AGAIN!

AGAIN!

Dr. House

I was watching an episode of House a moment ago, and it struck me how much of ideation he used in his "quest" to cure his patients. In that scene he and his colleagues were basically brainstroming on a possible cause for a senator's illness. They were throwing ideas about; brainstorming, cause and effect, etc. when House, staring out the window said "When the Inuits go fishing, they do not look for fish". This turns out to be one successful example of the ideation process. The Inuits instead follow the birds because the birds lead them to the fish.

Analogies derived from the natural world, animal kingdom and in this case other cultures spur idea generation and are a successful way of generating ideas. These ideas are out-of-the-box and lead to a solution of one or more problems. So instead of looking for a direct cause of a problem, it was clear to him that there may be other factors at play. He then proceeded to "unconventionally" question the senator on his childhood and in the end found out that he had been on a particular medication as a child. Knowing this he could easily prescribe an appropriate drug.

Burning the midnight oil

Venti Americano @ my lifeblood ;)

chair shaped ass...

I've been sitting here at starbucks since 4. its 10pm now. i've been here for 6 hours.

my eyes are blur. the music that sunrise is playing is too loud and the DJ is annoying.

a guy with ugly bermudas just went up on stage to collect a prize

the good thing is that, wait i forget...

i need to go out soon. argh. i need to get OUT damnit OUT!!!

hot chick just walked by *grin* and bittorrent is downloading at 200kbps combined. i'm so happy... bliss is when wifi goes three digits. Maxis rawks

i'm talking cock.

another hot chick walked by and lets not mention the others who were here earlier :)

Fulltime

I quit my job and I'm going to pursue my studies fulltime. There was just too much going on in the office that it was impossible to perform to my own expectations.

I guess its time to change my blog title.

Unklebus

Brainstorming sucks

An interesting article by Jaren Sandberg of the Wall Street Journal on brainstorming. Some of the terms we see here we've heard in class for example "Blamestorming". It's a good read and does probe into some of the pitfalls of having such discussions.

John Clark, a former university dean of engineering, says brainstorming sessions come in handy to distribute blame in the event of failure. But in his experience, most often someone hijacks the topic at hand, tries to prove everyone else wrong, works to impress the superiors who are present, or just plain blathers for his own enjoyment. "I can't remember a single instance where a group produced a really creative idea," he says.

In fact, great brainstorming sessions are possible, but they require the planning of a state dinner, plenty of rules, and the suspension of ego, ingratiation and political railroading. Hosts have to hope that people won't expend creative energy trying to tell others their ideas are bad without actually telling them that -- admittedly a real business skill. And they have to cross their fingers that the session won't deteriorate into what some people call "blamestorming" or "coblabberation," where you get nowhere or settle on something mediocre to be done with it.

Follow this Link for the full article

The Adaptor Innovator

The Adaption – Innovation (A-I) theory defines and measures two styles of decision making (Kirton 1976, 1977, 1980) clarifying earlier literature on problem solving and creativity which concentrates more on defining and assessing level rather than style.

According to the Adaption – Innovation theory, everyone can be located on a continuum ranging from highly adaptive according to their score on the Kirton Adaption – Innovation Inventory. The range of responses is relatively fixed and stable (Kirton 1977), and in the general population approaches the normal curve distribution.

Adaptors are characterized by being able to produce a sufficiency of ideas, based closely on but not in entirety an existing agreed upon definition of a problem and likely solutions. Adaptors are in other words those who seldom deviate from a known solution or a likely path to a solution.

Innovators by contrast are at the other end of the spectrum, are more likely in the pursuit of change to reconstruct the problem, separating it from its enveloping accepted thought. In this sense they take a problem and view it from different perspectives and different paradigms to emerge with a less probable solution.

Two different styles of thinking

Adaptive solution lean more toward general conformity to the norm and/or agreed upon paradigms, which are easily grasped intellectually and therefore more readily accepted by most. In this sense even innovators who may not be directly involved in the problem are included. Should a solution fail the position of an adaptor would be more shielded as it the solution itself conformed to a something that was readily acceptable. In other words it is less damaging as the consequence of that said failure would be diverted away from the individual(s) concerned.

Innovative ideas, as they are not closely related to the group’s prevailing, relevant paradigms, and possibly even opposing consensus views, and their originators are liable to be treated with suspicion and even derision. This tends to be the case even after a successful solution has been implemented.

My take on things.

Innovators are seen by adaptors as abrasive and insensitive (Henry, 1999) by innovators because of their views and they often question conventional thinking. This is quite true I’ve noticed in myself that I often question why conformity is necessary when there could be other possible solutions. Though I am aware of the risks, as are all innovators, I do continue to pursue that direction of thought. Innovators also are seen to be at conflict with one another except when ideas occasionally converge as innovators have little or no respect for convention or set standards of behavior.

I have noticed that the education system especially in Malaysia tends to produce adaptors especially in the Chinese school of thought. Minds are often molded to conformity and discipline rather than freedom of expression and free will. With this in mind I do observe that Chinese educated working adults have a high productive value as compared to an innovator. Innovators tend to lose much interest (an observation on myself) if a project takes too long.

That being said, every organization has its own culture or ‘climate’ and most of its key individuals reflect the general outlook. This rubs off on others in the organization forcing conformity and this cognitive style will in time reflect the general organization ethos.

Bank employees and government officials for example are largely adaptors taking into account that these organizational structures require close conformity to rules. Adaptors are more likely to emanate within a production department and Innovators from departments that act as interfaces (sales, R&D). Studies in American R&D departments found that adaptors are valued for communications on the workings of the company and innovators being more valued for communications on advanced technological innovation. (Keller and Holland, 1979).

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That’s it for now. In the next article I will write about the creative process, including the six and nine stage models as well as the process of identifying problems and ideation. I’m halfway through stuckyness so a breather will do me good.

Creative destruction

Business Creativity and Innovation is a something totally new to the likes of me. Coming from a technical IT background, (un)conventional business wisdom is something that is elusive and yet to attain. The few classes that I’ve been through so far have been an eye opening experience. We were asked questions that defied convention, which allowed us to think beyond the box and question why and when we should think in and out of the box.

One of the more interesting topics that we came across was that of creative destruction. Wertheimer ([1945] 1959) suggested that creative thinking involved breaking down and restructuring our knowledge about something in order to gain new insights into its nature. Creativity therefore is defined as a process of developing and expressing novel ideas that are likely to be useful, in which the end product would be innovation or in other words, creative destruction. An invention (by means of a creative process) on its own will by no means be a guaranteed marketable success. It has to go through a certain process of innovation to ready it for commercialization and to be useful.

Introduced by the economist Joseph Schumpeter (Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 1942) innovations come to market creating creative destruction by stimulating general economic growth and simultaneously destroy specific jobs as emerging technologies replace older technologies. Even today we have creative destruction at work this very moment. New methods of communication with the advent of the internet for example, or the innovation of IP phones severely or perhaps even completely limiting the usage of terrestrial telephony has forced large corporations in turn to innovate to survive. One would think that creative destruction is an unnecessary force for everyday life but I believe it is inevitable.

In the article City Planet by Stewart Brand he plays with the idea of the symbiosis between an urbanized city and its slums; how creative destruction created the slums and later how the slums have been an influence to drive creativity in the business place and drive a paradigm shift for how businesses operate, again another process of innovation. It also points out the fact that a microcosm of innovation is present in the slums itself, whereby its inhabitants are forced to survive by any means necessary. Destruction paves the way for creativity and innovation similar to the bush fires in Africa that paves the way for renewed growth of new seedlings.

It all had a profound impact on the way I saw things. On the one hand we have the ability to create and innovate but in doing so something has to make way. On the other hand destruction forces adaptability.

I think I'm starting to like this...

The first post

I hope in starting this blog it will help me with my understanding of the modules being presented for the duration of the course. Jogging my memory and allowing me an outlet to express my views on the subjects and topics.

The posts will be of my understanding of the subject matter and will solely represent my opinion. In other words, do not quote me ;)