Ravenweb Blog

Check out my guest post on Business Insider. This piece is about the technology kids who are entering kindergarten today will be using when they graduate. Here's How My Daughter Will Be Using Tech To Manage Her Career In 2025 http://www.businessinsider.com/tech-and-careers-in-2025-2012-9

Dear Kevin, You don't know me or my family, but our lives are intertwined. You see, five years ago -- on September 9, 2007 -- while you sustained a horrific neck injury in the Buffalo Bills opener against the Denver Broncos, I was sitting in a hospital room awaiting the arrival of my first child. My wife went into labor early that Sunday morning and we settled into a hospital delivery room just before the Bills game started. Though I was more excited than anything to welcome my baby into the world, I was still a devoted Bills fan and kept peeking at the game on the TV monitor in-between my wife's contractions. We muted the volume, but I was able to follow the action and noticed immediately when you went down to the turf. The swarm of medical personnel and the stretcher indicated the seriousness of your injury. You lying there motionless was in surreal contrast to the activity going on in front of me, with my wife's heavy breathing, contractions, and the baby's con...

Check out my guest post on Business Insider. The piece was inspired by the film Sideways and is about maximizing network contacts. 10 Tips For Building Strong Professional Relationships http://www.businessinsider.com/10-tips-for-appreciating-your-network-contacts-2012-8

It’s 2012, and in the United States we’re fast approaching another presidential election cycle. Different issues drive elections, but with a jobless recovery and a flat unemployment rate (8% officially but probably over 11% once you adjust for the millions who have dropped out of the job market or are underemployed), it’s very likely that jobs and unemployment will figure prominently in the upcoming November election. There are many good articles and posts that provide explanations and opinions about the jobs picture. Many point out that companies today are banking their profits or making investments instead of creating new jobs, while other point to a  skills gap and shortage of available talent. Among the best analysis I've recently read is Wharton professor Peter Cappelli’s text Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs . Here the author offers fresh perspective and insight about the topic and challenges whether we really have a skills gap and the effectiveness of automa...

As a culture, we strive for personal transformation. Whether it's eating better and getting fit, redefining our professional value proposition through training and education, or simply trying to be kinder and gentler, we're constantly reinventing who we are and what we can do. We may not be successful all the time, or achieve breakthroughs like those featured on The Biggest Loser or facilitated by Tony Robbins , but millions of people successfully transform and reinvent themselves every year. Unfortunately, the very organizations where we work generally do not do the same. As Saul Kaplan elaborates in The Business Model Innovation Factory , most organizations struggle to transform from their core, initial business models and tend to become stagnant and vulnerable to disruptive competitors. The example Kaplan leads with is Blockbuster, which for a time owned the brick and mortar video and DVD rental space, until they were "netflixed" by a disruptive competitor (...

In a December post, I mentioned how a local sports team brightened the burden of a boy with a degenerative liver condition . Unfortunately, while the gift made a big difference, the boy's medical problems have worsened and he now awaits a new liver. At this time, I would like to introduce you to the boy. His name is Mitchell Simon, and he is an 11 year old who resides just outside of Buffalo, NY. Mitchell was born with  Biliary Atresia -- a congenital liver disease -- and the disease has progressed rapidly over the past year such that a transplant is necessary. Because medical and related expenses for a liver transplant recipient typically exceed $100,000, the family is accepting donations and a fundraiser benefit will be held on June 2, 2012 to help defer costs for the transplant. DONATIONS You may send donations to the address below or donate online at  http://cota.donorpages.com/PatientOnlineDonation/COTAforMitchellS/ . Miracle for M...

We live in an era of sweeping change and uncertainty. There's economic nervousness and under-employment, climate change and wild weather, concern over peak oil and the future of energy, globalism and a flat world, and a dizzying array of social networking tools for connecting like never before. Such a mix creates both strain in the system and new opportunities to connect, and this has led to a dramatic rise in cultural movements, including the recent Arab Spring and Occupy movement. In Uprising: How to Build a Brand--and Change the World--By Sparking Cultural Movements , author Scott Goodson looks at movements from a marketing perspective and offers a fascinating survey of recent movements as well as an elaboration of how marketing and business are beginning to add value and collaborate with movements, without co-opting them. Goodson terms this new marketing "movement marketing" and cites several examples, including the Pepsi Refresh project, the InnoCentive move...

Gallup chairman Jim Clifton offers a timely and compelling exploration of the urgency of job creation and the current "all out global war for good jobs". Jobs are critical, Clifton contends, because they underpin societies and allow people to prosper, thereby creating well-being and fostering new achievements in all areas of human development. Unfortunately, we face a global job shortage approaching 2 billion with no apparent driver for jobs imminent. The country that does the most to enable job growth will become the next economic superpower. The text explores the multifaceted dimensions of this topic, with plenty of corroboration from Gallup data. As an American, Clifton admits to a U.S. bias and speculates on what America must do to maintain its predominant economic position and prevail in the coming jobs war. His ideas include encouraging job creation in cities, emphasizing entrepreneurship over innovation, drastically cutting healthcare costs, improving...

Check out my new article on 12 Most that compares technology companies to countries. 12 Most Striking Comparisons of Technology Companies to Countries http://12most.com/2012/02/21/comparisons-technology-companies-to-countries/

In little more than a decade, Google has grown from a smart, disruptive search company to an Internet behemoth, with over $39 billion in revenue and a product portfolio now spanning advertising, mobile, cloud computing, and video. Since Google's inception, millions have used its search engine and services and come to rely on the company for fast, reliable information. Indeed, the company name itself is now a verb meaning "to search". Steven Levy's In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives  chronicles the story of Google, from its origins and founding, through its incorporation and rapid growth, and to its ascendancy as one of the biggest and most influential companies on the planet. I found the text well-crafted and fascinating. Though a work of journalism, the narrative flowed very much like a story, with Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt cast as the main characters. The book elaborated all the major developments in the company's h...

Super Bowl week can be tough on Bills fans. On the one hand, the coverage and retrospectives force reflection on probably the greatest run in the franchise, but one that did not end with a championship. Lately, Super Bowls are a reminder of how irrelevant the Bills have become and how far they are from even competing for a playoff spot, let along reaching a Super Bowl. It’s now been twelve years since the Bills last played a playoff game. This was the “Music City Miracle” against the Tennessee Titans that was played on January 8, 2000. Think that was long ago? The last time the Bills appeared in a Super Bowl was eighteen years ago, in Super Bowl XXVII, when the Bills lost to the Cowboys, 30-13. The date of that game was January 30, 1994. Since then, seventeen Super Bowls have been played, with another one coming this Sunday. To crystallize the long run of Bills futility and remind everyone how long it's really been, I’ve listed 46 facts about 1994. One for each Sup...

The measure of an organization is often what it does when no one is looking. This week, I was fortunate enough to experience this firsthand from a local organization. It all started when I learned last week that Jake* -- the 11 year-old son of some family friends -- was experiencing serious health problems due to a degenerative liver condition. I was told that Jake had been in and out of the hospital for the past few weeks, and that the prevailing opinion was that he would need some medical/surgical intervention or a liver transplant. Understandably, Jake was a little down and out of sorts because of all the health complications. I was saddened by the news but resigned that there was little I could do to help or improve the situation. Then I recalled that Jake loved the Buffalo Sabres, and I thought perhaps I could contact them. I'd heard Ted Black speak on WGR-550 and was very impressed with his willingness to make himself available and always answer q...

To close out this blog series, I wanted to express my appreciation for everyone who's stopped by and provided feedback. Thanks so much. Writing a daily blog post about a different BIF speaker every day turned out be more difficult and time consuming that I thought, and I appreciate the interest. In addition to a general thank you, I also want to call out four people: Sandy Maxey - For all the RTs and mentions. Thanks! http://sandymaxey.wordpress.com/ Twitter:  @sandymaxey Jessica Esch  - For sharing her wonderful BIF sketches that helped jog my ossifying memory as I was writing the recaps. http://www.sayitbest.com/ Twitter:  @jesch30 Amanda Fenton  - For those crystallizing and invaluable mindmaps that captured the essence of each BIF  storyteller and help me refine the posts with appropriate detail. Twitter:  @AmandaFenton Deborah Mills-Scofield  - For promoting BIF like no other and tweeting all my posts. Thanks, ninja fairy god mothe...

You can't do a blog series about BIF without mentioning Saul Kaplan and the outstanding BIF team. Saul self-identifies as the "Chief Catalyst" of the Business Innovation Factory, but he's much more than that. He's smart, professional, friendly, inventive, and, most of all, always open to "random collisions of unusual suspects". There was a telling moment toward the end of BIF-7 when the audience stood as one to show appreciation to Saul with a standing ovation. Saul looked horrified, but not because he's uncomfortable with public speaking. He's just the kind of leader who would rather deflect praise to his team, or talk about the inspiring stories shared at BIF, or make that next connection with a suspect he hasn't met yet. Thank you, Saul, and thank you, BIF team. The BIF Team Saul Kaplan http://businessinnovationfactory.com/about/leadership-team/saul-kaplan Twitter: @skap5 Christine Costello http://businessinnovationfactory.c...

I don't know how much Dan Pink personally likes Halloween, but it sure corroborates the talk he gave at BIF-7. People love to innovate and push the envelope with costumes. Just on our street this Halloween I saw someone dressed up as a cell phone, a meticulously made up geisha, and a Facebook profile page. Some of the creative costumes worked and others failed, but the point is that creative thinking and a willingness to try new things accompany innovative costume-making. This is strikingly similar to the point Dan made at BIF-7, that unconventional and non-commissioned work can lead to breakthroughs and innovation. As an example, Dan cited Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for groundbreaking experiments with graphene during their free "Friday evening experiment" time. (Note: Dan explores the potency and value of non-commissioned work in more detail in his newest book, Drive .) Most unconventional and non-commissioned experim...

I would love to listen to a debate someday between Duncan Watts and Malcolm Gladwell. Because, in his BIF-7 story, Duncan came across very much as an anti-Gladwell: precise, deliberate, and respectful of the difficulties and complexities involved with attempts to influence and predict behavior. During his BIF-7 talk, Duncan talked about the problem of obviousness and common sense -- basically, that "the way we make sense of the world can actually prevent us from understanding it." This is also the hypothesis Duncan delineates in his new book, Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer . As Duncan elaborated, we are susceptible to errors of reasoning when we rely on common sense: When we think about why people do what they do, we place too much emphasis on incentives, motivations, and beliefs, and not enough on the thousands of other influencing factors Groups are extremely complicated to predict -- we erroneously apply the logic of "individual" action to...

What are the greatest innovations and accomplishments from organized religion? I ask this question as a response to Jim Mellado, who in his BIF-7 story talked about how the church can be a contributor and innovator to society. Jim's claim was fascinating and foreign to me, as I've always equated the church and organized religion with the status quo (at its best) and repression (at its worst). My intent with this post was to list out the most commonly agreed upon innovations/accomplishments of religion from a number of sources. Unfortunately, my searches turned up very little about this topic. I've reproduced the best items I could find, but I welcome additions to this list: Preservation of historical documents Preserving writing and intellectual inquiry in Western Europe after the collapse of Roman administration Revived interest in Classical Greek and Latin from the lead up to the Protestant Reformation Islam: the notion and push for universal education, algebra, t...

Matthew Moniz's story was probably the most heartwarming and life affirming of all the stories at BIF-7. An accomplished mountain climber at 13, Matthew described the major peaks and summits he's climbed, including Everest and 50 peaks in 50 states in 50 days. It was even more revealing when Matthew talked about one of his best friends with a medical condition and symptoms that ironically emulated the effects of high-altitude environments Matthew typically encounters while climbing. Like everyone in the audience at BIF, I was pretty much blown away by Matthew. He was so focused, yet modest; engaged and driven to be great. As the days passed and I reflected about Matthew and his story, I realized that one of the reasons his story stood out is he's exceptional, a true outlier, and I wondered why that is. Why aren't more kids like him? Is it that schools educate for compliance and not creativity and innovation? It's noteworthy how much Matthew has learned outside...

Talking about the evolution of capitalism seems like a daunting task, even for an innovator. But that's exactly what Christopher Meyer did at BIF-7. Capitalism is moving, Chris suggested, and the genome is going to shift as emerging economies like Brazil, India, and China grow and begin to dominate the global economic system. Organizations that maximize growth in change over time, Chris suggested, will benefit the most from a new prevailing version of capitalism. I brought up Isaac Asimov and the Foundation Series in reference to another BIF storyteller , and I thought of speculative fiction when Chris presented as well. Here, it was China Mountain Zhang , by Maureen McHugh, a celebrated near-future novel where America has gone through a socialist revolution, China is the new superpower, and a hybrid of capitalism and socialism has become the major economic system. The future described in the book seemed to fit the evolution Chris described. Additional information: http://w...

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents — except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets, rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness. You look up from the two documents on your desk. One is a business plan, and the other is a resignation letter. You are anxious and diaphoretic. Totally afraid of making the wrong decision. Of failing. As you acknowledge your fear of failure and let it sit for a while in your gut, you begin to calm down, and then, eventually, smile. Because, in the words of Whitney Johnson, "If it feels scary and lonely, you're probably on the right track." During her BIF-7 talk, Whitney focused on disruption as a key trigger for personal transformation. Fittingly, her anchor quotes crystallized her points and recalled some of the other BIF speakers. "If it feels scary and lonely, you're pro...