Simon Chen: Good morning, everybody, and good evening it may be to you wherever you are listening to this call. It is my absolute pleasure to be talking this morning -- on a cold and chilly Melbourne morning -- to Dr. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson.

Many of you that know me know that I've been associated with Michael for a few years now and he was heavily involved with the X10 Seminar back in 2004. So, Michael, good morning, how are you my friend?

Dr. Michael Hewitt-Gleeson: Hey, Simon, how you doing, keeping warm?

Simon: Good. Michael, we've been talking a lot about the Internet lately and this is a series of calls that I'm doing with some folks around the world at the moment. And I think the Internet is one of those mediums that's really gathering in pace and you've been online for a long time and I wanted to ask you some questions this morning and just see where the discussion goes.

I know we are going to talk about the fairly exciting adventure that you are embarking on with your new book. Just talk about how long you've been online and what are your perceptions of things right at the moment.

Michael: I put my first website online in 1995. It was the School of Thinking, which was something I started in New York with Edward de Bono back in 1979. And the purpose of the School of Thinking online was to make thinking lessons and training in thinking available for people.

I think it was one of the first 10,000 websites. There's a hundred million websites now. And we even won the Top 5% of the Web award which some people who have been around awhile may remember that award from many years ago. So I suppose we've been online for about 12 years.

Simon: And what do you think have been the most significant or dramatic changes, not in the 12 years, that's too big a time span, but just talk about the last two years.

Michael: We've been on the web in the initial culture of the web, I forget who coined this phrase, with a bit of research I could find it, but the culture of the web at that time was "information wants to be free." And a lot of people wonder why the School of Thinking is still free, and it came out of that culture and we've been able to keep it free all that time. Although if you use the word "free" these days, usually the spam filters lock you out. So we use "pro bono" and other synonyms.

Then along came e-commerce and that was probably the next biggest change. The first big web boom when people really started to realize and then businesses and then big business, Fortune 1000 companies and so on, that the web is really a medium for doing business, for creating revenues, for talking to customers 24x7.

And that became e-commerce and that was really, I think, the next big thing. Then of course there was clicks and banners and all that sort of things, and spam and all that stuff. And then we had everyone writing business grants and raising money to make a billion dollars on the web and then there was the bust.

Just like a gold rush, there's boom and there's bust and people consolidate, they learn what they have learnt so far and then the next phase was what we are coming into with Web 2.0 and serious looking at web analytics, all that sort of thing, that really turnsurning it into an environment where you can really build serious business. Boards of big companies really taking it seriously and investors and so on. That's the way I've seen it over the last 12 years.

Simon: Ok. I was at a function last week in Melbourne at the Red Square and it was put on by the Melbourne online digital media community. It's a group that's been started by Cameron Reilly from the Podcast Network. And we were lucky enough to pick up the bar tab, unfortunately, for that event.

And a gentleman by the name Peter Ellyard spoke, who is considered by many to be Australia's leading futurist. He's a certainly well sought after public speaker and he shares the same speaking management team with you with X10.

But to be honest -- and I hope this is not a criticism of Ellyard -- but he spoke to a gathering of digital folk, 40-50 of us. I just got the impression that he doesn't get the online space, yet he calls himself a futurist. What do think about that?

Michael: I know Peter quite well, so I won't comment personally, but I think the principle you've raised where "Do people get the online space" is a very interesting question and I think the answer is no, largely.

When it comes to selling and marketing -- in particular selling, which I have been involved for a long while -- I don't think people get the offline space! So it's no surprise that they don't get with the online space. Of course there are exceptions with people doing well in the area, but for the most part, most of my clients and the people I deal with still think that being online is putting up a website which is sort of an online copy of your brochure. Some people do it a bit more, some people are doing transactions, but the actual strategy in the thinking and the insight behind it are still back in the Dark Ages.

And even with many people who are doing well on the Internet, the silicon community, still are operating from very antiquated ideas of what selling actually is. They are just bringing old-fashioned selling ideas into a very new and zippy environment.

That's helping them do some clever things with analytics and so on, but they don't really know what they are supposed to be doing, what the relationship with the customer is supposed to be. I think there's lots of ground for improvement, that's the exciting part.

Simon: Do you think that selling online -- because you've obviously made a very successful professional career out of working with corporates in the consulting space in selling and you've got the worlds first PhD in selling -- but do you think that selling online is different from selling offline, so to speak?

Michael: I don't from certain very fundamental positions. You still have a customer with a customer's brain and you still have the sales person or the window representative with their brain, so the sort of things that have to go on whether it's online or offline are still the same thing.

I mean, the customer's brain doesn't turn into another entity just because they are online and vice versa. So there are fundamental things that need to be understood and are still not understood offline or online. So if that's misunderstood, it's not going to make a difference.

But there's no doubt about the different environment online, the immediacy of transactions, 24x7, from the industry point of view, the ability to really track activity in a detailed and real-time ways is thrilling, especially if you have a good strategy for selling. So there are differences, but fundamental principles of selling and what it means still apply.

Simon: If you look back to when you launched your first website back in '95 and if you look at today, one of the challenges that we face is the absolute overload of information that's coming to us as consumers. If you look at the volume of email we get via our inboxes, the media messages that are hitting us from all angles. And the Internet has the benefit of immediacy.

It's just become a lot harder for marketers and advertisers to get through to consumers, because I certainly think that there's no loyalty anymore in today's market. And the young community has demonstrated that time and time again. They're very fickle in terms of how long they'll stay within a community, for example.

Michael: Right. Well, I think those are really interesting points. Loyalty decreases with the more options you've got. If you lived in a little village and you've only got one blacksmith, then the question of loyalty doesn't come up, because that's the only place that you can go to to get a horseshoe for your horse.

But if you've got two blacksmiths, then there's the option of leaving the one that you've got and moving to another one. And so the whole idea of all the things we do to attract customers then comes up.

Of course in the online environment, but even prior to that in the '80s, when marketing was booming in America and around the world, lots of people were getting into businesses, big companies were fracturing into smaller companies. A lot of these things took off then, before the online environment.

I remember, for example, when you and I did a lot of work on the X10 Seminar. And the issue of online marketing and email marketing and spam and all that came up. But that's really an extension of junk mail, and all the sorts of things that were going on in the '80s.

There were books and seminars and tapes and training available for people to get into mail-order and into mail marketing and that sort of thing in the '80s. And many of the techniques and the people that were selling those ideas just evolved into email marketing and Internet marketing and so on, using the same old tired techniques.

So, there's a lot of stuff around from the customer's point of view. There's a lot of bombardment. We're getting pretty good at sorting out the wheat from the chaff. And of course from the vendor's point of view, and from the whole area of analytics and so on, there's a lot of data there.

And just having data and input by itself isn't enough. You need organizing concepts and strategies so you know, when you're looking at it and the problem that you've raised, how do you tell what's useful and what you can act on and how you can make revenue with it, if that's the name of the game. Compared to just all the other stuff that's around that's little more than static.

So, that's always going to be a big issue. And the solution to that is having a strategy. If you don't know what it is that you're looking for, or your strategy is misguided, then all the information in the world isn't going to help you.

Simon: Yeah, yeah, I definitely would agree. You had the privilege, I would like to think it is, of studying under George Gallup in the United States.

Michael: Yes, it was a great privilege.

Simon: And if he was alive today, what do you think he would make of the Internet and where it's heading?

Michael: Well, a lot of things. He'd be very comfortable with it, because it was George Gallup who invented analytics. In those days it was called "market research," but what I call "sales analytics," which is what my new book "Silicone Selling" is going to be about.

He really invented it. He, as you probably know, invented the Gallup Poll. He was in the advertising space. He discovered the statistical sample and discovered that if you measure the opinions of about 1,200 people, you get the same result plus or minus a small variation as if you'd measured the whole population.

Now, obviously it's not convenient or practical to measure whole populations, but you can measure 1, 200 people. Prior to George, there was Henry Ford saying, "You can have any color you want as long as it's black."

These days, no one would go into the market, in a serious way, with a product or a service without doing what he called "market research," which today we would call "analytics." No candidate would go into the marketplace.

It's interesting with the presidential elections coming on in America, and of course our own elections here in Australia, to see the amount of polling going on and the amount of money that the candidates and their parties and so on spend on polling, which is simply trying to measure voter -- customer/voter -- behavior and tendencies and make predictions about them.

And that's really analytic. And he started that whole field. He had an enormous influence on me, when I wrote about selling and so on. So, that's been the fundamental shift on my approach to selling, and the other things, ever since then.

Simon: I take your point about politicians, because I've actually got it as a question here, or as a comment to talk about. And my note to you is: opinion is being swayed by media that we now take control of, not the other way, as it used to be. And this is probably the first election, both in the U.S. and Australia, where the candidates will have to have a very strong online strategy.

And things like blogging are the forefront to that. What are your thoughts about that, in a sense that opinions can be swayed heavily now, using online media such as blogs, right?

Michael: Oh, yes. There's absolutely no doubt about it. Opinions are swayed -- again, we go back to that "basic brain" of the customer and the voter, and the other customer and the other voter -- opinions are swayed today just as they were a thousand years ago.

People sat around a fire or in a castle or in a little marketplace, and they talked to each other. And they'd tell gossip and it's all mixed in. You know, gossip: "Did you hear the bit about so-and-so, and who's sleeping with so-and-so? And by the way, buy this kind of horseshoe instead of that horseshoe, it's better."

So, the brain hasn't evolved much in the last thousand years. And the way that people interact and share ideas and how one opinion leaps from one brain into another brain, and memes and idea viruses and all that sort of thing. That's been going on for a long while.

The media that we use is what's sort of changing and evolving. And of course, the speed, the flow, how quickly it happens is a very dramatic change. And the scale, the number of people on the planet: over six billion as compared to a couple of billion. That's another big factor.

But certain principles remain the same. But we're just getting better at measuring these things and understanding them. But what I think that the big opportunity for people to look at the strategy, the fundamental understanding of what they think selling or talking or gossiping or word-of-mouth is, and whether they're operating from the right strategy.

Let me explain it. Suppose you are a brilliant sailor and then you become a captain and then you go to admiral school and you learn how to be a great admiral. You're an expert at navigation, you know every nautical knot, you know how to manage your crew, and all that sort of thing.

But you think the earth is flat. So what you do is you take all that brilliant knowledge and all your techniques and technology and you sail up and down the coast because you don't want to go too far away from shore because you might fall off the edge of the earth.

But suppose that you change your view of the world from a flat earth to a round earth? And then, like Christopher Columbus, you can take a sharp right turn and discover half the world in 30 days. You didn't have to go back to admiral school, you didn't have to learn how to tie any more knots or any more techniques.

It was a change of his view of the world that allowed him to take what he's got and apply it in an entirely different way. And I think that's where people are missing out. Their tactics are getting better and their technology and techniques are getting better, but they're still operating from flat-earth principles.

So, the biggest bang for the buck that you can really get is really changing the way you look at things. And then everything you're doing suddenly takes on much more productive results. Does that make any sense?

Simon: Yeah, it does. So, let's just continue this theme for a bit, because it goes into my next question or topic. And that is that you're writing in your book, and I went to a briefing the other day with some folks about that.

And the book is titled "Silicone Selling," and a lot of people are saying that it's going to be another best-seller, which I'm sure it will be. So, I'm very curious about the title, "Silicone Selling." And I'm being, perhaps, a little critical here, but what's "Silicone Selling" about? Aren't sales books sort of done to death? And aren't they all the same content just rehashed in other ways?

Michael: Well, they are done to death. Most of them are rehashed, just done, and if you've been in the field long enough from when the subject was first written about in the '30s -- certainly in America, which is the largest market for sales books and sales training and so on traditionally has been -- there's a couple of people that started.

And they mostly had a strong religious base, because in those days you had a market where people... A relatively unsophisticated market and so you had, like I say, sort of the concept of door-to-door bible salesmen going around from door to door, using strong-arm persuasion, highly emotional and relatively unsophisticated techniques, talking to relatively unsophisticated people.

And also, in a large and growing market where you could go door to door and you'd never have to go back to that door again. So, it becomes a zero-sum game. It's a win-lose situation for the salesperson. To win, the customer's got to lose, and off you go, because you're on to the next door and the next street and the next town and so on.

So, it's not the same thing at all where you want a win-win situation, because you want a long relationship with the customer, you want them to replicate into one batch, one that's word of mouth by where a satisfied customer replicates another satisfied customer. So, you're getting compounded returns on your investment.

And that's more the world we live in today, certainly in the online world, where a customer can just push a button and let people know very, very quickly -- quite a large number of people -- what their experience of an encounter with a particular salesperson or vendor is.

So, that's certainly changed things. The consequences are catching up with people much quicker than they would have. But the point is that some of the fundamental principles -- like the earth is flat -- were established in those early books that were written in the 1930s, and even though the market has changed and the environment and all the things we've talked about, people get the book, they don't really do any original research of their own.

They want to become salespeople of selling. The get a book, they rewrite it, they make it look graphically more pleasing, change a few of the words, make the idiom a little bit more modern. But the fundamental principles -- for example that the salesperson's job is to close the sale -- that meme just travels right through all the books.

And if you go up to most of the books on the shelves now -- you still notice a change, because we started a new stream about 25 years ago -- but most of them are still one version or another of the idea that the salesperson's job is to close the sale. Which is nonsense.

Simon: So, why focus, then, the book and the content of the book squarely at the digital space, that some would argue don't need any help or assistance in selling? For example, Google, and even Microsoft.

Michael: Well, to talk about Google, because we all love to talk about Google, and we'll come back to that in a second. But if you say that what they're doing in the silicone space, that we're satisfied with that, then there would be no need for a book in that area.

But the other position to take is that we're not satisfied with that at all, that there's enormous potential. And still, many of the things that are being done in that area -- even though it's in a slick, new, exciting and technological space -- are still based on those flat-earth concepts of "our job is to close the sale" and things like that.

I mean, it's changing, there's no doubt about it, and I think it's changing more in the silicon space than in other industries. And that's kind of why I've been writing more of a... My other books have been across the selling industry, trying to change the thinking in the selling industry as a whole.

But now having done that for 20-odd years, I see some areas move faster than others. And there's no doubt in my mind that the silicone areas and the IT-based industries probably are driven as much by Moore's Law as by anything else. They're moving faster.

So, I'm getting older, less energy. So, I'm focusing my attention and preaching to the people who I think really can make the biggest difference more quickly. I think that's in the silicone area. So this will be more of a vertical book, aimed more at the industries that really are using technology to move ahead, and really could use some fresh approaches.

So that's my particular strategy for why I'm making this a vertical book. Other people could obviously use the book and apply it if they're interested in it, but I'm going to be focusing my energies in the United States next year on the silicone industries.

Simon: So, let's talk about de Bono for a minute, because you and he have had a 25- or 30-year relationship and he was your professor for your PhD. Correct?

Michael: Correct, yeah.

Simon: Does he get the Internet?

Michael: To some extent. But I don't really think so, and I don't... Well, I don't know. Not by his behavior or by his websites, if you look at his websites. He's not using that as a central strategy.

And that may not mean because he doesn't get it. It could be because he just doesn't choose to. He's got a particular... He's doing very, very well. He's like a rock star. He does seminars and writes a book every year and has a circuit that he does every year around the world. It's very, very profitable for him.

That's something that he likes to do. We've talked about it often. I don't like to be on a plane all the time, doing things. He enjoys it. So, I wouldn't say he doesn't get it, but he's not exploiting it and he's not centering his approach and his ideas on that.

I mean, we developed the "Six Thinking Hats" concept 20 years ago to teach thinking. And then after that, I developed the idea of the "neck-top" computer. I could see what was happening. I had a client -- IBM -- in the '80s, and the first desktop computers came out. And suddenly when you realized what was going to happen with IT technology, it wasn't going to just be these big, huge machines with men in white coats. We all were going to be able to have our own one.

And so once we realized we could have desktop computers, I then started with the metaphor of the "neck-top" computer, which is the brain, the biggest computer of all. And therefore, if we have neck-top computers, we need to upgrade our software. And so wrote a book 18 years ago called "Software for the Brain."

And when I discussed that with Edward -- he's a medical doctor and medical professor -- he said that, "Well, I think the difference between the human brain and the computer is so vast that there's little point in comparing them."

And I said, "Well, I think that they're both digital environments and whatever the difference is, it's going to be at least a useful metaphor." Now, as time has moved forward, it's turned out that my prediction has been quite useful, and so the "Software for the Brain" book was a bestseller, and I'm doing another -- fifth edition -- next year. And I just see recently that Edward is now promoting the concept of software for the brain.

But I just think, like I mentioned to other people before, a lot of people --unless they're really focusing in the area -- and relatively few people, especially of my generation and possibly older, are not necessarily... They're acknowledging the online environment, but they're not necessarily strategically involved in asking themselves the question: "What's it for?"

Simon: When I was at the Web 2.0 Conference earlier, you know, John Batelle, who's I'm a big fan of and who wrote the book called "The Search," he...

Michael: It's a great book. He gave it to me.

Simon: He mentioned that it would take, he believed, two full generational cycles before the world and the population was really digital, right, in the sense that... I look at my parents, and my father's 73 or 74, my mother's 60,late 60s. I forget. They're old, all right?

Michael: Careful. I just turned 60 a couple of weeks ago.

Simon: My father clearly doesn't get the Internet. He struggles with it, it frustrates him, but technology frustrates him. But then I have other friends who are in their 70s who book online travel.

Michael: Yes.

Simon: There are some people that still can't get an ATM machine. There's still a generation that wants to walk into a bank. And the resurgence of banks and branches, if you look at the banks here in Australia reopening branches, because when they... That strategy failed to consolidate and try and get everybody to go to other channels.

Michael: Look, there's a lot that's wrong with technology, and in future evolutions of technology, it may suddenly flip back and be so advanced it suddenly becomes much more user-friendly again.

I mean, many of us -- and this is just a constant dinner party topic - - people talk, "I just bought this fabulous new VCR or a new Blackberry or a this or a that, but I only use about 5% of it. I use it to do this and that, but I know it's got all this other stuff, but I don't know how to use it."

And there's a big gap, not necessarily only with people in an older age group, but with many people in general who have technology. It's not that they don't have it, but that they're only using a tiny portion of it. And I'm certainly in that category, because you just don't know how to use all the other stuff.

And to be honest, the silicon industry's moving so fast, driven by Moore's Law, moving so fast ahead to get newer and newer and more and better technology, haven't really been all that great in providing customer service and educating people who don't know how to use it in how to use it.

And this is a big topic of conversation, and many companies differentiate themselves in this space simply by how well they provide customer service, meaning customer education, coaching, understanding, so people can get more of the technology that they've already invested in. You know what I'm saying?

Simon: Yeah, absolutely.

Michael: And you talk about that, don't you? I've seen you on your blog talk about it.

Simon: Yeah, we do and a lot of that corporate consulting work we do is around the training and education space.

But it brings me to a couple of points, because we're halfway through the call and I'm really enjoying the conversation, but I want to talk about a couple of things because the problem I have with folks like Sol Trujillo, who runs Telstra, and Steve Ballmer, who is the worldwide CEO of Microsoft, is - and I know this might sound arrogant and controversial - but I actually don't think that they get the Internet that well.

And the fact that they have very little control or influence over how we as consumers consume their content, or content that they would like us to consume. The control rests squarely with us now, you and me. I mean, the consumer, not them. And it's not necessarily us versus them anyway.

And maybe Sol and his PR folks would say, "Well, this is a little aberration," but he was famously quoted as saying, "Google, schmoogle," you know?

Michael: Yes.

Simon: "Who cares?" Yet, Telstra don't have a clear search strategy in sensis.com.au. No one uses it, right?

And Steve Ballmer is world-famous courtesy of the Internet for this chair-throwing incident, which, whether it be true or not, it's certainly well-reported. His absolute fury and frustration at Google cutting into the Microsoft space.

So Google, just this week, announced an acquisition into the PowerPoint area, into the online slide presentation business. And if anyone thinks that Google's not getting into the office environment, into the environment that has really been the domain of Microsoft, I think that they're kidding.

So, my whole point is that the technology companies are so focused on the technology that they're forgetting about the consumer that has to use it, right?

Michael: Yes.

Simon: And I sent you a link to Michael Anderson's blog, who many would say is one of the pioneers of the Net: built Netscape, blah, blah, blah. And he has a great post on hiring, and the fact that Google, for example, is absolutely hell-bent on hiring based on your educational credentials. Microsoft used to; its hiring policy was "Could you solve these puzzles?"

But there's still going to be people at the end of the day, Michael, that sell it...

Michael: Yes, indeed.

Simon: And market it, and teach people how to consume their content. So, what are your thoughts on that, in the sense that Microsoft's never really had to sell anything because it's got market dominance? And in some ways, it's just the same as Google. They have a beautifully simple interface that everybody can understand, but have they ever really had to actually sell their product, right?

Michael: Well, exactly. I think an interesting thought experiment, and a genuine provocation, would be to ask the question: does Google really understand the Internet?

Now, you could imagine the reaction. Many people are like, "Well, don't be ridiculous. Look what they've done. They're the biggest company in the history of the world. Their brand is the biggest brand in the world." Yadda, yadda, yadda. It goes on and on. So, clearly, obviously, they do understand, and they're there and they're creating a world.

But compared to what could be understood, compared to things that we do know about that would dramatically, say, multiply Google by 10, and to do that... It's the flat earth/round earth thing. There are things about human interaction. There are things about the way people search, why they search, and the patterns of their search.

I mean, I've been in this search space for 30 years. If you're in thinking, you're in aching from your current point of view and searching for a better point of view. And then in the middle of this space, $20 billion industries have popped up, basically.

And I have been asking the question for a while and considering, based on things that -- I met with George Gallup many years ago -- to what extent Google actually understands the space. To the extent they don't understand it represents an enormous opportunity, because they could continue to move into that area.

Simon: It probably suggests, though, if they were allowed to do more, they could deliver a better experience. And the issue that they probably would... And I'm putting words in their mouth, but let me expand out for a second. The whole issue at the moment around online is privacy, right?

Michael: Right.

Simon: So if we went into Building 43, which is where all the search nerds hang out at Google, at the Googleplex, and we said, "Look, just wind back the curtains, dim the lights, and really tell us what you're working on and what you could do." And I'd bet that they'd say, "If we were allowed to take control or use the data that we have that we've built up over eight years, and the data that we have access to via your desktop and via your every click stream on the web, we could provide a much better result for the user."

Michael: Right.

Simon: But the issue is that you and I, as consumers, are very nervous about that happening. I actually, personally, am not, but I know a lot of people are.

Michael: Yeah. Well, this is a very, very interesting--this could even be the most interesting part of our discussion. And again, I think this whole discussion about privacy and all is obviously important in the context of everything. But, again, it's a bit like the discussion: "Don't go too far away from shore, because if you do, you'll fall off the edge."

Now, you can imagine that they would have a "Flat Earth Commission," they would have regulation about "Where is the edge of the earth? Is it five miles out? Is it ten?" there would be enormous experts, there would warnings and so on. And there probably was a whole industry about how do know when you're getting to the edge of the earth, what to do and all that sort of thing.

Of course, it was all based on the assumption -- which no one is ever checking -- that the earth is flat. But the earth isn't flat, it's round, and all of that whole huge, vast industry of regulation and concern isn't really anything much more than a sort of nonsense industry.

I think this is where it gets into the very interesting area. What really is in Building 43? And I think there's some insights there that really are not about the whole privacy industry. For example...

Let's as a fundamental question: What is Google for? If I were to ask you, "What is Google for?"

Simon: I think there are two answers. Google will tell you -- one of their corny words -- that their mission statement is to organize the world's information. But for you and I... Well, for me personally, Google is there to help me find things. Right?

Michael: OK. OK. Let's just take both of those. Because you covered that well: one's from Google's point of view and one is from the customer's point of view. I first read about googols and googolplexes in a year before Google started. But I was only, in "Software for the Brain," trying to talk about very large numbers, and a googol is obviously a very large number and a googolplex is an even larger number.

And I was discussing a thing I talk a lot about, 10 Power, when you want to move information faster than logic. One method is to multiply things by 10, to constantly be adding zeros. We've just got to get into the habit of moving much faster, because the information universe is expanding at such a rate.

If we're going along with 2,500-year-old logic, from just step to logical step, we're just going to be left behind. So, one of the strategies to thinking is to escape from your point of view much, much faster than we're doing so that we can move to the next point of view.

Now, Google... Of course from the customer's point of view, once it's going to occur to us to escape from "unsearch" to "search," once it occurs to us to rub Aladdin's lamp, to actually write something into the Google box, to press a button, and now we've escaped from our point of view and now we're searching the Internet.

That's really good. And Google used the number googol to illustrate... It's very interesting if you look at their website, they say to illustrate the "seemingly" infinite amount of information on the Internet.

Now, let's switch to the customer's point of view. Or to your point of view. Why do you use Google? Well, as you say, to find the things you want to find.

Now, what's in Building 43? I mean, John Battelle talks about the "database of intentions," and how vast it must be and the vast amount of information on the Internet and how clever Google Search is and their secrets and all that.

What if that's all flat-earth stuff? What if the shocking insight about the Internet is not how big it is, but how small it is? And this was something that George Gallup found in the work that he did. No one has measured public opinion, the database of pubic opinions, over a longer period of time than the Gallup Organization.

And the insight that he found was that, looking from the customer's point of view, the things that people search for are not enormous and vast and huge, the shocking thing is how small it is.

Simon: Are you suggesting that people... That if you and I jumped on a plane and went to Google, managed to get past the security people, got into Building 43, that there might only be three people there?

Michael: [laughs] Because they might not even realize this themselves, and there's a lot of people working in analytics in there. Flat-out, all day long, crunching vast amounts of numbers, but they have no idea what they're doing and why, and whether that's an ounce or a pinch of vinegar. You know what I mean?

But the insight, for those that have the insight, might be not how... Suppose you do the heat map of the Internet? You know, there's a crazy egghead, on of the analytic things, they've got this way, this very nice way, so that you can look at it at a glance at where customer activity is.

Say you had a Wikipedia, which you'd have to assume is a pretty big website because of all the many pages and so on. And if you had a heat map of Wikipedia... Now, this is actually a nice example, because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it projects the concept of a map of all human knowledge.

But if you do a heat map of where everyone's going, you'd be shocked to find that they're all clustering around just a very tiny area.

Simon: The majority of us are searching for the same things.

Michael: The same things. George Gallup said that 98% of people 98% of the time are interested in 30 things.

Let's look at it, say, from God's point of view. One of the ways that people define God or different Gods and so on, is that they're busy all day answering our prayers. If you've got a problem or something, you kneel down or you beat yourself with a stick or you do rosary beads or whatever the method is, and you ask God.

And even people on both sides of a wall think God's on their side. "God, help us win." "No, no, God help US win." Gut the point being that you imagine God up in heaven or wherever he hangs out, with his big Building 43, trying to answer all of the prayers and all of the things that come in.

Now, because God's been around a long time, he knows that most of the people most of the time are only asking about 30 things, which we've been over again and again so many times. So, he probably says, "I'm off to the beach." He's got a small bunch of people...

Simon: An auto-responder set up.

Michael: Yeah, he's got an auto-responder, exactly, operating. Now, for the individual who doesn't know something, the individual who's worrying about their weight or their diabetes or how to get more customers or what's the best school. All the different things that people have. Because we're all from the same gene pool. It's not like the "Star Wars" bar, where everyone's from a different galaxy. We're all from the same gene pool, we're all concerned about the same things, we live in the same environment. It's a very, very tiny part of the cosmos.

And so, if I was going to start a new search engine, what's the smallest... I mean, googol's like the largest number in the world, with the sort of feeling that what people want is so vast, we've got to be able to deal with very large numbers. It's interesting that they say "seemingly."

But what if you started a search engine called Epsilon, which is the smallest number in the world? And you really knew that while you weren't going to cover everything, most people most of the time -- that's where the action is, that's where the customers are -- in your Internet they're congregating about that information.

What if you provided a much, much better search engine and a much, much better search experience for customers in the 30 areas that they're mostly looking for than spreading yourself into others. That's a thought experiment, but that would be the sort of things that I think customers would appreciate better, and would provide enormous opportunities for people who want to get in and compete with the Googles and the Microsofts.

Simon: Look, I absolutely agree. I think that there's a lot of work, Michael, being done at the moment... [audio from computer interrupts]

I will pause this out.

So, what I did just then is I actually typed into Google Epsilon.com and a search marketing and an online business came up. And it probably made a fundamental error in its website strategy, in the sense that it has auto-audio play, right? Which is quite embarrassing in this particular example, as we just illustrated. But also...

Michael: I don't really mind. [laughs]

Simon: So, you can't have Epsilon.com, Michael. It's already gone.

Michael: Maybe, we have to do what Google did. Because the guys tell the amusing story that they had the clever idea of choosing Google as the last number, but they didn't know how to spell it. The correct spelling for the last number is googol, which I write about in my book.

And they didn't know that, because you don't have to be a great speller to be clever. So they did google. So, maybe we have to misspell epsilon and go epsalon, or something like that.

Simon: Maybe, maybe.

[laughter]

Simon: Going back to your comment, though, about that a lot of the industry experts are talking a lot about local search and the future of local search. So if you talk about Google as a macro-engine, and you talk about where the future is in terms of what's possible for local, because that's where they see a lot of potential still left.

I tend to agree, in the sense that we -- as a result of the Internet -- are drawn to these local communities. I don't get the success of things like MySpace and FaceBook. Maybe I'm too old, because I'm 40. And I don't get how young kids text people so much, 40 or 50 texts a day. I might text four or five times a month.

So, do you think that's just a natural extension of what you're saying about people looking for a smaller community, and that's what the web enables?

Michael: Yeah. I think a lot of it and a lot of these things that we're experiencing now could be transitional phases which will then evolve into something. I mean, I love my mobile phone, but I hate the Pavlov's-dog-bell-ringing and making me drop everything and suddenly, like a trained dog, having to react. So, I don't have it on all the time.

And I'm probably being a bit old-fashioned, but I don't like being a slave of the technology. I just like it there when I want to use it. And I'm quite willing to admit that could be old-fashioned, but I do think a lot of these things are fads and will evolve to the next phase and then suddenly people won't be texting all the time we'll be doing something else.

But the interesting point that you raise is, why are people doing it. They're not saying terribly interesting things. Different reports come out from time to time and one of them that I read recently was that, on phone conversations and phone texting, the number one message that people text -- which is great, which is great revenues for telecom companies all over the world -- is, "I'm on the train."

That's the message. It gets back to this 30 things idea. If you did a heat map of all of the text messages going around, which ones are being texted the most? It's not "E=MC2" or some great insight, its "I'm on the train." Because people say, "Where are you? Are you coming home yet?"

And you're looking forward to coming home to your mate or your partner or your loved one or whatever. "I've left work. I'm on the train." Now it's "I'll be home in 20 minutes." Instead of having to wait until you get home in the old days and say, "Hi, honey, I'm home." Now you text and say, "I'm on the train, I'll be home in 10 minutes."

That's very human, and actually I think those things never change. Humans like to... You go back to the monkeys who like to just sit there picking nits off each other, it's called "stroking." It's just what we like to do. We like to be touched and stroked.

And just a simple little message like "I'm on the train, " is a little stroke, a little touch. Except now instead of having to do it in one medium, we have new media. So, it's the interface between the neck-top computer that we all have in our head and these other computers, whether they be palmtop or desktop or whatever.

It's that interface which I think is the interesting area, and that's where strategies can emerge from flat-earth to round-earth, so people can have really big leaps forward, not just crunching more data in the same way.

Simon: Do you personally think that the database of intentions exists?

Michael: Well, it exists, whether anyone's got it or not. It exists as effect, in a sense. Just like we've been saying. In the sense, if you just call it whatever that most of the people are thinking about most of the time, that's a database of human thought, to the extent that they express that thought in a request.

From God's point of view, for example, that would be the database of prayer, of requests, and so on. From that position you'd be able to say, well, whatever people think about most of the time, this is what it is. So, whether it's in Building 43, or certainly I know it's at the Gallup Poll at Princeton, I know they have it.

And I would assume, I think you couldn't take the... And I think Google do have it and I think the insight that it is much smaller than it is, is a very precious insight. But, I don't necessarily want to go into tonight, but the little clues if you go -- I just put it up on my blog the other day.

As I was just looking, to see why they choose the word, googol, because, knowing that I've written about it before then. They said it was because it was a very large number and to indicate the seemingly infinite amount of information on the Internet.

Simon: Do you think you're reading too much into that?

Michael: I could be. Because it's coming from my point of view. I think it would require too big of a leap of faith to assume that Google could have done all that work and yet don't have those insights.

That doesn't necessarily say that the only insight; they could still be working on other areas and so on. But I think that's an insight that most people don't have. When I discuss it with them, it's usually quite a shock.

Simon: I'm absolutely fascinated by the statement, but I suppose the counter to that would be, "OK, we accept that as a perspective." But the fact that Google's technology, its physical server infrastructure has had to scale beyond what most companies, and countries, are capable of in terms of the absolute investment in power and hardware and server farms around the world.

For example, we are based in Australia. Our search queries aren't actually going to Google in the U.S. They're going somewhere geographically here in the region, because Google's insistence is that the speed in which the result is returned is absolutely paramount.

So it doesn't want to have what we call latency in the system, and it will replicate it's engine, if you like, all around the world. People would say, if it were only 30 things people were looking for, why then all of the infrastructure?

Michael: Well, one answer could be, because there's a lot of people looking for it. In other words...

Simon: True.

Michael: In other words, God could have... In other words, it might be deeper rather than wider, so God could say, "Look, I know we only have thirty desks." You know how the foreign affairs department has the Saudi Arabia desk and the Mozambique desk. So you might only have thirty desks, but you might have 10,000 people working behind each desk, because there's so many people who are interested in those 30 things, that you need a lot of scalability.

That's one answer, so that if Google are providing, servicing their heat map of the database of intentions, but they're doing it on the global scale more and more, which they are, that's still going to need enormous crunch power.

I'm being slightly provocative, just to get people to think. I'm not saying it's exactly the way I'm saying. It's probably a mix between depth and width. But I am drawing attention to the point that most of the conversation just goes about the vast infinite number of separate items.

They think of a very vast breadth of the infinite, and I think the insight is that the breadth isn't as big as it is, but because there's a lot of people interested in certain areas, that requires enormous scalability and this is the great job, of course, that they're doing.

Simon: You know when we talked a little bit about word-of-mouth buying tail, you could argue that Google has achieved that in the sense that they've not spent a cent on marketing or advertising. You don't go and turn on your TV and see ads for Google. You don't go down the freeway here and see billboards, right?

Michael: Well, the Google home page is extraordinary, through its lack of advertising and its white space. There's almost nothing on the Google... So you're quite right.

It's in a class of it's own in many areas. It's done many, many things.

Simon: Could it be replicated?

Michael: I don't know whether that's the best question to ask, and I don't know the answer to that. I mean, in a sense that it's already there. But could it be... Could people do something else with an equivalent benefit, build something else that also becomes very big, that either competes or -- better still -- complements or cooperates with Google?

That would probably be a more interesting question. And I think a lot of people think in terms of competition, with Microsoft or whomever. "Can we do another Google?" It would be better to do, "Can we do and Epsilon?" Or something. Can we do something that everyone who's in Google now, because they're there, wants this other thing, rather than just replicate another Google and split the market.

So, that would be how I were to go about it. But most people are thinking about how they can do another Google.

Simon: And we're getting to the bottom of the hour for the interview this morning, Michael, but if you... You're an academic, right? Well, I like to think that you're an academic. You're certainly very well-regarded in your field. You've written extensively, you have a PhD. You're perfect for Google's hiring criteria. Right?

Michael: Right.

Simon: Well, they might say that you're a bit old. Right? But that's your only fault. Right? I'm only joking. They've just hired Dr. Vinton Cerf, who makes you look like a spring chicken.

Michael: I hope so.

Simon: Anyway, is that wrong to focus on that? If you at they've got 12, 000 people as their total head count. They're adding people dramatically. But if their focus is just on the academic result -- and this goes back to Mark Anderson's post -- I personally think that's flawed.

And I know that sounds really arrogant from a little guy in Melbourne on a cold winter's morning. But I do think it's flawed, ultimately.

Michael: Well, if what you say is true, it's flawed. And it probably is. You can see the logic of it. Certainly technology... I mean, one of the problems if I am talking to someone of my age group -- who may be sitting as directors on boards of companies that are very large companies -- a couple of generations ago, you had to be grey-haired to be a director.

You had to work your way up the ladder and by the time you were a director of a company, you've got a big salary and all that, but also you've got a lot of experience. You've been around a long time, you've seen the company evolve through its generations, and so that's it.

So, people coming into the company were younger, they may have -- increasingly, as time went on -- had more and more qualifications, but they didn't have the experience. And so, there was that hierarchy.

Then along comes everything we've been talking about. The whole online world, which is technology, which -- by the time these guys get grey hair -- they've missed out on all that. It's not that they can't think, it's not that they don't have experience, they just don't know how to work the keyboard.

It's actually a relatively small part of the information that they don't have, but it's critical. So, they have to rely on the 24-year-olds, and empower them to make very, very important business decisions. And we've seen lots of... This has been a very difficult area.

Because someone who is very, very adept at a new technology and at using it, still may not have a lot of wisdom and experience, because they haven't been around 60 years and so on.

So, one of the interesting challenges -- and I think we'll get better at that in the future -- I mean, I often talk about the Six Thinking Hats, and if we were to add one more Thinking Hat, I'd add the Grey Hat, for wisdom and experience.

Wisdom and experience, and continuity and history, are things that you just can't buy. I mean, IBM -- or Google, even -- no matter how much money it's got and how big it is, it can't suddenly acquire a thousand years of history and background, like say, the Vatican.

The Vatican has a pretty big library and pretty big database of intentions and correspondence and stuff over a very long period of time. And that's just something that Google is trying to, but it just can't suddenly acquire.

So, it's another dimension to things. There's technology, there's speed, and there's also long-term views, experience, cycles. You know, we're all concerned about global warming, because in our short human span, we've seen some things happen that we're worried about. And I think the big thing behind it is the expansion of human populations. I think it really is something.

But the other side of it is, is this just a cycle? Could it be like a hundred-year cycle, or a thousand-year cycle? And we just don't have the perspective to be able to understand it. So, you get things like that. And I think that's one of the problems in what we've been talking about.

It's very exciting and thrilling and moving fast, only in the space of about 10 years, but that is still a very, very short time space. And people may have a lot of qualifications and PhDs in that area, but in terms of the large scheme of things and the human...

Like the Mean Pool. People are very qualified for the Mean Pool, but in terms of the gene pool, they have a long time, there's a lot of wisdom there that may not be... If I was hiring and so on, I'd try and balance that out somewhere, so I'd give me a job.

[laughter]

Simon: Well, you know, Eric Schmidt was hired and he jokingly made a comment that he was the adult that was brought in to supervise the children.

Michael: That's a very nice example. I mean, Google wouldn't be where they... I mean, I have the utmost admiration for the two guys, Larry and Sergey, but they would not be in the business they are today without Eric. It's taken that balance between the younger generation and the older generation. That's actually a very nice micro-example of what we're talking about.

Simon: Yeah, I think the fact that now Steve Jobs is on the board.

Michael: Yeah.

Simon: And you'll be very proud of me at the moment, because yesterday after -- I don't know -- 15 years or 20 years of using a Windows-based PC, I've bought my first Mac.

Michael: Well, welcome to civilization. All that work I've put into you over all that time.

Simon: Exactly. So, I'm finding that very confronting. But I'm determined to make the leap of faith.

So, Michael, you can hear in the background that my family is waking up, and it's going to start to disintegrate fairly shortly. I'm going to have a naked 4-year-old in the office here in a minute. And people don't need that in their mornings.

I've absolutely enjoyed our conversation, as I always do, and I'm absolutely looking forward to this new book, "Silicone Selling." I know you're off to the States shortly to start the whole whirlwind tour and your consulting business is obviously thriving. Where can people learn more about you and what you do?

Michael: Well, thank you for your kind words. It's always fun, mate, when we get together and have a chat, so I appreciate all that. My two blogs: they can either Google my name -- Hewitt-Gleeson -- or there's the School of Thinking, which is the online program for teaching thinking. I blog things there as well. People can sign up and get the lessons if they want, it's all free.

My other site which I have at present, I'm going to change it to "Silicone Selling, " but I've got one based on the last book, "Wombat Selling." But I think there's such "NewSell" coaching. But if you Google Hewitt-Gleeson, or get to the School of Thinking, then you can go from there.

Simon: All right, Michael, it's been an absolute pleasure. I'll look forward to posting this all shortly, so people that are listening to this call, I would certainly encourage you to share it around, and the mp3 will be up on our blog shortly, and so will the entire transcript of the call.

Michael, thank you very much, and I'll look forward to talking with you again soon.