The coming boom and bust of design thinking
There is tremendous excitement right now about “design thinking” (see Helen Walters’ review of the best design thinking books of 2009, for example). Battered by economic failure, public uncertainty and the failure of traditional forms of leadership and management, many are gazing hopefully towards design thinking as a new management wonderdrug that will help them make sense of what is going on and secure their next big bonus, election or promotion. A Tweet I received a few days ago from @rosariocacao is typical of this excitement. See if you can count the number of buzzwords crammed into just 140 characters: “Design thinking – the premier organizational path to breakthrough innovation and collaboration While I too am excited that the general public is starting to better understand and appreciate the value design, it may be wise to inject a small note of caution gained from bitter experience before we get too carried away. Here is why.
Bre Pettis | I Make Things - Bre Pettis Blog - The Cult of Done Manifesto
Dear Members of the Cult of Done, I present to you a manifesto of done. This was written in collaboration with Kio Stark in 20 minutes because we only had 20 minutes to get it done. The Cult of Done Manifesto There are three states of being. Update: James Provost made the awesome poster for the Cult of Done Manifesto. And Joshua Rothaas made this poster.
Michael J. Gelb—How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci
Audience: Leaders, managers, professionals, people working in teams (special adaptations for trainers, engineers, financial services, marketers and salespeople)Competencies: Creativity, accelerated-learning, leadershipProgram formats: Keynote speech, half-day to two-day workshop Thinking creatively, learning faster and leading change, these abilities are at a premium in a highly competitive global business environment. What if you could call on history’s greatest genius, Leonardo da Vinci, to be your personal mentor in cultivating these highly prized elements of human capital? Leonardo invented the parachute before anyone could fly!
Creative Thinking Articles and Techniques by Michael Michalko
George de Mestral was inspired to improve the zipper. He thought about the essence of zippers which is to fasten two separate pieces of fabric together. His question became “How do things fasten?” He became committed to the idea of inventing a better fastener and spent considerable time pondering how things fasten in other domains including nature. One day when George was hunting birds with his Irish pointer, he traveled through some burdock thistles. When you are committed and start to actively work on a problem that you are passionate about, you will start to notice more and more things that relate to what you are working on. The burdock fascinated George and he imagined a fastener that mimicked a burdock. George envisioned two fabrics that could attach in this manner with one having a surface covered with minuscule hooks and another with hoops. Cognitive scientists understand the importance of perception and pattern recognition as a major component of creative thinking.
L’éveil pour oser devenir soi-même (développement personnel)
- Mes difficultés proprement dites importent peu mais la manière dont je les perçois fait toute la différence car elle détermine comment j’y fais face. - Souvent c’est le jugement d’autrui qui détermine ma perception de la réalité d’une chose ou d’une situation et qui dit que mon comportement est bon ou mauvais. - Toutes mes discussions reposent sur la manière dont je perçois mon environnement, les choses et les êtres qui m’entourent. - En appréhendant les choses autrement, je les penserais autrement et les autres agirons autrement avec moi. - Diverses interprétations d’une même information peut, soit enrichir une relation, soit semer la discorde entre deux personnes car d’autres éléments doivent être également pris en compte : le passé, la culture, les valeurs, les désirs, l’éducation, le degré d’ouverture de chacun… - Tenir compte des filtrage de chacun m’ouvre de nouvelles perspectives. - En comprenant l’autre (son point de vue), je vis de manière harmonieuse avec lui.
Thinking Like Einstein
Einstein asked, “What would it be like to ride light?” For perhaps the hundredth time, I try to think like Einstein. A burst of light is seen by two observers: one stationary on a platform, the other moving in a train. We think of meditation as following the breath, but for Einstein meditation was following thought. The Dalai Lama writes often about “analytic meditation.” As I work through each step inwardly from both points of view – stationary and moving – I encounter a paradox, a contraction. A second kind of meditation should then be joined to the first, says the Dalai Lama. And now I’ll return to the burst of light for the 101st time. -Arthur Zajonc President
Design Thinking Is A Failed Experiment. So What's Next?
The decade of Design Thinking is ending and I, for one, am moving on to another conceptual framework: Creative Intelligence, or CQ. I am writing a book about Creative Intelligence, due out from HarperCollins in fall 2012, and I hope to have a conversation with the Fast Company audience on this blog about how we should teach, measure, and use CQ. Why am I, who at Business Week was one of Design Thinking's major advocates, moving on to a new conceptual framework? Simple. Design Thinking has given the design profession and society at large all the benefits it has to offer and is beginning to ossify and actually do harm. Helen Walters, my wonderful colleague at Business Week, lays out many of the pros and cons of Design Thinking in her post on her blog. Design consultancies hoped that a process trick would produce change. I would add that the construction and framing of Design Thinking itself has become a key issue. There were many successes, but far too many more failures in this endeavor.
Dancing Makes You Smarter
For centuries, dance manuals and other writings have lauded the health benefits of dancing, usually as physical exercise. More recently we've seen research on further health benefits of dancing, such as stress reduction and increased serotonin level, with its sense of well-being. Most recently we've heard of another benefit: Frequent dancing apparently makes us smarter. A major study added to the growing evidence that stimulating one's mind by dancing can ward off Alzheimer's disease and other dementia, much as physical exercise can keep the body fit. Dancing also increases cognitive acuity at all ages. You may have heard about the New England Journal of Medicine report on the effects of recreational activities on mental acuity in aging. The 21-year study of senior citizens, 75 and older, was led by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City, funded by the National Institute on Aging, and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Neuroplasticity Aging and memory
