Thoughts Pad

Google reaps billions every year with advertisements, and people just get crazy about that dream of making “easy” money. Not saying that Google’s money is easy, because I know it isn’t easy at all to keep such a huge infrastructure. But, people just think it is… or they want to think it is, because they want to build the next Google or next highly profitable ad-clicking business model based company.

The fever for the last years was to find a way to build something, put of the web and reap money with advertisements. We see blogs, games, social networks and all sort of other fancy and trendding web sites possible written from scratch to match the requirements of an ad based business model.

Suddenly, someone asked the good question: “If instead of pointing their incredible infrastructure at making people click on ads, they pointed it at great unsolved problems in science, how would the world be different today?” – That was Jeff Hammerbacher, who left Facebook back in 2008. Ironic, uh?

Most digital mafiosi would loudly answer to Jeff’s question: Then I wouldn’t have my digital mafia and wouldn’t see snoopy dog blowing up an armored car live on ustream.

What do you think people is really interested in? Seeing snoopy dog blowing an armored car, or having our top world class ultra smart engineers finding a solution for making electric cars more efficient than combustion based ones, ways to make wind turbines and solar panels more efficient, or finding better treatments for cancer/aids/malaria/”your bad disease here”?

That’s what drives traffic: stuff that people enjoy doing to perpetuate indefinitely their state of procrastination and false entertainment. Cool… So is this the formula for easy money? Make a website that allows for people to procrastinate, then fill it with ads? Sorry, this is the bubble we’re talking about. This business model is a bubble, and sooner or later it will burst.

Fortunately, from my perspective, even people that would make themselves available on ustream to watch live snoopy dog blow the truck, are beginning to care more about changes that are happening in the world, and how our collective behavior impacts our lives. We’re seeing a lot more green products reaching mainstream, and that means something. Is that the beginning of a change?

PS: For those who missed this awful demonstration of what people really seems to care about, here is the thing:

I went through the first morning of the event, and it was very inspiring. The speakers quality is very ok, and the event very well organized, but the catering service… Ok, we’re surviving that and in the end, we came here for brain not stomach food.

John Cleese mainly talked about ways of leting and insentivating your creativity come out from your unconscious. Not a surprise to most of us, interrupting the cognitive process can be a disaster as he said. I believe that, and always tried to find a calm and quiet place to let my ideas flow. But that is nice when we’re under control of the situation and we can manage to set a good slot of time in a peaceful place to let our neurones work as they like. But, how to produce such an environment inside a company? How to let your employee in charge of creating their creative environment in which they can feed their minds with what they need to come out with innovation? Is it good or is it bad for your company?

That is hard to say. A later speaker, author of the book My Company is a Jungle, claimed that culture is vital inside a company. If your company doesn’t have an inner culture, you’re going out of wings. Maybe, that could relate our former need: How to let our employees in charge of creating their perfect creative environment and not mess up with your company? Maybe, setting a culture could be the answer.

Yeah, that’s not something new or ground breaking. We hear all the time people saying about companies trying to set a creative culture, and you shouldn’t take more than 1 second to remind the name of a couple of them.

What are the other companies missing then? Is that fear which motivates then to keep thenselves in the age of iron when it comes to creating a culture inside a company? Is the fear caused because it is expensive to afford such a freedom to their employees?

We clearly see the benefits of providing time and a good environment for criativity, so why do we keep pushing and pressing people to keep in track of deadlines, and do more things in less time? We are so used to this culture, of pushing and pressing and delivering things in very tight deadlines, that we feel afraid of trying the disruptive aproach of not having a deadline and not pushing things arround.

So, from were I can see, things must change both internally and externally, and as Jef Staes said: it must start from the edge.