A few weeks I experienced a pretty unique combination of creativity and sand storm all at the same time. A hackathon, with 13 teams creating gameful experiences for Unilever to reach out to the young generation within 24 hours, opened the DLD Tel Aviv. While at the same time a huge sandstorm turned the blue skies over the middle east into a yellowish glow. More about that in my blog.
Before the VW-scandal unfoled, the former Porsche- and now new VW-CEO won this week's "Famous last words"-award. Let's remember Porsche and VW and not look back. BMW takes a different stance, but The Guardian puts that in relation to the Google efforts. More about that in the Intrapreneurship section of this newsletter.
The art of looking at art: Have you ever sat in front of a painting and looked at it for three hours straight? Without taking a peek at your cell phone? Ever wondered what you may notice? Or do you simply expect to get bored to death? Well, Stanford professor Tina Seelig experienced that as a student with her arts teacher, and has since then used it for pushing her own students on creativity. More about that in the Gamification section.
Porsche-CEO Matthias Müller a few days ago revealed what a dinosaur he is and in what troubles his company and his parent company is. He was quoted in one of the recent issues of the German magazine auto motor und sport with the following sentence:
"I am always asking myself how a programmer can decide through his code how a self-driving vehicle in a ambiguous traffic situation decides to veer off either to the left into a truck or crashes right into a small car."
Epicly polemic and famous last words. Like these ones from other former CEOs. Of course this message is for hardcore Porsche fans, but they are dwindling in numbers as the future arrives. And if you are puzzled as much as me about the qualifications and the confused logic of the head of a prestigious German car manufacturer, the signal to Porsche intrapreneurs is devastating. He basically used a negative polemic approach to novel ideas, signaling to his own staff that ideas that disrupt the status quo he'll fight with polemics and other means. Instead of disrupting himself, disruption will happen to Porsche. And that's far worse for this German company. Let's remember Porsche - and move on.
Gamification is the ultimate tool to reach the Millennial generation. That's what Unilever or insurance company Munich Re realize. This young generation cannot be reached with traditional means. They don't watch TV, they don't read newspapers. How do you communicate with them? Instead of bringing Millennials to companies, companies are coming to the Millennials.
If you remember my report about the gamescom 2015 a month ago in Cologne with 345,000 young people attending, you know that this is not a niche, but the new reality. And this is why you must get familiar with gamification. Here are steps to get gamification-ready:
Innovation requires a mindset that allows for playfulness, takes time out of the usual routine, and is mindful. Playfulness means that one needs to look at things with the curiosity of a child and the will to just take unexpected approaches. Like a little boy would re-use daddy's books to build vast bridges in the living room (yep, that happened to my books).
You can't be playful if you are in your usual routine. Often I hear from executives that their employees would say "I have so many things on my plate, now you want me to be innovative?" That's like this fun picture of workers pushing a cart with rectangular wheels and responding to their colleague with a round wheel in his hands "We are busy, can't you see?"
And mindfulness requires you to go with an open mind through the world and notice details. Best way to start? Take your eyes from your smartphone, put it in your pocket, and look around. Stanford professor Tina Seelig mentions in InsightOut a lesson from her art teacher who forced them to sit in front of a painting and look at it for three hours. Yes, three hours, that is not a spelling mistake. After 45 minutes she realized that certain patterns in the landscape were repeated in the people on the paining. And this continued. Even after 2 hours she still found new insights.
The Creativity-technique of the day is Remember to look at bad examples. This not only boosts your confidence, because you realize that you can do better. You'll also are able to identify the mistakes and possible fixes better. It also makes you aware that creativity is a process and a bad example is one where the person behind that may not have taken enough time to make it better. Read a badly written book (Tip: 50 shades of Grey), look at bad paintings or photos that are out of focus.
A list of more creativity techniques can be found here.
The biggest news from my side this week is about my upcoming book "Die Silicon Valley Mentalität" ("The Silicon Valley Mindset"). This book will be published in German and be available in January 2016 by the German publishing house Plassen-Buchverlag. It is from my perspective - an engineer with both a PhD and a business degree - with fourteen years of Silicon Valley experience in big corporate, with startups, and my own companies.
In contrast to another Silicon Valley book published in Germany it is not fear-mongering and giving the vibe of hopelessness, but will through interviews with European expatriates in the SV and my own experiences focus on the often little but important Silicon Valley lessons that Europeans can apply and combine with their own strengths to take control. I have already interviewed nearly two dozen German, Austrians, Americans, and Israeli makers and shakers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Today's NSFW - internet lingo for Not Safe For Work - comes from one of my favourite blogs: MessyNessy. Here the author reminds us that today's smart technologies are not that new. Decades ago version of those already existed - sort of!
Google Maps? 1920 Routefinder - CHECK! Facetime and Skype? 1956 handheld videophone - CHECK! ebook-readers? 1922 Fiske Reading Machine - CHECK! Google Earth? 1908 Pigeon-mounted cameras - CHECK!
That and much more are technologies from our grandparents that we take granted today. Read more here.
