Writing this intro in 2006:

WCBN
I now know of World Class Brands as the last of 3 open debating networks that I have been associated with. It started with my 1991 publication of World Class Brands. I believe this was the first whole book on brands but it was also a future transformation book. As my whole professional career has been connected by an obscene fascination (Johny von Neumann's trem for what a mathematician's lifetime compass of revolution should be - his was collaborative computing as we discovered in my dad's biography of this MVP of mathematics and market games) with maps as a way of sharing connections between 2 or more people with big budgets to govern -and all who may get stuck between them -I wanted to start guiding and being guided to how different the leadership of global or corporate brand architecture practices would be from budgeting for a different brand for every country and new product. I had spent the 1980s researching how uneconomic a new brand for every new product had become for the world's largest multinational brand owners. Our database (using one of the earliest database softwares Express) connected almost every major brand owner of the 80s; and my own project work took us to 25 countries. We got to the embarassing stage of predicting that 90% of new product launches couldn't achieve what their whole NPD process had invested in becasue the company wanted double the share that crowded markets would permit, absent of a revolutionary innovation. Embarassing because before we had the databank, we were paid to manage simulated test marlet surveys, but now we knew we didnt even need to do most of them! Our market models were licensed for worldwide use outside of USA from an MIT professor.

By 1996, I now had many years of experience in how numbers spreadsheeting - learnt at one of the master of such onbfuscation of markets' voices - Coopers & Lybrand - and had taken ove true customer research. So I needed a second book Brand Chartering if any networks were to grow round brand scripts connecting learning organisation and living system. This genre proved to be quite challenging requiring as it did that both the ad agency and the leadership teams connected with all disciplines in the way they communicated service of the brand and vision for their sector's future. The world class brand trilogy has been completed by various co-authored books, one of which is Beyond-Branding.

I still use WCBN in my email but in other respects the network has branched through about 15 names. Before we called ourselves BB or Medinge , we were Chief Brand Officer Association or Brand Chartering or Marketing Electornic Learning NETwork - the latter being how I pasted up the 1996 book Brand Chartering on a web, so I could discuss almost any quiz and answer section of the book with almost any discipline. That worked well until the 3 Bradford Business School professors (including the school's head from whom I learnt about the risks of system theory) who had supported the MELNET web all left, and the web was melted over night by a new brigade

DOD
The Second Network circles I populate -let's call it DoD for "Death of Distance" - began back in 1984 (when my father from The Economist and I co-authored a future history book timelining the s altterantive states -very goodwilled or very badwwiled) of the world to 20204) or 1973 (when i worked for 3 years as a development officer in the UK's national development programme for computer assietd learning). The book was on networking economics and the societal chalenge of transparently connecting 2 million global villages before rivalries between nations or superpowerful specualtors blew us up. Neither fanciful if you understand living systems theiry nor if you understand one defintion of networks as systems*systemes, nor fanciful if you know that my father listened to leaders from more big countries or big corporations between 1950-1980s than just about anyone -including a group who wanted secnarios scripted for the 3rd world war - another one of the future histories my dad helped to wordsmith as well as map how to prevent). DOD newswires keep you up to date with personally interesting stuff such as:
-how to use email to find your best mentors through life & help others likewise
-how to correspond for a global vilage, city or country by co-editing a timeless blog format
-how we need to chnage the curriculum the world ove for 9-13 year old girls including my American daugther
-what the 2 biggest innovation challenges of 2006 in my world are - and how to play a game of snap in case you and one of my big 2 connects (the future of the world's public media sector and the future of photosynthetic energy which we have been scripting since 1984 and keeping an ey out fro who will brang it to worldiwde market safely in time -including unlucky first attempts -Kuwait was just investing in it when saddam started the first gulf war! - how time warps futures!) . Of course I am interested in surveying everyone's biggest 2 - mail me at wcbn007@easynet.co.uk if you are

ER
The third network circles I now need to populate are celebrating their 30th birthday in 1976, which was the year my dad's survey launched Entrepreneurial Revolution in The Economist. This network gives us permission to chnage economics: the main chore of 2005-2010 as predicted by network 2 and our 1984 book's summary here. In my next post in this section I will turn to an opening brief on what is 1-2-3 Entrepreneurial, Revolution, Brand Leadership. By open brief, I mean something that is 90% on target but need iteratively re-editing with you if you have a context which you passioately want to aplly these 3 terms to in oredr to see the future of your context clearly enough to faciliate goodwilled leadership decsions as well hi-trust productive and demanding relationshiops all around it. posted by ..., 12:48 PM  permalink