IdeaFestival

Breakthrough questions

Among people who live a life of the mind, courage and conviction is a hard combination to beat, as Kris pointed out in a recent post from the MIT conference he attended.

Between the Lines reported that Nicholas Negroponte has this to say about "impossible."

"Impossible" at MIT is a code word for "Do it."

I LOVE people like that.

But courage, clarity and conviction is an even more potent combination. Whether in science, theology, the arts or other creative pursuits, a problem well stated, as they say, is half solved.

In many of these cases there is an intuitive understanding of the challenge. I know in my own experience building wood furniture, the questions are one of space, proportion, weight, contrast, color, depth, texture, joinery and size. These questions are understood and I enjoy the pursuit of design in the middle of a project.

Charles Radtke, who never visualizes the finished product from a drafting board, is a modern wood furniture maker that I admire both for his design sense and his sense of adventure. 

But sometimes clarity requires us to formulate a precise question in order to arrive at a satisfying answer. In other words, it's beneficial to take a step back from the constant mental churn to ask the right question.

Early in my married life, it was this question: "why do you see this differently than I do?" I can tell you that got me a whole lot closer to a satisfying answer.

Problem half solved.

Today, I'm adding a new category to make those well-stated problems easily accessible to future Festival participants by cataloging some of your breakthrough questions asked on the way to creative solutions.

Happy (clear) questioning!

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The "here " Web

More from the MIT Emerging Technology Conference. Today we heard from Ed Zander CEO of Motorola and Bill Joy, former Chief Scientist at Sun Microsystems and now a venture capitalist. Both discussed where the information economy is going in terms of applications and business. A key point from both was the future of what Zander called "seamless mobility" and Joy, the "here web". The idea that the web and computers are becoming more and more personal.....and that increasingly new business opportunities are being created by this.

Zander said we are rapidly moving toward a time where the web follows "us" instead of us following it: keeping us personally informed with all sorts of customized information. Again both talked of the huge emerging markets in India, China and elsewhere. These markets will have a profound influence on business and innovation in this country.

Kris Kimel

"Impossible" not in the vocabulary of success

I am in Boston attending the MIT Emerging Technologies Conference which brings together some of the leading scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs in the world to discuss what's coming down the road in technology. Just left a session with Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab and Dean Kamen entrepreneur and inventor of the Segway. Both talked about the power of technology to solve many of the intractable problems of the developing world. In fact both are now immersed in such projects: Negroponte to develop and distribute low cost PC's ($100) to students and Kamen to provide clean drinking water to areas through a new affordable, portable device he has invented.

Both discussed the huge obstacles they face in getting the staus quo to buy-in to these innovations. But both also said that impossible wasn't part of their programs.

Kris Kimel

Organizations and the nature of knowledge

Creative Generalist has a fascinating post on problem solving from a presentation given by Dr. Nancy Dixon, who spoke at a meeting called the Learning Summit in 2001.

Dr. Dixon says start with the seekers if you want answers.

This sounds familiar.   

I think that's what we see happening today on the Web. A collective body of knowledge can be collected, analyzed and acted by the group far faster than any time in history. "Peer production" makes the seeker the expert because it places the seeker, participating in a group, closer to the solution. An expert can't function apart from the collective and constantly changing body of knowledge.

I particularly liked this quote from Dr. Nancy Dixon on the disconnect between organizations and the interconnected nature of knowledge.

Most of our systems, she argues, have been designed for situations where we hire people and tell them what to do and how to do it. But, increasingly, we are hiring people for their judgment. "We're in such a changing situation that we can't rely on knowledge that exists; we have to have people continually inventing it," Dixon says.

In peer produced economies, organizations will have to change to remain relevant to the people they employ and serve. Because as an agent for shared knowledge, they're failing far too often.

"Problems are Solved by Seekers" links to a cached version of Dr. Dixon's presentation.

The long tail, a big idea powering the web, explained

Chris Anderson is a gamechanger. Here, he offers an easy-to-understand macro view of one of the chief economic principles powering the Web, the "Long Tail."

Hit-driven culture, whether in music or advertising, is giving way to something far more penetrating, a culture where the focus is shifting from "dozens of markets of millions, to millions of markets of dozens."

Anderson describes how it is now possible -- and profitable -- to serve even the tiniest niche markets. The result: more opportunity for market consumers and producers.

The presentation is only 18 minutes long. You’ll need Flash (software) if it doesn't load immediately, but the plug-in is free. Your effort will be rewarded with a deeper understanding of one of the key principles behind the success of the Web.

Chris Anderson is the editor-in-chief of Wired and the leading authority on the phenomenon. He maintains a web log covering his research.

Because the answers are everywhere

I recently came across the commencement remarks that Steve Jobs delivered this past spring at Stanford University. The whole speech was great but one thing particularly caught my attention. After Jobs formally dropped out of college he decided to take some courses just because they interested him. One of these was a calligraphy class at Reed College. Jobs was inspired by the elegance of it all and the art and structure of calligraphy. Once it was over Jobs had absolutely no expectation that this knowledge would have any use or application in his life. But a decade later when he was involved with developing the Macintosh computer suddenly the calligraphy stuff "all came back" to him.  And they designed it into the Mac. Jobs said that " If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts". In a world of increasing specialization we often find ourselves thinking that we only have time to focus on the narrow bandwidth bottom line stuff. But in fact the seeds of innovation reside in unexpected places. The insight that Jobs derived from this and other similar experiences continues to shape his thinking to this day....the answers are everywhere.

Kris Kimel

"Why?" matters

Some introductions are in order. My name is Wayne Hall. I'm by training in the information technology business -- but not in the application development side, there are some seriously talented people working there. Rather, I think about how information technology is applied to problems. Most of the big ideas in the right column are related to information technology because of that. I'll be working to expand the list.

 

My typical question: "what is the information problem here?" I take "but I thought you wrote about information technology" as a complement.

 

I've worked for many years with a group of technologists in government. They are often terribly bright people deeply affected by the process of government, which grinds high hopes down to manageable size over time with rules that long ago were separated from principle. Lets just say there is a rule for just about everything in most government institutions. If you're not aware of a rule, someone will be happy to look up the applicable rule for you. I suspect most people don't feel helped by the new information. 

 

Government bureaucratic structures used to solve an information problem when information was scarce by coordinating a big effort on behalf of big goals. Solutions worked their way down the food chain. Today, problems don't generally suffer today from a lack of information. The governmental response to Hurricane Katrina illustrated that. The biggest question on the minds of many appeared to be who reports whom rather than how can the already abundant information (horrific disaster, response needed) should be addressed. Problem not solved.

 

My favorite quote, which I can't unfortunately find, goes something like this: "if the government had responded like Walmart more lives would have been saved."

 

Today, solutions are everywhere and more often than not bubble up from below. Free to communicate, ordinary people can do extraordinary things across this thing called the Web. Innovation is happening at an accelerating clip. That's why I was initially attracted to the opportunity to edit the ideaFestival web log. It takes advantage of the Web to bring together people interested in discovering the principles underneath it all.

 

What I'm saying is that the ideaFestival believes in the ideas behind the rules. It's a process where "why?" is welcomed. Rules flow from principles.

Past participants have included Dith Pran, Photojournalist and Survivor of the Cambodian Holocaust; Sir George Martin, Beatles' Producer/Composer; and Iain Couzin of Princeton and Oxford Universities, who is exploring Swarm Theory. Participants in the 2006 Louisville Festival will likewise be innovators that don't just tinker at the edges. More on that later.

I'm glad to be aboard. I could use your help moving the dialog along. So offer your thoughts on the importance of idea and discovery and how it all can be applied to solve problems. The "why's" really do matter. More than ever.  

 

 

Leader Fest

What is leadership? That question is increasingly on the minds of people who want to know how things get done, who does them and why people succeed or fail.

 

It's an elusive quality people seem to recognize when they see it. I like this definition as a starting point: Leaders are people who can initiate and respond to change.

 

If change is a constant, then an adaptability to change, and the fortitude and courage to make change, is a necessary trait of a leader. A leader also has followers, people who believe in the vision and the change-making ability of the person they follow.

 

There are several lines of academic inquiry into leadership. The study of leadership differs over whether a good leader is also a good manager, or whether the nature of leadership is one of power or servitude.

 

Whatever your definition of a leader, the field has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. Leadership development is particularly important to business schools. Non-profit leadership is also studied. If leadership can also be defined as success, then the ideaFestival has touched on the issue with the many successful people who spoke at the 2004 ideaFestival.

 

How should leadership be addressed in 2006?

 

 

Ideas: getting from here to there

If you're reading this, you know the importance of ideas. Via the Creative Generalist and the Fast Company web log, here's an interesting collection of idea generating methods from Martin Leith.

Tagging the ideaFestival

Going forward I'll be tagging individual posts with a variety of keywords. "ideaFestival" will appear a lot. If you would like to contribute your thoughts about the '06 conference in Louisville, label your pictures, posts and bookmarks with the "ideaFestival" too.

Why is this important? Tagging simply means that information about the same topic can be found no matter where it originates on the Web. It's a method for collaboratively organizing information across the Web. Instead of an expert taxonomy applied top down, it's a "bottom up" application of categories by everyone. Some call it a folksonomy".   

Sites like Del.icio.us (shared bookmarks), Technorati (tracks web logs and syndicated links) and Flickr (shared pictures) all use tags to identify information they host. For example, "business" appears in these shared Del.icio.us bookmarks. Here are Technorati web log posts labeled "business." Similarly, you can find pictures of "business" on Flickr.

If you need a better description of the phenomenon, see the BusinessWeek article, "Picking up Where Search Leaves Off."    

Steve Rubel, author of Micro Persuasion, has also written quite a bit on the subject. See his "tagging" index on Technorati for Steve's posts on tagging and its use.