Herding Cats

You might have spotted the video “Herding Cats” at the bottom of my blog. It is an extremely funny commercial from EDS, especially if you are a cat lover. My friend Thomas Verner pointed out to me that EDS actually did a series of videos, all using the same kind of metaphorical approach.

According to Gerald Zaltman, consumers use seven deep metaphors in order to orient themselves in the world. By understanding them, companies can frame their marketing better. These deep metaphors are balance, transformation, journey, container, connection, resource and control. He has described these and a method for extracting them in his book “Marketing Metaphoria”. The method requires people to collect images that they think relate to a specific product and are used as a point of departure in an interview.

In cognitive linguistics, deep metaphors are a well-researched area and the book “Metaphors we live by” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. The former is very much engaged in demonstrating how metaphors are and can be used in politics. His latest book is called “The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 20th Century American Politics with an 18th Century Brain” and he has used some of his findings when analysing speeches made by Barack Obama.

When looking into what voters seem to try to understand about a politician (Values, Authenticity, Communication, Judgment, Trust and Identity) it seems to me that they are very similar to what you want to understand about companies. There is a great trend towards looking at yourself as a brand, so why shouldn’t companies see themselves as persons?

Take a look at the EDS videos. They are witty and still very accurate illustrations of what it is like working in the software consulting industry. And the comments are quite interesting too.

• Running with the Squirrels
• Airplane
• Manhattan
• Suki

Looking at these I was reminded of the now classic Norwegian Helpdesk video, where a monk is instructing a fellow brother in how to use a book. Hilarious!

If you want to learn more about how to combine metaphors and storytelling, there is no better way than to go on a Metafari!

Slow Food – Big Business

A couple of years ago, a friend gave me Carl Honore’s book “In Praise of Slow”. I haven’t taken the time (!) until now to read it, but I must say I like it a lot. He describes his conversion towards a more “slow” approach to life in various ways in a very down to earth and funny way going through topics like cities, food, sex, work, medicine and children. His own wakeup came when he realised that he was toying with the idea of buying a collection of “One-Minute Bedtime Stories” for his children at an airport.

Already in 2003, USA Today stated that the slow movement meant big business. Lots of companies and cities have joined the slow movement since then. Of course, research has not been slow to pick up. For example, Dr Philip Howard at Michigan State University has investigated the consolidation of the organic industry and illustrated this in very telling graphics.

The Slow Food movement has also started to look into research and education, and founded in 2003 a University of Gastronomic Sciences. The Swedish equivalent I suppose would be the Department of Restaurant and Culinary Arts at Örebro University, in Grythyttan. They received funding from The Knowledge Foundation as part of their “Creative Industry” program.

In West Sweden we are also oriented towards slow food. The local chapter, Slow Food West, is collaborating with the great “Paradise Gardens” exhibition in Göteborg. Last week I had a healthy snack in Göteborg Botanical Garden, and we also had a big family lunch at my favorite garden, Gunnebo. The restaurant at Gunnebo is part of the consortium “Västsvensk Mersmak” guaranteeing the use of local and organic products and great care in both cooking and presentation.

However, the first city in Sweden to be accepted into the Citta Slow is Falköping. This small city in West Sweden has pledged to the Citta Slow philosophy, festina lente: to haste slowly, to seek the unique and special, to respect the small and local in a globalised world, and to seek sustainable solutions. It will be very interesting to see how they will integrate this into their action plans for regional development and how they relate it to the overall vision of the Västra Götaland Region: “The Good Life”.

Smoke in China

In China, not only the smoke from cars and factories seem to be a problem in relation to the Olympic Games. China has 350 million smokers, a third of the world's total, and a million Chinese a year die from tobacco. Although smoking in public places has been banned in Beijing before the Olympics, it is no wild guess that smoking will continue to be an issue.

The initiative from Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates is therefore very welcome, launching a $500 million dollar call on governments to implement proven interventions to reduce tobacco use, save lives. They emphasize the use of the World Health Organization’s program MPOWER:

Monitor tobacco use and the policies to prevent it
Protect people from tobacco smoke
Offer people help to quit tobacco use
Warn about the dangers of tobacco
Enforce bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship
Raise taxes on tobacco

They will support complementary efforts to reduce high rates of tobacco use in countries such as China and India, as well as to help prevent the tobacco epidemic from taking root in Africa.

Of course not everybody is happy with this development. Russian Pravda calls Bloomberg and Gates naïve. According to the Chinese Embassy in the US, China will ban all forms of tobacco promotion by January 2011. Since China is both the largest tobacco producer and consumer, this is an important and not uncontroversial step.

In Sweden around 1,3 million people in Sweden smoke, out of a 9 million population. About 6 500 individuals die every year because of smoking. That is more lives than taken by traffic accidents, hiv/aids, drugs and suicides together, according to Cancerfonden.

A really interesting website is The Tobacco Documents Online, where you can find the documents that the tobacco industry uses in trials in the USA. The website is a search engine, making search through various databases possible.

If you want to get a complementary view of China, watch the wonderful movie CJ7.

New Issue of The Holmberg Gazette

It’s been a while since the last issue of The Holmberg Gazette, but now it is here again! As usual, you can find it in the right marginal below. The focus this time is on “Information and Communication Technology” (ICT) and the articles cover different aspects such as development, use and research. The photos are taken this year in various locations, and can be seen in full at my Picasa site. Enjoy!

I hope you are busy doing nothing during your vacation. One of my next blog posts will have “slow” as its theme. If I ever get around writing it… Suggestions are very welcome!

Location Location Location

On Öland, the second largest island in Sweden, direction is always given in terms of north, south, east and west. Never as right or left. The island is about 130 kilometres long, only 20 km wide, and also very flat why it is kind of difficult to lose direction.

How the landscape can impact our thinking is the major theme for the sixth meeting of the European Network around Appreciative Inquiry and Strength based change. It will take place in the beautiful Italian landscape Reggio Emilia 10-11 October.
It is interesting to think about how the location may have an impact on the political discussions in Almedalen (in the medieval town Visby on the island Gotland), Tällberg (a tiny country village set deep in the woods in Dalarna) and Davos (a ski resort in Switzerland). What does leaving the city and getting closer to nature mean for the people attending these meetings?

The importance of the location has long been recognised by others than Conrad Hilton, for example by Leif Edvinsson who created Scandia Future Center. The centre has served as inspiration for many creative places such as futurefocus in London and Dalenum in Lidingö. However, one of Leif’s latest adventures, The New Club of Paris, seems to be more virtual in character in spite of its name!

Made in Sweden

Yesterday we went to see the latest Björn&Benny success: Mamma Mia The Movie. According to the official website we were in good company since among the 30 million people in 160 countries have watched it. ABBA has done a really good job marketing Sweden, and we are now almost rid of getting mixed up with Switzerland. And yes, it is good fun to watch even for people like me who have seen the show live.

Design is another successful Swedish export area. I went to the small country town Lammhult in Småland, the hub of Möbelriket (the Furniture Country) to check out the latest news at Norrgavel and Svenssons. Although I was tempted by the many creative items from Källemo and beautiful rugs from Kateha (whom I was glad to find is operating with a RugMark licence and thus is working against child labour) this time I bought a very comfy Bruno Mathsson Jetson 66, a really soft cushion from Bantie with the pattern “Paradise” and a Danish vase from Normann. You can see the vase and the cushion in the picture above, although the aluminium table and chair from Byarums Bruk are previous purchases.

For those of you who won’t be able to make it to Småland this year, I recommend www.scandinaviandesigncenter.com!

“It shall stand the wear of the eye”. Sven Lundh

Envisioning The Works of a City

One of my great regrets in life is that I have never been to New York. Although I have been to the US many times, it has always been in as part of a business trip and somehow the conferences have always taking place elsewhere like Orlando, San Diego, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, Cleveland and Atlanta. So I have to envision the city and dream about when I’m going to experience spring there IRL.

There are several means for visualizing New York. One way of doing it is to read Kate Asher’s book “The Works – Anatomy of a city”. She works at the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) and has designed a beautiful and intelligent piece of art that describes the transport system, the various parks and trees, how the sewage system works and so on. I guess she’s been inspired by Edward R Tufte’s work on visualization.

Another way of experiencing New York is to read Mark Helprin’s wonderful story “Winter’s Tale”. This is my absolute favorite book of all times since the language is so beautiful and the story so rich and amazing. It combines the importance of following your dream with staying true to your friends and family.

“Set in New York at the beginning and the end of the twentieth century, Winter´s Tale unfolds with such great narrative force and beauty that a reader can feel that its world is more real than his own. Standing alone on the page before the book begins are the words, I have been to another world, and come back. Listen to me. In that world, both winter and the city of New York (old and new) have the strength and character of protagonists, and the protagonists themselves move as if in a vivid dream. Though immensely complicated, the story is centered upon Peter Lake, a turn-of-the-century Irish burglar, and Beverly Penn, a young heiress whom he encounters in robbing her house, and who eventually will die young and in his arms. His love for her, and a gift of grace, will allow him after the most extraordinary and painful explorations and discoveries to stop time and bring back the dead. To follow him, his predecessors, his inheritors, and his companions is to experience one of the great stories of American literature.” (from www.markhelprin.com)

A totally different way would also be watching the new “Sex and the City” film. I must admit that I have seen quite a number of the TV episodes, although I’m not sure I will watch the movie. Although it contains a lot of clever product placements and must in itself be a great ad for New York, I’m not sure I can stomach the moral. Especially after trying out their “Match your man” quiz that resulted in pairing me with Mr Big...

Should you want to view New York and the US in a larger perspective, you can always watch Hans Rosling’s tool for visualization of complex and important issues: Gapminder. There you can watch his 2007 TED talk, "The Seemingly impossible, is possible". It will be interesting to follow the development of Gapminder, now that Google has bought the underlying software.

However, Göteborg is also good at visualization! I feel proud about having been part of the formation of the Center of Visualization Göteborg, an organisation that supports collaboration between academia, companies and the public sector. We used “Appreciative Inquiry” as a means for envisioning the future of the center, and so far much of what was expressed as dreams now have come true in terms of research funding, a conference, a physical center, a web site, collaboration projects and so on.