Pattern Recognition

How the brain works : finally a map I can read

From the ever quirky infosthetics this map  shows what the different parts of the brain do in a most wonderful way : mapping it out like a hilly island with rivers etc.

Despite having a professional interest in how the brain (mind?) works I have never found a "way in" to how the different bits actually fit together apart from a vague notion that we "think" at the front and see at the back (upside down?). This map is such fun, I think I will wander around it for a while and learn a lot.

Every school should have one!

I particularly like the puns on the map. I am intrigued if the soaring heights of "Emotional Pique" are really right beside "Addiction Gorge".  My Dad, God bless him, was good at this sort of stuff and once created a Treasure Map for our school fete with such gems as Nearer Hill and Father Hill (our vicar).

So much to explore, so little time....

A ladder for successful innovation : Sutherland's Law

In the last month, two marketing people have quoted me the 70:20:10 principle of budget allocation.

And I've always liked a nice simple device like this whether the classic Pareto's 80:20 law or the more recent 89:10:1 Web 2.0 rule which I think I got from Antony Mayfield.

Using this new idea, the rule of thumb is that when allocating budgets in  uncertain times you should spend 70% replicating stuff that always works, 10% on trying completely new stuff, never  tried before and the balance on the new stuff that worked well last year (in the 10% pot) that  you can roll out more aggressively this year.

This way you get a "ladder for successful innovation" as Rory Sutherland calls it.

Indeed it seems that this new meme originated from the Ogilvy Wizard, and as I have taken to frequently using this new thought could I suggest that we christen the new law Sutherland's Law? (don't check out Wikipedia's entry just yet as it needs a bit of polishing).

It does seem like quite a good way of positioning (OK, selling) higher risk ideas to clients much as Independend Financial Advisers talk about building a Risk Pyramid of investments for your pensions (a base of solid cash and bonds at the bottom,  a few high risk equities at the top and a bunch of blue chip equities in the middle).  I am trying it on with (as opposed to just "trying it on" with) a Corporate Banking client of mine soon.

And as I can't resist a bit of semiotic gilding,  I have colour coded the bottom layer BLUE (for solid, reliable, but maybe a bit boring), the middle layer SILVER (for a bit more quality and attention getting) and GOLD for the top layer (potentially the most valuable but could be fool's gold?).

With any luck we will soon have all our clients saying "great presentation but I think we need some more gold ideas too". And that would be nice.

For those of you who are more visually minded, imagine a diagram about here showing the above.

Oh alright, I'll make one for you :

Personal Digital Upgrade : 2008 Edition

A couple of years ago i decided that I was going to use the slack time around Xmas and the new year to give myself a Digital Upgrade.  This was partly for my personal entertainment but also it was hard to be a convincing bluffer on all things digital if I myself did not have an iPod, Sky+ or my own blog at the very least. So those three items constituted the Digital Upgrade of 2006.

Prompted by a post about Facebook on the eminent salon that is Adliterate I found myself being expertly advised on this topic by the magisterial trio of Richard Huntington, Rory Sutherland and Tim Hayward.

So 2008's Digital Upgrade has the added dimension of having been enhanced by the digerati themselves.

There are three planks :

1. To keep this blog for professional/planning/PR stuff.

2.  To create a Facebook profile (but not MySpace, LinkedIn or Bebo) for general social and semi-workish things. Announcing that you don't have a  Facebook profile is starting to feel like saying you don't drive : it seems a bit perverse, lazy and even somwhat selfish in some social situations.  So despite the real leading edge guys saying that Facebook is "so over" (and heading off to Twitter or whatever) it seems that not being on Facebook will be like not being on email soon.  So I am now looking for a suitably non-alarming photo to use. This may take some time.

3. To create a BT Tradespace profile.  A bit left field, this but I heard about this about 9 months ago and saw one of its architects talk about it at a conference. The point of it is that small businesses can get a basic web site with some good Web 2.O functionality for free (and the bigger version, much like blogs, isn't that much extra).  As I have a small training business that I never quite get around to sticking up on the web this could be just the sort of Digital Upgrade i need for that part of my life.

I will report back on all this at a later date - but that is the current plan.

PS I have also made another digital discovery on my moby over the last few months.  I am with Jon Steel that planners need to stay "off-net" quite a bit if they are going to think hard occasionally (or is it planners of our age?). So no Blackberry for me.  But when you occasionally do need to pick up your e-mails in an emergency, a basic 3g phone (mine is a Nokia N73) hooked up to a Hotmail account does the job reliably enough (if a bit slowly).  You can also read the Guardian on-line and various other bits of net content for when you are marooned watching your son's Karate grading for five hours in community hall in the rough end of Hampton.  Tecnhnology - don't you just love it.