Systems Biology and the Third Incarnation
At first, scientific discovery was about understanding the system - how different components come together to make a specific signaling pathway work in a specific way. Later, when we learned that the same pathway could be used in different situations to effect different outcomes, science became about understanding the system *in context*. And in the new millennium, there's emerged a new school of scientific thought called Systems Biology which, in its simplest explanation, seeks to understand how different systems fit together to form a larger piece of the whole.
Take for example the Wnt signaling pathway. Whereas The First Incarnation of Science was interested in understanding the details of how the external signal results in changes in beta-catenin levels in the nucleus, the Second Incarnation was interested in understanding how wnt's role in carcinogenesis differs from its role in cell polarity. And now Systems Biology, the Third Incarnation of Science, is interested in how all these different outcomes integrate during development.
Steven Wolfram, in his tome "A New Kind of Science," delves into a much more thorough discussion of how science has changed and evolved over the years. He also discusses his vision for the future of science, a vision in which Systems Biology plays a significant role.
And while the book is very long and very dry, what struck me about it was the parallels we can draw between The New Incarnation of Science and how we should be thinking about Marketing in the Next Incarnation.
All too often as marketers we can get caught up in a product-associated tunnel vision. We're encouraged, paid and judged on how well our product or service works in and of itself - does it address a specific customer need, does it solve a customer pain in a meaningful way, does it meet design requirements to achieve specific goals?
At times it seems as though we're on the cusp of the transition to the Third Incarnation of Marketing. We now understand both the details of the product as well as its different use cases. What we're working towards now is a deeper understanding of how different products can work together.
The funny part in all this is that our customers are already doing most of this work for us. People are out there, figuring out how to make this product work with that one in a way that makes sense for their business. They're constructing work-around and special connections that oftentimes make better use of the product than we had ever intended. And there are a select few companies out there capitalizing on the desire to make things work better together, regardless of their origin, architecture or underlying ownership.
Take for example this blog post. While many of you are reading it on my wordpress blog, you might be surprised to learn that it started out as nothing more than an email message. Using a service named Posterous, I was able to send off the email and have it cross-posted to a variety of different social networking sites, including Facebook, twitter, flickr and a host of other sites (go here for a preliminary list).
The great thing about Posterous is that it makes use of existing technologies that were, more often than not, freely provided by the social networking sites themselves. Rather than focusing on developing new and proprietary ways to get the same thing done, Posterous spent time on the layer than sits above that one; they spent time figuring out how to tie everything together and present one common interface to get to everything. All you, the user, needs is the ability to send an email. Posterous will take care of the rest.
As we move into the Next Incarnation of Marketing, hopefully it will be the companies like Posterous that thrive, companies that spend time thinking about how to connect this to that in ways that make for new and itneresting functionality.
What's great about excel?
A little late night fun with Excel.IM21 — The legal drinking age cellK9 — The dog cell
AK47 — The assault weapon cell
HI5 — The alternate handshake cell
AH:HA — The discovery range
F16 — The fighter jet cell
AM:FM — The radio range
ET2 — The Brute’ cell
BY:BY — The farewel…l range
IC2 — The double-vision cell
IQ100 — The average intelligence cell
HO:HO — The Santa Claus range
GO2 — The destination cell
FU2 — The same to you cell
EX2 — The second former spouse cell
CU8 — The oil-rich country cell
AG1:GB1 — The ‘00 disputed Florida vote range
T42 — The old soft-shoe cell
U2 — The Irish rock group cell
C4 — The explosive cell
R2:D2 — The android range
I1:U1 — The tied game cell
H8:U2 — The ex-wife range
IN2:CA9 — The dog-lover range
D84:U2 — The double date range
I812 — The Monica Lewinsky meets Linda Lovelace cell
I12:CU2 — The “when can we meet” cell** Is it too geeky that I started filling these in on an Excel sheet? Yeah, I thought so.
