Memetic Brand

Thanks to Gunther Sonnenfeld for bringing this video to our attention:

Oh, oh …

At many levels I wish this had not happened. I remembered seeing something interesting in this Richard Dawkins’ video a few months ago and have finally had time to take a closer look & listen to it.

The interesting bit was the invitation from Steve Grand shared by Dawkins, to consider what we are. Now I have to try to comprehend the mind of Steve Grand. Pass the nuts.

If you don’t have enough time for the whole 20 minutes (all highly recommended), pick it up at 8:49 mark until you hear the words, “if that doesn’t make the hair stand up on the back of your neck then read it again, because it is important”.

Another interesting bit can be picked up at the 19:53 mark … “in short” to “millions of deluded people” … an interesting observation on why we personify things or in other words, brand them.

Dawkins observes we are social beings, swimming through connections with people. We have therefore highly evolved models for simulating the world that we need to navigate based upon social signals, so we end up applying that successful model to inanimate objects, personifying them even while being aware that this is the wrong model to solve our problem. For example, when we swear at a broken down car or dare I say the words … “BP”.

Any time that I can find anyone who can bat the ball around, I continue to wonder about the idea of establishing a prediction market to seed early stage innovation in Ontario and Canada.

With their permission, I am publishing below an exchange that I had with John Delaney, CEO of prediction market platform Intrade and Russ Cameron Thomson the founder of Meritology who blogs at Value Made Visible.

I know that this will be very difficult for anyone to wade through unless someone is really interested in the possibilities but at this stage I can not justify the time to edit.

I am still trying to determine if the basic idea works or is theoretically flawed.

Very informative discussion with these leaders of prediction market thinking.

I continue to wonder if a prediction market could be used to help spread a globally oriented innovation meme in Ontario and/or Canada.

UPDATE, April 2010 - I recently had an exchange about the idea below with John Delaney, CEO of Intrade and Russ Thomson founder of Meritology.  I have published that on this post.

UPDATE, Mar 2010 - This idea could easily be applied across Canada. I trust that readers can envision the edits that would be required below to adjust.

UPDATE, Nov. 19, 2009:  It seems that something like the idea below is being tested in an executive program at Singularity University in Silicon Valley.  Crowdcast points out that there are fundamental flaws with an idea market but it seems that they go on to explain how a prediction market may work for the application that I have described below.

UPDATE 2, Jan. 2, 2010: Was just introduced to Jed Christiansen’s Mercury Blog on prediction markets and innovation and found his simple introductory video.  I would love to have Jed’s comments on the post below.

Original Post:

Quite a while back I wrote a couple of posts over at www.socialcapitalvalueadd.com that provided some observations on the dangers of tightly knit social networks in Ontario’s business community and a request to the Ontario Government to focus any investment to bail out the troubled venture capital industry in this province on building global connections.

A year later the meat of these posts became a cocktail conversation at NetChange Week at MaRs.  The cultural irony in the air was noteworthy, having boot strapping social entrepreneurs gathered, talking about self starting, market driven enterprise while a concentration of Canadian establishment digital media execs and politicians were assembled in Stratford “defining Canada’s digital future” with a $10-million cheque, a declaration and the idea of a government led national digital media action plan.

Is it safe to say at this point that Ontario needs a change in culture to continue to enjoy the privileged position it has held in Canada and globally?  I think so.  There is a lot of quality conversation (like Research Capital’s effort & the exchange at StartUpNorth) and some money being thrown at the problem (by the Ontario & Federal Governments).

That cocktail conversation led to an email exchange that I have been meaning to dump into a blog post all summer.  I hope that you put this into the mix of quality conversation.  Perhaps if it drums up some interest, we can evolve the thoughts here from a rough set of cut and pastes into a viable plan?

While we think we suffer unique hardship in Ontario, with power and money being concentrated in Toronto and Ottawa, while innovation is often highly distributed at the edges - disconnected from power, money & each other - it occurs to me that this is a well recognized pattern once you understand social networks.  Innovation - a new combination of information, insight & resources - often takes place when weak ties bring together the previously unassociated.  So we need solutions designed to improve these loose connections, not reinforce the status quo.

If you talk to local angel organisations you will learn that they are seeing more then 200 seed stage companies a year.  About 25 are getting funded at this stage.

VCs say that they need at least 50 quality deals to get through initial start up to have a funnel of activity that will produce enough home runs to float the domestic industry.

Both VCs & angels will tell you that one of the problems in Ontario is that they are not seeing enough quality deals.

Seed stage companies are full of risk.  So far Ontario doesn’t seem to have a Yossi Vardi who can successfully invest in 50 to 80 hungry entrepreneurs that he can believe in.

Most agree that companies that survive and thrive do so because of the PEOPLE!  I can not believe that there are not 40 or 50 promising people to back in business in Ontario each year.  Once you get going with a business relationship among good people, you might change the business model, you might change key players, go after different customers, etc but you are way more likely to come out with a growing business then if you take this crazy view that quality deals are divined by Angels. That is sort of the point.  World class Angels & VCs work with great people through the good, the bad and the ugly and still come up with a return on investment that keeps institutional investors coming back to the table.

So can we agree that Ontario would be much further ahead on the innovation file if we were seeding great business people?  So the question is … how do we seed 40 to 50 promising startups in Ontario every year? (i.e. funding under $500K).

Some thoughts to steer around (or through) …

- we don’t need to start something like MaRs that is GREAT, but money is needed in startups not institutions,
- we don’t want to give money to the same people (i.e. Ontario VCs, Ontario bankers) to solve this problem, they have their own problems to solve, pre-revenue startups are not an ideal focus for them and besides … startups are going to save Canada’s Venture Capital industry.
- we don’t want to put any team of experts (more people to pay instead of funding start ups), a bureaucracy or government in the position of trying to pick winners from losers in the start up world, too risky, too slow, too much same old “who you know” thing in Ontario.

So how about setting up a prediction market to select the companies that will get seeded?

I am told that if you are going to sit down with government, you should have some sort of ask in mind.

My ask would be this -

Use some dough out of the Ontario Venture Capital Fund and the Emerging Technologies Fund (since hardly any of this money has hit the street yet) or find new money to set up an Ontario Seedling Prediction Market.  Get Ontario VCs to partially fund or make some sort of commitment to this initiative since this is helping solve the quality deal flow problem that they complain about. Make the Prediction Market open and global but the companies vying on the market must be Ontario based.

Set up a standard corporate structure so that these seedlings are ready to scale and (if their promise warrants) take on a $10-million B round (keep founders in, but be big enough and compete with US early stage venture companies).

Get commitments from government and globally based investors (to bring competition and connections for later rounds) to provide the $20-million a year needed to seed 40 companies.

A couple of other upsides from a prediction market approach that come to mind …

a) A prediction market would orient seed companies toward a global market rather than a local closed network.  We all know how the Bell Fund, the NRC programs and other government programs (ACOA comes to mind) skew companies away from global business focus and turn their attention towards the special “screening”, applications and procedures required to win government favour.  Look out!  Here come a bunch of new consultants that local capital ends up paying to get their companies through the hoops (money that should be going into start ups!).  The relationships required to get funding from an Ontario government program are not aligned with the attention & relationships required to make it through a globally competitive B round (i.e. around $10-million).

b) A prediction market positions the Ontario government to champion the cause of early stage companies with global investors in an consistent, long term, sustainable way.  If the Ontario government hires a bunch of “experts” to pick winners (i.e. the typical role of partners in a VC firm or Angels or managers of a pension fund) they become accountable for the picks.  They will get evaluated based upon the performance of these investments.  Just ask local VCs and Angels how difficult it is to achieve positive returns by picking winners.  Have any of them achieved this yet?  The success of a prediction market would be a function of the kind of attention & engagement that it obtained from global, diverse markets.  The Ontario government could lead targeted programs designed to capture the attention of investors in Silicon Valley, New York, Boston, Hong Kong, Singapore, London, etc … all based upon the premise that obtaining the attention of these investors makes the prediction market function better and showcases Ontario innovation rather than a limited portfolio of companies caught in time by the rear view mirror of a few connected locals.

Here’s a pretty good FAQ from an open prediction market platform called Inkling: http://inklingmarkets.com/homes/faq

Here is a NYT article about Crowdcast another start up in the prediction market space:  http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/start-ups-software-crowdsources-company-forecasts/ Google, HP, Warner Bros., GM and companies in media and pharma all trying out some variation of prediction markets.

In Ontario we really need government to take a lead on something like this because most of our companies are too small to take advantage of these new abilities to tap into emergence and make better decisions on innovation.

GE & Motorola use Consensus Point Software to manage internal prediction markets …

http://www.consensuspoint.com/prediction-markets-blog/

Take a look at The Industry Standard’s prediction market …

http://www.thestandard.com/predictions

Another thought to keep in mind, domestically, encouraging companies across the province to list on the prediction market would create broad awareness of government leadership on the innovation file and awaken Ontario companies to the need to oriented towards globally competitive innovation.  The prediction market would create a cross promotional effect (with no crazy spends on wasteful the kinds of broadcast advertising often use to raise awareness of government efforts).  As companies oriented themselves towards it, work towards announcing key customers, great products, highlighting great teams, all of their activities would demonstrate to their peers in Ontario what it takes to hatch globally competitive innovation.

A prediction market would cross industries better then common place business plan competitions and pitch  forums for start ups.

As some of you know, I have some recent experience with this.  My Social Capital Value Add method of linking social media to corporate value was a finalist among over 320 entries from 48 countries in a business plan contest held at the University of Miami by WeMedia in February. (part shameless plug, but this experience definitely pushed me beyond the idea of “democratizing” into learning more about prediction markets which deal with unequal distribution of information better).

Offering prize money only works when you are damn sure the kind of innovation that you want to incent.  For example, you could not spur innovation in cleantech and Web 2.0 with the same prize, although once you put a structure in place you could duplicate it in various areas of interest.

Most importantly, while prize money would crowd source desirable innovation, unlike a prediction market, it would not achieve the most important provincial goals which are to wake up all Ontarians to the need for an economy led by globally competitive innovation nor would it orient domestic companies towards global markets instead of a local prize while giving the Ontario government something that they can confidently promote to forge links with foreign markets that are critical to commercialization, marketing success and next rounds of finance.

By the way, a prediction market would not get in the way of Angels or VCs boot strapping early stage seed financing in Ontario.  They would be free to go after the same deals, co-invest, etc.  We agree that there are more then 20 or so quality groups of hungry, crazy people to invest in.  The current ETF approach makes the government a follow on investor, essentially giving this money to existing early stage (not seed) investors, relieving them of the responsibility of earning returns that attract institutional investors.  It is relief to existing early stage investors not start ups.

Feel free to read more about prediction markets:

IDC and The Industry Standard Announce Strategic Prediction Market Partnership

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/prediction-markets-as-collective-inteligence.html

The Farmetrics(R) Prediction Market https://www.farmetrics.com/

http://mashable.com/2009/08/31/pretweeting/

Did Intrade Predict the Resignation of "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones?

http://www.daily-chuck.com/2009/09/did-intrade-predict-resignation-of.html

http://www.consensuspoint.com/resources/academic-research/Harvard_Consensus_Point_Prediction_Markets.pdf

I have also posted this with some comments over at www.socialcapitalvalueadd.com because it is a great discussion of how network thinking is emerging as a dominant form in the 21st century.

From about the 3:38 point in the video to 7:30 Barabási and Fowler have a focused discussion on the differences between social & tech networks and the role of natural selection in the formation & structure of social networks.

These are four highly recommended minutes for anyone working towards the understanding of memetic brand.

Hat tip to Valdis Krebs for sharing this item and these related links:

The genes in your congeniality:  Researchers identify genetic influence in social networks.

The PDF of the full paper.

The transcript is here.

I just started following Dr. Robin Teigland on Twitter.  Get ready to be blown away … check out her slide share presentations.

She is an Associate Professor at the Center for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) in Sweden.  For more than ten years, she has researched and lectured on social networks and their relationship with strategy and performance.

This presentation seems spot on to me.

I just posted her presentation of Leveraging Social Networks for Results over at www.socialcapitalvalueadd.com.  It is even better.

Hat tip to Dallas Knight (perhaps an alias? UPDATE: not an alias, what memetically gifted parents!) also known as starpath for turning us on to this great video (being promoted) by fellow Canuck Michelle Hoyle aka Eingang.

UPDATE: Note from Martin’s comment below, who’s blog is called Ed techie, as in education techie: Actually it’s mine (see http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2008/10/a-twitter-love-song.html), not Michelle’s, she’s probably been plugging it for me though, and I used a lot of her tweets in the vid. Thx for the plug, I’d happily settle for 10,000!)

What do you think are the highlights or new insights from the video? Please jot them in the comments below and I will move them up into this post to flesh it out.

As I publish this, the video on YouTube has only been viewed 264 times.  I predict 10,000 views by next Monday.

Check out the rest of the Why Twitter Matters series that I have been putting together:

Why Twitter Matters #1: Follow me, Follow You on Twitter

Why Twitter Matters #2: Memetic Logos

Why Twitter Matters #3: Escalopter

Why Twitter Matters #4: social capital discussion evolving

Why Twitter Matters #5: Twitter and Social Capital

Comment, Kim Patrick Kobza, CEO, Neighborhood America: cognitive outliers, real time group cognition

UPDATE@Nov.4, 2008 - an overview of StockTwits from Stowe Boyd.

UPDATE@Dec.1, 2008 - Tim O’Reilly “Why I Love Twitter”

Now that I have used Twitter for a while, I am more convinced than when I started that it is an example, along with activity feeds & other microblogging platforms, of a new medium that is particularly suited for memetic branding purposes.  It is involved in the genesis of shared perception.

Picked up on twitter …

MarkusvonRoder: Demonstrating the memetic trigger “Violation of viewing habits” - the Escalopter (escalator + helicopter)

Update:

I have turned my evolving reflections about twitter into a series of posts.  Catch the other thoughts:

Why Twitter Matters #1: Follow me, Follow You on Twitter

Why Twitter Matters #2: Memetic Logos

Why Twitter Matters #4: social capital discussion evolving

Comment, Kim Patrick Kobza, CEO, Neighborhood America: cognitive outliers, real time group cognition

Why Twitter Matters #5: Twitter and Social Capital

Why Twitter Matters #6: Twitter Love Song

UPDATE@Nov.4, 2008 - an overview of StockTwits from Stowe Boyd.

UPDATE@Dec.1, 2008 - Tim O’Reilly “Why I Love Twitter”

UPDATE, April 2010:  Could it be?  Is Pepsi listening?  What do you think of Pepsi foregoing the traditional Superbowl ad and stepping up with its REFRESH program?  For details on REFRESH catch this series by a group of my HumberPR students.  Kudos to Pepsi and Weber Shandwick.

ORIGINAL POST:

Hot selling book authors Seth Godin & Jonathan Salem Baskin, who both released manifestos in ChangeThis’ 50th issue (I was fortunate to have my manifesto released @ along with theirs), have picked up on Pepsi’s recent announcement that they are going to “pour some $1.2 billion over three years into a push that will include sweeping changes to its brands“.

Seth’s “punchline is: take the time and money and effort you’d put into an expensive logo and put them into creating a product and experience and story that people remember instead.”   He has a corner on the whole idea of making products remarkable that is well worth following.

Jonathan finds it “stunning that nobody is asking these businesses why they aren’t focusing on making cola relevant again.”  It is a great post.  Check it out. The bit that really got me noodling was:

“Use or need cases are used in technology development to identify the places and times  people might require a software product or widget.  That approach to the mechanics of consumption is based on actual experience, not imagined desires or emotional associations, so the strategy doesn’t start with brand…but certainly impacts it.”

Can we use this notion of memetic brand to get more prescriptive if we are sitting in boardrooms with folks like Pepsi?

The money quote from Introducing Social Capital Value Add would probably be a bad place to start:

“Social capital means far more to Coca-Cola than Coca-Cola means to social capital.”

Ah, that might just get you the door before you had a chance to get the account!  So perhaps it would be good to start with a little illustration of the difference between being “viral” and “memetic”.

I bet the traditional brand folks over a Coke have been counting all that “free advertising” they have been racking up since someone discovered what happens when you drop a mintos into a bottle of diet coke.  That is, after they took weeks to stop hand-wringing about what such an image does to “the brand”.

Now that is entertainment! I love it! Millions of views. Probably billions now that dudes like me are clipping it into web pages all over the internet. But is it selling Diet Coke? Hmmm …. maybe a little bit. That awareness and repetition is not likely hurting any. But I am pretty sure that this isn’t the stuff that is going to effect market share, or share of stomach or any of the other fun ways to measure soda pop.

So how about something that can be remarkable, address needs and mobilize the entire Pepsi ecosystem towards something amazing?

I am certain that there are many memetic approaches and I would very much appreciate it if you could jot down your thoughts below.  I admit it.  I am a bit stuck on this idea of a relationship between altruism and corporate motivations.

I think that I would like to present the folks at Pepsi with some case studies and trend analysis of approaches like the one the folks at TripAdvisor are taking.  I have some criticism of the execution and if TripAdvisor is still burning VC money, god bless ‘em.  The trick is to go beyond feel good CSR tactics and tie this into your mission and maybe even your business model if possible.

Then maybe we could get some serious new thinking about how to change the game with Pepsi.  How about a crazy idea like committing Pepsi to being a cure for cancer?  That just popped into my head as something provocative to help reboot thinking and then, as I sifted though my reader while procrastinating on writing this post I picked up this link from June Avila on the MaRs Innovation & Commercialization Blog:

Better Beer: College Team Creating Anticancer Brew

Yes.  Still seems off the wall, but somewhere between mintos & the cure for cancer there is a better way.