CPH127

Between the presentations the participants have the opportunity for discussing their perspectives on the subjects… The following is a few of the subjects discussed at one table - and rethought once more before written here…

- How do you define diversity? All though according to Jack Cohen we are biologically very similar, actually all human beings are very different. Human beings will naturally tend to interact on their similarities and create bonding and relations that way. Could we make a social experiment where we would only highlight the differences in each other in stead of the similarities?

- From participants - and practitioners - perspectives a lot of the functioning of groups is actually about "chemistry" - whether you can function together as persons. But what is this "chemistry" about?

- Constrains will often foster the innovation process - and so will thinking from the ideal situation. When can you use constrains and when can you use ideal thinking in creative and innovative processes?

- According to practitioners it is important to make teams according to different personality types and disciplinary skills - but in reality what often happens is that the people available will be the people in the group….

- It is good to work with different systems for personality types for several reasons: It gives a better insight in one self and it gives a better understanding of the others. And it is a tool for understanding differences in preferences, thinking styles and working modes and not least a tool for talking about these differences and moving on with the work.

What are your experiences of and reflections on diversity of people in groups or other settings?

When does a difference make a difference?

PhD Niall Connolly, HP Manufacturing, Ireland

Social Innovation – Highly interesting – one of his points is that you seek knowledge where you are used to look for information. It restricts the solution.

He differs between heterogene and homogene groups. The more heterogene you are as a group the less you communicate.

Diversity, leads to less communication, leads to conflict.

What does that mean to innovation.

I NEED, NEED , NEED his presentation….;-)

Barry Katz’s presentation of the ApproTec project of making a pump for the bottom classes in Kenya and Tanzania concluded that although this project was non profit there was a lot to be gained from it:

- Because of the project group being very fluid with people joining before and after working hours it had to involve a very high degree of knowledge management to ensure that the right competencies were used and that learning was passed on.

- Because of the challenges of the project regarding usability, mobility, costs and more there was a high level of technical learning.

- The project lead to a high degree of community building  because it involved people from different areas and created a high level of trust and community in the organisation.

- This project has given a lot of "bragging rights" because of its nonprofit character and actually given an amount of positive publicity that could never have been paid for.

Finally worth mentioning is that this very simple and yet advanced product created by committed people before and after working hours has improved life significantly for more than 30.000 people and created a basis for further development of the rural sectors of Kenya and Tanzania.

The point of not only thinking in diversity in innovation regarding the input in the process but also the output gives food for thought. It opens up for rethinking the possibilities of creating concepts that will be a win win situation to the people both in the top and the bottom of the pyramid.

At what levels and in what areas can we apply our abilities for creative and innovative thinking?

Nel Mostert, Unilever R&D in the Netherlands.

How can you motivate to creativity?

Nel presented several tools to motivate creativity: When you encounter a problem, you immediately try to find a solution.

She stats that companies can’t be Innovative without creativity.

The Creativity is a process, Innovation is a result.She ran through the obvious fields of what diversity is – ge, gender, culture, language, nationality, Cultural difference, work level, background…..Everybody is creative, she states.

She mentioned Einstein:

The mindset who created the problem can’t be the one solving it – Albert Einstein

He usually worked by him self, he’s ideas incubated over time and during his private sessions. She mentioned another one as well. One of here conclusions was that you need to be alone to produces creativity. Afterwards sharing the thoughts results groundbreaking idea’s.

What does that mean in terms of working with creativity?

Introvert and extrovert people corporate in different ways = pair them in the creative process.

Creativity is destruction – to create something new means that you have to destroy something else.

To be really creative you have to be in a very secure environment.

You don’t need big groups to be creative – you need to be creative in your own mind.

Please share – what do you think?

Barry Katz, Professor Humanities & Design, Stanford University.

IDEO once again made it into the scene – covered up as a professors from Stanford.

He started his presentation with saying that the colour in design is in fact a fact , but – not  there  aren’t different colours among designers. What does that mean when it comes to the right formulation of the right solution?

The first generation of women in design – the example of the raiser; men raise one way, women the other = new design of the raiser.

ApproTEC – run through their businesscase – very interesting – design for the bottom of the pyramid – the ones who survive on a dollar, maybe two a day.

He points to the necessity of diversity in project teams to gain as much different perspectives in the early project phase

Early prototyping is about making it cheap and fast to gain as much good ideas during the project as possible.

Please share your perspectives in dealing with diverse projectteams. Anyone?

Dr. Jack Cohen, Evolutionary biologist, Warwick University, UK

Small event causes increased order not otherwise. We don’t test mutation when they arrive.

We all differ differently. Humans start their life’s with huge  amounts of diversity – 10% of our genes differs from each other. That’s a biological fact! What does that mean?

Diversity: Found Object = Lost property.

To sides of the same thing. How is it that we can see the same thing but from completely different angels? 2 theories about where the sun is:

1. The sun is 90 millions miles away.
2. The sun is a small bright object moving around in he sky.

Most knowledge is outside our brains, not inside. The knowledge is in our surroundings. "Extalligence" - we learn as part of our interaction with the world around us, and there is much more learnings around you than inside you - Intelligence.

We are not born with “good” mind’s frome start with – we are programmed with Cinderella’s and wise foxe’s There is diversity in the icons we use – we se differently on things. 3 is a magic number in every aspect in life.

Just because the tool you have in your hands is a hammer, that doesn’t mean that the next problem you find is a nail.

Very interesting perspectives on what diversity is from a biological perspective.

I’ve never tried it before – live blogging.

Tomorrow I’ll be blogging live from a conference.

I’ll try to spice the posts with some photos as well, but let’s see about that.

When talking about fuzzy frontend, creating innovating companies and people I think the concept of Diversity is HIGHLY important for, but less applied to companies of today.

As Susanne did put it last week in an article of the largest business newspaper in Denmark – “The higher you move in the management pyramid the less diverse mindset you will find your self being able to apply to the management team”.

Think about it – maybe that’s why most old-schooled companies cant figure out to innovate strong/radical enough?

I think so.

…stay tuned.

I found a really interesting post on Communites Dominate Brands about the experience economy. Overall it gives some perspectives on "expanding the experience" for the customers in order to survive in the market place. Even though its a good post I disagree with the brand angle:

Context is something that already exists in peoples lives. Combining the brand to the context gives the experience new, deeper meaning.

I dont think its branding that makes a difference…in worst case, branding can be counter-productive. As mentioned in previous posts I believe that branding - at its best - is a "fog of war", propaganda and something meant to cover up that no real development and improvement in a company or its products has occured.

Instead (of the above) I believe that combinding new and real value to a given person’s context gives the experience new, deeper meaning. Something design ("new design" if you like) can do.

Nevertheless, its an interesting post and I agree with its suggestion that business need to focus on the total experience for their customers if they want to be a player in the future.

How you create this experience is a different matter, I guess…do you have any thoughts on this?

(Thanks to Morten Grønborg for some interesting discussions about branding in relation to this).

I guess so – take a look on this very interesting issue from Fast Company. But nether the less, it’s well done PR from the guys at IDEO.

I won’t complain – The issue is highly relevant and I agree very much with most of the IDEO approach.

But then again – It isn’t all about IDEO, isn’t it? Who are the stars of tomorrow?

• Channel Design Starts with the Customer (Proven Ways to Get New Customers)
  (tags: jacob blog channel design participatory brock)
• Reading Room at the ICSC
  Killer stuff for people interested in creativity and how to enhance it
  (tags: jacob creativity resources links organization association)