The 'S' shaped shift and the gay marriage aceptance in USA

A recent article from the New York Times shows that the American opinion on gay marriage has turned favourable recently with a slight increase on the speed of change in the last 3 years.

This increase of change is common in such progressive changes, happening in a S-shaped rhythm. A similar phenomenon occurred in Portugal on the topic of violence over children back in the 80's. Before it was common for parents and teachers to use violence as a consistent method of education.

This S-shaped phenomenon means that there are some early adopters that slowly show a different opinion from the mainstream. At a certain point, the entire society starts changing at a very high rate, until it slows down as a few late adopters insist on maintaining their old habits. This is what happens usually, obviously with exceptions. In some cases, inversions are normal.

What is odd about the case presented in the article about gay marriage in USA, is that the S only took shape around 50%. Usually this happens somewhat between 10% and 30%.

I see two logic explanations for this difference. The first is about the specificity on the thematic, which afects directly more than 10% of the population that has a lot to gain with this aceptance.

The second and most significant is the size of the USA, and the diferences between liberal and conservative states. If such a study had been made in each state independently we would certainly observe the S shape begining at 20% or 30%. Also, if we look at states individually some of them would have a very high rate of acceptance, where others oppose strongly.

This happens because making oppinions is a social experience, and although we all like to think that we make our own oppinions, someone who doesn't take other's oppinions in consideration can't be considered healthy.

Better means of communication improve and acelerate this social process of changing oppinions. Internet allows constant and intensive communication between citizens from different states and countries. This adds steepness to the S-shape, making it happen in lesser time.

Workshop "Automobile Sector in 2020"

Yesterday I gave my first Future Studies Workshop.

This project started by a request made by Innov-XXI, a portuguese company developing a Roadster, Asterio.

This event had also the suport from Beta-I, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Association, and WouldSteps, CoolHunting Association.

Using a process based in Manoa, the output of this Workshop were 4 Scenarios for the sector in 2020:

- Car as a Toy. With development of Economy and Public transports worldwide, most cars are bought for fun. They are very different from each other, consumers know a lot about them, including engineering. The consumer is part of the design and building process. High taxes for cars, oil, parking, highways and cities. Before buying the car, the driver makes a first test drive trough the Playstation.

- Car for Use. For most families, the car is a deep need, but resources rocket and it's hard to buy and keep a car. Consumers are very informed, trough the web about caracteristics and services but not mechanics. Fewer brands worldwide, and personalization is inexisting. Sharing, and renting plans are common. Hibrid cars with plug in are very popular.

- Caos. Oil price is very volatile and lobbies from diferent energy sources make lots of pressure and live in constant conflits. Consumers know a lot about mechanics and make adaptations from one energy source to the other. Taxes and subsidies achieve a very complex dimension.

- Kitt. New cars are mostly eletric, very high-tech and some drive by themselves. The driver never pops the engine, which is sold as a close piece, and knows nothing about the technology. Everything is automatic, like the door that opens when the driver is near, and every information appears to the driver by sms or Augmented Reality. Cars are bought trough the internet, and dealerships disapear. Using Nanotechnology, the exterior can change it's collour according to the driver request.

Thank you to all the participants that were involved.

Full Report

Economic Crisis may be Over

If we could trust economic agents to be rational, it would be fair to say that the economic crisis would end now, with a strong cameback.

America's economy is starting to grow steadly, slow but steadly. The Chinese economy also shows signs of healthy grow. Europe still shows fragilities, like the Portuguese and Spain Economies, but the aid capacity is larger than the risk. Whether EU and FMI came to the rescue of Iberian Economies or not, they are not a risk for EU and the global economy.

This means that the risks are controlled. It also means that the possibilities for growth are really strong.

In this reality, stock-brokers should start buying, and companies should start hiring and investing in acquisitions.

On the other hand, gold has raised too much and might go down, as investors sell gold to buy stocks.

Soros, one of the world top investors has already claimed that this is the moment to sell gold and invest in health and biotechnology. He goes further saying that gold is the last bubble.

But we know that agents are not rational, and the insecurity raised since 2007, made investor more cautious. Maybe too cautious.

Is it possible that we all remain frozen in panic waiting for someone else to start investing?

Disengagement

Some people have the determined idea that younger generations are worse than older generations. Others have the opposite idea. I see myself in this second group.
Nonetheless, this trend, disengagement, tries to resume what younger generations are loosing in terms of personal relations.
By this expression, I mean that younger generations might have less capacity for engagement, which is different than commitment.
It’s easier to understand the meaning of engagement if we think about conflicts. The person who is getting involved in a certain type of battle is engaging.
In a personal relation it’s possible to have commitment without engagement. For example, in a love relation it’s only natural that someone is committed to the relation as long as the other person acts under a certain way, like being faithful. This means that he is fully committed, but not totally engaged.
An example for the extreme of engagement would be someone who knows is being cheated, or even a victim of domestic violence, but still, holds to that relation with every possible effort. Like everything else, the extreme of engagement is bad.
But the opposite is not necessarily better. If our standards for friendship are so high that no one can comply, than it becomes impossible to have long lasting relations.
This concept can be applied to a much wider field than personal relations. It can also be applied to studies, work or a sport.
A top student who is giving a great effort into his studies may change his behavior dramatically when he finds some kind of contradiction like a severe teacher or being in a class where other students are smarter than he is.
What this tell us about future generations, is that they will search for commitments in order to feel like part of something, but it’s becoming ever more increasingly hard to resist to contradiction.
This might mean that we are loosing our capacity to deal with frustration and contradiction.

Maturity in Social Networks

In this particular post, by Social Networks I mean every technology oriented for communicating, including chats, blogs, micro-blogging, comunities and specifically social networks.

All of those tend to have a boom period, when is fashion and cool and everybody wants to give a try. This boom period can be longer or shorter according to the experience it provides to the users. The more complete that experience is, the longer it lasts. This is why Facebook had such a long boom period.

But, sooner or later, they all reach maturity, and a lot of users, abandon it, by shutting down, deleting, or just forgetting about it.

In the boom period, the tipycal user is young, and somewhat of a social geek. On the other hand, after reaching maturity the tipical user is older, with a selective and more professional profile.

A good example for this pattern, would be Twitter. Most teenagers had a twitter account sometime, but found it hard to keep track or a visiting routine. Now most twitters are older, with professional motives.

For everyone who is trying to create the next Big thing, this pattern means a great problem. In order to make it popular and be successful social networks have to be thanked for teenagers, but in order to be sustainable it has to have real advantages for grown-ups.

During the 90’s when someone wanted to look into the future of technologies it was common to look at teenagers. It was assumed that what was being done by teens, would later be done by everyone. But nowadays, we understand that teens can not be a reference for the rest of the society as they are mostly driven by excitement, not utility. If we want to understand the future of a certain technology we should look at 35 year old women, who usually can use technologies, but won’t do it just for curiosity. They will use it, when the utility of a certain technology outcomes the difficulty to use it.

Hire out of the box

Nowadays, Innovation is finally receiving the attention it deserves, and most people agree that Innovation is important. But when it comes to it, are we really up for it?

It’s not unusual to see someone doing things the same way he always did, and expecting different results.

One way to test the readiness to innovate is by evaluating the Hiring Procedure. By observing how a certain person or entity hires, we know if they are ready to innovate and if they will indeed innovate.

It’s not about age, or about a radical look. Nothing tells us that a teenager with blue hair will innovate more than 60 year old person with grey hair.

What must be seen is the relation between the mind-set carved by experience and the mission at hand.

If we hire someone who is a specialist at a certain task, innovation is not likely to happen. If that specialist comes from a more modern enterprise, it might bring the old-fashioned one half-way, but it will hardly bring it ahead. At the limit, it can innovate by aggregating competences from both companies.

If you really want to innovate and overcome competition, then you must hire out of that specific market, finding someone who doesn’t have the orthodoxies from your industry, but excels at the skills you want to introduce.

A good example for this paradox is Hospital Service Management. When asking most people who they would hire to run the hospital Service, usually the answer is something like Hospital Manager. Of course, someone like this won’t worry about the operational part, leaving it to the doctors, but won’t innovate as well. He will just focus on managing the money, operating logistics, and hardly anything else.

Instead, if you want to innovate in the service of the hospital, the right person to hire would be a manager from a 5 star hotel. Such a manager, wouldn’t concern about operational procedures, but would be extremely demanding in anything related to service, costumer care and professional-patient relation. His service standards are so high that he wouldn’t even had to be concerned to innovate. His mind set would only be to implement what he considers to be acceptable, and he would still innovate much more than any field expert.

So If your organization wants to innovate, it’s not enough to think out of the box. You have to hire out of the box.

Technologic integration – Myth or Reality

There has been some discussion whether technologic integration is an urban myth or reality.

Usually consumers are always expecting integration. Will facebook integrate with google? Mobile with computers? Wikipedia with Forums?
On the other hand, innovation brings us new disrupting concepts constantly that are not integrated with existing technology.

My previous post, explains the difference between patterns and trends, and this should help us better understand this dilemma of integration.
If we look at integration as a trend, we really can’t get nowhere. Are technologies more integrated today than they were five years ago? I can’t answer this question correctly and I doubt that anyone can. The problem is that we don’t have a way to measure integration.

Instead, if we look at patterns, the answer becomes much more clearly. Whenever there are new disruptive concepts or technology they are usually disintegrated from the existing ones. It makes only sense, that the settled players are not negotiating with the new arising players.

But once that new technologies or players are settled and they find their space close to the consumer, then all the others want to integrate.

So there is a clear pattern. When something new appears it’s disintegrated, and over time it tends to integrate. This doesn’t answer if the future will present us with more integration or disintegration, but it tells us that what today is disintegrated will be integrated in the future.

So if innovation keeps growing there will be more disintegration, but if innovation slows down, than integration will occur.