Joseph Stiglitz was quoted in the article as saying all our bailouts are focusing on the past, not the future.  Will throwing money at corporations for innovation work?  or should the government be investing in small businesses?  I am not sure either will work effectively.  This is a little farfetched, but what about making all college graduates publish at least 1 academic paper before graduating?  This would show them the power of creating new ideas and the validity of peer review.  I am not sure it would create jobs, but it would certainly make our society one of thinkers and creators, two ingredients for innovation.

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As a marketer, I read David Mullen’s 5 PR Predictions and think he has some great points.  I want to focus on his point about measuring people.  I agree with David that we will start measuring people instead of impressions, but I think it will go a lot further than that.  I don’t think the economy is turning around so quickly, which will cause companies to be very “bottom line centric”.  Companies will want to show how their investment in Web 2.0 has paid off and that will mean qualifying the active users/visitors.  It will mean developing ways to report how effective social networking tools are, like managing a twitter account.  Yes, twitter allows the company to talk to it’s customers one-to-one, but did that person buy something?  Did they click on an ad?  Did they refer someone?  How long did the cycle take? 

I think 2009 is going to be the year of the number crunchers and web analysts.  Maybe it is time to take a statistics refresher course.

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I found this very interesting because I have been researching what it takes to create a successful office-community.  The article lists three rules that they live by: 

1. Everyone has the ability to talk to whomever they need to from any department or level.  
2. Everyone has the ability to offer up an idea.  
3. Everyone must be familiar with the goings on of the academic community.  

At the same time, they setup a brain trust, consisting of their smartest and most creative people. The trust is used to ask questions of and to get feedback from on a daily basis and more frequently if necessary.  

I read this and thought, wow Pixar has a great management team.  They respect their staff, give them the authority they need to get their jobs done and supply the feedback they need keep things on track.  Until now, those were the ingredients I thought were necessary to get the job done well.  But according to Ed, my missing ingredient is Talent.  

Ed writes that “if you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they’ll screw it up.  But if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they’ll make it work.”  He defines a great team as a talented group of smart people.  What happens if I don’t have a smart group?  What if each individual in my team never finished high school?  Can’t their collective intelligence make the team work?  or are they limited in what they can do?  Is there anything they can do to move passed their mediocrity?  

I don’t have an answer, but hope there is one or that Ed is wrong.  Otherwise many companies are doomed to fail by their unsurpassable mediocrity and that is just sad.

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