How & Why

18

It’s About The Why

Discovering The Why

Con­tem­plat­ing The Why

Under­stand­ing The How

Since the ear­li­est mem­o­ries of our child­hood molded by some of the most influ­en­tial peo­ple we will ever encounter, our teach­ers, we have been taught to lineup, con­form and learn our A B C’s.

Life became struc­tured at a very early age as did our beliefs, ways of think­ing and our own sense of identify.

We all remem­ber our home­work assign­ments, research, find­ing the right answers, doing what is expected — a tetra­he­dron does not fit into a round hole.

Mem­o­riza­tion is para­mount if we want to pass our exams. Con­di­tion­ing and ver­ti­cal, lin­ear, sequen­tial think­ing has over­taken our cre­ative, ran­dom, abstract think­ing process of youth.

Now as adults we have roles and expec­ta­tions to live up to. Hus­band, Wife, lover, friend, mother, father, pro­fes­sional and social life. The role demands and tugs on our life is never-​ending.

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man

We are either cogs in a machine, doing what our supe­ri­ors expect of us, tak­ing their direc­tion, down­siz­ing, out sourc­ing, clo­sures or new career choice, the rea­sons are end­less and sud­denly find­ing our­selves in unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­tory. The Glad­i­a­to­r­ial arena of cre­ativ­ity and inno­v­a­tive think­ing for our very survival.

Those of you read­ing this arti­cle on a tablet expe­ri­ence first hand how mod­ern, advanced tech­nol­ogy is defin­ing how we do things and man­age our life. Some­thing new, hor­i­zon­tal, inno­v­a­tive think­ing is chang­ing our life once again.

Per­haps you are a busi­ness owner, an entre­pre­neur, a per­son look­ing for a career change or want­ing some­thing more in life.

Money will not make you happy but it cer­tainly makes life more comfortable.

What will make you happy you ask? Ful­fill­ment will.

Thus… The Why.

The How Never Pre­cedes The Why

The How is assem­bling and uti­liz­ing the under­stood, the process to achieve an end, a desired outcome.

If I do this, because it is a known expe­ri­ence, that will hap­pen. Ver­ti­cal, sequen­tial, lin­ear think­ing is learnt in acad­e­mia. Our A, B, C’s.

Many busi­ness peo­ple, pro­fes­sion­als, ama­teurs, devel­op­ers and design­ers are con­di­tioned by ver­ti­cal think­ing, ‘The How’.

Few know or under­stand ‘The Why’.

Per­ils of Ver­ti­cal Thinking

Ver­ti­cal think­ing both built and sunk the Titanic.

Laid down on 31 March 1909 and com­pleted on 02 April 1912, she sank on her maiden voy­age in the numb­ing, teeth chat­ter­ing, black abyss of the North Atlantic, in the dread of night on 15 April 1912, slip­ping into the depths as the ships band played Auld Langs Syne, claiming 1,514 souls.

The nau­ti­cal think­ing, par­a­digms of the era are shat­tered, laid to ruin, strewn about like bro­ken Cham­pagne glasses of cel­e­bra­tion through­out the rooms and hall­ways of belief.

The impos­si­ble hap­pened— the unsink­able has sank.

Titanic Maiden Voyage

RMS Titanic depart­ing Southamp­ton
10 April 1912

Dr. Albert Ein­stein under­stood Ver­ti­cal Think­ing as doing the same thing over and over again and expect­ing dif­fer­ent results. Throw­ing more money at it, spend more hours on it or suc­cumb, acqui­esc­ing to defeat. It is what it is until the per­cep­tion of what it is changes— trans­form­ing what­ever it is into some­thing else! Re-​frame it.

Think­ing Horizontally

Why do some sites suc­ceed, while the vast major­ity fail? The answer is in ‘The Why’. It’s easy to know ‘The How’ but what about ‘The Why’?

How To Think Horizontally

Nor­mally we ask our­selves How, Why or When, all seek­ing a pre­de­ter­mined answer. Now ask your­self these questions:

  • What if?
  • What would it be like?
  • How would it be?

It is not easy, for it is Hor­i­zon­tal think­ing; your brain is not accus­tomed to it. It is some­thing you were never taught — The Why.

Once you know ‘The Why’ and bridge it con­cep­tu­ally you will have a pow­er­ful pres­ence and a vehi­cle to accom­plish your goals, pro­duce or design what­ever it is you desire.

Try it and you will dis­cover new ways of prob­lem solv­ing or cre­at­ing some­thing that does not exist.

It’s Not About The How, It’s About The Why!

It is bet­ter by noble bold­ness to run the risk of being sub­ject to half the evils we antic­i­pate than to remain in cow­ardly list­less­ness for fear of what might hap­pen. – Herodotus (485 — 425 BC)

Change the Rules

574



Time for a Game Change

Time for a Game Change

Think­ing Ver­ti­cally & Obtain­ing the Same Results?

Change the Game Rules

Albert Ein­stein wrote, “Insan­ity is doing the same thing over and over again and expect­ing dif­fer­ent results”. Admit­tedly, not the most bril­liant math­e­mati­cian, he began with the end in mind, hav­ing a hypoth­e­sis, Ein­stein wanted to prove a the­ory that came to him — the birth of an idea — by pure math­e­mat­i­cal means.

In order to accom­plish this ‘game chang­ing’ the­ory that super­seded a 200-​year-​old the­ory of mechan­ics elu­ci­dated by Isaac New­ton, Ein­stein sur­rounded him­self with the best inno­v­a­tive, pos­i­tive, math­e­mat­i­cal minds in academia.

Spe­cial Rel­a­tiv­ity and Gen­eral Rel­a­tiv­ity later to become known as The The­ory of Rel­a­tiv­ity, or Rel­a­tiv­ity took the Sci­en­tific Com­mu­nity mind-​set of the era by storm.

Inci­den­tally, Einstein’s teach­ers said he would never amount to any­thing. Now they are gone and he is famous.

The rest is his­tory: E=MC²

Think Hor­i­zon­tally

After all, fif­teen hun­dred years ago every­body knew the Earth was the cen­ter of the Uni­verse. Five hun­dred years ago, every­body knew the Earth was flat, and fif­teen min­utes ago, you knew what you know, ‘it is what it is’. Right? Wrong! Now think potentialities.

Imag­ine what you will know and expe­ri­ence tomorrow.

How to Move Forward

Now is time the time for a game change. Change what you know with new infor­ma­tion, act on it and every­thing else will change.

It is a belief sys­tem. Fate favours the bold. Act on faith and belief. Real­ity is per­cep­tion; change your per­cep­tion and every­thing else will change to reflect your new reality.

Ein­stein under­stood he could not do it alone, he needed help from other, bright-​accomplished minds — open to dif­fer­ent ways of think­ing — the key to success.

To put this into per­spec­tive, man was begin­ning pow­ered flight in 1905, when Sim­ple Rel­a­tiv­ity was pub­lished, long before space exploration.

Retain proven and accom­plished tal­ent to alter the sta­tus quo and profit from a new beginning.

Math­e­mat­i­cal Equa­tion For Success

A root of an equa­tion is a num­ber which sub­sti­tuted into the equa­tion instead of an unknown con­verts the equa­tion into an iden­tity. The root is said to sat­isfy the equa­tion. Solv­ing an equa­tion implies find­ing all of its roots.

An equa­tion that is always sat­is­fied, no mat­ter the choice of val­ues for its unknowns, is called an identity.

(a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2

Think out­side the box!

If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.“
 — High-​tech proverb

Best Talent

1


The 14 Virtues by Marcus Aurelius

Best of the Best

Retain­ing the Best

Inc. Mag­a­zine writer Keith Cline, Tal­ent Scout, reports on Decem­ber 19, 2011, the 5 hard­est Jobs to fill in 2012 are:

  1. Soft­ware Engi­neers and Web Developers
  2. Cre­ative Design and User Experience
  3. Prod­uct Management
  4. Mar­ket­ing
  5. Ana­lyt­ics

Hir­ing the best of the best is an absolute must if you are going to build a suc­cess­ful company.

You will need to be pre­pared to com­pete against big com­pa­nies with deep pock­ets and other up-​and-​coming star­tups that also have blue chip investors and a game-​changing idea.

So, what are the most com­pet­i­tive areas for tal­ent these days? Here’s a look:

Soft­ware Engi­neers & Web Developers

The demand for top-​tier engi­neer­ing tal­ent sharply out­weighs the sup­ply in almost every mar­ket espe­cially in San Fran­cisco, New York, and Boston. This is a major, major pain point and prob­lem that almost every com­pany is fac­ing, regard­less of the tech­nol­ogy “stack” their engi­neers are work­ing on.

Cre­ative Design & User Experience

After engi­neers, the biggest chal­lenge for com­pa­nies is find­ing high-​quality cre­ative design and user-​experience talent.

Since almost every com­pany is try­ing to cre­ate a highly com­pelling user expe­ri­ence that keeps peo­ple engaged with their prod­uct, it is tough to find peo­ple who have this type of expe­ri­ence (espe­cially with mobile devices includ­ing tablets) and a demon­strated track record of success.

Prod­uct Management

It is always help­ful for an early-​stage com­pany to hire some­one who has very rel­e­vant and spe­cific expe­ri­ence in your industry.

This is espe­cially true for prod­uct man­age­ment, since the per­son in this role will inter­face with cus­tomers and define the prod­uct strat­egy and use cases.

How­ever, be pre­pared, as it will be a chal­lenge to find peo­ple with expe­ri­ence in these high-​growth indus­tries: con­sumer web, e-​commerce, mobile, soft­ware as a ser­vice, and cloud computing.

Mar­ket­ing

I’m not talk­ing about old-​school mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Com­pa­nies are look­ing for expert online mar­keters who know how to cre­ate a buzz of inbound mar­ket­ing or viral traf­fic through the web, social media, and con­tent discovery.

Writ­ing a good press release just doesn’t cut it any­more, as every­one is look­ing for the savvy online mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sional who under­stands how the cur­rent state of the web oper­ates and knows how to make it work to their benefit.

Ana­lyt­ics

Since data is becom­ing more and more acces­si­ble, smart com­pa­nies are increas­ingly mak­ing deci­sions dri­ven by met­rics. Ana­lyt­ics is becom­ing a cen­tral hub across com­pa­nies where every­thing (web, mar­ket­ing, sales, oper­a­tions) is being mea­sured and each deci­sion is sup­ported by data.

Thus, we are see­ing a high level of demand for ana­lyt­ics and busi­ness intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­als who almost act like inter­nal con­sul­tants; they help deter­mine what should be mea­sured and then build out the capa­bil­ity for a company.

Tablets Rule

23
Tablets are Personal

Tablets are Personal



Tablets Rule The Evening Hours

In a recent arti­cle by Johanna Werther, Prod­uct Mar­ket­ing Man­ager, Google Mobile Ads, dated Sep­tem­ber 26, 2011, she writes.

Are you read­ing this post from your PC at work, from your mobile phone as you wait in line at a café or from your tablet at home before bed?

The screen a user chooses to engage with is largely dri­ven by con­text and users are match­ing their device type to their situation.

At Google Mobile Ads, we’re inter­ested in the way the pro­lif­er­a­tion of these screens is impact­ing user behav­ior, espe­cially search behav­ior. We looked sep­a­rately at searches from tablets, PCs and mobile devices.

The data show that dur­ing the work­day users are search­ing from their com­put­ers and they use smart­phones steadily through­out the day

with a lift dur­ing com­mute time and in the evening. Tablet usage spikes dra­mat­i­cally in the evening. While both tablets and mobile are portable devices that can be used in a vari­ety of places, this data points to the fact that tablets are used pri­mar­ily at home as “lean back” devices while sit­ting on the couch, whereas smart­phone devices may be used in a sim­i­lar way but are also used in the office and on-​the-​go through­out the day.

Cus­tomers pre­fer Tablets



If you’re an adver­tiser, you might be won­der­ing which is the best screen to reach your cus­tomers on.

The answer is: all of them. These screens are bet­ter together. Each screen fills a spe­cific need state con­sumers have for infor­ma­tion at dif­fer­ent, com­ple­men­tary points in the day.

Fail­ing to invest in any of these three dig­i­tal screens not only leaves the door open for com­peti­tors to engage with your cus­tomers, but also could mean a missed oppor­tu­nity for brand aware­ness and sales either on the device itself or through dri­ving poten­tial cus­tomers into your place of business.

Scan Codes

4


Emerald City Media QR Code

Emer­ald City Media Mobile QR Code

I need infor­ma­tion and I need it now!

Put QR Codes to work for your busi­ness. Be eas­ier to find and more prof­itable. Mobile cus­tomers will love the con­ve­nience, you will love the addi­tional business.

Dur­ing the month of June 2011, accord­ing to one study, 14 mil­lion mobile users scanned a QR code or a bar­code. Some 58% of those users scanned a QR or bar code from their home, while 39% scanned from retail stores; 53% of the 14 mil­lion users were men between the ages of 18 and 34.

Although the QR tech­nol­ogy is still new to North Amer­ica, mobile bar­code scan­ning was up over 4,500 per­cent com­par­ing Q1 2010 to Q1 2011. So far this year (as of Q3 2011), Scan­Life reports over 20 mil­lion bar­codes have been scanned world­wide, of which 60 per­cent were in the United States.

Rec­om­mended Mobile QR Scan Code Usage:

  1. Serve a busi­ness objec­tive to gen­er­ate leads, retain cus­tomers, drive traf­fic, etc.
  2. Add value for the user such as to save time, reduce cost, enhance expe­ri­ence, mobile-​friendly con­tent, etc.
  3. Pro­vide con­tex­tual assis­tance such as How-​To Steps, link to get a reader app, call-​to-​action, bar­code link or SMS alter­na­tive, etc.
  4. Test to ensure codes are scannable review­ing QR Code size, colour, light­ing, Wi-​Fi, etc. across dif­fer­ent read­ers and handsets.

Note: Some ear­lier cam­era phones like iPhone 3GS and Black­berry or any other brand for exam­ple, oper­at­ing with less than 3 MP res­o­lu­tion with out auto-​focus capa­bil­ity may not scan bar codes smaller than 1“x1”.

Where do I get a QR Code scanner?

Check with your man­u­fac­turer for appli­ca­tions such as Apple, Android and Black­berry. For best results keep your apps updated with the most cur­rent version.

© 2012 Emerald City Media - Design for Success | We are the agency for tomorrow. The future is already here.