Leonardo da Vinci was the ultimate jack of all trades, with expertise across many disciplines in science and art. As painter, he was known for the masterpieces listed above and also for dabbling in sketching, sculpting, writing, music, and mathematics. His contributions in science include discoveries in human anatomy, botany, astronomy, and more.

And of course, Leonardo wasn’t the only genius of the past four hundred years as  Galileo, Blaise Pascal, Einstein, and even Bobby Fisher attest. So then, who is today’s great mind—that once in a lifetime cross disciplinary genius able to see the big picture? No one, says author Tim Hartford.

Harford makes the claim in a recent Financial Times article that there will never be another Leonardo da Vinci because today’s thinker is swimming in too much knowledge. The amount of knowledge available today is unparalleled in history. Harford notes that approximately 3,000 scientific articles are published each day, and the rate of scientific papers is quadrupling every 30 years. With all this information, he says, “the percentage of human knowledge that one scientist can absorb is rapidly heading towards zero.”

Leonardo lived during the Renaissance, a period of significant cultural and intellectual achievement. Harford says Leonardo was able to contribute so much because so little was known. It was possible, he says, to make significant leaps in understanding the world around us because there was much to discover, especially for someone like Leonardo who pursued a multidisciplinary approach to knowledge.

Fast forward to today: With so much knowledge available, and more produced every day, Harford questions whether there will ever be another person with the ability to learn, understand, and then forge the necessary connections to produce new insights. In short, he claims there will never be another Leonardo, not because the individuals alive today are sans the requisite brainpower, but instead because there just aren’t enough hours in the day to acquire the knowledge necessary to make significant—i.e. non-incremental—contributions.

With worldwide data volumes growing 59% a year, we definitely live in an information age of plenty. Our hope then seems to lie in the use of technology to help us separate “signal from noise” in analyzing mammoth stockpiles of social, blogs, and other data. Focusing today’s minds on data worth paying attention to is probably one of the few ways we’ll increase our odds of significant scientific advancement.

• Harford says that too much specialization in science and business means it will take us longer to make significant discoveries. Do you agree?
• Do you agree with Harford that indeed there will never be another Leonardo da Vinci?

Contagion takes many forms in our global economy. Some definitions for contagion include the “spread and transmission of disease, ideas, influence and emotions.” Another aspect of contagion is that it spreads in unimaginable ways. Thus, sometimes what seems like a tiny spark ends up as a full fledged forest fire.

Marketing professionals know that contagion can sometimes be extremely dangerous to our companies, brands and reputations. Therefore, it’s imperative to not only recognize early warning signs of contagion, but to react quickly when contagion spills over. Below are five strategies that can help us plan, prepare, manage and even seize the advantage when contagion strikes.

First, manage your risks. Author Nassim Taleb of Black Swan fame, says the essence of risk management, “lies in maximizing the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimizing the areas where we have no control of the outcome.”

One method of risk management is to maintain a significant buffer against unforeseen forces. For example, in financial services, companies are required by regulations to maintain a liquid capital cushion to buffer financial losses. Financial services firms also measure their risk exposure via Value at Risk (VAR) modeling or other stress test methods. And while it can be intelligently argued such methods are flawed, for many companies they remain the best tools available for analytical risk management.

Second, calmer heads prevail. When the European debt crisis threatened to engulf nation states in the European Union, German Chancellor Angela Merkel did her very best to stay above the fray. While contagion swirled around Merkel, she maneuvered among constituents, political leaders and central bankers to find a solution that would benefit both Germany and the greater European Union. And though some pundits argued that Merkel perhaps made matters worse by delaying action for weeks, sometimes it pays to gather information and not make hasty decisions.

Third, have a plan. Suppose a crisis hits, have you considered the likely outcomes? This is where scenario planning can help. Scenario planning is the consideration of known facts with plausible alternatives. Think about a given a situation and the top five likely outcomes. Then prepare a plan of action. Afraid you won’t get scenario planning right? Author Bill Ziemba reminds us that it’s darn near impossible to get scenario planning exactly correct. “What is important,” he says, “is to cover the board of possible occurrences. Then you will make sound decisions with risk under control.”

Fourth, consider using overwhelming force to deal with contagion. Sometimes the only way to restore confidence is via “shock and awe” or the use of the “big guns”. Best practices include the recent response of forty-three children’s medicine manufacturers to remove all potentially tainted products from store shelves until contamination causes can be determined. In another example, facing fraud allegations by the Securities Exchange Commission, Goldman Sachs hired Greg Craig, the lawyer who “saved Bill Clinton from impeachment.” Instead of responding in piecemeal to contagion, often it is better to respond in force.

Fifth, when contagion strikes look for opportunities in chaos. When the Wall Street “flash crash” occurred on May 6th 2010, liquidity evaporated from the market and bellwether companies like P&G saw their stock drop 35%, while global consulting firm Accenture’s stock traded briefly for one penny! Meanwhile, on financial news network CNBC, the normally hyperactive and boorish Jim Cramer calmly announced that anyone with modicum of common sense should buy those two stocks. Ultimately, the market corrected itself within a twenty-minute time frame and those who listened and immediately acted on Mr. Cramer’s advice made a mint. Where there’s panic, nervousness or irrational behavior, there’s also likely opportunity for gain—if you’re paying attention!

With today’s global economy tightly linked by capital, labor, and information flows at the speed of light, it’s not uncommon for bad news, nervousness, or outright panic to spill across borders and disrupt even the most stable of companies and industries. Moreover, what may seem like a non-event can quickly transform into a full blown crisis.

Listed above are five strategies when contagion swirls. Do you have others?

As a heavy carpet of snow drapes over the mountains outside of Anchorage, Alaska, a small squad of Raptors flies across the sky. Meanwhile, on the ground at Elmendorf Airforce Base, pilots and ground crews shake their heads in disbelief as they watch the F-22s perform maneuvers in war games against its predecessor, the F-15 eagle.

According to a recent Atlantic Monthly article, the F-15 eagle has been the work horse of the modern USAF for the past twenty five years. Yet airplanes from other countries have caught up technologically and now equally match the F-15 strike eagle in capabilities. Desperate to keep competitive advantage, the USAF turned to the F-22 Raptor which sports improved and advanced avionics. However, competitive advantage in the skies hasn’t always been about technology.

For example, during World War II, pilots with first rate eye sight would often be the last one flying. That’s because fifty years ago, it was important to be able to see enemy planes 7-10 miles out, and then maneuver accordingly. Seeing the enemy first had its advantages.

As avionics and computer technology improved over the years, winning the skies became less about what the pilot could physically see and more about what sensors in the plane could detect. Pilots would essentially wrap themselves in a “digital cocoon” of lights, sensors, gauges and radio signals. The most important attribute for pilots then, changed from eyesight to an ability to process “multiple streams of information”, and then choose a course of action.

The ability to capture information, process it, and choose a smarter course of action is a key to competitive advantage, and the new F-22 Raptor takes this into account.

Now, instead of forcing the pilot to absorb many information inputs, the F-22 offers pilots a single display in the middle of the cockpit. The pilot now has a 360 degree view–in color–of the battlefield with communications and inputs fully integrated from the plane itself, fellow Raptor pilots and AWACS commanders.

While the technological advantages of the F-22 Raptor have changed the playing field, technology alone does not confer competitive advantage in the skies. Skill, training, and the right physical characteristics (to cope with G-forces) all play a part.

However, since most modern combat now takes place, “beyond visual range”, having a complete picture–a single, integrated view–allows a pilot to react to a threat before they even see it. Pilots can leverage the explosion of information, and react quicker than their competition. And in a “dogfight“, seconds make a difference.

As marketers across the globe grapple with challenging recessionary forces, gaining new customers, adding wallet share and retaining cash flows is more critical than ever. The technology exists to help marketers capture, integrate, analyze and manage the onslaught of data that customers, suppliers and partners produce. Data can be leveraged into information to help understand customer behavior, generate insights and drive better customer interactions.

Think about this–whatever analytical capabilities you have now–may not be good enough in today’s complex marketplace (think: F-15 Eagle). Are your competitors building an F-22? Will you know when they’ve launched a missile–or will it be too late to react?

Questions:
* Does the ability to display information in a relevant, logical and prioritized fashion confer competitive advantage for businesses, much as it does in military conflicts?
* How critical a factor is “time” in decision making? Do seconds and hours count? Have you seen the windows of opportunity closing faster than in previous years?
* Some marketers believe it’s not their job to promote integrated data across a company–they say this should be the role of the CIO. What do you think?
Related post: CMO’s Don’t Get Customer Service

I have come up with a couple of options that allow me to keep tabs of what people are saying and staying engaged when I cannot be actively watching and listening.
Subscribe via RSS
This is my favorite at the moment. At the bottom of each user’s page on Twitter have a small box that looks like this . That link is an RSS feed of the last things that person has said. I added it to my Google Reader in a category called Twitter Faves and it allows me to read them at any time. Using RSS in Google Reader also lets me search through them over time.

Use an application
Personally I use twhirl as my application of choice. I keep it open during the day and turn off the new Tweet notifications. When I have time I scroll through it and catch up. Twhirl also lets you do some cool filtering. You can filter by keyword or user as well as view Tweets by replies, direct messages, friends and followers. It also lets you search through the messages as needed. At the bottom of the window it shows if you have any replies or direct messages in the queue.
Use a web service
There are a host of new services such as Quotably that will allow you to track conversations by user and show you how they evolve over time. Keep in mind this is limited by the way that Twitter is set up (no threading, no groups, etc.) so it is of marginal value. You can also use a service like FriendFeed to keep track of what your friends are doing. Twitter is just one subset of information that FriendFeed tracks.

Services that consolidate and add value have a bright future in the conversation economy. There is a lot of opportunity out there to listen to, track the trajectory of and help people engage in conversations.
How do you listen? Do you accept the fact that people are talking and you can’t listen? Do you use something that is not on this list?