14 posts tagged “innovation”
I attended the mind of Buckminster Fuller's talk at Bucky Group last Saturday. The talk is conducted by Bucky Group member - Titus Yong. He shares what he seen at the Buckminster Fuller's exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
He also talks about what he thinks about how Buckminster Fuller thinks. I recall what he says and express it in a diagram.
Whole Wide World
Whole - seek synergy
Wide - seek knowledge across disciplines
World - seek inspiration from our World
What are the characteristics of innovative people?
Sense from:
You and Creativity
Don Fabun
Kaiser Aluminum News 25
Sensitivity
A propensity for greater awareness which makes a person more readily attuned to the subtleties of various sensations and impressions. Eric Fromm writes, "Creativity is the ability to see ( or be aware ) and to respond".
Questioning Attitude
An inquisitiveness, probably imprinted in early home training that encourages seeking new and original answers.
Broad Education
An approach to learning instilled from a liberal education that puts a premium on questions rather than answers and rewards curiosity rather than rote learning and conformity.
Asymmetrical Thinking
The ability to find an original kind of order in disorder as opposed to symmetrical thinking that balances everything out in some logical way. "The creative personality is unique in that during the initial stages he prefers the chaotic and disorderly and tends to reject what has already been systematized". Ralph J. Hallman
Personal Courage
A disregard for failure derived from a concern, not for what others think, but what one thinks of oneself. "They seemed to be less afraid of what other people would say or demand or laugh at ... Perhaps more important, however, was their lack of fear of their own insides, of their own impulses, emotions, thoughts". Abraham Maslow
Sustained Curiosity
A capacity for childlike wonder carried into adult life that generates a style of endless questioning, even of the most personally cherished ideas. Eric Fromm: "Children still have the capacity to be puzzled... But once they are through the process of education, most people lose the capacity of wondering, of being surprised. They feel that they ought to know everything, and hence that it is a sign of ignorance to be surprised or puzzled by anything".
Time Control
Instead of being bound by time, deadlines and schedules, creative individuals use time as a resource - morning, noon and night - years, decades - whatever it takes, unbound by the clock.
Dedication
The unswerving desire to do something, whatever it may be and whatever the obstacles to doing it.
Willingness to work
The willingness to continue to pursue a project endlessly, in working hours and so - called free hours, over whatever time might be required. Roger Sessions said, "Inspiration, then, is the impulse which sets creation in movement; it is also the energy which keeps it going".
What I read?
Starbucks have started a web site to collect suggestions from customers.
Where did I read it from?
Hey, Starbucks, how about coffee cubes?
Jeff Jarvis
BusinessWeek 15 Apr 2008
What sense did I make out of it?
Companies are experimenting to connect closer to customers. They are beginning to understand that customers can help them to innovate.
One of the things I observe on remarkable people like Buckminster Fuller ( Bucky ) is that they influence people with their ideas. Their ideas can through time lag become artifacts ( products ), services or improved versions of the ideas.
Bucky have inspired Stewart Brand to create the Whole Earth Catalog ( WEC ). It is a catalog of learning resources for an individual to take his own initiate to do his own learning. I recently watched a video ( time - 1hr 46 mins ) on the legacy of the Whole Earth Catalog.
What I found interesting in the video:
The impact of the WEC is that it created a culture of learning through making.
The WEC change Kevin Kelly's life as he realize that he did not need to go to collage after reading the catalog.
Stewart Brand was inspired by Bucky to create WEC as a tool to enable people to create change.
What did you found interesting in the video?
Education systems are educating people out of their creative capacities. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our children.
Sir Ken Robinson
TED 2006 Feb presentation
Here's a crash course from Keith Yamashita, cofounder and principal of Stone Yamashita Partners on the art and science ( mostly art ) of creating strategy and unleashing change.
1. Outlaw PowerPoint. Write down your vision as a story - with a beginning, middle and end -- to clarify what must change first.
2. Don't rely on words alone. Bring your thinking to life: Create an exhibit, use diagrams, prototype ideas.
3. Make strategy an everyday act. The creation and re-creation of strategy shouldn't be a process that you undertake only when budgets are due.
4. Argue forcefully against your most dearly held hypotheses. Only then will you know if they stand up to scrutiny.
5. Make decisions, right or wrong. There's nothing worse than waffling.
6. Take over the TV station. Airtime is everything. Reinforce your messages in everything that you do. Use every ad, press release, store, package, and event to tell your story.
7. Embrace thine enemy. Make a list of the people who could legitimately stop your big idea from taking root. Befriend them. Convince them. Make it their responsibility to improve on your vision.
8. Don't hold meetings longer than two hours. ( Otherwise they're workshops, which require more planning. ) And don't walk out of a meeting without assigning a name to every item that needs follow-up.
9. Startle people. Break out of your comfort zone and do something unexpected. Run an offbeat ad. Institute casual-dress Tuesdays.
10. Don't throw anything out. Don't kill ideas that won't work right now. Someday soon, the world might be ready for them.
Source:
Keith Yamashita wants to reinvent your company
Fast Company 2002 Oct
Polly Labarre
How to get different ideas? To get different ideas, start asking sources besides the usual sources you ask. Open up! Broaden your sources. Sources can be a person, a group of people ( Vox group ), a management theory, a school of thought, a book, a journal or a web site?
Inspiration from:
The best idea is boss
This is something that you will often hear in the hallways at Crispin Porter + Bogusky. It means that an idea is judged solely on its own merit. A good idea can come from anywhere, from any person in any department at any level. If you've been here a long time, if you're overdue, or if you've worked on that account longer than anyone, that doesn't matter. And just because a person's title is associate creative director or management supervisor doesn't necessarily mean their ideas are automatically weighted more toward the good end of the scale. We hope that this attitude creates a wonderfully liberating environment where great ideas gush forth freely from each and every person. Or at least an environment where you feel like you can contribute even though you're not running the place.
Source: Employee Handbook version 4.0 Page 13
Edison relentlessly recorded and illustrated every step of his voyage to discovery in his 3500 notebooks that were discovered after his death in 1931. Keeping a written record of his work was a significant key to his genius. His notebooks got him into the following habits:
They enabled him to cross-fertilize ideas, techniques and conceptual models by transferring them from one problem to the next.
For example, when it became clear in 1900 that an iron-ore mining venture in which Edison was financially committed was failing and on the brink of bankruptcy, he spent a weekend poring over his notebooks and came up with a detailed plan to redirect the company's efforts toward the manufacture of Portland cement, which could capitalize on the same model as the iron-ore company.
Whenever he succeeded with a new idea, would review his notebooks to rethink ideas and inventions he'd abandoned in the past in the light of what he'd recently learned. If he were mentally blocked working on a new idea, he would review his notebooks to see if there was some thought or insight that could trigger a new approach.
For example, Edison took his unsuccessful work to develop an undersea telegraph cable and incorporated it into the design of a telephone transmitter that adapted to the changing sound waves of the caller's voice. This technique instantly became the industry standard.
Edison would often jot down his observations of the natural world, failed patents and research papers written by other inventors, and ideas others had come up with in other fields. He would also routinely comb a wide variety of diverse publications for novel ideas that sparked his interest and record them in his notebooks. He made it a habit to look out for novel and interesting ideas that others had used successfully on other problems in other fields. To Edison, an idea needed to be original only in its adaptation to the problem he was working on.
Edison also studied his notebooks of past inventions and ideas to use as springboards for other inventions and ideas in their own right. To Edison his diagrams and notes on the telephone ( sounds transmitted ) suggested the phonograph ( sounds recorded ), which in turn suggested motion pictures ( image recorded ).
Source:
Cracking Creativity
Pg. 105
Michael Michalko
Ten Speed Press
ISBN: 0-8981-5913-X
What is churning?
It is a product development process which begins with the idea, move it through engineering and production, gets it to the consumer who generates feedback, modify the product, send it back to the consumer and repeat the cycle.
What are the principles of churning?
1. Plan for it.
2. Fail quickly but last long.
3. Use your own products.
4. Build in the means to fix your product.
5. Write the engineering specifications of your product so other folks can figure out how to extend and enhance your product.
6. Improve your product for people who are buying it, not people who aren’t.
7. Don’t try to hide your mistakes.
Source:
Rules of revolutionaries
Page 46 to 63
HarperCollins
ISBN: 0-8873-0996-8
What are Marissa Mayer’s ( Google’s Vice President for search products and user experience ) views on innovation?
1. Ideas come from everywhere
Google expects everyone to innovate, even the finance team.
2. Share everything you can
Every idea, every project, every deadline - it's all accessible to everyone on the intranet.
3. You're brilliant, we're hiring
Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin approve hires. They favor intelligence over experience.
4. A license to pursue dreams
Employees get a "free" day a week. Half of new launches come from this "20% time."
5. Innovation, not instant perfection
Google launches early and often in small beta tests, before releasing new features widely.
6. Don't politic, use data
Marissa Mayer discourages the use of "I like" in meetings, pushing staffers to use metrics.
7. Creativity loves restraint
Give people a vision, rules about how to get there and deadlines.
8. Worry about usage and users, not money
Provide something simple to use and easy to love. The money will follow.
9 Don't kill projects - morph them
There's always a kernel of something good that can be salvaged.
Source:
BusinessWeek 19 Jun 2006
ISSN: 0739-8395
