Venture Lab | Design Thinking Action Lab All humans are born as creative beings, but as we grow up, school and work offer few opportunities to cultivate and apply our creativity. At Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design - known as the d.school - students of all disciplines learn the design thinking process as a methodology for creative and human-centered problem solving that empowers them to collaborate across disciplines and tackle the world’s biggest challenges. In this experiential course - free and open to all - you will learn the design thinking process by tackling a real world innovation challenge. As preparation for each stage of the challenge, you will explore the main design thinking concepts through short videos, each paired with brief activities to practice relevant methods and approaches. By the end of the course, you will have learned through experience the mindsets and basic tools for each stage of the design thinking process: Empathize: understanding the needs of those you are designing for. Workload.
70 useful sentences for academic writing Back in the late 90s, in the process of reading for my MA dissertation, I put together a collection of hundreds of sentence frames that I felt could help me with my academic writing later on. And they did. Immensely. After the course was over, I stacked my sentences away, but kept wondering if I could ever put them to good use and perhaps help other MA / PhD students. So here are 70 sentences extracted and adapted for from the original compilation, which ran for almost 10 pages. This list is organized around keywords. Before you start:1. Arguea. Claima. Data a. Debate a. Discussion a. Evidence a. Grounda. Issue a. Premisea. Researcha.This study draws on research conducted by ___.b. If you found this list useful, check out The Only Academic Phrasebook You’ll Ever Need, which contains 600 sentences, as well as grammar and vocabulary tips.
SCAN and Causal Layered Analysis How do we make sense of story – the stories and narratives and anecdotes that people tell each other and themselves about their world? How can we link between the layers of story to help us make sense of some broader picture, or to derive a clearer view of some desired future? (This is a post I’d promised a colleague a long time back – this is me at last completing on that promise! One of the tools I often use for this purpose is Sohail Inayatullah’s Causal Layered Analysis (CLA). CLA describes narrative in terms of four distinct layers: – At the surface is the litany, the world of the tabloid-newspaper, the everyday of ‘the world as it should be’ – or, more often, the ‘litany of complaint’ that it’s not ‘as it should be’. – Beneath this is the systemic layer, the layer of social causation. – Beneath this again is the worldview layer – the stories and narratives through which we decide what is ‘relevant fact’ and what is not. Also interesting (to me, at least Over to you, if you wish?
Cultural Institute – Google Google has partnered with hundreds of museums, cultural institutions, and archives to host the world’s cultural treasures online. With a team of dedicated Googlers, we are building tools that allow the cultural sector to display more of its diverse heritage online, making it accessible to all. Here you can find artworks, landmarks and world heritage sites, as well as digital exhibitions that tell the stories behind the archives of cultural institutions across the globe. Cultural Institute on YouTube Follow Cultural Institute on G+ Our Projects Art Project Museums large and small, classic and modern, world-renowned and community-based from over 40 countries have contributed more than 40,000 high-resolution images of works ranging from oil on canvas to sculpture and furniture. Art Project on YouTube Art Project on G+ World Wonders Project World Wonders brings modern and ancient world heritage sites online using Street View, 3D modelling and other Google technologies. World Wonders on YouTube
IRI 2038 Futures Study Launch Date: May 2012 Wrap-up Date: November 2013 As part of IRI’s 75th Anniversary Celebration (2013) IRI commissioned the IRI2038 project, a futures initiative designed to answer the following two questions: How will possible future developments and events impact the art and science of research and technology management over the next 25 years? How can IRI best serve its membership in these possible futures? The primary output of the project is twofold: four plausible, yet provocative scenarios about the future of R&D and innovation management and the results of a backcasting exercise designed to help R&D practitioners prepare for these scenarios. The Scenarios Africa Leapfrogs Developed Countries - An inability to build new capacity in the developed world due to increasing environmental regulations creates a new flexible and localized manufacturing process. Backcasting Africa Leapfrogs Developed Countries Backcasting Summary Discovery Extrapolation The Extrapolation Phase included: Planning
Exploring your own learning style Research has shown that the more we become aware of our own learning styles, the better we learn. These web sites are offered in that spirit, but we cannot account for their validity. We recommend that any "profiles" offered should be taken to a professional academic counselor for validation. Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire: (Felder/Silverman) introduction, learning preferences on four dimensions (active/reflective, sensing/intuitive, visual/verbal, and sequential/global); and a self-assessment instrument self-scored. Results/scores are based upon 44 questions. The Success Types Learning Style Type Indicator (Pelley) based on the Myers Briggs Type Indicators (Extraversion, Introversion, Sensing, Intuition, Thinking, Feeling, Judging, Perceiving) Introduction and links to related Myers Briggs type indicators. Edutopia's Learning Style Survey24 questions scored on intelligences of Howard Gardner See also:
The Thing From The Future – Situation Lab - OCADU The Thing From The Future is an award-winning imagination game that challenges players to collaboratively and competitively describe objects from a range of alternative futures. *link fixed The object of the game is to come up with the most entertaining and thought-provoking descriptions of hypothetical objects from different near-, medium-, and long-term futures. In addition to the deck of 108 game cards, a supply of blank index cards and a pen for each player is required. A single deck of The Thing From The Future cards may be used for play by individuals or by groups of two to six members. There are four types of cards in The Thing From The Future: Arc, Terrain, Object, and Mood. ARC cards broadly describe different kinds of possible futures. Grow is a kind of future in which everything and everyone keeps climbing: population, production, consumption… Collapse is a kind of future in which life as we know it has fallen – or is falling – apart. Team Thanks Getting a Deck
The Life Cycle Of Ideas Every scientific idea has its day. Theories are born and experiments are designed; results are put to the test, then disproved or accepted as canon. As scientists discuss an idea, they cite the paper that proposed it in their own work. Then, as the conversation moves on, references to the paper drop off. The rise and fall of citations serves to measure the lifespan of a paper’s underlying ideas. Life sciences tend to have a flatter citations trend [shaded portion], perhaps because ideas in the field are easier for other experts to grasp—in contrast to fields like mathematics—so it takes less time for them to catch on. Data provided by Thomson Reuters Web of Science; Consultation by jevin west, university of Washington; Analysis and Data visualization by Accurat. This article originally appeared in the May 2014 issue of Popular Science.
Three Horizons – fields of future, full of foresight. I’d like to relate to parts of a book that came out in late 2013 from Bill Sharpe. His book, or actually more a booklet, called “Three Horizons: The Patterning of Hope”, published by Triarchy Press, has some really helpful insights. In this book, Bill outlines his distinct ways of creatively working through many of the unknowns, by framing and connecting though the Three Horizons, (3H) as his contribution to the patterning of hope for all our futures. I draw out a lot within his thinking, experiences and approaches within the book. Here are some of the ‘triggers’ I connected with strongly from his book: The three horizons does offer us much to frame the future Firstly, the 3H is actually a simple framework, see my original opening post in 2010,on a quick explanation if you need it. The 3H methodology enables us to look out into the future, across different horizons. Tackling uncertain futures for transformational change So it becomes clear the 3H is a way of working with change Like this:
How to see into the future Billions of dollars are spent on experts who claim they can forecast what’s around the corner, in business, finance and economics. Most of them get it wrong. Now a groundbreaking study has unlocked the secret: it IS possible to predict the future – and a new breed of ‘superforecasters’ knows how to do it ©Laurie Rollitt Irving Fisher was once the most famous economist in the world. Some would say he was the greatest economist who ever lived. In the 1920s, Fisher had two great rivals. Fisher’s rivals fared better than he did. If Fisher and Babson could see the modern forecasting industry, it would have astonished them in its scale, range and hyperactivity. It is true that forecasting now seems ubiquitous. Irving Fisher. Real breakthroughs have been achieved in certain areas, especially where rich datasets have become available – for example, weather forecasting, online retailing and supply-chain management. So why is forecasting so difficult – and is there hope for improvement? ©Corbis
future_fabulators:new_approaches_and_needs_in_foresight [the libarynth] New Approaches And Needs In Foresight (workshop at FTA 2014 - 27 NOV 2014) short summary workshop “New approaches in FTA / foresight” at the EU FTA conference, November 2014 (based on notes from Cornelia Daheim) New Approaches FoAM on flickr 4 major clusters: IT-based / “automated” foresight (in early stages, to be used with a “disclaimer” because of the current hype, experiences still have to be evaluated and sense-making still not generated;) Relies strongly on having had a precise “question” / task before starting Integrated qualitative-quantitative approaches. New or Unmet Needs in Foresight Where are new needs? Needs in Innovation Field are expanding Also in corporate foresight Health / social systems “Political” Foresight Need for Shared Theoretical Background / Futures Literacy / practical principles Shared language / vocabulary Prove / exemplify impacts Practitioners being clear about values Need for more value-based approaches Tools and Skills Needs FoAM on flickr Foresight 2030
How to See the Future First manoftaste.de/Flickr One of the biggest challenges innovators face is to truly understand the market opportunity space before they start creating a strategy and well in advance of product development. Since we can’t see the future, we need to gain some real insight from deep domain experts and make sense of possible scenarios. Even if the innovations are disruptive and the future is discontinuous, all we can really know is based on the data we have today. So it is through diligent inquiry and sense making that we get some general idea as to what will likely happen next. But creating innovations that we believe will succeed in the future requires that we first develop some clear foresight. I was given such a challenge when a celebrated medical device company came to me with the following questions: 1). This organization had mastered incremental innovation, smaller and less intrusive devices for example. What are the future opportunities and challenges you will face?