photo by Richard What & Tom Ryder

Since 2006, my team and I have searched high and low for examples of digital leadership from people like Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales, Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk, and even studied President Barack Obama’s use of digital technology to win the election, and then the Nobel Peace Prize. From there, we turned to companies as far ranging as Cirque du Soleil, BT (formerly British Telecom), the TED conference and Best Buy. After lengthy interviews and in-depth analysis, a few simple patterns emerged. Here are some of the top rules for positioning yourself as a leader in the digital age. See if any of them surprise you:

Your Influence Is Greatest When You Are At The Center Of The Action.
Just being online isn’t enough. You need to get out there and start building bridges with several communities (professional organizations, industry organizations, minority-run organizations, woman’s organizations, tech meet-ups, innovation meet-ups, emerging market meet-ups etc.) Follow up with all new contacts via social networks. It is the easiest way to keep your new contacts abreast of your new developments, without having to constantly pester them with newsletters and emails. The more connected you are and are perceived to be, the more visibility you have- that’s a given.

What might not be as obvious is that being in the center of your network also gives you access to more information, sooner - a competitive edge with which to make better business decisions.

Your Online & Offline Presences Reinforce One Another.
Leverage your social capital (the power of those amazing friends who want to help you succeed! Just ask a question to your facebook/twitter and linkedin friends and see how many great responses you get- that’s your social capital at work). When your social capital starts affecting people outside of your networks, I refer to that in my first book, 33 Million People in The Room, as ‘cultural capital’ (you are now influencing the culture at large). Why? Most likely because you are perceived to be adding value to the lives of the people in your community. The next step is to translate your social connections into real-world influence.

Keep Strengthening Social Ties As Your Influence Spreads.

Photo by Richard Vandentillart

When your influence spreads beyond immediate social circles, your social capital turns into cultural capital, which has the power to attract financial success. Why? People and companies are attracted to ‘leaders’ and digital leadership is no different. The more you are perceived as an authentic leader within the culture, the more you become a magnet, an attractor. Offers come to you by the thousands. The old quandary changes from ‘how will I pay rent this month’ to ‘how do I decide which opportunities to pursue’.

Social Capital + Cultural Capital Attracts Financial Capital

Are you a future Digital Leader?

Just think of the issues digital leaders like Gary Vaynerchuk must face daily for example. With about 1 million Twitter followers (depending on the day), Vaynerchuk’s success is astonishing, yet the pattern to his success is quite simple: social capital + cultural capital attracts financial capital. The proof in in the pudding so to speak- this year Vaynerchuk signed a 7 figure book deal and released his best selling book, ‘Crush It‘.

If the words “Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” come to mind:  wouldn’t you like to have those problems too?

Music Icon Dave Stewart on Digital Media, Mobile and Gaming

(Transcribed from my filmed interview : youtube.com/juliettepowell)

Juliette Powell, Cindy Gomez & Dave Stewart

So what happens when you end up in Monterey, California at a place called Ideas Camp surrounded by some of the world’s top technology people and you stumble upon somebody that you’ve been hearing about since you were a kid, who’s not only talking technology but he’s also talking music and a whole way to revolutionize it. Well, that’s kind of what happened just a few minutes ago. And I found my old friend Cindy Gomez along with Dave Stewart. Now you were both on stage, you were performing.. and you also talked about a new business model (for music distribution and digital rights management). I’m curious, where are you going with this?

Dave Stewart: Well basically, years ago when the walls came down and the internet arrived, there was this kind of fear amongst the entertainment industry like, you know, how do we stop it? It’s like trying to put your finger in a dam, and suing people and taking people to court. And slowly they start to realize this thing’s not going to go away and since then everybody’s been trying to work it. Well, how do we create a new model because we used to manufacture things and distribute them and that’s where our revenues came from. Then Steve jobs came along and said: “oh look what I’ve made”, it cost about 10 million dollars or something and he said “look it works.” You know, iTunes and all the labels. And you’re like:

“Oh my God this could help, this could help save the world”. Basically, it’s much deeper than that.

What’s going to happen is all artists, creators, and anything from magazines to film makers like Ridley Scott to musicians will start having a world, a little world. And that world will be that portal into everything that they’ve created and anything that they might want to nod their head to and say ‘this is great, I love this’. What that (portal) needs is a huge rights management system in between.

So in the front end you will have a cell phone, possibly a Nokia cell phone and you will have a rights management engine and at the back end, you will have a payment system.

Now, it isn’t that everybody will pay for stuff. There will be millions of different kinds of mobiles, ad revenues, people will be subscribing, some people will pay out of pocket, and it doesn’t really matter. At the end of the day, there will be a gatekeeper, who just realizes “oh this person was standing on this street in Boston and they pressed yes to Tom Petty’s track and this has rights on buying on blah blah blah”. And digital rights management will unfold and Bing! - pay all those people - and Tom Petty, at the end of the day will look at it and say “Oh, somebody who was standing on the street in Boston liked my song .”

Juliette Powell: So if this is sitting on the phone and you mention Nokia, it feels like you’re developing all of this in conjunction with the artists as well as with specific sponsors. Where does Nokia come into play and how does that sponsorship come into play?

Dave Stewart invents 'Sponserability' for Stones

Dave Stewart: “I came up with this word “sponserbility”. I think the Rolling Stones were the first band I ever got sponsored. That paid for their tours, a perfume company that approached the Rolling Stones in the 1970 or something. And then sponsorship was frowned upon a bit and then it became a necessity for artists to survive. You couldn’t tour or anything without having some sponsors but eventually, the way the internet is broken down into a tiny little leashes, worlds, or they’re called web pages or whatever, that need micro sponsors or community sponsors. And the issue is that is becoming easier and easier to sort with the way that software works.

Companies like Nokia are at the forefront of developing ways and means in which people can connect with each other and retrieve media, and play with it and send it and in the middle of that , they’re also very clever at understanding how to sort of make a revenue model, revenue stream that works for everybody.

So, I can’t really talk and give too much away about everything but basically the thing is on the way.

Juliette Powell: So, are you comfortable with working with a sponsor? I mean, you’re an artist, you’re a pure artist. I’ve known you for a while and it’s always been in your heart to be able to write your own songs, sing it as best you can, and really have that interaction with your audience. Now we’re talking about bringing in sponsors and working on phones, I mean, how does that feel to you?

Cindy Gomez: I think it’s a great idea because in today’s day and age with new technology, it’s just so difficult for a new artist to emerge on the scene and to break out. So you need these new ways to have people recognize you and see who you are because otherwise for myself, how am I going to get the music out there? At the end of the day, I do what I do because I love it but you want as many people to hear it. So for example right now, I’m an avatar in a game Nokia has called Dance Fabulous. So this allows now in Asia and all across the world to hear these songs and play them. There are two or three of them out of the five that are going to be on my album. It just allows people to see who I am, or all be that’s the cartoon version but at least they get an introduction to who Cindy is, what kind of music she does, and from there on, either hopefully they like it and check out websites, and go further but otherwise a little kid in India, how are they going to know who Cindy is? So I think it’s a great way to get the two worlds together.

Juliette Powell: So I’ve known a few people who’ve actually received Nokia phones and when they turn on the device, BOOM there you are. It’s like who is this girl, what’s she all about? Now they can also play the game and the avatar and what not but how do you keep it authentic? Because as we all know, at the end of the day, you’re artists.

Cindy Gomez: I think the artist keeps it authentic. We do what we do because we love it. And you know, having the sponsor is a way of getting out to the world. We’re not doing something that we don’t want to do. We still continue our art because we love it and we do it.

Juliette: So it’s just a distribution mechanism? To get paid?

Dave Stewart: You guys have people in the band and signed to the record label, EMI. Well it’s not EMI (records). EMI makes rockets and missiles and all sorts of things. Television sets, Sony makes all sorts of different things. So it became very apparent, it doesn’t matter if its Timberland boots sponsoring our music and putting our music on their websites. But what we’re really talking about is not really about that. What we’re talking about is creating a new way in which to connect all the dots and so that you can have a new railroad track or a gateway and that dis-intermediates a lot of the old guards and creates a new railroad track basically. So the interesting dots that’s connecting Cindy is that Cindy is an incredible singer and she sings in 8 different languages including Indian and Cantonese. So what we’re doing is she’s sung in some of these languages.

AR Rahman wins Oscar Night

I’ve written a little story where the game inside the Nokia phone is found by a boy in India, in a movie. So now Cindy’s playing the lead in the movie and the song from the game is the title of the movie. And she’s doing the music with myself and A. R Rahman (Slumdog Millionaire).

I’ve just been doing some of that in the last few days and so it’s a continuation of people discovering Cindy. Like “Oh wow, she’s that girl in the game and now she’s the lead in the movie where the boy finds the game.” And it’s all her songs coming out in all different methods.

Juliette Powell: So with this new business model, to what extent is the artist going to have to know about the business side effects? Is the mechanism going to be in place where it kind of takes care of itself and you can focus on being you?

Dave Stewart: That’s the main thing. What we want is a way in which an artist or artist manager or a friend or whatever, can get these tools, the tool box, build the little world, fill in the bits and from then on it works just like clockwork. Because artist or not, we’re really not focusing on business. If you have a business meeting with an artist, usually after two minutes, they’re doodling a picture of their dad.

Tony Greenberg: You’re not talking about yourself are you?

Dave Stewart: No, I’m not talking about myself. (Laughs) That’s because I’m a schizophrenic. I feel my role working with Nokia is on behalf of artists. So what I keep saying is listen, it has to be transparent, for once, it has to be swift, accurate payment systems, and it has to be a distribution network that allows everybody from Madonna to a new kid starting off to be able to make his voice heard. And all of it has to work seamlessly and that’s what everybody’s working on.

Juliette Powell is an author, entrepreneur and integrated media specialist. Her first book: 33 Million People in the Room (Financial Times Press, 2009) builds on her work as co-founder and COO of the Gathering Think Tank Inc., an innovation forum at the intersection of integrated media, business, innovation and technology. A popular key note speaker and commentator, connect with Juliette directly on Twitter and Facebook.

In my most recent HuffingtonPost story, I wrote about Cirque du Soleil founder, Guy Laliberte’s upcoming social mission into space.

Thanks to several million dollars and a few friends in the right places, Laliberte has secured a much-envied spot on Expedition 21 to the International Space Station, scheduled to launch September 30^th, 2009. Beyond the financial capital necessary to purchase a seat and the grueling astronaut training involved, Laliberte plans to leverage the exposure to amplify his social and cultural capital and thus raise awareness around the global water crisis.

Laliberte is a great example of an entrepreneur who, over the past 25 years of building Cirque du Soleil into a privately held multinational, has surrounded himself with the right people (social capital) and has continually added value to his community (cultural capital) which resulted in enough financial capital to last most people (let’s be honest - most countries) several lifetimes.

So how does one get to a point where they can afford to both make their childhood dreams come true AND use that dream to make a difference in the world?

We often attribute it to the powerful or the lucky, the rich or the famous – the seemingly magical ability to persuade and influence other people to help us build our businesses and even to make our dreams come true.

Although we don’t always realize it, all of us – from managers to journalists, entrepreneurs to activists – regularly use unacknowledged skills to build social and cultural capital. We’re just not always aware of it. Networking skills can be used to influence and sway people in all areas of our lives and we can often see the repercussions of our actions, after the fact. The more aware of how exactly we influence others and why, the better we can shape the nature of that influence. The transparent world of online social networking only adds a new layer of depth to the capabilities and possibilities of building up and maintaining relationships in an interconnected world.

There is much to be garnered in learning by example and with that in mind, this blog sets out to find stories of people and companies successfully using social networking for business. The idea is to share commonalities from which we can deduce the basis of social networking success in the ever increasingly networked public sphere.

Key among these is the:

• simultaneous use of online and offline networking skill sets
• ongoing interaction within your community
• willingness to co-create with that community
• sound understanding of how to create meaningful social currency
• passionate dedication to authentic communication.

It goes without saying, basic networking skills like personalized attention and follow up, when combined with social networking technology, can increase your reach exponentially.

To find out how you can use your social and cultural capital (and your social networking skills) to help with Laliberte’s upcoming space mission around the global water crisis, visit onedrop.org.

Juliette Powell is an entrepreneur, digital media consultant and author of 33 Million People in the Room (Financial Times Press, 2009), a book about social networking for business, inspired by Guy Laliberte. Powell is also co-founder of the Gathering Think Tank Inc., an innovation forum at the intersection of media, business, advertising and technology. You can connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

Obama did it. Filmmakers are doing it and now you can do it too. ‘Crowdfunding’, a spin on ‘crowdsourcing’, is the latest funding opportunity at a time when our funding institutions are failing. With the success of crowdfunding campaigns like wikipedia.com and threadless.com, the financing of projects and people by large crowds is on the rise and a new tool to fund even the smallest of projects is now available to the general public.

In the best of times, there is always a sense that there are great ideas out there with little or no chance of funding from traditional channels. According to web-preneur Perry Chen, “the biggest trend we’ve seen so far: even during this economy, people are generous.  One reason why: people are getting big responses from their networks as people leverage their Flickr groups and other niche communities to spread the word about their projects‘. Also, small amounts are key.

“We need to move away from looking for big checks and learn to embrace small amounts.  I love people who pledge $1 or $5 to a project. Why shouldn’t we be able to become a patron each other for the price of a cup of coffee?“

Enter KickStartr.com a free online platform that uses ‘crowdfunding’ to seed small projects with big communities. Although still in beta, the funding platform launched 2 weeks ago is for everyone from artists to entrepreneurs to students. Contrary to online investment mechanism’s Kickstarter’s site says that: “People who use KickStartr to fund their projects (”project creators”) keep 100% ownership and control”.

Crowdfunding yourself to success (image:stevegarfield.com)

How does one crowdfund that project you’ve been forever putting on the back burner? To find that out, I turned to KickStartr.com founder, Perry Chen.

What is the key to crowdsourcing for money or ‘crowdfunding’?
A focused project. I think we want to rally around things with specific goals. Making people feel like they are a part of something.  This starts with a compelling story — why I should support you — and then a determination to spread the word.

There is a great concept coined “Empowered Interactivity” by marketer and author Mark Hughes. Paraphrasing: Create a mechanism where people have an observable impact, and it becomes their brand, their 15 minutes of fame, their outcome.

If you already have a large social network, will it help you get funded more quickly? No question. Each person you know is an amplifier to each person they know. We all have a social network, and the key to crowdfunding is sculpting your project and presentation so that it amplifies past that first degree of your network. If it’s compelling, people will forward it.

What if you don’t have lots of online presence before using KickStartr, how do you raise awareness and get funded? It might not be the sexiest thing, but email is still extremely powerful. Send a rallying cry to friends and family, encouraging them to forward along.  Reach out to relevant blogs and organizations.  Become a marketer.

You can also go small.  One of our first projects (and we are only starting our 2nd week) was a programmer named Dan Phiffer who raised $99 to build a Wikipedia iPhone application. The funds will go to pay the Apple’s iPhone application fee. He was fully funded in a few days.

What can people do to make their idea stand out overall?
Video! It’s not required to fund a project, but we strongly encouraged it. Doesn’t need to be Kubrick, some of the best video are just people talking about their projects.  Their passion comes across, we can connect.

Along those same lines, offering benefits or rewards that have charm or value is a huge boost.  If you just put your hand out, it’s not that interesting.  Everyone can offer something in return.

One great example is a project by Earl Scioneaux, a musician from New Orleans, who is offering prospective backers some home-cooked gumbo and music theory lessons. His rewards really connect us to his project and make us feel like patrons.

What are some of the projects currently being funded?
They cover all the bases: group of New Yorkers self-publishing a book where everyone gets a page, a photographer exploring Iceland, a writer funding travel for a regional cookbook, a NYTimes crossword puzzle creator funding the release of Brooklyn-themed puzzles.

The day after we launched, two projects were already completely funded. That really blew us away. Five projects have been funded in the first week.  Five more are quite close.  The smallest funded was $35, and another is already close to it’s $3,000 goal. Several new projects are attempting to raise $10,000. I think projects will mostly be started by: people with particular ideas that have been burning in their hearts for awhile; those people that have ideas falling out of their heads; and people in creative industries that no longer want to wait to be tapped on the head. Then the second group are the audiences and networks of those folks. We think, eventually, that’s almost everyone.

KickStartr was a back of a napkin idea, and everyone has those. What if you could easily aggregate enthusiasm with resources? What project would you like to kickstart?

Juliette Powell is an entrepreneur, media consultant and author of 33 Million People in the Room (Financial Times Press, 2009), a book about social networking for business. Powell is co-founder of the Gathering Think Tank Inc., an innovation forum at the intersection of media, business, advertising and technology. You can connect with her on Twitter and facebook.

It is mind boggling to think about how many millions of people in the world, let alone in America, still consider whatever is said in the news to be the ‘truth’. Whose ‘truth’? While a healthy skepticism remains about digital news sources, traditional broadcast is still, in many cases, still getting a free pass.

Last week’s post Colbert Shrugged: Ayn Rand Institute Responds to ‘Rand Illusion’ prompted such a strong reaction from fans of both Rand and Colbert that 136 comments later, truths of all shapes emerged from the heated discussion. One topic that came up time and again was the importance of media literacy.

Part 2 of my interview with Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute looks at the way Ayn Rand’s classic 1957 work ‘Atlas Shrugged’ has been mediatized in recent months to communicate political messages.

How have the political left and right used Rand’s characters, stories and philosophy in the media of late to reinforce their positions within a larger audience?

I don’t think liberals or democrats are making use of Rand; rather, they are attacking her and Atlas Shrugged. (I suspect that Stephen Colbert is a liberal.)

Conservatives are making use of Atlas Shrugged, but only in a limited political sense. They rarely mention the fact that Atlas Shrugged is about a moral revolution and not a political one. One major reason they fail to mention this aspect of Atlas Shrugged is that the morality of rational self-interest stands opposed to religious ethics, which demands that an individual subordinate himself to something that is supposedly higher than himself. Explicitly or implicitly, most conservatives support a religious approach to morality. And of course religious ethics is the source of the slogan that we are our brother’s keeper.

On Rand’s view, therefore, conservatives are not actually opponents of socialism but its enablers, because they, like the liberals, advocate the opposite of a morality of rational self-interest: they advocate selflessness and altruism.

How much of what we’re seeing in the media’s recent references to Atlas Shrugged is actually reflective of Rand’s philosophy of Selfishness?

It is true that Atlas Shrugged depicts an America in which the government, through various “emergency” measures, seizes control of the economy. But what most commentators miss is that politics is not the focus of Atlas Shrugged. Its focus is on morality and philosophy. The story of Atlas Shrugged is about productive individuals learning fully to value their own lives and happiness, and coming to understand that this requires uncompromising devotion to their own minds and to what is in fact morally right. They must learn that to fully live their own lives and achieve happiness, they need a new morality of rational self-interest.

As one aspect of this issue, Atlas Shrugged in effect argues that only such a morality can in fact explain, justify and defend why an individual has the moral right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Contrary to the Declaration of Independence, Rand does not regard these rights as self-evident.

Notice that the rights Jefferson lists all sanction self-interest: my moral right to my life, my moral right to my freedom to think and act, my moral right to pursue my happiness. If selfishness is evil, then these rights are wrong, morally wrong.

And so in a society that regards the pursuit of self-interest as evil, like the society depicted in Atlas Shrugged and like today’s society, these rights will be tossed aside as wrong. If we are our brother’s keeper, as Obama declares (echoing the conventional wisdom)–if your moral duty is to serve your neighbor and anyone else who is in need, then you don’t have the moral right to pursue your own life and happiness.

As in the case of any controversial figure, there is no substitute for going to the source. To discover what Rand maintained, read her works. To understand the meaning and importance of Atlas Shrugged, pick up the novel.

Ayn Rand’s work was introduced to this author when I began my first job in journalism as an eager teen. Over a decade later, Rand’s books remain constant reminders of the powerful influence media has in shaping perceptions of who we are as individuals and as a society.

In the last week, I must have received several hundred messages via facebook and twitter suggesting I look at The Colbert Report’s ‘The Word’ segment called ‘Rand Illusion’. And so I did, again and again, torn between a giggle and a sigh.

Call me old school but my first reaction to all of these Atlas Shrugged references in the media of late was to wonder if these pundits have actually read and understood the book. I suspect they have, but probably figure that, of the millions who have read it, few would actually bother to argue in a public forum. Having personally read the book several times- four to be exact - this last couple weeks have shown me that I do care enough to help set the record straight on Rand’s story and philosophy.

Why? Because even though I’ve read Rand’s books multiple times, given the myriad of news articles and television references to Atlas Shrugged lately, I genuinely began to wonder if perhaps I was the one who had completely misinterpreted her work. Since Rand herself can no longer address the way her work is being interpreted, I found someone who could.

Interview with Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (part 1)

by Juliette Powell

What do you think of last week’s Colbert Report and his ‘Rand Illusion’ segment where Colbert asserts that Atlas Shrugged is a ‘Conservative Bible’ and ‘is being used by Conservatives to spur a movement . . .  a calculated work slowdown? What do you think Colbert wanted to accomplish and what did he accomplish?
Stephen Colbert’s television show of course parodies (allegedly) right-wing television hosts like Bill O’Reilly. In the process it ridicules Republicans, conservatives, O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, and so on.

The segment on Atlas Shrugged was an attempt to ridicule Rand’s novel. I found the segment distasteful. Many people of course disagree with the ideas contained in Atlas Shrugged. Rand knew that the novel challenged moral ideas entrenched in Western thought for over 2000 years.

To disagree with the ideas and theme of the novel is different from what the Colbert segment did. It treated the novel as though it were not a significant work of literature—the segment suggested that if you’ve read to the end of the book “the world does owe you.”

This is ludicrous. In purely literary terms, Atlas Shrugged is a great novel. The segment then went on to misrepresent the content of the story. For instance, to claim that Atlas Shrugged “can be used to justify anything” is absurd. Perhaps more than any other novel, Atlas Shrugged presents a firm and detailed view of what is morally right and morally wrong. Rand said (accurately) that the theme of the novel is “the role of the mind in man’s existence—and, as corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest.” One may of course disagree with the moral philosophy contained in the novel, but to suggest that the book is so vague as to be capable of justifying anything is disingenuous.
Or to take another example, the Colbert segment said that the hero of Atlas Shrugged, John Galt, tells the poor of America: “You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you.” But if you read the actual novel, you will discover that Galt has called on strike the men of the mind (rich and poor alike) and that these words of his are in fact addressed not to the poor. They are addressed to those who advocate or accept a philosophy that damns the individual’s happiness, mind and life. Here is the passage from the novel, in context (John Galt is speaking on the radio):
“Do not cry that it is our duty to serve you. We do not recognize such duty. Do not cry that you need us. We do not consider need a claim. Do not cry that you own us. You don’t. Do not beg us to return. We are on strike, we, the men of the mind.
“We are on strike against self-immolation. We are on strike against the creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. We are on strike against the dogma that the pursuit of one’s happiness is evil. We are on strike against the doctrine that life is guilt.
“There is a difference between our strike and all those you’ve practiced for centuries: our strike consists, not of making demands, but of granting them. We are evil, according to your morality. We have chosen not to harm you any longer. We are useless, according to your economics. We have chosen not to exploit you any longer. We are dangerous and to be shackled, according to your politics. We have chosen not to endanger you, nor to wear the shackles any longer. We are only an illusion, according to your philosophy. We have chosen not to blind you any longer and have left you free to face reality—the reality you wanted, the world as you see it now, a world without mind.
“We have granted you everything you demanded of us, we who had always been the givers, but have only now understood it. We have no demands to present to you, no terms to bargain about, no compromise to reach. You have nothing to offer us. We do not need you.” (Atlas Shrugged, Part III, Chapter VII)
So what did Colbert want to accomplish? As I said, he wanted to ridicule Atlas Shrugged. Did he succeed? No, because the segment simply ignored to novel’s literary virtues and misrepresented its content.

Is Colbert, and the media in general, taking a cheap shot, going for the easy laugh using Rand’s philosophy of selfishness or are they using humor and irony to open a much needed public debate?

The Colbert segment was a cheap shot, so, no, I don’t think he was trying to open a debate. If anything, by attacking a straw man, he was trying to close debate.

But I don’t think the media in general has been taking cheap shots at Rand or Atlas Shrugged during the present financial crisis. There have been many more accurate stories, such as the one in The Economist (which the Colbert segment mentioned), a news story which reported the dramatic increase in the sales of Atlas Shrugged and suggested a connection between this fact and the financial crisis.

What we are witnessing I think is the fact that precisely because Atlas Shrugged is a radical book—it presents a new view of morality, a morality of rational self-interest—it creates passionate admirers and passionate detractors. And as has been the case since the novel’s publication in 1957..

… detractors almost always misrepresent the book’s ideas because they are unable or unwilling to mount an argument against what Rand actually says. The Colbert segment was a small example of this.

Ayn Rand fans, let’s hear from you. What do you think of the Ayn Rand Institute’s response to Colbert’s ‘Rand Illusion’ segment so far? I’ll try to connect with the folks at Colbert for their comments and hope to have that, along with Part 2 of my interview with Onkar Ghate, senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute shortly. Keep checking in here for Part 2 in the next few hours and days where we discuss the political implications of the mediatization of Atlas Shrugged.

~> j*

(excerpt from my new book 33 Million People in the Room, Financial Times Press)

A recently published article in the Harvard Business Review discusses the social and emotional intelligence wielded by effective leaders. Unsurprisingly, they discovered that the best leaders are the ones who exhibit not only influence and inspiration, but also empathy, attunement, and a genuine desire to help develop others. In conjunction with the Hay Group, the article presented a battery of questions aimed at assessing, “Are You a Socially Intelligent Leader?”

Many of the questions listed proved to be a far cry from typical leadership surveys:

-    Are you sensitive to others’ needs?
-    Are you attuned to others’ moods?
-    Do you provide feedback that people find helpful for their professional    development?
-    Do you understand social networks and know their unspoken norms?

While traditional understanding of leadership structures stressed the need for power and stern guidance, new measures of leadership are increasingly reliant on empathy and understanding. The unspoken message is clear: be real and be compassionate. To be a truly effective leader, you need to have a team that supports you and is willing to work hard not only on your behalf, but on their own as well.

The same principles apply online. From Obama to microcelebrities like Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales or WineLibrarytv founder, Gary Vaynerchuk, each are the equivalent of socially intelligent organizational leaders. They are tuned in to their participatory audience and keep the channels of feedback wide open, demonstrating their compassion and sincerity. Their community trusts them and understands that even if they do make mistakes, they will own up to them through their honest feedback and reactions. That trust translates to loyalty, and it is that loyalty that builds a dedicated community.

Calling all Leaders:

Speaking of community, with all of the talk around the economic stimulus package, what are your thoughts on your top 5 tips for bailing yourself out of tough times, before you ever have to.

Overworked, Public, Economist – These are the 3 words Paul Krugman used to described himself as we sat back in Princeton, NJ for our interview. Add to that the titles ‘New York Times columnist’, ‘Princeton Professor of Economics’ and ‘2008 Nobel Prize laureate in Economics’ and you begin to get a sense of the man behind all of the big headlines.

In Part 2 of my conversation with Krugman, we discuss everything from the impact of the Yes We Can generation, to political nominations within the Obama administration to the small world theory.

You 2.0 meets the Yes We Can generation

An interview with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman (Part 2)
By Juliette Powell

Where do you see the biggest impact of social networking and social media in the next 4 years?
Krugman: Some of it has already happened.

There have been some proposed appointments in the national security area, or at least floated appointments, that have essentially been torpedoed because the online community said no. ‘these guys are unacceptable!’ and rightly so.

There will be other areas affected but remember that basic policy formulation won’t come out of this stuff because it’s detailed. It will always require somebody sitting at a desk with lines of access and so on… But fast critique now demands that issues be brought to the front of the table when they were no being considered in the past.

Yes, the online community is gaining in power and influence and the effects are compounded because we realize it. Yes, it will be harder for this (Obama) administration to slip!

In the later Clinton years, the administration took on more of a managerial role and wasn’t as pro-corporate as a republican administration but less of a force for democratic change than one would have hoped.  That’s partly because they had a hostile congress but it’s also that there was no effective community saying: ‘Hey this is not what we elected you for!’ I think the Obama administration will have that kind of community and a good thing too!

Now that people all over the world have seen the impact that a single person can have using social networking technology – do you think that’s going to change the way that we view our own possibility to actually take control of our own destinies?

Krugman: I think there is something like that happening and it’s not just what is happening in America. What I hear a lot, is that many countries, including very oppressive regimes –

It starts as people having Facebook profiles just for friends, then something happens. It turns out that that same technology, that same involvement is also a way of getting political action together. People can be mobilized and I think it changes a lot of things.

In the 18th century, when we lived in small towns and everybody could participate and then we moved to this world where the power became very distant and news media far away, dictated how you saw the world. Now I don’t want to romanticize it but I think that it’s going to affect a lot of the world.

Take the famous Jacques Chirac quote: “The internet is an Anglo Saxon network’, that is no longer true at all. I watch my own links for my blog posts and I can see that we really are a small world. I’m seeing Chinese links, Korean links, Russian links. It’s a world now where this involvement has spread to very many cultures and indeed it is a very small world.