Lunch Talk: TEDx, Neuroscience and Creativity

Professor Vincent Walsh is a cognitive neuroscientist who has worked extensively with artists and public engagement projects and has taken a special interest in music since 2001 when he organised a McDonnell Pew Music and Brain Symposium in Oxford.

As a scientist he has worked broadly on perception and awareness and has published 225 scientific papers on vision, awareness, time perception, music, synaesthesia and technical aspects of brain stimulation.

Lunch Talk: (MIT) Problem Solving Process

This short video from an MIT engineering course provides a good example of a structured problem solving process when a problem situation is relatively simple.



tags: lunchtalk, problem, solution, process

Deontic Payload

My sticky notes on an extension to the system model introduced in BUS 74 and Scalable Innovation

 

tags: system, process, evolution

Sisyphus 2.0: predicting the future is easy.

Despite all the technological change, our daily lives are quite similar to that of Sisyphus, a character from an ancient Greek myth. As a punishment, the gods condemned him to" roll an immense boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this action forever."

A research paper from Microsoft shows that а modern person's future is highly predictable:

It turns out that no matter how spontaneous we think we are, humans are actually quite predictable in our movements, even over extended periods of time. Not only did Far Out predict with high accuracy the correct location of a wide variety of individuals, but it did so even years into the future.

The researchers note that frequently visited locations can be further linked to people's actions. One could reasonably guess that people who happen to be at the same location do similar things. As a result, knowing what one person does on a regular basis helps predict what other people do on a regular basis. Quite likely, companies like Google, with access to lots of user data, will soon be able to predict (among other things) a country's economic activity better than the government statistics.


tags:  process, creativity, prediction, mobile, aboutness

The essential non-essentials.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over the last 100 years household expenditures on non-essentials grew to 50%.

It appears that the beginning of growth coincided with the proliferation of the mass manufacturing system pioneered by Henry Ford.

tags: s-curve, process, innovation

Will robots kill Tesla Motors?

Robotization may make electric cars viable even if consumer demand doesn't pick up for some time.

Feb 16, MTR -- "The [car] industry is getting very good at making profits on lower volumes of vehicles for niche applications," says Jay Baron, CEO of the Center for Automotive Research. In part, this is because factories are using more robots, and robots that can perform more functions, so they can be quickly reprogrammed to make different vehicles. Some automakers have announced that they will offer three versions of a car—one gasoline-powered, one hybrid, and another electric.

 This means Tesla Motors will have a hard time being an independent car maker. Their best shot at profitability would probably be through technology licensing and/or key component manufacturing. They just don't have the economies of scale to invest in full-blown robotic assembly lines.

tags: process, innovation, transportation, energy

Will tablets help creativity?

Slow, deliberate problem solving is hard because our working memory is severely limited. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman describes how the brain deals with the overload,

We normally avoid mental overload by dividing our tasks into multiple easy steps, committing intermediate results to long-term memory or to paper rather than to an easily overloaded working memory. (Thinking fast and slow. 2011.)

Sketches and simple diagrams also help capture intermediate results. Unlike PCs, tablets are better suited for hand drawings. I'd say they are even better than paper because you can use practically unlimited number of pages and colors. It's quite possible that children who grow up with tablets rather than PCs will be able to escape mental overload during problem solving sessions.

I wish blogspot had doodling tools...

tags: creativity, tool, process, control, separation

Schools vs Creativity

A good post on marginalrevolution about creativity:

From Creativity: Asset or Burden in the Classroom?, a good review paper. What the paper shows is that the characteristics that teachers use to describe their favorite student correlate negatively with the characteristics associated with creativity. In addition, although teachers say that they like creative students, teachers also say creative students are “sincere, responsible, good-natured and reliable.” In other words, the teachers don’t know what creative students are actually like.

Here's a creative summary of creativity killing process in education

Schools are created for puzzle-solving, i.e. learning pre-defined answers to known questions. Real-life creativity is about problem-solving, i.e. discovering new (mostly wrong) answers and new questions. 
 

tags: education, creativity, process, problem, puzzle

ARM vs Intel

(November 11, 2011. Bloomberg):

Intel (INTC) focused its efforts on what’s called the “clock speed” of CPUs, rapidly increasing the performance of computer chips to handle desktop operating systems and processor-intensive applications better. Less thought was given to reducing the power consumption requirements of these chips.

...ARM chips have used a “bottom up” [low-power] approach. Early ARM chips weren’t capable of running complex software but could run for days between charges. Once the power requirements of the silicon were effectively managed, ARM chips began to ramp up performance, most recently with quad-core chips that can offer 16 hours of high-definition playback on a tablet.

The companies' IP models are also very different. Intel develops and makes its chips, maintaining a quasi monopoly in the high-performance PC and server markets. ARM designs chips and licenses its architecture to third party manufacturers.

ARM's IP model is better suited for early stages of the product innovation process, when companies adopt trial-and-error market strategies (Synthesis?).

An IP strategy map would probably be a good idea to reflect the contrast, but I don't quite know what its dimensions should be.

tags: technology, battle, information, s-curve, product, process, mobile

Invention of the Day: Chocolate.

A recent meta-study of the relationship between chocolate consumption and cardiometabolic disorders concluded:

Higher levels of chocolate consumption were associated with a reduction of about a third in the risk of cardiometabolic disorders in our meta-analysis. This beneficial association was significant for any cardiovascular disease (37% reduction), diabetes (31% reduction, based on one publication), and stroke (29% reduction), but no significant association was found in relation to heart failure.

[however]...the high sugar and fat content of commercially available chocolate should be considered, and initiatives to reduce it might permit an improved exposure to the beneficial effect of chocolate. (doi: 10.1136/bmj.d4488 Published 29 August 2011).

In short, chocolate is good for you if it contains just a little bit of sugar and no added milk fat.

Though the history of drinking a cacao beverage goes back to 500 AD, today's solid chocolate is a fairly recent invention.

In 1828, Dutch chocolate maker Casparus J. van Houten patented an inexpensive method for pressing the fat from roasted cacao beans. Van Houten's machine -- a hydraulic press -- reduced the cocoa butter content by nearly half. This created a "cake" that could be pulverized into a fine powder known as "cocoa." 

The introduction of cocoa powder not only made creating chocolate drinks much easier, but also made it possible to combine chocolate with sugar and then remix it with cocoa butter to create a solid. In 1849, English chocolate maker Joseph Storrs Fry produced what was arguably the world's first eating chocolate.

It's interesting to observe the evolution of chocolate products and manufacturing processes. From a rare bitter drink to a popular sweet drink to a mass market packaged sugar+fat bar, with a wide variety of added ingredients.

Creativity is no longer an option.

The Economist (Sep 10, 2011) has an interesting article on the relationship between global trends and unemployment in the US. This paragraph in particular attracted my attention:

Michael Spence, another Nobel prize-winning economist, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs agrees that technology is hitting jobs in America and other rich countries, but argues that globalisation is the more potent factor. Some 98% of the 27m net new jobs created in America between 1990 and 2008 were in the non-tradable sector of the economy, which remains relatively untouched by globalisation, and especially in government and health care—the first of which, at least, seems unlikely to generate many new jobs in the foreseeable future. At the same time, says Mr Spence, the mix of jobs available to Americans in the tradable sector (including manufacturing) that serves global markets is shifting rapidly, with a growing share of the positions suitable only for skilled and educated people.

If you look at the "Creative Crowd" chart below, you can see that mass manufacturing processes (upper left corner) simply moved overseas where pay rates for routine labor are lower. First, the creation of a highly effective shipping industry that started in the 1950s, and then the addition of inexpensive communications in the early 2000s, lead to a situation where exchanges between the right and left parts of the chart became very easy. The housing bubble of the 2000s masked the fact that in the US not being entrepreneurial and/or creative  means competing with people who live on $100/month.

tags: creativity, business, model, process, scale, 10X, commerce

Problem-solving in context

In one famous experiment, the psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby showed that subjects often had difficulty solving a logical puzzle which required them to identify playing cards that failed to conform to a rule of play (this is called the Wason selection task). However, when the very same logical puzzle was reformulated as a problem of identifying people who had failed to conform to a rule of social behavior, the subjects performed very much better on the test. This led Cosmides and Tooby to conclude that our reasoning abilities are sensitive to context in ways that would have been beneficial for our ability to spot cheats during our evolutionary history.

Wilson, Robert. The Company of Strangers. revised edition. p. 75.

It appears, in many cases we fail to solve a problem because we don't understand - no, understand is not the right word here - we don't internalize the rules, i.e. we don't feel comfortable working and playing within the context in which the problem is presented. Transferred into a familiar context, the problem becomes an easy target. Therefore, finding the right context of a problem should be one of the first steps in a problem-solving process. Stripping the problem of professional jargon, explaining it to an 8-year-old would be good first steps.

tag: creativity, problem, solution, method, process, inertia, psychology, magicians

Forming a good creative habit.

Forming a good habit requires repetition. The more complex the task, the more repetition is needed to get to a plateau where the behaviour becomes automatic. This appears to be a conclusion of the study reported in a research blog:

" It seems the message of this research for those seeking to establish
a new habit is to repeat the behaviour every day if you can, but don't
worry excessively if you miss a day or two. Also be prepared for the
long haul - remember the average time to reach peak automaticity was
66 days."

Usually, repetitive work is not associated with creativity. But Edison's name comes to mind, b/c of his constant focus on developing new inventions. Over his lifetime he accumulated more than a thousand patents, some of them turned out to be seminal in the history of technology. Edison's lab tried to be creative "repetitively" and, obviously, the succeeded.

In Creativity, by now famous psychologist M.Csikszentmihalyi, the idea that creative people are very repetitive, almost stubborn, in things they are trying to create comes out loud and clear.

From my own experience, writing for two hours a day was key to making progress with my own book. Zerubavel's "Clockwork Muse" helped me immensely to understand and implement this simple recipe. Also, my best patents came out during the time when I literally forced myself to think up an invention a day. Most of the ideas died, but a good 50 or 60 of them made it into a patent application.

Of course, the problem with the repetitive approach could be that you get stuck with the same set of tools and in the same concept area, developing, even if you are very successful, a tunnel vision. Then, an antidote to this problem would be to work in many areas at the same time. That is why I really like working with various startups, learning new technologies, and teaching different invention techniques. Listening to UC Berkeley podcasts on topics ranging from electronics to philosophy of language, also helps.

tags: creativity, process, problem, solution, science,  invention

East vs West: twitting [un]happiness

tags: emotion, source, map, 10x, psychology, process

and the pursuit of fantasy

Games and movies are becoming a self-reinforcing platform for the new media:

...the $46 billion worldwide video game market in upheaval--budgets are soaring for console titles even as free online games sharply cannibalize sales--agents are suddenly awfully useful: finding the right talent to complete increasingly complex titles, structuring deals across media, bringing in third-party financiers.

Add to it social networking, better graphics, faster processors, ubiquitous mobile computers and you get a market revolution in the making.

tags: information, entertainment, content, source, process, innovation, payload, mobile, social

Thinking aloud

iPhone/iPod/iPad sw application approval process as it exists today is not compatible with enterprise IT practices. That is, to get an application deployed inside a company, the company would have to get Apple's approval. It's unlikely that companies, especially large ones, would go for it. Inserting Apple into the IT decision chain infringes upon internal governance model, creates IP/disclosure, and other issues.

This situation presents an opportunity for Google and Microsoft to aggressively pursue mobile enterprise business.

tags: apple, google, microsoft, infrastructure, tool, control, control point, evolution, process

Half full or half empty?

Mark J.Perry cites US patent data and marvels how creative Americans are: "5% of the world's population have received more than 22% of the world's patents."

I look at the growing gap between patent applications filed and patents granted and wonder how much inefficiency is built into the system. Especially, if we take into account that only a very small fraction of patents is useful. We ought to use better methods to invent.

tags: problem, efficiency, process, method, economics, technology

Surveying modern surgery, it is possible to picture change in terms of three successive, overlapping, phases of development. The first stage of modern surgery involved an era of extirpation, which pioneered new ways of dealing with tumors and injuries by means of surgical excision. There followed a stage of restoration, in which stress fell on surgical physiology and pharmacology, aimed at repairing impaired or endangered function. The third age has placed greater emphasis on replacement, the introduction into the damaged body of biological or artificial organs and tissues.
This last phase requires a more systemic approach to treatment that may be breaking down the time-honoured boundaries between surgery and other medical disciplines.

The Cambridge History of Medicine. p. 207.

The next stage seems to be bioenhancement, which intends to extend the range of human physical and mental capabilities. Medicine is increasingly becoming a technology, i.e. a complex web of materials, devices, practices, and processes that are being developed by multi-disciplinary teams.


tags: health, biology, course, evolution, technology, process

The structure of the chasm.

I am reading "Rationality in Action", a fascinating philosophy book by a UC Berkeley professor John Searle. In the book, Searle not only critiques the so-called Classical Model of Rationality that, among other things, serves as a basis for today's thinking about organizations, but also provides a modern framework of rationality that can be applied to the theory and practice of innovation.

He makes a case for desire-independent reasons for action that are created by people who assume responsibilities, e.g. within an organization, when the take on certain roles. One immediate implication would be that Christensen's Values/Resources/Processes framework is incorrect in at least its Values and Processes aspects. That is, employees don't act in a certain way because they suddenly get company values when they join the organization. Rather, by joining it, they assume non-contractual obligations that set essential conditions for employment, and these conditions are enforced by organizational culture and a system of monetary and other incentives.

Searle also talks about gaps "between causes in the form of your beliefs, desires, and other reasons, and the actual decision that you make." The gaps are as follows: 1) decision-making, when you have to make up your mind with regard to a course of actions; 2) action-making, i.e. the gap between decision and action; 3) activity-making, when you need to sustain the initial action to carry on a complex activity. Being aware of these three gaps is very important for designing and analysis of technology, i.e. a series of complex actions that involve equipment, people, management procedures, interfaces, and etc. (Chapter 1. p.14-15).

tags: theory, innovation, control, process, course, book

Is Yoga a technology? Probably, not.
Is psychoanalysis a technology? I don't think so.
Is medicated blood chemistry (cholesterol, sugar, vitamins, hemoglobin, etc.) maintenance a technology. Most likely, yes.

What's the difference? The type of learning that is required to produce consistent results. With technology we have a formal set of repeatable steps, while in a human-centric methodology we've got a series of rules, internalized by apprenticeship and practice.


tags: technology, control, mind, learning, method,  process, education