Information designer David McCandless of InformationIsBeautiful.net has created yet another interesting visualization. He has developed a first draft of “A Taxonomy of Ideas” to find out if there is “invisible language of ideas” and “unseen hierarchy hidden in that language”. Great idea!

Source: InformatioIsBeautiful.net

I am wondering what linguistics experts could contribute to it. For example, I am wondering if “brilliant idea” can be categorized in one way only because different people use “brilliant” in different ways at different times. McCandless addresses this in the comment section: “I guess my criteria is responses that you give as ideas are emerging live, before moral and ethical considerations kick in. When you’re just being struck by the structural quality and functional fit of a concept. Before you’ve had time to fully think it through.” But I would argue that “brilliant” already means different things to different people before they had time to think it through.

He is currently inviting feedback and thoughts. I am looking forward to seeing the next iteration.

Valuable insights from Glenn, Neland, Dell’s former head of supply chain and customer experience in Bob Pearson’s blog post.

Stop metrics that cause the wrong behavior: “You have metrics in place that guide certain behaviors within the organization. Periodically, you will find these metrics are not creating the behavior you wanted, or you may decide that the behavior you wanted isn’t providing the best customer experience. Change the metrics.”

Read the full article here.

Today, most businesses wishing to take advantage of the social-digital revolution are in the “crawling-walking” phase of their transformation; they are focused on building numbers measured by likes, followers, and the amplification of their messages. Tomorrow, many companies will be in the “running-flying” stages of social digital; they will connect effortlessly with multiple stakeholders who make their businesses smarter and better positioned for the future. Tomorrow’s metrics will be new efficiencies, ideas, products, and services as well as better business intelligence.

Source: David Armano in Harvard Business Review

In yesterday’s article from the Harvard Business Review blog, Edelman’s David Armano asks How Social Digital Is Your Company?. “Social Digital” sounds a bit like catchphrasification of the obvious to me. But Armano has it right. Social and digital are separate but go hand in hand.

The thing is, though, one can’t understand what he calls the social-digital revolution without also understanding how the “infrastructure, the plumbing and wiring”, actually works and how marketing and communications can benefit from it. Too often, this part gets glossed over, because people love to talk about the “social” part of the equation. For businesses, this is as much a social revolution as it is a data-driven revolution.

Long-term, it breaks down the traditional marketing barriers and brings change to many jobs, departments and industry (like communications). “Social digital” done right transforms the way companies do business. Exciting times!

Steve Jobs internal introduction of Apple’s 1997 “Think Different” campaign is still a great video to watch for all marketers and communicators.

“To me, marketing is about values,” [Steve Jobs] said. “This is a very complicated world, a very noisy world and we’re not going to get the chance to get people to remember us. No company is. So we have to be very clear about what we want people to know about us.”

Source: AdAge – The 1997 Video That Explains the Marketing Genius of Steve Jobs

Great introductory video by The Academy to an important initiative. Nicely done.

Open Government from The Academy on Vimeo.

Inspiring: TEDxToronto 2011 Speaker Nicholas Schiefer (by TEDxTO) “created a new type of search engine that works through the relations between words rather than words alone”.

Source: Toronto Standard

I like the new design approach. Can’t wait to try out Windows 8.

Source: Microsoft’s Windows Live YouTube channel

Great perspective on innovation and corporate culture from Jeffrey Phillips on the Innovation Excellence blog. Full article here.

A culture of innovation [..] indicates that an organization is at least willing to embrace many of the tools and techniques that innovation requires, but moreover is able to endure the potential outcomes. For every innovation success there are many attempts and several failures. Every innovation is potentially cannibalizing an existing product or service, and innovation forces constant change – not just to products and services, but to experiences and business models.

This means that a culture of innovation is agile, nimble, constantly adapting and learning, open to experimentation and many points of view. A culture of innovation tolerates and learns from failure, incorporating the best parts of the failure into new efforts. A culture of innovation understands that innovation is a continuous, consistent process rather than an occasional effort. A culture of innovation seeks out internal and external viewpoints and perspectives that are different from what the team “wants” to hear, and works closely with customers, partners and even the disinterested to understand future needs. A culture of innovation has as much invested in understanding the future as it does in delivering value in the present. A culture of innovation constantly generates ideas but also has the ability to commercialize the best ideas and ships valuable products. A culture of innovation isn’t just an idea machine, it is a commercialization machine.

Jeffrey Phillips in What is a culture of innovation anyway?

Just came across a good perspective by Lee Bryant on the evolution of social media monitoring. More in his blog post here.