Reading the Fine Print

This article published today brings notice of the deepening enmeshment of mobile technology with the individual's touch points in society. Nothing particularly new, just noteworthy. Although I have been thinking for some time about the mobile phone as one's personal daemon, I was a bit shaken by this comment: "We want to make the cellphone the center of life" (Shim Gi-tae of SK Telecom). I take the comment at its face value, which is the more troubling aspect. I suppose we're headed toward the day when one's dying thought might be "I wish I'd had a better cell phone."

Rosabeth Moss Kanter questions the changing concept of privacy in this context:

Has the culture already changed so much that people don't care about privacy any
more? Has being on public display all the time made
exhibitionism (teenage style) and self-directed exposure of personal information
(social network website style) preferable to privacy?

She says no - and imagines this will open up new business opportunities for devising means of opting out. I think she's a bit too fast with her answer.

The issue is that most people aren't really thinking about consequences (the terms of the deal); they're making trade-offs about which they simply are not conscious. When teenagers disclose too much online, they don't consider just how public the display is -- as evidenced by their outrage when they learn of parents watching the YouTube videos of their escapades. They think they're publishing to 'friends' (whatever that means in this commercialized age), and ignore the potential consequences when parents, the admissions officer at a university, or potential employer view their public displays. Although on-line teens can't claim they never heard the warnings, they choose to consider this the fine print that is too tiresome to read or even consider.

I've been advocating for mobile commerce for some time, so have to question my unease with its evolution. Mobile technology is facilitating grassroots business opportunities around the world, which is in turn empowering women from cultures in which they are long used to dependence and poverty. It's not whether mobile commerce can be put to good use, or even profitable use, that is at question. I think it's time to consider: what are the outcomes we want?

If we look at the catalysts for the current economic crisis, it's clear that societies and individuals benefited from the treats dangled in front of us, with no real consideration for the trade offs. It's no use claiming we didn't know what we were trading off; we just chose to ignore it. On paper, it was all good: people appeared to be house rich, and borrowed against the equity in their houses, using debt to fuel a higher standard of living. People thought they were living better lives, because of the stuff they had acquired -- and they conflated their lives with the stuff in their lives. People also saw the extreme wealth being generated for the titans of the banking and financial services industry, which was based on the housing bubble and the credit markets and clearly was not sustainable -- but like any gull, the public was distracted by the lure of shiny baubles. We could have benefited from a serious consideration of what outcomes we want -- for our society, for global relationships.

One outcome I hope for is enrichment of lives -- which requires a long horizon, and spills over national and cultural boundaries, as life does. Spending less time paying for a commercial transaction would support this outcome, but additionally we must examine the means being used, to ensure they are also consistent with enriching lives, not just bank accounts.

The Amazon Imprint

I bought a Kindle this year, and am still waiting for that magic moment when, I'm told, the device disappears and it's just you and the text. So I found this story more than mildly interesting.

I do understand that the e-book is still young in its development and that the designers had to make hard choices on what they could and could not do, but the choices themselves are telling. The first thing I really missed was the cover art. It's not just advertising to impel the customer to 'Pick ME!!!!' off the book store shelf. Once you have the book at home, it also reinforces the title and author, no matter which way you lay the book down. The first book I read (completely) on my Kindle was fascinating, but I have a terrible time remembering the title and author, since they were only listed on the device's index (not on the cover, not on the individual pages), and the title was too long to be fully represented. The Kindle does display a graphic image when you turn it off (alternating images of Western literary icons who have been oddly beautified) -- why could it not display an image of the cover art specific to the book you're reading? The fact that so little attention was given to the cover, and to displaying the title and author within the book, implies more than a lack of technological design.

More subliminally, the graphic design of the cover comes to represent the book in your mind. A re-issued book, with new cover design, is never quite the same book or reading experience that it was when you read the original. I have associations with the copy of Jane Eyre that I read as a teen, and they are indelibly linked with the design of that particular book. The copy we have in our home these days is somehow different, and somehow less engaging. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold conjures up the dark and moody cover art of the 1970s edition I read as much as it does my introduction to George Smiley.

And of course there's the issue of inner-page design (fonts, contrast between ink and page, and the tactile feel of the book), but these I can understand and with enough use I can probably get over it. I don't expect an exact replica of the book experience with an e-book. But, digital information about the book -- why is this a trade-off?

Perhaps some of the difficulty is just technical (the photographic images contained in an e-book are rendered so poorly that they I found archival images just impossible to interpret) -- but I think the issue is simpler than that. Amazon's needs have been served once you've purchased a book for your Kindle, so why bother? They aren't publishers; they're merchants. A merchant only cares that you buy a book - some book, any book -- and that the transaction works well enough that you return for future purchases. Publishers, though, need to engage the consumer with their brands -- and authors are integral to this -- so that you choose their books, not just any book. So titles and authors matter a lot -- if you can't come up with either when you're recommending a book to another consumer, or when you are browsing a bookstore, future sales are jeopardized. Amazon understands this when they are selling books: they have a great search engine, a fast site, and continue to enhance the experience of learning about a book before adding it to the cart. But once it's paid for -- well, they're done.

There's a lot to like about the idea of an e-book reader, more so than the reality today. To make this transformative is not just a matter of throwing more technology at it. If the merchant would make a fundamental shift to digital publisher, how they build the devices would change radically, perhaps enough to realize the potential that readers seek.

If I Only Had A .....

The news last week that the US lost only 540,000 jobs in April was disturbing for a couple reasons. You had to read closely (and you had to read) to learn that the number was actually skewed lower by the creation of temporary jobs for census-taking -- excluding those jobs brings the total to the frightening levels above 600,000 in prior months. More obviously, the positive spin and market response indicated a deepening sense of desperation in the country. Is it really a good sign that almost 9% of our workforce is actively seeking employment because they have none? What of the news that including the under-employed and those who have given up their job search increases this percentage to 16%? And viewing the impact by race is simply horrifying - the unemployment rate for African Americans was 15%. Yet the media's spin that the economy seems to be failing at a slower rate was widely embraced.

OK - so people are looking for some reason to feel better, if they can't feel good. What's wrong with that? Unfortunately, saving the economy is not served by feeling good. That impulse leads to talk of recovery (getting back what you had) rather than renewal (making something new). As I read about business globally, the most radical and sustainable growth initiatives seem to be coming from developing economies, where recovery is not a consideration. Ethan Zuckerman's post on innovation earlier this year summarized rules for innovation in developing markets that would be well heeded in over-developed economies that are in desperate need of renewal. One of these is 'What you have matters more than what you lack.' As we see big business stretch out its hand to the American people relentlessly (and this week's news that the medical-industrial complex is signaling it's gearing up to do the same), I wish the market leaders in this country would internalize the fundamental intelligence in 'what you have matters more than what you lack.'

Trying to replace what was lost (what you lack) is self-defeating. If we learned nothing else, the country should have learned that the practices leading to the collapse were unsustainable. Trying to get back to those practices is more than harmful -- it is deadly. Yet, the impulse is profoundly human. I'm reminded of Jared Diamond's brilliant book Collapse: we are living out the same impulses that failed civilizations acted on to bring about their self-destruction.

Taking to heart Zuckerman's rules on innovation would renew any enterprise, and it is of a piece with the Ben Zander dictum to choose to live in a world of abundance rather than one of scarcity. It only takes a change in perspective: rather than think "All I have is a bicycle" think "I have a bicycle!" -- because that sets up the next crucial thought stream: "What can I do with that?" instead of "I need a truck and can't afford one." Thinking optimistic, happy thoughts is not the point ("whew - only 540,000 jobs lost!"); it's where you go with your thoughts. Do you open up possibility for renewal, or do you double down on moribund practices?

Recently, I stood on the dock of a distribution center, where the manager was leading a group discussion on increasing capacity 25% for planned growth. Construction and racking consultants had provided estimates for expansion within the same warehouse footprint. But, the group pointed out, we're still stuck with the same number of dock doors. This led to their thinking being stuck, because they couldn't get beyond what they lacked. "If only we had more bays ....." That discussion was taking us nowhere. So, we started talking about why that's a problem, and questioning the processes and schedules that made this a problem. In the end, embracing the number of dock doors in the facility enabled us to come up with a radically different process that would also increase productivity and throughput for all of its operations -- not just the new work resulting from growth. Persisting in getting what they lacked would have increased storage capacity, but would also have increased resource requirements -- which would be unsustainable. Getting what they lacked would doom their operation.

For most of us, our impact is admittedly small. But in the aggregate, the impact would be tremendous if we used this perspective daily in our businesses. And for the so-called titans of industry (or, masters of the universe -- pick your favorite hyperbolic euphemism), thinking small would be huge.