How sensors shape our Algorithm Eco System

The art of quantitative prediction is reshaping business. Technology evolves -> Sensors increase and improve -> Big data grows exponentially -> Development of mathematical models -> Resource allocation based on algorithms.
Being ten microseconds ahead is the distinctive competitive advantage in the unfolding, real-time, algorithm eco system.

In an interesting TEDtalk, Kevin Slavin explains how algorithms affect our everyday lives. Algorithms can make our lives better by recommending the right movies, but can also cause financial ruin.



Our financial system has become increasingly dependent on quants - math wizzards and computer programmers in the engine room of our financial system - trying to quantify human (economic) behaviour with mathematical models.

Building brands & driving sales by activating mirror neurons

Mirror neurons - the neurons that trigger the same responses in our brain whether we do something ourselves or whether we observe someone else doing the same task - form the foundation of influencing decisions about what products and brands we purchase. Indeed, Future actions (i.e. purchase decisions) can be predicted from registered brain activity patterns .

Magazine advertising is fairly effective at triggering mirror neurons by visualizing other people enjoying, for example, Häagen-Dazs ice-cream.

Observing someone else enjoying delicious Häagen-Daz ice-cream will trigger the same reaction in our brain as if you had one in your own hand. This neurological response generates a desire for ice-cream that can only be satisfied by buying a real one.

Recent research shows that well executed magazine ads can be impactful enough to create a false memory of having tried a product that doesn’t even exist.

Researchers Rajagopal and Montgomery showed subjects either high imagery or low imagery versions of magazine ads for a fictitious popcorn product, Orville Redenbacher Gourmet Fresh. Other subjects were allowed to consume “samples” of the invented product which were actually a different Redenbacher popcorn.

A week later, all of the participants were surveyed to determine their attitudes toward the product and how confident they were about their opinions. Members of the group that viewed the more vivid ad were as likely to report that they had tried the product as the group that actually consumed the samples. The group that saw the low imagery ads were less likely to report they had tried the product, and had weaker, less favorable opinions about it.

Changing the brand to an unknown name, the fictitious “Pop Joy Gourmet Fresh,” reduced the false memory effect. I presume that the more ubiquitous the product and brand, the more likely these false recollections are to occur.

This study shows the power of magazine ads that incorporate vivid imagery – clearly, paper has once again shown itself to be an effective medium. These magazine ads can apparently create the impression of experiencing the product in consumer brains, and can increase positive feelings about the product.

Clearly, it’s worth taking the time to create superb images – mouth-watering, well styled closeups for food products, for example. For other products, images that emphasize the products sensual aspects – textures, scents, etc. – would likely work best, even though the sensory experience will be in the mind of the viewer.

(Sources: tdgNeuroBrand & R. Dooley)

Relationship between brain activation pattern & intangible value of a brand

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Neuroscience: data mining & visualization

How to apply the generated brain-activation data to improve marketing ROI?

Data-driven neuroscience will need machine learning because of the curse of dimensionality.

Neuro secrets of superbrands

The BBC program, Secrets of the Superbrands, looks at why technology megabrands such as Apple, Facebook and Twitter have become so popular and such a big part of many people’s lives.

UK neuroscientists suggest that the brains of Apple devotees are stimulated by Apple imagery in the same way that the brains of religious people are stimulated by religious imagery.

DigitalNow 2011

Author Tomi Ahonen delivers the opening keynote presentation at digitalNow 2011 at Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa

An effective economy-of-everyday-life-innovation

How to intervene meaningfull with commuters at critical inflection points?



What is the secret behind it's success? The concept has taken into account the critical success factors for economy-of-everyday-life-innovations:

1. Find a practice that is common and trivial enough
2. Remember that self-evident issues are in many cases the platform for new innovation
3. Become embedded in current practices of everyday life
4. Build new services on the basis of existing ways of doing
5. Help your potential customers to learn new forms of practices

The Transmedia Business Model Canvas

Technological development: robotica and gaming

Nieuwe technieken op het gebied van robotica en gaming zorgen voor een revolutie in de zorg. De computertechniek brengt tevens grote veranderingen in oorlogsvoering.

How to design effective business models

A moral operating system should be developed at a European level, not at a national level

There are a million thing you can do with cookie data. But we should not have a dialogue about what we CAN do with cookie data, but about what we SHOULD do with data. It's about making ethical decisions.

It makes no sense to have a dialogue at a national level on this topic. The online world is a world without nation states; a world without national borders. To be effective, a moral operating system has to be formed on - at least - a European level.

Imagine exponential-growth-impact of techological innovations (faster, smaller, cheaper, better)

When trying to understand the impact of exponentially growing techological innovations (faster, smaller, cheaper, better) on our Marketing Eco System, we often - unconsciously - assume a linear growth. But if you think about it, if you have a lily pad and it just divided every single day....two, four, eight, 16....in 15 days you have 32,000. What do you think you have in a month? We're at a billion.

Try to start to think exponentially to imagine how leveraging cross-disciplinary, exponentially growing technologies is affecting our Marketing Eco System.

In case of understanding consumer behavior: from cheaper, but higher-resolution MRI-scans to improving mobility of neuro imaging and next level real-time data-gathering & -visualization tools.

In case of healthcare: from low-cost gene analysis to the ability to do powerful bio-informatics to the connection of the Internet and social networking.

The current technology is able to make the next better by itself. That is new.

Augmented reality is not changing what you see, but how you see it; new ways to see, not new things to look at. Reality is not augmented by adding a layer, but by adding augmented sensors. Connectivity of people with data should not happen solely via the eye, but also via other senses.



The morality of objects from anonymous to highly disruptive to your personal space. Demolishing the public space.



Every generation threatens the generation before. The current technology is able to make the next better by itself. That is new. The people who are in charge now hardly know how things work in the new marketing eco system, the grown ups are the next ones down the list. The grown ups could not be disruptive anymore....the grown ups have work to do. Proving that networks are stronger than hierarchies.

Financial warning sense by tactile feedback

We have trouble controlling our consumer impulses, and there's a gap between our decision and the consequences. This is magnified by the digitization of money. When we pull a product off the shelf, do we know what our bank account balance is, or whether we're over budget for the month? Our existing senses are inadequate to warn us.

The Proverbial Wallet gives a financial warning sense at the point of purchase by un-abstracting virtual assets. Tactile feedback reflecting our personal balances and transactions helps us develop a subconscious financial sense that guides responsible decisions. In addition to providing a visceral connection to our virtual money, tactile output keeps personal information private and ambient.

The Proverbial Wallets are working prototypes, tough enough to sit on. They communicate with a cellphone through Bluetooth, using its data connection to get financial information from the user's bank accounts.

Source: http://eco.media.mit.edu/static/proverbialwallets/index.html

The Arab Spring, a rebirth far beyond a social media revolution

While some call it the Facebook-revolution, the Arab Spring (which began in Tunis) is far beyond a social media revolution...most Egyptians have no internet access at all. The Arab Spring is a rebirth of Islamic modernism.

Many Islamic movements in the Middle East tend to be authoritarian. But an authoritarian political culture, as Islamic modernists argue, should not be confused with the very origin of Islam. Realize that the main cause of the Arab Spring lies in the autohoritarian political culture of the whole region, not just Islam. Citizens in the Middle East have a problem with the authoritarian political culture and are motivated to change that political culture.

In the 19th century, when Islamic modernists were looking at Europe as an example (realizing that Europe has many things to admire: like science and technology, but also democracy, parliament, the idea of representation and the idea of equal citizenship), the Islamic modernists were independent and self-confident.

With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, in the early 20th century, the Middle East was colonized. This caused not only a very sharp decline in liberal ideas in the Muslim world, and a defensive, rigid, reactionary Arab mindset, the colonization of the Middle East also caused an anti-colonization culture. Europe became an enemy to fight and to resist.

When the colonial period ended, what you had in place of that was: dictators, suppressing democracy; suppressing its own people including the Muslims, and they reacted in reactionary ways.

With the Arab Spring, Islamic modernism is having a rebirth. Arab masses revolting against their dictators, are asking for democracy and freedom. And they do not turn out to be the Islamist fundamentalists that the dictators were always using to justify their regime. Democracy is a process, not an overnight achievement, but this is a promising era in the Middle East.