�It�s all about changing the dynamics of a community,� said William Brody, president of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.The dynamic of Cleveland is dysfunction.
January 31, 2003
This is CRUCIAL! Tell everyone you know that this kind soul has distilled Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point into an outline and posted it on the web.
January 30, 2003
12/100 Ways to Reach your Goals, a PDF.
Interesting Fast Company article. What happens when you do something that has no budget, few people, no tangible resource? Usually great things!
John Polk rocks! Look what he asks in his opinion piece Reinventing Cleveland�s Power Structure
- What if the decisions affecting the area�s economy were being made by people whose companies are actually growing here?
- Would the community�s priorities be different?
- And who might those decision-makers be?
- What do we do with all that pent-up energy and creativity?
- How do these entrepreneurs re-invent the community�s institutional infrastructure so that it becomes more relevant in a post-industrial economy?
- What might the next generation of entrepreneurial leaders do to shake up Cleveland�s corporate status quo?
George Nemeth: 1M Splotz of Glue
Valdis sent me a cool link to an organization that is working to, as they put it, be the “splotz of glue” that keeps communities together. Sounds like a cool idea to me! Here’s how they explain it on their website:
“We Build Community through our everyday actions, and some of these actions have the cumulative effect of increasing the quality of life in a community. By deliberately doing more of these specific activities we can build the kind of community we want to live in.”
What specific activities are they referring to?
“What we have learned is this: Communities where trust is high, where people are informed about current events, where there are strong connections and high civic activity are communities that we want to live in. These are communities that have a good quality of life. We have also learned that doing only one of these activities (trust, inform, connect, get involved - what we call splotz of glue) is not enough. They must be done together and in abundance.”
I like it, I like it!
Get the Cool Cleveland Newsletter fer crying out loud!
Richard Florida’s Innovation Center may have to relocate outside of his hometown of Pittsburgh, where he teaches at Carnegie-Mellon. If you’re a Cool Cleveland reader, you’ve probably got a well-read copy of his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, and how it’s transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life. And you may have even caught one of his three or four appearances here in Cleveland in 2002, preaching from the podiums of the City Club or University Circle, Inc., about how Cleveland needs to become more tolerant and diverse, focusing on the arts, technology and creativity in order to attract, harness and mobilize the key 30% of the population that Florida calls The Creative Class: those individuals such as designers, software developers, financial wizards, legal eagles and medical geniuses. Now he finds that his message may be more welcome outside of Pittsburgh. He wants to start an institute devoted to the issues of the creative class and to put those ideas into action, and places like the University of Toronto, the New School in NYC, the Gates Foundation in Seattle, and supporters in Kansas City, Chicago and LA have stepped up to make him offers. It is always the prophet who is ignored in his own land, but is this an opportunity for Cleveland? He only needs $5-6 million for a staff of 5 to start. What could such an institute do for CWRU, the City of Cleveland and NEOhio?
January 29, 2003
From the Futurist Update:
“Computers should be put in places where low-income users are likely to find other people to help them–such as churches, barbershops, and commercial laundries. So says Lynette Kvasny, assistant professor of information sciences at Penn State. Without this kind of social networking to support learners, the millions of dollars invested in initiatives to bring information technology to minorities and low-income groups will largely be wasted, she claims.”
The Wal-Marting of America the World - “Anyone whose stocks rose in the late 1990s owes Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest company. It alone accounted for as much as 25% of the U.S. productivity gains from 1995-99, says consultant McKinsey & Co. Such gains drove corporate profits, thus stock prices. Wages in retailing, one of the biggest sources of new jobs in the ’90s and current decade, are also affected by Wal-Mart. With 1.3 million workers, it is the world’s largest private employer. It employs one of every 123 U.S. workers and nearly one of every 20 retail employees.”
January 28, 2003
Maybe it’s because my head isn’t facing north that I have trouble sleeping.
Listening to the audiobook The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot, And Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It. The authors take you back 10 years and trace the threads of terrorism and show the development of the network. Interesting from a networking and institutional behavior standpoint.
The Internal Impact of External Branding - “Conventional wisdom says branding is for external communication; it aims to influence current and prospective customers. But this view of the power of branding is too narrow, especially when a company is trying to fundamentally redefine its business strategy. Companies in the throes of dramatic change need brand communication to affect their employees� actions as much as their customers�.”
Leadership Principles - “What skills do outstanding leaders most often possess? That’s the question we’ve been addressing at this time each day. One such skill is persistence–the tenacity to keep driving toward goals. People who risk making changes and pursue lofty goals not only succeed more often; they also fail more often. But effective leaders are so completely committed to their vision that they see setbacks as opportunities rather than dead ends. When they fall down, they pick themselves up, figure out why they fell, and try again.”
January 27, 2003
From Zooba’s Management & Strategy - The Competitive Advantage: Embracing the Swarm
The key is to abandon top-down, centralized control in favor of exploring and exploiting the power of decentralized communication networks. Organizations can enable and exploit swarm power in two ways:
- distribute the intelligence throughout the organization by making information on products, services, and important processes easily accessible to all employees
- operate in “real time” by allowing swarm members to provide immediate, often live responses to customers and business partners.
Adopting these practices will help companies react faster to incoming customer demands.
I guess it’s because I’ve spent so much time thinking about Economic Development is the Cleveland area, that perhaps abandoning the top-down, centralized command and control structure and distributing ED intelligence throughout the network would be a really good thing!
Started reading Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi. The gist:
“The construction and structure of graphs or networks is the key to understanding the complex world around us. Small changes in the topology affecting only a few nodes or links can open up hidden doors, allowing new possibilities to emerge.”
My favorite quote so far is, “A mathematician is a machine that turns coffee into theorems.” - Alfred Renyi
