For example, in a recent Harvard Business Review article, economists Gökçe Sargut and Rita Gunther McGrath claims that in the last thirty years, complexity has

[…] gone from something found mainly in large systems, such as cities, to something that affects almost everything we touch: the products we design, the jobs we do every day, and the organizations we oversee.
(Sargut & Gunther McGrath 2011: 70)

Complex does not, of course, just mean complicated. It involves the transition from chain to network, from separate to interconnected and interdependent systems. Business is then, to use the terminology of Karl Popper, not a clock anymore, it is a cloud.

It is apparent then, that the tried and trusted way of thinking about business does not work anymore. It is, essentially, broken. We need another way of approaching business problems, one that is more attuned to this complexity. Especially when we’re doing entrepreneurial things. (Yes, I know. Me too, I have a deep-rooted aversion towards the Entrepreneur with a capital E. Megalomaniac characters balancing between having great networking skills and sociopathy. Smug technophiles with the capacity for reflective thinking like that of a Giant Schnauzer. And so on. However. Contrary to popular belief, entrepreneurial ventures does not have to include this unsavoury figure.) Entrepreneurial in the sense of starting something, but also to reinvent or revolutionize an existing business – by for example launching new products, finding new markets, or changing organizational models. And it is in exactly this search for change, for revolution, that existing business models fail to perform in a world of uncertainty and intricacy. This is where another line of thinking is needed.

But what does work, then? What line of thinking can actually help navigating in an uncertain, fast, difficult world? A couple of years ago, design thinking claimed it was it. And I felt towards it in varying ways going through the same process I often do: (1) Infatuation (in this case fuelled by the efficient trick of the Common Enemy – taunting MBAs was very clever). (2) Followed by a growing sense of belonging to a club where less intelligent people sit around collecting buzz words as if they were stamps. (3) General hostility.

But, I’ve decided to be reasonable. I’m not convinced that a designer can come up with the solution to world starvation better than someone who actually knows something about it, simply by being seemingly magically creative. In fact, it is a bit too close to romanticism surrounding nature people. Another reason I’m not convinced is that I’ve been to design school, and every time we did a project that went farther than our actual field of competence, every idea we came up with was rather shitty.

But there are elements of design thinking that are better tools for dealing with clouds, rather than clocks. Better, that is, than the standard business school equipment.

Number one. Start using the whole of your brain.

That is, to approach business in the way that Roger Martin defines design thinking – as bringing together the best of analytic reasoning with the best of creative, emotional thinking.

Why this is needed to tackle complexity? Something the artist Dutch video artist Guido van der Werve told about what he has learnt from chess Grandmaster Leonid Yudasin might serve as an illustration. (I wrote about it once before.) The game of chess is, according to Yudasin, too complicated for a Grandmaster to learn all strategies and possible outcomes with his rational mind. Instead, they train their aesthetic sensibility; they look for what feels and looks “right” to them.

This part of the brain copes with those complex and quite mathematical chess problems much better than the rational part, in the Grandmasters’ experience. Clearly something that suggests that all ways of thinking should be represented when trying to solve business problems.

Number two. Stop being so bloody linear.

Iteration, constantly refining and retuning your idea throughout the design process, is of course another  feature that separates design thinking from traditional business thinking. This seems even more fruitful as an approach when the world seems difficult to predict and complex. And it is in entrepreneurial undertakings like discovering new products and offerings that the unpredictability and complexity is the biggest challenge.

But surprisingly often, the traditional business process, that starts with planning and then goes on to execution and then has a little feedback arrow meekly attempting to make itself heard in the end, is taken for granted. It is, however, rather hopeless when everything changes constantly, and inconsistently. Dust yourself off and try again. Again and again.

At least, that’s worth a try.

This autumn, I have been involved with something that is rather brilliant. ( I am allowed to say this without it being bragging, actually, since said brilliance is more other people’s than mine.) My company, business magazine Veckans Affärer, has joined forces with Resumé, the largest Swedish communication industry mag, and B2B agency Hilanders, to start a conversation. A conversation about where the industries that define Sweden (hard and heavy stuff like steel and paper) are heading, and what actually drives their growth in the 21th century.

This discussion, between the communication industry, top management in B2B coorporations, and the odd publicist, has been played out on – yes, yes, yes – all our platforms, of which the site b2bconversations.se might be the quickest one to access. (Or, if you’re one of those Facebook-is-the-new-Internet kind of people, well, here then.) It is in Swedish, so it’s not for everybody, but for Swedes, there is some quite interesting stuff in there.

And on the 7th December, the next step on this journey will be the B2B Conversations seminar, at the lovely Berns Salonger in central Stockholm. Big name speakers, a panel with a couple of communication people with very good resumés who will occasionally ring a funny bell of some sort (Yes, buying a funny bell is my responsibility. I haven’t yet gotten around to getting one, but whatever I choose, it will be spectacular.), oh yes, and wine. Stockholmers, I hope to see you there on the 7th. Do get in touch for discounted tickets, I’m sure I can get you some, but you have to act quickly – we close registration this week.

It was never quite like this, but I wish it would have been.

… sometime in the future … but this month, Crédit Lyonnais finally decided that enough was enough. After five years of non-activity – save the odd deposition to cover fees – their bloody-impossible-no-hope-customer algoritms have, correctly, identified me. They’re closing my account for me.

With some types of products and services, consumers are thought to be profoundly boring. Like with bank accounts. Either hyperrational assessors of offers or safety junkies, clinging to a brand because it feels like an institution stuffy enough to lack the imagination needed to do anything remotely risky.

Well, I had a bank account for five years after moving from France, because I liked to toy with the idea that I was back in Stockholm temporarily.

Also, I thought 1 euro per month plus the additional sporadic 27 euro fee (I could never figure out what that one was for, actually), was quite cheap for this pleasurable sensation of faux cosmopolitanism.

I’m not suggesting that this is the most common rationale for keeping a Crédit Lyonnais account. I’m not even suggesting that I’m not an utterly, utterly silly girl. But I think that there’s some kind of poetry in the power of humans to take the most prosaic of services, and just go crazy romanticizing it. And it should be taken into account when trying to figure out the intricacies of ‘consumer behaviour’. That is all.

(image flow from northia.tumblr.com)

1. A man explains how he put all his possessions online and sold basically everything, in order to live a “minimalist, digitally-centered life”. (Watch »)

Also, he seems terribly smug about it, probably in part due to the “Oooh! You are CRAZY!” tone of the presenter, who apparently came straight from year 2000 (“You’ve digitized ALL your music…?”). What this man’s done, obviously, is to take his bachelor’s pad to its extreme consequence, where he erases everything in it that can signify anything about him. Women (and gay men, see Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) are traditionally thought to be the family specialists in the symbolic language of consumer goods – knowing and appreciating what a pair of shoes or yellow walls say about you, compared to the traditional male stereotype who “don’t know what they want”, or “don’t care about how it/he looks”. Everytime someone gets attention in media for leading an ascetic, digital life, it’s a man – usually of the badly dressed, geeky internet start-up entrepreneur variety.

I’d say that escape from this difficulty is a part of the temptation to sell all your shirts (including, yes, the “Unidentified Robot t-shirt”).

But don’t think this is an easy way out, oh you worn-out ironic t-shirt wearers who roam the internet. Because if my research isn’t completely wrong, girls and better dressed men than you are quickly moving symbolic value online too, and you’ll be lost again. Look at this, for example:

2. An NYT article about Polyvore (read »)

It’s a year old, but it’s a good read. Polyvore, the site where you can appropriate designer clothes and other items by putting them together in image sets, has two million users, by the way, did you know? (In related news, Polyvore wants to make fashion more data-driven, which is yet another opportunity to ponder if one should do an Apple 1984-style uprising against the tyranny of the crowd, or try to find another level of creativity on top of the giant pile of user data. Let’s go with the latter, shall we.)

3. Janice Denegri-Knott on how we act on Ebay, among other things (read »)

I couldn’t find an original article that didn’t require uni access, but this second-hand account will do fine as an introduction to Denegri-Knott’s research on digital virtual consumption.

Any item seen and desired, but not yet decided on or affordable can be “placed” in this personalized area (the wishlist), achieving a liminal status where they are not yet owned by the would-be buyer, but neither are they not owned. Their digital virtual image remains in the “possession” of the individual providing pleasure as an item that when acquired will fulfill his/her wishes of the consumer. Although much focus has been on the economics of the “long tail” that such functions promote (where consumers consider goods well outside the most popular that physical retailers stock and display), the implications of such practices are that consumers are invited to seek out and want more and more obscure commodities and to promote these to each other as objects of desire.

From Janice Denegri-Knott & Mike Molesworth’s 2010 article “Concepts and practices of digital virtual consumption”.

OK, so I’m trying to make some kind of order in my mind, the first little step in writing my Master’s thesis. I just feel the need to get everything one can do online to engage with a brand down on one place, in a neat table. Just a fraction of these interest me right now, but it’s still good to see it all together. What glaringly obvious actions have I forgotten? (I will fill in more examples where possible, when I get around to it.)

(Yes, two examples from the world of Barbie. There could be more. I got a bit sucked in to the Barbie universe the other day, although it was all in the name of research so it wasn’t wasting time really, and discovered that both Barb and Ken are on Foursquare, too. He’s apparently rambling about all over America reminiscing (a little bit creepily) about when they were dating. Get over it, Ken.)

But YOU, my darlings, I’ve got some grand plans for you. You’ll spend your holidays reading clever stuff on communication, digital culture and futurology, going back to work enlightened and inspired. Someone has to do it. Why not start here:

1. A classic article
Grant McCracken: Culture and Consumption. A Theoretical Account of the Structure and Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods
Grant McCracken’s 1986 article on how cultural meaning moves in a consumer society. One of the best accounts I’ve ever read on how products, signs and style get their meaning, and why and how that meaning changes.

Read (PDF)

2. An interesting blog
Top Trends
Slightly silly name for a good blog by futurist Richard Watson, a man who advises organisations such as IBM, Coca-Cola, Nestlé and McDonald’s on the future. Which means that what he says is probably good enough for you, as well. Judging from his blog, mr W also seem to have the advantage of being a consultant on the future who’s actually reflective and, yes, rather nice. Instead of a raving mad technophile dressed like some horrible little man from your technical support department.

Read

3. Heavy stuff in a small book
Adam Arvidsson: Brands. Meaning and Value in Media Culture
I’m not a great fan of critical theory in general, but frankly often find its self-righteous accusations a bit of a detour. But if you as an advertising professional can stand a bit of Capitalist Conspiracy and a galloping sense of being Part of the Problem while reading, don’t miss out on Arvidsson’s clear and sharp history of adland trends and rhetoric, and his analysis of how brand value is created in the digital age. Very clever.

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