Tweet Round-up for May 2012

Yet again this week I was asked for a list of books I would recommend to anyone starting out in the fields of Knowledge Ecology, Narrative Landscapes and Innovation Ecosystems. Increasingly my answer is all my aha moments and real turning points in my approach and understanding have been made in my use of Twitter.

I use Twitter as my radar, I have grown a list of individuals who I believe have their fingers on the pulse and readily share what articles, blogposts and resources they find exciting or useful. As I read through my Twitter feed on a morning I myself highlight those that I find most interesting by re-tweeting them to my Twitter feed thereby ‘bookmarking’ them for future access and more crucially sharing these wonderful resources with those who follow me and, my most enjoyable pastime, signifying the resource via hashtags such as #innovation, #storytelling and #complexity so that they can be more widely found by others interested in the subject. I genuinely believe that by being so altruistic, improves the resource for others and that other users will be encouraged to do likewise.

Enough justification, after the wettest April on record I believe May 2012 has been the most fruitful for tweets relating to Innovation so here is my selection of 15 of what I believe to be the best of the best, enjoy:

MAKING SENSE OF INNOVATION

Excellent post – Seven curses of #Innovation http://t.co/34oC8jh7 – seen most of them #TRIZ

RT @neridahart The Nine #Innovation Roles http://t.co/3pCuYk8q via @zite

RT @gquaggiotto 2 great pieces on disruptive #innovation 4 globaldev http://t.co/3gu9UeDu @patrickmeier & http://t.co/wFyGj3cP @alwalji

RT @rachelbotsman @iRowan “I see elimination of gatekeepers everywhere.” Jeff Bezos: Fab NYTimes piece http://t.co/YY5oe4m6 #innovation

RT @DavidHolzmer How to Identify World-Changing #Innovation http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2012/04/ff_spotfuture/

RT @euopeninnovatio Velocity is the only #innovation outcome that matters http://t.co/9ExDSgMm

Why extractive business models fail. They destroy the ecosystems that support them http://t.co/adwFDHN3 #innovation

RT @rachelbotsman Part 2 of blog on building successful #CollCons platforms: Trust and user experience http://t.co/F9eAUXJj #innovation

RT @skap5 Are you a share taker or a market maker? From tweaks to transformation. http://t.co/NDkfRdyv #bmif #innovation

Are You Solving a Puzzle or a Mystery? http://t.co/gKUTkxHh #innovation #complexity

RT @minmien How Creativity Works in Cities | @scoopit http://t.co/FePBeceN #innovation

APPROACHES TO INNOVATION WORTH PURSUING FURTHER

RT @chuckfrey Amoeba-Through-Zebra #Innovation: An Interview with #Biomimicry Expert Janine Benyus – http://t.co/wUpaF8HL #triz

Wow – RT @reluuplands DEFRA Ecosystems Knowledge Network launches new website http://t.co/NJzQiOX7 #km #innovation #ecology

RT @chuckfrey Generating ideas with hieroglyphics – an unusual but potentially valuable lateral thinking technique: http://t.co/ujOSa5WD

The evolutionary TRIZ trends of Pinterest

One of the key TRIZ components I help to teach and facilitate at Oxford Creativity is that of Evolutionary Trends. These are the typical paths that previous innovation has taken eg Increased Flexibility or Shortening of Energy Flows.

Watching recent developments at Facebook has illustrated a number of these Trends, in particular the integration of Pinterest.

Pinterest if you haven’t encountered it yet is an online pinboard that enables you to bring together images that (p)interest you with an inbuilt reference to their original source. It is a bit like selecting your own page of google images. The interesting TRIZ trend is that it has combined dissimilar elements that are already in existence into a product that is currently valued at $1.5 billion.

Essentially Pinterest combines (using dissimilar elements) the image pages of Google with the Retweeting option, 140 character comment and hashtags of Twitter, together with the like and follow buttons from Facebook. When you pin an item you can advertise the fact on Twitter or Facebook and when someone engages with your pinboards you are emailed accordingly (increasing controllability ie a system with feedback).

I read recently that Facebook now occupies a similar niche to the landlines of our old phone system and that new modules will effectively interact as did our mobile phone technology.  Pinterest, although currently independently run, is becoming much more tightly integrated into Facebook (Transition to the Super-System).

And has Pinterest got any real business benefits. Well aside from the costs and harms of playing with it for hours rather than getting proper work done it is an interesting showcase of the thoughts, values and beliefs of an individual. Take a look at my first attempt at a pinboard of ‘The TRIZiest ideas‘ which has already started to receive comments, repins and may just begin to allow individuals to self-realise (Less Human Involvement) the wonderful world of TRIZ.

[This is a parallel posting with the Oxford Creativity trusttriz blog

Niche Behaviour

“Our experience of the world is relative to our perspective,
The world of our experience is always changing,
Therefore we must be wary of our tendency to adopt

fixed or dogmatic judgements, evaluations, and standards

based upon a narrow viewpoint,

since this leads to conflict and frustration.”

Chuang Tzu, 4th Century BCE

Ego Eco

Hat tip for this pic to my friend (and fellow tales to sustainer) Chris Holland, the didgeridoo man.  This has to be my favourite graphic of all time and encompasses everything I believe in. No needs for words, interpret it as you see fit. So much complexity. Thoughts of how the emergence of ‘ego’ created all the ‘warning stories’ of giants and monsters of the past. Smiles at comparing where the woman is positioned on the left with that on the right. Memories of the teaching stories about connecting cow and grass rather than cow and chicken. enjoy.

Who wants to live forever

There may not be a word in English for ‘Multiple belongings’ like the Welsh ‘cynefin’ but there should be.

I have just returned from the funeral of my dad and, for the first time in my life, find myself as an orphan. What I found most difficult was breaking all the connections to the past that the family had made over the years living in Roker, Sunderland. Small connections like stopping the milk, Sunderland Echo and fortnightly delivery of Ringtons Tea which had all continued without break for more than 50 years each re-enforced the finality of this event. I have drunk so much Ringtons Tea in my life that it must be detectable in my DNA.

Phoning to tell the relations gave me a stark shock that the generation that made funerals and weddings a storytelling bonanza are all but gone. My dad was the youngest and all the siblings have already departed this realm or are in care homes or house bound. The other striking realisation was that I have no close friends in the North East now yet I received 35 very much appreciated messages of sympathy on facebook showing that our new sense of belonging is very different, becoming multi-national and more virtual thanks to the Internet.

Funerals like many other businesses have taken the one-stop shopping model to an impressive but expensive state. One brief interview with the funeral director sets up all the cars, flowers, newspaper (and  internet) obituary, minister and service. The only other necessary meeting was with the local council registrar of deaths who with one click of her keyboard stopped passport, driving licence, pension, benefits, council tax, medical records and a whole lot more, which deserves to become a mobile phone app one of these days.

Meeting with the minister was a fun way to celebrate a loved one, we shared all the funny stories, many jobs and surprisingly full life that dad had had. At the service in the crematorium on Monday he then showed his ministerial experience by drawing a full and rounded picture of dad in words and stories pulling on the connections each and everyone of the congregation had with such a wonderful man.

The key story that he shared was one than my dads mother Polly (my nanna and best storyteller I have ever known) used to tell at all the funerals and weddings in the past . When Ernie was about seven he climbed onto the roof with a brick tied to a few rolled up newspapers.. The chimneys were straight in those days. White sheets were laid out in the sitting room, Ernie then dropped the brick down the chimney to clear the blockage. As he descended he was met by the next door neighbours with blackened faces. He had dropped the brick down the wrong chimney.

We entered the crematorium to a piano version of ‘Clair de Lune’ having deemed Tomita’s version, which my dad absolutely loved, a little too quirky and we left in floods of tears to the tune that was his absolute favourite from the Highlander movie, and forever a family jest that it would make a perfect exit, ‘Who wants to live forever’ by Queen.

Building innovation using Lego

Lego 'Experience Wheel'

Hat tip to a 2009 post over on the Customer Experience Matters blog which I discovered while building another pinboard on Pinterest (but thats worth a whole new posting).

I just love models that both visualiseand tell a story and therefore make sense of systems and/or processes in a different way. This is a model that was (is?) used by Lego when examining user experience and what intrigued me was the number of ideas and perspectives contained within a single method/chart.

First it has the Before During and After elements of  After Action Reviews and TRIZ nine box thinking but even more intriguingly elements of the Cognitive Edge Future Backwards for which it also identifies ‘make or break’ moments or as we describe them ‘key turning points’ or ‘tipping points’.

Secondly it looks a great way to open up the customer perspective currently showing a big come-back in Innovation Ecosystem ideas of the Wide Lens and other useful business frameworks.

Thirdly it has an element of  and making visual the emotional response and kind of signifying the experience which is a brilliant way to highlight the points in the process/system for which harms should be reduced and benefits should be increased (which is a TRIZ Ideality exercise) until a smiley face appears.

Fourthly, I like the idea of placing the ! where ‘data’ is needed which is an integral part of the Cognitive Edge knowledge auditting method to identify where knowledge initiatives are needed

Fifth and finally I am thinking that the Cognitive Edge archetype extraction technique would provide very useful material to complete the centre of the wheel.

Recent Roundup

There has been a recent surge of interesting material on the internet which I have been re-tweeting as I find them but here is a brief round-up of 12 of the most worthwhile reads.

Jonah Lehrer on Innovation is not a genetic trait, It’s a skill. Anyone can learn to be creative. here

Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments of Writing (Metaphysical) on the wonderful Steampunk Theology blog  here

David Griffiths (aka @skunkworks) on The nature of complexity   ‘predators needed!’

I just love this posting on retirees (‘the Amazings’) paid to teach their skills to a younger generation where they ‘ create amazing experiences with their skills, knowledge & passion’  here

The emerging open-source civilization – thoughts from Michel Bauwens here

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Rob Hospkins on Transition Culture. “Here are three ingredients. Now form an initiative”.  here

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Max McKeown new column: All failure is failure to adapt and “All success is successful adaptation”

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James Urquart recommends ‘Five resources for learning complex adaptive systems’ here.

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Umair Haque lets us into the Ultimate Super Duper Innovation Secret here .

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 From @learn_logic an interesting collection of 3 fun Venn Diagram Generators To Help You Visualise Your Data: here

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Finally if you haven’t yet seen it, Cognitive Edge has a spruced up new web-site and I have my own network member page.

12 ways to connect with nature

Cynefin in nature

The cynefin framework can emerge naturally and this one shows clearly the slippery cliff-like boundary between the simple (bottom right) and the chaotic (bottom left) domains.

Now you see it …

We are on holiday this week so these postings will be shorter and to the point.

A letter in the latest Whitby Gazette tells a nice story about the patterning of humans and the inadequacies of a rule based system:

During the recent cold spell the Council gritter spread rock salt all along Church Street (on the East side of Whitby where we are staying) in anticipation of a forecasted snow fall next day.

At 08.20am next morning, the Council road sweeper came along, as usual, and swept it all up.