This month in Wired there is an article called “The Church of The Non-Believers.” Written by Gary Wolf, he seeks out the people he believes are making the most cogent arguments for atheism. He speaks with people such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett. Unfortunately it is a piece that speaks more too bigotry cloaked in scientific rhetoric. The core of the “new atheist”, and I am not sure how new this really is, is more than simply that there is no God. People have been shouting this for more than a few centuries with varying results, admittedly most often unpleasant. Where it gets destructive is they are saying that any religion or belief system that is not based on scientific principles should be extinguished for the good of the world. Since they also believe that religion is for the weak-minded and that people with high intelligence are atheists, it’s a pretty comfortable position. It gets reduced schoolyard retort: “The reason you don’t agree with me because you are stupid. Since you are stupid I can dismiss what you have to say.”

Richard Dawkins says in the article “I think we’re (atheists) in the same position that the gay movement was in a few decades ago. There was a need for people to come out.” A primary difference here being that the objective of the gay movement was not to eradicate all other forms of sexual freedom, but to have the right to enjoy the same freedoms as everyone else. What struck me in reading the article is that to call yourself a new atheist you have to be aggressively and explicitly intolerant of anything someone else believes. To me this puts them squarely in the same camp has Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, The Taliban, and people that assault women outside of planned parenthood clinics. Dawkins even suggests that society has a right to intervene when parents subject their children to “manifest falsehoods.” This was some of the same logic that we used in the US when we tried to eradicate Native American culture and speech in the US. Cultural genocide has been a far more effective practice over the years than the highly visible form we most often read about. Both science and religion can claim more that a little shame in this area.

When I read it, it looks more like the beginning of a moral panic phenomena than anything else. A moral panic is essentially the social bogeyman. They often occur around controversial topics that are seen as some threat to social order. Moral panics also tend to invoke danger to children by some forces either unseen or difficult to target (just as Dawkins feels children should be saved from the parents that subscribe to some form of religion). The internet is a current moral panic. To hear the media tell it, there’s a horde of pedophiles stalking our children with every click they make of a mouse button. Before this, there was the phenomenon of satanic ritual abuse, something with little or no foundation. If you don’t remember this particular moral panic, in which a number of innocent people found themselves in prison, there was a wave of belief in a large highly organized and secret cult of Satan worshipers in the country operating out of places like daycare centers. Prior to this there were moral panics in regards to hippies… and Jews… and television… and radio… and movies. You get the idea, it’s a long list.

Is this in fact the beginning of an unusual form of moral panic that is actually anti religious? The timing and elements would seem to be right. We have a largely unseen enemy, terrorism in the name of religious fundamentalism. There’s absolutely nothing effective the vast majority of the population can do anything about. So we have our faceless bogeyman that the government is putting to use. The version of the belief systems we’re hearing about her generally alien and frightening to most people. Is this fear of Islamic extremists going to translate into a backlash of religion in general? The new atheists are certainly hoping so, and seem eager for the fall so the world can be remade in a nice orderly system of data points that need no debate, or art or daydreaming or inspiration. A world without magic (which makes them strange bedfellows with the religious right freaking out over Harry Potter), inspiration from the unknown, scary stores about goblins and elves and grumpy other-worldly creatures. No more snipe-hunts, no more SETI, nothing but hard core western medicine. The religious or simply imaginative people of the world can be shuttled to some scrublands while the rationalists do the right things. The new atheists don’t have to believe in religion, like other bigots they are already constructing a world that looks like hell to the rest of us.

Blog Disclaimer. I will often go back to entries to make edits or clarify points. If I am changing my point of view, that will be a new entry.

Well, this is not armchair anthropology, but there are so many good reasons to watch / listen to these programs I have to listen to them. They are all a wonderful mix of satire, social commentary, fact, fiction and the occasional fiasco.

From Public Radio International: Listen to “This American Life” from WBEZ in Chicago. Each program is a series of stories around a particular theme. They often include conversations with the people that were involved in the particular story and their different points of view. They are full of emotion, humor and a little uncomfortable to listen to at times. But its not just the stories, they also get to the essence of the theme, for example last weeks theme was Fiasco’s and just what is a Fiasco and why are they often more interesting what was supposed to actually happen.

On Discovery Channel: Watch “Dirty Jobs” to see the joys of participant observation at its most basic. Mike Rowe, the host of the show goes all over the country spending a day doing other peoples jobs and in fact often getting dirty as promised. He goes off to make cheese, plant taro root, and clean sewers all with varying degrees of competency. What I like about this show is it does not pretend to be anything more that what it is: a brief look into one portion of someone’s life.

On the Travel Channel: “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations” he is New York chef that gained fame outside of the food world with a book called “Kitchen Confidential” about the goings-on behind the scenes at those restaurant you waits months to get a reservation at. On No Reservations he eats and chain smokes his way through a host of countries and showing that to fall in love with the food is to fall in love wit the country.

None of these people are anthropologists or make any claims to be doing anything but telling an interesting story about real people and real emotions. Listen to and watch these programs and you will get a lot of food for thought.

Blog Disclaimer. I will often go back to entries to make edits or clarify points. If I am changing my point of view, that will be a new entry.

Innovation as a result vs. innovation as a practice.

Before talking about an innovative outcome, companies would be better served understanding and building a robust Practice of Innovation: the art and science of unraveling knotty problems in a way that reveals underlying need and refrains in a unique and robust way that guides and inspires long-term strategic development.

What do I mean by the art and science of unraveling knotty problems?
This means interesting solutions often start from interesting questions. Getting to the nuances of these questions clearly is a challenge for most companies as it often bucks convention wisdom in the organization. Asking the right question is a place most people don’t spend a lot of time on, but it is imperative. As a rule of thumb, that first question asked is not the correct one, it needs to be pulled apart in layers to get to the essence. Sometimes you don’t even know the most interesting question until you get out into the field.

In a way that reveals underlying needs.
This is key: often the surface issue is not the true need. For example, the WebTV service meets the need of letting people have an easy to use service that gives them basic access to internet functionality and e-mail without having to purchase the entire computer system. You plug it into your living room TV and the whole family and surf the web and do e-mail together!! (if this was ever a real need, why WebTV is a marginal idea would be an excellent case study). It does not take much ethnography to see the flaw in this plan for families. Most people want to read their e-mail in private, surfing the web as a group is not unlike trying to read a book as a group, and on top of it, it means that one person is monopolizing, usually, the biggest TV in the house. They attacked the surface need, and ignored that numerous underlying needs that would have radically changed the product/service.

Refrains them in a unique and robust way.
If it’s not a unique insight about the work, who cares? People in the social science end of this game should pat special attention to this. One of the jobs of the anthropologist is to go far past collecting and organizing data, but help your client understand the world in a way nobody else does. If you can’t get there, where is the competitive advantage?

That guides inspires long-term strategic development.
The practice of innovation is not aimed at creating a one-off product or service. Its creating a path or roadmap that others can follow and build on over time.

Blog Disclaimer. I will often go back to entries to make edits or clarify points. If I am changing my point of view, that will be a new entry.

The innovation business is full of gurus: people that companies hire believing that they have some special source of knowledge that they simply don’t have.

In my early days working in consulting, I saw a lot of people and companies sell themselves as being smarter than the clients they are supposed to help. A phrase I heard from one business development person I was acquainted with (thankfully, this was years ago) was “What you want to do in a pitch with a prospective client is to inject F.U.D into their thinking about the job they are doing and other consulting companies.” F.U.D. stood for “Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.” This is one the more offensive notions I’ve come across professionally. Maybe I’m lucky, but most of my clients have been pretty smart bears. They’re eager to learn new methods, eager to share with you what they know, and I find working with them makes my process much better. I’ve been fortunate to have clients that have changed the way they interact with their potential customers after working with my company and their projects have raised our bar on what we deliver.

And this brings me back to the question: Is the innovation guru you have hired a true teacher? My clients experience with consultants seems to be that the consultant constantly raises their game, takes knowledge out of the company and does not add that much back. So if you’re currently a company that’s looking to hire consultants or have consultants on staff, the first question you need to ask is whether you learning from them. I don’t mean just in the sense of they provided you with results to a question. Ask a larger question, what are you learning that you can take forward long-term? Have you learned a different way of working from them? Are you seeing them actively take what they are learning from you, and using it to increase the effectiveness of the work you’re doing together?

So if you’re looking to hire a consultant to retain your current consultants, make sure you ask who’s getting the most out of this deal. Are they working with you, and teaching you with an open heart, open mind and mutual respect?

Just some thoughts..

Blog Disclaimer. I will often go back to entries to make edits or clarify points. If I am changing my point of view, that will be a new entry.