Innovation Commons Values Web Conference
View more presentations from Paul Schumann.
Innovation Commons Values
View more documents from Paul Schumann.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Innovation Commons Concept and Values
Slides from a a web conference on the concept of an innovation commons, values in oranizations, and the results of a survey to determine the values of an innovation commons.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The Vuvuzela and Complexity
As almost everyone now knows, the vuuzela is a noise maker used at sporting events, especially the World Cup matches. Its use at events is controversial. The sound pressure one meter from the horn is at the pain threshold, and when played in unison, in a stadium of 100,000 drowns out everything.
When played it produces notes around 235 and 465 Hz. In aggregate, the sound is like a very large angry bee hive.
I wonder if the aggregate sound is random or complex? Does it have structure like a fractal?
And, I wonder when things like the equivalent of the wave will start. I'll be really impressed when something like a beat or rhythm emerges.
When played it produces notes around 235 and 465 Hz. In aggregate, the sound is like a very large angry bee hive.
I wonder if the aggregate sound is random or complex? Does it have structure like a fractal?
And, I wonder when things like the equivalent of the wave will start. I'll be really impressed when something like a beat or rhythm emerges.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Diffusion of Wal-Mart
Temporal GIS map of spatial diffusion of Wal-Mart across USA -- note the numbers upper left and lower right.
http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/
From Jim Ronay
http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/
From Jim Ronay
Principles of Innovation
The purpose of an organization is to create wealth. Not just wealth in the sense of money, but in its original meaning that is prosperity, well being, and health -- the common weal. And, the organization creates wealth, not just for its owners, but its employees, stakeholders and the community at large. In order to create wealth the organization must innovate.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Ingenuity: Humans and their Organization a the Crossroads
Why don't things work the way that they used to? Where are our leaders? Why am I working harder and harder while I seem to be going backwards? Why do my children perceive that they will not have as good a life as mine? Why is violence rampant in our streets? Why are schools, business, and government broken? These are questions that we hear over and over again in millions of forms as we grope to grasp the meaning of what's happening to us.
The basic problem is that our models of organizations and of ourselves are out of date. We, as humans, our societies and their artifacts, have evolved. The gap between what is and what we perceive has widened to the point of breaking. We must change our mental maps to reflect the world. And, our organizations must emulate the new mental maps.
We are at a crossroads and we have a choice. We cannot deny any longer the existence of the need for change. And, we cannot waste our energies any longer fighting against change. We must embrace change and move rapidly towards a new state of being, knowing, and creating. We must develop our ingenuity and the ingenuity of our organizations.
MoreConversation and Creativity
Creativity and conversation are directly linked. Indeed, conversation, as a generative process, is the prerequisite for all creativity. This becomes immediately obvious if we distinguish between conversation and communication. Derived from the Latin communare, a shared space, communication means interaction in a common context or domain of consensus that makes communication possible and determines the meaning of all that's said. The control of context is the control of meaning is the control of reality.
To create new realities, we must create new contexts, new domains of consensus. That can't be done through communication. You can't step out of the context that defines communication by communicating; it will only lead to trivial permutations within the same consensus, repeatedly validating the same reality. Instead we need a creative conversation (from the Latin "to turn around together") that might lead to new consensus and hence to new realities, but which is not itself a process of communication. I say some thing you don't understand and we begin turning around together: "Do you mean this or this?" "No, I mean thus and such.
During this nontrivial process we gradually approximate the possibility of communication, which will follow as a trivial necessary consequence once we've constructed a new consensus and woven together a new context.
Communication, as a domain of stabilized, noncreative relations, can occur only after the creative (but noncommunicative) conversation that makes it possible: communication is always noncreative and creativity is always non-communicative. Conversation, the paradigm of all generative phenomena, the prerequisite for all creativity, requires a two-way channel of interaction. That doesn't guarantee creativity, but without it there will be no conversation at all, and creativity will be diminished accordingly.
The worse thing we can say about the mass media is that they can only communicate. At a time when creative conversations are essential on a massive scale for human dignity and survival, our society is dominated by a centralized, one-way, mass audience communication system. The mass media system can only speak a world that is already understood to be the world. It can only address problems already understood to be problems.
It can only furnish models of behavior that are compatible with the world as it is already perceived by most people most of the time.
Conversations are closed generative processes through which we create the realities we talk about by talking about them and thereby constitute autonomous reality-communities. The observer as autonomous individual is a myth: there is only the observer-community or reality-community whose constituents can talk about things (like art, science, religion) because they create the things they talk about by talking about them. Every reality community is autonomous -- self-governing, self-organizing, self-constituting. And every autonomous system is organizationally closed: realized through recursive, reciprocal, circular relations that may be
characterized as conversations. Indeed, communities are indistinguishable from the conversations that generate them.
Telecommunication makes possible communities independent of geography, but satellites and telephone wires are merely conduits that operate only in real time with no stored time, no memory; the virtual communities realized through them exist only during transmission with no archival or historical perpetuity, unless the transmission is continuous and pervasive. But when the computer is introduced as a component of a conversational network (the Internet) the power of social organizing is entered. A perpetual universe is created, independent of transmission, and a new class of political entity becomes possible. Autonomous reality-communities that are historically continuous and environmentally pervasive, accessible through any computer terminal anywhere in the world are possible. This is the profound significance of computer
networks.
To create new realities, we must create new contexts, new domains of consensus. That can't be done through communication. You can't step out of the context that defines communication by communicating; it will only lead to trivial permutations within the same consensus, repeatedly validating the same reality. Instead we need a creative conversation (from the Latin "to turn around together") that might lead to new consensus and hence to new realities, but which is not itself a process of communication. I say some thing you don't understand and we begin turning around together: "Do you mean this or this?" "No, I mean thus and such.
During this nontrivial process we gradually approximate the possibility of communication, which will follow as a trivial necessary consequence once we've constructed a new consensus and woven together a new context.
Communication, as a domain of stabilized, noncreative relations, can occur only after the creative (but noncommunicative) conversation that makes it possible: communication is always noncreative and creativity is always non-communicative. Conversation, the paradigm of all generative phenomena, the prerequisite for all creativity, requires a two-way channel of interaction. That doesn't guarantee creativity, but without it there will be no conversation at all, and creativity will be diminished accordingly.
The worse thing we can say about the mass media is that they can only communicate. At a time when creative conversations are essential on a massive scale for human dignity and survival, our society is dominated by a centralized, one-way, mass audience communication system. The mass media system can only speak a world that is already understood to be the world. It can only address problems already understood to be problems.
It can only furnish models of behavior that are compatible with the world as it is already perceived by most people most of the time.
Conversations are closed generative processes through which we create the realities we talk about by talking about them and thereby constitute autonomous reality-communities. The observer as autonomous individual is a myth: there is only the observer-community or reality-community whose constituents can talk about things (like art, science, religion) because they create the things they talk about by talking about them. Every reality community is autonomous -- self-governing, self-organizing, self-constituting. And every autonomous system is organizationally closed: realized through recursive, reciprocal, circular relations that may be
characterized as conversations. Indeed, communities are indistinguishable from the conversations that generate them.
Telecommunication makes possible communities independent of geography, but satellites and telephone wires are merely conduits that operate only in real time with no stored time, no memory; the virtual communities realized through them exist only during transmission with no archival or historical perpetuity, unless the transmission is continuous and pervasive. But when the computer is introduced as a component of a conversational network (the Internet) the power of social organizing is entered. A perpetual universe is created, independent of transmission, and a new class of political entity becomes possible. Autonomous reality-communities that are historically continuous and environmentally pervasive, accessible through any computer terminal anywhere in the world are possible. This is the profound significance of computer
networks.
Bringing Up the Leader Within
We are a nation of pioneers. Our strength is our diversity and our 'can do' attitude. The industrial age was merely a step on our path to achieving our national purpose. However, the impact on us has been the fragmenting of our spirit. We are now at a crossroads, and we must make a decision. Which path are we to take?
We know what we have lost. Yet we do not see clearly what we will gain. We can no longer deny that transforming actions must be taken. Yet it is impossible to go back to past as some urge us to do. We must go back to the past only in order to rediscover our strengths and transform them into our future. The role of a leader is to discover and illuminate our path to the future.
Leadership is now a state of mind, not a position. In this highly interactive age, each of us will find that we will increasingly be in situations that demand the exercise of our innate capability to lead. It is imperative that each of us bring up the leader within. We must all develop our leadership capability to its fullest in order for our organizations and institutions to be transformed.
More
We know what we have lost. Yet we do not see clearly what we will gain. We can no longer deny that transforming actions must be taken. Yet it is impossible to go back to past as some urge us to do. We must go back to the past only in order to rediscover our strengths and transform them into our future. The role of a leader is to discover and illuminate our path to the future.
Leadership is now a state of mind, not a position. In this highly interactive age, each of us will find that we will increasingly be in situations that demand the exercise of our innate capability to lead. It is imperative that each of us bring up the leader within. We must all develop our leadership capability to its fullest in order for our organizations and institutions to be transformed.
More
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