Environmental Stimulants to Creativity - Research Results - Teresa Amabile, Harvard Business School

In Chapter 8 of Creativity in Context, Teresa Amabile presents her research on characteristics work environments that foster creativity. The research method was to ask groups of employees (research scientists, bank employees and railroad employees) to describe two critical work incidents, one involving high creativity and the other involving low creativity. The incidents did not necessarily feature the person responding; that is, they could describe incidents not involving themselves. The surprising result was that the descriptions did not involve the characteristics of the creative or non-creative person, but instead focused on the general work environment. Here are the most important characteristics listed by Amabile, in rank order (most important first) for the research scientists. (Amabile writes that the members of the list were the same for bank and railroad employees, although the order was sometimes different.)

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3 Key Components of an Innovation Culture - Jeffrey Phillips, Blogging Innovation

Good artists borrow and great artists steal. Today I am a great artist, and stealing from another. At a recent speaking engagement which I attended virtually through a Twitter stream, Rob Shelton described an innovation culture as being made of vision and metrics and motivation. I thought this was an excellent summation of the attributes of an innovation culture, and I’d like to tell you why. I’ll also tell you one other component I’m sure Rob talked about but isn’t explicitly in this list.

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Climate Change and Nuclear Power in Australia - a speech by Dr Ziggy Switkowski

Recently I had the pleasure of attending a luncheon arranged by The Australian German Association where Dr Ziggy Switkowski was key speaker. Ziggy has previously been CEO of Telstra before the Sol era and is now chairman of ANSTO. The subject was climate change and the future of nuclear power in Australia. What follows is a summary of his speech.

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A new look at Solar

The Solé Power Tile system is the first building-integrated photovoltaic roofing product designed to blend in with curved roof tiles commonly found in the Pacific West and Southwest of the United States.

The triple-junction amorphous silicon thin-film technology incorporated within the Solé Power Tile is manufactured by United Solar Ovonic and allows the system to produce an estimated 8-20% more energy than incumbent crystalline silicon panels.

Any power generated by the system which is not used by the building (or stored in batteries if that option is chosen) is fed into the grid. Utility companies then give a credit for the amount of energy generated.

Source: Idea Connection

Glass Leaf Produces Energy by Sweating

Glass Leaf Produces Energy by Sweating

Electrical engineers in the US think that synthetic leaves could be used to generate electricity in a different way – by sweating.

The new synthetic leaves lose water through evaporation to create that mechanical water pump effect, and use it to generate power.

The System could be scaled up to produce artificial trees that generate power entirely through evaporation wherever there's a cyclical change in humidity. Although the modest power output is not enough to rival solar technology, Maharbiz thinks it could act as a complementary technology – the sunlight that generates solar power could also drive transpiration to boost the electricity generated.

Source: New Scientist