Category Archives: creativity

Curiosity killed the cat …Not!

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No, curiosity is something good. Today there’s even talk about not killing young children’s curiosity during their first school years. Amazing if that will happen within reasonable time…

Personally, I am devoted to make a living from my curiosity. People used to say that “I don’t want to die curious”, meaning that they were devoted to satisfy their curiosity. I would rather state that I’m going to die still being curious. My almost unlimited interest lies in many things, especially the extremely fast technology development. Digital communication and social media are some of my favourite areas. All this is very useful in my new role as a free agent doing situational and scenario analysis. I even found a new title – Future Strategist – after taking an extended course at Kairos Future.
So now I’m looking for challenging opportunities to do some work in my new role. Anyone up for a new strategy? I am here to assist you!

 

What counts?

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Math is a real challenge for many. Admittedly, calculus takes some training, but simple tasks such as addition and subtraction may ocassionally be just too much. Percentages are another major obstacle. I meet almost daily statements that you can save as much as 5%, 10% or even 20% by some irresistible deal. The other day Ryanair provided yet another example. They promised me to save over 20% buying six scratch cards for €10 when one card was sold for €2. What’s wrong you might say? Well, €2 off from €12 is not over 20%. It’s less — only 16,7%. So are Ryanair cheating or just poor at math?

Lifelong learning word cloud

Life-long learning

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http://web20classroom.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-are-you-life-long-learner-follow-up.html

Our ways of learning are changing, but it seems that not everyone is aware. Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown describe in their new book A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, how a new type of learning takes place without books, teachers and classrooms. It is a social phenomenon that emanates from the amazing interactivity we have acquired with the many new Internet tools like Wikipedia and Facebook. We meet with a new form of culture in which knowledge is seen as fluid and evolving, the personal is both enhanced and refined in relation to the collective, and the ability to manage, negotiate and participate in the world is governed by the play of the imagination.
Jane Hart describes part of this development in her Social Learning Handbook. Her strong statement is that Life in the Social Workplace is not something you just talk or read about; it’s something you do! She has created an interesting presentation entitled A new approach to workplace learning:

A new approach to workplace learning

Killing creativity…

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Youngme Moon who is the Donald K. David Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean at Harvard Business School has compiled an “anti-creativity checklist” that gave me a total flash back to my earlier employer. I believe I heard at least 80% of her sentences. Numbers 1-4 relate to colleagues which make them less relevant. Most of my colleagues were just as frustrated as I was. Number 11 is about underestimating your customers – They’re not ready for that, or That’s not what they’re asking for – I heard that just too often.

Please enjoy the video!

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Things poorly designed

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Seth Godin at Gel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.
Seth presents a long list of reasons why things are broken or merely poorly designed. Some broken things may be fixed, others not. It is as always very entertaining and rewarding to listen to Seth, but I especially like his discussion on things broken by purpose. It may be wise to realise that some stupid signs maybe were designed to grab your attention.

My favourite among his many examples is this sign:

Check out Seth’s Blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/