Collective Thinking – Part 1
My friend Andrew and I had an interesting conversation about collective thinking. So you can understand our different points of view, he is a medical student, and I am an international business student.
We began realizing that our business world and even our non-business (medical, law, philosophy, history, any subject really) has been following both a telescoping and an exponential growth rate.
Telescoping Exponential
In the history of sciences and new knowledge, we can take some of the greatest minds in history: Galileo, Pythagoras, Newton, any great mind from the renaissance or before the 20th Century. All of these men were experts in not just one field, but many. Galileo is remembered as a premier astronomer, but was also a physicist and mathematician, amongst others. Pythagoras was a philosopher and a mathematician. These men were the best in more than just one thing leading to the basis of so much science in today’s ever-evolving world. This is the telescoping point of view, few people with a vast amount of knowledge on many different concepts.
Today though, this is being reversed. We have many people with very intricate and specific niche topics. You can go out today and look for a marketing agency and find a marketing agency dealing with just publicity or just advertising, they are a specific set of people with a small focus and they’re damn good at it. Same goes for science, you will find a neurologist, radiologist, podiatrist, the list is almost infinite, hell there’s probably even a doctor for just your femur (yes I am exaggerating). You see where I’m going with this.
Graphically it would look like this:
This general overview of specific concepts that used to be held by so few people who knew many things, is now backwards. More people know fewer things, but they’re better at them! That is the defining factor.
In the end what this ends up happening, is that the individual knowledge becomes so high, that the level of growth become a sky rocket. If you take a look at any economical graph or a world economics graph over the past centuries, the growth is exponential.
Image source: dinocrat.com
What does it all mean?
The more we grow, the more specific we get. The more specific we get the more we can dedicate research to individual topics and get to new heights in research, levels of income, and best of all for your business, more revenue!
Take this YouTube video for example, part of the inspiration for this post:
Stick around next week for the followup on this post: Collective Thinking – Cloud Minds
The New Age of Business
Apologies
I’d like to make my apologies for not realizing that I haven’t posted in close to a month. I have gotten caught up with classes, and the many new people I am meeting every day here at the residency in Alicante.
On the up-side it has given me a lot of time to look into the new wave of economics, marketing, and the whole entourage of business coming into view for me.
Market the hell out of it
If you’re not reading Seth Godin and you’re a marketer, even a professional with an amazing track record I highly recommend just taking a peek even if once a week.
His posts are never too lenghty and my favorite is that they are never strictly to-the-point. He makes you think! Take the example of The unclicking 84%; Seth’s genius in marketing takes you from concrete data, to making you think of what the next step should be for you, your venture/business/etc., and most importantly for your market. My ideas and questions for you:
- New ideas. Even if they’re recycled ideas with a new twist, or a new focus, that makes it become new.
- Can you change or increase your market focus without losing the original base?
- How can you take your brand to a level of incredible trust and promotion?
Social Media Economics
Yes; not marketing, media nor optimization…but Economics.
Many have put themselves in roles of Personal Branding consultants, Social Media Marketers and Optimizers, but you may be asking what does any of this have to do with economics?!
Actually, quite a lot. This new age of entrepreneurs has unleashed the venture capitalists, the big businesses and the small businesses to look into a new realm of enterprises. From an economical point of view, unemployment (9.8% Wolfram|Alpha) in America is still worsening, but with many more entrepreneurs emerging daily and new ideas coming fresh from those unemployed new businesses are starting up daily with the goal of giving a good or service to the people.
Now, here’s where social media comes in. The main social media hotspots are, San Fancisco, NYC, Boston, Washington DC, and the Raleigh-Durham (RDU/Triangle) area of North Carolina.
I point you to the NY Times Unemployment map (interactive) here. Accounting for the size difference of population between these metropolitan areas and other rural areas, the unemployment rate in the social media hotspots is relatively less than the other main areas due to their success with entrepreneurship.
Just some thoughs, what do you think? Leave comments.
Image by billadler