Assignment on March 17 – My favourite nesta idea

THE OPEN BOOK OF SOCIAL INNOVATION BY NESTA.

Tip #139.

A working museum. A workplace should provide a clear and engaging insight into the work that goes on and culture that rests within the organization. Some ventures go further and make their workplace into a working gallery or museum. They demonstrate much of their work visually, through photos and graphs. Some arrange tours and generate income from them. For example, Vauban in Freiburg, Germany, and Bo01 in Malmo, Sweden, are examples of low-carbon communities which allow visitors to touch, use and see the results, as well as see the work of the employees and staff. It is always a useful exercise for a venture.

We have chances to see their work in the public gallery or museum, but what about their studio? or home office? Even better. I believe visiting people’s work space is a very intimate thing, its like looking at the very raw drawings and rough design. It must be amazing to know how the final product was develop from sketch. Conversely, if I know people are visiting where I work normally, I would have try even harder to express what I want to say through art and design. Let people feels like they are in a wonderland. Also, hopefully by looking the initial ideas of my work, I will gain more recognitions and inspiration feedback. After all, life is about learning from each other.

Filed under: Design thinking, Innovation

Reflection on Cathrine’s class (session 3) Part II

Why innovation matters?

Does it bring direct investments to countries? (to the GDP and FDI?)

Why UK has lost their competitiveness? ( is it lack of productivity innovation)

The changing nature of domestic and international competition?

(legal issues, patent, intellectual property rights)

(the R&D, education, clusters? tax, rewarding, incentives)

Obvious example are like how swiss are in making watch…italy are good in shoe making…industries should remain on the top of the game, which leave the rest of the country a question, if they want to put itself on the map of the design? HOW??

Filed under: Uncategorized

Reflection on Cathrine’s class (session 3) Part I

Question: Can you actually create a context of creativity and innovation?

This is the graph created by Thomas Pans, introduce in the class in related to the question.

During the class we define innovation from creativity. Innovation begins with creative ideas, it is a process and a opportunities for value creation.

We also identified different types of innovation. (Check the powerpoint presentation) The exercise we did in class was very useful. I didn’t use to know these varies types. For different types of  paradigm innovation: changes are in the underlying mental structure/ model which frame the business, it comes form the company.

Example1: small size shampoo doses for developing countries. it is a incremental position innovation because it is a steps by steps innovation not the radical innovation.

Example2: white led lighting (radical production)

Example3: online health service (incremental product)

Filed under: Innovation, Uncategorized

The six thinking hat

In this week Cathrine’s class (session 2), we continue to explore innovation and find out why innovation are so important to a city.

This topic of this class interests me a lot since I was born in a cosmopolitan city as well as living in one now (Hong Kong and London). I traveled regularly to China with my parents, to the less developed part. I love the totally different things in these places and it is always been my interest to find out why and where does people want to live and pursuit a creative career.

Important points to discuss after class:

1. ‘Creativity as a multidimensional process which requires combination of thinking styles’ -this statement is true in a very large extent. The fact that it is not that difficult to live/work with people with different culture backgrounds. The history and prosperous of the cities have successfully attracted professionals or people who seek new geographical opportunities. Whereas if you go to a less developed city, For instance, Zhongshan, a city in a prefecture-level city Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province in southern China. Seeing foreigners in the high street is not a common thing yet,  also a lot less labour are come from other countries too. However, major city like beijing and shanghai of course has a different story.

My opinions might have bias since I have been out of my home country for 7 years, the people and things evolve around me are naturally international, or conversely, I have already quite blend in to the a second culture.

2. Coming up with new ideas demand effective thinking. – This is a true statement and simply I think that effective thinking  help to pushes the ideas forward, it values up the idea instead of degrading it. Very similar to innovation, it prolongs the life of an idea by refreshing or adding new elements to it, so it adapts to the current environment.

3. Be able to switch through different thinking style (especially for international thinkers) – During the class we got introduced the De Bono Six’s thinking hat. A thinking tool for group discussion or individuals. It is quite common in the UK innovative sector. It shows attempts of parallel thinking which is very different from the ordinary unstructured thinking. In a group situation, it is recommend to think through the project with different hats, avoid individuals converge with the same ‘hat’ of thinking.

This class inspire me to one of the possible dissertation topics, where does creative talents like to work? Does different styles of management in different culture had affected their choice? Is it a advantage or a disadvantage for a creative team to have a international background? Apart form this, recruitment policy of a company probably plays a very important parts in this area as well.

Filed under: Innovation