I read something today that made me take pause. It mentioned that in the early days of the internet, hen chat rooms were prevalent, you would tell people you were taking a break and would be back soon.

It was announced when you wouldn’t be there, because you had to literally sit at a computer to chat. Nowadays, we don’t need to do that as we are always on and always connected.

Until I read that post it didn’t occur to me how true that is. We can be at work, home, the beach and still be connected.

This is a topic touched on quite a bit and I have been intrigued by it for some time. When we are younger we can go to work and then home. They are separate entities. I had a job working at Pizza Hut as a teen. I can recall not once did I get home thinking about work or responding to emails. ( I did love it though, as I’m a huge pizza fan).

One result of that job was that I didn’t learn the lesson that sometimes work does need to be done at home or after hours. And now, as a professional, I struggle to figure out a balance to it all.

I had a CEO tell me one time that work and life are actually a blend.

There will typically not be a true balance, but both bleed into each other. As a father I find myself on my phone too much at home. Sometimes it’s work and sometimes not.

The blend idea teaches that the most important thing is to be present in the moment. It will pay dividends in the long run.

Being present may be the most important lesson I have learned on this topic.

And perhaps if we, as a society, put it in practice then work-life balance would not be such an issue.

I don’t believe there is one simple solution, but that would be good start.

Image credit: Laura LaRose

I really enjoy the oddball columns in the New York Times, especially considering how depressing the news is these day.

There is a feature called Metropolitan Diary where people write short accounts of things that happen to them in their everyday life in the city.

A few days ago John Cunningham wrote about seeing celebrities daily during his lunch time.

His co-workers didn’t believe him, because they didn’t see any.

One day Tracey joined him to see if it was true. They walked to the corner and he asked if she had seen any yet.

She said no.

So he asked the guy standing next to her if he could shake his hand.

It was Henry Winkler.

Tracey didn’t see him, because she wasn’t paying attention — not mindful in today’s lingo.

I had a habit of looking into the face of every person who walked by me or stood next to me on the street, something that maybe most people did not do.

All this happened in 1988.

Before smartphones, before iPods, before all the distractions of our digital age.

I hope you remember this the next time you find yourself staring at your phone, instead of noticing the world through which you are moving.

Who knows who you might see or what adventures await you if you only notice.

Image credit: Skinny Casual Lover

My wired friends (which is 90% of them) rag me for my resistance to being wired and periodic rants about privacy, which is so last century.

They tell me that it all makes life better; I tell them what they are full of.

Two recent pieces of information gave me great ammunition to refute their “makes it better” claim.

The first involves Reddit and its creep factor (it could just as easily be Pinterest, Instagram or Tumblr).

Reddit has come under fire for harboring a forum that encourages people to covertly photograph women on the street and upload the images to the site for others to ogle and comment on.

Posted anonymously, of course.

And, of course, those who posted the objectionable pictures, often of underage girls, were extremely upset when they were outed.

These actions, in turn, prompted an outcry from those who felt that they should be able to retain their own anonymity while posting photographs of women without their consent.

Reddit uses the ever popular “Freedom of Speech” defense for not doing anything, but, as Zeynep Tufekci, a professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill says it doesn’t qualify.

“…those running Reddit are twisting the logic behind that notion because the free speech referenced in this case refers to images of women, often underage girls, taken without their consent, and passed around for pleasure.”

I’m glad I’m beyond the age anyone would bother with my picture.

90% of the 90% mentioned earlier own iPhones, on which they tend to wax lyrical with little to no provocation and immediately upgrade when a new version is launched.

So when I read the Slate article about the new iPhone 5’s default tracking function I gleefully sent it on.

You weren’t imagining things. Apple’s new iOS 6 does, indeed, come with a default setting that tracks your activity, gathering a constant stream of personal data. Apple’s advertising arm, iAd, uses that data to create a targeted, personal ad campaign based on your recent Googling…

The tracking function isn’t just on the iPhone 5, but applies to anything that uses iOS6, like the iPod touch or iPad.

But at least Apple provides a way to turn the feature off (instructions in the article).

If having your cellphone track everything you do in order to send you targeted ads is supposed to improve life then I prefer my life to remain unimproved.

My friends and I will continue to disagree, but I can honestly say I am one happy dinosaur.

Flickr image credit: InfoMofo

By Wes Ball. Wes is a strategic innovation consultant and author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success (Westlyn Publishing, 2008) and writes for Leadership turn every Tuesday. See all his posts here. Wes can be reached at www.theballgroup.com.

Why can’t every innovation be “disruptive?”  Why can’t more companies come up with disruptive innovations?  And why is it that many innovations that are disruptive only lay the groundwork for another  competitor to take control and become the leading innovator?

I believe the answer is in the focus we place upon innovation.

All useful innovation starts with an idea that addresses an unmet functional need.  Without that initiative, the idea will have little value to customers.  “Good” innovations also create future growth potential by pointing the way to a “thread” of future innovations — a logical progression of innovations that build upon and improve the original innovation.  Those that change the way much of an industry works are considered to be “disruptive.”  But the most desirable innovations also allow the original innovator to maintain control over the innovation “thread,” rather than just creating opportunities for many other competitors, who may take control and become the leading future innovator. Maintaining control ensures the innovation thread will be sustainable for the original innovator.

Harley-Davidson was able to achieve this—until recently, no other competitor was able to overcome the hold H-D had on customer aspirations.

Apple may have with its iPod and iPhone.  In fact, Apple seems to be making its innovation thread expand to encompass its entire product line with new products like the MacBook Air that share many of the characteristics of both the iPhone and the iPod.

BMW and Mercedes have been able to do this, as well.

In fact, most companies I refer to as Alpha companies do this to some extent, although most could do it even better.

We are talking about much more than functional innovation or branding or advertising or new distribution models or any of the typical things innovators might think to use to expand attractiveness and build loyalty and longevity to their innovation threads.  We are talking about things that go beyond the traditional factors addressed in innovation, yet create significant and dramatic shifts in loyalty, aspiration to purchase, and willingness to pay more to own.

Almost any smart group of people can come up with a potentially disruptive idea that addresses unmet functional needs.  Customers are certainly under-satisfied in most categories.  The key is in understanding how to make that innovation yours, and not something others can improve upon, taking the lad away from you.

Here’s the problem:  innovation is almost always too focused upon functionality, price, and delivery of benefits rather than the real core factors that create long-term, sustainable success.

What if Apple had decided to introduce the iPod in a traditional way, using functional performance as the sole innovation criteria?  It still would have been new.  It still would have made getting and listening to music easier and more “personal.” It still would have had iTunes.  It still would have been a breakthrough that changed the way people buy and listen to music.  It still would have made Apple the initial leader, but almost any competitor could have come out with a cheaper and perhaps better performing product that would have put Apple on the defensive. And isn’t that what we see happening to too many “good” ideas?

Luckily, Apple did not stop there.  It also made its product with visual and tactile appeal — a seemingly superfluous addition, but the key to generating ego-satisfaction: the real key to sustainability. With those ego-satisfaction factors, it has been able to hold off numerous attacks and charge significantly more.

The “intelligent” cell phone is another great example.  Blackberry was really the disruptive leader.  Apple, however, “improved” upon it with ego-satisfaction factors that gave them the real leading position.  They now have the opportunity to control the innovation thread from this point forward, IF they protect what got them there.  The iPhone’s functionality was different, but not really “better” than that of the Blackberry.  It just appealed to the ego-satisfaction side better and more fully that RIMM’s Blackberry product did.  Now Blackberry, the original innovation leader, is on the defensive.

Alpha learning shows that disruptive innovation is only of value to the originating innovator, if ego-satisfaction becomes part of what is “proven” by the functionality of the disruptive innovation.

Every human needs three sets of things: physical minimums (safety/security), a sense of being cared for and valued (affection), and a purpose for being.  For purposes of innovation, the Alpha model breaks them into Function, Self-satisfaction, and Personal significance.  The reality of life is that humans cannot fulfill the satisfaction and significance elements easily, because they are typically based upon how they feel about their interactions with other people.

By understanding and focusing upon fulfillment of emotional satisfaction and personal significance, however, once functional performance has reached at least the minimum level required, the Alpha innovator dramatically magnifies the impact and value of innovation.

The result?  Control and dominance over the future thread of innovation.  After all, what good would be a disruptive innovation that just gets taken over by a competitor?

Don’t misunderstand:  this is not suggesting that functional innovation is a waste of investment.  You cannot create sustainable innovation by only addressing ego-satisfaction.  It is just the way you dramatically enhance whatever innovation you create.  It is also the way to filter ideas to make sure they will be sustainable, whether they are truly disruptive or not.

Almost all of the disruptive innovations we can think of are most obviously functional innovations.  But the innovations that will really make your company’s future (and do it at the lowest initial and on-going investment) will come from adding the ego-satisfaction element to them.  Such innovation is truly disruptive, because it changes everything in your favor, while competitors wonder what happened.  In fact, in most cases, competitors are caught flat-footed for months, because they can’t understand what you even did to create such successful change.  They are looking at the functionality but miss the ego-satisfaction elements as the really critical ones.

It also doesn’t just create a new functional solution that everyone can copy or improve upon.  It creates a highly-defensible platform from which you can control much or all of your category, while competitors scramble to even come in second.

Image credit: Flo_Evans  CC license