It doesn't have to be broken to need a change

Luke Williams talked about how to be and not to be disruptive. I use to avoid people who have written a book because they tend to market it with a catchy and quotable summerization presented with an attitude and a big sapient smile. Maybe I didn't think that the concept of distruptiveness was possible to summerize well, but I guess Luke proved me wrong.

In a business world of nonstop change, there's only one way to win the game: transform it entirely. This requires a revolution in thinking—a steady stream of disruptive strategies and unexpected solutions. In Disrupt, Luke Williams shows exactly how to generate those strategies and deliver those solutions.

He kept his promise. I feel I can use some of his catchy quotable summerization as a checklist more or less.

- Don’t build what people want, build what they don’t know they want. (Ford said it and Steve Jobs is a master of it.)

- It’s hard to be disruptive because we want people to like us, we don’t want to separate from the flock.

- Disruptive is the opposite of control and stagnation.

- We tend to like and favor ideas we already know - those that fit in to what we know from before.

- Being intentional unreasonable prohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifvoke new ideas.

- Identify clichés and make a contradictory to find something that nobody else does, something surprising and disruptive.

- It doesn’t have to be broken to need a change.

(Socks are sold in pairs of two - no at LittleMissMatched who sell socks in three for mixing and for the one you always loose.)

FourSquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai prolonged the list with
- The more unexpected the higher outcome.
- The more predictive the easier for competitors to copy.

When building Stardoll we have been stuck in and practiced each and everyone of these problems. I just wich that I had had these tweetable oneliners to lean on by then. It never worked very well just saying 'Girls will like it'. On the other hand, it will always be hard to convince everyone, or even anyone, that you are not crazy but the rest of the world is.

Read about crazy genius Steve Mann and Dave Asprey.

What is the most disruptive - full time conntected or fully disconnected?

Keynote speaker Amber Case (@casorganic) turned out to be the most charming personality ever. She is that sort of person replying every question with a smile and a ‘thank you’ before answering. Telling her story she laughs over and over again, enjoying the world and the people in it.

Amber showed us the story of Steve Mann, an amazing half maniac creative genius from the 80s still active today. We laugh at him because he was so out of the box but he was really ahead of everything – so far in front of us we couldn’t realize it, crazy enough to try out things before they were possible. This made me think of who is that Steve Mann character of today. Who is considered full feathered crazy but will be recognized as genius in 20 years?

Maybe we soon after met that person in Dave Asprey. Dave himself challenged Amber already at her speech asking her if she was only passively talking or if she was actually doing any cyborg practicing herself, which she replied that she did. She, just as Dave himself, measure everything she does. Statistics about you and your body seems to be interesting to the scientists and you can’t avoide the sense of elitism as often with cyborgs. There is always a fine line between health and support and superhumanpowers.

I interpreted Dave’s story about going from a super clever 150 kg computer addicted guy in his 20s to an (almost) normal functional family man with the help of happiness data as a story of healing – a remedy. He has found a way to control his mind and not let it do unhealthy choices, but on the contrary, only do what makes him feel good. You get a little scared by this man and yet I’m wondering if he’s not the Steve Mann of our times. Will we in 20 years look at him and see that he was right even though his practice will seem disruptive even in the future?

Susan Maushart discovered just as Dave that the fulltime connected life can have bad impact on the health of a family, and so she disconnected the entire family for a year – including 3 teenage kids. I wanted to ask her what she believed that the kids will say about it when they are 40... My mom experimented with our lives...or My mom did a real good move back then... To be completely disconnected today means that you put your kids outside both communication with school and moreover with their friends. Again this might have been the only remedy for this family, but I feel that I will not try it at home.

The success of the GameBoy

I held a very short session in a composition of three today, filling in Björn Jeffery's talk on the Toca Boca research on bluckbusters. Here is an even shorter version of my preso:

There are lots of lessons to learn from blockbusters and I’ve been looking into the success of the Nintendo GameBoy.

I started by asking all my game savvy friends about it and they all answered short and direct in one word – Tetris.

Tetris was included in the GameBoy per default from the release in 1989. Nintendo run a long struggle for the rights with both the Russians and other parts, so the game was strategically important for them. But why were Tetris and Gameboy the perfect match when everyone else were doing cooler stuff? Tetris was and is considered a game for girls.

Other gaming consoles of different brands were all cool looking black as something to steer a spaceship with. The Atari Lynx was released right after the GameBoy with mediocre success. They all offered the latest technology at the time, the coolest games and design - the kind of features that appeal to any hard core gamer. The target group was by that limited to primarily boys 16-30 years old, at most 10% of the population.

The Nintendo style was completely different. I’ve urged for everyone of their devices and I own them all. It's clear that they recognized a potential market much bigger than those 10%.

They made a toy that most people could possess and play. It could be carried in a pocket. It was cheap, easy to start and end and had long lasting batteries.
A tech device has wires and ports, a toy has batteries.

Long life time batteries are also important to let people bring it along to school, handle it to others and to get hooked to play for hours.

A toy has easy interaction for the inexperienced. No pre-skills demanded. It’s easy to get started. But to get that quick start you also need a fun short session game that is easy to get into.

The low price was prioritized to let everyone be able to own it. Cheaper weak processors didn't offer complex graphics and action games and Tetris was required to create the perfect match.

This Nintendo reciepy is most relevant today – keep casual games as casual as they can get for casual people.

Druged or young and creative by Gucci

The Gucci ads give pretty much the same mood expression as the Ralph Lauren fall style - bored bought women. Looking at the entire collection it's kind of sad they choose that approach as the styles in fact are colorful and vivid. It's full of life, but the ads remove all spirit from the wearer. It presents the drug dealer VIP room behind the dance floor or the late night when all the excited Donna Summer fans have left. They probably want to connect it to the mid 90s blasé top models in the same place and mood.

The catwalk reminded me more of the 70s Cher and Lindsay Wagner, by that time natural beauties with elegant and still young and creative looks. That type I'd love to be.