Isaac Asimov Asks, “How Do People Get New Ideas?” Note from Arthur Obermayer, friend of the author: In 1959, I worked as a scientist at Allied Research Associates in Boston. The company was an MIT spinoff that originally focused on the effects of nuclear weapons on aircraft structures. The company received a contract with the acronym GLIPAR (Guide Line Identification Program for Antimissile Research) from the Advanced Research Projects Agency to elicit the most creative approaches possible for a ballistic missile defense system.
The government recognized that no matter how much was spent on improving and expanding current technology, it would remain inadequate. When I first became involved in the project, I suggested that Isaac Asimov, who was a good friend of mine, would be an appropriate person to participate. How do people get new ideas? One way of investigating the problem is to consider the great ideas of the past and see just how they were generated. There is a great deal in common there. But why didn’t he think of it?
Psychology. Sociology. The WAR of ART and the Unlived Life. The Traca Project. Willconstantine : NEVER Forget! #ASTDALC... Your organization sucks at innovating. It’s easy to make your organization more innovative if you stop trying to show everyone how innovative you are. What can you do to add more innovation to your organization? A question, no doubt, asked in every organization.
There are simple accessible answers to that question all over the place and countless best-selling books. It’s an easy question to answer but it’s the wrong question. There are generally two ways to become more innovative. We can add things to what we’re already doing (innovation by addition) or we can take things away that get in the way of innovation (innovation by subtraction).
We tend to focus on additive innovation because it’s a lot easier than subtractive innovation. We can add innovation days. But we all know this crap doesn’t work. Innovation by addition is tangible. Additive innovation quickly turns into activity for its own sake: innovation champions, innovation awards, innovation panels. But…here’s another thought. Want to kill innovation? Three Reasons Instructional Designers Need to Know about Tin Can. So, I’m an instructional designer, with an emphasis on design. I learned about acronyms like AICC and SCORM purely in self-defense, so my eyes wouldn’t cross when I talked to developers. And honestly – it wasn’t that important for me to know that much about those standards because there was such a short list of things I could do with them. But Tin Can is different, and it’s important for IDs to start wrapping their heads around it. There’s this thing that happened with SCORM – it could actually originally do a lot of different things, but as it got implemented, we started defining it very narrowly.
We basically put ourselves in a very small box: We put ourselves in that small box and labeled it SCORM, and then decided it was necessary on the off chance that we might want to move a course from one LMS to another, which was pretty much missing the point. So here are three reasons why instructional designers need to pay attention to Tin Can: Reason 2: The format is accomplishment-based. Radically Improved Action Planning. Most of us who have been trainers have tried one or more methods of action planning—hoping to get our learners to apply what they've learned back on the job. The most common form of action planning goes something like this (at the end of a training program): "Okay, take a look at this action-planning handout.
Think of three things from the course you'd like to take away and apply back on the job. This is critically important. If you feel you've learned something you'd like to use, you won't get the results you want if you forget what your goals are. On the handout, you'll see space to write down your three goals. I'm going to give you 20 minutes to do this—because it's so important! " Unfortunately, learner follow-through from this method is likely less than half than that of another—more research-based—method.
When trainers perform action planning, we recognize that learning is not enough. Consider the following diagram. Enter triggered action planning. Wait but why: Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy. Say hi to Lucy. Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y. I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—I call them Gen Y Protagonists & Special Yuppies, or GYPSYs. A GYPSY is a unique brand of yuppie, one who thinks they are the main character of a very special story. So Lucy’s enjoying her GYPSY life, and she’s very pleased to be Lucy. Lucy’s kind of unhappy. To get to the bottom of why, we need to define what makes someone happy or unhappy in the first place.
It’s pretty straightforward—when the reality of someone’s life is better than they had expected, they’re happy. To provide some context, let’s start by bringing Lucy’s parents into the discussion: Lucy’s parents were born in the 50s—they’re Baby Boomers. Lucy’s Depression Era grandparents were obsessed with economic security and raised her parents to build practical, secure careers. GYPSYs Are Delusional. Problems with Survey Questions. Dr. Patti Phillips has focused on the implementation of ROI evaluation for the past seven years. She assisted in building an international evaluation consulting business, helped launch the ROI Network, and developed and managed international partnerships with organizations interested in implementing the ROI methodology.
Prior to her involvement with ROI, she worked 13 years in the electric utility industry. As the manager of market research and planning and marketing administration, Phillips helped launched a number of initiatives, including Marketing University, a unique learning environment for new sales representatives. Phillips works with organizations to implement accountability processes including ROI.
She has served as contributing author in a number of publications, including Donald Kirkpatrick's Evaluating Training Programs (Berrett-Koehler, 1998), Lorraine L.