Big Data Meets Big Idea

J. Walter Thompson wondered whether big data could be assembled to paint "The Next Rembrandt" for client ING.

So a team of art historians, scientists, developers and analysts created scans of Rembrandt's 346 extant paintings and used a computer to catalog the data based on commonalities.

They then asked the computer to paint a Rembrandt.

The resulting portrait combines 160,000 fragments of the artist's oeuvre.

HAT TIP: Appraiser Todd Sigety alerted me to this story. 

Happy Accidents

Christopher Columbus discovered America while seeking a sea route to Asia.

Alexander Graham Bell was hoping to help teachers of the hearing impaired when he stumbled on the telephone.

Three PayPal employees built YouTube to compete with the dating site Hot or Not.

Objectives feel good, but accidents often outshine them, as researcher Andrew Smart says in Harvard Business Review.

"Our objective obsession might be doing more harm than good, causing people, teams, and firms to stagnate," Smart says.

Statistics and stories about inventions prove that.

"Reports indicate that half are the result of not direct research but serendipity—that is, people being open to interesting and unexpected results."

Smart says we should ditch all the goals for "detours" that might lead to "something new and interesting."

"The more time we spend defining and pursing specific objectives, the less likely we are to achieve something great."

The Delicate Delinquent

I grew up a mile outside Newark, New Jersey, home town of Jerry Lewis.

My mom, a school teacher, worked with an older colleague who'd had Lewis in her fifth grade classroom 25 years before.

Despite his fame as a nightclub, radio, TV and film star, my mom's coworker hated Lewis.

He'd been a 10-year-old thorn in her side that whole school year. 

A jerk. Smart ass. Wise guy. Class clown. 

She hated him.

In Originals, Adam Grant says the difference between an original and the rest of us boils down to whether or not that person "rejects defaults." 

Default behaviors. Default beliefs. Default systems. Default "worlds."

"The hallmark of originality is rejecting the default and exploring whether a better option exists," Grant says.

We tend to think originals are appreciated early, as were Mozart, Rimbaud and Picasso.

But that's not the norm, Grant says.

Social science shows school kids who are originals are the least likely to be appreciated.

In one study, teachers listed their favorite and least favorite students, and rated each group.

The least favorites were the non-conformists.

"Teachers tend to discriminate against highly creative students, labeling them as trouble-makers," Grant says. 

"In response, many children quickly learn to get with the program, keeping their original ideas to themselves."

But some people, for their own crazy reasons, can't sit still long enough to "accept defaults."

Happy 90th Birthday, Mr. Lewis.

Still rejecting defaults after all these years.

UPDATE: Jerry Lewis passed away August 20, 2017, in his home in Las Vegas. Love him or hate him, he was surely an original.

Disruption is for Idiots

Technology journalist Michelle Bruno's most recent article, "What Disruption Really Looks Like," prompted me to phone her. 

In the course of our conversation, she asked me why tech company executives—disruption's tireless cheerleaders—so often rest on their laurels.

In my answer, I fell back on one of my favorite words, hidebound.

Tech company execs who succeed, with few exceptions, turn hidebound; and their standpatism leaves their companies exposed.

Hidebound is often applied to larger-than-life figures of military history.

Major General Ambrose Burnside, a West Point-trained insider, was one.

In December 1862, he caused 13,000 casualties in one day, when he threw his troops against Robert E. Lee's entrenched Confederates in two assaults at Fredericksburg.

Burnside wasn't an idiot. He simply assumed he could use tactics that had worked for his century's greatest soldier, Napoleon. But Napoleon's soldiers faced smoothbore muskets, not rifles.

Too bad he wasn't an idiot.

Like all West Point insiders of his day, Burnside was blind to the effect of a disruptive change in technology.

Idiot comes from the Latin word idiota, an "outsider."

Disruption takes an idiot: an outsider unschooled in the assumptions, unversed in the tactics, and unacquainted with the rules, the business models, and even the names of the players.

The insiders are all hidebound.

Disclosure: The hero of Michelle Bruno's extraordinary story is my employer.

Child Speed

Every week, my two-year-old granddaughter dashes past another developmental milestone.

She's unafraid to ask questions or state her observations. 

For their part, the googly-eyed adults around her make a willing audience. 

Of course, it does't hurt to be adorable.

Eighteen years ago, designer Bruce Mau wrote his 43-point Incomplete Manifesto for Growth to inspire the designers in his studio in Toronto.

Point 15 of the Incomplete Manifesto reads:

Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

Were it possible to learn for a lifetime at my granddaughter's present speed, we'd all be geniuses. 

Unfortunately, brain physiology holds us back.

In fact, most minds fossilize before their owners turn 30.

But destiny shouldn't deter you from asking stupid, innocent, childlike questions.

Who knows?

Once in a while, you might get an adult answer.

Disclosure: Bruce Mau is now my employer's Chief Design Officer.

Harvest Time

Salesman Ray Kroc was 52 when he asked the McDonald brothers to let him franchise their drive-in burger joint.

Composer Ludwig van Beethoven was 54 when he wrote Symphony No. 9.

Pharmacist John Pemberton was 55 when he started to sell his invention, Coca-Cola.

Actor Ronald Reagan was 55 when he first ran for public office in California.

Former slave Nancy Green was 56 when she was selected to portray the trade character "Aunt Jemima" by the Pearl Milling Company.

Philosopher John Locke was 57 when he penned An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Two Treatises of Government, his magnum opuses.

Pamphleteer Daniel Defoe was 58 when he penned Robinson Crusoe.

Filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock was 59 when he directed Vertigo. 

Actor Sidney Greenstreet was 61 when he began his film career.

Gas station operator Harland Sanders was 65 when he opened his first fried chicken restaurant.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright was 70 when he designed Fallingwater. 

Artist Grandma Moses was 78 when she first picked up a paint brush.

Even though I've worn out two dozen erasers in my Saturday afternoon drawing classes, I feel a thrill every time the marks resemble the thing in front of me.

Any gardener will tell you, patience and blind faith are the keys to an autumn harvest.

"Here's to the late bloomers, holding on 'til our time arrives," says songwriter and storyteller Korby Lenker.

Learn more about later bloomers from Dan Pink and Malcolm Gladwell.

"Autumn Leaf" by Robert Francis James. Charcoal on paper.

Lost in a Daydream

One hundred years ago this month, Einstein stood before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin and read his paper describing the General Theory of Relativity, "the most beautiful theory in the history of science," according to biographer Walter Isaacson.

Isaacson wants to use the centennial to celebrate daydreaming, as he says in a recent op-ed in The New York Times.

Einstein concocted the theory not by recasting formulas, but by daydreaming about light beams and billiard balls.

Isaacson argues we should goad kids to accomplish more than memory-work. "We should stimulate their minds’ eyes as well."

"Everything of value in our world started at some point with an idle daydream," writes marketer Mark Schaefer in Born to Blog. "Dreaming helps us connect the dots. Dreaming is mandatory for seeing the world as it should be, rather than how it is."

Take a few minutes today, grab a coffee or chocolate bar, and celebrate Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

But, please, don't interrupt your daydream.

Too Much Information. Not.

E-com exec Hiroshi Mikitani says you can't get too much info.

“If anything, to be successful, one must embrace all kinds of information, all the time.”

Mikitani cites a passage from the 16th-century Book of Five Rings, by samurai-author Miyamoto Musashi.

Observing a carpenter at work, Musashi sees ways for readers to sharpen their skills:

The carpenter will make it a habit of maintaining his tools sharp so they will cut well. Using these sharp tools masterfully, he can make miniature shrines, writing shelves, tables, paper lanterns, chopping boards and pot-lids. These are the specialties of the carpenter. Things are similar for the soldier. You ought to think deeply about this.

"Answers and ideas are often hidden within completely unrelated things," Mikitani says. 

To spot them, you must approach the world with curiosity.

"There is nothing in the world unrelated to your life. That fire hose of information that douses you constantly is a blessing, not a curse."

The point? 

Stay open for inspiration.

Think Billboard

Want to know if a new-product idea is any good?

Create an ad for it. 

Or, better yet, a billboard.

That's how Apple rose "from flame to fame" in the late '90s.

Using journal entries and agency memos, California adman Rob Siltanen constructs an account of the birth of Apple's legendary "Think different" campaign in Branding Strategy Insider.

On a July afternoon in 1997, in a cluttered conference room inside Siltanen's agency, the campaign began life as a series of billboards. 

They looked just like the ads that would eventually appear on TV and in newspapers and magazines nationwide a few months later.

The idea for the campaign paired two sources: an IBM ad campaign running at the time ("Think IBM") and Ralph Waldo Emerson's chestnut, “To be a genius is to be misunderstood."

No sooner had "Think Different" launched than "Apple became the talk of the town," Siltanen recalls. 

The ads pushed consumers "to suddenly think about the brand in a whole new way."

Within 12 months, Apple rolled out the multicolored iMac and the company's stock price shot up 300 percent.

Want an acid test for your new idea?

Think billboard.

The Secrets of Teamwork

Thomas Edison's great grandniece has penned Midnight Lunch, a 300-page book that reveals the inventor's four-faceted approach to teamwork.

• Edison built teams from diverse disciplines. The team that invented the lightbulb included chemists, mathmeticians and glassblowers.
  
  
• The inventorlearned from his mistakes. After state and local governments rejected his electronic vote recorder, Edison decided to focus exclusively on consumer products.
  
  
• Edison's vision kept the teams on track. When team members floundered or disagreed, the boss quickly intervened, deciding the course.
  
  
• Edison changed direction with the market. Other inventors of the day ignored the fact that consumers wanted products powered by electricity—and they failed.

Marketing Lessons from the Three Stooges

For pure marketing genius, contemporary giants like Jeff Bezos, Howard Schultz and Tony Hsieh shrink in comparison to the three ur-marketers.

I'm talking about Moe, Larry and Curly.

Sure, attend all the marketing conferences you want. Follow all the blogs. Study all the books. Consume all the CDs.

You won't learn a tenth of what you'll learn by watching any one of The Stooges' shorts.

To save you time, I've boiled their innumerable brand-building insights down to three key lessons:

Make great products. The boys always innovated and never imitated! Want to make a great cupcake? Add pillow feathers. A great microbrew? Add a whole box of alum. A great soup? Add a live oyster.

Keep a laser-focus on your goals. The boys understood the paramount importance of attention to detail and keeping "on task." Which of their competitors would have spent as much time fixing a leaking pipe? Pitching a tent? Eating an artichoke?

Utilize short, snappy content. As content marketers, The Stooges were ahead of their time. They drew millions of fans by keeping their messages brief and on point. And they built a loyal following by perfecting a consistently edgy—and authentic—tone. While you don't want merely to copy the boys, it will help if you break rocks over your head, mistake a skunk for your hat, and rip out clumps of your own hair.

The Original TED Talk

Teddy Roosevelt delivered "The Right of the People to Rule" in New York's Carnegie Hall on March 20, 1912.

Six days before, The New York Times heralded the speech through an article headlined ROOSEVELT INTENDS TO MAKE THINGS HUM.

Teddy chastised his party for its "ultra-conservatism" and ended on this high note: "In order to succeed we need leaders of inspired idealism; leaders to whom are granted great visions; who dream greatly and strive to make their dreams come true; who can kindle the people with the fire from their own burning souls."

 

Lincoln Would Have Loved Twitter

FCC chair and part-time historian Tom Wheeler wrote a cool book a few years ago titled Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War.

It attributes the North's victory over the South to Lincoln's embrace of the telegraph, the "killer app" of the 1860s.

Lincoln, as history shows, was a super-skilled telegraph user, while his Rebel foes were, well, late adopters. (They were also late adopters of civil rights, but that's another story.) 

Lincoln, Wheeler contends, took advantage of the real-time nature of the telegraph to direct the Yankees on the battlefield, enabling them to run circles around the Johnnies.

When Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails first hit the shelves, Twitter was only three months old, with hardly any users. But, had he foreseen its surge in popularity, I'm sure Wheeler would have agreed: Lincoln would have loved Twitter.

Of course, Lincoln couldn't have Tweeted top secret orders to his generals. But he could have used Twitter to rouse the troops who followed them.

It's easy to imagine some of the momentous microbursts that might have come from our most articulate president:

During the massive Union rout at First Bull Run. "Stop running! The Marine Corps Marathon is next week, you morons."  

After the Union triumph at Gettysburg. "Rebs in full retreat. Stay tuned. Speech to follow."

After Lee's surrender to Grant at Appomattox. "Mission accomplished. Ulysses, you're doing a heck of a job!"

Boomers: Which Kind of Genius are You?

Social entrepreneur Marc Freedman, writing for Harvard Business Review, cites the research of economist David Galenson, who by studying painters concluded there are two kinds of geniuses.

Conceptual geniuses do their best work before the age of 30. These "finders" produce breakthroughs early in their careers, then peter out.

Experimental geniuses peak later in life. These "seekers" need decades of trial and error to accumulate the ideas and techniques that mark their signature work.

Freedman thinks Galenson's research is good news for entrepreneurial-spirited Baby Boomers.

"One in four Americans between the ages of 44 and 70—about 25 million people—are interested in starting their own businesses or nonprofit organizations in the next five to 10 years," Freedman writes.

Provided they didn't peak in their 20s, these 25 million Boomers stand to succeed in launching new ventures, because they bring decades of experimentation to the task.

Half of these aging entrepreneurs also want to "give back" through their new businesses.

"Research shows that half of those who want to become midlife entrepreneurs—more than 12 million people ages 44 to 70—also want to meet community needs or solve a critical social problem at the same time," Freedman writes.