I’m gratified to see people applying the ideas in What Would Google Do? to other industries and jobs. Here’s a blog that asks about WWGD and supply-chain management.
If Google was in charge of your supply chain, what would it look like? What would an “open source” supply chain look like, one that fosters greater collaboration and sharing of resources and ideas between suppliers, customers, logistics service providers, and even competitors? How would you design your supply chain if you had to take your products back at the end of their useful life?
And if not now, when?
: LATER: Here’s another blogger applying one of the rules – ‘think distributed’ – to advocacy groups.
I spent the day yesterday at Google and environs—my first visit to Olympus—and came away with one word: smart. I guess I missed that rule in the book: HIre smart people, act smart, be smart. It’s simple and obvious, but I can’t help feel that that is what sets Google apart from other companies: an assumption of intelligence.
As I left, friend Kevin Marks showed me the equipment store where Googlers can just swipe an employee card and pick up a cable or a power adapter or a laptop case: no requisition forms and bureaucrats to go through. They just make it work. He came over on one of the bikes that are scattered across campus and rescattered each night. The famous free food keeps people on campus working. My book talk was organized, I was amazed to learn, by volunteers who manage visits by filmmakers, musicians, authors, and now green leaders. One of the volunteers works hard on the visits, so he comes in on weekends to handle more tickets. Another volunteer told me over lunch – a damned fine burrito – that since he arrived at Google from college six months ago, Google has been teaching him coding; he said the assumption is that if you need to know how to do something, you take a course or go find someone who can teach you. Smart people learning, with roadblocks to that removed. It feels like the extension campus of Stanford. Well, it is.
My book talk was fun. They’ll be putting it up on YouTube soon so you can judge how I did. I wish that the room had been reversed: that I’d been sitting in the audience and they had told me their rules and what I got right and wrong. The discussion was about supporting news, about privacy and publicness, about Google’s image. I couldn’t take notes, of course, so I’m sorry that I’m a bad correspondent; it’ll be on the video. Then I met with folks at GoogleNews just to talk about the landscape and future and enjoyed the conversation pushing issues facing the business. Finally, I sat with Kevin in one of those famous lounges – after he made his own latte – and saw some of the amazing things he is working on in Open Social and Friend Connect; more on that later. Next stop: Mountain View and a book talk and signing – under the benevolent cloud of Google wi-fi – where the discussion was about whether Google should be trusted with its power.
I rarely wish I were young but yesterday, I did. If I were younger and smarter, I’d kill to work at a Google (is there more than one?). Oh, I have no doubt that there are frustrations and inefficiencies and politics inside its walls; Googlers are still (for now) human. But I would love to have worked for a company where at least the culture decrees that the default is smart and the expectation is learning and the response to problems is finding solutions. For those who think I admire Google too much, yesterday didn’t help.
I’ve said before that there’s nobody better at analyzing the plight of newspapers than Alan Mutter. But Alan and I disagree about one thing: the likelihood that newspapers will be able to charge for their content online when their information—news—is quickly commodified and when there is no end of free competition. Mind you, I’ve never said that charging for content is bad. If you can charge, mazel tov! My argument is instead that charging is unlikely to succeed and talk of it lately is another unfortunate example of news executives grasping at straws rather than building the future. I’m writing my Guardian column right now about this game of whack-a-mole and Alan and I are set to debate the topic in the Australian press magazine Walkley.
But, as I said, Alan and I disagree, and to make his point, he parried with his sword, pointing out the irony more than once on his blog that I’m charging for content myself (want to buy my book?).
Tim Windsor and Matthew Ingram then pick up their swords and argue with Alan. Ingram says:
This no doubt seemed like a slam-dunk argument to Alan. After all, as he notes towards the end of his post, Jarvis even admits in his book that he is “a hypocrite” for not just giving his book away online (although it’s worth noting that you can read the entire thing through his publisher’s website, if you so desire). But I think Jarvis is actually a little too hard on himself in that quote, and that Mutter draws almost exactly the wrong conclusion from this case.
Why? A number of commenters on Reflections of a Newsosaur, including my Nieman colleague Tim Windsor, make the same point that occurred to me: Jarvis has been writing about his theories on content online and new business models, and how more companies should think like Google, for months, and possibly even years. He has been giving those ideas and conclusions away virtually for free (apart from some measly Google AdSense dollars) for most of that time. Anyone can get Jeff’s content whenever they want. But if you want it packaged in a nice and convenient way, such as a book (either the regular or the Kindle kind) then you have to pay.
Jarvis’s content giveaway on his blog, as several people have noted (including Jarvis himself, in a comment on Mutter’s post) effectively marketed — and possibly even created a market — for his ideas, both in book form and in the form of consulting gigs and speaking engagements. Those are ways of adding value to that content. While there isn’t a direct corollary with newspapers and other media outlets, the concept is the same: give away content, and then find ways of adding value to it — packaging it in a convenient form, for example, or adding to it in some useful fashion, creating a relationship around it — and then monetize that.
Alan asks the question “What Would Jarvis Do?” in a sarcastic way, but it’s actually not such a bad question after all.
Thank you, Matthew and Tim.
Here’s what I say in the book about writing a book:
I confess: I’m a hypocrite. If I had followed my own rules—if I had eaten my own dog food—you wouldn’t be reading this book right now, at least not as a book. You’d be reading it online, for free, having discovered it via links and search. You’d be able to correct me, and I’d be able to update the book with the latest amazing stats about Google. We could join in conversations around the ideas here. This project would be even more collaborative than it already is, thanks to the help of readers on my blog. We might form a group of Googlethinkers on Facebook and you’d be able to offer more experience, better advice, and newer ways to look at the world than I alone can here. I wouldn’t have a publisher’s advance but I might make money from speaking and consulting.
But I did make money from a publisher’s advance. That is why you are reading this as a book. Sorry. Dog’s gotta eat.
I already do most everything I describe above, not in this book but on my blog, where ideas are searchable and collaborative and can be updated and corrected—and where I hope conversations sparked by this book will continue. I believe the two forms will come together—that’s part of what this chapter is about. In the meantime, I’m no fool; I couldn’t pass up a nice check from my publisher, Collins, and many services, including editing, design, publicity, sales, relationships with bookstores, a speaker’s bureau, and online help. There’s a reason publishing is still publishing: It still pays. How long can it stay that way? How long should it stay that way?
While we’re on the topic of books, I wish a reader could acquire access to a book with one fee in all media – as a book, an e-book, an iPhone book – and perhaps subscribe to updates. But the system isn’t set up for that – yet.
Educators – like musicians, journalists, carmakers, and bankers before them – won’t know what hit them. But as sure as change is overtaking every other sector of society, it will overtake education – as well it should. Our cookie-cutter, one-pace-fits-all, test-focused system is not up to the task of teaching the creators of the new Googles.
I’m one among many who believe that there are huge opportunities in education, not just to change and improve it but to find new business opportunities. That’s true especially now, as the economic crisis forces people to reconsider and change paths. Note the post below about increased applications at journalism schools. A friend of mine who works in a community college is seeing a surge of people coming back to school to finish degrees and buff up resumes.
I’ve seen this commercial a few times with its stirring call for change and expansion of education. It comes from for-profit Kaplan University (a division of Washington Post-Newsweek; indeed, the division that subsidizes the newsrooms there; as journalism becomes more educational, I believe the can find synergies beyond financial ones). Kaplan is arguing that its for-profit schools can give students more practical, more useful education in more ways:
Here’s another Kaplan ad:
Now see this statement of need by students at Kansas State in the digital ethnography class of the amazing Michael Wesch:
I put those up in the wrong order. The students show the need; Kaplan thinks it has a solution.
For today’s 30 days of WWGD?, here are snippets from the beginning and end of my chapter on education, Google U:
* * *
Who needs a university when we have Google? All the world’s digital knowledge is available at a search. We can connect those who want to know with those who know. We can link students to the best teachers for them (who may be fellow students). We can find experts on any topic. Textbooks need no longer be petrified on pages but can link to information and discussion; they can be the products of collaboration, updated and corrected, answering questions and giving quizzes, even singing and dancing. There’s no reason my children should be limited to the courses at one school; even now, they can get coursework online from no less than MIT and Stanford. And there’s no reason that I, long out of college, shouldn’t take those courses, too.
You may suspect that because I’m a professor, I’ll now come out of this litany of opportunities with a rhetorical flip and demonstrate why we must preserve universities as they are. But I won’t. Of course, I value the academy and its tradition and don’t wish to destroy it. But just as every other institution examined in this book is facing fundamental challenges to its essence and existence in the Google age, so is education. Indeed, education is one of the institutions most deserving of disruption—and with the greatest opportunities to come of it.
Call me a utopian but I imagine a new educational ecology where students may take courses from anywhere and instructors may select any students, where courses are collaborative and public, where creativity is nurtured as Google nurtures it, where making mistakes well is valued over sameness and safety, where education continues long past age 21, where tests and degrees matter less than one’s own portfolio of work, where the gift economy may turn anyone with knowledge into teachers, where the skills of research and reasoning and skepticism are valued over the skills of memorization and calculation, and where universities teach an abundance of knowledge to those who want it rather than manage a scarcity of seats in a class. . . .
On its official blog, Google gave advice to students, not about where they should learn but what they should learn. Jonathan Rosenberg, senior VP of product management, blogged that the company is looking for “non-routine problem-solving skills.” His example: The routine way to solve the problem of checking spelling would be use a dictionary. The non-routine way is to watch all the corrections people make as they refine their queries and use that to suggest new spellings for words that aren’t in any dictionary. Rosenberg said Google looks for people with five skills: analytical reasoning (“we start with data; that means we can talk about what we know, instead of what we think we know”); communication skills; willingness to experiment; playing in a team; passion and leadership. “In the real world,” he said, “the tests are all open book, and your success is inexorably determined by the lessons you glean from the free market.”
Rosenberg’s best advice for students and universities: “It’s easy to educate for the routine, and hard to educate for the novel.” Google sprung from seeing the novel. Is our educational system preparing students to work for or create Googles? I wonder.
[Thanks to Fred Wilson for the headline to this post]
Applications are up for the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, where I teach. But it’s a new school, so that might stand to reason. But they’re also up at least one other and much older J-school in New York. And they’re up at J-schools in the U.K. Lots of possible reasons: Business school doesn’t look so good anymore. Entry-level journalists try to leapfrog other competitors by getting a degree. Young people recognize the need for journalism. Note well that even as newspapers moan and mourn, more people see opportunities in journalism.
I just found out that Craig Newmark will lead the discussion at my book event this Thursday in San Francisco at Booksmith, 1644 Haight St., at 730p. So don’t come for me. Come for Craig!
The night before, I’ll also be doing a talk and signing at Books Inc. in Mountain View, 301 Castro St., at 730.
And for Googlers, I’ll be in a book event at Google on Wednesday at 1pm.
NOTE: I had the wrong address earlier for Booksmith. It’s 1644 Haight.
Tom Watson, the blogging and tweeting Member of Parliament, passes along, via Twitter, a job posting for a director of digital engagement in the U.K. government. Specs include:
• Develop a strategy and implementation plan for extending digital engagement across Government
• Work with communication, policy and delivery officials in Government departments to embed digital engagement in the day to day working of Government
• Work with Directors of Communication to ensure that digital media are included in the reporting of reaction to Government policy and initiatives
• Work closely with web teams to ensure that digital communications are making the most effective and efficient use of hardware and software
• Act as head of profession for civil servants working on digital engagement
• Ensure that digital engagement is always a leading part of Government consultation
• Introduce new techniques and software for digital engagement, such as ‘jams’ into Government
• Convene an expert advisory group made up of the leading experts on digital engagement to provide advice to Ministers and act as a sounding-board for the Government’s digital engagement strategy . . .
You will have a small budget, but two key purposes of the job are to assist Government in making effective use of current digital spend, which runs into many millions, and to enable departments to save significant sums on their engagement activities through switching from expensive face to face and postal methods to cheaper digital techniques. You will be accountable for leading Government’s new focus on digital engagement, which is central to Government priorities and with significant risk of reputational damage if this does not happen or Government gets it wrong. . . .
You will be required to exercise influence across departments with Ministers and senior officials to drive forward the future of digital engagement. This will require Government and individual departments to change the way they do business – from consulting citizens to collaborating with them on the development of policy and how public services are delivered to them. It will involve supporting Ministers and senior officials in entering conversations in which Government does not control the message or the dialogue. . . .
Within two years the use of world class digital engagement techniques should be embedded in the normal work of Government
The promise of local ad support for news will come only if a new population of very small businesses can be served in new and effective ways – before Google beats everybody else to it. That’s apparent in the results of Webvisible and Nielsen surveys reported by MediaPost (via Marketeting Pilgrim and Frank Thinking), which show that local marketers are leaving newspapers and the yellow pages but are still dissatisfied with – and don’t pay enough attention to – internet marketing. Factoids:
* 42 percent of small businesses say they use the local paper less and 23 percent use yellow pages less – while 43 percent use search engines more.
* “Though 63% of consumers and small business owners turn to the internet first for information about local companies and 82% use search engines to do so, only 44% of small businesses have a website and half spend less than 10% of their marketing budget online.”
* “Only 9% are satisfied with their online marketing efforts.”
* Mediapost found a disconnect in how small-business owners act as business people and marketers vs. how they act as consumers. That is, as consumers, they use and are satisfied with the internet and search to find other local businesses, but as marketers themselves, they use online less.
In these stats lies a big – but fleeting – opportunity: serving local businesses by helping them use online well. By this, I don’t mean doing what local newspapers have been doing: trying to sell them display or directory ads, just as they did in papers but in a new medium. Instead, I mean redefining what it means to help them succeed online. This might mean helping them place ads smartly on Google with good SEO (see Fred Wilson’s tweet out of our New Business Models for News Summit at CUNY). It might mean finding was to help local businesses interact more meaningfully with their own communities. It might mean enabling armies of citizen sales people – neighbors who really know their local businesses – to serve and sell those advertisers. It might mean providing tools to help local businesses create better (more informative, more SEOed) online presences and providing them data to show them their return on investment. I might mean finding other means to efficiently sell local businesses (can phone rooms ever work?). And so on…..
The assumptions I so often hear about local advertising – it doesn’t work; it doesn’t pay enough; small businesses are ignorant – need to be updated. The assumption that most needs to be updated is that a business needs an ad. It may need other tools to be found in search and to reach the right people and to improve relationships with them. All that may count as marketing, but not necessarily with an old ad in a new medium.
