November 2011
4 posts
Will the EURO break up?
With the crisis in the Eurozone approaching its climax, I was curious to read the collective mind. On the Web, in the blogosphere, and on Twitter there is a lot of buzz about Eurozone breakup or survival. I decided to ask both the swarm (through blogs) and experts (through News Web sites) as well as the crowd (through Twitter), using our Condor coolhunting tool. It turns out, swarm and experts...
“What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.”
– Marcus Aurelius
5 tags
Occupy Wallstreet battling TeaParty – Divided they...
Today (11/20/11) I ran a Condor twitter analysis for #ows (the Occupy Wallstreet Twitter tag) and #teaparty (the Tea Party Twitter tag), trying to predict public sentiment for these two social movements. I only collected retweets, and constructed the retweet-network, measuring the importance of people retweeting based on their social network position. The picture below shows the resulting network,...
3 tags
What creative swarms can learn from the bees
Last Friday night I had a great discussion with Billie Bivins, host of the show “Make Art…Feel Better” at the Belmont Media Center about creative swarming and the bees. She even got me to cobble together my own bee. Here is the link to the resulting video. Very cool.
July 2011
1 post
Wikimaps Revised
The first version of the Wikimaps Page (http://bit.ly/Wiki-Map-Project) that we published a couple of weeks ago helped to visualize the basic idea of Wikimaps. It consists of an interactive animation that allows visitors to visually track the changes in Wikipedia articles over a given time period. Real world activities and events are reflected in updates of the respective articles and the links...
June 2011
1 post
Wikimaps: Dynamic Maps of Knowledge
Wikipedia does not only provide the digital world with a vast amount of high quality information, it also opens up new opportunities to investigate the processes that lie behind the creation of the content as well as the relations between knowledge domains. In their daily work Wikipedia editors make sure to keep articles updated: Natural disasters, shiny new pop icons and scandals are reflected...
April 2011
2 posts
4 tags
The US – a Loophole Society – or a Society of...
My immersion into the loophole society concept took place in 2007 when I was bringing used computers to Ghana, to be donated to schools. While the total value of the computers was about $1200, getting them through Ghanaian customs took two weeks and cost me another $1200. I had to hire an agent, who was a relative of the headmaster at the receiving school, who expected to be paid $200 to shepherd...
3 tags
Might growing health care costs be a good thing?
Everybody is complaining about the ever-rising costs of health care. But could it be that this is actually a good thing, because it means we can afford to spend an ever-rising share of our dispensable income on our health? While there is undoubtedly some misuse of our healthcare dollars, and money is wasted on unnecessary beauty operations, or even worse, on lawyers filing malpractice suits, I...
March 2011
1 post
3 tags
Prediction Market predicted Oscars correctly 11...
I just stumbled on this interesting Blog post which compared the predictive quality of the Intrade prediction market to correctly predict this and last year’s Oscars. It seems the market picked the winner correctly 11 out of 12 times. Also interesting is the comment by BarTaxCa on the post, noting that depending on which prediction market one picks (HSX, Intrade, Inkling market) prediction...
January 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Facebook Pages, and why we know that you probably...
The IdeaEver since Facebook rolled out pages in 2007, it has become very easy for users to show their interest in music, film, books, artists and other entities in various categories by clicking the “like” button on a specific facebook page. Most of the time, the information about your personal “likes” is not protected automatically and therefore can therefore accessed by everyone,...
2 tags
To Be a Better Manager Means Not to Be a Manager!
I think that time has come to fundamentally rethink the way we train and reward managers. While social entrepreneurship has become a popular buzzword at management schools, and Andrew Cuomo, the new governor of the state of New York asked all his senior staff to take an ethics class in the first sixty days of his tenure, this is still just lip service. My proposal is far more radical: Make...
December 2010
2 posts
Latest News Through Wikipedia - Wikipedians are...
People have long predicted the demise of traditional news media and the rise of the citizen journalists. Various initiatives have tried to create new media outlets on the Web, Blog, and Twitter powered by creative swarms of hobby journalists - but none of them has been a breakthrough success so far. Well, it turns out that there is such a citizen Web site, venerable old Wikipedia! In a...
How Much Are People Smiling in the US, Germany,...
Who are happier, people in Switzerland, in Germany, or in the US? To answer this question, I looked at the use of smiley’s in Twitter tweets – smileys are those emoticons used to express one’s emotions like :) smile :D big grin :( sad, frown :P sticking the tongue out, “raspberry” My hypothesis is that the larger the fraction of happy smileys :) and :D in all tweets containing emoticons is,...
November 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Another Day of Hope (mostly), and some Fear and...
Today I checked on the mood of the US Population through Twitter, using Twitter’s Geotagging feature. Alan Mislove from Northeastern had already found that the mood of the nation changes over the course of the day, with people having a low over lunch, and getting collectively happier in the evening, when work is over. Using our Twitter-collector-tool built into Condor, I was able to easily...
3 tags
Monitoring Midterm Election Night Through Twitter...
Yesterday November 2nd 2010 was midterm election day in the US. I was curious what Twitter would tell us about the mood of the voters. It was already clear that things did not look good for the Democrats. In prior work analyzing data from 2009 we had already found that monitoring posts for the occurrence of “hope”, “happy”, “fear”, and “worry” would give us a good proxy for the mood of the...
August 2010
2 posts
4 tags
Emotions Draw Close Friends: Analyzing the Social...
Recently we were wondering if the social network structure of fans of a brand, a star, or a cause tells us how passionate the fans are. To be more precise, we were looking at the network structure of the friendship network of Facebook fan pages. This means that we collected – as far a publicly accessible – the friendship network of the people who clicked on the “like” button on a fan page. For a...
4 tags
Predicting Stock Market Indicators Through Twitter...
We have been working on trying to predict market indicators for quite some time by analyzing Web Buzz, predicting who will win an Oscar, or how well movies do at the box office. Among other things we have correlated posts about a stock on Yahoo Finance and Motley’s Fool with the actual stock price, predicting the closing price of the stock on the next day based on what people say today on Yahoo...
July 2010
1 post
5 tags
My new Coolfarming Book out
I am delighted to announce that – finally - my new book “Coolfarming - Turn Your Idea Into The Next Big Thing” just came out. “Coolfarming” is about how to grow your own trends by creating an environment where COINs (Collaborative Innovation Networks) flourish; then - once a product has become established - extend the creative pool into a Collaborative Learning Network, or CLN,...
June 2010
1 post
4 tags
Predicting the World Cup 2010 Winner
Today I was giving a presentation about Coolhunting through Swarm Creativity at the CRM Forum in Zurich. As there is currently Soccer World Championship time in South Africa, at the end, the moderator Susanne Wille asked me to make my predictions about which team would win the World Cup. Unfortunately, reading the collective mind on the Web does not predict the outcome of 22 soccer players...
May 2010
2 posts
When are we ready for eternal life?
Well, I guess most of us would like to live forever. At least that’s what I think when I see how old people are clinging to their lives. On the other hand, if all of us would live forever, while producing more offspring, earth would soon overflow. So the solution, if we get eternal life, would be to have no children anymore. This, however, is in contradiction to Darwin’s evolution. We need to...
50 best blogs on creative thinking
This morning I got a nice e-mail from Anna Miller, alerting me to the fact that the swarmcreativity blog has been listed in her post on “50 Best Blogs on Creative Thinking”. I quickly looked at them, excellent selection. Thanks Anna!
April 2010
1 post
The world’s greatest coolfarmers – what we can...
Yesterday evening I was part of a great coolfarming experience. It was the final performance of Jazzaar, a one week workshop of practical music for talented young musicians culminating in public concerts on Friday and Saturday evening. Jazzaar is the brainchild of Fritz Renold, a Jazz musician, composer and music teacher. Every year since 1998 Jazzaar invites internationally renowned Jazz...
March 2010
2 posts
5 tags
What Motivates Creators – Lessons from a Cool...
Little did I know when I was attending one of the evening events of Swissnex that I was about to meet a truly impressive creator. After filling a heaped plate of food at the sumptuous buffet after the talks, I was looking for a place to eat when I noticed two attractive women in the back of the room. As soon as we started talking I noticed that they were not just a pleasure to look at and talk...
Oscar Predictions Updated Here is an updated analysis of the Oscar predictions, run on March 2nd, 2010. Again, sources being used were the collective mind of movie enthusiasts on IMDb.com and movie fans from all around the world represented by bloggers and Web masters. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) was analyzed using a specialized version of sentiment retrieval with an adapted...
February 2010
2 posts
3 tags
It’s In a Name - How much is an athlete worth?
These days Forbes again published sport’s top earning athletes. In spite of his transgressions, Tiger Woods still leads the pack with $64 million, followed by soccer player David Beckham ($18 million), tennis star Roger Federer ($16 million), Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt ($14 million) and basket ball players LeBron James ($13 million) and Kobe Bryant ($12 million). I was curious to see if Web buzz...
Oscar Predictions 2010 – Official Nominations of...
Oscar Night is getting closer. On Tuesday Hollywood announced this year’s official nominees of the 82nd Academy Awards. As previously posted on this blog we are running our own Oscar predictions based on buzz in the Oscar forum on imdb.com and Web and Blog buzz analysis. Our latest results presented here were calculated on January 5th 2010 which is over one month before the nominations were...
January 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Who will become the next Massachusetts Senator
The race to fill Ted Kennedy’s vacant senatorial seat in Washington has turned into a real shocker. At the outset, it seemed clear that in deeply democratic Massachusetts only a Democrat could become the next senator. As of today, it seems to be the other way. Republican candidate Scott Brown is ahead of Democrat Martha Coakley by 5 points. I wanted to know what the Web would tell us. The...
5 tags
Scientists, Monks and Bankers - It's All About...
Why do people collaboratively engage in innovative tasks? What’s the motivation to work together to develop something new? After all, if I do everything by myself, I will reap all the rewards for myself, and don’t have to share. Nevertheless, humans are the most social species of all, and progress is only possible by collectively creating new things “standing on the shoulders of giants”, by...
November 2009
1 post
Who will win the 2010 Oscar – Early predictions?
March 7th, 2010, the 82nd Academy Awards, commonly known as Oscars, will be given out for best picture, for best actor and actress, and in 21 other categories. Two years ago we successfully predicted who would win an Oscar Award, almost two months before the Awards were actually given out. This blog post contains our first predictions for the 2010 Oscars, more than three months before the Awards...
October 2009
2 posts
3 tags
Taoism and COINs
The principles of the Chinese philosophy of Taoism have many parallels with the ways how COINs operate. The way is the goal - Tao means “way”, and “way” is the cornerstone of Taoism. This is very different from Western philosophies, where the “being” and “truth” are in the center. In Taoism, on the other hand, “the way is the goal”, this means it’s not the solution, which is important, but the way...
3 tags
Reflections on COINs2009 - Towards a Science of...
I am writing this blog post on my way back from the first Conference on Collaborative Innovation Networks COINs2009. It was a cool event, taking place Oct. 8-11 2009 at SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design. SCAD was a fitting place and perfect host for this conference, with its mascot the bee, paragon of collaborative swarms. The themes of the COINs conference cover a wide range of...
September 2009
6 posts
4 tags
Bundestagswahlen in Germany - Who will be the next...
Tomorrow September 27th, 2009, there are elections to the German parliament. It’s the conservative (by German standards) CDU/CSU led by Chancellor Angela Merkel, against the social democrats (SPD) led by Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, with the liberal democrats (FDP,Guido Westerwelle) and the Green party (Jürgen Trittin) as minor players. Predictions still seem to project a win...
Coolhunting for the next Swiss Federal Councilor -...
In the last three posts I have looked at what the crowd on the Web was saying about the chances of the 3 main candidates for Swiss Federal Councilor in the elections of Sept. 16 to succeed Bundesrat Pascal Couchepin. And note that we had to predict what the crowd was thinking what the 248 members of the Swiss National Assembly would be doing. The ranking was (see three previous posts): 1. Urs...
Who will be the next Swiss Federal Councillor -...
Tomorrow Sept 16 will be the elections for next Swiss Federal Councillor in succession of Pascal Couchepin. Here the latest coolhunting results on the blogs for the four main candidates:
3 tags
Who will be the next Swiss Federal Councillor -...
The elections for the successor of Swiss Federal Councilor (Bundesrat) Pascal Couchepin will be this Wednesday, Sept 16. Here is a new update on the trend prediction, as of this evening, Sunday Sept 13. Again the disclaimer is that it is not the Swiss population who is electing the Bundesrat, but the 248 members of parliament, which of course makes it much harder to predict the outcome....
Who will be the next Swiss Federal Councillor -...
After I did my first automatic coolhunting yesterday, I got feedback that I had forgotten to include one of the main candidates, Christian Lüscher (FDP, Geneva) into my coolhunting. So I repeated the process for both the German and French speaking parts of Switzerland. Here are the results: Web in French speaking Switzerland: Blogs in French speaking Switzerland: Web in German speaking...
3 tags
Who will be the next Swiss Federal Councillor
Sept 16, 2009, the Swiss Federal Assembly will elect the successor of longtime Swiss Federal Councillor Pascal Couchepin, who will step back after over ten years in office. The Swiss Federal Council is the executive seven-member council who serves as the collective head of state of Switzerland. Although this means that not the entire Swiss population, but the Swiss Federal Assembly - an admittedly...
June 2009
1 post
4 tags
Coolhunting Today's Iranian Presidential Elections
This weekend the Iranians are electing a new president. Incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad competes against reformist candidates Mir-Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaee. It seems that Ahmadinejad’s fiery rethoric did little to help him improve his chances to win the elections, at least on the Web. Coolhunting with Condor today for the frontrunner on the Web and the Blogs, once on...
May 2009
4 posts
3 tags
Who innovates better - the small or the tall?
Today’s New York Times has an article by Steve Lohr “Who Says innovation Belongs to the Small?” which makes the argument that “These days, more than ever, size matters in the innovation game”. I beg to differ. While it might be true that it takes the resources of large companies to implement fundamentally new things, large companies are extremely bad in recognizing...
7 tags
Creative Ideas as Galactic Black Holes
“Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo (loose translation) When following the diffusion of a cool new idea in a social network, an interesting similarity with the structure of our universe and its stars and galaxies can be recognized. Readers of “Swarm Creativity – Competitive Advantage through Collaborative Innovation Networks” know that a cool idea runs through...
4 tags
It doesn't look good for the Republicans, or does...
Today’s attack of Dick Cheney against Colin Powell, who ‘d rather choose Rush Limbaugh over Powell prompted me to check what the Web buzz is saying about the Republicans against Democrats, using our CoolTrend application. At first, checking Web buzz at large, I got the expected result: The Democrats lead on the Web, with 53% over 47%. But then I took a closer look at the spiderweb of...
4 tags
ORF Swarmcreativity Podcast (in German)
This week I participated in the EduMedia eCreativity Conference in Salzburg, Austria. The Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) was also present, and put togethera very nice online interview and podcast describing the foundations of Swarm Creativity (in German)
April 2009
3 posts
3 tags
Predicting the Iranian Presidential Elections?
Recently I was asked if I could predict the outcome of the Iranian Presidential elections on June 12, 2009, based on what people are saying on Blogs and the Web about the candidates. Unfortunately this is a much harder task than predicting the US Presidential elections, or the Zurich Mayoral elections, as our system is not set up to parse and rank Farsi Web sites. Nevertheless, I was curious what...
2 tags
Panopticon or Bee Hive – living in total...
People need to be watched, otherwise they will not do their job. That was the idea of Jeremy Bentham, who designed a prison, the Panopticon, where every prisoner could easily be watched by much fewer guards. Today there is software that does a similar job. For example, LiveJobs, a company that operates virtual call centers all over the US, distinguishes itself from competitors by meticulously...
3 tags
Creating iPhone Apps - the Swarm takes over
Today’s NYT describes a list of computer programmers turned entrepreneurs, creating cool apps for the iPhone. With the barriers to entry as low as they are here: one basically just needs a computer to download the app developer kit, plus of course programmer skills, this is the perfect opportunity for swarm business. People like Ethan Nicholas, a (former) Java developer at Sun, making...
March 2009
4 posts
3 tags
Interview on "Open Innovation and Swarm...
Today the “A World of Possibilities” Radio Show published my interview with host Mark Sommer talking about Open Innovation, Swarm Creativity, COINs, and the role and inspiration of bees.
Predicting Zurich Mayoral Elections - It Works!
In a blogpost on January 8 I spoke about the CoolTrend prediction system for the Zurich mayoral elections I had set up. At that time candidate Corinne Mauch was already ahead of candidate Kathrin Martelli. In the meantime our Coolhunting system collected the statistics from the blogosphere every day (see picture below: Until the main elections on February 8 things were fuzzy, with Corinne Mauch...
4 tags
Web Science 2.0 – Online Analysis of Entrepreneurship Activity at German Universities Which university is the place to go to become a successful entrepreneur? Where do I find a strong entrepreneurial network and prosperous environment to start off my business? By mining and analyzing online social networking sites we found interesting answers to these questions. Out of representative samples of...
3 tags
Swarmcreativity Essentials Video on I-Open...
Wednesday afternoon I had a visit by Betsey Merkel from I-Open Education, in its own words “…a community that shares best practices in collaborative leadership, networks and Strategic Doing to strengthen Open Source Economic Development”. She did a really nice video interview that gives an overview in a nutshell of the principles of COINs and swarm creativity (you will need to...
February 2009
1 post
4 tags
Predicting the results of today's Swiss vote on...
Today the Swiss voted about extension of the right of free movement and residence with the rest of the European Union. The vote was brought by the extension of the right of free movement and residence (Personenfreizügigkeit) to new EC member states Rumania and Bulgaria, which had previously been approved by the Swiss government. The right-wing people’s party collected enough votes against it...
