B is for Beta

Management design flaws and radical remedies

MLab was founded by Gary Hamel and is designed to support research and experimentation around the future of management. At the inagural event the MLAb interviewed the attendees to hear about what radical remedies they might have for the future of management.

Each participant was asked to identify a key barrier that prevents organizations from being adaptable, innovative, or an inspiring place to work; and then to propose a potential solution. In the video clips, academics, venture capitalists, and CEOs identified the critical flaws of "management-as-usual" and posit innovative solutions.

Underlying music moment

I’m always amazed how small interactions can create such a level of happiness. That’s what happened to me last night when I discovered the Shazam application for iPhone.

Already an industry standard, Shazam fully integrates with and complements the iPhone's native environment, allowing you to seamlessly discover, buy and share tunes simply by holding your iPhone to music for just a few seconds.

The Shazam application enables you to tap into a vast database of nearly 5 million tracks giving instant satisfaction for those times when you want to know the tune that is playing, learn more about the artist, buy the song immediately - or simply add it to your playlist.

You can:

• Tag music: identify music anywhere - whether it's on the radio, TV, in a movie or in a store.
• Build your own soundtrack: see the list grow every time music is tagged.
• Get the music: go straight to iTunes to preview and buy.
• Music Videos: see related videos of the track on YouTube.
• Capture the moment: personalise the tag by taking a photo and adding it to 'My Tags'.
• Share the moment: send track details to friends via email.

Above is a demo of the product. Enjoy.

Predicting the next 5,000 days of the web

At the 2007 EG conference, Kevin Kelly shares a fun stat: The World Wide Web, as we know it, is only 5,000 days old. Now, Kelly asks, how can we predict what's coming in the next 5,000 days?