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.

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.

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

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

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...

Go Al Go!

You can add your voice to the chorus here >>

Bishop Tutu stands up and tells it...

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.

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 >>

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

Mugger robs man.

Man offers mugger his coat and free meal.

Mugger goes to dinner with Man.

Read all about it >>

And here's the original version by Robert Nesta:

Get Up, Stand Up!

"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)...

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...