I never considered myself to be a writer and, as a publishing CEO, I tried my best to avoid any creative aspirations I might have had. When management sticks its nose into the creative side of the business it always creates problems. Nevertheless, in 2009, with Ukraine heading down a dark path, I found myself writing essays in LinkedIn groups to draw traffic to my profile.
Much to my surprise, I soon began receiving private messages from people who wanted to let me know how much they liked what I wrote. At first, I thought they were nuts! But the messages kept coming and so I kept writing. A few weeks later, Digital Tonto was born and it turns seven years old this week.
Over the years, the site has built a strong following and I’ve become a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review and Forbes. Last month, I took the next step and signed my first publishing contract for a book that will come out next spring. It’s been a wild ride and a wonderful journey. To celebrate, here are some my favorite posts from the last seven years.
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For a long time, marketing was driven by taglines—short, evocative slogans that captured the essence of a brand’s message. Nike encouraged us to “Just Do It,” while Apple inspired us to “Think Different.” Miller Lite simply had to say, “Tastes great, less filling” and product flew off the shelves.
Taglines worked because they cut through the clutter and stood out in a sea of brands vying for our attention. Marketers needed to project images that were compact, but meaningful or risk getting lost in the mix. Yet it is no longer enough to merely grab attention. Marketers now need to hold attention.
Today, when consumers take notice of a brand, they are less likely to run to a store and more likely to jump on the Internet, where their digital activity can be retargeted by competitors. We need to shift from crafting messages to creating experiences. Brands can no longer rely on slogans and jingles, but must learn to tell stories. Here are four rules you need to know:
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In 1952, Remington Rand’s UNIVAC computer debuted on CBS to forecast the 1952 election as early results came in. By 8:30, the “electronic brain” was predicting a landslide, with Eisenhower taking 438 electoral votes to Stevenson’s 93. The CBS brass scoffed at the unlikely result, but by the end of the night UNIVAC proved to be uncannily accurate.
It was that night that the era of digital computing truly began and it was a big blow to IBM, the leader in punch card calculators at the time. It’s Research division, however, was already working on more advanced digital technology. In 1964, it launched its System 360 and dominated the industry for the next two decades.
Today, we’ve reached a similar inflection point. Moore’s law, the paradigm which has driven computing for half a century will reach its limits in about five years. And much like back in the 1950’s, IBM has been working on a new quantum computer that may dominate the industry for decades to come. If that sounds unlikely, wait till you hear the ideas behind it.
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We think of art as the most human of endeavors, but in recent years we’ve learned that machines can understand creativity too. There are algorithms that evaluate songs and movies for record companies and movie studios. One music professor even created a program that wrote compositions which drew critical acclaim.
Paradoxically, developing algorithms that can create artistic works pushes the bounds of human capability. Unlike machines that, say, dig holes or build cars, algorithms that produce creative work need to understand things that even humans find difficult to articulate. That’s the idea behind Google’s Magenta project, which is developing machine learning tools for art and music
Magenta is built on top of TensorFlow, the library of machine learning tools that the firm recently released as an open source technology, allowing anyone who wants to download the source code. To get a sense of why Google would open up its most advanced work, which is at the heart of its most important products, I asked company executives about it.
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I never planned to be a writer. In fact, it was something I actively avoided. As a publishing CEO, I felt it was important to steer clear of the creative process. When business side people start inserting themselves into creative work, it usually leads to trouble. So I focused on supporting other people’s creativity rather than pursuing my own.
But a strange confluence of events led to a blog, which found an audience and led to me becoming a contributor on Forbes and Harvard Business Review. That, in turn, led to an even bigger audience and, more recently, a book deal. So now, I guess I’m a full fledged writer.
I’m one of the last people you’d expect to become a writer. I wasn’t very interested in writing in school and, to be honest, wasn’t particularly good at it when I first started my blog. Yet the truth is that talent is overrated and anyone can learn to be creative over time. So here’s five things that I’ve learned along the way that can help you unlock your own creativity.
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American industry has a rich heritage of top-notch corporate labs. Bell Labs created not only the transistor, but also other fundamental breakthroughs, such as the laser and information theory. PARC, developed much of the technology we associate with modern computers, such as the mouse and the graphical user interface.
Both labs have attained mythical status and rightly so. Yet IBM Research has been no less important, developing early breakthroughs such as the first computer language and the relational database, garnering 5 Nobel Prizes along the way. And unlike Bell Labs and PARC, it’s still going strong.
Today, it employs thousands of scientists in 12 labs across six continents and continues to make breakthroughs in areas such as cognitive computing, quantum computing and neuromorphic chips. To get a better sense of what makes IBM Research tick, I talked to Bernie Meyerson, IBM’s Chief Innovation Officer about his 35 years there.
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By the mid-1980’s, the American semiconductor industry seemed like it was doomed. Although US firms had pioneered and dominated the technology for decades, they were now getting pummeled by cheaper Japanese imports. Much like cars and electronics, microchips seemed destined to become another symbol of American decline.
The dire outlook had serious ramifications for both US competitiveness and national security. So in 1986, the American government created SEMATECH, a consortium of government agencies, research institutions and private industry. By the mid 1990’s, the US was once again dominating semiconductors.
Today, SEMATECH is a wholly private enterprise, funded by its members, but its original model is being widely deployed to solve new problems, such as creating next generation batteries, curing cancer and reviving American manufacturing. The truth is that some of the problems we face today are simply too big and complex to be solved by any one organization.
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I recently wrote an article about Tribune Publishing’s reincarnation as Tronc and the poorly thought out video that the company put out describing its efforts. It seemed to be well received and many people, even those who work at Tronc, seemed to think I had gotten it right.
My basic point was that the notion that you can transform a failing media company — or any company in any industry for that matter — by infusing it with data and algorithms is terribly misguided. I stand by that analysis, but I also realize that rather than tell publishers what they should do, I merely spelled out what won’t work.
I also think my article gave Tronc’s management short shrift. The fact is that they are trying to revive a storied icon of American journalism and should be given some credit. As a former publishing CEO who managed a number of digital and print brands, I know how difficult that can be. So here are four things that publishers need to know to compete in the digital age.
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We tend to think of innovation as a moment of epiphany followed by an onward march toward disruption. Sure, there are always some twists and turns along the way, but fearless entrepreneurs seem to have no problem adapting, iterating and pivoting their way to incredible success.
That makes for inspiring stories, but the truth is that innovation more often follows a long and twisted path. Chief among the difficulties is the wide chasm—often known as the Valley of Death—that separates the discovery of important new insights and the development of a viable product. Many promising ideas never make it through.
That’s one of the things that makes James Allison’s development of Cancer Immunotherapy so inspiring. Not only is it achieving miraculous results, curing people with terminal cancer who once would have had no hope, but has led others to pursue similar research. The story also shows how hard it is to bring a major discovery to market, even if it’s a miracle cure.
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A few weeks ago, my friend and former colleague Vitaly Sych reached out and asked me to write an essay about “change in America” for the Ukrainian newsmagazine, “Novoe Vremya.” It is to be published in a supplement to the magazine published in cooperation with the American Embassy in Kyiv this week.
Ukrainians are, for a variety of reasons, intensely curious about the US. They, like most nations, are interested in knowing more about the most powerful country in the world. Our influence in their affairs has grown since the Euromaidan protests and the conflict with Russia that followed. Much of their fate rests in our hands.
So while we are currently viewed very favorably by the former Soviet Republic — by a margin of 69-22 according to Pew — and they welcome our support for their independence, there remains an element of confusion surrounding us, our values and our motives. I wrote this essay for a Ukrainian audience, but I’d also like to share it here on July 4th.
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