Drop in Teen Driving Tracks with Rise in Teen Unemployment

Car culture: drive-ins, drive-throughs, cruising, road trips, hot cars, hot girls and cool boys. US teens defined it but recently they appear to have eschewed it. Was it the 'net? The new urban vibe? Or just ennui? There was even speculation that whatever their parents and grandparents (and in some cases, great-grandparents) embraced, today's Xers and Yers would automatically reject. Just because.

But new research suggests it may be far simpler and more basic than that. Money. As in, too expensive even for those who would love to have their own wheels and the freedom that has so long represented. the problem is that costs are rising: for gas, insurance, tires and especially cars themselves. And the inclination to get under the hood and do-it-yourself has gone the way of all specialized tasks. Nowadays, a background in electronics may be more essential than training in auto mechanics.

The other issue is that teens themselves no longer have access to the part time and summer jobs that enabled them to pay for fuel, insurance and incidentals. As the following article suggests, the rise in teen unemployment rather perfectly tracks the decline in teen license registrations. This is, after all, a material world, so the reduction in capacity to pay for material goods is, logically, a material consideration. Just another reason to remind those in favor of wealth concentration that it comes with a cost and may well undermine the trend from which the few but vocal so benefit. JL

Russ Rader at the Highway Loss Data Institute Reports:

A recent drop in teen driving likely comes down to simple economics.

Don't Like That Video? Tell the Characters How to Change

Viewers have been expressing their opinions for decades about what they liked and didnt concerning TV shows, movies and videos. Usually, however, they were talking to themselves, bored colleagues or eye-rolling family members.

But interactivity is here. Don't like something? Change it!

This is the logical next step in the ever increasing self-propelled media bubble individuals are being encouraged to create. Select your own news, political views, shopping options, sports, entertainment and advertising access. Can weather be far behind?

The technology exists and is being made more effective. The most interesting question is what this will do to content. Tragedy? Comedy? How will personal selectivity influence and be influenced by the tastes, mores and experiences of a global population raised in disparate cultures but weaned, in the global tech era, on a diet of shared inputs? Will diversity spread or conformity rule? JL

Stuart Elliott reports in the New York Times:

TELEVISION viewers have been talking to characters in commercials for decades, even if those conversations have been one-sided and consist mostly of demands to pipe down. In an online initiative to help promote the 2014 Infiniti Q50 sport sedan, the characters talk back.

Apple, Microsoft and the Free Software Gambit

Did an altruism epidemic suddenly infect the entire tech industry?

Yeah, right.

Apple announced that iWork apps will be free and that certain other updates will be as well. Microsoft released the much anticipated - and desperately needed Windows 8.1 update - also for free. This was neither coincidental nor an act of unparalleled generosity.

As the leading tech giants increasingly put themselves in harm's way by trampling on each other's turf they are finding that the concepts of better and brand are no longer adequate selling propositions. They must now try to drive each other out of business. Welcome to the logical extension of technological capitalism. But there are two elements to this approach: one is that the lower prices will hurt the other guy's margins. For MSFT, this is particularly true as Windows remains its cash cow. Apple, also has some vulnerabilities in this regard, but believes that the provision of free software will grow its market in the long run.

Apple would appear to have the least to lose and most to gain, but Microsoft remains a huge company with vast resources and the capacity to hurt rivals if it senses its own existence is threatened. In addition, the rumors that Bill Gates may become re-engaged could signal that Apple's easy days are over. Gates may have become the world's most famous and generous benefactor but he got there by being one of its most ruthless competitors.

The danger is that fewer choices will ultimately mean more limited options and higher prices, both of which could kill innovation and economic growth. But in the meantime, it's going to be quite a show which will both entertain and benefit consumers. JL

Alex Wilhelm reports in TechCrunch:

Both companies moved to free updates to their operating systems at the same time, and that’s hardly coincidental.

The Media Can't Stop Sucking Up to Alan Greenspan

What's up with this? The guy most responsible for the conditions that created the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression writes a book and everyone in the mainstream media fawns all over him instead of asking why he isn't in jail?

And he still maintains 'no one could have seen it coming.' Un-huh; assuming they were locked in a sensory deprivation tank.

As a society the US has failed to come to terms with the 2008 financial collapse and its aftermath.  are fearful of upsetting the only industry - financial services - in which, the American people have been led to believe, they are still competitive. This lack of confidence is more pathetic than the unwillingness of this proud and resourceful people to hold themselves accountable. Societies get the leaders they deserve. Healing only begins when problems are acknowledged. America's failure to come to terms with it inadequacies will continue to haunt it until that reckoning occurs. JL

David Dayen reports in the New Republic:

Instead of treating him like a wise man, make him pay JPMorgan's fine.

To Market...:The Global Price Network

For all of our blather about Big Data and the global role that information is going to play in determining winners and losers, many organizations will admit in the privacy of their darkened conference rooms that they are surprisingly, sometimes helplessly ignorant about the state of the markets they serve.

This is not for want of trying or for lack of intelligent initiative, but as anyone who has attempted it will tell you, getting good, comparable data on global prices for many consumer products is harder than you or their employers would have thought.

The reasons for this, as the following article explains, is that organizing an enterprise to gather that information is a huge effort. There is no central repository of information. And given the different weights, measures, currencies, definitions, descriptions and seasonal timing issues simply compiling the data is only the beginning of making sense of it.

There are, however, initiatives afoot to combine mobile technology and 'boots on the ground' to begin that process. The economy itself has already begun to do this, with revolutionary results, both literally and figuratively. As people learn of their relative position in the global hierarchy of needs and wants, they either smile at their good fortune or begin to protest the evident inequality from which they believe they suffer. This is, for some, a matter of right and wrong. But for others, it is more a question of supply and demand. The issue, as those in the affluent west are discovering to their discomfort, is that information can be a great leveler. But it is also an opportunity: to take advantage of that knowledge and convert it into wisdom that improves competitiveness and daily lives. Talk about Big Data, indeed. JL

Derek Thompson reports in The Atlantic:

What could you learn about global prices if you simply paid people around the world to take photos of their stores and markets? Maybe, everything.

Amazon Employee Count Soars Above 100,000 Surpassing Microsoft

We know that bigger no longer equals better. Having the most sales or the most locations or the most employees is no longer a defining or determining factor in an era when technology makes every small business a David to the mega-enterprise's Goliath.

But still, size does convey something about prospects and performance.

So the fact that Amazon now has over 100,000 employees - not counting seasonal workers - is potentially instructive about the future of business. To put it in perspective, however, it is worth noting that Foxconn has 840,000, IBM has 433,000, Samsung has 371,000, Hewlett Packard (!) has 331,000, Dell has 106,000 and Microsoft has 90,000. Given that HP, Dell and Microsoft are in a perpetual state of decline - if the press and their contemptuous competitors are to be believed - crossing that 100,000 threshold is not necessarily good news.

What it does suggest, however, is that ecommerce is a significant economic force (yes, d'uh: we get it) and that the infrastructure necessary to maintain and expand on that base is now in place. The question is what this portends. The irreducible logic of being a public company means grow or die. So the concern is that Amazon, like Microsoft whom it has now surpassed as Seattle's biggest employer, will face those same laws of big numbers with which previous tech titans had to wrestle and which often seemed to signal their loss of initiative, if not doom.

On the plus side, however, because of the role which convergence plays in the economy generally and in retail specifically, the world is full of possibility. Because there is one stat of interest to Amazon and those who believe in its future that we have not yet mentioned: the real competition in global commerce, a firm called Walmart? Yeah, it has 2,000,000 employees. Onward and upward. JL

Blair Frank reports in Geekwire:

Amazon’s growth shows no sign of slowing down.

Why Online Ad Bids Drop Sharply During Tragedies

Bad news may sell newspapers (what's left of them) but it doesnt sell ads online.

Advertisers have become increasingly sophisticated about what works and what doesnt when it comes to generating sales from online sources. One of the factors that has become apparent is the relationship between public crises or tragedies and the number of bids received for ad space.

Global advertisers are leery of having their brands associated with such negatively emotional events. They do not want to appear insensitive to the victims and their families, nor do they want to spend money at times when they know that potential purchasers are distracted and less likely to spend, rendering their ad budgets inefficient.

There is a growing body of data measuring the timing and productivity of ad purchases and their impacts. Computers have been programmed to ascertain the traffic generated by such events. Just as information about individual's moods is being mined to determine optimization, so too is that knowledge being extrapolated to cover entire population segments. JL

Richard Feloni reports in Business Insider:

There are sharp drops in online advertising bid activity during times of widespread negative news reporting, according to a report from Casale Media's Index Exchange.

How the Internet Is Changing What Economists Do

How relevant is traditional economic analysis in a world where capital markets are driven by traders who have access to information gathered millionths of seconds before other investors and whose 'buy and hold' strategies can be measured in thousandths of a second?

Yes, it's an issue.

The power of the technology was funded by the capital markets but it is also driving them in ways that have caused tremendous changes in the way information is gathered, processed and distributed.

The challenge is that more information is of decreasing value if it can not be effectively interpreted. Economics, however, places great value on longitudinal data in which rest the sort of useful comparisons that lead to better-informed decision-making. Which is all very nice, respond the traders, but I dont have time for that.

The internet is providing economists with both the data and the analytical tools. From Big Data to Google Trends and Twitter Feeds, there is a plethora of new information available. What may be missing - or scrambling to catch up - is structural framework most professions rely upon to manage credibility. Collegial oversight and exchange mechanisms have made this a bit of a Wild West boom-town: the benefits tend to go to the fast and the loud, leading as the old WWII ditty had it, to a differentiation between the quick and the dead.

The reality is that crises and bubbles are going to arise and disappear with increasing velocity. It is essential that those tasked with identifying and managing them have the tools and the knowledge to do so. JL

Mark Thoma comments in Fiscal Times:

Unlike academic economists who have little riding on the outcome, real-time analysis of the economy is essential for the bottom line of many businesses and for effective monetary and fiscal policy decisions. Increasingly, however, academic economists are expected to diagnose, analyze, and provide prescriptions for whatever ails the economy in real-time.

Talent on the Sidelines: The Widening Excellence Gap

Using half the resources at your disposal is unlikely to produce a competitive result if those against whom you are pitted can bring a greater percentage of their assets to bear on the issue in question.

But that is exactly the situation the US finds itself in with regard to talent management. It is especially noteworthy at a time when American businesses claim to face a skills shortage which is causing them to cut back or delay investment in new ventures.

The issues appear to have their basis budgetary decisions which reinforce biases whose outcome - intentional or not - is to reduce rather than expand the number of trained, skilled and willing workers of every imaginable type.

Whether it is the unemployed stigmatized by their condition or those faced with de facto economic, gender and racial discrimination, the result is the same: a resource allocation process that is shortchanging American businesses eager for new employees.

The negative impact of these decisions is two-fold: not only are talented and available people denied access to the education and training that would make them productive members of the workforce, but because they are without such access, they eventually become a burden to society rather than a contributing force. The burden evinces itself through crime, poverty and increased demand for public assistance. Those who are serious about promoting a more productive society must start by addressing the opportunity at hand. JL

Scott Kaufman reports in Scientific American:

The United States is relying on less than half of its talent, with large percentages of our brightest students not even getting a chance to enter the room.

Moving Markets: How Much Could a Single Post on Twitter Be Worth?

Trick question.

It is not so much the value of the tweet itself that matters, but what the user of the tweet hopes to accomplish by employing that platform to achieve their own ends.

What adept users of Twitter have learned to do, as the following article explains, is create a reality distortion field. The network effect extends and prolongs the impact of whatever the message may be. Carl Icahn and other financiers are learning to use Twitter and other social media in the way they once attempted to use business TV and print media to, as the Wall Street saying goes, 'talk their book.' In other words, to try to convince others to respond to information in ways that would benefit the investments they hold in businesses or securities which comprise their so-called book of business.

Whether it is financial or political or organizational or emotional, the ability to manipulate the medium to achieve one's end is what determines the value of the tweet, just as it once did so for a newspaper article or a tv news story. JL

David Carr reports in the New York Times:

How much could a single post on Twitter be worth?

On My Watch: Dealing With Leadership Crisis

'Not on my watch,' is one of those defiant, chest-thumping declarations of managerial intent designed to signal a determination to stave off mistakes, crises, disappointments and disasters; the sort of problems whose denial executives often find easy to mouth but which few of them ever really have to face.

Sales declines? Environmental spills? Losing a key customer? Stuff, as they say, happens. But how about discovering that the organization for which you are very publicly responsible suddenly suffers from the glare of a exploding scandal about whose origins you, dear leader, knew nothing?

Sympathy is rare and resignation followed by ignominy is common. Some, like JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon brazen it out thanks to vast financial resources and a web of bought-and-paid-for supporters. But the average manager has neither the money, the time or the defenders to thwart the howling mob, however remote and digital they may be.

Most leaders who suffer through such an experience slink away, lick their wounds and quietly try to rebuild their lives and their reputation. Martha Johnson chose another path, which makes her story that much more remarkable. She was the Administrator of the US General Services Administration, the entity responsible for overseeing the vast real estate holdings of the US government and all of the services, processes - and problems - associated with it. A scandal involving the almost unimaginably inept decision by some underlings to host a government-sponsored workshop a) in Las Vegas and b) with a lot of over-the-top  accessorization that even a financial services auditor might think about twice, let alone an agency charged with making government more efficient. Johnson, following the predictable script in such situations, resigned, and not without the expected firm, albeit stealthy, push from her horrified bosses in the White House who feared the taint would attach itself to them.

And it might have ended there: another sad tale of good intentions gone wrong under the weight of a huge bureaucracy. But rather than hide and stew, Johnson has chosen to tell her cautionary tale so that others may learn from it. I should add at this point that she and I have been friends since grad school. There is no one more intelligent, sensitive and competent. If this could happen to Martha Johnson, trust me, it can happen to anyone. The point is twofold: that in our technologically-driven, global economy, the immensely scalable enterprises we have developed to 'optimize' our returns can also magnify our crises; and that while the very human instinct to assign blame will be forever with us, choosing to share with and to learn from such experiences is an act of bravery and of wisdom. JL

Martha Johnson excerpts from her book On My Watch:

In April of 2012, a scandal emerged over a GSA training conference in Las Vegas, and Martha Johnson, Administrator of the General Services Administration for President Obama, was compelled to resign. What happens when things fall apart and how leaders can re-surface.

Tactics and Strategy: The Motive Behind Google's Motorola Maneuvers

Was it Sun Tzu who said 'hit 'em where they ain't?' Well, if not, he probably meant to. 

Lots of people are scratching their heads over Google's decision to buy Motorola and get heavily committed to the hardware game. Why bother, goes the thinking: margins are better in search and the other digitally-focused, internet-oriented businesses it already dominates.

Nokia, Palm, Blackberry and Motorola itself are evidence of the debacle awaiting anyone who can't effectively compete with the leaders of the pack. But in a global economy in which convergence is inexorably driving competitors into each others way, it may be, as the following article explains, that Motorola and its products have little to do with Google's own plans for the future, but a lot to do with thwarting those of its primary rivals like Apple and even its own erstwhile partner, Samsung.

Given the profits and networks advantages inherent in the smartphone ecosystems other tech companies have created, Google may simply be messing with their margins. By introducing its own well-funded if slightly derivative devices, the company can force the others to be conscious of - and in certain markets - drive it to compete on price. This challenges their financial position (on a purely relative basis), causes management distraction from achieving more significant strategic objectives and may reduce customer loyalty by offering increasingly acceptable alternatives.

All of which is to say, that when you have resources of that scale and power - and perhaps especially when you dont -  you must think and act with longer term goals in mind. JL

Farhad Manjoo comments in the Wall Street Journal:

Maybe It Is a Long-Term Effort to Drive Down Rivals' Phone Prices?

Bio-Hacking Comes of Age. Seriously.

Groups of largely self-taught and self-funded biotech entrepreneurs invent and experiment with the interaction between technology, science and the human body. Their goal is to create a community of DIY - do-it-yourself - scientists intent on developing interactive electronic devices that can be implanted in people to monitor and hopefully improve physical and mental health.

What could go wrong? Oh, quite a lot, as you can imagine.

But that is not going to deter them anymore than the skepticism of 'serious adults' stopped Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or anyone else who had smarts, an interesting idea and supportive combination of friends and backers willing to see what they could come up with.

The lack of official sanction from a university, corporation or government agency has been more of a motivation than a hindrance. Which says a lot about the evolution of research and innovation in this economy. Access to powerful technology has reduced start-up costs. Relaxation of some regulatory standards has provided more a more permissive environment for experimentation. And the belief that breakthroughs are not just possible but achievable has fueled the movement to determine how technology might actually deliver on some of its promise to improve human lives.

The implication is that rates of return for corporate R&D have eliminated all but the most massively scalable attempts to explore intriguing and new concepts. But that has not stopped those whose intelligence, ingenuity and determination drive them to see what can be accomplished in the absence - or perhaps precisely because of the absence - of more formal methods. JL

Jessica Firger reports in Al-Jazeera:

Biohackers conduct science experiments and perform gene sequencing in improvised labs to increase science literacy and build devices that alter the senses or maximize human health.

What the Heck Happened to Apple's iPad Sales?

It's another superamazing, mindblowing new product announcement day in Apple-land!

The latest iteration of the iPad tablet computer series is about to be launched and the world can hardly contain its excitement. Sorta.

While everyone was mooning over the iPhone 5S and/or dissing the 5C, there was this assumption that iPads were just humming along, eating the competition's lunch and then demanding a few bucks to buy dessert.

Um, except that, as the accompanying chart suggests, all is not well in the world of premium priced tablets.
So today's introduction of additions to the line are rather more desperately important than they might have previously seemed.

The issue appears to be that when it comes to the tablet, the consumer's cost-benefit assessment is different than it is for phones. The smartphone has become so essential that its purchase is freighted with meaning far beyond that accorded other mere devices. The tablet, by contrast, does not seem to share that iconic stature, as the following article explains.

This gets to the heart of the company's strategy and what many consider its quandary: maintain high quality and high prices or go for market share in order to establish the Apple operating system as the global standard. The considerations are not trivial. Apple has enjoyed enormous success and is understandably loathe to become something else. But the danger lies in the potential for an alternative such as Android's sales to achieve tipping point status. The smart money says only fools bet against Apple, whatever it decides. But conventional wisdom is considered conventional for a good reason. JL

Henry Blodget reports in Business Insider :

Apple is trying to maintain premium pricing in a market in which competitors are increasingly selling high-quality iPad alternatives for significantly lower prices.

The Secrets of Shopping Revealed: More Knowledge Could Cause $1.1 Billion Drop in Spending

There is a lot consumers dont know. And new research reveals why merchants are understandably nervous about educating them.

The trove of consumer data being made available to business and academic researchers is providing enlightening - and sometimes disquieting - insights into how customers make purchase decisions.

One of the greatest challenges businesses face is how to maintain customer loyalty in an age of significantly enhanced knowledge about costs and benefits. As the following article explains, Nielsen is starting to share its data with researchers and the revealed wisdom is proving important those with access to it .

Among the findings is that if consumers shopped more like chefs or doctors or other professionals with 'inside' knowledge, there could be a $1.1 billion drop in spending because they would - like those professionals - probably be inclined to save a few bucks and buy generics rather than branded merchandise. Businesses would also find that quality is more important than price so that the investment in brand should focus on those attributes that are truly differentiating rather than wasting resources on those that provide more benefit to the corporation than to the customer. However, it may also be that subsidies in the form of promotions may build and help sustain brand loyalty.

All of that said, however, it appears that geographical and regional traditions may be as important in establishing brand preferences as any marketing budget.

The point is that why we buy is a complex but ultimately discernible basket of influences. Assuming that price or packaging drive sales may be misleading. The larger implication, however, is not just that data reveals all, but that the ability to interpret those data properly and then draw accurate strategic inferences from it remains as, if not more, important. And that continues to be a distinctly human skill. For the moment. JL

Amy Merrick and Emily Lambert report in the University of Chicago's Capital Ideas:

Why do people pay more to buy branded products when generic alternatives are available? How much of a consumer’s decision to pay more for a branded product is driven by knowledge about its benefits, and how much is due to incomplete information?

Netflix Was Supposed to Kill Cable. So Why Is It Begging to Be Included As a Channel?

Convergence creates strange bedfellows. Netflix was supposed to be cable TV's worst nightmare, the grim reaper responsible for the diversion of millions in movie revenues and the harbinger of dramatic changes in the public's viewing habits.

Umm, yeah, well, stuff changes.

Netflix, like many other businesses is suddenly discovering that in the era of 'frenemies' cooperation can be more profitable - and - sustainable than full spectrum dominance. As the following article explains, the industry - Netflix included - is coming to the conclusion that rather than being competition, Netflix may be complementary.

The entertainment industry has a history of awakening to this sort of belated revelation. DVDs, streaming, even cable itself were all viewed with hostility when first announced. Until the industry realized that there was more money to be made by - to channel an old tv ad - switching rather than fighting. Netflix, too, has dropped the 'smartest kid on the block whose also going to eat your lunch' posturing and recognizing that the costs of driving cable out of business is probably not worth the return. Grabbing a piece of the action is far easier and less expensive.

Households are not cutting their cables or chords quite as rapidly as projections might have led one to believe they would. In addition, Netflix has created a valuable brand. Leveraging that asset is going to drive scale faster and farther if it is done collaboratively. The changes are here to stay, but the way that customers access them and companies build on them may just be different than adherence to the old binary win-lose continuum may have seemed at first. JL

Derek Thompson reports in The Atlantic:

Netflix is in serious talks with Comcast and other pay-TV providers to hop onto the cable bundle as a stand-alone channel. Add it to the list of tech companies—Apple, Google, Microsoft, Intel—who have internally debated trying to "disrupt" the cable TV business, but have wound up working with the cable companies (e.g.: Apple, Xbox) or simply built their own cable equivalent (Google Fiber TV).

US Rents Begin to Exceed Household Income

Yes, the US learned its lesson: too much housing stock is a not a good thing, especially if people who could not afford the carrying costs were encouraged to buy a house or apartment.

But the US is now learning the corollary to that first, hard-earned wisdom: when you overbuild one type of shelter and the market for it collapses, other dislocations will ensue.

The latest data show, as the following article explains, that the market for rental housing in an increasing number of US cities has risen so much that families and even individuals can not find shelter they can afford given the stagnation of income and household wealth.

The problem is two-fold: too few units were built following the financial crisis and ensuing recession. That is, in part, because most of the housing stock inventory was originally built for sale. The collapse of the housing market complicated the financing mechanisms that control such investments so it is taking time to convert. The result is a shortage of rentable units. At the same time, the lingering unemployment numbers combined with the relative declines in ability to pay for those who do have work has pushed what rental housing is available out of reach for many.

There will, no doubt, be a spate of rental housing construction now that the demand is clear. But it will come on line too late for many who need it now. Ideological battles over the role of government are contributing once again to the functioning of the markets affected. The only question is how long it will take to address the problem and restore equilibrium. JL

Jeanna Smialek reports in Bloomberg:

Rising housing costs, elevated unemployment and stagnant earnings are increasingly placing rent beyond reach. The housing slump made matters worse as former homeowners turned into renters, increasing competition for available apartments.

How Disruption Happens

Disruption has become the meme du jour. From entrepreneurs in tee shirts and sandals to starchily-shirted corporate executives, everyone wants to proclaim their earnest, sometimes gleeful desire to blow up whatever the status quo is in favor of something presumably, though not always demonstrably, better.

It is worth noting that this comes from an increasingly stratified society. We are nothing if not rules-ridden. We accept - without too much overt complaint so far - that Big Brother is most emphatically watching. So this whole disruption schtick feels a little forced; a tad too glib given our enthusiastic embrace of data and its allegedly infallible lessons.

The contradictions inherent in this disruption chic may be a reflection of a desire for more freedom and creativity, the man in the gray flannel suit having been supplanted by the contractor in khakis and loafers. But they may also reflect the loss of what used to be called control: the ability to predict almost anything with a fair degree of consistency. Control has become an illusion given the larger forces at work. Its weaker cousins, influence and leverage, can sometimes be summoned but even they are transitory. We look for who or what is responsible so that we can better understand how this happens and, yearningly, perhaps how to anticipate and possibly deflect the impact, usually in vain.

The reality is, as the following article explains, it's not the node it's the network. Or, as the Swallows and then Maria Muldaur once sang, 'it aint the meat, its the motion, that makes your daddy wanna rock; it aint the meat, its the motion, its the movement, it isnt the stock.' Influencers have been replaced by a complex adaptive system attuned to impulses that affect each factor individually and collectively.

Technology and globalization have broadened the impact of even the smallest changes in the systems of which we are all apart, however unconsciously. The degree to which we - and the organizations with which we are associated - are damaged by or benefit from the disruptions buffeting our lives will be largely determined by our acceptance of network power as a force we can manage positively. JL

Greg Satell comments in Digital Tonto:

Everywhere we turn our world is being disrupted.  From the mightiest dictators to the biggest companies, no one is safe anymore. While revolutionary ideas and movements are nothing new, they have become more frequent, intense and far reaching.

TED Loses Cred? The Derivative Nature of the Creativity Business

The business guru has been with us for over a generation now. Those engaged in the serious practice of management can name many of them without much effort: Drucker, Porter, Cristensen; Kaplan and Norton; Waterman and Peters; Covey, Collins and the rest.

They emphasized the importance of quality and loyalty and disruption and knowledge and strategy and much, much more.

They became so popular that an entire industry sprang up around getting to yes, and aha moments, and creative destruction and many less worthy ideas. In fact, demand was so great and the need for new voices willing to share their insights without charging the equivalent of a fully -loaded, late model Mercedes became so compelling that conferences like TED and Aspen, often featuring the previously unknown, became hot tickets for those whose employers were willing to pay the intellectual freight - or those who were simply hoping to gain some recognition themselves.

Ideas have their time. And it may be that for all the emphasis on design and creativity and disruption, that many of the concepts and experiences being shared are quite derivative, as the following article explains. Which is not to gainsay their value, but to merely point out that creativity is difficult to generate and even harder to sustain. But then you knew that. JL

Thomas Frank comments in Salon:

The creative class has never been more screwed. Books about creativity have never been more popular. What gives?

Are You Left Brained or Right Brained? Doesn't Matter Because the Theory Turns Out to Have No Basis in Science

We get so invested in theories. They help us make sense of an often chaotic or unfathomable world. They provide short cuts to categorization that enable us to dismiss or embrace that which confirms our views or which simply seems most comfortable.

And so it is hard when additional research leads to enhanced knowledge that throws these concepts into turmoil.

For decades we have learned to live with the left brain-right brain dichotomy. We plan around it, excuse our behavior because of it and even talk about hiring, marriage and other personal decisions based on it. We assign meaning to performance at work, in war, at sports and at home based on our assumptions about which of the two brain halves supposedly drive us. But we are going to have to learn a new tune when it comes to whistling past the frontal lobe.

As we might have supposed had we been paying more attention - and that even means you, all you former left brainers - developments in the field of neuroscience have altered researchers understanding of how this all works. As the following article explains, society extrapolated from some useful but limited research and has been leading itself astray ever since. In short, the brain functions much like our multi-channel and platform world does - there is a lot of convergence, or mixing and of gray area...

This will undoubtedly make it harder for organizations to quickly categorize the people who drive and inhabit them. But it will also bring more reason to the expectations based on and the interpretations of individuals' performance. And from that enhanced accuracy, we will all benefit. JL

Stephen Kosslyn and Wayne Miller report in the Wall Street Journal:

The popular left/right story has no solid basis in science. The brain doesn't work one part at a time, but rather as a single interactive system, with all parts contributing in concert, as neuroscientists have long known. The left brain/right brain story may be the mother of all urban legends: It sounds good and seems to make sense—but just isn't true.

Facebook Ad Profit Is 1,790% More On iPhone Than Android

A thousand percent here and a thousand percent there and pretty soon you're talking about real profits.

Paraphrasing now-deceased Senator Everett Dirksen comment about billions of dollars is always fun, especially when the evidence is factual rather than theoretical.

The issue, as the following article explains, is that new research demonstrates that iPhone owners generate a lot more return on investment (ROI) for advertisers than do Android owners.

But before iPhone owners start doing victory laps declaiming the superiority of their devices, it is worth examining why this difference exists. Simply put, Apple charges more for its phones. Usually a lot more. Therefore, those who tend to buy such items tend to have more money. Which also, by implication and experience, means that they spend a lot more, too. This may also infer that iPhone owners are less cost sensitive when it comes to paying their phone bills.

Now some may argue that iPhone owners are more tech savvy, more net-oriented, smarter, prettier and more attuned to the zeitgeist. All of that may turn out to be true, but currently there is no data to support it. And it should also be pointed out that Facebook itself is a relatively new entity while its mobile initiative is even younger. This does not in any way discredit the comparative data but does suggest it may change over time, to say nothing of how people actually use their phones and make purchases.

All of which means that Apple's strategy is working for the time being, albeit on a relatively small base. Wealthy people can afford to buy more, but whether that will hold up globally as China and other developing nations gain access remains to be seen. Android's lower price point, bigger market share strategy may play out over time due to shear volume. The difference in return on investment is staggering since most of it appears to come from the top or revenue line rather than aggressive management of the cost or denominator. We will have to see if this is translating into another feature of advertiser satisfaction not directly based on a ratio: long term impact on sales and profits. JL

John Koetsier reports in VentureBeat:

A study of more than 200 billion ads on Facebook says that mobile ads on iPhone generate 1,790 percent more return on investment than ads on Android. Even worse, advertising on Android actually costs more than it returns.