Trust, Play and Creativity

Why do we lose our creativity over time? Why, as adults, are we not supposed to "play" anymore -- not video, card or board games -- but really play. Blocks, Lego, forts, tree-houses, cardboard boxes, Nerf guns -- these are "kids games."

Here's a very interesting presentation (~28 minutes) by Tim Brown about the relationship between play, creativity and even learning, again from TED (I wasn't kidding when I said I was going to watch as many of them as I could). I've been thinking about the benefits of play for a while now, but if you've ever wondered why, other than cool factor, all these super-successful, creative companies like Google and Pixar have such an investment in their "fun" -- this is why.

"We need trust to play and we need trust to be creative."

Creativity, Fulfillment and Flow

An interesting video posted by SEO Black Hat about "Creativity, fulfillment and flow."

This reminds me a great deal of the Conscious Competence learning model, but about the relationship between skill and challenge rather than skill and awareness. (To sum up two complicated topics in one, rather inadequate sentence.) Very worth the 19 minutes.

I suspect I will be writing an overview of the Conscious Competence model in the near future.

I also think I'll be watching as many of these Ted talks as I can get my eyes on.

If Google Were a Person...

Someone mentioned to me today that Google's quarterly revenue is $5.5 billion.

That means the company makes a little under $42,000 per minute, before overhead, all day every day. At first this seems utterly stunning -- especially given the going salaries these days -- but how many AdWords clicks does it take to generate that money? If the average click costs $2, that's 21,000 clicks per minute. Of course that seems insane to most of us small-timers, but for the reach and reputation of Google it doesn't seem particularly impressive. Even if the average click is only $1, the 42,000 clicks required to get that revenue doesn't seem that overwhelming for the mighty giant.

The great part about this, from a business standpoint, is the ability to spend time working on high-value activities (HVAs) while the money-making end of things practically run themselves. For Google, this means they can spend time working on improving the process, improving the profitability and the long-term value of their business while AdWords chugs along. They can explore new possibilities for revenue streams; ones involving their existing technologies (Gmail, for example, shows you unobtrusive ads but hosts your e-mail for free) as well as completely new avenues.

Most companies simply don't have the luxury. Google's constant innovation is not really so surprising, since they have time to get to their non-urgent, important activities. The rest of us spend so much time putting out fires (our urgent, important activities) and making sure things run in the day-to-day that the small amount of time we have for improving the business as a whole takes a long time (forever, if we're unlucky) to manifest positive results. As the saying goes, you must work on your business to be truly successful. not just in it.

Here's the fun part: if Google were a person, working 50 weeks a year with 9 hour work days, they would make $9,777,777 an hour.

Google's Great Consolidation

Google doesn't really seem to be invested in competing with the likes of Facebook, Myspace, and other large social networking sites. Of course they want to index them, provide their search features and have positive business relationships, but why are there public profiles available for anyone with a Google account? There are no social media-esque features (pick friends, post updates, photos, etc.), so why -- other than more data (which they always seem interested in), what's in it for them?

Yes, Orkut showed up with a bang a few years ago, but it sizzled out pretty quickly in North America and, from what I understand, Europe. With the amount of money going through Facebook ads daily, I can't see the big G being uninterested in getting advertising in front of so many eyes.

Are these profiles a testing ground for a competitor to LinkedIn? Where are you and who do you work for, who have you worked for, what schools have you gone to -- sounds about right for the information end of things.

What if it's the precursor to Google Facebook Gbook, or Gspace? How convenient it be to have your entire web experience (blog, search, video, social/networking) tied together with one account? Cue paranoid ramblings about big brother, but if the quality of the other products (beta or no) is there, it sounds pretty nice to me. OpenID has been around for quite a while, but it hasn't seemed to gain much real momentum, but so many already use Google's personalized services for so many things, why wouldn't they try to bring as much as they can under their umbrella? More usefulness, more page views, more ads, more money.

Making money through being both useful and convenient. No, that's not evil, but it is clever.