PODCAST: Grant McCracken on Managing Discontinuous Change

I was searching for a thoughtful intro to this post, but nothing’s came my way.  Except to say that doing this interview was truly a pleasure because Grant–the author of Flock and Flow: Predicting and Managing Change in a Dynamic Marketplace— is a thinker and blogger from whom I’m always learning.  So, if you’re interested in dimensioning the challenge of culture that is confronting businesses and how marketing organizations must adapt in order to get ahead of the cultural innovation curve, this podcast is for you.

00:26 – Grant’s background
01:13 – Anthropology and the tools it provides marketers
02:16 – Ethnography contributes to consumer-centricity and co-creation
02:41 – Contrasting the economic POV
03:46 – Why culture matters
07:21 – Building brands by taking meanings from culture
09:40 – How most organizations view cultural innovation
10:01 – Levi’s “blindside hit”, circa 1996
11:00 – The big board concept introduced
11:45 – The big board defined
13:42 – Where to situate it within a company
14:50 – Differences between big boards and trendspotting
15:53 – Knowledge distribution
16:32 – Everyone as a listening post
20:09 – New skills required/Pattern recognition
23:08 – Harvesting chaos/Kaufman Continuum
26:28 – Watching culture will be like watching the code in “The Matrix”
28:27 – A model for the innovative company
30:34 – Avoiding blindside hits doesn’t mean recouping marketing investment
32:03 – The imperative of preparing multiple strategies
32:53 – He remembers the cultural meaning map
33:33 – End

MP3 File