Posted on 03 July 2008.
And by way of continuing the conversation from yesterday, Jeff Jarvis wonders if Google ran a restaurant, who would do the cooking?
Besides the silliness of open source restaurants as a concept — technique matters far more than recipe — the NY Times contrasted that notion with the need for efficiency in dining, noting that too many choices killed the Manhattan diner.
But art demands risk and taking a step forward into the unknown. Asking your customers to make all the choices — which, one might argue, is an artistic choice in and of itself — is not the same thing as crowdsourcing. For example, Threadless.com has plenty of folks vote on the best designs, but still maintains final creative control on which t-shirts to send into production.
Even Wikipedia, famed for its “wisdom of crowds,” has become more bookish and patroling than in the past. Giving an example at a client site, we created a page for their hospital… and then they got banned. For copyright infringement.
I think the point of the restaurant was “Can we imagine Google mashups working in a world outside of technology?”
Sure, go to any jam band or jazz pickup group. The improvisational talent is found plenty of places. But if you don’t share a common level of expertise, you can’t play along.
About Paul Griffiths
Paul has been CEO of MedTouch since April of 2007 and, prior to that, held the position of COO. As a co-founder, he has helped set the vision for the company from its inception. Paul is an active speaker in the healthcare marketing community. In addition to the dozen webinars MedTouch presents each year, Paul can be seen and heard giving lively talks around the country about helping healthcare organizations succeed online: from New England (NESHCo), to Tennessee (TSHPRM), Florida (FSHPRM), and Las Vegas (Annual Healthcare Internet Conference).
Prior to MedTouch, Paul managed online brand experiences for a variety of for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. He has over 15 years of combined experience in online commerce, interactive marketing, experience design and content management solutions. Most notably, he directed the consumer-facing channel for the now defunct Send.com, an online gift delivery network that raised $45 million from such VC luminaries as Greylock, Highland Capital, Benchmark and Charles Rivers Ventures in the late 1990s.
Paul earned a Master of Arts in Creative Writing from Boston University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.
When he’s not traveling across the country to visit clients or to speak at healthcare conferences, Paul runs a humanitarian non-profit with his wife. He’s thrilled to finally have a yard for his dogs and two boys, and often daydreams of spending a summer in Iceland.
I wasn’t suggesting that the kitchen should be turned over. I’m exploring the ideas of openness even in restsaurants. For example, I’d like to know which dishes get ordered more so I can use that in my decision. Or perhaps diners can suggest improvements in recipes. And so on.
Next I’m tackling health. Since that’s your expertise, how do you think Googlethink could come to health care? Could it? Can doctors and health institutions be more transparent? What would we learn from aggregated and open data? Would there be value in a social relationship among patients? And so on. I have some ideas but I’d love to hear your thoughts.