entertaining.

(Kent Anderson, from the Scholarly Kitchen, also wrote about this in his post Can the Creativity of Social Persuasion Cure "Corporate Asperger's Syndrome"?)

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Google Wave: When More is Too Much

We're talking about Google Wave over on the Scholarly Kitchen.

Google Wave was built to answer the question, “How would email look if it were invented today?”  But Wave goes far beyond email-like functionality and tries to get to the heart of communication in all the forms that we’ve come to know.  Wave is part email, part IM, part Wiki, and part document management, to name a few.Ann Michael under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Oct 2009

Come join us!

Sci Foo Camp 2009: Nature Video

After Michael Clarke's coverage of Sci Foo Camp on the Scholarly Kitchen, I thought there was nothing left to say.

• Day 1
• Day 2
• Day 3

I was wrong.

NatureVideo just posted a Science Foo Camp 2009 video on YouTube.  From DNA, to skulls, to puzzles, it seems like Sci Foo had it all.

It was interesting to see how most of those interviewed contrasted the open and informal nature of Sci Foo with traditional science research and discovery.

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reBlog from Ann Michael under: The Scholarly Kitchen

Attending SSP IN!  Here's a post I wrote on the Scholarly Kitchen:

Fifteen years ago would anyone have imagined that Apple, a dying computer company, would come back to life by gaining control of the music business?Ann Michael under, The Scholarly Kitchen, Sep 2009

Read all the coverage of the Society for Scholarly Publishing IN Meeting on the Scholarly Kitchen.

Google Buys reCAPTCHA

Aside from the topic, which is interesting, I love the idea that Silicon Alley Insider is facilitating the proliferation of their content.

Embedding text.  Why wasn't this done years ago?

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SSP: Are you IN?

Why haven't I been blogging regularly?

One big reason is the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) IN Meeting.

Richard Newman, from the American Medical Society, and I are the co-chairs of the SSP IN meeting.

SSP IN will take over the entire Hotel Providence from September 23rd - 25th. I could tell you all about IN here, but everything you need to know is on the SSP website:

IN is a different kind of conference. It is part symposium, part seminar, and part un-conference. Most of all, it's an opportunity to learn from your colleagues by participating in small groups lead by industry innovators like Kent Anderson (Massachusetts Medical Society, New England Journal of Medicine), Chris Beckett (Atypon Systems), Alex Frost, Thane Kerner (SilverChair), Howard Ratner (Nature Publishing Group), and John Sack (HighWire Press). During IN you'll be the student, the collaborator, and the instructor!

IN was created to address the unprecedented change taking place in today's scholarly publishing industry. Disruptive technologies and business models are changing the market at the same time the global economy presents the most challenging fiscal climate in nearly a century. IN is designed to help you formulate strategies and tactics to take advantage of the opportunities and successfully negotiate the challenges of today's publishing landscape.

If your interested in a highly interactive program and you care about the future of publishing and media, think about coming to IN!!!

SIIA: New Rules for Licensing, Building & Aggregating Information

Earlier in the spring, while attending the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) NetGain conference, I was asked to answer a question as part of a series for the SIIA Content Division. 

As the result of sheer coincidence, Chris Anderson was a keynote at the conference and was also asked the same question.

Several people were interviewed and the SIIA has posted all of the interviews as well as all of the sessions from NetGain.

The question?

What are the new rules for licensing, building and aggregating information?

Chris' answer was brief and pointed to Freemium as the new model.

My answer was a little longer and is included here just for fun!

Anderson, Gladwell, and Godin - Oh My!

Image via CrunchBase

As many of you know, there has been an interesting and spirited debate going on around Chris Anderson's (pictured) new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price, Malcolm Gladwell's review of that book, and Seth Godin's rebuttal to Gladwell's review.

Those arguments speak for themselves and you can see them on this Squidoo lens started by Seth Godin.

What I find interesting are that the tactics being used and the roles being assumed look very much like those employed during a change management effort within an organization.

There are people advocating, recognizing, and interpreting change (Anderson and Godin) and there are those seemingly resisting change or debating its impact (Gladwell).

Those that bring up alternatives or poke holes at the new direction are regarded by the "change visionaries" as resistant, threatened, or sometimes, simply ignorant.  Often, while some are truly resistant to change, many are simply raising issues and perspectives that haven't been fully considered by the change management effort.

On the other side, change visionaries are often resistant to considering anything contrary to their position. Adaptation or adjustment of the change being implemented is viewed as selling out or lacking faith.

It's the healthy debate between these groups, and the shades of gray between them, that allows the organization to find its way and avoid some costly mistakes in the process.

As General George S. Patton said, "If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."

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