Making Innovation Happen
Wednesday, September 15, 2010 at 11:53PM What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? I have heard far too many answers to this question. Everything from being an inventor, a small business owner, to being just plain crazy or lucky. But none of these things have anything to do with entrepreneurialism, and frankly neither does much of what I have read in business books.
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 10:25PM I was going to entitle this post after Malcolm McLarens’ keynote at Games-Based Learning in 2009 “Never-Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Txt Pistols” as his talk captures the tension between Innovation and Control that occurs when any new technology enters education. McLaren, like McLuhan, was arguing for the conversational crafting of new creative potentials, something social media makes readily available. The delicious crowd-sourced ideas of #BectaX were arguing for a socialised, participative, learning exchange, roughly speaking, “every learner their own TxT Pistol”. New media, new technologies in fact, create new affordances for disruptive innovation, as they offer new tools and processes for problem-solving. Social media offer the opportunity for the “creativity, innovation and collaboration” of Group Genius to became processes welcomed within educational institutions. We play, we learn, we imagine new futures; the point of course is how do we realise them?
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 03:04PM At an August 6, 2010 conference in Lake Tahoe, the richest and smartest guy in the room, Bill Gates, offered his opinion on the next big thing. Ready? Toilets. All kinds of toilets. Broadband biffies that email PSA counts to your doctor. Do-gooder dumpers that save water in the third world. “[Toilets are] one of the greatest under investments,” Gates effused. “Not much money goes into that. You end up with the low IQ guys on the toilets.” If you know Gates — I once spent 5 days on the road with him — you’ll know he uses the term, IQ, a lot. Gates has always loved IQ. He loves it like a football coach loves 40-yard-dash speed. It never seems to occur to Gates that IQ has become a politically incorrect subject for many. Some 30% of American colleges have made the SAT test — a rough proxy for IQ — optional in the admissions process. Where the SAT is still considered, Asian and east Indian enrollment has soared.
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 02:40PM Following on from his groundbreaking The Creative Economy in 2001, John Howkins' new book Creative Ecologies Where Thinking is a Proper Job grew out of a research project for the Chinese State Council. Asked to provide a global overview of the creative economy, he took the opportunity to go back to first principles and work out a general theory that identifies three general conditions for a creative ecology: talent, freedom and markets. From this he proposes an evolved concept of the creative ecology. This is leading thinking for a new knowledge economy.
Download the first chapter of the book here.
Friday, September 10, 2010 at 02:32PM A 2010 study of 1,500 chief executives conducted by IBM's (IBM) Institute for Business Value identified creativity as the No. 1 leadership competency of the future. This paints a broad role for creativity in the business world in spurring economic growth. Creative solutions are needed for organizations to thrive, but how can business leaders deliberately increase creativity? Allow us to introduce the four Ps of Creativity, a holistic model for looking at creativity that leverages People, Products, Process, and Press to build creative competency, develop radically innovative solutions, and increase revenue.
