Category Archives: Current Affairs

What Makes a Good Toy?

All the recent attention focused on the toy industry courtesy of safety concerns seem to have not just caused any Chinese-manufactured toys to be viewed with suspicion and sent parents trawling through the Internet in search of advice on the matter, but also caused a wider shift in spending patterns link as parents increasingly worry about finding something for their little ones this Christmas, which won’t get recalled in a few months time when someone licks it and finds it poisonous.

This in my mind doesn’t just touch on ensuring even better quality control on toys, but brings in to sharp focus two potentially incompatible value-systems: on one hand – the desire for safety and quality; on the other hand – the (almost) accepted transitory nature of many products (temporary diversion rather than long-term joy) and the subsequent unwillingness of some to spend money on products where safety and quality are taken extremely seriously.

Certainly in the toy industry nobody likes to point fingers and it is a matter of ensuring that each manufacturer takes responsibility for this, however with a lot of the focus on price, China has in recent years been a very tempting solution for many trying to keep abreast with a larger consumer trend of continuously wanting everything faster and cheaper than before. Quality takes time, it costs too and that can be a problem if your company’s business model can’t support the investment in it.

Back to lamenting toys I was recently asked what in my opinion makes a good toy, so here’s my personal list of criteria:

1. Age appropriate - small children in particular like to put everything in their mouth and are very  tactile in their play and exploration of the world – that means that the materials used and size are essential in making the toy safe. Older children have better fine motor skills and have stopped ‘chewing’ on everything to figure them out so can better handle small pieces.

2. Hands on – minds on: children’s gross and fine motor skills along with coordination mature earlier than other parts of their brain so it is important that their toys stimulate movement and coordination, both on large and small scale. The ability of the toy to engage your mind and imagination is essential as children learn about both themselves and the outside world through their imagination.

3. Easy to learn but challenging to master - this gives the toy longevity and guarantees interest over time.

4. Many ideas and opportunities – it is important to be able to learn through the toys, but if they do not encourage experimentation and idea generation the learning will be short-lived

5. Fun alone and together – being alone and together is important for kids, both with their own peers but also with their parents, so toys that can handle both enable role-play and storytelling that kids both love to hear and to do for themselves, alone and together.

Now some toys tick all the boxes, others only some, but it’s important to remember than there are many kinds of toys, each with their own strengths and a good mix is important too, but above all they must all encourage play, the more the better!

 

 

The Key to Social Media: Above all – Be Useful!

First I would like to dedicate this post to Mum of a LEGO Kid, because you just convinced me to drag myself out of my self-pity (I have a cold!) and reflect on what were my Aha-moments from last week’s Conference on Social Media and User-generated Content.

So a rather intimate affair, we were around 50-60 people in total and from a refreshing variety of companies ranging from CNN, Yahoo, Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank, TripAdvisor, E.On, Honda, Habbo Hotel, Spannerworks and many more. Although initially I was expecting something bigger, the frankness of the discussion and the willingness of people to share their thinking and ideas was great – it seems a smaller conference is more conducive to that, rather than a bigger one where you never get to know everyone there.

Interestingly, there were also plenty of different approaches to the subject matter – from literally how to do corporate blogging by VisitBritain.com to my own talk about how we at LEGO strive to not only involve lead users in our product development, as was the case with LEGO Mindstorms NXT, LEGO Hobby Train and now the LEGO Universe MMOG but also have created ways for everyone to design their very own LEGO products via LEGO Factory and are gradually setting up structures to open up our business platform to our fans and LEGO certified professionals, creating an business ecosystem around LEGO.

Honda contributed with a case studies of their recent marketing campaigns on ‘Hate Something Change Something‘ and ‘Hondamentalism‘, both which I thought were brilliantly executed campaigns, but somehow I was a little disappointed not to see a truer user-focus from them – i.e users really having a big say in what Honda does, more than just interact around the campaigns.. perhaps it is hard to do as a car manufacturer, but somehow I would like them to be different and do it anyway! (call me a hopeless romantic!)

Coca-Cola talked about how coke music was the spring board for many a young aspiring artist and how the community here took off – of course needless to say, music has a strong tribal effect particularly on young people so hats off to Coke for making it happen. Another piece of inspiration came from Yahoo, whose Yahoo Answers is an interesting way to create discussion around a topic and find answers to all your questions, whatever they may be. Not that revolutionary you may say, but think of it this way – Wikipedia is great if you want to find the explanation to something you have stumbled on, but aren’t sure of the details. Yahoo answers is great if you have a question, but don’t know the answer.. You with me? Hmmm… perhaps not the best explanation – but essentially I’m trying to say that here community interaction is focused around problem solving, where the collective brain of hundreds of thousands of Internet users can come to your rescue whatever the problem.

Also, I can’t help but love the pixelated world of Habbo, created by my fellow Finns at Sulake Corporation – also a massively multi-player on-line game, this one primarily at teen-agers and very funny in its approach to characters, locations – you name it.   

So ultimately if I was to distill my thoughts from the conference without making this too long a post it would be this:

  1. Create an open platform – platforms work better than closed solutions, because you can never quite anticipate how people will use things you create. If you have a platform, more things are possible and it is easier to reconfigure stuff that doesn’t work. Open platforms means its easy for advocates to get others on-board, and you do want a bustling community for it to make sense!
  2. Unite people behind something they care about – Social networking is great, but after you’ve got all your mates on Facebook or Myspace, why would you go anywhere else? Good question. Ultimately we tend to be more open about meeting new people when it is around a subject we are really in to – immediately we have something in common with these strangers and it is easy to strike up a conversation. On-line it is very similar too.
  3. Make it useful – Whatever fancy community you want to create, this links to the above point. Many an idea dies a horrible death, because beyond the novelty factor, it really doesn’t do much. The bits that people come back to over and over again are the useful bits. Wikipedia is useful. Linked-in is useful too, these things have a purpose people get and hence I predict they will be around for a long while. Facebook has a chance of being around far longer than Myspace, because they went for an open platform, allowing people to come up with tons and tons of widgets and applications (some useful, some less useful), but at least they are there and things happen at a breakneck speed, so there is a reason to keep coming back for more than just checking on your mates.
  4. Don’t manipulate, facilitate - This one is very much about the approach. Meaningful things happen trough facilitation, only bad things happen through manipulation. Enough said. Help people to make a difference and you help yourself.
  5. Be truthful and honest (and humble) – No, Social Media is not some sort of smoke and mirrors thing you can douse a failing product line in and miraculously see it recover.. it is essentially a dialogue and nobody wants to discuss anything with a liar and a cheat. To involve users you have to be honest and truthful, not think you can use this thing to warp people’s perception from bad to good. Moreover, treat people with respect – always. I get so furious for instance when I hear people talk about driving traffic to websites by comment spamming – no, it doesn’t work. You look like an idiot trying to advertise Cillit Bang by posing as Barry the character from the adverts on someone’s blog..
  6. Have some fun! Yes it can all be very serious sometimes and uniting people in laughter is a great one, however – it’s more of an ingredient, as not all people will find all things funny all the time. Also, people who share a common interest or passion are more likely to be able to share something funny between them and boy, sometimes we all need cheering up!

Last, but not least I’ll do a plug for our friends at Spannerworks, who have created a no-nonsense guide to all things social media in a nifty E-Book you can download and dazzle your friends with in-depth knowledge. Or as Forrester research puts it ‘Social Computing is not a fad. Nor is it something that will pass you or your company by. Gradually, Social Computing will impact almost every role, at every kind of company, in all parts of the world.’ Forrester Research, Social Computing – How Networks Erode Institutional Power, And What to Do About It

Happiness is a skill you need to practise

Money can’t buy you love sang the Beatles already a long time ago, yet these days we are finally beginning to understand the meaning of this yet, interestingly, various research around seems to be far more pre-occupied with who the happiest people on the planet are, rather than trying to understand what makes us happy.

Just back from my holiday in Finland I’m greeted with yet another piece of research (This time from Euromonitor) focusing on happiness and how it is beginning to increasingly pre-occupy both discussions, articles in the media and how, for some reason, the Scandinavians seem to be the happiest people ever. Considering these people live in pretty cold climates with plenty of rain, some snow and darkness for large parts of the day during winter months, we must conclude that at least you can’t blame it on the weather. These are also countries that are relatively rich, have high literacy and work pretty long hours so you can’t put it down to all play and no work either. Moreover, all Scandinavian countries also have high taxes, often the booze is expensive too and they all spend far too much time on the Internet – all supposedly things that  make us depressed, but not the Scandies. What could be their secret? I’ll return to this later.

First to some facts about this emerging research field of happiness levels on a global basis – In June this year, experts gathered at the OECD forum in Istanbul concluded that economic-focused indices of the past, usually based around GDP levels, are no
longer sufficient in measurements of social development around the world.

Various approaches have been introduced to try to address this, the most famous perhaps is the
United Nation’s Human Development Index. This has been used for many years to
calculate a standardised, comparable indicator of social progress, based around
the key social components of economics, health and educational opportunity. This
itself was an advance on the earlier focus simply on GDP levels. The key
statistics are GDP per capita, life expectancy and education (a weighted
composite of adult literacy and school enrolments). Many other studies of human
well-being around the world are also based on this work.

However, experts in this field have in recent decades confirmed that the key
criteria behind happiness change as an economy and society evolve, and that the
link in particular between economic success and happiness changes. The latter
connection typically wanes as a country becomes wealthier – creating an
income-happiness paradox that is frequently linked to aspiration and comparison,
i.e.:

  • The consumers’ ongoing increase in income and
    material success fails to match the wider growth in their expectations as their
    wealth rises;
  • Consumers feel that their own achievements fall
    short of the successes of others in their society (and with today’s mass media,
    comparisons are also perhaps being made internationally).

Another way to approach the tricky subject of happiness is the World Values Survey. This academic-based survey looks into values across world societies, including
social, cultural, religious and political aspects. It was launched in Europe in
1981 and its success led to its subsequent expansion into a regular global
survey. Individual national surveys are conducted by a network of academics
worldwide, each funded locally.

Press reports on the top-line results into “happiness” tend to vary, largely
due to the fact that the survey asks two related questions:

  • Taking all things together, would you say you are Very Happy… Not at All Happy"
    (graded response options);
  • “All things being considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole
    these days.” (graded response options).

The latter “satisfaction” questions also relate to a definition known as
“subjective well-being,” which some researchers believe is a better indicator of
overall happiness than happiness-only questions. Incidentally, another newer survey seeks to build on this approach by adding
in an environmental impact element. This is the Happy Planet Index (HPI),
launched in July 2006 by the New Economics Foundation. Another body of work is the World Happiness Database by Ruut Veenhoven at the University of Rotterdam, and furthermore the map of subjective well-being by Adrian White at University of Leicester.

Comparing happiness in societies around the world in such different states of
development and with such differing priorities clearly has limitations, but the
principal is now gaining credibility amongst even the most fiscally-focused
analysts. In very broad terms, work to date demonstrates that national happiness and
well-being levels are generally related to health, income and education, and
honest, tolerant government, offering people the opportunity to pursue a way of
life of their choice. It is widely agreed, for example, that Denmark and other
Scandinavian markets score well on all of these points. Denmark has also
incidentally shown good rises in its happiness levels over the past few
decades.

Economic improvement is a factor in less developed economies, but once a minimum
standard is reached (probably around the level of the poorest Western European
markets) it has a fast diminishing effect; The criteria behind happiness vary by market and over time as aspirations
change. Many developing markets are still in the basic material upgrading phase.
As is well-known, however, in advanced economies materialism has waned, and in
these markets has even been described as a “happiness suppressant”; A just, open government and society show as key factors behind social
contentment. Some fast-improving economies generating rapid financial gain for
their citizens appear to have happiness levels limited by such issues.

All this research is missing a crucial point though – a human being’s ability to take active charge of your own happiness. Rather than being told that the Danes are the happiest in the world, I would like to know which societies or people are best at coping with adversities.

Invariably we cannot control the things that fate will throw in our way, but I’m always astonished to hear about the stories of how people cope with seemingly impossible situations, how when told they only have a year left to live people emerge from initial depression to extol how much more they enjoy their life now than before. Some attribute it to a realisation of what is important in life and prioritising that, others talk about a self-discipline in terms of not succumbing to anger, jealousy and hatred and instead finding happiness in helping others – these are invariably individual stories with a great capacity to inspire and reminding us how much we ourselves are in charge of our own happiness and how the way we look at the world has an enormous impact in how happy we are. In that respect, the level of material wealth and how fair or just a society is become external factors providing an added bonus, but not the factors explaining happiness as a whole.

Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton is a good introduction to this topic, pointing to the fact that our likelihood of feeling happy or depressed has a lot to do with the values we aspire to, and how learning associated to growth as individuals, altruism and helping others as well as creative expression have an infinitely greater capacity to provide a foundation to happiness than material wealth or celebrity. So with all this talk about happiness I would like to know how these happiest people on the planet look at these topics, not just the fact whether they are happy or not. I would argue that Scandinavians are great fans of self-actualisation through all these means and it is the wide access to, and opportunities within these areas that drives a great sense of satisfaction, rather than merely economic wealth and a fair justice system although they are very important. So much like any other talent or skill you have – happiness is a skill that needs to be practiced, not only in your outlook on life (refraining from seeing the bad side in everything and always striving to be positive and counting your blessings), but also in your investement in growing yourself as a human being through learning, creative expression and helping others, as well as looking after yourself physically. It’s a balancing act, that only you can master.

Interview: Where Does the LEGO Lady Go to Unwind?

A fair question and although this interview explains all about one of my favourite places on Earth; little Pietra Santa in Tuscany, Italy read the Interview – although it is not where I’m headed this weekend. A holiday is certainly something I need right now, it’s been a wildly busy year and I’m getting to that stage right now that although I love my job and have a blast doing it, people could be handing me the greatest gift on the planet and I would struggle to summon my trademark enthusiasm for it.

I simply need a rest. And to stop thinking about all the things I have to think about as part of my job just for long enough so that thinking about them will feel like ‘I’m thinking about them after having had some time to think about something else’ rather than ‘I’m thinking about this again and by the way I haven’t had time to think about anything else in the meantime’. You know what I mean. Fortunately a break is looming on the horizon and I’m truly madly deeply looking forward to it, much like someone crossing the desert must be feeling when they finally come across an oasis. So on that note – over and out and back again next week!

It takes a (global, connected) village to raise a child

No I’m not referring to Hillary Clinton’s book, nor her speech on the topic of children – but I am borrowing the same (origin unknown) African proverb that claims it takes a village to raise a child. In fact, I’m building on it to refer to the Internet, the global connected village it has made the world, we are all connected, not necessarily by six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon but in fact by 3rd degree via LinkedIn (or Myspace, Bebo, Facebook or whatever takes your fancy).

For me it has been a revelation that by humbly starting to publish this blog here in my corner of London, UK, there are people as far as Kiribati who magically stumble on this site and moreover, can be bothered to read what I have to say. Truly humbling. Big up to Kiribati I say! This global village of ours has also taught me some very valuable lessons, some of which I agonise over in a previous post about the pain of trying to come up with consistently good quality material. Not sure I succeed consistently, but mainly due to the kindness and patience of my readers, I still have an audience..

I recently came across a brilliant study from Forrester research by a guy called Jaap Favier, Dutch perhaps I endeavour to guess? Anyway he has managed to pull together some great insights about how group dynamics are driving social media on the net and how this connectivity means companies need to change in order to stay relevant for their consumers. Sounds complicated, but on a larger scale I feel companies need to learn what the village has raised me to believe over the years:

Content is king -> CONTACT is king
It’s not about the stuff, it’s about whether you care to listen what people have to say, whether you can help put them in touch with each other and provide them with ways they can not only help each other, but create things together with you. Are you a good citizen and do people even want to know you? If you are evil, chances are they don’t. Often only when you go look for friends do you discover what people really think about you. Don’t let it get that far.

The Medium is the Message -> The RESPONSE is the message
Can you get people to care enough to get involved, can they respond to you, to others, do things change based on their response? You get what you give, if you are rude and deceitful, chances are you also foster that behaviour in people around you.

We call the shots -> THEY call the shots
Don’t think you know it all. Don’t even attempt. There are people out there who know your company, product, service you name it better than you do. They do call the shots whether you like it or not. A smart thing would be to learn from what they have to say and be humble.

KEEP IT REAL
Only if you are honest, true to what you promise and deliver it as good as you say it is, people trust you. To be trusted you have to keep it real, always. No lies, no cheating, no screwing people over – they find out soon enough and others even sooner, so be good and the world is good to you back. Most of the time anyway!

It’s funny – yesterday we had the last episode of the Apprentice, (for now) where our pet magnate Sir Alan Sugar got himself a fresh faced new apprentice, Simon, willing to work ‘his cotton socks off’ as he bluntly put it when asked why he should be hired. Sugar, true to his name, subsequently presented Simon with some unsightly pairs of cotton socks that he could ‘work off’ in due course. Although not the most experienced of contestants, Simon’s happy-go-lucky attitude and kindness got him quite far and moreover made him a master at dealing with some of the more prickly contestants in the show.

The complete opposite was Katie, fired from the show last week. It seems that in her case, common decency took a left-turn and avoided her altogether. Certainly, courtesy of having a blog you learn first-hand how quickly the Internet bites back and let’s you know faster, sooner, and more sharply how much you suck, even when your best-friends stay silent. It felt almost sadistic and certainly voyeuristic to sit there watching Katie spouting her horrific comments about her fellow contestants to the camera and then select comments being revealed to the fellow contestants by programme directors.. pausing to focus on the furious candidate, squirming in their seat, rolling their eyes. It just amazes me that no one from the real or virtual village has played their part, taking Katie to one side, giving her a really good hiding and reminding her just what it means to be a citizen in the global village. Sir Alan Sugar did it sort of, a little yesterday – but all she did was smile. Knowingly. Thinking she still calls the shots. Think again.