ChristianSarkar.com

I think it's a nice gesture that PBS is asking viewers for programming suggestions:

What would your prime time lineup look like? Would you emphasize news and public affairs programming over science and nature content? Would you make changes to existing shows? What kinds of new series and specials would you bring to the public airwaves?

When they meet in Palm Desert, CA, the executives should take a look at the suggestion, but I feel they should talk to themselves as well.

Why? Because there are serious limitations to heeding the Wisdom of the Crowd.

I blogged about Nick Carr's take on this subject a while back: "What crowds are good for is producing average results that are not subject to the biases and other quirks of human minds."

The PBS bigwigs have forgotten their mission. (Maybe not, since a lot of them are now Republicans; I have to confess, when I heard about that I was sure we were soon all going to be watching infomercials on PBS 24/7).

So let's remind them what public television stands for. What's the brand personality they need to be faithful to?

Seth Godin weighs in on this issue with a brilliant post about the purpose of the New York Times. Same deal for PBS.

So let's ask: What's important? What's true?

Big opportunity for big stories, PBS. Go where the corporate media can't go:

News, Education, and the Arts. And don't forget to add "Global Warming" as a new category.

PBS, you knew that once.

Look what happened to Ted Koppel and Nightline. Or David Brinkley's This Week. I'll Fly Away. That's commercial television. PBS, please don't go there.

One more thing: make sure every show is archived online for viewing over the Internet. All the way back to the very beginning of PBS (including Mr. Rodgers' Neighborhood). That would be a real public service. Heck, put 'em all on YouTube.

I'm a fan of customer feedback, but I'm a bigger fan of the customer experience.

Don't mess this up, PBS.

Posted by Christian at 6:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Tom Davenport has done it again. He's come up with a list of top business gurus in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal.

Using the same methodology he used in his book, Tom tells us that things have changed. These are the new Big Idea boys in business.

Why all boys? Because the business world still seems to be sexist? Or maybe the women thinkers aren't focusing on "selling" their ideas as much? Where's Dorothy Leonard-Barton? Or Tammy Erickson, for that matter?

The Times has its own list of business gurus.

Accenture still points to the 50 Gurus that Tom Davenport came up for them a few years ago.

God is in the details. The issue I have is that Tom and H.J. have not really taken into account how Google works. They're measuring quantity, not quality.

In terms of popularity, no one uses Lexis Nexis or the SSCI database, except for academics and librarians. So I've got to discount those two components of the guru index.

Let's get less academic and try to measure who's really getting attention. (By the way, Tom has a great book on that subject as well).

So to measure real-time popularity, here's what I propose: let's measure the influence network for each of these management gurus. Let's see how far their reach extends in the ecosystem they've built with their ideas. Let's look at who's linking to them. Let's look at their site traffic. Let's compare their ecosystem rankings. Let's take Google, Yahoo, and the blogs into account.

Stay tuned. We're going to have some fun using our ecosystem mapping tool.

Posted by Christian at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Inevitably, we want to compare this to Jobs' speech at Stanford.

I'm going to resist that temptation because I feel that Bill Gates has finally found a vision worthy of his (and Buffet's) billions. And the irony is he had to look outside Microsoft to get it. Well done, Melinda Gates!

'For what purpose?" he asks. Shouldn't our best minds be more dedicated to solving our worst problems? Poverty, Clean Water, Sexism... Gates nails it (except for global warming; I suppose he's left that to Al Gore).

My take: Harvard is failing us, as are our other institutions of higher learning, because they are not helping students develop an "informed conscience" as Gates calls it. Heck, they're not even helping students develop an "un-informed conscience"!

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

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The Steve Jobs story: follow your curiosity, not your curriculum!

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Interesting analyses. We are going to see many more such mergers.

India and China are buying up brands.

We are going to see many more such mergers. These are "learning-acquisitions."

Let's see what Tata can teach Jaguar, and vice-versa. Value-engineering? Haven't heard that terms since the 1980s...

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Go Al Go!

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Here's how Twitter helped Team Tibet follow the secret torch route as authorities tried to hide the Olympic flame's dash through San Francisco. It's nice to see Twitter being put to serious use as a real-time communication tool for its customers.

You can add your voice to the chorus here >>

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Bishop Tutu stands up and tells it...

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Because resource-rich Africa has been left out of the development plans of most Western companies, doesn't mean that Africa won't find a way to join the wave of globalization sweeping the world from Asia to Eastern Europe and South America.

So how will Africa do it? Through China and India.

This is a not good news for democracy:

In February 2007, Hu Jintao proudly announced the creation of a new special economic zone complete with the usual combination of export subsidies, tax breaks and investments in roads, railways and shipping. However, this special economic zone was in the heart of Africa—in the copper-mining belt of Zambia. China is transplanting its growth model into the African continent by building a series of industrial hubs linked by rail, road and shipping lanes to the rest of the world. Zambia will be home to China's "metals hub," providing the People's Republic with copper, cobalt, diamonds, tin and uranium. The second zone will be in Mauritius, providing China with a "trading hub" that will give 40 Chinese businesses preferential access to the 20-member state common market of east and southern Africa stretching from Libya to Zimbabwe, as well as access to the Indian ocean and south Asian markets. The third zone—a "shipping hub"—will probably be in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam. Nigeria, Liberia and the Cape Verde islands are competing for two other slots. In the same way that eastern Europe was changed by a competition to join the EU, we could see Africa transformed by the competition to attract Chinese investment.

As it creates these zones, Beijing is embarking on a building spree, criss-crossing the African continent with new roads and railways—investing far more than the old colonial powers ever did. Moreover, China's presence is changing the rules of economic development. The IMF and the World Bank used to drive the fear of God into government officials and elected leaders, but today they struggle to be listened to even by the poorest countries of Africa. The IMF spent years negotiating a transparency agreement with the Angolan government only to be told hours before the deal was due to be signed, in March 2004, that the authorities in Luanda were no longer interested in the money: they had secured a $2bn soft loan from China. This tale has been repeated across the continent—from Chad to Nigeria, Sudan to Algeria, Ethiopia and Uganda to Zimbabwe.

Read more here >>

Africa's "imperialism challenges" will now come from the East.

Pranab Mukherjee, India's Minister of External Affairs, talks a good game.

So why all the fuss over Africa? And why now?

Do China and India really care about African development?

Or is it the news that Africa is the new oil frontier.

Apparently Africa will account for 12% of global oil supplies in the next few years. And that's not counting other mineral riches...

Don't be too eager, Africa. Trust, but verify - as someone once said. And heed this African saying: If a little tree grows in the shade of a larger tree, it will die small. But if a little tree stands side by side with a larger tree, you have the start of a forest.

Posted by Christian at 7:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

see this >>

Stop Bush's Forest Giveaway

Idaho contains more unspoiled wild forest than any state outside Alaska, providing the last intact forest habitat for countless fish, wildlife, and plant species. These areas are enjoyed by hunters, anglers, hikers, and all who treasure the backcountry. Yet the Bush administration is making a play in its last days to hand this natural gem over to its friends in the oil, natural gas, timber, and mining industries by weakening the Roadless Area Conservation Rule protections that currently guard it.

The administration's proposal will open the door to logging millions of pristine acres, risk dangerous toxic contamination from mining, degrade clean fish-bearing streams and important wildlife habitat, and fail to live up to the public's overwhelming desire to protect all of these areas for future generations.

This forest giveaway could lead to 545 million tons of phosphate being mined on nearly 8,000 unspoiled acres near Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Any increase in phosphate mining would worsen the already serious problem of selenium poisoning in local streams and aquifers. Selenium is an extremely dangerous contaminant known to cause birth defects, which bio-accumulates in the food web -- persisting for centuries after entering the environment.

Six million acres of wild forest or a toxic waste dump? The choice should be clear to any American who values our natural treasures and takes their responsibility to future generations seriously.

Stand up for this glorious and irreplaceable wild forest! Let the Bush administration know that you are against removing Roadless Rule protections for the forests of Idaho. And hurry! The administration is only accepting public comments until April 7th.

Go deh >>

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in case you wondered why these "Tibetan monks" were so violent in Lhasa....

Posted by Christian at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A positive story (for a change) from NPR Morning Edition:

Mugger robs man.

Man offers mugger his coat and free meal.

Mugger goes to dinner with Man.

Read all about it >>

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David "Dread" Hinds (Steel Pulse), Sly & Robbie, Aswad, Ini Kamoze and Dennis Brown... mash it!

And here's the original version by Robert Nesta:

Get Up, Stand Up!

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From the NYTimes >>

"Rising prices and a growing fear of scarcity have prompted some of the world’s largest rice producers to announce drastic limits on the amount of rice they export."

And The Economist >>

I remember when Indira Gandhi was kicked out of office when the price of onions got too high. And rice is the staple food of most of Asia... It's all about the price of rice.

And then there's Marie Antoinette who, it turns out, did not say: "Qu’ils mangent de la brioche" (let 'em eat cake)...

Posted by Christian at 9:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

More fun facts:

The average American produces about 20 tons of the major greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) every year. That might sound like a lot — and Americans do have among the biggest carbon footprints in the world — but the entire world emits around 27 billion tons of CO2 each year, through transportation, electricity use, deforestation.

So now we have Earth Hour.

Let's rearrange the deck chairs...

Posted by Christian at 7:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Economist story Welcome to the Olympics states:

"Resenting criticism of its handling of unrest in Tibet, China wages a gruesome propaganda offensive..."

"Meng Jianzhu, China's most senior police official, also toured Lhasa on March 23rd and 24th. His words were not encouraging. Monasteries, he said, should step up “patriotic education”—ie, a much resented government-led campaign that requires monks to state their rejection of the Dalai Lama, who is hugely revered in Tibet."

Patriotic Education? Sounds a bit like our Republicans...

Nice.

Read this report as well: "Trashing the Beijing Road"

Posted by Christian at 7:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here are three stories I came across in the last week or so:

1. Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace - "The Chinook salmon that swim upstream to spawn in the fall, the most robust run in the Sacramento River, have disappeared. The almost complete collapse of the richest and most dependable source of Chinook salmon south of Alaska left gloomy fisheries experts struggling for reliable explanations — and coming up dry."

Here's my explanation. Apparently this kind of thing happens up and down the Pacific coast of California.

2. Why are thousands of bats dying in New York? - "Bats in New York and Vermont are mysteriously dying off by the thousands, often with a white ring of fungus around their noses, and scient ists in hazmat suits are crawling into dank caves to find out why."

3. Massive ice shelf collapsing off Antarctica - "Scientists are citing 'rapid climate change in a fast-warming region of Antarctica' as the cause of an initial collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. The damage got started at the end of February when an iceberg dropped off and triggered the "runaway disintegration" of a 160-square-mile portion of the 5,282-square-mile shelf."

Why is it that we're still sitting here doing nothing?

I'm amazed at companies like Exxon Mobil - they still try to shirk their responsibility for the damage they cause...

And here's a story about the Japanese whalers - they're ready to kill Moby Dick!

Wait, there's more >>

Please pass the popcorn.

Posted by Christian at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

When I was a kid in India, one of the fondest memories I have is of a family vacation in the foothills of the Himalayas - eating at a tiny Tibetan roadside dhaba, being fed tons of cho-cho-momo and heaping piles of noodles. The food was great, but what struck me was the poor Indian peasant family sitting across from me eating their fill as well. Why? because the food was so cheap and so good that everyone could afford to eat well. I've never forgotten that day.

The family that ran the dhaba were refugees from Tibet, and I was fascinated by the store, the food, and the way they used an abacus to add up the transactions as they happened. That day I became a believer in a free Tibet.

I wrote earlier about China's country branding issues and the upcoming Olympics.

I've also written about how to measure democracy with the "Journalists-in-Jail Index."

And now we have pictures of the Chinese government beating up on Tibetans splashed across the pages of every major newspaper and magazine.

And don't forget YouTube:

Here we go again.

This time Chinese officials are blaming the Dalai Lama for the violence. Give me a break. They've even got an army of bloggers and hackers working the media sites posting "pro-chinese" accounts all over the place.

Bush, of course, is silent. He knows that China's in Tibet for the uranium.

I get a feeling the sponsors of the Olympics are in for a rough ride. Here are the brands which stand to get a black eye:

Coca-Cola
McDonalds
General Electric
Visa
Johnson and Johnson
Kodak
Samsung
Panasonic
Atos Origin
Lenovo
ManuLife
Omega

And let's not forget the Olympic brand itself. This could do it in completely!

Stay tuned and sign a petition>>

UPDATE: More video >>

Posted by Christian at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been following Ricardo Semler for many years now.

In 1993, in a fit of madness I slipped a copy of Maverick into the hands of Riley Bechtel - thinking as I did at the time, that this is the only way to get Bechtel to re-engineer itself. Of course I was a little too naive...

Today I don't think I could work at Semco because I'd rather work for myself. But if I had to get a corporate job again (heaven forbid) I'd choose Semco.

Question: when are they opening a "Semco-proper" office in the US? You can check Semco's company history here.

Anyway, the revolution has happened and it was televised. Here's what to expect:

And definitely check this out >> (Journeyman Pictures doesn't understand YouTube - hence the "Embedding disabled by request")

Open-capitalism is thriving at Semco, and one of these days, it will show up in your industry. What strikes me though is the fact that this model can be used in non-profits, in government (are you listening, Barack Obama?) and even in the fields without hope - like education. Apparently Bill Gates' foundation is keeping close tabs on Semler's schooling experiment.

Posted by Christian at 1:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From GE to Target, from IBM to Best Buy, companies of all stripes and sizes are struggling to quantify the effects of Web 2.0 on their companies. What are the blogs saying? Are they positive or negative? What's happening on Second Life? Where are our customers congregating? Who are the influencers in the marketspace?

The result of this anxiety is a new booming business in "marketspace analytics"—companies that profess to track your brand over time and alert you to news (bad or good) in real time.

Given some of the new findings about buzz in the blogosphere (positive online buzz for cars and trucks doesn't necessarily translate to volume sales) you have to ask, are they wasting their time?

My take on this is somewhat biased. I view all of these brand monitoring products as the online equivalent of the traditional press-clipping tracking function the PR companies used to cling to as a way to justify their existence.

That said, online brand building is a critical competence for today's marketer. What matters is not online buzz which is a temporary spike in attention, but what that buzz does to your position in your online ecosystem.

Your competitive position in your ecosystem determines your destiny:

• How do you and your competitors compare in terms of return on marketing investments and relative share of the ecosystem?
• How are the leaders making money, and what is their approach in the ecosystem?
• What is the full potential of your business position in the ecosystem?
• How big is your marketspace—the size of the ecosystem you want to compete in?
• Which parts of the ecosystem are growing fastest?
• Where are you gaining or losing share in the ecosystem or sub-ecosystems you compete in?
• What capabilities are creating a competitive advantage for you in the ecosystem?
• Which capabilities need to be strengthened or acquired to help you compete in the ecosystem?

Because we couldn't find anything to help us with these questions, we decided to build it ourselves. That's how Ecosystema came into existence:

(i) to help measure a company's position in the ecosystem(s) it competes in, and
(ii) to help improve that position in the marketspace over time

Now let's check out some of the competing brand monitoring vendors:

Biz360: provides customer opinion measurement from thousands of expert and consumer product review websites, shopping sites, blogs and message boards

Cymfony: rated highly by the tech analysts, they claim to "quantify your amount of coverage as well as get expert qualitative interpretation of how effectively your message is being picked up in traditional and social media."

Skygrid: a search tool that sifts through hundreds of web and mainstream media to show you just one thing: whether the balance of the news on a public company is good or bad, and how the “mood” is changing.

BrandIntel: collects, processes and analyzes online consumer content and applies human analysis to the results in context.

Factiva: monitors your competitors, customers, and industry, with in-depth research and company financial data reports.

MotiveQuest: "sees" the "peaks of passion" in online conversations to understand customer motivations. Again, a combination of proprietary software and human analysts to explore what drives customer behavior.

Nielsen Buzzmetrics: measures consumer-generated media to help companies understand consumer needs, reactions and issues. They use a data-warehouse approach to index customer sentiment.

Scout Labs: allows users to track brands and reactions to those brands. In essence, the company helps companies make sense of positive and negative brand sentiment in blogs, user generated videos, and images.

Umbria: analyzes social media—including blogs, message boards, Usenet, and product review sites. Umbria also adds human insights to their data reports.

And there you have it, all variations on the press-clipping theme.

And unfortunately most companies (including the ones above) don't get it.

It's not about tracking buzz, it's about starting a conversation.

Seth Godin gets it.

Posted by Christian at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hat tip to Steel Pulse!

Posted by Christian at 7:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Positive online buzz for cars and trucks doesn't necessarily translate to volume sales, period.

Here's the story in AdAge: "What Web Buzz Does for Car Sales: Not Much"

Turns out that BrandIntel has been monitoring 450,000 comments over the past year. Comments made by "enthusiasts" in consumer discussion forums on auto-information sites such as Edmunds.com, newspaper and magazine sites, and blogs.

Let's look at the print/paper analogy. This is the equivalent counting the number of press-clippings in the trade mags. As a measure of PR efficacy of getting stories published, it worked great. As an indicator of sales, it didn't.

What matters in print and online is the credibility of the messenger and the size of the audience. A story in Rupert Murdoch's WSJ or the NY Times may have a dramatic impact compared to the same story in your local rag.

Online, credibility and audience-size still matter, but so does findability. How easy is the story to find? Does it come up high in Google and to a lesser extent Yahoo? If there is buzz, is the buzz on a hub or a backwater site? Is it getting attention or play through links from other noteworthy sites?

How does one measure that? There is a way - ecosystem relevance - which measures the position and rank of a site within its industry/category ecosystem.

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