Information Products and More

Well, I have a bunch of ideas for CDs or downloadable files that assemble information on topics that people care about. I'm thinking of a searchable compendium of knowledge and ideas in areas like these:

1. health and fitness.
2. Wealth building.
3. Success.
4. Applied Psychology.
5. Marketing.

Knowledge base files could also be created for areas of concern for activists and nonprofits. I know enough about some of the relevant topics to help research and write the content. What I really need is production and marketing help. I could also create a Web site to sell the products.

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Social Marketing Wiki - Another one of my wild online ideas, but perhaps one that people would like. The idea is to create a site devoted to social marketing and the relevant psychology. It could extend to topics like the psychology of influence, copy writing, and neurolinguisitic programming. As a wiki, anyone with anything to contribute could add or edit entries. I think the information would be most helpful to lots of nonprofits and activist groups!

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Next time I'll turn my attention to thoughts inspired by a book called Jump Start Your Business Brain. A book on selling stuff has more applications in the nonprofit world than you may think. Ditto for activism.

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Finally, I remember to mention this really cool Weblog on innovation. The Innovation Tools Web site is also a good source of information on books and software that support creativity and problem solving. Check 'em out, beginnning with the blog.

http://www.innovationtools.com/weblog/innovation-weblog.asp

Social Pollution and Other News

Maybe something like this already exists for teaching students in high school and college, but probably not: There could be a market for teaching materials that show students how to identify biases in their own thinking and (more importantly) in others' thinking.

The biases are of three kinds: the ecological fallacy, the individualistic fallacy (both familiar to sociologists but not to the general public, it seems) and overemphasis of one perspective/explanation for social phenomena and personal behavior. The perspectives that would be cevered in these teaching materials include biological/genetic. spiritual/religious, moral, social, individualistic, scientific, and economic.

There could be three lessons. This is probably the minimum required to get any benefit from the material. Lesson one could cover the definitions of three biases and their impacts. Lesson two could focus on identifying their prevalence in each student's own thinking. Lesson three could focus on the social consequences of each bias.

I have detailed information on this material and would love to work with someone on creating and marketing it. The actual product would be a workbook and teacher's guide. If you are interested, feel free to contact me at chetdavis35@peoplepc.com with "social pollution" in the subject line.

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In other news: I only plan to do a few more of these "idea" posts. Then I'll shift my focus to commentary on how business innovation tools and strategies can be used in nonprofits. My emphasis wil be on sustainable development and social change organizations (or informally organized groups!).

A Social Change Wiki

First, you should know that a wiki is a Web site that anyone can add to, delete from, or edit. The most famous wiki is probably Wikipedia, a free online encyclopedia. I was reminded of a wiki idea of my own today when I saw a reference to Wikipedia in a book. I think there may be interest in a wiki that focuses on one or more aspects of social change, assuming no such wiki already exists.

So what is in a social change wiki? My idea is for a wiki that focuses on using business innovation tools and strategies in social change efforts. The scope of the wiki could be expanded to cover education, economic development, sustainable development, and community organizing, and general nonprofit management.

What sorts of "business innovation tools and strategies" am I talking about? You may be familiar with term "lateral thinking" and you may even be familiar with some of the specific tools used in it. Many books on the subjects of creativity, brainstorming, problem solving, and innovation exist. The material in these books is certainly applicable to social change efforts and these applications, real or theoretical, would be covered.

Software for problem solving, decision making, and brainstorming also exists. The software is usually sold to business users but should also be valuable for nonprofits and informal groups focused on activism or economic development. There is also software for managing group brainstorming sessions. The social change applications, actual or theoretical, would be covered.

The idea is to get people to talk about how the tools and strategies can be/have been/are now used.

What I'd like to do is donate some of my time and knowledge to this effort. I need people with the technical skill and the marketing resources to help me make this wiki happen. I suspect this would have to be done as a hobby or as a nonprofit venture.

If you can help or know someone who can help contact me at chetdavis35@peoplepc.com with "social change wiki" in the subject line.

Problem-Solving Techniques and Sociology

Yes, sociologists and sociolo9y students generally know how to "brainstorm" in a general, undisciplined way. But there are some specific techniques and applications that may be interesting to sociologists and other social scientists. This post offers some of my thoughts on that topic.

Survey research - Concept fans can be used to work from the general intent of a question to the specific word choices and "angles" that are possible. What do you really want to know and what particular wording will elicit this information? This is the sort of issue that concept fans can help you answer as a student, or as an expert working on a particularly challenging research subject.

Studying - Tony Buzan invented Mind Maps (r) as an alternative to note taking and outlining. The technique has obvious uses in studying social science textbooks and in literature reviews.

Theory building - Mind Maps (r) and concept fans can help you understand the mechanisms that are at work. They can also make it eaiser to think about the relationships between variables. In qualitative research this capability may be especially valuable since there is no formal way of summarizing the relationships between variables. (Yes, I know qualitative researchers usually don't talk about variables! Substitute factors, frames, or similar terms.)

Interested in a quick overview of problem-solving and creative-thinking? See Mindtools.com for an introduction to many of the techniques.

Finding Business and Nonprofit Applications of Sociology

I'm sure there are many things sociologists have done that could form the foundation of business ventures, nonprofit programs, new products, or new services. I've already come up with a few.

The Institute for Applied Sociology would develop nonprofit and business applications of sociology. This would be a for-profit venture. It could provide training, sell information products, and perhaps do some custom research. The Institute's work could and should be extended to other social science disciplines. Psychology, organization theory, and techological futures research seem like good choices.

What sorts of possibilities are there for new products and services? I've come up with several ideas:

1. EScanner software for trend analysis and environmental scanning.
2. Workshops on "selling" new ideas, based on Everett Roger's book Diffusion of Innovations.
3. Neurolinguistic programming for social marketing and advocacy.
4. Fighting social pathology - teaching materials and books devoted to combating the impact of bad ideas on societies.
5. Using the psychology of selling to promote social change.
6. Biographies of sociologists whose ideas are highly relevant to modern life. We'd probably have to do them all in one or two volumes unless we included social philosophers like Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx.

Anyway, I think there are many more product and service ideas to be found in the social science literature. Some will have enough potential to be worth developing! I need help doing the development and marketing.

Interested? Contact me at chetdavis35@peoplepc.com )mention Applications of Sociology in the subject line) or call me 703-823-2145 and leave a message.

Environmental Scanning Software

This is a potentially valuable product for social forecasting, technological forecasting, strategic planning, trend analysis, and perhaps for other applications. Perhaps it offers a new way to study the "cultural climate" in foreign countries or to track the "chatter" on hundreds of Arabic Web sites. Environmental scanning is the systematic search for information about an organization's social environment.

My environmental scanning software, call it EScanner for want of a better term, could be valuable to marketers, consultants, and some government agencies.

A Web interface walks the user through a series of questions about his or her organization. The questions would be a mixture of open-ended and closed-ended. The software would be able to interpret key phrases in the open-ended questions to produce search terms. The result would be a set of search instructions that are used to search the Internet(including Usenet, and whole Web sites - not jsut home pages). The results would be returned as links and descriptions.

Similar software already exists, but it tends to allow only one search at a time. This software would run 21 searches (7 dimensions times 3 characteristics) at one time and present the results in a relatively more-organized fashion.

There could be several options built in. Here are my ideas:

(1) This software has obvious uses in data mining of blogs, Usenet, and public Web sites.

(2) The software could also do more processing of the information, to present graphs and tables.

(3) EScanner sould support content analysis of the searched text, reporting themes and their categories.

(4) EScanner could also offer decision support by guiding users through a series of questions on the organization's social environment, complete with a report on the results of each questioning session and a set of recommendations.

I would love to find someone with the programming skills to help me develop the functionality of this software. I could handle the conceptual parts and the interface design (using a WYSIWYG editor). My PhD is in sociologyso I studied theory on the social environments of organizations. I could also write the user guide. I've also written functional requirements and managed an IT project.

Interested? Email me at chetdavis35@peoplepc.com with the subject line "Environmental Scanning Software" or call me at 703-832-2145 (and leave a message - it is my home answering machine).

Please contact me only if you are serious, and have either the money or the technical expertise to do the development work. We would share in the licensing fee and royalties. Note that I am only interested in developing this product for licensing, not as the core of a new business.

Some Random Thoughts

Creative thinking can be helped along by comparing a challenge to a randomly selected word. This technique, sometimes called random input, is an old brainstorming trick. Here are a few related thoughts on challenges that I've been thinking about lately. Note the form of the statements I make. The "random" words jsut popped into my head. You could use a dictionary and just open to a random page.

How can a lizard help improve Washington D.C. public schools (buildings, plumbing heating/cooling)?

How can a vending machine help promote the faster adoption of a sustainable consciousness?

How can a vending machine help me capitalize on my knowledge of sociology?

How can a vending machine and a bus help combat homelessness in the DC area?

How can running help me promote my consulting business?

The technique is fairly simple. Just think about the attributes of lizards, vending machines, or whatever. List as many attributes, characteristics, or associations as you can. Take them one at a time and try to make some connection with the challenge at hand.

Impact of Ideas Initiative, or I3

I3 is a project to research the consequences of popular ideas about various aspects of social life. The exact areas of social life and the exact ideas are open. The areas I had in mind to invesitgate are science, government, religion, economy, politics, ethics, education, family, and technology.
Those areas seem to make the most sense as focal points because of their impact on social life.

Why do we want to systematically study the consequences of ideas? We want to be able to quantify their effects on modern life/ If that is not possible we at least want to make a systematic qualititative assessment of how ideas shape our lives. This seems like good basic research and may have a practical use.

If we know how popular ideas are affecting modern life we can do one of three things. We can adjust our advocacy and public education efforts to better focus on our goals. We can measure the real effect of ideas we are currently promoting. The research results could also be used to inform, shame, or oppose opinion leaders in areas like politics (President Bush) or religion (Pat Robertson). Of course the applications to social criticism are so obvious I won't bother. The results of I3 research could also help support and improve the operations of our existing social institutions.

(An aside: we can also measure the costs of what I like to call "social pollution" - ideas that are illogical, counterfactual, or contrary to widely held human values.)

Yes, I know this stuff gets done now. I'm just suggesting a deliberately organized effort to investigate the ideas that underlie modern life in certain key areas. Oh, and I do have another purpose in mind!

We can gather the information we need to design and "sell" alternatives to current ideas that are not getting the results we may have hoped for. I'd have to elaborate on what I mean here in a future blog.

It seems that I3 would make a great project for a nonprofit think tank. As far as making this into a business opportunity, well, my imagination fails me. The business angle includes selling books based on the Initiative's research or creating a television show devoted to the impact of ideas in various areas of social life. I'll elaborate on the possibilities in my next blog. (Yes, I'm aware of the difficulties involved in getting deals from book publishers and television studios.)

The Initiative could have a cross-cultural focus, rather than being an American operation. Starting small, with the USA or with one of those areas of research would make sense.

As always, if you are qualified and interested, you can contact me to discuss this idea at any time. Email me at chetdavis35@peoplepc.com or call 703-823-2145. Please put Impact of Ideas Initiative in the subject line if you decide to email me.